dynamics of fandom, 2
5 Jun 2010 12:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaigou[continued from pt1]
Where I meander, I'm also busy trying different ways to approach and/or assess the evidence at hand. In case you weren't already aware of my hermeneutic habit trails.
Whenever I read of Authors dismissing fanfiction as intentional (if not outright malicious) distortion, and the way that such tarrings sometimes spread to an implied tarring of all fandom (beyond just the writers and their readers), it strikes me as ignoring a benefit that might outweigh that of the distortion-risk drawbacks.
By that I mean: there is a derivative benefit to Authors from the connections that exist between fans not by virtue of their shared baseline fandom (focus on an original story) but on their participation in fandom itself, as a generalized entity or way of being.
The dashed lines above are the connections, pulling together two fans of one group with a fan of a second group, but without connections created (yet) between each yellow-circle and the unfamiliar/unconnected original story. That's probably common sense to many Authors, in that if you're a fan of this genre story, then you'd probably also like that genre story; same basic logic as Amazon's "other people who bought this also bought..." addendums on any purchasing page.
What got me, in considering the dynamics at play, was in recalling several Author-statements (and I name no names here due to in part being the kind of fool who reads Author-statements by Authors whose stories and/or genres are totally unfamiliar to me, which often leaves my response nothing more than, "and who are you, again?" not to be a smartass but because I really am that unaware of that genre's big names). On the face of it, it'd seem like one would want fans of one fandom to connect with others, and hope for a bit of cross-pollination, as it were.
What I can't figure out, though, is whether the Authors refusing or discouraging this kind of cross-fandom pollination are doing so just as part and parcel of the kneejerk anti-fanfiction stance, or because the Authors really are/were that savvy about just what's going on. If the former, well, whatever; if the latter, well, no use trying to sugarcoat what I see, then.
The author's green-circle sphere of influence is no longer the intermediary for interpretation; the role of introductory intermediary is -- in this type of instance -- taken over by the fandom interpretation (fanon).
In effect, it seems to me that the more fandom itself takes center stage -- the co-interpretation and/or interaction between fans of similarly-themed original stories -- the more the fans' own interpretative texts become introductory points to new/unfamiliar original stories. Where the Author's imposition as intermediary asserts a force in terms of interpretation, the fans' imposition as intermediary does the same, but distorted, once step removed.
That, obviously, is what some of the Authors fear: that fan-distorted interpretations bias readers ahead of time. (I suppose the logic is that it's okay if it's your own work that you're biasing people towards, or against.) What I have no way to measure currently is whether the positive biases outweigh the potential negative: whether there are more fans expressing appreciation of the text with affectionate fan-interpretation, or whether there are more fans using their perspective to critique the original story. And, I imagine, plenty of Authors (or at least judging from the noisiest ones who are anti-fanfic) consider any such critique of the original story to be tantamount to a personal insult.
The thing is whether the Author sees all re-interpretations as critiques in disguise, or as adoring emulations by fans (some of whom, shall we euphemistically say, just don't know better, bless their hearts, and distort without realizing just how much it hurts the canonical Author). How to rationalize the risks of having your work introduced via someone else's interpretation?
Or perhaps it's better expressed as: maybe it's time to recognize that fans of any work, regardless of fanfiction tendencies, have always exerted their own interpretation on a work when introducing it to others. In this, fanfiction acts as a textual re-imagining working along the same lines as a serious book review. The difference is that fans don't get interviewed, have their references checked, and suffer annual employee reviews to warrant the right to critically review an original story. Then again, seeing how some Authors react to critical reviews even by seemingly educated and erudite Serious Book Reviewers, maybe it doesn't matter who's making the noise.
Moving along, what had been marginal-positioned (ex-canon) fanfic, some in-canon fanfic, and cross-fandom connections, becomes considerably messier when we move into the more recent (past decade or so) of the Internet Era. Or more specifically, the rise of the massive multi-fandom archives, and I'm looking at you, Fanfiction.net and Mediaminer.org.
These are all drawn (err, so to speak) from what I've seen happen in various fandoms/fancircles. At the top left, for instance, marked with a (1) is a blue-bordered square with a medium-blue thick line leading from a yellow circle. That fan-writer is, as marked by the light blue dashed lines, part of the general 'fandom' that centers on the original story (top middle, in the pinwheel). But this fan's ex-canon story now not only has garnered several fans in its own right, these fans are not only not connected to the original canon, they have also connected to each other (2).
In essence, it's a mini-fandom of a fan-interpretation of a canonical story.
Over on the top right, at the spot marked (3), is the next stage in that evolution. Same premise: fans connected to each other, focused in their appreciation for an ex-canon story -- and one of that story's fans has, in turn, produced an interpretation (4)... of what was already an interpretation. This is true fanon: where a fan incorporates another fan's perspectives in absence of a significant (or any) connection to the original story, and thus may not know (or may not even care) that the next level of interpretation is more than just a few jumps to the left.
Granted, I think this is also one aspect that Authors fear the most, when they're anti-fic-ranting; most frame it as a dislike for being distorted, but this is a level of distortion beyond what the Author can reasonably influence. It's well past the borders of the general canon-facing (or canon-aware) fandom.
But it doesn't stop there, because an influential interpretation can also become the locus of a fandom and not just in terms of fans grouping around a specific and more-appreciated re-imagining. The next evolutionary step after the two-steps-removed aspect is when the secondary fan's interpretation loops back at the primary interpretation in a move reminiscent of the way, in affirmational fandoms, the fans' story-interpretations loop back to fall within the Author-gatekeeper scope.
