This that and fanfiction redux
Jul. 15th, 2011 07:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatOff to watch more of The Wire shortly...my new favorite show/cultural obsession. If you are keeping track, I have very few of these...Buffy, Farscape, and now The Wire. Game of Thrones and The Good Wife sort of fall under the BSG, Veronica Mars, Firefly, and Angel category.
Difficult work day.
Did have a nice lunch at a portugese restaurant, the only good restaurant where I work. I work in the same neighborhood that Damages and The Good Wife are filmed. So you can see it on tv. Cool, eh?
Off and on, I've seen discussions on narrative tropes. Your favorite and/or least favorite narrative tropes in fiction. Been meaning to write up something on it - but I'm not sure how much people care? Is this something you'd read or skip over?
In other news? Momster read the article in Time about fanfiction.
Momster: Interesting thing - JK Rowlings has no problems with fanfiction and loves it, even encourages it. But George RR Martin despises it and has major problems with people doing it in regards to his books. He feels they are his characters and his story to tell and he doesn't like other people to play with them.
Me: Which actually that makes sense. Martin is incredibly detailed in his writing and tells you everything you ever wanted to know, including quite a few things you didn't about each of his characters. He wouldn't want fans to write about them. Plus it is a book - so unlike Buffy and other tv series, fans are writing fic in the same medium. Rowlings - while her's are also books, is also done with her story and/or characters and has left a lot of gaps in the story. She's not as detailed and obsessive about her characters. Although she did win a copyright case recently against some guy who wanted to publish a website encyclopedia on Harry Potter for money. And I can see why he'd feel protective of his characters and want to be the only one continuing their story.
On the other hand - Martin is an abysmally slow writer. He's as bad as Tolkien. Takes him 6 years to write a book. (Although I shouldn't talk - I'm hardly quick myself). By the time he finishes, people have forgotten the last one and have to re-read it. In fact I slowed down because I figured by the time I got through Storm of Swords, Dance of Dragons would come out. I was right. Figure by the time I finish Feast of Crows and Dance of Dragons, To Run With Wolves will get out. And I won't have forgotten as much. Although I have clearly forgotten all of Clash of Kings and most of Game of Thrones...not that big a problem, since I have a tv series to remind me of the major plot points.
Plus? It's not like he can do anything about it. Buck up and deal, dude. Lousia May Alcott, Dickens,
Emily Bronte, Jane Austen, and countless others have had to. It's part of the job. Fanfic has existed before he was born. It's timeless. Whining about it just makes you look like a doofus and pisses off fans. There's worse things...like having no one buy or want to read your book for starters.
Felt the need to say the same thing to Ursula Le Guine who got snooty about it, too. Seriously, if there can be published fanfic on Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, Moby Dick and a sequel to Gone with the Wind, who are you to bemoan a few frustrated writers their fun? It's not like you are losing money over it or anything. Actually, you may get more readers - it tends to bring in more fans than discourage them.
Always annoys me when published writers and publishers whine about fanfic. Do they realize they sound like spoiled brats? I'd love to have people writing fanfiction about characters I created. I'd consider it compliment. JK Rowlings has the right idea.
Difficult work day.
Did have a nice lunch at a portugese restaurant, the only good restaurant where I work. I work in the same neighborhood that Damages and The Good Wife are filmed. So you can see it on tv. Cool, eh?
Off and on, I've seen discussions on narrative tropes. Your favorite and/or least favorite narrative tropes in fiction. Been meaning to write up something on it - but I'm not sure how much people care? Is this something you'd read or skip over?
In other news? Momster read the article in Time about fanfiction.
Momster: Interesting thing - JK Rowlings has no problems with fanfiction and loves it, even encourages it. But George RR Martin despises it and has major problems with people doing it in regards to his books. He feels they are his characters and his story to tell and he doesn't like other people to play with them.
Me: Which actually that makes sense. Martin is incredibly detailed in his writing and tells you everything you ever wanted to know, including quite a few things you didn't about each of his characters. He wouldn't want fans to write about them. Plus it is a book - so unlike Buffy and other tv series, fans are writing fic in the same medium. Rowlings - while her's are also books, is also done with her story and/or characters and has left a lot of gaps in the story. She's not as detailed and obsessive about her characters. Although she did win a copyright case recently against some guy who wanted to publish a website encyclopedia on Harry Potter for money. And I can see why he'd feel protective of his characters and want to be the only one continuing their story.
