Halloween in Four Days!

[brigdh]

My roommate has gone home for the weekend. Double-you Tee Eff. Seriously people, what could possibly entice you to leave New York City on Halloween weekend? It is the best holiday of the year, as I have recently spent some time arguing with a girl from Iceland, where apparently it is not celebrated. (Which, by the way, is clearly blasphemy. Life without Halloween is just wrong.)

Anyway. I read a very interesting post on metafandom earlier today: Fandom and RP, from an Outsider by altoidsaddict.

Her basic argument is that the difference between fanfiction and original writing is that fanfiction necessarily entails communication within a community, and original writing, while the purpose is still communication, is far more unidirectional, from an author to the reader (but do go read the original post; maybe I'm misrepresenting her).

Which I thought was very interesting, because a lot of my stories were conceived as my contributions to the fanon conversation. When I get so sick of people writing Hisoka as the girly uke (or whatever my current hated trend is), I go and write a story with him on top. Looking over my stories, quite a few were written because it's politer than screaming, "Oh my GOD, fandom, stop writing that or I'ma cut a bitch!" Also, writing porn is generally more fun than getting into a wank.

It reminds me of a post I was thinking about writing a few weeks ago, about the differences between fanfictions that can be read without knowing the canon, and ones that can't. It was Swordspoint fandom that made me think of it, of course (what else do I think about?), because most of the existent stories are of the first type: they're relatively long, most over a thousand words, and tend towards either first-times or other similarly self-evident plots. Which is not to say they're bad, not at all! But they are stories that you probably can get a lot of enjoyment out of even if you have no idea who Richard and Alec are.

I do not write stories like that. My first Swordspoint story was only 300 words, and relied on and alluded to the canon so heavily that I imagine it would be incomprehensible to people who haven't read the book (and possibly people who have). Of course, then I threw off my theory, at least in regards to myself, by writing one of those long, canon-free stories, which is why I never got around to writing the post, but I still think it's an interesting division. I like stories, both to write and to read, that do require you to be obsessively immersed in the canon to untangle all of their metaphors, ones that depend on you understanding some tiny reference to make sense of the plot or characterization. I like the feeling of interplay with canon and fanon, with the community of people equally involved in the story, and with the story itself that those types of fanfic give me. I like stories that aren't just well-characterized or recognizable as being from a certain source, but that are heavily steeped in all possible details of the canon: tone of voice and mood and colors and sounds and everything else. (Occasionally there are fanfictions that manage to do so better than the canon itself. Not in Swordspoint, but when some mangakas seem to forget what happened to their characters earlier in the series, yeah). But that's me, and clearly many people prefer the other type.

Another reason why I was thinking about this topic recently is because nanowrimo is coming up. There is no possible way I'll have time to participate, but I was thinking about setting up a challenge for myself for the month of November, just to see if I could: write an original short story. And I have no problems thinking of characters, or world-building- any of the things, really, that fanfiction writing supposedly hampers- but I have no ideas for a plot. Because so many of my plots are just parts of a conversation; they're me saying "check out this interpretation!" or "you've all got it wrong, this is how he acts" or "don't you think they look good together?". And when I don't have my community to say things to, I have no idea what I do want to say.

So! What do you all think? Does that seem like a valid distinction between fanfiction and original writing to you? Which type of fanfiction do you like better? Am I still feverish and making things up that are totally illogical?

Comments

[ranalore.livejournal.com]

Now that I've read the original post, I don't think the poster is quite saying that original writing doesn't take place within a community context, but rather that the community is not as well-defined as within fandom. And that's a point I agree with, specifically because I'm both a genre reader and writer. The "canon" of sf/f is both hotly contested and wide-ranging, whereas the "canon" in fandom is the source(s). Works produced in both are in conversation with other works, and works produced in fandom are in conversation with the source, but works produced in sf/f are only in conversation with the "canon" insofar as the writer and readers are aware of the "canon," which...is not a problem that often crops up in fandom (and when it does, as in stories written by people who haven't seen any of a show or have only read the first chapter of a book, it's pretty universally agreed this is a bad thing).

Also, and I don't think this is a crowd who will get touchy about this, but fanfic tends to be one more step along the line than original fiction in terms of the conversation we're having. For instance, Minekura reads Journey to the West, watches Japanese theatre involving comedic figures wielding harisen, studies up on the Buddhist God/dess of Mercy (I'm speculating wildly on her sources here), and puts them all together to produce Saiyuki. I read Saiyuki, am familiar with JttW and the Buddhist God/dess of Mercy, not to mention a few other things that resonate with the source text of Saiyuki, and produce a work of fanfiction specifically using the characters and setting that Minekura created. I'm explicitly having my part of the conversation with her creation and with the people familiar with and invested in that creation.

Now, I could take Saiyuki and JttW and Japanese theatre and my knowledge of Buddhist mythology and create something that's not fanfic, that's my own take on all these things. I could also have never read Saiyuki and created something based on the same sources as Minekura. In the first instance, I'm having a conversation with Minekura's work on the same level as her own sources. In the second instance, I'm having an unconscious conversation with Minekura's work, because I'm unaware of it. My readers, however, might be, and might continue the chain of conversation.

