anghraine: david rintoul as darcy in the 1980 p&p in a red coat (darcy (1980))
My best friend and I had an interesting, fairly wide-ranging conversation about the distinctions between adaptation, retellings, fanfiction, other forms of directly intertextual storytelling (à la Wide Sargasso Sea, Lavinia etc), covers (as in music), heavily illustrated editions of texts, collage, sampling, novelizations, ekphrasis generally, translation, and inspiration.

The distinctions here are mainly ones that he makes and I do not. For me, all of these things are on a spectrum or scatterplot of something like intertextuality. As I was saying on Tumblr the other day (re: fanfiction), I don’t actually think that most of these kinds of terminology reflect coherently defined art forms at all. They reflect norms, values, and conventions shaped by laws and corporations and other economic/cultural concerns, not any consistent system of understanding intertextuality more broadly.

This is a frequent point of disagreement between him and me, because he prefers to refine terms like these into … philosophical coherence, I guess? So he’ll say, well, I think of the term as more specifically meaning X, not Y, and that lets us examine the different approaches that X and Y take in a more systematic, artistically formal way. (As in the linked post, this is formal in the sense of form not as in propriety.)

And I’m like … it does, yes, but I don’t think that kind of re-definition corresponds to the meanings of those terms in actual usage. Narrowing the definitions imposes a coherence and logic to these distinctions that I don’t think actually exists. It’s more like a grab bag of imprecise, overlapping categories defined by values and customs and legal practice than anything they’re doing artistically.

Him: inconsistent laws and customs are kind of arbitrary and uninteresting in terms of theorizing categories of art, though.

Me: not to me, but anyway, I think the way we theorize art is very profoundly shaped by modern customs and laws to a degree we often can't even see, and words are defined by usage, not philosophical convenience.

(Yeah, we’re super fun at parties. But seriously, this is how we’ve talked since high school.)

Regardless, his theory is that adaptation is actually a narrower category of intertextual art than in casual (or academic) usage. His view is that an adaptation is an attempt to represent the actual source; there may be new material added, and some of the original material may be removed, but there is an effort to preserve not just character outlines or plot structure or elements of setting, but considerable amounts of the original source, usually in a different medium than the original. A re-telling, on the other hand, is a work that re-casts the source material into new language and sometimes generic (as in genre) form.

This is all according to him, not me. I think all storytelling of this kind = re-telling and that there is no hard line separating these approaches, just gradations of variance.

Read more... )
anghraine: a picture of grey-white towers starting to glow yellow in the rising sun (minas anor)
The meme crossed my dash, so: top five things I completed in 2020!

In no particular order:I only just noticed that they’re all Tolkien! I had to do a ton of 16th/17th/18th-cent reading irl, though, so it was nice to get far away from all that.

Tagging: [personal profile] heget, [personal profile] heckofabecca, irresistible-revolution, garethsedwards, [personal profile] incognitajones, and [personal profile] tree—if you want!
anghraine: a photo of emilie de ravin (a blonde, blue-eyed woman); text: lucy (lucy (emilie))
2020 fic writing post!

2020 was not my most productive year, but apart from the general state of 2020, I had a lot to do for my PhD and sleeping problems, so … /shrug. Anyway, this year—

- I got inspired by my “eh” feelings about TROS to outline a big chunk of my f!Luke series, and after (I think) four years of no updates, wrote some eighteen and a half chapters on The Jedi and the Sith Lord in something like six weeks. It’s now 67k.

- I updated my very niche Guild Wars 2 fic, pro patria, a kind of fragmented AU in which the “Missing Sister” option to say that the PC/Deborah are proud Ascalonians has a major effect on the PC’s character and story. I got Althea through a bunch of Ebonhawke/Fields of Ruin stuff, which was 50% of the motivation for writing it at all. It’s now at 89k.

- I finally finished the gift of men, the Eldarion/Faramir-and-Éowyn’s-daughter fic that has been rolling around my brain/Google Drive for years. It’s only a little over 1k, but I was really glad to get it finished and posted.

- I was overpowered with Ascalon/fuck the Searing feelings while playing the original Guild Wars and wrote a fic about the Prophecies PC’s last day (creatively called the last day) before the Searing. It’s also just over 1k and almost nobody read it, but it was really for me, so that’s okay.

