Whee, fandom drama...
I was over at Fiction Alley Park again, seeing what the fans there had to say about the latest JKR chat. I can't believe how whiny some people can be! "Waah, I don't like Ron's middle name! Snivel, she says Draco is an unsympathetic jerk(eventhoughhe'ssupposedtobe)! Boo hoo, she doesn't have the ages and birthdates of every one of her 100+ characters memorized! Whine, she's not giving away all the huge secrets she's got planned for the last two books!"
Geez, people, lighten up and relax. More specifically, I wrote this:
-----------
It's fine to play with theories, ships, fics, whatever, and I agree that many ('though not all) of the questions in the chat were unsatisfying, but we must remember that none of us would be here in the fandom without Ms. Rowling's work.
A fan can write a 300-page Draco novel, or paint a ten-foot-tall mural of Dumbledore and Fawkes, or sew a completely authentic Hufflepuff Quidditch uniform, or whatever, but they are still JK Rowling's characters. And as such she can do whatever she darn well pleases with them.
Sure, we can be frustrated that things don't go the way we imagined them. That's natural.
But foremost I think we have to respect the creator and her views on her creation.
Put yourself in her shoes and imagine how you'd feel if your brainchild(ren), a world you've worked for years to create, a deeply personal part of your mind, were being treated the way we treat the HP books sometimes. I would sometimes feel frightened, discouraged, frustrated, and even offended. (At other times I'd be flattered, giddy and thrilled--depends on what aspect of the fandom you're looking at!
To put it another way, we can put different clothes on the dolls, tie different ribbons on the handlebars of the bicycle, take apart the Lego sets and make them into different objects, but at the end of the day they're still Jo's toys. Her name is written on the bottom of the dolls' feet; her initials are on the bicycle's play license plate. We are the ones visiting her house and borrowing them to play with for awhile, sometimes leaving them in a heap in the middle of the living room floor with Kool-aid stains on them.
Eh, bottom line, there would be NO fanon without canon. We take ourselves waaaaaaaaaay too seriously sometimes.
They're books. Fun books, books we spend lots of time and energy thinking about and playing with, books we are emotionally invested in, but they are just books.
------
/end quote from FAP
It's like, I imagine how I'd feel if Heritage in the Stars were well-known and published, and there was a huge following for a Xorax/Delzeena ship. o_0 I can compare that well to Draco/Hermione, which JKR was "OMG SO MEAN WTF?!!!1" to say would never happen.
Xorax hates Delzeena's race, has sworn to kill everyone in her bloodline, and fantasizes about the many gruesome ways he could kill her.
Delzeena hates Xorax's race, is terrified to near-paralysis by him, and sees him as the embodiment of everything evil in the world.
Yes, if some random fangirl came by and said "OMG but tehy l00k so KYOOT 2getha!!!!!1one" and started drawing pictures of them making out, I'd be freaked out and dismayed! Of course! I would despair that the fan had missed the total point of the story.
Or if someone insisted that Vazali's father isn't really dead but is actually in hiding somewhere, I'd want to smack my head against the wall. Or if someone said that Minalla and Zadie were lovers, I'd be horribly disgusted, because they get on each other's nerves terribly, Minalla is happily married, Zadie gets married in a sequel, and Minalla is old enough to be Zadie's mother. Or if someone adamantly refused to believe that Bronzar doesn't have a twin sister. Or something. I don't know. I just see all these ridiculous things in fandoms sometimes, and I look at it from the POV of the original creators of the characters, and can't help but feel they aren't thrilled by all of it. Attention and admiration is one thing. Bastardizing characters and concepts with no regard to author intent is another.
I write fanfiction, draw fanart, concoct theories, etc. But I always do so with the utmost respect for the author.
It's also different with a series of novels than it is with a cartoon show. The creators of, for example, Tale Spin, no doubt cared about their characters and thought up backstories for them, etc. But it was part of their job as Disney employees, and a collaborative effort, and after working on that show they moved on and did other shows and never worked with the characters again.
With novels, the author is much more intimately involved with the character development, and pours their heart and soul into the work. It's a more personal thing.
Maybe I just relate more to the latter since I've done it myself.
