This one might require a little bit of homework if you haven't read the story below -- but it deserves all of its accolades, and it's well worth your 15-45 minutes (it's about 9,000 words).
So:
Cold in Gardez's The Glass Blower as a metaphor for the writing of fanfiction. Discuss.
(My own thoughts have light story spoilers, so I'm leaving them in comments below.)
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As I said to CiG in story comments: Art that talks about art always runs the risk of being examined as talking about itself, but in this case, it's a metaphor that hits especially hard.
We all aspire to be glass blowers here, shutting ourselves away from polite society to chase an objectively mad dream, our passions driving us to produce works of beauty for a world that we're convinced will give them the proper affection and respect, when really we're writing about a cartoon show the vast majority of whose fans consider "fanfic" a dirty word. Even here, among our fellow travellers, it's so easy to put weeks or months of labor into a story that can be basically ignored.
I've watched new authors unleash their 20,000-word masterpiece on the world to a collective "meh" -- as I'm feeling all the while like Sticks biting a hooftip on the sidelines as hearts smash into pieces around him. Even the best authors can be brought low when the world collides with our creations; witness Device Heretic's disappearance. We're all the fragile pony in the mirror.
We can only hope we're in a different story, the one where it all works out, because certainly sometimes there's cosmic justice. ... Right?
The most perfect art is one made for its own sake; but if you are making art for another, then you must see the truth within them if you wish them to see perfection. The audience wants what it wants, and will throw down and crush great works, trample and discard Art and Beauty, ignore Power and Depth... for baubles and noise. For the things that feed its inner emptiness and leave it hungering for more.
I'm gonna have to disagree with this on pretty much every level.
For one thing, I don't see art as a matter of shutting yourself in. Maybe that's because of my history; my first experience with serious storytelling was GMing RPGs, which is obviously an intensely social experience. The biggest reason I keep writing ponyfic is as a way to stay in touch with my friends in the community. Art has been a way for me to connect with people, not a barrier.
Also, I really don't feel like the reception has been lacking. I pour my heart and soul into a story, release it into the uncaring void... and then hundreds or thousands of people read it. That's pretty dang satisfying.
Somewhat tangentially:
My friends consider spending time on fanfic to be about as shameful as spending time on reddit, i.e., it's seen as kind of embarrassing but people understand what you're doing and why. It's something I can freely bring up, when it's relevant. Granted, this isn't the norm. I hang out with nerds in their mid 20s, most of whom identify strongly with LW. Still, I chose these social groups on purpose.
Now, if you want an allegory for writing fanfiction, try this on for size.
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Well, heck, if we agreed it wouldn't be much of a discussion, now, would it?
It's interesting you see art as social, because in many respects it feels like the social aspects of fanfic writing pull me away from the fics themselves. The time I spend writing comments and blog posts and story reviews is significant enough that I feel a little guilty about my own material. I see what you mean, though, about the sharing of those stories being a far more social experience than it is for most art. In some respects fanfic is similar to roleplaying that way, in the very direct and immediate engagement from the audience with the things you plotted and schemed for weeks in a dark room in order to bring to life for them.
That's actually part of why the Glass Blower metaphor hit home for me. The craft of the writing is all behind closed doors, but the presentation is out in the crowd.
> Still, I chose these social groups on purpose.
I know exactly what you mean. People who respect others' passion and creativity are precious jewels. That respect is as close to a litmus test as I've ever found for whether I want to get to know someone better or not as a friend.
I'll admit, the Rarity in my own internal Glass Blower isn't the crowd. It's the editor inside my head. The superego who has a clear, perfect vision of my stories that the muse struggles in vain to assemble words to recreate.
Fortunately, my own fanfic doesn't follow that tragic model. However, the fact that I have about 50,000 words of completed/unpublished fic to about 10,000 that have seen the light means that the comparison is closer than I'm entirely comfortable with.
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Honestly, my primary disagreement with The Glass Blower (on its own terms, not as metaphor) is the notion that making art for others is a magical source of inspiration. I don't think I've ever met an artist who did better work on behalf of a third party than they did while pursuing their own vision. Art is creative, but it's a weird selfish kind of creative ...
... of course, having said that, the easy counterexample (which I do myself) is GMing for roleplaying games. That couldn't exist if you weren't offering it to others in a very directly TGB way.
Mmm. It still doesn't sit well with me and I'll have to think about it some.
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And, of course, we can never have our work viewed by the show's creators. Never ever, unless they quit the show. And they only way they'd do that is if they don't want to be involved with pony at the highest level, or are forced out.
