I just realized that I seldom write/read fanfiction of books, and when I do, it’s because they’ve been adapted to multi-media. Like, when I was into the LoTR and Hobbit fandoms, my baseline was the movies. When I got into Hannibal, it was because of the TV show. Harry Potter–the recent video game. Even my most recent story, set in the Song of Ice and Fire, is based on the series.
The only time I’ve had the book-version in mind, was when I was looking for stories on Arya/Jaqen H’ghar.
Everything else, I imagined the assets and events used in the shows/movies.
It’s the same with drawn media. Manga and comic books don’t inspire the urge for fanfiction in me, but anime and movies do. I had no interest in reading Marvel fanfiction until the movies came out. I only got interested in fanfiction for Haikyuu, One Punch Man and Chainsaw Man when I saw the anime.
The type of media I tend to write for is video games and the ones I read from are TV shows. I have no idea why, but I just thought it was interesting how certain media can make my brain latch onto the IP more creatively than others.
How about you guys? Any media preferences as well or maybe you have other factors in play?
I tend to focus on media that has an ensemble cast or else media that has an entirely different set of rules for the world than our own. My top fandoms are Harry Potter, Naruto, Persona (the game series), and Marvel. For Persona and Marvel, I care about spending more time with the ensemble characters and seeing them interact outside of canon, but am not especially interested in seeing authors rework the rules of the universe. For HP and Naruto, it’s more about the flexibility of canon to allow authors to do almost anything with the world, even if it’s pre or post-canon.
Ohh, so does that mean you’re not into Alternate Universes for Persona and Marvel fanfiction, but would consider it for HP and Naruto? Or do you still prefer the exploration of the world to be in canon for the latter two?
No, I definitely still read a ton of AU stuff in the Persona and Marvel fandoms, but I’m less interested in AUs for them where the rules of how the main characters affect the story have changed (e.g. it’s Persona but the main characters are all vampires instead of having Persona). Instead I like to see butterfly effect stuff, where canon unfolds differently from a single point of change, and how the characters respond based on that change.
For HP and Naruto, every character’s abilities or proficiencies can be so varied in canon that I’m not really bothered if one of the main characters has an ability never mentioned in canon , because a good writer can incorporate it as the character being unique instead of it being an entirely different world with similarly named characters.
I’m not sure that makes sense, reading it back, but I’m scratching around the edges of it at least 🤣
Uchronia is the term! It’s the umbrella term for “What Ifs” but specifically What If’s that show that Buttery/Domino Effect of change. Those are my favourite fanfics in general as well~
You have taught me yet another term! Uchronia.
No I refuse. I must of told you about that term before!
I’m definitely with you on that first paragraph. I can enjoy other AUs, but I definitely prefer the butterfly effect concepts so much more.