Ha, no no, not belligerent at all. :) I guess that I get frustrated sometimes by the "all fanworks are [x]" statements (or at least those that read that way to me) and if I seemed at all irritated, I was responding to that, not to any irritation at you. :)
but if I encounter a badly written profic book, I almost always quit reading it. That's not true of fanfic and I think that's because I'm getting something out of reading fanfic that I can't find in profic (and part of that has to do with selection; obviously there *are* profic works out there that emotionally resonate with me and I can and do read them and enjoy them.)
I think I am actually more likely to do the opposite. I read your post on bulletproof kinks but couldn't really answer it, because in fandom, there are few kinks that'll keep me reading through to the end - this is much less true of me in fandoms where there's a true dearth of fic, but in those cases it's less that I'm searching for a particular kink and more that I could only find 2 fics in the whole fandom about characters x and y, so I'm reading them even though the writing is terrible and they contain nothing else I would normally look for in a fic. *g*
Whereas with a profic book, if I suspect it may hit my kinks later on, I'll forge onward (or at least skim). I think some of this might have to do with labeling - in fanfic, I know up front whether I'm reading h/c or whatnot, so I know what to expect from the later part of the book. In original fic, not so much, and for me that's good because so many of my big kinks I simply can't get from fanfic because they hinge on being surprised (characters coming back from the dead, twist endings, surprising and unexpected friendships and sexual relationships).
Actually yeah, come to think of it - I never realized this before typing the above, but my bulletproof kink inasmuch as I have one, is being surprised. I really love h/c and I enjoy the id-indulgent aspects of fandom for it, but coming upon surprise!h/c in a book that I didn't know contained it is infinitely sweeter to me. Being made to believe a character is dead (or is about to die with 100% certainty) and then learning they're not is possibly one of my favorite things EVER, and one of the most emotionally satisfying experiences I can have as a reader, but it's one that I will almost never have in fanfic because we always label deathfics. (I'm not arguing against the practice, not at all! It's pseudo-death that's a kink for me anyway, not the real thing. But labeling a fic "fake character death" strips out the aspect that makes it a kink for me.)
So perhaps this goes some way towards explaining why I feel awkward in discussions of fanfic as a total id zone. It is for me in some ways, and actually, I really appreciate fandom for restoring a lot of the joy to my writing - for pointing out to me that not only is it okay to write id-ful fantasies, but that it is in no way incompatible with being a "pro" author, because a whole lot of authors turn their id-ful fantasies into books and sell them. (I think I had to see it running rampant in fanfic in order to recognize it in a ton of profic that I'd responded to without really understanding why.) And I think that I was also being much too black-and-white above, because I do really love the shared context in fandom - that I don't have to create my own world and spend a couple of books setting it up, but can go straight for the fun bits, the big emotional scenes or the little domestic scenes, and have readers who are already primed to love those characters to go "awww" along with me. That's awesome. But the actual kind of thing I'm writing in fandom isn't qualitatively different than what I'm writing out of fandom, except that it involves different sets of characters - the stories that I write in different fandoms are at least as different as the stories I write in fandom and out of fandom, so for me it's just as meaningful to draw lines between, say, my DBZ fic and my SGA fic, as between my fanfic and my profic, in terms of both its creative elements and its effect on my id.
Which of course is not to say that my way is the only right way, or that other people are wrong. :)
no subject
but if I encounter a badly written profic book, I almost always quit reading it. That's not true of fanfic and I think that's because I'm getting something out of reading fanfic that I can't find in profic (and part of that has to do with selection; obviously there *are* profic works out there that emotionally resonate with me and I can and do read them and enjoy them.)
I think I am actually more likely to do the opposite. I read your post on bulletproof kinks but couldn't really answer it, because in fandom, there are few kinks that'll keep me reading through to the end - this is much less true of me in fandoms where there's a true dearth of fic, but in those cases it's less that I'm searching for a particular kink and more that I could only find 2 fics in the whole fandom about characters x and y, so I'm reading them even though the writing is terrible and they contain nothing else I would normally look for in a fic. *g*
Whereas with a profic book, if I suspect it may hit my kinks later on, I'll forge onward (or at least skim). I think some of this might have to do with labeling - in fanfic, I know up front whether I'm reading h/c or whatnot, so I know what to expect from the later part of the book. In original fic, not so much, and for me that's good because so many of my big kinks I simply can't get from fanfic because they hinge on being surprised (characters coming back from the dead, twist endings, surprising and unexpected friendships and sexual relationships).
Actually yeah, come to think of it - I never realized this before typing the above, but my bulletproof kink inasmuch as I have one, is being surprised. I really love h/c and I enjoy the id-indulgent aspects of fandom for it, but coming upon surprise!h/c in a book that I didn't know contained it is infinitely sweeter to me. Being made to believe a character is dead (or is about to die with 100% certainty) and then learning they're not is possibly one of my favorite things EVER, and one of the most emotionally satisfying experiences I can have as a reader, but it's one that I will almost never have in fanfic because we always label deathfics. (I'm not arguing against the practice, not at all! It's pseudo-death that's a kink for me anyway, not the real thing. But labeling a fic "fake character death" strips out the aspect that makes it a kink for me.)
So perhaps this goes some way towards explaining why I feel awkward in discussions of fanfic as a total id zone. It is for me in some ways, and actually, I really appreciate fandom for restoring a lot of the joy to my writing - for pointing out to me that not only is it okay to write id-ful fantasies, but that it is in no way incompatible with being a "pro" author, because a whole lot of authors turn their id-ful fantasies into books and sell them. (I think I had to see it running rampant in fanfic in order to recognize it in a ton of profic that I'd responded to without really understanding why.) And I think that I was also being much too black-and-white above, because I do really love the shared context in fandom - that I don't have to create my own world and spend a couple of books setting it up, but can go straight for the fun bits, the big emotional scenes or the little domestic scenes, and have readers who are already primed to love those characters to go "awww" along with me. That's awesome. But the actual kind of thing I'm writing in fandom isn't qualitatively different than what I'm writing out of fandom, except that it involves different sets of characters - the stories that I write in different fandoms are at least as different as the stories I write in fandom and out of fandom, so for me it's just as meaningful to draw lines between, say, my DBZ fic and my SGA fic, as between my fanfic and my profic, in terms of both its creative elements and its effect on my id.
Which of course is not to say that my way is the only right way, or that other people are wrong. :)