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janiedean · 4 years ago

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I feel bad for all the nice J*nsa shippers who like their ship for whatever reasons (tropes, pretty art, aesthetic appeal, whatever) and know it's not canon but get associated with the misogynistic Dany hating crowd who act like Jon being attracted to Ygritte is J*nsa foreshadowing because red hair (I guess Jon should fuck Edmure Tully too? Omg give me Dark!Jon getting revenge on Catelyn by seducing her brother!) Tell me something. I'm new to the fandom but was J*nsa popular before the show? And I've heard something about the OG J*nsa shippers being alienated by the new shippers who insisted it had to be canon and acted like the series is called, "A song of J*nsa #danysux." I don't find that hard to believe because I know people who are now ashamed of calling themselves J*nsa shippers. Like, at this point, it's not only rival shippers who hate it. Even Gendrya/Braime/Jon stans/etc have started disliking that ship. You know your fandom is a problem when people who have nothing to do with Jnsa have a problem with it.

me: reads this ask

me: iwastheregandalf.gif which I can't find now but

okay anon buckle up because I am sadly well-equipped to answer this ask but before I do lemme tell you dark jon seducing edmure to take revenge on cat is LITERALLY THE BEST THING I'VE EVER HEARD but *clears throat* ALL RIGHT THEN.

disclaimer: as anon says I have no issue with like the shippers mentioned by anon in the beginning and ngl I agree, I have ABSOLUTELY ZERO FUCKING STAKES in the j*nsa vs j*nerys war and the only het jon ship I gaf about is jon/ygritte and we all know where that ended up I just... have been here since 2011/adwd was over and all the fic around was just for the books under secret lj communities and asoiaf qualified for yuletide and I have... seen... things.... and I actually have like uh had... beef... with some people in there and I know things bc ppl who hated those others told me stuff so anyway *sigh* buckle up anon I'mma tell you the story of jon shipwars through the years

in order, the old gods help me here, under the cut bc this is long as fuck

when I got into fandom also given what numbers were on ao3 one ship was popular and it was sansan. no like sansan was lit. the only asoiaf ship on ao3 with more than 200 fics. jb had twenty when i checked first. jc had like around 100-ish because of the show but sansan dwarfed anything. I posted the first jon/ygritte fic on the ao3 tag and the fourth throbb fic and like the others were all reposts from lj kinkmemes. nothing was popular before the show except for sansan when it comes to huge numbers bc grrm doesn't like fic and it was all hush hush until the show made it impossible to control and that ship was the one with a huge enough fanbase it actually had numbers, so like... j*nsa wasn't popular in the way nothing else was popular until it got screentime on the show

now, that stated, j*nsa had a... fair amount of fic for a rareship which was mostly book-based and from og shippers that were there from before the show and liked it for what it was but literally none of them thought it was gonna be canon, like it wasn't huge or anything but it had a small but dedicated fanbase who did their own thing and thought it was fun/liked the idea but that was it

that fandom had their own niche of hcs that they cultivated and shit except that like... at the end of S5/beginning of S6 there was a surge in shipping for... well obvious reasons bc it was obv sansa was getting to the wall and that would have been all nice and good but a) it was the time puritanical shipping was starting to take root and the 'shipping sansa with sandor or tyrion is hella problematic' rhetoric had started to circle coming from sans*ery shippers mostly but I'mma not open that fucking can of worms here, b) while the ending of S5 had more of a theon/sansa spike, the j*nsa stuff started getting big

now here we have to mention my villain origin story ie: j*nsa fandom had this one stan whose name I won't make because honestly it's been years and if she's still around I don't want her to remember I exist who was a bnf, wrote for... the website that created the whole larry/carol thing etc who was really fixed on this thing that j*nsa was actually canon and started writing extremely popular meta about it. now you're gonna ask how do you know, I know because this person once wrote a meta named 'why robb stark is a dick' and I told her that it was really fucking bad meta and she took it so badly she kept on trash talking me on her blog/her podcast (I was apparently the insane robb stark fangirl l m a o good lord) and like that was when some sane ppl who argued with her informed me in pvt that she was basically harping on the CANON thing when they'd have been okay with like... it being crackshipping and that she was basically cultivating a hoarde of followers who were harping on them/the ogs and basically ostracizing them;

