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My Own Rage: I'm Choking on It.
Today, Amazon announced Amazon Worlds.
It's their shiny new fanfic platform so "writers" who can't quite get it together to create a milieu, settings, conflicts, arcs, or characters can still make money from their literary masturbation. For the record, I am pro-masturbation. I just don't want to see it online in places where I should be seeing the real thing. Also, fuck fanfic. Fuck it.
I'm not against fanfic, so long as it's for writing practice, and/or relegated to fanfic boards and discussed among fans of the genre. It's very nice that people love their TV shows and whatnot enough to make up their own stories. It's very cute, like adding your own doodles to a coloring book. But these doodles need not find their way into the gift shop at the Louvre...or even the DIA. I also find it a little disheartening when a fanfic writer has fifty kajillion readers while I still don't have a single book with 40 Amazon reviews. But this isn't about me. This is about books.
It's bad enough that scads of self-important douchebags put out a new shitty, unedited book every six weeks and that new readers have to wade through thousands of said shitty books in order to find anything decent. But this? God fucking dammit. Not only that, but it's ALL gonna be self-published, which means that there will be no filter, and little if any editing (not that I have a whole lot of room to talk about editing).
Also, if fanfic is published, how does one distinguish what is actually becoming canon in a given lexicon?
And before someone else asks me if I would be complimented if someone wrote fanfic about Sadie, or Mikey, or any other character of mine--listen up. I'm a mature adult, which means I can refrain from killing you, or even hitting you. But if you steal my characters and do some fucked up shit with them--I will hate you with every fibre of my being. Hate. Honest-to-Zod wishing terrible things on you, lighting black candles in your honor, almost ashamed at my own intensely vitriolic loathing of anyone who would do this where it could be seen by another human being (or sentient being of any other species).
When people talk about their pets as if they are their children, I find that annoying. I'm not Pentelope and JoJo's "mom." That's just dumb IMO.
But my characters? I *am* their creator. They are mine. MINE! And they don't do a goddamn thing unless I say so (are you also noticing that this attitude would not actually be conducive to child rearing?).
Amazon, I've always stuck up for you and your outsourcing ways. And this is how you do me? No...
I'm so sad.
Seriously, I wish this hadn't happened during my menses because I am not taking it well at all. I kinda feel like Writing is over; but that's alarmist isn't it?
Isn't it?
In other writing news, I'm almost half way through reading Oryx and Crake. It's kicking my ass, for sure. What I find most amazing about it is that the writing is lyrical and poetic even though the POV character is not. Because I write mainly in the first-person, I don't do this. I've told myself that it can't be that way--but now that I see that it can, I feel sort of remiss in some way. Like I could have been writing a whole lot better but I wasn't pushing myself, reasoning that the prose had to sound like the character.
Then again, one could argue that the strength of my writing is the raw voices. At any rate, Atwood is inspiring me to try some more 3rd person stuff and to play around with poetic language amid abrasive characters.
It's their shiny new fanfic platform so "writers" who can't quite get it together to create a milieu, settings, conflicts, arcs, or characters can still make money from their literary masturbation. For the record, I am pro-masturbation. I just don't want to see it online in places where I should be seeing the real thing. Also, fuck fanfic. Fuck it.
I'm not against fanfic, so long as it's for writing practice, and/or relegated to fanfic boards and discussed among fans of the genre. It's very nice that people love their TV shows and whatnot enough to make up their own stories. It's very cute, like adding your own doodles to a coloring book. But these doodles need not find their way into the gift shop at the Louvre...or even the DIA. I also find it a little disheartening when a fanfic writer has fifty kajillion readers while I still don't have a single book with 40 Amazon reviews. But this isn't about me. This is about books.
It's bad enough that scads of self-important douchebags put out a new shitty, unedited book every six weeks and that new readers have to wade through thousands of said shitty books in order to find anything decent. But this? God fucking dammit. Not only that, but it's ALL gonna be self-published, which means that there will be no filter, and little if any editing (not that I have a whole lot of room to talk about editing).
Also, if fanfic is published, how does one distinguish what is actually becoming canon in a given lexicon?
And before someone else asks me if I would be complimented if someone wrote fanfic about Sadie, or Mikey, or any other character of mine--listen up. I'm a mature adult, which means I can refrain from killing you, or even hitting you. But if you steal my characters and do some fucked up shit with them--I will hate you with every fibre of my being. Hate. Honest-to-Zod wishing terrible things on you, lighting black candles in your honor, almost ashamed at my own intensely vitriolic loathing of anyone who would do this where it could be seen by another human being (or sentient being of any other species).
When people talk about their pets as if they are their children, I find that annoying. I'm not Pentelope and JoJo's "mom." That's just dumb IMO.
But my characters? I *am* their creator. They are mine. MINE! And they don't do a goddamn thing unless I say so (are you also noticing that this attitude would not actually be conducive to child rearing?).
Amazon, I've always stuck up for you and your outsourcing ways. And this is how you do me? No...
I'm so sad.