The dotted and solid lines here are not random; they're based on actual observed overlappings and interactions in a fandom. At the (1), there's a fan who self-identifies as being 'within' the scope of the canon-focused fandom, with two interpretative works in play. The first is in-canon; the second is ex-canon and significantly transformational. A number of fans have grouped around this second ex-canon work, and are linked to each other as co-fans of the (1) fan's story.
One of those fans, at (2), has in turn produced an interpretation of the (1) interpretation, as noted in the evolutionary point previous to this image. But it doesn't stop there; a third fan gets involved; a fan who, unlike the second, is also connected to the originating fandom -- and is not a fan of the first fan and/or the first fan's work (no solid blue line connecting, there). And this third fan's work overlaps significantly enough with the second to imply a sharing of the fanon-based, ex-canon interpretation of this fan, even though the third fan is well-familiar with the original story.
This is one path to the development of a shared world or zoofic or whatever the fandom calls it this month -- a re-interpretation, often with added original characters, which in turn become fodder for other fans to pile on and draw/write within the same world. (I say one path, but it's also the path I've seen most often, where substantial twist added is from someone outside the specific fandom, though not outside fandom in general.)
There are paths to create the same where the players/writers are all at least somewhat familiar with the original story, but I highlight this particular wacky process as reminder that this ain't necessarily so. With enough fanfic (either a little from many writers or a lot from a few), secondary derivations can develop that in turn lead back to the mainstream fandom...
...And, to what is probably the horror of a few Authors reading this, the significant movement in the image is not that of (2) writing about an unfamiliar canon. It's that (3) turns away from the original story and intentionally focuses on an ex-canon version.
It can happen within the boundaries of the general mainstream fandom (the dashed blue circle ringing the original story) or exterior/marginal to it (as the example above). Either way, what you get is a bubble of fanon sitting in an uncomfortably close proximity to the original story. Well, uncomfortable if you're the Author, I suppose.
The green space is the bubble within which (from what I've seen) the fans then create a new, derived canon -- based loosely or closely, but almost always with additional elements or specific interpretations as foundation -- which is then policed just as much as original canon. That is to say, if the fandom already tends to police its canon tightly, then it's likely to do the same for its shared-world bubbles; if the fandom's pretty easy-going about the dividing lines of canon, then it seems this also affects its attitudes towards shared-world subsets.
(Well, not always: I've heard of a few instances where wildly chaotic fandoms produce strictly-controlled bubble-worlds, but in that case my suspicion is that it's fandom-reaction, a need to have some kind of comprehensible and coherent canon when the original story is nothing but a hot mess -- a favorite mess, but a hot one all the same.)
When I read posts and missives from Published Authors expressing their fear/aversion to fanfiction (and/or, sometimes, misbehaving fandom itself), it seems to me there are two things Authors fear. Naturally, I'll start with the slightly-lesser of the two evils, first. I say that with the caveat that upon reflection, I don't think this is truly a fear so much as it is an alternative perception. (The problem there is that opinions are strongly personal and therefore hard to quibble over, since opinions aren't nearly as malleable even when you do have all the facts).
I say 'perception' because it's important to note (if you haven't noticed already) that I've taken somewhere between a neutral approach to the dynamics I'm pondering, and a somewhat fandom-positive approach. It may not seem like it, perhaps, and in case that's so, I'll explain why I think (or hope) I've achieved that: because while canon may be supplemented by fan-interpretation, I don't think it's entirely overrun, nor do I think most fans would see canon as ever being truly surpassed, or made irrelevant.
The reason for stating that explicitly is because, from Author complaints and rants, this is the impression I get of what they think is a more accurate representation when we talk about fan imposition on the original story.
That's right. The fandom-created interpretations, the fanfiction stories, are crowding the original story, to the point of burying it. This seems the only logical explanation of Author-verbalized perceptions; it's the only one that makes sense when I consider those Authors who fight against fanfiction -- and the way they express their fears.
They're convinced that the more fanfiction there is, the more their own version, at the center of the pinwheel, is being drowned out. Those are not re-interpreted stories, bounded neatly by canonical square, but warped re-tellings, twisted all out of shape in comparison to the Author's vision of the original story. Fanfiction is not just potential competition, it's actual competition, and it's winning, and it's doing so through incredibly distorted presentations: perversions of canon.
The expected result, if allowed to multiply unchecked?
Not only does the original story lose its solidity, compromised and re-interpreted and buried by the fanfiction, but the Author hirself ceases to exist anywhere in the picture. The Author has lost the Authority of being the creator, and I use that Author/Authority/creator connection quite intentionally.
Back when I first got into a particular fandom -- which we'll say is simply That Fandom Which Shall Not Be Named, because let's not get into the specifics, shall we? Some incendiary devices should be left to rot peacefully -- I had a conversation with a fellow fanwriter that went something like this.
Friend: It's an article of faith among the majority of the fandom that despite the lack of any canonical basis, such-and-such character was repeatedly assaulted, sexually and physically, for most of his childhood.
Me: Did you mean to use that phrase, there?
Friend: What where?
Me: That it's an article of faith. Like it's some kinda religious tenet.
Friend: ... well, it fits, and it's true. If it all it took was hitting the Enter key to lob a grenade at someone else through an internet connection, most of this fandom would be dead and buried under about twenty feet of rubble. Wars have been fought over less, my dear.
Me: ... *what the hell have I gotten myself into?*
In the past few weeks, I've seen several references to this same notion, but framed in reaction to (if not outright derision of) Authors who cling with their last bit of fingernails to the Authority vested in them as the internal vision of an original story. Some fan-critics, likethefourthvine, have spoken of "the Anointed Few", while others have used phrases like "the Voice of God" or "speaking from on high" and so on. All of these are strongly religious-colored takes on Authority, mixing in the power of the Creator-author with a Creator-god. I don't think it's a slip of the keyboard, either. Both the Judeo-Christian mindset (and the West's dominant paradigm for god-like critters) and the snark against Authorial Authority contain the assumption, obliquely or outright, that the Creator-god is a distant God; to be granted the chance to hear the God's words is a marvelous, and unusual, event.
