Continuations by people other than the original author/creator aren't worth getting worked up about.

[old_prof]

I know you're not going to listen to me, but I have spent too much time over many giving advice to young hotheads to not at least try.

Take a step back. Take a day off. It wouldn't be hard to restart the argument. You are arguing by yourself against a wide range of people. Anyone who finds themselves in that situation (including me) should take a step back and ask themselves "Why does everyone else see this differently. Is is possible they're right and I'm wrong." Because everyone is likely to be wrong in that situation. It could be that you are the sole clear mind, the only one who can cut through all the issues and make out the answer clearly. It seems far more likely that you have dug your heels in so deep that you are underground now.

In defense of the "you've dug your heels in" position. There are at least a half dozen core issues that people have raised that you have completely ignored. At one point, you argued that is was legal, therefore ethical. You do seem to have realized that maybe the lawyer in this conversation does know something and maybe what you're proposing isn't legal, so legality is not a judge of ethics.

Take a step back. Reread the points posted by others. Reread your own inconsistencies. If you still think you are the lobe voice of reason, do what you have to. But take a step back first and check that you really want this to be the hill you will forever be judged on.

 

[IWroteThis]

I cannot accept a claim that an action being legal necessarily means that it is ethical.

That's fine, but it's also irrelevant, as you seem to have fallen victim to the Fallacy of the Inverse.

The more relevant version of that question is, does being illegal necessarily mean that it's unethical.

Sorry, but your continued misuse of Wicked as an example is a prime example of your logical failure. Whether or not the writing of Wicked based on work within the public domain was ethical or not, it has no bearing on the ethics of writing something based on a work still under copyright.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Wow, @RocketGrunt. I don't understand where you find the energy to argue on this topic into infinity. In that sense, and only in that sense, I agree with most of the crowd here.

But what's more amusing is the fact that so many people here can't seem to separate legality from ethics. I don't get how they can, and it's so obvious in many of the posts here, conflate those two concepts so often. Wow, truly.

Anyway, I see your point, and I agree that whether some work is in the public domain or is protected by a copyright doesn't affect the ethics of using that work. It affects only legality. Legality in this sense is the copyright law that someone lobbied for, that some officials agreed on, and then voted for. That law is arbitrary in the sense of ethics; it's just a result of an agreement between certain interested parties.

A work passing into the public domain is merely a result of the force of law, not something that happens by divine influence. It's silly to use passing into the public domain as an ethical argument.

Now, when we talk about ethics, there is personal ethics, which is probably the most important one in this case, but there's also the collective ethics, which often gets incorporated into certain laws, although I'm totally going to argue that the copyright law isn't one of those. That one is totally a case of mere practicality.

So I'll mostly tell you my personal ethics on the topic. To me, it doesn't matter whether it has been one, ten, or a hundred years since the author died, from an ethical standpoint. Either it's right to use someone's work the second after their death, or it's still wrong to use it a millennium after their death.

Spouses, children, or legal guardians inheriting copyright to the author's intellectual work, while practical and acceptable as a concept, isn't something I see as necessarily ethical. There are authors who are likely turning in their graves, considering what their inheritors allowed to happen with their work. Most recently, Tolkien and Jordan come to my mind.

Anyway, this isn't a bad topic for debate, but as I said, it's mostly affected by our personal ethics. For me, if the author has passed away, then their work being protected by copyright or falling into the public domain has zero bearing on the ethics of using that work, although the legality of those two cases is obviously very different.

The only thing that matters to me in deciding whether using such work is ethical or not is the motive. If celebrating the work and the author, and respecting the essence, the soul of that work, is what prompts one to use it, then that's fine by me.
But if it's just greed or political motivation that spurs one to use such work, then even the inheritors allowing/selling the rights has zero importance from the ethical standpoint. The inheritors aren't the author. I see such work as an abomination.

Yet if the author is alive, then things aren't the same. Then, you can actually ask them for permission, convince them of your love and respect for their work, and of your honest intentions. Ethically, it's not okay if you create something that angers the author, who should be the only arbiter of their own work.

