Fanfic Writers. Gah. I Hate You All.

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Title:	Fanfic Writers. Gah. I Hate You All.
Creator:	Raietta
Date(s):	August 31, 2002
Medium:	Livejournal
Fandom:
Topic:
External Links:	Fanfic Writers. Gah. I Hate You All., Archived version
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Fanfic Writers. Gah. I Hate You All. is a 2002 essay by Raietta.

The post is also at the author's blog where it has this addendum (and no comments):

ADDENDUM, some ten hours later:

Hmm. Oh my God. Something just occurred to me. Urghhh. I'm wondering if, posting this angry, vicious rant to my blog and not my Livejournal was, in fact, an act of cowardice. Oh no oh no oh no. This is not something I want to be worried about. I mean--this blog is pretty isolated, is pretty much for friends only, whereas the LJ has a potentially larger audience via the Friends List. Ohhh nooo… did I do that on purpose? Did I deliberately say mean things about other people, and then hide it away here where no-one but the people I like will read it? Damn it, damn it, damn it. Is it? Or isn't it? Oh my God, I think it is. I think I did it deliberately, and meanly. Oh no… This is going to bother me until I give in and post it to my LJ--then I will breathe easily and not feel myself a coward, until, of course, I start to wonder if I am being a coward by not posting this to a list of some sort, or a website of some sort… God. Why do I do this to myself? Urrghhhh… So. My apologies to all of you for posting this hateful entry twice. I'm gonna put it up, verbatim, on my LJ. And I WON'T FRIENDS-ONLY IT!!!!!!!!! Oh my God. Yes. I am not a coward! I! Am! Not! A! Coward!!!!!

God.

And here's another cowardly act by me, but a truthful one, so I'm saying it (repeating it, actually): all of you reading this blog, and that includes the ones reading it via another friend, etc--you are exempt from the group of targets I go after with a flamethrower in this post. I just like you too much to ever say anything bad about you. It's this little failing of mine, I become blindly loyal to my friends and never say a bad thing about them, even when it's blatantly obvious that they are in the same boat as the people I verbally hack to pieces with a chainsaw--not that any of you are in that boat now, because you're not, I adore you all, and I love it when we trash people on IM and in e-mails and oh God yes I am a coward. No! No more post-scripts! No more addenda! No more apologizing to my friends! This is how I feel! No! More! Backpedaling!!!! I! Will! Not! Apologize!!!!

Gahhh…

Some Topics Discussed

• BNFs and their big heads
• fanfic vs "real writing"
• power games and idolatry in fandom
• poorly written fanfic vs a good story
• the wrongness of inverting the status of original and fan fiction
• hurt feelings

Excerpts

I love writing. So much. It is a very big passion with me, it is a certain way of life with me--if there was one big neon word in my life's vocabulary, it would probably be "writing." I just love it. I love stories. I love novels. I love poetry. I love biographies and nonfiction books, I love humor collections, I love it all. I love writing.

Fanfiction is a very small part of this writing world. It is so small. It might occupy my time--it might occupy an inordinate amount of my time and my brain, but it's still small, it's still a small part of my world. I don't respect it very much. I don't love it very much. I love writing, but I don't really love fanfic. This is maybe an odd way for a fic writer to be, but that's the way I am. I won't lie about it. I don't hold fanfic in very high esteem.

There's lots of reasons for this, but I think the biggest reason, the most glaring one, is the very act of talking about fanfic. The very act of being in a community that is so fucking self-absorbed, so fucking oblivious, it seems to me at times, to anything outside of fanfiction, is what makes me not like it very much. I don't like, it has become to clear to me, blogs by other fic writers, at least the fic writers I don't know and like personally. I don't like the blogs or LJ's or whatthefuckever journals of popular strangers positing their Very Deep thoughts on fucking Art and fucking Craft and fucking Style and fucking Character and Mood and Plot and Setting and Tone and Genre, oh God it tires me right out. It takes the joy of fanfic right out of me.

And I hate fic lists. Hate them. I hate fic list discussions. Hate them. Won't participate in them, won't read them.

