Your Children Are Not Yours

[Caesius]

For example (and probably a stupid one) a wide fanon thing with My Little Pony is that Princess Celestia is a Totalitarian Tyrant who does all sorts of terrible things. This is highly persistent in fanworks, and is even inserted into works that are otherwise not about her at all.

To be fair, that does make the premise significantly more interesting...

[Lawls]

"any suggestions as to which demographic I should provoke next?"

People of the Muslim faith the rage from them is always palpable

[TheHivemind]

Personally, I try to just avoid fan works for the most part (although clever kids will notice that I have fallen prey to the urge on several occasions). I would note, however, that every time I've written such a thing, I've been painfully aware of the fact that I am in essence taking a shortcut in order to get a story idea out of my head. 'Gee, wouldn't it be fun to write something like Chandler?' I think, and then I am too lazy to come up with characters so I just take a Chandleresque premise and shoehorn the poor bastards from Yamaku High into it (does that make it a KS/Chandler fanfic hybrid? Some kind of Mobius reacharound fanfic clusterfuck? I've no idea). Oddly enough the only fanfic I've written has been for this game which I have had a hand in writing in the first place.

I still consider it 'fanfic' though, because it's written outside the actual canon of the game in a magical world where Misha and Emi have hot lesbian makeouts. Or Hisao is a hard-boiled private eye stuck in a high schooler's world. In this sense, fanfic's actually been helpful, as it allowed me to play with a nagging idea while the writing of Emi's path was underway without potentially fucking up Emi's path. Certainly there was never going to be any kind of lesbian makeouts in Emi's path, but if the idea's stuck in the head it needs to be purged. So my fanfic at least is not good writing because it's just there to clear an idea from my head so I can get back to something more substantial.

As for having others create fanfics of KS, I don't tend to read it much anymore because there's just too damn much of it (and the high volume means there's a higher volume of utter rubbish). I am always, however, curious to see what the reaction of fans will be when they realize that the girls they've built up in their fanfics bear little or no resemblance to the girls in the finished product. Most curious indeed.

[Mirage_GSM]

It's actually a good thing you [Aura] don't read the fanfics, as I'm pretty sure you'd crush the dreams of many an aspiring author.

Which, of course, is A22's job.

I think it's usually SC who does that

[Leotrak]

It's actually a good thing you [Aura] don't read the fanfics, as I'm pretty sure you'd crush the dreams of many an aspiring author.

Which, of course, is A22's job.

I think it's usually SC who does that

It's possibly a shared responsibility

[U.T. Raptor]

I find this vaguely ironic, since our own Shimmie probably perpetuates as much fanon as anywhere else...

As I'm sure you well know, given you devs/artists are the only ones who can do anything on it other than post as an Anonymisha.

[valderman]

Nothing exists in a vacuum. Even if the original work is not physically changed (and in the valve example it in fact is), if people experience it differently as a result of fan works, they have been affected.

As previously stated, everything affects someone's experience of a given work, including their upbringing, their current mental state, the environment where the work is experienced, any environment where said someone has a single thought about the work, etc. If you want to play it that way, sure, fan works affect the original for anyone exposed to them.

Creating a fan work is not the same as running around forcing people to experience it. If I create and publish a fan work, I can hardly be held accountable if someone decides to view it and it then ruins their experience of the original work, can I? In Sweden, there is a particular cartoon that airs every christmas, and pretty much every Swedish family watches it. When I was in my early teens I found a sound-only gay porn spoof of that cartoon, something I found hilarious at the time. That completely ruined the original cartoon for me. However, the decision was completely mine to make; nobody forced me to listen to the spoof, especially not whoever created it. The creation or existence of the spoof didn't affect me, my decision to listen to it did.

[ElisaMasah]

The creation or existence of the spoof didn't affect me, my decision to listen to it did.

Without going into phylosophical stuff about Free Will are you aware that nowaday thing like meme and quotes exist? I frankly could live without being aware that some disgusting thing ... like Squad Broken exist but i keep stumbling on meme or quotes or other stuff just by browsing "Da Interneth" casually or reading unrelated work just beacause the author find fun making Shot Out.
Some grow so much that become the pure internet lingo ... so one can basically avoid to become aware of they existence without doing thing like ... stop using the internet ... pretty prtical indeed.

Hell, even here we ave "Gimme the Chocolate, Hisao!" ... and i'll glady like to lurk the shimmie without that thing keeping coming up even in innocent art.

Is not so easy avoid information in this day and age, unless obviously one want to live like an hermit on a colum.

[valderman]

The creation or existence of the spoof didn't affect me, my decision to listen to it did.

Without going into phylosophical stuff about Free Will are you aware that nowaday thing like meme and quotes exist?

So basically, if you get goatse'd, the fault lies with the goatse dude rather than whoever tricked you to click the link? If you get hit by a car, it's the fault of Honda/Audi/Volvo rather than the driver (or yours, for not taking care where you're walking?)

