Castle Geekland

The Defector article doesn't pull the other thread, the one that the MeFi commenters are, about how much commercial publishing is still not willing to give the audience for fanfiction what they want in commercial fiction, outside of some very narrow lanes and imprints. They do a decent job of pointing out that adapting fanfiction into original fiction muddies the relationships, as does treating fanfiction like a training ground for original fiction and suggesting that people not show their fic origins too much if they want to be treated as a serious author. It doesn't quite capture the spite and malice applied in the fic community to people who treat fanfiction as the kiddie pool, but it does at least quote someone appropriately about that attitude.

I feel like the more fruitful direction to hare off in would have been to examine why these fic adaptations are getting picked up, and why more of fic culture, and the existence of fic, is getting put into novels and original stories, rather than sticking to the existence of the boundary, and the permeability of it, as if it were something new and fascinating for publishing houses.

Still, good article to read, even if it wasn't the one that I was hoping for.