It happens sometimes. Fandoms just explode. Natural causes.
—Repo Man/Fic mashup
SOMETIMES FANDOMS EXPLODE by growing exponentially and becoming large enough to change culture and drive wide-ranging economic growth. And sometimes these same fandoms explode in conflict.
The causes really are natural.
As we saw with Snowqueens Icedragon and Sebastian Robichaud, even close friends in fandom communities have very different approaches to and feelings about the communities. Sometimes these differences even end such friendships. And as for writers who aren’t close friends? Snowqueens Icedragon and AngstGoddess were never going to be besties. As we just saw (in “A Fandom Exchange” between E. L. James and Sylvain Reynard), even their first interactions betray a certain tension.
Fanfiction makes for a lot of strange bedfellows. It’s known for that, right? But so do fanfiction communities—where bed should be understood to mean both the vast, rumpled playground of a common source everyone has been rolling in, and also the thing that, once made, you must lie in. The thing that, if you were a dog, instinct would tell you not to foul.
What’s “fouling it” to you, though, is “feathering the nest” to someone else. Both feel like instinct. Both are defended as such.
In these communities, where rules are taken to be self-evident but are not written down (or are written down but routinely ignored, until suddenly they are not, as has sometimes been the case with FanFiction.Net) the misunderstandings that arise are colossal. They hurt. People leave. People are damaged, and damage others.
I began this book with a discussion of a fic set in the middle of a fandom conflict for a reason. These conflicts—flame wars, wanks, kerfuffles—can be as important as they are depressing and aggravating for all concerned. What sometimes seems like squabbling over petty issues is almost always a proxy for large, unresolved, and perhaps unresolvable concerns. Here I want to look at two of the best-known conflicts in the biggest fandoms. Each involves a now-famous bestselling writer; each turns on a combination of interpersonal difference and real disagreement about the nature of fanfiction, intellectual property, authorship, and community.
The Cassandra Claire Chronicles
Before she was Cassandra Clare, author of the internationally bestselling Mortal Instruments series, Cassie Claire was a Big Name Fan in the Harry Potter fandom—by most accounts, the very biggest name of all. Beginning in 2000 with “Draco Dormiens,” Claire wrote and posted The Draco Trilogy, which ultimately amounted to nearly a million words of fic. The Trilogy was enormously popular and served—like NautiBitz’s stories for Buffy and AngstGoddess’ “Wide Awake” for Twilight—as a gateway fic for many, many readers and writers.
While not slash itself, the Trilogy contained enough homoerotic subtext between the Draco and Harry characters to stir up controversy (as well as to inspire a very popular “leather pants Draco” trope). Claire’s story transformed the fanfiction afterlife of Draco Malfoy, making him into a more sympathetic, and much sexier, leather-clad bad boy quite distinct from Rowling’s depiction. Claire’s Draco became fanon, a widely accepted and often preferred alternate to official book or movie canon.
Readers of both this fanfiction trilogy and Claire’s (or rather, Clare’s) professionally published, bestselling Mortal Instruments series have noted parallels between the two, but such commonalities are not the major source of the Cassie Claire “scandal.” The controversy surrounding Claire began much earlier, and initially involved FanFiction.Net. In 2001, Claire’s Draco series was pulled from the site for violating its posted guidelines. The charge: plagiarism.
A reader brought to FanFiction.Net’s attention that a chapter of Claire’s fic incorporated elements of a scene from an out-of-print novel by Pamela Dean—reproducing both the scene’s structure and several verbatim or minimally altered passages. The reader, whose screen name was Avocado, felt the attribution given in the fic was incomplete and did not acknowledge the extent of Claire’s debt to its source. Avocado has elsewhere self-identified as a member of the professional organization Romance Writers of America, a detail suggesting a sense of common cause with rightsholders over amateur fic writers. Avocado also listed the Dean novel in question, The Hidden Land, as a great favorite. Pairing passages from Claire’s fic with passages from Dean’s novel, as Avocado has done, indeed reveals direct quotes, paraphrases, and similar scene structures.
