astridv | (no subject)

Damn. This had started out as such a productive day. I sketched a cover art and it turned out nicely; I caught up with a lot of my email and LJ comments, I went to the gym and did the back exercises I neglected last week; I enjoyed an hour in the sauna, watched two eps of Fullmetal Alchemist with my friends, and was juuust about to sit down and get a lot of work done, and then I made the mistake to just quickly check my friends list. And found a bunch of links to this post by Diana Gabaldon - well, you've probably seen it by now. If you haven't: Pro author shares her thoughts on yaoi: OK, my position on fan-fic is pretty clear: I think it’s immoral, I _know_ it’s illegal, and it makes me want to barf whenever I’ve inadvertently encountered some of it involving my characters. And it only gets worse after that.

Cue comments along the lines of "I have never heard of this thing called fanfic until just now, but that won't stop me from explaining how immoral, lazy, and badly written it is, and while I'm at it, let me proudly display my ignorance of intellectual property law."

I spent hours reading&refreshing. I can't help it, I find anti-fic wank oddly entertaining and addictive. And some of this shit is involuntarily funny. My favorite part is Verna, who is of the opinion that... wait, I'll quote, no one's gonna believe that otherwise..."

Diana is pointing out that wrong is wrong, no matter the circumstance. And she is right. Murder is no more wrong than stealing. Stealing is no more wrong than lying. It is all the same. Many here have said that fanfic is "grey" in regards to legality. If one is not sure the rightness or legality of an action, then said one should not be doing it. [snip] So, if there is a hell, is there a worse hell for murderers and a lesser hell for liars?

[eta:] Ahahaha... my new fave comment: Chip Michael explains that 'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead' isn't a derivative work of fiction because the story is basically the same, but the characters are the heart are not the lead characters and are fully developed in and of themselves. (link)

And of course developing minor characters is not something done in fanfic, ever. Uh-huh.

meta rec:

bookshop - I'm done explaining to people why fanfic is okay.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I love when people give a perfect argument for why they're wrong as if it's an argument for why they're right. Yes, the legal greyness of fanfic is kind of similar to the relative moral greyness of lying as compared to say, murder.

That poster is the illustration of that great old saying "Get off my side, you make my side look stupid!" (Or, in this case, stupider.)

So, if there is a hell, is there a worse hell for murderers and a lesser hell for liars?

Someone clearly missed the day they covered Dante in English class.

I want to know which circle of Hell is the one where fanficcers go, anyway! If I'm going to be stuck there for all eternity, I want to know who else I'll be hanging out with ... aside from the entire contents of my f'list, Shakespeare, and just about every novelist, comic book writer and manga-ka in the 20th century, of course. *g*

... oh dammit, this probably means Gabaldon will be there too, doesn't it? SUCK. Well, maybe we can leave her and Lee Goldberg (tie-in novels? TV scripts? he is SO GOING TO BE THERE TOO) to have a mutual whinefest and go have grown-up conversations elsewhere. *g*

I want to know which circle of Hell is the one where fanficcers go, anyway!

Yeah, I wanted to ask that person if the fanartists end up in the same circle as the ficcers. That'd be nice. We could organize Big Bang in Hell!

I wish I had Fandom Wank at work...except I'd never get any work done. As it is, I'm doing this at lunch right now...

Sometimes I think it'd be good if I didn't have internet where I work. That way, I could've had some actual work done yesterday.

Ah, whom am I kidding, I love having internet while working...

Thank you for the link, now please give me back one hour of my life back again, thanks.

A classic case of
http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/duty_calls.png

One hour! You got off cheap, my friend. ;)