rpfs (still).

[wisdomeagle]

Hey everyone! Guess what I'm still thinking about? Latest New Daft Obsession, hurrah! (As long-time readers know and everyone will realize soon enough, I tend to go through phases of obsession. Give my brain something new and shiny to stare at, and I'll talk of nothing else till the next new shiny thing comes along. I rediscover old shinies all the time, so the West Wing, Sports Night, Buffyverse, Firefly, VMars and SG-squee will be back... eventually.)


In the meantime! I keep having to kill RPFS bunnies because what I want to write is fluff. I have fluff in my head. I think it should be fluff, with kitties and sewing and big fires in the fireplace and reading together, but all the plotbunnies I keep coming up with are focusing on the dichotomy between public persona (which is fiercely asexual) and private life. The thing is I really don't want to write those fics I keep coming up with because I don't think privacy is a bad thing and I don't want angst. But I simply can't step outside my own perceptions, because to me Ann is the Author Of The BSC Books and always will be, whereas to Ann, that's incidental to her identity and even her professional life at this point. I can't step outside the meta-nature of writing RPF. With Joss this is much easier because I feel like Joss views himself as Creator Of BtVS and buys into the fans' view of him much more than Ann does. And while with Joss, my RPS-impulse is definitely "the shows are the most important thing in my life; I wish they were the most important thing in Joss's life too, to the point of frelling the actors," with Ann it's not quite like that. I want the story(ies, depending on how long this particular obsession lasts) to be about this woman who lives in New York with her cats and her lover and happens to write YA novels, but I just can't snap my brain around to that perspective.

Incidentally, in one of the threads I ended up in last night, there was mention of the official autobiography, which (duh) has no mention of homosexuality. The question that apparently no one thought to ask was "Was there any mention of heterosexuality?" the answer to which would be quite telling I think.


Now: cake, ice cream, Sports Night (I'm about to start S2!) then gleee!, shower, and bed....

Comments

[tartanshell.livejournal.com]

One thing I've been wondering...

Aren't the BSC books (beyond the first ones, I mean) ghostwritten? At the rate they come (used to come? Is the series over?) out, they'd almost have to be.

I know the Sweet Valley books were, and I think the same holds true for most YA/middle grade series that big.

[wisdomeagle]

Yes, they are, but Ann did write the first several and iirc outlined and okay'd the others - they came out at a rate of once a month. Looking at the 11 CA Diaries books I have in my lap, 8 are ghost-written and 3 are by Ann herself.

One thing that always puzzled me about SV was that the very first book was ghost-written. Was there ever such a person as Francene Pascal, or is she just a fictional entity of some sort?

[tartanshell.livejournal.com]

Oh, okay. I'd just been thinking that, for all any of us knew, Ann M. Martin as portrayed by Scholastic wasn't the real deal. But after Googling her, I guess you do get a good sense of her, and she even admits that a lot were ghostwritten. (Though I don't think her math works. In the interview I found, she said it takes a year to write a book, and then she claimed to have written about half of the BSC books.) What is it with kids' authors and math??

I wouldn't be surprised if Francine Pascal was just a name the company thought up for their new series' "author."

What I don't like about a lot of kids' billion-part series is that they're so commercialized. I mean, Ann said her editor wanted her to write a series about a group of babysitters-- it's not like this was her idea. Ditto with Sweet Valley-- I bet some guys in suits came up with the idea of "perfect" twin sisters and got a group of writers together to write their thrilling California hijinx.

I like the idea of writers fretting over their manuscripts, getting rejected until they finally get that big break. Same with singers, and then you always feel so disappointed when you realize that, say, the Spice Girls didn't really have to pay their dues before they made it.

[tartanshell.livejournal.com]

...I should add that your posts and my Googling have given me the mad desire to find the entire BSC series and read it. o.O

I'm looking at the list now and trying to figure out where I quit buying them. I think it was somewhere around "Dawn and the We Love Kids Club," but I'm not sure!

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

I can't step outside the meta-nature of writing RPF. With Joss this is much easier because I feel like Joss views himself as Creator Of BtVS and buys into the fans' view of him much more than Ann does. And while with Joss, my RPS-impulse is definitely "the shows are the most important thing in my life; I wish they were the most important thing in Joss's life too, to the point of frelling the actors," with Ann it's not quite like that.

This makes perfect sense to me.