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

[djonn]

Warning: this is going to run long....

I think part of the problem is that the body of literature classifiable as "fanfic" is much less amenable to generalizations than most people -- on all sides of the debates -- realize. Also, most definitions of "fanfic" promulgated to date are not qualitative (that is, derived from characteristics of the works themselves); rather, they're formulaic (that is, derived from a logic-equation that tries to map relationships between creators and works). This leads to several problems:

Problem #1: Crafting a qualitative, content-driven definition that reliably distinguishes fanfic from profic is impossible -- just about any generalization that attempts to draw such a distinction is easily disprovable by counterexample. I could cite a long series of examples, but it's easier to argue from Sturgeon's Law: "90% of everything is crud". Qualitatively, this is equally true of fanfic and profic alike -- but so is its corollary, that 10% of everything is NOT crud. (I'll get to examples eventually, but I want to get the full analysis out of the way first.)

Problem #2: The logic-equations that drive formulaic definitions of fanfic rely on questionable premises. One is that "fanfic authors" and "pro authors" are mutually exclusive sets. In fact, authors cross back and forth over the border -- it's easy to name fanfic authors who've gone pro; what isn't acknowledged openly is that not all of them stop writing fanfic after becoming pros; they just take the fanfic underground. (In almost all cases, the fanfic involved is mediafic; in the very few cases I know of relative to printfic, the creators of the parent works have at least tacitly granted approval to fanfic creators.)

Problem #3: While modern fanfic and the associated debates originated with respect to original-series Star Trek, and continue to focus mostly on SF/F genre works, fanfic has been around much longer than that. Notably, Sherlock Holmes "pastiches" have circulated openly since before Conan Doyle's death, first arising in publications almost exactly equivalent to the 1970s Trek-derived mediazines.

Problem #4: Ultimately, the present fanfic/profic distinction is the wrong distinction -- a better model would distinguish between individually created works (most prose fiction) and collectively created milieus (dramatic/performed media, RPG-derived settings, prose "shared-world" universes).

The Hobb essay is a solid, morally and legally sound defense of the sanctity of individual creations; as such, I agree with its case. But it falls apart on two levels when it attempts to go farther: it fails to acknowledge the unique characteristics of collective creations, and wrongly concludes that flaws arguably endemic to fanfic based on individual creations must also apply to fanfic based on collectively created settings. It doesn't help that today's profic is blurring the lines significantly. The advent of the 'Net has caused shared-universe fiction to evolve -- with MUDs and MUCKs on the gaming side, and things like Eric Flint's 1632 shared universe in the prosefic world.

I'll close with a handful of pointers to fanfic I consider of excellent to extraordinary quality.

Doctor Who
Two short, loosely connected pieces, interpreting material from the new BBC season.
The Terminus of Prayer
Look Upon This Sky

Gargoyles
Originally a respected animated series produced by Disney; parts of the series might be regarded as Shakespearean fanfic. Though long, this story is accessible even to those not familiar with the show.
The Scottish Play

Veronica Mars
A fragment extrapolated from the current UPN series. This is just astonishing....
The Tragedy of Lillian Kane -- Epilogue

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

...a better model would distinguish between individually created works (most prose fiction) and collectively created milieus (dramatic/performed media, RPG-derived settings, prose "shared-world" universes).

Djonn, that's elegant, and it probably would let people talk to each other (as opposed to shouting at each other), if there could be some general understanding that the two processes are similar-but-not-exact, with not-very-similar desired payoffs. I'm likening the "collective creations" to open-source programming -- community creativity in service of one project -- for my ease of thought.