Rant on people
So, I have George R.R. Martin's Not a Blog friended so that I can keep up to date on the next book and when I need to get HBO, and he posted about a controversy he found on another author's (Diana Gabaldon) blog page.
Fanfic.
These two authors do not view it favorably, or as legal without consent. Neither give their consent to people to write fanfiction and really their arguments are solid and make sense to me. For one, neither feels comfortable letting other people use the characters they have created in ways that they cannot control and say "No, that character would never do that". Also, they argue that in a way it is a wasted effort, base works off works you like, just not copying setting and characters, you may be able to sell them that way, or if nothing else you have created your own world and work.
However, I'm not really looking to rant about them, I agree with them. It is the kneejerk reaction by many in the fanfiction community I'm ranting at. In many ways it has the entitled feeling that the people infringing on other copyrights has. "Art is meant to be shared, so that means I can do whatever the hell I want with it and the person who actually did the work is evil and mean for disagreeing."
Big example, in GRRM's post, he mentioned the case of I believe Marion Zimmer Bradley, who was very supportive of fan works. Long story short, fan work ended up being remarkably similar to her book in progress, she contacted fanwriter to explain situation and offer mention and such in book, fan demanded co-authorship and 50% of the royalties, book died. LJ reaction to that "Oh, that wouldn't happen NOW" Sorry, once again someone ruined it for everyone. It doesn't matter that there are creative commons licenses and the such, the damage was done and that is a valid reason for authors to be wary about fanfics.
The other author mentions something I've learned about in a different field, and from my own experience as a child. She describes a story where someone she knew was in a book discussion and ran across a person who was going on about a scene between two characters that the author never wrote. It was from a fanfic, but the person associated it with the series canon. One problem here being it is VERY easy to blend stuff around in your memories from two different sources. For example, when I was little I KNEW that Biggs showed up in Star Wars, but whenever I saw the movie that scene was not in it, however, that scene was in the Star Wars Storybook which I owned. The other problem ties into that, fanfic takes away the author's quality control, and horrid writing could mar opinion of the real work. This is also the reason a lot of portrait photographers do not give out those cardboard frames like you get with school portraits. No one is going to keep the beautiful picture paid you to take of them, but, that horrid snapshot that's overexposed, with lens flare, your thumb and the camera strap in the picture, and with Uncle Joe's head cut off that you stuck in the frame that has the name and info of the good photographer because it's the only pic you have of the baby, that hurts the photographer because whether it makes sense or not, your name is attached to that awful picture.
And the rest of my rant I use to make fun of stupid people. Like the person who in all seriousness said that creating an original work with original characters is less work than writing convincing fanfic. Hell, I'm not particularly against it, not attracted to the stuff myself, but with consent, fine, knock yourself out. But do not play this "I'm better than the real author" shit, be honest about it all. Writing fanfic is not a high calling, its not noble, its not really that special. It is using your creativity to express your enjoyment of some work of fiction, it can be good practice writing, I'm sure that it is fun as well. But its not more challenging than creating your own story, even if you are borrowing concepts.
Another piece of what I feel is stupidity are the people who were informing the authors "Oh, well if you didn't want us to fanfic your works you needed to put it on your website/tell whatever fanfic site" ahem "Oh, well if you didn't want us to have a party in your backyard you needed to post a notice on your fence or call us up." Fine, an author allows or even encourages people to make fanfics, Go wild! But really if you are going to make derivative works, even without profiting monetarily, the onus should be on the fanfic writers to check if that's cool with the author, not the other way around, that's just basic freaking decency. These things can have an effect on the perception of the related works, and its not really that much work to shoot off an email asking the author's stance.
O-k, I think that's enough late night rantage (Could be worse, I could have shared my thoughts on checking Ron Paul's website in the wake of Arizona's anti-american bill, Joe Lieberman's unconstitutional completely unamerican asshattery, and the example of loose industry regulation as can be seen from fucking space in the gulf of mexico and seeing nothing about them there. =p)
P.S. In running this post through spell check I come up with the amusing fact that LJ's spell check does not recognize LJ.
