Author Topic: General Discussion and Recs  (Read 375738 times)

mvansand76

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Re: General Discussion and Recs
« Reply #30 on: July 26, 2007, 04:18:51 pm »
The one thing I could never quite wrap my brain around were those folks who blatantly said:  "I don't read dead Jack stories".  They were rather a rabid bunch abuot the subject.  Whenever I heard that, my skin crawled,  he was dead...so, did you see the movie?  Read the book?  Guess AP had no justification in killing the poor guy off, let's annihalate her, and make her life miserable.

I don't think that's what people mean when they say "I don't read dead Jack stories". The people who say this, their overall reason for reading fanfic is to read about a different ending in which Jack and Ennis live happily ever after, or about the time in which they were happy, like canon stories that take place during their summer on the mountain. They simply cannot stand to read about Jack dying or about Ennis moving on, because it hurts too much. I think there is nothing wrong with taking such a stance, as long as you respect the writers who write dead!Jack or MO!Ennis.
« Last Edit: July 26, 2007, 04:42:35 pm by Snavel del Snuit »

moremojo

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Re: General Discussion and Recs
« Reply #31 on: July 26, 2007, 04:27:17 pm »
I kind of fell into the opposite camp in preferring stories that followed Proulx's original conception of Jack indeed dying in the course of Ennis's existence. When I stated this preference in words, some folks seemed to take umbrage at my apparent dissing of AU stories--which was not my intention.

Offline louisev

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Re: General Discussion and Recs
« Reply #32 on: July 26, 2007, 04:40:45 pm »
And yes, I think the pendulum is swinging the other way now.  Now that some ground has been broken - now that tears have been shed and boundaries have been crossed, more readers are getting ready to read something other than interpolated moments between the Brokeback Summer and the reunion, because there are only so many beautiful moments that can be depicted without getting to the hard reality of the plot, and because there is a point at which the big picture of the characters and their ultimate fates, needs to be faced and seen to be relevant.

I had a mail from an author who watched in sad silence for all of the flak I got for writing my "Moving On" story, and even though there had been Forster's "Ennis" for many months prior to my writing a word in this fandom, and even though there were other stories about Ennis after the end of the original book, the lashback against Ennis finding a new relationship really hit its stride when I wrote my story.  I felt myself completely incapable of writing a story that changed the ending of BBM, so if I wanted to write something, I had to write it starting at the end of BBM, and not change any of the facts, at least of the short story, if I could.  I thought that was adequately "respectful" in that the tale had not been changed at all.    At any rate, this author of strictly "canon and au" stories told me that there was a time when the slightest adventuresome idea about life after Jack incited intense negative emotions, and in a year, that feeling in the fan fic arena has greatly changed, and that my story helped effect that change.

I was immensely flattered, but I also don't think I was alone in this, because I'm not the only person who ventured there with a story, I was just the most visible and prolific.  Moving on or "Dead Jack" stories remain problematic, and a lot of people still avoid them, preferring "happy ending"  or "happy interlude" tales still, but there is a growing taste for new things... and the newest thing of all is writing original post-Brokeback tales.

And I agree with you S del S - the future is in original gay and erotic stories - and I hope those of you who have found a voice in fanfiction go all the way and write something marketable and publish it, or edit your existing works, and publish them,  because this, I believe, fulfills one of the deeper and more universal messages of BBM - carpe diem.
“Mr. Coyote always gets me good, boy,”  Ellery said, winking.  “Almost forgot what life was like before I got me my own personal coyote.”


yb

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Re: General Discussion and Recs
« Reply #33 on: July 26, 2007, 06:31:04 pm »
Hope you don't mind me quoting you, but I've read it a couple of times recently and am wondering just what is meant by this.   ??? ???

For me, it means an author or a story that is off the radar.  For instance, the story "Ennis" that was just quoted - I haven't even heard of it.  And if it's good but unknown then that's what I would call underrated. 

