riddle me this
31 May 2010 03:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaigouDefine fanfiction.
note: that's fanfiction, so it's okay if you can't think of the ninety-nine other categories of fan____.
note: that's fanfiction, so it's okay if you can't think of the ninety-nine other categories of fan____.
Hah!
Date: 31 May 2010 09:02 pm (UTC)D:
Date: 31 May 2010 09:24 pm (UTC)Fanfiction: derivative works written using settings, characters, etc. created by others. Due to its derivative nature, fanfiction is generally not written for profit unless the writer in question has been officially licensed by the owner of the original work (i.e. Star Wars expanded universe novels, games, etc.). Fanfiction can have several functions, ranging from critique of the original work to using the original work as fodder for erotica. While the term fanfiction, or fanfic, generally refers specifically to written works, other fanworks such as fanart, fanvids, etc. may also be said to be similarly defined and to have similar functions. Also, what constitutes an original work has a fairly broad definition, covering actual texts like books to more broadly defined texts such as TV shows, movies, comics, anime and manga.
No doubt I've forgotten something somewhere, so I'm open to suggestions on how to refine this definition.
Re: D:
Date: 31 May 2010 09:38 pm (UTC)Fanfiction written for profit (or written for love and then published for profit) without being officially licensed: fanfiction of out of copyright stuff, like Austen.
'Created by others' has to include 'reality' (which is, in a sense, created by others, I guess) to include large swathes of fandom, like RPF and anthropomorfic.
And you need to include the fact that it's 'fans' somewhere, or you're including really large groups of people who don't consider what they're doing fanfic at all (like tie-in novel writers, adaptation writers/directors, &c).
Revised, Round 1?
Date: 31 May 2010 10:01 pm (UTC)Fanfiction: Fan-created derivative works written using elements such as setting or characters from an original work, where an original work is defined a work created by others. What constitutes an original work has a fairly broad definition, and may include actual texts such as books, manga, or movies, to less conventional texts such as the personas put forth by celebrities (in the case of RPF) or anthropomorphized concepts (in the case of anthropomorfic). Due to its derivative nature, fanfiction is generally not written with the intent of profiting off its creation, though circumstances may arise that allow a writer to make money of fanfic (i.e. when the copyright on the original work in question has run out or works officially licensed by the holder of the copyright). Fanfiction can have several functions, ranging from critique of the original work to using the original work as fodder for erotica. While the term fanfiction, or fanfic, generally refers specifically to written works, other fanworks such as fanart, fanvids, etc. may also be said to be similarly defined and to fulfill similar functions.
Re: Revised, Round 1?
Date: 31 May 2010 11:42 pm (UTC)This is why I usually use the term "fanwork" (when I'm not referring specifically to "fanfiction") -- intuitive meaning, after all: "work by a fan", with no attempt to define or delimit just what we mean by "work".
Although perhaps I should clarify (as I did in the original post): I only said fanfiction, so it's okay if it's easier to just leave the rest of it off. Not to say it's worth discussion, only that not-fiction is not my focus right now.
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Date: 5 Jun 2010 12:01 am (UTC)Has there been any? My understanding is that the existing published Austen-derived works were all produced exterior to a fandom (that is, not posted for public fandom consumption prior to publication).
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Date: 5 Jun 2010 12:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 5 Jun 2010 12:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 5 Jun 2010 12:22 am (UTC)I am so NOT surprised -- was just commenting on this in another reply on this post. Although in that case it's the policing of being transgressive enough, it's the same basic drive (I think) that causes some fandoms to police any that are too transgressive in the first place. Like, you can go this far, but no farther (with "far" to be defined by the TPTB of the fandom).
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Date: 5 Jun 2010 12:32 am (UTC)The only boundaries actively policed are: chan and bestiality, and... alternative pairings to the Darcy/Elizabeth one. I kid you not. (This last surely works a bit to police slash too, but there's always alternative universes where they both male/female, etc, and that's not happening too much, compared to other popular alternative universes.)
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Date: 5 Jun 2010 12:25 am (UTC)Eh, that's why I asked -- i can't name any! I don't actually know the genre/fandom/source very well, so I was curious. Most fandoms, if not all, that I've ever been involved with have been under copyright, so there's always been a significant pressure to properly do the serial-number filing dance. I'd guess that when we get into public-domain works, the need for such filing is reduced (and if the original work is prestigious enough, such filing might even be counter-productive when it comes to publication, because you're reducing the borrowed glory)... and I suppose in some ways, I've been so trained by the 'omg! copyright!' tensions of 20th-cen-based fandoms, I'm not sure I can even comprehend how awesome it must be to know you can take a fanfic and with enough polish and little filing, publish it.
