Fanfic I avoid

[sistermagpie]

I said something today about how the current Bat-titles are for me like having to read fanfic by the kind of authors I usually try to avoid. So even if there's good things in it it still upsets me. lucky_sometimes asked, understandably, what kind of fanfic authors I avoided. It's hard to be clear in 140 characters!

It's not a certain type of author really, except that it's "the type of author who doesn't agree with me"

People often ask "what makes you hit the back button in a story?" and get responses about "character bashing" or things like "Ginny-bashing in an H/someone else" story, or sometimes other more generic requests like not ignoring the canon love interest or vilifying her. Then there are common tropes that people avoid--mpreg, evil!Ron (or whatever character), girlie!Shep (or whatever character). Takes that are common enough that they have names and people know they can't stand them.

What I was thinking about it writing about the Batverse was something both more subtle and more pervasive? It's that experience where you're reading a fic and it might not be the worst-written fic you've ever read, but you start to be aware that the author has a very strong take on canon that's a bit like...well, it's a bit like moving canon a few feet to the left before starting your story. And you can’t even disagree with it because it's not being argued so much as stated in a challenging or querulous tone of voice. They're starting with the premise that certain things are good or make sense and you just don't agree. In fact you might think it's terrible.

This probably comes up a lot in shipping. If you ship something you really don't need much to get you into the story. But to someone who doesn't ship it, who just can't even see it, it just reads as jarring. In a well-written story you might wind up buying the ship in spite of yourself, or at least buying the world around it and able to suspend your disbelief. In less well-written cases it's funny and unbelievable. In bad cases it feels vaguely insulting or like the characters are being abused or something. It's the fics where I want to jump in and argue with the author's meta that annoy me.

Basically, it's the same as somebody giving you a meta reading that you don't like, only putting it in fanfic form, even if it's badly written, is just far more disturbing and visceral because it's like it's "true" now even if you tell yourself it's not canon. So there tends to be fanfic writers you know to avoid. I wouldn't read a writer if I knew their view of the Batverse was that Damian was uber-special and complex and Dick was his dumb sidekick. Just as I'd avoid a story if the author had a history of, say, writing Tim Drake as the under-appreciated genius who was secretly better than everyone around him and they were going to continue that here. Or sometimes it's two characters—for instance, every relationship the main character has is unhealthy for him except for his relationship with X, who is the only person who really cares about him. You read it and know the person could easily tell you the ways every single character really is an unworthy friend compared to character X, who is also the only person who can understand the Special Problem the main character has in this story. Or at least tell you that they really do feel like the character gets let down by everyone.

To be clear, I'm not making this about me having great taste. I actually totally understand the satisfaction of seeing certain characters as the tragic victim who suffers because nobody appreciates them. It just needs to be one of the characters I can relate to that way. That's why I would never want even those stories I like to be canon, because I know what a horror it would be for the people who were more likely to identify with the characters getting trashed for it.

Tl;dr, the simple way to say it is it's like those fanfics where you start to read and you quickly realize something like: Oh god, Harry's a little angel who's too good for this world and the only person he can really feel safe with is...Snape. Or: Oh, Scully's responsible for all Mulder's successes and now she's betraying him with Krycek and he deserves it. Iow, fics where you have to share the same itch, grudge or disinterest for something the author has or else.

Comments

[seductivedark.livejournal.com]

Is it something in the air?

I'm reading a fic right now that was going good but has snuck in a type of story line that I find I dislike. I've seen it before in fics but never really thought of it as a dislike on its own because the place I usually see it is in badfic. What I'm reading isn't badfic. It's decently done and in a fandom I like. But I have put it aside and am not eager to get back to it because I don't like ratcheting up the abuse to near-fatal levels just to build sympathy or whatever the reason is. So-and-so wasn't just treated poorly, he was abused to within an inch of his life and - what a guy! - he's still on the job, hiding his misery and injury when he ought to be falling down in a bloodless faint and confined to bed for at least a week. I could take the abuse of another character earlier on since it rang true to me in ways this second one didn't, simply due to the characters involved. The second, though it would have been in character for the baddies, didn't play out like it should have, IMO. The guy was severely injured but, as I said, was still on the job to hide that he had been abused. There are also way too many "oh poor me" backstories to the main characters that are just heaping on more and more hurt so, I suppose, the reader will be happy when everything turns out in the end.

Please. I don't need this level of hurt-comfort.

