quote:Originally posted by fugu13: A note: you don't lose copyright because others infringe it. There might be some concerns about losing trademarks, but his copyright is safe.
Your right, I meant trademark. The characters would be in jeopardy of becoming indefensible as tradmarks.
Although in point of fact, I believe that one does have the responsibility of defending one's copyrights on published materials as well. If OSC or any other author knowingly allowed his work to be copied and distributed by others without agreements, then the copyright could come into question.
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No. If he does it knowingly, he might lose the ability to pursue certain damages against those people he knows about, but he'd still be able to use his copyright to make them stop copying (and pursue damages against other people).
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Yes, some fan fiction is written specifically to "fix" something the writer didn't like in the original. But not all of it is, and I think you're doing the fan fiction community a disservice by implying that the desire to rewrite the original is the root of all fan fiction. Most of what I've read was clearly written with a desire to expand the original.
Some of it is written to fill in missing moments (Simon apologizing to Kaylee for using her life as a bargaining chip, Luke and Leia having "the talk" after finding out they're related, etc). Some of it is written to continue the original, especially when no more of it is being made. Some of it is written as parody. Some of it is written as a fantasy, a version of the original that the writer knows would never happen but would like to see anyway (i.e. slash or alternate universe stories). Some of it is written to combine beloved characters from different fictional universes. Some of it is written just to see what would happen.
And yup, I'm defending my own fan fiction. Why not? I know my motivations better than anyone else's, and since they don't match what you've been saying I've been moved to speak up. Especially since the one I'm working on could not possibly be filmed or produced, so it's difficult to see how it could be considered "fixing" the original.
Let's sum up. I believe that writing fan fiction is a great writing exercise, a fun way to add to the fan community of the subject, a promotional tool for the original, and a way to see stories you would otherwise never get to read. I know that I have read fan fiction that was as good or better than published works. And I know that some authors -- Whedon, Rowling -- think it's great. Whedon and Rowling have both encouraged fans to write fan fiction. Paramount even published Star Trek fan fiction (and still continues to do so, under the "Brave New Worlds" anthologies). Eric Flint encourages fans to contribute to his "1632" world and publishes anthologies of the best. Clearly not all authors feel fan fiction is harmful.
I also realize it can be a way for writers to remake the original the way they want despite the intentions of the creator, or to rewrite the orignal as a badly disguised fantasy. And I know that some authors -- Card, Pratchett, Rice, -- think it's a waste of time, or disrespectful to the authors, or dangerous to their copyrights, or simply a potential annoyance if the author writes a book that happens to include an element previous used in a fan fiction somewhere. Marion Zimmer Bradley, Mercedes Lackey, George R. R. Martin, and others do not tolerate fan fiction of their works, and some television studios (X-Files, Babylon 5) actively pursue fanfic writers. I also realize that the vast majority of fan fiction is crap.
I think there are many levels to this, and many perceptions, and why we write depends on what we get out of it. We should pay attention to the wishes of the creator out of respect, and if we discover that we like writing, we should try to invent our own worlds.
But even if I do I'll probably always write fanfic anyway. Because it's fun.
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Maybe I'm not ready to be a published writer. Of fiction, that is, I guess I'm ready to be a non-fiction published writer as I've already been.
Because I agree with much that was said, as a reader. That characters may be created by their writer, but we as a reader really give them life. I can't for the life of me see harm in fan-fiction, and there's part of me that says it's enormous flattery. It means you've created a world and peopled it with characters that others want to spend time there.
But then there's a visceral reaction to me when I think specifically about characters of my own that I'm working on that screams "Nobody else better lay their hands on them." Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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quote:Originally posted by fugu13: A note: you don't lose copyright because others infringe it. There might be some concerns about losing trademarks, but his copyright is safe.
I don't think losing the ability to stop others from outright copying is what OSC's attorney is worried about. If there's lots of fanfic around, a movie company could conceivably make a movie as a derivative work of the fanfic, which would cut OSC out. This could happen when they want to make use of the universe without filming an actual story by the author. So this wouldn't affect Harry Potter that much, because those stories are clearly the books. But think of an I, Robot movie based on the three laws but nothing else or a Middle Earth movie with brand new characters.
