Why do people hate fanfictions?

[Lord Joeltion]

Um, I'm not quite sure what your point is. That he isn't a bit self-congratualtory in HPMoR? Or that he is but intended to be? Either way I found that part annoying.
What's the difference between taste and artistic value?
Honest question.

I meant that he is self-congratulatory, but that fact doesn't necessarily affect the quality of his work. There are some authors that I don't like because they seem to rejoice on their intellectual abilities a little too much. But I am still able to recognize whether they are good writers, nevertheless. It's a flaw that doesn't necessarily affect their writing skills; it's just their personality transpiring through the paper. Sometimes that personality doesn't bother me as much. In HPMOR I didn't mind that aspect from the author, even tho I noticed this aspect of him through the text. It is much more evident once you read his blog too.

Anyway, in my personal experience I found many pieces of art with gigantic artistic value that I happen to don't like in the least. Books, music, paint, everything. Taste is personal, and it's tied to a lot of personal experiences after all. But the ability to recognize artistic value is more about how much knowledge you have about a subject. That's why people can enjoy bad movies even tho they are fully aware of their poor crafting. It's not always the case that it's "so-bad-its-good"; it can happen with mediocre art too. I enjoy a lot of mediocre, but I don't always like everything that I know is excellent, just for its excellency. Personal taste is the deciding factor about whether I will like it or not. Then again, some people confuse personal taste with excellency. I am totally not one of those.

[Xyril]

That is, in my opinion, a great deal of why fanfictions are underestimated, both by readers AND authors. Working with source material may look easy on paper, but it isn't necessarily so.

Actually, this is why I think that fan fictions are (on the aggregate) judged precisely correctly: Working with source material is pretty easy, it's doing it well that takes a bit of skill and effort. Most fan fictions seem to be written by folks who treat the whole exercise as if it were easy, or by folks who do in fact recognize the difficulty of the task but nonetheless lack the ability to do so.

Used poorly by an unskilled writer, source material is a crutch--it saves you the trouble of having to construct setting and character in your mind, and allows you to get away with failing to communicate key elements because you and the intended audience will have the benefit of substantial shared information.

Used effectively by a skilled writer who cares about the quality of his work, and actually understands what good work is, source material is a cage--you are constrained by the author's depictions of the setting and the characterization of important figures, and also by the audience's willingness to go along with any departures from the norms or the tone of the original work.

The best fanfiction writers--and even many professional writers--are the ones who not only recognize the constraints of the cage, but also use it as a means to showcase their skills. The demonstrate their mastery of the characters by putting them in new circumstances and having them react consistently with their personalities in the source material. Or they might give a known character an entirely different personality from the source material and then show us how this "real" personality is nonetheless consistent with their actions and reputation in the source work. Or they could create a story that is deliberately incongruous with the conventions of the original work, and in that incongruity create something that is not only an interesting work in itself, but also changes the way we view the source material.

[Misereor]

Why do people hate fanfictions and act as if they were bad?

Let me tell you about my favorite character!!!

[A.A.King]

Personally I find "a lot of it is trash" already quite a good reason to hate something (things might get confussing for fans of 'trash metal' I suppose but for most everything else it's a good starting point). Now it's perfectly fine to keep Sturgeon's Law in mind when trying out new things, because ninety percent of everything is trash so you shouldn't write something of after having tried it only once, but when people say "most fan fiction is trash" they mean above and beyond the normal 9 to 10 ratio. It means 99% or even 99,9% or maybe 99,99% or well, you get the point. At some point it is safe to say that the rare exceptions are no longer worth the endavour. I may have hit a beautiful hole-in-one once but my inability to get even remotetly close to par on every other occasion ment I had fo give up on my dream of a professional Golf Career.

It is not just that a lot of it is bad (and not jist bad as in 'badly written' but bad as in blatant wish fullfiment with a lot of self inserts and bad romance.. and don't even get me started on 'slashfiction') but it is more so that it just seems so entirely pointless:

However, you will occasionally find a fanfic that transcends these flaws. The classic example, in my mind, is Game Theory, a Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha fanfic. It's well written, a complete story (with a complete sequel at that), and lacking in errors. Some knowledge of the first season of MGLN is helpful for fully understanding the first two chapters, but after that is not required at all. Many people consider Game Theory's plot, characterization, and worldbuilding to be superior to the original, in fact. Finally, the fic is very accessible to people who haven't read much fanfic before, and provides a unique spin and very different tone and plot to the original.

Now I'm sure Game Theory is as good as you say it is (atleast, to anyone who is fan of the Magical Girl subgenre of fiction) but the bolded parts just make me ask one simple question: Why is it written as a Fan Fiction?

