Welcome to Fan Fridays where I talk about anything to do with my fanish nature. It might be a review or recommendation, or something about a particular fandom or fandom in general. This is the day were I get to be really nerdy if I want to.
Fanfiction (Fanfic)
I love fanfiction. There is no two ways about it, fanfic it wonderful and I will not have a word said against it. I think those writers who don't want fanfiction for their work are idiots. I can totally understand not wanting to read it because some fans do try for lawsuits, but to object to it on principle is silly. It's is a sincere form of flattery even if the writer is subverting your characters from where you might want them to go.
After all a writer/creator has to have caught the audience with something to make them want to write.
So for those not familiar with fanfiction, the simple definition is that fanfic is a derivative story based on a universe/characters created by someone else. Some great works of literature are actually fanfiction in the technical sense.
There are many places on the web to find fanfiction, Livejournal has a lot, Tumblr has some too, but the big two are definitely:
Fanfiction.net
Now this is the older of the two and has been around a very long time. It used to host just about everything, but then, aways back ;), they stopped hosting the higher end of the adult fanfiction and deleted anything explicit. This pissed off a lot of people and other archives sprang up to fill the gap. Many people who were already annoyed with the place stopped using it all together.
AO3 (Archive of Our Own)
AO3 is an archive run by The Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) which is a nonprofit run by fan people for fan people. It is designed to be a safe place to post work where it will never disappear. They even work with older fanfiction archives to move them over so that if that archive disappears the fanfic will still be available. This page will tell you all about them and their work. AO3 is the archive of choice for many many people and definitely mine.
When I first started dabbling in fanfic online it was mostly all done on mailing lists. You wrote your stuff, transformed it in to nice email sized chunks and sent it off into the ether. Everyone responded on list and if you were lucky the list had an FTP archive where you could find all the previous stories. Now we have the luxury of web interfaces and tagging systems - it's awesome :)
Some people look down on fanfic, but this is a massive mistake. Yes some of it is the first tries of teenagers who have barely written before, but some of those teenagers have real talent, and even if they don't they're enthusiastic and they learn. That is what is so wonderful about fandom and the fanfic, it is a wonderful medium and place to learn more about the skills of writing while enjoying something you love and sharing it with others.
I have met and spoken to fanfic writers from the ages of 15 to 70 and all have one thing in common: they love what they do.
Some of the best fiction I have ever read has been fanfiction.
- Ever wondered what happened after the last episode of that show you loved that was cancelled? Go look on AO3, find the fandom in their fandom list and check out the stories - someone will have written it.
- Did you ever think it might be interesting to see all your favourite characters from a book or movie in highschool or working in a coffee shop? It'll definitely be there.
- Wanted to see two of your favourite characters kissing passionately and what comes after? If you can think it, someone's probably written fic for it.
The world of fanfiction is an amazing place. It can be silly, it can be fluffy, it can be smutty, it can be downright hot, it can be angsty, it can be sad, it can be happy, it can be a complex epic of hundreds of thousands of words, it can be a single scene, it can be anything imaginable. It is a world of incredible creativity and I have never, ever regretted finding my way into it.
If you haven't tried fanfiction, you really should; it's awesome and it's FREE! (And just in case anyone is interested, all my fanfic can be found on AO3 over here - well the stuff I'm willing to admit to anyway ;)).
What is your favourite show/book/movie? Have you ever read fanfiction for it? Would you ever want to?
I got into writing through fanfiction. I used to be major into Sailor Moon (who am I kidding, still am...) and one of the best fanfictions I have ever read told the Silver Millenium, and Neo Tokyo storylines from Mamoru/Darion's perspective. It was amazing. Heartfelt. Tragic. Considering Tuxedo Mask got basically no personality in the anime or manga, it was really cool to see him developed in such a way.
ReplyDeleteI was writing fanfic at home before I even realised other people might be doing the same thing (V and Trek) :) Got into Highlander fandom and fanfic online and never looked back. It's amazing how fanfic writers flesh out the characters isn't it.
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