I could write a whole essay about this, but.
Fanfiction as a collective exists as a combination of the ideal state and all the broken pieces that are left behind. Fanfiction shows us all the things that should have happened, if the world was a little bit kinder: someone adopts Harry Potter, the Avengers live domestically together, people fall in love and admit it. Fanfiction says, things are awful but we’re kind anyway, because we can be, because kindness costs little and gives much. It is democracy at its best, a collection of people solving problems together, solving plotholes and heartbreaks and deaths, a conversation of solution responding to solution because the whole of fandom is, itself, its own canon.
But at the same time, fanfiction is about all of those holes and jagged edges and wounds left unhealed, about what happens when the war is over and everyone who’s left needs to go back home. It’s about the fact that surviving is usually the hardest part, and we rarely get to choose what’s done to us but we do get to choose how we survive afterwards. It’s about the child soldiers who no longer have a war, and about the trauma of getting past the trauma you’ve survived. It’s about injury and depression and PTSD. It’s about recovery, yes, but also about those things that do not recover, those things that will never recover. It is a reminder that we live in a world where many people don’t get white picket fences and 2.5 kids and a happily ever after, but also a reminder that there is life beyond that, survival, yes, but also life. It is a reminder that characters’ lives don’t end with the last page and nor too do people’s lives end with their trauma, but that after that hurt comes comfort and healing and putting one foot in front of another because the best way to get through hell is to keep going.
pixelskylines
snowghoul
theartofmadeline
dededos
titsay
gummygunk
romaincrisis
janainaart
blakekathryn
