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You did not just go there...
I should just not read metafandom on LJ and meta_roundup on IJ some days.
Because when I see posts like this where fanfiction is compared to "gay marriage," I want to break things. (The correct term is equality marriage, BTW. Edit: I've been told that "gay marriage" and "same-sex marriage" are as acceptable as "equality marriage." Just throwing that out there so it doesn't detract from my point.)
[NOTE: DO NOT go over and flame the OP or cause her problems. I'm providing the link so you can read the post and for no other reason.]
I first heard/seen it on LJ a few days ago. Then I saw it linked to on JF. It's now been linked to meta_roundup on IJ.
I've seen this same comparison three times in something like three days.
Each time I read it, I get a bit angrier.
Look, I understand that the Organization for Transformative Works (hereafter referred to as the OTW) is a big deal to some people. I've read the various arguments in support of it, and I'm still not horribly impressed. I see a lot of biiiiiiig words arguing why I should think the OTW (whatever it's supposed to be) is the greatest thing evah, but what I don't see is a lot of operational details that a wonk like me sees as remotely feasible.
Personally, when it comes to the OTW, I say the jury is waaaaay out on that one. Because all those words I'm reading really don't tell me a damn thing of what it's actually supposed to be and what it's supposed to accomplish. I feel a bit like someone who's listening to 5 blind men describe an elephant without knowing that they're describing an elephant. No one seems to actually agree on what "it" is supposed to be.
But far be it from me to harsh anyone's Big Idea That Will Change the World. Knock yourself out, sez I. Who knows? Maybe I'm too naturally suspicious of the Big Idea That Will Change the World. Maybe the supporters of OTW are right. Maybe it will actually turn out to be something pretty special. I could be wrong, and I'm willing to be wrong.
However, based on what I'm reading/seeing so far...let's just say I have my doubts about OTW and leave it at that.
That said, posts like "fanfiction is like gay marriage" is not going to win me over.
In fact, it really pisses me the hell off.
As someone who lives in the only state in the U.S. that actually recognizes equality marriage as a matter of law and who lived the 4 bruising years between 2003 and 2007 where the fight raged non-stop over any and all attempts to amend our state constitution to make our gay and lesbian friends, family members, and neighbors into second class citizens to the point where it overrode all other state issues I'm pretty fucking sure that fanfiction is not like "gay marriage" at all.
Let me explain something:
I'm sure that list could be a lot longer, but that's just for a start on how writing fanfic is not at all like "gay marriage."
Listen, I'm not saying that fanfic writers haven't found themselves in shit RL situations like the ones I've listed above. I'm also not arguing that all fanfic writers are gay, lesbian, or bi any more than I'd argue the reverse.
However, 99% of the time verging on 100% of the time, when RL (as in: not on the Internet) sexism or racism or sexuality bias rears its ugly head and slaps an individual across the face, it's not because they write fanfiction. They may happen to write fanfiction, but it's not because they write fanfiction, damn it!
You see the difference, right? Because I see a pretty big difference between the two.
Listen, I understand that the very idea of the OTW inspires fanatical devotion among some in fandom to the point where they can be pretty annoying about it, but posts like this are not helping your cause.
And this isn't the first time I've seen/read posts in favor of the OTW that lacked any sort of perspective at all. I mean, for the record, writing fanfiction is not at all like being in an interracial marriage. And questioning the purpose of the OTW is not at all like being homophobic or racist (examples of arguments I've actually read).
Posts like this piss people off. It sure as hell pisses me off. And when you piss people off, you turn them off. Maybe permanently.
Hyperbole is no one's friend. Please keep that in mind for the future. Thanx.
Because when I see posts like this where fanfiction is compared to "gay marriage," I want to break things. (
[NOTE: DO NOT go over and flame the OP or cause her problems. I'm providing the link so you can read the post and for no other reason.]
I first heard/seen it on LJ a few days ago. Then I saw it linked to on JF. It's now been linked to meta_roundup on IJ.
