On original fic and fanfic

[melannen]

There are currently a couple of debates going around - about the problem of Sue-shaming and about mixing original fic and fanfic in communities and archives - that have combined with other stuff to make me want to write about original writing.

So, re: the debate going around about whether AO3 should allow original stuff in with the fanworks:

There are some people who want to keep a wall between original and fan fiction, and want to keep AO3 limited to fan writers. And I can see their point - I, too, am far less likely to read something if it's original: it's harder work to read, less likely to be id-tastic, when I'm in the mood for fanwork I don't want original, and either the average quality of original fic is less, or I simply don't have good enough filters for finding the good stuff with original as compared to fan work. Plus, many original writing communities are not only very different in culture to fanwriting communities, some of them are openly hostile to fanwriting, or to some of the values that my particular fanwriting community espouses.

The problem I have with that viewpoint is that the separation between original and fan work *isn't* a wall. It is, at best, a long sloping gradient with something on it that might be an attempt at a wall that has fallen over in places and wasn't very straight to begin with (and has only been there for a paltry few decades anyway.) The boundary between original and fan work is not a hard boundary. People have brought up historical RPF several times already, but as far as I'm concerned, it's only the tip of the iceberg.

I write stuff that is definitely fanfiction. I write stuff that is definitely original fiction. And I write stuff that, um, I have no bloody idea if it's one or the other.

And the thing that attracted me, as an author, to AO3, is that it's one archive where I don't have to worry if my fanwork is "enough" for it. Is it slashy enough, or too slashy? Shippy enough, or too shippy? Too porny or not porny enough? Too long or too short, not canonical enough, not finished enough, too crossovery, too script-y or meta-y or poem-y to be a proper story, not angsty enough, too much or not enough... on AO3 I can just put everything up, as a proper archive, without having to stress over categories.

I would love if "not fan-fic-y enough" was one of those categories I didn't have to worry about on AO3. And since - *for me* - the most important role of AO3 is to be an archive for fanwriters to universally preserve and organize their work, I want all the edge cases to be allowed; if that means blanket allowing original fiction (and I suspect it does), then so be it. I would, however, support a restriction that every author account must have at least one definite fanwork uploaded, to preserve the archive as primarily fannish and to filter out people who are hostile to fanfic culture. And a rule that any original work hosted on AO3 must allow derivative work.

And, sheerly out of curiosity (and not intended to be anyone's opinion on what should or shouldn't get posted at AO3): Here is a poll about some of those "edge" cases. What do you think, fandom-at-large? Original or fanwork? (And no, you don't get tickyboxes or third options. You must make a judgement! Like archives always make me do!)

Poll #2693 Is it original fic or is it fanfic?

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 128

View Respondents

Historical RPF about dead people!

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Fanfic
90 (70.9%)

Original
37 (29.1%)

Non-historical RPF about living people!

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Fanfic
112 (88.2%)

Original
15 (11.8%)

Historical fic set in a specific place and time but with mostly-original characters (because the people I'm writing about went unrecorded by history!)

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Fanfic
14 (11.0%)

Original
113 (89.0%)

Fic set in the present with original characters, but all about their relationships with real celebrities, places, and/or current events!

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Fanfic
44 (34.9%)

Original
82 (65.1%)

A story set in fandom with characters who are all recognizeable fangirl achetypes!

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Fanfic
92 (73.0%)

Original
34 (27.0%)

A story based on a story my great-grandma wrote that was only ever published in a tiny edition!

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Fanfic
87 (69.6%)

Original
38 (30.4%)

A story based on something in my high school literary magazine!

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Fanfic
86 (69.9%)

Original
37 (30.1%)

Fic based on a friend's unpublished and unfinished original novel!

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Fanfic
99 (80.5%)

Original
24 (19.5%)

My original story that my friend pulished fic about before my story was finished!

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Fanfic
7 (5.5%)

Original
120 (94.5%)

A non-canon AU I wrote in my own original universe that uses fannish tropes like AMTDI or "five things that never happened"!

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Fanfic
53 (43.1%)

Original
70 (56.9%)

A story where my original characters meet fandom characters!

