Not Your Sandbox

[jeriendhal]

james_nicoll would like to point out that Diana Gabaldon doesn't care for fanfic.

Now, it's important to point out that what's she saying is essentially correct. Her characters and stories are copyrighted material. When other people publish stories online using them, for profit or not, that's a violation of her copyright, and with Sturgeon's Law in mind the result is 90% likely to be crap anyway. So she's well within her rights to call fanfic authors out on this.

Nevertheless...

With a grand total of one exception that I can think of in the past twenty years, fanfic's effect on author copyright has been frankly negligable. Plus, banning fans from writing fanfic is approximiately as effective as shoveling water. You'll expend a lot of energy you could be using for something else for very little effect.

There are ways of dealing with it. Now some authors, such as Gabaldon, try to forbid it. That's probably the least effective method. The ones who want to write in the author's world will, or alternatively will become so irritated by the resctriction that they quit buying the books.

Some like Mercedes Lackey or Anne McCaffrey try to at least channel it, making fanfic authors jump through legal hoops to be published semi-legally. That's only as effective as the fanfic writers who choose to pay attention to it. It was somewhat effective in the days of published fanzines, but with the explosion of the Internet it's nigh impossible.

Many authors take Lois McMaster Bujold's approach and politely ignore it, perhaps even making a note on their website that while they won't ban fanfic they're legally obligated not to read it either.

Some, like David Weber, take the rather unique approach of co-opting it, effectively opening their universes to a limited degree to outside authors to play in and professionally publishing the results. That can be tricky, especially when dealing with amateur authors, but you can't deny the fannish good will it generates.

And sometimes the fanfic author hits the proverbial jackpot and becomes one of the team, such as the Buffy fic writer who became a member of the show's writing staff.

* * *

Then of course there's the really gray areas of professional writers playing in another author's playground, except that the author is safely dead so copyright isn't an issue anymore. Is The Seven Percent Solution or the Mary Russell novels ripping off Arthur Conan Doyle's greatest work, or paying homage? Is the Wind Done Gone or Wicked stealing from the grave of the authors of Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz or providing clever social and literary commentary?

* * *

Me, I'm extraordinarily lucky. Not only do I write in the universe of one author who's fanfic friendly (LMB), but I also write in chaypeta's universe and received the high honor of not only her becoming a consumer of my works, she's seen fit to use some of my ideas in her own writing. For which I'll be forever grateful.

Because it's her sandbox. She just lets me play there.

Comments

Yup, lucky you...

[mjkj.livejournal.com]

Yup, lucky you...

(...and lucky me for being able to read those :) )

mjkj

[scarfman]

None of my sandboxes are single-owner boxes. Corporate screen story copyrightholders, in my passive and anecdotal research, send C&D notices to websites sharing the copyrightholders' own work (screengrabs, videoclips, episode transcripts), but don't bother websites presenting derivative works.

[secoh.livejournal.com]

Yeah you're lucky indeed!
The world I started playing in is owned by Tiffany Ross who as best as I can tell has no interest in fan fic other than high quality drawings by the artistic experts out there. I approached her about what I was doing and she said it was ok as long as I didn't make money off it which I agree with.

I feel that if it's a work of appreciation for the fictional universe and not published commercially then there should be no problem with it. It's when people start making money off the back of someone elses hard work I can understand their anger. So much better if the owner picks out the best of them to support them though! Plenty of fan driven shadowrun or star wars stuff has earned a place.

[secoh.livejournal.com]

Now that I got the chance to read the article I can see their point and on the most part agree, because the fan fic referred to is the use of already created characters rather than original characters inserted into the existing owners backdrop. I don't see how a work of appreciation of original characters posted on a forum related to that author is the same as rampant theft of IP.

The vast majority of it out there is utter crap it's true, but it would be a shame to tell peope they aren't allowed to draw a picture of Donald duck in their school book or practice the use of English with readily available resources.

[lennan.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty conflicted by this. When I get my comic up and running, to be honest I probably wouldn't mind the fan fiction. I probably wouldn't read most of it either, but that's me and the 90% crap rule. Same goes for fan art. Being in fandom and also reading your stuff, made me realize that fanfiction is an incredibly great marketing tool albeit an unintentional one, and it allows fans to get together and have fun with something they like. I think it would behoove authors to tolerate it enough in recognition that it's possibly more beneficial than they think. I think that Diana Gabaldon is actually doing a good job of alienating fans and potential readers by that article, which is pretty stupid tactics if you think about it. While I'm sympathetic, I think she really is missing the point of fan-fiction. Le Guin's reaction is by far more classy. She'll turn a blind eye on the playing in her sandbox, but does mind playing with her characters.

