Saving the Universe with Luke and Han
So you know that writer guy, what's his name? The one who wrote for Diagnosis Murder and other shows and hates fanfiction with the white hot intensity of a thousand suns? I think his blog is called something like "A Writer's Life" but every time I see it linked it seems like bitterwriter.com. Anyway, he's got another thread up where he went to some meeting for mystery writers and they all talked about the many non-writers they were superior too and he asked the other professionals what they thought about fanfic and they were all creeped out by it.
Now, I don't think I'll even go into all the issues that seem to be on display with this guy and the other self-proclaimed professional or wanna-be professional writers who agree with him. They seem mainly obsessed with a) finding a group they’re superior to (which isn't easy) and b) being really angry at how little respect readers have for the individual author. I admit I find this kind of funny, the focus paid on the author as a person whose personal wishes should be respected to the point of keeping readers from talking about their stories and characters in a way they don't like (they completely reject that idea that fanfiction is commentary on the source material). It seems like the idea that somebody reading a story should give a second’s thought to the writer when talking or thinking about the characters themselves is new and strange. Maybe it makes you uncomfortable, but people can do whatever they want with your characters. You published them publicly for an audience. The audience can say whatever they want about them. You’ve got the ability to have copyright now. That’s it.
I mean, very little about writing has anything to do with respect for the writer as a person. People care about your characters, not you (if you’re lucky-a lot of them just don’t care, period). You’re still not as bad off as Jerry Mathers getting called Beaver at 60 or Gary Coleman having random people ask him "Whatchoo talkin’ ‘bout, Willis?" Think of all the times your actual work gets hacked up on somebody else’s orders. Fanfic writers are worshipful in comparison--they probably know your words by heart and they don't put your name on their stuff. Your name isn’t going on their stuff. Fanfic isn’t the same thing as series work. I see the point they’re trying to make about hurting the author, but I don’t think that kind of hurt is going to be protected. The audience just isn’t going to give you that one, nor feel they owe it to you. They like reading stuff, they're not making money off it, you're not losing money. This falls under the category of "the less-than-positive side of success" rather than "crimes against the successful."
Um, that was a tangent. What I was really thinking about is related to that thread, and a comment on it where someone said (wades through bitter, anger to find correct post):
"Fanfic in general seems to spring from the writer's strong identification with a fictional world, and a desire to insert himself into it - either explicitly, as a character, or as the author/god, making the characters do as he wants (in some varieties, like slash and hurt/comfort, the writer's personal needs are pretty much clear to everyone). In other words, the fanfic impulse comes from the same place as my childhood daydreams of saving the universe with Luke and Han.
That may be a little unkind, but I think it's true."
What struck me about that is that obviously this guy thinks he's being really insulting (“That may be a little unkind…”), and this implied insult appears throughout the thread in different forms: only children identify with fictional characters and go to that fictional world for their own needs. You stop doing that in junior high! When you grow up you...what do you do?
See, this is one of these areas where I remain forever stunted because I have always read fiction the same way: I immerse myself in the world when I read, and if the characters and world are compelling enough they stay in my head and I continue to explore my own version on my own. I'm not sure why this impulse is considered childish but it obviously is--after all, it's considered geeky and geek=socially inept. That thread is full of generalizations about anyone who might write fanfic: they all really want to be “us” (meaning the "professional writers" or writers of original fic) and can't, they have no lives, they have no jobs. Of course, knowing so many people who write it I know plenty of them are probably more successful in their chosen careers (whatever they are) than BitterWriter might be in his or I am in mine. Plenty of them have families and lives. Some don't, but then, some sports fans don't either.
What this got me thinking about was the way the imagination is somehow considered something for children. Not all children are into imagination games, but most understand them and consider them a reasonable way to spend ones time. They know exactly what they're doing--sometimes people act like children don't know the difference between reality and imagination because they can act out something imaginary unselfconsciously. But of course they know they're imagining something--why shouldn't they? It's fun! For some reason adults aren't supposed to do this except in very specific instances.
Those instances are important because I just don't think we ever lose that "childhood daydreams of saving the universe with Luke and Han." Why would we? It's not like most peoples' adult lives become exciting enough that they lose all need to dream. In oselle's posts about Hooligans she mentioned how Lexi Alexander described men who join football firms as people who grew up dreaming of being football stars and that didn’t happen. This world was the best they could hope for. On one hand it gave them a sense of importance (like some people might feel they'd get from being a BNF), but also I think it makes them feel part of something bigger--like a hero or a warrior-like they used to feel imagining they’d be a footballer. It's dangerous because they aren't able to just make it imaginary and end up killing each other.
