Hi All - the beginning of this story is posted on my multichannel.com blog which is where I live these days. We're experiencing a software glitch which is why the post continues here.
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On to the main attraction:
Just to be clear, my2centences appears to be running two parallel efforts to monetize fanfic. One is FanLib.com, the aggregator website that has caused the big stir; the other is FanLib, the on-line fanfic events organized on behalf of Showtime, CBS, and others.
Williams' disclaimer that the controversial pdf. applies to the fanfic events, and not the FanLib.com site, may be true but it's also disingenuous. The intent behind both projects looks to be the same: ""Produce consumer-generated media that is ready for the marketplace. The result: More value for marketers, more manageability for producers..."(From the H.I.G. Ventures website description of FanLib. The page links directly to FanLib.com.)
Both H.I.G and my2centences employ lush terms to describe the “proprietary ‘Massively Social Storytelling™’” method used to run their on-line HarperTeen FanLit, and probably the Ghostwhisperer and L-Word, fanfic events. They’ve applied for what appears to be a business method patent.
They’ve trademarked the word “fanisode.” They use the words “patent” and “proprietary” and “democratically” in the same sentence.
Founder Craig Singer leaves surfer-dude messages on blogs touting this technology.
How "obvious" is this method? It appears to be an on-line writing exercise reminiscent of round-robins. Many business method patent applications are "nothing more than combinations of age-old practices with a computer or the Internet."
Per FanLib.com, this woman immediately intuited that FanLib.com was the Emperor Has No Clothes of the Internet and interrogated one of the FanLib executives in a manner worthy of A Few Good Men.
The grandstanding around these projects makes me uneasy, especially...
when I see that now KEM-owned Entertainment Marketing Partners' heavy-weight Mark Stroman was hired to help Singer and Williams persuade Madison Avenue that fanfic could be used to attract the coveted and elusive young male demo - even though, after 40 years, fanfic remains almost exclusively written by women, and untouched by men in spite of the obvious opportunity and an abundance of techy Internet tools.
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UPDATE: It's 3:15a.m. on May 29, and I just checked my links. The my2centences website is suddenly "under construction." The supporting documentation has disappeared. I captured a number of pdf.'s, something I do routinely. I will repost the files shortly.
UPDATE#2:
from my files - the Mark Stroman article Download advertising_ages_madisonvine_will_nets_sign_off_on_fan_episodes.pdf
from my files - the m2centences marketing pdf. for their on-line fanfic events. Download FanLib_info.pdf
(courtesy of lavenderfrost)
Update #3: when I first spotted this icon it made me laugh out loud. Then, when my2centences flounced off with their documents in the dead of night, I couldn't resist posting the icon here.
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Corralling writers to hand them (and their audience) over to advertisers and milk them for their user-generated content strikes at the heart of the rebel fanfic culture. Because, you know, to appeal to advertisers, their faces will have to be washed first and their hair combed. You've torn your dress, your face is a mess, how could they know? Hot tramp, I love you so!
Yeah - that'll go over well with the Tiffany Network (CBS).
Fanfic has always been about boldly going where no studio or network was willing to go. Fanfic writers explored gay and lesbian relationships decades before Dawson’s Creek got around to the big kiss.
And yeah, a lot of the writers – including some of the most talented - write slash. Yes, slash. About gay relationships. It’s been around since the early days of ST-TOS. This is such old news. Can we just talk about this without tittering please?
Sure, a lot of fanfic is silly. But I remember my first encounter with fanfic at a Trek convention in the ‘70’s. Some of it was, and continues to be, brilliant. Yes, occasionally fanfic is NC-17. Shrug.
(Icon courtesy of angelofsnow.)
Fanfic writers have assiduously avoided the “limelight” FanLib is so certain writers crave. Fanfic writers prefer their underground sanctuaries.
And they are deeply networked, especially on LiveJournal. They’re smart – really smart - and tech savvy, building livejournals chock full of icons and other nifty tidbits. Some fandoms have set up their own extensive fic archive sites, managed by dedicated volunteers.
And when they're ticked off - and, boy, are they ticked off! – they put their tools to use. Go here to the new Life without FanLib community to track the latest and view the icons multiplying faster than tribbles.
Said one user on a livejournal site, “I have to laugh at the story ‘FanLib.com helps these readers find each other and gives them a space to share what they've created.’ I think we're doing that *just fine* on our own, thankyouverymuch.[sic]”
I hate to break it to FanLib but these women have no problem finding each other and/or assembling spaces. It’s something they managed to do in the dark ages of snail mail, long before the advent of the Internet.
