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

[StillStunned]

I've been quite vocal here about continuing other writers' work without their expression: I condemn it in the strongest terms.

But I'm also the initiator of next year's this year's Fan Fic challenge. I don't think these are incompatible though.

In my view, by writing in someone else's universe or using their characters, you're appropriating their work. You're saying that their world is yours too now.

If you write fan fic of any property big enough and established enough to generate fan fic, you're only appropriating the tiniest part: your Star Wars/Star Trek/Game of Thrones/I, Claudius/Great Expectations/Northanger Abbey story, with a few thousand readers, barely registers against the vast numbers who are already invested in the source material. You might claim it as your own world, but you're pinching a grain of sand from a desert. And from a tiny portion of the desert that nobody seriously thinks is part of the desert anyway.

But if you start writing in another Lit writer's world, that's a big deal. If I have three stories, with 10k views in total, and you write a story with 2k views, you're staking a huge claim to my property. You're appropriating my characters and world and ideas, and saying, "No, these are mine now. I'm nearly an equal partner."

If this doesn't make sense to you, that's alright. It makes sense to me.

 

[Britva415]

Wheel of Time, Dune, Millennium, Phillip Marlowe, Jason Borne are a few examples of works being continued under various circumstances

Unauthorized ones?

 

[YmaOHyd]

If this doesn't make sense to you, that's alright. It makes sense to me.

It's the argument that @MelissaBaby made on the previous page. Fan fic requires an existing fandom.

I have 80 followers. My Dafydd and Emily romance hasn't had an update since late March or early April (fortunately, I left it at a stable-ish place). I'm working on a stand-alone sequel now. If BurntRedstone, to pick a name completely at random, were to write a story picking up where chapter 5 leaves off for his 12000 followers, I'm fucked. His followers aren't gonna go back and look at my work. I'm not going to gain anything from this. I'm going to lose the characters!

 

[Djmac1031]

On the more realistic side of this:

I have had multiple requests from readers for a third chapter in my incest story, My Sister's Skincare.

The reason I never wrote it was, frankly, I lost interest after part 2. And it's pretty easy to figure out where it goes from there: they fuck. The end.

Now if some reader decided to write a part 3 without asking, would I even know? Unless someone pointed it out to me, probably not.

Could I stop them? Good question. I suppose a complaint to Laurel could get it pulled.

Honestly, my main objection would be they didn't ASK first. Because if they had asked, I'd probably give permission on that one. I'm not super attached and its a pretty standard type story.

I'd be far, FAR more upset, however, if someone were to take characters I'm more invested in, like Jenna from The Jenna Arrangement, or Cozbi from my Angels And Demons stories, and write their own stories without my express permission.

I put a lot of time and thought into crafting those characters and I know exactly who they are. And anyone wanting to write them would need to demonstrate they understand my characters too and I'd need veto power over whatever they wrote.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

It's the argument that @MelissaBaby made on the previous page. Fan fic requires an existing fandom.

I have 80 followers. My Dafydd and Emily romance hasn't had an update since late March or early April (fortunately, I left it at a stable-ish place). I'm working on a stand-alone sequel now. If BurntRedstone, to pick a name completely at random, were to write a story picking up where chapter 5 leaves off for his 12000 followers, I'm fucked. His followers aren't gonna go back and look at my work. I'm not going to gain anything from this. I'm going to lose the characters!

You haven't lost anything.
Why wouldn't his followers go back and look at your work?
And even if they don't, you are in no way objectively worse off than you were before.

 

[Djmac1031]

You haven't lost anything.
Why wouldn't his followers go back and look at your work?
And even if they don't, you are in no way objectively worse off than you were before.

You're assuming the new author gave credit in the first place, let alone provided any links to the original author's work.

I wouldn't say the original author "lost" anything, but there's certainly no guaranteed gain either.

 

[MelissaBaby]

You are free to disagree.

That doesn't change my opinion that the site cheapens itself and the experience of its readers by allowing OBVIOUSLY incomplete works to stagnate, take up space, and frustrate its client base. Any competent person with third-grade reading comprehension could identify the stories that I am referring to.

There are many story sites that regulate incomplete works and they survive just fine. It fosters a better experience for readers and greater discipline from writers. Win/Win.

The simple solution is for the site to create a separate, accessible archive of incomplete series, that can be restored to active status if the author adds to them.

