Discussion The Multifandom

Hi everyone.

I was thinking about this earlier (as is often the case with me), but now my own thoughts aren?t quite enough for me (also, often the case), so I thought I?d ask my fellow NSWFFers their thoughts and opinions.

Most of us here were primarily Star Wars writers when NSWFF came to town and opened the door to a lot of possibilities. There was a time in my fan fic life when I never thought that I could write anything but Star Wars (it?s ?verse is large and complex and you could have pretty much any kind of story take place there), but now I?ve done a 180 and everything is upside down: I don?t write Star Wars any more and I could sink my writing claws into just about any fandom, even the ones that most people haven?t even heard of.

So, for how many of you is that the case?

My other question is this: have you discovered any new fandoms by clicking on a fic whose fandom you know nothing about? Have you been encouraged to find out more about that fandom by simply reading the story? How many of you are willing or interested in reading fics for fandoms you know nothing about?

We have a few multifandom threads cropping up here and there ? like Salacious_Drabb?s drabble series, or Mira_Jade?s 50 Sentences series ? and I?m wondering how many of you out there would be willing to dive into a new fandom offered by a multifandom series, or would you only read the entries that have to do with a fandom you like?

Personally, I am discovering a lot of new and wonderful things by reading stories for fandoms I know nothing about. Plus, the option of multifandom series is really wonderful for someone like me: right now, I have a tendency of watching a film or reading a book and immediately get inspired to write a short vignette or a 50 Sentences table about it. It?s pure, spontaneous writing for me, which feels very liberating in many ways.

So, is it just me, or am I completely nuts (as is, once again, often the case)?

 

I was actually introduced to the fandom of Firefly through an excellent Firefly/Doctor Who crossover by Frostfyre - I enjoyed it, but as I had known nothing of the Firefly 'verse then, the enjoyment wasn't as full as it could've been. So I decided to watch the series and the film, and grew to really like it (it took me some time to get used to the unusual combination of sci-fi, western and Chinese culture... ).

And I don't write SW any more - actually, I'm no longer such a big fan of SW as I used to be...

 

I started with the Beyond the Saga, and back then, I could not think about writing about anything. Then the NSWFF forum started.

Now, I am struggling to even keep interest in writing Star Wars, not when My Superman fiction is turning out to be my best work ever, and most viewed story that I have ever written.

Of course, after I am done with my Superman epic trilogy, I have no idea what I'll write about next, if anything. Most likely, it will not be Star Wars.

Update:When it comes to writing, I will only write about what I know more about. As for reading, I will read fandoms that I know nothing about. I have read some stories about Gundam, and I know nothing about it. I've seen a few episodes on Television, and really can't get into it. For me, the only thing I do not like to read is Harry Potter, or anything fantasy. Other than that, it all depends on content. I like reading epics more than anything else. Stories that are well balanced in comedy, drama, action, and romance. Any one of these alone will quickly loose my interest.

If it's a fandom that I know, i like to read things that has similar feel to how the original. For example: With Avatar: The Last Airbender, I will enjoy reading anything which has the same feel as the series did. I read how some people say that the fans know certain characters more than the creator of that character. I will probably not read any of those stories. I just think it's wrong that the fans think they now characters better than their creator, and that is just not true in my opinion. Any stories like that I usually try to avoid.

One more example: In 2002, after seeing the original Spider-Man movie, I wrote what i thought would happen in a sequel. I wrote it trying to get into the mind of Sam Raimi, and develop the characters how I thought he was trying to do. These are the kind of stories I like to read the most.

 

Since I've already been mentioned, it's probably redundant for me to actually post, but anyone who's followed me knows I'll dive into fandoms I've barely heard of; I don't expect anyone else to know all of them.

As of this moment, the fandom count stands at 323. Of course, almost 2/3 of those (just under 200) are properties for which I've only written one drabble, but they still count.

 

323 is quite an impressive number there. I guess my question for you would be "why"? Do you enjoy writing in all 323 fandoms? Do you want to see how many fandoms you can possibly write in? A combination of the two?

 

You know, all I knew was Star Wars. Then I got out of it completely and now...

Holy crap.

I started reading TV fandom such as NCIS, CSI, Criminal Minds etc then somehow ventured in Harry Potter and then Star Trek.

Now that the NWSFF is here, there are more fandoms that are intriquing me, so I'm trying to keep my mind open. I just have so much I keep track of.

I still write Star Wars, but right now my focus is on Star Trek.

 

Idri, as one who brought Hamlet to the NSWFF you can certainly talk about broadening my reading horizons. I loved Shakespeare and all things British Lit but never thought to find them here

I love LOTR and the Pern legend to bits!! Star Trek as well.

