reynard531

Hello everyone. I figured I would try and use this journal to talk about aspects of writing. So here is the first subject: medium bias. It's related to the next subject I plan to write about.

What is medium bias? Well, it's a term I created myself for something in fan fiction. Entertainment and fiction come in many mediums. The first medium of fiction is the written kind, like books. Then you have visual mediums like TV, movies, cartoons, anime, so on and so forth. But when writing fanfic, is everything you see necessarily what happens? You could also call this In-Universe vs. Out-Of-Universe.

Take High School Musical. Yes, I know what you are thinking, but don't go away. I remember seeing a review for a HSM fic, don't remember what it was, where the reviewer said something along the lines of "Troy is stupid, if someone started dancing and singing at random in my school they would be weird." Something like that. They seemed rather serious with that remark.

And that's my example. Truth be told, Troy Bolton was NOT singing at random, anywhere. The students in the cafeteria did NOT break out into song. You may have seen it in the movie, but it did not actually happen in-universe. Musicals are a medium in which a story is told with song and dance numbers mixed in between to entertain us, and to help show us what the characters are thinking and feeling. Those song and dance numbers don't actually happen in the story unless the plot calls for it (like when characters are on stage and performing). So if you where on an Earth where HSM was real, the cafeteria scene would look much different than it did on screen, with no singing, or dancing. People don't do a perfectly choreographed song at random. That reviewed did not understand that concept.

There was actually an HSM fic called "Why Were We Dancing?" that poked fun at this. The male main characters were sitting around and looking at a scrapbook of photos taken during their year in school, and are completely confused and freaked out that in those still pictures, they seem to be singing and dancing. But they don't remember doing that. Really, it was funny.

Another example that comes to my mind is Power Rangers and Sailor Moon. Both shows are from Japan, both involve superheroes. And both have transformation sequences. A common question that gets asked by the fans of both is why the monsters don't attack the heroes while they are transforming. That is a good question. The transformation sequences are elaborate and seem to take a while, so why not cut them off?

The answer could be that they can't. Those sequences are very flashy and stylized, and are probably put in there for aesthetics and to appeal to the typically young target audience. So despite what you see, if you were on an Earth with either group, you might see that the transformations happen a lot faster than on TV.

This is medium bias, the distortions that can happen in a story because of the medium used to present it. This sort of thing happens in musicals, TV, anime, cartoons, so on and so forth, and doesn't happen in books, because books are pure story. It's the difference across the fourth wall, that fictional lens that we the audience use to see the story. Some characters break the fourth wall, like Pinkie Pie from MLP FIM, or Ambush Bug from DC Comics. They're antics stay pretty much as they are simply for humor value, and it's too much apart of their characters.

Another example is from anime, specifically sweat drops and anime falls. I have seen fanfics where it's mentioned that characters do an anime fall or they "sweatdropped". Don't do that. Both are unique to anime, and both are visual puns, the humor really comes in seeing them, and not really from reading it. Maybe it could work if you were writing a parody, but it really doesn't work otherwise, and it draws the reader out of the story.

And that's it for now. In another post, I'll go over Game Logic vs Story Logic.