Deconstruction: The Subversive Power of Slash-Fic

I've been thinking a lot about fan-fic and slash-fic lately.

Now, it's really difficult to write a post about fan-fic and slash-fic without defining the terms for the readers who aren't familiar with either. And it's really difficult to accurately define these terms because they mean different things for different people. So I'm going to try to define what the terms mean to me, but with the advance warning that I tend to define these terms more loosely and more broadly than many other people do. And, it's worth noting: I don't own the terms and I'm not the definitive guide for using them. So there's that!

But having said that, I use the term fan-fic to refer to stories written by fans of an existing fictional work. The fan-fic work utilizes some or all of the existing work's pre-established characters, world building, and possibly story arcs. I use the term slash-fic to refer to "fan-fic that contains romantic pairings between existing characters that is not directly supported by the established work", but it's important to note that a large body of slash-fic requires changing or modifying a character's established sexuality in order to make the pairing work.

Based on these very broad definitions, I've loved fan-fic for years. Some of my favorite novels are new retellings of old fairy tales or modern rewrites of Shakespearean plays. My favorite Greek plays are the ones that took pre-existing myths and reworked them into new interpretations. I've seen "The Divine Comedy" described in jest as "history's first recorded self-insert fan-fic", but by golly I like that Dante gets to meet Virgil and be Best Friends Forever. Fan-fic has always seemed to me to be a great platform for breathing modern concerns and issues into relevant older pieces, as well as for filling in plot holes or extrapolating what happens after The End.

Slash-fic, on the other hand, I've had a more changeable relationship with, and for that I blame Sherlock Holmes. You see, I like Sherlock Holmes stories, although I think I liked them more when I was a child and the logic trains seemed more clear-cut and less authorially-mandated. But I like them nonetheless, and I especially like that Sherlock Holmes is portrayed, in my opinion, as a rare asexual character in a genre that more often than not seems to center around the hero getting The Girl (if not lots and lots of girls) as a prize at the end of every solved mystery.

But Sherlock Holmes is also one of the most famous literary characters I can think of who is also regularly the subject of slash-fic romance with his sometimes live-in roommate Watson, despite Holmes' (in my opinion) carefully portrayed asexuality and Watson's romantic devotion to his wife. And if you'd asked me a few months ago what I thought about the tendency to slash-pair Holmes/Watson, I would have said it really isn't my thing. But then Melissa McEwan said something that made me reconsider my position.

A few days after I very badly communicated in a Slacktiverse thread that non-canon pairings weren't really my thing because of this hang-up I have with Sherlock Holmes, Melissa McEwan posted on her blog a trailer for the upcoming movie "The Hobbit". And because Shakesville is a feminist blog with a heavily female readership, a delightful conversation sprung up about Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" epic and the relative lack of female characters therein. In the ensuing discussion, I confessed that as a child I had accidentally read hobbit Merry and elf Legolas as females, because I had assumed that someone in an epic adventuring party needed to be female. I also offered that I had been so upset on the realization that there were no women in the LOTR adventuring party that I wrote a truly execrable fan-fic about "Gandalf's daughter". I pointed out that this character I had written was a silly and one-dimensional device intended simply to follow the party around and provide a 'hook' for me to sink into the narrative. Melissa responded by saying:

It doesn't sound silly to me.

It sounds like building a room of one's own (so to speak, and with all due respect to Ms. Woolf) within a literary space.

If feminism is learning the cultural architecture to build rooms of one's own wherever one finds the need, and I believe that it is, then creating a character for an author who couldn't be arsed to create one for you is an act of feminism, not silliness.

"Creating a character for an author who couldn't be arsed to create one for you is an act of feminism." I'd never seen it that way before, and now that it had been said, I couldn't see it any other way.

We live in a world where popular fiction, if it wants to avoid being shoved into the "issues" section, frequently presents a world of monochromatic characters in hetero-normative relationships. Female characters, no matter how "strong" or competent, are more often than not shoved aside in favor of male protagonist pie. Minority characters -- people of color, people with disabilities, people with body fat -- are included rarely, if at all, and almost never as main characters and almost always with glowing neon "issue" signs over their heads. Non-neurotypical characters, including people with multiplicity, are rarely included and almost inevitably whodunit. QUILTBAG characters are frequently silenced or absent altogether.

Of the 100+ books I read last year, only two of them even mentioned gays and lesbians, let alone the other letters in the alphabet soup. One of those books was a non-fiction book with the word 'gay' in the title. The other was a history book about U.S. presidents. The last fictional book I read with a bisexual character was Steig Larsson's "The Millenium Trilogy", and the bisexual female protagonist largely prefers men. I cannot remember reading a fictional book with undecided, intersex, transgender, or asexual characters that wasn't explicitly an "issue" book. I can't remember recently watching a movie or television show with QUILTBAG characters where the issue wasn't largely included to drive ratings or to serve in place of actual characterization except maybe, maybe, True Blood's Lafayette. Who, in addition to being gay, is also a drug dealer and a prostitute (and a perfect example of why television writers need to read up on Wicca before throwing it into a show with Vampires and Werewolves and Fairies as though all of those things is just like the others). Well-adjusted, happy QUILTBAG characters seem to be as rare in mainstream fiction as unicorns.

If creating a character with an identity similar to yours, for an author who couldn't (for whatever reason, because I fully recognize that It's Very Complicated) create one for you, is an act of positive subversion, does it matter if the character is a new one a la Gandalf's Daughter or a new interpretation of an existing one a la Sherlock Holmes?

I'm not sure that it does matter, at least as far as fan-fic goes. Possibly the full power and finance of Hollywood does not need to be directed into turning Hamlet gay for a Hamlet/Horatio pairing, or Mary Bennet lesbian for a Mary Bennet/Charlotte Lucas interpretation, or Odysseus transgender and his classic odyssey through space-time reinterpreted as a modern odyssey through self-identification. With great power comes great responsibility, and with the power that big-budget movie makers wield to create definitive renditions of text, possibly they have a greater responsibility to cleave to the author's perceived intent.

But fan-fic is written largely by the powerless and shared widely among those who are not looking to permanently change the original work. The goal of fan-fic is almost always to enjoy and savor the original piece, but with a few tweaks here and there to make the story more approachable for the fan and their readers. And with that in mind, I now have to think that fan-fic and slash-fic can be positive acts, acts that take an existing work and say, "I know you couldn't include a person of my gender, a person with body fat, a person of color, a person who identifies as QUILTBAG, a person of my religion, or a person of non-neurotypicalness in your narrative. But I love your narrative enough that I'm going to write a fan-fic to fix that for me. And I'll share it with anyone else who has the same needs as I."

I now think that can be a good thing, a positive subversive act meant to signal to the larger world that we -- the non-white, the non-male, the non-heterosexual, the non-neurotypical, the non-body conforming -- are here and we are not going away any time soon. I think it can be an act that signals that we are not only building rooms of our own in new houses that we build from scratch, but we are also building additions to the older, existing houses that we've been given to inhabit.

It's More Complicated Than That, of course. Fan writers aren't always automatically on the side of angels, and things become more muddied when the author of the original work is still alive and the work is still under copyright. (This is one of many reasons why the examples in this post are all works in the public domain.) There's the question of author intent to consider, and how much that author's intent should weigh on the interpretation of the work in question. There's the question of how the fan-fic is written, and whether the newly added elements are 'merely' subversive or actively harmful. (As with, for example, fan-fic that portrays intensely triggering, disturbing, or illegal elements.) Like almost every issue there are shades of gray, and reasonable people are going to disagree here and there.

But considering all that, and purely as my personal opinion, I think that when crafted with love and respect and when shared with the intent to expand and embrace, fan-fic and slash-fic can be positive subversive acts. And I am mostly in favor of that.

--Ana Mardoll

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Comments

[Kit Whitfield]

Thank you, Nenya, apology accepted.

[Nenya]

Thank you, Kit. :-)

[MercuryBlue]

casually announcing that she couldn't be bothered to try and work out what to do to fix the situation, but that she was going to carry on with the discussion she was actually interested in anyway.

So there's no difference between 'I have to figure out what to say here; it might take hours' and 'I already know what to say here; it'll take ten seconds, and then I can go back to thinking about what to say on the other thing'? Or the fact of the first precludes the second such that I am not allowed to participate in an ongoing discussion if an earlier part of the discussion contains something I need to consider my response to?

You're right, though. I didn't think. I should have thought. I should have reread the whole thread to remind myself that there was a reason you weren't participating, and I should have chosen a different example.

[Kit Whitfield]

There's a difference between ''I have to figure out what to say here; it might take hours' and ' I'm busy, and also not sure what I could possibly say to make things better with Kit', which is what you actually said.

It's got nothing to do with what you're 'allowed' to do; don't be passive-aggressive. You didn't say you were trying to figure it out; you said you weren't sure what to say and then changed the subject, which suggested that you weren't going to say anything else about it and carry on your merry way.

And while you're at it, you should have checked or remembered what I'd said, but you could also have observed that I wasn't participating without having to read it all. You were putting words in my mouth: as I have tried to say on numerous occasions, my position as regards fan fiction is complicated, and the reason I try not to discuss it in public is that people like you attack people like me if we say anything more nuanced than 'Fan fiction is great!' You should not be using me as an example unless you actually understand my position, and frankly I think you projected a position onto me rather than making any effort to understand what it really was.

And now you're sniping at me for pointing out that you came across as dismissing the issue. Passive-aggressive attacks have no place in an apology.

[Julie paradox]

As a side note Kit: I don't know what recuse means.

(The one of my four dictionaries that doesn't simply suggest you're becoming RC says it's chiefly NAm and SAf)

[Kit Whitfield]

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Recuse

[DavidTC]

I find it somewhat confusing I mentioned that the problem was pop culture distorting the original works, not fanfic, and in reply I get...movies? Yes, works in different media, especially visual, can end up determining how we think about the originals. Neville is blond, Harry has green eyes, Luna looks weirder, etc.

Large scale distortions require either society as a whole reading that other work (Everyone has seen Superman flying, so the early works, in which he can't, seem odd.) or it requires some influential people reading the other work and somehow communicating that to everyone. (For example, via an SNL sketch or something.)

The thing is, neither of those happen with fanfic.

But I cannot tell you how many places have recommended "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality" (or whatever it's called) as an educational tool for "critical thinking", "skepticism", etc.

