Ontological Entitlement · 4:24pm Oct 21st, 2016
Many, many, many years ago, when 2400 baud was normal and 9600 was blazing fast, when BBSes crawled the Earth, while randomly exploring one of them, I found a picture which profoundly affected me, and the effects are still seen to this day.
It was a rather abstract collage, what you would call “creepy” today, and used difficult to decipher images to emphasize a phrase.
The phrase was: “Just who told you that you are even alive?!”
True to my obsession with acknowledging every syntactically correct question as a serious topic for study, I wondered. Just what does it mean to be alive? How do we know we are? And do we even know? Taking this to the logical extreme, just how do we know we are even real? “Cogito ergo sum?” And hence, I offer the following definition:
Ontological Entitlement is an illusion that while you, yourself, are real, other entities, ones you describe as “imaginary,” “fictional” or “virtual” are denied existence in some fundamental way. Ultimately, mostly because they won’t talk to you.
If you study in detail what differentiates you and these entities, you will find that the division is rather arbitrary.
As I used to explain it to students, when I actually had those, your daily life depends on numerous entities which have a very nebulous existence – money, which is just a quantifiable expression of value and debt, categories that only exist in a person’s mind, being merely the most obvious example. When the money is no longer believed in, it will rapidly vanish, even if the physical representation of such remains in your pocket. If enough people believe in the value of pieces of paper with numbers on them, this value might emerge from that alone. There is no end to other things which have similar properties, and without many of them, life in a modern society would become patently impossible.
Few of these virtual social entities are in any way people. But I don’t think that “What Would Jesus Batman Daring Do?” question, which some perfectly normal people ask themselves on occasion, is meaningless just because the people whose opinion they wish to solicit are not here, is it? Even purely imaginary people can have tangible moral authority. In fact, many an imaginary hero was enshrined in history as real, and we don’t know how many still are.
As a result, being real and “not real” is not a dichotomy, but a continuum, where the two extremes are much less common than most people believe, and which ones are which may well depend on the direction you’re looking from.
Now, why am I even remembering that…
There was a thread in the Writers Group, again, where the various contributors kept arguing about the value of fanfiction. A very common argument was that the only worth of fanfiction is being the entertainment equivalent of fast food. Because it’s a “knockoff” of “original work.” Also, that anyone who can write professionally should obviously write professionally, and not doing that is simply stupid. Therefore, all the fanfiction writers write unprofessionally because they can’t write professionally, and their work is worse than anything professionally written for that reason. Fanfiction is, at best, practice, and nothing else.
You all heard those.
Let me tell you something…
1. GhostOfHeraclitus lives in Redactistan. I live in a nearby Obscuria.
There was a book I wrote. I don’t know if it legitimately counts as fiction, but it was sold as such. I got paid for it. I had fan mail, more than I could read and respond to – occasionally, people still recognize my official name, even though it’s very common in Obscuria,1 and say, “That was you?!”
I got cheated by the publisher. I’ve met acclaimed authors who were working on their books while trying to hold down a full-time job, because no matter the acclaim, the books just weren’t a living wage. I’ve met those few who were lucky to actually make it as professional writers, and found that… I really don’t like quite a few of them. I mean really. And time demonstrated I wasn’t mistaken, either.
By then, I already knew one simple truth: A “professional” is merely someone who does something for money, no more and no less. There is no other real distinction between a professional and a skilled amateur. I did not magically become a better programmer than I was when I got a programming job just by doing so – I just became one with actual deadlines.
2. That said, if anyone can be a literary agent for me, I could reconsider. Since people who can do this and are not too busy are entirely unlikely to stumble onto my blog, that would be amusing.
In the end, I’m not a professional writer, because I don’t like the industry.2 I don’t like most of the company I find in it, and programming takes less effort and pays better. I.e. I abandoned that potential career just like I abandoned social sciences as a career, for reasons entirely unrelated to the process itself.
There is no end to perfectly legitimate reasons not to try to make writing your day job, no matter how good you are at it.
But what about the other argument, that fanfiction is ultimately derivative?
Consider a work that is inherently collective, like a TV series about chromatic equines. Which is itself based on the ideas of a previous TV series about chromatic equines. Which, in turn, is based on a toy line created as a near-perfect abstraction of a cute horse. Yeah, that TV series.
3. I foresee one, maybe two counterexamples, which will inevitably fall short of the production value polish of a typical TV cartoon or be incomparable in total length. Don’t bother, you know what I meant.
