how I fan differently in SPN vs. Buffy
May. 31st, 2013 10:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snick_backupDo y'all remember back in my Buffy days, when I wrote like 95% genfic? I do. Vaguely. Even as late as the beginning of last year, I mostly wrote gen. But these days it's mostly ships, most of the time. (Which reminds me, I have got to change the subtitle of this journal; it used to be "Mostly Fic, Most of the Time," which hasn't been true since about two weeks after I created the thing, and now it's "Mostly Fic, Some of the Time," which... doesn't really mean anything?)
I think this gen vs. ships thing is partly motivated by canon. We're told that we write fic to fill in the gaps, to get the stories that canon doesn't give us. Well, we got plenty of romance in Buffy canon - and appropriately so, given the ages of the characters - and what little we get in SPN is, well, pretty underdeveloped. Meg/Castiel is the first ship even close to a canon ship for this show that I've been actively excited about, and it managed that basically by pulling a Spuffy: it developed over several seasons a relationship between characters that were not either of them introduced to be anyone's romantic interest. Ruby/Sam also has some very interesting aspects and got lots of screentime, but that one was hard to ship in realtime, since it was so unclear where Ruby was coming from. And then of course as soon as we found out, she died. >:( /forever bitter
So with SPN there's this huge gap I want to fill in with relationships, and for some reason that isn't entirely clear to me, most of all I want romantic relationships. They don't have to be Happily Ever After ships; in fact, most of them I write really aren't. They do tend to be positive in some way, because that's just how I roll; mutual destruction is not something that usually appeals to me in a ship. So maybe it's partly that I want for these characters who live in such a bleak universe to find some solace, however brief. Again, why I've been defaulting to sex and romance for that, I don't know.
There's also the fact that SPN is actually much, much better in the plotty gen department than BtVS was, at least in the places I read. (I have this impression that more male-dominated Buffy spaces, like Twisting the Hellmouth, had more of it? But then I also have the impression that it was largely Xander-centric, which wouldn't have done anything for me.) The casefic is a genre in SPN, and it really just wasn't in BtVS.
And yet... I often don't really care? Don't get me wrong, there is definitely SPN plotty gen that I love. But I frequently find that plotty gen tends to focus a lot more on action and, well, plot than on character development of any kind. The characters themselves are static. And emphasis on those things at the expense of not just characterization but in forward motion of some kind for the characters is exactly why I don't read thrillers; there's too much running around and not enough feelings. I need feelings in my fic! (Obviously this varies with the reader; if everyone felt the way I do, no one would write or buy thrillers.) OTOH, there's also plenty of SPN genfic that's still about feelings TO THE MAX, thank you, canon. :D (For whatever reason, I don't end up writing any of that, however.)
Entirely aside from the ships vs. gen aspect, I find that I'm just much, much looser in my approach to most SPN fic than I am to Buffy, even now. I'm totally cool with noncanon ships in SPN, whereas there were very few in BtVS that interested me for more than novelty value. I happily read tons of tropey AUs in SPN where Dean's a carpenter and Castiel is a theater major or whatever and don't even care particularly how closely the characters relate to canon, as long as I enjoy their characterization in a given fic. I can't imagine doing that for any character or ship in Buffy fandom unless it could still be tied back into canon somehow, as some kind of canon divergence AU. I apparently treat SPN more as a sandbox to play in, and BtVS more as a... Lego set? Everything in SPN is malleable, but BtVS is composed of discrete pieces that I am disinclined to try and break? IDK.
I also never made a big deal about female characters in Buffy. My very favorite was Spike, first of all, but it wasn't like I didn't write female characters or read fic of them. I just... didn't need to make a point of it? I shipped a juggernaut het pairing (which frequently did poorly by its female half, but that's another story), and any fic worth its salt featured plenty of female secondary characters as well, and there was genfic of female characters I cared about, too. Whereas in SPN, of course, fic of women is scattered hither and yon. Also, I frequently end up feeling a wee bit defensive of my beloved SPN ladies when discussing them with other fans. I think it's clear that this difference is down to the canons. But again: what I can't get in canon, I want in fic.
