Keith Hamilton Cobb on Tyr
May. 16th, 2005 11:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wiseheartI've discovered something utterly amazing today. I followed a hint given in a story on the Andromeda Uncovered site, the home of good, honest Andromeda smut from slash through het to multiples (yes, I'm a Tyr/Harper 'shipper, so shoot me!), and found Keith Hamilton Cobb's website:
www.keithhamiltoncobb.com
It's actually run by the actor himself, and it had a link to The Ancestor's Breath, KHC's own musings about Nietzschean life, spoken through the character he played in the first three seasons of Andromeda, Tyr Anasazi.
I've only read bits and pieces so far, but I'm completely blown away. As I'm currently working on a Tyr-centered Andromeda AU, the discovery couldn't have come at a better time. How could a writer get better into a charcter's mindset than through the thougts of the actor who played said character so excellently as KHC did with Tyr?
And the guy is an excellent writer, too. I guess, having played Shakespeare for a long time does rub off to an actor, eh?
Actually, my main complain with Andromeda genfic is that the writing is usually so poor. The people who write it are great fans of the show and serious hobby-writers who are honestly trying, but the style is just too flat for my taste.
Especially the male writers usually rush the whole thing to finally get to the action (no, I don't mean sex, I mean action, in the primary sense of the world). They usually have good ideas, and they understand more from the technical background and the military stuff than I can ever hope to imagine, but the stories are just... flat. There's no better expression for it.
There's no description, no background facts given, barely a glimpse into the characters' mind, and the dialogue is, well... all characters sound just the same. I haven't even had the chance to watch the show in original, but having read the transcripts even I know what a different style, what different speech patterns the individual characters had. At least in the first two seasons, before TPTB castrated all individuality out of them.
Interestingly enough, slash writers seem to have a much better writing style, at least in this particular fandom. Of course, most slash writers are women, and women tend to have more patience for details. Granted, there's a great deal of gratuitous smut, impossible pairings, psychological impossibilities, sometimes even blatant ignorance of canon - but the stories are more entertaining. Even despite the godawful purple prosa that often raises its ugly head.
So, on the one hand, we have good stories with interesting ideas, a solid plot, firm knowledge of and great respect for canon. On the other hand, we have sometimes hair-raising plot twists, lots of gratuitous sex, sometimes utter OOC-nes... and the second sort of stories still make a more enjoyable read. I wonder why?
An interesting exception in-between is Kit Mason's story The Recreation of the Warrior. It's the best original approach on Nietzschean culture that I've ever read. Without all that graphicly decriptive smut, it'd be the best Andromeda story I've ever read. It's not bad with the smut, either. I don't mind smut very much. But in the case of this particular story, I think, it's a disadvantage.
I think I'll cross-post this entry to the Otherworlds board. Maybe someone picks up the topic. My latest efforts didn't gain much interest. *g*
www.keithhamiltoncobb.com
It's actually run by the actor himself, and it had a link to The Ancestor's Breath, KHC's own musings about Nietzschean life, spoken through the character he played in the first three seasons of Andromeda, Tyr Anasazi.
I've only read bits and pieces so far, but I'm completely blown away. As I'm currently working on a Tyr-centered Andromeda AU, the discovery couldn't have come at a better time. How could a writer get better into a charcter's mindset than through the thougts of the actor who played said character so excellently as KHC did with Tyr?
And the guy is an excellent writer, too. I guess, having played Shakespeare for a long time does rub off to an actor, eh?
Actually, my main complain with Andromeda genfic is that the writing is usually so poor. The people who write it are great fans of the show and serious hobby-writers who are honestly trying, but the style is just too flat for my taste.
Especially the male writers usually rush the whole thing to finally get to the action (no, I don't mean sex, I mean action, in the primary sense of the world). They usually have good ideas, and they understand more from the technical background and the military stuff than I can ever hope to imagine, but the stories are just... flat. There's no better expression for it.
There's no description, no background facts given, barely a glimpse into the characters' mind, and the dialogue is, well... all characters sound just the same. I haven't even had the chance to watch the show in original, but having read the transcripts even I know what a different style, what different speech patterns the individual characters had. At least in the first two seasons, before TPTB castrated all individuality out of them.
Interestingly enough, slash writers seem to have a much better writing style, at least in this particular fandom. Of course, most slash writers are women, and women tend to have more patience for details. Granted, there's a great deal of gratuitous smut, impossible pairings, psychological impossibilities, sometimes even blatant ignorance of canon - but the stories are more entertaining. Even despite the godawful purple prosa that often raises its ugly head.
So, on the one hand, we have good stories with interesting ideas, a solid plot, firm knowledge of and great respect for canon. On the other hand, we have sometimes hair-raising plot twists, lots of gratuitous sex, sometimes utter OOC-nes... and the second sort of stories still make a more enjoyable read. I wonder why?
An interesting exception in-between is Kit Mason's story The Recreation of the Warrior. It's the best original approach on Nietzschean culture that I've ever read. Without all that graphicly decriptive smut, it'd be the best Andromeda story I've ever read. It's not bad with the smut, either. I don't mind smut very much. But in the case of this particular story, I think, it's a disadvantage.
I think I'll cross-post this entry to the Otherworlds board. Maybe someone picks up the topic. My latest efforts didn't gain much interest. *g*
