Posts From The Desert - MOVIEVERSE
Oct. 27th, 2002 11:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dexfarkinA little subsection of a group of notions that have recently been noted on my earlier post about the CBFFAs. It's a minor little thought that has occured to me, and seeing as my little exile is all about exploring those thoughts, I am going to run with it.
I wonder why the idea exists that X-Men Movieverse is a ghetto of the comic book fanfiction community. Some of the major early work in that community was done by people who were big on the comicfic side of the fence. There is a fair amount of cross-over involved. Yet, it seems that a large number of exclusively movieverse writers feel as if they're advancing against a storm of hatred; modern martyrs of fanfiction.
It puzzles me because I didn't know that any of us comic book fanfiction writers were supposed to hate Movieverse fic until someone told me that I did.
When Movieverse first came out, the overall opinion of the community was that the movie was damn good. I took forty-five people to see it during DexCon. (Side note: Funniest movie comments ever provided in a packed theatre by Speedy Paul. "Ah just kissed him and he was in a coma for eight months." "Cause she's just that good!" and "Senator Kelly is dead." "On the plus side, if anyone's thirsty...") However, the opinion on reading fic about it was lukewarm at best. Some, like Dyce and Kielle looked forward to it. Others, like myself, really didn't care.
It was a good movie. It was about the best adaption of the X-Men to the big screen you could hope for, while still retaining their personalities. But they were still X-Men Lite. Two hours verses forty years? I'll take my comic canon.
That seemed to be the end of the issue. The Movieverse grew (exponentially) and drew in some comic writers. It also started with some people who crossed over later. However, in general, it seemed to be it's own community, with it's own stars and issues and ideas.
The Rogue/Logan debate was the first real spill-over that I noted. The idea of their's as a sexual relationship was treated by most comic writers with the same mindset that they approached Logan/Kitty and Logan/Jubilee relationships. Some were huge fans of it. That distaste seemed to rankle the L/R people (shippers, guild, community? I'm not sure the word) which touched off the first cross-community argument. Even that was considered by most comic writers, including myself, as an off-handed little argument in a corner. Obviously, it was not considered in the same light by the L/R writers.
Then came the CBFFAs. I'm not going to get into the logistics, suffice to say that I made the significant error in not barring them or throwing the doors wide open right off the bat. My vague 'gentlemen's agreement' idea led to a lot of ill feeling. This was compounded by a very unfortunate element of the Movieverse community who felt they had the right to demand their own categories, and threaten the integrity of the awards if not appeased. (The Best Serious-Logan/Rogue, Best Humourous-Logan/Rogue and my favourite, Best Erotic-Logan/Rogue were the main demands) Talk about tarring the entire community with the same brush. Completely devalued the opinions of the Movieverse in one stroke. The sheer volume and viciousness of the attacks left me raw to the far more reasonable voices of Naomi and Minisinoo.
Even after all that, I don't hate the Movieverse. However, it still doesn't interest me all that much. Again, X-Men Lite. I realise that there are many fine writers involved and producing likely some exceptional work. Still, I'm not very interested in it. Same reason I don't read much Batman fanfiction. Don't care. Characters don't interest me.
My sojourn into Movieverse is because the exploration of Doctor Jean Grey fascinates me, and I get to do horrible things to Mister Sinister. Even writing it, I'm still not all that interested in the characters. They feel less real to me than thier comic canon versions.
Which brings me to the question: Is this why Movieverse fanfic writers feel ghettozied? (Or if they don't, is this why Victoria P feels ghettozied?) Is it because they get disinterest about their work, while a new comic fanfiction story receives interest?
I'm rather curious on this, mostly because after reading the past posts on the X-Men Movieverse list, most of the struggles seem to be between seperate bodies of Movieverse writers arguing about interpretation, or the ever present 'Logan/Rogue' question. A wash of comic fanfic writer's posting negative protrayels of Movieverse wasn't amoungst that.
Perhaps there's an idea that Movieverse should be interchangable with comicverse, on an archival level, which has not happened to a large extent. Or perhaps that disinterest is taken as a personal rejection as a writer. Or is it that even though you're writing about a movie property of a comic book, you feel the characters and concepts should be interchangable?
