Meta: The Philosophy of Poverty

[executrix]

You know that thing where the private eye's cases turn out to be related? Yeah, that thing again. Proximately, I'm riffing on cupidsbow's post "How Fanfiction Makes Us Poor" which is linked on metafandom if everyone on your flist hasn't already linked it. In broader terms, replying to the whole discussion "Fanfiction always and everywhere sucks"/"No it

Comments

[miriam_heddy]

Thank you for saying this. I read the link via metafandom just this morning (well, skimmed is more like it) and I just didn't even know where to begin.

But I like this:
But after all one reason people even *want* money in the first place is to buy things to make themselves feel better, and to the extent that we enjoy participating in fandom* that satisfaction is valuable.

As someone who can't usually afford to attend a B'way play or regularly go to $10 per ticket, I find myself a little annoyed to have writing automatically linked to profit in this way that institutionalizes the relationship between writer and reader as producer and consumer. Fanfic, as it happens in fandom, isn't quite so cut and dried, esp. when so many fans take up writing as a response--to give back--to pay in kind, as it were, in more of a bartering sense than anything. Most of us are both writers and readers all the time, and... eh. I'll hold back the rant on that, but as a feminist, I don't think it's nearly as simple as all that.

[executrix]

Well, there *are* those lurkers who are supporting me in e-mail...but one thing I love about fandom is the very blurred lines between performers and audience.

And, while there is still a digital divide, Internet and e-mail access is, among other things, a tremendous value in terms of access to information and entertainment resources.

Even if we leave to one side the persistent tendency to undervalue women's work, I think it should be noted that many people (male as well as female) have a high opinion of an activity that is *only* considered OK if money doesn't change hands.

[lunabee34]

Fanfic, as it happens in fandom, isn't quite so cut and dried, esp. when so many fans take up writing as a response--to give back--to pay in kind, as it were, in more of a bartering sense than anything.

Very well said.

[inlovewithnight]

Very well-put. This round of the debate has been making me think a lot, but I've had zero luck putting any of it into words. Luckily, I have smart and wonderful flist for the assist.

[executrix]

If we can get into a feces-flinging fight with a monkey it is because we are on the shoulders of giants...uhhh...well, you see what I mean. And thanks.

[glossing]

I think that one way to look at the ambiguous copyright situation of fanfic is that what the copyright proprietor owns is not the right to think about the intellectual property, but the right to *profit* from it, which therefore is a value for working outside the cash nexus.
That's how I've long thought about copyright anyway.

it's probably more satisfying to play at the top of your game than to keep doing things you could do with one toe.
I like to think so. It just gets difficult, sometimes, to balance the emotional gratification of good hard work with the immediate pellet of squee.

Or something.

This is a fantastic post. *memories*

[executrix]

Thx! You're high on my list of "people to suck up to because they are JUST THAT AWESOME" but it doesn't always manifest because we operate in different corners of Fandomia (Fandomdom, by analogy with Christendom or Islamdom?)

Well, you can always do something little and unambitious and post it and use the immediate pellet of squee as fuel for the good hard work.

[glossing]

Bbbbbut, you're high on MY similar list! (Dude, is the old-girls network that's being exalted in the comments to cupidsbow's post actually *real*? Huh.)

...We'll always have Firefly? Something like that. :D

you can always do something little and unambitious and post it and use the immediate pellet of squee as fuel for the good hard work.
*cough* I thought about that, but I know myself. I would then compare the squee to the much sparser fb on the Big Thing and get down about The Nature Of Humanity all over again. So I'm trying to be all WASPy and work-ethic-y. (It sucks, in case you're wondering.)

[executrix]

As a member of the Chosen People, I suppose I should be more entrepreneurial but...it just isn't working.

[chelseagirl]

You know, I was thinking about what you were saying the other day about mid-list authors. And how picking up my copy of John Crowley's Endless Things from the post office, where the carrier unkindly left it (if you don't know Crowley, it's the last in a four-book sequence that has come out over almost 20 years!) is for me like Harry Potter d-day for everyone else I know. I'm looking forward to Harry but since everyone I know, fannish and otherwise, will be buying a copy, I've decided to keep my scarce adjunctly income for authors who actually need the sale (like Crowley and Elizabeth Hand), as opposed to the Richest Woman in Britain, and borrowing someone's copy after they've gobbled it down. Thus, my small contribution to supporting the mid-list instead of the blockbusters.

[executrix]

I was sort of thinking about doing a Fanthropology post about whether it would be possible to organize a central database where we could all list Fannish Stuff We're Willing to Lend via Media Mail (not the priceless things whose disappearance would devastate us, of course) so the DB would resolve questions like "Who the 1@@##$%$ did I lend my @##$%$ copy of Fan Cultures to?" Which would then allow us to make a single copy do multiple duty!

[chelseagirl]

All I know is that I've made about twenty xeroxes of the Constance Penley article on the origins of slash in the Cultural Studies anthology over the years . . . ;-)

[dknightshade]

Thank you for this. I think it makes the point of why people feel that fanfic is worth doing, money or no.

That doesn't mean that there's NO audience for demanding work, or that the people who appreciate it don't appreciate the hell out of it.

Exactly. And there are always going to be creative people who want to interact with the objects of their entertainment. Some people are happy to passively consume what is mainstream or who will woe over the cancelling of a show they like, but there are alo people who are willing to put the time and effort into continuing and actively engaging in the things that entertain them. Or reach out to others who felt the same level of enjoyment in something they saw.

[executrix]

knightshade: online fanfic is truly a new phenomenon--for both good and ill, it's amazing for writers to, as you say, be able to talk to the audience, as well as a fast-moving exchange of ideas and techniques with other writers.

I suspect that introducing economic factors would have a chilling effect--we'd be (even) less willing to branch out in what we read, and certainly in what we write.