Subject: Non-canon =/= Sporkable
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Posted on: 2013-08-28 02:56:00 UTC
From what I understand, we're not supposed to PPC published works, such as expanded universe novels. However, I wanted an opinion as to the sporkability of something that is clearly fanfiction collected in published form - not quite an official novel, but not quite the free fanfiction you'd find online.
So, I've found some Star Trek badfics, TOS.
The first one is a Suefic. Classic - she's a scientist who hates Vulcans, but rather quickly falls in love with Spock. And he returns it. Suethors don't seem to remember that Vulcans don't express emotions. Oh, and did I mention the urple description Spock gives her? He's describing her mind, but it's still painfully flowery - "Knowledge was Spock's God, and Katalya Tremain was one of its prophets".
The second is a genderbend fic - basically, the Enterprise crew gets lured to this planet, then they inexplicably wake up as the opposite gender. Like, here's the line: "Kirk snapped awake - and knew. There was no mistaking the one overwhelming fact: He was in the body of a woman." That's how fast it happens. And then there's a scene where fem!Bones and unchanged Spock agree that Kirk is too pretty to be taken seriously as captain. Which is just...ugh. TOS is vaguely sexist, but it isn't that bad.
I suppose you're wondering where I found them, since I didn't post links. Well, that's because they're not online.
I found them in a box of old Star Trek novels from the '60s and '70s. The first one is a novel, and the second is from a fanfiction anthology.
I have some pictures and some more analysis on my Tumblr here, if you're interested.
This makes me so excited. This is the history of fandom right here. It's changed form - fanzine is an outdated term, and I never saw the term "fanfiction" anywhere on the book - but in some ways, it's stayed just the same. It's something the fans do to respond to the work, fill a gap, explore something, do something the series can't. Of course, badfic has stayed mostly the same too, which I find quite interesting. With all the different anti-badfic techniques that have cropped up over the years, wouldn't there be some changes? Wouldn't there be fewer Sues? What do you think?
Of course, badfic has stayed mostly the same too, which I find quite interesting. With all the different anti-badfic techniques that have cropped up over the years, wouldn't there be some changes? Wouldn't there be fewer Sues? What do you think?
Fanfiction has been around as long as sentient minds have had the ability to make stories. (For more on this, see most of the later issues of Sandman. Or, see also, the Foglio's take on it, from Girl Genius.) I wonder, sometimes, how many stories of the gods and goddesses of ancient cultures - Greek myths, for example - were originals, and how many were story-telling after the fact that got woven in over time.
As for "anti-badfic techniques," I'm honestly not sure what you mean. There's nothing out there stopping people from writing whatever they want, good or bad, and nor should there be. We all go through a learning process as we write. We all start out writing bad stories, and get better as we learn from our mistakes. (Well. Most of us get better. Some of us stop writing, and some of us refuse to learn from our mistakes. See again: the entirety of the history of sentience.)
If you mean stuff like the PPC, that's not really "anti-badfic," not in a sense that would stop people from writing it. (And again - nor should it. The last thing we want to do is silence those we disagree with.) It's just a different kind of fanfic - one that happens to revolve around other folks' fanfic. Meta-meta-meta-fiction. Sort of. But actually stopping badfic? Well, first we'd have to agree on exactly what badfic is, which probably will never happen, since what's good and bad fanfiction is so subjective. (Mostly. The stuff we generally mission, as pointed out several times, is the hilariously-bad, not the mediocre or the "bad but it could be improved." That's for a reason.)
But my point is, most people will never read fringe stories like the PPC, or Sue-slayers. They're written for a very small audience, for the most part, because most people don't actually know fanfiction exists when they start dreaming it up, and may not even know fanfiction exists when they start writing - until they get into a community, and even then, a lot of folks don't much care to distinguish between badfic and goodfic, and the ones that do either leave concrit or flames or just don't bother reading it... and the very few folks who are left over may or may not ever actually care enough to find the PPC. So... we're not really making a huge difference in fandom, in any single fandom. The point, as far as I know, is to entertain each other and vent about stuff we dislike - writing as catharsis. That's never going to stop anyone (and, yet again, nor should it).
As for the thread going on about whether we're allowed to mission these... Please don't.
1) They were written, for the most part, multiple decades ago. The authors who wrote them would probably be deeply embarrassed to know they're still floating around. Lois Bujold got her start in writing there, and IIRC, one of the ones she wrote was the story where Cordelia's Honor started. And although a Klingon and a Vulcan falling in love may be utterly bizarre fanfic, and perhaps something some of us would write scathing reviews of, Cordelia's Honor is an excellent book. It's a cheap shot to go after something so long ago, so far, when we have no idea how the authors feel about it now.
2) Not everything needs our input. To me, it's really awesome that we have records of where the fandom started out! Maybe it's just me being old and crotchety, but I find it a bit irritating that our first thought in finding this interesting history is "How can we best mock it?" Please... don't. Appreciate it, laugh at it... don't go after it. Please.
...is that awareness of Mary Sues and common types of badfic have increased over the years. Looking back, anti-badfic techniques is a really stupid way of phrasing it.
And, well, I thought it was an interesting idea to do a Flower-centric mission, but then again, I really didn't want to spork them unless people could give me very good reasons. And you're right - they are such interesting history.
To Everyone: Would people be interested if I wrote reviews of the stories? Good and bad?
