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I know you'd think I'd said all I could say--but no! There was a side issue I noticed while reading that thread, which, btw, is here, since I keep referencing it. There's one person there defending fanfic and doing a brilliant job staying polite despite everyone being rude and condescending.
Her position is laid out more clearly in her own lj here. At first I thought it was just that naturally I didn't like to hear fanfic writers divided into good ones and sickos who write "freaky weirdness," defined thus:
So was it just that I just reacted to seeing slash and h/c lumped with mpreg like it's all just the same, or that ultimately I just don't see what's so freaky about any of it? If I was imagining slash h/c in my head as a little child watching Batman, it's not weird, imo. Mpreg is pretty out there, I admit, I don't like it personally, but the impulse behind it is pretty logical given what slash is.
Or maybe I reacted badly to the idea that someone was defending fanfic by trying to throw most fanfic writers out the window, raising one group up by pushing others down, setting writers of R-rated gen above R-rated het, and PG-rated het above G-rated slash etc. Maybe I just thought this was a sort of "teacher's pet" sort of thing, like one author trying to get in good with the series creator and leave other fanfic writers behind and cross a line they can’t cross.
Then I realized there was a bigger problem with that whole line of thought: it essentially re-creates the anti-fanfic position. The anti-fanfic people felt that the characters and world belonged to the author even after they'd sold it to a publisher and put it out for public consumption, so you had to respect the author by not using/molesting his or her work. And what this argument is sort of saying is that yes, the characters and world DO belong to the author even after they've sold it to a publisher and put it out for public consumption, but some fanfics DO respect the author by writing stories where the male characters don't kiss and nobody gets hurt and comforted and only ladies have babies-so we're okay. But that doesn't work, imo. I think you have to either think you should be able to write about characters that aren’t yours for pleasure or else you can’t. It's just not up to fanfic writers to decide what is okay and what isn't. They can have objections to certain stories as stories (like not liking chan or bestiality or slash) but they can hardly say one uses characters that aren't yours and one doesn't. It seemed like the anti-fanfic position was that you shouldn't touch their (potential) characters AT ALL. They don't want to see their crime-solving doctor having lunch with Mr. Spock any more than they want to see the two of them fucking.
It reminded me of when this subject came up regarding![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
nocturne_alley. Some players said they didn't like the idea of people writing fanfic about their RPG characters and others countered--how can you say fanfic is bad when these are all characters from a fanfic? And obviously that's true. For me what made it different was simply that the NA players were people fanfic writers knew and JKR wasn't. I don't mean that in a flippant way. There are lots of things people would like us to do, and things we want to do ourselves. Living together means we compromise. That means sometimes we're deciding whether what we want to do is worth ignoring the feelings of someone else--and sometimes it isn't. If a novelist you've never met makes a blanket statement that she hates fanfic I can totally see why someone would really not feel beholden to stop their social hobby of exchanging stories. (They might pull it from public view with a C&D letter.) But if someone you know asks you to stop doing something, well, now you're risking a real relationship, risking trouble in your community.
At the time I remember comparing it to an ex-lover. If your friend's ex from two years ago asks you out and your friend says she would really not feel good about your dating him, even if you really like the guy you might decide to turn him down. The feelings of your friend, whom you care for, and that relationship outweighs your feelings for the guy. But if some guy asked you out and his ex, whom you'd never met, tracked you down and called you and said, "Hi, I'm his ex. We broke up two years ago and I just really don't like the idea of him dating someone else," you probably would date him anyway (unless you were worried she would stalk and kill you because she’s nuts). It's really not an ethical issue, because the guy's free. In the fanfiction case, the author wrote a story and sold it to a publisher to sell to the public. Now the characters are in your head and you can't completely give them back to the author. The copyright is protected so the author doesn't lose money and other related things, but there's no law protecting the author from feeling uncomfortable at the idea of somebody else playing with his/her characters. Similarly, an RPS author might be less likely to write about a celebrity she actually knew who asked her to stop, than just one who were famous.
