Greg: I proclaim it's the Texas heat which has boiled the last three braincells. No, really.
Ehhh, the kid+sex aspect is one that's a major squick for people (no surprise), as is the hugely popular tendency in Japanese fanfic circles (and recently spread to US) to write incest. The fact that these are both probably a massively small part of what's already a mere percentage-point of a fandom's entirety is probably beside the point for news-writing, which can be exploitative at times.
I see "kiddie porn in fanfic" and start thinking of the mary-huana salesman from Reefer Madness. Little true basis in reality but enough fluff to scare the bejabbers out of all the good white folks in bible belt land.
It would be more helpful to have a survey whose questions have been validated. Those listed make me uneasy for reasons I can't put a finger on, as it's been too long since grad-level statistics.
*headdesk*
Guh. Okay, right. The first two should both count as negatives -- would not buy. I'm not sure I like having this one as a five-range question, instead of a three-range, which might have been simpler to parse (as well as push those truly ambivalent into stating their ambivalence with a 2).
Disregard!
Greg:
The Scotsman has run an article discussing the amount of homosexual content fic in the Harry Potter fan fiction community.But your poll says that this should make a huge dent in J.K.Rowling's sales. Some massive percentage of your respondants said they wouldn't buy the work if this scenario occurred.
What? Did I read the poll wrong? Seemed to me the highest percentage in the first two options both demonstrated that the public's reaction to fanfic was to, well, ignore it.
-- article + fanfic + children + sex:
Would refuse to buy the novel and related products 25 (25.77%)
Would probably not buy 23 (23.71%)
Would not affect decision to buy 45 (46.39%)
Would be more inclined buy 2 (2.06%)
Would absolutely buy 2 (2.06%)
-- article + fanfic + sex
Would refuse to buy official merchandise related to the television show 8 (8.42%)
Would probably not buy 7 (7.37%)
Would not affect decision to buy 54 (56.84%)
Would be more inclined buy 18 (18.95%)
Would absolutely buy 8 (8.42%)
-- author + emotional reaction + crackdown
Would refuse to buy the books and related official merchandise 30 (31.25%)
Would probably not buy 36 (37.50%)
Would not affect decision to buy 25 (26.04%)
Would be more inclined buy 5 (5.21%)
Would absolutely buy 0 (0.00%)
Pretending we can expand such a minor sample to a broad swath of the general population, I'd say the one thing that might really make a dent in Rowling's sales is if she suddenly went after every single teenybopper writing fanfic, het, slash, or gen, and whipped them all publically to Respect Huh Authoritah.
If I've got that backwards, someone correct me, because I find that aspect the most fascinating revelation in nearly the entire thread. Much food for thought.
Laura: And I was a bit surprised by how many people would change their buying decision based on those scenarios. I don't think any sort of blanket statement can be made regarding fan fiction not having a market affect.
Uhm...but from what I can tell, it looks like the non-fen's reaction to mention of fanfic (of any kind, slashy, hentai, whatever) gets a "wouldn't affect my decision" in the majority (46%, 56%) ... but asking a non-fen how they'd feel upon hearing a writer essentially threw a hissy fit (come on, you did mention The Self-Proclaimed Amazing Rice), that this would affect non-fens negatively -- and suddenly we go from "would not affect" carrying the greatest weight, to this:
Would refuse to buy the books and related official merchandise 30 (31.25%)Seems to me those first two consist of variations on the same: "would not spend money on author's work". That, to me, says more about people's interpretations of an author (and hir authority) than of fanfic.
Would probably not buy 36 (37.50%)
Would not affect decision to buy 25 (26.04%)
I wonder also if you accidentally side-stepped into something socio or anthropological that goes far deeper than just fanfic, a situation which is admittedly only the tiniest part of any fandom, really. Most people, if aware of fanfic, pretty much dismiss it, but it may be that on some level, some cultures find the author's apparent tyranny to be more repulsive than fanfic itself? Or do bystanders/non-fen consider fandom essentially harmless, and thus lose respect for an author who doesn't agree?
As always, I think there's a lot more in those numbers than meets the eye, and would make me long for a much larger sample and a good afternoon running the results through Delphi...
A.R.Yngve's questions:
1: "Do fanfic writers respect MY personal vision, the parts of my soul that I put into this story?"
Seems that what an author considers respect and what a fan considers respect are sometimes diametrically opposed. I'd say from an author's point of view, the answer may likely be no; definitely no (it seems) if enemy!sex gets into the picture, and moreso beyond that if slash. YMMV.
2: "Will this hurt my ability to make a living off my original work?"
I agree, the answer seems to be a strong No, which is curious considering #1.
3. "Do I risk losing my copyright if I don't enforce it?"
