Canonical Imperfection Breeds Much Fic

[armoredsuperheavy]

I’ve been thinking a bit lately about the relationship between corporate near-monopoly ownership of our shared stories/modern mythologies, how the for-profit model drives creative decisions in that realm, and how the shortcomings or missing elements in the resulting canon media drives fic writing and fandom participation.

Two things I read got me thinking: 

First, @sbooksbowm on Tumblr is doing her dissertation on the place of fanfic in book history and the social mechanics of fandom, I'm doing a terrible job explaining. Here browse the dissertation masterpost! You can also read her in her own words about it  It's fascinating! But this observation from the introduction jumped out at me:

 

Fic ‘rewrites and transforms other stories currently owned by others’. Coppa elaborates: ‘it is only in such a system—where storytelling has been industrialized to the point that our shared culture is owned by others—that a category like “fanfiction” makes sense’ [1]. That is to say, in a system where stories can be bought or sold, the transformative, for-pleasure work of fanfiction is defined in contradistinction to for-profit story production and distribution; in a system without purchase and ownership of stories, the work of fanfiction would be called ‘folklore’.[2]

 

[1] Francesca Coppa, The Fanfiction Reader: Folk Tales for the Digital Age (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2017), p.7.
[2] @sbooksbowm, Dissertation, Draft - Introduction Part 1 (2020)

 

Secondly, @Nymphomachy on Twitter put out a great tweet discussion about the Harry Potter series, its canonical shortcomings, and how that breeds a huge amount of fic. They also criticize the way in which not-for-profit fandom, bred by inadequacies of original text, end up creating a feedback loop that makes the creators of the original canon even richer. ( Part 1, Part 2 and a great reply thread by @arthur_affect ) Warning it’s got some vitriolic criticism of the HP canon and JKR.

 

To me this echoes the firestorm of criticism that’s been leveled at other huge television and film franchises. Most notably on my radar, the widespread panning of Avengers: Endgame and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. But other properties see this stuff too, such as the Supernatural series' later seasons.

 

The right environment to breed a lot of fic seems to be a canon with engaging qualities that draw you in, numerous characters with inconsistent or incomplete character development, handwavey worldbuilding, and niggling details of the plot (not to say holes) that fans want to see addressed. These kind of issues with big properties, along with the nature of IP laws today and how we as a culture have permitted certain entities to own our shared mythologies, is why I think fanfic has exploded over the last 20 years. Fanfic has an entire subclass called “fix-it” and this is clearly one of the fundamental drivers behind writing a lot of fic.  Fic spackles in the cracks, makes the pearl around the grain of sand.

 

Fanfic exists as an underclass of storytelling, in counterpoint to canon, corporate, officially recognized storytelling. Fanfic has no gatekeeper and no editorial green light. Fanfic is telling all the leftover and left-out stories that aren’t globally marketable or palatable to a mass audience. Fanfic is full of heartbreak, trauma, sweet domesticity, profound emotional connections, and demons exorcised. Its value isn’t measured in dollars, and frankly I don’t think it can be. As with other forms of emotional labor, its value will never be calculated or fully appreciated if you are thinking in terms of money. The tales told in the democratized world of fic are by their nature niche and personal. If they weren’t, then they’d be the tales that we see on the big screen to begin with!

 

I think fanfic will continue to boom as long as our mass media continues to deliver huge, shiny, beautiful, incomplete and emotionally shallow adventure tales.  On one level I'm so happy to see fanfiction boom the way it is now - hell, canon + fanon is our modern-day shared mythology!  On another level I'd like to see storytelling democratized more fundamentally. But in our capitalist society, the only way we can have that self-deterministic, open-to-all-comers creation without editorial vetos etc, is in a liminal noncommercial or not-for-profit space. (Donate to OTW/AO3!)
 

A side note though. I do think mainstream publishing has started to take note to some degree. Notably, TOR has been picking up some books in what I consider to be the “original fic” side of the broader “fic” genre. (e.g. K.M. Szpara's Docile and Everina Maxwell's Winter's Orbit aka The Course of Honour by Avoliot) These books tell the type of tales and tropes we often seek in fanfic but aren’t composed on the framework of an existing canon. I’m excited by this development, and looking forward to see what’s next. 

