#the bratty dialogue is the best imo

[generallyyapping]

One of my favourite scenes lowkey:

[zdbztumble]

My god...I’d given up hope of seeing it outside of Revelation Lugia, but as Yoda once said, there is another...

Another pokefilm where a travelling companion gets an actual arc!

Not just an arc - Max’s friendship with Jirachi forms the core of the plot. That friendship is very sweet and believable. Jirachi’s a cute character, and Max is at his slightly bratty but innocent best. Ash is in a mentor/supporting role this time ‘round, and plays the part well. Even in the climax, he doesn’t end up arbitrarily acting as the hero; he’s part of the team that saves the day, but not its star. This film puts him to better use than most of them IMO. And having the heroes work together with the “villain” at the end is novel. On paper, Jirachi Wish Maker should be among the best of the pokefilms.

On paper.

I’ve critiqued the pace of most of these flicks, but this one has unique challenges on that front. It’s a very choppy plot. By that I mean that individual scenes and sequences may be well-constructed and effective, but there’s not a great organic flow from one to the next. The first attack by Absol’s a good example. It’s a nifty little bit of action, but it just happens in the midst of other things without a clear set-up and without a good lead-in to the next scene. Compounding this problem is the decision to structure the story around one week. That’s not an inherently bad way to organize a movie’s plot, but the danger of it is that, when not done carefully, it can feel...well, as I said already, choppy. It doesn’t help that the timing is a bit funky with the days of the week; the first few get a decent amount of screen time, the middle few are breezed over, and the last one eats up nearly half the movie.

There are also story elements here that just don’t work IMO. The opening sequence with the TRio feels like something from a typical episode thrown in here for padding. The melodramatic romance between Butler and Diane is plagued by hammy dialogue and the fact that Butler isn’t a very likable guy. But most out of place is Groudon. The situation here isn’t quite as bad as the one with Yveltal in Diancie; at least the idea the Groudon will play a part in the film is introduced early on. But Jirachi is a Pokemon with the reputed power to grant wishes, and the confirmed power to teleport. Both these things would make her a prized target for any villain. To ultimately want her just to revive another Pokemon - one that amounts to a bland kaiju at that - feels like a bit of a waste. The animation of the fake Groudon is impressive, and its powers and attacks have a bit of Miyazakian flavor to them, but I think they would have done better to have Jirachi as the one featured Pokemon.

When I realized that Max and Jirachi’s story would carry the picture, I kind of hoped that this film would take the “Best Role for a Traveling Companion” crown from Lugia. But because the plot is so riddled with issues, Max’s arc, charming though it is, just doesn’t gel as nicely as Misty’s in Lugia. It’s a case of the main relationship of a story being solid, but the structure and execution of the plot around that relationship dragging things down.

Now, for its technical weaknesses on the story front, Jirachi is a very entertaining movie. From Mewtwo’s cape in the (ever baffling) introduction sequence to the candy scene to a great exchange by Jessie and James (”do I look blind?” “That would explain the hair.”) this film is full of fun little details and moments. At the risk of being repetitive, the main friendship is very endearing. And it was so good to hear the 4Kids cast again after going through so many films in the hands of TCPi. I can’t say I found the lullabye the dub provided especially memorable, but having an all-around solid cast, cast in appropriate roles, is so welcome at this point. Veronica Taylor doesn’t get enough credit for subtly tweaking her Ash voice to reflect his growing maturity in the AG era.

...And yeah, now that I’ve seen it in context, that “a good friend left me” line is right up there with “you don’t need beauty sleep” and the “Misty’s Goodbye” song in the “4Kids Pokeshipping That Should Have Been in the Original” contest. And, lest ye forget, there aren’t that many contenders for that prize.

[brujahinaskirt]

Stylized Fandoms - or, when It’s All The Same, but also It Isn’t.

NECESSARY STUFF: The OP above gave full permission to use their post as a launchpad for this commentary, so please don’t mistake this as either endorsement or criticism, and please do not mistake it as a group invitation to attack. I’ve written about this phenomenon in the Rowling fandom before and this gives me another excuse. Plus, as someone who tried to join a fandom via this writing strategy and failed, I think I can contribute some thought fodder on the issue of content sameness.

I’m bout to drop an essay, hobbits. This essay isn’t, however, a critique. This is a non-evaluative observation and a writing theory. And, finally, an open question to fellow fic writers.

