Fanfic + SF/F rant

[anghraine]

It feels like I'm increasingly seeing posts that are like "a bold and daring thought: what if genre fiction actually is a lesser art form" and "fanfic really is cringe and shallow in a way original, or at least literary, fiction definitionally isn't, as a natural byproduct of the form."

I have many complaints about fandom trends, both generally and specific to certain fandoms. I have always had lots of complaints about these. But I hate this. I hate the snide, snappy versions of this especially, but I also hate the more earnest arguments about how this just naturally arises from the existence of magic or spaceships or the re-purposing of pre-existing characters. I hate the attempts to pass off nostalgia for ye olde SF/F + handwringing over the corruption of the youth/womenfolk/etc as somehow progressive. I hate framing the most absolutely conventionally pretentious arguments about why less "respectable" genres really truly deserve to be disrespected as revolutionary.

There are deeply ahistorical and short-sighted elements to this that I've ranted about before (most recently with regard to fanfic here), and trying to additionally suggest these ideas are dangerous and transgressive and simultaneously so obvious as to be above criticism is so nonsensical. If you want to talk in sweeping generalizations about how SF/F is trash and fanfic is trash, you can do that, but the demand to be welcomed for doing so in fandom spaces and that the entirely predictable result of people getting annoyed just shows how right you are and how defensive fandom is about their unsophisticated tastes is just raw entitlement and elitism. Upsetting people is not a vindication of your position.

Now, people have always made this argument in fandom, and in SF/F circles, too. I personally cannot remember a time when there weren't people writing SF/F that was extremely identifiable as such while denying that it was SF/F at all, because by their own estimation, they're too good or too distinctive for SF/F. But it's pervading more and more of what I see in a fandom context and it's just ... ugh.

It's especially grating with regard to fanfic, which is already a shorthand for "trashy" for a lot of people in a way that SF/F had somewhat clawed past. And it's still more annoying when the argument doesn't seem to even get fanfic at a very basic level. Yes, I am frequently annoyed by the way that fandoms get overrun by fanon and modern USA settings and shipping that becomes progressively more and more detached from anything particular to the characters. But I am way more annoyed with these very respectability-tinged arguments about the evils of fanfic not doing exactly what its canon did or not exactly sharing the priorities of its canon or not fixing its canon (often when it's SF/F!) or whatever.

Fanfic has often had a reputation (largely among people outside fandom) for arising out of desire to just have more of whatever its source material was doing. But that has very rarely been my experience of what fans are getting out of fanfic, as either writers or their audience. Fanfic is overwhelmingly about poking at things that are in some way not in the canon. This might be a relationship (not necessarily romantic) you find fun to think about, but it didn't happen in canon, or wasn't a focal point because of genre or not involving the protagonists or whatnot. It might be a relationship that was a focal point in canon, but there's a lot the source just didn't get into out of time or plot constraints or whatever. It might be that you're curious about what would have resulted from some change that might have occurred, or there's an aspect of the setting/world-building that you want to expand on in a way the original didn't, or you want to write about something to do with canon from a different perspective or in a different style. And so on. The point is generally introducing something that isn't already present in the canon (often many things) and seeing what results.

But a really frequent criticism that I've seen basically forever, but more and more recently, is that it is fundamentally problematic to have different priorities than the source material did, especially if the source dealt with something more fraught or abstract or directly political than the fandom usually does. And I've been annoyed about how fandoms handle that kind of material, but I don't actually think it's incumbent on fans to do it the way the source did, no matter how good the source is. In fact, when the source handles something like that really well as a central focus, I think it's all the more understandable that fans who approve of the canon treatment would tackle some other aspect that was less central or less developed, given that a) the canon's treatment of its subject has already been done really well by canon, and b) odds are high that almost everyone in your audience is going to be familiar with the really good canon version.

