Fan Fiction: Against

[rolanni]

Robin Hobb has posted a cogent rant here. Link from pegkerr

I know that some folks on my friends list write fan fic, and may thus not agree with Robin's points. If you feel compelled to disagree with them here, please be polite and rational. Posts deemed impolite, irrational, or both, by Eagles Over the Kennebec Management will be deleted.

In the service of Full Disclosure and Fair Warning, I do agree with Robin's points. Scott Lynch (link also from pegkerr) does not.

Comments

I'm on the fence

[jennifer-dunne.livejournal.com]

I disagree with fanfiction of printed fiction, on general principle. You're competing in form and function against your primary source, and corrupting canon in an ongoing creation. Just because you see a hole where something wasn't developed to your liking doesn't mean that the author never intended to go back and fill in that hole.

If someone's going to go to all the trouble to write a fanfic story, they can just as easily take the inspiration they got from the original, plus whatever they wanted to change, and create their own worlds and stories. Writing is still writing.

But I'm not as sold that fanfiction of media properties is as bad an idea. Obviously, this doesn't include franchises like Star Trek and Star Wars, that pump out plenty of books. But cancelled television shows? Even if there was a sudden windfall of money allowing the show to be reconstituted, hiring producers, directors, costumers, set designers, lighting crew, camera crew, and all the zillions of other people required, they'd never be able to get the actors back, and even if they did, they'd probably have aged out of the show's timeline. So to all intents and purposes, there will be no more stories in that world.

In that case, I think fan fiction keeps shows alive, building a market for the DVD releases, and peripheral fan souveniers. Where's the bad in that?

Re: I'm on the fence

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

...cancelled television shows? Even if there was a sudden windfall of money allowing the show to be reconstituted, hiring producers, directors, costumers, set designers, lighting crew, camera crew, and all the zillions of other people required, they'd never be able to get the actors back, and even if they did, they'd probably have aged out of the show's timeline. So to all intents and purposes, there will be no more stories in that world.

OK -- point. Cancelled television shows is a personal blindspot because, um, I don't watch television. I have no idea what the dynamic is there, and it may well be as you say, that the fan's fiction keeps interest in the show alive.

I'm not on the fence.

[od-mind.livejournal.com]

No more stories in that world? Then how did Thomas Disch come to write a 1979 novel in the world of "The Prisoner", which aired in 1969? How did we come to have an (atrcious) "Avengers" movie recently? Numerous "Addams Family" films?

Even dead television shows are intellectual property. I certainly don't want the good ones corrupted by an infestation of fanfic, and I'm not willing to assign anyone the authority to distinguish between "good enough to protect" and "not good enough to protect".

At any rate, even when it isn't *monetary* theft, it still looks to me like the literary equivalent of breaking into someone's home and wearing their scanties. Not an admirable practice, even if you think you look better in 'em than their owners do, and refrain from selling them on Ebay.