On Fanfic

Fanfic. It’s a concept that’s become popular, thanks to the Internet:

“A story written by a fan of a particular wordard/word (movie, book, tv show, video game, etc.), about the characters and world in that series, usually without the original creator's permission.”

 

Do you not approve? Well, that just makes you like those guys who were horrified by the printing press, writes Laurie Penny!

“In the late 15th century, when printing technology first took off in the West and literacy became more common, the moral panic over ordinary unecclesiastical people being allowed to read, interpret, and have opinions about the Bible almost tore Europe apart.”

Come to think of it, people have been writing fanfic for ages:

“Fan fiction is, in a way, as old as literature itself. Paradise Lost was biblical fanfic; Dante's Inferno may well be the first self-insert fan story to make it into the Western canon.”

And in more recent times, people wrote Star Trek fanfic.

 

But fanfic never felt OK, even to the writers:

“I didn't have a word, at first, for that type of writing. It felt vaguely distasteful, almost shameful, as if I were tampering where I didn't belong.”

Until, that is, the Internet came along:

“Harry Potter fandom was where a generation of young writers cut their teeth.”

And then the defensiveness went away:

“It wasn't about fixing or correcting the Harry Potter universe but adding to it, having fun. The media theorist Henry Jenkins, a great champion of fans, nonetheless describes them as “poachers” on the property of established authors—except we weren't stealing, only borrowing. We broke into Rowling's garden, but only so we could play there with our friends. Fan fiction was and remains an act of love for the original work, as well as a longing for everything it isn't.”

 

The author, by definition, can’t follow all the forks in the road. Fanfic allows others to go down alternative, even radically different, paths. Consider it the parallel universe of what-if’s. And given how Game of Thrones ended, can you really argue we don’t need alternative paths to our favourite stories?

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