Anyhow, feel free to elighten me. If you're a Movieverse writer and feel like you've been relegated to a second class citizen by comic book fanfiction, explain why that is. This is not a trial or a place for justifications. I'm honestly curious why the feeling exists, and in what ways you feel it's manifested on a regular basis. Enlighten me.
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Re: Second half of reply
Date: 2002-10-28 03:39 pm (UTC)Back up the truck . . . didn't the movie-verse people start this entire discussion with "comic-verse people ghettoize us and make us feel like the stepchild?" If you want labels dropped, then by all means, let's drop all of them. =) I agree, that would help things tremendously. But then you have to decide what is a label and what is a descriptive word. "What sort of fic do you write?" does not require a ten page description. It's looking for a short answer, and 'movie-verse' would certainly fill that role.
But we feel movie-verse has a negative connotation in the minds of others, Mitai.
In short answer - change that. Write a whole crapload of really stunning fic. It's the only way to change the negative connotation of the word 'fanfiction,' too.
Thus, applying this critique to movieverse as a reason for not reading it doesn't make much sense, unless you apply this critique to fanfiction in general, and don't read that. I which case ... why are we having this conversation and what are you doing here? (g)
Because a bunch of authors in that crappy fanfiction genre leapt out of the woodwork slapped me across the face with such stunning fic I couldn't help but like them. And they said "Look! Here is an archive full of stunning fic!" and I went "Yay!" and completely, totally ignored every last thing posted to ff.net. Is that fair to ff.net? Probably not. I'm sure there are very good authors there that post there and nowhere else. And I'm missing their stories. If you want to think of it that way, I'm punishing myself for not trying all the brands of chocolate, so why get offended if you already know I'm missing out? =)
Movieverse doesn't have a corner on the market when it comes to poor writing quality, unfortunately.
I know, and I have a theory why you feel people seem to think it does. The movie created ficwriters. First off, there's no reading in the movie. You're jumping from a fully visual media to a fully written one. (Yes, I realize you 'see' words. You know what I'm talking about. =) That's a hell of a leap. At least with comics you've got a medium that's half-art and half-words. A little easier to transfer from one to the other without losing quite so much in between.
Secondly, the movie created the ficwriters. =) So writes of all ages who may have had no writing experience whatsoever flooded the genre, which is also Very New.(tm) The newness of the genre, the newness of the majority of the writers, and the general lack of a great deal of source material are all contributing factors to the general quality of movie-verse fic. Add to that the 'definitive archives' are new, and it's a lot harder to weed through the 80% of crap to find the 20% gems.
It's all quite logical. None of it means that movie-verse out to be tossed out with the trash. And like movieverse, comicverse also has new writers that have never written a word in their life. But the genre is not new, and there's abundant source material to reference. I state my thesis x, and use this evidence to support it. There's simply more evidence in comicverse to support a thesis, which while limiting the span of your thesis choice makes it a lot easier to convice a reader of your thesis.
Not to mention comicverse has been around long enough to lay fields full of gems, keeping the weeds out, so the gems are a lot easier for a stumbling beginner to find. A beginner that isn't rewarded is soon going to tire of stumbling looking for those gems, and the easier you make it the more people are going to consider looking.
In short - movieverse should eventually grow out of a lot of the problems it has now. Which will eliminate a lot of the issues you've brought to light. But until then, all I can suggest is patience and lots of good fic.
Re: Second half of reply
Date: 2002-10-28 08:22 pm (UTC)Min: But we feel movie-verse has a negative connotation in the minds of others, Mitai.
Mitai: In short answer - change that. Write a whole crapload of really stunning fic.
I'd suggest that there *is* a crapload of stunning movie fic out there. Both romantic and non.
The movie created ficwriters. First off, there's no reading in the movie. You're jumping from a fully visual media to a fully written one. (Yes, I realize you 'see' words. You know what I'm talking about. =) That's a hell of a leap. At least with comics you've got a medium that's half-art and half-words. A little easier to transfer from one to the other without losing quite so much in between.