In other words, the sacredness with which the readers are expected by (some) Authors to treat the text is, when you strip back the neuroses and the protests, also the sacredness with which the readers are expected to treat the Author's interpretations of that text. The Author is supposed to take precedent, but more than that, really. The Author is not just the biggest baddest force on the playing field, the Author is the only force on the field.
Thus, I don't think it's that much of an exaggeration to draw a thick and solid line between the religious concept of "not worshipping graven images" and the authorial concept of "not worshipping derivative stories". I wouldn't be surprised if some Authors do sincerely wish for the ability to smite those who write blasphemous fanfiction in the Author's name.
The lynchpin here is that despite these articles of faith that say worship of anything else is tantamount to denial of the rights and privileges due unto the Canon, I didn't draw the fandom side of things with those distortions because I think those are present only in the Author's viewpoint. From the perspective of readers/writers of fan-interpretations, it's not necessary to excessively warp the illustrated version as some kind of reminder of the fan-version's unnaturalness or wrongness. It's not like we ever confuse the two. We don't need the additional visual stimuli to remind us which is the "real" story and which is the "derived" story.
I think that's the point where the twain shall never meet; the fearful contingent of Authors -- or those who long for Affirmational-only, well-behaved fans who color neatly within the Author's designated lines -- will never be able to see the same map as the readers. Because I've yet to meet a single fan, ever, who can't tell the difference or who isn't aware which is a story by a fan versus by the Author.
And that's really the issue, isn't it? Competition versus cooperation, and to the average fan, these things co-exist: the original canon and the fan-created interpretations. At a fundamental level, of course, there's the fact that fanfiction is free and canonical stories are not (setting aside things like borrowed books and libraries). If fans have limited money, at least they're not spending it on fanfiction -- the cash goes to the Author, and payment for fanfiction is (often but not always) reviews or other time-sinks.
The former also carries the stigma of 'derivative' (or even outright 'stealing') while the latter is prized, so there's additional social weight on fanfiction writers to justify themselves. Like all good capitalistic costs, the fan-writers transfer this weight onto the canonical story, so it bears the burden for their attention to fan-interpretation. Basically, "I only do this because I love the story just so much, and it's a really great story that deserves this level of attention."
Yet the tension remains, because a number of Authors see themselves as displaced, dislodged gods of their created universe, with ungrateful fans busy worshipping false gods. What the Authors don't get is that in the eyes of most fandom members, I'd say, the Authors weren't really much of gods in the first place.
Distance and pre-eminence (and careful cultivation in online/early-Internet Affirmational-style interaction) may have temporarily given that impression, but fans don't worship false gods, because that implies there were ever true gods. If we truly believed there were a 'true' god of any Original Story, would we even be writing fanfiction in the first place?
Or maybe it's just that we're not half so stressed by the Author's insistence on recognizing hir Authah-ey-tay, so much as a fear we may actually share with savvier Authors: of a God already present and quite voracious in fandom itself.
Yes, dear reader, it's the Big Name Fan.
Rivaling the size and scope of the original story in terms of influence and audience-power, faster than a fanfiction.net "new story!" alert, able to leap Mary Sues in a single bound, it's the dreaded Big Name Fan (BNF)! And no kryptonite will take this puppy down, either.
The birth and upbringing of the BNF is a fascinating thing, worthy of a National Geographic study, but I'll leave that for some other post. Instead, here I only want to point out what is possibly as much of a nightmare for an Author as the notion of reams of derivative, repetitive, and distorted re-interpretations (with porn!) of the original story: a voice in the wilderness of fandom that has power to rival, if not drown out, the Author's own.
That's why I drew the pinwheel lines as curves, above, rather than direct straight lines: because one aspect of a BNF is that (intentionally or unintentionally), the BNF becomes like a medium-sized sun in an asteroid belt. The gravitational pull warps everything in its vicinity, and those fans who cluster the closest will find -- whether or not they realize it -- that their interpretation of the original material is distorted away from a direct line to fall in line with the BNF's version of events.
Granted, the BNF doesn't get that way just on sheer charisma; there must be significant production of works that maintain a certain consistency in their approach to the original work. This is the BNF's ideology (and I use this is as neutral a sense as possible), and just like fans will cleave to an original story whose world-perspective aligns with their own, fans will also cleave to a BNF who exhibits the same.
That's how you get people who go from fandom to fandom not because they've discovered a fandom, but because they're trailing along in the gravitational wake of the BNF. Those are the fans exterior to the blue square's perimeter, above; those fans are linked to both the BNF and the BNF-produced stories. And just like in the earlier stages of fandom where access-to-Author made validation-by-Author both possible and important, there are fans whose connection to the BNF is not by dint of a specific story but directly to the BNF.
On top of the distortion in perspectives of the canon, a major BNF-presence can also warp other stories -- either in the creation, or in the judgment other fans lay upon the story. It can be as simple as "So-and-so likes it, so it must be good, because I love So-and-so's work/perspective". That's how you end up with the BNF writing/posting a story that's borderline canon, and other stories then positioning themselves as closer to the BNF-version than to the original story (or even the writer's own personal interpretation).
If that's not bad enough for an Author -- probably in paroxysms of terror at being rendered obsolete by the BNF -- it'd be compounded by any realization that the BNF's gravitational pull is now tilting people away from the canon to focus solely on the BNF's version of things... and the Author, hidden within the canon text, can't do a damn thing about it.
