Fannish Rights

"We envision a future in which all fannish works are recognized as legal and transformative and are accepted as a legitimate creative activity. We are proactive and innovative in protecting and defending our work from commercial exploitation and legal challenge. We preserve our fannish economy, values, and creative expression by protecting and nurturing our fellow fans, our work, our commentary, our history, and our identity while providing the broadest possible access to fannish activity for all fans."

That, my friends, is the mission statement of the Organization for Transformative Works, a new organization that hopes to legitimize fanfiction. I kid you not. When I first saw the site, I thought it was an elaborate practical joke, like amptp.com. But it isn't. The movers and shakers behind this effort include Naomi Novik, a fanficcer turned acclaimed fantasy novelist, and Dr. Robin Reid, the Texas A&MUniversity professor best known for writing fiction about real people like Viggo Mortenson having sex with other male actors.

They steal the creative work of others and then have the balls to say they want to "defend their work from commercial exploitation."  Their hypocrisy is staggering…and apparently boundless. One of their "missions" is "establishing a legal defense project and forming alliances to defend fanworks from legal challenge." (I wonder if they will also form an alliance with the group that polices plagiarism of  fanfic by other fanficcers) Novik writes on author John Scalzi's blog:

"We just want to enjoy our hobby and our communities, and to share our creative work, without the constant threat hanging overhead that an overzealous lawyer at some corporation will start sending out cease-and-desist notices, relying not on legal merit, but on the disproportionate weight of money on their side."

With that kind of reasoning, I'm surprised they haven't recruited Lori Jareo to lead their organization. 

While their staggering hypocrisy might be lost on the majority of fanficcers, the foolhardy nature of this effort isn't. For years, studios, publishers, authors and other rights holds have largely turned a blind eye to the blatant copyright infringement that is Fanfiction as long as fanficcers haven't tried to profit from it. Or, as John Scalzi puts it:

"To the extent that fandom currently does what it does, it does it because of the benign neglect or tolerance of the copyright holders of the works the fans are working with.

Now many fanficcers seem justifiably concerned that the OTW's efforts to claim ownership of their copyright-infringing works could end this fragile détente. Elfwreck writes on Scalzi's blog:

"Sooner or later a copyright owner is going to issue a DMCA notice to a fan, a fan is going to run to OTW (or alternately, OTW will offer its services), and an expensive legal suit will be on and if the case is of sufficient profile, then other copyright owners, alerted to the existence of a group who says they can in fact no longer control their copyrights from people who claim to be fans, will start giving the fannish community quite a bit more attention, and probably not of the good kind..."

Scalzi envisions it happening like this:

"If and when a fan, told by, say, NBC Universal to take down her Battlestar Galactica fanfic, decides to make the legal argument that her work is transformative and fair use, […] and the fan shows up in court with the assistance of an umbrella group dedicated to the proposition that all fan work is legal and transformative, I suspect the era of benign neglect or tolerance of fan activity will be at a sudden and pronounced end. Because now the fans are saying, why, yes, this really does belong to us, and corporations who have invested millions in and can reap billions from their projects will quite naturally see this as a threat. From there it's all DMCA notices and entire fan sites going down."

The OTW claims that "fannish work," an umbrella term for fanfiction and the "Real People Slash" that Dr. Reid gets off on and even such fetish fanfic as  "DUE SOUTH Masturbation" stories, is "transformative" rather than "derivative," that it is a unique and important expression of feminism, and therefore should be legally protected. John Scalzi observes:

"OTW's claim, however, appears predicated on a fairly expansive idea of what "transformative" means under the law, and also that all fanwork is transformative, apparently by the mere nature of being fanwork. OTW is perfectly in its rights to make such a claim, but they are fairly significant claims, and I don't imagine that OTW's interpretation of the law would go unopposed if it were presented in a court of law."

[…]I suspect that a judge asked to consider a possibly infringing works' "fannishness" as a relevant criterion for evaluation will toss that out early, chosing instead to look at what the law actually requires."

One fanficcer offered this comment on Scalzi's blog:

"I'm not going to stop [writing fanfiction] either way, so I'd like to see the rules set on fandom's terms, even if it is a segment of fandom that I and others don't wholly agree with. There's a risk in founding OTW at all, of course– it scares me to think of what unintended consequences might arise due to the whole thing. But there's also a risk in sitting on one's hands and doing nothing. If this history ends up being rewritten by victors that are not part of fandom, I'd at least like to know I didn't stand still and do nothing while they were at it."

I want to see the day OTW legally challenges J.K. Rowling's right to prevent people from disseminating stories about Snape and Voldemort gang-banging Harry Potter and Ron. Or the day the OTW fights for Robin Reid's right to create and distribute stories about Sean Bean having sex withViggo Mortenson. Because when that day comes, instead of legitimizing fanfiction, they will kill it…not only in a court of law but in the court of public opinion.

Comments

[MercuryBlue]

I do have to ask. Does Wicked by Gregory Maguire constitute an infringement upon L. Frank Baum's intellectual property? Do Disney's or Robin McKinley's or Mercedes Lackey's fairy-tale retellings constitute infringement on the intellectual property of the Grimm Brothers et al? Does the movie She's the Man constitute infringement on the intellectual property of William Shakespeare? How are these transformative uses of intellectual property so different from transformative uses of intellectual property for which no one is asking for money, and which tend to increase the amount of money flowing towards the owners of intellectual property not in the public domain, by making fans familiar enough with settings, characters, and plot of these stories to want to read/watch the originals for themselves?

[Cleta]

Works that have fallen into public domain aren't subject to the same laws as Harry Potter etc.

[Meg]

I can see why everyone wants to protect themselves from being sued, but I hardly think a legal organization is necessary. I always thought it was simple - fanfic writers don't write for profit and acknowledge that they're borrowing the characters and they don't face legal hassles. And the fanfic archives take action when someone breaks the rules of the site. Seems simple enough - why complicate it?

I write both fanfic and original fiction with the goal of getting the original fiction published one day. While I'll never read any fanfiction based on my stories because I wouldn't want to be influenced, I'd be flattered if people thought that much of the stories to want to start fanfic about it. Apparently the characters and stories mean enough to them that they aren't just willing to turn off the TV or put the book away with no further comment, which means I've obviously done something right.

RPF is something else altogether, but many fanfic archives don't support it anymore.

[Heidi]

"I do have to ask. Does Wicked by Gregory Maguire constitute an infringement upon L. Frank Baum's intellectual property? Do Disney's or Robin McKinley's or Mercedes Lackey's fairy-tale retellings constitute infringement on the intellectual property of the Grimm Brothers et al? Does the movie She's the Man constitute infringement on the intellectual property of William Shakespeare?"

No, because once they fall into public domain there is no infringing on intellectual property rights. It's perfectly legal to do as you wish with work in the public domain.

"and which tend to increase the amount of money flowing towards the owners of intellectual property"

Is there any actual evidence of this? Because following the discussion on Scalzi's blog, as well as several posts defending OTW on LiveJournal, this claim is never supported with more than anecdotal evidence.

