on smallville fanfic and au's and so much rambling

bexless is leading a revolution La Bexistance and shunning is involved. I'm confused as to the details, but like any good lemming, I am totally supportive. Unless I shouldn't be.

Hmm. This kind of thought makes my head hurt. That's what I get for denying myself friendslist while working on the remix, which, by the way? Is kicking my ass. And not in a good, porny way, but in a bad, I want liquor sort of way. Preferably single malt. One bottle, please. tstar78 is keeping me sane, but I suspect she's doing it for the amusement value of watching me panic on AIM. *grins*

Recs

Deceit by Aklani. Okay, now THAT was unexpected. No spoilers. Read cold. I'm--a little dazed. Wow.

Inland by Rhiannonhero, sequel to Cherry Blossom Conduit. Okay, I have a thing for Clark/Lex/Lana. There's just so little. And this is hot. Let me point that out.

*****

Links

rageprufrock is listing out what she considers the CLex Primer. *grins* I love how she does it by stages. Now I'm mulling what I'd add. Hmmm. Much fun.

dammitcarl has a new webpage at Young and Sexy, with art by slodwick, liviapenn, and well, me. All condensed Jessica-ness. VERY happy. *nodnodnod*

*****

Other Things

Did I mention the remix is kicking my ass? Dearest God. Why the hell did I do this? Right, because I'm STUPID. And also in need of a keeper to remind me that, no, really, just because someone challenges you does not mean you actually have to join in. Gah.

New allery medicine is still screwing with my ability to sleep and added nausea to the package last night, which was, I admit, an experience to treasure, since it was just plain bizarre. I ended up falling asleep every time I sat down for most of the day and staring vaguely at food as if it would attack. I can't prove it wouldn't, either.

Dear God, I am boring. So I shall discuss nonsenseish things.

Nonsense

koimistress adn I were chatting about--something. Not entirely sure what. Te's a thematic chatter, Beth's a personal chatter, pearl_o's a bubbly chatter, the chat room can go from cheeze whiz to milk bags (just ask me about those milk bags) when you blink, but with Koi, the starting place of chat and the destination tend to be something on the order of being teleported from land you know into land you don't without being entirely sure that the conversation was supposed to do that. No, I have no idea how this happens, but my best example is imagine you're on your porch discussing, say, cows, and then suddenly you're wondering about existentialism in current literary trends while among elves. Then imagine that you know nothing about that subject, but somehow, you're really fascinated with it for a few hours.

Yeah. She's WAY too smart. It'd be annoying if I wasnt' trying to pry more fic out of her. *grins*

Anyway, the concept was themes in fiction--more specifically, fanfiction. minisinoo, who really does get in depth when studying what people write in fanfic, once pointed out that as a rule, fanfic owes far more to the romance genre than any other, no matter what the actual genre of the show/book/media. Everyone knows this, I know, which is why there are gen/pairing debates, plot versus relationship talks, lalala fandomcakes. Moving on to what I've been thinking.

And this is where I'll cut, because this is going to be boring.



In my diary last year, I was looking at how fanfic goes through thematic trends--specifically, that if you pay attention, you can see which authors and which stories kicked off what. Examples included the darkfic-rush with the posting of Te's Past Grief and the denialfic spun by Destina's beautiful Prophets of Eden, which gets extra points for explaining what canon never bothered; specifically, what on earth Lex would use a particle accelerator for and the happy futurefic rush with Livia Penn's Demarcation. Other trends included happyminion's extremely fun CLex happyfic futurefics, and so on and so forth. Incestfic was off with a bang with xoverau's Thin Line and Te's Vision Thing, and by now Luthorcest (with the addition of Lucas) is so entreched in our fandom that we barely note the incest warning and have shifted it from A Massive Deep Serious Subject Covered With Much Angst to, well, Lucex. Er. Lecus? You get it. I'm a fan of it. *g* I need to find that entry, because I think I covered some specific stories.

