(no subject)

[estirise]

I guess since I'm not sleeping yet, I'd do a bit of meta.

I was chatting with capncosmo tonight earlier (at least I think it was she), when she asked me if someone with no knowledge of Kiva could understand "Apart from the Ocean". Now, "Apart from the Ocean" is OC-heavy, to put it politely, given it's for a challenge comm for Original Characters (occhallenge). But is it readable if you haven't watched an episode of Kiva? That's a good question. I'd like to think so.


I believe that most fanfics - at least the decent ones - can be readable by people with little to no familiarity with the fandom. For example, I read "The Sentinel" fics, even though I've only seen about two episodes of the series. (Which, for some reason, I've never been able to get into.) In the Olden Days when people made these things called "Fanzines", I was able to pick up a lot of things in fandoms I'd never seen. I recall a fanzine I bought for a "Voyagers!" fanfic, that had a selection of other fandoms. I can't recall most of them, but one of them was "Blake's 7", and I think another was "Randall and Hopkirk, deceased". I seem to recall another one was for a series called "The Master" (which had nothing to do with Doctor Who; it was a series about ninjas that aired in the U.S. in 1984, and apparently part of it was featured on MST3000). I've never seen any of the three aforementioned shows, and yet I read the fics just fine, and recall the one for "The Master" fondly. (Don't ask me where said fanzine is.) In some ways, well-done fanfic, unless it's really short/focused heavily on a particular episode, can be read by anyone. Sure, you're not likely to get all the details, but a good story is a good story.

Nowadays, people have the Internet, and they can pick and choose what they read. Which is a shame, really, because you get more exposure to other shows when you're a captive of the fanzine editor's choice of fandoms for a particular multifandom 'Zine. I have no clue why I started reading fanfic for "The Sentinel", but I still read it even though I'm not familiar with the series. I try to do the same for other fics if they look interesting. (I also miss the QC that happened with fanzines, but that's a different story.)

So, to apply this to my fics. I'm not sure I can really do it, because I'm not the best final judge of how good/accessible the fic is; I'm too close to my own creations. I'd like to believe that at least some of my fic could be read without knowing the series in question. For example, I think people unfamiliar with the new series of the Tomorrow People could get the gist of "Growing Out Of", while Keita's musings in "Keitadapting" are universal - you might not know that Seven is a cellphone, but Keita's feelings are understandable enough. And a reader of "Murfletuffle" could probably get the gist of Otoya and Jiro without knowing the specifics of the series they came out of. Likewise, I think that if someone clicked on "Furry Children" on fanfiction.net, they'd be able to figure things out pretty quickly, the same for "Goodbye From Where It Hurts".

When I wrote "Turns to Dust", I was writing it for somebody who had never seen Kamen Rider 555 before. In other words, it was a Kamen Rider 555 story, but I didn't want people to skip it because it was Kamen Rider 555, which is largely obscure outside Japan. And I think people do skip it because they see the fandom and they've never seen it, so they think they won't understand it. When I wrote it, I wrote it from the perspective of a newcomer to the scene, the Original Character Susan. You don't really have to know who Mr. J or Smart Lady or any of the other canon characters are in this story, or at least that's what I intended; it's nice to know, for example, who Susan encounters at the end of the story, but that's an added touch for the Kamen Rider fan reading the fic.

On the other hand, "Apart from the Ocean" is only partially written with the non-fan in mind. It helps if you know who Ramon is, and the same with Megumi, Jiro, Ramon, and Riki, though I think you could probably figure them out just as well without seeing an episode of Kamen Rider Kiva. "Apart from the Ocean" has little to nothing to do with the main Kiva series itself, and a good portion of it is set in an alternate universe, which if I've done my job as a writer, one should be able to pick up what's going on without having seen an episode of the series. (The same holds true of "Boxed In", an AU which is in the same universe as "Apart from the Ocean". I wrote it so early on in the series that I think you can follow it without knowing much of Kiva's canon.)

It occurs to me that a good crossover can be readable, even if one has never seen one/both/all of the series involved. Of course, this depends on the length and how much explanation/world showing that you get in the crossover; my extremely short crossover "Not My Thing" would probably give someone unfamiliar with Keitai Sousakan 7 a good idea of its plot, but doesn't provide a good explanation for Kamen Rider Kiva, the other series involved. But my longer crossovers would probably work, if I did them right. It's hard to explain "done right", but if you can get through a crossover - or any other fic - wanting to read more/see something of an unfamiliar series, the author has done their job right.

And that's what it comes down to, I think. In order to write a decent fanfic, you have to be able to write a decent story. And if you write a decent story, things should be intelligible to the non-viewer. That is where I hope that I have succeeded.

Comments

[capncosmo.livejournal.com]

Well, I can see your point. I actually do read a lot of fic with people I'm not terribly familiar with, and it's not impossible to understand/enjoy a story that way. That said, the advantage of fanfiction is that you can take for granted people know/understand the settings/concepts/characters and you don't have to put a lot of effort into description/set-up. Even in an AU, a character should be recognizable, and that gives the writer an advantage of not having to specify eye color/speech quirks/body language/etc. So, I think that there could definitely be certain elements that, while not fatal to the story, could detract. (Example: I read a story where a character was making fun of another one, but referred to him by first name when in narration he was always referred to by last name; it's not terribly important to the story, but it bothered me that I didn't understand the joke.) And people spending all their time setting things up is annoying to people familiar with the series who are just here for the story, so. *shrugs* My two cents, anyway.

[estirose.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that is a good point. One of the things that fanfiction writers are criticized for is that we don't worldbuild (unless we're writing radical AUs), and instead take advantage of other peoples' work. On the other hand, it gives us a very effective shortcut.

I think the way I view fics depends on my familiarity with the source. If I'm reading a fic in a fandom I'm familiar with, as you pointed out, I generally don't want things explained to me. If I'm reading I fic in a fandom that I'm not familiar with/haven't seen the source material, I don't go in there expecting anything other than the author knows how to write. If I'm reading a crossover, I know that chances are there's going to be a bit of explanation that might be terribly obvious to me, but the people coming from the other fandom of the crossover would appreciate.

It's really a tricky balance to write a fic that's deliberately accessible to people that aren't familiar with the fandom without annoying the people who are. "Turns to Dust", which was deliberately written that way, had an advantage where those that were explaining things explained the minimum amount. And it also helped that the POV character was new to the whole thing, so she did need a bit of explanation. Likewise, I'd like to think the exposition at the beginning of "Boxed In" served the dual purpose of cluing in the KR Kiva fans about what was different in the AU, and told a non-fan the essential facts of what was going on.

I think it does depend on the skill of the author, which is what makes me uncertain about my own fic and its readability outside its fandom, because my view of my own writing is quite a bit more critical than other peoples'. A good author makes you not mind that they're putting in some extra stuff, or makes you comfortable with a fandom you're not in, and in that case, hopefully makes you want to check it out.

And I think I turned this into an essay on you. Sorry about that!

[cmar-wingnut.livejournal.com]

I started out writing fanfiction with deliberate inclusion of background for non-fans, intended to be readable by anyone, but got some complaints that the repetition of what fans already know was irritating and unnecessary. Partly this was my fault for not including it more subtlely, but still - it's a real dilemma whether to explain and annoy fans or not explain and annoy non-fans. Considering the vast majority of readers are going to be fans, I now usually explain very little unless it can be done pretty seamlessly. (Which is quite possible in a longish fic - a little bit here and there can add up to a fairly complete background.)

In that way, crossovers have a built-in advantage since the characters from each fandom can legitimately need some information on the situation in the other fandom. One of the many reasons I like doing crossovers.