"Fanfic doesn't lose anyone money, my friends and I spend MORE because of it!" is far from a legitimate legal defense.

[Mark Terry]

I'm not an attorney, so it's quite possible that there are legal issues I'm not familiar with here (quite probable, actually). But there does seem to be two primary issues.

1. Does fanfic negatively affect the income of the originator? I think you could argue that any effect, positive or negative, might come into play here.

2. Does fanfic affect the intent of the originator's work? This is a major issue and gets deeply into areas of intellectual property rights. And frankly, I don't see where fanfic writers have any legal basis for saying they have a legal right to do this. If I were to write, say, Harry Potter and the Department of Aurors, a straightforward tale that is, as much as possible faithful to JK Rowling's 7-book vision, but which picks up where she left off, with Harry going on to become an auror, although I might argue that I was in no way harming Rowling's books, as a matter of fact, I was infringing on her intellectual property. And, I would suggest, breaking the law and setting myself up for a major lawsuit.

If I wrote it and kept it in a drawer, no big deal. If I tried to have it published by a publisher, they wouldn't get near it because of the IP issues. If I self-published it, I'd get a cease-&-desist order so fast, I'd be better off taking a bushel of money and setting it on fire. If I post it online...

Hey fanficcers! That's publishing, you idiots! That's a copyright and IP infringement and it's illegal!

[Lee Goldberg]

My favorite comment among the 500 on Scalzi's blog is the one I quoted above..

"I'd like to see the rules set on fandom's terms.."
To me, that embodies the hubris and outrageous sense of entitlement that fanficcers have...at that OTW wants to legitimize (good luck on that one). They don't believe the original creator has any say in how his creations are used...that it should be decided on "fandom's terms." They think that just because they have read something or watched something that it's theirs.

Lee, OTW defines fandom as LiveJournal and female. As a male FanFiction.Net anime fan fiction writer, OTW does not speak for me and does not speak for most of fandom.

[Lee Goldberg]

I also thought it was pretty cocky of OTW to claim all of fandom as primarily an expression of feminism. In one fell swoop, they alienated 50% of their potential supporters.

I also wonder how they are going to determine what is fan expression and what isn't...and what fandom actions they will consider as part of their "fannish culture." They have set themselves up as the arbiters of what is or isn't fandom...which takes some chutzpah. Then again, that's typical of the outrageous sense of entitlement and hubris they are exhibiting in every other aspect of their misguided endeavor.

[jeanjeanie]

...former fanficcer.

Thanks for the link. ;-)

[Richard S. Wheeler]

For months I've tried to puzzle my way toward an understanding of fanficcers. How can it be that the same people who would be outraged if a mugger ran off with everything in their wallets are not outraged when they themselves mug the intellectual property of others?

I finally gave up on trying to understand the psychology, and have come to see the problem in terms of opportunity. Advancing technology has made publication cheap and universal, and this gives any larcenous literary impulse a free platform.

Worse, to take a gloomy view of it, technology is trumping intellectual property; anything can be easily pirated, and nothing devised so far to protect the originators, such as copyright or royalty payments, can stem the tide of piracy.

Roll back technology to a time when publication meant setting type and printing and binding books and then distributing them, all at great cost, and you reach a historic time when fanficcers weren't very active. The opportunity wasn't there.

[MercuryBlue]

No one involved in any fan activity is making money off it (except an idiot here and an idiot there, who of course get smacked down as quickly as the author can manage it). No harm, no foul. And perhaps the only evidence that fan activity tends to increase the author's profit is anecdotal, but that doesn't change the fact that a few more Naruto graphic novels have been sold than would have had I not decided to check out the Naruto fanfic written by the same fanauthor who writes one of my favorite Harry Potter fanfics, and been intrigued enough by the characters and setting to check out the original story.

Some authors support the idea of fanfiction, in its current form with no rights attached. J.K. Rowling is quoted as responding to the following question in the Comic Relief live chat transcript, in March of 2001 ( http://www.accio-quote.org/articles/2001/0301-comicrelief-staff.htm ):

---

Carrie: How do you feel about thousands of fans writing fanfiction about your books, and having them posted on the Internet?

J.K. Rowling: It's wonderful ... I love writing more than almost anything in the world so the idea that Harry has inspired other people to write makes me very happy.

---

So, accusations of evil intent based on stealing an author's characters and work can be overwrought. In the case of Harry Potter fanfiction, writing and posting fanfiction to the internet is supported by the copyright holder. She has been known to curtail use that she considers too mature, but historically only the extreme stories or sites.

I'm not a lawyer, but I would think any illegality is waved with permission of the author, as she has given by her supporting comments as quoted above and in other interviews.

Mike F.

[Peter L. Winkler]

"The question before the court," he wrote in his order, "is not who gets to write history, but rather whether Ms. Randall can permeate most of her new critical work with the copyrighted characters, plot, and scenes from 'Gone With the Wind' in order to correct the 'pain, humiliation and outrage' of the 'a-historical representation' of the previous work, while simultaneously criticizing the antebellum and more recent South."

http://e http://archive.salon.com/books/feature/2001/05/02/wind/ n.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wind_Done_Gone#Legal_controversy

The estate of Margaret Mitchell sued Randall and her publishing company, Houghton Mifflin, on the grounds that The Wind Done Gone was too similar to Gone with the Wind, thus infringing its copyright. The case attracted numerous comments from leading scholars, authors, and activists, regarding what Mitchell's attitudes would have been, and how much The Wind Done Gone copies from its predecessor. After the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit vacated an injunction against publishing the book in Suntrust v. Houghton Mifflin (2001), the case was settled in 2002 when Houghton Mifflin agreed to make an unspecified donation to Morehouse College, a historically African American college in Atlanta, Georgia in exchange for Mitchell's estate dropping the litigation.

[Richard S. Wheeler]

No harm, no foul, says MercuryBlue, defending fan fiction. But in fact there is grave harm, no matter whether the fanficcers make a dime. There is innate harm when an author or creator loses artistic control of a work or character. That may not result immediately in financial loss to the author, but it could in the future if an author's character is corrupted. Fan fiction compromises the artistic integrity of the work, and it destroys the very quality of the work. I have a series character I would dread to see corrupted by fan fiction, and would regard such efforts as actionable.

But I always return to the great mystery: why do fan fiction writers steal other people's literary or film characters instead of inventing their own? It is innately parasitic in artistic terms, if not financial terms. These people are literary leeches, unworthy even of contempt.

[kete]

Haha, Lee, I was wondering when you would catch onto the OTW coup and start to milk it for all it's worth.

In view of the above quoted Mitchell/Randall case I even might suceed with officially publishing my HP fanfic as I use a secondary character for a critical retelling of the HP books. Not that I will try, but I could - and probably get away with it.

And it was, of course, clear that you hadto bring this censorship thing up again. Fanfic is bad, very bad - but homoerotic fanfic? Perish the thought. What Lee Goldberg dislikes must naturally be illegal.

As someone said so poignantly, "You can't stop the signal." You can't stop fanfiction. No one can stop human creativity - whatever way it choses to go.

