Fanfiction: On Trial for Kidnapping? While many people find themselves indulging in late night binge-watching or gauging on unhealthy fast food, some would consider their guilty pleasure to be reading fanfiction. Fanfiction is a story written by fans that takes elements from a previously established setting and transforms the already fixed plot into something entirely new. The elements that pre-exist might be characters, locations, objects, or institutions adapted from another source. A fanfiction author typically writes a story using one or more characters from these developed settings. These stories offer new scenarios that fans have not seen or read before in the original source, allowing for endless amounts of imagination. However, is
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Fanfiction provides readers with the rare chance to be the one in control. Imagine you’re reading your favorite book and you get to the end and the finishing pages of the novel leave you grasping for more or on the other hand, dissatisfied. Fanfiction provides readers with the unique opportunity of finishing a novel on their own terms and shaping the plot into something that only a hungry imagination can fuel. Delving deeper into fanfiction led to two prominent sites that the majority of fanfiction stories are written on. FanFiction.net and Wattpad are the two highest ranked sites for the publications of fanfiction. FanFiction.net is split into nine main categories: Anime/Manga, Books, Cartoons, Miscellaneous, Games, Comics, Movies, Plays/Musicals, and TV Shows. Users who complete the free registration process can submit their fanfiction, maintain a user profile, review other stories, apply for a beta reader position, contact each other via private messages, and maintain a list of favorite stories and authors, making FanFiction.net an instant leader in the fanfiction. Its easy access to hundreds of stories proved to be exactly what Americans wanted. Harry Potter and Twilight lead the site …show more content…
On the other hand, fanfiction that comments negatively on the original source or turns the story into something very unpleasing does not meet the definition of fanfiction presented by Tushnet and may be viewed for copyright infringement separately to fanfiction guidelines. These works would fall into the "criticism and commentary" side of the argument rather than secondary works that are true works of fanfiction. This side of the argument is in regard to someone who is a follower of the original work and wants to ask the "what if" or "what happens next" questions in response to the original work. The biggest picture in all of the debate about whether fanfiction is too close to copyright infringement to actually be promoting the source it is going off of is that in order to be analyzed in the genre of fanfiction with no other implications, the created piece of fanfiction needs to differ substantially from the original work in order to qualify under the definition of fanfiction (Lipton, 436). If it doesn’t deviate any from the original work and only slightly changes a few things, it crosses the line of copyright infringement and is considered to be plagiarism. Best-selling young adult author Maggie Stiefvater explains her viewpoint on the difference between her attitude to
Fanfiction provides readers with the rare chance to be the one in control. Imagine you’re reading your favorite book and you get to the end and the finishing pages of the novel leave you grasping for more or on the other hand, dissatisfied. Fanfiction provides readers with the unique opportunity of finishing a novel on their own terms and shaping the plot into something that only a hungry imagination can fuel. Delving deeper into fanfiction led to two prominent sites that the majority of fanfiction stories are written on. FanFiction.net and Wattpad are the two highest ranked sites for the publications of fanfiction. FanFiction.net is split into nine main categories: Anime/Manga, Books, Cartoons, Miscellaneous, Games, Comics, Movies, Plays/Musicals, and TV Shows. Users who complete the free registration process can submit their fanfiction, maintain a user profile, review other stories, apply for a beta reader position, contact each other via private messages, and maintain a list of favorite stories and authors, making FanFiction.net an instant leader in the fanfiction. Its easy access to hundreds of stories proved to be exactly what Americans wanted. Harry Potter and Twilight lead the site …show more content…
On the other hand, fanfiction that comments negatively on the original source or turns the story into something very unpleasing does not meet the definition of fanfiction presented by Tushnet and may be viewed for copyright infringement separately to fanfiction guidelines. These works would fall into the "criticism and commentary" side of the argument rather than secondary works that are true works of fanfiction. This side of the argument is in regard to someone who is a follower of the original work and wants to ask the "what if" or "what happens next" questions in response to the original work. The biggest picture in all of the debate about whether fanfiction is too close to copyright infringement to actually be promoting the source it is going off of is that in order to be analyzed in the genre of fanfiction with no other implications, the created piece of fanfiction needs to differ substantially from the original work in order to qualify under the definition of fanfiction (Lipton, 436). If it doesn’t deviate any from the original work and only slightly changes a few things, it crosses the line of copyright infringement and is considered to be plagiarism. Best-selling young adult author Maggie Stiefvater explains her viewpoint on the difference between her attitude to