#this isn't even meant to dunk on fanfics

[voluptuarian]

Its interesting that there's this growing push to judge the quality and success of media by how much fanfic presence they have, especially since fanfic thrives on a lack of something in the source material. Most fanfics seem to be in response to something a writer disliked about the source-- fix it fic, canon divergence-- or felt like adding to the source-- crossovers, original characters, added scenes etc. I'm this case, the better written, more satisfying piece of media would, one assumes, have fewer reasons to fall into either category.

Another appeal for fiction is shipping-- I think most semi enlightened folks can understand that quality and shippability are not tied together (I anticipate there are fewer ship fics written for Stalker for instance, than their are for Law and Order). For a lot of that fiction, much of the ship interest revolves exclusively around shipping men with other men, specifically men who are seen as attractive by the community, so the more men are involved, and the more "attractive" they are, the higher the chance of ship fics being written (one reason you'll probably see more fic for Les Miserables than for Bridesmaids, for instance, despite the latter being more modern and seemingly more popular.)

The other element is suitability to tropes. Can I stick a fake marriage in it? Do any of these characters seem suitable as the owner of a florist shop? What does it crossover well with? Can I typecast one character as "sunny" and the other as "grumpy"-- in less flattering terms, how dimensionally flat is it/how similar is it to other things/how unimportant is the plot in molding characters or action? The less distinct it is and more easily its fits into common tropes, the more fanfic there will be. Generally any of these things tends to suggest (though not necessarily guarantee) worse quality source material.

These are all elements that a work specifically lacks which make it popular for fanfiction writing. Good quality fiction is likely to make satisfying use of its narrative, so there aren't dozens of empty plot areas for writers to fill, less likely to make terribly disappointing and ooc decision for fanfiction to correct. They probably have a strong plot, which ties characters and action to time and place, making disconnecting any of these elements while retaining the flavor of the original more difficult, and which allows for less easy insertion of fluff or sex into that narrative. And they don't have to appeal to endless romantic tension to keep audience interest (a romance might build its narrative on that, being a plot centered on romance, but an action series has other concerns that should come first). And, in my opinion, well crafted fiction is more likely to have a well rounded cast of all genders, rather than being a sausage party and 2d female supporting cast waiting to be fucked or fridged. All these elements make the better written piece obviously less conducive to fanfic production.

And then you look at the most legendary (or infamously) popular characters and series to produce fan content and most of them all capitalize off one or more of these big narrative lacunae. Supernatural has a week plot with few well developed female characters and multiple big m/m ships, none of which were satisfactorily handled but frequently teased, and ended horribly. Hannibal took plot that belonged to a female character to spin a central m/m ship that also never coalesced into anything concrete, ringed them in with a decent female cast who tended to die off or end up narratively unimportant (including a wife), and left fans with unfulfilled desires to see the central ship living in domestic bliss or fucking nasty or both, perfect fanfiction making material. Even with HP tanking in acceptibiltiy here, I'm still subjected every day to gay Marauders content, which seems fueled entirely by the potential attractiveness and male-dominateness of the era (Peter Pettigrew always seems to be absent from these things) anf its undefined and unconcrete nature (for example, a core element being the presence of Regulus who in canon we never see, know almost nothing about, have little reason to connect to the Marauders, and who is dead the whole series and only vaguely discussed towards the end). Again, built on the most un-written parts of a narrative, centering on elements that most appeal to fic writers. And then, the cockroach-like flourishing of Sanders Sides content, where the guy who makes the content was washed up a decade ago and it's literally one guy rping with himself, and yet not a day goes by where I'm not having to see content for it, despite my having blacklisted it. It has a. character over plot b. majority male cast (who are apparently "attractive" and appealing to see fuck each other, even tho they are all basically the same guy) and c. elements easily applied to other genres/tropes/series etc. (And of course, Osumatsusan had a similar thing happen, but with setting and genre mood that were almost completely removed from the original-- the existing plot and setting were fluffy and inane enough that fan content almost entirely skewed to extremely dark and fucked up, and of course, centered on multiple guys who were carbon copies of each other fucking.) All of this without even addressing the go-girl-give-us-nothing fan content wunderkind that is The Onceler. Like, what a tour deforce. The soft kids movie plot completely abandoned, all attention on one "fuckable" male character with no official ships and no female characters to get in the way, the entirety of fandom energy channeled into shipping one guy with himself. Its absolutely a fan content triumph, latching on to something with almost no existence and completely filling in whole cloth, completely reinterpreted, and duplicating ad nauseaum to make content from. The success of Goncharov has similar roots (combined with just Tumblr commit-to-the-bit-ness) allowing people to just completely fabricate a plot from a handful of elements, focus almost entirely on characters and most importantly ships, and inventing male characters to have unresolved homoerotic tension with each other.

