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darkemeraldsI think I now understand why professional fiction writers are up in arms about fanfic. And it's not what any of them are actually saying.
In July 2008, The Atlantic published an article by Nick Carr entitled "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" in which Carr argued that because of the internet, people are losing the ability to engage with long works of literature.
Clay Shirky, in a pair of response posts, says, basically, "so what?"
The real anxiety behind [Carr's] essay is that, having lost its actual centrality some time ago, the literary world is now losing its normative hold on culture as well. The threat isn’t that people will stop reading War and Peace. That day is long since past. The threat is that people will stop genuflecting to the idea of reading War and Peace.
Shirky goes on his second essay to say something that made me go, "Ohhh! So that's what's really going on!" [Bolding is mine.]
Whenever the abundance of written material spikes, the average quality of written material falls, as a side-effect of volume. New forms start out tentative and incomplete, and can only compete for attention with older literature among people who prize experimentation...The abundance itself creates a distraction...Institutions built around previous scarcities warn, often correctly, of the end of society as we know it.
Fanfic is one of the distractions drawing the attention of people who prize experimentation (i.e., us) away from the old norm of published literature and OMFG It's TEOTWAWKI!!!!
Sure, that pencils out to lost sales, but as others have pointed out, the most anti-fanfic pro authors are the most monetarily successful. It's not about money; they just don't like the idea of having finally climbed aboard the Published Express, only to find it running slowly down a side track to marginal relevance.
It must gall them to see some of the the most experimentally minded readers out there haring off to tentative, incomplete new forms. They focus on the tentativeness and incompleteness of fanfic as a literature and willfully ignore the whole point.
Fanfic apologists, for the most part, seem to have missed the point, too: they argue for quality, they argue for passion, they're defensive of their little corner of the old written world, when in fact the only really valid answer to anti-fic authors is, "It's new, it's changing, it represents something that nobody fully understands yet, and we can't quite explain it, but it's not going back in the bottle."
In July 2008, The Atlantic published an article by Nick Carr entitled "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" in which Carr argued that because of the internet, people are losing the ability to engage with long works of literature.
Clay Shirky, in a pair of response posts, says, basically, "so what?"
The real anxiety behind [Carr's] essay is that, having lost its actual centrality some time ago, the literary world is now losing its normative hold on culture as well. The threat isn’t that people will stop reading War and Peace. That day is long since past. The threat is that people will stop genuflecting to the idea of reading War and Peace.
Shirky goes on his second essay to say something that made me go, "Ohhh! So that's what's really going on!" [Bolding is mine.]
Whenever the abundance of written material spikes, the average quality of written material falls, as a side-effect of volume. New forms start out tentative and incomplete, and can only compete for attention with older literature among people who prize experimentation...The abundance itself creates a distraction...Institutions built around previous scarcities warn, often correctly, of the end of society as we know it.
Fanfic is one of the distractions drawing the attention of people who prize experimentation (i.e., us) away from the old norm of published literature and OMFG It's TEOTWAWKI!!!!
Sure, that pencils out to lost sales, but as others have pointed out, the most anti-fanfic pro authors are the most monetarily successful. It's not about money; they just don't like the idea of having finally climbed aboard the Published Express, only to find it running slowly down a side track to marginal relevance.
It must gall them to see some of the the most experimentally minded readers out there haring off to tentative, incomplete new forms. They focus on the tentativeness and incompleteness of fanfic as a literature and willfully ignore the whole point.
Fanfic apologists, for the most part, seem to have missed the point, too: they argue for quality, they argue for passion, they're defensive of their little corner of the old written world, when in fact the only really valid answer to anti-fic authors is, "It's new, it's changing, it represents something that nobody fully understands yet, and we can't quite explain it, but it's not going back in the bottle."
