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McAnally's (The Community Pub) => Author Craft => Topic started by: cephis on March 17, 2008, 08:18:16 PM
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I am well aware that fanfic is frowned upon by mr. Butcher on this site, as it is a contractual oblegation. I started thinking of fanfic in general
1. do you think fanfic adds depth to a universe, or do you think that the differing styles detract from the expeirance?
2. why is there so much slash ?
Discuss.
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1. I think good quality writing helps enhance the universe/mythos of a certain series, etc. But bad writing, while it doesn't detract from it, can make me embarassed to be fond of the same thing as the author of said bad writing, and at times, I wonder if the person read/watched the same thing that I did.
2. I'm not going to answer this one, since I'm not the most fond of slash and I tend to get suspicious of the fankiddies that see subtext where I don't.
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My personal attitude is "Why write about someone else's characters and universe when it's so much more rewarding to create you own?" However, I think fanfic may be useful practice for emerging writers as well as a form of wish-fulfillment fantasy for those who can never get enough of their favorite characters.
As to whether it adds depth to a universe, yes, if it expands on it in ways that are creative and exciting. I've read a few pretty good Star Trek novels, for instance, and Alan Gordon's Fool's Guild series, which I love, is, technically, Shakespeare fanfic.
I've no idea about the slash.
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I think fanfic is morally acceptable only if
a) the author has given permission (some specific Good Omens fanfic writers)
b) the author is dead
c) it's a shared creative universe to begin with (DC comics for example)
In general, I think 99.9% of it is not a net win. I can count the counterexamples I have seen on the fingers of one hand with three fingers left over.
Why so much slash ? I think it's a combination of a) being able to write about relationships which one can idealise without having to worry about social power dynamics between women and men and b) some sort of female equivalent, most slash writers being female, of the HotBiBabe cliche in porn aimed at a male audience, translated into a key of romance.
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1. I think good quality writing helps enhance the universe/mythos of a certain series, etc. But bad writing, while it doesn't detract from it, can make me embarassed to be fond of the same thing as the author of said bad writing, and at times, I wonder if the person read/watched the same thing that I did.
The good writing is the important part and most of the time, they change the style entirely, no attempt to try to incorperate the setting into the story. it's like [Insert Name] walked through the do and saw [Insert Name] with [Insert Name].
2. I'm not going to answer this one, since I'm not the most fond of slash and I tend to get suspicious of the fankiddies that see subtext where I don't.
The inexplicable part is that most of that stuff is written by little girls, sorry, women. I could understand if it was greared towards gay men, but there isn't enough sex to satify that need<sigh> I don't know
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Well, I don't think people who write fanfiction would be able to do the Dresden Files justice. They wouldn't be able to catch that special something that Jim produces in the Dresden Files. This is due to in part the writing skills that some fanfiction writers have not being able to compete with Jim's skills.
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I didn't realize Mr. Butcher felt that way at all, but perhaps I'm wrong... still, if he does, why did he write a SpiderMan fan fic story?
I thought he has a contractual obligation to stay away from fan fic of his work, so as not to poison the well, so to speak. If a fan comes up with a plot he already intended to use and he sees it before writing it, it could cause problems with copyright infringement.
Me, I run a fan fic RPG site of Jim's world, though I've never written one of his characters. I don't feel I could do it justice. That said, writing consistently on that site has done wonders for my ability to build characters and plot and has really helped my writing.
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I didn't realize Mr. Butcher felt that way at all, but perhaps I'm wrong... still, if he does, why did he write a SpiderMan fan fic story?
I thought he has a contractual obligation to stay away from fan fic of his work, so as not to poison the well, so to speak. If a fan comes up with a plot he already intended to use and he sees it before writing it, it could cause problems with copyright infringement.
Me, I run a fan fic RPG site of Jim's world, though I've never written one of his characters. I don't feel I could do it justice. That said, writing consistently on that site has done wonders for my ability to build characters and plot and has really helped my writing.
Really? I thought that from the way Pricille comes down like Ms. Gard that Jim was going to kick the bejusus out of us (I'm not sure about the rest of you but, I'm pretty sure that Jim could whipe the floor with me.)
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Nah - in fact, if memory serves, it was from one of Priscellie's posts I read about the contractual issues he tries to avoid by staying away from the fan fic sites.
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Edited and corrected, thanks MSD!:)
Now, Proceed with the discussion please.
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According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, to "plagiarize" means
to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own
to use (another's production) without crediting the source
to commit literary theft
to present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source.
While fan fiction may not be totally thought of as plagiarism......the ideas behind the character's personalities, settings, etc.
I personally don't enjoy fan fiction because I want to know the original author's true vision of the story.
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It's fun to play in someone else's playground, which is why for my game I tend use skew fanfic'ish and send our characters to different worlds, just so they can experience new and varied flavors of, 'What the hell's going on now?!?' Still, that's just me having fun. I don't tend to read a lot of fanfic, because I like the author's original work. No one wants to hear my interpretation of Harry Dresden. That's why Jim Butcher deservedly gets the bucks, you know? He's the well, and my Parfums De Couer knockoff version can't compare. I don't care how good a fanfic writer is, it'll never be the original. Gaming in an author's setting is one thing. Writing about it is something completely different.
As for copyright, from what I understand it's not only fear of tainting the well, but also needing to keep the copyright strong. If I know my law right, then say Jim sees a really good Codex Alera fic and lets it go. Then, another author builds on that fic. Then, someone does an Alera/Dresden crossover. Years go by, and suddenly someone's publishing an anthology of all these stories. Well, he can't let them make money off of what is his intellectual property. His case in court will be weakened by the fact that he let it go for so long. Dresden and Alera are his babies. He's gotta protect 'em, even from the nice aunts who only wanna pinch their cheeks a little.
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If this is against the rules mods feel free to delete my post if I don't respond and I apologize for any trouble I might have caused.
A really well written fanfiction can add to the whole experience of reading a book, watching a movie or a tv show. They can offer insights into the character that you never thought of, explore "what if" situations, or even correct a "wrong" that you feel the original author(s) have committed***. On the flip side there are some truly horrible and ghastly stuff out there that can make you rip your eyes out and wonder if they had even read/watched the same stuff that you had before reaching for the brain bleach.
I don't blame some authors one bit for wanting to put a lid on their sandbox. A little disappointed sure, but I understand their feelings wholeheartedly. I can't claim to imagine what an author or an actor would feel like if they ever came across some of the schlop out there. They spend all this time and effort creating a story to tell to the masses and then some fans come around and mess around with your creations until they are mere shadows of your efforts.
Although as much as I hate to admit it, there are some fandoms where the fanfiction is even better than the original work, I won't implicate the author(s) (original and fan) involved because I don't want to stir up a whole can of worms.
At this time I would also like to point out that technically, fanfiction has been around as long as the first oral stories. One person would make up a story, a person who had overheard it would pass it on to others while adding a few embellishments of their own. It was expanded on throughout the ages until you reach the modern fandom of zines, internet and mailing lists. For more information you can go here: http://www.trickster.org/symposium/symp173.htm
Finally, I have no idea about the slash thing, I wish I did, but I don't.