Although I wonder what kind of affect that may have upon the fandom, in general, to have that "shhh, technically we're illlegal" aspect no longer in play.
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Date: 5 Jun 2010 12:40 am (UTC)It's not so much borrowed glory, in the case of Jane Austen, as the stuff published is not high brow at all, but rather a powerful marketing tool for romance fiction. Because it's a marketing tool, and the market is exploding right now (oh, how I wish it would die already), not much polishing is needed at all, which results in a fandom-like mix of quality: there's good stuff, but there's also hilariously bad stuff.
It's... I mean, it's one of my fandoms, and I'm reluctant to badmouth it to someone who doesn't know it, but the general population is so ignorant about copyright it's a like scary. Like the rest of fandom, more or less, except they are contemptuous of the rest of fandom for doing something immoral (not all, but, you know).
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Date: 5 Jun 2010 01:02 am (UTC)the general population is so ignorant about copyright it's a like scary
You mean, above and beyond how terrifying it is to see the level of ignorance required to a) argue freedom of speech is something other than, well, what it really is, and b) to completely ignore that it only covers you if you're American? That kind of level of ignorance in the general population?
Although frankly, I can sort of forgive general ignorance, since copyright law is incredibly complex. It's when I run across authors -- published authors! -- busy parroting the very edges of Really Freaking Ignorant that I start doing the gnashing of the teeth.
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Date: 31 May 2010 11:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 1 Jun 2010 12:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 1 Jun 2010 08:27 pm (UTC)"What influence/impact/import do you think fandom plays in the creation* of fanfiction? Or none at all?"
*and on second thought, not just creation, but interpretation of, and reaction to, and consumption of, all whatever other intersecting points between fanfiction writer + fanfiction work + fanfiction audience...
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Date: 1 Jun 2010 12:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 1 Jun 2010 07:56 pm (UTC)Fiction created so to be dependent on narrative content already extant in the a large or small subset of the public consciousness, generally without legal right to profit by it.
My reasons are twofold. Most people are not familiar with the term "intertextuality" and it is poorly defined (it took me some time to try to figure out what you meant and even then I'm not sure my suggested alternative is what you intended). Second while tie-in books might be fairly described as formal for profit fanfic, most people would not describe them as such without much disagreement.
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Date: 1 Jun 2010 08:25 pm (UTC)while tie-in books might be fairly described as formal for profit fanfic, most people would not describe them as such without much disagreement.
I think there's a double negative in there that's tripping me up. You mean, tie-books could be formally described as, and people would mostly agree? or that people would not mostly disagree? or would mostly disagree?
eerrrrggghhh, nothing gets me worse than double negatives. I have no idea why.
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Date: 1 Jun 2010 01:08 am (UTC)Fan fiction is fiction that depends for its full intended effect on its audience's familiarity with and sometimes emotional investment in a pre-existing media (book, television, film, opera, celebrity-gossip-sheet, whatever) canon (and yes, I know that canon in this definition needs its own definition, but this is what happens when I don't sleep for three days straight, right?). This may include the 'canon' of RPF -- I mean, I don't understand anything about RPF, but I do gather that there is such a thing as a canon that the relevant community constructs, and the outlines at least of which they'll agree on to the extent fandoms ever agree about anything.
So your basic American Idol fic is fanfic by my definition, in that you can read it without having a clue who the people are, and have the basic narrative make sense to you -- but without knowing the canon, and probably without having some emotional connection with the people/characters being written about, there'll be layers of meaning that are completely invisible to you. And in fact, in most cases a huge part of what gives any such story its impact will be in the aspects that are invisible.
But of course, so is a great deal of the professionally-published fiction I think people who define fanfiction as fiction written by members of the fan community would exclude. A definition that excludes stuff like The Wide Sargasso Sea makes no sense to me, on a gut level -- to me, this is all about what can be done within a set of formal constraints. Those formal constraints, and the aesthetics arising from the community's interests, may have nothing at all to do with the aesthetics of the mainstream or of published mainstream fiction, but that's not to say that all fiction written by fans must be fanfiction, even when it ignores the form.
This makes for a case-by-case sort of test: in the real world there'd be many instances where under my formulation a reasonable person could call it either way. But the fact that there isn't a sharp boundary doesn't, I think, make the basic idea unworkable or incoherent.
-- Or, of course, I could be wrong.
