some kind of snark faery (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
arcanetrivia) wrote2015-10-01 02:23 pm
arcanetrivia) wrote2015-10-01 02:23 pm
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(no subject)
It's interesting how setting deep roots in one fandom seems to have changed how I interact with any new media thing or narrative I pick up. After tentatively venturing out from that OTP of Me/Harry Potter fandom (vintage 2007) into Doctor Who fandom (as of not quite a year ago), it's like it's my first response now: go looking for fanworks. I haven't yet then really latched on and drunk deep of most things, but I do frequently at least go see what there is.
So far this has mostly amounted to sampling fanfic for things David Tennant was in because having started in Doctor Who I've been working through his CV for a while - Blackpool, Takin' Over the Asylum (would that there were more! ♥ Campbell Bain 5eva, see icon on Dreamwidth), Broadchurch, things like that - but other things too. Like, I've been reading Skagboys, Irvine Welsh's prequel to Trainspotting, and at about halfway through it I today decided to go looking for fanfic, even though I can barely keep straight who most of the characters are. This is probably not a way I would ever have thought to approach it had I read it ten years ago, but now it seems like the obvious thing to do. (Spoilers: such fics frequently warn for drug use; who knew? Also: Renton/Begbie NOOO AUGH WHYYYY)
Sometimes I also poke around for fic for stuff I have known for a while but never really approached in a fannish way before, like Red Dwarf, Labyrinth, Pern, ElfQuest, or Hitchhiker's Guide, though all that's more casual, sometimes limited just to seeing what each year's Yuletide has on offer. Oddly, I have never really gotten much into Tolkien fanfic (though I collect a fair amount of fanart), though it was actually dabbling in LotR slash that primed me for getting into Potter slash when I got into Potter fandom.
No real point here, I guess; just navel-gazing.
BTW, if any of the Potter folks still reading me are also into new Doctor Who, I recommend![[archiveofourown.org profile]](https://p.dreamwidth.org/b164c54b26e4/-/archiveofourown.org/favicon.ico)
shivver's DW/Potter crossover Mistaken Identity.
So far this has mostly amounted to sampling fanfic for things David Tennant was in because having started in Doctor Who I've been working through his CV for a while - Blackpool, Takin' Over the Asylum (would that there were more! ♥ Campbell Bain 5eva, see icon on Dreamwidth), Broadchurch, things like that - but other things too. Like, I've been reading Skagboys, Irvine Welsh's prequel to Trainspotting, and at about halfway through it I today decided to go looking for fanfic, even though I can barely keep straight who most of the characters are. This is probably not a way I would ever have thought to approach it had I read it ten years ago, but now it seems like the obvious thing to do. (Spoilers: such fics frequently warn for drug use; who knew? Also: Renton/Begbie NOOO AUGH WHYYYY)
Sometimes I also poke around for fic for stuff I have known for a while but never really approached in a fannish way before, like Red Dwarf, Labyrinth, Pern, ElfQuest, or Hitchhiker's Guide, though all that's more casual, sometimes limited just to seeing what each year's Yuletide has on offer. Oddly, I have never really gotten much into Tolkien fanfic (though I collect a fair amount of fanart), though it was actually dabbling in LotR slash that primed me for getting into Potter slash when I got into Potter fandom.
No real point here, I guess; just navel-gazing.
BTW, if any of the Potter folks still reading me are also into new Doctor Who, I recommend
no subject
I have a theory about fanfic. I think that the more incomplete the source material is, the more good fanfic there is and the more people go looking for it. (I specify "good fanfic" because crappy fanfic and pure porn seem to have no relationship to the quality of the source material.)
So, for example, Tolkien didn't just write an epic fantasy novel -- he invented something like six different languages, at least five different races, and an entire cosmogony going back to the creation of the world in which to set this epic fantasy. Plus a sprawling universe of side stories, back stories, and future stories covering almost every single character in the books, from Elrond's father to Merry and Pippin's grandchildren. His world is so complete in itself that for people who love the books, fanfic just seems blatantly unnecessary.
Harry Potter, on the other hand, despite being roughly the same length as LOTR in terms of word count and covering six years longer, leaves so many questions unanswered and so many characters unexplored that for people who love the books, it positively cries out for fanfic.