HAPPY SOLSTICE! Have some meta to wake up from the longest night!
Reply to http://community.livejournal.com/otw_news/16030.html in regards to the first line of the anti-fanfic bingo card available here.
These five are in two overlapping categories: crime and literary ethics.
#s 1 and 2 are about legal interpretation. People against fanfic assume it's illegal, usually a form of copyright infringement. (Sometimes they think it's trademark infringement; sometimes they imply it's some form of harassment or defamation.)
That copyright infringement is not an absolute never seems to occur to them--that there are no sharp, well-defined laws about what is, and is not, infringing on someone's copyright. It's well-established that it involves some form of copying... but unclear how much, or what a transformative fair use is, or where free speech trumps copyright. (As it does in the case of parody or critique.)
It's my conviction that all HP slash, and most other slashfic, is a form of parody: like the story The Wind Done Gone, they re-interpret the original characters with new relationships, in a way that, on the surface, strikes most people as ridiculous. That many of these parodies aren't overtly "funny" doesn't make them not parodic.
Funny how so many of the writers and supporters insisting that fanfic is copyright infringement don't want to acknowledge how much of fanfic is obviously parodies. More funny that, if they had their way and all non-parodic fanfic that hadn't asked for specific permission of the author were banned, the only exposure most people had to fanfic would be the worst crack!fic.
And that's aside from the practical concerns of attempting to enforce what they think the law is: fan outrage (which equals both loss of current customers and lack of future ones, as word-of-mouth turns against them), a potential string of pointless but costly legal challenges (as several fanficcers decide they've written the next TWDG and are willing to try that in court), and a market that dies soon after canon does.
In regards to the other issues, those of ethics... it's claimed that the author should retain creative control of his characters and settings. This strikes a chord of logic in most of us (which is why it is so compelling to the general public)--we can understand that, after days or months of developing a group of people, and carefully crafting the world in which they live, and giving them fine adventures and watching them grow and change... one doesn't want to watch them be gang-raped, nor sex-changed, nor turned into sentient bunnies, nor converted to the Dark Side, nor enamoured of the character that the public doesn't yet know is actually his brother masquerading as a nun.
There is something very real, very raw, about this concern. It ties into some thoughts about rape in RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons: Rape is entirely a crime of context, degradation, and dehumanization. Under proper conditions, the physical acts themselves might be exceedingly pleasant, so the atmosphere and conditions in which the acts were committed are the true offense.
Role-playing is all about creating context and atmosphere; about opening our minds and our hearts to one degree or another, in order to experience emotionally that which is outside our grasp to experience physically. When we engage in role-play, we make ourselves vulnerable to the crime of imagined rape in a way we do not and cannot make ourselves vulnerable to the crime of imagined murder.
Good fiction-any good story-makes the characters real in a way that cannot be denied or evaded, and changing the motives or practices of those characters, even in your own head, is an act of volition… even in your own head. If the writer made Larry Stu to be a helpful and generous fellow, and you remake him in your mind to be a selfish bastard, and maybe tell a friend or two, you've interfered with the author's mission to make people think and feel in a particular way. And while the author has no legal right to prevent your interference, she may well have an ethical foundation to object.
There is something legitimate and valid about the cry of, "Hey! You can't DO THAT to my character!" And if we want to win not only a potential legal case, but public opinion, we need to acknowledge that concern, and with more than "Ooh, I'd be so thrilled if someone liked my writing enough to write fic about it; I'd let them do anything to my characters!" We sound like groupies fangirling the readers. We sound like we're so desperate for attention, we don't care if it's bad.
We don't sound like we are Honoring The Creative Spark, which is what we think we're doing. We need to change our message.
It is true that no children are harmed when Harry Potter is molested. However, that doesn't make the molestation "not real." It's as real as the One Ring, as real as the Ghost of Christmas Past, as real as Miss Mary Mack. Maybe less well-known, but just as real. And we who create and reshape worlds need to acknowledge that reality, not try to simultaneously pretend that what we write is meaningless and casual, and yet we find it so soul-compelling that we're willing to risk a challenge by Disney, Paramount and Warner Brothers' lawyers.
The claim cannot be, "forgive our harmless, pointless fripperies." The idea that fanfic is a mindless entertainment is disingenuous, and insulting to the communities we've claimed to have built.
Our claim must be, "forgive our intrusion on your worldspace… we are drawn in by your lights, by your will o' wisps, and tangled in the fabric of your tale until the only chance to find our way out is to weave the threads into a tapestry, and if you do not like the pictures we draw, we apologize. Sometimes we work entirely with your threads; sometimes we have some dye upon us and recolor some of them. But we cannot stop. You have created this world, this trap; you have captured our interest as if it were a wild beast, and this is the only way we can free it."
