On the "Legitimacy" of Fan-Fiction

[wolven7]

Ruby - [Tiny Meat]--- I want to ask writers who oppose, deride, or devalue fan-fiction the following question:

'Where is the line, for you, between writing a story with original characters, but in Someone Else's Style (known generally as "homage," or "pastiche") and writing a story with Someone Else's Characters, in your own style (generally known as "Fan-fiction")?'

What, for them, is the crucial difference? (Ruby - [Carondelet]). Because otherwise the whole argument is bullshit.

Comments

[karma-aster.livejournal.com]

Well, I always want to ask the ones who get snarky and snobby about fanfic if they realize that most of what Shakespeare and many other greats of Western Literature wrote was, in effect, glorified fanfiction.

To me, it's a lot more about the quality of the writing than what the writing actually IS. I've read some incredible fanfiction and I've read some seriously shitty professional and original writing. If you're just being a snob about it, then admit that you're being a snob. And then get the hell over it.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

YES! Or, as oletheros put it elsewhere, “What do you think of Jason and the Argonauts?”

[not-hothead-yet.livejournal.com]

I am not snobbish nor snarky about fanfiction however here is my personal opinion on the matter:

Part of being a fiction writer is the characters you create. Especially if you write serial stuff: everything really revolves around your characters. People don't come back again and again because you can describe a good landscape, they come for their favorite character. An excellent character can transcend their original setting, even their own history and background, if they are written well.

Well then, with that in mind, when a writer creates a character, that "person" is theirs. The character has depth, meaning, motivation, thoughts feelings and spirit that the writer knows but may not always put down. This is how the writer can take that great character and move them around anywhere and they remain the same wonderful "person" to the reader - a "person" that you can love and admire, hate and revile, second-guess and be surprised by but more than anything keep coming back for more. Because you want that character - that "person" - to live forever, keep having adventures, never grow old and never wind down. That is what an excellent character does. Its what every fiction writer strives for.

When that goal is achieved, that character, that "person", is the child of the writer. It isn't just something they created, its a part of them. They know them like no one else will ever know them. Period.

Now, consider this; while characters are a writers ultimate creation, style is the voice the writer uses to create. They are nowhere near the same thing. Characters have a writers style in them, like DNA and so should every other aspect of the writer's world but characters are stand-alone creations as well. Style permeates the fiction, characters populate it. Both are important but not the same thing.

When a writer decides to write an "homage" or "pastiche", what they are doing is taking a page or two from a beloved peer's style. They might, as a matter of course, use a character to do so, but that is not really the aim of homage. The aim is to showcase everything that makes the honored author so revered. Characters, voice, setting, incidentals - its all a part of homage. And the writer who does so does it with full understanding that the "new" creation is really not new nor is it wholly theirs. Such writers have their own voice, characters, setting, incidentals - their own STYLE - that they use in their own work. Homage is often an exercise, not expected to be viewed as a full-fledged honest-to-goodness piece of fiction by itself.

Fanfiction, however, seems to believe that taking someone elses characters and using them for WHATEVER reason you want (furthing the story, expanding it into other realms, intermixing characters that haven't met or interacted, getting their sexy on etc) just because you love those characters somehow constitutes good writing.

Yes, I know there's "good" fanfiction. If a writer can make "good" fanfiction, then they ought to be able to stop cowering behind someone elses creation and come up with their own awesome characters and world using their own voice. Sorry, but that's the way I see it. If you consider yourself a writer, then write YOUR stuff. Don't steal someone elses child and pretend that makes you a creator. It doesn't. And I know that as someone who has created characters that I love and feel connected to, I'd be somewhat miffed to find someone else took my children and plastered them in other places and stuck them in other situations as if THEY know my children. They don't, no matter how much they want to think they do. They didn't create them and they DON'T know them like I do. Its lazy, its childish and its pointless - if you're a good writer, you should be able to make your own characters and not need to steal someone elses. If you're a bad writer, stealing someone elses character isn't going to suddenly make you a good one.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

So, then, by your reckoning, the entirety of the Greek oral and story tradition was lazy? All television screen writers are lazy? All comics authors and artists not doing creator-owned work are lazy? Every Doctor Who showrunner is lazy?

