Special Comment: Wherein we peer into Fanfic-World (1 of 2)

Diana Gabaldon outlines why published authors almost have to take anti-fanfiction stances, some suggestions on how to make fan fiction original fiction, what characters are safe to use, and some of her own personal problems with fan-fiction, including the existence and repeated application of Rule 34. After some amount of wank, including bits we’ll get to later that show at least the possibility of mass hypocrisy, she released a second post explaining some of those issues and rebuttals and expounding upon her positions. (And then, there's a third post that's supposed to be the final word on it.)

After reading these pieces, I knew it was going to develop into a long-form comment. So let’s go through it and see what develops.

First, the legal reasons: Copyright infringement is still copyright infringement, regardless of making money, and there’s always the possibility that not smacking every single instance down that the author is alerted to will be used as a legal defense to basically say the equivalent of “But she was asking for it by the way she was dressing.” Thus, published authors whose characters are still under copyright, as a general rule, officially hate fanfic, and possibly other fanworks, and once they know it exists, they will make you remove it.

Despite this, there is obviously a thriving fan fiction community that keeps itself alive by following the first rule of Not Being Seen. And any author that believes by taking an anti-fanfic stance, it vanishes, is kidding themselves. Ones that are particularly successful at squashing fic may invoke the wrath of 4chan, among other possible places, to propagate lots of poorly-written fic across the Intarwebs. Japan’s Comiket seems to point out that it is possible to live and let live on the fancreations, at least for the most part. Some people are famous and/or get hired into the regular studios because they consistently sell out of their fancreations, so there’s clearly some quality work present.

So now that both sides understand each other, let’s move forward into the other side of the argument: the writerly bits. These consist of three major points: You can create original fiction - just change the names, You can find feedback circles that will like your original fic and give comment, and Good Writing Takes Time, so you’ll just have to be patient, instead of scribbling fic to fill the void.

The first point basically hinges on the conept that There Are No New Ideas, only Recombinations. Thus, file the serial numbers off of your fan-fiction, change some names to protect the copyright, and look! You have an original piece. That will be compared immediately to the item that you cribbed from, whether favorably or unfavorably. Mostly unfavorably based on her assumption (at least, I see that assumption) that many fanfic writers are doing it to learn how to write, and are thus unpolished, or because they’re hack writing without the benefit of being paid to do so, because they lack the courage to strike out on their own. True courage comes from writing original stuff, reusing The Tropes, The Settings, and The Archetypes, but not The Names. In Part Three, she says that pretty explicitly - the ideas can't be copyrighted, but the particular incarnation of those ideas given form and name, can be. Truthfully, though, that’s a weak argument - if you can copy everything but the name, then apparently only the name matters, which is totally not the case for good writing, yeah?

I don’t think fanfic writers lack courage. Mind you, it may be the courage of The Anonymous, and some writers would be morbidly embarrassed were their habits to come out into the light of their regular lives. Considering that writing anything and publishing it opens one up to the very real possibility of trolls, angry shippers of a different pairing, and people who sniff at your work and dismiss it as juvenile, hack writing, or just plain Not Good (regardless of the truth value of their critique, mind), stepping out into that world, even just on-line, takes some thickness of skin.

Second, fanfiction is the route to AU. Where some settings, like “Doctor Who” can actually canonically play with the “what if?” concept (Turn Left, a Series 4 episode (of the 2005 New Who), is this concept applied, parallel universe and all), most stories, shows, and settings march forward through their narrative, pruning off the bits where something else could have happened and rarely ever revisiting them. It would be quite awesome to see a writer that could make a career out of writing all the major permutations of the major events of one timeline. Start with how it happened, then play Chrononauts with it to show how it happened with those choices, and then again with these choices instead, when those choices lead to major story divergeneces. The “Well, I saw the big shiny rock, but I passed it by. So I lived a boring life until the aliens wiped us all out.” story can probably go by. If it turns into a narrative about watching some other person be the hero and wishing they were them, possibly to the point of doing something stupid to help the hero, though, that’s a possible story.

