Original & Fandom Fic poll follow-up

[melannen]

Wow, that entry is almost tied for "most comments I have ever gotten." Clearly people care about this issue! Now, if only I could write some fic that got that much response! ...if only I could write some fic, period. :P

There is a lot of good discussion going on in the comments, too, some of them along tangents I really want to follow up on (I didn't reply to all of them that I meant to, either - somewhere around the point where comments on an entry collapse I completely lose track of what's going on and am mostly lost except for reading the email notifications.) There's good stuff in OTW's follow-up post, too.

Some people asked me to post the specific examples I was thinking of for each poll question, so here they are under the cut, at leas the ones I can link to, along with a teeny-tiny bit of analysis.

1. Historical RPF about dead people: very very large genre, but the one I was thinking of in particular (because it is dear to my heart) is No Rest for the Wicked by naraht.
Survey says: Fanfic, by 72%

2. Non-historical RPF about living people: also very very large genre, but here, have the British Comedy anon fic meme I've posted on recently, notdancers.
Survey says: Fanfic, by 88%

3. 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:) Okay, the best examples I can think of for this are stories I have not yet written - talking with stellar_dust, the ideal case would be something like "the story of Slave Woman #3 who lived in structure C at Monticello from 1768-1794, got a ration of one pound of pork and three pounds of cornmeal a week, had two kids living with her for part of that period but is never given a name in the surviving records." Sort of the historical RPF equivalent of the fpf stories that are about "third Gryffindor girl". The example I can link you to (that I was sort of thinking of) is Life at Keatley Creek, which is a short bit I wrote in reaction to an anthropology case study I read in college.
Survey says: Original, by 90%

4. Fic set in the present with original characters, but all about their relationships with real celebrities, places, and/or current events: This I was thinking of unfinished/unpublished stories of mine; they are hard to find in fan sources, but in published fic *all the time* (and I wish they showed up more in fan sources, as I adore outsider POV and setting-focused fic.)
Survey says: Original, by 65% (I'm kind of surprised this one is closer than 5 - maybe it's because I elaborated on it in comments? Or stated it badly?)

5. A story set in fandom with characters who are all recognizeable fangirl archetypes: Mina de Malfois is the obvious example. (Mina herself does not appear to be on AO3; Mina fic is. This seems to me like a clear example of "original fic that belongs on a fannish archive", but I guess fandom itself is a fandom now.)
Survey says: Fanfic, by 75%

6-9: I wrote these before I turned twenty. Having been smart enough at the time not to post them on the internets, I will not make the mistake now. :P

6. A story based on a story my great-grandma wrote that was only ever published in a tiny edition: This was for a school assignment about an immigrant story in your family; since I have no "immigrant stories" remembered in my family, I took some of Great-grandma's semi-autobiographical stuff & remixed them with real history into an AU where she was an immigrant (and then didn't tell the teacher it was nearly all fictional.)
Survey says: Fanfic, by 70%

7. A story based on something in my high school literary magazine: Short version: I was editor. There was some stuff we were obliged to publish that was *really terrible*. Privately, in the dark of night, I fixed it.
Survey says: Fanfic, by 70%

8. Fic based on a friend's unpublished and unfinished original novel:...nope, *really* not going in to this.
Survey says: Fanfic, by 80%
(The previous three are basically the same question: is it still fanfic if there's not chance at all any of your readers know the canon? It's interesting that even as the proportions worked out about the same, individual people's answers are often different for the three.)

9. My original story that my friend published fic about before my story was finished:It's possible the first chapter of this story is still around on the Forward Motion message boards somewhere, but it is not worth digging it out to share it. And the story around the first piece of fic I ever got is kind of creepy in a stalkery way but I still treasure the fact that it happened.
Survey says: Original, 95%
(This is, clearly, original. And yet, depending on how the posting rolled out, it could end up looking like fic. Also, something I would strongly support allowing on AO3 even if original fic in general isn't: if a work has derivatives up on AO3, and the original copyright owners are willing to let the canon be hosted right alongside it, how would that not be *awesome*? Says the person who shares ebooks for most of the small fandoms she writes it. :p)

10. A non-canon AU I wrote in my own original universe that uses fannish tropes like AMTDI or "five things that never happened": there was some confusion about my wording on this; basically I meant when you decide screw plot and contiunity and being a real author, you're just going to write fanfic for your own work. This bit of futurefic from nano a few years ago is probably the closest to this category that I have online; there is a great deal more that isn't: Much, much later
Survey says: original, by 56%
(Which I guess means that authors who join their own fandoms under pseudonyms aren't really writing fic.)

