April 16, 2026 • 25 mins
What are transformative works? We scroll through some updates, some questions, and some history.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha. I'm all for stuff
I never told you production of iHeartRadio, and welcome to
another edition of Happy Hour. As always with these, if
you are choosing to drink or whatever you're choosing to do,
please do so responsibly. Samantha, are you up to anything?
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Bubblewater my good old bubble.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Water red wine also a classic, Yes, keeping it? Yes, Yes,
that is what we are doing today. I have to
say this episode, I did a lot more writing than
I normally do for a Happy Hour h And also,
(00:50):
I just want to say I'm not a lawyer. My
dad really wanted me to be one. He was one,
but that is not what the path like took me down. Okay, Yes,
So a couple of you wrote in about our fan
(01:11):
fiction and censorship episode and about a comment I made
about copyright, and so I wanted to clarify some things
when it comes to copyright and fan fiction. But I
do want to say copyright law is complicated and disputed.
(01:31):
So there's that, and yes, I am not a lawyer.
So if you, as I said at the end of
that of that episode, if you would like to learn
more about fan fiction and copyright, specifically from all angles
from the fan fiction author's perspective and from the original
creator's perspective. You can go to AO three. They have
(01:54):
a whole list of resources and a bunch of FAQ
so if you would like to do that, you can.
But very basically, I forget that people have not been
People don't know about what's going on with fan fiction,
and they haven't been in this world as long as
(02:15):
I have, which was two thousand that's when I first
started reading fan fiction. Plus I do have to go
through classes for work on copyright and related issues since
twenty ten, which I have to say, I actually think
I'm a bit more nervous than a lot of our
coworkers because remember when we were writing our book, Yeah,
(02:38):
and we had the illustration of Princess Leiah, and I
was the one that was like Disney's litigious, I don't
know that this is legit. I don't know that we
can do this, and everybody was like, ah, it's transformative,
which is what we're about to get into. So, yes,
fan fiction has been generally accepted as legal in the
(03:02):
United States and many other places for a while now.
As long as it is transformative, some people writing fan
fiction go out of their way to credit the original creators,
like they'll be like George Lucas did all this credit
to him. But most of the time, I feel like,
if you're there reading it, you already know who created it,
and that's not going to protect you in any legal way,
(03:24):
can't hurt. I'm not saying don't do it. I just
don't think in the scheme of things that that's really
making it a big change. Although I have to say
I have encountered a lot of younger readers especially who
are like, I've never interacted with this actual media. I've
only interacted with the fan fiction. Right. Did I find
(03:45):
really interesting that whole thing of like crediting the creators
was really big in the early two thousands, which I'll
get into more why in a second. But I do
still see it today. So judges can enter her transformative
in different ways. So I suppose in theory you can
argue that fan fiction isn't legal. I would actually add
(04:07):
non commercial in there. We do not make money off
of fan fiction. AO three has strict rules around not
making money off of fan fiction. Once the money starts
getting made, that's when companies step in. Although there are
playing a fan fiction based on copyrighted materials that got
made into books and movies after changing the names of
(04:28):
the characters Ray Lo or Kylo, ren and Ray is
a big one right now, Jermiine or Draco and Hermione
or Edward and Bella Samantha. Do they have a ship name?
I don't know it would it be bell Lord.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
I don't think there is a ship name. With the
fact that Rennette it may exist. Who is the like
the worst name? Ever, I don't think they did a ship.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
I could be wrong.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
I could be wrong because I'm not in beyond Gee.
I can't say I'm not into fan fiction because technically
Twilight is fan fiction as well as the fact that
I want read other things that she wrote that were
pertaining that felt like fan fiction of Twilight as well,
even though it was her whatever that is not I
know anyway, I don't know this answer to that.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
I've never heard it.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
They don't seem to have like a natural one. No, yes,
but kay Christina.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Is yeah, Christina might know as as saying rinesme.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Of course, of course, But more about all of that
at the end, we are talking about fan fiction today.
But this does relate to other things like drag shows, plays,
bands like if you go to I've been to a
lot of plays that are based on copyrighted material, things
like that. I believe we discussed this in our History
(05:48):
of fan fiction Episodes are or We also did a
history of AO three specifically, but the legality of fan
works has gone to court and one before AO three
as a whole legal team that tackles this and other things.
This was a big thing in the early two thousands
when everybody was like, George locus Osys, don't sue me.
And that's when people had more access to the internets,
(06:12):
and specifically Harry Potter. Fan fiction in particular was blowing up.