Bits II and III, about how writing takes time and how comment circles exist for original works, too, play into the idea of “write your own stuff” mentioned above. The problem is, “Write your own stuff” runs at almost cross purposes with another common piece of writerly advice - “You only get better at writing by writing”. Ideas come from anywhere, sure, but comfort zones still apply - it’s easier to write using a scaffold provided for you than it is to build the whole thing from scratch. Plus, knowing what something should sound like in an established universe can help refine the writing process as well to catch the right rhyme, meter, and characterization that will come in handly later when keeping original characters consistent with themselves and their setting. (Or in learning the right ways to bend any of them so that they still fit in the framework even if they are deliberately OOC.) The fans can tell when something is done right (usually). Comment and criticism and readers are sometimes better able to help you with your writing and characterization if you’re using an established framework because they can compare to the official work and show where the shortcomings and the good parts are. For some part of building your narrative self and your authorial style, scaffolding works. Taking the step out into original characters just exercises the other part of the good author and narrative, that of building one’s own scaffold to write from. That requires even more courage, because it says “I‘m good enough to try doing this by myself, and I want to further my writing craft.“ It’s the beginning of the step from casual to hardcore, as it were. Once out in that realm, it’s a very short step to ”I’m going to focus on this and dedicate the right kind of time and effort to it to make myself better.” Most people won’t go that far.

In Part II, the authoress says that she hadn’t considered the possibility that people were doing it out of love for the author and her characters (when, if you read the original, she dismisses this very reason as legitimate), because the quality of the fan-fic material she’s seen certainly doesn’t seem to engage in a lot of love, even though all the other creative creations she’s seen or been asked to do are totally okay. What is she talking about? Well, there is one other issue left to discuss...

...and we’ll do it in the next entry.

Special Comment: Wherein we peer into Fanfic World (2 of 2)

So, last time, we said there was one thing left to discuss about fanfiction that Diana Gabaldon was totally squicked about...

...and it’s Rule 34. Or, more specifically, that there’s a high-percentage chance that J. Random Fanfiction will include smut, pr0n, masturbatory fantasies of the author, or other semi-adult to fully explicit material. Her argument starts from something reasonable: an author who likes their characters doesn’t like to see them abused in such a way, and moves on from there. I’m guessing the high prevalence of slashpr0n, and especially hateslashpr0n, where two nemeses end up having all sorts of hatesex all over the place, contributes to this perception and feeling of abuse. I could be biased, though, against the vocal Yaoi fans and slash shippers that don’t understand the virtues of modulation of volume, as well as the point that good sex is not necessarily explicit or frequent.

I suppose now would be a good time to mention that the source material from the author is apparently totally full of sexual encounters, many of which involve dubious consent issues. Oh, and that one of her characters may be a companion from Doctor Who with the serial numbers filed off, compounding the accusations of hypocrisy into “you write fan-fiction, and to turn around and say you don’t like it is dissonant cognition at best.”

Anyway, returning to the original point, first, she invokes Sturgeon’s Law. We’ll grant her that one without a problem. She then uses it as a justification that things falling under that Law should be removed because they just suck too much. Just because 90% of what you find on the Internet is crap doesn’t necessarily make a solid argument that it should be removed - were that the case, well, the Internet would be a lot less populated - including a lack of me, and that would just plain suck.

Second, she likens seeing sexual fanfiction of her characters to opening the mailbox and finding a story that the neighbor wrote of your daughter boinking him, with associated squick factor. She then equates fanfiction of her characters having sex with reading scenes of family members having sex. Her critics generally take this as a sign that she’s far too invested in her characters. That statement does ring pretty solidly of “overprotective mother who wants to hear nothing of her daughter’s sexual identity, nor to provide said daughter with any information about it, so that she can maintain the fiction of the virginal daughter for as long as possible.” In her third posting, she makes that case much more explicitly - messing with her characters is messing with her, because her characters are a part of her, and she doesn't like being messed with.

The problem with this argument is, well, Twilight. It follows this formula remarkably well (abrupt scene shifts, quick fade to black, Anvilicious moral about how bad teenage sexuality is, etc.) and sold lots of copies. Because it defanged the vampire and made him safe and virtuous and sparkly and then got marketed to the crowd that wanted the thrill of the vampire and true love without any of the danger associated with either. It made Edward into a eunuch, and it de-sexed anyone when they were around Isabella, despite the implications that the couples already made were meant for each other and were compatible. This is what Twilight does well. It is part of the reason why I think Twilight is poorly written (the other being Emo Edward and Isabella Sue, the Queen Manipulative *Beep*). It is a safe book, and by being so safe, the terror that Isabella should be feeling from day one of getting mixed up with the Cullens is artificial, when it’s actually there.

