#I just went through my idea file and found a script that vaguely related to the prompts

[ecstaticasusual]

Warriors Unit Week 2023 Day 7: Duty

[sahbibabe]

A Mission For One

A Mission For One

Soulmate AU

Sephiroth/Fem! Reader

You are given the details of your mission. It wasn't your intention to be crippling the last of the previous AVALANCHE's funding, nor was it to face the risk of seeing Hojo ever again.

RENO, JUST LIKE RUFUS had said, showed up the very next day, just shy of seven in the morning. He didn't have Rude with him, which was unusual, and instead had a lowly grunt with him. He had a briefcase in one hand and his weapon in the other, shooting you a grin when you opened the door.

     "Ready to get started?" He asked, pushing past you to set up on one of the tables. He opened the briefcase with a flourish. "Might wanna sit down because I have a lot of stuff to tell you and not a whole lot of time."

       You locked the shop door and sat down across from him, eyeing the grunt who positioned his back to it with a rifle in hand. "Was it necessary to bring the gun inside?"

      "Him? Nah." Reno pulled out a file as thick as your fingers put together and set it aside. "Right, first thing I have to tell you is to hold out your arm."

        You did so obediently. "What for?"

      "This." Reno gave you no warning other than a smirk, and plunged what looked like a five gauge needle into your wrist. He injected a clear substance into you and, before you had time to jerk away, was done. "There. Your Shinra access chip. After the fiasco with keycards and AVALANCHE last year, we decided on these bad boys to secure the system. As long as you're alive, calm, and healthy, you can get anywhere you want to. I think the boss gave you B-Level clearance until you pass your physicals, then will up it to A-Level after that."

       You felt dread settle in the pit of your gut. You had never owned anything as much as D-Level access in your entire life, and that was just to attend a small court session to set up your tea shop and legally sell tea from Shinra suppliers. B-Level was a high jump, and giving you A-Level access after? Those were the same permissions that only Rufus's seconds in command got, only less to Rufus himself.

      "Reno," you asked slowly,"what the hell am I going to be doing that requires A-Level access?"

      "A lot of things," he whistled, thumbing through a plastic card case and pulling out an ID card with your face plastered on it. "Assassination, murder, espionage, sabotage, take your pick. The things we Turks can't do and get away with easily."

       The bad feeling in your stomach told you it was a bit more than that. You let it slide when he handed you the ID, noting the fluorescent finish on it and the expensive plastic it was made of, as well as the giant Shinra logo printed beside your head with a script reading 'VIP: DO NOT ENGAGE' along with your VIP permissions underneath, which extended to free hotel stays, you noticed.

       "What's this?" You asked, watching it shine in the light. "I already have an ID."

      "Yeah, but not one that's special like that." Reno then pulled out a manilla file almost as thick as the one he had brought out before, except this one had giant red confidential stamps all over it and was sealed with Rufus's personal seal. "It can get you anywhere and everywhere, just like the Turks, and more. Flash that thing and anyone will think twice about stopping you. Murder is easy with a card like that."

      "I'd imagine," you said, a little choked. You had, quite literally, just gotten federal permission to commit murder. Freely. In an effort to distract yourself from the fact that you'd just been given a 'free for all' card, you tapped the first file he'd pulled out. "And these?"

      "Paperwork for the doctor who does the exam." Reno shrugged when you gawked at the sheer size of it. "I know. It's a lot. But it only takes an hour. Drug tests and blood tests and all that. Even STD tests."

      You placed it aside in favor of the packet he now held. "I'm guessing those are my mission details?"

      "More like your trial targets," Reno supplied vaguely. "You won't officially start them until next week. You'll have a month to finish all of them. You can read up on them and memorize them until then."

      In Reno's hands laid the lives of the people you were about to take forever. Permanently. And it wasn't even what you were being recruited for; they were tests. That was it.

      He handed it to you and you broke the seal, pulling out one of the targets. A photo had been blown up to visible proportions, blurry and grainy, but you could make out the face well enough, recognized it even: one of AVALANCHE's older benefactors, a man by the name of Michael Dallien.