I've seen this same comparison three times in something like three days.
Each time I read it, I get a bit angrier.
Look, I understand that the Organization for Transformative Works (hereafter referred to as the OTW) is a big deal to some people. I've read the various arguments in support of it, and I'm still not horribly impressed. I see a lot of biiiiiiig words arguing why I should think the OTW (whatever it's supposed to be) is the greatest thing evah, but what I don't see is a lot of operational details that a wonk like me sees as remotely feasible.
Personally, when it comes to the OTW, I say the jury is waaaaay out on that one. Because all those words I'm reading really don't tell me a damn thing of what it's actually supposed to be and what it's supposed to accomplish. I feel a bit like someone who's listening to 5 blind men describe an elephant without knowing that they're describing an elephant. No one seems to actually agree on what "it" is supposed to be.
But far be it from me to harsh anyone's Big Idea That Will Change the World. Knock yourself out, sez I. Who knows? Maybe I'm too naturally suspicious of the Big Idea That Will Change the World. Maybe the supporters of OTW are right. Maybe it will actually turn out to be something pretty special. I could be wrong, and I'm willing to be wrong.
However, based on what I'm reading/seeing so far...let's just say I have my doubts about OTW and leave it at that.
That said, posts like "fanfiction is like gay marriage" is not going to win me over.
In fact, it really pisses me the hell off.
As someone who lives in the only state in the U.S. that actually recognizes equality marriage as a matter of law and who lived the 4 bruising years between 2003 and 2007 where the fight raged non-stop over any and all attempts to amend our state constitution to make our gay and lesbian friends, family members, and neighbors into second class citizens to the point where it overrode all other state issues I'm pretty fucking sure that fanfiction is not like "gay marriage" at all.
Let me explain something:
- No one has ever been beaten into the hospital or the morgue because they wrote fanfiction
- No one has ever found themselves put out on the street because their fanfic writing partner died and their writing partner's family didn't want that dirty little co-writer around
- No one has ever been prevented from attending their fanfic writing partner's funeral by members of their fanfic writing partner's family who were fanficphobic
- No one has ever been prevented from seeing their fanfic writing partner in the hospital because they wrote fanfic
- No one has ever been treated as a second class citizen by society at large because they wrote fanfic
- No one is arguing about making amending the U.S. Constitution to make fanfic illegal, thereby relegating you to permanent second-class citizenship because of your hobby (as opposed to, y'know, your very existence)
- No one has ever had their civil rights violated because they wrote fanfic
I'm sure that list could be a lot longer, but that's just for a start on how writing fanfic is not at all like "gay marriage."
Listen, I'm not saying that fanfic writers haven't found themselves in shit RL situations like the ones I've listed above. I'm also not arguing that all fanfic writers are gay, lesbian, or bi any more than I'd argue the reverse.
However, 99% of the time verging on 100% of the time, when RL (as in: not on the Internet) sexism or racism or sexuality bias rears its ugly head and slaps an individual across the face, it's not because they write fanfiction. They may happen to write fanfiction, but it's not because they write fanfiction, damn it!
You see the difference, right? Because I see a pretty big difference between the two.
Listen, I understand that the very idea of the OTW inspires fanatical devotion among some in fandom to the point where they can be pretty annoying about it, but posts like this are not helping your cause.
And this isn't the first time I've seen/read posts in favor of the OTW that lacked any sort of perspective at all. I mean, for the record, writing fanfiction is not at all like being in an interracial marriage. And questioning the purpose of the OTW is not at all like being homophobic or racist (examples of arguments I've actually read).
Posts like this piss people off. It sure as hell pisses me off. And when you piss people off, you turn them off. Maybe permanently.
Hyperbole is no one's friend. Please keep that in mind for the future. Thanx.
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Yes, it does, when what makes a property commercial is the government's restriction of other people's right to free speech. Copyright law--all IP law--is a direct restriction of free speech rights. And that doesn't mean it should be overthrown (perjury law is also a limitation on free speech rights), but the law needs to consider how it restricts speech, and whether society benefits more from the restrictions than it loses.