Why not just bend over and take it like a man? ;)

[P M Rommel]

Richard Wheeler says, "Fan fiction compromises the artistic integrity of the work, and it destroys the very quality of the work."

I call bullshit.

I mean, wtf? How exactly does fanfic do that? Does it take it out to cheap brothels and feed it bad gin? Make it read "Lolita"? Induce it to mainline Jackson Pollock? It surely doesn't matter how many fanfics are written about a work, or how bad they are, the original work is there on the shelf untouched for other readers to enjoy.

Bit like it doesn't matter how many crap directors re-tell the Iliad in less than glorious Technicolor. The Iliad is still there for me to enjoy, and it always will be.

In any case, surely the point of copyright isn't to protect the 'artistic integrity' of the work, but to protect the creator's right to profit from it. It's a mechanism of the market. It has nothing to do with artistic endeavour.

[MercuryBlue144]

The only reason the author of The Wind Done Gone got sued over it is because said author was trying to make money off it. (And hadn't gotten permission from the people who make money off Gone with the Wind, but that wouldn't have been enough for a lawsuit to be worth the effort, whether or not there'd be a legal basis for a lawsuit if there hadn't been money changing hands involved.)

One of the many reasons people write fanfic is that it helps one practice skills needed to write that Great Novel everyone dreams of writing. One cannot be a great author, or even a good one, without, among other things, being capable of keeping one's characters distinct from each other and acting like themselves. With fanfiction, there are already-defined characters; if one can stay true enough to those definitions that no one fusses at one for writing characters out of character, one is probably skilled enough to define one's own characters and stay true enough to those definitions within one's original story. If one cares to. Some people don't care to--they might like to write a Great Novel, but that involves more worldbuilding and character-building than they care to put in to a hobby. Are people who build model airplanes from kits instead of from scratch to be censured for not caring to put too much effort into a hobby?

And one could as easily say that Disney is a literary leech unworthy of contempt for producing Peter Pan, because Barrie had nothing to do with the Disney movie except write a stage play and a book decades earlier, and doubly so for Peter Pan: Return to Neverland, because no one involved with the first movie was also involved with the second.

(Also: Apparently I am a comment spammer. Why I was informed of this only after defeating two captchas, then informed again on the second try only after defeating a third captcha, I do not know. Hence using my other nickname and email.)

[Meg]

C.S. "Jack" Lewis was asked if he'd ever write any more Narnia stories after he finished the Chronicles of Narnia and he said he didn't plan to - but that he thought he left enough hints for other people to do their stories to continue on.

Realistically - I don't see how it could ever harm the original. Yes some people are going to take it to slash and other extremes, but nobody is going to take that serious enough to have that affect their judgement of the original work. If you don't like the quality of the fanfic you just stick to the actual series/book.

Why? Well, I don't know about book fanfic but in the case of television fanfic it's because I'm not content to only have 22-24 stories a year. Most shows I don't bother, but there is the odd one where I'm not content to just watch tapes/DVDs of reruns. And most series don't put out novels for tie-ins. (And even if they do - that's still not enough because they only last so long) I may have to wade through some bad stuff, but I'll check fanfiction just to give me something of a fix. For writing, it's to look at and explore the the information they didn't have time to cover and play with what might have happened if the story could have had more time were it not for constraints. Or because I want to play with how a character would respond to a situation that they haven't encountered yet that I wish they would. Or just simply play with the "What-if" question, which I've seen them teach in actual writing classes with movies or novels, just as an exercise.

[Herron Grieve]

Opinions are interesting for analysis, but need facts to be good argument.

A comment that begins "In fact," but provides none, is a case in point:

But in fact there is grave harm, no matter whether the fanficcers make a dime. There is innate harm when an author or creator loses artistic control of a work or character. That may not result immediately in financial loss to the author, but it could in the future if an author's character is corrupted. Fan fiction compromises the artistic integrity of the work, and it destroys the very quality of the work.

After "In fact," there is nothing but rhetoric.

The factual "grave" and "innate" harms are assertions without proof. Links? Court cases? I'm not seeing any harm except to authorial ego when someone doesn't read the character the way the author did, or god forbid, rewrites it to more popular. But that's what the arts are all about - improvisation and improvement. Deal.

Saying something "could result" in financial loss "in the future" is pure speculation. Courts don't accept this; neither do I.

"An author's character is corrupted... the artistic integrity... the very quality... " is destroyed.

What is an "uncorrupted" character - a virgin hero? Sort of like virgin fiber, that would be a book nobody has read. The second someone does, it's not the author's character any more. It's the reader's. (Ad lib sexual jokes here.)

Someone has mistaken his personal and subjective opinions of art, integrity, corruption, and quality for objective standards. Thank you for sharing your inner feelings with the group.

Moving on, here's a fact that can be (and is being) quantitatively and qualitatively assessed:

Most attacks on fanfic resort to a pseudo-authoritative tone (Fallacy of Authority), and rely not on facts but an hysterical mixture of art-critic pomposity (Fact-Values Fallacy), financial paranoia (Hypostasis, Slippery Slope Fallacy), bullying misogyny (Fallacy Ad Baculum, or argument to violence) and homophobic moral panic. (The futile stupidity of that last one stands on its own.)

The knee-jerk resort to bad reasoning and threat suggests the writers know little about fandom culture and feel threatened for a host of vague reasons revolving not around "writing" but something else. That other thing is the role of writing in supporting traditional race, class and gender power structures.

Fanfic challenges these control structures, especially as practiced by women, PoC, and non-heteronormatives or body-normatives working outside the for-profit economic sphere.

Traditional writers, critics and readers alike feel threatened by this kind of fanfic because they didn't invent it, can't make money off of it, and don't comprehend it intellectually or artistically. In retaliation, they seek to control it.

Fanfic doesn't seek to end normative profit-centered art, it simply seeks acknowledgment that there are multiple styles and reasons for doing art, of which fanfic is one. If Bollywood writers came to Hollywood, would they be accused of trying to "steal real writers' money," "corrupt the quality," or "destroy the integrity of art" because the Indian writers portray favorite characters differently? Because they have even the most macho cop-type guy burst into song? (Oh wait, that's been done.)

Hysterical rants about how fanfic steals our money, corrupts our morals, and destroys our culture are familiar to anyone who's studied the language of racism, anti-immigration, sexual puritanism and religious bigotry. It's an effort to reassert control through rhetoric, where facts are lacking.

Hate rants are not facts but bad fiction. Politically and artistically, they're not up to the standards of bad TV shows and airport novels, let alone fanfic.

[Ella]

"why do fan fiction writers steal other people's literary or film characters instead of inventing their own? It is innately parasitic in artistic terms, if not financial terms. These people are literary leeches, unworthy even of contempt. "

Mr Wheeler,

Let me preface by saying I'm not here to prozealotize or try to prove you wrong, but given the fact that fanfic *does* exist, and is written by people in huge numbers, perhaps it is worth treating the question of why they write fan fiction rather than original stories in a manner other than the rhetorical.