Anyway, Twilight took a fairly standard “book intended for younger audiences” trope and Dialed It Up to Eleven. Most kids books do not have characters kissing, excepting for the Platonic variety between adults, the Kiss of Masculine Destruction (ewwwww! Cooties!), and the Saved the Day Kiss (often coming at the end of a book that opened with the Kiss of Masculine Destruction, now pleasant because of the character development). Harry Potter has flirting, kissing, seeign characters in new lights because of their dresses, but nowhere, absolutely nowhere, does it ever say anyone shagged. (Except the epilogue, when there are children of the characters. That doesn’t count, as it’s like thinking about your parents having had sex because you’re here.) In seven years. Despite the clear coming-into-puberty and the rest that is hinted at when there are a couple of deep kisses and such. The trope is on television, too - unless you’re in Primetime, expect no affection excepting for the ideas described above (the equivalent of kids books). In Primetime (the “young adult” market), there are hints and cutaways and suggestive dialogue, and occasionally there’s a bared back or a scene of conveniently-placed objects. Only when past the watershed (or on pay television) does one actually get to bits where the characters actually have intimate relations on screen, clothes or no clothes (that would be the adult book market, for those keeping score).

So for two and some unspecified fraction of the three major age markets, there’s no sex, no intimacy, no anything, despite, well, sex and how people relate to it being a major part of development and life for people. (Paradoxically, there’s a lot of implied sexuality in advertisements, but that might be more broadly and properly classified as exhibitionism rather than sexuality, because it’s a fairly one-way channel.) Well- and poorly-written characters are conceivably older and younger than their canonical self, and then there’s the whole AU world, so there’s plenty of places for speculation about a character’s first time, or first time with someone else, or what some characters did in between the chapters of the narrative or the scenes thereof, stuff that we have to experience moment by moment but books and shows can cut because they want to get to more plot, and readers and writers can speculate about the “what if” branches, as above. What if Harry and Draco had a secret love for each other? Or what would happen if Harry and Draco got into a game of dominance that raised the stakes all the way up to the Imperious Curse? Or Harry and Hermione were down in town drinking actual alcohol and the lightweight Hermione spilled her secret crush on Ron/Harry, and Harry took advantage of that knolwedge to set Ron/Hermione/all three of them up for a situation where they would give in to their teenage hormones? What if Alice was a switch-hitter and entranced Isabella with the promise of knowing what it would be like to be with a woman? All of these situations can be written well or poorly, cerebrally or earthy, focused on the mind or the body. To deny someone those possibilities might deny them what they need to get the confidence and skill to write original fiction, and might deny some truly good pieces of work the right to exist. Remember the Comiket example above? Now I think I should mention that a lot of doujins are H(entai) material. Take from that what you will.

Nothing less than the exceptional - 4-5 May 2010

Greetings, people who delight (or facepalm) in the PR disasters of others. Today’s client? George Rekers, strident leader of the Chrisitan Right, anti-LGBT activist extraordinaire, caught on camera with a call boy whom he just spent ten days in Europe with. Mind you, nobody admits to any sort of sex going on between the two, and The General points out all the credentials the man has to make him a upright model for the Christian Right, so he couldn’t have hired him for sex. As for Mr. Rekers’ defense, he claims that he's a minister to the sick and the LGBT, convincing them they want to turn straight. By hiring them from websites that have lots of NSFW pictures and profiles. Well, I have to admit, it’s a pretty good save. About the only thing worse would have been getting caught with his pants down.

In the United States, today was also a National Day of Prayer (and all the troubling governemnt endorsement of religion questions that entails). Here, then, is the Slacktivist's take on what the nation should be praying for today - that those who follow certain religions will follow the teachings of the major prophet they have, isntead of ignoring him in favor of the prophets of older times.

Web sites recommending and discussing books like GoodReads are likely blocked in Iran. This may be because of Genre Savvy, for once, instead of bone-crushing stupidity, because books and their ideas, and especially open discussion of both, is anathema to totalitarian dictatorship-type government. It’s still horribly wrong and unethical of them to do it, but it does at least indicate they have learned a few things.

Out in the world today, all couples in Denmark can apply for adoption now, instead of being restricted only to heterosexual couples. Fruit Bat power, yo.

The Chinese government continues to try and unmangle English translations of Chinese, so as not to have giggle-worthy signage, a task that has some linguists and analysts worried, because they see malapropisms and mistranslations as useful tools for looking into the brain of the translator and figuring out how the concepts relate to each other across translation.

Domestically, in the “Pot, meet Kettle” department, the CEO of Massey Energy, the repeatedly-fined-and-cited-for-safety-violations company that owned the Upper Big Branch mine that recently caved in, called his critics "evil people". That takes stones to do - in your gentials, and where your brain should be. He continued by demonizing union presidents and representatives, safety regulations he considers useless, and several legislators and the President for listening to those union types. So who are you going to believe, then, the guy in charge of the company cited for safety violations as a chronic pattern, or the people who give those violations out to the company?