 

[YmaOHyd]

You're assuming the new author gave credit in the first place, let alone provided any links to the original author's work.

I wouldn't say the original author "lost" anything, but there's certainly no guaranteed gain either.

If a bigger author than you takes your characters in a direction you don't want, I think you've lost creative control over them. I can ignore what that other person wrote, but the audience won't. Occasionally you see this in comic-book-land, but it doesn't really come up in fiction.

Edit: I'm trying to think of a fictional version of this, but it's just not really a thing that happens outside shared universes where there's (usually) someone whose job it is to oversee canon. Comics are really the only place, and comics are littered with examples of times when big names in the comic book world come in and shred established characters or continuity, leaving other, smaller, authors to pick up the pieces. But in those cases, those big names are still working with the label's blessing, so it's not the same.

 

[Djmac1031]

If a bigger author than you takes your characters in a direction you don't want, I think you've lost creative control over them. I can ignore what that other person wrote, but the audience won't. Occasionally you see this in comic-book-land, but it doesn't really come up in fiction.

Good point.

 

[MelissaBaby]

It's the argument that @MelissaBaby made on the previous page. Fan fic requires an existing fandom.

I have 80 followers. My Dafydd and Emily romance hasn't had an update since late March or early April (fortunately, I left it at a stable-ish place). I'm working on a stand-alone sequel now. If BurntRedstone, to pick a name completely at random, were to write a story picking up where chapter 5 leaves off for his 12000 followers, I'm fucked. His followers aren't gonna go back and look at my work. I'm not going to gain anything from this. I'm going to lose the characters!

I have written a sequel to The Adventures of Ranger Ramona, so it is listed as a series, Chapters 1 & 2. I have other ides for further adventures, but none are fleshed out enough for a third chapter. I could write one if I put the story ideas aside, and may eventually do so. If someone else were to take it upon themselves to write a new chapter, it would be, in my opinion, an infringement upon my right to use my own characters.

On a lighter note, I'll repeat something I said during the last go-round on this subject. If someone wrote a story using my characters without permission, I don't think I'd get mad about it. I'd just write a 750 word followup, in which one of the characters wakes up and tells their partner, "I just had the stupidest dream..."

 

[RocketGrunt]

I am personally offended by the devastation that has been wrought upon our culture by intellectual property. The idea that people do or even can "own" stories to the extent that they can keep other people from telling stories of their own is just the most dystopian part of our society. And I'm genuinely including coffin motels and the fact that fast fashion is made by child labor in that analysis. Human suffering is bad, obviously, but what hope can we have if our very imaginations are in cages?

I write a lot in worlds written by and in by other people. I make my own worlds as well. But the idea that you have to go the full Tolkien every time you want to tell a high fantasy tale is just so disgusting and stultifying. Anyway, I wrote a whole essay about using worldbuilding pioneered by other people:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/145478933

In many important ways, the mythology of today is to be found in our movies, our comics, our videogames, and our books. Superman and Darth Vader are our Hercules and Humbaba. We tell legends of Spiderman the way people of old would tell legends of Beowulf, the Justice League and The Avengers every bit as worthy a pantheon to spin tales around as the gods of Olympus or Asgard.

But there's one big crucial difference. Modern mythology is owned. Generally by big corporations or by the estates of authors who have licensed them to big corporations. That is to say that if you were a skald in the fjords of Scandinavia and wanted to write a new song about Thor and Loki, you just did that. And if people thought it was good, it would get repeated by others. But in 2025 if you want to write a story about Thor and Loki as known by most people today (as depicted in the MCU), you'd need a licensing deal from Disney or it ain't happening. Our modern day pantheons are private property, our heroes and gods are not ours to do with as we please, they are locked in walled gardens of intellectual property.

Except one. The Lovecraftian Mythos belongs to all of us. No corporation can tell you that you can't put Cthulhu in your stories, in your paintings, in your songs. And it is precisely because this is just about the only part of our culture that is truly ours rather than leased to us by our corporate overlords that it appears in many places that you wouldn't necessarily expect.

 

[alohadave]

The idea that people do or even can "own" stories to the extent that they can keep other people from telling stories of their own is just the most dystopian part of our society.

