Re: Fan fiction in general was: MOVED from MAIN - "sequels" to the classics

[Carol]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "coriandra2002"
<coriandra2002 at ...> wrote:
>
> If any of you are or hope to be published writers (as I do sometime in
> the future) how would you feel about fan fiction writing in your
universe?
> 
> My position would be: don't ask don't tell.  I'd rather not have
> people killing off my characters or writing slash or incest stories
> about them.  But because there's so little control over that on the
> internet, I'd try to encourage good writing by linking some high
> quality archives to my website and try to ignore the more tawdry ones.
>
Carol responds:

That's a really interesting question. Certainly, if I were a
children's author, I wouldn't want X-rated stories written using my
characters. that aside, how I think I would feel and how I would
actually feel may be two different things: I have no emotional
investment in a hypothetical question, whereas I would certainly care
about my characters.

What I would *not* do is to stifle discussion or interpretation of my
characters in any way. But literary criticism and fanfic are opposite
reactions to a literary work. One analyzes and interprets what the
author has written, the other strives to expand or recreate the work.
And while it must be flattering for a writer to discover that readers
care enough to fantasize and write about her characters, posting
fanfic on the Internet (as opposed to writing a handwritten fanfic
that no one but a few close friends will ever see) does strike me as a
form of intellectual theft akin to plagiarism. It's a form of
publication even though the fanfic writer isn't being paid.

I think I would be most opposed to the fanficing (sp?) of my 
characters if I were planning to write a sequel or prequel or series
using the same characters as in a previous novel. That a fan can sue
the author who provided the basis and inspiration for her fanfic is
just preposterous. IMO, of course.

Carol, wondering whether the copyright laws of the U.S. and various
other countries are being rewritten even as we type to incorporate
Internet fanfiction