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Sep. 14th, 2006 11:39 amI could get a bus into Stockport (3 miles away) and pick up the latest Doctor Who magazine. It's out today. However, that would mean acknowledging my obsession has gone beyond all reasonable bounds.
I've never been very good at defending my obsessions. My kids would game on World of Warcraft 24/7 if they had chance, apart from the odd break to read WOW forums. In fact, they like to do that on my laptop whilst they play on the PC. Never thought of that when we got two computers, we envisaged a golden age when we'd be able to hit a keyboard whenever we wanted. As if.
Other people have no inhibitions about openly following their football team, or favourite celebrity. But they do tend to be younger than me. And I'm very sensitive to any sneers from the younger generation. I feel I'm stealing their culture and they have a right to resent me.
I was very inhibited at first about even reading, let along writing, fan fiction. I still don't know if I could post any of my stuff openly. But I do find the concept of it fascinating, because I'm intereseted in mythology. Homer's Iliad probably started out as a relatively trivial incident - just some scrap over a woman - embroidered out of all recognition by oral tradition, each story teller owning the characters and adding their own spin to it. Nobody could copyright anything so it just worked that way. And now the Internet has opened up the opportunity to do something very similar with the characters in popular cultures who capture our imaginations.
Interesting that, with the exception of Ceres Wunderkind I find most His Dark Materials fanfiction almost unreadable - just clumsy American high school angst which completely misses the point. But Who is another matter. I'm amazed by the quality of a lot of the Who fiction out there. It's witty, it's funny, it's real, it's often very tightly plotted and both existing and new characters tend to be portrayed very well. And the Americans who write it seem to capture its British quirkiness perfectly. I don't think I could borrow one of their heroes so confidently. I wouldn't know how to begin writing Captain Kirk, for instance.
So I enjoy reading the stuff because it gives me the opportunity to hang out with intelligent people who won't judge me because of my age - I only wish I'd thought of some of their plot solutions before they did. And, in private, I find writing the stuff very much more challenging than I'd expected. Reading the First Series shooting scripts is very helpful. It shows me the importance of many things I've neglected in my past attempts at writing fiction - how a scene looks, how to cut between narrative threads, how to build up tension, that sort of thing. Instead of my old, sloppy habit of relying on character and gags to the detriment of anything else.
And now, to the bus stop and DWM.
I've never been very good at defending my obsessions. My kids would game on World of Warcraft 24/7 if they had chance, apart from the odd break to read WOW forums. In fact, they like to do that on my laptop whilst they play on the PC. Never thought of that when we got two computers, we envisaged a golden age when we'd be able to hit a keyboard whenever we wanted. As if.
Other people have no inhibitions about openly following their football team, or favourite celebrity. But they do tend to be younger than me. And I'm very sensitive to any sneers from the younger generation. I feel I'm stealing their culture and they have a right to resent me.
I was very inhibited at first about even reading, let along writing, fan fiction. I still don't know if I could post any of my stuff openly. But I do find the concept of it fascinating, because I'm intereseted in mythology. Homer's Iliad probably started out as a relatively trivial incident - just some scrap over a woman - embroidered out of all recognition by oral tradition, each story teller owning the characters and adding their own spin to it. Nobody could copyright anything so it just worked that way. And now the Internet has opened up the opportunity to do something very similar with the characters in popular cultures who capture our imaginations.
Interesting that, with the exception of Ceres Wunderkind I find most His Dark Materials fanfiction almost unreadable - just clumsy American high school angst which completely misses the point. But Who is another matter. I'm amazed by the quality of a lot of the Who fiction out there. It's witty, it's funny, it's real, it's often very tightly plotted and both existing and new characters tend to be portrayed very well. And the Americans who write it seem to capture its British quirkiness perfectly. I don't think I could borrow one of their heroes so confidently. I wouldn't know how to begin writing Captain Kirk, for instance.
So I enjoy reading the stuff because it gives me the opportunity to hang out with intelligent people who won't judge me because of my age - I only wish I'd thought of some of their plot solutions before they did. And, in private, I find writing the stuff very much more challenging than I'd expected. Reading the First Series shooting scripts is very helpful. It shows me the importance of many things I've neglected in my past attempts at writing fiction - how a scene looks, how to cut between narrative threads, how to build up tension, that sort of thing. Instead of my old, sloppy habit of relying on character and gags to the detriment of anything else.
And now, to the bus stop and DWM.
