FanFiction is a Gift (A Writer’s Perspective on FanFiction)

This is the last planned post of my weekly series of guest posts on FanFiction. Every Friday for the past few months, an eclectic mix of writers will guest-post on FanFiction (please go here for a controversial definition). You will be hearing from Computer Science majors and published authors and FanFic writers and Drama geeks and articulate fans. FanFiction is fascinating to me because it brings up issues of technology and copyright, originality and creative derivation, gender-norms and digital communities.

This week we are hearing from Sinead Toolis Byrd. Sinead is tje creator of Little Dead Girls, an innovative comic about the daily struggles and triumphs of a millennial and her friends. Sinead is completing her bachelors at Berkeley a year early, and will be starting her Masters work at the Savanna College of Art and Design in 2010. In her free time, Sinead watches anime, designs doll-costumes, and, of course, draws. She plans to run Disney one day.

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As a writer and a future novelist hopeful I have often been asked about my opinion on the institution (or chaotic lack thereof) of fanfiction and fan created substance. Fanfiction, if you are unaware, is when fans take the characters, events, and story of another author and writes material using these pre-fabricated conditions as the base of their story. This can be done to explore relationships that the new author wishes were present, or sent the characters on wild new adventures, in short, a fantasy world with a fan’s favorite Stars orbitting brightly.

Some authors have such a negative reaction to fanfiction that they ask major fanfiction websites to ban fanfiction of their stories. But personally, ‘Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery’, and if my own work was to become a hotspot for such work I would gladly welcome it. I am not naive enough to not realize that my beloved characters are going out into the world to be maimed and brutalized; that many ways in which others treat them will be disturbing or perverse, however I feel that the fans mere expression and time is a gift unto the author. To have fans that think enough of your work to throw themselves into your world and try to understand it, is truly a gift.

As a writer, and as a fanfiction writer, I believe that fanfiction is a perfect medium for a fan to express their gratitude to the original author.

Inspirational Quote:

“If we believe in the freedom of individuals, we must necessarily be interested in whether the functioning of the media contributes to that freedom or not. The ways in which freedom may be helped or hindered by the media are far from simple and far from clear. We tend to frame the questions in terms of our own underlying assumptions about history and the way the world works.”–Judith L. Tabron

Writing for Fun (Not Profit)

We are now well into my weekly series of guest posts on FanFiction. Every Friday for the next few months, an eclectic mix of writers will guest-post on FanFiction (please go here for a controversial definition). You will be hearing from Computer Science majors and published authors and FanFic writers and Drama geeks and articulate fans. FanFiction is fascinating to me because it brings up issues of technology and copyright, originality and creative derivation, gender-norms and digital communities.

This week we are hearing from Adiva Calandia (nome de plume) writes fanfiction (mostly about obscure fandoms and with a truly incredible focus on bizzare crossovers), as well as singing the occasional filk and editing the occasional fanvid.

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When Jessica asked me to write a post about fanfiction for her, I was terribly enthused. Fanfiction’s been part of my life for . . . well, my memories vary. It may have been when I was about eleven, and I started writing a truly horrific Harry Potter story about an ~American transfer student~ who was ~mute~ and ~secretly a werepanther~. I wonder if that’s still on my hard drive . . . Anyway, the point I usually count from is my seventh grade year, when I was thirteen, and The Fellowship of the Ring came out. My first foray into Lord of the Rings fandom was just as horrific, believe me — something about a half-elf who fell in love with Aragorn and ultimately sacrificed herself tragically, I don’t even know, there was a lot of overwrought symbolism with doves and brown eyes and Celtic songs — but it was my first foray onto fanfiction.net. I lasted there until about halfway through high school, I think.

Anyway, so. Counting from my first “official” fanfic, shared with the terrifying wilds of the Internet, I’ve been writing fic for the last seven or eight years. Counting from my private stories on my hard drive, it’s been ten — nearly half my life.

So of course I’m qualified to talk about fanfiction and will have all kinds of insights these folks who just consume don’t, right?

. . . Um . . .

