{"id":523,"date":"2015-05-08T21:36:47","date_gmt":"2015-05-09T04:36:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/?p=523"},"modified":"2015-05-08T21:45:33","modified_gmt":"2015-05-09T04:45:33","slug":"fanfic-is-not-a-threat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/fanfic-is-not-a-threat\/","title":{"rendered":"Fanfic is Not a Threat"},"content":{"rendered":"

How do you feel about fanfic? Does the thought of basement dwellers shitting all over your favorite franchise make you shudder? Does the idea of someone stomping all over your vision make you hulk out? Well, maybe it\u2019s time to calm down over this douche-tide in a pony vagina (I\u2019m going for a non-cliche way of saying \u201ctempest in a teapot\u201d \u2013 I don\u2019t think I was entirely successful). Fanfic has been a thing for ages, and it hasn\u2019t destroyed literature yet.<\/p>\n

To gain some perspective, I\u2019m going to turn to modding for a moment. I recently posed the question: how do you feel about other people modding your mods? The group I talked to were pretty cool about it, even found it flattering, but I\u2019ve encountered modders who get bent out of shape about people messing with their \u201cartistic vision\u201d \u2013 which is bullshit, and here\u2019s why.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

First, modders are already playing in someone else\u2019s sandbox. It was created for them, so they have few rights over the IP. Sure, they have copyright on any assets they made themselves. Anything they could sell separately from the mod (models, textures, etc.) is theirs. Anything dependent on the game is not. When modders get proprietary over the latter, this is what we call \u201cbeing a dick.\u201d<\/p>\n

A modder could strip their content (characters, dialogue etc.) from the game and use it in something else. But a modder acting like that gives them greater IP rights than the original developer doesn\u2019t get it. It\u2019s like saying no one\u2019s allowed to write fanfic of your fanfic. Nobody\u2019s making money in this equation, so why would a fanfic writer care more than the original author? Because ego and insecurity \u2013 mostly the latter.<\/p>\n

Often this \u201cdon\u2019t touch my stuff!\u201d mentality comes from a fear of someone else breaking your toys. But here\u2019s the thing: if your toys are so easily broken, you\u2019ve made shitty toys<\/em>. This is more a problem in modding, where someone can literally break your toy by \u201cplaying it wrong\u201d (which means your mod was already broken) or tweaking\/removing a feature they didn\u2019t like (because it sucked).<\/p>\n

As for fiction, one kind of \u201cbreaking\u201d authors fret about is fans correctly guessing what\u2019s going to happen next, thus spoiling the series. But anyone who worries about that doesn\u2019t understand how the execution is more important than the concept. If the author\u2019s writing can\u2019t compete with the fanfic, and the author responds with a tantrum, then the author is neither good nor gracious enough for me to give a damn.<\/p>\n

If you want a good example of author magnanimity, look at how Terry Pratchett reacted to a bunch of fans writing lyrics for A Wizard\u2019s Staff Has a Knob on the End<\/em>. He didn\u2019t get all huffy about other people taking his joke and running with it. He said (and I paraphrase), \u201cThat\u2019s pretty cool.\u201d<\/p>\n

Consider how fanfic (or mods of your mods) fulfill a need that maybe you\u2019re not providing. Maybe it points to something your work is lacking. If it\u2019s something you can accommodate, then you stop the derivative work by giving the people what they want. If you don\u2019t want to, then leave the fans to it. If it happens to be not within the scope of your work, such as hardcore pornography (if you\u2019re not in that business), then leave the fans to do their icky thing. Your baby is all grown up. Once it\u2019s out in the world, you can\u2019t control who\u2019s fucking it. If you didn\u2019t want that to happen, then you should\u2019ve never let it leave your house. Do what all sane parents do: pretend to live in blissful ignorance.<\/p>\n

When it comes to watching your characters say and do things they never would<\/em>, I can understand the distaste. I\u2019ve told people they can write dialogue for characters in my mods, but is that because I don\u2019t feel proprietary about them? Those NPCS did, after all, start out completely utilitarian in nature. So I considered how I\u2019d feel if someone messed with the characters in my novels.<\/p>\n

I had to mull that over, and decided it wouldn\u2019t bother me that much, even though I care a lot more about them. After all, anyone trying to write for my characters is only writing facsimiles of them. They\u2019re not the originals, and everyone would know that. How many people have written stories about Sherlock Holmes? Even when those stories are as good as the originals, they\u2019re good in different ways. Like stories of King Arthur, they build on the legend. They don\u2019t detract from it at all.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not concerned for the same reason I can\u2019t take Kurt Vonnegut fanfic from Kindle Worlds seriously. No one is ever going to replicate Vonnegut\u2019s voice, which is the main draw to his fiction. It\u2019s the same reason anyone trying to write like Douglas Adams or James Joyce ends up falling flat \u2013 because they don\u2019t have that specific combination of neurons that produces that particular kind of magic. If you\u2019re trying too hard to be someone else, you\u2019re not putting enough of yourself into it, and that\u2019s the only way you\u2019ll create a compelling voice of your own.<\/p>\n

So how do you inoculate your work against being (unfavorably) compared to derivative work? Make sure it\u2019s damned good, so no one can compete. When someone can\u2019t pull that off, they bully people off their \u201cproperty\u201d because they feel threatened, and it\u2019s pathetic. Good authors are magnanimous towards fandom because they have nothing to lose by it, and they know it. The rest, just aren\u2019t that good.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"reddit\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>by <\/span>\"feather\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How do you feel about fanfic? Does the thought of basement dwellers shitting all over your favorite franchise make you shudder? Does the idea of someone stomping all over your vision make you hulk out? Well, maybe it\u2019s time to calm down over this douche-tide in a pony vagina (I\u2019m going for a non-cliche way […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,19],"tags":[37,24],"class_list":["post-523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-games","category-writing","tag-fiction","tag-rants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=523"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":545,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523\/revisions\/545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}