***Not to say that anything that a creator imagines in their own universe is wrong, it is their story, their characters and their plots after all. It is sometimes though that you wish a creator hadn't done what they did in a book, movie or tv show.
Edit: After reading Noey's post I would also like to point out that I have no respect for people who profit off of unauthorized fanfiction. Like she said people should not make money off of what is their intellectual property. They put in all of the work creating these wonderful universes and they should receive all of the credit and profit for it.
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According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, to "plagiarize" means
to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own
to use (another's production) without crediting the source
to commit literary theft
to present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source.
While fan fiction may not be totally thought of as plagiarism......the ideas behind the character's personalities, settings, etc.
Heh - There's a really great blog on this subject, I can't remember where I saw it, but I think there's a link to it around here somewhere. Anyway, the subject of it is that EVERYTHING written currently is plagiarized from somewhere else. There's nothing original under the sun, my friend. Most, if not all, Marketable plots these days are plagiarised from Shakespeare, and he plagiarised from the writers that went before him. One can even get so technical as to say any written work that uses words found in any dictionary is, by definition, plagiarised. The very words themselves are someone else's product.
So, we have to look to copyright law for an actual ability to redress plagiarism. And in copyright law, only physical end result can be copyrighted. Concepts and ideas, cannot. Hence the stickiness for current successful authors who inspire fan fic. Who owns the copyright to a plotline? The one who wrote it down first, NOT the one who thought it up first.
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Concepts and ideas, cannot. Hence the stickiness for current successful authors who inspire fan fic. Who owns the copyright to a plotline? The one who wrote it down first, NOT the one who thought it up first.
*nods* It makes sense, and explains why the talkers (like MUDS, without the killin' stuff), that I've played on got cease and desist letters from White Wolf over the help files regarding rules. The help files for descriptions of powers and other background stuff was fine, but the actual mechanics of the game had to be taken down. I imagine it's because that's easier to defend in court. It's a fine line to walk.
Menolly, you're right that it can add to an experience, but I think the problem is that good fic is few and far between. It gets especially tough for an author to be told, you're doing it wrong. I can take your ideas and do it way better, even though you're the published author. I know that's not how you meant to come across, but I'm looking at it from the devil's advocate side, and I think it's very easy for a fanfic writer to come across that way. Honestly, if a fic writer is talented enough to beat the original author in the author's own imaginary playground, why isn't that person writing their own stuff? Use the talent for something that person can really be recognized for.
I have a theory on slash, and it mostly revolves around Lisa Simpson's Non-Threatening Male Weekly magazine.
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Devil Advocate away, that's what this forum is here for :D
Yes, the problem is is that the good stuff is few and far between, you have to wade through alot of mediocre and worse to find those few authors who respect the original universe while taking it in a slightly different or new direction.
And you're right, that is not how I meant to come off when I said that in a few fandoms there are fic authors who write better than the original(s). What I meant to say is that there are a few fic authors whose versions of the story I prefer over the original. Don't get me wrong if I read fanfiction, chances are I loved the original material enough to see if there is anything else out there, but sometimes (and I can't help it) I prefer another person's interpretation over the original.
In the end, I probably should have phrased my original statement along the lines of "I do not mean any disrespect to anybody and while the original author is talented and creative in their own way, I prefer fic writer b's interpretations of the the characters. This does not mean that one is the better writer than the other, it's just a matter of personal opinion."
I know this isn't going to soothe any author's opinions, I'd be insulted as hell too if I was an author and somebody came up to me and said "So and so does a better job of writing your characters and universe than you"
Also, while I can't speak for everyone out there but most, if not all fanfiction writers have a folder of original stuff stashed away that they work when they have the chance and are trying to get published outside the internet.
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why did he write a SpiderMan fan fic story?
He didn't. He was contracted to write an authorized novel in the Spider-Man universe... legally an entirely different animal from fanfic. Fortunately, he was coincidentally a big fan of SM. ;)
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Ah, cool, thanks for putting that in, Shecky. I didn't realize he was contracted to do it. That's pretty cool!
Still, though if he'd had issues with fan fic the way was originally implied (Since corrected, *nods*), he might have said no on principle.
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Another thing to look at are the shared universes, I think the first big one was Thieves World tm Where a number of authors set out to tell stories in a mutually constructed universe. Among the rules was, you could use someones Else's character but not use them up. Lately came Eric Flint's 1632 universe, where when the fanfic started he read them and then opened a franchise where first an anthology and then the Grantville Gazettes came about. Stories have to meet standards and must be true to "Canon" However He pays 6 cents a word and the works are published as Ebooks and eventually hit paper (GG 1-4 are in paper and we are up to 16 released and some stories have been bought and scheduled up to edition 23) the GGs have been selling well enough to support them self's. (Baen is offering them via Webscriptions book sales)
Of note is the fact that that the various stories have turned in to almost four million words of paid fiction. And the shared author model has kept the universe fresh and open. (14 published in paper and another 16 electronic volumes of the GG) with another three novels contracted.
Just a thought,
Kevin
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Ah, cool, thanks for putting that in, Shecky. I didn't realize he was contracted to do it. That's pretty cool!
Still, though if he'd had issues with fan fic the way was originally implied (Since corrected, *nods*), he might have said no on principle.
He sorta did. From what I've gathered, he seems to like fanfic in general, but I'm sure he's been badgered by his agent and his publisher to stay away from it to avoid any potential lawsuit material. The thing about fanfic is that it can only be all-or-nothing in order not to be a problem - either permit it all and run with it, or completely divorce yourself from it. Anything between, unfortunately, opens you up to a world of legal juggling; business CYA, distasteful though it may be, is sometimes the only defense against that kind of you-gotta-stay-on-top-of-it limbo.
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He didn't. He was contracted to write an authorized novel in the Spider-Man universe... legally an entirely different animal from fanfic. Fortunately, he was coincidentally a big fan of SM. ;)
So.... are authorized tie-in novels considered fanfic, or not? I was counting all the published Star Trek fiction, e.g., as fanfic when I wrote my original post, but if it isn't, then I retract what I said. I've never actually read any of the amateur stuff posted on the web.
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So.... are authorized tie-in novels considered fanfic, or not? I was counting all the published Star Trek fiction, e.g., as fanfic when I wrote my original post, but if it isn't, then I retract what I said. I've never actually read any of the amateur stuff posted on the web.
Amateur = fanfic; at least, that's the way I've always understood it. Otherwise, you get some of the actual Star Trek: TNG scripts classified as fanfic (people who've always loved the show and its universe getting to write something in it for the show) and suchlike, and that opens up a whole can of logic worms, making it difficult to distinguish between fanfic and official writing.
Basically, I don't think of it as fanfic if the writer works closely with the person/people in charge of the rights to that universe, both making sure that everything in the writing is "supposed" to be there. Really, it's just a special treat if the writer happens to have been a fan of that universe - and isn't that the best kind of work? :)
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My opinion is that I don't consider authorized tie-in novels fanfic for a couple of reasons. Tie-in novels are contracted and paid for by the publisher, which gives them legal legitimacy. Also, the kinds of worlds with tie-in novels tend not to belong to one person's exclusive creative domain. Comic books, television shows and game settings, even if thought up by one person originally, usually have a team of writers working on it as is so contracting out to more writers isn't as unusual. You're not going to find tie-in novels with Dresden, Alera, etc. because the novels ARE the product being sold. In all cases, though, I don't consider it fanfic if it's put out by the publishers of the original source material with their stamp of approval on it.
