A question on fandom familiarity

[leethet]

I just read a remark from someone saying they'd read and enjoyed an MFU fanfic despite knowing nothing about the show, and it got me thinking ... how?  Why? WTF? *G*

Then it occurred to me, if you read a fanfic about a show you know nothing about, you're really reading original fic, aren't you? For your purposes, it's all new, there's no "canon" (that you know about) to compare the story or characters to, there's only the writer's skill at telling a story. It's original fic.

I assume this reader read the fic because they knew the writer from another fandom and trusted their work (because I can't imagine why anyone would bother, otherwise). But I'm interested in people's thoughts on this. Is it weird to read in a fandom you know nothing about? Would you do it? If so ... why? Because it's an author you trust from elsewhere? But ... isn't it still, basically, reading original fic? So why?

Any thoughts are welcome here. This is really weird to me. :)

Comments

I confess!

[veronicaluv.livejournal.com]

That's exactly what I did with The Professionals. It was a combination of two things that started it. One, a good friend whom I trusted had seen a few eps and had waxed poetic over their adorability *g* and their so-very-married banter. That was intriguing but it wasn't until she sent me links to some outstanding stories that I was hooked.

It was actually a bit of a risk, now that I think on it, because by the time I actually watched the show, I'd fixed these characters quite firmly in my mind. I count myself very lucky that I'd read stories that were true to the show, so that when I saw the episodes, I wasn't disappointed. We all know how fanfic can wander far afield from what the source material intends!

Having said that, I think it was a fluke for me. I can't imagine reading fanfiction for something with which I had no familiarity, no matter how talented the writer. I've never followed a fanfic writer from fandom to fandom, even though I know there are outstanding stories that I'm missing.

The only other thing I'd add is that in this day and age we really don't have to read in a fanfic vacuum. There's oodles of information out there about anything, so if I were interested in something where I had no access to the source, I could readily find it. I think I did that with Pros, too - joined a listserv, used the links and info from there, and informed myself.

[st-crispins.livejournal.com]

It always seemed weird to me too, but apparently it's becoming more and more common.

The only fanfic I ever read that I didn't know the source text was in Professionals. A friend wrote a novel and asked me to read it and I did. I liked the novel but it didn't really interest me in the show.

[graculus.livejournal.com]

I guess it depends on what you're looking for from a particular story and how important canonicity is to you - I recall reading a shedload of fic from The Sentinel long before I'd ever seen any episodes and frankly, I'm glad it worked that way around. The show itself is so cheesy and the actors so unlike the mental picture I'd been given by the fic that I probably wouldn't have bothered if I'd ever seen the show first, and there are some excellent spinners of stories in that fandom.

However, I'd say that show was an exception for me - for the same reason I don't usually like wild AU's where they've taken characters and put them way out in another universe that doesn't resemble 'ours' (from the source material) in the slightest, it's important for me that the characters bear some resemblance to how I see them and the canon events of the source. Or that any change from canon has a logical reason behind it, if the writer's imagination is good enough to assist me in suspending my disbelief.

Horses for courses, though. After all, there seems to be an audience for pretty much anything! ;)

[gilda-elise.livejournal.com]

It happened to me with The Professionals. A friend of mine sent me a link to a story, saying she thought I'd really like it since it was scifi. I did. A lot. It was an obvious AU and I didn't even know what one of the characters looked like, but I liked the writing so much I went on to read all the other Pros stories by the author. Then other Pros stories. I was hooked. Still am. But I did read the original story as original fic. Actually, I recently reread it and, even though I now know the characters as they're portrayed in the story are nothing like those on the show, I still love it. So I guess it's still original fic to me. One thing, though, it did make it hard for me to write in the fandom, since my impression of the characters isn't "true," not even after having seen the episodes, because it's overlaid with the one created just from the stories I read first. It's made it harder for me to create my own image of them.

Anyway, it did serve another purpose. Because of all the cross-overs between Pros and MFU, I eventually gravitated to MFU. That show I'd seen from its first airing, so the characters were already fixed in my mind. But it took reading them in a slash setting with Pros to get me into that part of the MFU fandom.

[tainry.livejournal.com]

Donna or lyrebird or someone pointed me at some From Eroica With Love fics. These were MfU crossovers, but I'd never heard of Eroica and I ended up reading some Eroica-only fics as well. Another for your 'trusted recc' tally. ^__^

[frau-flora.livejournal.com]

I don't ever read fanfic about a show I've never watched. I don't see a point in it when I don't know the characters. I have read the odd MFU crossover (and enjoyed it) but it didn't make me want to watch the other show. The most that I did was look for photographs of the characters from the other show, found them unattractive and that was that.

However, I wouldn't regard it as original fic. Fanfic is usually strongly focussed on two (slash) or very few (gen) characters from a show. Original characters do appear but they usually only play a supporting role (unless they're Mary Sues). In fanfic I wouldn't have it any other way. In original fic I expect a little more.

Obviously fanfic as opposed to original fic has a certain setup and character description that appeals to fanfic readers even if they don't know the show. I don't really understand it but there are numerous examples for this, not least in the comments to your post here.

[xincinsin.livejournal.com]

Most times, I start reading in a fandom because I enjoyed book/movie/TV show but I've often read in fandoms I know nothing about because I liked an author, or because the fic sounded interesting when I skimmed a multi-fandom rec list. I started reading MfU with only the vaguest recollections of the TV show. And I began reading Harry Potter (the books) only after I'd read the fanfic, which I started looking at only because a cross-over tale (And I believe some HP fanfic far outstrips the quality of the books!).

I don't think you need to know anything about a show to read the fanfic unless events in said fanfic were highly contingent on background knowledge. If I'd known how hilarious The Sentinel was, I might not have approached its fanfic with such seriousness (3 years after reading the fanfic, I finally caught one ep on the afternoon repeats). And I still haven't watched a single ep of Magnificent 7 but I read and enjoy lot of the fanfic: gen, het, slash. Do I consider these forays into the unknown on par with my reading original fic? I suppose I do especially for slash stories, except that for fanfic, I do have the recourse of research if I wanted to know more.