Fan fiction and You.

[Farseer]

Thanks 'thul but I'd already clicked out of the window I was typing in and went to view the other one which I'd opened so that I could view your post as soon as I'd done mine!

Anyhow, cooking dinner so the gist of it was:

While I strongly stated "I hate fan fic" (which probably should be written as 'fanfic' but, anyway!), it is a very interesting topic for discussion.

I role-played as a child, as children do, and my own children have also role-played everything from Cookie Monster, Monkey Magic, Steve Irwin, Harry Potter and beyond. Playing as Obi-Wan or Luke and destroying Darth Vader with your stick-cum-lightsaber could be considered as a form of fan fiction, in actions if not text. It didn't happen in the movie like that but it's what you would like to have happened, or the direction in which your role-plying has taken the storyline.

A school student is often required to offer an opinion of a novel's ending and sometimes even hand in an assignment with an 'alternate ending'.

Many online, computer and gaming console-based games encourage fan fic thinking and actions well beyond the parameters of the original storyline or plot of a book, game or movie. Gamers are able to choose their activity, location, weapons etc as well as change elements of the already-created world and change features of already-created characters.

I'm not sure if it's an inaccurate assumption or not but most fan fiction seems to flow from the pens of young people (as in people who are younger than I!) and most would not consider that what they do is wrong, let alone dapples in theft (as I believe fan fiction is)...it is just part of the creative process, a progression from what they have been doing their whole lives and/or a way to process the characters, plots and worlds they are introduced to via a variety of media.

Could most fan fiction (the more innocent ones at least) simply be "the next step" up from role-playing...an avenue for teenager or young adult role-play that uses words rather than the actions of younger children in play?

Again, it's interesting...