Poll: Separation of Canon People and FF People

[thefourthvine]

(Note: I'd like to get responses on this from as many different fan writers as possible. Anyone who pimps it will have my eternal gratitude. And if you leave a comment letting me know where you pimped it, you will get my eternal gratitude and an imaginary cookie.)

This poll is for anyone who has ever written fan fiction and in some way shared it - internet, zine, carrier pigeon, coded broadcast to Alpha Centauri, whatever.

So. If someone connected with the canon found and read your fan fiction, how would you react? For the purposes of this poll, I would like you all to imagine that we live in a world where there are no possible legal consequences. In other words, your weird new readers can hate you, but they can't take you to court or send a C&D.

[Poll #698126]

Comments

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

So, for you there's no real distinction between a canon-associated person finding your stuff and just anyone (non-fannish, I mean) finding it? That's an interesting point of view that's been emerging entirely in the comments section, as I didn't even think of it when I was assembling the poll.

[boji.livejournal.com]

Look, in order for it to matter if a cannon-associated person found my work, the issue of C&D letters would have to be real (and in your pole they weren't) plus they would have to hack their way past my LJ name and separate e-mail addy. I do keep my fanfic self utterly separate. If they managed to trace it back to RL me then I'd die. Probably.

On the other hand, well I wrote several its of Doctor Who fic (and I doubt Russell T Davies would mind the slash - so copyright violation would be the only issue) In the Spooks universe - Kudos productions (again BBC) I'm a tad more reticent because I'm not sure the work is as viable. It's a romance, a hook-up, but then again I like my character exploration so ...

In the fic I wrote for Smallville I have no respect for the cannon writers - outside of their legal department so no skin off my nose there and in SG:A it's impossible for them not to know their characters are being slashed, impossible not to be playing on that. So unless they sat me down over coffee to enquire as to why I saw chemistry and connection where I do... I'd be fine.

After that it's all in the interpretation. I don't feel I'm harming the characters. I'm as true as I can be to my interpretation of them, from that point forth if canon-associated people wanted to take that on board I'd be fine with it. If they were amused and took the piss (probable), no skin off my nose and if they were horrified... well there's no litigious power in your universe and it's NOT as if I'm taking away someone's livelihood.

It's not the same as illegal music downloads. You could always ask the question as to whether the Harry Potter series (a universe in which I don't write) would have been as successful if NOT for the fic-train which rolled through the fandom keeping interest at a peak. Not that I'm saying media hype didn't contribute but I do think that the sheer volume of fic had something to do with it too...