The hooligans example is good too because it's about sports--ever notice how the stereotype is that jocks beat up geeks for liking fantasy, yet the one area where grown men are allowed to fantasize is sports? I was reading an article about Harold Ramis once where he talked about working with Bill Murray (before BM decided he hated HR and never spoke to him again). He discussed that one oft-quoted scene in Caddyshack where Bill Murray's Carl is playing golf in the flower garden. The scene was supposed to be silent, but Ramis went up to Murray and said, "Do you ever pretend you're the sports commentator...?" and Murray just said, "Oh yeah. I know what you want." And that's where we get that whole intense fantasy: "This crowd has gone deadly silent...it's in the hole! It's in the hole!" So it’s totally okay to indulge that childhood impulse as long as there’s some sports equipment involved.
And that led me--sorry I'm making another leap here--to a show I was watching on Monday night: Bullshit with Penn & Teller. This episode was looking at alien abductions and the lack of evidence for it. There was this one woman they featured who was a "therapist" who had a handy checklist of signs you were abducted by aliens (a list that applied to everyone on the planet). She would do these "regressions" where the person would lie down and relax and she'd lead them through "remembering" what happened to them--really she was asking leading questions and having them make up an alien story. These sessions were expensive and people kept coming back for more; she also set up sad little groups where they all met and shared wild stories and everyone pretended everyone else's was true.
So I'm watching this "regression" and it reminds me of a thing I did once--I went to this workshop for past life regressions. It was part of a weekend convention but a single workshop wasn't too expensive. I had wanted to do one of those "guided imagery" things where someone helps you to imagine stuff intensely. Now, I had no need for reincarnation to be true or not. Whether or not I lived in 1612 makes very little difference to my life. But I thought this would be fun-the idea of past lives is cool. To my surprise it wound up solving a big problem I was having. See, the way this woman worked is we all lay down and did the regression together--not being hypnotized or anything, just imagining things with her help ("You see a door. What color is it? Is it big or small? Does it have a handle?” etc. and you feel in the details in your head). We were supposed to think of a problem we were having and travel back to the past life where this problem started. Would I say I discovered my real past life? Probably not. But I told myself a neat story where I was a boy blacksmith apprentice to a mean guy and it was all very Dickensian and the story helped me to see exactly what I was doing wrong that was creating this problem. It was a major help to me!
So I can't bring myself to just say that past life thing was bullshit because I got out of it exactly what I expected: a fun imagination game that turned out to help me a lot. Other people in the group were more seriously into the past life thing, and it seemed like that's how they socialized. Like one woman had all these tremendously exciting past lives and was always meeting people she "recognized" from the past. So that was someone, imo, who was a little too focused on her fantasy past and ought to have learned to deal with reality.
The point of my telling that story was that like I said, my regression was very much like what this alien therapist was doing, so my first thought was to say, "Is that woman being regressed being dishonest? Like, does she know she's making this up but likes the attention (like I suspected that past life woman was doing)? Or does she honestly believe it?" She seemed to honestly believe it, or at least feel it was appropriate to act like she did. She was very serious and said, "I'm really glad to have found out what happened." And she kept having all these expensive sessions and joined a group of people who sat around with straight faces and talked about their alien weddings to lizard men.
Then it hit me...maybe the reason some people are so willing to buy this stuff is they literally do not know how imagination works? I mean, they use it so little that they just don't know what it's capable of, so they think, "I couldn't possibly imagine anything like what I saw when she asked me what I saw in the space ship! That would be impossible unless I’d really seen one!" when of course they could. (Unsurprisingly, descriptions of average alien abductors tend to change over the years, and always reflect the movies...hmmmm....) Or they just don't know what it feels like to have an intense daydream where you try to "see" this fictional place. So they’re more likely to confuse it for a memory, because they don’t know how real the imaginary can be.
Artists are supposed to do this more often. Writers see the places they write about, hear voices of their characters, and become fictional people as they write. A painter sees a place in his/her head. Actors become other people. Dancers become characters or become music, as do singers. One ballet teacher I have ends her class with improv where she puts on music and everybody is supposed to do whatever they want to it. When I was a kid I *loved* doing that--if you ever watch kids do it, some of them get really serious about it-there nothing cuter than watching a little kid do interpretive dance. In the beginning it was a weird feeling, but now I'm like, "Oh yeah, I remember how fun this was!" Plus I'm more likely to just do it when I'm at home--music comes on and I'm all, "La la la, I am dancing--yay! Moving is fun!"
Granted, this probably does make me a loser according to the many people on that other blog (though since I'm not a fanfic writer at least I'm not immoral, unethical and a thief), but it just goes to show this impulse really isn't so unnatural and it's not something you grow out of. You might not do it anymore, but you can. It really isn't, as they would have you believe, like the way you no longer find kiddie jokes funny.