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Date: 1 Jun 2010 02:39 am (UTC)Very true. Which is why it seems to me that for it to be fanfiction, the 'fan' part is really short for 'fandom' -- so fiction significantly influenced by the fan/writer's fandom is probably fairly safe to say some kind of fanfic. But I can also write influenced-by-story but not-influenced-by-fandom, and those stories are original fiction and yes, I am a fan and yes, I may even be writing an adaptation/retelling, but I'm not doing it under teh influence.
Although that in turn cracks me up, post-dinner and in throes of not-enough-chocolate: Writing under the influence (of Fandom)!
"The agent was going to ask for a full manscript, but then he did a search and discovered I'd done time for a WUI. Yeah. Miami Vice fandom. I know. Young, stupid, and you think you'll never be caught, and one bust and your life is ruined. Your parents warn you, but you know how it is. Kids never listen."
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Date: 1 Jun 2010 03:11 am (UTC)Here's what might be a useful example set. Back in the 80s, after the first ghastly Star Trek movie came out and Pocket Books acquired the right to publish tie-in novels, they bought and published a whole bunch of manuscripts written by pro sf writers who'd loved Star Trek as kids, and were delighted to have the chance to actually play in the universe for real. For the most part they weren't in fandom as we know it (or at least, they weren't to the best of my knowledge), and the various books they produced were produced in isolation from one another, so that various writers were exploring their own ideas of the Star Trek universe without a lot of input from anyone beyond the people who'd be giving input to writers working on non-tie-in novels (members of writing groups, editors, spouses, those kinds of people).
And yet, I'd have no hesitation about calling that set of Star Trek tie-ins fanfic. Professional and legal, to be sure, but none of them would work as a stand-alone sf novel in the ways they work when set against the Star Trek canon, so that as a formal and aesthetic matter they're interdependent with the source: you don't even need to take into account the fact that the writers were working out of love of that source, even if they weren't working from a community of fans or out of a fan community aesthetic tradition. But by your definition here, I gather they wouldn't be fan fiction? Or am I wrong about that?
And if you wouldn't consider them to be fan fiction, what about work by a writer who's a member of the LJ/DW-etc. online fan community, and who writes for a fandom that doesn't have a set of agreed-on ideas about their canon? Or who writes stuff that doesn't fall into the main categories that show up on label templates (no romance, no angst, no PWP, et cetera)? Is this even the sort of thing you mean by 'the influence,' or (as is more likely) am I entirely missing your concept?
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Date: 1 Jun 2010 03:29 am (UTC)Thing is, I don't mean to give the impression that it's better, somehow, to be WUIoF -- only that it's different. It shapes what one writes, differently, to have expert-level (or self-proclaimed-expert!) fans able to keep one in line when it comes to "that's OOC" or "you just totally broke the timeline, dude," and so on. I don't think it's even a matter of having a canon defined; I mean, look at the average American superhero comics. I tried once to decipher their idea of 'canon' (they have like FIVE canons in Batman, I think!) and it was seriously eyeball-bleeding. But it's still canon, even if people pick and choose.
More importantly, there's still fandom influencing via conversation and other fanworks and previous fanfics and debate and reviews, helping to shape a work even when it stands on the edges of anything canonical. The community element still influences the work in some way, at least from what I've seen... and if you don't have that community influence of equally-knowledgeable fans, then you have an adaptation -- and possibly even a very good adaptation/continuation -- but I'm still not convinced that it'd qualify as fanfiction, at least by my measure.
I mean, if 'fan/dom' has nothing to do with it, then aren't we only just writing derivative fiction?
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Date: 1 Jun 2010 04:23 am (UTC)Anyway, I haven't been reading you as claiming that WUIoF is superior by its nature to work that is both derivative of a source and dependent upon it for its effectiveness but isn't WUIoF (or vice versa). It's seemed to me that this is a quest for accuracy/truth, not a claim of hierarchical rank. And on my part, I'm batting away at it under the same terms -- as is probably obvious, given that it's impossible to say one is better than the other if you're having trouble wrapping your mind around the suggested distinction at all.
Where I'm having trouble may be with the very idea of fandom as some special type of community. Because on one level, almost all creative work is shaped to some extent by the producer's community and its discourse. The Troubadour poets will have been influenced by one another (and no doubt the ones attached to the same courts at the same time would, like members of the same fandom, have an extra degree of interdependence and influence on one another). And so on, in any community I can imagine. So I totally accept that fandom is likely to have some influence on the work of anyone in the community who writes -- well anything at all, really, including fan work, because most people's minds don't come with pre-installed Chinese walls.
