DW/QAF crossover post: Is Fanfic Inherently a Bad Thing?

[lucinda428]

I'm indebted to larissa_j for kicking off this train of thought. She posted a rant about shipper wars in the Dr Who fandom which set me thinking about the role of fandom, and particularly fanfic, in relation to canon.

Comments

[veryshortlist]

JK Rowling hasn't suffered that much from fanfic. If anything, she wasn't seen as a credible writer at the start of her career, and now that she's richer than the queen mum, people don't call her writing ability into question. At least not as much.

[lucinda428]

Oh gosh, I've seen heaps of people on the Net complaining they've given up on the novels because they fall so far short of the fanfic, and I don't even go into the fandom itself, because I'm frightened of it too!

OTOH I admit that JKR, being richer than the queen, apparently personally happy and writing up an ending she has always apparently had in mind, probably isn't suffering too much in any real sense!

[veryshortlist]

Ah, I see your point. I hated Order of the Phenix, which I read after three years of reading fanfic in between books. That does not mean that I love the books any less. The fact that I haven't actively bought an HP book in years doesn't mean that I love it any less. It's just that, coming from fanfic, I have higher expectations.

Yeah, the sheer amount of bad fic is very scary. Some of it is okay, though. There are several I've read that can be read over again, a rare thing, even with published books.

[lucinda428]

It's just that, coming from fanfic, I have higher expectations.

See, I would argue that what you have, from reading fanfic, are expectations that Rowling write a different story from the one she always intended.

How can you say you hated OOTP but that doesn't mean you love the books any less??

[veryshortlist]

It's just the one book. The rest are fine, imo.