       He had donated a total of three million gil to the cause shortly after the mako reactor went down, you read, and had been funneling smaller sums to them ever since under the guise of fundraisers. At the bottom, stamped in blue, was the price of his bounty: four million gil, plus a bonus for delivering visceral proof.

       Which meant Rufus wanted his head. Literally.

       "As you can see, you'll get paid more than the three million gil for whoever you kill," Reno explained, pointing to a section near the bottom. "There will be others competing with you, though, but they aren't doing it with the accesses that you have. They work for other corporations wanting to overthrow Shinra. If you get to them first, the other corporations won't be able to nab their resources and bam, you get paid and you move on to the next one."

       The more people you found in the packet, the higher the bounties became, until you came upon a bounty on Rufus Shinra himself, priced right around one million gil.

      "What the hell?" You breathed, showing Reno the picture. "What does this mean?"

      "That leads me to your official assignment." The redhead plucked the paper from your hands and pointed to the list of mercs slated for the job; you weren't on it. "Our little Public Relations guy, Heidegger, put this up a few weeks ago. I doubt he knew we bugged his personal computer, but he's enlisted several attempts on the boss's life in the next couple of months. Now, the Turks aren't invincible, some are bound to slip through the cracks. That's where you will come in."

       "You want me to protect Rufus Shinra," you deadpanned,"because the Turks can't."

       "Hey, it isn't for lack of trying. He has so many enemies it's hard to keep track of. We keep eyes on the outside, you keep eyes on the internals. Simple."

      "You mean people like Heidegger and Scarlet," you supplied, realization dawning on you. "It's not because you can't, it's because you can't do it without everyone knowing who did it."

      Reno winked and pointed a finger at you. "Bingo. I knew you'd put it together. Rude owes me fifty gil."

      "That explains the ID," you sighed, waving the card around flimsily. You tucked everything into a neat pile in front of you. "Anything else?"

      "Yep. I took the liberty of pulling some strings and getting you a female doctor to perform your physical." Reno leaned back and crossed his arms, the grunt shifting nervously behind you. "Figured you wouldn't want Hojo snooping around in your insides again."

       The sudden horror you felt had you speechless. Hojo was supposed to do your physical? Hojo had none of the specifications for that, last you had heard, and that was when he was injecting your eyeballs with some dark fluid. To have him examining you from head to toe, even for the gynecology exam because it had to be on there too, made you want to throw up at the idea.

      "Other than that, though, all you have to do is get your Shinra tech fitted and your uniform. It's all unbranded so no one will be able to trace us if you get caught, and made with synthetic material that also can't be traced. You'll have to check with the boss about your weapons. Can't go to Scarlet." Reno seemed to be checking off some list and nodded to himself. "That's it, I think. Rude will drop by later and give you your rental keys."

      You were still caught up on Hojo doing your physical exam, even after Reno dismissed himself and headed out of the shop. It disgusted you on so many levels that as soon as you tucked your files away into your floorboards and put your ID in your wallet, you went to the bathroom to hurl up your breakfast.

      None of what Hojo did to you was memorable after the initial injection, but you recalled him speaking of something like,"Let Her see through your eyes," but it was muffled behind the wall of pain you felt. You remembered the pinch of an IV, trying to open your eyes and only feeling your eyelids as swollen as golf balls, and feeling nurses walk in and out to switch your dressing gown.

      Hojo would check, occasionally, prying your swollen lids apart and testing the tears and occasional pus that would stream out, ignoring your crying and screaming indignantly. He pressed the swelling, irritated them, scraped samples from your waterline, and then fed tubes into them to drain the pus out. It never ended well, because it would soon grow clogged with that black material he had put in, like a coagulated gummy pile of rot. You never bled, but the sheer amount of tears you produced left you dehydrated and desperate for water.

      You were one hundred percent certain he had also done something to your reproductive system, because after that, your cycles just became nightmares, even more so towards you leaving after he deemed you a failure. You never checked, though, too scared and poor to afford an exam, even when you now had the money and means to do so.

