Over the last couple of decades, fan fiction has been crazy. People taking other people’s stories and writing their own. People using pop groups to write stories about.

Yikes.

I was on Wattpad from 2011 to 2018 trying to get my books out there. But the one thing I always noticed was, what a cesspool of copyright infringement it was.

I joined because the adult authors I was following at the time were on there. I also noticed they didn’t do much of anything with their books, or comment, or keep uploading.

It was the decade I was trying to get published, found self-publishing, and didn’t look back. So, I left my books on there, and come 2017 when I decided to start taking this publishing gig seriously, knowing my Porn Star Brothers series was coming out in a year, I decided to become my business and use my ISBNs and slather my name everywhere. That meant deleting a whole bunch of websites and apps I was on. And boy, was it refreshing to do so.

Culling’s always a refresh. You get rid of things that you don’t use, is broken, or not needed anymore.

And Wattpad was one for me.

I wanted to take my publishing seriously, I was overhauling the titles and covers for my first four books, and things were getting busy.

But, after the sale of Wattpad, the rise and rise of AI for lazy bastards to write books, and the fact I’ve slogged my guts out and my fingers to their arthritic bone, I will never be on the side of stealing.

Stealing from creatives.

Stealing as a creative.

To me, if you steal from a creative, you are not a creative yourself.

If you call yourself a creative and steal from creatives, you are most definitely NOT a creative.

You are a thieving bastard I will never support.

While the conversation around AI to write books is a side I will never be on, I will also never be on the side of fan fic shit.

I fully understand there is a difference between using a boy band as the inspiration for a story you come up with, and taking someone else’s story, characters, and world that they built, and immersing yourself in that world to create your own. You use everything someone else created, and to me, that is theft.

The copyright laws around fan fic shit are cloudy, as it has been around awhile, and people love to argue the “it’s on the internet” rule, or the, “but I can change 10%” rule. Neither of which they actually understand. And neither of which is correct. Depending on your country’s laws, you may have no such copyright rule in law.

So, the next time you want to be a whiny thieving bastard who plays the victim, don’t. Do what every writer and author before you did, use your damn brain and come up with something yourself instead of stealing.