Honestly, using me as an example, I would feel the same way. Unless I absolutely trust the fan-fic writer (like you for example) I would feel very uncomfortable with someone else writing my characters. They don't know how that character is in my mind and I feel that I would be the person best able to portray them by virtue of being their creator. But you've always shown that you really understand and care about the characters and write them in a way that the author and me the reader feels is sincere to original. It's obvious favoritism, but that's humanity for you. XD I mean, say if someone saw my work and wanted to write fan-fiction of my characters, I wouldn't stop them or go after them, but I would chose not to read it. But that's where I draw the line: my characters. Personally, I would be really happy if people wanted to play in my world, because I'm one person with ideas and can't possibly explore them all. And I'm creating something to be shared anyway. I would definitely draw the line at someone profiting from my work or writing my characters in their own stories, but otherwise, I would welcome it.

Not to mention that if "fan-fiction" or derivative art works weren't allowed then how would Shakespeare have written Hamlet? Or his other plays? How about Chaucer, how about all of those myths? The problem is that what was originally meant to protect the monetary earnings of an author has now become an issue of whether or not something is "theirs". And they usually say this without realizing the history of literature and writing. I'm really conflicted about this, because while I agree and sympathize to a certain extent, I also recognize that every author is to some extent deriving their ideas from half-remembered and mis-remembered bits of things they read as well. Even if they think they aren't. At least the fan-fic writers are being honest and saying that's exactly what they're doing. While I'm sympathetic to authors because really I do understand, I also feel sympathetic to the fan-ficcers because a majority of them are people who simply want to share enjoyment of a work. I think that authors who go fascist on this issue will only lose. They will make themselves look like they're persecuting their own fans. Stupid business practice if you ask me and as much as artists hate business, you've got to at least understand enough that you're selling a product.

I mean, seriously, using a pedophile as an example? Way to put your foot in your mouth, author. For someone writing about people, that's quite insensitive.

I really like categorising things, I think.

[ankewehner.livejournal.com]

The problem is that what was originally meant to protect the monetary earnings of an author has now become an issue of whether or not something is "theirs".
Fun stuff. In a different context, I'd say that copyright has turned from something protecting the rights of the creator to something mostly about enabling companies to milk a property for money as long as possible. I mean, "death of the creator plus 70 years" is a ridiculously long time before something enters the public domain, and has nothing to do with the original creator's interest anymore.

I don't really agree with conflating inspiration with fanfiction, because it's a far more removed relation with the original material.
Closest would in my opinion be fanfiction using the original characters (because some authors are rather attached to them).
Fanfiction using all-original characters, but set in a world someone else made up is somewhat more removed. (Personally, I'm not comfortable wirting someone else's characters, but I was for a while involved in OC RPGs set in the universe of Elfquest.)

Then there's things you might call hommage or ripoff, depending if you like it or not, like The Phoenix Guards is based on The Three Musketeers, or West Side Story is based on Romeo and Juliet - they use the same plot, but different settings, and even if the characters' personalities may map very closely to the originals, they are not supposed to be the same people.

Then there's inspiration. Eiichiro Oda said one of his inspirations for One Piece was Vicky the Viking, but about all they have in common is that the main characters are pirates. Lumping fanfiction and inspiration like this into the same category seems odd to me.

Re: I really like categorising things, I think.

[lennan.livejournal.com]

The concept of copyright and authorial ownership is very new. Historically, originality wasn't so closely guarded. J.S. Bach blatantly took melodies from other composers, myths being told over and over again differently, and medieval poetry retelling Greek myths is much closer to fanfiction than inspiration. You have to think about what is fanfiction (outside of personal feelings on its morality). What Fanfiction does is literally take the world and/or characters of a story and re-writes or re-imagines their stories or makes new ones outside of the original author's intent. When you retell a myth, changing one detail or another, or (I would argue) trying out a different theme, it's still closer to fanfiction than West Side Story is. White's version of Arthurian legend is also closer to fan fiction than West Side Story in my opinion. The setting is the same, the characters are the same, and are meant to be the same people, etc. It's just that they're meant to be what the writer thinks they should be. I actually don't like the "oh if the author's dead and ancient then it's fair game" leniency towards making derivative works because that strikes me as a tad hypocritical. So you want people to respect you, but you don't want to respect long dead or anonymous authors who you shamelessly pilfer from because that means you might not be able to steal from them? I can't side with that, personally. In fact, I really hate that manner of excusing oneself from responsibility. If say, Galbaldon was losing money from fanfiction or someone was selling it without her blessing, then I would say she has a legitimate complaint under law since the law does appear to seek to protect her economic gains on her intellectual property, but fans doing what a lot of authors and most likely what she has done in the past without realizing? Not so keen on that.

