So I was reading this rumination on fanfic and I was thinking about something @involuntaryorange once talked to me about, about fanfic being its own genre, and something about this way of thinking really rocked my world? Because for a long time I have thought like a lawyer, and I have defined fanfiction as âfiction using characters that originated elsewhere,â or something like that. And now I feel likeâŠfanfiction has nothing to do with using other peopleâs characters, itâs just a character-driven *genre* that is so character-driven that it can be more effective to use other peopleâs characters because then we can really get the impact of the storytellerâs message but I feel like it could also be not using other peopleâs characters, just a more character-driven story. Like, I feel like my original stuffâthe novellas I have up on AO3, the draft I just finishedâare probably really fanfiction, even though theyâre original, because theyâre hitting fanfic beats. And my frustration with getting original stuff published has been, all along, that Iâm calling it a genre it really isnât.Â
And this is why many people who discover fic stop reading other stuff. Once you find the genre you prefer, you tend to read a lot in that genre. Some people love mysteries, some people love high-fantasy. Saying you love âficâ really means you love this character-driven genre.Â
So when I hear people be dismissive of fic I used to think, Are they just not reading the good fic? Maybe I need to put the good fic in front of them? But I think it turns out that fanfiction is a genre that is so entirely character-focused that it actually feels weird and different, because most of our fiction is not that character-focused.Â
It turns out, when I think about it, I am simply a character-based consumer of pop culture. I will read and watch almost anything but the stuff thatâs going to stick with me is because I fall for a particular character. This is why once a show falters and disagrees with my view of the character, I canât just, like, push past it, because the show *was* the character for me.Â
Right now my big thing is the Juno Steel stories, and I know that theyâre doing all this genre stuff and they have mysteries and thereâs sci-fi and meanwhile Iâm just like, âOkay, whatever, I donât care about that, JUNO STEEL IS THE BEST AND I WANT TO JUST ROLL AROUND IN HIS SARCASTIC, HILARIOUS, EMOTIONALLY PINING HEAD.â That is the fanfiction-genre fan in me coming out. Someone looking for sci-fi might not care about that, but Iâm the type of consumer (and I think most fic-people are) who will spend a week focusing on what one throwaway line might reveal about a characterâs state of mind. Thatâs why so many fics *focus* on those one throwaway lines. Thatâs what weâre thinking about.Â
And this is what makes coffee shop AUs so amazing. Like, you take some characters and you stick them in a coffee shop. Thatâs it. And yet I love every single one of them. Because the focus is entirely on the characters. There is no plot. The plot is they get coffee every day and fall in love. Thatâs the entire plot. And thatâs the perfect fanfic plot. Fanfic plots are almost always like that. Almost always references to other things that clue you in to where the story is going. Think of âfriends to loversâ or âenemies to loversâ or âfake relationship,â and youâre like, âYes. I love those. Give me those,â and you know itâs going to be the same plot, but thatâs okay, youâre not reading for the plot. Itâs like that Tumblr post that goes around thatâs like, âMe starting a fake relationship fic: Ooooh, do you think theyâll fall in love for real????â But youâre not reading for the suspense. Fic frees you up from having to spend effort thinking about the plot. Fic gives your brain space to focus entirely on the characters. And, especially in an age of plot-twist-heavy pop culture, that almost feels like a luxury. âCome in. Spend a little time in this characterâs head. SPEND HOURS OF YOUR LIFE READING SO MANY STORIES ABOUT THIS CHARACTERâS HEAD. Until you know them like a friend. Until you know them so well that you miss them when youâre not hanging out with them.âÂ
When that is your story, when the characters become like your friends, it makes sense that youâre freed from plot. Itâs like how many people donât really have a âplotâ to hanging out with their friends. Thereâs this huge obsession with plot, but lives donât have plots. Lives just happen. We try to shape them into plots later, but thatâs just this organizational fiction weâre imposing. Plot doesnât have to be the raison dâetre of all story-telling, and fic reminds us of that.Â
Idk, this was a lot of random rambling but Iâve been thinking about it a lot lately.Â