thread: 2005-07-05 : Setting and Source Material
On 2005-07-13, Emily Care wrote:
J wrote:
I still want an example of what Sarah's saying. I don't think "canon" and "premise" are the same thing. You can have canon and totally miss the point, thereby lacking premise.
I agree. So let's look at Canon and Premise. If we look at Canon as the agglomeration of underlying and background source texts and cultural knowledge that informs a given work, we can see that all works have a canon.
If we look at Premise as the issues being addressed within and by any given work, we can see that all works will have a premise. But we can ask about the quality of the premise, or its resonance for us, and we can make distinctions between what premises different works are operating under.
Eliot wrote:
For example, there are works which struck a chord when I first encountered them even though I now might see them as atrocious derivative crap. And then there's crap which somehow crosses over, in some viewers' eyes, into sublime camp.
There is individual judgement, but there can also be community standards. "Mary Sue"-ism is a fictional practice looked down upon by the fanfic community. It's when a writer uses a character to insert themselves into the world of the text, eg to get to hook up with Spok or what have you. In rpg, pawn stance is often seen as less desirable, though ymmv.
Narrative structures that help people come up with engaging premises are what we want here. Be it the ground rules and social mores of a narrative RP community, or the rules of an rpg. Having a specific text is not to blame, but it is imaginable that loyalty to a given work might cloud someone's judgement about what is really interesting about creating fiction. Or a desire to use the fiction writing for a masturbatory purpose. But what's boring about this is that it doesn't give others any way to meaningfully engage—it shuts others out from collaborating since it's a premise for one. Just as front-loaded premise that's brought to the table by the gm, in the end, can be a lot less satisfying than having premise be brought by all.
This makes AN go "celebrating..."
"(using) the fiction writing for a masturbatory purpose" is how I interpreted "celebrating the source material."
Sorry, dumb joke.
