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I mean, looking back on my FPS "career", all my fandoms have been ones with a very strong story arc. Space: Above and Beyond first and foremost, and if I ever found out who nixed that show after just one bloody season, I will hang them by their toenails and have them eaten by ants. There were several story lines there, interwoven with each other and with strong, interesting characters. There was the Nathan/Cooper/Shane triangle, The whole InVitro thing, the legacy from the AI Wars, the political sheming Nathan got himself involved in, and so further and so on.
The next fandom I was really in was Biker Mice from Mars, which had a surprising amount of storyline and mythology, considering the fact that it's a cartoon. Of course, that could just be me and my thing for a) Mars, and b) rebels and freedom fighters.
And then there was Harry Potter, which was a veritable haven for the myth-addicted like me. So many things to discuss! So much backstory to go through, to talk about, to think about, to reconstruct.
Yeah, sure, there's a lot of that in RPS, too. But first of all, we get a much more subjective view of the story, because almost everything is filtered through someone else, be it the subject, the interviewer/writer of an article, both, or someone else entirely. When it comes to cold, hard facts (as opposed to things like characterisation), RPS is much more confusing than FPS. It's not fluid, exactly, it's just that there's a lot more missing pieces, more contradictions between the versions of the different parties involved, because everything we get is second-hand and subjective.
With FPS, while there's still some subjectiveness and second-handness, for the vast majority of canon, we're right there, witnessing it. You can theorise all you want about why X said "A", but the fact that he said "A", and "A" exactly, is a fact, something that can be checked for accuracy. You can't do that with RPS, you can't go back in time and witness what X said to Y, what his or her exact words were.
I'm not entirely sure where I'm going with this post, or even where I really stand on the vague-vs-defined-canon issue, becuase right now I want more defined canon, but the vagueness and the shiftiness of RPS factual canon is what attracted me in the first place, and I'm sure I'll continue to love it in the future.
I guess what I'm saying is, anyone have any reccs for an FPS fandom I could get into? Someting with good female characters, some slashiness, good dialogue, strong plot lines and story archs, lots of conflict and dysfunctionality, and a way for me to get access to it. (Tapes, whatever.) Come on, that's not asking that much, is it?
Is it
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Present tense. While present tense is not bad in and of itself, it gets old when every story is written in present tense.
Fragments. The stupid fragmentary style everyone seems to think is so great where every sentence is broken into at least three smaller sentences: "He went. Down. The stairs."
Second person. I can't stand second person. I don't think I've ever seen it used effectively outside of a Choose Your Own Adventure novel. I don't want to be the character; I want to read about what the character is doing.
Vagueness. People don't tell you anything and expect you to just fill in every blank yourself. If I wanted that, I'd make up a story in my own head, not go reading one by someone else.
And while this isn't really related to writing style, as long as I'm bitching about tendencies I see coming out of boyband slash, I'm really irritated by the sudden surge in Eminem/boyband member fic. It pisses me off that he wasn't good enough to be written about until he insulted Chris Kirkpatrick, which obviously means they should be sleeping together
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a) 2nd person
b) present tense
c) fragmentary sentences
d) Elijah/Orlando.
Although to be fair I'm only co-authoring the Elijah/Orlando deal. And the first three all happened in the same story, my one and only published. (Everything you dislike, in one convenient 500-word package! Isn't FoTR fic wonderful?)
I understand everything you're saying, and while I don't always agree, I empathize. I have dozens of thoughts about fannish writing, and internet writing, and how fans connect and how it relates to style, but they're too blobby and unformed to even natter about in my own journal.
Relentless focus on the Pretty disturbs me too. It surprises me that writers can maintain such a high level of squee-ness. Writing lotrips, for me, vaporized my Elijah-crush and quashed any chances of developing an Orlando-crush. Now that I walk around thinking about them all the time, about what they would or would not do, how they would react, what their faces might look like in a certain expression, I don't do the teenage girl eck fibble gah! when I see a picture or read a story. Pulling them apart made me lose all interest in their outsides. I often wonder if that happens to other people, or why it doesn't happen to boyband writers.
Random other thing that pisses me off:
book fans write Gimli/Legolas. Why? Because there's a fucking basis, that's why. They have a connection, they have moments.
movie fans write Aragorn/Legolas. Why? The pretty! The pretty!
Okay, enough ranting for one comment
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book fans write Gimli/Legolas. Why? Because there's a fucking basis, that's why. They have a connection, they have moments.
movie fans write Aragorn/Legolas. Why? The pretty! The pretty!
That doesn't go for all Aragorn/Legolas writers, though. But yes, a lot of the immense, vast popularity of the pairing is because of that. (And I base this not on my own prejudice, but on the plots of the majority of the A/L stories, which are more "Aragorn thinks Legloas is pretty, Legolas thinks Aragorn is pretty, so they fuck and then declare their undying love"-gag- and less "Aragorn and legolas have a history, and this and that and then and their love grew etc."
Of course, I may just be prejudiced, here, but i've had bad experiences with rabid A/L-ers who a) either ignore or completely villify Arwen (I'm not that fond of her, either, but give the woman a break, please); or b) "bash" Gimli as being "ugly" and unworthy of Legolas and whatnot. (Survival tip: don't bash draves where I can hear you. ;D)
I'll stop rambling now.
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I just can't win, can I?
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I think the pretty may be part of it. Em's not pretty in a boyband/Elijah Wood/Orlando Bloom kind of way, and Fred, Proof, and Dre are even farther from it.
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Another thought
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