Continuations by people other than the original author/creator aren't worth getting worked up about.

[BobbyBrandt]

Rather than delete incomplete series, perhaps they could be moved to an archive, where they are still available to be read, and possibly continued by the author without having to make multiple resubmissions.

But in either scenario, delete or archive, how would it be determined if a series is complete or not? The distinction between separate chapters of a single stories and anthology type series is a not a simple matter. Many series are a hybrid, made up of stand alone stories that connect into one longer narrative.

As for the overall issue, my position is that no one else knows what happens to my characters, so anything written as a continuation is worthless and not worth any reader's time.

Archiving would be an option I could support.

As for how completeness could be determined, that would require more editorial prowess than this site is capable of currently, at least where older stories are concerned. Unless Laurel and Manu wanted to create an review committee or something similar made up of select members of the site, or encourage readers to report stagnant and incomplete stories.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

SOL has a system that marks stories incomplete and inactive. You see it in the story listings when you search. For people who will absolutely not read something that is not finished, it's a useful feature. Something similar could easily be setup at uploading that gives the option to allow/authorize continuations by others.

That is one of the sites I was thinking of.

 

[SimonDoom]

There are those who will argue that fanfic is okay because everyone knows whose Star Wars or LoTR are, but that's a weak argument at best, as long as the new author of the Lit, or Amazon, or SOL, or AO3 story clearly states who wrote the original and holds copyright to the characters and the world. This here is a discussion of the general ethics of doing something like this, and Literotica's rules have no bearing here, unless Laurel was proclaimed a saint and thus holds some moral high ground.

I personally have mixed feelings about fanfic. It's probably, in most cases, copyright infringement, and some authors don't like it in the same way that some Lit authors don't want their stuff used without permission.

But even if you think fanfic is, on balance, it doesn't follow that we MUST therefore accept that it's OK to write stories of Lit authors without permission. There are some special reasons relating to Lit that are different, and that's evident in how many authors here feel that way. We're not getting paid. We receive compensation in the satisfaction of writing our own original stories. We are a community, while fanfic authors on a fanfic page are not in a community with famous others of the fanfic source material.

This makes sense to me. It seems to make sense to many of your other fellow authors here. It may not make sense to you, and if so there's been so much discussion of it that we'll probably just have to agree to disagree.

Fortunately, Literotica has a given us a rule to resolve the issue, and it makes sense from their position that it would be OK to have a rule that treats these two classes of authors differently. By allowing fanfic, they are abiding by industry norms. By disallowing unauthorized stories based on other Lit stories, they are protecting the copyrights of their authors and honoring the sense that many of them have that they have an exclusive artistic right to make these decisions.

It doesn't always have to make perfect sense, and I concede in this case it doesn't. It just has to work, and to make enough sense. I think that's the case here.

 

[Erozetta]

You can collect multiple works as an anthology and copyright them that way. It can be multiple novels worth of stories collected under the title "Darkniciad Anthology #1" and kill many birds with one $45. KeithD mentioned doing that to save time, money, and paperwork on some of his.

Not that it's really worth it when you're writing freely available smut stories, but it is an option.

Yeah, the fact that it isn't worth it means smaller writers are easier to take advantage of in this way, so it's a bit of an asshole move to do so when you could just ask. Many writers would be fine with it as long as they are asked. It's the not asking and having no say in what happens to the characters that most have an issue with. (I'm the only one who gets to torture the figments of my imagination.) Hell, some might even collaborate with the intended author on it, I would and I'd be fine with them posting the finished work to their account instead of mine. I'd probably encourage it, actually, and ask them to not credit me anywhere besides noting they had my permission to write the story.

 

[mrs_mackenzie]

If I sold the rights to my IPs for billions, they could do whatever they wanted with the characters. I'd be too busy bathing in a swimming pool full of money to notice.

Any takers on Lit...?

 

[lovecraft68]

This topic is famous for being a lit drinking game and something everyone is tired of.