For many of Claire’s readers, this was not new information. The issue of quotation and attribution, both generally and with specific reference to Dean, had already been discussed publicly in Claire’s Yahoo! comment thread, where the fic was also posted. Claire credited Dean’s work, but vaguely, initially without the author’s name but later more fully. She often quoted from the works of others and did so openly, explaining her practice in her author’s notes. She later suggested that in the case of the Dean passage, she’d gotten confused on the pages of a notebook and hadn’t realized that some of what was written there—in proximity to some of her reactions to the Dean novel—was quotation rather than her own writing.
Avocado’s report to ff.net, then, was less a case of discovery than “alerting the authorities,” who agreed Claire’s use of Dean’s material was a problem. They removed Claire’s work without warning, and despite being one of the most popular authors on the site, she was also banned. FanFiction.Net’s terms of service explicitly prohibit copyright infringement and warn that any content proven to infringe can be taken down without notice.
But wait. Doesn’t the whole site infringe? Well, no, probably not. Each case is different; some fic is clearly fair use, some parodic, some wildly transformative. Still, doesn’t a lot of it? Probably. Who knows? It’s never been tested. Copyright is a thorny, widely misunderstood, variously interpreted code that ultimately comes down to case-by-case instances of use, and people don’t (yet) litigate about fanfiction because there hasn’t been much profit. Rightly or wrongly, fanfiction’s not-for-profit status has been widely understood as the cornerstone of its toleration by the rightsholders at whose pleasure fanfiction is often (and often erroneously) understood to exist. This belief is so firmly entrenched, however, that anyone threatening the uneasy détente between rightsholders and fan writers attracts the ire of other fans, who believe the survival of the fanfiction community to be at stake. For this reason, fans can sometimes police the bounds of copyright and intellectual property (as they understand it) much more stringently than those with an actual legal stake in the property in question. Similarly, many—like, perhaps, Avocado—did not want to see fanfiction challenge the copyright status quo because they saw themselves aligned with rightsholders on principle—again, regardless of any position the rightsholders in question may or may not have taken.
The science fiction writer and industry blogger John Scalzi took up this fanfic controversy after Claire received a publishing contract for what would become her Mortal Instruments series. His response and that of others in the comment thread underscored the disconnect between the world of conventional professional publishing and fanfiction. Despite his dismissive, damning, yet tolerant attitude toward fanfiction, his reaction to the controversy aligns more closely with Claire’s than with her detractors’. In a 2006 post entitled “Crimes of Fanfic,” Scalzi explains that he’s received a number of emails asking him his opinions on “a long-running kerfuffle in the Harry Potter fandom about a particular fanfic author who allegedly plagiarized other works in the construction of her own fanfic story.” He reacts with a shrug: “I’m not feeling a whole bunch of outrage here.” He doesn’t see how a fanfic writer’s actions could affect anything outside of fanfic, and also doesn’t agree that “this fanfic writer needs to be punished or humiliated prior to their formal publication.” Scalzi doesn’t care about what happens in fanfic because “almost all of it is entirely illegal to begin with”; ethics within the fanfiction community can only be “honor among thieves.” After all, he argues, “If you’re already wantonly violat
ing copyright, what’s a little plagiarism to go along with it? Honestly. In for a penny, in for a pound.”
He suggests in a mildly threatening vein, however, and in keeping with those who are nervous about disturbing the détente of the status quo, that if people are going to ask him to comment on plagiarism in fanfiction, he’s going to need to weigh in on the “appropriation of copyrighted character and settings.” In other words, let sleeping dogs lie. Don’t wake the grown-ups. He adds:
On the other portion of the issue, should what an author does within the confines of the fanfic sandbox have any effect on what happens when they start to do original fiction? I think not, personally. What happens in fanfic, stays in fanfic. I’m perfectly content to think of fanfic as a sort of free play area where anything goes and what goes on has no bearing in the real world of writing.