Actually I don’t have the first clue what to write about.

Jessica suggested I write something from a feminist standpoint, about how the majority of fanfic authors and consumers are female, and how the majority of patent and copyright holders are male, and that makes the negative reaction of the establishment towards fanfiction a gendered move . . . and that’s an awesome idea and someone should totally write that post, but I’m just — not legally minded enough on that front.

I guess I oughtta be. There is a not insignificant chance that someone like Thomas Harris (Silence of the Lambs) or Phillip Pullman (His Dark Materials) or Diane Duane (Young Wizards) could decide to sue me. (Well, not that last one, probably. Ms. Duane is not only very encouraging of her fans, right down to sanctioning a collaborative fanwork based on her books, but she got her start as an author writing Doctor Who and Star Trek stories. She still references both canons in her books on a regular basis. If that ain’t an author sympathetic to fans, I don’t know who is.)

Anyway. So I should probably be a little more concerned about that whole infringing-copyright-for-my-weekend-kicks thing. Obviously, I’m . . . not. And frankly I’m not particularly qualified to talk about copyright infringement, or the gendered politics of accusations of same, or what have you, so . . . I’m gonna skip that.

What I can talk about it why I write fanfic.

Or at least, that was what I figured when I started writing this. I figured I could pin it down in some nice academic phrase about engaging with the text and exploring avenues ignored by the authors, aaaaand . . . yeah, okay, there’s some of that. For instance, I started writing a story about a year ago about what circumstances might prompt the Doctor, of Doctor Who, to regenerate in female form — a Time Lady rather than a Time Lord. It’s currently simmering on my metaphorical back burner, along with about four other multi-part epics in various fandoms. Writing four-to-ten page papers every few weeks in college is a great way to lose track of the stuff you’re writing for fun.

–Oh, wait, did I just define it? “Stuff you’re writing for fun”?

Because that’s the thing. Whether I’m writing a parody of “I’ve Got a Theory” (“Once More With Feeling,” Buffy the Vampire Slayer) starring the cast of Heroes, or a multi-part epic about Nita Callahan (Young Wizards) teaming up with the Winchester boys (Supernatural) to fight demons, I’m writing this stuff because frankly, it’s fun.

There are plenty of other reasons, too. I have written something fannish just about every day since seventh grade; that means I’ve been writing something every day for the last eight years. Look in any writing book and it’ll tell you that the best way to get better at writing is to do it constantly, and while I may not meet the thousand-words-a-day mark or whatever some people recommend, I do still write every single day. As a result, I flatter myself I’ve become pretty deft with words. (As empirical evidence, I point to the number of papers I’ve written at the last minute over the last two years at college that still somehow managed to get A’s.)

When I was in seventh grade and I told my friends, bursting with delight, that I had started a new story the night before, but this one wasn’t a Lord of the Rings story, it was a Sherlock Holmes story, I was greeted with sighs, eye rolling, and “Why don’t you write something original?” It was crushing. (I was thirteen. I got over it.) And that “Why don’t you write something original?” refrain is the reason I don’t tell most people I write fanfic — not because I’m afraid of being sued for copyright infringement.

And the thing is, it’s a stupid question. One friend* described it thus:

It drives me crazy, whenever the “why aren’t you writing your own stuff?” argument comes up: people who knit aren’t expected to become artisans, people who cook aren’t expected to become chefs, people who write shouldn’t be expected to become published writers. It’s a whole different animal.

Other fannish friends** agreed:

There’s a whole undercurrent to our culture that if you like something and if you’re good at it you should/will want to get paid for it. There are lots of times people tell me “you should sell those” when they seem me knitting something. I may or may not reply to them with a) there’s no way someone would pay me what my time & effort is worth and b) I don’t necessarily want to do it for pay. That’d suck all the fun out of it. But my not being terribly interested in getting paid for it doesn’t mean I don’t try to improve and learn more.

I enjoy writing on its own merits (as evidenced by how long this post is getting). It’s a pleasurable activity. You might as well just ask me why I write.