- I updated tolerably well acquainted, my canon-compliant book-only P&P fic about how Elizabeth falls in love with Darcy from Pemberley onwards. Lydia just ran off with Wickham and Elizabeth reunited with Jane; I wrote about half of another chapter, but didn’t finish it. The fic as a whole is now 27k, which is kind of astounding to me tbh.

- I’d always thought of my Éowyn-meets-f!Faramir fic, we also are daughters of the great, as a one-shot, but got inspired by their canon scenes to take it further … and then got waylaid by Merry feelings? I don’t know. I also wrote about half of another chapter of this one before exams struck, so that’s partly done. I’d really like to get to the hair mingling scene! Someday. It’s 4800 words.

- I haven’t posted much of it (just this) or named it, but I started a fic about Darcy’s family (canonical and head-canonical) reacting to his engagement to Elizabeth/Elizabeth herself. It’s part of the tolerably well acquainted continuity, I think, and a kind of fun experiment with different voices. It’s 1500 words so far.

- I started a fic about Faramir’s birth and early childhood, but it stalled partway through dealing with tiny Faramir’s first dream of Númenor. I might get back to it someday. It’s 1300 words.

- I also brainstormed a Star Wars/Dungeons and Dragons fusion where Anakin is an aasimar (as are Luke and Leia), but the composite setting drifted far enough from either that it became an original fic in a universe powered by the blessings/curses of the gods. It follows a sorceress of the god of the Void who takes on the care of a troubled demigoddess. I wrote a ton of background material, but only 1200 words of actual fic.

- After only cutting things out and fixing the gaps for years, I wrote two full chapters of my original fantasy novel; I’ve decided to take out a big chunk of one of them, but even so, it’s very satisfying, and (after a lot of cuts) brought the whole thing to 72k.

And I think that’s everything!
anghraine: a picture of grey-white towers starting to glow yellow in the rising sun (minas anor)
rain-sleet-snow responded to this post:

The Gift of Men absolutely broke my heart!

I replied:

Oh, that’s so nice to hear! Well, I mean … lol, it was a pretty niche fic for me and not a lot of people read it, so I’m glad that it touched you!

rain-sleet-snow responded:

Honestly, I don’t think anyone writes about the tragedy waiting to happen of Aragorn, Arwen, and Faramir outliving their contemporaries/spouses/children (delete as applicable) quite like you do.

I replied:

Well, thanks! I think a lot of people prefer to avoid thinking about it or to downplay it, which is fine, but I think it’s really interesting character-wise as well as sad, so.
anghraine: a photo of emilie de ravin (a blonde, blue-eyed woman); text: lucy (lucy (emilie))
brambleberrycottage said:

1 and 8 for writer's ask?

I replied:

1.

My favorite thing that I posted in its entirety this year: probably the gift of men, my Eldarion/Faramir’s daughter fic that I managed to squeeze into my challenge format of seven parts of seven sentences each. It had been rolling around in my head and in scraps for a long time, even though it’s quite short, and I finally managed to get it out in a way I was happy with!

My favorite thing that I updated this year is, inevitably, the chapters of The Jedi and the Sith Lord (the current fic from my Lucy Skywalker [f!Luke] ’verse) that I added. For some reason, TROS ignited my brain and after some four years of no updates I added a ton of chapters within a few weeks.

8.

Which fic this year was the most fun to write? Hmm, it’s got to be Lucy! I just really enjoyed it—the evolving relationship between Lucy and Vader, the droids, the ~drama, the RO cameos, everything. It’s a nice change, too, because while I’m really fond of the Lucyverse, some of it has been a misery to write and this was just a great time.
anghraine: the symbol of gondor: a white tree on a black field with seven stones and a crown (gondor)
eillam said about my Eldarion fic here:

Love it, so beautiful!

I replied:

Thank you very much!

anghraine: the symbol of gondor: a white tree on a black field with seven stones and a crown (gondor)
The fic is three pages long and has taken yeaaaars to write. Anyway: some cheerful Eldarion fic!

He did not choose the marriage. He did not choose the bride; he did not even choose the day. He assented to everything, decided nothing. Yet though he wed not of his own desire, he never regretted his marriage, nor his fair and laughing princess.


Read more... )

Profile

anghraine: vader extending his lightsaber; text: and now for the airing of grievances! (Default)
Anghraine

June 2025

S M T W T F S
12345 67
891011121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
2930     

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jun. 11th, 2025 09:43 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios