so like most people who've existed online, I've used "fanfic" as a pejorative before. couldn't tell you what exactly, but I mean, take your pick of crappy stuff from the last... ever- it's a short, convenient little insult. punchy. I also never really thought about fanfic. I was not a fanfic person- never wrote, never read. it just wasn't a form of interacting with fiction that I engaged with.
well, a while back I got fed up with telling myself "well, if I was writing Mass Effect I'd do it this way", and asked hey, why don't I just write Mass Effect? so I started, and am still working on it because I'm stubborn. in the process, I've started to think about my own history with the concept of fanfic, which until this year started and ended at saying "something feels off to me in a negative way."
like what do posters mean when they say something is like fanfic? probably that it's indulgent, top of the list. less technically skilled. doesn't get the tone of the original work. doesn't understand character nuance. rewrites "canon". it's pretty analogous to the concept of the "knockoff"- there's the Real Thing, and then there's this quantifiably lesser version. stepping back and thinking about it, it's got a weird relationship with Licensing and Branding. fanfic is bad because it isn't official, because if it isn't Officially Licensed, it must be worse in some way than a product for sale. weird, right?
we live in a world of The Phantom Menace, Star Trek: Picard, The X-Files Season 11. materials that, original creators attached or not, drastically misunderstand what they're working with. The Phantom Menace codifies Jedi as biologically-determined space cops who don't think slavery is worth getting worked up about. Star Trek: Picard is a wretchedly bleak vision of the future where everything's miserable, nobody gets along, and the old have to save the world from the young. The X-Files Season 11 is, well, I've already forgotten everything about that other than Chris Carter decided to make Scully pregnant again. there were a couple of good episodes, I think.
we exist under a relentless barrage of stuff that's wildly indulgent, generally in the wrong ways (Star Trek: Discovery had an angel-winged robot suit like Mercy Overwatch?) technically a dud (everything kurtzman touches) thinks tone is just the guy from the sopranos (star trek has been cynical and militaristic since like, the first TNG movie) values brand recognition over character (take your fuckin' pick) and makes canon someone else's problem (everything does this. they just do whatever the fuck they want and leave it up to the tie-in novels to resolve)
like, there's no sanctity to defend from fanfic. this shit's just cranked out by whoever has a dad that got them into the industry. I think we as a people can move past the purity of official licensing stuff. hell, at this point, after reexamination: at least a fanfic creator presumably likes the fuckin' thing in the first place. I do respect the act of putting yourself out there and creating something, but also, a lot of creators do not realize or understand what they have made. I again point to george lucas. there's also a significant difference between someone making something to post to friends or a small community for free and a License-Holder putting together a gaggle of yahoos to revive a fondly-remembered franchise (it's Baldur's Gate 3! pay no mind to 2 ending about as conclusively as it's possible to)
also, I'm not going to take any shit for being indulgent. frank herbert put space-drug orgies in dune. this isn't technical writing, authors being weirdly indulgent about whatever they're into is a foundational aspect of writing. also, even technical writing has people weirdly indulgent about stuff. we're all freaks, deal with it