I don't think that's the real worry, either. I think the real worry is that a movie studio will be less willing to pay for characters and settings which they can't control utterly. If there's lots of fanfic, the movie company would have to tolerate it if the author tolerated it for too long (as you said). If the fanfic is "anti-family" (think Malfoy shipping), the company might not be willing to assume that baggage.
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quote:If the fanfic is "anti-family" (think Malfoy shipping), the company might not be willing to assume that baggage.
That's what bothers me. When I write novels, I'm very particular about sex and violence. I don't do graphic violence, and sex is something that occurs between married people only and it's also not graphic. That's my choice as a writer. And incidentally, it probably makes me less publishable, but I live with it because I'm not going to change or compromise just to increase my odds of publication.
The idea that after publication, someone might take my characters and have them doing things that I specifically object to - that would be hard.
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So make it known that you don't appreciate fanfic of your material, and why. Perfectly valid reason, as many of the reasons given by authors are.
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quote:Originally posted by Dagonee: I don't think losing the ability to stop others from outright copying is what OSC's attorney is worried about. If there's lots of fanfic around, a movie company could conceivably make a movie as a derivative work of the fanfic, which would cut OSC out. This could happen when they want to make use of the universe without filming an actual story by the author. So this wouldn't affect Harry Potter that much, because those stories are clearly the books. But think of an I, Robot movie based on the three laws but nothing else or a Middle Earth movie with brand new characters. [/QB]
Well one might make the case that a movie inspired by an author's "universe," is perfectly fine, as it is certainly not unethical to model your ideas on previous works. It would have to be clear what the difference was between stealing and inspiration, and I have a feeling that in practice, OSC would have a difficult time proving that a movie inspired by his future universe was actually "stolen," since the parameters for it are pretty loose and given to alot of interpretation. For instance, you can't possible stop everyone else from having the idea that a society of 300 planets exists linked by an ansible network; even the ansible wasn't OSC's original idea exactly.
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You could bring a case against a movie that used concepts pioneered in your works, or arrangements of concepts. Harlan Ellison won a case against the first Terminator movie that way, even though he had never written a story about Sarah Conner.
As an aside, the only way I can enjoy the movie "I, Robot" is if I think of it as a future where robotics scientists grew up reading Asimov's books and used his Three Laws when they became applicable, as opposed to trying to believe that the people on the screen were the same ones Asimov wrote about.
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quote:Originally posted by Chris Bridges: Yes, some fan fiction is written specifically to "fix" something the writer didn't like in the original. But not all of it is, and I think you're doing the fan fiction community a disservice by implying that the desire to rewrite the original is the root of all fan fiction. Most of what I've read was clearly written with a desire to expand the original.
Some of it is written to fill in missing moments
I am not implying it, I am making that claim, I believe that desire to be the root of fan fiction, whether it is conscious or not. The act of filling in "missing" moments is rewriting the context of the original. The intent is all there in your own words I think, because you call the moments "missing," that tells me something about your probable thought process.
If your looking to me to somehow "prove" what I've said, I can't. The closest thing to proof is that my points have generally been twisted or ignored by everyone who has argued with me. What this proves I am not sure: either no-one understands them since I haven't expressed them clearly, or I have expressed them so clearly that the only rebuttal can be "I don't agree," followed by a rationalization which is altogether beside the point.
This isn't whining or complaining, I wouldn't really care for a second round of "yes it is, no it isn't." For the few of you who actually understood my opinions and genuinely disagree, Hats-off, your more self-confident than I am Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Chris Bridges: As an aside, the only way I can enjoy the movie "I, Robot" is if I think of it as a future where robotics scientists grew up reading Asimov's books and used his Three Laws when they became applicable, as opposed to trying to believe that the people on the screen were the same ones Asimov wrote about.
I had never thought of it that way. So you write a future movie in which every peice of technology and its name has been borrowed from sci-fi of the 20th century, so your not really stealing, since your concept involved acknowledging the literature's influence up-front.