Fanfic is fun for the fan, but the problem lies in fans taking material that belongs to someone else, and making it their own instead. When does it cease to be the author's baby, and start to be anyone's? That's the tricky question, and to avoid it I absolutely understand authors having to protect their authority over their work. That's why any fanfic'ish stuff I do, is kept entirely private between me and if applicable who I'm gaming with if it's being used as a setting. Plus, I never use someone else's characters. Maybe it's the gamer in me, but I feel that a person's characters are their own unique sliver of their own personality and creativity. That's all theirs, and I can't imagine taking over someone else's voice.
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Personally, I was always a fan of The Destroyer novels; they are up to the high 130's. The books after a while were Ghost Written by some more or less talented writers. I would feel comfortable writing a fan fiction.
1. That the last 80 novels, with some exceptions, have been published fanfic.
2. The characters are static, they do not really change.
3. I may offer up any fanfic to other fans to point out any flaws.
I admit the other part is that with the fact that there isn't as much fanfic out there for it means that most of the people that author the stuff are pretty good at it and the original author of the series will read the boards and sometimes even comment favorably on their efforts. As an aside, I would love someone good to ultimatize that franchise; it's been 40 years for God's sake!
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Again, though, is it really fanfic if it's published? I think we need to define what exactly we're talking about when we say fanfic. I consider fanfic to be something written as a hobby by a fan of a particular fictional universe. It can incorporate the original characters, or it can use the fanfic author's own imaginary people and use the setting only. I think in either case, if it is sought out by the publisher and purchased, it ceases to be fanfic. This is obviously a fanfic writer's dream, but I think 99.99999% of the time it'll never happen. There's money to be made off intellectual property, and therefore it has to be protected, no matter how complimentary and awesome it is to see how much a person's work has touched the lives of others and inspired their own creativity. It all comes down to the fact that a writer has to eat, and this is how they do it.
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I think that using an authors universe but not their charecters is best for a jumping off point for a writer trying to find their own voice. As long as the original author's characters are not in it I think of it as constructive non-publishable work of fiction. If someone is writing a spin-off of anothers writers established work for pay it is simmiler to fan fic that they are trying to fit what they contribute into an exsiting framework and is not a one-off of what is the universe
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Anyway, the subject of it is that EVERYTHING written currently is plagiarized from somewhere else. There's nothing original under the sun, my friend.
I would say that this is provably false by looking at, say, Greg Egan, Ted Chiang, or Peter Watts, who are telling shapes of stories that are uniquely new built around ideas that are uniquely new. [ Though Watts less of the time than the other two. ] Unless you want to use a definition such as "This story has people in it" as plagiarising the idea of "people", which strikes me as meaningless.
Who owns the copyright to a plotline? The one who wrote it down first, NOT the one who thought it up first.
There is no copyright to a plotline, just to a specific instance of that plotline.
There are arguments, for example, that all stories have one of three fundamental plots. I think that's rubbish, myself, because even if it were true, that is defining your fundamental plots so broadly that they become essentially meaningless and therefore useless as concepts.
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Personally, I was always a fan of The Destroyer novels; they are up to the high 130's. The books after a while were Ghost Written by some more or less talented writers. I would feel comfortable writing a fan fiction.
1. That the last 80 novels, with some exceptions, have been published fanfic.
2. The characters are static, they do not really change.
The particular genius of the better Destroyer novels is, that, in the way that really good SF builds up a world by implications of little clues and how they fit together rather than by stopping to lecture you, some of the contracted later Destroyer novels are using that technique to build characterisation in.
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There is no copyright to
There is no copyright to a plotline, just to a specific instance of that plotline.
Right, copyright belongs to specific ideas. A boy has an adventure before learning he's a prince. That's not something you can hold up in copyright court. It's pretty much a classic plot at this point in literature. It's the more specific you get. If I wrote a story like that, and named the boy Tavi, and had everyone controlling "elementals" as part of their magic, then it'd be on the squiffy side of copyright because I took a name, and an extremely similar story component to Jim's unique idea. In the case of fanfic, no one's even pretending that it's their original recipe. It's the same thing behind the lawsuit a long time ago where White Wolf Games sued the makers of the Underworld movie because of similarities to their game. One of the strongest arguments was the use of the specific term "abomination", a game term, used in the same way in the movie as it is in the game. They very well could have lost the case, but, they also have it on record that they attempted to protect their copyright so it's just as strong for next time.
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Unless you want to use a definition such as "This story has people in it" as plagiarising the idea of "people", which strikes me as meaningless.
Which I think was the point... the concept of plagiarism can be stretched to an absolute absurd degree.
There is no copyright to a plotline, just to a specific instance of that plotline.
Perhaps I used the word 'plotline' inappropriately, I meant to refer to the actual created story, which in fact may take many different books to play out.
And again, Noey, Copyright doesn't belong to ideas at all. Only to physical results of those ideas. What is actually written down.
Almost every time a big block buster film comes out, we're likely to see a couple of mock-offs hit the theaters soon after... or in some cases, just before, depending on how long it takes the big studios to get through production. Why? Because you can't sue for copyright infringement and WIN if someone takes your ideas, changes enough elements to make it reasonably dissimilar, and gets to the finish line ahead of you. It's a screenwriters worst nightmare.
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And again, Noey, Copyright doesn't belong to ideas at all. Only to physical results of those ideas. What is actually written down.
Yep, and I was trying to agree with you but I think I've been at work too long, and my last brain cell went on an extended lunch break about an hour ago. I really hope it comes back, because we carpooled.
Anyway, I was trying to add to what you were saying with my agreement, and in addition that copyright is further difficult because it needs to be specific to a published work. It can't just be a similar plot. There has to be a lot of elements in common, and definitely you need to prove you got there first to protect your work. If you can't, well, you're just up a fragrant river.
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I think I've been at work too long, and my last brain cell went on an extended lunch break about an hour ago. I really hope it comes back, because we carpooled.
Heh- This is a great line for a book... LOL
Point understood, now.
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1) Fanfiction, i think to a certain degree can be healthy for aspiring writers. I view fanfiction as a kind of writing exercise. There are plenty of creative writing prompts that will provide a little back story and characters that you are expected to extrapolate from. Fanfiction is a similar concept. You can never appreciate, as a writer, how difficult it is to command the sheer amount of creativity it takes to create a successful novel. Fanfiction is a way to cushion an aspiring writer into the world of authoring on a smaller scape. You "borrow" (this is a euphemism, dear children) someone else's brilliance and merely work in your own. In a sense, fanfiction has challenges that normal fiction doesn't, because if you are " borrowing" such beloved characters and stories then it is your responsibility to live up to the great craftsmanship of the works you've taken a free ride from.
Of course, many abuse these privileges. There should be like, rules to posting fanficiton.
1) No, you and your friends may not pose as the 10th, 11th, and 12th walkers of the fellowship.
2) No, you may not indulge in written fantasies of falling in love with any of the fellowship members.
3) Get your f*ckin' homophones right. Its/it's, their/there/they're, too/to ect.