All condescension aside, this attitude also confirms fic writers’ sense that all is well as long as they keep their world separate, don’t talk about it, and don’t consider it as applying to the “real world of writing.” My research suggests these factors played a role in some reactions to Claire’s practice, but attracting unfriendly attention from rightsholders did not seem to be the main issue in the Cassandra Claire controversy. And as for Scalzi, he clearly wants to avoid appearing to legitimize some fanfic practices by condemning others.
For the record, Scalzi’s views appear to have evolved over time. In 2007 he said it’s fine with him to fic his work but claimed all rights and cautioned against trying to profit; in 2010 he agreed with critics that his Fuzzy Nation “reboot” of H. Piper Beam’s universe was (licensed) fanfic, and he also hosted a Lupus Foundation fund-raiser inviting readers to fic a picture of Wil Wheaton riding a kitten unicorn and wielding a spear against a John Scalzi!orc. Most recently, he also wrote thoughtfully about Amazon’s Kindle Worlds.98 Many people’s opinions on fanfic have evolved in the past few years; the comment threads as well as Scalzi’s own posts provide historical snapshots of how attitudes played out—in the science fiction community, at least—at different times.
In complex, opinionated communities, there are always complex motivations, and plenty of Claire’s detractors were already angry for other reasons. Many disagreed with her position on various relationship pairings, both het and slash. Some were unhappy because she was a Big Name Fan whom they believed had undue influence. Others felt slighted, excluded. The dynamics surrounding Big Name Fans are a constant in fandom, and the attention they attract can be both positive and very, very negative. Sometimes this negative attention is targeted at real-life identities, with threats to professional and, in some extreme cases, to physical lives as well—as in Claire’s case, according to her agent, Barry Goldblatt, who weighs in on the comment thread of Scalzi’s post (Claire’s accuser Avocado is there as well). The anger and complaints of “small name fans” are often dismissed as jealousy, but like most fandom conflicts, these feelings usually turn on disagreements over big issues: the nature of fandom, fanfiction, community, originality, and relationships.
Community dynamics shape individual reactions in any fandom, and this controversy was no exception. Courtney Hilden was thirteen at the time the Claire scandal erupted, and in her words, it “unleashed chaos on the fandom.” Hilden had been reading the Draco Trilogy when it was removed, and so was happy when it found a new home at the Harry Potter fanfic archive FictionAlley, a site formed (or at least hurried along a bit) by trouble with FanFiction.Net. Hilden said she understood the controversy at the time to be about the misattribution of a single quotation, but she later came to believe it was more extensive. Today a graduate student in English, Hilden now recognizes how fandom social dynamics shaped her opinions of individuals and stories. She remembers the allure of fitting in with the people who seemed to “run the show”:
At the time of the scandal, I would have put Claire as a BNF, and I’m at a loss to find anyone else in the fandom who ever came close to the level of notoriety that Claire had. Even though I didn’t know the term BNF, part of the fascination for me was these fans who seemed to hold so much sway over other fans. I think at the time I thought of it in terms of popularity, like one would think of a popularity contest in high school. And like most narratives about high school popularity, I wanted to be one of these popular fans, so I followed them around, like a lackey. Interestingly enough, I was never much a lackey in my actual high school, because I didn’t like any of the popular girls enough to care what they were up to. I don’t even remember their names.99
While some fans respond to that kind of hierarchy and aspire only to be included, others react very, very resentfully, having had enough of what they see as bullying or controlling behavior in high school. These dynamics certainly contributed to the overall sense of controversy surrounding Claire, but they don’t fully explain the strong feelings involved.
The fact is, some people saw Claire as a plagiarist, and were angry—even though none of those angry people appeared to be the writer Pamela Dean herself.
Incidentally, about homage: Claire’s incompletely attributed Dean quotation was not an isolated incident. Cassandra Claire openly and frequently incorporated passages of dialogue—and sometimes ideas and rough outlines of scenes—from popular sources such as Buffy, Black Adder, and Stargate—often without attribution. She mentioned that she did so in her author’s notes, inviting readers to play “find the quotation.” Other fandom writers did the same thing; it was a fandom game, at least in some circles. Nonetheless, other readers—perhaps less plugged-in, less active participants in the community, or at least in that part of it—were shocked to hear of this practice. Some of these readers were very young, and some may simply not have known the sources or recognized them out of context. Others (who did know, who had recognized, who liked the game and participated) felt it was impossible that anyone could not know. Claire was open about it. The game was a nod to a common pop culture language—but of course, not everyone speaks the same language, ever.