     But now you had to because of the stupid physical exam. Hojo had ruined you in more ways than you could say, and it was no wonder you lied to everyone in your life. You were petrified of trust because you, once upon a time, had trusted him to help you. That had been a mistake.

       Never again.

[neth-dugan]

Nine Worlds - Saturday

Friday found [here]

I got a full night’s sleep! I was still tired but it wasn’t too bad. I think I grabbed a nap at some point between panels but for the life of me I can’t say for sure when. Just that I really needed it. It was also the first day when I sat on or ran a panel.

ALCHEMY AND CHEMISTRY IN SF/FANTASY

This ended up being more about the history of chemistry and alchemy through time with a few examples of how it isn’t done accurately in either SF or Fantasy. Not what I was expecting, to be sure, but I still enjoyed it. I recognised a lot of it from a programme about the history of science and chemistry by Prof Jim Al Khalili on the BBC. The person presenting used to teach Chemistry and thus knew their stuff.

My only concern is that they said they were probably going to take longer than the slot assigned to them willy nilly like. Which. People have to get to things. Thankfully volunteers do pop their head in near the end of the slot if needed and it over ran a bit but not by too much. 

Something that is important to note, and that not many realise but the presenter here made sure people knew, is that alchemy and chemistry aren’t that different in many ways. It isn’t like astrology and astronomy. Alchemy is where chemistry came from, like its ancestor, more than anything else, and there was this period of transition where it gradually grew from alchemy into what we realise as the modern day science of chemistry. 

HARRY POTTER AND THE CURSED CHILD APPRECIATION

... behind the scenes footage of the first cast rehearsing the play. Clemmett as Albus and Boyle as Scorpius. Not in costume/wig but look at Albus glomping his best mate. Look!

I went to see this play when it was still new, when we had to keep the secret safe and before the script was published. I loved it. I remember the little girl next to me in utter awe about the stage as we walked in. I remember of the Dementor flying just above my head. The thump that got you in your core as time travel took place. Adoring Scoripus so so much. My heart breaking during the scene with Albus and Scorpius on the stairs, and with the cast at the end when they must let events play out. And I remember learning that a lot of Potter fans weren’t a big fan of the play. 

So when I got an e-mail asking if I’d be willing to be on a panel about appreciating Cursed Child? I was all in. And when we were trying to figure out who would mod it I volunteered and so it began. 

It was a great panel. Me who had only seen it, not read it. Someone who’d only read it. People who’d done both. People who know a lot about plays and how they work and theatre and the like. 

We talked about the legacy of pressure of family, how that impacted Albus and Scorpius, and how there was these two stories - the kids and the adults. How we think it works that the characters aren’t these perfect adults and parents who do no wrong. Harry has a lot of trauma that the others around him don’t and that brushes up against the plot and also the needs Albus himself has. It’s messy and we think it works. There was also a lot of discussion around how it works as a play, how that makes it different from a book and the impact this probably had on reception. Play texts are fundamentally different from traditional prose and this can make it hard for those not used to reading them, who don’t know how to literally read between the lines. And we had huge appreciation for the stage craft from all sides of production.

I’m not turning this into a blow by blow of the panel. But there was a lot of love for the play. And considering this panel was up against the Black Panther panel? I think we did well. I am sad I didn’t get to go to the Black Panther panel but Nine worlds has not yet invented time travel so alas. I had a lot of fun, I hope others did too.

TOP OF THE SFF COPS

...tragically nobody mentioned Odo until I suggested him at the end. So I’m sticking him in here.

This panel is slightly infamous at this point, and going in I had no idea. Whilst I knew there were issues with a separate panel and a serving police officer being placed on it, I didn’t know this one would blow up. So far as I knew there’d been a similar one last year and I’d only heard good things. I also know that I have a lot of privilege being white and despite being queer I pass.... but I’ll go into that in a separate post later. Will post a link here when up.