Sherlock Holmes has been reinvented dozens of times. Batman has seen more incarnations by more writers than almost any other character, and each one has something unique and individual about them while still remaining recognizably "Batman."

Yes, "your children" are yours, with a back story and a life that others may not know, but you know what? They want to know them! And if they can't get it direct from the source, they're going to speculate, and some of them, in that speculation, are going to write things. They're going to write them in your style, in their own style, in a mishmash of styles. if you don't want "your children" appropriated by others, then the only "reasonable" option is to keep writing stories. Forever. Forever and ever. To never stop talking about them. Because, if you look at the fan fiction culture, what is Accepted Canon is that which comes from the creator of the characters.

Everything else is a sandbox.

There are two distinct threads, here: One is that the people who write fan fiction are lazy and/or untalented. The second is that they are misappropriating a thing in which their creator has a vested interest and for which they have created an inner life. I've partially addressed the latter, and the former, but let's go a little deeper, here:

When you create a character or a placement or a world, and that world and those people get turned into, say, a television show or a Movie, do you then get upset about what happens in that show? Alan Moore does this, and he is roundly stared at with incomprehension for it. If people care for your work, if people want to See That Work Continue, and you yourself are unwilling or unable to continue it, then why do you care?

If someone perhaps isn't a strong author, yet, then fan-fiction is the second best way I can think of to strengthen that understanding (The first being reading), As children, we all incorporate characters we love into the games we play and create. It's part of the creative process.

But I don't want this to sound like I think ficcers are childish, because I don't. For that point, look at your description of style and voice. When someone steals or unknowingly appropriates their favourite author's style, they're found derivative, at best, and actively derided at worst-- told to "Find Their Own Voice." But when it is, as you've said, knowingly done, it's somehow embraced as homage. When one knowingly uses a character, it's theft and derivative and childish, but if they take attributes, and never even acknowledge them it's...what? Character creation?

A style is just as recognizable as a character to the reader who knows them both. The comparison stands.
(continued...)

[wolven.livejournal.com]

When we have characters about whom we want to know more, we engage in mental speculations, and perhaps we'll tell new stories about them.

Do you think Homer was upset with bards and lyricists telling Odysseus stories? Do you know that Shakespeare was called a hack for ripping off Tristan and Isolde? You know the answers to these questions.

From what I know of fan fiction writers, on the whole, they ride a weird line between preferencing the word of the creator, above all, and seeing their fan worlds as "just as valid." But that "Just as Valid" is in the same way that a parallel universe is "just as valid" as our own: Things are slightly different or vastly different, because people want to imagine how they play out. They're not trying to sell them, they're not trying to "own" them. They just want to create with them.

And that urge to create, as a tradition, goes back thousands of years, and which is lauded in some cases and derided in others. Where's the line?

As a creator, your only way out of this eventuality is to never stop creating with those beloved characters, until you die. Your fans will always want more, and they'll get it however they can, even if they have to make it themselves.

And then there's this: http://www.eljamesauthor.com/

Sometimes a really great writer writes fan fiction because it's fun, and comes to think, "Maybe I could use this setting and interaction for my own characters. Maybe I will." Ideas come from everywhere. Just because someone writes fan-fiction doesn't make them untalented, or lazy, or scared. It makes them a writer who, at the moment, happens to be creating with something already extant. As Every Writer Does.

[not-hothead-yet.livejournal.com]

no, actually I don't know the answers to those two questions; not being a student of history and not having communed psychically with either Homer nor Shakespeare. Considering the amount of contention when it comes to ANYTHING regarding Shakespeare, I'm not going to use or accept him as an example of fan reception. As with Homer, I'd theorize that the difference is in the medium, which I will address a bit further down.

However, both will serve as an example of the effect of history to a piece. THe fact is, like the other comment I made, just because you wrote something doesn't suddenly make it acceptable. Just because you post something on the internet and someone else says "hey I like it!" does not make it valid within the world of literature. Shakespeare had contemporaries. How popular are they now? Who can name the direct competition of Bach? Was DH Lawrence automatically loved and embraced? Give me a break. Most ground-breaking art is not appreciated in its time. you know that.