(no subject)
14/5/10 21:26 (UTC)It's a truism that the harder it is to get into some group, the more those who /do/ get into it will defend both the group /and/ the barriers. See also hazing. They paid a lot to get in, and for a number of reasons (none actually good but all quite persistent) they don't want anyone else to get in without paying just as much. And no one had better say it wasn't worth it!
And here we have a group that doesn't have most of those barriers. Which makes for a whole lot of weirdness and fireworks and short, sharp showers of ordure, along with the quality and passion, and it's all mixed together, and a /ton/ of people are involved. Which means we're saying it's better! Cue panic.
(no subject)
14/5/10 21:50 (UTC)I suppose that the presence of fanfic actually does suggest to some published authors that they paid unnecessary dues (particularly, I would imagine, if their published work doesn't earn money, as is the case with almost all published fiction). Like, why did I go to all that trouble only to watch people who just slap their stuff up there online get as many readers as I ever had, and way more feedback?
It would make me dislike fanfic too, if I were in their position. It would be cool, though, if just one of them would realize that that is their main argument against it.
(no subject)
15/5/10 07:17 (UTC)Fanfic isn't new, it's as old as storytelling. And as integral. Today's slash and drabbles were yesterday's Greek mythologies and medieval ballads. We are storytellers by nature, and it's in our nature to create shared stories -- not just shared with one another, but experienced with one another. The means may have changed -- and certainly the internet has been integral in the development of a very defined culture of fanfic that is as complex and sophisticated as the traditional publishing world's -- but the act of experiencing story together and interacting within those stories has existed for a very long time.
And I don't believe most* pro-fic authors' objections have to do with a worry (subconscious or not) of the marginalization of publishing**. It's much simpler than that -- for writers objecting to fanfic of their own works, it's a visceral feeling that their creation is being stolen from them (and I don't mean in sales, but in a more primal way); for writers objecting to fanfic in principle, it's a sense that building a world and characters from scratch is inherently harder and requires more skill than to "play in someone else's sandbox".
I know this, because this used to be my own feeling, to some degree. What I realized over time -- what those who object to fanfic haven't realized and may never realize -- is that A) others playing in my sandbox doesn't take away from my own experience of building the sandbox; B) a story is communal, cannot really be "owned" in the way they think, and by its very nature, can, will, and should be released into the wild to share with others (and thus, when others show their delight by wanting to play in your sandbox, that's the mark of success); and C) creating a world and characters is a lot of work and difficult to do well, as is writing within a world and with characters someone else created, because writing, period, is a lot of work and difficult to do well. Fanfic is merely a form of story, just as a mystery is a form, and a ballad is a form, and a graphic novel is a form, and a movie is a form, and so on. It's not about one form being better or worse, easier or harder, right or wrong.
*Which isn't to say your point is invalid, because I don't doubt that it's true for some authors. I just don't think it's true for most.
**And I don't think publishing*** is going anywhere. It's undergoing a revolution, certainly, and how successfully today's traditional publishers transition to the brave new world of whatever publishing is destined to become is entirely dependent on how forward thinking they are. Which, unfortunately for them, most of them seem NOT to be. But there will always be books written by people, edited by other people, released and marketed by still other people for the simple reason that the publishers' real value is in providing professional editing and marketing***. Most of them think their value lies in producing a widget to sell to retailers, which is why they're all flailing about, but they wouldn't be the first industry to be completely clueless about what the purpose of their business actually is. (see also: music industry)
***Which isn't to say that it will be the only way to be successful as a writer. That's already changing, obviously, and will continue to change dramatically. Traditional publishers' role as gatekeepers is shrinking, as it should, and I think that's/i> the quarter that the cries of "Oh noez, it's the end of the world as we know it!" originate from.
(no subject)
15/5/10 17:15 (UTC)What's new is its explosion on the internet, to the point where not only can an author (filmmaker, actor, producer, etc.) easily and even accidentally come across it, but more and more people are writing it. More people are studying it and the subculture it arises from. It's being codified and classified now, doctoral theses are being written on the subject, there are physical and virtual archives of it that go way beyond a single fandom paper zine.
