On 2012-01-04 18:14:31 +0000, David Dyer-Bennet <
dd...@dd-b.net> said:
> Kurt Busiek <
ku...@busiek.com> writes:
>
>> On 2012-01-04 15:05:08 +0000, David Dyer-Bennet <
dd...@dd-b.net> said:
>>
>>> "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <
sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> writes:
>>>
>>>> _The Wizard of Karres_ would be fanfic, in my view (and not
>>>> in, IIRC, Kurt Busiek's, because he believes that the fact that it's
>>>> published automatically removes it from the fanfic category. That's
>>>> not my position but it's a perfectly valid and understandable one.)
>>>
>>> As short-hand to describe what I thought had happened to one series,
>>> I've told a number of friends that it started out promising but quickly
>>> degenerated to writing fanfic in their own universe. So apparently I
>>> don't consider the books being professionally published to be a bar.
>>
>> Yeah, but there, aren't you essentially using "fanfic" as a reference
>> to quality, saying it's self-indulgent and not up to the writer's
>> previous standards?
>
> Pretty much that, yes.
>
>> You're saying that it's the kind of thing you'd imagine to be fanfic,
>> leaving out a few words.
>>
>> Or does fanfic no longer require a fan to be doing it?
>
> These people didn't hold up to my standards, but they weren't hacks; so
> they were probably fans of their own work.
I think that's an un-useful way to use the word "fan."
>> This is what bugs me about the broadening of the term -- it was coined
>> to mean something specific, and was a useful term as such. It
>> distinguished between authorized, professional work and unauthorized
>> work done by fans. But once you start expanding it to any work that
>> the author enjoyed doing, including work done on professional
>> assignment, or even (in this case) by the person who created and
>> presumably owns the material, then the usefulness of the original term
>> is gone. You might as well just call it "fiction," because you've
>> expanded the boundaries to include everything.
>
> "Enjoyed" is not at all the issue. "Not up to professional standards in
> particular ways (largely focusing on self-indulgence)" is the issue.
So you're using the term as a measure of quality, but as someone else
noted, it's a metaphoric use -- you're saying it's the sort of thing
you'd expect from an unprofessional writer, but not actually claiming
the writer isn't a pro.
Ryk is using it differently, to say that if we write what we enjoy,
we're fans of it, and therefore it's all fanfic, which, as noted,
strikes me as watering down the term to the point of uselessness.
>> And then you need a new term to describe what the term was coined to
>> describe in the first place.
>>
>> I don't spend too much time in fanfic circles (except by Ryk's
>> standards, where my entire career is fanfic), but my sense of how the
>> word is used is far more in keeping with the original coining. If
>> someone says they wrote a fanfic story, the listener (if they
>> understand the term at all) doesn't assume they were commissioned to
>> write a novel featuring characters of their own creation and set in a
>> world they own, they assume that it's an unauthorized story written by
>> a fan of the characters and setting.
>>
>> Expanding the term by using it as a comparative (as you seem to be
>> doing) or just as a way to say authors have influences (as Ryk seems
>> to) isn't seen as the accepted meaning -- it's an allusion to the real
>> meaning in your case, just as someone might refer to a professional
>> production as "amateur hour" without literally meaning that the
>> perpetrators are amateurs, or a recognition of the commonalities among
>> writers in Ryk's case.
>
> Writing stories involving characters not your own seems to me to be the
> core of "fanfic".
I think "unauthorized" and "not intended for sale to the owners" need
to be in there, too. Otherwise, Harlan Ellison's "City on the Edge of
Forever" is fanfic, because he didn't own the characters. And if I
pitch a Spider-Man story to Marvel, it's fanfic.
I don't think either of those are fanfic, whatever Harlan or I may have
felt about the Trek characters and Spider-Man. They were professional
work, or an effort to gain professional work.
> In particular I don't hear people describe bad
> slushpile stories in original universes as "fanfic"; it doesn't mean
> just "bad". Maybe there's another layer on top of that. I know some
> people say it has to be non-commercial, but I'm pretty sure that's a red
> herring.
>
> And "fanfic" is what lots of people who LIKE it call it, too; so it
> certainly doesn't mean just "bad" to them.
>
>> But if someone says "fanfic," people don't assume it refers to the new
>> Harry Dresden novel, even though Jim Butcher is a fan of the things
>> he's influenced by, or to episodes of STAR TREK written by
>> screenwriters who grew up fans of the franchise. Or even of Heinlein's
>> late works where he returns to older characters and plays with them
>> like a fan might.
>>
>> People assume it means an unauthorized work written by fans, not with
>> the intent of selling it.
>
> To a lot of people, it has a lot of overtones of "badly written",
> especially self-indulgent.
I think that's the metaphoric use discussed above -- first you need the
concept of fan-written stories to establish a reputation for low
quality, and then you can use the term as a comparison.
>> Or so it seems to me.
>
> I don't know of an example off-hand, but there *must* be stories written
> as fanfic and eventually professionally published by now.
There are.
> Which is a
> big part of why I think the professional aspect can't be a gating
> factor.
Why not? If I write a story about Marvel superheroes for my own
amusement (as I did with THE BATTLE OF LEXINGTON, a comic Scott McCloud
and I did for fun when we were in high school), that's fanfic. If I
write a story to sell to Marvel, that's not. There's a clear difference
in intent.
Is the TV show JUSTIFIED fanfic, because Elmore Leonard isn't writing
the episodes?