If the tone is different from the original, why not just be original yourself. The Author clearly shows that he can think up his own plot and apparently his was better than the original. Not only that, you say he did a better job at worldbuilding and was even better at characterization. So why not use those skills on his own world and his own characters? The Magical Girl subgenre is already quite derivative so he could easily goten away with boring some traits from the show that inspired him while still creating something that was uniquely his own. When the best of fan fiction stories are being sold as better or very different from the original, why are those writers not just being originall? You can even be quite succesfull with a story that started as a fan fiction before being sold as its own thing (just ask E.L. James)

This is especially true for those (apparently) good fan fictions which ignore or 'disfigure' one of or even the main character of the story they are supposed to be a fan of. If you are a fan of a story and it inspires you to write but you choose to write in an entirely different style and genre and you didn't really like the main character and so you tone down his role and you chose to put a lot of your focus on background characters (which nobody knew anything about really so they might as well just be original characters) then why not just ditch everything else I write your own work? At that point even a 'gem' looks bad to me because now it is a decent-to-good writee hiding behind someone else his characters and world (while having the audacity to feel you can improve things).

[Mikemical]

Why do people hate fanfictions and act as if they were bad?

If you think about it almost every movie is nothing but a type of fanfiction.

People hate bad fanfiction, and the people who read and write fanfiction tend to be in the majority rather obnoxious and self-important. I don't read fanfiction. Not because I hate it, but because I have so much more better things to do than sit down to read an alternative version of Harry Potter where everyone is a Vampire and it's named after certain Evanesence song.

Following your logic, any form of media is fanfiction. Hell, even the Bible could be considered fanfiction by that logic.

Spoiler

Show

It's not. It's a recopilation of stories told through time for thousands of years of human history. The difference between media and fanfiction is that the people who make movies, books, comics, etc, related to a certain intellectual property usually have the pertinent rights to do so, whereas fan-made stuff is usually done without the author's knowledge, consent or approval.

What's your deal? Leave me alone!

You posted an image of a bad movie without providing a compelling argument and he pointed that out for you?

This is why I stalk your threads. They derail into comedy gold, usually not in the same page though.

Also, I hate sports.

[Lacuna Caster]

Even if I hated all movies and all fan fiction they're not comprable mediums. One is a medium with a ton of people working on it (here talking about studio generated films) and the other is written by people in their loft apartments late at night. Not liking a movie because of bad writing isn't the same as not liking a fan fiction story for bad writing.

Yes. The bad movie is a much more staggering waste of finite resources.

Referring to Aeschylus and Sophocles as fan-fiction authors doesn't really make sense from my point of view. Fan fiction is a recent thing: it requires, as per its name, a fandom. And fandom was born around the times of Sherlock Holmes, and is a subculture. Sophocles and Aeschylus weren't writing for a subculture when they created their works: they aimed for a public consisting of the whole of the city of Athens, and foreigners too. Their works were relevant to the whole of Greek culture.

Eh, that strikes me as a facile argument. You can argue that was a 'subculture' of european or mediterranean civilisation, but that's not really the important point. The question is whether crowd-sourcing the generation of narratives based on, or derived from, an earlier corpus can give you good results.

A think a more recent example that folks are overlooking here is superhero stories. Same characters, but in different stories with separate continuities and different authors, over and over again. It happened for nakedly mercenary reasons, and there are a lot of distasteful side-effects, but it's fair to say the overwhelming majority of superhero stories written are functionally fan-fiction by now- to the extent that the 'canonical' versions most embedded in the public consciousness may only loosely resemble their original incarnations.

[Lacuna Caster]

It's not. It's a recopilation of stories told through time for thousands of years of human history. The difference between media and fanfiction is that the people who make movies, books, comics, etc, related to a certain intellectual property usually have the pertinent rights to do so, whereas fan-made stuff is usually done without the author's knowledge, consent or approval.

I can guarantee you that St. Peter and St. Paul would have had vigorous disagreements about how the new testament should be written.

Also, going back to superhero stories, in many cases creative rights were effectively wrenched from the original authors by the most thuggish methods imaginable. I'm not saying that's a good thing, but it didn't inherently prevent subsequent authors from taking their work in other directions and being well-received for it.

[Florian]

Eh, that strikes me as a facile argument. You can argue that was a 'subculture' of european or mediterranean civilisation, but that's not really the important point. The question is whether crowd-sourcing the generation of narratives based on, or derived from, an earlier corpus can give you good results.

No, it really is about fandom. You must be a fan of something, feel empathy or fascination for it, to feel the need to contribute to it (and other fans) in the first place.

So I wouldn't call it "crowd-sourcing", as it´s primarily based on how the fan-author interacts with the source material, the pride of sharing and potential adoration by other fans.

