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As it turns out, I've been a fan of Seanan McGuire's work for a while, although it was under the Mira Grant label that I was first introduces. I'm going to slowly make my way through the other materials as well. Probably about the time I don't have some of my own writing to work with. Seanan's essays are wha bring me here at this point. (Also, if you get the opportunity to hear Seanan be on a panel, take the opportunity. You will learn so many things.)
I'm going to start with how My Little Pony taught Seanan about telling stories...and about what you can get away with in shows meant for girls. Which is true - shows for boys are often scrutinized more harshly about their content than shows for girls. (My Little Pony still gets away with a lot more potentially terrifying things than Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or even the Power Rangers did.) But that idea of being able to tell stories with your toys? And not just the ones that the shows want you to tell with them? That's very improtant.
A sort of follow-on to this idea happens in a Twitter Thread, where Seanan Gets Mad At Shit. Specifically, Seanan gets mad at people who think fanfiction isn't a valid writing form, isn't rigorous, or is somehow a lesser form of writing than original fiction. (Edited to add: a Tor column that is mostly the same thing, but cleaned up and expanded some from the original Twitter thread, which is great because Twitter threads are occasionally extremely annoying to read.) One of the cavalier assumptions about fanfic is that it's gay porn written by women, a reading based almost entirely in the accepted narrative of fanfiction that it started with Kirk/Spock slash from Star Trek and hasn't strayed particularly far from that origin story. The presence of the Aeneid disproves that fanfiction is solely a creation of these times, but it's unlikely that anyone of that time would have called it that, for reasons that Seanan describes in the thread - it's a guy writing something that's based on another guy's work, so it gets more heft in our dude-favoring society than it would if Virgil had been a not-dude. There's plenty of other stories that are clearly borrowing from other places, but depending on the writer, they get anything from being called masterworks to being dismissed as trash. That's published authors running that gamut, by the way, and it would probably be an interesting study to see how correlated the placement of those works on the accolades scale is to how closely they hew to The Default as Seanan describes it -- white men and boys -- in both their characterization of the lead character and in the presentation of the author.
It's easier to envisage women in starring roles that aren't pigeonholed into various one-dimensional characterizations these days than it was when both Seanan and I were smallings. Many of the people writing those stories have gone through the school of fanfic, where you can learn about the craft of writing in smaller chunks, as it were, and where you have a very effective feedback mechanism of your fellow fans. Fanfiction lets you make small changes to an already established space and follow the ripples of those changes, or let you swap in different characters or personality traits and see how that changes the characters and their interactions. You can also tell new sories with established entities, because sometimes what you're really trying to nail down is the setting that all of these characters find themselves in. Or that you want to write believable interactions between people who are in vastly different contexts.
Or that you have an idea in your head about what kind of relationship these people would have if only the showrunners and writers were able to actually write the story they wanted to write and not have to care about advertising dollars, executive meddling, or Moral Guardians letting their opinion be known en masse in such a way that would get the show canceled prematurely for the story. Because a lot of those things that Seanan mentions about girls and women being made fun of because they wrote something other than The Default into their story still happens, even to published authors. How often does romance, as a genre, get looked down on as not serious literature? How many people's critique of Fifty Shades of Grey started and stopped at "well, it used to be Twilight fanfic"? Hell, how many people were down on Twilight because it was essentially a romance story between a girl, a vampire, and a werewolf, and neither the vampire or the shifter was committing horrible acts of violence to the townspeople? It was an unconventional take on both of those archetypes. Knowing that Fifty Shades started as Twilight fanfic helped me contextualize it more and understand how it came to be and what its characters were doing. Because I could then map the appropriate character traits and contexts onto the new situation. It didn't necessarily mean that I felt it was better for knowing, but it became more comprehensible.
I don't like Fifty Shades because it portrays the BDSM community in a terrible light and tries to portray as sexy things that are much more like abuse and stalker behavior. I didn't particularly like Twilight because I didn't find the Cullen family to be engaging enough or well-thought out enough to exist well with their setting, and I was turned off by the purple prose. Which is not to say that they don't work for others, they just don't work for me, and it would be lazy of me to dismiss either of them out of hand solely because they didn't adhere to The Default.
