Way back in the dark ages, before much of fan fiction was published on the web, I would illustrate fan fiction “fanzines”. Usually Star Wars, and a few other media (TV shows) fan fic stories. It was mostly for fun, and because some of my friends were fan writers, and wanted me to illustrate their stories. They still occasionally sucker me into doing something!
There are some REALLY sucky fanfic writers out there, but some “mainstream” writers got their start in FanFic. Melony Rawn comes to mind. (I helped illustrate one of her Star Wars fan novellas) and…I’m trying to think - Mercedes Lackey…and I cannot remember who else! Some of these writers used different names for their fan fic, so while I know that they went “pro”, I cannot remember what name they are now using. I have a friend who wrote one of the original Star Trek episodes, and also wrote for many TV series in that era. She is semi-retired, and now writes and reads fanfic for her own amusement.
I think a lot of the time, fanfic is just fun. But I could see that the creators of the original characters could get their knickers in a bunch over some of it. Slash fanfiction, for one thing. To write a story where Kirk and Spock are lovers definitely does not mesh with the way the original characters were written. I even saw one Slash story where the brothers from “Simon and Simon” ('80s detective series) were involved romantically with each other. I mean, that’s just sick. So, I guess there’s a balance there.
Slash fanfic is not sick. PLEASE don’t say that. If you don’t like it, fine. But don’t call me and my friends sick for writing/reading it. Hell, some slash fics are truer to canon than the gen fics out there.
And dogs? I don’t know…one of the few rules I adhere to in fanfic is no realperson fic.
I hope, some day, to be able to call myself a screenplay writer (and very possibly a published author). Now, if I get there, I will have busted my ass to develop characters, plots, and settings that are my own. They’ll come from the influences of other writers, they’ll come from people I know and love, and they’ll come from how I’ve lived my life. They’re mine. If I haven’t done something with them, chances are that I don’t want that done to them. If you want to do something with them, too damn bad. Shoulda thought of them before I did.
That’s one thing I can never understand about fanfic. The OP says that fanfic authors put characters/settings in a story that the original authors/intellectual property owners have not put them in. And I can’t think of a single better way to ensure that they never will. If you publish a story where one of my characters flies to Paris and has sex with a supermodel, there is no way in hell you will ever see me write that story. Why? Because if I do, you may have some legal standing to sue me for recompense because I used your idea. Granted, the characters and setting were mine, but the story is yours, and the mess that would result would honestly not be worth the trouble of writing the damn story to begin with.
What if your show gets cancelled? What happens then to all the fans? ALL of the fanfic I read/write is for cancelled shows. Then it’s not that the writer is putting your characters into a situation you don’t want…they’re continuing your show.
I agree that this is a problem, but that’s exactly why fanfiction should be made legal. If a fanfiction writer wants to use characters created by someone else, it should work both ways. The law could be modified to prevent such lawsuits on BOTH sides. Wouldn’t this be preferable to the current situation, where the original authors have to avoid fanfiction like the plague to avoid lawsuits?
Let me just add that copyrights are NOT God-given, Ten Commandments rights. They’re not even Constitutional rights. It’s true that the Constitution gives Congress the right to pass copyright laws, but nowhere does it say that Congress HAS to pass them. Copyright is a right granted by Congress; no more, no less. Free speech, on the other hand, IS a Constitutional right, and I believe it’s also God-given. That having been said, I do believe that authors should have the right to profit from their creations. If someone wants to make a movie out of the Harry Potter books, they should pay for the rights. But, copyrights were invented to promote the free exchange of ideas, not suppress it. In my opinion, fan fiction is an essential part of that free exchange that does not threaten the author’s right to make money. Sure, I don’t have any statistics to back up that claim, but think about it. Fan fiction has been written about characters who are owned by companies whose lawyers are card-carrying Satanists, and they STILL haven’t done anything to stop it. Why? Because a lawyer’s devotion to Satan isn’t as strong as his devotion to money, and there’s no money in going after fanfiction. As I said before, a law legalizing fanfiction would actually benefit the original authors by protecting them against lawsuits by fanfiction writers. If it gives them that benefit, and even the devil-worshipping lawyers agree that it does no harm, then there’s no earthly reason not to allow it.
