Fic: Why Fanfiction Is Taking Over the World

by Jamison, Anne

  What began as a lighthearted fantasy between lovers had evolved into the exact reality it had pretended to be: the celebration of first love, of being alive and young, of turning your world into an enchanted realm of whimsy. Because of the authors and fans who give Bradam a place to live in their hearts, that celebration will continue forever.

  Peter Berg is a writer, blogger, and high school student. He is also a “brony”—a fan of the children’s television program My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. From its first airing in 2010, the show surprised its parent company Hasbro and the world by attracting a large and largely male fanbase of adults and older teens. As the media has puzzled over the phenomenon, trying to understand these fans as rebels against gender stereotypes or proponents of a new era of internet sincerity, bronies have been busy creating a truly impressive array of pony-related art, video (including the “Friendship Is Witchcraft” fandub series by the brony known as “Sherclop Pones”), music, and, of course, stories. Peter Berg has created an enormous crossover universe with these ponies and part four of Gulliver’s Travels, among other sources. Here, he reflects on his motivations, experiences, and the role this online fandom has played in his writing life.

  Hobbyhorsing

  Peter Berg (Homfrog)

  Let me start off with a bold declaration: I have far too many ideas for my own good. My brain runs over with great big chocolate fountains of creativity and I can never turn it off, not ever. One might think, “What’s so bad about never-ending chocolate?” In all honesty it’s not all that bad on a slow day, a day when I’m too focused on other, more mundane things to pay heed to the gushing idea fondue.

  But on a fast day, a day when close to 100 percent of my attention is in my own head, too much of a good thing can be overwhelming. Ideas pour into my mind all hours of my waking life, bubbling and frothing like coffee percolators and spewing like geysers. Ideas, to me, are a very liquid thing. They are capable of dribbling, dripping, flowing, running, crashing, streaming, boiling, and freezing. In this regard, and especially in regard to the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fandom, I have chocolate on the brain.

  Here’s a little backstory. I have been writing ever since I could read. I first started reading at age three and a half, and by my estimate it was only months later that I tried to write something. I believe I was trying to communicate my feelings on the ghosts that lived in the scary spruce tree in our backyard; either that or something about one of my stuffed animals. The first complete story I wrote was a short tale about dragons titled “My Dragon Book.” It included descriptions of their feeding habits, family structures, mating rituals (as well as I understood such a concept at five years old—I knew it involved butts), and a cover decorated with stickers of the planets, because everyone knows dragons are associated with outer space. Surprisingly, it managed to have a semblance of a plot-line. It followed one dragon, an unnamed character who I remember was colored blue, from birth to death. I hand-drew several pictures of dragons for the book and pasted them in with the purple glue stick all schoolchildren have. When finished, the book was about ten pages long, bound with staples, and covered in black construction paper titled with white crayon. It was, to my young eyes, the best compendium of dragon biology and culture that existed, probably the best book that took a scientific approach to mythology in the history of the universe. I was so proud, and from that moment forth, I loved writing. That was the day the ideas started trickling in.

  Writing and reading, in my experience at least, behave in a nearly symbiotic biological relationship. Each one benefits and relies on the other for its continued existence, and they react with each other like complex chemical systems. In my case, reading lets me take in more ideas than my body can hold, and writing lets me drain myself of those ideas and relieve some of the pressure that builds up. I am an idea pressure cooker; what leaves my body through hand and mouth is far tastier and more succulent than the raw vegetables that have entered through eye and ear.

  I currently have a document of My Little Pony story ideas that is, at the time of this writing, over 250 pages in length. It consists of over 400 premises for stories categorized with more than thirty-five different color-coded tags, a timeline of events spanning over 400,000 years and fourteen pages, over 49,000 words of headcanon, and forty-one original characters. Out of the myriad story premises, only nine have been completed, and thirty-two are in the process of being written. My sheer creative output, if channeled effectively and with entirely original content, might have the capacity to earn me some serious dosh. But instead I choose to write stories about ponies using characters who I didn’t even create. “Why is this?” one might ask. “Why would such a prolific writer choose to write fanfiction instead of original, potentially moneymaking masterpieces?”

  The simple answer is, I didn’t choose the pony life; the pony life chose me. What made my life become so intertwined with the My Little Pony writing experience was a combination of factors from within and without. I honestly don’t even remember how I got into this fandom, or at what point I said to myself, “I’m a brony now.” However, I think the first thing that really appealed to me about this show was the world building. Ohhh, the world building, so grand, so ancient, so in-depth for a children’s show. Equestria is such a large kingdom; so much of it remains unexplored by the viewing audience, and yet we get a sense that we almost know what’s around every corner. Over a thousand years of history were put into the show’s backstory, and I’m willing to bet that there is a lot more we haven’t seen yet. Much of the fanfiction I write, and the headcanon I create, concerns the history of Equestria. I’ve detailed many eras, with five calendar systems, the gradual change of languages and governments, and factoring magic-assisted evolution into it as well, given the scale of time across which I work. I start the march of time before the Big Bang and finish it after the Big Whimper, so to speak. I’ve quite literally (and literarily) created a universe.

