Fanatic Fiction

The ones that claim they put your work through an AI detector, and now they've put put you on an "AI author blacklist," and then urge everyone to start using AI detectors.

The ones that tell you they just loved your fic, do you want to commission them? For fanart? :)

The one where they start out praising your fic before "kindly warning you" that your fic is in a "depreciated fandom" and moderators are going to delete it to save server space, so you should probably just delete it yourself so they don't ban you.

Terry Goodkind: “Copyright law dictates that in order for me to protect my copyright, when I find such things, I must go out and hire lawyers to threaten these people to make them stop, and to sue them if they don’t.”

John Scalzi: “Let's remember one fundamental thing about fanfic: Almost all of it is entirely illegal to begin with. It's the wild and wanton misappropriation of copyrighted material”

Diana Gabaldon: “OK, my position on fan-fic is pretty clear: I think it’s immoral, I know it’s illegal, and it makes me want to barf whenever I’ve inadvertently encountered some of it involving my characters.”

Robin Hobb: “Fan fiction is like any other form of identity theft. It injures the name of the party whose identity is stolen.”

Anne Rice: “I do not allow fan fiction. The characters are copyrighted. It upsets me terribly to even think about fan fiction with my characters. I advise my readers to write your own original stories with your own characters. It is absolutely essential that you respect my wishes.”

Anne McCaffrey: “there can be no adventure/stories set on Pern at all!!!!! That's infringing on my copyright and can bear heavy penalties…indiscriminate usage of our characters, worlds, and concepts on a 'public' media like electronic mail constitute copyright infringement AND, which many fans disregard, is ACTIONABLE!”

Chelsea Quinn Yarbro: “No. Absolutely not. It is also against federal law.”

Lynn Flewelling: “Whether you are writing about Seregil or Fox Mulder or Sherlock Holmes, if you do not have legal permission from the author, their estate, or publisher, then you are violating US copyright law. It is creative piracy. Doesn't matter how many disclaimers you put on, or if you're being paid. It. Is. Illegal.”

Someone Else, elaborated in the notes

John Scalzi's position is that fanfic of copyrighted material is illegal and a slippery slope to plagiarism: "the fact of the matter is that if you’re writing fanfic, you’re already doing something legally out of bounds. And, really, if you’re already wantonly violating copyright, what’s a little plagiarism to go along with it??"

And that while he personally doesn't mind if people write fanfic for his work (how benevolent!) he still thinks that they're breaking the law, and he doesn't think anyone should care if fic authors get plagiarized. (x)

Anne Rice's position waffled a bit before she died, but when she was against it she was notorious for her legal threats, and she's still on FFN's list of authors whose work can't be written about.

Diana Gabaldin also said fanfic was like "someone selling your children into white slavery." Yeah.

Note that this was fanfic about her character Saint Germaine, a historical vampire AU character.

The story she went after was a St Germain/Sherlock Holmes crossover - almost certainly legal parody, did not interfere with her rights at all, but the fans being targeted did not have the resources to fight it.

My thoughts on Fan Fiction are pretty much this: That it seems strange to want to copy or 'augment' someone else's work when you could expend just as much energy and have a lot more fun making up your own. I feel, and I think with good reason, very proprietorial about Thursday and all her escapades; clearly I can't stop you writing and playing what you want in private, and am very flattered that you wish to do so. But anything published in any form whatsoever - and that specifically includes the internet - I cannot encourage, nor approve of.

Source (2006)

This is the same Jasper Fforde who has Jane Eyre, Humpty Dumpty, and Hamlet as characters in his books.

And hilariously:

Titled The Eyre Affair when it was published in 2002, Fforde began penning the book in 1993. He stopped for several years because he was concerned about how fans of the classic novel Jane Eyre might respond to his toying with its characters.

And:

Fforde's motivation for writing The Eyre Affair and its sequels was born out of his own appreciation of the classics. He told James Macgowan of the Ottawa Citizen, "I love literature. I love stories, actually. The point of using the classics in this kind of playful reverence is that I always felt the classics had become stuffy through being academized—is that what the word is? Jane Eyre is a study text, and it should never have been made a study text, as has Wuthering Heights and Shakespeare. I think people are in danger of seeing them as only that, when they aren't, they're just great stories."

Terry Goodkind: “Copyright law dictates that in order for me to protect my copyright, when I find such things, I must go out and hire lawyers to threaten these people to make them stop, and to sue them if they don’t.”

John Scalzi: “Let's remember one fundamental thing about fanfic: Almost all of it is entirely illegal to begin with. It's the wild and wanton misappropriation of copyrighted material”

Diana Gabaldon: “OK, my position on fan-fic is pretty clear: I think it’s immoral, I know it’s illegal, and it makes me want to barf whenever I’ve inadvertently encountered some of it involving my characters.”

Robin Hobb: “Fan fiction is like any other form of identity theft. It injures the name of the party whose identity is stolen.”

Anne Rice: “I do not allow fan fiction. The characters are copyrighted. It upsets me terribly to even think about fan fiction with my characters. I advise my readers to write your own original stories with your own characters. It is absolutely essential that you respect my wishes.”