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Fanfic
125 (99.2%)

Original
1 (0.8%)

A story my original characters meet historical characters or celebrities!

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Fanfic
55 (44.4%)

Original
69 (55.6%)

A fusion where my original characters are put into a fandom-canon universe but no canon characters appear!

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Fanfic
119 (94.4%)

Original
7 (5.6%)

A crossover where my original characters meet me and my friends!

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Fanfic
29 (23.6%)

Original
94 (76.4%)

A crossover where my original characters meet my friend's original characters!

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Fanfic
63 (51.2%)

Original
60 (48.8%)

A story about recognizable living real people where all the names have been elided or changed!

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Fanfic
56 (44.8%)

Original
69 (55.2%)

A story about anthropomorphized objects or concepts!

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Fanfic
39 (31.5%)

Original
85 (68.5%)

A story about anthropomorphized *fannish* objects or concepts!

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Fanfic
92 (73.6%)

Original
33 (26.4%)

A retelling of a myth or fairy tale where all of the names, the setting, most of the details and the ending are different!

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Fanfic
42 (33.3%)

Original
84 (66.7%)

A retelling of a myth or fairy tale to make it work in the framework of my original universe or with my original characters!

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Fanfic
33 (26.6%)

Original
91 (73.4%)

An obvious parody/pastiche of a published author's style and subject matter that doesn't reference any of their characters or settings!

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Fanfic
57 (45.6%)

Original
68 (54.4%)

A side story to my fanfic epic, about two original characters from the epic, which based only on internal evidence could be set in a non-fannish world!

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Fanfic
91 (72.8%)

Original
34 (27.2%)

A novel set in [fandom A] that's all about original characters who live around the world from canon events so the only explicit reference to canon is passing allusions to distant events!

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Fanfic
112 (88.9%)

Original
14 (11.1%)

An AU story based around minor OCs from an AU of an AU of an AU that has since been thoroughly jossed!

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Fanfic
95 (75.4%)

Original
31 (24.6%)

A novel about characters that started out as fanfic OCs or AUs of canon characters but I have deliberately moved outside the fandom context!

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Fanfic
24 (19.2%)

Original
101 (80.8%)

A shared world written by many authors with no "primary" text or "series bible"!

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Fanfic
28 (22.6%)

Original
96 (77.4%)

Biblefic!

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Fanfic
106 (84.1%)

Original
20 (15.9%)

A slashy story about an angel that draws heavily on traditional Western angelology and eschatology, including [list of canon texts in original sense of canon texts], but is not based on specific text!

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Fanfic
32 (25.8%)

Original
92 (74.2%)

A Lovecraftian horror story that mentions the Necronomicon but is otherwise completely original!

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Fanfic
48 (38.7%)

Original
76 (61.3%)

A story that is direct commentary or critique of tropes, plots and characterizations specific to a very small subgenre but with all made-up proper names!

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Fanfic
41 (33.9%)

Original
80 (66.1%)

A novel that is mostly an original work but in which the Doctor makes a cameo (because he can!)

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Fanfic
62 (49.6%)

Original
63 (50.4%)

A professionally published story using other authors' characters and settings that the pro author loudly insists is not fanfic!

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Fanfic
104 (84.6%)

Original
19 (15.4%)

(I will stop there before poll gets even longer, but for the record, none of these are hypothetical cases - they are all either things I personally have written, or things other people who identify as fanwriters have done that I could point you to.)

Comments

[melannen]

Well, but the point of the question is, if the writer hasn't specifically labelled everything, how does the heir know what they intended?

And, yeah, the problem with "Fannish Intent + Transformative = Fanwork. Original Intent + Non-transformative = Not Fanwork." is that inevitably there will be "Original Intent + Transformative" and "Fannish Intent + Non-Transformative". Even if it were possible to always evenly judge intent and transformativity, which I don't think it is.

[melannen]

That would be my ideal, too, but I'm not sure how you quantify "fannish sensibilities" without just letting in everything. Hence, brain-breaking.

[tsukinofaerii]

If they're not labeled... Ow and poor, poor Heir. D: That would be a mess to sort. I would generally lean towards "can I attach a fandom to this? If yes, proceed. If no, halt. If maybe, panic and ask for 2nd/3rd/OVER 9000 opinions" philosophy. Which is easier to type than to do.

