What do you guys think of this? Ie, you like someone's story until a certain point, but find it jumps the shark thereafter, and decide to write your own version of the story. Alternatively, the original author abandoned it.

Assuming you give credit/links to the original work, what do you guys think of the ethics of this?

 

You really need permission for it to be kosher, and very few authors will take "I think you fucked up riiiiiiight here, I'm gonna take over from there and fix it" kindly.

Re: original author abandoned it, see Oedipus Mirror. I started it, Big D picked it up. Not a unique occurrence by a long shot.

 

Fanfiction of fanfiction...

Some chick contacted me about this awhile back and I was all like 'whatever'.

It may be the worst thing I've ever read, and technically I wrote 95% of it.

 

Hey, how is that no one asks authors of original fiction if they can write fanfiction about it, but if you want to write fanfiction of fanfiction you need to ask for permission?

 

You start rewriting someone's fanfic, there's a very real chance that you'll gank their fans. And fans are why the majority of fanfic writers write. Authors, on the other hand, write for money, and you're not ganking their profits by writing fanfiction.

 

People have asked before (not anytime recently), and I've told them to go fuck themselves in slightly gentler terms. For pretty much the reason Tehan stated. I don't care to have someone leeching off whatever reputation I've earned in the time I've spent at this pursuit. I'd probably be more open to the prospect if the writer involved were someone I knew and respected.

Of course, why any such person would ever WANT to continue some of the garbage I've written is beyond me.

 

Majority of the authors who re-write the abandoned stories screw up theirs massively and tarnish the original fics reputation. In minor cases the authors pull off exceedingly well than the original author.

Though the later case is highly uncommon its a loss-loss situation for the original author. So majority of the authors like LT2000 never want to see their stories re-written.

@LT2000: 'Some of the garbage' you wrote is something majority of the authors at FFN could never achieve. 'Dakaath' is one of the best stories I've ever read with a Harry/Cho pairing to boot. I imagine you never read the H/Cho stories nowadays... absolutely pathetic.

 

Joe that's the funniest thing I've ever read. Bravo sir, you have spawned genius.

 

If you are just writing for your own pleasure and not intending to post in a public setting, nobody will care what you do. If you plan to post your story publicly, I believe that one should ask permission and respect the author's wishes, even if it's parody (a protected class of derivative work as far as intellectual property goes).

I've been asked a few times if folks could continue some of my stories. For one-shots that I don't intend to follow up, I generally grant permission, provided they reference the original story, that I be given the opportunity to read their work when the time comes, and that they make clear what I wrote and what they wrote (i.e., no piggy-backing on my "fame," modest though it may be, and no claims of "co-written by Pers"). I do not bless Dagger and Rose derivatives. Detention in Defense and The Game is Afoot have had such follow-on stories, though neither has gone past LiveJournal pages or private distribution. I think only the continuation of the former (by a fanfiction author most here would recognize) has a chance of being published on ff.net anytime soon.

 

I would say as long as credit and permission is given there should be no problem to it as I personally happen to like a fanfic that fits that description. Mr. Black: Terminal Justice is basically one really freaking huge omake of Rorscharch's Blot's "Make A Wish" universe. Now MAW was really cool at the beginning but honestly required more suspension of disbelief than I have. However Terminal Justice I just didn't care about it because he was in the JLA universe, a universe that has alien invasions every other weekend.

 

Why is this even a question ?

- Active authors: don't publish your derivative of their stuff until you get their permission.

- Inactive authors: publish your derivative/continuation, then pull it if they finally speak up and say otherwise.

Frankly, I don't like that an inactive (or even active) author can hold a fic hostage, despite it being 2+ years with no intention of updating - but it is their work.

 

I've actually thought about this recently. There is a story i have read (4 times not actually, i just like it that much), but there is a lot of stuff wrong with it that i thing i could improve upon, so i have started to rewrite it. As far as i could tell, the author had no plans to finish it and hasn't updated since 2008, but I did get permission from him, although it was about 8 months after I first asked. I plan on giving credit to the guy in the first chapter so credit goes where credit is due, and so I can't be called out on plagiarism. It is the only story the author has written anyway, so I don't think he is a big fan of fanfiction.

 

When I head the "fanfiction of fanfiction" concept, my mind immediately jumps to the DangerVerse. It might just be the original author that's writing spinoffs of her own universe, but the conept isn't new.

 

Bah, fanfiction is fanfiction. If a person wants to write a fanfiction on a fanfiction let them do it, it is not like someone would remember the shit that would be spawned anyway.

 

If someone wrote a Contemplating Clouds spin-off where Luna dumped Harry for Draco and gave up her weirdness because she only did it because she had no friends, you better believe I'd be shitting bricks of rage. Fanfiction might be a murky area plagiarism-wise, but ripping off someone else's fanfic without permission is seen as wrong by the community.

 

I always thought that authors firstly write for themselves, next for fans and in the end for money. And having in mind how much one must endure before his writing is published, not to mention give them respectable profit, I think this order in most cases is correct. But I'm taking this little out of context.

I see your point, but to me, writing fanfiction and fanfiction of fanfiction isn't really much different. Yes, one should ask author for permission and later gave him credit, but in the end writing fanfiction is about telling a story we want to share with rest of us, but that's not truly ours. So even in situation when author don't gave permission and someone is still writing it, I don't have much problem with that. Sure, it probably will be a crap and it goes against our egos, because 'hell, it was my story', but truth is we're all borrowing from Rowling (or other authors), so it's not like anyone is stealing your ideas for any other reason that telling story he wants to tell.

 

DLP frowns upon plagiarism in any form, including fanfiction of fanfiction, but others might disagree, and seeing as there's no legal background to speak of (as in we all belong to J.K.R.) every site has a right to choose where they stand based on their own morals.

 

I can't imagine anyone ever wanting to write fanfiction of my fanfiction, but if they did it wouldn't really bother me. I would prefer that they asked me first though and put a disclaimer on the story.

 

I always had ideas of fanfiction for Shezza's Dverse.