4/13 Celebration Poem: Moirail For Sale

Happy 8th birthday, Homestuck!

As a fan-to-the-death, I've taken it upon myself to offer up some Alpha Rose/Dave poetry in celebration. To any Homestucks still out there: May your pesterchum accounts never be deactivated and your strife deck be ever of a deadly kind.

Moirail For Sale

There are many Daves,

But you are not mine--

There are fewer Roses,

And I am not yours.

It’s just how things have always been.

It’s a fact,

And nothing more.

And yet,

you are close.

More than anything I want my Dave,

But I would play your Rose

If you wanted--

I would offer up my comfort,

A moirail-for-sale--

Ha!  What a pitiful mop I am for pale,

All my diamondic trysts drift apart

Or turn from pale to pail--

Only when our friends were there to stop me did I keep from wanting you.

I should disclose these things to you;

It would only be fair.

But I don’t want to scare you off--

The only Dave I’ve met who tastes the barest bit like mine--

So I lie.

Through omission.

If you call that lying.

(do you?)

...

Moirail for Sale:

A slut for pale

Whose Diamondic desires always turn to the pail.

Morail for hire:

I’ll dampen your ire

And seal every kiss with a sharp lack of fire

(I am, after all, a wonderful liar.)

9 Suggestions For Remodeling The ReaderX Fic

     A while back I posted an essay in defense of reader insert fanfiction in which I stated at least twice that many, if not most, reader inserts are not well-written (but that everyone needed to calm their tits anyway).
   
     Other than reader insert writers practicing more, reading up on writing techniques, and improving their skills bit by bit (or more experienced writers jumping into the tidepool), there's not much that can solve the most prevalent issue with self inserts, which is, as I stated, lackluster technical skills in writing and story-telling.  With practice and with time, those things will come, but for now I do have a few suggestions that could improve the quality of ReaderX fics by restructuring some of the conventions of the genre.

     So now, for your consideration, I suggest to you:

1.  Do away with (y/n), (f/c), etc.

     Y/N, Your Name, F/C, Favorite Color, E/C, Eye Color, H/C, Hair color, F/F, Favorite Food, the list goes on; this vague parenthetical command is meant to draw the reader deeper into the narrative by allowing them to insert their own name, appearance, and various favorite things.

     The goal is noble, but the result is more distancing; having to read the clinical projection cues time after time only serves to remind us that we're reading a story, not experiencing it first-hand.  That's why Pokemon has you input your name before the game and then inserts it into the coding, rather than leaving a blank space or a (y/n) in the game text.

     In place of the parentheticals, a short description works better.  Because these stories are written in the second person, we're already experiencing the story as ourselves; it's okay to say, "You give them your name," or something like that.

     Doesn't, "You told them your name and they repeated it joyfully, thrusting their glasses in the air" flow better than, "'My name is (y/n).'  '(y/n)!' they shouted joyfully, thrusting their glasses in the air"?

     If something is going on that your character's name is said so often that it's necessary for it to be included in quotations rather than just in narration, an easy out is to have one of the other characters give "you" a nickname--either something cutesy/related to the fanwork, or something that has to do with the plot of your AU.  I'd be hard-pressed to find a place where a (y/n) is ever strictly necessary.

     There are a lot of places where the details are entirely superfluous anyway--because the author is already projecting their own tastes when they do things like design costumes, it seems silly to bring the audience out of the spell for the sake of a color.  Still, "She handed you a dress in your favorite color, much to your delight" is more seamless than "She handed you a (f/c) dress, much to your delight," and as I've discussed before, making sure your audience stays trapped in the reality of your story is The Most Important Thing, ESPECIALLY for a reader insert story.

2.  Fewer protagonists in default white

     As a white girl, I see myself reflected much more prevalently than any other race in pretty much every form of media.  The tides are turning of course, and many of us creative types are doing our damnedest to see more representation find its way into the public eye, but it's been hard work trying to break the back of this institution.