I guess the question comes down to "is the OTW for creative works, fanworks, transformative works, or all three"? There's always going to be grey areas, but we shouldn't let our worry about boxes exclude those who want to be with us, or include those who don't. (There is something odd about the potential prospect of saying "no, you're too original to be one of us" to Writer 1 while telling Writer 2 "your story is fanfic and I don't care what you say la la la la".)

I'm not sure I'm comfortable with the idea of laying down and policing those boundaries, either, which makes my opinion that the Archive should exclude original works wobbly. At some point with that rule, someone will report someone else for posting Original Fic when it's fanfic by the author's definition, and... cue a storm. :\ But The other option of throwing the gates wide open doesn't suit either. Which is why a self-declaration of fannishness/transformative intent via posting would work for me. If challenged, all the author would need to do is point at the fandom tag.

TL;DR, it's a complex issue, and I'm grateful I'm not the one who has to decide.

[melannen]

Yeah, collaboration becomes an issue. (One of the questions that seems to be most clear-cut - the "friend posted fanfic of your original fic before your fic was finished" - seems to me to touch on collaboration, too; how do you know whether one story influenced the other more?)

I should have put a question specifically about co-writing on (as opposed to shared worlds) but I didn't think of it in time.

[fangirlism]

I think you have to look at the author's intention, and the plotline to draw the line.

My NaNoWriMo novel was about a group of boys who become musical celebrities in present day America. They opened for the real life celebs they opened for, and took my OCs under their wing. But that was at year three of what was a nine year timeline I had written when I dropped out. It really can't be called fanfic.

OTOH, I have friends who write fics about their OCs meet, hook up with, break up with (for drama), hook back up with, and eventually marry a certain celeb.

Yet in the second example, "girl group who opens for the boy group" is a classic plot.

It's funny, when I posed this question in the NaNoWriMo communities (I asked if the inclusion of the RL celebs in my novel made it cross the line into fanfic), even though the consensus was no I still had people telling me to just change the names.

[phoebe_zeitgeist]

No, I realize that not everybody reads for the characters. I was talking specifically about characters in this sub-thread because we'd narrowed the field, I thought, to the limited set of RPF that didn't ring the chimes on anything else that might take a given story beyond the basic genre romance formula. Given what folks are saying in comments I can only believe that yes indeed, there are people who are happily engaged by stories that conform to a rigid formula featuring characters they have no engagement with or interest in -- and if the writers didn't intend or hope for their stories to do anything more than that, to engage with some source in a way that makes these stories significantly more meaningful for someone who does know the canon, then I too have trouble distinguishing these things from original fic -- and I'm not at all sure why they aren't. If the reference to the Real People doesn't actually add anything or mean anything, why do it?

good original writers - especially ones coming out of fan traditions - can write original short stories that read to me exactly like good fic in fandoms I don't know yet.

As I think about this, it strikes me again that the next question would be, will/would a piece of fanfic in a fandom you don't know yet work in the precise same way or have the same meaning for you once you do know the canon?

To try to be a bit more specific, the fandom that lured me into the active LJ/DW world is one where I did read a fair amount of fic before I was able to run down all of the canon. And gorgeous fic it was, too; in a way I'm still glad I saw some of it before I had the canon in my mind. Because once I did, it was still gorgeous, but all the meanings changed and often deepened. The fact that one could read it without canon (although I think in this case it would still read as a kind of beautiful artifact from a literature one hadn't read) didn't alter its dependence on canon knowledge for many of its effects and for its intended structure.

If your fanfic for which you don't know the canon doesn't shift in meaning or depth or power when you (or at the very least, the writer's ideal reader) do know the canon -- well hell, I don't see a difference between that and original fic that felt to you like fanfic for which you didn't know the canon either. But I also don't get why that writer is even bothering with writing the thing in a non-original universe. Because in this case, by the terms of the argument we're talking about a situation in which writing it as fanfic adds absolutely nothing for anyone.

