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When Fandom Drama Goes to Court
A Feud in Wolf-Kink Erotica Raises a Deep Legal Question
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/23/business/omegaverse-erotica-copyright.html
This article is a wild ride, and I enjoyed every stop along the way.
You can bypass the site's paywall by opening the link in an incognito browser window, by the way. It feels weird to have to attach that sort of "how-to-access" information for a nationally syndicated newspaper, but I guess it's appropriate for an article about commercial fanfic writers suing each other over their novel-length Omegaverse stories.
As an aside, Anne Jamison covers a lot of similar drama regarding Twilight fanfic authors going pro in her (excellent) 2013 book Fic: Why Fanfiction Is Taking Over the World. There is nothing new under the sun, and what's under this particular sun is people taking their vampire and werewolf erotica way too seriously.
Anyway, the article's opening sentence?
Relatable.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/23/business/omegaverse-erotica-copyright.html
As the rise of self-publishing has produced a flood of digital content, authors frequently use copyright notices to squash their competition. During a public hearing hosted by the U.S. Copyright Office in 2016, Stephen Worth, Amazon’s associate general counsel, said that fraudulent copyright complaints by authors accounted for “more than half of the takedown notices” the company receives. “We need to fix the problem of notices that are used improperly to attack others’ works maliciously,” he said.
In the Omegaverse case, Ms. Cain’s claim of copyright infringement against Ms. Ellis has struck some as especially tenuous. “They are not very original, either one of them,” said Kristina Busse, the author of “Framing Fan Fiction,” who has written academic essays about the Omegaverse and submitted expert witness testimony for the case on Ms. Ellis’s behalf. “They both stole from fandom or existing tropes in the wild.”
In the Omegaverse case, Ms. Cain’s claim of copyright infringement against Ms. Ellis has struck some as especially tenuous. “They are not very original, either one of them,” said Kristina Busse, the author of “Framing Fan Fiction,” who has written academic essays about the Omegaverse and submitted expert witness testimony for the case on Ms. Ellis’s behalf. “They both stole from fandom or existing tropes in the wild.”
This article is a wild ride, and I enjoyed every stop along the way.
You can bypass the site's paywall by opening the link in an incognito browser window, by the way. It feels weird to have to attach that sort of "how-to-access" information for a nationally syndicated newspaper, but I guess it's appropriate for an article about commercial fanfic writers suing each other over their novel-length Omegaverse stories.
As an aside, Anne Jamison covers a lot of similar drama regarding Twilight fanfic authors going pro in her (excellent) 2013 book Fic: Why Fanfiction Is Taking Over the World. There is nothing new under the sun, and what's under this particular sun is people taking their vampire and werewolf erotica way too seriously.
Anyway, the article's opening sentence?
Addison Cain was living in Kyoto, volunteering at a shrine and studying indigenous Japanese religion. She was supposed to be working on a scholarly book about her research, but started writing intensely erotic Batman fan fiction instead.
Relatable.
no subject
no subject
Same tbh.
Then again, I suspect that most of the people who buy commercial romance novels (as opposed to fanfic or self-published work) are straight.
Also, it feels a bit weird to say this, but a lot of the m/m stories I've encountered read as straight to begin with. That's not to say that the writers and readers are "straight" (whatever that might mean in this context), but rather that the tropes and conventions of the m/f template are difficult to get away from, especially for younger and more inexperienced writers.
I feel like someone could write a really interesting essay about all of this, but I've gotten such a strong backlash against my own work on gender and sexuality that I wash my hands of these issues entirely.
no subject
If you don’t mind me asking, did you get conservative backlash or, in addition, very-left-super-entitled backlash? I feel like it’s too narrow a path to walk safely atm, can end up getting a facefull from both sides. Not conservative enough, not progressive enough – at least, in my case. Some of the stuff I did (and do) in fandom can be seen as very toxic by some, these days.
no subject
Both! I feel like 2015 was a magical year between Gamergate and the U.S. presidential election in which it actually felt good to be online. I got serious backlash from 4chan (and Kotaku, of all places) from 2012 to 2014, and from 2016 to early 2019 the backlash came from Tumblr.
Thankfully, I am now largely irrelevant and no longer get weekly messages telling me to get raped and kill myself.
straight readers of this kind of romance novels – kind of appropriated the term omegaverse to mean het wolf romance/porn
I'm going to have to push back against this a little, if that's okay. I think "appropriated" is a strong term for what's going on, which is women coming directly from fandom and retooling (so to speak) their fanfic for commercial sale. Like, I don't think they're appropriating Omegaverse if belonged to them in the first place. Also, I'm always a little wary of arguments that fall into "fandom creators shouldn't make money" territory, especially because no one ever seems to have any problem with male fans commercializing their hobbies.
And honestly, if I could figure out a way to support myself through my creative work, I would have zero qualms about doing so... although hopefully I wouldn't go so far as to try to copyright my Omegaverse profic lol.
no subject
Oh, congrats on that at least. So much for attempting to be a good scholar and communicate your research to wider audiences.
I think "appropriated" is a strong term for what's going on
Ah right, I stand corrected. Let’s go with… ‘adopted’ the term?
I personally appreciate reading original works written by (and maybe, for) people who came from fandom. It’s great to see writers and artists, who started by creating fanworks that I enjoy(ed), being able to support themselves, now, with their work, be it original (as far as ‘original’ goes) or heavily drawing on fandom. Especially in case of queer and tropey stuff – I really appreciate it, even though some people don’t quite like it.
Somehow I feel that self-published works are more ‘true’ to the author’s original intention, cuz having a publisher may mean that they had to change some stuff for it to be ‘sellable’. So, my personal preference is to look for this stuff on Patreon and similar platforms.
Also, I don’t see making fanworks as a stepping stone on the way to making own original works. Illustrators get money for, basically, fanart, so… Money for fanworks is always problematic to discuss. Like, ok, there are those promoted fans whose works got endorsed by the franchise/creators, they might or might not be allowed to legally make money from it. But then the majority are doing stuff which will never be accepted as being close to the canon…
Oh yeah, back to omegaverse and the article… The authors came from fandom and, yeah, no problem with that. They turned it into het (or, perhaps, they wrote het from the start…), who I am to judge. But the readers, at least based on the info in the article, are not from fandom. Fen, imo, won’t be supporting authors who try to sue each other and copyright this stuff. Fen know it’s not, strictly speaking, original. It can't be.