I don't like reading about Mary Sues on online symposiums. I don't like reading about slash discussions on essay pages. Actually, I don't like reading essays, whatever their format, on fanfic at all. I only like them when people I know and enjoy personally are talking about them, and then I chime in and posit little idiot theories of my own.

But it doesn't make me very happy.

Fanfic doesn't make me very happy.

I have decided to try staying away from strangers' blogs and from webpage essays and from Yahoo groups and all that. It doesn't do any good for me, I don't like it, it doesn't make me happy.

And the point of fanfic is to make a person happy. The point of me reading and writing fanfic is to make me happy. Which is why I don't get people who get such a kick out of belittling other people's writing in public. I don't get it. It's just mean, to me. It's small, and petty, and mean-spirited. All it does is make people not want to write because they're told they're not very good, or implied they're not very good, that in fact they're crap, and why don't they just die so the sniper sniping at them won't have to read their shitty fanfic anymore?

I hate that. It shows you. It reveals you to the world. It strips you bare so that everyone can, just by reading your words, see that you are a crippled, tiny, angry, unkind little gnome without an ounce of generosity or sweetness in your soul, and that you are incapable of seeing anything but the bad in a thing.

Why reveal that? Why show everyone online that yes, you are indeed smart and clever and cooler than the bad writers of the fanfic world, but you are also terribly crabbed and mean and horrible and unkind?

And then, in a sudden glorious show of that same cramped, cruel thinking, I go and belittle people in public as well. Make fun of them. Try to show everyone how much smarter and what a better writer I am. Ugh, ugh, ugh. It's just so gross.

Fanfic is not true writing, in my mind. I always get into trouble when I say this to my friends: ebonbird has questioned me on this, wildy has questioned me on this. But it's the truth, no matter how hard I wish it wasn't. Fan fiction is not true writing, in my mind. It's play. It's fooling around. It can be very serious, it's sorta like folklore--small and on the edge of proper writing/storytelling, but legitimate all the same.

But I never put any fanfic in the same category as my favorite non-fanfic writings. I never put someone's X-Files slash story in the same category as Charles Baxter, or anyone's brilliant and minimal Nsync story in the same category as Kate Atkinson, or anyone's wild and sweet X-Men story in the same category as Laura Ingalls Wilder, or Brock Cole, or anyone at all that I love dearly, anyone at all whom I love as a writer.

Because, to be brutally, brutally, brutally frank, fanfic, no matter how hard it tries, is just not good enough. It's not.

Now, some fanfic is as good as some professional writing, is as good as some fiction with original characters--but the original fiction that these fan stories are as good as, aren't all that good. To me, a wonderful and mind-blowing fanfiction story is as good as a mediocre original fiction story. To use an example, let's just take--oh, I don't know, Neil Gaiman.

I don't like Neil Gaiman at all.

His stuff bores me so utterly I could cry from it.

And a piece of fanfic that is beautiful and wonderful and heartbreaking--a story from a fanfic writer I love, like ebonbird or wildy or aris or Rax or CC or CM Decarnin or whoever, is, to me, a thousand times better than anything poor Mr. Gaiman could ever come up with. The quality's better. The writing's better. It's all just better.

But fanfic doesn't hold a candle to the great novels, the great short stories, the great poems. No fan story could ever hope to be as good as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, or The Catcher in the Rye, or Ulysses, or The Grapes of Wrath, or Invisible Man, or Lord of the Flies, or Beloved, or anything by Shakespeare or Dickens, as much as I don't adore Shakespeare or Dickens, I at least know enough to know that no piece of fanfic will ever be on a par with them.

Maybe, maybe, theoretically, hypothetically, ideally, it's possible that a work of fanfic could be as good, but I sincerely, sincerely doubt any work of fanfic will ever actually make it. I just don't believe I will ever, ever see a work of fanfic that's as good as anything Dickens ever wrote, as good as anything Derek Walcott ever wrote, as good as anything Blake or Bishop or Joyce or Hemingway ever wrote. I just don't believe it. I just don't believe it.

