Post by Stacy on Jun 6, 2010 18:43:51 GMT -5
I have been reading absolutely fascinating discussions about fanfic and its culture and meaning and how it relates to professional literature.
Here's the post that started this off.
How Fanfiction Makes Us Poor
Which man, the post hits a lot of points that I think about a lot - like how Sims stories are seen as lesser because we don't get paid for them and we don't go through the capitalist gatekeepers.
Sims stories are not fanfic. I think of them more as...machinimanga? LOL. But yeah - most of us create our own characters and worlds and just use the game as illustration. Even for stories that feature Maxis/EA characters, it's not like there's a whole lot of canon there to pull from. There's not books and TV episodes and movies - there's just a short bio and the description of the family and the preset relationships.
But we do have some things in common with fanfic. The majority of us do not have a Y chromosome. And I've just dipped a bit into the LJ simfic community, but it seems to have a lot of the tropes and traditions of fanfic. Which that's something I'd love to talk about - the differences in genre and community and how what I read on LJ is so incredibly different than you know, well - the tradition I'm working from, to put it in terms that I'm not really comfortable with. I come from Boolprop, land of legacies and challenge stories and a general PG-13 rating. I started my Sims story career on the exchange five years ago, when legacies were first becoming popular.
My first Sims story was made with Sims 1, though. And I never shared it with anyone, but I quite liked it. It featured Chris and Melissa Roomies as a couple and Chris wanted Mortimer Goth to donate his genetic material so they could have a kid. This was way back in the days before hacks and cheats that would have allowed them to have a kid - or at least Sims 1 did not have the Tombstone of L & D and I wasn't aware of any same sex kissing hacks for it - haha, I'd totally forgotten that you had kids in Sims 1 by making out a lot until the option came up.
Last night John said that he didn't think I could write a book for traditional publication because I'm so addicted to sharing my progress online every few days and getting instant feedback.
So here's a question to get things started - is there anything wrong with that? Is sharing a serial story for free online just as valid as traditional publishing, or not? How do we decide what has artistic value and what doesn't, and how is that tied in to monetary value and cultural rules and expectations and the socioeconomic makeup and prejudices of the gatekeepers who decide what gets to be known as classic literary masterpieces? Because yeah, I'm not shy - I grew up reading the classics and it's always been my goal to be among them.
Personally, I would like to perhaps traditionally publish something one day. Because it might mean a bigger audience, although who knows with the way things go now in the publishing business. If I didn't get marketing support, a novel might end up with less readers than my blog has had. And I absolutely love the instant feedback and replying to comments and getting to know my readers and becoming friends with them and having an emotional attachment.
On the other hand - publishing serially has its problems. I really would like to just write a great big book and then be able to look at the whole story and edit scenes and fix plot problems. And I will do that, one day. And who knows - maybe once I've done it I will publish it online. Or maybe I will start sending it around to agents.
And I do imagine I would at least still show my progress every once in a while to close friends and get feedback and support that way.
So what do you guys think about Simfic and how it relates to fanfic and professional fiction? How does gender and socialization play into it? What schools and tropes and traditions and circles of influence do you see?
Here's the post that started this off.
How Fanfiction Makes Us Poor
Which man, the post hits a lot of points that I think about a lot - like how Sims stories are seen as lesser because we don't get paid for them and we don't go through the capitalist gatekeepers.
Sims stories are not fanfic. I think of them more as...machinimanga? LOL. But yeah - most of us create our own characters and worlds and just use the game as illustration. Even for stories that feature Maxis/EA characters, it's not like there's a whole lot of canon there to pull from. There's not books and TV episodes and movies - there's just a short bio and the description of the family and the preset relationships.
But we do have some things in common with fanfic. The majority of us do not have a Y chromosome. And I've just dipped a bit into the LJ simfic community, but it seems to have a lot of the tropes and traditions of fanfic. Which that's something I'd love to talk about - the differences in genre and community and how what I read on LJ is so incredibly different than you know, well - the tradition I'm working from, to put it in terms that I'm not really comfortable with. I come from Boolprop, land of legacies and challenge stories and a general PG-13 rating. I started my Sims story career on the exchange five years ago, when legacies were first becoming popular.
My first Sims story was made with Sims 1, though. And I never shared it with anyone, but I quite liked it. It featured Chris and Melissa Roomies as a couple and Chris wanted Mortimer Goth to donate his genetic material so they could have a kid. This was way back in the days before hacks and cheats that would have allowed them to have a kid - or at least Sims 1 did not have the Tombstone of L & D and I wasn't aware of any same sex kissing hacks for it - haha, I'd totally forgotten that you had kids in Sims 1 by making out a lot until the option came up.
Last night John said that he didn't think I could write a book for traditional publication because I'm so addicted to sharing my progress online every few days and getting instant feedback.
So here's a question to get things started - is there anything wrong with that? Is sharing a serial story for free online just as valid as traditional publishing, or not? How do we decide what has artistic value and what doesn't, and how is that tied in to monetary value and cultural rules and expectations and the socioeconomic makeup and prejudices of the gatekeepers who decide what gets to be known as classic literary masterpieces? Because yeah, I'm not shy - I grew up reading the classics and it's always been my goal to be among them.
Personally, I would like to perhaps traditionally publish something one day. Because it might mean a bigger audience, although who knows with the way things go now in the publishing business. If I didn't get marketing support, a novel might end up with less readers than my blog has had. And I absolutely love the instant feedback and replying to comments and getting to know my readers and becoming friends with them and having an emotional attachment.
On the other hand - publishing serially has its problems. I really would like to just write a great big book and then be able to look at the whole story and edit scenes and fix plot problems. And I will do that, one day. And who knows - maybe once I've done it I will publish it online. Or maybe I will start sending it around to agents.
And I do imagine I would at least still show my progress every once in a while to close friends and get feedback and support that way.
So what do you guys think about Simfic and how it relates to fanfic and professional fiction? How does gender and socialization play into it? What schools and tropes and traditions and circles of influence do you see?