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Last edited by yblees on Tue Oct 21, 2008 4:10 pm; edited 1 time in total

Nanook wrote:

As a published writer, admittedly not of fiction, I find the very nature of fanfiction to be abhorrent in the extreme. You can't create an emotional attachment yourself, so you go about rearranging characters as you see fit? It's a bad way for a thirteen year old girl to masturbate, and a good way for a mediocre writer to get skyrocketed to instant fame.

Not that I'm referencing this writer; I've never read her work.
It's just a general observation.

I'm sorry, but this just sounds like sour grapes to me. Fan fic is just one more fan activity, like making wallpapers, doujinshi (fan-fic in graphic form), blogs and shrines, etc.
So what if they get instant fame - it's all part of of the interaction within an active, healthy fan community. And, gods knows people, young and old need to be interacting with one another more these days.

With any popular series, the amount of information/art/etc. produced by fans will vastly, vastly outweigh "original content" produced by the actual author. I think it was William Gibson who wrote this in "Idoru".

If you don't like it, Don't Look!!

For the record: I agree most fan-fic is utter garbage, and I don't generally read it myself (because I haven't been able to look at FMA the same way since encountering one particular FMA doujinshi we shall not mention here...).
But I definitely support the right of others to make and read fanfic.

Anime World Order wrote:

As I mentioned in my response to last week's column, the problem at hand is that there's a disconnect between what should happen (it is exactly as you say; nothing should happen at all and there should be exactly zero impact) and what actually does happen.

No, no, no. I said it should have zero impact on your enjoyment of the text, not the text itself. Quite frankly, I think all the hand-wringing about shounen being tainted by appealing to women is laughable. Face it, the readers of Shounen JUMP have made no real effort to reclaim their manly, head exploding days of yore from the pretty, female-appealing neo-shounen movement. As such, it deserves to be regulated to the pages of seinen magazines, for older readers that just can't quite let the idea of "violence first, everything else last" go.

If you destroy your work trying to appeal to the fanbase, then you have no one but yourself to blame. Rather like fangirls don't like the idea of being pandered to too much, fans will reject a work that flits about trying too hard to cover all its bases on the basis of quality. That doesn't mean they won't still derive enjoyment from it--see: Code Geass--but I don't think many will try to debate its merits on a quality basis.

In short: there is nothing wrong with pandering, within reason.

In a 'finished' fictional series, one can denote a particular character sufficiently by referring to the sum of the actions they do and lines they speak. Combining everything that character does along with their appearance and composition will for all intents and purposes form their haecceity.

Any attempt to denote a character from a series by making reference to that which was not true of them in such a canon would by the above hypothesis be impossible: The name of the character in the anime may be the same word as that in the fanfic, but the meaning of the word (viz. the bearer of the name) would be different in each work. "The character dies in the anime but lives in the fanfic" is an illogical sentence. Two objects exist in such a case, each one being predicated one truth (something which is applicable to them) and one falsity (something which only occurs in a realm in which they don't exist).
I thus believe that a fanfic does and indeed can only form its own world and own characters.

These points may cause problems for me when applied to official sequels or remakes, but I would consider it uncontroversial to state that no claim of officiality can be made by fan fiction.
I've read a couple of them, but only as means of reading into one interpretation of the state of affairs of the official anime at the time before the fanfic's author 'takes over'. I generally stop reading once the author begins to take creative liberties, unless such liberties are of a certain *ahem* type...

Anime World Order wrote:

CCSYueh wrote:

There's also the fact some of these are hinted at so blatantly, it's not even funny. What was that 3 pages of a naked Matsumoto in Orihime's face in a recent Viz release of Bleach (was it 23?) A last page shot of Kenpachi & Mayuri. Aren't these just planting the seeds?

While I've never read or seen any of Bleach, the scenario you've described sounds like a fine example of neo-shonen pandering at its most obvious.

I don't even remember the Kenpachi & Mayuri one. As for Orihime and Mastumoto, while I'm a cardcarrying yuri fanboy and the scene in question was certainly fanservice, its a big stretch to justify Orihime x Matsumoto with that scene, particularly since there has been nothing else in the series to support it.

