Fic: Why Fanfiction Is Taking Over the World

by Jamison, Anne

  ME: I think anyone who tweets with me regularly wouldnt think that..

  SAM: i’d just be careful if i were you keeping business away from motu

  thats really the only thing you have to be concerned about

  ME: I don’t feel about motu the way you felt about wa [Wide Awake]…I have done it as a sort of exercise.. to see if I could … and I think I have proven to myself that I can…

  I now want to capitalize on it..

  I am not a spring chicken like you.. I am in my 40s . . . so I want to try and do something before its too late – lol

  I have only found out what I love to do – and it’s taken this long!!!

  And life aint no dress rehearsal etc

  Life may not be a dress rehearsal, but it seems in some ways that this chat was, as E. L. James has used this same line in countless interviews. While Snowqueens Icedragon may have gone into writing her fanfiction “Master of the Universe” “as a sort of exercise” to prove to herself that she could do it, she quickly decided to repackage the dress rehearsal as the main event. As also emerges from the extended conversation, James—that is, Erika Leonard, the television producer—was not only no spring chicken, she was also no stranger to finance and the world of writing for profit. Her husband was a successful television screenwriter; as a producer, she had business acumen of her own. For her, writing was, from the beginning, a for-profit enterprise. That was her world. She was a confident professional who learned her newly discovered skill could have value, and she decided to sell it. Her readers had proven her own marketability—the Twilight fandom had become, in effect, a test market.

  AngstGoddess first published heavily edited excerpts of these chats; Snowqueens Icedragon retaliated by posting more complete context. She closed her post by trying to clarify her respect for the fandom that made her:

  I want you guys to know that to the people that have supported me I am grateful. Really grateful. I have met some amazing, talented, witty, wonderful women in this fandom. I do not consider myself above any of them—they are my peers. I know some of you will be disappointed that I have stooped to AG’s level, and part of me is too — but really, I’ve had enough of her negativity. I’d like to put this ugly mess behind me.

  That’s all I am going to say, except finally – because I have an inner bitch too – here’s a certain someone saying they would like to publish their fic.

  [Picture of AngstGoddess at the 2009 San Diego Comic-Con]

  In the “gentleblaze” LiveJournal post with which AngstGoddess left the Twilight fandom, she explained some of her motivations for taking the conflict so public: “SQID displayed continual classism toward me. When I was asked if I’d consider publishing my own popular fanfiction “Wide Awake,” I said no, and she wondered why this would be, since I’m so poor.” AngstGoddess also explains her conviction that the large sum of money the “Master of the Universe” outtake auctioned for the Fandom Gives Back auction was instrumental in making that publication a reality:

  I know she’s going to publish MotU eventually, and I’m 100% certain that seeing her outtake raise $28,000 for pediatric cancer research had more than a little to do with that. I’m not extremely active in fandom anymore, and the auction website was my last mention-worthy contribution, so I have no problem ultimately revealing these chats.

  The ramifications of this conflict didn’t end or begin with this public outing of private chats. Before they became public but considerably after they occurred, a new player arrived in the Twilight fandom: Twankhard, the center of the kind of negativity James mentioned in her chat post. On this Big Name Author–hate website, all posters were anonymous; its targets weren’t. Speculation about its administrators and posters were rampant, but when the truth was revealed, it shocked the community. One of them wasn’t just an insider. It was the insider. AngstGoddess. Her stated motivation? Rage at Snowqueens Icedragon and the “pull-to-publish” phenomenon. That same “gentleblaze” post explained Twankhard, its motivations, and her own motivations for joining it:

  Twankhard, created in late September of 2010, was an anon-meme’ish blog that I had some involvement in. It’s hosted on Wordpress.com, and posts made there were usually related to authors publishing, archives converting themselves into vanity-presses, reviewer bashing, ego wank, etc etc. All mods, admins, and commenters were forced to anonymity. No high horse’ing allowed.

