Good fanfic is not so bad as all that

[The King in Black]

Is game of thrones considered fanfic ?

The tv show? Well ,if season 5 really does have Queen Cersei pole-dancing to 'Fancy' and feature the Dornish performing occult orgies; then yes

[Errant Bard]

Flattered that they appreciate your world enough to want to play with it? It's not like they're damaging your "actual" world by inventing variants, and they're not costing you anything. Plenty of highly-regarded authors put no work into developing a setting at all, they just copy from reality.

Fun fact: GRRM considers that fanfic can damage his world and his property.

[Serious Callers Only]

Topic was inspired by this large persona 3 & 4 fanfic sequel, which i guess outs me as a massive nerd.

Now if only Maya from P2 was there...

[The Marquis de Leech]

Fun fact: GRRM considers that fanfic can damage his world and his property.

Martin is a writer, not a lawyer, and sometimes it shows.

[Errant Bard]

Martin is a writer, not a lawyer, and sometimes it shows.

I guess so, I'm no lawyer myself.

In any case, he is showing how an author can feel about fanfic, since that was the original question.

Topic was inspired by this large persona 3 & 4 fanfic sequel, which i guess outs me as a massive nerd.

Never played those, but it's funny how easy it is to get fanfics of anything coming from japan, and how fanfics are sometimes better than the original (I've read some "light novels" that spawned animated/drawn adaptation, and some were so bad compared to fan work, it is not even funny.) Maybe it's because Japan has that fanfiction culture, officially, at least in the animation/game/manga industry.

Anyway, there must be a good NessiexGodzilla fic out there.

[Magnar of Skagos]

Fun fact: GRRM considers that fanfic can damage his world and his property.

I'm gunna write my own ending for ASOIAF where Jon Snow is Rhaegar and Lyanna's son so that when TWOW and ADOS are released, I can sue GRRM for a billion dollars. :devil:

Absolutely genius, flawless plan. Don't know why nobody else has thought of it.

[Darth Richard II]

Sure! It's all fan fiction! Hail hydra!

[Theda Baratheon]

I agree the Divine Comedy could be considered fanfiction in a broad sense but not too sure about the Aeneid.

EDIT: i guess iliad fanfiction??

either way its a very broad definition, i think a lot of people just think of fanfiction as fanfiction.net

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

EB,

Fun fact: GRRM considers that fanfic can damage his world and his property.

This is not news. GRRM has been up front about his distaste for "FanFiction" for decades. As for damaging his property consider that Marion Zimmer Bradley ran into difficulty from a fan who wrote fanfiction in one of her settings (which Bradley was originally very blazee about) necessitating Bradley drop a novel she was writting because it overlapped too strongly with the fanfic story.

Thus, fanfic can create problems for authors. This is not to say fanfic should be banned or that it is universally terrible. Just that it can and has created problems in the past. GRRM isn't coming by his postion from the clear blue sky.

[Castel]

EB,

This is not news. GRRM has been up front about his distaste for "FanFiction" for decades. As for damaging his property considered that Marion Zimmer Bradley ran into difficulty from a fan who wrote fanfiction in one of her settings (which Bradley was originally very blazee about) necessitating Bradley drop a novel she was writting because it overlapped too strongly with the fanfic story.

Thus, fanfic can create problems for authors. This is not to say fanfic should be banned or that it is universally terrible. Just that it can and has created problems in the past. GRRM isn't coming by his postion from the clear blue sky.

Which is why the defense is usually to ignore it or endorse while explicitly saying that you'll never read it. I don't blame people who want a stronger defense though.

I agree the Divine Comedy could be considered fanfiction in a broad sense but not too sure about the Aeneid.

EDIT: i guess iliad fanfiction??

either way its a very broad definition, i think a lot of people just think of fanfiction as fanfiction.net

Exactly. Don't really see the point in the comparisons.

[The Marquis de Leech]

I agree the Divine Comedy could be considered fanfiction in a broad sense but not too sure about the Aeneid.

EDIT: i guess iliad fanfiction??

either way its a very broad definition, i think a lot of people just think of fanfiction as fanfiction.net

I do have a broad definition of it (basically, the unauthorised use of another's invented setting or characters). It's as old as humanity, and certainly far older than intellectual property.