There’s also a community aspect, which really I could just devote a separate post to and still not cover everything, so I’ll say this, piggybacking off the earlier idea of “writing every day, even something fannish, makes you a better writer”: if you publish a short story or a poem or even a novel, the most feedback you get on it may be just the notes from your editor. You never know.

When you write a fanfic and you post it, on fanfiction.net or LiveJournal or Dreamwidth or alt.callahans or anywhere else on the Internet . . . the Internet will let you know how it is. Fans can be hugely supportive and gentle and encouraging; fans can be brutally cruel. (Fans can occasionally be unhelpful: “omg this is soooo good more pls!!!”) Having received feedback from all over the spectrum, including the flaming end, I can tell you that there’s nothing like fan feedback for improving your writing. (I thought about including here the tragic story of how I got flamed for one of my terrible Lord of the Rings stories — seriously, it’s tragic, and the more I think about it the more I want to dissect it, and it taught me more about Internet decorum than almost anything else that I’ve ever read or experienced — but it’s long-ish.)

And besides: fans are fun. Some of my best friends are fans, and I don’t even know what they all look like.

Anyway, look. To say that fanfiction is fun, and useful to me as a writer, is not to say that it’s not also an important part of the copyright fight, or of the literary world in general. (My definition of fanfiction tends to be so broad as to count Gregory Maguire’s Wicked or Neil Gaiman’s “The Problem of Susan” as fan-works, although I know at least one person in this series would disagree with me violently.) But I don’t feel like thinking about it like that. I don’t think about shooting hoops in the driveway as an important part of my cardiovascular health, or as practice for a real game. It is those things.

But it’s also just fun.

And I’m not aiming for the NBA any time soon.

*Miss Lucy Jane (a pseudonym), who not only writes wonderful Torchwood fanfiction, but has published one novel and several short stories, and is working on a screenplay (and, I think, another novel). When she talks about publication, she knows what she’s talking about.

**Countess, whose knitting is beautiful and creative, and whose writing is the same.

Inspirational Quote:

“I feel like a lot of people are drawn to writing fic or RPing because writing is something they don’t know how not to do.” (this quote is from Esther, who I blame for at least one of my writing projects).

The Meaning of Feeling Elephants

I will be in the mountains for the week, so this will have to tide you over until I get back–I will miss you!

I just sent an email where I answered the question: what does the title of your blog mean? I would usually just point the questioner to “Feeling Elephants: the title explained“, but I felt inspired and decided to tell the story in my own voice. It is an old Indian folk story.

There were once 3 blind men walking down a road. They came upon an elephant. The first blind man put up his hands, and felt the elephant’s trunk:

“A snake!” he cried.

The second blind man knelt down to the ground, and felt the elephant’s foot:

“A small tree!” he corrected.

The third blind man walked around, trailing his hand along the elephant’s side:

“You are both wrong. It is simply a wall,” he declared.

The moral of the story is that large, complex problems (like an elephant in the road), can only be fully understood by analyzing small portions of them in great detail. Each blog post I write is an attempt to feel an elephant–I do not write a post about “is fanfiction good or bad?”; I write (and currently, edit guest posts about) small pieces of the fanfiction problem, such as whether it is covered under the fair use doctrine or whether a better term might describe the genre.

The idea of feeling elephants helps me keep on track when I am writing and a post gets too large, starts dealing with too many issues. I remind myself that my job is to only feel a piece of the elephant, and leave the rest to another day. This is a lot like Anne Lamott’s one-inch picture frames, or E.L. Doctorow’s quote below about writing a novel by only seeing as far as you headlights. Though I only deal with tiny portions of huge issues, after writing dozens of these little issues I get a fuller picture of what I am writing about. I can only write about as much as a blind man can see of an elephant, but even just that will eventually show me the whole picture.

Inspirational Quote:

“Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”— E.L. Doctorow

The Tasteful, Tasty Bite-Sized FanFic

We are now well into my weekly series of guest posts on FanFiction. Every Friday for the next few months, an eclectic mix of writers will guest-post on FanFiction (please go here for a controversial definition). You will be hearing from Computer Science majors and published authors and FanFic writers and Drama geeks and articulate fans. FanFiction is fascinating to me because it brings up issues of technology and copyright, originality and creative derivation, gender-norms and digital communities.

