There are many "official" works that set out to sabotage long-standing IPs, wearing the skinsuit while demanding the same respect it had earned from fans in the past.
I call this anti-fanfiction.
They want the existing fanbase to accept their anti-fanfiction as canon. They will gladly buy the IP rights to further validate it.
Many years ago I wrote a fan fic in the Buffy Universe when my writing career was in it's infancy. It wasn't altogether bad and I moved on to other things. Time passed and I grew as a writer, got some books on Amazon that were modestly received. I mentioned in passing on my web site that i had been working on a story in H. Beam. Piper's Kalvan universe. A lot of people said they wanted to read it. I posted it and then more books as I finished them. One day I got an email from John Carr, the right's holder for Piper's original book, and he asked if I'd agree to publishing them under his imprint. All I had to do was make some changes. Carr was publishing his own follow-on stories to Piper''s work and I was excited, Then the last of his books in the series came out, and while he didn't kill off the main character, he did trash him (at least in my opinion).
This is the big danger to writing in someone else's universe -- although of late entirely too little attention is being paid to "canon.' And the collapse in audiences for a lot of series is proof positive that things have gone too far. Star Wars, Star Trek, Marvel,DC, and many Disney works and many, many more.
All we can do to fight this is voice our opinions and withhold our gelt. Slowly, slowly things are changing.
Some of the stories they've reworked only need a slightly different premise and the writer can reimagine it as much as desired. Who doesn't imagine what movie character you'd want to play one of your characters? God knows writers have been changing themes and doing it for hundreds of years! Of course the kicker, as you say, is the writing needs to be good, and the writer has to exercise some imagination. Did I mention the need for good writing?
I don't know if it's the same thing, but I've seen and heard the term 'Hate Fic' used. Maybe that covers it? Though it seems more focused on making terrible and often pointless things happen to a character the author doesn't like simply so they can, I don't know, embarrass a fictional character in public?
I remember reading a defense of how a certain dystopia had been sent up to do this and that to women who did something, and then the central character did that something, and got away scot-free without the slightest justification. It was murmuring about how enjoyable it was to see her do it, and I noticed how it didn't even hint that a realistic treatment would break the delusions of fans who liked to imagine they were in that dystopia.
Why would anyone want to imagine they were living in a dystopian world? I've read about people who lived in real-life dystopias like Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia or North Korea, and few of them look back fondly on the experience.
When I was a young girl and I read books, I would imagine how I would stand up to the evil authorities.
But I realized during these last four years...that's a lot easier said than done. I don't even know where I would go or what I would do if I wanted to object to things going on here.
But I think part of it is the masculine vs. feminine view.
A man, in his wish-fulfillment fantasy, often imagines defeating an opponent with violence. Women imagine defeating their rivals socially....showing them up, turning out to be right.
That kind of fantasy fits into a bad situation quite well.
It occurs to me to point out that there is a long history of dystopias as worthy foes in pulp fiction. Poul Anderson's *Sam Hall* is a splendid example. It's a surveillance state as in *1984*, and Anderson clearly thought through what it would take in more detail. It also was defeated. So the defiant opposition does not have to be wish-fulfillment.
I remember reading that one in an anthology of Anderson's stories. I believe he said it was inspired by his experiences on a hiking tour he took through Europe, with all the constant demands for "Papers, please."
You have reminded me of how much I disliked the book "Ender's Shadow", written by the same author as Ender's Game and set as a parallel running story to it. The protag, "Bean", sucked the magic and despair out of the entire high stress setting of the original story.
It made the original Ender feel like the Worf balloon since they had this genetically perfect super being who could have ran circles around Ender secretly supporting him.
So I suppose even having the original author doesn't prevent something becoming fan fiction. I had a similar beef with the Foundation series since they have everyone in the Foundation series, Seldon included, be wrong and stupid puppets compared to the new hotness main plot he wanted to wrap things up with.
I also notice with both books, Ender's Shadow and the later Foundation books, they were written many years after the original so the author must have become a completely different person who is not in touch with the muse that inspired the originals. In Japanese manga that actually happened with 'Kinnikuman Nisei' as well where the author seemed to forget who the characters were and wrote them completely differently than their original appearances.
I have a friend who's complained about the Beanbook as well.
That's a phenomenal I see often... Undercutting what makes the original story good, are the characters.
Maleficent is like that. What a horrible thing to do to poor King Stephen... Undercuts the entire punch of the fairy tale, which is that they have bad things happen because they accidentally arbitrarily offended somebody
I can go on and on. There are a lot of cases of that.