4) Get your spelling right. I don't care if english isn't your first language or if you're just a retard. When you write crap like "He was sihlent" for silent, somewhere someone dies.
5) No, you may not marry Harry Potter
6) And no, you may not have sex with Harry Potter either.
*shudders* Horrible, horrible people. But, also, you've got to accept that many of these would-be writers are quite young, probably high school level or even jr. high level in some cases. They don't know how to write more than just the books they read or a lot of the time their attempts at writing are diluted by their illusions of good writing from television and movie scripting. Someday in college or later on, they very well may learn to write better and understand more about character achetypes and story development rather than just resulting to shoddy plagiarism. We shouldn't begrudge fanfic people of their writing development...even if it does make us want to impale someone.
2) Slash, i dunno if you mean male/male kind of slash or just the whole "I'M GONNA PAIR ALL THE CHARACTERS IN THE BOOKS IN RANDOM AND DISGUSTING PAIRINGS". I'll try and address both.
Gay relationship slash: Many fanfic writers are females*. Many women have the "wishing for a gay friend" thing. The psychology of this phenomenon in brief is that females like the idea that in a gay relationship, one of the males have to fulfill a submissive role much the same way all females face in a relationship. I'm not just talking sexually here. Women like the idea that a male would have to go through the same problems they do in a relationship. Women crave for a man to have some sort of vulnerability, which is why women go for that whole "mysterious stranger" stereotype because a man with secrets makes him vulnerable.
But anyways, the reason why people like making unlikely pairings or random pairings or going off already existing pairings is because the fanfic author or the audience that person is addressing are all craving for a wider range of emotions that the book or movie or whatever provides. In other words, they want love angst. They crave for that whole hurt/comfort blah blah blah romance kind of stuff with character they love, but perhaps cannot wholly be satisfied with because of the kind of story they're in.
Take for example, Lord of the Rings, a story now riddled by fanfiction (although some of it is quite good). In LOTR, romance was a kind of subplot. The Aragorn and Arwen thing was mainly explained in the appendix and vaguely in the story. Oh and for all those Aragorn/Legolas shippers, many were curious as to where the two had met and just how intimate of a friendship they had. Aragorn/Boromir people too were like, "DID ARAGORN KNOW HIM WHILE HE WAS STATIONED IN GOnDOR?!!!! squeee". People are just trying to fill in that hole.
*On male to female ratio on fanfic writers. I know a lot of guys, instead of fanfiction just write really bad "creative" fiction that mind as well be fanfiction. They seem to think that by changing the names of the characters and planets, they have something new and innovative instead of another rewrite of Star Wars.
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So.... are authorized tie-in novels considered fanfic, or not? I was counting all the published Star Trek fiction, e.g., as fanfic when I wrote my original post, but if it isn't, then I retract what I said. I've never actually read any of the amateur stuff posted on the web.
No, in the case of Spiderman, or Star Wars, or Star Trek novels, the copyright owners contract with a professional writer like Jim to write a book in the series, and usually provide the plot outline and character descriptions, so everything has continuity with the existing work. The copyright owners retain the copyright on the finished novel, not the writer who produced it. I doubt if Jim gets any royalties from sales of the Spiderman book, either; writers usually get just a one time fee for the job. But you'd have to ask him about that.
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I agree with most of what THETA said above. Let's face it, 90% of teen written fan fiction just sucks, half of the remainder just blows, and most of what's left sucks and blows at the same time, e.g., gay slash featuring Harry Potter + Dumbledore vs Draco Malfoy + Snape vs Hermione + Ginny. The odds are that, somewhere, in the vast pile of dreck there must be at least one story that's well structured, insightful of the characters, grammatically correct, and spelled right, but I haven't seen anything that fits the description on fanfic.net.
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You forgot Harry Potter + Draco Malfoy
And there is a very good reason why ff.net is called 'The Pit of Voles'
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I suspect that the slash pile on fanfic.net would be a fertile hunting ground for pedophiles looking for hormonal teenagers searching for positive feedback on their writing talents.
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Now there's a thought to give me nightmares! *shudders*
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*gags*
Eww. Anyways, i apologize for my age group Yeratel. Most of their shit does indeed blow. God, you would think that if they're already using someone else's characters, universe, and basic storyline they could at least bust out something half descent. I blame the school system's lack in bolstering creative writing in english classes. For god's sake, we're expected to explicate poems and analyze the existential ideas portrayed in works by Camus for months on end, but they can't just hand us a piece a paper and say write a short story for one bloody week? And again, i blame TV. Television and movies are not a prime example of good writing. Literature is. GAH, anger.
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It's not their fault for being teenagers, and at least they enjoy reading, and they WANT to write, they just don't know how. I don't know if creativity is something that can actually be taught, but it would be great if they learned more about parts of speech, sentence structure, and spelling.
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No, creativity can't be taught, but it can be encouraged. I think any advanced placement (AP, IB, college prep, ect) classes are pretty good about working with sentence structure and analytical skills as well as sentence coherency and paragraph cohesion. Normal classes on the other hand scares me. Every other week or so my english teacher has us revise the papers from his normal classes and it is just aweful. Okay, regular 9th graders who use "I was happy, lol." i could almost stand, but with some of those 12th grade papers i was glad to find someone who could have a complete sentence, much less one that actually had an understandable thesis. Bleck.
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Of course, many abuse these privileges. There should be like, rules to posting fanficiton.
1) No, you and your friends may not pose as the 10th, 11th, and 12th walkers of the fellowship.
2) No, you may not indulge in written fantasies of falling in love with any of the fellowship members.
3) Get your f*ckin' homophones right. Its/it's, their/there/they're, too/to ect.
4) Get your spelling right. I don't care if english isn't your first language or if you're just a retard. When you write crap like "He was sihlent" for silent, somewhere someone dies.
5) No, you may not marry Harry Potter
6) And no, you may not have sex with Harry Potter either.
I'm going to add a few ("Matrix" series fandom):
7) No, you cannot fall in love with Neo; if you try, Trinity will kill you.
8 ) No, you are not "TEH REEL WUN!111111", there is only *one* One per iteration. You are not it.
8a) Matrix Online Corrollary: Don't try and claim your character is the next One if you consistently throw the canon out the window because you think it's "too restricting".
9) No, you cannot have a threesome with the Twins; they would as soon kill you as look at you.
10) What subtext between Smith and Neo? where?
11) No, the Merovingian is not going to try to seduce you if you're underage. He survived three versions of the Matrix and six cycles of the One by *NOT* trawling high school enrollment records looking for Mary Sues.
12) There are other Exiles besides vampires and werewolves. Most of them are common garden humanoids.
13) NO! Emphatically *NO*: Agent Smith, or any other Agent is *NOT* going to fall in love with you, either.
14) There is only one female Agent, and that is Agent Pace. Last I knew, she had a thing for Ghost, and also, she's not really that cuddly, either.
I'd like to do a list of rules for imaginary bad TDF fanfiction, but someone would pull a Ms. Gard on me and since I'm already having a bad day, I don't want to make it worse for myself.
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Sorry for sounding ignorant, but what is slash?
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Theta, it doesn't surprise me at all about writing skills in regular English classes.. try having a class of 8th graders just write me a simple observation and I end up with at least half of the class not forming complete thoughts... and I am not going anywhere near handwriting problems..
