The best commentary I've seen on the profic/fanfic question

Long ago I had a wonderful, literary-minded roommate with whom I wrote song parodies and read great novels aloud and invented fractured aphorisms, of which two of my favorites were "Discretion is the better part of EVERYTHING!" and "When in Rome, SHUT UP!"

twistedchick has just posted the finest response I've seen so far to the latest anti-fanfic rantings, and at its heart I can find my two altered mottoes.

She takes on the "hack" insult, she takes on the "lazy" insult, and she reframes the entire argument with a perfectly apt metaphor of foreign travel and the behavior of travelers. And she quotes Keats.

On Hack Writing and Inopportune Travelers in the Realms of Gold. Well worth a read.

ALERT! Fanfic means the end of society as we know it.

I think I now understand why professional fiction writers are up in arms about fanfic. And it's not what any of them are actually saying.

( I don't think Shirky was thinking about fanfic when he wrote this, but who cares? I was thinking about fanfic when I read it. )