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On original fic and fanfic
So, re: the debate going around about whether AO3 should allow original stuff in with the fanworks:
There are some people who want to keep a wall between original and fan fiction, and want to keep AO3 limited to fan writers. And I can see their point - I, too, am far less likely to read something if it's original: it's harder work to read, less likely to be id-tastic, when I'm in the mood for fanwork I don't want original, and either the average quality of original fic is less, or I simply don't have good enough filters for finding the good stuff with original as compared to fan work. Plus, many original writing communities are not only very different in culture to fanwriting communities, some of them are openly hostile to fanwriting, or to some of the values that my particular fanwriting community espouses.
The problem I have with that viewpoint is that the separation between original and fan work *isn't* a wall. It is, at best, a long sloping gradient with something on it that might be an attempt at a wall that has fallen over in places and wasn't very straight to begin with (and has only been there for a paltry few decades anyway.) The boundary between original and fan work is not a hard boundary. People have brought up historical RPF several times already, but as far as I'm concerned, it's only the tip of the iceberg.
I write stuff that is definitely fanfiction. I write stuff that is definitely original fiction. And I write stuff that, um, I have no bloody idea if it's one or the other.
And the thing that attracted me, as an author, to AO3, is that it's one archive where I don't have to worry if my fanwork is "enough" for it. Is it slashy enough, or too slashy? Shippy enough, or too shippy? Too porny or not porny enough? Too long or too short, not canonical enough, not finished enough, too crossovery, too script-y or meta-y or poem-y to be a proper story, not angsty enough, too much or not enough... on AO3 I can just put everything up, as a proper archive, without having to stress over categories.
I would love if "not fan-fic-y enough" was one of those categories I didn't have to worry about on AO3. And since - *for me* - the most important role of AO3 is to be an archive for fanwriters to universally preserve and organize their work, I want all the edge cases to be allowed; if that means blanket allowing original fiction (and I suspect it does), then so be it. I would, however, support a restriction that every author account must have at least one definite fanwork uploaded, to preserve the archive as primarily fannish and to filter out people who are hostile to fanfic culture. And a rule that any original work hosted on AO3 must allow derivative work.
And, sheerly out of curiosity (and not intended to be anyone's opinion on what should or shouldn't get posted at AO3): Here is a poll about some of those "edge" cases. What do you think, fandom-at-large? Original or fanwork? (And no, you don't get tickyboxes or third options. You must make a judgement! Like archives always make me do!)
Historical RPF about dead people!
Non-historical RPF about living people!
Historical fic set in a specific place and time but with mostly-original characters (because the people I'm writing about went unrecorded by history!)
Fic set in the present with original characters, but all about their relationships with real celebrities, places, and/or current events!
A story set in fandom with characters who are all recognizeable fangirl achetypes!
A story based on a story my great-grandma wrote that was only ever published in a tiny edition!
A story based on something in my high school literary magazine!
Fic based on a friend's unpublished and unfinished original novel!
My original story that my friend pulished fic about before my story was finished!
A non-canon AU I wrote in my own original universe that uses fannish tropes like AMTDI or "five things that never happened"!
A story where my original characters meet fandom characters!
A story my original characters meet historical characters or celebrities!
A fusion where my original characters are put into a fandom-canon universe but no canon characters appear!
A crossover where my original characters meet me and my friends!
A crossover where my original characters meet my friend's original characters!
A story about recognizable living real people where all the names have been elided or changed!
A story about anthropomorphized objects or concepts!
A story about anthropomorphized *fannish* objects or concepts!
A retelling of a myth or fairy tale where all of the names, the setting, most of the details and the ending are different!
A retelling of a myth or fairy tale to make it work in the framework of my original universe or with my original characters!
An obvious parody/pastiche of a published author's style and subject matter that doesn't reference any of their characters or settings!
A side story to my fanfic epic, about two original characters from the epic, which based only on internal evidence could be set in a non-fannish world!
A novel set in [fandom A] that's all about original characters who live around the world from canon events so the only explicit reference to canon is passing allusions to distant events!
An AU story based around minor OCs from an AU of an AU of an AU that has since been thoroughly jossed!
