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So the fanfic debate is raging again, and the latest entry is this post from Robin Hobb. Hobb admits right at the beginning that she is less than rational about the subject, but in her essay, as well as many of the anti-fanfic comments on Lee Goldberg's, I'm struck by the stream of analogies that completely don't work. Just because you're a writer doesn't mean your metaphors are logical, apparently. Granted, I've read plenty of comments from the pro-fanfic side that didn't hold up either. Basically, the entire argument drives me up the wall because everybody keeps jumping from one position to another, and it makes me feel like both sides must like to deny certain personal feelings. Some authors, whether they are or not, wind up sounding incredibly threatened by people they claim are pathetic. Some fanfic writers sometimes seem like they want to be the author or the author's buddy a little more than they'll admit.
For instance: fanfic is bad because you're not allowed to write about somebody else's character. But even fanfic writers that have the author's permission suck because they are talent-less, unimaginative wannabe writers who live in their parents' basement and can't get dates, because only those people would ever write about characters they didn't create. Unless they're doing it for money, or they're Shakespeare, or they're published.
Or: fanfic is great because we all are just flattering the author. Creativity should be encouraged! Except in those people who write things I don't like, who don't count. I think people writing about sex should be forbidden from writing fanfic. Unlike me, who is writing stuff the author would love, even if s/he doesn't know it yet.
It's like please, guys, take one position and stick with it, and if it doesn't hold up, just admit it already.
But rather than add to the conversations already going on well elsewhere, such as here, this has started to make me think about something I almost never get to think about because I'm too busy defending fanfic, which is
The thing is, sometimes I wonder why I don't. See, I think fanfic is a perfectly natural reader response. As somebody who writes for children I can't imagine trying to tell a 9-year-old reader that s/he couldn't imagine his/her own stories about the characters, or that writing them down would be a bad thing that would keep him/her from ever being an author. On the contrary, many schools encourage that exercise. I remember in high school having the assignment of re-writing a favorite scene from a book. I wasn't there the day after they were handed in, but I heard the teacher really liked mine, which I thought was kind of funny because he seemed to be praising me for recognizing a good scene when I saw one. Though at the same time I think I definitely was doing the point of the exercise, trying to figure out how to convey a scene well in my own words. How else do we all start to do things as kids except by copying others? As![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
conversant stated so clearly: this is called "play." When JKR and George Lucas sell action figures to children, what else are they for but for making up further adventures for the characters and acting them out, possibly in front of an audience of your peers?
I understand that the internet makes things more complicated and threatening for the author, in that she's more likely to come across these stories that once would have been more private. But at the same time I think having the author right there can sometimes be an infringement on the fan's space, you know? It used to be that if you wanted to talk about Star Wars with someone you had to know somebody who loved it as much as you did. You role-played with the kids on your block. The internet, while public publishing in some ways, is in other ways just a virtual community, at least that's how it's used (as evidenced by the amazingly private comments people sometimes drop). You are still just seeking out a bunch of your friends with the same interest to talk about this stuff, only you do it through letter-writing on the 'net. Having an author suddenly break in on those private conversations, to me, can be kind of annoying. For many people it may be exciting to think that the author is listening and can acknowledge and so validate them as fans and that's true, but it can also be like inviting somebody to the party who's just too powerful to not disrupt the conversation. And then you get into this whole idea that you're supposed to react to a book in a way the author would like-and some authors seem to think this is something they are owed.
Fanfic, imo, is very much a fan activity much of the time. That is, it's really not something that's supposed to stand alongside of canon on the same level. Hobbs claims she doesn't like people "fixing" the story, but that fixing is often a compulsion that has nothing to do with wanting to change canon. The clichés we see so often in fanfic, like hurt/comfort, torture, angst, porn--there's a reason those appear in every fandom. I started making up h/c scenarios for Batman and Robin long before I knew there was such a thing as slash. It's just a personal itch a lot of people need scratched once in a while. Hobbs says she dislikes fanfic writers "filling in" missing scenes or writing out set endings where the text is ambiguous because it robs the read of the ability to come to his or her own conclusions, which is odd, since fanfic *is* the reader coming to a conclusion and playing with it just enough to write it down. How can you write an ambiguous ending and expect the reader to not naturally fill in some possibilities?
