Writers create. This is the assertion of an author, one who seems quite upset about fanfiction. I’m afraid I don’t quite see eye to eye with him. Her? Wasn’t paying that much attention and can’t find the page again.

Anyway, this individual asks how I’d feel if I was a real writer (fanfics are not creations, so if I write only fanfic, I can’t, he says, call myself a writer), and had created a new story and someone fanficced it, slashed my characters in relationships I found offensive and so on.

I did think about this. Really. And maybe I’m just the wrong person to be asked of this.

I do like to imagine something I’ve written being picked up and used, by TV or movie. And I could imagine that there would be tie-ins, marketing and merchandising. And maybe a TV series or some spin offs. I mean, in the best possible world, of course.

Now, as a reader, I often am disappointed in movie characters of books I’ve read. They don’t always look right, they don’t act right. Maybe I’m the one that’s wrong. Maybe directors, screenwriters and actors take extra special care so that their interpretation of a character matches the author’s original vision precisely. And when they drop scenes there just isn’t room for, it’s always the one’s the author felt less than married to. “It was something my editor wanted, I never saw a need for the scene,” they may say.

Or maybe not. Maybe there’s always going to be someone professionally hacking my characters, scenes, narrative. If I’m paid for the opportunity, I probably won’t be terribly concerned. It may even be in the contract.

Then there’s the audience. My characters will be action figures. Kids will act out scenes from my movie. Of course, they’re going to get bored doing the same thing over and over again. They’ll start improving on it in their play. Lamia’s action figure will fight Darth Vader. Clarisse will marry Barbie. Or eat her. My Starfleet Blackadder officer will serve on the Voyager Bridge playset or maybe he’ll lead GI Joes on a mission. It’s what we used to do, so I haven’t got a problem with that.

My Character’s RPG stats may show up in a magazine so people can introduce Dungeon Skippy to their campaign. I could be parodied on SNL or in MAD Magazine.

The TV show that is inspired by my movie would probably employ a number of different writers over the ten seasons it’s in production. Not all of them will have a perfect handle on my giant SID Agent or his human partner, or the various subplots confusing the people and governments involved.

At conventions I would have to establish carefully that the smart-assed sidekick was not my invention, nor the plucky robot or the dodgy mechanic who becomes a fan favorite. And when I judge the costume contests I can’t downgrade a woman’s efforts just because there were no women on Space Station Arcadia when _I_ envisioned it.

It seems that the height of authoring success leads rather directly to a whole bunch of people just absolutely fucking with your character(s). Why would I treat the fanfic differently? Or, why would slash ‘shipping be too terribly different from everyone else’s take?

Again, though, maybe I’m the wrong person to ask.

Do I create, though? Writers create, it is asserted. But how easy would it be to create something completely original? The basic plots are eternal: Man vs. nature, man vs. man, man vs. public transit, whatever the asserted basic seven, ten or thirty plots are. When you boil down Star Wars and Harry Potter, how original are they? An orphan living with relatives founds out that the world is not as he thought, he has powers and a bearded old man to teach him to use them, new friends and adventures, natural piloting skills, deft hand with the magic system they depend upon, an important heritage… And so on and so forth. No one complains that basic plot devices or character archetypes depend on previously established fictions and are not entirely original creations.

Dante’s Inferno, Milton’s Paradise Lost are both respected efforts building on characters and settings they didn’t ‘create.’ But Inferno, for one, was so successful many Christians I’ve talked to think their impression of Hell’s set up is biblical, not Dante’s in source.

For me, I’d say that any new story is at least a little bit ‘creation.’ Without fanfic, it is unlikely that the agents of NCIS would ever investigate the deaths of Marines serving at Stargate Command. Different networks, different studios, different contracts.

I do dislike some fanfic, such as the hamfisted self-insertion. The Supernatural brother’s long-lost sister; Agent Scully’s new and unstoppable partner; the human Starfleet officer who can program Spock’s computer better than Spock can… But then, a lot of original fiction sucks. I stopped reading Dirk Pitt’s adventures when the masturbation became too obvious to ignore. So, it’s a matter of good writing vs. bad writing, not creation vs. fanficcing.

I guess some of us are just too full of ourselves. I wish I could refind this author’s rant. I want to buy his action figures as a compliment. Then pose his characters in Celtic dance numbers with Lego men and anime bobbleheads and call it fan art..