I like fanfiction.
That’s perhaps something that someone who wants to be taken seriously as a reader, as a writer, and as a sayer-of-things about the state of the world shouldn’t admit, but it’s true. I’m not going to say what fandoms I enjoy, but I read a fair bit of it, and I’ve (pseudonymously) written a little as well.
Fanfiction, for those of you who haven’t heard of it, is when people, without permission, write stories based in worlds and/or on characters that they did not create. You’ll find everything from five hundred-word scenelets showing something alluded to but not actually spelled out in the original published canon, to delightfully queered re-imaginings, to multi-hundred-thousand-word epics taking familiar characters on new adventures. On Archive of Our Own, or AO3 – probably the best broad repository of fanfiction that exists right now, though far from the only one – you can find more than 14 million stories in thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of different fandoms.
I don’t really understand the disdain that a lot of people, particularly those who think of themselves as Serious Readers, hold for fanfic. I mean, yes, a lot of it is just not very well written. But as someone who myself enjoys a wide range of writing – both fiction and non, in many genres and forms – and who I think can fairly claim both to pay a lot of attention to, and to have a deep appreciation for, writing craft, I still don’t quite get why the frequency of mediocre writing translates for so many people into assertive, even snobbish, dismissal. I often find things to enjoy even in fics that do not demonstrate a lot of writerly skill. And a surprising amount of the writing you find is actually pretty good.
I think for other people, their negative view of fanfic comes from an assumption that it is only and always smutty. I remember, for instance, that many years ago I mentioned fanfiction in passing to a dear friend, and her response made it clear that she thought something along these lines (which I found particularly surprising because she is someone who engages with other aspects of fan culture, so I expected that she’d be more knowledgeable and more sympathetic). Of course, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with writing or reading sexy stories, though they aren’t a particular priority for me personally. But the thing is, this assumption that smut is the be-all and end-all of fanfiction just isn’t true. I mean, there is certainly no shortage of sexy fanfic out there, but there’s a huge breadth of other kinds of fics too, that do a wide range of different things for the people who read them.
Personally, I think I get a few different things out of fanfiction. Certainly, it can be a means of escaping into story, much like any other kind of fiction. It can be a site of delight and joy and play. It certainly isn’t always, but it can be a way to encounter good writing. Sadly, like any other kind of narrative, fanfic can be a site where oppressive ideas, imagery, and tropes are reproduced, but you can also find lots that pushes back against those things, often in ways that are rare in traditionally published fiction. I particularly appreciate the scope it offers for finding stories about experiences of queerness, gender, and dissident relationship practice that push back against dominant norms, which are so often absent or minimally present in the works on which these stories are based. They have a scope to do weird, innovative, and sometimes silly things that, again, would be much harder to find in Serious Fiction or Quality TV/Movies of any sort, let alone those featuring characters that you already know. And honestly, there is something that I think should be treasured about the scope that fanfic offers to read stories that someone has written about a character they love navigating sexual violence, or a cancer diagnosis, or autism, or some experience of queerness or gender stuff, sometimes written with great skill but often not, but carrying an earnestness that signals that you are being let into something special – you’re getting a glimpse of people tapping into their own lives and drawing from the world as it immediately surrounds them and then sharing it. How awesome is that?
I also appreciate that capitalist property laws that have been written precisely to safeguard the domination of predatory, for-profit corporations in our culture industries are the very force maintaining fanfiction spaces as gift economies and fanfic writing as a non-monetizable hobby and site of pleasure. With a few very fringe exceptions, you cannot by law turn fanfic writing into a hustle – if you’re going to write it, it’s because you want to write for writing’s sake, and you want to gift what you’ve made to readers. Is a space like this going to bring the revolution? Of course not. But it’s still nice to experience a shared environment that is at least a little bit insulated from oppressive market dynamics.
All of this also makes me think about the ways in which those of us on the left relate to things like pleasure and joy and play. The fact is, many strands of leftist culture can be quite dour and humourless. And, like, I get it – the world is on fire and getting worse, billions of lives are saturated with oppressive violence, and all of that has to be our top priority. For that reason (and also because of my formation in a family context shaped by a particular strand of areligious Scottish presbyterian culture), I certainly feel the pull towards being suspicious of pleasure. But escaping into fun stories as part of creating a life that denies the terrible realities of the world is one thing, but weaving play and joy judiciously through a life that does its best to engage with the horrors of the world and with struggles to transform it is something very different. I think we need to take a sort of whole-person, whole-world view of things, and recognize not only that play and struggle can co-exist, but that they probably should. Especially over the long haul, moments of joy and pleasure and play sustain us for the fight, and perhaps give us fleeting spaces to imagine the world that we’re fighting for. And if for you that includes reading the occasional sweet, fluffy Picard/Worf coffee shop AU story…well, you do you. (And, no, I’ve never read anything at all in the Star Trek fandom – like I said, I’m not telling you what I read 😉 – let alone this specific story, but I bet someone, somewhere has written such a thing.)
And if your dismissal of fanfic is more from the cultural snobbery perspective, I’m not sure there’s much I can say – picture me rolling my eyes at you.