KJ

It's E3 time, and although I haven't been paying super-close attention, a few things have broken through. One of the harder stories to miss is the controversy over The Last Night, a side-scrolling platformer in a cyberpunk setting. Among other issues, the game seems to be set in a dystopia designed to be a critique of socialism (in contrast to most cyberpunk, which tends to be anti-capitalist). I'd seen a number of takes on the issue, but the one that broke through and inspired me to write my own thoughts was this Twitter thread by petercoffin (the thread and replies are recommended reading, both up and down):

Want to know why these folks think creativity goes away when people's needs are fulfilled?

They think the motive is specifically profit.

— Peter Coffin🌹🔑 (@petercoffin) June 12, 2017

I retweeted it a couple of days ago, with a promise to come back and say more, and here we are. My thoughts are going to be less about capitalism vs. socialism and the many issues with this specific game (Peter and the rest of the Internet have that aspect amply covered) and more about the economics of creativity, specifically the economics of fandom, which is where my creativity has lived for the past decade and more. I said in my tweet that I have "literally never" been paid in money for creative work; there are some hairs to split (I've written freelance a little bit, mostly advertising copy, and ladybusiness launched a Patreon about six months ago), but I think it's fair to say for the creative work that's personally meaningful to me -- fiction, fannish meta, book reviews, essays like this one, etc. -- I have never received renumeration. I consider this to be choice, because I have immersed myself in fandom, writing fiction of a type that I legally cannot sell. I've chosen not to write original fiction, or file the serial numbers off my fic; I've chosen not to pitch essays or reviews to paying venues; and I've chosen not to set up a personal Patreon or any kind of tip jar. Within my corner of fandom culture, we mostly accept that we're creating for the love of it, and for the personal satisfaction of sharing our creations with others.

So I look at a sentiment like the one that Peter describes, and it's alien to me. Many years ago, at my first FogCon, I got into a brief debate with a professional author during a panel about fanfiction, and why anyone would put time into writing something you couldn't sell. (Perhaps ironically, it was a panel about cyberpunk and other "-punk" genres.) Although my comments were well-received in the moment, the pro who raised the issue admitted that he still didn't really get it; he offered to continue the discussion over email, but I was too shy to take him up on it, so it ended there. I still think about it sometimes, though. There are plenty of people who undertake creative pursuits with no expectation of making them into a career: crafters, home cooks, musicians. I've never made money off music, either -- I actually pay for the privilege of singing in my chorus. Amateurs often create for love, in all kinds of fields. Why should writing be any different?

Fandom has an economy, of course. Most often it's described as a "gift economy", meaning that you publish your work as a gift to the community, with no expectation of receiving anything in return. Another, in my experience more accurate description, is the "attention economy". Instead of money, creators get "paid" in attention: likes, kudos, clicks, reviews. Both of these models are somewhat limited, and the "attention economy" frame in particular is still rooted in the paradigm of capitalism, but I think there's something worthwhile in both descriptions. One of my favorite articles on the subject is The Economics of Fandom: Value, Investment, and Invisible Price Tags by saathi1013, which goes into detail about the "work" it takes to be in fandom, and the different ways in which we value and/or are compensated for that work.

On the other hand, there are signs that this may be changing. In this respect, there's always been a disconnect in fandom between fanfic and fanart -- unlike fanfic, there's a long tradition of selling fanart: at comics conventions, for example, or via commissions. In professional comics circles, there's an expectation of sorts that artists will cut their teeth on fanart and perhaps even include it in their portfolio. And increasingly, fanfic authors have been questioning why they can't benefit from selling their work, too. I've known fanfic authors to take commissions, or set up Patreons. And the practice of "filing off the serial numbers" has gotten more transparent with the success of authors like E. L. James and Cassandra Clare. Everyone knows that 50 Shades of Grey was originally a Twilight AU, and that Clare was offered a book contract on the strength of her following in the Harry Potter and LoTR fandoms. As IP holders have grown less likely to bring down the hammer on fanfic authors, fanfic is coming out of the shadows. Can a growing commercial acceptance be far behind?