In part, of course, because even acknowledging the BNF's existence may lend authority to an already-bloated power imbalance, but also because to recognize a BNF requires, most of the time, recognizing that which gave the BNF that authority: the fan-interpretation and ideology that drives the BNF's attractiveness to other fans. And, thanks to such wacky copyright laws as what we got right now, it seems many Authors are of the mind that just being even vaguely aware of fanfiction puts them in the position of having to tell their publishers and let loose the hounds of cease-and-desist letters.
Thus, the BNF can continue to reign supreme, thanks to a unique combination of circumstances and some deft timing and no small amount of skill at tapping into what, exactly, the fandom is really craving (that, usually, is missing from the original story). I've noted these characteristics amongst many a BNF-example... but the truly powerful BNFs, the ones who can capitalize on this (sometimes to a scary degree), are the ones whose metaphorical diagram looks more like this.
The BNF creates a kind of fandom that revolves around the BNF and/or the BNF's works. This may include BNF-sanctioned or -blessed derivations of the BNF's derivations, like shared worlds or spin-offs other writers have done based on the BNF's own work. But first and foremost, it's a fandom that revolves with its center not as an original story, but with what's effectively a substitute-author.
This, I think, is possibly what seems to give nightmares to those Authors who make enough noise to let slip between the cracks what they fear. As if it's not bad enough that not only are they sequestered away (to be fair, more commonly by legalities than outright insecurities, I think), unable to interact directly with fan-writers and/or fan-interpretations, but this enforced distance is no longer prized. That is, when the Author breaks the silence and speaks, the fandom world has become so used to chattering amongst itself in the past twenty-plus years of Middle Internet Era that they don't even think to stop talking long enough to fall silent and soak up the words of their Creator-god-Author.
Instead, when Authors speak, it's ex cathedra in some way, a distanced voice that has little bearing on the fan-interpretations because, after all, the Author can't even acknowledge the existence of the fan-creations, let alone comment or validate them... but the BNF can.
And, too, the BNF is not distanced, locked within a cone of legal silence when it comes to fanfiction; the BNF stands squarely in the center of a swirling mass of fanfiction, derived-from-derived, shared-world, new fandoms, crossovers, and connections to other fans and fellow BNFs. Where the Author is a silently producing Creator, the most powerful BNFs are those whose fandom interactions are driven by connection, connection, connection.
The greatest irony of all, of course, is that the most skillful of the BNFs manage to master the art of inspiring, even as their own prolific creativity -- that which got them into their position in the first place, really -- drops off. That is, BNFs don't necessarily fade away from the public/fandom awareness, if they do it right, unlike an Author who risks no next book deal if a certain threshold isn't satisfied. So while an Author has external pressures to meet and satisfy (books sold, deadlines met), and failure means a loss of status as an Author, a successful BNF's success is marked by fewer external pressures -- because part of the art of the BNF, at the highest grade (from what I've seen) is in, effectively, getting other people to write your stories.
In other words: the BNF is the Author's shadow-side. Where the Author creates the world and is hampered by legal, social, personal, and professional issues to both counter and refute the fandom's interpretative and transformational creativity... the BNF is perfectly positioned to capitalize on this creativity. The Author can never take a break by saying, I won't have that new book out right away, but in the meantime, you can read all these re-imaginings of it -- which is exactly what a savvy BNF does do: I haven't written that story I promised, but I had this idea for a shared world, and here are three chapters written by these other people, using my idea.
The BNF can take the credit (and a rightful credit, most times, for a creative idea) without losing prestige, because the fandom doesn't revolve around the same limitations as given to Authors. That, I think, is where Authors are recoiling in greatest horror and terror from their own fandoms, if they even remotely suspect their fandom has become home to one of the supernova BNFs.
As if it's not bad enough to feel as though the fandom were leeching off the Author's own creativity (while simultaneously denying the Author's rightful Authority), it's got to be salt in the wound to know there's someone who is so thoroughly working the system -- a system based, in large part, on the Author's vision in the first place. And worse, to intuit that if the Author stops writing, the fandom will not only carry on, but that the only one who suffers if the Author stops is, in the end, the Author and only the Author. Fandom can and will continue long after the story's written, and there's nothing like the pull of a BNF to help dynamo the fandom into new and unexplored corners.
This isn't where I expected to end up, but logically, it does make some sense (though discussion and contemplation won't hurt, as part of processing) -- that the Authorial fear isn't just of fandom itself, nor entirely (I think) of fandom's production. It does seem as though Authors, even mid-fanfic rant, do seem to recognize that the vast majority of fan-interpretations are both dreck and unlikely to ever be mistaken for the real thing. Yet despite that, Authors continue to express an overwhelming (and almost always near-irrational) terror about some kind of dreaded eight-headed monster that will consume them, their works, and bury them, leaving only distorted perversions in their wake. And if there's anyone in fandom, any fandom, who could pull that off, it'd be a BNF.
Wow, look at that: I found something against which both the little people of fandom and the creator-Authors could struggle in unison! Except that then we're right back to the original issue. The Author may be the equivalent (potentially) to a three-ton gorilla bearing down on BNFs who, even with plenty of BNF-ness, can't really top more than a ton and a half in comparison -- but recognizing the BNF and using those fandom-connection tools against such extreme distortion means recognizing fanfiction in the first place.
Not to mention, once an Author recognizes fanfiction, then the question becomes: what if the next step in the process is not to long for the days of the one-voice affirmational fandom, but to find a way to use transformational fandom -- and its powerhouse BNFs -- as a force for good?
note: there is slight hyperbole about authors vs. bnfs, for the sake of irrepressible humor, but really only very slight. or another way to put it: I ended up thinking in this direction because I do think there's a kernel in there worth digging at, so what you see here is sort of the 'first pass', with characteristic irreverence, of the dynamics of that particular aspect of fandom.