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Sorry for sounding ignorant, but what is slash?
Be thankful for your naivety. However, i would love to awake you from your Matrix (thank you Morraeon for the reference), so here. Slash is either A, random pairings between characters that are not canon (already established in the story's universe) and then involving them in some kind of romantic liason (usually in a rather provocative fashion). For example if i were to take the Harry Potter series and be like, "OMFG Hermoine/Draco forever!!!!1111". Slash's second skin is B, gay relationships between characters, so keeping with the Harry Potter theme here, slash B would be along the lines of Harry/Draco, Remus/Sirius, ect. Revel or cringe in your newfound knowledge.
Theta, it doesn't surprise me at all about writing skills in regular English classes.. try having a class of 8th graders just write me a simple observation and I end up with at least half of the class not forming complete thoughts... and I am not going anywhere near handwriting problems..
Lol, thankfully when i was an eigth grader all three years ago, i was in a GATE english class, so by that time we were writing essays on To Kill a Mockingbird and The Giver (how good they were, i have no idea). Well, Matthew D, here's to hoping that in the next few years laptops will replace notebooks and all you'll ever have to see is typed nonsense.
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My personal attitude is "Why write about someone else's characters and universe when it's so much more rewarding to create you own?"
Erm...haven't read the whole thread, so I don't know if anyone else has addressed it, but simply put: because the authors of said fanfic don't find it more rewarding to come up with original material. You might think it is, but what is considered fun and rewarding varies greatly from individual to individual. Personally, I like to come up with original characters in a pre-existing world; then again, my "fanfic" writing has always been a component of my RPG groups, so I'm a little skewed.
But yeah. That's what I like to do. Do I plan on coming up with my own worlds and playgrounds some time down the road and writing about them? Yup, sure do, but not everyone is an aspiring author. Some folks just like writing fanfic. So, as long as these people are doing something they find fun and enjoyable, and are of no harm to anyone's intellectual property, what's the big deal? Let 'em write and share, and you can just sit back and laugh and/or shudder at the twisted minds that think it would be neat if Kirk and Spock got together.
Oh, and a note about Star Trek novels...an excellent example of how fanfic can be legal and profitable. Some RPGs I've played in have even accepted some of them as canon -- New Frontier, to be precise, but I'd also make the case for actor authored books such as The 34th Rule and A Stitch In Time. Then there's the whole Extended Universe novels in the Star Wars franchise, and, well, just about any RPG that's ever been created for any other franchise, including The Dresden Files. The only difference between a bunch of people playing with character sheets and dice and fanfic writers is that the RPG people generally don't transcribe what happens in play sessions into story format :P
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Okay, now I have read the whole thread, and I think I see where you guys are coming from. The problem is, you're not necessarily seeing where the fanfic writers are coming from.
I do not hang out in fanfic circles, just Star Trek RPG circles, but I think it is safe to say that the vast majority of fanfic writers don't intend to make any sort of profit off their writings. The ones who do (and I have seen them, at conventions, with really scary pictures of Kirk and Spock doing questionable things with their shirts off) deserve to have the book thrown at them, because they are profiting off of something to which they do not own the copyright.
But for all the folks out there who write about what Harry Potter did between Potions and Herbology and then say, "Hey guys in this fanfic community, look at what I just wrote!" -- they aren't breaking any laws, aren't at risk of causing J.K. Rowling any trouble, and are most likely such bad writers to begin with that no one outside of their particular community will ever give a damn. But hey, they're having fun and expressing their fandom in their own way, and maybe practicing writing regularly like that will make them better writers who can actually string a coherent sentence together. Or not. Who cares?
Just because it exists doesn't mean you have to read it, or appreciate it. But I would encourage people to accept that it does exists and that people do derive a form of enjoyment from it, and as long as they aren't violating any laws by trying to profit from it, then leave them be.
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Just because it exists doesn't mean you have to read it, or appreciate it. But I would encourage people to accept that it does exists and that people do derive a form of enjoyment from it, and as long as they aren't violating any laws by trying to profit from it, then leave them be.
I see what you're saying, and I agree with you to a point. I do the same RPG stuff you do, so believe me I get where you're coming from there. I think our opinions differ a bit in that I think there is some difference between RPG fic, which is based on a game that actively encourages people to make up their own stories in the game setting, and fanfic that's based on something that doesn't have a RPG. For example, a Dresden Files RPG group might publish their stories in a LiveJournal community for fun and amusement, and I don't think that Evil Hat would have a problem with that as long as game mechanics aren't published. That's what the game system is there for, after all. A series of Codex Alera stories, however, would be different because it's not meant to be used the same way a game system is meant to be used.
So, with that said, I do admit I play around in the sandboxes of others, RPG and otherwise, because it is very much fun. No argument there at all. The only thing is, I don't publish it because I don't want to cause problems for the authors. I have two major reasons. Of course if it's an RPG, the rules are bendable:
I want to support my fandom. I don't read the work of other people or publish my own, because there's already works out there by the original author. That's the main focus, and that's how it should be.
Allowing fanfic makes it okay for others to make this particular work their own. If the author leaves it alone, then when he does need to defend his copyright in court the fact that he didn't zealously protect the intellectual copyright here makes it more difficult to justify to a judge the defense of intellectual copyright there. It's already hard enough to defend copyright without leaving any room for weakness in the argument.
I'm not calling fanfic writers bad people, and I'm not saying they can't be as creative or insightful as any other writer when the talent is there. I just think that we need to keep a sense of perspective and remember, it's not ours. We can talk about it, obsess over it, create multiple threads, dream up alternate stories, and discuss the villain's hair color at length but at the end of the day it belongs to the original person who thought of it, put in the massive hours of work to bring it to the public, and deserves the recognition.
In other news, run-on sentences are my bestest of friends. ;D
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If I remember correctly, Japan is as fanfic-friendly as you can get. There's a whole slew of manga artists/authors there who got started in the craft by writing fan-manga (called doujinshi, I think) based off other people's work. I know of a few people who avoid the whole question of copyright infringement by writing fanfic based only on stuff created in Japan.
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Sorry for sounding ignorant, but what is slash?
It's homosexual porn in fan fiction. It's called that because fans use a forward slash symbol "/" to denote the relationship, like Kirk/Spock, instead of an ampersand symbol denoting conventional relationships, like Aragorn & Arwen.
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Okay,thanks Yeratel for that edit clarification. I will now be worrying about my over useage of forward slash when compiling names...... brain bleach please....
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How I got started on this train of thought that kicked off this thread was a thought. What if Bob gave Molly training? Knowing what we know about Bob is goes in to speculation, if we stay true to the universe as we know it, Harry would feel it was "hammer time" after any interlude that I would of descibed. I would not want Bob's skull broken open like a pinata, even in my imagination. Any aside like that would change the flow of the story. if there were some fanfic about what Harry Potter wedding was like, thats o.k. That story is as done as it is ever to get and I like to muse about what could of happened. It's sort of like those books by Turtledove, one twist. I think those are ok as long as you note all the differnces that the twist makes.