Quote:

The implication of this statement is that of all the Gundam Wing fan fiction out there that Natalie Baan--a self-professed huge fan fiction enthusiast--read, none of them placed any significant focus on the political aspect of the series, which happens to be its fundamental narrative element! That entire fan fiction communities will handily and gladly jettison wholesale entire aspects of a series en masse, no matter how essential they may be, begs the question: "do they even actually WANT the show itself?" If so many are THAT willing to collectively change/ignore the actual storyline and characterizations present within a given series in order to write "they're all gay!" wouldn't they be equally (if not BETTER) served by simply being handed some drawings of a bunch of characters in various outfits and poses plus some short biographies/vital stats? Perhaps include a drama CD if voice acting is important to the equation? Would this not accomplish the same task for fan fiction authors as the multiple anime for say, Weiss Kreuz?

Gundam Wing was the only series I ever got into fanfiction for (reading, not writing). I read a good deal of it. There was definitely a lot of slash stories, but I never had much difficulty finding stories that focused on non-slash pairings and I found a good number of ones, sometimes lengthy series, that were much more in tune with what the series was actually like. Some may have had a bit more of the romance aspect than the actual series did, but there were a number of stories and lengthy series that had a heavy focus on the fighting and politics.

My personal favorite was a story that looked at what would happen to the characters after Endless Waltz if the world government (whatever it was called, I forget) started holding people accountable for war crimes. Of course, basically all of the main cast were guilty of committing some over the course of the series. It was a rather grim story, with several characters being sentenced to execution or committing suicide.

Kimiko_0 wrote:

Well, Shakespeare is overrated anyway. He's only as popular as he is because there are few English language writers/manuscripts from that age, and because every English-speaking country insists on putting his works in their school curricula. Having a different native language (Dutch), I find it rather strange to accord just one writer (and a playwright at that) such authority and influence.

Wow, there are so many things I want to say about your argument, I'm not sure where to begin. Shakespeare is so highly revered because he actually was one of the English language's best writers. It is completely untrue that he is "only popular because his manuscripts survived." The only reason his plays survived was because they had been plagiarized. In those days there were no copyright laws protecting the rights of individual creators, particularly playwrights. Shakespeare only ever published his sonnets, he never published his plays (because his theatre company would have been in danger from its competitors if they got their hands on his scripts). So, I have to wonder how you think his plays survived all these years? It's because the people of his era saw his work for what it was, brilliant, and went to his plays and copied down the scripts. They stole them. Would people have gone through that kind of trouble for an "overrated" playwright? And if plagiarism was rampant back then, where are all the other plagiarized play manuscripts from that time period? Couldn't it be that Shakespeare was simply that great and his work survived because it was regarded as that great for the last four hundred years and was preserved over other works?

I also object to the notion that he is the only English literary figure of note. Perhaps "of his era," but how many figures of note are there from any era of any particular culture? There are a host of English literary figures that if you have studied English literature, you will have heard of and read: Milton, Yeats, Byron, Mary Shelly, Emily Dickenson, Edgar Allen Poe, TS Elliot, geez, even Robert Frost or Lewis Caroll, and I am sure a dozen or two more that I am completely forgetting about.

Maybe you don't like his work, and that's completely fine to have an opinion, but I think the argument that he "isn't that great," when there is an overwhelming history of evidence in support of his renown, is based on that opinion and not on a fact. I don't particularly care for Fumi Yoshinaga's mangas. I recognize them as popular and I see that she is popular because she is good at storytelling, but I simply don't like her work. That doesn't mean she is "overrated," it means I have a minority opinion of her body of work.

So much of modern, particularly English, popular culture is derived from Shakespeare's body of work (if you really start peeling back the layers it is everywhere). Even if you don't like his plays, you have to recognize the very real impact they have had and continue to have on society. They have had that impact for a reason, not just because a bunch of English professors are pushing the giant texbooks into their students' laps.

Anyway, I'm sorry to go so far off-topic. I'll try to focus on fan fiction related arguments from now on.

yblees wrote:

So what if they get instant fame - it's all part of of the interaction within an active, healthy fan community. And, gods knows people, young and old need to be interacting with one another more these days.

There is no such thing as a 'famous' fanfiction writer. Claiming that someone popular inside a relatively small niche fanbase that exists entirely inside insular communities on the internet is 'famous' is totally misleading.

Zac wrote:

There is no such thing as a 'famous' fanfiction writer. Claiming that someone popular inside a relatively small niche fanbase that exists entirely inside insular communities on the internet is 'famous' is totally misleading.