Fanfic.
These two authors do not view it favorably, or as legal without consent. Neither give their consent to people to write fanfiction and really their arguments are solid and make sense to me. For one, neither feels comfortable letting other people use the characters they have created in ways that they cannot control and say "No, that character would never do that". Also, they argue that in a way it is a wasted effort, base works off works you like, just not copying setting and characters, you may be able to sell them that way, or if nothing else you have created your own world and work.
However, I'm not really looking to rant about them, I agree with them. It is the kneejerk reaction by many in the fanfiction community I'm ranting at. In many ways it has the entitled feeling that the people infringing on other copyrights has. "Art is meant to be shared, so that means I can do whatever the hell I want with it and the person who actually did the work is evil and mean for disagreeing."
Big example, in GRRM's post, he mentioned the case of I believe Marion Zimmer Bradley, who was very supportive of fan works. Long story short, fan work ended up being remarkably similar to her book in progress, she contacted fanwriter to explain situation and offer mention and such in book, fan demanded co-authorship and 50% of the royalties, book died. LJ reaction to that "Oh, that wouldn't happen NOW" Sorry, once again someone ruined it for everyone. It doesn't matter that there are creative commons licenses and the such, the damage was done and that is a valid reason for authors to be wary about fanfics.
The other author mentions something I've learned about in a different field, and from my own experience as a child. She describes a story where someone she knew was in a book discussion and ran across a person who was going on about a scene between two characters that the author never wrote. It was from a fanfic, but the person associated it with the series canon. One problem here being it is VERY easy to blend stuff around in your memories from two different sources. For example, when I was little I KNEW that Biggs showed up in Star Wars, but whenever I saw the movie that scene was not in it, however, that scene was in the Star Wars Storybook which I owned. The other problem ties into that, fanfic takes away the author's quality control, and horrid writing could mar opinion of the real work. This is also the reason a lot of portrait photographers do not give out those cardboard frames like you get with school portraits. No one is going to keep the beautiful picture paid you to take of them, but, that horrid snapshot that's overexposed, with lens flare, your thumb and the camera strap in the picture, and with Uncle Joe's head cut off that you stuck in the frame that has the name and info of the good photographer because it's the only pic you have of the baby, that hurts the photographer because whether it makes sense or not, your name is attached to that awful picture.
And the rest of my rant I use to make fun of stupid people. Like the person who in all seriousness said that creating an original work with original characters is less work than writing convincing fanfic. Hell, I'm not particularly against it, not attracted to the stuff myself, but with consent, fine, knock yourself out. But do not play this "I'm better than the real author" shit, be honest about it all. Writing fanfic is not a high calling, its not noble, its not really that special. It is using your creativity to express your enjoyment of some work of fiction, it can be good practice writing, I'm sure that it is fun as well. But its not more challenging than creating your own story, even if you are borrowing concepts.
Another piece of what I feel is stupidity are the people who were informing the authors "Oh, well if you didn't want us to fanfic your works you needed to put it on your website/tell whatever fanfic site" ahem "Oh, well if you didn't want us to have a party in your backyard you needed to post a notice on your fence or call us up." Fine, an author allows or even encourages people to make fanfics, Go wild! But really if you are going to make derivative works, even without profiting monetarily, the onus should be on the fanfic writers to check if that's cool with the author, not the other way around, that's just basic freaking decency. These things can have an effect on the perception of the related works, and its not really that much work to shoot off an email asking the author's stance.
O-k, I think that's enough late night rantage (Could be worse, I could have shared my thoughts on checking Ron Paul's website in the wake of Arizona's anti-american bill, Joe Lieberman's unconstitutional completely unamerican asshattery, and the example of loose industry regulation as can be seen from fucking space in the gulf of mexico and seeing nothing about them there. =p)
P.S. In running this post through spell check I come up with the amusing fact that LJ's spell check does not recognize LJ.