To be fair, it's a lot more difficult to get a hold of a professional author and ask then it is to PM a fanfiction author.

 

I logged in today to find I started a thread. Imagine my surprise. (It actually was split from the other thread, I believe).

 

I would argue the opposite (for abandoned stories) since fanfic authors usually abandon stories and fade into obscurity.

 

Fading into obscurity doesn't mean they left entirely, and even if they did a lot of people are sentimental enough to keep using their old email address. At the very least, you should ask them the question, because if anything I wrote had fanfiction I'd want to know about it.

 

Yeah things are getting a bit harder to track. So let's put some notations here.

On continuation:
C.1) Take ideas and rewrite
C.2) Reference their story and continue with new chapter
C.3) Post their existing chapters (with credit) and continue
C.4) Post their existing chapters + your new chapters without credit.

On seeking author approval:
A.1) Do you just go ahead without asking?
A.2) If you ask and they don't reply, do you go ahead?
A.3) If you ask and they say no, do you go ahead?

So, I'm okay with A(1-3) and C(1-3) because yadda yadda yadda (in my case, I only consider C.4 to be the dick move)

 

Am I the only one seeing the thin line between "continuing abandoned story" and flat-out appropriating the story for own use?

 

(Premise 1) It's fine to write fanfiction about a story (e.g. Harry Potter), so long as you don't pretend the original story is yours, and don't try to profit from it.
(Premise 2) A piece of fanfiction is a story.
(Conclusion) It's fine to write fanfiction about a piece of fanfiction, so long as you don't pretend the original story is yours, and don't try to profit from it.

DLP might have different rules, and of course us DLP writers are appreciative that we're being looked out for, but morally, fanfic of fanfic is just as justified and permissible as fanfic of original stories.

 

If I remember correctly, fanfic authors are using a bit of a loophole their, as their fanfics are for the Game of Thrones HBO series, which HBO owns and distributes. GRRM can tell people to stop writing fanfiction about his books series, but unless HBO does the same, people can write fanfiction for the show.

At least, that was how I heard it.

By the way, a question, but what happens if an author of a fanfic dies, and we are able to confirm that the author is dead perhaps through a family member announcing it through the author's Facebook or Twitter. If a fan decides to continue the dead author's story, is that considered stealing or against the DLP site rules?

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe authors even have a very clear right to deny fanfiction, especially when it's nonprofit. Sufficiently altered works count as original on their own.

Perhaps some of the crappier canon rehash fics on FFN would not be sufficiently original, but I believe most decent fics would.

Sites like FFN enforce the authors wishes out of goodwill, but I don't think there is a solid precedent yet if they tried to force the issue.

As far as I understand it, this also means the author of a fanfic has ownership over the collection of words that comprise their story, meaning they can disallow others from straight up continuing them, just the same as JKR could prevent someone from writing a HP book 8.

 

Fanfiction exists in a grey area between derivative work and stuff made by people too poor to afford a lawyer. So the current circumstances are basically that fanfiction is generally okay, unless the original author threatens to sue, in which case it's off the cards because nobody is going to spend thousands of dollars/pounds on defending a piece of fanfiction.

 

I like this designation and think it might be a good way to designate one from the other, but what do you see as the difference? Permission? Length of time? I'd have to say the former, but many would probably say the latter.

 

No, you're not.

I think of it as the difference between pretending that I wrote ASOIAF, and me writing a continuation after GRRM unfortunately passes away before completing the series.

 

I would also say 'permission'. Using the excuse 'length of time' just smacks of "I didn't care enough to try" to me. Which ties back into the whole respect thing.

 

As I said, I agree.

This question also leads into other questions as well. For instance, to what degree can you reference a fic in another fic before you should get permission? There's the legal "Fair use" limits, but in fanfiction, do those those still apply? And, legal is not equivalent to moral or respectful.

For instance, in a fic I'm writing, I have a scene with the sorting hat. The hat isn't at all close to JBern's hat, but since it is with Fleur, I threw in a few lines of direct quotes to play off his fic. Since I was directly quoting, I sent a PM asking for permission. He didn't answer me, so I changed it around so there's only two phrases that are quoted directly, both of which could have come about without reading his fic (but in the scene, it's still obvious I'm playing off it.

Could I have kept the original? Should I have changed it even more? Again, if I was publishing, the whole thing would have fallen into the fair-use category. But, since we're all in the FF community, I didn't feel quite right doing it. It does make me wonder, though, where's the limits?

 

Maybe authors should include fanfiction dispersal in their wills.

 

I think an interesting aside to this is the development of genres within fanfiction. Mid-2005, independent!Harry formed with a list of characteristics that were definitely built off of older stories and not canon. Most genres develop around what the community most enjoys. If we can follow that trail, thousands of fanfics are built off of an original set of authors' ideas. I don't think that's thievery or immoral.

Hell, a lot of people believed Psychic Serpent was canon for a while.

And while I think that some of these genre characteristics may just be general concepts of the urban fantasy genre like Taure mentioned, many of them are specific to Harry Potter FanFiction and come only from older authors' works. I think it's more interesting to analyze how different genres develop than to bitch about how others steal ideas. I think if we are honest enough with ourselves, we all have a few "stolen" concepts rewritten on our hard drives.

I know I have a multi-core wanded, tattooed, long-haired Harry with the respect of the goblins, more marriage contracts than he knows what to do with, the powers of merlin, and a manipulative Dumbledore somewhere on mine.

 

You say this as if a person that writes a continuation of an abandoned story does not expend any time and effort to do so. If they write a continuation, without copying anything, writing in their own ideas, etc... Then they work just as hard as the author of the original story, no?

Edit: Sorry, couldn't shut up about it.

 

I don't think anyone here disagrees that republishing any of the writing/words of a previous author is unacceptable by any standard. Even if the original authors are referenced.

Where people seem to differ in opinion is on the fanfiction of fanfiction concept.

 

I don't understand why that is a flashpoint. If you are writing fanfiction of something, whether a book, game, or other fanfic, then attribute your shit. No one cares if you write an omake to a story and post it as long as you don't pretend it isn't based on another fanfic.