     But ReaderX fics are all about making sure that the audience is as absorbed as possible in the reality before them, right?  That's why we have the (y/n) (f/c) convention in the first place.  So it's extremely jarring to me when the author, who will be hard-pressed to describe concretely something as relatively inconsequential as an eye color or favorite type of burger, describes the POV character's skin color--invariably something along the lines of, "your peaches-and-cream complexion" or "the contrast between your white hand and his gray one."

     The white default is a setting that a lot of people haven't yet unlearned; we're taught from a young age that white skin is "normal," and the rest of the spectrum is "other," so when we go to read fiction a lot of people just assume that their characters are, of course, white!  And writers will do the same thing, which leads to entire series of books where the only characters who get a description of skin color are the ones that aren't white, because they are Not The Default.

     This is harmful for a lot of reasons, not least of all because it alienates people who aren't white and reinforces the idea that they are Not Normal.  In a reader insert story, it also reads as a statement from the author to any non-white person reading it that it wasn't meant for them to enjoy.  I know most people don't mean for it to come across that way, you just did what so many people do and went along with what you think of as the default skin tone, the same way we think of 5'4 as a default height for a woman or pizza as a default meal for Americans, but it can still hurt.

     If you had blue eyes and every ReaderX story you read had brown-eyed protagonists, you might feel excluded, right?  Like you were being ignored or worse, singled out--like you didn't belong in that fic, that "space."

     The best thing to do with a ReaderX fic in regards to skin color is just--don't mention it.  Unless race is super important (or you're some kind of alien creature with a canon skin color), leave it completely out of the equation.  Don't default to white; default to blank slate, the same way you did with the eye and hair colors.

3.  Give the character a stronger background/personality

     A lot of characters are these mostly blank slates with a tiny bit of personality and a smidgen of backstory.  Blank slate is great and all, especially with reader inserts, but part of the fun of imaging that you're in a different world is imagining yourself as having lived a different life.  In a lot of stories this is already a prerequisite--most of us don't live in the city that the story takes place in (if any of us do), and sometimes we're placed on entirely different planets, or in universes in which magic is real, etc.

     Don't be afraid to let the character have a bit of history.  Any detail you include in a story is going to make it so someone isn't going to be able to project themselves fully into that character without some cognitive dissonance, so you might as well make them interesting and less cardboard while you're at it.

     Giving a character a strong personality is also a risky business in this situation; you don't want it so strong that it's overpowering, because then people are going to be constantly saying, "I would never do that!"  Then again, the reason you read a ReaderX is because you'd never do what you're reading about doing.

     So go ahead and give us a strong, interesting personality.  Just make sure the character the audience is playing isn't too obnoxious; this is one of those times that a protagonist pretty much has to be likeable.  Otherwise the audience will feel like they're being insulted and will piss off.

4.  Less blushing please

     One thing that really gets my goat is how much blushing goes on in these stories; you'd think everyone had rosacea!  One blush for every three chapters should be the max, I'd say.  Some people may blush a lot in real life, but reading about it gets old. Especially when it's in almost every ReaderX.  

     Blushing is boring.  Blushing is the status quo.  It's time we break free of that.  And this is more than just about the blushing.  This is about a specific type of personality that we've seen a thousand million times, and maybe it's just person taste, but as a reader insert reader I am sick to death of blushing and stumbling over myself every other sentence.  I've been that person IRL; I don't need to read about being that way.

     Let your characters be confident, charmed and charming in return; let them be flustered when flustered is appropriate, sure, but don't make the protagonist go all stupid every time they accidentally touch the main love interest.  Most of us in real life hold our lives together pretty well, no matter how punchdrunk we are around our special someone, and don't let ourselves fall to pieces just because they know our name.

     We're not the stereotype that Disney created, and I think it's time that reader inserts explored a fuller range of emotion.

5.  More realistic flaws

      ReaderXes suffer from a lot of the same problems as OC fanfiction, because every reader insert is an OC on top of being a more-or-less blank slate.  One of those problems is the Mary Sue issue; no flaws.  Or, if there are flaws, only those which don't impact the plot.
 