Whoa, whoa, back up the truck.
People have been writing fanfic about visual media since the modern version of fanfic began. Now, you can talk about the new writers, some of whom have never set pen to paper before, sure. But I don't think you can make a blanket statement about the leap from visual to written media. I mean, litfic is *less* acceptable in many places than media fic (and I have my own issues with litfic and authorial ownership etc. that I won't get into now), and while many people who aren't familiar with writing decide to write fanfic, I don't think the medium of the text they're ficcing is really relevant. In fact, I'd say it's *harder* in some cases with text, because there's the issue of trying to write like the original author, which isn't so much the case in media fanfic.
Re: Second half of reply
Date: 2002-10-28 08:55 pm (UTC)Well, no, you can't prove it, because it's not true.
Date: 2002-10-29 07:50 am (UTC)The best fanfic I have ever read in my life would be split between comic fic and Star Trek fic.
Buffy inspires worse fic than Superman because Buffy's audience is younger. There is probably some craptastic Smallville fic. The fandom I've read heavily which has the *worst* record for fic is Pokemon... where 99% of the writers are under 16.
Young people are rarely good writers.
Some of the most execrable fanfic I've read has been based on Harry Potter or Anne Rice, both written media.
So no, translating from written to visual media's got *nothing* to do with it. It has to do with the overall age of the fandom.
Well, no one can prove it =) but . . .
Date: 2002-10-29 01:39 pm (UTC)Let me phrase it another way. If I give a fourteen year old a copy of Superman #122 and tell them to write some fanfiction based of it, and I give someone an episode of "Smallville" on VHS and tell them to watch it and then write feedback on it, I believe it is more likely that the kid with the comic book is going to write a 'better' fanfic, with better characterisation (as in true to canon comic, vs. true to canon episode) better spelling, and better grammar.
Yes, it depends on the fourteen year old. But I am confident that if I had a pool of 100 of them, and 50 got Smallville and 50 got Supes comic, the comic fanfic would be overall 'better' in the above characteristics than the tv show fic.
You're right, and age shows a trend, but even in comparing kids posting really bad comicverse fic and kids posting really bad movieverse fic, I tend to think the movieverse fic is slightly worse, given the movieverse fic and comicverse fic I have read. (Note that disclaimer. =)
Re: Second half of reply
Date: 2002-10-29 07:52 am (UTC)Admittedly, pretty much all of the fanfic I read is based on visual media, even if the text originated as a book (HP, LotR) or comic (X-Men, Smallville), and I can list fan authors up the wazoo who write well, and another, shorter list of authors who rock my world and would, in a perfect world, be published and revered, and I can do it in up 4 or 5 media fandoms.
Not having read any Superman comics fic (is it big? I'd read some lovely Clark/Jimmy Lois & Clark fic prior to getting involved in Smallville and I know Batman is fairly ficcable), I can't comment. But there's some excellent Buffy fic out there.
Re: Second half of reply
Date: 2002-10-29 01:56 pm (UTC)From the previous CBFFA thread where the entire subject of movieverse got started with someone complaining the CBFFAs didn't handle movieverse very well at all, because comicverse people ghettoize it. =) Don't play cute. You're not that cute. . .
Well, maybe you are.
Shucks. Okay. So you are. =)
Well, again, it's not a matter of not trying other brands of "chocolate" but of labeling it all "bad."
What's wrong with that? I hate peanut butter. It tastes nasty. No one on the planet is going to be offended because I didn't try Jiffy and Buttercrunch before making that blanket statement, and if they are . . . then really, too bad. =( It's not a strange statement to make, and while it is both blanketing and labeling, I don't think there's much anyone can do about that sort of statement. It's everywhere. I hate wrestling. It sucks. I hate the Gap, everyone who shops there is a snob. (these are not my true opinions. Just like the chocolate wasn't, either. I LOVE timtams. =) Rossi sent me a box and I ate all of them in one day. I am such a pig.)