I wonder if part of this isn't that I'm long trained to pick up an original series on book 15 and jump right in, or read comics by way of one random-numbered issue at a time, or watch TV series in scattered episodes here and there. I'm used to having to fill in the backstory for myself, bit by bit; I don't *want* to know everything before I start.

Oddly enough, that's my experience too. Perhaps I've just been sloppily using the word understand to carry more weight than it should? I do know fandoms where some of the best work is pretty nearly incomprehensible in all respects without some knowledge of canon, but in fandoms where that's not the case I'm happy enough to read without knowing the canon first -- as long as there's enough there that doesn't depend on canon to engage my attention.

Which brings me back to where I started: my experience of RPF wasn't that I couldn't read it without knowing canon and follow the story. I totally could. I just assumed -- perhaps wrongly -- that there had to be significantly more there that the author had put in, and that I wasn't seeing because I didn't know canon. Because again, if not, why is this fanfic at all? And why are, say, all the American Idol people on my flist falling over each other to insist that a given story is amazing and everyone should read it, while all the non-AI people who try find themselves looking nervously at one another and asking each other whether we were the only ones to fail at seeing the awesome?

[melannen]

I would actually say that anything you intend, or hope, to sell commercially (by commercially I mean in such a way that someone could conceivably receive royalties on the copyright) shouldn't go on AO3, because to me, one of the main purposes of AO3 is that it's a *persistent* archive - a fic I read on there today should be there ten years from now if I want to find it again.

That isn't to say nobody can take things down - things happen, lives change - but I don't actually think a story you are already thinking about maybe taking off the internet to turn into a pro novel should go up in the first place, because I want AO3 to be a place where things are intended to persist.

That would mean self-publishing or 'zine publishing, in a way where you also leave it freely available in fannish spaces, wouldn't count as "commercial" for my purposes. And it certainly wouldn't automatically exclude works that *could* be sold commercially, as long as the author has no plans to do so.

Of course, if there's a massive shift in the publishing industry such that it becomes normal for professionally sold work to stay up on author blogs and websites, I'd have to change the criterion. :D

[melannen]

Ooh, I love this idea! That sounds like a criterion where you might actually be able to identify something like "fannish sensibility".

And I think it fits well with the general purpose of OTW, too, because my definition of "commercially intentioned" is something like "involving the possibility of selling or making money from the copyright itself" (as opposed to just from selling physical copies.)

That goes back to authorial intent again though, blah. But it would at least be something you could put in the upload guidelines that would fill in most of the existing gray areas in terms of my unwillingness to make the call for my own stuff, at least.

(It would create new ones - oh, man, especially if AO3 became known as a source of good orig-fic slush and pro editors started recruiting there, which I can actually see happening, considering the increasing numbers of fanwriters who are getting pro careers based entirely on fan rep, and the fact that it seems like most of the *really bad* origfic writers really want to go pro, so wouldn't post to AO3.)

[holyschist]

Haha, I figured.

[melannen]

Oooh, I like the tangent. Yes! Putting all sorts of transformative work on AO3 - even stuff that is clearly legal within the current system - seems like it could only help OTW's argument that fanfic and derivative work is a valid part of the artistic continuum and conversation.

Also, what I would really love to see happen, connected with that, is for AO3 to host original works, with permission, for some of the things people write fic about - obvs. that's never likely to happen for Star Wars or whatever, but when the canon is a fannishly-written, non-commercially-intended source, I think it would be awesome both for the value of the archive and for the copyright argument. And I can even see authors of forever out-of-print or creative-commons pro SF novels agreeing to have their stuff posted there, too - some of them have it up on websites already - which, again, seems like it could only strengthen the advocacy position - "hey, these pros are okay with having their work right alongside fanfic of it--". ...of course, that begs the question of putting up public domain sources like Madelyn Mack, where the author can't be contacted, and turning AO3 into archive.org.

[melannen]

Ah! Yes, we are. I would have called setting it in a different century an AU rather than a retelling; a retelling to me specifically refers to telling almost exactly the same story, just in a different way.

(Although, of course, my "fairy tale retelling" example does change the setting, so I'm wrong even about my own use of the word - I guess to me an AU is "I'm specifically changing the story in these specific ways to make it a different story" and a retelling is "it's still basically the same story, even if it seems very different." But that goes back to author intent again. bah.)

