flamingoslim:

cupidsbower:

loudest-subtext-in-television:

I love that “homage,” “pastiche,” “reboot,” “retelling,” and “fanfic” all mean the same damn thing, except that the last one is written primarily by women for free, and often includes sex, especially queer sex, so it’s delegitimized in the eyes of society.

And by “I love” I mean “I don’t love” because apparently we can just pick and choose what words mean

I totally agree with the point being made by the OP, but want to point out the irony in the politics of remix being described here.

You see, “homage,” “pastiche,” “reboot,” “retelling,” all tend to be less <i>original</i> than fanfiction. And I use the word “original” knowing how loaded, and potentially meaningless it is — it’s the criteria used by copyright law for a text worthy of being covered by copyright, and also as part of the definition of plagiarism. Works in the genres of “homage,” “pastiche,” “reboot,” “retelling,” are nearly always assumed to be original enough to be copyrightable in their own right, despite being derivative works.

These remix categories are all expected to explicitly rework a story while adding in a few new frills, and yet somehow, magically, that re-working makes them “original”. Yet that magic does not apply to fanfiction, which is seen as much more derivative and less worthy of respect.

Here’s the irony I mentioned. Fanfiction often jumps off from the source and tells a new story, or fills in a gap in the story it’s responding to (commonly with queer romance or sex). In many cases, fanfiction, while still a derivative work, is fundamentally much more “original” than the mainstream and more legitimate forms of remix, as it is telling a new story altogether.

Interesting, isn’t it, that the form of remix which is often most “original”, in that it offers more than just a retelling with new frills, is derided as the most derivative.

As the OP says, it’s not a coincidence that fanfiction is the version of remix currently considered least clever or worthy of respect, and is primarily a women’s genre and often also a queer genre.

Way back in 1985,  Joanna Russ (one of the first feminist literary critics to take slash writing seriously) wrote that slash fanfic was  “…is the only sexual fantasy by women for women that’s produced without the control or interposition of censorship by commercial booksellers or the interposition of political intent by writers or editors.” In the same essay, she wrote what slash writers wanted was “…the freedom to choose, a love that is entirely free of the culture’s whole discourse of gender and sex roles….” (From “Magic Mommas, Trembling Sisters, Puritans and Perverts: Feminist Essays”.)

Still relevant…