11. So, I was thinking something along the lines of the story where my old OC Prince Senning of Appenall gets to hang out with BBC Merlin, but I deliberately wrote the question so that it could mean basically, every OC fic ever. I suspect the answers might have come out less one-sided if I'd made it clear they were pre-existing OCs. Anyway as an example, here's part of one of my old Mary-Sue Pride stories: To Touch Pitch, in which Peggy has a thing with Snape.
Survey says: Fanfic, by 99%

12. A story where my original characters meet historical characters or celebrities: 90% of Time Travel novels plus a significant fraction of all historical novels. If you want one by a Certified Fan (c), read Temeraire and just try to not ship Laurence/Napoleon (No? Just me?)
Survey says: Original, 55%

13. A fusion where my original characters are put into a fandom-canon universe but no canon characters appear: Actually, this is one I have been deeply tempted to do, but never dared, because I assumed there was no audience. (I could tell you the plots of some of them though. At length.) Also, there are some fandoms where this sort of story is really, really common. Pern, say.
Survey says: Fanfic, by 95%

14. A crossover where my original characters meet me and my friends: Last done in high school. Staying drawerfic. (Also, a fairly common exercise given to young creative writing students.)
Survey says: Original, by 75%

15: A crossover where my original characters meet my friend's original characters: this, of course, gets into the sticky question of when it stops being fanfic and starts being co-writing. And this is again something from teenagerhood that I'm not sharing. :P
Survey says: Tie, 50%
(This is where I should have had a question about original characters from one of your own stories meeting original characters from another of your stories. But I forgot.)

16. A story about recognizable living real people where all the names have been elided or changed: Specific example, Drabbling in Archeology, which was one of my sister's yuletide gifts this year. On the published side, "Primary Colors" seems to come up a lot.
Survey says: Original, by 55%

17. A story about anthropomorphized objects or concepts: Again, an entire genre, but here, have Hot Stuff, since it was mentioned in the comments already.
Survey says: Original, by 69%

18. A story about anthropomorphized *fannish* objects or concepts: See all of the stories I got for yuletide 2009. (I am not sure how clear this question was - I meant stories like Angst/Meta, not stories where John and Rodney are dirty socks; that might have been why there was such a swing in numbers. Or not. It could be "fandom itself is a fandom" again, although if so, I don't see why Cookies/Milk can't be.)
Survey says: Fanfic, by 75%

19. A retelling of a myth or fairy tale where all of the names, the setting, most of the details and the ending are different: Salad-Head, by rubynye, which is widely recced in fandom and only resembles the fairy tale it was based on in broad strokes.
Survey says: Original, by 66%

20. A retelling of a myth or fairy tale to make it work in the framework of my original universe or with my original characters: The Tales of Beedle the Bard it's the most blatant case, but it's far from the only one. I do this a lot but most of them wouldn't make sense unless you're me; the closest thing I have published is a creation story.
Survey says: Original, by 72%

21. An obvious parody/pastiche of a published author's style and subject matter that doesn't reference any of their characters or settings: Also by me in high school, but since it's still up, Ballad of the Hairy Man, in the style of Robert Service (with bonus inspiration from the folk song "The Black Fox", but that's also the sort of thing Service would do.)
Survey says: Original, by 55%

22. 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: Not the best example in existence, but try some of daegaer's Schwarz!Kinder, all grown up. (The example I was thinking of turned out to have more canon in it than I thought, due to me being unfamiliar with one of the fandoms. Which tells you how much I care about whether something's in a familiar fandom. Also, this gets much stickier with fanart - how can one tell the difference been fanart of your Highlander OC and fanart of your non-fannish OC?)
Survey says: Fanfic, by 72%

23. 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: The specific series I was thinking of here (HP fandom) has been taken off-line to have the serial numbers scrubbed, but there are some fandoms where this is a large proportion of the output.
Survey says: Fanfic, by 90%

24. An AU story based around minor OCs from an AU of an AU of an AU that has since been thoroughly jossed: Okay, the specific story I was thinking of here is locked (which, underage/dubcon/threesome/incest, probably good reason) but just go to clan_mitchell and you will find some stories that fit this description.
Survey says: Fanfic, 75%

25. A novel about characters that started out as fanfic OCs or AUs of canon characters but I have deliberately moved outside the fandom context" This is the classic "file off the serial numbers" scenario; Amy Webb's Devil Series is the first example I actually followed, and a non-commercial series along these lines is laylah's precious_stones.
Survey says: Original, 80%

