I read FanFiction, and here’s why you should give it a chance too
Avatar the Last Airbender was recently added to Netflix, causing a new audience to discover and fall in love with this famous animated series. My friend had just finished a rewatch, and he couldn’t help but bemoan to me that he wished there was more to watch. I recommended Legend of Korra, but my friend wanted to watch the cast he had come to love over the course of three seasons.
“So why not read some FanFiction?” I asked.
He thought that idea was ridiculous. And I don’t blame him. FanFiction (fanfics) gets a bad reputation on the internet for numerous reasons. But I feel that there’s a needless amount of hate thrown towards this writing form. It kind of irked me as a fanfic reader, so I wanted to document a few counterpoints somewhere to hopefully convince you to give a story a chance.
To give a brief summary of what fanfic is: fanfic encompasses writing, not done by the original creator, that is based loosely on an already existing form of media. Harry Potter fanfic includes not only stories about Harry Potter and other characters, but also stories that borrow from the universe of Harry Potter. A story is not fanfic because it has magic: it is fanfic because it also uses alohamora as its unlocking spell, and your original character (OC) goes to Hogwarts. It is written by fans of the media for various reasons: they want to create their own stories with these characters. Maybe they fell in love with the setting and create some unique original characters that explore this setting in ways the original author only teased. Maybe they just really want two characters who do not have romantic encounters in the source material to have sex. Maybe they are just practicing writing fiction. Lots of reasons. So there is plenty of reason to write, but there is also a lot of negativity surrounding fanfic.
Fanfic gets a lot of crap for a bunch of reasons. One, it is terrible writing. That’s true: anyone can submit literally anything to these sites typically, and they tend to be unedited and poorly thought out. I click on stories all the time that have interesting premises, but turn away due to the unbearable grammar or ridiculous plot points. Two, it is all smut, or people writing about sexual fantasies involving the characters. It isn’t but there is a fair amount of mature content that tends to be either exceptionally poorly or exceptionally too detailed. This kind of couples with the ideas that fanfic is all about shipping (matching two characters together romantically). It isn’t, but again, there is a lot of people writing about romances they wished had happened. Lastly, I think fanfic gets a lot of flak for being pointless. Why add your dumb ideas about a post-universe Code Geass if the ending was perfect? Honestly the first point covers a lot of what people hate about fanfic. And I am not going to defend these points because they tend to be true. 80% of what I end up reading is garbage. But to be fair, 80% of anything in the world tends to be bad (AKA Sturgeon’s Law). I was pretty good at alto sax in high school (first chair, county band, blah blah), but I definitely fell in the 80% that is terrible in the world. But why is that 20% worth reading at all?
Here, I’m going to give some more specific arguments on why this trash is worth reading in any capacity. I’ll mention and link some stories, but I won’t spoil anything important in those stories (very minor spoilers).
1. Some fanfic writers just capture characters as well as the creators.
Everyone has encountered a show that left a hollow feeling when it was over. Whether it is Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, or Avatar the Last Airbender, some media manage to make their consumers just want more. The world will never really be able to experience a show about the adult Gaang (Avatar). But some fanfic writers who felt similarly manage to write stories that faithfully represent our favorite characters and worlds. Plenty of fanfic gets the criticism that the characters are just too different and they tend to be subservient to the plot these authors desire. This is a bold claim, but I genuinely believe that some writers do an amazing job understanding the characters/universe of a source material.
When I finished Neon Genesis Evangelion (NGE), I was confused but also hungry for more adventures about the characters. Something worth noting about NGE: it is legendary in the anime community for being incredibly confusing, thematic, and psychologically jarring. The entire cast of the show can be classified by a range of psychological disorders and mental illnesses, from depression to daddy issues. Accurately capturing the personalities and creating interactions and development moments for this cast is without doubt a ridiculous hurdle that no one can claim to approach.
