shadowsong26 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
shadowsong26) wrote2012-04-11 02:02 am
shadowsong26) wrote2012-04-11 02:02 am
so, i recently came across a seven-year-old rant...
This one, to be precise. And I have some...thoughts.
Okay, taking my response in order, the way the original rant does.
For reference, Hobb's definition of fanfiction: "Fan fiction is fiction written by a 'fan' or reader, without the consent of the original author, yet using that author's characters and world."
The first issue addressed is the 'without the consent of the original author.'
...okay. That, right there, disqualifies a lot of popular and/or influential works. Let's start with the new Sherlock Holmes franchises. Specifically, the Guy Ritchie films, the BBC series, and House, since those are the ones I'm most familiar with.
The films are, in some ways, closest to the original work--and, to their credit, they get a hell of a lot closer to the original characterization of John Watson than most other films in the last century have, where Watson's intelligence and general badassery tend to be downplayed. That being said, they're steampunk action/adventure films with a basis in crime solving rather than straight detective stories--not exactly the same spirit or tone as the original stories.
The BBC series? Modern-day AU.
House? Modern-day AU in a hospital. Admittedly so, given House (synonym for the homonym of 'Holmes'--homes) and Wilson's names (the parallels are a lot clearer in earlier episodes).
And those are only the adaptations I'm intimately familiar with. There's also a couple anime versions, IIRC, the new Elementary that's in production, The Great Mouse Detective...
I sincerely doubt Sir Arthur Conan Doyle gave consent for any of these.
What about Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet? Or Ten Things I Hate About You? Both are modern-day settings of Shakespeare plays, though the first keeps the original text. The second is a straight-up High School AU--a popular fanfic form.
What about Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame? Excises Hugo's narrator and cuts or limits the role of other characters, expands on a few brief references to Quasimodo talking to gargoyles, changes Frollo's occupation--and, most importantly, which you mentioned as one of the worst things a fic writer can do, keeps people alive at the end who died in the original work.
Again, doubt Shakespeare and Hugo consented to any of this.
What about Troy? It came out in I think 2004. It may be a bad example, 'cause it kinda sucked, but Paris survives. Right away a big change from the Iliad.
But film adaptations always change a few details here and there. That's to be expected, even when an author sells the movie rights. Just look at the Prisoner of Azkaban film (another rant for another day). Okay, fair enough. Let's move on to live theatre.
Skipping Wicked and Lestat and a few other novel adaptations, despite some (occasionally aggravating) sweeping changes they made, due to those being official/licensed/whatnot.
Let's start with West Side Story. Mid-fifties AU of Romeo and Juliet, where Juliet survives and the two feuding families are no longer Veronese aristocrats, but first and second-generation dirt-poor immigrant New York street gangs (Polish and Puerto Rican, respectively).
Maury Yeston's Phantom--where oh where do I begin. About the only similarities to the source material are the names of the main characters, the fact that he's disfigured, and that it takes place in an opera house.
Andrew Lloyd Weber's Phantom of the Opera--again, a main character who dies in the novel is at least heavily implied to survive. Then he wrote a sequel which confirmed it. Then there are the characters who are cut (like Raoul's brother) or turned into composites (like the Persian with Mme. Giry).
Actually, let's take some of Andrew Lloyd Weber's other well-known plays. Jesus Christ Superstar. Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Hell, even Cats. None of these are actually his original stories--or does the Bible not count, because it's either the Word of God or no single human author or both (i.e., God working through multiple mouthpieces)?
How about Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead? Again, taking from Shakespeare in terms of plot and characters--explicitly filling in gaps of things that happen 'offstage', which was another thing Hobb says should be absolutely taboo--but that must have been done for a reason! Shame on you, Mr. Stoppard. And that's not even touching on the way you basically rewrote Waiting for Godot to do it.
And what about Les Miserables? While overall faithful to the tone and no major character storylines are changed, quite a few are cut--but, again, if film adaptations are allowed to do that, provided the rights are sold appropriately, I suppose I can't complain about that in a stage musical adaptation, either.