And yet somehow the idea of Rational!Harry has not entered pop culture. The fact that everyone seems to recommend it is a bit moot.

It is interesting that the 'fictional work written to demonstrate a philosophy' is fanfic, and if rationality ever became some giant thing and "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality" ended up right next to "Atlas Shrugged" as some 'defining philosophical work', and people read it without having read HP, well, we'd be having a different discussion. But it's not. (Strangely, in a way, I think MoR is a much more honest work, simply because if you build your own fictional world, of course your philosophy works in it. Putting someone with your philosophy in someone else's world, especially a philosophy that's never heard of the basic premise of 'magic', OTOH...)

I know many people who have read Grossman's THE MAGICIANS who never read a Harry Potter book -- but certainly would not be able to now without being influenced by Grossman's criticism of the original.

Well, yes. You shouldn't read a criticism of a work and then expect to read the work with a clean slate. And plenty of HP fanfic is a criticism of the original. (As I said, one of the major 'genres' of HP fanfic is essentially 'evil manipulative Dumbledore'. I don't like those stories, but it honestly doesn't take much of an alternate character interpretation to make this viewpoint reasonable.)

But the amount of people who read _fanfic_ without first reading the original is so small as to be immeasurable. That's simply not something that happens. In fact, a lot of fanfic is impossible to understand without having read the originals. Just like fiction is 'like reality except noted', fanfic is 'like the original work except noted', which requires you to know what the original work is. Often it requires you to know impossible obscure details of the original work.

If someone who'd never read HP were to pick the books up today, their perceptions would be changed by everything pop culture 'knows' about HP, both stuff that is wrong, and stuff that is right but they aren't supposed to know it yet, aka spoilers. They'd be influenced by parodies they've seen, they'd be influenced by random stuff they overheard, they'd be influenced by movie trailers. They'd be influenced by other authors who read HP and wrote their books to make a 'better HP'.

But they wouldn't be influenced by some fanfic they'd never read and has essentially no cultural existence. 100,000 people who've never read HP might see an SNL sketch about it for every 1 person who's never read HP but randomly stumbles across an HP fanfic and reads it.

Now, it does distorts the story to read fanfic afterward, but at that point we seem to be getting a little fascist about the stories that people are holding inside their own head. I'm firmly in the 'no spoilers' camp, and fully agree that people shouldn't screw up a work for someone who hasn't seen it, and, hell, shouldn't screw it up afterwards if that person doesn't want them to. (I.e., don't go around forcing criticism of works on people and complaining that they like like something you can clearly see is a piece of crap. You are not the boss of other people's tastes.)

But I can't really get behind the idea that a person isn't allowed to (make a mental copy of and) change it in their own head after viewing it, or that it somehow becomes wrong when this 'changing' involves more than one of person participating with full knowledge of what they're doing. (Which, again, does not make fanfic _legal_.)

[Izzy]

@David: I tend to agree.

Also, if the problem is perception of the original...well, even leaving movie adaptations aside, there are about a thousand theories out there about how Hamlet is gay and the Wizard of Oz is an allegory for populism and Harry is in love with Hermione and Buffy all takes place inside her head and so on.

I'm not sure how writing it into a story is any more damaging than publishing an academic paper on it. And you can't really control what people think: if someone likes the idea of my heroine with my villain or my hero's little sister, well, I don't think I have any right to get upset over that, or over them saying as much on a public forum that I don't have to read.

I mean: someone, somewhere, is thinking about my characters having gay sex. If I'm lucky. ;)

[Kit Whitfield]

@Izzy - I'm of the opinion that people pretty much have the right to feel whatever they feel as long as they don't act unreasonably about it; after all, if it's fascist to object to what's in people's heads, that ought to apply across the board.

[hapax]

But I can't really get behind the idea that a person isn't allowed to (make a mental copy of and) change it in their own head after viewing it, or that it somehow becomes wrong when this 'changing' involves more than one of person participating with full knowledge of what they're doing.

What the heck?

I was asked to provide an example of "a[n erroneous] detail from fanfic that's made it out into the real world". I responded that I don't read much fanfic, but I could provide examples of widely known details from derivative works that significantly impacted the interpretation of the original text.

In response, I get called a "fascist"?

I will give a hundred dollars to the charity of the poster's choice if anyone can point to an instance of me calling fanfic "wrong" or "immoral" or suggesting that people do not have the absolute right to read works any way they please, and share their interpretations with other people, within the limits of the copyright laws.

All I said was that I find fanwork to be a different activity from critique. Not "lesser". Not "bad". Just DIFFERENT.

Agree or disagree with that assessment, any moral or qualitative judgment that anyone has read into it lies entirely within zir own head.

[Izzy]

@Kit: Sure, but then we get into the question of what's reasonable or not: having Feeling X, sure, whatever. Hard to control that sort of thing. Expressing Feeling X and expecting to get a lot of sympathy for it, enh, situational. Which is what I meant by "getting upset".

Also, had missed the use of "fascist" in that post, and...yeah, that term seems like a bit much for this sort of discussion, to say the least.

[Timothy (TRiG)]

I suspect there's an overlap between "fanfic" and "critique". (We also need a word for Donnie at the cookie stall, and for Edith & Ben.) But I also suspect that that overlap is not large, and that most critique or fanfic falls squarely into one camp or the other. But what would I know? I don't read fanfic.

I've created quite a lot of fanfic inside my own head*, but I've never written any of it down. I wouldn't see the point. But perhaps that's just me.

TRiG.

* I do it less these days. I'm more likely to create my own fantasies. I can do worldbuilding, plot, or characters. Note the or. If I could find a way to do all three at the same time, I might be onto something. I have a reasonably detailed fantasy world with maps, governent structures, and history, but no one interesting lives there. Elsewhere, I have some fairly interesting people who don't do anything. And in other parts of my brain all sorts of fascinating things happen, but the people they happen to are cardboard cutouts. It's rather frustrating. One day I'll bring it all together, which will leave me with the non-trivial problem that my writing sucks.

(And yes, "worldbuilding", for me, includes spending a fair bit of time working out the signalling protocoll for a high-speed railway. Did I mention I'm a geek?)

[Kit Whitfield]

@hapax: of course you got called a fascist. You said something more nuanced than 'Fan fiction is great!' What else was going to happen?

[Kit Whitfield]

@Kit: Sure, but then we get into the question of what's reasonable or not: having Feeling X, sure, whatever. Hard to control that sort of thing. Expressing Feeling X and expecting to get a lot of sympathy for it, enh, situational. Which is what I meant by "getting upset".

Sure, but if we get into the difference between thought and action we get into the difference between thought and publishing something on the Internet and expecting not to get criticised for it, and at that point we're back to sauce for the goose.

[Izzy]

@Kit: Right. And then it becomes either a question of whether that criticism is valid--at which point there's the whole objectivity v. feeling v. WTF--or just a recurring chain of everyone hating each other. So...not sure where any of that goes, I guess.

[Mmy]

@DavidTC: Now, it does distorts the story to read fanfic afterward, but at that point we seem to be getting a little fascist about the stories that people are holding inside their own head.

Flag on the play David -- please. I just looked up fascism in my dictionary and find it defined as system of extreme right-wing dictatorship.

No one here is a arm of a corporatist dictorship. No one is wielding state power. Using terms such as that are emotionally inflammatory and stand in the way of reasoned (and reasonable) debate.

[Dragoness Eclectic]

But, if the question is, Who has the right to tell this story, as a story? then I'd have to come down on the side of the original author. At least as far as publication goes; private fantasies and writing exercises and such limited-readership productions are a different matter.

@Amaryllis: way over on the other side of the field from you on this topic. No one owns an idea or a story once they set it loose in public; it becomes the common heritage of all mankind. Now, modern governments, with the interest of encouraging "progress in the arts & sciences", have made laws that give the creator a legal monopoly on the right to reproduce his works for a limited time. Monopolies are generally evil, but the copyright monopoly is considered a necessary, or at least, useful evil for encouraging authors to write, artists to create, and inventors to invent. It is not a moral right, it is a useful evil. However, thanks to certain big moneyed interests, there's been a lot of propaganda pushing the idea that this useful evil is somehow a moral and civic right--especially where the copyrights of the big moneyed interests are concerned.

I tried to abuse the sandbox analogy, but then I realized I was saying something entirely irrelevant with it. The point of my crude summary of copyright is that copyright law itself presumes that the author has no "natural" ownership of the story--the government has to grant a special monopoly. Stories are public property; they are part of our common culture as soon as they are published/told/performed/etc. Anyone and everyone has the right to tell and retell the story as they see fit, bar copyright monopolies.

Now, whether or not you respect the author's wishes on playing with their world and characters depends on whether or not you care to respect their wishes. Maybe you do, or maybe you think the author is a twit/bigoted blowhard/whatever and don't give a flip what their wishes are. That's personal choice, not a moral imperative.

[Mmy]

@Dragoness Eclectic:

Charles Dickens had much to say on this topic since once he published his books in the UK people in the US felt quite free to republish them without his permission (and without recompensing him) using basically the same logic.

Now, whether or not you respect the author's wishes on playing with their world and characters depends on whether or not you care to respect their wishes. Maybe you do, or maybe you think the author is a twit/bigoted blowhard/whatever and don't give a flip what their wishes are. That's personal choice, not a moral imperative.

Do you also respect my wishes not to have my home burglarized on the same basis (what you think of me) since my guarantee / claim to safely is also based on the laws of the country in which I live?

[Dragoness Eclectic]

But aside from the reasons you mention - which are good reasons - no, I don't think most professional authors would write and distribute fan fiction.

@Kit: this is one of those topics that the facts are not likely to be available to verify or falsify any claims about it. Contrary to your assessment, I have heard that quite a few profession authors write fanfiction on the side--but it's a deep, dark secret vice committed under pen names not associated in any way with their professional identity, because the legal issues could get so very messy. There's no feasible way to confirm or disprove such rumors.

[Kit Whitfield]

Did you just call me evil for thinking I have the right to own the product of my own labour?

Wow. First co-opting, then fascism, now evil. And fans are somehow puzzled when authors aren't always thrilled with them.

Seriously, fan side: do you have any idea how aggressive you're being?

[hapax]

Stories are public property; they are part of our common culture as soon as they are published/told/performed/etc. Anyone and everyone has the right to tell and retell the story as they see fit, bar copyright monopolies.

