sarah eve kelly

I hate the free exchange of ideas.

More accurately, I hate people who go on about the free exchange of ideas.

Every morning I wake up and check my email. Sometimes I check Facebook too. I also check my LiveJournal friends list. I’ve only posted to LiveJournal about a half dozen times, but I have a small friends list, worth checking every day because these friends are effusive posters. This morning, the sun not fully up and my eyes not fully open, I read a post that made me angry enough to get up, get dressed, and get to work on time.

I have no objection to fanfiction qua fanfiction. The vast majority of it is awful enough to send one into palpitations, but some is good, and some few authors rise to the level of real excellence. Fanfiction is also interesting as a cultural phenomenon, because one can’t imagine networks of millions galvanizing paper-postage-pen-pal systems criss-crossing the planet: fanfic is a child of the internet.

It would be hypocritical of me, too, to over-criticise fanfiction because it is, in essence, what I write. What is historical fiction if not the ancestor of fanfiction? The only real difference is that instead of using the template of another person’s character or universe, one uses the template of pre-existent figures, eras, and locations.

The essay that got me hopping mad was called “Valuing the Work in Fanwork”. The friend from whom I retrieved the link called it “Fanfiction as Anti-Capitalist Subversion”. You can read it here. The piece – a very well-written one – posits that while fanfiction was originally seen as subversive because of its frequent sexual themes, the real subversion exists in “the nexus of product and practice”: viz. that people write stories and post them publicly without expectation of return, as opposed to the fiction shackled by the publishing industry, which operates on a retail basis according to what is saleable. That is to say, fanfiction authors do not expect financial return: for stories, for fanart, for LiveJournal icons, credit is expected and requested, as is feedback. Exchanges of stories or art happen constantly – arguably the biggest one, the Yuletide exchange, is going on right now.

How wonderful – inspiring, even – that so many millions of words, ideas, story arcs exist completely free of charge to anyone who has a computer and an internet connection. Here is the problem that I have with this quasi-utopian socialist rendering of the world of fanfiction: arguably the only reason that fanfic is free is because it cannot legally be sold.

I say this because there is no such free exchange of original fiction. There could be two reasons for this: first, fanfic has a built-in audience. Anyone who enjoys the show, the film, the book in question is going to have at least an initial interest in fanfiction, even if it is just a morbid one. The second reason, though, is that people who write original fiction are saving it in hopes of publication. I have never met or otherwise come into personal contact with a single writer of fanfiction who didn’t aspire to become a “real writer”. I don’t necessarily agree with the distinction; as I’ve said, there are fanfiction writers out there who are more than talented enough to withstand the scrutiny of agents, publishers, and the book-buying public. In fact, there are many who have voluntarily subjected themselves to that scrutiny. There are several examples of former BNFs (“Big Name Fans”) who, having accrued an enormous fanfiction audience, have gone on to publish their original fiction. The only fan writer whom I actively follow is a young woman named Sarah Rees Brennan, known as Maya to her LiveJournal public, who has written Harry Potter fanfiction for at least five years. Here is someone who (as her stories make obvious) writes compulsively for the joy of it, who is enormously talented, and who has penned an original trilogy that became the object of a six-figure bidding war eventually won by Simon & Schuster.

Until I read this essay I thought all writers – serious fan writers and the serious other kind – were united in demonising the publishers, The Man. That readers and writers of books somehow found their way into the firing line had escaped me. The author writes, “owning things is the ultimate value in capitalism – even intangible things like ideas, which ironically only reach maximum value when shared.” I posit that it is possible – even obvious – that ideas are entities that can be both shared and owned, as they are in fanfiction as well as everywhere else. The author does, after all, rightly imply that plagiarism, even if it isn’t actionable, is just as serious a moral offence in fanfiction as it is in original fiction. Fanfiction is there for the enjoyment of its readers, but it does not become the property of its readers any more than a book on a shelf does.

As an aside: Jesus Christ. Does the person who wrote this piece sincerely believe that writers striving for publication are in it for the money? Godless capitalists out for blood and profit? Really? Anyone who has tried and succeeded – and, God knows, anyone who has tried and failed – knows that the decision to write is one that is fraught with frustration, humiliation, and poverty before it leads anywhere else.

To suggest that, because the works available at your local bookshop have run a gauntlet of professional editing, haggling, agents’ rates and translation rights, they are somehow automatically good is an obvious fallacy. I would much rather pay twenty bucks for If You’ve A Ready Mind than for The Da Vinci Code. But the truth is that fanfiction has as little – usually far less – a chance of being readable, because it exists in a universe of friendlier checks and balances.

Beyond this, most people who want to write for a living want to write for a living. There are certain reasons for not wanting to pursue profit for fanfiction, even if such a pursuit were possible: I’ve spoken to people who enjoy the freedom to write what they choose, no matter how small the audience, to people who don’t want to feel the pressure of deadlines and quality control. But if copyright allowed, a market for fanfiction would exist. Who amongst its authors would actually turn the money down, given the option?

If anyone is still reading this page I will probably incur nine kinds of wrath for having written this. But it’s OK – I’m not getting paid! I can say whatever I want!

Till next time, if God wills it, &c &c.

Related posts:

1. found wanting
2. eta
3. corners
4. no service
5. drawing a line for historical fiction