Intemperate Review: Robin Hobb's Fan Fiction

[mishalak]

The essay I am commenting on is helpfully archived on the web archive.

"To use an analogy, we look at the Mona Lisa and wonder. Each of us draws his own conclusions about her elusive smile. We don't draw eyebrows on her to make her look surprised, or put a balloon caption over her head."

Apparently Robin Hobb is completely unaware of the history of art, art training, or art commentary. Painting the works of the old masters anywhere from almost stroke for stroke to in entirely different styles has been around almost since there have been museums. If there is someone out there who does not believe me for some reason just do a google image search for 'mona lisa' with or without the quotes. Upon my last search I found everything from subtle alterations to extremely modernist interpretations. Even works that might be considered great works of art them selves such as Self Portrait as Mona Lisa by Salvador Dali.

This idea that the words and works of an author, no matter how minor or great, are sacrosanct is a subset of the notion that freedom of expression means freedom from criticism. It is stuff and nonsense, of course, as anyone who is more emotionally mature than the average collage freshman will tell you. But nonetheless it persists because of confusion with copyright or trademark and some people just cannot help but to go looking for trouble online (Why hello pot, yes I'm aware).

All this ignores the fact that her analogy is false in the first place that when a person does fan fiction he does not alter the original. He has not done the literary equivalent of sneaking into however many thousands of homes and libraries to alter every copy of the story in question. Robin Hobb has a real problem with this sort of sloppy analogy making as evidenced by her comparison of fan fiction writing with coloring in coloring book, mixing a cake mix, and so on. It would be a lot closer to the truth to say that a person will never be considered a great chef if one just follows the standard recipes as written in a cookbook forever. For better or worse our society values originality.

Which may be why Robin Hobb reacts with such nonsense to fan fiction since her works are held up frequently as examples of EFP, that stands for "Extruded Fantasy Product" or "Epic Fantasy Pastiche" depending on how kindly one feels towards the genre. I've read a number of her novels including Mad Ship and I did not particularly care for them and I did not think they were particularly good EFP, either. It is not true in all cases, but very often people go after things in others that we do not like about ourselves or have recently given up. An example is how against smoking people who have given it up can be vs. the more live and let live attitudes of those who have never smoked in their lives. Perhaps because her own work is so close to JRR Tolkien/D&D fan fiction she is particularly worried about the writing of her fans being confused with her actual writing.

None of this is to say that fan fiction is morally right or wrong. I know that there are darn good legal reasons authors cannot read fan fiction generally and why publishers might require that a writer not publicly approve of it. But she is dead and absolutely wrong about the money angle. Anyone who knows anything about copyright knows that legal scholars disagree on if it is purely a created property right or a moral right. And they disagree at length with footnotes and case law examples of every sort. Legally speaking the right to make derivative works is the exclusive right of the copyright holder for as long as the copyright exists. So, yes, a fan fiction writer is violating a writer's copyright and is breaking the law everywhere copyright is enforced.

The thing is that contrary to her assertion at the start of her rant she was not in any way "rational on the topic of fan fiction". So I end with two questions for all the touchy authors out there who want no one ever to write anything based upon their work. Did Nicholas Meyer break a moral law when he wrote The Seven-Per-Cent Solution? And if he did what should be done about it?
 

Comments

[jcfiala.livejournal.com]

Total Agreement. Well, on fanfic - I haven't ever read any of her books, so I couldn't comment on those.

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

I am being just a wee bit snarky about her books. Well maybe more than a wee bit. "Intemperate Review" is about saying the awful true things that my inner censer usually quashes. Her book Royal Assassin was one of the many books that has met my wall over the years. Though, unfortunately, after I had fair warning about how bad it would be by reading Assassin's Apprentice. And this feature is also about meta-snark, snarking about other people's snarks. Though when I do it about movies I hate I should probably pair it up with a fairer review.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

I've heard all the explanations of how fan-fic is pretty close to what lots of classic authors were doing, from Homer to Shakespeare at least, and in a lot of ways they're all true.

It's also *exactly* what's happening when multiple people write for a TV show, and when people do novelizations for movies or TV shows, or ghost books in series (like The Destroyer). And lots of that stuff, especially the book stuff in that class, is viewed as hack work.

And I'm coming more and more to feel that I don't care. When people go in to other people's worlds and write using the other people's characters, the results are nearly always bad. Furthermore, even when they're good, they're still slightly off, so the combination of many people doing this tends to blur things. So I steer clear of it, and if I were an author I'd steer clear of it even more strenuously, and it makes me feel queasy to know it's going on out there.

And there can be nasty legal repercussions if it looks like an author may have used an idea from something sent them by a fan (more an issue for movies; the reason why directors and writers won't even *open* unagented material).

Furthermore, the ethical standards developing in the modern fan-fic arena appear to be appalling, judging by the amount of plagiarism that's caught and the amazingly lame excuses many of the authors attempt to hide behind.

I've read a little Robin Hobb, but rather more Megan Lindholm, and met her a few times in person since we have friends in common, but not enough to care to discuss the details and quality of her work. My 50,000-foot-view is kinda that the "Lindholm" name wasn't selling well enough (but getting lots of positive responses from writers and actual fans) so she started writing under Hobb and doing more traditional epic fantasy to sell to a wider audience -- it sounds to me like a classic "dumbing down" maneuver, but I have no idea if she saw it that way (if I had inside knowledge, I'd probably find it appropriate to keep quiet).

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

I think you are wrong about the quality of fan fic and the ethics of its writers. Though you are right as well. I think that ethical standards are laxer than they were in the past, though a discussion of why this is would probably take more space than available in comments. I'll just point out the amount of plagiarism, bad behavior, and bad writing reported among published authors and note that it would be a lot worse if not for the editorial gatekeepers.

As I have read more I have become both more and less tolerant of fiction in general. I think the main problem with fan fiction is that it is like reading the slushpile straight without editors in the way. Crossed with a writing group that does not actually want to improve writing, but to just make friends and socialize.

In short: If I were to write a rant against fan fiction it would be fairer and a lot more hard hitting than hers.

[kaffy_r]

I found myself, to my intense surprise - not least because I felt no guilt in doing it - writing fan fiction recently. I'm a newspaper writer by trade, and I worked very hard, and unsuccessfully, at fiction writing when I was much, much younger. I am satisfied creatively with what I do now, possibly because I often play with minor characters or walk-ons in my particular chosen Other Person's World to see what I can develop, rather than with major characters. I've read some fanfic that was almost transcendently good. And I have read a great deal of execrable dreck, reeking of self-indulgence, swarming with Mary Sues and worthy of deployment only in one of the cess pits of prostituted creativity. Rather than babble further here, here's what I said about it recently.

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

I think fan fiction happens to everyone who reads at some point. If only in dreams. John M. Ford wrote the first part of a very interesting Wooster & Jeeves with Aragorn Wooster, of the Ring Woosters. Totally unpublishable, but it was a hoot to hear him read it at MileHiCon.

[kaffy_r]

That would, indeed, have been a treat to listen to.