sundries

[rm]

Make the Mercury Retrograde stop, I want to get off! Seriously, I left my keys at work yesterday and I'm damn well hoping I left my passport and cash card at home this morning or else I'm a bit fucked. Also, eleventy billion other things.

Went to ellen_kushner's party for the debut of "The Man With the Knives" last night. I'm very excited that more people I know will have read it soon, as I've had things to say about it since I heard it at the NYRSF reading some time ago, but have been avoiding doing so because it's high on the list of things you need to experience in the moment. It, and the presentation of it in this form, gets at some of the stuff in my Bristol paper in a sort of sideways way. So I'm really excited about it, but am still like "fsdjkafjldgjaldfgjal! read it people, so I can talk about it!"

Anyway, cool party, cool location, cool people. One of those nexus of awesome things. *Waves at the new people.*

All of which means I did maybe less work on the Bristol paper than I should have last night. HOWEVER, 1,200 words, some of which might eventually be useful isn't bad. Also, this morning I woke up knowing how to solve the current problem with the intro, so yay? I do much of my best work when I am sleeping; I think I learned this from the Asimov Robots books; I did a book report on one of them in 7th grade and remember how the main character kept almost solving the mystery as he fell asleep after sex, but his mind wouldn't quite let him hold the connections. Thank god I can hold the connections.

A suspect has been caught in the Times Square car bombing.

You know, I don't particularly want to give the Diana Gabaldon anti-fanfic screed more attention, but I feel like some things need to be said, above and beyond all the right on kalichan said here.

1. Stories make me brave, made me brave. They help with the getting out of bed sometimes, or the walking into a room full of strangers. Which is why I find it so fundamentally appalling when writers act in a manner, that sure seems like cowardice to me, about their writing and its reception.

2. My background in largely in public relations and marketing. Add to that my life as a performer and a storyteller and nearly everything I do at least brushes against the idea of image-making and image control. And here's the thing, you can control what people see about you; but you can't control HOW THEY SEE IT. This is true of everything from the fiction you write to the self-image you sell¹.

3. I have never read Gabaldon's books, and now I probably never will. Not because she doesn't want fanfiction written about them, but because she has contempt for people engaging in dialogue about her texts. To me, this screed from her is no different than when other pro writers lash out with ad hominem attacks at professional critics or random readers offering reviews on Amazon. It's inappropriate and rude².

4. I am a published author, and I write fanfic.

5. I don't need your approval.

Last night we watched the "Hand! Evil Hand!!" episode of Angel. Is there really anything else I can say to that? Actually, there is:

1. Viscerally, totally creepy and awesome.
2. The guy who was all "kill me" -- sure, he'd lost his hand, but he seemed otherwise in tact. What gives?
3. Angel is such a fucking five-year-old sometimes.

I looked myself up on the evil that is Spokeo before opting out. It claims, when you search on my full name, among other things, that I am a scorpio (I'm a libra), that I have children (I don't), that I am a clerical worker (I'm not), that I have "some college" (I have a BA), that I have lived at my current address for 1 year (try 4), that I'm single (I'm not), that I'm not interested in politics (WHAT?), that I enjoy shopping (eh?). Now I want to punch someone.

I cannot listen to this shitty, shitty song without working on ConSweet.

---

¹ Yes, this tangent speaks to my feeling about the fact that while some RPF may be squicky some of the time for some people, that it's a valid mode of cultural dialogue.
² I'm looking at you, Anne Rice.

Comments

[rm.livejournal.com]

1. And fanfic writers should know that Paramount has completely wiped some fanfic writers out and left them homeless for copyright violations.

Citation, please. I feel pretty confident, however, in telling you that beyond a C&D here and there, this is unlikely to be even remotely true.

2. Stop lecturing me and my friends. You do it about Buffy and Angel and now you're doing it about fanfiction. I have said this to you before, and clearly I need to say it again: I am a pop-culture scholar and a writer and a performer. Most of the things you presume to lecture me about (thanks, I know how and to what purpose narratives are constructed), are the primary focus of the work that I do. And because like tends to gravitate to like, a huge number of the people you've been similarly rude to in my playground are also scholars and creators.

3. I write fanfiction. I got a book deal because I write fanfiction. I have been invited to be in anthologies of original fiction because of the quality of the fanfiction I write. One of my first pro publications was in a magazine and subsequent anthology dedicated to work inspired by the Cthulhu mythos. That story? That story that is arguably fanfiction is the story I have sold for reprint rights the most times.

4. Fanfiction has never cost an author a dime ever. No one buys fanfiction INSTEAD of the source material. Hell, I know lots of people who went and bought the source material after getting turned on to it through fanfiction (usually when a writer they like in a property they were familiar with jumps to something else).

5. If you actually want to understand these issues, I suggest you read the Corey Doctorow essay on fanfiction (which he supports) and investigate the OTW.

6. Trivia that might interest you: Nearly ever single person currently writing Doctor Who for the BBC has admitted to writing fanfiction. In several cases, that's how these writers met.

[lefaym.livejournal.com]

Yes, I believe that RTD and Steven Moffat were both Doctor Who BNFs in the early 90s.

[paulshandy.livejournal.com]

I heard about Paramount and Disney's reputation for strict enforcement hanging out with older writers at conventions. Paramount has obviously found more constructive ways to deal with fanfic. Now they treat them as novelists and everyone makes money, especially regarding "Star Trek." Which I'm sure you already knew - I was just completing my thought process.

I did read Cory Doctorow's "Content", a collection of essays on this matter, after discussing it with him at a convention. I reluctantly agreed with his ideas about what is happening online, but most of the writers I know think he is very optimistic about the end result. The idea of fanfic as free advertising and that giving away e-copies of his book for free increased sales boggled the minds of the other professional writers there, and they were mostly SF writers, ironically.

His essays convinced me to experiment with being on-line (I have three such experiments on going at the moment) just to see what happens. Apparently this was a good idea, because by accidentally annoying strangers I might learn how to avoid annoying fans, should I have them in the future.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Protip #1: When someone says you're behaving in a way they find insulting, apologize even if it was inadvertent. My complaints don't go away because you ignore them.

[paulshandy.livejournal.com]

I have also had the pro-tip "do not engage," since it is very easy to make things worse instead of better.