"I love fandom!"
If it was possible, I would go online right now, get ordained and marry myself to fandom and have lots of fandom children.
Why, you might ask, would I love a thing were any Tom, Dick, and Harriet can spew their opinions all over each other and then descend into faux-fisitcuffs over character interpretation?
"Why" is exactly the reason for this.
As a person who has always asked why, always questioned, curioused, wondered and pushed for a concrete reason behind any action that I was asked --read ordered--to take, fans take all of the millions of whys and hows and whos and create whole universes in order to develop, defend and state their reasoning.
The creators of whatever have already given us these characters, a setting and a world but that's not even for the discerning fan these days. We have to ask why, we have to know more and we have to be able to take an active role in the texts we're taking in.
At the end of the day, Harry Potter belongs to JK, Teen Wolf belongs to Davis and various and sundry fandoms sprouted as a result of the source material and that's wonderful. Fans take their work and play with it:
They put themselves in it, change the setting, throw characters into alternate verses, mesh two fandoms together in a gooey mix, and interpret the source material in ways that the original creators either refused to or couldn't due to marketing, sales, or vision.
One of my very favorite things about FanFiction in particular is the way that fans ask billions of questions and then proceed to answer them themselves before the book is even half way done.
Sites like FanFiction, AO3, Tumblr, LiveJournal, AdultFanFiction and the like are avenues for writers, readers, artists, critics, etc to contribute to a thing they absolutely love.
Take for instance this iconic image. Baby Potter probably being left on a Surrey porch the night/morning of October 31, November 1st by Dumbledore, McGonagall and Hagrid, three powerful yet stupid wizards who decided that it's OK, he'll live throughout the cold weather and he'll be fine.
This image right here has launched thousands of fics
- Instead of a lightning bolt, it's the Yucatec sign of the Sun and Harry is actually the Avatar for Kinich Ahau, a Mayan sun god.
- Harry is left out in the cold for too long and as a result develops an inner ear infection: he is deaf for the rest of his life and because he was without magical healing for the first 11 years of his life, could not be put to rights.
- Harry dies in the cold of the night, as a baby might and passes into the Spirit World, unfortunately due to the looming prophecy, he is brought back by Dumbledore with Dark Magic to do his bidding.
- Harry is kidnapped by vampires hunting in the night and trained to hate all Wizarding kind; he eventually slaughters all of Wizarding Britain.
- The Horcrux in Harry's scar takes over in this moment of weakness as Harry's magic struggles to keep him alive. He is squib, unable to use Harry's magic but proceeds to terrorize the Dursley's/Little Whinging until such time as he is allowed into the Wizarding world.
And this is just one moment of the movie, a visible representation of the books. It amazes me how much care, attention and time goes into really good Fanfiction, fanart and fanvids. These people, like the rest of us, have lives: school, work, families whatever and still have the time to devote to this living, breathing entity. It amazes me every time I read a new Fanfiction or see a new video, read new meta or just log into Tumblr.
I personally don't need to own a thing in order to appreciate it, take pleasure in it and ultimately challenge its existence.
At the end of a day, fandom is a powerful, independent collosus with the ability to dissect a text in less than ten minutes.
So give yourselves a big pat on the back, play this song on your listening device and walk out like:
I read one fanfic where curse made Harry Potter have cognitive delays, making him disabled. The story wasn't well written, but the possibilities were interesting. It focused more on how Petunia had to react to caring for the child of the sister she was jealous of and the added complication of having to care for a special needs child.
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ReplyDeleteI'm fairly new to the whole fanfic world, but the more fics I read, the more impressed I am by the scenarios they come up with. Also, the attention to detail is amazing. I find it really impressive that these people find the time to write these! I can barely handle the required work load I have now, so I cant imagine the dedication and passion it takes to make time (and have the energy/creative power) to write these amazing stories.
ReplyDeleteI have never been into fan fiction before, but I will say because of class I find myself spending more time reading it. I think it's really interesting to see how fans have taken an original story and adjusted it. I really have been liking fanfics that change the point of view of the story just because I usually want to know what another character was thinking during the events. I definitely have gained a new appreciation.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was in my preteens, my Maya and I would write fanfic and send it to each other. We would put ourselves in these stories and be the lovers of our favorite characters and just be general "Mary-Sues" (say that word in your head with as much disdain as possible, that's the only way to properly read it.)
ReplyDeleteIn high school I was too cool for fanfiction, I only read 'real' books. My nose was so far up in the air I could smell Heaven.
Then, I started watching Suits and I was so in love with the Broship of Harvey and Mike that I quickly turned to the internet for more. That drew me back into fanfiction and I have decided that I can live a full and satisfying life with fanfic in it.
Fanfiction is a part of who I am, which sound both sad and scary, but it really is. I learn new things about the world through fanfic, I learn new things about myself, and I have learned to read and write better than I could have without it.
And I don't love fanfic for all of the 'good' fanfic. I love it for the bad too. I love it for the porn, for the novels, for the damn crack fics too. They are what I turn to when I need to escape because it fills me with the same gooey warmness that trashy romance novels did.
I totally agree that fandoms are a powerful thing. It really drives a lot of texts, I think too. Fandoms are able to keep shows going by spreading the word through their own art. It's kind of awesome. They just couldn't bring back Firefly. Sad.
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