I would like to add that this person - before her tumblr got 'accidentally deleted' and remade it therefore deleted most receipts for, er, her so-called meta which included stuff like ned and cat raised sansa as a sexual object and only wanted to sell her like cattle - had at some point started a round robin fic thing where... some of the characters mocked openly said stuff that some of the og fans had said specifically targeting them and people in that side basically went harassing anyone who didn't agree with that specific notion

now never mind that this person basically coined an entire term to describe ppl who liked white guys and excused all their wrongdoings out of my conversation re robb basically lying about everything I said as if I didn't have the receipts and tried to sell shirts with it and it didn't work and like then she got kicked out of her own website because she was telling her commenters disagreeing pretty shitty insults (considering I was called psychotic for disagreeing with her that time I don't doubt it) I think at some point she stepped back from fandom bc idk wtf she's up to these days and I don't want to, but basically at that point the dam was broken and there was a bunch of puritanical shippers harping on anyone who didn't agree with j*nsa is canon endgame stuff

this also includes an incident when those ppl were like... passing themselves as throbb shippers and ended up trying to tell t*hramsay shippers off the theon tag based on moral reasons and I ended up arguing with all of them (and they were all from that crowd) which in turn landed me in contact with other og j*nsa shippers who were like detached from that fandom bc those same people harassed them away as well ssooooo fun

anyway when S6 happened everyone was high on it and whatnot but I wasn't gonna begrudge them that I mean... you shipped it for years, canon is delivering you, good for you, but then j*nerys happened

god j*nerys happened

aaand basically...... I mean personally I was there like are y'all seriously arguing about the best incest jon ship out there but like basically the j*nsa endgame side was like AH JON IS PLAYING DANY SEE IF IT DOESN'T HAPPEN, the j*nerys obv got defensive af and both sides were sort of alternatively shitting on jon/ygritte anyway and depicting any other romantic rship jon could have as abusive™ and during S8 it just got worse and like I tried to stay out of it but basically from what I'm seeing now idk how the j*neryses are doing but on the j*nsa one it's ah jon's gonna play dany anyway and she's going to go insane like in the show so SHOW TRUTHING EVERY OTHER WAY and like again denying that sandor exists or that tyrion exists and like I barely touch my corner (sansan) but I ended up arguing with j*nsa/th*nsa people on twitter who were antis and is2g it was white-hair inducing and I know for sure the sansa/tyrion shippers were harassed to hell and back throughout so FUN

and even if the show didn't go there now since everyone there banked on the jnsa endgame thing and admitting you're wrong is like... not a thing, they still haven't let go of it and attach to that ship any shred of evidence which honestly is grasping at straws half of the time (like... the sansa/alysanne parallels like guys please no) and which is why every other ship is starting to get fed up, attaching canon proof of stuff from other ships onto theirs see that batb argument and jb is platonic but jonsa is not nvm taking all the sansan stuff and throwing it on j*nsa but then denying that sansan has canon evidence (like guys I had to read sansa touching his shoulder when saying gregor wasn't a true knight wasn't meaningful and we were seeing things please) and blah blah blah

this also goes hand in hand with the fixation on like... villanizing dany at all costs and like is2g I have zero investment in dany or her storyline I don't even remember it and I don't particularly care abt her either way and sure af I'm not for j*nerys endgame but like.... some stuff I read is completely excessive esp when fixing on how she's a completely mad tyrant who's gonna have to be put down and like... guys no

(also there's some srs stannis hate in that corner which I honestly don't get why they even care abt stannis but I had to read stuff like ppl don't recognize that dany and stannis are the real villains in this saga and like........ idek)