[The Extinguisher]

The uncomfortable answer is that fanfiction was, (and still is really) a medium with primarily women authors. Which is people can be pretty unforgiving with mistakes in fanfiction then in other media (see: how bad movies don't cause people to hate all movies, also self inserts which are everywhere in media but get a lot of hate in fanfiction)

[AMFV]

The uncomfortable answer is that fanfiction was, (and still is really) a medium with primarily women authors. Which is people can be pretty unforgiving with mistakes in fanfiction then in other media (see: how bad movies don't cause people to hate all movies, also self inserts which are everywhere in media but get a lot of hate in fanfiction)

This is so far wrong, that I can't even accurately go into how wrong you are here. First many popular works of Fanfiction that have been discussed are NOT written by female authors. Second, the stereotype of a fanfiction author in the view of the general public is not that of a woman but of a neckbeard. Third, there are plenty of genres of genre fiction which are primarily full of women authors that do not receive that same degree of distaste that you have in fanfiction.

The reasons fanfiction has a dislike is because:

A.) A lot of it is bad, people have talked about this, it's frequently bad. There isn't much oversight.

B.) It's derivative, and some people will see that as worse inherently.

C.) It's considered an "acceptable" target socially. It's the same thing as when you say "I don't like Country music," in many places that's socially acceptable to say, whereas "I don't like pop" or "I don't like Rock" would be less so.

[The Extinguisher]

This is so far wrong, that I can't even accurately go into how wrong you are here. First many popular works of Fanfiction that have been discussed are NOT written by female authors. Second, the stereotype of a fanfiction author in the view of the general public is not that of a woman but of a neckbeard. Third, there are plenty of genres of genre fiction which are primarily full of women authors that do not receive that same degree of distaste that you have in fanfiction.

The reasons fanfiction has a dislike is because:

A.) A lot of it is bad, people have talked about this, it's frequently bad. There isn't much oversight.

B.) It's derivative, and some people will see that as worse inherently.

C.) It's considered an "acceptable" target socially. It's the same thing as when you say "I don't like Country music," in many places that's socially acceptable to say, whereas "I don't like pop" or "I don't like Rock" would be less so.

I have no idea where you are that the view of fanfiction authors is that of a neckbeard. Fandom in general maybe (and even then I remain very skeptical. The neckbeard association is more towards the people who deride fanfiction) but the stereotypical fanfiction author is the thirteen year old girl who doesnt know anything about sex writing sex scenes. (example here not that tv tropes is a source or anything but it documents repeated instances of popular culture which is good enough when talking about stereotypes). Similarly, I would like to know what genre fictions are primarily women authored that aren't heavily disliked. Cause off the top of my head the biggest one I can think of is romance fiction which absolutely 100% is seen as "bad literature" and suffers worse than fanfiction in that sense. Please elaborate.
And yes, most of the popular fanfiction being discussed are written by men. Its almost that men who write in women dominated fields are raised higher than their women peers. Hmm i wonder why?

Also:
A) lots of things are very bad, see above: mobile apps. They are very frequently bad with no oversight and no one has written off the mobile app business.
B) its just as derivative as everything else, unless you also hate it when theaters put on retellings of shakespeare plays
C) you do know its considered acceptable because its a women dominated field? like thats the reason.

Its important to look at reasons why media is considered an acceptable target because they often betray our societies prejudices. country music is an interesting case because its modern implementation differs greatly from its historical roots. country music was the music of poor people (it grew out of folk and blues in appalachia). I'll leave it to you to figure out why rap music is almost always included with country when people talk about music they dont like.

All of the criticism laid before fanfiction is valid criticism. Its true of the format, but its certainly not unique to fanfiction or even writing in general. We give other media a pass where we fail fanfiction because of the cultural association behind its historical and modern day usage.

heres someone who says this better than me

[Xyril]

B) its just as derivative as everything else, unless you also hate it when theaters put on retellings of shakespeare plays

I agree with much of what you say, but I find this a bit unconvincing. I think all fiction has the same potential to be derivative, and the same potential to be fresh and novel. However, it seems hard to dispute that fan fiction--like the retelling of Shakespeare or yet another remake of something we loved from the 80's--starts off with a much stronger tendency to be derivative, and it takes quite a bit of deliberate effort from a skilled artist to avoid this pitfall. One additional advantage of "everything else" over fan fiction is that the professional "everything else" tends to have quality control, obviously, but even if you try to take Sturgeon's law out of the equation by looking at more amateur works from other genres, you still see a stark difference. For example, if you ever visit one of those sites where aspiring screenwriters post their work (or went to a school that tends to convince a disproportionate number of people that such a career is viable), you will see a lot of terrible, derivative crap, but you will also see a lot more surprisingly original crap that is terrible for entirely different reasons.

[The Extinguisher]

That's a fair point, and I guess it depends on how you differentiate between original and derivative in media, which is its own larger issue.

