"fan fiction "......

[WritePR]

Originally Posted by pshrynk

The only RPF I've ever seen was really poorly written porn.

Not that I read porn..

Honestly I think that's what most RPF is. Someone writing their sexual and or romantic fantasies with the RP they are infatuated with. Kind of disturbing and a bit stalkerish to me.

[Yapyap]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

Harry does not need to apologize for that because he hasn't insulted any particular person but simply stated his opinion about an entire class of people engaging in activity that is often illegal.

And it's not like the MR echo chamber hasn't already come down on him with the usual dose of hostility for anyone who suggests that authors and other people who create content have actual enforceable rights.

And he insulted a LOT of people who haven't done anything illegal. Or are you suggesting that writing Jane Austen fanfic is illegal? (I keep bringing up Austen because there is a lot of non-commercial Austen fanfic around, and several of my fanfic writing friends write or have written Austen fanfic. They don't do it with the aim to publish it, although they easily could if they wanted to, just like many others have done; it's written and read as fanfic.)

Authors have rights. Authors have moral rights and authors have legal rights. And as has been said again and again, if an author doesn't like the idea or existence of fanfic, the author has the right to ask people to stop writing and sharing it - and more often than not, people do that. There is extremely little Outlander or A Song of Ice and Fire fanfic around, considering how extremely popular these series are - some, yes, but among the millions of fans around the world, there are bound to be a few who either haven't heard about the respective authors' anti-fanfic attitudes or plain don't care.

Authors also have a right to not have their work pirated or plagiarised, or having other people commercially gain from using their characters and worlds. And the overwhelming majority of fanfic (i.e. fanfic based on works currently still under copyright) does none of that. Fanfic readers and writers are usually among the most ardent financial supporters of the author, often buying up every copy of every book (including various editions of the same books), every piece of official merchandise there is; there is often an overlap between collector fans and fic-writing (and fic-reading) fans.

Fanfic also isn't plagiarism; it rarely copies directly from the source (and when it does, e.g. to quote specific lines of dialogue from the source for the purposes of re-interpretation of a scene, it's nearly always clearly marked and attributed). It almost always comes with a disclaimer (which may be legally useless but has the intention of making certain no one mistakes it for the original, generally naming the original author and saying the characters or settings don't belong to the fanfic author).

And it's maybe one in a million fanfic writers who would seriously even try to sell their fanfic commercially as-is. Yes, EL James published her Twilight fic with very minor changes (but those minor changes made it legal), and as far as I've gathered, so have other Twific writers (it seems to be more popular in that corner of fandom than anywhere else, possibly because there is a large amount of completely AU all-human stories there to begin with). But while the idea doesn't sit well with me, morally, the fanfic was a complete AU story to start with, borrowing very little apart from the characters' names that was unique to Twilight, I'd say it was basically an original story to start with - so a find-and-replace of the names was really all it took to turn it into a completely original story that simply had its inspiration, its origin, somewhere else. Just like a gazillion other published novels out there - just that with those, the origin usually doesn't get as much public attention.

I really don't know how all of the above translates into suggesting "that authors and other people who create content [shouldn't] have actual enforceable rights". As a rule, people who write fanfic are very much for authors' rights - we love authors, we want authors to create more. And since fanfic doesn't, in and of itself, harm the author or the author's income, and is a legal grey area even for copyrighted works, not a clear-cut illegal activity, people keep doing it - and, yes, defending it, because it's a fun hobby and a good way to interact with other fans.

[kennyc]

Can't we all just get along. Sheesh! Everybody's got an opinion, like certain body parts. It's okay, really!

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by BeccaPrice

The character Dracula is very different from his real-life progenitor Vlad Dracul, the impaler.

RPF with conptemporary people does kinda squicks me out too - to me it crosses a line that I'm not sure should be crossed. But, in truth, I don't think I could tell you why I feel that way.

The story is based on the fact that his political enemies decided to spread the word across Europe that he was drinking the blood of his victims and enjoyed torturing people, and they did so with engravings. So this is a story based on RPF with contemporary people.

[covingtoncat73]

Did anyone else here the piece on NPR, broadcast from ComicCon, about fanfic? I don't know if this is the link to the right story. They seemed to have several and they did talk about more than "50 Shades." Anyway...


http://www.npr.org/2012/07/13/156681...ades-of-fandom

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by WritePR

Honestly I think that's what most RPF is. Someone writing their sexual and or romantic fantasies with the RP they are infatuated with. Kind of disturbing and a bit stalkerish to me.

I assure you I have no sexual or romantic fantasies, nor infatuations, about the characters I've written into explicit RPF.

(I wrote Jesus/Ratzinger. People are encouraged not to look for it; I will not be supplying brain bleach if they find & read it.)

[Love.Forever.]

I actually quite enjoy reading fan fictions. There's just something about them that just draws me in and you think "hey this would have been great if they explored this direction in the actual movie". Though the excitement ends when you realize you have to wait for the person to write another chapter (like right now).

[Harper Kingsley]

Originally Posted by Love.Forever.

