fandomFilter

March 2, 2020 1:04 PM

A couple years ago, I wrote a fanfic with very specific details and themes. In a few days, a book will be published that has a striking number of them. I did not write the book. What should I do?

It's a non-vanity, serious, real-world, respected publisher in the genre. The author has already been a finalist for some fairly prestigious genre awards, although this appears to be their first published novel. They are continuing to write and have a significant presence on the Internet. They are also, from what I can tell, fairly open about having been in fandom. My fic was posted to AO3, and promotional materials for the book joke about what the book's AO3 tags would be.

It's clearly not plagiarism. In some ways, it would be easier if it were. From I can tell from the extended preview, the book doesn't lift verbiage. However, there are a lot of very specific details, themes, and concepts, so many that if I ran into it on AO3, I'd recognize that part of it was the trope, but would also conclude that this person remixed my fic for their own purposes and then didn't acknowledge me, probably because they wrote the fic out of irritation over mine.

Then I'd move on, because I've been in fandom for decades. In fact, that exact scenario has happened to me. Each time, I've just moved on.

But this feels different, because the person is getting paid. Plus the book has a bunch of blurbs (including from authors that I really admire and like and follow on Twitter, which is how I ran into the book in the first place) talking about how great the book is. I think some of them even talk about how original the book is, but to be honest, I've haven't gone back to look because even after sitting with the knowledge for a few weeks, I'm still mad and upset.

Am I right to be upset? What should I do? Part of me wants to compile a thorough list and reach out to the author, and then reach out to the publisher/post about it to fandom spaces if I don't get a satisfactory response. I spent years of my life writing that fic! But that would involve going through the book carefully. I already did that with the extended preview available on Amazon and thinking about doing it for the whole book makes me upset. I don't have any fandom friends who have the time to read my long, 100,000+ word fic plus a full-blown novel. Plus, given the author's online persona, I'm pretty sure they'd deny everything and be very offended/set their fans on me. And I don't want any money or to stop publication, even if that were appropriate. The most I'd ever want is an acknowledgement in a tweet or a tumblr post, but I have no idea if that's even plausible.

I'm just mad, I guess, and not sure what to do. Throwaway e-mail: [e-mail]

posted by anonymous to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (12 answers total)

I sympathise a lot with you, and I think your irritation is totally understandable, but I think it might be useful for you to sit down and really work through various scenarios of what you want out of this.

I know you answered this a bit in your question here, but I mean, really imagine various possibilities in detail. What would it feel like to you if they'd read your fic and gotten a bunch of ideas from it? How might that work? Would you end up feeling happy and vindicated, or worse? How about if they publicly acknowledged that they'd gotten ideas from your work? How about if they gave you money? What if you reached out to them and they denied it entirely, or denounced you publicly as a liar?

I'm not saying any of these outcomes are "wrong" per se. It's just that some are a lot more likely than others to be achieved[*], and as an outsider I'm not entirely sure any of them would make you feel good about this situation. I suspect that what you really want is the book not to have been written at all, but the time for that is past. Given that, I think sitting down and thinking about what kind of resolution would make you feel better might not only lend you some clarity about your feelings, but also help you process them.

And if you need more processing beyond that, you might even consider writing about them in a new piece of fic! That will serve the dual purpose of processing your situation and also reaching some of the audience you kind of want to reach (i.e., the ones who read your original fic).

Good luck. On the plus side, think about it this way: imitation is the highest form of compliment. Your fic must have been really good to have served as such an inspiration for this person.

[*] Realistically, I'm not sure any of them is likely -- even if the author is a kind person and wants to admit it, they'd probably be scared to (in any form, even a private email) lest you sue them or raise a public fuss. Depending on the specificity of the match, it's also possible that they didn't get the ideas from you or don't recall doing so.
posted by forza at 2:42 PM on March 2, 2020 [1 favorite]

I am burning with curiosity now! It’s transformative fiction and this is an etiquette question because of that. They accessed the same source material and yours, and in fandom remixes are allowed. Plenty of authors hate them and ask for others not to write remixes of their stories or to work with the OCs or AU they’ve created but that’s a question of etiquette, not rights.

I say this as someone who has remixed without permission, knowing I was being rude, due to an argument with someone (years and years ago - I don’t think it’s even on my ao3).

Plagiarism is a whole other story.

Memail me the story and book and I’ll read it within a day or two and update.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 2:58 PM on March 2, 2020 [10 favorites]

I'm sorry! This sounds really upsetting. I unfortunately don't have any concrete advice, knowing nothing about fanfic/publishing/etc., but...

