Monday Monday

I haven't been able to shake off my cold yet, and I'm back to losing at Scrabble; in other words, another week that's the same as the last week.

Over on (postmodernbarney), Dorian had an interesting question derived from two message board quotes:

True writing talent comes from inspirational ideas, vision and creativity. The boring technical stuff can be done by others.

And

The characters are not there to serve your super-special plot. Rather, your plot should serve the characters. This a fundamental rule of writing in someone else's universe. *I* obey it and I don't even get paid, you fuckwads.

Dorian's question, likely rhetorical, was how telling these comments were about fandom in general.

I've heard the first sentiment expressed a lot, about how writing is just about putting words down on the page. It's the ideas that are hard, they say. After all, everyone always seems to ask (well, at the SF conventions I'd go to, anyway) "Where do you get your ideas?" like it's some magical process. Over the years of reading various how-to books on writing, talking with authors, hanging out with some and attempting to become one myself, I've learned that the ideas are actually the easy part. The hard part is taking that idea and expressing it in a way that others will find interesting. One of the reasons for my attempting this blog this year is to gain practice in just that.

Thus, I find that the first statement denigrates the writing process, and doesn't recognize that even a bad story (like, oh, One More Day) still takes craft, discipline and skill to put together.

The second statement is more subtle in its wrong-headedness. Assuming it's written by someone referencing super-hero comic books, it seems to ignore that the comic book characters are corporate properties. It also ignore that comic books have almost always given no more than a passing nod to characterization, letting the needs of plot drive events. The insult at the end is, however, unsubtle in its contempt for the people who are trying to put out this entertainment.

Fandom, or at least, the vocal contingent of fandom online, has grown to believe itself to be privileged to act as the gatekeeper of taste and quality. This sense of entitlement has definitely led some people to hold unreasonable expectations of the object of their fanaticism. I suspect there have always been people like this, since I can remember some of the old letter pages having the occasional missive with hints of that "how dare you do something I don't approve of" tone to them. The more extreme letters, I hope, were filtered out by the editors. Online now, there are no editors – so people like me can vent and rant and complain all we want.

I have been trying hard, though, to step back from my emotional responses and recognize that it's not my Avengers or Legion of Superheroes or Batman or Iron Man who's being "ruined". Rather, it's just a story I don't enjoy. My not enjoying it doesn't make it a bad story, or a story without merit. Nor does it mean that anyone who does like that story is instantly an idiot or loser. Other people's enjoyment of these things should not threaten or undermine my own sense of worth and self, after all. I can express why I don't like what Marvel has done to Spider-man, but I shouldn't berate, insult or call you an idiot if you disagree.

… anyway, tomorrow, I think I'll rant a little bit about color coding villains in old DC and Marvel comics.