Transformative Works

Hello everyone, and welcome to my English blog. Today, we are talking about...

Fan fiction. Now that's a sentence I never thought I'd write.

First, let’s define fan fiction. Every piece of fiction could be thought of as a fan fiction of real life, so for this blog post, I'm defining fan fiction as unofficial works derived from pre-existing published pieces of fictional media. Some people think of this as copyright infringement, but others welcome it. In general, however, it doesn't have the best reputation. It often conjures images of bored fangirls who have nothing better to do than write slash fics of their favorite male characters. However, this view is overly reductive and disregards the real potential fan fiction has.

Some people think of fan fiction negatively because it's not original. 

Well, nothing is original. Every story ever written is derivative-

Not that kind of derivative, fortunately (or maybe unfortunately if you love calculus). In this case, derivative just means that it comes from something else, whether that's a real-life story, either your own or someone else's, or another fictional work. It's like we said in class: nothing is truly original, but that doesn't have to be a bad thing. It could even be argued that it's good; if you write a story that is completely unrelated to anything that exists, it's not going to be meaningful to anyone. If it were possible for such a thing to exist, it would be a confusing incomprehensible mess with no impact of any sort.

A story doesn't have to be original to be good. Romeo and Juliet wasn't, and is anyone arguing that Shakespeare was an unoriginal plagiarist? If so, it's certainly not the majority opinion.

Some people argue that it's too sexual, but that problem is by no means exclusive to fan fiction. How many times have you read a story that had an unnecessary romance plot that served no narrative purpose? For me, that number is far too high to count. The oversaturation of romance, especially unrealistic idealized romance, in media is ubiquitous, and its presence in fan fiction is only a symptom of this problem.

Fan fiction is often thought of as inferior to published works, but most of everything created is of low quality, fan fics not excluded. Sure, many of them might be outright terrible, but that doesn't erase the existence of the good ones, sometimes to the point that fans proclaim it better than canon. I'd read a good fan fiction, or even a bad one, over The Book Jumper any day.

Despite its reputation, the benefits of fan fiction should not be overlooked. It's helped people become better writers, been a source of useful feedback, and even taught tolerance. 

So don't dismiss fan fiction as solely the work of inexperienced amateurs. See it for what it really is: a valuable outlet for creativity, just like any other fictional work.

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