Defending Fanfiction as a Medium

 

Every time fanfiction is used to derogatorily describe something subpar for official media, I just wanted to throw something. 

The Stranger Things final season is an example. Stranger Things' problems have been evident since the second season, and the final season just exemplified everything that had been discussed before, making the problems ten times worse. 

To say that it's fanfiction as a result of all that is just nonsense. 

Fanfiction is a medium that uses official media to explore things that have yet to be explored in official media and runs wild with that. Fanfiction is transformative; it doesn't always have to conform to canon, but transform it. 

For example, there are villain-centric fics that give villains a chance to grow healthily and essentially give them a happy ending. That is transformative from works that obviously and resolutely won't reward the villains for their villainous behavior and deserve to be punished. 

Or how about this: Crossing over with another franchise for funsies or you really want a serious take on their universes meeting. Taking the Yuri on Ice universe and just send them in the real homophobic world is a thing fans have always done before and it’s not surprising with their crossovers too. That is transformative. 

Yes, canon is not the end-all-be-all. There are fics that take canon in consideration and analyze them. It’s about analyzing canon. Fandom in fanfiction culture may have taken to ignoring canon to an enormous degree that it’s actually hurting analysis in fanfiction but that does not mean bullying to conform to canon. Sometimes canon can be so bad that it does need fixing, be it atrociously bad writing to better fulfill its potential or saving a character. Seriously, people were surprised to see Eddie Munson lives fics, you definitely aren’t there for anything because that is so easy. 

That's the point of fanfiction: taking official media and transforming it. Be it either ignoring canon or using canon as a base to develop, because that's the point of fanfiction at the end of the day. Not a machine to pump out things quickly for consumption ala TikTok, but a gift-based community involved in the love of the source material. 

To shout and demand more with entitlement and then put them down simply because they aren't good writers or have the care or knowledge of fandom etiquette. To them, it's a consumer with a short attention span and a refusal to understand anything. 

At the end of the day, HR fandom's toxicity is more toxic than others, but nothing new. It's just mashed up with current fandom problems in which HR is the gateway fandom for people who previously avoided fandom like a plague. 

I roll my eyes when I see people denigrate fanfiction for not giving them what they deserve and for fanfiction as nothing more than simply a source of consumption meant for profit and entitlement. 

Heated Rivalry won't be the first and the last of this type of behavior either. It's just easier now to see the fandom as the scapegoat and the scene of the crime. Heated Rivalry will die down and become another fandom like Red, White, and Blue, but for now, we have to deal with the ugliness and the bad of the fandom that is at the forefront, simply because they are the loudest. 

On an aside note, I can't believe we are even saying this: Heated Rivalry and their source material are their own thing. Yes, it's not gonna awards, but if one meets where it is, it's enjoyable. Sure, there will be better books, but isn't that the point of literature. People's writing differed from the other but no less valid. 

We can't exactly say each piece of art is the same because each person writes and tackles their themes differently. It’s apples and oranges, more cake to be had. Hype definitely plays into this too because people often try to be contrarian or do provide civil constructive critique but does so in such a negative way it would deter rather than provide. Because like most things that get too popular, the hype backlash is real. 

Sure, sure, fanfiction has its own fair share of just plain bad. Not even so bad it's good, like just plain bad, but at least they are written by someone who has a love for the series they are writing for. 

Mentioning the good of fanfiction, where you can find the best of the best, the cream of the crop, if you know enough of the fanbase to know their respective bases. I don't need to step on the grounds of EndHawks to know there will be good fanfiction, but for my own sanity, I wouldn't read them because I hate the ship and would rather not have my brain break. 

In a time where the fanfiction to official media, as in name changes and even slight characterization changes just so that they are unrecognizable from the characters they were beforehand, even now those are advertised to draw the original readers in to some extent as well as using all the tropes. 

Again, fanfic has so many tropes, but that’s all they are. Sure, people can be fans of certain tropes (as I can say, I’m very much into magical girls au) but that's all it is. How does people use these tropes and execute them? In the realm of fanfiction, you expect middling results. 