A novel about characters that started out as fanfic OCs or AUs of canon characters but I have deliberately moved outside the fandom context!
A shared world written by many authors with no "primary" text or "series bible"!
Biblefic!
A slashy story about an angel that draws heavily on traditional Western angelology and eschatology, including [list of canon texts in original sense of canon texts], but is not based on specific text!
A Lovecraftian horror story that mentions the Necronomicon but is otherwise completely original!
A story that is direct commentary or critique of tropes, plots and characterizations specific to a very small subgenre but with all made-up proper names!
A novel that is mostly an original work but in which the Doctor makes a cameo (because he can!)
A professionally published story using other authors' characters and settings that the pro author loudly insists is not fanfic!
(I will stop there before poll gets even longer, but for the record, none of these are hypothetical cases - they are all either things I personally have written, or things other people who identify as fanwriters have done that I could point you to.)
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It wasn't that the writers in question couldn't have done the work of creating reasons for emotional involvement, et cetera, for a reader from outside the fandom: all the talent and skills were clearly there. It was, I'd assume, because they were in fact writing fanfic, and taking advantage of the opportunities the form offers to do something different from conventional original-novel construction.
-- Or perhaps not? As I said, I don't read a lot of the stuff (there's a deep level on which I don't get celebrity culture, which means that most RPF is pretty impenetrable to me; I don't know who these people are, and I don't know what's supposed to be interesting about them). So for all I know we could be defining "requires" precisely the same way, and I could simply have run into an anomalous random sample.
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But I also don't feel the need to "care" about characters in particular, so that may be a difference as well. I mean, if the story is interesting, it's interesting, whether I know who they are or not. To me most RPF reads the same as original fiction.
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I agree with you that if a story is interesting, then it's interesting no matter who the characters are. But to be interesting, at least for me, a story needs to have something striking about it: a riveting storyline, or great worldbuilding, or a terrific narrative voice, or stunning prose, or a bunch of other potential literary virtues, or some combination thereof. And that I have not seen. Some gracefully-told falling-in-love stories, sure. But unless you're already invested in the characters, a graceful rendition of a well-worn storyline, without something more, doesn't make a piece interesting.
Or at least, that's been my own experience. But then, my own experience is usually eccentric as hell, so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised to find it is in this instance, too.
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I think that is the definition of the romance genre, though? I mean, you may or may not like romance novels, but clearly there IS a huge market for stories (both pro and fanfic) that follow a well-worn storyline without something more.
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If that's not the case in the pro market, then I'd have to come round to something more like your take on, and say that there's undoubtedly lots of RPF that by my definition is Not Fanfic. (Or else, I suppose, that the entire romance genre somehow is, and relies on a canon of stock characters in whom genre readers are already deeply invested.)
I'd assumed it had to be the case that people writing original romances tried to draw their characters vividly enough, to give them enough life within the story itself (as opposed to relying on the reader's knowledge of their three-dimensionality and interestingness, et cetera, from outside the words of this single story) that a reader would come to care enough about them to be interested in seeing how the falling-in-love thing plays out for them. Because otherwise, why would anyone be interested enough to keep going? I don't want to insult an entire genre here, but surely "Two people you have no reason to be interested in or care a hoot about engage in courtship with a happy resolution" isn't enough, without something more? Something more than grammatical sentences and adequate proofreading, I mean?
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But I do read a lot of RPF, most of it about characters I don't care about, and quite a bit about characters I don't know anything about outside of the story. Yet I find much of it interesting and engaging.
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Well... Romance as a commercial genre is divided into lots of different parts. I'm not that well read in it, but my impression is that the 500-page epics by romance authors whose names take up more of a book cover than the book's title absolutely do do that. The 200-page Romance-of-the-month-club type things that people get in the mail usually just take a couple of stock characters (rake, tragic widower, cowboy, doctor, navy seal, whatever flavor of hunk we like in the Romance industry this week plus the author/audience stand-in) and throw them together. There might be a few key details to help the audience identify with the stand-in (she's shy, she has straight brown hair and wishes she had blond ringlets, she's feisty, she likes horses), but most of the audience investment is just assumed from the outset.