This week’s post is from my friend, Kendra Lee: Kendra is a junior Dramaturgy student at Carnegie Mellon University. She maintains a blog about feminism, pop culture, etiquette, and criticism at www.straightupjank.blogspot.com (a blog so fantastic it is one of the few I have listed on my blogroll). She’s a feminist and an elitist and proud to be self identified as both of those things. She doesn’t wear colors. She has great taste.

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I never knew or cared about fanfiction until Jessica asked me to write this guest post for her. My only brush with the subject was some Hermione+Ginny erotica I found online a few years ago, completely accidentally, and because of that (horrifying) experience I didn’t hold the fanfic genre in extremely high esteem. I was prepared to write all kinds of disparaging things about it, but I’ve discovered one aspect of it that is completely awesome, intriguing, and obsession-worthy.

Wild Mass Guessing is incredible. It’s a form of fanfiction in which the writer makes (you guessed it) wild mass guesses about the original art. Like in “Finding Nemo“, Dory could have lived in an aquarium (a big, public one, where she learned how to read and speak whale). Juno might be Junie B. Jones (from the books) all grown up. WALL-E’s plot occurs in the distant past, and the events were later distorted into legend and became the basis for The Bible. Kenneth from 30 Rock is related to Forrest Gump.

It seems so obvious!

This is really the best of all possible fanfiction worlds. Wild Mass Guesses incorporate all the creativity, fun, and devotion of traditional narrative fanfic, but none of the possibly offensive subversion of the beloved source material. The “Wild Mass” label give the writer carte blanche to posit any crazy theorem they want to. It’s just a guess, so why NOT go crazy? The writer effectively sheds several layers of super ego when she puts her ideas under the WMG label. If I had first heard that Hermione and Ginny Got It On in the Gryffindor girl’s dormitory in that way, and not by accidentally reading most of an awkwardly long, poorly written, and hella creepy narrative, I may have been more receptive to the idea and maybe I wouldn’t have thrown up a little in my mouth. The WMG label is a way to frame an idea about characters and situations that is fun and inoffensive to those who also have very clear and strong opinions
about the characters and situations in question.

It’s the quick-’n-dirty (and easy) way to write and read fanfiction. One doesn’t have to match the character’s specific language patterns or the source material’s author’s voice. Bad writers can make good WMGs. There’s no need to craft paragraph after paragraph to flesh out a situation. Just make the guess, bust out a sentence (or tweet!) about it. It’s quick to read and a good way to look at your favorite art in different ways. No pressure, low stakes. Fun.

In The Venture Brothers, maybe Dr. Girlfriend and Brock have had a relationship in the past. Little orphan Annie probably grows up to be a huge Paris Hilton-style spoiled brat. Maybe in Into the Woods, the Mysterious Man is Jack’s father too?

Inspirational Quote:

“To be simple is not always as easy as it seems.”–Ferdinand Hodler

Are Disney’s Most Successful Movies FanFiction?

In a neat take on Disney’s famous derivitiveness from Real Life (a good, geeky comic).

Inspirational Quote:

“We are here to add what we can to life, not to get what we can from life.”–William Osler

Are Jack and Will A Legal Pairing? (Maybe)

This is the third post in a new weekly series titled FanFiction Fridays. Every Friday for the next few months, an eclectic mix of writers will guest-post on FanFiction (please go here for a controversial definition). You will be hearing from Computer Science majors and published authors and FanFic writers and Drama geeks and articular fans. FanFiction is fascinating to me because it brings up issues of technology and copyright, originality and creative derivation, gender-norms and digital communities.

This week Matthew Alexander Holmes writes about the trouble with telling when fanfiction is fair use. Matthew does not read fanfiction recreationally, but is a nationally competitive gymnast and has duel Computer Science and Public Policy majors at William and Mary. His favorite authors are George R.R. Martin, Terry Pratchett and Orson Scott Card, and he writes strategy games in Java for fun.