I think most of the og shippers are gone or don't ship it openly bc they don't want to be attached to the drama but like I also think they're pissing off everyone else bc like... I mean a bunch of them also were down with sansa being paired with other ppl as long as it meant a good ending for her except those ppl were... like everyone but the ppl she has actual contact with in canon which meant that at some point sansa/gendry was a thing and like.... you can imagine why arya/gendry shippers & arya stans were fed up, and there's also this tendency to behave like sansa is the center of the entire saga which like these books is named a song of jon snow basically can we pls make peace with it and personally I've had it with both j*nsa and j*nerys people since they started with that dumbass JON/YGRITTE WAS AN ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIP rhetoric but I'm also fed up with the total ignoring that sandor exists/depicting us as delusional and honestly I also was by proxy fed up from the harassing of the sansa/tyrion shippers soooooooooooo

there were also instances of 'well theon is an acceptable choice other than jon bc he can't threaten her' which... i mean we all know what that meant and I'm not even commenting it bc it's one AM and I have no force to but I don't have to explain why it's not a progressive take now do I

there were also metas about how cousin incest being legal in half of the world means that jondany is a worse incest and j*nsa doesn't count as such and I was basically there like guys please just fucking own up to it but honestly I chose to forgot where I read that and I couldn't find the link if I tried

tldr: no one wants to admit that it's not gonna be endgame which considering the amount of fic they have on ao3 is imvho useless bc they have more content than like.. anything I ship that's not jb or that's actually like canon *cries in joncon/rhaegar but I mean renly/loras is canon and has less fic than them* so idk what's the problem with enjoying that instead of insisting it's gonna be canon when not even the show validated it while show truthing anyway when the only show truthing that can be truthed is the small council made of minorities and possibly jon eventually fucking off with the wildlings but not like that but like most people who thought it wasn't gonna be endgame had left/were made to leave by the time S7 rolled by and at this point since wow isn't out yet everyone is fandom-grasping at straws to find stuff to discourse on and we're here beating dead horses *shrug*

so that's... how it is but I would again like to point out that I don't judge ppl on their shipping, I don't particularly care about this entire feud bc I only ship jon with ppl he's not related to in whichever way and I try to stay out of this mess bc I don't really care to argue with ppl who have already decided to bend canon to whatever they want and will have to realize that it's not what grrm wrote at some point but like I have a very good memory and the above rant is as objective as possible also bc again I don't literally have a stake in that race I just think romantic/endgame j*nsa is not a thing and that ppl should stay in their lane and not harping on other ppl who ship whatever in general but especially when their ship is the most popular thing in fandom in the first place /two cents

#1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #anonymous #ask post #anti-jonsa #anti jonsa #anti-jonerys #anti jonerys #both of them for equality

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duckbeater · 8 years ago

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Arbitrary Comparison: Sontag and Batuman

This business of waiting for celebrated essayists to produce their first novels should have ended by now. In the first, there exists no material or aesthetic contest between the forms: neither lends respectability nor solvency to its practitioner. In the second, this is obviously the age of essays—or, perhaps, at least the age of opinions. Attaching a personality to the opinion seems to produce the essay. That and fact-checkers. Also brevity.

Essays are things you can scan on the train, share among friends, and credibly lie about having read in their entirety. You can even manage lying about having read the savvier responses to the original essay—my brother calls this the “meta”—and so absorb and reflect on whole ecosystems of expression through muddled précis, vivid sub-headlines, mean tweets, and abstruse hashtags alone.

Essays, particularly those that produce sensations, do the important work of shoring up intellectual economies. Interpreters, commenters, bloggers, reposters, recappers, analyzers, pollsters, wonks—a generation’s vitality restored by its ability to call-out or call attention to whatever urgencies its essayists prefer. We used to have public intellectuals and now we have guest columnists. Analogously, our latest capitalism is defined by its precarity. Writing gigs feel very fly-by-night.

I want to suggest, by way of comparison, one inheritor of our outmoded expectations for the magazine writer. I mean, the essayist.

Like Susan Sontag, Elif Batuman is primarily known for her personal and literary essays. Always at a remove, Sontag nonetheless made her presence felt in places as disparate as Hanoi and Sarajevo; she scrutinized the morality of photography, and parsed the aesthetics of pornography. She delighted in difficulty, and yet, through a queer kind of autoerotic extrusion technique, mangled what was most difficult, least seemly, the silliest, the most somber—she took all of the patience-taxing seriousness of high art (many movies, many dances, many “happenings,” and many, many long novels), and fashioned of it these beautiful, brisk essays.

