Conceptual Analyses of Fanfiction, and Why They Don't Work

[alixtii]

So many of you, the ones who follow metafandom at least, will be familiar with the rough outline of the discussion: kradical--Keith R.A. DeCandido, the author of, among other things, the Serenity novelization (which I own but have yet to read)---made a post discussing the difference between fanfic and professional media tie-in fic in which he had the bad sense to

Comments

[mymatedave]

I'm doing a monthly Intro Phil course on Saturdays and and it's always fun when I can recognise if not completely understand some of the terms you talk about. That, and it's about fanfic, which is always good.

[alixtii]

This post was strongly influenced by recent conversations on the role of academic theory in meta posts, but I don't know if it was a reaction against that conversation (I'll talk about theory if I want to!) or a capitulation to it (insofar I made all my steps more explicit than I usually would, with links to theorists' Wiki articles, although of course that foregrounds the theoretical content in a way which otherwise wouldn't be the case).

I really love philosophy (particularly philosophy since Kant; I really couldn't be bothered with the older stuff, for the most part), and analytic philosophy isn't a voice that's heard very much in lit crit (and thus in fannish meta conversation dominated by lit crit perspectives) which tends to draw more on Continental sources.

[cathexys]

That's just b/c noone like th Continentals anywhere in philosophy departments...we're the poor step children *bg*

[alixtii]

Well, yes, of course. Politics getting in the way of dialectic, as usual, when both groups have so much too offer each other!

[cathexys]

Well, I'll stand by my community distinction (by which none of the professional texts Livia collected are fanfic) that I'm putting forth in the paper to be given later this month, but I should acknowledge your scifi community issues. [Then again, I'm not trying to establish categories of inclusion/exclusion and rather attempt to look at aspects that seem more pronounced in fanfic maybe?]

And yes, slash aesthetic is a bust unless I exclude a decent percentage of stuff written after 2001...

[alixtii]

Well, I'll stand by my community distinction (by which none of the professional texts Livia collected are fanfic)

That's where I put my emphasis as well, of course. It's the best way to make a conceptual analysis, insofar as that includes pretty much all of the clear cases and excludes most of the problematic ones.

And of course the way the analytic philosophers in my premise respond to objections is by adding caveats (my prof called them "epicycles," I think) and then caveats to the caveats....

but I should acknowledge your scifi community issues

They're really not my issues; they came up in the conversations themselves. I see from the tracked comments in my inbox you've already found the comments made in liviapenn's journal re: the community aspect of the litfic establishment, and kradical and dduane were arguing against the claim that community could be seen as a final distinction between writing Star Trek fanfic and writing tie-ins

[alixtii]

I don't know if it used to be not true that most fanfic was written in a community. I of course wasn't around one way or another, but I don't know--nor do I know how anyone could know--how much fic was written completely ferally, without any connection to the fandom. I mean I understand the impulses that could encourage someone to write a Kirk/Spock (or Blake/Avon or whatever) WIP having never previously heard of fanfiction and then never show it to anyone, but is there any reason to assume that it was really going on? Fanfiction--not just having the ideas in one's head, but writing them down--isn't all that intuitive a concept

[azdak]

At the risk of getting tedious, I feel have to speak up against being lumped in with the academically backward conceptual analysts and point out that I ALSO said in liviapenn's journal

[alixtii]

Well, it'd be more accurate to say that at the time this post was written, you would go on to say those things; I've been considering my reply since you've made your comment (I'll say most of the things I was planning to say here rather than there now). I'd like to think I was clear in the way your (initial) comment was different than conceptual analysis, but I'm glad you're here to speak for yourself if you feel the need.

I don't think R&G is much of an outlier as you paint it--and you did paint it as being clearly on the other side of some line in the sand, as much as you acknowledge it as complicated and arbitrary--but I'd agree that it's more of an outlier than anthropomorfic which shares a lot of the connections to the fanfiction community which R&G lacks (even as it utilizes several fanfic-y tropes

[azdak]

I wrote a reply to this, but it got very long and very general, so I've posted it over on my own journal. There are a couple of specific things I wanted to respond to, though. One is that anthropomorfic is an interesting case because it is, in fact, original fiction. I take your point that it has strong connections to the fanfic community, but nonetheless, it's a bit of a stumbling block (or not, depending on how one approaches the definition of fanfic - hence the over-length of my reply).

Although the actors who play Ros and Guil may be incredibly interested in their character's interior lives (since I can't agree they don't have any at all), and when one is responding to a performance (or an ideal performance) as a whole one has that to draw upon.Actors are (nearly) always interested in the interior lives of their characters, since that's the material they use to create a credible character in the first place. However they can, and in German theatre often have to, create characters out of text that envisages no characters at all

[alixtii]

No, you misunderstand me. I'm not saying that performances are fanfic; I'm saying they're part of the source text. Now when we write as ficcers we may not be responding to any specific performance other than the one we see in the head when we read the script, or an amalgamation of several performances--that's what I mean by an "ideal" performance. But the play exists in fullness only when we consider it being performed.

So I'd resist the notion that what the actors bring to the performance isn't in the "text." It's not in the script, but theatre is always by its nature collaborative.

One is that anthropomorfic is an interesting case because it is, in fact, original fiction.

I think that, in the way that anthropomor_fic constructs its concept of OTP, it does have some sense of canon, so that today I'm writing math anthropomor_fic and tomorrow I'm writing philosophy anthropomor_fic, just like I'd otherwise write Buffy fanfic today and VMars fanfic tomorrow, so I wouldn't call it completely "original"--it's notion of canon are looser, as in RPF

[trobadora]

And with fanfiction, the best way to prove that a given Theory of What Fanfiction Is and Is Not is faulty is to demonstrate that it excludes the latest McShep WIP.

You win. Seriously, you WIN. This was great fun to read. :-)

[cofax7]

My definition is that if you get paid for it, it's not fanfiction. *grin*

Good post. There's an accumulation of factors that can be pointed to, in general, when you say "that's fanfic", but once you start looking at individual works and how they fit according to single criteria, almost any categorization scheme will break down.

[alixtii]

Well, by that logic the draft of Gregory Maguire's next book is fanfic--until he signs the contract for it. Not to mention I could come up with all sorts of other problematic cases if I only twist my brain long enough, but since you get my point, I won't bother.

once you start looking at individual works and how they fit according to single criteria, almost any categorization scheme will break down.

Yes, that's it exactly!

[cofax7]

If you can get legally paid for it, then. Although really, that's not quite true, either, because nobody claims a screenwriter's spec scripts are fanfiction, even though you can't get paid for them.

[alixtii]

I could get legally paid for my yuletide story, too, and I wouldn't want to have to conclude it isn't fanfic (although of course such a conclusion wouldn't be incoherent). anthropomor_fic could legally be paid for as well.