Paperback's Pondering's is a weekly discussion when I take a topic and well, ponder about it! Judging by this week's title, I can guess that almost every bookworm reading this right now is gasping for breath. Get ready people, because it's #unpopularopinion time.
You're probably wondering, how can any bookworm not appreciate the beautiful art of taking their favourite characters and making more stories about them? What's so bad about that? Well, I can say that I wasn't always this way, but my opinions on fanfiction has changed drastically over the years.
Once upon a time when I was a 13 year old girl obsessed with One Direction, I read fanfiction religiously. Now don't be fainting asking why a 13 year old girl was reading possibly dirty fanfiction on the Internet, because I didn't read anything smutty. First, because I had the most ignorant sex education ever and didn't understand half the terms, and second because I was a goodie two-shoes and knew that I would get in trouble. ANYWAYS, I was really into reading One Direction fanfiction as the really good ones seemed like contemporary romance novels with my favourite band as the main characters. It was awesome.
Once I hit 14, the fanfiction switch suddenly switched off in me and I just was not into it anymore. This was partly because I was maturing with my reading and wanted to read proper published books, and also because I thought that reading fanfiction was sort of creepy and overly-obsessive. It's sort of like forcing something that's never going to happen.
When I entered the book blogging world, it seemed like everyone was obsessed with fanfiction. To this day, I haven't seen anyone who has said that they don't read it, and even some YA books are actually dedicated to it. When I read Fangirl and then Carry On by Rainbow Rowell, I knew that fanfiction had finally taken a world of it's own. It was really incredible, but for me, unnecessary.
Ever since my 1d days I can't bring myself to read fanfiction. Even if there's infamous Hermione/Draco, Harry/Luna ones, I found them to be weird and uncomfortable. This meaning, that they just seemed wrong. I'm a big believer that what ends in a book is how it should end, that maybe we can't understand it, but we cannot change it. These fanfictions at least give me false perceptions on what really happened in the story, they mess with my brain.
I just don't like change, which is a sole purpose in fanfiction, and so I try to stay clear. I think that who ends up with who was meant to be, who died was meant to be, and I couldn't imagine anything else differently.
All this being said, a main purpose in fanfiction could be to change typical stereotypes in books and promote diversity, which of course, is always a good thing. A lot of fanfiction can feature LGBTQA romances using traditionally straight characters, which can show the spectrum in which a character could be on. I do respect this movement a lot.
This isn't a post to bash fanfiction. A lot of work goes into it and some writers have even gone so far as to get book deals for their work, so there's no denying that this medium can bring out true talent in people. I'm just saying that it's not for me, and probably never will be. I think that the past should be left in the past and I just don't like to read the change. Maybe I just haven't found the right fanfiction yet.
What do you think? Are you into Fanfiction or not into it? Do you have a favourite story or theme?
Emily @ Paperback Princess
