Fictional Fans

for me, fanfiction feels like kind of a response to the fact that, well, you can’t hoard your favourite stuff like that, other people are going to like it whether you want them to or not— so what do I do? I impose my vision of the thing on other people by writing fanfic. This is obviously a pretty uncharitable-sounding explanation of the motivation behind my writing, and I don’t really mean it in a bad way, but— fiction is a very sneaky way of pulling people around to your point of view.

I really identify with this. So much of my fic is "this is how I view the characters" disguised as entertainment. *g* I'm different from you, though, in that I engage in and sometimes host some meta discussions as well, because I have warring impulses between wanting community and an active fandom, and wanting my feelings about and interpretation of canon to be unmediated by other people's takes (unless I accept, adopt and integrate specific points into my reading).

But I can usually kind of side-step the feeling of being told what to think and feel if I go, for example, "We're approaching this through different lenses, and that's why other people's readings differ." (My lens is, of course, invisible to me, so it feels more right.)

IDK if this necessarily reflects WELL on me, but hey 🤷🏻‍♀️

I share your ambivalence here, too. (Plus the people who are collaboratively metaing (and shitposting) always look like they're having so much fun...)