When a creator produces a serial work it is surely their aim to make their audience emotionally invested. A creator *wants* people to fall for the characters, to care about their stories and to want to keep coming back for more. Serial fiction is written with the *deliberate* artistic intention of getting the audience emotionlly hooked, is that not true?

As I understand it, the fanfiction urge comes from *that* impulse - the desire to sate an appetite which the original source material excited. Is it not evident that such a drive could never be satisfied by writing original fiction? The primary drive is not to write (though it is people who have a drive to write who see fanfic as the best outlet for the other drive). The primary drive is to further explore the world and characters in which they are invested.

You may call it parasitic, but it stems from a symbiotic coexistence of source material and fan investment which original creators repeatedly deliberately seek to cultivate.

It's one thing to write fanfiction, Ella, it's another thing to publish it on the Internet. I don't think Lee Goldberg or Richard Wheeler have anything against the act of writing fanfiction. Their beef is with the need to distribute it worldwide. I think it's clearly a violation of the creative rights of the authors when the fans do that. You can like a book or a show without trodding on the copyright of the authors and creators whose work you admire.

I don't think Lee Goldberg's problem is homophobia. I think his beef is with the twisting of characters into sexual roles that their creators didn't intend. In the case of Robin Reid, she is using real people, not fictional charcters, in her slash fiction. I don't see how the OTW or anyone else can call what Dr. Reid writes fanfiction or an expression of feminism. I am a woman and it sickens me (and not because of the gay angle. I'm a lesbian). I think Dr. Reid is showing an enormous disrespect for the actors she admires, their families and their loved ones. I can only imagine how the families and children of these actors feel when people like Robin Reid publish stories depicting them having sex with other people. It's one thing to depict the characters they play in sexual situations and it's another to use the actual actors themselves. I know how I angry and violated I would feel if I found a story about myself on the net having sex with a man. I know how hurt and angry my partner would feel and how confused our son would be.

[Lee Goldberg]

Typepad is behaving strangely today and sending a lot of legitimate comments -- even this one! -- to my SPAM folder. Don't worry, I am checking the SPAM folder and will post the genuine comments (those not involving deals on Xanax and penis enlargements).

[Richard S. Wheeler]

Mr. Rommel, fan fiction is usually devoid of character description, including each character's idiosyncrasies and each character's unique way of talking and dealing with others, because its writers assume that fanfic readers already know the characters. In typical fan fiction there is not even a physical description of the characters. That means that the work is incomplete and cannot stand on its own, and therefore it has limited artistic merit. Material that damages the author's characters, as fanfic does, is harmful. The harm I am talking of here has nothing to do with copyright, but with the aesthetics of the story and the characters. Or are you saying that the fan fiction version is on an aesthetic plane with the author's work even though the fan fiction version cannot even stand on its own? I hope you won't embarrass yourself with an argument like that. Go ahead, Mr. Rommel, kill the host and see if your parasites survive for long.

[TD]

"Fanfic challenges these control structures, especially as practiced by women, PoC, and non-heteronormatives or body-normatives working outside the for-profit economic sphere."

If that isn't the sentence of the year, I don't know what is.

I always thought I was fat. But now that I know I'm just non-body-normative, I feel so much better about myself. I think I'll celebrate by writing some fanfiction.

Hmmm. Who should take it up the ass?

[B. Archaon T.]

I happened upon your blog and took the time to read everything relevant to your views on fanfiction. I am aware that people rarely alter their opinions and this is hardly my intention. I couldn’t however stay silent and without expressing my points of view for anyone that might care.

First of all, this is not about the legality of fanfiction or lack thereof. Laws that cannot be enforced effectively are nothing more than waste of good flora. In the Web, a global environment of abundant, sometimes excessive, freedom, such enforcement is hardly feasible or even practical. Copyright laws might protect creators but more often than not they are meant to protect the profits of said creators. Unless a creator can prove loss of revenue, few courts would interpret the law in a way that would convict an often-penniless fanfiction writer. In fandoms with thousands of fanfiction writers the notion becomes absurd. Like beating a dead and mummified horse, I say.

The phenomenon of fanfiction is nothing more than a textbook case of the laws of supply and demand. By definition, readers/fans go through the official material faster than the creators can produce it. A reader might finish a book in six hours while the writer might have had to invest six months on its production. This surplus demand is covered by the fans themselves through fanfiction, fanart, fansites, fan conventions, etc. Notice that I’m not saying whether this is right, wrong, moral or immoral. It is simply natural and unavoidable in the societies we live in. Trying to suppress this current would only lead to tighter forms of ‘black market’ and, in extreme circumstances, damage the creator’s fame itself.

On the quality of fanfiction I’ll be blunt. To find good fan stories you have to wade through the excrements at the bottom of the pit of It (also known as ‘the stereotypical mother-in law’). 90 percent of fanfiction is crap. Another 8 percent is material with potential while only the top 2 percent would be considered publishable material (were it NOT fanfiction). However, that top 10 percent is worthy of the inconvenience for many fans. This is also very natural and true for aspiring professional writers. More than 90 percent of the manuscripts is rejected by the editors and a good thing it does.

I have noticed you often refer to Harry Potter fanfiction. While I have read the books and fairly enjoyed them, I usually won’t set a foot (i.e. mouse pointer) in that fandom’s fanfiction archives, unless someone I trust recommends a particular story. That’s because the community, while extensive, is still severely immature. The last book was only recently published and the target group is not quite yet consisted of adults. There is of course the subject of homosexual fanfiction (a result, I believe of sexual repression, but that’s neither here nor there). These… ‘works’ are not the majority, just the ones that prickle and ignite the ‘innocent’ public opinion. More often than not, they belong to the aforementioned 90 percent, which I’m personally not touching with a ten-foot pole. Not that I have anything against ‘gay’ people, or those who indulge in any kind of harmless and/or voluntary depravity.... when *out* of my senses' range.

It should also be noted that ‘slash’ is much more restrained in other fandoms. Akin to a camp fire, one must wait for the initially untamable flames to settle down before achieving anything useful, like cooking. In effect, wait for the idiots to get out of the fandom (And hopefully get out of the gene pool too. One can hope.)

As for whether fanfiction can aid a writer to achieve the very coveted published state, I theorize it can. I happen to be a non-native English speaker, although I want to believe I have reached a level where that matters little. I entered the fanfiction scene three years ago, starting just above the previously mentioned 10 percent. I’m pretty sure, after 300k words, both my grasp of the language and my style has improved a lot, perhaps even within that pinnacle 2 percent.

There are elements in fanfiction writing that can prepare a potential professional writer, provided he writes in a fandom with a portion of intelligent readers. Writers that are not up to par with the readers’ standards usually receive either silence, a constructive criticism review that exposes the work’s flaws or even the traditional ‘LOLOMGWTF YOU SUX0RZ!11!1!’. More potent stories receive variations of the also traditional one-liner (Good job out there. Now go write the rest!), the more common five-liner (recounting the reviewer’s highlights of that particular chapter) or, more rarely, the 500-words review. This last one mentions the good the bad and the ugly and can be anything between sugar-coated and brutally blunt. I personally love this last kind despite its potential sting, because somebody thought what I produce is good enough to essentially mini-edit it. While none of any potentially negative reviews is akin to a true-life rejection letter, I believe it’s good practice.

