Or, "Post in haste, repent at leisure." One of the most useful pieces of advice I was ever given about the online world was back when I was a wee newbie; I was told not to post in anger. Write it if I must, but then leave it. For at least ten minutes, preferably overnight. Come back and look at it when calmed down, and ask myself, "Do I really want to send that?"
( there is no such thing as 'delete all copies' on the internet )
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Conversation with the genre -- plagiarism, allusion, and intertextuality
An extensive discussion about plagiarism has been going on in some of the romance blogs over the last few weeks. One thread in the discussion has been about the difference between allusion and plagiarism. Why is one acceptable and the other not, and what is the difference between them? After all, both involve the use of someone else's work, even to the extent of word-for-word copying.
For me, the difference between the two is very simple in theory, even if in practice it's not always possible for a reader to be certain what an author had in mind. If your intent as an author is that your audience should recognise the work you're quoting, or at the very least realise that it's intended as a reference to someone else's work, you're making an allusion. If you are hoping that they won't notice that it's not your own words, that's plagiarism. For this is the key part of what plagiarism is -- that you are taking the credit for work that was in fact done by someone else.
( detailed discussion, with examples )
Perhaps the simplest test of all, if you're a writer wondering whether what you want to do is on the wrong side of the line: ask yourself how you would feel about someone doing to your work what you're proposing to do to someone else's. And be honest with your answer.
My thanks to the people who looked over the draft of this post and made helpful comments.
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I've been threatening for some time to do an essay that summarises the "why do girls like boys who do boys?" thread from rasfc in June/July 2003. This is a placeholder, with some notes as I go through the thread. Please feel free to comment and add further suggestions -- I'll work it up into something more coherent later. Possibly much later.
There was also discussion of the difference between graphic and explicit, whether it is possible to tell whether an erotica writer is male or female (often, but not always, yes), definitions of homosexuality through the ages, fanfic, and is there anyone in the known universe who doesn't want to shag Legolas...
[ETA: this was a discussion on a pro sf writers' group and was initially about profic, although we also drew on fanfic as the discussion progressed. I haven't explicitly identified most of the people involved, but as several of them read this LJ, if anyone wants to be credited, speak up. :-)]
( a) Why do women like m/m: )
( b) Why isn't more of it published: )
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There is a great temptation to turn the events of history into a story of Good and Evil. There is a great temptation to say of a nation that collectively committed a great crime that it reflects some flaw in that nation, that there is something in the national character that caused that, that the seeds of such evil could not possibly be in ourselves. But history is more complicated than that, and so are people.
We learn, if slowly. But also we forget. We forget that the evil that enveloped Europe some seventy years ago started years earlier, with the small things. A little here, a little there. The appeal to the need for national security in uncertain times. The appeal to people's bigotries and fears, to turn them against their neighbours.
And not just their Jewish neighbours.
Romanies. Homosexuals. Communists. Political dissidents. Religious dissidents. The list goes on and on. So does the list of the death factories that sprang up all over Europe, wherever the creed of racial or religious purity took a tight enough grip on some group in power. And on that second list is a name I did not know, not until this morning. I knew that such a place had existed, knew that it was one of the factors in a conflict that flared to fresh life nearly fifty years later, but I did not know its name. Not until one of my friends spoke of it this morning, in a way that made it more than a historical note.
That place is Jasenovac. I've read through some of the links she provided, Googled more. It is the subject of dispute, of propaganda, of bitter arguments about who died there, and how many, and what it means. But there is no hiding the fact that the argument is about whether it was hundreds of thousands who were murdered by a fascist government, or "only" tens of thousands. And they were not murdered by Germans. This is the place that shocked even some of the SS with its brutality. I'd heard *that* story before, but not the name that went with the place.
We forget. We forget because it is too painful, or too inconvenient, to remember. Especially when it reminds us that the world is not a simple place, that there isn't an easy way to label people Good or Evil. But when we forget, we risk it happening again. Anywhere. Everywhere. For it is not the unfathomable sin of one nation, but the besetting sin of a species. No nation is quite safe from it. Another name I did not know, and learned today in another discussion: Solomon Ashe. I did know the two other names mentioned: Stanley Milgram and Philip Zimbardo.
It's too much to hope of human nature that there will be no more Jasenovacs. But we *can* remember that Jasenovac happened, and that it could happen here. Wherever "here" is.
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I don't normally do religion in public, but I'm getting very tired of some of the people who claim to speak on behalf of all Christians. No, they don't. And *this* Christian is of the opinion that some of the things they claim to be saying in the name of Christianity are decidedly unChristian.
My basic philosophy is agnostic, in the technical sense of the term - it is not possible to prove the existence or absence of a god. My faith, if you will, veers all over the place. But the core of my moral code, the foundation of how I see good and evil, comes from Christianity. For better or worse, I am a Christian in general, and in particular I am an Anglican.