But if that's generally true of all writers who aren't living as hermits, making a specific claim that fandom shapes work in some particular and distinguishable way, so that we can recognize works made under that influence, seems to me to imply that there's some characteristic set of attitudes or approaches to the material that we could identify. Only once we do that, if we can, then we're back to the issue of work that doesn't seem to have whatever those characteristics are. Which to me seems problematic, because I come from a fandom where writers have blithely ignored canon and had radically divergent notions of characters, such that there's not a lot of point in even talking about OOC-ness as an aesthetic standard. All the body of work produced really has in common is that without the background a reader will miss a lot of what the stronger writers are doing in any given story.
And I'm still not sure how that's any different from "just derivative fiction." Or at least, I'm not sure unless I go back to my starting place about the need for the audience to have the relevant background knowledge to understand the fan work. I can imagine derivative work that wouldn't have that kind of interplay with the original text -- that is, derivative work that is not fan fiction -- but I can also readily imagine derivative work that does depend on the original text, but that doesn't come out of a fan community at all. With the first type (I write an epic fantasy about Paolo and Francesca di Rimini's rebellion against the powers of Hell, stealing imagery and the occasional story element from Dante but writing a pulp adventure that isn't intended to exist in any kind of creative discourse with the original), we've got something I can readily classify as derivative work but not fan work.
But if I write that epic in such a way that it only works if you actually know the Dante, it's a different creature: now it's derivative work of a kind different from that pulp epic, one that requires an entirely different reading strategy and set of background information. And I'm having trouble seeing how that isn't the case regardless of whether I-the-writer am or ever have been involved with fandom, or whether (assuming I am) there's a Dante fan community. It's the same book, regardless of the circumstances of its production. Isn't it?
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Date: 1 Jun 2010 04:35 am (UTC)I think for me, I've come to the point where I can say: all fanfiction is derivative fiction, but not all derivative fiction is fanfiction... and then I have to be truthful and add: except for when fanfiction is not derivative.
And for my next trick, I shall be in the corner, kicking the cat.
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Date: 1 Jun 2010 08:02 pm (UTC)Here's the thing, or one of them: A good part of what I really love about the pieces of fanfic that I do love seems to be unrelated to what the vast majority of fandom is looking for and loves. (The vast majority, but not everyone, and naturally the people I spend the most time discussing this stuff with are the ones who aren't entirely aligned with that vast majority.) There is a fanfic majority aesthetic, one most of us know when we see. And there's certainly fanfic that's best identified by its clear positioning within a community's practice (discourse, whatever).
But there's also fanfic that doesn't fit easily within the majority aesthetic, and/or that doesn't strike me as being readily and intrinsically identifiable as the product of one aesthetic subculture and its practices. ("Readily identifiable," that is, in the sense that it would be obvious to a scholar from a future culture that this particular story belonged to the same aesthetic tradition as the one that gives rise to the Id Vortex concept.) Since I tend to prefer this not-really-conforming work, I have an obvious investment in not seeing it excluded from whatever definition we adopt -- and more of an investment in not having it treated as a kind of marginal afterthought.
Only that's the thing that leads to my issue, because once I start insisting that this other work that doesn't really fit within the dominant community aesthetic is just as much fanfic as the work that does, I have no basis on which to exclude a good deal of work that you're arguing for excluding -- at least, I have no basis if I want a definition that is purely text-based. And I do want that kind of definition, because it seems to me that once we start classifying things based on the circumstances of their creation, we're no longer evaluating them as individual works, but rather as expressions within a limited and walled-off tradition.
Which isn't to say I don't see value in the second kind of understanding and examination of any kind of work. I do: that kind of approach is both interesting for its own sake and important in understanding one set of meanings that a given set of works has. But the value of any given work is not solely its value within its originating subculture, and its only legitimate meaning isn't the meaning that subculture would generally ascribe to it. And that's particularly true in a world where none of us is a member of only one subculture, or practicing anything without being influenced by any number of other traditions and aesthetics.
Thus my conclusion that it makes more sense, and is more broadly useful, to try for a text-based rather than a community-based definition.
