What are your thoughts on fanfiction authors who start writing and publishing original stuff? As someone who writes fanfic, it means a lot to see that a lot of my favorite authors did/do it too, but it also seems like it brings a LOT of crappy internet abuse with it, because sexism. :/
Hi! My name is Seanan, and I’m a fanfic author.
My first “serious” writing–IE, had a continuity, was not abandoned as soon as it got hard, went through an actual editorial process where a red pen was applied to my precious pages–was for an ElfQuest fanzine called Dreamberry Jam. I wrote about a glider/sea elf cross named Gull, who basically hopped from one disaster to another, because I was a sixteen year old girl with the power of life or death in her pen I WAS UNSTOPPABLE and I was having so much fun. So much fun.
My high school LJ (which became my college LJ, which became my post-college LJ) was studded with Buffy the Vampire Slayer fic (not gonna lie: lots of porn there, much of it written for my girlfriend of the time, who had a thing for Buffy/Faith), with Veronica Mars fic (including my Shakespearean adaptation of season one), with Halloweentown fic (I am most of the fandom). I have participated in every single Yuletide. My agent knows I will turn down work in December so that I can remain a pitch-hitter for defaults.
What are my thoughts on fanfiction authors who start writing and publishing original stuff?
I’m in favor.
But you’re right: people do get some shit for their fannish pasts, and by “people” I mostly mean “women,” because “being a fanfic writer” is a “giggle giggle let’s show porn to the actors and see if they get mad” thing that girls do, while “putting myself in the story” is a manly masculine imagination thing that boys do. Almost every guy in my high school creative writing classes began with a self-insert Trek or Wars character, assuming they weren’t writing up their D&D or World of Darkness campaigns, but they never got the scorn from the teachers or other students that the girls got for admitting that maybe they gave their OCs the hair color they’d always wanted. It goes all the way back to elementary school. It was totally normal for the boys to be racing around BEING STAR WARS PEW PEW PEW, but weird for the girls to want in.
(I know this is gender essentialist, I know, and I’m so sorry about that, but I’m talking about my elementary school experience, where girls would literally be pulled out of aggressive pretend play, and my high school experience, where the boys were encouraged to file off the serial numbers and the girls were told to write what they knew. The lens of the past is dusty and cold.)
Most of the shit I see slung at former fanfic writers (or professional authors who still write fanfic) is thrown at women who write YA, because, well, fanfic is juvenile and YA is juvenile (unless you’re a man writing YA romance and then it’s world-changing and revelationary). They are hence easy targets. You’re right: it’s sexist. It’s unfair. It will, hopefully, decrease and even go away. It will not happen fast enough for people to stop leaving bruises on my friends.
But here is the thing about fanfic: fanfic never dies. From kids playing on the playground to elementary schoolers writing their first stories to adults on the internet, fanfic is the human urge to interface with the stories that make us. A lot of very successful, very powerful works are saved from being fanfic solely by the fact that their source material is no longer under copyright. As the number of those works increases, as the scholarship on and around fanfic increases, the stigma is going to decrease. I genuinely believe that. I look at fandom now and compare it to fandom ten years ago, and I see so much more acceptance of fanfic on both the fannish and professional levels.
Crappy internet abuse aside, fanfic is restorative and powerful and important, and if it’s a thing you enjoy, you should absolutely embrace it with all the joy you can. The abuse may be here for a while yet. I will not lie about that.
Time for a new prompt from the Short Fiction Weekly Challenge, tumblr edition. Let it spark your imagination. Any character, any fandom, any original world. Reblogs welcome!
Post your story to your blog and send the link to Short Fiction Weekly Challenge! We’ll send the link out to all our followers to enjoy.
This week’s SFWC prompt:
Week of April 12, 2024
Accidents: Things don’t always go according to plan. Caos intrudes, a random event, the situation changes--all by accident. No one’s at fault and no one’s to blame. Still, when the results are tragic, it’s rather cold comfort that the incident wasn’t planned, premeditated, or intentional. Then, too, there are happy accidents as well. Just as unplanned as the tragic ones, but with a happily ever after. What’s happened to your character “on accident,” and how did things turn out?
Feel free to continue submitting stories for any prompt. A masterpiece missed the deadline? Don’t let it gather electronic dust. Submit it anyway and Short Fiction Weekly Challenge will publish it.
This week’s featured previous prompts are:
Longing: For all the Christmas carols celebrating togetherness, family, gift-giving, and joy, there are some touching on other emotions, like loneliness and longing. Can your character relate? The first holiday without a loved one: long-distance separation, a breakup, illness, or even death. A gift desired but impossible or utterly impractical or maybe simply very unlikely. nostalgia for the holidays of their past when the world as they perceived it was simpler. Feeling out-of-step with the rest of society celebrating; wanting that togetherness, but not being able to share it. When has your character experienced longing?