For instance: most Jyn/Cassian shippers have a high respect for how Rogue One handled the exigencies of resistance to imperialism and fascism, and matters such as the sacrifices made by our faves and their allies. There are a few fics that focus on those themes from a somewhat different angle but which are fundamentally similar to the film (and these are usually quite good!). But "writing fanfic where Jyn and Cassian and maybe even more people survive and heal and get to have good lives together" doesn't mean we don't get the film's themes or are trying to undercut those themes. A given Jyn/Cassian fic might do so, sure (I've read some that were very dissatisfying for that reason!), but by and large, Rogue One fanfics are in conversation with Rogue One, not trying to replicate or compete with Rogue One. The consolation of a good Jyn and Cassian Survive and Get To Be Happy Together fic is partly derived from the very fact that this did not happen in Rogue One.

Sometimes you'll encounter a Jyn/Cassian fic that is actively antagonistic towards Rogue One (I have read these!) or which is deeply antithetical to the themes of Rogue One (I have also encountered these!). But that kind of thing is actually rather rare IMO. A much more common annoyance is Jyn/Cassian fic that has nothing to do with Rogue One at all, even in terms of peripheral elements or differing interpretations or re-imaginings or whatnot. The problem with a fic like that isn't that it's a bad story, but that no matter how good the story is in itself, it's not really working as fanfic. If I wanted to read original fic, I could simply do that.

And part of my annoyance with these sweeping dismissals of fanfic for not being perfect extensions of their canons (something very little fanfic ever attempts or desires to be) is that it flattens the distinctions between fans focusing on something the source material didn't (world-building for the Ring of Kafrene, say), fans taking an essentially combative position towards the source material ("maybe fighting imperialism is morally equivalent to imperialism"), and fans disengaging from the source material altogether. And any or all of these things can happen in different parts or aspects of any individual fic. The easy conflation of them into one thing makes it fairly difficult to have any meaningful conversation about, say, actively anti-revolutionary trends in Rogue One fic if any and all fic that is not Rogue One 2.0 is defined as fundamentally "not getting it."

That's just an example of fic for one ship in one film in one fandom, but I've seen so many of these kinds of reductive sweeping dismissals of fanfic and SF/F broadly that make it only more difficult to discuss these kinds of things with any nuance beyond good vs bad. But it's doubly annoying that these dismissals get presented as genuinely groundbreaking and transgressive and not the same over-simplified, stale arguments that the literary crowd has been making since before Lord of the Rings was a glimmer in Tolkien's eye.

Comments

[chestnut_pod]

And the easy response (Okay! What are you doing here, then?) so rarely goes down well…

[elperian]

I assume the answer is something like "because this is the only place they have left that hasn't kicked them out".

[anghraine]

ngl I do sometimes suspect that, while these people may not have been actively kicked out, they've often burned bridges with or failed to stand out from those they would actually respect as their peers or superiors, and they're settling for an attempt to be sort of monarchs of fandom. They present themselves as smarter, cooler, edgier (or purer, depending), less invested in silly fandom things yet more incisive about them, would-be trailblazers trying to steer the unwashed masses of fandom. But at the end of the day, it's very ... well, there's a reason the "what were you doing at the devil's sacrament?" shitpost has resonated for years, lol. If you're too cool for the fanfic crowd, then why are you in the fanfic crowd?

(You already know this is not me advocating for 100% uncritical consumption of fanfic, something I have never done, but in case someone else sees it: this is not advocating for 100% uncritical consumption of fanfic! The intellectual laziness and lack of nuance in sweeping denunciations of fanfic does not actually exhibit any greater degree of critical thinking, though. In fact, my experience w/ teaching inclines me to think it actually exhibits less; this kind of kneejerk, over-generalized condemnation is easier for many people than any kind of emotional or analytical engagement.)

[anghraine]

Yup. I kind of wonder if it's a big fish, small pond thing to some degree? Like, they obviously think fandom or at least fanfic is an intrinsically inferior form at some level and hold other people in contempt for their participation in it, but in fandom, that also lets them feel special and sophisticated for their elite tastes vs the cringe nerds around them, where that kind of grandstanding would be indistinguishable from most others in a more conventionally respectable space.

