So I’ve been thinking about this lately: when did it become okay to copy someone else’s ideas and pass them off as your own? Of course, I’m referring to things like Fifty Shades of Grey and The Mortal Instruments, not just regular fanfiction. But how, have we (well, some of use) as a literary society, and as authors started to condone repackaging a fanfiction, giving it a new title, and changing the names.

E.L. James is definitely the worst offender, I think in a Conjugal Felicity spork it was mentioned that someone ran her book and fanfiction through a plagiarism checker and it was something like 70 or 80 percent the same. Clare is in a better position, since she actually re-worked her fanfictions a lot more, but Jace is so obviously Draco, Simon so obviously Harry. To top it off, I’ve read articles from readers (who aren’t even necessarily fans) saying “good for her if she can get fanfiction published, the only problem I have is that she plagiarized lines from Buffy”. What? I mean, Clare didn’t just take her fanfic word-for-word, but there’s so much Harry Potter in there (a villain with a V name, “mundies”) that it’s obvious that her fanfiction was a large inspiration.

I suppose one could argue that since it’s not really like her fanfic at all (I struggled through the first 60 pages of Draco Dormiens, which features Draco and Harry snarkily bickering and love triangle angst throw in the middle of rescuing someone), that it’s not really copying anyone. I suppose that’s true, it’s just a really bad Harry Potter knock-off. But it’s been proven that Clare stole lines from other shows, lots of other shows, and I’m sure some of that is in her Instruments books as well. How can we condone pure plagiarism? How?

That brings me to another question, how do authors let themselves do this? Writing fanfiction can be fun, but at the end of the day, it’s like driving someone else’s car as far as fiction goes. Everything’s there, all you have to do is put the key in and decide where to drive. Writing your own novel, while a bit harder, is like making your own way of transportation (I’d probably make a 4-horse drawn carriage). You have to gather materials, and craft it, make sure it works, etc. One (in the published world) should be acclaimed, and the other should not. I know a lot of people want to be a famous author and all that jazz, but I can’t imagine getting any pleasure out of fame/fortune knowing that I stole someone else’s ideas. The whole point of writing, and story-telling, is tell something that comes from you! Is there anything wrong with inspiration? No, everyone’s work is going to be derivative somehow, especially when you’re just starting out and trying to find your voice. Still, this doesn’t mean that it’s okay to pass off what J.K Rowling or Stephanie Meyer (even though the latter wasn’t too great to begin with) as your stuff. And I don’t know how James and CC can live with themselves, or even regard themselves as actual authors, especially with CC (even though her books are a bit less famous) since she actually plagiarized.

Any thoughts on the state of books today/this issue? I think it’s really sad when people are standing up for slapping a different label on a fanfic.

When it comes to James/Clare, part of the issue is, I think, that they’re not selling it as fanfiction. They’re selling it as if it’s something original and new—when it really isn’t, it’s a repackaging of something older.

If they were explicitly publishing it as extended universe stories from a different world (which I’m aware is not allowed for most canon universes…), I dunno if there’d be nearly as many people annoyed about it.

I think a big part of this view of fanfiction is due to the fact that a lot of current authors come from a fan background – they grew up reading these books and watching these shows, and incorporate a lot of that into their own writing. Hell, Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series began as fanfic of the Aubrey-Maturin books. Comics like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and most of the fiction Kim Newman publishes under his own name are practically fanfiction. Jacqueline Carey and Dennis L. McKiernan both published series that are essentially retellings of Lord of the Rings (McKiernan for legal reasons).

I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with publishing works that began as fanfiction, if the story is good enough. And that means the author put in the time and effort to make the story their own, rather than using the characters as puppets to play out their own fantasies.

Why is it okay for people to do retellings like Wicked or Grendel and tell stories in the same universe like the Star Wars Expanded Universe, but not okay to publish a fanfic?

In this case, I believe it’s about IP ownership – the Oz books and Beowulf are public domain, and Star Wars isn’t. Lucasfilm (and now Disney) owns Star Wars, so anyone selling products using their characters without their permission is basically taking their profits. Same for any other IP. This is why the only way to get a copy of Kirill Eskov’s The Last Ringbearer (an actual alternative version of and sequel to LotR) in English is to download the free copy.

I’d have an issue if they were taking Twilight, copying and pasting the text and just changing the names, but this feels like something completely different. These are entirely new stories (terrible ones in the cases of these two writers, but I’m not here to judge their writing) written in someone else’s world. They just took out the “someone else’s world” part and replaced it with their own so they don’t get sued. I’m not gonna lie, I wouldn’t know that Fifty Shades and City of Bones were fanfics if I wasn’t on this site. I’d just think they were terrible generic fiction.