Ghosts: Does your setting have ghosts? Are they spectral entities, leftover remnants of consciousness, the literal spirits of the dead? Are they folklore? Something to scare children and the gullible, but no one really believes they exist? Or the belief exists and people act accordingly, but actual ghosts do not? A ghost as a haunting entity can be more than the classic depiction, though. A sad or frightening memory might haunt your character. So might the death of a companion, close friend, or family member. A missed opportunity, a tragedy, or even a disaster narrowly averted can stick with a character long after the event is over. What ghosts has your character encountered and how do they deal with them?
Time for a new prompt from the Short Fiction Weekly Challenge, tumblr edition. Let it spark your imagination. Any character, any fandom, any original world. Reblogs welcome!
Post your story to your blog and send the link to Short Fiction Weekly Challenge! We’ll send the link out to all our followers to enjoy.
This week’s SFWC prompt:
Week of April 19, 2024
Paperwork: In most settings, your character will have to interact with officials of some kind, and that involves paperwork, literal or figurative. How do they finance an expensive purchase? Loans? Indenture? What about passes to travel between kingdoms or star systems? Is there an office that keeps track of property? Crimes committed? Occupations? How do they get into a school or apprenticeship or training program? Is there a sign or badge guaranteeing quality work? What records are kept in your setting, and who keeps them? What happens if your character doesn’t complete their relevant paperwork, or does it wrong? We’ve had prompts for law and legality, as well as for writing. This week it’s the intersection of the two.
Feel free to continue submitting stories for any prompt. A masterpiece missed the deadline? Don’t let it gather electronic dust. Submit it anyway and Short Fiction Weekly Challenge will publish it.
This week’s featured previous prompts are:
Reunited: Characters who spend time apart must come back together. Do they look forward to it? Dread it? Count every moment until they can reunite, or invent ways to prolong the separation? Do they have any special rituals? A particular knock or bell ring, a call to their partner, a hug or kiss? Furtively sneaking in and hoping no one notices? How do they catch up? Long conversations? Bare mumbles? Does it matter for them how long they’ve been apart, or is a few hours separation as hard to bear as a month?
Oblivious: Not everyone is observant, and even the most vigilant character misses something on occasion. When did they miss something obvious? It could be a physical object or an idea. The proverbial elephant in the room or a solution that's staring them in the face. Maybe your character just overlooks cues everyone else sees. What happens when someone else points it out?
A typical portal fantasy follows a human from our world who steps through a portal into a magical land (think of narnia). But there are many fun variations of this trope! Sometimes it's the magical people who come to our world; sometimes we get to follow people who have returned from their adventures and are seeking for new meaning; sometimes our world isn't involved at all. As might be assumed, most portal fantasies are fantasy stories, but some lean more toward magical realism, others toward sci-fi. It's a fun spectrum!
I'm separating portal fantasies from alternate timelines/parallel worlds type stories (which will get their own rec post soon-ish). I also generally do not include stories where the character travels to fairyland/land of the dead/etc as those feel like a genre of their own to me, but the lines between them sometimes blur and this is, obviously, a subjective list.
(Titles marked with * are my personal favorites)
Other book rec posts:
Really cool fantasy worldbuilding, really cool sci-fi worldbuilding, dark sapphic romances, mermaid books, vampire books
For more detailed info on the books, continue under the cut.
The Magicians (Magicians trilogy) by Lev Grossman*
You may not have heard of this book, but you have probably heard of the scyfy series of the same name that crashed and burned a few years ago. This is the book it’s based on (pros: it doesn’t end in the same way; cons: it doesn’t feature the juggernaut ship of the show in any major way). For the uninitiated: features what is essentially a (secret) magic university for tormented geniuses. When he finds magic isn't enough to grant him happiness, main character Quentin goes digging into the truth surrounding his favorite childhood books searching for meaning, and finds out that the magical other world they describe might not be so fictional after all.
Stray (Touchstone trilogy) by Andrea K. Höst*
Young adult told through diary entries. Including this as a portal fantasy is a bit of a stretch, but essentially: Cassandra unkowingly walks through a wormhole and lands herself on another planet, where she has to survive on her own until she is rescued. Soon she finds herself embroiled in a war between creatures from dreamlike other dimensions and the people who saved her. Skirts the line between scifi and fantasy (it has psychic space ninjas!), but generally feels mostly like sci-fi. Absolutely fantastic worldbuilding.