BASE OBSERVATION: The dominant writing styles in book-based fandoms mirror and pay homage to the style of the original author.

In Summary: The Hobbit fandom (and the Harry Potter fandom, which I originally theorized about) experiences a high degree of stylistic sameness as a whole because a lot of stories attempt to recreate Bilbo’s voice as it appeared in Tolkien’s first-person-via-third-person POV technique. They achieve this, naturally, by following the original text. This trend may be especially pronounced for The Hobbit as opposed to the Lord of the Rings or Silmarillion works because Tolkien’s narratorial voice is more exaggerated – if not better-written – in The Hobbit.

Now, to break that down a little more.

Tolkien’s Hobbit style contains a few highly recognizable elements that stick out to a contemporary prose reader: sentence structure that mimics speech, brisk dialogue, use of mundane exchanges to instill realism, avoidance of emotional description, exclamation use, childlike diction, minimalistic characterization, parentheticals, verse, sweeping summarization as an alternative to scene, laboriously expanded setting descriptions that prioritize listing physical details over atmospheric metaphor, reliance on simple/well-known similes, frank delivery of fantastical elements and world mythology, limited access to character feelings, and huge time skips. When an author chooses to maintain most of these at once without selective deletion or without constantly highlighting their own personal stylistic flourishes, we get something that sounds  – ‘course – super Tolkienesque.

There’s a really dominant style in Snicket’s fandom, too. And Butler, Bradbury, Rowling, Gaiman, etc. Which is important to note, because…

Generally speaking, stylized writing tends to be more popular, more memorable, and more marketable than contemporary “high literary” minimalism. And it’s more likely to have intensely stylized fandoms. Which makes sense; book-readers generally come to fanfic because they want more of published content that is already familiar to them in some way. It follows that one of the reasons those style-adherent/style-preserving Hobbit fics are so successful is because they gain a lot of traction with people who are specifically looking for recreations of Tolkien’s writing style. (Since stylized writing isn’t really prominent on those abovementioned literary main markets anymore, I think this is a large part of his lasting appeal.)

Let’s take a quick look at the opening chapters of a few of the most popular, widely-read fics in this fandom to pinpoint what I’m getting at. I’ve only sampled first chapters here – mainly because I don’t want to spoil ‘em for anyone.

First, from the illustrious Sansûkh:

"You have come to a place of rest, Thorin son of Thráin," said the voice, and Thorin blinked furiously, trying to make out the voice's owner in the gloom. His excellent Dwarven dark- vision did not seem to be working, and he began to push himself up onto his elbows. He was unclad, and his skin shivered and prickled in the icy darkness.

"Explain," he snarled. "And show yourself!"

"Patience," the voice chided. It did not sound angry at Thorin's disrespect. Rather, it sounded fond, even fatherly. "Do calm yourself. Your sight will return."

In my opinion, this style is the pinnacle of faithfulness to Tolkien’s Hobbit voice. Taking a minute to identify Tolkien elements, we observe a skilled and almost intimidatingly close use of: Tolkien dialogue, Tolkien exclamation patterns, Tolkien diction, Tolkien avoidance of emotional description, Tolkien character access, Tolkien rhythm and tempo, and much more as we continue to later chapters.

From A Shot in the Dark:

Shaking, he scrambled out beneath the mountain of blankets and quilts and stumbled over to the mirror. Grasping the edge of it, he stared at the face of the young Hobbit before him with freckled skin and thick brown curls, and felt something in him crack.

"I'm young again," he said aloud, watching the face in front of him repeat his words. "I'm young again, and in my old house in Bag End before I went to Erebor—"

Understanding dawned on him and brought him to his knees. He recalled now, a story from long ago, of a Hobbit lass that had watched her beloved die in an accident. When she awoke the day after his funeral, she found herself reliving the days before the accident over and over again, and was able to save her beloved from his cruel fate.

Obviously, this fic – and every fic – displays subtle voice differences from Tolkien (and, by extention, other fic writers). And thank goodness for that, or how would an author develop a fanbase at all? That said, we can see a lot of Tolkienesque, highly attentive and skillful patterning in the prose itself, the vantage point, the syntax, and the overall voice.