L. Frank Baum couldn't keep Oz consistent for the length of two books. And when he was cranking them out for the money and nothing else, it declined steeply and often undermined the earlier books.
It's quite off the path of the topic, but the thought was put into this teller's mind on the finish of the read, good work by the way.
Now, the intruding thought barely related.
A particular quirk to chinese webfiction is the rapidity in which after one writer does say, a story of a coldblooded young man being transported into a deathgame where he and others are lords of territories in which they summon forces of course he usually has a 'cheat' that makes him the superior lord, soon or even during serialisation a thousand and one variants will be spawn. From making the young man kindhearted to a woman, to different summons, different deathgames some daring writer might even do a 'cheatless' variant.
It cannot be said to be exactly fanfic really, but it's interesting to see so many variations of a story's conceit.
Naturally most of this kind of fiction is the reading equivalent of eating from a random streetfood stall in a country with lax laws on health and hygiene.
It's often coming from a place of trend chasing rather than fan-love.
Regardless many of the modern ideas of plagiarism and fanfic fall apart when one looks back to the old tradition of storytelling, the oft forgotten root of writers.
With stories told, the same tale can differ even when told by the same teller.
It's part of why this teller has distain for those who claim the nastiest versions of a folktale are the truist.
Truth is, countless tellings have passed, unique to a family or community.
Were all those tellers of past purveyors of fanfiction? The idea is baldly ridiculous. Only the most thickheaded can't see.
This teller won't call the chinese arena of deathly struggle the correct form, but undoubtedly the writers of those who owe their words to the land of Arthur, have become far too divorced from the past.
I think the copycat phenomena has been going on for centuries. You could see it in books when I was young, but since they only published a few of what was written, it wasn't as obvious as in people posting things on the web.
As someone who has committed fanfic- I don't think any of it wish fulfillment, except maybe righting the wrong of a *poorly conceived or insufficient ending*, or wanting to know what was going on with another character during the story, or wanting to spend more time in a world and/or with characters; fine, it's wish-fulfillment- I have a theory that the difference between what's technically fanfic but doesn't cross the fanfic line you describe is catharsis. A lot of fanfic is a form of catharsis, and it is bad even when technically not badly written. The message of catharsis and its attendant emotions take primacy over all the elements that make a story good. But a lot of original writing is that, too. Sometimes, stories classed as fanfic are not that, though.
Good fiction moves beyond catharsis, be it fanfic, original, or retelling. It becomes sub-creation, even if you're playing in a world set up by someone else- and in that case, when the good of the world that was made by the other is respected, it becomes an act of subcreation done *with* others which is a wonderful thing in its own right, like polishing up and restoring an heirloom you were given.
I've struggled to come up with a good term that sums it up. It is terrifyingly often prurient, but sometimes it's just emotional or ideological self-indulgence. It's that feeling you get when you say "he wouldn't say/do that" about a character, or something in the world doesn't fit, like it's a piece from a different puzzle that got put there. There's a self-centeredness to it. There's a common thread to it but it's hard to name...at least by me, some Inkling would probably come up with an amazing one.
In the vein of bad and fun fanfic: I read one crossover based in a far off galaxy with a scarred young broom-rider. Possibly the very worst long form writing I've ever encountered, but the ideas were so fresh and well thought-out that it was a delight.
I have read a couple of fan fics. Or maybe just one. It worked surprisingly well for the schlock it was, perhaps because it was based on Ah, My Goddess! and the characters in the original work are pretty 2D to begin with.
There are many "official" works that set out to sabotage long-standing IPs, wearing the skinsuit while demanding the same respect it had earned from fans in the past.
I call this anti-fanfiction.
They want the existing fanbase to accept their anti-fanfiction as canon. They will gladly buy the IP rights to further validate it.
Oh, that's a great term!
I should write an article about that.
Maybe antifan-fiction?
Hm. Or even "Anti-fan Fiction" to hammer home the point. Otherwise it can be misconstrued as being against fanfiction in general. Good catch.
Many years ago I wrote a fan fic in the Buffy Universe when my writing career was in it's infancy. It wasn't altogether bad and I moved on to other things. Time passed and I grew as a writer, got some books on Amazon that were modestly received. I mentioned in passing on my web site that i had been working on a story in H. Beam. Piper's Kalvan universe. A lot of people said they wanted to read it. I posted it and then more books as I finished them. One day I got an email from John Carr, the right's holder for Piper's original book, and he asked if I'd agree to publishing them under his imprint. All I had to do was make some changes. Carr was publishing his own follow-on stories to Piper''s work and I was excited, Then the last of his books in the series came out, and while he didn't kill off the main character, he did trash him (at least in my opinion).
