I'm going to respectfully disagree with you, Nan. I don't think that the willingness to read and write fanfic has much to do with age or innocence. Yes, I'm younger than you are (36 next month), but I've seen my fair share of real life. If I wrote a biography, they'd have to sell it as fiction, but that is neither here nor there.

I think that a comfort level with deathfic or "heavy-fic" (my new term for MAJOR angst without death) has more to do with two things:
1. What the is person experiencing in real life at the moment.
2. How they best process the emotions of tough times in real life.

For some people, enduring a hefty dose of reality is cause to run into the arms of happy-fic for comfort. Usually, that is me.
But sometimes, real life is just too real. Too much. Too intense. And I need to, for whatever reason, keep it together in that real life. But I need a release. A good cry with a movie like Somewhere in Time can do that for me. It's a safe outlet for real emotions that still lets me not "deal" with the real issues.

In other instances, I'm so worked up that I can't let go and have a good cry even if I want to. I'm not a crier. Don't even get tears in the eyes. I feel things deeply, but I don't often cry. It's exhausting, it leave my nose a mess, and my eyes feel dry! But there are times when I simply need to trigger the process and get the release. Crying for a movie or a fanfic etc. doesn't cost as much energy to me. I don't feel so drained as I do after a "real" cry. But it functions as a safety valve. So in summary- a heavy fic or a death fic can help me cope with the emotions of an icky real-life situation without having to directly deal with those emotions as they relate to that icky real life situation.

Sometimes, I even write dark passages to help me process those feelings and get them out. On paper, they free my soul for happier thoughts.

From the sounds of things, your fanfic therapy comes in the form of "escape from reality" to a place where things work out right. All the power to you! In no way does that make you shallow. It just means you know what you need to do to feed your soul. Don't apologize for that! Rather, embrace it and use that knowledge to feed your soul as much as it needs you to.

But I'm willing to bet that there are plenty of battle-worn people that actually seek out heavy stuff to help them cope. Fanfic is a safe forum. It's not real. We can write a death fic off as an alternate reality, what-if scenerio and not cannon, providing a different form of fanfic therapy than when used as an escape, but a form of therapy even so.

No way is better than another. It's just a case of what works for that individual. But I don't believe it correlates to age or life experience. Rather, it's a reflection of how we each cope as best we can.

And I'm going to go even futher and suggest that toying with death in fanfic is a way of grounding oneself in reality when life is going "too well" to be trusted. smile What better time to explore the issues of life and death than when we're on a natural high and looking down at the valley we know is coming?

Jackie

Jackie N.
jacalynsue@zoominternet.net