And we'll get We'll talk more about that in a
second too, But I am getting ahead of myself from
AO three. Quote copyright protects an individual's expression of an idea,
not the idea itself. Expression refers to the work created,
such as the wording of a paragraph in a book,
(06:33):
while an idea covers general plots or tropes. For example,
posting a transcript of a movie without permission constitute copyright
infringement as it replicates a significant part of the original work.
The spoken dialogue exactly in comparison, a transformative fan work
reframes existing material in a unique manner, such as retelling
a superhero movie from the perspective of civilians. The Supreme
(06:57):
Court of the United States has explained transformative youth as
quote adding something new with a further purpose or different character,
altering the first work with new expression, meaning, or message.
Essentially by significantly reinterpreting the original material, the creator of
a transformative work makes a new, distinct creation that does
(07:17):
not require the copyright owners permission to create or share.
There are some more specific rules around how much direct
dialogue our content you can pull. Again. AO three has
more on that, if you're interested. I actually learned a
lot more about fan fiction researching this, because I've never
done one that had a lot of dialogue directly in it,
(07:41):
and I didn't know there were specific rules around that.
It also has to be fiction, it can't be nonfiction.
In the early two thousands, there were a few lawsuits
around things like fan produced encyclopedias and cookbooks, but again,
they were making money and they were not necessar saily transformative.
(08:01):
I think some of them won their lawsuits, though, are
the lawsuits were dropped because I definitely have a Harry
Potter fan encyclopedia. That was they were sued, do we
have a cookbook? I have a cookbook?
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Yes, I was thinking on our Supernatural cookbook.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
Yeah. I'm not as clear on that, but I just
remember this coming up because this was at the early
two thousands. As I said, Harry Potter fan fiction was
really big. So JK. Rowling, she must not be named,
she started to like she was going back and forth
(08:37):
about what she thought about fan works and fan fiction,
and she sued a couple of entities, but I think
they all got dropped because she decided it wasn't worth it,
which we're also going to talk about a second. But yeah,
that's definitely allowed now. Although I again, because we were
talking to our coworker Holly about this, you know, like
Disney's not going to let you make a Star Wars
(09:01):
cocktail book without their permission, right, Yeah, So I'm not
as clear on whatever's going on there, but it was
involved in this whole conversation. One of the things that
comes up a lot in this conversation too, is that
targeting non commercial fan fiction wasn't a good look, especially
(09:23):
within fantoms. So yes, corporations largely gave in, and creators
have different views on fan fiction, and that is completely
their prerogative. Another thing we're not going to go to
(09:48):
in depth here, but I do think is related is
fair use. So fair use is this idea that you
can use clips of things or samples of music as
long long as you're commenting on it directly. We have
to know a lot about this for our job, but
the fun thing is it's the wild world of bust.
(10:08):
Nobody knows, and it's not actually a legal protection. It's
more of an understanding. And we've been told by our
lawyers to like, if you can, just don't do it.
But there are some shows that are music based and
they're like, what are we supposed to do?
Speaker 4 (10:27):
Right?
Speaker 1 (10:27):
Also, yeah, yes, yes, this is also different than plagiarism,
which is all other can of worms, But that kind
of comes into this conversation sometimes as well. I generally
don't see most people what I read is very different
(10:51):
than the original material. It's not like they're just took
the script and maybe put like one different thing. It's
very different. Oh, and I would argue most big franchises
and a lot more are sanctioned fan fiction I think
they're fan fiction, but that's for another day. And we
(11:11):
had a whole list of them in our history of
fan fiction episodes. So actually, I would say our upcoming
feminist movie, Friday Aliens, is a recursive fan fiction. I'll
talk about that more in that. Oh yeah, when something
(11:31):
enters the public domain, here's another thing. People can make
transformative works off off of that that can also make
money without potentially ending up in a lawsuit like you
might if it wasn't in the public domain. You might
have seen those kind of wild Winnie the Pooh horror movies,
or you probably haven't, but I have.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
I have not.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
No, you didn't know about this. It's called the pouniverse.
Oh my gosh. I'm gonna tell you all about this later.
I tell you all about this. So you have to
be careful about which edition you use when it comes
to public domain, because some editions aren't public domain, even
(12:14):
if it's the same material. This is something Samantha and
I also have to be very cautious about at our job,
and this is why we were able to read a
certain edition of Frankenstein's Monster Frankenstein, but we had to
choose which one A three has rules about using works
in public domain too. It still has to be a
(12:35):
fan work. You can't just post the whole thing without
changing anything, which I'm not sure why you'd want to,
but they have rules about not doing that. However, plenty
of fan fiction not based off the public domain have
made a ton of money. And more on that in
a second. So I think this is what got people
(12:57):
riled up when I said I owe my fan I
obviously do not own the characters or universe of Star Wars.