26. A shared world written by many authors with no "primary" text or "series bible: steampunk_nusantara is the one I am (and everyone should be) following at the moment, but there are others. (Also, a fair number of text-RPGs could fall into this category.)
Survey says: Original, 77%

27. Biblefic: Again, a genre of its own, both within fandom and in published fic. I am most familiar with fic actually based around bible stories, but there is a usage of this term that refers to fic generally set in a Christian milieu, with guardian angels and things. Random rec: The Syro-Phonecian Woman by tree_and_leaf.
Survey says: Fanfic, 85%

28. 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: This is specifically a story I am working on about the angel Presbyopael who couldn't see God as anything but a headachey blur until he fell to Earth and got a little distance. But the genre of stories set in paracanonical Western Christian mythology is not exactly *small*.
Survey says: Original, by 75%
(This is really the same question as 26, where bible!fic is derivative of the Bible, and 27 is derivative of bible-fic, so the swap in survey numbers is intriguing.)

29.A Lovecraftian horror story that mentions the Necronomicon but is otherwise completely original: Specific example was another high school ouvre of mine, but such things as this are not rare in pro genre circles or certain fan circles.
Survey says: Original, 62%

30. 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: I was thinking here of Alexei Panshin's "Rite of Passage" specifically, because I am kind of over-fond of Panshin and his wanky fanboying, but really, whole subsets of SF publishing are this.
Survey says: Original, 66%

31. A novel that is mostly an original work but in which the Doctor makes a cameo (because he can: This is Diane Duane's "High Wizardry".
Survey says: Original, 53%

32: A professionally published story using other authors' characters and settings that the pro author loudly insists is not fanfic: heh, pick your favorite pro-author whipping boy.
Survey says: Fanfic, by 85%

% of examples currently published as fic that y'all declared original: 3/9, 33%
% of pro-published (non-tie-in) examples y'all declared fanfic: 1/5 as of now, but both "High Wizardry" and the Lovecraft example have been fluctuating right around the 50% mark.
% of examples that are within 20% of a tie: 11/32, 33%

Also, the con-txt panel survey is live!

No prizes for people who manage to guess one of the panels I submitted, because, umm, your odds just for picking one at complete random would actually be pretty good, plus a couple of them are re-posts from previous years. But feel free to guess anyway, and I will confirm yes or no :D

Comments

[naraht]

Historical RPF about dead people: very very large genre, but the one I was thinking of in particular (because it is dear to my heart) is No Rest for the Wicked by naraht.

Awww, thanks for the rec. :)

[melannen]

Not all of the links in this post are recs (especially to my stuff!) but the one to your story definitely is. Hoover/Tolson OTP! :D

[ciaan]

This whole discussion has been making me remember and consider stuff I've written before, like, the story I posted to the ElfQuest fanfic mailing list in high school/college that was original fiction set in the "real world" about characters who were EQ fans and met each other through EQ (and how then later on I had some of them run onto some of my other characters, which was sorta like doing a crossover with myself, except I have long ago decided that all my plain fiction characters live in the same world (and thinking about it just now, since I have made decisions about that world's history and pop culture that are not the same as our reality, maybe there are elements of RPF in there somewhere)).

Or my NaNovel one year that was titled "The Great Parody Comedy Fantasy Novel Involving Pirates, Archaeologists, And Intelligent Giant Squid, Oh My!" which was kinda set in a world based on Diana Wynne Jones' Tough Guide To Fantasyland and had characters inspired by both The Princess Bride and The Pirates Of Penzance. So it was like a parody/pastiche of the fantasy genre based on three other parodies? But I thought of it as original fiction when I wrote it, not as fanfic.

It is very interesting to consider where I feel the lines are in my own work, and how they have changed over time, and how much I base my decisions about my own work on my understanding of my authorial intent, which I don't have in the same way when looking at other people's work.

(Also, I don't think I'll ever be able to read anything by Alexei Panshin on account of going to college with his son.)

[melannen]

...I am now desperately trying to remember if you already had me friended back when I was begging for Panshin RPF for yuletide. I didn't traumatize you, did I? (It is so weird to actually know people, or relatives of people, who you think of as being distant artists up in the sky. The sister of one of my high school favorite SF authors is in fandom, and I've had her lj-friended for years. I can't read his stuff anymore. Hers is good though! :D )

So much of my original stuff is in direct response to what I've been reading in genre - in fact, it took me a few years, but I finally figured out that why I slowed down on the original stuff so much when I first started reading fic is that I get inspired to write 'original' SF *directly* based on the SF I'm currently reading. It really is a very similar process to writing fic based on a show I'm watching, I just take different elements and smaller fragments to transform when I'm writing the 'original' stuff.