What about Verdi and Rossini writing Otello operas? What about RENT taking from La Boheme? Madama Butterfly from Madame Chrysantheme? What about Byron taking from Moliere when writing his Don Juan story? What about when Mozart did it? Hell, Moliere just popularized him--he borrowed from Tirso de Molina. What about when Racine borrowed from Euripides' Hippolytus and Seneca's Phaedra to write his Phedre? What about the way Seneca explicitly was working from Euripides for the afore-mentioned plays? What about all the Greek tragedians who wrote parts of the Odyssey and Iliad?
On the subject of live theatre, what does that mean for companies who stage Shakespeare plays--or Ancient Greek drama, or Restoration drama, or 19th-century drama, or any other play written in another time period--in anything other than the specifically referenced time and/or place given in the text? Or, if there isn't one, Generic Playwright's Era costumes/sets? What about when the Shakespeare Theatre of Washington DC did Love's Labours Lost in the 1960s, clearly referencing The Beatles? Or Ion, a Greek tragedy, specifically referencing modern tourism? Or Ibsen's Ghosts set in modern times and implying AIDS rather than syphilis? Or, hell, that one film version of A Midsummer Night's Dream with pretty clearly Edwardian costumes and sets (in the Athens portions of the show)? My high school Shakespeare Troupe even did a production of Much Ado About Nothing drawing heavily on 30s and 40s organized crime, set in Sicily. What about when we did The Merchant of Venice in Depression-era New York? Romeo and Juliet in the Regency (18-teens)? Were we evil bad fanfic writers then? We were definitely fans using an author's world and characters without his consent and twisting them to suit our own ideas.
Speaking of Shakespeare, what about all the novels written about his plays? I remember one--though I can't recall the title--YA novel about Shylock's daughter Jessica. Obviously a fanfic. What about 19th-century novelizations/summaries of Shakespeare plays? What about abridged versions of classics designed to introduce them to children? What about Wishbone?
By the given definition, all fanfics. All bad.
So, before I get to the other points in the essay, here's my question. I wrote a fanfic I'm rather proud of, set a few years after the conclusion of the series it's based on, about the eventual death of a major character. Why is what I did unacceptable, when clearly there's nothing wrong with any of the other stories I mentioned? Is it just because those authors are all long dead, and the creators of the world I wrote in aren't? Is it because Andrew Lloyd Weber, Tom Stoppard, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, Steven Moffat, and all the rest are themselves professional writers, and I'm an amateur? If not, and if those works aren't considered fanfics when mine are...please explain.
Okay. Onto the smaller points in the rant. I'll be paraphrasing these points rather than quoting directly from now on, but they all come from Hobb's above-linked rant.
1. The comparison of fanfic to identity theft--okay. Fine. That's Hobb's opinion. I disagree, but it's a valid one.
2. The idea of people wanting to continue/elaborate on your stories should be insulting--again, a valid opinion. But I write both original and fanfiction, and I have to say I disagree. Maybe it's because I have a different attitude towards my control over my stories--namely, even before it's left my hands, it's not my story so much as it is my characters'. And, actually, I would be flattered if someone wanted to play in my world. I myself write AUs of my things in my head all the time. Will I like everything that other people come up with in my world? Almost certainly not. Will there be some I wish I'd come up with myself before they did? Almost certainly yes. But I don't think I have absolute control over my world, and I think maintaining a strict opinion that I do is a disservice to my characters and the world they live in. I think...I guess I view my world differently than Hobb does hers. Some things I leave out because I'm not comfortable explaining them in detail, not because I think they need to be mysterious. And, to be honest...a lot of times I leave space to encourage the kind of speculation fanfiction celebrates. What's the point of putting a mystery into my story and then yelling at people when they develop opinions on its solution? Because whether or not it's written down, gaps left in the story will be filled in by fans/readers. And just because someone else comes up with a different fill-in doesn't necessarily mean that's the be-all end-all of what I'm going to think about a novel I've read or a movie or TV show or play I've seen, as Hobb seems to think it will, any more than I'd feel the same about such an interpretation I found in a scholarly analytical essay on said novel or movie or TV show or play.
3. Writing fanfiction to become a writer is like singing karaoke to become a singer--sure, maybe. I'll accept that analogy, at least for the purposes of argument, as both a novice writer and a voice student. If it's all the writer/singer does. But, you know what? Any kind of practice is helpful. And, for all my complaints about people who don't do thorough worldbuilding (especially all the high-fantasy Tolkien ripoffs), worldbuilding isn't the only thing that goes into writing. I have learned things and improved my craft by writing fanfiction, in more than one way.