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I got back into writing fiction writing short-short fics as responses to story prompts. There's something inspiring about trying to please someone that a mere "do exactly this, but do it well" never touches.
715198 I just dropped elsewhere a comment about the true benefit of writing prompts, so I suppose I should follow up and ask: do you find that the benefit of a story prompt is that you're trying to please someone? For me, the benefit is that it serves as a focus for my creativity, and gives me permission to flip a scene out of my head without obsessing and overanalyzing the same way that I tend to do when I'm trying to add new content to an existing story.
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For me, it's more about giving the audience something special, something I've never seen before which I assume they haven't either.
I'm probably going to end up putting up an anthology story of all the fics I wrote in 2011 on prompts.
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Interesting. Certainly valid, but not how I generally approach the audience relationship.
On a tangent, though, I think you should! I'd love to see your collected shorts.
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You know, I was never able to see The Glass Blower as anything more than a pretty good story, exactly as good as the sum of its (high-quality) parts. This conversation is making me think about why everyone I respect likes it more than I do. I don't identify with the protagonist's neuroticism about his art; other fanfic authors do. I never sympathized for him, I just wanted to smack him upside the head. My leading theories right now are that other authors on fimfic aren't nearly as comfortable with their work as I am. (This would make sense for other reasons, too. I very nearly cannot feel stress, which is both a blessing and a curse. This time I'm filing it under "blessing.")
Funny. I've found that the stories in my head always seem far more interesting than their content justifies. It's the process of assembling the story for others that lets me evaluate how good it actually is, and then improve the story so that it's as good as it should be. It sounds like it's the same process in practice, but I feel like I'm creating beauty where I only imagined it before, not like I'm failing to capture beauty that already exists somewhere.
...Okay, I think there's a lot of stuff going on in The Glass Blower that I didn't pay much attention to because I find its philosophy to be actively repulsive.
Well, this might have come a bit late, but I finally got around to reading The Glass Blower, and finally have an opinion.
First, yes, I empathize completely with the allegory-for-writing thing. (Forgive me for the self-centered monologue.) I've always loved fantasy, and have always wanted to write my own, even as a child. Several years later, a friend of mine tells me I should check out this pony thing. From just the two-minute intro, where it describes Nightmare Moon and the Elements of Harmony, I already started to wonder what the show would have been like if it were targeted at adults. I realized that that lore could easily have been used to write a decent epic fantasy if it had been used elsewhere. I watched a few more episodes and my craving for a mature version of the story grew. I looked long, and the closest I ever came to finding my ideal story was Sabotage Valkyrie, one I'm sad to see has been laid to rest before completion. I loved it, but unfortunately I eventually found that it did't quite hit the spot for me. I eventually realized that if this story would have to come to be, I would have to write it myself. And it deserved to be written. It was therefore an obligation.
Well, 51 episodes and one fandom later I had enough material to outline a story. Though I don't have much to show for it on paper, this thing has been brewing and brewing for almost a year now, and so much of myself has seeped into it. It's become a part of me, the extraction of my soul. It has become One is Silver. I only wish my writing skills could do this story justice. Sadly, it really hit a wall when it hit this site, though, so I know exactly what Horizon is talking about.
Once this story is done, it will be something I will not be afraid to write over again, cover to cover, if I had to. Hell, I might just want to. It might even be something I'll write over and over again until the day I die. To connect back with the Glass Blower, it feels like my hummingbird. Something I have written for myself, and for its own sake, and is my pride and joy. It is something I wish only perfection for. And in response to earlier comments, yes, it saddens me that I can only call it a "fanfiction." A fanfiction of a show about technicolor cartoon ponies. Yet, when I think about how far it has come from simply that, I cannot help but feel a hint of pride. Fortunately, bittersweet is my favorite flavor.
Sometime after Silver settled into its comfortable little hole, I wrote what feels like my glass comb: The Princess Will Save Us. To be honest, I wrote it largely for credibility (of course, I also liked the idea in is own right). It fared marginally better. A friend of mine hit it as is hundredth reader, and after some jokes and misunderstandings, it somehow arrived that I would eventually write a story for him as a prize with the prompt "Luna vs. Cupcakes's Pinkie Pie." This one I don't feel particularly attached to, and will really write it for practice in getting out of my element and style of choice. It feels like my armillary sphere, really.
I don't think I'll be entering writing as a primary career, but I'd love to pursue it as a casual hobby. I'd like to graduate from writing ponyfics and write independently eventually. Who knows? Maybe I'll have myself a perfect mirror some day.
I would like to think that in one way or another I agree with each and every one of you here.