Suggestion...

[Maxilyah]

I'm not sure if I'm posting this in the right place, but I think there should be a roleplay/fanfiction section on this forum for the more creative souls. Just a thought. Thanks!

[Shwoo]

Well there technically already is in the Sam & Max comics forum. Making the characters do or say things without the creator's input is fanfiction, even if it's got images as well.

I think a fanart subforum would be a good idea. There are a fair amount of Sam & Max fanart threads, at least, and most of them are in the comics forum, where they don't really belong.

Although I don't think posting fanfiction on an official forum is a very good idea, I just want to debunk the all fanfiction is horrible thing. Because I know someone will bring it up, I did a search and noticed that someone always does. Explain what is inherently terrible about these three stories. None of them are slash or porn, don't worry. You can say that most fanfiction is bad, and I'd say that most fanfiction is bad to mediocre, but for me the good stuff makes up for it.

Look, I don't mind if it's not your thing, but I'm getting sick of the scorn. It's just a hobby. And not all fanfiction writers do it because they're too unoriginal to come up with their own characters and settings. Personally, I do it because I love the characters.

That was a bit off topic, sorry. I couldn't take it anymore.

[light_rises]

Originally Posted by Shwoo

You can say that most fanfiction is bad, and I'd say that most fanfiction is bad to mediocre, but for me the good stuff makes up for it.

This reminds me a lot of what Lois McMaster Bujold (a fantastic author, BTW) had to say about the spectrum of quality that fanfiction tends toward*:

I've read a smattering of fic across several fandoms, enough to get a sense of how all these different texts are sometimes being run through the same sausage-makers, and in a deep and narrow slice down one fandom, which gave me a good sense of the range of quality out there. (Superb to dire, roughly. Actually, the full bell curve goes: brilliant; pretty good; mediocre; mediocre and interminable; dire; vile; dire and vile; and dire, vile, and interminable. Among the other things amateur writers tend not to have under control is pacing. But I digress.) [Emphasis mine]

I think it's a pretty accurate assessment. I'd also argue that this "bell curve" could be mostly applied to the publishing industry at large. The main difference is that anyone can, say, join fanfiction.net and post something he/she wrote at 3 AM while on a sugar high without any real consequences. This, sadly, describes the vast majority of fanfiction writers on the Internet. At least in a bookstore, you have a good chance of randomly picking something readable from a bookshelf, even if it's still mediocre or bad as a whole.

That said, I agree with Shwoo. I've read some wonderful, even brilliant, stories, and I've come across a number of good-to-mediocre writers who are receptive to constructive criticism. (A lot of the decent ones are aspiring authors who are doing it for both fun and practice. You can learn a lot about pacing and plot structure—and, yes, how to do characterization effectively—even while you're playing in someone's else sandbox.)

Fanfiction is, by no means, for everyone, and I totally understand the aversion to most of it. But I'm growing a bit weary of the "fanfiction = suck" meme as well. It just isn't true.

Oh, and Shwoo? Three years later, and "The Queen's Return" still makes me all misty-eyed. Thanks a lot. *dabs at eyes* :P

Oh! And to get back on-topic—yes, I'd love a separate forum for fanart. I feel as if the art-related threads that pop up on the Sam & Max Comics and Strong Bad General Discussion forums seem a bit misplaced and, well, scattered. It'd be great to see them all gathered in one place, much like what happened with the Forum Games.

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*The original article can be found in its entirety here.