The flip side of pretentiousness is the virulent strain of anti-intellectualism that is so uniquely American

Quote from: J.L. Duncan;922245There was a Harry Potter Book (that supposedly 7 I think) I read. It was totally fan fiction, but it wasn't that horrible. It certainly had less plot holes then the actual books.

Harry Potter itself is much more enjoyable if one thinks of it as Troll fanfiction.

RPG fanfic? Isn't that where Weiss and Hickman made their careers? Not to mention the rest of the TSR books stable. Much of it being of the expected quality for fanfic.

The original Dragonlance trilogy might be more properly an RPG novelization than a fanfic, as iirc it was based on actual campaign.

All the GW Black Library fiction is definitely gaming fanfic, although that is wargames not RPGs.

Ray Feist wrote a great Tekumel fanfic series...

Quote from: Spinachcat;922231That was surprisingly fun fanfic...perhaps you have practiced this talent before?

In the early aughts some friends and I encountered a fanfic online by the title of "Deathworld". It was a massive undertaking, spanning close to a thousand pages,written by a fellow going by the screen name Supermutant. And it was a work of unintentional comedic genius that puts "The Room" to shame. We would print chapters and nightly go to an overnight diner, taking turns reading aloud until the tears and laughter prevented one of us from continuing. My fanfic is a shallow imitation of Deathworld's style. Almost a fanfic of a fanfic.

Quote from: yosemitemike;922237Not really.  Fan fic isn't inherently bad but there is an awful lot of fan fic out there that is very, very bad.  There is a large amount of it that is basically unreadable.  I don't mean stuff that is a bit hard to get through.  I mean entire stories written in text speak without a single capital letter or punctuation mark in sight.  All fan fic isn't terrible but a lot of it is and sorting costs are a thing.

Well, sure, but that's just the crap. It's like saying movies are bad because of all the bad B-list films stocking the shelves. The good ones that rise to the top are a minority. There's good fics out there too. But yes, that requires finding them. Normally easier done via communities that tend to read them since you can find out through word of mouth what's good.

Yeah, I was being sarcastic earlier, good fan-fiction exists.

The way some of you define fan-fiction though is so ridiculously broad as to be meaningless.  You may as well just call it fiction and be done with it then.

Quote from: TristramEvans;922253The flip side of pretentiousness is the virulent strain of anti-intellectualism that is so uniquely American

Oh sure, knee jerk anti-intellectualism is annoying and one sees it a lot here in America and it is more broadly accepted here than in a lot of countries - though most countries seem to have an anti-intellectual strain be that yobs in the UK or Mao's Cultural Revolution. But sometimes the flip side of pretension is simply a doesn't take itself too seriously, bucket o' popcorn Saturday afternoon movie. Or a typical session of an RPG, to use an example that is likely to be familiar to all of us.

Quote from: CRKrueger;922266The way some of you define fan-fiction though is so ridiculously broad as to be meaningless.  You may as well just call it fiction I don't respect and be done with it then.

I think you forgot a key phrase.

Quote from: Bren;922272Oh sure, knee jerk anti-intellectualism is annoying and one sees it a lot here in America and it is more broadly accepted here than in a lot of countries - though most countries seem to have an anti-intellectual strain be that yobs in the UK or Mao's Cultural Revolution. But sometimes the flip side of pretension is simply a doesn't take itself too seriously, bucket o' popcorn Saturday afternoon movie. Or a typical session of an RPG, to use an example that is likely to be familiar to all of us.


I think you forgot a key phrase.

Creative writing is a worthy endeavor for anyone to undertake, however, in the words of the immortal philosopher Clint, "A man's got to know his limitations".  

Also, paid work approved by owners of IP, Shared Worlds Fiction (like Thieves' World), pastiche or Aesop's Fables aren't examples of fan-fiction, no matter how much you dis/like the concept.

Sturgeon's Law applies.  Also, Jesus, TristramEvans, that was positively Eye of Argon-esque.  You win one Internet.

I think the problem most people have with fanfic is not that it's by fans, or that it's unoriginal.  It's that almost by definition it's self-indulgent.  It's not about writing a good story that other people will enjoy; it's about writing a story that strokes the author's particular fetish for the source material, and that's rarely meaningful to anyone but the author.

QuoteI saw a talk by a creative writing professor who encouraged her students to write fan-fiction. She said it removed a lot of the hassle of coming up with a setting and characters and such and let the students dig right into the work of telling the story and getting all the parts working together. Makes sense to me.

I would violently disagree with this, if for no other reason than that coming up with a setting and characters and such is part of the work of telling the story.

Quote from: CRKrueger;922276Creative writing is a worthy endeavor for anyone to undertake, however, in the words of the immortal philosopher Clint, "A man's got to know his limitations".  

Also, paid work approved by owners of IP, Shared Worlds Fiction (like Thieves' World), pastiche or Aesop's Fables aren't examples of fan-fiction, no matter how much you dis/like the concept.

I'll agree that paid work approved by owners of IP, Shared Worlds Fiction and the like aren't fan-fiction, but how is pastiche like, say, "The Seven Per Cent Solution" not fanfiction?

