yet another opinion on fanfic...

[boogieshoes]

So, over in Charlie Stross's blog, there's a rather engaging discussion going on over the fanfic and copyright thing.  I encourage you all to read, especially, the original post, which last paragraph is just plain fun.

Anyway, in the comments, I came across a sentiment I've finally hit my limit on:

"Fanfic is for writers too insecure or unimaginative enough to come up with their own works, or worse, exploiting the success of another's creation. Never understood it. Same with fan films. Invest in your own talent, not someone else's."

I've left the commenter's name out, because he's voicing something that is frequently opined among the many people who just don't get fanfic fandom as a whole.  Mr. Stross offered a very nice, and traditional, rebuttal to this, for which I thanked him.  I went on to add (1):

"[This argument] has always been one that irked me. Fanfic, for me, is specifically a hobby, and probably always will be. For one, I know enough writers and have heard the story of how hard it is to break into the book market to know that I really don't care to take on the stress of trying to make it as a published author right now.

For another, I have invested in 'my own talents' - I've got a bachelor's degree from Texas A&M in aerospace engineering, and a master's degree from U. of Cincinnati in fluid flow and propulsion.  I'm currently employed by a Dept. of Defense contractor doing systems integration engineering, and computational modeling. It's a great job, and I love it, not the least because I'm a math and science nut.

So I have developed my own talents, and put them to good use. But I write fanfiction when I want to do something else with my time, the same way I cross-stitch, or garden. I'm not expecting to get anywhere, although I'm delighted when I receive praise for my works. But there are other things in the world than our one-true-talent, and I like trying to do new and challenging things. Like writing."

I'd like to expand on that, for a moment.  I'm at the beginning of my career, and expect to be doing this for a long, long time.  And I'm good at it.  That sounds an awful lot like ego, but it isn't, it's based on feedback I've gotten for my work and offers I've gotten based on my resume.  I'm not the king-god of the engineering world, but all in all, I'm a very decent engineer, with a career potential that makes the average writer's career potential look like slave labor.  It is not at all unreasonable for me to expect to make a steady, 6-figure-a-year income at some point in my career, and it will be doing something that I love to do.  How cool is that? 

And then there's the second and third careers: I'm not only very good at this numbers game, but I'm also very good at passing on what I know.  I would like to become a professor at a university at some point.  There's a good chance I'll be published when I do: engineering disciplines are ever-expanding, and there is always the need for new textbooks to educate the next generation of engineers.

Looking at it economically, it literally makes no sense for me to turn to writing as a profession right now.  More to the point, I don't have the push, the impulse, or the discipline to push out 300pg novels one after another to the point of supporting myself in the lifestyle to which I wish to become accustomed.  And I also work very badly under that sort of pressure, even if it's only present internally. 

This all brings up a pro-fanfic argument that's been hashed out many times before, but which I'll re-iterate, because I strongly resonate with it.  I've never, ever, had people ask me why I don't go pro with my stitching.  There's never, ever been criticism of me because I prefer to stitch to patterns of other people's designs rather than come up with my own.  There has never, ever been an expectation that I'm just cross-stitching those pictures for 'practice', and that eventually, I'll do some 'real' embroidery or stitching.  There's never been accusations that my stitching is plagiarism, stealing, or 'just like assaulting the author's original design', and this is true even though I frequently modify a design to suit my own tastes, such as my Mag7 doggies piece (scroll down to see pics).  And I've never heard of other stitchers running into such a attitude, either.  (There are some who have the bad luck to have had their stitched gift offerings rejected or insulted, but even then, it's never been a case of 'not good enough because it's not pro', it's always been a case of 'not good enough because it didn't cost money' - some people are amazingly rude.)

Stitching is a respectable hobby.  Gardening is a respectable hobby, even when people suck at it, like I do.  The same with painting, woodwork, etc ad nauseum.  Why isn't fanfic respectable?  Especially since most people who write it do it at least, in part, to think of something other than work.  Like, you know, a hobby. 

In sum, fanfic is one of my hobbies.  I love it dearly, but I know where my talents lie, and I have developed them, thank you very much, and have a career I very much enjoy.  People who don't get fanfic or fanfic authors, please stop intimating that we're all lazy gits because we're not professional writers.  Fanfic authors have lives other than fanfic.  Fanfic authors have talents other than their supposedly dubious (in your point of view) writing talents.  The fact that those talents are in the direction of, say, decomposing geometry and eating partial differential equations for breakfast and teaching people that Newtonian calculus is a stone bitch, does not preclude fanfic authors from also being interested in being well-rounded, or taking on a challenge they are not otherwise used to getting.

Thank you.

(1) Edited for capital letters (I usually write in all lower-case, but this being a rant, most people find it easier to read long text with caps on hand) and emphasis tags (in the original, I used stars to indicate emphasis - I'm a rather old hand at this internet stuff, and some habits ae hard to break).



 

-BoogieShoes, the peeved off