But I know a lot of people really like this sort of fic and, done well, it does provide what is wanted. I'm sure other people find what I like to be not up their alley, too.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Oh, so true. That's the thing people sometimes don't realize about good writing taht it's a lot easier to read stuff you don't like when written badly because it's just not as visceral. It never seems real. But you get a good writer who's really interested in something you don't like? That can kill you. I've read fics that really got under my skin for exactly that reason.

[lilacsigil.livejournal.com]

I understand exactly what you mean! The emotional investment is different with canon! With fanfic, you can just click away, know that other people are enjoying it, then go and read something else. With new canon, there is no something else. I try to think "Well, someone must be enjoying this!" but it just makes me cranky. You can't even tell yourself it's OOC because this is the definition of C. The only answer is to stop reading (and, on the art side of things, I had to stop reading X-Men for the first time in decades because the Greg Land art was like this for me. I can get through some shitty art, but his is actually offensive to me.)

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Comics is just so weird in that way because it completely blurs the line. In some ways it's all fanfic, but in other ways, it's fanfic that becomes canon. I always notice that in comics fandom it's really common to hear people saying "my canon stops at..." or "in my canon..." and sort of mean it, because you can go in and out. And people will totally argue characterizations based on the things they've read and not others.

No one should have to be subjected to Greg Land just to read X-Men.

[dotfic.livejournal.com]

Yep, I think I know this feeling. Beyond the obvious avoid at all costs things, I'm picky and sometimes I'll read stories by auhors whose style I admire, and the fic is well written but my god, their take on the characters feels jarringly off kilter in relation to my lens, or I feel like the fic is telling me lies about the characters. In extreme cases it's a knee jerk feeling of slander! And wondering if we even have looked at the same source text. Or that the author is diminishing the characters by going too OTT or arguing their own meta via fic with an argument I can't buy.

[edited because I was typing with my thumbs.]

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I remember one very well-known fic that was really long and I checked out the latest chapter thinking I'd start from the beginning and it was just...yeah, jarring. It wasn't even just the characters but just the tone, the way they spoke to each other. I don't even know if there was a canon take I wouldn't have liked because that alone freaked me out!

[ava-jamison.livejournal.com]

I said something today about how the current Bat-titles are for me like having to read fanfic by the kind of authors I usually try to avoid.

Sing it, sister! Also with you on the meta reading you don't like and 'more disturbing' because it's "true" even though you're telling yourself it's not canon. Which... if you're talking about certain recent takes on characters in current Bat-titles... wasn't canon until a writer's brand new take. So THEN one hopes even harder that it won't stick. Or I do, anyway.

And yes. For me, too, like a fanfic where I start to read and go 'oh no.' I DON'T share this writer's same itch, grudge or disinterest.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

It's creepy because you wind up feeling like...I dunno, like you're on the Titanic and you're the only one who notices the water's rising. Or maybe it's more like you're the only one who notices characters being targetted by assassins or something!

[ava-jamison.livejournal.com]

Dick! The call is coming from inside the house. INSIDE THE HOUSE!

[mildlunacy.livejournal.com]

Hahaah I think... imagine feeling this way about like, *all* fics (ie, arguing with their meta/base assumptions... no matter what), and you have (I think) why it gives me the shudders to read [very nearly] all HP fic these days. Sort of like how when you're having serious issues in a marriage, everything becomes a reason to nag or argue, haha, and when you're just falling in love, even gross craziness is sort of ok 'cause isn't it just *cuter* that way? haha. I mention this because it's sort of like in medicine, you realize 'oh so this is how a healthy body works' when someone's system(s) breaks down? That's how it seems. Like, my whole 'system' broke down, which establishes the fact that we have to sort of do certain mental maneuvers while reading, esp. fanfic.

When I had a semi-healthy relationship with HP (and... when was that??! a mythical time indeed), I think I had these 'dead-breakers' that pretty narrowly defined, and so it was easy enough to avoid reading 'certain things', and then I just got so sensitized by reading a large enough quantities of fic with a wide enough range of things 'wrong' that I think it's like the very 'fanon'/canon overall 'verse' I saw in fanfic in general... shifted to the left. And after you go far enough left long enough, it's like you can never go back; like, you can't recover from something like... the way X-Files went wrong, say. Imagine if they knew they really messed up and got really great writers to fix it, except after that certain point, what's happened has happened, and there's no fixing it in the viewers' minds.