For the criminal stuff, Criminal Minds is the one I'm most familiar with. But brodiew and Mira introduced me to Castle and dianethx to the wonderful world of Merlin.

And you and others to the zany world of Sherlock.

Needless to say, I'll read another fandom mostly based on who the author is and how much of a sponge I am for their works.



Doctor Who I stay away from because ven though I love time travel stuff, I'm not familiar enough with it to keep all the threads straight LOL

As to writing, all the songs I hear and the snippets of dialogue in movies still spark Trek and SW mostest.

In that realm, though I am branching out into chaptered fics and flavoring stuff more with angst. Don't faint!



Je

 

I am super glad to find open minds here. After all, like you say, Deb, I'm the one who dared to bring Shakespeare into the forum - and even still I have moments where I look at what I've written and go, "What kind of a dork writes Hamlet fan fic? Oh right, me."

I'm striving for something similar. I used to shy away from reading fandoms I know little about, but I say "no more!" There's two many good fics and writers that go unnoticed simply because their topics may not be as popular as the mainstream ones like Harry Potter and Star Wars.

 

Three many!

A totally OT comment here: Idri, I love your new sig!

 

Some of them were for challenges (official or self-imposed), some of them were because I had an idea, and some were for other reasons. I can't say I enjoyed them all -- some researches were more pleasant than others -- but most of the time, yeah, even if I don't like some of the fandoms themselves. Could I write most of them again at the drop of a hat? I don't know.

 

You know, there is one fandom that I am utterly surprised that no one has really done, and that is How to Train Your Dragon. I would have thought that would have caught on by now. That is one I would jump at reading. I know that I would not try to write one because the Irish accents would be too hard to try to capture. Perhaps that is why no one is trying.

 

The whole reason I got into Supernatural was because of two Star Wars authors whom I greatly admired. They had switched over to it, and I was curious to see what it was about. Same with Torchwood, though I'm not into that as much, at the moment (new season. ).

Interestingly, I became interested in the Sandman series because... well, that was just because I was becoming a bit of a Gaiman geek. It's very popular, yet the fanfiction for isn't really around, and I sort of understand why (besides that it's so good, I don't think that anything I could write could do it justice ): Some mediums are harder to write fic for than others. Oneshot movies and books, for example, often close up all endings, and I think that because it doesn't really have the potential to expand, fandom tends to die down not long after the release.

Comics are strange, though. I don't have trouble adapting a movie or a television show into fic material, and while I don't think, off-hand, I've ever written anything longer than a poem or two for a book fandom, I read them, and it's not hard to imagine writing them. But when it comes to comics, there seems to be much less fic, and, for whatever reason, I can't imagine writing a story longer than a drabble or a 50-sentence one around them. I have no idea why.

Anyways, it's almost 11, and it's been a very stressful day, and I think I missed the point a few paragraphs back. Carry on!

 

Irish? Irish?! Ach, I have only seen the trailer and not the film, but even I can hear that they are Scottish, laddie.

The only reason why I haven;t written HTTYD fanfic yet is that I haven't seen the film.

While one could say an accent qualifies for the way a character speaks, I wouldn't let that be the deciding factor on whether I would write a fic for the fandom or not in this case. Accents are terribly annoying for the reader, and in most cases aren't all that important. As far as I can tell, all of the adults in How to Train Your Dragon sound Scottish and all of the kids sound American, which isn't really a realistic case - luckily, it's a piece of fiction and the fact whether they speak with an accent or not doesn't really matter in the long run, eh? If you have an idea or, as I've been calling them now "impressions", go for it.

Now, what is more difficult than worrying about capturing the accent in the right manner would be how a character speaks - not the cadence of their voice, but their choice of words, the structure of their sentences, etc. That occasionally puts me in a bit of a conundrum (for example, I had a lot of trouble writing Sherlock at first, mostly because I couldn't grasp our favourite high-functioning sociopath's "voice" in my head and was clueless as to what words he would use in a certain situation), but you can work it out. It's just another part of the characterisation, getting the dialogue right and creating different voices for each character, voices that are distinct, unique and belong solely to a specific character.

If you're really concerned about the accents, I would suggest writing the dialogue as normal, but doing research into the kind of slang and various other words that people who speak with that accent would use. You should probably avoid using stereotypes that go with that accent as much as possible - like I did not do at the start of this post. I was playing off the fact that stereotypically, Scottish people say "Ach!" a lot, which is probably not very true.

Right now, I'm contemplating a fic with a character who is white South African and he uses a lot of interjections and slang words that don't exist in Canadian English - I've been trying to research those kind of things so I can use them in his dialogue.