Besides originality is vastly overrated.

[AMFV]

I have no idea where you are that the view of fanfiction authors is that of a neckbeard. Fandom in general maybe (and even then I remain very skeptical. The neckbeard association is more towards the people who deride fanfiction) but the stereotypical fanfiction author is the thirteen year old girl who doesnt know anything about sex writing sex scenes.

That stereotype holds true only in people who are more familiar with the medium. In general parlance I think you'd see the other way. I know this because I asked my mother, who is not super into fanfiction. I mean certainly you might see a different view from people who, say, peruse TV Tropes, but I don't think that's going to be the common view.

Also it's worth noting that in that case you have to prove that it'd be the bias against women that's the real reason and not a bias against teenagers. Which I think is far more likely.

(example here not that tv tropes is a source or anything but it documents repeated instances of popular culture which is good enough when talking about stereotypes). Similarly, I would like to know what genre fictions are primarily women authored that aren't heavily disliked. Cause off the top of my head the biggest one I can think of is romance fiction which absolutely 100% is seen as "bad literature" and suffers worse than fanfiction in that sense. Please elaborate.

I don't think that "romance fiction" is always seen as bad literature depending on who you're talking to. Poetry is a good example at least in the modern of a genre that is fairly respected and largely authored by women. Diary/confessional writing is largely authored by women, and is often VERY highly respected in literary circles. Slice-of-life works are often (more often I would wager) written by women, and are often fairly well respected, although there is some overlap with the aforementioned diary/confessional type works.

And yes, most of the popular fanfiction being discussed are written by men. Its almost that men who write in women dominated fields are raised higher than their women peers. Hmm i wonder why?

In this case, we can point the answer squarely to the quality of the work. The most popular work of fanfiction (or at least what was originally fanfiction) was authored by a woman. So I don't think your argument holds water here, much less any number of shades of grey.

Also:
A) lots of things are very bad, see above: mobile apps. They are very frequently bad with no oversight and no one has written off the mobile app business.

Again 50 shades shows that the corporate publishing market has no problems exploiting popular fanfiction. The same as with mobile apps. Many people talk about how many mobile apps are "bad", but they'll sure as crap exploit them when they're popular. So again this doesn't actually hold water. Companies are motivated by profit, a fanfiction work, by a female author is the most successful breakout example of fanfiction, so doesn't really hold water.

B) its just as derivative as everything else, unless you also hate it when theaters put on retellings of shakespeare plays

If the retellings were as bad as many works of fanfiction were, I would hate that. Many of them are quite bad, and I do dislike that. When they're good I thoroughly enjoy them. I suspect that if I read more fanfiction, enough to find the good stuff, I would feel similarly about taht.

C) you do know its considered acceptable because its a women dominated field? like thats the reason.

Country music is absofrickinglutely not a female dominated field and it's an acceptable target. Professional Wrestling is absofrickinglutely not a female dominated field and it's an acceptable target. Cheesy action cartoons are also not a female dominated field and they're considered acceptable targets.

Its important to look at reasons why media is considered an acceptable target because they often betray our societies prejudices. country music is an interesting case because its modern implementation differs greatly from its historical roots. country music was the music of poor people (it grew out of folk and blues in appalachia). I'll leave it to you to figure out why rap music is almost always included with country when people talk about music they dont like.

Country music still is the music of the working class. Most working class folks I know listen to country, and I'll wager I know more of them than most people here. Although some of that is pretty regional.

All of the criticism laid before fanfiction is valid criticism. Its true of the format, but its certainly not unique to fanfiction or even writing in general. We give other media a pass where we fail fanfiction because of the cultural association behind its historical and modern day usage.

heres someone who says this better than me

I think that the reason that we're more quick to attack fanfiction is likely because it's a field that's focused on by teenagers. Because it produces more volume of bad works, and because it's new. New fields attract more and worse criticism. Also of note, if TV Tropes isn't a source Bustle is triply not a source.

[The Extinguisher]

I don't think that "romance fiction" is always seen as bad literature depending on who you're talking to. Poetry is a good example at least in the modern of a genre that is fairly respected and largely authored by women. Diary/confessional writing is largely authored by women, and is often VERY highly respected in literary circles. Slice-of-life works are often (more often I would wager) written by women, and are often fairly well respected, although there is some overlap with the aforementioned diary/confessional type works.

I really dont have time to go over the rest of your post but I do want to address this here cause I think this keys in on a fundamental issue. The fact that you dont think there is significant bias against romance fiction as literary works is hugely telling. Romance is often seen as trashy, as a joke. We laugh at the shirtless men on the cover and at the "lonely, middle aged women" who read them. Romance novels are seen as the lowest of the low of literary works.
I'm also talking about public perception, since that is what this whole discussion is about. And I don't see much positive public perception for slice of life and diary works. (in fact, to take an example from another medium with a lot of slice of life stories written by women, anime, they are widely hated in western anime communities).

