Reading articles for Composition II

[shamanicshaymin]

I found this little gem from The Problem(s) With Fan Fiction:

If you’ve got crazy cool ideas for characters and relationships, don’t waste them in someone else’s world. Do you think Suzanne Collins would have been successful if she reworked her Hunger Game stories into works of Rugrats fan fiction?

Congratulations, author. You just shot yourself in the foot, 'cause now Hunger Games AUs in Rugrats fanfiction probably exists. Or will exist. I don't even like Rugrats, and the first thing I thought was, "Dude, now I wanna see Collins do dark Rugrats fic set in her own universe."

Is it me, or does a few of the anti-fanfic arguments seem misogynistic? "Ugh, women and their slash and talentless hacks masturbating over porn of someone else's characters! Stupid anime fangirls who crush over hot bishounen disrespect the author by writing fanfiction."

Comments

[sarajayechan]

Oh for the love of cheese. *facepalm* Yeah, definitely misogynistic. BECAUSE IT'S NOT LIKE HORNY FANBOYS WEREN'T WRITING ONE-HANDED SAILOR MOON LEMONS WAY BACK IN 1999 OUT OF THE SHEER DESIRE TO SEE USAGI GETTING NAKED AND TRIBBING WITH ALL THE OTHER SENSHI, NO SIR! It's always been us silly giggly little infantile fangirls who just discovered the word penis and want to touch our no-no bits to penises touching other penises!

And "only people who aren't creative enough to make their own stories write fanfiction" is a weak argument, imo. Some origfic writers aren't even that damn creative! :P The Legend of Rah and the Muggles, anyone? ...okay, that came out first. But what about all the movie ripoffs the Nostalgia Critic mentioned in his Gordy review? Or the animated Titanic movies? Or "The Room"?

[swordianmaster]

Or, keeping with the TGWTG content, what about Linkara's attempts at origfic? Or the fact that a decent number of script writers for popular shows (Star Trek: TNG comes to mind) were originally fanfiction writers?

It's not an instant pass/fail in either direction.

[redwoodalchan]

It also disregards the fact that there's a pretty significant leap between coming up with something new to do with an already-existing character and writing a completely original work. I've actually gotten ideas for original works but I haven't committed any to paper for a really long time (let alone tried getting them out into the world) simply because I can create a character, but not a world. Or I have a world, but not a plot. And so on. Whereas with fanfiction you have a world already established, and characters, and your biggest challenge is writing the story you want to write while still keeping the characters in-character.

[tropicsbear]

TBH the only anti-fanfic argument I've seen is the, "Why waste time writing about other people's characters when you can write about your own." No one form of writing is inherently better than the other, and if I prefer to not make money but enjoy writing about fictional characters that other people created, then I will.

[shamanicshaymin]

You'd be surprised how big the fanfic debate is! I found a lot under "arguments against fanfiction," and there's the infamous posts of George R. R. Martin, Robin Hobb, and Diana Gabaldon as well. More info here.

[guardians_song]

Yeah, misogynistic. And elitist.
~Because how dare you fandom scum write about MY timeless characters? brb, gotta write Hamlet fanfic because the orig. play is sooooo dumb & it would be SOOOO better if Hamlet was, liek, a Gary-Stu & his dad was a pedo! i r so smrt!!!~

^*doesn't think much of Orson Scott Card*

Though misogyny and elitism tend to go together in male-dominated fields, because of course those wretched women are a lower class of fan. After all, FEMALE-written fanfics filled with gratuitous sex, botched characterization, and pointless power-ups are INFINITELY inferior to MALE-written fanfics filled with gratuitous sex, botched characterization, and pointless power-ups! XP