But if you're a teen fangirl, then what commonalities do you have with a self-seeking attention whore like Lockhart or a twisty double agent like Snape? Do you have common ground with them or are you more likely to identify with the characters closer in age to you? I tend to see much better (or perhaps more realistic and *human*, I should say) characterisation in many of the slash stories I read, without (for example) the need to whitewash Snape and make him good and nice but just misunderstood really...
What, Snape isn't a fluffy bunny?
Point taken. If slash has, as woman with long X name says, writers older than the mean, then I can see how you'd get the better characterization (particularly since older seems corrolated with old school fans...)
I would expect that the more experienced writers don't really care as much (gross generalisation but mine own!) about whether they get adulatory feedback over what they wrote, so they're going to be more willing to tread paths untrodden. If you're a first time writer, the temptation has to be there to re-tread familiar kinds of stories because you know (consciously or sub-consciously) what response you're going to get from the fandom as a whole.
It seems (I think someone else mentioned this in comments but I don't remember who) that socialization in HP fandom takes place around comments, esp to feedback to writing, so there's a perverse disincentive to write original and distinctive gen.
Well, that sucks.
Harry is the star character, naturally. Snape and Draco vie as chief anti-hero with Draco providing much more of a blank canvas for writers to use to their own desires. Sirius and Remus are there as 'nice' older characters - not quite hero but definitely not villain. Ron is the chief comic foil, while Hermione and Ginny vie to be the romantic lead. Hard to step out of those uses of those characters, I would have thought...
Leave it to you to depress me on a saturday. :P
I think that part of the problem then stems from the fact that we're talking about books rather than episodes. If we had 22 pieces of OotP distributed over a year, there'd be lots more room in the fandom for non-fiction-related interaction, so the feedback would not be such a factor. Socialization would be less about being a popular writer, so I think there'd be less pressure to write popular things.
no subject
What, Snape isn't a fluffy bunny?
Point taken. If slash has, as woman with long X name says, writers older than the mean, then I can see how you'd get the better characterization (particularly since older seems corrolated with old school fans...)
I would expect that the more experienced writers don't really care as much (gross generalisation but mine own!) about whether they get adulatory feedback over what they wrote, so they're going to be more willing to tread paths untrodden. If you're a first time writer, the temptation has to be there to re-tread familiar kinds of stories because you know (consciously or sub-consciously) what response you're going to get from the fandom as a whole.
It seems (I think someone else mentioned this in comments but I don't remember who) that socialization in HP fandom takes place around comments, esp to feedback to writing, so there's a perverse disincentive to write original and distinctive gen.
Well, that sucks.
Harry is the star character, naturally. Snape and Draco vie as chief anti-hero with Draco providing much more of a blank canvas for writers to use to their own desires. Sirius and Remus are there as 'nice' older characters - not quite hero but definitely not villain. Ron is the chief comic foil, while Hermione and Ginny vie to be the romantic lead. Hard to step out of those uses of those characters, I would have thought...
Leave it to you to depress me on a saturday. :P
I think that part of the problem then stems from the fact that we're talking about books rather than episodes. If we had 22 pieces of OotP distributed over a year, there'd be lots more room in the fandom for non-fiction-related interaction, so the feedback would not be such a factor. Socialization would be less about being a popular writer, so I think there'd be less pressure to write popular things.