But 3 pages and still going.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

I personally have mixed feelings about fanfic. It's probably, in most cases, copyright infringement, and some authors don't like it in the same way that some Lit authors don't want their stuff used without permission.

But even if you think fanfic is, on balance, it doesn't follow that we MUST therefore accept that it's OK to write stories of Lit authors without permission. There are some special reasons relating to Lit that are different, and that's evident in how many authors here feel that way. We're not getting paid. We receive compensation in the satisfaction of writing our own original stories. We are a community, while fanfic authors on a fanfic page are not in a community with famous others of the fanfic source material.

This makes sense to me. It seems to make sense to many of your other fellow authors here. It may not make sense to you, and if so there's been so much discussion of it that we'll probably just have to agree to disagree.

Fortunately, Literotica has a given us a rule to resolve the issue, and it makes sense from their position that it would be OK to have a rule that treats these two classes of authors differently. By allowing fanfic, they are abiding by industry norms. By disallowing unauthorized stories based on other Lit stories, they are protecting the copyrights of their authors and honoring the sense that many of them have that they have an exclusive artistic right to make these decisions.

It doesn't always have to make perfect sense, and I concede in this case it doesn't. It just has to work, and to make enough sense. I think that's the case here.

Oh, I don't dispute that Lit's policy about general fanfic and the potential copyright infringement of Lit stories is a sort of ad-hoc solution that works in practice. But it works because it appeases the general authorship of Lit, not because it's ethically fine. And I have no real problem with that, but again, this discussion here was started in a much wider sense than that, and I am trying to steer it that way.

 

[RejectReality]

The odds of me completing my Dark stories at my age with my feast and famine level of production are pretty much zip. So long as everything goes right, my sister will be making a note on my profiles when I fucking snuff it, and at that point, everything is fair game. If I get to a point where I can't write at all before that happens, I'll take care of it myself.

My biggest problem with fanfic of my work is whoever writes it is going to want my approval of the finished product even if they don't ask for it, and the odds of me actually liking it aren't good. LOL That impediment vanishes once I take a dirt nap.

 

[crookedletter]

I'm reminded of Siegel and Shuster, the guys who created Superman, who famously railed against adaptations of their work. The story as I've heard it is that Siegel and Shuster got well and truly fucked over by DC Comics, their creation making its "owners" piles of money while they, for awhile at least, got basically nothing. All of this was legal, of course, whether or not it was ethical. Because they signed contracts, and the contracts stipulated how the rights of their work were to be distributed.

Presumably these contracts had upsides, too. They were paid. Maybe not enough given how popular Superman ended up being, but they made the choice at the time based on what they were getting out of it, hopefully reading enough in the fine print to understand what it meant for their future control over their intellectual property. Even if they ultimately came to regret that.

I haven't seen anything in Lit's terms about how joining and posting content here means we agree to have our works taken up, adapted, retooled by whoever wants to. Comparing a story posted here to Star Wars or Tolkien isn't instructive. I assume George Lucas and the Tolkien estate have come to some agreement about the rights to their intellectual property that allows others to carry them on. I would guess they get something out of it.

If someone wants to take over my intellectual property*, present me with terms, whether it's a bag of money or a shrine in my honor or just an author's note giving me a shout-out. If I find the terms acceptable then I'll agree. If I don't then leave my shit alone.

* I understand no one is interested in my intellectual property.

 

[UnexpectedLuggage]

Great post.

It brings to mind the toxic you tube culture that lot of 'reviewers' have created. There is this attitude among them that nothing classic or an original IP-example Star wars, LOTR-should ever be remade or added to. Now personally all I have against it is don't you have your own ideas? Did we need Beetlejuice 2 35 years later? But other than seeing Hollywood in creatively bankrupt mode I don't have a problem with it.

Why? Because no one is making me watch it, and if I do and don't like it? Okay, I say it sucks and move on.

But losers like Critical Drinker, Nerdrotic, and a slew of other trolls do this thing where its "Not my Tolkien!" Its "Not my Star Wars!"