Just a few more clear examples of this homage-style at its best and brightest:

An Expected Journey:

An ancient hobbit lay in a soft bed below them. His eyes were closed. There was a breeze coming in through the open window that made his thin white curls stir slightly. The sheets lifted with each shallow breath and Bilbo realized that he was looking down at himself and that he was dying. There was a pale cast to his features that showed that he was not much longer for this world. Outside, Frodo sat in the garden the elves had gifted them, a book in one hand and a half-eaten apple in the other.  A smile made his face light up as he turned the page and there was an inner peace about him that helped to settle Bilbo’s fretful heart a little. His nephew would be happy here and maybe with time the pain of his wounds, the ones on his heart especially, would diminish. No doubt he would miss his uncle, but that was such a small thing that it hardly seemed to matter now.

“Change is a fickle thing. Remember this in your journey, Bilbo Baggins, and perhaps you will be able to alter history after all.”

The hobbit in the bed took its last breath and was still. Frodo closed his book.

Comes Around Again:

“Come on, slug-a-bed,” his mother called. “Time to rise.”

Gimli blinked at the ceiling. Was he in the Halls of Mahal? He didn’t expect them to look quite so much like his room in Ered Luin. He pushed himself up to look.

The room was exactly as he remembered: dark, lit by lamps shining blue-green with the glowing plants that lived in the deep, dark places, and with grime caked in corners that he could never scrub clean. There was the crack in his wall, more an eyesore than a danger. The tapestry he had hung to hide it, his first and last attempt at loom-work, had fallen again. The stone face was too brittle. His chest of drawers, also a product of his hands, stood straight and even, if modestly decorated. His mirror, tinted green with age and spotted black, had been a relic found when they had come to these mountains when he was a lad. Between his drawers and his trunk lay his things: his training axe, his ‘prentice tools, a pile of clothing that would quickly become far too small for his growing frame.

[Purely an aside: You may notice a striking similarity of introductory schemas, too! Most of these fics begin with the classic “protagonist wakes up” scene popularly found in all storytelling mediums – but given the tragic nature of the source material, it’s become a “wake up from death” scene. This, though, is not a precedent set by Tolkien; it’s a marker the Hobbit fandom gravitated to all on its own. How? I dunno, exactly; seems like it just kind of happened that way. Cool question, if you’re a writer/literary critic/English major type.]

Please note here that I am completely uninterested in debating how good these fics are (or any fics, for that matter). Frankly, my dear, I do not give a damn whether or not you love Sansûkh, A Shot in the Dark, An Expected Journey, or Comes Around Again. What’s indisputable and relevant is that all of these fics are extremely successful. For the sake of this piece, we’re going to put artistic innovation on the back-burner and define successful by two measures: 1. sustained popularity, and 2. accurate replication of their source text. Do they achieve the dominant fandom (original author) style, and does this style reap the harvest of massive audience feedback? It’s hard to argue no, regardless of how these fics measure up to your personal tastes.

To put it another way: If you misread this essay as a rallying cry, then go and yell at individual authors for making successful creative choices, I DON’T KNOW YOU, and what’s your fuckin’ problem? That’s like yelling at one person for painting their room green because you feel there’s too much green in the world. These writers are fandom tone-setters. They know their room is green; they picked it because they like green, not because they aren’t skilled interior designers. Targeting a writer for a style trend is not helpful; it’s bratty, it’s misguided, and it’s futile.

So why would anyone worry about this? If overwhelming majorities are deliberately seeking works that recreate the experience of reading Tolkien’s prose, and writers are having great success with that style, are there any drawbacks?

IMO, there’s one big one. In fandoms like this one, I think authors can come to feel beholden to Tolkien’s style – like if they don’t recreate it, their fic will flounder  – and that danger zone, not homage, is where creativity and variety come to die.

This can put a fic writer in the uncomfortable position of making a choice between three imperfect options:

Faithfully reconstruct and largely adhere to Tolkien’s style. (This is the choice most Big Fic writers in any book-based fandom make. On the downside, this limitation can feel creatively constricting. It should, however, be mentioned that some writers find this strategy ultimately increases their creativity – the stylistic constraints demand they make more daring creative choices in other realms, such as plot or characterization.)

Ignore the original materials. (The downside here is obvious: In a book-based fandom, this choice is likely to significantly decrease traffic on Page One and therefore decrease responses to your fic. As the overwhelming majority of fic writers will attest to, nothing kills a fic faster than a writer who feels like no one is interested.)