But I guess I just don't understand how someone can profess to be a fan of an author's work, and then turn around and try to change things about it, pervert it, replace it and mess with it. If you are such a fan of the original work, emulate it, try to capture some of its magic that made you a fan in the first place. Don't say, "I'm a fan of Redwall but it would be better if it were set in outer space, and the characters swore and got stoned, and Martin was actually a cyborg, and Tsarmina ran a brothel, and there are these mutant horses with guns..." Some fanfiction is so far from the original that it's mind-boggling. (Although thankfully that Redwall example is totally made-up, as far as I know!) o_0
When you do something like that it's not being a fan of the original. Because what you're doing is nothing LIKE the original.
You're just taking your own ideas and superimposing them onto other's characters. It's like having your own characters wear Harry Potter costumes (i.e. call them by the names of Rowling's characters, even if they act nothing like them) so more people will read your story.
It's frustrating to create original characters that mean the world to you and then have them be ignored. But you have to fight that uphill battle, because making your own original characters and then dressing them up and pretending they're popular characters is an insult not only to the other author's characters, but to your own characters as well.
For a couple of years I took character ideas from the TV series and pilot novelization of the crappy old War of the Worlds TV series and wrote literally hundreds of pages of fanfics. Some of those stories are still halfway decent, even thought I wrote them soooooooo long ago. With a little polishing, I might not even be too embarassed to post them online. The problem is, they aren't WotW fanfics, really. They're my original characters using names, some settings, and a smidgen of plot backstory from the WotW series. So if I showed them to anyone familiar with the series, they'd be like, "What the hell is this? This isn't WotW!" And they'd be right. They would be SO right. It isn't. It's my own stuff. My own stuff that evolved over a period of several years and eventually ended up becoming Heritage in the Stars--which now bears absolutely no resemblance to War of the Worlds whatsoever. (Unless you count the fact that they're aliens.) o_0
That was all back in the Neolithic period, before the Internet! *gasp* I didn't even know what fanfic was in those days. I was young and silly--something that unfortunately all too many fandom participants are--and didn't know any better. I didn't realize what I was doing for years. But when I did, what a liberating feeling! And what a feeling of accomplishment! By slowly replacing all the bits and pieces of the WotW universe that I started out in with my own ideas, I eventually created an entire world that was completely original. Absolutely NOTHING remained of the material I started with. And it felt great! True, my characters aren't as famous as Harry Potter, Luke Skywalker, James T. Kirk or Legolas. (Given the mangling influence of fandoms, that might be a good thing.) ;) But they're MINE, and that's a very good feeling.
Geez, people, lighten up and relax. More specifically, I wrote this:
-----------
It's fine to play with theories, ships, fics, whatever, and I agree that many ('though not all) of the questions in the chat were unsatisfying, but we must remember that none of us would be here in the fandom without Ms. Rowling's work.
A fan can write a 300-page Draco novel, or paint a ten-foot-tall mural of Dumbledore and Fawkes, or sew a completely authentic Hufflepuff Quidditch uniform, or whatever, but they are still JK Rowling's characters. And as such she can do whatever she darn well pleases with them.
Sure, we can be frustrated that things don't go the way we imagined them. That's natural.
But foremost I think we have to respect the creator and her views on her creation.
Put yourself in her shoes and imagine how you'd feel if your brainchild(ren), a world you've worked for years to create, a deeply personal part of your mind, were being treated the way we treat the HP books sometimes. I would sometimes feel frightened, discouraged, frustrated, and even offended. (At other times I'd be flattered, giddy and thrilled--depends on what aspect of the fandom you're looking at!
To put it another way, we can put different clothes on the dolls, tie different ribbons on the handlebars of the bicycle, take apart the Lego sets and make them into different objects, but at the end of the day they're still Jo's toys. Her name is written on the bottom of the dolls' feet; her initials are on the bicycle's play license plate. We are the ones visiting her house and borrowing them to play with for awhile, sometimes leaving them in a heap in the middle of the living room floor with Kool-aid stains on them.
Eh, bottom line, there would be NO fanon without canon. We take ourselves waaaaaaaaaay too seriously sometimes.
They're books. Fun books, books we spend lots of time and energy thinking about and playing with, books we are emotionally invested in, but they are just books.
------
/end quote from FAP
It's like, I imagine how I'd feel if Heritage in the Stars were well-known and published, and there was a huge following for a Xorax/Delzeena ship. o_0 I can compare that well to Draco/Hermione, which JKR was "OMG SO MEAN WTF?!!!1" to say would never happen.