In some ways, it's a good thing. I don't need to stick my hand on the side of every crock pot ever made to know that I might get burned. I should be hesitant about sticking my hand against it, since I have been burned before and I didn't like it. Sitting there getting offended because I say "Crock pots have shitty insulation. They say you won't burn yourself but you will." and I may or may not have brushed my hand against your crock pot (boy, this is sounding more and more wrong =) is something that, in this instance, you wouldn't do.
You'd say "Huh. I've brushed this crock pot a few times and it never burned me." and go about your business. There would be no feeling of ghettoization because everyone hated crock pots, and your poor neglected crock pot was getting criticism that it didn't deserve.
This happens often in the computer world. Pentiums are actually shittily designed processors. They're designed on purpose to be crappy, at first because they have to be backwards compatible, now for a variety of reasons. Pentium could produce a wonderful new processor that was a lot better a lot cheaper, but they don't, for various reasons. They have a reputation they don't deserve. It kind of bugs computer techs.
When someone hands me a pentium and says "This is the greatest thing in the world!" and I look at it and see all the flaws, I just sort of shrug and hand it back and don't spend much time on Pentiums, and may say "Pentiums on the whole are pretty crappy." I doubt whoever owns the Pentium business is going to get all offended and say "But have you seen our new line?!? Have you?! When was the last time you saw what we were working on over here! How dare you make that blanket statement!"
(This exmaple used to place all of fanfic within the group 'Pentiums.')
So while I understand that the label bugs you, I don't know if there's any way to unlabel movieverse in the minds of so many without either radically improving the genre or setting up a place where a reader can't help but see all the good Pentiums.
Because there's a difference between "this is crap" and "I don't like it."
Date: 2002-10-30 07:07 am (UTC)My mother got into an argument with my brother once about musical quality. She does not like Nine Inch Nails. Now, say what you will, but Trent Reznor is an artist who experiments with multiple forms, attempts to expand both his own repertoire and push the envelope of "what is done", and was extraordinarily influential. You may not *like* Nine Inch Nails because you do not like that style of music, but unless you are an expert on music (and my brother is much more an expert than my mother is) or you *like* that style of music and have listened critically to a whole lot of it, you cannot say "Nine Inch Nails is bad music." My mother attempted to make this argument, that because she didn't like it it was objectively bad.
That's the basic problem. Not "Movieverse isn't to my taste" but "movieverse sucks." If you don't read it, you can't say it's objectively bad. If you do read it, and you don't like it because the characters don't appeal to you or because the heavy emphasis on pairings doesn't appeal to you or because the source characterization seems shallow in comparison to comicverse, you still can't say it sucks.
Now, I can say Pokemon fanfic, as a general rule, sucks. Because as a general rule, it violates most of the rules of good writing. it is full of misspellings, poor punctuation, egregious lack of characterization, AND WRITERS SELF-INSERTING THEIR SUPPOSEDLY AMUSING ASIDES IN ALL CAPS AND THEN LAUGHING AT THEMSELVES, TEE HEE! *All* Pokemon fanfic isn't crap-- there's some I very much like. But as a general rule, it's crap, because it's written by 12-year-olds.
This is not true of movieverse. To argue that movieverse is crap, you'd have to say it's generally poorly written, *not* that the themes it generally uses or the characters it uses don't appeal to you. And that's why this is important.
If you say "Peanut butter sucks!" when what you really mean is, "I don't like peanut butter," well, peanut butter has no feelings to get hurt. But, in fact, the correct thing to say is "I don't like peanut butter." If you are a connoisseur of peanut butter you could say that Skippy sucks, because by the standards you judge peanut butter quality it is objectively bad. But you cannot say *all* peanut butter sucks unless you're judging by an objective standard for food, such as "It is too fattening" or "It is made with little attention to quality" or "It has too many preservatives." (And then you'd have to apply the same standards to chocolate, which you like.) Still, when talking about peanut butter it doesn't matter if you mix up "objectively bad" with "not to my taste." It *does* matter when talking about fic.
Re: Because there's a difference between "this is crap" and "I don't like it."