I think this was the sort-of concept in "Galaxy Quest," only they did this by first doing an ST rip-off, THEN playing like that was the tv show that went into space and was made real by aliens. Ah what tangled webs.
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Guys, the bottom line is this: Fanfiction is permissable if the author permits it. The author *does* own all rights to characters he/she creates. How much you liked it or how much it makes you feel like part of a community -- none of that matters. It is owned by someone else: the author.
The end, the end, the end.
And no amount of justifying the opposite view can make fan fiction *not* be theft.
If the author says no, it's theft. YOU DON'T OWN IT.
If the author says yes, knock your guts out.
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I am not implying it, I am making that claim, I believe that desire to be the root of fan fiction, whether it is conscious or not. The act of filling in "missing" moments is rewriting the context of the original.
I listed six reasons for writing it, and yes, that one fits your theory. Personally I think your experiences back up your beliefs and my experiences back up mine, and the reality includes both and many more.
And no amount of justifying the opposite view can make fan fiction *not* be theft.
Unless you write a parody of their characters. Then it's protected Posts: 7790 | Registered: Aug 2000
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Yep. Welcome Back, Potter, a sitcom in which Harry returns to Hogwarts to teach remedial potions to students affectionately known as oozeslangs, would be parody.
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There is a lot of parody to be found within the realm of fanfiction, though. Most fan writers write parody at one point or another.
The fanfic I've been dabbling with (as a warm-up exercise off and on for... three years, as I said before) is a fairly oblique parody, mostly of fan fiction tropes. It's been fun. It also isn't in anybody's playground who minds that sort of thing, in case you wondered. Posts: 9293 | Registered: Aug 2000
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quote:Originally posted by TL: Fan fiction and parody are two completely different beasts.
That's what consfuses most fanfic writers..They think they write the former, so they don't realize when they are writing the latter.
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quote:Guys, the bottom line is this: Fanfiction is permissable if the author permits it. The author *does* own all rights to characters he/she creates. How much you liked it or how much it makes you feel like part of a community -- none of that matters. It is owned by someone else: the author.
Except that the author DOESN'T own the story or the characters within it. Which means that the bottom line is that fanfiction IS permissable whether the author permits it or not.
What the author does own is a copyright, but he only loses that if you publish your fanfiction during the period of time in which the copyright is valid. Thus the only thing you need an author's approval for is to publish your fanfiction during that time. Just writing fanfiction is by no means theft.
But the story and character - those are ideas, not owned by the author, but existing (and created) within the minds of each individual reader. What a reader does with those, within the limitations that the copyright requires, is up to the reader. If the reader wants to imagine that Ender has blue hair, the reader can do that. If the reader wants to write down that Ender has blue hair, and write a story about how he got blue hair, the reader can do that too.
quote:I am not implying it, I am making that claim, I believe that desire to be the root of fan fiction, whether it is conscious or not.
What I don't understand is why you think the desire to improve upon a story implies some sort of selfishness or wrongess that the writing of the "original" story did not.
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quote:Originally posted by Tresopax: What I don't understand is why you think the desire to improve upon a story implies some sort of selfishness or wrongess that the writing of the "original" story did not. [/QB]
Are parents selfish for not wanting anyone else to raise their children?
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quote:Originally posted by Tresopax: What I don't understand is why you think the desire to improve upon a story implies some sort of selfishness or wrongess that the writing of the "original" story did not.
Originally posted by Orincoro: Are parents selfish for not wanting anyone else to raise their children?
Well, yes, they are, but a more apt analogy would be asking if it is selfish to want to raise your neighbour's interesting and talented children as your own. Or rather, borrow them for a while and do stuff with them that their parents either haven't the time, want or inclination to with their children themselves. Like making the children have hot gay sex with unlikely prospects.
What kind of unnatural parent would object to that?
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quote:Except that the author DOESN'T own the story or the characters within it. Which means that the bottom line is that fanfiction IS permissable whether the author permits it or not.
What the author does own is a copyright, but he only loses that if you publish your fanfiction during the period of time in which the copyright is valid. Thus the only thing you need an author's approval for is to publish your fanfiction during that time. Just writing fanfiction is by no means theft.
