[ SECRET POST #4911 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4911 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 25 secrets from Secret Submission Post #703.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

09. https://i.imgur.com/9EwDaMi.png

[(Anonymous)]

Ugh. Are they really trying to make it a thing? I write fanfic out of love for a series. I don't ever expect or even want to be paid for it, and I never intend to become a professional writer (the exception being if I hit the damn fandom lottery and ran into a show creator or something and they officially hired me to write... oh, and I'd have to chill the fuck out too :P).

I mean, I guess it isn't entirely unheard of. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead comes to mind (though Hamlet was written like 400 years ago). But idk if I'd want to see fic of varying quality by people getting paid to write for series I enjoy everywhere, all the time. Maybe I'm just an asshole, but I don't think I'd ever want anyone IRL knowing I write this kind of stuff. I know I shouldn't decide that for others, but I do worry about what it means.

[(Anonymous)]

What I don't get about this post is, do you think someone is going to force you to write fic for money

[(Anonymous)]

nayrt

I don't think forcing is -- I think it's more likely people will have patreons or cashapps or whatever like -- instead of withholding fics for reviews or kudos, the chapters will be withheld for money. And if it's on a patreon scheme, then the smutty chaps or additional material will be available for higher tiers.

The very idea of fic being commidfied like that though...I mean I guess it kind of already exists. Don't doujins cost money? Are they authorized by the publishing companies or the original creators?

[(Anonymous)]

nayrt People have bullied me for writing not-for-money.

[(Anonymous)]

No, I don't think I'll be forced to write it for money, and I'm not sure where you got that from. I just want fanfic writing to remain fun.

[(Anonymous)]

lol I can't write for shit but I wouldn't mind being forced to draw fan art in exchange for money.

[(Anonymous)]

Allowing people to make money out of fanfic is, to my mind, the least worrying part of the commodification of fandom. This is worrying about the barn door being open after the whole barnyard has gotten out. And I'm especially uncertain whether opposition to writers making money is actually in the best interests of writers, as you try to frame it. I'm sure that some writers would feel worse about it but that doesn't seem like a strong argument to me. I don't know! I'm sure that some fanartists really dislike the fact that some people charge money for fanart, but we still don't seem to have a problem with the practice in general.

[(Anonymous)]

I worry about it because, as the Axanar snafu demonstrated, "fair use" gets mighty tenuous when you start having a funding model, even if you're paying yourself well below market rate.

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, I agree that there are legal questions to be answered and I think this is a much better reason to be cautious about the commodification of fandom than the reasons that OP seems to give. Although that said, I don't think those problems are really moral objections whereby doing it is wrong; they're simply a consequence of the state of the law as it exists whereby doing it is unpractical.

[(Anonymous)]

Sorry, I'm out of the loop... how are people trying to commodify fanfiction now?

[(Anonymous)]

I dunno how prevalent it is, but I have seen a few Tumblr posts about how an author will write you a fic tailored to your tastes for X amount of money. Maybe I'm just an old, but that's such a huge no-no for me.

[(Anonymous)]

yeah, feels weird. They request about 4 USD for 1000 words, so it's not a huge profit. I don't like it much, as well as fanart comissions. It's like creators didn't really loved their work and needed money to write or draw.

[(Anonymous)]

Isn't that illegal? Making money off someone else's intellectual property?

[(Anonymous)]

doesn't seem to stop fanartists

[(Anonymous)]

According to U.S. copyright law, using someone else's intellectual property isn't legal, though some argue there's a lot of gray area in terms of fair use, derivative works, etc. Making money off someone else's IP is definitely not legal, but it's not commonly prosecuted so it's like jaywalking... tons of people do it and don't get in trouble, so many people think it's legal. It isn't.

[(Anonymous)]

I am no expert, but from what I've read, if a work is considered transformative enough, the law will find in favor of its right to be commercial.

But it seems like there's a bit of a weighing and balancing act that happens legally. Basically, if a work is transformative and non-commercial, it's legal. But if a work is transformative and commercial, then there's the question of how transformative the work is, and also how much or how little it uses from the copyrighted material.

Fanfic tends to borrow quite heavily from the copyrighted material, and is transformative but tends not to be whompingly transformative. Which is likely why AO3 and the OTW do not allow fic authors to link to any form of "tip jar" website.

