About my works of fiction.
PrevNode LinkNextWhy do you write mostly fan-fiction and crossovers?
Node LinkNextLawrence Lessig gives many good reasons for remixing in his book Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy, which I have read and enjoyed. Writing fan-fiction and crossovers, whether in fiction or in non-fiction (see some of my crossover essays), is the writing equivalent of what he describes being primarily done with music and videos.
Our aversion towards fan fiction and an insistence on "originality" is mostly a 20th century fad, that is slowly (for some values of "slowly") diminishing.
Anyway, the various fiction franchises and idea systems that influenced me are a large part of me, and I cannot throw them away when writing my own works. I don’t have a lot of control of the ideas I come up with, but I know I must materialise them eventually.
What about your real person fiction?
PrevNode LinkNextI feature or reference several celebrities in my stories (whether past or present) as a way of Real person fiction. According to the wikipedia page, such fiction is likely to be legal if it is done in mostly good taste, which I believe and hope is the case for me.
The general consensus is that a celebrity generally allows himself or herself to be a subject of reuse in literature, and that includes me, Shlomi Fish.
Update (02 November 2019): I have now written a more comprehensive essay about why writing real person fan fiction is good.
Update (26 November 2019): I now realise that fan fiction and especially real person fiction can be used to help combat the flood of new characters and names that plagues many more-"original" stories. People generally have a rough concept of what characters such as Chuck Norris, Emma Watson, Richard Stallman, Moses, or Miss Piggy, are like and generally can better remember them because they thought about them a lot.
Update (06 September 2022): commercial real person fiction is common and encouraged:
You feature sexy women and girls in your works. Are you a pervert?
PrevNode LinkNextWell, I don’t know about you, but I feel that a man who is attracted to women displaying competence, sexiness, strength, etc. - however manifested - has a healthy libido (or “sex drive”) rather than is a pervert, whose sexual preferences prevent him from functioning.
Anyway, do you really believe that when Taylor Swift depicted her friends and herself laying waste to a whole city in the videoclip for her song "Bad Blood" (and Chuck Norris, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and similar, likely showed it more than once) that they actually are so violent in real life? While sometimes I felt a little like going on a mayhem rage when there was a lot of commotion outside when I was trying to sleep or concentrate, I didn't actually try to do that, and at most only ranted about it on online chat services or called the police. I believe no great action hero will ever deliberately kick a friendly cat or dog.
Furthermore, just because I write about stuff like that, does not mean I do not have enough self-control, or that I have sex with, sexually assault, or sexually harass everything that moves.
Moreover, my fiction tends to be mild and hopefully in good taste. If you think it is bad, then you should try:
The Hebrew Bible, which many people have traditionally considered holy, and which features such texts as:
Song of Songs - I started reading it in Hebrew, and while I found it beautiful, it was too erotic for me to finish reading.
Or, to a lesser extent, some of the modern slash fiction and other incest fiction that exist, and which:
Many gay, lesbian, bisexual, and even trans, people dislike.
Its authors are often otherwise sexually-healthy-functioning adults.
Now regarding their age: yes, I'm aware that some of them are underage. However, it may seem farfetched, but I think that underage girls and boys can still be competent, both in their tangible endeavours, but also in their sexual/romantic orientation. Expecting them to remain disadvantaged is detrimental.
Back at the time, Macaulay Culkin, who was the “alpha male” of a large part of the 1990s (despite his youth), raised a few eyebrows, when marrying at the age of 18 shortly after high school graduation. However, I recently heard of a Jewish couple of a husband and wife who were 15 years old then (with the girl pregnant), and as scary as it sounded, it didn’t seem too horrid of a thought. Some people learn faster than others.
Just another note about Culkin: some people also criticised him for possessing Marijuana and for its use, but many young and not-so-young people I talked with have had a history of Marijuana use, or even Marijuana addiction. So I do not hold it against him. See my essay, “The Case for Drug Legalisation”, for why I think Marijuana, and all other illegal narcotics, should be made legal globally.