The problem is not with copyright per se, it's the length of it. It's perfectly reasonable to have a limited time monopoly on your work before it becomes public domain.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I am personally offended by the devastation that has been wrought upon our culture by intellectual property. The idea that people do or even can "own" stories to the extent that they can keep other people from telling stories of their own is just the most dystopian part of our society. And I'm genuinely including coffin motels and the fact that fast fashion is made by child labor in that analysis. Human suffering is bad, obviously, but what hope can we have if our very imaginations are in cages?

I have a lot of issues with the current IP system. I acknowledge that it's broken in many ways.

But I also believe art (be it fiction, poetry, film, ...) is something that brings great value to society. I'd like to see people keep on making it, and I don't just want art made by the idle rich. It needs to be possible for artists to feed themselves and pay bills; many of my favourite authors simply wouldn't be writing if they couldn't support themselves that way.

There are some alternatives - government grants, things like Patreon - but they don't go very far, and they're especially limited for things like erotica. So it's hard for me to support tearing down the copyright system until we have some viable alternative in place for ensuring that folk can afford to make the stuff that we love. (Fixing some of the more egregiously broken bits, OTOH? Go right ahead.)

 

[Bramblethorn]

If a bigger author than you takes your characters in a direction you don't want, I think you've lost creative control over them. I can ignore what that other person wrote, but the audience won't. Occasionally you see this in comic-book-land, but it doesn't really come up in fiction.

Edit: I'm trying to think of a fictional version of this, but it's just not really a thing that happens outside shared universes where there's (usually) someone whose job it is to oversee canon. Comics are really the only place, and comics are littered with examples of times when big names in the comic book world come in and shred established characters or continuity, leaving other, smaller, authors to pick up the pieces. But in those cases, those big names are still working with the label's blessing, so it's not the same.

Not fiction, but Trent Reznor talked about something similar in connection with the Johnny Cash cover of Hurt, how it no longer feels like his song.

He wasn't saying that Cash had done anything wrong. The cover was properly licensed, and Reznor is pretty easygoing on licensing and IP. And obviously having a song covered by Cash is a tremendous honour. But it sounded like it was still bittersweet for Reznor to see something that he'd put a lot of himself into eclipsed by another guy's version, to the extent where many people only know it as a Johnny Cash song now.

 

[YmaOHyd]

Not fiction, but Trent Reznor talked about something similar in connection with the Johnny Cash cover of Hurt, how it no longer feels like his song.

That is a brilliant example, thanks. I'd hardly thought about music, but it does have that culture of big borrowing from small. "Ring of Fire," "Twist and Shout", "Girls Just Want to Have Fun," "I Love Rock 'n' Roll," "Respect," "I Heard It Through the Grapevine." All iconic songs for artists who covered them, to the point where no one remembers that Otis Redding, himself a legend, actually wrote "Respect." "All Along the Watchtower" -- Bob Dylan literally said "that's Jimi's song now" after Hendrix covered it.

 

[MelissaBaby]

I have a lot of issues with the current IP system. I acknowledge that it's broken in many ways.

But I also believe art (be it fiction, poetry, film, ...) is something that brings great value to society. I'd like to see people keep on making it, and I don't just want art made by the idle rich. It needs to be possible for artists to feed themselves and pay bills; many of my favourite authors simply wouldn't be writing if they couldn't support themselves that way.

There are some alternatives - government grants, things like Patreon - but they don't go very far, and they're especially limited for things like erotica. So it's hard for me to support tearing down the copyright system until we have some viable alternative in place for ensuring that folk can afford to make the stuff that we love. (Fixing some of the more egregiously broken bits, OTOH? Go right ahead.)

I think that another aspect of copyright has been overlooked in this discussion. Copyright is not just meant to ptrotect creator' rights to profit from their IP, in theory, it is supposed to incentivize original work. We don't need alternative versions of Lord of the Rings or the Avengers. To maintain a vibrant culture we need future generations of creators to bring forth new concept and fresh insights. That copyright laws have been distorted for the benefit of media conglomerates doesn't invalidate the value of copyright overall.

 

[RocketGrunt]

I think that another aspect of copyright has been overlooked in this discussion. Copyright is not just meant to ptrotect creator' rights to profit from their IP, in theory, it is supposed to incentivize original work. We don't need alternative versions of Lord of the Rings or the Avengers. To maintain a vibrant culture we need future generations of creators to bring forth new concept and fresh insights. That copyright laws have been distorted for the benefit of media conglomerates doesn't invalidate the value of copyright overall.

