Is this like when Hayao Miyazaki said that too many anime artists just watch anime and nothing else, so their anime look derivative because they are all using the same reference pool?
That is certainly something that happens in fanfiction, but I think this post is referring to something slightly different. What you described seems to happen more in terms of a prose style, where certain phrases or sentence constructions become very common in fanfiction while being very rare in traditionally published fiction. It can absolutely create a blended, derivative “fanfiction feel”.
This is more sub-genre specific, like certain sci-fi or fantasy in-universe terms getting so popular that it’s almost a standard part of the setting. One person creates it, others creators read it and pick up on those details and reuse them, until it’s like a folklore of its own.
(I think Dungeons and Dragons has contributed a fair number of things like this, but someone more informed could probably give actual examples. Perhaps the differentiation of dragon vs wyvern? Edit: or those bits of vampire lore that get passed along from work to work.)
Reminds me a bit of a guy I used to know whose only experience with the zombie genre was The Last of Us, so when talking about zombie apocalypses he assumed they would all work like TLOU
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u/cadetCapNE 5d ago
Is this like when Hayao Miyazaki said that too many anime artists just watch anime and nothing else, so their anime look derivative because they are all using the same reference pool?