To me, maybe it doesn't matter. Although I certainly appreciate no longer living in fear that I'll receive a cease and desist letter someday, I don't know that I would try to sell my fic even if I were given the opportunity. Essays and reviews might be a different story, further down the road, but for now I'm happier where I am, in (what feels to me) like the lower-pressure environment of fandom, where I can write for the love of it, and in the hopes of finding fellow travelers who will love what I love with me.

I posted a mini-rant on this subject to Twitter last month, but apparently I decided that wasn't sufficient:

The Tyranny of "Do It Yourself!"

As discussions about representation in media continue to grow and gain traction around the Internets and through different corners of fandom, we start seeing a lot of repetition: the same unhelpful arguments being made again and again. One of the responses I see a lot, and that I find among the most tiresome, boils down to this: "Stop complaining that other people aren't making the media you want, and just do it yourself!"

I first encountered this response in media fandom, as a pushback against people who wanted to see more content for an unusual pairing, and/or more diversity in romantic pairings (more femslash, more pairings involving people of color, etc.). It was frustrating there, but it's even more pervasive in the wider SF/F fandom, and follows many of the same patterns. And although I don't want to say that this is the very worst response to calls for diversity -- there are a lot of contenders for that title -- it's certainly up there.

Check it out!

New news post, in which they address the comment pages outcry... kinda.

Rest assured, we are paying close attention to all of your feedback.... We're also aggregating all your feedback about the presentation and usability of the commenting form in the general sense, including items missing from the previous version, and the appropriate project teams are reviewing this feedback to help guide what further changes will be made. Thank you for your patience as we continue to work on the new commenting system.

As I said in my comment to that post (but in nicer words), I find this statement so disingenuous, I could scream. If they cared about paying close attention to our feedback, they wouldn't have rolled out this change in the first place. People have been complaining, requesting, begging them not to change the commenting functionality ever since we first got wind of the possibility last week. The negative reaction cannot possibly have come as a surprise to them. How can we trust them to listen to user feedback when they could have prevented the problem by paying attention to the feedback we were already giving them?

And yet, they keep doing this. Implement drastic change without any prior warning, let people scream and howl for a little while, roll the change back, then sneak a more moderate version back in once the uproar has died down. I wonder when a critical mass of users will finally get sick of it.

I mean, seriously. What the hell? Was there any kind of warning on this? Any secret "preview our new service!" opportunity? Because if not.... wow.

Guess it's time to leave. You all know I am generally for riding out the changes with free Internet services, but not when they totally break them overnight. Any recommendations for other bookmarking tools? For my purposes, the only real problem is not being able to see all my tags, but what a problem to have. How is a bookmarking service useful if I can only get to a handful of randomly-selected tags?

Bleh.

I'm not sure how to feel about the fact that the NPR SF/F Top 100 list that I posted about the other day has morphed into yet another book meme, for the most part without any critical commentary. (I was, however, happy to see an entry on NPR's Monkey See blog that calls out the list for its maleness and mentions the YA ban as a partial reason.) There is eruthros's call for nominations to create a Top 100 list of speculative fiction works, at least one goal of which is to promote more diversity, but the call requests nominations across all forms media. Not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison. I wish someone would do a book-focused list targeted at fandom.

But, well, I never met a book meme I could resist, so here you go. I make no claims to this list's legitimacy as a canon or source for reading recommendations. Bold if you've read, italicize ones you fully intend to read, underline if it's a book/series you've read part but not all of.

( Huh, I've read exactly half, not counting partial reads. )

So, how about this kerfuffle over the Bitch Magazine recommended reading list of YA literature? It's been all over the Internet for a couple of days now, and it probably deserves a more thoughtful post than I have time to write tonight. But this story hits me in so many places that I live: as a reader, as a writer, as a feminist, as a free speech advocate, as a librarian, as a long-time reader of and some-time subscriber to Bitch. In the end, I couldn't just let it go by.

The background: over on its blog, the magazine's librarian posts a list of "100 young adult novels that every feminist should add to the stack of books on their bedside table." As such lists always do -- as, in fact, I would argue they are meant to do -- it raised questions of what's on the list and what's off and why, and there was lively debate in the comments. So lively that the magazine actually decided to take three books off the list.