     Problems are never their fault, they may stumble around cutely, but they're not going to do something like embarrass their date because they have no table manners, or become possessive or something of the like.  Try to give your characters flaws that will influence and even drive the plot; we're not perfect.  The protagonist doesn't have to be perfect, either.

     Alternatively, we see characters that are just walking Flaw-Bombs waiting to go off.  They're obnoxious, they make unnecessary drama, and no one should like them, yet for some reason everyone does.  Make sure your other characters are responding accordingly to the stimuli provided them, no matter how pretty your protagonist is.

6.  Fewer miscommunication plots

     Rule of thumb; if your plot can be resolved in under two minutes if your characters just sat and talked, it's not enough of a plot to warrant a serious story.  Miscommunication is great for comedy, but in serious plots it gets frustrating.

     The whole "This isn't what it looks like!" storyline, for example:  if a character can say, "Tom, he's my cousin," and the whole thing is resolved?  Not worth more than five hundred words as conflicts go.  If a character says "Tom, he's my cousin," but she's lying, on the other hand, or it's not the whole story, then that warrants a fuller investigation.

     Also, if your character is so jealous they can't even wait around for someone to explain themselves after being caught in a compromising position, they clearly don't trust their partner, which is a red flag as far as the health of the relationship goes.  In fact, if they're walking out on them without an explanation, they clearly don't respect their partner, and to me that's a "break the camel's back" kind of straw.

     Be careful with your melodrama.

7.  More male POV characters

     Or better yet; more characters with no specified gender.

     There may not be as many men/boys who read reader inserts as there are girls, but that may also just be a confirmation bias; how do you know they wouldn't like it if they aren't given a chance?  Plus, there are many girls who wouldn't mind adopting a male persona over the course of your story, and a lot of people who don't fit into the gender binary who would like to see themselves reflected in the story.

     More stories written with a broader audience focus would be beneficial; anyone can write a story from a male perspective now and again, and you can easily write a story in the second person without using gendered pronouns for the POV character.

     Give it a shot; let's make the protagonists a little more diversely applicable.

8.  More female love interests

     Male love interests are the default in ReaderX land, but there are a lot of people interested in the female characters of a given work, whether boys who like girls, girls who like girls, nonbinary folks who like girls, etc.

    Even outside the context of romance there's a dearth of female characters.  I'd like to see more involvement of the female characters in these types of works, not just as love interests but as friends, colleagues, even siblings.  Don't turn them into strawman bitches "getting in the way" of your self ship or ignore them altogether; give them a chance to get in the mix, too.

     I guess the title of number eight should really be More strong female characters, not just as love interests.

     And as a side note, friends in general are always good!  Too many ReaderX protagonists are lone wolves who have no one to talk to except the person they love; people need friends outside of a romantic relationship.  Whether it's a character or characters in the cast or an OC, let the insert have some companionship.

9.  More choose-your-own-adventure type stories

     These needn't be the complex type you see on the shelves of your local library, but I'm a sucker for a  ReaderX that sets me up with a storyline, then veers off into different paths that I can choose from.  Do I want to pursue this character, or this character?  (I'll probably choose one, then go back and read the other bc I'm a fiction ho, shhh ;) )

      This semblance of interaction makes the audience feel like a part of the story, and wraps them up further in the protagonist's skin; it gives us agency, and we all love to feel like our choices matter.  After all, if our choices matter it serves to reason that we matter, right?

   

     So there you have it folks; my take on how to improve the ReaderX genre as it stands.  Do you have any opinions on the ReaderX genre?  Do you have any suggestions I might be missing?  Or am I the only self-indulgent asshole with a writing blog?  Leave a comment below, so that I might one day embark a journey to become self-aware.  ;)

In Defense of ReaderX

     You may or may not know what I'm talking about with the title there.

