#arguments and it becomes a little stifling to play around with it knowing the creator can just interject. u can say its the crews effort to

[puppyeared]

i feel like im not making any sense but does anyone else feel like there are stories that let u run with them and ones that spell everything out for you

[sundaynightbombers-blog]

ON BENEFITS OF FANFICTION; OR, VETERAN OF THE FLAME WARS

            I was flipping through some old writings of mine a while ago, all while re-watching the French animated series Code Lyoko in an attempt to recapture my childhood or something, with the looming deadline of this week’s post over my head. Oh, and an unfinished album review for a metal CD that came out last week. Good times.

            Anyways, I was looking through some of my older stuff when I stumbled upon that cringe-inducing aspect of my childhood that made me not only regret undertaking this bit of literary skullduggery, but also made me remember way too many things all at once. This was, of course, all of my old fanfiction stories from when I used to kill time on deviantART.

            Oh yeah. We’re talking about this.

            Alright, firstly, let’s get the obvious out of the way: fanfiction has an immensely controversial reputation, one it’ll probably always have. Fan labour will always be around, fan art will always be popular, and fans will always remake their favourite films, either by their lonesome or through mass collaboration, and fanfiction will always be written and read. Fan labour and its many facets are, honestly, some of the most impressive, sincere, and genuinely cool enactments of creativity that’s readily available, but where there’s fandom, there is unease. Ever since the internet became a viable meeting ground for fans of, well, anything, it’s also become a battleground-cum-farmer’s market of fan-made goods and loving tributes to anything and everything that has a copyright slapped on it and has existed at some point. For every twenty pieces of fan art, there’ll be forty arguments being carried out across countless forum posts on the very same subject.

            Fanfiction’s place amongst all of this is one of distinction and notoriety. The art of using established characters and settings and telling your own stories with them reaches all the way back to the death of Sherlock Holmes, where fans resurrected the character for their own stories after Sir Arthur Conan Doyle killed the character off. Since then, fans crafting their own adventures for their favourite characters have long become a popular way of not only displaying their affection, but also showing off their own writing and storytelling skills. It should also be noted that the idea of having two male characters enter a non-canonical relationship started not with the anime boom, but with Star Trek fans. In fact, the seminal novel Killing Time had heavy undertones of a Kirk/Spock relationship in its original manuscript, something that’d been well-established and practiced among female fans of the show since the original run. Fanfiction has a seminal place in the development of modern fan culture, and there just isn’t no denying it.

            But as I was reading back through these old fanfics of mine, I realized something. Fanfiction, especially nowadays, has this uncanny ability to see where a person was at the time of writing a fanfic. A lot of general queasiness about fanfiction comes from not only the sometimes subpar writing on display, or the admittedly cringe-inducing sex scenes that sometimes play out in an unsurprising amount of these stories, but also the large amount of times when the story starts to play out like someone’s diary rather than a cohesive narrative. I’m certainly guilty of this myself, and while it can certainly be uncomfortable to read for the uninitiated, other times it shows just how deeply connected someone is to what they’re writing. Sometimes, it takes someone else’s creation to get your deepest thoughts and feelings out, which is something that’s not so easily accepted.

            So why am I talking about fanfiction? Well, I think it’s because I believe that, like fan art or fan games or fan music or whatever, it has value to those who partake in it. It’s hard to sit here and really speak ill of something I’ve been involved with since I was young, but that doesn’t mean I understand why it usually elicits shocked laughter and uncomfortable side-glances from those who’ve seen some of the more questionable sides of the subject. The numerous ironic reading videos of people trying to stifle their laughter as they slog through a poorly-written overly-edgy My Little Pony fanfic can be hilarious, just as the idea of an erotic story involving Tracer from Overwatch getting gangbanged by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles can confuse and horrify anyone who’s not the reader. It’s no secret that fans sometime use these forms of fan labour as conduits for their own oddly-specific fetishes and fantasies. It’s a way for teenagers to get out a lot of their angsty, underdeveloped emotions, all without resorting to real-world actions. It’s a weird, strangely personal world.

            But is it bad? Like, should we believe the horror stories we’ve heard and just shun anyone partakes in fanfiction?

            The reason looking through these old stories compelled me to write this is to highlight the good that comes from writing fanfiction and letting people do their thing when they write it. As someone who considers writing their natural talent, I can honestly confess that if I hadn’t started writing dumb human-girl-meets-alien-boy fanfics way way back in grade 7, I would’ve never planted the seed that made me realize that I actually have a way with the written word. Other people might think otherwise, and that’s fair, absolutely. But fanfiction is not only a way of expressing one’s love for a piece of media, or getting out of your head all those weird unrealistic self-insert fantasies, but I also see it as a genuine way of honing one’s abilities to write and tell stories.

