Fun and games with fanfic

[julesjones]

Interesting debate going on elsewhere about fanfic: quality, moral aspects, legal aspects. It started with the Making Light post about a fanfic author who put her (not very good) fanfic novel up on Amazon, complete with ISBN and all. Very silly thing to do, and lots of people have said so over the last few days, including the Making Light collective. Somewhere in that thread, Teresa posted some excellent comments about where fanfic comes from, which Patrick pulled out into a separate post. Long comments thread naturally ensued, with some very interesting discussion about the pros and cons of fanfic. What's nice about this is that there are people on both (or more) sides of the question discussing it in a sane fashion, which is not as common as one might hope.

Since a number of people have friended me recently, I'll point at my own take on fanfic, an essay I wrote last year after a previous Great Fanfic Uproar. Note that this does not address the issue of the legality of fanfic; I was only considering the question of why people would choose to write it.

On fanfic -- Some answers to the question 'You're such a good writer, why don't you write for money?'