fadagaski | Thoughts of a ficcish nature, part 177,950

Regarding Avatar: I understand that this film kinda sucked a little. The CGI was, of course, first rate cutting edge modern awesomeness. Everything else, from the plotline to the characterisation to even the score in some parts, was cliched and well-worn to the point where I half-expected the General to say "No, Luke. I am your father!"

But.

Am I really the only person on the whole of Livejournal who kind of wants to read fic about this strange new planet and all these kooky people? I know that every single character is one-dimensional (pun entirely intended), but I think that makes it more exciting because there are more gaps to fill, more things to explore! It's like Harry Potter, where every adult character is exactly who JKR needs them to be until they're needed to be someone else (see: Sirius Black).

I would like to read about how Jake's experiences in jungle warfare on Earth impacted adapting to life on Pandora (no PTSD? What about tactics? Similarities? Peculiar habits? Memories?). Or how about filling that huge span of time between Neytiri putting the gas mask on human!Jake's face and them deporting RDA. First of all, how do you coordinate the logistics of evacuating a base of humans that have been there for 30+ years and send them back to Earth at the same time? What happens to the other Avatar drivers like Norm? For that matter, what happens to the non-Avatar drivers like Max? Do they stay out of choice, or because piling into a ship with the humans you just defeated is suicidal? How much power/food do the humans have left on Pandora? And what about Jake and Neytiri? You don't just have your 8' tall blue girlfriend rescue you from your crazy Gundam boss and then decide to gamble your entire life on a semi-sentient planet transferring your entire consciousness from your human body to your blank Avatar through a tree conduit. What's the story there? And that's just the two I thought of when I watched it again this afternoon.

In regards to Star Trek XI, I still have this one fic that I'm trying to write, but I'm having issues with style and voice. It's from Gaila's POV (another blank-canvas-character. Sensing a theme?) but I can't decide how to tell the story. Most Gaila-fics (the good ones, with depth) have a kind of over-arching style where the reader is half-linked into Gaila's thoughts and time passes in blobs that serve to pick out the prudent parts of her history that make the point. The best writer by far is

igrockspock and she employs this style a lot, which I think my Muse is trying to emulate. I think it would suit the flow of the story, too, and I have a succinct writing pattern anyway. But I'm reluctant to throw my eggs into that basket purely because it's quite a common narrative style in fanfic now (see: every 5Times fic ever written). So do I go with the style that is trying to come out or do I try to write something more structured?

Gah! Fic = hard.

Current Mood: pensive
Current Location: Birtley
Current Music: Shuichi and Yuki - Gravitation OST