Fan fiction
The attitudes of authors and copyright owners of original works towards fan fiction have ranged from encouragement to indifference or disapproval, and have occasionally responded with legal action.
For instance, Shakespeare's plays Romeo and Juliet, Much Ado About Nothing, Othello, As You Like It and The Winter's Tale were based on recent works by other authors of the time.
[6] In 1614, Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda wrote a sequel to Cervantes' Don Quixote before he had finished and published his own second volume.
Many unauthorized stories of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle have been created, including The Adventure of the Two Collaborators by J. M.
[12]: 1 These fanzines were produced using offset printing and mimeography and mailed to other fans or sold at science fiction conventions for a small fee to cover the cost of production.
To avoid copyright infringement, James changed the characters' names to Ana and Christian for the purposes of her novels,[18] a practice known as 'pulling-to-publish'.
[19] Anna Todd's 2013 fan fiction After, about the boy band One Direction, secured a book and movie deal with renamed characters in 2014.
On May 22, 2013, online retailer Amazon launched a new publishing service, Kindle Worlds, which allowed fan fiction of certain licensed media properties to be sold in the Kindle Store, with terms including 35% of net sales for works of 10,000 words or more and 20% for short fiction ranging from 5,000 to 10,000 words.
However, this arrangement included restrictions on content, copyright violations, poor document formatting, and use of misleading titles.
The study did not include profiles written in Chinese, Greek, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Russian, or Turkish.
[25] A 2020 study of Harry Potter fan fiction writers on Archive of Our Own found that of the users who disclosed their gender in their profiles, 50.4% were female or femme-leaning and 13.4% were masculine or masc-leaning.
The most common trope in this genre is a character being convinced that they do not have, want, or deserve a soulmate, only to be proven wrong as they fall in love.
If it focuses heavily on critical thinking skills and deductive reasoning, it can be considered a "rationalist rewrite", as popularized by Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.
Some fan fiction sites, such as FanFiction.Net, have prevented authors from posting songfics with lyrics from songs that are not in the public domain.
[39] In an essay in Music, Sound, and Silence in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, University of Sydney professor Catherine Driscoll commented that the genre was "one of the least distinguished modes of fan production" and that "within fan fiction excessive attachment to or foregrounding of popular music is itself dismissed as immature and derivative".
[40] Uberfic is a form of alternative universe in which characters physically resemble and share personality traits with their canon counterparts, but have new names and backgrounds in a different setting.
[44] Disclaimers are author's notes which typically inform readers about who deserves credit for the original source material,[45] and often containing pseudo-legal language disavowing any intent of copyright infringement or alluding to fair use.
A Mary Sue, also known as MS, is a term which editors and writers credit as originating in Star Trek fan fiction and later becoming part of the mainstream.
In early fan fiction, a common plot was a minor member of the USS Enterprise's crew saving the life of Kirk or Spock, often being rewarded with a sexual relationship as a result.
The term "Mary Sue", which originated in a parody of stories in the wish fulfillment genre, often refers to an idealized or overpowered character who lacks flaws and is often seen as a representation of the author.
The book After by Anna Todd, later adapted into a film of the same name, was originally a real person fan fiction about One Direction member Harry Styles.
[50] A subcategory of shipping, "curtainfic", which depicts romantic couples in mundane domestic situations such as picking out curtains, was once used but has somewhat fallen out of use.
Fan fiction has also been shown to improve literacy by allowing authors to have a wider audience for their works and encouraging people to write.
[55][56] The 2009 ruling by United States District Court Judge Deborah A. Batts, permanently prohibiting publication in the United States of a book by Ryan Cassidy, a Swedish writer whose protagonist is a 76-year-old version of Holden Caulfield of The Catcher in the Rye, may be seen as upholding this position regarding publishing fan fiction, as the judge stated, "To the extent Defendants contend that 60 Years and the character of Mr. C direct parodied comment or criticism at Catcher or Holden Caulfield, as opposed to Salinger himself, the Court finds such contentions to be post-hoc rationalizations employed through vague generalizations about the alleged naivety of the original, rather than reasonably perceivable parody.
This transformative usage of Harry Potter in fan fiction is allegedly from the desire to enhance and express value to Chinese tradition and culture.
[63] Similarly, Stephenie Meyer has put links on her website to fan fiction sites about her characters from the Twilight series.
[64] The Fifty Shades trilogy was developed from a Twilight fan fiction originally titled Master of the Universe and published episodically on fan-fiction websites under the pen name "Snowqueen's Icedragon".
[65][66] However, in 2003, a British law firm representing J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros. sent a letter to webmasters requesting that adult Harry Potter fan fiction ("stories containing graphically violent and sexual content") be removed from a prominent fan fiction website, citing concerns that children might stumble upon the illicit content.
[67] As an example of changing views on the subject, author Orson Scott Card (best known for the Ender's Game series) once stated on his website, "to write fiction using my characters is morally identical to moving into my house without invitation and throwing out my family."
Martin is also strongly opposed to fan fiction, believing it to be copyright infringement and a bad exercise for aspiring writers.
