On Fic and the Glorification of the Mundane

[roselightfairy]

 Well, okay.  If I'm moving content over here from Tumblr, why not start with an impromptu and impassioned ramble I wrote recently, which most of you who will see this have already seen?  I mean, this way at least my page has some, you know, stuff on it.

(I tried really hard to make a cut here, but apparently that's not happening, so here is the text.)

A lot of people in my “real life” know that I write fanfiction. Precious few know my username, and of those even fewer actually read my fic. But a lot of people know I write it. This is in part because as a hopelessly external processor I’m unable to keep everything in my head inside my head, and in part because I’m really working on unlearning the societal shame surrounding fic and other parts of online fandom. I feel embarrassed about it sometimes, and I’ve developed the habit of compulsively shielding my computer screen whenever anyone comes just a little too close, but I also recognize that a lot of the shame around fandom comes from internalized sexism.  There are other articles and essays that deal with those ideas, but what I’m basically saying here is that I am, for the most part, “out” as a fanfiction author and fandom participant.
 

I’m also one of the many fic writers that would dearly love to become a “real” writer one day (as in, having my original work published somewhere other than on a fanfiction website). This is another thing that a lot of people in my life know, and knowing these two things together has led to the oft-repeated comment (that I’m sure a lot of you have heard too) that “you can just change the names and you’re set!”
 

But the thing is, that’s something that a lot of fic authors immediately understand as wrong, and people outside of fic – after the 50 Shades of Grey phenomenon especially – don’t get.  But I wanted to delve into why that’s often not possible (there are always exceptions, of course, but as a general rule), and I’ve realized it’s because, for the most part, the style of fic and the types of things that get written are wildly different from the types of things that get published outside of fanfiction websites.  And for good reason.  To describe this phenomenon, I’ve come up with the phrase “the glorification of the mundane.”
 

The longest piece of fanfiction I’ve ever written, to date, is an 85,000-word story about Legolas and Gimli from Lord of the Rings.  It stems from the headcanon/interpretation of Legolas as having social anxiety, and both reimagines scenes in the books and fills in missing scenes of the characters.  This story is about 150 pages on Word, and is the length of a typical novel.  But the story itself is not a novel, precisely because it’s filling in things that are missing in an existing book.
 

I didn’t need a main plot, because a main plot had been provided for me.  I didn’t need to create my own characters (beyond a few OCs created for my own pleasure), because they already existed – and were, in fact, the whole reason I wanted to write the story.  And all that I had to do to make the existing characters compelling to my readers was try very hard to be faithful to my interpretation of them – an interpretation based entirely in the books that someone else had already written.
 

This meant that I didn’t have to come up with a creative storyline, I didn’t have to create significant events or establishing-character moments, I didn’t have to make it clear why each scene was important.  I didn’t have to hook new readers into my story – my readers were hooked because of a love of the things I was using, the things that already existed.
 

And this isn’t a critique of fanfiction at all.  My readers liked my story because I didn’t have to create much that was new – all I had to do was add my interpretations of scenes, of characters, of things that could have happened. And I could do those things in the kind of luxurious detail that wasn’t included in the source text, because there was no space for it there.  When reading Lord of the Rings, people aren’t looking for a single conversation between two relatively-insignificant characters to be described in thousands of words.  But when reading fanfiction, they are, because that was left out (with good reason) of the source text, and we get to fill it in.  We can fill in thousands of words of things that were tantalizingly left out of the source material, and so many people can do it in so many different ways.
 

If I’m reading a novel written by someone else, they have to get me invested in their storyline and their characters.  This means they can’t go into excruciating detail about these characters meeting at a coffee shop and having incredibly everyday conversations. In fanfiction, there’s an entire trope devoted solely to this idea, and thousands of stories.  Because the mundane details are left out of the source text, we want them in fic.  I want descriptions of how this character’s heart is beating when they see the object of their affections.  I want date nights and domestic scenes and oblivious pining and so many other tropes – things that I would sigh at and skim over in an original work.  I want the mundane, and I want it written in lavish detail – but I only want it because I already care about the characters.
 

Again, none of this is to say that fanfic writers aren’t just as creative or talented as any other author.  The reason we write is, over all, to play with language – and fanfiction can be more beautifully and lyrically written than a lot of published work.  It can be longer and more gripping, have detailed plot and wonderful characters – original and otherwise – and interpretations of a canon that are sometimes better than the original author’s interpretation of their own work.  But the reason that fanfiction has the freedom to do this is because there’s a source text laid out for us, one we all care about and one we all come back to.
 

Ultimately, rather than a critique, I think this is even more of a celebration of fanfiction.  Fanfiction is more than just a stepping stone on the way to “real” writing.  Fanfiction is a way to celebrate a given universe, to make it broader and deeper and more inclusive and more wonderful; a way to become involved in a story and a community in a way we couldn’t have otherwise been.  It’s an end in itself, not just a means to publication.
 

It’s mundane, yes, and gloriously so.

Comments

[hebethen]

Thank you for crossposting this lovely reflection!

I'm not a scholar of comparative literatures or whatnot, but this also reminds me of what little I've seen about conflict-driven Plots being a non-universal literary structure. Aside from the lack of explicit setup/establishment -- which could probably be left off altogether and be called avant-garde high literature for all I know, as long as you have solidly upheld the characterization and POV-based worldbuilding -- I wonder if this kind of "glorification of the mundane" has siblings in any other literary traditions.

[roselightfairy]

Ooh, that's a super interesting thought! I mean-- yeah, this initial reflection was mostly a response to the idea of traditional plot and characterization, and this idea of needing to establish your characters in order to make them important to readers. But your asking this question is making me think back on the little I've read of modernist literature, things like Mrs. Dalloway or Proust's tomes of self-reflection, in which it is all just mundane things. Now I'm wondering if part of the motivation of this reflection did come from those attitudes I was trying not to indulge-- like, I wonder how differently certain types of fic would be received if you did change the names and slapped a person's (probably a man's) name on it. I wonder if this wasn't reductive of fic itself... but then on the other hand, I wonder if these stories would find any audience at all if they didn't have the draw of that connecting character/plot that we look for.

...oh, I don't know. I'm sorry for how convoluted all this got, but your response made me wonder!