Plagiarism and reviewing

[louiselux]

I see the plagiarism argument has resurfaced on the old flist.

There's this idea that people who write fanfic are not only breaking the law but are somehow wasting their talent/time/precious souls to boot. I delight in using someone else's characters and derive vast amounts of entertainment from it, as long as the author doesn't mind. If they did mind, then I think I'd stop. Which brings me to a point - would you stop writing fanfic if the author asked you to stop? What would you consider as 'stopping'? Stopping distributing or posting it, or stopping writing altogether?

Another hoary old chestnut that nonetheless bothers me, because you really can't get away from it, is the idea that by attacking someone's fic you're attacking them as a person. I don't believe this is true, but I can see why some people feel it. It's hard receiving criticism, as hard as it is to give pain-free criticism. I think the same general rule applies to this as to any social interaction - practise common decency in reviews and LoCs. Personally, I try and be honest, think about the language I use, and think about my own motives.

Comments

[sabrinanymph.livejournal.com]

Sailed in from daily_snitch, I think ultimately so far as posting fic goes-If the author said they hated it, I'd stop posting it. Now, that isn't to say I'd necessarily stop writing it. As a fan, writing fic is one way to work out all of those necessary what if's that pop up in my mind when reading someone's work. In some cases, those ideas could be put forth in essay form and in the case of someone who hated fic, I'd probably write more essays to share with other fans. But if they didn't want fic written I'd stop distributing it.

Someone above mentioned treat others as you would like to be treated. I've got to say that in many of the fandoms that I'm in there are fics that would make me, if I were the original author, really uneasy. It's difficult to see your characters doing things that you know they'd never actually do. So if it were me, and I said as an author that I didn't want fic written, I'd certainly want people to respect that-so I'd try to do the same for those authors.

Although this is kind of a moot point since none of the fandom's I'm involved in really have this problem!