And I guess, to me, there's a difference between something that's an "canonical AU" - a lot of source canon have official AUs, either in the paracanon (see SW:Infinities) or as AU episodes (see Xena) or even series (see Blackadder). Whereas I was thinking more like an author who's writing something cracky or a bit OOC that they don't particularly want to be counted among canon at all - like, for example, naominovik recently wrote a short story in which her OC Temeraire goes on American Idol and Cthulhu is one of the judges, which I'm fairly sure she does not intend should ever be used in any arguments about his canonical character, no matter how AU.

And yes, fandom characters = someone else's source materials.

[melannen]

See my reply to you below in the other conversation. :D I do think I overstated it with "might eventually" - obviously that's impossible to predict, and we shouldn't say that anything that's ever been on AO3 can never be published pro - but I do personally think that with AO3's intent to be an archive that *preserves* content, anything you are specifically thinking about making pay-only in the future doesn't belong there.

I think a lot of people would object to that, too, though.

A self-publishing setup where you retain full control of all the intellectual property rights and can choose to keep it online wouldn't fall under my "sold professionally" category - I was thinking "sold the story itself to an editor" not "sold physical copies of the books". Though of course some people might not like that distiction either.

[melannen]

I would definitely say self-published stuff is okay, myself, as long as you're willing to simultaneously have it free on the web, because yes, all else aside, there's plenty of self-published fanwork out there.

[starlady]

Hmm, I forgot about zines.

But, you know, I don't think a zine is the same thing as a self-publishing service like Lulu or iUniverse, which is what I was thinking of when I said "no self-publishing." Given the long history of zines in fandom, I certainly wouldn't want to say 'no zines'!

The at-cost thing is important, too--the other thing I don't think should be happening is people somehow trying to make money off of their content that's hosted on the AO3.

[damned_colonial]

Why wouldn't you use Lulu to publish your zine, these days? I know that's what we were thinking of doing with ours.

[starlady]

Well, okay, with the caveat that you are pushing me to think out implications that I had not thought out at all when I tossed out my 2x earlier comment (*g*)--

I know hardly anything about Lulu, but it was my understanding that it's intended for things like novels and photo books and such (?). When I hear "zine" I think something that is shorter/has less pictures than those things, which is why I tend to assume that Lulu + zines is not a natural fit. But in your case I am sure you have a much better concept of what you mean when you say "zine" (because I am still thinking bound b&w photocopies, even though I know from experience that Kinko's can print some phenomenal desktop publishing products) and whether it would work with Lulu.

Yeah, I don't know, I guess I'm thinking that "zines" are shorter than "novels", to sum up. But I am almost certainly inventing a false distinction/dichotomy.

[damned_colonial]

Well, as I understand it, you send Lulu a PDF and tell them what quality of paper/binding you want, and they handle printing and distribution. That's it. They can certainly handle glossy photo books, and novels, and anything else you might want to print, as long as you can send it to them as a PDF.

The fic series I was thinking of would be somewhere over 100k words by the time we had it in shape for print, if we did go that way, and that's two NaNoWriMo "novels" at least. We were also talking about tying in fanart based on the series, laying out the epistolary fics as "letters" on the page (like, as sheets of paper with handwriting), etc.

On another note... I've mentioned elsewhere that I have an alternate history/historical RPF novel plotted out, and I spent a bit of time wondering whether I wanted to treat it as orig fic or fanfic. I decided that if/when I get around to writing it, I'd like to treat it as fanfic and do it here on DW, and post it as a WIP with hypertextual notes and background and whatnot, and encourage people to give feedback and play in the universe, and so on -- treating it as a fannish AU 'verse, where the fandom is that period of history. But I had also considered, if/when my own main plot arc was "finished", publishing it via Lulu, in the form factor of a novel, for those who'd like to read it straight through that way. So, there's two points of anecdata, for what they're worth.

[melannen]

As a person who's kind of accidentally gotten involved in the "fanart for profit" culture, I don't feel comfortable making the for profit/not for profit distinction. I know fandom has a strong ethic against selling fic for profit, and a lot of people who've done it historically have done it unethically and/or wankily, but it's not a distinction that's really important to me anymore (except in the not-causing-wank way.)

