Fanfic, Ownership and P2P...an old e-mail
I was searching for an email today to see if the library had notified me about a book they claim they recalled (they didn't, those bastards), and came across this. It was an email I wrote to a friend who was a big fan of MoTU, but, at the time she read MoTU, was new to fandom and fanfic. She asked if I would explain why people who are so angry about P2P and feel it is so destructive feel the way we do. This was mid-March, right around the time that MoTU got its huge book deal. Re-reading it, I feel it's one of my clearer articulations of my stance on P2P, and so I thought I'd post it to my journal for posterity.
One of the big things that protects fanfiction is that writers don't
make money off it. Back in the day, when fanfic was passed around in
printed "zines" (really just mimeographed or xeroxed typed pages
stapled together), copyright holders would sue fanfiction writers,
rightly asserting that the characters and the worlds belonged to them.
They would shut down writers, and shut down fan conventions, and
anything they perceived as a threat to their copyright.
Over the years, an uneasy balance has developed, where the source
creators have realized that it's being done for fun, that fan writers
aren't out to screw them or to usurp their audience, and that most
fanfiction is written with the intention of showing a love for the
source material. So most writers allow public posting and distribution
of fanwork of their stuff, because fanwork helps keep people
interested. Some don't, though, which is entirely in their right to do
(Anne Rice, George RR Martin, Diana Gabaldon to name a few).
So one problem with P2P is that it undermines this fundamental thing
that fanfiction writers have struggled DECADES to get the source
creators to get on board with--the idea that "No, we're not going to
use your fanbase for our own personal gain. We're going to write
tribute works for fun." By P2Ping, authors put the entire ability of
others to write fanwork at risk.
The second problem with P2P is the question, at what point does a
character cease being the source author's? By presenting a story as
being Twilight, an author is saying that the character is not just
similar to Edward Cullen, he *is* Edward Cullen. Edward Cullen belongs
to Stephenie Meyer. She spent a long time creating him, and writing
him, and making him who he is. When an author posts fic, she's
publicly saying she's using that character, whom she did not create.
So to then take that down and say the character was hers all
along...well, that's simply not true. No matter how different he was,
posting it as fic is making the statement that the main character *is*
Edward, and Edward belongs to SM. The academic equivalent would be
citing someone's research, but then publishing a later paper which
claims you did that research yourself. It would be fraudulent.
[Edit: Jami Gold did a really nice post on what makes a character a character. I know almost no writer who feels that the essence of their characters lies in their hair colors, their names, their occupations, or even whether or not they are human or human-like supernaturals. I could write Edward Cullen as a girl, and at his core, he'd still be Edward Cullen.]
So, it's the "saying it's not mine" but then "saying it's mine" thing
that is a problem.
As to the rest of your question...I really am VERY much against this
sort of pick-and-choose stuff about P2P, because it obscures the real
problems. A lot of people "cafeteria" P2P opposers...if the fic was
badly written, okay, get mad! If the author was a jerk, get mad! etc.
There are several of us who are outraged that Fifty Shades gets all
this attention when there have been dozens of fics that have been
published. We think fingers should be pointed equally, no matter how
well-written the fic was or how nice the author is.
For me? I have two close friends who've P2Ped. I've told them in no
uncertain terms that I will not buy their books. And one pubbed with
Omnific, and I told her I wasn't interested in her original work
pubbed with them, either. My line is very hard. I don't care how good
it was, or how nice the author was, or how considerate she was in
pulling. It's all flat-out wrong to me. It all risks my ability to
write fanfic. It's all dishonest. There are others whose lines are
equally hard, but since we tend to be the more rational people, we
don't make as much noise as the "Icy was a big meanie and her fic
sucks! Down with P2P!" crowd. So it seems like it's a personal
vendetta, when for a lot of us, it's an issue of ethics.
As to outrage over AH, it's more that AH introduces this weird
slippery slope where authors can say, "Oh, well, ooops, I didn't
really mean it! It wasn't Edward! See, he's not a vampire!" In most
other fantasy fandoms, an "AH" fic is one which explores the
characters as human, often as a result of a what-if in the story
(ANGEL actually did this in the canon in an episode in Season 1--he
gets turned into a human and has to deal with Buffy as a man). For me,
right now, it's turning into this craziness because in the past, I've
taken a lot of flak for supposedly saying that AH wasn't "real"
fanfiction. I'd actually never said anything of the sort before this
whole P2P mess started, simply that I liked SM's characters and I
preferred to read them as she wrote them--as vamps.
At the time, people clamored that their AH stories were deep character
explorations of the existing Twilight characters, and that their
"Edward" was indeed Edward Cullen, just like my vampire Edward, and
how dare I be so mean as to imply otherwise.
Now, however, the moment the story is pulled, the fact that the
characters aren't vampires is the primary thing being used to justify
the argument that the stories are nothing like Twilight. For me,
that's the height of hypocrisy, because if the stories were nothing
like Twilight, they did not belong posted as fanfiction in the first
place. For them to be posted is essentially a grab at Meyer's audience
because the writer lacked confidence in her own work.