(Let's face, it modern copyright law would screw everyone from Shakespeare to Goethe).

[The Marquis de Leech]

EB,

This is not news. GRRM has been up front about his distaste for "FanFiction" for decades. As for damaging his property considered that Marion Zimmer Bradley ran into difficulty from a fan who wrote fanfiction in one of her settings (which Bradley was originally very blazee about) necessitating Bradley drop a novel she was writting because it overlapped too strongly with the fanfic story.

Thus, fanfic can create problems for authors. This is not to say fanfic should be banned or that it is universally terrible. Just that it can and has created problems in the past. GRRM isn't coming by his postion from the clear blue sky.

I always though Pratchett's approach (write fanfic to your heart's content, but don't put it where he can see it) was the best. That way Pratchett could never be accused of stealing ideas about his own work.

[Theda Baratheon]

I do have a broad definition of it (basically, the unauthorised use of another's invented setting or characters). It's as old as humanity, and certainly far older than intellectual property.

(Let's face, it modern copyright law would screw everyone from Shakespeare to Goethe).

yeah but "fan" seems quite modern to me, so the concept of fanfiction. Also the characters of the iliad and the aneid weren't really characters of one author but Gods and mythic Heroes so i'm not sure it really works.

[The Marquis de Leech]

yeah but "fan" seems quite modern to me, so the concept of fanfiction. Also the characters of the iliad and the aneid weren't really characters of one author but Gods and mythic Heroes so i'm not sure it really works.

Yes, but by that reasoning I could write a story featuring Twilight characters, then claim it isn't actually fanfic, because I'm not a Twilight fan.

In the case of the Aeneid, it fits with my general idea of fanfic being the re-using of something someone else originally created (also, IIRC, Alexander the Great wrote Hercules stories, which is pretty damn fanficcy).

[Theda Baratheon]

I mean - if you're calling the Aeneid Fanfiction then the same could be said for all the greek tragedies, using existing myths and ancient mythic hero except labelling it as such just doesn't work. Because fanfiction implies a FAN using setting and characters of their favourite authors. There was no ORIGINAL CHARACTER DO NOT STEAL in Ancient Athens for example, and using the Gods and Heroes for tales of heroic downfall, morality whatever you think the ancient greek tragedies are about was just normal, it wasn't a case of being a FAN of earlier writers. Not that I can see anyway. So i just don't know that i agree with labelling it fanfiction.

[Theda Baratheon]

Yeah but the Trojan War and mythic Heroes like Achilles and Agamemnon aren't really the property of Homer are they. Therefore having the Aeneid use the trojan war and certain heroes doesnt work as fanfiction. It might be funny to think about Virgil as a Homer fanboy but the concept of fan seems pretty modern to me.

It's the same when we talk about homosexuality in ancient Greece, it wasn't a concept then so to describe certain relationships as homosexual relationships just doesn't really work. Im on phone atm and on way to work but I can elaborate more later or hopefully make more sense lol.

[Errant Bard]

The gospels are in the same vein as the Aeneid, but fitting your definition more. You can't say the apostles were not fans. :leaving:

This is not news. GRRM has been up front about his distaste for "FanFiction" for decades.

I... knew that. Again, I was just bringing up how an author could feel about fanfic, as that was what was being asked in the upthread post. Everything you say is written in the link, anyway. :)

[Castel]

I'm not really sure who will ever argue in a way that requires you to go back to Ancient Greece to make the argument for fanfiction anyway.

[King In The Couch]

The gospels are in the same vein as the Aeneid, but fitting your definition more. You can't say the apostles were not fans. :leaving:

Funny about that because apparently there's also apocrypha gospels as well. :shocked:

[The Marquis de Leech]

Of course there was no ORIGINAL CHARACTER DO NOT STEAL. Copyright is an eighteenth century invention. For the ancients, it'd be perfectly normal to come up with fresh stories about Gandalf, or Harry Potter, or whomever - such characters would become part of the great cauldron of story. The idea that characters are the property of a particular person (let alone their Estate) is simply ridiculous in a pre-modern mindset.

I guess my point is that fanfic is simply a reflection of an incredibly ancient impulse, and that the only reason we think of such an impulse as fanfic is because of the modern paraphernalia of copyright law.