I'm totally going off on a tangent from what I was first thinking about--see what I mean about being distracted from it? The thing is, like I said, I've never written fanfic. I've done it in my head, as I said before, but I've never felt really moved to write it. When it comes to other peoples' work, I'm more about analyzing it to death. But I wonder, since I don't want to be denying my own fears the way so many people seem to do when they talk about this subject, if I honestly don't feel right about using someone else's characters--thus siding reluctantly with Hobbs and Goldberg to an extent. Sort of feeling like, I would never write it, but it's okay if other people do.
But then, I have written tie-in books, which work much the same way (sorry, Lee!). You take someone else's characters, come up with a new story for them, and write it. True you have to stay within the guidelines of the series and you can't take the kind of creative license fanficcers do, but still, you're writing someone else's characters. I've also adapted a story into a musical, which also involved taking someone else's characters and making them my own. One of my first tie-in books was even based on an episode, which my partner and I then had to add to in order to hit the right word count. I've seen both sides of the argument try to take the high ground on artistic merit: I've seen fanficcers pretend a "real writer" wouldn't just write for money (yeah, right) and professional writers claim a "real writer" would never write about someone else's characters, even while they're writing tie-in novels, as if money washes away that stain. Or they want to deny obvious fanfic-type work like Wicked
Then I thought, maybe it was just with book-based canon it seemed like it should stay in the author's own voice, because the author's voice is often tied to the characters. But I didn't want to write XF fanfic either. And there are plenty of fanfic writers whom I love *because* of their voice. They simply create an alternate version of the canon world. In fact, I tend to prefer writers who more blatantly diverge from canon because in my experience it's often the "fanfic should stick close to canon!" crowd who seem to be closer to bestowing the author's validation upon themselves by separating themselves from people having a different conversation with canon. Anytime a fanfic writer has to marginalize other fanfic writers by giving themselves more rights than those writers get, I think their argument is falling apart.
Maybe it's just that the kind of "stories" I make up to myself about other canons are always too obviously of the "personal itch" variety--that is, I'm less interested in fleshing out a story to draw other people in when I can just grab my action figures and amuse myself with a sketchy backstory that doesn't need to hold up to much scrutiny. That, I guess, is what always amazes me when I hear people talking about how fanfic writers are lazy or uncreative--Jesus, I'm amazed at the stuff people come up with for something that is a hobby for fun. I've got no problem admitting there are fic-writers whose style I admire above many original writers. I can do that without going too far to the other extreme, as I've unfortunately seen people try to do, and pretend that there's no difference between fanfic and original fic. This is not meant as a way of ranking one against the other, just me saying I see no reason in ignoring the differences that gave us those different names. I've written both types of things, so I know they are different to write. Similarly, I remember being annoyed when LOTR Purists wanted to call the movies "fanfic" basically as an insult. I agreed that there were plenty of things that adaptation has in common with fanfic, but there's no reason to call adaptations "fanfics" when there is already a word for what they are: adaptations. They are defined by how they are different from each other, just as tie-in novels are defined by the ways they are different from fanfic, and original fic is defined by what makes it unique.
Still, despite being surrounded by fanfic and happily reading it, I don't want to write it. When people occasionally tell me they'd love to read it if I did I get nervous--probably because I don't think anything I wrote would live up to their compliment. Not that this is a problem--plenty of fic writers have no desire to write Meta, plenty of essay-writers don't do fan art. But sometimes I think it's more than that, because when people have issued challenges for fun that I'm included in I think I do feel almost like that's something I (as opposed to anyone else-I don't have any problem with people doing it in general) should do. I don't know...maybe it's that I'm so into meta and picking apart the characters as they stand I'm all too aware that if I were to write fanfic I'd be creating a whole other version of the character, one who has not yet been analyzed and is, at heart, completely different.
