Late to the Fanfiction Party
6 Jun
Really long entry incoming. I apologize ahead of time, but it’s been a while, so why not?
While I had my head up my– er, buried in the sand and Plaguebringer, I mean to say, there was a sort of metaphorical conflagration over fanfiction. Yet another author decided to get offended that people imagine her characters screwing other characters she never intended them to screw, or something.* Anyhow, I’m really late to the party, but I have to represent here just for the record.
Loads of authors are squicked by seeing someone doing things, bad or good, to their babies, and that’s cool because it’s theirs. Thing is, daydreams and fics can’t threaten that ownership in any real way. Perhaps this is part of the reason why, legally speaking, there’s no way to stop someone imagining your story ending another way, continuing forever, or getting sucked into an alternate dimension where it meets up with Luke Skywalker and Homer Simpson for a can of True Blood at Merlotte’s. Nor can you stop fans sharing this abomination with like-minded individuals (because oh, they will find them, thank you internets), so long as they’re not getting paid or claiming the work as their own. It’s the internet equivalent of kids writing stories and passing them around a slumber party. If you want to, you can tell the kids to get their slumber party off your damn lawn. Totally cool, and personally I respect that.
But you have no legal shotgun on this metaphorical lawn– you can only hope the giggling fans will be scared away by the threat of extensive defense fees. Not to mention prosecution fees for you. And perhaps a significant loss of book sales because you were a jerk to your giggling fans, but that’s another issue.
I had many many issues with the whole thing, and all of them were very well expressed by Corinne Duyvis in a series of posts at the time:
The Great Fanfic Debate , pt. 1: Why Fandom Is Good For Authors (As in, the authors whose works are being ficced)
The Great Fanfic Debate, pt. 2: Why Fandom Ain’t As Bad People Think It Is (As in, a few of the reasons people pan fandom, and why those reasons are pretty lame)
The Great Fanfic Debate, pt. 2.5: Why Fandom Is Good For… Er… Authors (As in, those who hope to one day publish novels worthy of generating their own fanfiction)
The final post deals with the point that I think stunned me the most, this misconception that [Fandom]‘s not a good place to grow as a writer. Create your own characters/worlds – at least that way you’ll learn something. Tied in with the implication, of course, that it takes no talent or skill to work within a world that did not spring fully formed from your own brainmeats.
Yeah, I can’t let that one go without saying something, and I’ve had plenty of time to simmer down since my initial reaction, so I feel safe now.
There’s a huge list of respected authors who write what is essentially fanfiction for a living (think comics writers, TV writers, Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms authors other than Weis/Hickman and Greenwood, Star Wars and Trek writers, hell, Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore with 1602 and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen). Yeah, all those are authorized or in the public domain, which is why they can make money off it, but my point is that they are fucking talented. So let’s do away with that right there.
The thing about it being impossible to learn anything there, that’s just inane. Corinne has the list of well-known current authors who proclaim the wonders fanfiction did for their writing skills at her post. It’s impressive, and there’s more where that came from– and not only writers, but many agents and editors have fandom roots, too. Not only is it supportive and a great learning environment, but it’s also an incredible networking score.
And at the risk of sounding like I think I’m any good now, I want to point out that 10 years ago I was such a terrible writer. I mean really fucking terrible, technically and– in every way imaginable. I’d been writing since I was a little kid, but no one but my best friend (who loves me far too much not to love whatever I write, bless her) had seen any of it. I went through one of my angry periods with Marvel and started writing my own comic book stories– my first fanfiction!– and suddenly there were people who would read them and say things like:
“Hey, this is a great idea, but you need a beta reader. I can help!”
and
“I’ve been thinking about this kind of thing too– maybe we could work together on something…”
Yeah you get your dickish types in there, fandom has more than its share of attention whoring, anyone will tell you. But the good far outweighs the bad, and man, the things I have learned from these people. Yeah, there are things you can only learn from writing your own stuff, no one denies this. But to this day, with only two exceptions, everyone who’s ever beta read anything I’ve sold has been a friend from fandom writing.