So fanfic is new in the consciousness of a lot of people, and some writers, to judge from their oddly hateful-fearful reactions to it, find it threatening. Those are the only writers I'm really talking about here.
Traditional publishers' role as gatekeepers is shrinking, as it should, and I think that's the quarter that the cries of "Oh noez, it's the end of the world as we know it!" originate from.
See, I think we're really talking about the same thing here to some extent. Writing is hard. Getting published is REALLY hard. Getting past that barrier used to mean the difference between your work being read by you, your best bud and the inside of your dresser drawer, and your work being read by some of its intended audience. It defined legitimacy as a writer, and there might have been some money involved.
Nowadays, in a lot of instances publication does none of those things very well, and the internet does the first one better. Fanfic apologists can argue all they like about the timeless human impulse to embroider on existing stories--it's all true, and it's worth saying, but it's beside the point in these responses to disgusted authors' diatribes against fanfic.
The fact is, fanfic in the incarnation that these authors are worried about is almost entirely an internet phenomenon. It's tens of thousands of variously talented writers givin' it away for free and sometimes finding a significant readership. Since virtually no fanfic is written based on novels that haven't been made into movies, the authors making the complaints are complaining theoretically. That makes me suspect a motive that they aren't stating.
I find "unconscious reaction to the threat of the new" a more satisfactory explanation. Fanfic as it's being reviled* by Diana Gabaldon et al is, indeed, something fairly new, and it perfectly symbolizes the tectonic change in the role of publishing.
*This is not to say that Gabaldon and company aren't genuinely disgusted by a lot fanfic. Hell, so am I. But disgust doesn't explain their whole reaction, any more than it explains the religious right's reaction to gays. I sense a "threat to my way of life" reaction going on here, and Shirky's piece gave me something to hang that on.
Great debate! As someone who's written both "original" and "fanfic" novels, I appreciate your acknowledgment that doing it right is hard either way.
(no subject)
15/5/10 11:28 (UTC)I happen to think that those who hate fanfic are wrong to do so, but that doesn't mean I think they're lying about their reasons. Surely we all know what it's like to love a character and be protective of him and think we know best what he's really like, and hate it when other people write him 'wrong'? Half the wankstorms in fandom are caused by that feeling - so why shouldn't that feeling be behind profic authors' outbursts too?
(no subject)
15/5/10 17:33 (UTC)*This is not to say that Gabaldon and company aren't genuinely disgusted by a lot of fanfic. Hell, so am I. But disgust doesn't explain their whole reaction, any more than it explains the religious right's reaction to gays. I sense a "threat to my way of life" reaction going on here, and Shirky's piece gave me something to hang that on.
All the digging into Gabaldon's past history, the stated fannish source of her main character, etc., is just fandom reacting to her threat the same way she's reacting to theirs. It's gleefully mean-spirited and unpleasant (though not, perhaps, entirely beside the point). It's just that if I accept that her (and others') only reason for writing a diatribe against fanfic is to say, "I'm personally disgusted by fanfic and would like to request all of my readers to respect my wishes and not fic my work" then that's probably what they ought to say.
No, writing fiction isn't a rational business. But since most of the authors posting anti-fanfic essays elevate their own legitimacy over that of fanfic writers by saying what they do is harder, they set a higher standard for themselves and their writing. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect them to uphold it in their public writings, or to get a little muddy in the melée that ensues if they don't.
(no subject)
15/5/10 19:00 (UTC)Having said that, I certainly wouldn't rule out the idea that it's also an unconscious reaction to the terror of the new. I imagine that for those authors who haven't done a stint in fanfiction themselves it looks like a huge and scary sort of movement that they don't understand and don't want to. I'm not sure how they could possibly see it as a threat, but then that's because I'm coming from a fanfic background myself, and maybe it is. Maybe they fear it will also steal their readers... I don't know about that one.