I frankly could live without being aware that some disgusting thing ... like Squad Broken exist but i keep stumbling on meme or quotes or other stuff just by browsing "Da Interneth" casually or reading unrelated work just beacause the author find fun making Shot Out.

I have no idea what you're talking about, which means that it's quite possible to spend a massive amount of time on the intertubes without encountering whatever whatever it is you're referring to.

Some grow so much that become the pure internet lingo ... so one can basically avoid to become aware of they existence without doing thing like ... stop using the internet ... pretty prtical indeed.

Even if that were true, which it's provably not, the author of a meme can't be held responsible for people retelling it. For fun, ask any "normal" Internet user about lolocats or some other ridiculously well-known meme; most will just give you a blank stare.

Hell, even here we ave "Gimme the Chocolate, Hisao!" ... and i'll glady like to lurk the shimmie without that thing keeping coming up even in innocent art.

And some artists would gladly draw it without people whining about it. The decision to look is yours alone; if it bothers you, don't.

[ElisaMasah]

Well you are both lucky ... I hope you keep it that way.
90% of fan made material are nothing more than garbage and filt, stinking garbage and filt. But hey who care is you fault you need to breathe?
And yes is more hard to roadkill someone without car or anything goin over a certain speed and this word is just that crapsack that this kind of thing start to make sense.

[valderman]

Well you are both lucky ... I hope you keep it that way.

Yeah, just like about 99.9% of the rest of all Internet users.

90% of fan made material are nothing more than garbage and filt, stinking garbage and filt.

Absolutely, just like 90% of anything that is created.

But hey who care is you fault you need to breathe?

Your analogy is stupid. You don't need to access websites that host "filt;" doing so is a conscious decision on your part and your own responsibility, ESPECIALLY since you seem to be highly aware of the presence of content that offends you.

And yes is more hard to roadkill someone without car or anything goin over a certain speed and this word is just that crapsack that this kind of thing start to make sense.

what is this i dont even

Assuming this sentence translates to "yes, car manufacturers are responsible for traffic deaths," then I'll gladly join your newly started crusade against oxygen, since research shows that oxygen is a major enabler of both serial killers and fan fiction writers.

[Darlat]

Assuming this sentence translates to "yes, car manufacturers are responsible for traffic deaths," then I'll gladly join your newly started crusade against oxygen, since research shows that oxygen is a major enabler of both serial killers and fan fiction writers.

Yes, let us go crusade against something that all living beings need to live! It will be a glorious battle! And afterwards we can brag about how we defeated oxygen... wait what?

[griffon8]

And don't get me started on the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide.

[G3n0c1de]

Yeah, it's kind of hard to read fanfiction if you don't click the link in the first place. Memes and other stuff may be a bit pervasive, but even if someone shoves fanfiction in your face, you still have to scan your eyes over the lines and read it.

[Guest]

As I said, define "fan work" for yourself. For me, a "fan work" is something that is result of admiration of the original, the fan phenomenon. For me, KS is not a fan work. Permissions also have nothing to do with it. We've given permission to some fans to use some parts of the KS IP in fan works, when they've asked. They still are fan works.

Sure it is. But the "fan phenomenon" is the key word there. KS is not aimed for fans of raita's original picture, and we don't share fanbase with that picture. In fact, the fanbase of that picture is probably close to zero. For me this is what makes the difference, for you it might be something else. [...]

I disagree with that definition of fan work.

It makes sense to me that KS would have a different fanbase than raita's drawing, but how important is that, really? I remember a rape fic I stumbled upon about Cthulhu and Slender Man (creepypasta) which was undoubtedly a "fan work." Does it share the same fanbase as the official Lovecraft mythos? I don't see how. Considering how humorous it tried to be, it couldn't have been aimed at a creepypasta fanbase either. It was still a fan work. Of course, this is based on one definition of fanbase. I'll try a different interpretation.

If a fanbase is attached to the characters, then it is possible that raita's pic does not have a fanbase (as you claim) because the characters are less than one dimensional, having only appeared once in a very static and minimalistic environment. How about we test this theory with an equally minimalistic picture, "The Scream" by Edvard Munch. (at least in terms of characterization) Two minutes of googling, and I was able to find a self-described fanfic of the painting. Can this work be said to be aimed for fans of the original painting? At a glance, the fic seems to be about gangsters, whereas wikipedia says the painting was of a sunset and the evoked emotions therefrom. A completely different demographic, yet it is described as a fanfic by the author.

Or how about (ugh cliche) the Zelda CDi? I'm sure there are many fanfics of it (possibly some which aren't porn), none of which are aimed at the Zelda CDi fanbase because it doesn't exist. But they still retain their fanfic label. I'm guessing admiration of the original work is not common among the fan works either.

I think that a fan work is not about admiration nor is it about fanbase. It is about the origin of the stories characters and/or world, which makes KS a fan work.

One final example. A story is written about an alien on earth. It is otherwise unremarkable and considered original. The author then reveals that the alien was a time lord. Is the story now a fan work?