Current shifts, however, aren't controlled by writers so much as they now seem to be controlled by challenges and groups of writers/readers working together, which is, honestly, really interesting if I'm right about what I'm seeing. Early challenges in SV, such as the different title challenges hosted by Livia Penn (X-Files and Bradbury), created a large and varied output--gen, slash, and het all combined in different ways, with authors, even slash ones, tending to vary their writing between all three different types. Series, short stories, even novellas all came out in a wide variety of different plotlines, relationships, and themes.

Current challenges are getting more and more specific, included in this being denialcorp, Isilya's snugglefic challenge back in November or December, Celli's Taxfic challenge, etc etc etc, I honestly would list them all because I think every one of them has contributed toward the shift, but really, that would take a LONG time. Anyway, moving on.

With these challenges also came a more specific audience--that being the Livejournal community, which is an entirely separate post on lalala mailing lists, what have you. But that has been a factor. Those of us who participate in these challenges tend to be on each other's friends lists and slashers, adn we see the challenges on LJ. The wider community of SV, well, doesn't. At least, I'm not seeing a very strong het presence. But then again, from what I understand, the Clark/Lana people tend not to wander around with us anyway, so beside the point.

Well, that was rambly off topic. I'm not even sure if I have a topic. Okay, got it. Koi.

I was whimpering about some kind of fic I want--because I do whimper when I feel that I can guilt someone into writing something for me, and I've been told it's cute. The natural response is, if you want to see something, write it yourself! But I don't have time! I whined back. You see where this is going.

Because I am a junkie of SV fic, almost literally. I read almost everything and write as much as I can and offer bribes for more. And well, stalk authors. But besides that, there's also--well, you know, a craving. For a specific kind of story. And it hits every so often--like while you may love chicken, you wake up wanting, say, pork chops and dammit, you want them now. This doesn't detract from teh chicken....

Okay, this is all a lemon-hummus thing going on now, and that essay is making me both thoughtful and hungry. Here's where I was going.

Currently in SV, with the exception of Prufrock and her WiP's of Massive Seat-Clutching and Lanning's spectacular Identical series (amongst a couple of others), there's a lack of long fic. And when I say long, I'm not asking for a full novella--give me twenty thousand words or so. Maybe thirty. It's not that I don't love these great short fics, because I do. I also love chocolate, but man cannot live on chocolate alone.

I want--something with teeth. Something to gnaw on for hours. Something I have to think about and haunts me for hours later and makes me reconsider canon as I know it. Reconsider the characters as I know them. Fuck around with my head a little. Pru was pointing out how a friend of hers new to SV reacted to Immortality, which, oh yeah, remember that one. Whoa. I do have a penchant for darkfic and have been called on it, but it's not just that--darkfic, besides hitting my kinks, also generally explores the themes that attract me most strongly, which nondarkfic could do as well, though it's usually harder. RivkaT's Switch by no stretch can be considered darkfic, but I do classify it as something that made me think after and re-read often to catch what I might have missed otherwise.

It occurred to me recently, possibly for the first time, that what I love about Smallville--all that comics canon to play with and reinterpret into SV, all those set-in expectations--is also massively limiting in some ways. Victoria P said that it was hard for her in SV because Superman was such a hugely--iconic thing for her. Most of us know the base mythology of Superman like we know our ABC's. It's cultural. And all that background makes a rich backdrop to play in, but in some ways, I think it limits our thinking as well. It makes it hard to get by it, to explore possibilities as thoroughly as, say, someone writing in Farscape or Star Trek. We find it hard, for example, to even consider some types of fics, even in theory. We're too seeped in the Superman mythology to buy in without a LOT of writer effort and skill and time.

An interesting off point to this would be the Five Things challenge--or three, four, whatever, where people snatched single scenes from AUs and introduced them to us. These AUs, often, are what contradict what I said above, as if when we label it AU and make the point that This Didn't Happen (the entire challenge concept was These Things Didn't Happen), we can get by comics and SV canon and think outside the general Superman myth without feeling too odd about it. Kind of like being given permission to get REALLY bizarre and having the defense "But this was part of the challenge!" if it feels like it's strayed too far.

And God, would I wouldn't give for some of those AUs to be turned into their own stories.

Well, that was rambly and weird and I should work on my remix. Tonight. I will. I WILL, dammit.