As an example that maybe would skim the fan-ethics and legality issues: if you wrote a Star Trek fic as a fic, and then got an opportunity to sell it to a for-profit, authorized Star Trek fan anthology while leaving it online, should that then be excluded from AO3? (Maybe? I don't know?)

In fan-ethically grayer areas, I certainly don't think someone selling her self-published Pride & Prejudice fic at cons and community fairs is suddenly no longer a fan author just because she's priced it high enough to cover her budget for the whole con weekend as well as the cost of printing. Or even if she puts a display in a local gift shop at the same markup. Or even, honestly, gets it listed on Amazon; as long as she's still allowing free distribution of e-copies, I view it as selling particular physical copies, not as selling the story itself.

I guess I make the distinction at the point where the right-to-publish itself is being given a monetary value, as opposed to individual copies of the books: the point at which copyright itself is being sold or leased. (Which, incidentally, would still leave the authorized fan anthology in limbo.)

[melannen]

Well, I guess for me, an RPF story that doesn't ring on anything but "person meets person, they fall in love and/or have sex" is an story I wouldn't be very interested in, regardless of whether I know the characters or not, so that just wasn't on my radar at all; I class it as "badfic". Because it's hard to imagine a story that *doesn't* have anything else that would still be a functioning story - wingfic I used because it was an obvious example and easy to search on, but it can be something as subtle as "dealing with commitment issues" or "licking ice cream off someone else's fingers" that pings my narrative kinks regardless of character. (Clearly, there are very different modes of fannishness going on here! And I know my mode is very different from torachan's, too, even if we're both disagreeing with you here.)

And the reason to add the reference to real people is that you are writing about those characters - I'm in it for, say, folding laundry, but Johnny Weir is going to fold laundry differently from the way Duncan MacLeod does, and that's part of what makes it interesting to read the same narrative elements over and over. And I would never have thought about how someone like Johnny might fold laundry without him existing as a fan character, so the fact that it's part of a larger fandom is important, and having him be the Real Person in question does mean something. (It also does, yes, mean that if I then want to then go read about how this interesting Johnny character sucks ice cream off fingers or deals with commitment issues or grows wings, I know where to look. So it's not that the characters aren't important, it's just that they're not what makes or breaks it for me.)

Fanfic for which I didn't know the canon when I started *does* shift in meaning for me once I've absorbed the canon - the same way that Feet of Clay shifted in meaning for me once I'd read other Discworld novels - and the first fic I've read in a fandom shifts in meaning after I've read others, whether I've gone to canon yet or not.

The thing is, it doesn't always shift for the *better*. In specific, I'm much more interested in ship-focused, all-romance-all-the-time stories when I haven't seen the canon; I can really enjoy reading about these character archetypes going through formulae that hit my narrative kinks, and learning more about them as I go, and yes, caring about them a lot. But it seems like once I've got enough backstory on the characters to see them as more whole, complicated people with real lives (whether fictional or not) I am far more interested in gen fic, or adventures-with-romance, or stories wihout happy endings.

Maybe that does mean the fic I enjoy when I get in to a fandom is stuff that should just have the serial numbers scrubbed and be written as original romance fic. But I don't think that's it - part of the fun of it is that each story I read builds on what I've learned from the others, so it's like reading an out-of-order original-fic series that *never has to end*. Part of it is that it's easier, as a writer, to write in the existing fan universe than to go to the extra work of worldbuilding and making your own characters - if I'm just in it for the finger-licking and the pretty scenery is a bonus, why should the author have to bother painting her own scenery? And some authors really like writing finger-licking, and don't like coming up with original characters, and that's fine with me, because I still get finger-licking and interesting characters. And if it's less work for the author, that's more finger-licking for me. Part of it is that the archetypes that fan characters embody are still deeper and more interesting (to me) than a lot of the ones that appear in genre stories. Because I find the basic formulaic plots less interesting when I've already got the characters figured out doesn't mean there's anything wrong with those plots, or the way that fan characters are written in them.