And finally, I would challenge you assertions that poetry is primarily authored by women. According Vida, Poetry (the magazine) hasn't had a majority women authors since they started tracking, only getting close but under parity. I dont know enough about the other publications to look at how they compare genre wise but I think its safe to assume that Poetry only publishes poetry. In addition, some quick research of my own from best poet lists from the first page at google had an average of 17% women poets, and that would have been 12% if it wasn't for a top ten that was specificly contemporary poets and aiming to be diverse.
In addition, ranker.com's best poet ranking which is entirely user generated has the first women show up at #12 (emily dickenson) and doesn't have another until #58 (sappho).
Poetry is very much a male dominated field, at least that's its public perception which is why its not derided like fanfiction.
(and it's also a great counter example to "a lot of fanfiction is bad". There's a lot of very bad poetry posted on the internet, and people dont use those bad poems to write off the whole art form)

Edit: I feel the need to clarify that I wasnt using bustle as a source, but as an editorial to elaborate my point. I have no idea what the site is, but I saw the article and thought it was a good read.

[AMFV]

I really dont have time to go over the rest of your post but I do want to address this here cause I think this keys in on a fundamental issue. The fact that you dont think there is significant bias against romance fiction as literary works is hugely telling. Romance is often seen as trashy, as a joke. We laugh at the shirtless men on the cover and at the "lonely, middle aged women" who read them. Romance novels are seen as the lowest of the low of literary works.

Well, it's worth noting that you're referring to bodice rippers. I'm referring to Jane Austin and Emily Bronte. I think you could probably identify the difference in the way that those are perceived in literary circles. Romance is not only bodice ripper harlequin novels, you should be aware of that, if you're trying to remove your own biases about works of fiction.

I'm also talking about public perception, since that is what this whole discussion is about. And I don't see much positive public perception for slice of life and diary works. (in fact, to take an example from another medium with a lot of slice of life stories written by women, anime, they are widely hated in western anime communities).

Again, I wasn't referring to slice of life stories from Anime, that's a different genre, and I'm unfamiliar with it. I was referring to works like Anne of Green Gables, written by a woman. Little House on the Prairie. And there are modern equivalent works to that. But there is certainly literary recognition for those works.

And finally, I would challenge you assertions that poetry is primarily authored by women. According Vida, Poetry (the magazine) hasn't had a majority women authors since they started tracking, only getting close but under parity. I dont know enough about the other publications to look at how they compare genre wise but I think its safe to assume that Poetry only publishes poetry. In addition, some quick research of my own from best poet lists from the first page at google had an average of 17% women poets, and that would have been 12% if it wasn't for a top ten that was specificly contemporary poets and aiming to be diverse.
In addition, ranker.com's best poet ranking which is entirely user generated has the first women show up at #12 (emily dickenson) and doesn't have another until #58 (sappho).
Poetry is very much a male dominated field, at least that's its public perception which is why its not derided like fanfiction.
(and it's also a great counter example to "a lot of fanfiction is bad". There's a lot of very bad poetry posted on the internet, and people dont use those bad poems to write off the whole art form)

I'll admit that my poetry statement came more from the poets I had met personally and attended readings by, who were by and large women. Now it's also worth noting that "Best Poetry Lists" include a lot of older poetry which was primarily written by men. Also I'm not sure that you can use magazine publications as a clear guide here, since that's a different area for publication.

Edit: I feel the need to clarify that I wasnt using bustle as a source, but as an editorial to elaborate my point. I have no idea what the site is, but I saw the article and thought it was a good read.

Fair enough, but I'll note you attacked the weakest and least important of my points. You left alone the ones expecting you to actually back up what you are saying with any kind of factual evidence and proceeded to not do any of that. You have to have evidence if you're making a sweeping statement as you did.

You made the claim that it's female authorship that makes fanfiction an acceptable target. I have not seen any evidence that's the case. Not any. Not one person I've heard complaining about fanfiction (and this is my own experience) referenced the author being female as a problem. And again the most successful work inspired by fanfiction was penned by a female author. That pretty heavily undoes your hypothesis or at least suggests a complexity you seem to be unwilling to allow.

[solidork]

I actually have seen men complain at length about women writing fan fiction, if 'personal ancedote' is permissible evidence. It's discourse of the lowest form and I won't repeat it here, but it is a thing. No one is going to prove anything with data here, it just isn't there. The closest thing I've seen to statistical data about fandom is a survey related to users of A03. 10,000 responders and fewer than 500 of them identified as male.(I was one of them) That pretty much matches my experiences with fandom on Tumblr.