  [ . . . ]

  When I was approached about doing the Twankhard blog, my reaction was this:

  THAT IS AN AWFUL AWFUL IDEA AND WILL PISS OFF THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE (when can we start?)

  [ . . . ]

  The general mission of Twankhard was to highlight various wanks in the fandom and cultivate an anon-based discussion on them. As stated continually, it wasn’t meant to be serious. We only wanted to mock others’ egos and inform the community of which stories were being pulled to get published. The blog posts themselves often smacked of mockery, while the real discussion happened in the comments.

  Like most things, I was too flaky to offer any really significant involvement, but I will say I did the technical work, wrote a little (less than I should have), and was in charge of answering emails.

  What was the immediate catalyst for AngstGoddess tweeting edited excerpts from private chats? She is very clear on that:

  The morning I found out about MotU being published, I tweeted to my 6,500+ followers, “I’m possibly about to commit fandom social suicide, but I just want you all to know, it’s totally worth it.”

  Her final tweet was as follows:

  /blaze of glory. I’m out. Stop perpetuating arrogance. Give your kindness to people who won’t take advantage of it.

  AngstGoddess did not leave Twilight circles permanently, though she has stopped posting fic in this fandom. They did not end up being her last words, but at the time she chose these words to go out on:

  I did learn a lot (this was my first fandom), and I’m able to reflect on my wanks with equal amounts humility and amusement. I know where I’ve gone wrong, and I know where I’ve gone right.

  Grudgewank? Wrong.

  Charity? Right.

  So I’m not entirely deluded. I give myself a firm C-, I’m only human after all, and let’s face it, I can change my screenname and move on to my next fandom without issue.

  Tish Beaty is a romance writer and editor. She used to write BDSM Twilight fanfiction and also edited another BDSM Twilight fanfiction, MOTU, in advance of its first presentation to the world as Fifty Shades of Grey. Here, Tish recounts her experience with the Twilight fandom, and explains her involvement with “that book” and with The Writer’s Coffee Shop, the independent publishing house she helped build from the fanfic website of the same name. Like Omnific, this publishing venture was very controversial within the Twilight fandom.

  Bittersweet

  Tish Beaty (his_tweet)

  The only fandom I’d heard of prior to 2009 was the Star Trek films’ fandom—the Trekkies. I was introduced to the Twilight fandom in November 2008 by a good friend of mine. It was unlike anything I had ever experienced: moms, daughter, sisters, and friends who were so passionate about the Twilight Saga that they stood in line for hours waiting for a movie and developed online communities to follow said books and movies. I thought they were kind of crazy—until January 2009, when I read all four books in five days. I was hooked.

  I joined the online community NewMoonMovie.org, where I met a great group of ladies who would eventually turn me on to fanfiction. “Wide Awake,” by AngstGoddess, popped my fanfic cherry. “Wide Awake” took the innocence of Twilight and twisted it into something mature, raw, and passionate. I read as many fics as I could on FanFiction. Net for several months. What drew me to fanfictions like “Wide Awake,” “Emancipation Proclamation,” “Clipped Wings and Inked Armor,” and “The Hunter & The Hunted” was actually the differences between the fics and their characters compared to Twilight. I liked reading Edward and Bella on a mature level, with more substance, a
nd in somewhat more realistic conflicts. After opening a Twitter account as a NewMoonMovie.org moderator, I found many of the fic authors also had Twitter accounts, and I began following them. Twitter is what lead me to other fic communities like Twilighted.net and LiveJournal.

  It was on the other sites that I discovered just how dog-eat-dog and ugly the fandom could be. It was like high school, with cliques of authors and their followers. Should you cross one or the other on a board or in a review, you would almost certainly be run off. Excommunicated. For example, the group known as the Bunker Babes—James’ most devoted cheerleaders while she was writing “Master of the Universe” (aka Fifty Shades of Grey)—were quick to pick up on negative reviewers and block them from the MOTU thread at Twilighted. I heard of one instance where a reader wasn’t allowed back on the Twilighted site at all after calling James’ knowledge of BDSM into question. I wasn’t a fan of this kind of behavior, but it didn’t affect me directly. I didn’t get involved in fandom drama, and while I didn’t like it, it wasn’t enough to turn me off from the fandom entirely. I even began writing my own fic.

  “The Submissive,” by Tara Sue Me, was the first BDSM fic I read. It piqued my interest in the BDSM lifestyle, and ultimately led me to an alternative-lifestyle site. The alternative-lifestyle site introduced me to people in the BDSM community I bonded with and grew to love. These relationships inspired me to write my story “Nilla Days and Bound Nights.”

  I wasn’t shooting for a Twilight-inspired story when I began writing “Nilla Days.” I considered the story an original creation, with characteristics of real people in my life woven into it, as well as real experiences with which I took creative liberties. BDSM was increasing in popularity on the fic sites, and I felt Twilight fic readers would be a good community to write for and learn from—a sounding board of sorts for a story I wanted to eventually publish. (I knew nothing about the stigma of pull-to-publish when I first began writing my fic.)

  You can’t be a fic author and expect your story to do well without becoming involved with others in the fandom. So, once I started posting my story, I began interacting more and more with the fanfic community. It was through these interactions that I first heard of the “Literate Union” (LU).

  Founded by a FanFiction.Net user from the UK, the Literate Union had members spanning the globe—many from countries other than the United States. They proclaim themselves as the “killer of dreams, destroyer of love, and ripper of stories.” The following guidelines are from their thread entitled “Critique/Flame Request”:

  Seen a shit!fic? Read a poorly written story that made you want to use bleach to clean your brain and eyes? Then post the link here and we shall look on to the story . . . Add a short description telling us why it should be reviewed/reported . . . It will save people time and you’re more likely to succeed in your mission.

  They seek out stories, cross-fandom, that they deem unworthy of posting and/or reading. An author can expect to be flamed in chapter reviews until he or she changes whatever it is the LU finds offensive—or until she takes the story down. In their “House Rules and Newbies Guide,” they actually state their members should “sign every LU review with ‘LU’ at the bottom. This will spread around the word of the LU, and possibly irritate those we are reviewing in the process.” The group seems to thrive on turmoil and confrontation.

  In late 2009, as the Saga’s worldwide popularity grew, the Literate Union homed in on the Twilight fandom. Members of the forum agreed that Stephenie Meyer was a “talentless hack” and that the fandom consisted of a bunch of “lemmings,” and the assault on Twific began. The first fics targeted were the ones breaking ff.net’s ratings guidelines: “FanFiction does not accept explicit content, Fiction Rating: MA, and the rating is only presented for reference.” Mature or “M” is supposed to be the highest rating that ff.net accepts: “not suitable for children or teens below the age of sixteen with non-explicit suggestive adult themes, references to some violence, or coarse language. Fiction M can contain adult language, themes and suggestions. Detailed descriptions of physical interaction of sexual or violent nature is considered Fiction MA.”

  I’m not sure how many ff.net authors actually follow this rule. The majority of the fics I read on the site were MA in content, and MA fics can still be found there in abundance today. Regardless, ff.net administrators started sending out warnings to the authors who were turned in for posting MA content. These authors were given the choice to remove the content or be pulled from the site. More often than not, the stories targeted were the ones with high numbers of reviews and/or hits.

  Around this time, fics started disappearing from the site, either because the authors didn’t want to change the content and so moved their fic elsewhere, or because FanFiction.Net had forced them off the site. I started posting on Twilighted.net to protect “Nilla Days and Bound Nights” because it, like so many other Twifics, contained MA material. But I found the process at Twilighted.net exclusionary and irritating. The use of “validation beta” readers to preapprove chapters reminded me of what the LU was doing at ff.net—the beta readers were deciding whether or not a story and/or its author were worthy of being part of the site. And while my story was approved for posting, I was bothered by the need for preapproval as well as the tight circles of readers that formed on some of the story threads.

