find it enormously flattering that something about my work speaks strongly enough to some people that they are compelled to write about those elements. I adore my characters -- pretty much all of them -- and I don't, umm, write a lot of sex, and much of the relationship stuff is subtle enough that even my mother missed it.
...This bothers me. You seem to be working off the misconception that all, or even most, fanfic is about sex. But there's a lot of great platonic fanfic out there; it just gets overshadowed by the romance because people like to defend/complain about the pairings they love/hate together, and the Shocking Weirdness of the couples they saw. There's a lot less to defend or complain about in a fic when there isn't a pairing that someone might challenge. So, the romance gets talked about, the platonic stuff (such as where someone reflects on their duties, or remembers the past, or explains some loophole in the work) gets read but not discussed as fanatically.
This leads a lot of people to think "fanfic = sex," or alternately "fanfic = unbelievable slash pairings," neither of which does it justice, I think. I've been writing fanfic since I was eleven years old, I've never written a fanfic romance, and I hesitate to tell people that I write fanfic because they'll be eyeing me and wondering if I'm one of those people who has a "thing" for imagining Harry and Draco getting it on.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2004-10-20 10:02 am (UTC)...This bothers me. You seem to be working off the misconception that all, or even most, fanfic is about sex. But there's a lot of great platonic fanfic out there; it just gets overshadowed by the romance because people like to defend/complain about the pairings they love/hate together, and the Shocking Weirdness of the couples they saw. There's a lot less to defend or complain about in a fic when there isn't a pairing that someone might challenge. So, the romance gets talked about, the platonic stuff (such as where someone reflects on their duties, or remembers the past, or explains some loophole in the work) gets read but not discussed as fanatically.
This leads a lot of people to think "fanfic = sex," or alternately "fanfic = unbelievable slash pairings," neither of which does it justice, I think. I've been writing fanfic since I was eleven years old, I've never written a fanfic romance, and I hesitate to tell people that I write fanfic because they'll be eyeing me and wondering if I'm one of those people who has a "thing" for imagining Harry and Draco getting it on.