That's why I feel like the argument, as nicely and rationally as it was present it to people who were not listening, was doomed, because it was giving the author far too much power to begin with. Once you agree that the author has to feel positively towards your story in order for it to be okay, or would have to like it if s/he read it, I think you've conceded their point. And really, maybe the main reason fanfic continues to grow is that most fans do see themselves as interacting socially with others in sharing their stories and not stealing from the author.
Her position is laid out more clearly in her own lj here. At first I thought it was just that naturally I didn't like to hear fanfic writers divided into good ones and sickos who write "freaky weirdness," defined thus:
"And yes, I know, then there are those OTHER stories. Slash (which creates a homosexual relationship between two characters), hurt/comfort (usually involves a major injury/mishap for one character or another just to see how they react), mpreg (male pregnancy. 'Nuff said), and just about any other freaky weirdness known to man has the potential to make it into fanfic. Don't ask me to explain it; in most cases I can't. Fortunately, the three story types [I've previously described] make up the vast majority of fanfic in all but the most popular fandoms."
So was it just that I just reacted to seeing slash and h/c lumped with mpreg like it's all just the same, or that ultimately I just don't see what's so freaky about any of it? If I was imagining slash h/c in my head as a little child watching Batman, it's not weird, imo. Mpreg is pretty out there, I admit, I don't like it personally, but the impulse behind it is pretty logical given what slash is.
Or maybe I reacted badly to the idea that someone was defending fanfic by trying to throw most fanfic writers out the window, raising one group up by pushing others down, setting writers of R-rated gen above R-rated het, and PG-rated het above G-rated slash etc. Maybe I just thought this was a sort of "teacher's pet" sort of thing, like one author trying to get in good with the series creator and leave other fanfic writers behind and cross a line they can’t cross.
Then I realized there was a bigger problem with that whole line of thought: it essentially re-creates the anti-fanfic position. The anti-fanfic people felt that the characters and world belonged to the author even after they'd sold it to a publisher and put it out for public consumption, so you had to respect the author by not using/molesting his or her work. And what this argument is sort of saying is that yes, the characters and world DO belong to the author even after they've sold it to a publisher and put it out for public consumption, but some fanfics DO respect the author by writing stories where the male characters don't kiss and nobody gets hurt and comforted and only ladies have babies-so we're okay. But that doesn't work, imo. I think you have to either think you should be able to write about characters that aren’t yours for pleasure or else you can’t. It's just not up to fanfic writers to decide what is okay and what isn't. They can have objections to certain stories as stories (like not liking chan or bestiality or slash) but they can hardly say one uses characters that aren't yours and one doesn't. It seemed like the anti-fanfic position was that you shouldn't touch their (potential) characters AT ALL. They don't want to see their crime-solving doctor having lunch with Mr. Spock any more than they want to see the two of them fucking.
It reminded me of when this subject came up regarding
nocturne_alley. Some players said they didn't like the idea of people writing fanfic about their RPG characters and others countered--how can you say fanfic is bad when these are all characters from a fanfic? And obviously that's true. For me what made it different was simply that the NA players were people fanfic writers knew and JKR wasn't. I don't mean that in a flippant way. There are lots of things people would like us to do, and things we want to do ourselves. Living together means we compromise. That means sometimes we're deciding whether what we want to do is worth ignoring the feelings of someone else--and sometimes it isn't. If a novelist you've never met makes a blanket statement that she hates fanfic I can totally see why someone would really not feel beholden to stop their social hobby of exchanging stories. (They might pull it from public view with a C&D letter.) But if someone you know asks you to stop doing something, well, now you're risking a real relationship, risking trouble in your community. At the time I remember comparing it to an ex-lover. If your friend's ex from two years ago asks you out and your friend says she would really not feel good about your dating him, even if you really like the guy you might decide to turn him down. The feelings of your friend, whom you care for, and that relationship outweighs your feelings for the guy. But if some guy asked you out and his ex, whom you'd never met, tracked you down and called you and said, "Hi, I'm his ex. We broke up two years ago and I just really don't like the idea of him dating someone else," you probably would date him anyway (unless you were worried she would stalk and kill you because she’s nuts). It's really not an ethical issue, because the guy's free. In the fanfiction case, the author wrote a story and sold it to a publisher to sell to the public. Now the characters are in your head and you can't completely give them back to the author. The copyright is protected so the author doesn't lose money and other related things, but there's no law protecting the author from feeling uncomfortable at the idea of somebody else playing with his/her characters. Similarly, an RPS author might be less likely to write about a celebrity she actually knew who asked her to stop, than just one who were famous.
