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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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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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