And no, as a creator your "way out" of those things is to end your character. and many creators do. and creators are well aware of the fact that fans will play with their creations (possibly doing things the creators would abhor) but that's fine because the creator is not smacked in the face with it)

Fanfiction is not considered "valid" for several reasons. The primary of which is the logical reason: if they were really good writers they'd come up with their own stuff and work with that and it would be popular. Not just because its the "right" thing to do, but because as a "real" writer, that's what you would do ANYWAY. If JK Rowling played with other characters before (which lots of writers do as exercises) she didn't try to pass it off as her "good stuff".

I mean, notice the characters that fanfiction culls from is always really famous stuff that is considered fairly original itself. If it wasn't they wouldn't cull from it. If I feel like doing a character study or full-on homage, I'm not going to pick some crappy writer I think was a hack, I'm going to pick someone I like and admire.

So don't give me that "its the same thing" jazz. Its not the same thing. It may not be "bad" and it certainly has its place in the world of writing, but its not the same thing.

[not-hothead-yet.livejournal.com]

and lastly, are you trying to defend the genre or the exercise? because they aren't the same at all. Yes, as noted elsewhere, "serious, real" writers do "fanfic" occasionally. If its done with actual permission and some guidance, that's called "collaberation" or "in consult with" If its just something they do for fun without consulting the original writer, you bet they keep that shit under wraps.

I'm sure even you will admit there's a difference between "inspired by" and "based on the original characters and settings by"

Cuz if you want to play the slippery slope game of "well even the classics were ripped off from..." we'd end up in a fucking cave in sumeria looking at drawings of one guy bashing int he skull of another guy so the girl will go with him. the end.

[not-hothead-yet.livejournal.com]

did you really just compare Batman, a character created, managed and envisioned by committee with fanfiction? Seriously?


Let me break this down for you: when a fan decides they want to try their hand and working a character, possibly speaking with the original writer's voice, that is in fact a kind of homage but the writing itself is a fledging kind of exercise. It's not considered to be "serious" and there's a reason for that. A painter who is paid to copy famous paintings on rocks may be the greatest painter in the world but no one will really know or believe that until they see something the painter did that isn't a copy. So it is with writing. If you lift someone's character AND voice/style, you are copying. I don't care if you change the background for the purposes of writing, you are copying. There's nothing wrong with copying at all. but if that's ALL you want to do, then yes, that's lazy and its not "real" writing/painting.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

Batman was created by One Person, as Superman was created by two. Their trampling of their rights as creators and their families' fight to regain control is well documented.

As a side note, people Creating things and having that stolen from them by near-monopolies is far more offensive than fanfiction on which no one makes money.

So far as the homage or fledgling painter goes: There are entire anthologies of "Established" authors playing around in the worlds of "established" characters.

And as I said, for fan-fiction: The vast majority of it uses characters but not Style. There are as many styles of writing in an-fiction as there are fanfic writers.

Also, why is the assumption that fan-fic writers only write fan-fic? Most of the fan-fic writers I've ever encountered are also writers of their own material, be it fiction or non-fiction academic material, or both.

[not-hothead-yet.livejournal.com]

I will say this about your basic question: the "line" is that writing in someone elses voice is HARD. Taking someone's character is EASY. Just like mimicking someone is EASY but predicting their decisions is HARD. Copying someone from a photograph is EASY. Making an oil painting of them in a way that exemplifies their entire personality is HARD.

Writers do homage because its a challenge. As you've said repeatedly, fanfic authors do fanfic because its enjoyable. And whenever a writer does an homage there is always tons of debate about whether it is considered "real writing" anyway. Obviously doing an homage is considered enjoyable too. But its still HARD.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

I would contend that using someone else's characters in your own original voice-- that is without slipping into the creator's voice-- is also a very difficult task.

