Having made a decision to write about creating
online roleplay personas, inevitably I needed to address the murky world of
freebooting, because essentially, that’s what fan communities do – pirate their
literary or cinematic idols identities and worlds.
Here’s what the Oxford English Dictionary
has to say on the subject…
“Definition of freebooter in English:
freebooter
Pronunciation: /ˈfrēˌbo͞odər/
NOUN
A pirate or lawless adventurer.
Synonyms:
pirate, marauder, raider;
bandit, bandito,
robber;
adventurer, swashbuckler
historical: privateer
archaic: buccaneer, corsair
Derivatives
freeboot
VERB
Example
sentences
·
Similar standards did not exist elsewhere in a world much beset by
brigandage, freebooting, dacoity and the insolence of outlaws.
·
But it would be small, often mutually competitive units of traders,
freebooting adventurers, and penitential pilgrims who would make the running in
the Mediterranean.
·
Like many other impecunious Caribbean drifters at the time, Dampier
slipped into a life of freebooting and buccaneering, hopping from ship to ship,
raiding Spanish vessels and towns.
Origin
Late 16th century: from Dutch vrijbuiter, from vrij 'free'
+ buit 'booty', + the noun suffix -er. Compare with filibuster.
Or, if you prefer something a little more up to
date, this is what Wiktionary says about the act itself…
“NOUN
freebooting
·
Piracy or plundering.
·
(computing) Software
piracy, or plagiarism or unauthorized rehosting of digital content.
·
1982, InfoWorld (volume
4, number 15, page 30)
Your
recent issue about the problems of electronic software piracy or "freebooting"
— if you will — was excellent and timely. However, I wonder if both sides have
failed to understand the social significance of the struggle.
·
2014, Brady Haran, Hello
Internet: Episode #5: Freebooting (the
first use of the term with this sense):
Oh
those freebooters taking our videos! I'm sick of it. Freebooting,
you know, it's a serious issue!
So – a big problem immediately arose because,
although Tolkien had never written about a character called Janowyn, I’d placed
her in a faux Rivendell, singing about original characters and events. I
couldn’t write a book using the name of Rivendell, Imladris or The Last Homely
House (the Professor was a great one for giving everything and everyone more
than one name), or any other characters or locations from The Lord of the
Rings universe, without getting into deep legal and fiscal doo-doo when I
came to publish!
What to do… Well of course my recourse was to do
what any other self-preserving hack does – change the names to protect the not
so innocent! Jano was OK, but it was kind of fun finding other ways to
‘reinvent’ her tales of Middle Earth’s heroes and histories so that they had
new labels, but still ‘worked’ in my reweaving, and at least retained some of
the look and feel of the revered originals.
There was also the ‘problem’ of other people’s
characters that Jano played with. I’d lost touch with some of them, though
others are still my good friends and fellow authors. Where there’s a will
there’s a way – I indulged in a little jiggery-pokery with the disclaimers and
came up with this little catch-all…
This is a memoir with the
focus on the author’s fantasy world. In the case of names, characters and
places, from the fan websites, these have all been changed from the accepted
canon of the original books and motion pictures to avoid copyright
infringements, and where a fellow roleplayer’s permission has not been given to
(or sought by) the author.
Luckily, the most important and significant
roleplay characters I interacted with, were all happy for me to mention them in
passing if needed. In fact, my friend who played Jano’s true love has written
the foreword for me ‘in character’ – there’s not many authors who have an ennobled
Wood Elf introducing their work!
Excerpt
Don’t worry about what
freebooting is—that’ll be explained very soon if you’re not already familiar
with the concept. For those of you who are, or at least know that ‘booting’ has
something to do with going online (well computers anyway…), you’re on the right
track, but it’s very much an inveterately human activity still.
As you can tell from the
subtitle, this is a semi auto-biographical work, but the almanac assignment is
a more truthful description of what goes on between the covers. This is because
the tapestry of words contained within is essentially a series of snapshots
taken during a lifetime’s journey, that encompasses one person’s struggles with
health, achievement, emotion and, most of all, dreams and imagination. Yes,
it’s me, me, me all the way through, but the fantasy twist is that often I’m
behind a mask, or in shadow, or slipping a veil over things as I explore
various personas and character facets. This may or may not be a conscious
experience since we’re dealing with the Fantasia
of Life and there’s been a fair amount of ‘making it up as I go’ action
going on, alongside a great deal of ‘I have no idea what I’m doing’
prevarication.
All I can assure you of
as you go further into this work of faction, is that it doesn’t matter whether
it really happened or not—life is as much a journey of the mind as one of
physical experience, through a series of events and encounters in the ‘real
world’. After all, even if you think you don’t believe in fantasy or magic,
your dreams are not always yours to command, or even to remember, and science
is still left with plenty of work to do in unlocking the secrets our brains’
conjure within all that mushy grey matter and electrical impulses. Freebooting
is a fluid and undefined undertaking, much like setting forth into uncharted
waters without a map of any real description, or even an idea of what to
expect, which is why an almanac is always handy, if only to use as a journal to
jot down the course you chart.
‘Magic always happens for a reason,
wherever and however it is created. Inside the fantasy, or springing from
it...’
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