That's why I used Hamlet. Hamlet was pretty blatantly based on various sources like the Ur-Hamlet text among others. Even White's and Malory's Arthur stories draw heavily from prior stories in a non-inspirational sense. It's literally a re-telling, re-telling is more or less fanfiction in my view for these cases. While you can argue that West Side Story is inspired, I can't say the same about Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, which relies on the original play. Nor can I call Wide Sargasso Sea "inspired" by Jane Eyre. It was clearly engaging with the original and meant to be part of that fictional universe. In all these cases you're retelling a story that is essentially the same as or part of the original. It's really a very human thing to want to retell the story that you know, and in any case when you summarize or paraphrase a story for someone else you're essentially writing verbal fanfiction since most likely you're going to make up details that you don't remember clearly. To me, regardless of how you categorize it, human nature tends towards telling and re-telling the same stories, especially if its one that resonates with them. They share these stories with like-minded people, engage with the original and come to new ideas about the original, but it's still part of the original. That, in my view is part of fanfiction and part of human nature. It's creating a mythos by branching more stories onto the "main" story, which is something that Tolkien understood pretty well.

I say that suppressing fanfiction is bad business because regardless of the personal squick factor, what the author is doing is basically saying: you're not allowed to engage with my text. You have to passively take my story and enjoy it only one way and that's the way I tell you to. People don't do that and I think an author is doing a disservice to the fans by cutting them off from engaging with their text. But I do draw the line at fans making profit on a modern author's work at the author's expense.

Re: I really like categorising things, I think.

[ankewehner.livejournal.com]

Yeah, times change. Used to be people didn't even get credit for their work.

I actually don't like the "oh if the author's dead and ancient then it's fair game" leniency towards making derivative works because that strikes me as a tad hypocritical. So you want people to respect you, but you don't want to respect long dead or anonymous authors who you shamelessly pilfer from because that means you might not be able to steal from them?
When the author's dead, there's no way they could see how their creations are (mis)used by others. Hypothetically speaking, if my pipedream of getting "officially" published came true, that's how I'd think about my own characters, too, so I don't think it's hypocritical.

My rambling about inspiration was more about your line "I also recognize that every author is to some extent deriving their ideas from half-remembered and mis-remembered bits of things they read as well." This sounded to me more like inspiration than re-telling to me, taking some small detail of the original story and building something otherwise new around it. (Or rather, otherwise drawn from other sources, making at least the combination new. Nothing new under the sun, and all that. :))

You have to passively take my story and enjoy it only one way and that's the way I tell you to. People don't do that and I think an author is doing a disservice to the fans by cutting them off from engaging with their text.
I find the way you phrased this objectionable, because it sounds like you are trying to dictate how people should deal with their reading material, as if you think someone who does not want to write fanfiction is doing it wrong.
I read a book and feel with the characters. I look for foreshadowing, or references to other books in the same series. I like to draw comparisons to other books, or myths, that might have been inspiration, or might have drawn from the same source. Is that not engaging with the story?

I do agree that banning fanfiction is a bad move, because it alienates the people who like to write fanfiction.

Re: I really like categorising things, I think.

[lennan.livejournal.com]

"When the author's dead, there's no way they could see how their creations are (mis)used by others."

Actually, that's precisely why I find it hypocritical. So it's okay to take their stories and do what you will with it if they're dead, but not okay if they're not? One day (general) you'll be dead and it'll be the same thing, if those authors are using ethics to curb people getting ideas from them, then I hope that those authors say that their works are fair game for derivative works after they die, just like every other dead author. Since those authors did precisely the same thing with old works anyway. I find it hard to make a moral ground of that. The morality, in my view is shaky here, on the other hand, it's not shaky if you take it on economic grounds and it isn't shaky as a matter of opinion. If authors were harmed economically or if they felt their wishes not to see fanfic floating around were not being respected, then I can stand behind authorial anger. I might, however, question why they get so giddy about fanart, though.

I'm sympathetic to how you feel about your characters, quite frankly, if I ever publish my story or get it online, I really will not be reading the fanfic starring my characters. There are very few people I can safely say right now who I would trust with my characters. And...I just can't do it, reading fanfic I mean. But if you or I as an author are not going to respect all works the same way, what sort of moral ground do we have to expect it of anyone else? Again, I see this as a matter of opinion and basic courtesy to another human being. And frankly, while I know that I would not want to see my characters being misused, I'm not going to pretend I have higher moral ground in insisting that fan-fic writers are somehow doing something wrong, when they're doing what humanity has done for thousands of years.

"I find the way you phrased this objectionable, because it sounds like you are trying to dictate how people should deal with their reading material, as if you think someone who does not want to write fanfiction is doing it wrong."

