forum Fanfiction: Legitimate or Lame?

Started June 05, 2018 by @Blossom_Utonium

tune

Is fanfiction just as good as published works? I wanna hear your side of the story

There are a lot of benefits to fanfiction that I believe get lost in the sauce known as toxic fandom. There are some fanfiction writers out there who could out-write even your best favs. They're not constrained by book companies or other external obligations, and they have the benefit of already established lore to go off of. Fanfiction writers can weave pre-existing worlds into fantastic stories, and that's something that must be acknowledged. I've seen some Twilight fics that convinced me that the books really could have been the best things ever if the writer had even a modicum of talent.

That being said, a good chunk of fanfic is just a vehicle for people to write creepy porn about their favorite characters. I've seen fanfiction used to further some extremely harmful ideas. I grew up on it, and I'm so glad that sites like AO3 didn't exist when I was younger, because it if did, I might have been one of those writers who's pushing 30 and still talking about how shipping children into incestual relationships is ok. I literally stumbled onto a Kingdom Hearts slavery AU, and when I called the author out on it, they really tried to explain to me why what they wrote was pefectly ok. I just got into it with an author who thought that shipping Loki as a stepfather with his 16 year-old stepdaughter behind her mother's back was perfectly fine because "things are different in the UK". Fanfiction can breed some awful things, but that's not because fanfiction is inherently bad as a medium. There are tons of real, published books that contain the exact same level of awful as fanfiction. Ready Player One readily (no pun intended) comes to mind.

The take away here is that fanfiction as a medium has its good points and bad, but ultimately, it's just that. A medium. It is what you make it.

^^^I like the way you put it, I've had some similar experience myself. I personally still write fanfiction on the side just to keep my skills sharp.

I exclusively write fanfiction myself; been doing so since I was a preteen. I've seen a lot, good and bad, and I've written a lot of good and bad works. But I love it, and I'm glad that it exists. A lot of people poopoo it, and for good reason as I illustrated above. But there's a lot of merit to it. I mean, there is a lot of classic literature that's fanfiction; stuff like the Illiad come to mind, as well as a good chunk of Sherlock Holmes' canon. And I'm sure there are more than a few famous published authors who started out writing fanfiction. Anyone who thinks its a lesser medium just because it "piggybacks on others' work" or think it's derivative has never read any good stories. Fanfiction allows us to further enjoy works that we love. In my opinion, it's the truest expression of appreciation for art.

When you think about it, the Renaissance revolved around religious fanart

It's not really my thing, personally. I've never read a good fanfiction, but I've also never seen a real koala bear before. That doesn't mean they don't exist. I don't think that fanfiction is any better or worse than writing original fiction, but it's just not really something that I go out of my way to seek out.

There are tons of real, published books that contain the exact same level of awful as fanfiction. Ready Player One readily (no pun intended) comes to mind.

Yeah, I definitely agree to that. I haven't read Ready Player One yet, but the risk of pissing off a lot of people, this was exactly how I felt about Carry On by Rainbow Rowell.

I've read some very good fanfic and also some that was a mess. Not even a hot mess. Just a mess. For me, though, the best fanfic I've head has been Hamilton ones since most are AUs or cute history ones, it feels like it's not really the characters but OCs.

Okay, so you guys are talking about the reading aspect of fanfiction, but from the perspective of a writer, fanfiction can be a stepping stone to writing original material. It's great practice on different aspects you would find in any other story, it's just not completely your own.