Most of this of course stems from their claim these are for "Modern Audiences" which is troll speak for woke. Not saying there aren't agendas pushing to some extent, but um, yes a movie made in 2025 is going to reflect different views than they did in 1985 so what? Again, watch it ot don't, like it or don't. Rings of Power is so awful I don't think I could list all the reasons why. But...Not my Tolkien? I didn't know fans owned the original IP, did any of you?

There's a clown on YT that at one point had 40, count them forty videos about Rings of Power during season one. He did forty vids on a six or 8 (I can't recall) episode show. So, you hate it, but you'll make money bashing it to your low IQ troll base?

We tend to be a bit protective of the movies we grew up with and don't like seeing them become low quality cash grabs some of which barely resemble the original, but is it that important? I think any Star wars movie beyond the original 3 is crap. But does it somehow take away those first three? I can't watch them anymore? The new one sucked so somehow the original is tarnished? The hubris is incredible here.

Now of course a lot of this is an agenda. The clowns I mentioned hate female leads, they don't like seeing different ethnic groups in roles etc and that's what they really mean most of the time.

Rachel Zeglar made a comment about Snow White "Its not 1937 anymore" in reference to them wanting to change some things. In one sense, I like a direct remake to be faithful, but on the ither side, she's right, we live in a different time and what people enjoyed in 1937 maybe they don't now, its no big deal. Don't watch it.

The Exorcist is the best, most iconic horror movie ever made to myself and many. It's had some bad sequels and prequels (and one good one part 3 based on Blatty's sequel Legion) but the one that came out a couple iof years ago Believer was an outright abomination that deliberately shit on so much of the point of the original. It was woke in many ways, it was a slap in the face to the source material, it was so bad the director was fired and what was going to be a trilogy was quickly dropped. I only saw it because my daughter wanted to go so I went, then she wanted toleave halfway through and I'm like "You dragged me to this, we stay"

But as bad as it was, am I running around screaming not my Exorcist? The original can never be watched again, its been pulled from shelves, gone forever? No, its was a pile of shit that I'll never watch again and if asked I will say it sucked, but FFS this is not the end of the world, fans of the original just pretend it doesn't exist. Kind of like I do with my first wife.

Rant over.

How dare you have nuance? This is 2025, that's straight up not allowed

 

[TheRedChamber]

I posted this, have been out all day, and now there's a whole bunch of responses I'd like to get to, but won't be able to cover everything in one post. First of all, I'd like to just highlight this again from my first post:

People will say its down to each individual author, and indeed it is and it must be.

I'm not talking so much about how the site treats these works. I, by and large, agree with the policy as is. It's more about how I see authors reacting to this stuff and especially a lot of the horror that many AHer seem to have for the whole concept.

This issue has been debated so many times in so many threads that I suspect this thread will reach the "drink" point soon.

This issue comes around regularly, but it's always in terms of specific new author A wants to finish off particular story by long gone author B and in which case the answer has to be a hard no if B is uncontactable and hasn't given specific permission. That's the correct answer.

It's also a pity, IMHO, because inevitably someone who was excited writing about writing something leaves deflated and the harm that might have been done is minimal. Some authors don't care about fan-completions and we all just submit our stories without necessarily thinking about it too much. No one wakes up expecting it, but if you were told you were going to be hit by a bus today, some people might quite like the idea of others continuing their work after they are gone. But if they didn't think to write down that wish prior to coachageddon they are out of luck.

What you’re saying is that readers don’t care whether the story is continued by original author or someone else.

I think I'm kind of saying exactly the opposite. Readers do care about the provenance of whatever bit of the story they are reading is. If someone reaches the end of the original part of the story and they see that there's an author switch because the original writer bailed they have a few choices - a) give up on the story completely b) wait in desperate hope of the original author coming back c) commit to reading the new ending by the new author d) give the new author a few paragraphs grace and then see if they quality is maintained. In all cases, they are and should be making an informed choice about how they are consuming the story.

