Dutyfic
| Synonyms: | Duty fic |
| See also: | Issuefic, Eating Your Veggies |
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Dutyfic is a derogatory term applied to fanfiction created out of (or perceived to be created out of) a sense of duty or obligation rather than a passion or interest in the canon, characters, or story. It is generally applied to a fic by someone other than the author, though there may be occasions where someone talks about writing fics for certain characters, pairings, or groups of characters in a manner that seems as though they are seeking validation or praise for having done so.
The term often comes up during discussions, discourse, and arguments on whether fandom and fans tend to focus on cisgender white men (who are often presumed straight in canon, but queer in the fanfic) in media to a disproportionate extent, and whether this and the reduced fandom focus on characters of color and female characters – particularly queer female characters – is rooted in bigotry.
The term was used in the meta essay Your Vagina is a Bigot; My Vagina is a Saint in the form of "joyless dutyfic", and it is sometimes referenced in relation to the Eating Your Veggies post (though the post did not use the term), both of which generated a lot of criticism, controversy, and discussion. When other meta or posts expressing similar sentiments circulate in social media spaces, references to dutyfic and how it has been used previously in meta like these two may be made.
The term can also be brought up as part of a response to fans express a disappointment in a lack of certain characters or pairing types in a fandom, though the specific term may not be used and the sentiment of the term may be expressed in different wording. Again, this is more commonplace when a fan is expressing disappointment or frustration about a lack of characters of color being shipped, a lack of femslash pairings, or a lack of trans characters being included in fanworks, as well as other less prevalent characters or story-lines.
Some fans use the term to express the idea that they wouldn't want fanworks written out of duty or guilt being added to their fandom, still retaining the implication that the work would not be created out of passion.
From a fan in 1995:
...the only good excuse for writing f/f, or any other kind of fanfic (including m/m) is because the characters are too interesting to leave alone. Fanfic as public service announcement has never quite worked, even if it's possible to get socially-responsible themes into a story where the scenario supports it. Female characters seen in a traditional way (including as victims of social bias) aren't likely to inspire any new interest, even if know we should share their concerns... [1]
Fan Commentary
Unknown Date
The other thing is that when you're berating people who aren't writing femslash/your ships/whatever for not writing the stuff you like, all you're doing is making them feel shitty. "Why don't you eat your vegetables?" is not an attitude that we want to have in our fic. That's what gets us nothing but shitty dutyfic or Extruded Fic Product, and I'd much rather that I had three other people who love my faves than twenty people dutifully banging out boring unpassionate paint by numbers fic.73chn1c0l0rr3v3l [2]
2019
[lj_writing[3]]
One huge strawman popular with people hostile to #FandomRacism #discourse is that the big bad fans of color want to force others to create for their ships. This is uhhh... how do you put it... a lie.
[lj_writing]
This "the scary discoursers want me to write dutyfic :(" strawman is a symptom of racial fragility and all-about-me-ism, based on the assumption that talking about racism is about guilting you, personally, into doing something. It substitutes defensiveness for thoughtfulness.