DW1: AUTHORIZED!

[Logan Darklighter]

Hey Bob. You might've heard that I'm pretty heavily involved in the Titan Networks these days trying to save City of Heroes. 

Well so is Mercedes Lackey. 

Just thought you'd be kinda tickled at the following exchange, which went WAY off topic due to a tangent that I unwittingly provided. 

The thread where this was posted is here.

But the relevant bit doesn't start until page 3 or so. 

I'll quote it here: 
(BTW - Victoria Victrix is Mercedes Lackey)

Atlantea
But seriously, yes. VV - you are awesome. I've thought that long before I knew you played City of Heroes. Even when I disagreed with the stance that you used to hold on fanfic, I still thought it. One of my favorite authors plays the game? AWESOME. 

And you've been incredible with your support of the movement. 

If TonyV is the head and the brains and the drive of this movement, you're most certainly the heart and the inspiration and the love. 

(*Edit: Er... not to say you don't have a lot of the brains too. Certainly more than mine! Just... yeah. I think you get what I'm saying.)

Segev
I hope I'm not stepping in it here to ask, but...what is VV's stance on fanfic? (The one with which Atlantea indicated she disagreed)

Atlantea
Yeah - VV herself could tell you much better. But a thumbnail sketch from a layperson like me goes thusly - 

VV legally CAN'T read fanfic of her own stuff. 

Here's what I remember. Bad Memory disclaimer applies!

There was a legal furball between a friend of hers - Marion Zimmer Bradley (MZB) and a fan of MZB's work where the fan had written a piece of fanfic and some of the things in one of MZB's later works vaguely (VERY vaguely - as in you had to squint HARD to see it and even then...) appeared just enough close to the ideas in the fanwork...  

Basically MZB had a trusting relationship with her fans and she was also an editor and IIRC encouraged fan writers to develop their original ideas. That relationship was taken advantage of by this one person... Well it got ugly in a legal sense and actually prevented one of MZB's novels from ever seeing the light of day. 

Mercedes Lackey (VV) was not directly involved, but she SAW it happen and MZB was a good friend. (In fact IIRC wasn't MZB was one of the people directly responsible for ML's first publish of the Arrows trilogy?) 

VV for several years (over a decade I think) felt it necessary to discourage all fanfic based on Valdemar for concern something like the above could happen. 

Until recently where a legal way of doing so that wasn't a threat was established using the Creative Commons rules. See here at VV's website. 

http://www.mercedeslackey.com/news.html

And look at the bottom. 

Now - I didn't agree completely with VV's stance on that through the years. Mainly I thought she might have been a little over the top with it. But I certainly understood where she was coming from once I heard the story. 

Mainly I heard about it because the fanfic Drunkard's Walk about a cross-dimensional displacee named Douglas Sangnoir (Looney Toons) had as a canon element his first dimensional cross-rip visit was to Valdemar and out of respect, the author never actually wrote that segment. But started with the SECOND one, where he wound up in the world of Bubblegum Crisis.  

(BTW - I highly recommend Drunkard's Walk. It's very well written. And if you want I'll post a link to the page. But I may be biased since I'm one of the pre-readers on it.  ;D In fact the author - Bob Shroeck is a personal friend and my Supergroup leader in City of Heroes. And I'm proud to say I'm the guy who dragged him and the rest of the pre-reader crew for DW into playing City of Heroes with me.    )

Now - take everything I said above and file it mostly under SPOTTY MEMORY for I fear I'm glossing over or doing a disservice to VV.

SHE should tell you the story really. Not me. I only tell it from my POV to explain the "didn't entirely agree" statement above etc etc. 

So take this not just with a grain of salt, but take the entire shaker! Okay?

Victoria Victrix
I have to say, that I was always in favor of fanfic; after all I got my start writing it.  Darkover, Star Wars, Cthulhu Mythos, a little Indiana Jones...  Like MZB, I encouraged it.  Until Le Debacle.  Short form was that Marion read a piece by someone in the Darkover fan circles, liked how the author treated Lew Alton, and offered what was the usual arrangement, an acknowledgement of where the idea came from in the book that Marion was going to write.  Because, face it, it isn't the idea that is the work, it is the execution of the idea.  There was no offer of collaboration.  The author in question demanded full collaboration and payment, and threatened legal action.  As a result, Marion abandoned the half-finished book and destroyed the manuscript, which now will never be seen.  A doubly damn shame because this was one of the last things she was writing before her series of strokes started.  And at that point our mutual agent decided that Fanfic was Dangerous, and should be discouraged.  This made me sad, but the mess with Marion made us all super cautious.  

Fast forward to recently when Russ (my agent) got Cory Doctorow as a client.  Now, as we all know, Cory is Awesome personified, and is very, very much in the corner of the fanfic writers among us.  Cory persuaded Russ that it was a very, very good idea to allow Creative Commons licensing of fanfic, that fanfic is good for the author, good for the fanbase, and takes not one thin dime out of anyone's pocket.  As a result the only time Russ will turn into the Great White Shark is when someone is trying to make a profit out of fanfic.

I still can't read fanfic of my own oeuvre, which makes me sad.  But as the lawsuits against Stephen King and Jo Rowling have proved, you have to be able to rigorously prove you never saw someone else's unpublished stuff when they sue you for "stealing their idea."  But I am very, very glad that people can write their fanfic and share it now.  

And hey, Atlantea, tell Bob Shroeck he can go ahead and write the first segment now!

Now there are other writers who think that fanfic is taking some of their income.  Uh, no.  No one is ever going to write as fast as readers can read.  All fanfic does is keep the flame stoked during the wait for the next book.  But you can't convince these people, I know, I've tried.

There are other writers who don't want anyone messing with their world and characters (some have even described a feeling like "being raped" when they discovered there was fanfic about their stuff.  On the one hand, I kind of sympathize...but there is no way short of inventing mind control that any writer is ever going to be able to control what happens to his book, world, or characters once the manuscript leaves his hands.  So IMHO, I think you ought to just pull on your adult pants, face up to that, and wave goodbye to your book as it heads out into the world.  You did your best by it, you tried to make things clear, you gave it the best start in life that you could, but it's on its own now, and you can either make yourself crazy by trying and failing to keep control, or you can do the smart thing and go on to the next book.

Whew.  Sorry that turned out long and OT.