Can Fanfic Be Better? (Public Post)

[author_by_night]

I realized that I added a bunch of fandomy people... and I haven't talked about fandom all that much. (To be fair, I haven't posted much at all. It's
been a hectic last few weeks.) I do miss talking about fandom, so I'm going to get back to that. For now, here's a short post (for me) about a topic I've seen raised a few times...

Can fanfic be better than the source material?

I've seen this debate come up a lot lately, and I decided to weigh in on it, because it's an interesting topic  - even if I don't have a definitive answer or opinion myself.

I think that it's a tricky question because people who claim that fanfiction they read is better might actually be saying: "I prefer where the author took the characters" or "I prefer this ship."  But that's less of a true quality issue and more of a taste issue, something I think fandom frequently confuses. You may prefer how an author portrays the world the writer created, but that doesn't mean the writing itself is better. 

The other problem is that writing itself is subjective. I've hated books everyone around me loved. I've loved books people thought were terrible. I think I must be the only person who doesn't think the Hunger Games books were ruined by the Peeta/Gale/Katniss love triangle. (Particularly because the way I read it, 90% of the "love triangle" was all part of the act, even if Katniss did have feelings for Peeta.) That's coming from someone who actually greatly dislikes love triangles. My point is that I can certainly prefer a fanfic over a novel, movie or episode, I can prefer how a fic writer portrayed a ship, but that's ultimately my opinion.
 
(And yes, even though I generally ship canon, there are still ships I prefer in fanfic. In one case I DO think the writer dropped the ball big time, I think it's hard... not to think that, yet even there people have disagreed with me.)

I'm tempted to say that there are exceptions. Maybe there are; I've read some pretty terrible books and seen some pretty terrible movies. Surely someone's come up with something better. :P 

Speaking of asking and answering things, still willing to do a talk meme. Feel free to ask something fandom related, but you don't have to. :)

Comments

[adrianners]

I love your thoughts here! I've been sort of perplexed by this "Reblog if you've read fic better than published work" trend overall, same for "This fic is so much better than the canon!" I suspect it's all just the old "Is fanfic legitimate writing?" debate in a new hat. And that debate was annoying.

I lean toward "No, fanfic can't be better than its canon" on one level simply because it's an inherently unequal relationship: fanfiction depends on the source text for its existence and motivation. The fic that are "better" because they fixed things I didn't like would have no basis for comparison without the canon, which means that--outside of general writing chops and all their subjective criteria--we don't have ways to measure the quality of fic without talking about the canon. I can say "I like this better than canon," but would I like it the same if it had actually been what happened in canon, or do I only like it this much because I was disappointed?

Now here's the other level: What I love about transformative fandom is the ability to fill the gaps and ask "What if?" a million times, and those are often things that would have a negative impact on the source material. I mean, resolving the same scene five (plus one) different ways is an approach reserved for the artsiest of original fiction, but fandom has made it a must-have trope. Or, as a more serious example, getting the side characters' perspectives on plot events would probably kill a novel's pacing. The freedom to play doesn't make fic better, nor does its casual violation of origfic convention make it worse. With that in mind, I don't think quality comparisons (whatever "quality" even means) are a meaningful way to measure the worth of fanworks. We're doing our own transformative thing on a separate level from the original, whether it's to amplify what we loved, fix what we hated, or just make everybody kiss. Even/especially characters who should absolutely not kiss in canon.

[thenewbuzwuzz]

You both raise a lot of good points. Personally, I see no logical reason why fic couldn't sometimes be better, as far as stories can be compared at all.

Talk meme question: would you like to talk about your favorite "Harry Potter" character or characters and why you love them?

[rhoda_rants]

I guess it's a subjective question to the same extent ALL questions about taste are subjective. I like the point adrianners made about fanfic being dependent on the source material for its existence.......BUT I also read a lot of fic that based on rock stars or other celebrities, or that's so far into its own AU that the source material is barely recognizable in it. At that point, it's a fan cast of an original work. And also--kind of awesome, depending the author's skill and the subject matter, the second of which is always subjective.

But then you have actual, published works that began life as fanfic, and again it's barely recognizable unless you already KNOW it started life as a fanfic, and again everything depends on the author's skill. I think we can all agree that Fifty Shades is categorically WORSE than Twilight for example. But how does Marissa Meyers' Lunar Chronicles series compare to OG!Sailor Moon? I'd say they're at least on par.

So for "Can It?" I'd say--yeah, sure. It isn't often, but it can be. Some fans will actually grow to become better authors than the people they admire. Happens all the time in original fiction. So yeah, it *can* happen.

[wheatear]

I mean, there's no reason in theory that fanfiction couldn't be better than the source material. I'm not sure it's really a meaningful question? The quality of published material varies just as the quality of fanfiction varies, and it's also hard to compare because fanfiction is a different medium that for the most part is trying to achieve different things than the source material.

[yalumesse]

What defines "better"? Quality of writing is one aspect, but not the only one. I can think of a few published works where the original was sufficient but at least one fanfic was miles better in terms of objective quality of prose and narrative suspense.

But there's way more to "better" than that and most of it is subjective. I feel like Pern fanfics which address or re-write the glaring awful sexism from the original books are better than the original, but despite a fairly universal consensus that sexism = bad, that's still my opinion.

I mean, we can look at god level fanfic, trashcan fanfic, and average fanfic and make mostly objective determinations about them, and we can look at published original works of the same levels of quality, but there will still always be arguments with valid points that make it impossible to declare "IS BETTER!"

The only constant objective difference between fanfic and not-fanfic is that fic depends on readers having already consumed the source material, whereas original doesn't. So I'd rephrase your question as, "Can a derivitive work be better than its source material?"

I'd consider that the same as "Can a sequal be better than the original?" since they are derivative works even when by the same author (supposedly, with movies in particular it's often entirely new writers). And I personally think the answer is yes - but, again, is subjective.