When Guys Write Fanfiction
| Meta | |
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| Title: | When Guys Write Fanfiction |
| Creator: | Jean Marie Ward |
| Date(s): | 2000 |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom: | |
| Topic: | |
| External Links: | When Guys Write Fanfiction |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
When Guys Write Fanfiction is a 2000 essay by Jean Marie Ward.
The topics are fandom and profit, copyright, fanfiction, and fan fiction as a primarily female pursuit.
Excerpts
Running a magazine -- hard copy or electronic -- gives a body a profound appreciation for the wonders of copyright and the protection it affords the media David in a world of corporate Goliaths. Add to that over 20 years as a government "communications manager" condemned to watch others use her words to the greater glorification of their careers, and you end up with a person who possesses a profound appreciation for the importance of intellectual property rights.
Nevertheless, I never understood the rabid reaction of some writers to not-for-profit fan fiction. No one starts the writing life as an original. We all model our first efforts after something. Those who don't use novels, television series or films retell ancient myths and family legends or try to explain the events in favorite pictures.
But these anonymous Arthurian writers didn't imitate their models exactly. They introduced new characters -- "Mary Sues" for "canonical" Arthurian heroes to fight and fall in love with. These writers obsessed over pageant, character emblems and emotional motivation. They even flavored their stories with not-so-discreet hints of homoeroticism, coming as close to Slash as possible in the time B.K/S. (Before Kirk/Spock). In other words, these women wrote fan fiction, and no modern Arthurian retelling -- from Tennyson's to Marion Zimmer Bradley's -- could exist without them.
You could call fan fiction an extreme case of imitation as the sincerest form of flattery. Even today, as long as no one attempts to sell their unsanctioned stories as originals, nobody gets hurt. No one mistakes even the most meticulous attempts at recreating a treasured book or television series for the real thing. Most of these efforts never see the light of day, much less publication. A few find homes at fan sites, and if luck smiles on us and the writer, the encouragement received for "getting it right" in that X-Files fanfic will prod the writer into attempting something bigger, better and all his or her own.
Writers who storm their fan sites with intent to eradicate all evidence of fan fictional activity face an even greater risk. By taking direct action to protest the "misuse" of their characters, not only do they risk losing fans, they leave themselves wide open to future accusations of plagiarism.
By complaining about someone else's version, these writers provide incontrovertible proof that they read and absorbed the various elements of the fan fic writer's story, even if only subconsciously. A far wiser course would be to accept the flattery of the homage, avoid the imitations and let your publisher take care of the legal aspects. Publishers -- often franchise holders themselves -- live for this sort of thing.
Yes, I said fan fiction. Just like your teenage cousin's Highlander/Lestat pastiche or all those anonymous Arthurian romances. These efforts differ not a whit from meta-fiction except for one thing: nine to one, a woman wrote them.
When women write in imitation of their personal obsession, people call it fan fiction and act as if the writer should be embarrassed by it. When men write it, they call it meta-fiction -- and pay men a great deal of money to write more.
You know, as a woman and a writer, that bothers me.
Fan Comments
[Alan]:To paraphrase Will Rogers, I never meta-fiction I didn't like. But if my work is going to be mentioned editorially, someone ought to at least review it in the magazine so everyone knows what we're talking about.
And where are these big bucks I'm supposed to be making?
[Jean Marie Ward, essay's author]:Alan,
My sympathies on the lack of big bucks, but trust me, compared to nothing (the going advance and royalty figure for fan fiction), any advance and royalty contract looks good.