If you decide to do nothing about this, read up on multiple simultaneous discovery a little bit. It's the idea that many scientific discoveries, inventions, and other things are discovered (/invented/written....) at around the same time, completely separately, by different people. The example that jumps immediately to my mind is calculus, but there are many.

I'm not saying this is at all what happened to you. This person may well have directly lifted your ideas and passed them off as their own. But we can never tell you that, not knowing details, you can't necessarily prove it, even if you believe it to be true or even if it is true, and honestly even the publishing author might not really know that they took too many ideas from you, even if they did, if it was subconsciously and in the course of lots of reading and research. The subconscious is a crazy place!

I would think with the globalization of the world, the internet, and even the nature of fanfic, this multiple simultaneous "discovery" is just that much more prevalent or possible than it was back in the 17th century when both Newton and Leibniz invented calculus.

It might help you to re-frame it in your mind that you are the Alfred Russel Wallace to this author's Charles Darwin.
posted by sillysally at 3:22 PM on March 2, 2020 [6 favorites]

I don't think there's anything you can do except whisper Cassie Claire to yourself and let it go.
posted by betweenthebars at 4:02 PM on March 2, 2020 [23 favorites]

Really, I don't think there's much you can do. You can just sit on it, or you can make a funny comment publicly about how similar this new novel is, or you can accuse the writer of swiping your tropes and themes. Which of those gets you anything good?

You might want to rethink the situation, too: can you recast it as you got to do this work in the context of fandom, which is mostly supportive, has no deadlines (well, except for YT and the like), is full of enthusiasm and free support. This other person is profiting, yes, but it's not fun for them the way it is for you. They have to do a lot of work on the marketing and the marketing and the marketing, and the book tour, and signing copies, and doing social media, and and and...

Being a professional writer -- even one who maybe swiped some concepts from something they saw on AO3 once -- is actually really hard. The work is never actually finished, if you want to have a career doing it. Whereas fandom is for fun and creativity and you don't have to do anything if you don't want to, and you're not dependent on it to pay your rent or your insurance premiums.

So, maybe cut them some slack? They took something and worked on it and produced something worthy of publication (which is not to say yours wasn't), and in all likelihood it's been a hell of a lot more work than they originally expected, and not all of that was fun. Even if they get paid, they probably won't cover all the time they spent on the book.

I sometimes get cranky about this issue, too: I've written a lot of fanfic, and a fair amount of it is better than a fair amount of published work for which people get paid. But I chose to be in fandom, and work unpaid, and I know enough professionals to have some idea of how much I would dislike doing all the marketing and other work associated with it.

I dunno if that helps at all? I hope it does, because life is too short to get miserable about a perfect stranger's successes.
posted by suelac at 5:06 PM on March 2, 2020 [3 favorites]

Part of me wants to compile a thorough list and reach out to the author, and then reach out to the publisher/post about it to fandom spaces if I don't get a satisfactory response.

I think this would be a mistake, if you did this.
The most likely best-case scenario would be that the publisher and author would ignore you, and that you'd get some validation from a few online strangers being upset on your behalf and sending you supportive messages.
But it's also rather likely that this could blow up in your face in the worst way, especially if you write YA (I don't think you mentioned whether or not you do?) as the online writing/reading world seems to thrive on drama, and you really, really don't want to be the focus of online writer-reader drama.
It won't matter whether you are in the right or not, you'll be portrayed as a pathetic sour grapes wannabe writer, and those who have an axe to grind about fan fiction will happily use you as a grindstone. Any hopes you might have of being published yourself will be damaged, and many readers will associate your name with negative drama.
As Forza said, take this as an opportunity to think very carefully about exactly what you want.
Is part of the reason you are hurting because you've told yourself that getting published is impossible, and here is some other person who used your ideas, and THEY are getting what you want to have? If so, that might be something to dig into. What is this really about? If you want people reading your stories, that is an achievable goal that's worth chasing.
(And lastly, I know it's meant well, but I dislike it when creative people are told to see it as a complement when others steal their work. It really isn't a complement. It's theft, like any other kind of theft. Having my work stolen by somebody is not validation and it feels like victim blaming and minimizing when people tell me it is.)
posted by Zumbador at 7:52 PM on March 2, 2020 [7 favorites]

