An Exhaustive Defense of Fanfiction

Tried testing out sarah's theory that I can find fanfiction of anything and ended up reading nathan for you fanfic for an hour :(

I disagree with the idea that it's difficult to separate historical fiction from fan fiction of historical characters. The latter is explicitly made for the fans of those individuals, Hamilton isn't made specifically for fans of the founding fathers.

"You really think Pride and Prejudice is in any way comparable to your 50k word omegaverse high school AU Supernatural BTS crossover fanfiction?"
The fact that I understood all of those words is terrifying.

I often want to get into fanfiction more, but I rarely read it. I‘ll defend fanfiction as a medium with valuable (art) work any day, but I still have my predjudice (I don‘t want to have). I guess I‘m wondering how to find the „good“ ones. Since fanfiction is another medium, that will probably be different than finding a good book.

Using known characters to shorthand explanation on how they behave or how you should feel about them is pretty old and not unique to fanfic or derivative works even! Oral storytelling, folklore, and fables did this all the time (often in the form of animals)- if a fox shows up in Aesop’s fables you know they will be tricky and selfish, if a fairy tale includes 3 brothers you know the youngest will be the wisest, etc. These aren’t derivative characters but they use character tropes in a way that modern storytelling has moved away from in favor of characters that develop through the story. Is it really so different having a story where a knight shows up vs Superman? We know both are there to be noble and save the day, I’d argue that fanfic using established characters is just the modern version of those old character archetypes.

have you read sobsicles...yeah i thought so

Literally every piece of work ever is transformative. People write/create art about what they see in the world, and what interests them. Nothing is ever truly, fully "original"

ALSO who said all art had to be "good" art?? All these arguments are like "you'll never be as good as these published authors" but who ever said you had to be? Just let people do what they enjoy and let others get enjoyment out of that without it being hyper analyzed and criticized all the time.

this is exactly what i’ve been saying for years. you just put it into better words. thank you, now i can send this video to my friends and not waste my time typing the same essay over and over again. this. is. perfect.

You mean like light and tangy?

Relatable, I love salt and vinegar chips

I believe fanfiction should be taken seriously in the sense that it isnt just "steamy stories by teenage girls on wattpat" like its often seen online. I've seen stories that are completely separate to the og canon except for the names of the characters. Ive cried to fanfiction, been conforted, etc. Its more accesible. Its an artform in its own way and a love letter to the og works they derive from.

You really can't read both fanfiction and "books." You even get to it towards the end of the video. Fanfiction readers and writers outright refuse to engage with more complex works.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Fanfiction is the literary equivalent of playing covers. It's what everyone does, it's why they get into this stuff in the first place. To imitate their heroes. Be it Ursula le Guin or Terry Pratchett with the pen, or Nirvana or Radiohead with the guitar. You start with what you know and love. After which you move onto to your own songs, worlds, and characters.

Fanfic cheaper than books, says person who already has internet

I fully support fanfiction while also being a lit snob. Listen, I am not here to tell you what you can or cannot write or read. If you get something out of a Barbie x Optimus Prime fanfic that I don't, that's not for me to say its bad and my thing is good. I intrinsically link value based on two core criteria: What the work says and the history of the work. And yes, that does mean I favor older works of fiction than more modern examples of similar genres and designs. I've also written numerous fanfictions ranging from WoW to HP to Percy Jackson. There are things. My own work that I pursue diligently is an original piece that was initially conceived as a HP fanfiction. Fanfiction is an excellent outlet to explore our growth and understanding of writing. Some are better than others (I have read works of Fanfiction so incredibly well written and transformative that not only did they stir an emotional reaction from me, but they also exist as some of my personal favorite examples of it and top 100 favorites I have ever read).

Who would have thought a shit-post would be that influencial in the art world

For me personally, I find it incredibly, INCREDIBLY difficult to get into brand new media. I have incredibly deep attachments to the media that I AM interested in, so of course, fanfiction becomes one of the biggest literary intakes I indulge in (both reading and writing), and I can say with confidence that it is INCREDIBLY hard to strike a balance where a character you've written feels "correct". Even if you're doing something like a timeskip, and you've made the character transition and get a bunch of new friends, and new hobbies, and a new job, and what have you, there's always going to be a line between what DOES feel like the character, and what doesn't. It's kinda scary to put fics out there for this reason because there will be readers that know your... blorbo from your game INCREDIBLY intimately, sometimes even more than you do. And if you're in a more. dangerous fandom for lack of a better term(I say this as a danganronpa fan, it's a love-hate relationship, really), people can be absolutely RUTHLESS. At this point I feel like I'm drifting more off topic so I'll cap it here, lol.