Part of that briskness, of course, is a matter of Sontag’s reductions, her love of aphorism and epigram—the effects of pendant lights hewn from the material they shine upon. Batuman has a similar fondness for these rhetorical devices, and she often dazzles the reader, paragraph by paragraph, in a repertorial style that synthesizes high and low—that looks at disarray and disconnection—to find great elegance. Batuman situates her romances in Erdoğan’s Turkey and then Samarkand, she appreciates Russian authors like Dostoyevski and Tolstoy, and playfully comments on such cultural trends as awkwardness, the brontosaurus, and Gone Girl. A recent stint in Istanbul, where she taught writing at Koç University, has always struck me as a move motivated in part by the need to absolve herself of the critique sustained in “Get a Real Degree,” a rather notorious assault on American creative writing programs.

Comparing Batuman and Sontag may seem unproductive at this stage in the former’s career. At 40 years old, Batuman has not, in any way, cultivated a leonine majesty or moral superiority. Indeed, she regularly submits, on Twitter and elsewhere, amusingly awkward portraits of herself, such that would undercut ambitions toward glamour. So we see Batuman: doleful, holding a koala; blank, in a “transcranial electrical stimulation selfie”; overhead cropped, to emphasize her cat Friday, who is helping her to “edit.” Whereas Sontag seemed to regard the camera with a heat that bordered on contempt, Batuman, even in press photos, is alight with reservation. (Realize, too, that for several decades, Sontag had Annie Leibovitz taking her goofy snapshots; if you google their names together, you will quickly find Leibovitz’s emotionally overwhelming collage of Sontag’s corpse.) Batuman’s beat has never been the absolutism of a given artist or artwork; she does not enshrine the pieties of a recondite vanguard; the world remains open and strange to her, alight with hilarity. When she’s exploring the stunning archaeological weirdness of Göbekli Tepe, she’s breezy about the multitude of erect penises to be found in the Early Neolithic figurations of man and beast. (Sontag’s review of Flaming Creatures comes to mind.) When she ever does lecture, she’s self-deprecating, warm, and witty. Batuman’s genius—when she recognizes it—seems to fluster and depress her.

Superficially, Batuman publishes in the same arenas as Sontag once published. Where Sontag staged her early salvos in the Partisan Review, Batuman made her name in n+1, a magazine perhaps two or three generations removed, though surely its noisome spiritual inheritor. Both published in the New Yorker (Batuman remains a staff writer there), and they’ve variously contributed to the New York and London Review of Books. Their tendencies as journalists, critics, polemicists, and memoirists, apparently at the behest of editors, prevented both writers from their first inclinations as novelists—steered them off course, as it were.

Both writers studied masters of the European novel and continental philosophical thought; the seriousness and attention they paid to these masterworks, they repaid again in serious attentiveness to reporting on our popular culture. We get this in Sontag, gleefully, when she vivisects b-grade sci-fi in “The Imagination of Disaster,” allowing the detritus of Eisenhower-era Hollywood to speak to a world’s fears of nuclear annihilation: “The films reflect world-wide anxieties, and they serve to allay them. They inculcate a strange apathy concerning the processes of radiation, contamination, and destruction which I for one find haunting and depressing.” Much more recently, we see this impulse repeated in Batuman’s take on the Ghostbusters reboot: “If the original Ghostbusters was about the thrill of the free market, the new one is about its consequences—about the people it disenfranchises, and the possibility that they will try to take violent retribution.”

This is why we encounter, in “Under the Sign of Saturn,” Sontag’s moving account of the life and work of Walter Benjamin, a sprinkling of astrology, and likewise among Batuman’s tender reflections on Dante, in a long article for Harper’s, a shout-out to “all the thousand and one douchebags of Florence.” Neither of these essays is academic. They are robust evocations of the peculiar, melancholic personalities these geniuses attract in their orbits (the authors included), of passions abrogated by exile, and it is difficult to finish either essay with dry eyes. I can, besides, point out where my breath catches in the essays—when I realize my goose is cooked.