On the other hand - Martin is an abysmally slow writer. He's as bad as Tolkien. Takes him 6 years to write a book. (Although I shouldn't talk - I'm hardly quick myself). By the time he finishes, people have forgotten the last one and have to re-read it. In fact I slowed down because I figured by the time I got through Storm of Swords, Dance of Dragons would come out. I was right. Figure by the time I finish Feast of Crows and Dance of Dragons, To Run With Wolves will get out. And I won't have forgotten as much. Although I have clearly forgotten all of Clash of Kings and most of Game of Thrones...not that big a problem, since I have a tv series to remind me of the major plot points.
Plus? It's not like he can do anything about it. Buck up and deal, dude. Lousia May Alcott, Dickens,
Emily Bronte, Jane Austen, and countless others have had to. It's part of the job. Fanfic has existed before he was born. It's timeless. Whining about it just makes you look like a doofus and pisses off fans. There's worse things...like having no one buy or want to read your book for starters.
Felt the need to say the same thing to Ursula Le Guine who got snooty about it, too. Seriously, if there can be published fanfic on Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, Moby Dick and a sequel to Gone with the Wind, who are you to bemoan a few frustrated writers their fun? It's not like you are losing money over it or anything. Actually, you may get more readers - it tends to bring in more fans than discourage them.
Always annoys me when published writers and publishers whine about fanfic. Do they realize they sound like spoiled brats? I'd love to have people writing fanfiction about characters I created. I'd consider it compliment. JK Rowlings has the right idea.
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no subject
Date: 2011-07-16 09:27 am (UTC)Even assuming the author doesn't mind the competition or fear that someone else might be better, what happens when a different interpretation of the characters / story becomes the "norm"?
But fanfic can also mean the difference between a fun but not all that memorable work and a work that survives the test of time, even if only similar to the original work.
For me BtVS was fun but not really memorable before fanfic. It was fanfic that "made" BtVS for me. Alas, it also left me dissatisfied with just BtVS.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-16 12:07 pm (UTC)True. But..considering that fanfic continues to be an underground medium and can't be published for money or done commercially until the work is in the public domain - which is when the author is either dead or long finished with it - I don't see this happening.
And it hasn't happened. People will always write or create fanfic in their heads or on the page, they will always share it. They always have.
Actually that's how myths and legends get created. They started out as one truth and over time became another. Because it was passed down orally or continuously translated and rewritten and each writer, each teller of the story added their own perspective to it. So by the end..the story no longer is the same.
Narratives change when we interact with them. Interpretations change. A writer and artist has no control over that. You can't tell your reader or audience how to see your story.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-16 12:29 pm (UTC)Clarification?
1.) I don't think it's possible for one interpretation to become the norm.
It didn't happen with Buffy fanfic or Harry Potter. For that to happen you'd have to have everyone see it and it would have to be done commercially.
The only stories that risk that happening are those that are in the public domain such as Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice - which has more published fanfic on it than anything out there, yet people still see Austen's version as the norm.
2) That doesn't mean the audience's or reader's interpretation won't vary from the writer's or that fanfic won't influence their interpretation or anything will. It does. But I don't believe a writer can ever control how someone will interpret their work or share it.
Narratives change when we interact with them. And everyone sees them differently. There really isn't one way or "the popular way" to see it - no matter how much the evil marketing people who rule the world would like that to be the case. Television critics such as Alan Sepinwall or Ken Tucker may be able to perk my interest in seeing a tv show they love or turn me off of one they hate before I've seen it or show me an angle that I have not seen
before, but they do not control how I see it. Or necessarily change it.
Any more than unbridled_brunette or selenak or herself or various other fanfic writers will change how I view the character of Spike - all they are doing is showing me another interpretation.