Fanfic is a way to get better at writing by writing. A lot of writing. And to get your work critiques on the various categories that your readers are bringing to the table, which includes things like how you handle inclusion, characterization, plot, pacing, and the like. Exchanges help you learn how to tailor writing to a particular audience, because you have a recipient who is essentially soliciting your work. As Seanan points out, while not everybody is necessarily interested in becoming a published author, it's pretty apparent there's a a talented pool of writers, artists, actors, and other creators making things to show their fandom love. Some creators are starting to figure out that they might be able to recruit for their efforts from the talents of their fans, and some agents and publishers might find they have a clearer idea of what someone's talents are by looking at their fanworks. (Or, as in the case of Sara Rees Brennan's In Other Lands, gently ask why someone is publishing a novel on-line and suggest that it instead get published in a codex form instead.)
If someone suggests that fanfiction is a matter that should be shameful or a phase that you grow out of, that person does not understand either the audience or the skill that goes into the works. I don't think feeding them wasps is the right idea. But giving them the Robot Chicken treatment of strapping them in and having them read and listen and otherwise expereince fanworks until they understand? That might be worth both of your whiles. And sadistic enough for someone to feel like they were able to express themselves fully.
---
Also this thing, which is about consumption and creation of fanworks.
I'm going to start with how My Little Pony taught Seanan about telling stories...and about what you can get away with in shows meant for girls. Which is true - shows for boys are often scrutinized more harshly about their content than shows for girls. (My Little Pony still gets away with a lot more potentially terrifying things than Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or even the Power Rangers did.) But that idea of being able to tell stories with your toys? And not just the ones that the shows want you to tell with them? That's very improtant.
A sort of follow-on to this idea happens in a Twitter Thread, where Seanan Gets Mad At Shit. Specifically, Seanan gets mad at people who think fanfiction isn't a valid writing form, isn't rigorous, or is somehow a lesser form of writing than original fiction. (Edited to add: a Tor column that is mostly the same thing, but cleaned up and expanded some from the original Twitter thread, which is great because Twitter threads are occasionally extremely annoying to read.) One of the cavalier assumptions about fanfic is that it's gay porn written by women, a reading based almost entirely in the accepted narrative of fanfiction that it started with Kirk/Spock slash from Star Trek and hasn't strayed particularly far from that origin story. The presence of the Aeneid disproves that fanfiction is solely a creation of these times, but it's unlikely that anyone of that time would have called it that, for reasons that Seanan describes in the thread - it's a guy writing something that's based on another guy's work, so it gets more heft in our dude-favoring society than it would if Virgil had been a not-dude. There's plenty of other stories that are clearly borrowing from other places, but depending on the writer, they get anything from being called masterworks to being dismissed as trash. That's published authors running that gamut, by the way, and it would probably be an interesting study to see how correlated the placement of those works on the accolades scale is to how closely they hew to The Default as Seanan describes it -- white men and boys -- in both their characterization of the lead character and in the presentation of the author.
It's easier to envisage women in starring roles that aren't pigeonholed into various one-dimensional characterizations these days than it was when both Seanan and I were smallings. Many of the people writing those stories have gone through the school of fanfic, where you can learn about the craft of writing in smaller chunks, as it were, and where you have a very effective feedback mechanism of your fellow fans. Fanfiction lets you make small changes to an already established space and follow the ripples of those changes, or let you swap in different characters or personality traits and see how that changes the characters and their interactions. You can also tell new sories with established entities, because sometimes what you're really trying to nail down is the setting that all of these characters find themselves in. Or that you want to write believable interactions between people who are in vastly different contexts.
Or that you have an idea in your head about what kind of relationship these people would have if only the showrunners and writers were able to actually write the story they wanted to write and not have to care about advertising dollars, executive meddling, or Moral Guardians letting their opinion be known en masse in such a way that would get the show canceled prematurely for the story. Because a lot of those things that Seanan mentions about girls and women being made fun of because they wrote something other than The Default into their story still happens, even to published authors. How often does romance, as a genre, get looked down on as not serious literature? How many people's critique of Fifty Shades of Grey started and stopped at "well, it used to be Twilight fanfic"? Hell, how many people were down on Twilight because it was essentially a romance story between a girl, a vampire, and a werewolf, and neither the vampire or the shifter was committing horrible acts of violence to the townspeople? It was an unconventional take on both of those archetypes. Knowing that Fifty Shades started as Twilight fanfic helped me contextualize it more and understand how it came to be and what its characters were doing. Because I could then map the appropriate character traits and contexts onto the new situation. It didn't necessarily mean that I felt it was better for knowing, but it became more comprehensible.