I’m currently working on two collaborative projects, both of them with people I originally met in fandom. One’s a short story, the other’s a graphic novel. A lot of you know the partner on the latter, too, because it’s Corinne. And that’s how I met her originally– like six years ago, or something. (I’m only using her name because she’s obviously not shy about it. See her blog posts! Really!)
I get that it’s cool to pan fangirls and fanboys and bark about some of the twisted shit people imagine Harry Potter characters doing. Hell, I once stumbled over a John Adams fanfic that involved dom!Alexander Hamilton, sub!Thomas Jefferson**, and a lot of rope; though I didn’t read the thing, I was still scarred by the very idea. Which is saying a lot, seeing as I do much scarier things to my own characters on a daily basis.
But actually cool people got that way by not caring if they were cool or not. So haters, no one who matters is impressed. Just sayin’. Fanfiction has some excellent points, and just how helpful it is to an aspiring writer happens to be my personal favorite.
*Okay, I’m oversimplifying and being a dick on purpose. For anyone who didn’t see it but actually cares, Diana Gabaldon was upset because a fan was auctioning off a fanfiction using one of her characters to raise money for a sick friend’s hospital bills. Which is completely valid, because it’s putting the author in a crap position– at the very least, she ought to have been asked first. I’m not going to get into the morality of the whole auction thing, that’s the author’s watch. What bothered me was not that at all– it was her initial vitriolic reaction to fanfiction and fandom in general that made me a bit ill. She has since retracted it, but it started the fire. This time.
**Are you morbidly curious to know how I might’ve come across such a thing? Or are some things better left unsaid?
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Now playing: Julian Plenti – Girl On the Sporting News
via FoxyTunes
I read this debate on GRRM’s LJ, or his ‘not-a-blog’ as he calls it. He cited the case of one author who was hit by a lawsuit because she ‘stole’ an idea from a piece of fanfic.
And it’s not a unique case.
So while i sympathize with your personal experience and agree there is a positive side to it, I am against fanfic being published. If I had created a world I was actively writing in, and my living depended on it, I wouldn’t want to be looking over my shoulder, worrying that someone has already used the a theme/situation from my WIP and published it on the Net or in a fanzine. I remember Terry Pratchett asking fans not to publish Discworld fanfic for this very reason.
Well…
I could say something here, but I’m pretty sure it’s unnecessary!
Michael: that case was definitely not representative. Jim Hines posted a good breakdown of it a while ago. Basically, as long as the author doesn’t read fanfic of their work, there’s really not much risk – and authors also get sued for stealing ideas from other original fiction, so you can never be 100% risk-free. To me, it wouldn’t be worth discouraging fans of my work from doing what they want to, especially as having a rabid fanbase and being nice to them can work in my favour as an author.
Which isn’t to say that authors shouldn’t be able to decide for themselves if they’re OK or not with fanfiction, but I do think that they should be well-informed about fandom before making such a decision, which a lot of them don’t seem to be.
Corinne, it does appear that MZB’s ‘mistake’ was to participate in fanfic, even going so far as to use fans’ ideas and acknowledge them in her stories. It still seems very heartless and unfair, though, to my mind, that a fan would hold an author to ransom and ask for a cut of the profits the way Lamb did.
And the point you make about encouraging a fan base is of course a valid one. I guess if I was fortunate enough to be an author affected by this issue, I’d just turn a blind eye and pretend it didsn’t exist.
I think it depends on how you look at it. Is fanfiction owned by the author of the fanfic or by the author of the original work? Does using Author A’s characters without making money off it mean Author A gets to make money off your work? Depending on how much MZB wanted to use from Lamb’s work, I can’t really blame Lamb for wanting to negotiate a better deal, especially if she did it as politely as she claimed. I mean, if MZB didn’t want to offer a better deal, then… don’t use anything from Lamb’s story, right? I don’t consider it holding MZB ransom; she made an offer, Lamb didn’t accept, that should be the end of it.