-- Mind you, I don't intend in saying any of this to try to make fan fiction seem more "legitimate" or respectable by trying to go out and claim mainstream works. (But then, I always flinch when I see people trying to justify it as practice for writing commercially publishable fiction, too.) I don't think fan fiction requires an apology or a special justification. Indeed, if I'd seen people bringing up mainstream fiction as apologetic, and fully registered it as such, I'd be snarling and kicking things too.
no subject
Date: 1 Jun 2010 08:18 pm (UTC)In going on almost ten years now, I have yet to meet a single fanfiction reader (online or in person) who defines what they like as "related to the majority of what fandom likes". In fact, I'd have to say that of the multitudes I've talked to, the ones who've said "what I like is the same as what most of my fandom likes" can be counted on one hand. They're that exceptional -- or perhaps it's that we all have different perceptions of "what fandom likes" -- not to mention how the hell we define "fandom" itself, to even define what fandom (any fandom) likes. I mean, when I say: "I like what my fandom generally likes", do I mean my fandom overall (Japanese anime/manga) or do I mean my corner of that fandom (Japanese anime/manga focused on mecha) or a subset of that corner (Japanese anime/manga focused on mecha with major homoerotic subtext)? If it's kept undefined just how someone is defining "fandom", then it renders the rest of the statement -- comparison between my-likes and everyone-likes -- almost useless. Doubly so in light of our tendency to say "my fandom" and mean not the overall fandom-around-canon but our own privately defined part of it, ie, "the fandom is Harry Potter but my fandom is the Harry/Dumbledore set".
So, all that said, I guess the question is: outside of setting a value judgment on whether you like/dislike in comparison with some internal or subset of a generalized fandom, does the existence of 'fandom' (as a generalized community of differing aesthetics that nonetheless is focused on and/or centered on some kind of shared/pre-existing narrative) have any influence at all in the creation of fanfiction? And if so, does the existence of (and interaction with) any fandom (in part or whole) thereby have importance in measuring something as fanfiction?
That is, if we say that 'derivative' means: a work based on a pre-existing work by another author/creator (independent of copyright/permission issues) -- then all adaptations, retellings, and fanfiction are derivative to some degree or another. This seems to be pretty much agreed-upon, that derivative includes fanfiction, and that the primary facet of 'derivative' is that there has to be something under it, a source, that existed prior -- whether this is a text, a presentation, a person's life, an animal, a still image/painting, etc -- and that this 'source' contained, or is related to, a narrative of some sort.
From that, then, the question is really: where do we draw the line between 'fanfiction' and other types of derivative works? And what I'm saying is that I think the line is most easily drawn along the general borders of 'inclusion in, relation to, and/or influence from, a larger fandom community', wherein 'fandom' is at its loosest definition of 'others whose work and/or interest also focuses on, or relates to, the same general source/base as one's own interest/work'.
Thus, getting back to the concrete example of bookshop's list, the titles there are 'adaptations' and 'retellings', and, like fanfiction, are 'derivative' -- but that fanfiction is the oddball for having a creative process that is influenced by and interacts with others with a similar interest in the source material.
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Date: 1 Jun 2010 08:44 pm (UTC)I come to the statement the hard way, through years of being told I'd love things that made me flinch when I actually got there, and more years of reading about celebrations of aesthetic norms I kind of hate.
Id-vortex fic tends to make me squirm with embarrassment and bail early. I don't like genre romance, and don't read it. I hate hurt/comfort. Redemption-through-healing-true-love gives me the creeps. In my fandom of origin, I dislike many of the most highly-recommended and best-loved works, and the ones I dislike are those that most conform to what I've come to think of as the fanfic majority aesthetic. And, you know, blah blah blah: I could go on, and probably even bring in independent corroborating testimony, but you get the general idea.
I promise, it's not that I'm seduced by the perceived need to present myself as different from the other children. I'm sick to death of it, to tell you the unvarnished truth. I'd love to find my reading tastes situated squarely in the middle, here or anywhere. I can't prove that to you, of course; all I can do is to say that from my own subjective point of view, from over here where I have trouble finding fiction I want to read, let alone media products I can sit through, it sure feels as if it's true.
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Date: 1 Jun 2010 09:08 pm (UTC)It takes a very good writer -- or a writer whose id-vortex happens to map very very closely to my own -- to make me not react the same way!
I didn't mean to imply that anyone necessarily wants to perceive themselves as different, only that fandom is so varied even in the best of times that there really isn't ever (IME/IMO) a true 'center' of 'this is what the majority of us like'. You really only find that if you narrow down to a subset of a fandom and call that 'your' fandom. In other words: it's true to say that for most fans, they're probably not in alignment with 'the majority' since there's not really a true 'majority' to align with, but at the same time it's also probably true to say that when fans find fans of like minds, then they are in alignment with that area of the fandom that they consider 'theirs'. And that's the beauty of the internet (and better search/tag functions in archives): that we can find a sub-set of a general fandom where we are in alignment, for the most part. ...even when the predominant external impression of a fandom differs from our sub-set's intentions/likes.
Which is why I'm not trying to define 'fandom' -- because if defining fanfiction is hard, defining 'fandom' is damn well impossible.