The thing that arises in writing original fiction, though, that isn't generally a concern in fandom, is the question of reference and allusion (and I'm having a strong sense of deja vu about this conversation). When I write fanfic, I write in and to a limited community. I write with an expectation that readers will get certain things I put in, that reference the source in some way, and the nature of fanfic makes this expectation reasonable. When writing original fic, I write with the hope that readers will get certain things I put in, but as I'm casting my work out there into a much less self-selecting audience, there's no way to know for sure. That, I think, is the main difference the post is addressing.

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

I'm not going to tell you there's no reason for that sense of deja vu. But I'm not going to stop chewing at this, either; like a wolf with an old bone, I have a sense that there's still good stuff in there that I haven't managed to get to yet.

As you know, I've speculated before that the ability to assume that readers will get your references might be one of the things that makes fan writing so particularly satisfying. But then, as I said below, my own speculations are based on less-than-firm facts, because in my own case, readers don't necessarily get my canon references. Some do, certainly, but a lot don't. And I'm not the only one who also throws in general references and allusions with considerable hope/expectation that readers will get them.

Which isn't to say there aren't real differences. Obviously there are. And what I'm straining at in this case may have more to do with the fact that I tend to think of fan fiction as a very broad category, logically sweeping in everything from West Side Story to the latest HP denial!fic to an 11-year-old's first soon-to-be-burned Mary Sue. If I take it more narrowly, as encompassing only those stories that are written as a part of an ongoing community conversation, a lot of my caveats vanish. Of course, that also makes for a certain circularity of definition, but I'm not sure how much that matters.

[ranalore.livejournal.com]

I'm almost positive you and I have had a discussion about allusions in fanfic before, but digging through our past discussions to find it, while a pleasant idea, has to take a backseat to a few projects I've got in the works at the moment. *G*

I think you're right about fanfiction being a very broad category, but I also think that the way the term was being used in the original post meant the poster was addressing a specific segment of it, the segment most non-fans think of when they say "fanfic," and that's the stuff produced in the self-identified fannish community, usually online these days, as part of our conversation with each other. And while I firmly believe fanfiction is wider than that (and in fact it's a lot of fun to see how people get confused when discussing the fannish sf/f community of the early twentieth century, because the fanboys and girls of the time were the sf/f "masters" of the mid-twentieth century, and it's harder to denigrate fanfiction when that's how most of your idols publicly got their start, but I digress), I can see why the original poster, when talking to fans about non-fan perceptions of fanfic and original fiction, would narrow down the definition. It's a question of audience. Just as I feel it's important to adopt the broadest possible definition of fanfic when discussing it with non-fans, in order to get them to understand that it's not this weird little hobby unrelated to any behavior they might engage in, I also think it's important to look at how most non-fans define fanfic when explaining why they'd think it's weird to fans. Especially since a lot of fans were non-fans at one point, and reminding them how they used to regard fannish activities is useful when your goal is dialogue between fans and non-fans.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

The thing that arises in writing original fiction, though, that isn't generally a concern in fandom, is the question of reference and allusion (and I'm having a strong sense of deja vu about this conversation).

There was a lot of discussion about allusion vs originality in the wake of the Cassandra Claire plagiarism scandal, though perhaps you're thinking of a different discussion. That was a bit of a different situation than what we're talking about, though.

[ranalore.livejournal.com]

I can't remember if it came up because of the CC issue or not, but I do remember discussing non-source allusions and references in fanfic with Phoebe, and I think you as well. The idea of digging through all our various conversations is a bit daunting, though, especially since I have got a few things what need doing. *G*

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

You know, it's starting to ring a bell for me too. But I can't remember when it was, or in what context, and like you, I am definitely not about to try and search for it. Let's just assume that if we repeat ourselves, it was because it was such a good point we had to make it twice. *grins*

[ranalore.livejournal.com]

This sounds like a good plan to me. *G*

I was actually thinking today about how often fanfiction is seen as the successor to oral traditions, but I think fandom, especially online fandom as it exists in the era of personal blogs, strikes me as very like the eighteenth-century salons that both spawned a fair chunk of well-known contes des fees and fostered discussion about women's rights (aristocratic women's matrimonial rights, to be specific, but every little bit helps). Anyway, one aspect of those salons is that the stories written in that atmosphere tend to be in conversation with each other, and to reference each other (and earlier known tales and archetypes). My corner of the fantasy field, in particular, often refers back to this model in our discussions with each other, but I think it also applies very much to fandom.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

I like that metaphor! (And randomly, have you seen Salon Fantastique- a book of short stories that came out about a month ago, by a lot of very good fantasy authors, with just that sort of idea in mind for genre writers?) I think it works very well for fandom, because we also have a lot of overlap between the purely creative aspects with personal, political or philosophical-type discussions.

Of course, this only increases my desire that I could gather up a crowd of fandom people and give them hot chocolate or something and have them sit around and talk about interesting things.

[ranalore.livejournal.com]

And randomly, have you seen Salon Fantastique

Seen it, no. Heard of it, yes. A decent percentage of the other flist is in it. *G*

I believe that last desire is the impetus for cons. ;-)