Art inspires art. It was a tale as old as time. Creativity doesn’t exist in a vacuum; it mirrors the interconnectivity of life. It comes from inspiration, a reaction from taking in a certain piece of art. It can originate from a real-life event, real people, or a fictional world. People had been creating art from perceiving art. The path most creative people take upon being endowed with inspiration is to create their world. Some wanted to take the existing art and its lore into their own hands and reimagine them as an "alternative" to the work they took. Worse, they pass it off as their own.

It's okay to say that you like something. It's easy to rewrite the thing you like into something you like even better (or something you don't like into something you like). It's difficult to create an entirely new thing from what you've seen, to pull from your creative energy, and to do something original. It requires a higher level of skill to work on cohesive word building, to flesh out complex characters, to establish a consistent tone in their dialogue, and to weave the nuances of their motivation and dynamics. It's easier to just build off of the work of the original creator.

Many original creators would feel compelled to say, You tell me you love my work, yet you disrespect all the effort I put into building it by recreating it to serve your wish fulfillment.

At some point in a person’s life, they will feel inspired and will, at least, feel the need to react to a certain piece of media they've consumed. But as a true creative person, your calling is, first and foremost, to always create an original. People here are looking for originality even if originality doesn’t exist anymore, and yet, there were some people who recycled just because they wanted to appropriate.

It's criminal to publish fanfiction and just change some details enough not to get sued.

I have to admit, this piece is a reaction to the recent media I've seen talking about how fanfiction was being published traditionally, fueled further by the BookTok to trad pub pipeline. There's also the suspicion going around that less than required editing was applied to the books being published because of layoffs to improve their bottom line. But more than that, I think it's coming from my frustration that I can't find a good story to consume anymore.

Maybe I’m just looking in the wrong places.

So this is my plea to any budding writer or artist out there:

Take pride in creating original work. It’s not easy. It’s a long, hard struggle to get noticed. Your favorite artists went through the same thing. You can break out too.

Fanfiction should remain free, revenue-wise. Filing the serial numbers off is a peak grifter move.

Creating a new original story or art is such a high standard that many of us try our damnedest to consistently achieve it. They’re the same people who don’t agree with shortcuts such as publishing fanfiction. We have healthy relationships with the creators we love by respecting them and their work. That means leaving them on their own.

As a consumer, I always prefer original work if I’m going to shell out big bucks. If it’s fan-made, I’d prefer that it be either cheap (owing to the cost of material production for art) or free (fan fiction). As a creator, I still prefer to have my original creations despite the constant struggle to promote them. I don't know where my pride as an original creator and my respect for other creators blur the boundaries of each other, but I strongly believe that this is the ethical path to take as an artist. Maybe I just want something good and new. Something fresh. Send me recommendations.

Originality is a creative’s primary objective.

6/30/2025