The continued expansion of IP law interpretation to benefit corporations at the expense of public exchange of knowledge is indeed a free speech issue.
You can stop writing fanfic.
You cannot stop being gay, bi, or straight.
You can stop writing fanfic, but you can't stop being inspired to do so. And you can't stop being gay, but you can "refuse to act on your immoral urges."
Which is what a lot of fanfic authors are being told--"why don't you just write original fic instead?" As if it were a simple matter of "change what you're interested in, what inspires you, and how you think about life."
Which is pretty much what the "gay is curable" crowd claims about sexual orientation: that you can, with practice and guidance, change your interests to something more socially acceptable, and legal to express in public.
fanworks is a lot like borrowing a car.
Fanworks don't put miles on your car. They don't touch the original at all. It's a lot more like someone took a picture of your car, photoshopped it to look like elves were driving it, and posted it on the web.
Which you may not like, but it doesn't wear out the brakes or grind the transmission, because intellectual property is not like real property... it's not something that diminishes with use.
The copyright owners have every single right to stomp out fanworks if they want to.
I strongly disagree. Certainly, they don't have the right to stomp out those fanworks that are parodies. Whether they have any right to restrict other fanworks is not established; it depend on whether they're "merely derivative" or "transformative."
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So fan fic isn't just like gay marriage, it's like being gay? Oh, I see - you're completely insane!
Please get some perspective.
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I'm fully aware that various artistic drives are a lot less important as societal issues than the right to marry.
I'm aware that Lee Goldberg's anti-fanfic rants are teacup storms, the proper reaction to which is the occasional fandom_wank entry, and that Phelps' protesting gay funerals is oppression, the proper reaction to which involves police activity and congressional rulings.
But a difference in scale doesn't mean a difference in core issues. And as long as the right for equal marriage is perceived as "gays want to have legal sex," it'll be ignored--it has to be framed as "all people deserve equal rights to express their love and commitment."
Please get some perspective.
I'm happy with my perspective. I'm open to more, if you're sharing.
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I the drive to write fanfic is nothing like being gay, because one is an action, the other is a state of being. It's still a piss-poor analogy. And how you keep missing this point positively boggles my mind.
Now, if you said "the drive to write" is an intrinsic part of someone's personality and psyche and affects the way one views the world, you'd have a better argument. I probably would still think you're overstating your case (i.e. the drive to write = equality marriage) but I could actually see something in it, especially since the Committee to Protect Journalists keeps a running tab of journalists who've been disappeared or killed because of what they write.
However, comparing reporter deaths worldwide and/or gay marriage to fanfiction is really overstating the case and obscuring whatever argument you're trying to make.
What I'm trying to say here is that this course of argument is not helping you at all. You seriously need to step back and really rethink the argument, and argument you've already admitted was an exaggerated one.
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I... uh... WHAT?!?
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The drive to write maybe. I'm a queer writer. I cannot divorce myself from one thing or the other. As
Fan fiction writers - that's a whole other ballgame. I have little authority to speak on that matter. Very occasionally I am inspired by a television series to write a short story or a script. Actually, for years I wanted to get into TV and wrote a heap of spec scripts - which is really in no way different to writing fan fic, except for the intent. So I get the idea you can be inspired to write fan fic - but I kind of balk at the idea that this is as intrinsic to you as my sexuality is to me.
I'm queer because I am queer. I write because I am a writer.
Marriage and fan fic hold little interest for me - but I understand why people want them. But beyond that the comparison is terribly weak.
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A smaller part of the persona, but just as intrinsic. Couldn't remove it without destroying me-as-a-person.
I politely submit (as politely as you can imagine me being, at this point of the discussion) that you aren't able to judge what elements of my psyche are crucial to my identity.
The drive to write maybe.
