Godawful Fan Fiction

I came across a fanfic discussion group called “Godawful Fan Fiction” that, despite the topic of the discussion, isn’t too pleased about my comments regarding fanfic.

Lee Goldberg, in my opinion, is nothing more than a glorified fanfic writer himself. He didn’t create the series, he just wrote some of the tv-episodes and followed up the series with several books…Basically, although I see Lee Goldberg’s point, I don’t think he is in any position to critisize, and I don’t think it’s his place to, either.

Obviously, he or she doesn’t understand the distinction between someone who steals the intellectual property of others (ie fanfic writers) and someone who is authorized by the copyright holders to write about their characters (ie me). He or she also doesn’t realize I was more than just someone who wrote a few episodes…I was an executive producer of the show (with William Rabkin) and, prior to that, a supervising producer… and we wrote DOZENS of episodes… and those are just the ones we took credit for.

I did learn something from reading these posts, however. Apparently the slash/impregnation fanfic is a genre all its own called “mpreg.”

Yuck.

Reformed Fanfic Writer Speaks Out

James Winter, a reformed fanfic writer, speaks his mind about his former pursuit on his blog

Why does anyone who does write fanfic bother writing the creator or writer of their favorite series to whine incessantly about rendering their creations irrelavant?

When you read crap like that or get letters like Lee gets, is it any wonder why people think science fiction fans are losers living in their parents’ basements and having trouble holding real jobs? When people send letters to writers and producers demanding they adhere to insipid story categories (ie – formulas) like hurt/comfort or slash (wtf!?!?!?!), how can you not understand why they get monumentally pissed off?

To the writers and producers, I say look, it’s just grafitti. Treat it as such. The problem is that the people who write fanfic seem to believe they’re writing the next Great Gatsby.

The thing about grafitti, Jim, is when someone puts it on the wall of your house or around your community, you paint over it… because it’s a violation of private property, it’s ugly and it ruins the neighborhood.

The Mail I Get — Fanfic, again

I got this email from someone this morning on the DorothyL list…

Lee Goldberg wrote: How is appropriating an author’s characters “praising” his ideas? In fact, you’re doing the exact opposite… you’re showing your lack of respect for their ownership of their own creations by stealing them. Unless the author says you may use his characters, fanfic is indefensible.

Lee, have you quite finished? I gather you are quite something in TV over there. As a poor limey I’m afraid I’m not familiar with your work altough I had a look at your impressive CV on IMdB. You’re very lucky, you’ve got to places others can only dream of. Instead, they strive towards their dream by emulating their idols. Notice that they don’t emulate what they don’t like. There’s a convention amongst pioneering climbers that they leave their pitons in place to help those who follow. You are like a mountaineer who, having conquered the mountain, surrounds it with barbed wire to stop anybody else from following. I wonder if you were bitten by a fanfic when you were a child – your reaction is so out of proportion.

Rosie

I don’t see how allowing other people to write about your characters is “leaving pitons in place to help those who follow.” I’m not against “fanfic” because I don’t want other writers to succeed. Quite the opposite. I want to encourage them to write original work that showcases their unique talent and creativity. That’s how they will succeed. Encouraging young writers to steal someone else’s intellectual property isn’t helping them learn their craft… it’s hurting them.

Spanked for Fanfic Rant

I raised the ire of the DorothyL moderator, Diane Kovacs, for the following exchange about fanfic which, as those of you who read my blog know, is one of my pet peeves. She sent me a warning saying she didn’t appreciate my comments and is now reviewing all my posts for appropriateness before deciding whether add them to the digest. Here are the exchanges that upset her (I’ve cobbled them together into one long post here). You be the judge. The first one, by the way, is a response to a comment of hers…

But, most of the fan fiction I’ve read is written for joy/practice/praise/ or because we want more of that author’s ideas.

How is appropriating an author’s characters “praising” his ideas? In fact, you’re doing the exact opposite… you’re showing your lack of respect for their ownership of their own creations by stealing them. Unless the author says you may use his characters, fanfic is indefensible.

I thought David Klass’s screenplay of James Patterson’s Kiss The Girls was much better than the novel. Stanley Kubrick made the Shining a classic movie even though Stephen King hated it and re-did it in 1997 which by all accounts was a ho-hum

As I’ve said before, there is a big difference between being hired to adapt an author’s work for another medium and stealing his characters for original “fanfic.” With an adaptation, the author is compensated for his work and has given his permission for its use in TV or film. There is no comparison between this and the odious practice of “fanfic.”

