Storytelling and Fanfiction

Lately I've been thinking a lot about the meta of fanfiction. In fact when I was at Educause a couple of weeks ago, one of the sessions I went to mentioned it (in regards to Paramount's ineffectiveness in enforcing their copyright, leading to loads of unauthorized Star Trek writing, including fanfic. This did nothing but create a strong fan culture).

Wikipedia's entry on storytelling caught my eye:

In oral tradition, where stories were passed on by being told and re-told again and again, the material of any given story during this process naturally underwent several changes and adaptations. When and where oral tradition was pushed back in favour of print media, the literary idea of the author as originator of a story's authoritative version changed people's perception of stories themselves. In the following centuries, stories tended to be seen as the work of individuals rather than a collective. Only recently, when a significant number of influential authors began questioning their own role, the value of stories as such - independent of authorship - was again recognized. Literary critics such as Roland Barthes even proclaimed the Death of the Author. The growing tradition of fanfiction may be seen in this manner.

Long exposure to the scifi fan community (and now the Internet community) has caused me to gently hate the possessiveness of "fans" who think they know (better than the creators of the original works) what the characters, etc should do. If I could get all the time back I've spent arguing on the Internet (you know what they say about that) with people about how this character would "never say or so that" I'd have a PhD by now and no dirty laundry. But seeing this ownership in the light of an oral tradition makes it easier to bear.

Henry Jenkins is way smarter than me and has written some great stuff (in books and online) about all this stuff.

That X-Files fanfic was often better than the show. At least had internal consistency.