#and 2. can teach you things youd never have thought of to include in ur existing processes for the art you really wanna commit to

[krogans-give-the-best-cuddles]

I generally think that the advice that if you want to make x thing you have to exist in x spaces is true... like if you make a movie but don't watch movies that would be shit, and the same with original fiction.

But I am tired with the disdain that goes both ways in the fiction/fanfiction spaces. Like I will see people be like "you won't get better at writing until you start reading og fiction" which is like. 1. Are they trying to write og fiction or fanfiction? Bc if it's fanfiction. A genre in its own right. By the logic of if u want to get better at x then you must participate in x, then they really only need other fanfiction 2. Not everyone wants to make original fiction. There's nothing wrong with that. The sort of disdain that treats fanfiction as training wheels is so annoying

Plenty of kinds of fiction rely on already created characters, and thinking that the only valuable stories rely on entirely original characters is foolish. Mythological retellings, Sherlock Holmes retellings, and comic books often have existing characters one is adapting. That's a different skill set one needs than the one for completely original fiction, just like fanfiction has.

And when people who exclusively read fanfic act like og fiction has nothing to offer, isn't diverse enough, isn't xyz, they're also being condescending and wrong. Like. Og fiction has everything you could want from fanfic. Except you gotta meet the characters the first time.

Everybody needs to get off their artistic high horses and come down in the dirt and just start learning and creating from one another, as is just.