chelseagirl

Well with Life On Mars I'd definitely watch more than once for fic-writing purposes - there's so much layered detail in each episode that I don't think it's possible to get a reasonably acurate in one viewing. (I read an otherwise excellent LOM fic a while ago which blundered by stating categorically that Sam couldn't cook! An error which the author has not repeated, btw.)

Anyway, I'm looking forward to whatever you decide to do with Sam's kitchen. :-)

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When I get there, after another view-through or two or three, is there any chance I could get you to beta? :-)

M. is Britpicking for me, and I'm bouncing ideas off him for internal story logic, but he's only watched the eps once and I could definitely use a real fan to have a look!

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Certainly - I'd love to!

The only problem is my antique computer at home: it has got to the stage where it often throws a wobbly and refuses to open documents produced on more advanced systems. :-( You might have to send me your fic as a .txt document or forward it to my address at work.

(And yes, I'm definitely looking to upgrade my equipment at home!)

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Hurray!

Can do either. I can remember, once upon a time, trading .txt files with someone who I beta'ed for and vice versa because she was using Word and I was using WordPerfect and either this was before they'd learned to talk to each other or one of us (probably me!) had a much older version.

How old is ancient? I had a 7 year old laptop at one point, but by the end M. had moved in and we had his desktop as well so it was mostly for writing. My mom actually has it now, several years later, just for writing.

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My PC is six years old - which practically makes it a museum piece by modern standards. %-P

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It's appalling. By the time I pay off the one I've got now, I'll have to replace it. Kind of like cars, really. (I would ordinarily not have bought on time, but because of my peripatetic lifestyle -- and most of it on foot from library to classroom to cubicle to library to home all around Manhattan -- I bought an ultralightweight. It's getting me through the dissertation so it's worth it. But the next one won't be quite so top of the range, alas.)

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Er, that is it's appalling how quickly they become obsolescent. I really tried to get the 7 year old one to last throughout my adjunct years, and in the end I had to give in.

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Yes, and the real problem isn't that it doesn't work (if I was just using it to write documents and scan pictures I'd be fine!) but it's becoming less and less compatible with other computers. %-P I dunno - maybe I could try renting a PC this time around.

(My car, btw, is a couple of years older than my PC. However, it's a Toyota, and as my mechanic puts it: they last "forever". Admittedly I had to replace the shock absorbers this year, but it's not something I have to do very often!)

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A new and different kind of planned obsolescence; not even so much planned but I wish they'd try harder to maintain compatibility longer. .

The Japanese car manufacturers seem to have failed to get the memo Detroit sent out. Probably why they're doing so well. :-)

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Okay, so I set out to answer this after I got home from work, and discovered I can no longer copy and paste from LJ posts when I go to answer them. Oh, great. And now I cannot even use the mouse to select text in this field, either. What dimwit thought up these "enhancements"? ~sigh~ From now on, I'll obviously have to compose in a separate wordprocessor, and then paste the finished product into LJ. Peachy. I'm going to go do that now, and actually answer your post in a separate post, composed elsewhere ...

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(Composed in Eudora.)

>"how many times do you watch the extant eps of a series before you write a fic?"

I wrote my first three Forever Knight pieces before I had seen all extant episodes, but that was, granted, in the days when it was much harder to lay your hands on episodes, if you hadn't been taping from the premiere forward. Everything since has been written with all episodes watched at least thrice ... (with one exception, which is another story).

For different scenarios, I wrote my one and only Fushigi Yugi piece when I was in the middle of that series, at the height of my enthusiasm, as watched on slowly-acquired pro VHS tapes; my enthusiasm waned when they later messed with and killed off a certain character, and I had no enthusiasm left by the end of the series, I'm afraid. I wrote my first Sailor Moon story after seeing all episodes available in the US once, and the good stuff at least twice; unfortunately, I wrote it right before 09/11/01, and it was a post-apocalyptic future .... For Highlander, I did not write anything until I'd seen every episode several times, but the HL feeling is very different -- it doesn't need fan help as do other series for which I've written (FK needs us, you know?).

Reputedly, Susan G. wrote her first FK fic after seeing only through "Cherry Blossoms" on tapes pressed on her by a friend, while the series had moved on from there. Or so I've been told.

>"And does it matter if it's a small mood piece vs. something more extensive?"

I did not try to write episode-like stories until I'd steeped in a series, but that was mostly because it simply didn't occur to me.

For contrast, as you know, what I'm told was Susan G.'s first FK story ("All That's Best of Dark and Bright") is not a small mood piece, but large and entirely episode-like.

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Hmm. I think

neuralclone may be right; my current experience with Life on Mars suggests that the episodes are simply too layered to really master on one view.