@Dragoness Eclectic: I really want to know now your precise definition of "the story".

The hoary tropes of "abused orphan discovers special heritage"; "school for wizardry"; "secret magical world hidden alongside mundane world"; "young people away from home form a substitute family through bonds of friendship", etc. etc., okay, I can see those as "common heritage of humankind".

But the creativity, the craft, the sheer drudging work that it takes to turn these basic story-ingredients into the very specific Harry, Hermione, Hogwarts, Horcruxes, etc. -- aren't these the unique contributions of the artist?

Aren't these the things that make *her* version of "the story" the multimillion-selling sandbox that the fanficcer wants to play in?

Do you consider it equally "evil" for, say, Paul Simon to claim ownership of a the music to Graceland, when (after all), setting words to melodies is a common heritage of all humankind?

How about a painter? Would Leonardo be "evil" if he were alive and objected to seeing his Last Supper staged by "South Park" characters and the mascots of sugary cereals? Color and shapes don't belong to anybody, do they, and sitting at a buffet table is certainly part of the common heritage of all humankind.

How about a jewelry-maker who wants to file a claim for a proprietary design for a pair of earrings? Since appreciating pretty stones and shiny metals are the common heritage of all humankind, surely zie is "evil" too?

Are all artists to adjudged "evil" if they should happen to believe that they own their own creations, or is this just a special condemnation for storytellers? Which artists are we to strip of agency and deem mere conduits for the great free-floating ART that flows through them?

[Izzy]

Hm.

Can only speak for myself, of course, and my own pro-fanfic (or at least "hey, no skin off my nose") stance is well-established already. But I think using characters and ideas I has put out there in a way that doesn't* reduce my right to make a living or use said characters/ideas again, on forums that I don't have to read, is pretty different from breaking into my house--where I have an expectation of privacy--and taking my stuff, which I can't then use again.

At the most, it seems like...talking about me. You can do that in nasty or uncomfortable ways, of course; you can set up izzysucks.livejournal.com or hotnakedizzypictures.org. Bringing those to my attention would suck; depending on how far you take them, you may well run into some laws re: libel or privacy. But it's not really the same as burglary, I think, and I don't think there's a moral imperative there one way or another.

*Or at least not provably.

[Izzy]

On the ownership v. not thing, I'm not so sure. Intellectual property may be a necessary evil in the same way that personal property as a whole is. I went to a giant hippie school; I can see that argument. And the way it's currently implemented is pretty damn bad.

But outside of either condemning personal property as such or the very specific modern approach to IP, I think ownership of the art is a good thing, at least insofar as that involves getting credited and paid for said art.

I am, of course, biased; I would make a lousy hunter-gatherer. ;)

[Mmy]

@Dragoness Eclectic: Contrary to your assessment, I have heard that quite a few profession authors write fanfiction on the side--but it's a deep, dark secret vice committed under pen names not associated in any way with their professional identity, because the legal issues could get so very messy. There's no feasible way to confirm or disprove such rumors.

And you might be able to find people who think it is okay to "borrow" their cars for perpetuity and don't mind if other people squat in their houses.

It doesn't diminish one wit my right not to have my car permanently borrow and not to have strangers decide they can just move into my house.

I am not an author but I have created other things and noticed that people who stole such things often justified themselves using similar arguments to those above (all property is evil, ownership is theft, you weren't using it anyway).

This whole discussion is getting seriously stressful to all of us who see our rights to the things we laboured to make waved so casually away.

[AnaMardoll]

As the OP, I want to express regret that this has been a place of stressful discussion for many. I honestly did not expect anything more than a "light" discussion, possibly with a good deal of swapping histories and recommendations. I am very sorry that something I have written was the starting point for a discussion that has harmed people I respect and care about. (I'm also sorry that I haven't participated more, but it's been very busy in my Real Life this month. I do apologize.)

[Kit Whitfield]

I am not an author but I have created other things

I have a sort of equivalent: one of my hobbies is knitting. Mostly I follow other people's patterns, which I sometimes tweak a little bit; every now and again I design something for myself but often incorporate bits and pieces borrowed from other patterns. I'd love to be a pattern designer, but it doesn't come easily to me: it requires an ability to think in three dimensions, and that's not my strong suit. But it's sometimes still quite hard to remember that I didn't create the things I knit all by myself: after all, I started with a ball of wool and did all that work and look, I've made something!

But then I remind myself that I did, in fact, borrow. I designed a funky Christmas stocking in the form of a monster recently; I'm proud of it, and would like to put the pattern on Ravelry.com. I could probably even put a price on downloading it; I posted a picture on my Facebook page and I've already had three different people ask if I'd make one for them. But there are a couple of bits - details, but important details - which I lifted from other patterns, and patterns which the authors sell rather than gift at that, so I can't do it. It's frustrating, because I put a lot of work into the rest of it, but I just have to live with it.

I guess I'm saying that I know from experience that if you put work into creating a variation, it feels like you've done it all yourself and you should be able to do whatever you like with it because it's yours. But when I feel that way, I remind myself that it's wishful thinking.

[Dragoness Eclectic]

Kit:

Did you just call me evil for thinking I have the right to own the product of my own labour?

Wow. First co-opting, then fascism, now evil. And fans are somehow puzzled when authors aren't always thrilled with them.

@Kit & Hapax: please reflect on Froborr's Atheism article, how the word "evil" was used there and in my comment, and how obnoxious the trolls who deliberately misinterpreted that usage were. I will not engage your strawmen.

[Kit Whitfield]

@Dragoness E: you said 'Monopolies are generally evil.' I am an individual who owns the copyright on my own work; therefore I am a monopoly.

Your post was not nearly as carefully phrased as Froborr's.

And what else was there in your post to engage with? It was a list of bald assertions with nothing at all to back them up.

[DavidTC]

Erm, wait a minute. I didn't call anyone in this discussion a fascist.

I pointed out that the only influence fanfic has is 'people reading fanfic after reading their story'. (As opposed to movies, and pop culture, and all sorts of things that do accidental damage to unwilling people who have not been exposed to the story yet.) So the only 'damage' it does is people _deliberately_ changing the story in their own head.

And then I pointed out that no one actually objects to people changing the stories in their own head. Such an opposition is inconceivable in our society and if people objected to that, they would be, well, rather fascist. (Although, yes, the correct term would be totalitarian.)

People will notice I said 'at that point _we_ seem to be getting a little fascist'. We _includes me_, so if I was literally calling people fascist, well, I just called myself one.

Of course, what I was really saying was 'the hypothetical position that I have carefully lead people to has reached the point of absurdity in requiring fascism', by which I mean 'thought police'.

I did not say 'At this point you are a fascist', or 'at this point the people here who think this are a bit fascist' because, duh, I _don't_ thinks anyone here thinks that we should stop people from altering stories in their own head, either hapax or anyone, and in fact would be very surprised to learn otherwise.

[Dragoness Eclectic]

Do you consider it equally "evil" for, say, Paul Simon to claim ownership of a the music to Graceland, when (after all), setting words to melodies is a common heritage of all humankind?

@hapax: do you consider monopolies generally good and desireable, then? I do not. There are circumstances under which limited, tightly-regulated monopolies are more useful than a competitive market--those circumstances usually being that a competitive market cannot exist and a market is necessary.

I argue that the intended-to-be limited monopoly of copyright, for the specific purpose of "encouraging the useful arts and sciences", is a "necessary evil"--one of those circumstances in which a monopoly is useful. It is still dangerous, and potentially counter-productive; that is, if it gets out of control (i.e., loses its "limited" character), it will destroy "the useful arts and sciences" rather than promoting them. I argue that "destroying" (i.e., suppressing or discouraging the creation of) the arts and sciences is very bad.

Paul Simon (or more likely his record label) owns the monopoly right to copy "Graceland". He does not own the individual words or musical notes. He does not own the idea of "Graceland". He does not own everyone's memories of hearing "Graceland". In short, he does not actually own anything that makes up a song in the world, as experienced by individual people, except the credit for creating it, and the right to copy or perform it (and he does not own even that if he sold the rights to his record label).

You cannot own an idea that has been communicated to other people, and that, fundamentally, is what a story, song, etc. is.

[Dragoness Eclectic]

Do you also respect my wishes not to have my home burglarized on the same basis (what you think of me) since my guarantee / claim to safely is also based on the laws of the country in which I live?

@Mmy: What? Okay, that makes no sense in relation to what I wrote.

[Dragoness Eclectic]

@AnaMardoll:

As the OP, I want to express regret that this has been a place of stressful discussion for many. I honestly did not expect anything more than a "light" discussion, possibly with a good deal of swapping histories and recommendations. I am very sorry that something I have written was the starting point for a discussion that has harmed people I respect and care about.

I assert that being disagreed with is not harmful, so you have nothing to apologize for. I am a woman who refuses to bow to the notion that disagreeing with people is intrinsically rude and is something we should avoid and be apologetic about. Frankly, if everyone agrees, we're just preaching to the choir and there's little to be learned. Debates are good, in my opinion, if we actually listen to each other's reasoning and engage it.

I've written fanfiction, and aspire to write professionally, so I have a horse in this race, so to speak. I also look at the cultural aspects of storytelling; storytelling is so fundamental a human activity that the notion of telling someone "you shouldn't make stories about X because N over there already told a story about X" is ludicrous. Humans don't work that way.

I approve of limited copyright since no one has come up with a better way for authors/artists/etc to make a living. I don't approve of "moral rights of the author" (e.g. "I get to control how everyone else tells stories about the world or characters I created even beyond copyright") or "effectively unlimited copyright" (life + 70? Life + 90? Yeah, I'll be long dead then, and the work will likely be culturally irrelevant by that point. It's unlimited as far as I'm concerned.)

[hapax]

@Dragoness Eclectic: I wasn't questioning your use of the word "evil."

I was trying to understand this: (quoted again)

Stories are public property; they are part of our common culture as soon as they are published/told/performed/etc. Anyone and everyone has the right to tell and retell the story as they see fit, bar copyright monopolies.

I asked, and will ask again, how you define "story".

Because in my understanding (I Am Not A Lawyer, etc.) the only thing that copyright "monopoly"* covers is the precise arrangement of words and images that constitutes a particular artist's unique contribution to the "story."

And yet it is often those very same unique elements that draw the attention of the fanwork community, why they are most interested in writing about (say) "Harry Potter at Hogwarts" rather than about "a boy at a wizarding school".

