Shared Worlds, Different Visions
Jan. 9th, 2014 07:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brightly_litI'm behind again on the Snowflake Challenge, but that's because Day 6 coincided so perfectly with something I really wanted to post about anyway that I decided to combine them. So this post will respond to Day 6 and will also introduce an idea for a project I want to launch that I was hoping some of you would be willing to participate in. The big vision is ambitious and ephemeral, but the beginning stage is what we do all the time here: I would simply love if you would be willing to write a fic or contribute some other type of artwork.
To explain ...
Day Six
In your own space, share a book/song/movie/tv show/fanwork/etc that changed your life. Something that impacted on your consciousness in a way that left its mark on your soul.
Bordertown.
My sister gave me the first two books in the series (Bordertown and Borderland) when I was 14 or 15 because the clerk at the bookstore recommended them to her for my age (she's much older than me). It was some perfect serendipity, a confluence of who I already was and something I was reaching for that ended up strongly influencing who I became because it already resonated with who I wanted to become.
The Bordertown books are a shared world created by an editor at a publishing house tasked with doing so and seeing if she could get some up-and-coming fantasy authors to contribute stories to the series. I'm guessing the publishing house thought it might catch on and be popular. They were wrong; for decades, I never met a single other person who'd ever heard of the series.
You can kind of tell what this editor came up with herself--the town, probably a map, the social politics, and a few landmarks and characters--but as far as I can tell, everything else was pretty much the invention of the authors who contributed (though that editor also contributed wonderful stories using a pen name), given absolutely free rein to create an entire world according to their own interests and needs as writers. Some of the stories were great, some not good, most in between, but to me at 15, all utterly entrancing.
The funny thing about Bordertown is that everyone who DID fall in love with the series seemed to want so desperately to get to find it and live there, but it's actually not a very nice place.
"Bordertown" exists where the world we know and the world of magic meet, so technology doesn't work the way it's supposed to, and neither does magic. Elves live there, and humans, and 'halfies.' It's all very punkrock and edgy, with elf gangs and human gangs and humans who are addicted to the water of the red river that flows out of Elfland. Teenaged humans and elves alike run away from home to find Bordertown for a variety of reasons, usually because their life sucks and they don't fit in where they are, so many of the stories are about newly arrived runaways making their way in this kind of mean town that's also oddly the only place that will ever feel like home to them.
Sound like a good series? IT IS. Unfortunately, those first books are out of print and quite expensive even used, but, well ....
A few years ago I thought of those books again and reacquired copies of those first books, only to see that a few other compilations had been released over the years, so I got those, too. (Unfortunately, most of the ones in the middle years were pretty sucktastic, as if those authors weren't quite sure what Bordertown was, wanted to be, or should become.) But they just released another book in the series, and lo and behold, I was not the only person profoundly influenced by these books! There are stories in this latest by Neil Gaiman and Charles de Lint and a really spectacular one by Cory Doctorow. I went online and found that love and respect for these stories had been bubbling underground all these decades and finally, only recently, burst forth openly into the wide world.
Which brings us to the next part of what this entry is all about for me.
Bordertown seemed so inclusive to me. The people who love it see it as where misfits can go and find a place where they belong, always.
When I discovered the Bordertown series was still going, I got excited about the idea of writing my own Bordertown story and submitting it to see if they might consider it good enough to include in the next compilation ... only to discover that in fact they're very exclusive about who they allow to publish official Bordertown stories. You can do fanfic they say, but there seems to be a sharp division between people allowed to really participate in building that world (i.e., only people who participated from the beginning, and already famous authors) and people only allowed to watch from the sidelines, which, well, if that's the way they want to do things, no one can stop them ... but it's not the way I would do it.
Who knows what issues they might be up against. Maybe they would like to include fans' stories but the publishing company or someone refuses, or maybe reading all the submissions and choosing among the best is either too time-consuming or would involve politics of who's in and who's out that they don't want to deal with. Regardless, it's their world and thus theirs to do what they want with.
... Which made me in turn want very badly to create a completely different but equally appealing shared world, that ANYONE will always be free to contribute to and participate in. If it's out here on the internet and no one (well, except maybe me) owns the copyright to the shared world, if we do it in the land of fanfic and thus there are thus no publishing costs or rules about who can and can't participate, then it could be a world that could evolve and grow without limits. This is what I so love about fanfic culture, that anyone and everyone can play on a totally level playing field and express love and a sense of community through their creativity.
