Quote:
Originally Posted by Sil_liS
Can we say that fanfic is the kind of writing that doesn't require you to know the original to enjoy?
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No, I would say it's exactly the opposite: it helps if you have at least a passing familiarity with the source.
If you were to read, say, a fic where Maude Standish goes out of her way to destroy a legitimate business started by her son Ezra, the characterizations and the cause behind such behavior will make no sense to you (and you'd probably be horrified by the mother's behavior) unless you know that the people in question are a pair of mother and son con-artists in the Wild West who are Southerners and whose names may or may not be real, who have been in the business eve since Ezra was a boy. He's currently an adult who's working as a (poker-playing, money-loving) lawman, and whose mother is trying to make him see the error of his ways and thinks if she beats him in the game of trying to run a legitimate business (a saloon, and she buys a hotel so she's in direct competition with him), it will make him abandon his law abiding work which is not worthy of his God given gifts.
The show in question is the TV version of The Magnificent Seven, and the above is the plot of one of the episodes. There have been fics written on the purpose and motivation of such behavior, from malicious to misguided.
In most cases, fanfic is an expansion of the source, an answer to all the "what if?" questions that stay with us after an episode or a movie is over.