Fanficcing Fanfic:
The Quandary of Who Owns What and When

Fanficcing Fanfic:
The Quandary of Who Owns What and When

I was going to post this in a discussion thread about Anne Rice, but my reply got too long for LiveJournal, its original host, to allow. Anyway, it’s less about the Anne Rice issue than about another issue… the writing of fanfiction about fanfiction.

A friend of mine said: I was discussing with a friend about why fan fiction writers, who by default revel in taking others’ characters and making new stories with them, get so anal if someone borrow their own characters, even with proper thanks or disclaimers etc.

Interesting development there… I had someone approach me recently and ask me if she could write a companion piece to Even Lions Have Their Pride, from Riddick’s POV.

I said no, but it wasn’t out of the insecurity that she might somehow write it better… but because of the following:

I have a lot of plot twists coming up in future chapters of Even Lions, including aspects of Riddick and Jack’s history together since the crash that have yet to be revealed, and things that happen to them, that I know but nobody else does. In terms of such things, I have a tendency to play my plots very “close to the chest.” (I do have two confidants who know pretty much exactly what is coming, but that’s it.)

I can’t really say “yes, please write a story that might contradict/impede the narrative I’m planning on writing in the next chapters.”

It might be something that I’ll be amenable to after I finish the story and it’s up in its established entirety, and I really am rather flattered that she wants to fanfic it, but it’s not time yet for me to stand back and give a blessing to that.

I remember reading somewhere that George Lucas had given permission for the Expanded Universe authors to write their stories, but had also added certain provisions: they could not write their stories within certain time frames in the SW timeline, that he was planning on working/delving in himself, and nothing they wrote would become a part of movie canon.

I didn’t understand why that was, until now, but now I do. There’s a danger that comes with being fanficced — especially if you officially endorse the fanfic the way the published EU stories are essentially endorsed fanfic — that your future efforts, using the world you created, will be rejected because somehow the “fanon” elements now have greater weight in your audience’s minds than your “canon” elements, and the places you want to take your world are no longer accepted by your audience.

Part of it, too, is that I don’t actually know the woman who asked. If, for example, Artemis or LadyElaine or Shalimar or Ayabie (to name a few) expressed interest in doing a Riddick POV companion piece to Even Lions, I might be much more comfortable. Those are people I would feel comfortable discussing the back-story and future plot points with, and explaining what Riddick’s as-yet-unrevealed motives, thoughts, and intentions are and how and when they can be revealed without spoilering Even Lions itself.

But otherwise, I can’t endorse or be involved in the creation of fanfic on one of my ongoing works. I can’t even read it because that would create a whole slew of conflicts — what if she contradicts my plotline? Or worse yet, what if she agrees with it, and telegraphs spoilers for some of my surprise twists before I can reveal them in my own time? I don’t dare get involved.

The actual reason that Anne Rice became repressive about fanfic, from what I’ve been told, is one I can be sympathetic towards — a fanfic author sued her, claiming that Anne had stolen her story ideas. Yes, that’s right… someone had taken Anne’s universe and characters and had written a story based upon them that closely mirrored what Anne herself was planning on doing, and then sued claiming that Anne had stolen from her. I’m not sure if she won, but Anne definitely lost — the book in question was never published, and discarded. *

When One Rule: Stay In the Light was plagiarized, something similar happened to me. I had been working out the storyline for converting it into a longer work, when I discovered that the first chapter had been ripped off. The thief had then extrapolated and used some of the ideas I had planned on using, but had not posted yet… and despite the fact that those ideas would only work in the storyline I had created and she had stolen, I knew I couldn’t use them now without running the risk that someone would call me a thief. I had to discard a lot of the work I’d been doing and rethink a lot of things.

So while I love movie and TV fanfic, I remain pretty iffy regarding book fanfic, especially fanfic on something that is still a work-in-progress, like a series of novels that the author might add to or expand upon… or an incomplete fanfiction like One Rule or Even Lions.

Of course, it’s a little mindboggling, too, that someone wants to fanfic me. LOL!

October 1, 2003

* Additional Correction: I learned a few years later that the incident I referred to, allegedly involving Anne Rice, actually happened to author Marion Zimmer Bradley.