Raison d'Fanfic

[Rosmerta]

Arghhh. This is all way too much to absorb; thanks for everyone's 
insight and comments. Couple of questions, mostly from Jen's post, 
and a few more comments: 

1)What're plot bunnies? I'm picturing Gloria Steinem with a cocktail 
tray serving up the denounement to a story, but that can't be right. 
2) And what's "ludic" mean? (I'd look it up myself but all the 
dictionaries in my house are currently being used as booster seats). 
3) And "gen" is general? 
4) And "het" is heterosexual? 

5) Slash I figured out on my own, but it was interesting that Jen 
mentioned the Mona Lisa ("Is an art student who sketches the Mona 
Lisa a forger?
) because the first time I heard the term, it made me 
think for some reason of that guy who slashed the Mona Lisa a couple 
of years ago. (Now there was a real fan, in all senses of the word.) 
So what does the slash refer to
.just the slash between the m and the 
m or the f and the f, or is it something more intriguing? 

Jen wrote: "a *huge* part of fanfic is the community generated around 
it. Reading and writing fanfic is a collective expression of love for 
a canon that now in some very real emotional and psychological sense 
belongs to the entire fandom. And Michela wrote: "I love the feeling 
of belonging to such and such a community, so I'll contribute to this 
community." 

This is very interesting. Xlibris and all the other new pseudo-vanity 
publishing projects are all  building this same kind of "community" 
into their business plans. And it's not because it makes their 
potential authors feel warm and fuzzy; it's because it guarantees an 
audience of at least some size if/when a book comes out either 
electronically or in pulp—i.e., that particular author's fellow 
listies.  I guess that was what I was meaning in my original query 
about the origins of fanfic, because that kind of instant, focused 
audience was difficult to find, even in the zine world it had to be 
built. Now it's there, along with all its subgenres and subsubgenres. 

Michela wrote: "A lot of authors, especially younger authors who 
haven't yet grasped the fundamentals of writing, may not be able to 
write their own stuff." And Stacy wrote: "For me, if it hadn't been 
for fanfiction, I would still be thinking about becoming a doctor 
instead of majoring in creative writing (thank goodness for 
fanfiction!)."

Also very interesting and a side effect I wouldn't've anticipated. Is 
it maybe that using characters that are already familiar to you and 
your audience is a way to give yourself permission to be a writer or 
to try it out without actually having to write the obligatory 350-
page first novel that sits in a drawer? 

Rebecca wrote: "Ideas themselves are a dime a dozen: but writers with 
the commitment, the patience, and the talent to credibly develop 
those ideas and draw readers into them are far more rare." 

This one, I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with. IMHO the 
world is full of capable practitioners who can write reasonably well 
but don't have anything to say. I don't want to think about the 
number of writing classes I sat through where a student would say, I 
want to be a writer but I don't know what to write about. (One class, 
the teacher answered that one with "then you're a reader not a 
writer.") Yes, it's extremely difficult to turn an original idea into 
something that's well written, well plotted, imaginitively 
characterized, and so on, but  that original idea is the spark that 
sets the whole thing ablaze. Without it, you've just got a nicely 
organized bunch of sticks. 

Finally, on the idea of fanfic fitting into a larger literary 
tradition of borrowing/begging/stealing material from one generation 
to the next, Rebecca wrote: "Even fantasy authors draw on medieval 
history, folklore and mythology for their material) and the 
characters aren't entirely original (and what characters are?)
"  and 
Michela wrote, "And depending on how you want to define stuff, most 
any story can be considered fan fiction... Roman mythology is derived 
from Greek mythology. The Bible was derived from an oral tradition 
and stories about God that were at one time put down into paper." And 
Al wrote: "There are very few original stories left to write - so 
practically anything can be interpreted as an homage or a re-hashing 
of something that went before, even if it wasn't intentional."

Sorry guys, this argument I just can't buy when trying to apply it 
specifically to the kind of fanfic we're talking about here. But 
maybe it's a matter of the macro view vs. the micro view. In the very 
biggest-picture sense, yes, all stories are ultimately derived from 
other stories; people have always written about life, death, coming 
of age, etc. Moving in a little closer, Rowling is obviously 
following a long tradition when she writes about magic, beneficent 
old wizards, young orphaned heroes, dark lords, inseparable friends, 
English boarding schools, and dragons that make tempramental pets. 
But a myopic preteen wizard who lived under a cupboard, has a 
lighting-shaped scar, one tall redhaired male friend and another 
supersmart bushy-haired female friend and is called Harry Potter? 
That's her individual and unique interpretation on those literary 
traditions, and to start writing from at that point (rather than at 
the life/death/coming of age point) is something more direct and 
intense that simply writing in a certain genre or tradition. 

Shakespeare wrote King Lear in 16whenever and 300 years later, 
Kurasawa (sp?) reinterpreted the story (brilliantly, lots of people 
think) in another medium (film) for a new audience (Japanese 
theatergoers late-20th century). That's not what's happening with HP 
fanfic. Here the story in some cases is being *pre*interpreted in the 
same medium for the same audience that's reading the original work. 
So it seems like we're mixing apples and oranges to talk about the 
Bible, Homer and HP in the same literary context. In 200 years, maybe 
(g), but not yet. 

Maybe we should let Jenkins, as quoted by Michela, have the last 
word? "Unimpressed by institutional authority and expertise, the fans 
assert their own rights to form interpretations, to offer 
evaluations, and to construct cultural canons." That seems to sum up 
fanfic to me. 

~Rosmerta