(As a side note, as long as it wasn't canon character/OC, I think I'd love to read a well-written Klingon/Vulcan relationship.)
Look what you may have started.
You see, I have a number of agents. Among them are a Klingon named Kozar and a Vulcan named T'Zar. Neither of them are currently in any sort of romantic relationship.
...I mean, this may not happen, but if it does, I'd like you to know that you're to blame *hugs*
However, how exactly does one write a Klingon/Vulcan relationship? Any ideas? And any sporkable badfic ones, well...I wouldn't mind seeing them.
So yeah. Thanks. I think. Let's see if this works out...
~DF
I think it would have to be a slightly less violent Klingon and a slightly less logical Vulcan. They'd have to have something in common, some way of achieving mutual understanding before the relationship could work. It'd take time. Lots of time.
Although I have inadvertently spoiled one of the plot points (sorry), read Cordelia's Honor, by Lois McMasters Bujold. Like I said, she started with that fanfic, and altered a lot of the things and somehow it grew into this awesome, amazing series, the Vorkosigan Saga.
It's a great series, and will with luck, give you ideas for your own potential fic.
Hermione, do you know what you just found? You just found the missing piece to my idea for a Flower centric mission! For this discovery, I will even give you the right to use this idea as your own, if you want it. The idea came when reading about the Flowers on the wiki, and I saw that in the past, Flowers did misions, rather than agents. So, if I could find some old fanfic, from the 70's or earlier, I could write one of the mission reports from the Flowers! We could learn more about our favorite department heads as they take out Sues without most of the technology we have now. The implications are staggering! Anyway, I will fade back into the background and either write the thing or let somebody else take it. My only request is that Hermione has first dibs. Should she decline it, feel free to descend upon the poor plot bunny and claim it as your own.
I'm not sure these are sporkable. They're published, even thought they are clearly fanfiction. And a novel is just hard to spork. Maybe since the anthologized fanfiction is so clearly fanfiction it's okay? Or should I just leave it alone because Gene Roddenberry wrote the intro to the book? Does anyone else want to weigh in?
If I can't use a PPC format, then I still might MST them and post the links to the Board.
These...works...were published in book format, yes - but there was hardly any other way to spread them back then, without the Internet.
My - quite possibly irrelevant - opinion: if they're clearly "fan" fiction or author wish fulfillment that spits in the face of canon, spork away.
Fanzines were sort of the equivalent of fanfiction.net. They were fan made and fan published, while these books were sanctioned by the creators of the show.
Like I said, there's always MSTs. There's a Next Generation novel with a blatant Sue I've been wanting to kill, and this might just be the opportunity. I could just do segments or something.
From what I understand the books and things like STO (star trek online) Is non-canon unlike say the EU books and games and such for Star-Wars. The premission from Gene and all that jazz is just so fans writing for that book can use his creations in thier own work.
From what I understand, we're not supposed to PPC published works, such as expanded universe novels. However, I wanted an opinion as to the sporkability of something that is clearly fanfiction collected in published form - not quite an official novel, but not quite the free fanfiction you'd find online.
I'd say it's sporkable have to remember at the time that book was published Star Trek was still a Cult Classic TV series that only got saved and made into a movie series because of the fans. Which led to TNG and such. So it could just be Gene going "Hey look CBS/paramount...look how popular my little space opera is with people" So in that sense it's fair game. Heck it might even be fun to do in a prequel sporking...you know have agents in the 60s~70s on a "From the archives" mission.
Gene's "blessing" is actually just the opposite of a quarantined continuum.
Most authors don't say if they like or not fanfiction of their works. Some forbid it (the quarantined continua, PPC-wise). And some allow, or even encourage it (Moony Witcher being another example).
The fact that they have been published shouldn't be a problem for Star Trek fanzines - Internet as we know it didn't exist back then, and so actual publishing was the only way to diffuse it.
As a rule of thumb, we can go for a "it was a time where rules weren't written" approach, as the PPC as we know it started only around the nineties. We also have to remember that the Flowers' original goal was to simply stop Sues from causing damage with all their unregulated plotholes, though. Defending canon wasn't a priority for them.
This should be fun. BETTER NOT MESS THIS UP (a.k.a. have fun) whoever grabs this.
This is... quite the find! I actually find it interesting that the plots, the fetishes, even the writing style are almost IDENTICAL to the bile we deal with on a daily basis. I wasn't exactly expecting something COMPLETELY different, but language changes, memes and cultural preoccupations change, the literate demographic evolves... you'd think that in the early 70s ficcers would at LEAST be less willing to publish thinly veiled transformation-fetish material...
You WOULD think that enough had changed in our culture since the 70's that fanfiction would have changed as well. It may have something to do with the idea of the Last Original Plot- all storylines have been written, mostly by Biblical writers, the Greeks, Shakespeare, and the Brothers Grimm, and the one remaining plot is sealed in a vault somewhere festering. It's hardly surprising that we're still using the same plots as forty years ago, when we're still squeezing every drop of intrigue out of plots created thousands of years ago.
But the gender-bender took me by surprise. You would think that was a more recent development.
Huh.
-- Len
Despite all the anti-sue methods, there will always be hormonal fangirls/boys who are too immature to write anything with more than a centimeter of depth. Thus, the PPC will always have job security. But that is just my humble opinion, and I wouldn't advise making any life choices based on it.
*bows*