Mind Vomit by the ikss: fic list

Settle in, kids. It's gonna be a long one.

The other day, I sent an email to The Holder of the Fic List (the Fic List being, for those of you who don’t know, a list of Twilight fanfiction stories which have been downloaded from the net and saved in pdf form. Copies of these fics are therefore available even if the fics have been or eventually will be pulled from the ‘net). I assume there is more than one holder of such a list and database of fics, but this is the only one I know about and it has been talked about a lot lately.

Before I launch into what will inevitably be a long-winded explanation of my feelings about downloading copies of people’s work and possibly distributing it, let me say first that I perused this fic list a few weeks ago and was delighted to find a couple of fics that I never got the chance to read, Poughkeepsie, being one of them. If I promise MrsTheKing that I will buy three copies of her book should she ever publish, do you think I’d be excused for reading this, even though she pulled it moons ago?

Anyway, so as I was perusing the list I saw that my own fic, The Cocky and The Cougar is listed. This seems odd to me, since my fic is still readily available online and I have no plans to pull it, but whatever. I honestly didn’t and do not care. Plus, based on some emails I’ve received over the past few months, I think some people are confused. They know I’m working on original work on the hope of publishing and in light of how many people have been pulling fics to publish them with Omnific or TWCS, well, they put two and two together and assume that’s what I’m doing. So maybe that’s why it was downloaded—a preemptive strike, as it were. Except that I’m not pulling the story. Cocky/Cougar is a work of Twilight fanficton and will never be pulled for publishing. My own personal feeling is that converting one’s fanfic into an “original” piece of fiction and publishing it is, at the very least, immoral and it borders on illegal. I just don’t think it’s right and I gotta tell you that I feel kind of shitty saying this in public because there are people that I am friendly with who are doing just that.

If you choose to try & publish, I really do say “More power to you!” and wish you luck. I read almost all of the stories Omnific chose to publish in their first go-round, in their original, Twific forms, and enjoyed them. I’m sure others will enjoy them as well. I have no ill thoughts or feelings about the process and I say that because I know that a lot of people in the fandom do. It’s just that it’s not something I would do.

But maybe I feel differently about my fic than others do theirs. We are talking about All Human stories here and some AH fics have nothing at all to do with Twilight. I know I said as much to twanza about her fic Neverending Math Equation. Change the character names and nobody would ever know that was a Twific. Her characters are fully developed as their own, individual entities, irrespective of their Twilight affiliation.

I remind her of all of this every time I nag at her to get to writing her original work.

Anyway, my point about her characters is that as we write Twific we are often lazy in the character development area. There are certain attributes and traits that all of our Edwards and our Bellas and our Jaspers share. That’s why we’re reading the stuff—we want to read what this new writer is going to do with these characters we all love (OK, or are at least interested in, for one reason or another) and is Tanya going to come in and try to get Edward to cheat and are Victoria and James playing secret bondage games in their house at night?

Whatever. You know what I’m saying. We read this stuff because we have certain expectations and certain preconceived notions. This is also why fics with original characters or that do not have happy endings or where certain characters cheat on others or where the author just goes way off the map in an effort to do something new often do not garner a very large readership. If people want that kind of creativity, they’ll go read a real book. We want the tried and true. The familiar. We want our beloved Twilight characters and we want our Happily Ever After.

I say none of this with pride, by the way. This is one of my biggest frustrations with the fanfic community. But I calls ‘em as I sees ‘em. I also understand it. I mean, this is fanfiction. By definition, it is supposed to be tied to its’ source material. But this is also why I decided How to Write a Love Song can’t be a Twific, for example. It’s not fanfiction. I was only going to change the names to make it one so that I could share it with people. But honestly, few in the Twific community would like it anyway, because it would fall too far off the map. Because it’s not fanfiction. So now, you’ll have to pay for it.

Anyway, what this means to us as writers is we don’t have to work as hard at creating fully developed characters. You, the reader, already know these people. It helps immensely, so thanks for that.

So maybe these writers who are converting their Twifics into original works and publishing feel more confident that their characters and story lines will stand alone, sans Twilight tie-in. But anyway. As I said. I wouldn’t publish The Cocky and the Cougar. And I honestly have no plans to pull it, so why it’s on The List is a mystery. I think they just started downloading fics as they are completed, just to cover their bases.

After I completed writing The C&C, I went thru it one last time, correcting some typos and making a few tiny alterations due to things I have learned since I started writing the thing (such as the fact that you can fly on planes while pregnant up until your third trimester. Who knew?). I did this before sending the completed fic to a few people in my real life who wanted to read it, but not necessarily on any of the fan fic sites. This way, they could print it out and read it in bed or whatever they wanted to do (in the case of some chapters, reading in bed is recommended. *ahem*). So now it looks cleaner. Prettier. And it’s now evident that I know how to use an em dash.

When I discovered that my story was on The Fic List, I emailed The Keeper of The List (no, I do not know its name) and asked if it would mind replacing the existing fic with my newer, prettier, em dash-ier version. It is doing so. Which is nice, I think. Well, I mean, at least The Keeper is willing to work with we, the authors.

(So here we are, 1,197 words later and I still have yet to relate my feelings about people who download and share copies of fics, which was my entire reason for writing this blog entry. New here? Well, you may no longer need the warning, but here it is: I am one long winded puppy.)