But the story and character - those are ideas, not owned by the author, but existing (and created) within the minds of each individual reader. What a reader does with those, within the limitations that the copyright requires, is up to the reader. If the reader wants to imagine that Ender has blue hair, the reader can do that. If the reader wants to write down that Ender has blue hair, and write a story about how he got blue hair, the reader can do that too.
This is so infuriating. You have no understanding of intellectual ownership *or* Copyright law.
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quote:Except that the author DOESN'T own the story or the characters within it. Which means that the bottom line is that fanfiction IS permissable whether the author permits it or not.
What the author does own is a copyright, but he only loses that if you publish your fanfiction during the period of time in which the copyright is valid. Thus the only thing you need an author's approval for is to publish your fanfiction during that time. Just writing fanfiction is by no means theft.
But the story and character - those are ideas, not owned by the author, but existing (and created) within the minds of each individual reader. What a reader does with those, within the limitations that the copyright requires, is up to the reader. If the reader wants to imagine that Ender has blue hair, the reader can do that. If the reader wants to write down that Ender has blue hair, and write a story about how he got blue hair, the reader can do that too.
This is so infuriating. You have no understanding of intellectual ownership *or* Copyright law.
That's what I said.
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quote:What the author does own is a copyright, but he only loses that if you publish your fanfiction during the period of time in which the copyright is valid.
That's pretty much completely incorrect.
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The author does not lose copyright if someone else publishes fanfic. What the author loses is credibility if the author later goes to stop or sue the fanfic because the defense can point out that the author allowed this usage previously, which can hurt the author's chances if there are disputes over other usage of the material. The copyright is still there.
This is one of the main reasons the music industry has been so apparently draconian in their attacks on music downloaders; if they don't go after every bit of piracy they see, it can later be argued that since they didn't they must not have minded too much.
However, to bring up another myth about fanfic, "for profit" does not equal "publishing." Posting something to the web, especially in a fanfic anthology site, is essentially publishing - you're establishing it in a fixed form for public distribution. Saying you're not writing for profit does not automatically mean you're not infringing on copyright, it just means that if you lose a copyright infringement lawsuit you can't be sued for as much money as if you had charged. But many fanfic writers believe that as long as they don't charge for their work the author has no recourse. Untrue.
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quote:What the author does own is a copyright, but he only loses that if you publish your fanfiction during the period of time in which the copyright is valid. Thus the only thing you need an author's approval for is to publish your fanfiction during that time.
Not true. Publication is not necessary for the most common forms of copyright violation. For example, copying is illegal (absent a few fair use exceptions) whether you publish the copies or lock them up in a storeroom somewhere.
More on point, the creation of a derivative work - which is the type of violation fanfic would be - is a copyright violation whether it's never published or not.
Not all fanfic is a derivative work; the test is incredibly fluid and notoriously unpredictable. But if the violation occurs - that is, amounts to creation of a derivative work - then it occurs at creation, not publication.
Of course, absent publication, it's pretty hard to seek damages, both because the author can't know about the violation and because the damages absent publication are negligible. But the essence of the violation is not publication.
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If I don't fix it in a physical form, is it copyright violation? Can I tell a story? Is it copyright violation if I imagine what Ender was up to while he was voyaging around before the events of Speaker for the Dead?
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I can see where the 'derivative work' thing could be a problem. There are a lot of "original works" out there that seem like "rub outs" (same context/characterization but the names have been changed). There are a lot of novels that borrow heavily from Asimov, for example, but the names have been changed.
Which makes it okay, though we all know Trantor=Coruscant=planet covered by buildings in several series. As long as you call it by a different name, you're golden.
Which reminds me... I once read a "fanfic" that claimed to be a sort of noir detective story starring Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi as Sam Spade-type detectives. The characters' names had been changed to something else (Quinlan Jenkins? Benjamin... Kendrick? I don't remember) and they had maybe a little more developed intuition than average, but no magical powers.
My reaction was O_O Whence These Flowers? It was really a well-written immitation of gumshoe genre, with the amusing Spade metphors and all that, and the characters bore only the most superficial resemblance to (the actors who played) the Jedi, but the characters were totally different.