In the first pages of his small book on Susan Sontag, Philip Lopate is quick to dispatch his subject’s fiction: it is, “in the main, poor,” he notes, qualifying that Sontag “lacked broad sympathy and a sense of humor, which are usually prerequisites for good fiction.” I have such an abiding reverence for Sontag’s essays, that I’ve not made it past her novels’ first chapters (although I have read their last pages—Lopate recommends this). It’s difficult enough to find them stocked in bookstores (hardcovers of The Volcano Lover do turn up in resale shops; I picked up my copy in Vancouver), and too depressing to excavate from off-site, remote-access stacks of university libraries, that I’m satisfied in the opinions of my betters: they’re best enjoyed as anecdotes.

Unlike Sontag, Batuman is very funny. I recently finished her novel The Idiot, and I think it’s tops. But I’m grateful that she’s always been an essayist, and that I’ll always have her essays at hand, and that they already constitute, to me, the memories and comforts of great novels.

#Susan Sontag #Elif Batuman #The Idiot

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ginnyzero · 5 years ago

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Copypaste Cris, Plagiarism, and Fandom

(Originally Posted April 2019)

Recently, there has been a very large controversy in writer twitter. A woman who I’d rather not name outside of Cris, has plagiarized a very long list of books and authors by stitching them together like Frankenstein and then passed the books off as their own. We’re talking taking paragraphs directly from other books and using them in their books. Paragraphs!

This isn’t what anyone ever meant when they said “good authors steal.” Or “taking from many authors is research.” This is out and out theft of other writer’s words. And it’s not cool. And I think most authors in original IP and in fandom spaces would agree about that.

However, what has come out of it is a very informative thread about how authors can search through google if their words have been plagiarized and put up on places like Wattpad or AO3. But in the thread, I noticed that there was no difference being paid to original work and fan works. It’s as if the creator of the thread didn’t know there legally is a difference between the two creations.

Quickly, fandom works are works both written and drawn in a specific book/movie/television universe created by people (fans) not the original author and may or may not use the same characters/settings/world building as the original author. (I have to accommodate for extreme alternate universes here.) They are posted on sites such as fanfiction(net), AO3(org), deviantArt(com) and so on.

Fan fiction has a very long history that includes the Iliad, Dante's Inferno, Shakespeare, etc. Basically, it's older than dirt and not about to go away. The concept of "completely" original work didn't arise until the early 1900s and before then was looked upon with disdain. You couldn't make money off an original work! Le gasp! With the rise of copyright and other such laws, there has become a legal separation between original IP and fan transformative works. (And also the abuse of copyright law.)

And in recent times, it feels that younger authors who are not part of the fandom scene don't know or aren't educated in the difference.

I blame Wattpad.

Wattpad has made a very iffy decision IMO to host both fan fiction and original fiction. There are also a lot of baby authors out there with no context of fandom history and fandom diaspora after the demise of LJ hasn’t created a new “community” to educate.

The closest thing that fandom has now to a history site is fanlore. There are a lot of fandom authors/creators who hate fanlore with an abiding passion. Yes, there are posts on tumblr about fandom history, but its shouting into a void. Because of this, fandom history has been lost or has been shrouded in the veils of hearsay. This hearsay has been spread to original authors making them afraid of things that would most likely never happen.

But simple etiquette things like: Put Disclaimers on your work that you don’t own it. Don’t send your fan fiction to the authors. Don’t try to make money off of fan fiction. And don’t talk about fandom to actors/creators. OMG. No. Have been lost. In fact, a lot of baby fandom authors either don’t care or don’t know they need to know things about disclaimers or why you don’t tell original creators your head canons. This can cause a lot of frustration between original creators and their fans. Not to mention some really awkward moments with actors/creators at Con panels. The meta fiction books about fandom make fandom cringe and froth the way the BDSM community cringes and froths about 50 Shades.

At the same time, the old code of fandom silence and trying not to attract the attention of original creators for fear of being sued has caused this schism between the two writing communities. The schism comes from both communities having 2 sets of rules and each community not knowing the other set unless they’ve come from that community in the 1st place. Not that anyone writes these rules down either.