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One of the complaints made against fan fiction (such as by George R.R. Martin) is that it infringes the copyright of the owner of the original work. In Martin’s words,

“The reasons most authors frown on fan fiction are legal. If you do not defend your copyright, legally the case can be made that you have abandoned it, and you lose all ability to protect your work.”

While a reasonable position to take, it does beg the question: is fan fiction a violation of copyright? If it is, I personally find it hard to fault Martin for his stance, though I am not sure I would agree with it. But if there is no copyright violation, then why take a hostile stance against fan fiction?

It is at this point that we turn to fair use, which is one of the better options for defending fan fiction on the copyright issue. For those of you not familiar with fair use (though that number is likely small given the author of this blog ),

“In its most general sense, a fair use is any copying of copyrighted material done for a limited and “transformative” purpose such as to comment upon, criticize or parody a copyrighted work. Such uses can be done without permission from the copyright owner. Another way of putting this is that fair use is a defense against infringement. If your use qualifies under the definition above, and as defined more specifically in this section, then your use would not be considered an illegal infringement.”

Of course, as that source goes on, figuring out what exactly a “transformative purpose” is would be the main source of problems for conscientuous fanfiction authors; there is no detailed checklist of factors to go down and settle the matter. The broad categories suggested are commentary/criticism or parody, but proving that any individual work either does or does not fit into these categories is far from simple.
Still, it is safe to say that most fan fiction fails to meet the standard for fair use; it may be an entertaining story, but a Will Turner-Jack Sparrow pairing which otherwise basically follows the Pirates plot does not qualify as commentary or parody. But it is not an impossible standard for fan fiction to meet either; another Will/Jack story could qualify if it was deliberately written in protest for a lack of homosexual characters in the original work, at which point the author would have solid ground to defend themselves. Two works, both derived from the same original work, with the same basic change to it, could have a different legal status. Which leads to the conclusion that each work of fan fiction has to be evaluated on an individual basis to see if it violates the copyright of the original author, and that the intent of the author must be included in this evaluation.

Unfortunately, while that would be an ideal solution, there is far too much fan fiction for an author to reasonably try to keep track of which works are in violation and which are not; it’s simpler for authors to assume that fan fiction is a violation and, if they care enough, force fan fiction writers to defend themselves. If that is a good thing or not… is probably long enough to leave for another day

Inspirational Quote:

“The best fantasy is written in the language of dreams. It is alive as dreams are alive, more real than real … for a moment at least … that long magic moment before we wake.
Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli. Reality is plywood and plastic, done up in mud brown and olive drab. Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey, cinnamon and cloves, rare red meat and wines as sweet as summer. Reality is beans and tofu, and ashes at the end. Reality is the strip malls of Burbank, the smokestacks of Cleveland, a parking garage in Newark. Fantasy is the towers of Minas Tirith, the ancient stones of Gormenghast, the halls of Camelot. Fantasy flies on the wings of Icarus, reality on Southwest Airlines. Why do our dreams become so much smaller when they finally come true?

We read fantasy to find the colors again, I think. To taste strong spices and hear the songs the sirens sang. There is something old and true in fantasy that speaks to something deep within us, to the child who dreamt that one day he would hunt the forests of the night, and feast beneath the hollow hills, and find a love to last forever somewhere south of Oz and north of Shangri-La.

They can keep their heaven. When I die, I’d sooner go to middle Earth.”
— George R.R. Martin

A Deeper World Through FanFiction (FanFiction Fridays continued)

This is the second post in a new weekly series titled FanFiction Fridays. Every Friday for the next few months, an eclectic mix of writers will guest-post on FanFiction (please go here for a controversial definition). You will be hearing from Computer Science majors and published authors and FanFic writers and Drama geeks. FanFiction is fascinating to me because it brings up issues of technology and copyright, originality and creative derivation, gender-norms and digital communities.