Do you think the "drive to write" is intrinsic, but "the drive to write poetry" or "the drive to write essays" or "the drive to write plays" are separable from that, and the drive can be redirected to a different format if the main one isn't available or acceptable? (This is a serious question. I see the drive to write fanfic as no different from the drive to write songs... writing software documentation will not fulfill the drive.)
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The creative urge isn't usually specific to only one kind of creativity. If you have that drive, you have it; you can and do choose what form you employ to express it. Anyone who's only driven to write fanfic is usually motivated by a need not to create but to find a way to insert him- or herself into the universe of the fandom in question. It's more like an externalized fantasy than a true "drive to create."
Anyone who is driven to create can and usually does find multiple outlets for that drive. To suggest that fanfic writing can be as intrinsic to one's identity and existence as one's sexuality is, at best, naive.
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How much software documentation have you written?!? I picked that one because it's one I like... but doesn't scratch the itch to write songs. Nonfiction writing is still creative.
Anyone who is driven to create can and usually does find multiple outlets for that drive.
1) There are people who aren't driven to create? I thought it was a basic human drive, like sex. That anyone who doesn't have it is considered weird and broken by most people, and that evolution had pretty much removed people who don't have it from the gene pool, so the lack only shows up in the occasional mutation.
2) "Find multiple outlets" is not the same as "any of these outlets will do for any particular inspiration. A person usually lusts after several other people... but that doesn't mean it's reasonable to say "well, this one is closed to you--just switch to someone else."
The drive to write fanfic cannot be fulfilled by suppressing it and choreographing dances instead.
3) (Deep breath; this is where you write me off as a total wingnut and decide I'm not worth replying to anymore. Or that you'll continue to bicker with me, but have concluded that I'm an utter waste of bandwidth and any goal I support is at best, of dubious value, because if a crackpot like me can be in favor of it, it must have serious problems.)
Conflating sexuality with creativity is a central issue in my religion, and I'm content to discuss it for days.
I know what I want to write. I know who I want to fuck. And I know how closely those two drives are connected, how much my creativity and sexuality overlap.
Maybe for you, they're not, and they don't. That's not my concern. I don't get to define your sexuality... and you don't get to define mine.
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To be clear, I was using the collective "you" rather than the specific you. You're right, I have no idea what elements are crucial to
Do you think the "drive to write" is intrinsic, but "the drive to write poetry" or "the drive to write essays" or "the drive to write plays" are separable from that, and the drive can be redirected to a different format if the main one isn't available or acceptable?
Now that's an interesting argument. And for me it's all about the story I want to tell. If it feels like a short story I write that. If it feels like a poem, I write a poem. If it feels like a stage play, I write a play.
I understand that some writers have their preference of medium. And a preference for genre. And their own style.
I personally don't understand the pull to writing fan fic over original fic, but I support your right to write it. However, it doesn't compare to centuries of persecution of homosexuals nor the lengthy battle for same-sex marriage.
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You are an offense. By this I do not simply mean that you are being offensive. I mean that the very fact that something like you exists, to go around and say things like that with no sense of shame, no sense of proportion, and no sense of what the HELL you are talking about is an offense against the world.
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I have, however, no idea how you expect me to react. But I'm sure it was useful to you to rant a bit in my general direction.
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It is not in your general direction. It is directly at you. You should be ashamed of yourself, and everyone you know should be ashamed of you as well. That you are not merely proves my point.
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I am not, as you notice, ashamed. I am puzzled. However, no amount of hate or disgust from strangers on the internet is going to change how I think. Certainly, I'm not going to be convinced I was wrong by people saying "I am offended that you even exist."
Plenty of people are offended that I exist. Get in line.
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My problem is with this statement:
"It is not in your general direction. It is directly at you. You should be ashamed of yourself, and everyone you know should be ashamed of you as well. That you are not merely proves my point."
How can you possibly feel the right to say that to someone? Fundamentally, this could easily be spoken by a hyper-conservative person in regards to how homosexuality offends them...
A difference in opinion does not justify the hatred of the person them self (though that's most definitely subjective), particularly if you don't actually KNOW them.