            Hear me out: imagine having an idea where you think of a story, but instead of characters or setting or anything, you think of a scenario or a new way of telling a story, or an experimental way of structuring a multi-chapter story. Fanfiction gives writers a place to experiment without having to create characters or settings. Pick something you know by heart, and throw your ideas at it, see what happens. It can also allow creators to tap into that childlike sense of make-believe, when kids ran around their suburban backyards throwing imaginary Hadoukens at each other. You have your favourite characters, now go on new adventures!

            It’s really hard to summarize my feelings about fanfiction. I see why some don’t like it, I see why others, myself included, love it. As I come to the exhausted end of this, I sit here and try to think of why fanfiction still matters in a day and age where fan artists can make money off of their work, fan remakes warrant documentaries about their productions some decade or two later, and where fan games are more popular than ever. Hell, the Japanese have essentially chiseled their own economy out of fan works, just look up Dōjin on google, the numbers are STAGGERING. But, why do these niche, sometimes awkwardly constructed stories still matter?

            Well, I think it’s the freedom that comes with it. It’s far from popular, and remains only a minor niche format these days, but the freedom of the written word is a beautiful thing. And fanfiction, in manners both fantastic and horrifying, may just be one of the ultimate exercises in creative freedom. At the top of the pile are works like Fallout Equestria and Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality¸ while at the bottom you have the eternally-infamous My Immortal. And everything between, and below. It’s a strange world, definitely not for all. But I can’t stay mad at it. In a way, I owe my creative life to it.

            Still, Tracer getting spitroasted by Donatello and Leonardo does bother me. And I don’t even like Overwatch.

 ~M.C.

[howaminotinthestrokesyet]

How Music Stuff Works: Sampling

For quite a few years, I have dabbled in creating mashups on my computer. I will take rap acappellas and combine them with instrumental versions of popular songs. I will then post this music for anyone that wants to hear on SoundCloud. In my mind, everything that I was doing seemed relatively harmless. Yet, I learned that I was committing copyright infringement because I did not have clearance. For the most part, the only thing that would happen to me was that my music will be taken down. I remember one time I got an actual email from the representatives of Jay Z for using one of his songs. Yet, I began to think about these questions about copyright, samples, and how it actually got to be this way. This would be a good exercise for me anyway, so I do not start doing something with my mashups that might take me to court.

Let me start at the beginning before I get too far ahead of myself. The first use of sampling was in the 1940’s with a technique called musique concrete. This was a technique where an artist would record sounds to tape, splice the tape, and then rearrange that tape to create what was called a sound collage. Composers began to experiment further with the technique, which led to the release of the first fully electronic soundtrack for the film, Forbidden Planet in 1956. These early sampling techniques were also used quite a bit to create soundtracks for television shows like Doctor Who. In the 1960s, music producers like Lee Perry began using samples, where they would utilize pre-recorded reggae sounds, then DJ over it. If Lee Perry sounds familiar to you, then you probably heard his name in a Beastie Boys song. They were always making references to early figures that influenced hip-hop. The beginning of sampling as we know it today really began with the introduction of the Fairlight CMI Synthesizer, which was released in 1979. The interesting thing was that the term sampler was meant to describe the technical process of how the machine worked, and not what it was being used for. The reason why the Fairlight was such a big deal emerged in the fact that it now made sampling music simple. In my personal opinion, this had the same affect as the cotton gin did in the south in the 1800s. Soon enough, other synthesizers were coming out that were significant improvements and much cheaper.

Sampling has influenced almost every genre of music, but it was hip-hop in the early 1980s that it influenced the most. Everything that hip-hop aspired to become was complemented with the use of samples. DJs and MC’s would like to take old funk and R&B records to create tracks. The reason for this was the presence of drum breaks in those albums. At first, artists were only taking little bits and pieces of the music from the past due to the fact that there was a limitation on the technology. In 1988, the Akai MPC was released, which probably had the single most impact on anything in hip-hop throughout its entire history. This instrument allowed artists to now use entire songs as samples, instead of bits and pieces. The other reason why this was so groundbreaking came in the fact that you did not really need any music knowledge to create the music. Anyone could do it.