That's why I feel like the argument, as nicely and rationally as it was present it to people who were not listening, was doomed, because it was giving the author far too much power to begin with. Once you agree that the author has to feel positively towards your story in order for it to be okay, or would have to like it if s/he read it, I think you've conceded their point. And really, maybe the main reason fanfic continues to grow is that most fans do see themselves as interacting socially with others in sharing their stories and not stealing from the author.
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Well, it's all fun and games until someone receives a C&D letter.
I think in theory the idea that all fanfic is created equal sounds grand, but in practice...
We all know that the author has the power. Anne Rice, bless her wanky ass, has proven that. (Try to find Rice fanfiction, I dare you.) Even if Rowling is comfortable with fanfic, she won't like Lunaticus. Yes, I doubt she will see the humour in "mushy buttocks." It just might give her the incentive to dislike fanfiction enough to start mailing C&Ds and mean it.
If you want to write about Mr Darcy's and Charles Bingley hot S/M heavy threesome affair with the Wickham, however, then go ahead. No one will sue you. You can even publish it commercially, if your are so inclined.
So, conclusively, all dead copyright fanfiction is created equal. HP fic... not so much.
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I have no problems with people writing it (Even though showing Lunaticus to Rowling would be fandom suicide.), but to pretend that there isn't a difference between necrophiliac incest and G-rated fluff is ever so slightly delusional.
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There is, it seems to me, an unwritten (or sometimes written) fandom law that you don't go up to the author and show them the squicky stuff, just as you don't go up to actors and show them erotic photo manips. If you do you're a big loser (I wouldn't want anybody to give her the gen Lily story either). But I don't think not wanting the author to see those stories means that you believe you're doing something wrong by writing or reading the stuff yourself. You might feel you're now at greater risk for the author to bring his/her power out against you, but I don't know if that's the same thing as feeling that you've been hurting the author until then.
It seems like fandom in general is happy with a don't-ask/don't-tell idea. They don't feel like they're doing anything wrong by writing fics, even if they don't think the author herself would enjoy them. But they feel it's an internal fandom activity; not something the author needs to be put in the position of approving. (Not that they're completely hidden about it either--there's been plenty of articles about slash that referenced specific stories, iirc.)
So the problem I have with what that writer's position is it seemed to be saying that fanfic was okay because we're not doing anything the author wouldn't approve of herself--don't judge us by the sick fringe who writes things like slash, even if that fringe makes up a large part of a lot of fandoms. Since nobody is going to the author and getting her approval on every story, I just don't think anyone can say, "Well, my fanfic is okay because I'm writing about Harry and Ginny going on a date to Hogsmeade, but that person's is the problem because they're writing about Neville and Seamus going on a date to Hogsmeade." Especially since while the debate in that other thread might contain sneers about homosexual trekkies licking each other (or something like that--can't remember that exact quote!) the main point they were hammering home was that it was stealing to write about characters you didn't create except under the eye of their creator so only if you were interested in stealing could you write fanfic, period. And that's why I felt like Jocelyn had a weak argument, because she conceded that the idea of an author feeling uncomfortable was enough to make the fanfic wrong (even without a C&D); she just consoled herself with the idea that her stories wouldn't make the writer uncomfortable. The discomfort was only about those "other stories." Really she'd already accepted the idea that it was okay to write stories about someone else's characters and put them on the Internet and was shifting the issue to be about taste, which nobody on that thread was really interested in. If that makes sense.
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Somewhere someone recently linked to Disney smut, Daisy doing Donald, in fact.
Is all fanfiction created equal?
Of course, the more likely to offend type of fanfiction is the first to get marginalised. The more fanfiction seems to subvert the author's original vision, the more people assume that this subversion would upset the author. However, I understand that the opposite assumption is upsetting.