Now, it is beyond the capability of any one person to produce this kind of work in this kind of volume all on their own.3 And as I have established time and time again, creative direction is lacking, all we have is an implied direction – and it’s the readers doing the implying.
Where is the actual source of creativity that the hypothetical fanfiction writer is leeching from? Does it exist? Just what is there to derive from?
If we posit that a fanfiction writer is leeching from a specific writer, we’re left wondering, what about the other writers who participated. If a specific fanfic is mysteriously purchased and re-released as a licensed property, does it change the status of the work, magically turning it from derivative into original? This sort of thing does happen on occasion, you know. In fact, that’s kind of one of the accepted avenues into screenwriting, if all those screenwriting books I’ve investigated don’t lie.
I think I’ve made enough of a point. If you think I haven’t, pick up any of the licensed pony books and try to judge it, objectively, as an abstract book for little girls. Many of the authors congregating around this site could do better children’s literature. Easily. I’m pretty sure a few already did, and I just haven’t stumbled into an example.
4. Will anyone say I’m being derivative if I say “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” and mean it? No? Good.
There isn’t really an author to derive from, around here. The only thing that objectively exists is the audience of people who like ponies. They all have different reasons to like them, but that alone is sufficient to make those people an audience. And what ponies really are to this audience is words of a meta-language this audience uses to communicate. Something they use because that is a something they already share and already have a level of emotional investment in. No more and no less. Characters are words. Very long and very complex ones, but still words, units of a language used to communicate an idea.4
Ultimately, this self-deprecation of fanfiction as non-literature is exactly the same kind of ontological entitlement as declaring some entities absolutely real above all others. While there is surely a continuum between good, sincere, original literature, and derivative, bad, unoriginal, bandwagony drivel, not to mention things that are simply unreadable, there really isn’t a cutoff point when something magical happens and one turns into the other. Just like there isn’t any magical event that happens in a tin the moment it passes its sell-by date. There isn’t even an antonym for the word “literature” in English.
When you are writing fanfiction, you are communicating ideas and emotional states to other sapients, for suitably small values of “ideas” and “sapients.” That is all any language ever does. Be serious about it, because you never know which of these butterflies that you’re dreaming of is dreaming of you.
It’s okay to fail. Not being earnest isn’t.
P.S. And don’t use that horrid “OC” acronym. Ever. This is like saying that you aren’t allowed to invent a new word to describe something that never happened before.
I want to say something so,
something...
This was interesting. I get it and agree, yet cant articulate a coherent response to it.
This is actually quite heartening. Thank you for a well-argued morale boost.
I've seen meany arguments in defense of fanfic and its value but it's almost always "these works of literature (The Divine Comedy, Paradise Lost, Romeo and Juliet) are fanfic; there's no such thing as original ideas" etc etc. But this is the first time I've seen this argument with some interesting philosophy and dang, I like it!
Oliver stop making me like you. This is not fair, you are not allowed to just articulate better than I can why fandom works the way it does!
And that's how you hit the nail on the head.
4265155 The line can be blurred to near illegibility when the nail does not fall quite into the right catagory. For example, one of my favorite songwriters, the genius Tom Lehrer, who for a living, was a professional scholar at Harvard, teaching mathematics, political science, and music (at times). And in his free time, became a legend to all of us who like to sing, but alas lack the talent.
Almost all professional authors have day jobs, are of independent means, or have a spouse who supports them. There are very few writers who make a living from only from their craft, and ones who make a good living are rare.
Among those rare individuals was Gregory Maguire, who wrote Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. His book was undeniably single-sourced Wizard of Oz fanfic. As far as I can tell, no reviewer among the crowd that rushed to praise the book ever uttered or even alluded to that label.
So, it depends on how you do it, evidently.
And as to the ability of some people on this site to produce better stories that the official ones. Yes, I've seen ample proof of that, again and again. Why aren't those people working for Little, Brown and Co. instead of G. M. Berrow? It's because of the magic of friendship, and I am being deadly serious about that.
Business people will go on about the importance of "connections" and "networking" but it's useless to be connected to someone if they don't like you. Having a friend you met in class who has a friend that they hike with who is friends with a literary agent is worth more than a Rolodex full of cards belonging to people you can't quite remember.
And... it might seem like I've strayed away from the subject a bit, but I really haven't.