From a more practical standpoint, I already said that I would likely treat someone using my work as simple fanfic. But the motives would matter. Someone treating the work with respect vs someone just wanting to leech off some followers or sell a story or something. And I'm still only guessing at my own reaction in such a case. Maybe I'd be pissed off regardless of how my work was treated.

 

[RocketGrunt]

The only thing that matters to me in deciding whether using such work is ethical or not is the motive. If celebrating the work and the author, and respecting the essence, the soul of that work, is what prompts one to use it, then that's fine by me.
But if it's just greed or political motivation that spurs one to use such work, then even the inheritors allowing/selling the rights has zero importance from the ethical standpoint. The inheritors aren't the author. I see such work as an abomination.

Yet if the author is alive, then things aren't the same. Then, you can actually ask them for permission, convince them of your love and respect for their work, and of your honest intentions. Ethically, it's not okay if you create something that angers the author, who should be the only arbiter of their own work.

From a more practical standpoint, I already said that I would likely treat someone using my work as simple fanfic. But the motives would matter. Someone treating the work with respect vs someone just wanting to leech off some followers or sell a story or something. And I'm still only guessing at my own reaction in such a case. Maybe I'd be pissed off regardless of how my work was treated.

Thank you for being a sane person with a reasoned position. I mostly agree with you here, although I think I have a less author-centric idea of what respecting a work means.

Example: Late in life, John Steinbeck's politics swerved sharply and he no longer supported the message of his own books such as The Grapes of Wrath and Tortilla Flat. Obviously he had the legal rights to say whatever he wanted about them, but I do not think it was unethical or disrespectful for fans of the original work to read them with the original message even though the author had subsequently come to hate people who did so.

Example 2: George Lucas sold the rights to Star Wars for a lot of money because he decided that he'd rather spend the rest of his life eating out in Sonoma with his wife than arguing with neckbeards about space wizard sword fights. He washed his hands of it and walked away with a bag of cash. The fact that he was fine with Disney doing "whatever" with the Star Wars franchise does not automatically mean it was respectful to write The Force Awakens as a story where Han Solo was a sad divorced failure who lost his house, his family, and the respect of his peers and gets killed by his own son who he tries and fails to reconcile with just like he's failed at everything else in his life. That Harison Ford was willing to reprise the role in exchange for a dumptruck full of money being poured on his lawn does not, I would contend, automatically mean that was an appropriate ending for the character.

Example 3: We've mentioned Anne Rice a few times as an author who sent harassment messages to fanfic authors, but she also underwent several quite... extensive religious conversions during her life. There were times when her Christianity put a powerful wedge between her and vampire fiction and she advocated against Interview With The Vampire. And when she changed her mind on that again, the later sequels are... not necessarily what gothic fiction fans were there for. Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis sounds like a Family Guy joke, but it was absolutely real.

I think there is an element of "death of the author" when it comes to respecting works. The author's later opinions and actions do not necessarily constitute the perspective most ethical and respectful of an artistic work. Especially if the author has subsequently "changed sides" or "cashed out," they might actually not be the person whose opinion is most relevant when it comes to the legacy of that work.

It's a complicated issue, and I think that defaulting to the author's opinions is usually going to be correct. But there are certainly counter examples. Harry Potter fans don't have to renounce support for trans rights just because Joanne Rowling later said they did.

 

[TheLobster]

But what's more amusing is the fact that so many people here can't seem to separate legality from ethics. I don't get how they can, and it's so obvious in many of the posts here, conflate those two concepts so often. Wow, truly.

“Amusing” is one way to put it. “Worrying” would be the adjective I would use. The moral landscape of many people here is evidently desolate, and not only they feel no shame admitting that, but also lording their sheer numbers over someone who dares to dissent.