The counter-claim to "that's not ethical!" is not "yes it is!" We need to avoid a bitchslapping contest that continues until one side gives up. (Especially since, as we know, their side has a lot of lawyers.) The counter to "unethical" is "compulsion."
This is why we keep mentioning fairy tales and children's stories reworked to fit the details of a child's life; this is why we mention classics of great literature with elements borrowed or stolen from other works. Because we know that this is an innate human calling-that the call to reshape the stories that touch are lives reaches beyond "I want" and into "I must."
That this is not a desire, but a need. And we joke about that sometimes--"Stop me, before I fic again!"--because it makes us uncomfortable. Because it marks us as different, for so many other readers don't feel this need. Because it marks us as freaks, as possible outcasts, as potentially the kind of crazy artists who light whole buildings on fire to see the pretty flames. (Not that we do such things, or even anything resembling them. But the compulsion is the same… the pull to art cannot be set aside because someone else doesn't like it. Nor because someone's going to sue us for it.)
And because this drive is so strong, we feel threatened when it's challenged. When someone says, "isn't fanfic illegal? Isn't that copyright infringement?" we don't generally reply with, "well, the various courts have ruled differently on similar cases, but nothing close enough to set a precedent. It's my belief that it's legal, but I understand some authors disagree."
No, we generally respond with, "Can't stop the signal!" sometimes with a side-order of "STFU; my fannish geekery is stronger than your pathetic legalisms! If you come after me, I'll change ID's and post again--eat my pixeldust! IM IN UR BOOK, SLASHIN UR DUDES!"
All of which gets us a less-than-positive reaction in the public sector.
We need to let people know that this is a drive so strong, that to "respect" or "insult" the author doesn't enter the equation… that something deep and untamed within us demands this reaction to stories and characters we love (and sometimes, to those we hate). That we can't stop, short of getting a lobotomy or literally mind-numbing drugs. That while we are not compelled to reach out to each other and create these networks and communities, we do so to make the need less raw, less painful, less overwhelming in our own lives.
It's like being gay, or straight, or polyamorous… it's not something we choose; just something we choose how to integrate in our lives. There's room here for a line about "fanfic is my sexual orientation," but that's another essay entirely.
These five are in two overlapping categories: crime and literary ethics.
#s 1 and 2 are about legal interpretation. People against fanfic assume it's illegal, usually a form of copyright infringement. (Sometimes they think it's trademark infringement; sometimes they imply it's some form of harassment or defamation.)
That copyright infringement is not an absolute never seems to occur to them--that there are no sharp, well-defined laws about what is, and is not, infringing on someone's copyright. It's well-established that it involves some form of copying... but unclear how much, or what a transformative fair use is, or where free speech trumps copyright. (As it does in the case of parody or critique.)
It's my conviction that all HP slash, and most other slashfic, is a form of parody: like the story The Wind Done Gone, they re-interpret the original characters with new relationships, in a way that, on the surface, strikes most people as ridiculous. That many of these parodies aren't overtly "funny" doesn't make them not parodic.
Funny how so many of the writers and supporters insisting that fanfic is copyright infringement don't want to acknowledge how much of fanfic is obviously parodies. More funny that, if they had their way and all non-parodic fanfic that hadn't asked for specific permission of the author were banned, the only exposure most people had to fanfic would be the worst crack!fic.
And that's aside from the practical concerns of attempting to enforce what they think the law is: fan outrage (which equals both loss of current customers and lack of future ones, as word-of-mouth turns against them), a potential string of pointless but costly legal challenges (as several fanficcers decide they've written the next TWDG and are willing to try that in court), and a market that dies soon after canon does.
In regards to the other issues, those of ethics... it's claimed that the author should retain creative control of his characters and settings. This strikes a chord of logic in most of us (which is why it is so compelling to the general public)--we can understand that, after days or months of developing a group of people, and carefully crafting the world in which they live, and giving them fine adventures and watching them grow and change... one doesn't want to watch them be gang-raped, nor sex-changed, nor turned into sentient bunnies, nor converted to the Dark Side, nor enamoured of the character that the public doesn't yet know is actually his brother masquerading as a nun.
There is something very real, very raw, about this concern. It ties into some thoughts about rape in RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons: Rape is entirely a crime of context, degradation, and dehumanization. Under proper conditions, the physical acts themselves might be exceedingly pleasant, so the atmosphere and conditions in which the acts were committed are the true offense.