In the case of television, the way you get an assignment is to write a spec script… a sample episode of a series (We go into great detail about this in my book, Successful Television Writing… and what seperates a good spec from “fanfic”). Aspiring television writers (or should I say “pre-produced” ??)
need to write a spec episode because that’s how you audition. You have to show the writer/creator of a series that you can capture the voice of his characters and the tone of his show. The only people who sees these scripts are agents and producers.

Again, there is no comparison between this and “fanfic.” For one thing, they are entirely different mediums. And for another, you write a spec episodic script with the permission of the creators of the work for the sole purpose of obtaining an episodic assignment.

And exactly how many of Shakespeare’s plots were original?

Jim, you’re not REALLY comparing Shakespeare’s plays to “Babylon-5” fanfic are you??
You can’t possibily put “Buffy” and “Star Trek” fanfic on the same level with HAMLET. I wouldn’t put them on the same level as Hamburger Hamlet.

There’s good fanfic and there’s bad fan fic. Shakespeare’s stuff is often so good that we don’t even think of it as fanfic.

You know how much I respect you but…. there is no good fanfic. Yes, that’s a blanket statement and I stand by it.

Fanfic is the appropriation of someone else’s characters and using them in a story of your own without the permission of the author. Fanfic is also, by and large, hideous garbage… go to one of those fanfic websites and look at some of that slop, most of which involves characters who aren’t romanticall
involved in the TV series jumping each other’s bones (Spock & Capt. Kirk, Mulder & Scully, etc) or meeting characters from other TV shows and movies (Darth Vader vs the crew of the Enterprise).

Comparing this drivel, the appropriate of TV and movie characters in fan-written stories, to Shakespeare is nonsense.

Under the ground rules we’re discussing here, Laurie King’s wonderful Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes novels are fanfic. You can’t say they’re not fanfic just because they happen to be really good.

There’s also a big difference between fanfic and using characters that are in the public domain.
I don’t think we’d be having this discussion if it was about Elvis Cole, Inspector Rebus, or Kinsey Millhone fanfic… you would be as horrified by it as I am. But somehow, this intellectual property theft is okay if we’re talking about TV or movie characters.

There is no difference between Star Trek “fanfic” and Harry Bosch “fanfic.” They are equally wrong and indefensible, in my opinion.

What is happening now is that the fanfic is on the web, unedited and uncritiqued. You can find it easily enough via Google. There are a few conventions where fanfic is available in print format, but most of the venues where fanfic was distributed are gone… as are the fanzines. *sigh*

Good riddance… I wish the same would happen to online fanfic sites, which are disseminating fanfic far wider than fanzines ever did.

I remember, years ago, when I took some writer/producer friends of mine on “Beauty and the Beast” to a science fiction convention and showed them some of the abundant “B&B” fanfic fanzines. To say they were shocked, horrified… and sickened… is an understatement.

If your criterion for condemning fanfic is that it appropriates others’ ideas, then by reduction, that which appropriates others’ ideas is bad.

It’s not the ideas, my friend, it’s appropriating the actual characters, relationships and situations… that’s not just bad, it’s intellectual property theft and copyright infringement in the most blatant sense.

how is fanfic different from me writing #21 in my Brady Coyne series

How would you feel if somebody started writing Brady Coyne fanfic… maybe got him involved in an affair with Harry Bosch. Or decided he was into S&M… and disseminated their version of Brady Coyne on the Internet? I think in that situation, as the creator of Brady Coyne, you’d feel very differently about your comment:

and who’s to say what somebody should and should not write?

Before the exchanges above got Diane upset, a teacher posted that she encouraged her students to write fanfic. So I asked her what she thought her students could possibly learn from the experience:

Teaching them to walk before they can run? Teaching them how to work with a ready-made environment and ready-made characters that they are already familiar with so that they can concentrate on other aspects of technique, like how to write credible dialogue? Teaching them, above
all, the importance of consistency – that they have to be true to those characters?

If my daughter’s teacher used “fanfic” as an approach to teaching creative writing, I’d be enraged… and would not only talk to the teacher about it, but the principal as well. Teaching kids to write by having them use characters from a TV show or a movie doesn’t “teach them to walk before they can run,” it teaches them how to take short cuts, how to devalue another artists’ work, and how not to apply themselves creatively to a project. The “consistency” I want to teach my children doesn’t begin with using someone else’s work… it begins with having faith in your own powers of imagination.