But “Life Goes On,” comes pretty close. This story changes one important scene at the end of the anime to create a more “normal” ending setting (that’s all I’ll say about the ending to avoid spoilers). The story then follows two of the show’s protagonists, Shinji and Rei, and their mental recuperation following the end of the anime. Shinji is very hard to describe accurately, but for this analysis, he is essentially depressed, emotionally fragile, and cannot let go of the past. Rei is emotionless and has lost purpose in her life after the ending of the anime. This story does such a great job maintaining these characters’ key traits while still having them grow. Shinji is able to become more independent and remind himself that he is someone worth loving, but still struggles over his regrets at the end of the anime. Rei still has limited expressions but strives to find purpose in her new life with the help of Shinji. “Life Goes On” turn these obscenely broken teens into functioning and happy individuals. The author does this without sacrificing their quirks. In the show, Rei has a monotone voice and is ignorant of culture. As she gets happier, Rei transforms while maintaining these traits: to educate herself on culture, she begins learning from comedy videos/books, and uses her monotone voice to make sarcastic remarks. It is a clever reimagination of a happy Rei without sacrificing what made this character memorable or set her apart from other anime characters. The author manages to keep the individual characters the same at their core, but still have them develop.
Though NGE Rebuild series is essentially a reboot to the show, there will never be a sequel to the original NGE series. It’s a really complex and one of a kind series. You never hear anybody put NGE and happy in the same sentence, but this fanfic is what I imagine a happy NGE would be. I thought the author nailed it. In addition to being faithful to the characters of the original show, “Life Goes On” is a fantastic story about mental rehabilitation and young love. Obviously you can’t confirm how well the author writes the characters if you have never watched the original series, so you will have to take my word for it. If you ever watch NGE and then find yourself needing more, hit this story up!
2. Fanfic can fully explore established settings.
FanFiction is by definition derivative. They rely on the characters, worlds, and rules established by their source material. But fanfic can still create in this context. And fanfic can challenge ideas in their source material in imaginative ways. No story is perfect, and everyone has a show or book they have read where they asked, “why didn’t X just do Y?” Stories often skip over things or create details that never get the chance to be fully explored. Fanfic authors are fascinated by these questions and details, and they try to fill in the gaps. Its risky, considering that usually requires much more original work than other fanfics that are character focused. Often those stories are weak: the cast acts “out of character” to bend to the plots, and the plots are aimless and unplanned because writers make it up as they go along. But some stories succeed in developing these smaller details that the original story could not. Some stories even challenge themselves to delve deeper than the source material on certain subjects and characters.
One of the longest fanfics I have ever read is called “Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality”. It has a simple premise: what if Harry had a more scientific or investigative mind? What if he was a natural scientist who liked to do research and always asked why and how things worked? What follows is a 600,000 word story about how Harry Potter defeats Voldemort by gradually understanding how magic works, and using it in ways no wizard or witch has before him. As an engineering student, this story was fascinating. The author had such creative and logical explanations or theories on how certain spells operated. Harry asked questions that I often considered myself: for example, does magic obey the conservation of energy and mass? When someone performs a water spell, does the water come from somewhere? Obviously in the books, this is all magic: there is no need for explanation. But the author has so many ideas on how magic functions, and they range from exceptionally intelligent to hilariously ridiculous. The story gained enough acclaim to have its own wiki page and be legitimately reviewed by critics/journalists.
Minor spoilers: One of my favorite segments of the story is a chapter in which Harry is trying to get another one of his friends to think like a scientist. He keeps asking them to consider other possibilities and consistently challenges their beliefs. It is an incredible arc in the story about changing someone’s mindset in a peaceful manner. He never forces his viewpoints or resorts to violence: Harry just encourages his friend to answer questions from Harry’s POV. This culminates in a scene where Harry reveals he has invented a new idea in transfiguration: partial transfigurations. He learned he could transform objects and people in class, but then he wondered if he could only partially transform things. What is required for a wizard to partially transfigure an object? Is the incantation different? Is the mindset different? Its such a simple idea but it absolutely blew my mind how naturally the author introduced and explained this concept. And by using Harry’s ignorant friend, Harry could teach me about how he founded this technique and the intricacies of how he achieved partial transfiguration. /end spoilers
Ultimately the story gets exceptionally messy. It’s still incredibly brilliant, but it just becomes a bit crazy and by the end I’m wondering what isn’t possible in this new world. Still, the story really ran away with a simple concept and the author created so many original ideas that excited me as both a Harry Potter fan and an engineer. The story is one that could not have been written by J.K. Rowling. Even amongst all the fiction out, fanfic or edited/published, there is not a story that matches the mix of logic, insanity, and planning of methods of rationality.
