An Argument on the Ethics of Fan Fiction and Characterization

(It's a long one; go pee now.)
So, I've rejoined the world of literary analysis through that scuffed, broken, and much ignored window in that literary bathroom known as "fan fiction."

Having caught up on my "Grey's Anatomy" it was slightly inevitable that I would return to my old 'shipping haunts to see what the still bitter fans had churned out. I come from the short lived shipper-dom of Callie Torres/Erica Hahn of "Grey's Anatomy" generally referred to as "callica" which is, altogether, not a bad name.

Not much has been produced that is of any notable quality save a few people who tend to always do solid work. Mostly the stuff out there seems to be from people who decide to force their own style and characterizations on characters that have already been created and solidified over the five seasons this show has existed.

I suppose I'm nitpicking but I feel if a character is not yours but you choose to utilize this character in your writings you have an obligation to the creator of the character to do some form of justice to the original characterization and style. If you are going to build using a base of Legos do not take selected Legos and then use them in conjunction with Polly Pockets. A Lego is a Lego. (I'm almost positive that analogy made far more sense in my mind than it did on the screen.)

That behavior annoys me. It annoys me but it does not annoy me nearly as much as people who do not do their homework. (Is it wrong to be angry at fanfic writers for not researching the characters and situations they are writing about?)

There was recently an introduction of a character with Asperger's Syndrome and someone included a segment from this character's point of view in a fic. I would not normally oppose this sort of thing but the writer in question showed a painful lack of understanding about this character and the particulars of her Asperger's and instead chose to write it as though the woman had a small tick like a stutter rather than a fundamental limitation of the understandings of social-emotional folkways and simple human pragmatics.

The character does not understand human emotion and has trouble recognizing and identifying emotions and has no concept of sensitivity to them but instead operates through complete logic and understands the world through strict inductive and deductive reasoning. It's the only real way she communicates but the fanfic author chose to approach her as someone who has actions driven by emotional connections and human understanding and empathy when that's just not accurate.

My point is that people should have more respect for the authors and creators from whom they so often borrow. It is not enough to credit the creator in a disclaimer. There needs to be a recognition that if these characters are not yours then they are not yours to alter at will and if they are altered then they aren't really the character that originally belonged to the creator you first credited but neither are they fully yours. Instead you end up with a literary chimera which is never good for anyone. It's almost as bad as alternate universe, original character, or slash.


I'm sure my arguments have huge holes in them and are very preachy and have no solid basis but after reading so many crap fanfics I feel a need to express how I really feel about these things.

Don't even get me started on fanfics about real people...