It's all still very much part of a conversation with ninety years of SF fandom, which has always had a tradition of 'fanwriters' writing in their own universes and characters. Which is part of why I'm leery of any definition that relies on it being part of, or based in, a 'fandom', because I've hung around SF enough that 'fandom' unqualified means SF, not media. And pretty much *everything* I do creatively is part of my identity as an SF fan, and would be accepted as such in fandom - that fandom.

[holyschist]

10. A non-canon AU I wrote in my own original universe that uses fannish tropes like AMTDI or "five things that never happened": there was some confusion about my wording on this; basically I meant when you decide screw plot and contiunity and being a real author, you're just going to write fanfic for your own work. This bit of futurefic from nano a few years ago is probably the closest to this category that I have online; there is a great deal more that isn't: Much, much later
Survey says: original, by 56%
(Which I guess means that authors who join their own fandoms under pseudonyms aren't really writing fic.)

Naomi Novik wrote a story about Temeraire on American Idol--the judges and other contestant were all from other fictional sources, but even if they weren't...she wrote a story about her Napoleonic-era DRAGON on AMERICAN IDOL, and if that's not fanfiction, I do not know what is. Also, it's hilarious.

[zvi]

See, I don't think Naomi's side excursions into the Temeraire universe count as fanfic, no matter how crack-y or id-vortex-y they are, but I do think that her AI RPF (and that story actually also includes HP and, I think, Song of Ice and Fire) is fanfic, even if she's inserting her own original characters into it. Because she's crossed her original work with fanfiction universes.

[melannen]

My hypothetical question then, if a hypothetical author were to write fic of her own stuff under a fannish pseudonym that isn't officially connected to her pro-author name, would it be fanfic then?

(Not being accusatory, just still curious. And if you do consider that still original fic, could anything be done enforcement-wise about it within the bounds of the fannish ethics around outing pseuds?)

[zvi]

Yes, the writings of one's sockpuppet are still one's own writings, so I would still consider that original fiction.

On the other hand, I would also not think that anything should be done enforcement-wise, if this were an actual secret sockpuppet, and not an open secret pseud.

I think -- some of the questioning I have seen from people about enforcement makes me think that they think I, and other people who don't want original fic on the Archive, are envisioning Content Comm as some sort of fanfiction secret police, swooping down on innocent infringers who had no idea that anyone might not consider their work the most fannish of creations, and throwing them off the archive or something.

The thing about laws/rules is that they mostly don't work based on the ability of the person making the rule to panopticon everyone and swiftly punish people who break them. They mostly work by people deciding to obey the rules that are in place. So, even if there is zero enforcement, even if nothing ever happens when someone reports original fic to the Content Comm except that the reporter receives some sort of form letter explaining about the wonder of fannish diversity and our multiplicitous fannish traditions, in which what looks like original fic is often extremely fannish ... I want there to be a rule that would give a hint to Scalzi that his "reboot" of that Little Fuzzy (title?) story is welcome but posting the sequel to Old Man's War (title?) if his publisher rejects it is not.

[melannen]

It's not that I think there's going to be a secret police? It's just that I've gone around this too many times with adult content and underage content (and for that matter, fannish content on origfic sites) and I know that people *will* report stuff, and then the abuse/rules/mod committee *will* have to do something about it, and both the site runners and the people posting liminal content will be unhappy in the meantime. (In fact, I got the impression from the latest OTW-blog post that they're already having stuff get reported, which is why they brought the issue up.)

So, no, we're not envisioning *you* as the enforcement secret police; I think everyone publically taking part in this debate on either side is willing to take a live-and-let-live stance, no matter how the rules end up working out. What people are worried about is the people who *will* decide to be secret police, the people with personal grudges or just plain troublemaking trolls, who *will* take advantage of the rules if they exist, especially if they exist without a clear policy.

[holyschist]

The thing is, I can't imagine an author who's never been involved in fandom producing something like that.

I have a pretty community-based definition of fanfiction, though, which seems to put me in the minority.

[zvi]

I know a gazillion people in fandom who knit or make jewelry or bake. Does every creative thing they do after they've taken a bite of the fannish apple get counted as fannish now?

[holyschist]

The difference is that they would probably knit or make jewelry or bake in the same way without ever encountering fandom, so unless they're knitting Daleks, they're probably not doing crafts in a fannish manner. (And I think knitted Daleks are pretty fannish, albeit not fanfiction.)

