Is this finally a conundrum that CAN'T be solved with helicopter theft?

[minxy]

Heh: T-Rex On Hidden Talents.

First time, standing apart. Walking the line of sex buddies and something more emotional, with an exit clause. Plus points for sneaky and effective use of tense changes: Something Guys Do from princessofg, who continues to provide wonderfully fresh, new Jack/Daniel. Hard R. S4ish.

From the Teyla ficathon, a darker femmeslash: strong women, surviving and finding that gives them more in common than they have with anyone else. Do No Harm, Teyla/Cadman, R, from alizarin_nyc.

kellifer_fic's entertaining drinking fic: It's the Firewater That Gets You. I love Ronon. I'm just saying. John & Rodney, G rated, humor.

Long, plotty Sam & Jack with a great premise: What if, one day, Sam just lost it and snapped and went a bit AWOL. Frankly, I'm stunned it hasn't happened, but it was with great foresight that Jojo had Maybourne approach her with a proposal in a story that played right into Season 5's Desperate Measures. It also does that thing where characters are allowed to have faults, and make mistakes, and accept consequences, and drive their friends to the edge. Daniel and Teal'c exist in this very nicely and importantly and as players in relationships that stand on their own and are as important as the great unspoken thing between Sam and Jack. And when they're pushed to the edge, you do find out exactly what it would take to get them to talk. Crisis, by Jojo, PG-13.

There was one about Rodney being insomniac. In fact, I think I read a DVD commentary on that one. Seems appropriate. I'll just go look for it for a moment... Oh, here is is: Solutions by teaphile, with DVD commentary here. John/Rodney, first time, cliche/kink challenge. NC-17.

And now, some brief meta, for I have not been sleeping well do to impending dissertation defense. Sure, it's in over a month, but there are deadlines and administration and there's work to do and advisors to badger and inconsistant people who must come through for me though there really isn't much precident... and I am sliiiiightly insomniac. But I'm working on it.

As per discussion with princessofg, using a hard POV in a fic is something that's a choice of the author, but is it a strength of fanfiction that T.V. or performances can't do as well? It seems to me that the camera's eye on screen is by default an omniscient POV, although I remember in bits of Ascension where the camera quite deliberately took on the POV of a floaty alien Orlin. In writing fanfic, I remember getting the first piece of beta advice alerting me to some alarming head hopping, and while omniscient POV in fic doesn't put me off, it's something I don't do well and try to deliberately avoid in my own writing.

There is a interesting side effect of hard character POV, though, and that's that if your character is unreliable or doesn't notice something or isn't there, you really can't get that information to the reader without telling your character or being very sneaky. T.V., on the other hand, can switch A to B storylines quite easily, and has been known to even jump clean away from our heroes and show wacky stuff like the badguys hanging out together, which is probably a more efficient way of doing things, but automatically filters the reactions through the audiences opinions rather than a characters opinions. I really like the intimacy of a hard POV, though, it's a direct and immediate way to access emotions and show how they're thinking by what they're registering. It's the anticipation of a first time when you really don't know how the other character is going to react, vs a foregone conclusion. Not that that is the only kind of tension, but it's an interesting kind.

I do suppose the camerawork itself is a (literal, har,) lens into the onscreen scene, and a director might suggest more intimacy with a two shot or aggression with a low angle, but even then, it's the directors POV you're getting.

Has Stargate ever followed just one character's POV in a hard way? If a hero is on his own, I suppose. Say, Daniel in The Summit/whateverthesecondepwascalled, but in a snap, they'll pull back to the Tok'ra planet and show stuff Daniel knows nothing about, and not particularly commit to Teal'c or Sam or Jack's POV there. In Alias early seasons, there was a significant commitment to Sydney's POV, and she carried you into and out of every scene, but apparently it almost flattened Jennifer Garner into exhaustion, so by S3 they'd introduced the idea of scenes that don't include Sydney, and there was much grumbling amongst the fans.

