is grumpy old fic queen
What is the deal with challenges and archives for fannish content welcoming original fic? If I wanted to read original fiction, I would go do so! People even post some free on the Internet, just for the reading! Professionally edited stuff, even, if you grab something from an old Baen CD.
I like fanfiction because it is fanfiction. Because, even if someone fails to get across in their 374 word meditation on how the light falls in character X's hair, I can go to Wikipedia and discover (a) why anyone in the world gives a damn about character X and (b) by hair the author meant swirling id vortex about to swallow all of existence, unless character C does something about it.
I like fanfiction because it is explicitly in dialogue with other works, because it is an argument for interpreting a particular set of characters in one way or another, and whether or not I find this interpretation plausible is a whole different discussion from whether or not the writing's any good.
Most of the good parts of fanfiction, I don't have access to in original work until the third or fourth novel. The world just isn't fucking lived in enough to trigger the joy of repetition before the 300,000th word, okay? I don't step into your original fiction novel knowing and loving your characters like you do, dear author, and, frankly, if I'm in a fanfic reading mode, I'm not really looking to get to know somebody new, okay? I want to curl up with an old familiar friend, or at least somebody I've heard all of the latest gossip about.
I approve of originalbigbang and original slash archives and origslash_news (although the name original slash still makes me cringe like a thing which cowers in distress); if people want to take the tools developed by fandom and use them to connect to one another around their original characters, who am I to say them nay? It'd be like telling podfic readers they should never go on to make podcasts about tulips or whatever else it is they like in the world. And I love good original characters in fanfic, and accept that in order to get good original characters in fic we will be forced to wade through any number of awful ones: that's how the creative enterprise works.
But I hate for the streams of original fiction and fanfiction to cross. Stay out of my ghetto! It is nice and comfy in here! (Also, I will not be able to stand it if you get pissy about people writing fanfiction about your original work when you post said work in fanfiction spaces. My epicaricy will know no bounds. I might even be moved to bake a schadenfreude pie.)
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I like fanfiction because it is fanfiction. Because, even if someone fails to get across in their 374 word meditation on how the light falls in character X's hair, I can go to Wikipedia and discover (a) why anyone in the world gives a damn about character X and (b) by hair the author meant swirling id vortex about to swallow all of existence, unless character C does something about it.
I like fanfiction because it is explicitly in dialogue with other works, because it is an argument for interpreting a particular set of characters in one way or another, and whether or not I find this interpretation plausible is a whole different discussion from whether or not the writing's any good.
Most of the good parts of fanfiction, I don't have access to in original work until the third or fourth novel. The world just isn't fucking lived in enough to trigger the joy of repetition before the 300,000th word, okay? I don't step into your original fiction novel knowing and loving your characters like you do, dear author, and, frankly, if I'm in a fanfic reading mode, I'm not really looking to get to know somebody new, okay? I want to curl up with an old familiar friend, or at least somebody I've heard all of the latest gossip about.
I approve of originalbigbang and original slash archives and origslash_news (although the name original slash still makes me cringe like a thing which cowers in distress); if people want to take the tools developed by fandom and use them to connect to one another around their original characters, who am I to say them nay? It'd be like telling podfic readers they should never go on to make podcasts about tulips or whatever else it is they like in the world. And I love good original characters in fanfic, and accept that in order to get good original characters in fic we will be forced to wade through any number of awful ones: that's how the creative enterprise works.
But I hate for the streams of original fiction and fanfiction to cross. Stay out of my ghetto! It is nice and comfy in here! (Also, I will not be able to stand it if you get pissy about people writing fanfiction about your original work when you post said work in fanfiction spaces. My epicaricy will know no bounds. I might even be moved to bake a schadenfreude pie.)
Original post at Dreamwidth. Read (
) comments or reply there using Open ID.