Consider: if you're writing trope-heavy work from the same source, the odds of significant overlap are just crazy high. I don't think many people realize just how identical all that work looks from the distance of someone who is reading anything other than a diet of 100% trope-du-jour-in-fandom-du-jour. (Also, I have to say, I don't even consider it a remix, much less stealing, for someone to look at a general scenario in someone's fanfic and, say, hey, Sally-the-show-character would never act like that in that situation, here's what she'd do.) Legal concepts aren't necessarily all that useful in sorting out ethical issues in these cases, but it's worth considering that in a copyright infringement case, the judge is supposed to look at whether there's substantial similarity in the protectable (i.e., reflecting creativity/originality) elements. In fanfic, there are tropes, but in fiction viewed more broadly, there's plenty of what they call scenes a faire--which means, stock elements. The newspaper with the grumpy, jaded, cigar-chewing editor. The assembling of all the suspects in the room to deduce the murderer. The wise old hermit on the edge of the desert. I don't know who you are, so please don't take it as any sort of insult to your work when I say that most fanfic, no matter how long or detailed, is dominated by tropes and stock elements. Which doesn't mean it can't be pleasurable to read or to write, but it does mean that you get a lot of overlapping work even when the authors aren't reading each other's stories.

So, before getting upset, I would try to be realistic about how much of that dynamic was present here.
posted by praemunire at 8:59 PM on March 2, 2020 [10 favorites]

I genuinely believe we’re never as original as we think we are, creatively. I’m a visual artist and I have had it happen multiple times, where I’ve been working on a piece, privately, and at some point - sometimes even years later - someone else has had a near identical idea, special snowflake details and all. It may seem very unlikely for that to happen, but it does.

Here’s something else - maybe they did read your fic years ago. And many other fics in the same fandom. All while cooking up their own ideas at the same time, I’m sure. Sadly our memories are fantastically terrible, and maybe they remembered parts of your fic not as yours, but as theirs, genuinely and truly. No deceit involved.

If you feel the need to prove this to anyone but yourself, I think that’s going to be a long, hard battle that ultimately may not be worth fighting. Try to find solace in your ability to create the work in the first place, and maybe not as much as the work itself. You have talent, you can continue to make amazing things and write amazing stories if you choose. In those years you spent writing it, you likely learned a lot and grew as an artist - that’s much more important than the work itself. If it’s true that she intentionally swiped it, she’ll likely have to keep swiping in order to keep on creating good work people want.

Don’t get me wrong though - money is as fantastic a reward as growing as an artist. And if that’s what this is about too, monetizing your work takes a completely different set of skills, a lot of time and energy, and also just plain luck. If you’re looking to do that, I think your time and energy would be better well spent increasing those skills and odds instead of chasing this down.
posted by Squee at 10:54 PM on March 2, 2020 [10 favorites]

if it helps, I'm pretty sure I know what the book is from that description and if I'm right, and I think I am, it looks just awful. also the kind of thing that would get a good moral outrage campaign going, for reasonably good reasons, if not for the cutesy AO3 tags.

nothing is stopping you from saying in public spaces, anonymously or not "Hey wow this is so much like [your story], I bet people who like one would like the other!" not saying this is a good idea but if you don't make it a backhanded accusation of stealing, which it isn't, you could do that.
posted by queenofbithynia at 7:32 AM on March 3, 2020 [3 favorites]

However, there are a lot of very specific details, themes, and concepts, so many that if I ran into it on AO3, I'd recognize that part of it was the trope, but would also conclude that this person remixed my fic for their own purposes and then didn't acknowledge me, probably because they wrote the fic out of irritation over mine.

This is a really, really bizarre way of looking at it--imagining someone spite-writing a book to get back at you?!

I'm a mainstream published author. I have had this kind of feeling, more than once, about published books. Here's an incomplete list:

The first book I queried was a YA novel set at an American school of magicians. The main character's name was Bram Broadwater. I was telling someone about my book and they recommended a book by Lev Grossman called The Magicians which had come out that year. It was set at an American school of magicians. The main character's name was Quentin Coldwater.

Six months later, I was drafting another YA novel about a generation spaceship. I'd heard about an up and coming YA sci-fi novel called Across the Universe. The first chapter had been released as a promotional item; it was about a young girl going into cryostasis. I figured I was good. My book didn't have cryostasis in it and instead described a ship-in-a-bottle society that had been shaped in 500 years of isolation. I queried it, found an agent for it. When we were on submission, Across the Universe came out. All the chapters beyond the first described a ship-in-a-bottle generation ship society that had been shaped by hundreds of years of isolation. Crap. My agent told me not to worry about it and it sold anyway.

After my novel sold, I read another YA sci-fi book in advanced reader copy form. This book was also set on a generation ship. The love interest's name was Kieran Alden. My love interest's name was Koen Adler. I think I changed my character's last name, but for the life of me I can't remember what I changed it to.

