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May. 20th, 2018 06:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI saw a thing on tumblr being annoyed about people saying fanfic is better than original stuff
because someone has to build the original stuff playground in order to make the fanfic interesting in the first place.
And I see what they're saying. It's true, mostly.
But I read fic in fandoms I haven't seen the source for. I've been reading nothing but Harry Potter fic (about After, and what they do as adults now the Chosen One phase is all over) for... possibly even months at this point, and I'm not actually a fan of the source. I've read so much Stargate Atlantis fic, and seen so little canon, because the characters I find so compelling in fic kind of make me want to thump them in the original.
I have followed authors I like into whole new fandoms without even knowing which media the source is in. I think I've been reading stuff based on a game? Maybe some movies?
Definitely I've read far, far more widely in Marvel fanfic than I have in Marvel comics. Sure I've seen the movies, but there's so many characters I've only met in the fic.
So something else is going on here, something that fanfic does well and the source... generally isn't trying to do.
And it's different than just wanting to get really into the source universe. I mean from certain angles everything Doctor Who is fanfic now, as in it's being written by the fans who grew up thinking it was great. We took over. Except... it's not fanfic, in that it's not doing the things fanfic does, somehow, even if it does have disc after disc of new story somehow meant to fit in between episodes.
So, yeah, original fic grows us a garden, but dudes, we are not playing the same games in it.
And sometimes I'll follow the game into new ground, with no clue what I'll find there, just it's us playing.
because someone has to build the original stuff playground in order to make the fanfic interesting in the first place.
And I see what they're saying. It's true, mostly.
But I read fic in fandoms I haven't seen the source for. I've been reading nothing but Harry Potter fic (about After, and what they do as adults now the Chosen One phase is all over) for... possibly even months at this point, and I'm not actually a fan of the source. I've read so much Stargate Atlantis fic, and seen so little canon, because the characters I find so compelling in fic kind of make me want to thump them in the original.
I have followed authors I like into whole new fandoms without even knowing which media the source is in. I think I've been reading stuff based on a game? Maybe some movies?
Definitely I've read far, far more widely in Marvel fanfic than I have in Marvel comics. Sure I've seen the movies, but there's so many characters I've only met in the fic.
So something else is going on here, something that fanfic does well and the source... generally isn't trying to do.
And it's different than just wanting to get really into the source universe. I mean from certain angles everything Doctor Who is fanfic now, as in it's being written by the fans who grew up thinking it was great. We took over. Except... it's not fanfic, in that it's not doing the things fanfic does, somehow, even if it does have disc after disc of new story somehow meant to fit in between episodes.
So, yeah, original fic grows us a garden, but dudes, we are not playing the same games in it.
And sometimes I'll follow the game into new ground, with no clue what I'll find there, just it's us playing.