It's a fucking medium. It just used official media and it's just as applicable for any means of art and creativity. 

Unfortunately, seeing something 'fanfiction' in official media is worthy of derogatory offense as if it just means to satisfy those types of fans. 

When fanfiction is written by people who take time out of their lives to write free stuff and gift it to the fandom. It's not a transactional relationship where one pays and consumes like buying tote bags. 

It's not consuming or asking for immediate food in an eating establishment. This is the immediate abandonment of a fandom once it's quiet, when the point of fandom is make food. Why else have Suzalulu survived this long, had it not been for the fans? The point of abandoning a fanbase just because it isn't airing anymore is just stupid when the point of fandom is the love and to continue in the community. 

Seriously, I seen this happen with the Chainsaw Man in regards to the anime at least. Fuck, the OPM fanbase continued well beyond the anime with the manga 

Seriously, rare pairs have to survive with whatever they can have. Seriously, rare pairs and overall small fandoms have to survive through the tenacity of their fans to keep it alive. They might not be as big as they want to be but at least they are happy with just what they have. 

Fandom isn't transactional. Sure, there are zines that are usually out of budget for most people. Fuck, I'm just happy with my zines. But those are optional. 

People are willing to wait for the zine's fics to be free on some platform one way or another 

Just give your flowers to the authors in the comments and it's all good. Even private DMs are good too. Just shower them with support. 

Every time I see something like 'is this fandom dead?', I roll my eyes. Fans are supposed to keep the fandom running, not the damn media. Fuck, Ace Attorney hasn't had a new game in years, and you still fucking see fics and fanart, new ones! 

Even if you stop playing the game and only live through walkthroughs, it's still enough to call yourself a fan because it's still a way to experience them. One shouldn't have to play to be a fan. 

Fandom is gift-based and free but newbies don't seem to care about etiquette at all. For them, it's just like TikTok, something easily consumable and quick to digest, not caring for the time and care these fans write in their free time. Even something they demand like faster updates, an algorithm, and censorship is just beyond stupid. Clearly, it shows they have no care for fandom history and why AO3 is the last bastion of creativity and why it's hard for AO3 to regulate AI-generated text on their website. 

If they censor it, that's bad. If they don't censor it, that's also bad, so really, AO3 is in a hard spot to do with AI in the fanfiction space. 

Please, I'm just begging fans of today that just because a show is either ending or has not produced any media in literal years, the fandom itself does not deserve to be languished in silence. A fandom is kept alive by fans and maintained by love and passion. YOU love this thing, right? Just shower it with love and keep it alive with that love. Talk meta or whatever because that keeps it alive. Even stupid ship wars keep it alive. 

Fanfiction has a bad reputation for being fanfiction. Apparently, official media isn't fanfiction in any means. I mean, who cares about the many adaptations out there of famous works? I mean, we wouldn't get Herlock Sholmes, wouldn't we? In any capacity? I mean, who cares that Maurice LeBlanc wanted his OC to meet ACD's OC, right? It's not as if it didn't create an interesting dynamic or anything of worth? Heck, Capcom turning to Herlock Sholmes just so they won't have to deal with the Doyle estate is just brilliant in itself. 

What is deemed fanfiction in official media? Something that feels official media couldn't have, for example? Something that feels like it couldn't be real? Because it's fanfiction and not traditional media? That traditional media hadn't done it before? 

Fuck, I know the fics I read readily belong in fanfiction territory as it outright explores things that wouldn't even happen. It's about the exploration, the fun, the love of the series. It might mean fixing the source material when it does wrong, as I seen fix-it fics everywhere I go. 

Though having seen FF7 Rebirth and how it questions, but not putting down the fix-its, it just shows that death is there and will always be there and has impacted the medium that even with fix-its, they still died and the ghosts of them still haunt the narrative. It says about what it means to remake a story and why the original 

It's definitely one of the better analyses of the meta writing I seen yet for that particular aspect. And you know me, if I sniff out good meta writing, I will recommend it highly. 