What that means is that the platform hosting it, AO three,
is relinquishing ownership to me because they are not legally
going to intervene on my behalf. If someone takes my
fan fiction word for word without permission or credit and
(13:21):
puts it on another platform, that's pretty much up to
me to resolve if that happens to me through platform
mechanisms and is an uphill battle. Unless the person who
stole it, who posted it word for word without my permission,
if they start making money off of it, that's a
(13:42):
whole other can of worms. That's a mess. But AO
three does not have a process for this. And also,
if you do make it big with your fanficy, you
own it, not AO three, So you get your fifty
shades of gray money. And people can and do make
fan fiction of fan fiction. Sometimes I write the ending
(14:05):
to abandon fan fiction. I lost one the other day.
It was so sad. I've never posted these, but I
write them.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
For like Cathartic, you need to need closure.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
Yeah, yeah, it's considered polite to get permission from the
original author for that if you can find them. But
it's not necessary for recursive fan fiction. So recursive fan
fiction is a sequel, the prequel like, not a rewrite,
not coming from the direct source material. You're you're doing
(14:38):
something else. And obviously not everyone obeys these rules. Some
fan fiction's inspired whole fan fiction universes of their own,
and we have all read the one that started all.
Some of them have acronyms, and I'm like, what does
this mean? And I go down this whole rabbit hole.
But those are still transformative, not word for word. There
(15:00):
are translations to which you're also supposed to ask permission for.
So when I was talking about this, I was talking
about how somebody asked me to make a podfic of
my work, which that is a derivative work that means
they're just like literally taking something I did and then
doing something else with what I did. That's different than
(15:20):
recursive work. So they're supposed to ask for permission. Some
authors will do something they call blanket permission, which they'll
just say at the top, I give blanket permission. Sometimes
they'll say like, please just credit me, or please just
do this right again. Not everybody follows those rules, but
(15:40):
people will do that too. I find it's interesting because
there's a whole category of fan fiction called react to.
I guess fix it could fall into that as well,
but react to fan fictions are like, I don't know,
the characters go in the past and they watch the
movie or something, and they are like, how could this happen?
(16:02):
We have to fix this, so that requires a lot
of kind of direct pulling from the source material. AO
three had a whole section on that and how to
do that and not get in trouble, And they had
a whole section on fanvids, which is also we're largely
talking about fan fiction written fan fiction right now, but
(16:24):
a lot more things are impacted by this then than
just that, and fanvids is one. But yes, I do
find it ironic when people get mad about people writing
fan fiction up their work when their work was originally
fan fiction. I think that's different than word for word
copy and representing it as your own. I do I
(16:46):
feel bad personally if I don't credit somebody for an
inspiring an idea that I had in one chapter of
a thirty chapter work, which did.
Speaker 4 (16:55):
Happen, and I still feel bad about it.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
But yeah, as I've been mentioning, there are fan fictions
that were made demonstrably, provably from copyrighted characters in fan
fiction that are very popular franchises, movies, books, what have you.
(17:31):
The most famous example, I think is Twilight fifty Shades
of Gray, as we talked about in our Twilight episodes.
The author has said it came to her in a dream,
but most of us are pretty sure. But well, most
of us who were like around in the fan fiction
(17:52):
days are pretty sure it was a fan fiction. But
sheet and this is the thing. Once you get big,
a lot of people delete their fan fiction, either because
they don't want people to know it was a fan fiction,
or maybe it's this whole copyright thing. Maybe they're worried.
I don't know. I'm kind of confused about it though,
(18:13):
because some of them are way more obvious now. Anyway,
Fifty Shades of Gray was definitely in interviews, has been
proven was a fan fiction of Twilight. So Twilight is
thought to be a Draco Hermione and then fifty Shades
(18:35):
of Gray as Bella and Edward. So just changed the
character names and you put them in different situations. They
were transformative, they were different. Love hypothesis. I haven't read
or seen, but it's a ray Loo. It's kyler N
and Ray from Star Wars, and it's clear it's about them,
(18:57):
just based on the cover. It looks like the actors.
It is a fan art that is on the cover,
and I think it even says from Watpad like people
are like I said, pan fiction has got more mainstream. No, hey,
people love it. It's getting made into a movie, and yeah,
(19:19):
they make so much money. I guess. I went back
and forth when I was thinking about this, and I
was like, well, kind of if it's non commercial, and
I was like, but there's been plenty of commercial examples
in its copyrighted characters they're working off of. So I
just think I do think, like when if I'm looking
(19:41):
at Twilight and thinking about Harry Potter. I think it's transformative.
