[PUBLIC POST] Let's talk fandom!

[ljwrites]

All right, the weekly open posts are back! This week let's talk about our fandom obsessions, or just works that we really like. Here are some possible discussion launchers, but feel free to ignore some or all of them and add your own:

- What are some of your favorite works?
- Were you or are you involved in fandom?
- How did your favorite works or fandoms influence your writing?

Go to town, folks!

Comments

[dhampyresa]

Favourite works: mine or other people's? Not that either is easy to answer.

I am involved in fandom and have been for years. I currently have a most terrible case of the Star Wars.

That is an excellent question. I'm not sure. I do know that if I not recently read a 300k+ Star Wars AU/time-travel fic, I would most likely not be planning a Star Wars AU right now.

[ljwrites]

Since the post is about fandoms I was thinking other people's works, but either is fine! Whatever you're comfortabel discussing.

You've caught the Star Wars bug bad! Were you a fan of the original trilogy and prequels too, or did TFA get you into it?

[dhampyresa]

I'm hard-pressed to name specific works, tbh, but some fandom people have been most awesome and helpful with my writing.

This icon isn't called "A most terrible case of the Star Wars" for no reason, hahaha.

I wasn't fannish about the prequels when they came out -- Revenge of the Sith is about one/two years before I got in fandom, even though I saw in theaters. I saw TFA because I am weak for SPAAAAAAACE on the big screen and I loved it so I went back and watched the other movies again and now I'm fannish about the prequels and the sequels, but not so much the original trilogy (except Leia). So six of one, half a dozen of the other.

[inkdust]

Now actually relevant to me!!

Well, I've always read some fic now and then, but I've never been involved in a fandom until now. AO3 account is rather new and shiny.

Things are still all Agent Carter all the time over here, and I don't expect to write for another fandom anytime in the near future, if at all - though of course this one came out of nowhere. But it's been an awesome experience to go beyond individual stories and identify actual writers whose work I admire (Paeonia, Eienvine, LadyWillow, *wistful sigh*). I don't think it's something I could have done, or done as well, earlier in my writing history. I can recognize specific skills and strengths now.

So it's been a little backwards for me - my writing initially influenced my foray into fandom, but I'm excited for the reverse as I continue on. The experience of feedback has been incredibly encouraging, and the practice finishing things and releasing them into the wild (five things now - three chapters and two shorts) is excellent. And I appreciate that I haven't entered this world until now. I know many people grew up as writers through fandom and benefited from that, but for me it's...testing grounds. It's exciting.

[ljwrites]

Go you--that is awesome, to be discovering new things and having fun! My experience has been in the other direction, too, coming to original writing through fanfic, so it's fascinating to hear how things can be the other way around.

Do you see differences between writing original stories and writing fanfic? Do you find fanfic easier or harder? I love the sense of community in fandom, and it doesn't hurt that there's a built-in audience for the stories I write in a fandom. I also like that even short stories are effectively "extended" through the existing canon, making writing and setup generally easier. When I started feeling constrained by the canon, though, I knew it was time to start working on original fiction. I still hope to go back to my fanfic projects once I have a little more time!

[inkdust]

I do find fanfic generally easier in terms of a predetermined world. At first I was apprehensive about characterization - keeping in character had never meant referring to an outside source before. But that's where the community came in, because seeing their praise and especially specific comments on the characterization was the most effective reassurance that my instincts were on track. Then just like with original characters, the more you write them the easier it gets.

And I've definitely noticed your point about short stories - I've found myself actually able to write shorter pieces, mainly because I don't have to provide explanation. In that sense it's a lot like the writing I was doing about my own characters - vignettes within a framework. I'm hopeful that the practice might help with figuring out how to write shorter original stuff.

It's also been good for letting me work more on the writing side of things, with less focus demanded for character and plot. I wrote a pair of 400 word snapshots with much more of a flash fiction / poetic essay / no actual action feel, focusing heavily on the tone, language, rhythm and received compliments directed at precisely those aspects. That's what makes me say "testing grounds." Let me try to write something quiet and beautiful and see if they say it's quiet and beautiful. Let me try to write something with an undercurrent of movement from start to finish and see if they comment on the rhythm and flow. It helps that I've picked a sharp little corner of fandom. I plan to try a piece with a little more humor next.

[ljwrites]

It's also been good for letting me work more on the writing side of things, with less focus demanded for character and plot. . . . That's what makes me say "testing grounds."

An excellent insight. It's kind of like working with a section or module of existing code to test it out, rather than trying to test and run an entire application built from the ground up. On a related note, I have argued that fanfic lends itself to a completely different style of storytelling than original fiction.

[inkdust]

"I have argued that fanfic lends itself to a completely different style of storytelling than original fiction." I agree completely. I'm happy to be getting to know it in addition to the other.

