In defense of a bad fanfiction

 IN DEFENSE OF A BAD FANFICTION

I have read a fanfic. It was not a good fanfic and, to be honest, normally I wouldn’t even bother. But in a group of fanfiction-loving friends we decided, that we should read and comment more stories in our language – Polish. And I decided, I will read all the six Polish Transformers fanfics existing on AO3 (it’s seven now, but the seventh is mine). Actually, it turned out those are three fanfics, two translation and one probably-a-translation-done-with-google-translate-and-not-credited. But this is not the one I want to write about.

The story in question is unfinished. It was last updated in december 2016, and the author has no other stories written. It doesn’t have the proper title: the author called it just „Transformers 1”. The main character is a human girl, who, on a trip with her best friend, stumbles upon Decepticons mining energon. Soon of course Autobots appear to save the main character… only, for reason mostly unknown, both sides use holomatter avatar most of the time, so they look human (and they real bodies are somewhere)… and this gives oportunity for the main character to develope an  attraction for Optimus Prime. The author doesn’t hide she wants the two to have a relationship. The fic is not well written, all characters behave like, well, teenagers in a first fanfiction written by a teenager. It is not a good story, not a good fanfic, not a good depiction of the characters I love. Ten years ago 25-year old me would roast the story and the author mercilessly. She would, of course, try to find good elements worth developing, she would give some advice, but she would be mostly disgusted.

Now, 35-years old me sees how bad this fanfic is, but she also understands it quite good.

You see, there was also 15-years old me. She fell in love with many stories and characters so much, she wanted to participate the story, be a part of character’s life. So she started to create stories for herself: unaware at the time that fanfiction exists, that „self-insert” is a thing, that something called „Mary Sue” is a thing. She created a story in which she traveled in time and met the crew of Enterprise – and soon this story developed into an epic series being a crossover of several series she loved (well, I love them still). Slowly, the main characters changed: it was not the author herself anymore, but several OCs, teenaged at first, growing up slowly, developing interactions with author’s beloved characters, falling in love with author’s beloved characters. Those loves were platonic, because the author liked canon pairings too much, but nevertheless. And, very often, the author’s female OCs were in love with female characters. 15-years old me didn’t recognize this sign. 35-yeras old me understands it so very well.

My access to internet was limited, I was unaware of the existence of fanfiction.net, and AO3 didn’t exist yet. It was even not yet the blog-era. I published one story of my epic series on one of the forums, people even liked it. That doesn’t mean the story was good. It was not. I am fully aware of how bad it was. I still like some aspects of what I created, I still like my Mary Sue-ish OCs, especially Katherine Wowden, who got some serious character developement over the time. Kate was, among other things, in love with an alien political and spiritual leader (that is, Delenn from Babylon 5). Well.

So I understand. I understand the bad fanfiction I have read. I understand the love for the story an characters that make the author wanting to be part of it. I understand falling in love with fictional character, because it happens to me all the time, even now, when I am 35. I understand her crush on Optimus Prime, because my current fictional crush is Megatron.

Did the author of this bad fanfiction hurt the characters, she writes about? No. They are fictional and they have so many canon versions, that it didn’t matter anymore (and let’s be honest, Bay’s versions were horrible enough, and they were official and comercial, so why should we care of a teenager’s fantasy?). And even in the case of a fanfiction based on something that has more coherent canon – does one bad fanfic make the original story bad? No.

Is including a female original character a bad thing? Puting my own teenage writing aside – the best fanfiction I’ve ever read in my life happens to be a Transformers story focused on an original female character. Xenoethnography is a perfect story, well crafted, the main characters relationships with the canon characters are well developed and meainingful. And yes, her relationship with Optimus Prime is central to the story. It’s not a romantic love, it couldn’t be in the kind of story Xenoetnography is, but it’s an example that such things can be done well.

Is the overuse of holoavatars a bad thing? Please, search on AO3, on Tumblr for „humanformers” and then think again.

Are author’s ideas weird, non-canon compliant? Transformers canon is an utter mess itself. Add fan ideas to the mix and it turns out what author created is more normal than you thought. Probably too normal for this fandom even. And really, stories like this exist across fandoms.

It is a lack of respect for the canon, for the characters? Please, the author clearly loves the canon and the characters! And if she sees them differently than you do, well, this is not a problem. There are many versions of them, there are even more possible interpretations.

What makes the fanfiction in question bad then? It’s mostly author’s inexperiance. It shows: in the style, in the way story is created, in characters’ behaviour. The author needs to learn, and how will she learn, if not by writing, by thinking about her stories, letting them and the characters to develope? If she wants to write, let her. Telling her, that what she had written is horrible will not help. It will probably discourage her. Of course, there is a posibliity she would like somebody to tell her what is wrong, to help her, to teach her: but I don’t know that. She didn’t ask me to read her story. She didn’t ask me to criticize it. Maybe she even doesn’t want to be better at writing. Maybe she wrote this story for her own amusement – and didn’t finish it because she stopped having fun. And that is all right. It’s not my mission to teach every fanfiction writer to be better. This is too time and energy consmuming and I have my own stories to write. And really, the author is probably just a teenager. She doesn’t deserve discouraging.

And, on top of everything, I understand the author. She created a story out of her love, her crush, her fantasies. I understand this, because I’m doing it all the time.