In Defense of Fanfiction
Getting beyond a weird bias
The other day I talked with someone online who insisted that fanfiction is worse than other fiction. To be clear, this person was not simply arguing that the average fanfiction is worse than the average original story. This person insisted that fanfiction (stories written by fans about characters that those fans don’t own) inherently makes for worse stories.
I see it as an odd form of straight-out prejudice. We know it’s wrong to judge a person by where he or she came from, to assume a person has a certain amount of intelligence because he or she came from a certain part of the country. A story is not a person, but the comparison holds for the same important axes.
Stories should be judged by their quality, not their origin.
This bias also insults writers, to say that one particular set of restrictions cannot possibly result in quality literature. All writers work under restrictions. I think we all agree that there are “good” Westerns, and “good” elves-and-dwarves fantasy.
(I use quotes around “good” and “bad“ because these are highly subjective terms. They do a poor job at communicating anything concrete beyond their users’ personal taste. But getting into that argument here strays from the message.)
Why this bigotry against fanfiction? We’ve gotten past it with science fiction, pulp, and Tolkien-derived fantasy. Why not fanfiction?