Cue the author outrage. For a number of reasons, but I think the big one was this, as articulated by Maureen Johnson in comments:

But I have been incredibly disheartened to see your process for removing books. It mirrors EXACTLY the process by which book banners remove books from schools and libraries--namely, one person makes a comment, no one actually checks, book gets yanked.

The parallel isn't exact, because the editors stated that they did read, or re-read, the books before deciding to remove them. But the comparison is still a fair one, particularly in the appearance of a single critic having the power to get a book off the shelf, or in this case a recommended reading list.

As I put my librarian hat on, I have to wonder if they really thought through the purpose of the list, or about what the selection criteria ought to be. Any librarian will tell you that, before you start collecting materials, you have to have a selection policy: a set of guidelines that you use to decide which books belong in your library. These policies exist for two reasons. First, they help you choose the books to buy. Equally important, they give you a baseline to help you respond to challenges when they arise. Then, when someone comes to you with a concern ("This book is too violent! This book is triggering! This book is not feminist enough!"), you're prepared with a defense, even if you ultimately decide that picking the book was a mistake. The quick capitulation (especially since the stated reason for removing the books was concern about triggers, which could easily have been rectified by adding warnings to the list) is what leads me to to believe that there probably was no formal selection criteria.

Some folks have criticized the original author of the list for posting it without having read all the listed books. I'm less sympathetic to this argument. No librarian has read every single book in their library, or even on the "recommended titles" display; it's simply not possible. To a certain extent, we have to rely on the judgement of others: reviews, back-of-the-book synopses, word of mouth. Yes, I have even been known to judge a book by its cover. But all this just strengthens the argument for selection criteria. When you can't answer a challenge with "I read the book, and therefore I can say it is appropriate for these reasons", you need to have something more specific, more detailed than "my friend read it and said it was good." Which is how the initial defenses for having added the books to the list in the first place read to me.

Librarians take risks in content choices every day. Sometimes, avoiding controversy is the best route to go for yourself, for your institution, or for the community you serve. But when the controversial path is chosen, I really think that we owe it to ourselves, to readers and to writers to stand by those choices, not to cave in to the first or the loudest complaint. We are the defenders of knowledge, and we are at our best when we act like it.

It appears that Gabaldon has, after posting a fauxpology (the classic "I'm sorry if anyone's feelings were hurt" response), deleted all her posts on the subject. Couldn't stand the heat? Some attempt to save face? Since the posts are gone, and she hasn't replaced them with a statement on their removal, we'll probably never know why. But I hope she knows that, on the Internet, wank is forever.

I also wanted to share two follow up notes to the GRRM posts. First, check out this totally fascinating post from nihilistic_kid which basically demolishes GRRM's claim that H.P. Lovecraft died in poverty because he allowed unlicensed derivative fanworks of his books. I really recommend this post, not only for the information about Lovecraft, but especially for links and discussion in the comments that cast the infamous Marion Zimmer Bradley fanfic case in a somewhat different light.

The other is from GRRM himself. He's posted on this issue twice more since his original comment on the situation. The first was a standard attempt to simultaneously entrench and backpedal (he did acknowledge the copyright misconpetion, sorta), but the other is actually fairly thoughtful and interesting, and it's worth reading, if you can get past his annoying habit of referring to fan writers as "fan fictioneers". It's an emotional look at what his characters mean to him, and why reaction to fanworks can be just as much about love for the original creators as for the fan writers. Fan writers create out of love for the characters and the world; original creators feel protective of their creations for the same reason. While I still take issue with some of the particulars of his argument, I find it a lot more sympathetic than the usual "copyright/stealing/talentless hacks/write your own stuff/ZOMGporn!" tactics that pro authors often use against fic. Good debate in the comments, too. For starters, I recommend this comment, a semi-rebuttal from dagas_isa taking issue with the implication that pro authors who allow and/or encourage fic love their characters less than GRRM. And I agree: not more or less, although possibly different.