Take the middle-road. Borrow a few secondary elements from Tolkien; consistently prioritize core elements of your natural style while deliberately limiting his. (Runs the same risks as the above example. This can also be incredibly difficult, especially for newer writers who haven’t quite settled on their natural style yet, or for authors whose natural styles conflict with Tolkien’s. It’s more complex than saying “get gud scrub.” Many new writers use fandom to begin the process of creative self-discovery. This process takes years of constant writing and is arguably never finished. Long story short: We can’t simply foist this strategy upon everyone and sustain a thriving book fandom.)

To more fully illustrate the pitfalls of Option Three, let me turn the criticism on myself and my own floundered fic – one of the nameless masses out there that never got airborne.

I tried out the middle-road mentality: taking a few major elements of Tolkien’s style and weaving it with personal storytelling priorities. But since some of my priorities are in direct contrast with Tolkien’s style – the style I tried to lean on! – and since his style is so dominant, I think I ultimately left readers feeling duped. 

For the sake of this theory, maybe we can take my common experience and apply it to why stylized fandom functions as it does. My primary failure was that those Tolkien elements I wrote in effectively set up a story contract I had no intention of fulfilling. To explain: You’d not be out-of-the-norm in this fandom to spot those telltale Tolkien signs and expect to get the whole Tolkien suite, and you’d not be out-of-the-norm to feel disappointed when you end up somewhere you specifically didn’t want to go… namely, stuff that isn’t like Tolkien.

In my story’s case, the Tolkien seduction might be his parentheticals, and the disappointment might be winding up at action scene, lots of emotional description, and snotty diction – all antitheses to Tolkien. People don’t usually come to Tolkien for those elements, so it stands to reason they don’t often come to Tolkien fanfic for them. And it stands to reason they’d feel confused or even cheated when the contract they expected carefully set itself up only to run off to the Keys with some nobody from accounting.

Option Three can feel, to those readers, like a carefully constructed scam.

In fact, I wonder if contract-thinking is one of the major reasons why the readers who feel dissatisfied with the dominant Hobbit style find themselves flummoxed by all this. Tolkien’s Hobbit voice is obviously married to and designed for Bilbo. If you’re not paying pedantic attention to the writerly mechanics (maybe even if you are), hearing Tolkien’s Bilbo-voice transposed over another character’s POV can be a disorienting experience – if you’re in this particular reader’s shoes, something sounds off, but you can’t quite put your finger on what it is.

SUPPORTING NOTE: I see this sameness happening at some level with characterizations, too. For The Hobbit, this strikes me as especially true with characterizations of the dwarven people as a whole – their culture in fandom tends to appear as traditionally male-prioritizing, Western nuclear family-based, and (strangely, given the Jewish inspiration roots of the dwarves) Christian-toned. They are also often considered by fandom to be among the more progressive Tolkien civilizations, but that by itself isn’t saying too much. (I expect this is because patriarchal habits are so prevalent in Tolkien’s canonical civilizations, even in the ones that aren’t supposed to be.)

OPPOSING NOTE: The biggest characterization element I can’t reconcile with this theory, annoyingly enough, is my personal pet peeve: the romantic feminization of Bilbo. It’s often found in fandom and often grounded in sexist stereotypes, but is not a feature of Tolkien’s original works. That’s another essay, though, and I’ve already rambled long enough.

On to the open question!

It’s probably too late to dismantle a dominant style in a fandom as longstanding as this one – and anyway, the cost-benefits of dismantling any style trend are sketchy at best. In general, though, I wonder what can be done to neutralize the more damaging byproducts. Specifically, how can we stop that “contract” dead in its tracks, and prevent fic writers from feeling obligated to an original author’s style?

Any ideas, folks? I’m scratching my head.

(Also, if you read all this, I love you.)

Special thanks to determamfidd, MarieJacquelyn, scarletjedi, and Silver_pup -- whose works were cited in this analysis without solicitation -- for writing, and for providing hours upon hours of joy to your thankful, hungry fans.

EDIT: Edited to clearly explain how fic “success” is defined here, as well as to further prune any impressions of my personal fic preferences. Success, in this essay, is quantified partly by number of kudos/comments a piece receives and partly by the closeness of its style mechanics to Tolkien’s. These quantifiers are used here solely to explore the relationship between popularity and stylization. In the broader world, popularity on its own is a poor measure of quality or artistic merit. (And it would kind of break my heart if you left this essay feeling down about your own work. Writers out there, please know that’s not at all the implication.)

In simpler terms: Just because it ain’t famous, honey, doesn’t mean you ain’t damn good at what you do.