reading

(Video ID: a white person with short reddish hair and gold-rimmed glasses sits before a bookshelf and speaks. /end ID)

Transcript: How do you feel, given Duck Prints Press’s mission statement and origin, about publishing books that are proudly “serial number filed off” fanfiction?

So, for people who aren’t familiar with that term, it just means somebody took a fanfic and, like, used find-and-replace to change the characters names and now are marketing it as original fiction. So if it was, I don’t know, Castiel and Dean – to use my own example – not that I’ve filed off serial numbers but I have written a lot of Destiel – then, you know, maybe Dean becomes some guy named Mitch, and Cas becomes, you know, Richard, and Mitch and Richard have their romance for the ages.

In this “original work,” how do I feel about it? I think it depends. I think it can be well done. I certainly – I don’t wanna name names, but I’ve been in fandom long enough that I know of major published works that were fanfic that are not widely known to have been fanfic and are very popular and are not getting, the, “oh, it’s got the serial numbers filed off, it’s bad.”

I think, just like most kinds of writings, it can be well done, it can be poorly done. I know as an author, at a point when I was having trouble making words on original work, I would write – I mostly write alternative universes, often very very far from the founding material. And part of the reason I did that was with the expectation that someday I would file the serial numbers off my own work. And it’s relatively easy to do when it’s very far from canon. That said, I think needs to be more than just a find-and-replace.

There’s things that work in fanfiction that won’t make sense if it’s an original fiction. If it’s poorly done, if those things aren’t changed, then it’s gonna read like fanfiction even if – you know – every will know, if I – I used Dean and Castiel as an example. If Dean – I mean if Mitch is still a monster hunter, and Richard is still an angel of the lord, it’s going to be pretty damn obvious that it was Supernatural fanfic, and that’s not necessarily gonna be that entertaining for people to read if they’re not interested in the fandom.

On the other hand, you know, I know of a Dean/Cas work that got remade as femslash – as sapphic – and completely rewritten. It’s a completely different book now even tho it has the same basic story and that’s bad in and of itself. So, what I think about it is – it really depends.

I think when they lean-in on that part for the marketing, though, that’s a little awkward. I feel like if any fan author did what tradpub is doing with “it’s actually Dramione” which is the ship for Draco Malfoy and Hermione. Or, you know, this was very clearly Reylo – which is Kylo Ren and Rey from Star Wars. Like… if any of us did that, we’d get our butts sued off. And it’s a little obnoxious to see places that are bigger than us taking advantage of that part of fandom culture in a way that fans never actually could. And that’s quite aside from whether or not they’re good books or bad books, because I think trying to say it’s okay when they’re good and it’s bad when they’re bad is actually not maybe the best framework for it.

But, yeah, sorry, I could keep going. I have strong opinions about fandom stuff. Basically, I think it can be done well. I think it can be done poorly. I don’t love the way it’s being marketed.

This is an Ask Me Anything. I’m Claire, the owner of Duck Prints Press. Hit me up if you have any questions!