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I'm not calling fanfic writers bad people, and I'm not saying they can't be as creative or insightful as any other writer when the talent is there. I just think that we need to keep a sense of perspective and remember, it's not ours. We can talk about it, obsess over it, create multiple threads, dream up alternate stories, and discuss the villain's hair color at length but at the end of the day it belongs to the original person who thought of it, put in the massive hours of work to bring it to the public, and deserves the recognition.
Ah, I think this here is the crux of our differing opinions. I honestly do not think that fanfic writers intend to do anything that compromises the original content. In fact, I believe that most fanfic writers think that they are contributing to, or supplementing, the existing content, and all praise for the original creator, be it Jim Butcher, Gene Roddenberry, J.K. Rowling, or whoever. Those that do somehow begin to think that they are surpassing or supplanting the original work, other than being guilty of extreme hubris and delusions of grandeur, are still just writing into the ether, with little to no chance of being taken seriously or somehow diluting the original work -- which, I would like to point out, is an issue with trademark law, not copyright law*. As long as the author takes the proper precautions, like Jim has done, then I don't think there is any legal issue with the proliferation of not-for-profit fanfiction.
Now, let me throw a monkey wrench into this and posit that the fanfic communities themselves are on significantly shakier legal ground, especially if their websites and/or magazines generate any ad revenue. Or do these communities fall under the Zeran v. AOL exception, where the provider is not directly responsible for the content that its members post?
P.S. Do not fear long sentences! As long as they are grammatically coherent, they are not run on sentences.
*Okay, I did some more digging on Fair Use and copyright infringement, and there is a dilution-like test in the Fair Use exception. However, this works in favor of fanfic authors, because it must be shown that the work in question substantially detracts from the author's ability to sell his or her work, and it can reasonably be argued that fanfic works to expand the author's fanbase, like free advertising. This gets thrown out the window if the work in question is a source of revenue for the fanfic writer, because whatever revenue the fanfic generates detracts from the author's potential take of the fanbase's money.
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*Okay, I did some more digging on Fair Use and copyright infringement, and there is a dilution-like test in the Fair Use exception. However, this works in favor of fanfic authors, because it must be shown that the work in question substantially detracts from the author's ability to sell his or her work, and it can reasonably be argued that fanfic works to expand the author's fanbase, like free advertising. This gets thrown out the window if the work in question is a source of revenue for the fanfic writer, because whatever revenue the fanfic generates detracts from the author's potential take of the fanbase's money.
Mmm. Case in point the crazy woman who wrote a novel-length Star Wars fic, then had it printed in book form and was selling it on Amazon.com until George Lucas's lawyers went after her with a cease and desist order.
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Mmm. Case in point the crazy woman who wrote a novel-length Star Wars fic, then had it printed in book form and was selling it on Amazon.com until George Lucas's lawyers went after her with a cease and desist order.
Precisely. That's just plain flippin' stupid. But, like I said. Hubris and delusions of grandeur. ::)
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It's homosexual porn in fan fiction. It's called that because fans use a forward slash symbol "/" to denote the relationship, like Kirk/Spock, instead of an ampersand symbol denoting conventional relationships, like Aragorn & Arwen.
I had no idea, thanks for the clarification.
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I think that using an authors universe but not their charecters is best for a jumping off point for a writer trying to find their own voice. As long as the original author's characters are not in it I think of it as constructive non-publishable work of fiction. If someone is writing a spin-off of anothers writers established work for pay it is simmiler to fan fic that they are trying to fit what they contribute into an exsiting framework and is not a one-off of what is the universe
The Battletech Universe is a Perfect example of a universe which don't need to use any established characters to write stories in. Based on a 20+ year old game, Battletech is space opera with multiple interstellar states, a solid and extensive universe background in place, and more conflict, both large and small that can be drawn on without effecting the major events going on around them. There are no "Evil" factions: all have some level of grey in them, each have heros and villians, strenghts and weaknesses. Almost any story can be told here, be it one of combat, or one of intreague, even to romance, if one wants to go thast route. I have written a bunch of stories set in this universe, and it's never old, becase I have a framework to work in, not a strightjacket.
Craig
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One thing I have to say in favor of fanfic, despite how bad it usually is, is that its a good way of learning to write better. It can be very difficult to come up with your own original ideas at times, and even if you do, you may not have the skills to execute said ideas. By starting with fanfic, you can find your own voice and seperate it from the original work, and then move on to your own works.
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One thing I have to say in favor of fanfic, despite how bad it usually is, is that its a good way of learning to write better. It can be very difficult to come up with your own original ideas at times, and even if you do, you may not have the skills to execute said ideas. By starting with fanfic, you can find your own voice and seperate it from the original work, and then move on to your own works.
If you ever want to pass it around, or actually see it in print anywhere, though, it would be best to pick either historical characters and situations (e.g. Harry Turtledove's Guns of the South), or literary characters that have passed into the Public Domain, like Dracula (e.g. P.N. Elrod's Quincy Morris, Vampire). There's an almost infinite number of characters and situations a writer can choose from, without stepping on another writer's copyright.
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I think in either case, if it is sought out by the publisher and purchased, it ceases to be fanfic. This is obviously a fanfic writer's dream...
Most of the fanfic authors I know would be horrified if they were sought out by a publisher, even the ones who aspire to publish their own original fiction one day. Personally, I like the unofficialness of fanfiction. I'll happily read about a character dying or suddenly changing sex or orientation or secretly being evil or any number of other things I would absolutely hate to have happen in the movie/book/tv show/whatever itself. Lots of people do use fanfiction as a writing exercise and a stepping stone to publication, but I think it's a mistake to evaluate it purely on that basis. No one thinks it's weird to do karaoke with friends, even if most of you are horrible singers. Why should all writing have any relationship at all to the publishing industry? (Just for that, I know I'll get about 500 responses proclaiming the utter weirdness of karaoke.)
--Franzi
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1. do you think fanfic adds depth to a universe, or do you think that the differing styles detract from the expeirance?
2. why is there so much slash ?
Discuss.
1. I think that fanfic is irrelevant to the original work. It can add or detract from my experience of a particular fandom, but it doesn't have much to do with my enjoyment of the original.
2. How much is "so much"? Any? Slash writers can't even begin to agree why people like slash, forget getting a bunch of other people to agree. For what it's worth, I actually think slash is much less common than other sorts of fanfic (like stories about straight couples who were actually couples in the original or stories where the author shacks up with her favorite character). People just notice it more because they find it strange.
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(Just for that, I know I'll get about 500 responses proclaiming the utter weirdness of karaoke.)
--Franzi
Good point, I agree. We should be equally prejudiced on all fronts of plagiarisms! ;D
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Fanfic is a good thing. Well, not when it's badfic, but you know what I mean.
I think it comes about when someone is so taken with a universe and/or a set of characters that
they're inspired to answer the what ifs and explore different aspects that cannot or will not be explored in the original source material. Inspiring creativity is a good thing. Even the worst piece of grammatically painful, self-insertion riddled, cliched fic can still have flashes of genuine creativity and brilliance. Those flashes may be few and far between, but most fics have some tiny bit of something that can be seen as worthwhile. I do admire folks for actually putting pen to paper (finger to keyboard???) and actually writing something, an act which so many of us lack the fortitude to do.
