“ the moment when, on the internet, creators are in direct competition with their fic-writing fans.”
Yes, I took your huge grain of salt, but it’s worth noting this is a common failure of fandom discourse.
A few hundred fans can ruin a creator’s day. A few dozen can ruin a fanfic author. One persistent jerk with a grudge can make life miserable for creators. I get it, they loon large. However, It takes hundreds of thousands of viewers/readers/merch-buyers to make the real money that attracts and compensates talent.
For every Harry Potter, where controversy endlessly roils close in the fandom and to the creatives (pro reviewers included), there is an Avatar where all the people who made it are left the hell alone to count their millions. Fic writers exist in their own ecosystem, that ecosystem is too scary and angry for normies, and in normie world, which pays for all this stuff, there is no large demand for a lower-quality version of the real thing but with more unusual sex partner combos (but not featuring the original actors). They will be busy eating each other alive, generally out of view, for a long time to come.
Transformational vs. affirmational fandom.
“ the moment when, on the internet, creators are in direct competition with their fic-writing fans.”
Yes, I took your huge grain of salt, but it’s worth noting this is a common failure of fandom discourse.
A few hundred fans can ruin a creator’s day. A few dozen can ruin a fanfic author. One persistent jerk with a grudge can make life miserable for creators. I get it, they loon large. However, It takes hundreds of thousands of viewers/readers/merch-buyers to make the real money that attracts and compensates talent.
For every Harry Potter, where controversy endlessly roils close in the fandom and to the creatives (pro reviewers included), there is an Avatar where all the people who made it are left the hell alone to count their millions. Fic writers exist in their own ecosystem, that ecosystem is too scary and angry for normies, and in normie world, which pays for all this stuff, there is no large demand for a lower-quality version of the real thing but with more unusual sex partner combos (but not featuring the original actors). They will be busy eating each other alive, generally out of view, for a long time to come.