3a. First, just the basic mechanics of the craft of writing fiction. I look up my work from ten years ago--both fan and original--and cringe at the clunkiness of the prose. True, some of my improvement has come from taking writing classes. Some of it has come from writing stories In The Style Of an author or particular genre that I'm not very well-versed in. Some of it has come from writing purely original stories. And some of it has come from writing fanfiction. This is the point where the karaoke analogy falls flat--in any craft, practice improves technique. For raw technique improvement, fanfiction is as good as any other prose-writing practice method.
3b. Second, I've gotten a lot better at distinguishing voices of different characters by trying to match pre-existing voices and characterizations. I don't think I would have gotten as good at distinguishing voices as I am (though I am by no means claiming to be a master of that, since it's super-hard to evaluate my own work) if I was only doing my own original characters--I mean, look at Robert Jordan's work--original world, original characters...despite its flaws, a pretty solid epic fantasy. In fact, I have a lot of fondness for the Wheel of Time, for a long list of reasons contained in another rambling post here on my journal, but one of the major flaws in his work is his lack of distinct character voices.
3c. Third, not all fanfiction (though some people would prefer it if it was) involves only canon characters. Hobb dismisses original characters as "masturbation fantasy" (that one is a direct quote), assuming that all original characters in fanfiction are author avatars. Well, that's simply not true, any more than all characters in original worlds are. Building a character to fit a pre-existing world helps one learn how to build well-rounded characters in one's own world. Even if no one else wants to read about them.
3d. Totally irrelevant, but I like cake. Whether or not it's made from a mix. Food can be non-gourmet and still yummy. So there.
4. Copyright extends beyond financial gains--fair enough. I'll concede this point. But since it seems to be the strongest one, I question putting it in this part of the essay, sandwiched between several weaker, purely opinion-based points.
5. Suppressing fanfiction is encouraging creativity--see all my responses in #3.
6. Fanfiction is unconnected to free speech--what really bothers me in this section of the rant is the assumption that all fanfiction is "poor quality". I've read plenty of fanfic that's a lot better than plenty of unrelated original novels, and plenty that's at least on par with the work it's based on.
7. If I'm tempted to write fanfiction, I should basically go ahead and do it, then file off the serial numbers before posting it anywhere. ...okay, yes, that is in fact where two of my current original works started, at least in part.
In conclusion: fanfiction and/or other forms of derivative fiction are omnipresent and have been since pretty much the dawn of fiction writing. A lot of the rant is opinion which Hobb is absolutely free to hold. I happen to disagree with it, and think there are points of the argument which fall flat. Fanfic of classic literature--or the Bible--is still fanfic, by Hobb's definition, and yet look at how much of it is around us. I'm not saying anyone has to love people writing derivatives of his or her or hir or their work. I, personally, would--because it would mean that people care enough about what I've produced to want to explore my playground. I respect that Hobb does not. She is certainly as entitled to her opinion as I am. All I'm trying to do with this rant of my own is point out the flaws in her argument against fanfiction--of which I found few points I either agree with/concede or respect as a simple difference of opinion without further need for comment. I write both fanfiction and original work, as I mentioned before. I love writing both. I have learned a lot from my fanfic works, and from roleplaying, speculating, and other parts of what a fandom does (though I tend to stay on the fringes of most fandoms I follow). I don't think it invalidates my work or is "unworthy" of me as a writer.
And I will leave with a final thought: The main thing that bothers me about Hobb's rant is that she seems to assume that no effort or creativity goes into fanfiction because the worldbuilding and character building has already been taken care of. Technically, that's also true of people who write historical fiction--particularly fiction about specific historical figures, rather than just generally in a time period. Plenty of historical fiction is poorly researched or plays fast and loose with what we know about historical personalities and events (I refer you to The Book of Eleanor: A Novel of Eleanor of Aquitaine--which I actually like, or did the last time I read it, despite its glaring, headwall-inducing inaccuracies). Does that mean those authors' work is less valid or creative?