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Date: 1 Jun 2010 10:08 pm (UTC)But if we agree that there really isn't a Fandom Majority, but rather a collection of loosely-aligned mini-communities (at least in an aesthetic and creative sense), doesn't that cut against the argument that we can best describe or identify fan fiction as the product of a fan community? Or to be more specific, let me try to address the two points you raised above:
[D]oes the existence of 'fandom' (as a generalized community of differing aesthetics that nonetheless is focused on and/or centered on some kind of shared/pre-existing narrative) have any influence at all in the creation of fanfiction?
First, of course it does, for the vast majority of what both of us would call fanfiction. Most of it is written by self-identified members of that community and for an audience consisting of that community, and the community's interests, enthusiasms, and standards will generally have some influence on what's produced.
But second, we have something of a chicken-and-egg problem here, because I'd argue that it's entirely possible for a writer to produce fanfiction without any contact at all with the community, and in the extreme case without a relevant community even existing. The only difference would be that in the last case, the writer would also be the only audience for the resulting work (or at least, the only audience able to read it with full understanding of what it's supposed to do). In these cases I'd say that the community has had no influence at all on the creation of the finished work. But if fanfiction is by definition the product of a community, there's not going to be any produced without some community influence, even if it's only a tangential and distant kind of influence.
And with that, on to part two:
And if so, does the existence of (and interaction with) any fandom (in part or whole) thereby have importance in measuring something as fanfiction?
This is where I'm going with a big Yes and no, with a side of, It depends on what one means by 'fandom'.
I'd say that the existence of a 'fandom' is crucial to whether a work is fanfiction, in a way, if (and only if) you conceive of a 'fandom' as a set of potential readers whose knowledge of and involvement with the source material is comprehensive enough that the writer was able to rely on it in shaping her work, and to use that knowledge to create the effects she's after.
Thus my continuing example of the American Idol story I had a friend rec in wildly enthusiastic terms: a perfectly readable story by a very good writer, but one that was nevertheless essentially incomprehensible to me, the outside reader. That is, I knew I was reading a story about how these two people formed a romantic and sexual relationship, and the words all flowed nicely enough that it wasn't painful to read; but I had no idea at all of why I was supposed to find any of it engaging, let along rave-worthy. It was working, that is, on a completely different level for those who actually knew and understood the source material, and depended on its readers having that knowledge. Most of what was going on in the story was invisible to me, but it would be wrong to say it wasn't there.
On the extreme side, this is where I locate the pro work that I think is what we're arguing over. Some such works I'd agree with you about: if you can get every bit of what's actually there without knowing the source it's probably derivative work that is not fanfiction by my definition. (This may be where we'd find Pride and Prejudice and Zombies -- I might be wrong, but without reading it I'd still be inclined to guess that it's not a work that was intended to be dependent on audience knowledge of the original from anything but a sales perspective.) But because a mainstream canon by its nature contains texts that many members of a mainstream audience will know well, it's also possible for a writer who isn't part of any 'fandom' beyond that so many of us belong to by reason of being versed in that canon, and perhaps having a special affection for some particular works within it, to write something that does depend for its effects on its readers having the kind of knowledge of the source that we associate with a fandom.
So this gives me the place where I'd be inclined to locate something like The Once and Future King. It's derivative and it's also fanfiction. Like that American Idol story, a person can read it without pre-existing knowledge of its sources, or the resonance of the Matter of Britain in so many of our minds, and you'll still be able to follow the story. (I got to it as a child, before I knew the underlying material, and had no real problems, and I'm sure the same is true of many of us.) But like that AI story, a lot of what it's doing is invisible if you don't have that background knowledge. When I first read it I couldn't quite see what the point of most of it was; it was when I came back to it with some knowledge of the canon that I could see what White was doing. I'm sure he didn't consciously think about what he needed his audience to know, but he did assume and depend on a certain amount of that knowledge.
And that illustrates the place where I'd say that if we're willing to count the kind of knowledge White assumed in his readers as a 'fandom,' then sure, I'd accept your formulation. From my point of view it's still a roundabout way of getting at the point about text; still, I'm not sure we're not using two different approaches to describe what in the end is really the same thing. That's on the 'yes' side of my 'well, yes and no.'
But if that wouldn't count as 'fandom' for purposes of your definition, then I'm back to the place where I'd say that no, the existence of a fandom and/or a work's place within it isn't a good touchstone at all, because it excludes work that I do think is fanfiction as well as being derivative fiction.
-- Damn. Maybe I should have been talking about required reading strategies rather than texts all along?
