On Fanworks

[chubbyleng.livejournal.com]

This was on the LJ front page, and it got me thinking. How do you feel about fanfiction? How do you guys feel about authors disallowing fanfiction of their works? Is it really a "lazy way out"?

I understand the whole copyright issue behind it, and I think that authors have every right to control the way fans use the characters and world they've created, but when I really like a book and find out that the author doesn't like to have fanworks of it, I can't help but feel disappointed. I've been writing fanfiction for a long time, and I think it really helps with understanding characters or at least forming your perception of the characters. And it's always charming to see how other people perceive the characters you read about. And for people like me, I wonder why it has to be a "lazy way out" when I don't even have plans of becoming a published author. (I also don't understand the 'suing' part. Fanfiction writers don't make any money. What are they going to sue from you?)

With that said, for the writers here, or people who are planning to be writers, (or dreaming of becoming one), would you be offended if people write fanfiction of your works? 

How about fanarts? Do fanarts hold the same gravity of rights infringement as fanfictions do?

Comments

[aged-crone.livejournal.com]

I can see its being a problem if the fanfic author is doing things to the characters that the author doesn't want done.

Or even if they do things that the author plans to do eventually, because if he somehow hears about the fanfic or even if he doesn't but theoretically might have, it could lead to "What a copycat - he's lost his skills so he's copying the fanfic sites..."

[drashizu.livejournal.com]

The second case is murky for me, too, because I think it depends on the particular situation and whether a lot of fans have been exposed to the fanfic (which is usually not the case, but has been known to happen, especially with some well-known fandoms like Harry Potter), which could make the fanfic have more impact on their appreciation of the original author's work. But if the author maintains strongly that he doesn't read fanfic, which I think most authors do, and it's a smart policy, then any fan who says that the author is copycatting a fanfic is basically accusing the author of lying.

That's a pretty egregious accusation for someone to make, and if they do make it in all seriousness, it would probably demonstrate that there are other underlying tensions between the author and his fanbase outside of the issue of just this one fanfiction (like the fact that he has been accused of plagiarism before, or his recent novels have been terrible, or he has a known ghostwriter or "collaborator" who has been doing all of the heavy lifting lately).

The first issue you mentioned, about the fanfic author doing things to the characters that the original author doesn't like, I don't see as such a serious problem. The author cannot control what goes on in each reader's mind when she reads his novels, no matter how hard he tries. If reader A constructs an idea about the characters that the author didn't intend, and reader B has the same idea but writes it down and is articulate about it, and posts it online, and reader A reads it and thinks, "Yes, this is what I thought should happen, too!" then where has the author lost any control over the characters that he had before? He couldn't control reader A's mind, or reader B's. Does he expect to be able to prevent them from sharing their thoughts with each other in a public forum? Talk about restricting freedom of speech...

[aged-crone.livejournal.com]

"Talk about restricting freedom of speech..."

Actually, I call it "protecting your intellectual property." There's a difference between a discussion where people say they wished something had happened, and coolly appropriating characters that belong to someone else and twisting them from the author's intention, if the author objects to it.

Also, there are any number of people in "fanbases" (another word that makes me cringe) whose elevators don't go anywhere near their top floors, and those might be the exact people who would accuse the author of stealing their ideas.

[drashizu.livejournal.com]

I don't consider fanfiction that the author dislikes because of its content to be any more of a threat to intellectual property rights than fanfiction the author tacitly approves of. (Explicit approval is an entirely different can of worms and is legally well-defined, so it doesn't apply here.) It's the nature of fanfiction as fanfiction, not the specific content of that fanfiction, that threatens an author's intellectual property rights.

I guess I just don't see how there's a categorical difference between writing fanfiction where the characters adhere to the author's wishes and fanfiction where they don't. Either way, you're writing something that the author didn't "intend"--or he would have written about it himself, and published it. It's all appropriating characters that belong to someone else and twisting them from the author's intention.

The only difference the author's approval makes, to me personally, is whether or not the fans are being decent, polite human beings. Which is where I can agree with you. Decent, polite human beings do their best to adhere to other people's wishes even if there's no law saying they should. Decent, polite fans adhere to the author's wishes about fanfiction even if there's no law saying they can't write what they want.

[aged-crone.livejournal.com]

"I don't consider fanfiction that the author dislikes because of its content to be any more of a threat to intellectual property rights than fanfiction the author tacitly approves of."

I didn't say that it was. We were, at that point, discussing people who write fanfic that the author finds objectionable, and you said, in regard to that, "talk about restricting freedom of speech." My point was that it isn't restricting freedom of speech, it's protecting intellectual property. That isn't to say that other situations might not also involve intellectual property, only that we weren't at that point discussing those other situations.