And may Obscuria and Redactestan continue their long history of peace, friendship, cooperation, trade, and soccer matches falling just short of outright war.
:)
4265228
I am convinced that it is pure social power, what gets labeled fanfiction and what does not. Purely invented. It's one of those irregular verbs as Yes, Minister would put it[1]: I write metatextual fiction, you write derivative works, he/she/it writes fanfiction.
It's the same thing but if someone inside the tribe does it, then it is good, if it is someone outside the tribe, it is bad, and if it is someone in the Tribe We Have All Agreed Is Okay To Hate, then it is wretched and possibly criminal, certainly immoral.
Various forms of this exist, like the treatment of SF ("SF's no good!' they bellow till we're deaf./ 'But this looks good … ' 'Well, then, it's not SF!'), or how one person dribbling paint onto a canvas is an idiot, and another a genius even if you couldn't tell apart the dribbles with the use of a panel of experts, an electron microscope, and a palantir. It's just raw societal power to declare one thing to be one way, and another to be a different way, manifesting in the world. That it is inconsistent and arbitrary is part of the point.
[1] As in: I have an independent mind, you are eccentric, he's gone around the bend, I believe the quote goes.
4265286
And that is a far better summation of the whole effect (and everything else even slightly resembling it) that I could have hoped to produce! I will treasure and use that irregular verb metaphor every chance I get.
4265286
Which is why the question we should be asking is why fanfiction writers - and readers - will so readily buy into a social order that disadvantages them and offers nothing in return.
But that’s a topic for another post, I suppose. For now, I just mean to say they shouldn’t, and I, at least, endeavor not to. :)
…
… If it turns out that by some grand cosmic coincidence you are actually Hazard Adams, I owe you, like, infinite beers.
4265376
I don’t think this gentleman lives in Obscuria, so I’m most definitely not him. :)
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4265228
Don't have much to add to the discussion, but I do have another example of "legitimate literature" which would be judged as fanfiction by modern standards:
The epic poem Orlando Furioso by Ludovico Ariosto, which is based on Orlando in Love.
(Oddly enough, the former has completely eclipsed the latter in terms of fame and importance).
I know about this because it's actually a culturally important work in Italy.
edit: there's also the Aeneid, which is a fixfic of the Odyssey from a Roman perspective.
That was a fun read! Well said.
I think that many (not just in the arena of MLP fan-fiction consumers) are a little too in love with hyperbole. People seem to feel empowered by making blanket statements with no real thought behind them; usually as a means of shoehorning their opinions into reality. I admit to falling into this
horrible habitpattern myself from time to time but I like to think that I'm self-aware enough to avoid relying on it as my sole means of communication. I just wish people were willing to say "I don't understand this" or "I don't like this" or "I don't value this" instead of "this is worthless". The first forms can engender discussion while the latter is just some jerk's bookend.On a somewhat related note, I look at fan-fiction this way: fan-fiction is art. Art's purpose is to evoke; typically to evoke thoughts or feelings. The right thought or feeling at the right moment can, quite literally, save a life. Life is invaluable. From there, the body of art - and by extension fan-fiction - is of infinite value.
And I, apparently, am some jerk's bookend.
4265391
And your description of the Aeneid gave me quite a chuckle.
I didn't know that about Orlando Furioso. Neat!
There are a ton of lesser-known "professional" fanfics out there, based on works out of copyright. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, springs immediately to mind.
And even "official" novels set in various universes such as Star Wars, Warcraft, Dragonlance, etc., are essentially fainfic.
People make a very busy hobby out of carving continuous transitions into discrete chunks. More of them need to learn calculus, apparently.
4265286
A number of the better dribblers make this lack of distinction part of the point--like Duchamp's 'Fountain'.
Devil's Advocate: The worst fanfiction tends to be worse than any other type of fiction. That is because the main advantage of fanfiction is the work of defining the setting and most of the characters has been done already, so first time aspiring authors with absolutely no talent are willing to write fanfiction when they would be unwilling to go to the extra effort of writing fiction. They don't even need to come up with a new idea, just take a existing plot, have an OC of theirs present and interacting-but-not-changing anything, and it writes itself.
Conversely, I think good fanfiction will actually be better than good fiction, given an author of equal talent, time and effort. That is for the same reason, a good author can use fanfiction to spend less time building the setting and characters, and spend more time writing interesting plots, prose and character development. It's like the difference between an artist who draws by hand and one who draws using computer software. The former might be more "authentic" and "crafty," but unless one artist is massively more talented than the other, the latter will be more detailed, beautiful and all around "better."
