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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. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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