Fandom Snowflake Challenge, Day 11

[aadler]

 
Continuing the meme/challenge begun and tracked here.

Fandom Snowflake Challenge, Day 11
 
In your own space, make a list of at least three things that you like about yourself. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

So far this has all been about fanfic, or at least fandom-and-my-thoughts-thereof. I think I’ll keep it within that venue. So, with those stated limitations, three things I like about myself, or that I see as virtues in fanfic writing:

I try not to repeat myself. Certain themes may reappear now and then, but from the very beginning I set myself to not keep turning out the same type of story over and over. I’ve rearranged the order in which I want certain stories to be read — or, in some cases, the order in which I choose to write them — to keep mixing things up. I’ve checked out instances where I seemed to be going back too often to the same elements, and made a decision to do no more of that. (Example: the different ways a vampire can wind up with a soul, or at least significantly different from other vampires. Example: an alternative reality which is brought to an end — and things returned to ‘normal’ — by the actions of my characters, as was done in “the Wish”.) I don’t even like to spend too much time dealing with the same people, unless others get their turn here and there. (I did more than a few Joyce fics at the beginning. Later, I went on a Cordelia kick. I put some effort into spreading those out among other stories.) This has always been a part of me; even before I was doing fanfic, back when I was trying to work up the concept of a series of scifi books, I put considerable thought into how to vary things. For me, it’s just all part of the fun.

I’m good at action. I mean, really good. The funny thing is, I’m doing rather fewer action sequences these days than in the past, as the types of stories I choose to write seem to call for less of that. I do still occasionally turn out a bang-up fight scene, though. And — see above — I try to make them enough different from one another that it’s always a new experience. More than that, I’ve given some care and attention to the setting of my grand battles, because I find novelty to be stimulating. Over the course of various Buffyverse stories, I’ve had fights/showdowns in:

• the SHS library (in two stories; hey, it’s traditional)
• the maintenance corridors under the Sunnydale skating rink
• Joyce Summers’ living room
• an empty factory yard
• the top of a water tower
• an estate garden (in two stories)
• the bay of an automobile repair shop/chop shop
• an abandoned warehouse (also traditional)
• a parking garage (in two stories)
• a cruise ship
• a subterranean demon warren
• a derelict apartment building
• the front yard of an empty house
• Willy’s bar
• a restaurant dining area
• an alley in a German city (probably Frankfurt)
• an unused auction barn
• the halls of Sunnydale High (semi-traditional)
• the Crawford Street mansion, followed by the factory, with retrospective narrative in the Library (TRADITION!)
• a playground jungle gym
• the Hyperion Hotel (T!)
• a demon bar, and the streets outside
• a demon dimension
• a roadside diner
• a meadow near Stone Mountain outside Atlanta
• Mixtec ruins in Mexico
• an otherplanetary someplace, big ol’ temple complex, whatever
• the street next to a crashed van in Los Angeles
• a Secret Evil Lair
• an empty theater
• one of the upper floors of an office building
• the back yard of the Summers home

Which is to say, I’ve really had fun with this.

I like the characters. I’ve never bashed anybody (though I may have come close, with Willow, but even that was from another character’s POV and he admitted to certain prejudices of his own). I’m far more likely to write justification-fic for unpopular or fanon-vilified characters — Quentin Travers, Hank Summers, Tara’s father come to mind — than to go out of my way to show someone in an outstandingly unfavorable light. Heck, I’ve written a segment that shows a less brash side to Kennedy, and she was all but designed by Team Whedon to be disliked. (My few highlights of Warren Mears, however, have not attempted any justification. I don’t see him as the living avatar of murderous misogyny, but I have no desire to show a more flattering or more sympathetic side to him.) If I have ever spoken disparagingly — in fic — of Spike or Lindsay, well, that was no more than other characters said about them at the time. This is the world as we were shown it, and I like that world; I can enjoy and celebrate that world without needing to paint anyone black, so I’m more concerned with scoping out interesting elements than incriminating ones.

I also like interacting with people who share my Buffyverse love. I’m not especially good at it, but I do what I can when I can.

Comments

[aadler]

I can’t remember if I ever touched on this in any other memes, but my influences on writing action include Robert Heinlein (particularly, the stream-of-consciousness assault on the otherdimensional tower in Glory Road), Dashiell Hammett (certain rough-and-tumble scenes in his Continental Op stories), William Goldman (not just the Inigo-Westley duel in the Princess Bride, but scenes also from the Marathon Man and its sequel), and Peter O’Donnell (something can be found in just about all of the Modesty Blaise books, but the prime examples that come to mind are from A Taste for Death — mentioned elsewhere in my posts on this meme — Sabre-Tooth, and the Silver Mistress).

Plus, there is no single effective way to write action, and choices have to be made that best 1) serve the story, and 2) illustrate the character of the person(s) involved. Sometimes chaotic is the way to go, sometimes stream-of-consciousness, sometimes you want clinical, almost brutal detail. Emotional, literary, graphic blood-and-broken-bones, even artistic; any of them might or might not be the ideal approach for one particular story-slash-situation.

What’s important is to make an impact, and for that impact to reinforce everything else you’re trying to do.

(Best fanfic fight scene I’ve ever read? that was in Dreamsmith’s story “Interludes”, and all the better for being an utterly convincing — and terrifying — representation of Faith at her most savage.)