Fanfic and RP, from an outsider.
Ever heard some say that RP is a waste of time? That if fanficcers were "real" writers, they'd spend their time on original stories instead of stealing someone else's work?

I've been doing some thinking about the experience of fanfic and RP. I don't RP, and what fanfic experience I've had is limited to one Bootstrap Bill/Jack Sparrow (in, I think, 5 chapters) and one awful Willow/Clara Bow. My published original works far outnumber my fanfiction - which ain't hard to do when you can count the latter on one hand. It's not like Lee Goldberg (rabid anti-fanfiction author who actually does write fanfiction but he does it for pay so it's OMG TOTALLY DIFFERENT U HOR) can accuse me of not being a "real" writer.

Lots of people who are not involved in fandom are confused by RP and fanfic, even if you leave off all the stuff about mpreg and crackfic. I find myself sharing their confusion at times when I read my friends' list - you guys devote hours per week to the material you produce for your fandoms, going to conventions, cosplaying, taping everything, writing thousands of pages of Draco/Harry while term papers go unwritten, spending thousands of dollars, intensely immersed in fandom to an extent most people reserve for, say, their children. Those outside fandom (and by "fandom" throughout I mean chiefly the con and RP and fanfic stuff; hell, the Bible has the biggest fandom in history, but my purpose is to separate behaviors) look at this effort and, I think more so than non-fandom hobbies, have no idea why. This is "nerdy," they say. Stupid and unoriginal.

But being perplexed, as I am on occasion, by intense fannish behavior need not lead to defensiveness. I think non-fandom folk become defensive of their own lives because they feel they might miss out on such an experience. Obviously there must be some enjoyment, or else cons wouldn't be able to attract thousands of people clad in fluorescent costumes brandishing swords. I don't mean to offer up the "y'all just jealous" defense, which is not an effective argument; I don't believe jealousy is exactly the right emotion, here. Instead, non-fannish people who call fanficcers and cosplayers "losers" come from a place of consumerist anxiety.

No, really!

Major fandom coincides with the rise of mass culture. In the United States, Europe, and Japan, this means heavy, indoctrinated consumerism. The more we are divided from one another by our books, radios, movies, televisions, and computers - all activities which involve experiencing our national character largely by shutting up and ignoring each other for several hours - the more we seek to connect with each other using those very conduits. Because these media are communication, they are used for advertising. And this didn't mean cheap artistic value - Dickens was originally published in magazines, and you can bet that Dr. Johnson's Opiate Calmative Tonic paid a pretty penny to have a full page after Nell's death in The Old Curiosity Shop. Mass culture means mass consumption of not only the culture itself, but the products that take advantage of mass distribution.

It's no wonder, then, that everyone - even the anti-consumerists, ironically - connects through consumerism. Two strangers wearing the same Hot Topic t-shirt on the same city bus will feel a connection, whether it's cameraderie (hey, MySpace for the win!) or competition (I so wear that better than she does). Take a look at Adbusters sometime - it mimics consumerist rhetoric so well, it is no longer a mimic. It merely sells the idea of not selling. Don't believe me? Try bootlegging it sometime. They believe, as most capitalist enterprises do, in intellectual property. Connection means money, whether it's making a profit or just getting back costs.

And that's where anti-fandom folk come from, whether they realize it or not. They're trained to connect through fads, trends, and products via mass culture, and nobody visibly enjoys mass culture more than fandom folk. Sure, NASCAR fans buy collectible plates and hate Jeff Gordon even though they've never met the man, but do they purposely dress up like Richard Petty? Do they attend panels on chewing tobacco? They watch "3" or whatever that Dale Earnhardt movie was (which, by the way, isn't bad), but the collectible plates and shrines to the Intimidator and daily NASCAR don't, for them, translate into fannish activity on par with anything anyone's ever done for BSG, but in a different way. It is, but because The Franklin Mint markets itself in Parade Magazine and not Super Shiny Anime Funzine, the approval of the most mundane of mainstream leads them to believe that this is normal activity, while fanfic and RP are for weirdos.

And that brings me into the second reason why non-fandom folk think fanfic and cons are weird. The genius of cons is that the popularity of, say, anime fandom does not depend on its distribution numbers. While trends and fads outside fandom are more popular the more people they reach, the opposite is true in fandom. There are millions of Buffy fans, for example, but they seek to divide and categorize - I'm in the Spuffy camp, I like Willow/Tara more than Willow/Oz, I'd like to YAR YAR HUMP HUMP the third extra from the left in the first scene in "Beer Bad." Hardcore Harry Potter fans aren't just Harry Potter fans. They're Herons or Harmonians. They're Slytherins and Ravenclaws and characterize each other as slaveholders and Nazis and, worse, Squibs. Fandom utilizes the language of niche marketing in a way Hot Topic could never dream.

This brings us back to how we are divided by media. Fandom is no exception, so just as the normals talk by the water cooler about how last night they all went to their individual homes and watched the same baseball game or TV show and now they're socializing about it so they can feel connected about an essentially separating activity, fandom's water cooler is fanfic and RP. It's nothing new - how many Christian parables would be classic fanfic if instead of "God" the author wrote about Inuyasha? When I was in elementary school - long before the Internet, when everyone rode dinosaurs to school and used raffia and cow dung as attractive cave decorations - my classmates used their free time to write sequels to movies they'd seen and enjoyed. These classmates were overwhelmingly male and mainstream, and their fanfic referenced TV shows like Heathcliff and Thundercats. They'd roleplay Ghostbusters during recess. I don't know how many of them today realize that these were fandom activities, how many of them continue in fandom, and how many deride RP and fanfic as though they'd forgotten about their intuitive leanings, but children who otherwise have no connection to each other will form bonds through the media they consume in common, whether it's Barbie or the Lone Ranger.