About the supposedly hypocritical plagiarism among fanfiction writers. Generally, ideas are free within a fandom. What is frowned upon is coping a story word by word, changing the names of characters and locations, or even a mere couple words, then pasting it on the net and taking full credit for it. Fans get very angry with such practices and would be even more enraged if somebody was to do the same with the original published work. After all, fanfiction writers write for the glory in the same way pro writers write for the money. While hardly the only reason, they get very cranky when their reward is transferred to another. On the other hand, an idea taken from another story and sufficiently improved/altered is a very common practice and generally leads to better fanfiction.

About the supposedly harmful effects of playing in another’s sandbox instead of forging your own characters and worlds. This is true for the less competent fanfiction writers who lack the talent to improve much more anyway. However, there is also the concept of original characters (OCs), either completely new or even already existing in the canon’s background as inconsequential. Reviewers are very brutal and demanding when it comes to OCs, often declaring them unrealistic and/or Mary Sues with little provocation. After that, incompetent writers generally quit while the more driven try harder. In addition, not all fanfiction is based on books. I have written quite a bit in video game fandoms, where the world descriptions, technology specifics and many characters’ personalities must be constructed from meager canon resources. While such pursuits do not offer complete freedom, they are a step above strictly defined fiction universes and are also the environment I generally thrive.

About profit from unlicensed fanfiction. I first started writing fanfiction because I thought I could do better than the majority and was proven right. In the process, I discovered the joys of storytelling and even began to crave the attention I was receiving. Finally, I learned the bittersweet victory of finishing a story or story arc. I never thought about profiting from something I’m basing even a little on somebody else’s universe. In fact, I believe that people like the spawner of ‘Another hope’ whose-name-shall-not-be-written should spend the rest of their lives being tortured via hot toothpicks or at least be banned from reading altogether (the horror!).

As for the ‘Organization for Transformative Works’, don’t be naive. They just want to gather donations. They want to make money out of clueless kids that think that because they write in a world, they automatically own it. In the unlikely event a creator from my fandoms was to use my ideas, I’d say more power to them. Not only do I get bragging rights, I also receive the message what I’m writing is actually worthwhile and from sources I respect more than any of my reviewers. They use my ideas for profit? So what? I never expected monetary gains in the first place.

As a footnote, I have to say that fanfiction was what introduced me to amateur writing. I’m already testing my limits, judging how much work I can output within a set amount of time, whether my original ideas and characters generally work, whether I have the tenacity to produce a story of multiple chapters and I also get a tiny glimpse to what the public reaction to my work could be. I have even started to experiment with original short stories. Some day soon, when I have judged myself to be able to produce truly publishable material, I might decide to try my hand (and keyboard) in the brutal world of professional writing, despite the additional barrier of having to contact editors in foreign to me countries. Should I be lucky enough to be published and should I be successful enough to actually attract a fanfiction community, I already know what my reaction will be. I’ll be flattered and ecstatic about those who sincerely try. I’ll be angry and bitter if I read about my characters being perversed and raped in sick ways, but I’ll also be aware that there is nothing realistic I can do. Above all, I’ll be hoping that some of my more talented fans will be able to enter the professional scene themselves and produce work I’ll want to buy.

Sincerely B. “Archaon” T.

[Matthew]

There is a legal remedy to the slash fiction with real people. You can sue for "misappropriation of likeness" or being placed in a "false light." Both are considered invasions of privacy and even celebrities can bring such suits.

And on a different note, what happens when a writer of fanfic posts his or her works on a web site with advertising?

[stephanie]

It's lawsuits like that which the OTW wants to prevent. They see it as an expression of womanhood and fan culture.
Up until now, I was on the fence about this fanfiction thing that Lee been railing against for so long. But now with this OTW silliness, I'm solidly on Lee Goldberg's side. These people are whacko.

[pfeffermuse]

Richard S. Wheeler wrote: In typical fan fiction there is not even a physical description of the characters.
.
.
.
If I recall correctly, Erle Stanley Gardner never provided a physical description for Perry Mason in his novels. Hence, the disparate difference between the Mason in the 1930s films vs the 1950s TV series.

The lack of descriptors is not a trait unique to fanfiction.

Pepper

[Iris]

I think it's very important that we don't confuse fan fiction based on original works and fan fiction based on real people. These are two separate issues with different legal and moral implications.

[P M Rommel]

"Mr. Rommel, fan fiction is usually devoid of character description"

'Usually' is a weasel word, Mr Wheeler. As a writer you should know that.

You'll also know from past discussions we've had that I would liken most fanfic on the web, not to published and edited works but to a slush pile of unsolicited manuscripts that will never see print. The best fanfiction is up there with the best books, the proviso being that very few fanfic writers are their own editor so editing sometimes isn't as good as it could be even in the "best of the best" fanfiction - but then I've seen some appallingly edited books see print.

RSW: "That means that the work is incomplete and cannot stand on its own, and therefore it has limited artistic merit."

Hmm...where to start with this one. Putting "therefore" in the middle of two statements does not necessarily mean that one follows the other, for example, 'The sky is blue therefore my cat is a microwave oven.'

I've read real, published books even by famous writers where the story was (in my opinion) so poorly put together that I was even more lost at the end of it than I had been at the beginning, but a good deal older and in a much worse temper. My favourite example of this is Golding's "Pincher Martin", which won prizes for literature. I still have no clue what that book was meant to be about (yes, I got that the 'island' was his own teeth) and do not care. I think that book had 'limited artistic merit' but clearly those who give out prizes for literature did not agree.

I suggest that, as someone else said, you're assuming that your own assumptions and tastes are obvious and are automatically shared by others. That is not the case.

RSW: "Material that damages the author's characters, as fanfic does, is harmful."

Unsupported assertion. You have yet to show that fanfic damages an author's characters. How, exactly, does a story in which (say), Aragorn does not marry Arwen but Éowyn instead damage Tolkien's original characters? The original remains untouched. (And, in this particular example, it may be helpful to note that it was the author's original intention was to have exactly that happen. Arwen was a later addition.)

RSW: "The harm I am talking of here has nothing to do with copyright, but with the aesthetics of the story and the characters."

But you still have nothing more than an unsupported assertion here. In what way does this mechanism operate? In what way is this damage demonstrated? Because I'm not seeing it.

RSW: "Or are you saying that the fan fiction version is on an aesthetic plane with the author's work even though the fan fiction version cannot even stand on its own?"

I have read examples of fanfiction which entirely stood on their own, and which were understandable without any prior knowledge of the original material. Now, it's likely that your next statement is going to be something along the lines of, "But that's so close to an original work that the writer should write their own stuff and get it published." or "They should become a 'real' writer."

To which my reply is, 'why should they?' For many fanfiction writers, writing is a hobby, an activity undertaken for amusement. Nobody, surely, tells Saturday footballers that they should cease to pay soccer until they can do so on a professional level. Or that they should make up their own game! Likewise, there are amateur musicians, actors, cooks and so on.

