As has been related here before, once upon a time (well, many times, for the children are really good friends) Dr. Merlin went visiting a friend who was, perhaps, not very fond of Harry/Ginny. And by "not very fond," please feel free to read: "It--it..the f--, it--flame...flames...flames on the side of my face." Dr. Merlin was sympathetic to her friend's plight, although she did not share it. However, among her friend's arguments against the pairing one was actually against the 'shippers who supported that pairing. They were uncreative, claimed Merlin's friend. How much creativity did it take to write about canon? Surely the non-canonical 'shippers were indicating their own much higher levels of creativity. And Dr. Merlin sat by and drank her coffee, because she has gotten better about not getting in the middle when someone has got their rant on. Sometimes it's best just to get it all out.

However, since there are often fights between the canon 'shippers and the noncanon 'shippers (with the gen fans off in the corner laughing their asses off at everyone else) perhaps we should examine the nature of this "creativity" in greater detail. It is my own personal belief that stories which line up with canon and those that deviate strongly from canon require equal amounts of creativity. They simply require different skill sets to accomplish successfully. (Successful = a well-received story, with death threats and flames only sent in the spirit of mock punishment for very bad puns.)

Let us start with our basic assumptions. The world at large says there are only seven plots, with "Groundhog Day" being the newly-created eighth. I submit that science fiction and fantasy have expanded those plots to a generous fourteen or fifteen, and strictly speaking, those could probably be broken into components of the Big Eight. (Exercise for the comments: what are your favorite plots, or at least the ones you keep rereading/rewriting. Mine are "Evil Twins Are Sexy People Too," "Boy Meets Girl, Girl Yells at Boy a Bit, Then They Hook Up," and "I'm My Own Grandpa / Time Loop Tango." I really like "Time Loop Tango.") So when we are talking about stories with plots, we're not talking a large number of plots. When you've read ten "They Woke Up Gay / Genderswapped" stories, you've read the other three thousand, too. Yes, even that one about the chicken. Fanfiction is not constrained by standard needs for plot (which is NOT my nice way of saying fanfics lack plot) so we have more room to spread. We have character pieces. We have vignettes. We have drabbles that are nothing but conversation or sex or both. We do need plots sometimes, but if I see a well-written piece that's nothing but my favorite couple snarking at each other, I'm pretty happy regardless of what my old English teachers might have said. (My old Latin teacher was a Trek fan. I know what she would have said: "That's not right. That tentacle goes over there." It's good to have people who understand you when you're young.) We have extra options. And still, there are only so many vignettes, and many boil down to: "Couple Snarks At Each Other" or "Shagging the Captain/Scientist/Doctor/Teaboy/Vampire (circle one), a Beginner's Guide."

This doesn't just apply to fanfiction; there's a reason the "seven plots" idea is so popular. "Boy Meets Girl's Evil Twin, Ends Up Own Grandpa" has been done because that's what people do. We tell each other the same stories over and over, because we like those stories, and we like the way certain people tell them.

It's not the song, it's how it's sung.

What does this mean for canon writers-of-negotiable-affection and their counterparts in non-canon ? Mostly, it means we're starting from the same place. We are starting with canon, because that's what we have. We have these stories as presented in front of us, in all their facepalming glory (that ep from Season two comes to mind, you know the one). Sometimes we reject that canon entirely, grab the few bits we like, and construct something entirely new in its place. If you have read "Sam and Dean Start a Rentboi Service In the Court of Charlemagne," you have seen this process in action. This is indeed a creative pursuit, involving a great deal of effort. The research alone on what kinds of lube would be historically accurate would daunt even the hardiest of hearts, and one can only pray the result is successful. Crazy AUs often involve research as well as inspiration, and when done right, betaing to within an inch of the story's life by an expert in the field. No one can accuse these stories of being just like the rest, unless one happens to be the kind of fandom butterfly who only reads the "Time-Displaced Characters Work in a Brothel" genre (or others in that vein over on AdultFanfiction.Net, because as it turns out, "Characters Work in a Brothel and Then Have Angsty Sex" is a pretty popular story on that site).

What about the pairings? Isn't "Boy Meets Girl He Didn't Romance in Canon, They Hook Up" more creative than "Boy Meets Girl in Canon, They Hook Up"? Honestly, it depends on the execution. A story that is indistinguishable from three hundred others at Fanfiction.Net on the same theme (regardless of pairing) may have felt creative at the time it was written but will not necessarily be remembered a week later by anyone but the writer. The challenge to writing canonical pairings or popular non-canon pairings is the same: try to tell the three hundred first story and make it different from what's already been done. The difficulty of this depends of course on how popular the pairing is, and it's made more difficult when one is holding tightly to canon (including the pairing or not). Anyone can take two names, stick them in a story, and be done. Again, we already know the plots they’ll undergo. But making it work, and making the audience think this particular go-round is special even when they've seen it before, that takes creativity no matter who the people are on the page.

And this applies to the fanfic versus profic divide as well. It's easy to say that profic is more creative because it involves original characters set in (one must assume) an original world. Except that's only a surface judgment. Is the "Boy Meets Girl" on the NY Times Bestseller List this week more creative than "John and Rodney Are Robots Mining Ore on Pluto, Get Kidnapped to a Brothel on Mars, and Have Angsty Robot Sex?" Is "Alien Races Have Tragic Misunderstanding Which Only Spock Can Fix" in the official canon tie-in novels more creative than "Alien Races Have Tragic Misunderstanding Which Only Spock Can Fix Via His Quivering Tower of Jade" in fanfic? Who decides which is more successful, and which should only be handled with tongs and a radiation suit?

The truth is in the eye of the reader. If your intended audience enjoys your work, you win. The end. You were sufficiently creative to meet the challenge of making someone else happy, unless your audience was yourself, in which case you won when you started writing. (Go, you!) Don't let anyone tell you that you're not as creative as the fans over there because they have a different 'ship than you do. Don't feel less creative than the writers doing original 'fic, especially if you can identify "I'm My Own Evil Twin" within the first two paragraphs. Write the story that only you can tell, research it like mad if you need to, and give it to the readers who want it most. If it's a plot you've seen before, see what you can bring to it that no one else has. If you think it's a brand new story no one has done before, make it memorable enough that any story with the same idea that comes along later will be compared to yours. Have fun with it. And seriously, don't worry about what the other fans in the other 'ships are doing; they're following their own squee and writing their own "Boy Meets Boy" stories, and their own "I'm My Own Grandma" stories and their own "Brothels on the Moon" stories, and that's how it should be.

Trust me. Grandma knows.