Am I saying people who disparage fanfiction are the same hipsters who want everything locally grown and made of hemp? Yes, I suppose I am.
4265286 I thought the original turn of phrase was "I unofficially briefed a reporter, you leaked, he's in violation of the state secrets act." Also sad to hear about the tragic loss against Obscuria, I thought you had it right until the end of the match.
On the subject of ontological entitlement, a lot of "not real" characters are eminently more real and meaningful to us than unquestionably real human beings. The classic example is Sherlock Holmes being a lot more real to most people than his creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (and in no small part because Holmes lives and thrives in various versions across books, games, movies, and TV series, not to mention fanfic, whereas Sir Arthur has been dead for close to ninety years).
I'd warrant that every one of us has "real" acquaintances, neighbors, coworkers and such, who in many ways are less real to us than the Mane Six -- that we have a much more vague and incomplete idea of their personalities, interests, hopes, dreams, fears and past than of a number of small technicolor magical equines.
Okay, I'm not a fan of this 'Ontological Entitlement' concept.
You are taking grades of 'reality' best suited to describing concepts and attempting to apply them to people - with the end result somewhat resembling nihilism.
Now, admittedly, you can argue one concept to be more 'real' than another, depending on how malleable that concept is, and the level of impact it has on the physical world, but the physical and the conceptual are two entirely separate things.
This is as far from truth as it gets. Fast food is bad for your health, sure, but it's also a highly profitable, very well engineered industry. The entertainment equivalent of fast food is softcover hard-boiled crime/spy fiction, borderline pron romance, soft fantasy and so on. They are terrible, yes, but they are terrible by design, and their terribleness is part of a complex equation that ends with "...equals a shitton of dough for the company". I know it because that's where I work. Don't expect actual quality from the industry: good books cost too much to make and don't sell enough copies. Publishing good books is unprofessional.
Comparing books to food, fanfiction is home cooking. Which means that some of it would get burned or over-spiced, far worse than a fast-food hamburger -- with it you can at least be sure it's edible. But some of it would be unprofessionally good, with the author putting so much time and effort and touching such subjects that no editor in the industry would allow it.
Scarlet sent me--I'm here to say--you've got a good thing going. "Ontological entitlement" is an excellent formalization of a feeling I've had brewing in my head for some time. Though I'll admit that it could've easily been its own blog post. This post takes a very interesting direction through its subjects; I'm sure a professor would mark off points for lacking a proper thesis and conclusion. Just goes to show what rubrics can do for you sometimes...
I think this blog gets to sit on the throne of "post I would theoretically link someone to were I trying to convince them of the artistic value of fanfiction." I dream that one day it will be useful to me in this way.
Also,
I feel this very strongly. And also syntactically incorrect questions. Really most questions, at all.
4270739
After you grade a paper which contains double (!!) exclamation (!!) points (!!) after every bleeding sentence, your standards for your own scientific writing become a great deal more relaxed. :)
Most of these start with “so what would be a syntactically correct question to ask?” though.
I do wish that people writing indignant blog posts about other users at least had the testicular fortitude to name names. Because, you know, if you're already ragging on someone behind their back, you might as well make it official. It's so annoying to only stumble over these by accident. Maybe I'll do the Ben Croshaw thing and have a biannual hate-mail showdown, God knows I get enough of these.
That sure is a lot of outrage over something you didn't care about enough to actually say it in that thread, though, that's for sure.
4273690
If that were actually outrage directed at you personally in any way, I would not hesitate to direct it at you personally and name names, you know. I did not, because I do not actually have anything against you. I choose not to express it as a personal attack, because it isn’t.
I dislike the point of view you expressed, that much is true. It was seeing your commentary that made me remember that it is a widely held point of view, that much is true as well. But, I think I’d have to date the first time I heard these arguments to 1998 or thereabout. From lots of very different people. And since I thought my thoughts neither fit well into nor are appropriate for a forum thread, I used my own blog.
Sorry it came out this way.
But if you still feel a hate-mail showdown is justified, I don’t think I can (or should) actually stop you. I don't promise to write a response, though.
