pendency

Always intriguing when reading highly praised fics in fandoms I'm not participating in, as mostly my reaction is a bit 'meh'. So much of fanfic experience (rightly) depends on what one brings to the fanfic from the source material.

Except then there's those few words-of-fire fics I read where I knew nothing about the fandom, they were just unspeakably good stories using typically fannish tropes but in clever yet genuine and affectionate ways. They were almost like fanfics of...fanfiction itself? Fanfics of slash as a fannish trope? A tribute to the tribute? Hence they stood alone from the source material, but probably wouldn't read well as standalones from fandom.