Fan Fiction

[syntheticgerbil]

The constant overflow of fan works in the last decade or so is kind of making me sick. When people make good chunks of money going to cons or having online stores selling their prints off of copyrighted characters it stops being harmless fun and illegal and obnoxious.

 

A quote from Mike Mignola talking about seeing unauthorized prints of his character Hellboy, at Comicpalooza:

"I don't go up to guys at their booths but, amazingly, a lot of these guys come to me to me to show me the print. I try to be nice and patient and EXPLAIN why I don't want them doing the print, that they don't have the rights to the character. About half of the guys are embarrassed and say they'll stop selling them (who knows?) but the other half just stare at me in confusion. Doing and selling prints--Especially by guys who aren't actually working pros is SO common these days--I find so many of these guys have no idea that there's anything wrong with it."

 

But that's not really fan fiction, I suppose you can't really profit off of something so obvious as writing a story about other people's copyrighted characters.

[Argobot]

But that's not really fan fiction, I suppose you can't really profit off of something so obvious as writing a story about other people's copyrighted characters.

Except for 50 Shades of Grey. Or the fact that YA author LJ Smith was fired from writing her own successful series and replaced by a fan fiction author. Or that a lot of the currently popular YA series have come out of fan fiction writing.

[Twig]

I'm for protecting someone's IP (provided they don't go all Disney about it), but I also wish there was an easy avenue for someone making fanart to sell it and give a cut to the creator. Because people are buying these prints for a reason. They want them. It sucks that there's no quick and efficient way to get this set up.

[syntheticgerbil]

Except for 50 Shades of Grey. Or the fact that YA author LJ Smith was fired from writing her own successful series and replaced by a fan fiction author. Or that a lot of the currently popular YA series have come out of fan fiction writing.

That's sort of what I was referring to, that she got away with it by replacing all of the characters, since you can't really take pages of your fanfics around a con and sell them or charge online for a chance to read it. But I wasn't aware of the rest of that story.

I'm for protecting someone's IP (provided they don't go all Disney about it), but I also wish there was an easy avenue for someone making fanart to sell it and give a cut to the creator. Because people are buying these prints for a reason. They want them. It sucks that there's no quick and efficient way to get this set up.

I'm pretty sure many professional artists aren't really looking to cater to fan artist's profit when they often sell prints of the IP they own from their own websites. Just takes potential profit from them since they will undoubtedly charge more and they own the rights anyway.

 

It's easier not to care when you have something impersonal like Disney works with no real creator who is working at a loss, but then that is the one company everyone is afraid of treading on in terms of copyright law.

[SuperBiasedMan]

I know some people who sell print fan art stuff at cons and it's because realistically it's what sells. People in cons indulge in their fandoms and don't often care as much about original content or characters. That doesn't make it any less illegal but I think it shouldn't be ignored that the artists are still putting in plenty of work to try making things that are inspired by or involve copyrighted characters.

[clyde]

The constant overflow of fan works in the last decade or so is kind of making me sick. When people make good chunks of money going to cons or having online stores selling their prints off of copyrighted characters it stops being harmless fun and illegal and obnoxious.

But that's not really fan fiction, I suppose you can't really profit off of something so obvious as writing a story about other people's copyrighted characters.

This makes me want to write a cyberpunk short-story about an agency that garnishes wages as they enumerate through the private property that a person has self-identified with.

"Our records show that you quoted this movie to your friends in conversation. So that's $1.03"

"What? But how did I take profits away from you?"

"You made them laugh and spoiled the ending Mr. Stime. That means they didn't have to rent the movie from one of our officially approved servers."

When I lived in Athens, GA there was some agency that went around trying to get restuarants and book-stores to pay licensing fees for playing the radio or cds.

I don't see creators as owners of ideas. From my perspective, when a creator distributes an idea or concept they have relenquished control. Its ours now. You don't get to throw trojan horses into the public dialogue and then tax everything that grows from it. I think it comes from this fantasy that if a person just comes up with one good idea, they can just put their legs up and watch the money come in for the rest of their lives. Nope. This expectation grows patent-trolls, not more culture.

