Winterfox you are such a mean person that you put words in my mouth that I did not say. Really people like you make me wonder where the world is heading.
Right. I probably shouldn't say anything, but... For someone who is claiming the moral high ground, you seem to be awfully prone to make personal attacks. And I happen to think the point is valid.
For me a writer is good enough when he/she manages to "travell me" and you did. Also for me a writer is good when he writes based on his OWN ideas and not to an idea that someone else invented. Mr Tolkien would start jump up and down in his grave if he could see what is happening with fanfic based on HIS idea. (I wonder to whom I am refering to? )
Not only is the last remark in brackets a cheap shot, totally destroying the credibility of supposed moral superiority, but the whole comment is insulting. I realize it's only your opinion, but it's a broadly shared, misguided opinion. What is your definition of orginal ideas? Every single epic story out there borrows style and character traits from earlier works. (For reference about LotR, see
http://www.jitterbug.com/origins/lotr.html)
You may think it is easy to work with a borrowed setting, but in fact, if you want to execute it well, it can actually be harder. Writing in a setting of your own device would give the author a lot more freedom, a lot more leeway to introduce plot devices, etcetera.
Writing with a borrowed setting and characters, you have to stick with the established events, and breathe life into characters that haven't sprung from your own imagination. And this, is hard. Which you can see from a lot of these products, which I will gladly admit, are just awful and not worth reading.
Now, a good author will succeed in breathing life into these characters, with dimension that are as believable as the original source, or in some cases, even more so. Once an author has done this, I see no difference between this or starting from scratch, as it requires as much effort in both cases.
Now, if you had said you didn't enjoy reading works which use an esablished setting, ala. That's your opinion. But you speak in terms of 'good' authorship, and since the opposite of good is obviously 'bad', you are saying authors who use an established setting are 'bad'.
As for intention, it is obvious what your intention was with the remark "I wonder to whom I am refering to?". You wanted to deliver a thinly veiled personal attack. The fact that to do so, you had to insult an entire catogory of writing didn't deter you. Well, in that case, don't be too surprised when you don't get a positive response.
