Thinking too hard about fanfic again
Oct. 4th, 2009 09:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rallamajoopThe ramblings below are going to be mostly about Cable and Deadpool/Marvel Comics, but if anyone who's completely unfamiliar with that fandom wants to throw in their two cents on broader canonical-accuracy-in-fanfic issues, please do join in. I'm in a discussion-y sort of mood.
With Let Slip the Dogs of War mostly done now (main story finished, epilogue two off to the beta reader) it's time to get working on the next idea that's sunk its little plot-snake fangs into me for this fandom. The only trouble with this particular idea is that it requires a lot of early scenes set in the early New Mutants/X-Force era – and that's a bit awkward, because outside of the Deadpool-related issues, I've read next to nothing from that part of the series, and only have a very vague understanding about who was around and what was going on. Since the whole idea depends on sending the timeline veering into AU territory I have leeway to fudge the details, but I'm not going to get very far without mentioning anything about the non-Cable-or-Deadpool characters and conflicts from around then. More importantly, I run the risk of putting off people who do know that part of the series well by getting things wrong.
Sure, most of the people likely to read it will probably be in the same boat as me – in it for C&DP, and interested in their earliest appearances mostly for backstory reasons, but I've been thrown out of fic myself before because a minor character I'd gotten myself attached to was acting wildly OOC. * I should be making at least a token effort not to make the same mistake.
So, yeah – in short, I'm stuck in that old fanfic question: just how well should you know canon before you can get away with writing about it?
When writing for a series like Marvel Comics, my general rule of thumb for this (ie, you should probably try to go through all the main source canon available for the series before you write much fic for it) just doesn't work. The total quantity of published work for the Marvelverse is insane – just keeping up with everything that happens in it on a monthly basis would be a job and a half. Many individual titles have issues going back to the '60s, if not much further (and even if they don't, there's probably at least one supporting cast member with important connections to a title that does). Most of them also include long periods where the quality of the writing rollercoasters around wildly, or which have since been retconned into oblivion. Even most of the professional writers Marvel employs probably haven't read half the canon out there (and a few make you wonder if they ever bothered to read material from a year ago...) Even for a really dedicated writer working in a universe that enormous, sooner or later the problem isn't going to be whether you know canon well enough, it's whether the plot elements you're referencing are so random and obscure that half your readers won't be familiar with them. Factor in that canon itself is so wildly and gleefully inconsistent, and not only is it virtually impossible to get yourself up to date with everything in canon, there's really not much point.
The part that matters to this fic, the New Mutants/X-Force era, is a much more limited subset, of course, but outside of the Deadpool-related issues (few and far apart), I don't have access to many of those comics – nor, to be honest, much interest in going out of my way to track them down. The writing's not terrible – I wouldn't be writing in that era at all if there was nothing that caught my interest – but we're talking a lot of Liefeld art, and there's a limit to how much I want to put my eyeballs through. This is canon so early that even the writers are still figuring out who the characters are, everything we're told about them can and probably will be contradicted later.
As for what I have gathered about that part of the series... well. Cable's playing mentor to a bunch of mutant kids called the New Mutants/X-Force. Active bad guys include Stryfe, who will at some point turn out to be Cable's evil clone from the future, and Tolliver, who Deadpool's working for, and who will at some point turn out to be Cable's evil son from the future. Cable gets back together with Domino, who later turns out to have really been Deadpool's shape-shifter ex-girlfriend Copycat posing as her while the real Domino was held captive by the bad guys. Other characters include Siryn, who I know mostly from when she not-quite-dated Deadpool, Cannonball, who may or may not be immortal, Riktor and Shatterstar, who finally came out of the closet lately (much to fandom's glee and Liefeld's horror), and a few extras like Kane, who by odd coincidence was both on Cable's old Six Pack team and in the Weapon X program at the same time Deadpool was. In short, it's pretty much one big soap opera about people with superpowers. **
And even with that much, we've got bizarre retcons and contradictions cropping up: because unless there's some major mitigating factor I'm missing, Tolliver sent both Deadpool and Copycat in to infiltrate the New Mutants/kill Cable at the same time, so that Copycat shows up, posing as Domino, just in time to shoot Deadpool in the back. Unless Tolliver is crazier than the Joker, this makes no sense whatsoever. Unlike the writers at the time, I'm not going to have the luxury of glossing over that particular plothole without dealing with it – so me and canon are already looking at each other sideways at this point.
