The Nightstar Zoo

It has come to my attention through another forum that fanfic writers might be coming under the gun by publishing companies in the near future. ShoPro, the company who owns the rights to the Naruto anime, and who is going to merge with Viz, holder of the license to the manga, in the near future, has been sending out emails to fafic writers asking them to remove any Naruto content they have on their site, or face legal charges. One writer, Jeffery "Oneshot" Wong has decided to fight back, and has posted the emails from Shopro and his responses on his site (Scroll down to the March 26 rant to see where this all started). While it seems like he might just get away with it, if you look at today's (March 31) update, he is in contact with one of the higher-ups over at fanfiction.net, which is currently host to well over 10,000 Naruto stories. The site has also recieved notice from ShoPro to cease and desist the posting of Naruto stories, and might begin such a policy as early as this Saturday (April 2). As far as I know, asking that no fanfics be written a rarity, though some authors do ask this, and ff.net even has a list of authors who have asked them not to post the stories. This is certainly a first for an anime though, and it is especially disconcerting that it was not the original author, or even anyone in Japan who started this, but an American company.

As a fanfiction writer and reader, I am very displeased at this turn of events. I hope that after the merger, Viz/ShoPro don't go after authors of fics based on other manga/anime ("Ranma 1/2" specifically since it's my favourite, but any would be bad), but things are not lookng good here.

Less crappy stories based off boring shows? I fail to see the downside.

_________________
Scharr, scharr, verscharr das Gebein, grab es tief unten im Keller ein.
Später dann graben es andere aus, und nennen dein Haus das Knochenhaus.
Scharr, scharr, verscharr das Gebein, leg auch ihre weißen Schädel hinein.
Mit Beton gießt du es aus, das Fundament vom Knochenhaus.
Scharr, scharr, verscharr das Gebein, da ist noch Platz, da paßt noch wer rein.
Hier tobte sich der Teufel aus, unten im Keller im Knochenhaus.

Ok, lets not be snippy. I agree that there are some pretty bad fanfics out there, and admit to not being a big fan of Naruto (the manga is good, but the anime is boring), but that is not the issue here. The issue is that it seems that the anime fanfiction community may die off if ShoPro gets their way, especially if after the merger they go after people who write fics based on licenses held by Viz (Inu Yasha fics are quite possibly the most popular fics out there).

Besides, not all fics are poorly written peices of crap. You may argue that the majority are (and I'd have to agree with you there...), but every so often you come across a diamond in the rough that makes wadeing through the sludge worth it.

One could say the same thing about writing in general (non-published, since someone has to like them for them to get published). There's a lot of stuff that sucks out there, but occasionally you can come across something that's truly worthwhile.

Yesh that does suck. Because I've been an avad fan fiction writer for about two years. And have been a fan of the "Fan Fiction" art form for a longer period of time. It's just sad that if the cease and decist goes through with FF.net that all the good stories that are posted on the site are going to come down. I was never a big fan of Naruto but saw a few good stories on FF.net involving that anime series. And it's just like this comic I read, it's based off of The TMNT but set in a different timeline, and has some original characters thrown in the mix. Personaly, I think the people that own Naruto that are doing this are afraid that other people could write the series better than they can. But as the company that owns the series they have the right to do that, and I don't agree with it.

I mean people would probably still write Naruto fan fiction they just couldn't share it with anyone on the web or anyone.
I just don't want FF.net to go down because that site has been my home for more than two years I just don't wanna see it go down because of one company not wanting Fan Fictions written about there series on there site.

The Fan Fiction movement would have to go underground if that happened.. which would be sad.