A thought that could also be a question for other writers

[leethet]

Given the upsurge in readership post-movie, I find it feels really odd to me to think of people reading my stories and picturing the movie-verse guys in them. I can't even imagine it - not having seen the film I can't see those actors/characters at all, let alone in my stories - but considering the possibility is really weird.

Am I the only one who thinks about that?

Comments

[elmey.livejournal.com]

Having seen the movie, I can't picture the movie characters in my stories at all. Until you said that, it never occurred to me that someone else might--but I suppose they do. I can't imagine it's a very satisfactory read though.

I tend toward psychological examination of the characters more than anything else and the characters really are very different.tbh when someone says you could read this story and exchange the characters and it would still work, I suspect it's pretty much an any two guys story and pass it by.

[leethet.livejournal.com]

I think it's just that I'm assuming a lot of the hits I've gotten recently are from folks who have only seen the movie - they want some fic, but they aren't viewing the fic as from the series, because they only know the movie. It's a guess, of course, but it was an interesting thought. How do the movie-verse characters fit into a story that has no conception of them?

[elmey.livejournal.com]

I check out the mfu tag on tumblr every now and then. There are definitely some movie fans that have checked out the TV show. I'm sure there are some new readers because of that, but how many I have no idea.

I have noticed (from doing short stories) that anything fairly new marked explicit has had an explosion of readership--I'm not sure all those readers are looking for true to canon characters ;)

[leethet.livejournal.com]

Slash springs eternal! :-)

[spikesgirl58.livejournal.com]

Hey, anything that gets folks to read MFU is not a bad thing.

Hadn't even thought about it myself, so I guess the answer to your question night be yes.

[leethet.livejournal.com]

It just crossed my mind because I think many of the recent hits on my stories have to be from "new" fen who watched the movie and went "Oh, cool." But my stuff would have nothing to do with the movie, in theory. Yet, I've gotten a few kudos - does that mean my stories work with the movie characters? Y'know? You just wonder how new fen are taking your stories.

[spikesgirl58.livejournal.com]

I've been getting tons of kudos as of late for the old stuff by people brand new to me ( and possibly MFU). Perhaps it's not as much the actors as the characters themselves who are capturing people's attention.

[graculus.livejournal.com]

From what I've seen on Tumblr at least (which I accept is hardly a statistically significant sampling method!) a lot of people seem to be watching the movie (& maybe reading associated fic), going 'hey, there's a TV show' and then discovering that said TV show has (a lot of) fic. There seem to be a lot of comments about watching the TV show or asking where they can do that, so I think people aren't just jumping from one to the other.

Are you getting comments that make you think that folks are trying to slot movie-UNCLE characters into TV-UNCLE stories? I have to admit I've seen a up-tick in both folks reading my TV-UNCLE stuff and in kudos for it, but I'd not thought that people were trying to shoehorn characters from what I consider to be a separate universe into another one.

If they are, then I wonder what they make of Pocket!Illya when he appears? ;)

[leethet.livejournal.com]

No one has said anything to that effect, I just assume the upsurge has to be due to the movie and that some of those readers probably haven't seen the TV show, so it made me wonder if they're viewing the movie-verse characters. I mean, if they haven't seen the tv show, they'd have to be viewing the movie-verse characters. It was just an interesting thought.

[gilda-elise.livejournal.com]

Since comments are rarely left, just kudos, I'm not sure if the people reading my stories are fans of the movie, or fans of the show. I did go back and change the heading from "Man from UNCLE" to "Man from UNCLE - TV show," so they should be aware of where my stories are set. And, truly, I think it would be hard to fit the characters from the movies into my stories, since I think there's a big difference between them and those of the show.

I have noticed that I'm getting more readers, but I guess I've sort of hoped that it's new fans of the show, fans who would have seen the movie and become curious about the show.

[leethet.livejournal.com]

Yes, exactly this. I assume because of the timing of the rather noticeable uptick in readership that it had to be due to the movie, and I just assume that at least some of those people won't watch the TV show. Maybe that's an erroneous assumption. :-)

[gilda-elise.livejournal.com]

No, you're probably right. I know it seems to have worked that way in Trek. Some of the people who watched the show went on to watch, and become fans of, the original, but most haven't. At least, that's what I figure going by how many more stories there are now that are reboot. Speaking of which, a MFU movie story was just posted today, so we may start to see the same thing in MFU. I hope not, but it may be too soon to tell.

[st-crispins.livejournal.com]

I've re-read some of my stories with the movie verse in mind. It's not too much of a stretch and with a little jiggling, movie verse readers could still read about half of my stories with no problem.

[leethet.livejournal.com]

It's interesting to think about, isn't it, in terms of authorial intent and reader autonomy?

[st-crispins.livejournal.com]

Yup.

But I have always argued that for fictional characters to truly live, they must be disengaged from the original and reinterpreted.

This is why we have iconic eternal pop culture characters like Sherlock Holmes, Dracula, Frankenstein, Tarzan, Superman and James Bond.

If MFU is to keep going, Solo and Kuryakin must grow beyond Vaughn and McCallum's portrayals.

Although I enjoyed the movie, I will never see them in my head as the movie verse. On the other hand, in fnafic, we've all reinterpreted them already. The new movie just continues the work that the fandom began years ago.