December Meme: Designing the ideal canon
Dec. 23rd, 2014 09:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kraitThis prompt from isis was a wonderful exercise in greed: "Design the perfect canon for you from scratch! What is it about? SF, historical, fantasy? Is it a tv series or a book series or a comic series or a game or....something else?"
Some parts of this were tough, but some came relatively easily!
* Book series. Virtually all of my deepest, truest fandom universes have their source in books. (Harry Potter. Good Omens. Foreigner. Vorkosigan Saga. Dragaera. Temeraire.) I've been active in fandoms from nearly all media except television, but the ones that never quite leave me are the ones that were textual, so my ideal canon has to be a book series!
* SF/Fantasy - this part was tough! I like both genres equally, as long as they feature well-done examples of my favourite elements: well-conceptualised, convincingly nonhuman sapient species (be they elves|dragons|griffins or aliens), lots of worldbuilding (but still leaving room for that fannish need to build upon what the author laid down), protagonists whom you like and want to see succeed (whether it's with a sword or a phaser - or neither). When it comes to reading, I tend to go through phases; right now I'm in more of a sci-fi phase, so let's go with that. (If you'd asked this question two months later, the answer might have been fantasy!)
* Let's talk about characters! I tend to prefer a set of main characters instead of just one; there's a greater chance I'll love one of them with the intense love that sparks fannishness, perhaps because of the greater complexity a larger cast builds. Thirteen people must necessarily have more relationships with others than one or two! That lays the foundation for multi-layer plots and complex shifts in motive... and, of course, likewise increases the chances for the kinds of gaps or glosses that can create fannish curiosity. We only see two conversations between X and W, but they spend four months on the ship together; what did they find to talk about? or A tells B one version of G's backstory, but G tells another version to J; what really happened and why are their stories not the same? are the kind of thing that crop up over the course of a series which will reveal subtler things about the characters, which makes them more interesting both to read about and to write (fic, meta, speculation) about!
* Now let's talk romance! Nobody on DW could possibly be unaware of how much I love interspecies romance (*snerk*) so please by all means throw some of that in there! Preferably something un-cliched (no human dude/green space babe) and exotic, even alarming at times. However, let it be a secondary plot, or even tertiary; too much will-they-won't-they kills a fan's desire to know more, and that won't do for me. I need just the right amount of "hook" and mystery, because I'll be looking for fanfic (or writing it) and I want to see half a dozen plausible, delicious variations instead of just one canon one!
* Let me add: NO FIRST PERSON POV. Too often this is a cheap trick to make the reader project themselves onto the narrator, which means either instantaneous disbelief-suspension fracture when they do/say something I would never contemplate, or slow tedium that saps my interest as a bland, uncharacterised protagonist limps along. Even a well-characterised protagonist, however, would be better off not narrating; having to listen to someone yammer on and on for eight hundred pages can make even the most finely tuned voice grow wearisome.
* Diversify, diversify! Let half the cast be female, and give me a variety of cultures and appearances among ALL areas of the cast - not just the humans OR aliens. Genders, too - in a sci-fi canon I find it particularly egregious to encounter a cast that's heavily male for not good reason.But please let there be enough for slashing purposes!
isis was a wonderful exercise in greed: "Design the perfect canon for you from scratch! What is it about? SF, historical, fantasy? Is it a tv series or a book series or a comic series or a game or....something else?" Some parts of this were tough, but some came relatively easily!
* Book series. Virtually all of my deepest, truest fandom universes have their source in books. (Harry Potter. Good Omens. Foreigner. Vorkosigan Saga. Dragaera. Temeraire.) I've been active in fandoms from nearly all media except television, but the ones that never quite leave me are the ones that were textual, so my ideal canon has to be a book series!
