Quote:
Originally Posted by DrNefario
But surely the skills involved in writing it are the same: taking someone else's setting and characters and writing a story around them. It's the same as working on an existing TV show or comic or writing spinoffs, it seems to me. It's just that fanfic is rather less constrained.
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Oh, the issue/difference isn't the skills; it is, as Harry pointed out, the (at best) nebulous ethical and legal issue of *publicly* working with somebody else's creation. People working in comics, TV shows, or shared-world projects are *invited*, they are unilaterally allocating to themselves the right to explore/exploit somebody else's creation. Permission matters.
Fanfic is a broad arena; it encompasses both innocence and darkness. But at its heart lies a murky ethical border. What is perfectly acceptable when practiced in private for one's own amusement or that of a few personal friends becomes tricky when practiced in public before strangers.
Especially when the material finds its way to the masses through the internet. That is outright publishing of unlicensed, derivative material. (By the letter of the law, fanfiction is all of it ilegal.)
The motivation might be pure, but it isn't always so.
The author might be flattered by the "homage", but some are offended, and not always without reason.
Some fanfic might simply extend or back-fill the material exploited, while other takes it places it doesn't belong.
The reason so much fanfic is raw is because for many it is their first attempt at creation--they have the inspiration, the avocation, but not the tools. As private writing exercises there is nothing to object to. But out in public...?
Dangerous. You never know how people might respond to even the most innocent of Homages.
Me, personally?
I think that folks playing in the fanfic arena would best serve *themselves* and the subject of their inspiration by using the inspiration they derive and channeling it to express their own ideas with their own characters, their own millieus, their own narratives. Many of those explorations or enhancements of existing products could easily be repurposed, redirected, refined into something new and personal. They could be moved from fanfic to pastiche; or moved across genres, cultures, settings.
In that respect, Ms "E.L. James" got it right.
Whatever the differences or similarities between her inspiration and her work, she made it her own and let it stand on its own. You don't have to like or approve of her efforts (or the road she followed to get there) to admit that in the end she brought something new and significant into the world.
That is no small thing.