If the unique elements that make "the story" into "that particular story" don't come from the artist, where do they come from?

If they DO come from the artist, why isn't it feasible for the artist to assert ownership?

I suppose one could make the case if one believed that no-one was entitled to the product of their own labors, but I honestly don't see how this can be claimed as prima facie obvious.

----

*Which is where you yourself brought in the word "evil", but I'll drop it if you like. I agree that it is a very strong emotional word that doesn't usually help conversation.

[Mmy]

@Dragoness Eclectic: @Mmy: What? Okay, that makes no sense in relation to what I wrote.

Makes all the sense in the world. You wrote:

No one owns an idea or a story once they set it loose in public; it becomes the common heritage of all mankind. Now, modern governments, with the interest of encouraging "progress in the arts & sciences", have made laws that give the creator a legal monopoly on the right to reproduce his works for a limited time

and

copyright monopoly is considered a necessary, or at least, useful evil for encouraging authors to write, artists to create, and inventors to invent. It is not a moral right, it is a useful evil.

Well, our right to own anything at all is as much a government created right as is copyright. Private property and ownership is a social creation just as much as copyright is.

Thus if you think that your opinion about the holder of the copyright should have weight as to whether you respect that copyright then I deduce that by extension you opinion about holder of physical property is just as important in your decision whether to their government created rights to that property.

[Dragoness Eclectic]

I apologize for probably not being able to follow-up until much later; my limited time on this computer is up for the nonce.

[sarah]

[[Dragoness Eclectic: You cannot own an idea that has been communicated to other people, and that, fundamentally, is what a story, song, etc. is.]]

...perhaps. But if I slapped my own name on "Graceland" and told others that it was my creation, or if I used parts of it without crediting Paul Simon, then they'd (rightfully) call me out on that.

Or if I slapped my name on, oh, say, Roland Barthes' "The Death of the Author," you'd all cry plagiarism. And again, rightfully so.

I know that this is a different animal from fanfiction, which I...don't think I have a huge problem with if 1)the writer of the fanfic gives credit to the original writer(s) and 2) the fanfiction writer doesn't try to profit from it. But I do understand why some writers/creators/artists might have a problem with it.

[Dragoness Eclectic]

Myself:
copyright monopoly is considered a necessary, or at least, useful evil for encouraging authors to write, artists to create, and inventors to invent. It is not a moral right, it is a useful evil.

Mmy:

Well, our right to own anything at all is as much a government created right as is copyright. Private property and ownership is a social creation just as much as copyright is.

Thus if you think that your opinion about the holder of the copyright should have weight as to whether you respect that copyright then I deduce that by extension you opinion about holder of physical property is just as important in your decision whether to their government created rights to that property.

Ah, okay; I think I see the misunderstanding. I was referring to the wishes of the author that people not write certain types/any fanfiction in their universes, which is not the same as plagiarism or copyright infringement (Morally/ethically, in my opinion. The legal arguments are still vague as to whether it is "fair use", "parody", or "creating a derivative work". Different cases can be construed as any of the above; it's complicated.) I was not suggesting that my non-existent right to download pirated copies of (hypothetical you) your ebook for free depended on whether I respected you or not, nor republishing your work under my own name, nor selling unauthorized copies of your books at Cons. I was talking about respecting the author's wishes on extra-legal matters, not about respecting the law. I believe that the nebulous concept I am poking it is termed "moral rights of the author", at least in EU law, but I am not certain.

[Mmy]

@Dragoness Eclectic: I was not suggesting that my non-existent right to download pirated copies of (hypothetical you) your ebook for free depended on whether I respected you or not, nor republishing your work under my own name, nor selling unauthorized copies of your books at Cons. I was talking about respecting the author's wishes on extra-legal matters, not about respecting the law.

I thank you for clarifying the issue about republishing/unauthorized publishing but I would cavil at your description of other things (such as not setting stories in a universe created by another author) as "extra-legal." Those rights are clearly specified under both American and European laws.

[hapax]

Y'know, I think the ideas about copyright and fanfiction are being conflated here, and I think it might help to distinguish them.

Ima gonna use the example again of Harry Potter.

When HP1 first came out, a lot of critics noted that it could, in some sense, be described as a mashup of Ibbotson's Secret of Platform 13 and Jones's Witch Week, with elements of O'Shea's Hounds of the Morrigan thrown in. (All very good books, by the way, and highly recommended to anyone who likes HP).

But nobody would have called it either technically "derivative" or invoked copyright violation, because what Rowling did was to draw on the same tropes and myths and themes as those authors -- stories which are indeed part of the "common cultural heritage" -- and use her own creativity and craft to create her own unique story about a particular set of characters in a distinctive world. Those elements that *differentiate* HP from all these other stories are what I would argue that Rowling, as a creative artist, "owns".

Now I see a LOT of ya fiction for review, and a few years back I got a story that, quite explicitly, was a retelling of HP1 except that the three main characters were *animals*, going to school to learn how to be *wizard familiars.* Details of the plot were quite different, but the narrative structure was the same, and the three characters -- in personality, mannerisms, backstory, interactions, even voice -- were obviously Harry, Ron, and Hermione.

No copyright violation was involved. The work wasn't "derivative" in the technical sense, but it was very much so in the broader sense; the story only "worked" as a sort of AU HP. Now I think that this particular book *could* have been written in a clever or charming way, but it wasn't; any appeal it had lay precisely in the associations it evoked of Rowling's story.

For this reason, I would therefore probably lump this as "fan-fiction", in a sense; but the "fannishness" here was of a particularly lazy and exploitive kind. And yes, I did judge it as "bad", but the "badness" lay in that cheapness and cynicism, not in the fact that it was "retelling the same story."

Later that same year I reviewed another book, a historical fantasy set among the Crusades. And there was one brief scene, set in a tavern, that made me stop and say, "Whoa." I read it to several other people, to make sure I wasn't imagining things, and they all agreed; in setting, dialogue, action, etc., this was a direct copy of the scene in the Mos Eisley cantina in the first Star Wars film.

Now there was nothing else in this book that was related at all to SW. This was certainly not SW fanfiction, or even a "derivative" work. It probably wasn't even deliberate; I suspect that the author needed a tavern encounter with a particular outcome, and zir backbrain obligingly supplied this particular scene without the author ever realizing the source.

However, I was pretty sure it was plagiarism, and probably copyright infringement. I flagged the passage to my editor when I sent in the review (I gave the book a lousy review, but it was for other reasons) and I believe that scene was substantially revised before final publication.

Are these useful distinctions for this conversation?

[hapax]

A-a-and while I was writing that wall-o-text, Dragoness Eclectic and Mmy already sorted this out, much more succinctly.

[Laiima]

I liked your post anyway, hapax. I think I learned stuff.

[J Enigma (the Transhumanist!)]

"I was referring to the wishes of the author that people not write certain types/any fanfiction in their universes,"

Why, can't I, though? If I labor hard to make something, shouldn't I have a right to say where and when it gets used? If I identify so closely to my characters that they're practically family to me, shouldn't I have my wishes respected? There's nothing that says I have to let you play with them. A teenage girl who becomes a superhero is a standard archetype usable by anyone. Renee Rhee, 16yo old heroine who goes by the name "the Blue Pimpernel", is non-neurotypical and lives in a miserable, dystopic future is my creation. I split off part of me to make her and her friends happen. Nobody is going to write those characters as well as I can, because nobody else is as close to them as I am. I have no "moral obligation" to open up these parts of my personality for use and abuse by people who have no idea what I had to go through in order to put them on paper. It's the ultimate disrespect for me to think you have that right without my consenting one way or another on the matter.

If I were going to release it under the "Share and share alike" license, like I do 90% of the stuff that I create, then I'm giving you explicit permission - go ahead, have a field day. Just credit me at the end. This world is yours as much as it is mine, and I'm not opposed to the license at all (in fact, I support it. Why do you think I release a lot of stuff under that license on my blog?) But I'm not doing that here. This book is something far deeper to me; these characters are part of who I am. Something I don't want to see abused, or in anyone else's hands (that'd be like me putting myself in other people's hands. That doesn't make me feel comfortable at all; I don't care how skilled you are, it doesn't make a difference). If I'm willing to share, you should be willing to respect my wishes for sharing.

The archetype Renee is built off of belongs to humanity. Renee Rhee the Blue Pimpernel, as a character, belongs to me and nobody else. Because she is me, and nobody else.

--- Aside ---

I finally got my proof copy in the mail today! It has a ISBN and everything - while It's not available to the public yet (and won't be until I vet it carefully for errors), I self-published my first novel! :D

[Mmy]

@J Enigma: I finally got my proof copy in the mail today! It has a ISBN and everything - while It's not available to the public yet (and won't be until I vet it carefully for errors), I self-published my first novel! :D

I know Ana Mardoll has recently gone through writing a book, having it beta read and even professionally edited. I don't know if you two might have some good tips for each other.

[Dragoness Eclectic]

J Enigma:

Why, can't I, though? If I labor hard to make something, shouldn't I have a right to say where and when it gets used? If I identify so closely to my characters that they're practically family to me, shouldn't I have my wishes respected? There's nothing that says I have to let you play with them.
.... (details elided)
I split off part of me to make her and her friends happen. Nobody is going to write those characters as well as I can, because nobody else is as close to them as I am. I have no "moral obligation" to open up these parts of my personality for use and abuse by people who have no idea what I had to go through in order to put them on paper. It's the ultimate disrespect for me to think you have that right without my consenting one way or another on the matter.

That is pretty much the standard, emotional argument for "moral rights of the author"; you have summed it up quite well. I believe under EU law you do have that as a legal right. Again, IANAL, etc; most of my study of copyright law has been in regard to US law. U.S. law does not recognize "moral rights", only copyright/trademark/patents.

Here's my problem with it: you're telling me what I can and cannot say about your characters, i.e., what I'm publicly allowed to think about your characters. Legally, the concept of "freedom of speech" says that I don't need your permission to say things about your characters. You do not have the right to suppress my speech, even if it offends your deepest emotions about your creations.

However... I (or anyone else) can voluntarily choose to respect your wishes. You cannot, however, force me to, anymore than you can force people to say only things you prefer to hear.

[Dragoness Eclectic]

I finally got my proof copy in the mail today! It has a ISBN and everything - while It's not available to the public yet (and won't be until I vet it carefully for errors), I self-published my first novel! :D

Also, congrats! I hope it does well!

