Tuesday Top Five: Formative Fanfiction
Sep. 24th, 2024 10:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nevannaThis is less a recommendation list than a sampling of stories that marked turning points in my fannish life, that showed me something new about fanfic as a medium, or both. Also, the first three are on fanfiction.net and the fourth one is on Dreamwidth, because I am Fandom Old and a lot of my formative reading experiences occurred before AO3 existed.
The works are listed in the order that they were completed.
1. An Accidental Interception of Fate (X-Men movies)
Minisinoo was a massive presence in the X-Men comics and movie fandoms (mostly the latter), and this novel, which traced the origins of the team and of Scott and Jean’s romance, was the first of her longer works that I read. I found myself caring deeply about characters that I’d readily dismissed before, and I was profoundly impressed by Min's ability to balance plot and character development, to reimagine elements of the original comics and make them work in context, and to make the fictional universe feel grounded and lived-in even if it was populated by super-powered mutants. In particular, I loved the insights into day-to-day life at Xavier’s School, both for the staff and the students, which I’d known that I wanted to read about since I first realized that I wanted to read X-Men fanfiction.
Grail, which was Min’s take on the Dark Phoenix Saga and the Legacy virus, was probably her most ambitious project, but Accidental Interception was one of the first fanworks – hers or anyone else’s – to show me that fanfiction could be crafted with the same effort and attention to detail as other forms of literature.
2. Rock Your World (X-Men: Evolution)
In this alternate take on XME’s first season, Lance Alvers and Kitty Pryde join the X-Men together, instead of fighting on opposing teams as they do in canon. This does not solve as many problems with their relationship as one might hope.
To this day, I’m impressed by AUs that deliberately reflect and comment on the canonical universe while telling a distinctly engaging story, and as a teenage reader, I had never seen another fic do so as cleverly as this one (though seventeen-year-old Nevanna was mostly preoccupied with her OTP's courtship and with Professor Xavier’s shadowy scheming). The author and I eventually became good friends, and I hope that she wouldn’t mind my drawing attention to something that she wrote a very long time ago.
3. A Sue’s Story (Harry Potter)
Yes, I know. Yes, I know.
Although I now understand that the pastime of Mary-Sue-bashing was and is sexist and mean-spirited, I can also recognize the narrative buttons that this metafictional parody pushed for me when I read it in the mid-2000s. I still enjoy self-referential examinations of genre tropes as long as they’re carried out with love, and I adore stories that explore the tension between identity and archetype, even when they don’t involve a squad of operatives who use sporks as literal weapons and regard certain online typing conventions as eldritch, madness-inducing incantations. This fic stands as an intriguing time capsule from a particular era of fandom, and I can’t deny that it Committed To The Bit even if I have mixed feelings about why The Bit existed in the first place.
4. Five Times Pepper Could Have Figured It Out (Iron Man movies)
Consider yourselves warned: the fic itself doesn’t contain explicit content, but the comments do.
Obadiah/Tony was one of the first toxic, dysfunctional pairings to capture my imagination (the other ones were from my favorite anime, then and now, which is a discussion for another time). Although I didn’t consider the possibilities the first time I saw the movie, as soon as I discovered that someone had written a fic about those two, I thought, "wait, of course!" While I haven’t actually written this pairing myself, the stunning use of Pepper’s outsider POV in this particular story, in combination with the Five Things structure, partially inspired two of my later works: To See a Friend Go Down in Flames and Knowledge Management in an Academic Setting.
Author quigonejinn eventually moved some of their Iron Man fics to AO3 (just not this particular work), in case you want more from them.
5. Management Strategies With Regard to Attempted Homicide (The Magnus Archives)
I have read some absolutely outstanding TMA fanfic, but if I had to point to a story that made the biggest difference in my fannish life, I would choose the one that inspired me to contribute to the shared vampire AU known as The Magnusquerade. I could write a lot more about what this world means to me, but the fact that more than half my TMA fics take place there speaks for itself.
The works are listed in the order that they were completed.
1. An Accidental Interception of Fate (X-Men movies)
Minisinoo was a massive presence in the X-Men comics and movie fandoms (mostly the latter), and this novel, which traced the origins of the team and of Scott and Jean’s romance, was the first of her longer works that I read. I found myself caring deeply about characters that I’d readily dismissed before, and I was profoundly impressed by Min's ability to balance plot and character development, to reimagine elements of the original comics and make them work in context, and to make the fictional universe feel grounded and lived-in even if it was populated by super-powered mutants. In particular, I loved the insights into day-to-day life at Xavier’s School, both for the staff and the students, which I’d known that I wanted to read about since I first realized that I wanted to read X-Men fanfiction.
Grail, which was Min’s take on the Dark Phoenix Saga and the Legacy virus, was probably her most ambitious project, but Accidental Interception was one of the first fanworks – hers or anyone else’s – to show me that fanfiction could be crafted with the same effort and attention to detail as other forms of literature.
2. Rock Your World (X-Men: Evolution)
In this alternate take on XME’s first season, Lance Alvers and Kitty Pryde join the X-Men together, instead of fighting on opposing teams as they do in canon. This does not solve as many problems with their relationship as one might hope.
To this day, I’m impressed by AUs that deliberately reflect and comment on the canonical universe while telling a distinctly engaging story, and as a teenage reader, I had never seen another fic do so as cleverly as this one (though seventeen-year-old Nevanna was mostly preoccupied with her OTP's courtship and with Professor Xavier’s shadowy scheming). The author and I eventually became good friends, and I hope that she wouldn’t mind my drawing attention to something that she wrote a very long time ago.
3. A Sue’s Story (Harry Potter)
Yes, I know. Yes, I know.
Although I now understand that the pastime of Mary-Sue-bashing was and is sexist and mean-spirited, I can also recognize the narrative buttons that this metafictional parody pushed for me when I read it in the mid-2000s. I still enjoy self-referential examinations of genre tropes as long as they’re carried out with love, and I adore stories that explore the tension between identity and archetype, even when they don’t involve a squad of operatives who use sporks as literal weapons and regard certain online typing conventions as eldritch, madness-inducing incantations. This fic stands as an intriguing time capsule from a particular era of fandom, and I can’t deny that it Committed To The Bit even if I have mixed feelings about why The Bit existed in the first place.
4. Five Times Pepper Could Have Figured It Out (Iron Man movies)
Consider yourselves warned: the fic itself doesn’t contain explicit content, but the comments do.
Obadiah/Tony was one of the first toxic, dysfunctional pairings to capture my imagination (the other ones were from my favorite anime, then and now, which is a discussion for another time). Although I didn’t consider the possibilities the first time I saw the movie, as soon as I discovered that someone had written a fic about those two, I thought, "wait, of course!" While I haven’t actually written this pairing myself, the stunning use of Pepper’s outsider POV in this particular story, in combination with the Five Things structure, partially inspired two of my later works: To See a Friend Go Down in Flames and Knowledge Management in an Academic Setting.
Author quigonejinn eventually moved some of their Iron Man fics to AO3 (just not this particular work), in case you want more from them.
5. Management Strategies With Regard to Attempted Homicide (The Magnus Archives)
I have read some absolutely outstanding TMA fanfic, but if I had to point to a story that made the biggest difference in my fannish life, I would choose the one that inspired me to contribute to the shared vampire AU known as The Magnusquerade. I could write a lot more about what this world means to me, but the fact that more than half my TMA fics take place there speaks for itself.