It is quite disturbing, honestly.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

“Amusing” is one way to put it. “Worrying” would be the adjective I would use. The moral landscape of many people here is evidently desolate, and not only they feel no shame admitting that, but also lording their sheer numbers over someone who dares to dissent.

It is quite disturbing, honestly.

Heh. The AH has always been that way, well, at least since I joined. And in that sense, it's similar to most other internet forums. The piling up and the strength in numbers have always been present. These are mostly well-meaning people, but they still often fall into that trap.

But rather than talk about that, I'll shift to the topic of ethics, of morality. So many people fall back on the law when it comes to deciding about the morality of certain acts. In many cases, they fall back on religious teachings. In the case of the AH, the fallback is often on Lit's policies as a measure of what's right and what's wrong.

I've always found it amusing the way some people argued so strongly against under-eighteen content while also defending rape stories as long as there's mention of the victim feeling some pleasure. It's clear that Lit's policies have become a part of some people's inner moral compass, the same as it often happens with law and religious teachings.

Why is that so? Now I'll fall back on someone smarter than me. I've thought about Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor so many times while participating in these threads.
Having your own distinct sense of morality and ethics rather than falling back on the law, custom, religion, or an internet site, is frankly quite a burden. Rather than fretting whether something is right or wrong and burdening your conscience with it, it's easier to let others decide.

To be fair, in the AH, law is the thing that's most often used as an ethical anchor. Lit's policies come second.
Now I've always seen the law as an instrument of order, not justice or morality. Lit's policies, yeah, those are likely a product of mere practicality.

I've had a very short debate once here, with Simon, I believe, when I said that I put my personal ethics and sense of morality above any law. I trust them that much, and I'd follow them always, if I could get away with it, of course.
I think Simon had been shocked at my words, and then proceeded to push arguments about what chaos such thinking would create. Proves my point that law is all about order, eh?

But yeah, that's me. In DnD, I've always gone for the Chaotic Good characters and could never play lawful ones, such as the paladin.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Thank you for being a sane person with a reasoned position. I mostly agree with you here, although I think I have a less author-centric idea of what respecting a work means.

Example: Late in life, John Steinbeck's politics swerved sharply and he no longer supported the message of his own books such as The Grapes of Wrath and Tortilla Flat. Obviously he had the legal rights to say whatever he wanted about them, but I do not think it was unethical or disrespectful for fans of the original work to read them with the original message even though the author had subsequently come to hate people who did so.

Example 2: George Lucas sold the rights to Star Wars for a lot of money because he decided that he'd rather spend the rest of his life eating out in Sonoma with his wife than arguing with neckbeards about space wizard sword fights. He washed his hands of it and walked away with a bag of cash. The fact that he was fine with Disney doing "whatever" with the Star Wars franchise does not automatically mean it was respectful to write The Force Awakens as a story where Han Solo was a sad divorced failure who lost his house, his family, and the respect of his peers and gets killed by his own son who he tries and fails to reconcile with just like he's failed at everything else in his life. That Harison Ford was willing to reprise the role in exchange for a dumptruck full of money being poured on his lawn does not, I would contend, automatically mean that was an appropriate ending for the character.

Example 3: We've mentioned Anne Rice a few times as an author who sent harassment messages to fanfic authors, but she also underwent several quite... extensive religious conversions during her life. There were times when her Christianity put a powerful wedge between her and vampire fiction and she advocated against Interview With The Vampire. And when she changed her mind on that again, the later sequels are... not necessarily what gothic fiction fans were there for. Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis sounds like a Family Guy joke, but it was absolutely real.

I think there is an element of "death of the author" when it comes to respecting works. The author's later opinions and actions do not necessarily constitute the perspective most ethical and respectful of an artistic work. Especially if the author has subsequently "changed sides" or "cashed out," they might actually not be the person whose opinion is most relevant when it comes to the legacy of that work.

It's a complicated issue, and I think that defaulting to the author's opinions is usually going to be correct. But there are certainly counter examples. Harry Potter fans don't have to renounce support for trans rights just because Joanne Rowling later said they did.