What if, and hear me out here, having Hawkeye be a legally distinct character from Green Arrow or George of the Jungle being a legally distinct character from Tarzan doesn't enrich our culture at all? What if the arbitrary distinctions Copyright demands don't make Sword of Shannara different from Lord of the Rings in any way that improves our mythology or our lives?

 

[ElectricBlue]

To maintain a vibrant culture we need future generations of creators to bring forth new concept and fresh insights. That copyright laws have been distorted for the benefit of media conglomerates doesn't invalidate the value of copyright overall.

Exactly this.

Which is why I forever say, "Fuck off away from my characters, my stories, and write your own damn stories. If you think you're that good a writer you can do better than me, go away and prove it, but leave my stories alone, thank you very much."

They might not be dazzling original, but at least my stories are mine. I don't understand why people don't want to write their own stories, that's the bit that mystifies me.

 

[YmaOHyd]

I'd also say that, absent something like copyright protections, creativity is going to be eaten by AI. If an unauthorized sequel that uses the same characters in the same basic ways is considered transformative enough to be fair use, why isn't feeding that into the AI meatgrinder to generate a new story also fair use?

 

[RocketGrunt]

They might not be dazzling original, but at least my stories are mine. I don't understand why people don't want to write their own stories, that's the bit that justifies me.

You write urban stories set in trains and cafes, right? Do you make up all your own cities and train companies? Like, obviously not, right? Unless you go the full Tolkien, your setting is going to be using "characters" that you didn't write. Just opening your work "Meet Me On The Five Thirty Train," I spot Endgate, Southwest Airlines, and British Airways: three "characters" you didn't write before I even scroll the page.

Borrowing from real world sources is not more creative than borrowing from fictional ones. You don't own those places, those logos, those companies. You include them in your story because you're writing a story about people and not writing a whole urban fantasy setting from scratch. How is that better or different than someone putting Spiderman in their story?

 

[SimonDoom]

Borrowing from real world sources is not more creative than borrowing from fictional ones. You don't own those places, those logos, those companies. You include them in your story because you're writing a story about people and not writing a whole urban fantasy setting from scratch. How is that better or different than someone putting Spiderman in their story?

The difference is that Spiderman is an original creation, while the names of places and other "real world sources" are not. As Melissa pointed out above, the primary purpose of copyright law is to incentivize authors to create new works. We do that, to at least some extent, by giving the creator of Spiderman exclusive rights in the use of the character, because, in theory, the more protection for characters like that the more incentive to create new ones. Since real-world sources can't be protected, there's no sense in protecting them.

We all have our own idea of what's logical and how much of an incentive copyright law really creates. It's debatable. But there's no question that this is the logic the US Supreme Court has adopted concerning copyright law

 

[Purechicanery]

I personally don't give a shit if anyone continues any of my stories, but also: why would anyone do this? It's not like I've created some amazing lore that would make anyone want to develop fanfic of the universe.

 

[YmaOHyd]

The difference is that Spiderman is an original creation, while the names of places and other "real world sources" are not.

I would also guess that @ElectricBlue is not writing about Southwest Airlines in the same way that a Spiderman fanfic is writing about Spiderman.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

You're assuming the new author gave credit in the first place, let alone provided any links to the original author's work.

I wouldn't say the original author "lost" anything, but there's certainly no guaranteed gain either.

No loss, no gain... so why get worked up about it?

Does the existence of Wicked somehow lessen the value of "A Wizard of Oz"? Of course not.
Yet they took L Frank Baum's characters and massively changed them.

How many versions of "A Christmas Carol" are there? Does the existence of Scrooged or A Muppet Christmas Carol lessen the value of any of them? Nope...

Frankly, you should be flattered that someone is invested enough in the world you created to want to write about it, to want more stories from those characters. That's why fan fiction exists in the first place.

 

[Britva415]

Not fiction, but Trent Reznor talked about something similar in connection with the Johnny Cash cover of Hurt, how it no longer feels like his song.

He wasn't saying that Cash had done anything wrong. The cover was properly licensed, and Reznor is pretty easygoing on licensing and IP. And obviously having a song covered by Cash is a tremendous honour. But it sounded like it was still bittersweet for Reznor to see something that he'd put a lot of himself into eclipsed by another guy's version, to the extent where many people only know it as a Johnny Cash song now.

At least he authorized it.