Seriously, I wish this hadn't happened during my menses because I am not taking it well at all. I kinda feel like Writing is over; but that's alarmist isn't it?
Isn't it?
In other writing news, I'm almost half way through reading Oryx and Crake. It's kicking my ass, for sure. What I find most amazing about it is that the writing is lyrical and poetic even though the POV character is not. Because I write mainly in the first-person, I don't do this. I've told myself that it can't be that way--but now that I see that it can, I feel sort of remiss in some way. Like I could have been writing a whole lot better but I wasn't pushing myself, reasoning that the prose had to sound like the character.
Then again, one could argue that the strength of my writing is the raw voices. At any rate, Atwood is inspiring me to try some more 3rd person stuff and to play around with poetic language amid abrasive characters.
no subject
That said, I readily admit that a lot of my disdain for this project comes from the fact that teenage fan girls are going to make money I can't make writing even after 7+ years of diligent writing and constant marketing. I'd guess it's similar to garage bands who practice for years and then lose their recording studio contract to some cupcake who won American Idol. Amazon Worlds is a fine example of how originality and artistic vision get shunted aside to make room for vacuous shit that makes money in the short term. Granted, I don't watch Pretty Little Liars, but I have trouble believing that it will inspire great literature.
But hey, you got me, I've never been contracted to write for a television series.
I wasn't aware that you had--but that's awesome.
no subject
First of all, you seem to be getting overly emotional in the "BUT THEY'RE WRITERS!"
When a person writes for spec, they are writing what someone else wants. Contractually, and creatively, what they have made isn't theirs. It's like if I come up with a character in my head and I describe it to an artist for them to draw with the agreement being that the character is mine; they are just the hands putting it on paper. That's what writing for television shows is. Do you think that the writers of Star Trek owned those characters? Do you think Joss owns Buffy? Do you think the people who write in the expanded Star Wars Universe own those characters? No. They are writing for spec.
I mean, I know artists get dicked around by that sort of thing often enough.
Sure, people like Jack Kirby got fucked over big. However, it's not getting "dicked around" if you go into the deal willingly.
I'd raise holy hell if I saw one of my characters online fucking Severus Snape or battling the Cullen family...to think that the "writer" of this might be getting rich off of it is too much to stomach.
Yeah, but they're not and you would be completely in the right if that happened. However, that's not what is happening.
That said, I readily admit that a lot of my disdain for this project comes from the fact that teenage fan girls are going to make money I can't make writing even after 7+ years of diligent writing and constant marketing.
Ok, so jealousy.
I'd guess it's similar to garage bands who practice for years and then lose their recording studio contract to some cupcake who won American Idol.
The entitlement in this sentence is pretty thick.
Amazon Worlds is a fine example of how originality and artistic vision get shunted aside to make room for vacuous shit that makes money in the short term.
Because no creativity can ever come from using another person's characters or concepts, right? So I guess the contributors to the recent tribute anthology for Bordertown weren't creative, original, or artistic? Give me a break.
Granted, I don't watch Pretty Little Liars, but I have trouble believing that it will inspire great literature.
Who says it has to be "great literature". The more I participate in this the more I see you tripping over your own baggage.
I wasn't aware that you had--but that's awesome.
I haven't, but I know people who have and I'm familiar with the legal aspects and concepts around doing so.
no subject
I'm not sure why that means you have to be an asshole about it.
But then, maybe I'm just too "overly emotional" to understand a complex issue like something you create belonging to you instead of belonging to everyone. I guess having opinions on the things I write just leaves me with "too much baggage" right?
Right now, Lena Dunham is fretting because of the porn parody of her show, Girls. Yes, it is legal for them to make a porn version of a feminist show. Does that make it any less of a dick move? No, not even if it's really good porn. But sure, it's legal, so why the fuck not tear down something someone else worked their ass off on if it makes you a few bucks, right?
I'm not clear on what the argument for Amazon Worlds is, other than "Hey, they said I could."
Yeah, that's true. And you can do it. But I--nobody really, has to like it.
no subject
That's the thing you don't seem to be getting here: the writers did not create those shows, at least not in the sense that you created your original works. They were given an assignment, paid to write something very, very specific. Kevin J. Anderson, when he is paid to write in other people's worlds, does not own what he writes.
I guess having opinions on the things I write just leaves me with "too much baggage" right?
Well, considering the fact that Amazon Worlds isn't about "the things [you] write" so, yeah, I'm thinking you're tripping over your own baggage by inserting yourself into a situation that has nothing to do with you.
Does that make it any less of a dick move?
Honestly, I'm unwilling to make a judgment of whether or not its a dick move. Does it run counter to her intent to make her show? Maybe. But are the parodies of Micky Mouse highlighting the greed of Disney a "dick move"? Is Saturday Night Live a dick move?
so why the fuck not tear down something someone else worked their ass off on if it makes you a few bucks, right?
I was unaware that someone else making a porn parody of Girls meant that Girls would stop being successful or cease to exist. Oh, what a cruel world where a parody ultimately destroys the original work. Please.