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The Fictional World and You

An Opinionated Thought Regarding Fan Fiction and Source Fandom

By Alex LeBlancPublished 6 years ago 3 min read
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Not my picture, I own nothing from it.

So as a forward warning, this essay is highly opinionated and based loosely on facts or quotes. In other words, this article does not even qualify for a half-ass source document for a liberal arts college essay. But this is a place where I hope to raise some thoughts and stir the thinking pot: Fan Fiction and how it should be used.Okay, so we all must have had some interaction regarding Fan Fiction works, whether they be good or bad. Speaking from my participation in a website known as Figment (a free-to-write site where aspiring writers come to start stories and share with a community of avid readers, writers, and dreamers) and needless to say, Fan Fiction is rampant in that website: fandoms from medieval RPG stories that share similar concepts to Game of Thrones to complete rip-offs of Doctor Who only with love interest twists (I'll leave that to your imagination. Just please don't share them; there could be children watching). Now it is not a wrong assumption to claim that this is what Fan Fiction is based off of; taking someone else's work and either making an alternate universe where difference events and outcomes happened is always an interesting concept to pondering (after all, that's what the Injustice comic book series is all about). But there is something dangerous about that kind of thinking; at least it was a pattern I have noticed while active in the Figment community. When it came to the Fan Fiction stories, many were just cardboard cut-outs of what happened in the show or followed the story-line of a character to the letter (save for a name or gender change). Now it is clear that it just a free-writing community and you are entitled to write whatever you please, but it does raise a question. "Can a writer build a series off of the world created by other writers?" For example, the Star Wars universe is MASSIVE! I mean, it's larger then anything else since the ships can literally jump to other galaxies in a manner of minutes or hours. And the Empire is massively large as well since they can clone soldiers and pump them out like cars in a factory. But if the Rebellion or the Resistance (hell, even the Galactic senate depending on what era you are more inclined toward) had to have stretched across the same scale and may be smaller in numbers does not mean that they are still present. Point is, there is possibility for stories that even the creators cannot keep up with or do not even think about.Now, yes there is such a thing as "stealing copyrighted work" and I am sure that there are laws out there that protects people's work from getting stolen, and yet Fan fiction is still getting put out there. Let me be clear: I am not trying to get people to starting dissing Fan Fiction; I myself would love to read some if it matches the fandom and the story is good. What I'm trying to get at is: is it a good idea to write stories based off of the worlds that are created by other stories even if there is no direct connection to the source material? Granted, Robert Kirkman and Jay Bonansinga made a story regarding a group of survivors who had to live under the rule of the Governor in their book Road to Woodbury, but that seemed to have the original author involved in the creation of the story. But what if someone was to rebuild a lost series and bring it back into the modern spotlight? Not reuse the original characters but use the same rules built in the universe? Is it a good idea or a lost cause?

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