Then I started reading it. What can I say? I read a homophobic rant against gay hobbit porn and had to check it out. The story was fun and I confess, I enjoyed it. I looked for more and found… oh, god. My eyes….

Finally, although I didn’t consider consider myself a writer at the time, I rolled up my sleeves to write. “Look, kids, this is how it’s done.”

The internet audience for fanfiction has been good to me. After a couple of duds, I learned to write a good hook, sliced my stultifying prose, and banked 2,000 happy comments in a few months and about five hundred regular readers. A satisfying hobby.

I learned that if you’re even a *decent* writer, the hunger for more fanfic is bottomless. Enthusiastic fans emailed for more, more, more. Editors — college professors! Who were published! — volunteered their services. Little “rec lists” websites anthologized links to my stories and gave critical but largely positive reviews.

Add to that the instant gratification factor. Like blogging, fanfiction gets a response within a half hour, if not sooner.

Compare this to my creative writing classes where “genre” sci-fi stories were sneered at (if they were even allowed). Undergrad peer reviewers unwillingly read and coughed up critiques for a grade. Professors were helpful and encouraging, but stretched thin.

In writing groups, a mystery writer would critique a war story, or a fantasy writer would find herself critiquing a novel about sports, and there seemed little genuine interest in each other’s work.

Now there’s nothing like seeing my work in print, and so far I’m one for one in getting my short stories published, but yes, there is plenty to attract and keep the fanfiction writer.

My understanding is that OTW is the Fan Archive project created last summer in reaction to FanLib’s skeevy attempt to profit off of fanfiction, and fears that FanLib would provoke an inevitable copyright battle.

Even some fans who don’t read fanfiction or who otherwise support your stance are turned off by that kind of pretension. It’s not that they’re taking their balls and going home, it’s that they — quite justly — feel that if you’re too good for them, you’re too good for their money.

I’m sure your parent(s) used to tell you that you can’t have your cake and eat it, too. It’s still true. If you want fans, you’re going to have to live with the fact that they are not going to be good little passive corporate consumers. A simple, “I do not approve of fanfiction and insist that no fanfiction of my work be written” and leaving it at that is usually enough to halt most fanfiction authors without sending out the message that you think them dirty commoners inferior to your work. It’s when you start going on these crusades of OUTRAGE against the Great Evils of Fanfiction that fans in general — not just fanfiction authors and supports — get the message that you and your work are too good for them.

Yes, I know it’s unfair that people judge an artist’s work partially on whether or not they can stomach that artist’s views or flaws. But life is unfair. An artist who can’t adapt and handle that reality is better off quitting the field altogether.

a mag7/sentinel crossover led me to buy the Magnificent 7 Tv Series Dvds – *and* i’ll be buying the movies, both the westerns, and the Seven Samurai, and take-offs of same. (one of the things that fascinates me about mag7 is how this particular team has a sense of timelessness about it, and can move from time to time and place to place without the inner dynamics being unduly screwed up.)

House, MD – would not even have bothered if i hadn’t read a highlander crossover.

buffy the vampire slayer, because of a buffy/ stargate crossover that concentrated on xander, not spike, buffy, or angel.

for those keeping count, now you have at least 2 people to add to your data points, with 4 different original properties that were positively affected by fanfic.

-boogieshoes (who can’t quite believe that this thread is *still* going on…)

I was not involved in fanfic culture when I read my first Harry Potter slash. I’d been attending sci-fi conventions for years, and knew of the existence of fanfic, but hadn’t run across any real amount of it–a friend had shared a couple of Blake’s 7 zines with me, but it didn’t click.

Someone posted part 1 of an explicit Harry/Snape story in which Voldemort won the war and Harry was Snape’ sex-slave, to an email list which had nothing to do with fandom. They were soundly reviled for (1) kiddie porn (which it was not) and (2) being hideously off-topic (which it was, but they also provided warnings saying so, and it was no more off-topic than the political posts that came around occasionally).

I read the story. I liked the story.

I read the Harry Potter books because I liked that story. I bought all 7 books, including 5 in UK editions, and the first four movies on DVD, and one of the video games, and a few of the official Harry Potter candy things. Have paid to go to the theatre to see every movie… and I attend about three movies a year in the theatre. Dragged husband to movies with me.

That’s several hundred dollars that wouldn’t have gone toward HP merchandise without explicit slashfic. (I forget if Harry was underage in the story; it hardly seemed to matter.)

Of course, you’ll probably insist that I was not “not immersed in fan culture,” or that I am not “the average fan” or that since Harry was probably at least 16 in the story, it didn’t count. I’m sure you’ll stagger the statistics until they say what you want them to.

I’ll agree that the number of people who decide to read Harry Potter after first reading 13-year-old Harry being Lupin’s catamite is small. Of course, such stories are both rare and hard to find… it’s hard to imagine such a thing being someone’s first exposure to HP fanfic.

Fanfic, however, is rarely anyone’s first exposure to a fandom. Filk sometimes is–which is covered by the same laws. I can’t count how many books I’ve bought and read because I heard a filksong about them first.

I don’t read books because of book reviews. Reviewers are paid to write them, and exhorted to find something positive to say about them.

However, knowing a book inspired someone enough to write a song that sticks in my head, tells me it’s got something. Knowing a tv series has inspired two hundred new stories, tells me it’s intriguing at the very least. Knowing it’s inspired these in people who don’t get paid for their work tells me it’s much more compelling than any paid book review could indicate.

Because I think that’s really the only statement that any of us can make with authority.

Do you have any evidence of this ever occurring, Sidebar? Even anecdotal? The scenario you have presented is entirely hypothetical, and I find it rather unlikely. I believe that fanfic, vids, filks, etc. have virtually no impact on the larger audience, as the members of that audience don’t even know they exist. These fan-works do have an impact on the people immersed in fandom, though, feeding the flames of their enthusiasm and making them feel more connected to and invested in the original works around which the fandom is formed. Personally, this year alone I have purchased two television series on DVD in which I only became interested because of the fanfiction written about them. The fanfic I read is slash, but the differences in character-motivation and -behavior portrayed in fic in no way made me disregard the portrayals on the shows.

Fan fiction also hurts the sale of books, hurts the sale of DVDs. Intellectual Property holders should have the right to control their marketing strategies and have the right to refuse marketing and intellectual property confusion with fan created products. I refuse to believe, until I see a study that proves otherwise, that the average fan not immersed in fan culture, would be more willing to buy Harry Potter books and Harry Potter DVDs as a result of reading and viewing sexually explicit fanworks featuring the characters as minors. I believe that the negative offset for purchasing, should those works be learned of by a wider audience, would be out weighted by positive buying by members of the fan fiction community affiliated with such fan products.