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fanfic question arising from whiskey priestess' experiment

10:38 / 17.08.01

hello all.

i've been lurking for a while, and though this seems a slightly scary place to make a first post, i've been following the fanfic thing with interest. hope these questions aren't dumb/haven't been answered in the thread/elsewhere, i got rather lost on that thread.

whiskey priestess' idea of posting one of her own stories and inviting people to fanfic it, which i think is great, raised a few questions.

are there many/any cases of writers inviting fanfic, writing with the knowledge that their work will be fanficked (can you use this as a verb?) and explicitly giving permission for this?

what implications does this have any implications for the fanfic-er, and the original 'author' (sorry but i'm a scare quotes person on this I think) does fanfic need the transgressive kick of taking someone's ideas without permission, or is the trangressive power of pulling implications/traces out of prexisting characters enough?

are there authors who invite this messing about in their universe as a part of the process of their writing? what effects do people think the allowing for and inviting of this intereference would have on the original writers processes?

10:57 / 17.08.01

I don't know about authors, but there is an interview with the creator of the Web based game Majestic on Salon.com where he says some of the characters in the game were created expressly for the fans/players to develop back story for.

Incidentally, has anyone here played this game? It seems to dovetail nicely with recurrent topics of conspiracy, paranoia, and the blurring of fact and fiction that come up here.

Blank Faced Avatar

11:54 / 17.08.01

I guess if you're working for some hellish TV company trying to make the next Buffy, then yeah, your dream is that people will be interested enough to slash/fanfic your 'characters'. The Trek franchises are basically created to feed fans; give 'em mistakes to complain endlessly about, & loose ends to tie up. They must have engineered 'new' Trek relationships in a post-slash perspective... people know. They're trying to work it. But trying to predict cult fandom is ( hopefully ) always doomed.

14:16 / 17.08.01

I suppose I should comment on this, given that the kind of writing I do (tabloid wackiness) is pretty explicitly ripped off all the time (see Men in Black, Bat Boy, the Musical).

But I'm pretty consciously writing a parallel text to mass media news, and the whole idea is to play with the boundaries between real life (things that aren't "written") and fiction.

Personally, I get a kick out of it. But it's because I'm trying to build things that aren't mine; any imprint of myself as author is gonna be snuck in sideways (most citations and revisions don't even have my bylines, most of which are fictional anyway). I get paid for filling the paper. Currently, I'm finishing a story on telling the future with thunder. I've invented an expert, and used an actual text from the Dead Sea Scrolls (4Q318, the Brontologion) as a jumping off point for a fictional divination system.

I haven't invested too much of myself in it, though. It's not a narrative (like some of the stories I do) and I can't model the plot on some structure inside my head. And my name won't be on this. Beth Gimmel's will.

So maybe that's the difference -- the name under the title, and the investment of self into the narrative. Making my world visible to others....

Imaginary Mongoose Solutions

16:04 / 17.08.01

Let's see, companies and persons who have given their consent or blessing for fanfic. Well, MARVEL COMICS has given permission to fic any of their output, the game MAJESTIC has inspired lots of company endorsed fic, the GABRIEL KNIGHT, TRIBES, and JAGGED ALLIANCE computer games have all endorsed, approved of, and even promoted the fanficing of their games and game worlds.

I know there are a couple of novelists who endorse fanfic, but I'm blanking on the names right now.

Comics writers Devin Grayson and Jay Faeber were both fic writers before comics writers. I know that there are actually some comics folk who read fanfic, such as Chuck Dixon (who has written feedback on a story to a friend of mine who wrote an AZRAEL fic) and Matt Wagner.

On the other hand there are authors who expressily forbid fanficing of their works, such as Anne Rice.