recent reading: Prophet by Sin Blache and Helen MacDonald

[lotesse]

I read MacDonald's memoir-about-T.H. White "H Is For Hawk," and heard that she'd co-authored an SF novel with a thank-you to the fanfic writers of the AO3. So I had to read that.



This book interested me as science fiction, but really interested me as the work of fanfic writers gone pro. There's no sense of serial numbers filed off, although I suspect someone of something like Avengers or Stargate fandom, somewhere back in there. But, around a third of the way in, it starting hitting hard in the feels the way that fic can, and in a way I recognized at gut level.

It was interesting to try to understand why, what it was I was responding to. The best way I can put it is that it feels like Blache and MacDonald built a MilSF action/adventure canon as if it were pre-existing, and then applied fic techniques to the canon to maximize emotional intensity and investment.

We meet our protagonists, wry Brit-Indian psychic Rao and stoic solider with a heart of gold Adam, after they've already met. They shared an intense adventure together previously in Afghanistan; this adventure is often referenced, but never fully recapitulated in the text. That's not what it's there for; it's not part of the novel "Prophet." But there needs to be a canon with a backstory, so that they can reconnect and go deeper. That's the part this book is about.

In the first third of the book, current and past looks at Adam and Rao are interspersed with cuts to a little boy. The book centers on experimentation with a substance connected to nostalgia, and the power of the emotional need to re-connect with or fix the past. When the text reveals, through the medium of this mystery substance, that the little boy was Adam, in his own undisclosed past, it hits like a freight train.

You can imagine, then, the fanfic that those scenes with the little boy would have been. And you experience it, in hindsight, like fanfiction. It's like having already read fic for a canon as it continues. Would I have cared so much about Adam and Rao, with other framing? Maybe, I don't know. But all of the tools for creating emotional intensity, character depth, and growth through character intimacy that we learn in fandom are on display in this book, and it cranked me round like crazy.

The totemic nostalgia iconography gets increasingly zany, frequent, and funny as the book comes to a climax. There's a distressing bit with a fellow and a dog that's a bit FMA, and a zombie American Girl doll on the lam. The book's political arguments about nostalgia are pointed, with accurate and humanistic aim. The final setpieces might be more deeply enjoyed by a reader with a deeper grounding in 80s kids' commercial culture.

But really, this book left me with a surprising insight into how mastery of fanfic as an art can be used in the creation of original fiction. I always lament serial-number-filing, a bit, and the loss of intertextuality. Blache and MacDonald really do show the portability of many of the approaches to storytelling that ficwriters specialize in, and how effective those approaches can be in origfic.

Comments

[vriddy]

Interesting observations! I'd love to see more intimacy/emotional intensity in origfic in general, it's cool to hear about places where it was achieved well.

[adore]

all of the tools for creating emotional intensity, character depth, and growth through character intimacy that we learn in fandom are on display in this book

that's fascinating! thank you for your insight. i added it to my tbr.

[rydra_wong]

Is it okay if I link people to this? I love this book so much, and am so excited to see people start to analyse it from a fic-literate perspective, because like you, I'm completely fascinated by what it's doing with its very intentional "ficcish-ness" and use of fic techniques.

The best way I can put it is that it feels like Blache and MacDonald built a MilSF action/adventure canon as if it were pre-existing, and then applied fic techniques to the canon to maximize emotional intensity and investment.

From what they've said in interviews (e.g. this one), that's very much the effect they intended, and also in terms of their process, what they did to a significant degree -- they kind of managed to trick their brains into writing the book as fic of a canon that didn't yet exist.

[lotesse]

Link away, no worries! And thanks so much for the interview link! How fun that we can "see" this thing being done, based on deep community/cultural knowledge.

[rydra_wong]

How fun that we can "see" this thing being done, based on deep community/cultural knowledge.

Yes! And they clearly drew on Blaché's experience writing collaboratively in fandom, and that very fannish style of writing back and forth at each other in DMs, immediately editing and reworking and expanding on each other's work.

You might also enjoy this essay by Macdonald from 2016, on The Force Awakens, a more benign view of nostalgia as it relates to tropes and stories (at least when it comes to claiming those stories for people who weren't allowed to be the protagonists before), shipping Finn/Poe, and fandom as scavengers repurposing canon to tell different types of stories, notably queer ones:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35501034

[rydra_wong]

There's also a great Washington Post piece:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2023/08/10/prophet-helen-macdonald-sin-blache/

“I wanted it to be fan fiction of something nobody had seen before,” Blaché said, “like these characters were loved before you even knew what you were reading.”

[cofax7]

there's a space opera series from Vonda McIntyre, I believe, which is also basically that: spin-off novels from a show that never got made. StarFarers, I believe it was called.

[anghraine]

This was really interesting to read (your post, I mean; I haven't read the book). The debate about fanfic writers going pro so often focuses on the ways that a) the techniques used in fanfic are similar to original fic's foundations and thus fanfic makes for a useful training ground or b) the techniques used in fanfic are fundamentally different from original fic's, and therefore inferior. So it's really interesting to think of original fic like this intentionally leaning into fanfic techniques w/o the serial numbers filed off—deliberately integrating them into original fic rather than trying to cover the fannish tracks.

[msilverstar]

The fanfic elements you describe even apply to RPF, which has its own flavor of canon though less dramatic structure. There's also an aesthetic element that is intimate but not Romance, I wish I could pin it down more. May take a look at this book.

[sabotabby]

Here via rydra_wong. Yes, this is it exactly. So many times when people say that something reads as fanfic, it's bad and tropey, but this read as fanfic because it felt like pre-existing lore and emotional connection that is given deeper meaning by the story we're actually reading.

[rydra_wong]

They shared an intense adventure together previously in Afghanistan; this adventure is often referenced, but never fully recapitulated in the text. That's not what it's there for; it's not part of the novel "Prophet." But there needs to be a canon with a backstory, so that they can reconnect and go deeper.

I found myself thinking that their Uzbekistan adventure kind of functions like it was Season One of the (non-existent) canon show for which this is fic, if that makes any sense?

[lotesse]

Right -- I kept thinking of the vibe you get in early SG1 fanfic, with the earlier adventure functioning like Stargate the Movie, and then the show bringing the gang back together again.