This week Tiffany June Lin writes about fanfiction as a way to deepen flat original universes. Tiffany June Lin is a fanfiction reader (Fanfiction.net username: kuailongkit (favorites only)). Her hobbies include singing a cappella, acting in her dorm musical, and, of course, reading fanfiction. In real life, Tiffany is an Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT.

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I am an avid fanfiction reader, not a writer, by any sense of the term. You can probably see why, after reading this post. But I’ll do my best. I will not give you philosophy. Instead, I shall explain the appeal of fanfiction.

I started reading fanfiction in middle school, and haven’t stopped. For me, it is more than just a hobby, it is an escape from our boring world. But why has fanfiction captured my attention so much? It is because of all the random hijacks that the fanfiction authors make their borrowed (without permission) characters do. I do not deny that I would love to have the chance to meet up with a few of my favorite authors and grab their signatures, sometimes more than I wish to meet the original author. Why would this be? The authors write such captivating stories, to prompt fans across the globe to write stories based on their characters. But sometimes, it is only the plot that is fascinating. Perhaps the characterization of fan favorites is just a little lacking, turning the characters into two dimensional caricatures.

Perhaps I should start with one of my favorite fandoms, Harry Potter. As an elementary school student, when the first few books came out, I found myself fascinated with the world. Now, as an adult, I find that when I reread the books, I look primarily to the characterizations, and find them lacking. Truly, the Harry Potter series was written for children. My favorite character is Severus Snape, because he is the most complex character.

But let’s analyze the other characters first. Perhaps I am being a little harsh, but all we have are a rule-abiding bookworm, a Quidditch-obsessed slob, and a hero for the three main characters. They don’t have any depth, and it’s insanely easy to predict what they would do next. Harry will always try to solve the problem by himself, try to keep everyone else safe. How boring. Hermione always runs to the library and believes that the adults are correct. Other than Umbridge, who was blatantly unfair. Ron… well, he has jealousy simmering under his idiotic exterior. How hard is it to write someone with a little more character than that? What’s worse is Ginny, who I have always seen as a ‘boy-who-lived groupie’ or simply as ‘Ron’s younger sister’, manages to get together with Harry after having no real interaction with him. I don’t understand.

The reason that fanfiction is so interesting is that it takes these boring characters, and creates a depth for them, creates some other motives that drive them, and makes them more interesting to read about. Instead of the (to me) nonsensical union between Hermione and Ron, and Harry and Ginny, we have interesting, fresh relationships like Harry and Luna, Harry and Hermione, and (one of my favorites) Harry and Tonks. These pairs aren’t as common as Harry and Ginny. But they’re interesting and they make sense to me.

Maybe this is only because I read too much fanfiction. But ultimately, I believe a good fanfic is one that takes the characters, places them in a situation, and makes it believable. How different is that from say, writing a sequel? The only difference is that the writers aren’t the same author.

Inspirational Quote:

“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand.”–Marie Curie

The Other F-Word: An Author’s Bid to Reclaim FanFiction

This is the first post in a new weekly series titled FanFiction Fridays. Every Friday for the next few months, an eclectic mix of writers will guest-post on FanFiction (please go here for a controversial definition). You will be hearing from Computer Science majors and published authors and FanFic writers and Drama geeks. FanFiction is fascinating to me brings up issues of technology and copyright, originality and creative derivation, gender-norms and digital communities.

Beginning the series is my good friend Lilly, or Lillian DeRitter: Lillian DeRitter is a Directing Major at the Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama. She recently won the Carnegie Mellon University Press Prize for Fiction.

Enjoy!

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In an earlier post, Jessica applied the term “fanfiction” to works like “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead” and The Red Tent. My largest objection to this is semantic: the word “fan.” “Fan” immediately sets up an unequal relationship between original creator and derivative author. When artists treat their fans well, we pat them on the back.

Oh, how kind you were to give that lady an autograph when you were out shopping!

Oh, how lovely of you to stop and talk to fans on the red carpet!

Celebrities and producers talk a lot about thanking their fans, about being responsible to their fans, but aside from the odd “Day with ____” contest, they rarely spend more than a minute with one of their admirers. A fan is somebody who is so separated from the object of their admiration that if that object stoops to acknowledge them, he or she is expected to be grateful for it. That is not how literature should be treated. Ever.

