This is not ganked from anyone in particular this year, but it seems like the kind of thing I ought to do, just to keep track of myself.

( 2008 Master List )

( Questions and answers )

I've just come back from a reading by Naomi Novik, author of the Temeraire series, and I am officially a puddle of fangirly joy.

It was a joint event with Novik and epic fantasy writer Eldon Thompson, who was new to me. Novik kicked off the event by reading a short story set in the Temeraire universe about the first dragon to be tamed in the West (it's going to be published in an anthology of dragon stories). Thompson read from his latest book, and then the two of them gave a good hour of Q&A. They talked about the differences in their writing styles, and how they both got started in writing -- Novik got her start in fanfiction, but her first professional writing job was on the team that wrote the game Neverwinter Nights! -- and how they've benefitted in different ways from the experience of other writers. Thompson is also a screenwriter, and his latest project was an adaptation of The Elfstones of Shannara by Terry Brooks, which was pretty exciting to hear. He admitted that it was his favorite book when he was nine; I was a bit older, probably around 14, but still. Naturally the first question was a request for an update on the films that Peter Jackson is planning to make of the Temeraire series, and she said that doesn't know the status, and in fact isn't going to be involved in the process at all. She trusts Peter Jackson to do it right, and I have to admit that it's hard to blame her.

( In which there are spoilers for the Temeraire books, although nothing specific to Victory of Eagles, I don't think. )

The issue of fanfiction versus profiction came up, of course. Novik had two comments for anyone interested in making the switch: first, to write AU for practice in world-building, and second, to fall in love with your characters. Which I'd never really heard stated before, but it makes a lot of sense: most fanfic writers are attached to their characters, and it could be difficult to sustain interest in writing origfic if you don't have that same drive. Thompson (who has clearly never been involved in fandom) brought up the old "training wheels" analogy (paraphrased, the idea that writing fanfic is a way of getting started in writing, because you have the world and the characters as training wheels, but eventually you get tired of it and want to ride the bike on your own), but Novik disagreed with him. First she pointed out that there are plenty of people who are happy to only ever write fanfic and have no need to turn pro, or write origfic. Then she made another analogy: she said it's like playing music. You start out playing music written by other people, then you start making jazz riffs, and then maybe you move on to your own original compositions, but that doesn't mean it's not fun to play covers sometimes. A new comparison to me, but one that really felt right.

Then I got my books signed (and I was too tongue-tied to thank her for spearheading OTW, which I had planned to do, oh well), and then I came home, and then I immediately sat down to type this up because I didn't want to forget anything.

I need to see about going to more readings; I almost never do, and it's such fun to get that kind of insight into writers' ideas and their processes. And of course there's the fannish glow, which still hasn't worn off. Fun stuff.

ETA: Oh, one more thing. She's only under contract for one more book right now, but she thinks the series will go to about nine. And yes, we will get to North America eventually.

1. Library vending machines in BART stations and other public places. Each book will be stocked with a few hundred popular titles, which can be checked out with a Contra Costa County library card. I do have the "thumbs up" reaction to anything that makes it easier for people to read, or to use the library. But is this really "using the library"? Especially given how limited the selection would have to be.

2. Fantasy writer Stephen Brust's full-length, unauthorized Firefly novel. In other words: fanfic. I'm really, really curious to see what happens now. No word yet on what, if anything, Joss Whedon might have to say about it. (Thanks to SE for the link on this one.)

Like last year, ganked from parron

( 2007 Master List )

( Questions and answers )

I have a feeling that I ought to have linked to this before, but I can't find any record of it in my postings, so maybe not. It's one of the best defenses of fanfic I've ever read.

Good fiction gets under our skin. It can change the way we see the world. But whatever its effect, it’s a significant experience. It would be a bizarre thing—unnatural, even—for writers to not engage with that experience. They always have. I could show you stuff centuries old—heck, some of it’s millennia old—that’s fanfic by any modern definition.

Of course, it would have to be a modern definition. In a purely literary sense, fanfic doesn’t exist. There is only fiction. Fanfic is a legal category created by the modern system of trademarks and copyrights. Putting that label on a work of fiction says nothing about its quality, its creativity, or the intent of the writer who created it....

I’m just a tad cynical about authors who rage against fanfic. Their own work may be original to them, but even if their writing is so outre that it’s barely readable, they’ll still be using tropes and techniques and conventions they picked up from other writers.

Some interesting reading in the comments as well, all the way from pure praise to criticism to the same old tired "must be inferior to origfic by definition", but overall it's nice to see a piece like that that's mainly positive toward fan writing.

I wonder, sometimes, if there are just some people who are predisposed to fanfiction. I never really thought about it until recently, but the fact is that I've always been a 'ficcer. I like closure in my stories, and if I don't get it from the source, I'll make it up in my head. My dad tells me that, instead of getting a bedtime story from him, I used to make up stories about the characters in M*A*S*H. (Apparently, Klinger was a particular favorite. I have no memory of this.) I've done it for TV shows, books, movies, anything that catches my attention. Heck, I'm involved in an RPG right now, and after the first session, an offstage conversation between two of the NPCs buzzed in my head for over a week. So fanfic isn't really new to me. It's just that the Final Fantasy X/X-2 universe is the first one that ever pushed me over the edge to write about it.

Someday I still need to post about The Democratic Genre. I read it, but I want to read it again to digest some of it a little more fully. I do recommend it, though, if you're interested in the topic of fanfic as literature.

Ganked from lassarina and parron.