Was think about this. Wondering if there is relationship to the disregard of Fanfiction as "trashy" writing and the way more highbrow people in publishing community have normally disregard romance novels in the same way particularly when they the romance novel was first coming on the scene. I mean both fanfiction and the romance novels historically have a larger percentage of non-cis straight men in the creation and consumption of the media than compared more traditional genres like Sci-Fi and Non-Fiction (and potentially fantasy). Also compared to to other genres romance is considered to be "easier" to publish a book in compared other genres. Also the Shipping is a part of romance. I am not saying this is true but it is something to think about

Dude in my country books are way way too expensive and the closest library is at 2hrs away, so yeah...

The part when you flashed the patrons in the middle of the video truly gave me a shock.

the only real problems in fanfiction are present in fandom and media in general, its all the bigotry

“If it exists, theres pron/fanfiction of it” BULLSHIT, THERE ARE 8 WORKS IN THE SHIP I LIKE ON AO3 AND IM GOING CRAZY BCZ THE FANDOM WAS A YEAR AGO SO PROB NOONES GONNA WRITE ANYMORE!!

I find both far ends of the "fanfiction vs. lit" debate absolutely bizarre. "Fanfiction is nothing but repetitive empty trash you flock to instead of trying challenging art, as well as supporting corporate worship" and "real books are boring to me now because fanfiction is so much better anyway" are like-

What? As if to suggest that finding comfort in familiar media makes you some kind of brainwashed zombie who can't appreciate higher forms of art, or that your own personal bubble of media is superior to published literature almost purely because your frame of reference for "real books" are books you resented having to read in high school that are decades if not over a hundred years old which obviously wouldn't connect as easily with a modern, audience, especially teenagers who already don't want to read them. I hate both the elitist nature of the anti fanfic side, and the insular, kind of ignorant bubble of the fanfiction side. Both these takes are absolutely insane to me.

Literally every time Sarah says “an all or nothing situation,” or some permutation thereof, I imagine that picture popping up, you know the one

The luigi x bowser with toe curling smut and lots of fluff is absolutely art and I refuse to take any criticism

Anyone else here while ao3 is being ddos'd? :(

I will never forget the day that my cousin and I stumbled across a crossfic between The Legacy of Kain and Sailor Moon, it was a literary masterpiece.

I once read a Chinese fic about Xi Jing Ping and Putin. Even using Google translate, it was a riveting experience. Really helped me cope with the invasion of Ukraine.

As someone who's seen fanfic written on his own work, I would still prefer if people made ideas their own to create original work rather than just reuse my stuff, especially when they throw major details or themes out the window to the point where it might as well be their own thing. Still, I can see the value in using familiar elements to ground it in its "fandom" (even if it's like maybe a few dozen people tops), and setting it in a world I made doesn't make it any less a creative work. I just find it really funny when someone attempts a "community reboot" of my project and its story about dehumanizing historical narratives and their role in a cycle of violence, and they add "Reloaded" to the title like it's an action movie sequel.

the Gideon the 9th Homestuck thing left me completely shook

Ah, always something interesting

I'm getting very annoyed at the start of the video. Not by you, but by the anti fanfic arguments. I write fanfic. Therefore I'm a writer. Therefore I'm an artist

OK -- Dante's Inferno may be excludable from the fan-fiction category on the basis that Dante did not believe the Bible to be fiction. However - Terry Pratchet was an Atheist - and I believe that so is Neil Gaiman -- so therefore this same reasoning can not be applied to GOOD OMENS.

And yes --- Percy Jackson SHOULD have used original elemental Gods rather than the Gods of Greek Myth ---- but only because the author clearly showed no desire to be in the least bit respectful to what was established about the Greek Gods. For example, one of the characters is, supposedly, Athena's daughter. But it would be extremely out-of-character for Athena to have an offspring --- to the point that any deity who has an offspring would be unrecognizable as Athena - who is one of the Three Maiden Goddesses. And in the case of Athena, even having an offspring by parthogenesis would be audaciously out-of-character.

