acroyear | Uncertain Principles on fanfics

Starts with a great quote fromTeresa Nielsen Hayden on fan fiction:

Personally, I'm convinced that the legends of the Holy Grail are fanfic about the Eucharist.

I'm not particularly interested in most fan fiction, simply because the really famous sorts (Star Trek, Harry Potter) tend to be set in fictional universes that I don't find rewarding of deep thought. Both of those have a sort of ad hoc feel to them, with critical new information about the way the world works tending to be revealed as the plot demands, in a way that feels like it was made up just to address a particular plot point.

For some people, this apparently leads to a need to write some backstory to explain the real rules. For me, it leads to a thinning of the fictional universe, and makes it seem like a waste of time to spend more effort on thinking about how things might work. I'm sure somebody could write a perfectly decent story about how some quirk of the latest Harry Potter book was really there all along, and wasn't just made up on the spot to get J.K. Rowling out of a plotting problem. but since it feels made-up to me, I'm just not that interested in reading it.