  In My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, there are mythological creatures and their kin at all points: cockatrices, dragons, griffons, hydras, changelings, chimerae, trickster gods, hippocampi, living constellations, plant-animal hybrids, insectoid tribbles—the list goes on. The mythology that the show simultaneously incorporates and produces really attracted me, particularly the races and species of beings that make Equestria and the lands beyond it their homes. Its rich and complicated universe makes my brain resonate with a multitude of symphonic ideas. So I do my duty as a devoted fan and build on that myself.

  I have expanded upon or invented, wholly or partly, over fifteen species of ponies and over twenty other species, ranging from Scythian-Neanderthal ponies to bicorn zebras to ponies that live in the Earth’s core, the mesosphere, and the moon; from sapient coats of skin to dark, telepathic parrots to flying creatures that resemble UFOs. And once I’ve created them, I back off and watch them live. A friend related to me that I am, in a sense, an anthropologist-god; I create a species and then study it. I detail a clear biology, both general and specific, for each species. I take note of their histories, their cultures, and their societies, and list their interactions with other species and how they fare in the world against the obstacles I create for them to surpass.

  As for my own species—bronies—I have plenty of interactions with them, too. I maintain a social group of about twenty bronies with whom I interact daily. These range from lifelong friends I know in real life to people I’ve only ever known through Twitter or Facebook. We write together, we talk about ideas and have roleplaying sessions, and we watch the episodes together and laugh. I find bronies to be a very rewarding community—almost always optimistic, well-meaning, kind, and thoughtful. It really means a lot to me that I have “found my people,” and that they have accepted me. It’s not too odd to me that the show we all care about is supposed to be for little kids, or that the show has a primarily female character population.

  So in the end, I suppose you could say that what really drew me to writing fanfict
ion for My Little Pony was that it offered such an enticing opportunity for my specific kind of obsessive, unstoppable creative flow to flourish. This fandom lets me bail out my brain—floating in a tumultuous, briny sea of golden ideas—with an extra-large bucket rather than a rusty soup ladle as I did in other fandoms before My Little Pony. It gives me an outlet to melt and smelt all my thoughts and whimsies into gleaming architecture or fine-edged weapons. Many of my ideas—I’d say a large percentage of them—will never see the light of day or the eye of any reader. Sometimes that hurts, but usually I can deal with that and instead concentrate on the stories that I definitely want to release into the world.

  I wouldn’t say my life is too hectic to get all the writing done I need to. I have ample free time on most days, although it varies with my schedule and the general course of events in my life. My afternoons and weekends are usually completely open, but I don’t spend all of that time writing. Often, though, I need to strike a balance between my real life and the life I live when my brain is plugged into the computer through my hands. Spending too much time writing and reading fanfiction keeps me from getting my homework done and being with my family and friends . . . but spending too much time in meatspace keeps me from draining myself of ideas, and then I have to pour those ideas all over my family and friends, even though they’d much rather not hear about that sort of thing. After all, I don’t know many bronies in real life, and even fewer who have the same passion I do for this particular constellation of ideas, this universe that I’ve half borrowed, half birthed. That is why I turn to my friends online.

  There, I’m not only a member of the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fandom. I’m a member of the SCP Foundation (a collaborative sci-fi/horror fiction-writing website), several internet poetry and art groups, and a cabal of professional jokesters and idiot-savant madmen on Twitter. I dip my tentacles into every social network in the hopes of making new connections. The more I can make, and the more options for new friends and communities I explore, the more outlets I have to express my ideas. This gives me more people off of whom to bounce notions and with whom I can discuss Big Issues—the Biggest Issues that concern me as a person and the internet realms I inhabit. The friends I’ve made through all of these websites and fandoms act as a support network to keep me afloat and sane amid the infernal busy buzzing of my head full of ideas.

  An early note from my editor: “This is such an important issue, and one you haven’t touched on much earlier in the book.” Sigh. I know. And neither has fanfic—not that much. Not enough, I’d say. There have been some moments, and this exchange between Rukmini Pande and Samira Nadkarni, two fan-studies critics based in India, touches on several of them. Overall, however, media fandom engagement with racial and ethnic difference in fanfiction has been minimal.

  As far as I’ve seen—and please take this as a challenge, a heartfelt invitation to prove me wrong—fanfic hasn’t done the kinds of deconstruction and reimagining of race and ethnicity that it’s done for gender and sexuality, occasionally social class, and, more recently, disability. In fic fandoms that do feature characters of color, the fanfic surrounding those characters still doesn’t typically engage their race or ethnicity, and for all the genderswapping and biological tinkering I’ve seen, I don’t see many Spocks of color, for instance. In this area, commercial entertainment’s reimagining of sources has outpaced fan culture: witness CBS’ casting of Lucy Liu as Joan Watson on Elementary, and New Paradigm Studios’ digital comic Holmes and Watson that recasts the duo as African American detectives in Harlem.

