This first appeared on Kiva’s blog.
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Fan fiction gets a really bad rap. It’s barely even acknowledged (even when everyone knows about it) and when it finally is, it’s dismissed as juvenile. Something teenage girls with terrible writing skills write, but no self-respecting author actually engages with. We are quick to judge fan fiction authors and readers, and we certainly don’t admit that we are these people.
I’m gonna right come out and say it because I would be that hypocrite if I didn’t: I read—and write—fan fiction.
It gives me a chance to flex my creative muscles without having to develop entire worlds, because someone’s already done the hard part. And as for reading it, well, sometimes, okay, most times, writers don’t see their characters entirely the way I do. The internet does. They fill in the blanks the way I want them to be filled. (I’d say “no pun intended” but with me, the pun is always intended.)
As a bisexual, I’m pretty much always tired of the complete lack of representation when it comes to LGBTQ+ characters. We don’t get many, and when we do, their storylines tend to revolve completely around being gay, as if we have no other interests. And good luck ever getting someone who’s into multiple genders to actually identify as bisexual. They’re always someone who “doesn’t like labels” which is so different to my experience. I love labels! Get me a label maker that exclusively churns out the word bisexual! Cause I wanna put that shit everywhere!
So yeah, we don’t get tons of characters to work with. However, we do get tons of characters who seem like they are expressing attraction to multiple genders or their same gender but it’s just…never addressed. In the end, they end up much more developed than their gay counterparts, but inevitably straight and we are disappointed. (By the way writers, that’s called queer baiting. You know you’re doing it and you’re all assholes.)
Sometimes I want to know more about That Thing The Writers Never Talk About. Obviously, the show’s never going to give me all of what I want. (Just enough of what I want to keep me watching forever in hope and denial.) But fan fiction does. That lingering moment that looks like it’s straight out of a regency costume drama in the new Star Wars? Fan fiction goes hard on that, and that’s the kind of content I wish I could get from the movies but know I never will. When Disney lets me down, the internet’s always there for me.
And okay, this kind of stuff may not be your cup of tea. I get it. Not everyone wants to read about two Presumed Straight dudes boning. That’s your prerogative. But you don’t get to shame people who do. Because everything you love is fan fiction too.
Renaissance paintings, often regarded as some of the finest art in the world, use the stories of The Bible and Classical mythology. That’s fan fiction.
The Aeneid, a piece of epic poetry read by every student of the Classics and then some, uses the stories of Homer. That’s fan fiction. (Of fan fiction, because Homer himself was working from oral traditions.)
House, M.D., an award-winning show about a crotchety doctor and his heterosexual life-partner, is a clear allusion to Sherlock Holmes. That’s fan fiction. (And, quite frankly, an “if Sherlock was a medical doctor” AU.)
Every single superhero movie, the trendiest thing in film right now, takes established comic book characters and tells new stories with them. That is, almost literally, the definition of fan fiction.
A ridiculously popular Twitter account builds on the characterization of Kylo Ren in The Force Awakens. THAT’S FUCKING FAN FICTION.
Denouncing fan fiction and avoiding it at all costs is stupid because, as my wise friend Renee once put it, “all fiction is fan fiction.”
“But those examples are different!” I hear you saying already.
Why? Why does something need to be either old or big budget or meme-worthy to not be considered insidiously fan fiction-y?
I’ll tell you why you immediately think your precious Marvel Cinematic Universe movies are somehow exceptions to Renee’s Law: Because when something’s old or big budget, there’s a 99% chance it was created by a man. And if it’s created by a man, it can’t in any way be akin to that stuff on the internet nobody talks about save for criticizing. But that’s classic sexism.
Stop vilifying teenage girls for what you praise men for doing. Internet fan fiction is a community largely comprised of women. That is the reason it is looked down on. That is the reason men will go through some serious cognitive dissonance to say that girls write fan fiction, but they don’t. And I simply do not have the patience for it anymore.
Male creators of the world: you write fan fiction. Admit it.
And furthermore, stop condemning those who read online fan fiction. Studies have shown that some women respond to erotica more than porn. And if you don’t believe the studies, believe the success of Nora Roberts. However, some of us, while responding to erotica, don’t respond to romance novels about boring, snooze-fest heterosexuals we have had no other interactions with. We respond to (yes, that) fan fiction.
