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starfishstarTwo thoughts, that to my pleased surprise I find I can tie together under one theme:
1. The excellent Elizabeth Minkel (who writes in mainstream journalism about fanfic and fan culture) wrote a great article called "Harry Potter and the Sanctioned Follow-On Work (or, Fanfiction vs. the Patriarchy): How we talk about The Cursed Child—and why it matters." She takes Harry Potter and the Cursed Child as a starting point, but also talks in general about what we mean when we call something fanfiction, and the gendered divisions of that, and character-driven works vs. plot-driven works, and a whole lot of other things besides.
Minkel is excellent – check out the article!
2. I just re-read Neil Gaiman's short story "A Study in Emerald," a brilliant fusion of the character of Sherlock Holmes with the world of H. P. Lovecraft. I hope the whole world knows it already, but just in case you don't... If you have the least bit of interest in Sherlock Holmes, and the least bit of interest in transformative works, your life will not be quite complete until you have read this story. I promise you, it's that good. You can read it here: "A Study in Emerald."
(I'm always fascinated by what does and doesn't get considered "fanfiction," as Elizabeth Minkel discusses so ably above. This is Neil Gaiman, and was published in a collection of Doyle/Lovecraft-inspired crossovers called "Shadows Over Baker Street," and he presumably got paid to do it, so nobody thinks of it as fanfiction. And yet...Gaiman is writing a Doyle/Lovecraft-inspired crossover, so of course it's fanfiction! Except in some crucial ways it's not, except at its core it really is. Etc.)
1. The excellent Elizabeth Minkel (who writes in mainstream journalism about fanfic and fan culture) wrote a great article called "Harry Potter and the Sanctioned Follow-On Work (or, Fanfiction vs. the Patriarchy): How we talk about The Cursed Child—and why it matters." She takes Harry Potter and the Cursed Child as a starting point, but also talks in general about what we mean when we call something fanfiction, and the gendered divisions of that, and character-driven works vs. plot-driven works, and a whole lot of other things besides.
Minkel is excellent – check out the article!
2. I just re-read Neil Gaiman's short story "A Study in Emerald," a brilliant fusion of the character of Sherlock Holmes with the world of H. P. Lovecraft. I hope the whole world knows it already, but just in case you don't... If you have the least bit of interest in Sherlock Holmes, and the least bit of interest in transformative works, your life will not be quite complete until you have read this story. I promise you, it's that good. You can read it here: "A Study in Emerald."
(I'm always fascinated by what does and doesn't get considered "fanfiction," as Elizabeth Minkel discusses so ably above. This is Neil Gaiman, and was published in a collection of Doyle/Lovecraft-inspired crossovers called "Shadows Over Baker Street," and he presumably got paid to do it, so nobody thinks of it as fanfiction. And yet...Gaiman is writing a Doyle/Lovecraft-inspired crossover, so of course it's fanfiction! Except in some crucial ways it's not, except at its core it really is. Etc.)