     To start, some of you may have read my ode to fanfiction sometime back, in which I espoused the joys and even intimated the necessities of the craft.  Fanfiction is in my heart and soul and there's pretty much literally no downside; it allows fans of a work to express their love for it, critique its flaws, play around in the sandbox that was left to them, and even advertises the original work--there's more than one story/webcomic/movie I've read/watched/consumed primarily because my friends were writing fanfiction about it.

     Of course, fanfiction, like all fiction, has its downsides, like the dreaded (or maybe overblown?) Mary Sue character that wrankles everyone's hides, or the inevitable kinky stories that come about, inspiring nosebleeds and squick in roughly equal measure.  But perhaps most divisive, and extremely unique to the fanfiction genre (medium?) are ReaderX stories.

     These are stories that are typically told in the second person (the "you" form), and insert the reader as a character into the world of the story (or often an AU), as a potential love interest or current paramour to one or more of the characters within.  Occasionally these stories are told in a platonic sense, the Reader just hanging out with their best buds or going on an adventure, but it's usually romantic and often sexual.

     These types of stories take Mary Sue to the next level--Mega Sue perhaps?  MarySuetron?  Sailor Maryoon?--and don't even try to disguise the self-insert into the narrative; it is blatantly and purposefully an adventure of wish-fulfillment in romance land, often poorly written and more than a little clunky in execution.  This is largely because these types of stories are usually written by young (usually teen or preteen), inexperienced writers still trying to get a feel for how to write a story in general.  To compound the issue, that very phenomena creates an echo chamber of young, inexperienced writers with very few solid examples of how to pull off certain techniques which are in actuality quite advanced--the very idea of a ReaderX, while an old tradition, is still experimental, seldom done, and more extremely seldom done well.  How often have you seen someone write well just in the second person?

     R.L. Stine, Andrew Hussie, and a few fanfiction writers are the only examples I can think of.  Then you add an attempt to actually make it about the audience member sitting at home--not just a character which the audience member assumes the shape of in the telling--and it becomes a thousand times more complex.

     But many are still enjoyable despite the clunkiness, and some are even excellent in quality!  Like any other genre of fiction, there's a whole spectrum of quality.

     And yet, regardless of the quality of any individual piece, the ReaderX is a genre which is extremely polarizing; it seems like you either love it (in which case you consume and produce it voraciously) or you absolutely detest it, in which case you either distance yourself from it or make it part of your life's work to shit on it.

     To be clear, there are a lot of very valid reasons for people to hate the genre; some people don't care for second person, some people can't separate certain conventions of the genre from the potential that lies beneath, some people just don't care for it, and that's fine.  I'm not writing this to insist that everyone love ReaderX stories; what I am doing is entreating you to listen, open your mind, and allow me to make my case in their defense--and thereby, in the defense of those who write and read ReaderX.

   
     There's this thing that's very prevalent in the fanfiction community in which people are unable (or unwilling) to separate a fictional work from its author, so when something bothers someone they take it out on the person who wrote the piece.  Sometimes this is rooted in validity--when an author writes something that very clearly promotes queerphobia, misogyny, or racism, for instance, the desire to correct them stems from a good place, and is usually the right thing to do.

     But often the issue isn't with the author at all--the reader just doesn't like the genre of the fic, or the way it's written, or something about it squicks them, and instead of just saying, "I don't like this" or trying to give the author constructive criticism, they take it out on the author for having the audacity to write something so atrocious, how dare they, and they lump anyone and everyone who writes in that genre into this category of HORRIBLE BAD EVIL and toss them in the public fires of shame.

     Again, there's nothing wrong with not liking something!  But publicly shaming an entire group of people for the things they like to read and write isn't a solution to the problem; the solution is to not look that thing up.  Put it on Tumblr Blacklist, read the tags or summary before you dive in, and avoid it if you know you don't like it; don't beat kids up for liking something.  Because that's what you're doing, in this specific instance; beating up kids.

     ReaderX fics are silly, self-indulgent, are often poorly written, contain too little substance, and can on occasion develop their own cultish subfollowings that are breeding grounds for toxicity (like any and every work of literature that has ever existed), and they're difficult at times to take seriously. but they aren't meant to be taken seriously!

