owlmoose | Fanfic, ownership, and metaficcing

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Fanfic, ownership, and metaficcing

So I was talking with

bottle_of_shine about getting ideas from other people's fic, and today she posted about it, and it got me to thinking.

It seems to me entirely natural that those of us who write fanfic would get story ideas from reading other people's fic. Because isn't that the whole reason for the existence of fanfic? We look at the canon and we say "But what happened next?/But what came before?/But what if it happened this way?" And seems to me that the impulse doesn't go away just because the story we happen to be reading is written by another fan rather than by whoever produced the original.

So I don't see how anyone who writes fanfic can object when someone looks at a story she's written and says "I want to see more" or "I wonder if I could take it in this other direction?" Because that's what she did when she wrote her fic in the first place. I won't quite say it would be hypocritical to object, but I think it leans in that direction. I'm not talking about someone who copies a story word-for-word without proper attribution, of course, or someone who does a "find-replace" on names but otherwise leaves the story intact or otherwise obvious acts of plagiarism. But fic about fic, or a remix, or whatever you call it when one fic is inspired by another, should be legit, and I think that should be a basic understanding among anyone who writes fanfic.

Or am I missing some completely obvious reason that this would be a problem?

Anyway. Part of me would love to see remixing etc.just become assumed as part of fandom culture. I'm not sure the Final Fantasy fandom has a coherent enough community to spread any kind of overall social norm, though. So in the meantime, I vote for releasing fic under a Creative Commons license, which has the advantage of coming in various flavors, so everyone and label their stories with whichever level of protection they're comfortable with. Just this morning, I put up the Attribution-NoCommercial-ShareAlike notice both here and on my FF.net page, and I invite anyone who agrees to join me.

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I am on board with you and have posted the same license on both my journal and my FFN profile page. This is a grand idea. ;)

I think there are degrees, where it becomes something more than just being inspired by something and more like theft. Like if a story has A-G plot/character points and you get inspired by B and D and write a fic, that's entirely cool and well within the spirit of fanfic-dom. However, if a story (though entirely re-written in new words) is written and they used A, B, D, F, E, G points -- that starts to get ridiculous without some kind of authorial dialogue or credit.

Of course, every fandom has tropes or cliches or what-have-you and no one owns those ideas and there's nothing I love better than to rework them myself or see them reworked. But I don't think it's hypocritical to get propertiary over our fics even if we have no legal reason for it. We still wrote/created much of it and everyone who reads it knows we didn't create the world we're playing in -- not necessarily the case if someone reads a "remixed" fic that isn't properly credited.

That said, I've been accused of copying fic because I wrote a story long ago where Quistis is kidnapped and so did this other girl (she was the one who accused me) even though my fic was a Quistis/Seifer story whereas she had her Seifer rape Quistis, and I thought she was out of her mind for even thinking it, let alone harassing me over it.

I've also never turned down anyone's request to borrow an idea from me and I've never gotten too out-of-shape if I see a fic eeriely similar to something I've written and I've certainly never emailed an author or called foul. It has made me cranky on occasion but never as cranky as when my fics have been stolen word-for-word and both has happened several times.

And, one more thing before I shut up, lol -- I think, in some ways, there can be a sense of "I'm better and I can do this better" when you take someone's ideas for remixing and that can feel arrogant and superior to the original author and it probably smarts, no matter who nicely the request is made. I'm sure no one wants to hear "This is a great idea but you didn't do it right, so I'm gonna do it better."

You raise a number of good points. First, though, I wanted to mention that I wasn't talking about doing any of this without attribution. Attribution is like the disclaimers on fanfic -- it lets the reader know what comes from canon and what comes from the writer's own head. The CC license specifically mentions proper attribution, whether the creative work is remixed or just republished. So I would always go into it with that assumption.

I definitely hear you on the "I'm taking your idea and writing it better" issue. Not quite as sure what the solution for that would be.

Randomly here from metafandom, just chiming in to say OMG, icon love! Echidna! I don't think I've ever seen anyone do icons from The Bouncer! That's so awesome.

The Confessional has been under a Creative Commons license since I made its site. =) It's a grand idea, and I've now put the banner in my writing LJ since I seem to have forgotten it!

Ha ha, you've made me a happy girl. Your work was why I got to thinking about it in the first place. Clearly I need to learn to just ask.

Aww, really? <3

I don't remember where I originally saw the Creative Commons license, but it's been years now that I've known of its existence. I guess it's one of those things you just take for granted. =)

Anyway, I'm glad that somehow I affected your work.

(P.S. I love your icon!)