Flipping away from Lit and back to mega-IPs again, to me, the Rings of Power is just fan-fiction. Warner Bros. can wave the rights in my face as much as they like but their retelling of the story has no more validity or canon-status in my eyes than any other keyboard warrior banging off their extended retellings of a paragraph from The Silmarillion. Some fan-fiction is good and some is bad. It would have been nice if RoP had been good fan-fiction since they'd spent so much money on it, but I'm not less of a J.R.R. Tolkien fan for having bailed on it three episodes in. And I only really lasted those three episodes due to a fascination with hobbit Lenny Henry. As @lovecraft68 indicated, I'm perfectly happy ragging on what I did see for it's multitude of issues, but continuing to watch it just to find more issues to raise to emphasize my super-fandom would be...not particularly healthy.

The authors, however, do care. We don’t want to lose control over own characters and storylines.

What I think authors here don't realize is that to most people the author is always the author. If someone created some derivative, non-cannon ending or spin-off, the majority of people will realize that's what it is and treat it as such. Especially if the new author clearly writes a caveat at the top of their continuation which ever forum-poster who raises this topic always stresses they are going to do. And someone who is excited to read a continuation of your story after an obvious author shift will come back to read your finished version if you ever produce it, I absolutely guarantee (as long as they know you did finish it which is always going to be an issue if you leave a work fallow for years at a time).

Imagine if someone wrote and published online an anonymous completion of the last two books of Game of Thrones and supposing these books got some notoriety amongst fan communities for being a pretty decent stab at it. Now, if the publisher could identify and find that individual, I've no doubt that they'd take them to court citing all kinds of harm and theý'd probably win. And legally and ethically maybe rightly so. But I'm also absolutely certain that anyone who was sitting down and reading 3,000 pages of fan-fiction completion of a story would be the first people in the midnight queue if George R.R. Martin were ever to actually finish the official version.

And if somebody wrote a story in which all my lesbian characters suddenly decided they were straight after all, I'd probably be a little bit sick in my mouth.

That's a reasonable point. I'd also expect all your dedicated readers to also be a little bit sick in their own mouths and come and tell the author about it in no uncertain terms, but, yeah, I guess there are squick issues around extreme fetishes, non-consent and 'straightening' characters out.

But where's the harm?
If someone were crazy enough to want to write a story in my "universe" using some of my characters how am I harmed?
If they put in a note saying, "if you like this please go checkout the author who inspired me..." arguably they've helped me.
I think that's where arguments like "stealing" fall apart. You aren't any worse off if someone does it.

Again, I think mostly people are able to say 'This is a copy of the thing I like. It has some of the features of the thing I like and it is also clearly missing some of the heart of the thing I like. It's is not the thing I like even if I quite like it.' Actually, I'm not sure even I can say that again reliably without looking - that quote was going to be a whole lot simpler when I started it. The point is that people can distinguish 'the true work' from 'the fan copy' and care about the difference even when the fan copy is really pretty good.

But many of us have had stories ripped off by people who are trying to make a buck off them, in the most cynical mercenary way possible. I can't find it in me to feel peace, love and understanding to the dude who copied my story and put it up on Amazon for sale (with a quick search-and-replace on the names), or the ones who rip off Lit authors' stories and upload AI-droned readings of them on YouTube to be monetised. I didn't agree to be the filling in the sausage.

This is a separate issue to the one I'm raising here and a much more irksome one. I'm assuming the new author isn't making any money and is writing all their own text.

 

[Voboy]

I know other people look at this differently, and that's their prerogative. I only know that if someone took it on themselves to "complete" one of my stories without asking? I'd be so angry I'd try to get them booted off the site, to say nothing of demanding their story be taken down.

So that's why I don't support anyone adding on to other writers' stories without explicit permission: because I have to assume other writers would be as offended as I would be.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

I know other people look at this differently, and that's their prerogative. I only know that if someone took it on themselves to "complete" one of my stories without asking? I'd be so angry I'd try to get them booted off the site, to say nothing of demanding their story be taken down.

