i ate too many pastiches

POSTED BY: wytchcroft
UPDATED: Saturday, January 19, 2008 10:34
VIEWED: 2676
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WYTCHCROFT

Friday, January 18, 2008 1:50 PM

I ate too many pastiches…

Terrible puns aside – I have been reading a lot of non-canon Sherlock Holmes stories recently (its the winter, natch) and, despite the obvious care of detail and relish of the authors it IS amazing how samey they are – not only does Holmes say “Elementary My dear Watson” at the drop of a pin, (the firefly eqv being “Job went south” or “shiny” – BOTH of which crop up in Buffy 7 sounding just plain wrong.) but the whole ‘mind reading’ episode (itself based on Poe) gets repeated ad nauseum – “Yes Watson I can tell by the flicker of your left whiskers that have decided against investing in South African bonds, however your twitching toe cap indicates that you are regretting not placing the same amount of money on Charlie’s Aunt which has just won the derby at, I believe, 7-1.” “Why Holmes – however…” etc.

So, here’s the thing – (ha ha) Most fics I read in the BSR (and elsewhere) avoid this kind of pastiche – we got the odd returning character (ala moriarty) but no biggie.

Why is this? Is it because carrying on a show already written by different people means pastiche is less of an issue? (Hmm, pastiche is what some people said about Those Left Behind – and at least in the Inara scenes, I agree)

Is it because the BSR writers just have their own voices and ideas? What we do seem to get are twists and expansions – relationships, children, families etc. writers creating their own verse.

Is this preferable?

What conscious things do you do to avoid pastiche?

I had fun trying to find out by writing a couple of flimsical blog fics – but one of them (A day at the races) probably has my best dialog!* (Grrr arrgh). Inara describing Mal as “Charming as sometimes” may be a pastiche (really) of Mal’s “my days of taking you seriously are coming to a middle” but it also sounds like Inara. So pastiche may NOT be totally go-se.

I’m interested in views on this (what people think has worked or not worked in their fics) as I start drafting up my next chapter based fic, while I consider turning The Christmas Run into something more solid and before really getting stuck into my sihnon story where pastiche may be less of an issue (I hope!).

*slightly kidding

SIMONWHO

Friday, January 18, 2008 2:16 PM

Stories descending into pastiche is one of the reasons why I have only written one fic (and that was purely as a mind cleaning exercise) - I can't think of anything more dull than 10,000 words with rebakes from the show. I think "shiny" occurs a little too often but the main thing is that as Firefly only had 14 episodes, it's much harder to pinpoint a standardised episode.

If there had only been one season of Buffy, you can imagine how radically different all the subsequent fanfic would have been - no Spike, no Mayor, no Faith, no Tara, no Anya; the library would have been their eternal hub and they'd have remained high schoolers forever.

Or it could just be that Fireflyfans are a darn inventive lot.

WYTCHCROFT

Saturday, January 19, 2008 10:34 AM

do you think fan fiction is developing as a whole???
or just here (for the reasons you mention)...

i read a lot of fics and many from different fandoms... i honestly believe that a lot of Firefly material (and the bSR itself) stands out.

LiveJournal however hides many great writers - many of whom are non firefly...