[(Anonymous)]

Maybe I'm being paranoid here but isn't that kind of thing that gets people sued?

Then again I suppose it depends on what fandom and how 'legally' powerful the fandom source is (like Star Wars doing everything to shut down Hans/Luke and of course all that is Anne Rice). Obviously small/out of date/obscure fandoms wouldn't get much notice, but I could see media from bigger co-operation like Disney catching wind and going after people online.

Not that I'm protesting against charging for fics, I'm just clueless about the whole thing.

[icecheetah]

That is not allowed on Ao3.
Albeit my attempts to find the exact part where it says that in the ToS have been... well I can't find it unless it's the bit under B. Spam and commercial promotion. (I am not good at legalese).
So have a tumblr source that has a former Ao3 person chiming in.

But like, in a hypothetical world where being openly paid for your fanwork wouldn't risk any problems with the ip owners, I don't think everyone would expect to make a living off their fanfic? People would still produce it for the pure love of the fandom. People put a lot of effort original work that is entirely free to read, play, use, whatever, even though they could make money off it.

Also doing comissioned fanfic has been a thing for a long time. And iirc in Japan there's conditions where it's perfectly acceptable to sell your fanwork (Doujin) but I really need to sleep so I can't research this properly rn.

[(Anonymous)]

Aside from copyright law, which I do have issues with (mostly about the ever-expanding span of time a work is under copyright in the US and the way Disney—and others, but mostly Disney—mine the public domain for ideas but ensure they never have to give anything back) I worry that paid fanfic might end up more like cosplay than fanart. Back when I started going to conventions, I feel like there were way more people cosplaying at all skill levels, including a small subset that were so talented they also sold full cosplay outfits and accessories to others. Now I see way fewer people cosplaying and frequently when I ask how they made their awesome costume, they say they bought it.

I’m not a skilled enough seamstress/maker to do really amazing cosplay, and while I still dress up (or did in the world before COVID, sigh) it makes me sad that professional to the point of commercial cosplay has seemingly discouraged people who are still learning or just not interested in/able to put that much effort into it from cosplaying.

Fanart has both professionals who sell their work and people posting their work for free, but that may have something to do with the ins and outs of copyright law and how it differs between written and visual media.

I have a full time job and can’t imagine writing fic for money; I think I’d enjoy writing less.

[(Anonymous)]

As someone who sells cosplay (commissions), I feel this. I haven't been seeing a downturn in actual cosplayers, but I have seen a massive downturn in people making their own, with the buyers only sort of half-assing a costume by buying just a jacket or just a dress shell from a Chinese bootleg site and not bothering to basically finish the costume. Fanfic has the potential to go the same way, where the people selling it aren't the high-end super talented folks who will agonize over edits and deliver a perfect but expensive product, but rather the quantity-minded quickie writers who can fart out a mostly-OOC-but-hits-all-the-fandom-ID-buttons bunch of fics in a week. It could end up the Chinese bootleg buffet of fic, especially if the fans do the same thing they do with their cosplay: "well, I hate it, but I paid for it, so /shrug."

[(Anonymous)]

I would never pay for fanfic, even if it went behind paywalls. JFC, the people on tumblr I see doing fic commissions write the worst OOC fic anyway.

[(Anonymous)]

I would never pay for fanfic. Way back in the day I basically taught myself photoshop so I wouldn’t have to follow some icon maker’s stupid rules for using their icons. I’m fueled by enough petty spitefulness I’ll just write it myself even if it’s not very good.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't think it's ever going to be a big issue, and I wouldn't do it myself, but I'm not oppposed to people writing commission fics or giving people access to extra fics on patronite and what not. Wattpad people are actively seeking fic s that they can turn into YA novels, it's not 1995 anymore, and sometiems it seems like fic writing is the only on-line time-consuming hobby that cannot be monetised in any way whatsoever, while everywhere else people are monetising what seems like almost everything else, from their own reactions to trailers to unpacking merchandise. Most of the people who try getting moeny from fics end up earning very litte for it, anyway; there's too much fic availabel for free everywhere.

[(Anonymous)]

Too much fic available for free? And why is that a problem?