(no subject)
I was quite pleased to see this. It made me happy! Congrats to all the other wonderful writers who made it, including illianaka and Scribblemoose. If you need something to fill your time, there are lots of yummy, yummy fics on that list to be read!
If you watch fandom_wank, you've already seen this, but I thought it was so interesting that I wanted to lay my thoughts down.
Here's the topic: (The various journals and stuff can be found on fandom_wank.)
This girl puts out a call of need to her friends and fans. She wants to take a year off from her (part-time) job so she can work on fanfiction. She mentions at least one WIP that she'd like to finish. So what does she want? She wants everyone to donate so she can quit. She states that she's not asking to be paid to write fanfic, but that if she was supported, she would have time to write both her original fiction and her fanfics. (Leaving off, of course, the threat that if she can't get paid, she won't finish it.) Not surprisingly, she gets the smackdown big time.
There are a lot of outcries about legality, and plenty of people are really upset with her that she would risk fandom to make money. Various nasty words are thrown her way. It comes out that one of her large WIPs is actually a collaboration fic with about a dozen other authors. A few of them speak up, requesting that she take their name off the fic and off the site it's housed at, as they don't want to risk a C&D letter. (This is the Buffy fandom, if you're curious.)
She ends up storming off lj in a huff, declaring that now that she won't be wasting time on lj, she's found the time that she needs to write. Most people respond with a 'good riddance'.
But the most interesting part of it all is a quite thoughtful response by cesperanza. In this post, she talks about why she thinks people *really* got so riled up.
Essentially, what she says is that while the legal issue is important, it isn't what hurt this girl the most. What happened was that she stepped outside of the fandom community with her actions, and they responded by shunning her. And I agree with her. Here's what I mean, if this isn't clear. Those who are fairly active in fandom tend to form communities with those who share their interests, be it a show, a genre, even something as specific as a pairing. I know that I personally fall into quite a few communities here on lj. I'm in the very general anime community, the slightly smaller yaoi fan community, and then the more specific Saiyuki and Weiss Kreuz communities. I've found that even in the larger community, there's a lot of support. We band together for a lot of things, including when someone needs help. The community supports each other like family, whether it's with words or gifts. Of course, that means we sometimes fight like families as well, but in the end, we come back together because that's what families do. (Most of the time. Those coming from broken homes, please don't kill me.)
And what this girl did was essentially step outside that community bubble. By saying that she thought people should pay her for her fanfiction, she put herself at a level above the rest of them. She defies the 'fanfiction is for fun' credo that is held fairly seriously by fandom, and for that, she got knocked down. Especially with the being paid to finish a WIP thing, she declared herself more important than other writers. More deserving. And they let her know that she wasn't in a pretty clear manner. Not that most communities don't have those who are considered 'the best' at their fandom, but those are chosen by the fandom, not by the writer themselves.
I had a point to all of this, but I've lost it somewhere in the multiple telecom circuits that just crashed on us. Let's just say I think the community reaction to one of their own is very interesting, and somewhat heartening. We take care of our own, unless you remove yourself. Then you're fair game.
Especially if you're trying to get paid for being lazy. Wouldn't we all like to have other people pay our bills while we spend our time writing? But we don't. We go to work, we go to school, we do what we have to in order to survive, and we still write. Because sometimes that's the only thing we *can* do. And she's cheapening it.
Before I forget, I'm leaving town on Saturday morning and I won't be back until the following Saturday. Yay for Pennsic! But... I won't have email (or computer) access at all. So I'll miss you all horribly for the week. I will go back and try to catch up with my f-list when I get back, but I will expect to have to go back a couple hundred entries, so if there's something you definitely want me to see, drop a comment on one of my posts or send me an email. I'll definitely post pictures when I get back so you can see what war is like in the SCA!
If you watch fandom_wank, you've already seen this, but I thought it was so interesting that I wanted to lay my thoughts down.
Here's the topic: (The various journals and stuff can be found on fandom_wank.)
This girl puts out a call of need to her friends and fans. She wants to take a year off from her (part-time) job so she can work on fanfiction. She mentions at least one WIP that she'd like to finish. So what does she want? She wants everyone to donate so she can quit. She states that she's not asking to be paid to write fanfic, but that if she was supported, she would have time to write both her original fiction and her fanfics. (Leaving off, of course, the threat that if she can't get paid, she won't finish it.) Not surprisingly, she gets the smackdown big time.
There are a lot of outcries about legality, and plenty of people are really upset with her that she would risk fandom to make money. Various nasty words are thrown her way. It comes out that one of her large WIPs is actually a collaboration fic with about a dozen other authors. A few of them speak up, requesting that she take their name off the fic and off the site it's housed at, as they don't want to risk a C&D letter. (This is the Buffy fandom, if you're curious.)
She ends up storming off lj in a huff, declaring that now that she won't be wasting time on lj, she's found the time that she needs to write. Most people respond with a 'good riddance'.
But the most interesting part of it all is a quite thoughtful response by cesperanza. In this post, she talks about why she thinks people *really* got so riled up.
Essentially, what she says is that while the legal issue is important, it isn't what hurt this girl the most. What happened was that she stepped outside of the fandom community with her actions, and they responded by shunning her. And I agree with her. Here's what I mean, if this isn't clear. Those who are fairly active in fandom tend to form communities with those who share their interests, be it a show, a genre, even something as specific as a pairing. I know that I personally fall into quite a few communities here on lj. I'm in the very general anime community, the slightly smaller yaoi fan community, and then the more specific Saiyuki and Weiss Kreuz communities. I've found that even in the larger community, there's a lot of support. We band together for a lot of things, including when someone needs help. The community supports each other like family, whether it's with words or gifts. Of course, that means we sometimes fight like families as well, but in the end, we come back together because that's what families do. (Most of the time. Those coming from broken homes, please don't kill me.)
And what this girl did was essentially step outside that community bubble. By saying that she thought people should pay her for her fanfiction, she put herself at a level above the rest of them. She defies the 'fanfiction is for fun' credo that is held fairly seriously by fandom, and for that, she got knocked down. Especially with the being paid to finish a WIP thing, she declared herself more important than other writers. More deserving. And they let her know that she wasn't in a pretty clear manner. Not that most communities don't have those who are considered 'the best' at their fandom, but those are chosen by the fandom, not by the writer themselves.
I had a point to all of this, but I've lost it somewhere in the multiple telecom circuits that just crashed on us. Let's just say I think the community reaction to one of their own is very interesting, and somewhat heartening. We take care of our own, unless you remove yourself. Then you're fair game.
Especially if you're trying to get paid for being lazy. Wouldn't we all like to have other people pay our bills while we spend our time writing? But we don't. We go to work, we go to school, we do what we have to in order to survive, and we still write. Because sometimes that's the only thing we *can* do. And she's cheapening it.
Before I forget, I'm leaving town on Saturday morning and I won't be back until the following Saturday. Yay for Pennsic! But... I won't have email (or computer) access at all. So I'll miss you all horribly for the week. I will go back and try to catch up with my f-list when I get back, but I will expect to have to go back a couple hundred entries, so if there's something you definitely want me to see, drop a comment on one of my posts or send me an email. I'll definitely post pictures when I get back so you can see what war is like in the SCA!