I also have a hypothesis that pleasure, education (learning and teaching), and creativity / conception, are closely intertwined. Since we cannot expect children to avoid having fun, or not to learn, we must accept the fact that they'll have sexual/conceptual experiences.
Moreover, note that E Nesbit, JK Rowling, Sesame Street, and Disney, all featured underage children in their works.
When PETA's twitter spoke against the sexualisation of catgirls in Anime, it was criticised for not going against Sesame Street, or My Little Pony, or Disney and being bullies.
So please pick on someone your size, or just admit you were wrong, and choose a more worthwhile battle.
Am I attracted to attractive underage girls? I admit I am, but no more than I am to those who are well above the age of consent (and usually much less). I suspect most other men do too (and women are attracted a little to underage boys), and repressing these emotions won't make the situation better. (One may still opt to suppress them instead, i.e.: acknowledge their presence but not act in accordance to them.) These feelings are automatic, harmless, and no amount of psycho-"therapy" will prevent them.
Moreover, as of 2023-09-24 the first and only time I recall "getting physical" with a MOTAS was when a girl who looked in her early 20s rapekissed me. 1st base? ½ base? Hardly a case of sexual assault, and it also wasn't my initiative, and the initiator seemed above the age of consent.
Do you idolise the celebrities or fictional characters that you feature in your fan fiction?
PrevNode LinkNextAs a matter of fact, it may be considered this way. My fan fiction may be thought of as a modern age way of having polytheistic gods or otherwise heroes, that can be used for guidance and for shifting the blame away from you, similar to the way that Plato used dialogues with Socrates for that, or the Greek used Aesop.
Note that even if I idolise (or perhaps just idealise) a person or a fictional character like that, it does not mean I actively worship them using pagan rituals. Nor do I believe they have supernatural superpowers, or see them as a supreme authority of telling me what to do. So I believe it does not go against the Jewish ethos. Moreover, the Jewish canon, sported some similar idols/"gods"/heroes besides "Jehovah" / "God" / the "King of the kings of the kings" / "haqadosh barukh hu" however they/he/she/it are manifested. For example: Moses, [King] David, and Deborah, are all such heroic figures, and I featured my own takes on some of them in some of my screenplays and stories.
Why are some of the source works or franchises of your fan-fiction works so old? Why don't you use only the Jewish canonical Torah? Why do you reference software world / computer geek / open source details?
PrevNode LinkNextWell, as you can tell, it is futile to try to please everyone and some people are bound to complain, and to opposite extremes. I try to take the advice to "make your own kind of music" and use my own cultural background and interests as inspiration for my creative works. Also note that I tend to agree with Larry Wall that “All Truth is God’s Truth”.
Often, people still enjoy my works without being intimately familiar with all the sources of inspiration.
Now, regarding the Mishnah and the Talmud, to paraphrase on Sturgeon's Law, I feel that 99.95% of the Mishnah and the Talmud are crap
, and while they contain many gems, they are mostly redundant.
There is no way one can expect them (or me) to only use sources earlier than 1900, because technology as well as art, culture, & entertainment / education / amateur philosophy, did not stand still since then, despite being increasingly based on Copyrights’ maximalism.
You can never truly appreciate Hamlet until you've read it in the original Klingon.
But all the mightiest Klingon warriors have watched Disney's The Lion King instead (or in addition), possibly with Klingon subtitles.
In my screenplay Selina Mandrake - The Slayer, the protagonist (Selina) runs into three vampire warriors (“The Three”) dressed as Klingons, who tell her that “Every mighty Klingon warrior has watched Sesame Street”.
As a retort, she exclaims: “Mighty Klingon vampire warriors who have watched Sesame Street… this decade royally sucks!!”. However, most of the best American warriors of the relatively recent past (of all kinds) have watched Sesame Street, because they loved it as happy children (and later as adults).
Why aren't you faithful to the original franchises and characters?