There does seem this feeling that they should not only "get" to make sweeping generalizations about fandom but should be applauded and admired for doing so, and that any challenge to them can only be further evidence of fannish inferiority.

[chestnut_pod]

It’s a type, for sure — I see it all the time at my university, for example, in people who feel they’re too good somehow for the program or the school. The fandom expression seems so particularly irritating, though, precisely because of the incredibly low stakes! We are all in the gutter here, but some of us are enjoying the fanfiction!

[anghraine]

The fandom expression seems so particularly irritating, though, precisely because of the incredibly low stakes! We are all in the gutter here, but some of us are enjoying the fanfiction!

Exactly, lol. There's a point where it's just like ... please, we're all cringe here. Some of us are at least capable of having fun, though.

[alias_sqbr]

Did you see that post about how fanfic is like single use plastic? I started writing a whole rant about it but it was so fractally wrong I got exhausted and gave up.

Anyway, agreed. It's also just... like, yeah, a large proportion of fanfic is self indulgent derivative tropey romance/escapist fantasy etc. So is most published original fiction. But they compare the Good (by their standards) published fiction to all fanfiction, which is wildly unfair. Ridiculous kindle unlimited porn is published fiction too!

And as much as, say, Rogue One fanfic often doesn't especially engage with the deep themes, you also have all the, say, Stargate Atalantis fanfic which explores colonialism and the nature of the self etc in a way the canon had little interest in doing. Sometimes because the original canon had little interest in exploring it.

A lot of anti fanfic types seem to believe both that fanfic represents people's full understanding of canon (so if they write happy romance for Rogue One they have terrible media comprehension) and that what people choose to write fanfic for is a sort of... vote for what they consider Good Fiction. If someone watches Top Gun and some indie anti-US imperialism movie but only makes fanfic for the former that means they approve more of Top Gun and every single one of it's messages. And if they write anti-US imperialism Top Gun fic that just means they're deluded enough to think that's what Top Gun is saying in canon, or are too ignorant and unable to think outside the box to write fanfic for some more appropriate canon. But it's a lot more complicated than that.

[anghraine]

Did you see that post about how fanfic is like single use plastic? I started writing a whole rant about it but it was so fractally wrong I got exhausted and gave up.

Yes, I did! SEAN, IT WAS SO BAD. AS YOU KNOW. BUT TRULY FRACTALLY WRONG.

It's also just... like, yeah, a large proportion of fanfic is self indulgent derivative tropey romance/escapist fantasy etc. So is most published original fiction. But they compare the Good (by their standards) published fiction to all fanfiction, which is wildly unfair.

You're completely right! This happens all the time, both in terms of modern literary comparisons, and when they're trying to come up with some argument about why early modern re-purposing of pre-existing characters/storylines is totally different because how dare you compare shitty omegaverse fanfic with Shakespeare!!! Nobody is comparing really good, thoughtful fanfic to really bad older literature, lbr.

I was actually just re-reading a more formal essay I'd written in 2012 defending fanfic as a form from this kind of formulation that glorifies originality in a cherry-picking and extremely culturally-contingent way that denies both:

The natural question, if one seldom asked, is what exactly distinguishes fanfiction from other fiction. It would be simple to say quality: Jean Rhys' post-colonialist appropriation of Jane Eyre in Wide Sargasso Sea is thoughtful and literary, where fandom produced the infamously terrible My Immortal (Dreamreaver). Deliberately awful or not, My Immortal would never reach the level of professional publication. The difficulty with this argument, of course, is that while My Immortal would hopefully never escape anyone's slush pile, the likes of The Playboy Sheikh's Virgin Stable-Girl do manage it. Professional fiction can be terrible.

And as much as, say, Rogue One fanfic often doesn't especially engage with the deep themes, you also have all the, say, Stargate Atalantis fanfic which explores colonialism and the nature of the self etc in a way the canon had little interest in doing.