Fanfic and RP are merely expressions of this communication in an extremely divided world. What perplexes many people who have never or no longer engage in RP or fanfic is this: fanficcers have learned to use the very language of production and consumption for themselves. RPers have seized the power of characterization. This takes an immense amount of creativity, and produces rewarding and customized connections. Original fiction doesn't quite work this way. Yes, the means of production are the same, and original fiction and fanfiction both involve creativity and originality. But original fiction is not a shared communication. In original fiction, I don't count on shared investment in the readers. I have to win them over. But make no mistake: by creating my own characters and plots and using more traditional means of writing, I place myself as the originator and nexus of my own message. Original fiction necessarily creates an intellectual hierarchy. Fanfiction and RP emphatically do not, and even seek to restore some balance between reader and writer.

Does this offend me as a writer? Hell to the no. And it shouldn't. By and large, fanficcers respect canon. I'd go so far as to say that there is no group of people who analyze writer intent more than those who intend to write departures from the source material, and that to me is a sign of respect that any writer should be glad to have in a fan. Go to bad_rpers_suck sometime and see how many complaints there are of players not recognizing or labeling out-of-character behavior. Fanfic defends individual characters and personalizes them while maintaining a clear line between fan and writer creation. The hierarchy here is defined, not obliterated. Aside from the crazies who think they're married to Scott Summers or dating Snape, people in fandom translate intellectual property of the writer into their own intellectual property. Incidentally, that's what makes fanart and the like a legal gray area - but it's also what makes this an effective tool to writers rather than a detriment. Writers talk about wanting to see a reaction in their readers - fanfic is the ultimate in reader reaction, and provides a clear marker that when readers of any strain connect with material, they always ALWAYS bring in their own experiences and projections. There may be a hierarchy, but that does not and will never mean that the reader is entirely powerless or passive. Fanfic also legitimizes craft in a way non-fandom sources cannot, and the scrutiny makes better writers. Which is why I think some non-fandom writers have a problem with fanfic in general - because writers are often unjustifiably insecure people who are terrified of unsolicited scrutiny. They're terrified of their message no longer being centrally important, and unfortunately take this to mean that in order for writers to have any power, the reader must have none save the power to plunk down $20 for the hardcover. I don't mean to delegitimize this fear, because I think it's perfectly rational - but writers can choose how they express it. They can urge respect for canon, squelch rumors, and define characters away from the parts of fandom they don't like. (See also: J. K. Rowling.) Or they can rant and rave about how awful fandom is and how nobody has the right to define or criticize characters. (See also: Anne Rice.)

Comparing fanfic to original writing is not quite like apples and oranges. It's more like grapefruit to tangelos. Okay, so fanfic is writing - but it has a different purpose than original writing, and to urge fanficcers to stop wasting their time and write something original ignores that the act of writing is almost incidental. (Yes, yes, you who are about to object, you're precious, creative stars in the galaxy of craft. Just a sec.) How I communicate to a reader as a writer is drastically different in purpose from how fanficcers communicate with other fandom folk. Yes, they have a lot in common - but the primary purpose is different, the human motivations are different, and that changes everything. The very means of production are used to find connection to others in a way writing original stories doesn't even approach. Fanfic writing is used to equalize and connect one fan to another; original writing is used to define and express one person's vision and maybe make some money. Not even close, my friends. There's a huge difference between the Mona Lisa and a Something Awful photoshop competition; the same techniques may even be used, the same mastery of skill, but the Mona Lisa imparts while the Photoshop Phriday reconfirms. RP is a different horse of the same color: it's fanfic, too, but in an even more participatory way. RP distills these communicative elements. Non-fandom folk can surely recall how many hours they've spent talking about the latest episode of The Office or Dancing with the Stars or finding Tickle Me Elmo Extreme. RP is essentially the same activity, but reinterprets and analyzes as a means of discussion. The time investment is, nutters aside, fairly equal to the amount of time the normals spend at that proverbial water cooler. It seems odd to non-fandom folk because it's an intense activity, and inserts production into what is, for non-fandom folk, a passive form of community - but the solution here is to emphasize the basic nature of what RP and fanfic are, because they're at heart understandable human activities.

So no, someone who writes fanfic will not get the same kind of enjoyment out of writing original fiction. It's not the same kind of communication. There's nowhere near the level of connection. In many ways, fanficcers enjoy their writing on a basic level to the extent writers of original fiction cannot, like the difference between a hobby and a job. Compare co-rec baseball to professional baseball. Same tasks, different purposes, and in the former you get to drink beer between at-bats. Would exceptionally gifted players in co-rec baseball better use their time by playing single-A ball? No, and whether or not they have the talent is incidental to the question. These lines of questioning belie a flaw in our consumerist system: we're sold on possibility as much as we are on product, and it's difficult to understand that just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should or will. We place means ahead of purpose in a way that is dangerously unhealthy for our society, when in fact the most meaningful experiences we have as humans - inside fandom or outside of it - strongly place purpose ahead of means. "Get paid doing what you love" only works until you no longer love it because, well, you're getting paid.

ETA: Now with spellcheck! Because "flourescent" is not a lighting system made of baked goods.