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Apr. 9th, 2006 12:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
icarusPet peeve time!
I confess, kids in fanfiction bug me.
It's not that I don't like kids. We get along just fine, kids and I. It's just that there's a certain -- certain... people write the kids like they're extensions of their parents.
They look like their fanfiction parents.
They act like their fanfiction parents.
They have similar talents as their fanfiction parents.
They aren't treated as if they are OCs, when really, they ought to be.
Why are they written this way?
Folks, the human method of procreation is designed to mix and match our DNA in such a way that we have a random slice of our parents' genetic code. In addition, that randomization expresses different dominant and recessive traits. Additionally, while I do not believe in Tabula Rasa (no insult to the fine fanfiction writer of that name) I do believe that our experiences do have an impact. There is no way that the fanfic kid's experiences are the same as their parents, so their personalities are going to be radically different.
Why the hell do people go ga-ga over fanfic kids who look or act like their fanfic parents? I'm not into the ga-ga over kids thing anyway, kids are just people as far as I'm concerned, but there's something troubling in the fact that writers forget this fact.
I actually brought my MPreg Reunion to a screeching halt over this issue. Someone sent me a photomanip of what the baby (which I never promised would ever exist) would look like, combining traits from Ron and Draco. Augh!
An entire chapter of that story was devoted to creating kids that were real people and not just one-dimensional extensions of the fanfic parents. Ron's four kids were not cute. Not a single one was like Ron. His youngest little girl was pampered and hurting and a little angry over his divorce, demanding his attention when he was trying to talk to Harry. Ron couldn't control his two oldest -- he was too mellow a parent -- and the third middle child was bright, quiet, and simmering with resentment. They had little lives of their own, and they were pretty miserable.
When Draco's daughter turned up, you were going to find a rigidly correct little stick, wan and smothered by the expectations of her Dad. She didn't have Draco's feisty rebellious spirit so the same parenting that led to Draco's constantly forgetting his father's advice and battling Harry turned her into a virtual paper doll.
But I couldn't battle the kid-lovers. They wanted Ron and Draco's kid to be just like them, ignored the real kids, and panted after the baaaaaby.
Sometimes I strongly suspect that people love babies because they can project their own image of who that person is onto them. Which is precisely why I like young kids over babies: when they're that tiny it's hard to tell who they are.
I confess, kids in fanfiction bug me.
It's not that I don't like kids. We get along just fine, kids and I. It's just that there's a certain -- certain... people write the kids like they're extensions of their parents.
They look like their fanfiction parents.
They act like their fanfiction parents.
They have similar talents as their fanfiction parents.
They aren't treated as if they are OCs, when really, they ought to be.
Why are they written this way?
Folks, the human method of procreation is designed to mix and match our DNA in such a way that we have a random slice of our parents' genetic code. In addition, that randomization expresses different dominant and recessive traits. Additionally, while I do not believe in Tabula Rasa (no insult to the fine fanfiction writer of that name) I do believe that our experiences do have an impact. There is no way that the fanfic kid's experiences are the same as their parents, so their personalities are going to be radically different.
Why the hell do people go ga-ga over fanfic kids who look or act like their fanfic parents? I'm not into the ga-ga over kids thing anyway, kids are just people as far as I'm concerned, but there's something troubling in the fact that writers forget this fact.
I actually brought my MPreg Reunion to a screeching halt over this issue. Someone sent me a photomanip of what the baby (which I never promised would ever exist) would look like, combining traits from Ron and Draco. Augh!
An entire chapter of that story was devoted to creating kids that were real people and not just one-dimensional extensions of the fanfic parents. Ron's four kids were not cute. Not a single one was like Ron. His youngest little girl was pampered and hurting and a little angry over his divorce, demanding his attention when he was trying to talk to Harry. Ron couldn't control his two oldest -- he was too mellow a parent -- and the third middle child was bright, quiet, and simmering with resentment. They had little lives of their own, and they were pretty miserable.
When Draco's daughter turned up, you were going to find a rigidly correct little stick, wan and smothered by the expectations of her Dad. She didn't have Draco's feisty rebellious spirit so the same parenting that led to Draco's constantly forgetting his father's advice and battling Harry turned her into a virtual paper doll.
But I couldn't battle the kid-lovers. They wanted Ron and Draco's kid to be just like them, ignored the real kids, and panted after the baaaaaby.
Sometimes I strongly suspect that people love babies because they can project their own image of who that person is onto them. Which is precisely why I like young kids over babies: when they're that tiny it's hard to tell who they are.
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Date: 2006-04-09 11:38 pm (UTC)As for artist talent, it does tend to flow in families, but sometimes I wonder if it's less rare and more that most people who have latent artistic ability don't have an opportunity to develop it in our society. We might be seeing a social phenomenon more than a genetic one. The opportunity to develop artistically is put into to good soil, so to speak, and then the rareness of that is set on a pedestal that encourages the kids to keep going. Coming from a Waldorf school where art was something that pervaded every class, I find it difficult to say that this or that kid is artistically gifted, since I've seen fine artwork done by kids who were largely the class jocks.
Back to fanfic... I think there's a lack of creativity when fanfic kids are written to be so similar to their parents. I can see in A Beautiful Lifetime Event that Hypatia would imitate Rodney because heck, when she was growing up he had all the answers to the "why" questions. No doubt she was impressed.
What doesn't make sense is when it's automatic: Snape's kids are always potions prodigies. Look at the Weasley family. We believe in them, yet is there any connection between the kids' talents and their parents'? No. Charlie loves dragons, Bill's a curse-breaker, the twins talented inventors... of all the kids, the only ones who come close to being like Arthur are the twins and Percy. And not by much. That feels real.
Icarus