Comments

[tei]

‘it is only in such a system—where storytelling has been industrialized to the point that our shared culture is owned by others—that a category like “fanfiction” makes sense’

I really like this framing. Something that gets pulled out a lot in "defence" of fanfiction-- as if it needs defence!-- is the "look at all of these great works of the past that were fanfiction!" argument. And... of course I see where that's coming from, but I don't think it's actually a particularly substantial argument? Fanfiction isn't defined just by being a work that transforms or builds on another work. That's one part of it, of course, but it's disingenuous to say that Homer or the Bible or whatever is "fanfiction," because a significant part of what fanfiction is is a very specific community with its own norms and traditions, and that's actually important in defining the genre.

The right environment to breed a lot of fic seems to be a canon with engaging qualities that draw you in, numerous characters with inconsistent or incomplete character development, handwavey worldbuilding, and niggling details of the plot (not to say holes) that fans want to see addressed.

It's funny, I think I used to agree with this more than I do? I don't know if it was just a natural process of choosing media or if Hannibal fandom actually changed my mind on a lot of things, but... I don't think I'm in this fandom because of the ways in which the canon is bad. Every canon has flaws, of course, because that's the nature of stories, but I really think I'm in this fandom because of all of the ways in which it's great. And... I actually think that's been the case for my previous fandoms, too. There are plenty of things wrong with Sherlock, but by and large the fandom actually chooses to ignore the inconsistencies and holes, instead of working with them or filling them in. And even watching lovetincture get into SPN, which is the quintessential "this fucking sucks but we're here anyway" fandom, it seems, from my outsider's perspective, that... the fandom really does exist despite the shallowness and incompleteness, not because of it.

IDK, maybe this is just a shift in my perspective on what I want from media and how I want to frame my love of things, but I'm tired of being okay with looking for scraps in things I don't fundamentally respect as stories or worldviews. And I think fandoms can thrive in environments where the canon is thoughtful and accomplished and not "incomplete" in any way besides ways that the author decided that they would be-- because you have to make choices about what to exclude somewhere, and you have to end the thing at some point, and sometimes restraint actually makes for a better story than absolute hedonism. My most recent fannish foray has also been into the Locked Tomb series, which I think helped me clarify for myself what it is that makes a canon ripe for fandom, if it's not the quality of having holes to fill in. And maybe this is an inconsequential or pedantic difference, but I think for me it's the quality of having enough id to draw you in, and then enough well-placed restraint to keep the story on your mind even after you've put it away for the day. I think sometimes that can happen accidentally, where a plot hole or inconsistency can accidentally almost appear as restraint or have the same effect, but... I don't think it's actually all that common (most things that are incomplete or full of holes are just boring, and consigned to the scrap heap of entertainment to be forgotten) and I don't think that's the primary way that properties achieve the kind of wiggle-in-your-brain-and-stay-there quality that breeds fannish activity.

And I think this argument, which kind of breaks down to "we like things because of the ways they're good, actually," can be uncomfortable when we have evidence or knowledge of the ways the things we love are also bad? Like, that Harry Potter thread-- she says,

HARRY POTTER is very bad. Like gay porn plot bad. Even its edited installments were, effectively, kids' TV screenplays converted to prose, which managed to be sufficiently quintessentially British that Americans couldn't tell the difference between that and intelligent literature

I... would like to believe this. It's comforting to be able to look at a book written by someone that is being vitriolic in public spaces and say "nah, I never liked this anyway, it sucks and I had the correct opinion on it from the very beginning. I only ever liked it because other people did, I was practically forced to!" But I just don't. I think that Harry Potter is a decent childrens' series, that a lot of people genuinely found value in even without the community aspect of everyone reading it at the same time, and I think it does a disservice to our attempts to come to nuanced understandings of literature to claim that it's simply "bad." It's a bit painful to admit to liking Harry Potter because of the aspects of it that are great, because that might also force to you say "damn, and I totally glossed over or didn't notice the aspects of it that were bigoted or limited." But that feels a lot more honest, at least to me.

[kradeelav]

Really love how you described the 'shiny, incomplete, emotionally shallow' line wrt corporate stories/mythology; mirrors a lot of my feelings. There is a post about punk creation and sincerity that you make me think of here, tangentially (rescued from tumblr: https://walonvaus.dreamwidth.org/35279.html ) The money shot line:

The punk thing is the thing that’s actually uncomfortable. The punk thing is the thing that is indifferent to reward, though it might get rewarded. The punk thing is the thing that doesn’t care if you like it. The punk thing is not always good. The punk thing also isn’t the angry thing or the rebellious thing. Not even the anti-institutional thing. The punk thing is simply the thing that doesn’t treat institutions sacredly.

- and I get a lot of that re: fic and fan art making (putting aside shiny works made for conventions which is a bastardization of the subculture, but that might be a bit overly judgemental and not a little bit hypocritical.)