On the subject of fan fiction, there's an interesting article on The Mary Sue about why authors shouldn't read stuff based on their own stories:
On the subject of fan fiction, there's an interesting article on The Mary Sue about why authors shouldn't read stuff based on their own stories:
https://www.themarysue.com/writers-fanfiction/
Fan art, on the other hand, is something I dream about every day
Fan art, on the other hand, is something I dream about every day
BEING THE GENESIS OF A NEW SPIRITUAL MOVEMENT THAT MAKES ME MILLIONS OF DOLLARS AND DISCIPLES YES THAT'S IT OK YOU'VE DRAGGED IT OUT OF ME.
but I would love for a film/TV show to be made. Even if it's terrible. (Another lie - would hate it if it was terrible. Betrayal).
Not me. Even though I only have really vague ideas what my characters look like -- we're talking like trying to read a grime-encrusted road sign in dense fog here -- they are at the same time remarkably exact, and I will know if any facial feature is even a millimetre out.
Like you, I found getting a few readers and reviews, welcome as they are, isn't the be all and end all I thought before I got them. In the same kind of sense as fanfic and fan art (but not fan art) what I would value particularly is someone taking an idea from my books and running with it, or it inspiring them in some way, or it making them see the world differently or IT BEING THE GENESIS OF A NEW SPIRITUAL MOVEMENT THAT MAKES ME MILLIONS OF DOLLARS AND DISCIPLES YES THAT'S IT OK YOU'VE DRAGGED IT OUT OF ME.
I am right there with you. For me, at least, I have spent so much time working on these characters that messing around with them is like trying to brainwash my children under my nose. And, that isn't limited to the protagonists I like, either. If someone rewrote the most vulgar of antagonists, the ones I would love to kill off if the story would permit, I think I would feel the same way. They are despicably evil for a reason, and they are, to an individual, both convinced they are right and may have a point at times...I couldn't read someone else writing my characters. No idea why, it would just not sit well with me.
It's good, that you moved on from this ambition: Wikipedia 'fame' is not all you might have imagined it to be. I don't know who it was started an article about my last labour of love, but I had to go through and take out all the factually inaccurate stuff; gods know whence they got that nonsense, it wasn't from me. And it was a shame, too, because the bogus stuff was far more impressive than the realities!As a teen I wanted to be Wikipedia famous …
For me, at least, I have spent so much time working on these characters that messing around with them is like trying to brainwash my children under my nose. And, that isn't limited to the protagonists I like, either.
I've recently come to consider that any author whose work inspires cosplay has left a laudable mark on the world. I've noticed some Space Captain Smith cosplay, for example.