Except for 50 Shades of Grey. Or the fact that YA author LJ Smith was fired from writing her own successful series and replaced by a fan fiction author. Or that a lot of the currently popular YA series have come out of fan fiction writing.

The problem here is that LJ Smith can't write (what is now) fanfic of her own creation for profit, not that she got fired from commissioned work.

[Argobot]

The problem here is that LJ Smith can't write (what is now) fanfic of her own creation for profit, not that she got fired from commissioned work.

 

I don't really understand the distinction you're trying to make here.

[clyde]

I don't really understand the distinction you're trying to make here.

I might have misunderstood what you were trying to say. I thought that you were saying that the ability for fanfic writers to profit from IPs they don't own, hurts the original authors.

I've never heard of LJ Smith until your post, but looking into it a bit it seems that she is a great example of why fanfic needs to remain potentially profitable for the authors of derivative works. She didn't own the characters or the story, it was commisioned work. So when the company tries to rip something she has invested so heavily in away from her, it's important that she be able to continue using the world she created in her ongoing creative efforts. She is doing so by writing fanfic.

http://www.ljanesmith.net/blog/2014/635-l-j-smith-s-new-vampires-diaries-series

[clyde]

So far, the 13-page fanfic I read for free on tumblr is way better than the 136 page one I paid for. The premises are exactly the same, but the longer one just hasn't intrigued me.

One thing I love about the experience of reading both of them is that they both make mention of the hideous plaid, tweed dress that the main character wears in on or two episodes of the show. When I've watched the show in the past I've always been stunned by the fact that anyone would make that dress, much less put it on a main character in a drama as if it was a reasonable thing for someone to wear. I like seeing that other fans noticed that dress, though neither of them have mentioned my thoughts of how horrible it must have been to have that fabric touching her skin. Its enjoyable to see other people noticed the same things.

[Gormongous]

Isn't Mary Sue a rather disparaging term used to identify badly written characters that are obvious stand-ins for the author, hollow expressions of wish fulfilment? We should be careful to bandy about this term, since it's full of loopholes and vaguery, and at the end of the day is as much about a personal feeling you have with a character as it approaches some objective criticism. It's a limited term. The best use is as a geuzennaam for this awesome website.

 

I'm late to the party on this, but I also feel like "Mary Sue" has to include not only extremely unrealistic competency but extremely unrealistic likability. A Mary Sue is universally loved, regardless of her actions, and has close positive relationships with most if not all major characters, none of which are explained by the in-world context of the work. I'd be much more likely to call something like Jar-Jar Binks, a useless, destructive, and annoying character that somehow is beloved by the rest of the Star Wars cast, a "Mary Sue" than call Commander Shepard one. People hate Shepard in the Mass Effect games. Granted, it's usually because they're jealous, irrational, or misinformed, all of which are kind of Mary Sue reasons, but the fact remains that inexplicable likability is as important if not more important to the definition.

[Merus]

From what I remember, Mary Sues don't have to be liked, but there is always this element that other characters are reacting in a way that is inconsistent with their existing characters, but reflecting the way the author reacts to the existing characters.

[tegan]

This will always be my favourite source of fanfiction:

 

http://www.storiesofintrigue.com/

 

The hammuck breezed back ‘n fourth in the winds like a fat child unable to work a swingset. It was Lazy Sunday and Wolferine was lazing about with various exotic fruits and shrimps shishkabobbed on each of his adamantium claws. His murder weapons justsupposed into a picture of domestic bliss. Acoustic guitars plucked angelic in the background; Six Pants None the Richard, Wolferine’s favorite. A Normal Rockwell painting wainting to happen.

[Argobot]

Six Pants None the Richard is a much better name for that band.

[Merus]

I am baffled by the final sentence. I was not expecting an art reference in a paragraph referencing fat children in swingsets, Lazy Sunday and Sixpence None The Richer.

