The Philosophy of Fan Fiction

Once again, I use this blog to chronicle random thoughts that someone might find interesting.

I have put a lot of time and energy and thought into fan fiction. This has been both a good thing and a bad thing. On the negative side, it has been one of the many things that I've used to procrastinate. But if things were qualified as inherently good or bad based on their role in my time-wasting endeavours, then housecleaning would be a gross evil...so that doesn't make fan fiction bad.

The idea of fanfiction is really fascinating. Some author out there created a world, whether through literature, or television, or movies, that was so real to the readers that they write more in that world. As with everything in this digitalized age, it means that lots of poor quality stuff gets written and "published" on the world wide web, but I think at the same time that it may be a way for us to do something that has not been popular since the days of Romanticism (stupid romanticism!) when we decided that originality (an originality that goes inward to the writer, as opposed to outward to a well known origin of the story) was the key to literature. Under this "lit-view" rewriting a story that some other author came up with in a different voice, or from a different perspective, or even borrowing the world and characters that an author created is the ultimate crime. I get the feeling that copyrights are not so much about making sure that authors receive compensation as that their characters are not messed with. To paraphrase one of my favorite singer-songwriters, "I may be wrong for all I know, but I may be right."

All this to say that before Romanticism, it was all about retelling old stories in an entertaining way. I'm not saying this never happens now. What are movie adaptations? or famous works like "Grendel"? or stupid things like "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies." It's just that no one says to budding writers, "Go and write another retelling of the Trojan war." They are encouraged to write something utterly unique and personal. Why should this be? Why shouldn't writers attempt to use old material to do something stylistically interesting? I just finished a class on Chaucer, and he ripped things wholesale from other authors. Am I saying that most people writing fanfiction (if any!) are the Chaucer's of our age? No. But I am suggesting that fanfiction is a potential outlet for that kind of thing.

All that I have said up to this point is my vision of what fanfiction could be. Unfortunately, while there are some (my more recent self included) who try to use it this way--some (my more recent self not included) who succeed in using it this way--it is mainly, in my experience, and from what I understand of its history, used very differently.

It becomes a realm for girls between adolescence and...say...30? to write out their emotions and their fantasies, of varying degrees of appropriateness and disturbingness. If you don't believe me, just browse fanfiction.net. And when I say emotions and fantasies, I mean everything from silly teenage angst to creepy sexual fantasies and morbid imaginings. (No, I have not personally read any examples of the second category...but I've read synopses and the like.)

I was introducing a friend to this aspect of fanfiction, and she said, "well, I imagine a lot of girls just write it out, and get through their teen years that way." I hadn't really thought of that, and I think it's true. In fact, I think I can see it in my case. There was something about writing down my silliness that made me realize just how silly it was...and cured me of some of my more puerile emotions. (At least, that is my hope.) But then, there are definitely girls who just stew in it, and never grow up. Women over fourty writing this teeny-bopper angsty fiction still. It's sad, really.

And then there is slash, which is basically a foundation of fanfiction, and which is just gross. If you want a disquisition on slash, just contact me personally and I'll be happy to share a letter I once wrote about it. I mean, I have no question in my mind that it is morally abhorrent, but it has an insidious effect on non-slash fanfiction.

As usual I am rambling, rambling, rambling away, and not getting anywhere.

I think my primary point is not a fanfiction related one at all. As I said at the beginning, I have wasted lots of time on fanfiction--reading it, mostly--I am not ready to call my written ventures into it wasted. But I had to read a lot of it before I started to see some of the good and bad aspects of it, particularly on an emotional growth/maturity level. Yet, I think it was the process of learning and discovering those things that helped me to grow in maturity. So...when I have kids and they are teeny-bopper types, should I let them read fanfiction? Should I let them read the other puerile outpourings of other angsty teenager-types? It worked out for me...but did I waste too much time to figure it out? Working through lot of the the issues related to slash's effect on fanfiction as a whole helped me to understand things about true love, about marriage vs. friendship, and about useful vs. self-feeding emotion. Should someone have just told me? would that have been as effective for me? In a way, I could say, "All things work together for good to those who love God." But that is not the same thing as saying "whatever happens to you should happen again to other people.

It's a sticky issue, I guess. I suppose it's a good thing I don't have kids, yet, since I obviously have no answers. :-D