Some of it is just bad writing, but a lot of it is genre convention too. If the reader wants to relax in her bubble bath and read generic trash for an hour, complex characterization and a twisty plot aren't necessarily desirable. Tropes that make the reader remember all the romantic comedies or Jane Austen costume dramas she's enjoyed are.
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Shorter romance novels, especially ones written to very strict romance line specifications, strike me as having a totally different intent: to evoke a specific set of sensations/emotions.
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But I think part of it is that *not everybody reads for the characters*. Yes, there are people who read romances just for the courtship formula; there are people who read mysteries just for the puzzle; action stories just for the violence; science fiction just for the spaceships. There's this perception that's really extensive that putting the characters first is the only way to do fiction - and it's not just you, it's the entire literary establishment - but that's just not true.
When I'm in the mood to read wingfic I don't really care if it's about Bodie and Doyle or Pine and Quinto or Lewis and Clark or two original characters; I want a story where someone's hiding a dangerous but beautiful secret, and the secret comes out but with no worse than a little relationship angst, and there are raptures about the joy of flight, and appreciation of non-standard beauty, and vaguely xeno-kinky sex, all things which meet my narrative kinks.
I'm more likely to *read* that story if it's labelled fanfic for two reasons: one, the person writing it is more likely to be writing a story that follows my formula, because it's a fannish formula, and two, the characters are more likely to have depth of backstory, because fan characters come with built-in depth of backstory, and deeper charactes to make a story better, even if I'm in it for the plot. The thing is, I don't have to know what that backstory *is*, as long as I can see it around the edges of the story, so I'm perfectly happy reading in fandoms where I don't already know the characters; and it's possible to write original characters with visible depth of backstory just as with fan characters. Just harder to do smoothly, and with more chance of boring, unnecessary infodumps, but good original writers - especially ones coming out of fan traditions - can write original short stories that read to me exactly like good fic in fandoms I don't know yet.
I wonder if part of this isn't that I'm long trained to pick up an original series on book 15 and jump right in, or read comics by way of one random-numbered issue at a time, or watch TV series in scattered episodes here and there. I'm used to having to fill in the backstory for myself, bit by bit; I don't *want* to know everything before I start.
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good original writers - especially ones coming out of fan traditions - can write original short stories that read to me exactly like good fic in fandoms I don't know yet.
As I think about this, it strikes me again that the next question would be, will/would a piece of fanfic in a fandom you don't know yet work in the precise same way or have the same meaning for you once you do know the canon?
To try to be a bit more specific, the fandom that lured me into the active LJ/DW world is one where I did read a fair amount of fic before I was able to run down all of the canon. And gorgeous fic it was, too; in a way I'm still glad I saw some of it before I had the canon in my mind. Because once I did, it was still gorgeous, but all the meanings changed and often deepened. The fact that one could read it without canon (although I think in this case it would still read as a kind of beautiful artifact from a literature one hadn't read) didn't alter its dependence on canon knowledge for many of its effects and for its intended structure.
If your fanfic for which you don't know the canon doesn't shift in meaning or depth or power when you (or at the very least, the writer's ideal reader) do know the canon -- well hell, I don't see a difference between that and original fic that felt to you like fanfic for which you didn't know the canon either. But I also don't get why that writer is even bothering with writing the thing in a non-original universe. Because in this case, by the terms of the argument we're talking about a situation in which writing it as fanfic adds absolutely nothing for anyone.
I wonder if part of this isn't that I'm long trained to pick up an original series on book 15 and jump right in, or read comics by way of one random-numbered issue at a time, or watch TV series in scattered episodes here and there. I'm used to having to fill in the backstory for myself, bit by bit; I don't *want* to know everything before I start.
Oddly enough, that's my experience too. Perhaps I've just been sloppily using the word understand to carry more weight than it should? I do know fandoms where some of the best work is pretty nearly incomprehensible in all respects without some knowledge of canon, but in fandoms where that's not the case I'm happy enough to read without knowing the canon first -- as long as there's enough there that doesn't depend on canon to engage my attention.
