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Date: 2020-09-27 11:15 am (UTC)I think it absolutely holds true that wide reading makes a good writer - or artist - and that goes whatever your genre. You do need to know your genre, but you also gain from experiencing things outside it.
Fanfiction is a hobby, and some people in that hobby are professional-level but most of us aren't and that's completely fine. Just like I also play piano and make cards and embroider, but I don't want to monetise any of that because then it won't be fun anymore. I have a day job, thank you, and I don't like the trend towards making everything you enjoy into a paid gig.
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Date: 2020-09-27 11:58 am (UTC)Anyway, I guess here's my AO3 account:
https://www.archiveofourown.org/users/sadoeuphemist/pseuds/sadoeuphemist
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Date: 2020-09-27 12:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-09-27 12:17 pm (UTC)Anyway, this is the definition of fanfic being used in the post, what doesn't apply?
With fanfiction you’re using somebody else’s characters and universe. You may have created a plot or a complex AU, but you have not created the base of the universe, the base of the characters. You haven’t made a compelling protagonist, haven’t put in any of the hard work of world-building and character design—someone else has done that for you and a huge part of writing fiction is creating your own character/voice.
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Date: 2020-09-27 03:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-09-27 03:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-09-27 01:14 pm (UTC)Heck, derivative works, fanfics, knockoffs and what have you can even elevate the originals in the public eye. Journey to the West is a big hodgepodge of Chinese legends, but that’s still pretty much one of most beloved and popular stories ever made. Are stuff like King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table/Le Morte d’Arthur or The Romance of the Three Kingdoms any lesser as literary classics because they're retellings of preexisting legends and history? Bringing things into the modern day, how many people wouldn’t have gotten into Harry Potter were that not for the movies? Would The Witcher be the international juggernaut that is now were that not for the games, which were themselves pretty much post-canon fanfic? Nosferatu was infamously Dracula with the serial numbers scratched off. The Clone Wars is (in my opinion at least) probably one of the best cartoons out there, is that “cheating” because that was based on the movies? Airplane! is hilarious, is that any less as art because that’s a direct parody of Zero Hour?
I don’t know, I’m very casual when that comes to what is and isn’t considered “art”. If a few brush strokes and a splotch can count as a masterpiece that gets sold for millions, why not derivative works like fanfic or fanart or comics or doujinshi?
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Date: 2020-09-28 12:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-09-27 08:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-09-27 12:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-09-27 02:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-09-28 02:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-09-29 12:03 pm (UTC)He didn't write as a hobby, he wrote it to earn a living as a playwright, and that is, I think, the difference, he was wanting to be, and became, a professional writer.
I mean, Neil Gaiman once said that he was a fan of fanfic, and he considered that his Sherlock Holmes/Cthulhu short story "A Study in Emerald" to be fanfic, but that seems a little disingenuous as, again, he submitted it for a collection to make money. So it's derivative, but not fanfic.
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Date: 2020-09-29 12:53 pm (UTC)It's much rarer than the very common fanart commission, because for some reason IP holders are much more likely to go after written works than drawings even if both are fanworks, but it still happens.
So writing as a job for the purpose of making money doesn't necessarily mean you are not writing fanfiction.
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Date: 2020-09-29 01:59 pm (UTC)If Alan Moore writes a Watchmen sequel, is he writing fanfic?
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Date: 2020-09-27 03:27 pm (UTC)This is especially fucked up when it comes to comics, because superheroes are a billion dollar industry, and yet how many of the writers and artists who originally created these characters managed to retain the rights to them? The writer of the post dismissively mentions Thorkyie pegging fics but fails to consider Thor Ragnarok itself as fanfiction, because Marvel owns the copyright, so it's legit.
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Date: 2020-09-27 04:39 pm (UTC)Fanfic is for "gross" white women: Fanfiction, and fandom in general tbh, has always been this white women’s fantasy play space where they can make their grossest, ickiest, most racist and offensive dreams come true. Instead of exercising some degree of normalcy, they build their entire personalities about these alternate universes of alternate universes because there is no personality to them outside of it! They’re just like they’re male counterparts — sarcastic youtube boys nutting over Marvel and whatever stupid game they’re lusting over at the moment — but instead of using shock humor and racial slurs, they use a more “feminine” approach, via microaggressions and rape fic.