* SF/Fantasy - this part was tough! I like both genres equally, as long as they feature well-done examples of my favourite elements: well-conceptualised, convincingly nonhuman sapient species (be they elves|dragons|griffins or aliens), lots of worldbuilding (but still leaving room for that fannish need to build upon what the author laid down), protagonists whom you like and want to see succeed (whether it's with a sword or a phaser - or neither). When it comes to reading, I tend to go through phases; right now I'm in more of a sci-fi phase, so let's go with that. (If you'd asked this question two months later, the answer might have been fantasy!)
* Let's talk about characters! I tend to prefer a set of main characters instead of just one; there's a greater chance I'll love one of them with the intense love that sparks fannishness, perhaps because of the greater complexity a larger cast builds. Thirteen people must necessarily have more relationships with others than one or two! That lays the foundation for multi-layer plots and complex shifts in motive... and, of course, likewise increases the chances for the kinds of gaps or glosses that can create fannish curiosity. We only see two conversations between X and W, but they spend four months on the ship together; what did they find to talk about? or A tells B one version of G's backstory, but G tells another version to J; what really happened and why are their stories not the same? are the kind of thing that crop up over the course of a series which will reveal subtler things about the characters, which makes them more interesting both to read about and to write (fic, meta, speculation) about!
* Now let's talk romance! Nobody on DW could possibly be unaware of how much I love interspecies romance (*snerk*) so please by all means throw some of that in there! Preferably something un-cliched (no human dude/green space babe) and exotic, even alarming at times. However, let it be a secondary plot, or even tertiary; too much will-they-won't-they kills a fan's desire to know more, and that won't do for me. I need just the right amount of "hook" and mystery, because I'll be looking for fanfic (or writing it) and I want to see half a dozen plausible, delicious variations instead of just one canon one!
* Let me add: NO FIRST PERSON POV. Too often this is a cheap trick to make the reader project themselves onto the narrator, which means either instantaneous disbelief-suspension fracture when they do/say something I would never contemplate, or slow tedium that saps my interest as a bland, uncharacterised protagonist limps along. Even a well-characterised protagonist, however, would be better off not narrating; having to listen to someone yammer on and on for eight hundred pages can make even the most finely tuned voice grow wearisome.
* Diversify, diversify! Let half the cast be female, and give me a variety of cultures and appearances among ALL areas of the cast - not just the humans OR aliens. Genders, too - in a sci-fi canon I find it particularly egregious to encounter a cast that's heavily male for not good reason.
Well...
Date: 2014-12-25 09:22 am (UTC)Re: Well...
Date: 2014-12-26 03:53 am (UTC)Re: Well...
Date: 2014-12-26 04:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-12-26 12:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-12-26 03:46 am (UTC)As Star Trek and other shows have so thoroughly learnt, this is what "the away mission" trope is made for! :D Beam (or stargate, or land on, or be given a diplomatic assignment on) Planet Fantasylookalike, and voila - all your favourite fantasy story tropes get to come out to play, without sacrificing all your favourite SF tropes!
no subject
Date: 2014-12-26 03:52 am (UTC)(Brust's Dragaera series comes to mind. One of my favourite fantasy series! But definitely fantasy; not enough boundary-crossing happens for me to consider it really part of both categories.)
Mind you, the SF-focused Pern novels (notably All the Weyrs of Pern and, after that, Dragonsdawn) are definitely faves within the series! But I tend to split it in my mind rather than lump all the series together, because so much of the story between those two books is pure fantasy that I can't quite consider it SF no matter the background...
This seems to be a really longwinded comment that amounts to Don't cross the streams! Or at least don't cross them without a lot of careful planning. :D
no subject
Date: 2014-12-26 11:05 am (UTC)On the other side of the part-SF, part-fantasy combo: most fantasy is set in what amounts to another universe from ours where all the stars are different and the map doesn't correspond to anything and there's no attempt to tie the invented world to ours, though there are some quasi-historical ones, Middle Earth or fantasy-Arthurian, etc. Most science fiction is set in a future-Earth universe, with differences in whether the USA or China or Russia is Earth's dominant culture and whether humans or aliens run the show. I don't see many SF stories set in a completely invented world that isn't a near or far future projection of our own, and I think I'd like to.