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Not really a rant, more a random thought
Nov. 27th, 2005 03:21 amI'm presently musing on the fact of my deep and abiding love of fic, first time OTP in particular, for that IS how it all started, but also how that branched out in directions I originally scoffed at. For example, AU. I fully scorned AU, because I honestly couldn't see the point of placing the characters I had fallen in love with in roles and worlds and oftentimes even attitudes so comprehensively different from those that had pulled me to them in the first place.
Yet I began to see the appeal. It was fun. That's all. Plain fun to take beloved characters and put them into the role of a waitress or a professor or a race car driver and try to accurately write how they may remain the person we love while at the same time realistically depict how they would be different.
Now this doesn't always work for me. It's gotta be well done, otherwise I won't finish the story (which I hate), and I'll feel like I wasted my time. Something of this category can be completely frivolous and at the same time some of the best writing I've ever seen, even if it isn't always strictly believable. The author is, after all, filtering the character through their own perceptions on how they may act given the altered circumstances.
But if it's just plain horrible writing, doesn't matter the category, I get upset. When the author obviously hasn't made the slightest attempt at understanding her characters' personalities and interactions, is simply using them as a veil for her own whatever, I find myself indignant at having my babies treated so poorly. Not to mention confused. Such an author had found herself enjoying and inspired by these characters enough to actually write something featuring them and POST it, so why wouldn't she be true to them?
Really, I can't handle that sort of disappointment.
Thank God for recs.
Yet I began to see the appeal. It was fun. That's all. Plain fun to take beloved characters and put them into the role of a waitress or a professor or a race car driver and try to accurately write how they may remain the person we love while at the same time realistically depict how they would be different.
Now this doesn't always work for me. It's gotta be well done, otherwise I won't finish the story (which I hate), and I'll feel like I wasted my time. Something of this category can be completely frivolous and at the same time some of the best writing I've ever seen, even if it isn't always strictly believable. The author is, after all, filtering the character through their own perceptions on how they may act given the altered circumstances.
But if it's just plain horrible writing, doesn't matter the category, I get upset. When the author obviously hasn't made the slightest attempt at understanding her characters' personalities and interactions, is simply using them as a veil for her own whatever, I find myself indignant at having my babies treated so poorly. Not to mention confused. Such an author had found herself enjoying and inspired by these characters enough to actually write something featuring them and POST it, so why wouldn't she be true to them?
Really, I can't handle that sort of disappointment.
Thank God for recs.