Teenage girls have become more comfortable with their sexual identity and are empowered by their sexuality because of writing and reading fan fiction. They shouldn’t be shamed for their desire and they shouldn’t be shamed for how they discovered it. The disparagement of fan fiction, and the girls who engage with it, is ultimately a microcosm of patriarchal society at large.
Noah Berlatsky wrote a piece for the LA Times titled “‘Batman v Superman’ is fan fiction, and that’s OK”. I only amend it to be more inclusive:
Everything is fan fiction, and that’s OK.
Disagree. Professionalism counts for a lot.
So do creativity and artistic courage. Fan fiction, or rather, the fan fiction everybody acknowledges as fan fiction, has a lot more of both, in general.
Yeah…professionalism can be good in some ways, but it has its downsides—such as slickness, predictability, pretentiousness.
As I understand it, the phrase ‘all fiction is fan fiction’ is a way of saying that all fiction is part of a whole. Remakes, novels, comics, sequels, fan fiction … they’re all connected. Thus, if you dismiss fan fiction, if you to strip it of any redeeming value, you are lying to yourself, denying its interconnection with the fiction that you value.
This might not have been the point, but if it were, I agree. But, I had kind of hoped that the article would give me a deeper insight into fan fiction, something I have never really explored. The entire focus is on that it is wrong to dismiss the value of fan fiction, but nothing about that value itself. Sure, I learned that fan fiction often features characters from popular culture making out, but I had kind of heard that before.
I think the “fan” part of “fan fiction” implies that the writer is prostrating himself or herself before the work of the original creator, which is somewhat different from being influenced by another creator or using well-known stories from history or religion. It’s the opposite of the macho loner artist schtick, which may be why it appeals more to women and is held in distain by so many guys.
Baldanders, I think that makes you a fan of professionalism, maybe?
I sort of agree with you, although I’d use a different word like discipline, technique or something rather than professionalism (and, as Noah points out,its not an end in itself).
But its not an objective standard. We like what we like.
If you’re curious, Kasper, there’s more on fan fiction on the site here.
Kate, could you say a little bit more about the first sentence in this post’s title? It’s looking pretty under-motivated by anything you’ve written here, maybe because I don’t have a sense of what you think counts as “fan fiction”.
My own naive concept of fan fiction was that it takes pre-established characters/settings and tells new stories about them. Which is clearly going on in the Aeneid, and then the Divina Commedia, or Paradise Lost, or… And maybe you could make the case that we could extend that concept, beyond works that explicitly use pre-existing characters, to works that merely have strong allusions to pre-existing characters (either by way of direct analogue, a la Watchmen’s relation to the Charlton characters; or the looser analogies between the characters of Ulysses and the Odyssey). But beyond that — what is e.g. Camus’ l’Etranger a fan fiction of? Or Last Year in Marienbad (to switch media)?
So maybe you extend the notion of fan fiction to cover fiction which is influenced by other fictions, which mirrors themes from other fictions, or which exists in conversation with other fictions — but then the claim that all fiction is fan fiction looks trivially true and banal (and would hardly vindicate the reading or writing of what people usually mean when they say “fan fiction” — not that I think it needs vindicating!). So I don’t get what you’re saying?
FIction: what if this happened? Well, then this would happen, and then this would happen, and then this would happen, and it would all turn into a whole other kind of thing.
Fan fiction: what if this happened? It would be hottttt.
“Fan fiction: what if this happened? It would be hottttt.”
Not all fan fiction is erotic. But fan fiction is often one of the only areas where fiction can deal frankly, honestly, and unabashedly with eroticism and desire. Mainstream fiction at the moment sure as hell can’t.
The other major area being romance/erotica of course.
Setting aside the erotic/romantic dimensions, is it fair to say that most fan fiction is focussed on characters, as opposed to themes/settings/plots? For example, it seems like “House” is more fan fiction than “O Brother Where Art Thou.”
I’ll add that I’ve read very little fan fiction, so this is a genuine question.
Nate, character focus is true of most genre literature though, right?
It is true to some extent, but there’s also fan fic that introduces new characters, or changes the original characters unrecognizably…
Noah,
Yes, most genre lit is character focussed, though there’s also a heavy dose of world building. Still, I assume there are plenty of fan fiction stories that take place in an existing world but with different characters.
Anyway, what I was getting at was that the difference between fan fiction and other sorts of intertextuality might be an emphasis on characters and relationships.