The "second generation" of Bordertown stories--the recent ones, in this new world of the internet and cell phones and portable electronics--kept the original idea and then expanded it into whole new dimensions. The most recent stories are richer than ever. For me, one of the very most fascinating aspects of reading those books is seeing how Bordertown evolved in the minds of those who loved it over time. To get to watch that happen freely in a community of writers and artists like ours here--especially given all the spectacularly talented writers and artists in SPN fandom--is one of the most fascinating things I can imagine, were this to catch on like Bordertown eventually did.
I know there are some of you who, like me, write original fiction and who might be willing to write a story that would lay the foundation of what this world we create is. (A couple of people here have already said they're in! :-D ) I know there are others who are only comfortable writing fanfic who would like to take characters created by other writers and do something new and different with them. I'd love to make this world wide open for both types of writers, as well as people shy about writing original fic but who might be willing to try it for just this project since it's kind of like fanfic, or anyone else.
I'd say that to participate in this, you'd have to be willing to freely allow other fic writers to use characters you create for this world in their own stories, put them in compromising positions (I figure that's inevitable, if we manage to write characters that truly mean something to readers and participants ;-) ), remix your stories, or whatever, then watch what your creations have wrought through generations of iterations and evolutions. Then you dive in and write another original story, or maybe you're inspired by someone else's fic, and ideally it's a glorious orgy of unfettered creativity.
That's my dream, anyway. Who knows if it would go beyond the first submission of original stories. It took the Bordertown series nearly 30 years to get there, although it did (in my estimation, anyway) finally happen. But it doesn't matter. All we have to do to start is write a few stories, and then later, maybe a few more, and see what happens. Regardless, we'll have had fun participating in an original project and inspiring each other's stories. Maybe this will just end up being an event at the Bunker, but I'll probably create a new community for it if enough people want to participate. I'm really hoping some of you will! Timeline-wise, the first round of fics (at least a thousand words, I'm thinking) would be due mid-April.
So my first question for you all as I work on creating a shared world for this project is: If you could make a perfect world, what would be different from this one? (Nothing about elves or magic; this has to be completely different from Bordertown, although I think two different kinds of worlds colliding would be one cool possibility ...)
If you have any ideas for a shared world, I would love love love to hear them. I hope some of you want to do this! Even if it was just a little group of friends sharing original stories, I still think that would be totally awesome, because I'd love to see how y'all's minds work outside of the SPN milieu.
To explain ...
Day Six
In your own space, share a book/song/movie/tv show/fanwork/etc that changed your life. Something that impacted on your consciousness in a way that left its mark on your soul.
Bordertown.
My sister gave me the first two books in the series (Bordertown and Borderland) when I was 14 or 15 because the clerk at the bookstore recommended them to her for my age (she's much older than me). It was some perfect serendipity, a confluence of who I already was and something I was reaching for that ended up strongly influencing who I became because it already resonated with who I wanted to become.
The Bordertown books are a shared world created by an editor at a publishing house tasked with doing so and seeing if she could get some up-and-coming fantasy authors to contribute stories to the series. I'm guessing the publishing house thought it might catch on and be popular. They were wrong; for decades, I never met a single other person who'd ever heard of the series.
You can kind of tell what this editor came up with herself--the town, probably a map, the social politics, and a few landmarks and characters--but as far as I can tell, everything else was pretty much the invention of the authors who contributed (though that editor also contributed wonderful stories using a pen name), given absolutely free rein to create an entire world according to their own interests and needs as writers. Some of the stories were great, some not good, most in between, but to me at 15, all utterly entrancing.
The funny thing about Bordertown is that everyone who DID fall in love with the series seemed to want so desperately to get to find it and live there, but it's actually not a very nice place.
"Bordertown" exists where the world we know and the world of magic meet, so technology doesn't work the way it's supposed to, and neither does magic. Elves live there, and humans, and 'halfies.' It's all very punkrock and edgy, with elf gangs and human gangs and humans who are addicted to the water of the red river that flows out of Elfland. Teenaged humans and elves alike run away from home to find Bordertown for a variety of reasons, usually because their life sucks and they don't fit in where they are, so many of the stories are about newly arrived runaways making their way in this kind of mean town that's also oddly the only place that will ever feel like home to them.
Sound like a good series? IT IS. Unfortunately, those first books are out of print and quite expensive even used, but, well ....