[Ella]

"In typical fan fiction there is not even a physical description of the characters. That means that the work is incomplete and cannot stand on its own, and therefore it has limited artistic merit. Material that damages the author's characters, as fanfic does, is harmful. The harm I am talking of here has nothing to do with copyright, but with the aesthetics of the story and the characters. Or are you saying that the fan fiction version is on an aesthetic plane with the author's work even though the fan fiction version cannot even stand on its own?"

Mr Wheeler, fanfiction qua fanfiction does not ever ask to be judged on its own merits alone. To divorce fanfiction from the source material is to change it so that it is no longer fanfic. You can then take a hot knife of aesthetic criticism to it and decide how well written it is as an original story, but that is to 100% miss the point of its original purpose.

Fanfiction asks the reader to judge it on the merits of its relationship to the original text. As you said, fans write for other fans and presume a familiarity with the source material. The currency of fandom is the canon. The source text is the gold standard. Spend any time at all watching fans talk on the internet and what you'll see is constant discussion of what is true and factual in the source text, which forms the boundaries of what will be accepted by most fans.

Read criticism of fanfiction by its readers and the common complaint you'll find is when something in the story does not conform to the source matierial. Love of the source material comes *first* and is of primary importance. Fanfiction is written in full knowledge and acceptance of that.

So when it comes to the aesthetic damage done to original worlds by fanfiction, I am left scratching my head and wondering do creators really believe their fans are so stupid that they can't distinguish the difference between the original source material which they love and with which they are enganged, and another fan's creative commentary upon that work? That they're too thick to decide for themselves whether they think a particular fanwork is a good or a bad derivation from the original?

If that's the case, it must be a constant source of delighted surprise everytime a viewer even manages to turn on the TV set, or opens a book at the right end.

[Sarcasmo]

All of your objections seem to be of a sexual nature. Are you repressed? Please keep in mind that the internet is for more than just Americans.

*I also thought it was pretty cocky of OTW to claim all of fandom as primarily an expression of feminism.*

You really have no idea about our history, do you? If it's got nothing to do with you, you don't care. Way to alienate 50% of your supporters.

[Erin]

"I think it's very important that we don't confuse fan fiction based on original works and fan fiction based on real people. These are two separate issues with different legal and moral implications."

Not to the people who write it or to the OTW. They sees it as fanfiction and an outgrowth of feminism. I'm a woman and I find the argument offensive. It demeans feminism and the battles we have fought and are still fighting today. All we need is for people to associate feminism with the childish, masturbatory, and probably illegal activity of a tiny percentage of women. That's the real danger of the O.T.W. and the one that we should really be worried about.

"Nobody, surely, tells Saturday footballers that they should cease to pay soccer until they can do so on a professional level. Or that they should make up their own game!"

There's no comparison, on any level, between people who play football and people who steal the creative works of others, distribute them worldwide, and claim the work as their own. Football is a sport, owned by no one, that anybody can play.

I suppose you could compare football to the act of writing as something anybody can do without being a professional. But that's about as far as you can take that comparison without looking ridiculous.

[Richard S. Wheeler]

Fan fiction damages an author regardless of copyright or financial issues. It damages the author's creations. Fan fiction usually lacks the essential story elements found in original drama and fiction. In original works, characters are carefully introduced. Their appearance, age, history, attitudes, beliefs, idiosyncracies are swiftly introduced because without them the stories make little sense. Fan fiction usually short-circuits these essentials, which is why so little fan fiction could be considered literature. This incompleteness damages the original author's characters, and potentially turns off potential readers or viewers.

A while ago an ardent advocate of fanfiction based in Germany emailed me one of her stories, based on a TV series I had never seen. What I found myself staring at was a jumble of male names; characters devoid of description, so that the episodes she sent meant utterly nothing. There was no way to connect with her work. She was, of course, engaged in the parasitic business of creating stories without creating or even bothering to describe the characters. It was very sad, actually, because she was obviously proud of her work.

I believe that abusive fan fiction does indeed damage the reputation of the original authors, by broadly publishing deeply inferior material based on the original work and creating public skepticism about the quality of the original work. It also is plain that the original author is deprived of artistic control, which in itself is damaging. However much these people believe they are engaged in a harmless pursuit, they are not: they are doing grievous injury.

[Lara]

"There's no comparison, on any level, between people who play football and people who steal the creative works of others, distribute them worldwide, and claim the work as their own. Football is a sport, owned by no one, that anybody can play."

Fanfiction does not steal from others (stealing implies loss to the original owner, and nobody's offered any evidence so far to support that apart from a lot of handwaving and calling other people perverts).

Fanfiction writers do not claim the work as their own. That strawman could use a little help from the Great and Powerful Oz. The liberty fanfic writers are taking is in expressing their interaction with the original source material in fictional form, rather than in watercooler conversation/academic papers/playing with action figures/adopting fashions inspired by the show/any other of a hundred ways audiences adopt cultural material for their personal use.

"All we need is for people to associate feminism with the childish, masturbatory, and probably illegal activity of a tiny percentage of women. That's the real danger of the O.T.W. and the one that we should really be worried about."

To meander off topic slightly, since you've positioned yourself as a defendent of feminism, doesn't it intrigue you at all that fanfiction is so predominantly written by women? In media fandom, figures in various studies have always found upwards of 85% of fanfiction to be written by women. In some fandoms, I would not be in the least surprised to find the percentage even higher.

If fanfiction is so morally reprehensible as you declare, does it give you pause at all to wonder why women do it? What is it that is lacking for them in popular culture which drives this impulse?

Cause I'm a woman too, and one who finds a cultural and emotional outlet in fanfic, and *I* find it offensive when a subculture which probably consists of tens of thousands of women all told are dismissed as perverts unworthy even of being allowed room for dialogue.

[P M Rommel]

Erin: "Not to the people who write it or to the OTW. They sees it as fanfiction and an outgrowth of feminism. I'm a woman and I find the argument offensive."

Way to conflate a series of disparate ideas.

'Real people fiction' isn't confined to fanfiction - it happens all the time and is (sometimes) accepted as art on its own merits. The film "Titanic" used real people's names and a real event as its basis - and some of the descendants of the real people concerned objected very strongly to the fictional use which was made of their ancestors.

Interestingly, they had no legal case - as soon as someone is dead they can be fictionalised all you want. If real people slash fans wanted to posit a relationship between Marc Bolan and John Bonham, they could do so until their eyes bubbled and nobody could do a damn thing about it. If they wished to do so about Robert Plant and Brian May, those gents might (depending on what the story said) have a case for libel. Or may not.

Now, anyone who's crossed swords with me before on this blog may remember that I am no supporter of real people fiction. I don't like it; it gives me hives.

That's not because I'm a woman or because I'm a feminist, though I am both those things.

It's because I think it's rude to use real people's names in fiction for the amusement of others, and that goes whether they're alive or - if they have living relatives -whether they're dead. Legal =/= moral.

That objection is all the greater when real people's names are being used in a Hollywood blockbuster; I hold that view because a lot of people get their history from films. It never seems to occur to them that the film-maker was telling a story, and one which is often at wild variance with actual events. It's unlikely that anyone reading RPF is going to mistake it for reality, not when there's a clear header saying, "THIS IS FICTION!"

