Can't stop the signal
I was just ranting to a few friends in a chat room about some of the comments on an old Making Light post ("Fanfic": force of nature) and on the recent boingboing entry on OTW (Organization for Transformative Works: defend fandom!).
I'm trying now to clarify my reactions to both.
It's important to note up front that I'm neither a media mogul nor a lawyer, so I'm not going to talk about legal definitions of fair use, satire, parody, trademark, copyright, or competition. I'm speaking purely as a writer of fan fiction, and I'm speaking only for myself; scratch a different fan writer, you'll get a different set of opinions.
While the discussions of the merits of fan fiction are ongoing in the pro writer community, I have a couple of responses to some of the recurring theories and arguments:
1) Fan fiction writers are loser wannabes who can't hack it as pro writers
2) Fan fiction should be written only with the approval of the original creator upon whose work it's based
3) Fan fiction's quality can be judged by the same standards as those used to judge pro fiction
(and my personal favorite)
4) Once we figure out a) if fan fiction is good or bad, we can b) decide what to do about it and then c) actually affect what fandom does and doesn't do.
1) Fan fiction writers are loser wannabes who can't hack it as pro writers
With regard to the comment by "Adventure Books of Seattle" at the boingboing thread, my reaction is pretty standard. Adventure Books says:
"I have always considered fanfic a poor cousin to REAL writing anyway. The authors cannot think up their own characters or plots, so they simply jump on the coattails of another author's hard work. Let the fanfic folks stay where they belong...down in the parking garage of the Writers Convention."
To which I say, in about as predictable a manner as any fan fiction writer could, "Bite me."
I think any rational person with a basic grasp of class theory can see the problems, both logistical and psychiatric, inherent in Adventure's statement. (For one thing, Mr. Adventure, there are waaaaay more fan fiction writers practicing our art today than there are pro writers practicing theirs; some of us even practice both. So before you try to lock us all in the "parking garage" where we "belong", you might want to reflect on the high probability of being the first against the wall when the revolution comes.)
I don't think Adventure's is a majority opinion, and so I don't think it really warrants an extended rebuttal. I was actually far more irked by some of the Making Light comments on fan fiction -- even some of the ones by pro writers coming out in support of fan fiction. Maybe especially those.
Here are some that bugged me. Keep in mind that these comments are over a year old, originally posted in April 2006, so I'm responding less to the original commenters here than I am to general statements about fanfic that I've seen again and again. I've included the names of the commenters quoted below you can search the Making Light thread for names or key terms if you want to see the quotes in context.
2) Fan fiction should be written only with the approval of the original creator upon whose work it's based
"In the end, I think the concise description of my opinion here is that non-commercial fanfic is a matter of courtesy. Fans who write fiction should stop if authors ask them to." -- Michael
Michael's comment is a really good one, and I agree with a lot of what he has to say about a person's responsibility to avoid giving offense when it's possible and reasonable. He's working from the idea that no decent person wants to hurt another person, so if they find out they are, they should stop hurting them. But I disagree wholeheartedly with the quoted part of his post, on a couple of counts.
First, it divides writers into "authors" and "fans who write fiction" and so automatically privileges the former over the latter. Fans who write fiction are also authors. You can say what you will about the quality of the work, but you can't deny that we fit the definition: we're people who write.
The second count is the underlying assumption that fan fiction writing is the social equivalent of humming out loud on the bus. That assumption is completely off-base. If you ask me to stop humming because it's bugging you, I will, because I don't need to hum. But if you ask me to stop breathing because it's bugging you, we need to have a serious discussion about priorities. My immediate and gut-level response to "if it's bothering the creator, you should stop writing it" was, "Oh, yeah? If it's so easy to just stop writing, Bub -- let's see you do it."
Whether he intended it to or not, Michael's statement imposes a class system on needs, with the pro writer's needs at the pinnacle and the fan fiction writer's needs at the bottom. I'm not even talking about the work here; I'm talking about whatever it is in people that drives them to write. And what I'm hearing in this statement, the assumption that props it up, is that Mary Jo ProWriter's tender feelings are deserving of protection, but my drive to express myself creatively isn't.
Every pro writer out there knows how it feels to be inspired by something, to need to write things down about it and share them. What some of them don't seem to get is that fan fiction writers feel exactly the same way. Our choices of subject matter, venue and audience are the only differences. And who gets to judge where the greater hurt lies? Is Mary Jo ProWriter's discomfort at having fan fiction written about her characters or in her universe greater than my discomfort at having to shut down my only creative outlet?
