Brilliant Writers & Professional Fanfiction (and Some Crossovers Thereof)

[starfishstar]

Two 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.)

Comments

[jo02]

This is a great discussion, and of course it has been going on for decades in one form or another. I remember having discussions about it back in the 80s when Star Trek fanfiction writers were just starting to get published as professional writers - writing those Star Trek novels that were big at the time: Della van Hise, Jean Lorrah, etc.

I don't think we're going to come up with a clear-cut definition of when writing is fanfiction, no matter how polished, or when it is professional writing for an established universe that is not (all) your own. I'm pretty sure it has something to do with money - the work gets paid for. I don't mean that in any unsavoury way - it would be considered professional writing if it was commissioned, or submitted for publishing and been accepted and paid for...

... but then it is also fanfiction if it is writing in someone else's established universe. (I've never been able to nail down exactly what I want to say in this area.)

There's also something to consider, that you haven't touched upon. Payment - and presumably a level of quality writing - go towards saying a piece of fanfic writing (or product) is also professional writing, but no-one ever talks about 'love' making a piece of writing fanfic. I hope I can explain this properly. Back in the day, all those ST fanfic writers who made it to professional level and got their ST novels published, were writing ST novels for love of the show ...

These days professional writers get their TV show novels published all the time. My husband has all the Buffy novels - I have many of the TW novels - I don't consider any of these published works to be fanfiction even though they fit the definition of fanfiction. Even though they are well-written, they were written for money, for payment, first (or only). Nothing wrong with this at all, but, not written for love of the show or characters, then not fanfiction.

I'm operating on about three hours of sleep so I can't think of a clever closing statement :) Over to you - what do you think?

[starfishstar]

Oh, for sure, I'm sure this conversation is as old as fanfiction is... And I definitely don't expect to ever arrive at one conclusive answer, even just in terms of what my own opinion is – I feel like anything I try to say about this question, I also want to say the opposite!

(Now here comes a massive wall of text as I try to marshal my many and disparate thoughts...)

Like, Stephen Moffat and Mark Gatiss creating BBC Sherlock – that's straight-up fanfiction, no question. I think they themselves have even said as much. They're huge fanboys of the original Sherlock Holmes stories, and they love the stories so much, they decided to create a modern-day AU of them.

And that's a hugely exciting thing to realize, as a fan and a fanfiction writer, that hey, these guys who've become mega-famous for making BBC Sherlock...they're doing the same thing I'm doing, writing fanfiction. For fan communities – who often get a lot of ridicule in mainstream press, and are constantly told that these fanworks we love so much are nice and all but are not as legitimate as "real" fiction and art – that feels really good and legitimizing, to see that any derivative/transformative work out there is also doing the same thing we're doing. (e.g., Shakespeare, who recycled most of his plots from writers who came before him, but made them very much his own through his great command of language, and nobody doubts the legitimacy of what he was doing!)

But at the same time I also agree with Minkel's take of "well yes...but also no," because it's not a level playing field. The creators of BBC Sherlock or the latest Marvel universe movie are, yes, creating a new story using characters created by someone else before them, but they get all these advantages that come with writing for TV or a major film studio: a huge budget, a massive marketing machine, cultural clout & respect, etc. And as Minkel points out, who's getting the big money to make Marvel "fanfiction", and who's writing (actual) fanfiction for free in fan spaces online? It's really shocking how clearly that falls out along gender lines. (Yes, of course some women make big budget films, and some men are part of fan communities and write fanfiction for free. But...not nearly as many.)

And in a lot of ways – that's cool! I love that fandom skews so female. I love that about every fan community/podcast/etc. I can think of is run by women. I love how queer-friendly fandom is, and how feminist it is, and how thoughtful and aware of power and privilege and intersectionality and representation and all of these very important things that the mainstream, big budget entertainment industries are not doing so hot on. I love that, exactly like you said, we're doing this purely out of love for these characters and these shows/books and the fan communities that have sprung up around them. Fandom is such a BRILLIANT place, and I don't actually want it to change at all!

(continues in part 2...)

[starfishstar]

(part 2...)

But at the same time, I actually think about that doing-it-out-of-love vs. doing-it-for-money question a lot. Because, again, why does it always have to be that way, that male writers (mostly) get money and prestige and respect for their writing, but when women (mostly) don't get paid for their work, oh, that's okay, because they're doing it out of "love." (I don't mean that you, personally, are saying this! I just mean that it feels like a sort of underlying narrative that, in a sense, we've all bought into.) I kind of wish women would stand up more often and say, hell no, I deserve to get paid for my writing/graphic design/sound recording/etc. skills just as much as anyone else does. (And I know some fan creators have managed that leap, by selling fanart or making the shift from fanfic to published writing, and I cheer for them so hard!)

So once again: "yes and no." I love, cherish and value the way fan communities are fueled on love. But sometimes I can't help thinking...what if we poured this much love and skill into something that compensated us with money? And why is it so often women who are willing to work for free out of love?

(Not that fanworks are "work" or should be thought of that way. They're a hobby, in the best sense – something I choose to do with my free time because I enjoy it, not because I have to. Just...sometimes I look at how women as a whole are cultured to be so giving, and men as a whole are cultured to demand that they be recognized for their worth and taken seriously, and I do kind of despair...)

And that's why I read a Sherlock Holmes "fic"/story from Neil Gaiman (and I legitimately LOVE Neil Gaiman and think he's so imaginative and brilliant) and most of me goes, YAY THIS STORY IS AMAZING, but a little part of me also goes, ugh, why does Neil Gaiman get paid to do this while (almost) nobody else writing brilliant transformative works based on Sherlock Holmes does?

Wow, that got really heavy, sorry!

I'll end on a positive thought: I like your suggestion that what defines something as truly fanfiction is whether love went into it. It can be a paid/professional work or not, but it only counts as a fanwork if it's made by someone who is in fact a fan and loves the source material (or at least, is moved/frustrated/inspired by it enough to want to react with a fanwork), andthat's what motivates the creation of the work, regardless of whether there's also monetary compensation involved.

So, BBC Sherlock is definitely fanfiction. ;-)