Where I meander, I'm also busy trying different ways to approach and/or assess the evidence at hand. In case you weren't already aware of my hermeneutic habit trails.
Whenever I read of Authors dismissing fanfiction as intentional (if not outright malicious) distortion, and the way that such tarrings sometimes spread to an implied tarring of all fandom (beyond just the writers and their readers), it strikes me as ignoring a benefit that might outweigh that of the distortion-risk drawbacks.
By that I mean: there is a derivative benefit to Authors from the connections that exist between fans not by virtue of their shared baseline fandom (focus on an original story) but on their participation in fandom itself, as a generalized entity or way of being.
The dashed lines above are the connections, pulling together two fans of one group with a fan of a second group, but without connections created (yet) between each yellow-circle and the unfamiliar/unconnected original story. That's probably common sense to many Authors, in that if you're a fan of this genre story, then you'd probably also like that genre story; same basic logic as Amazon's "other people who bought this also bought..." addendums on any purchasing page.
What got me, in considering the dynamics at play, was in recalling several Author-statements (and I name no names here due to in part being the kind of fool who reads Author-statements by Authors whose stories and/or genres are totally unfamiliar to me, which often leaves my response nothing more than, "and who are you, again?" not to be a smartass but because I really am that unaware of that genre's big names). On the face of it, it'd seem like one would want fans of one fandom to connect with others, and hope for a bit of cross-pollination, as it were.
What I can't figure out, though, is whether the Authors refusing or discouraging this kind of cross-fandom pollination are doing so just as part and parcel of the kneejerk anti-fanfiction stance, or because the Authors really are/were that savvy about just what's going on. If the former, well, whatever; if the latter, well, no use trying to sugarcoat what I see, then.
The author's green-circle sphere of influence is no longer the intermediary for interpretation; the role of introductory intermediary is -- in this type of instance -- taken over by the fandom interpretation (fanon).
In effect, it seems to me that the more fandom itself takes center stage -- the co-interpretation and/or interaction between fans of similarly-themed original stories -- the more the fans' own interpretative texts become introductory points to new/unfamiliar original stories. Where the Author's imposition as intermediary asserts a force in terms of interpretation, the fans' imposition as intermediary does the same, but distorted, once step removed.
That, obviously, is what some of the Authors fear: that fan-distorted interpretations bias readers ahead of time. (I suppose the logic is that it's okay if it's your own work that you're biasing people towards, or against.) What I have no way to measure currently is whether the positive biases outweigh the potential negative: whether there are more fans expressing appreciation of the text with affectionate fan-interpretation, or whether there are more fans using their perspective to critique the original story. And, I imagine, plenty of Authors (or at least judging from the noisiest ones who are anti-fanfic) consider any such critique of the original story to be tantamount to a personal insult.
The thing is whether the Author sees all re-interpretations as critiques in disguise, or as adoring emulations by fans (some of whom, shall we euphemistically say, just don't know better, bless their hearts, and distort without realizing just how much it hurts the canonical Author). How to rationalize the risks of having your work introduced via someone else's interpretation?
Or perhaps it's better expressed as: maybe it's time to recognize that fans of any work, regardless of fanfiction tendencies, have always exerted their own interpretation on a work when introducing it to others. In this, fanfiction acts as a textual re-imagining working along the same lines as a serious book review. The difference is that fans don't get interviewed, have their references checked, and suffer annual employee reviews to warrant the right to critically review an original story. Then again, seeing how some Authors react to critical reviews even by seemingly educated and erudite Serious Book Reviewers, maybe it doesn't matter who's making the noise.
Moving along, what had been marginal-positioned (ex-canon) fanfic, some in-canon fanfic, and cross-fandom connections, becomes considerably messier when we move into the more recent (past decade or so) of the Internet Era. Or more specifically, the rise of the massive multi-fandom archives, and I'm looking at you, Fanfiction.net and Mediaminer.org.
These are all drawn (err, so to speak) from what I've seen happen in various fandoms/fancircles. At the top left, for instance, marked with a (1) is a blue-bordered square with a medium-blue thick line leading from a yellow circle. That fan-writer is, as marked by the light blue dashed lines, part of the general 'fandom' that centers on the original story (top middle, in the pinwheel). But this fan's ex-canon story now not only has garnered several fans in its own right, these fans are not only not connected to the original canon, they have also connected to each other (2).
In essence, it's a mini-fandom of a fan-interpretation of a canonical story.
Over on the top right, at the spot marked (3), is the next stage in that evolution. Same premise: fans connected to each other, focused in their appreciation for an ex-canon story -- and one of that story's fans has, in turn, produced an interpretation (4)... of what was already an interpretation. This is true fanon: where a fan incorporates another fan's perspectives in absence of a significant (or any) connection to the original story, and thus may not know (or may not even care) that the next level of interpretation is more than just a few jumps to the left.
Granted, I think this is also one aspect that Authors fear the most, when they're anti-fic-ranting; most frame it as a dislike for being distorted, but this is a level of distortion beyond what the Author can reasonably influence. It's well past the borders of the general canon-facing (or canon-aware) fandom.
But it doesn't stop there, because an influential interpretation can also become the locus of a fandom and not just in terms of fans grouping around a specific and more-appreciated re-imagining. The next evolutionary step after the two-steps-removed aspect is when the secondary fan's interpretation loops back at the primary interpretation in a move reminiscent of the way, in affirmational fandoms, the fans' story-interpretations loop back to fall within the Author-gatekeeper scope.
The dotted and solid lines here are not random; they're based on actual observed overlappings and interactions in a fandom. At the (1), there's a fan who self-identifies as being 'within' the scope of the canon-focused fandom, with two interpretative works in play. The first is in-canon; the second is ex-canon and significantly transformational. A number of fans have grouped around this second ex-canon work, and are linked to each other as co-fans of the (1) fan's story.