I wonder if internal consistency might also have something to do with it -- since in some aspects FK would contradict itself at times, that gave the fanwriter a fair amount of latitude. Maybe?

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You're right. The lack of internal consistency in FK might indeed both give fan writers more courage to strike out and write before they quite know what's going on, and also give fan audiences a more forgiving take on certain errors. Since the most canon-obsessed author is put to the task of reconciling canon inconsistencies, a reader can do nothing but perceive arguable canonical errors in a fanfic as a deliberate attempt to choose between consistencies -- even if they are really just plain old "I haven't seen the eps" errors. (And oh! In that vein! The N&Ners who annoyed you so circa the first airing of "The Human Factor." How many of them had seen only third season at that time, and honestly had no clue what they were ignoring, but this ignorance was somewhat disguised by FK's fragmentation and inconsistency? Evidence of the consequences of writing prematurely?)

However, I think you may actually be looking at two things. How many times do you watch the episodes before you have the drive to write for a story? And how many times do you watch the episodes before you have the expertise to write well for the story?

And when might the latter get in the way of the former?

Taking FK as an example of a tiny and consistency-challenged universe, and Trek as its opposite, I wonder whether consistency-rich universes discourage some writers from daring them? Goodness knows, I can't imagine daring Trek, well-loved as it is, because I can never know its canon well enough to meet my own standards of canonical accuracy, as they've developed this past decade. Perhaps it is better to write as soon as you have the drive, and then find a beta-reader with the expertise? Granted, beta-readers are rare and precious treasures.

More random thoughts on your original question: I used to know a fan writer who was prolific in FK's third season and for a few years after, but who had never watched the earlier seasons, even when tapes were given to her, even when the series was on Space and SciFi, because she simply had no interest in the non-third-season characters. She depended on her beta-readers to prevent problems, and it worked for her. By the time she finished writing for FK, she was very good, having developed her skills with practice, but her interpretation of the story was necessarily slanted by her making her home exclusively in third season -- she chose to make a small universe even smaller, where most of us strive to make our fannish universes bigger. ~shrug~

I'm sorry I can't be useful on Life on Mars. I have basic cable, which here means clear reception of the broadcast networks and UHF channels, plus Discovery, Food, CSPAN and "i" (the old PAX), and shopping networks that proliferate as fast as you can program them away. Some days I also receive Oxygen, with another channel -- FX, I think -- ghosting over top of it. But never BBC-A. :-)

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I meant when would a writer feel comfortable about knowing canon well enough; sometimes the drive comes early and sometimes late, and for many of my best-loved shows, there is none. (Because, as we've discussed, no sense of something to be fixed.)

I think you're right that it would depend on the show. I wanted to write some Sharpe stories after M. showed me the films, but got tripped up on "oh but I need to read all the Cornwell books first" (and then didn't like them that much, plus so many inconsistencies between the books and movies and some of the active fans seemed to be bookverse snobs so scary!), I need to read histories of the Napoleonic wars so I don't make a big mistake!, I need to reread Jane Austen . . . anyway, never got there.

I think with LoM, neuralclone was right -- it's just a *dense* show -- and since there are only 8 extant episodes 'til next season, I can rewatch a couple of times without too much difficulty.

Do you get SciFi? Will you be able to see new Who when it airs? I was the fangirl without cable forever (I got it after 9/11 because the broadcast towers were out and I needed the escapism of my Buffy and Angel), so I was always the one blessing people for sending me tapes of La Femme Nikita, various BBC costume dramas that A&E nabbed instead of PBS, etc.

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>"Do you get SciFi?"

Nope. It would cost $50/month (my basic cable is $15), and I couldn't justify it just for the new Doctor Who, when I know I could soon buy the DVDs on Amazon.ca for less than subscribing for the duration.

It would be different, I think, if these were to be the first airings, and everyone was atwitter over them, but most people I know already watch the UK feeds, so I'm so far behind anyway, an extra few months doesn't seem so different.

(If only I could subscribe to the SciFi and Comedy Channels a la carte.)

>"Will you be able to see new Who when it airs?"

I imagine I may possibly be able to borrow it from someone. One problem is that so few people actually have VCRs anymore; they record on TiVo, which is harder to swap.

tv_elf tried to show me "Christmas Invasion," but it turned out to be an international region DVD, so we're making alternative viewing plans.

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We still have a VCR and if the show were on any other night but Friday I'd offer -- but last time we taped for someone it was Deadwood, and if it hadn't been for the HBO on Demand feed, we totally would have dropped the ball on way too many of the episodes.

I would drop cable altogether for the same reason, but M. had Sky in England and his brain might explode if we only had the 9-10 channels.

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This weekend, my friend V. let me know she would be taping the second season of the new Doctor Who for me, three episodes to a tape. I'm taken care of! :-)

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