[Froborr]

Not touching this debate with a ten-foot-pole, but I did want to say: Viga and I got our table for Small Press Expo, and will both be selling chapbooks of our work. I hope to have a website up selling ebooks before then (September). Pixel-stained techno-peasantry, here I come!

[Froborr]

Also, congrats J. Enigma!

[Dragoness Eclectic]

Cool! Good luck, Froborr!

[Nenya]

Congrats, J. Enigma and Froborr!

[AnaMardoll]

@J Enigma, Froborr: High fivez!!!!

[Nenya]

Pixel-stained techno-peasantry, here I come!

I had forgotten about that meme....

[Ursula L]

Why, can't I, though? If I labor hard to make something, shouldn't I have a right to say where and when it gets used? If I identify so closely to my characters that they're practically family to me, shouldn't I have my wishes respected? There's nothing that says I have to let you play with them.

No, there is nothing that says you have to let someone else play with your characters.

But when you create a story and present it to the public, you are inviting them to play with your characters. And part of that invitation is that you need to live with the consequences of making that invitation.

If someone, say, publishes a story in text format, either online or via a professional publishing house, they are relying on the readers giving their time and mental effort to read the story and engage with it. Reading is not a passive activity.

When Rowling described Harry as having a scar on his forehead, messy dark hair, green eyes and broken glasses, she invited the readers to pause and think about what Harry looked like. And any reader who pauses to think about the description Rowling gave will use their imagination to fill in a lot of details - his height, his complexion, the shape of his face and nose and mouth, the expression on his face, etc. They won't just think about the details she gave in an abstract manner, they'll use their imaginations to create a face. Based on the text description, if you gave the description to ten talented portrait artists, you'd come up with ten rather different portraits.

Being the audience of a story, whether you are listening to someone telling the story, reading it, or watching it acted out on stage or on screen, is not a passive experience.

The storyteller is relying on the audience to pay attention. They are also relying on the reader cooperating with their storytelling - being open to suspending disbelief, being willing to spend the time and mental effort to imagine details about the world that led to the beginning of the story and existed after the end, etc.

There will be details offered that must be carefully thought about in order to understand events later in the story, and there will also be details offered that aren't necessarily essential to the broad outline of the plot but which are offered because they enhance the story in other ways. And the text won't, can't be 100% clear about the nature of every detail at the moment it is offered, because the text is also busy doing things like building suspense, managing the pacing of the story for the best effect, offering red herrings to make a mystery genuinely mysterious, or giving details that are not strictly about the plot of the story, but which are important to elements like surprise and world-building. And there will be details offered that can't be specifically labeled with a single purpose in the story, but which are interesting and captivating and which enrich the story without being strictly essential to the story.

If you are offering a story to the public, you are relying on them cooperating with your story-telling efforts. You want them to use their imaginations to work with your story, rather than against it. You want them to suspend disbelief on realistically unbelievable things, if those things are important to your story. And you're certainly hoping that your story will lodge in their minds, and that they will use that memory to describe your story to others and encourage others to buy and read the work you've created.

But this creates a dilemma. Once you've engaged the imagination of your audience, you can't arbitrarily say "you may imagine this far, and no further." Some portion of the audience will look at the story you've presented to them, and their imagination will lock on to issues you set aside as unimportant, or characters that you considered to be minor. (Such as the waiter serving dinner to your protagonist at a formal dinner hosted by a prominent politician.)

The interesting question isn't "should original authors have any rights to their work?" It is "what are the rights that an original author should have to their work?" And "what do we, as a society, do to give writers enough control over their work to allow them reasonable profit and comfortable living from their work?" And "how do we do this without creating unnatural and arbitrary legal restraints on human imagination that will undermine society's long-term interest in having a vibrant story-telling and story-creating culture?"

Can an author control the way a reader imagines things as they read the story? I'm pretty sure that everyone here will say "no", you can't control what people think about your work.

Can an author control whether or not a reader writes down the stories and ideas that follow from reading the original work?

Can that writing be in a private format such as a journal?

Can that writing be shared with others as private correspondence?

Can that writing be shared more generally in an online setting where people talk about stories?

Can an author control whether a reader talks about their reaction to the work with a single friend?

Can the author control how people talk about their work, and the ideas that flow from it, in a group setting such as a reading club?

What about talking about it in text format in an online reading group?

What about an online setting devoted to sharing thoughts about and reactions to professionally-created works when those reactions and thoughts are developed in a "story" format rather than an "abstract literary discussion" format?

Given the earlier example of a reader talking about the work with a friend, can the author control written communications between friends, such as sending a letter or e-mail that includes those reactions?

Can the author control the shape of a reader's reaction, whether it is criticism in an abstract form or mentally imagining variations in the story that addresses their criticism?

If a reader's response includes imagining variations on the story, such as a missing scene, a scene retold from a minor character's point of view, or events that follow from the consequences from the story, what rights does the original author have over those imaginings which are engaging points that the original author brought up but did not address in a satisfactory way?

Given the imaginings of the paragraph above, does the author have the right to stop a reader from talking about those imaginings from a friend? Including those imaginings in private written correspondence? Snail-mail or e-mail? Discussing those imaginings in a real-life book club? Addressing those imaginings in an internet setting where people are talking about stories? Sharing those imaginings as a fanfic story without any chance of financial gain to the reader/fanfic-writer but with enthusiastic encouragement towards buying and reading the original author's work? Taking those imaginings ad getting them published in a professional way, with profits given to the creator of the original work? Publishing those same imaginings in a way where profit goes to the fanfic writer?

On the one hand, the limited legal and economic monopoly that writers can be given in the law in order to let them control certain aspects of how their work can be shared is a very good thing, because it helps make it possible for talented story-tellers and story-creators to devote themselves to creating and offering high-quality stories to the public and to human culture.

On the other hand, the way in which copyright law in the US is routinely rewritten every time that it gets close to Disney loosing control over the "Steamboat Willie," and the "Mickey Mouse" character is problematic and destructive.

The way it allows corporations like Disney to poach in the public domain, retelling pre-existing stories and then using that retelling as the basis for suppressing any other use of the preexisting story by others, is worse. Would anyone, these days, dare make an animated musical version of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs?"

Kit wrote a wonderful story involving werewolves. That story very much dependent on the existing werewolf genre of stories as a foundation, thinking about and addressing issues that werewolf stories have generally overlooked and considering the genre in a contemporary setting.

It is quite clear that Kit deserves to have some very significant and powerful rights over the text she wrote.

At one extreme, people shouldn't be allowed to take chapter-sized passages of her text and include them in different stories without giving Kit credit for her work. If profit is made based on her work, Kit certainly deserves a fair share.

At the other extreme, Kit's story should not give her and her heirs rights to or control over any and every future werewolf story in perpetuity.

And there are a lot of different points between those two levels of control where the law might decide to draw a line.

There are also a lot of different groups and perspectives with an interest in how the law balances these things.

An individual professional writer (like Kit) will quite reasonably have a strong idea about the level of control she should have over her work.

The publishing houses that have put her work on paper in bookstores will have a different idea.

Other people who want to write werewolf stories (not fanfic) will have yet another set of ideas about what public policy should be.

People who read and enjoy fiction and write fanfiction in response will have a completely different perspective.

Another perspective will come from people who read stories and write nonfiction discussing and reviewing the stories they've encountered, with their nonfiction work quoting the original fiction story as needed for good discussion of the story.

In other words, It's More Complicated Than That.

And also Pie. And Blue-Footed Boobies.

[Mmy]

@Ursula L: People have been specifically asked not to bring Kit into this discussion. Why can you not use a fictitious writer?

I think that this is inappropriate behaviour on your part.

[Mmy]

@Everyone: To repeat something hapax wrote two days ago:

Kit is a member of this community, and is presumably reading this thread, but has also repeatedly stated that she does not comfortable -- or even safe -- speaking about fanfiction.

I haven't had a chance to discuss this with the other members of TBAT but for the moment I am going to simply delete any further comments on this thread that bring Kit's work into the discussion.

[Froborr]

@Nenya: Yay! I was wondering if anyone would recognize/comment on the reference.

[Mmy]

@Froborr: Congrats!!!!

[Rowen]

I'd like to start this by saying that I'm not a big fan of fan fiction, and that is going to REALLY color what I have to say. I'm not sure if this requires a trigger warning, but I kinda felt that it required some sort of warning that I'm about to step on someone's toes, even though I'm going to try really hard not to.

There's lots of fan fiction and fan art and stuff like that out there. Unfortunately, I see a sizable portion of it as more inexperienced artists cutting their teeth, hence why the boards on DeviantArt are filled with very talented artists copying Amano's Final Fantasy work. Also, why there's a lot of author insertion and Mary Sueism going on.

All that is fine. Or at least it's legal. If an author or another type of artist says "I'm not comfortable with people creating new stories using my setting," well, I feel that it's extremely distasteful to create fan art based on that. Here's a professional example. Michel Fokine created a ballet for the Ballet Russes out of Rimsky-Korsakov's Scherazade. Rimsky-Korsakov's widow denounced the ballet. Did she have the right? I think so. She knew her husband and understood what his music was supposed to be about. Did Michel Fokine have a right to be inspired by the music and come up with a ballet? Sure. The music is gorgeous. That doesn't trump the widow's right to say she felt that the ballet didn't hold up to her husband's vision. And I think in a society where the arts aren't treated so well, I think it's important to foster the right of an artist to have control over the way their art is used JUST as it's important to make sure that other artists are allowed to be inspired by each other's work.

Now, this post is getting away from me, but there's another point I have to make, or at least bring up. Why fan fiction? Why, for example, does one have to write a Lord of the Rings around Gandalf's daughter or whomever, for whatever reason? Why not use that as a spring board and do something like Jacqualine Carey's Godslayer books. When you read them, you can TELL she was inspired to write these based on how she viewed LOTRs, but I felt that took that inspiration and ran with it. To me, at least, writing a story where Gandalf has a daughter or Harry and Hermione get together does not mean you're writing a LOTRs story or a Harry Potter story. I feel like you're writing your own story, but using someone else's characters, and . . well, at the moment, I feel like that's lacking in effort.

I really hope this doesn't start another flame war, because I'm about to go to bed. I'll be around later to talk more, and like I said I REALLY hope I haven't really ticked anyone off, but if I have . . hopefully we can chat about it when I'm more coherent.