I think it's different. That's a different thing, even if
it started from that place, right, I think it's a
different thing. There are also compelling arguments for older historical
examples too, like Lord of the Flies and Call of
the Wild, which took very specifically from certain other works
(20:06):
at a time, and I think Call the Wild got
wrapped up in a whole legal battle about it again
see here fan Fiction episodes. We talked about that more
in there. We also talked about this in those episodes.
But generally the historical attitude has been that when men
write fan fiction, it's legit and definitely not fan fiction,
but when women do it, it's trash and illegal and
(20:27):
she can't come up with a single idea of her own.
So there's that. And there are more examples of fan
fiction in your media than you think. And sometimes creators
take inspiration from fan fiction. So Star Trek three, for example,
was inspired by a fan poem, and some big creators
throughout time have written fan fiction themselves, which I always
(20:51):
interested to hear. Some of the big ones right now
are RPF, which is real person fiction. So like Harry
Styles one direct a lot of like, if he looked
up what current movies are based on fan fiction or whatever,
A lot of them are Harry styles one direction fan fiction.
(21:12):
And I'm not as confident in knowing copyright and.
Speaker 5 (21:17):
That, but.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
I do. I believe it's probably legal. I'm just not
as well versed in like the copyright of a person,
you know what I mean, right. Also, I learned through
this that My Immortal, which is one of the most
notoriously poorly written fan fictions of all time, has a
(21:41):
Wikipedia page and a couple of books written about it.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
I've heard this title. I mean, it's definitely a song too, but.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
Yes, and it's by Evans and she's been interviewed about
it and she had to read it because she's like
I kept getting asked about this.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
So it was it was written before she's her song
became popular.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
I think so because it was an early it was
the early days of Harry Potter fan fiction. I can't
remember when My Immortal got blew up.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
My high school days, so.
Speaker 5 (22:15):
Oh well, at the same time as yeah, Hay Potter,
I think it was. I read it just for just
for research purposes. There's a lot of back and forth
about who wrote it. There's a lot of controversy about
who wrote it, because some people have come forward and
said it was me. Yeah, but it's and there's been
(22:40):
podcasts where people just read that and I'm not sure.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
I guess if you're.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
Coming, can you do a reading on it?
Speaker 5 (22:48):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (22:48):
No, you wouldn't believe. It's wild about the It's like
my chemical romance comes to Hogwarts and she's kids Hogwarts.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
Okay, cool?
Speaker 1 (23:00):
Yeah. One other thing I jokingly said, I don't even
know how people find straight fan fiction because it's such
a queer space. But there are huge ships that are straight.
I just find that overall even those even those might
be less than straight, like thereby or they have a
(23:23):
lot more gay ships in them than the source material.
So like if even if one of them, if the
main one is straight, there's a bunch of other gay
couples in there. Just overall, there are a lot more
gay relationships than mainstream media. And I am not in
those straight spaces. They are always secondary couples for me,
(23:43):
So to me, I'm like, what Okay. So, as I
discussed in the episode about fan fiction and censorship, there
are some proposed loss that could impact all of this.
We even talked about some of the copyright laws being
proposed that could impact all of this, and that's what
(24:04):
I was talking about at the end when I said
that AO three has a lot of source material explaining
what's going on and monitoring what's going on, and not
the copyright of fan fiction authors, because as I said,
that was all news to me, because they do think
that fan fiction authors should have copyright. I never imagined
(24:27):
ever that I'd own anything in my fan fiction, and
I imagine most people are the same. I think most
people probably don't even think about it. But this is
the general situation as of now. I know it's messy.
Please go see AO three for more. Literally everything I
mentioned here has more specific rules and they outline them,
(24:51):
and I did. I did learn a lot. And if
the whole transformative protection thing goes away one day, which
is possible, it's going to impact a lot more th fiction.
That is not the only thing that will be hurt
by it. So all right, Ope, I didn't make a bigger,
confusing mess out of this, but that is what I
(25:12):
have to say for now. Yes, thank you, thank you.
If you would like to write into us, you can
and our emails Hello at stuff Onever Told You dot com.
You can find us on Blue skyte moll Stuff podcasts
are on Instagram and TikTok at Stuff One Never Told
You for us on YouTube. We have some merchandise at
Cotton Bureau and we have a book you can get
(25:32):
wherever you get your books. Thanks is always too our
super roduced Christina and exective producer My and your contributor Joey.
