Mindreading, genre and sonnets

Reading around through metafandom - someone wrote that one of the big differences between profic and fanfic is that profic has to satisfy a much larger audience.

Which, okay, yeah. Or at least it does if you want to write ever again. Because there's money in the equation, so you have to make a profit on book one to make there ever be a book two.

But the thing of it is... How can you know?

Figuring out what an audience wants involves mind reading. I don't know about the rest of the universe but this model human does not come with that feature.

I have noted however that many people *act* as if it does. And they get away with it, on the whole, because everyone is playing compatible games. Never quite the same game - life would be too easy that way - but ones where their assumptions about future actions fit together in ways that allow continued survival. On the whole. Most of the time. They get to go out and cross the road and then cross the road again later.

So... the book two problem.

I think genre stands in for mind reading.

From the reader end we pick a genre because we think we'll get something useful and valuable out of it. We know roughly what game they'll be playing, and it's the one we're in the mood for today.

Writers presumably pick a genre that appeals to them as a reader, for they'll be spending much more time with their story than the average reader.

But it also helps figure out if there will be any readers. We know there are readers for F&SF stories, we know about how many readers there are, we know it can support book two. Or getting book one into paper form.

So... is that 'satisfy larger audience' thing a genre thing???

Slash is a genre. Got it's own game. And it is one with a readership that seems pretty large to me, but apparently is not large compared to print-book numbers. Especially when you get the venn diagram overlap that is 'slash' and 'particular fandom'. Pretty small slice there.

Fanfic doesn't care. Fanfic can pick a genre, any genre, and play there. Play whatever game it likes, or make up it's own.

And if there turns out to be nobody else playing, well, we're not going to starve on that account, so book two is just as likely as it ever was.

Profic? Starving. Ungood.




There's a lot of other stuff that genre is about. But the mindreading thing is what I just now thought.



There's also thoughts about sonnets. A sonnet happens in a sort of big structure of all-other-sonnets. It's why some poems can make with the funny just by delaying the volta. Readers know how it'll turn out, but getting there by an unusual route is funny.

Profic, in the tie-in novel sense, happens in a structure of canon texts. Fanfic often happens in a structure of canon PLUS fanfic. I mean, if one person starts writing five things stories, or xovers, or poems, then quite often someone else will join the game and pass it on with variations. And you only get the whole effect if you are playing that game, if you know the other fan texts, if you know what, for instance, five things stories tend to be and what the rules they play with are.

Fanfic writers are already familiar with canon texts so they know how profic is played. Yesno? So they can read it quite well. It's part of their game, but fanfic isn't part of the profic game so much.

Profic-only readers might not have that kind of genre knowledge, literacy, set of game rules, intertexts to play with. So it seems likely they'll quite often miss the joke. Or the game. Or the point.

Am wondering how much of that 'fanfic unyaay' reaction is because the readers aren't playing.
*ponders*

So... saying that profic is fanfic-with-money is only true from one angle. Considering fanfic as a genre / shared set of texts / game... Tie-in novels are only playing with half the texts.


huh... fanfic readers as Janus, looking to two sets of sources.
... that's only a good image in my head. Because Ethan.

I'm getting random. I'll go do something else.

(no subject)

Bond films are best watched on the biggest screen possible, with surround sound.
This I knew.
The sound on my TV is rather pathetic.
This I also knew.
Have every intention of getting better sound to go with it. Any day now. I'm sure.

At the cinema I didn't get bored with any of it. At home the long action sequences sort of lost me. But second time through it made a slightly different sense in the people bits than first time. And everyone was telling stories with their faces, which my hazy memories of earlier Bond films suggest they mostly don't bother doing. Here there was Stuff going on. Actual acting.
... I'm being mean to earlier films.
... which is not new.



So far today I had a bath, did laundry, had lunch, hung up laundry, and am now about to put a second load of laundry in. Towels this time. They'll take half way to forever to dry. My washer/dryer manages the wash half but the dry half I'm not sure I've got the hang of at all. Hence the hanging things up. Is easier. Even if it does mean I've got underwear strewn around my flat and hanging from most every available surface. Probably makes it look like I have more fun.


I'm the sort of bored I'd usually fix with Lit reading.
Unfortunately I'm the sort of tired that suggests sleep would not be of the bad.

Blah.


Also, I have no chocolate.
This probably makes it the longest I've gone without chocolate in my life.


I only sort of miss it.