Throughout the 1980s, sampling became increasingly more and more popular with major artists. One of the first to do it was Stevie Wonder in 1979, while the band Big Audio Dynamite introduced sampling to the main stream in rock and pop in 1985. Big Audio Dynamite was led by a former clash member Mick Jones. Artists in hip-hop begin to create albums composed entirely of samples. One of the most popular samples used in the 1980s was John Bonham’s drum beat in the song “When The Levee Breaks.” This was used in the Beastie Boys track “Rhyming and Stealing.” One surprising fact that I learned was that Fab Five Freddy, who used to host Yo MTV Raps, created the most commonly used sample in the 1980’s. Another sample that was used quite frequently emerged in the Amen track. NWA used it quite prominently in Straight Outta Compton. The original artist was never compensated one cent for the use of the sample. In the early to mid-80s, sampling was much like the wild west, where everyone was taking original music for their own repurposing. At first, sampling was not this out of control because they had certain unwritten rules about what you could use and what you could not use. For example, you could not use anything that was currently released and on the charts. Yet, the thing that happened was artists began to get younger, and they began ignoring the rules because there was lots of money to be made. One of the first artists to release an entire album filled with samples was the Beastie Biys with Paul’s Boutique, which people today call groundbreaking and visionary. The funny thing when asked about the samples on that album a few years ago. Mike D said that it would probably cost $1 billion to make that album today. The reason for that was that the original creators of the samples were now looking for compensation as record companies began to realize money could be made from hip-hop songs.

Using someone else’s work as your own has legal implications obviously. The interesting thing to me was that it took the music industry so long to actually start to take people to court. If you want to use a sample, you need to get legal permission from that artist in what is called clearance. The first lawsuit that occurred was when the Turtles sued De La Soul for using a sample from one of their songs. The case was settled out of court, but it signaled what was to come. In 1991, songwriter Gilbert O’Sullivan sued Biz Markie for using material from one of his songs. The court ruled that Biz Markie had infringed on his copyright, which meant Sullivan had a choice, either money or removal. He chose the latter, so Biz Markie’s record company had to remove any copies of the albums from stores. Some people have said that sampling in hip hop is the equivalent of a guitar to rock ‘n’ roll. Some writers have further said, this decision was as if a musical instrument had been removed from the hands of the artists. Some artists outside of hip-hop would argue that you cannot take away a musical instrument from someone who doesn’t know how to play one. This moral, philosophical argument would go on to dominate hip-hop for its entire existence. Hip-hop still struggles with this question of whether or not hip-hop artists are musicians. As time passed, hip-hop artists found it increasingly more and more expensive to use samples in their songs. Today, the only artist that can use significant portions of established songs are popular ones because they can afford to do so. New artists are faced with the question, which some say has become a case of asking themselves what can I use and what can I get away with. If a hip-hop artist thinks he can get away with something because the original artist has passed away, then just look to the Marvin Gaye example. His estate did not allow Robin Thicke any leniency. Experts argue that it has completely stifled for creativity. Some practices today have been used as workarounds for copyright infringement. One such artist that has taken advantage of a workaround is Chance the Rapper. He has used streaming services like Spotify and SoundCloud to use songs with uncleared samples, but he is able to get away with it as he is not receiving any royalties for the music. This has become one of the things that new artists have to do. They give away their music for free, but then make all their money through their live shows. Another workaround is when an artist records their own sample of a song, then samples the cover. This would be a great idea, but the problem is there is absolutely nobody in hip-hop that knows how to play an instrument. I am not being critical here, but only speaking the truth. Sadly, there has been absolutely no incentive whatsoever within hip-hop to learn how to play music. As far as legal challenges to samples being used in songs, the number of musical notes it takes matters very little. I remember hearing about one case where it was four or five notes. I guess Vanilla Ice was very lucky that “Ice Ice Baby” was even allowed to be released. That is in a way funny, but very true.

I am beginning to sound like a broken record, but the music business is incredibly complicated where nothing makes sense. This idea and question of whether these hip-hop artists should be allowed to freely sample anything they want is a tricky one. I understand that there is a certain artistry to doing rap songs and remixes. Yet, the thing I cannot wrap my head around is the fact that it is a reinterpretation, not completely new. Another analogy would be if you remember when Steve Fisher took over as head coach of Michigan basketball in 1989. He did win the national championship, but the one criticism was they were not players that he recruited. I see the same thing with these artists using other people’s songs. For me personally, I will always side with the original creator. I have written novels before and I am currently writing a new one. I would not want anyone using my words, characters, plot in any way, unless I agreed to it. If your primary instrument of making songs is something that essentially acts as a copy and paste button, then you may want to go into a different direction. The problem is that currently in hip-hop, producers and even the artist themselves, have gone the complete opposite direction of where it should be headed. I believe that hip-hop artists should learn to play music. Instead, all of these artists and producers have made the decision that creative and catchy samples are really not that important. For the most part, hip-hop and rap is suffering from an immense identity crisis right now. All their songs sound the same. And so it goes.