Of course, saying "my fanfiction is super-close to the author's original vision" is super-wanky and probably false. I think an author either likes fanfiction or doesn't. If he likes it, he will understand a huge amount of subversion, although not necessarily to the Lunaticus degree. If he hates fanfiction, then nothing but his own work will appeal to him. I think there are really only these two extremes.
Do I make any sense? Because I start to doubt that. Insomnia bad, tree pretty.
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So, to many folks, not all fic is created alike, and i agree with sistermagpie that theoretically&politically, we as a community don't really do ourselves a service by washing our hands of our more problematic subsets...
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I reckon this is the part they. Just. Don't. Get. -_-
Once you agree that the author has to feel positively towards your story in order for it to be okay, or would have to like it if s/he read it, I think you've conceded their point.
*nodnodnod*
And really, maybe the main reason fanfic continues to grow is that most fans do see themselves as interacting socially with others in sharing their stories and not stealing from the author.
I get the feeling those authors think of their fans as dangerous creatures that gather in dark caves for obscene rites that involve drinking the blood of their defenseless characters... Really nice, considering we're the ones paying their bills.
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Let's remember that this whole topic came up on Lee's blog to begin with because hard-core Diagnosis Murder fans (not necessarily fanficcers) were unhappy with the direction his novels took. It didn't fit in with their conception of Diagnosis Murder, and Lee quite rightly took umbrage at being told what he should and shouldn't write.
It just seems sort of interesting this came on his radar because he was taking umbrage at someone not liking what he did with the characters! It just makes it seem like it's part of a much larger problem of fans not always being supportive. Even fantasy and sci-fi writers who have an open relationship with their fans, it seems to me, know how they can be scary, overly-critical and sometimes downright arrogant.
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I think it boils down to the old idea that fans must always be supportive and not critical of the author's work, and I think that the arrival of Internet fandoms has changed that. Sure there were critical fans before Internet, but Internet makes them much more visible. Like
It's probably very hard for the authors to accept the idea that being a fan doesn't mean being a some kind of an adoration machine. That in fact their fans may be their hardest critics without being lunatics or something like that. I suspect it's going to take lots of time for that to sink in.
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i really hope you were upset for reason #2, b/c getting upset by seeing h/c grouped with mpreg would be recreating the fanfic opposition on a third level, right??? :D in other words, the current ffnet songfic debate really bothers me, b/c it doesn't matter whether songfic's good or bad (and frankly, i have read good stuff, but it may be differnt when it's canon :-), when we start segregating among ourselves on pseudo-aesthetic reasons, it gets very problematic!
it essentially re-creates the anti-fanfic position exactly!!! i'm always amazed by the canonicity arguments b/c (and i'll get stoned for this one :-), to me fanfic is *all* about the what if! yes, there are missing scenes and character vignettes that try to simply recreate/fill in moments in canon, but for the most part (and the most creative part, i'd argue), we twist and turn and violate canon.
and it's odd to me that we do that and then turn around and claim canonicity as the prime, the only quality. i'm not saying that the source text do not provide a framework, a guideline, a blueprint, but we're not simply retelling, we're going someplace else...for me it's not just about ownership but about the old intention thing again.
it's like the author not only owns the world and the characters abut every potential event (ot their non-existence) within...oh, and that makes no sense, does it? *shutting up now*
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and really, if h/c is the worst she can come up with, i wantto introduce her to some nice cartercest bdsm :D maybe one where the turn into eleves or grow wings???
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To finish my sentence *g*, what I meant to write was,
...exposing [HP and co.] to sexual situations that RL children could not legally be exposed to is logically consistent with an acceptance of the other high-risk situations in which they are canonically placed, and of the unusual (fictional) resources that are placed at their disposal to enable them to handle those (fictional) situations better than would be expected of an actual child.
