Twisted Tuesdays, The Weekly Zym Options

[zymurgy]

Tuesday, July 25th, 2006

The Importance of Being G.

J.K Rowling has long since abandoned the idea that her books are for kids. Ron Weasley has ceased merely saying things “he wouldn’t if his mother were there,” and gets his French into solid print. Draco is no longer content with a mere sneer, but gets some rather brutish action in this last book. And of course, Voldemort is no longer a vague and shadowy presence.

However, Project Ferret retains its policy of child-friendly stories and posts. We may not be by kids, but we are definitely proud of being for kids. Kids with a capital K.

Now, you might ask why this is so. “JK said that in her story! Why can’t I say it?”

Because, as much as Harry Potter may have spiraled into dark times and despair, we should hope that the kids who read it have not. The point of FanFiction, as I see it, is to expand, elaborate, and sometimes straight out change what was given to us by the author.

Canon, in other words, is seen as “raw material.” Even as it is worshiped, like a lump of gold, it simply isn’t pretty enough for a smith. We’ve got to play with it, twist it around, and make something new.

And boy does JK give us a wealth to work with! We have characters, a setting, a premise, and even a time period worked out for us in advance. Simply put, the only thing a Fanfic author has to do is mix and match, adding originals as he sees fit.

That being so, why choose to use what we have, which can be put to a million uses, to write a story inappropriate for children? JK has already done that; hundreds of Fanfic authors have already done that. Why not have a bit of fun in the other direction?

None of this, of course, is to say that we should present only the happiness of Harry’s world. Clean fic is not necessarily happy, simplistic, or easy. All of Half-Blood Prince, for instance, could have been rewritten, portraying the same events, but in a way more accessible to the young – it would still be HBP, just from a different angle.

There is a place for serious fic here, for sad fic, and even for certain situations that aren’t to be avoided as canon stands. However, I don’t think there’s a place for so-called “adult” fic.

Why, after all, do we write and read fanfiction? Simply because we don’t want the story to be over – we don’t accept ‘that’s all she wrote,’ for an answer. As much as we understand that Sirius flew backwards through a veil and died, we still want to know more, to see more, to have another view.

And why have that view be one where he swears like a sailor, drowns his sorrows in fire whiskey, or commits a bloody and brutal murder of Peter Pettigrew?

Of all the angles available, the least chosen seems to be that of the first floor window we started from. And it simply isn’t fair to those of us (loosely termed ‘kids,’) who are still there, to have all the fic over our heads and beyond our reach. The stories, dangled just out of our reach, with teasing summaries or teasers, make us understandably upset.

Why couldn’t that author write the really cool story, (where Ron gets kidnapped by Death Eaters and has to escape on his own, without magic, but turns out he’s really Remus in Pollyjuice, while Harry believes he’s actually Draco because he misunderstood something he overheard in a dark corridor while he was hiding from Filch, and there’s a Basilisk who wears sunglasses so that it won’t petrify people, and Neville turns out to be a member of Arborists Anonymous… ) so that we could read it? Honestly!

Finally, the importance of being K is a question of numbers. It is better to have something that everybody can read, rather than something a few, however few they may be, cannot.





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[zymurgy]

Tuesday, April 11th, 2006
Concerning Characters and Death

According to Canon, quite a few people are dead – Quirrel for starters, and Diggory, Black and Dumbledore.

In Fanon it’s generally considered okay to revive these people (well, maybe not Quirrel…) for various reasons. What isn’t considered okay is to kill other people off.

Readers often get rather upset if you kill people. Except, in the grand tradition of entertainment, if they’re minor characters. Nobody cried when JK offed Emaline Vance, after all. And in a lot of “drama,” or “angst,” fanfics, several minor faceless characters will be AK-ed in the final battle alongside some supporting characters we don’t particularly like, say, Argus Filch, and of course biers and biers of bad-guys.

However, there’s a singular dislike of “death fic,” enough so that its now customary to put a warning about it in the summary, “Main Character Death”.

Now, nowhere in any other entertainment do they do this. Would you have read HBP if JK had added, “Warning: Language, Gore, and Character Death,” on the back jacket? Or, indeed, read any book or watched any movie if you’d known in advance that Character X would kick the bucket in the end?

I am against offing characters lightly or merely for shock value. As with everything, character death has its proper place. There’s nothing I dislike more than reading a fic where there’s a ‘final battle,’ and afterwards somebody just rattles off a list of who made it and who didn’t – seemingly at random:

“Harry, here’s your mourning robes – Neville, Hagrid, and your next-door neighbors are all dead! Voldemort’s SUCH a stinker…”

However, I am all for it if its done well, although I will still cry. Fanfic authors have written good stories and bad stories in every category, and that includes stories that involve the death of main characters. I didn’t cry when JK killed Dumbledore – I cried when a fanfic writer did.

The question isn’t so much whom you kill or why, but how well you do it. I’ve no objection to reading a well-written fic where Harry dies in the end. I do, however, object to a fic where Emaline Vance is randomly killed and nobody cares. (Oh, wait, that was HBP – nevermind… ) The general rule of thumb is:

If you don’t feel bad about killing them, don’t.

Or, in the case of the bad guys:

If they didn’t fight tooth and nail against you, don’t.

Cry havoc, and unleash the dogs of war! Go ahead and write fic about the last few weeks of James and Lilly’s lives. Feel free to write fic where Lupin is put down by the Ministry. Write that bit that’s been nagging you about how the Weasley’s would have had eight children if it weren’t for the first war.

Please remember, however, to keep it G!