As for your last question - I can't answer that question, because it's totally not the experience I've had - I've seen people (including myself) who could give a tinker's damn about AI the show or the celebrity coverage of it, who were rec'ced an AI fic or two and now devour them avidly.

My guess would be just that the things that tend to go into AI fics aren't things that happen to appeal to you and your cohort? Like, I adore stories about coming out and queer culture, and about open relationships, and about people who are really good at a craft or art and invested in getting better at it, and about transcendence through art, and about dealing with being a sudden celebrity, and about mentorship, and about random people in close quarters under stress becoming families, and these are all things that AI fandom delivers in spades.

If I was uninterested in those things I probably wouldn't care about the fandom (the same way I'm completely uninterested in, say, the majority of SPN RPS, even widely rec'ced ones, because the way that fandom developed it just doesn't tend to hit my kinks in the same way.)

[starlady]

I guess I make the distinction at the point where the right-to-publish itself is being given a monetary value, as opposed to individual copies of the books: the point at which copyright itself is being sold or leased. (Which, incidentally, would still leave the authorized fan anthology in limbo.)

I think that's a much more sensible distinction; as I've been talking with damned_colonial I've been realizing that I'm uncomfortable with the implications of my own position. I'd much rather have fan content be as unbounded as possible--though, given the AO3 and the OTW's legal status and position, it may still not be possible to allow AO3 content to be monetized, even by creators. I don't know one way or the other, but I could easily see that as a possibility.

(Though, I don't think anthologies per se are actually in limbo--an anthology generally pays contributors a set fee for the right to reprint for a certain amount of time, amirite? I know for a fact that there are stories on the AO3 now which have been published in pro anthologies.)

[melannen]

I think it depends on the anthology? Certainly, many of them want rights to "exclusive" publication within that time limit, or to "first" publication, and it depends a lot on the power balance between the editors and the authors (and how ethical the editors are being) but all of that's really shifting right now anyway as people figure out how things like blog posting fit into the "publication" paradigm anyway. With a fanwork anthology I don't have the first idea, since the copyright issues there would be complicated anyway; I wouldn't be surprised if they tend to be more restrictive than average, but most of the current ones commission work specifically for the anthologies, I think, though some of the early ST and SW ones I'm pretty sure reprinted some fan-published work. (I should ask someone who's actually been published in an authorized fan anthology!)

Re: O.O

[melannen]

Ooooh, thinking in terms of "transformative" instead of "fanwork" really does make some of these easy to decide ... except then I realized that was because I do think that *all* art is transformative, so if you told me the archive was limited to transformative work, I would read that as allowing everything.

Whereas I think you can have transformative work that is distinctly not fannish.

...I guess it would keep out people who insist they are working with pure jewels mined solely from their virgin brainstuff, though. And it would help clarify that AO3 is remaining true to OTW's mission.

My vote is that we just let in original work and don't make *anyone* decide! I think it has to be either that or trusting authorial intent, but trusting authorial intent is basically still making authors live in that liminal space where they have to worry that they'll be told at any point they don't belong.

And (fannish, female, genre) writers get that often enough; I don't want AO3 to be another place where I worry about it. Saying we ban original work but we don't enforce it as long as the author is willing to claim transformativity, to me, leaves open that they could choose to start enforcing any time they wanted to. I guess I am just generally uncomfortable with living in liminal spaces that depend on unenforceable rules staying unenforced - I live there often enough as a fan and writer due to the state of copyright law; I don't want spaces that *could* avoid it to create new ones.

[starlady]

See, I'm thinking of pro Holmes anthologies (one in particular, or rather a particular line of anthologies), but I'm sure you're better versed in fan anthologies.

[melannen]

Not ... really? Anything I know about it is either at least fifteen years out of date or comes through word-of-mouth at cons. :D I could be wrong about that. But somehow, I think I'd still want to class a pro anthology as "selling professionally" when I wouldn't count self-publishing. Hmm.

[melannen]

Yeah, the fact that quality is my absolute first filter means that I frequently miss the fact that a lot of fans actually do voluntarily read deeply crappy fic. (It gives me a warped view of what's out there sometimes, and occasionally rose-colored glasses on fandom in general, because I just automatically filter the absolute crap out of my worldview entirely.)