Thank you and thanks to you for listening Stuff I
Never Told You inspection of my Heart Radio. For more
podcasts from my Heart Radio, you can check out the
heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or you listen to your
favorite shows
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha. I'm all for stuff
I never told you production of iHeartRadio, and welcome to
another edition of Happy Hour. As always with these, if
you are choosing to drink or whatever you're choosing to do,
please do so responsibly. Samantha, are you up to anything?
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Bubblewater my good old bubble.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Water red wine also a classic, Yes, keeping it? Yes, Yes,
that is what we are doing today. I have to
say this episode, I did a lot more writing than
I normally do for a Happy Hour h And also,
(00:50):
I just want to say I'm not a lawyer. My
dad really wanted me to be one. He was one,
but that is not what the path like took me down. Okay, Yes,
So a couple of you wrote in about our fan
(01:11):
fiction and censorship episode and about a comment I made
about copyright, and so I wanted to clarify some things
when it comes to copyright and fan fiction. But I
do want to say copyright law is complicated and disputed.
(01:31):
So there's that, and yes, I am not a lawyer.
So if you, as I said at the end of
that of that episode, if you would like to learn
more about fan fiction and copyright, specifically from all angles
from the fan fiction author's perspective and from the original
creator's perspective. You can go to AO three. They have
(01:54):
a whole list of resources and a bunch of FAQ
so if you would like to do that, you can.
But very basically, I forget that people have not been
People don't know about what's going on with fan fiction,
and they haven't been in this world as long as
(02:15):
I have, which was two thousand that's when I first
started reading fan fiction. Plus I do have to go
through classes for work on copyright and related issues since
twenty ten, which I have to say, I actually think
I'm a bit more nervous than a lot of our
coworkers because remember when we were writing our book, Yeah,
(02:38):
and we had the illustration of Princess Leiah, and I
was the one that was like Disney's litigious, I don't
know that this is legit. I don't know that we
can do this, and everybody was like, ah, it's transformative,
which is what we're about to get into. So, yes,
fan fiction has been generally accepted as legal in the
(03:02):
United States and many other places for a while now.
As long as it is transformative, some people writing fan
fiction go out of their way to credit the original creators,
like they'll be like George Lucas did all this credit
to him. But most of the time, I feel like,
if you're there reading it, you already know who created it,
and that's not going to protect you in any legal way,
(03:24):
can't hurt. I'm not saying don't do it. I just
don't think in the scheme of things that that's really
making it a big change. Although I have to say
I have encountered a lot of younger readers especially who
are like, I've never interacted with this actual media. I've
only interacted with the fan fiction. Right. Did I find
(03:45):
really interesting that whole thing of like crediting the creators
was really big in the early two thousands, which I'll
get into more why in a second. But I do
still see it today. So judges can enter her transformative
in different ways. So I suppose in theory you can
argue that fan fiction isn't legal. I would actually add
(04:07):
non commercial in there. We do not make money off
of fan fiction. AO three has strict rules around not
making money off of fan fiction. Once the money starts
getting made, that's when companies step in. Although there are
playing a fan fiction based on copyrighted materials that got
made into books and movies after changing the names of
(04:28):
the characters Ray Lo or Kylo, ren and Ray is
a big one right now, Jermiine or Draco and Hermione
or Edward and Bella Samantha. Do they have a ship name?
I don't know it would it be bell Lord.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
I don't think there is a ship name. With the
fact that Rennette it may exist. Who is the like
the worst name? Ever, I don't think they did a ship.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
I could be wrong.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
I could be wrong because I'm not in beyond Gee.
I can't say I'm not into fan fiction because technically
Twilight is fan fiction as well as the fact that
I want read other things that she wrote that were
pertaining that felt like fan fiction of Twilight as well,
even though it was her whatever that is not I
know anyway, I don't know this answer to that.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
I've never heard it.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
They don't seem to have like a natural one. No, yes,
but kay Christina.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Is yeah, Christina might know as as saying rinesme.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Of course, of course, But more about all of that
at the end, we are talking about fan fiction today.
But this does relate to other things like drag shows, plays,
bands like if you go to I've been to a
lot of plays that are based on copyrighted material, things
like that. I believe we discussed this in our History
(05:48):
of fan fiction Episodes are or We also did a
history of AO three specifically, but the legality of fan
works has gone to court and one before AO three
as a whole legal team that tackles this and other things.
This was a big thing in the early two thousands
when everybody was like, George locus Osys, don't sue me.
And that's when people had more access to the internets,
(06:12):
and specifically Harry Potter. Fan fiction in particular was blowing up.
