Alelou wrote:A lot of new people haven't read all the old fic out there already. There are certainly cliches out there. Anyone who's read enough fic knows them by now, and will recognize them quickly when they start spilling out of a new story and probably move along unless there's something particularly compelling going on (or they're truly desperate for ANY TnT fic). But there are new readers too, who may think ooh cool, I never saw that before.
This isn't rocket science, it's fanfic. I just don't see the point of heaping public scorn on other fic writers because they used this plot device or that plot device in a way that is insufficiently different from every other earlier use of that plot device. It must be very inhibiting for newbies to think they'll get jumped on if they accidentally do something the way someone else did. Especially in Star Trek, where there are literally decades of different shows and fanfics already written.
Thanks for that,
Alelou. While you can often add a new spin to things, the truth is there really are a finite number of things even an experienced, skilled writer can come up with, especially in a 40-year-old fandom where a particular alien society and the characters that come from it have been a strong object of fascination for many fans. Chances are, some people are going to reach the same conclusions as others, and there are going to be parallels here and there. For myself, I'm not going to jump through all kinds of hoops and try to read every story out there on the subject so I can "be original"; it's ridiculous and even if I tried, I'd never get any writing done because I'd be too busy reading and talking myself out of ideas because, oh no, so-and-so did something similar. When I write and post my story, the result will be because of
my vision that I saw in
my head, not a reaction to what some other author wrote or didn't write. Even if it ends up being similar to something else someone else wrote, hopefully I'll have told it well enough that people will find it entertaining any way. If not, oh well.
You can't please everybody, you know?
Kevin--honestly? Most of the cliches I see are universal, they're not just limited to one fandom or another. Oftentimes my dislikes of an NC-17 story aren't because of fandom-specific issues, they're because the author has dubious storytelling skills to begin with and/or hasn't really figured out who their characters are
out of bed before throwing themselves the curveball of writing them
in bed. But writing is a learning process; we were all guilty of cliches and mistakes at one time, of not doing enough of our homework, and no matter how good you get, there's always room for improvement. But for those who are serious about their hobby to improve, they need a safe environment where they can get honest, constructive feedback, with
helpful suggestions for improvement, and people mind their manners. So far, I think people here do a pretty good job of that.
And in terms of the Trek-specific cliches, another thing that is not rocket science is predicting what the cliches are gonna be in a TnT
pon farr fic if you've ever been a reader of fic devoted to
any other Vulcan in the franchise. Believe me, after some of the fics about Spock or even Sarek and Amanda I've seen, it wasn't hard for me to figure out that there'd probably be a lot of fic where T'Pol beats the living daylights out of Trip, and for no good reason other than reader titillation--it's a concept that's been done to death long before T'Pol was ever thought up. Hey, if that's somebody's thing and that's what they like to read, more power to 'em, you know? Personally, I'm more interested on the impact it has on their relationship than the Tab A/Slot B stuff, or the who tied up whom.
And about that once every seven years thing? Yeah, it's canon, and I'm not trying to argue that. HOWEVER, it might not have always been that way before, and things could've always changed after. As long as the author explains this credibly, who cares? And seriously? Just because a couple of characters have
said this, it doesn't necessarily mean it's "true". Not so long ago in my lifetime, masturbation was this big, dark, taboo subject that nobody talked about, except to tell you that if you did it, awful things were going to happen to you. Then as time went on, it sorta became that thing that you take for granted that everybody does it, but nobody would admit to. Now even mainstream magazines like Cosmo have articles on better ways to do it and there are stores devoted to selling hardware to help you do it. Hell, these days I bet women under 40 get more invitations to sex toy parties than they do Tupperware, PartyLite, and Mary Kay
combined! So society's attitudes on a taboo subject can change in a relatively short time, and I would not be the least bit surprised if sex between
pon farrs was something a lot of Vulcans did, but nobody talked about or admitted to. T'Pol's time was kind of the Dark Ages compared to Spock's; you had melders living in secret, etc. But T'Pol is living in the dawn of change for her people, what with the discovery of the
Kir'Shara and all, and she's finding out that a lot of things she believed about her people are not really true--even things about herself. I would find it very credible if an author circumvented the Only Once Every Seven thing by having even that be one of the things that T'Pol and many other Vulcans took for granted to be true but is actually a myth. If they're doing it, nobody is going to admit to it in that atmosphere of repression; no one wants to be known as the village freak, you know?
So there are a lot of possibilities, even if others have had the same idea, it doesn't make them
bad ideas. Why make people reinvent the wheel if they don't have to?
)? I mean, in sci-fi females tend to... not have anything at all! Oh, sorry, except a very intense sexual appetite on some occasions.
.
