It would just be nice to think that I could put my real name on my writing and not risk a law suit for it, and not worry that in this very discussion I'm breaking the ettiquette of fannish self-preservation by indicating to some PTB that my journal is a place to start looking for this stuff.
This makes sense. I write under two or three names -- Michelle West, Michelle Sagara, and Michelle Sagara West (the latter not on purpose, but it happens anyway <wry g>). I would not, however, mind writing under a different name again -- I kind of want the stories to be written, and to be out there; my name is sort of an afterthought. If that makes sense.
This isn't in any way meant to diminish the desire to be associated with your own work; it is work; I can't imagine that it's hugely less work than the work I do. Well, okay, SUN SWORD was 420,000 words long (the last of six volumes on its own, that is), but in principle.
Oh, I see. They relate to it as is. But parody does change it, while still relating to the original. This is why, to my mind, fanfic *is* parody -- albeit the unfunny kind, like the Wind Done Gone.
I don't consider most fanfic to be done with an intent to poke fun, which I generally consider parody to be. Sometimes the "fun" is just cruel, but there. The changes made are changes that are recognizeable riffs on what's there. I don't consider the emotional intent of parody to be the emotional intent of most fanfic -- but I don't read fanfic, so I'm making base assumptions that could be entirely wrong, wrong, wrong. Sadly, it would not be the first time I've been wrong.
In the case of fanfic, the work is the stepping stone, the foundation, the thing people stand on while they branch out; the anchor to which they tie their own skills, developing their own voices and abilities.
*nodsnods* Yes, I agree completely. But I guess, to me, that's part of why I used the term artistic conversation -- not just the analysis of a particular work, but the way one work inspires the next work inspires the next work, in agreement or in rebuttal, or some of each.
Ah! Got it. Literary dialogue! The light dawns. I have, in the words of Pratchett, a mental sunrise. Where each particular fandom is a microcosm of the larger literary tradition.
Some of my favorite pieces of art are reworkings of other pieces of art -- Grendel, Till We Have Faces, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Wicked, etc. A lot of those originals are in the public domain, of course. And some of the others use other's characters in ways that the courts have, in the past, allowed. But it's getting harder and harder to do that.
Part of the reason these work so well, though, is that those works are widely enough known that there's a resonance; the work comes as a revelation that's almost mythic or archetypal in force. It's not a literary dialogue, but a dialogue with our past, with our possible naivete, with what we've bought into at other times.
Fifty years from now, if Buffy were part of the collective cultural psyche, it would be possible -- I think -- to have that same overarching effect. I know that it wouldn't be possible for it to have that effect on me at the moment, because Buffy is of this moment; the time for turning that over, for seeing what lies underneath and is relevant to a different generation with different myths and experiences, isn't yet; she's ours.
No conclusion to come to, I'm just noodling along as best I can.
Me too. The point about public domain is a good one -- but for me, I see the later works working because the note of cultural relevance, the shift of perspective, is in part generational.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2004-10-20 03:24 pm (UTC)This makes sense. I write under two or three names -- Michelle West, Michelle Sagara, and Michelle Sagara West (the latter not on purpose, but it happens anyway <wry g>). I would not, however, mind writing under a different name again -- I kind of want the stories to be written, and to be out there; my name is sort of an afterthought. If that makes sense.
This isn't in any way meant to diminish the desire to be associated with your own work; it is work; I can't imagine that it's hugely less work than the work I do. Well, okay, SUN SWORD was 420,000 words long (the last of six volumes on its own, that is), but in principle.
Oh, I see. They relate to it as is. But parody does change it, while still relating to the original. This is why, to my mind, fanfic *is* parody -- albeit the unfunny kind, like the Wind Done Gone.
I don't consider most fanfic to be done with an intent to poke fun, which I generally consider parody to be. Sometimes the "fun" is just cruel, but there. The changes made are changes that are recognizeable riffs on what's there. I don't consider the emotional intent of parody to be the emotional intent of most fanfic -- but I don't read fanfic, so I'm making base assumptions that could be entirely wrong, wrong, wrong. Sadly, it would not be the first time I've been wrong.
In the case of fanfic, the work is the stepping stone, the foundation, the thing people stand on while they branch out; the anchor to which they tie their own skills, developing their own voices and abilities.
*nodsnods* Yes, I agree completely. But I guess, to me, that's part of why I used the term artistic conversation -- not just the analysis of a particular work, but the way one work inspires the next work inspires the next work, in agreement or in rebuttal, or some of each.
Ah! Got it. Literary dialogue! The light dawns. I have, in the words of Pratchett, a mental sunrise. Where each particular fandom is a microcosm of the larger literary tradition.
Some of my favorite pieces of art are reworkings of other pieces of art -- Grendel, Till We Have Faces, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Wicked, etc. A lot of those originals are in the public domain, of course. And some of the others use other's characters in ways that the courts have, in the past, allowed. But it's getting harder and harder to do that.
Part of the reason these work so well, though, is that those works are widely enough known that there's a resonance; the work comes as a revelation that's almost mythic or archetypal in force. It's not a literary dialogue, but a dialogue with our past, with our possible naivete, with what we've bought into at other times.
Fifty years from now, if Buffy were part of the collective cultural psyche, it would be possible -- I think -- to have that same overarching effect. I know that it wouldn't be possible for it to have that effect on me at the moment, because Buffy is of this moment; the time for turning that over, for seeing what lies underneath and is relevant to a different generation with different myths and experiences, isn't yet; she's ours.
No conclusion to come to, I'm just noodling along as best I can.
Me too. The point about public domain is a good one -- but for me, I see the later works working because the note of cultural relevance, the shift of perspective, is in part generational.