  Whereas some series that have inspired vast fic fandoms have made important inroads in diverse casting and representing racial and ethnic differences—the original Star Trek being the most obvious and groundbreaking example—the fic itself has not necessarily followed suit. In science fiction and fantasy franchises, furthermore, racial and ethnic issues are often explored via divides between imaginary species or synthetic and biological humans—approaches that, while fascinating, place the issue of race as we experience it at a certain remove. That’s fine; that’s how those genres engage culture and politics, and I’m a big fan of that engagement. But dealing with tension between werewolves and vampires or between Cylons and humans doesn’t confront race head-on in the way a show like The Wire does.

  On the other hand, when Western media culture or fanfic does imagine characters in some nonwhite or non-Western scenario, it’s not always sensitively or tastefully done. Of course it isn’t. The history of cultural appropriation and exploitation is as obvious as it is extensive and egregious—Charlie Chan and Gunga Din don’t know nothin’ bout birthin’ no babies, and so on. If people are writing fic for fun, it makes sense that they might stay away from these issues—race isn’t nearly as much fun to talk about as sex. It feels heavy, and people who appear to take fanfiction very seriously can open themselves to ridicule. Moreover, fic gets feedback, and inviting feedback on racial issues can be scary. Writers don’t want to field accusations of racism or find they have actually been, however unintentionally, racist or insensitive. I have spoken to many writers (of various backgrounds) who are interested in portraying more diverse characters or playing with racial and ethnic difference, but are wary of giving offense, getting flamed, or simply having their work ignored. I’ve heard from many fans of color who tire of always feeling like the only nonwhite in the virtual room, even as I’ve also spoken to those who embrace online fandom as a venue where they don’t have to interact or write primarily through their ethnic or racial identity. Most often, however, I’ve heard comments akin to the following, from an email exchange with a fandom blogger and critic:

  For me, online fandom has not been a place in which I don’t have to deal with race. In my experience, online fandom has simply been a smaller subset of the larger culture (which, of course, is not exactly the healthiest place in which to exist if you’re any shade that isn’t White). I’ve been fortunate enough to have a cluster of cool, mellow, socially aware people of all shades with whom I can share my fandom love (although, that doesn’t necessarily make the uncomfortable feeling of being a fan of color [FOC] in a sea of White ones go away). I’ve seen many, many other fans of color be attacked, degraded, and threatened for expressing legitimate criticism of the problematic elements in the shows/books they love (or of the frequently oppressive behavior of other fans).135

  Racial and ethnic dynamics play out differently in manga, anime, and other fandoms with non-Western origins that haven’t been my focus here. But all of the Western, predominantly white media properties Fic has discussed have vast global fandoms. Every one of these shows, movies, and books has inspired fans from many different cultures and ethnicities to read and write fic. Some evolve their own localized fan cultures, as we saw earlier in this volume with the 1950s Irish fandom. Some don’t develop local communities, having strong cultural reasons for not acknowledging in person the kinds of materials they like to read and write online. Some read and write in English; some expand the diversity of fandom’s readership by donating labor to translation projects, garnering, say, Chinese or Thai or Indonesian readers for fic writers from London or Utah or Finland. There are many, many different experiences of global fandom outside the cultural centers where the media properties are produced. The following dialogue gives two perspectives from two individuals who do not speak for vast, undifferentiated demographics, but only for themselves.

  From a Land Where “Other” People Live

  Perspectives from an Indian Fannish Experience

  Rukmini Pande and Samira Nadkarni

  It is a truism that no person experiences or “does” fandom in any one way. When it comes to race in fandom, this is perhaps even more true. As aca-fen who started our journeys as academics and members of media fandom at almost the same time (in 2002) and in the same place (Mumbai), we wanted to look back at the different experiences we’ve had while coming to terms with our identities as fans, and in particular as fans of color. While Samira
left India in 2008 and has navigated fan communities in the UK, Rukmini went on to Delhi and found fellow fans there, too.

  Fanfiction in particular has been examined as a site of subversion by various aca-fen and critics, and it is where we both would have expected racial dynamics to be explored as well. Our conversation here is an attempt to map out our differing experiences, while also touching on how contemporary fan communities try (and, it has to be said, very often fail) to come to grips with issues like equitable representation and cultural appropriation in the popular media texts that are their focus.

  Finding Fandom in India

  RUKMINI: Samira, you were my introduction to media fandom and for a long time you were my only actual “IRL”136 fan person. Do you think your distance from the larger, mostly Western fandom communities affected the way you viewed fandom, and your own identity as a participant? And further, race in fandom?

  SAMIRA: It’s the oddest thing, because my original fandom community, and indeed, the fandom community I still identify strongly with, is the community that I built within my own preexisting social circles—people I knew outside of being a fan and brought into fandom, not people I met because I was a fan. As a result, race and culture didn’t really enter into this early stage of my fandom persona as an issue quite as much as age and gender did—I found it far easier to talk to young women about my growing interest in slash simply because they were more likely to be receptive to it. Indian culture is very concerned with machismo, and homosexuality itself was extremely taboo until July 2009.137 So, in many ways, you were my first experience of what a real-world fandom community entailed as well.