Why fanfic is bad

What is scary about transformative fandom is that it's a place where young women love their media without reservation, and where they can make stories for themselves. Because fandom is the province of young women and, culturally, we find young women terrifying. Previous entry: Canon, fanon, shipping and more: a glossary of the tricky terminology that makes up fan culture. Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment: to empower through understanding.

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Cookie banner We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from. By choosing I Accept , you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies. Why we're terrified of fanfiction. Reddit Pocket Flipboard Email. Beatles fans in Indiana. Getty Images This article is part of a series on fan culture and its many related topics.

A new "fandom is broken" article and the ensuing avalanche of responses is only the latest iteration of a familiar cycle Most recently, Birth Movies Death editor Devin Faraci declared that " fandom is broken.

All of these arguments are very familiar. To wit: Fandom is a mass of lightsaber-clutching nerds camping out all night on the sidewalk to buy movie tickets, and fundamentally either sophomoric or solipsistic. All fanfiction is slash , and all slash is pornographic. All slash is by straight teenage girls. No, all slash is by middle-aged gay men. Or, worst of all, fandom is a group of oversexed teenaged girls writing porny and borderline illiterate fanfiction, which is wrong for moral , aesthetic, and legal reasons.

And the fan counterpoints: Some fans are curative , which means they're into knowing all the trivia about a given piece of media or canon and discussing it in minute detail. Some are transformative , which means they're into writing fanfiction or drawing fan art and making fan vids. Some are into both! Fandom is not a monolith. Fanfiction writers are mostly women.

Writers for the fanfiction site Archive of Our Own are mostly but not overwhelmingly just out of college ; other sites, like Wattpad, skew younger. There has been lots of respected literary fanfiction.

That fandom mostly comprised women, she wrote: Male fans of the show generally balk at the restriction and prefer to engage in activities such as costuming or crafts, for which payment is not a traditional reward. We write because we must. I think a huge part of what makes fan fiction so singularly special is that there is no ambition in it, only passion.

The mockery is a lot more outright when we're young, but oh, it does not stop there. Even in the last week, I had a friend seven years older than me tag me in a mocking tweet that revealed that he and two other of my friends had been poking fun at my fan fiction behind my back. It can be even less subtle than that, though. It's the friend that feels the need to embarrass you by loudly mentioning your fan fiction in a place where they know it would make you uncomfortable; It's the people whose overly-aggressive "supportiveness" of your hobby is one faint shade away from mockery; It's the shared look between two of your non-fangirl friends when the topic comes up.

Hey, guess what, assholes?! Also, ew. Get a life. I think the reason people feel so comfortable mocking fan fiction authors is because we're somehow less "real" or "legitimate" than other writers in their minds, and they don't think we'll take personal offense to them mocking our work. I cannot tell you how many pieces of fan fiction I have thoroughly enjoyed writing that were then completely wrecked by someone tainting them with meanness. I can't even look back on some fics that people in my life have made fun of, and it's so unfair.

I worked hard on them, I was proud of them, and I wanted to enjoy them privately and anonymously. The fact that people in my life have dug them up and used them to make fun of me in the past makes me want to go ape shit on them for it.

Let it be known, "normal people": we are not immune to your mockery, and it sucks. Fan fiction, for many people, is just a gateway drug to all other fiction writing.

We obviously have the chops to commit ourselves to long pieces of works, and the imagination to go wild with somebody else's characters. Once we come up with our own which we frequently do , we have the same enthusiasm for our own work that we do for fan fiction.

And even if we don't—what's the big deal? We don't go up to kids on little league baseball teams and tell them there's no point in enjoying themselves if they aren't planning to make a career out of it. Fan fiction is the same thing: a fun hobby. We ended up with over 1, hours of participant observation and several hundred pages of field notes and memos. We also interviewed authors both formally and informally.

The overriding reason that authors wrote fan fiction, we found, was for the love of it. They unanimously believed that it had helped them to become better writers, an evolution we could see for ourselves. They were very clear that support from other members of the community was critical. As one anonymous author told us:. When I was 13, I had a major crush on a certain fictional character. As a result, I learned to be sensitive to these types of bad writing.

I think if a teacher had simply red-penciled my childish scribbles, I might have been so discouraged as to never write again. Although privacy concerns prevent us from directly quoting from the stories written by the authors we interviewed, a well-known example illustrates how bad fan fiction can be. I have pale white skin. Workshopping with a larger community, which might be an alien experience for many entering my department, is almost a daily routine for me by now.

We found that not only were fan fiction authors writing original fiction; they also learned life lessons, becoming more tolerant and willing to help others.

When I started writing fan fiction at age 13, I was a queer, autistic middle schooler who had not yet realized that she was either of these things.

I had difficulty with many of the social situations that came naturally to others my age, and I became isolated from my peers at school. Fan fiction communities were a vital social outlet for me. That definitely had an impact on who I am.

We expected to find traditional mentorship pairs, with an older or more experienced author serving as a beta reader for a younger or less experienced one. What we found was different. Millions of authors and readers communicate via multiple channels—including Skype, official beta reader groups, fan fiction user groups, and other messaging and social-media platforms, as well as story reviews.

The possibilities are literally endless. Because the characters have been developed for you, you can free up extra time and mental space in order to work on creating intricate worlds and scintillating plots. Working with established characters, Bonnie Wynne suggests, actually makes you work harder:. You have to really understand them. What kind of words do they use? What are their values? How would they react to any given situation? Spend enough time examining the inner workings of your favourite characters and soon it will be second nature to scrutinise your original creations in the same manner, bolstering their authenticity.

As well as gaining the aforementioned skill boosts, interacting with a fandom can also remind you why you like writing in the first place. For the most part, writing is a solitary experience. The whole process can be very isolating and, in turn, demotivating. You become frustrated with seemingly endless plot holes ; all your characters are suddenly infuriatingly obnoxious. If you find yourself in a moment of disdain for your current project, taking a step back to write other, less intimidating works can be refreshing.

But writing about characters you already know and care about can help reinstate regular writing habits, as well as your love for the craft itself. Sharing your creations with the fandom might also provide you with the motivation boost you need to get stuck back into your main project. So, if fan fiction is what keeps your creative muses fluttering, then go for it, guilt-free.

At the end of the day, writing anything is better than writing nothing.