3. The source material can be used as a vehicle to deliver more transcendent ideas.
What’s great about fanfic is that you tend to be working with settings and characters that already have a lot going for them. Characters already have their backstories and personality traits that fanfic readers are familiar with. Nobody who reads Harry Potter fanfic does not also know that Hermione is a nerd and Ron loves to eat. These details are already established in the source material. That means writers do not have to be bogged down with defining their characters and settings in their stories (though some do just for some out of character shenanigans). While this is not a prerequisite for writing about “transcendent” ideas, it does help communicate them to fans of the source material.
One of my recent favorite stories is called “Dating Teacher Bae.” It is a alternate universe (AU) story about Red Velvet, a Korean pop music group. The story is about what life is like for Kang Seulgi, who is dating a preschool teacher named Irene Bae. Seulgi in this story lists the highs and lows of their relationship by noting a trait and recounting a memory about that trait. One of those notes is how Seulgi hates it when Irene uses her teacher voice on her (basically how a teacher would scold a toddler). You do not need to use Seulgi and Irene to describe this interaction. You could create OCs who can accurately reflect this scene. But consider how much this was fanfic used Seulgi and Irene to further decorate this situation. Readers of Red Velvet fanfic already know what Seulgi and Irene are like. We know Seulgi tends to be clumsy off the stage and tends to be the most easily confused or playfully dumb. We know Irene is a homebody and loves to keep things clean and organized. Irene also has a temper when someone messes with her order and way of doing things. So the scene becomes: Seulgi, in her playfulness and love of dancing, clumsily knocks over a lamp, and Irene gets mad and scolds Seulgi in her teacher voice. The author can basically write “Seulgi knocks over a vase and Irene uses her teacher voice in her anger,” and readers’ knowledge will fill in the rest. Typically in writing, that sentence will need some further build up to make the scene sensible and smooth. The author does not need to sell readers on how clumsy Seulgi knocked over this vase or why Irene is upset. Instead, the fanfic writer builds off that premise to further describe how Irene’s teacher voice is less anger than disappointment and to emphasize how Seulgi is annoyed by the tone. In using the Red Velvet characters as a vehicle, we can focus less on the whys/hows and spend more time on the whats. The characters essentially come with depth, and we can more easily focus on the action of a story, instead of the motivations. This story also has less of a linear plot: it is more of a collection of anecdotes instead of one single story. Seulgi and Irene already have the character traits and familiarity from their real world counterparts.
“Dating Teacher Bae” is filled with these small little moments that, in the end, are not about Irene and Seulgi. It expresses a sentiment that goes beyond the Red Velvet characters: it is a love letter to teachers, and communicates the effort and love teachers pour into teaching children to readers. It is a story about why we should admire our educators, and it happens to star two of my favorite people. This story could definitely have been told with an original cast and did not need Seulgi or Irene. But there is a lot of groundwork already available to work with, and the story gets to deliver it’s message in less words without sacrificing any of the motivations, personality traits, and flow.
4. Fanfics are a great training ground for writing.
It’s pretty obvious, but it’s worth repeating. Getting your writing critiqued and out there in public is more difficult than one would expect. You can always start a blog or submit writing to online/physical publications, but in general there are not a lot of spaces where you can submit writing and have it be read. If you write fanfic, you have a fanbase that will likely be eager to consume everything that gets published. I read basically every fanfic regarding Red Velvet nowadays, and I’ve probably read fanfiction.net’s entire libraries of Sound! Euphonium and Steins;Gate (among others). Reviews are not always useful: I’ve scrolled through a few of my favorite stories and the comments tend to be both positive and critically useless. The rare commenter will note some grammar issues or point out some nonsensical plot element, but they tend to be useless for actually learning how to write better.