One of those fans, at (2), has in turn produced an interpretation of the (1) interpretation, as noted in the evolutionary point previous to this image. But it doesn't stop there; a third fan gets involved; a fan who, unlike the second, is also connected to the originating fandom -- and is not a fan of the first fan and/or the first fan's work (no solid blue line connecting, there). And this third fan's work overlaps significantly enough with the second to imply a sharing of the fanon-based, ex-canon interpretation of this fan, even though the third fan is well-familiar with the original story.
This is one path to the development of a shared world or zoofic or whatever the fandom calls it this month -- a re-interpretation, often with added original characters, which in turn become fodder for other fans to pile on and draw/write within the same world. (I say one path, but it's also the path I've seen most often, where substantial twist added is from someone outside the specific fandom, though not outside fandom in general.)
There are paths to create the same where the players/writers are all at least somewhat familiar with the original story, but I highlight this particular wacky process as reminder that this ain't necessarily so. With enough fanfic (either a little from many writers or a lot from a few), secondary derivations can develop that in turn lead back to the mainstream fandom...
...And, to what is probably the horror of a few Authors reading this, the significant movement in the image is not that of (2) writing about an unfamiliar canon. It's that (3) turns away from the original story and intentionally focuses on an ex-canon version.
It can happen within the boundaries of the general mainstream fandom (the dashed blue circle ringing the original story) or exterior/marginal to it (as the example above). Either way, what you get is a bubble of fanon sitting in an uncomfortably close proximity to the original story. Well, uncomfortable if you're the Author, I suppose.
The green space is the bubble within which (from what I've seen) the fans then create a new, derived canon -- based loosely or closely, but almost always with additional elements or specific interpretations as foundation -- which is then policed just as much as original canon. That is to say, if the fandom already tends to police its canon tightly, then it's likely to do the same for its shared-world bubbles; if the fandom's pretty easy-going about the dividing lines of canon, then it seems this also affects its attitudes towards shared-world subsets.
(Well, not always: I've heard of a few instances where wildly chaotic fandoms produce strictly-controlled bubble-worlds, but in that case my suspicion is that it's fandom-reaction, a need to have some kind of comprehensible and coherent canon when the original story is nothing but a hot mess -- a favorite mess, but a hot one all the same.)
When I read posts and missives from Published Authors expressing their fear/aversion to fanfiction (and/or, sometimes, misbehaving fandom itself), it seems to me there are two things Authors fear. Naturally, I'll start with the slightly-lesser of the two evils, first. I say that with the caveat that upon reflection, I don't think this is truly a fear so much as it is an alternative perception. (The problem there is that opinions are strongly personal and therefore hard to quibble over, since opinions aren't nearly as malleable even when you do have all the facts).
I say 'perception' because it's important to note (if you haven't noticed already) that I've taken somewhere between a neutral approach to the dynamics I'm pondering, and a somewhat fandom-positive approach. It may not seem like it, perhaps, and in case that's so, I'll explain why I think (or hope) I've achieved that: because while canon may be supplemented by fan-interpretation, I don't think it's entirely overrun, nor do I think most fans would see canon as ever being truly surpassed, or made irrelevant.
The reason for stating that explicitly is because, from Author complaints and rants, this is the impression I get of what they think is a more accurate representation when we talk about fan imposition on the original story.
That's right. The fandom-created interpretations, the fanfiction stories, are crowding the original story, to the point of burying it. This seems the only logical explanation of Author-verbalized perceptions; it's the only one that makes sense when I consider those Authors who fight against fanfiction -- and the way they express their fears.
They're convinced that the more fanfiction there is, the more their own version, at the center of the pinwheel, is being drowned out. Those are not re-interpreted stories, bounded neatly by canonical square, but warped re-tellings, twisted all out of shape in comparison to the Author's vision of the original story. Fanfiction is not just potential competition, it's actual competition, and it's winning, and it's doing so through incredibly distorted presentations: perversions of canon.
The expected result, if allowed to multiply unchecked?
Not only does the original story lose its solidity, compromised and re-interpreted and buried by the fanfiction, but the Author hirself ceases to exist anywhere in the picture. The Author has lost the Authority of being the creator, and I use that Author/Authority/creator connection quite intentionally.
Back when I first got into a particular fandom -- which we'll say is simply That Fandom Which Shall Not Be Named, because let's not get into the specifics, shall we? Some incendiary devices should be left to rot peacefully -- I had a conversation with a fellow fanwriter that went something like this.
Friend: It's an article of faith among the majority of the fandom that despite the lack of any canonical basis, such-and-such character was repeatedly assaulted, sexually and physically, for most of his childhood.
Me: Did you mean to use that phrase, there?
Friend: What where?
Me: That it's an article of faith. Like it's some kinda religious tenet.
Friend: ... well, it fits, and it's true. If it all it took was hitting the Enter key to lob a grenade at someone else through an internet connection, most of this fandom would be dead and buried under about twenty feet of rubble. Wars have been fought over less, my dear.
Me: ... *what the hell have I gotten myself into?*
In the past few weeks, I've seen several references to this same notion, but framed in reaction to (if not outright derision of) Authors who cling with their last bit of fingernails to the Authority vested in them as the internal vision of an original story. Some fan-critics, like
thefourthvine, have spoken of "the Anointed Few", while others have used phrases like "the Voice of God" or "speaking from on high" and so on. All of these are strongly religious-colored takes on Authority, mixing in the power of the Creator-author with a Creator-god. I don't think it's a slip of the keyboard, either. Both the Judeo-Christian mindset (and the West's dominant paradigm for god-like critters) and the snark against Authorial Authority contain the assumption, obliquely or outright, that the Creator-god is a distant God; to be granted the chance to hear the God's words is a marvelous, and unusual, event. In other words, the sacredness with which the readers are expected by (some) Authors to treat the text is, when you strip back the neuroses and the protests, also the sacredness with which the readers are expected to treat the Author's interpretations of that text. The Author is supposed to take precedent, but more than that, really. The Author is not just the biggest baddest force on the playing field, the Author is the only force on the field.