Final note: I DON’T want to hear anyone using the fact that fan fiction is illegal in their arguments. My original post admitted that. I’m proposing that the law be CHANGED. We DO have that right in the United States.
Lots of people are saying that most fanfiction is crap, as if that were a reason to ban it. Well, Sturgeon’s Law says 90% of EVERYTHING is crap, INCLUDING movies and books written by professionals. A fanfiction writer is an “amateur” only in the sense that they don’t get paid, not necessarily in the sense that they lack talent. There was one Star Trek fanfic I read that had been submitted to Paramount for publication, but they turned it down. It was one of the best stories I had ever read, Star Trek or otherwise. Soon afterwards, I bought a so-called “professional” Star Trek book that used many of the same plot elements, only it sucked. So don’t be so quick to dismiss fanfiction writers as people who couldn’t cut it as “real” writers. Hell, almost all “real” writers were told at some time that they couldn’t cut it. The author of “Harry Potter” was told that children would never read her book because it was too long. That was the first book. The fourth book is at least twice as long as the first, and it’s still breaking sales records.
Just one more note. My favorite type of fanfiction is crossover fiction, where characters from different series meet each other. I once read this great story in which the characters from Star Wars, the X-Files, and Due South all got together to stop a dark Jedi. Fanfiction is the ONLY way such stories could exist. Oh, sure, they’ve done crossovers in comic books before, and there’ve been a few published books like that, but such things are a legal nightmare if done for profit and usually aren’t worth it. Fanfiction is the ultimate form of speculative fiction; stories that ask the question “what if?”, which is the heart and soul of all writing. It’s not stealing intellectual property, it’s only borrowing it.
One does not have to defend a copyright in order to keep it. One has it regardless of violations, at least in a legal sense. Of course, as pldennison and others have pointed out, frequent violations may in some cases tend to reduce the value of a copyrighted work, so it may be in the best interest of the copyright holder vigorously to protect the work.
What must be defended or lost are trademarks. The relevancy to fan fic is that often the creator of a fictional work will trademark the main characters, fictional locations, etc. with an eye toward future use in fictional work, merchandising or otherwise. To pick an example (fictional, AFAIK) out of thin air, if a trademark owner vigorously prosecutes people who manufacture tee-shirts proclaiming loyalty to Cthulhu but fails similarly to prosecute cases against fan fic using the character, he would soon find himself losing cases to the shirt makers.
Copyright falls under the Berne Convention. It isn’t just a US thang. All hell would break loose if the US decided to ignore international law on copyright.
And what on earth do you mean by copyrights being invented to promote the free exchange of ideas? Copyright is there to protect the rights of the author. It is there so that unscrupulous publishers can’t snaffle work and publish it without paying royalties. If copyright was not about the rights of the writer, then works would not pass into the public domain fifty years after the death of the author. If copyright were about free exchange of ideas then the writer would just instantly be putting their work into the public domain by having the book published. For that matter, works don’t even need to be published to be protected by copyright law. You write the stuff, you can prove you wrote the stuff, you own the stuff.
Yup, old-school 1st edition style monks are making a comeback in the 3e players handbook. Due out August 10th.
Yes, Ryan Dancey, WoTC VP of D&D has confirmed 3e will be an open source game.
Yes, the psionics rules are playtesting right now with a select couple hundred groups. The official expansion is the 4th or 5th book on the 3e release schedule.
How about the barbarians, cavaliers, and thief-acrobats from Unearthed Arcana?
(Sure, sure, I know they got those character classes from the D&D cartoon show – but hey, the more classes I can combine in a multi-classed character, the better!)
pldennison: I actually knew about that already, and made note of it, and its irony, in one of the “Napster bad” posts. Doesn’t change my views, but I do find it funny. Besides, as I mentioned over there, I use Gnutella–part of Gnu open-source code. So at least I’m consistent, non?
