My Own Rage: I'm Choking on It.

[wednes]

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.

Comments

[cuddlycthulhu]

Huh, I've reread what I said a number of times and I never used the words "moral". How about you go back and reread what you read, then reread what I wrote, and respond to what I ACTUALLY said.

Or I can help you out. You complained about stealing. Stealing is a crime. Something cannot be a crime if it's legal. This is absent any notion of morality; something is either a crime or it isn't by law. You never said anything about morality in the comment before where you quoted me.

If you're going to argue a line of reasoning, it would help if you remained consistent.

"Morality and legality are not remotely the same."

You're completely right; I wasn't commenting on morality, only legality.

[wednes]

Gosh, it sounds like your baggage is making you overly emotional.

I get it, Amazon has now decreed that profiting off your (the general you, not YOU you) addition to someone else work is legal, therefore the taking is not legally stealing, it's just taking. And taking is okay now, because Amazon legalized it. If you don't want to see it as stealing, by all means, don't. I see it as yet another thing that people more powerful than I have decided is okay--because they want to profit from it. But on a human morality level, I still think it's fucked up.

[cuddlycthulhu]

Gosh, it sounds like your baggage is making you overly emotional.

Ok.

Amazon has now decreed that profiting off your (the general you, not YOU you) addition to someone else work is legal...But on a human morality level, I still think it's fucked up.

That's not what they've done at all. They've reached a specific agreement with a specific group to allow people to be paid for derivative writing of specific works. The owners of the works have said that other people can write in their worlds using their characters. That's not stealing.

You may not like the fact that people you consider inferior writers, writing in worlds you don't like, are possibly going to get paid for it, you've certainly made that clear, but what's going on here isn't stealing, it's not even taking, and it's not immoral. The writers of those shows did not own those characters or worlds they were paid to write for, not ever; that's the nature of the contracts and work that they did. I would agree with you if Amazon was doing something like trying to monetize Harry Potter fanfic without JK Rowling's permission, or any other work ACTUALLY owned by the writer, but this is no different than someone being paid to write a Doctor Who novel; Allow has just lowered the bar so that other people can possibly play.

And that's the part I think you're really upset about. I think you're really upset that people who you see as beneath you, doing something you see as lesser or not as valid as what you do, may be getting a shred of legitimacy because your arguments about people's work being stolen are empty as that's not what is going on. You can't get beyond your bias regarding fan fiction, that it's not "real" writing (i.e. "writing exercise", "literary masturbation"), so you're trying to spin this into some kind of moral outrage about something being taken from the writers that was never theirs to begin with, because saying "These people are beneath me and why should they get any kind of attention?" is a crappy, egotistical thing to say.

Except you essentially did say that "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."

[wednes]

Except you essentially did say that...

Well, the important thing is that you took my admitted insecurity and ground it into my arm like a smoldering cigarette. I'm glad you've enjoyed deducing things that I've said outright.

I don't know how this could possibly have escaped you as a regular reader of my journal, but I'm an extremely damaged, pathetically insecure person. I majored in theatre because it ends with applause.
I also believe I'm producing good work that nobody gives a shit about despite fervent marketing on my part. In addition to every other point I've made, I'm pissed as hell that fanfic writers are about to join the endless fray of unknowns that people have to wade through to find anything good. My numerous unsuccessful attempts to achieve readership are driving me to the point of madness--which is not to say that I'm better or worse than anyone else. Only that there's no real way for someone like me to compete with other new books that already have a fan base of millions. And if you don't think it's about competition, you may not fully understand how Amazon rankings work. I don't know why that makes me such a bad guy in your eyes--or why you feel like you need to school me about how wrong my opinions are.

I also LJ-cut my condescending and bitchy comments about fanfic, so that anyone who might take personal offense could avoid them and spare themselves the anger. Simply not clicking was too much temptation for you. That's me schooled, I guess. For the record, I post my thoughts on things to inform people as to what my thoughts are. I'm not requesting that you agree, not trying to convince anyone of anything.

