Poll: What is the artistic status of fanfiction?

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Batou667

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What is the artistic status of fanfiction?
A sweeping generalisation, but most fanfiction is up there with 12-year old Deviantartists' attempts at original Sonic-universe characters or Dragonball Z/Pokemon crossover characters. To be precise: drivel.
 

Batou667

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CleverCover said:
Chefodeath said:
CleverCover said:
It's art.

Anything can be art, it just depends on how good you personally think it is.

If it makes me cry, want to hug someone, take a step back and think, it's art.
Your definition is far to broad. My dog dieing makes me want to cry, my girlfriend laughing makes me want to hug someone, terrorist attacks make me want to step back and think. Are these art?
My first thought was, "is this a scene for a play?"

Second thought. More serious. No I don't think that's art, but I'm pretty sure someone somewhere can see that as art.

Okay, I'll try and change it for you. If it's a medium of expression designed to move me emotionally, and the medium manages to do that, I would call it art.
My definition of art is something along the lines of "An example of intentional craft aesthetically designed for the primary purpose of evoking an emotional response".

The word intentional is there to stop idiots (not a dig at anyone on this thread) claiming that a sunset is art. I also don't think that something should count as art unless it has a degree of craftmanship to it - so something like a pot of paint spilled onto a canvas shouldn't be art. Under this definition even photography shouldn't be considered true art, as all you do is point and click until you get lucky - although I realise many people would disagree with this.
 

CrazyGirl17

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...I write fanfiction my self, but have been on hiatus for a while to hone my skills. I'm not the best writer out there, but I'm trying to improve, dammit!

That being said, there is really good fanfiction out there... you just have to look.
 

ThunderCavalier

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... So? Fanfiction and fanworks in general are sometimes completely awesome and should be supported. I refer to Touhou and frankly ANYTHING RELATED TO IT as justification for why fanmade works are awesome.

But even if we're just talking about Fanfiction alone, there are some well-written works. Granted, Fanfiction.net seems made to directly appeal to the idiots that love gay fanfiction pairings, stupid self-insertion stuff, and whatnot and whatnot, but I've seen some great works of literature in fanfiction form, and sometimes some of these things are just plain fun. I've seen some nice crossover work in fanfiction form, and to go back to fanmade work, I would like to refer to Haloid and Dead Fantasy for how to make an awesome crossover.

And, as a bit of a fanfiction writer myself, I take offense to the generalization that we all obsess over self-insertion or gay pairings. Some of us have a brain, thank you very much.
 

Terminate421

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None, usually it's plaigarism with romance somehow wrenched in between two people who show no interest in each other anyway.
 

Lunar Shadow

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theheroofaction said:
Chefodeath said:
Dante was blatantly copying from Catholic mythology.
Actually, if you look, you'll find that catholic mythology copies more from dante than the other way around.
Anyway, back on topic.

Fanfiction as it is defined today tends to be kinda shitty, especially that of the "self-insertion" variety, and double-especially for slash fiction.

Still though, many good works have been made that can technically fit under that label.
technically is the word of choice here
Suprsingly there actually is rather good slash out there. Egg Belly(A Mahou Sensei Negima fic) and Misfiled Dreams (a Misfile fic) Thought MD only sorta counts, as the focus of the original comic is the relationship

Edit: Want to clarify that while these fics have somewhat graphic sex scenes, they also have amazingly well written character development and plot. Also I have to plug Shinji and Warhammer 40K cause it is fucking awesome.
 

Zantos

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It can be art, as it can be emotive and entertaining. Sometimes taking an aspect of someone's work and adding new elements to it can be difficult, but yield fantastic results and maybe even be incorporated into canon.

It can be, at least, if done well. I fully accept that I will never get the hours of my life back I spent reading My Immortal (doesn't matter, had sex) and will probably slap that girl if I ever meet her in real life, but all forms of art have their crap, it's just easier to proliferate it with the internet than when people were painting rubbish in their workshops in renaissance Europe. Though the internet has yielded some crap paintings too.
 

repeating integers

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I'd say it can be, but not to the extent of original works. Some fanfiction is utterly brilliant though (see Mass Effect: Interregnum and Halo: The Enemy Of My Enemy).