A report from Mental Disability Rights International accuses the Judge Rotenburg Center, located in Massachusettes, with violations of the United Nations Conventions against torture because of their disciplinary measures involving restraint boards, isolation and deprivation, and backpacks the students must wear that administer them electric shocks several times the amperage of a standard stun gun. I thought we had gone past that point in our mental health history.

Significant amoutns of protests occurred in Arizona on 5 May to protest Arizona's Papers Please law, while at least one poll indicates those who live in Arizona like the law and want to keep it. There’s a disconnect somewhere, I’m certain, but I don’t know what it is yet.

More information appears about the person who has confessed to the Times Square bombing plot - apparent links to another attacker who attempted to bomb the New York subway system and the attacker's own admission of having received training in Pakistan, although in this case, either student or teacher wasn’t very good at their task. And praise for how the system worked from the WSJ, except when it charged him in a civilian court. That was wrong, because he’s an enemy combatant and shouldn’t be allowed the protections. Oh, and the fact that this worked totally vindicates everything the Bush Administration ever did in the anme of anti-terrorism, we love you, Xs and Os, the Wall Street Journal. (Gag.)

Ah, and one other thing - Senator Lieberman thinks that if you have ties to sketchy organizations, the State Department should be able to revoke your citizenship, so they can then arrest you and send you off to military tribunals. Of course, your right to buy weapons and explsoives, even if you are on a terrorist watch list, is sacrosanct. Remember the part where we accuse people of selectively reading the Bible? It seems that the opposition (and people like Lieberman) have finally taken the next logical step forward and are sleectively reading the Constitution.

Elsewhere, a former CIA lawyer considered showing photographs of possibly under cover agents to terror suspects at Guantanamo bay to be a bigger security breach than the deliberate outing of Valerie Plame to the news media.

Barack Obama and the Democratic Party have received significant campaign contributions from British Petroleum, with Politico setting it up as a possible attack venue for the opposition when the hammer comes down on BP for the current Deep Horizons well incident. Later on, the article also notes that BP is fairly indiscriminate in giving money, but it likes to concentrate on lobbying members of Congress who are near oil deposits. I wonder what Citizens United will let BP do in this upcoming cycle...

Despite their public commitment to open government, the Obma Administration has mixed results when it comes to fulfilling requests for information. As with most agencies, the ones that probably have the juciest data are the ones least likely to release unredacted, if they release at all.

Last out, Congressman Obey of Wisconsin says he's not seeking re-election this year, and uses his newfound freedom to rip into the entire political process in Washington, criticizing the usage of procedures and rules to obstruct progress, the last president’s insistence that he would only pay for so much improvement of agencies after the 11 September attacks, and the short-sightedness of legislators who do not want to make “long-term investments in ”education, science, health and energy that are necessary to modernize our economy, and at the same time decline to raise the revenue needed to pay for those [investments].“ The Republican Party took the announcement as cause for celebration and a victory lap, proving the President’s point about polarization and lack of civility being prevalent.

Welcome to technology, where night vision could be added on as a feature to most objects, using optical light-emitting diodes, people who take excess doses of antioxidant supplements may end up increasing their risk of developing cancer, using deteriorations in our handwriting to diagnose certain brain and motor related illnesses, and a camera that can keep everything in focus, even if one of those objects is 6 inches away from the lens and the other is twenty meters away.

The United States Federal Communications Commission will reclassify Internet Service Providers as "common carriers" rather than "information services", bringing them under the FCC's regulatory jurisdiction and allowing the FCC to enforce net neutrality, requiring ISPs to treat all data equally, instead of using ”traffic shaping“ measures that give high-bandwidth applications the lowest priority in getting through their servers.

And last out, a nice timeline for the evolution of life, where one inch represents millions of years.

When it comes to opinions, there’s always a good chunk available - the ones that lambast the President for not believing in American exceptionalism, not because he said he didn't believe in it, but that he believed that everyone believed their country was exceptional, and how this lack of jingoism puts the United States on the path to European socialism and decline, instead of choosing to defend Freedom through giving defense spending and the military whatever they want. They pair up nicely with the people complaining that the traditionally special relationships don't seem to be as special any more. And then, for extra specialness, put the cherry on top of a prominent United States Republican politician explicitly saying that America is objectively better than everyone else in the world, and I think you’ve got the measure of them. Almost like they feel they failed when a black guy got elected to the office, whose history is one of persecution, and he decided to acknowledge the faults that were apparent to everyone else, instead of pretending they don’t exist.

There’s also Mr. Stephens telling us that believing in things like the NPT only delays the real thinking we need to engage in - how to live in a world where rogue state nuclear actors will use their bombs, even when the CW says its suicidal.