     In my experience, ReaderX fics are written and read by preteen and teenage girls that are absorbed in a fictional work to the exclusion of social lives they probably didn't have to begin with.  They have crushes on the fictional characters in a given work--as many people of all ages, sexes, and sexualities do--and they want to explore that attraction in the only place possible; fiction.  There's no chance that they'll ever meet these characters in real life, let alone have a relationship with them, and they know that.  They're not deluding themselves into thinking that the laws of reality will bend so they can smooch APH Germany or go superhero hunting with Megamind.

     The kids who wind up deeply entrenched in ReaderX culture are often depressed and isolated.  They're the type of person who has always retreated to fiction because the real world didn't want them, and all they want is to be wanted; they need that outlet, those twenty minutes of smiling as they pretend that this person they've attached themselves to cares about them.  It's no different from pretending that you're your favorite character as you read a book, except the story in question was specifically written with that in mind.

     To kids like this, ReaderX stories can be very therapeutic.  It's like daydreaming on paper, but sharing that daydream in such a way that others can experience it too, exposing themselves to daydream scenarios that they never would have thought up by themselves while simultaneously allowing themselves to step outside their own heads.  

      As one of those kids myself, ReaderX stories helped me survive depression.  It definitely wasn't the prevailing reason that I lived through it, but it helped; in the seven and a half years during which my depression was at its worst, I probably put in enough hours reading ReaderXes to fill up at least a month.  ReaderXes allowed me to leap into the head of a blank template that had friends that loved her and a romantic interest that valued her, and because it didn't just happen in my head, like a daydream, I wasn't beholden to all the things my brain insisted were Cold Hard Fact--the "you're unloveable"s, the "this is stupid"s, the "everyone hates you"s that often made daydreams unsustainable and entirely unsatisfying.

     Even if a kid isn't depressed and has no mental health issues, if they're just a perfectly healthy child with an active imagination and they want to indulge themselves in a fluffy adventure of which they're the central figure, so what?  It's as healthy as daydreaming, and more productive, since any writing at all is practice in story-telling and reading can teach a great many things (even if it's just what not to do).

     Actually, it may be healthier than daydreaming, which has been linked to Alzheimer's; daydreaming can cause false memory paths to be created which go nowhere--they trail off and wither, taking up space in the brain.  At least if it's written down, it has a basis in the concrete world, and when read it's neurologically no different from reading a short story.

     Reading and writing ReaderXes is really no different from playing pretend as a child and trying to save the princess from the tower, though admittedly it is a less physically active pursuit.

     Are ReaderXes the pinnacle of literature?  Hell no!  But there's nothing wrong with them, and I think it's time we stopped acting like there was.  More to the point, it's time we stopped acting like there's something wrong with reading or writing them.  When you attack someone for reading/writing something you don't like, you're telling them that it's not all right to like that thing, and in my experience the kids who revel in self-indulgent literature are the ones who are most likely to believe you when you badmouth them.  Saying they're shitty isn't revealing new information, you're just reinforcing what they already believe about themselves, and shoving them deeper into the very mindset that made many of them flee to self-inserts in the first place.

     I mean for Christ's sakes, just let kids be kids!  The act of enjoying a story about themselves isn't hurting you, or anyone else for that matter.  You liked ridiculous stuff when you were that age, too, and no matter how far you try to run, you'll never be able to escape that; nor should you.  Interest in things that seem silly or unproductive is nothing to be ashamed of; we're all human, and we all like to indulge ourselves from time to time.

     So next time you're thinking about tearing someone down for reading or writing ReaderX fanfiction, type "Reader/[your favorite character]" into AO3 and see if you still hate them when you're done.

     Or better yet, just don't.  Keep your complaints to the fics themselves if you have to, and away from the people who write them.  Otherwise you might have to put up with me *cracks knuckles* Tourette's Girl, protector of outcast children everywhere!