In other words, yes, it *does* make a difference -- a major conceptual as well as legal difference -- that HP and co. are fictional characters, not children. I mean, would you send *your* kid to Hogwarts? Well, maybe you would -- after all, Cathlic parents still let their kids be altar boys. OMG I AM TOTALLY KIDDING PLEASE DON'T KILL ME LOLZ
When I see people saying "OMG Snape and Harry having sex is SO WRONG, I mean he's just a child, what are you, some kind of pedophile??" I have to wonder who's the "psycho" who needs to "get a life" -- me, the fanfic writer with a clear grasp of the difference between fiction and reality, or the guy who apparently thinks Harry Potter really exists and is capable of suffering psychological damage at the hands of a sexual predator?
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It's a very good point that people often forget or dismiss, but that I feel is often an underlying idea in many fics. Harry has handled attempts on his life, has seen two people die, lost beloved people, and has a crushing weight of a supposed 'destiny' on his shoulders. I don't think it's surprising that in looking at his sexuality, we feel able to cover more difficult situations than a few teenage fumblings (which have been covered by canon!).
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He-yes, it would be recreating it! I can be surprised that somebody thinks that the idea of two men kissing is as bizarre as one man having a baby, but I really don't think mpreg is somehow bad in ways slash or h/c or not. In fact, mpreg makes perfect sense when you think about what a lot of people are probably getting out of slash. You want them to have a baby--poof! They have a baby!
to me fanfic is *all* about the what if! yes, there are missing scenes and character vignettes that try to simply recreate/fill in moments in canon, but for the most part (and the most creative part, i'd argue), we twist and turn and violate canon.
Yes, I know what you mean. To me it seems like canonicity or "IC" really just means the story gives us what we want. It's totally common, for instance, for people to completely disagree about a character being IC or not, and it always seems to me that IC just means the person has captured something you like in the character, even if it's not something featured usually in canon. Because we are all so flexible about accepting the strangest things, but we've all got those little relatively minor things we can't stand.
I think a big thing is that people don't really like to be reminded what they're reading isn't "real" as they read--in this case that means wanting to be able to tell yourself this is something that "really" happens to the characters as you read, but really it's not. But maybe what seems so dangerous about that is the fact that canon is equally fictional and open to mistakes and bad ideas from the author. The difference between reading a story where Sirius dies falling through the veil and one where Harry marries Snape is one that we kind of make up in our minds, because none of these people really exist in the real world.
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seriously, though, it's a bit unsettling the way canonicity and IC gets wielded as a weapon when the most fascinating thing about ff is that other thing (at least to me..if i wantto read rowling, i read wrowling...i read ff to *not* read her, y'know :-)
and that doesn't mean that everyone's limits are someplace else (or, as you say, everyone's individual interpretation isn't). but we shouldn't dismiss X b/c it's not Y or too much X or whatever :-)
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Taken as a whole, both the original post and the ensuing discussion ooze fear of violation. The original poster mentioned two fears: first, fanfic, but also the possibly influence of bloggers on pro writers' critical reputations. Two sides of the same coin: with the advent of the internet pro authors are being being subjected to comment from communities who previously have not had much of a public voice. Did you notice how several commenters said they were afraid to post about fanfic because they were afraid of being deluged by indignant responses? And that producers were afraid to antagonize fanficcers because they acknowledge that fanfic a part of fan culture? If you step back from the nastiness, what you see is terror -- terror of a phenomenon that they know is very large and very powerful and very much a part of their world.
Perhaps this fear of becoming one voice among many explains why the commenters wasted so much of their space, at least initially, in finding various ways to classify the fanfic poster: as young, as a lawyer, as a law student, as a pornographer. All insults, in their view, but insults of a particular kind: the commenters wanted to slot her into some group of people that they consider as not having the right to speak -- as people whose arguments, however rational they may seem, are really just a sort of noise expressing their needs or biases. All that name-calling was basically just a policing action born of panic. I felt rather sorry for them. Almost.
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Along with classifying these people as not deserving a voice there was also a real need to say that they were all bad writers. Really, if everyone were a terrible writer there would be less of a threat. The real thread comes from *good* fanfic writers who can convince people of their version of the world.
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"Freaky Weirdness" really isn't that polite...
That is all...
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Here via cathexys:
Well said!
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From another angle...
