authors, readers and stories

So, Cathexys posted a link to a nice little free-for-all over the issue of authorial intention. See here to be entertained and, possibly, confused. My own opinion, sufficiently expressed by other people, is that Kita, or, more likely, the people she's been reading, are confusing authorial intent with explicit canon, but the whole thing made me think.

( What are stories for, and why do we do this, anyway? )

and about uses of fic

While I'm thinking about the functions of fic, here's something I've been playing with for a while.

So, having already covered that I think of stories primarily as acts of communication, let's ramble about what other functions they can fill.

Fic does not function as a commercial product, which is why we don't all immediately get sued out of our socks, so let's set that aside.

I tend to divide fic, loosely and not exclusively, into two categories: stories that are stories, and stories that are not stories. It seems to me that a great deal of angst, drama, flames and wanking arise from people confusing the two.

( By this I mean … )