Fan Fic and the Boy Who Lived Forever

[rthstewart]

So, I found an article via Dunc at Club Jade, in which Lev Grossman of Time takes on fan fic in this article.  I really enjoyed the article and thought it brought out some nice things about fan fic.  I especially liked this quote:

 

[Fan fiction is] also an intensely social, communal activity. Like punk rock, fan fiction is inherently inclusive, and people spend as much time hanging out talking to one another about it as they do reading and writing it. "I've been in fandom since early 2005, when I was getting ready to turn 12," says Kelli Joyce. "For me, starting so young, fanfic became my English teacher, my sex-ed class, my favorite hobby and the source of some of my dearest friends. It also provided me with a crash course in social justice and how to respect and celebrate diversity, both of characters and fic writers."

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,2081784,00.html#ixzz1RTc56Xgo

And this speaks precisely to me, why I adore fan fic so much, and, as I've said before, the women I meet along the way.  (There might be a few men, but it's mostly women).  As it turns out the blogger who directed me to that article, Dunc, is a woman I met through my first fic, in about 1995 when I had a lot less grey hair and she was still in high school and we were hanging out on AOL on the Who Luke Should Marry Star Wars board.  I've met Dunc in real life lots of times.  The last Harry Potter film opens next week and I've traveled to distant cities to see those films (and Star Wars films and Lord of the Rings films and Pirates films and others) with women I met in the 90s when writing fic.  This time, everyone is distant and I'm not going anywhere and no one is coming here and it makes me a little sad because I see the films as a bit of fan fiction (though licensed) that is, as the quote says, "inherently inclusive" and enjoying them is part of an ongoing fandom conversation among friends.  As Dunc observes on Club Jade,

I particularly love Grossman’s explanation of fanfic as a conversation, because it captures all the aspects. There’s doing it for the sheer love of the original work, but there’s also a great deal that comes from disappointment with what’s being offered by the creators (or, in our case, some of their hirelings.)

 

 

 

The last point is more applicable to other fandoms than to Narnia, and yet, there are plenty of fics, my own included, that are centered on 'fixing' something in the films.

Oh, and FYI, I'm trying really hard to finish the final Lone Islands chapter. Really. Current word count is 9,000 words and I have to get it done soon because I've got a blessed week next week to write my NFE.