Obviously, I don't think so. I strongly suspect that the passive discomfort of knowing people are writing something you don't want them to write is easier to bear than the active discomfort of being creatively restricted. I think it's far worse to be told to stop writing than it is to know that people are writing fan fiction about your work.
But the point isn't whose hurt is greater; the point is, there's no way to make that determination objectively. Maybe I'm the one who stands to lose the most here -- I certainly think so -- and if that's the case, then the moral responsibility for "stopping" lies with the original creator. Original creators who try to stifle the creativity of fan writers should stop when fan writers ask them to.
3) Fan fiction's quality can be judged by the same standards as those used to judge pro fiction
Another comment that got to me: Leigh Butler said, "I'm personally sort of ambivalent toward fanfic. On the one hand, I've read some truly excellent fanfic (like the Buffy novel PNH was talking about, for instance), and good writing is good writing is good writing, ya know?"
You might think it would be the ambivalence that bugged me here, but it's the judgment, actually. It's that Leigh is holding up this fan-written Buffy novel as an example of excellent fanfic, when I'm pretty sure what she means is "this Buffy fan fiction novel is excellent by the standards I use to evaluate professional fiction".
Here's the thing: You can't judge fan fiction by the same standards you use to evaluate professional fiction. Not because it's somehow lesser and could never live up to those standards, but because the purpose, audience, format, venue and intent of fan fiction are different from the those of professional fiction. Expecting fan fiction to do the same job as pro fiction is like asking a slice of key lime pie to do the same job as a hammer.
Fan fiction as it exists (mostly online) today is inextricably tied to the fannish culture it's created for. While it may succeed outside of fandom, it isn't written for that purpose. It's written as part of an ongoing conversation between the fan writer and other members of fandom. It's not just a creative work; it's a cultural communication, as well. And it has to succeed as both to be considered "good" fan fiction. The former can be judged by outsiders; the latter never really can.
As a cultural communication, it relies on common values and understandings between community members that outsiders may not (probably won't) share. And when it branches off from those common values and understandings, it still does so in a way that's informed by them. Fandom is not just a group of people who like a TV show or a movie or a book. It's a vast, sprawling, on-going multi-media conversation between members of a specific subculture. Fan fiction comes from fan writers who are a part of that conversation on a regular basis, familiar with its disagreements and the places where there's consensus. Familiar also with what their readers thought about the source text, universe, and characters yesterday and last month and last year.
People who aren't immersed in a particular culture are simply not qualified to judge the success of its internal communications, and that's what fan fiction is. It's a response to the original work intended for the fannish community, based on that community's shared "language" and tropes, and built within (or springing from) that community's literary traditions. Whether or not a piece of fan fiction can be judged "excellent" or "poor" by the standards used to judge professional fiction is irrelevant; what matters is if it succeeds by the community's standards for fan fiction. You might be able to find a really solid slice of pie that could work great as a hammer, but the pie maker probably doesn't care. The pie maker wants to know, how does it work as pie?
All of that brings me to the fun part, which is also the concluding part:
4) Once we figure out a) if fan fiction is good or bad, we can b) decide what to do about it and then c) actually affect what fandom does and doesn't do.
This comment, by Stephen Frug, was one of my favorites. It's meant as a statement of what can happen legally, rather than what should happen ethically, but I found it to be charmingly naive; it actually made me smile:
Lucas can shut down all star wars fanfic, not just stuff that gets charged for.
...
Underlying almost every comment in the thread, whether in support of fanfic or against, was the unspoken agreement that if the pro writers could ever agree on whether fanfic was a good thing or a bad one, they could figure out what should be done about it and do it. Maybe bring it into the free market so it could be licensed and regulated, for instance. Maybe make people stop doing it, if that's what everybody decides is the right way to go.
Oh, you crazy kids.
You really, really can't. You can't do either of those things. You can't actually do anything at all. If you try to license and regulate it, there will be fans who don't want to bother with the corporate nonsense; they'll password protect their stories and journals and archives, and write them anyway. If you try to put a stop to fan fiction all together, we'll all do exactly the same thing. What would you do if someone told you to stop being a writer? You could try to shut down all fan fiction writing, but that would just get you a bunch of fan fiction writers you couldn't find -- and that's just assuming we'd all go underground quietly. I think the Organization for Transformative Works might have a few things to say on that topic.
The thing is, writing fan fiction isn't just something we do. We're not just humming on the bus. Fan fiction is part of how fans are who we are, with each other. It's one of the ways we relate to each other, one on one and as a community, and that's not something we're going to give up just because it might make a pro writer feel a bit oogy. I wish it didn't do that; I'd really rather every pro writer could take it as the compliment we intend it to be. But if they can't, they can have my sympathy -- not my compliance.