Which brings me back to where I started: my experience of RPF wasn't that I couldn't read it without knowing canon and follow the story. I totally could. I just assumed -- perhaps wrongly -- that there had to be significantly more there that the author had put in, and that I wasn't seeing because I didn't know canon. Because again, if not, why is this fanfic at all? And why are, say, all the American Idol people on my flist falling over each other to insist that a given story is amazing and everyone should read it, while all the non-AI people who try find themselves looking nervously at one another and asking each other whether we were the only ones to fail at seeing the awesome?
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And the reason to add the reference to real people is that you are writing about those characters - I'm in it for, say, folding laundry, but Johnny Weir is going to fold laundry differently from the way Duncan MacLeod does, and that's part of what makes it interesting to read the same narrative elements over and over. And I would never have thought about how someone like Johnny might fold laundry without him existing as a fan character, so the fact that it's part of a larger fandom is important, and having him be the Real Person in question does mean something. (It also does, yes, mean that if I then want to then go read about how this interesting Johnny character sucks ice cream off fingers or deals with commitment issues or grows wings, I know where to look. So it's not that the characters aren't important, it's just that they're not what makes or breaks it for me.)
Fanfic for which I didn't know the canon when I started *does* shift in meaning for me once I've absorbed the canon - the same way that Feet of Clay shifted in meaning for me once I'd read other Discworld novels - and the first fic I've read in a fandom shifts in meaning after I've read others, whether I've gone to canon yet or not.
The thing is, it doesn't always shift for the *better*. In specific, I'm much more interested in ship-focused, all-romance-all-the-time stories when I haven't seen the canon; I can really enjoy reading about these character archetypes going through formulae that hit my narrative kinks, and learning more about them as I go, and yes, caring about them a lot. But it seems like once I've got enough backstory on the characters to see them as more whole, complicated people with real lives (whether fictional or not) I am far more interested in gen fic, or adventures-with-romance, or stories wihout happy endings.
Maybe that does mean the fic I enjoy when I get in to a fandom is stuff that should just have the serial numbers scrubbed and be written as original romance fic. But I don't think that's it - part of the fun of it is that each story I read builds on what I've learned from the others, so it's like reading an out-of-order original-fic series that *never has to end*. Part of it is that it's easier, as a writer, to write in the existing fan universe than to go to the extra work of worldbuilding and making your own characters - if I'm just in it for the finger-licking and the pretty scenery is a bonus, why should the author have to bother painting her own scenery? And some authors really like writing finger-licking, and don't like coming up with original characters, and that's fine with me, because I still get finger-licking and interesting characters. And if it's less work for the author, that's more finger-licking for me. Part of it is that the archetypes that fan characters embody are still deeper and more interesting (to me) than a lot of the ones that appear in genre stories. Because I find the basic formulaic plots less interesting when I've already got the characters figured out doesn't mean there's anything wrong with those plots, or the way that fan characters are written in them.
As for your last question - I can't answer that question, because it's totally not the experience I've had - I've seen people (including myself) who could give a tinker's damn about AI the show or the celebrity coverage of it, who were rec'ced an AI fic or two and now devour them avidly.
My guess would be just that the things that tend to go into AI fics aren't things that happen to appeal to you and your cohort? Like, I adore stories about coming out and queer culture, and about open relationships, and about people who are really good at a craft or art and invested in getting better at it, and about transcendence through art, and about dealing with being a sudden celebrity, and about mentorship, and about random people in close quarters under stress becoming families, and these are all things that AI fandom delivers in spades.
If I was uninterested in those things I probably wouldn't care about the fandom (the same way I'm completely uninterested in, say, the majority of SPN RPS, even widely rec'ced ones, because the way that fandom developed it just doesn't tend to hit my kinks in the same way.)
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At most, we're talking about a situation where writing it as fanfic adds nothing related to canon. Plenty of people write fanfic to cement social bonds in fandom (taking part in a challenge run by people they like, giving birthday fic to friends, etc.). Plenty of people do it for attention (maybe someone will read something that's "RPF AU" but ignore the same story if it's "original"). There are lots of motivations for writing fic that have more to do with fandom than with the actual source text.