[Nenya]

@Froborr: I used to have a Livejournal icon with, I believe, Neil Gaiman on it, labelled "Pixel-Stained Techno-Peasant."

I suppose it's even tangentially related to this discussion, in that it's referring to pro writers who put free stories out online. Yet another way of storytelling.

[Froborr]

Why fan fiction? Why, for example, does one have to write a Lord of the Rings around Gandalf's daughter or whomever, for whatever reason?

Still not going to take a side in this debate, but I think this question is explicable without doing so. I think fandoms are less a part of pop culture than they are folk cultures that use pop culture as their jumping-off points. What I think is happening (regardless of whether or not it should be happening, which I have no opinion on that I will state here) is that fans are treating the original works as myth-cycles, and telling folktales rooted in those shared myth-cycles. I suspect the reason for this is that we live in a folk-culture desert; it has been almost entirely supplanted by commercial pop culture.

[Kit Whitfield]

thinking about and addressing issues that werewolf stories have generally overlooked

Kindly don't tell me what I was and wasn't thinking about. It is not an accurate description of the creative process that went into the books, and it is splainy.

[Kit Whitfield]

@Froborr - that's a very interesting point. The one thing I'd say is that I think conflating 'pop culture' with 'the works of an individual' (which is what The Lord of the Rings is, to address that example) doesn't seem right: pop culture may be a mass product, but single individuals are a different matter, and hardly responsible for culture as a whole.

Besides, I don't think we do live entirely in a folk culture desert. What are urban legends, after all, if not folk tales? (Which have been the source of many a horror movie.) What are nursery rhymes and old tunes nobody can remember the composer for? (Which are often adapted to football chants, and also improvised on by a great many mothers - I can cite The Food Is Coming Song, Nappies Go On The Bum and Your Face Is Dirty from our own household, for instance.) What are fairy tales? (Which are popular subjects for fiction, including literary authors like Angela Carter.)

I don't think we're as impoverished as all that when it comes to folk culture. We have plenty of folk works, and they do get used both by artists and by 'the people', as it were - so much that they're hiding in plain sight.

[Kit Whitfield]

But when you create a story and present it to the public, you are inviting them to play with your characters. And part of that invitation is that you need to live with the consequences of making that invitation.

See, this? This is splaining.

One cannot invite accidentally, and invitations have limits. It is an appallingly rude guest who contradicts the host as to what the invitation implied.

If I say, 'Drop in for tea some time,' I am issuing an invitation to do something, but I am not issuing an invitation to move into my house and refuse to leave. If I say 'Do you think this hat suits me?', I am inviting an opinion on the hat, but I am not inviting someone to say 'Well, it looks okay, but your face will never really look right till you get a nose job and do something about that ugly complexion.' If I invite someone to shake my hand, I am inviting physical contact, but that does not imply the right to punch me in the face.

And if somebody does those things, and I object, and they say I've invited them, they aren't accepting an invitation. They are engaging in victim-blaming.

An author who publishes work is not automatically inviting fan fiction. Many authors have never heard of fan fiction at the time of publication; I was astonished when someone told me it existed. Other authors may know of it and not like the idea, as witness the fact that some authors forbid it. And if an author forbids it, then obviously they were not inviting it. They were inviting readers to read and think and talk and fantasise about their work; they were not inviting them to write derivative work based on it and publish it.

Invitations have limits.

My views on fan fiction are mixed. My views on entitled splainyness are not.

[Mmy]

@Kit Whitfield: (Which are often adapted to football chants, and also improvised on by a great many mothers - I can cite The Food Is Coming Song, Nappies Go On The Bum and Your Face Is Dirty from our own household, for instance.)

Okay, the "Nappies Go On The Bum" totally made my morning. And brought back memories of every mother in my family :)

[Kit Whitfield]

It's sung to the tune of 'A-Hunting We Will Go.' You add different garments each verse: '...Shoes and socks go on the feet, and nappies go on the bum.'

[hapax]

Ha. I can still induce massive twitching in my nigh-adult children with the first line of the "Wait A Minute" song.

And the "Clean Up Everybody Everywhere" song? They'll do anything -- even possibly clean something -- to stop it at the first bar.

[Kit Whitfield]

Ooh, will you teach me?

[Rowen]

Ugh. I had JUST gotten the Grand Old Duke of York out of my head. . .

[sarah]

@hapax: oh god. Is that the Barney song?

Talk about an earworm.

[Shit Slacktiverse Says]

Straight (usually white) women appropriating gay men's experiences and other people's fiction to wank over? I mean, whatever floats your boat, but don't try and kid yourself that you're being "subversive". You're not subverting anything.

[Kit Whitfield]

SSS does not speak with courtesy, but I think s/he raises a relevant point: if something is done purely for erotic/pornographic purposes, can it really be said to be subversive?

[MercuryBlue]

http://freethoughtblogs.com/greta/2012/02/22/porn-or-erotica/ --yes, it really can. Greta's not talking about fanworks in specific, yes, but fanworks are certainly a subset of what she is talking about.

[MercuryBlue]

Erotic/pornographic fanworks, I should say, because not all fanworks are erotic/pornographic by a long shot.

[Kit Whitfield]

I don't disagree that erotic work can be subversive, but what about the issue of appropriating experience?

[MercuryBlue]

Fandom's been arguing about that for years. If you like, after work when I have Dreamwidth/Livejournal access I can find some links discussing the question.

And SSS is wrong, anyway. If ze'd made a less sweeping statement, maybe ze'd still be wrong, maybe not (like I said, it's an ongoing discussion), but I'm thinking of a fanauthor pseud of architeuthis, who is a gay man who writes m/m fic, and who is far from alone.

[Izzy]

I think porn can be subversive in the same way that anything done for fun can be subversive: usually unintentionally, and usually more effective for it. (Did anyone really become an environmentalist because of Captain Planet? Ever?)

On appropriation, I really don't know: I'm a straight white girl. Where the things that could be appropriated about me are concerned--mostly being female--I'd rather have invisibility than stereotypes. (LotR doesn't bug me as much as The Simpsons, for example.) Once we get beyond the stereotype/generalization thing, then I don't mind.

But that's me, and being female, and other stuff.

[L. David Wheeler]

I don't have much of an opinion on fanfic itself -- never written any, except for one small chapter in a round-robin exercise on the old "Cult of Tintin" website a dozen years ago; and haven't read much in recent years (and what I have read varies in quality from excellent to execrable). My gut instinct is to respect the stated feelings of the author — if they've said directly that they don't want it done or even that they're highly uncomfortable with it, I think it's uncharitable at the least to barrel through with it publicly (as opposed to done by oneself or shared with a few friends, and I realize it's the "sharing with a few friends" that's the sticky point, because at issue is how to define "sharing," "few" and "friends"). Other authors -- John Scalzi, for instance -- have said they're OK with it, just don't tell him about it, as he doesn't want to see it (for a number of reasons, not least among them legal protection). And a few like the idea, at least in concept -- Izzy, at least, has indicated in this thread she's OK with it. So it's a gray area, and I do think regard for a work should carry over to respect for the creator and zer (zier?) concerns.

What I'm wondering about is how this plays out when the interplay is between art forms -- specifically, music inspired by literary works. Obviously, there's been music based on literature for centuries -- operas based on Shakespeare or Spenser of Greco/Roman or Teutonic mythology -- but there's been plenty in "mainstream" pop music as well; Sting's "Moon Over Bourbon Street," for instance, is inspired by Anne Rice's "Interview with the Vampire," as he says directly in the liner notes of its album.

I ask because I'm part of the filk community (and I know a number of you are at least familiar with filk), a musical movement of sorts that grew in and around science fiction/fantasy fandom, in which the songs we write/sing/play in circles and concert settings range from completely original concepts to songs inspired by/based on books/movies/TV programs (it was hearing about 30 songs about it that finally drove me to check out Firefly) to parodies (of standards, pop/folk songs, other filks) to covers (ranging from Tom Lehrer to Pink Floyd).

It's the second category that runs analogous to fanfic -- I've written perhaps three songs that could be considered in that category, one from the perspective of a character in Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles; a Simon & Garfunkel "The Boxer" parody from the perspective of Charlie Brown (called "The Beagle"); and a brief song inspired by the 1910 silent-film version of Frankenstein. (Others are based on original scenarios, including an unpublished and largely unwritten original story of mine.) I think legally, different rules apply, though I'm not sure about that. Morally, I tend to think the same rules apply -- if an author adamantly did not want people writing songs about their work, most filkers, I think, would stay away from it. There hasn't been a lot of Violent Filk Opposition among authors that I know of, possibly because filk has grown alongside fandom since the '50s and many professional authors -- including folks like Asimov himself -- have taken part. Poul Anderson and Gordon Dickson were active filkers (Anderson's widow Karen still goes to filk conventions); in a more modern context, authors such as Tanya Huff and Seanan McGuire are active in filk (Seanan has four albums to her credit).

So ... yeah, I'm just wondering what people think about the concept when it crosses not just persons or genres but art forms as well. (I've mentioned music, because that's my particular area, but this could also apply to visual arts or performing arts like dance.) Thoughts?

[Timothy (TRiG)]

There is a house in Ankh-Morpork
It's run by Rosie Palm.

[Dragoness Eclectic]

Rowen:

Here's a professional example. Michel Fokine created a ballet for the Ballet Russes out of Rimsky-Korsakov's Scherazade. Rimsky-Korsakov's widow denounced the ballet. Did she have the right? I think so. She knew her husband and understood what his music was supposed to be about. Did Michel Fokine have a right to be inspired by the music and come up with a ballet? Sure. The music is gorgeous. That doesn't trump the widow's right to say she felt that the ballet didn't hold up to her husband's vision. And I think in a society where the arts aren't treated so well, I think it's important to foster the right of an artist to have control over the way their art is used JUST as it's important to make sure that other artists are allowed to be inspired by each other's work.

She had the right anyone else does, to express her opinion. Note that she's not the composer, either, so her opinion has nothing to do with the late composer's control of how his work is used. I would not consider this a good example for that reason.

[Dragoness Eclectic]

Kit:

See, this? This is splaining.
...
My views on fan fiction are mixed. My views on entitled splainyness are not.

