A Few More Last Words

May 08, 2010 20:25

And one more thing ( Read more... )

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dagas_isa May 9 2010, 03:12:08 UTC
I don't think there's any problem to an author not liking fanfiction or telling fans not to write it. I also think the majority fans are quite reasonable when an author says that they do not allow fanfiction. I think the problem (and the explosiveness) comes when authors try to put some universal moral imperative on Why Fanfiction is a Dirty, Wrong Thing and Why Good Fans Don't Do It.

The first is a policy decision that's well within the author's right to make. The second is equivalent to a personal attack on those who write fanfiction and consider fanfiction to be important to how they relate to a creation that they love.

I'm also hesitant at saying that creators who allow fanfiction to be written for their characters and worlds love them any less than I'm sure you or Diana Galbadon do. If characters are likened to the children of their creators, then it's reasonable to say that there are different parenting styles, and that one's strictness or lenience is not necessarily an accurate measure of the love one holds for their characters.

I don't want to read your fanfic where Gatsby and Daisy run off together, and I certainly don't want to read the ones where Gatsby runs off with Tom Buchanan, or the two of them and Daisy have a threesome, or Gatsby rapes and murders Daisy... and I'm pretty sure F. Scott Fitzgerald wouldn't want to read 'em either.

To tell the truth, if I were writing those stories I wouldn't want F. Scott Fitzgerald reading those stories, and not just because of the storylines you mention. Fanfiction at it's best is basically a fan connecting to a text created by someone else through the lens of their own perspectives and experiences, and I think the scrutiny of the author inhibits that process.

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geminai5 May 9 2010, 07:33:09 UTC
I second this opinion in regards to fans respecting authors and their wishes and how the main problem was with the perceived personal attack on fanfic writers/readers as a whole as being morally deficient and sexually deviant with malicious intent to prove the author made a mistake of some sort in the canon story.

As you say, it's about love, but unfortunately, it has become an I-love-the-characters/world-more-than-you debate between the author-creator who requests that no fanfiction be written, the author-creator who allows fanfiction to be written, and fanfic writers and readers.

We're all entitled to our opinions regarding who wins that debate, but to disrespect and bad-mouth the others in that debate is the gasoline fueling the rage.

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