At some point when I was reading reviews of the "Temeraire" series, I saw several complaints from Patrick O'Brian fans who'd been pointed toward the books as "Patrick O'Brian... with dragons!" but didn't think that it was O'Briany enough. They were simultaneously complaining that it felt too much like fanfic because Novik's characters spent too much time thinking about their feeeeeeelings.
On the one hand, I can see their point in that (iirc) O'Brian's narrative style struck me as unusually sparse and exteriorized, and Novik sometimes makes weird bloopers about How Ships Work in fairly obvious ways.
OTOH, I couldn't help thinking that most of these complainers seemed to be men, and that the real gist of their complaint was that they wanted manly-man action untainted by any interior monologue about misgivings or conflicted motives, because that type of self-doubt is only for Gurls. (Also, no comments from them about O'Brian's publishers starting his series by asking him to revive the Horatio Hornblower naval adventure genre.)
I dunno. This Salon article may have some passages of interest, at least wrt the mainstream/outsiders' view of fanfic: "Some Tolkien fans have dismissed "The Last Ringbearer" as nothing more than fan fiction, although it certainly doesn't conform to the stereotype of fan fiction as fantasies of unlikely romantic pairings among "canonical" characters as imagined by teenage girls. [....] If it is fan fiction (and I'm not sure I'm in a position to pronounce on that), then it may be the most persuasive example yet of the artistic potential of the form."
So in other words, "fanfic" is being used here as a stylistic brushoff instead of a fundamental question of derived origins, rather like the people who think of "anime" as a genre instead of as a medium.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2011-07-17 09:10 pm (UTC)On the one hand, I can see their point in that (iirc) O'Brian's narrative style struck me as unusually sparse and exteriorized, and Novik sometimes makes weird bloopers about How Ships Work in fairly obvious ways.
OTOH, I couldn't help thinking that most of these complainers seemed to be men, and that the real gist of their complaint was that they wanted manly-man action untainted by any interior monologue about misgivings or conflicted motives, because that type of self-doubt is only for Gurls. (Also, no comments from them about O'Brian's publishers starting his series by asking him to revive the Horatio Hornblower naval adventure genre.)
I dunno. This Salon article may have some passages of interest, at least wrt the mainstream/outsiders' view of fanfic: "Some Tolkien fans have dismissed "The Last Ringbearer" as nothing more than fan fiction, although it certainly doesn't conform to the stereotype of fan fiction as fantasies of unlikely romantic pairings among "canonical" characters as imagined by teenage girls. [....] If it is fan fiction (and I'm not sure I'm in a position to pronounce on that), then it may be the most persuasive example yet of the artistic potential of the form."
So in other words, "fanfic" is being used here as a stylistic brushoff instead of a fundamental question of derived origins, rather like the people who think of "anime" as a genre instead of as a medium.