GodEmperor47 said:
Switchblade 327 said:
ZippyPizzahead said:
All possible types of fanfiction:
a) A group of people are playing (insert game here), when all of a sudden they are sucked in to the world they're playing and must fight for the survival of both!
b) Character X is emo.
c) Character X has gay love for Character Y.
d) Character X is the long forgotted relative of some godlike figure that has absolutely no place in canon subject.
Granted, there are actually a few well written, original stories, but they are few and far between.
What about the ones that are genuinely interesting expansions on the original plotlines featuring only original characters meant to fill minor roles as the focus is actually on the main characters who are carefully kept in-character and goddamn I feel like I've typed the word "characters" a dozen fucking times already but whatever.
Using the setting, concepts, etc. still eliminates a lot of the workload for the fan fiction writer. If I took everything but the characters from Peanuts, and made a strip that imitated it closely without ever bringing in Charlie Brown, I'd still be ripping off Peanuts.
Yeah, it does, but then again, some people like me get attached to certain characters and would like to see their adventures expanded upon while the original authors are busy jacking off.
Let's relate fan-fiction to something people might understand better: music.
Have you ever heard a truly original artist? Because there have probably been five in the entire history of the world. Some of the most unique, out-there artists we all know and love are just taking their influences and building off of them.
The Black Dahlia Murder took a lot of European melodic death metal like Carcass but then blended in their American influences like Morbid Angel into a brand of American Melodic Death Metal that only they really play, and yet apparently they aren't being original artists because their music had influence.
An even more precise analogy would be a techno artist that takes samples from other works and then blends a bunch of their own effects and melodies into it to create something that, while entirely different than the original piece, is apparently not art because there was an original piece, as per your logic.
I think that fanfictions can be art just as music can be art -.-