[clyde]

As I'm becoming more familiar with the terms, I'm realizing that one of my favorite korean dramas features a mary-sue lead. You Are Beautiful is about an orphan-girl who grows up in a convent and finds herself in a situation where she must pretend to be a boy in a boy-band to save her brother's career. She is incredibly self-sacrificing throughout the show which actually becomes an obstacle to the romance that eventually forms. Everyone loves her except a female star who is competing for the love-interest. It's really great.

-----

So I was reading some of the fanfic about the actors in Master's Sun falling in love (just until filming ends). And there is this additional quality I noticed. In the first one I read, I thought the use of Gong Hyo Ji's break-up of a 10-year long relationship was kind of awkward. I didn't know anything about her personal life before reading the fanfic. I was like "Huh. Okay, I bet that her fans knew about this before Master's Sun started and it was probably an angle they played up to build the sense that there is a potential real-life relationship between the two leads." I can certainly understand what the purpose of that would be, given that I am reading fanfic about them hooking up.

But now I'm reading this one and the suicide of one of So Ji Sub's best friends has become a emotional touchstone by which he measures Gong Hyo Jin's personality; she reminds So Ji Sub of him and he wonders if he can handle that. I looked it up and indeed, the suicide is real and there are a bunch of pictures of So Ji Sub in grief during that event. I'm conflicted because I view the use of a very personal, real-life trauma for a fictional work to be in poor taste just as a general rule; but I have to admit that it's used for something interesting here. It's probably not my place to chose what is "interesting enough" for acceptable use of a personal tragedy, but if the reasoning for the suicide was depicted (for instance if the fanfic stated that his best friend committed suicide because So Ji Sub scorned his love) instead of the effects of it on So Ji Sub, I would find it vulgar*.

This inner debate about whether or not I think this is poor form, got me wondering if there is a subset of fanfic about non-fictional people (and all the baggage that that would include). Indeed there is:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_person_fiction

* actually, now that I'm thinking about it, I would find a description of his grief as insincere and for show as rather distasteful.

Also also:

tegan, I just have to express my appreciation for this line from the fanfic you linked.

Beleive it or not, but his muscles got even ripley’er.

[clyde]

After reading that the Bronte family wrote fanfic about Lord Byron, I read his wikipedia article. What a colossal dick. His great uncle was a dick too. The Brontes can write whatever they want about him as far as I'm concerned. Hopefully it's about how much of a dick he was.

[Patrick R]

I have been fascinated by slasher movie fan films for a long time. I think slasher movie fan films feel distinct from Batman, Star Wars, etc. because slasher movies so often already look like their made by amateurs. And, in the case of most of the major slasher movie franchises (Freddy, Jason, Michael Myers) there is no one creative force (and often, not even one studio) behind them, so every entry already feels like fan-fiction, in a way. The line between Friday the 13th Part 3 and

is a lot thinner than you'd think.

 

What I've learned is that most slasher movie fans (or at least, the ones who make and watch slasher movie fan-films) are obsessed with two things:

 

• Who could kick whose ass?
• Creating complex mythology that explains why these mindless killers are doing what they do

Which is too bad because those are my absolute least favorite parts of slasher movies. But there's still something pure about slasher movie fan-films. I feel like at one point every little kid who likes horror movies picks up a camera, puts a mask on their friend, and makes something like this. Even in the most elaborate and slick looking slasher movie fan-film, there's still that vibe of the 12 year old with a camcorder making a monster movie.

 

My favorite slasher movie fan-film is

, which is already down the rabbit hole of fan-fiction, since it's an adaptation of a Friday the 13th young adult novel, which in turn was written by an amateur writer and Friday the 13th fan who worked at K-Mart. The story behind that is apparently crazy (he misread his contract and thought he had a year to write each of the four books he was assigned and it wasn't until he finished Mother's Day on month ten that he realized he had two months to write three more books) but the book he wrote actually shows a really good understanding of what makes slasher movies work. If most Friday the 13th movies feel like sex comedies that got interrupted by a deranged killer, Mother's Day feels like a Sweet Valley High book that gets interrupted by a deranged killer.