But some people would sure have you think so, huh? So reading a book, having it spark your imagination, thinking up stories about the characters, writing them down and sharing them with others becomes this perverse activity and must be strictly separated from the grand art of the original writer (or the writer who writes episodes or tie-in novels based on somebody else’s characters!). Or something.
Now, I don't think I'll even go into all the issues that seem to be on display with this guy and the other self-proclaimed professional or wanna-be professional writers who agree with him. They seem mainly obsessed with a) finding a group they’re superior to (which isn't easy) and b) being really angry at how little respect readers have for the individual author. I admit I find this kind of funny, the focus paid on the author as a person whose personal wishes should be respected to the point of keeping readers from talking about their stories and characters in a way they don't like (they completely reject that idea that fanfiction is commentary on the source material). It seems like the idea that somebody reading a story should give a second’s thought to the writer when talking or thinking about the characters themselves is new and strange. Maybe it makes you uncomfortable, but people can do whatever they want with your characters. You published them publicly for an audience. The audience can say whatever they want about them. You’ve got the ability to have copyright now. That’s it.
I mean, very little about writing has anything to do with respect for the writer as a person. People care about your characters, not you (if you’re lucky-a lot of them just don’t care, period). You’re still not as bad off as Jerry Mathers getting called Beaver at 60 or Gary Coleman having random people ask him "Whatchoo talkin’ ‘bout, Willis?" Think of all the times your actual work gets hacked up on somebody else’s orders. Fanfic writers are worshipful in comparison--they probably know your words by heart and they don't put your name on their stuff. Your name isn’t going on their stuff. Fanfic isn’t the same thing as series work. I see the point they’re trying to make about hurting the author, but I don’t think that kind of hurt is going to be protected. The audience just isn’t going to give you that one, nor feel they owe it to you. They like reading stuff, they're not making money off it, you're not losing money. This falls under the category of "the less-than-positive side of success" rather than "crimes against the successful."
Um, that was a tangent. What I was really thinking about is related to that thread, and a comment on it where someone said (wades through bitter, anger to find correct post):
"Fanfic in general seems to spring from the writer's strong identification with a fictional world, and a desire to insert himself into it - either explicitly, as a character, or as the author/god, making the characters do as he wants (in some varieties, like slash and hurt/comfort, the writer's personal needs are pretty much clear to everyone). In other words, the fanfic impulse comes from the same place as my childhood daydreams of saving the universe with Luke and Han.
That may be a little unkind, but I think it's true."
What struck me about that is that obviously this guy thinks he's being really insulting (“That may be a little unkind…”), and this implied insult appears throughout the thread in different forms: only children identify with fictional characters and go to that fictional world for their own needs. You stop doing that in junior high! When you grow up you...what do you do?
See, this is one of these areas where I remain forever stunted because I have always read fiction the same way: I immerse myself in the world when I read, and if the characters and world are compelling enough they stay in my head and I continue to explore my own version on my own. I'm not sure why this impulse is considered childish but it obviously is--after all, it's considered geeky and geek=socially inept. That thread is full of generalizations about anyone who might write fanfic: they all really want to be “us” (meaning the "professional writers" or writers of original fic) and can't, they have no lives, they have no jobs. Of course, knowing so many people who write it I know plenty of them are probably more successful in their chosen careers (whatever they are) than BitterWriter might be in his or I am in mine. Plenty of them have families and lives. Some don't, but then, some sports fans don't either.
What this got me thinking about was the way the imagination is somehow considered something for children. Not all children are into imagination games, but most understand them and consider them a reasonable way to spend ones time. They know exactly what they're doing--sometimes people act like children don't know the difference between reality and imagination because they can act out something imaginary unselfconsciously. But of course they know they're imagining something--why shouldn't they? It's fun! For some reason adults aren't supposed to do this except in very specific instances.
Those instances are important because I just don't think we ever lose that "childhood daydreams of saving the universe with Luke and Han." Why would we? It's not like most peoples' adult lives become exciting enough that they lose all need to dream. In oselle's posts about Hooligans she mentioned how Lexi Alexander described men who join football firms as people who grew up dreaming of being football stars and that didn’t happen. This world was the best they could hope for. On one hand it gave them a sense of importance (like some people might feel they'd get from being a BNF), but also I think it makes them feel part of something bigger--like a hero or a warrior-like they used to feel imagining they’d be a footballer. It's dangerous because they aren't able to just make it imaginary and end up killing each other.
