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merryish's work here: Fan fiction as it exists (mostly online) today is inextricably tied to the fannish culture it's created for. While it may succeed outside of fandom, it isn't written for that purpose. It's written as part of an ongoing conversation between the fan writer and other members of fandom. It's not just a creative work; it's a cultural communication, as well. And it has to succeed as both to be considered "good" fan fiction. The former can be judged by outsiders; the latter never really can.
One of the interesting things about writing for Yuletide - and I think this has been discussed around the meta circle before - is that you're working without the community net. These are rare fadoms; you haven't read a gazillion and one stories involving these characters, or at least not a gazillion and one written in fannish style, and sensible of fannish concerns. You've just got your canon. Someone mentioned in a long-past discussion that Yuletide fic often looks more "okay" to outsiders, that when non-fen ask to see fic we show them our Yuletide stuff. It's less weird, more normal. I think that this is a direct function of the rarity of the fandoms, and the lack of communal writing.
There's a communal progression inherent in fan writing. Things start out more controlled, more normative, closer to the canon. When I first start dreaming out fic for a new fandom, before I've poked around for other fen's work, I tend to stick pretty close by canon, at least in terms of plot. Things maybe get a little bit more h/c-tastic than they were in the source canon, but I'm unlikely to deviate heavily from the source world. But then we band together, and then we start creating fanon, and daring a little bit more in our reinterpretations. But it's really hard to write, oh, wingfic or weird AUs or even really truly indulgent emoporn in a fandom where you haven't read much fic, where not much fic exists.
This is why I love fanon, because it allows the id vortex to go crazy. Fangirl A pushes canon this far, and then Fangirl B reads her fic, and likes it, and adopts her characterization, and pushed it a little further. And by the time you get to Fangirl M, the sky's the limit. Without those layers of interdependent and self-referencing rewritings, we'd be much more limited in the sort of text we could produce. We wouldn't ever get to the Regency genderswap AUs, because it's hard to break that far from your text in one mighty bound. It takes a village.
I love Yuletide, and I think it doe tend to produce "higher quality" tuff, in that it's fic that looks more like publishable writing. But I love and respect the id vortex. I mean, this might sound weird, but I feel like the fannish id vortex has helped correct for our cultural blind spot with regard to women's sexuality. Maybe that's saying to much, but. It seems important that we have space to be transgressive. We know that it's transgression, because they keep getting upset about it. Outsiders don't mind the more normal stuff, the closer-to-canon stuff. It's the id vortex, I think, that most upsets the pro-writers and the non-fen. I tend to think that that only highlights its importance in terms of groundbreaking treatment of narrative and (mostly female, at least feminized) desire.
eta: fannish hivebrain alert. I love it when this happens; Flambeau has kindly explained it all already.
merryish's work here: Fan fiction as it exists (mostly online) today is inextricably tied to the fannish culture it's created for. While it may succeed outside of fandom, it isn't written for that purpose. It's written as part of an ongoing conversation between the fan writer and other members of fandom. It's not just a creative work; it's a cultural communication, as well. And it has to succeed as both to be considered "good" fan fiction. The former can be judged by outsiders; the latter never really can.One of the interesting things about writing for Yuletide - and I think this has been discussed around the meta circle before - is that you're working without the community net. These are rare fadoms; you haven't read a gazillion and one stories involving these characters, or at least not a gazillion and one written in fannish style, and sensible of fannish concerns. You've just got your canon. Someone mentioned in a long-past discussion that Yuletide fic often looks more "okay" to outsiders, that when non-fen ask to see fic we show them our Yuletide stuff. It's less weird, more normal. I think that this is a direct function of the rarity of the fandoms, and the lack of communal writing.
There's a communal progression inherent in fan writing. Things start out more controlled, more normative, closer to the canon. When I first start dreaming out fic for a new fandom, before I've poked around for other fen's work, I tend to stick pretty close by canon, at least in terms of plot. Things maybe get a little bit more h/c-tastic than they were in the source canon, but I'm unlikely to deviate heavily from the source world. But then we band together, and then we start creating fanon, and daring a little bit more in our reinterpretations. But it's really hard to write, oh, wingfic or weird AUs or even really truly indulgent emoporn in a fandom where you haven't read much fic, where not much fic exists.
This is why I love fanon, because it allows the id vortex to go crazy. Fangirl A pushes canon this far, and then Fangirl B reads her fic, and likes it, and adopts her characterization, and pushed it a little further. And by the time you get to Fangirl M, the sky's the limit. Without those layers of interdependent and self-referencing rewritings, we'd be much more limited in the sort of text we could produce. We wouldn't ever get to the Regency genderswap AUs, because it's hard to break that far from your text in one mighty bound. It takes a village.
I love Yuletide, and I think it doe tend to produce "higher quality" tuff, in that it's fic that looks more like publishable writing. But I love and respect the id vortex. I mean, this might sound weird, but I feel like the fannish id vortex has helped correct for our cultural blind spot with regard to women's sexuality. Maybe that's saying to much, but. It seems important that we have space to be transgressive. We know that it's transgression, because they keep getting upset about it. Outsiders don't mind the more normal stuff, the closer-to-canon stuff. It's the id vortex, I think, that most upsets the pro-writers and the non-fen. I tend to think that that only highlights its importance in terms of groundbreaking treatment of narrative and (mostly female, at least feminized) desire.
eta: fannish hivebrain alert. I love it when this happens; Flambeau has kindly explained it all already.