For me, the story is a little different because I am a tv whore. I watch an obscene amount of tv, and so my interests in fanfiction are generally spurred from my pre-existing interest in the original material. That being said, my latest love was different, because I'd seen the DWP movie back when it first came out and didn't find anything all that compelling in it. Then I saw a recommendation for a fic, read it and immediate fell in love with Andy and Miranda's unique dynamic (the subtext I had apparently completely missed the first time around). So then when I watched the movie again, it just suddenly had a whole new layer of meaning, and from then on I was hooked.
Hmm. It's interesting that you mentioned DWP there, because my obsession with it happened exactly the same way. I saw the movie, didn't think too much about it, read a couple of stories, and then rewatched and found the subtext. I've still only watched the original maybe 4 times, but I'm certainly obsessed, the first bookmark I visit most days is the DWP lj community.
Actually, I'm a little jealous of your vast TV watching. When I wander into a new fandom, I usually have no idea what the characters look like, so when a story catches my interest I've started looking up who plays the central characters to fill that gap. I feel a little silly about that, oh well.
There's a lot of truth to that, a sufficiently well written piece will work whether or not you already know the characters, but you're right that fanfic often works on the assumption that readers don't need any introduction to the characters. In my experience, your best chance of getting that background from the fic comes from longer pieces. I suspect that that is part of the reason that I rarely look at drabbles. I tend to want the character and setting analysis that longer stories give room for. This isn't to say that short stories can't do that, just that it takes an unusual level of skill to do that well in a short piece
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For me, the story is a little different because I am a tv whore. I watch an obscene amount of tv, and so my interests in fanfiction are generally spurred from my pre-existing interest in the original material. That being said, my latest love was different, because I'd seen the DWP movie back when it first came out and didn't find anything all that compelling in it. Then I saw a recommendation for a fic, read it and immediate fell in love with Andy and Miranda's unique dynamic (the subtext I had apparently completely missed the first time around). So then when I watched the movie again, it just suddenly had a whole new layer of meaning, and from then on I was hooked.
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Actually, I'm a little jealous of your vast TV watching. When I wander into a new fandom, I usually have no idea what the characters look like, so when a story catches my interest I've started looking up who plays the central characters to fill that gap. I feel a little silly about that, oh well.
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