Fic: Why Fanfiction is Taking Over the World

Becoming Bella Swan - Randi Flanagan (BellaFlan)

Hey, you created me. I didn't create some loser alter ego to make myself feel better. Take some responsibility! 

--Tyler Durden, Fight Club

Part One--Lost in Meyer 

No story is an island. That is to say, the act of reading a novel affects it--every reader is a participant in the story, whether she imagines herself in place of the protagonist, or she's taking a voyeuristic approach. When a story stays with you, when you think about it and dream of what happens after the final page, you are writing a fanfiction. When you apply critical thought to a text, you are participating in the novel.  

In fanfiction, a Mary Sue is a self-insertion into the world of your source material. Example: the BBC miniseries Lost in Austen drops an OC, or other character, into the universe of Pride and Prejudice. Amanda is dissatisfied with her life and uses Austen's world as a form of escapism. She wreaks havoc in the world, but does her best to set things straight, having an obsession with the canon text.  

But what if we insert an OC or Mary Sue who doesn't want things to stay true to canon? 

In 2008, Bella Swan stared at me--all dishwater brown--through the pages of Twilight, and I wanted to grab her by lackluster hair and smack her several times. "You're a coward!" I screamed at her, "a selfish bitch thrown into a world of magic and terror and . . . really hot men! Do something other than brood and trip over your own feet." There was nothing about this weak, selfish girl that interested me, yet I couldn't put the book down. In fact, I read the entire series several times. 

Clearly, Bella Swan needed to be replaced. 

For all of its faults, I was drawn into the fantasy world that is Twilight. I wanted to live in that world, to play in it, and to imagine what I would do if I were Bella. Yes, I wanted to become Bella Swan. And this is how I discovered fanfiction, because as it turns out, an active community of at least 50,000 readers and writers also want to be her to some degree. 

Fanfiction in the Twilight fandom is often reactive rather than written as tribute to canon. We tear apart Meyer's universe and rebuild it at our whim. As a reader of fanfiction, I want to experience what is missing from canon: genitalia. As a writer of fanfiction, I wanted to have a very stern conversation with our heroine, Bella Swan, and by extension, her creator. 

So I did what any rational person would do, of course: I took Stephenie Meyer's characters hostage. My experimental fanfiction, "Becoming Bella Swan," was an exercise in critique by self-insertion. My protagonist was essentially my id setting fire to the Twilight universe and playing in the ashes. And no Swan rose from Phoenix, Arizona in this particular fanfiction; a thirty-something, broken woman woke up in a mental institution in Tacoma, Washington, faced with the task of becoming Bella Swan. Isabella Flanagan, my alter ego, gave Bella Swan a voice to scream with.

Part Two--Fucking in Twilight 

So here's a personal question every woman needs to answer for herself: if you could fuck your way through the Twilight universe without any consequences, what would you do?  

No, I'm serious! Imagine a universe without consequences, where you can revisit themes the author neglected to resolve, and you can give Edward and Jacob their cocks, since Meyer seemed to have forgotten men have them. 

Fanfiction makes us God in a world that doesn't belong to us--it lets us break through the proverbial fourth wall. 

And while we're there, oh God, do we want to fuck Edward Cullen. But why?