Wasn't the whole enforce-or-lose a result of mashing trademark and copyright? Cover me, I'm going in. *scrolls back and back and back...*
A.R. Yngve asked: How do fanfic writers "relate" to original authors?
Second that on the reverence. All hail the mighty Joss, and so on. My fanfic experience (outside The Mighty Jossverse) is in Japanese anime, and that's a culture that is perfectly willing to look the other way on fanfic all the way up, and including, comic books (doujinshi) written, draw, produced and sold by fans, as long as the manga-runs stay under approximately 1000 copies each title. (The corrollary benefit of that, of course, is that it makes particularly popular fan-manga artists even more precious, and there's hot competition to get copies of stories by some "circles", as groups of fan-artists are called, including setting the prices accordingly.)
I've seen fanartists and fanwriters interact with the voice actors, producers, animators, and directors from various Japanese production companies, and the conversations/interviews are marked by respect, even adoration, and a certain sense of gratitude: thank you for creating these characters/worlds/stories that have so eaten into our brains. Disrespect on the part of a fan, more than anything else, rouses the fury of fans. Do not diss the hand that brings the original stories to life. But be not afraid to create AU, school!fic, divergent future, genderswitch, fusion, crossover, or any other fic that plays with the world. This is not dissing, this is playing, and a compliment to the creators.
The rough part, of course, is when fans feel the creators "compromised" or "watered down" or somehow contradicted the original promise (or premise) of the story. I've seen this kind of betrayed-hurt/fury unleashed (though usually behind the scenes/hands) in two types of cases.
1. The author, originally neutral toward (or even mildly encouraging of) fanfic, summarily decrees fanfic/fanart is off-limits. The fans do not like having their cookies taken away halfway through playtime.
2. Authors with policies of Absolutely No FanFic Or Else You Mindless Fans will get slammed if the fans feel the author's writing is any way mediocre. I've spoken with fantasy fans who've grumbled that "So-and-So had a great idea, and botched the delivery, and won't even let us fix it."
Ahem.
This is what makes me leery about fanfic, that someone might write better than me at my own damn characters. (On the other hand, I'm not exactly standing on high moral ground were I to bar it outright, upon publication.)
But having come from a fannish background, to some extent, I do get the odd sensation that those authors most vehemently against fanfic sometimes demonstrate a certain nervousness about the topic. That's why I sometimes wonder if the authors are, in fact, worried that a fan can write/tweak/play with their world so well that the author's original offerings will be cast aside in favor of well-written fanfic. This is where the Respect Mah Authority! attitude comes in, I think.
In the case of "the fans doing it better", again, the fans themselves would not -- and do not appear to, from what I've seen -- consider this 'dissing'. In fact, most appear to argue they're being true to the story itself, and if the writer's too blockheaded and hamfisted to write a good story with the characters, s/he should do the fandom a service and get out of the way so someone can.
The loyalty, above all else, for a fan, seems to be to the characters, the world, and the story. The author is always secondary, just as much as we would value the psychic's message of peace, hope, and the thirty grand in Uncle Harold's footlocker, and not whether the psychic hirself had enough to eat for breakfast.
cmk:
I think the tendency to type 'speak my peace' is possibly influenced by the confluence of 'peace of mind' and 'give you a piece of my mind'. I've taken to using 'speak my peace' as a type of written pun that, if spoken, simply wouldn't register.
I still find myself typing speak my peace, despite having been corrected many times now that it's piece.
Then again, I have family in Mississippi; no matter how much I get told otherwise, my fingers automatically type it mischevious — because there IS an extra vowel in there if you were raised on the Gulf Coast. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Cosplay comes from "costume play", and uses the Japanese form of shorthand, where instead of calling it CP (as we might in the US), they use the first kana of each word. (It's odd at first, then you get used to the logic: Hikaru no Go becomes HikaGo, f'rinstance.)
That's just another form of fandom, really, if a bit more specialized. I mean, we've got people who've been doing Vulcan ears for years in the US, or making their storm trooper outfits and scaring the fans dressed in prison-orange as rebel pilots. Now I've got friends with HP scarves, and others with their forehead protectors and throwing stars, and others with...well, the list goes on. There's been some question, too, in quieter circles, as to whether recreating character designs in 3-D is possibly copyright infringement.
All I know is if I were ever at a book signing and anyone walked up dressed as my characters, I'd probably die of teh squee.
Although I should smack a caveat on that -- I recall Fred Gallagher reciting the tale of horror and woe, when at a book signing someone arrived as Naked Largo. The only item keeping this Naked Largo from complete nakedness was box formerly used to house servers. If Naked Largo let go, well... Fred seemed a bit traumatized, and politely requested that the audience exert some modicum of dignity in their cosplay. Please. For the baby wallabees.