Anyway, so I think that's what happens to me if I read a series and it sours. At first I just feel a sort of mental disconnect and frustration because of the shifting ground and feeling like they've just got to be kidding, but eventually I allow them their 'canon' and it's me and not they that gets displaced from the 'Narrative'.


Anyway, I have a sensitivity to fics where I can tell an author has *any* serious agenda, whether I agree with it or not. Like, I have no beef with say, genius!Jim Kirk, but the more I see it, the more it annoys me. I think agreeing may just put off my irritation, but I really just can't stand propagandizing or things that are too ornate/too good to be true *unless* you can sell it and/or it's one of my beliefs (in which case I usually like it to be presented realistically but acknowledging it's unlikely but happens anyway). So you can't sell me on things like 'eternal victimhood', but you can sell me on say, Twue Wuv, so maybe it just depends. The true serious offenders (like the Snape Will Save Him people) are just wrong because they don't know crap about human nature, in my view, not because Snape Just Wouldn't. No one is The Answer to anyone's issues in that fashion, a point even JKR got about Snape & Lily (which is just sad, if JKR is more psychologically savvy than you).

Anyway, there's no way to make inherent bullshit really edible, in other words, regardless of character. Original fics where some woman rescues a man through Lurve are slightly more acceptable 'cause they're made within the romance genre conventions without pretense to cross-pollination, generally, so they're to be taken in the same stylized fashion as horror slash films. When you transplant Treacherous Passions to Harry/Snape, you're basically creating a monster. Kind of a fun monster (gotta love fanfic) but still........ Btw, not sure what my point is or was. Crazy premises are crazy??? Um.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

LOL! I like to think your healthiest relationship with HP was back in those days when you'd never read it.:-D

So you can't sell me on things like 'eternal victimhood', but you can sell me on say, Twue Wuv, so maybe it just depends. The true serious offenders (like the Snape Will Save Him people) are just wrong because they don't know crap about human nature, in my view, not because Snape Just Wouldn't.

You know, you might have hit on something there. Because on of the things about the most troublesome fics is that they're so biased in a way that's just unrealistic. I mean, I guess one could say that even in canon things will always work out for Harry etc., but it's not the same. He still lives in a world that's populated by people who are doing their own thing. Where as then there's fics where you can sort of tell you're listening to one person's view of the world where nobody else is given any inner life beyond how they feel about the issue the author's writing about, like the main character. It's like if you listen to a person IRL who thinks they're always right and everyone else is just mean to them and you can't help but know that they're either in denial or lying.

[mildlunacy.livejournal.com]

Ha! I like that. 'In denial or lying', 'cause human nature is so obviously *there* it's not like you can miss it unless you're trying to. :D :D :D

[oselle.livejournal.com]

fics where you have to share the same itch, grudge or disinterest for something the author has or else.

Yeah, I know I'm turned off by stories in which the author clearly has an agenda or an axe to grind. Even if I grind the same axe, I don't think it makes for very good storytelling unless you can get your point across as part of the story. Case in point: I really hate the way SPN has cast Dean as a "whiner" who repeatedly needs to be lectured. If I read a story in which someone started lecturing Dean (as the show does) and then another character came in and yelled at that person and told them they were ALL WRONG about Dean, I'd know the author felt the same way I do, but they would be expressing it in a clunky way that would probably make for a poor story.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Yes, very much. It's the difference b/w fanfic that scratches an itch, which has its uses, and one that's a real story. I remember one HP story where I thought this one character was really sympathetic and compelling, and it turned out the author hated the character so they'd really struggle to write her fairly. You could still clearly see how the author felt and it was a meta comment (just as every fanfic characterization tends to be)--the situation was obviously saying "this is what would happen in the real world if you acted like this." But it was done realistically and sympathetically so it didn't sound like a criticism but a well-done characterization.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

I know that I'd have a really hard time writing Sam Winchester into a story now, based on what they've done with his character...I'd probably avoid it altogether. As it is I don't write about him very much. "Lazarus Came Forth" was the last story I wrote where he really played a role, and even though that was before Season Four, I still had to reach back to a much older (and more fanon-influenced) version of that character in order to write him in a positive light. If I wanted to write him now, I'd kind of have to ignore everything that's happened for the past season-and-a-half.