     (But seriously guys, being mean to kids isn't cool and it doesn't make you "edgy" or anti-establishment; it just makes you a bully.  Grow up.  Learn to separate the wrongs of an author from flaws in their artwork.)

4 Basic (Novel/Short Story Writing) Formatting Tips

     I don't have a lot of time to just sit down and read anymore--it's one of the things I really really miss about being a kid.  I devoured It in maybe a week as a ten-year-old, and when I was twelve I once read eight 200 page books within twenty-four hours.  Watching that huge stack of library books lower book by book was so satisfying, and the books themselves were wonderful.

     My point there kids is, read while you're young.  Do as much as you can, because the older you get the tougher it's going to be to find that time and cultivate those skills.

     Anyway, now that I'm an Adult™ I have trouble finding time to read--so most of my reading on a day-to-day basis consists of plays I have to read for class or, most voluminous, fanfiction.  Some fanfiction is really really good.  Other fanfictions are really, really bad.  

     The vast majority are okay.  But there are a lot of good fanfictions that get a total pass from me just because of the formatting--the ideas are solid, the writing is fine, maybe it's not the best work in the world but I'd read a couple thousand words if the formatting just weren't so nonstandardized.

     And I get it--schools don't teach you things like this anymore.  No teacher ever told me to do any of these things--with the exception of indentations when starting new paragraphs, I had to teach myself how to write and format by extensive reading on my own.

         So in the interest of helping writers, new and old, fanfiction or original content, here are some of my formatting pet peeves.


1.  One Paragraph, Many Speakers

     Make sure that when a new character starts speaking, you switch paragraphs.  Even if this means having several one-sentence paragraphs, do it.  It'll make the work more streamlined and less cluttered, it increases the white-space-to-text ratio, and it very clearly indicates that someone new is speaking, meaning you can use fewer dialogue tags, and your audience doesn't have to put in too much brainpower.

     Your audience sometimes needs to be able to work things out on their own, it's in the contract, but when it comes to formatting, don't make them work any harder than they absolutely have to.

2.  "  " or '  ' Used For Thoughts

     This gets me.  This gets me really hard.  I'm sitting there, reading a fic or short story online, doo doo da loo, la la la, and I see the character starts speaking, and I get into character speech mode.  "Dorothy Anne should be shot," she thought.

     And I always have to double-take--thought?  Thought?  What?  Quotation marks indicate speech, not thought, that's why they're quotation marks, because we're using them to quote a person's speech.

     Almost as bad are the using of 'apostrophes' to indicate thought, which just irks me on a level I don't completely understand.  It's a thing, okay, we've all got them, and this thing is that these tactics confuse the reader--even if it's just momentary, that's still a moment that the reader is taken out of the story, that they have to double-back and approach from a different angle, and the goal of a writer is to minimalize those moments as close to completely as possible.

     To avoid this confusion, there are two ways to indicate thought that aren't intrusive--you can just state it;         She thought this was a really bad idea; he thought about the cat on the roof, and wondered how it got there.

     That method is quick and simple, though it creates a little more distance, and summarizes more than it shows exactly what a character is thinking.  If you're looking to quote the exact thought, I recommend the second method; italics:       Thus is ludicrous, she thought, climbing into her car.  "Hand me a Kleenex."  There's no way Jonathan could have done any of this.

     This way the thought is clearly separated from typical narration, and when the character does speak aloud, the audience can tell what's being said aloud and what's being privately pondered upon.

3.  '  ' For Speech Spoken Aloud

     Again, quotation mark drama will be the death of me.  Here's a quick rundown of what kind of quotation signifier to use in different situations:

Speech:  Quotation marks.  Always quotation marks.
     Ex,  "Hey Mom," Jenny called, "Can you help me with this?"
Exceptions:  I really need to punch someone in the face, Jenny thought, and didn't realize she'd spoken aloud until every eye in the room was on her./He asked his mother for a tissue and she told him to go fuck himself.

Quotations outside of speech:  Quotation marks.
     Ex.  He took the "pencil box" and buried it deep beneath the ground.