Instead you base your writing growth on engagement instead of specific critiques. Whether it is number of favorites or number of comments left, these sites provide some means of judging how favorably the audience is reacting to the story. When I look for fanfic of a new show I watched, the first thing I always do is sort the FanFiction by favorites or kudos or whatever to see what stories people have deemed the best in the fandom. So there exists some method of feedback. But more importantly, it is a media where your stories will be read and one can really practice writing. The presence of a community is also a way to motivate yourself to write more: people will often be messaging authors for the next chapter of the current story, or tell the author that they will follow the user and look for more new things. There’s reasons to write more, and writing more is the best way to get better.
So I’ve read a lot of long fanfics. One of them is called “Feels Like Home,” a series of 101 one-shots (like short stories, not linked to other chapters) about Attack on Titan. This show is known for a few things: great animation, amazing soundtrack, and just brutal scenarios. It’s a dark fantasy/action story about a world overrun with monsters called titans that eat humans. In such a brutal world, the author does not focus a lot on things like romance. So of course fanfic writers want to write happy love stories about the main couple. “Feels Like Home” is 101 shorts about the relationship between Eren and Mikasa, two of the protagonists. The story takes advantage of its one-shot nature and places the characters in a large amount of settings. The first chapter is a small imagining of their reunion following a dramatic scene that is canon in the manga. Other chapters put the characters in an alternative universe, maybe as high school sweethearts or working adults meeting for the first time. The author in this case writes about a huge variety of circumstances, plot lines, character interactions. Not all the stories are amazing, but the chance to try these different genres and settings can only help the author. And by taking advantage of the embedded character traits I mentioned in point 3, the author can avoid worrying about defining characters and focus on other plot points like how to sell a mystery or how to write an emotional break up.
Between 101 chapters and three years of writing, I can definitely see the improvement in writing. Chapter 1 tended to be a bit more blatant in its writing: Eren’s emotions are clearly explained and the author focuses more on his actions than his thoughts. Chapter 101 places Eren in a setting where he is thinking about his future and his relationship with Mikasa. Eren is more introspective here, and comes across as more of a thoughtful and pragmatic individual. The dialogue also seems more natural in chapter 101: Eren avoids using only declarative statements and his actions work with the dialogue to depict Eren’s emotional state.
From chapter 1: “I’m going to keep it that way.” He rubbed the thick fabric between his fingers. They had been bound since the moment Eren stepped inside that room. Mikasa had always known it, but Eren, he was only just beginning to realize it.
From chapter 101: “It does,” he said, a smile on his lips again. “Wherever you are, that’s home.” That’s the way it had always been. As much as he remembered the time before Mikasa came to stay with them, at the same time it felt like he never lived his life without her and God, he would never want to.
Both chapters are definitely cheesy and use platitudes a lot. But chapter 1 Eren uses simpler and more direct language throughout the story; chapter 101 Eren is maybe a bit more expressive and uses a metaphor instead. The following narration after the quote of chapter 1 really feels like an outsider narrating this romance. It seems to be directly pointing out how intertwined Eren and Mikasa were, and that Eren had only just realized it. Chapter 101 is more subtle in implying how Eren had come to realize how connected he was to Mikasa. The expressive clause about how he does not want to part with Mikasa gives the sense that the narrator is Eren (as opposed to an omniscient narrator). There are small influences throughout these two chapters that I think point to how the author has become better at expressing Eren, who tends to be written pretty simply due to his stubborn characterization, and smarter about word choice and style.
There are a lot of improvements and experimentation that can be seen when reading all 303,869 words in “Feels Like Home.” Given such a large word count and no need to have all those words connect to one story, the author has a lot of freedom to explore different genres and try out new things. The direct feedback is definitely lacking, but given the 600 reviews and 600 favorites, the story does pretty well for an Attack on Titan fanfic and there is a good response to all the stories. It’s no replacement for an editor or a publishing company, but fanfic has provided the author with a chance to grow as a writer. And I think any of her 493 followers would be able to point out how much he/she has grown.
Anyways, that was my somewhat meager defense on fanfic. Though there’s definitely a lot of low quality works, there are also a handful of really touching and sophisticated pieces of literature that can impress anyone. If there is ever something more you want from a show or book, then you always have a chance that someone felt the same way and wanted to try to capture those feelings in text. It’s still literature worth reading.
TL;DR: Fanfic is far from good writing/book quality, and 80% of what I end up reading is basically trash. But there are some great works sprinkled in there that I love for a few reasons.