[not-hothead-yet.livejournal.com]

I would have to disagree: "slipping into" someone elses voice is an odd idea. "slipping" means you intended to do otherwise but you just can't help falling back into the default - AKA NATURAL - position. Your own voice is the default. That's what you'd "slip into"

[wolven.livejournal.com]

Disagree completely. In much the same way as being in a place with a distinct accent on a familiar language will cause your mode of speech to vary toward that, if you've been reading or otherwise consuming a lot of another creator's material, your authorial voice can easily become similarly accented.

[not-hothead-yet.livejournal.com]

and frankly, I'd have to say that if you think using someone elses character in your own voice is "hard" then perhaps you simply aren't that good at the craft.

It's going to happen - there are going to be lots of people who THINK they can write well but they DON'T. Just because they post it and some hard-core "gotta have me some more Kristen and Edward" fans eat it up doesn't make it GOOD.

Yes there are good writers who write fanfic. They are GOOD WRITERS.

Fanfic writers, because you are calling them that, aren't necessarily good writers. Maybe someday they will be, but I posit that as a creator, IF they realy have the urge and wherewithal to be creative, they will naturally gravitate to creating their own stuff eventually.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

By "Fanfic Writers" I mean nothing other than "people who write fandom-based fiction."

To consume enough of the Material to know the Character, but to write the Story in your Own Voice? That's difficult.

As a prime example, I would point at greygirlbeast's time on The Dreaming comics and Mike Carey's Lucifer series. Both understood the characters and represented completely their familiar personalities, and both did daring and inventive new things with them, in a voice distinct from that of Neil Gaiman's.

It's not an easy line to walk.

[kitsuchan.livejournal.com]

By your very terms, they're different-- one is mimicking style, the other is borrowing names. There are useful arguments for and against fanfic, but its similarity to or difference from pastiche is beside the point.

I have no real problem with fanfic. I think most fanfic isn't exactly great literature, but it's not trying to be. Most fanfic is about filling in emotional gaps left unaddressed by the original story; you wanted to see more romance between the characters, or any romance between the two male leads, or there wasn't enough resolution in the final fight or whatever. It's not particularly self-reflective and usually doesn't say anything meaningful, but it's satisfying to the writer and often to a bunch of readers. Well-written fanfic of this sort can even make people feel happier about the original work, or like a certain character more. Fanfic tends to be too brain-candy for me-- it's easy to overdose on and leaves me feeling a little dizzy and sick if I read too much-- but there's also published writing that's just as candy-like. Published writing tends to have a better chance of being good, but I assume that's more because it has to go through a more stringent vetting and editing process. I'd bet any given published Pride and Prejudice sequel is about as good as any other random published romance. There are some stylistic similarities in a lot of fanfic these days, and they also crop up in the writing of people who got their start in fanfic, and it's a style that I generally dislike-- too much over-explaining, especially of emotional states and meanings of words and gestures. It makes sense to include that in fanfic, because fanfic is about filling in the cracks. In original writing, it comes off as heavy-handed.

Of course, there are works of fanfic that get published and make their way into the cannon. The Wide Sargasso Sea, Jin Ping Mei, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, The Mists of Avalon and a bunch of others. I think generally what makes these special is that they're less about the original work, and more about using the original work to comment on society and human nature and whatnot. Using the original work is important, because its very inclusion into the canon is a statement that can then be critiqued. So that's a kind of literature fanfic is particularly well-suited for.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

Very interesting perspective on that.

[renatus.livejournal.com]

Oh hey, this is relevant to my interests. 8) (I should come around more often, you bring up so many good topics for discussion...)

I used to be one of the people who got really pissy and snobbish about the whole subject of fanfic and thought I was hot shit because I wrote ~original~ fic. I had all the typical arguments: it's lazy because you don't have to create your OWN things, you're TAKING someone else's CHARACTERS who do you think you are, blah blah blah lots of tiresome and boring arguments that amounted to 'stop having fun guys!' and the fear that someone, somewhen, might get their dirty prole fingers on MY STORIES.