I just can't help but wonder about that tinge I feel at the idea of writing fanfic myself. Maybe it's nothing more than feeling it wouldn't be any good, but sometimes I wonder if I don't share some of the same feelings as those other original fic writers in feeling I “should” be writing original fic. I just can't convince myself this is much of a badge of honor. Recent discussions just seemed to make it clear that a lot of people have strong feelings about fanfic and are less-than forthcoming about what they really are, so it made me wonder about my own possible conflicted feelings on the subject, and sometimes I found myself wanting to say, shyly, "hey, sometimes I wonder if I feel like there's something wrong with it, but you're all such jerks I don't think there's any point in discussing it with you."
For instance: fanfic is bad because you're not allowed to write about somebody else's character. But even fanfic writers that have the author's permission suck because they are talent-less, unimaginative wannabe writers who live in their parents' basement and can't get dates, because only those people would ever write about characters they didn't create. Unless they're doing it for money, or they're Shakespeare, or they're published.
Or: fanfic is great because we all are just flattering the author. Creativity should be encouraged! Except in those people who write things I don't like, who don't count. I think people writing about sex should be forbidden from writing fanfic. Unlike me, who is writing stuff the author would love, even if s/he doesn't know it yet.
It's like please, guys, take one position and stick with it, and if it doesn't hold up, just admit it already.
But rather than add to the conversations already going on well elsewhere, such as here, this has started to make me think about something I almost never get to think about because I'm too busy defending fanfic, which is
The thing is, sometimes I wonder why I don't. See, I think fanfic is a perfectly natural reader response. As somebody who writes for children I can't imagine trying to tell a 9-year-old reader that s/he couldn't imagine his/her own stories about the characters, or that writing them down would be a bad thing that would keep him/her from ever being an author. On the contrary, many schools encourage that exercise. I remember in high school having the assignment of re-writing a favorite scene from a book. I wasn't there the day after they were handed in, but I heard the teacher really liked mine, which I thought was kind of funny because he seemed to be praising me for recognizing a good scene when I saw one. Though at the same time I think I definitely was doing the point of the exercise, trying to figure out how to convey a scene well in my own words. How else do we all start to do things as kids except by copying others? As
conversant stated so clearly: this is called "play." When JKR and George Lucas sell action figures to children, what else are they for but for making up further adventures for the characters and acting them out, possibly in front of an audience of your peers?I understand that the internet makes things more complicated and threatening for the author, in that she's more likely to come across these stories that once would have been more private. But at the same time I think having the author right there can sometimes be an infringement on the fan's space, you know? It used to be that if you wanted to talk about Star Wars with someone you had to know somebody who loved it as much as you did. You role-played with the kids on your block. The internet, while public publishing in some ways, is in other ways just a virtual community, at least that's how it's used (as evidenced by the amazingly private comments people sometimes drop). You are still just seeking out a bunch of your friends with the same interest to talk about this stuff, only you do it through letter-writing on the 'net. Having an author suddenly break in on those private conversations, to me, can be kind of annoying. For many people it may be exciting to think that the author is listening and can acknowledge and so validate them as fans and that's true, but it can also be like inviting somebody to the party who's just too powerful to not disrupt the conversation. And then you get into this whole idea that you're supposed to react to a book in a way the author would like-and some authors seem to think this is something they are owed.
Fanfic, imo, is very much a fan activity much of the time. That is, it's really not something that's supposed to stand alongside of canon on the same level. Hobbs claims she doesn't like people "fixing" the story, but that fixing is often a compulsion that has nothing to do with wanting to change canon. The clichés we see so often in fanfic, like hurt/comfort, torture, angst, porn--there's a reason those appear in every fandom. I started making up h/c scenarios for Batman and Robin long before I knew there was such a thing as slash. It's just a personal itch a lot of people need scratched once in a while. Hobbs says she dislikes fanfic writers "filling in" missing scenes or writing out set endings where the text is ambiguous because it robs the read of the ability to come to his or her own conclusions, which is odd, since fanfic *is* the reader coming to a conclusion and playing with it just enough to write it down. How can you write an ambiguous ending and expect the reader to not naturally fill in some possibilities?
I'm totally going off on a tangent from what I was first thinking about--see what I mean about being distracted from it? The thing is, like I said, I've never written fanfic. I've done it in my head, as I said before, but I've never felt really moved to write it. When it comes to other peoples' work, I'm more about analyzing it to death. But I wonder, since I don't want to be denying my own fears the way so many people seem to do when they talk about this subject, if I honestly don't feel right about using someone else's characters--thus siding reluctantly with Hobbs and Goldberg to an extent. Sort of feeling like, I would never write it, but it's okay if other people do.