And I say that these people who are preaching hatred in the name of my Lord are not Christians, whatever they might call themselves and however they might pronounce the name of the one they do evil for.
I mention Anglicanism, because one Anglican's discussion of "deeds not words" is very pertinent and has recent wide exposure. "Therefore if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath's sake, it is by me that he had truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him. And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted." Quite. Doing evil in the name of Christ is still doing evil. Is it any wonder that there are certain preachers who have attacked Lewis, called him atheist or Satanist? They have seen a reflection in a mirror, and chosen to call it a view through a window. Or a cell door, that door they wish to shut on others without knowing who is on the inside, and who is on the outside.
What is evil? Well, Jesus was pretty blunt about how he wanted us to treat one another. Part of his response when asked which is the greatest commandment: "And a second is like it. You shall love your neighbour as yourself. Upon these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." Nothing can be put above the commandment to love our neighbour. And who is our neighbour? He was asked that too. The point of his answer has been softened down the years, because anyone exposed to Christianity has almost certainly heard the parable of the Good Samaritan, but doesn't have the context of the time that parable was first taught. For us, "Samaritan" has come to mean "good person". Now read that parable over, and substitute "Israeli" for "Jew" and "Palestinian" for "Samaritan". *That's* what's going on in that parable. Your neighbour isn't just the person you think it right and proper to treat as a human being. Your "neighbour" is *everyone*.
Over and over again, he told us to have mercy, to have compassion, to treat others as we would wish to be treated. And he warned us against condemning others for their sins while ignoring our own. "Let he amongst you who is without sin cast the first stone." That's not open to weaselling about "My sins are minor, but *those* people deserve to be punished." Nor is, "First pluck out the log in thine own eye." There is a great temptation to attack others for their sins, to make them scapegoats for our own sins that we do not wish to acknowledge, and he knew it. Whether he was Incarnation of God, prophet, or simply a man with a vision, he understood people and how terribly easy we find it to turn and rend the weak and the few and the oppressed. Self-righteous hatred is a most gratifying and addictive drug, and so very very sweet to indulge. And he wanted us to stop doing that, and take the harder way.
So now I will indulge myself. I say of our modern day Pharisees who ride the airwaves to preach hatred and violence towards any who are not exactly like themselves; they are not Christians. With their fear and their hate and their greed they have put themselves aside from God; and they will not find Him again until they find it within themselves to open themselves to His love for all of us. All of us, including the lepers, the poor, the whores, the tax gatherers, the outcasts of society, and even the officer of the occupying army. We are all one in the body of Christ, and it is not the place of the Pharisees to give Him orders as to who may or may not receive His love. And I really, really wish they would stop parading their sick and twisted version in public and saying that this is what Christianity is. It isn't.
And the King will answer them, 'Truly, I say to you, as
you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you
did it to me.'
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This rant has been brewing for over a month, but was finally triggered when I went over to Amazon earlier this week to look at reviews for an html reference book. So when I went back to writing prose rather than html yesterday, the word count was 1700 words of rant instead of shapeshifter smut. :-)
On writing reviews...We've all seen them on Amazon. The one line reviews that say "This book sucked!" or "This book is great!". They're not very helpful, and one of the reasons they're not very helpful is that they don't tell you _why_ the book sucked or was great. You have no way of knowing whether that person's tastes match yours, and hence whether you can trust their opinion to reflect what you'd think of the book. ( The job of the reviewer isn't to say whether she liked or disliked the book... )I'm not going to write a long, detailed review of everything. I'm not spending a huge amount of time on writing reviews for Amazon when Amazon takes a licence to sell those reviews on to others, with no compensation in return, and on my own blog I may well say in passing, "I've just read such-and-such and it was brilliant!" But I do try to provide a little bit of detail beyond "It was good/bad." It's more helpful to other people. And I know that if I want to influence people to read/avoid a book, I'm more likely to succeed if I provide them with solid reasons for doing so. After all, why should I expect others to pay attention to the sort of single-sentence review that I routinely ignore?
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Sturgeon's Law: "90% of science fiction is crud. But 90% of everything is crud." Though there's anecdotal evidence that he used a somewhat stronger word than "crud"...
It's a well-known saying in sf circles. And it applies equally well to fanfic. 90% of fanfic *is* crud. The difference with fanfic is that the 90% is out there in public. The crud that in profic is only seen by unfortunate slushpile readers is in fanfic available to anyone who cares to go and wade through the relevant web archives. When you read the slush, the 90% of crud, it's easy to forget that the 10% does exist; that there are people writing fanfic who are competent, even brilliant, writers; who choose to write fanfic not because they are incapable of "doing better" but because fanfic offers them the opportunity to write stories that they couldn't write in the profic world.
( Some answers to the question 'You're such a good writer, why don't you write for money?' )
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