An observation on comparative fanfictions...

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Warrl
Posts: 1723
Joined: Sat Jul 20, 2013 10:44 pm

An observation on comparative fanfictions...

Post by Warrl »

I've been thinking about fanfictions of different comics, and something occurred to me... differences in how the comics' canons are treated in the fanfics. (Note: I'm going to make sweeping statements about the different fan communities, with the proviso up front that occasional exceptions are likely.)

On Wapsi Square, the comic canon - as of when a fanfic is written - IS part of the fanfic canon. Comic-canon characters show up in the fanfics. The fanfics share and enlarge the setting of the comics, including specific locations. Also, the writers interlink their stories and often a single story will have multiple authors.

Cross-Time Cafe is similar, but the comic itself is sort of a fanfic mashup mostly populated with a mixture of canon characters (from several comics) and fan self-inserts, and has several artists most of whom are also both forum participants and characters in the comic.

On Freefall, the fanfics are clearly in the same world and are based on the comic's backstory, but are not the same planet, and rarely include or even mention canon characters. (Although the canon comic does contain a reference to a fanfic.) One writer per story.

(Forums for the latter two comics and several others are on the same forum site, and there's a separate forum for stories that aren't attached to any of the comics. In that forum it's pretty much one writer per universe.)

On TwoKinds, I don't recall seeing anything I even classify as fanfics. There are furry stories, some of them (like the comic) focusing on interactions between humans and furries, but clearly not in the same world. Others, most actually, are literally space opera - and the comic's setting is low-tech. And once again, one writer per universe.

And then El Goonish Shive looks to me like a world ripe for fanfic, but I don't recall seeing any long fiction stories at all in its forum. Same for Gunnerkrigg Court.

Any thoughts on explanations or significance?
FreeFlier
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Re: An observation on comparative fanfictions...

Post by FreeFlier »

I'd say part of it depends on the artist's interaction . . .

On CRFH, we had high involvement from the artist, Maritza Campos aka The Goddess, and we had enough fanfics to cause Herself to respond "Dear God, how many of them are there?!" once someone started compiling them into an index thread. (300-some at that time, IIRC.)

And we had all types of fanfiction and fanart-fiction . . . ones that sat within canon, giving a larger more complete/more explicit (not sexually explicit, the forum was PG-13, but more complete) version of what had happened off-screen, stories that happened outside of continuity as of the time they were written, things that happened in the past (a couple of those became canon because Herself liked them), butterfly fics, where a butterfly flaps its wings in Tokyo and changed things at their college in the US, extensions from canon at the point the story was started, alternate universe stories (the universe where they were all the opposite gender was popular), fanfics created to give a punchline for a bad joke . . . just about anything. It was a very active ficcing community.

No, I'm not going to explain Nipples of the Apocalypse except to note that the author was (very) drunk when he wrote and posted it. Image

--FreeFlier
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