In defense of fanfiction: Game devs share how writing fanfiction kickstarted a career in games
Pixar's Disney+ original movie Turning Red is turning heads. It's a fun romp about a 13-year-old girl named Meilin "Mei" Lee discovering a big family secret that turns her into a giant red panda—right as she's slamming into puberty and all its wonderful side effects. It's cute, it's sincere, and today, it's got game developers talking on social media about fan fiction.
Why? Some predictably sour reasons. A conservative-leaning backlash against Turning Red has been brewing for a few months now, and this weekend it manifested with a review bomb campaign on Rotten Tomatoes, complaining against everything from the diverse cast to the "unrelatable" plot (for more on that cringe-worthy critique, you can read about the cast's pushback).
One pattern among the harsh reviews was a critique about Mei's habit for fanfiction. "I had to turn it off after 10 [minutes], after I saw the main character drawing fanfiction as a 13 year old," one reviewer wrote. "It left me uncomfortable that a 13 year old was doing this in a Pixar film."
They then noted that they would rather watch Cars 2.
If you haven't seen the movie, the subtext is this: Mei's not just "drawing fanfiction," she's actively fantasizing about a boy she has a crush on. If you ever had a crush on someone but didn't know what it was, it's very relatable. This reviewer and others have taken serious umbrage with the idea of a 13-year old realizing she's romantically interested in other people and is manifesting that interest through art and fiction.
The burgeoning backlash has been met by both fervent defense of the movie's fans and an even more rousing defense by fanfiction (fanfic) writers. And among the ranks of those fanfic writers were a great many game developers--not just game
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