Fan Fiction

                Most of everybody I know over the age of fourteen (and claim to have mastered the elements of fictional writing) say that “Fan fiction” is a load of potatoes. In other words, they think taking a piece of entertainment (a book/movie/show/etc) and molding it into a different shape and form so deeply that everything about this piece of entertainment (other than the characters and the main “magical” sense of the entertainment) is different, is absolutely disgusting. But they are wrong. See, fan fiction is really just a synonym for inspiration of a plot or theme. What these critics are really basing their opinions off of (whether they know it or not), are twelve year olds taking the entire theme, plot, and characters and rewriting it. That’s not the only type of fan fiction. Real fan fiction is taking the inner depths and the idea of the piece of entertainment and using it to create their own. The truth is, fan fiction is probably the most overrated yet misunderstood genre, and critics do not even acknowledge that.

                If people really want to get inside the depths of fan fiction, they need to look at literature as a whole. What inspired Suzanne Collins to write a book about a group of youths trying to kill each other over a simple reward? She said much of her novel was based upon Theseus, a tale in Greek Mythology. And do people think it is a coincidence that all science-fiction hold ties to Orson Scott Card and Ray Bradberry? If so, they need to reread books from the 20^th century. Too many books have common themes taken from people like Shakespeare and Mary Shelley. If people can take characters from legends, change their names, possibly add a few quirks to their main conflicts, is that not the same thing as fan fiction? I have read way too many books lately about an abused main character that “suddenly” realized that they are just a magical creature born in the wrong world. Surely that idea originated from somewhere. And what about when authors name their characters off of different characters? Like Hermione from “The Winter’s Tale” (Shakespeare). Most people do not even know that connection because “The Winter’s Tale” is overshadowed by other works of Shakespeare like “Romeo & Juliet” and “Julius Caesar”. Maybe if they did, they would realize that even the most powerful writers of this generation are basing their “oh so original” works on classics that people have forgotten about.

                Fan fiction is not necessarily bad. Whether it is published, unpublished, hidden inside other famous works, tucked into the cracks of overrated internet sites, it is just a genre that has been picked on and abused. If we did not have fan fiction, a lot of the works that make up our life today would be gone. If anything, fan fiction is needed. Even a critic in The New York Times can manage to defend the classical, new age fan fiction written by twelve year olds on sketchy websites:

“Fan fiction is what literature might look like if it were reinvented from scratch after a nuclear apocalypse by a band of brilliant pop-culture junkies trapped in a sealed bunker. They don’t do it for money. That’s not what it’s about. The writers write it and put it up online just for the satisfaction. They’re fans, but they’re not silent, couchbound consumers of media. The culture talks to them, and they talk back to the culture in its own language.”

—	The Boy Who Lived Forever | Time Magazine (via bergusia)

                So yeah, maybe fan fiction can be collection of paragraphs consisting of trash that are practically insults toward the original works, but in the end everything is a piece of fan fiction. We all want to base our pieces off works from people like Oscar Wilde, Homer, and Charlotte Bronte; not because we are not creative enough to write as well as them, but because we see them as the true masters of fiction. And who knows, maybe we are not reading about Sherlock Holmes dealing with his secret crush on John Watson three hundred years earlier than the true story is set, but two men fighting the social prejudices in the Elizabethan Era while at the same time being forced under a injustice monarchy to save the English community so that their nation will not collapse.