A lot of genre fiction has police or security type characters in it. From X-Files to Star Trek to Discworld to Alien Nation and way way more. And like many professions who are portrayed on TV or otherwise intersect with it a lot (doctors, archeologists, writers, scientists) a lot of it isn’t done particularly accurately. So a group of people who work in law enforcement in various ways decided to do a session on which characters do their actual job best and in line with actual standards. It was made clear that they were there on a personal basis and not as an on duty or official representative type thing. 

They put forth a set of criteria - things like knows the law, exercises discretion, compassion, does the day to day hard work and not just the action stuff and so on. Mulder? Is right out. Scully however was in, and the only character I recognised. So I was mostly went by who sounded the best and it ended up being the guy from Discworld who wont the vote. I don’t know the books well though so who knows. This was literally the entire panel. Still, I can see in retrospect how it would make some people uncomfortable.

It was an okay panel. I wasn’t expecting it to be a big vote thing, and more of a discussion type thing but in hindsight  that may have caused more issues. 

LET THE PAST DIE: SACRIFICING SACRED COWS IN STAR WARS THE LAST JEDI

This was put into a room far too small for what it needed to be. People were crowding in and it wasn’t great. Not long after it started a volunteer came in and offered up the room across the hall that had way more seating, so we voted on it and unsurprisingly we moved across. This would have been easier for some to do than others but it also have people who needed more space that space whilst letting people in. But it likely caused issues for those who have a harder time moving. I’d had a big dizzy spell on my way to this but seemed to be okay moving. 

Part way through I decided to start live tweeting it and you can find that HERE. I’m not really sure what else to add but it was an interesting panel. Lots of talk about letting whiney fanboys whine to themselves, a lot of stuff they keep going on about was also in or also missing from the original trilogy. Nobody explained Palpatine until the prequel trilogy after all. He just turned up as a vague big bad when needed for plot. One panelist wished them the prequel trilogy ‘they deserve’ which amused me.

What I found most interesting though was a note on the green milk scene with Luke. I’ve seen people joke and deride that scene a lot since the movie came out. But one of the panelists, a woman from with roots in Hong Kong, said that it really struck a chord with her in relation to the diaspora. It reminded her of going into Tesco and finally seeing a noodle that isn’t exactly the same but reminds her a lot of something from home. And this was Luke claiming something that reminds him of where he came from even as he’s far away from it. It had honestly never occurred to me but it makes so much sense, and gives that scene a lot more value. I have no idea if the writers did that on purpose or if they did it as the easy joke though.

LAYERS OF MEANING: THE DIMENSIONAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ENGLISH, CHINESE, AND SIGN LANGUAGE

I loved this! This was hosted by a woman who was born in China and whose first language is Mandarin, but moved to Britain as a kid and later in life learnt BSL and now works as a sign language interpreter. She does this for Nine Worlds in various panels, as well as hosting a few sessions relating this to herself. And so she decided to do a panel that talks about her three languages as they’re all very different and go at language in different ways.

It was awesome.

...Mulan is not at all relevant but she is Chinese this is the best gif I could find that is both nerdy and has the writing system talked about in this session. And also, y’know, Mulan.

She isn’t a linguist, which she made sure everyone knew. But I think that made it work. It was also kinda amused because on the front row on one half of the aisle was a native speaker of BSL, and on the front row of the other half was someone who knows Mandarin better and I get the feeling probably came from a different part of the Chinese speaking world. But I’m just assuming there. And the interplay between the three was informative but also amusing.

I kinda knew the general concepts of what she was talking about. Or very vague versions of the concepts anyway. English is phonetic and the letters themselves have no meaning. D implies nothing when used in dog or door etc and it can be polysyllabic. Mandarin is logarithmic, it’s tonal and uses that rather than multiple syllables and it doesn’t have individual letters. The symbol for ‘female, woman’ 女 but as a radical can become a part of words like ‘calm/peace’ 安 which has the radicals for woman and home. Which, being at home is calming so I get that. There are also some not great words with woman as a radical too. 

