I just reblogged a whole bunch of takes on the Fanfiction vs. Published Fiction post on my main, but I’m posting this here because this is my writing account. Suddenly I understand why people say that there’s no reading comprehension on this website. So here it is:
Not all published fiction has literary merit.
Fanfiction does not, by virtue, of being fanfiction, not have literary merit
The western canon is primarily written by upperclass white men from colonial nations
That said, “read stuff other than fanfic” isn’t saying to restrict yourself to JUST THE WESTERN CANON.
There are other countries and culture out there with their own literary history and to ignore that and act like everything that isn’t fanfiction is Western Canon is malicious in a way of denying other nations their own independence and history and literary voice and culture
“Read stuff other than fanfic” also isn’t saying “read a whole bunch of classic literature and nothing else”.
Western canon is primarily written by upper class white men
Fanfiction is largely written by queer neurodivergent women, including many women of colour
(The fanfiction community and fandom does have internal,,,,colonial?? issues, though. There’s internal racism. There’s internal misogyny and lesbophobia. That’s not to say that fandom is terrible and has no value, but it’s also not absolutely saintlike.)
But there are also published neurodivergent queer female authors of colour with incredible and intricate works. People want to talk about supporting marginalized authors, but if you don’t support (I mean like. Financially. Or at the very least acknowledge them.) these authors when they’re being published, then there’s a chance that they’re going to get disregarded on the large scale
That said, fanfiction is also largely financially accessible in a way that a lot of published fiction isn’t; it’s free, it’s portable, it’s internationally available
This is where I throw in my obligatory GO TO THE LIBRARY argument. GO TO YOUR LIBRARY.
That said, libraries aren’t accessible to everyone. This could be because of language barriers, because of geographic location, transportation, or especially now because of COVID.
Fanfiction isn’t subjected to the same whims of the capitalist hellscape that published fiction is. That is to say, there aren’t censors, there are a lot of people publishing without being restricted by the pressure of publishing firms and editors.
Also though, self-publishing and small-press fiction is available and has a lot more of this.
It’s still more expensive, though (my wallet does hurt from buying indie press books)
To say “read stuff other than fanfiction” isn’t to say “never read fanfiction”. Don’t pull that shit.
As outlined above, fanfiction and original fiction have their respective merits
Fanfiction is for a lot of people comfort material. It is for me too. I write fanfiction, I read fanfiction, I love fanfiction.
As comfort reading, fanfiction is great, and as written fiction, it’s also very great
But we shouldn’t just restrict ourselves only to our comfort material. Maybe that’s what you need at the time, yes, and that’s understandable. But to stay within only your comfort zone provides no challenge to you intellectually or personally
You don’t need to challenge yourself all the time by any means. Anyone who says that is dumb.
But you should still step out of your comfort zone at times. That’s something that we need to do, generally speaking.
Personal value and literary merit are not the same thing. Things can be important to me without having literary merit, and I can hate things but they can still have literary merit.
So keep reading fanfiction, absolutely!! Keep writing fanfiction!!
But also read things that are not fanfiction.
I’m not fucking getting started on the “Dante wrote fanfic and that turned into the Divine Comedy” because.
It’s just not happening here.
I understand. But if that’s your take, then literally every piece of literature since like. I don’t even fucking know when. But every piece of literature is just fanfiction, because nobody’s ever had an original idea.
