Comments on: DC’s Greatest Imaginary Stories

By: Phil

Phil — Sun, 20 Aug 2006 17:16:26 +0000

PS: Both Alan Moore's The Killing Joke and Watchmen (had it been, as originally planned, explicitly featured the Charlton superhero community) can be considered professionally-published good darkfic, in my opinion. The "loony Bruce makes Dick eat rats" subplot of "All Star Batman and Robin" can be considered professionally published bad darkfic.

By: Phil

Phil — Sun, 20 Aug 2006 17:02:41 +0000

Motivations for darkfic – quite often it’s an excuse to ramp up the angst and see how characters behave in extreme circumstances, which is what a lot of media fanficcers are deeply into. It’s also partly a writing exercise and a way to show that you aren’t over-idealising characters – part of the point is to extrapolate from the less sympathetic or moral moments for the characters in canon instead of just doing a “this is an alternate universe where everyone’s evil” story. There’s also an element of pure “see how edgy and controversial I am” in there somewhere.

By: Johanna

Johanna — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 16:51:04 +0000

That’s a good reminder, Lyle, but I assumed what I did because of Phil’s comments about how detailed it is. If bad things happen, then yeah, the message is probably “this is the best of all possible worlds”; if bad things are described in copious detail, then someone’s also getting off on the execution (so to speak).

By: Lyle

Lyle — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 16:12:27 +0000

I hadn’t heard of darkfic before, is it driven by a desire to see bad things happen to the characters or a message of “we should appreciate what we have” — I’m thinking about how many What If? stories take a tone of “That story you wish went differently? Well, the world would’ve ended if that happened.” (Like the ‘What if Phoenix had lived?’ where everything seems fine until Scott dies and Jean loses control of her powers out of the grief.)

By: Johanna

Johanna — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 10:47:22 +0000

Can I just take your word for it? :)

Interesting, I didn’t realize that destructive impulse was so widespread.

I tried it with the only show I’ve ever read fanfic for, “Remington Steele”, and luckily, didn’t find anything. Whew!

By: Phil

Phil — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 10:16:07 +0000

Oh yes. It’s broadly known as “darkfic”. Just try putting that word in a search engine along with the title of a show or comic and you’ll get all the tragedy, madness and depression you could desire. Along with quite a bit of gratuitous sicko violence, unfortunately.

By: Johanna

Johanna — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 01:27:29 +0000

Great point — maybe that’s why they’ve been popular? They get closer to what readers are wondering?

I didn’t realize “everything goes to crap” was a fanfiction cliché, though.

By: Phil

Phil — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 17:59:10 +0000

What interested me was how similar these stories are to fanfiction cliches – the focus on romantic relationships, the offspring stories, the fix-all-the-problems happy-ending story (Red and Blue), the darkfic (all of Superman’s girlfriends dieing horribly, Lex murdering Superman after feigning redemption).