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luciazephyrand I don't mean just apologizing for not having written more yet
So. MoC. It's was conceptualized by an idle remark Grene made in a reaction post back when Marcone's short story came out. Turned into my gateway into the fandom, which in turn lead to me meeting Grene the Wonder Beta, making a lot of amazing friends that have kept me going in rough times, and going to Actualfacts Chicago with Binz (aka: the greatest week of my life).
The problem is. That through various means, I think I've progressed a lot as a writer since I started writing it. I've learned how to keep my writing tighter, and how to handle flawed characters sympathetically.
At its core, MoC is equal parts Fix It Fic and primer to TDF. I've been told on many, many occasions that MoC has been a good infodump for people who are interested in the Dresdenverse but who hate the books. And I'm very glad for that. I like that role it apparently has in the fandom, even if I have to breathe into a paper bag sometimes when I think of the implications of that.
But as a Fix It Fic, it's.... oh so lacking. I mean, I try to avoid a lot of the worst skeevy shit through MoC (let's not play Ask Lucy Her Feelings On Proven Guilty tonight). But on the flipside? It's just as fucked up as canon.
Someone who's opinion I greatly respect abruptly called me out on a lot of the power imbalance issues of the story on Twitter, and dragged out a lot of things I fucked up on and was too blind to notice. That, in part, killed my urge to finish the story, because being told that the entire framework for your trilogy is fucked beyond repair kind of makes it hard to work up the willpower to finish.
Such is part of why MoC is so stressful for me. I have to divergent feelings about the story.
1. MoC's basic conceit is pretty fucked and in such a way I literally cannot repair it.
2. MoC is a learning process and a story I still want to tell.
And whether 1 or 2 has more sway over me changes from day to day.
There's so much I wish I could magically fix. My mental image of Marcone and his personality has drastically changed from when I started writing MoC, and writing MoC!Marcone is something of a hardship, compared to the canon!Marcone. In all honesty, I consider the Marcone from the Bakery AU to be more in line with canon than MoC!Marcone.
That is a WIP is another difficulty. The aforementioned person who ripped me a new one about MoC did so having only read it in part. Their assessment isn't wrong (no assessment is "wrong", see: Death of the Author) and it made it clear my authorial intent is weak at best. In my mind, other things the road to hell is paved with revolves around an unbalanced relationship. putting out your fires with gasoline is supposed to be the other shoe dropping, with Harry and John's partnership becoming more equal and John fucking up pretty much every goddamn thing possible. MoC3, the storm that lit the city takes place several years down the road and complicates things further.
But readers don't know that. The haven't seen the outlines. They just have my somewhat shitty writing to go off. When someone says something disheartening that I think I disagree with, I can't very well get into an argument with them about it. It's unfair to the extreme.
And yet, because I am a delicate fucking flower, it kills my muse anyway and stresses me out.
Complicated feelings aside, I do want to finish it. In fact, I really want to write the third book. MoC3 is fucked up and tackles just how far from the straight and narrow Harry has wound up over the course of MoCverse. And it has some prickly issues with John that I am dying to share, because just thinking about it makes me want a curly moustache to twirl.
It's just a matter of getting there. Working up the muse and setting aside the inherent issues of the story just to finish it.
So yeah. Those are my thoughts right now. Actual dictionary-definition ambivalence.
So. MoC. It's was conceptualized by an idle remark Grene made in a reaction post back when Marcone's short story came out. Turned into my gateway into the fandom, which in turn lead to me meeting Grene the Wonder Beta, making a lot of amazing friends that have kept me going in rough times, and going to Actualfacts Chicago with Binz (aka: the greatest week of my life).
The problem is. That through various means, I think I've progressed a lot as a writer since I started writing it. I've learned how to keep my writing tighter, and how to handle flawed characters sympathetically.
At its core, MoC is equal parts Fix It Fic and primer to TDF. I've been told on many, many occasions that MoC has been a good infodump for people who are interested in the Dresdenverse but who hate the books. And I'm very glad for that. I like that role it apparently has in the fandom, even if I have to breathe into a paper bag sometimes when I think of the implications of that.
But as a Fix It Fic, it's.... oh so lacking. I mean, I try to avoid a lot of the worst skeevy shit through MoC (let's not play Ask Lucy Her Feelings On Proven Guilty tonight). But on the flipside? It's just as fucked up as canon.
Someone who's opinion I greatly respect abruptly called me out on a lot of the power imbalance issues of the story on Twitter, and dragged out a lot of things I fucked up on and was too blind to notice. That, in part, killed my urge to finish the story, because being told that the entire framework for your trilogy is fucked beyond repair kind of makes it hard to work up the willpower to finish.
Such is part of why MoC is so stressful for me. I have to divergent feelings about the story.