And we'll get We'll talk more about that in a
second too, But I am getting ahead of myself from
AO three. Quote copyright protects an individual's expression of an idea,
not the idea itself. Expression refers to the work created,
such as the wording of a paragraph in a book,
(06:33):
while an idea covers general plots or tropes. For example,
posting a transcript of a movie without permission constitute copyright
infringement as it replicates a significant part of the original work.
The spoken dialogue exactly in comparison, a transformative fan work
reframes existing material in a unique manner, such as retelling
a superhero movie from the perspective of civilians. The Supreme
(06:57):
Court of the United States has explained transformative youth as
quote adding something new with a further purpose or different character,
altering the first work with new expression, meaning, or message.
Essentially by significantly reinterpreting the original material, the creator of
a transformative work makes a new, distinct creation that does
(07:17):
not require the copyright owners permission to create or share.
There are some more specific rules around how much direct
dialogue our content you can pull. Again. AO three has
more on that, if you're interested. I actually learned a
lot more about fan fiction researching this, because I've never
done one that had a lot of dialogue directly in it,
(07:41):
and I didn't know there were specific rules around that.
It also has to be fiction, it can't be nonfiction.
In the early two thousands, there were a few lawsuits
around things like fan produced encyclopedias and cookbooks, but again,
they were making money and they were not necessar saily transformative.
(08:01):
I think some of them won their lawsuits, though, are
the lawsuits were dropped because I definitely have a Harry
Potter fan encyclopedia. That was they were sued, do we
have a cookbook? I have a cookbook?
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Yes, I was thinking on our Supernatural cookbook.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
Yeah. I'm not as clear on that, but I just
remember this coming up because this was at the early
two thousands. As I said, Harry Potter fan fiction was
really big. So JK. Rowling, she must not be named,
she started to like she was going back and forth
(08:37):
about what she thought about fan works and fan fiction,
and she sued a couple of entities, but I think
they all got dropped because she decided it wasn't worth it,
which we're also going to talk about a second. But yeah,
that's definitely allowed now. Although I again, because we were
talking to our coworker Holly about this, you know, like
Disney's not going to let you make a Star Wars
(09:01):
cocktail book without their permission, right, Yeah, So I'm not
as clear on whatever's going on there, but it was
involved in this whole conversation. One of the things that
comes up a lot in this conversation too, is that
targeting non commercial fan fiction wasn't a good look, especially
(09:23):
within fantoms. So yes, corporations largely gave in, and creators
have different views on fan fiction, and that is completely
their prerogative. Another thing we're not going to go to
(09:48):
in depth here, but I do think is related is
fair use. So fair use is this idea that you
can use clips of things or samples of music as
long long as you're commenting on it directly. We have
to know a lot about this for our job, but
the fun thing is it's the wild world of bust.
(10:08):
Nobody knows, and it's not actually a legal protection. It's
more of an understanding. And we've been told by our
lawyers to like, if you can, just don't do it.
But there are some shows that are music based and
they're like, what are we supposed to do?
Speaker 4 (10:27):
Right?
Speaker 1 (10:27):
Also, yeah, yes, yes, this is also different than plagiarism,
which is all other can of worms, But that kind
of comes into this conversation sometimes as well. I generally
don't see most people what I read is very different
(10:51):
than the original material. It's not like they're just took
the script and maybe put like one different thing. It's
very different. Oh, and I would argue most big franchises
and a lot more are sanctioned fan fiction I think
they're fan fiction, but that's for another day. And we
(11:11):
had a whole list of them in our history of
fan fiction episodes. So actually, I would say our upcoming
feminist movie, Friday Aliens, is a recursive fan fiction. I'll
talk about that more in that. Oh yeah, when something
(11:31):
enters the public domain, here's another thing. People can make
transformative works off off of that that can also make
money without potentially ending up in a lawsuit like you
might if it wasn't in the public domain. You might
have seen those kind of wild Winnie the Pooh horror movies,
or you probably haven't, but I have.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
I have not.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
No, you didn't know about this. It's called the pouniverse.
Oh my gosh. I'm gonna tell you all about this later.
I tell you all about this. So you have to
be careful about which edition you use when it comes
to public domain, because some editions aren't public domain, even
(12:14):
if it's the same material. This is something Samantha and
I also have to be very cautious about at our job,
and this is why we were able to read a
certain edition of Frankenstein's Monster Frankenstein, but we had to
choose which one A three has rules about using works
in public domain too. It still has to be a
(12:35):
fan work. You can't just post the whole thing without
changing anything, which I'm not sure why you'd want to,
but they have rules about not doing that. However, plenty
of fan fiction not based off the public domain have
made a ton of money. And more on that in
a second. So I think this is what got people
(12:57):
riled up when I said I owe my fan I
obviously do not own the characters or universe of Star Wars.