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Date: 5 Jun 2010 12:11 am (UTC)Wouldn't that really be arguing for the existence (and use of, and influence of) fanon, and its role in the group interpretation of the work? In other words, you can have fanfiction that exists separate from fandom (where the reliance is on, and only on, understanding of the original text) versus fanfiction that exists within fandom and in part or whole (or in really subtle ways) riffs off the one-step-removed or group-created interpretations of the text?
For the first, one need only know the primary material to get the connections. For the second, if you're missing the lingo and the assumptions that fanon has developed, then all the original source material you want might still leave you completely clueless. (Man, have I read those stories.)
Well, clueless when you're not completely outraged at what the hell someone must've been smoking in order to write that with a straight face.
But at the same time, I've read fanon-based stories that were completely comprehensible even without knowing the original canon, because the fanon was using the same tropes and metaphors and assumptions that I'd found in other canons/fanons/fandoms. Like, oh, the way we treat archetypes: you read one short, hot-tempered, genius pre-pubescent boy, you've freaking suddenly read all of them, it seems like, or at least it seems that way based on fandom (or fanon) interpretation/recreation.
ut because a mainstream canon by its nature contains texts that many members of a mainstream audience will know well, it's also possible for a writer who isn't part of any 'fandom' beyond that so many of us belong to by reason of being versed in that canon, and perhaps having a special affection for some particular works within it, to write something that does depend for its effects on its readers having the kind of knowledge of the source that we associate with a fandom.
Seems to me this is also where you get into the power of conventions, in genre: that fandom itself, just by nature of being human and social animals, cultivates conventions just as much as any genre. Part, I think, because it's a comfort-zone (we know in this genre we'll get a happy ending, and damn it, right now we want happy endings), and part because it's just easier. Here, everyone's meeting in an inn and eating stew and discussing the Big Bad taking over the land: I don't have to give you more than that; you know where we're heading with this.
then I'm back to the place where I'd say that no, the existence of a fandom and/or a work's place within it isn't a good touchstone at all, because it excludes work that I do think is fanfiction as well as being derivative fiction.
...which is why I think I'm ending up angling towards something that's above/beyond the simple "affirmational vs. transformational" definition provided elsewhere (see next post from me) and into something that encompasses that and yet also allows room for the various types. Unfortunately (and I say that because the term has become something derogatory in the past 20 years), the best term seems to be that it's all 'derivative works' -- movie adaptations, retellings, including fanfiction... and there are subsets within that of 'derivations influenced by existing interpretations (produced by academics, fans, whomever)' and 'derivations that attempt to bypass the existing assumptions and re-connect with the original text'.
*ponders*
Ah. Fixed.
Date: 5 Jun 2010 02:59 am (UTC)I'm not sure whether I'm following you correctly here. Let me see whether I can try to unravel this a little, and with any luck you'll at least be able to tell me whether I've completely missed your point.
If you're suggesting that we might be looking at two classes of fanfiction, one that requires only a solid working knowledge of the original source, and a second that requires a knowledge of fanon and fandom writing conventions in general, I'm not sure I'd disagree as a matter of substance. (Although I'd probably argue in that second case that one could just as well characterize the second type as being fanfiction where fandom itself was the, or one of the, primary sources, so that there was no material difference between this kind of fanfiction and the kind where all a reader needed was a working knowledge of the primary source.)
I think this fanon-influenced category may be an area where by both temperament and experience I'm ill qualified to say much of anything. Most of my direct experience has been in a tiny fandom where we just plain didn't develop much of any fanon (or at least, not much I'm aware of). With very rare exceptions, all you'd need to read anything the fandom has produced is the source material itself, and the exceptions are unusual enough that they carry author's notes saying, "I was riffing off Jane Fangirl's story XXX when I wrote this, and you need to read that to understand this, here's where to read it if you haven't." Which, I gather, is not quite the same phenomenon as what you're talking about. Especially in light of what you say here:
Seems to me this is also where you get into the power of conventions, in genre: that fandom itself, just by nature of being human and social animals, cultivates conventions just as much as any genre.
I think it's the very conventions you're referring to that were at the heart of my earlier pathetic whimpering about being not as much like the other children as I might wish. I really, really would rather have less by assurance of where a story is going -- not that I want the structure to feel wrong and forced when I get to the end, but unless a writer has the kind of gift that makes the oldest and most conventional of forms new again, I'd much rather not be too certain. Indeed, one of the things I come to noncommercial fiction for is the way it bypasses the gatekeepers whose preference for the familiar tends to limit the directions in which commercial work can go. And if everyone's in an inn and eating stew and talking about the Big Bad, well, I hope to God someone's given me more than that. Because otherwise, as you say, we've all been to this show already; why on earth would we want to sit through it again?
