Remix Reveals (the unusual amount of time spent musing on Stannis Baratheon 'mix)

[netgirl_y2k]

Earlier this year I tried to game my sign up in an exchange, failed badly, and found myself writing a fic about the Baratheon brothers at The Wall, focused on Renly, who by a very small margin I find the least boring of the three. (Brother, It's Cold Outside.)

prodigy remixed it into the Stannis centric Black Horns, White Snow which I liked a lot; Stannis' bitterness at Ned was darkly hilarious, and it fixed some issues with Stannis' characterisation that I felt my original had.

My remixee was The_Plaid_Slytherin who writes a lot of fic about Stannis, all of it good, and all of it skated right over my eyeballs because even after all my years in ASOIAF fandom my feelings about Stannis are still mostly: Who? What? Huh?

Writing fic about characters you don't like doesn't necessarily have to be hard (there's a difference between having a different take and bashing, obviously, and you should try to stay on the right side of that) but what is hard is fic about characters whose existence you struggle to remember.

I do understand why people get irked when it seems obvious that your remixee has scrolled through your works looking for one of these things which is not like the others (I've had it happen to me) but sometimes with remixes it's unavoidable, because sometimes the answer to the question how would I write this fic? is simply I wouldn't.'

I ended up remixing a short fic about Loras and Margaery bonding (For The Best) into a Margaery character study. For the Best (My Church Offers No Absolutes Remix).

As a remix it's less than ideal, but on the plus side I was writing it just as the show pulled Rhaegar and Elia's annulment out of its ass, and I managed to channel my annoyance into the line: Many men came to care little for their wives, that was why the laws of gods and men made it all but impossible for a husband, king or commoner, to set his lawful wife aside.

Comments

[falena]

Oooh, ASoIaF fic.

*scurries off to read*

[netgirl_y2k]

Yay, enjoy!

[kith_koby]

I find it deeply ironic, because it seems to me that just as you picked For The Best because it had the only characters you felt you were interested in writing/could write, Profigy picked the only fic of yours that had characters s/he was interested in.

I'll be blunt; I myself was kind of bored by For The Best and by your remix of it (though less by your remix of it, obviously). It's just that the Tyrells don't interest me nearly as much. Your characters study of Margaery was more interesting, but it didn't feel new to me in any way... I still liked it well enough, but it didn't move me as most of your fics do. I don't have any deep thoughts on it besides the occasional 'that was funny' or 'true'...

Sorry for the brutal honesty. I'm tired and annoyed by work... all I really want is my Dornish orgies, frankly.

[netgirl_y2k]

I'm not sure that's entirely true, because they also wrote an Arya/Shireen remix. I think it's also that I was a post deadline pinch-hit (having already scared off my first remixer, lol) and my Baratheon brothers fic was close to the top of my AO3 page.

I ended up getting a kick out of writing my remix, but then Margaery Tyrell and sibling relationships overlap in the ven diagram of stuff I'm interested in. But then we all have those characters that we're just not interested in. For myself I will never ever understand the one true king fandom that's built up around Stannis.

I hope things look up for you soon. Chin up :)

[kith_koby]

Possibly both; after all, if that was the case, wouldn't you choose the option you were already experienced with, rather than trying something new?

I don't get Stannis or his fandom at all. Heck, on SpaceBattles there is a user who basically roleplays Stannis in every post who makes... what is this world?

The kids are wearing me down, but I have vacation in a week... maybe I'll even get around to finishing the latest chapter of my story.

[parcequelle]

Good on you for signing up and for finishing, even though they were challenging! I am always so impressed when people successfully manage remix fic because I find it particularly intimidating (and for exactly the reasons you've named). My fandoms rarely qualify, but even when they do, my writer/recipient and I have been incompatible because I so heavily favour f/f and that is often... not what people want. (But on the other hand, I'd be desperately searching for the one gen/het needle in a haystack, too, if I got assigned someone who mostly writes slash.)

Anyway, my point is well done! You're great.

[netgirl_y2k]

Yeah, the female character remix always suited me better, but it didn't seem to be running this year. And as much as I enjoyed that remix, I didn't have much patience for their raison d etre, which was that it was annoying when remixers unfailingly pick one of your very few stories about dudes. I mean, it is, but it goes both ways, and I know I've done my fair share of, as you say, looking for that gen/het needle in the slashy haystack.