My fanfiction adventures (tl;dr: stochastic events within my psyche caused me to randomly become obsessed with Bucky Barnes and slam back like 30 novels' worth of fanfiction about him; i don't like the MCU nor do I read fanfiction. part 1. part 2.) are partly enriching because of the awesome and creative stories I am experiencing, and partly because of experiencing the medium and/or genre of Fanfiction itself
What I thought before: Fanfiction is an array of literary works each derived from a central work that is considered to be the "canon"
What I understand now: Fanfiction is a sprawling network of literary works, unified by common descent from a central "canon," which engage in dialogue with each other and form new "nodes" of storytelling concepts, propagating further derived works
The fanfictions are just as much derived from each other as they are from "canon," forming an evolutionary thicket where new ideas are created, elaborated upon, and gradually cluster together into their own "canons" which inspire new works that evolve further
I have read enough of the Bucky fics that I am starting to piece together how pivotal fanfictional works inspired other ones.
I could track the formation of some of these idea-nodes and map the relationships of each fanfiction to different idea-nodes. I don't have a good sense of what does and doesn't come from canon, though, so yall would have to help me
(it becomes even more complicated considering that some of the fics are also derived from comics, which are an overlapping mess of contradicting canons)
ideas common but possibly not universal
Bucky spending time as a vigilante murdering hydra agents
Bucky as survivor of rape (as part of torture by Hydra)
Bucky has a "file" documenting everything that was done to him, and everybody who bitches about him being a murdermachine sobers up really fast after reading it
Hydra tormenting Bucky with news of Steve's death
Bucky is "The Soldier/The Asset," referred to with it/its pronouns, conditioned to think of itself as a weapon and not a person
Super soldier serum causes wounds to heal much faster
Super soldier serum causes drug metabolism to be much faster
Bucky helped train the Black Widow in the Red Room; she had a special nickname for him in Russian
Bucky's captors bathed him by hosing him down
Steve and Bucky had an apartment together before the war
Steve unwilling to confront being suicidal as motivation for crashing the plane and getting frozen
bucky was used to getting sold/transferred to various villainous organizations and governments
steve is an artist and has notebooks with sketches/drawings of Bucky
tony stark has apartments for each avenger in his tower
i dont think i would be very good at guessing what is canon and what isnt