And then there is sign language which doesn’t have just the mouth to speak. It has two hands, your face and your mouth. It takes place in a 3D space and adjectives are often included as part of the word, not separate to it. You can say entire sentences with a gesture, and you pick up on ways of expressing things because they look interesting in the same way you’d vocalise something a certain way because it sounds nice..

It was interesting. I don’t know a lot about language, and anything too technically worded would have lost me. But this didn’t and this was another of my favourite panels this year.

THE POLITICS OF ACTIVISM IN MARVEL COMICS

So I don’t know a lot about the comics. I’ve read a couple Wolverine books but that is about it. But I thought I’d go along and listen cause it seemed interesting. Jaime was hosting it, someone who’d worked on the comics was meant to be there but had to pull and out and so Jaime was left by themselves but... Jaime did a good job. 

A lot of the specifics were beyond me. But it seemed to be a common theme that activism within the comics would change the world too much beyond the baseline - a baseline that needed to remain stable. And a fear of how the much vaulted cis het white male would take it I’d imagine though I don’t remember that being touched on a lot.

I did comment at one bit. I tried to do a ‘I only really know the movies so maybe this is stated in-verse’ type of disclaimer and then was given what felt a bit like I’d been shot down with ‘comics only!’ despite others bringing MCU up before including by the mod. If they hadn’t, I’d have said nothing at all. But I may have just been a bit sensitive. In any case, I wondered if perhaps the characters did do things, within the parameters of their non-hero lives. Tony Stark is the CEO of a massive company after all, maybe he funds charities, treats workers well and make sure workers rights are a thing etc, invests responsibly. I dunno. And we just don’t see it much because it isn’t about punching people. I don’t remember a lot of what was said after that as I was too busy berating myself for daring to speak in a comics panel. Note to self, never go to one again, it is not meant for me. The vague idea I had about an X-Men as metaphor panel for next year? Likely wont submit that now.

But it was well moderated. People got a chance to speak, bounce ideas around and I think what I said was taken in as part of that. The session didn’t get stuck on one thing and it flowed through topics and ideas and the like and it was interesting. Except for that one moment I did genuinely enjoy it. Given the last minute alterations due to a key component having to drop out it was very well done.

... why do tumblr gifs all have to be so big? 

DR MAGNETHANDS

This is kind of hard to describe, but it was very adult friendly, It had Captain Picard with swearing crashing the moon onto London, and Theresa May as a monster head fighting against a butterfly made out of lamb chops in some kind of anti-Brexit accidental metaphor. Especially as the lamb chop butterfly was a heroic character that Theresa treated as a bad guy.  Everyone boo’d her at every turn.

It’s kinda hard to describe in any logical way what this session was like. Drawn off of audience suggestions and participation it’s basically crack fic made manifest.

... giant jellyfish in the sky didn’t happen, but were a distinct possibility.

It was just pure fun really. I laughed a lot, I had a great time, it was awesome.

SEX AT HOGWARTS

Another session that needed a bigger room. I got there pretty early and so had a good seat and then being a tad hyper I decided the room needed mood music. So I searched for romantic music in Spotify and played it. This is whilst the room was mostly empty and I did stop before the session started. Those who could actually hear it seemed amused. Not sure if it was at me or the music. And there were lots of tipsy people around.

We were also graced with Professor McGonagall who visited us and gave us all a good staring at. 

Much like the late night panel on Friday, it was a pretty lively discussion with lots of absurdity and very clearly adult only. There was a sensible power point that combined info released after the books about who was dating who, comics and some parodies of what sex ed at Hogwarts might look like. It’s not what I’d have done but given it’s slot it worked out pretty well.

...given the topic, probably best to have a gif of adult characters. Also it’s cute.

There was discussion of what counts as bestiality in a world where all sorts of beings are sentient. I even posited the question that if someone kept up with polyjuice for nine months, could someone usually lacking a uterus become pregnant and give birth? This was laughed down and dismissed as it was meant to. Think it was kinda obvious in how I delivered it that I was being absurd. There was a lot of speculation of what portraits get up to and.... yeah. it was exactly as it sounds.

A lot of fun, and probably nothing teens haven’t heard or thought before but still, a good thing they weren’t there.

