Lawrence Lessig gives many good reasons for remixing in his book Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy which I have read and enjoyed. Writing fan-fiction and crossovers, whether in fiction or in non-fiction (see some of my crossover essays) is the writing equivalent of what he describes being primarily done with music and videos.

Our aversion towards fan fiction and an insistence on "originality" is mostly a 20th century fad, that is slowly (for some values of "slowly") diminishing.

Anyway, the various fiction franchises and idea systems that influenced me are a large part of me, and I cannot throw them away when writing my own works. I don’t have a lot of control of the ideas I come up with, but I know I must materialise them eventually.

I feature or reference several celebrities in my stories (whether past or present) as a way of Real person fiction. According to the wikipedia page, such fiction is likely to be legal if it is done in mostly good taste, which I believe and hope is the case for me.

The general consensus is that a celebrity generally allows himself or herself to be a subject of reuse in literature, and that includes me, Shlomi Fish.

Update (2 November 2019): I have now written a more comprehensive essay about why writing real person fan fiction is good.

Update (26 November 2019): I now realise that fan fiction and especially real person fiction can be used to help combat the flood of new characters and names that plagues many more "original" stories. People generally have a rough concept of what characters such as Chuck Norris, Emma Watson, Richard Stallman, Moses, or Miss Piggy, are like and generally can better remember them because they thought about them a lot.

Well, I don’t know about you, but I feel that a man who is attracted to women displaying sexiness, strength, competence, etc. - however interpreted - has a healthy libido (or “sex drive”) rather than is a pervert, whose sexual preferences prevent him from functioning.

Furthermore, just because I write about stuff like that, does not mean I do not have enough self-control, or that I have sex with, sexually assault, or sexually harass everything that moves.

It is also obvious from my stories, that I do not wish any harm on the heroes (or often even the villains) of my stories: in general, they do not get killed, or raped, or even become pregnant without intending to. While they have some hardships, they end up performing some amazing achievements of competence, and all that while not having any supernatural powers.

Now regarding their age: yes, I'm aware that some of them are underage, and only in high school. But it may seem farfetched, but I think that underage girls and boys can still be competent, both in their tangible endeavours, but also in their sexual/romantic orientation. Back at the time, Macaulay Culkin, who was the “alpha male” of a large part of the 1990s (despite his youth), raised a few eyebrows, when marrying at the age of 18 shortly after high school graduation. However, I recently heard of a Jewish couple of a guy and a girl who are 15 now, and as scary as it sounds, it didn’t seem too horrid of a thought. Some people learn faster than others.

Just another note about Culkin: some people also criticised him for possessing Marijuana and for its use, but many young and not-so-young people I talked with have had a history of Marijuana use, or even Marijuana addiction, so I do not hold it against him. See my “The Case for Drug Legalisation” for why Marijuana, and all other illegal narcotics, should be made legal globally.

As a matter of fact, it may be considered this way. My fan fiction may be thought of as a modern age way of having polytheistic gods or otherwise heroes, that can be used for guidance and for shifting the blame from you, similar to the way that Plato used dialogues with Socrates for that.

Note that even if I idolise (or perhaps just idealise) a person or a fictional character like that, it does not mean I actively worship them using pagan rituals. Nor do I believe they have supernatural superpowers, or see them as a supreme authority of telling me what to do. So I believe it does not go against the Jewish ethos. Moreover, the Jewish canon, sported some similar idols/"gods"/heroes besides "Jehovah" / God / the "King of the kings of the kings" / haqadosh barukh hu however they/he/she/it are manifested. For example: Moses, [King] David, and Deborah, are all such heroic figures, and I featured my own takes on some of them in some of my screenplays and stories.

Well, as you can tell, it is futile to try to please everyone and some people are bound to complain. I try to take the advice to "make your own kind of music" and use my own cultural background and interests as inspiration for my creative works.

Often, people enjoy my works without being intimately familiar with all the sources of inspiration.

I note the significance of the factoids trend in this section about them and continued in 2019 here. One should also note that there has been mutual influence on the facts, and by them, with my longer stories / screenplays. Often such facts are being made up about celebrities or fictional characters on social media without being officially considered as such.

Note that if you do not find these facts funny, that is OK - I still love you! ♥️ 😉! But "live and let live and do and let do" and like my psychotherapist advised me: please don't be domineering/"pushy". Different people are different.