Vic has always had a good readership and a good number of responses to her story.  Underrated isn't a word I would use to describe her and her stories.

I guess I am just confused, and apologies for picking you out to ask you about this!  :)

No, Helen, I don't mind at all.  Louise explained quite clearly what underrated is. 

While I agree with your observation about the readership of Vic's stories, I do have a slightly different opinion.  As I said, I started BR from about chapter 17 and lurked at the BBM forums at the same time but found that her story was practically ignored in all of them.  I would say the response she got on her lj was fair, not great when compared against some other more famous writers.  It's only until she decided to friend-lock her journal than a lot of silent readers came out and expressed how they have been reading and loving her story and requested to be friended; to be honest, I was rather shocked by this overwhelming response and she admitted to have the same feeling herself.  So, my interpretation of underrated is the feeling that she should have received more recognition about her writing than she was getting that made me think she's underrated. 

BTW, Helen, how is Lotus Blossom going?

Offline mariez

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Re: General Discussion and Recs
« Reply #34 on: July 26, 2007, 07:20:57 pm »

A Love Born From Steel - I liked it.  Genuine charectarization, honest writing, again despite the AU aspect of it, but if I had never heard of BBM in any form I would have enjoyed this.

A Love Born From Steel and its sequel Through the Veil of Time are classics and definitely my "comfort" fics that I still turn to.  In fact, I'll probably read a chapter or two tonight. 


The belief that we each have our own vision is actually built into the rules of this forum area.  We actively discourage members from touting one story as authentic or authorative over another - because it's ALL fanfic, and no one has the blessed holy vision of Jack and Ennis.

Amen, Louise! 


I agree about the direction of fics and AU/AU's in particular - I'm at a point where I don't need to see the J&E names all the time. And speaking of that:

BTW, Helen, how is Lotus Blossom going?

I was wondering the same thing myself (although I know "Going Home" is your priority right now).  I believe your "J" character - Jairaj - is the first non-caucasian I've seen.  I love that idea. 

Marie
The measure of a country's greatness is its ability to retain compassion in times of crisis         ~~~~~~~~~Thurgood Marshall

The worst loneliness is not to be comfortable with yourself.    ~~~~~~~~~ Mark Twain

Marge_Innavera

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Re: General Discussion and Recs
« Reply #35 on: July 28, 2007, 02:33:29 pm »
oh, I definitely agree with you there.  Every author has their own vision, and one thing that always annoyed me more than a little was the vastly different reconstructions of the dialect.  There was a little "guide to Brokeback Dialect" that someone posted a while back on DC forum, and I felt very proud of myself for having followed a good many of those in my own fan fic.  . . .one thing that was borrowed directly from Heath Ledger was the taciturn mumbling and grunting of Ennis that did not exist in the original story, so ... which canon is which?  There is more than one source from which to draw, and a lot of people have used as signature images or quotations items put in by the screenplay that were not in the original.  So even if one identifies "canon" as a single source, there is still the issue you point out Helen.  Most definitely.

First, as far as I'm concerned, "canon" can apply to either the original story or the film, and in fanfiction the two can be mixed -- though I've seen very, very few pieces where Ennis and/or Jack look like they're described in the original.

As for dialect, IMO people can go quite a few routes with that. Personally, I've always found fiction written in dialect very entertaining to listen to but absolutely hate reading it. (Stephen King's Dolores Claiborne, written in Maine dialect, is a good example -- loved the audiotape, couldn't get past page 5 of the original book.) And in the case of what I'm working on, for a good portion of the book Ennis is living in a household of 3 people with 3 distinct dialects: a Southern accent, a Minnesota accent and Ennis' Wyoming twang. Just the thought of rendering all that would send me running screaming from the computer keyboard  ::)  not to mention the reactions of readers.

So the compromise I'm working with is rendering dialogue in what I'm billing as general American colloquial speech: e.g., "runnin' " for "running," "hafta" for "have to", etc. Not ideal, but at least Ennis isn't talking in academic prose.

