A Question on Textual Encounters, or Everything I Know I learned from Fanfiction
Recently I've been pondering how I encounter different textual materials, characters, settings, etc.
A capsule history of my interactions with fanfiction may explain where I'm coming from here. I'm not really a TV watcher, and for most of my adult life I've owned a TV but not had it hooked up to anything other than a VCR or DVD player, so I encountered Buffy via picking up a cheap DVD set for Season 1. I was immediately hooked and eventually managed to buy or borrow all of Buffy and Angel. Not too long after I finished watching my way through that, I found Willow/Tara fanfiction. Eventually, I ended up branching beyond that, generally via common authors, or hosting sites, and I started reading stories set in universes where I had not encountered the original work. Some of these, I've since been exposed to the originals, but there are a number of fandoms where my second title above is literally true. Everything I know about them, I learned from fanfiction.
My question for the rest of you is: How often does this happen to you? Do you have many fandoms where your knowledge is derived largely or wholly from fan works instead of the original stories, or only a few, or even none? And in an expansion for this, does this change for you with stories that originate in media other than TV, or is it consistent regardless of medium?
A capsule history of my interactions with fanfiction may explain where I'm coming from here. I'm not really a TV watcher, and for most of my adult life I've owned a TV but not had it hooked up to anything other than a VCR or DVD player, so I encountered Buffy via picking up a cheap DVD set for Season 1. I was immediately hooked and eventually managed to buy or borrow all of Buffy and Angel. Not too long after I finished watching my way through that, I found Willow/Tara fanfiction. Eventually, I ended up branching beyond that, generally via common authors, or hosting sites, and I started reading stories set in universes where I had not encountered the original work. Some of these, I've since been exposed to the originals, but there are a number of fandoms where my second title above is literally true. Everything I know about them, I learned from fanfiction.
My question for the rest of you is: How often does this happen to you? Do you have many fandoms where your knowledge is derived largely or wholly from fan works instead of the original stories, or only a few, or even none? And in an expansion for this, does this change for you with stories that originate in media other than TV, or is it consistent regardless of medium?