But then, I have written tie-in books, which work much the same way (sorry, Lee!). You take someone else's characters, come up with a new story for them, and write it. True you have to stay within the guidelines of the series and you can't take the kind of creative license fanficcers do, but still, you're writing someone else's characters. I've also adapted a story into a musical, which also involved taking someone else's characters and making them my own. One of my first tie-in books was even based on an episode, which my partner and I then had to add to in order to hit the right word count. I've seen both sides of the argument try to take the high ground on artistic merit: I've seen fanficcers pretend a "real writer" wouldn't just write for money (yeah, right) and professional writers claim a "real writer" would never write about someone else's characters, even while they're writing tie-in novels, as if money washes away that stain. Or they want to deny obvious fanfic-type work like Wicked
Then I thought, maybe it was just with book-based canon it seemed like it should stay in the author's own voice, because the author's voice is often tied to the characters. But I didn't want to write XF fanfic either. And there are plenty of fanfic writers whom I love *because* of their voice. They simply create an alternate version of the canon world. In fact, I tend to prefer writers who more blatantly diverge from canon because in my experience it's often the "fanfic should stick close to canon!" crowd who seem to be closer to bestowing the author's validation upon themselves by separating themselves from people having a different conversation with canon. Anytime a fanfic writer has to marginalize other fanfic writers by giving themselves more rights than those writers get, I think their argument is falling apart.
Maybe it's just that the kind of "stories" I make up to myself about other canons are always too obviously of the "personal itch" variety--that is, I'm less interested in fleshing out a story to draw other people in when I can just grab my action figures and amuse myself with a sketchy backstory that doesn't need to hold up to much scrutiny. That, I guess, is what always amazes me when I hear people talking about how fanfic writers are lazy or uncreative--Jesus, I'm amazed at the stuff people come up with for something that is a hobby for fun. I've got no problem admitting there are fic-writers whose style I admire above many original writers. I can do that without going too far to the other extreme, as I've unfortunately seen people try to do, and pretend that there's no difference between fanfic and original fic. This is not meant as a way of ranking one against the other, just me saying I see no reason in ignoring the differences that gave us those different names. I've written both types of things, so I know they are different to write. Similarly, I remember being annoyed when LOTR Purists wanted to call the movies "fanfic" basically as an insult. I agreed that there were plenty of things that adaptation has in common with fanfic, but there's no reason to call adaptations "fanfics" when there is already a word for what they are: adaptations. They are defined by how they are different from each other, just as tie-in novels are defined by the ways they are different from fanfic, and original fic is defined by what makes it unique.
Still, despite being surrounded by fanfic and happily reading it, I don't want to write it. When people occasionally tell me they'd love to read it if I did I get nervous--probably because I don't think anything I wrote would live up to their compliment. Not that this is a problem--plenty of fic writers have no desire to write Meta, plenty of essay-writers don't do fan art. But sometimes I think it's more than that, because when people have issued challenges for fun that I'm included in I think I do feel almost like that's something I (as opposed to anyone else-I don't have any problem with people doing it in general) should do. I don't know...maybe it's that I'm so into meta and picking apart the characters as they stand I'm all too aware that if I were to write fanfic I'd be creating a whole other version of the character, one who has not yet been analyzed and is, at heart, completely different.
I just can't help but wonder about that tinge I feel at the idea of writing fanfic myself. Maybe it's nothing more than feeling it wouldn't be any good, but sometimes I wonder if I don't share some of the same feelings as those other original fic writers in feeling I “should” be writing original fic. I just can't convince myself this is much of a badge of honor. Recent discussions just seemed to make it clear that a lot of people have strong feelings about fanfic and are less-than forthcoming about what they really are, so it made me wonder about my own possible conflicted feelings on the subject, and sometimes I found myself wanting to say, shyly, "hey, sometimes I wonder if I feel like there's something wrong with it, but you're all such jerks I don't think there's any point in discussing it with you."