Also, people don't just announce their biases. They aren't even always aware of them, and if they are will often go to considerable lengths to hide them, even from themselves.

Things being classified as lesser because women like them is not a ridiculous thesis, and it is a popular one for explaining the dislike for fan fiction. It is definitely a thing that happened and is still happening.

[A.A.King]

I can't believe it is actually true... take any topic you want and someone will say the problem is sexism... just wow

Is it really that hard to understand that the ratio of bad-to-good in the movie industry is not comparable to the ratio of bad-to-good fan fictions? Especially when you take into consideration the fact that when people think of 'movies' they only think of Hollywood-level of production values so all the proper bad movies (like the weird 'artsy' independent student 'movies' are not taken into consideration). You just can't take compare an industry of high-budget projects with something anyone can do without any oversight.

The problem with the 'authors' of fan fiction (a term they really haven't earned but oh well) isn't their gender, it's their age. It's a bunch of kids doing something badly (i.e. writing) and then patting themselves on the back for it. People generally don't like things which are almost primarily done by children (unless it goes mainstream I suppose). Worse though is the fact that rather than ruining their own characters they decide ruin someone else's, ones you might like. You're allowed to break your own toys, you just can't break mine. People may not hate 'all movies' but there are a lot of people (at least, here on the internet it seems like there are lot of them) who hate those new Transformer movies (though at this point calling the franchise 'new' seems to be stretching it) or that new TMNT movie because, as they put it "They are ruining our childhood". They liked something, someone else made his (wow, it's a man this time and it is still hated, unbelievable right?!) version of it which they thought was bad so they hate it (and the man). So here you have, a pass time done mainly by kids trying to do a grown-up skill badly and by doing so they mess with something you like? Is it really, really, that hard to understand why there might be hate or can you only ever see 'it's mainly done by woman' as their main motivator?

[Lacuna Caster]

No, it really is about fandom. You must be a fan of something, feel empathy or fascination for it, to feel the need to contribute to it (and other fans) in the first place.

So I wouldn't call it "crowd-sourcing", as it´s primarily based on how the fan-author interacts with the source material, the pride of sharing and potential adoration by other fans.

Again, is it so difficult to describe the general greek populace as being 'fans' of homer or greek mythology in general? I mean, does fanfiction cease to be fanfiction when acceptance of the topic (e.g, Game of Thrones,) approaches demographic saturation? I mean, okay, you can define it as a minority or subculture concern, but it just raises the question of 'why does this distinction matter'? Is there something about writing fanfic for Home And Away or American Idol that will make it less bad, critically speaking?

Going back to the capes, I'm pretty sure a lot of comic authors are ascended fanboys these days.


Anyhoo, on the topic of sexism- it certainly wouldn't surprise me if the bulk of fanfic authors were women, and although I don't think sexism per se is the primary motive for hating fanfic, I do think it gets a little more flack and stigma than it deserves. Wrestling and B-movies are all relatively high-budget affairs that could certainly afford to hire decent script-writers if they had the interest in doing so. It is reasonable to have somewhat relaxed standards when it comes to an angsty teenager working alone for their own satisfaction and maybe some in-group kudos- the Snyders and Bruckheimers of the world have no excuse.

[Florian]

Again, is it so difficult to describe the general greek populace as being 'fans' of homer or greek mythology in general?

Yes, because that´s based on a purely cultural background that is commonly understood. You don´t have to be an adherent of a religion to use common and readily understood tropes to ease up communication. Take Constantine as an example. Unlike Hellblazer, it´s easier to use christian symbology to add context without having to explain it because it´s mostly common knowledge for your target audience - unlike explaining how magic ought to function in a nutshell.
That´s one of the reasons why correct use of cultural archetypes can be a very powerful thing.

As for the matter of sexism. I actually don´t know why someone would deride "penny dreadfuls", "space opera" or "romances", expect being in denial of reality. That´s good business, caters to and holds on to the target audience in a matter other industries can only dream about.
But then we have things like 50 Shades .... Ok, I must admit that I´m a bit biased, mainly because I have friends in the BDSM scene and a bit more than second-hand knowledge myself, so I take a very critical view on some topics that clearly show hormones, but lack of experience.

[Vinyadan]

Again, is it so difficult to describe the general greek populace as being 'fans' of homer or greek mythology in general? I mean, does fanfiction cease to be fanfiction when acceptance of the topic (e.g, Game of Thrones,) approaches demographic saturation? I mean, okay, you can define it as a minority or subculture concern, but it just raises the question of 'why does this distinction matter'? Is there something about writing fanfic for Home And Away or American Idol that will make it less bad, critically speaking?