Mr. Dhume says the only way for Pakistan to move forward is to abandon its Islamic roots and hope of worldwide Islam in favor of nationalism and developing an identity as a nation, instead of as a religious group. Find: Islam/Islamic. Replace: Christianity/Christian. Find: Pakistan. Replace: United States. Read opinion again. Would Mr. Dhume be so swift to tell us to get rid of our beliefs in worldwide Christianity and focus on our American nationalism? And what kind of stink would he raise (or what kind of dirty names would he be called), here in america, where most conservatives fiercely believe that both of those goals - worldwide Americanism and worldwide Christianity - are essential?

Mr. Barnes claims the President has been ignoring the populace in his drive to get stuff done, and that the Democrats and the President are now trying to do as much ramming through of their unpopular agenda before The People vote them out. Mr. Barnes insists that if it’s unpopular and the Republicans don’t support it, then it must be evil and should be stopped. A lot of columnists of his like were praising the previous President for ramming through unpopular things as well, but that was bold and decisive leadership.

Mr. Fund accuses the government of being caught flat-footed by not having equipment the law requries them to have on hand to combat oil spills.

Then there are the better ones, like Mr. Phillips encouraging a 26 year-old to run for Congress, extolling her Republican virtues and the fact that she’s homegrown and well-known to make her an excellent candidate against machine politics. She might also help inject some life into the Republican Party if they elect her precisely because of her youth and energy.

Remarkably, Mr. Sowell gets one right by decrying the practice of hating someone because they started at the bottom and made good on themselves and achieved. He might have found a calling - perhaps he’ll get off the worrisome path of calling the President a racist and stick to this kind of social commentary. Admittedly, it is somewhat of an Anti-Kitten Brigade column, but the point he makes still stands.

And then, of course, we have the worser ones - Ms. Schlafly misrepresents the bill regarding Puerto Rico, calling it a bill to force statehood on them and then decrying that plot as a Democratic one to pander to Hispanics, make the nation officially bilingual, and give Democrats more power and control than 24 states currently have. Well, Ms. Schlafly, once you set up a false premise, you can draw whatever conclusion you would like from it. It’s even more egregious when you say what the bill actually does after making your wild claims, making it fairly easy to say, ”You were wrong just a minute ago.“

Mr. Stossel fights for the right to have unpaid interns, because paid interns means less interns, according to the dictates of The Market (A.P.T.I.N.) and the federal government is trying to bully employers by suggesting unpaid interns are exploited. Interns do get valuable experience, but unpaid internships closes off a significant swath of the population from being able to take advantage of them. The person he caricatures as someone who doesn’t get it has valid points that companies should really be building internships into their budgets so they can attract a wider pool of talent, and/or colleges and federal work study programs should also leverage their monies to make sure that interns get paid for the work they do. And they do work. Anyone who would be Dark Apprenticing in my profession would be doing the work - they deserve to get paid for it. Now we know where Mr. Stossel stands - corporations should be able to use interns to get free labor, and interns should be so grateful that they’re getting a chance to work that they should willingly prostrate themselves and humbly beg not to be paid for it.

Worse than that, Reverend Graham the Younger swings his Muslim Conspiracy bat, claiming the President is giving Islam a pass while advocating to make Christian evangelism classed as hate speech. Swing, batter, batter, and please refer yourself to my Special comment last week about pompous self-absorbed clerics who believe Islam is going to take over.

But really the worst, in many ways, including evasion of questions without answering, as well as the standard lines of ”socialist President, entitlements are all waste, but national defense is sacred“, but most especially for calling moderates ”people with no core convictions“ and accusing liberals of lacking patriotism, something that can apparently be measured, because ”You do not love this country. You are embarrassed by us...those of us in fly over country are the real americans“, is Judson Philips, founder of the Tea Party Nation, who took questions from Washington Post readers about his group and Tea Partiers in general. The coasts apparently don’t count. So, all the liberals in the Midwest, kindly raise your hands. And the union supporters? What about the people who like their Social Security or Medicare? Congratulations, you’re at least part liberal, and luckily for us, you count!

On the question of whether the Tea Partiers are lacking in diversity, he said ”Go to a rally.“ On whether they’re racist, he said ”Media smears.“ And on what they mean by smaller government and cutting waste, he said ”Everything but national security and defense have waste, especially entitlements. Cut those.“

Last for tonight, the best opinion expressed to us in this cycle - how conservative thinking paved the paradise of the Gulf Coast and put up a parking lot, expecting us to applaud them for it every step of the way, excepting for the terrible tragedy of things going different than their plan, even if the result was the same.

And six people we don't know but we should all thank for saving our lives.