Legitimacy, Validity, and Writing for Free: Fan Fiction, Gender, and the Limits of (Unpaid) Creative Labor

Fan fiction is an essentially parodic, some would say parasitic, art form: it cannot exist apart from the creative texts, whether novels, television programs, or movies, on which it is based. As a result, its current creative and legal status is tenuous, falling as it does outside the injunction that creative works be "original," and outside of copyright laws which uphold the ownership of the originary producer of his or her work and the right to control derivative works. Given the fraught nature of the relationship between copyright-holding creative producers and their potentially copyright-breaking fan producers, it is perhaps inevitable that interactions between the two are similarly problematic, ranging from affectionate recognition of their shared love of the creative worlds in which they play, to tense, open hostility and accusations of theft, exploitation, and creative over-reaching. In an analysis of a series of debates between fans and copyright holders that took place between 2005 and 2010, this articles addressses, specifically, the issue of creative labor and its place in discussions between these various stake-holders in relation to questions of creative control and "legitimacy."