![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
what fic is for
There's been quite a bit of discussion over the years about whether a fanfic can be the kind that can have its serial numbers filed off and still be a good fanfic. I have a range of different feelings about that (mostly leaning towards the "if you can file the serial numbers off, it might have been a really good story, but it probably wasn't all that great of a fanfic, because fanfic imo should deal explicitly with the specificities of canon"), but I want to come at the "fanfic is different than original fic" from a bit of a different angle.
I've been thinking a lot about how what I want from canon and what I want from a piece of fanfiction are often very, very different. And how many things I desperately want to read about in fic...would not work in canon.
For example, one of my favorite movies, The Vast of Night, has a very specific ending that, imo, makes the entire thing work. If it didn't end that way, the film would be significantly lesser.
And yet I wrote fix-it fic! For a film that worked perfectly as it was! Because while I would not change the film's ending for anything, I also love to explore other possibilities. I got great joy out of imagining another ending, and apparently other people who watched the film did too.
The same goes for the recent film Prey. A certain Big Significant Thing happens, and it absolutely works with the film. The structure of that film, the call-backs and parallels, are so good! I'm so glad it did what it did! But also, my heart calls out for some fix-it fic!
Often, the joy of a specific work of fanfic arises from knowing that it didn't happen in canon. If it had happened in canon, it would be less enjoyable. If it had happened in canon, I would love canon less. There are just so many things I want to happen in fic that I do not want to happen in canon!
And to me, this is why canon divergence is my favorite genre by far. There is nothing I love exploring more than all the other ways the story could have gone. This is one reason I'm a multi-shipper and also get so frustrated with the kind of shipping that insists its pairing needs to be endgame.
I am ridiculously happy that Wei Wuxian/Lan Wangji is endgame on CQL. Nothing else would work. That is the story. And it is one of my all-time favorite pairings in any medium. But I am also so happy to read Wei Wuxian/Jiang Cheng fic or Wei Wuxian/Wen Qing fic (when you can find some good stuff, which is really rare). Obviously I'm a Buffy/Spike fan primarily, but I absolutely adore Spike/Dru and also think that Buffy/Faith is in some ways the superior ship. (Also still holding out for a Buffy/Gunn fic.)
I just lovelovelove the way fanfic lets us explore all the different ways canon could have been. And sometimes I do wish that canon had been more like fanfic, because I think the writers made a seriously bad writing choice. But so often, I am so happy with canon and thrilled that I also get fanfic too.
Fanfic is fanfic because it's in conversation with canon. Sometimes that conversation is, "You really screwed up, canon!" and sometimes it's "Let's dig a little bit deeper into a thing canon didn't have time for." But the conversation has to be explicit in a way that original fiction, while it is also in conversation with...literature as a whole (and often specific other works), just doesn't. I love that conversation. That conversation is fandom (whether it takes the form of vids or meta or fanart or shit posts or arguments about interpretation) and my theory is that the difference between people who are drawn to fandom and people who are not, is that fannish people (whether they ever discover fandom or not) are hungry for that conversation, whereas non-fannish people just...don't react to stories that way. Even some people who love stories very much don't react to them in that way. My mom loves to read as much as I do, but I don't think she would ever, ever feel that fannish hunger.
And I don't understand people who experience fiction in that different way (I will never, ever understand how someone can watch a whole movie and not know the characters' names at the end. Were you paying attention at all????) but I don't think my way of experiencing it is better, really. I'm just glad I experience it the way I do and that I have fandom to experience it that way with me.
I've been thinking a lot about how what I want from canon and what I want from a piece of fanfiction are often very, very different. And how many things I desperately want to read about in fic...would not work in canon.
For example, one of my favorite movies, The Vast of Night, has a very specific ending that, imo, makes the entire thing work. If it didn't end that way, the film would be significantly lesser.
And yet I wrote fix-it fic! For a film that worked perfectly as it was! Because while I would not change the film's ending for anything, I also love to explore other possibilities. I got great joy out of imagining another ending, and apparently other people who watched the film did too.
The same goes for the recent film Prey. A certain Big Significant Thing happens, and it absolutely works with the film. The structure of that film, the call-backs and parallels, are so good! I'm so glad it did what it did! But also, my heart calls out for some fix-it fic!
Often, the joy of a specific work of fanfic arises from knowing that it didn't happen in canon. If it had happened in canon, it would be less enjoyable. If it had happened in canon, I would love canon less. There are just so many things I want to happen in fic that I do not want to happen in canon!
And to me, this is why canon divergence is my favorite genre by far. There is nothing I love exploring more than all the other ways the story could have gone. This is one reason I'm a multi-shipper and also get so frustrated with the kind of shipping that insists its pairing needs to be endgame.
I am ridiculously happy that Wei Wuxian/Lan Wangji is endgame on CQL. Nothing else would work. That is the story. And it is one of my all-time favorite pairings in any medium. But I am also so happy to read Wei Wuxian/Jiang Cheng fic or Wei Wuxian/Wen Qing fic (when you can find some good stuff, which is really rare). Obviously I'm a Buffy/Spike fan primarily, but I absolutely adore Spike/Dru and also think that Buffy/Faith is in some ways the superior ship. (Also still holding out for a Buffy/Gunn fic.)
I just lovelovelove the way fanfic lets us explore all the different ways canon could have been. And sometimes I do wish that canon had been more like fanfic, because I think the writers made a seriously bad writing choice. But so often, I am so happy with canon and thrilled that I also get fanfic too.
Fanfic is fanfic because it's in conversation with canon. Sometimes that conversation is, "You really screwed up, canon!" and sometimes it's "Let's dig a little bit deeper into a thing canon didn't have time for." But the conversation has to be explicit in a way that original fiction, while it is also in conversation with...literature as a whole (and often specific other works), just doesn't. I love that conversation. That conversation is fandom (whether it takes the form of vids or meta or fanart or shit posts or arguments about interpretation) and my theory is that the difference between people who are drawn to fandom and people who are not, is that fannish people (whether they ever discover fandom or not) are hungry for that conversation, whereas non-fannish people just...don't react to stories that way. Even some people who love stories very much don't react to them in that way. My mom loves to read as much as I do, but I don't think she would ever, ever feel that fannish hunger.
And I don't understand people who experience fiction in that different way (I will never, ever understand how someone can watch a whole movie and not know the characters' names at the end. Were you paying attention at all????) but I don't think my way of experiencing it is better, really. I'm just glad I experience it the way I do and that I have fandom to experience it that way with me.