So, wandering around in a universe where fanfic writers, especially the popular ones, carry on like they're the modern-day equivalent of Joyce or Salinger or Chopin, is very trying for me. It makes me snicker, actually, reading our self-absorbed and self-congratulating posts on the very uninteresting and altogether underwhelmingly sub-par fanfic pieces we all so lovingly churn out into the world wide web--reading people slaver all over a particular writer like she's some sort of fricking Tolstoy come to bless us undeserving whelps with her muddy and wholly uninteresting fanfiction. Just makes me grin.

And, of course, when I cave in and do it myself, I feel a little sick afterward. When I, too, exclaim in public, "Ohmigod, Writer X is a fucking GODDESS!!!"--oh man. I feel like I've just done something slimy and untrue, like I've prostituted myself.

At first, I thought this view I had on fanfic was in defense of the crappy writers, which I actually am--what I mean is, I thought I was defending bad writing because I was unpretentious and didn't put on airs, like some people do. Now I know better. I'm the biggest snob of them all. Because you can never, never convince me that fanfic, even the best of it, is all that fucking good. You just can't. Argue with me if you will, discuss with me if you will, and I might even lie and say I agree--

But I don't. And I won't. Ever.

Fanfic is just not good enough for me. It's a small, pleasant, but ultimately meaningless exercise in fun and writing, and it will never pull me into a fervor, a religious trance, the way "proper" writing does, the way "real" fiction does.

People who write only FOR themselves, supposedly, and then publish on the Net and then bitch about the lack of feedback, are hypocrites and I hate them. But people who write wholly FROM themselves, drawing from a true part of their selves, their hearts and minds and lives--that is so exceptionally wonderful. That is so rare and wonderful. They aren't trying to write from anyone else--they aren't trying to be another Toni Morrison, or another Henry James--they are speaking truthfully, from the heart. See what I mean? See what a colossal difference that is?

Anyway. The worst, most crappy fanfic out there, that the Good Writers sneer at, is generally, to me, a hundred times better than the most polished and professional fanfic ever written. Bad spelling and bad grammar does not make bad story. Conceit and a monster ego and contempt for faulty writers does make bad story. Because I can see straight through you. I can see straight through your faultless prose and your dazzling metaphors to the heart of your story, which is usually stilted and derivative and dishonest.

And it's an insult to the people who write from their hearts, having fun with the characters and story, enjoying themselves, and being honest enough to write what they enjoy--pulp, maybe, sentimental syrup, maybe, but honest and passionate.

Just because you're a good writer doesn't mean you're a good writer. And you're never going to be as good as the true writers, the ones who write true works and who are brave and open and miraculous. You will probably never have that, you will probably never experience that, and because of this I pity you.

I am the fanfic community's biggest snob, because I look down on all of you. You are all so small. And pathetic. The number of people I don't despise is so small--in fact, I bet, minus one or two folks, only the people who are reading this entry are those who are exempt from my contempt. Heh. So it's kind of like I'm preaching to the converted--and it also sounds suspiciously like I am raveningly jealous of a lot of fanfic writers. I mean, I'm a small writer, I'm unknown. Is this jealousy? Be truthful now--is it?

No. It's not. It's the truth. I'm sick of everyone taking themselves so seriously over something that is so small. I'm sick of pretentious people, and I'm sick of reading their exceedingly disinteresting work. This is not real writing. Please. Stop pretending it is.

Comments at the Post

[legane]:

Thank you from the bottom of my little black heart, Raie. After reading this, I might be able to get my head out of my ass and write again.

[lyrebird]: This is such a detailed rant that I'm not sure how to reply. And all that anger!!

But I totally agree about writing from the heart. Emotional truth. That's the type of writing I love best. Those are the stories that are worth reading again and again.

And as for people taking fanfic so seriously... I can see where you're coming from. We aren't writing Shakespeare. Taking it so seriously is absurd at times. I can even understand why non-fans mock fanfic. The recurring topic of sex in fanfic does make me wonder too.

Sex, sex...is that all you write about?