(Icon courtesy of Lavenderfrost.)
T-shirts? They don’t need no t-shirts. Or anything else offered by FanLib. Quips a woman known as Lizbee, "I mean, what did they expect us (fandom) to say? 'Thank you, O Unknown Men With No Fandom Backgrounds, for bringing an air of legitimacy to our forty-year-old tradition of women's writing! Without you, why, we wouldn't have known what to do with ourselves! My, what a big TOS you have!'"
What writers do value is the freedom to create without limits imposed by TPTB - standards and practices, the MPAA, and/or television suits. From a post on Henry Jenkins’ blog: “[Fanlib] is mass-market circulation; 'normalization' into a masculine worldview and publishing economy; and assimilation into a single dominant website with rules codified and enforced by an external authority.”
Women also picked up on a striking dissonance because, no matter how hard he tries to present himself as MOFFT(member of the fanfic tribe), Chris Williams' remarks are riddled with MadAve-speak and with assumptions about what the Silicon Valley/LA corridor entertainment industry THINKS is a "value proposition" (his words) for fanfic writers.
On his blog. Director of Comparative Media Studies at MIT and participatory culture theorist, Professor Henry Jenkins said:
“To add insult to injury, [FanLib] surrounded itself with self congratulatory rhetoric about taking fan fiction into the ‘major leagues,’ which showed little grasp of why fans might prefer to operate in the more liberated zone of what Catherine Tossenberger, an aca-fan who spoke at Phoenix Rising this weekend, calls the 'unpublishable.'…FanLib had done its homework by the standards of the VC world….[but] they simply hadn't really listened to, talked with, or respected the existing grassroots community which surrounded the production and distribution of fan fiction.”
There are, in addition, many insightful posts written in response to Jenkins' remarks.
Update:
Chris Williams issued a mea culpa and his extensive answers to fan questions are now posted on Jenkins’ blog.
Update:
No one’s buying it. Scroll down Jenkins’ blog and read the dissections of Williams’ post.
Update:
It just keeps getting better. Workers of the World Unite: An Old School Marxist Analysis of FanLib vs. Fandom
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UPDATE:
I've tried, I really have, to reply to messages left on my Multi blog. But my blog hates me. I know it hates my Mac. Maybe it hates the fact that it lives in NY and I live in the Bay Area. I don't know. It's not talking to me.
I used the word "weanie" at one point. I thought it had something against the word "weanie." So I re-edited. No can do.
Why do I let my blog treat me like this? Because my editors at Multichannel give me enough rope to hang myself are the best. and I really love working with them.
So, here's what I tried to post. Not that earth shattering. But I did try.
Hi All –
Okaaay – third attempt at posting a reply. The system hates me.
But I want to thank everyone for taking the time to comment. I’m kinda blown away by all the responses, to be honest.
per LJ iconage: it's endlessly imaginative and yet another example of what happens when users are allowed to freely play with tools and content.
I'm clueless when it comes to building icons. But I would imagine it takes some effort and skill. I was very happy to give credit where credit was clearly due.
Shoutout to Robin. Go us. I watched Star Trek during its original run. My grandmother helped me compose a letter to NBC, asking TPTB to save the show. NBC will never be forgiven for moving the series to Friday night – never, ever, ever.
To Blackbird Song: thanks for articulating (so beautifully I might add) a big concern in the fanfic community – the copyright issue. It’s something I didn’t cover in my post. Fanfic is a mutli-layered topic and I finally had to stop, somewhere, somehow. Plus, every time I tried to talk about the copyright issue, it felt like my blog went into a state of liquefaction. I just never got a handle on the topic.
As for the extended history of fanfic, if you should have the energy to expand on the topic, I'm all eager eyes.
"masterpieces and drivel" lol!
Fanfic does indeed have an illustrious history. I can almost hear Spock, or maybe Teal'c, saying that. :)
(courtesy of lavenderfrost) -
Lavenderfrost, and Kirby and Silvia - yeah - I watched those documents disappear before my eyes. See above, a little response, in my update. I mean, honestly!
Slashpine - thanks! for dropping by and putting the name/face/spirit behind a really neat quote.
Read - yeah, agree - it's not about money at all, imho. I had something in my original post about recognition from peers, not authority figures, as paramount in the fanfic community. One is horizontal; the other vertical, which is why the fanfic community is so hard to control. They don't recognized authority. It's part of the DNA.
I feel okay about putting the observation out to the community for feeback. But as a wholly declarative graf in an article - well, I was unsure, so I deleted it.
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