Marge_Innavera

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Re: General Discussion and Recs
« Reply #36 on: July 28, 2007, 02:45:37 pm »
The one thing I could never quite wrap my brain around were those folks who blatantly said:  "I don't read dead Jack stories".  They were rather a rabid bunch about the subject.  Whenever I heard that, my skin crawled,  he was dead...so, did you see the movie?  Read the book?  Guess AP had no justification in killing the poor guy off, let's annihalate her, and make her life miserable.

I find that odd, too. It makes me wonder why spend time on this particular work of art to begin with.

Offline louisev

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Re: General Discussion and Recs
« Reply #37 on: July 28, 2007, 03:14:14 pm »
 
The dialect issue is one that hardly gets discussed, and yet, I spent a good deal of time thinking about it, and decided I needed to have three levels of narrative:  one, the limited third person, which would use almost entirely standard English, and for my first two books kept the limited narration as the original BBM did, from Ennis's character's perspective. Then there was the dialogue which I wrote in dialect - and different characters had different levels of dialect - I had some characters, like judges and the D.A. and his Eastern protege who had their own cliches and did not have any noticeable dialect at all -- and the locals.  And the third was the character's talking to himself, which was not as pronounced dialect as the actual dialogue but did have some of its features. 

But other folks have had success with other methods.  I personally have a low tolerance for reading narrative written in dialect because I get that confused with the character's voice. I never read "Dolores Claiborne" though I greatly admired the film, and I had an attachment to it, since my ancestors are from Maine and some of the older folks still had some elements of that down Maine accent.  Reading narrative in dialect, as you say Marge - does make me batty.  And that ruled out a number of fics in this fandom for me - I couldn't make it through the dialect in the narrative.
“Mr. Coyote always gets me good, boy,”  Ellery said, winking.  “Almost forgot what life was like before I got me my own personal coyote.”


one_of_one

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Re: General Discussion and Recs
« Reply #38 on: July 29, 2007, 03:46:10 pm »
Dialect is an interesting and contentious subject I think.  I heard a lot of people saying they had problems with Somebody New because the narrative was a very close third person which was indistinguishable from Ennis's speech.  I had no problems with that personally, but then again (straying a little from the point) I found what HL was saying in the film to be completely understandable when I had been told it was difficult to hear.

Anyway.

I prefer to write dialect in the same way as AP did - to say doin and not doin' because all those ' get somewhat distracting after a while.  The short story is really my only experience of Wyoming dialect and if I am writing something set in canon/AU then it gets that kind of treatment, solely because I don't know any different.

Generally speaking I do try and not put the whole thing in dialect because it's usually such a chore to read it.  In my little bible "Self-Editing for Fiction Writers" they advise against it because it of that.  What is very interesting is that you can write without using dialect if you use other aspects of speech to show where a person is from...such as word order and the use of certain words.

What I find easy is separating dialogue from narrative, but I do find sometimes the line between narrative and character thought to be a fine line and sometimes I'm not too sure where exactly to have dialect and where to have standard prose.  But I think that's more a problem of me not writing precisely enough rather than anything else.

In general I do dislike dialect and will be more inclined to give up on a book where I am actively having to work my way through the narrative rather than letting it flow from the page.

Marcia - talking of MO!Ennis stories...I'd be glad of the next part of yours, I'm missing it quite keenly at the moment. :) 

Offline louisev

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Re: General Discussion and Recs
« Reply #39 on: July 31, 2007, 09:33:24 am »
I will second that... which reminds me, if anyone has not looked into it, Marge_Innavera's "Gift of Exile", some absolutely beautiful scenes of Ennis returning to Brokeback that had me turning green.
“Mr. Coyote always gets me good, boy,”  Ellery said, winking.  “Almost forgot what life was like before I got me my own personal coyote.”