Each side eyes each other with disdain. (Unless an author has come from fandom into original.)

So, now Wattpad has created this community where original IP authors are mixing with fandom authors. Neither know each other’s etiquette rules and each resents the other for existing in the same space. The reason I call Wattpad’s decision iffy is because when fanfiction(net) realized its authors wanted to post original work, they created fictionpress with a different TOS. As far as I’m aware, Wattpad is posting fan fiction and original fiction under the same TOS.

Legally, I’d call this very squishy and not a good idea. Not a good idea, as in, “Have you been sued today?” Especially as Wattpad is trying to transition from a free platform to a paid platform. If a baby author starts trying to sell fan fic, well, it’s a good way to end up being sued. There is going to come a point where Wattpad is going to have to make a choice. Do they continue posting fan fic and deal with legal repercussions? Or do they ban it entirely and piss off a big chunk of their user base? I predict banning.

Whereas, Archive Of Our Own or AO3, was created by the Organization of Transformative Works expressly for the purpose of hosting and legally protecting fanfiction. AO3 does have original works on it. A tiny fraction of a percent of the millions of work on AO3 are labelled as original work. There are some (57K) original works on AO3. That’s smaller than the number of Tolkien fanworks (61K). Because most authors who post on AO3 know that original isn’t the point of AO3 and they’re posting fandom works under the same pseudonym.

And once again, Fanfiction(net) handled the problem of writers wanting to step out of fan works and into original works by creating an entirely new website with the same user interface. Thus keeping the works legally separated and everyone in the happy space of “this is someone else’s IP I can’t make money off of” and “this is my IP, I’m building a reader platform, and I can make money off of it eventually.”

Fictionpress is probably why you can’t copy/paste or download fan fiction off of fanfiction(net.) Having one user interface means protecting the words of the original IP also means protecting the words of the fandom IP.

On top of this, there are indie and traditional authors that either don’t know or don’t like the concept of fan fiction. They don’t want other people to play with their characters. Those are perfectly valid feelings and ffnet will accommodate certain authors to a point. By to a point, I mean usually under a threat of lawsuit from a very big name author who has asked politely for their works not to be included in the site. FFnet also banned song fics and NC-17 because they rely on ADS.

I don’t know about AO3, because AO3 rose up after some of the bigger authors relented about fanfiction and I don’t have an account there. I stopped posting fanfiction for the most part around 2010 due to severe burnout. It wasn’t until 2012 or so that I worked through some issues and started writing… original.

I still keep a toe in fandom spaces to keep track of the controversies and what’s going on there because it may show up in original spaces later and vice versa. We of fandom often don't realize how small we actually are and how many people don't know about fandom. We're a global community. It's fairly common to have friends in Europe and Asia and Australia. (This makes getting together difficult.) Twitter is now doing this for the original writer community.

If your work becomes popular, say with a related comic or a television show or you get a movie or you write romance in a series that gets a lot of readers. (Yes, book fandoms are a thing.) Fan works, transformative works protected under the rights of fair use, are inevitable. People (fans) that aren't you, the original creator, are going to create stories, make art, put together song lists with, of, and about your characters, that you, as the original creator, will have no control over. And to an extent, in the case of fan fiction, legally shouldn't read in case you're working on a similar idea at the same time due to the universal consciousness of mankind.

Fan works aren't the same as original works. Fandom people know this. They know they can't make money off of your ideas. They aren't even trying to make money off of your ideas, at least the ethical knowledgeable fandom writing creators aren't. (Fan art is different.) They have many other reasons, mostly love, for borrowing your characters to tell their stories with for a time.

Please, don't mix this up with authors plagiarizing your works. There is a legal definition of plagiarism and most fan fiction doesn't fall under it.

Here is the thing, most fandom authors aren’t going to be copying your work word for word into their fic. It’s not really the point of fan fic. They may drop a line or two for reference if they’re doing a canon divergent scene, but paragraphs are off limits. In fact, most the time when fandom authors are caught plagiarizing. They’re plagiarizing works that have nothing to do with the original IP. Or are plagiarizing other fandom authors by reposting those works and claiming them as their own.

