OTW Fannews: Building and Re-Building

• The Prince Albert Daily Herald wrote about a fanfiction author whose path to publication involved plagiarism. "Another series she’s working on centres on the fictional Red Rebels motorcycle club, which was inspired by the television series Sons of Anarchy. It started off as a Sons of Anarchy fan fiction novel she wrote and was stolen by someone online who stripped it of the television references and tried to pass it off as an original novel of their own. The rip-off garnered some positive reviews, so Breadner decided to give motorcycle club fiction a try."
• Rosalyn Hunter wrote about her experience with fan video takedowns. "I posted the work on You Tube and others were able to find it. They gave me comments and encouragement to go on and try again. I had begun the learning process. I was pleased, but this positive experience was not to continue. My next videos were found to have content matching commercial works, and so they were either blocked worldwide, or removed entirely...I created a video and posted it as a private work. This work too received a content warning. Others were not able to view and comment on the work...I was told in one case that I could erase the music and pick a piece from their music library, but the images were integrated with the music. To remove the music would upset the unity of the work so that it would make no sense."
• The Asian Age reported on expected takedowns. "[A] massive crackdown by Google on Blogger, its popular global blogging community, will effectively ban all ‘mature’ creative content from the site." As of 2012, Google made it easier to censor Blogger content by country. "Adult fanfiction writer Khyati Gupta, who has been writing an ongoing work-in-progess of erotica for almost six months now, shares...'To me, a blog always meant a space where I could be myself, express myself freely and share my creative musings with a host of people who don’t personally know me and are therefore better placed to give me completely objective feedback. It was that one space where I didn’t have to restrain my imagination. Erotica is a fairly marginalised genre in India as far as paperbacks go.”
• By comparison the Apocalypse Weird franchise centers on collaboration. "The creative collaboration on Apocalypse Weird is scheduled to include 20 authors, with two new titles releasing each month. There are also plans for a fan-fiction thread, in which readers will be able to expand on the stories of their favourite characters with the chance of their contributions becoming canon in the Apocalypse Weird universe. There’s an impressive level of creativity and ambition in this indie publishing collaboration, something too often missing from mainstream publishing today."

What examples of takedowns or collaboration have you experienced? Write about it in Fanlore! Contributions are welcome from all fans.

We want your suggestions! If you know of an essay, video, article, podcast, or link you think we should know about, comment on the most recent OTW Fannews post. Links are welcome in all languages! Submitting a link doesn't guarantee that it will be included in a Fannews post, and inclusion of a link doesn't mean that it is endorsed by the OTW.