That's a great idea-I just put the same license on my FF profile too :)

I've seen this go by before, and the only reason I haven't picked it up is because something in me hesitates when trying to decide which version of the CC license to use; it's like trying to decide the health insurance plan 'that's right for me!' when all of them look good and you're wondering where the bad parts are. Do you or

bottle_of_shine have any recommendations/experience with people having any problems/any advice?

The only thing I can think of, personally, is that I wish I'd get told if someone uses anything I've done! But that's not under any of the licenses, so I think I'm SOL. ;)

Yeah, the licenses cover attribution, but I don't think they say anything about notification. You can request it, but as far as I can tell you can't make it part of the terms of the license. You could always make it a personal addendum in wherever you posted the license, though -- "No need to ask permission, but notification would be deeply appreciated" or something along those lines.

I chose the "Attribution-NoCommercial-ShareAlike" options because I don't think anyone should profit directly from fanfic given current copyright laws, and I like the idea of the CC license being perpetuated. This is the flavor I see most often on CC-licensed fanfic; it makes an easy starting point, anyway.

What I am mostly tussling over right now is the urge to do the 'Attribution' vs the 'Attribution-Commerical OK' line. I don't really care personally if someone takes my stuff and makes a profit off it (so long as there's reference) because I've already given up some of my stuff as commercial fodder before without being financially included, and that's all good. But I know that I probably should not allow that because the amount of bizarre business practices out there can and do become remarkably corrupt. Cough, Fanlib, cough.

I don't think I'd ever, ever get on the radar of someone who'd make a decent profit off remixing anything I came up with, which is why I sort of don't feel like I should put on the No-Commercial tag, but at the same time my cynicism for humanity is warning me otherwise (not to mention, the rest of the pack think it's an awful idea to skip out on it, 'just in case.')

Yeah. The thought of FanLib definitely crossed my mind as I picked the "no commerical" option. I extremely doubt that anyone would look at my work and think it was a sure-fire source of profit. ;) But one never knows. I figure better safe than sorry.

Yeah -- FanLib made me very aware that, despite the bizarreness of it all, some people might actually go and make a profit off fanfic. I mean, yes, even with crediting and all that, that the 'based on' would be obscured under giddy legalese in the small print of the credits with no real credit given to the author; I think I didn't imagine that for-profit works would be so awful as to do whatever they could to not be respectful of the person they'd be 'basing off of.' WITNESS MY BUBBLE OF BLISSFUL IDEALISM.

That being said, some part of me is very inclined to go ahead and allow the Commercial-OK tag because it's... it feels weird for me to say about my own stuff (NOTE: just my stuff, everyone else is totally cool by me with whatever they choose), 'this fanwork which is based off of a commericial subject can no longer be profited from!!1' because 1. I'm sure they'd do it anyway, only without the credit, 2. it's like the ideas can't be recycled back into the original media they sprang from, great circle of inspirational life and all that.

It's just the sheer disdain of how FanLib handled matters that is making me want to put on the No-Commercial note. Otherwise, I'd gleefully throw out my arms and shout, 'Be free! Be free, little chickadees!'

I did what KJ said, actually, in my profile (http://bottle-of-shine.livejournal.com/profile), but honestly, it was mostly so I could see what people came up with instead of wanting people to credit me. ;)

Yeah, it's not the need to be credited so much as natural curiosity! If someone has inspiration to go off and do amazingly cool things, I'd love to see it. :)

I think I may take a similar tack to what you've done, if the license so far has worked out well for you.

I've never used them for fic before (so this might end up being hilarious and ironic if it back fires on me?). I did for my art back when I did web design and it worked really well. It's funny how more likely people are to credit and share what they're done if you say you're okay with it, instead of just take it and run off. But art is a little different than writing, so your mileage may vary. :D

Yeah -- for art, I would definately put the No-Commercial, because art is easy to scam since people are accustomed to buying prints, or fanwork at cons, and so on. And I've allowed remixes of personal art already so I can't really take a stand there. But I have some friends who have their stuff ripped every other week, it seems; people are crazy.

Most of my 'ehhhh I don't need to put this up' is because I don't imagine anyone would ever want to remix or rework my stuff. But it doesn't seem to be hurting anything to put up the label, so. :)

You'd be so, so wrong in saying that people would never want to remix your stuff. I mean, I can only speak for myself, but... ;)

Pfff -- remix away! It'd only be an improvement. :)

I want to mix my own stuff a lot, just for the fun of it. I know there are communities (challenges?) where people will occasionally remix from a pool of contributed work, and I think that's awesome, keeps creativity going. I need the confidence to go play the next time a remix wagon passes by my way. :) So if the CC label helps encourage that... then I really should put one up!

