Sakura of DOOM

So I stumbled online yesterday after STILL attempting to do the conclusion of that thesis thing and found the huge Firefly vid kerfuffle (both the TWoP and the fireflyfans.net ones)... those who want details and links:

The fireflyfans.net one (really big and just.. ugh) and details on the TWoP one and the other one can be found on bonibaru's LJ.

This is why I stopped being actively involved in fandom and why I'm glad I'm a no-name fan. Well, that and the yaoi flamewars of Gundam Wing... heh.

But yeah, I remember back when my GWing page was still being updated, Teen found our "You know you watch too much GWing when..." list had been copied verbatim and posted on another popular GWing site, under one of those "I got this somewhere; if you know where it's from, please tell me". So I emailed the owner and told her that it was ours, could she please put some credit on it, thanks? Teen checked later to find that no credit had been put on and told me. I had also been thinking about this, and figured the strong point of our site was original content, and hey, content's not that original when other sites have it. So I emailed the site owner saying I had changed my mind, that TMT's policy was that people were free to link to our stuff, but to please keep it on our site thank you very much. Site owner did so, but put up something nasty on her own site in its place detailing how mean and nasty we were to make her take it down, and of course, not putting on a link to our site.

That's my only experience with this sort of stuff. It was a little experience, I didn't get raging mad at it, although it definitely pissed me off. But it still wasn't pleasant, especially the last part, in which we still got no credit with the fact that the site owner was taking our stuff, despite not knowing the ownership, and in which we were called mean and nasty because we wanted our stuff off her site. And this was just a stupid little list on our site that we thought of on the spur of the moment because we didn't want to take other people's content. Ironic somehow. I mean, the entire problem with the GWing fandom back then was that every single site that wasn't fanfic was basically exactly the same. Everyone had the same character descriptions taken from official info, everyone had the same scans, etc. And TMT was supposed to be an original GWing site, in which we scanned in our own artbooks and our own fanart and wrote our own fanfics and our own synopses, character descriptions, everything. Anyway, I'm getting distracted. But that's what happens to a fandom when no one is producing anything -- opinions included. It was a pretty boring fandom, I'll admit, especially since most of the people were newbies (no offense to newbies, but it generally meant more flame wars on mailing lists when a newbie offended by yaoi showed up). It was also kind of boring for me because my OTP was non-popular despite being pretty canon and because I wasn't so into yaoi.

And after this Firefly stuff, even I got paranoid (and my fics and my site are by no means anything close to high profile), so I checked on Google. And yup, some sites that I've never heard of are hosting my fic. Luckily, my name's still on them, but I don't think my website is. Grrrr.

And it's just a kind of uncomfortable feeling, knowing that people could be taking stuff you made (even if it's derivative illegal fanfic) and putting them on their own site. With your name attached. Now. But now, who knows? Eep.

I also read seperis' post on entitlement, and (I know this is a hugely touchy subject), I was wondering if we fans aren't doing the same thing to ME and Joss Whedon and SMG and company. I've read some random posts (not many) in which people seem to think SMG is obligated to continue being Buffy, or that Joss is obligated to give us the ending we want. And how is that different from some fans demanding that their OTP fanfic be written by others or that so-and-so archive should do things in certain manner? And I do realize when a creator is completey derogatory and mean to the fans, they are in a sense biting the hand that gives them ratings. Just as authors/vidders/whatnot being derogatory to their readers/audience would be too. So I worry a little about this sense of entitlement all around, because personally? I'm glad as all hell that people are out there making screencaps, writing fics, vidding, making icons and etc. And I'm also glad as hell that Buffy lasted these seven years, of which I derived much enjoyment.

I think I lost my point there, and I hope I didn't piss off anyone... hrm. Right. Thesis. Back to work.

edited because I obviously have no command over HTML