The Good Ship SNSD: Fanfiction, part 1

[arbitrary_greay]

Yes, you read that right. Part 1. Because I recently discovered some articles(courtesy of R and Jko) that might do all of our discussing for us. D:
But I did this damn idol fic writers survey a month ago, so you're going to get selected answers whether you want them or not, dammit.

Comments

[just_keep_on]

What would also have been interesting was to see how long each participant had been reading/writing fanfic and been in idol fandom, mostly because it seems like the participants have been in fanfiction and/or idol fandom for a couple months (which is pretty much all you need to understand idol fandom, I'd say). It would be interesting to see the mindset of brand new fans and if they even think about these things at all (and why).

How do you view original fiction/fanfiction/RPF vs idol fic? ...
- Fanfiction as libel: I've always wondered about this. I mean, there are authors that have prohibited people from writing fanfiction for their work (btw, can someone enlighten me as to how do they do this?) but has there ever been a celebrity who's said: "Thou shalt not write fanfic about me"? Or is it just something they shelve under the "gossip/tabloid fodder" category?
-- Tangent: Fanfiction as "helping the cause" - it keeps fans interested and the idols themselves engage in fanservice which incites more fanfiction ...

- Idol fic as less 'strict': Is it really less strict than fanfiction from other fandoms?

- The purpose of fic: What *is* the purpose of fic? I think it's the collision of "fanfiction as fanservice for fellow fans" and "fanfiction as a tool for writing" and the shifting from one camp to the other that causes so much drama in the community that surrounds fanfiction. (more later...)

- Is a fan's knowledge about an idol directly or inversely proportional to that fan's ability to write fanfiction? If directly proportional, is there a threshold at which the amount of knowledge gained becomes detrimental to that fan's ability to write fanfiction? If indirectly proportional, is this where badfic comes from? Or is that just a reliance on/playing up to "fanon"?

How has writing idol fic affected your fandom?
- Fanfiction as a fandom's lifeblood: Can we say that fanfiction is another form of gossip? (Like the tabloids?)

Do you read idol fic? ...
- The fanfiction community: The community around fanfiction isn't totally bonkers - it can be very good for getting more into fandom, finding friends, and/or improving writing skills. In regards to the last, online fanfiction allows for incredible writing growth due to the close relationship built on the quick interaction between readers and writers of fanfiction. Writers can can get feedback instantly on grammar, characterization and what audience members simply like. However, most of the time it's the last that a writer gets - "Great story," "Love this OTP," etc. - which is fine and dandy for a writer of "fanservice fics," fics written solely for the entertainment of other fans. It's not so fine and dandy for a writer trying to improve their writing skills.

"But fanfiction is *supposed* to be fine and dandy! Rainbows and OTPs and lots of porn! All you srs bsnz people need to gtfo!" some may complain. True - it's probably where it all started, for shits and giggles. (I'd also point them to links I'd dropped off in previous posts, which reveals how a lot of literary awesomeness was actually fanfiction.) But then someone started taking it seriously, maybe writing an alternate fanon or about some "taboo" subject, or (gasp!) writing a different OTP, and then someone took *that* seriously - "This bitch, look at 'em being all srs bsnz" - and then kablooey.

I think it's the collision of and the jumping to and from fanservice fics and fics for writing that causes some of the drama (of course, there are always personal vendettas and wankers DX). The fanfiction community and its various groups can put just as much stress and pressure on their writers as BNFs do on the fandom at large (being "loyal" and such).

I think that's all I have to ramble about. ... For now~

[arbitrary_greay]

The links you and R gave me mostly answer all of these questions. XD I'll probably put up part 2 on Saturday. And likely steal these questions for picking excerpts~

Is a fan's knowledge...
Writer I's response to question 1: "The closer I get to a band, the harder it gets for me to do it.[write fanfic for them] It feels violating, like I'm making them do things against their will?"

[just_keep_on]

I personally think it's an inverse relationship - you don't see a lot of 'older' fans (not in age, but in length of time in idol fandom) writing fanfic, or at least as profusely as they used to. A lot of fanfics are written by newbie fans, which is also why the quality isn't so great.

Can we also put this to idol fandom as a whole? Is it it harder to be fans of an idol the more we know about them and the lives they lead?

Also, is this something that occurs only in idol fandom? Or can we not make that conclusion since fandoms like anime have only have limited information on their characters?

[greywing]

I've always wondered about this. I mean, there are authors that have prohibited people from writing fanfiction for their work (btw, can someone enlighten me as to how do they do this?)

As far as I can tell, they simply ask and the fans respect their wishes, for the most part. That simple! It may even be a case of fans policing fans in these regards; authors may not have the time to trawl the Internet asking people to stop writing fanfic of their works in every individual case. XD (Then again, some of them may . . .)

Re: relationship between knowledge and the production of fanworks.

These questions may be too general, I think, as it is enirely dependent on the writer, the source, and when a fan gets into the source. XD For example, I wrote almost all of my FMA fic while the series was still in progress (and since then, Arakawa made about 99% of my fanfic obsolete XD), but by the time the series had finished, I had dropped out of the FMA fanfic game. The FMA fanfic I wrote was a direct consequence of wondering about a character I liked that hadn't received development at certain points, but would later have details filled in about her past, motivations, etc. by the author herself (which is what made my fanfic obsolete). [Aside: And since I am so out of the FMA fanfic scene, someone tell me: Has anyone written a fic about manga!Riza's army days? I've always wondered how her boot camp mates must've reacted to her and she to them (she seemed kind of an isolated kid :( ). . . . How can Riza still fascinate me?!]

My Mai HiME fanfic days, however, were entirely after the fact: imo, the anime had done such a poor job tying up loose ends, that I felt like I needed to write some fanfic to put some of my frustration at ease. So all the fanfic I wrote was after I had the entire body of canon before me and could work with and within it more closely.

This is completely different from writing for a series like, say, the comic series Birds of Prey, which has characters that are constantly appearing in other series and are written by different authors in canon (so characterizations tend to change, new "facts" about characters appear out of nowhere, and at a later point in time, something may be considered not part of canon anymore). While fanfic in such series can be invalidated by canon later, the perpetually ongoing subset of the superhero comics genre means that almost any "timeline" or "event" can be kind of considered either existing within or outside of canon pretty happily.

The a combination of my FMA and BoP examples is probably the closest to what it's like to write within idol fandom: you can only work with what you have at any given moment, yet the canon is always alive without any "end" in sight and anything you know now may be invalidated later. XD Thus you can never really "wait" to get all the information (i.e. for a series to end) and must work with the body of knowledge you have at any given moment. It also depends how thorough you, as a writer, feel like you need to be. The more reflective of reality you need to be, the more overwhelming the constant influx of information can be.

At the same time, it may be the revelation of just that one certain thing that may set off inspiration.

Did any of that make sense and/or answer any question?

[just_keep_on]

Well, makes sense: fans can be the best police.

Comics are crazy - there's 5 bazillion different storylines going on at the same time that it's hard to ever be "wrong" I think xD

So if it's not about knowledge ... is it rather how close a person feels to their idol? Or rather, how much of a "normal person" they realize their idol to be? [that prevents someone from continuing to write about them]