Buried in this tl;dr is a J2 rec, believe it or not
I have absolutely no info or opinions about the current fannish kerfuffle (except: wow, this is why I have no desire to go to a con), so I'll go back to the penultimate one, which thefourthvine has also pilloried examined quite precisely.
More on this fanfic v. authors thing: I understand that authors like Cory Doctorow & Jim Butcher have released their work under a Creative Commons license, which allows for derivative works as long as they're tagged as such (including the license) and not sold for profit. this is a merely a legal stamp on what fandom's been doing for years, of course. I'm torn about it - I would love to be able to stop having the 'fanfic's legal, no it's not' argument ad nauseum, but I firmly believe that fanfic is legal regardless of what the canon author thinks about it or whether they approve. I believe U.S. case law suggests it (some of the court cases on parody and musical influence were mentioned in the Gabaldon coments, if you're in a researchy mood), but since it's not been ruled on specifically, all we can do is speculate and draw comparisons, whether we're lawyers or not. Regardless, I continue to assert that fanfic is and should be fair use, needs to be for a healthy intellectual culture to persist, and (hold your breath here folks) given that the U.S. is not the whole world, U.S. law is only one of the factors informing this issue.
Leaving aside the issue of legality, is coming out of the closet the best thing for fandom? I'm unconvinced. One of the things I was shocked about, oh little innocent that I was, when I first encountered fandom was how fucked up it was, how boldly some kinds of fanfic delve into our deepest desires and our greatest fears. Authors like Gabaldon judge the whole enterprise of fanfic badly because of stuff like bad kinkfics, which is too bad. But I think the existence of the messed-up stuff, whether it has salutatory value or not, is one of the things that makes fanfic such a powerful genre.
These desires and fears are often seen as socially unacceptable, and there's few other contexts (I'd say none, for most of us) for us to discuss and think about them. And the extreme fics let the rest of us feel OK risking sharing our thoughts about issues that are just as risky for us, whether or not they appear edgy to anyone else. (Let's not forget that even the sweetest, schmoopiest slash fic ever would still disturb a lot of people in Middle America (I hate that phrase, but I can't think of a better way to put it).)
As an example, I'd give you this recent fic from the SPN kink meme. It's a J2 AU, explicit, and one of the most powerfully evocative I’ve ever read. It uses ‘kink’ (really, not that out there, especially compared to some of the stuff on that meme) to illustrate the characters and their situations, which I appreciate. People have sex, like they do anything else, in ways that reflect who they are, what they want (and think they want), their blind spots, and the way they think. Button-pushing fics with hackneyed or non-existent characterization are fun and all, but fics that do something new with the characters are the ones that I truly love the most. Now, if that meme didn't exist, and it wasn't open to all kinds of crazy shit (most of which I find totally creepy, personally), would we have gotten that amazing fic?
I can't help but think that author-sanctioned fanfic would lead to a chilling effect on less socially acceptable fic (not to mention critical fic and other satire and parody). In this case, 'don't ask, don't tell" may be the best policy.
More on this fanfic v. authors thing: I understand that authors like Cory Doctorow & Jim Butcher have released their work under a Creative Commons license, which allows for derivative works as long as they're tagged as such (including the license) and not sold for profit. this is a merely a legal stamp on what fandom's been doing for years, of course. I'm torn about it - I would love to be able to stop having the 'fanfic's legal, no it's not' argument ad nauseum, but I firmly believe that fanfic is legal regardless of what the canon author thinks about it or whether they approve. I believe U.S. case law suggests it (some of the court cases on parody and musical influence were mentioned in the Gabaldon coments, if you're in a researchy mood), but since it's not been ruled on specifically, all we can do is speculate and draw comparisons, whether we're lawyers or not. Regardless, I continue to assert that fanfic is and should be fair use, needs to be for a healthy intellectual culture to persist, and (hold your breath here folks) given that the U.S. is not the whole world, U.S. law is only one of the factors informing this issue.
Leaving aside the issue of legality, is coming out of the closet the best thing for fandom? I'm unconvinced. One of the things I was shocked about, oh little innocent that I was, when I first encountered fandom was how fucked up it was, how boldly some kinds of fanfic delve into our deepest desires and our greatest fears. Authors like Gabaldon judge the whole enterprise of fanfic badly because of stuff like bad kinkfics, which is too bad. But I think the existence of the messed-up stuff, whether it has salutatory value or not, is one of the things that makes fanfic such a powerful genre.
These desires and fears are often seen as socially unacceptable, and there's few other contexts (I'd say none, for most of us) for us to discuss and think about them. And the extreme fics let the rest of us feel OK risking sharing our thoughts about issues that are just as risky for us, whether or not they appear edgy to anyone else. (Let's not forget that even the sweetest, schmoopiest slash fic ever would still disturb a lot of people in Middle America (I hate that phrase, but I can't think of a better way to put it).)
As an example, I'd give you this recent fic from the SPN kink meme. It's a J2 AU, explicit, and one of the most powerfully evocative I’ve ever read. It uses ‘kink’ (really, not that out there, especially compared to some of the stuff on that meme) to illustrate the characters and their situations, which I appreciate. People have sex, like they do anything else, in ways that reflect who they are, what they want (and think they want), their blind spots, and the way they think. Button-pushing fics with hackneyed or non-existent characterization are fun and all, but fics that do something new with the characters are the ones that I truly love the most. Now, if that meme didn't exist, and it wasn't open to all kinds of crazy shit (most of which I find totally creepy, personally), would we have gotten that amazing fic?
I can't help but think that author-sanctioned fanfic would lead to a chilling effect on less socially acceptable fic (not to mention critical fic and other satire and parody). In this case, 'don't ask, don't tell" may be the best policy.