To further complicate matters, the various pop culture sources that generate this language are also full of homage. Just recently, there was a Twin Peaks episode of Psych and a Castle homage to Rear Window; more contemporaneous with the Claire controversy, there was the X-Files’ Frankenstein episode, “The Post-modern Prometheus”; Buffy’s calling the Slayer’s best friends “the Scooby Gang”; Moulin Rouge, with its “jukebox musical” take on the Orpheus myth, as sung to ’80s pop music and set in nineteenth-century Montmartre. In my field, postmodernism itself has been defined (both positively and negatively) in terms of such mix-and-match pastiche. A later section of this volume takes up these issues as they pertain to nonfanfiction writing contexts, but suffice it to say, quotation and appropriation are very, very common. While rights and use are only sometimes negotiated or litigated, terms of such negotiations are rarely visible to casual viewers.
There doesn’t seem to be any question that Claire was incorporating passages from other writers and doing so quite openly, if not always specifically citing them. The question—the controversy—had to do with how readers interpreted this act, whether they felt they were part of a game or were duped. The reactions of all sides beg a variety of questions. Why was this act—mixing other sources in—different from the whole fanfiction enterprise to begin with? For some readers, a whole set of unwritten rules seemed to have been violated. For others, it was business as usual—a sense that remix culture what was fanfiction did, that it was all noncommercial—and they were shocked that anyone could think they were doing anything wrong.
Looking back at the Harry Potter blogs and archives, what I see is a lot of people who felt the need to draw a firm line about what is and what is not OK, with little agreement on where and how such a line should be drawn. Even so, there’s a sense from the tone of these discussions that the line should be obvious to everyone.
It isn’t.
It might be logical to assume that a writer like Claire, who rose to fandom prominence on a story th
at made frequent and sometimes unattributed use of existing creative content, would hold a liberal view of similar use of her own fanfiction (and she’s encouraging to fanfiction based on her published work). It might be logical to assume that in a fandom where tropes are exchanged, and characterizations and storylines are by definition shared among thousands, writers would recognize a certain amount of sprawl in ideas as natural and inevitable, or be flattered by any imitation or reworking. Some of the writers in this volume have expressed just such sentiments.
Cassandra Claire—in her fandom incarnation, at any rate—didn’t always take this position. When another writer began posting a fic Claire felt was too close to one of her own, she requested it be taken down. The writer complied initially (the two were friends), but then reposted it when the friendship fell apart, and Claire was unhappy with this decision. I can’t pass judgment on the specifics of that situation—I wasn’t there, haven’t read the works, have no comment. But it’s a good example of how fanfiction does indeed confuse and destabilize notions of authorship and ownership in ways fanfic authors themselves are not always consistent or clear on.
From the perspective of both reader and fan, I understand the anxiety around a fan writer presenting another fan writer’s work as their own. Credit is the only currency most fan writers will ever receive in exchange for their work. Paying homage to work that has already been published, from which an author has already reaped rewards, and giving full credit to that work may seem different than sharing credit with another fan writer in an all-credit, cashless economy. Similarly, to many people, lifting actual expression (words or sequencing) feels different from borrowing story, ideas, or inspiration—and the law marks a difference here as well. On the other hand, there are different conventions for fair use, transformative use, and critical use. Today in fandom, remix challenges that (openly, avowedly) rewrite other people’s fic are quite common—a sign of respect. Context matters. In my profession, incompletely citing my own work would be seriously frowned on, and could even lead to charges of academic fraud. In political speeches, on the other hand, lifting material from other politicians’ speeches seems fairly widespread (ask Joe Biden).
Fic: Why Fanfiction Is Taking Over the World Page 27