[ SECRET POST #2272 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2272 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 06 pages, 140 secrets from Secret Submission Post #325.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 1 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 - posted twice ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[truxillogical]

Wellll...

Gail Simone, who adores the whole concept and culture of fanfic, has kind of made this point fairly often and eloquently.

Writing for Marvel and DC is not writing fic. Especially for DC right now where it seems to be 90% of the editors telling the writers what to write.

Fic is kind of glorious in its freedom--it only needs to appeal to you, the writer. It doesn't have to properly gel with continuity--it can take place in completely different versions that only exist in the writer's mind. It might be beta'd, but it never has to get okayed by another human being. It doesn't have to be written with the visual storytelling in mind (a big detail, really) or the physical limitations of the story. It can be as short or as long as the writer wants to make it. It can be abandoned halfway through and still be good. It doesn't have to be concerned with its own popularity; it can just be.

Fanfiction has its own demands and expectations that make it a completely different animal than pro comic writing. It creates an interactive fandom. It can and often does focus on small moments and relationships that a published story can't afford to. It's its own thing, and that's fine.

That's kind of why I hesitate at folks automatically relabeling every fairy-tale-retold as "fanfic." Some are, but not all of them. There's a certain feeling to fanfic, a sense of community and sharing, and I dunno...

[dazzledfirestar]

I'm sorry but I look at things like Age of Apocalypse, Age of Ultron, the What if series and... I can't agree with your take here. The concept of a shared universe and a multiverse negates the need (and it's barely a need at this point anyway) to follow perfectly to the continuity that has come before. Editors and writers cherry pick what they want to work with in the same way fan fic writers do. This character speaks to the writer/editor/team and they have a good pitch for a story, they work with it.

The cultural difference (which is what it boils down to) is there, but at the heart, the pros are doing the same thing we are. They just have a far more demanding fanbase and process and a certain (arguable) level of quality that must be met.

[truxillogical]

The end result may feel the same, but the creation of a published Main Two comic is such a completely different animal. Fic may involve collaboration on occasion, but any give comic issue that goes to press is the result of at least five different people (writer, artist, editor, inker, colorist...letterer, EiC, collab writer, etc etc) working in tandem. Simone's got longer essays about it from the trenches, but while folks can look at it and say, "it's a story created with characters someone else made," the creation of a published comic is something that is completely different from the writing of fic. It's just not the same thing.

Editors and writers really don't get to cherry pick. Writers can pitch, and sometimes they're lucky enough to get offered a dream job, but nine times out of ten, they get handed a character, or a bunch of characters, and told, "Write these," or they request a specific character and are denied. Editors...well, DC's trying to cherry pick now, and that's why they've been running the company into the ground. There's just too much business and politics tied up in the whole thing for it to be comparable to "I have this plot bunny, it's gonna be great!"