4273690 Awwww, Pookie!
Seriously I don't see what business it is of yours what other people blog about, even if your comments inspired it. Are you allergic to people disagreeing with you outside of a thread or something?
4273993
I don't find it very respectable. I welcome disagreement and would have enjoyed a debate about this, but say what you want: when I accuse people of acting entitled, I do it to their faces.
4274025 Well, you clearly found what was going on, it wasn't even a direct response to you, and you've decided to make this about personal beef rather than actually responding to the content of the blog.
ok then.
What writers' group was this? Surely not one here on fimfiction?
Are you another damned furriner who speaks better English than I do, even though it's your third language?
4296678
The very same. Check the above argument with wlam, who, in fact, considered this post a personal attack precisely because he was one of the participants in that thread and expressed the view I am criticizing here.
Don’t tell me you didn’t know already.
4296850 Do you remember the name of the thread? I'm gathering quotes from fimfiction writers about why they write or what the purpose of fan-fiction is.
4297123
Alas, no.
This is going to sound like I’m messing with you, but I swear that this is one hundred percent serious.
This is about the first half of your essay, before you get into the defense of fanfic:
If someone can have a “tangible moral authority” even if they aren’t, strictly speaking, 100% real—can those of us presumed real have a tangible moral duty towards someone who isn’t real?
Let me use an example. Suppose tomorrow, I publish a blog post about my pet dog. I don’t describe him in very much detail, nor do I provide any photos of the dog, but I claim that I just deliberately broke his leg. I admit that it’s an act of pure sadism, hurting the dog for no reason whatsoever. (Or perhaps, for maximum crazy, I claim that injuring my dog will somehow help my brother find the love of his life, so that makes it okay.) How will people on this site react? After the initial confusion, there would be anger. People would call me nasty names, and someone would track my IP address so they could report me to the local police. Either Knighty would ban me, or I’d disappear from the site on my own. (Did I get arrested, or did I leave of my own accord? You’ll never know.)
Is that dog real? Again, there were no photos of this dog, and I barely described him in my blog post. From your end of the screen, he’s just vague words on a page and a mental image of a canine. Yet that would make him real enough to provoke genuine anger and serious consequences for me.
(Real talk: I don’t actually have a dog, and if I did I would never ever hurt him.)
Now consider Twilight Sparkle. We’ve watched hours of footage of her. We’ve heard her voice, and we have a reasonably good idea what she looks like. She has a consistent personality, yet one deep enough to still surprise us: given some particular scenario, we could guess how Twilight would react, but not with one hundred percent accuracy. She is, perhaps, a more three-dimensional person than some humans I’ve met in real life.
Say I publish a story where a random accident (”an act of God”, if you will) breaks Twilight’s leg. And for maximum crazy, this somehow leads directly to Applejack marrying Rainbow Dash. How would people on this site react?
It’s obvious enough why my hurting Twilight and my hurting an allegedly real dog would provoke different reactions. But should they?
I spent quite some time meditating on your example, before finally realizing that it actually re-frames a paradox that I already wrote about in terms of moral relationships, when these terms are simply not part of my habitual vocabulary.
The particular difference you highlight is ultimately in whether the object is thought to be mutable or immutable. Which is what makes it somehow other people’s business that you allegedly broke the leg of a dog for sadistic reasons: People believe that, at least in theory, they can get their hands across your throat and get the dog to a vet’s office, the event is actionable. They are in the same story with you – or at least close enough to be sure they can make themselves a part of yours. This is usually not an option with a Twilight who has a broken leg, which forcibly relegates them to the role of spectators.
1. Also, to see the invisible, row, row and fight the power.
Now, do spectators, who can’t do anything but choose to watch or not, have a moral duty to do the impossible?1
This is actually in itself a formulation of Rika’s Problem:
4265359
From a writer's perspective, I can see at least one: protection from criticism. Something along the lines of "I'm not really a bad writer, I'm just playing around. I'm not done getting serious yet!"
A lot of new writers seem to entertain the notion that writing fanfiction entitles them to a higher degree of leniency.
4265122
Dante's interactions with Virgil turn him into the worst kind of self-insert, the kind that would get you or I crucified for doing it unironically. I have no idea how he got away with it in fanfiction for a work whose fans are famous for murdering anyone they don't like during the time period he was alive in. He even did the Chris-chan thing where he included his enemies and critics in the story getting what he thinks they deserved, bending over backwards to include in the afterlife one who wasn't actually dead yet.