I was answering to someone saying that, in a certain sense, the plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles were fanfiction. So what I was saying had nothing to do with the matter of quality, but with the matter of whether or not they are fanficiton. I actually was quite confused when you quoted me and said that the most important fact was related to quality of crowd-sourced narratives.

Now, if you want to start saying that, after all, the States are just very large counties, and the Federation is the largest county of them all, sure, you can do that. Just don't expect that many will follow and start calling the USA the County. This is in answer to the idea of Greek culture being describable as a subculture of a (from my POV, inexistent) Mediterranean or European culture of the time.

Another problem I see is that fanfiction is unpaid. To become commercial works, these stories have to be edited in such a way, as to lose their character of fanfiction and turn into something else (50 Shades being the most important example). Instead, Greek poetry was paid for. The aedoi sung at a court. The authors of Olympic poetry (as well as those who composed for the winners of other sport events) were paid for their work. The same goes for religious hymns. Behind Attic tragedy we see a state-sanctioned funding system, in which the richest citizens had the honour of paying a tax called choregia to pay for the choir.

Mythology was a religious deal. There is a strange school of thought that says that the ancients did not believe in their own religion, but we actually have many displays of this faith, some of them quite costly. There is a certain difference between religious faith and being a fan. The fact that myth wasn't separate from history adds one more layer that seems to me different from fanfiction, because the work of the poets had a great value as testimony of the role of families and cities. This is something you won't find in fanfiction.

Then we have the fact that fanfiction as a genre has its own set of tropes, which you won't coherently find in ancient literature. Most importantly, ancient Greece had no "canon". There wasn't a separate priestly class in Greece, nor a holy book. Priesthood was mostly something that was taken up by State magistrates to keep the peace with the gods, or occasionally was hereditary in a family which, however, otherwise lived its life as any other. Which leads to the question: even assuming that ancient mythology literature could be classified as fanfiction (which I don't think), where does the mythology end and the fanfiction begin? Because mythology isn't something that exists on its own, outside of texts, and Homer and Hesiod not only weren't "canon", since there was no canon, but also weren't writing (or composing) stuff they had exclusively made up.

So I don't think that the Greeks were "fans" of their myths, even though they enjoyed them greatly. One reason is that "fan" tends to be synonymous with "supporter", and it's hard to be a supporter for Achilles, when he's been dead since 1100 BC and you live in 500 BC. Which is why it turns into hero cult, which was an important part of Greek religion, with sacrifices, processions, prayers and all. They probably were fans of great sportsmen. But, even then, the tall tales about Milo of Croton have more to do with legend building than with fanfiction writing.

Since I don't know what Home And Away or American Idol are, I can't answer the last question.

[Lacuna Caster]

I was answering to someone saying that, in a certain sense, the plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles were fanfiction. So what I was saying had nothing to do with the matter of quality, but with the matter of whether or not they are fanfiction...

I don't mean to cut you off, and I'm sure that from a scholarly perspective one could draw valid distinctions between then and now. But I don't see that fanfic writers are doing anything psychologically deviant here, aside from being the negative intersection on a venn diagram of originality, professionalism and privacy that renders them a soft target.

The basic question here is, "why is fanfiction hated"? A lot of posters seem to be answering, "because it is mostly of poor quality". The reasonable counter is this owes to the lack of critical oversight or quality control, but you can say this for a vast range of other personal hobbies, such as gardening or painting or little league sports, and amateur efforts are generally not detested. Another argument is that "fanfiction is derivative and shows disrespect for authorial intent", but huge chunks of celebrated franchises and mythologies have been derived from earlier narratives and distorted to the point where earlier meaning is barely visible. Maybe that's a good thing and maybe it isn't, but we should at least be consistent about detesting it.

.

[GolemsVoice]

The basic question here is, "why is fanfiction hated"? A lot of posters seem to be answering, "because it is mostly of poor quality". The reasonable counter is this owes to the lack of critical oversight or quality control, but you can say this for a vast range of other personal hobbies, such as gardening or painting or little league sports, and amateur efforts are generally not detested. Another argument is that "fanfiction is derivative and shows disrespect for authorial intent", but huge chunks of celebrated franchises and mythologies have been derived from earlier narratives and distorted to the point where earlier meaning is barely visible. Maybe that's a good thing and maybe it isn't, but we should at least be consistent about detesting it.

.

The "problem" with most hobbies is that they aren't distributed on the internet. If somebody has an ugly garden because they are a poor gardener, their neighbours might scoff, but even a few hundred meters further, nobody will ever notice. A bad painter or artist will likely at best annoy their friends. Most little league games at least have some trainer and maybe even a, well, league, where actual efforts are measured in a competitive environment. I think the problem with fanfiction is intense passion + lack of oversight + lack of actual skills + internet.

[Bohandas]

But then we have things like 50 Shades .... Ok, I must admit that I´m a bit biased, mainly because I have friends in the BDSM scene and a bit more than second-hand knowledge myself, so I take a very critical view on some topics that clearly show hormones, but lack of experience.

Have any of them actually read De Sade or Masoch?

[goto124]

Most little league games at least have some trainer and maybe even a, well, league, where actual efforts are measured in a competitive environment.

I misread that as League of Legends, and nearly went on a tangent on how LoL players get plenty of hate for bad play.

[jayem]

Quote Originally Posted by Razade View Post
Even if I hated all movies and all fan fiction they're not comprable mediums. One is a medium with a ton of people working on it (here talking about studio generated films) and the other is written by people in their loft apartments late at night. Not liking a movie because of bad writing isn't the same as not liking a fan fiction story for bad writing.
...
Yes. The bad movie is a much more staggering waste of finite resources.

I'd agree. That did seem a bit backward to what I would do (assuming I read it correctly).

I mean as a predictor of quality, it seems a perfectly reasonable way of going about it. It isn't surprising that a top 10% fan-fiction is worse in quality than a bottom 10% actually completed movie. Merely by being completed it's passed a test that the fan-fiction on is only now going through*.

But if I saw the two works blind, rated both as being equal quality (i.e. in bad writing) then I'd give the fan-fiction points on the basis it can be made better, whereas the movie has already been 'polished' and is still what it is.

*which is of course another reason fan-fiction is often worse. When it is good, it gets repackaged with additional editing and counted as a story.

[Mikemical]

I think the problem with fanfiction is intense passion + lack of oversight + lack of actual skills + internet.

Not to mention the large amount of self-inserts and authors who will bend the entire universe backwards to try to make people sympathize with them. Plus the special snowflakes that go "IT'S MY STYLE!1!11!" whenevery anyone tries giving them constructive criticism.

[Lord Joeltion]

The real issue isn't that "people tend to hate amateur efforts". Given a sufficiently big enough fandom (which doesn't really need to be that big nowadays, thanks to internet), you get the natural emergence of an opposite force, a.k.a: a hatedom.

That is natural not only for fanfictions, but it occurs on every level of human activity. Problem is, fanfiction already needs a an established fandom which it necessarily wants to attach to (otherwise, it wouldn't be published). But because of the dynamics of how fanfiction sites work, they attract only a fandom, not its correspondent hatedom (at least that isn't a general case); therefore the readers of a fanfiction are mostly fans of the Original Work and the Fanfic Hatedom is born from those. So a fanfic gets now two Hatedoms, one from the original series, and one from the fans themselves. Double hatedom, double criticism.

Now, hatedom and fandom psychology share a peculiar trait: they aren't generally the most rational of peoples. So their criticism tends to be harsher, more disrespectful and irrational than regular criticism. And also, because fanfictions are published almost exclusively for niche people; those criticism get magnified yet again, because the criticism isn't coming from general acceptance, but from people who already share some traits and prejudices among themselves (being fans of the same thing, basically).

So yes, it's only natural that haters of fanfics become irrational and some may show their sexist (or any other prejudice) faces. But summarizing the hate to fanfics in general to a single form of prejudice and/or trying to shield fanfiction from criticism (either fair or biased) on the basis of a simple statistical fact, is somewhat naive and an oversimplification of the issue IMHO. Many human behaviours are discredited solely for sexist reasons. But fanfiction writing isn't one of them.

[AvatarVecna]

I generally enjoy fanfiction, having been reading it for over a decade and writing it for nearly that long, but with how much I've read, a lot of common issues have become incredibly obvious. Here's a really good satirical video that does a really good job of showing off all the cringy, poorly-made aspects that plague many of these stories.

[Glorthindel]

Another argument is that "fanfiction is derivative and shows disrespect for authorial intent", but huge chunks of celebrated franchises and mythologies have been derived from earlier narratives and distorted to the point where earlier meaning is barely visible. Maybe that's a good thing and maybe it isn't, but we should at least be consistent about detesting it.

In my defence, there is nothing I detest more than a current singer doing a cover of a classic song, or a reboot or remake of a classic movie. I am just about tolerant of a thoughtfully done book-to-movie or stage-to-movie adaption, but I will invariably seek out the original as a point of principle. So although my own reason for detesting fanfiction is the plagiarisation side of it, I am generally consistant in applying that distaste to other mediums that practice it.

I will even go so far as to say that I refuse to read the Brandon Sanderson Wheel of Time books - I thoroughly enjoy Sandersons own works (the Mistborn series is brilliant), but have no interest on seeing his take on Robert Jordan's work (even if he was working off Jordans roadmap, I am still utterly uninterested). I extend this same attitude to Christopher Tolkien and Brian Herbert - I don't care how many pages of notes or half-written books they keep finding, I am not interested in their words.