**Editing in a few more replies:

Hmm, that?s very interesting. If I think about how I?m writing right now, I can associate with that. I could very well write a whole set of ficlets or one shots or vignettes or whatever, changing fandoms each time, but I don?t know if I could ever return to each one afterwards. Because I?m getting inspired by closed-ended, stand-alone stories (for the most part), a lot of what I write is becoming solely character-driven rather than plot-driven ? and that makes it more difficult to sustain over long periods of time, say, for a +20,000 word fic or something to that extent. You can push and push a character, but you can only take it so far.

My actor training is, of course, objecting heavily to that ? my theatrical instincts tell me that you can never take a character too far.

 

Great idea for a thread!!

Star Wars is one of the biggest universes out there, in terms of how much material there is, how much time it covers, how much there is to explore, etc. And it was my first, and for a time only, fandom. Minus the Hogwarts House Cup, I never wrote or read outside of that until NSWFF came along. So I'm very grateful to this forum

For me, it depends. I'm one of those super-anal people who has to read everything in exactly the correct order (and authors like Katherine Kurtz who just around on the timeline and then jump back just make my head spin ). So a lot of times, I don't check out a story unless I'm familiar with the fandom because I hate the feeling of missing something. It's easier with something like a drabble, because it's short (and often funny or moving) in a way that I don't have to understand the backstory to understand this one moment in time. But that's not the case for all fics.

Reading Star Trek, A:TLA and Sherlock fics motivated me to see them (or, in the case of Avatar, to finish them). I clicked on them in the first place because they looked interesting, or because I knew the author - and then I reread them after watching the movie/series. And it was awesome

That being said, a lot of fandoms I'm just not inclined to read because I have no knowledge or interest. I am trying to change that, but it's baby steps


(Random side note: I recently saw How to Train Your Dragon, and it rocks.)

 

Saw this crossover fic today: A Burning Boat

Clicking on links hasn't made me write new fandoms, because I don't like writing fandoms I don't know a lot about. But participating in the Crossover discussions in the Fanfic Resource has given me some terrible ideas for multifandom fics... [Edit: "terrible" as in absolutely insane]

Kind of an unrelated question, but does anyone think that Crossovers should be posted here? It would also draw more traffic to this section of the boards, if that's what we want.

 

1: Sorry, I hope i didn't offend anyone by getting Irish and Scottish mixed up.

i agree, How to Train Your Dragon was absolutely awesome, and would make a great fan fiction.

Another issue, for me personally, in writing in certain fandoms is it's part of a large series of books. Example: The Chronicles of Narnia. The final book really makes it impossible for a continuation, unless you create OC children. I guess I am a stickler for continuations or something that doesn't contradict the original material.

 

True. Drabbles and vignettes are a lot more friendly to fandom newbies than longer stories, where it's usually assumed you know the background of the characters and whatnot.

Though I wonder if it's possible at all to write a longer, fandom newbie-friendly story. In the words of Barney Stinson - "Challenge accepted!"

(Except I highly doubt I will get around to it for a while! ).

I suppose there's moments like that even in the SWFF forums, though. For example, I never felt inclined to read Before the Saga stuff because I had no knowledge/interest. Saga was pretty much always a guarantee for me, except for Clone Wars stuff, and I'd pretty much nip into anything in Beyond the Saga.

So, could crossovers potentially be a stepping stone to another fandom that you don't necessarily know much about, for you? I mean, in the sense that if you read, say, someone else's entry to a crossover challenge, became curious about the crossed fandom, looked it up and watched/read it, and then started writing fanfic for it?

I don't know. I sit on the fence for this one. On one hand, it's really nice not to see any Star Wars around. Funny, saying that, considering we're on a Star Wars forum and everything. But on the other hand, I do agree with you that allowing the Star Wars crossovers to be posted here would probably bring in a lot more traffic than we currently have, which would most likely make this forum a lot more successful.

I dunno - is it better to keep Star Wars consolidated from everything else, or is it better to have a mix? Should NSWFF be the, say, YJCC (sorry, couldn't think of another board where you aren't really allowed to talk about Star Wars ) of fan fic or the Amphitheatre (where you're allowed to discuss Star Wars and everything else) of fan fic?

No worries, I was just pulling your leg.

Well, considering that Narnia pretty much dies in The Last Battle and it happily-ever-after in the real Narnia, Lewis really clamped that world down tight. But there are plenty of other places you could go in search for a Narnia story - for example, the long reign of the Pevensies in Narnia. Or what does Caspian get up to after his voyage? How did Miraz come to power? With a series, you can pick any point in time and start there; it doesn't always have to be at the end. There's so many stories that could exist or Noodle Incidents* that crop up in large series books that could easily be explored and become very, very interesting.