Which is all a very long-winded supporting argument to my first point, that people are increasingly judging the quality of a work by its fanfic presence, despite the appeal of making fanfic hinging on the weakness and disappointing qualities of the original works.

People will be reading War and Peace or The Hour of the Star likely far longer than anyone will care about Supernatural. Meanwhile, Sherlock is sure to have more fanfic written about it than Dom Casmurro. Far from proving the superiority of the works woth more fics, it rather proves the opposite. Furthermore we can tie the amount of fanfic not even to a grade up or down in fictional quality, but specifically to a list of elements which allow fic writers to fill in extremely large blank areas or get them frustrated enough to "fix" themselves.

So stop saying x work not having much fanfic presence means its somehow bad, and admit that it just means it has less scope for people to imagine characters as breedable omega werewolves.

[orkbutch]

So I've been seeing A Viewpoint within the bg3 fandom occuring. And I gotta be honest. I disagree that the characters being bisexual in Baldur's Gate 3 means you cannot headcanon them as other sexualities for your own fandom content purposes. I think that's not reflective of how queer people and their sexual identities actually work, and its just antithetical to how fandom has always functioned, which is an exercise of imagination. I wanna clarify up front: I agree that someone saying that a character Can't or Shouldn't or Was Not Meant To Be bisexual because of whatever reason IS biphobic sentiment. The characters in Baldur's Gate 3 are canonically bi/pan, thats made pretty damn clear when you look through all their content. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about headcanons, au's; the kind of imaginitve play that is very much what fandom creativity is about. If you set a standard in fandom that depicting a character as a certain sexuality is Not Allowed, 1. you're kinda flattening sexuality in a weird way, like personally my sexuality is complicated as fuck and has changed over time, and 2. you're limiting creativity. And I think creativity in fandom is extremely important. It's the whole fun of fandom. Creativity is worth protecting and its worth establishing the nuance between Depicting A Version of Character who is X and Insisting That Character Should Be X in canon. Because like... we meddle with character's identities in fandom all the time. That's what headcanons ARE, they change appearance, social position, career, faith, species, traumatic experience, moral and political alignment, and SO much more. I think limiting what people can headcanon within fandom... is less fun! It's just less fun. Imaginative scope lets you do more, weird fun stuff. It lets you depict more complex interesting characters. Example: my Bad Nun AU. In that, Shadowheart identifies as a lesbian. Why is that? Because I wanted Shadowheart's experience within Bad Nun to specifically explore the history and context of lesbians within nunneries, especially how that manifested post Vatican II. These were also eras when 'lesbian' was more ubiquitos, had a different context and more flexibility; a lot of women that would probably consider themselves 'bisexual' now were identifying as lesbians, were in lesbian communities and events and spaces.

On that note: Flattening sexuality. You're gonna say people CANNOT depict these characters as ANYTHING but bisexual? That is not how most queer people's sexualities work. It simply isn't. I've identified as tons of different shit in my sexuality. I'm still not sure about it. For me half the time my "sexual identity" is just the words I use to communicate what I'm looking for, and that changes depends on What I Want at that time, what I'm looking to explore, my social context, ect. ect. like what. This isn't how sexuality works for real people. How are artists meant to be Creative and imaginatively depict real, complex, queer sexuality if they are restricted to depicting only what is within canon?? This is not how any other part of fandom works. Fandom art should work how all art works. If someone makes shit art, it gets dunked on and ignored for being bad or lazy or lame. If someone did Heterosexual Karlach fanfic, I would be like "what the fuck why" because they made Karlach less fucking cool. Het Karlach would be boring and thats More Egregious because they DECIDED to make her heterosexual DESPITE canon. But even then, EVEN THEN, I don't think that should be looked at as off limits shit, because I don't believe art should have many things off limits. Any limits must be very nuanced, because art and creativity is nuanced. Obviously my brain would go "het karlach? you deserve jail time and thats queerphobic", but I honestly believe creative license is more important than those feelings. I WOULD happily comment on their thing, "heterosexual karlach is boring, thats a shit idea" because I'm right

If you want good art and good writing, you need to protext creative license.

[jetravenex]

I think something was stretched a bit here.

Everything does have a message and something to be drawn from it.

Recently I had a discussion relating the feelings of upheaval to a moment in Transformers One after all. There is the potential for there to be correlation to political feelings but also to general feelings and themes.