When it comes to SW, that's quite easy now. Lucas has sold the rights, and his soul along with them, so now SW is in the hands of a greedy company. Nothing any fan could ever write, regardless of the purpose, could ever come close to the damage that the so-called episodes 7-9 have inflicted on that universe. So yeah, any SW fanfic is totally fine in my book.

I'm not very familiar with Anne Rice. I've only ever seen the movie and felt no desire to pursue her work any further. So I'll use Tolkien and Jordan as examples. I'm sure they'd be livid if they could see what's been done with their work. The two high-budget, but absolutely abominable TV shows, The Rings of Power and The Wheel of Time, are a stain on their work. For me, that's proof that inheritors aren't always a good choice for copyright holders. They'll always choose money.

On your other point, I agree that any work is ours to read and to interpret. The author can't force their interpretation on us. The way we see it and what we feel about it is always ours and ours alone, and we are free to disagree with the author about their own work.
But I still think it's not ethical to use their work and to write our own continuations and versions without their consent, at least while the author is alive.

Depending on the magnitude of such work, fanfic can be harmless, sure. Ethical? Not so much, although pure intentions and the love for the work do help in that sense.

 

[lovecraft68]

“Amusing” is one way to put it. “Worrying” would be the adjective I would use. The moral landscape of many people here is evidently desolate, and not only they feel no shame admitting that, but also lording their sheer numbers over someone who dares to dissent.

It is quite disturbing, honestly.

The AH is no different from any other social media, there's individuals who speak for themselves and cliques who attack in packs. Toss in using the shield of identity politics and you have the Bluesky effect.

Like I said earlier, I personally don't feel its ethical without author permission, but those are my ethics, and I know there is no legal reason you can't do it, its a cause you can, should you?

Should is up to the individual.

Anyone who has put stories here has had them lifted and put on another site, and people come here to complain about it. Now, should people take your work? Of course not, but....you put it here on a free site.

Don't want it stolen or 'borrowed from"? don't give it away.

People tend to not like that concept.

 

[StillStunned]

Who knew that ethics were so black and white, one size fits all, my way or the highway?

Sarcasm aside, no, ethics don't always make sense. What works in one situation, for one person, might be total nonsense for someone else, in a different situation. Anyone who's had their stories stolen, in any way, is unlikely to shrug off the suggestion that it's fine for writers to co-opt someone else's work.

But some IPs are so huge that they're part of the collective consciousness - like some trademarks are synonymous with devices. In the 1980s and 1990s, everyone knew what you meant if you said you'd bought an IBM, or if you were going to Xerox some papers.

Middle-Earth, Star Wars, Harry Potter, Sherlock Holmes, James Bond, things like that have had a huge impact on numerous lives. They've been formative to many of us. So sure, the IP is legally held by someone else, but it's a two-way street. The properties feed off the fans' devotion as much as the fans consume the properties.

As long as they remain under copyright, the law protects them. Whether the owners choose to enforce the law or not is for them to decide. I don't think anyone would argue against that. But once the copyright expires, or if the copyright owner decides to make it available to everyone, then the properties pass to the public that's nurtured them for so long.

As an aside, Leonard Cohen said of "Suzanne" that the rights were pilfered from him. But the song was known and sung all over the world, with people adapting the lyrics to their own language, so that it belonged to everyone.

 

[RocketGrunt]

When it comes to SW, that's quite easy now. Lucas has sold the rights, and his soul along with them, so now SW is in the hands of a greedy company. Nothing any fan could ever write, regardless of the purpose, could ever come close to the damage that the so-called episodes 7-9 have inflicted on that universe. So yeah, any SW fanfic is totally fine in my book.

But I still think it's not ethical to use their work and to write our own continuations and versions without their consent, at least while the author is alive.

I see that as a contradiction, or at least an incompleteness.

Obviously, George Lucas is alive. He is living his best life. He is dead to Star Wars, and I think that's the important point. Whether Disney cares about you writing an alternate Star Wars sequel, George Lucas does not.

