It’s Lit! is back and they have picked an easy subject to discuss: how Fan-Fic is actually awesome.
I wouldn’t really say I got my start writing fan fiction. Sure, I wrote some stories loosely based upon MacGyver and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. But I’d say they were more homages to… Okay, they were fan-fic. Who am I kidding?
That paragraph essentially sums up what I used to think of fan-fic. I appreciated it, recognised it as a legitimate creative outlet, that it could be great fun to write, and that authors should be proud to have people passionate enough about the work that they are being inspired to write their own stuff. But at the same time, I saw it as what beginners did. It was really just for the writers, not readers. That it wasn’t “legit” writing.
It wasn’t worthy!
When Anne Rice was issuing cease and desist letters to her biggest fans, I thought she was a fool. What sort of idiot honestly thinks these fans are somehow ruining her characters and books?
But underlying this argument was the idea that none of those fan-fic stories was any good. Rice’s characters were safe from harm because no hack would be taken seriously compared to the internationally bestselling author. Those stories weren’t even available in real books.*
Then I had somewhat of an epiphany. An author friend made the argument against fan-fic from the premise of copyright and how fan-fic was low quality. They made a sizeable amount of their income from tie-in novels, the books that are licensed to a movie or TV show IP, and written to satiate fans who can’t get enough of the adventures. So you could see their points as defending their meal ticket. But after they made that argument, a professor of writing, who was a published author and also wrote tie-ins, pointed out how they also wrote fan-fic and how this wasn’t about copyright. This was about fans expressing themselves.
It is easy to say that copyright is being breached, despite the clear acknowledgement by everyone involved that fan-fic isn’t canon and isn’t even “sold” to people. No one picks up a Chewie and Yoda slashfic and thinks, “Can’t wait to see this will be in the prequel trilogy movies.” It is also easy to say that the people writing it are all hacks. Except we not only know that isn’t true (e.g. the above writing professor and award-winning authors mentioned in the video). And if these fans are working hard at writing lots of fan-fic, they are bound to become good at it.
So now I stand back and say: Fan-fic is legit.
I mean, where else will I read a steamy sex scene with cries of linguistically impaired pleasure and Wookie growls?
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For years writers of fan fiction were shamed, the butt of jokes, and even subject to copyright litigation. However, in the past few years, with the fan fiction writers of today becoming the published mainstream authors of today the past time is a celebrated benchmark of one’s climb to publication.
In the season two premiere of It’s Lit, we explore what happened and how fan fiction writers were able to come out of the proverbial closet of shame.
Hosted by Lindsay Ellis and Princess Weekes, It’s Lit! is a show about our favorite books, genres and why we love to read. It’s Lit has been made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the human endeavor.
* It was the 90s. If it wasn’t in print at your local bookstore, it didn’t exist. It certainly wasn’t going to overturn the canon.
Tyson Adams 