Conundrum

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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of some kind of copyright if the professional thing you were trying to do with it demanded that the work be previously unpublished?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

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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!