This is the big danger to writing in someone else's universe -- although of late entirely too little attention is being paid to "canon.' And the collapse in audiences for a lot of series is proof positive that things have gone too far. Star Wars, Star Trek, Marvel,DC, and many Disney works and many, many more.
All we can do to fight this is voice our opinions and withhold our gelt. Slowly, slowly things are changing.
Some of the stories they've reworked only need a slightly different premise and the writer can reimagine it as much as desired. Who doesn't imagine what movie character you'd want to play one of your characters? God knows writers have been changing themes and doing it for hundreds of years! Of course the kicker, as you say, is the writing needs to be good, and the writer has to exercise some imagination. Did I mention the need for good writing?
Agreed!
And sorry to hear about the matter with Mr. Carr. ;-(
I think the other commenter who coined the term anti-fan fiction is onto something.
I don't know if it's the same thing, but I've seen and heard the term 'Hate Fic' used. Maybe that covers it? Though it seems more focused on making terrible and often pointless things happen to a character the author doesn't like simply so they can, I don't know, embarrass a fictional character in public?
I think hate fic is a subset of wish fulfillment fic.
Poor characters. ;-)
That was one reason I wanted to say something. anti-fan fiction is a good term!
Indeed!
I remember reading a defense of how a certain dystopia had been sent up to do this and that to women who did something, and then the central character did that something, and got away scot-free without the slightest justification. It was murmuring about how enjoyable it was to see her do it, and I noticed how it didn't even hint that a realistic treatment would break the delusions of fans who liked to imagine they were in that dystopia.
Yeah. That makes sense.
Why would anyone want to imagine they were living in a dystopian world? I've read about people who lived in real-life dystopias like Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia or North Korea, and few of them look back fondly on the experience.
Because they imagine that they would do better, solve the problems that others could not solve.
Or they enjoy the angst. Angst is a big draw for some, especially young women.
They imagine themselves as the brave, bold defiant souls. While remaining perfect sheep in real life, of course.
When I was a young girl and I read books, I would imagine how I would stand up to the evil authorities.
But I realized during these last four years...that's a lot easier said than done. I don't even know where I would go or what I would do if I wanted to object to things going on here.
But I think part of it is the masculine vs. feminine view.
A man, in his wish-fulfillment fantasy, often imagines defeating an opponent with violence. Women imagine defeating their rivals socially....showing them up, turning out to be right.
That kind of fantasy fits into a bad situation quite well.
It occurs to me to point out that there is a long history of dystopias as worthy foes in pulp fiction. Poul Anderson's *Sam Hall* is a splendid example. It's a surveillance state as in *1984*, and Anderson clearly thought through what it would take in more detail. It also was defeated. So the defiant opposition does not have to be wish-fulfillment.
I think the only difference between Mary Sue and a true heroine is how realistically the world responds to their actions.
A person can be brave in a dystopia...the question is do they overcome real obstacles or just kick aside cardboard ones.
For an example of someone who did it for real...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKoi7Fi9oWU&ab_channel=ScotlandHistoryTours
I remember reading that one in an anthology of Anderson's stories. I believe he said it was inspired by his experiences on a hiking tour he took through Europe, with all the constant demands for "Papers, please."
Makes sense.
You have reminded me of how much I disliked the book "Ender's Shadow", written by the same author as Ender's Game and set as a parallel running story to it. The protag, "Bean", sucked the magic and despair out of the entire high stress setting of the original story.
It made the original Ender feel like the Worf balloon since they had this genetically perfect super being who could have ran circles around Ender secretly supporting him.
So I suppose even having the original author doesn't prevent something becoming fan fiction. I had a similar beef with the Foundation series since they have everyone in the Foundation series, Seldon included, be wrong and stupid puppets compared to the new hotness main plot he wanted to wrap things up with.
I also notice with both books, Ender's Shadow and the later Foundation books, they were written many years after the original so the author must have become a completely different person who is not in touch with the muse that inspired the originals. In Japanese manga that actually happened with 'Kinnikuman Nisei' as well where the author seemed to forget who the characters were and wrote them completely differently than their original appearances.
I have a friend who's complained about the Beanbook as well.
That's a phenomenal I see often... Undercutting what makes the original story good, are the characters.