I understand your argument, but I have to disagree because "fame" does not need only be acknowledged on a societal scale. We talk about "famous people" as people everyone knows about, but it is still culturally relative. Should people in some third world nation on the other side of the planet really be expected to know who Abraham Lincoln was? I would argue that "fame" is relative to the group within which it resides. It may very well be "misleading" to suggest that a fan fiction writer is "famous" based on a larger scale (and I acknowledge that fan fiction is a niche within a niche), but within the fan fiction community, particularly within a particular fan fiction fandom, an individual is very much capable of reaching "famed" status (my desktop dictionary simply defines "fame" as "great reputation and recognition," btw). However, the original comment this was spurred from implied that fan fiction could make someone "famous" beyond the boundaries of fandom, and I agree, that is ludicrous.

Cait wrote:

Should people in some third world nation on the other side of the planet really be expected to know who Abraham Lincoln was?

Given that I used to know how to transliterate "Lincoln" into Chinese, I'd say YES. Honest Abe isn't exactly a famous in America only type. Not as famous Mickey Mouse, but who is?

Zac wrote:

yblees wrote:

So what if they get instant fame - it's all part of of the interaction within an active, healthy fan community. And, gods knows people, young and old need to be interacting with one another more these days.

There is no such thing as a 'famous' fanfiction writer. Claiming that someone popular inside a relatively small niche fanbase that exists entirely inside insular communities on the internet is 'famous' is totally misleading.

Truly "famous" in the global sense, no.
Famous in their niche, famous among the populous of their website, famous in terms of notoriety. Think micro, not macro.

Anime World Order wrote:

Then again, I must re-ask: why does the supermajority of fan fiction writers want to write about every character being gay or otherwise engaged in some sort of romantic and/or sexual pursuit? Is it really as simple as "because the supermajority of fanfic authors are interested in this sort of thing because they're teenage girls...only it's also true when they're in their 20s-30s...and especially in their 30s-40s and up"? Because I must say that if I was a card-carrying misogynist--AND I AM, WOOP WOOP WOOP--that sounds like exactly the answer I would provide.

I think it's a culture thing. This is all pure speculation with nothing to back it up, but hey, where would we be without thinking outloud, eh?

Men have a lot of places (speaking from an American viewpoint) to express their sexuality in socially acceptable forms. Pornography, internet sites, toys, drugs, strip clubs, prostitution, etc. all very much pander to men. If we think homosexual appeal to heterosexual peoples as men usually preferring lesbians and women usually preferring gay men, and then we think about which form of homosexuality is more available to their respective counterparts...of course, besides more sex being available to men, this may also be compounded further by misogyny. Women are supposed to serve men, and if that means kissing another women in front of them to please them, then hey! All for it! Men, on the other hand, aren't "required" to sexually stimulate women, so men may feel less pressure to perform experimental acts with other men to excite women.

Add to all of this that women are much more about relationships, and therefore would prefer a medium that emphasizes or displays emotional involvement. Men don't require as much emotional involvement, so things like movies and pictures are satisfying.

So...you could think of sex literature, and certain fanfiction as its offspring, as being populated more by women than by men because men are getting their needs met in other places.

As for why the majority is slash, you can blame it on the fact that in a lot of the shows where slash is found, the majority of characters with ANY personality or development are male. Or you can argue that, as above, heterosexual literature is pretty much out there for women (ugh...dime store novels), but gay literature for women isn't around or...it's harder to find (I could tell you were to find books with hetero porn but not homo, and I don't even read the stuff). And like I said above, women aren't finding homosexuals (erm, as in actors or some sort of sexual entertainment) willing to perform for them as easily as men are...

All speculation. Argue as you wish.

musouka wrote:

Anime World Order wrote:

As I mentioned in my response to last week's column, the problem at hand is that there's a disconnect between what should happen (it is exactly as you say; nothing should happen at all and there should be exactly zero impact) and what actually does happen.

No, no, no. I said it should have zero impact on your enjoyment of the text, not the text itself. Quite frankly, I think all the hand-wringing about shounen being tainted by appealing to women is laughable...

So wait? Was Anime World Order trying to blame the rabid fanbase for "neo-shounen" (I learned a new term today!). I'd like to clear this up before I make a response...

konkonsn wrote:

Men have a lot of places (speaking from an American viewpoint) to express their sexuality in socially acceptable forms. Pornography, internet sites, toys, drugs, strip clubs, prostitution, etc. all very much pander to men.

There's a lot of feminist spin about how it's good to have masturbatory aids for women. Sex toys for men, however, have never seemed particularly socially acceptable, because real men get it on with real women.

Gay men don't seem to have any problem finding "gay for pay" male porn stars, so why aren't they being tapped to do gay porn for women?

