Entertainment
Kids Today Don’t Understand How A Horror Author Transformed Fiction Forever, And It’s Going To Cost Them
By Jonathan Klotz
| Published
There’s a war brewing on the internet, and chances are, you’re unaware of it, but fan fiction authors are readying for battle. The latest generation wants to monetize their fan fiction, encouraged by the success of E.L. James with 50 Shades of Grey (originally Twilight fan fiction), Anna Todd’s After series (originally Harry Styles fan fiction), Cassandra Clare’s City of Bones (originally Harry Potter fan fiction), and Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One (not fan fiction, but able to reference every fan property under the Sun).
The older generation of fan fiction writers is trying to warn them that this is a bad idea, and the best example they can cite is Anne Rice’s legal crusade that nearly ended fan fiction, a period so fraught that it changed how fan fiction was written forever. Now the kids are stepping onto legal landmines despite the clear red flags on every fan fiction website.
Anne Rice’s War On Fan Fiction
Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire kicked off a frenzy among fan fiction writers of the 90s following the success of the Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt film, with her brilliant characterizations of Louis and Lestat, who, of course, were often paired up in fan fiction stories. The standard disclaimer before any fan fiction story, that it’s a “non-profit, amateur effort not intended for sale,” wasn’t enough to stave off Anne’s lawyers, who fiercely defended her intellectual property. Webmasters would warn users not to write anything based on Anne Rice’s characters, or the fan fiction author could, and likely would, get sued. What makes it worse for fan fiction authors is that Rice had every right to defend her work this way.
Copyright law can be incredibly tricky and requires copyright holders to actively defend against every infringement, or the courts will treat it as abandoned. Anne Rice took it a little further due to her attachment to her own characters, as she couldn’t imagine anyone else ever writing about Louis, Lestat, Armand, Akasha, etc., and took it personally when fans developed their own stories. The other problem is that if she ended up writing a story that matched a fan fiction, she could be sued for plagiarizing her own characters.
Fan Fiction Exists In A Grey Area
Fan fiction has always existed in a grey area, legally speaking, ever since the Romans filed the names off the Greek pantheon. Dante’s Inferno, the only part of the Divine Comedy that anyone ever reads, is now considered one of the earliest self-insert fan fictions of what else, the Bible. That explains the entire chapter about his local Italian politicians being burned in caskets for all eternity. The biggest defense fan fiction authors have had is that they aren’t profiting off the creations of others. Even fan fiction authors whose works have been widely published and adapted into Hollywood hits have done enough work to turn the fan fiction into a wholly original piece of fiction.
Anne Rice mellowed as she got older and stopped defending her work so vigorously, but other authors, including George R.R. Martin and J.K. Rowling, have occasionally had to sue fan fiction creators. What’s happened now is that 20 years after Rice’s crusade started to fade, new fan fiction authors have begun a push to allow monetization of their works on popular fan fiction platforms, including AO3 (Archive Of Our Own), one of the largest and oldest fan fiction communities. The argument is that they’re telling their own story, so what if the parts are borrowed from someone else? It’s largely their creative work. That argument terrifies the older, more experienced authors, who know that if one person starts monetizing, the entire fan fiction community could come crashing down overnight.
The Push For Monetization
Around the time of the Covid lockdowns fan fiction authors started printing their works and creating physical, bound collections of their stories that some ended up trying to sell. Those quickly resulted in lawsuits for every single cent of profit and penalties for copyright violations, and if an author who sold a collection wasn’t sued, they got lucky and kept quiet.
The current controversy in the fan fiction community will eventually settle down, and hopefully, everyone will realize why the “no monetization” rule is in place before someone has to be made an example of. Fan fiction is a major part of what keeps fandoms alive during lulls and can bring in new fans of the original work. When left on their own, fan fiction authors are among the largest fans of an author and will happily act as guides and cheerleaders for newbies to a fandom. They’ve fought the battles, they’ve been in the trenches, they’ve seen con artists and hacks enter their communities, and they don’t like it. If the new generation doesn’t change course quickly, we may never get another masterpiece like 50 Shades of Grey, and copyright attorneys will be able to start looking at blueprints for their new vacation home.