I’d have liked to go to bar and play Slash but alas, I was tired so I went to bed. Hoping for sleep and rather sad that the next day would be my last for another year.

[SUNDAY HERE]

[onceandfuturekiki]

The reality of our protections as fanfic writers (aka: What you think you know about the law and fanfic is probably a myth)

Since I posted that reply a few days about about there being no laws or legal precedent stating that content creators can't read fanfiction, or that protects fic writers from their ideas being used by the original content creators, I've received a number of messages about it. Most of them have been curious, as they had just believed the idea that creators couldn't legally read fanworks, but there were a few that were very hostile and tried to challenge what are, really, just basic facts.

So I figured it might be a good idea to go a little (or a lot) more in depth on the matter of fanfiction, fair use exemptions, and whether or not fic is protected under copyright law. As fanfiction writers it's really important that we actually know where we stand legally and understand how copyright works, rather than just listening to the general idea of "yeah, you hold the copyright to your fic and you're totally protected" that goes around the internet. I did a ton of research and this is what I've come up with. Some of it is just restating what I said in the other post, but some of it is new information I did not originally include.

This is actually really important information, so please reblog it.

I was only able to find one court case where a person sued a creator of a derivative work sued the original content creator, and it was the one I cited in my original reply post. Anderson v. Stallone was a 1989 case where Timothy Burton Anderson sued Sylvester Stallone and MGM for copyright infringement. His claim was that he had independently written a script for a Rocky movie, and that he'd had several meetings with producers and other MGM bigwigs discussing it. He was told they'd pay him if they decided to use his script, but ultimately they decided not to. When the next Rocky movie came out, Anderson claimed that there were themes and ideas incredibly similar to his script, and he sued. The judge found that Anderson's script had absolutely no copyright protection as it was an unauthorized derivative work and that under 17 U.S.C. section 106 (2), derivative works are the the exclusive privilege of the copyright holder of the original content (in the case of the Rocky movies, the copyright holder was Stallone). This means that the only person who is legally authorized to create derivative works of a product is the person who hold the copyright to that product.

There are, of course, fair use exceptions. It seems like a lot of people don't actually know what fair use exemptions are (I've seen a lot of people say things that suggest they think that fair use just means that any sort of derivative work is protected), so I thought it would be a good idea to research and talk about what fair use exceptions really are.

Under 17 U.S.C. section 107 presents instances where the creation of derivative works would not be the exclusive right of the copyright holder. It does not cover ALL derivative, or ever transformative works. The exemptions are for derivative works or copies for purposes of criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. To determine fair use, these are the factors that are considered:

the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes.

the nature of the copyrighted work

the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole

the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work

This set of factors was the result of the court case Folsom v. Marsh, an 1841 court case where a reverend, Charles Wentworth Upham, copied hundreds of pages from a 12-volume biography of George Washington, published by Bela Marsh, to create his own 2-volume work of his own. The pages copied were mostly letters written by and to Washington that he been published in the biography, and Upham argued as the letter were written by a US president, they belonged the US rather than a publishing firm, and that it was fair use because, according to his argument, he was creating something new. The judge ultimately found against Upham and Folsom, setting forth the above factors as the determination of fair use and deciding that their work did not successfully meet the criteria for fair use.

Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. was the case that established that a work being transformative made it more likely to be protected by fair use (but it did not make it a certainty). To be considered a protected transformative work, one has to be able to prove that it either advances knowledge or the progress of the arts through the addition of something new. LA Times v. The Free Republic also found that a work being non-profit or not used for commercial gain does not automatically mean it's protected under fair use.

So, it's a sort of fandom-wide, internet-wide idea that fanfiction would be automatically protected under fair use, but there is no guarantee of this. Whether or not it would qualify as fair use under any of the four factors is iffy, and the truth is, fanfiction will only have any kind of guaranteed protection if a creator or copyright holder actually files suit against a fic writer and the court ends up finding that the fanfiction in question qualifies as fair use. As there has, at this point, never been a case where a copyright holder has sued a fanfiction writer (there have been cases of original content creators suing people for using their characters and stories, but only in cases where the derivative work was going to be commercially published), the protections that fanfiction might have under fair use are up in the air. So don't assume that you just automatically have protection under fair use, because you don't.

