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

[moonshayde.livejournal.com]

I've always been a fan of limited 3rd person pov, whether it's for one character throughout the whole story or for a character per scene. It just fits for me. I am rather against the omniscient pov, for writing. I feel differently for TV and film...with both of those I think some limited pov is nice, but it makes sense for those media to shake things up a bit. It's necessary to move the story along, especially if you have an ensemble cast or something. If the whole poitn of the movie or the film is to mislead you, then obviously use of the limited pov is more useful.

Some of my best writing has come from the limited pov usage, such as Echoes of Autumn. The whole fic is about an unreliable narrator. All the necessary information to understand what is happening is given in bits and pieces, word usage mby myself, and various clues throughout the text. But since someone like Jack would not have context for this information yet (just like the reader) they don't fall into place until things start to make sense. In that respect, it's much like Changling which was Teal'c's pov until the very end -- scene when he is getting tretonin and unconscious is the only time the episode switches to outside of Teal'c's head.

Other fics I've written, I jump between limited 3rd pov. If a character knows something that I don't want him or her to share, i won't write through their pov for a while. And when I do, I write around some of the information by using a variety of sneaky language that could mean anything.

I don't know. I get very bored when I read something where someone tells me everything that is going on. It's one of those things I stick to rather regularly.

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

All the episodes people are coming up with that had a tighter POV than others are among my favoritest ever. I'm wondering if it's a trend.

But here's a question: do performances need omniscient narration? A play or live performance can still manipulate what you learn by only showing you the scenes a particular character witnesses (a la Sherlock Holmes, I think this is very effective for mysteries) but every reaction on stage, even if that character isn't registering it, can be seen and interpreted by the audience.

In film, it's the director who funnels those reactions through camera frame, restricting and influencing what you as a reader see. They also have time restrictions and a lot to say in that time. Maybe omniscient camera narration is the only way to get enough information across?

In fanfic, an author can focus the vision of the story into the characters POV so tightly that nothing else matters. Is that a strength of fanfiction and written story that other mediums have to try ridiculously hard to emulate? If so, why so many novels in omniscient narration?

[moonshayde.livejournal.com]

You have to remember that tv and film, for example, have 1-3 hours to tell a story. A book can span upwards of 1000 pages. With such a time limit, you need to find ways to move the story along as quickly as possible.

And I don't like omniscient narration in books so I don't read them ;)