I enthusiastically second the recommendation of John Hollander's Rhyme's Reason.
Also, while I haven't done more than play with it, VersePerfect is an impressive software application. And it's free!
If it helps any, I think some of the more basic points of contention are over (a) whether it's in any way possible to create a community of any sort outside of corporate interests, (b) whether people in general think it would be more desirable to do so, (c) whether people should find it more desirable to do so, and (d) whether corporate interests can be a positive force for individuals.
My answers are no, no, no, and yes. I'm guessing yours are yes, yes, yes, and no, as is your right. Just don't mistake disagreement with ignorance.
dlnevins: I dunno... I've read Tavella's post several times now, and disagree with all of it, with the possible exception of the first sentence.
how will those users react when they discover that corporate interests actually control the discourse on what they thought was their own community?
Probably with an elaborate yawn.
Like anything else in life, you get only what you're willing to pay for. There are already plenty of other "free" (corporate-controlled) social network sites out there; the net doesn't need another one. Is actually requiring people to pay up front for the resources they wish to use such a radical business proposal these days? Certainly LJ's paid user community doesn't seem to think so!
I think I'm going to start at the end and work my way back through the unfounded assertions...
(1) The seperation of those who pay for LJ services into a community of their own is artificial.
(2) The existance of people willing to pay for additional features and/or to support the community in no way implies that all or most of them support requiring people to pay. Allowing unpaid or sponsored accounts might be seen as being in the best interests of paying LJ customers, giving them easy access to more content.
(3) One could as easily argue that there are already plenty of pay sites out there, and that the Internet doesn't need another one. As it stands, LJ is unique in its combination of its software, policies, servers, and userbase. There are others out there using the same code (with LJ's blessing; they deliberately opt for open-source and open standards when possible), but none with the same degree of popularity.
And I don't recall too much in the way of asking for adverts in exchange for more icons. There's a fair number who say they'll pay extra though.
And yet people are opting for "plus" accounts, rather than springing for paid ones, which kind of puts a crimp in that claim. If there were no interest, there wouldn't be anything to discuss here.
Once they made 'plus' accounts the default, they were getting more than 50 percent new users with them, and since free accounts see ads on plus user journals, that meant that most people were seeing ads.
I have a free account, and I have yet to see an ad on LJ. Then again, I read virtually all my journals via my friends list. Is that not the norm?
Is "het slash" really a contradiction in terms? If so, what word is used for fanfic involving het pairings if not "slash"?
It depends on who you ask. The term originally referred specifically to gay male pairings, but has been used much more loosely in recent years, whether rightly or wrongly. (Therein lies a usage flamewar.)
See also Wikipedia's rundown.
Cofax, I mean in the sense of someone takes a poem and rewrites it from a differnt perspective.
Fer example doing The Rhyme Of The Ancient Mariner from the albatross' point of view.
Or as the husband has suggested as funny: Ozymandias as slash.
Absolutely. There have, for example, been innumerable takeoffs on "Casey at the Bat," some about later games Casey was in, and at least one from the pitcher's perspective.
I would point out that, as regards aesthetics, the problems people have with fanfic can apply equally to works by the original creator. I personally refuse to consider Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator canonical with regard to the first book; others feel the same way about Episodes I-III of Star Wars.
That doesn't mean the questions aren't legitimate. I'm just not sure how far authorial intention ought to be privileged in trying to answer them.
Ohhh. I see. You're misunderstanding the terms here.
OK, just to keep things straight, could everyone prelude their posts with a marker saying whether they're talking about whether fanfic is "good/bad" (Asthetics) or whether it is "fair/unfair" (Justice)?
Those aren't the questions. The aesthetics issue doesn't hinge on whether fanfic or mainstream fic are good or bad; Sturgeon's Law applies to both. The question is whether the existance of fanfic inherently has an impact in the aesthetic appreciation of the original. The justice issue is about legal mechanisms, which are not identical to issues of fairness.
Greg: you're making my point.
The point was that when talking about whether fanfic is "good" or "bad" for the original work it is really a discussion about fairness rather than asthetics.
The point was that this analogy makes no sense in application to this discussion, and that the existance of fanfic is in no way unfair to the author/chef, as the original work is unaffected. The only place such an argument might be made is in regard to aesthetics (not that I'd agree with it there either). In that argument, it's irrelevant whether the fan-created work is legal, illegal, for profit, or shared with a chosen few.
Quoth Greg London:
The thing for me is that when people start talking about fanfic "diluting" the original work or whether fanfic actually "improves" the original work, the original work is owned by the author, and it is really up to the author to decide what is best for his creation. It's sort of like the guy in the restauraunt telling the chef that cooking with a wood fire will make the steak "better". Well, that's the chef's choice at that point.
This analogy would hold true if fanfic writers were sending changes to the publisher, who would then use them to alter the next printing of the original novel. Nobody here is proposing that.
The chef gets to make his dish his way, but that doesn't mean other people can't add their own condiments, make their own side dishes, or whip up their own home-cooked versions.
It might surprise you to find out how many writers have works of personal erotica tucked away in their unpublished-or-unpublishable manuscript trunks. There’s no good way to get those published, but they write them anyway, because they’re writers, and eroticism is an important part of our lives.
That would make an interesting anthology. Anonymous works of erotica from famous authors. But we're not telling who.
Re: earlier attempts at messing around with Poetry.Com
There was also Dave Barry's Freemont Poetry Project two years ago.
Well, somebody has to do a triolet...
Thirty million I will send
And we can split the take.
If you will help me out, my friend,
Thirty million I will send.
A rule or two we'll have to bend
But there's a lot at stake:
Thirty million I will send
And we can split the take.
To the spammers, to make much of time
Gather ye patsies while ye may,
When they are new to 'Netting:
The babe on AOL today
Some wisdom will be getting.
Today they'll send their passwords out
To every passing spammer
They will not feel a moment's doubt
Or note the faulty grammar.
That age is best when first they land,
When they are clueless newbies
Entranced by urban legends and
The camgirls showing boobies.
But soon they learn the tragic score,
And thenceforth will remember.
That would be it, but then come more!
God bless the long September.
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| 2008 | 1 |
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| 2005 | 3 |
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