Fanfic (2016 essay by Ru)
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| Title: | Fanfic (2016 essay by Ru) |
| Creator: | Ru |
| Date(s): | 2016 |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom: | |
| Topic: | |
| External Links: | Fanfic (2016 essay by Ru), Archived version Fanfic (2016 essay by Ru) (2016) |
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Fanfic (2016 essay by Ru) is a 2016 essay by Ru.
Excerpts
Okay so I was thinking about these amazing posts I’ve been seeing of late about the relevance and importance of fanfic as transformative media and why it matters. And I think it actually goes beyond the fact that thousands of our most important cultural items are actually fanfic of another thing, and that it allows those of us outside of the mainstream mould (women, LGBT, POC) to make our own representation and tell our own stories in the worlds we love. It’s also the fact that fanfiction as a medium is different than other media based on the stories it can tell.
What made me think of this was a gifset from the movie Stardust. There’s a random moment in the ending during the wedding scene, where the gay transvestite pirate Captain Shakespeare leans back and winks at Humphrey, our hero’s original love rival. Humphrey looks pleased and flattered, and his girlfriend sneers. The joke is that the snotty original love interest, Victoria, has ended up with the man she said she wanted, only to discover he’s gay.
In an original story, Stardust, that’s all that can be: a joke. The story is done, Yvaine and Tristan are happy and the villain defeated. No one cares about two minor characters and a slightly problematic throwaway gag. From the creator’s perspective that’s that. No one would be interested in a second movie about Humphrey coming to terms with the new world beyond the Wall, or his homosexual feelings. No one would watch Humphrey, a minor antagonist, stumble through this new magical world and meet again the handsome older gentleman who winked at him at Tristan’s wedding. No one cares if he then joins the pirate crew, and the two men slowly fall in love as Captain Shakespeare starts to train this stupid (but hot) young dandy in the ways of his lightning ship.
But fanfic would allow for that. In a fanfic you could write a 100,000 word adventure epic about two supporting characters. Hell, you could parallel that story with Victoria growing up as well, realising that there’s more to the world just over the Wall, and finding herself a place beyond the provincial It Girl. And again, no one would watch a movie about that. No one could market it. In the original media it remains speculation what happens next. Fanfiction opens the door to exploring whatever part of this universe you want, without diminishing the original story.
And the question then comes 'well why not write a whole novel about a young man from a small village who becomes a gay Lightning pirate?’. And the answer is that the story then becomes divorced from its context. It matters for this hypothetical Humphrey story that we know that Tristan became the hero. We know he was humiliated when Tristan returned, having grown into an accomplished man, and made him small and unimpressive by comparison. It matters that we know Captain Shakespeare’s homosexuality and transvestism has only just been revealed to his crew (in the climax of the original movie) and that they were accepting of it. It matters that we come to this story with Humphrey and Victoria well aware that they’re supporting characters in the broader story. It matters that we know Tristan and Yvaine’s story just ended, and we come with an emotional tie to those people. Those details carry far less weight when explained in an opening chapter that also has to create an entirely new world. Those nuances matter less when we’re more concerned with introducing the characters for the first time and trying to make an indifferent reader care.
What I’m saying is that this story COULD be told as its own book, movie etc, but that it SHOULDN’T be. Yes, an original novel about a young country dandy discovering a homosexual life of piracy would be amazing. But it wouldn’t be -this- story. That character wouldn’t be Humphrey learning and growing as a result of Tristan’s actions. That novel wouldn’t include Captain Shakespeare, whom we all love already and whom we come in already emotionally invested in. It wouldn’t return us to a world were already familiar with, thus allowing us to take the fantasy elements for granted and focus on the characters and relationships. And those things change the audience’s perspective on the story, and create an experience wholly different to what you could get in any other medium.
What I’m saying is that even leaving aside mainstream media’s reluctance to show stories about LGBT, POC and/or female characters, fanfiction matters because it allows us to tell the weird side-story as the main story. It allows us to tell smaller stories, and focus on minor characters who were underdeveloped for good reason in the main story. It allows us to try weird shit and, on a meta level, deconstruct the story itself. It allows us to respect the original story’s focus and plot, the original world, and then put a new angle on it. It allows us to examine sexuality, character growth, motivation, race, gender, and whatever else we want within the confines of a world we already know and have emotional investment in.
Fanfiction writers are doing amazing things with structure, with character, with the focus and theme of their work, because working within an established universe gives you opportunities that an original story won’t. Fanfic can be terrible and trashy and cliche but y'know, so can original media. Fanfic at its best is transformative, original, literary and engaging. It expands the original characters and universe by shifting the focus, narrowing in on a particular facet, or changing the plot or setting in some way and examining the consequences of that change. Its more than a stepping stone before we become 'real writers’. And it isn’t for people who are just too lazy to make their own thing.
Fanfiction is beautiful, and it deserves more credit than it gets.