Fanfiction authors are "bitches": Long story short, I can’t wait ‘til fanfiction goes out of style so we don’t have to deal with fandom bitches any more. and also i’m not arguing with bitches whose crowning achievements is a couple thousand kudos on a03. pre-order my book, because i’m a published author and you’re a stay-at-home pervert
Fanfiction writers are unattractive: You are a slovenly hermit in your late twenties, early thirties producing child porn and rape fic for the “benefit” of equally disgusting people on the internet. You have no skills, you have no voice; you are using recycled words and phrases and tropes and sentences from the same fanfiction that has been on the internet since it began. You have no made anything.
Suicide-baiting other fans is okay: I don’t send people anon hate, but I’m not going to tell people “don’t send anon hate or suicide bait vile people that should be de-platformed because that doesn’t align with my personal morals on what I’d allow myself to do and i think that’s very bad for anyone to do even though {insert reasons why the person is horrible} but don’t”.
[Emphasis mine. Note: the 'vile person' referred to was a fan on Tumblr; their 'crime' was following somebody who posted racy anime art.]
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Date: 2020-09-27 05:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-09-28 12:37 am (UTC)It definitely reminds me a number of political leaders and clergy members I've heard, too. That's not the kind of person or the kind of content I want in my fandom experience. D: I refuse to engage with her or with anything she says or writes, beyond making sure others are aware of her behaviour.
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Date: 2020-09-28 05:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-09-28 01:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-09-27 04:46 pm (UTC)I'm not really interested in being used to advance some argument you're having on another platform. Especially when it's an old tired argument like this one and you haven't read the comm rules. Mods?
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Date: 2020-09-27 05:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-09-27 07:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-09-27 07:24 pm (UTC)I mean, this fellow seems like quite an unpleasant sort and I doubt I'd ever want to be friends with them, but dragging out something they've deleted seems pretty bad taste. If you really think the content of the post is worth discussion, let it stand on its own; don't send us running to the author's door when they don't want more visitors.
Mod Note!
Date: 2020-09-29 12:20 pm (UTC)We are a site for posting scans from, and discussing, comics.
If another bit of media is distinctly comics-centric, or comics related, and it's not done too frequently, we allow it because comics now live in a much more multi-media world than previously.
This is a discussion about the very concept of fanfic, which is a different scope than Scans_Daily is designed to be a platform for.
It might work as a post in Off-Topic Tuesday, which is what we have it for, but not as a post in it's own right.
If you have any doubts about whether something is appropriate for a NoScans post, you can always check with the Mod Team.
Re: Mod Note!
Date: 2020-09-29 12:42 pm (UTC)Re: Mod Note!
Date: 2020-09-29 12:48 pm (UTC)In the meatime, if you could remove the text of the post, and just put something like "Removed at Mod Request"
Oh, geez.
Date: 2020-09-27 05:22 pm (UTC)I'm a multi-published author (I'm a hybrid - both traditionally published and independently published). One of the best ways to insure that you don't sell a second book is to be unprofessional, to put it mildly.
No one wants to work with someone who is rude, cruel, and self-involved.
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Date: 2020-09-27 06:32 pm (UTC)I also think there's something else that has contributed to the stigma of fanfiction. One of course, is the Sturgeon factor. It's said there's no such thing as "Cancel Culture" because very few people have been completely cut off from the ability to create. However, I do think people have been "cancelled" by individuals, and I have a theory that it' been so prevalent not just because we are reassessing our society from a moral standpoint, but because we've become so inundated by content that what has historically been a leisure activity has now become homework. I think when someone gets outed for reprehensible behavior, there's almost a relief that it's one less thing they will feel obligated to consume. Where does this bring me back to fanfiction? Because there's so, so, so much out there, I think intellectually, a lot of people would rather just write the whole thing off than do the work to separate the wheat from the chafe.
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Date: 2020-09-28 05:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-09-28 02:35 pm (UTC)I believe today superheroes are more necessary than ever. The modern iteration of superheroes were created by Jewish immigrants during WW2, as a direct and explicit response to the idea that people in times of crisis should only think of themselves and screw everybody else. Those creators loudly answered that no, if anything times of crisis are when people need to be better.