Just something for the relevant parties to think about, while they're trying to decide what's to become of us. In the immortal words of Joss Whedon - you can't stop the signal.
I'm trying now to clarify my reactions to both.
It's important to note up front that I'm neither a media mogul nor a lawyer, so I'm not going to talk about legal definitions of fair use, satire, parody, trademark, copyright, or competition. I'm speaking purely as a writer of fan fiction, and I'm speaking only for myself; scratch a different fan writer, you'll get a different set of opinions.
While the discussions of the merits of fan fiction are ongoing in the pro writer community, I have a couple of responses to some of the recurring theories and arguments:
1) Fan fiction writers are loser wannabes who can't hack it as pro writers
2) Fan fiction should be written only with the approval of the original creator upon whose work it's based
3) Fan fiction's quality can be judged by the same standards as those used to judge pro fiction
(and my personal favorite)
4) Once we figure out a) if fan fiction is good or bad, we can b) decide what to do about it and then c) actually affect what fandom does and doesn't do.
1) Fan fiction writers are loser wannabes who can't hack it as pro writers
With regard to the comment by "Adventure Books of Seattle" at the boingboing thread, my reaction is pretty standard. Adventure Books says:
"I have always considered fanfic a poor cousin to REAL writing anyway. The authors cannot think up their own characters or plots, so they simply jump on the coattails of another author's hard work. Let the fanfic folks stay where they belong...down in the parking garage of the Writers Convention."
To which I say, in about as predictable a manner as any fan fiction writer could, "Bite me."
I think any rational person with a basic grasp of class theory can see the problems, both logistical and psychiatric, inherent in Adventure's statement. (For one thing, Mr. Adventure, there are waaaaay more fan fiction writers practicing our art today than there are pro writers practicing theirs; some of us even practice both. So before you try to lock us all in the "parking garage" where we "belong", you might want to reflect on the high probability of being the first against the wall when the revolution comes.)
I don't think Adventure's is a majority opinion, and so I don't think it really warrants an extended rebuttal. I was actually far more irked by some of the Making Light comments on fan fiction -- even some of the ones by pro writers coming out in support of fan fiction. Maybe especially those.
Here are some that bugged me. Keep in mind that these comments are over a year old, originally posted in April 2006, so I'm responding less to the original commenters here than I am to general statements about fanfic that I've seen again and again. I've included the names of the commenters quoted below you can search the Making Light thread for names or key terms if you want to see the quotes in context.
2) Fan fiction should be written only with the approval of the original creator upon whose work it's based
"In the end, I think the concise description of my opinion here is that non-commercial fanfic is a matter of courtesy. Fans who write fiction should stop if authors ask them to." -- Michael
Michael's comment is a really good one, and I agree with a lot of what he has to say about a person's responsibility to avoid giving offense when it's possible and reasonable. He's working from the idea that no decent person wants to hurt another person, so if they find out they are, they should stop hurting them. But I disagree wholeheartedly with the quoted part of his post, on a couple of counts.
First, it divides writers into "authors" and "fans who write fiction" and so automatically privileges the former over the latter. Fans who write fiction are also authors. You can say what you will about the quality of the work, but you can't deny that we fit the definition: we're people who write.
The second count is the underlying assumption that fan fiction writing is the social equivalent of humming out loud on the bus. That assumption is completely off-base. If you ask me to stop humming because it's bugging you, I will, because I don't need to hum. But if you ask me to stop breathing because it's bugging you, we need to have a serious discussion about priorities. My immediate and gut-level response to "if it's bothering the creator, you should stop writing it" was, "Oh, yeah? If it's so easy to just stop writing, Bub -- let's see you do it."
Whether he intended it to or not, Michael's statement imposes a class system on needs, with the pro writer's needs at the pinnacle and the fan fiction writer's needs at the bottom. I'm not even talking about the work here; I'm talking about whatever it is in people that drives them to write. And what I'm hearing in this statement, the assumption that props it up, is that Mary Jo ProWriter's tender feelings are deserving of protection, but my drive to express myself creatively isn't.
Every pro writer out there knows how it feels to be inspired by something, to need to write things down about it and share them. What some of them don't seem to get is that fan fiction writers feel exactly the same way. Our choices of subject matter, venue and audience are the only differences. And who gets to judge where the greater hurt lies? Is Mary Jo ProWriter's discomfort at having fan fiction written about her characters or in her universe greater than my discomfort at having to shut down my only creative outlet?
Obviously, I don't think so. I strongly suspect that the passive discomfort of knowing people are writing something you don't want them to write is easier to bear than the active discomfort of being creatively restricted. I think it's far worse to be told to stop writing than it is to know that people are writing fan fiction about your work.
