Fanfiction

/rant

So I got into an argument at work today about the merits of fanfic. The other arguee, is a rather pathetic 58 year old woman who is completely and utterly obsessed with Twilight. She spends most of her free time writing rather disgustingly erotic fanfics where the Twilight characters basically screw each other until someone loses an eye. She even told, once, of a slumber party she had with women her own age, where they stayed up all night writing Twilight fanfics together and reading them to each other. GROWN WOMEN, ALL!!! And most of them old enough to have grand children and even great grand children, acting like twelve year old girls. Setting aside the wtf factor of that for another rant, her argument is that fanfics are fun. They're not hurting anyone. They continue the stories that people love, giving fans a way to live their fantasies. She thought that I'd be pleased with her as she knows that I spend a lot of time writing and am trying very hard to get a writing career off the ground. Unfortunately for her, I have a very low opinion of fanfic, and those that waste their talents writing it, and I'll tell you why.

I am no stranger to fanfiction. In my earlier years I used to seek them out on the internet, because like the people who wrote them, I wanted the stories of my favorite games, movies and animes to continue on. I even tried my hand at writing a few, though I found it to be very unsatisfying in the end. Why? Because I was wasting my talents on something I can never, ever, ever take credit for. I am the sort of person that likes to be praised and recognized for my accomplishments. I do not know where this need of mine came from, likely because as the first child everything I did was never good enough for my parents. From an early age I was constantly driven to be the best, and when I fell short, as I often did, I was chastised for it, rather than told that since I did my best I should be proud of what I'd accomplished. They never praised anything I did, even when I became Utah's youngest Eagle Scout in history, and told me that I had better do better next time if I know what's good for me. Oh, it's not their fault, they were still learning to be parents at the time, and likely had no idea how badly they were messing me up. Writing stories that take place in other people's worlds with other people's characters did help me to begin learning how to write, but it was very unsatisfying, because it wasn't my own creation, and therefore I could not take credit for it, and thereby earn praise for it.

I've read many fanfics in my time, though I stopped bothering long ago. Some of the people who write them have real talent, and with a bit of polish and hard work they could have themselves a very successful writing career. But they instead waste themselves on writing stories that take place in the realms of someone else's imagination. It makes me sick to think of all the would be authors out there that are throwing away real chances of making something out of their talent for storytelling. It's just such a waste.

It is my belief that the people who write fanfics can sometimes have very good ideas for stories. They can be very creative and quite original sometimes, though the majority are just retellings of things that already happened in whatever the original source for their fanfic is. Why not take those ideas that you have for a fanfic, and instead of writing them out in someone else's world, with someone else's characters, take one step further into originality and create your own world around them, with your own characters to act them out? It's a very short step from coming up with a good idea for a story, to coming up with a world and characters to base it on. That is how I came to write my very first book. It was total crap, I will admit it, and I have tried very hard to forget it, but it was MY crap, and no one else could ever take credit for it. It was a first attempt at writing a book, way back in tenth grade, and it set me on the long path of honing my skills as a writer and pushing myself to come up with more original and more exciting ideas to write, with ore interesting characters and worlds.

The worst part about it is that most of the people that write fanfics with great skill, and very creative and original stories will never know how talented they are, because they will never seek to put their skills and talent to anything of their own making. THAT is why I hate fanfiction. Because it wastes the talents of the talented, and makes them think that there is nothing more to put their talents to. Think of all of the great writers who go on to boring office jobs and the like, because they never stopped writing fanfiction and started writing their own stories.

Fanfiction destroyes the careers of many promising young writers.

/end rant