I don't like Fifty Shades because it portrays the BDSM community in a terrible light and tries to portray as sexy things that are much more like abuse and stalker behavior. I didn't particularly like Twilight because I didn't find the Cullen family to be engaging enough or well-thought out enough to exist well with their setting, and I was turned off by the purple prose. Which is not to say that they don't work for others, they just don't work for me, and it would be lazy of me to dismiss either of them out of hand solely because they didn't adhere to The Default.
Fanfic is a way to get better at writing by writing. A lot of writing. And to get your work critiques on the various categories that your readers are bringing to the table, which includes things like how you handle inclusion, characterization, plot, pacing, and the like. Exchanges help you learn how to tailor writing to a particular audience, because you have a recipient who is essentially soliciting your work. As Seanan points out, while not everybody is necessarily interested in becoming a published author, it's pretty apparent there's a a talented pool of writers, artists, actors, and other creators making things to show their fandom love. Some creators are starting to figure out that they might be able to recruit for their efforts from the talents of their fans, and some agents and publishers might find they have a clearer idea of what someone's talents are by looking at their fanworks. (Or, as in the case of Sara Rees Brennan's In Other Lands, gently ask why someone is publishing a novel on-line and suggest that it instead get published in a codex form instead.)
If someone suggests that fanfiction is a matter that should be shameful or a phase that you grow out of, that person does not understand either the audience or the skill that goes into the works. I don't think feeding them wasps is the right idea. But giving them the Robot Chicken treatment of strapping them in and having them read and listen and otherwise expereince fanworks until they understand? That might be worth both of your whiles. And sadistic enough for someone to feel like they were able to express themselves fully.
---
Also this thing, which is about consumption and creation of fanworks.
- What's the largest fandom you've ever been part of?
Size-wise, there's a lot of big fandoms that I've been part of, and occasionally even written works for. Doctor Who, Harry Potter, and a lot of very popular movies and television shows. So, I don't think there's much of an issue with regard to size of fandom that I've participated in. - What's the smallest fandom you've ever been part of?
Size only matters if you're desperately looking for more works and can't seem to find any. Which, I suspect, is the problem a lot of people have for their fandoms. But the smallest fandoms I've been a part of are ususally from old Sierra games, or in the various crossover and original works that have been requested or offered. - What's your oldest fandom love?
Oldest? As in "when I was a smalling, I very much enjoyed the animation blocks of the 90s and the public television Square One TV and Carmen Sandiego blocks," or oldest, as in "The 1960s Batman series and early science fiction television like the Twilight Zone are things that I enjoy?" Because both of those things are true. - What's your newest fandom love?
Temporally, and perhaps most recently, it's probably The Good Place. - Do you mainly read/write/draw/vid Gen, M/F, F/F or M/M?
I tend to write mostly gen or het, although that doesn't preclude me from writing other things. I'll just always feel fantastically nervous about messing up a relationship that isn't one that I have experience with. (Luckily, there are beta readers and others who can help me not mess it up.) - If you ship, are you more of a OTP, Little Black dress or multi-shipper type of shipper?
My ship rule tends to be "does this ship make sense in its context?" Which means occasionally that I need convincing beefore I see the reasons why someone's ship is going to make sense. And occasionally, that means I will go completely against what's been set out in a canon because it fails to fit the contrext test. - What's your favourite genre/type of story?
It's more like I don't particularly want a lot of stories that set out to put their characters through as much terrible things as possible for the sake of doing terrible things to them. Context matters again - the payoff of the terrible things needs to be worth it. - What rating do you prefer your stories to be?
No preference for particular ratings one way or another. Choose the appropriate rating for the thing that you're interested in and go from there.