So that's why I don't support anyone adding on to other writers' stories without explicit permission: because I have to assume other writers would be as offended as I would be.

Does that opinion change if you are long gone from the site, or perhaps even have shuffled off this mortal coil?

It seems like most of the time this comes up people have made a good faith effort to contact the original author.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

This topic is famous for being a lit drinking game and something everyone is tired of.

But 3 pages and still going.

If everyone was tired of it they wouldn't be weighing in...

It's kind of one of those, "nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded" things.

 

[Djmac1031]

The funniest thing about this particular debate every time it pops up is that the time and effort put in by these people who want to defend continuing someone else's story could far better be put to use simply writing an "original" story based around the same ideas, concepts and kinks as the one they want to "continue," and just create their own version of it and absolutely no one would care or have a problem with it.

 

[theWollstonecraftWoman]

Why is this even being discussed? One doesn't take someone else's work and make it your own.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

The funniest thing about this particular debate every time it pops up is that the time and effort put in by these people who want to defend continuing someone else's story could far better be put to use simply writing an "original" story based around the same ideas, concepts and kinks as the one they want to "continue," and just create their own version of it and absolutely no one would care or have a problem with it.

While not approving of it or finding it acceptable, I can imagine an incomplete story with characters and a plot that proves enticing for someone to continue it, over simply trying to mimic it.

This isn't a "February Sucks" scenario. There are hundreds of stories on this site with unresolved plots that people may want to tackle. Again, I'm not saying that they should, but I can see the potential attraction.

 

[Djmac1031]

While not approving of it or finding it acceptable, I can imagine an incomplete story with characters and a plot that proves enticing for someone to continue it, over simply trying to mimic it.

This isn't a "February Sucks" scenario. There are hundreds of stories on this site with unresolved plots that people may want to tackle. Again, I'm not saying that they should, but I can see the potential attraction.

If someone wants to "continue" an already written story but cant figure out a way to take the original and simply reshape it in their own words, they probably shouldn't be writing the continuation either.

 

[lovecraft68]

If everyone was tired of it they wouldn't be weighing in...

It's kind of one of those, "nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded" things.

Good analogy, then it's compounded by last word syndrome.

 

[lovecraft68]

Flipping away from Lit and back to mega-IPs again, to me, the Rings of Power is just fan-fiction. Warner Bros. can wave the rights in my face as much as they like but their retelling of the story has no more validity or canon-status in my eyes than any other keyboard warrior banging off their extended retellings of a paragraph from The Silmarillion. Some fan-fiction is good and some is bad. It would have been nice if RoP had been good fan-fiction since they'd spent so much money on it, but I'm not less of a J.R.R. Tolkien fan for having bailed on it three episodes in. And I only really lasted those three episodes due to a fascination with hobbit Lenny Henry. As @lovecraft68 indicated, I'm perfectly happy ragging on what I did see for it's multitude of issues, but continuing to watch it just to find more issues to raise to emphasize my super-fandom would be...not particularly healthy.

I watched the entire first season. Then I proved myself a true masochist by watching the first four of season two. By that point I think it was like rubbernecking at an accident. All that money and the worst writing I'd ever seen, timeline a mess, characters acting one way, then another, things happened, then someone unhappened. I think I hung in as long as I did because I wanted it to be good.

I don't like the cast gets a lot of flack from the trolls, but fact is, no one could do anything with those scripts.

I doubt we'll ever see it but I wish instead of pounding on the Sauron saga they'd do a movie or series that goes back to Morgoth, the original Tolkien Big Bad

 

[gunhilltrain]

In my opinion, there two scenarios associated with "continuation" of someone else's work:

• The first is when someone wants to expand on what has been fully created, and write a sequel. The "fandom" effect.
• The second is when someone wants to complete an obviously incomplete work by someone else. The "frustration" effect.

Neither is acceptable without permission of the original creator, or whoever else owns the rights. Period.