Maleficent is like that. What a horrible thing to do to poor King Stephen... Undercuts the entire punch of the fairy tale, which is that they have bad things happen because they accidentally arbitrarily offended somebody
I can go on and on. There are a lot of cases of that.
But the one you gave is really strong one
L. Frank Baum couldn't keep Oz consistent for the length of two books. And when he was cranking them out for the money and nothing else, it declined steeply and often undermined the earlier books.
It's quite off the path of the topic, but the thought was put into this teller's mind on the finish of the read, good work by the way.
Now, the intruding thought barely related.
A particular quirk to chinese webfiction is the rapidity in which after one writer does say, a story of a coldblooded young man being transported into a deathgame where he and others are lords of territories in which they summon forces of course he usually has a 'cheat' that makes him the superior lord, soon or even during serialisation a thousand and one variants will be spawn. From making the young man kindhearted to a woman, to different summons, different deathgames some daring writer might even do a 'cheatless' variant.
It cannot be said to be exactly fanfic really, but it's interesting to see so many variations of a story's conceit.
Naturally most of this kind of fiction is the reading equivalent of eating from a random streetfood stall in a country with lax laws on health and hygiene.
It's often coming from a place of trend chasing rather than fan-love.
Regardless many of the modern ideas of plagiarism and fanfic fall apart when one looks back to the old tradition of storytelling, the oft forgotten root of writers.
With stories told, the same tale can differ even when told by the same teller.
It's part of why this teller has distain for those who claim the nastiest versions of a folktale are the truist.
Truth is, countless tellings have passed, unique to a family or community.
Were all those tellers of past purveyors of fanfiction? The idea is baldly ridiculous. Only the most thickheaded can't see.
This teller won't call the chinese arena of deathly struggle the correct form, but undoubtedly the writers of those who owe their words to the land of Arthur, have become far too divorced from the past.
I think the copycat phenomena has been going on for centuries. You could see it in books when I was young, but since they only published a few of what was written, it wasn't as obvious as in people posting things on the web.
Interesting observations! Thanks.
As someone who has committed fanfic- I don't think any of it wish fulfillment, except maybe righting the wrong of a *poorly conceived or insufficient ending*, or wanting to know what was going on with another character during the story, or wanting to spend more time in a world and/or with characters; fine, it's wish-fulfillment- I have a theory that the difference between what's technically fanfic but doesn't cross the fanfic line you describe is catharsis. A lot of fanfic is a form of catharsis, and it is bad even when technically not badly written. The message of catharsis and its attendant emotions take primacy over all the elements that make a story good. But a lot of original writing is that, too. Sometimes, stories classed as fanfic are not that, though.
Good fiction moves beyond catharsis, be it fanfic, original, or retelling. It becomes sub-creation, even if you're playing in a world set up by someone else- and in that case, when the good of the world that was made by the other is respected, it becomes an act of subcreation done *with* others which is a wonderful thing in its own right, like polishing up and restoring an heirloom you were given.
Right. Spot on.
What you're calling catharsis is what I mean by whis fulfillment.
But, there is nothing that says it just because you're writing in someone else's background that you're not doing a good job.
I've struggled to come up with a good term that sums it up. It is terrifyingly often prurient, but sometimes it's just emotional or ideological self-indulgence. It's that feeling you get when you say "he wouldn't say/do that" about a character, or something in the world doesn't fit, like it's a piece from a different puzzle that got put there. There's a self-centeredness to it. There's a common thread to it but it's hard to name...at least by me, some Inkling would probably come up with an amazing one.
Yes.
Fanfic often has this quality, which is why it is often used...but the existence of good fiction written by fans leads to the need for another term.
Transformative works is used by some to describe fan-works. It lacks poetry though, and is already broadly in use by some Bay Area sort of circles.
In the vein of bad and fun fanfic: I read one crossover based in a far off galaxy with a scarred young broom-rider. Possibly the very worst long form writing I've ever encountered, but the ideas were so fresh and well thought-out that it was a delight.
I've a feeling I saw part of that once. If so, it was truly awfu
But a charming idea.
I have read a couple of fan fics. Or maybe just one. It worked surprisingly well for the schlock it was, perhaps because it was based on Ah, My Goddess! and the characters in the original work are pretty 2D to begin with.
Complaints about wish-fulfillment aside, there is nothing about writing fanfic per se that makes it so that the author has to do a bad job. ;-)
I have heard tell of a number of really good fanfic stories.