Quotations within speech:  Double apostrophe
     Ex.  "Your 'pencil box' is really starting to unnerve me," she said, backing away slowly.

4.  Massive Blocks Of Text

     A paragraph that goes on for an entire page isn't one most people are likely to sit through--not unless you are really, superbly, extremely  skilled, but if that's the case you're unlikely to do this.  Big paragraphs in and of themselves are fine in moderation, and sometimes necessary.  But many many big paragraphs can, and should, be broken up into smaller bite-sized chunks.

     Sometimes, especially online, an author breaks up their paragraphs into perfectly manageable bits, but due to the lack of a double-space option, the paragraphs clump together to form a massive text wall nonetheless, which drives off prospective readers.  In this situation, make sure you press "enter" twice between paragraphs; this will serve in the place of the double-space option and help your readers break the text up.  Plus, it helps them avoid losing their place.

     ... I should probably stop forgetting to do this on my own blog.  Whoops.  Well, I never said I was perfect, did I?

     If you have any formatting or fanfiction pet peeves you'd like to share, feel free to drop them in the comments section below!

The Importance of Fanfiction

   The first story I ever wrote was called "The Hecatense Goose;" I was three and could neither read nor write, so my mother wrote it down and it was eventually lost.  I have no idea what the story was about.
     But my second story was a series of scribbles that told a tale of Peter Pan's post-Hook adventures, and my third was a sequel to the then-unfinished Series of Unfortunate Events books.  At the time I did not, of course, know anything about fanfiction or copywright laws, but since then I've done a lot of growing as a writer--yet still fanfiction calls to me.
     It's a polarizing issue.  As a once-B-rated-star of the Megamind fandom, I am very biased in favor of fanfiction, because it's fun, it's flattering (I can't think of anything better than having such a wide fan base that they take inspiration from and write about your world and characters!  How great would that be??  ((Super great is how))), and reading/writing it can help you grow as a writer.
     Here are a few ways it's beneficial to a writer.

     Fanfiction can....


1.  Be great place to start

     At any level of writing skill fanfiction is great practice, but it's especially good for beginners, since it allows you to create stories with pre-established characters in a pre-established world, often in a pre-established style, which gets you comfortable with developing plot, using detail to your advantage, and using correct grammar, spelling, punctuation, and format.
     Once you're comfortable with the writing basics, it's easy to rocket through the ranks, stepping up one rung at a time rather than going in all at once--you start deviating in style, then move the characters from one world to another, and finally start creating OCs (usually either using author inserts or child-of-PC characters at first).  Before you know it, you're creating fanfiction that's only tangentially related to the original story--sometimes barely related at all.
     When writing original content there's a very sharp learning curve--you essentially go from zero to three-sixty in nothing flat, but fanfiction allows you to build at a pace you're comfortable with, without feeling pressured to be your best most original self right off the bat.

2.  Offer a source of feedback

     One great thing about fanfiction is that, at least when published online, it offers you a source of feedback through the fandom.  When you do well, this means instant gratification, which can make you feel amazing, but arguably the more valuable form of feedback comes in the form of constructive criticism and suggestions from the audience.  You learn a lot about spelling and grammar--always useful--and even more about story structure and character development.
     Whether what you're writing is offensive, or just poorly executed, it's always nice to have eyes on your words, people who can tell you when your characterization is inconsistent or when you need to plug a major plothole or if your "super secret" ending/plot twist is visible from a mile away.  And while beta readers and critique partners are great after the fact, feedback from the community usually occurs as you publish each chapter, which allows you to make changes as you go forward rather than having to double back--and by implementing changes as you go forward, you'll remember to implement them in future projects, too.

3.  Be inspiring

     Fanfiction is great even if you don't write it.  Just reading fanfiction can be inspiring, as I mentioned here; good fanfiction makes you want to run out and write a story based on X idea or Y character arc, and bad fanfiction makes you want to write something amazing just to prove to yourself that you can do it.  It's a good idea.  You should do it.