As far as Literotica is concerned, I do wish that the site would exercise some control over stories that have sat stagnant and incomplete for years. Delete them and let the writer resubmit if and when they get back into the mood or overcome whatever obstacles they have faced to cause the stagnation. Maybe if writers knew that they had a deadline to complete their story, they would be either motivated to keep at it, or better yet, complete it before publishing.

That's notable, because I just started up a series again that I ended in 2020. The ending was somewhat ambiguous, but it was an ending even if the characters lived on. Then I was inspired to concentrate on some new material about one of the formerly secondary characters and I started adding new chapters.

If someone had jumped in there in those years, I guess I would have been irked. But I'm sure they couldn't do it the way I did.

 

[Voboy]

Does that opinion change if you are long gone from the site, or perhaps even have shuffled off this mortal coil?

It doesn't. The stories are MINE. They didn't continue because I decided not to continue them, and in every case I've had my reasons for ending my stories the way I did. If I say they're done, they're done. Others can write their own stories, like I did.

I doubt we'll ever see it but I wish instead of pounding on the Sauron saga they'd do a movie or series that goes back to Morgoth, the original Tolkien Big Bad

"They" cannot. The estate controls all the First Age IP, and after the hash the showrunners have made of RoP, there's no way the estate will ever trust another production to come in and do anything.

 

[Omenainen]

This issue comes around regularly, but it's always in terms of specific new author A wants to finish off particular story by long gone author B and in which case the answer has to be a hard no if B is uncontactable and hasn't given specific permission. That's the correct answer.

To be specific, they don’t want to just write it, they want to publish it here for the reading audience.

It's also a pity, IMHO, because inevitably someone who was excited writing about writing something leaves deflated and the harm that might have been done is minimal.

My take is different. If someone is so excited to write, why don’t they write their own stories? If they lack the imagination, how could they do justice to anyone else’s stories? Not every hobby is for everyone. Why should it be?

They also could write it to their heart’s content, just not publish it anywhere when it’s not their intellectual property. Why is that not enough?

I think I'm kind of saying exactly the opposite. Readers do care about the provenance of whatever bit of the story they are reading is. If someone reaches the end of the original part of the story and they see that there's an author switch because the original writer bailed they have a few choices - a) give up on the story completely b) wait in desperate hope of the original author coming back c) commit to reading the new ending by the new author d) give the new author a few paragraphs grace and then see if they quality is maintained. In all cases, they are and should be making an informed choice about how they are consuming the story.

The way the site works now there are slim chances of the readers of the original ever even hearing there is now some black market continuation. The new story would be published under the new author’s name, and only those who happened to click on it would see the note that it is based on something else. The most the new author could do is send a comment to the original story saying they’ve continued it, but that would require the original readers to go back to it to reload on the comments. So options c and d are pretty theoretical.

 

[lovecraft68]

It doesn't. The stories are MINE. They didn't continue because I decided not to continue them, and in every case I've had my reasons for ending my stories the way I did. If I say they're done, they're done. Others can write their own stories, like I did.



"They" cannot. The estate controls all the First Age IP, and after the hash the showrunners have made of RoP, there's no way the estate will ever trust another production to come in and do anything.

I know they don't have rights. Part of the wish is it being able to be done and after ROP I need to add that if anyone purchases the rights they care about it enough to do a good job.

I give some credence to the internet trolls who comment that it was so bad it was like they were deliberately crapping on it and having watched more than I should have it's hard not to take that into consideration. That or the creators literally had no knowledge of the originals nor did they care to research it. Its just that off in every way

 

[TheLobster]

I doubt we'll ever see it but I wish instead of pounding on the Sauron saga they'd do a movie or series that goes back to Morgoth, the original Tolkien Big Bad

Or just anything that isn't just a bookend to LotR because that's the only storyline from Tolkien that the wider public knows.

Heck, they could even expand on the story of Sauron, just from a different era. One of the best chapters in Middle Earth's history that could be adapted into a self-contained movie or short series is the fall of Numenor. It doesn't touch on the restricted First Age IP and it would nicely tie in to the history of Isildur everyone sort of knows from LotR movie flashbacks.