streams not so much crossing as mixing like a cup of tea that can't be unstirred

[psocoptera]

This is about fanfiction and pro authors.

So, I found out today that one of the Sorcerer to the Crown Yuletide stories I liked, Winter Sojourn, was in fact written by Zen Cho herself (see here). And I feel weird about that! So I've decided to talk about it here, in what is hopefully a fairly private place where it won't bother Cho, a writer whose work I love. I also want to say that Cho isn't the only writer doing this; I was already aware that Yoon Ha Lee, another awesome writer whose work I admire, had written several Machineries of Empire Yuletide stories (see here).

And, of course, for all I know, many many writers have been writing fanfic of their pro work for years and years. Have I read Newsflesh stories, say, secretly written by McGuire? Seems entirely possible, right? But the secret vs public distinction feels significant to me. Authors writing autofanfic *secretly* are throwing their fic into the same pool as everybody else, and the rest of us (except a few friends in on the joke, presumably) get to interact with it the same way we'd interact with any fic - squeeing if it hits the spot, dismissing it if it isn't to our taste, and, especially around Yuletide, being excited to connect with another fan, being excited that someone else was into this thing we were into.

All of that feels weird to me when you find out the author was actually The Author! Is this fic, now, or a sort of para-canon? Not that I won't cheerfully dismiss canon I don't like either, but it feels like a different action than not being into a fic. If I leave kudos, saying, hey, I thought this was a neat fic, am I now saying I like that fic idea as canon?

I don't actually want to say that autofanfic is bad, or that authors should stop doing it. Cho and Lee's Yuletide recipients seem to have been very happy with their stories; there's some funny back-and-forth in some of Lee's comments as his recipients realize who the author was and mildly freak out (in a good way). I just... I don't know, I find it a little unsettling, so here I am trying to process that. This might even turn out to be a great evolution of fandom norms - I've always found it frustrating to know that there are pro authors I love who have written fanfic that I probably would love if only they were willing to point to it, so, yay rising culture of openness! But, like, I don't know, I'll be curious to see how this increased porousness between canon and fandom goes. (I feel like some of the other explorers of that terrain have had it go not so great - like Check Please, which has always had this heavy halo of para-canonical material around the core canon, and where Ngozi had very close engagement with her fandom, which ended up in an ugly backlash by quite a few of the early big fans.)

Comments

[jedusor]

I feel differently about exchanges than I do about just fic. I'm fine with authors posting fic to AO3 set in their own universe just for the heck of it (which Ngozi also did in Check Please, though I don't know if she ever acknowledged that publicly), but it feels like it violates the spirit of an exchange.

(also I am not-particularly-closely acquainted with the person that Zen Cho fic was written for, and I will be very curious to pick their brain about it when I see them next month)

[ursula]

Also, does it matter how fic-ish it is? I beta-read Yoon's silly story where Cheris and Jedao are soulbonded and go to therapy, for instance. (The fact that Yoon & I are friends and I could guess which stories were his made the Yuletide reccing dynamics a little bit strange, but that must be true if you're friends with a BNF within fandom, too.)