In the past 20 years the world has been steadily falling into fascism. It's not just the USA: the Right has been on the rise everywhere. And in a couple of months, actual fucking Nazis may pull a coup on the country with the highest amount of weapons.
Now more than ever we need the guy who punched Hitler, the woman who fights the patriarchy, the black man who exposes racism, the immigrant who reports on abuse and corruption and whose archenemy is a megalomaniacal billionaire who becomes the President.
And yes, only Cap, Diana and T'Challa got movies that actually address the social issues, while Superman directors decided to go with the terrible Christ-like metaphor instead of the illegal alien journalist thing. That's all the more reason to make a Superman movie that gets it right.
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Date: 2020-09-29 02:04 am (UTC)Like, the funniest part of Captain America: Winter Soldier is that SHIELD is already a flagrantly evil institution, so they had to make HYDRA stupidly, comically evil to compensate. Nick Fury tells Cap, 'Hey, we're making a bunch of helicarriers to rain death down on our enemies in the Middle East,' and Captain America goes 'Hrmmmm, seems bad, I don't like it' but doesn't do anything to stop it. It takes HYDRA going 'actually, we're planning to use them to rain death down upon our enemies here in the United States!' for Captain America to realize, 'Oh no! That's really bad!!!'
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Date: 2020-09-29 01:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-09-28 06:30 pm (UTC)1) The aforementioned glut in entertainment options, particularly streaming. So let me just say a streaming show making a meta statement on superheroes kind of gets a contemptuous laugh out of me. (That said, you can still get stuff like Knives Out or Get Out hitting it big.)
2) We, as a culture are very divided. Conservatives don't trust the majority of Hollywood right now, and liberals feel like works have to fill some kind of morally responsible checklist, you can't have more original stuff that pleases a wide swath of people. The Blind Side was the first major non-franchise blockbuster in something like seven years, and it routinely places in "Worst Best Picture Nominees" lists. American Sniper was the first "real world" movie to make more than the contemporary comic book movies since Titanic, and it's not a favorite of cineastes. La La Land was a commercially successful throwback film, and when it was beaten by the little-seen dark horse Moonlight, people were not so much thrilled by its win but annoyed that it was even that close. Now I'm not saying such opinions are wrong and of themselves, but you're going to have like, choose? Superheroes have such a built-in fanbase (and are not subject to the trials of one person just losing it) they are less vulnerable to the tall poppy syndrome.
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Date: 2020-09-28 03:51 pm (UTC)But sometimes flawed indicators are all we have, and people will use those in the absence of other evidence. Fanfics are likely to be amateurish because their features are attractive crutches for amateurs and repel many professionals. Don't know how to make a full cast of likable characters, a detailed setting, and/or a science-fictional conceit? Here, use these prefabbed ones. Apart from the poor fiscal strategy of creating something derivative that you may not be able to sell, many pro writers want to stand creatively on their own two feet.
When I first got into comics, I was super into the idea of calling any sequential images "comics." Begone with your "airline safety manuals," your "hieroglyphs," your "graphic novels," and hello, "airplane infocomics," "ancient Egyptian comics," and "longform comics." But nowadays I see more value in connotation, and it may be sad for fanfic writers, but it's true: if the work is high-quality and generally respected, even if you can argue it's fanfic, most people won't call it that.
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Date: 2020-09-28 08:13 pm (UTC)I read once that some writing instructors and successful published authors advise against writing fanfic because it doesn't help you learn how to create original characters and settings. That's true to an extent, although it overlooks the fact that many fanfics do include original characters. Yes, far too many of those are laughably obvious self-insert fantasies, miracle-working mentors who solve everyone's problems, or both. However, in the better-written cases, OCs can be as fascinating and relatable as the canonical characters.
Also, I think how applicable that professional advice is, depends on one's reasons for writing fanfic in the first place. If the goal is to hone one's writing skills so as to get good enough for conventional paid publication, then yes, it's probably better to stick with original characters and settings. But if you're not interested in conventional paid publication, and would rather just have fun putting your own spin on others' work, then I see no harm in writing fanfic.