Role-playing is all about creating context and atmosphere; about opening our minds and our hearts to one degree or another, in order to experience emotionally that which is outside our grasp to experience physically. When we engage in role-play, we make ourselves vulnerable to the crime of imagined rape in a way we do not and cannot make ourselves vulnerable to the crime of imagined murder.
Good fiction-any good story-makes the characters real in a way that cannot be denied or evaded, and changing the motives or practices of those characters, even in your own head, is an act of volition… even in your own head. If the writer made Larry Stu to be a helpful and generous fellow, and you remake him in your mind to be a selfish bastard, and maybe tell a friend or two, you've interfered with the author's mission to make people think and feel in a particular way. And while the author has no legal right to prevent your interference, she may well have an ethical foundation to object.
There is something legitimate and valid about the cry of, "Hey! You can't DO THAT to my character!" And if we want to win not only a potential legal case, but public opinion, we need to acknowledge that concern, and with more than "Ooh, I'd be so thrilled if someone liked my writing enough to write fic about it; I'd let them do anything to my characters!" We sound like groupies fangirling the readers. We sound like we're so desperate for attention, we don't care if it's bad.
We don't sound like we are Honoring The Creative Spark, which is what we think we're doing. We need to change our message.
It is true that no children are harmed when Harry Potter is molested. However, that doesn't make the molestation "not real." It's as real as the One Ring, as real as the Ghost of Christmas Past, as real as Miss Mary Mack. Maybe less well-known, but just as real. And we who create and reshape worlds need to acknowledge that reality, not try to simultaneously pretend that what we write is meaningless and casual, and yet we find it so soul-compelling that we're willing to risk a challenge by Disney, Paramount and Warner Brothers' lawyers.
The claim cannot be, "forgive our harmless, pointless fripperies." The idea that fanfic is a mindless entertainment is disingenuous, and insulting to the communities we've claimed to have built.
Our claim must be, "forgive our intrusion on your worldspace… we are drawn in by your lights, by your will o' wisps, and tangled in the fabric of your tale until the only chance to find our way out is to weave the threads into a tapestry, and if you do not like the pictures we draw, we apologize. Sometimes we work entirely with your threads; sometimes we have some dye upon us and recolor some of them. But we cannot stop. You have created this world, this trap; you have captured our interest as if it were a wild beast, and this is the only way we can free it."
The counter-claim to "that's not ethical!" is not "yes it is!" We need to avoid a bitchslapping contest that continues until one side gives up. (Especially since, as we know, their side has a lot of lawyers.) The counter to "unethical" is "compulsion."
This is why we keep mentioning fairy tales and children's stories reworked to fit the details of a child's life; this is why we mention classics of great literature with elements borrowed or stolen from other works. Because we know that this is an innate human calling-that the call to reshape the stories that touch are lives reaches beyond "I want" and into "I must."
That this is not a desire, but a need. And we joke about that sometimes--"Stop me, before I fic again!"--because it makes us uncomfortable. Because it marks us as different, for so many other readers don't feel this need. Because it marks us as freaks, as possible outcasts, as potentially the kind of crazy artists who light whole buildings on fire to see the pretty flames. (Not that we do such things, or even anything resembling them. But the compulsion is the same… the pull to art cannot be set aside because someone else doesn't like it. Nor because someone's going to sue us for it.)
And because this drive is so strong, we feel threatened when it's challenged. When someone says, "isn't fanfic illegal? Isn't that copyright infringement?" we don't generally reply with, "well, the various courts have ruled differently on similar cases, but nothing close enough to set a precedent. It's my belief that it's legal, but I understand some authors disagree."
No, we generally respond with, "Can't stop the signal!" sometimes with a side-order of "STFU; my fannish geekery is stronger than your pathetic legalisms! If you come after me, I'll change ID's and post again--eat my pixeldust! IM IN UR BOOK, SLASHIN UR DUDES!"
All of which gets us a less-than-positive reaction in the public sector.
We need to let people know that this is a drive so strong, that to "respect" or "insult" the author doesn't enter the equation… that something deep and untamed within us demands this reaction to stories and characters we love (and sometimes, to those we hate). That we can't stop, short of getting a lobotomy or literally mind-numbing drugs. That while we are not compelled to reach out to each other and create these networks and communities, we do so to make the need less raw, less painful, less overwhelming in our own lives.
It's like being gay, or straight, or polyamorous… it's not something we choose; just something we choose how to integrate in our lives. There's room here for a line about "fanfic is my sexual orientation," but that's another essay entirely.