Speak Stiltedly and Wear a Yellow Shirt

Naomi Chana was blogging about multi-fandom writing not working. She sees similar failures in cross-overs, as well. One might take this, on one level, as the usual murmuring against multi, and, on one level, I did so when I commented that single-fandom authors failed as often (if not oftener) to live up to the spirit of the show as multi-types did.

There is something eternally suspicious about the multi-fandom writer - something that smacks of betrayal or at least jaded decadence. In larger fandoms, similar suspicions cling to those who leave one camp within the fandom for another, whether it be a change of pairing, the frequent switch to slash, or the infrequent switch to what Naomi Chana called compatibility. Or back again.

What she called good fanfic, fanfic with the referential dimension, compatible with the show, is what I call canon fic. To me, it’s just another fanfic genre. Don’t get me wrong - I certainly prefer it to all other fic as much as she does, but I don’t mistake it for the sine qua non of fanfic. I didn’t get into fanfic by reading canon. The first fanfic I ever read was Jane Austen fic, and of it all only one story sticks out in my mind as canon writing. Canon can be hard to find in Trek as well, perhaps because space opera isn’t all that easy to write. Romance is easier, or angst, or smut, depending on your leanings.

What got me into fanfic was reading fanon. The referent of canon writing is the show; fanon writing calls instead on the body of fanfic. In that way, fanon is more truly referential - it is a language that grows, even after the show is off the air. Take, for instance, the J/C fanon that has sprung up to bring an end to the C/7 broadcast relationship. J/C canon pales by comparison.

Those members of the C/7 list who were never in the J/C camp like to point out the baselessness of the whole J/C phenomenon. Those classic J/C episodes, they would say, were bad episodes and unconvincing. Those famous stray J/C moments - well, they never really happened. They were a mass-hallucination.

As a former J/C writer, my response is, why, yes they were, thank you very much. That is the nature of fanon. Seeing things that aren’t there is the greater part of fanfic. I started writing with a rather choppy background of watching the show, but a very strong grounding in fanon. My stories were a dialogue, not with Voyager, but with the J/C Story Index. Maybe they failed as good writing, maybe they failed to capture the spirit of Trek, but they had the referential dimension all right. They referred to fanfic. They were good fanon.

Naomi Chana remarked that multi-fandom writers, while writing good stories, usually failed to write good fanfic (of my canon variety). The other side of the coin is that single-fandom writers, while writing good fanfic (of my fanon variety), frequently fail to write good stories. I think most of us recall a time when a good fanfic excused a poor story; many fans never stop preferring good fanfic to good stories. Those of us with the bad luck to grow old in fandom lose patience with poor stories.

Maybe it’s true that multi-fandom writers prefer, subconsciously, a good story to a good fanfic. After all, how can they tell, hopping from one fandom to another, what a good fanfic is for any particular show? How can they establish the reference, without extensive reading in the fanon, or obsessive watching of the show? Yet if they carry their own universe with them and speak some language of angst only they can understand, that is also a fanfic genre.

Just not my genre. I prefer canon, though I haven’t forgotten fanon.

Take the Purrsonality Quiz!

I was home sick one day this week, and despite being high on antihistamines,
I got more writing done than I usually do healthy. I found it relaxing to have the
whole day ahead of me to write whatever the muse chose to write. For some
reason that doesn’t work with Sundays.

It’s hard for me to get the whole picture of a story in my head with just a few
spare hours after a long day of startup-meltdown craziness. The muse wants her
mental lebensraum. If only fanfic paid the rent, she could have it.
I wonder if so many college students drop off the face of fandom when they
graduate because of the sudden lack of muse-time.

I’ve been meaning to filk this one for a long, long time. It was like shooting
fish in a barrel, really: I’ve Grown
Accustomed to the Phage. If you don’t recall the original tune, I keep a page
of original lyrics for my filks.

Pardon me while I go post it to ASC.