Okay. I feel better now. Hopefully that was relatively coherent, and to anyone who stuck with me through all that, thank you.
Okay, taking my response in order, the way the original rant does.
For reference, Hobb's definition of fanfiction: "Fan fiction is fiction written by a 'fan' or reader, without the consent of the original author, yet using that author's characters and world."
The first issue addressed is the 'without the consent of the original author.'
...okay. That, right there, disqualifies a lot of popular and/or influential works. Let's start with the new Sherlock Holmes franchises. Specifically, the Guy Ritchie films, the BBC series, and House, since those are the ones I'm most familiar with.
The films are, in some ways, closest to the original work--and, to their credit, they get a hell of a lot closer to the original characterization of John Watson than most other films in the last century have, where Watson's intelligence and general badassery tend to be downplayed. That being said, they're steampunk action/adventure films with a basis in crime solving rather than straight detective stories--not exactly the same spirit or tone as the original stories.
The BBC series? Modern-day AU.
House? Modern-day AU in a hospital. Admittedly so, given House (synonym for the homonym of 'Holmes'--homes) and Wilson's names (the parallels are a lot clearer in earlier episodes).
And those are only the adaptations I'm intimately familiar with. There's also a couple anime versions, IIRC, the new Elementary that's in production, The Great Mouse Detective...
I sincerely doubt Sir Arthur Conan Doyle gave consent for any of these.
What about Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet? Or Ten Things I Hate About You? Both are modern-day settings of Shakespeare plays, though the first keeps the original text. The second is a straight-up High School AU--a popular fanfic form.
What about Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame? Excises Hugo's narrator and cuts or limits the role of other characters, expands on a few brief references to Quasimodo talking to gargoyles, changes Frollo's occupation--and, most importantly, which you mentioned as one of the worst things a fic writer can do, keeps people alive at the end who died in the original work.
Again, doubt Shakespeare and Hugo consented to any of this.
What about Troy? It came out in I think 2004. It may be a bad example, 'cause it kinda sucked, but Paris survives. Right away a big change from the Iliad.
But film adaptations always change a few details here and there. That's to be expected, even when an author sells the movie rights. Just look at the Prisoner of Azkaban film (another rant for another day). Okay, fair enough. Let's move on to live theatre.
Skipping Wicked and Lestat and a few other novel adaptations, despite some (occasionally aggravating) sweeping changes they made, due to those being official/licensed/whatnot.
Let's start with West Side Story. Mid-fifties AU of Romeo and Juliet, where Juliet survives and the two feuding families are no longer Veronese aristocrats, but first and second-generation dirt-poor immigrant New York street gangs (Polish and Puerto Rican, respectively).
Maury Yeston's Phantom--where oh where do I begin. About the only similarities to the source material are the names of the main characters, the fact that he's disfigured, and that it takes place in an opera house.
Andrew Lloyd Weber's Phantom of the Opera--again, a main character who dies in the novel is at least heavily implied to survive. Then he wrote a sequel which confirmed it. Then there are the characters who are cut (like Raoul's brother) or turned into composites (like the Persian with Mme. Giry).
Actually, let's take some of Andrew Lloyd Weber's other well-known plays. Jesus Christ Superstar. Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Hell, even Cats. None of these are actually his original stories--or does the Bible not count, because it's either the Word of God or no single human author or both (i.e., God working through multiple mouthpieces)?
How about Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead? Again, taking from Shakespeare in terms of plot and characters--explicitly filling in gaps of things that happen 'offstage', which was another thing Hobb says should be absolutely taboo--but that must have been done for a reason! Shame on you, Mr. Stoppard. And that's not even touching on the way you basically rewrote Waiting for Godot to do it.
And what about Les Miserables? While overall faithful to the tone and no major character storylines are changed, quite a few are cut--but, again, if film adaptations are allowed to do that, provided the rights are sold appropriately, I suppose I can't complain about that in a stage musical adaptation, either.
What about Verdi and Rossini writing Otello operas? What about RENT taking from La Boheme? Madama Butterfly from Madame Chrysantheme? What about Byron taking from Moliere when writing his Don Juan story? What about when Mozart did it? Hell, Moliere just popularized him--he borrowed from Tirso de Molina. What about when Racine borrowed from Euripides' Hippolytus and Seneca's Phaedra to write his Phedre? What about the way Seneca explicitly was working from Euripides for the afore-mentioned plays? What about all the Greek tragedians who wrote parts of the Odyssey and Iliad?