And regarding chan, an author doesn't even have to create a new world to have chan pairings. No matter what you think chan is, child/adult, adult/youngmale, it has already been done in our own history. In some cultures, it is still being done. It's acceptible in certain cultures in the real world, or it has been in the past.
Would people who have a dislike of certain types of fics mind as much if a fanfic 'corrected' the 'skewed' view of the original canon? If they can say yes truthfully, then fine. IMO, they should probably stay away from fanfic as much as possible. But I think that picking out a type of fanfic because its contents squick you and saying that this type of fic should never be written, is just opening doors for others to do the same thing to your fics based on their squicks.
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Re: From another angle...
I think one of the things that's so surprising about reading that thread is when you're in fandom you get used to people having to make room for others' viewpoints, kinks and squicks. So much of fanfic is based on that with its warnings etc. When you think about it it's surprising how organized fandom is about that. No one is allowed to police when should and should not be written, but everyone agrees to warnings to let people know so they can avoid what they like and find what they like. It seems like everybody's mostly forced to admit there's lots of possibilities and no universal agreement.
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Is the scope of this question too broad? Writing anything in and of itself is not "unethical." Is it unethical? It can be.
Is it stealing? Yes... and no. Is it disrespectful? Yes... and no.
The answer is, "it depends."
Many pro writers don't like it and resent it, but they will not say a word because they are scared of fans. Fans can be vicious, petty, petulant babies. On the other hand, many pro writers understand that storytelling is a two way street, and understand that stories live on in the minds of the audience and that the desire to write and read fanfic is a natural by-product of storytelling.
Storytelling is a two-way venture. It requires a storyteller and an audience. The story is only completed when it is interpreted in the mind of the audience. No two readers ever have exactly the same experience or interpretation of a story. Fanfic is all about saying, "Here is my interpretation of this character/setting/event." In that sense, it is not stealing at all. It is merely an expression of how a reader has chosen to interpret something. It doesn't stop the original writer from continuing to tell the "real" version so long as they make it clear that for copyright protection reasons, they never read fanfic (because of the fear that some wanking fan somewhere will have the gall to claim that the pro stole an idea from her fanfic.)
IMO, everyone has to decide for themself on a case-by-case basis. If you think that your right to tell your interpretation of someone else's creation outweighs the creator's claim of ownership, then go ahead and write your fics.
If the pro writer specifically says, "Stop it, this is stealing, this is disrespectful to me as a human being," then again, everyone has to decide for themself whether or not they are going to respect that person's wishes or decide that their own desires are more important. Hopefully the fic writers can make this decision without insulting the pro writer. I can only make those decisions for myself, not for you.
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While I understand drawing a "legal" divide between writing Diagnosis Murder fanfic online and, as Mr. Goldberg does, writing licensed Diagnosis Murder novelizations, I do not understand drawing an "artistic" divide between the two. I udnerstand why he/they would want to, but I don't think the argument holds up.
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As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving pedophiles or pedophilia approaches one.
::sigh::
*Godwin's Law: As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.
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it was only the die-hard ones
Oh, let me get out my Die-Hard-O-Meter(tm) and check to see who is a die-hard fan, then.
*slaps the idiot*
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Posting fanfic to a publicly accessible venue is the thing that's the debatable issue, it seems to me. I think it tends to support the author's creation, for the reasons well detailed in other comments here and to whet the public's appetite for more of the original (and I haven't noticed the fanfic hurting JKR's royalties anyway) but at least the argument against it is a little easier to back up.
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I know it's a messy area and a slippery slope; fanfiction doesn't fall under fair use, for sure (at least in my understanding of the law). Don't want to throw intellectual property rights out the window, though.
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If my scholarly work gets misused, I can get into (an always entertaining genre to read) a flamewar in the letters pages of Current Musicology. As creative work isn't quite the same thing, authors don't have a similar area within which to respond--and I wonder how sympathetic the response from fans would ever be, anyways.
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how can you say fanfic is bad when these are all characters from a fanfic? And obviously that's true. For me what made it different was simply that the NA players were people fanfic writers knew and JKR wasn't.
Haha! Love this, b/c I've been thinking about that in a sneering sort of way, and you put it v. well with that sense of community idea.