Help finding a comment about saving characters in fanfics

May 14, 2019 7:16 AM

I'm looking for a comment which I believe was on Metafilter (although I could be conflating it with another site) within the last couple of years. If I'm remembering it correctly, it was in a discussion about or related to fandom or fanfiction, and the comment was something like "when people put a lot of energy into saving a particular character, on some level they're putting that energy into saving themselves." This is precisely what I did, and I've wanted to refer to that comment several times, but I've never been able to find it. Does it ring a bell for anyone?
posted by shirobara to MetaFilter-Related at 7:16 AM (5 comments total)

Have been trying to search the last day or so but am not striking any gold, sorry shirobara, hopefully someone else will have some better search-fu.
posted by Fizz at 11:04 AM on May 15, 2019 [1 favorite]

I tried digging around on Fanlore for a while and came to this essay by Elizabeth Minkel with a bit of that idea: "there are so many paths to fanfiction, and we take away so many different things, but we all wind up in the same space, trapped on the same ships, joking about how they’re ruining our lives, when actually, they’re saving them." I feel like I've seen this idea here, too, though. Hmm.
posted by asperity at 12:00 PM on May 15, 2019 [5 favorites]

Fizz: Thank you!

asperity: Although that's not what I was looking for it's a fantastic essay, thank you for the link!
posted by shirobara at 12:52 PM on May 15, 2019

I've been searching too and although I haven't found anything that matches your description, there's some really lovely stuff about writing fanfiction in this thread. I just wanted to share it because it's such a nice thread and it makes me want to hug everyone and go start writing.
posted by beandip at 3:51 PM on May 15, 2019 [3 favorites]

Speaking of Elizabeth Minkel, if you don't already know these, I'd strongly recommend two projects she's involved with, Fansplaining (podcast and articles) and The Rec Centre (a weekly email newsletter about fandom).

You may well come across the concept you're thinking of in the archives of one or the other of these, and if not, they're generally a great source of insightful and funny material about fandom.
posted by ITheCosmos at 5:57 PM on May 15, 2019 [2 favorites]