On the subject of live theatre, what does that mean for companies who stage Shakespeare plays--or Ancient Greek drama, or Restoration drama, or 19th-century drama, or any other play written in another time period--in anything other than the specifically referenced time and/or place given in the text? Or, if there isn't one, Generic Playwright's Era costumes/sets? What about when the Shakespeare Theatre of Washington DC did Love's Labours Lost in the 1960s, clearly referencing The Beatles? Or Ion, a Greek tragedy, specifically referencing modern tourism? Or Ibsen's Ghosts set in modern times and implying AIDS rather than syphilis? Or, hell, that one film version of A Midsummer Night's Dream with pretty clearly Edwardian costumes and sets (in the Athens portions of the show)? My high school Shakespeare Troupe even did a production of Much Ado About Nothing drawing heavily on 30s and 40s organized crime, set in Sicily. What about when we did The Merchant of Venice in Depression-era New York? Romeo and Juliet in the Regency (18-teens)? Were we evil bad fanfic writers then? We were definitely fans using an author's world and characters without his consent and twisting them to suit our own ideas.
Speaking of Shakespeare, what about all the novels written about his plays? I remember one--though I can't recall the title--YA novel about Shylock's daughter Jessica. Obviously a fanfic. What about 19th-century novelizations/summaries of Shakespeare plays? What about abridged versions of classics designed to introduce them to children? What about Wishbone?
By the given definition, all fanfics. All bad.
So, before I get to the other points in the essay, here's my question. I wrote a fanfic I'm rather proud of, set a few years after the conclusion of the series it's based on, about the eventual death of a major character. Why is what I did unacceptable, when clearly there's nothing wrong with any of the other stories I mentioned? Is it just because those authors are all long dead, and the creators of the world I wrote in aren't? Is it because Andrew Lloyd Weber, Tom Stoppard, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, Steven Moffat, and all the rest are themselves professional writers, and I'm an amateur? If not, and if those works aren't considered fanfics when mine are...please explain.
Okay. Onto the smaller points in the rant. I'll be paraphrasing these points rather than quoting directly from now on, but they all come from Hobb's above-linked rant.
1. The comparison of fanfic to identity theft--okay. Fine. That's Hobb's opinion. I disagree, but it's a valid one.
2. The idea of people wanting to continue/elaborate on your stories should be insulting--again, a valid opinion. But I write both original and fanfiction, and I have to say I disagree. Maybe it's because I have a different attitude towards my control over my stories--namely, even before it's left my hands, it's not my story so much as it is my characters'. And, actually, I would be flattered if someone wanted to play in my world. I myself write AUs of my things in my head all the time. Will I like everything that other people come up with in my world? Almost certainly not. Will there be some I wish I'd come up with myself before they did? Almost certainly yes. But I don't think I have absolute control over my world, and I think maintaining a strict opinion that I do is a disservice to my characters and the world they live in. I think...I guess I view my world differently than Hobb does hers. Some things I leave out because I'm not comfortable explaining them in detail, not because I think they need to be mysterious. And, to be honest...a lot of times I leave space to encourage the kind of speculation fanfiction celebrates. What's the point of putting a mystery into my story and then yelling at people when they develop opinions on its solution? Because whether or not it's written down, gaps left in the story will be filled in by fans/readers. And just because someone else comes up with a different fill-in doesn't necessarily mean that's the be-all end-all of what I'm going to think about a novel I've read or a movie or TV show or play I've seen, as Hobb seems to think it will, any more than I'd feel the same about such an interpretation I found in a scholarly analytical essay on said novel or movie or TV show or play.
3. Writing fanfiction to become a writer is like singing karaoke to become a singer--sure, maybe. I'll accept that analogy, at least for the purposes of argument, as both a novice writer and a voice student. If it's all the writer/singer does. But, you know what? Any kind of practice is helpful. And, for all my complaints about people who don't do thorough worldbuilding (especially all the high-fantasy Tolkien ripoffs), worldbuilding isn't the only thing that goes into writing. I have learned things and improved my craft by writing fanfiction, in more than one way.
