Feb 23 2009
If Arthurian legend had fan-fiction…
- The hero would definitely be American. And possibly a woman, but nevertheless the most acclaimed knight of all time.
- The hero would find the Holy Grail halfway through the story. Just because.
- The official currency at King Arthur’s court will be gold pieces, and everyone will wear plate mail. With leather pants.
- Neither King Arthur nor Lancelot would mind if this knight started dating Guinevere. After all, the hero is universally acknowledged to be the noblest and sexiest knight in all the land, so of course he should have the noblest and sexiest woman in all the land. Duh.
- After the hero effortlessly wins Guinevere’s heart, she never even thinks of pining for anyone else (even though she, umm, cheated on Arthur with Lancelot).
- The hero would be of ridiculously high birth, probably the heretofore-forgotten eldest son of King Arthur. And recently returned from the heretofore-forgotten American Crusade. God save the Queen, indeed.
- If male, the hero is about 50% likely to be a furry. This will not make it any less likely that he gets together with Guinevere.
- Nobody will starve, get dysentery, get gangrene from a minor wound, or die of battle exhaustion. That would be, like, so medieval!
- The hero may have a bizarre sexual fetish, like wanting to have sex while on fire. Fortunately, he will discover that everyone else has the same fetish.
- Other characters will not even try to apply prevailing social norms (particularly related to gender roles and sex) to the main character. After all, he’s American. Duh!
- The hero probably has a dragon. Depending on #7, he may be a dragon.
- Any sort of religiosity will be notably absent, including the Holy Grail.
- Gallahad, the Green Knight, and a squire dressed as an ocelot are fairly likely to make you wish the knighthood took its don’t ask, don’t tell policy more seriously.
It’s pretty true that most fan-fictions ignore geography, sociality, and decent character concept. I admit that fanfics are usually dry and to heavy on the authors opinions and interests. I understand that you want to put your own artistic spin on a story, that’s the point. But when the Superman is a chronic meth addict who slept with almost every superheroine, that’s taking it a little far.
It’s pretty funny. Fanfiction usually ignores common writing norms. Which would mean that it’s sort of anti-writing. Haha.
I’m glad you wrote this. The next time I do some fanfiction, I’ll try to be more conscious of common writing practices.
I yield to no one in my Americanness, but I think it’s widely known that the insertion of an American character into a story that’s set entirely in Britain or Japan is a huge red-flag.
Fanfic based on Arthurian legend would probably suck mainly because the author failed at research.
That and the furries. Blergh.
Um… Arthurian legends were fanfic.
What do you think Mists of Avalon, and Camelot 3000, and the six thousand other modern retellings of Arthurian legend are, if not fanfic?
Very true, t3knomanser. However, as far as I can tell, the creation of Arthurian stories in the middle ages does not seem to have led to many of the problems commonly seen in modern fan-fiction.
As a rule, I think money tends to guarantee a certain level of quality. So, for example, Sherlock Holmes stories are still being written (which is essentially fan-fiction for money), but they tend to be at least decent. The financial motive is critical. The author has a financial motive to write well and has professional editors to help him, for example. Also, he needs to write up to the expectations of his audience; paying readers tend to expect more. In contrast, I don’t think the typical fan-fiction writer has any incentive to put in the insane amount of work and rewriting that are usually necessary to make a story readable.
Most importantly, money tends to entail a selection process. As far as I know, fan-fiction sites don’t have quality controls. Publisher’s assistants at top publishers pass along only about 5 out of every 1000 manuscripts up the chain and reject the rest. Although bad books sometimes slip through anyway, the books that survive this harrowing process tend to be at least passable. On a fan-fiction site, you’re pretty much subjected to the work of all 1000 authors and have to see how bad the bottom 500 are. There may be some gems out there, but ultimately I think the authors that are skilled enough to write excellent fan-fiction probably want to write for money instead.
This is hilarious because I actually have a friend writing Arthurian fan fiction. And it doesn’t suck. Actually, Arthur is a girl.
I think her name is Arthuria or something, can’t remember. Anyway, it does sound like he did his research and knows the language and everything. I like his version of the story (he hasn’t gotten very far, but still). It also has some other major differences and it’s a fascinating story.
I think everything on that list could apply to just about all fantasy fan-fic.
Yeah, Stefan. #14 is more noticeable in Arthurian legend, though.
Not all fan-fic writers are insane. You’re stereotyping.
MOST are, but I wouldn’t be caught dead reading, let alone writing the monstrosity you described.
I think it’s more of an issue of quality control than sanity. If fan-fiction sites weeded out the worst 75% of submissions, the quality of fan-fiction would rise dramatically. (If that sounds draconian, keep in mind that professional publishers tend to reject more than 99% of unsolicited manuscripts).
There’s also the eternal allure of money. There are probably some excellent fan-fiction writers out there, but they’re probably good enough to write professionally. Given a choice between writing fan-fiction for free or writing professionally for money, I think most authors would go pro. I expect that fan-fiction communities tend to be similar to minor-league baseball teams: their best members quit because they have the talent to make more money elsewhere.
I think that copyright laws pretty much keep the money out, which is bad for fan-fiction. For example, Youtube encourages quality by offering its most popular movie-makers a share of the ad revenues. But fan-fiction sites can’t do that because the author would be profiting from copyrighted material that he doesn’t have the rights to.
Not ALL fanfic writers are insane!
*turns to next reviewer*
Do I seem crazy to you?
- Wings the Slightly-Pissed
lol Nice article, but I think the title is a little misleading. Fanfics don’t suck; a good portion of the writers are the ones to blame, not the medium itself.
Why, that’s almost like saying comics suck, due to the facts that the heroes are mostly male, white, and always win.
And what about taste? What if you (bear with me, trying to make a point) like furries? Or could care less about religious ideology? Is someone trying to be elitist?
And on the topic of elitism; since the topic of money is a no-no, what about giving stellar fanfictionists (chosen by the “Grand Council of Fictional Fiction”) the sole ability and responsibility to give ranks on others’ works? No one would be banned from X site, but the ones that were given higher rankings could get more site publicity, exposure, and such… just a thought…
Most submissions in any medium (comic books, novels, etc.) are bad, like the many novel manuscripts that are instantly rejected because they have spelling mistakes in the first sentence or whatever. The difference between fan-fiction and professional media is that only fan-fiction floods readers with truly awful ones. Professional publishers have at least cursory selection processes that weed out the worst of the worst.
I think the use of the best authors as the main judges is a nice twist, but that could get very cliquish. For example, my high school had a literary magazine that was loaded up with bizarre poems like “Guyana is a Porcelain Bowl” because that’s what the 5 judges liked the most. There’s always a bit of pandering to what publishers want to see, but I think that professional publishers generally do a much better job of printing decent stories with fairly broad appeal.