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Sadly, this won't address my least favorite rant elements:
But, well. One thing at a time.

Good Reasons for a Professional Fiction Writer to Fear Fan Fiction








I'll just read some fan fiction instead.
feanna: The cover of an old German children's book I inherited from my mother (Default)

[personal profile] feanna 2010-05-10 01:44 am (UTC)(link)
You make good points about what "injuries" writers might actually suffer through fanfiction. I can't say that I'd actually feel sorry for them though, because while I can understand these points and might even have bought into them before I found fandom, after spending this much time around here, those points sound a lot like whining to me (no matter how real they are).
In all areas of life it continues to boggle me how many behaviours are accepted in adults that any kindergartener would know are things that are "bad". We teach kids to share and not to hit each other and to be nice and lots of other stuff and then they grow up and somehow this becomes acceptable again.

Also, I think that fandom and the ways we interact in fandom give just as much to the authors as the "old/professional" ways, only in other ways. And there are pro authors who have figured this out, but many just seem (like you said) bad at the internetz.

Also, and this is just one example that I came across again today:
Thinking of characters as "real"(in a certain way) is, I think, a valid philosophical standpoint.
Then there is this certain pro-author who insists that her characters are totally real and totally exist inside herself and nobody else can ever really understand them
and then there is syne, whose characters talk to her and then she encourages other people to talk to them too and there's a whole verse and comm about these people that she created and she leaves comments at other peoples fics about how they totally got it right.
You may now guess which way of thinking I find potentially more rewarding...
(To make this clear, I find the idea of characters existing in no way outside of the author and containing only and nothing more than parts of this author incredibly limiting. Empathy does not equal identity.)
branewurms: (Default)

[personal profile] branewurms 2010-05-10 03:46 am (UTC)(link)

IA. If these characters are "real" in some way, then not only does it not seem logical that only you could know them, it seems like it would be undesirable and isolating if only you could know them.

[personal profile] feanna 2010-05-10 11:54 am (UTC)(link)
Yeah, and kind of narcissistic and mentally problematic on the part of the author. Here's the meta about that (by Cate, always awesome!) in case you care
branewurms: (Default)

[personal profile] branewurms 2010-05-11 01:37 am (UTC)(link)
Oh. Oh wow. That makes all sorts of no sense in so many ways I can't even begin to count them. The thought that surfaces above the rest though is pretty much summed up in the first comment to that post - like, wait, if they're "real" in the sense that you say, aren't you doing horrible things to them to begin with? And if they're you, doesn't that make you your own victim and your own assailant? Just, WHAT???

I have no problems with the belief that characters are in some way "real" (I even entertain this to some degree), but that is just crazypants, that right there is.