Xorax hates Delzeena's race, has sworn to kill everyone in her bloodline, and fantasizes about the many gruesome ways he could kill her.
Delzeena hates Xorax's race, is terrified to near-paralysis by him, and sees him as the embodiment of everything evil in the world.
Yes, if some random fangirl came by and said "OMG but tehy l00k so KYOOT 2getha!!!!!1one" and started drawing pictures of them making out, I'd be freaked out and dismayed! Of course! I would despair that the fan had missed the total point of the story.
Or if someone insisted that Vazali's father isn't really dead but is actually in hiding somewhere, I'd want to smack my head against the wall. Or if someone said that Minalla and Zadie were lovers, I'd be horribly disgusted, because they get on each other's nerves terribly, Minalla is happily married, Zadie gets married in a sequel, and Minalla is old enough to be Zadie's mother. Or if someone adamantly refused to believe that Bronzar doesn't have a twin sister. Or something. I don't know. I just see all these ridiculous things in fandoms sometimes, and I look at it from the POV of the original creators of the characters, and can't help but feel they aren't thrilled by all of it. Attention and admiration is one thing. Bastardizing characters and concepts with no regard to author intent is another.
I write fanfiction, draw fanart, concoct theories, etc. But I always do so with the utmost respect for the author.
It's also different with a series of novels than it is with a cartoon show. The creators of, for example, Tale Spin, no doubt cared about their characters and thought up backstories for them, etc. But it was part of their job as Disney employees, and a collaborative effort, and after working on that show they moved on and did other shows and never worked with the characters again.
With novels, the author is much more intimately involved with the character development, and pours their heart and soul into the work. It's a more personal thing.
Maybe I just relate more to the latter since I've done it myself.
But I guess I just don't understand how someone can profess to be a fan of an author's work, and then turn around and try to change things about it, pervert it, replace it and mess with it. If you are such a fan of the original work, emulate it, try to capture some of its magic that made you a fan in the first place. Don't say, "I'm a fan of Redwall but it would be better if it were set in outer space, and the characters swore and got stoned, and Martin was actually a cyborg, and Tsarmina ran a brothel, and there are these mutant horses with guns..." Some fanfiction is so far from the original that it's mind-boggling. (Although thankfully that Redwall example is totally made-up, as far as I know!) o_0
When you do something like that it's not being a fan of the original. Because what you're doing is nothing LIKE the original.
You're just taking your own ideas and superimposing them onto other's characters. It's like having your own characters wear Harry Potter costumes (i.e. call them by the names of Rowling's characters, even if they act nothing like them) so more people will read your story.
It's frustrating to create original characters that mean the world to you and then have them be ignored. But you have to fight that uphill battle, because making your own original characters and then dressing them up and pretending they're popular characters is an insult not only to the other author's characters, but to your own characters as well.
For a couple of years I took character ideas from the TV series and pilot novelization of the crappy old War of the Worlds TV series and wrote literally hundreds of pages of fanfics. Some of those stories are still halfway decent, even thought I wrote them soooooooo long ago. With a little polishing, I might not even be too embarassed to post them online. The problem is, they aren't WotW fanfics, really. They're my original characters using names, some settings, and a smidgen of plot backstory from the WotW series. So if I showed them to anyone familiar with the series, they'd be like, "What the hell is this? This isn't WotW!" And they'd be right. They would be SO right. It isn't. It's my own stuff. My own stuff that evolved over a period of several years and eventually ended up becoming Heritage in the Stars--which now bears absolutely no resemblance to War of the Worlds whatsoever. (Unless you count the fact that they're aliens.) o_0
That was all back in the Neolithic period, before the Internet! *gasp* I didn't even know what fanfic was in those days. I was young and silly--something that unfortunately all too many fandom participants are--and didn't know any better. I didn't realize what I was doing for years. But when I did, what a liberating feeling! And what a feeling of accomplishment! By slowly replacing all the bits and pieces of the WotW universe that I started out in with my own ideas, I eventually created an entire world that was completely original. Absolutely NOTHING remained of the material I started with. And it felt great! True, my characters aren't as famous as Harry Potter, Luke Skywalker, James T. Kirk or Legolas. (Given the mangling influence of fandoms, that might be a good thing.) ;) But they're MINE, and that's a very good feeling.