There's an old post linked on metafandom awhile back; Stop Calling Yourselves Criminals! (http://elfwreck.livejournal.com/204820.html?format=light) by elfwreck. It's a good post, with some interesting links. It all converted me as I was reading it, and I still like it for these issues.
You're insulting the writers whom you claim to love!
Actually, there are writers who love it, who feel flattered and honored and who get awfully glowy when they find out people love their worlds enough to play in them.
Nobody can say anything about my characters but me, the original writer!
Are you fucking insane? What do you think English majors do all day? They say shit about characters! They walk into Shakespeare class and say "Hamlet and Ophelia were totally doing it" (direct quote, actually). The relationship between a work of fan fiction and a literary essay is a complicated one, but I do have a working point: you simply cannot tell me that no one but a writer is allowed to interpret the text. That's so patently ridiculous that I'd be speechless if I hadn't heard it so damned often before.
Readers interpret. It's how you engage with the material. You know, in middle school, I was encouraged to read in such a way that could have resulted in fanfic? We were supposed to stop after every chapter of whatever we were reading for our book reports and hypothesize about what could be revealed next.
And - this is stretching it, but - you know what? Writers don't always know everything about their characters. I am constantly surprised by some of my characters. They can be secretive bastards. And some of my characters really fucking hate me, and it's a situation I've heard other authors come up against. Some characters won't tell their writers a damn thing. That doesn't mean they can't speak to their readers.
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There's an old post linked on metafandom awhile back; Stop Calling Yourselves Criminals! (http://elfwreck.livejournal.com/204820.html?format=light) by
You're insulting the writers whom you claim to love!
Actually, there are writers who love it, who feel flattered and honored and who get awfully glowy when they find out people love their worlds enough to play in them.
Nobody can say anything about my characters but me, the original writer!
Are you fucking insane? What do you think English majors do all day? They say shit about characters! They walk into Shakespeare class and say "Hamlet and Ophelia were totally doing it" (direct quote, actually). The relationship between a work of fan fiction and a literary essay is a complicated one, but I do have a working point: you simply cannot tell me that no one but a writer is allowed to interpret the text. That's so patently ridiculous that I'd be speechless if I hadn't heard it so damned often before.
Readers interpret. It's how you engage with the material. You know, in middle school, I was encouraged to read in such a way that could have resulted in fanfic? We were supposed to stop after every chapter of whatever we were reading for our book reports and hypothesize about what could be revealed next.
And - this is stretching it, but - you know what? Writers don't always know everything about their characters. I am constantly surprised by some of my characters. They can be secretive bastards. And some of my characters really fucking hate me, and it's a situation I've heard other authors come up against. Some characters won't tell their writers a damn thing. That doesn't mean they can't speak to their readers.