A lot of the people who write fan-fiction scarely get round to reading books

I think that’s obvious… not only from how they write, but what they write. The last thing I would do as a teacher is encourage “fanfic” in any way, shape or form.

Diagnosis Murder Fanfic

I know there are people writing Diagnosis Murder Fanfic out there, and I thought I’d heard every possible permutation (Hurt/Comfort, Slash, etc.), but this… well, this one is the champ. An anonymous poster alerted me to "Nesting", a Diagnosis Murder story by Sarah Saint Ives, at this fanfic site

"He’s a brilliant doctor." Dr. Mark Sloan was saying as Steve entered the office. "His work with invitro fertilization is incredible. He’s helped a lot of childless couples conceive and deliver normal, healthy babies."

"So, what do you think? Should I go through with it? Dr. Jesse Travis asked. The younger doctor looked up to Mark as a mentor, even as a father figure.

"That’s up to you, Jesse. It’s your body."

Steve glanced curiously at his father, then his best friend. "What’s up?" he asked. "What about his body? You thinking about giving someone a kidney, Jess?"

Jesse looked down, then met his eyes a little shyly. Steve mused that it was an engaging flaw in his character to be occasionally reticent. Although Jesse Travis was gifted with an impressive IQ and an insatiable curiosity, he was laden with personal insecurities, which, to Steve, made him even more adorable. "Dr. Homer Penrose. He asked me to be a guinea pig for an experiment."

"Well, tell me about it." Steve said. "Judging by the looks on both your faces, if you asked me right now, I’d say the answer is not just ‘no’, but *hell*, no! What does he want to do to you?"

There was a long pause, then Jesse said, "Make me pregnant."

Hey, it could happen. All Jesse needs, the story goes on to say, is a proper "birthing orifice," and everything will be fine. Steve is all too happy to start looking for the orifice because, ladies and gentleman, this is also slash fanfic.

Once the "birthing orifice" issue is resolved, there’s just one hitch.

"Very minor ones."

"He would like an answer to the question, Penrose." Steve said, not so nicely.

Penrose was irked by the policeman’s presence. "He will be unable to perform sexually with a woman during the pregnancy." he directed the statement at Steve. "It’s necessary for the sake of the baby."

Hey, the doc didn’t say anything about sex with a man, so no problem! Everything works out and Jesse gets knocked up, though Jesse has some jitters…

She’s going to be perfect in every way, Jesse.” Placing his hands on either side of his friend’s face, Steve forced calming eye contact. “She’s going to be beautiful and smart just like you. She’ll have your big blue eyes, your cute little nose, your sweet personality and your radiant smile. It doesn’t matter who the biological parents are, Jess. She’s yours, and she’ll be the way you raise her.”

Jesse laid a hand on his chest. “I’m so glad you’re here with me, Steve. What would I do without you?”

“You’ll never know because I’ll be here forever, my love.” After placing a soft kiss on the younger man’s button nose, Steve started the car and drove toward Jesse’s apartment. Conversationally, he asked, “Would you feel safer if your own sperm cells had been used to fertilize the egg?”

“Nothing makes me feel very safe except being this close to you.” Jesse was still attached to his arm.

Excuse me, I have to wipe the tears from my eyes… and the vomit off my keyboard.

Another Unfair Attack on Fanfic

jeriryanThe funny folks at Defamer got in a dig at fanfic in their coverage of the Jack Ryan sex scandal…

I have a hard-time believing Jeri Ryan is the "most favored masturbation target" in the Star Trek franchise. Are they forgetting about DeForest Kelley?

Actress Jeri Ryan, best known as Seven of Nine, the most favored masturbation target in the history of the Star Trek franchise, alleges in court papers (filed in 2000) that her ex-husband pressured her to go to sex clubs and perform sexual activities in front of other couples. Oh, and her ex-husband is Jack Ryan, the Republican senatorial candidate from Illinois. (We’ll leave it up to sister blog Wonkette to detail the undoubtedly hilarious political implications). We just hope that they managed to keep the sex hijinks in da club and away from the hotel rooms at the Trekkie conventions. It’s way too early in the morning for us to handle the image of a Republican, Jeri Ryan, a guy in a Klingon mask, and a midget dressed as a Tribble banging away in a Borgy at the Burbank Ramada Inn.

[Ed.note–We don’t want any Trekkies writing in to tell us they like to jerk off to someone more than Seven of Nine. Just redirect that energy into writing yourself a fan-fiction orgy scene with the object of your intergalactic spank-attacks. OK, another fan-fiction orgy scene.]

