#mylittlepony - #On fan-work, and how it stimulated this fandom:

On fan-work, and how it stimulated this fandom:

Nine years on, I'm becoming increasingly aware of an interesting difference between this fandom and so many others: The degree to which it has embraced fan-work as wholely acceptable alongside the show. Many fandoms have well-developed libraries of fan-fiction and small mountains of fan-work, of course - we're hardly unique like that. And many more have other expressions of fan love, such as meticulously-curated wikis (Wookiepedia and Memory Alpha, looking at you).

But this fandom did something relatively unique, in that it not just accepted fan-work as interesting but embraced it practically on a level rivaling that of the original show itself. We set up streaming and hosting websites for the show itself, a wiki, and of course have plenty of discussions regarding the actual official content.

But we also built a searchable, tag-able website just to hold all our fan-words, and within that built a whole network of groups for everything from new-writer training to variously-themed stories. Then we did the same thing for fan-art, and did it again when the first one fell down. When the explosion of tumblrpone was happening (RIP that magnificent platform), it was accepted as cool to make "accurate" versions of the show characters - just as it was to make any number of alternate-universes and reinterpretations.

I can't speak to why, exactly, this fandom embraced fanwork to such a great degree. I can speculate on a few causes:

• The show itself contains relatively little media (compared to, say, a full season of 44-minute TV, a "cinematic universe", or novel series) and little/no extended storylines to debate and argue over. Fans turned to discussing each others' ideas instead.

• The show deliberately induced a sense of childlike wonder and expectation that there was more to see beyond the boundaries, and fans reacted by starting to color in the blank pages the show implied, hinted at, or only briefly touched on.

• The basic nature of FiM - a toy commercial being turned into a genuinely good storytelling platform - encouraged fans to believe they could produce good stories on a modest basis or origin as well.

But all of these speculate about why creators started creating, not why creators were embraced so thoroughly. That reasoning still eludes me.

Regardless of the reason why, however, I firmly believe that the embrace of fan work was a boon of unimaginable value to this fandom. Everyone knows comments and discussion are like food for content creators. Encouraging them to share their ideas - not just content consumers - is a major factor that widely sets us apart from so many others, and while I can't say FiM is my favorite fandom in every respect I wish others would embrace this idea as well.

Submitted December 27, 2018 at 09:56AM by Logarithmicon
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