The author no doubt put quite a bit of effort into it, but... I think it was only "fanfic" because the author wanted to share it with his/her friends for free.
Blew my mind. It made me realize that I don't really have a good definition for fan fiction, if that story counts.
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quote:Are parents selfish for not wanting anyone else to raise their children?
If a parent-child analogy can be made to stories, then at least one parent of a story is the reader.
quote:Not true. Publication is not necessary for the most common forms of copyright violation.
Okay, yes. But practically speaking, the author doesn't lose anything unless the derivative work is made public. Some guy privately writing a book about your characters and locking it in his closet is not really taking anything from you, even if legally he has violated the copyright. Legally speaking I can see why the copyright violation would occur when the derivative work is written, but morally I think no right of the author's is violated when a fanfic is written but not published or made public.
The important point is that the author owns a copyright, not a story. The copyright is a limited set of protections set by the law to allow it to be profitable to create new intellectual works. It doesn't (or shouldn't) change the fact that the story and characters themselves are just ideas existing in the readers heads. And it shouldn't take away a reader's right to do with those ideas what they wish, so long as they don't limit the author's abilities to profit from his book in the way the copyright sets out. For instance, a reader can imagine characters doing whatever he wants them to, no?
quote:The author does not lose copyright if someone else publishes fanfic.
Yes, sorry - that is not what I meant. What I meant is that the author loses that which he is entitled to by that copyright when someone else publishes a fanfic. For instance, he may lose some of the profit that he is supposed to exclusively deserve under that copyright.
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The author isn't supposed to have exclusively reserved to them all profit related to the creative endeavor under copyright, either. Creators frequently license works in ways that allow others to make a profit off of them.
A large part of what you say is correct, but it is far too concentrated on profit. The purpose of copyright is to provide an incentive for creators to create more works. That incentive does not necessarily take the form of profit. For instance, many people may find they are disincentivized from creating more works if people immediately make derivative works involving pornography, even if no change in profit occurs. Its a question of the utility derived from copyright, not profit. Profit is merely a frequently important part of one's utility function.
And of course, in many places other than the US copyright is not the only authorial right. Even when copyright is dispensed with, authors still enjoy "moral rights" regarding their creations, to prevent them being used in ways they find repulsive.
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quote:I don't do graphic violence, and sex is something that occurs between married people only and it's also not graphic. That's my choice as a writer. And incidentally, it probably makes me less publishable, but I live with it because I'm not going to change or compromise just to increase my odds of publication.
If it makes you less publishable, from my vantage, it's because it's not true. I expect a great many people have extra-marital sex and a healthy percentage of the most interesting sex is rather graphic. I think it's pornographic or gratuituous if the scenes don't involve the plot, but to depict a world where only married people have sex, and sex isn't lusty, is cornball morality. And cornball morality is the reason why a large percentage of Christian fiction is awful.
I'd rather have you depict relationships as they occur, and maybe add the emotional muddle attends many extra-marital affairs, and diseases that could occasion sex. The result would be the same, that is, the reader choosing to have safe married sex.
You are right. It is your choice as a writer. I'm just not going to tell you it's a noble one.
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Fugu, Sorry... I was an economics major. As a result, to me profit means any benefit an author gets from his work, whether it be money or anything else. But yes, you are right - it is a question about protecting an author's right to derive utility from his work.
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Irami - the impression I got from Belle's comments was not that sex didn't happen between unmarried couples in her world, but that the characters she chose to write about didn't fool around. Adultery happens, she's just not interested in writing about it. Just my take, I could wrong.
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quote:Originally posted by Olivet: Which makes it okay, though we all know Trantor=Coruscant=planet covered by buildings in several series. As long as you call it by a different name, you're golden.
I don't like the extent that some people go to assign ownership or primacy to a few ideas. I am against fanfic for many reasons, but this is not one of them. If you can't write about a planet covered in one big city just because somebody else also had that idea, then you shouldn't be able to write about space travel, since others have already written about that. What I mean is, its such a general concept that I would be annoyed if i wanted to use it, that I would have to contend with baseless accusations that I am stealing it from asimov. (I don't even like asimov)
Tres: If you believe you are one of the parents of the characters in my writer-child analogy, then I'm sorry, I am only more sure of how narcisistic your worldview is. Does every child have a million fathers or mothers? No.