I did not post that comment (Ursula L. did), but I believe she explained the reality of the matter very well. I am not impressed by your attempt to dismiss an entire line of discussion by giving it a pejorative label. No, it was not "splaining". I was not impressed by your attempt to derail the valid and comprehensive explanation that Ursula presented by focusing in on the verb "invite", interpreting it hyper-literally and drawing nonsensical conclusions from that.

Once one makes one's creations public, one cannot control how the public reacts to them. Human beings don't work that way.

[DavidTC]

They were inviting readers to read and think and talk and fantasise about their work; they were not inviting them to write derivative work based on it and publish it.

Whoa, slight phrasing issues there. Calling what happens with fanfic 'publishing' (Which is associated with actual professional printing.) and calling what happens with criticism 'talking' (Which is associated with talking to single person and vanishes after a second.) is somewhat misleading.

'Talking' about a work and 'publishing' fanfic are the same process in this world we live in. Someone puts text in an HTML form, hits 'submit', and now it's text on a website anyone can read.(1) Either word will do, but we need to use the same one, not different ones with different connotations. Either they're publishing criticism and publishing fanfic, or they're talking in the form of criticism and talking in the form of fanfic.

That said, 'fantasize' confused me, Kit.

Are you saying that fantasizing about a work is different from fanfic? I.e, that there's a line between thinking 'If X had done this, then Y would not have happened, leading to Z', vs. actually constructing a narrative in your head?

Or are you saying that sort of thing is fine as long as you don't communicate it to others? I.e., you can talk about the work in other ways, and you can fantasize about the work to whatever level you want, but there's a certain level of detail above which you can't communicate it to others, because it has turned into a narrative, aka fanfic?

An author who publishes work is not automatically inviting fan fiction. Many authors have never heard of fan fiction at the time of publication; I was astonished when someone told me it existed. Other authors may know of it and not like the idea, as witness the fact that some authors forbid it. And if an author forbids it, then obviously they were not inviting it. They were inviting readers to read and think and talk and fantasise about their work; they were not inviting them to write derivative work based on it and publish it.

Presumably, we all agree that when a writer allows fanfic, fanfic is allowed. And when a writer forbids it, it's not allowed. (Although this forbidding can only go as far as copyright law would allow them to forbid.)

Are you trying to say the default assumption should be 'Writers with unstated preferences do not allow it?'. Which I would disagree with, but I'm going to wait until I know that's what is being argued.

Or are you taking issue with some hypothetical fanfic written against authorial wishes? That's what you seem to be upset about, but I'm pretty certain no one here is arguing that such a thing is allowed or should be distributed. And when such things exist, they get shunned by the rest of the fanfic community, usually existing solely on individual fanfic writer websites.

1) That reminds me of a fact that I deleted from a previous post, but I should point out: There are forms of fanfic that are entirely legal. People can, for example, make up their own Harry Potter story in their head and wander around telling people it. As long as it's never contained in a fixed medium (or presented in front of enough people at once that it counts as a public performance) it's not a copyright violation.

[Izzy]

TW: Swearing.

@David: In fairness, I did say, back at the beginning, that there were certain authors whose wishes I could see not respecting, mostly people in the Card/Rice/etc camp, because...well, because fuck them, basically.

My general stance is threefold, or two-and-a-half-fold:

1. If you don't respect an author, then sure, write fanfic against their wishes, but don't act like you're making any non-go-fuck-yourself statement when doing so.

2. If you do respect an author, go by their stated wishes.
2.5: "What they don't know won't hurt them" is...well, is a policy I've taken regarding parents, bosses, and a boyfriend or two, all of whom I respected at least as much as a theoretical author I've never met, so I don't think I can say much against it.

[Mmy]

@DavidTC: Are you trying to say the default assumption should be 'Writers with unstated preferences do not allow it?'. Which I would disagree with, but I'm going to wait until I know that's what is being argued.

Can't speak for Kit but that is what I am saying. The default is to assume "not allowed."

Because one should proceed using the "first thing, do no harm" criteria. And since it does you no harm† to stop, wait a moment, and make the effort to ascertain the author's preference and it can do harm to write/publish/distribute share fanfic when it violates the author's preference -- then it is an obvious choice.

<insert stretched analogy> there are people who like the taste of salt, people who like a little bit of salt and people who are under doctor's orders not to eat salt. A wise (and thoughtful) cook ascertains how their guests feel about salt before drenching the only available foods with the spice. </stretched analogy>

† You may find it annoying. It might try your patience. It doesn't harm you.

[Izzy]

Added: I am not, and never have claimed to be, any kind of moral role model, so.

[Rowen]

DL,

She's not the composer, no. She was the composer's wife, and therefore probably had a better idea of what was going on through the composer's mind then the director of the Ballet Russes. At this point in time, she was also executor of his estate, so, yes, by that standard, at least in a modern setting, her opinion WOULD matter in regards to how his music is being controlled.

This happens a lot. Bush II used Tom Petty's "I Won't Back Down" in his 2000 campaign. Tom Petty objected, since he didn't want his song used as an endorsement for Bush, and sent a cease and desist letter. Did Bush have a legal right to connect with Petty's song? Yes. Did Bush have a legal right to buy Petty's album and listen to it, and enjoy the song? Yes. Did Bush have a right to then use the song as his anthem in a professional sense against Tom Petty's wishes? According to American law, no, and I'm kinda glad for that.

As an artist, I know what goes into my artwork. I don't mind people viewing and judging and critiquing my pieces and writings. I don't even mind if they flat out tell me to my face. What I DO mind is if they take a painting of mine and make a copy, even if it's in their own style, and pass it off as their own artistic endeavor (keep in mind, I've done paintings that are in the style of another artist, or were inspired by another artist. It's still MY own. I hope you understand the distinction).

[Beroli]

I am not impressed by your attempt to dismiss an entire line of discussion by giving it a pejorative label.

I'm oddly reminded of your recent use of the term "monopoly," somehow. And when people objected to you throwing around claims that monopolies are inherently evil, you replied, "do you consider monopolies generally good and desireable, then?" As though the fallacy of the excluded middle wasn't a fallacy.

[Amanita]

I’ve worked as an account manager (talent handler, basically) at a publishing house for several years now. The fanfic issue comes up every once in a while, generally after one of my authors has been self-googling, and reactions are extremely varied. Some get a kick out of it, some absolutely loathe it, but most fall into the middle area of “maybe in this case, but not in that case, or only if.”

One novelist in particular is very conservative (you’d never realize by his writing) and was incensed to find “gay smut” involving his characters. He wanted lawyers, apologies, blood, and the destruction of the entire internet. He made a little more sense once he’d managed to take a few deep breaths, but he was still furious.

In a situation like that, what do you do? Okay, he could sue. He had the right to. He might have won the case in a court of law, but the court of public opinion is a different thing entirely. The media probably would have spun it as a David and Goliath story. A successful author going after an average Joe. More to the point, a gay average Joe. (The fic writer self-identified as a gay man.)

Even if the issue had been a general objection to fan fiction (it wasn’t), this author would still likely have been seen as a bigot. That’s the sort of thing that brings boycotts and sales slumps. Ridicule, too, depending on how the defense responds. Back in 1990, there was an obscenity trial against 2 Live Crew. The highlight of the trial was when the stenographer read back the “obscene” lyrics in monotone. Just think of the field day the media would have had with pornographic snippets of the fanfic being presented in court.

It was essentially a damned if you do situation, and in the end the author chose to look the other way. I had to spend a good long while soothing those feathers, though.

Personally, I don’t have very defined opinion on fan fiction. It’s more of a case by case situation depending on who I’m dealing with at the time. I don’t write it and I rarely read it. Most of what I do read is linked to me by the author I’ve worked with the longest. She gets a kick out of wretchedly bad fan fiction, though, which is arguably so terrible it no longer resembles her work.

As far as copyright goes, I think individual authors need it, corporations need it to a far lesser extent, and Disney needs to damn well stop.

[Kit Whitfield]

I believe she explained the reality of the matter very well

Of course you do. She said things you agree with. The fact that she was also splaining is therefore presumably of no interest to you; after all, it wasn't you she was doing it to.

--

Calling what happens with fanfic 'publishing' (Which is associated with actual professional printing.)

Rubbish. Ask anyone who's ever boasted of their work being 'published online'. 'Publish' means to make public.

Are you saying that fantasizing about a work is different from fanfic?

Are you saying there's no difference between having a thought and writing it down, and no difference between writing down a thought in private and putting it online for the world to see?

[Rowen]

"As far as copyright goes, I think individual authors need it, corporations need it to a far lesser extent, and Disney needs to damn well stop."

I hate it when you spend hours trying to put your thoughts down and then someone comes along and sums it up in about 2 sentences. Well done, Amanita. ^_^

[DavidTC]

Because one should proceed using the "first thing, do no harm" criteria. And since it does you no harm† to stop, wait a moment, and make the effort to ascertain the author's preference and it can do harm to write/publish/distribute share fanfic when it violates the author's preference -- then it is an obvious choice.

Except I don't agree with the idea of fanfic doing _harm_. (In fact, I argue that it's just a slightly formalized version of what people do when they experience a work.)

People say 'harm', but way back in my original post, I've listed all the ways I've heard it might do harm and none of them actually stand up to any scrutiny at all. If you have a way fanfic harms the original work, please state it.

And there's plenty of stuff that apparently is allowed that _does_ do harm. I'm a little baffled at the idea that a scathing criticism of Work X published on a website reviewing those things does not do 'harm', but some Work X fanfic published on some other website does. (In fact, we wouldn't argue such reviews aren't allowed _even if_ the author didn't like them.)

So you can't just stand there and say 'do no harm', without demonstrating that a) some actual harm is happening, and b) it is at least _slightly_ comparable in harm to the amount of harm that happens other ways.

I'm all for saying people should not 'harm' fiction, or, rather, 'harm people's experiences of fiction', I actually think fiction is _incredibly_ important to how society works, and I think people should experiences works in as much in their original form as possible. I have argued, a long time ago in a newsgroup far far away, that DVD should have commercial breaks in them, or at least thirty seconds of blank screen where the commercials were intended to go when the show was made.

But fanfic is dead last in things that do that. Heck, the actual publishing industry, with spoilers in previews, revealing cover art, etc, is more 'harmful' than fanfic.

If fanfic is, I dunno, 5% 'harmful' to the original work, and 0.01% of the people who read the original work read it, that's 0.0005% damage...and meanwhile someone on a morning show just insulted your book, including spoiling a major plot point, (20% damage) to a national audience, including 3% of your future readers.