I actually quite enjoy reading fan fictions. There's just something about them that just draws me in and you think "hey this would have been great if they explored this direction in the actual movie". Though the excitement ends when you realize you have to wait for the person to write another chapter (like right now).

Right? I've been following Vathara's "Embers" since September 2009. It has 664,000 words and is really getting good

I wish she was on AO3 so I could just click for a mobi copy, but I had to grab her story with Fanfiction Downloader.

[Love.Forever.]

Originally Posted by Harper Kingsley

Right? I've been following Vathara's "Embers" since September 2009. It has 664,000 words and is really getting good

I wish she was on AO3 so I could just click for a mobi copy, but I had to grab her story with Fanfiction Downloader.

I admit I had a bout of nostalgia a while ago and decided to read Beauty and the Beast fanfic, some of the stories are simply amazing! I usually pick the stories that have longer chapters, just finished an incomplete 20 chapter story not too long ago ... dying to read the rest though. Not sure if you feel the same way but when I read the stories, it's like I never want them to end.

[Pinecone]

IMO, a LOT of fan fiction shows why some people can make a living at being an author and others would starve trying to do so.

But there is good fan fiction out there, from people who did not take a chance on making a living at writing, but might well have been able to do so.

[khalleron]

Originally Posted by Pinecone

IMO, a LOT of fan fiction shows why some people can make a living at being an author and others would starve trying to do so.

But there is good fan fiction out there, from people who did not take a chance on making a living at writing, but might well have been able to do so.

I learned not to be too judgmental too quickly. I know when I first started doing fanfic, I would read a story and go, 'ouch, that was terrible', then I would find out the author was 13 years old, and then I'd think, 'well, that was actually pretty good.'

Lots and lots of fanfic writers are kids - I say just enjoy it for what it is. I think older writers tend to write better, but the kids need a chance to develop, too.

[Harper Kingsley]

Originally Posted by Love.Forever.

I admit I had a bout of nostalgia a while ago and decided to read Beauty and the Beast fanfic, some of the stories are simply amazing! I usually pick the stories that have longer chapters, just finished an incomplete 20 chapter story not too long ago ... dying to read the rest though. Not sure if you feel the same way but when I read the stories, it's like I never want them to end.

It's so easy to fall in love with a good character and never want the story to end Though I think some fanfic authors need to realize that every story must come to a conclusion at some point--and I think 250 chapters and 1,000,000 words is enough

When I go on AO3, I always look for the longest story in whatever fandom first. My only problem is that I'm a weirdo and whatever interesting story I find has to be read right that minute. Then there's always one more good one after that...

There's so many good fanfic stories out there and it's totally worth having to dig around to find it. Like finding a copy of "Iron Man" in the $5 dollar bin. Score!

[cfrizz]

I have hundreds of fanfic stories from various Star Trek shows mostly Voyager & TNG. These stories kept me reading long after I had given up on paperbacks. I go through some of them now & what I thought was terrific several years ago now seems a little weak, but others including a 50 story saga that starts out with Janeway & co out in the Delta Quandrant & brings them back home filling in all those spots that we wished we could have seen but were left dangling on the show were so well done that they still engross me when I reread them now.

This writer is thought of as the standard to follow when writing ST fanfic. She went on to have two of her own books published. Another woman who got started in ST fanfic is now a published author with 9 books to her credit and growing.

I've grown as a reader, able to quickly distinguish good writers from bad whether fanfic or published books.

[Yapyap]

Coming back for a moment to the legality of fanfic... I spent some time recently reading through the Estonian Copyright Act, and came across this:

§ 19.

The following is permitted without the authorisation of the author and without payment of remuneration if mention is made of the name of the author of the work, if it appears thereon, the name of the work and the source publication:

/--/

7) the use of a lawfully published work in a caricature, parody or pastiche to the extent justified by such purpose.

Again, I'm not a lawyer, but from what I understand, although I'm not entirely certain of the definition of "pastiche" meant here, I would think it's precisely that "pastiche" part of the abovementioned clause, which would/should cover fanfic; in other words, the way I'm reading this, writing fanfic, with a disclaimer, with or without the author's permission, is completely legal as far as I'm concerned?

"To the extent justified by such purpose" is also debatable, I assume, but the very purpose of a pastiche, as far as I understand it, is to use another person's original work as its basis in some way.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Yapyap

Again, I'm not a lawyer, but from what I understand, although I'm not entirely certain of the definition of "pastiche" meant here, I would think it's precisely that "pastiche" part of the abovementioned clause, which would/should cover fanfic; in other words, the way I'm reading this, writing fanfic, with a disclaimer, with or without the author's permission, is completely legal as far as I'm concerned?

The OTW believes most fanfic is pastiche or parody, and therefore legal by US law. However, some fanfic is not; if someone copies out a short story and just replaces the main character names with the names of their favorite actors, that's a lot harder to excuse under "pastiche." But that kind of fic is very rare and almost never published. (It's something young writers sometimes try just to see how the story reads differently with just the names changed, or with a few other details changed.)