Work Text:
I was thinking the other day about what we all do here, or more to the point, how we do it. This was because I ended up having an exchange of comments with crazypandabear over her marvelous set of icons (seriously, go check them out) where she said she'd never thought anyone would care to know about her icon making processes unless it was for a tutorial. And maybe she's right, maybe most of us in our busy lives just tend to look quickly at pretty things, and dash off an "OMG, I loved this!" when we do, just before logging off to go do something else.
But I just thought I'd put it out there that I actually do enjoy reading about people's processes, or explorations of one another's work, like the discussion millylicious has here about the new Firefly vid by bradcpu and laurashapiro. I like reading people's fic commentaries too, but I suppose there are a number of things holding people back from having such discussions. For one, some people just don't enjoy discussing their process (I now have Joss Whedon's "Heart (Broken)" stuck in my head). But I suspect the reasons everyone else doesn't are purely cultural –- people either feel odd about anticipating the interest of others, or they're worried about offending people with their interpretations of someone's work. I think both reasons are easy to understand, but it does have some unfortunate consequences.
One of the things I found interesting from Jinjurly's Podfic panel at Writercon was the explanation for why such a lot of older fanworks are not available as podfics (despite being very well regarded stories). Simply put, it's difficult for people to get in touch with the authors to get recording permission, and too few authors ever anticipate such requests and offer blanket permission for recordings or incorporation into new fanworks (such as vids, art, whatever else is going to come along). I'm really rather astounded, for instance, how few Buffyverse podfics are available at the archive compared even to what fic is still being written (much less what's come before). That seems like a real loss to me.
Just for the heck of it, I thought I'd run a poll and see how many other people are interested in this issue.
Participants: 11
Do you like reading author's/vidder's/artist's notes on their work?
Yes
8 (72.7%)
No
1 (9.1%)
Sometimes
2 (18.2%)
Do you wish you could read such notes (or longer commentaries) more often?
Yes
8 (72.7%)
No
0 (0.0%)
Sometimes
3 (27.3%)
Do you ever write such notes yourself?
Yes
7 (63.6%)
No
3 (27.3%)
Not applicable
1 (9.1%)
Do you ever feel uncomfortable about discussing your own work?
Yes
4 (44.4%)
No
4 (44.4%)
Sometimes
1 (11.1%)
Do you ever listen to podfics?
Yes
3 (27.3%)
No
8 (72.7%)
Would you (in general) be willing to have podfics made of your work?
Yes
7 (63.6%)
No
0 (0.0%)
Not applicable
4 (36.4%)
Would you discuss other people's work more often if you felt the creative fan culture supported such discussion?
Yes
6 (54.5%)
Maybe
3 (27.3%)
No
0 (0.0%)
No, too short of time as it is
1 (9.1%)
Such discussion would never be acceptable
1 (9.1%)
Additional Comments
People sometimes talk about certain writing issues in generalities. (I know in my case half the reason is because I can't remember the specific fic but I think in most cases people just want to avoid problems). In other cases they will talk about it but lock the posts. And there are also some specific efforts such as this one in SPN fandom. There was a similar community for the Buffyverse but it never got much participation going. I think part of it was just that people found it difficult to schedule reading (I know I did) but I suspect a lot of it was people's reluctance to discuss someone else's work openly.
Having comments on commentary files are certainly one way of engaging an audience in having a discussion about the details and processes of a fic. This tends to be the exception in fic commenting in general which focuses more on how fic made people feel.
I answered "no" because I feel that author's notes seldom contain anything substantial. I would be interested if notes would discuss one's work (this is why I answered "yes" on the second question). But it's not the norm. I would feel pretentious if I would do a commentary for my fanfics because I don't have a big readership.
There is already so much to read and view that doubling it, by discussing each work as well, is overkill. But I do think that the "average" is all relative. For example, for newbies, discussion of an average work might be much more helpful than discussion of a very special work. Discussion of those works might be very interesting but some people could be thinking "Oh, I could never do that" or details of the discussion could just go over their heads. Of course this then overlaps with the issue of tutorials but I do think there's a difference between discussing intent and process and producing a "how to." For example, one would likely be too technical to interest me if I don't do that sort of work. But writing an interesting commentary is, to me, a different thing.
I've found it incredibly helpful to watch drafts of vids, and see how they change for the better, and to listen to vidders point out flaws in their earlier work, particularly when I am already familiar with the vid in question. And generally to discuss the beta process, and how it works. (Specifically, these were panels at VividCon.) Fans who are self-confident enough to point out flaws and also self-confident enough to think that someone cares if they point out the flaws ... don't grow on trees? It's not for everyone, I guess. And I think that it may be less stressful to put this stuff out there in a semi-contained environment than to publicly post your not-quite-there versions of your fanwork.
In the beta panel at Writercon one of the things we discussed was what the benefit was to doing beta work. Many people agreed that seeing how work could be improved (or what didn't work) was very helpful to their own work. Even though I'm not writing fic, taking that time to actually think about how something's put together instead of just being a reader has definitely been interesting and helpful.
Even though I really love reading other people's commentaries on their own creative process, and I also actually love writing commentaries on my own stories, I hardly ever do so and when I do I always feel really embarrassed by it! Like it's arrogant to think that other people would actually be interested.