Thus, I don't think it's that much of an exaggeration to draw a thick and solid line between the religious concept of "not worshipping graven images" and the authorial concept of "not worshipping derivative stories". I wouldn't be surprised if some Authors do sincerely wish for the ability to smite those who write blasphemous fanfiction in the Author's name.
The lynchpin here is that despite these articles of faith that say worship of anything else is tantamount to denial of the rights and privileges due unto the Canon, I didn't draw the fandom side of things with those distortions because I think those are present only in the Author's viewpoint. From the perspective of readers/writers of fan-interpretations, it's not necessary to excessively warp the illustrated version as some kind of reminder of the fan-version's unnaturalness or wrongness. It's not like we ever confuse the two. We don't need the additional visual stimuli to remind us which is the "real" story and which is the "derived" story.
I think that's the point where the twain shall never meet; the fearful contingent of Authors -- or those who long for Affirmational-only, well-behaved fans who color neatly within the Author's designated lines -- will never be able to see the same map as the readers. Because I've yet to meet a single fan, ever, who can't tell the difference or who isn't aware which is a story by a fan versus by the Author.
And that's really the issue, isn't it? Competition versus cooperation, and to the average fan, these things co-exist: the original canon and the fan-created interpretations. At a fundamental level, of course, there's the fact that fanfiction is free and canonical stories are not (setting aside things like borrowed books and libraries). If fans have limited money, at least they're not spending it on fanfiction -- the cash goes to the Author, and payment for fanfiction is (often but not always) reviews or other time-sinks.
The former also carries the stigma of 'derivative' (or even outright 'stealing') while the latter is prized, so there's additional social weight on fanfiction writers to justify themselves. Like all good capitalistic costs, the fan-writers transfer this weight onto the canonical story, so it bears the burden for their attention to fan-interpretation. Basically, "I only do this because I love the story just so much, and it's a really great story that deserves this level of attention."
Yet the tension remains, because a number of Authors see themselves as displaced, dislodged gods of their created universe, with ungrateful fans busy worshipping false gods. What the Authors don't get is that in the eyes of most fandom members, I'd say, the Authors weren't really much of gods in the first place.
Distance and pre-eminence (and careful cultivation in online/early-Internet Affirmational-style interaction) may have temporarily given that impression, but fans don't worship false gods, because that implies there were ever true gods. If we truly believed there were a 'true' god of any Original Story, would we even be writing fanfiction in the first place?
Or maybe it's just that we're not half so stressed by the Author's insistence on recognizing hir Authah-ey-tay, so much as a fear we may actually share with savvier Authors: of a God already present and quite voracious in fandom itself.
Yes, dear reader, it's the Big Name Fan.
Rivaling the size and scope of the original story in terms of influence and audience-power, faster than a fanfiction.net "new story!" alert, able to leap Mary Sues in a single bound, it's the dreaded Big Name Fan (BNF)! And no kryptonite will take this puppy down, either.
The birth and upbringing of the BNF is a fascinating thing, worthy of a National Geographic study, but I'll leave that for some other post. Instead, here I only want to point out what is possibly as much of a nightmare for an Author as the notion of reams of derivative, repetitive, and distorted re-interpretations (with porn!) of the original story: a voice in the wilderness of fandom that has power to rival, if not drown out, the Author's own.
That's why I drew the pinwheel lines as curves, above, rather than direct straight lines: because one aspect of a BNF is that (intentionally or unintentionally), the BNF becomes like a medium-sized sun in an asteroid belt. The gravitational pull warps everything in its vicinity, and those fans who cluster the closest will find -- whether or not they realize it -- that their interpretation of the original material is distorted away from a direct line to fall in line with the BNF's version of events.
Granted, the BNF doesn't get that way just on sheer charisma; there must be significant production of works that maintain a certain consistency in their approach to the original work. This is the BNF's ideology (and I use this is as neutral a sense as possible), and just like fans will cleave to an original story whose world-perspective aligns with their own, fans will also cleave to a BNF who exhibits the same.
That's how you get people who go from fandom to fandom not because they've discovered a fandom, but because they're trailing along in the gravitational wake of the BNF. Those are the fans exterior to the blue square's perimeter, above; those fans are linked to both the BNF and the BNF-produced stories. And just like in the earlier stages of fandom where access-to-Author made validation-by-Author both possible and important, there are fans whose connection to the BNF is not by dint of a specific story but directly to the BNF.
On top of the distortion in perspectives of the canon, a major BNF-presence can also warp other stories -- either in the creation, or in the judgment other fans lay upon the story. It can be as simple as "So-and-so likes it, so it must be good, because I love So-and-so's work/perspective". That's how you end up with the BNF writing/posting a story that's borderline canon, and other stories then positioning themselves as closer to the BNF-version than to the original story (or even the writer's own personal interpretation).
If that's not bad enough for an Author -- probably in paroxysms of terror at being rendered obsolete by the BNF -- it'd be compounded by any realization that the BNF's gravitational pull is now tilting people away from the canon to focus solely on the BNF's version of things... and the Author, hidden within the canon text, can't do a damn thing about it.