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quote:Tres: If you believe you are one of the parents of the characters in my writer-child analogy, then I'm sorry, I am only more sure of how narcisistic your worldview is. Does every child have a million fathers or mothers? No
I think you miss the point where your actual disagreement with Tres lies. He doesn't think every child has a million fathers or mothers. He thinks that the character as it exists in each reader's thoughts is a different child.
So the author has a million kids, but each kid only has two parents.
Still something I'm not sure I agree with; I'm torn on the issue. But it's not necessarily narcistic and it's definitely not dependent on each child having more than two parents.
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I could make more obvious parallels where a published author has copied an entire world system from another work, but changed the names and told a different story there. I have chosen not too because the examples might be taken as disrespect (which I do NOT intend).
It's not 'stealing' I agree. But it also isn't far from what some fanfiction stories do. Like the example I gave above, I'm not even sure what makes some stories 'fanfiction' if they don't even use the same names or environments. Also, there are categories for 'parody' on most sites that archive fanfiction.
My point was that the line seems much blurrier to me, now that I've seen more of the better fan-written stuff. MZB even helped publish and encourage some of her better fan writers... It isn't as black-and-white as you seem to suggest. I agree that no one should use the worlds of authors that don't want them to.
But published authors frequently do, with superficial changes -- kind of the same way Star Trek used the same seven paper mache rocks to represent every planet they visited -- but the reader *knows*. The book jackets even tell you, most of the time. "Not since the tales of ____ has there been such an epic tale, yadda yadda."
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I can see that point too. Still in that case how significant is the contribution of each reader to the characters? Since the author is a huge part of every reader's experience, it seems to me that everything depends on the writer. Of course this is why some writers are sucessful for 50 books, and some never sell a copy.
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quote:Originally posted by Olivet: But published authors frequently do, with superficial changes -- kind of the same way Star Trek used the same seven paper mache rocks to represent every planet they visited -- but the reader *knows*. The book jackets even tell you, most of the time. "Not since the tales of ____ has there been such an epic tale, yadda yadda."
I would hate to ever be known as the new_____ or the the next_____. That just smacks of trying to fulfill an expectation set up in another author's work, or at least your publisher trying to bank on those expectations. If I had a publisher more interested in me because I sounded like someone, than for the quality of my work, then I would find a new one.
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I was not making value judgements. Just saying that it happens. I mean, anybody notice how the re-issued children's book series with covers that looked more Harry Potterish?
Just saying publishers do that, because published authors do it, too.
Oh, and FYI, most authors don't have a lot of say so about their book jackets, unless their names are Rowling or King. Just take a gander at the original cover of Wyrms by OSC. There's a big freakin' bug sporting a woody on that one. O_O (No say in the art or the blurbs at least until they've had a few best sellers. Any new author who demands changes in the blurbs on their first novel... *giggles quietly*)
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I have a Castilian translation of Ender's game, which has a kid with a huge head and a sour look on his face with his dukes up. He's squared off with a Giant ant, also with its dukes up. Interesting. The whole thing is done in 2-d monochromes.
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quote:Irami - the impression I got from Belle's comments was not that sex didn't happen between unmarried couples in her world, but that the characters she chose to write about didn't fool around. Adultery happens, she's just not interested in writing about it. Just my take, I could wrong.
You're not wrong, you're absolutely correct. In fact, in one of my stories extra-marital sex not only occurs between two minor characters, but it is part of the plot. I just make sure the reader knows it happened, without writing the sex scene itself, and I don't portray adultery as a noble thing or something that should be emulated, in fact it has disastrous consequences for those characters.
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quote:I think you miss the point where your actual disagreement with Tres lies. He doesn't think every child has a million fathers or mothers. He thinks that the character as it exists in each reader's thoughts is a different child.
Yes, that's exactly what I was thinking!
quote:Still in that case how significant is the contribution of each reader to the characters?