Also keep in mind that if current canon ever does reference any of these events again, odds are half the awkward details will be delivered with enough spin to make them fit the current status quo, if not retconned right out of existence.
Even with that in mind, I do still feel like I should probably make an effort to show some respect for that era of the series if I'm writing fic based on it. On the other hand, if most of the people who are reading have even less interest in that part of canon than me, is it really worth the bother? And on a third hand, since the whole point of the story involves turning the timeline on its head, should I worry about any of this at all?
So here's where I throw this out there for discussion – are there a lot of people in C&DP fandom who have a lot invested in Cable's earlier misadventures? Are there any particular issues or summaries I should be looking at in particular? Or is that all going to pale into insignificance as long as I can guarantee that the fic's going to involve C&DP getting it on at some point?
* I've been thrown out of professionally published comics for the same reason. Alas, such is the nature of the medium, le sigh.
** Totally different from Marvel today, of course. *cough*
With Let Slip the Dogs of War mostly done now (main story finished, epilogue two off to the beta reader) it's time to get working on the next idea that's sunk its little plot-snake fangs into me for this fandom. The only trouble with this particular idea is that it requires a lot of early scenes set in the early New Mutants/X-Force era – and that's a bit awkward, because outside of the Deadpool-related issues, I've read next to nothing from that part of the series, and only have a very vague understanding about who was around and what was going on. Since the whole idea depends on sending the timeline veering into AU territory I have leeway to fudge the details, but I'm not going to get very far without mentioning anything about the non-Cable-or-Deadpool characters and conflicts from around then. More importantly, I run the risk of putting off people who do know that part of the series well by getting things wrong.
Sure, most of the people likely to read it will probably be in the same boat as me – in it for C&DP, and interested in their earliest appearances mostly for backstory reasons, but I've been thrown out of fic myself before because a minor character I'd gotten myself attached to was acting wildly OOC. * I should be making at least a token effort not to make the same mistake.
So, yeah – in short, I'm stuck in that old fanfic question: just how well should you know canon before you can get away with writing about it?
When writing for a series like Marvel Comics, my general rule of thumb for this (ie, you should probably try to go through all the main source canon available for the series before you write much fic for it) just doesn't work. The total quantity of published work for the Marvelverse is insane – just keeping up with everything that happens in it on a monthly basis would be a job and a half. Many individual titles have issues going back to the '60s, if not much further (and even if they don't, there's probably at least one supporting cast member with important connections to a title that does). Most of them also include long periods where the quality of the writing rollercoasters around wildly, or which have since been retconned into oblivion. Even most of the professional writers Marvel employs probably haven't read half the canon out there (and a few make you wonder if they ever bothered to read material from a year ago...) Even for a really dedicated writer working in a universe that enormous, sooner or later the problem isn't going to be whether you know canon well enough, it's whether the plot elements you're referencing are so random and obscure that half your readers won't be familiar with them. Factor in that canon itself is so wildly and gleefully inconsistent, and not only is it virtually impossible to get yourself up to date with everything in canon, there's really not much point.
The part that matters to this fic, the New Mutants/X-Force era, is a much more limited subset, of course, but outside of the Deadpool-related issues (few and far apart), I don't have access to many of those comics – nor, to be honest, much interest in going out of my way to track them down. The writing's not terrible – I wouldn't be writing in that era at all if there was nothing that caught my interest – but we're talking a lot of Liefeld art, and there's a limit to how much I want to put my eyeballs through. This is canon so early that even the writers are still figuring out who the characters are, everything we're told about them can and probably will be contradicted later.
As for what I have gathered about that part of the series... well. Cable's playing mentor to a bunch of mutant kids called the New Mutants/X-Force. Active bad guys include Stryfe, who will at some point turn out to be Cable's evil clone from the future, and Tolliver, who Deadpool's working for, and who will at some point turn out to be Cable's evil son from the future. Cable gets back together with Domino, who later turns out to have really been Deadpool's shape-shifter ex-girlfriend Copycat posing as her while the real Domino was held captive by the bad guys. Other characters include Siryn, who I know mostly from when she not-quite-dated Deadpool, Cannonball, who may or may not be immortal, Riktor and Shatterstar, who finally came out of the closet lately (much to fandom's glee and Liefeld's horror), and a few extras like Kane, who by odd coincidence was both on Cable's old Six Pack team and in the Weapon X program at the same time Deadpool was. In short, it's pretty much one big soap opera about people with superpowers. **
And even with that much, we've got bizarre retcons and contradictions cropping up: because unless there's some major mitigating factor I'm missing, Tolliver sent both Deadpool and Copycat in to infiltrate the New Mutants/kill Cable at the same time, so that Copycat shows up, posing as Domino, just in time to shoot Deadpool in the back. Unless Tolliver is crazier than the Joker, this makes no sense whatsoever. Unlike the writers at the time, I'm not going to have the luxury of glossing over that particular plothole without dealing with it – so me and canon are already looking at each other sideways at this point.