The closest thing to someone being sued for fiction was the case of Paramount v. Axanar, where a relatively sophisticated Star Trek fanfilm was sued by the holder of Star Trek's copyright, Paramount, and how it went down isn't great for the idea that fan creators are automatically protected. While Axanar created new characters, the film used things that were created for the Star Trek universe, like the Federation. When they tried to get the case dismissed, claiming that those things were too abstract to be copyrighted, the judge disagreed, ruling to continue the trial because those things WERE protected under copyright. Paramount and Axanar settled out of court, with the latter admitting that their work did violate copyright and agreeing to make massive changed to their work.

But is your fanfic protected from a content creator using your ideas? Well, Anderson vs. Stallone did establish a precedent in regards to creators of derivative works not having this kind of protection. I wasn't able to find any other actual court cases where the writer of a derivative work filed suit against the original content creator for using their ideas. The only other court case I found that might set any kind of precedent in regards to this sort of thing was a very vaguely mentioned case where a fanfiction writer found a book which was not a part of the series on which her fanfiction was based that seemed to use a great deal of ideas, characters, and plot points from her fic. The judge in the case decided that the fanfiction writer's work was not protected because she didn't hold the copyright to the original work, and that only the copyright holder of the original work could file suit for copyright infringement.

A lot of people like to site an instance where a fanworks writer claimed that science fiction writer Marion Zimmer Bradley stole from her fanwork as a case of the courts declaring that fic was protected from creators using the ideas therein, but this is not the truth. No lawsuit was ever filed. The dispute never went to court, so there was no decision made by the judge in regards to fanfic's protections, and therefor, no legal precedent set.

One of the things that people like to lean on in regards to the idea that fanfiction is protected from the original content creators is the idea that the writer of the fanfiction holds the copyright to that fic. People seem to think that just by creating the fic that you hold the copyright, but the fact of the matter is that's a little murkier than that. While copyright law does grant the POSSIBILITY of something created for private use that has not been registered for copyright protection, simply creating something does not automatically mean your work is going to be protected by copyright law, especially if the thing you created is a derivative work, whether you think it's protected under fair use or not. There are some pretty specific laws about how much protection your work has if you don't register the copyright. If you haven't registered your work for copyright you can't actually get an injunction against someone infringing on your work. Under the law, you aren't actually even allowed to sue someone for infringement unless you hold a registered copyright. You can register your copyright even after an infringement and then sue, but you aren't going to be able to successfully sue without your copyright being registered.  So unless you've registered a copyright for your fanfiction, you're not going to be able to file a suit if you think the original content creator read your fic and stole your ideas.

I imagine the next question a lot of people are going to have is "can I register my fanfiction for a copyright?" I'm not 100% sure on this. I wasn't able to find anything that specifically discussed the possibility of copyrighting fanfic, but 17 U.S.C. section 103(2) says that any copyright on a derivative work only extends to the new material, which means any new characters, locations, objects, etc. So if you write a derivitive work, you hold absolutely no copyright on the original content that "inspired" you, or the already created world and characters. So if you're writing a fic with no new characters, locations, objects, etc., you're unlikely to be able to actually register a copyright, and any automatic copyright protection is going to be murky at best. And, as discussed above, there is at least one court case that established legal precedent that when it comes to fanfiction, the copyright holder is the person who holds the copyright for the original content and not the fic writer.

Ideas themselves do not have copyright protection. The execution of those ideas does. So if you WERE able to file suit against an original content creator, you wouldn't have a claim if the themes and ideas explored were similar, or even pretty much identical. Any legal claim you might have would depend on whether or not the execution is similar, so that would mean a similarity in a character, or a location, or an object, or a specific event.

