my taste in fanfic
I don’t read all that much fanfic. My fannish impulses don’t express themselves that way; I write individual stories because I come up with specific concepts, not because I have an ongoing engagement with the canon, or am linked into the social community of that fandom. Taken from the other direction, I generally only read things if a friend has recommended them, and a lot of what I read ends up not meaning a whole lot to me, because I lack the context or the interest to receive it properly.
But there are exceptions. There are fanfic stories I not only read, not only love, but remember for years afterward.
And, as I realized a while ago, they all have a common trait.
For a fanfic to really stick with me, it needs to be doing something extra, beyond just being fannish. (There’s nothing wrong with being fannish, mind you — it just isn’t what I read for.) Something intellectual, something critical, which can’t be done by writing original fiction, because that would lose the closeness entanglement of its commentary, and can’t be done by writing straight-up criticism, either, because that would lose . . . something harder to put my finger on. Stories that strike that balance make me absolutely giddy as a reader.
I’d like to share with you a few examples of what I mean, with explanatory notes. (But, uh, be warned — I guess the stories I like share two common traits. The thing I mentioned above, and the fact that they’re EPICALLY LONG. The two rather naturally go hand-in-hand.)
“The Game of the Gods” (Lord of the Rings, but really more The Silmarillion), by Limyaael — This was the first one, the first massive fanfic I read in its entirety. There are 35 chapters in it, and even if a lot of them are really short, that’s still a pretty substantial total. I think Teresa Nielsen-Hayden was the one who recommended it, years ago; the fact that I still remember it this far on should tell you something.
The gist is that Varda and Morgoth have a contest: he will try to destroy Middle-Earth using Mary Sues, and Varda will try to stop them using nothing but logic and common sense. Run with that concept, and what you end up with is not only a fanfic (with lots of really hilarious Silmarillion notes around the edges), but a critical typology of Mary Sues. There’s the goth one, and the sparkling-unicorn one, and the anime one, and the Harry Potter crossover one . . . your brain will melt by the end. 🙂
“Myriad” (DC Universe/Buffy crossover . . . to start with, before it eats EVERYTHING ELSE), by Vitruvian — This one starts off with Lois Lane in a bar, ranting at another woman about Superman, and finally bursting out, “When you come right down to it, Superman – no, scratch that, Superman and all of his costumed cronies and stupid enemies – never belonged anywhere but in a comic strip, and I WISH that’s where they stayed.”
At which point Anyanka, vengeance demon extraordinaire, says, “DONE.”
In subsequent chapters, the same thing keeps happening, over and over again . . . and so the fic ends up framing the various canons for Superman over the decades as attempts by the Powers That Be to get Superman’s story back on track after Lois Lane repeatedly wishes him out of existence. Naturally, all this mucking about with history attracts the attention of the Doctor . . . and Torchwood . . . and this is the one fic on the list I didn’t end up finishing, because I started to run into too many things I either wasn’t familiar with, or didn’t want spoilers for. It still entertained me mightily, though.
“Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality” (Harry Potter, naturally), by Less Wrong — This is the one that made me realize what it is I look for in a fanfic, because it does it all, in spades.
(Warning: I will not be held responsible for the hours of your life you lose reading this fic. I’m told it’s now longer than the first three HP novels put together, and I can believe it.)
It’s an AU with one core difference: Petunia Evans married, not Vernon Dursley, but Michael Verres, a professor who raised his adopted son (non-abusively) as a genius of rationality and science. Which makes this a “magic vs. science” story . . . but unlike most such stories, it falls neither into the trap of “science proves that your magic doesn’t work!,” nor into the trap of “haha, magic doesn’t have to obey your silly science.” Harry knows magic doesn’t work. When he sees undeniable proof that it does, his response is the truly rational one: he concludes that one or more of his starting premises must have been wrong, and sets out to improve his understanding.
Along the way, the fic does a bunch of other things, many of them correctives to things that have always bugged me about the canon. Harry, of course, gets Sorted into Ravenclaw; so does Hermione, while Neville goes to Hufflepuff and Ron (for whom the writer seems to have zero use) goes off to Gryffindor. In other words, all four Houses get used. And Slytherin gets a much more nuanced portrayal, without being utterly revisionist as to its flaws. The same can be said of Draco: he’s still a jerk, but he’s also eleven, and capable of change (though not easily). There’s also commentary on gender, and responsibility, and what happens when you think of yourself as if you were a character in a story, and . . . lots of awesomeness.
Many thousands of words of it, in fact. 🙂
“Carpetbaggers” (The Chronicles of Narnia), by cofax7 — Another novel-length work, this one filling in the gap at the end of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, after the Pevensies have been crowned. It takes a much more realistic angle on the story than Lewis did: Narnia is still a magical, wondrous place that works changes on the people who come to it, but it is also a land that has spent a hundred years in the grip of winter and a ruthless queen. And that has consequences.
This one is interesting for its practical look at nation-building and the basis of sovereign power. Aslan has named the Pevensies kings and queens of Narnia, but that endorsement only gets them so far. They have to earn the respect and acceptance of their new subjects, in a variety of different ways. What makes this one work for me is the way it contrasts with the half-cozy, half-mythic tone of the source; there are plenty of stories about those themes, but by sliding this one into that gap, it reflects interestingly on how such practicality gets turned into smooth-looking history.
“The Chuck Writes Story: An Unauthorized Fandom Biography” (Supernatural), by Lettered — ALL THE META. This one requires a strong working knowledge of the TV show, and even with that, you may lose track of where the boundaries are between the fic and the source. It imagines that Chuck Shurley, who (in the show) wrote the Supernatural novels about the adventures of Sam and Dean (yes, this is still in the show) under the name “Carver Edlund” (which is a nod to people outside the show), found his way to the Supernatural fanfic communities (which also exist in the show) . . . and started writing his own fic. Starting with scenes cut from the novels, and then writing sequels to his canceled series. Which leads to him interacting with some of the Big Name Fans — some of whom are characters we saw in the show. And then wank erupts when his true identity is revealed. But all of this is happening concurrently with the events of the show, which means that all kinds of CRAZY META SHIT starts going down.
And the entire fic is written in the style of a fandom-wank history. Complete with links to dummy LJs/DWs created for the purpose of versimilitude. It is freaking brilliant. And it talks about fandom and fanfic and the way we interact with stories, in ways that absolutely could not be done in any other medium.
(Be sure to read the afterwords. One of my favorite touches is in the third one — the fake fandom_secrets manip. Also, you can read it on AO3, if you prefer, though that loses the visual element that makes it seem like a real fandom-wank history.)
Those aren’t all the fics I’ve ever liked and remembered; they’re just five of the most epic examples. I could list Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead among them, because really, it’s the same kind of thing. And — though I shouldn’t say this; I really don’t have enough spare time — if you know of any others like them, in fandoms I might be familiar with, feel free to recommend them in the comments.
In the meantime, I hope some of you lose many enjoyable hours reading these. 🙂