I wasn't clear, I'm sorry. My point in writing it like that is that the way Gabaldon phrased her disdain for fan-fic writers was pretty childish. It really sounds like that's what she's saying by telling people who engage in a text by fan-fic that they're doing it wrong. That there's only one way to engage with her text (or even any text) and that's the way she dictates they do it. Well, no. People are going to engage however they want, whether it's by writing critical essays, discussing, fanfiction, or whatever else. It's one thing to say, "please don't write fan-fic of my work, or if you're going to do it don't post it publicly, I don't really appreciate it because I find it squicky" but it's quite another to imply they're all criminal and stealing, when what they're actually doing is engaging with the text. In their own way.

I do not write fanfiction, the closest I've even done to fanfiction is childhood daydreaming about AU stories in my head, just in case you might think I'm a fan-fic writer. Writing fanfic ain't my cuppa, and since I've been a student of literature, I'm more like you in how I prefer to engage with a text. I'm not trying to say that there's one way of reading, in fact my views on books and reader engagement are far from that and are extremely broad. If they weren't so broad I wouldn't be defending something in which I don't even participate.

Re: I really like categorising things, I think.

[ankewehner.livejournal.com]

I hope that those authors say that their works are fair game for derivative works after they die, just like every other dead author
Yep, that's what I said. :)

I might, however, question why they get so giddy about fanart, though.
Just speculating a bit... I think fanart might be more likely to be a direct adaptation than fanfiction.
A piece of fanart can be about depicting as precisely as possible a certain scene the book author described. That's way more obvious a message of "I admire what you wrote" than a piece of fanfiction that carries more ideas the fan came up with, which might be (mis)understood as "You did not put enough detail there", "I can write your story better than you" or "I want to tell my own story, but using yours as foundation is easier than making up one from scratch".
Of course you get crazy what-if/out of character fanart, too, but there can easily be a bias of what the author sees or hears about.

Thank you. :)

[mjkj.livejournal.com]

Well, I can see the legal issue of "passive allowance" as she described it - but I think that this could be easily thwarted by a statement on the site that says knowledge of use does not mean agreement to it or (partial) transfer of ownership of a character / setting / universe etc.

Other than that — I really do not understand her aggravation...

mjkj

[chaypeta.livejournal.com]

Very much enjoyed reading the debate this entry sparked.

Personally, I feel qualified only to speak from my perspective... that being a writer with a sizeable piece of work which has enjoyed a small but loyal patronage in the internets. I do not make (much) money out of my title and never intended to nor plan to. I write and publish for the fun of it. And part of the fun of it for me is looking at how other people perceive my characters and world setting through fanfic and fanart. I'm not constrained by legal issues involved with making a living from my work... my stuff is in no way big enough to attract any sort of marketing. Also I am not so protective of my characters that I can't allow other people to write about them how they veiw them. I find it interesting to see how others envision my people. If i don't like it I stop reading.

Having said that, I can sympathize with authors who make their living off their work having a negative veiw of fan works. the biggest problem I can see, besides fans selling their fanfics for profit and thus cutting a share of a market they don't legally own, is the risk that a fan will accuse the original author of misappropriating ideas from fanfics and incorporating them into the core stories. It has happened in the past. This is why authors publically state that they will not read fanfics. But this, unfortunately, may not be sufficient to stave off legal proceedings should an accussation arise. A dead author cannot be accused thus. One would argue that why have the seventy year clause then if not to protect the income of the copyright holders. There is a lot of room for debate here on respecting the decendants desire to preserve the original authors work in the minds of the readers without it being mixed with the ideas of fan writers. Personally i would argue that each individual reader creates their own internal fanfics reguardles... For example: have you never looked forward to a revelation or confrontation in a story only to find that when you get there the canon version feels unsatisfactory? Who hasn't rewritten the scene in their head to appease that sense of dissapointmen? We are all fanfic writers internally. And we are all smart enough to differentiate between what is canon and what someone else has fanticised based on original characters and world settings.

[jeriendhal.livejournal.com]

I'm not constrained by legal issues involved with making a living from my work... my stuff is in no way big enough to attract any sort of marketing.

I would argue rather that your work certainly could be. But you're not the sort to go around tooting your own horn, and it would require a fairly vigorous program of self-promotion. (For further insights just take a look at haikujaguar's "The Three Micahs" LJ posts) Hell, Howard Tayler supports his family with what he makes from Schlock Mercenary merchandise, and his artwork is like his main character, a pile of crap.

[chaypeta.livejournal.com]

In the world of making comics you can actually survive on drawing crap... as long as you do it consistantly and in a timely manner. Just check out some of the inks the big boys pay for. Quality is cheerfully sacrificed for deadlines.

me and 'timely manner' don't go together in the same sentence. If only I didn't have to work. :(