What that means is that the platform hosting it, AO three,
is relinquishing ownership to me because they are not legally
going to intervene on my behalf. If someone takes my
fan fiction word for word without permission or credit and
(13:21):
puts it on another platform, that's pretty much up to
me to resolve if that happens to me through platform
mechanisms and is an uphill battle. Unless the person who
stole it, who posted it word for word without my permission,
if they start making money off of it, that's a
(13:42):
whole other can of worms. That's a mess. But AO
three does not have a process for this. And also,
if you do make it big with your fanficy, you
own it, not AO three, So you get your fifty
shades of gray money. And people can and do make
fan fiction of fan fiction. Sometimes I write the ending
(14:05):
to abandon fan fiction. I lost one the other day.
It was so sad. I've never posted these, but I
write them.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
For like Cathartic, you need to need closure.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
Yeah, yeah, it's considered polite to get permission from the
original author for that if you can find them. But
it's not necessary for recursive fan fiction. So recursive fan
fiction is a sequel, the prequel like, not a rewrite,
not coming from the direct source material. You're you're doing
(14:38):
something else. And obviously not everyone obeys these rules. Some
fan fiction's inspired whole fan fiction universes of their own,
and we have all read the one that started all.
Some of them have acronyms, and I'm like, what does
this mean? And I go down this whole rabbit hole.
But those are still transformative, not word for word. There
(15:00):
are translations to which you're also supposed to ask permission for.
So when I was talking about this, I was talking
about how somebody asked me to make a podfic of
my work, which that is a derivative work that means
they're just like literally taking something I did and then
doing something else with what I did. That's different than
(15:20):
recursive work. So they're supposed to ask for permission. Some
authors will do something they call blanket permission, which they'll
just say at the top, I give blanket permission. Sometimes
they'll say like, please just credit me, or please just
do this right again. Not everybody follows those rules, but
(15:40):
people will do that too. I find it's interesting because
there's a whole category of fan fiction called react to.
I guess fix it could fall into that as well,
but react to fan fictions are like, I don't know,
the characters go in the past and they watch the
movie or something, and they are like, how could this happen?
(16:02):
We have to fix this, so that requires a lot
of kind of direct pulling from the source material. AO
three had a whole section on that and how to
do that and not get in trouble, And they had
a whole section on fanvids, which is also we're largely
talking about fan fiction written fan fiction right now, but
(16:24):
a lot more things are impacted by this then than
just that, and fanvids is one. But yes, I do
find it ironic when people get mad about people writing
fan fiction up their work when their work was originally
fan fiction. I think that's different than word for word
copy and representing it as your own. I do I
(16:46):
feel bad personally if I don't credit somebody for an
inspiring an idea that I had in one chapter of
a thirty chapter work, which did.
Speaker 4 (16:55):
Happen, and I still feel bad about it.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
But yeah, as I've been mentioning, there are fan fictions
that were made demonstrably, provably from copyrighted characters in fan
fiction that are very popular franchises, movies, books, what have you.
(17:31):
The most famous example, I think is Twilight fifty Shades
of Gray, as we talked about in our Twilight episodes.
The author has said it came to her in a dream,
but most of us are pretty sure. But well, most
of us who were like around in the fan fiction
(17:52):
days are pretty sure it was a fan fiction. But
sheet and this is the thing. Once you get big,
a lot of people delete their fan fiction, either because
they don't want people to know it was a fan fiction,
or maybe it's this whole copyright thing. Maybe they're worried.
I don't know. I'm kind of confused about it though,
(18:13):
because some of them are way more obvious now. Anyway,
Fifty Shades of Gray was definitely in interviews, has been
proven was a fan fiction of Twilight. So Twilight is
thought to be a Draco Hermione and then fifty Shades
(18:35):
of Gray as Bella and Edward. So just changed the
character names and you put them in different situations. They
were transformative, they were different. Love hypothesis. I haven't read
or seen, but it's a ray Loo. It's kyler N
and Ray from Star Wars, and it's clear it's about them,
(18:57):
just based on the cover. It looks like the actors.
It is a fan art that is on the cover,
and I think it even says from Watpad like people
are like I said, pan fiction has got more mainstream. No, hey,
people love it. It's getting made into a movie, and yeah,
(19:19):
they make so much money. I guess. I went back
and forth when I was thinking about this, and I
was like, well, kind of if it's non commercial, and
I was like, but there's been plenty of commercial examples
in its copyrighted characters they're working off of. So I
just think I do think, like when if I'm looking
(19:41):
at Twilight and thinking about Harry Potter. I think it's transformative.