My point is basically 'do no harm' only applies to harms that are visible against the background noise, and I don't think fanfic is even *slightly* to that point, assuming I concede it causes any 'harm' at all. Does 'do no harm' include 'using up oxygen'? Of course not.

Meanwhile, restricting people from communicating in certain ways _does_ do harm, which is why we have a very high bar to pass for doing that, aka, the first amendment in the US, and similiar rules in other countries. And, yes, fanfic, under the incredibly expansive-and-widening-every-day version of copyright law we have in the modern world, does indeed reach that legal bar, but reaching a legal bar doesn't magically make harm appear from thin air.

So if we're talking 'First, do no harm', I have to say, we should _first_ not restrict how people communicate about a work unless it can be demonstrated to be at least harmful. (At which point we need to carefully weigh it.)

[Kit Whitfield]

At this point, I'm just going to throw my hands in the air and explain my position on fan fiction.

As an activity, I believe it's extremely complicated both legally and morally, and needs to be judged, as Amanita says, on a case by case basis.

Anybody who declared that all fan fiction should be completely forbidden would almost certainly be too sweeping. There are cases and kinds where it seems legitimate comment; there are situations where it is of benefit to the fans. That's fair enough.

On the other hand, a lot of fan fiction proponents make arguments that are ill-informed, simplistic, insular and self-righteous, and that gets right up my nose. It seems to bring out the worst in quite a lot of people, which is, to my mind, a relevant factor in any human endeavour.

To quote Arthur Guiterman: 'Borrow, Sir Knight, but be decent in borrowing!'

[Mmy]

@DavidTC: Except I don't agree with the idea of fanfic doing _harm_. (In fact, I argue that it's just a slightly formalized version of what people do when they experience a work.)

Not going to address anything else you wrote because I there was a screeching thunderclap in my ear when I read the first sentence.

You don't get to decide what hurts other people.

TRIGGER WARNING: DISCUSSION OF SPOUSAL ABUSE, RACISM, SEXISM

I have spent my entire life hearing/reading/studying people who said "I don't think that thing X did any harm to Person Y."

I have heard men who denied their wives access to friends, money, jobs, freedom and education day that.

I have heard people who were white say that about policies that only affected people who were not white.

I have heard men say that policies that affected women.

YOU ARE NOT THE PERSON WHO MIGHT BE HARMED AND THEREFORE I HAVE NO INTEREST IN HEARING WHAT YOU THINK.

If an author tells me that zie feels that fanfic harms them/their work then I don't get to tell hir that it doesn't.

And neither do you.

[Timothy (TRiG)]

Copyright and patent law do establish legal monopolies. That is, in fact, precisely the point.* And monopolies can be harmful. I suppose you could see copyright law as a "necessary evil". I wouldn't look at it that way myself. That way of thinking is as follows:

* Monopolies are a bad thing.
* Copyright law establishes monopolies.
* But copyright law is necessary for authors.
* Therefore copyright law is a necessary evil.

I'd approach it differently.

* Monopolies are often a bad thing.
* Authors need monopolies, but these are the non-evil kind of monopoly (generally).
* Copyright law established monopolies.
* And that's not a problem (unless indefinitely extended**).

It is not, on the face of it, absurd to worry about the ever-expanding reach of copyright, but I'm not sure how closely that relates to fanfiction.

In the Free Software community, there's a mantra that patents apply to ideas (and software patents are evil), while copyright law applies to specific expressions of an idea. So if I write an app to foo*** widgets, copyright law applies to the specific code I used to write my app, but not to the idea of fooing widgets in general. If I want to protect that, I'd need to patent it.

So how does that apply to fanfiction? Is it the author's copyright that's being violated, or something else? Moral rights? I'm confused.

Should we stop talking about the law altogether, and just talk about the morality and ethics of the situation? I say we. To be honest, I'm barely participating in this conversation.

TRiG.

* They are, though, very different things, and lumping them both together as "Intellectual Property" obscures useful distinctions. We're talking about copyright here.

** See Disney needs to damn well stop.

*** A metasyntactic variable.

[ZMiles]

Gee, Mmy. I'm told that my very existence harms other people. See, I'm an atheist, and a whole lot of Christians feel that my very presence corrupts their children/ruins their happiness/turns God against America. Do you think I should die or go into hiding? I mean, I can't decide what harms them, right? I have to take their claims at face value, according to you, right?

(Which, incidentally, means that your argument is hurtful to me. If you want to be intellectually consistent, retract it).

I've heard men claim that women in power harms them (the women). "I have an obligation to protect my wife that I can't fulfil if she's in the workplace!" "It turns society on its head!"

I've heard white people claim that extended rights to POC harms them (the white people). "Affirmative action means that qualified white people can't get jobs!" they say.

Guess we should roll back the civil rights clock, eh? I mean, we can't question any claim of harm.

What you promote here is abominable. It ignores any possibility that sometimes all possible choices harm people. It ignores the possibility that sometimes, one group is harmed and the other actually isn't. It's a mindless, ignorant approach to the world, blindly accepting whoever shouts in your ear first that they're hurt. It jettisons all critical thinking and analysis.

Oh, and as an aside? Lots of people think that banning fanfic would hurt them. Because it would shut down their creative expression or prohibit them from registering rebuttals to offensive works as best they wanted, or what have you. Who are you to tell them they can't write it? Especially if they say it harms them?

Until you, or Kit, or anyone else can come up with an actual way that fanfic might harm someone, why should anyone give credence to this viewpoint?

[Beroli]

Until you, or Kit, or anyone else can come up with an actual way that fanfic might harm someone, why should anyone give credence to this viewpoint?

http://www.jimchines.com/2010/05/mzb-vs-fanfiction .

Relevant, if we're discussing whether it's possible for fanfic to be harmful.

[Mmy]

@ZMiiles: None of your arguments are made in good faith. You know that as well as do I.

I don't have to prove to anyone that it would hurt me if they stole something from that I own. I don't have to listen to a fence telling me how much the suppression of burglary hurts hir business.

[Kit Whitfield]

Until you, or Kit, or anyone else can come up with an actual way that fanfic might harm someone

Did I say fan fiction harmed people? All I have said in this argument is:

a. Some of the points people have made strike me as faulty for this or that reason.

b. I don't want people putting words in my mouth.

c. Fan fiction is a complicated issue but some fans can be jerks.

As regards your comment, I refer you to point b.

[DavidTC]

@Kit: Rubbish. Ask anyone who's ever boasted of their work being 'published online'. 'Publish' means to make public.

I was clearly taking issue with was using two different words, with two different connotations, to describe the same thing (Posting stuff on the internet) in a comparision. That is misleading. As is cutting sentences in half to pretend I object to things being posted online as 'publishing', when I actually object to some things being called 'publishing' and others not being called that.

Are you saying there's no difference between having a thought and writing it down, and no difference between writing down a thought in private and putting it online for the world to see?

_I'm_ not saying anything, I'm asking you what _you_ were saying, because I do not understand the line you drew.

You said that fantasizing about a work of fiction was okay, but fantasizing about a work of fiction, writing that fantasy down in narrative form, and letting others see it (aka, fanfic) was not. And this was confusingly in a sentence that also said talking (Which is letting others see your ideas.) about a work of fiction was fine.

So I asked exactly _where_ exactly you were drawing the line in that process. Narrative form? Distributing narrative form?

Or are you making some sort of distinction that I didn't even think of, between one-way communication of documenting a fantasy even not in narrative form, and posing an offhanded hypothetical, or what?

You know, for someone who just jumped on someone else for 'splaining', you seem to be rather annoyed when I _didn't_ make assumptions about what you meant, and asked you instead.

And if you really want an answer to the questions you asked, no to the first, and yes to the second. And while I see the analogy you're trying to draw there, that _still_ didn't answer my question about what you meant, because I have no idea how _you_ would answer them. ('Do you like pie?' 'You might as well ask me if I like cake!' '...uh, okay...do you like cake?')

Do _you_ see a difference between having a thought and writing it down in private? Do _you_ see a difference between writing it down in private and putting it online for the world to see?

And, perhaps more relevantly: Do _you_ see a difference between 'putting it online for the world to see' and 'talking about it in an online forum'? Do _you_ see a difference in ideas between casual hypothetical and someone working out exactly what would happen? Do _you_ see a difference in writing those different hypothetical down? Putting up that online for others to read?

I don't know what you think, which is why I asked _you_.

[Mmy]

@ZMiles: See, I'm an atheist, and a whole lot of Christians feel that my very presence corrupts their children/ruins their happiness/turns God against America. Do you think I should die or go into hiding?

To clarify something you seem not to understand.

I know that there are people in America who believe that my existence harms them. I have no doubt that someone who believes that a woman, by her very nature, is incapable to holding positions of authority and learning finds my very existence a threat to their ideology. Which it is.

I also believe in the fact that I live in a nation of laws. Just as I am not allowed to bend the law to suit my feelings nor should they be so allowed. They are allowed to "think" but not allowed to act on their belief that they know better than I what truly harms me.

If the law states that something should not be done/allowed -- then I cannot claim exclusion from that law on the basis of saying "I don't agree with the people who made a convincing argument for that law to exist."

Therefore, if you don't believe that fanfic hurts anyone then get off your can and work to change the existing copyright laws.

Just as (and I loathe and despise the people who are doing so) there are people in the United States who are working to change the laws that protect women from discrimination. I think those people are wrong. I loathe their ideology -- but I will grant them one thing, they are going about "rolling things back" in the way one does in a nation ruled by law.

[Rowen]

Um, Zmiles, we're talking about intellectual property and why someone using your creation without your explicit permission. Can we at least start there? I'd like there to be an acknowledgement of the author/creator's work in coming up with a novel/show.

[MercuryBlue]

Beroli: Seems to me, and to Hines, that the salient points of the article you link are:

Bradley was an active participant in Darkover fanfiction, editing a fanzine and reading unlicensed, fan-written works.

Bradley tried to buy the rights to use a fan’s story.

So as long as we're not talking about authors who read fanfiction of their works or, probably more to the point, who attempt to buy the rights to particular fanfics, the Bradley case is not on point.

I believe I shall spend my weekend researching US copyright law as it pertains to derivative and transformative work including but not limited to fanfiction (I'm a paralegal student, therefore I have LexisNexis access through my school), and y'all will see the results in this or next This Week post.