I think the only way for a fanfic interpretation to become the norm is if the original story were no longer available, it ceased to exist. Which is the case, if you think about it, with very old texts or stories - such as the Bible, the Greek Myths, Legends, Fables, Fairy Tales - stories passed down orally or translated so many times now that we no longer quite know what the original tale or interpretation is...(with the possible exception of The Bible). And perhaps in time - when the original version of Buffy is lost and it has been rebooted by someone else and that version takes over, it too will change. It's more likely actually to happen with a television series or movie - it has happened. That's what Ron Moore did with Battle Star Galatica - he re-did it, so that the new version is the norm and the old few remember. But he did it with the original creator's approval - Glenn A. Larson was all for it.
OTOH - the new versions of Sherlock Holmes really haven't changed the fact that most people see Conan Doyle's original tales as the norm.
It may depend on the strength of the original story in the consciousness of the viewer/reader. How strong and well-written it and the character was.
How many gaps, how satisfying. BTVS wasn't that well-written, it had gaps.
People felt a need to reinterpret it. They loved the characters that the writers created, but not what the writers choose to do with them or the plot - so numerous fans chose to ignore what was on-screen or say, in the comics, and create their own canon with those characters. To date there's no consensus - so a new canon has not replaced the original creators version.
Too many people still prefer that. But this happens a lot with tv shows.
The stronger televisions series - better written ones - tend to not have it happen as much - but television is a difficult medium to do without losing a viewer or two, or not screwing up here and there. Particularly genre television which has a lot of demands, many of which the writer can't get the funding to pull off the way he'd like to. The constraints of the medium of tv and film and even graphic novels...tend to result in stories that are more open to re-interpretations and re-tellings becoming the norm.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-16 03:39 pm (UTC)Even people who are cool with it, suddenly become less cool when they feel someone is giving the fanfic writer a big enough forum, like Whedon.
For some of these writers their work is more than just a story, it's their "baby". Something they leave behind, their mark in the world.
And other people are mucking about in it, changing stuff, messing with the "vision"...
Of course, there's no way to stop it. But the chances of GRRM ever having to listen to "Yeah, the series is so much better than the books!" is virtually null, while I'm sure Charlaine Harris has already had people tell her that.
Because True Blood is fanfic. And GoT is an adaptation.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-16 04:18 pm (UTC)I can totally see why a writer would struggle with it. Martin refused to sell the rights to GoT unless he was involved and had some control. He would never have permitted what Harris did. But Martin's relationship with Song of Ice and Fire is very different than Harris' with Sookie Stackhouse mysteries. Just reading the two authors - you can tell the difference. One author clearly lives and breathes his characters, his writing is from his heart, it's part of him. Harris is basically doing it for money. She has various mysteries out there. And her characters don't really evolve that much. She doesn't write in the same way or I suspect for the same reasons Martin does. I don't think Harris has anything to say, while George RR Martin definitely does.
Because True Blood is fanfic. And GoT is an adaptation.
No. They are both adaptations. Or derivative works based on a work that was created in another medium. One is just a looser adaptation than the other.
It's confusing, I know. Because wouldn't written fanfic based on tv shows be the same thing more or less? No. See, the difference is
fanfic is created by fans, without the permission of the writer.
OR the original writer and owner of the rights did not grant permission.
Wide Sagrasso Sea - is in a way a published fanfic. Charlotte Bronte is long dead, the rights are in the public domain, and it is in the same medium.
The Spike comics are not a published fanfic of the Buffy verse, they are a derivative work loosely based on the series, by another writer granted permission by the original creators/copy-right holder to do so.
True Blood - same deal. Charlain Harris is making a lot of money off of True Blood. She sold the rights to the tv producers/writers to do what they wanted with her characters and book in a television show only - this is called "film/tv" rights or subsidiary rights - there's a contract and everything spelling out exactly how much they have to pay her, what they can't or can do, etc. Just as Joss Whedon sold the Kuzies the rights to Buffy to do whatever they wanted to do with his story. That's very different than writing fanfic. Heck in Whedon's case? The rights to Buffy have been sold three ways - one (film rights), two (tv rights), three (comic book rights). The Film Rights are separate than the TV rights. Which is why the film isn't really canonical to the tv series.
Fanfic - is when you are writing something without the express permission of the original copyright holder and more to the point, not paying them. When you are? It's a derivative work or an adaptation.