**
Copyright laws were made to encourage the arts and science by making sure the creators could profit from them.
Article I
Section 8
Clause 8
“To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;”
I noticed that the Constitution uses the phrase “exclusive right.” So while congress decides how this right is exercised it does appear that an arguement could be made for it being a Constitutional right.
I’ll admit, Slash is not my cup of tea. And I do wonder what the motivation is behind writing Kirk/Spock Luke/Han Starsky/Hutch Mulder/Skinner…and a multitude of other TV characters out there as gay lovers in fan fic. I seriously doubt that all of these TV shows have “gay undertones” that a fan fic writer felt needed to be explored. There is some other agenda for writing and reading Slash. But you know - whatever. I don’t have to read it, and I don’t consider Slash “sick” - just odd, and something I don’t get. But whatever floats your boat!
However, you must admit, you can’t always expect the creators of these original TV characters to be thrilled to see Slash fiction devoted to their shows. It might be considered a dramatic departure from the way they wrote the original characters. That might not please them.
As far as the specific “sick” reference - my original quote was:
It is sick. Simon and Simon are BROTHERS. To write a story where they are lovers is sick to me. It’s incestuous. I daresay a lot of people would find such a tale “sick” and would not understand why anyone would write it, or read it. Sorry. I think I gave an example of Slash that indeed was “sick”.
Thrilled to see it? No. Not the earlier shows, at least. But for some of the newer shows, writing slash makes a lot mroe sense than gen. Shows I’m thinking of here are Sentinel, Due South, and Xena. Hell, the producer of Due South admitted he WROTE A CHARACTER IN for the slashers in 3rd season.
I’m not sure if there’s really some other agenda…hell, most of the slashers I know don’t HAVE an agenda. We just like writing the stories and looking at the guys. And if you don’t like it…hey, whatever works. Sorry if I overreacted…I just got done with the quarterly “You all are PERVERTS!” discussion on one of my mailing lists.
As for Simon&Simon…well, I still don’t call it sick. Yes, I don’t read it. Yes, it squicks me. (And the defn of squick I’m using is “something that just bothers you, and you don’t read.”) But one of my best friends writes it. And I refuse to call HER sick, when there are plenty of people who would call ME sick for what I write and read myself. Just my $.02.
I think I remember the character in “Due South”. And Xena does not shock me either. But there are plenty of shows where I daresay the series creators are not tickled pink with what the slash writers do with their characters!
I guess I was being really general. The slash authors I’ve met (a few of them, anyway) write all slash. They look at a new TV show/movie, and decide “who will I ‘slash’?” That is an agenda - it’s a pattern. I’m not saying it’s a bad agenda, or pattern, but it is obviously there.
I have heard some slash writers claim that they wrote certain characters as slash because they just “saw it in the undertones” or “felt inspired” or something like that. Like it was a pure literary inspiration on their part. And I didn’t buy that. It’s wasn’t about that at all, as far as I could tell. They enjoyed writing slash, they looked for characters to pair up in slash fiction. They specifically went out of their way to write it that way, because they got some sort of gratification from it. Now, once again, I’m not saying there is anything terrible about that. And I’m guessing that you wouldn’t deny that - or wouldn’t take offense at the idea that writers do choose to write slash specifically, because they enjoy it.
But I don’t really understand the genre, or why people want to read or write it. But - hey - I don’t have to read it, so I doesn’t matter if I get it or not!
I guess that’s the “agenda” - to look at the guys!
I won’t call your friend “sick” either, but I guess I’d wonder about it a little, and ask her what exactly the appeal is for her. I still think “Simon/Simon” slash fiction is SICK. I find stories of incest definitely unappealing. And I do not understand why anyone would write it, or read it. Ick ick ick. There are some lines that should not be crossed.
You’re right, but the Constitution also uses the phrase “limited time.” After a certain length of time, authors ideas and characters were supposed to pass into the public domain. That aspect of the copyright law seems to have been abandoned.