There is a form of cosplay that's much like fanfiction, however, sometimes called 'cosplay redux' or 'cosplay remix' -- where you take a character and re-envision them as a stereotype of some sort. Goth Sasuke (verrry emo). Jock Sosuke (gun hidden in football). Lolita Pikachu, and I am so not making that one up. I think part of it is to test the other fans: can you recognize me now? And when the fans do, there's much squeeing, and pictures taken, and everyone's happy, doing the obscure-inside-joke fandom-bonding thing.
inge:
I know that it took me years to get into Harry Potter, because the media hype was beyond the pale. It took a fan to tell me, "Do not mind the hype, it's a good story".
I think the key word in there is media. I had the same reaction to HP; the only interaction I had with anything HP-related was solely through the media. The party decorations, the halloween costumes, the massive banners at Borders proclaiming MIDNIGHT VOL 2!!!, the incessant articles about the entire phenomenom... bleah. And then the first movie rolls around, and you honestly had to live under a rock to not get pounded almost daily by something HP-related.
But, it took friends who were HP fans to get me to read. (More precisely, 8-yr-old fans.) "No, no," they said, "ignore all that, just read, it's a great story." So I did, and while I'd never nominate Rowling for a literary award personally, she's an excellent storyteller who knows her audience inside & out.
But if it was the media's overhype that turned me off, it was personal recommendations by fans I knew who turned me on.
Does anyone have an example of fannish behaviors that have turned off a majority of the potential audience, independent of media hype? I can't think of any, outside the gushing I recall from romance-fan friends who bought every book with Fabio on the cover because, well, FABIO.
After all, it doesn't necessarily follow that to be a fan I must also participate in fandom. Nor do all fans create art, music, or stories to highlight their inclusion with the fandom, but that doesn't stop them from discussing "what ifs" with friends, and (hopefully) suggesting the book/movie to the unconverted.
Seconded on Shauna's post, since she's said just about everything I had considered saying, myself.
But I noticed only one or two people mentioned something that I think is of great importance when discussing fanfiction, which is: the format of the original versus the format of the derivation/continuation. It seems to be assumed that one might mistake fanfic for ofic, or have impressions of the original colored by a brush with fanfic.
The vast majority of fanfic, the strongest fandoms out there, are not literary-based. They are based on movies and television: Sentinel, SG-1, Sailor Moon, Gundam Wing, Star Trek, Star Wars, Naruto, Buffy, and so on. As at least one person did point out, these are all collaborative works. We may thank Joss Whedon alone in the disclaimers, but no one is foolish enough to think he did it all on his lonesome; Buffy killing Angelus wouldn't have had half the punch without Kenneth Zunder's cinematography, without Sarah Michelle Gellar's acting chops, without Christophe Beck's gorgeous soundtrack.
For many fans -- of both fanfic and fanart, and fanvid -- in their minds, they're just continuing this collaboration. If the writers sit in a room threshing out ideas, then run it past director and actors, and then the editor scans and crops and the composer drops in music, and then the fans watch it...for a trufan, letting such an event go past without participation is almost like refusing to respect the original work. That may sound odd to some of you, but it's the attitude I've noted amongst the majority of fanfic/fanart folks, even if not all may put it in quite those words.
Regarding literary-based fanfic, however, I've noticed I'm not the only one feeling a bit more uncomfortable. You can no longer truly claim you're collaborating after-the-fact on a collaborative piece; it was one person's words and ideas, maybe two or three others if you count beta-readers, agents, editors as having a finger in the pie to any notable degree. This may be why I see so many authors happily embracing "fanart" -- in which there's no mistaking it as canon, or official -- because it's not impinging on the format of the original. A newcomer cannot mistake this picture on the 'net of these two characters getting it on like wet wacky weasels and confuse it with the almighty CANON.
This is why I might suggest that it's not always enough to say "fanfic is wrong" or "bad" or "right" or even "better than the original"; we must also qualify the original's format versus the continuation. Certain mix and match setups will lend themselves to greater confusion on the part of fans: literature to literature, film to film, and so on. And therefore, perhaps in some cases we can see that fanfic is a genuine attempt to continue a collaborative, folk-based storytelling effort, and in other cases it may genuinely confuse readers trolling the 'net for more of their favorite author.
This is why 99% of the decent archives out there insist on disclaimers at the top, to prevent such confusion. Then again, a huge chunk of the various fandoms always spell it "cannon"; draw your own conclusions about how well they pay attention.
I don't know if anyone's mentioned this -- I'm about halfway through (yipes) the thread, but I just passed the minor flare-up over calling fanficcers wannabes.
Yeah. Well.
As a Harley biker once told me, "you gotta be a Wannabe before you get to be a Be."
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2006 | 13 |
Total: 13 comments. View all these comments on a single page.
The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by ksgreer:
Show all comments by ksgreer.