Fanfiction: What Does it Mean for Society?

Hello, everyone! Owyn is here to talk about FANFICTION.

Now, for some of you, that could be a really dirty word that you associate with "Porn" or "Plagiarism". And some of you wholeheartedly embrace the trend and perhaps even write some of your own. And then some of you either don't know or don't care.

My opinion is that Fanfiction is fun to read and write and that people shouldn't be attacked for doing something they enjoy.

That being said, I know where a lot of you are coming from.

Take Fifty Shades of Grey for example. If you haven't heard yet, E.L. James originally wrote this as a Twilight (smut) fanfic, and it grew a huge following. So James decided to have it published, with the names switched to avoid copyright.

Not all fanfiction and its authors are like that. (Like Cassandra Clare got her start writing fanfiction.) Some of can be fluffy ones that people write because they want something changed or expanded on from the original story. And there's nothing really wrong with that.

Most fanfiction authors aren't trying to pass the story off as their own. They just want to tweak it a bit, and there are a lot of reasons for that. Like their ship isn't canon. In layman's terms: there's a couple that they really wanted to get together but they didn't end up dating in the original story, like if you wanted Katniss and Gale to get together. It's basically when you really support a couple and them being together. Or maybe they want to tell the story with the same characters but in a totally alternate universe (for example, taking all the characters in Harry Potter and making them dogs.)

I was talking to Jorden from Shipping and Receiving about a book that featured fanfiction, and I compared it to: "Someone made a bunch of really unique dolls and told a story with them. And someone else really liked those dolls, so they decided to play with them as well, but told a completely different story." And, some people can take the story with totally different characters. Like, if you really liked The Hunger Games and you wanted to write a story about a bunch of people in a death arena, you could write a fanfic based on that series but with new, original characters.

Now, like books, some fanfiction stories can be really bad. Since they don't have editors (unless you have a bit of a following, then someone in the same fanbase could help you edit it), there are a lot more grammatical mistakes and plot holes than you would find in a published book.

Or they could just be poorly written. And that's okay, this could be part of their process for becoming better writers, because most fanfiction sites have the ability to let people review the stories, so authors get instant feedback. Everyone has to start somewhere.

If you would like to get into the fanfiction scene, then you can try fanfiction.net or Tumblr. (WARNING: There could be some dirty stories on there. On Fanfiction.net you can limit your story rating to K-> T, which stands for Kid-friendly through Teen. On Tumblr, if you use Google Chrome, you can "blacklist" it with Tumblr Savior so it never shows up in your feed. I recommend blacklisting "NSFW", which means "not safe for work" and "Smut", which is how fanfic writers refer to "sexy times").

But yes, that is my opinion on fanfiction. If you guys have varying opinions, feel free to talk to me in the comments below!

Sincerely,

Owyn the Intern