And yet... I have a strong emotional attachment to fanfic. I print out fics I love, and re-read them. They make me laugh, and some of the angsty ones do bring a tear to my eye. So I do care about them very much. I know it's derivative, and ripped off from someone else's creation, but that's part of the fun. The best ones actually expand on what we see on the show, and increases our enjoyment of the original source. So I will happily cheer the stories I love. They may only be fairy floss, but it's good floss!

As for writers...well...I don't get this fan worship of writers. So I'm with you when you put the boot in writers who let their egos get away from them. But you know, it's fans who encourage it. See the gushy responses some people get in their guestbooks. Look at how certain writers have dozens of 'friends' on their LJ, and each time they post, the fans vigorously agree and praise them to the heavens. It's really quite funny. Typical fannish behaviour.

[ebonbird]: We've talked about this, bunches, but not ad nauseum and I figured, hey, I wanna write down my thoughts, if only to remember them should my opinion change, though I doubt it will.

Basically, I disagree with you. In my experience & in my opinion, story is story is story - regardless of the medium. So, I've read stories that speak to and move me in original fiction, fanfiction and in the inspiring texts of fanfiction. Many original fiction stories I've read have done nothing for me (or little that I've noticed).

I do think, though, that many fan fiction writers take themselves too seriously. I'll say this though - I turned to fanfiction, in part, because I was having trouble finding stories that I cared about in professional fiction. Not only that, but I couldn't give a damn about most of the characters I encountered in the books I'd try. Some of the stories I remember most vividly were the equivalent of professional fanfiction (Laurie R. King's "Beekeeper's Apprentice" and Jeannette Winterson's fairy tale riffs in "Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit").

In any case, arguably, Shakespeare was a fanfic writer. I'll take my stories from any place, all it matters, to me, is that I connect with them. It's true that writing fanfiction, good fanfiction, may not require the work that writing convincing original fiction does - characterization needs be tight, or failing that, compelling. When I come to a fanfiction story, the odds are I either already like, love, or hate the charcters. Through fanfiction, though, I know I've gotten to know about characters and sometimes, about myself, life and sometimes the universe.

Do I take fanfiction too seriously? Probablly. And I'm taking your post as headsup to that - but again, to me, story is story is story. And it's all valuable to me, be it original or derivative.

[leadensky]: First, Bravo for posting this. It is great to see someone unafraid to take the unusual stand and poke hard at beloved opinion.

Secondly, I think you're wrong. Others will say the same thing, but let me say so: I think you're using different criteria to judge fanfic writing and 'real' fiction, that you may be letting the weight of popular opinion tell you what 'great' 'real' fiction is, and that your comparisons, because of these two faults, basically don't hold water. IMO.

But fanfic doesn't hold a candle to the great novels, the great short stories, the great poems.

I disagree that the gap between the two is as wide as that. And I think that when you say Fan fiction is not true writing, in my mind. It's play. It's fooling around. It can be very serious, it's sorta like folklore--small and on the edge of proper writing/storytelling, but legitimate all the same.

When you say *that*, I think that is a clear demonstration of your bias towards 'proper' 'mainstream' 'realistic' writing.

And when you go on to say: No fan story could ever hope to be as good as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, or The Catcher in the Rye, or Ulysses, or The Grapes of Wrath, or Invisible Man, or Lord of the Flies, or Beloved,

*then* I get really convinced of your bias.

No genre novels there. Everything you listed was published in the English language and all are on high school or community college English Lit reading lists.

These are the novels that *everyone* says are 'great novels.' Yes, high quality. But also universally acclaimed and *very few people in academia* claim they aren't 'great works.'

That these novels are on your list says less about the fanfic that you would compare them to and far more about the 'real writing' that you have been exposed to, I think.

And then anything by Shakespeare or Dickens, as much as I don't adore Shakespeare or Dickens, I at least know enough to know that no piece of fanfic will ever be on a par with them.