In part, of course, because even acknowledging the BNF's existence may lend authority to an already-bloated power imbalance, but also because to recognize a BNF requires, most of the time, recognizing that which gave the BNF that authority: the fan-interpretation and ideology that drives the BNF's attractiveness to other fans. And, thanks to such wacky copyright laws as what we got right now, it seems many Authors are of the mind that just being even vaguely aware of fanfiction puts them in the position of having to tell their publishers and let loose the hounds of cease-and-desist letters.
Thus, the BNF can continue to reign supreme, thanks to a unique combination of circumstances and some deft timing and no small amount of skill at tapping into what, exactly, the fandom is really craving (that, usually, is missing from the original story). I've noted these characteristics amongst many a BNF-example... but the truly powerful BNFs, the ones who can capitalize on this (sometimes to a scary degree), are the ones whose metaphorical diagram looks more like this.
The BNF creates a kind of fandom that revolves around the BNF and/or the BNF's works. This may include BNF-sanctioned or -blessed derivations of the BNF's derivations, like shared worlds or spin-offs other writers have done based on the BNF's own work. But first and foremost, it's a fandom that revolves with its center not as an original story, but with what's effectively a substitute-author.
This, I think, is possibly what seems to give nightmares to those Authors who make enough noise to let slip between the cracks what they fear. As if it's not bad enough that not only are they sequestered away (to be fair, more commonly by legalities than outright insecurities, I think), unable to interact directly with fan-writers and/or fan-interpretations, but this enforced distance is no longer prized. That is, when the Author breaks the silence and speaks, the fandom world has become so used to chattering amongst itself in the past twenty-plus years of Middle Internet Era that they don't even think to stop talking long enough to fall silent and soak up the words of their Creator-god-Author.
Instead, when Authors speak, it's ex cathedra in some way, a distanced voice that has little bearing on the fan-interpretations because, after all, the Author can't even acknowledge the existence of the fan-creations, let alone comment or validate them... but the BNF can.
And, too, the BNF is not distanced, locked within a cone of legal silence when it comes to fanfiction; the BNF stands squarely in the center of a swirling mass of fanfiction, derived-from-derived, shared-world, new fandoms, crossovers, and connections to other fans and fellow BNFs. Where the Author is a silently producing Creator, the most powerful BNFs are those whose fandom interactions are driven by connection, connection, connection.
The greatest irony of all, of course, is that the most skillful of the BNFs manage to master the art of inspiring, even as their own prolific creativity -- that which got them into their position in the first place, really -- drops off. That is, BNFs don't necessarily fade away from the public/fandom awareness, if they do it right, unlike an Author who risks no next book deal if a certain threshold isn't satisfied. So while an Author has external pressures to meet and satisfy (books sold, deadlines met), and failure means a loss of status as an Author, a successful BNF's success is marked by fewer external pressures -- because part of the art of the BNF, at the highest grade (from what I've seen) is in, effectively, getting other people to write your stories.
In other words: the BNF is the Author's shadow-side. Where the Author creates the world and is hampered by legal, social, personal, and professional issues to both counter and refute the fandom's interpretative and transformational creativity... the BNF is perfectly positioned to capitalize on this creativity. The Author can never take a break by saying, I won't have that new book out right away, but in the meantime, you can read all these re-imaginings of it -- which is exactly what a savvy BNF does do: I haven't written that story I promised, but I had this idea for a shared world, and here are three chapters written by these other people, using my idea.
The BNF can take the credit (and a rightful credit, most times, for a creative idea) without losing prestige, because the fandom doesn't revolve around the same limitations as given to Authors. That, I think, is where Authors are recoiling in greatest horror and terror from their own fandoms, if they even remotely suspect their fandom has become home to one of the supernova BNFs.
As if it's not bad enough to feel as though the fandom were leeching off the Author's own creativity (while simultaneously denying the Author's rightful Authority), it's got to be salt in the wound to know there's someone who is so thoroughly working the system -- a system based, in large part, on the Author's vision in the first place. And worse, to intuit that if the Author stops writing, the fandom will not only carry on, but that the only one who suffers if the Author stops is, in the end, the Author and only the Author. Fandom can and will continue long after the story's written, and there's nothing like the pull of a BNF to help dynamo the fandom into new and unexplored corners.
This isn't where I expected to end up, but logically, it does make some sense (though discussion and contemplation won't hurt, as part of processing) -- that the Authorial fear isn't just of fandom itself, nor entirely (I think) of fandom's production. It does seem as though Authors, even mid-fanfic rant, do seem to recognize that the vast majority of fan-interpretations are both dreck and unlikely to ever be mistaken for the real thing. Yet despite that, Authors continue to express an overwhelming (and almost always near-irrational) terror about some kind of dreaded eight-headed monster that will consume them, their works, and bury them, leaving only distorted perversions in their wake. And if there's anyone in fandom, any fandom, who could pull that off, it'd be a BNF.
Wow, look at that: I found something against which both the little people of fandom and the creator-Authors could struggle in unison! Except that then we're right back to the original issue. The Author may be the equivalent (potentially) to a three-ton gorilla bearing down on BNFs who, even with plenty of BNF-ness, can't really top more than a ton and a half in comparison -- but recognizing the BNF and using those fandom-connection tools against such extreme distortion means recognizing fanfiction in the first place.
Not to mention, once an Author recognizes fanfiction, then the question becomes: what if the next step in the process is not to long for the days of the one-voice affirmational fandom, but to find a way to use transformational fandom -- and its powerhouse BNFs -- as a force for good?
note: there is slight hyperbole about authors vs. bnfs, for the sake of irrepressible humor, but really only very slight. or another way to put it: I ended up thinking in this direction because I do think there's a kernel in there worth digging at, so what you see here is sort of the 'first pass', with characteristic irreverence, of the dynamics of that particular aspect of fandom.