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

[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.

[leethet.livejournal.com]

It's not at all that it's a bad thing to read fanfic as original fic (it's weird to me, but that doesn't make it bad), except that if you do get into the actual show/book/whatever ... I would think it'd be a jolt, as you indicated. :) I do think whatever your original source, that's how you see the characters to a large degree, whether that source be the show, good in-character fanfic, or wildly OOC fanfic that makes you eventually think "what show was this writer watching?" when you actually see the show. :) (With, of course, the caveat that in character and OOC are in the eye of the beholder).