Conundrum

[lettered]

What are people's thoughts on making a fanfic into an original work of fiction and attempting to do something professional with it?

For instance, if you took a Wolverine/Rogue fic you wrote, took away their super powers, gave them different names and different histories, but otherwise kept what words you could of the fic you had written intact?

What if that fic was already posted? Would that mean taking the fic down, or locking it, would removing people's access to the fanfic be reprehensible, would it be in violation of some kind of copyright if the professional thing you were trying to do with it demanded that the work be previously unpublished? What if your fic is on someone else's archive? Do you ask that to be taken down too?

I feel like some people will answer that one should just try to write something new instead of recycling a fanfic for a professional purpose, but I have one or two things that I have posted that . . . were more just using characters in order to say something for me, rather than using something for me to say something about the characters, if that makes sense.

All thoughts and opinions welcome.

Comments

[hl]

I think you can do whatever you want with your words. I suspect it may be a legal issue if the publishers discovered that it was published before and the understanding was that it wasn't (though I don't know for sure), but taking it down (including from the wayback) should solve that for you.

I would take it down from everywhere for that reason.

As for if it's reprehensible or not, it depends. I feel pretty disgruntled when I follow a rec and it leads to a 'ops, published!' message (which is arguably pretty common on JA fandom, my main one), but that doesn't mean it was wrong of the author to take it down. I would feel badly (though I'm not saying I NEVER EVER WOULD DO IT, or anything) about doing it myself because I've had lots of betas and friends and readers who ultimately helped me craft most of my stories, so to take them from them would feel kinda cheating. idk.

[lettered]

I wondered about that, in JA fandom. Sometimes I get these awesome fics in my head and then realize, I could publish that. That doesn't happen in many other fandoms for me because of copyright, but also because JA has such a huge fanfic market, whereas the couple others I might play in (Phantom of the Opera, Sherlock Holmes) not so much. Though Sherlock Holmes does have Laurie King.

I don't feel like other people really helped craft the pieces I'm thinking of, though some awesome people did stuff like grammar edit them. That removes the guilt factor there, but I do feel bad taking things away from a fandom.

Thanks for your thoughts!

[rahirah]

If it works, go for it. I have found that in practice, when I transplant characters from one milieu to another, that if I do my job right, the necessary changes in their background results in them becoming different characters, whether I intended them to or not. I can say that a character in 'Verse A is inspired by a character in 'Verse B, but they're no longer the same character, and IMO shouldn't be. (Which is why human AUs and whatnot do not work for me.)