The April/May BUST had an m/m story for their One Handed Read. Is OHR porn or erotica?

I used to really enjoy fanfiction, but my enjoyment is litterally dead these days and has been for years. What killed it: well, the bad attitudes of spoiled fanbrat writers that acted like anybody not praising their fics needed to die didn't help things, neither did the writers with ADD that couldn't keep their attention to what they were writing for more than 3 chapters before boredom sets in and they start writing something else, but even the good fics were losing me for two primary reasons.

The first was the excessive attention given to pairings / chrater treatment over plot. I won't claim to be devoid of romantic bones in my body, but after a while, I want something else to be focused on. It can even get to some extreme levels when you consider the nature or expansive universes of the fandom being used. One of the earlist criticisms of fanfiction I read was around the time the Lord of the Rings movies were coming out. To paraphrase: Tolkin must be spinning in his grave at the thought that given the vast detailed world he created, the first and often only things thought of by these writers are Aragorn molesting the hobbits and Legolas and Gimli having gay sex. I blame our sexually obsessed society on this lack of creativity. Character treatment is a similar problem. "You get in the way of my 'true' pairing. You must die." "You were a jerk to my favorite character. You must die". No rhyme or reason. Not necessary to the plot (if there is one). Just a raw rant that the original writer didn't tailor make their story especially for you, and sometimes just leaving the story at how much you hate Naru from Love Hina. Maybe I'm the last person onthe planet that puts plot above all and doesn't care about these things.

The other problem was when authors got too far from the series they were claiming to write about. It wasn't uncommen for me to read a Ranma 1/2 fic with a completely different setting, completely differnt tone, completely different character relationships, completely different behaviours, and completely removing the curses and other trademarks of the series. I often told a writer other than the main character is called "Ranma" how am I supposed to connect this to Ranma 1/2 when it looks like what you're writing is better suited for Fist of the North Star or Dragon Ball Z. The Gundam Boys in high school? Sorry, I wanted to read Gundam Wing, not Saved by the Bell. People say fanfiction is about love of the seires, but can you say you love a series if you have to change 90 - 95 percent of it to write about it?

Fanfiction got more and more about instant gratification on so many different levels. Instantly see the pairing you want. Instantly see the outcome you want. Instantly get praise from others online that wanted the same thing. I finally lost my will after seeing an AMV creator say the 3 minute video took 500 hours to make, and it showed in high quality. I couldn't go back to fanfiction after that. Their efforts just seemed trivial by comparison. This saddens me because I still like the idea of fanfiction. I just think there's more to a good story than sex (of any orientation).

fuuma_monou wrote:

Cait wrote:

Should people in some third world nation on the other side of the planet really be expected to know who Abraham Lincoln was?

Given that I used to know how to transliterate "Lincoln" into Chinese, I'd say YES. Honest Abe isn't exactly a famous in America only type. Not as famous Mickey Mouse, but who is?

Are you suggesting that China is some backwater third-world nation? You know they are a world power, right? And that they have a vested interest in America, considering we are a major trade partner with a considerable debt to them? It wouldn't surprise me in the least if they knew about one of our presidents. My reference was specific to countries whose awareness of America might not be such that they would have heard of Abraham Lincoln. My argument is that no one outside of our culture should be expected to know who he was.

Cait wrote:

fuuma_monou wrote:

Cait wrote:

Should people in some third world nation on the other side of the planet really be expected to know who Abraham Lincoln was?

Given that I used to know how to transliterate "Lincoln" into Chinese, I'd say YES. Honest Abe isn't exactly a famous in America only type. Not as famous Mickey Mouse, but who is?

Are you suggesting that China is some backwater third-world nation?

I'm in the Philippines. Third world by any standard definition, halfway across the globe from the U.S. Neighborhood my school's in has a Lincoln Street. Pretty much all the streets were named for U.S. presidents (Madison, Roosevelt, Grant, etc.), though I suspect this had more to do with having mostly ethnic Chinese residents (the U.S. is "Beautiful Country" in pretty much every Chinese language) than the Philippines being a former U.S. colony.

China being a nominally communist country means it can't be third world. Could use a little work on human rights, though, not to mention safety standards (lead in toys, melamine in milk). Been to Fujian province a couple of times to visit the ancestral home and relatives.

Bamboo wrote:

But I guess my whole shtick is with the for-profit fics, and not at all the true fan fics, written by and for fans.

OT: If you replace "fics" with "web sites", that's exactly how I feel about ANN writing fansub previews!

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