Which says much about how many pieces of Shakespeare drama you've read. The man put out *scores* of plays. Some were crap. Some - the ten or twelve we all can name - were beautiful and stunning and re-worked the oldest themes of human experience. And then he got *really* popular and (like some BOFQ I could name but won't) put out stuff to make money that shouldn't have been used for toilet paper.

And working for popularity? Twain wrote for the newspapers. He wrote for magazines. He wrote for whoever would pay him and he wrote what they told him to write. Shakespeare did the same thing - only his options were more limited.

You've said a lot in this post - some of it I agree on whole-heartedly. People should write with enthusiasm *and* skill - with heart as well as with hand. But the point of writing is, as you say, to communicate. To express *something* in a manner that the reader *understands*.

I feel, strongly, that many of the 'real writers' you listed and quoted - Joyce and James, to pick two of the most pretentious and obtuse authors I have ever had the misfortune to attempt to decipher - fail miserably in the last. They speak on terms and in language that leaves the reader confused and disinterested. Other writers - Hemmingway, for instance, are considered by some to be great, by others stilted and shallow.

I also think you're comparing *popular* fanfic with *literary* novels. You're not comparing popular fanfiction with Steele or McCaffery or Mack Bolan novels. And if you think fanfic is incestuous and self-absorbed, then you haven't spoken to enough English lit proffs at any university.

Finally, Bad spelling and bad grammar does not make bad story. Conceit and a monster ego and contempt for faulty writers does make bad story.

You are, I think, confusing the writing and the writer. One can be a stellar human being-honest, open, giving - and be absolute crap at communicating the time of day through the written word. Or one can be a lying, thieving, child-beating drunk, and write words that would make an angel weep to hear.

I'm always glad to 'meet' someone who loves reading as you do. I'm also glad that your prejudices on quality do not govern the kind of work that is available to me.

[raietta, original essayist]: First off, you write basically that my original post came off as rather an opinion rant disguised as a reasoned argument dissecting Great Lit and fanfic. Those are my words, not yours. Right? And I say, my original post was definitely not a reasoned, calm essay on the limitations of fanfic, etc. It was more a hacked-off fan's attempt at kicking fandom repeatedly in the stomach. So, ignoring the anger, the main message of my post still comes through--it stated (or tried to) that fanfic is not comparable to excellent original fiction. I stated that because I saw many fanfic writers making just that sort of statement, usually indirectly, though.

And when I did compare fanfic to original fic, fanfic came out lacking greatly. You pointed out that fanfic looking bad next to original fic is my opinion, and others might find the opposite true, and that's absolutely right. Sigh. Then you said that Great Lit is Great Lit, whether or not an individual likes it (paraphrasing here). And here I say, yes, but I don't see any fanfic being universally accepted as great writing the same way original stories are, and that's because fanfic isn't as good as original fic, and you say, I think, that's my opinion again, plus fanfic is only read by a certain group of people, so it isn't fair to, uh... compare the two? And besides, fanfic is a very new genre, discounting the whole "Shakespeare was a fanfic writer" idea, and here I must agree. I like that. The genre is new, and growing, and young, and has wonderful potential. Yes.

So, okay, moving on. [looks at mental notecards, realizes they're illegible]

What I'm seeing is, I've gone off on a tangent with the arguments. I started out saying fanfic isn't as good as original fiction, and "proved" it by showing how no piece of fanfic can compare to something by Dickens or whatever. And then the argument went on to discussing just what makes great lit, and how a work of great lit can leave a reader cold, so the argument against fanfic is null. Is this right? I'm losing my train of thought. Ugh.

My argument is still that fanfic is not comparable to great original fiction, and here is what I have just learned--it's not because fanfic isn't as good as original fic. It's because fanfic is a whole other genre than original fic. It's unfair to compare fanfic to original fic. It's like comparing poetry to fiction novels. It's like comparing fiction to nonfiction. They're two different genres, and to compare them is faulty, because they are different mediums (a?) of expression, they are different genres. Also, they can't be compared because as you'd stated, a certain group of people read and write fanfic, and the outside world probably wouldn't understand the importance or whatever of the genre.