For what it’s worth, I think fan fiction is one of those terms that is so overused as to not mean much of anything beyond “writing I don’t like.”
alright, author here. i’m finally able to respond to a bunch of comments that asked me things (my master’s thesis is getting in the way of all the stuff i really want to talk about) so here’s a comment dump:
@Badlanders
that’s your prerogative. to me, professionalism is kind of overrated these days because self-releasing any media is so commonplace and it’s often hard to tell the difference, really, between the two. and when you self-publish, you have complete creative control. and i find “professionalism” can sometimes mean stripping away a lot of the uniqueness of a story and making it ‘fit’ more with what’s currently ~on trend~
@Kasper Hviid
yes, that was my point. or really, my point was, many things that are considered good, classic, or even part of the literary canon, can be called fan fiction because the definition of fan fiction is not exclusively “teenage girls writing porn on the internet” so people ridiculing fanfic: stop acting like you’re above it.
as for your second comment, even though i read/write fanfic, it’s not my job to give you deeper insight into something you’ve never taken the time to explore. there’s fic on literally every piece of media…pick a fandom and go read some. that’s how you get deeper insight.
@Jones, one of the Jones boys
i’ll be honest with you…the title is quoting my friend’s twitter, so it’s meant to be taken lightly. i also linked it in the post itself, so i felt that once you read the piece, you’d realize where it came from. i’m being hyperbolic, and certainly i don’t believe EVERY SINGLE PIECE OF FICTION is fanfiction, but i do believe a lot of commonly considered “classic” “high brow” works ARE and they are not dismissed as trivial and bad writing…which fanfic normally is. the point of the post was to assert that there is a common characteristic between a lot of the precious and defended literary canon and star trek porn, so it’s hypocritical to resign all fanfic as a lowbrow form of writing.
@Petar Duric
actually, i would say that romance/erotica doesn’t always cover desire and sexuality as honestly and frankly as fanfic can (and does). it is largely the same tired tropes of women-as-damsels who get with the heterosexual attractive man who saved them, and they have boring vanilla sex. the books may say “penis” (and its many other euphemisms) a lot, but that doesn’t make them progressive.
i wanted to say a lot more but i forced myself to only respond to those who asked specific questions/addressed me in particular, cause i have tons of work to do. BUT, i’ll probably come back and hang out in this sandbox after i turn my thesis in and i’d be more than happy to have a discussion then.
Fair enough, Kate
Ditto Jones’ comment.
Kate: “@Petar Duric
actually, i would say that romance/erotica doesn’t always cover desire and sexuality as honestly and frankly as fanfic can (and does). it is largely the same tired tropes of women-as-damsels who get with the heterosexual attractive man who saved them, and they have boring vanilla sex. the books may say “penis” (and its many other euphemisms) a lot, but that doesn’t make them progressive.”
So I would agree it doesn’t *always* cover sexuality honestly, but I don’t think fan fic does either (or at least, my sense from dipping in now and then is that there can be a lot of bad fan fic, like there’s a lot of bad everything.) There’s a lot of good romance writing too, though; I’ve been reading Jennifer Crusie who I like a lot and who I think is very thoughtful and funny. Also like Kathleen Gilles Seidel a lot; Judith Ivory, Laura Kinsale…oh and Jojo Moyes is very good. and Cecelia Grant…so I don’t know. There’s definitely some out there, fwiw.
also a lot of m/m romance these days…read a couple series I quite liked, including this one:
https://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/cozy-closet-josh-lanyons-holmes-moriarity-series
I actually read a complaint about m/m romance from a gay YA fic writer who called it, “a genre for white women who want to mash male bodies together,” or something like that. I am not really making a statement, just wondering about your thoughts on that, Noah…
Well, first of all, it’s simply inaccurate to say that all m/m readers are white. The genre orginated in Japan…and more than that, it has many black readers. Also a lot (a lot) of female readers who are bi, lesbian, and/or queer.
It also has gay male readers and writers. Dirk Deppey’s essay on the genre is maybe a good place to explore these issues. I think that women representing the experience of gay men can be tricky; at the same time, gay male objections to m/m can slide into misogyny pretty easily.
I thought the complaint was a little uncomfortably close to misogyny, but I didn’t know if there was a history to justify the complaint. And thanks for the essay recommendation.
Damn, that had to be the most thorough and completely horny piece of scholarship I have ever read. Great piece of writing, and really insightful and educational on the subject, but as a straight guy finishing that piece in a coffee shop…I think my blush is pretty permanent. Although, I can say I have a pretty firm grasp of why that gay YA author’s complaint was perhaps at least a bit unfair.