I think it's different. That's a different thing, even if
it started from that place, right, I think it's a
different thing. There are also compelling arguments for older historical
examples too, like Lord of the Flies and Call of
the Wild, which took very specifically from certain other works
(20:06):
at a time, and I think Call the Wild got
wrapped up in a whole legal battle about it again
see here fan Fiction episodes. We talked about that more
in there. We also talked about this in those episodes.
But generally the historical attitude has been that when men
write fan fiction, it's legit and definitely not fan fiction,
but when women do it, it's trash and illegal and
(20:27):
she can't come up with a single idea of her own.
So there's that. And there are more examples of fan
fiction in your media than you think. And sometimes creators
take inspiration from fan fiction. So Star Trek three, for example,
was inspired by a fan poem, and some big creators
throughout time have written fan fiction themselves, which I always
(20:51):
interested to hear. Some of the big ones right now
are RPF, which is real person fiction. So like Harry
Styles one direct a lot of like, if he looked
up what current movies are based on fan fiction or whatever,
A lot of them are Harry styles one direction fan fiction.
(21:12):
And I'm not as confident in knowing copyright and.
Speaker 5 (21:17):
That, but.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
I do. I believe it's probably legal. I'm just not
as well versed in like the copyright of a person,
you know what I mean, right. Also, I learned through
this that My Immortal, which is one of the most
notoriously poorly written fan fictions of all time, has a
(21:41):
Wikipedia page and a couple of books written about it.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
I've heard this title. I mean, it's definitely a song too, but.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
Yes, and it's by Evans and she's been interviewed about
it and she had to read it because she's like
I kept getting asked about this.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
So it was it was written before she's her song
became popular.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
I think so because it was an early it was
the early days of Harry Potter fan fiction. I can't
remember when My Immortal got blew up.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
My high school days, so.
Speaker 5 (22:15):
Oh well, at the same time as yeah, Hay Potter,
I think it was. I read it just for just
for research purposes. There's a lot of back and forth
about who wrote it. There's a lot of controversy about
who wrote it, because some people have come forward and
said it was me. Yeah, but it's and there's been
(22:40):
podcasts where people just read that and I'm not sure.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
I guess if you're.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
Coming, can you do a reading on it?
Speaker 5 (22:48):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (22:48):
No, you wouldn't believe. It's wild about the It's like
my chemical romance comes to Hogwarts and she's kids Hogwarts.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
Okay, cool?
Speaker 1 (23:00):
Yeah. One other thing I jokingly said, I don't even
know how people find straight fan fiction because it's such
a queer space. But there are huge ships that are straight.
I just find that overall even those even those might
be less than straight, like thereby or they have a
(23:23):
lot more gay ships in them than the source material.
So like if even if one of them, if the
main one is straight, there's a bunch of other gay
couples in there. Just overall, there are a lot more
gay relationships than mainstream media. And I am not in
those straight spaces. They are always secondary couples for me,
(23:43):
So to me, I'm like, what Okay. So, as I
discussed in the episode about fan fiction and censorship, there
are some proposed loss that could impact all of this.
We even talked about some of the copyright laws being
proposed that could impact all of this, and that's what
(24:04):
I was talking about at the end when I said
that AO three has a lot of source material explaining
what's going on and monitoring what's going on, and not
the copyright of fan fiction authors, because as I said,
that was all news to me, because they do think
that fan fiction authors should have copyright. I never imagined
(24:27):
ever that I'd own anything in my fan fiction, and
I imagine most people are the same. I think most
people probably don't even think about it. But this is
the general situation as of now. I know it's messy.
Please go see AO three for more. Literally everything I
mentioned here has more specific rules and they outline them,
(24:51):
and I did. I did learn a lot. And if
the whole transformative protection thing goes away one day, which
is possible, it's going to impact a lot more th fiction.
That is not the only thing that will be hurt
by it. So all right, Ope, I didn't make a bigger,
confusing mess out of this, but that is what I
(25:12):
have to say for now. Yes, thank you, thank you.
If you would like to write into us, you can
and our emails Hello at stuff Onever Told You dot com.
You can find us on Blue skyte moll Stuff podcasts
are on Instagram and TikTok at Stuff One Never Told
You for us on YouTube. We have some merchandise at
Cotton Bureau and we have a book you can get
(25:32):
wherever you get your books. Thanks is always too our
super roduced Christina and exective producer My and your contributor Joey.
Thank you and thanks to you for listening Stuff I
Never Told You inspection of my Heart Radio. For more
podcasts from my Heart Radio, you can check out the
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