Oddly, I am now sitting here thinking about the problem I often have with "first time" fics, particularly longer, chaptered first time fics: that they are SO EXCLUSIVELY interested in showing me exactly how these people got together that I then have to plow through twenty chapters of NOTHING HAPPENING to reach that point. Like they have heard people's crit regarding this and think, wow, I better not rush it! But they completely miss the actual point, which is the careful and thoughtful construction of a relationship. Literally a case of confusing quantity with quality.
I also feel compelled to balance out all the first time fic love in the comments. We've talked about this in person, but for the benefit of anyone reading this: I tend to only write each pairing's "first time," the story of how they ended up together, once. After that, I'm just writing more fics in that universe and if someone wants the whole story they can go back and read the earlier installments. There are exceptions to this, like AUs for instance, but yeah. That's basically my policy. I see writing that first fic as setting the stage, in a way -- what I really want to do is enact further dramas UPON that stage once it's done and to my liking.
As for reading? I guess I'm "one per author" although certainly I have limited patience for even that. Pairings, especially minor pairings, tend to have one or two ways in which most people write them. Particularly when there's already been a Big Popular Fic that kind of sets the tone for the ship. So while I want to read good fic for pairings I like, I'll admit I get weary of seeing them plod through the same series of steps over and over and over again in different authorial voices.
For most of my ships, I feel like either the canon itself or the fandom have pretty much set down how those people hooked up, with some small variations according to preference. You can pretty safely assume that if you put in some sentence about a ferry in a Jet/Zuko fic or "exploring the temple" in a Haru/Teo fic, people will get what you're talking about, you know? Esp when it's a closed canon and everyone's had some time to digest.
So what I really want are post-canon fics that skip that whole song and dance and tell me something I don't already know.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2009-03-04 05:07 pm (UTC)I also feel compelled to balance out all the first time fic love in the comments. We've talked about this in person, but for the benefit of anyone reading this: I tend to only write each pairing's "first time," the story of how they ended up together, once. After that, I'm just writing more fics in that universe and if someone wants the whole story they can go back and read the earlier installments. There are exceptions to this, like AUs for instance, but yeah. That's basically my policy. I see writing that first fic as setting the stage, in a way -- what I really want to do is enact further dramas UPON that stage once it's done and to my liking.
As for reading? I guess I'm "one per author" although certainly I have limited patience for even that. Pairings, especially minor pairings, tend to have one or two ways in which most people write them. Particularly when there's already been a Big Popular Fic that kind of sets the tone for the ship. So while I want to read good fic for pairings I like, I'll admit I get weary of seeing them plod through the same series of steps over and over and over again in different authorial voices.
For most of my ships, I feel like either the canon itself or the fandom have pretty much set down how those people hooked up, with some small variations according to preference. You can pretty safely assume that if you put in some sentence about a ferry in a Jet/Zuko fic or "exploring the temple" in a Haru/Teo fic, people will get what you're talking about, you know? Esp when it's a closed canon and everyone's had some time to digest.
So what I really want are post-canon fics that skip that whole song and dance and tell me something I don't already know.