I therefore think the person who made the original point was right. Real person fiction and fanfiction about a fictional creation are completely different and I think (I can't speak for them) that OTW hold that view, too. They are an umbrella organisation for both FPF and RPF, but they're not conflating the two into one.

[Adian]

"There's no comparison, on any level, between people who play football and people who steal the creative works of others, distribute them worldwide, and claim the work as their own. Football is a sport, owned by no one, that anybody can play."

I think you have it a bit wrong. If OTW is comparable to sports fans, it would be similar to sports fans creating an organization and sending out press releases claiming that as fans, they have the legal and moral right to tell the owners of a sports team how to run their organization. This includes telling them who to trade, who to keep, who they can approve as advertisers, when they can play their games and who they should chose as opponents. It sounds silly. Sports fans offer lots of commentary on owners, rail against what they see as stupid trades, condemn them for obtrusive advertising in a ballpark. They do not claim to be equal to the owners, nor do they threaten legal action to support that claim.

OTW supporters using that sports analogy, just plain silly and not thought out. I also expect better of the anti-OTW crowd, recognizing that analogy for the stupidity that it is.

[Jim]

One of the ugly truths out there that a discussion about the ethics of fan fiction is it forces us to confront what is “original.” The old adage that there is nothing new out there looms out there; taunting us would be writers with the possibility that our Great Idea for a novel might be a rehash of themes seen countless times before in different incarnations.

Is anyone really “original” anymore? Would Sir Arthur Conan Doyle consider Monk a derivative sham of his own eccentric crime solver? Would JRR be looking sideways at JKR about the characters in her works? Oh wait Dumbledore can’t be Gandalf – he’s gay.

Anyone think that any publishing company in today’s business is going to let one of their properties fall into the public domain? Me neither.

I’ve got a short story making the rounds. It’s the story of a pay per view Werewolf hunt set on October 31, 2020 (a blue moon on Halloween if anyone cares). Everyone in my writer’s group agreed that it was an entertaining use of 3000 words, but I soon found myself answering questions concerning whether it could be considered derivative to King’s (well technically his pen name’s) “The Running Man”, because of the game show aspect. This led to several posts in which I argued that applying that logic “The Running Man” could be considered derivative of “The Most Dangerous Game.”

Fan fiction removes the thin blurred line of what can be considered derivative. No longer is a person using themes that we’ve seen before or characters that are “familiar yet different.” They simply use the characters and settings without attempting to hide it under the guise of “original writing.”

Provided that piece of fan fiction isn’t directly making them money, I don’t have a major issue with it. Matthew above (and if it’s the same Matthew I know – incidentally involved in the “Running Man” vs “Most Dangerous Game” debate) comments that suppose a piece of fan fiction resides on a website that has advertising on it? I’ve heard that the Mugglenet website (which hosts news, interviews, and of course fan fiction) generates around $100,000/per year and essentially paid for the founder of that sites education at Notre Dame.

The fan fic writer making money off of using other peoples characters – bad.

A hosting site such as Mugglenet(dot)com or Fanfiction(dot)net making money off of hosting fan fiction via advertisers - ???

Someone told me recently that the woman behind the Princess Diary series of stories got her start writing fan fiction. More recently there’s a young adult writer signed by Simon and Schuster simply because of her large reader base for her fan fiction. Neither of these women made money directly from their fan fiction, but it obviously had a factor in their success.

Is it wrong for an aspiring writer to use fan fiction to develop and cultivate a reader base so that when they do publish their own original works that their sales are higher? Is that underhanded or creative advertising? I prefer the latter since it’s my own route.

Like most everything else, simple things become more complex and convoluted as more questions are asked, again forcing us to confront what is ethical, moral, or even legal.

Mr. Wheeler’s comments about rolling back the technology miss the fact that fan fiction really began with the Star Trek fanzines of the mid 1970’s – mailing lists without computers and whatnot. The computer age has made this much more accessible to everyone.

A quick look at your impressive list of novels shows that from 1973 to 1990 you produced 13 novels. In the next 17 year period you produced twice that number averaging two or more per year since 1999. I can assume the modern age which has only served to loose this digital larceny upon the world also might have had a hand in boosting your own productivity? You must acknowledge the good with the bad, sir.

As for these OTW people, they come off sounding like a paper tiger. I can’t picture them surviving the first onslaught of legal challenges. They’ll claim they’re doing it to “protect the fandom” and what not.

Me, I’m a bit more honest than that. I’m in it for me. I’ve little interest in whoring myself out to an agent, who will then pimp me to a publishing house. The rise in small and independent publishing means I have a shot to get started without kissing too many rings.

I was most impressed by the post by B. “Archaon” T. Good luck with you works.

[snoot]

Lee,

I don't know if you are still monitoring Scalzi's blog, but Robin Reid is back. Here is my favorite part of her comment:

"Re: female space. You are confusing fandom with media fandom and fanfic and fanvidding fandom elements. Many people make the mistake of using “fandom” when we really mean “the little corner of fandom I inhabit.”

My current fandom for example is LOTR (book and film), slash fiction (Fictional People Fiction, and Real People Fiction), in LJ. That is almost exclusively female, but it’s not all of fandom.

While there has been no demographic study done of fandom(s) (even pre-internet days), the existing scholarship on media/fanfic fandoms (done by Henry Jenkins, Camille Bacon-Smith, and Constance Penley) confirms my personal experience, the experience of the Board of OTW (mostly coming from media fandom and being heavily into both fanfic and fanvids, vidding pre-existing machanima or whatever that’s called), and the basic attendance at fan conventions which indicate a heavy female presence coming into fandom at large during the 1970s (Star Trek–I first came into organized fandom as a Trekkie myself). Women writers invented fan fiction (as stories written about characters in the media shows and some books). Previously, fanzines tended to focus more on essays, letters, con reports, evaluations of books and shows (what is now called “meta” — fan scholarship and evaluation)."

[snoot]

By the way, Lee, Fandomwank is once again attributing the comments of others, in this case Richard Wheeler's, to you and you are getting trashed for it. You might want to talk to them about it.

[Lee Goldberg]

Snoot,

I'm not surprised that other people's comments on my blog are being attributed to me. It's happened before and I don't think it's always accidental.

Lee

[Richard S. Wheeler]

When I was a book editor I received the second manuscript of a new series, from an author who went on to become a top-seller.

As I read it I was dismayed to discover that he hadn't reintroduced the characters that he created in his first novel. It is a rule of publishing that all series books must stand alone; a publisher or author can't assume that the purchaser of a subsequent novel has read the earlier ones. That means that in all cases, to avoid chaos, the characters must be reintroduced to readers in each work. The author resisted introducing the characters, and attempted to do it by inserting material from the first novel in italics. The book bombed. He hurt himself badly.