9 times out of 10, fandom is your friend. Fandom creating transformative works of your things is free publicity for your work. Granted, fandom usually only swirls around things that become big and popular. Twilight, the Hunger Games, MCU, SuperWhoLock. Fandom is also fickle. The creator and fandom divide has gotten extremely thin with the rise of social media and the demand that creators be on social media. The lines between original and fan fiction have also become blurred. Example, the “omegaverse” controversy.

Fandom can quickly become an enemy. More and more, fans feel entitled to tell creators exactly how they feel about a work when it doesn’t go the way they want it to do so. See Star Wars and a half a dozen cartoons. Fandom has a long memory and an unparalleled capacity for grudges. See James Gunn and GotG. This isn’t cool as because it's the internet and there is "anonymity" it can devolve or escalate into doxxing, swatting, and death threats fair quickly.

Doxxing being when a fan outs where another fan or an original creator lives in order for people to move out of cyber bullying and into the realm of stalking or physical death threats. Swatting is more common in the gaming community where on gamer calls in a fake report to their local police and the police come to raid their house. This is hugely illegal!

In fact, probably within the next 2 decades, those writing fandom stories now are probably going to start being original IP authors peers as more and more YOUNG fandom authors transition from fan fiction into original fiction. There are more traditionally published authors than many are aware of that started out as fan fiction authors to hone their skills or as a hobby that turned into a passion. They’re very attached to fan fiction and quite defensive about it.

(And many self-published authors also started out in fandom circles. However, traditionally published authors like us less than fandom authors.)

They also know the rules of fandom. Disclaim your work. Don’t talk about fandom. Don't send creators your ideas. Especially, don’t talk about your RPF fan work to the actors of a certain series. Don’t email death threats to their spouses. Don’t dox people. Don’t take writing commissions for fan fic. (This doesn’t apply to fan art and thus the arguments rise in fandom spaces about that!)

With the rise of social media and things like AO3, the need for disclaimers have fallen out of fashion. More and more people are willing to stand up and say “we are fandom!” We hear more about the bad things than the good things. Good things are, “fandom keeps me from suicide.” and “I got a job through fandom!” (More artists than writers because of the whole legal issue of original IP writers reading fan works.) “Fandom makes me happy,” is prolly my fave.

Because of copypastecris, there are now a lot of original authors out there afraid that their works are being taken and used elsewhere. They're now googling or using software where they upload passages of their books and try to find similar passages on places like Wattpad or AO3 (if they know AO3 exists.) They don't know there is a difference between original work and fan work.

They just see "oh, people are using my characters. I don't like that. That's stealing! Stealing is wrong!" Then they send a DMCA. When that's not what plagiarism is legally.

And fandom doesn't know that this is happening. Not a peep has come up about copypastecris in the fandom spaces I know about. If an author hits them with a DMCA for plagiarism on a fandom story that is clearly labelled fan fic, they're going to be blindsided. Since many fandom writers are young, they're going to be terrified!

(A DMCA for a stolen photograph/artwork for a cover is different. DMCA away. Too many people think that anything art wise posted to the internet is free for the taking. They also know how to remove watermarks. And yes, this attitude falls upon books too, thus piracy. But that's a different issue than fan works!)

So, please don’t punish fandom for copypastecris. Fandom doesn’t know about copypastecris. They don’t care about copypastecris. And they’d be as pissed as you are about it if they did know because most of them have ethics and that’s not cool.

(I’d compare the copypastecris to their Cassie Claire controversy back in the late 2000s. But even Cassie Claire didn’t have THAT much chutzpah to plagiarize close to 100 books. I have no idea how much editing went into her books to make them publishable as original fiction. Most fandom authors will tell you unless it's an extreme AU, taking a fan fiction and trying to make it original fiction isn't worth the bother. It's too much work.)

Please, check the work before you DMCA and if it is a fan work and labelled as a fan work, take a moment to breathe and not hit that button. Count the words. Make sure it legally fits the definition of plagiarism before hurting someone who loves your stories. Fandom isn’t your enemy. They aren’t trying to claim your IP and make money off of it. Thank you.

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