Anne McCaffrey: “there can be no adventure/stories set on Pern at all!!!!! That's infringing on my copyright and can bear heavy penalties…indiscriminate usage of our characters, worlds, and concepts on a 'public' media like electronic mail constitute copyright infringement AND, which many fans disregard, is ACTIONABLE!”

Chelsea Quinn Yarbro: “No. Absolutely not. It is also against federal law.”

Lynn Flewelling: “Whether you are writing about Seregil or Fox Mulder or Sherlock Holmes, if you do not have legal permission from the author, their estate, or publisher, then you are violating US copyright law. It is creative piracy. Doesn't matter how many disclaimers you put on, or if you're being paid. It. Is. Illegal.”

Someone Else, elaborated in the notes

John Scalzi's position is that fanfic of copyrighted material is illegal and a slippery slope to plagiarism: "the fact of the matter is that if you’re writing fanfic, you’re already doing something legally out of bounds. And, really, if you’re already wantonly violating copyright, what’s a little plagiarism to go along with it??"

And that while he personally doesn't mind if people write fanfic for his work (how benevolent!) he still thinks that they're breaking the law, and he doesn't think anyone should care if fic authors get plagiarized. (x)

Anne Rice's position waffled a bit before she died, but when she was against it she was notorious for her legal threats, and she's still on FFN's list of authors whose work can't be written about.

Diana Gabaldin also said fanfic was like "someone selling your children into white slavery." Yeah.

Terry Goodkind: “Copyright law dictates that in order for me to protect my copyright, when I find such things, I must go out and hire lawyers to threaten these people to make them stop, and to sue them if they don’t.”

John Scalzi: “Let's remember one fundamental thing about fanfic: Almost all of it is entirely illegal to begin with. It's the wild and wanton misappropriation of copyrighted material”

Diana Gabaldon: “OK, my position on fan-fic is pretty clear: I think it’s immoral, I know it’s illegal, and it makes me want to barf whenever I’ve inadvertently encountered some of it involving my characters.”

Robin Hobb: “Fan fiction is like any other form of identity theft. It injures the name of the party whose identity is stolen.”

Anne Rice: “I do not allow fan fiction. The characters are copyrighted. It upsets me terribly to even think about fan fiction with my characters. I advise my readers to write your own original stories with your own characters. It is absolutely essential that you respect my wishes.”

Anne McCaffrey: “there can be no adventure/stories set on Pern at all!!!!! That's infringing on my copyright and can bear heavy penalties…indiscriminate usage of our characters, worlds, and concepts on a 'public' media like electronic mail constitute copyright infringement AND, which many fans disregard, is ACTIONABLE!”

Chelsea Quinn Yarbro: “No. Absolutely not. It is also against federal law.”

Lynn Flewelling: “Whether you are writing about Seregil or Fox Mulder or Sherlock Holmes, if you do not have legal permission from the author, their estate, or publisher, then you are violating US copyright law. It is creative piracy. Doesn't matter how many disclaimers you put on, or if you're being paid. It. Is. Illegal.”

Someone Else, elaborated in the notes

John Scalzi's position is that fanfic of copyrighted material is illegal and a slippery slope to plagiarism: "the fact of the matter is that if you’re writing fanfic, you’re already doing something legally out of bounds. And, really, if you’re already wantonly violating copyright, what’s a little plagiarism to go along with it??"

And that while he personally doesn't mind if people write fanfic for his work (how benevolent!) he still thinks that they're breaking the law, and he doesn't think anyone should care if fic authors get plagiarized. (x)

Anne Rice's position waffled a bit before she died, but when she was against it she was notorious for her legal threats, and she's still on FFN's list of authors whose work can't be written about.

Diana Gabaldin also said fanfic was like "someone selling your children into white slavery." Yeah.

?!

'Libraries "have been around too long" and are "no longer relevant", according to Horrible Histories author Terry Deary, an apparently lone literary voice to believe that libraries have "had their day".'

"This is not the Victorian age, when we wanted to allow the impoverished access to literature. We pay for compulsory schooling to do that"

"Books aren't public property, and writers aren't Enid Blyton, middle-class women indulging in a pleasant little hobby."'

?!?

"I've no interest in schools," he continues. "They have no relevance in the 21st century. They were a Victorian idea to get kids off the street...Kids should leave school at 11 and go to work."

“Unfortunately, [thing that would ordinarily be described in much stronger terms than ‘unfortunate’].”  

“Fortunately, [thing that is in no way fortunate].”  

“Unfortunately, [thing that would be fortunate in nearly any circumstance except the particular circumstance at hand].“  

“Fortunately, [very minor benefit that absolutely does not offset the considerable drawbacks of whatever just happened].“  

“Unfortunately, [the exact, word-for-word thing that somebody just expressed that they hope won’t happen].“  

so his solution for this problem was… to solely read serial web novels in languages that (1) he did not speak, and (2) for which there was no actual translation, fan or otherwise

apparently, the combined forces of “trying to figure out WTF is going on via the power of Google Translate" + “cultural differences in storytelling conventions” + “the inherent randomness of where the hell amateur authors are gonna take their plots”—those all mashed up to make stories that were unpredictable enough to keep him guessing all the time

then he described to me this totally batshit-sounding Hungarian story he’d been obsessively reading once a week for years

and of course the classic