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How to scare yourself empty in five minutes: look at that list of unfulfilled fic requests in obscure fandoms. Don't get me wrong: the scariness for me is in thinking about actually writing some of these suckers.

I observe how many literary fandoms are present and think how I wouldn't want to try writing a Renault pastiche or a Sayers one, and at that point the penny drops. When you write in a purely prose fandom my assumption is you're writing pastiche. I would hope to God it was everyone else's assumption too, because if the style is wrong for the characters what's left but a bunch of unconvincing names? It's not even a live action or anime thing where there's a visual image that presumably appears when you write 'Spock' or 'Sanzou.' Renault's Nikeratos exists only as Nikeratos' voice; get that wrong and there's no Nikeratos by me. But I'm not sure that's true for everyone, or else we wouldn't have generic plainspeak coming from the mouths of so many characters in fanfic.

The issue has always been obscured for me by having to go from Japanese to English when I write. The quasi-translation thing actually covers as many sins as it reveals. It's not real translation, as I know perfectly well. All I have to do is translate what my charas are saying back to Japanese to realize how very wrong I have them. What I write is 'something that sounds plausible in English coming from someone who speaks Japanese the way Sanzou does.' That gives you more room than you'd think. You can actually make him screw in something that sounds like plausible English coming from etc etc. Whereas if I'm faced with Mr. Knightley speaking English as Mr. Knightley does, and am required to make him have sex with Fitzwilliam Darcy-- no. Mr. Knightley's English doesn't do that. Neither does Mr. Knightley, of course. You can't do slash with certain characters, and it's a travesty to do yaoi (yaoi= 'I'm putting them in bed together because *I* want to, not because I have any reason to think they do.') Travesty only works if it's Monty Python, and then natch it's all about the surrealism of a situation where Darcy is giving Knightley head, and not at all about Austen's characters.

Note 1: People want Daryun/ Arslan. Ack. Someone wants Rika. Ack again. Modesty Blaise-- well, as an exercise in voice, yes. Ditto The Mask of Apollo, probably the only one of her characters I'd like to write. And uhh

rushthatspeaks wants slash with Dian de Momerie/Harriet Vane/Wimsey? What's the definition of slash here, because where I come from it's two series guys, certainly, and possibly two series women, but that's pushing it.

Note 2: 'Scout discovers she's a lesbian' sounds like a bad ff.net summary. But. But. Given that Truman Capote is an actual character in TKaM, you only need to transpose Scout into a Capote short story. It won't be me that does it but, y'know, it's doable.

Note 3: 12 Kingdoms, Youko/ Rakushun. No. Go away. No no and no. Not unless there's a story around it and I don't do plots. But Rakushun.... No. (puts hands over ears) No. No. And No I said no I won't no

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A co-worker of mine is very into Sherlock Holmes--has all the Conan-Doyle books, the entire BBC Jeremy Brett series, etc. She was telling me a couple weeks ago that she'd read a pastiche that she said was surprisingly good; it involves a younger woman teaming up with Holmes to solve a mystery. And the minute she said "younger woman," I immediately thought "Oh, no, a Holmes Mary Sue!"

She allowed as how the book was in fact written by a woman, but "oh, no, the two characters don't get involved...well, not sexually; she does find Holmes attractive and tells him as much, but...well, I guess there is some sexual tension there, but it's unresolved." Ack.

I got as far as the request for Barbie fanfic and stopped right there. *brrrr*

I wonder if that book is The Beekeeper's Apprenctice (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0553571656/qid=1104729156/sr=2-1/ref=pd_ka_b_2_1/104-0038666-3259926)? I haven't read it, but my history professor had raved about it, and she had read all of the author's books. When she described it, I instantly thought of the Mary Sue point too, but I respect her opinion, and assumed the books were probably pretty good for a mystery fan.

Barbie? Slash? Hopefully not with her little sister, Skipper.

That's the book! :) I'd forgotten the detail about Holmes having taken up beekeeping.

If it's the Laurie King books that TTG mentioned, I've got several of them as well. They've been spawning fanfiction of their own for a while now. (Those requests would be farther down from Barbie, though. :)

I rather expect that Mary Russell, the main character, has a very strong touch of the Mary Sue, but that's not automatically a Bad Thing, y'know? In much the same fashion, Harriet Vane in the Sayers books remarkably resembles the author writing herself in; I loff Harriet very much and am pleased that she did it.

On the other paw, I classify Anita Blake as another obvious Mary Sue. I find her irritating beyond words. Yet Hamilton has hordes of fans. /shrug

Inserting yourself in a story is one thing: I'll grudgingly agree it can be done well if you distance yourself enough. Falling in love with your main character is a sin. You then lose all distance: he becomes perfect and as

supacat said, you go on writing about him long after you've run out of things to say.

I reread Harriet and Peter after two decades away from them, and right now I can't abide either of them. Smug. God are they smug.

If smug, then smug in witty and British way that charms the nonwitty and non-British and thus is fine. ('Have His Carcase' is the one that I like the most with these two. Bit like Nick and Nora minus Asta and excess booze.)

I also like Joesphine Tey, in which the detecting is usually done by a nonimal Inspector. Although she also made forays into the land of quirky, enthusistic amateurs. :D

I observe how many literary fandoms are present and think how I wouldn't want to try writing a Renault pastiche or a Sayers one, and at that point the penny drops. When you write in a purely prose fandom my assumption is you're writing pastiche.

Well, it depends. If you're trying for a semi-convincing extension of original, yes -- in which case, you go all out with slavish style imitation. If you're trying for something else, no.

