Oh, dear.

[fabrisse]

The whole Diana Gabaldon versus Fanfiction thing is interesting to me.

I've used this line elsewhere, but really, what's Euripides' The Trojan Women? It's a really terrific Iliad fanfiction. He fills in the interstitials and shows the consequences for characters that are minor at best in the original work. For those of you who read or write fanfic, how many of those stories do the same thing?

Plus there's the professional fanfiction... Star Trek, Criminal Minds, The 4400, etc. all have professional writers creating further adventures in a universe someone else created. Marion Zimmer Bradley published a book of stories set in her Arthurian universe that included works by a young Mercedes Lackey, and now Lackey is allowing her publishers to put out books of Valdemar short stories by other writers.

And love or loathe Cassie Cla(i)re, her YA original novels are better than anything Stephenie Meyer ever wrote, and her style is recognizable to anyone who read "The Very Secret Diaries."

On my own front, I'd love to have more and better ideas for original works. I know fanfiction has made me a better writer. It has certainly opened me up to a wider range of subjects. I remember reading what may have been the first ever "Five things" story back in the earliest days of the Smallville fandom. Nearly a decade later, I've finally written a "five things" and it's a tough conceit to play with. Drabbles, which call upon a writer to work with lapidary precision, challenges, themes, style choices, all of these things make fanfiction vibrant and original.

My last point, and I think this is what Gabaldon and some of the other commenters may be viscerally reacting to, most fanfiction fandoms grow up around either television where side stories happen all the time or "imperfect" worlds. There's probably someone, somewhere, who's written War and Peace fanfiction (and yes, there's a thriving Jane Austen community), but in general, really magnificent "for the ages" prose is not going to have thriving fanfiction communities.

Damn, I miss thamiris. She would have posted about this far more wittily than I can.

Comments

[aurora-novarum.livejournal.com]

Did you read bookshop's commentary on the whole mess? (I don't know bookshop outside of being linked to this post btw) She wrote a reactionary post listing a plethora of "commercial" fanfic (and while large, was not an exhaustive list. Where's Shamela? Heh.)

I honestly think Gabaldon got a bad taste in her mouth because her first stated introduction to fanfic was actually plagiarism of one of her stories using Evanovitch characters.

Hell, my first introduction to fanfic had me screaming for the hills, and that was just a badly written Jack/Sam fic with atrocious grammar at GW.

But that doesn't excuse her poorly thought out rant.

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

I did read bookshop after I wrote this. SHAMELA! How could I forget?

There's a great deal of scarily bad fic out there, and that's not even including the bad!fic. But to judge it all without finding out how comprehensive all is was just bad form. Yes, plagiarism is bad and the type of thing that story did is even worse (if that makes sense), but, frankly, I've read professionally published stories and non-fiction with grammar issues, plagiarism, and muddle-headed thinking. I do the same thing with it as I do with bad fanfiction, discard the bad and never read the author again. *G*

[riverfox.livejournal.com]

I think you did just fine. :) I'm not up on who Gabaldon is, but fanfiction is everywhere, in every "fandom". I think it's interesting that some folks don't consider The Trojan Women or Shakespeare in Love fanfiction, probably because the source is over 500 years old and are thus considered legitimate writing sources. It doesn't make them any less "borrowed".

I miss Thamiris too.

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

Yeah. To both.

For heaven's sake, look at the Arthurian accretions. A minor lord with the Roman title of Dux Belloram wins a battle and gets two mentions in different Latin works. A hundred or so years later, Geoffrey of Monmouth includes him and some stories about him and his court in his History of the Kings of Britain. Two hundred years after that, Mallory does his thing and somewhere in there the Mabinogian is written in Welsh. Different stories from different places start being hung on the same courtly universe. Suddenly, the Round Table has knights from all over the known world.

My only real surprise is that Shakespeare never wrote a play about Arthur. *G*

[riverfox.livejournal.com]

LOL Would've been awesome. Mind you, there's probably someone out there who's tried to write one in Shakepeare's style. ;)

[bibliothekara.livejournal.com]

And if I learned one thing one from my several college Shakespeare courses, it's that Shakespeare might be the most critically adored fanfic writer of all time.

"Hamlet" as a "Revenger's Tragedy" AU, set in Denmark. "Titus Andronicus" as the most FRAO bit of violence-porn fic I've ever seen. Or, hell, what are "Henry V" or "Richard III", if not RPF in Iambic Pentameter? :p

(I'm also reminded of those personal copies of "Canterbury Tales" floating around out there, where the copier-owner "fixed" a Tale, took one out, or added new ones. I am the Renaissance reader, and I laugh at your paltry fic disclaimers.)

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, "fixed" versions. I actually own a couple of Bowdler editions of Shakespeare. What I find hilarious is that the man didn't understand double entendres very well, so he left in things that are very dirty because he didn't get the joke (or he thought delicate women wouldn't).

There's so much borrowing and retelling and quirking of original stories throughout literature.

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

Have you ever heard what Lewis Carroll said about Bowdler?

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

No. Tell me. *G*

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

In discussing future projects he planned to work on:

Fourthly, a "Shakespeare" for girls: that is, an edition in which everything, not suitable for the perusal of girls of (say) from 10 to 17, should be omitted. Few children under 10 would be likely to understand or enjoy the greatest of poets: and those, who have passed out of girlhood, may safely be left to read Shakespeare, in any edition, 'expurgated' or not, that they may prefer: but it seems a pity that so many children, in the intermediate stage, should be debarred from a great pleasure for want of an edition suitable to them. Neither Bowdler's, Chambers's, Brandram's, nor Cundell's 'Boudoir' Shakespeare, seems to me to meet the want: they are not sufficiently 'expurgated.' Bowdler's is the most extraordinary of all: looking through it, I am filled with a deep sense of wonder, considering what he has left in, that he should have cut anything out! Besides relentlessly erasing all that is unsuitable on the score of reverence or decency, I should be inclined to omit also all that seems too difficult, or not likely to interest young readers. The resulting book might be slightly fragmentary: but it would be a real treasure to all British maidens who have any taste for poetry.

[(Anonymous)]

At a panel at Arisia 2009 Greer Gilman made the comment that "The Little Mermaid was Titus Andronicus with fish." Interesting summary of that panel (on Fear of Fairy tales) here:

http://skogkatt.livejournal.com/105422.html?format=light

Scruffy-looking bookpusher

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

I love it. *G* The worst part is, I can see it.

[fangirljen.livejournal.com]

I've been following this since yesterday. I think Gabaldon has forgotten that Claire and Jamie appear in a published fanfic: Sara Donati's The Last of the Mohicans sequel, Into the Wilderness.

I also am amused by the fact that Jamie is based on Jamie McCrimmon (http://www.lallybroch.com/LOL/original-jamie.html) from Doctor Who. WTF lady. D:

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I don't think she really gets it, at all. *G*