There's valid reasons for why I started comparing fanfic to original fic, and I shall address them in another post. It's all very interesting. I've lost the train of my argument again. Damn... This entry makes no sense. Let's give it one last try. 1) I agree that one man's favorite story is another man's most reviled story. 2) I say that, if you're right about Great Lit being quantifiable in a way, then I doubt any piece of fanfic can be seen as Great Lit. It doesn't match the criteria. 3) That's possibly because fanfic is a different genre from original fic, and the two have different criteria for greatness, and should not be compared in such a manner. 4) Fanfic has the potential to break the genre barrier and become Great Lit. 5) It hasn't yet. 6) I still hate you all. Well, not really. =0)

And now, my head hurts and I'm not sure about this whole entry. I apologize if this post didn't address anything properly or intelligently. I hope it hasn't annoyed you too much. Yeah...

[lobelia321]: I linked to your post from Metablog and find it very interesting but also heartwrenching because I recognise myself in scary ways, and this is very dispiriting - well, I should say sobering.

I was most struck by this:

Their characters are trapped in the arrogance and complacency of the writer's talent. You never wish, fervently and ecstatically, that there was more to read about them, that they were real flesh-and-blood people so that you could meet them and be with them.

Heh, writing in rps (as I do), means that, of course, that the characters are real flesh-and-blood people, and maybe that's the problem in some way. But even apart from that (because in the end the link between character and real person, while not arbitrary, is tenuous at best), this really makes me gulp.

I was thinking about rl literature only today, and thinking that actually that there is also a dividing line between good literature and between great literature. What I like in good literature is often a facility with plot and words, lovely metaphors, skillfull story-weaving, great dialogue, the whole shlamozz, but it's true that what I love about great literature is something different altogether, it's the personality of the author imbuing everything with a philosophical greatness of spirit (even though intellectually I don't believe in the privileged position of the Author but the gut feeling I have when reading something I consider great is nevertheless like that).

Anyway, the 'great' can certainly never apply to fanfic because why bother writing fanfic if you can write a published novel?

I only glanced at some of the comments made here and someone (maybe even you yourself?) said that the criteria are different. I certainly agree!!! You can't compare fanfic with general literature, you have to compare it with other genre literature.

But maybe that's not what you were saying, really. You were really pointing to the discrepancy between the 'you are a goddess' cult and the sobre facts of quality. However, the 'you are a goddess' I take just to be fandom convention and hyperbole -- and everyone knows it is that. (Don't they? Eek, I hope so!)

[snipped]

I just read ebonbird's reply to your rant but I don't know how to use blog and can't figure out how to reply so I'm spamming a bit more here.

Actually, am very confused now. Because why have I been so addicted to this fanfic stuff over the past months (am a fairly new recruit, Jan.)? It can't be that my critical faculties have completely deserted me. There must be something else.

Comments Elsewhere

[wyzeguy]: Saying that original fiction is superior to fan fiction is stacking the deck when the masterpieces of literary history are included on one side, but no examples are listed for the other side. It's also an unfair comparison given that the literary greats span hundreds of years, while fan fiction is just getting started on the internet. Based on that, original fic would appear to have an unfair advantage . . .

. . . if one's definition of "fanfic" were limited to "stories made by fans of licensed entertainment properties from view on the Internet. But because the definition of original fiction is vast enough to include "any story ever written that features original characters", then wouldn't it make sense to broaden the definition of fan fiction as well?

For one thing, the history of fan stories is actually just about as long as that of original fiction. Today, people call it "folklore" and "tall tales", but it basically involves people inspired by previous legends to write their own stories about them. This was a predominant means of telling stories for much of human history. As soon as a given culture devised characters popular enough to become common myth (or certain real people acheived larger-than-life popularity), people told their own stories about them. You might have heard of a few works of fan fiction by a Greek guy who wrote about his gods. I believe the guy's name was Homer, and his works included The Illiad and The Odyssey. How about the oral tradition of American Indian tribes and other similar cultures that favor the passing-down of stories from generation to generation? Or folk tales like Pecos Bill and Merlin. Robin Hood might have been an actual person at one point, and the stories that developed about him could be considered Real People Fic.