That said, the R. Taslorian Games folks had once linked to a fanfic based off of their Mekton Empire background - I think this is it: ftp://ftp.eyrie.org/pub/anime/Mekton/.  IIRC, it was never finished, but it was a fun read until you reached the end.

Huh... did they ever release Mekton Zero?  I'm guessing not.

Quote from: CRKrueger;922276Also, paid work, Shared Worlds Fiction, pastiche, Aesop's Fables aren't examples of fan-fiction, no matter how much you dis/like it.

Fan fiction is usually thought of as amateur writing. So if you got paid for the work then in a technical sense it is "professional" in that you got paid for it and so it is not amateur and thus is not fan fiction. I'm with you so far. Most (or at least a lot of) fiction that eventually is published  and paid for is written prior to and without a guarantee of payment, but we don't typically consider all writing like that fan fiction unless and until the author manages to sell their story. I've read some pretty poorly written fiction that still got the author a paycheck. I recall one series of post apocalyptic, gun-porn novels that a friend of mine bought. I read one or two of them. Awful dreck. This was back in the 1980s (I think) when word processors were novel. This author was clearly enchanted with his brand new word processor and wanted to use it to the full because he lifted entire paragraphs of description about his "twin Detonics .45s" from the beginning of one novel and repetitively* dropped it verbatim throughout the rest of that novel as well as liberally littering the subsequent books with the same word-for-word, boring description.

So, Humpty Dumpty like, when I say "fan-fiction" I am focused far more on the lack of quality, self-indulgence of the topic, and general awfulness of the writing than I am on the question of would anyone buy this for a dollar.



* I'm well aware of the technique of formulaic repetition used in oral storytelling, but let me assure you, the only Homer that this author resembled has the last name Simpson.

Quote from: Bren;922284Fan fiction is usually thought of as amateur writing. So if you got paid for the work then in a technical sense it is "professional" in that you got paid for it and so it is not amateur and thus is not fan fiction. I'm with you so far. Most (or at least a lot of) fiction that eventually is published  and paid for is written prior to and without a guarantee of payment, but we don't typically consider all writing like that fan fiction unless and until the author manages to sell their story. I've read some pretty poorly written fiction that still got the author a paycheck. I recall one series of post apocalyptic, gun-porn novels that a friend of mine bought. I read one or two of them. Awful dreck. This was back in the 1980s (I think) when word processors were novel. This author was clearly enchanted with his brand new word processor and wanted to use it to the full because he lifted entire paragraphs of description about his "twin Detonics .45s" from the beginning of one novel and repetitively* dropped it verbatim throughout the rest of that novel as well as liberally littering the subsequent books with the same word-for-word, boring description.

So, Humpty Dumpty like, when I say "fan-fiction" I am focused far more on the lack of quality, self-indulgence of the topic, and general awfulness of the writing than I am on the question of would anyone buy this for a dollar.



* I'm well aware of the technique of formulaic repetition used in oral storytelling, but let me assure you, the only Homer that this author resembled has the last name Simpson.

"THE SURVIVALIST!" oh yeah, I had every one of those. John Rourke, ultimate bad ass! Laugh, made for fun reading in those days.

Quote from: jcfiala;922280I'll agree that paid work approved by owners of IP, Shared Worlds Fiction and the like aren't fan-fiction, but how is pastiche like, say, "The Seven Per Cent Solution" not fanfiction?

That could be both.  Since Holmes is Public Domain, I suppose you could call all Sherlock Holmes fiction that wasn't expressly authorized by the Doyle estate as fan-fiction of a sort.  If that author is also specifically trying to imitate Arthur Conan Doyle's style, then it is also pastiche.  But the definition of pastiche itself has nothing to do with fan-fiction.  If I create a Sword and Sorcery world and characters from whole cloth, it's not fan-fiction obviously, but if I consciously try to imitate the writing style and plots of Robert E. Howard's Kull the Conqueror then it is pastiche.

Both definitions are a little fuzzy around the edges, but they do have edges.

Take Dan Abnett's Gaunt's Ghosts stuff.  It's obviously not a setting he created, but the Tanith First and Only and many of the other characters and worlds are wholly his inventions authorized by the holders of the IP.  Not fan-fiction by any stretch of the definition.

most of fan fiction in the wild is utter shite, full of bad prose and Mary Sue/Marty-Stu crap. The same applies to self-published fiction, which is really fan fiction they're charging you for. My best guess as to why there is so much shite would be the lack of gate keepers.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;922258Well, sure, but that's just the crap. It's like saying movies are bad because of all the bad B-list films stocking the shelves. The good ones that rise to the top are a minority. There's good fics out there too. But yes, that requires finding them. Normally easier done via communities that tend to read them since you can find out through word of mouth what's good.

There's a lot of crap though.  The signal to noise ratio on fanfic sites is very low.  The fact that anyone can upload anything to a site like Wattpad at no cost and with no vetting means there is a lot of crap and no floor for quality.  There are gems but they are lost on the sea of crap.  Finding them costs time whether that time is spent reading lots of crap or reading what the community is saying, separating the noise from the signal there and then using that.  Sorting costs are a thing.