I know a lot of people cite original content creators choosing not to read fanfiction because they worry about any legal issues that might arise as support for the idea that there's some kind of law or legal precedent preventing them from reading fic. There definitely are content creators who exercise caution in this area, but that does not mean it's a law, nor does it suggest that the law would come down on the side of fic writers in such a case. (Any sort of dispute of this nature, whether it went to court or not, would end up costing a lot of money and lead to some unpleasant press).

Which, mostly in conclusion, according to both legal precedent and the actual wording of copyright laws, means that it is unlikely that fanfiction writers actually have much, or really any protection from original content creators using their ideas.

So, a little bit of a tl;dr review, all of these ideas that go around the internet about fanfiction and copyright are myths...

Your fanfiction is automatically protected under fair use exceptions

You automatically hold the copyright of any fanfiction you publish online

You automatically have grounds to sue someone who plagerizes your fanfiction or uses your ideas

You automatically have grounds to sue an original content creator for plagerizing or using your ideas in their original content

Original content creators are legally not allowed to read fanfiction

These are the actualities that every fic writer really needs to know...

Your fanfiction is not automatically protected by fair use exceptions

You do not automatically hold the copyright for every bit of fanfiction you publish online as the original content creator holds the copyright for the characters, worlds, objects, etc. they created. Your copyright only extends to the new material (characters, worlds, objects, events, actions) you created.

You do not automatically have the right to sue for infringement unless your copyright is registered.

Ideas are not protected by copyright. Their execution is.

These is absolutely no statute or legal precedent that prevents content creators from reading fanfiction, no is there any statute or legal precedent that protects fanfiction writers from their ideas and work being used by the original content creator.

This is seriously something that creators of fanworks need to know. Fanfiction writers have made themselves feel safer by passing around unsubstantiated and unsupported ideas about the protection they have, but pretty much all of these ideas are myths.

It is important that we all know that, as creators of derivative fanworks, we do not have any substantial amount of legal protection. There is no legal precedent or statutes that prevent content creators from reading our work. There is no legal precedent or statutes that protect our works, ideas, and creations from being used by the original content creators. There is no legal precedent or statutes that establish any protections under fair use for fanfiction. Whether or not we actually hold copyrights for our derivative works is murky. We're not actually able to file suit for infringements without a registered copyright, and whether or not one would be able to obtain a registered copyright for fanfic is also murky. And all of the cases that HAVE happened that might relate to these issues or set any kind of precedent have not come down on the side of the of those who create derivative works.

Were a such case to go to court, we might end up being granted protections. But we also might end up with a ruling that denies us denies us protections. Right now, fic writers existed an a vague world of undefined legal status where we don’t have any official protections, but where we also aren’t officially violating the law.

I know it might seem like I've said it a million times right now, but it's so important that fanfiction writers (and other creator of derivative fanworks) know that there are no statutes or precedents that give us any legal protections. We need to be aware of that. Again, please reblog this because it’s vital information.

Sources and further information:

http://www.kentlaw.edu/faculty/rwarner/classes/legalaspects_ukraine/copyright/cases/anderson_v_stallone.html

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/106

https://debmcalister.com/2013/04/28/copyright-myths-from-the-world-of-fan-fiction/

http://www.trademarkandcopyrightlawblog.com/2016/10/10-copyright-cases-every-fan-fiction-writer-should-know-about/

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/cbs-paramount-settle-lawsuit-star-trek-fan-film-966433

https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/what-are-derivative-works-under-copyright-law

http://www.finnegan.com/resources/articles/articlesdetail.aspx?news=9cbb473b-f87b-47eb-8d4b-0202ad56343a

http://www.trademarkandcopyrightlawblog.com/2014/02/a-presidents-day-copyright-story-george-washington-and-the-first-fair-use-case/

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/510/569/

http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2014/02/15/protecting-ideas-can-ideas-be-protected-or-patented/id=48009/

https://www.newmediarights.org/business_models/artist/ii_what_can_and_can’t_be_copyrighted

https://www.thebalance.com/registering-a-copyright-3514952

https://fanlore.org/wiki/Marion_Zimmer_Bradley_Fanfiction_Controversy