OTW and fanfic and Scalzi and stuff

[sholio]

I can't believe that I just spent three hours reading all 400+ comments at John Scalzi's blog entry on the Organization for Transformative Works (and there are probably a lot more comments now, but I WILL NOT READ THEM because I have to sleep at some point).

It was actually a remarkably civil, reasonable and pleasant discussion. Or maybe I've just been unlucky enough to get sucked into exceedingly unpleasant discussions in my earlier fannish existence, when the topic of fanfic came up between fanfic people and pro writer people.

I actually created this fan journal back in '04 in large part because a lot of the readership of my original journal, glacierdust, had been involved in those discussions, and a few of the people who knew me in real life (who I still wanted to stay on good terms with) were vehemently anti-fanfic. I didn't use my glacierdust journal for my fanning because I didn't want to get into a fight every time I posted something fanfic-positive. Looking back on it, I think I might have been unreasonably sensitive on the topic; still, there had been some nasty fights on the comics message board where I used to be (and technically still am) a co-moderator, to the point where the other mod and I actually banned the topic of fanfic completely, because people couldn't discuss it in a civil manner.

It made me happy to find everyone (well, almost everyone) on Scalzi's board discussing the topic like reasonable adults. It also made me happy to see the fanfic side being represented by a lot of articulate, smart, well-spoken people, and most (not all, but most) of the WTF-ery happening on the "anti-fanfic" side.

One of these days, I want to make a long thinky post about fanfic vs. original writing, and my relationship to both -- the changes my opinions on both have gone through over the years, the ways I've shuffled back and forth between the two of them until coming to the rewarding balance that I have now (which may change again in the future), the way that I feel they complement each other rather than being in opposition. But right now, I'm sleepy and I have the last 50 pages of Temeraire book 3 to finish, so I think I'll go do that instead.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I think a lot of protest you get from pro writers is because they feel ownership towards the characters and worlds that they worked hard to create - as you put it, it's their 'baby'. If they are making a living of it, it matters a lot. I found it interesting to know that you bought the actual HP books because of reading fanfics. That's a surprisingly positive outcome which has made me change my opinion somewhat that perhaps *good* fanfic is way better than totally misrepresented fanfic. But then bad or worse yet, totally misrepresented fanfics can have the opposite effect on new potential readers of said book.

I like the idea of copyright privileges being enforced during a writer's lifetime. After their death, then it's open ground for anyone who wants to play with them. I don't think protecting pro writers' rights stifles creativity as people can always write their own stories without resorting to using published novels' characters. I think there's a difference between a person writing a scratching review telling readers what they didn't like about a work to fanfics that totally misrepresent the characters of a published work. For one, reviewers are not taking *ownership* for the said published characters (though they can cause much damage to sales, etc, which can be devastating to the writer). Fanfic writers on the other hand (though they do not legally own them) take ownership (by default) by placing the said characters in situations and making them react to how they want them to react. As someone mentioned in this post (it might have been you - I only skipped though the other comments quickly), there is power in the pen. Words can heal or they can hurt.

A pro writer who might want to spread a positive message to their readers would not want to see the characters they took long and hard to create being represented as bad role models in fanfics. Of course, they can't prevent such things from happening but pro writers, I think, are happier not knowing about them. Then there's the whole issue of what if the pro writer unknowingly wrote a story that had similarities with a particular fanfic? It just makes things messy with slanders of 'you stole my idea' etc.

Yes, that was me who posted above…

Tyme

[sholio]

Hi Tyme,

I may be wrong, but I really do think the chances of a reader being turned off a book by a bad or inaccurate fanfic is very small. The reason: most people who are regular fanfic readers understand that fanfic is probably not an accurate reflection of the source canon. People who aren't regular fanfic readers (who would be most likely to misinterpret a fanfic) are also very unlikely to accidentally stumble across and read fanfic for a book that they haven't read. Why would they go looking for it? If they found it, why would they go ahead and read it? Surely it should be obvious even to someone who doesn't know what fanfic is (and I think that's getting rarer as the public gets more educated about it) that this isn't the book they're looking for. And if they have only a vague idea what fanfic is, the things they've heard are likely to be uncomplimentary enough that they'd realize they were looking at fanfic and stay far away from it.

I know it probably sounds like I'm downplaying the chances of such a thing happening, but the conditions that would have to be true for such a thing to happen seem very unlikely to me, and it seems like the remote possibility is poor grounds for dismissing an entire body of endeavor that brings a lot of happiness to a lot of people.

It would suck very much to be the rare writer to have that happen to them. But there are also writers who are gaining new readers via the "advertising" of fanfic at the same time. So, some people benefit and some people lose. Take away fanfic, and some writers might benefit in terms of a handful of readers not lost, but others would still lose in terms of a handful of readers not gained.

For one, reviewers are not taking *ownership* for the said published characters (though they can cause much damage to sales, etc, which can be devastating to the writer). Fanfic writers on the other hand (though they do not legally own them) take ownership (by default) by placing the said characters in situations and making them react to how they want them to react.

See ... here's the thing. I think that readers take "ownership" of characters in their own heads the minute they read or watch something. Just listen to a bunch of fans arguing about a film or TV show. They've all watched it with great attention to detail, yet to listen to them, it appears that they've all been watching completely different shows.

As soon as you make the decision to share your creation with other people, you lose control of the way they see it. You cannot control how your readers see your work, and you can't control their discussions about your characters. To me, it's only a small step from discussing the work to making up new, amateur stories about it. It's a matter of degree, not of kind. The community aspect to fanfic, the way that it gives fans a medium for interacting and expressing their opinions about the source material, is one of the most rewarding aspects of fandom for me and for a lot of other people I know.

There are real, practical benefits to using copyright to grant writers a limited, financial monopoly over their creations -- i.e. no one else can sell it. But I can't see any real benefit to granting them a creative monopoly as well. I certainly don't think that a writer has a moral right to full creative control of their work because they lost THAT the moment that they put their work out in the public eye -- the moment that other minds got hold of their characters and started thinking and re-interpreting them. (And I'm speaking as a writer of original fiction here, as well as a fanfic writer.)

I also think that buying and selling copyright, as our current laws allow one to do, is morally repugnant. My greatest fear for my own original works is not having someone else write about my characters. It's being tricked or forced by financial necessity to sign a contract that prohibits ME from writing about my characters. And just the fact that copyright has the power to do THAT -- to take the stories and characters that I've devised in my own mind and take them away from me forever -- terrifies me far, far more than the possibility that someone might get the wrong idea from a fanfic they read about one of my characters.