Monday, April 2, 2012

My Sister Reads Fan Fiction

But my sister also likes Walker, Texas Ranger. No offense to any Texas Ranger fans (or my sister), but I generally dislike most things my sister enjoys. She knows this, and I tease her about it constantly. Anyway, I don't like fan fiction for a couple reasons: it's a creative crutch, and I feel it takes away from the original intent of a book, movie, or TV show. I feel that people who are unsatisfied with the original content of a production are only taking it at face value and are not critically understanding either the characters, or the arc of the story. The creator of something has a reason for making a production the way it is, and an amateur trying to change it or add on to it I feel only takes the people who read fan fiction away from the creator's intentions of the original piece. I know I wouldn't want people to create fan fiction for any of my work. I mean, it would be flattering, but at the same time I feel like they don't understand my work. I also feel that it is a creative crutch. By that, I mean they were only able to do something creative based off the the work of someone else. I feel the same way about Hollywood adaptations and remakes, but that's a whole other blog post. Anyway, if someone feels like they want a story to go a certain way, then they should write their own story, with their own characters and situations, and have them do the things they want. As for the erotica and slash fan fiction, I imagine its just as bad as watching a porn spoof of a movie. The story is irrelevant, you're just there for the sex. I can totally understand if fan fiction is your guilty pleasure, but I cannot condone contributing to it. It just goes against what creativity should be.

6 comments:

  1. I understand what you are saying about a "creative crutch," but I look at Fan Fic as a way to give a voice to marginalized or timid writers.

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  2. I'm in agreement with your post on an aesthetic level and in terms of gut feeling, but I think we play a dangerous game when we start talking about "what creativity should be" or "original intent" of a piece of work. It's dangerous because it forces us into positions we may not want—i.e. the idea that musicians who sample tracks from other artists are somehow less creative because they sampled a bass line from a song they liked when they were a kid, or the idea that Queen and David Bowie had some grand intention for their song "Under Pressure," an intention that Vanilla Ice somehow ruined when he ripped the underlying groove for "Ice, Ice Baby."

    When it comes to fan fiction—again, it's not my taste—I think we need to apply the same critical lens as we do to traditional forms. Doing so will weed out the awful stuff while still holding that good stuff may exist out there.

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    1. Tanner, I love a post that includes Walker Texas Ranger!

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  3. I think I would have to disagree with your "creative crutch" statement, but only half disagree... haha. Though I do agree that using other characters and other systems can be considered non-creative, the fact that they are creating a different story thread, is every bit as creative as the original work. Though the person may not be creating an inhabitable world, or original characters, they are creating a scenario that takes as much creative ingenuity as any other story.

    In any case, I think it's hard to use the term "original" as every character and every plot is based on or influenced by something that came before it. Harry Potter "dieing" and "coming back to life" to defeat Voldemort is one of the oldest plots in the world. So even though fan fiction writers are ripping off other people's material, pretty much everyone that will ever write is ripping off other people's material. It's just done in a less obvious way.

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    1. I think there is no such thing as originality, i mean, everything is a copy of something someone else already did. Maybe the first human on Earth was not copying anyone when he opened his mouth to speak. Who knows. Maybe he copied the dinosaurs.

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