Tade Thompson: I'm going to sub-skeet this because I don't have the strength or inclination to get into it with...strangers. Copying is part of the creative process. Many creatives start by emulating their influences. You grow out of it. Fanfic can be a part of that, or its own thing, or both. Lighten up.

I'm going to sub-skeet this because I don't have the strength or inclination to get into it with...strangers. Copying is part of the creative process. Many creatives start by emulating their influences. You grow out of it. Fanfic can be a part of that, or its own thing, or both. Lighten up.

I have never understood how ppl have the bandwidth to get this worked up about what someone else does in their free time by themselves for their own entertainment that is hurting nobody

and the entertainment of others, too. I mean, the fanfic community is huge, and honestly, has more readers than most best sellers

it's also ahistorical to think their faves didn't do this

My monster-in-law has made this a foundational part of her personality. Like, yes, that house's exterior decor isn't to your taste, we get that, but it's not even in your NEIGHBORHOOD and you aren't forced to look at it, so maybe stop ranting about it. Get a fucking hobby.

A perfectly acceptable conversation on the topic: "Ugh, that house is ugly." "Okay." - FIN -

Definitely, I started writing fanfic when I was a kid, about pretty much everything I loved on TV.

Nods. That said, in the past I was threatened with blacklisting by the spouse of a writer friend if I didn't stop writing fanfic. I was writing fanfic to get past a horrific block created by a toxic critique group. The threats made me cautious about that person's advice in the future.

I think it was time to leave that critique group.

Yeah, this was after I had left that critique group. This person also insisted that I had a better nonfiction voice than fiction...I later came to the conclusion (after speaking to mutual trusted friends) that said spouse feared I was competition for their spouse.

Oh that sounds very, very familiar. One must choose writing groups as carefully as one must choose friends.

Yep. That's why I don't participate in critique groups anymore. That one group really did it for me.

Me too. The woman who ran mine was quite a mean spirited person.

The sad thing about mine is that the organizer was perfectly nice...except his notions of what was good writing...did not involve fantasy. I know two other participants who had the same response. He was also scornful of selfpub. The three of us are successful selfpub writers.

Again, that all sounds awfully familiar. Mine had very, very fixed view on who was a good writer and the mere mention of someone who was outside of bracket got her back up.

As a kid who was raised Catholic, I wrote a bunch of Bible *fanfic. *Known to some as "blasphemy".

I wrote a lot of blasphemy.

*blasphemous high-five*

Some of my earliest writing was Doctor Who and Boba Fett fanfic. Plus an "original" sci-fi novel that cribbed from just about everything I'd been exposed to at the time.

I'd completely forgotten until you said this that I wrote some terrible E.E. Smith 'Lensman' fanfic in my early teens...

Anyone who read Lensmen could not help but be inspired to write fanfics in that world! Lensmen was Harry Potter for kid science fiction readers.

I pretty much started out in fanfic too (The Professionals if anyone's asking lol) and it was a great place to learn the art of writing with an audience who loved the characters. Gave me the confidence to move on to my own stuff.

Exactly this! Growing as a writer, skill wise, with a ready made audience and getting enough confidence to then put out your own original writing! My fanfics were V for Vendetta and Star Wars lol.

Oh, you came up by the same route then. That's wonderful. I didn't even know there was a V for Vendetta fandom which shows how long ago I left that world!!

I don't actually read fan fiction - I don't have time - but I do read some media tie-in novels, and if you don't consider that fan fiction, then you're fooling yourself!

A recent example was a Doctor Who novels that included a) why Liz Shaw left UNIT, b) what led up to the Brigadier's divorce from Kate's mother & c) how Mike Yates ended up as a Captain. It was pretty bad.

I'd absolutely use more fanfic tropes in my pro-fanfic if Big Finish let me.

Blake and Avon gets stranded on a snowy planet, but the real problem - there is only one bed!

Amen. The earliest fanfic I remember writing was a mashup of Star Trek, Galactica, Star Wars, and Space 1999 with a character from each stuck on a ship and working together to get back to their respective crews. I was in 2nd grade. Realizing I could do that was freeing. And delightful.

That sounds like FIRE!

Hell yeah.

im fairly sure my first ever attempt at writing was basically naruto fanfiction. i still have fragments of that draft. our voices evolve to tell our own stories.

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