3a. First, just the basic mechanics of the craft of writing fiction. I look up my work from ten years ago--both fan and original--and cringe at the clunkiness of the prose. True, some of my improvement has come from taking writing classes. Some of it has come from writing stories In The Style Of an author or particular genre that I'm not very well-versed in. Some of it has come from writing purely original stories. And some of it has come from writing fanfiction. This is the point where the karaoke analogy falls flat--in any craft, practice improves technique. For raw technique improvement, fanfiction is as good as any other prose-writing practice method.
3b. Second, I've gotten a lot better at distinguishing voices of different characters by trying to match pre-existing voices and characterizations. I don't think I would have gotten as good at distinguishing voices as I am (though I am by no means claiming to be a master of that, since it's super-hard to evaluate my own work) if I was only doing my own original characters--I mean, look at Robert Jordan's work--original world, original characters...despite its flaws, a pretty solid epic fantasy. In fact, I have a lot of fondness for the Wheel of Time, for a long list of reasons contained in another rambling post here on my journal, but one of the major flaws in his work is his lack of distinct character voices.
3c. Third, not all fanfiction (though some people would prefer it if it was) involves only canon characters. Hobb dismisses original characters as "masturbation fantasy" (that one is a direct quote), assuming that all original characters in fanfiction are author avatars. Well, that's simply not true, any more than all characters in original worlds are. Building a character to fit a pre-existing world helps one learn how to build well-rounded characters in one's own world. Even if no one else wants to read about them.
3d. Totally irrelevant, but I like cake. Whether or not it's made from a mix. Food can be non-gourmet and still yummy. So there.
4. Copyright extends beyond financial gains--fair enough. I'll concede this point. But since it seems to be the strongest one, I question putting it in this part of the essay, sandwiched between several weaker, purely opinion-based points.
5. Suppressing fanfiction is encouraging creativity--see all my responses in #3.
6. Fanfiction is unconnected to free speech--what really bothers me in this section of the rant is the assumption that all fanfiction is "poor quality". I've read plenty of fanfic that's a lot better than plenty of unrelated original novels, and plenty that's at least on par with the work it's based on.
7. If I'm tempted to write fanfiction, I should basically go ahead and do it, then file off the serial numbers before posting it anywhere. ...okay, yes, that is in fact where two of my current original works started, at least in part.
In conclusion: fanfiction and/or other forms of derivative fiction are omnipresent and have been since pretty much the dawn of fiction writing. A lot of the rant is opinion which Hobb is absolutely free to hold. I happen to disagree with it, and think there are points of the argument which fall flat. Fanfic of classic literature--or the Bible--is still fanfic, by Hobb's definition, and yet look at how much of it is around us. I'm not saying anyone has to love people writing derivatives of his or her or hir or their work. I, personally, would--because it would mean that people care enough about what I've produced to want to explore my playground. I respect that Hobb does not. She is certainly as entitled to her opinion as I am. All I'm trying to do with this rant of my own is point out the flaws in her argument against fanfiction--of which I found few points I either agree with/concede or respect as a simple difference of opinion without further need for comment. I write both fanfiction and original work, as I mentioned before. I love writing both. I have learned a lot from my fanfic works, and from roleplaying, speculating, and other parts of what a fandom does (though I tend to stay on the fringes of most fandoms I follow). I don't think it invalidates my work or is "unworthy" of me as a writer.
And I will leave with a final thought: The main thing that bothers me about Hobb's rant is that she seems to assume that no effort or creativity goes into fanfiction because the worldbuilding and character building has already been taken care of. Technically, that's also true of people who write historical fiction--particularly fiction about specific historical figures, rather than just generally in a time period. Plenty of historical fiction is poorly researched or plays fast and loose with what we know about historical personalities and events (I refer you to The Book of Eleanor: A Novel of Eleanor of Aquitaine--which I actually like, or did the last time I read it, despite its glaring, headwall-inducing inaccuracies). Does that mean those authors' work is less valid or creative?
Okay. I feel better now. Hopefully that was relatively coherent, and to anyone who stuck with me through all that, thank you.