The thing of it is, though, that The Sandman is totally about storytelling, and about playing with narrative - blurring the lines between symbolic and literal, between fact and fiction. Gaiman doesn't just incorporate other people's fictional characters (from comics and from myths and folktales and plays etc) but he also incorporates real people. It's like an Uberfanfic thing, in a way. And A Game of You in particular plays games with reality and dream and reshaping other people's narratives and shit like that, but it's all about that, all the time. And the fact that Thompson's At Death's Door pulls a Rosencrantz and Guildenstern on Season of Mists underlines this for me - that storytelling and narrative games are explicitly what it's all about. Jebus, Gaiman's even a character in the comic himself, and I know they've drawn other Vertigo people into it too - and with The Tempest you've got Gaiman, Morpheus and Shakespeare all explicitly working as mirrors of one another. And the reader is sucked in as a character at times, with the use of the second person. It's all a big multilayering viewpointy thing. Um.

I'm not being very articulate, but I am being very soapboxy. Hmm. Sorry about that.

Plei is mostly me, with her comment about completeness. A TV-verse, and even sometimes a movie-verse, can feel like a world, and sort of meander and not have a story for a while, or drop one story (or character) and pick up another. Whereas most of the bookverses I've read feel like beginning-middle-end, and anything I were to add to it would pretty clearly not fit, except as "wouldn't it be nice" speculation (a topic I generally avoid).

Which is not to say there aren't bookverses that meander and world-build -- there used to be a whole series of Darkover fanfic short stories published in book form -- nor that TV series or movies aren't sometimes so seamless that I can't insert anything.

There was a point when I used to speculate about soap opera fanfic -- full of holes and dropped threads! -- but then I realized that with daily shows, you have to write your fanfic really fast.

He's not Anne Rice, for instance. And he has written fic, since he wrote a story set in the Matrix universe, although that was, as I recall, upon request.

Plus there's the whole Narnia-slash thing.

I've read his commentary on fanfiction-as-writing recently enough (and I still think he's dead wrong about it, but that's neither here nor there), but my main mental hiccup is how he, personally, may feel about things being written about his own universes. And I seriously recall him being perhaps squirmy, as in, knowing it's out there, and being both flattered and mildly disturbed at the same time.

And the reader is sucked in as a character at times, with the use of the second person. It's all a big multilayering viewpointy thing. Um.

I know, but I still see it as complete in and of itself. Every thread in place to lead to the final scenes, and what not. A series of fragile connections that would be disturbed by the slightest alteration in course. It's part of what I love about it.

A series of fragile connections that would be disturbed by the slightest alteration in course

But don't you find there are a lot of non-canon violating things untold?

But don't you find there are a lot of non-canon violating things untold?

Nope, not really. Or at least, not so many that I'm interested in. But for the most part, nope.

To be honest, I don't really have much of an opinion on fan fiction. I don't actually have much of an opinion on people using my characters in fan fiction. For that matter I barely have an opinion on "slash" fiction (although I still find the idea of Good Omens slash fiction fairly mindboggling) (er, and Knight Rider slash fiction. I think that Knight Rider slash fiction is pretty weird, to be honest).

As long as people aren't commercially exploiting characters I've created, and are doing it for each other, I don't see that there's any harm in it, and given how much people enjoy it, it's obviously doing some good. It doesn't bother me. (I can imagine a time and circumstances in which it might. But it doesn't.)

...I don't honestly mind if you stick (for example) Shadow or the Marquis De Carabas into a story intended for your friends, and not for commercial exploitation. I'd rather you put a note at the end saying who the characters belonged to, which most fan fiction people seem pretty good about doing anyway. But I'd hope you'd see it as a privilege and not a right.

Neil Gaiman (neilgaiman.com journal), April 8th 2002

He's cool with it. Bless him. Which looks very much like I'm trying to convert you to be all LitFicYay! - I'm not, 'cause I get that the areas of discomfort are very personal, and I know a lot of people are troubled by the idea of lit fic. But this put my mind at rest, because my concern would have been if he'd said he found it upsetting/a violation/whatever, rather than out of an inherent dislike of lit-based fic. So this is just in case anyone else was in the same mental space as me.

('cause, yes, it's ALL about me. Always.)

(Dare someone to write me Crowley/Kit)

Any good Joyce/Giles fics out there?

Signed,
Just rewatched Band Candy

the Potterverse contains enough throwaway lines and minor characters scattered about for it to feel incomplete. It is possible that this could be read as a critique of her writing.

Yes and no. Especially in genre/future/AU fiction I like authors who can create a world that seems new and convincing at the same time. I'd say that in a lot of these, there are exactly these elements - characters whose stories are key to establishing the legitimacy and realism of the world, but who aren't central to the story the author is telling. I like seeing those looser bits in a story. Those are ripe for fanfic, IMO. I can more easily see an author taking issue with fanfic that alters or contradicts the paths of her main characters than those who play with the edges. I'm not really up on it, but my take is that Anne McCaffey's dragon stories have inspired a lot of this around the edge sort of fic.

OTOH, maybe those are the sort of thing that a writer can later claim they meant to go back to and pick up? Personally, I'd think it the highest compliment that I'd managed to create a world that seemed so true that people wanted to explore it on their own.

(Dare someone to write me Crowley/Kit)

....tempted