How much can you change and still remain fanfic, though?
Another *very* debatable question. Fanfiction isn't just text. It has a visual baggage. You write "Buffy" and your reader will mentally see Sarah Michelle Gellar without further descriptions of her eyes, lips and hair. It's like you imagine Buffyverse actors playing together in some movie.
If the authors and their readers both agree that their AU stories are fanfiction and are happy with such definition, I think it's their own niche with their own rules. OTOH, the lines are very blurred here. I know that some canon-respecting ficriters later re-wrote their Buffyverse fics into original fiction.
Oh, and are you sure Homer wasn't a professional? Not in the sense of getting paid a salary, of course, but if he supported himself by reciting his poems and receiving food and money in return - or was maintained by a patron - then he was a professional poet. The only alternative would be that he was an independently wealthy landowner or similar who made up poetry as a hobby.
You've got a point. Homer isn't a good example. But I only wanted to say that writing became a profession only - when? - three? four centuries ago? Medieval monks who wrote their treatises, aristocrats who composed plays for their home theaters, knights who wrote poetry to impress their beloved - they did it for a very limited (often target) audience and they didn't get paid.
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Date: 2007-05-24 06:09 pm (UTC)Another *very* debatable question. Fanfiction isn't just text. It has a visual baggage. You write "Buffy" and your reader will mentally see Sarah Michelle Gellar without further descriptions of her eyes, lips and hair. It's like you imagine Buffyverse actors playing together in some movie.
If the authors and their readers both agree that their AU stories are fanfiction and are happy with such definition, I think it's their own niche with their own rules. OTOH, the lines are very blurred here. I know that some canon-respecting ficriters later re-wrote their Buffyverse fics into original fiction.
Oh, and are you sure Homer wasn't a professional? Not in the sense of getting paid a salary, of course, but if he supported himself by reciting his poems and receiving food and money in return - or was maintained by a patron - then he was a professional poet. The only alternative would be that he was an independently wealthy landowner or similar who made up poetry as a hobby.
You've got a point. Homer isn't a good example. But I only wanted to say that writing became a profession only - when? - three? four centuries ago? Medieval monks who wrote their treatises, aristocrats who composed plays for their home theaters, knights who wrote poetry to impress their beloved - they did it for a very limited (often target) audience and they didn't get paid.