Also keep in mind that if current canon ever does reference any of these events again, odds are half the awkward details will be delivered with enough spin to make them fit the current status quo, if not retconned right out of existence.
Even with that in mind, I do still feel like I should probably make an effort to show some respect for that era of the series if I'm writing fic based on it. On the other hand, if most of the people who are reading have even less interest in that part of canon than me, is it really worth the bother? And on a third hand, since the whole point of the story involves turning the timeline on its head, should I worry about any of this at all?
So here's where I throw this out there for discussion – are there a lot of people in C&DP fandom who have a lot invested in Cable's earlier misadventures? Are there any particular issues or summaries I should be looking at in particular? Or is that all going to pale into insignificance as long as I can guarantee that the fic's going to involve C&DP getting it on at some point?
* I've been thrown out of professionally published comics for the same reason. Alas, such is the nature of the medium, le sigh.
** Totally different from Marvel today, of course. *cough*
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no subject
Date: 2009-10-04 04:24 pm (UTC)Personally, I think that depends almost entirely on the canon.
As you know, I'm a huge canon-whore (who cares about this trivial detail that doesn't affect the story in any way? I DO, GOSHDARNIT!), but there are times when even I give up and just go "screw this, I'm making it up". Some canons are simply incompatible with canon-whore-y writing, and comics canon is the king of such canons.
Seriously, even professional writers can't get it right. That's not the exception, that's the norm. There are so many idiotic mistakes in official comics, so many I-Couldn't-Be-Arsed-To-Research-This-Stuff-For-Five-Minutes wallbangers, I really wouldn't lose any sleep over getting something wrong in fanfiction.
but we're talking a lot of Liefeld art, and there's a limit to how much I want to put my eyeballs through
And yet, Liefeld "art" is incredibly popular and well-paid. I don't get it, I just don't get it :(
Shatterstar, who finally came out of the closet lately (much to fandom's glee and Liefeld's horror)
That was so awesome, I couldn't stop giggling. I was especially amused by Liefeld's claim that Shatterstar couldn't possibly be gay because "he is a badass warrior!"
Meet the Midnighter, beeyotch!
no subject
Date: 2009-10-04 04:29 pm (UTC)http://comiccritics.com/2009/08/26/gladiator-comics/
^_^
no subject
Date: 2009-10-05 07:39 am (UTC)(Not that I want to come across as too negative about comics as a whole, given that I'm pretty sure the willingness to go through all their big retcons and reinventions is a lot of what has let so many titles survive so long. But finding titles worth reading really is a lot like finding good fic on ff.net a lot of the time...)
On the other hand, just because those wallbangers get published doesn't mean people won't be put off just as much if I commit one in fic. I might have a bit more leeway to make mistakes - but I don't want to assume I'm basing the fic in a period everyone wants to see retconned to hell if there's stuff in there worth preserving.
And yet, Liefeld "art" is incredibly popular and well-paid. I don't get it, I just don't get it :(
Oh yeah, if I ever start developing a little faith in the comic industry, I only have to remind myself that Liefeld's art still sells comics to get rid of it again. I hear sales went up when he joined the X-Force title - there must be a demographic out there that actively likes ugly, grimacing people with deformed muscles. And no feet. I don't know what I hate more - the art itself, or the people out there who bought so much of it he could keep doing it.
because "he is a badass warrior!"