* Warning: TV Tropes link. Click at your own

 

Hello all. I have to agree with you, at least in part, Idri. My world was expanded when I saw Star Trek 2009. My eyes wandered from home, Star Wars, and I strayed. Star Trek consumed me for a while until I realized that I could, indeed, write other fandoms. Castle became my Number 3, and most recently I've tried my hand at Supernatural.

Some fandoms, even movies or shows that of which I am a big fan, can be intimidating. But I think its just a matter of time before I find the confidence and the niche within the fandom, to venture out.

Where you and I don't necessairly match up in the my openness to try fics of fandoms I don't know. I'd never say never; in fact, I feel this thread has challenged me to do so. We'll see what happens.

 

Go. Watch. NOW.

That's an order.

 

I think all of us have some kind of fandom that which just can't seem to write. For me, it's not necessarily intimidating, per se, but more that if I find the fandom in question so complete (i.e. everything having to do with Middle-earth) I don't have any inspiration to write for it because my mind already believes that there's nothing more for me to add or to explore.

Then there lies the question - are larger fandoms (like Harry Potter or Star Trek) more scary to write for, or the smaller fandoms? I could see it going either way. With larger, more well-read fandoms, you're opening up to a huge audience and may not live up to every reader's standards; on other other hand, a smaller fandom might not get you any readers at all, especially if you mess up your first attempt and scare off the small population.

That's what I'm here for. If theatre school has taught me anything, it's how to challenge yourself.

Pfft, calm down, you two, I'll get around to it.

I think that's possibly one of the best ways of slipping into a new fandom. If you already know you'll like the style it's written in, that eases a lot of the tension that comes from throwing yourself in blindly.

We should conspire together.

 

I'm pretty new to the non-SW fanfic thing, so I guess I could get introduced to new fandoms that way. For the most part, what happens is that I get involved in a discussion and then I end up with a silly idea. Case in point: a Big Love/Twilight crossover in which Bill's wives keep leaving him for vampires. I'm now convinced that Barb and Dr. Cullen were made for each other.

I wonder. Is it better for the NSWFF to be free of SW, or for the SW boards to be free of non-SW material?

 

There's nothing wrong with the weird and the wonderful.

Good question. Personally, I would not like the option of the SW boards being free of non-SW material. I think it's good and healthy for us to have so many options - this wouldn't be the same place if we were limited to only discussing/writing about only Star Wars. I love the JC Boards primarily because of the community - there's no other place like it around. I have a lot of very good friends here, with whom I want to share and express my ideas and my writing, and I'm very glad for NSWFF because that means I can continue to do that while developing other interests. We're all Star Wars fans, that's what brought us together, but now we can venture out into other things, too. We can be informed about a certain piece of fiction through other works, and it would be a loss if we couldn't share and discuss options like that. There was once a time when if I wanted to write something non-Star Wars, I would have to cross it with Star Wars - and that was always an interesting job that taught me a lot about both fandoms.

Also, personally, if it wasn't for NSWFF, I probably would have left this community a couple years back when I lost my inspiration for Star Wars fan fic.

 

Idrelle, I think she just meant the three (not counting Classic) SW-fic boards, not the whole JC.


It's absolutely possible to write a newbie-friendly longer piece; most professional tie-in novels are written to be accessible to newcomers. The issue with fanfic, though, is whether readers will give it the chance. And that's not even just for longer works; people have told me they don't want to read my drabble threads because they don't know all the fandoms.


The overwhelming majority of fandoms for which I've written, particularly those I've written about more than one or two times, are television series. On top of that, when I do write for a film or novel, it tends to be a film or novel series more often than a single standalone work. The extended narrative structure does make it a lot easier to come up with ideas. You get to see the characters in multiple situations, giving a more thorough (or at least more reinforced) characterization. Also, working from a series gives you a great, fertile area to explore: the gaps between the elements (episodes or individual films or books). Unless it's told "in real time," any individual work is going to have spaces in the narrative, possibly quite big ones, but with a series, we get spaces so regular that we don't even necessarily have to identify which one the story fits in. The other thing a series usually gives us is a reusable template for stories. In a standalone book or film, there's the sense that the events that are happening are unique; and then we get sequels.

 

Oops.

Oh well, I was due for my daily dose of self-induced embarrassment.

Well said.

I still am inclined towards standalones then series, on a whole, at least where writing is concerned. While the structure of a series does give you more room and maneuver, I often find that I have enough to work with within the narrative of the original piece, or (in the case where the characters I want to concentrate on die by the end of the film/book/whatever) in the stories that could have come before the original piece. This is especially true for me when it comes to writing fan fic for films; part of that may be because I am usually really curious as to the backgrounds the actors developed for their characters (provided they were doing their job properly) and sometimes I like to try to imagine what that may (or may not) have entailed.