If the definition of fanfic includes "fiction about uncopyrighted characters", then a large chunk of fiction, published or otherwise, could conceivably fall into this category. A Disney movie about Snow White or Cinderella could be considered fan fiction. Movies based on Shakespearean plays could be considered fanfiction. After all, the people adapting them would have to be fans in the first place, or at least have enough interest in them to devote the time and resources to make a movie. Fairy tales and folklore are ripe territory for modern storytellers, because they're not copyrighted.

These days, if someone wants to create a folktale about a popular character created in this century or the last, that person stands a good chance of having to violate copyright law in order to do it. That means that the story's distribution audience is autoatically much smaller than a published work of original fiction. That's why there are far less sterling examples of fanfiction than there are of original fiction (putting aside for a moment the question of skill level among writers in either category). It's hard for fanfiction stories to become public consciousness the same way Hamlet or A Tale of Two Cities has, because they can only be posted on the internet or in fanzines.

So let's play role reversal:

What if fanfiction stories and original fiction traded places? What if the stories that comprise fanfiction had the status of Literature, and the stories that comprise original fiction could only published on the Internet on a barely-legal basis? And let's say the content remained intact for both. Would stories like Moby Dick and Romeo and Juliet acheive the same exalted status online that they currently hold in the literary world? Would epic fan works like Minisinoo's "Climb the Wind" or Jenn's "Jus Ad Bellum" be destined to become required reading in high schools? Would Perch_and_Creep be a world-class poet on the level that T.S. Elliot and Walt Whitman enjoy? Imagine fan works being published in hard-bound volumes instead of websites, and vice versa for classic original works.

I'd guess that the classic originals would put up the same struggle to be noticed at all that typifies fan fiction. After all, while literary status ensures that most everyone has at leard of if not read Moby Dick and Treasure Island, the very nature of the Internet means that it's not a safe bet that any one fanfic story is common knowledge. maybe within a fandom, but not across the fanfiction readership at large. It seems to me that the most popular fanfiction stories are lucky if they acheive the relative level of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy. That is, an absolute classic to enthusiasts of the genre, but not as well understood by people from other genres. I doubt there's really been time for fanfiction to have a William Shakespeare, but if there actually is one, it'd be a bit difficult for the fanfiction followers at large to become aware of it.

[andrastewhite]: The fanfiction/original fiction divide is an artificial division based on copyright law. As such, its artistic implications are limited. The reason the vast majority of fanfiction isn't as good as published original fiction is that it doesn't go through the filtration process that gets a book onto a shelf or a short story into a magazine. If you considered all the original fiction that never makes it out of shoeboxes and off harddrives, I doubt the quality of the writing would be much different between the two.

The idea that original characters and plot are somehow desirable qualities in a work of fiction is a very recent one - developed in the 19th and 20th centuries as far as I can tell. Shakespeare's plots were seldom invented by Shakespeare, and most of his characters are taken from other sources. Ditto Homer, Boccacio, Chaucer and the rest of the greats. There was nothing shameful about taking someone else's story and telling your own version in those days. The whole concept of original fiction wouldn't make any real sense to a Medieval or Renaissance mind, not to mention how it would be received by other cultures.

That said, fanfiction as we know it isn't usually a retelling of someone eles's source material, although it can be. It also often strives to keep within 'canon' rather than revelling in the freedom to tell the story any way the author pleases. It is a new animal created by fandom, which barely existed before the 20th century, looked down upon because it is derivative by its very nature. The idea that being derivative is bad has a short history in the human psyche, however, so personally I don't feel too bad about it.

[calystarose]:

You've said what I've been trying to articulate for ages. And I really like the idea of inverting the status of original and fan fiction. I would imagine that original fiction would be viewed very dimly as it has no cultural relevance since it fails to draw from previously established works. ;) hehe Oh that would be a fun idea to explore. And just imagine the outrage toward Original Fiction authors! I mean, how dare they presume to push their views on the world!? hehe