That said, since we don’t know a lot of details of the case, I’m struggling to really form an opinion on who was out of line.
Either way, I think turning a blind eye would be a good tactic *g* Becoming involved just gets everything all messy! I’d probably say, “Hey, I love what you guys are doing–but don’t send it to me.” I think Jim Butcher recently changed his policy on allowing fanfiction to a similar stance.
I’ve lost track of the slew of really good authors who have written good fiction based on someone else’s concept. think Star Trek, Star Wars, Spider Man. Most of these characters were started by someone else and expanded on, legally mind you, but it is refreshing to see a great worldbuilder eventually pass the torch on to someone who can take it to another plane of existance.
Mike, I do agree with your point about it being heartless and unfair, personally. People are assholes (or worse yet, stupid– the auction thing was flat out dumb in my opinion), and that’s part of why I understand some authors’ desire to ask that their work not be ficced. And fans who do not respect those wishes are, again, assholes.
It’s the screaming vitriolic overreaction to the idea of fic after the fact that looks a bit– er, silly. Fans are NOT entitled to your world any more than they are entitled to DEMAND another book, certainly. But either way, authors calling fans names for doing something that causes them no material harm is probably not the best reaction. And for every author who loathes fanfiction, there’s another author with a huge effing fanbase who encourages it wholeheartedly (while still maintaining immunity by not actually reading it). JK Rowling and Stephanie Meyer and their rabid fans being the most immediate examples that come to mind. That’s some fan devotion, man. I wasn’t really getting into all that in that post because it was long enough, but that’s where I stand on the issue of it being good/bad for authors.
No fanficcer in the world considers themselves published, and there is always a “this is not mine, and I’m not trying to say it is” disclaimer attached. There is a very acute awareness of a lack of ownership in all fandom, apart from the crazy bastards and small children, as with everything else sensible. MZB’s fanzine was considered published back in the day from what I hear from Those Who Were There. But thanks to one “mistake” in a lifetime of her encouraging creativity in her fans, authors now know they can get burned, and plan accordingly to protect their intellectual property from asshole fans.
Personally I’ve never written fanfiction for a book, series of books, movie, or anything but comics. I did briefly do a Firefly collaboration after it went off the air, but that was it. Those worlds tend to stick in my head as created– perhaps I’m unimaginative. I wrote comic fanfiction because I really truly wanted, and want to write comics.
But it’s good for some people, I reckon.
[ETA: I read that bit in GRRM's blog too. The whole "but MZB got burned!" defense, which is a non-issue these days (whether he knows it or not-- there's no reason anyone not involved in a fandom would know it), was sort of back-up for his real point-- which was that these are his babies and he doesn't want anyone else playing with them, in his own words.
That's another completely valid point, and I'm pretty sure it's Anne Rice's reasoning too (though she put it much more elaborately, that's what it boils down to). And another reason why it should always be his right to ask fans to respect his wishes and not play in his sandbox. But yeah. Respect to him for saying what everyone's thinking.
Rabid, ficcing fans buy a lot of books, and convince other people to do the same. Hell, I was terrible and I convinced people Northstar was the man!]
Cory yes! Hee
Jamie, I agree. Dr. Who is an extreme example, really. Not only do the writers switch out, but the Doctor himself! Pass that torch, it’s lovely.
And I’m sure Roddenberry is pleased somewhere with what’s gone on in the Trek verse. How could he not be?
Let me just say any character I’ve written is open for fan-fictioneering. Gary Sump doesn’t really want to play, and he’s kind of a dick, but the rest of the crew is ready to party.
Truthfully…I hope someday to write something well read enough to have a rabid group of fan-fictioneers. That’s pretty top end.
/out
You should see the fan-fiction that goes on inside my head ; )
Aaron, I couldn’t possibly agree more.
Well, I think Gary Sump is delightful, so maybe not about that. But he doesn’t seem like the sort who’d be into fanfiction, admittedly. I mean, he’s used to running his own world.
Nat, it’s probably very similar to what goes on in mine. And in many cases, what goes on in the ones I’ve actually written…