All art is derivative, this is something every creative artist knows unless they are a very ignorant and self involved individual (and that person is derivative too.) Every work of art, experience, telemarketing call, and traffic ticket goes into an artist’s little bag of tricks. An artist cannot think “what if…?” if there is no what in the first place. Yes, not all of us create derivative work in the copyright sense (i.e. work that includes major, copyright-protected elements of an original, previously created first work), but we are all derivative. Why put a word in there that makes the author of a derivative work completely beholden to the author who influenced them, especially when, in the case of “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead”, the author has been dead for over four hundred years?

The literary world refers to these types of work as parallel fiction, or derivative fiction, mostly because not all of the works that are used are emulated in the way a fan would. “Fan” comes from the term fanatic, a person, who according to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, is “marked by excessive enthusiasm and often intense uncritical devotion.” Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea sharply criticizes Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre by reclaiming Rochester’s first wife, the infamous “madwoman in the attic” as a biracial heiress who has been abused by the predictably awful Rochester. (Seriously, Mr. Rochester is the 19th century’s Edward Cullen. So attractive until you notice his abusive personality.)

I am well aware that the reclamation of the term “fan” is underway, bringing it further from its Latin root, fanaticus, or frenzied by a deity. Fans have begun to hold their creators accountable (the most notable example being the letdown and ensuing rebellion that stemmed from Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace.) Disney fans have also fought back against the companies rampant lawsuits over their licensed characters. (Though I’m not sure they ever won…)

There are some writers of published derivative fiction that do characterize themselves as fans of their sources. Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked, has an admiration for The Wizard of Oz that verges on worship. I recently got a chance to speak to Mr. Maguire at a literary conference I attended. Much of his childhood play revolved around the world of Oz, and he talked about how frustrating it was to stop the game, to know that Dorothy was frozen there, lost in Oz. I think that a lot of derivative work stems from this feeling, this need to continue a world that has been put on pause because the original creator is not there to continue it.

On the notion of fanfiction, I asked Mr. Maguire, if there was any narrative universe a writer couldn’t explore ethically. Without pausing he replied,

“There is no such universe. No door is locked if the pen is sharp enough. […] Of course, there is a difference between writing and playing and selling.”

He said that he didn’t know what he would have done if the Oz books were still under copyright: “probably not publish.” (It turned out that they had entered the public domain less than three months before Harper Collins received his first draft of Wicked.) On a side note, he does not characterize his work as fanfiction.

In the best case, fanfiction enriches the work it emulates, while acknowledging where it came from. In the worst, it devolves into badly written erotica and rape fantasy. Kind of like “real” literature. The sooner we can move fanfiction as a genre closer to the rest of the literary world, the sooner authors will stop getting sued for their work. Part of that can be giving up a name that has handicapped creators from protecting themselves from large corporations and from the negative connotations the term “fanfiction” now has attached to it. The term “fan” does not protect anyone from legal action, in fact, most corporations have no qualms about “suing their fans.” [Update on the lawsuit: Rowling won in September 2008.]

Reclamation is a long process. A process that may outlive the interest and ambitions of most fanfiction authors. There is great derivative work out there that isn’t reaching as far as it could because the term “fanfiction” hangs around its neck. The writers and script doctors who write for franchises like Star Wars or Buffy the Vampire Slayer are doing the same thing most fanfiction writers do. The franchise writers are getting paid and the  fanfiction writers are getting sued. The two differences are authorization and labels. It’s pretty hard to get authorized, but not that difficult to pick a different label.

Inspirational Quote:

“You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we’re doing it.”–Neil Gaiman

Anime and Fair Use

Anime Music Videos are fanvids of animes, but have the fascinating reputation of being supported by anime creators. Perhaps it is the collaborative nature of anime creation, or maybe there is stronger support for fair use under Japanese copyright law. Whatever the reason, anecdotally, anime creators feel more flattered than violated when fans riff off of their works.