Thanks to Sara, all the sad, lonely plot bunnies of the world have a place to
hang out and multiply. Hop on over to
The Breeding
Ground and watch the fic fly!

Jade’s drabble Sands of Decision
and Picnic Prize-winning story A Moment of
Clarity are up.

Also, for your reading pleasure, a preliminary filk from my forthcoming filk
musical, The Sound of Borgness:

Filk:      Drone Seven
Original:  (How Do You Solve a Problem Like) Maria
Codes:     Borg Queen, drones, pre-Scorpion
Date:      August 26, 2002

   Two of Nine:
She rushes round
With such a sound -
She never takes the stair.

   Three of Nine:
She leaks when she assimilates
And all the new drones stare.

   Two of Nine:
And underneath her armor
She has mammaries to spare!

   Three of Nine:
Drone Seven doesn't fit in the Collective.

   Two of Nine:
She's early for her duties,

   Four of Nine:
But she does them like a drone.

   Two of Nine:
She's leaves us still regenerating
And does our work alone.

   Borg Queen:
It's time to put Our foot down -
All the evidence has shown

   Two and Three of Nine:
Drone Seven doesn't fit in the Collective.

   Four of Nine:
We could have ended like the other five;
But Seven saved our lives!

   Three of Nine:
How do you solve a problem like drone Seven?

   Borg Queen:
How do you reassimilate a drone?

   Four of Nine:
How do you find a role that fits drone Seven?

   Two of Nine:
A manifold scrubber!

   Three of Nine:
A sonambulist!

   Four of Nine:
A Queen!

   Borg Queen:
Many a thing she feels she ought to tell you,
Many a thing she tries to organize...

   Four of Nine:
But how can you make her stay
And do it proper Borg way?

   Borg Queen:
How do you cut her ego down to size?

   Four of Nine:
Oh, how do you solve a problem like drone Seven?

   Borg Queen:
What can you tell a drone who thinks she's wise?

   Four of Nine:
When I'm with her I'm unused
Out of contact and bemused,
Yet she makes me proud to think that I am Borg.

   Three of Nine:
Unpredictable as humans,
Independent like her parents.

   Four of Nine:
She's a good drone,

   Two of Nine:
She's a misfit.

   Four of Nine:
She is Borg.

   Three of Nine:
She'd out-pester any pest,
Drive a Horta from her nest,

   Two of Nine:
She could throw an old Hirogen
Off the trail.

   Four of Nine:
She's efficient,
She's precise,

   Three of Nine:
She's a nuisance.

   Four of Nine:
She's all right.

   Two of Nine:
She's a rebel!

   Four of Nine:
She's perfection!

   Borg Queen:
She's a girl.

   All:
How do you solve a problem like drone Seven?
How do you reassimilate a drone?
How do you find a role that fits drone Seven?
A manifold scrubber!
A sonambulist!
A Queen!

Many a thing she feels she ought to tell you,
Many a thing she tries to organize...
But how can you make her stay
And do it proper Borg way?
How do you cut her ego down to size?

Oh, how do you solve a problem like drone Seven?
What can you tell a drone who thinks she's wise?

I’m way behind on ASC, as usual, so I just read a set of three-week-old posts about writing fanfic series. Among them was a link to Phoenix Virtual Television. I’ve noticed how virtual series tend to attract non-fanfic readership, and the FAQ for PVT brought that point home when they said that virtual series allow character development, while other fanfic has to return the characters in their original state at the end of the story.

Now there’s a sure sign of someone who hasn’t actually read any fanfic. Voyager has been off the air for a while, but I’m pretty sure that Janeway was never a prostitute, Chakotay a deadbeat dad, Paris a starship captain, Torres a housewife, Tuvok a double agent, Neelix a naked Lothario, Seven a brain-sucking not-so-ex-Borg, Kim lucky in love, or the EMH off-screen. That’s the stuff of fanfiction, along with weddings and babies and angst and character death.

The trouble with writing a fanfic series, I hear, is keeping track of your own canon. I haven’t written any myself (unless the unpublished fragments of the Seven Saga count) and I don’t read any except Lori’s Captain and Counselor. Not that I have anything against series; the show itself is already a series, and that’s enough continuity for me.

By ’series’ I mean a series of freestanding works. A show like Babylon 5 where you find yourself asking, “Who’s that?” and “What the heck is going on?” in every other scene, and the answer, if anyone can provide one, is longer than the commercial break, is not a series but a serial. Soap operas are the classic example of serials, though most serials are closed-ended - serialized novels in magazines, or one-season soap operas in South America. The only thing worse than an endless serial is a pseudo-serial like the X-Files that pretends to have an arc but really just tosses out disconnected bits of rubbish about pox, bees, clones and black oil. But I digress.

Is a series fundamentally more enjoyable than a single “original” work? That’s the question I asked myself when I reached Memory in my rereading of LMB. I doubt I would have sympathized so much with Miles if I hadn’t expected better of him. Does that mean I’m going to go forth and write a million words about Seven of Nine? Probably not.

But I am tempted.

There are more spoilers in this entry than usual. Don’t make me say I told you so.

I’ve reached Mirror Dance in my Lois McMaster Bujold rereading project, and it’s certainly grown on me. With apologies to Liz, though, I still can’t add it to my favorites. I rank it above the pure space operatics, but below the moving themes of Shards of Honor, Memory and
Komarr.

Christine once said “psychology robs us of our complexity.” (John Irving?) The on-and-off psychoanalysis of Mark robbed him of his complexity for me. He starts out intriguingly clueless and inchoate, but then he overhears his parents talking about him, has some sort of Road to Damascus event right there on the library floor, and loses me completely.

I’m not knocking the presence of psychobabble itself - Cordelia’s analysis of Mark was wonderful, and the little bits about Gregor both taking after Cordelia and watching the watcher were lovely, too. Only Mark’s psychological insight into himself threw me, because to me self-knowledge is at the other end
of the mental health spectrum from psychological instability. This contradiction comes to a head when Mark tries to warn Kareen about his mental problems, and settles for letting Cordelia warn her. At that point, I didn’t see what was left to warn her about. (Apparently Cordelia didn’t either.)

I know Liz isn’t buying this, so let’s compare Mark to Miles. For at least the previous two books, Miles’ identity problems (Lt. Miles vs. Lord Miles vs. Admiral Miles, with a side of Amnesiac Miles) have been a significant theme, but never has anyone reduced Miles to a syndrome or a defense mechanism. Yes, Cordelia blamed it on Barrayar, but I didn’t buy that. For one thing, that’s LMB talking about how she
meant to write about the pain of a mutant in a military anti-mutant society, while the real pain has come mainly from his grandfather and his own screw-ups. More importantly, Miles has never looked for a therapeutic purpose behind “the little Admiral.” When he thinks about it at all, Miles is just as ignorant as the reader about the psychological underpinnings of his multiple personality - and just as disinterested.

That Mark can explain Mark to himself makes him fundamentally less complex than Miles. Perhaps in real life psychology does not rob us of our individuality, but in literature explaining a character too well amounts to explaining the character away. Yes, there are more pieces of Mark than of Miles at the end of the novel, but Mark’s pieces are all labelled and pinned to a board, while Miles’ pieces run free (and run him into serious trouble in Memory, as foreshadowed by Cordelia when she says she’ll only
start worrying about Miles when the little Admiral is taken away).

For all the fascinating parallels between Mark and Miles, Mark is not a mirror image of his big brother. Mark is, if you’ll pardon the math, a projection of 3-space Miles onto a rather dark plane. It does take the whole novel to get him properly pinned down, but I don’t see room for a Mark sequel beyond his comic subplot in A Civil Campaign.

Speaking of comic subplots, I think I’m in love with Ivan Vorpatril.