Home again, home again.

[alex_beecroft]

Jiggety jig.

We are safely returned from Cornwall, bringing home with us patchy tans, several pounds of extra weight due to ice-creams and cream-teas, soaked and salty wetsuits, and a sheaf of photos that need sorting through before I post any on here.

(Not one of our photos of the Minack Theatre. Ours include the stage hands setting up backdrops for The Book of Mirrors, a steampunk musical. But as I say, they’re still in the camera.)

I just about managed to keep up with my more urgent emails while I was there, but it’s hard typing a cogent message on a mobile phone, so I’m catching up with my blog posts now I’m home.

Speaking of which, here I am guesting on Elin Gregory’s blog, being put through the ordeal of the Comfy Chair:

http://elingregory.wordpress.com/2012/08/11/today-in-the-comfy-chair-alex-beecroft/

where I’m talking about the problem I have with villains. (They will keep blocking the chimney when they try to break into the place. Why can’t they just come to the front door like the salesmen?)

Mrs Giggles reviews Bomber’s Moon and gives it a mark of 83 (out of 100.) I don’t think I really do it for her, but many thanks to her for reviewing it

Clare London sent me an interesting link to a Guardian article on fan fiction

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/aug/13/fan-fiction-fifty-shades-grey

in which, apparently, the mainstreaming of fanfiction spells the end of literature as we know it. IMO, this doesn’t sound like a bad thing. My only real interest in 50 Shades of Grey comes from noting that it at least proves definitively that there’s nothing illegal about filing the serial numbers off your fanfic and publishing it. If this isn’t a legal precedent, I don’t know what is.

Mirrored from Alex Beecroft - Author of Gay Historical and Fantasy Fiction.

Comments

[sharpiefan]

Haven't read 50 Shades and don't intend to, but this bit of yours caught my eye: My only real interest in 50 Shades of Grey comes from noting that it at least proves definitively that there’s nothing illegal about filing the serial numbers off your fanfic and publishing it. If this isn’t a legal precedent, I don’t know what is.

I thought Naomi Novak already did that with the Temeraire series? As I understand it, they started life as an AU fanfic based on the Aubrey/Maturin series of novels by Patrick O'Brian? (I've only read the first half or so of the first Temeraire book and couldn't really see it myself... I'll have to give them another go, I think.) Of course, it might simply be that 50 Shades is more... mainstream than AoS fiction and fanfic.

[alex_beecroft]

I think you probably had to be in the know - someone who had known the original fanfic version - to know that the Temeraire series was O'Brian fanfic. They could very easily have been simply original fiction set during the Napoleonic wars, so they flew under the radar more. (I've read quite a few of them and honestly see no resemblance to PoB's books at all.)

With 50 shades, it's such common knowledge that it's in all the newspapers. You could definitely argue that the issue hadn't been forced up to now. But now, everybody knows, there's no plausible deniability, millions of dollars are at stake, the world is watching, and still there's been no lawsuit. Lots of gnashing of teeth, but no legal action, and you'd have thought that if there was going to be legal action it should have happened by now.

[gehayi]

From what I've heard, Meyer is unlikely to sue over the Fifty Shades trilogy; James removed pretty much every obvious identifier of Twilight from her story. The original fanfic, "Master of the Universe," was an all-human AU. Automatically, that eliminated vampires, Quileute werewolves on the La Push reservation, a treaty between the vampires and werewolves, the Volturi, immortal children and imprinting. She moved the setting from Forks, Washington to Portland, Oregon, Vancouver, Washington, and Seattle, Washington. She changed the characters' names; she altered the color of Not-Edward's eyes and his sister's height. She made the characters older (in their twenties, rather than teenagers) and took the story out of high school. A Twifan would still see the similarities between Fifty Shades and the Twilight series; there are sections that are amazingly close to the Twilight series in terms of plot and content; James didn't knock herself out filing off the serial numbers. But a casual reader who isn't familiar with Twilight wouldn't know how close the two series are. It would be very hard to bring a successful lawsuit, and I think Meyer knows that. She's certainly gone on record as saying that James' characters and hers have nothing in common. (It's demonstrably not true, but what else can she say?)

However, Meyer doesn't like the Fifty Shades series. She and her inner circle have apparently developed a code word for discussing it ("banker"), because the words "Fifty Shades" sets Meyer's teeth on edge. (I saw this in an interview.)

[alex_beecroft]

Yes, it's got to be difficult proving any connection between a vampire novel and a BDSM contemporary, once the connecting tissue of specific names and locations has been removed. But it's nice, if you have a fanfic you fancy adapting, to have such a high profile test case. Imagine how many people would be tearing their hair if it had gone the other way. Naomi Novik for a start. The publishers of all those 'Pride and Prejudice and Zombies' books might be looking a bit nervous too.

[gehayi]

The publishers of all those 'Pride and Prejudice and Zombies' books might be looking a bit nervous too.

I doubt it, since Pride and Prejudice is in the public domain. You have a lot more latitude with fanfic if the work is in the public domain already. And the Temeraire series may be set in the Napoleonic wars, but the fact that she introduced military dragons that could talk changed the very nature of the stories, as well as giving her new plots to play with.

That is not the case with E.L. James. She not only doesn't create anything new, she's planning on rewriting all three books of her trilogy from the point of view of her male protagonist--an idea that she ripped off of Meyer.

I don't care if her thing was originally fanfic. I respect fanfic; fanfic, whether in its original form or recycled, can be awesome.

But James'...thing...is not only not awesome, it is not even marginally competent. James wrote an uncreative, ill-researched, plotless trilogy containing badly written and amazingly vanilla sex, wooden characters, conflation of BDSM with non-consensual physical and emotional abuse, and the message that being willing to put up being hit in exchange for being fucked equals true love. I can only conclude that the fans of the series never read any porn before and don't know that this stinks. And I'm very, very scared that someone is going to get hurt or killed because she mistook an abuser like the male protagonist for her BDSM true love. (And abusers who pass themselves off as being into BDSM and who prey on inexperienced girls? From what I'm told by friends in the Lifestyle, they're pretty common.)

If there was going to be any kind of test case, I wish that it had been a far more imaginative and creative work than this.

[alex_beecroft]

Well, it's the fact that EL James didn't change very much and hasn't added 'literary value' or mindblowing ideas (such as Napoleonic dragons) and has fanficced a work still under copyright which makes this such a great test case for the legal issues. Simply in terms of litmus test for whether or not repurposed fanfic is legal or not, it could not be a more perfect test.

That doesn't mean I'm saying that 50 Shades is a good book - I don't know, I haven't read it. I haven't read Twilight either. I'm quite prepared to believe that it's as bad as you say. It's probably not a great ambassador for the creativity, literary and social value of fanfic, and it's unlikely to make literary snobs grudgingly admit that some fanfiction can be excellent.

But literary snobs are never going to admit that there's any value in a form of writing done for free by women, usually based on genre entertainment and including sex. Literary snobs base their entire self-image on being better than the people who actually enjoy genre fiction. We've never needed their respect before, so 50 Shades not making them give it to us now makes no real difference.