 

My love of the big three horror franchises has always been my dumb little guilty pleasure, but my fascination with their fan films is a different thing entirely. It's the only fan-fiction I've ever been able to get into.

[tegan]

After reading that the Bronte family wrote fanfic about Lord Byron, I read his wikipedia article. What a colossal dick. His great uncle was a dick too. The Brontes can write whatever they want about him as far as I'm concerned. Hopefully it's about how much of a dick he was.

 

[Architecture]

Except for 50 Shades of Grey.

Oh my god, this explains everything.

 

That book is just mind-numbingly awful--I think I gave it about 40 pages until I finally conceded defeat.

[clyde]

In the show that the fanfic I'm reading is based on the characters each have a (like) poker-tell. They have these physical catch-phrases. I'm sure there is a name for this but I don't know what it is. She unthinkingly grasps him all the time and then looks at him with wide eyes and nods enthusiastically while he tells her to go away. She also has this serious persona she puts on on where flipping her hair away from her neck with her hand is used for punctuation. He tends to say something he thinks is clever and then looks at no one and talks to himself while smirking and it communicates very clearly that he is proud of himself. It's really effective when the fanfic makes use of these motions. I can picture them doing it and it makes the dialogues way more interesting when they reference those tells for shorthand. I like that a lot.

Something else I noticed (and this could have more to do with reading a romance than with reading fanfic) is that when I brush up against my wife or get a chance to hold her by the shoulders for a moment while reaching for something on a shelf, I experience a tetris-effect from the fanfic that makes me feel like it's a really big deal. We've been together for a while and we are frequently physically affectionate. The young-love doubts expressed in the fanfic are not something we typically experience. But there have been some moments in the past few days where I am sincerely thinking "I can't believe I'm touching her right now."

[osmosisch]

After reading that the Bronte family wrote fanfic about Lord Byron, I read his wikipedia article. What a colossal dick. His great uncle was a dick too.

Cool daughter though.

[Bjorn]

Something else I noticed (and this could have more to do with reading a romance than with reading fanfic) is that when I brush up against my wife or get a chance to hold her by the shoulders for a moment while reaching for something on a shelf, I experience a tetris-effect from the fanfic that makes me feel like it's a really big deal. We've been together for a while and we are frequently physically affectionate. The young-love doubts expressed in the fanfic are not something we typically experience. But there have been some moments in the past few days where I am sincerely thinking "I can't believe I'm touching her right now."

 

That's fantastic!  We're going on ten years in our relationship this year, and we definitely notice there are certain types of experiences that kind of spark that particular bit of romantic affection for us, the type of thing that usually fades over the years.  Cool that you've found one!

[clyde]

Cool daughter though.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace

 

Now that is a wikipedia article! How is it that all this shit is connected? Is it because so few people had the resources to do interesting things in Victorian society? or because they were all reading the same three magazines? 

 

What a horrible family, but they ended up with a great character for a steampunk story.

 

I'm having a hard time finding any of Flyology's illustrations online.

 

Edit: 

Looks like William Gibson and Bruce Sterling wrote a steampunk book with her as a character. Cool.

[Gormongous]

Looks like William Gibson and Bruce Sterling wrote a steampunk book with her as a character. Cool.

 

It's actually rather good, though it suffers from the typical problems of a book by two authors with different styles.

[Merus]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace

 

Now that is a wikipedia article! How is it that all this shit is connected? Is it because so few people had the resources to do interesting things in Victorian society? or because they were all reading the same three magazines? 

 

I'd guess the first one.

 

Ada Lovelace gets a lot of credit as the first computer programmer, but Grace Hopper doesn't get nearly the same amount of props as she should. She was one of the early greats - named computer problems as 'bugs', and wrote the first compiler, without which we'd be writing computer code in binary and three-letter mnemonics.