What do you think of Fan Fiction?

There are a lot of "fan"fix writers that legitimately don't respect the source material, and I can't speak for those people. The rest of us, on the other hand, aren't writing as an ego trip.

We're writing because our favorite characters stay with us as fascinating people long after the original story is over, rather than being mere plot devices that we abandon after they've served their purpose, and we get excited by the idea of things happening in their lives that the original creator didn't get around to covering.

Discovery and exploration are just as important as creation.

A surprisingly successful artistic concept

 

Ego is most definitely not part of it for most fanfiction writers, they usually write for the simple reason that they were inspired. They watched the movie or read the book or played the game and they were inspired by the characters or the setting or whatever, so much so that they felt the need to get it all out. Sometimes they write for themselves, sometimes they write for others, the important thing is that for them, they have fallen in love with piece so much that they want to continue the story. They want to see what happens to that random student that wasn't adapted on or find out how the antagonist came to be that way or hell, how well the hero would go in a zombie apocalypse. The main thing is that they wrote these out of love for the stories, and yes they may get it wrong, but the main thing is that they wrote it because they were inspired by that work. And while I know others might not see it the same way, I think fanfiction is one of the highest forms of praise because it takes dedication, time and effort to write it but most of all, a love for the work.

 

Of course not. And most fanfic sites won't even post such stories if they are submitted.

 

Yet they still appear. That's what gets me about fanfiction. I mean, many of the writers are great, but many don't care about the author's wishes about saying "No fan fiction" and then go write horrific fan fiction.

And for a while there was a ASOIAF fanfic page. It may or may not still be up, I'm not entirely sure.

 

They appear where? On a regular fanfiction site or on someone's personal blog/webpage? Two different animals. Most fanfic sites definitely respect the originator's wishes (they don't want legal problems). But individuals? Well, then you're talking people, not fanfic, and some people are douchebags.

 

Like a site for it. Like a fanfic site dedicated to ASOIAF fanfiction. But sadly I cannot find it anymore.

It was like asoiafanfic.org or something like that.

But there's a Tumblr blog under that same name and that's all that pops up now.

 

Perhaps the confusion has come about because you SAID you were looking at it from the perspective of the original author:

So I don't think it's so much that you haven't been clear enough as it is that you've changed perspectives. Which is fine, of course, but for clarity it seemed worthwhile to point that out.

I think you're still not understanding what fanfiction IS. Nobody is drawing on the Mona Lisa, moustaches or otherwise. That would be changing the ORIGINAL. Nobody changes the original in fandom - the books and shows and movies are still there, just as the creators left them.

A better analogy for fanfiction would be, for example, someone drawing a super-close-up view of Mona Lisa's ear. Or photoshopping her into modern clothing. Or drawing her as one part of a scene full of other famous paintings, or putting an Andy Warhol wash of colour across her face, or drawing what the fan artist thinks she looked like as a child or would look like as an old woman, or... whatever else. Fanfiction doesn't alter the original. It uses it as a starting point, and then blasts off to various distances from the original.

 

Sounds like a site set up by an individual just for a specific fandom - and the 'honor' of those sites depends on the individual running it. Fanfiction.net absolutely disallows work whose originators don't want it done.

 

And not as a contradiction, but only as a convenient segue to proffer the flip side of the story, you have writers like Storm Constantine so enamored of her fan-fiction following that she created an indi-publication house specifically for fan-fiction from her different worlds.

 

Thanks for pointing that out. I made the one argument earlier, and then a newer one. Sorry if it was confusing. (It's confusing to me, too - see below.)

The thing is, this doesn't answer my question. I want to know why someone would want to write fanfiction. I understand being a fan of something, and I understand being inspired by it. But what is the impetus for wanting to play in that sandbox? When I'm inspired by something, I'm inspired to make my own sandbox.

Regarding the Mona Lisa analogy: It seems to me that fanfiction is like drawing on the Mona Lisa, even if you aren't changing the original. Characters and worlds do not exist only in the pages the original author wrote; they exist (at least in my imagination) throughout. The original might just tell two weeks of someone's life, but in my mind, that character exists throughout his life, from his birth to his death. Take, for example, Holden Caulfield. Salinger wrote a small piece of his life as a teenager. I suppose someone could write a story about Holden at the age of 35 (or at the age of 8) without changing the original. But what I do with him in my story would somehow color the original, would it not? Shades of character that I add in, at a different time in the character's life, changes the reader's impression of who the character is. If I write a fanfic about Holden later in his life, it makes a difference whether I portray him as a pool hustler or a nuclear physicist. It makes a difference whether I have him living in California or Portugal. It makes a difference whether I give him a loving wife and six kids or I give him a lonely life. Whatever I say about him will somehow affect how a reader will interpret Salinger's original The Catcher in the Rye, would it not?

 

So? You've been given various reasons why people want to innumerable times - if you don't want to accept those reasons, then there's no point repeating them. Just because you don't or won't understand it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with it, or with them.