[sholio]

Wandered in from metafandom ... and thank you for articulating this so well, because you've described a feeling that I've often had, but never really was able to put into words. :) I wonder if this feeling of being out of step with the writer gets worse the longer you're in a fandom, too -- I notice it the most strongly with fandoms where I've been for awhile, either my current fic-writing fandom (where I'm going on four years) or various comics series that I've been reading for upwards of 20-25 years in some cases. (Actually, I get it a lot in Marvel and DC when the writing teams change -- it's like I get used to one interpretation of the characters, and then have to tilt my head sideways to climb on board with the new versions, if I ever manage to do so ... sometimes I just have to wait out one incarnation of the characters in the hopes that the next team will be better. Mapping the two feelings between comics and fanfic is not something that had occurred to me before -- and yet, it is a very similar sensation, isn't it?)

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Welcome! And yes, I can totally identify with what you describe in comics. Sometimes it's really really jarring, especially it's not even just one character, it's often the whole universe changing around that character. And in the same way I think people feel a lot less anxiety about it when it's labelled as being an elseworld or something like that. If people know that the author's just putting a spin on the character in a meta way they tend to be a lot freer about going along with it, at least in my experience.

[lyndseas.livejournal.com]

I think there's also an opposite feeling to the jarring feeling, where you read it and it seems jarring to read everything else, because it fits in so well with the fanon in your head that it seems more canon than canon (which is not very far-fetched when it comes to comics fandom...I think everything was retconned since the last time I read significantly in comics fandom, much less read the actual canon). Of course, then it usually ends up being the only fic with that interpretation, which is just depressing.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Now that you describe it yes, I have had that experience and it is weird. There's a lot of fics that are still in my head that way.

Here via metafandom

[twenty-rooks.livejournal.com]

I know exactly what you mean (and good grief, I've actually read that Harry/Snape story - in several versions, even, before I learned to spot the signs and avoid it!); there are always parts of fandom that seem to have an axe to grind, and aren't afraid to show it.

I had a hard time in the HP fandom, actually, since I was into H/D but didn't agree with most of the lj-based (and lj was where I were at the time) fandom's take on the characters. The fic was good, but to me it felt wrong, which was terribly frustrating, haha.

It's funny, because I actually touched on the subject in a post (http://lanjelin.dreamwidth.org/5890.html) that I made earlier today. It's mostly about why and how authors use the seme/uke labels, what they mean, and their relation to slash, but some of it is about the characterisation that goes along with it.

I'd like to add that I don't think that it's always a case of reading against canon, or writing characters OOC; often it's just a case of differing interpretations, and even though I (naturally!) prefer my own, the other one can have just as much support in canon. Mostly it's for characters that hasn't got a very thorough characterisation in canon, of course - it's hard to have really wildly different versions of a main character, without outright ignoring pieces of the canon.

Re: Here via metafandom

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I can totally identify with the feeling of liking a pairing but just not liking what fandom is mostly doing with it. I'm not sure if it's always that authors feed off each other so dominant views start to come up, but if you get a lot of people writing you do tend to see certain versions you can identify. If you don't like the most common ones it's almost like not having fic at all.

I do also agree that it's not always reading against canon. Sometimes it's more a feeling that they're correcting something, but even there it's still sometimes coming from canon. But people who are just interpreting can be just as strong in the way they state something.

[raius1.livejournal.com]

Ha, thanks for elaborating.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the thanks!:-)

[dumbledore11214.livejournal.com]

Ha, I am into Batverse at all, but I can totally understand avoiding the type of fanfiction you seem to describe. I mean, I think it is simple (to me of course) I definitely read fanfiction first and foremost to see a development of certain canon ideas and/or characters, so if author does not seem to think that the characters could or should go that way, I am simply not interested, no matter how good writing is. Basically I will read the original fiction for good writing and plot, etc, etc. Fanfiction? I certainly like good writing, but I also want to see what I want to see if that makes sense :)

HP example, I am a bit more tolerant of Snape in fanfiction than I am in canon (so tolerant heh that I am okay seeing him in bed with Sirius lol), but all my tolerance ends right away when fanfiction ends up portraying Sirius as complete devil.

Staff like that, it is even possible to make me like Draco in fanfiction, but I certainly want to see a certain scenario or two playing up and boy he he better pay for his character misgivings as I see them.

SO, all I am saying is that I read fanfiction to see scenarios which I agree with by and large if not, it is usually buy buy for me.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Yup, I think that's the way a lot of people read it. It's a reason why I sometimes don't agree with people who say you should try different things, or who don't want to give warnings. I think that the fact is a lot of fanfiction is about looking for stuff you want to see in canon.