What do you think are the "trademarks" of the fiction that I write? What type of themes or characterization notes or quirks keep on manifesting in my writing? Essentially, what do you think is a stereotypically "KJ" way of writing fic?

I have my own ideas, of course. But I'll hold them for now, since I wonder how they compare to what other people see.

So discussion of metaficcing and remixing has spread throughout LJ fandom, and one of the more interesting effects has been the creation of a remix community: remixy_things. Its founder, amidalashari, describes her reasons for going this route here.

It's an intriguing idea, for sure, and I'm thinking about joining, although given that I'm only really in one fandom I would be more interested in an FF-centric remix community or project. (Anyone up for something like that?) It does raise my eyebrows a bit, though, that she says she rejected the Creative Commons license as a solution because we don't "own" the rights to the fic we write. I disagree with this sentiment, pretty strongly. The legality of fanfic has never been tested; it's a gray area of copyright law, not a bright line. But even if I don't own the characters or the world of Spira in a legal sense, I do feel that I have some ownership of the stories I created that use that world and those characters. Okay, the CC license might not stand up in court, but that's not really the point.

Still, anything that gets this concept spread further in fandom is good by me. And seriously, anyone wants to do something like this in Final Fantasy, let me know.

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.

CEO Chris Williams "answers" questions about FanLib. This is a follow-up to the Henry Jenkins article I posted the other day. The answers are full of non-apology apologies and canned marketing speak -- Williams seems, in large part, to be regurgitating his press kit. It can be summed up thusly: "We've changed the TOS and the FAQ, so go read them and quit complaining." Also, the last question is muffed by interviewee and interviewer both; Jenkins tried to ask why Williams is willing to engage him and not the fans, but he did so in such an apologetic manner that he gave Williams an out from having to provide a real answer, and so of course no real answer is forthcoming. Disappointing; I expect better from Jenkins.

On the lighter side: fanfic about the guys in the (weird, tacky, ill-advised) FanLib advertisements (slightly NSFW).

1. Cory Doctorow column entitled "In Prase of Fanfic"; cesperanza writes a post in praise of Cory Doctorow's column. Doctorow hits all the right points I think: fic writers are your best fans, it's a great way to become a better writer, this is all part of a much longer tradition, etc. Maybe nothing new, but I found it to be unusually concise and well-put.

2. Henry Jenkins, fan culture academic extraordinare, weighs in on FanLib. Not so much regarding whether the archive is a good idea, but about the fandom reaction and why the company blundered so badly when they tried to deal with it. Good summation, thoughtful and well-written. At the end of the artice, he invites the CEO of FanLib to be interviewed, and Williams accepts. Interesting, and a bit troubling, that the CEO, who has been so reluctant to get engaged in dialogue with (female, "countercutlure") fans, is so happy to talk to a (male, establishment figure) academic. Some good discussion and questions in the comments.

Meme ganked from parron. Man, I had a busy year.

( Warning: Long )

Note: for some reason this entry is a target for comment spammers and so I've had to turn comments off. I don't know why anyone legit would want to comment on a year-old message at this point, but if you have something to say, please feel free to email me. Thanks!

So I know that fanficrants can be a scary place, but this post is actually generating some interesting discussion, particularly in this thread.

Who owns a story? The writer? The reader? A writer of course can pull down any story at any time, but do they have the "right" to demand that every copy of the story be deleted? (From the Google cache, from the Internet Archive/Wayback Machine, from people's harddrives, etc.) Does a reader have the "right" to be able to find the story again? Do they have the "right" to download it, to pass it on to friends, to write their own fanfic based on it? Complex questions, I think.

I tend to think that, once a story is posted to the Internet, we lose control over what happens to it. It's out there, in the world, free to be read, reviewed, linked, copied, downloaded, fanficced. Why should we expect more control over our writings than traditionally published authors? A professional writer could never demand the return every publically available copy of a book. Once published, it's out there. Even if such a thing were possible, the story would live on, in the minds of the people who had read it.

Personally, I tend to think of a story as a collaboration between its writer and its readers. The writer creates the story, but it doesn't really come to life until someone else reads it. Perhaps this is a part of why we all adore reviews so much: a review is proof that someone read, that the story did indeed take on that life of its own. Maybe not the life we inteded for it, but a life all the same. (I think this is true for all stories, not just fanfic, although of course the feedback loop is more immediate in fandom.)

Anyway. Just my random thoughts on a Thursday evening. What do you all think?

Home sick, bah. Guess that means it's meme time!

Ganked from bottle_of_shine and parron.

( Long, rambly, self-indulgent. )

Okay, I know I am way over my posting quota these days, but I just had to share this right away (found it by following a link in madlori's blog).

The Democratic Genre: Fanfiction in a Literary Context. A scholarly work about fanfic, examined from a literary persepective rather than considering it as a social phenomanon. And high time, I say. The first chapter is published online; I'm about halfway through and it is utterly fascinating. Anyone interested in literature should look at this.

Unfortunately it only seems to be available from Amazon UK. I'm pretty tempted to buy it anyway.

Last night, AGL got a nice review from a new reader. I was relishing it a little bit when T glanced at my email over my shoulder. We got to talking a little bit about my writing, and he raised an interesting question that I'm still thinking about: why fanfic? And why from this particular source?

( Musing behind the cut. )

So there it is. I don't need to justify it particularly, but I like to think through my reasons every so often anyway. If I'm going to devote so much time and effort to something, I ought to know why.