Happy Birthday Fer! I got you... em... an essay?

First of all: Happy Birthday fer1213

I hope you have a wonderful day with lots of hugs and cake!!!

Now I can’t write birthday fics at the drop of a hat (and why would I? Weird expression!), but I’ve been writing this essay for a while and I thought I’d post it today in your honour, since it’s about fanfic! Or more precisely about why people write fanfic in the first place - what is it about some shows/books/films that make people run to their keyboards, plot bunnies multiplying in their heads? I’m not saying that I know - I just came up with some ideas. I hope people find them interesting:

To start:

Some weeks ago now, my husband and I had a little discussion. I was reading someone's LJ and he said something about sad obsessives writing about Buffy. I answered that people had been analysing and writing about Shakespeare’s plays for centuries and no one took exception to that. To which he replied that they didn’t write b****y fanfiction about it! (pardon the swearing)
Which of course people don’t (I think? Is there a thriving ‘King Lear’ community out there?). But this made me wonder - why not? Why do some things (Buffy, Star Trek) inspire fanfic and others not at all?

So after a lot of thinking I’m going to write down what conclusions I came to.

(And I‘m excluding ‘FitB’s’ or ‘Missing Scenes’ from my definition of fanfic for the purposes of this essay, since the basic premise is different. I’ll deal with FitB’s separately at the end).

Also many, many thanks to lillianmorgan for the feedback and suggestions!

( Essay: What entertainment genres inspire fanfiction and why )

Happy Birthday Fer! I got you... em... an essay?

First of all: Happy Birthday fer1213

I hope you have a wonderful day with lots of hugs and cake!!!

Now I can’t write birthday fics at the drop of a hat (and why would I? Weird expression!), but I’ve been writing this essay for a while and I thought I’d post it today in your honour, since it’s about fanfic! Or more precisely about why people write fanfic in the first place - what is it about some shows/books/films that make people run to their keyboards, plot bunnies multiplying in their heads? I’m not saying that I know - I just came up with some ideas. I hope people find them interesting:

To start:

Some weeks ago now, my husband and I had a little discussion. I was reading someone's LJ and he said something about sad obsessives writing about Buffy. I answered that people had been analysing and writing about Shakespeare’s plays for centuries and no one took exception to that. To which he replied that they didn’t write b****y fanfiction about it! (pardon the swearing)
Which of course people don’t (I think? Is there a thriving ‘King Lear’ community out there?). But this made me wonder - why not? Why do some things (Buffy, Star Trek) inspire fanfic and others not at all?

So after a lot of thinking I’m going to write down what conclusions I came to.

(And I‘m excluding ‘FitB’s’ or ‘Missing Scenes’ from my definition of fanfic for the purposes of this essay, since the basic premise is different. I’ll deal with FitB’s separately at the end).

Also many, many thanks to lillianmorgan for the feedback and suggestions!

( Essay: What entertainment genres inspire fanfiction and why )