For example, in the two years I have attended Fanime (an anime fan convention in San Jose CA) I have seen dozens of AMVs played as part of the schedule  convention. Since Fanime is a successful business which would not needlessly subject itself to claims of copyright infringement, this leads me to think the convention organizers have done one of two things: 1) they have gotten permission for every clip in every one of the hundreds of AMVs they play each year (and a given AMV may sample from 1 or a dozen animes); 2) they have decided that AMVs are fair use. Whichever it is, the relationship between anime creators and fans is a special one, which I think western media could benefit from studying.

Below are three of my favorite AMVs, all of which I believe are using copyrighted content fairly (as always, I do not think the use of the musical setting is fair, as the music is untransformed and not commented on).

The clips in the video below are from Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, a movie which sprouted from the popular Final Fantasy video game series.

Watching the above video reminded me of my freshman year of high school, when I first started watching anime. The romantic surety of the characters, the desperate fights, the dramatic black ensembles. And let us not forget the ridiculously proportioned Cloud Sword.

Tainted Donuts is a famous AMV–it narrates what would happen if Cowboy Bebop’s Spike (a green-haired bounty hunter) took out a contract on Trigun’s Vash (a gentle goofball whose body happens to be full of weapons):

Finally, a Fruits Basket AMV. Fruits Basket follows the kind and klutzy Toru Honda, who comes to live with some schoolmates who turn into animals when hugged by the opposite sex. It is one of my favorite animes because Toru is such a strong character in disguise.

Re-watching these videos made me realize that most fanvids are like Hemingway’s stories: 8/9ths below the water. While what is visible of a good fanvid should convey a story, the fanvid references much more than it shows. This means that fanvids are much more meaningful to fans than to non-initiates.

Perhaps this could be added to the broader definition of fanworks: they reference more than they show, and it is those references which draw in and keep fans contributing and consuming fanworks.

Inspirational Quote:

“If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one ninth of it being above water.” Ernest Hemingway

Top 3 TV Shows with Kicking Female Geeks (my pics)

With access to a TV (thanks uber-cool roommate!) I’ve started having my favorite shows on in the background when I spin, write or read. I find myself attracted to TV shows with butt-kicking, geeky women.

1. NCIS–a police procedural with a military twist.

NCIS has two butt-kicking and brilliant women I would like to highlight: Ziva (Mossad agent and temporary NCIS agent) and Abby (Goth forensics genius).

Here NCIS agents are trying to detain a Marine with PTSD who is reenacting his escape from Iraqi Insurgents, and also having super-soldier drugs tested on him:

Abby is normally known more for her brains and quirky clothing than her fighting skills. Here she is kidnapped from NCIS (embed disabled by request).

2. Bones–another police procedural, this time from a forensic anthropologist’s view.

Dr Temperance Brennan (“Bones”) has 3 blackbelts. NOTE: I am still trying to find a good clip of Brennan kicking butt. Booth/Brennan fans (that is, fans who want Bones and her FBI partner Seeley Booth to be together) dominate YouTube to the extent it is difficult to find *any* clip which is not about their relationship. This is an ok example of how Bones operates.

3. Burn Notice–a spy for the U.S. government is blacklisted and must get help from his friends (including his explosives-expert ex-girlfriend Fiona).

(she is cooking fresh, homemade C4 in the clip.)

I like following the fictional stories of physically dominating and geeky women because I like collecting role-models. I don’t want Abby’s fashion sense, Bones’s lack of social awareness or Fiona’s pyromania; but I would not want Anne Lamott’s financial problems, Hilary Clinton’s husband issues or Isabella of Spain’s martial commitments. I can still look to them as thoughtful, intelligent, powerful female role-models. TV role-models will always be missing importance pieces that real-people role-models will have. But it is still fun to see how women function when they do not have to deal with rent or periods or the Metro. Fantasies allow us to explore aspects of our world directly without the burden of complex reality. I find value in these simplified worlds because they allow idealistic clarity which the real world eschews.

Inspirational Quote:

I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.–Atticus Finch in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird

For bonus Ziva goodness: