Get ready for part three of my rants about ClearPlay (part 1), (part 2):

The other thing that this whole ClearPlay thing (and also game mod technology), calls to mind is fan-fiction. For anyone who doesn’t have a nerdly background, fan-fiction basically consists of fans of a particular movie, tv show, game, novel, comic, going and writing their own derivative works using characters, settings and themes lifted from the works they so admire. It is a hugely popular subculture on the internet.

You also have a subset of that called “slash fiction” which is stories which feature homosexual erotic pairings between media figures. The original form of it occurred in the 1970’s, with Kirk/Spock match-ups. This is something I stumbled upon during a sci-fi convention I somehow ended up at years ago outside of Baltimore. Among all the costumed Babylon 5 weirdos, and endless booths selling t-shirts and videos, there were maybe 4 or 5 booths all staffed by graying portly women. Their products for sale consisted exclusively of hand-bound photocopied slash fiction booklets. They each had weird little pen drawings on their covers. One that stands out in particular was of Captain Kirk and Spock reclining together nude in a hot tub.

By and large, fan fiction is tolerated by pubishing companies. Which is the right thing to do, in my opinion, since people who write fan fiction are absolutely the most fervent fans. Although certain companies are notorious for cracking down. A couple snippets from an article I found on the subject:

… Fan fiction is fiction written by fans, for fans. Fans get so much enjoyment from their chosen fandom. What is produced professionally isn’t enough so they produce their own.

… Not all companies share this enthusiasm for the fan. Universal comes down hard on any Star Trek and X-Files tales by fans. Anne McCaffrey and Ann Rice have pursued fan centered websites for removal of stories related to their works.

Every author faces a loss of intentions and integrity of their original story. That is a part of the business. Once a novel is published, as the word publication indicates; it belongs to the public. How consumers relate to it in the realm of fandom is a reflection on the author’s ability to connect with their audience.

Actually, no wait. Here’s a better article which covers fan fiction & game modding. This guy has some great passages:

Modding exemplifies the ongoing and ever-intensifying clash over who will control popular culture. What (most) game companies have discovered is that people who buy computer games do not simply want to play those games, but they also want to use games as a platform for their own self-expression.

… The problem for companies that are in the popular culture business and want to stop this sort of thing is that it is becoming easier every day for computer users to create original content that is derivative of copyrighted material.

On the computer game mod front, for example, many companies are devoting a significant amount of the game development time to making it easy to create mods (so easy, in fact, that even I can do it). But across the board, it is becoming easier every year for someone to buy a CD or DVD or book and to use that as a starting point for new and unauthorized tales.

The response from companies, of course, is to try to slap a lid on that either legally or through technological changes to computers that would make try to make them locked boxes when it comes to copyrighted materials.

… It is just human nature to both want to listen to stories and tell, re-tell, and rewrite stories. In fact some of the greatest works of art involve such copying and adding, except if it happened today I get the feeling that Boccaccio and Petrarch would have hired lawyers to send cease and desist letters to Chaucer. Our culture would have certainly been the worse had they had to deal with the sort of rigid intellectual property laws that are now commonplace. Hopefully we will yet prevent companies from eviscerating that sort of borrowing and experimentation.

I couldn’t agree more. In fact, I like to think this sort of struggle in terms of Canon vs. Apocrypha. Canon is a term which goes back to the formative years of the Catholic Church, when they were holding councils and making decisions about which books of the Bible would be included in the “official” version, and which ones would be left out. Also, anything that was deemed to be an “inconsistent message” was removed or changed.

Works which were outside the official Canon were considered Apocrypha. Both these terms now are used more widely than just in reference to Christianity. Which makes sense, because the struggle to maintain control over a story-system is one of the central dynamic forces in human culture.

Those in power seek to ensure that everyone follows their version of a story. Whether that story is about history, legitimacy, morality, propaganda, or which version of a movie is the “official” one. The natural thing for people to do in relation to stories is to tell and re-tell them. During this process, they are inevitably (and intentionally) modified to suit the teller and the listener. Gradually stories morph into versions which differ wildly from the authorized version. Then you have the backlash by those in power to purge these unauthorized stories from a culture. The clearest examples I can think of here are the Inquisition, and the battles currently being fought by Hollywood against its customers. Hollywood, as the source of our guiding stories, is in a sense the New Rome, for us. The Church by which we truly live, even though our governmental allegiance may belong to another body, namely Washington, DC. I think right now we are in the early stages of a “Protestant Reformation” against the excesses of New Rome/Hollywood.