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

[woogledesigns.livejournal.com]

I'm sensitive that in this thread rm has expressed a desire not to discuss the legalities or jurisprudence of the matter, but I am still very curious as to how fanfiction counts as fair use- is it only fair use if there is a substantial qualification that makes it transformative? What exactly separates derivative from transformative? If it is more appropriate, and if you would like, I would be very grateful for a PM.

[kalichan.livejournal.com]

As of this writing, no internet fanfic cases have gone to court, so there isn't a specific precedent. But if you're looking for legal stuff: Rebecca Tushnet's articles (http://www.tushnet.com/law/law.html) are a good start. In copyright law, fan practices, and the rights of the author, she writes

"The rhetoric used by courts in transformative use cases suggests that, to be fair, a transformative use must add new material that reflects critically on the original. [...] Even more fascinating is the discussion the Wind Done Gone case about the relevance of homosexuality and miscegenation to fair use. The Mitchell estate didn’t want Gone with the Wind to be associated with such controversial topics. The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals held that Alice Randall’s insertion of homosexuality, in the form of a gay Ashley Wilkes, into the world of Gone with the Wind was an important part of what made her book transformative. The court quoted Gone with the Wind’s description of the Wilkes family as artistic and “queer” (Suntrust: 1270 n.26), a term already widely used to describe homosexuals when Mitchell wrote the novel (Dictionary of American Slang 1967: 415). (The similarities to slash fan fiction, which picks up on homoerotic elements in the original texts, are evident.) In other words, the court held that transformation consists of making clear or exaggerated what was opaque or limited in the original text. As a result, the legal defense of parodies and other literary transformations protects critics as creators in their own right only when they draw deeply from a preexisting well.

If you think about lit. crit., criticism of a work can take several forms: one can write a simple appreciation, a highlighting of a particular issue, an exploration of subtext, a new interpretation, an expansion or extension of the idea implicit, a critique of things that are mishandled, an application of a certain theoretical lens. Fanfic does all of these things -- just, you know, in the form of a story. They don't all do it well, but they all do it.

[kalichan.livejournal.com]

Also, in terms of authorial control, the thing about fair use is that it also needs to allow for negative critique. If you have to ask an author, for instance, for permission to quote from their work in a review, then the likelyhood that they will agree if your review is negative is slim to none in most cases. No one is saying that authors shouldn't get paid for their work; merely that, once the work is out there, in many ways they can't control the use to which it is put: that's up to the reader.

[woogledesigns.livejournal.com]

Hello Kali. Thank you for responding. I have tried to include my response here: http://rm.livejournal.com/1845484.html?thread=19547372#t19547372

In current copyright law there are exceptions that are broadly described as fair use, and much of what Gabaldon's objects to could be covered by that. But I'm interested in what isn't covered by that- what is just, in the parlance of my youth, ripping off somebody else's work.

If I was an author I wouldn't know where to stand on fanfiction. I'd like to think I'd be as generous as Doctorow, but I think part of me would feel as protective as Gabaldon.