the feminist librarian reads

Sarah:  [Laughs] I will confess that for a really long time, I didn’t quite get fanfiction.  Like, I didn’t quite get why that was a thing.  And then I realized, once I experienced books and stories that created a fandom around them – and television series – I realized, oh, it’s for all the things that aren’t there that you wish were there so that you can be in that world a little longer, even if you’re constructing your own entry into it.

Bree:  Yes!

Sarah:   You want to be in this world longer, so you’re going to find a way to be in it, even if you have to write it yourself.

Bree:  Yes.

Sarah:  That is an enormous amount of creative dedication and enthusiasm, and I didn’t, it’s not like I was ever like, oh, fanfic, that’s dumb.  I didn’t mock it; I just didn’t get it.  Nope.

Bree:  Well, and you know, I wrote fanfiction.  That’s how I started writing.  I was, you know –

Sarah:  As a lot of people do.

Bree:  Yep.  I mean, I wrote Star Wars fanfiction, I wrote X-Men movie fanfiction.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Bree:  I mean, I loved to – and it was always, you want to write, you think, well, I loved that, but what if they had done –

Sarah:  This!  Yep.

Bree:  So it’s, it’s a way to engage with something that you love, and it’s just crazy passion, and –

Sarah:  And it’s a deep dive in a, a way that lets you, that lets you be in that world more.

Bree:  Yes.

Sarah:  And get to be –

Bree:  And that’s what we all want to do.

Sarah:  Yep.

Bree:  We want, you know, want to belong to these, these worlds that have, like, captured our imagination.