Given that I revived this series in part because of AO3’s Hugo win, I was extra-thrilled when 2019 Hugo winner Zen Cho agreed to participate! And you should absolutely read her Hugo-winning novelette, “If at First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again,” which is a dear and lovely story that I adored.
How did you get into fanfic? Do you remember the first fandoms you read/wrote in?
We got a computer when I was 9 and the first thing I did was go online and look to see if there were any books by L. M. Montgomery that I could read for free on the Internet. I was not successful, either because the books hadn’t been added to Project Gutenberg yet or because I didn’t really know how to use a search engine. I ignored the Internet for the next few years, but as a kid I was perpetually starved for reading material so eventually I went back online and managed to find a couple of Star Trek fanfic sites. The rest was history!
The fandoms I started reading in were Star Trek (Next Generation and Voyager, lots of Mary Sues) and Disney’s Gargoyles. I had a Hanfic phase, Hanfic being RPF for the boyband Hanson, and a Sherlockian phase during which I got obsessed with Sherlock Holmes pastiches, especially Laurie R. King’s Mary Russell novels.
I read and lurked for several years before I posted my first fanfic. It was a Harry Potter vignette about Narcissa Malfoy. I wasn’t a big fan of the books or all that interested in the canon version of the Malfoys, but I had read a lot of HP fanfic! I only really started writing fanfic regularly from around age 16 and my first real fandom was Good Omens.
You’ve been a fanfic reader since you were eleven so you’ve seen some of fandom’s major changes! Have you seen changes in what fic looks like? What’s better about now, and what things about the fandom past do you miss?
I read fanfic irregularly these days, so I’m kind of out of date on modern fandom. There have been big new trends that were unthought of years ago – A/B/O is one, coffeeshop AUs another.
People talk a lot more about social justice issues now, which is mostly good. That said, I do think one of the nicest things about fanfic is how it’s all about desire – not just sexual desire, but the desire for narratives, fictional dynamics and character interactions you don’t get much of elsewhere. And I think people can get overfocused on being right or morally pure and miss what to me is a really fundamental part of fanfic, the centrality of that desire. It’s definitely a positive change that people are discussing racism, homophobia, ableism etc. more openly in fanfic fandom, though. I just don’t like that sort of thing being used as ammo in shipwars.
I suppose one of the biggest changes is how mainstream fanfic is now. I can’t count the number of writers and other industry pros I know in SFF, romance and YA who are open about writing and reading fanfic. There’s very little stigma attached to it anymore.
How has fanfic (reading or writing it, or just being in fandom!) influenced your professional work? You’ve spoken about being very aware of the way books of different eras and genres are in conversation with each other, as well as of the gaps that period fiction leaves unfilled. Do you think that awareness comes from a fanficcy ethos?
The consciousness of intertextuality is definitely a very fanfic thing, but I think my awareness of the gaps left unfilled comes more from the gap between what I read growing up in Malaysia – fiction in English, almost exclusively by Western writers – and the world I lived in IRL. That was a huge gap and it was present with the fanfic I read and wrote, too. This was actually the main reason I stopped reading and writing fanfic in my early twenties and moved to original fiction. I couldn’t find what I needed in either the published fiction I was reading or fanfic, so I had to make my own.
Fanfic was foundational to my development as a writer, though. The most important thing it taught me was to chase my joy – to uncover what makes a story live for me and cling to it. When you’re writing you’re always trying to get to the thing that’s so true, that you feel so strongly about, that you struggle to say it out loud. Because fanfic isn’t constrained by the demands of commerce or respectability, it’s a really good space for taking creative and emotional risks.
Are there particular fics or authors that influenced you or that you often go back to?
astolat is an unfailing comfort read for me, especially her Master & Commander fic. I find her inspiring in general, both in her approach to a professional writing career and how she participates in fandom. I’ve always loved Daegaer‘s Good Omens fic and I’m thrilled she’s written some more recent stories following the TV series. And I’ve never watched Highlander: The Series, but for some reason I read loads of HL fic as a teenager, and my favourite author in the fandom was Sylvia Volk, who wrote these amazing Dunnett-style historicals about Methos, with vivid settings, wonderful prose and wholly convincing OCs. I can’t work out why she isn’t a super famous fantasy author. Perhaps she is.
What do you love best about fanfic as a medium? And are there things about the fic world that you wish would change/improve?
I know the heart wants what it wants and I’m slightly contradicting some of the things I’ve said above – but I wish fanfic writers and readers would invest as much time and passion and excitement in female characters as they do in male characters.
Tell me some of your favorite tropes! And/or: Are there any tropes you really hate except for That One Fic that wore it best?
I like anything that imposes intimacy on characters – arranged marriage, oops we don’t know/like each other but now we have a soul bond, having to bring up a kid together. Also, pining – especially if two characters are pining after each other but don’t know it – and characters working together for a shared goal. I’m too old to understand soulmate marks and I hate how A/B/O has taken over fandom.
Could you share some fic recs for fandom newbies?
I always recommend The Good Student by Sylvia Volk. You probably don’t need to know anything about Highlander except the basic idea that they’re Immortals and go around cutting each other’s heads off. I suppose it’s gen, or maybe smarm. It’s supremely elegant and the ending is perfect.
Zen Cho is the author of a short story collection (Spirits Abroad, Fixi) and two historical fantasy novels (Sorcerer to the Crown and The True Queen, both published by Ace and Macmillan). She is a winner of the Crawford, British Fantasy and Hugo Awards, and a finalist for the Locus and Astounding Awards. She was born and raised in Malaysia, resides in the UK, and lives in a notional space between the two.