Coexistence in the Hanfic World

by: Flash (journal)

Within the Hanfic community, there are quite a few factions. There are people who write and read only Hancest, people who write and read only non-Hancest, and people who really don’t care as long as it’s a good story. I personally fall more in the middle than anything, so I thought I’d take a look at both sides and see what the big problems were with why they just can’t seem to get along.

What I found, and some people may disagree but this is the easiest point to pinpoint, is that some people are overly defensive of their likes and dislikes and feel the need to shout from the rooftops that “Hancest is wrong” or that “Hetfic is lame.” Instead of sticking with things they know they’ll like to read, they purposefully seek out things they hate just so they can tell the author how gross they are or how lame they are.

It’s a common enough occurrence in most fandoms, but it does make blood boil, and I think I’ve seen more eruptions caused by it in the Hanfic world than anywhere else.

Because once someone attacks your favorite genre, you obviously have to defend, right? Once someone lobs mudballs into your sandbox, you have to get your own mudballs and lob them into theirs or else they’ll think they can just lob mudballs at you whenever they please and you just can’t have that, amirite?

That may be some people’s thinking, but it doesn’t really get the job done, because once the defensive mudballs start getting lobbed, the other faction has to lob their own defensive mudballs which then means you have to launch more and then they have to launch more and you have to launch more and…

You get the picture?

Anyway, the point is, if someone starts lobbing mudballs at you, don’t start lobbing the back. Be the bigger man (or woman, or other, whatever you may be). Take a deep breath and remind yourself that these loud, mudball throwing haters aren’t representative of every single person in that other faction. In fact, they’re usually a pretty small minority who just happen to be really loud and excellent at mudball throwing.

And if you start lobbing back at the whole group? Only the inital lobbers will know what the hell is going on and everyone else is going to get particularly pissed and, of course, start lobbing their mudballs, and only then will it turn into the actual Genre War (or mudball war, if you’re still in kindergarten).

The best thing for the Hanfic community as a whole is to ignore that loud, angry, mudball slinging minority. Yes, even if they comment on your fic to tell you you’re a horrible person. Because no matter how loud they get? They’re just a few of many. And if we start ignoring those mudball slingers they’ll eventually get bored and go away (most of them, anyway, some will stay…but we can always laugh at them) and the people who don’t care what you write will be left and the Hanfic Community will be able to coexist and come together to celebrate the love of writing, the love of reading, and the love of Hanson.

Because it isn’t about Hancest or Het or Slash or Gen, it’s about telling a good story.