Fan-fiction - Why?

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

The canon novels total a bit over 1 million words (1.08 and change) which means that there is approximately five thousand times as much fanfic as there is canon material. Five. Thousand. Imagine that you have one book in front of you -- say, Dune -- and the fanfic written about it amounts to five thousand more books of similar size. Shelves of them. Boxes of them. Stacks of them on the floor.

Archive Of Our Own has 30 Harry Potter stories of more than 100,000 words each.

Walking the Plank, a Harry/Snape only archive, has 18, only one of which is also at AO3. One of them is almost 500,000 words long. Several of the others are parts of series which total over 500,000 words. (I don't, off the top of my head, know any Harry Potter single stories that are over a million words, but I do know of some series that are more than that. Longest single story I know of is Aspen's "A Year Like No Other," at 750,000 words. There are two sequel stories; the third's not finished yet.)

AO3 has over 2,000,000 words of fanfic, in over 1000 stories, for Inception, a movie that came out last year. The screenplay is less than 30,000 words.

There might not be a need to devise a word for something J.K. Rowling just hinted at, but if even 1% of 1% of the HP fanfic goes beyond hinting, that's a hundred stories that have just described something they need a word for, so a word will appear.

Severitus: fanfic where Snape is Harry's father. This can be by adoption (often to switch the "magic protection" from the Dursley's to someone actually willing to fight Voldemort) or as a secret kept from Harry, sometimes kept from Snape. (One drunken night with Lily; they both woke up with hangovers and fuzzy memories--in some fanfics, *nobody* knows Snape is Harry's father until some weird blood magic shows up.)

Knotting: I discovered this one two weeks ago. Apparently has something to do with animalistic behavior in werewolves or shapeshifted dogs. I don't want to know. (And if anyone *does* know, don't tell me. I'll stay over here with my dubcon chan bondfic, and you can have your knotting thingstiel wingfic, and we can both pray that vore never catches on as a fanfic trope.)

There is no concept so weird or convoluted that it couldn't have its own special term in some corner of fanfic. That doesn't mean all concepts have such terms; there are plenty of ideas that haven't caught on enough to get their own term, and others that, for whatever reason, just never got their own label. "Woke up in a slave pit with amnesia, chained to best friend, which neither person recognizes" is a not-uncommon fanfic trope, but it doesn't have its own special name.

[Keryl Raist]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

Two words: Rule. 34.
Fanfic has -- if its writers will use it -- the opportunity to be better than the original. Obviously that's harder in some canons than others. Outdoing ST:TOS season 3 is a lot easier than outdoing Firefly.

That made me laugh. Firefly is the only community where I haven't found any fan fic I thought was better than the original. Some that was just as good. But so far, never better.

[Frida Fantastic]

I like fanfic. I see it as an extension of the wonderful universe that the author has created and keeps fans active when there's nothing left to publish, or while fans are waiting for the next release.

I read fanfic sometimes, but I have pretty high standards for quality. I like "what ifs" that stay true to characterization. I like stuff that challenges some of the canon (i.e. the author always portraying the character in a certain light, some of the author's values) while keeping the rest of it intact. It can be engaging, interactive, and subversive.

I have also written fanfic to practice writing fiction. I took it seriously. I pored over every single page and found good writers to provide feedback and edits, and then I'd revise, and so on. Fanfic's a good way to demonstrate a good handle of characterization, because you got an an entire rabid fan community willing to jump on your back if your characterization is shoddy and inconsistent. It's too easy to go lax on characterization when you're new to writing and dealing with original characters. New writers can fall prey to "Hey, no one can say that my characterization is wrong! I made them!"

Also, fanfic is nice because you already have an audience happy to give feedback. Quality of feedback given is highly dependent on the community. P.S. "Write more!" is nice, but not helpful.

[Worldwalker]

I should hope you pored over every page rather than poured over it. The latter would make your manuscript distressingly soggy.

[LCF]

I like reading about my favorite characters.
I have also stumbled on some fan fictions (like Harry Potter And The Methods Of Rationality), which in my opinion are at least as good as the originals.

[Frida Fantastic]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

I should hope you pored over every page rather than poured over it. The latter would make your manuscript distressingly soggy.

Haha, cute! You are correct. I clearly don't pore over my 4 am forum posts

[Michael McLovin]

just read this and instantly thought of this thread.

http://www.cracked.com/article_19084...n-fiction.html