Right! And there's a lot of pretty good, deep, thoughtful RO fic; it just tends to focus on different things than the film did because we've all watched the film and nearly all of us love and respect the film enormously, so there's not a lot of reason to simply do what the film already did well. Even good RO fanfic is more likely to engage with things the film didn't directly touch on (whether overt Jyn/Cassian romance or more room to breathe in certain locations with more world-building or more attention to Jyn and Saw's relationship or how the surviving characters in AU might deal with grief or the genocide of Alderaan etc). There's a definite sense that if you want a story that does what RO did, you can just watch RO, but it also opened up all kinds of other possibilities, too. But if you want something that really explores an element like, say, the impact of Anakin Skywalker's enslavement on his psyche, you're honestly going to have much better luck with fanfic than anything George Lucas wrote. Not all of it will be good, but there's a lot of fanfic that is all the more concerned with it because it's so awkwardly handled in the actual films, and it's certainly not difficult to find fanfic that deals with it more deeply than the prequels ever did.

A lot of anti fanfic types seem to believe both that fanfic represents people's full understanding of canon (so if they write happy romance for Rogue One they have terrible media comprehension) and that what people choose to write fanfic for is a sort of... vote for what they consider Good Fiction

Yup, exactly. This seems so diametrically opposed to what actually drives most people to fanfic that it's always such a baffling take. And as with the Top Gun example, it's essentially a very ... conclusion-driven approach? Like, it ultimately doesn't really matter what fanfic is actually doing with a text if you've already pre-defined fanfic about it (or fanfic altogether) as X. Literally any approach will be represented in whatever way suits the conclusion already made.

[alias_sqbr]

Ha, yeah, they've defined things so rigidly the only way fanfic can be "good" is if it's like... publication quality sequel of a highly respected work, which has the same tone and themes but is also original and brilliant. And since not all fanfic passes through these perfectly reasonable goalposts it is all trash.

[anghraine]

It's morbidly interesting because I'm more used to people who have big fanfic opinions but could not define what fanfic actually is or is not for the life of them, yet still have a more mainstream concept of what "good" is. But yeah, that post essentially creates a concept of what makes fanfic specifically "good" that narrows the definition of what "good" even means as a concept from anything like its usual usage, that creates a wild double standard for fanfic vs original fic, and which is also profoundly divorced from common motivations for writing fanfic at all. And it's all ultimately just rhetorical flailing about a conclusion they've already reached in a way that tries to obscure the flailing via moral righteousness. The worst fanfic discourse!

[beatrice_otter]

I am lucky (or perhaps choosy in my fannish circles) and haven't encountered that. It sounds really annoying.

[anghraine]

It certainly is. As I was telling sqbr, I was already writing screeds about how annoying and poorly argued it was back in 2012 and the whole thing has only gotten worse since then.

[elperian]

Upsetting people is not a vindication of your position.

A very, very important point!

Fanfic has often had a reputation (largely among people outside fandom) for arising out of desire to just have more of whatever its source material was doing.

This perspective seems to completely miss the transformative nature of fanfic - even when it is creating "more"* of the source material, it is transforming it with a new author or artist's ideas, and that extends into more deliberate transformation as well.


*It feels so oxymoronic to say this, because the source material is from a particular source, and the new artist is not from that source.


is that it is fundamentally problematic to have different priorities than the source material did, especially if the source dealt with something more fraught or abstract or directly political than the fandom usually does.

*rubs temples*

I wonder how much this has arisen from the pushback against parasociality with original source artists to the point of putting the work on a pedestal, although I think it goes back much further than that.


A much more common annoyance is Jyn/Cassian fic that has nothing to do with Rogue One at all, even in terms of peripheral elements or differing interpretations or re-imaginings or whatnot. The problem with a fic like that isn't that it's a bad story, but that no matter how good the story is in itself, it's not really working as fanfic. If I wanted to read original fic, I could simply do that.

