The Weekly: Fanfiction

Every week, around Wednesday or Thursday, I will be blogging on a topic with the wonderful Tatra.  You can find her blog here and we'll be talking about a variety of subjects.  It'll be in a format that you're used to seeing with the WriYe Blogging Circle (WBC) posts, in that there will be a topic and questions to answer.  This is to help us get used to using our blogs more as well as just getting us thinking as writers.  Not that we're not doing that nearly every second or every day, but this is just a bonus.  Plus, it's something more for you, wonderful reader, to read.  :)  So, it's a win win.

This week, our subject is fanfiction.  Fanfiction is known as a work of fiction or art that is based on a work of fiction, non-fiction, or real people created by a fan of that work.  We'll be focusing on the writing aspect of fanfiction, although some people create art that is amazing and I really hope they're artists of original work that they can sell.  Like on the level of drawing a work that looks like a photograph / still from the movie or TV series but is actually done in pencil or ink.  You can find those easily through the handy dandy Google machine.  Now, you noticed I said non-fiction and real people.  Yes, people create fanfiction off of blogs like Badass Women in HIstory, CollegeHumor, Cracked, and so on.  There are also people who take a real person and put them in situations that come out of their head.  It's not really my cup of tea, but I feel that you should know about all types of fanfiction, considering that I've been writing it since 2001.

Yes, you read that right.  Fanfiction is how I got into writing.  I'm not the first writer to start off this way either.  Mercedes Lackey, the author of the Valdemar series, got her start writing for fanzines.  Cassandra Clare, the author of the Mortal Instrument series, was a Harry Potter fanfiction author before she got her big break.  Fifty Shades of Grey was a fanfiction before E.L. James cleaned it up and published it.  So, yes, it is not unheard of as people think it might be.  These are just a handful of examples off the top of my head and there probably are more.  I put these out here to show you, dear reader, that it isn't as far fetched as you've been led to believe.  Fanfiction is becoming less and less of a black mark against a published author, which is pretty nice considering I have a lot out there.

So, now that you have background into the subject, let's get onto the questions.

• Do I write fanfiction?  What do I write in?  What don't I write in?

And you're all, Liz!  You already answered this!  And yes, I have.  But I haven't said what I write in.  I write mostly in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Sherlock (BBC), Constantine (the 2005 movie, not the TV series coming out this fall), White Collar, and Leverage.  Those are my top five when I look at my Archive of Our Own profile, even though I haven't written anything new in the last two in a while.  Oops.  What I don't write in is less of the deal with the original work itself and more about situations.  While I dabble in the idea of kinks, I won't write an out and out rape scene.  Other than that, I follow where the muse goes when it comes to fanfiction.  If I can write it and I want to publish it, I do so.

• How do I compare original fiction to fanfiction?

I view original fiction as a harder and more satisfying than fanfiction.  While I love fanfiction and am not putting it down, I love creating my own worlds.  I love creating my own characters and putting them into situations of my own making.  Fanfiction, on the other hand, is easy to write because, when I love a fandom, I study it.  I know it nearly inside and out.  Like in the case of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I can remember that, in Captain America: the First Avenger, Red Skull took hold of the cube and went "poof" somewhere.  He didn't die, he went "poof" in a way of transportation energy.  We know it's transportation energy because, in the Avengers movie, Thor uses the cube to transport himself and Loki back home at the end.  I remember details of Person of Interest that comes from watching complete seasons two or three times.

And, when all else fails, there are these wonderful things called wikias and the Google.  :D

• What if someone wrote fanfiction about my stories?

I'm going to be considered odd for this, but I would view it as praise.  Someone likes my work enough to write an idea that I wouldn't have thought of.  Or to put two characters together that I didn't have time to write together because I was focusing on the main plot line.  Now, will I read fanfiction based on my original works?  Nope.  It's just that thin line because, once you've known as reading it, people can and will sue you about stealing ideas.  I just hope that people don't try to make money off of it, as that would suck, and then I'd have to sue a fan.

Also, I really hope that nobody writes incest about some of the characters.  Like, in Mystery of the Dark, there's a lot of family stuff that I would groan about people putting characters together before they know about the family connection.  And then get angry fans who love the pairing but now it's labeled incest because I went all "yeah, they're half siblings".  But, otherwise, I feel that people should be free to write fanfiction about whatever they want to.

Bonus!: Where do I post my fanfiction?

You can find me as crescent_gaia on the Archive of Our Own here.  Read at your own risk and realize the tags are warnings of what you might not want to read.  Also, check the rating on the left hand side before you decide you want to read something too.  I go as low a general audience and as high as explicit.  So, yep, read at your own risk, but check things too.  If you complain about something I write on there because you didn't double check things, I will only laugh at you (in a polite way, but still, laughing).