I don't agree with the slash-bashing, honestly. While I can't personally see how Elmo/Grover or Jesus/Judas could be plausible, I'll congratulate you on your creativity and defend your right to experiment artistically. Considering how many original sources (books, movies, etc.) are male-centric, it makes sense that fans would explore the characters in different ways and combinations, regardless of gender. Besides, in many fandoms, the slashers are older and more mature, thus the slash fic is generally better written. Bandslash is dominated by young girls, but the grownups are writing most of the other slash out there. I know PhDs, professors, lawyers, scientists - lots of really smart, well educated, grown women - who write slash. It's good writing, too. Some of it is similar quality or better than the source. The original source sill wins, hands down, because that person created the universe and the characters, but let's not fool ourselves into thinking that just because someone is published that their work can't stink. Look at the Anita Blake series, for example. It's devolved into polygamous porn, basically, so a good writer might be able to spin a plot that some readers would find more intriguing and compelling than the actual books. Ditto for JK Rowling, who is the most amazing world builder but who is not the most proficient or polished writer.
I think part of the disconnect is in thinking that slash=smut. On the surface, that seems true. There's a lot of porn out there, and slashers are not shy about creating and consuming it. However, in a less heteronormative culture, you'd expect a larger comfort zone with sex and sexuality. Believe it or not, there's a lot of slash out there that involves no sex at all. It's about the relationships, the way the characters interact.
I've never been moved to write any Dresden fanfic, and I doubt I ever will. There aren't any holes that need to be filled, y'know? We get such cool backstories, like with Thomas or Billy & Georgia's wedding. The books themselves don't wrap everything up in a little bow, but we don't have huge, agonizing cliffhangers unresolved either. Plus, knowing that the next book is only a year away makes the suspense tolerable. I don't feel the need to make it up for myself, because it will be along soon enough.
Besides, even though I support slash, I just cannot fathom Harry/Bob.
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Necroposting just a little to add this article, which is reason # 234345-B why authors need to watch the fandoms and fanfic.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/books/04/21/harry.potter.lawsuit.ap/index.html
Rowling openly admitted she was cool with the site, but of course he had to try and publish it, making a profit off of her work. I don't see any malice in his intentions, but this is the kind of line crossing that ruins it for everyone.
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My first on-topic post!
Tentatively dabbing my toe into the calm waters of Dresdenville to respond to what is obviously a fairly contentious thread. As an oft-times fanfic writer myself, I fear that I'm opening myself to being eviscerated alive, but you know.
Nothing like confrontation.
Except more confrontation.
Cassandra, you caught it for me perfectly when you said that fanfic should be about capturing an 'off screen' scene, or using incidental characters who are only mentioned in passing. The majority of the one-off stories I've written have generally been small scenes, or lesser characters from a variety of fandoms. The Dresden Files, in my opinion, doesn't lend itself largely to fanfic because the story plans are so well constructed. Harry particularly wouldn't be good fodder for fanfic material (in my opinion) because he's too well rounded. As Cassandra points out, characters like Billy and Georgia do lend themselves to fanfic.
I'm a great believer that fanfic should be about character studies, a glimpse into the life of a character as you personally imagine them. Not re-writing what you know about someone just to suit your purpose.
(Don't get me started on how much I dislike slash-fic-for-the-sake-of-slash-fic, for example).
I've read some very good fics over the years and I've also read some absolute rubbish. But a lot of people take a lot of pleasure in enjoying their fandoms. Where the author is not overly bothered about such activity (see, JK Rowling, just don't try to publish anything), then as with everything else, if you're not enjoying something...stop reading it.
Just to skew the conversation in a slightly different direction: what is the overall opinion of 'interactive story' type forum-based fandom 'games'? Again, I've seen some that are dire beyond belief and others that are good, interactive fun. I myself write regularly on an original fantasy-based forum and get great enjoyment out of it.
~P~
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Necroposting just a little to add this article, which is reason # 234345-B why authors need to watch the fandoms and fanfic.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/books/04/21/harry.potter.lawsuit.ap/index.html
Rowling openly admitted she was cool with the site, but of course he had to try and publish it, making a profit off of her work. I don't see any malice in his intentions, but this is the kind of line crossing that ruins it for everyone.
2008-04-24 Columns
Uncle Orson Reviews Everything
J.K. Rowling, Lexicon and Oz
by Orson Scott Card
April 24, 2008
Can you believe that J.K. Rowling is suing a small publisher because she claims their 10,000-copy edition of The Harry Potter Lexicon, a book about Rowling's hugely successful novel series, is just a "rearrangement" of her own material.
Rowling "feels like her words were stolen," said lawyer Dan Shallman.
Well, heck, I feel like the plot of my novel Ender's Game was stolen by J.K. Rowling.
A young kid growing up in an oppressive family situation suddenly learns that he is one of a special class of children with special abilities, who are to be educated in a remote training facility where student life is dominated by an intense game played by teams flying in midair, at which this kid turns out to be exceptionally talented and a natural leader. He trains other kids in unauthorized extra sessions, which enrages his enemies, who attack him with the intention of killing him; but he is protected by his loyal, brilliant friends and gains strength from the love of some of his family members. He is given special guidance by an older man of legendary accomplishments who previously kept the enemy at bay. He goes on to become the crucial figure in a struggle against an unseen enemy who threatens the whole world.
This paragraph lists only the most prominent similarities between Ender's Game and the Harry Potter series. My book was published in England many years before Rowling began writing about Harry Potter. Rowling was known to be reading widely in speculative fiction during the era after the publication of my book.
I can get on the stand and cry, too, Ms. Rowling, and talk about feeling "personally violated."
The difference between us is that I actually make enough money from Ender's Game to be content, without having to try to punish other people whose creativity might have been inspired by something I wrote.
Mine is not the only work that one can charge Rowling "borrowed" from. Check out this piece from a fan site, pointing out links between Harry Potter and other previous works: http://www.geocities.com/versetrue/rowling.htm. And don't forget the lawsuit by Nancy K. Stouffer, the author of a book entitled The Legend of Rah and the Muggles, whose hero was named "Larry Potter."
At that time, Rowling's lawyers called Stouffer's claim "frivolous."
It's true that we writers borrow words from each other – but we're supposed to admit it and not pretend we're original when we're not. I took the word ansible from Ursula K. LeGuin, and have always said so. Rowling, however, denies everything.
If Steven Vander Ark, the author of Lexicon, had written fiction that he claimed was original, when it was actually a rearrangement of ideas taken from the Harry Potter books, then she'd have a case.
But Lexicon is intended only as a reference book for people who have already paid for their copies of Rowling's books. Even though the book is not scholarly, it certainly falls within the realm of scholarly comment.
Rowling's hypocrisy is so thick I can hardly breathe: Prior to the publication of each novel, there were books about them that were no more intrusive than Lexicon. I contributed to one of them, and there was no complaint about it from Rowling or her publishers because they knew perfectly well that these fan/scholar ancillary publications were great publicity and actually boosted sales.
But now the Harry Potter series is over, and Rowling claims that her "creative work" is being "decimated."
Of course, she doesn't claim that it's the Lexicon that is harming her "creative work" (who's she borrowing from this time?); it's the lawsuit itself! And since she chose to bring the suit, whose fault is it? If she had left Vander Ark alone to publish his little book and make his little bit of money, she wouldn't be distracted from her next novel.