In Other Lands by Sarah Rees Brennan*
Young adult. Kids who can walk between our world and a magical one get recruited into a magical school that trains them either to be fighters or sort-of diplomats. Our lead decides that fighting is stupid and that he’s going to peacefully solve every conflict ever, all while being the most delightfully obnoxious little brat possible and getting incolved in the most bisexual love triangle imaginable. Very good, funny, and heart-felt coming of age story.
NPCs (Spells, Swords, & Stealth series) by Drew Hayes*
This one only counts as a portal fantasy on a technicality and on the fact that I love it and this is my list. Follows a group of DnD players whose characters immediately die, forcing them to make new characters, and, parallel to their adventures, a group of NPCs from the fantasy world who find themselves forced to take the place of a party of recently deceased adventurers. The two parties do cross path on occasion, but there aren't actually any portals involved as all characters (mostly) stay in their respective world. A fun and light-hearted adventure that turns a lot of the expected tropes of the genre and of character archetypes on their heads.
The Time of the Dark (The Darwath series) by Barbara Hambly
1982 classic. Medieval history student Gil and biker Rudy are complete strangers, but when they get mixed up with a wizard from another world the two must work together to survive and get back home. Fairly traditional fantasy with its fair share of issues, but! It has cool swordswomen, creepy lovecraftian monsters and also mammoths!
The Twelve Kingdoms by Fuyumi Ono*
Young adult, light novel. Yoko Nakajima is a regular high school student, or at least she was one until a strange man showed up in her school, swore allegiance to her and whisked her away to another world. As the two get separated, Yoko is stuck on her own in a strange world, hunted by humans and demons alike as she travels in search of a way home. Absolute high point of isekai literature, with an incredible main character and really cool and unique worldbuilding (also available as an anime, however I have yet to watch it and can't speak to its quality just yet).
Peter Darling by Austin Chant*
Novella. An older Peter Pan returns to Neverland after years spent in our world, only to find that everything is different. Before he knows it, he finds himself working with his lifelong enemy, Captain Hook. Very gay and very trans, with interesting takes on toxic masculinity. Made my heart ache in the best of ways.
A Curse so Dark and Lonely by Brigid Kemmerer
Young adult. A retelling of beauty and the beast, where 'beauty' is a girl brought in from our world to a fantastical one and the narrative focuses a lot on what actually happens to the kingdom when the royal family suddenly disappears, and whether it’s even possible to fall in love with someone you know is deliberately trying to seduce you to break a curse. This is part one of a trilogy, however I'm only really recommending the first book as the second did not work for me at all.
The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials trilogy) by Philip Pullman
Young adult/middle grade, fantasy but has a lot of sci-fi aspects as well. Already well-known and for good reason, the His Dark Materials trilogy starts as what seems a pretty typical fantasy with some cool unique aspects (everyone has a soul-bound animal only they can speak to as their best friend!), and soon veers into a truly one of a kind story. It has magical portals, it has strange worlds with equally strange inhuman creatures, it has physics, it has god murder, it has gay angels, it has tragedy, and it’s very much worth your time.
Every Heart a Doorway (Wayward Children series) by Seanan McGuire*
A tumblr favorite, the Wayward Children novellas feature a school open to children who have returned from adventures in other realms and now have trouble adapting back to regular life. Some installments are set in our world, others follow children as they have their otherworldly adventures. The main characters vary between books, but are generally pretty diverse with among others asexual, trans, intersexual and sapphic leads. Both funny and dark, it takes a closer look at the trauma many endure growing up different.
Otherside Picnic (Otherside Picnic series) by Iori Miyazawa
Sapphic light novel with a surreal and episodic horror vibe. Following the directions of an urban legend, university student Sorawo finds her way to a reality populated by horrifying creatures from ghost stories and modern urban legends (of which I'm sure you'll recognize many). Here she teams up with fellow explorer Toriko, both to both find out more about this strange world and to help Toriko find a missing loved one. Also available as a manga and (one season of) an anime.
Last Bus to Everland by Sophie Cameron
Young adult. Brody is dealing with a lot, but it all gets a little easier when he meets Nico, who shows him how to access Everland, a magical land where he feels less out of place. But when the doors to Everland start disappearing, Brody must choose which world is really home. I'd categorize this less as fantasy and more as coming of age with a fantasy slant. It's also very gay.
The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern
Surreal and fairy tale-esque, The Starless Sea is stories within a story, following graduate student Zachary as he finds a strange book which, in-between other tales, tells a story from his own childhood. Trying to find out how this came to be, Zachary gets involved with a pink-haired woman and a handsome man who are doing their utmost to protect a strange, otherworldly library available only through magical doors. It's a book hard to put in words, but which I once described as "romantic without being a romance while stile having a love story at it's core", and which can be summed up only as "an Experience". It's also quite gay!