A series that an author is still working on? It's absolutely unethical to jump in and write your own version of the next sequel. Like, what the fuck? But what about a series that the author has walked away from? What exactly are we protecting by demanding that our culture's monuments molder unfinished?

To give a salient example: George RR Martin. He's not going to finish Song of Ice & Fire, right? We all know this. He's off making Cards Against Humanity sets and stuff, literally not even working on it. Also he has a psychological hangup where it's actually impossible for him to write a satisfying ending. He only wants to write an ending that fans didn't predict, and as it gets closer to he ending the number of possible satisfying conclusions converges to a number small enough for fans to guess them all. He will not and can not write a satisfying ending. So... what are we even doing here? Why not just let fanfic authors finish it? That's functionally what's going to happen anyway as soon as he dies. And letting license holders do it for us isn't going to give us anything better than Season 8 of Game of Thrones. And the author didn't like that any more than the fans did.

So back to the thing we actually have any say over: resurrecting and finishing defunct series that the author abandoned in an unfinished state. Isn't that essentially the George Lucas situation?

I will say that the Anne Rice situation makes it more complicated. She literally said that Jesus didn't want her to write vampire novels and she wouldn't write any more vampire novels and she shouldn't have written the ones she already did, and all the vampire fanfiction everywhere was an affront to God and needed to be taken down. And... a few years later she decided that actually Jesus was OK with her writing more vampire novels.

I'm actually not sure what the line is we should draw to say that abandonware is actually abandoned and that other writers should feel free to write an ending. A certain part of me would be OK if we had collectively told Anne Rice that the fandom owned the work she disavowed and she wasn't allowed to take it back, but another part of me is OK with people changing their minds and changing them again.

 

[Voboy]

Lol. I love the reductio ad absurdam.

Not wanting someone to use my characters somehow makes me (what was that term?) "morally desolate" now. That's intriguing.

I value dissent. But I value debate more. Dissent without debate is merely stubbornness.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

I see that as a contradiction, or at least an incompleteness.

Obviously, George Lucas is alive. He is living his best life. He is dead to Star Wars, and I think that's the important point. Whether Disney cares about you writing an alternate Star Wars sequel, George Lucas does not.

It's not a contradiction; it's just a rare case, one that easily falls under dead authors.
Lucas sold the rights to his IP, but it's not the legality of the transfer that does it for me, but the fact that he gave up on his own work. He wasn't forced to do it, and he had no emergency that prompted him to acquire money fast, as far as we know. He just decided to cash in on his creation, and for me, that's a clear statement that he renounced it.

I absolutely have no ethical qualms about writing fanfiction for something that Disney owns, even if it's unlikely I'll ever write any.
But as long as the author is alive and holds on to their work, that's what makes the difference in my eyes.

 

[Britva415]

Lol. I love the reductio ad absurdam.

Not wanting someone to use my characters somehow makes me (what was that term?) "morally desolate" now. That's intriguing.

I value dissent. But I value debate more. Dissent without debate is merely stubbornness.

I’m floored that you took that as what was being described as morally desolate. They weren’t specific, but that sure wasn’t how I took it.

 

[YmaOHyd]

I’m floored that you took that as what was being described as morally desolate. They weren’t specific, but that sure wasn’t how I took it.

I mean, that comment was aimed pretty squarely at me, and I feel exactly the opposite. I'm floored by how many people's attitudes are essentially "only I can determine right and wrong." I don't think it's morally desolate, but it's quite anti-social. (To say nothing of how idiotic some of these hypotheticals are. A chewing-gum-in-Singapore gotcha? Of course it's not unethical. It's also not illegal. The hypothetical's totally irrelevant. What's illegal is spitting your gum out on the sidewalk, which is a definitionally anti-social behavior.)

 

[Bramblethorn]

You are not in a position to judge this if the author is unreachable. Sure, in a poorly constructed hypothetical where you decide that in advance, maybe.

