Fanfictions are Crap
This is a personal piece I submitted to another site, but was rejected due to "style" issues. So I thought "well that blows" but then realized I have my own blog where I publish stuff all the time, on which I'm the style nazi, and in which I can choose to publish what I choose. So I'm publishing it here.
enjoy.
enjoy.
The problem with fanfiction is that is a particular lens.
Like any lens, it changes our perception of things. We accept it though,
because the subject of our perception may be too difficult to face or too
complex to comprehend. Sometimes we have to step back or break it down to make
sense of it. It’s akin to using metaphors and analogies to describe new things
and drawing parallels on ideas that we’re familiar with to contend with
novelty.
I still have a problem with it, though. Granted, it’s an
aversion to a particular type of fanfiction but I think it’s applicable to the
entire “discipline”. Most fanfiction is just creativity: works of art are generally
inspiring and rouse a desire to create something based upon it. The easiest
path to creation in this case is outright copying. From here, one can work
towards originality through considerable effort in reimagining and reshaping
their inspiration into something uniquely personal.
That’s cool, though. It’s the creative process. Almost
anyone who’s ever attempted to create something knows that it’s easier to start
from somewhere, anywhere, than from nothing, no matter how derivative it feels
(or is). It’s about drawing on the skill, passion, and creativity of the
inspiring work and its author to drive one’s own ambition. And that’s cool,
too. Obviously, this is not where my problem with it lies.
My problem lies in application. Fanfictions, like many
things, are often applied as analogies to life: the fictional escapades of
Gregory House, MD successfully diagnosing and treating enigmatic diseases all
while fielding ignorant assumptions from inexperienced interns and manipulating
his superiors sometimes mirrors our own feelings and desires so closely that we
want to inhabit him. So we write as though we were. But this is a very
different exercise than say, comparing the function of a battery to a tank of
water.
Analogies often work as simplifications, allowing us to
comprehend an idea piece by piece so we aren’t overwhelmed. In this sense,
these analogies are meant to clarify: they act a crutch to help us towards a
clearer understanding of an idea, and as such can be discarded once they are no
longer useful. They carry with them little to no emotional or philosophical
weight. Fanfiction is different.
Fanfiction, as a coping mechanism, still works to simplify,
but it also invokes the power of iconography: the qualities (the emotion and
philosophy) of the creation or character is brought to bear on the idea or
situation. This isn’t just an exercise in clarification; it’s an exercise in
amplification and transmutation. Like I said before it’s a particular lens. But
more accurately, it’s like a perception-altering drug.
Analogies serve to clarify, but fanfictions (or derivations
of any kind) invoke; they call upon the power of the icon; the emotion of an
event, story, or personality and use it as a hammer upon the present situation.
Unlike the standard analogy, this is a distortion. The weight and subsequent
strike of this hammer upon the present situation smashes its honest and
truthful face into a crazy mirrored funhouse, and any conclusions based off said
crazy mirror funhouse are guaranteed to be deeply flawed.
We’ve all had this experience, too. We’ve done it to other
people: I often distracted my parents by bringing up stories of my prodigal
brother to draw the slightest of parallels to my own chronic disobedience in
order to immediately conjure a fiery anger that can no longer be fairly
directed at me. I’ve fabricated highly improbable (but altogether possible)
consequences for attending an evening show of RENT as part of an effort to
divert attention away from my laziness and distaste for downtown Los Angeles
traffic. Essentially, what fanfics do (and what analogies don’t) is distort,
divert, and destabilize the audience so that when the moral of a given story is
presented, they accept it.
This is my problem with fanfiction. This is my problem with
all derivative works, really. They are parasitic. They call upon emotions of
greater things because they can’t conjure for themselves. And then apply these
emotions (or divert them) to personal gain. It’s a dishonesty of form, and it’s
one that videogame culture is especially susceptible to.
In games our role is often the assumption of a fictional character.
Through this assumption there is an investment made and as a result a payoff
expected. Even in games where the payoff is not obvious (or even nonexistent),
the investment is so complete that the payoff is just generated by the player himself:
he decides what the game meant based on what he played through.
Now, I realize that this isn’t a phenomenon unique to games.
But what I would ask you to realize is that it is the strongest of this type
across all media. As a direct result of this investment of time, emotion, and
imagination, the conclusions and morals generated by a game are quite nearly
unshakeable (and this is even more true for popular games). And when a creation
comes along that taps into them, no matter how subtly, it unleashes their full
force upon the subject. But it is a lie.
This is why I hate fanfiction. I hate fanfiction because
it’s a trick, it’s a leech, and it’s a gimmick. And when it’s attached to a
meaningful message with a positive conclusion it makes me cringe, because it
cheapens it. It cheapens the impact of the moral and it admits that the idea
wasn’t good enough on its own. It’s a good old-fashioned hamburger with a soy
patty in the middle. It’s a twinkie inside your corn dog. It’s a guy trying to
sell you a picture of a dog with one of his boogers stuck on the back, because
he was actually trying to sell you his boogers all along.
If you like fanfiction, or even if you make it, I don’t
mind. But don’t use it to further an end. In the same sense, don’t use games to
do so either. If your message or your idea is good, it will be heard. And if it
has merit it will see its time on the stage of sociocultural importance. Most
of all, don’t commandeer other people’s works of art for your own ends. It just
tells me that you’re too afraid to be true to yourself.