Absconding With The Tontine Funds

So much for a fun snow day. Here I was envisioning a day of relaxation and resting up to get rid of my stupid cold (and possibly even vacuuming), but no. Of course that wouldn't happen. Because of course the power at my condo had to go out. It's been out for ten hours and counting now, with no ETA from the electric company as to when it'll be restored.

Thankfully, I could charge my phone in my car, and once the roads were cleared, my parents came to get me (they don't trust that I can drive in winter conditions and they're probably correct, as I can barely drive properly in fully clement weather). Now I am warm, with electricity, and with wi-fi at my parents' house. Huzzah!

Here's to hoping that the power will come back soon and no pipes get frozen and maybe another school closure for the one I didn't even get to enjoy. Lol.

I've occasionally grumped about how fan artists are perfectly within bounds to make commissions off their artworks while fanfic writers have never been allowed anything of the sort, like some ugly stepsister kept in the attic. But when Amazon announced this morning that they're now in the business of selling fanfiction, it felt intuitively wrong to me. Right now, Amazon only has access to a portion of WB's rights (series like The Vampire Diaries and Pretty Little Liars), but that's not to say more companies won't eventually join the fray if there's money to be made.

As a long-time fic writer, I've never expected to make any profit off what I've written (heck, I barely expect to make anything off my novel). The complaint mentioned above is more to do with the legitimization of creative fan productions than anything monetary. I write because I love to write, I read fanfic because I love the universes created and the wonderful paths on which fandom takes them.

Let me preface what I'm about to say with: I like Amazon in general. I buy lots of stuff off them and I use their Kindle platform to sell my book. It's been fine. But. Getting their corporate fingers into fanfic is icky. Fandom, and by extension fanfic, isn't about money, it's about creating something from stuff you enjoy for the sheer love of it, and it's about creating something for people who share that joy.

Aside from that, the way in which Amazon is going about this business is problematic in itself. I'll let John Scalzi enumerate the ways in which this is going to suck (and far more eloquently than I could), but basically it comes down to this: Amazon will let fanfic writers sell fanfic for royalties that amount to a pittance, hold the rights to anything original that the writer comes up with, and make a profit off those original elements without any compensation to the writer. Plus, Amazon gets to decide, with very vague language, what is and isn't acceptable as 'offensive' material -- I'm just going to go out on a limb here and guess that all our lovely porn isn't going to make the grade. Ha.

The thing is, I'm all for making fanfiction more mainstream. We've been living a long time with fanfic writers stereotyped as sweaty nerds living in our mother's basement or screaming teenage girls with no grip on reality, even though -- obviously preaching to the choir here -- fandom is made up of fantastic, kind, imaginative people. The perception of us should change, but what we do shouldn't. And especially not because a corporate giant who doesn't understand fandom tells us to.