Fanfic and Semen...

[curiouswombat]

There have been a good deal of posts, in the Tolkien fandom, about a fic site which has been bought by someone who has said, in the past, that he intends to become very rich by buying (I paraphrase because I am too lazy to go and check exact words...) 'run-down sites where the current owner has no idea how commercially valuable they may be.' And that he intends to 'take over fandom'.

As you can imagine a lot of people are very pissed off at someone intends to make money from their creative work, and worry that he will draw the wrath of the Tolkien Estate, which can be extremely wrathful, if it looks as if he is making any money at all out of Tolkien related stuff. (If you are interested Esteliel has written a good account of the whole thing.)

I didn't post there, and hardly ever read there - the default is grey print on black, and even if you change to the alternative grey on cream it isn't an easy place to read.

So - why am I mentioning it at all?

Well - the person who had developed the site has said one reason she sold it was because she was paying a lot out of her own pocket because no matter how often she asked for donations almost no-one gave...

Do you read fanfic at any of the archive sites that has a 'donate' button? Have you ever donated? If not, why not?

Do you want to find your favourite archive disappearing, or being bought by someone who annoys so many of your favourite authors that they withdraw their stories? No? Then go and click on that 'Donate' button. And yes - I do - I reckon I get a lot of pleasure from my favourite sites and on the three of them that have a 'Donate' button I click it at least once a year.

It is not expensive - if every reader gave the cost of one paper-back book a year to their favourite sites there would be no question of any of them having problems keeping going. So - just_ann_now gave me a really good book (Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner) - the cover price is $6.99. I can donate that much money, or even just $5.00, and I can read guilt-free for a year.

Take a lesson from the Lord of the Rings Fanfiction buy out and make sure your favourite archive in whatever fandom has the support it needs. And the second lesson - if you want me to read, don't use grey on black as your default...

And now for the semen... This is a short clip from an e-mail from my daughter, currently having a whale of a time in Buenos Aires having been stuck in London for two days by a Chilean volcano until British Airways got her onto an Iberia flight from Madrid -

There was no inflight entertainment on the Iberia flight and I've been on nicer areoplanes with flybe and easyjet! But it got me here and I can hardly complain when BA had put me up in the Hilton and the Marriott and paid for all my meals the last 2 days!

I got through a rather lax customs, full of signs warning against importing semen into the country(!), and to Katie's with no problems...

I leave you to make of that what you will!!

Comments

[evilawyer]

That's one of the odd things about the Internet --- that people have an expectation that the maintenance of it (the servers, the satellites, the time it takes for people to create the code and all that stuff to make it all work is all free. It's one thing to make an active choice of "No, I'm a cheapskate, and I'm not willing to help pay for something that I'm able to get for free." Mean-spirited, but reasoned. It's another thing to simply not realize that everything costs money and that absolutely nothing in life is free.

[curiouswombat]

The assumption, too, that if money is needed someone else will doubtless provide it, is what leads some of the archives to close - and has left the person who originally ran this one able to say "I only sold it/you/your stories to someone because no-one else would help..."

There is some debate about it - did she ask for help loudly enough? But some of the big archives do ask for donations towards upkeep - and I felt it was timely to remind people that a few dollars will keep you in reading matter for a long time!

[evilawyer]

The assumption, too, that if money is needed someone else will doubtless provide it,

You give more credit to human nature than I do. I think people --- especially many of the young people --- don't stop to think that someone out there is altruistic and solvent (which, let's face it, is iffy in this day and age) enough to shell out cash for the good of the many. They just think "If this one closes down, I'll get it for free somewhere else." Which, in keeping with my original point, at least has the "benefit" of showing that they are thinking and not just assuming it's all free. Mixed blessing, though.

did she ask for help loudly enough?

I've never even been to the site in question and this was the first thing that came to my mind when I read about the debacle. I think it was the way (reported way, anyway) that she was so quick in tone to say "It's all you people's fault" (tone is very often everything) rather than something along the lines of "I'm sorry, but it's like I've been saying for a long time --- I can't afford it." Uncharitable conclusion for me to reach, I know. I still reached it. Still, in the greater scheme of things, no one will likely care in the end. As long as readers don't get innudated with ads or can, as at LJ, buy their way out of seeing the ads*, the websites will continue ---- writers' misgivings that someone is making money off the stories they write out of love for a show/book/movie/etc don't count in the greater scheme of things.


*Which still leaves in play the issue of having ads appear on your page for others to see that you'd rather not have associated with your screen name ---- like the time a few years back when I saw an anti-abortion ad on the LJ of a pro-choice woman who wrote extensively about how "choice" is rapidly shrinking and constantly threatened by all manner of political and economic forces. I doubt she even knew LJ was selling ad space on her journal to anti-abortion forces because she had a paid account.

Here via the ManderFail links list

[alex_quine]

Thankyou for giving me a nudge to do something - offer to contribute to the cost of maintaining the archive/s I frequent - I really should have thought of myself.
p.s. The Semen is probably bull semen - they may be trying to avoid bringing something nasty into the country's beef/dairy herd.

Re: Here via the ManderFail links list

[curiouswombat]

Hi! I think if we all gave just a pound/dollar or two now and again it would not be a big thing - but it would surely be appreciated.

I think she would have figure it was bull semen - although it might not have occurred straight away as she had been awake for almost 21 hours at that point. I understood straight away (I'm from a family where the farmer in the joke, who put the nail for the artificial insemination man to hang his trousers on, could well have been a relative!!) - but that the signs appeared less specific gave me a good giggle,too.