In case you missed it in the midst of all of my wandering off topic and rambling nonsensically, I mentioned that I don’t care that my fic is on The List. My attitude about it is that once you choose to post something on the internet, you have to know that people are printing it out, downloading it to read later, sending copies to their friends, etc. That just happens. I mean, duh. And I really don’t see any harm in sharing copies of fics you like with your friends. To me, this is the same as lending a book to a friend. I guess, technically, it’s illegal. You’re supposed to tell your friend to buy the book (and of course you should never burn copies of CDs! *cough*). But in my family, we pass books around through like fifteen pairs of hands and then argue about whose book it was to begin with.

So, I sent The Keeper of The List an email and it nicely acquiesced to my request (ooh ... gotta love the word play there). But I don’t want The Keeper to think we’re cool or anything. Because while I may or may not have to go to confession next week and seek absolution for the reading of Poughkeepsie, I have come to the conclusion that I do not really like what they’re doing.

People have many reasons for pulling their fics. Yes, many writers are pulling so that they can rework the story and either shop it round for publishing or be published by fandom offshoots Omnific or TWCS (they’d probably hate that I called them “fandom offshoots”, but let’s be real, here). But that is not the only reason.

For example, I know of one hugely popular author who pulled her fic because of personal issues. She lives in a small and extremely religious community and was posting an NC17 story. Her story, and she, became so popular that, at one point, she was approached at the drug store in her town and asked about it. Her husband was being asked about it at work. It became a huge intrusion into her life. Nobody expects anything like that when they decide to post a silly bit of Twilight fanfiction on the internet.

I know another woman who is very active in her church and she would die of humiliation her if her smutty fanfiction stories were ever discovered by those in her community. She’s been writing for a long time and only recently decided to try her hand at getting something original published. She pulled her fics out of a fear that, once published, her smutty online writing will be exposed to her community.

I have seen writers get ridiculed when they say they are pulling their fics for “personal reasons” or “to protect their family”. These are only two such reasons and I find their reasoning entirely understandable.

Both of these women have their pulled fics on The List. One of them asked politely if hers could be removed, citing her reasons, and was of course denied. The reason she was given was “It creates a slippery slope if I do it for you.” Logical reasoning, but does that make it right?

I do have to say that even in their email refusing to pull her stories from The List, whoever this person is was as nice as possible and did accommodate he author in a couple of ways. But the end result is still the same.

Here’s my position on the matter: I don’t see anything especially wrong with downloading a favorite fic and even sharing it with a friend (we’ve all lent books to friends and this is the exact same thing). I think any writer who thinks that what they choose to post online is not being copied and pasted elsewhere is naive. It is. Just hope you’re being credited as the writer (which in the case of these downloaded fics, you are). We write and we post online—we even choose to publish—because we want to share our work with others. Why quibble about the way in which this is accomplished? Just know that it happens, control what you can and look at that positive aspect.

I can understand that sometimes we move beyond what we once wrote and it can be embarrassing to know that people are still reading something we wrote a few years back and are now ashamed of. But that’s life. That’s the evolution of an artist. You think U2 wouldn’t scrap a whole lot of The Unforgettable Fire album now, if they had the chance? But it’s out there. Fucking “Promenade” is out there forever.

That said, the truth is that the reasons we choose to pull our work from the ‘net are as varied as the people doing so. For some, it’s not just a matter of wanting people to pay for our published work and so not wanting a copy floating around out there for free. I am not a person who hides any part of who I am. Most people in my family and many friends know I write smutty Twilight fanfiction and post it on the internet. They just roll their eyes and chalk it up as another of Crazy Aunt Karen’s little idiosyncrasies. (By the way, I can’t believe I just spelled idiosyncrasies correctly on the first try right then! Go me!) A couple of them are reading it. I am now their husbands’ favorite aunt. But anyway, not everyone is me. There are a lot of people who, for various reasons, would want and even need to keep their online identity completely separate and apart from their real world life, especially if they are writing NC17-rated stories. We would all like to think that by using cute little online handles like “ikss” we are keeping our real identities a secret, but we all know that is hardly true anymore. It is frighteningly easy to track people down if you know what you’re doing (don’t worry. I don’t know what I’m doing so you’re all safe).

Whatever their reason, to just have the attitude that the authors’ wishes just do not matter at all and we’re going to keep distributing these fics whether you want us to or not and we don’t care why you chose to pull your fic is, as the author of one of the stories on the list said to me recently, the ultimate “fuck you” to the authors. I mean, they have fics on that list which were pulled before they were even finished. Why would anyone want or need to read that now when they don’t have the ending? The only point in stories like that being there is to say “fuck you” to the author. They are just going to have every story that they possibly can and they will never pull anything from the list for any reason. So I guess when I die in a car accident next week, my parents can track down copies of the smut I wrote as my parting gift to the world.

Oh my god. That is depressing on so many levels...

Before I end this rantry (see what I did there? It’s a cross between a rant and an entry), I leave you with one caveat: In all of the above, I am not talking about people who pull their fics with only a few chapters left to go. That. Just. Plain. Sucks. To pull people in and get them excited about your story, only to yank the rug out from under them and say, “Wait for the published book, then you can have your ending!” is just all kinds of shitty. You basically used Twilight and it’s built-in fan base so that you could rope the readers in. Now you’re going to publish a book that’s not even about the same characters and you expect people to pay to get their ending ... about different characters. Huh?

If we expect readers to be fair, we writers need to be so also.

Stay tuned for my next rantry: What the Fuck is Up with All of These Fucking Awards (aka Do Wide Awake and Master of the Universe Really Need Any More Stinking Awards?)?