Everything does have a message. That does not mean it should be corelated to activism.

Now I admit I don't know what the 'previous' problem the OOP is talking about, but I wanted to point out that correlating everything having a message to activism is a big leap in logic.

Everything is written with biases in mind. And that can be important sometimes to occasionally pull back and go 'wait a minute, what is the subliminal messaging going on here' What is the subtext to the text?

The impact our media and fandoms have on us cannot be denied. It's why representation in media is something to strive for, whether it be to see POC, female leads, or queer characters.

Even in media that isn't meant to be deep. There's just something so important in making it so someone can see someone they relate to on the big screen.

Like for instance, MLP has messages about the magic and power of friendship. Love and tolerance. Transformers has varying messaging like dealing with corrupt systems. You don't have to even dig too deep into varying Transformers media to see the criticisms of systems.

Some of the best Megatron origins are built on him being the product of a corrupt system. The caste system that appears in transformers where they push for a society that 'form dictates function'. What you transform into is what you should be and your function determines where you are placed in the system.

Ones beliefs, morals, and own opinions is what determines their politics. and sometimes those beliefs, and opinions will be woven into the narrative. Sometimes very subtly, and other times quite blatantly as that person has an agenda and opts to use their selected medium to get that through.

Stories shape us, and our lives and beliefs shape our stories. Even if we do things for fun, meaning can be drawn from it.

I wrote a fanfic and I got the most amazing review where someone picked up on themes about characters respective pride and the pitfalls that go with it.

Totally not something I went in with conscious intent but it was something someone was able to draw from it.

It's like how various ships happen. You look at two characters and while maybe the text isn't pointing towards those characters getting together, but something sub textual, something in you interpretation of a character you see them as being a pair.

NOTE: I will admit that it is at THIS point that I looked into what the 'problem' that they were responding to was. I wish OOP had included the full text, as I don't see why they shortened it.

Here is the full 'problem' for full context:

'Fandom isn't activism' has to be one of the dumbest takes I've ever heard. Here's a history lesson: Fandom has always been a radical zone full of all kinds of activist takes. From Spock and Kirk being secretly shipped by fans to becoming a great platform for fandom today to exist to bodice rippers being an outlet for safe female sexual expression that grew into a feminist reckoning on consent. When the very media you consume is embroiled in political, ethical, and moral scenarios and then expanded upon by those that consume it... Everything has a message, a bias, and even problematic elements. That's part of the whole shebang, darling. How you choose to interact is your own business but don't be so foolish as to think you are above or beyond the reach of engagement, American or otherwise.

Actually I do see why they shortened it, it was because just dunking on the 'fandom is activism' and saying that without the whole rest made it look dumb.

Like this person was just saying fandom is activism and not quantifying it by the very ways it WAS activism.

Stories about trans people helped me better understand the struggle trans people deal with.

A black woman sharing her fun fandom bits led me to also watching her other takes. She still has her fun moments but also takes some time to share her opinions and politics more up front.

She does the fun stuff, but with all her values still there even if the fun stuff is for fun. And then it leads to her also having a space she can share stuff.

I mean AO3 is literally the blood sweat and tears of our queer brothers and sisters who came before us. Those older members of fandom who dared to ship two men together, which may I remind you, we had to have PSAs not even a quarter of a century ago that saying 'that's so gay' is not okay.

The right for same sex couples to get married was only given 10 years ago. Back in the 80s the AIDs crisis was seen as the queer community getting its just desserts.

I do think there's nothing wrong with carving out your spaces where you're like 'no politics here' like on servers, and opting not get on a soap box yourself.

But there has been so much knowledge I've gained about consent, about getting a better understanding for people, and even if I didn't get something in a story at one point in my life, or I related to a different character at one point, I may relate to them at another point in my life.

If stories did not inspire, did not teach, did not make people look at things with a different perspective, make people dream, did not make people go 'wait a minute maybe there's a different way', or that they might not be alone and there are people like them out there.

They would not be banning books.

Re: 6723

Everything has a message, a bias, and even problematic elements. That's part of the whole shebang, darling. How you choose to interact is your own business but don't be so foolish as to think you are above or beyond the reach of engagement, American or otherwise.

That makes “everything” activism (not just fandom) and, to paraphrase The Incredibles, if everything is activism then nothing is. Which means, “darling,” that you might want to consider not being “so foolish as to think you are above or beyond” making something as joyful as fandom into your personal soapbox, which others may find to have “problematic elements.”

Posting as a response to a previous problem.