But it's a poorly constructed hypothetical, and you should stop asking those.

Plus, Literotica readers' ideas of what counts as an "unfinished" story don't always align with the author's.

My first story here was a lesbian romance. It ended at a point where the main characters had resolved all the challenges I'd set up for them - third-act breakup, homophobic family, career angst, mourning the death of a parent.

I still heard from some readers who felt the story wouldn't be complete until I'd written a wedding scene for the MCs; never mind that the story was set in a time and place where the MCs could not legally marry, this was part of the tension with family, and I had no crystal ball to tell me when those laws were going to change.

Another of my stories is a kind of esoteric horror/doomed romance. It ends with the death of the protagonist and a cut forward to the discovery of her remains decades later. I still got "is this really the end?" comments on that.

Some readers simply aren't capable of distinguishing between "I like how this story made me feel" and "I want the author to keep milking this story forever, until every last drop of blood has been squeezed out and only a desiccated husk remains".

In previous discussions where people talked about "unfinished" stories, quite often when I've checked the work they're discussing it turns out that the author has written a perfectly good resolution that would be reasonable to describe as "finished" but the reader wants it milked and milked and milked.

This should not be the criterion for when it's okay to write a "continuation".

 

[Purechicanery]

Some readers simply aren't capable of distinguishing between "I like how this story made me feel" and "I want the author to keep milking this story forever, until every last drop of blood has been squeezed out and only a desiccated husk remains".

lol yeah, it seems like by far the most frequent comment on my stories is that they need sequels or part twos, to the point that I've started opening with an author's note to let people know that I will never ever write a sequel

 

[Cacatua_Galerita]

Looking at the archive, this thread discusses a common question often asked in December… but it is never discussed in Feb/Mar. So please wrap up your comments before the end of the month. (Of course, come April, feel free post a repeat of this same question.)

Apr 04, 2002 Continuing a story w/o Permission
Aug 08, 2009 Continuing another author's story?
Jun 15, 2017 Writing a sequel to another authors finished work
Dec 31, 2018 Continuing a story that isn't yours?
Jun 21, 2023 On continuing where other authors left off…
Nov 08, 2023 Derivative works
Dec 26, 2023 Continuing abandoned stories? Whats the procedure?
Jan 26, 2024 Abandoned series.
Apr 03, 2024 Ethics of Jumping Into an Existing Story?
May 19, 2024 I Feel Like Starting An Argument: Writing a fanfiction based on ANY story you've ever read is perfectly fine***
Jun 10, 2024 Question for the author community
Sep 22, 2024 Rejection Due to Derivative Work
Oct 06, 2024 Question. Can writers continue an abandoned story?
Jul 04, 2025 What to do when author doesn't reply to anyone's mails and I want to continue the story ?
Aug 10, 2025 ANSWERED: Abandoned Stories - What is the protocol for finishing one? - - YOU DON'T
Aug 12, 2025 Ethical Question: Taking Inspiration Vs Blatant Rewrite
Dec 10, 2025 Request for Reconsideration – Carrie’s Awakening (Fan Continuation)
Dec 11, 2025 Using other authors characters.

---

For the archives, I’ll also add an example of story ‘continuations’ on Literotica:

The author account “FinishTheDamnStory” is a collaboration account between the primary writer and “John” (now deceased), who had “very strong ideas about adultery, cheating, and humiliation stories.”

Female adultery specifically, I gather. So if they felt the “bitch” was undercooked by another author, then they would write a BTB continuation of the story with, or without, permission. (However, if the original author responded to them and denied permission, then they would respect their wishes. They were principled like that.)

Very few story comments seem to care about the story-continuation aspect, except for this prominent first comment on one of their stories:

Anonymous over 12 years ago

GARBAGE!!!!! I couldn't even finish the first page! How about instead of ripping off other stories, come up with YOUR OWN ideas! 1*

Any other Literotica story-continuation-without-permission examples out there?