4.  Give you a sense of accomplishment

     Fanfiction is, I find, relatively easy to produce--there's a lot of work that's already been done by the original creator, which means that a lot of your characters don't need descriptions, a lot of places don't need explaining, and a lot of events are already common fandom knowledge--yet there's still a TON of work that goes into making a truly quality fic.  When you finish a fic, or a fic chapter, it feels amazing--when people respond positively, you feel like you're on cloud fucking eleven; it helps with your sense of self and it increases your confidence, and when you feel good about yourself it becomes a lot easier to make progress on the next or concurrent project.
     Progress begets progress, so sometimes it's great to use a little project (like a fanfic oneshot) to jump-start a larger project--like a couple thousand word down payment on your new MS.
     Plus, again, you feel really great, and who doesn't like feeling really great?

5.  Community

     Because the entire basis of fanfiction is that you're writing in a world someone else has created, the people you're trying to reach are already fans of what you're watching/reading, and, as fandom flocks together just like birds of paper feathers, you're not just pitching to individuals but to a ready-made community.
     One of the best ways to become a fully realized member of a fandom community (and through doing so find a place where you belong, people to help you in your quest for perfection, friends to see you through until the end) is to write fanfiction (or make fanart but, while I am very enthusiastic about art, this is not an art blog).  The more obsessive you are about a fandom, the more fanfiction becomes something akin to a need, and the best fillers of those needs are gods on high for a fandom nerd.  If you're fanficcing on the same account where you present your real life persona, it also creates a community that revolves around your work, which can be a great marketing platform when you start launching original content.

6.  Make someone else's day

     You know you have done your job as a writer when someone tells you that you have made their day.  The only thing that even comes close to describing the feeling is "euphoria."  This, like before, creates an increased sense of self, a greater feeling of self-confidence, and a driving desire to continue working.  Writing is an addiction, and like all addictions, the more you do it, the more you want to do it--and the more people agree with your addiction, the better it feels to give in.
     Also...

7.  Fear of disappointing your fans keeps you trucking along at a good speed

     One of the things I have trouble with is meeting my own deadlines.  This is really bad for a writer.  I do, however, do very well at meeting deadlines when someone else is waiting for the update with bated breathe.
     When I was especially absorbed in the fanfiction world, I could pump out several chapters a week in a good month--sometimes several a day, because when you know people are enjoying your work it, again, encourages you to work more, but it also encourages you to work toward not disappointing them.  The last thing you want when you have fans is to lose them.  Worse than just losing them is losing them not to your own incompetence, but to laziness, of all things.  It's definitely an incentive, and if you smarten up and get organized with your attempts to deliver quality content at death-defying speeds (I didn't), you can put the same updating strategies you use with fanfiction on your writing.
     Maybe you have a flow chart, or a friend you can submit chapters to the same way you'd submit to your chosen hosting website--whichever way, organization in one realm of your writing life should definitely lend itself to organization in others, and as they say, an organized life is an organized mind (or something like that), which lends itself to productivity.

8.  No limits, no consequences

     Addendum:  There are no limits in original writing either, and there are some minor consequences to writing (and publishing) bad fanfiction.
     hOWEVER; it's easier to write without limits when you're playing with someone else's characters.  It feels like there's less to lose--you can't screw it up, because the worst thing that happens if you do is you need to write something else, or maybe apologize for a few mistakes.  You're more likely to follow tangents and do silly, seemingly unnecessary things, or kill off or bring back characters at will, playing with the rules when it seems convenient (or refusing to ever play with the rules, whichever isn't your default), which can be goldmines for your creativity.   Just because it's not being used in a "real" project now doesn't mean you won't use it later.
     There are a lot of pressures fanfiction allows you to let go of, which is important practice for when you need to forget about society while you write your magnum opus.  One of the best things you can do for your writing is allow your creativity to run wild, because you can always--and should always--edit later.

     The long and the short of it is, fanfiction is amazing.  Use it as an outlet, use it as practice, use it just for fun--any way you dice it, it's worth whatever time you do--or don't!--want to put into it.