More On Fanfic

Novelist Sara Donati responded to my post on fanfic by directing me to a long essay she wrote on the topic. Among her thoughts…

But there’s a lot more to fan fiction than the obvious. It has to do with storytelling in the first line, yes, but far more important: fan fiction has to do with communities of storytellers. People who get together (symbolically, of course, and mostly on the internet) and starting with a character they all love, they spin tales. Then they write back and forth about those stories, exchanging ideas. Five hundred years ago people sat together around fires and told stories about the gods, about heroes they all knew and feared or loved, about Coyote, about ancestors. That was a kind of fan fiction, too.

She also pointed me to a very interesting overview on Fanfic from the BBC. I especially enjoyed the “fanfic glossary.” Some highlights:

Fanboy/fangirl – A fan who is childishly obsessive about his or her fandom, and so over-the-top that even other fans are embarassed to be associated with them.

TPTB (or TIIC)/Canon – TPTB – or in full, The Powers that Be – are the producers of the original source material; more specifically – in terms of TV series – the creator, the executive producers and the most prolific writers/directors. The term is mostly respectful, but a little sarcastic; the opposite balance exists in the term TIIC – The Idiots in Charge. The material which they produce and sanction – the series itself, plus some of the accompanying books, comics and what have you – is canon material, and is revered and referenced like the unadulterated words of the gods by the majority of serious fanfic authors. Anything else – and in particular all fan fiction – is non-canon, and fanfic writers feel no compulsion to consider it when creating their stories (but cf fanon).

For example, while a Buffy fanfic writer would be considered bound to respect the fact that the character Jenny Calendar died before the end of season two, they would not be expected to respect a fanfic in which the entire Scooby Gang were turned into vampires and burned down a 7-11 (cf AU).

Fanon – Fan canon. A fan-created fact or event widely accepted as canon, or a fact deemed to be unstated canon.

(To Be) Jossed – To have events in one of your fan fictions be invalidated by a canon development. Originally derived from Buffy fandom, the term ‘Jossed’ is named after Buffy creator/writer/guru/god Joss Whedon.

Plot Bunny – The central idea of a fanfic; the equivalent of a movie pitch. Writers sometimes swap around plot bunnies, especially if they have an idea which they don’t have time to explore more fully. The term comes from the fact that if you get one or two of these ideas together, they tend to breed like…well, you know.

Slash Fanfic

It’s as old as fanfic — slash fic. That’s when Kirk and Spock do The Nasty…and so do McCoy/Scotty, Josh/President Bartlett… you get the stomach churning picture. Gotta love fanfic. Anyway, there’s even Diagnosis Murder slash fic. Can you imagine? Why would you? Why would anyone? One particularly upset fan rails on a blog against a new DM slash story.

Fanfic Rant II

Karabair defends fanfic on her blog

I think some of these real TV writers need to breathe. Lee Goldberg writes for "Diagnosis Murder," so I’m not sure exactly what kind of artistic or professional integrity he’s protecting. On the other hand, anyone who writes fanfic about "Diagnosis: Murder" worries me much more than someone who writes it for money.

 

I have to admit, that made me laugh out loud. It’s mean, but it’s FUNNY. No one will ever mistake "Diagnosis Murder" for great literature or even exceptional television. For what it was, a humble little whodunit, I believe it was done well. Whether you agree with that or not, "Diagnosis Murder" represents an expression of someone’s (or a group of people’s) creativity. Those characters belong to somebody. You don’t have to like "Diagnosis Murder", or appreciate it, to respect the author’s right not to have his or her characters ripped off by someone else.

She later writes:

I mean, for most people it’s not a choice of publishing in the real world for money and publishing fanfic among their friends

Huh? I don’t get her reasoning at all. 

Writers write. It’s part of who they are. Most can’t help themselves. If they are lucky, they are able to sell their work and make a living at it. If they can’t, there’s nothing preventing them from making copies of their stories for their friends to enjoy. Who says if your work isn’t published you have to write fanfic??

Why is it a choice between "publishing in the real world" and "fanfic?" 

Because, um, it isn’t. It’s a bizarre rationalization.

I think it’s far more likely that writers turn to fanfic because it’s a hell of a lot easier than coming up with something original. It’s creative laziness.

This, of course, is coming from a guy who writes "Diagnosis Murder" novels, based on a TV series created by Joyce Burditt, who obviously isn’t me.

