1) Activism I'm not personally involved with really, though I have seen some, and I know that people tend to talk about issues they're passionate about (I helped pass along information about the situation in Iran back in June). As for identity politics - when you are writing fiction, you are able to write about situations that would never actually happen to you, stripping things down. I think people identify the most with what they recognize, and you recognize yourself the most. I tend to write Susan and Edmund the most in Chronicles of Narnia because I see myself in them a lot. Since I'm writing about people similar to myself, it ends up turning into identity politics - how I view myself, how I view the world - we write what we know, and what I know or want to know is what I am, so that's what I write. Somebody showed me a quote recently by a writer who said that writing can be about what we know or what we don't know that we know, or an exploration of what we don't know. I think that's really true - I mean, if you look at what I write, about 75% of it is spiritual/emotional rehabilitation fic, which is something that I've been working on for myself for the past year.
2) I write fanfiction because I love the canon but feel that it's missing something, or I love the potential of the canon but wish it was written better/with more exploration of something (Narnia!), or because I love the characters so much I just want to keep writing about them later in life, and what happens next. Canon fluidity depends on the fandom - in Narnia, I follow only the bare structures of the books and follow the movies much more closely. In Harry Potter, I follow canon closely up until the end of Book 7, unless it regards characterization, which I sometimes feel is done too broadly. Something I think is true - if you don't at least love the potential in a story, why are you writing about it?
3) My communication with fandom occurs almost entirely on LJ, but I do have the emails of a few friends, and my LJ includes non-fannish things. I would love to meet fandom friends, but at the moment am restricted by age and parents and my own decision not to try that until I'm a little older. I consider the value of my fandom interaction really highly - in RL my family moves in a very conservative, kind of prejudiced circle that I have a lot of trouble getting along with, and being able to talk to people who have completely different viewpoints from what is the norm around me has opened my horizons and broadened my interests.
4) I'm... not much of a fandom person, actually? I mean, I write, and I do icons when I have the tools, and I talk the movies/books/shows with my friends, but I'm not actively involved in any fandom. My involvement tends to center around my friends. I guess I like larger fandoms more? That way when I do get involved there's a lot more options, and if I want to find a specific type of fic the odds are it's going to be around somewhere.
5) "Fanfiction is the act of taking something that doesn’t represent you and transforming it into something that does." Discuss. yes yes yes aghksldhgldksgj. YES. like I said up further! we take things and make them about us, because that's simply what people do. The canon that we take was not made to represent us, but we write bits and pieces and transform parts and turn it into something that is a representation of us - of our identity and our decisions and our beliefs. You write what you know, yeah? Or what you don't know that you know.
no subject
2) I write fanfiction because I love the canon but feel that it's missing something, or I love the potential of the canon but wish it was written better/with more exploration of something (Narnia!), or because I love the characters so much I just want to keep writing about them later in life, and what happens next. Canon fluidity depends on the fandom - in Narnia, I follow only the bare structures of the books and follow the movies much more closely. In Harry Potter, I follow canon closely up until the end of Book 7, unless it regards characterization, which I sometimes feel is done too broadly. Something I think is true - if you don't at least love the potential in a story, why are you writing about it?
3) My communication with fandom occurs almost entirely on LJ, but I do have the emails of a few friends, and my LJ includes non-fannish things. I would love to meet fandom friends, but at the moment am restricted by age and parents and my own decision not to try that until I'm a little older. I consider the value of my fandom interaction really highly - in RL my family moves in a very conservative, kind of prejudiced circle that I have a lot of trouble getting along with, and being able to talk to people who have completely different viewpoints from what is the norm around me has opened my horizons and broadened my interests.
4) I'm... not much of a fandom person, actually? I mean, I write, and I do icons when I have the tools, and I talk the movies/books/shows with my friends, but I'm not actively involved in any fandom. My involvement tends to center around my friends. I guess I like larger fandoms more? That way when I do get involved there's a lot more options, and if I want to find a specific type of fic the odds are it's going to be around somewhere.
5) "Fanfiction is the act of taking something that doesn’t represent you and transforming it into something that does." Discuss. yes yes yes aghksldhgldksgj. YES. like I said up further! we take things and make them about us, because that's simply what people do. The canon that we take was not made to represent us, but we write bits and pieces and transform parts and turn it into something that is a representation of us - of our identity and our decisions and our beliefs. You write what you know, yeah? Or what you don't know that you know.