  The tumult messed with my creativity, and I sought out another forum for my story. A friend suggested a new fic community called The Writer’s Coffee Shop (TWCS). One of the founders of the site had been targeted on ff.net for noncompliance due to explicit MA content, so a group of ladies from the United States and Australia decided to start their own place where fans could discuss books, authors, blogs, and more. In January 2010, TWCS Library was opened to allow writers to post original works as well as fanfiction without having to jump through the hoops that other sites required.

  After visiting the community and library, I moved my story over to TWCS. In my opinion, the site was the best available to fic authors at the time. TWCS had feature stories, used cute little coffee cups for readers to rate the works they read, held writing challenges, and posted top ten lists. “Nilla Days and Bound Nights” was welcomed with open arms by the readers and admin on the site, and it remained a top ten story for several months. It didn’t take long for me to become friends with Amanda Hayward, one of the original founders of TWCS. After a few weeks I was made a site administrator. I spread the word to my readers on ff.net and followers on Twitter that TWCS was the place to be.

  Amanda and I chatted a lot about our love of all things literary, as well as our desire to see some of the talented writers on TWCS Library published. She had been thinking about opening an online publishing house and felt TWCS would be the perfect platform to do so. I agreed because I believed in what the site stood for: a place for people all over the world to meet and become friends; a place where authors could post their fic or original stories and not be limited by cliques or groups like the LU; a place where I felt welcome and wanted.

  A major topic of the discussions between Amanda and me was the creation of Omnific, an e-publisher that got its start by turning popular Twilight fics into publishable books. These fics ranged from contemporary to paranormal romance and were published after minor editing and changing the Twilight characters’ names. Their first “edited” fic, Boycotts and Barflies, was released in January 2010. The vision for TWCS Publishing House was to encourage writers of the fic community to spread their wings and write original works that could be published while helping them grow as authors. A publishing house that catered to the needs of aspiring authors. Although TWCS Publishing House would go on to publish some reworked fics, unlike Omnific it was not started as a place to publish popular fanfic.

  From February to May 2010, we researched the ins and outs of book publishing. I worked during the day, so I spent my evenings and weekends looking up contract law, writing contracts and formulating information packets for editors and authors, contacti
ng printers across the globe for run prices, and discussing with Amanda how the publishing house should be set up and run. I signed several authors while I was with TWCS Publishing House and helped bring in new editors as well. In the summer of 2010, TWCS Library hosted a contest for original works in which two or three participants would be offered a contract with the publishing house. Miya Kressin’s The Changeling’s Champion and JD Watt’s The Children of Creation: Convergence were both chosen and given to me as my first edits.

  From the beginning, I was given the title of managing and acquisitions editor. It was my understanding that I’d be brought in as a 20 percent partner in the publishing house as a form of compensation for all of the work I was doing, because there was limited cash flow prelaunch and probably would be for the first year or two. Then, after my first few months of work, I was told it would work out better for me if, rather than receiving any stake in the partnership, I were paid more per book than the other editors as compensation for all of the administrative work I’d done and continued to do. I had no reason to doubt that I would be compensated fairly for helping in the acquisition of authors as well as the development of the publishing house. After all, Amanda and I had formed what I thought was a close working relationship as well as friendship, frequently signing our emails or ending our chats with “Love Ya.”

  I had the honor of working with several wonderful authors during my time with TWCS. I edited five amazing women—including the world-renowned E. L. James. The decision to publish Fifty was an easy one for TWCS. James had an established fic fanbase that spanned the globe. Her series was exactly what our company needed to put it on the map as a bona fide publisher while generating revenue for the business. Up to that point, the only fics TWCS had published had been heavily edited and reworked, and while I can’t say I fully embraced the idea of pulling fics to publish, I knew that TWCS needed a boost if I was going to begin working solely for the publishing house. After being told I was “the only one for the job,” I agreed to work with James as the editor of Fifty.