I love the WUI concept, I admit it. But even as I giggle at the concept of that old arrest on Miami Vice charges, I need to ask, more seriously: what constitutes writing under the influence?
Here's what might be a useful example set. Back in the 80s, after the first ghastly Star Trek movie came out and Pocket Books acquired the right to publish tie-in novels, they bought and published a whole bunch of manuscripts written by pro sf writers who'd loved Star Trek as kids, and were delighted to have the chance to actually play in the universe for real. For the most part they weren't in fandom as we know it (or at least, they weren't to the best of my knowledge), and the various books they produced were produced in isolation from one another, so that various writers were exploring their own ideas of the Star Trek universe without a lot of input from anyone beyond the people who'd be giving input to writers working on non-tie-in novels (members of writing groups, editors, spouses, those kinds of people).
And yet, I'd have no hesitation about calling that set of Star Trek tie-ins fanfic. Professional and legal, to be sure, but none of them would work as a stand-alone sf novel in the ways they work when set against the Star Trek canon, so that as a formal and aesthetic matter they're interdependent with the source: you don't even need to take into account the fact that the writers were working out of love of that source, even if they weren't working from a community of fans or out of a fan community aesthetic tradition. But by your definition here, I gather they wouldn't be fan fiction? Or am I wrong about that?
And if you wouldn't consider them to be fan fiction, what about work by a writer who's a member of the LJ/DW-etc. online fan community, and who writes for a fandom that doesn't have a set of agreed-on ideas about their canon? Or who writes stuff that doesn't fall into the main categories that show up on label templates (no romance, no angst, no PWP, et cetera)? Is this even the sort of thing you mean by 'the influence,' or (as is more likely) am I entirely missing your concept?
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Date: 1 Jun 2010 03:11 am (UTC)Here's what might be a useful example set. Back in the 80s, after the first ghastly Star Trek movie came out and Pocket Books acquired the right to publish tie-in novels, they bought and published a whole bunch of manuscripts written by pro sf writers who'd loved Star Trek as kids, and were delighted to have the chance to actually play in the universe for real. For the most part they weren't in fandom as we know it (or at least, they weren't to the best of my knowledge), and the various books they produced were produced in isolation from one another, so that various writers were exploring their own ideas of the Star Trek universe without a lot of input from anyone beyond the people who'd be giving input to writers working on non-tie-in novels (members of writing groups, editors, spouses, those kinds of people).
And yet, I'd have no hesitation about calling that set of Star Trek tie-ins fanfic. Professional and legal, to be sure, but none of them would work as a stand-alone sf novel in the ways they work when set against the Star Trek canon, so that as a formal and aesthetic matter they're interdependent with the source: you don't even need to take into account the fact that the writers were working out of love of that source, even if they weren't working from a community of fans or out of a fan community aesthetic tradition. But by your definition here, I gather they wouldn't be fan fiction? Or am I wrong about that?
And if you wouldn't consider them to be fan fiction, what about work by a writer who's a member of the LJ/DW-etc. online fan community, and who writes for a fandom that doesn't have a set of agreed-on ideas about their canon? Or who writes stuff that doesn't fall into the main categories that show up on label templates (no romance, no angst, no PWP, et cetera)? Is this even the sort of thing you mean by 'the influence,' or (as is more likely) am I entirely missing your concept?