But no, Rowling claims Vander Ark's book "constitutes wholesale theft of 17 years of my hard work."
Seventeen years? What a crock. Apparently she includes in that total the timeframe in which she was reading – and borrowing from – the work of other writers.
On the stand, though, Rowling's chief complaint seems to be that she would do a better job of annotating and encyclopedizing her own series.
So what?
Nothing prevents her from doing exactly that – annotating and explaining her own novels. Do you think that if there were a Harry Potter Annotated by the Author, Vander Ark's book would interfere with her sales in any way?
This frivolous lawsuit puts at serious risk the entire tradition of commentary on fiction. Any student writing a paper about the Harry Potter books, any scholarly treatise about it, will certainly do everything she's complaining about.
Once you publish fiction, Ms. Rowling, anybody is free to write about it, to comment on it, and to quote liberally from it, as long as the source is cited.
Here's the irony: Vander Ark had the material for this book on his website for years, and Rowling is quoted as saying that when she needed to look up some 'fact" from her earlier books, she would sometimes "sneak into an Internet cafe while out writing and check a fact rather than go into a bookshop and buy a copy of Harry Potter."
In other words, she already had made personal use of Vander Ark's work and found it valuable. Even if it has shortcomings, she found it useful.
That means that Vander Ark created something original and useful – he added value to the product. If Rowling wants to claim that it interferes with her creativity now, she should have made that complaint back when she was using it – and giving Vander Ark an award for his website back in 2004.
Now, of course, she regrets "bitterly" having given the award.
You know what I think is going on?
Rowling has nowhere to go and nothing to do now that the Harry Potter series is over. After all her literary borrowing, she shot her wad and she's flailing about trying to come up with something to do that means anything.
Moreover, she is desperate for literary respectability. Even though she made more money than the queen or Oprah Winfrey in some years, she had to see her books pushed off the bestseller lists and consigned to a special "children's book" list. Litterateurs sneer at her work as a kind of subliterature, not really worth discussing.
It makes her insane. The money wasn't enough. She wants to be treated with respect.
At the same time, she's also surrounded by people whose primary function is to suck up to her. No doubt some of them were saying to her, "It's wrong for these other people to be exploiting what you created to make money for themselves."
She let herself be talked into being outraged over a perfectly normal publishing activity, one that she had actually made use of herself during its web incarnation.
Now she is suing somebody who has devoted years to promoting her work and making no money from his efforts – which actually helped her make some of her bazillions of dollars.
Talent does not excuse Rowling's ingratitude, her vanity, her greed, her bullying of the little guy, and her pathetic claims of emotional distress.
I fully expect that the outcome of this lawsuit will be:
1. Publication of Lexicon will go on without any problem or prejudice, because it clearly falls within the copyright law's provision for scholarly work, commentary and review.
2. Rowling will be forced to pay Steven Vander Ark's legal fees, since her suit was utterly without merit from the start.
3. People who hear about this suit will have a sour taste in their mouth about Rowling from now on. Her Cinderella story once charmed us. Her greedy evil-witch behavior now disgusts us. And her next book will be perceived as the work of that evil witch.
It's like her stupid, self-serving claim that Dumbledore was gay. She wants credit for being very up-to-date and politically correct – but she didn't have the guts to put that supposed "fact" into the actual novels, knowing that it might hurt sales.
What a pretentious, puffed-up coward. When I have a gay character in my fiction, I say so right in the book. I don't wait until after it has had all its initial sales to mention it.
Rowling has now shown herself to lack a brain, a heart and courage. Clearly, she needs to visit Oz.
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http://greensboro.rhinotimes.com/Articles-i-2008-04-24-177772.112113_JK_Rowling_Lexicon_and_Oz.html
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If you ever want to pass it around, or actually see it in print anywhere, though, it would be best to pick either historical characters and situations (e.g. Harry Turtledove's Guns of the South), or literary characters that have passed into the Public Domain, like Dracula (e.g. P.N. Elrod's Quincy Morris, Vampire). There's an almost infinite number of characters and situations a writer can choose from, without stepping on another writer's copyright.
The problem is that things aren't passing into the public domain anymore, and that's across the board. There is a ton of copyright abuse, because there's no incentive not to. And on top of that the extensions to copyright passed in law every time some big corporation realizes one of its cash cows is about to pass into the public domain. As it stands, IIRC, pretty much the entire 20th century is going to be off limits until well into this one.
I honestly don't have a problem with fanfic. It tends to stay off in its own little corners of the internet, not hurting anyone, not making any money off of it, as far as I can see. If you don't want to know about it, you can happily live in ignorance (as I mostly have). Having looked into it a bit more- thanks to tvtropes, I now know a little bit more about fandoms than I did previously (which basically amounted to "they exist"). In some cases, I now wish i could go back ot that state, but anyway- I don't really see the difference between it and, oh...rampant speculation. It's just fan communities having a little fun. How is it different than having a conversation about it? And if anyone claims to have never, ever, once in their life had a conversation along the lines of, "hey, you know that movie franchise we just saw, wouldn't it be cool if in the next one they did XYZ?" I will call them a liar.
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Alot of the copyright extensions are done by Disney. Which is rather funny, when you realize that much of their work is pulled from the public domain.
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Alot of the copyright extensions are done by Disney. Which is rather funny, when you realize that much of their work is pulled from the public domain.
Fairy tale characters and folklore figures are public domain, but original cartoon characters like Mickey Mouse, the Smurfs, and Spiderman are not. Anybody can write, publish, and/or sell variations on Sleeping Beauty with no legal troubles, but if you want to write new adventure for Mickey or Spidey (or a Mickey Spidey crossover ;D), you're gonna need permissions from the rights holders.
Writers who think they've got a great new story idea for an existing character resent the fact that copyrights now last for the life of the author, plus 70 years, but the author's heirs who are entitled to retain the income from his works appreciate it very much.
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I'm aware of that, but when Disney does its extensions, they're not just extending their Mickey copyrights, but all of them.
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I'm aware of that, but when Disney does its extensions, they're not just extending their Mickey copyrights, but all of them.
They can copyright their particular version of something like Sleeping Beauty, but not the character itself.
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I'm aware of that, but when Disney does its extensions, they're not just extending their Mickey copyrights, but all of them.
not to mention that copyright holders often ignore what is allowed, and go after people anyway. So easy to send off cease & desist letters, and then there's the possibility of squeezing money out of someone. That disney used so much from the public domain has not stopped them from acting as if they own it.
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http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080530/1507241271.shtml
Funny copyright battle. Well, not so much battle, as dispute.
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http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080530/1507241271.shtml
Funny copyright battle. Well, not so much battle, as dispute.
As the old saying goes, how you feel about it depends on whether or not it's your ox getting gored.
BTW, I believe the characters in Casablanca dropped into the public domain in 2002, which may have inspired the interest from Madonna's production company in making a remake. If anyone want's to pick up the story where the movie left off, and follow Rick and Louie and Ilsa through WWII, now's your chance.
For myself, I'm eagerly awaiting the next installment in Michael Kurland's series about the Sherlock Holmes character, Professor Moriarty.