Re: Note 1. I've decided I will not run shrieking from other people's odd preferences if they'll return the favor. :P I'd had to think about who on earth Dian de Momerie was; I didn't remember this character, and it became a weird point of pride not to look it up, dang it. I've decided she must be the Bright Young Thing from 'Murder Must Advertise'; I've only read that book twice maybe, so memory is foggy. ^^;

There's a certain point of confusion that I'd had initially as well. These are -not- necessarily 'couplings' unless that's stated as such in the comment (such as 'Slash yay!'). Otherwise, it's merely a list of characters that this person would like to see/read in the same fic, and you do anything you like with them. Which means Arslan isn't necessarily rolling in the hey-hay, y'know?

(But there does seem to be a fairly large audience for 'canon-couple + 1', which is like having one's canon cake and eating slash, too. But why not? Why can't you shoehorn everything you want into fanfiction? I'd have thought that was the entire point of the exercise. :)

These are -not- necessarily 'couplings' unless that's stated as such in the comment (such as 'Slash yay!').

To which I say, don't use a slash fer-gods-sake. An ampersand would do as well.

Shoehorning everything you want in may make for a satisfying fic-for-one but is likely to make for a bad- or at least very unbalanced- story. I think back to the woman who had the fetish for excruciating physiotherapy. Her stories consisted of Bodie or Dorian or whoever very plausibly dislocating shoulders or tearing ligaments, and then described in painstaking and painsgiving detail how the injured area was treated. Once of that was truly enough.

If you're not trying for a semi-convincing extension of the original, what can you be trying for? Certainly you can do a nipple-piercing scene with Harry and Draco, but if they both talk like SF leathermen one will doubt very much that they're Harry *Potter* and Draco *Malfoy.* If the dialogue style is wrong, what's left to reference the original work?

To which I say, don't use a slash fer-gods-sake. An ampersand would do as well.

I'm not a writer of databases, but I'm sure there was a practical reason for that. I do know that an ampersand would require a special entity code, making it problematic.

Anyhoo. In the same fashion, I suffered through a CCS in which Yukito attends endless, free sessions of Alter-Ego Talking Cure delivered by ~~Psych Major Mary Sue~~ a psychotherapist who just happens to meet him on the street one day. Umm, or how 'bout the multichapter extravaganza in which Tatsuki and Tsuzuki adopt a healthful BDSM lifestyle, which makes their in-office quickies a gory trial on everyone.

If you're not trying for a semi-convincing extension of the original, what can you be trying for?

Fanfic fills lots of different holes for different people. E.g., with the latter mentioned, the author was ever-present in the form of copious notes -- 'Kids, don't try this at home, these are professional shinigami!' -- complete with plugs for her BDSM LJ community. Fanfiction as advertisement. O.o;

I don't know that -everyone- is trying out for Best Fanfic Ever. More like Best Presser of Specific Buttons Ever. I'd followed rec links to both of those mentioned above; I found them awful, but they obviously do have an audience. Of some sort. Um.

I'm sure someone out there has done Draco/Harry + Leather . . .

I'm going to wind up echoing those people who say If it doesn't talk like Harry and doesn't think like Harry and doesn't walk like Harry then why call him Harry? Call him George. Or Jason. No-one will read your OCs, sure, but you won't have a horde of outraged potterfen flaming you either.

IOW there *is* a point at which a fanfic gets so far OOC (character/ canon) that it ceases to be fanfic. The scenario may press specific buttons, but using series names actively detracts from the button pushing, it doesn't help it.

Agreed, not *actually* slash, but I was having something of a nomenclature problem, namely that Harriet and Peter get married, and I was hoping to have a femslash fic involving Harriet that didn't remove her relationship to Peter. However, I didn't want to go on forever in the notes being terribly specific, because if I were going to do that, why not write it myself? I need better abbreviations.

So do we all need new abbreviations. But given Sayers' sniffy High Church ewww reaction to lesbians per se, how do you see her avatar, sniffy High Church Harriet, getting involved with a woman? Angst all over the place, as per The Charioteer? (Charioteer slash strikes me as about as much fun as childbirth. Those guys prefer to get off via their hyper-refined moral sensibilities rather than their genitals; and I think Harriet does too.)

Possibly it's because I went to a womens' college (which has adopted Gaudy Night as a book which Really Expresses How Things Are), but Harriet reads to me as a person who could not easily, but plausibly become involved with a woman, since she's been trained that home, shelter, and emotional validation as well as academic support all come from women. Her issues with marrying Peter Wimsey are so power-centered that she might find it easier to establish something without those issues if both parties were closer to being on the same social footing-- and another educated woman is as close to equality as she'd get.

I may well actually have to write this fic myself, as I have a very clear idea of it. Dian de Momerie is, in fact, the rather dissipated young woman from Murder Must Advertise, who is represented as promiscuous and evil but intelligent, and who has a weird sexual cat-and-mouse thing with Wimsey. So the arc which popped into my head would be that halfway through the book 1. Dian runs into Harriet and complains about her life; 2. Harriet figures out that Wimsey is messing with Dian's head and is furious; 3. Dian manages to seduce Harriet; 4. Harriet in spasm of remorse has long interesting conversation with everybody which works things out; return to novel. Thing is, I don't want to write it, because I agree with most of what you were saying above about literary voice, and I am not at all sure either that I could catch Sayers or that I want to put in ferocious work on trying.

However, I know there're people out there who can, and I've read a couple who have. So I keep hoping somebody will write it for me.

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