China: Harry Potter Fanfic Novels
We now see a continuum of fanfic. In English-speaking countries, where “fan fiction” as a genre was born*, fanfic is more or less underground and online. In Japan, fanfic in the form of doujinshi are quasi-official and sold openly at places like Comiket; I understand that some mangaka have even written doujinshi about their own characters, because they wanted to tell stories about their characters that their publishers rejected. And in China, fanfic in the form of these knockoff novels is being openly published and sold.
I speculated about how I might feel if someone took my characters and began writing about them without my knowledge or permission. I have to say that I don’t feel any strong aversion to the thought at the short story/art/doujinshi level, but that I start to bridle when I imagine unlicensed novels, movies, video games, etc. I guess it’s the difference between having fun and freeloading. Fanfic at its purest is a type of homage; but when people begin making money off of it, it seems more like a crime, at least to me. But my feelings on the matter are a little tangled, and I haven’t sorted them out thoroughly yet (for example, I think that knockoff novels in English would annoy me more than knockoff novels in Chinese, and I’m not sure why. Is it some kind of subconscious racism, such that I feel like what happens in China isn’t as relevant to me?).
(* I wrote that in the awareness that the roots of fanfic can be traced back to oral traditions in which storytellers would take a popular folk hero and make up new stories about his [since heroes were usually male] adventures, a practice found in all cultures. But you know what I mean — fanfic in the more contemporary, copyright-violating sense of the term.)
drupagliassotti @ August 8, 2007