A few years ago I thought of those books again and reacquired copies of those first books, only to see that a few other compilations had been released over the years, so I got those, too. (Unfortunately, most of the ones in the middle years were pretty sucktastic, as if those authors weren't quite sure what Bordertown was, wanted to be, or should become.) But they just released another book in the series, and lo and behold, I was not the only person profoundly influenced by these books! There are stories in this latest by Neil Gaiman and Charles de Lint and a really spectacular one by Cory Doctorow. I went online and found that love and respect for these stories had been bubbling underground all these decades and finally, only recently, burst forth openly into the wide world.
Which brings us to the next part of what this entry is all about for me.
Bordertown seemed so inclusive to me. The people who love it see it as where misfits can go and find a place where they belong, always.
When I discovered the Bordertown series was still going, I got excited about the idea of writing my own Bordertown story and submitting it to see if they might consider it good enough to include in the next compilation ... only to discover that in fact they're very exclusive about who they allow to publish official Bordertown stories. You can do fanfic they say, but there seems to be a sharp division between people allowed to really participate in building that world (i.e., only people who participated from the beginning, and already famous authors) and people only allowed to watch from the sidelines, which, well, if that's the way they want to do things, no one can stop them ... but it's not the way I would do it.
Who knows what issues they might be up against. Maybe they would like to include fans' stories but the publishing company or someone refuses, or maybe reading all the submissions and choosing among the best is either too time-consuming or would involve politics of who's in and who's out that they don't want to deal with. Regardless, it's their world and thus theirs to do what they want with.
... Which made me in turn want very badly to create a completely different but equally appealing shared world, that ANYONE will always be free to contribute to and participate in. If it's out here on the internet and no one (well, except maybe me) owns the copyright to the shared world, if we do it in the land of fanfic and thus there are thus no publishing costs or rules about who can and can't participate, then it could be a world that could evolve and grow without limits. This is what I so love about fanfic culture, that anyone and everyone can play on a totally level playing field and express love and a sense of community through their creativity.
The "second generation" of Bordertown stories--the recent ones, in this new world of the internet and cell phones and portable electronics--kept the original idea and then expanded it into whole new dimensions. The most recent stories are richer than ever. For me, one of the very most fascinating aspects of reading those books is seeing how Bordertown evolved in the minds of those who loved it over time. To get to watch that happen freely in a community of writers and artists like ours here--especially given all the spectacularly talented writers and artists in SPN fandom--is one of the most fascinating things I can imagine, were this to catch on like Bordertown eventually did.
I know there are some of you who, like me, write original fiction and who might be willing to write a story that would lay the foundation of what this world we create is. (A couple of people here have already said they're in! :-D ) I know there are others who are only comfortable writing fanfic who would like to take characters created by other writers and do something new and different with them. I'd love to make this world wide open for both types of writers, as well as people shy about writing original fic but who might be willing to try it for just this project since it's kind of like fanfic, or anyone else.
I'd say that to participate in this, you'd have to be willing to freely allow other fic writers to use characters you create for this world in their own stories, put them in compromising positions (I figure that's inevitable, if we manage to write characters that truly mean something to readers and participants ;-) ), remix your stories, or whatever, then watch what your creations have wrought through generations of iterations and evolutions. Then you dive in and write another original story, or maybe you're inspired by someone else's fic, and ideally it's a glorious orgy of unfettered creativity.
That's my dream, anyway. Who knows if it would go beyond the first submission of original stories. It took the Bordertown series nearly 30 years to get there, although it did (in my estimation, anyway) finally happen. But it doesn't matter. All we have to do to start is write a few stories, and then later, maybe a few more, and see what happens. Regardless, we'll have had fun participating in an original project and inspiring each other's stories. Maybe this will just end up being an event at the Bunker, but I'll probably create a new community for it if enough people want to participate. I'm really hoping some of you will! Timeline-wise, the first round of fics (at least a thousand words, I'm thinking) would be due mid-April.
So my first question for you all as I work on creating a shared world for this project is: If you could make a perfect world, what would be different from this one? (Nothing about elves or magic; this has to be completely different from Bordertown, although I think two different kinds of worlds colliding would be one cool possibility ...)
If you have any ideas for a shared world, I would love love love to hear them. I hope some of you want to do this! Even if it was just a little group of friends sharing original stories, I still think that would be totally awesome, because I'd love to see how y'all's minds work outside of the SPN milieu.