Responsefic
| Synonyms: | reaction fic, fix-it story, HEX (in B7) |
| See also: | unauthorized sequels, fanon, shared universe, Story Tropes, Remix, |
| Click here for articles related to this term on Fanlore. | |
A fanwork created in part as a method of conversation, or argumentation, sparked from the creation of someone else's fanwork, or an entire trend of fanwork. Sometimes the line is very blurry between casually sharing someone's universe, a trend in fandom where number of stories seem to share aspects, and a story that is specially responding another another fanwork. The odds that a fanwork would be given the label responsefic seems to be more likely if the response appears to be negative. Unlike many other glossary words, a recent conversation about the term responsefic [1] showed that while most fans could think of examples of it, most weren't familiar with the specific term.
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Reactions to themes or trends
ResponseFic has a long history in fandom. In the 70s, as K/S was publicly appearing in Star Trek zines, many people feared that The Premise, was tearing Star Trek fandom apart. J. Emily Vance (a pseudonym for Nancy Kipax, April Valentine and Beverly Volker), wrote The Rack to show how completely implausible the premise was. In The Rack, Starfleet Command suspects Kirk and Spock of having an affair, and court-martials them. At the end of the story, Kirk attempts suicide. The authors wrote the story to show what, in their opinion, would "really" happen if Starfleet suspected, even erroneously, that Kirk and Spock were having an affair.
In Highlander, both in fiction and metaconversation, it wasn't uncommon for people to talk about Duncan, the protagonist of the series, as if he were a stuffy moralistic prude. Luminosity created the songvid Not a Virgin Anymore to have an excuse to use three minutes of clips of Duncan drinking, wenching and carousing, to show certain fans that their fanon had completely overwritten the readily available canon.
In OZ fandom, Feochadn and Michelle Christian became annoyed by vids that seemed to reduce a richly complex (and violent) ensemble show to nothing but a twisted romance about two characters. To make a point about how OZ-the-show diverged from OZ-the-romance-about-two-guys, they made a vid to the theme music to The Love Boat, consisting of some of the most violent and bloody moments of the show up to that time.
Reactions to specific stories
Fans have also created stories and vids that were responses directly back to another story. For example, Two-Up Truly Queered was a step-by-step response to the homophobia that Jane Carnall saw in Jane of Australia's story, Two-Up. The story Take Clothes Off As Directed by Helen was perceived by some fans as a response to the likeliness or unlikeliness of the universe created by Xanthe in her story, Coming Home. Helen's popslash story All I Ever Needed[2] was a response to All I Ever Wanted by NSyncGrrl and was meant as a parody that was supposed to make fun of the soap-opera-like qualities of the original[3], but some of NSyncGrrl's readers accused Helen of plagiarism and thought the response was in bad taste.[4]
Reactions to sudden changes in canon
When TPTB make sudden changes to a show or other source, fans often feel the need to 'fix' what they feel the show has broken.
Reactions to Responsefic
Some people feel that responsefic is unfair. It can look like the responding author is bullying the original author. However, when the original author and the one responding are established authors with a readership of their own, it's not so much about authors bullying each other as it is about a perceived attack on the readers of the original; they liked it in the first place and are put on the defense by the reactions to the second story. Pitching readers against readers is rarely pleasant and a huge part of the controversy. This can be true when the fic is in response to a trend as well, not just a specific work.
