Fanfic vs. Profic

[lunabee34]

When I reviewed The Democratic Genre a couple posts back, some of the comments turned to a discussion of fanfic vs. profic. executrix suggested I take that convo top-level, so here I am. Doing that. *g*

Anyway, I said that I think that fanfic and profic are equally challenging to read and write, and I don't privilege one over the other. I also said that fanfic and profic often have different aims and pull out different tools from the toolbox.

Now, I can't speak very much about the writing of profic, as I've never had anything published. However, I *read* a lot of profic, and some of my RL friends are writers and one of them in particular has been encouraging me to do some writing of original pieces (*nudge nudge* krayat). So, from my position of dubious experience, here's a handful of comments about fanfic and profic.

I think that fanfic provides someone who's not interested in world building a way to write stories without having to worry about or spend time creating from whole cloth a universe for her characters to inhabit.

I think fanfic provides an excellent opportunity for creativity. Because the infrastructure already exists, doing something truly novel and shocking and intriguing takes a heck of a lot of work. Taking those bones and building something unexpected and different from the original model (or even just the original model from a different angle) on top of them makes for damn good reading. And because your readership is familiar with the original model, making it leaner or showing it only from the ass side immediately creates tension. Fanfic is, for me, all about subversion. Taking this thing that already exists and wringing the hell out of it--sometimes as Pugh says to make more of it and sometime to get more from it.

I know with this original fiction story I'm making pages of notes on and creating outlines and Venn diagrams for writing, I couldn't decide what to write about at first. And then I thought, "Wait! I'm an interesting person. All kinds of traumatic interesting things have happened to me. I'll just fanfic my life." And what I meant by that was, okay, I can take the bare bones of an event from my life and then fictionalize around that foundation. And I know it sounds like I'm calling fanfic a crutch here, but I'm really not. I *am* saying that reading/writing fanfic creates a different way of approaching reading/writing profic, at least for me.

Most profic I think also necessarily has to contain more descriptive passages than fanfic. For instance, most fanfic doesn't spend a lot of time describing characters physically because we all know what the characters look like. Same with, oh, the library in Sunndale or the lobby of the Hyperion. (0f course, always exceptions to the rule)

What do you guys think?

Comments

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

Fanfic is derivative work, while profic is supposed to be original.

This is one of those binaries that Pugh talks about at length, and I really agree with her take on it. *Everything* is derivative. Homer already told all the good stories, you know? LOL

I really like what you say here about fanfic as an interpretative argument. One of the reasons I think I find myself participating in fandom with increasing frequency rather than turning my thoughts to my diss and other academic pursuits like I ought, is that fandom really is that conversation that academia purports to be but isn't. When I read and write meta posts and discuss fic in club_joss and read and write fanfic, I really feel like I'm participating in this huge conversation, some parts of which I may not be privy to or even interested in, but I'm still one voice in a chorus. I have no delusions that my academic writing will do anything other than take up space on my hard drive. LOL

[executrix.livejournal.com]

Someone has a "National Write My Goddamn Thesis Month" icon.

I'm only going by hearsay, never having gone to grad school myself, but isn't the whole point of being expected to master the entire literature on your subject, and then of being expected to publish regularly (and probably to present at a lot of conferences) that there's supposed to be a Choir Invisible of collaborating scholars?

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

Yup. That's the whole point. Except that it's a big fat lie. Even if I get something published, there's really no guarantee that it's going to become part of the conversation in any meaningful way. In order for that to happen, it would have to be responded to by some big name. When it's validated by that person, then it's part of the discussion. And there are so many of us grad students, it's just beyond unlikely that we all are gonna get that recognition.