Oh, the original quote was much worse than that - he called Shatterstar a "Spartan warrior". Because we all know how totally manly and heterosexual and manly the Spartans were, right? It just doesn't get any better than that. XD
no subject
Date: 2009-10-05 07:43 pm (UTC)Is it really? Ugh.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-06 07:23 am (UTC)I stopped buying Teen Titans years back when he started a six month run on it. His style was so completely inconsistent with every artist they'd had to that point, and yet he was apparently considered enough of a draw-card to be hired for the job. (Never did start buying it again when his run was up though, I'd pretty much lost interest in the title by then.)
no subject
Date: 2009-10-04 04:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-05 12:35 pm (UTC)Thanks for the offer - still deciding how to play things, but I may well take you up on that.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-05 03:03 pm (UTC)You're welcome! :D Just let me know if I can be of use.
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Date: 2009-10-07 04:18 pm (UTC)Speaking of fandoms past and present, you wouldn't happen to know anyone who's still in xxxHOLiC fandom who'd be up for betaing 90,000 words of fic, would you? Didn't get a single response to my post asking for beta readers, my next option is to go begging for help at one of the comms. -_-
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Date: 2009-10-06 07:34 am (UTC)2) I usually do my best to stay away from creator-bashing territory, but my ability to laugh at Liefeld would be a lot better if he hadn't had such a driving influence on so many things that make comics bad. When you're looking at pictures of women in comics built like stick figures with boobs, or guys who have only twice the natural maximum amount of muscle mass and find yourself thinking 'it's not so bad, at least it's better than Liefeld', something is very wrong with the world. :/
His 'art' is still good for a laugh or to hold up as an example of how not to do things, but then I remember this guy has managed to become one of the big names in comics and I lose a bit more faith in the industry.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-05 11:47 pm (UTC)I mean, it's one thing to not know who Domino is or suddenly have Deadpool be pretty for no explainable reason, but glossing over or throwing out the technical details of old back issues seems acceptable to me.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-06 07:47 am (UTC)I mean, it's one thing to not know who Domino is or suddenly have Deadpool be pretty for no explainable reason
And yet I'm sure I can think of at least two examples of creators making mistakes at least that big just off hand. Ah, Marvel. XD;
I think mostly I'm worried about coming across as the kind of fan who does things like getting into Harry Potter purely by reading bad Harry/Draco slash and spends the rest of their fannish life complaining about how JKR wrote her own characters 'wrong'. ^^;;; Though the lack of respect even the people Marvel hires officially often show for past canon (and often for good reason) should probably be enough to negate most of those concerns on it's own.
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Date: 2009-10-06 04:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-06 07:57 am (UTC)I've tried doing wikipedia research for some details - it usually ends with me getting stuck on something that gets glossed over and not explained at all, or going, "wait, WHAT?" over some detail that makes no sense (and probably would still make no sense even if I tracked down the comic it happened in, but at least there it makes no sense in context). Some comics just defy summary.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-07 12:26 am (UTC)As for the topic of canon; the biggest thing is that the characters are at least true to themselves. Nothing wildly OOC and all is groovy in the world of fandom
unless you're specifically trolling or crack-ficcing which can be great fun itself. Of course you'll always have the very anal about canon who will hem and haw over the trivial stuff, but if they don't like they don't have to read. Or, if you manage to piss off some crazed fan enough you may even get an excellent flame-review out of the deal. Man I love those. <3Sometimes fandom does it right and canon fails horribly. It's all about the presentation and you are definitely a top notch writer so you won't have any problem bending canon to your wiles if that's the way you choose to go.
I, for one, will definitely be looking forward to reading more of your C&DP fic. =D
no subject
Date: 2009-10-07 08:06 am (UTC)That should be worth a craftsmanship award right there.
The amusing thing about this is that the only time we took it on stage in a cosplay competition was the year we won Best Skit. And we didn't even technically *have* a KH group at the time. XD;
As for the topic of canon; the biggest thing is that the characters are at least true to themselves. Nothing wildly OOC and all is groovy in the world of fandom
Actually, what strikes me most about the little early canon I've read is how different some of the characterisation is - partly because the characters have changed since then, sure, but also because it's pretty clear even the writers were still figuring out who the characters are (I have this strong suspicion they hadn't even decided exactly what Cable's deal was for a long time). So I'm probably going to have C&DP 'OOC' by the standards of the period just by using their present day characterisations (and then you get to all the minor characters who I know even less about).
It's a fair point overall though - the worst example I can ever think of where a canonical mistake really got to me in a Marvel fic, most of what really bothered me was that it was a part of what was making one of the characters wildly OOC, not that the detail itself was wrong.
It's all about the presentation and you are definitely a top notch writer so you won't have any problem bending canon to your wiles if that's the way you choose to go.
