![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Fanfic Musings
May. 2nd, 2010 11:06 amSo, I just started my own AO3 account (link to the side!) to post the fic I am at long last finishing. Particularly some that were conceived and drafted back in the message board days of many-many-many chaptered fic, and I just don't think LJ (or dreamwidth which I'm not on, or any blogging tool really) is a good format for that kind of story. So, this way, when they're done - I'll put them in AO3, and just link from here.
So, I took some time to read what's in the archive there. Most of them I had read already, so, I'll cop to skimming at some bits. (!)
Mostly what I wanted to muse about what I noticed (again, for the first time?) is that the whole view of Section is lighter in the oldest fic -- the stuff written, or begun (!), in S1 and S2, maybe early S3.
There is a whole turn toward darker stories after that. Section itself becomes more of a character, and a more implacable and dangerous one.
The Nikita in those stories could not survive were she transplanted without alteration into the stories from later on. She would have failed - quickly and with a quick 'bye-bye.'
I *read* fic like a hoover beginning around S2, more or less as soon as I discovered it, but I never thought to try to write it myself until the original run was nearly over.
So -- I'm pondering the way serial TV changes over time and how that affects what and how you come to the fanfiction.
I'm remembering something Jaybee was saying about when people come into MI5/Spooks and how that affects their view of earlier/later seasons, pro and con. Or, lord knows, the endless wars over which Doctor/Companion team was best. (Nine. If you want my vote! LOL! I just realized I may have to someday watch GI Joe because Christopher Eccelston played the bad guy!)
Or the way I was saying in a comment in another thread that for me, HIGHLANDER ends before Ritche's death --- which is part of why, I suspect the whole Methos/Mac pairing that ate fandom leaves me cold. That was really a plot/fannish development of the later seasons I wasn't watching anyway because I'd already bailed on canon.
I know in LFN that there was a whole bunch of fans that 'left' the show really before S4 and its much darker turn. I mean, the turn doesn't come out of the blue - it was always a possiblity, there but not explored for what it might really mean/play out - so I didn't and don't really have any difficulty embracing the whole story arc S1-S5.
But.... there is still that dissonance, the early lighter view of the Section and its inhabitants crashing up against the later one, and I think I wrestle with it even now watching and writing.
~~~~~~~~~
On a related but different note: it has often occurred to me of late that if I could just pull all these old LFN fic remnants and stories out of my head the way Albus Dumbledore does with his wand, and drop them into a bowl, it would be LOT easier and faster to clear my headspace for other things, other stories, other obsessions! And save my tiny flist from my whinging over a long dead show. So I could whinge over a new one! I've been carting Michael and Nikita and their concerns around in my head for a decade, and it seems the only way for me to rid myself of them is to write it out. Sigh.
So, I took some time to read what's in the archive there. Most of them I had read already, so, I'll cop to skimming at some bits. (!)
Mostly what I wanted to muse about what I noticed (again, for the first time?) is that the whole view of Section is lighter in the oldest fic -- the stuff written, or begun (!), in S1 and S2, maybe early S3.
There is a whole turn toward darker stories after that. Section itself becomes more of a character, and a more implacable and dangerous one.
The Nikita in those stories could not survive were she transplanted without alteration into the stories from later on. She would have failed - quickly and with a quick 'bye-bye.'
I *read* fic like a hoover beginning around S2, more or less as soon as I discovered it, but I never thought to try to write it myself until the original run was nearly over.
So -- I'm pondering the way serial TV changes over time and how that affects what and how you come to the fanfiction.
I'm remembering something Jaybee was saying about when people come into MI5/Spooks and how that affects their view of earlier/later seasons, pro and con. Or, lord knows, the endless wars over which Doctor/Companion team was best. (Nine. If you want my vote! LOL! I just realized I may have to someday watch GI Joe because Christopher Eccelston played the bad guy!)
Or the way I was saying in a comment in another thread that for me, HIGHLANDER ends before Ritche's death --- which is part of why, I suspect the whole Methos/Mac pairing that ate fandom leaves me cold. That was really a plot/fannish development of the later seasons I wasn't watching anyway because I'd already bailed on canon.
I know in LFN that there was a whole bunch of fans that 'left' the show really before S4 and its much darker turn. I mean, the turn doesn't come out of the blue - it was always a possiblity, there but not explored for what it might really mean/play out - so I didn't and don't really have any difficulty embracing the whole story arc S1-S5.
But.... there is still that dissonance, the early lighter view of the Section and its inhabitants crashing up against the later one, and I think I wrestle with it even now watching and writing.
~~~~~~~~~
On a related but different note: it has often occurred to me of late that if I could just pull all these old LFN fic remnants and stories out of my head the way Albus Dumbledore does with his wand, and drop them into a bowl, it would be LOT easier and faster to clear my headspace for other things, other stories, other obsessions! And save my tiny flist from my whinging over a long dead show. So I could whinge over a new one! I've been carting Michael and Nikita and their concerns around in my head for a decade, and it seems the only way for me to rid myself of them is to write it out. Sigh.