[ljwrites]

The first time I ever showed strangers my fictional writing was when I started posting Harry Potter fanfic as a college student, and for a long time my fictional writing was almost exclusively fanfic. My most recent fandom obsession was Avatar: The Last Airbender, for which I wrote a bunch of fanfics including a giant 160K fic. The HP fic starred Snape while the ATLA fic was about Prince Zuko, so being obsessed with morally ambiguous antiheroes and redemption arcs seems to be A Thing for me. (Other characters I've focused on: Seifer from Final Fantasy VIII, Sesshomaru from Inuyasha, Denahi from Brother Bear. Yup, all villains at some point or morally grey in some way.)

For a long time I was content with almost exclusively writing fanfic, despite being asked by some friends and readers why I didn't write original fiction. (I did, a little, but they were drawerfics for my own consumption. One of these manuscripts is 150 pages long.) It was fanfic that ultimately inspired me to start working on original fiction, though. After I wrote the giant ATLA fic I started chafing against the restrictions of canon and wanted to try something different. Joke's on me, though, because I started working on historical fiction which is basically fanfic with a bigger and more complicated canon.

Another area of fiction that I worked on for a long time was roleplaying fic, where I would write novelizations of roleplaying sessions or character backstories. Another writer told me that I was the most communally-minded writer she knew, and I think that's a common thread through all my fiction-writing efforts: From fanfic to roleplaying fic to historical fiction, I always want to write something with relevance to specific communities whether it's my roleplaying group, a fandom, or a country. I even co-created this community of writers! :P

[jae]

Fandom has been a hard thing for me lately. I still feel fannish, but the last few years have been a time of realizing just how little organized fandom and I actually gel. I feel like my organized fannish experience has mostly been characterized by investing energy into understanding the kinds of things that other people care about without fandom as a whole ever investing the same kind of energy into the things I care about (which, I mean, that's totally fair, if they're just not interested in those things? but it gets old!). And while I do know from experience that there are plenty of individual fans out there who get fannish in the same ways I do (usually on the edges of fandom, the "barely-fannish"), it's gotten much more difficult to find them since fandom as a whole has become less interested in having complex, multi-threaded conversations about fictional characters.

I think I will always get emotionally invested in fictional characters--other people's as well as my own--and I will always want to write and talk about them. But I'm not sure fandom-as-a-community is actually for me in the long run.

-J

[ljwrites]

I feel you, after the 50th favorite character list and 500 different shipping combinations I start wondering if fandom is the place for me, too. It does become a matter of finding like-minded individuals to be fannish with in a way that you want to be, which is harder because, as you pointed out, they're not nearly as organized and visible (which is probably part of the reason why some of us get so invested in getting friends into our shows/books). Good meta and interesting fanfics are still out there, and are in some ways more abundant than ever, but searching them out is often a matter of luck and chance in my experience.

[lilly_c]

I've been doing fandom since I was a kid and now at 32 there are times when I feel old especially with the ones I was invovled with growing up. Mainly Simpsons, Star Trek (TNG; DS9; Voy), X-Files and Stargate SG-1.

At the moment I'm involved with Agent Carter fandom although very quietly but still I'm around, thankfully it is quite supportive and inclusive even though I primarily write a seemingly rare pairing.

Favourite works of mine are always the same of If You Asked (Killer Instinct), Haunted (SG1), and Twice Unjust (Taggart). I don't read as much fic as I'd like because RL is a pesky wee so and so but my current favourites are Moments (Agent Carter), Finally (Agent Carter) and Give Up The Ghost (MCU/Agent Carter) and two of those are WIPs which I usually avoid reading because of being burned in the past with WIPs.

Most of my fandoms are sci-fi/cult/horror so the influence on my own writing from those is that the possibilities are endless and that anything from canon can be turned into something completely different and that is quite freeing.

[ljwrites]

I have only recently discovered DS9 and it is awesome. I caught a few episodes of Voyager back in the day too. And now they're renewing the X-Files and Xena, so it seems that once you wait long enough everything old is new again.

I've heard good things about Agent Carter, and our very own inkdust is really into it, too. I miss reading and writing fanfic and look forward to getting back into it once I have a little more time.

[tblspoon]

I am and will be forever- a lurker. I am that silent reader who watches as the fandom explodes with works and then wanders off in chase of some new shiny fandom.

My favorite kind of fanfic to read are Crossovers. Generally, I find one fandom I know, get introduced to a completely new one, read all I can of it, determine the 'best' authors in the fandom, then get introduced to another new fandom based on the wonderful authors' other works and bookmarks. I find my experience with wikipedia and AO3 very similar in how I wander from topic to topic.

[ljwrites]

That's awesome that you use good fanworks as an actual gateway to other fandoms! So I take it you don't write fanfic, just read them?

[tblspoon]

Yes, I'm just a reader of fanfic and the attempter of original fic.