I think people have a fit in fandom because when you write fic on the original series, the creator is probably not going to read it, or be in fandom. But the author of the fic one wants to remix or whatever is in fandom, and will likely see it. There's a feeling of 'the creator is never going to see it, so I don't feel bad about writing YuRiPa smut!'. That changes when you know the person you are deriving your work from can see it and be like 'I never meant for Yuna and Rikku to do it at the end of my fic! It was Rikku/Paine OTP forevah!'.

Your point about fandom as a community and wanting to respect each others' wishes is well taken. Although there are plenty of "original" creators out there who accept and even welcome fanworks, and some who observe and/or participate in fandom, so I don't know that you can take that as a given.

But I would argue that once you release a work publicly, you lose control of it. People will come up with different interpretations of a story; even if the author didn't intend those interpretations, that doesn't mean they're wrong. (Try to convince a slasher that the original meaning of a text is the only appropriate reading; I don't think you'll get very far.) And fanfic can have multiple possible readings just as much as any other kind of story, so why we should say it's "wrong" for other people to use fic as a springboard? I'm not sure we can.

If someone else writes a metafic that uses your ideas and takes them in a different direction, I don't think that it necessarily invalidates your original story. They can co-exist, different takes on the same subject, just like the wide variety of fanfic in general.

Oh, *I* understand what you're saying, but fandom can be irrational sometimes. *laughs*

Some people have a stick up their ass (myself included) about someone doing a derivative work from their fic. I know it's hypocritical to only want good authors to build off of your work, but that is kinda the way I feel. If any of the, say, ff_press usual crowd asked me, I'd feel honoured. Random ff.net fanbrat? Not so much. There's also a feeling from some people that they only want people they know to make a derivative work.

i'd also be afraid the other person would do my idea better

Hehe, funny you talked about this because I've read a story with elements similar to what I wrote sometime ago, and I dismissed it as coincidence but now I think about it, it might not be completely unrelated since the fandom I write in (or should I say the specific pairing I write) has a pretty small fanbase. I didn't really care because it was totally one of those A-G points and they may have taken only Point A situation, so it's not that big a deal. But if someone takes more than just one point I . . . really don't know how I'd feel about it.

Personally I'd never remix other fics, because if the writing's crappy usually the idea's crappy/cliche/uninteresting in itself. But in the case that the idea's brilliant but the execution poor - I still wouldn't think of remixing it because, well, I have too many of my own ideas that never get finished, I don't have time to write other people's. XD And I think part of the fanfic-remix problem is that the remix is taking someone else's idea - not just characters. Most fanfics take the characters and some plot and add their own ideas to it, be it a subplot, a relationship that wasn't there, etc.; we rarely see a complete retelling of the game/series as it originally happened, because it's already been done. But the remixing of fanfics is basically taking someone's original idea (in various degrees) and then reiterate that, and I can see why folks have problems with it.

But if someone takes more than just one point I . . . really don't know how I'd feel about it.

What I wonder is this: would you feel differently if someone did that, and then credited you? "I got bunnied for this story by

solitaryjane's fic about A, B, and C." Because I never said anything about metaficcing/remixing without credit -- I think that does skirt the boundaries of plagiarism.

I disagree, though, with the idea that that fanfic only uses the characters from canon and not much else. We borrow a lot from the source: the world itself, its history, its culture, how the characters relate to one another, elements of the plot. There's a reason my disclaimers don't just say "the characters belong to Square Enix". Lots of the ideas we're working with when we write fic come from the original material. I don't see much of a distinction there at all.

Then again, I tend to believe that no one has a monopoly on any particular idea. An unusual or fascinating idea might get me started on a fic, but what will really suck me in is the execution -- how well is it developed and written? To me, that's the important thing.

Following a link to here, and just chiming in to say hear, hear. For quite a while now my lj profile has said

This journal and all its public, unlocked contents are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License. Please attribute all use of this work back to me, and note changes you've made which are not my work. This includes all my creative works: as long as you cite my contributions and note any changes you've made of my words, feel free to modify / disseminate / archive as you see fit. My fic posted on my website has the same license.

I've been quite surprised that more fen *don't* use CC licenses, actually.

Good point about the "public, unlocked" contents -- I may go add that to my own userinfo.

The lack of CC use is probably related to two things: lack of awareness that it even exists, and a feeling that we shouldn't slap a legal license on content that we don't "own" in the traditional copyright sense. The first is just a matter of education; the second issue is a little stickier, but in the end I don't think that should keep us from using it as a convention, even if we wouldn't use the license to haul someone to court.

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Fanfic, ownership, and metaficcing

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