I loosened up on it eventually after reading a lot of talk about it on Making Light, especially this this article: http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/007464.html The whole 'engaging with the text' thing made me stop and think for once about what I was objecting to so very fiercely. I loosened up more once I started consciously engaging with the actual craft of writing and meta commentary and realized how much of the stuff I wrote that I thought was hot shit was actually really really derivative -- which, I've noticed, happens a lot with people who are very self-congratulatory about how original they are. That's the point at which I stopped deluding myself and started consciously integrating my influences.

But fanfic was still a mystery. I did some meta, but I didn't really read it or think about writing fanfic until recently. No media really grabbed me enough, and I hadn't seen enough examples of what fanworks could do to get inspired about it. Wish fulfillment stuff generally didn't do anything for me. Then last year my friend Luka started waving it at me for the fandom he'd gotten me into, going 'Look, Ren, LOOK, fanfic can be GOOD! O_O'

And lo, it was -- hell, it wasn't just good, it was excellent, it made me think and look at the characters and canon situations from angles I hadn't even considered before.

I finally started to understand in a real way what 'engaging with the text' meant. Fanworks are a non-passive way of consuming entertainment -- they are a conversation that allows fans, whether they be silly kids or snooty intellectuals or a little of both, to talk back to the author-as-a-construct and talk to other fans. They're a way of deconstructing the text, pulling it apart to understand it better and criticize it. Fanfic can go places meta commentary can't go very well; it can create space in canon for marginalized groups where no space existed before, get people to think about and understand that lack of space in a way that they might object to if they encounter it in a direct confrontation through meta.

Furthermore, it's fun! Playing with canon makes it so much richer for me and extends my enjoyment of it immensely. It's fun to play around with character types I hadn't given much thought to before, play around with POV and tense, play around with situations. It's good to just play for once instead of always taking writing So Fucking Seriously. It's good to play and have other people to play with and be a part of a community with.

Fuck that 'you're taking someone else's characters' noise. THEY ARE STILL RIGHT THERE IN CANON. No one is 'taking' a good goddamned thing -- the source material still exists and can be consumed completely seperately from the meta. What this so-called argument smacks of, to me, is whining that the peasants are getting their hands all over someone's precious perfect fictional babies. Newsflash: they aren't precious, they aren't perfect, and the moment you let someone else read about them they're getting interpreted and deconstructed in ways you never intended, even if it never goes down on paper or in bytes. Fanfic and meta just allows other people to see it.

(continued)

[renatus.livejournal.com]

Fuck that 'it's self-indulgent' noise. God forbid people actively make fun rather than passively consume fun.

Finally, fuck that 'lazy' noise. Do you tell actors and historical fiction writers that they are 'lazy' because their characters are already made for them? Because writing fanfic of someone else's characters is a very similar skillset (and in the case of historical fiction, the very same). Interpreting, deconstructing, and reinterpreting characters, settings, and events accurately and believably is not 'easier' than writing believable, distinct original characters and settings, it's a skillset of it's own (and one highly complementary to writing original characters, in fact).

(Sure, a lot of people don't do that, or don't do it well. So what? People are allowed to play and be bad at stuff but still have fun at it.)

My fandom has brilliant writers who do things with words and setting that can make me weep with joy. You want to tell the guy getting his PhD from Oxford who wrote a fic that's a pastiche of Brideshead Revisited that blends settings and characters from both the book and the fandom and stays true to both that he's lazy? Yeah, good luck with that, I'll just be over here with a vacuum to clean up after he politely and thoroughly takes your huffy argument down to its component atoms.

You want to tell the two guys who have their own long-running, popular original webcomics that they're 'lazy' because they have fun writing fanfic for another? Go right ahead, but I'm going to be laughing along with them.

You want to tell ME I'm lazy? Sorry, I started off with original fic and still write it. I have three novels in progress, four more planned with worlds flexible enough to allow more, and reams of notes on all of them. I'm not the fastest writer, I'm not super productive, but I'm a steady worker who's very determined to tell as many stories as I can before I die.

Lazy. Pfft. What's really lazy are the shoddy arguments against fanworks that tend to elevate writing original fic to some mysterious, elite skill that springs forth pure and beautiful and doesn't take too much from existing culture. Fuck. That. Noise.