That's quite a vote of confidence - thanks! ^_^
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Date: 2009-10-08 03:38 am (UTC)Well, when I wandered into your journal I saw 'cosplay' over in your links and being the cosplay whore I am I had to check it out. I've also got a heartless plushie that I use for my KH Aeris cosplay so when I saw yours I had to heap the love on your superbly crafted heartless. I mean, its eyes GLOW. That wins at everything. <3
>> (I have this strong suspicion they hadn't even decided exactly what Cable's deal was for a long time).
To this point, I completely agree. I'll also be brutally honest here without going into detail about my love-hate relationship with american comic books. Way back when Cable was introduced I was actively reading american comics and I didn't give a damn about his character. He was so bland and boring that it didn't matter to me one way or another if he even existed. He was a two dimensional character in the figurative and literal sense.
Having just semi-recently read the C&DP comics; and only at the behest of other fangirls who cheekily pointed out the hoyey and at which I was warily cautious since as I said, I never cared for Cables character; I was incredibly surprised. I actually liked this portrayl of him.
Granted it's mostly that Nicieza is an awesome writer and he played C&DP off each other so damn well.
Everything aside though, Cable's character in the C&DP comics is far, far better than anything I had read in the early days. I look at it as if it's a character finally getting fleshed out after such a long time, and if using a good portrayal of a character is OOC then by all means bring on the OOC.
Unless of course you're going to write Cable solely based on his lobotomized acid trippy personality... for which I'd probably love you forever for the oodles of pure crack that would be. XDDisclosure: I did stop reading american comics for a long stretch of time so there could very likely be good writing of Cable's character I never read.
Finally, I do so love pontificating, so when I'm on my soapbox take everything I say with a grain of salt. This is an awesome subject to discuss though, and I've thoroughly loved reading everyone's thoughts on the matter.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-09 05:16 am (UTC)Having just semi-recently read the C&DP comics; and only at the behest of other fangirls who cheekily pointed out the hoyey and at which I was warily cautious since as I said, I never cared for Cables character; I was incredibly surprised. I actually liked this portrayl of him.
Oh, that was my experience exactly. Apart from the fact I'd read next to nothing with either character in it before - but I'd still gotten the very strong impression that Deadpool was a character I was going to like, and Cable was going to be a character I'd have to put up with. Instead I wound up liking both of them so much that after Cable left the series it was just never the same again.
Though now that I have been poking back through some of the older issues featuring Cable, I've actually been really surprised how much I like some of the older material too. I expect a lot of that has to do with my impression of him being coloured by his C&DP appearances - but there is a surprisingly decent amount of material that paints him in a reasonably sympathetic light. For example, I hadn't realised he came back in time with no idea that Stryfe was his clone, or who his parents were, so the issues where he found out had some solid emotional impact. There was also a really touching issue of X-Force where he reunites with the team afterwards and comes right out and admits just about everything he'd done wrong with them, comes clean about his past and it's hugs all around. (It also probably helps that most of the time when he is acting like an arse, you can see the other characters getting even more frustrated with him than you are.)
Of course, the big thing that probably made those particular issues stand out? A lot of them were also written by Fabian Nicieza.
I'm definitely not going to make any effort to defend a lot of the crap he's been in before and since, where the writers saw fit to portray him as an uncompromising bastard (working up any interest in most of the earliest New Mutants/X-Force stuff is just about impossible for me - it's hard to believe the writers had even decided he was going to be Scott's son, or have his vendetta against Apocalypse, or most of what defined him since). But it's reassuring to be finding that the guy I liked so much in C&DP still exists in at least some issues outside that series.
(Ironically, I would have gotten to answering your comment sooner if I hadn't been on a huge old-Cable-comics binge yesterday. >.>)
Finally, I do so love pontificating, so when I'm on my soapbox take everything I say with a grain of salt. This is an awesome subject to discuss though, and I've thoroughly loved reading everyone's thoughts on the matter.
Oh, me too - on all accounts. ^^;
no subject
Date: 2009-12-03 01:07 am (UTC)I've tried to read the early canon for both Cable and Deadpool to better understand the present comic series but honestly with all the retcon, bizzare contradictory plot twists and the godawful art of Liefeld I've just given up. I'm happy to read anything you write with Cable/Deadpool and so long as the journey from point a) to point b) makes sense I couldn't care less about canon.
;) Happy writing