My book came out, and I started working on the second book, set on a planet with hostile sentient alien plants. The sequel to Across the Universe came out, and the cliffhanger at the end was abundantly similar to the cliffhanger at the end of my first book. By this point, I was friendly with the author. I wrote her a panicked email. She assured me that the final book in her trilogy did not feature hostile sentient alien plants--but that she'd seriously considered going that route.

I've encountered other books that seem eerily similar to my own--or even just to ideas I've had. Right after I had a home birth, I considered writing a picture book emphasizing the normality of the process. I would have called it "This Ordinary Day." To my knowledge, I told no one about this. If I drafted anything, it was a line or two, in my head. Last year an acquaintance announced this picture book, with a near-identical title, featuring a plotline about home birth.

I've also been on the other end of this. Twice, I've started drafting books only to be told by acquaintances that they were too similar to books they were working on--the implication being that I was plagiarizing. One book was a YA paranormal romance novel about a merman, while a friend was working on a mermaid book. This was actually based on a merman book I started writing while I was twelve; I'd completely forgotten that my friend was writing a mermaid book. The other situation arose out of a conversation with an editor, who asked me to write a book about gargoyles. Other themes in common with a friend's book arose out of mutual and fairly common interests. Our book would have been very different, but the experience soured me on both the book and the friendship.

All this is my way of saying that this happens. Do you know about pareidolia? Humans are good at looking for patterns in what is really randomness. We see faces where there are really only shadows, and we're incredibly vulnerable to confirmation bias. We are also all surrounded by similar media, news, articles, and trends. Your fandom interests are not unique--that's what makes them a fandom! I understand that these things feel really personal to you, but they're likely more universal than you know. I promise you, this writer was not thinking of you when they chose to publish this book. They are not writing or tweeting at you.

And even if they were (and they're not), you can't copyright inspiration or ideas. That's why writing the thing, creating the thing, publishing the thing are what really matters in the end. If there was room in the YA market in 2013 for at least three fairly similar sci-fi novels about moody girls on generation spaceships, then there's room for both your fanfic and this book.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 8:27 AM on March 3, 2020 [19 favorites]

I’m also pretty sure I know which book you’re talking about. I read a review that said the plot feels derivative of some very common fanfic tropes and suggested that someone should run the book through some plagiarism filters! The review also said they were numerous fanfics that explored the same territory in a more interesting, more skillful way.

So you might take heart in knowing that even if the specific similarities with your fanfic aren’t recognized, the broad strokes of your experience and emotional response are being seen by at least one reviewer.
posted by overglow at 8:47 AM on March 3, 2020 [3 favorites]

I'm pretty sure I know the book as well, and have talked with friends who read ARCs. Every one of them said "this was well written and fun enough to read if you're into the tropes but also reminded me strongly of dozens of fanfics I have read." It didn't strike them as plagiarized per se, but definitely as generally derivative of the fanfic trope stew that everyone who comes out of fandom ends up floating in. (Kind of similarly with AO3 tags; I feel like in the past year or so that's suddenly how every published author I follow is marketing their books, if they come from fandom roots. It's just sort of in the air now, and I don't think you can extrapolate anything from it about this specific author's source material.)

Which is to say I don't think there's any way we - or even you at this point without seeing the actual book - can know whether this is a case of misuse of your specific material, or just of how creative overlap happens. If you want to pursue this anywhere, you (or someone you know who's less emotionally invested; hell, I'd cheerfully do it for you if you want to MeMail me) would really need to dig into a specific, detailed comparison of the full book and your full fic and maybe several other similar fics to prove that yours is so unique that it was clearly the reference point. Could be worth doing, but probably only if you're willing to then pursue some kind of (threatened or actual) legal action with the publisher. No author is going to casually tweet a "oh, by the way, I forgot to say this was heavily inspired by XYZ" without a million publisher lawyers looking over their shoulders.

If you do go that route, I would definitely not do it publicly online unless you're prepared to be the center of an online drama shitstorm; get a lawyer and handle it privately until/unless the time comes that you're getting stonewalled by the publisher and decide you have no other options but to engage online drama.

If you're not interested in going that route at all, I think your best bet is to try to sit back and disengage emotionally from this as much as you can, or funnel the emotion into whatever would bring you happiness - more writing for fun? Trying to monetize your writing? Taking a fun kickboxing class and really working out some of this stuff on a safe and well-padded target or two?

I'm sorry, I wish there were a better answer than "lawyer up or let it go," but I think those are the options here.
posted by Stacey at 10:49 AM on March 3, 2020 [4 favorites]