[not-hothead-yet.livejournal.com]

Interesting,. because what it sounds like you're saying is that because YOU have done both original and fanfic and found fulfillment and enjoyment and stumbled across good writing, that makes the whole GENRE just as good as what you've done and seen.

I've done lots of playwriting. I've read a lot of great plays. That doesn't mean everyone who writes a play has some inner depths and is engaging in the dialogue of the audience and blah blah blah.

There's nothing wrong with having a go at some craft. I encourage everyone to do it and if it brings you joy, keep doing it. But let's not pretend somebody sitting at their computer tapping away on a fantasy they've always had about some famous characters is automatically deep and meaningful and GOOD.

No one is saying published writing is automatically good and deep and all that jazz, what we're saying is that there's a vetting process, a whole screening that takes place before you ever see the published manuscript (unless, apparently, you're Stephen King in which case fire the editor, every word he writes is gold /sarcasm)

I wasn't saying if you write fanfic you're lazy, I said if all you do is use someone elses characters and have no motivation to create your own, yeah that's lazy and I wouldn't consider you a writer. A hobbyist maybe. I can slap together a wooden cabinet if it has instructions and the parts are pre-cut but that sure as shit doesn't make me a cabinet maker. Does that mean a cabinet maker never uses pre-cut parts and still constructs something beautiful? Of course they might do that, why not? But it isn't the same thing as when *I* slap together a cabinet. Let's not pretend it is.

If there are scores of good writers who write fanfic, awesome, then there's scores of great fanfic I'm sure. That's good writers. They are in all genres.

[not-hothead-yet.livejournal.com]

and excuse me but I take umbrage at being snarked because you think I am disdainful of writers having fun. Where in holy fuck did I say anything like that? Of course its fun. Fun is great. Fun however, does not equal serious or meaningful. We weren't discussing whether its "okay" for writers to do fanfic, we were discussing where is the line between "real" writing and fanfic writing?

Just because I make distinctions between "serious" writing and fanfic writing I get all kinds of names hurled at me. The only thing I said that could be construed as insulting was "lazy" and I was talking (deep breath as I say it again) about people who ONLY WRITE FANFIC EVER AND NEVER PUT ANYTHING ORIGINAL IN IT.

[renatus.livejournal.com]

If I was snarking at you personally, I would have done so. I was riffing off of some of the statements you made -- because they're all arguments I've seen before at tedious length -- and jumping off into my own personal rant at all of the other ones I've seen. Hell, they're all arguments I made at one point, and have since come to the conclusion I was being an ignorant jerk. If you see yourself reflected in that, that's your problem.

I must say that it's awfully disingenuous for you to complain about being called names when neither I nor Damien -- the only two people who have engaged you -- have done so. Damien has been nothing but patient, and the only thing I replied to you specifically about was to take you to task for assuming that because something is easy for you, it must universally be so.

At any rate, I am unlikely to engage specifically with your arguments because your goalposts waltz so merrily around the landscape it's giving me a headache.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

Come back to LJ land! We have Cookies!

[renatus.livejournal.com]

Yeah but tumblr has a whole buffet... granted, a really hard to navigate buffet with baffling utensils, but it's where most of my fandom is, so.

I'll make sure to log in here for you and Bear's stuff, however.

[raidingparty.livejournal.com]

The devaluation is entirely in the character creation. The realization of entities borne of but not identical with one's own consciousness is a process not undertaken by fan-fiction writers (in the course of writing fan-fiction) (more addenda needed: to varying extents depending on how many characters they create during the course of the writing).

Of course by symmetry, the only "value added" is of the characters. A cheeseburger with pickle is theoretically more valuable than a cheeseburger without, but it only has value if one likes pickles (let alone cheeseburgers... :P ... 90% of original work is terrible, 90% of fan-fiction is terrible).

The weirdness comes with the assumptions one has about a given craft. In this case, the creation (or discovery?) of characters that fascinate the readers is one of the tools that is commonly associated with wordcraft. Floundering for examples of other automated crafts that might or might not use pre-made parts.
There are also character creators who are not writers, but there isn't as much of a sphere around such.