Tyranomaster
Guy who writes stuff
- Joined
- Oct 5, 2022
- Messages
- 746
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That... isn't what the definition of a fanfiction is. As per Merriam-Webster
fan fiction, noun
: stories involving popular fictional characters that are written by fans and often posted on the InternetAs per my understanding:
Fanfiction is explicitly reusing an established fictional universe or characters to write a new story without the original author's permission, and while it is outside of fair use. Most of Lovecraft's works are now public domain, so you can't have Cthulhu mythos fanfiction, merely reimagining of it. As long as laws don't get passed making real life events able to have a copyright put on them, then those events also aren't fanfiction.
I believe originally, they were fan appreciative works usually. However, as Sailus points out, the only people writing them now-a-days are morally bankrupt people who are essentially corrupting existing works for profit. The author doesn't appreciate the original work, they're explicitly looking to corrupt someone else's characters into situations they wouldn't appear in, in order to collect money from others.
They're the moral equivalent of, at best, scalpers, and at worst, counterfeiters. If the story could stand on it's own merit, without having to piggyback of another story's success, why doesn't it? Why do they need to use the names and places in the other story? Because what they are telling you isn't actually reliant on it's own merit, it requires you to experience the emotions of the other story first, before twisting them. Very few fanfics can actually stand on their own merit without any understanding of the original work. The only one that comes to mind off the top of my head would be "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality", which does a great job of essentially rewriting the whole story in a way that if it was the only standalone Harry Potter work, it'd stand well.
There are plenty of authored works that are very similar to fanfiction, where it's clear that all the characters were inspired by a different series, but they wanted to try and make it stand alone, and most of the time they don't measure up, but occasionally they do surpass the original. To those authors, I can at least say they are trying to compete fairly.
To the other crooks who sit around and say "But uhhhhh, all works are derivative, therefor it doesn't matter if I just copy others", I have to say, it does matter. People who merely piggyback off other's success aren't contributors to society. In the best case scenario, where you aren't trying to take money, and are just making an appreciative work, you are corrupting the original authors vision of a space, and taking a portion of their audience with you. At worst, you're upcharging fans of the original work for cheap knock offs of the original product. I can hear the reply now, "But they want it, I'm just providing what they want.". Yeah, they want more of that work, and it's up to the original author to provide it to them. If their doctor gives them a small amount of Vicodin after a surgery, and they get addicted, you aren't helping them by "providing more to them for a fee", you're drug dealing.