You and me talking about every AU that abandons the construct of the fight in RO! Who are they without the world they lived in? Is Cassian really Cassian in a coffe shop AU where he's just trying to romance Jyn and not fighting the system? Deep Questions at 3.

[anghraine]

A very, very important point!

I hate the "looks like I hit a nerve!"/"hit dogs holler" element of online discourse so much. It's something that I used to primarily associate with right-wing trolls—I mean, it definitely is a fundamentally trollish logic to my mind. Of course, the reality is that upsetting people doesn't intrinsically have any bearing whatsoever on the strength of an argument. If a bunch of people are upset or annoyed by something you (general you!) say, it might be that you're daring to argue something unpopular and intellectually challenging but righteous and the majority of responders are kneejerk defensive about it. But you can get the same response by being sufficiently provocative or obnoxious or poorly-informed or getting a chance reblog from a BNF that brings in an unfamiliar audience or, or, or. In and of itself, people getting upset doesn't mean anything except that people got upset, and it's really frustrating to see this pattern of substituting shit-stirring for decent arguments become so thoroughly normalized and pervasive in all quarters.

This perspective seems to completely miss the transformative nature of fanfic - even when it is creating "more"* of the source material, it is transforming it with a new author or artist's ideas, and that extends into more deliberate transformation as well.

Yup. No matter how true to a source you're trying to be, you can't help saying something about it. I've often thought that fanfic bridges the gap between creative and analytical writing in really interesting ways because of this—even when it's bad, this kind of direct transformation can't really help but get into conversation with its source or sources and the culture around them. The very fandom context that lets fanfic writers bypass certain steps that original writers often can't afford to also presents complications and hurdles and advantages distinct to fanfic's transformative and conversational nature. Replication is never going to be the end-all and be-all of fanfic—what really "makes" a fanfic for me, beyond craftsmanship, is what the author is bringing to this overall conversation.

I wonder how much this has arisen from the pushback against parasociality with original source artists to the point of putting the work on a pedestal, although I think it goes back much further than that.

Yeah, there are definitely many factors, and I think the pedestalizing is part of it for sure. I think there are also some people (lots of people) who have internalized a very auteur-inflected but also corporate hierarchy in which both fandom and SF/F occupy relatively low places. There are all sorts of fandom tensions that arise from this, but I think there are definitely people who ultimately see themselves in a high-social cachet way—as fundamentally smart and cool and sophisticated—that is difficult to square with the reality of fandom's actual social cachet. I feel like the attempts to normalize fandom as actually respectable and serious business, and the sweeping dismissals of other fans as unsophisticated rubes, may make exactly opposing arguments but kind of seem to be coming from similar internalizations of social hierarchy and respectability.

You and me talking about every AU that abandons the construct of the fight in RO! Who are they without the world they lived in? Is Cassian really Cassian in a coffe shop AU where he's just trying to romance Jyn and not fighting the system? Deep Questions at 3.

Yup! Like, I've periodically seen modern AUs where Jyn and Cassian at least have fundamentally revolutionary politics and this is actually relevant to the story, and those sit a lot more easily with me than ones that strip out the political themes altogether.

I'm also thinking of the fics that are set in the GFFA and basically seem to conclude that the Rebellion is just too impure for our heroes and they need to leave and fight the Empire as independent lone agents rather than doing things they're morally uncomfortable with as part of a larger organization that can achieve greater things collectively. I mean, it's a buckwild response to Rogue One to me, and while more engaged w/ the film (if in a way that is pretty fundamentally opposed to its themes) than the beige coffeeshop AUs, I do think there are some intriguing common elements that seem much more reliant on hyper-individualistic anodyne centrism than the Disney product that inspired them! As you and I know, there are many fics as well that are totally unlike this, and it becomes difficult to talk about the nuances and complications of how people are engaging w/ a film like Rogue One when everyone is lumped into an amorphous mass of uncomprehending and insufficiently radical fandoms.