1. MoC's basic conceit is pretty fucked and in such a way I literally cannot repair it.
2. MoC is a learning process and a story I still want to tell.
And whether 1 or 2 has more sway over me changes from day to day.
There's so much I wish I could magically fix. My mental image of Marcone and his personality has drastically changed from when I started writing MoC, and writing MoC!Marcone is something of a hardship, compared to the canon!Marcone. In all honesty, I consider the Marcone from the Bakery AU to be more in line with canon than MoC!Marcone.
That is a WIP is another difficulty. The aforementioned person who ripped me a new one about MoC did so having only read it in part. Their assessment isn't wrong (no assessment is "wrong", see: Death of the Author) and it made it clear my authorial intent is weak at best. In my mind, other things the road to hell is paved with revolves around an unbalanced relationship. putting out your fires with gasoline is supposed to be the other shoe dropping, with Harry and John's partnership becoming more equal and John fucking up pretty much every goddamn thing possible. MoC3, the storm that lit the city takes place several years down the road and complicates things further.
But readers don't know that. The haven't seen the outlines. They just have my somewhat shitty writing to go off. When someone says something disheartening that I think I disagree with, I can't very well get into an argument with them about it. It's unfair to the extreme.
And yet, because I am a delicate fucking flower, it kills my muse anyway and stresses me out.
Complicated feelings aside, I do want to finish it. In fact, I really want to write the third book. MoC3 is fucked up and tackles just how far from the straight and narrow Harry has wound up over the course of MoCverse. And it has some prickly issues with John that I am dying to share, because just thinking about it makes me want a curly moustache to twirl.
It's just a matter of getting there. Working up the muse and setting aside the inherent issues of the story just to finish it.
So yeah. Those are my thoughts right now. Actual dictionary-definition ambivalence.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-04 04:29 pm (UTC)One of my biggest hang-ups is that a lot of the issues I know now, but didn't realize when I was writing it. I cannot express how much I've learned from the TDF fandom, and recognizing power imbalances and consent issues is one of them. I mean, some of the issues were completely by design. But I know that, I know that's my angle, but my readers don't, and it bothers me more than it should when people think I intend John and Harry's relationship to be healthy and perfect. I'm hoping with Hendrick's POV interlude, I can handle some of that--
But that's not going to help the people who fail out of the story because of those issues and don't get tot he point where the power dynamics are dealt with. I think I'm going to revise the AO3 series page with a note about MoC being very much about evolving power dynamics and, as you said, tied to a pretty unsubtle fealty kink.
Hell, the impetus of the story, Grene's original prompt, was about Marcone getting fed up with how sloppy the supernatural world is, overthrowing it, and winning Harry as spoils of war. And that was very much in my mind when I was drafting the trilogy out.
Oddly enough, I actively dislike a lot of the series as well. I loathe Proven Guilty and Turn Coat with a fiery passion, and I have lackluster feelings about everything except the Marcone-heavy books and Ghost Story. But, TBH, I think every writer I hang out with and talk shop with on a regular basis feels the same. TDF fandom, to me, is all about reclamation of mediocre, oft-problematic source text.
HMMMMM. It's not that I feel obligated to make MoC!Marcone close to canon. It's that.... my perception of his core principles has changed. Like, okay, one of the recurring jokes in MoC is John being a gourmet healthy food nut, right? That is 100% counter to what I actually think of him now. I think he shams at having good tastes, but in reality, he just wants comfort foods and simple pleasures, because he does not come from money. He's just very good at pretending to be more upper class than he is or feels.
Basically, LGI's Cross through my John characterization for a loop and lead to me re-examining the character.
MAGIC. OKAY. I'm one of the odd folks in fandom that enjoys the early books best. They are the shakiest in terms of Butcher's writing and they are the most overly sexist, but... they still give us John's defining character moments (FM) and Harry at his most interesting to me. I love Harry's love of magic in the early books. One of the passages that sticks out the most in my mind is about Harry's work being magic and his hobby being magic, and how he's a bit of a magic geek.
The saddest thing to me is that this concept of Harry being a magic geek is shelved early on. I think Butcher needed to keep Harry as an eternal layman to allow Bob to do infodumps for the readers. But I don't like it, and I like exploring Harry's magical innovations. It's going to be the driving force of the plot in Hendricks' interlude and in MoC3.
I hope I write it too, hun. 8)
(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-28 11:47 pm (UTC)And, I sort of like John finding Harry as a magic geek sexy. Sort of, in that I think that's part of the attraction. It's been too long since John had the luxury of not giving a fig what other people think, so of course Harry being a poster 'child' for not giving a fig is oddly appealing. That he's more dangerous than any five fully-automatic rifles, just a bonus.
(I mention that I love Marcone's thorns? Without the moral quandries, John isn't half the character he is with them.)