So, I Read Fanfic Now
Jun. 10th, 2019 04:01 pmRecently I have been trying and enjoying a bunch of new to me mediums and genres-- one of these is fanfic. I feel a bit silly for only starting now in my mid 30s. I've been a fan my whole life, and part of online SFF fandom for a long time, but I'm pretty new to transformative fandom -- the type of fandom that focuses on fanfic and other creative responses to sources. So I wanted to write a bit about why I didn't read fanfic in the past and what I'm enjoying about reading it now.
The main thing that has changed is my attitude to the idea of canon. When I was a kid I used to go to movies and complain that they weren't exactly like the book. I got attached to the idea of one true version of a story and didn't like any changes. Obviously this wasn't really a great mindset for approaching fanfic, which is all about different takes. Over the years I have gradually softened on this. Some of that is just experiencing a lot more media as seeing that creators are biased or don't focus on my favorite parts of the source. I’ve gotten more critical of how stories reflect the injustice in the world, and that has made me more aware of stories as created by people, who are often flawed. All of that has made me less interested in one true source.
Over the last several years I’ve made more friends from the transformative parts of fandom, and this made me more interested in transformative works. My friends showed me how they related to fanfic. I learned how it can be a critique of problematic works, and about the female centered fanfic community, the fanfic gift economy and non commercial fanfic spaces like the Archive of Our Own (AO3). All of that sounded really appealing, but I was content to support my friends without joining in.
Because I had friends participating in transformative fandom I started listening to Fansplaining, a podcast about fandom. Even if I wasn't sure about reading fic I wanted to learn more about my friends’ communities. And Fansplaining always made transformative fandom sound delightful even as they explored some of its problems.
The other thing that happened recently that made fanfic more accessible to me was that I started watching TV by myself. I know this is something most people do but I was reluctant for a long time. But last year I came home from WisCon with so much I wanted to watch that R really wasn't interested in that I finally got over my hangups and started watching stuff. Watching more TV means I'm consuming more canons that have transformative fandoms.
So with all that background I finally decided to try read some fanfic! And of course I really enjoyed it, and have been reading a lot of it recently. I feel a bit weird about how much I like slash (ie m/m focused fic) because I am generally all about the female characters. I spend a lot of time yelling about fictional moms or the lack thereof. It's strange to me that a genre that's mostly written by women for women focuses so much on men. I guess everyone is affected by cultural narratives of whose stories are important. I’m also aware of critiques of racism in fandom. I guess I’m just going to have to accept that I like things that are imperfect and be aware of that while liking them anyways. That’s hardly new. With SFF I've been trying to mitigate these issues by seeking out works by marginalized creators. That's harder to in anonymised fan spaces. However I intend to keep reading and listening to these types of critiques and thinking about how I can do better. Despite these issues I do like fanfic and slash. It's delightful!
People sometimes talk about fanfic as though it has all the things that are missing from mainstream media. I have not found that to be true. I have yet to come across tons of fanfic about moms for example. (If you know of some please rec it!) But there are things that I really love in that I wasn't finding elsewhere. Fanfic is great for cute romance that is good at consent and doesn't have gender dynamics that make me want to scream. Fanfic is also good for quiet domestic fluff which is something I adore. I also really enjoy some of the ways fanfic can play with canon. I like the way it can expand the world building in all kinds of fun and interesting directions. And I enjoyed Alternative Universes (AUs) and how they translate things between settings. That can really illuminate character traits or just be downright clever. Branching paths AUs, where something happened differently than in canon and the story explores how that would play out, are also really interesting way to explore settings and characters. There is such a lot of good stuff out there and I’m still learning about it and appreciating all the different types of things it does.
I’m having so much fun reading fanfic. I wish I had read more of it sooner -- but then I didn’t really have the approach to source media to appreciate fanfic until recently. I'm glad I have got to a point where fanfic is part of my reading diet because it's great. I’m enjoying all the fluff and some of the angst and generally having fun exploring the vast universe of fanfiction.
The main thing that has changed is my attitude to the idea of canon. When I was a kid I used to go to movies and complain that they weren't exactly like the book. I got attached to the idea of one true version of a story and didn't like any changes. Obviously this wasn't really a great mindset for approaching fanfic, which is all about different takes. Over the years I have gradually softened on this. Some of that is just experiencing a lot more media as seeing that creators are biased or don't focus on my favorite parts of the source. I’ve gotten more critical of how stories reflect the injustice in the world, and that has made me more aware of stories as created by people, who are often flawed. All of that has made me less interested in one true source.
Over the last several years I’ve made more friends from the transformative parts of fandom, and this made me more interested in transformative works. My friends showed me how they related to fanfic. I learned how it can be a critique of problematic works, and about the female centered fanfic community, the fanfic gift economy and non commercial fanfic spaces like the Archive of Our Own (AO3). All of that sounded really appealing, but I was content to support my friends without joining in.
Because I had friends participating in transformative fandom I started listening to Fansplaining, a podcast about fandom. Even if I wasn't sure about reading fic I wanted to learn more about my friends’ communities. And Fansplaining always made transformative fandom sound delightful even as they explored some of its problems.
The other thing that happened recently that made fanfic more accessible to me was that I started watching TV by myself. I know this is something most people do but I was reluctant for a long time. But last year I came home from WisCon with so much I wanted to watch that R really wasn't interested in that I finally got over my hangups and started watching stuff. Watching more TV means I'm consuming more canons that have transformative fandoms.
So with all that background I finally decided to try read some fanfic! And of course I really enjoyed it, and have been reading a lot of it recently. I feel a bit weird about how much I like slash (ie m/m focused fic) because I am generally all about the female characters. I spend a lot of time yelling about fictional moms or the lack thereof. It's strange to me that a genre that's mostly written by women for women focuses so much on men. I guess everyone is affected by cultural narratives of whose stories are important. I’m also aware of critiques of racism in fandom. I guess I’m just going to have to accept that I like things that are imperfect and be aware of that while liking them anyways. That’s hardly new. With SFF I've been trying to mitigate these issues by seeking out works by marginalized creators. That's harder to in anonymised fan spaces. However I intend to keep reading and listening to these types of critiques and thinking about how I can do better. Despite these issues I do like fanfic and slash. It's delightful!
People sometimes talk about fanfic as though it has all the things that are missing from mainstream media. I have not found that to be true. I have yet to come across tons of fanfic about moms for example. (If you know of some please rec it!) But there are things that I really love in that I wasn't finding elsewhere. Fanfic is great for cute romance that is good at consent and doesn't have gender dynamics that make me want to scream. Fanfic is also good for quiet domestic fluff which is something I adore. I also really enjoy some of the ways fanfic can play with canon. I like the way it can expand the world building in all kinds of fun and interesting directions. And I enjoyed Alternative Universes (AUs) and how they translate things between settings. That can really illuminate character traits or just be downright clever. Branching paths AUs, where something happened differently than in canon and the story explores how that would play out, are also really interesting way to explore settings and characters. There is such a lot of good stuff out there and I’m still learning about it and appreciating all the different types of things it does.
I’m having so much fun reading fanfic. I wish I had read more of it sooner -- but then I didn’t really have the approach to source media to appreciate fanfic until recently. I'm glad I have got to a point where fanfic is part of my reading diet because it's great. I’m enjoying all the fluff and some of the angst and generally having fun exploring the vast universe of fanfiction.
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