PrevNode LinkNextWhen I hack on my fan-fiction works I apply my education and entertainment creative filters, just like Disney's films or The Muppets have been doing for similar sources.
As I noted:
Note: many of my stories are not too realistic, and aim to reflect a better and more idealistic reality than the one many people would perceive. This is in part because, I am an idealist, and plan to remain so (and my idealism is dynamic and constantly changes), and wish that my words and deeds will carry reality forward instead of preserving the status quo.
In their "Poetics", Aristotle notes:
Homer, for example, makes men better than they are.. Similarly, the characters in my fics are competent: confident, open, forgiving, funny [I hope], greedy and ambitious, resourceful, generous, passionate, socially capable, sexually assertive, and sexy.
Why are you so obsessed with “facts”/factoids about Chuck Norris/etc.?
PrevNode LinkNextI note the significance of the factoids trend in this 2013 mini-essay about them and continued in 2019 here. One should also note that there has been mutual influence on the factoids, and by them, with my longer stories / screenplays. Often such facts are being made up about celebrities or fictional characters on social media without being immediately recognised as such.
These "facts" are a natural evolution of attributing fables to Aesop (often ones thought about on the spot) or telling stories about idols (whether real, fictional, human, immortal, etc.).
( I have similarly had Gowron attribute a quote to the iconic Klingon philosopher “Kahless the Unforgettable” which I came up with. )
Note that if you do not find these factoids funny, that is OK - I still love you! 💟 😉! But "live and let live and do and let do" and, like my psychotherapist advised me: please don't be too domineering/"pushy". Different people are different and like or dislike different things.
Why don't you cut out contact with the outside world for several years and release a perfect screenplay?
PrevNode LinkNextThis was popularised by Hollywood, but from my experience is detrimental in this day and age (~January 2021). I find that releasing screenplays (or essays or software) in an "imperfect" or even incomplete state, helps getting input from readers, reviewers, and collaborators, which even if negative and "destructive", helps in the thought process.
For example, after writing the first three stanzas of "Terminator: Liberation", it took me close to a year to come up with a better (and shorter) plot. Moreover, subsequent readers' input was instrumental in further enhancing it.
Also note that in a true "open" fashion, I encourage people to fork, or (licence-permitting) even change the licence of derivatives. I can never please everyone but feel free to take my work in your own direction.
Cookie Monster agrees with me.
May I prepare a derivative of a work (or of several works) of yours? (E.g: a computer game, a tabletop game, a parody, a video, an animation, an audio file, a picture, a version with some amendments or corrections, a translation to a different language?)
PrevNode LinkNextSure! Go ahead, as I encourage derivatives, and I believe most of my works are under licences that allow derivatives given respecting certain conditions. Even if you violate the conditions, I will likely lack the time and energy to start a law suit, and instead just gently "shame" you on Internet social media or other sites.
Also see some relicensing options.
Do note that I try to provide sources for most of my works - usually on my GitHub account or other code sharing sites (where "code" can be markup or a different file format). As a result, I recommend you peruse them if you wish to keep the best quality.
How do you expect to afford paying the [big name] actors that you sport in your screenplays?
PrevNode LinkNextFirst of all, note that I believe by observation that most of them are modern-day geeks and "amateurs" (= workers who work for fun/"love") and often agreed to act in films they liked for a relatively small pay. For instance, according to the wikipedia article about Emma Watson the one about Kirsten Dunst, and the one about Keira Knightley they all played in some independent films, which I presume paid less than "major motion pictures".
Secondly, my cast pages (e.g: 1; 2; ) are merely guidelines. Film makers are welcome to take them in their own direction (or the screenplays themselves).
If you are the “2nd worst vocalist on YouTube”, who is the first?
PrevNode LinkNextMy future successor. Not unlike Deep Thought being "the second greatest computer in the Universe of Time and Space".
Are there audio-book versions of your texts?
PrevNode LinkYou should be able to find ones using web searches. I originate them as text due to usability and accessibility considerations, both of mine and of my users.