Entry tags:
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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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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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