Anyway, insomniac inability to remember the scathing conclusion I was going to draw here, so tell me moments in fanfic where you thought a character's POV really changed the way the story unfolded (I really enjoyed writing Daniel as an unreliable narrator in Like No One is Watching, for example), or instances where omniscient POV made it a better action fic or something (do you find the omniscient POV better lends itself to fanfic that feels like an episode? That might have been my whiz-bang conclusion.) Any times when you remember canon committing to a hard character POV?

Maybe Beneath the Surface? Because we do get reintroduced to the characters, and don't follow Daniel until he's introduced to us through Jack...

Or the Changeling, which might be the best example, since Teal'c is effectively in a series of AUs and dreamscapes, so he more than many other episodes, is the standout hero of his dreams, and his is the only POV that matters. It isn't until he is discovered and at least partially stabilized at the SGC that the audience hears any other opinions other than Teal'c's, and even then, he's still in the room.

But then, Teal'c stories don't often overlap well with the other heroes, since he is a bit removed.

Thoughts? Ideas? Coherent arguments? Bring it.

OMG, I need to sleep. How do people handle this for a lifetime? I've only missed out on less than my normal 8 hours for a couple of nights in a row and I'm loopy. Of course, I'm not sleeping due to panic, so that could be causing the loopiness.

Comments

[alizarin-nyc.livejournal.com]

EEEEEE! Thank you so much for the rec. I'm honored beyond measure and feeling rather puffed up for having my first attempt at femmeslash do so well in your eyes. raqs will deflate me tomorrow.

I really like the intimacy of a hard POV, though, it's a direct and immediate way to access emotions and show how they're thinking by what they're registering.

I do too! And I love that fanfic has that limited POV. However, I think in a lot of novels that I've read, it's not that way. A Henry James drawing room, for example, may show you the tiny turn of a wrist and the sidelong glance across the room but rarely does he put forward the intimate POV, rather lets the reader draw the conclusions that they will.

So I'm thinking that what I find in fanfic is a character POV rather than an omniscient narrator. Novels have a narrator, who is all-seeing if not altogether reliable, but it's at such a remove and I wonder (now, having read this post), why fanfic differs so much. It is likely because we, the fans, want to get closer to our favorite characters. We want to see and be inside their heads. That's the point of fanfic, I think.

Sleep my darling Minxy, sleeeeeep!

[http://users.livejournal.com/_minxy_/]

You know, one day you're going to figure out that I'm not all that, and I will feel bad for falling so spectacularly off my pedastal. Hope I don't break anything on the way down.

In the meantime, though, I will reaffirm that I did enjoy that story so much, partly for the complexity of the relationship, partly for omgTeyla, partly for the women and in a big way because it was dark. That really got to me, and I am so enjoying the implications for them. Especially as they are women, and so much of the femmeslash, at least that I've seen, is so comfort laden, that the the softness contrasts nicely with the dark themes, and balances out.

My favorite bit of intimate POV is that sometimes, it's really not overt, what you're doing with your narrator. You can have Teal'c registering that Sam is horizonal on the couch and have him think that she is tired, without really realizing that she is also comfortable enough in his presence to let her guard down completely. Snazzy things like letting the reader draw conclusions your character hasn't made yet. Fun. Yay!

Interesting difference between limited and intimate POV, though. I must ponder.

One of the biggest barriers to writing any kind of full length novel for me is the omniscient narrator. I don't like that style nearly as much. I do think, for a new character(s), you would be taking a huge risk focusing really absolutely on a single night watching a movie, where with our fandom characters it adds a unique moment to the canon and fanon and wealth of information we have about them. It's probably really freeing to have that background here, where with original characters it might be a huge risk or require confidence and dexterity that many of us lack.

I caaaaaaan't sleeeeeeeep! OMG! It's past midnight. I'm turning off the light. I need my beauty sleep.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_minxy_/]

Actual looking at the clock indicates it is really nearly 1 in the morning.

I think there will be no more actual looking at the clock.