But the point isn't whose hurt is greater; the point is, there's no way to make that determination objectively. Maybe I'm the one who stands to lose the most here -- I certainly think so -- and if that's the case, then the moral responsibility for "stopping" lies with the original creator. Original creators who try to stifle the creativity of fan writers should stop when fan writers ask them to.
3) Fan fiction's quality can be judged by the same standards as those used to judge pro fiction
Another comment that got to me: Leigh Butler said, "I'm personally sort of ambivalent toward fanfic. On the one hand, I've read some truly excellent fanfic (like the Buffy novel PNH was talking about, for instance), and good writing is good writing is good writing, ya know?"
You might think it would be the ambivalence that bugged me here, but it's the judgment, actually. It's that Leigh is holding up this fan-written Buffy novel as an example of excellent fanfic, when I'm pretty sure what she means is "this Buffy fan fiction novel is excellent by the standards I use to evaluate professional fiction".
Here's the thing: You can't judge fan fiction by the same standards you use to evaluate professional fiction. Not because it's somehow lesser and could never live up to those standards, but because the purpose, audience, format, venue and intent of fan fiction are different from the those of professional fiction. Expecting fan fiction to do the same job as pro fiction is like asking a slice of key lime pie to do the same job as a hammer.
Fan fiction as it exists (mostly online) today is inextricably tied to the fannish culture it's created for. While it may succeed outside of fandom, it isn't written for that purpose. It's written as part of an ongoing conversation between the fan writer and other members of fandom. It's not just a creative work; it's a cultural communication, as well. And it has to succeed as both to be considered "good" fan fiction. The former can be judged by outsiders; the latter never really can.
As a cultural communication, it relies on common values and understandings between community members that outsiders may not (probably won't) share. And when it branches off from those common values and understandings, it still does so in a way that's informed by them. Fandom is not just a group of people who like a TV show or a movie or a book. It's a vast, sprawling, on-going multi-media conversation between members of a specific subculture. Fan fiction comes from fan writers who are a part of that conversation on a regular basis, familiar with its disagreements and the places where there's consensus. Familiar also with what their readers thought about the source text, universe, and characters yesterday and last month and last year.
People who aren't immersed in a particular culture are simply not qualified to judge the success of its internal communications, and that's what fan fiction is. It's a response to the original work intended for the fannish community, based on that community's shared "language" and tropes, and built within (or springing from) that community's literary traditions. Whether or not a piece of fan fiction can be judged "excellent" or "poor" by the standards used to judge professional fiction is irrelevant; what matters is if it succeeds by the community's standards for fan fiction. You might be able to find a really solid slice of pie that could work great as a hammer, but the pie maker probably doesn't care. The pie maker wants to know, how does it work as pie?
All of that brings me to the fun part, which is also the concluding part:
4) Once we figure out a) if fan fiction is good or bad, we can b) decide what to do about it and then c) actually affect what fandom does and doesn't do.
This comment, by Stephen Frug, was one of my favorites. It's meant as a statement of what can happen legally, rather than what should happen ethically, but I found it to be charmingly naive; it actually made me smile:
Lucas can shut down all star wars fanfic, not just stuff that gets charged for.
...
Underlying almost every comment in the thread, whether in support of fanfic or against, was the unspoken agreement that if the pro writers could ever agree on whether fanfic was a good thing or a bad one, they could figure out what should be done about it and do it. Maybe bring it into the free market so it could be licensed and regulated, for instance. Maybe make people stop doing it, if that's what everybody decides is the right way to go.
Oh, you crazy kids.
You really, really can't. You can't do either of those things. You can't actually do anything at all. If you try to license and regulate it, there will be fans who don't want to bother with the corporate nonsense; they'll password protect their stories and journals and archives, and write them anyway. If you try to put a stop to fan fiction all together, we'll all do exactly the same thing. What would you do if someone told you to stop being a writer? You could try to shut down all fan fiction writing, but that would just get you a bunch of fan fiction writers you couldn't find -- and that's just assuming we'd all go underground quietly. I think the Organization for Transformative Works might have a few things to say on that topic.
The thing is, writing fan fiction isn't just something we do. We're not just humming on the bus. Fan fiction is part of how fans are who we are, with each other. It's one of the ways we relate to each other, one on one and as a community, and that's not something we're going to give up just because it might make a pro writer feel a bit oogy. I wish it didn't do that; I'd really rather every pro writer could take it as the compliment we intend it to be. But if they can't, they can have my sympathy -- not my compliance.
Just something for the relevant parties to think about, while they're trying to decide what's to become of us. In the immortal words of Joss Whedon - you can't stop the signal.