And all this is just ONE EXAMPLE. So yes - if the author had no interest in being in the least bit respectful to what is establshed, he SHOULD have come up with his own deities rather than re lied on those of Greek Mythology.

nothing ever made me want to run in the opposite direction of "real books" more than those screenshots in the video. there's something so lame and pathetic about elitism. i'll just stay dumb as hell, i really don't care.

I thought that the only defining difference between fan-fiction and what you refer to as "original fiction" is that the many of the characters and settings are borrowed from earlier works of fiction by other authors. By that token, every one of the writers of ancient Greek mythology would be producing fan-fiction -- with the possible exception of Homer (and even he may have borrowed his characters and settings from someone earlier - we just no longer have access to any such earlier author). And then don't get me started on Nathaniel Hawthorne -- some of whose works are simply modern presentations of ancient Greek myths that we still have available in earlier form.

Now - is your random Redditter's Ranma 1/2 Fan-Fiction as great or artistically significant as Les Misérables by Victor Hugo? My answer is --- that's not a fair comparison. Les Misérables is not just some traditional, old literature. It is from among the BEST literature of its time --- literature that has survived while other contemporary works have been forgotten. As opposed to your random Redditer's Ranma 1/2 faction that for all we know may be all but forgotten within a decade from now. Very few of today's works of fan-fiction will still be read by people 200 years from now ---- and odds are, any particular one you pick (including that random Redditer's Ranma 1/2 fan-fic) is not going to be it. However, the few works of today's fan-fiction that people are still reading 200 years from now and being inspired by them --- THOSE are the ones you should be comparing to Les Misérables.

In conclusion. Is writing fan-fiction today as legally secure as other kinds of fiction literature? Well -- to be sure, you might need to seek out a lawyer --- but my guess is that in today's environment with extremely corporate-sided copyright law -- it is probably not as legally secure. Is it good art? Well --- most of it is probably not - just as most other art is not. However --- is it legitimately art? Absolutely --- and without a sliver of a doubt.

Your videos have made me realise something tumblr is just gay Reddit

I’m glad you couldn’t conceal your laugh when you read out that comment about how fanfic has spoilt somebody in our books aren’t good enough Jesus Christ the few tiny pieces of fanfiction I’ve ever dared look at almost always involved like sex with children I don’t get it fanfic is pretty much just horny people self on certain cells and to better peoples work I don’t understand and why is it always children what a fanfic writers always wanna fuck children?

I really don't understand how some people think being elitist will in any way help them, because newsflash, when people think you're being an asshole, they're more likely to double down out of spite. I don't doubt that someone fed up with arguing has already gone and said " yes, fanfic is killing literature, cry about it."

I find it really interesting that fanfiction kind of has a monopoly on outsider writing just because to my knowledge there's no equivalently big site to AO3 for people to go to in order to read self-published original fiction. These days anyone can grab a DAW and a microphone and set up a bandcamp account and potentially get fans, or upload pics to instagram and get fans, and that creates a basic dynamic of "anyone can now make and publish art without industry contacts or respectability, but there will be much less guarantee of basic competency". The fact that for writing, that dynamic only seems to really apply to transformative works is really interesting to me. It'd be like if bandcamp only accepted cover songs, so general discussions of the merits of amateur/outside music always had to be accompanied by discussions of the particular merits of making cover music.

I've been writing fan fiction for over a decade or so mainly for fun and an outlet for creativity. I can't believe it's looked down upon while comic book writers demand to be taken seriously since they're more or less doing the same thing - taking characters they didn't make and writing them insanely poorly - but getting a salary for it.

in most cases, canon gives you some small windows into the world, and good fanfiction (rare though it is) tears down all the walls and completes the story.

Not to toot my own horn, but I wrote a one shot and posted it on A03 and it got onto tumblr. Despite it being a (what I thought, anyways) shitty one shot where I was retroactively acting out the breakout with a guy I never got to have because he blocked me, so many people resonated with it and I began to slowly write more chapters. This was all in 2019/2020 and I ended it due to depression and stress with covid. But it impacted people in ways I could have never imagined. THAT'S real writing. I doesn't matter what format it's in.