All of which means simply that I haven't read very much of what I think is probably a vast body of fanfiction that does a lot of what you're talking about here: to the extent I find it I bail from it early in the work. As I think about various discussions I've had, though, I'm inclined to think you're right based on evidence as well as pure logic. I'm remembering someone -- it may have been
And sure enough, there's your thesis illustrated right there (again, if I'm following you), because what she was telling me was that to understand the AI story I had failed to get at all, a reader needed to know both the basic AI canon and to know the fanon conventions that form the coming-out story form (or the mainstream conventions that inform it, plus whatever fanon conventions modify it?). Without both, you're not going to be able to see what the work means for its intended audience.
But whether I've followed you correctly or not, I'm more and more inclined to think that you're absolutely right about the "affirmational vs. transformational" framework being too limited to really account for the variety of work being done both inside fandom as we know it and outside of it. And since "derivative works" is the base term we have, perhaps the best strategy is to accept it and go for reclamation? I'm suddenly struck by an annoying sense that musicians have some really excellent terminology for this that we might borrow, but there's a hole in my brain where the relevant words are supposed to be. I'll have to go check The Memory of Whiteness and see whether I can find them.
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Date: 1 Jun 2010 08:57 pm (UTC)Somehow this brings to mind Kathleen Sky's "Vulcan!", which became one of those rare books I threw across the room into the corner about six pages in.
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Date: 5 Jun 2010 12:15 am (UTC)Heh, I'd say the opposite -- or more like yes and then no. Fandom validates a newcomer's impulse to reimagine an original work, which is the codification part of the process, but past a certain point, fandom also can slam down pretty hard on those who go wildly off into the blue yonder away from canon. Fandom can be both transgressive and incredibly conservative, all at the same time, which is part of its beauty but also the root cause (I think) of much of its worst wank. We're transgressive, but we're only transgressive in these ways, and that other way is not okay. In that sense, a solitary writer, shooting off from fandom, will go places a non-fandom-influenced writer might not go (thanks to fandom's primary cultivating/encouraging element), but will also likely take fandom's step-removed and become an outlier going even farther in the re-interpretation.
I guess: fandom uses canon as a springboard, and then solitary writers in turn can use fandom itself as yet another springboard.
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Date: 2 Jun 2010 11:05 am (UTC)So given that, what influence/impact/import do you think fandom plays in the creation of fanfiction? Or none at all?
None at all. Because while fandom might have an influence in some cases, my fanfic that I wrote in total isolation at nine years old about the further adventures of Merry and Pippin is just as much fanfic as the Final Fantasy fanfics I wrote with my friends in high school but that never saw the light of day on the internet, as is the silly BL fanfic I might write now from an LJ community prompt - fandom is an awesome part of fanfiction, but not a necessary ingredient.
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Date: 5 Jun 2010 12:18 am (UTC)That all said, fandom must serve some purpose in the creative process, or what use do we have for it, that we'd keep it around (except as easy-accessible audience for produced derivative works)?
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Date: 7 Jun 2010 04:43 pm (UTC)I'd guess that what fandom does is supply support and ideas you would not necessarily think of on your own. As well as prove you're not crazy.
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Date: 1 Jun 2010 08:13 am (UTC)See, I write RPF, and it is just as much fanfic as the FPF I used to write—so 'derivative work' isn't a helpful part of the definition.
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Date: 1 Jun 2010 08:23 pm (UTC)Actually, all of the above are 'derivative' in that they're all based on an existing narrative -- even if this 'narrative' is a person's life/existence, which means RPF (along with fictionalized historical biographies!) are 'derivative'. (I'm including 'transformative' within 'derivative' because even when you're transforming, there's still an originating point that you've derived from.)
Adaptations and retellings and whatnot are cousins to fanfiction, by that standard. What has me intrigued is where 'fanfiction' stops and 'adaptation' or 'retelling' or whatever else starts (well, outside of the obvious 'because this chunk of fanfiction is in copyright violation', eheh). I mean, if there's no effective difference between 'fanfiction' and any other derivative work (other than copyright/permissions, that is), then why not call all 'fanfiction' simply 'derivative works'?
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Date: 1 Jun 2010 10:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 1 Jun 2010 08:51 pm (UTC)Fanfiction is a story of any length constructed in or about another person's material, whether that material is visual, written, or audio.
Or I suppose... Fanfiction is fiction written by a fan?
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Date: 5 Jun 2010 12:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 7 Jun 2010 04:38 pm (UTC)