Bermuda
I'm equal parts puzzled and amused by this thing called fanfiction.
If I were to interview the top ten fanfic writers in any given fandom, I'd ask them this: what makes you spend all that time writing, reviewing and perfecting works of fiction that will never receive any publication credibility, authorship or remuneration? I get the sense that most people will say it's out of generosity, to build the fandom or it's a dress rehearsal for a more professional writing career.
Is altruism a defining trait of publishing fanfiction? Or are the FF.net and LJ communities that archive fanfics so actively driven by a creative writing ethos more hardcore than most Masters of Fine Arts programmes? What role does sadism have, especially for those who crave reviews, ship certain couples so hard that they've long crashed into the rocks and who beta away to the point they can become editors themselves?
I've been writing away under a FF.net profile for 12 years now and I don't have any concrete answers. But every two years I have a renaissance, rewriting and publishing new material like I'm under some kind of spell. While the communities on LJ have come and gone, fanfiction for some reason attracts a steady stream of devotees, and some of us, having been around for so long, are like priests: part of the laity, but having an almost divine perseverance.
Fanfiction credits don't count - at least that's the impression I've been given. You can have the most amazing submission-acceptance ratio and can get published by Math Paper Press, but you don't tell anyone that you ship Harry Potter and Cho Chang.
And that strangest thing? Even though I so badly want to break into a respectable journal, it always seems that the fanfiction I write is always three steps ahead of my growing portfolio of short fiction. It's odd and I don't understand why subject matter can prompt productivity and creativity. I wonder if this is a symptom of the writers that come from my generation: we're reusing, reducing and recycling other ideas beautifully, but we struggle when we come to our own.
Still, I admire the community of fanfic writers who stay around FF.net through thick and thin. I've made a lot of friends that way from all walks of life: Iraq War veterans, lawyers, army officers from Budapest and struggling musicians from LA. It's a great way to socialise. Though it seems that fellow Singaporeans would rather admit that they beat their grandparents than admit they write fanfiction.
In the meantime, as work piles up, it's become a great substitute to running. It's the original placebo, the first endorphin-fuelled high, the thing that you do when you're too tired to swim, run or go out with friends who buy you drinks and do nothing but brag about how awesome their jobs are.
(Shit, I think I need a life).
If I were to interview the top ten fanfic writers in any given fandom, I'd ask them this: what makes you spend all that time writing, reviewing and perfecting works of fiction that will never receive any publication credibility, authorship or remuneration? I get the sense that most people will say it's out of generosity, to build the fandom or it's a dress rehearsal for a more professional writing career.
Is altruism a defining trait of publishing fanfiction? Or are the FF.net and LJ communities that archive fanfics so actively driven by a creative writing ethos more hardcore than most Masters of Fine Arts programmes? What role does sadism have, especially for those who crave reviews, ship certain couples so hard that they've long crashed into the rocks and who beta away to the point they can become editors themselves?
I've been writing away under a FF.net profile for 12 years now and I don't have any concrete answers. But every two years I have a renaissance, rewriting and publishing new material like I'm under some kind of spell. While the communities on LJ have come and gone, fanfiction for some reason attracts a steady stream of devotees, and some of us, having been around for so long, are like priests: part of the laity, but having an almost divine perseverance.
Fanfiction credits don't count - at least that's the impression I've been given. You can have the most amazing submission-acceptance ratio and can get published by Math Paper Press, but you don't tell anyone that you ship Harry Potter and Cho Chang.
And that strangest thing? Even though I so badly want to break into a respectable journal, it always seems that the fanfiction I write is always three steps ahead of my growing portfolio of short fiction. It's odd and I don't understand why subject matter can prompt productivity and creativity. I wonder if this is a symptom of the writers that come from my generation: we're reusing, reducing and recycling other ideas beautifully, but we struggle when we come to our own.
Still, I admire the community of fanfic writers who stay around FF.net through thick and thin. I've made a lot of friends that way from all walks of life: Iraq War veterans, lawyers, army officers from Budapest and struggling musicians from LA. It's a great way to socialise. Though it seems that fellow Singaporeans would rather admit that they beat their grandparents than admit they write fanfiction.
In the meantime, as work piles up, it's become a great substitute to running. It's the original placebo, the first endorphin-fuelled high, the thing that you do when you're too tired to swim, run or go out with friends who buy you drinks and do nothing but brag about how awesome their jobs are.
(Shit, I think I need a life).