I'll also mention that I supported the Kickstarter for your Cthulhurotica antho, because I thought it was an awesome concept. It's sitting on my Kindle right now. As I stated in my first reply to you, my comments on fanfic do not apply to fiction that pays homage to a classic. In fact, I'm pretty open minded about that shit--having just wrote eleven glowing reviews for Bates Motel. As for Amazon Worlds, this applies to one group of TV shows right now. It's the beginning of something huge, barring some porn-related oversight. This thing is going to expand like wildfire, and unless contracts have predicted this--it will not be up to authors what is licensed and what isn't. I daresay I'm not the only writer who's unnerved by this.

[cuddlycthulhu]

In addition to every other point I've made, I'm pissed as hell that fanfic writers are about to join the endless fray of unknowns that people have to wade through to find anything good.

Unless you're intending to join in that particular sandbox, I don't think you have anything to worry about as what they're writing is so focused they might as well be in another genre.

I don't know why that makes me such a bad guy in your eyes--or why you feel like you need to school me about how wrong my opinions are.

I didn't say you were a bad person, I pointed out your pretty negative opinion regarding other people, people who haven't done or are doing anything wrong.

Simply not clicking was too much temptation for you. That's me schooled, I guess.

If you don't want people to disagree with your opinions, don't post them out in the open. Saying "I was shouting inside my house with an open window, you didn't have to listen" is disingenuous; yeah, I didn't have to click it, but if you didn't want it read then why did you post it?

I'll also mention that I supported the Kickstarter for your Cthulhurotica antho, because I thought it was an awesome concept. It's sitting on my Kindle right now.

Thank you.

As I stated in my first reply to you, my comments on fanfic do not apply to fiction that pays homage to a classic.

That's incredibly arbitrary. Why is fanfic about a classic more valid than fanfic about a show that came out a few years ago? Does it really make any difference when the originating work was produced?

As for Amazon Worlds, this applies to one group of TV shows right now. It's the beginning of something huge, barring some porn-related oversight. This thing is going to expand like wildfire, and unless contracts have predicted this--it will not be up to authors what is licensed and what isn't.

Considering that, legally speaking, if a contract does not mention a right being transferred than that right remains with the creator I'd say they're ok (especially as I've seen several instances of authors successfully going after publishers who produce versions of their works the publisher didn't have the rights to). An author, if they own the copyright, will have a say in what is and is not licensed.

[wednes]

Yeah, it's arbitrary. I guess I'm quirky that way. When I talk about paying homage to a classic, I speak of writing that is written out of deep admiration for the writer and/or the work. To me, that feels much different than shipping characters on Gossip Girl. The idea that someone who is only vaguely interested in the source material (ie: the most recent seasons of True Blood and Criminal Minds) is obscene to me. In fairness, I'm sure the kids writing this fanfic are big fans of the show--even if it's in a trend-fueled way as opposed to thoughtful adoration. Yeah, I suppose I do have some pretty lofty ideas about lit that sound pretty snooty when I articulate them. I'm okay with that.

To be clear, I wasn't saying "I'm posting this but don't read it." I was saying "I'm gonna say mean stuff about fanfic; so if that makes you mad maybe you shouldn't read it." But you know, the internet is a place of intense outrage. I'm certainly not immune to it. That said, I feel very much like you were on a mission to convince me that my views are wrong or that I'm a hypocrite for having them. I'm all for passionate discourse, but I wasn't attacking people who write fanfic, I was attacking fanfic and the monetizing of it. And I felt like you were attacking me, which in turn led me to feel defensive. Drag.
People have tons of different opinions on art, some are even more bitter and spiteful than mine. Am I proud that I'm already a bitter crank? Not really. But that doesn't mean I have to love, or even come to terms with monetized fanfic based on teen dramas. And when the slash starts, my anger may ripen even further. But for you, I'll put it under a cut. ;-]