Monday, March 20, 2006
"Resolved: That...."
I decided to compare and contrast two assertions regarding fanfiction by two good writers. One you know, and one you don't know, but you can find him on The Infamous Brad .
The first person is Kara Wild. She writes, in her DVDaria Blog entry of March 19th that:
I understand all of these sentiments, but I can't tolerate them, especially the third one. Fanfiction can be enjoyable, but its role has been to fill in the gaps left by the show, not act as a substitute for the show. Viewed alongside the actual series, fanfiction can be fascinating in its character studies and multiple "what ifs?", but without the availability of the series, a lot of fanfiction just doesn't hold up. To act as though fanfiction is a perfectly adequate substitute for the real show strikes me as irresponsible. Fanfiction should be tiding us over until we get the real series on DVD, not making us blase about whether or not the real series ever comes out.
However, Brad Hicks writes the following on March 20th -- the discussion concerns the difficulty of writing and if Alan Moore truly deserves the praise he's been given:
Not all writers get shat upon equally. Comic book writers, as Alan Moore accurately complains, get shat upon more. There's a reason for that, and that's that what they do is, yes, really is, that easy. When you consider how much of what Alan Moore has done is based entirely on other people's characters and simply continuing inherited story lines, jesus, I'll bet at least two hundred of you could (for example) have done as good a job as he did on "Swamp Thing", and I have no doubt whatsoever that any ten out of fifty random fanfic writers could have churned out fan-fic involving the same characters as "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" and done a better job of it than he did. (emphasis mine - CG)
The topic for debate:
"Resolved: That the best "Daria" fanfiction writers are at least as good, if not better, than the people who wrote the "Daria" episodes. If circumstances were changed, these fanfiction writers could have done at least as well as Bernstein, Nicoll and company".
If you leave a comment, state whether you are taking the positive position (agreement) or negative position (disagreement).
# posted by James @ 1:35 PM 