Ironic, huh?

The difference is I wrote & produced the TV series for years…I have a certain pride of ownership (if not actual ownership) of those characters. For a long time, they were were my characters… I was responsible for them, and "controlled them," for nearly 100 episodes (with my writing partner, William Rabkin, of course, assisted by a terrific staff of writers and freelancers).

But even if you don’t buy that argument, I’m now getting paid by the copyright-holders to write authorized novels. They have, in essense, given me the characters and their blessing to do with them as I creatively see fit. Big difference from fanfic.

She then argues:

I don’t see fanfic as an attempt to replace the show’s writers or tell them how to do their job. It’s a way to tell stories that don’t fit within the format of a series. Cutting away from Buffy & Spike in the basement in "Chosen" is absolute-fucking-lutely brilliant story telling.

That’s like saying somebody adding lyrics to somebody else’s hit song is engaging in "abso-fucking-lutely brilliant song writing." The logic is faulty, to say the least. 

Fanfic Rant

Jim Winter writes:

"I agree with a lot of your points even though I am a recovering fanficcer.  I say this because I went in to that particularly literary ghetto with my eyes wide open.  I never wrote "slash" or hurt/comfort, and anything resmebling a Mary Sue got personality and depth hammered onto it.

But Lee, you haven’t dealt with the worst of the fanfic community —  the Trekkies.  Yes, that was the world I inhabited.  My approach was to invent an entirely new cast whose adventures took place in a time not likely to be hit upon by any of the series.  Until Enterprise (which convinced me I’d overstayed my welcome in fanfic), I pretty much was able to adapt to anything the writing staff threw out there.  Others were less accomodating.

To which I, Lee Goldberg, say: no offense intended, but why bother? If you are creating a "new cast," why not just write an original novel that takes place in space? Using other people’s characters seems like a collosal waste of time and talent. Jim writes:

I cannot believe the sheer numbers of people who really believed that Kirk and Spock were so gay that they made the Queer Eye guys look like cousins to The Rock.  The worst case was one group, who like me did an original cast of characters, that threw a very public temper tantrum when Deep Space Nine changed writers and upset the intricate little universe they created.

I, on the other hand, and a few others knew we were just having fun with our favorite show (though I’d come to really hate it by the end of Voyager’s first season), that we were "playing in someone else’s sandbox," and that none of us would make a dime off of this.  (Hell, I lost money on a fanzine and still give the evil eye to anyone who says, "Hey, Jim, you should try editing.")  Several of us had to post reminders on a few Usenet groups that what we wrote was subject to the whims of someone else, and no one in Hollywood was bound by anything "established in fanfic."

By 2000, though, it occurred to me that, if I was as good as my friends were telling me (and every fanfic writer who gets a following hears this), I was wasting my time on copyright infringement that would make no one any money.  I also realized I never really liked reading science fiction much.  So I switched to crime fiction.  I went from being an obscure fanfic writer to an obscure crime fiction writer, dropping fanfic altogether when I wrote my first novel.

Money and copyright aside, what an incredible waste of creativity. Why toil on characters you don’t own in a world that’s not your own? It’s not even literary masturbation. It’s more like the literary equivalent of having sex with an inflatable woman who looks like Halle Berry. I honestly don’t get it.

Sixteen years ago, my then-girlfriend (and now justifiably acclaimed novelist) Karen E. Bender was trying to break in to publishing. I got her a job working as an editorial assistant at Starlog magazine, where one of the editors gave her this sage advice:

"You want to break in to writing, the best place to start is with a Saavik story. Writing for the secondary characters is where the literary giants of tomorrow get their experience. If you make a mistake with them, it’s a lot easier to fix in later fanfic. But blow it with Kirk or Spock, and your reputation as a serious writer is ruined." (I later used that quote in my book "Beyond the Beyond").

He also said writing sequels to movies, like his own to "Planet of the Apes" and "Superman," were good ways to hone her craft. The poor schlub didn’t see any difference between the fanfic world and the literature. 

Last I heard, he was still living with his mother. Jim writes:

So, Lee, I really do sympathize.  I hope to God I never come across any Nick Kepler fanfic.  I understand the motivation and the appeal of it, but really, 95% of it proves that Shatner was right during his SNL skit.  Or, at least, the evil Captain Kirk from…  um…  10?  "The Enemy Within". 

Or was he really saying just pay attention to the movies?"

UPDATE: Jim expanded on his thoughts about fanfic in a lively rant on his own blog.