It's only censorship if what's being said is politically correct. Hah.
"I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the death, your right to say it."
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reply
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And some of my best friends are fan fic writers :-)
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You're brilliant. :)
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(Oh, and here via metafandom.)
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They should use desktops like decent people. *nods*
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Copyright law does not restrict parody. Nor does it restrict discussion of an original work. Nor does it prevent people from using snippets of the original work in the course of discussion. In fact, copyright does have a "fair use" clause, all of which are the case.
That corporate entities are trying to close that "fair use loophole" is a completely separate argument.
However, in no way, shape, or form can most forms of fanfic or fan works hide behind "parody" or fair use. And protecting a copyright holder's right to, y'know, actually own their creation and decide on how it's used in the public sphere is not a violation of your free speech rights.
And again, it has been ruled time and time again that the First Amendment is: 1) not absolute; 2) applies only to the U.S. government; and 3) applies to political speech.
Fanfiction may in some cases be considered a parody. Fanfiction may in some cases considered a form of political speech. However, in the main, that is not what fanfiction is.
Furthermore, the U.S. Government can't go stomping in and put a stop to fanfiction just because, say, Warner Brothers gets its corporate panties in a bunch over HP slash. If Warner Brothers wants to get pissy about HP slash, it's got to send out a raft of cease-and-desist orders. Which means that fanfiction is a civil matter between two private entities, not a criminal one.
So, again. No matter how you paint this, someone squashing your ability to write fanfiction, be it random corporate entity or your next-door neighbor thinking you're a loon, is not a repression of your civil rights.
here via metafandom
Fanfiction was not always illegal -- unauthorized sequels to and spin-offs of Samuel Richardson's Pamela were practically an entire genre in mid-18th century publishing -- nor was fiction using someone else's characters and plots always looked down upon or viewed as "stealing." The "lazy-derivative-theft" concept of fanfiction I would argue is at least partially a product of the environment created by modern copyright law.
If I recall my 18th century lit classes and that one lecture in Introduction to Archives properly, I think copyright was actually created to prevent printers from printing and selling unauthorized copies of another publisher's books (i.e. piracy), not to prevent writers from using another writers' characters. I believe that element was added later, as copyright laws became more and more extensive and more and more intermingled with trademark law.
I mostly know copyright legislation as it pertains to scholarsand archivists (i.e. orphan works, James Joyce's nephew, and so on), though, so I could be wrong.
Re: here via metafandom
While I agree that the current legal environment in the U.S. is far more restrictive than it was even 50 years ago, that still does not get away from the fact that when a copyright right owner sends out a cease-and-desist it is not anywhere near being a violation of someone's civil rights.
So for the purposes of this argument (despite the fact that
The reason why fanfiction and the greater category of fanworks has been allowed to thrive is because, in essence, most copyright holders have turned a blind eye or have gone the wink-wink-nudge-nudge route. But watch how quickly that wink-wink-nudge-nudge disappears the second a fan tries to cash in. And rightfully so.
That's not to say that I like the current U.S. climate for copyright law (I don't), but at the same time copyright is very much a necessity because it protects as much as it restricts. (For example, without copyright law, Warner Brothers could've simply taken the Harry Potter books and made movies of them without paying JKR a dime.)
However, at no point in my lifetime has fanfiction ever been considered a-okay with the copyright laws, so it isn't like it's actually new to anyone. (I'm also starting to wonder if anyone actually reads or understands their own fanfiction disclaimers when they slap them on their stories, because I'm beginning to guess they don't.)
Let me circle around back to my point:
There is no sane way you can possibly say that fanfiction is like same-sex marriage (which is what the OP actually said, and is actually what people are taking issue with). They are not even on the same planet of equivalencey. Hell, they're not even in the same universe.
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Dude, I like you, but that's just not a correct interpretation of "freedom of speech" under U.S. law). And this analogy is looking increasingly strained (heading towards offensive) overall.