 

I didn't say there's anything wrong with it or them. I said I don't want to make it illegal. I said I think the writer of fanfic is disrespecting the original work, even if he loves it. It's a subtle thing, and maybe unique to me - everyone else here seems to think stomping through other people's gardens is just fine!

The more I post in this thread, the more you people are convincing me that I'm utterly insane. I'm off now to make an appointment with a psychiatrist.

I've had my fun here. See you in other threads, everybody!

 

Personally I don't see the point. Yes, I've become attached to casts of characters and wondered how their lives played out afterwards, but somehow I've never had the urge to write them. Whatever I write would just be making it up, it feels - which is ironic considering that's exactly what the author's doing too lol.

Authorship or ownership of intellectual property is a very interesting idea to me. Why do people, in general, feel that they cannot decide what would happen to characters in someone else's book? People get upset at book endings they hate, or rave and wait impatiently for the next installment of an episode or a sequel - why? Can they not decide for themselves, "Well, this will happen next,"? Cus that's all the author's doing. Yet we do not feel we have the authority to do that.

And if for example, I claim now that Harry Potter got together with Harmione, people will tell me that's wrong. It didn't happen. But if JK Rowling just made it up, why can't I? Why's my version not seen as the "right" version? In the end the original author holds sole ownership.

It's a very interesting idea to me.

 

Why do people do any of the things they enjoy? Do you demand a logical answer from people who jump out of airplanes, or eat sauteed mushrooms, or ice fish? I don't want to do any of those things, but I'm also not going to wonder why the folks that do don't instead design airplanes, or open restaurants, or build ice houses. Those aren't the things they want to do, even though they might be my choices.

 

I know you've moved on, but your POV puzzles me too I don't get 'disrespectful' at all.

It is no longer your house when you invite the world into it. They're already there, because you've sold tickets to them and asked them to enjoy themselves. If you never published it at all and never wanted anyone to see it, then it would be a private party. As it is, you've thrown the doors open to all manner of dirty feet, letting them traipse about on your marble floors and poke at glass ornaments, then inexplicably growled at a couple kids to stay off the grass outside.

Yeah, you own the house, but the idea is for others to admire it and you have to let them do that their own way. You don't really have to understand it. Some will walk in with their noses high, criticizing everything. Some will take one step into your foyer and walk straight out again, even though you went to a lot of effort to bake everyone cookies. If they just want to sit outside and paint your house, or do cartwheels, it doesn't mean they have no manners, it means you're that grumpy old man shooing them away for no reason. (Not actually calling you old!)

Some people don't have the skills or the time to build their own house. Some people just don't want to. But you invited them into yours and they loved it so much they built a replica in the sandbox. Then you came along and backhanded their sandcastle into ruin, yelling 'Build a real house!' Just because you were inspired to build an original one, doesn't mean everyone has that capacity, or desires to.

... 'You' doesn't mean you you. I realise you're not an insane destroyer of sandcastles.

 

What does 'taken seriously' mean in this context?

 

Good analogy, in some ways. But of course FanFic does involve SOME creativity. They're not just re-telling the original story (tune), but changing it. I'd say maybe it's a combination of karaoke and parody? Is this leading anywhere. Probably not. More coffee then....

 

I don't know that much about fan fiction, I've never written it and don't intend to and I've never looked for and read any (to my knowledge) but I do have a question:

What would happen if, lets say an author writes and publishes a book which sells well and has a great following. Some fans decided to write a bit of fan fiction that makes it onto various websites, their own versions of 'what happens next'... Then the author, who realises that her/his book has a following, decides to write another book following on, sort of his/her version of what happens next. So, would the author have to trawl through the fanfics to make sure their idea for book two was in no way a copy of any of the fan's stuff?

Would the author just start writing and if something is too close to a fan's story, the fan can sue for plagiarism? Or does none of that count because the characters were created by the author in the first place ...?

 

I imagine 'taken seriously as an art form/form of expression'.

 

I don't think it does. I mean, in terms of you being dismissive of both forms, okay, yeah, I can see how it fits.

But in terms of the sort of creativity actually being applied? If we need a musical analogy, I'd say fanfiction is closer to sampling. It borrows a riff or a section from the original and then builds something new around it.

The goal of karaoke is to accurately reproduce the original. If a fan wanted to accurately reproduce an original story, they could just retype it. Maybe change the font or something... THAT would be the analogy to karaoke. But I don't think anyone's really doing that.

 

I've written a few mainly to work on some aspects of my writing like dialogue, etc;

I was writing one earlier this year to test myself and see if I could commit to something for an extended length of time before I approached my novel and once I was able to I felt a lot more confident in regards to what I'm writing now.

Like some Fanfics are glorious, for example Game of Champions by Lamora, it's one of the best things I've read in the past few years.

 

There's definitely a feeling among some authors that they can't read fanfiction in order to protect themselves from being accused of copying fan ideas. There was a big fuss related to Marion Zimmer Bradley in this area - http://fanlore.org/wiki/Marion_Zimmer_Bradley_Fanfiction_Controversy