I think it is huge. Just start asking "What would that character do?" questions, and see how different people give very different answers. We had a thread on this forum a while back about Stilson, and I still remember how different Anne Kate's idea of Stilson was from my own. And based on how he wrote the Shadow series, I am pretty sure OSC conceived of Peter in EG very differently than I did when I was reading it. And one could see from their performances how differently Johnny Depp and Tim Burton conceived of Willy Wonka than how Gene Wilder conceived of him. All these conceptions are based on the same original words, so I think the difference that the reader of the words adds is pretty significant.
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To be fair, when your talking about characters in a movie, your throwing in a whole different discussion, because the movie is a creation in itself. Comparing two movies about the same story isn't at all the same thing as two people reading a book and thinking different things about them. The process of making a movie comes after the moviemaker reads the script, and he creates a derivative work, it isn't necessarily a representation of his personal mental image. There aren't two different books, there is only the one, thus no act of mirroring the work in two different public ways.
What stops OSC for revisualizing Peter for himself? I think this was the coolest thing about the Peter character, because if you read EG, then you would have one image: the very image OSC created. Then you read the other books later and the character gets recontextualized again and again. Now you see who has real control over what makes that character, and it isn't you who thought you knew him from the first book. Was OSC "tricking" you into thinking peter was really evil, or that Bean was a white kid until you find out he's also African? No, OSC doesn't like playing "tricks," he just has control over what he does with his characters, who they become. You talk as if there were little "clues" in the earlier books that if you worked hard enough, you could decipher and predict what the characters will do. But this just shows me that the only place the characters' motivations come from is the will of the author.
The fact that certain people understand characters differently doesn't convince me of much. When I took math tests in highschool, my answers were always different from the ones the teacher was thinking of when he wrote the test. I should have used your argument, and explained to him that I had perceived the situation with the breadmaker, who needs to feed 18 people 3 loaves of bread when he only has 12 pounds of dough so how big will the loaves be if they were all equal in size, differently, and my answers were equally valid.
edit: Understand I'm not saying that a math test is the same as a book, but that people will think differently about virtually anything, and the ability to take something in the wrong, or at least a different direction is not special or unnusual.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:And based on how he wrote the Shadow series, I am pretty sure OSC conceived of Peter in EG very differently than I did when I was reading it.
My guess is that OSC conceived of peter in EG very differently than he did 20 years later when he wrote the Shadow series.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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quote:Now you see who has real control over what makes that character, and it isn't you who thought you knew him from the first book. Was OSC "tricking" you into thinking peter was really evil, or that Bean was a white kid until you find out he's also African? No, OSC doesn't like playing "tricks," he just has control over what he does with his characters, who they become.
No, he doesn't have that control - the reader does.
Take my reaction to the Shadow series as an example. When I was reading the Shadow series, I didn't buy OSC's changes in Peter's character. It distracted me and made the whole book seem less real. The result is that I don't consider the Shadow series to be "canon". I consider Ender's Game to be the real story, and the more recent books to be a spin-off story added on later, not unlike how new Star Wars books might be related to the original Star Wars movies. I like the Shadow series as its own set of stories, but can't put it on the level with Ender's Game. And even now, to me Peter is the Peter in Ender's Game, and not the Peter in the Shadow series.
What this means is that OSC cannot control who characters become, unless the reader accepts the changes that he puts forth. The reader has that control. Author's must convince their reader to buy the changes they write - readers are not required to do so. (In contrast, readers can imagine those characters doing whatever they think they would do, without needing to convince the author of anything.)
A more common example might be Anakin Skywalker in the new vs. old Star Wars movies. Viewers do not have to accept George Lucas' interpretations of Anakin's character in the new trilogy. If they find it too unrealistic in inconsistent with what THEY considered the true character of Darth Vader in the original trilogy, they can and probably will reject the new trilogy as being unrealistic.
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I had never thought of it that way. So you write a future movie in which every peice of technology and its name has been borrowed from sci-fi of the 20th century, so your not really stealing, since your concept involved acknowledging the literature's influence up-front.![[Smile]](smile.gif)