Still, don't put down fanfiction or any fan-made material. Yes, they are infringing on copyright. Sure, people can appreciate art, but with AI, it's clear that people do not respect the process and the hard work that goes into it. They just want instant results of what they imagined, and that's it, even if it is directly stolen from artists. 

Just like how in fanfiction, AI-generated content is somehow picked up by some. 

And how AI hunters aren't doing much better, as accusing everything under the sun of being AI is not good. Yes, it's bad that we can't even trust an image to see if it's actually real and not computerized, but that's not good behavior, much less still running through AI detectors, because that is still AI consuming data. 

It's really annoying to see accusations of AI even in something I know took time. It's horrible to see distrust in something we can't believe isn't real anymore and made by human hands. 

But we're getting off-topic. Fanfiction is itself a medium. Just like any other medium, it has its own trash and gems that you have to sift through. Unless you're in a small fandom, you've got to make your own food. At this point, I really am debating just throwing all pretense and making my own food regarding KyoAi, Capioro, Akimina, and ShirLulu. Actually, thinking of making that a threesome with Suzaku too because Suzalulu is definitely a huge part of my shipping too. 

Sure, the Asoryuu, in terms of new ships, is already grateful for the food even though they aren’t updating daily like NaruMitsu/Wrightworth. At least they have food in comparison to the truly rare pairs of those mentioned above. 

Fanfiction is never official, but it's still a good way to learn how to write. It's a medium using official media to draw upon and written generally with love. 

Heck, as much as I don't prefer the fanfiction to just going at it in traditional media with name changes, Heated Rivalry is definitely one of the better ones in comparison to the Harry Styles fanfiction pipeline anyhow mainly because Heated Rivalry is definitely better written than the Harry Styles fanfiction turned film pipeline so far. 

Even though Heated Rivalry, I don't think I have to use the Stucky advertisement to draw in old readers or AO3 readers but it's still a known fact regardless but it's a fact not as advertised as many other pipeline fanfics turned traditional media used. 

I mean fanfiction is all about the freedom afforded that traditonal media would not let us have. We can explore not just the topics we wanted but also the relationships. Heck, it might be better that fans can handle the better written stuff than this. Again, Stranger Things have problems since forever. It's just the final season just encapsulate all the problems in an easy bow and doing nothing but revel in their backfired nostalgia that not even the actors can save it with their acting because at least in season 4, we got Joseph Quinn who acts the shit out of his role. 

Heck, it might be better to just let the fans have this or that. While fandoms have run amok of purity culture and poor etiquette for a long time, fandoms also have their own problems of racism and so forth. I mean Steddie, a white boy with white boy pairing over Argyle x Jonathon, an interracial couple featuring a person of color... yeah, and that's just one example. 

I will defend fanfiction till the end of times. The way people used fanfiction to deragoily describe something is just awful. 

Because fanfiction is a medium. All these AUs and divergences are all the fun of fanfiction where we can imagine fucking Captain America meeting Phoenix Wright. 

Fanfiction is about discovering all the ways a couple can be together again and again. I can watch my beloved ships get together and it's never boring. It's never boring to explore things never explored expansively in canon because that's what fanfiction is for. 

Fanfiction is many things. It's free and written by people of adults and it's an easy way to gain experience writing. It shows that talent is a skill, grown over time. It's a great way of exploring canon as well as oneself when writing. It's a medium. 

It's not a shitty way to divert attention from official means. Traditional media has their own blockways when fanfiction has no such thing, written with love and passion for what they are loving and giving it freely. It's not supposed to be fully edited or better paced when it's all depends on one's time and love for the source material. The source material is just that. 

To demean fanfiction is to demean the official pastiches and actual fanfiction. Seriously, the Cinderella movies? Those aren't new. There are fairytale-based fics. You are just as likely to find Cinderella AUs as you are to find Beauty and the Beast AUs. 

Fanfiction is a medium and shouldn't be demeaned simply because it's fanfiction and that it isn't official.