Also, that particular piece of Temeraire fiction does include numerous characters from properties not belonging to Novik. Unless including one of her own characters negates them all--in which case any fanfiction with an original character wouldn't be fanfiction--I'm not sure how that's arguable. I personally would still count it as fanfiction even if those characters weren't there, but since they are, I don't understand the debate.

Then again, I also don't understand why it's beneficial to define fanfiction narrowly, so.

[melannen]

Actually, when I think of the creative fiber-arts crafts I've actually done, other than a few things I've made to patterns for gifts: the gryffindor scarf, the Dalek, the webcomic amigurumi, the scarlet letter A, the embroidered fanart, the Voldemort doll - that's all clearly fannish; the period things done for SCA and Williamsburg, the poppets, the hyperbolic trim and moebius scarves and klein bottle hats, the binary-coded E2 afghan squares - those are made in what I think of as a fannish spirit, even if the fandom is "math geeks"; and then there's the rainbow afghan based on one my grandmother made but with different colors, the quilt based on a traditional pattern (and one I first learned about in a YA novel), the black-and-green scarves that are continual failed attempts to recreate the colors of Juniper's Doran cloak - that's still transformative. And you get from there into garb and cosplay and costuming...

Honestly, fiber arts, and especially knitting/crochet/quilting, have a long transformative tradition of their own, and one that has modern copyright/legal issues not unlike fandom's, and even have a tradition of being linked to female resistance that has a kinship with fandom's. It doesn't belong on a fic archive, and probably not even all of it on a fanart archive, but I would love to see OTW do something specifically about fair use/transformativity and fiber crafts, even if it sticks to things like Doctor Who scarves at first.

[holyschist]

I'm not sure I'd say that fandom has influenced my crafts so much as my geekiness has influenced both my fannish activities and my crafts. The interactions are obviously going to be different for different people, and I definitely agree with you about fiber arts and transformative tradition.

[melannen]

I guess I don't make a strong distiction between geekiness and fannishness; in myself, they seem like different facets of the same thing, or different communities around the same values, or simply blur into each other. Which I guess is why I have such trouble making these distinctions.

Partly, I think it's because I came into online fandom - and thus actual fanfic communities - through webcomics, which really was, at least in my day, a spontaneous mixing of people, ethos, and techniques from Western comics, anime, SF/Fantasy, media fandom, and tech/math/science geekery into one big transformative pot, in a lot of ways. It didn't make the distinctions, either.

[holyschist]

Hmmm. I think that's true for me, but I definitely know geeks who aren't fannish and also fans who aren't terribly geeky. So--very similar communities in a lot of ways, with a lot of Venn diagram overlap.

I think history is my main fandom, actually, long before I got into "fandom".

[lady_ganesh]

one that has modern copyright/legal issues not unlike fandom's

Oh, the stories I could tell you from Ravelry.

[melannen]

Yeah, I used that as an example in the first posts' comments a few times, but it does fall under the "crossovers with fandom characters" rule too, which nearly everyone does agree is fic. So while it's a good example of the sort of thing someone might get up to, it doesn't make a proper type specimen.

I know I've seen authors doing this though; I just can't find any of them. (I think the more likely answer is that most authors don't post it online; the most we get about that stuff is usually offhand comments at signings.)

[majoline]

The moral of this story is Everything is Derivative. :)

[melannen]

I agree entirely. :D

[starlady]

I took the Con.txt survey, and now I think I have to go.

[melannen]

I believe that is the rule! :P (I think you would enjoy it.)

[starlady]

Based on the panels, I think I would too. (And I'm going to register tonight or tomorrow.)

[melannen]

Yay! There are going to be so many awesome DW people there! And I am going to embarass myself utterly in front of them, just you watch!

[starlady]

I am excited! (Not for the embarrassment, but for the people and the panels!)

[lady_ganesh]

An example of #3 is probably the American Girls books, set in a very specific time and place but with mostly (and often all) original characters.

[melannen]

And long before that was the A Little Maid series, which I read at the same age and did basically the same thing...

(Actually, the example I should have used is a book I loved at about the American Girls age, called "A Haunting in Williamsburg", which was not only set in Colonial Williamsburg, but was set in real buildings around Williamsburg accurate right down to the trees, shrubs, fast-food joints and floor plans - I checked, last time I visited. We took pictures.)

[lady_ganesh]

(Eee! It reminds me of what I just read this afternoon about Harriet the Spy, which you can also pretty much re-enact going about NYC.)