And of course, all this is aside from the RPF, where all I want is a) exploration of social structures built on alternate reproductive strategies, and b) tropey rom-coms.
TL;DR I am quite a different fan in SPN than I was in Buffy.
Crossposted from Dreamwidth. Comment here or there. (
DW replies)
I think this gen vs. ships thing is partly motivated by canon. We're told that we write fic to fill in the gaps, to get the stories that canon doesn't give us. Well, we got plenty of romance in Buffy canon - and appropriately so, given the ages of the characters - and what little we get in SPN is, well, pretty underdeveloped. Meg/Castiel is the first ship even close to a canon ship for this show that I've been actively excited about, and it managed that basically by pulling a Spuffy: it developed over several seasons a relationship between characters that were not either of them introduced to be anyone's romantic interest. Ruby/Sam also has some very interesting aspects and got lots of screentime, but that one was hard to ship in realtime, since it was so unclear where Ruby was coming from. And then of course as soon as we found out, she died. >:( /forever bitter
So with SPN there's this huge gap I want to fill in with relationships, and for some reason that isn't entirely clear to me, most of all I want romantic relationships. They don't have to be Happily Ever After ships; in fact, most of them I write really aren't. They do tend to be positive in some way, because that's just how I roll; mutual destruction is not something that usually appeals to me in a ship. So maybe it's partly that I want for these characters who live in such a bleak universe to find some solace, however brief. Again, why I've been defaulting to sex and romance for that, I don't know.
There's also the fact that SPN is actually much, much better in the plotty gen department than BtVS was, at least in the places I read. (I have this impression that more male-dominated Buffy spaces, like Twisting the Hellmouth, had more of it? But then I also have the impression that it was largely Xander-centric, which wouldn't have done anything for me.) The casefic is a genre in SPN, and it really just wasn't in BtVS.
And yet... I often don't really care? Don't get me wrong, there is definitely SPN plotty gen that I love. But I frequently find that plotty gen tends to focus a lot more on action and, well, plot than on character development of any kind. The characters themselves are static. And emphasis on those things at the expense of not just characterization but in forward motion of some kind for the characters is exactly why I don't read thrillers; there's too much running around and not enough feelings. I need feelings in my fic! (Obviously this varies with the reader; if everyone felt the way I do, no one would write or buy thrillers.) OTOH, there's also plenty of SPN genfic that's still about feelings TO THE MAX, thank you, canon. :D (For whatever reason, I don't end up writing any of that, however.)
Entirely aside from the ships vs. gen aspect, I find that I'm just much, much looser in my approach to most SPN fic than I am to Buffy, even now. I'm totally cool with noncanon ships in SPN, whereas there were very few in BtVS that interested me for more than novelty value. I happily read tons of tropey AUs in SPN where Dean's a carpenter and Castiel is a theater major or whatever and don't even care particularly how closely the characters relate to canon, as long as I enjoy their characterization in a given fic. I can't imagine doing that for any character or ship in Buffy fandom unless it could still be tied back into canon somehow, as some kind of canon divergence AU. I apparently treat SPN more as a sandbox to play in, and BtVS more as a... Lego set? Everything in SPN is malleable, but BtVS is composed of discrete pieces that I am disinclined to try and break? IDK.
I also never made a big deal about female characters in Buffy. My very favorite was Spike, first of all, but it wasn't like I didn't write female characters or read fic of them. I just... didn't need to make a point of it? I shipped a juggernaut het pairing (which frequently did poorly by its female half, but that's another story), and any fic worth its salt featured plenty of female secondary characters as well, and there was genfic of female characters I cared about, too. Whereas in SPN, of course, fic of women is scattered hither and yon. Also, I frequently end up feeling a wee bit defensive of my beloved SPN ladies when discussing them with other fans. I think it's clear that this difference is down to the canons. But again: what I can't get in canon, I want in fic.
And of course, all this is aside from the RPF, where all I want is a) exploration of social structures built on alternate reproductive strategies, and b) tropey rom-coms.
TL;DR I am quite a different fan in SPN than I was in Buffy.
Crossposted from Dreamwidth. Comment here or there. (