The Memory Theater by Karin Tidbeck
Listen, there’s a whole bunch of Swedish portal fantasies I read growing up that I'm dying to include here, but I'm not because they’re not available in English. The Memory Theater however is available, and is very good. Two children who were stolen into an otherworldly realm that wants them dead fight return to earth, and are followed by one of their captors across universes. The story has the feel of a dark fairy tale, and their captors, while not fey, are very reminiscent of them.
The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow*
Historical young adult, more magical realism than fantasy. In the early 20th century, January is living under the care of her father's employer while he travels the world searching for valuables and secrets. But both her father and her caretaker are keeping something from her, something about her own family's history. When she one day stumbles upon a strange book, one that speaks of other worlds, she finally sets out to find the truth. However, there are those seeking to stop her and destroy the doors between worlds, no matter what.
The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher*
Horror rather than fantasy. After having divorced, Kara moves to stay with her uncle and help him run his museum of curiosities, until one day she discovers a hole in the wall of his house. The hole leads to a strange bunker, and beyond that, a dark and dangerous world beyond her understanding. In the company of a friend, she goes to explore this world, but quickly comes to regret her decision to do so.
The Unspoken Name by A.K. Larkwood*
The sort of portal fantasy you get when all the worlds connected by portals are fantasy worlds, and none of them are ours. The portals themselves become simply a part of the worldbuilding that the characters use to travel between fascinating places, and it's all really cool. It follows Csorwe (lesbian orc assassin whom I love), who grew up in a cult, indoctrinated as a child sacrifice to a god. But on the day she was meant to die, she instead chose to follow a powerful wizard and train to become his loyal servant and sword. Aside from being an excellent fantasy, it's also a close look at the hard path of unlearning indoctrination and the search for love and validation where you'll never find it, and learning to live for yourself.
Odin's Child (the Raven Rings trilogy) by Siri Pettersen
Norwegian (vaguely Norse mythology inspired) young adult. Fifteen-year-old Hirka grew up thinking she simply lost her tail to a wolf attack, but one day she finds out she never had one: she's an Odin's child, a human, sent from another world and rumored to spread rot and ruin wherever she goes. To keep her secret safe, she goes on the run, but there are forces hunting for her, wanting to use her in their war. This reads mostly as a fairly typical epic fantasy, with the portal aspect not playing a major role until the second book.
The Barbed Coil by J.V. Jones
1997 classic. Tessa is a young woman with little going for her, until she stumbles upon a strange ring that transports her to a magical and dangerous other land. Here she meets Ravis, a mercenary who takes it upon himself to protect her, and discover her own special abilities, which she must use against an evil king whose mind has been corrupted and taken over by his crown, the Barbed Coil.
Skeen's Leap (Skeen trilogy) by Jo Clayton
1986 classic. While most portal stories are fantasy, this one has a distinct sci-fi flavour. Skeen is master thief wanted in a myriad solar systems, until her spaceship gets stolen and she's stranded on a backwater planet. Here she hears rumors of ruins leading to a strange other land. Hoping for treasure enough to get her off-planet, Skeen goes in search of this place, but finds herself stuck and unable to get back. This one has a unique, almost stream of consciousness prose that takes a while getting used to, but rewards you with a one of a kind experience.
Inkheart (Inkworld trilogy) by Cornelia Funke
German middle grade/young adult, in which the fantastical other worlds are those told of in books. Young Meggie's father has the ability to, when he reads, bring things and people out of the books, or put other people into said books. However, once having done so, he knows of no way to put anyone back where they belong. Now, years after he accidentally brought the terrible villain Capricorn and his henchmen out of their book, he and his daughter must evade them at all costs or be forced to bring further horrors out of the page and into the world.
Bonus AKA I haven't read these yet but they seem really cool
An Accident of Stars by Foz Meadows
A teenage girl accidentally follows a worldwalker from her world to a magical realm on the brink of civil war. I believe this on has both a major polyamorous relationship and ace/aro characters?
The Sleeping Dragon (Guardians of the Flame series) by Joel Rosenberg
1983 classic. A group of college dnd players find themselves transported to the magical realm they previously thought just a game.
The Wandering Inn by Pirateaba
Webnovel. After having been transported to a magical world, Erin decides to, rather than become a warrior or a mage, start running an inn.
Honorary mentions AKA these didn't really work for me but maybe you guys will like them: The Marked Girl by Lindsey Klingele, The Summer Tree by Guy Gavriel Kay, Child of a Hidden Sea by A.M. Dellamonica, Spellsinger by Alan Dean Foster, The Shattered Gates by Ginn Hale, The Awakening by Nora Roberts, Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor.