The hooligans example is good too because it's about sports--ever notice how the stereotype is that jocks beat up geeks for liking fantasy, yet the one area where grown men are allowed to fantasize is sports? I was reading an article about Harold Ramis once where he talked about working with Bill Murray (before BM decided he hated HR and never spoke to him again). He discussed that one oft-quoted scene in Caddyshack where Bill Murray's Carl is playing golf in the flower garden. The scene was supposed to be silent, but Ramis went up to Murray and said, "Do you ever pretend you're the sports commentator...?" and Murray just said, "Oh yeah. I know what you want." And that's where we get that whole intense fantasy: "This crowd has gone deadly silent...it's in the hole! It's in the hole!" So it’s totally okay to indulge that childhood impulse as long as there’s some sports equipment involved.
And that led me--sorry I'm making another leap here--to a show I was watching on Monday night: Bullshit with Penn & Teller. This episode was looking at alien abductions and the lack of evidence for it. There was this one woman they featured who was a "therapist" who had a handy checklist of signs you were abducted by aliens (a list that applied to everyone on the planet). She would do these "regressions" where the person would lie down and relax and she'd lead them through "remembering" what happened to them--really she was asking leading questions and having them make up an alien story. These sessions were expensive and people kept coming back for more; she also set up sad little groups where they all met and shared wild stories and everyone pretended everyone else's was true.
So I'm watching this "regression" and it reminds me of a thing I did once--I went to this workshop for past life regressions. It was part of a weekend convention but a single workshop wasn't too expensive. I had wanted to do one of those "guided imagery" things where someone helps you to imagine stuff intensely. Now, I had no need for reincarnation to be true or not. Whether or not I lived in 1612 makes very little difference to my life. But I thought this would be fun-the idea of past lives is cool. To my surprise it wound up solving a big problem I was having. See, the way this woman worked is we all lay down and did the regression together--not being hypnotized or anything, just imagining things with her help ("You see a door. What color is it? Is it big or small? Does it have a handle?” etc. and you feel in the details in your head). We were supposed to think of a problem we were having and travel back to the past life where this problem started. Would I say I discovered my real past life? Probably not. But I told myself a neat story where I was a boy blacksmith apprentice to a mean guy and it was all very Dickensian and the story helped me to see exactly what I was doing wrong that was creating this problem. It was a major help to me!
So I can't bring myself to just say that past life thing was bullshit because I got out of it exactly what I expected: a fun imagination game that turned out to help me a lot. Other people in the group were more seriously into the past life thing, and it seemed like that's how they socialized. Like one woman had all these tremendously exciting past lives and was always meeting people she "recognized" from the past. So that was someone, imo, who was a little too focused on her fantasy past and ought to have learned to deal with reality.
The point of my telling that story was that like I said, my regression was very much like what this alien therapist was doing, so my first thought was to say, "Is that woman being regressed being dishonest? Like, does she know she's making this up but likes the attention (like I suspected that past life woman was doing)? Or does she honestly believe it?" She seemed to honestly believe it, or at least feel it was appropriate to act like she did. She was very serious and said, "I'm really glad to have found out what happened." And she kept having all these expensive sessions and joined a group of people who sat around with straight faces and talked about their alien weddings to lizard men.
Then it hit me...maybe the reason some people are so willing to buy this stuff is they literally do not know how imagination works? I mean, they use it so little that they just don't know what it's capable of, so they think, "I couldn't possibly imagine anything like what I saw when she asked me what I saw in the space ship! That would be impossible unless I’d really seen one!" when of course they could. (Unsurprisingly, descriptions of average alien abductors tend to change over the years, and always reflect the movies...hmmmm....) Or they just don't know what it feels like to have an intense daydream where you try to "see" this fictional place. So they’re more likely to confuse it for a memory, because they don’t know how real the imaginary can be.
Artists are supposed to do this more often. Writers see the places they write about, hear voices of their characters, and become fictional people as they write. A painter sees a place in his/her head. Actors become other people. Dancers become characters or become music, as do singers. One ballet teacher I have ends her class with improv where she puts on music and everybody is supposed to do whatever they want to it. When I was a kid I *loved* doing that--if you ever watch kids do it, some of them get really serious about it-there nothing cuter than watching a little kid do interpretive dance. In the beginning it was a weird feeling, but now I'm like, "Oh yeah, I remember how fun this was!" Plus I'm more likely to just do it when I'm at home--music comes on and I'm all, "La la la, I am dancing--yay! Moving is fun!"
Granted, this probably does make me a loser according to the many people on that other blog (though since I'm not a fanfic writer at least I'm not immoral, unethical and a thief), but it just goes to show this impulse really isn't so unnatural and it's not something you grow out of. You might not do it anymore, but you can. It really isn't, as they would have you believe, like the way you no longer find kiddie jokes funny.
But some people would sure have you think so, huh? So reading a book, having it spark your imagination, thinking up stories about the characters, writing them down and sharing them with others becomes this perverse activity and must be strictly separated from the grand art of the original writer (or the writer who writes episodes or tie-in novels based on somebody else’s characters!). Or something.