stating to think there’s an inverse correlation between how good media is and how easily fandomizable it is 😁
good media should make you stare at wall for 2 hours instead of immediately starting shippings wars and coffeeshop au and slowburn fics
no no you’re not wrong but also
there’s a reason for this.
My personal theory is that if Media is REALLY good, there isn't really... space, if you will for fans to add or change perspectives on it. Too dense, too complete. Like how coral won't grow on plastic because it's too smooth
Whereas some half-baked hot garbage has got ALL KINDS of plot holes, incomplete characterization, warped timelines, missing worldbuilding and other Spaces for fans to colonize, like coral growing on a sunken battleship.
And then if a series just sucks too much, it's not fun to interact with at all, and people won't fandomize it because it's toxic. Like how coral won't grow on sunken piles of burnt-out tires.
I call this the Fandom Barrier-Reef Theory.
You're theory's almost there... but might I present for Further Conjecture: JRR Tolkien.
Lord of the Rings (both book and movie) is fun to read/watch, is objectively good, and also very occasionally feels like homework. It feels like homework when you ask yourself; where the hell is Moria? Why don't any of these elves speak Common? If Theoden has a huge ass castle in the mountains why doesn't he Just live there? It's homework but it's like when your teacher said you had to do a book report but you could pick any book you wanted. Or like the time Mr. Jenkins told us to come back on Monday with bugs and leaves to stick under the microscope.
It's also, objectively, great literature. It's very very probable that Lord of the Rings will be the sort of thing that's a standard of college literature classes in a hundred years.
I think, quite possibly, fan fiction happens when the author of the source material, either purposefully or unwittingly, creates 'space' for it. Usually by either implication or omission. This is why there's so much comics fanfic. Because there's no real cannon, other than the fact that Uncle Ben and the Waynes always die. There's so much space to explore, so many characters to interact with, so many stories that could be told but haven't been. It's why DC and Marvel keep printing comics. And it's why fans keep writing fic.
Sometimes a creator will have a vision of a story and it's entirely complete, the narrative is tight and you see the entire picture beginning to end without any gaps. But gaps don't necessarily make a work inferior, they just mean that the author didn't need to fill them in order to tell the story. I'll even posit that Tolkien left those gaps on purpose because he wrote fan fiction himself when he was young and encouraged young people to do so as well because he viewed it as foundational in the process of learning to tell stories.
My dream is to one day write something where the narrative of the story is tight, and you see the whole picture and you stare at the wall for 2 hours after you've finished. And then when you go back to look at it again you say; Hey, what about...
Because I will have left those gaps for you, just for you, to go on your own adventure.
