When I first sat down to write this article, I thought I would be writing a short piece, a witty and humorous defence of a type of writing that I unashamedly enjoy. A quick glimpse into the much overlooked world of fluffy fan fiction and why people make fun of it. In all honesty, I thought the piece would be a little like the fiction I am writing about, a puff piece.

However, when I combined research, thought and discussion with my fellow Zendomites, I was suddenly hurtling down a different road. I discovered that there was more to this story, that there existed deep depths to be delved to, opinions to be shattered, and plenty of questions to be answered.

Fluffy fan fiction depends on one key component: bringing happiness to the reader. Fluffy stories are the ones that leave you all warm and fuzzy without having to jump through the hoops of angst or having to crawl under the barbed wire of doom. You rarely cry over fluffy fan fiction, instead preferring to laugh and smile. Whilst fluffy is probably considered the direct opposite of angst fiction, the term ‘fluffy’ does not automatically belong to any story without angst. There are a number of angst-free romances, comedies and adventure stories that are not considered fluffy, instead falling into the wide middle ground between the two terms.

Along with a good feeling, fluff incorporates the elements of romance and humour. Romance is not compulsory in fluff, but romantic stories often bear the tag of fluff. Romance and fluffy fic go hand in hand for a very simple reason: it makes us feel good. We want to see our favourite characters together, watching their happiness leaves us happy, with inexplicable smiles and lasting tingling feelings. Love makes us feel good, so we believe it will make our characters fell good, and then the good feelings bounce out at us again. Love is the sweetener in the fluffy souffle.

If romance is the sweetener, then humour is the egg white of our souffle of fluff. People tell me that fluff can be written without humour, but no one can really remember a story where this occurs. Ninety-nine percent of fluff aims to bring the happy in one form or another, whether it’s one smile worthy image, or the whole story which has you snorting your coffee out your nose. If your humour falls flat, and your readers fail to laugh, it is probable that the whole story will fall.

Fluffy fiction can also be considered as a break, a bit of a vacation for both readers and writers. Sometimes it’s a break from angsty or serious situations, a chance to wrap oversized, prewarmed towels around our characters, to light them from their good side and make them laugh a little. Other times, fluffy fan fiction provides everyone with a break from technical babble. This could entail a removal of complicated science from a Star Trek fic, demon research from Buffy or Angel, or political theory from West Wing, stripping the story down to its pure, uncluttered bones.

As well as releasing writers from old chains, light hearted stories allow the opportunity to try new things out. This could be anything from taking new characters or pairing on a fun filled test drive, or playing around with sometimes scary situations. One of my own fluff filled stories gave me the chance not only to play with a new pairing, but also to write a sex scene, something which scared me before this story.

A much overlooked element in fluff is the strength of characterisation. Fluff forced the writer to remove the angst from the characters’ shoulders, bearing them and allowing us to see the ‘real’ person. As one Zendomite said, “fluff is where we get to see characters as they really are, without the mask of angst, it is where we get to like them for who they really are.”

Despite all the good will in fluff, the general opinion of it leans towards the negative. Often it is perceived as less worthy than other types of fiction, something we should spend less time and effort on. While some fandoms (Trek is often mentioned here) are friendly and accepting of fluff, others see fluff as to root of all evil, the genre that undermines all that is good in fan fiction.

Why does this opinion exist, and how common is it? These opinions can be seen in unfavourable discussions on lists and in blogs and the feedback for fluff stories, if not lower in quantity, seems to be lower in quality. When readers are asked for lists of their favourite fics, fluff is usually absent, in favour for stories that are dark and angsty. This attitude towards fluff even appeared while I was researching for this article. Questions on fluff received only a moderate response, while a loud conversation about rape fic, a more serious topic, raged nearby.

Even the term ‘fluff’, like so many other fan fiction terms, is negative. Fluff is lightweight, unimportant. Fluff is that stuff they spoon onto the top of cappuccinos. Fluff is the stuff that a three year old child pulls from their worn teddy bear. The word ‘fluff’ refuses to be taken seriously, and this opinions carries onto the stories.

This is not a phenomenon confined to our own fan fiction world. Out in the real world (I know, a strange and unusual place for many of us) there are many examples of the serious being valued over the comic, especially in the world of the arts. Serious movies and television shows, even when they are shockingly bad, are usually considered as more important than their light-hearted counterparts. Comedians such as Robin Williams and Jim Carrey feel compelled to make serious, ‘grown up’ movies to prove their value as an actor. In my own real life field, dance, critics and the cultural elite are quick to sneer at the joyous simplicity of the third act of “Coppelia”. This work is dismissed as irrelevant, while a political piece like Christopher Bruce’s “Ghost Dances” is considered as a very serious, very important piece of work.

“If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read it?” Franz Kafka

Influenced by this culture of ‘serious art’, it is inevitable that these opinions carry into fan fiction. Fluff has been tarnished with the brush of ‘easy’, easy to read, easy to write and therefore less valid. Any message a light hearted story might carry is sugar coated and, according to the critics, real art should be a bitter pill.

Fan fiction writers tend to have a difficult time explaining their habits. “Why,” we are asked, “spend time writing about someone else’s characters? If you were any good you would be writing original stories.” When faced with this kind of opinion from the real world, it is understandable that fan fiction writers would want to be taken seriously in their field, even if this meant writing the most gut wrenching stories possible. Fluff can be seen as confirming the opinions of real world critics, an ‘easy’ form of writing, written by those who haven’t the talent to write original stories.

Another argument often levelled at fluffy fan fiction, is that it’s just bad. Sometimes this is true, fluff attracts its fair share of bad writing. Like original characters or song fic, fluff is easy to mangle. Too much happiness and you find yourself drowning in saccharine; the wrong jokes and you could be listening to the crickets chirping. These are common faults along with long fluff stories, where tension needed to drive the plot is absent.

Of course, if good fluffy fan fiction was easy to write, we’d all be doing it. Light hearted stories which are not formulaic, stories which touch the reader without making them feel like they’ve been there before, are probably on equal ground with pure comedy as the hardest stories to write. Keeping the tone light, the characters likable and the plot moving are all difficult standards to maintain in fluff, and it’s easy for the writer to fall into the gaping cracks. Finding good fluffy stories is harder than finding good angst or drama - the dangers of falling into cliche or formula are much greater - and this is one reason why we should appreciate good fluff more.

Good light hearted stories also provide telling insights into our characters. In angst, characterisation is controlled by the external event, something terrible, and the character is shown at their extremes in their reaction. In fluff, the characterisation is less driven by great external events, and the writer has to work harder to show the character in their normal surroundings. This is where we discover why we liked the characters in the first place, not because of how they react to bad circumstances, but because of who they are.

Fluff is not the root of fan fiction evil, but instead a victim of a culture where serious is valued more than the comic. But, no matter how harsh the opinions get, fluff will continue to be written. It’s too hard to stop writing, or reading, something that makes us feel so good.

~*~

The following are Melina’s own “fluff filled” stories:

Doing Josh Lyman
Coffee and Conversation
Joining the Circus
Presidential Big Brother
Washington Heelers

Melina is a bedraggled Honours student and the self-proclaimed donut queen of Brisbane. She was a West Wing only fanatic, until Liz swirled her black cloak of Harry Potter. She reads American Politics, philosophy, Plutarch and Plato for fun, and wants to be a primary school teacher so she can manipulate young minds. She reminds you to return the chocolate mint biscuits when you’re finished.