noblealiceworks | Essay: Why FanFic has Made me a Better Person (Reply)

I used to like stories with people who were different from me. I read fantasy and worshipped the knights, queens, warriors and princesses. They were all perfect. They were all good, smart and beautiful.

They were all Mary Sues.

I didn’t know this at the time, and so long as my stories gave me happy endings where the couple gets together in the end and the bad guy was punished, I was delightfully ignorant of how false this vision was from the real world.

I started reading fiction for my favourite television shows simply because I found that the programs I was interested in, weren’t giving me the happy endings I craved. I wanted to read stories that would fill in the gaps that the show left. At first I didn’t care if characterisation was wrong, I don’t even think I knew what that was. I just knew that I wanted a resolution to a problem.

As I continued reading, I discovered the “angst” genre. Writers who liked this style would purposely mentally, emotionally and sometimes physically torture my favourite characters. Other writers would kill them off completely. This was not what I wanted. Where was the happy? Where was the resolution? And yet I got sucked in. Most of the time a correlation showed up that meant that the darker the fic, the better the writing style. The more gruesome the image, the more vivid the description. Gone were those annoying spelling mistakes and dialogue that felt unrealistic. Here in this genre I found in-character writing. It was pessimistic, but so were some of the situations. I was finally honest with myself when I embraced this genre. I may have wanted the couple to announce their love and get married and have babies, but I would never expect it on the show. Or in real life, most of the time, there are deep flaws to my favourite characters that I couldn’t admit until I started writing. Girl A would never announce her love to Guy B and if she did, Guy B would think he was saving them both a mountain of trouble by lying to her that he didn’t feel the same way. THIS was reality. This was life, in all its complexities, captured in print.

So now all my favourite characters are ‘real’, they are flawed and half the time I wouldn’t actually want to know them because that is how fucked up they are. But I enjoy watching their life. So my idea of ‘perfect’ shattered to the point of non-existence. There was no one who was wonderfully good. Everyone had dark secrets or streaks of grey. Everyone sinned.

If I am to think this way about my heroes, what does this mean for my villains?

Don’t they deserve to change as well? Doesn’t logic dictate that their souls are streaked with light? That they have a chance at redemption? If I forgive my protagonists of their minor sins, what makes these people so different except for a larger heart, a bigger leap of faith? Especially since recent quality television has generally started adding in ‘shocking’ reveals that excuses the villain their problems due to a past experience or trauma. Or perhaps even a whole series or novel from the scoundrel’s point of view. It is almost expected now that even the coldest hearted shadow started as a young bright flower and was taken from the sun to be raised in the dark. Their actions are explained by a deprivation of family, love, attention or the socially accepted version of right and wrong. Are these the faults of the child as they grow up? Can they regret what they do not know is wicked?

When I started to imagine the most evil of villains under this philosophy, I also started to use it in real life. My real life heroes are flawed; they have days when they are tired, cranky or grumpy. It doesn’t detract from their heroic deeds, but adds another layer of hope to my life. They are no longer an idealised figure of marble, but a figure of flesh, whose status I might one day attain if I work hard enough.

In tandem, I also have more empathy for society’s criminals. I look for a redeeming feature, a characteristic that is common. I look for a connection. I believe that this empathy has improved me by making me a kinder, gentler and more generous human being that takes time to judge people instead of making a decision on a first impression.

All because fan fiction taught me that angst is real and should not be hidden from, but embraced, because the potential for it is within us all.

Although, I doubt that this would actually hold water against a parent or employer who is mad that you are reading fiction when you should be studying/working. Meh. Worth a shot, right?