Date: 2002-10-30 11:31 am (UTC)In this case, yes, you can say that Nine Inch Nails is bad music. The purpose of music is not to have new form. Its purpose is communication. I can state "John Cage just sucks." because he decided that a bus farting was a musical event and be completely right in every form of the word 'right.' If he bases his music on a bus farting, and I don't believe that is a musical event, then his music really DOES suck.
Beacuse we're dealing with concepts, not physical or black/white issues. Is a bus farting a musical event? Well, it has pitch, frequency, alternation, overtones . . . at the same time, it's both a random sound and a common one. But so is humming, so can you exclude a bus farting from music? What does a farting bus convey to you?
(I'm not kidding. You really don't want to talk to the gung-ho musicians about 20th and 21st century music. Particularly when it comes to form, because the entire 'appeal' of 20th century music is that it doesn't have 'form' as in a regular body or framework. Hell, it even makes up its own notation. Then again, everyone said the same thing about poliphony when it popped up, so there you go. =)
What I was trying to point out was, when you hear someone say "Movieverse just sucks. I don't like it." they probably mean "Everything I've read I haven't liked." And while asking people to be more specific so they don't accidentally offend is perfectly well and good, the phrasing "Spicy food makes my stomach hurt." and "Spicy foods suck." may mean exactly the same to some people, they're virtually interchangable in the United States in every place I've been.
I also admit that because I don't like the peanut butter I've tried, I am convinced I will not like any peanut butter, and while it's a closed mindset on the subject of peanut butter, I doubt Jiffy is going to get bent out of whack. They have plenty of customers who think peanut butter is the greatest.
Re: Because there's a difference between "this is crap" and "I don't like it."
Date: 2002-10-31 06:09 am (UTC)And yeah, if someone says "Movieverse sucks," that *is* probably what they mean. Unlike peanut butter, however, real people who are probably reading what you write and may be friends with your friends have emotional energy invested in Movieverse. I personally get a little hurt when people say "Star Trek fic sucks", and I'm *good* at shrugging things off, particularly with my writing. So saying "movieverse sucks" is a good shorthand way to piss people off while *trying* to convey the idea that it's not to your taste.
Unless, of course, you actually mean, "I read several dozen movieverse stories and 90% of them were very badly written, with poor punctuation, no grasp of movie characterization, egregious Mary Sues, slash with improbable positions and too many weepyfests from men, Rogue consistently spelled Rouge and Magneto acting like a maniacal mustache twirling EEEEEEVIL villain when the movie portrayed him as just misguided." If that's what you saw, then people pointing out the existence of well-written movieverse fic refutes the thesis. If it's just that it's not to your *taste*, you should say so. People's writing is not Jif.
Re: Because there's a difference between "this is crap" and "I don't like it."
Date: 2002-10-31 10:35 am (UTC)Whereas John Cage actually did, so that is why I chose him.
However, one can argue that NIN music just sucks. So you understand the lyrics and think the melody contributes to the words - what if I don't? Then the music sucks for me. So I can say "NIN sucks," and be right.
We're seeing the other's point, just disagreeing, so I'll leave it at that. =)
I'm not too happy when people say "Classical music sucks," but it's something that I don't resent people for. If you don't like classical music, I'll find some that you do, and show it to you. I don't get resentful because some of my friends have no desire to come to my recitals. They don't like it, even though they've never heard the pieces I'm playing or me play at all, and that is a perfect analogy to Minisinoo. Folks who read Movieverse label the entire thing as bad, and my friends label all of classical music as bad.
And it's perfectly okay. =) I understand that some would get resentful, but I don't, and I know that if most musicians I know did, music would stop being a joy. I'm not sure if that translates over to fic or not. If you don't take what I do seriously, oh well. You're a pootie head, moving on. =) If I can forgive Matt for telling me my entire career is completely useless and offensive to him because people will pay me money to perform, I can forgive anything. =)
(Not a slam on Nute - just a reference to a conversation in IRC where the arts were discussed in terms of their true value to culture and society. He and I were not the only participants, and more than just music was discussed.)