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

[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! ;)

[leethet.livejournal.com]

My question then would be what was it that made you read that fic in the first place? Idle curiosity that led you to a good story, etc.? What was the original impetus to start reading? That's the part that's a puzzle to me, at least as regards fanfic. If I don't know an author in the bookstore, I might try their book if it looks interesting, but that doesn't work on fanfic - for me, anyway. If I'm not in the fandom, I have zero interest in the fic, even if it's recced to high heaven and even if it's by an author I love. For fanfic purposes, my mindset is different, and I want that familiar background.

[graculus.livejournal.com]

Lack of knowledge about the show, which meant I wasn't actually repelled by reading fic based in it (unlike some equally productive fandoms) + the fact that there's a shedload of fic out there and it was at a time when I was basically only reading SG-1 (I think) and that fandom was small and I'd pretty much tapped it out.

I'm not much of one for crossovers, mostly because in my experience the writer knows one of the fandoms way better than the other and it's unbalanced, so I couldn't be led astray that way anything like as easily...

[leethet.livejournal.com]

That's weird to me. :) Your lack of familiarity led you into reading the fanfic? Did you go to authors you trusted from other fandoms?

[graculus.livejournal.com]

I knew the basic premise of the show in question but didn't know enough to actively dislike it (in other words, unlike some fandoms I hadn't suffered from people lecturing me about how I must get into the fandom in question, or how it was the greatest thing since sliced bread).

I don't think there were really authors I knew from elsewhere because my view of fandom was pretty limited to SG-1 (and UNCLE, to a much lesser extent because it tends to have more single fandom peeps in it)...

[leethet.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean - people insisting you're going to like something when you haven't heard anything that tempts you can be very irritating. :)

So the premise itself interested you?