But here we have fan fiction writers displaying the same weakness. The characters are not introduced or refined, and this weakens their stories and confuses anyone who is not familiar with the original. In other words, these are works of so little merit, because they lack vital story elements, that they damage the reputation of the original. The absence of artistic control over fan fiction ipso facto damages the originator. The incomplete nature of fan fiction has a ruinous impact on the original. It really should be stopped cold.

[P M Rommel]

Snoot...if you have any evidence which would show that Robin Reid is wrong, let's see it. There's no use making unsupported assertions and none in a discussion she's not participating in.

My experience of specifically media fandom (25 years and counting) would indicate she's right. The only - and I mean *one* out of many - corners of fandom where my experience was that participation was slightly skewed toward a male demographic was Dr Who. Everywhere else, women predominated.

In fanfiction writing and reading, specifically, it seems to me to be around 95% women and I've been to fanfiction events which were 100% women.

[kete]

"A while ago an ardent advocate of fanfiction based in Germany emailed me one of her stories, based on a TV series I had never seen. What I found myself staring at was a jumble of male names; characters devoid of description, so that the episodes she sent meant utterly nothing. There was no way to connect with her work. She was, of course, engaged in the parasitic business of creating stories without creating or even bothering to describe the characters. It was very sad, actually, because she was obviously proud of her work."

Jesus Christ, Richard. Can't you at least *try* to get your facts straight before you make a comment? I did send you a link to Cesperanza's Due South fanfic "Eight Sessions" as it is my favourite entry fic to introduce people to slash. I never claimed that I had written this story and so could not be proud of it. And if you consider Ces' work inferior - to what exactly? to the show? to your own work? - because she doesn't bother with lengthy descriptions of the mountie and Ray K. which aren't necessary anyway - why, I think you still don't understand what it is about. And let me tell you that I consider Ces' work (style, writing talent) far superior to your own although she didn't get paid to do it.

[Jonquil]

Paul Cornell, scriptwriter for, among others, Doctor Who (co-Writer's Guild award winner), novelist, tie-in writer, and comics writer, has just posted fanfic to his blog.

http://paulcornell.blogspot.com/2007/12/twelve-blogs-of-christmas-six.html

Talentless unpublishable man that he is.

[Richard S. Wheeler]

Kete,

You sent me one of yours, and named the TV show it was based on.

[frakman]

Kete, considering you're an outspoken advocate and fan of child pornography, I'm not surprised that you would rank butt-fucking fanfic based on a Canadian TV show over the highly-acclaimed work of Richard Wheeler, the author of more than forty books, the 2001 recipient of the Owen Wister Award for lifetime contributions to Western literature, a four-time Spur Award winner, one of the most respected authors in the history of the western genre (he is the western equivalent of Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury or Arthur C. Clarke).

Your profound ignorance, lack of respect, arrogance and bad taste says more about fanfiction "writers" and their "readers" than anything else I've read on Lee Goldberg's blog.

I don't know why Lee let's you continue to post on his blog. The stench carries.

[kete]

"You sent me one of yours, and named the TV show it was based on."

Richard, at the time we corresponded I had not written any fanfic for TV shows, only for LOTR and HP.

And frakman, dear, I'm a gen-writer and don't read kiddie-porn. I have, however, stated and stand by it, that in my opinion people may write whatever they want, even if it is not to my taste.

[Richard S. Wheeler]

Kete,

If my memory is failing me, then I apologize to you. I've switched computers and no longer have the material.

[Fay]

"But I always return to the great mystery: why do fan fiction writers steal other people's literary or film characters instead of inventing their own? It is innately parasitic in artistic terms, if not financial terms. These people are literary leeches, unworthy even of contempt."

::sighs::

Well, your list of literary leeches beneath contempt must then include Neil Gaiman, Joan Aiken, Helen Fielding, Gregory McGuire, Jean Rhys, Carrie Bebris, Tom Holt, Barbara Hambly, Gregory McGuire, Roald Dahl, Geoffrey Chaucer and William Shakespeare, to name but a few.

It must also include the writers of children's books such as 'The Three Little Wolves and The Big Bad Pig', or 'The Stinky Cheese Man.' (Teaching children to write sequels to beloved stories, or alternative endings to said stories, is an explicit part of the British National Curriculum, incidentally.)

(Out of courtesy to Mr Goldberg, we shall perhaps draw a veil over the whole business of people who write books based on other people's television shows, rather than inventing their own characters. I am sure you did not mean to insult our host.)

Taking pre-existing stories and characters and working with them is its own discipline, Mr Wheeler. Nailing character voices and psychology in such a way that people who love those characters will recognise them in your retelling is a challenging (and enjoyable) task in its own right. Then again, at other times it is the *universe* that someone is intrigued by, rather than the characters - one of my favourite 'Star Trek' spinoff novels, as a kid, was 'The Pandora Principle', which took a minor character from the Trek movies and sent her to a Romulan world as a spy. I found it quite fascinating. Conversely I have just bought Hambly's book 'Renfield', which promises to retell Dracula from the pov of the titular bug-eater; in this instance I'm not expecting any great expansion of Stoker's universe, but I *am* looking forward to seeing events and characters presented from a different perspective.

'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead' is a rather delightful example of what fanfiction does and how it functions. Stoppard's play is a response to 'Hamlet', and it makes precious little sense to a reader or viewer who is not already familiar with Shakespeare's play. Its impact, its humour, its cleverness and its pathos all depends upon the interaction between the two texts. Now, of course Stoppard is profiting from his art - and, moreover, he is in the happy position of knowing that the creator of the source text has long since shuffled off his mortal coil and thus cannot protest at the misrepresentation of his characters. But it seems highly unlikely that Shakespeare would have had any such objections, given that all but 2 of his plays were themselves retellings of other people's stories.

Similarly the recent 're-invisioning' of the 1970s SciFi show 'Battlestar Galactica' takes a setting, a plot and a collection of characters invented by someone else and then remixes and reinvents characters, motivation, context and narrative arcs with great success.

In short, Mr Wheeler, many people - perhaps most people - enjoy interacting with texts by playing the 'what if' game. This may be simply a matter of speculating with a fellow fan about what will happen in the next movie/episode/volume of an ongoing narrative. You will also find that people have many different interpretations of texts and characters; in any group of undergraduates, or any weekly meeting of a book group, you will find a wide array of different perspectives on what happens and why. You will find people's readings of character and motivation are influenced by their own experiences, by their own gender, race, sexuality, class etc etc etc. Jane Austen was probably not consciously making statements about colonialism in her books, but readers who are familiar with Edward Said will nevertheless view her books with an awareness of how colonialism underpinned the characters' lives (as the most recent film adaptation of 'Mansfield Park' emphasised).

Certainly fanfiction does not work in the same way as an original text. Writers do usually avoid patronising their readers with extensive scene-setting and character-describing, in much the same way that one does not waste time explaining the appearance and function of a kettle or an iPod in an original text - because it is needless and dull to do so. Introducing familiar characters and describing their appearance, within the context of fanfiction, is actually BAD writing; it's rather like a novelist reintroducing and redescribing their characters at the start of every new chapter, or a TV show doing the same at the start of each episode. The reason the reader is there in the first place is because they already know the characters and the setting and the story.