Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Oh yes, I'm well aware of that. The most popular fanfic, however, is probably Star Trek and Harry Potter, and that's not "legit". I remember when Paramount had a "purge" of all the Star Trek fan web sites about 5 years ago which were using copyrighted material - literally hundreds of them got shut down.
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OH yes, I remember that quite well.
And do you know the result of that? A lot of people now speculate that that is why we have no Star Trek shows on TV right now. That they literally sucked their massive core fanbase right out. Of course, Roddenberry LOVED fan-written material and was known to subscribe to a few of the "Star Trek Fan Fiction" magazines (which were more or less typed and then mimeographed) and wrote under some pen names for them.
And then he died.
On the flip side, Lucas has let his fandom grow and produce things, and now he's looking at an upcoming TV series, two more movies, and other things.
I'm not saying fanfiction is the reason that people like something.. but it DOES keep things moving in lean years. And Paramount's crackdown after Roddenberry's death resulted in a huge number of fans writing off Star Trek for good.
Trust me. I was one of them. I went to.. ironically, we called it the "Dark Side" .. but I went to Star Wars.
The roughest part of the whole thing was knowing that Gene LOVED things taking part in his world, and knowing that they were waiting for him to kick it so they could focus on the money. That hurt bad.