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On original fic and fanfic
So, re: the debate going around about whether AO3 should allow original stuff in with the fanworks:
There are some people who want to keep a wall between original and fan fiction, and want to keep AO3 limited to fan writers. And I can see their point - I, too, am far less likely to read something if it's original: it's harder work to read, less likely to be id-tastic, when I'm in the mood for fanwork I don't want original, and either the average quality of original fic is less, or I simply don't have good enough filters for finding the good stuff with original as compared to fan work. Plus, many original writing communities are not only very different in culture to fanwriting communities, some of them are openly hostile to fanwriting, or to some of the values that my particular fanwriting community espouses.
The problem I have with that viewpoint is that the separation between original and fan work *isn't* a wall. It is, at best, a long sloping gradient with something on it that might be an attempt at a wall that has fallen over in places and wasn't very straight to begin with (and has only been there for a paltry few decades anyway.) The boundary between original and fan work is not a hard boundary. People have brought up historical RPF several times already, but as far as I'm concerned, it's only the tip of the iceberg.
I write stuff that is definitely fanfiction. I write stuff that is definitely original fiction. And I write stuff that, um, I have no bloody idea if it's one or the other.
And the thing that attracted me, as an author, to AO3, is that it's one archive where I don't have to worry if my fanwork is "enough" for it. Is it slashy enough, or too slashy? Shippy enough, or too shippy? Too porny or not porny enough? Too long or too short, not canonical enough, not finished enough, too crossovery, too script-y or meta-y or poem-y to be a proper story, not angsty enough, too much or not enough... on AO3 I can just put everything up, as a proper archive, without having to stress over categories.
I would love if "not fan-fic-y enough" was one of those categories I didn't have to worry about on AO3. And since - *for me* - the most important role of AO3 is to be an archive for fanwriters to universally preserve and organize their work, I want all the edge cases to be allowed; if that means blanket allowing original fiction (and I suspect it does), then so be it. I would, however, support a restriction that every author account must have at least one definite fanwork uploaded, to preserve the archive as primarily fannish and to filter out people who are hostile to fanfic culture. And a rule that any original work hosted on AO3 must allow derivative work.
And, sheerly out of curiosity (and not intended to be anyone's opinion on what should or shouldn't get posted at AO3): Here is a poll about some of those "edge" cases. What do you think, fandom-at-large? Original or fanwork? (And no, you don't get tickyboxes or third options. You must make a judgement! Like archives always make me do!)
Historical RPF about dead people!
Non-historical RPF about living people!
Historical fic set in a specific place and time but with mostly-original characters (because the people I'm writing about went unrecorded by history!)
Fic set in the present with original characters, but all about their relationships with real celebrities, places, and/or current events!
A story set in fandom with characters who are all recognizeable fangirl achetypes!
A story based on a story my great-grandma wrote that was only ever published in a tiny edition!
A story based on something in my high school literary magazine!
Fic based on a friend's unpublished and unfinished original novel!
My original story that my friend pulished fic about before my story was finished!
A non-canon AU I wrote in my own original universe that uses fannish tropes like AMTDI or "five things that never happened"!
A story where my original characters meet fandom characters!
A story my original characters meet historical characters or celebrities!
A fusion where my original characters are put into a fandom-canon universe but no canon characters appear!
A crossover where my original characters meet me and my friends!
A crossover where my original characters meet my friend's original characters!
A story about recognizable living real people where all the names have been elided or changed!
A story about anthropomorphized objects or concepts!
A story about anthropomorphized *fannish* objects or concepts!
A retelling of a myth or fairy tale where all of the names, the setting, most of the details and the ending are different!
A retelling of a myth or fairy tale to make it work in the framework of my original universe or with my original characters!
An obvious parody/pastiche of a published author's style and subject matter that doesn't reference any of their characters or settings!
A side story to my fanfic epic, about two original characters from the epic, which based only on internal evidence could be set in a non-fannish world!
A novel set in [fandom A] that's all about original characters who live around the world from canon events so the only explicit reference to canon is passing allusions to distant events!
An AU story based around minor OCs from an AU of an AU of an AU that has since been thoroughly jossed!
A novel about characters that started out as fanfic OCs or AUs of canon characters but I have deliberately moved outside the fandom context!
A shared world written by many authors with no "primary" text or "series bible"!
Biblefic!
A slashy story about an angel that draws heavily on traditional Western angelology and eschatology, including [list of canon texts in original sense of canon texts], but is not based on specific text!
A Lovecraftian horror story that mentions the Necronomicon but is otherwise completely original!
A story that is direct commentary or critique of tropes, plots and characterizations specific to a very small subgenre but with all made-up proper names!
A novel that is mostly an original work but in which the Doctor makes a cameo (because he can!)
A professionally published story using other authors' characters and settings that the pro author loudly insists is not fanfic!
(I will stop there before poll gets even longer, but for the record, none of these are hypothetical cases - they are all either things I personally have written, or things other people who identify as fanwriters have done that I could point you to.)
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I may post titles for some of the examples I was thinking of, but later, when they're less likely to directly influence voting.
I realised after posting this that I completely left out the whole category of RPG and gaming fic (whether it's a fictionalized D&D campaign or a journal-based RP or your WoW guild) - yes, those are also often on the edge! I wish I had thought of it before posting!
And, yes, this whole post comes down to "I don't want anyone to have to make these judgement calls! Particularly me!"
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I've got no idea how close to some canon or another someone's elves-dwarves-wizards-&-Magic Jewelry of Doom fic would have to be, in order to still be "fanfic." How many unnamed but identifiable cameos does it need to qualify?
And there's the fun, "it's fanfic based on the unpublished RPG game my friends were writing six years ago before one of them went back to college."
Aversions to bad drawerfic is not the same as aversions to the genre it happens to fall in.
(Definitely would like links to the AU of AU of AU etc stories, because anything that's that *conceptually* painful has to be worth reading. Can wait; no hurry at all.)
Tangent-ish:
I'd think that allowing AU leaps and distantly-tangential fic strengthens the legal foundation for fanfic: it makes a connection between the literary style of some kinds of fic that everyone acknowledges to be legal, and the more traditional fanfic that there's controversy about. Putting Jane Austen fic alongside Harry Potter fic shows that the free-speech literary impulse is the same (or at least comparable). Putting both alongside Daily Show fic potentially puts them all in the context of "satire & commentary." Including fic about OCs in fanon settings that only readers of a particular AU would recognize, shows how literature evolves and transforms--it may help prove that "normal" fanfic is one type of transformative literature in a large body of such, rather than the claim that "mostly it's derivative and only a few works are really transformative."
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Also, what I would really love to see happen, connected with that, is for AO3 to host original works, with permission, for some of the things people write fic about - obvs. that's never likely to happen for Star Wars or whatever, but when the canon is a fannishly-written, non-commercially-intended source, I think it would be awesome both for the value of the archive and for the copyright argument. And I can even see authors of forever out-of-print or creative-commons pro SF novels agreeing to have their stuff posted there, too - some of them have it up on websites already - which, again, seems like it could only strengthen the advocacy position - "hey, these pros are okay with having their work right alongside fanfic of it--". ...of course, that begs the question of putting up public domain sources like Madelyn Mack, where the author can't be contacted, and turning AO3 into archive.org.