Fanfiction

This is going to sound weird coming from me because even though I was a fan of the show "Sherlock" I have not been active in the fandom. Deb is involved enough for all of us. At one point she told us of an event attended by both Martin Freeman and Benedict Cumberbatch. At one point a reporter by the name of Caitlin Moran gave them a printout of a Sherlock fanfiction story and had them read it.... out loud.

I'm presuming most of you know or have heard of FanFiction. If you haven't, these are stories written by fans of a particular TV series or movie. Sometimes these are simple stories of friendship. But often times they are out and out explicit erotica. As a rule, these stories are written by women, most of whom have very active imaginations and have very excellent writing skills.

The aftermath of Caitlin Moran giving Martin and Benedict that story has been pretty much unanimous, and it's not very nice. Anger is putting it mildly. Fanfiction authors are, for the most part, very private because oftentimes it is not in their best interest for their hobby to be known. Many have never told their families about their hobby.

One writer, known simply as Dangermouse, pulled all her work off the Internet when someone found out her real name and threatened to not only tell her family, but also her employer. She wrote fanfiction for the show Stargate CG1. Very homoerotic fanfiction. Having her family and her employer learn of her hobby of writing what some would characterize as "smut" could have had detrimental effects on her life. So, rather than take the risk that the person was merely making idle threats, she pulled everything off the fanfiction sites on which she had posted and remove her alias from the Internet. Which is sad because she was such a gifted writer.

As with any work of fiction, one needs get the author's permission before printing out or publicly publishing a story. While many of the characters may be from a copyrighted series, the fanfiction itself is the intellectual property of the fanfiction author and permissions must be granted before any sort of publication. Even if the writer is from another country, there are international laws concerning the theft of intellectual property. It doesn't matter where you find it, if you have not asked permission, or properly cited the work, you Can Not just take it. Plus, it's simply common courtesy. 

So the reporter, Caitlyn Moran, goes to a fanfiction website, finds a Very explicit Sherlock story, prints it out, and hands it to the stars of the series to read in a public venue. Did Caitlin Moran get permission from the author to print out this story?? No! Did she get permission to give the story to the stars of Sherlock?? No!! And did she get permission to let the stars publicly read the story out loud in a public venue??? NO!!! What she Did do was publicly embarrass herself by showing the world that she's the worst sort of reporter by pulling such a stunt, and she embarrassed the stars by showing them what their "pathetic" fans write about their characters. And she managed to inflame the ire of every fan of Sherlock fan, not just the ones writing fanfiction. Hence the reason for this post.

Probably the worst part of the fallout from Caitlin Moran's publicity stunt was the reaction of Sherlock himself, Benedict Cumberbatch. He has been a victim of a stalker before, and had been ubducted at gunpoint about 10 years before while in South Africa. So, after reading this story he was visably upset and was observed being comforted by Martin Freeman and his partner, Amanda Abbington.

How many people out there realize that this modernized version of the Sherlock Holmes stories was in itself fanfiction? Think about it. Anytime Anyone writes stories based on another story they are writing Fanfiction!

This version of the Sherlock Holmes stories was a vanity project for Showrunner Steven Moffat and co-writer Mark Gatiss. Martin and Benedict were never under contract to do the show, they were doing it because it appealed to them. The producers could have canceled the show after the end of the Second Season when Martin signed the contract so he could do "The Hobbit", and Benedict signed to do about 10 films including "Star Trek: Into Darkness", "The Fifth Estate", "12 Years a Slave", "August: Osage County", and a many others. (Honestly, when did the man sleep!) The point is that the producers could have decided to pull the plug on the whole thing at any point. (Though in hindsight, they probably should have stopped after the 3rd season since the 4th season was so bad. But thats a whole other blog post.) They didn't. And when a show has a devoted following, people, usually fans, will write stories about it.

The upshot is this. The writers of fanfiction are Not pathetic. They are gifted writers just looking for an outlet. Let them write! Who knows, maybe they'll be become published authors like what's her name who wrote the Fifty Shades books. She started out writing "Twilight" fanfiction.  So to the fanfiction writers out there I say, Write On!