I actually dislike the hype over Fifty Shades, because I think it
overlooks how utterly widespread this problem is, and that it's being
done equally by "nice" authors as "mean" ones. The fact is, the
characters belonged to SM. She put a lot of work into making them. And
if we're going to say they're her characters when we put a fanfic up,
then there really isn't any good reason to call takebacks.
One of the big things that protects fanfiction is that writers don't
make money off it. Back in the day, when fanfic was passed around in
printed "zines" (really just mimeographed or xeroxed typed pages
stapled together), copyright holders would sue fanfiction writers,
rightly asserting that the characters and the worlds belonged to them.
They would shut down writers, and shut down fan conventions, and
anything they perceived as a threat to their copyright.
Over the years, an uneasy balance has developed, where the source
creators have realized that it's being done for fun, that fan writers
aren't out to screw them or to usurp their audience, and that most
fanfiction is written with the intention of showing a love for the
source material. So most writers allow public posting and distribution
of fanwork of their stuff, because fanwork helps keep people
interested. Some don't, though, which is entirely in their right to do
(Anne Rice, George RR Martin, Diana Gabaldon to name a few).
So one problem with P2P is that it undermines this fundamental thing
that fanfiction writers have struggled DECADES to get the source
creators to get on board with--the idea that "No, we're not going to
use your fanbase for our own personal gain. We're going to write
tribute works for fun." By P2Ping, authors put the entire ability of
others to write fanwork at risk.
The second problem with P2P is the question, at what point does a
character cease being the source author's? By presenting a story as
being Twilight, an author is saying that the character is not just
similar to Edward Cullen, he *is* Edward Cullen. Edward Cullen belongs
to Stephenie Meyer. She spent a long time creating him, and writing
him, and making him who he is. When an author posts fic, she's
publicly saying she's using that character, whom she did not create.
So to then take that down and say the character was hers all
along...well, that's simply not true. No matter how different he was,
posting it as fic is making the statement that the main character *is*
Edward, and Edward belongs to SM. The academic equivalent would be
citing someone's research, but then publishing a later paper which
claims you did that research yourself. It would be fraudulent.
[Edit: Jami Gold did a really nice post on what makes a character a character. I know almost no writer who feels that the essence of their characters lies in their hair colors, their names, their occupations, or even whether or not they are human or human-like supernaturals. I could write Edward Cullen as a girl, and at his core, he'd still be Edward Cullen.]
So, it's the "saying it's not mine" but then "saying it's mine" thing
that is a problem.
As to the rest of your question...I really am VERY much against this
sort of pick-and-choose stuff about P2P, because it obscures the real
problems. A lot of people "cafeteria" P2P opposers...if the fic was
badly written, okay, get mad! If the author was a jerk, get mad! etc.
There are several of us who are outraged that Fifty Shades gets all
this attention when there have been dozens of fics that have been
published. We think fingers should be pointed equally, no matter how
well-written the fic was or how nice the author is.
For me? I have two close friends who've P2Ped. I've told them in no
uncertain terms that I will not buy their books. And one pubbed with
Omnific, and I told her I wasn't interested in her original work
pubbed with them, either. My line is very hard. I don't care how good
it was, or how nice the author was, or how considerate she was in
pulling. It's all flat-out wrong to me. It all risks my ability to
write fanfic. It's all dishonest. There are others whose lines are
equally hard, but since we tend to be the more rational people, we
don't make as much noise as the "Icy was a big meanie and her fic
sucks! Down with P2P!" crowd. So it seems like it's a personal
vendetta, when for a lot of us, it's an issue of ethics.
As to outrage over AH, it's more that AH introduces this weird
slippery slope where authors can say, "Oh, well, ooops, I didn't
really mean it! It wasn't Edward! See, he's not a vampire!" In most
other fantasy fandoms, an "AH" fic is one which explores the
characters as human, often as a result of a what-if in the story
(ANGEL actually did this in the canon in an episode in Season 1--he
gets turned into a human and has to deal with Buffy as a man). For me,
right now, it's turning into this craziness because in the past, I've
taken a lot of flak for supposedly saying that AH wasn't "real"
fanfiction. I'd actually never said anything of the sort before this
whole P2P mess started, simply that I liked SM's characters and I
preferred to read them as she wrote them--as vamps.
At the time, people clamored that their AH stories were deep character
explorations of the existing Twilight characters, and that their
"Edward" was indeed Edward Cullen, just like my vampire Edward, and
how dare I be so mean as to imply otherwise.
Now, however, the moment the story is pulled, the fact that the
characters aren't vampires is the primary thing being used to justify
the argument that the stories are nothing like Twilight. For me,
that's the height of hypocrisy, because if the stories were nothing
like Twilight, they did not belong posted as fanfiction in the first
place. For them to be posted is essentially a grab at Meyer's audience
because the writer lacked confidence in her own work.
I actually dislike the hype over Fifty Shades, because I think it
overlooks how utterly widespread this problem is, and that it's being
done equally by "nice" authors as "mean" ones. The fact is, the
characters belonged to SM. She put a lot of work into making them. And
if we're going to say they're her characters when we put a fanfic up,
then there really isn't any good reason to call takebacks.