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[GiglameshDespair]

In true, terrible style, they'd stop mid-coitus to deliver a long spiel of my opinions on it and various irrelevant issues.

[KingofstarrySkies]

If I made a book, I'd be fucking honored if someone made a fanfiction of my work. 'Course, that's just me. Still, seems a bit mean to tell them that they just can't use it because you said so... 

[AlleeCat]

They're taking characters and plotlines that I've created and doing their own thing with them.
Defacing the author's creations and twisting them to fulfil their own twisted desires. Gosh, now I'm getting angry just on behalf of this hypothetical author. I don't understand how anyone could not see why an author might object to this.

If I were an author, I would love to see any sort of fan fiction about what I've written. Even if it's porn! I don't want to horde over my characters and plots and protect them with my life because they'll never evolve that way. Even if it's someone making fun of my work, or getting the characters all wrong, I can still laugh at it, because hey, who cares? I know my work is just fine on it's own, or maybe I admit that, yeah, X was kind of a dumb choice, or maybe Y and Z should have ended up together in the end.

Really, when it comes down to it, it's people being inspired by your work. Nobody is stealing anything from you. Your work is your work, and theirs is theirs. Nobody's stealing anything from you. Hell, if anything, people who know nothing about your work might stumble upon it and be intrigued enough to find the original.

[SalmonGod]

This has been a big scary week.  Things are happening that I never saw for myself.  I never saw myself climbing the ladder.  I never wanted to see myself as someone who had such aspirations.  I identify with workers, not managers.  I especially never saw it happening in a business environment like this.  But I think it's about to happen anyway.  I do and don't want this.  I hate the business world.  I hate the people that operate it.  But I'm suddenly finding my personality, talents, and work ethic recognized and respected by those people, and now I'm being invited closer to them.  Even by someone who I've spent most of my time in this office avoiding, because every interaction with her felt like being stalked like a predator.  I'm now realizing that's completely reversed.  A week ago, I was dead set on escaping this place as soon as I could.  Now I'm thinking about how I'm going to make it better.  All in the midst of swallowing down emotional turmoil, because the two people I'd grown closest to at work, who supported me so much towards growing into the position I'm in now, have left within the span of two weeks.  One had her last day today and I actually teared up over it, because of how overwhelming everything has been, knowing that the last person who went out of her way to teach me and support me when I needed it is gone.

Life is fucking bizarre and terrifying and oh my god this is going to suck so bad.  But... I have to grow up and take an opportunity to build a better future for myself and my family someday.  I may never see a better opportunity than this, and as I close in on 32, it's sunk in pretty deeply that the opportunities I really want may never come.

In other words, I'm being practically handed a team lead position (at a small but rapidly growing company doing really big business, so it's significant... I'd be shouldering primary responsibility for the majority of air freight imports for a major corporation).  My boss has been making references to "my future at BDP" almost every time I talk to her.  She announced the position being opened today, just as the last person who took on the position stepped down, because it basically broke her within a span of 4 months.  She's the second person I've seen torn apart by this position in the less than 2 years I've been here.  And as my boss was leaving today, she... indirectly said to me "I'm opening this position back up so you can take it."  But... I'm being told by the person one step down from her, who I respect, and realizing to a large extent myself, that the way I've evolved in my time here I have practically turned into the de facto team lead anyway.  Everyone looks to me for guidance, and I spend most of every day providing it.  And it's been that way for a while.  And higher ups look to me for my analysis of both the workload and the people of the team.  I can't deny that it makes sense... and maybe I am suited for succeeding at this where others have failed.  And maybe this is a first step to making something of myself.

[Frumple]

For me, it depends on the writing in question. Something like Game of Thrones? Yeah, okay, it doesn't cotton well to fanfiction and most would just be straight-up porn.

S'wha'? There's like a slew of pretty ruddy excellent GoT/ASOIF fanfics. It's a really nice setting to meddle with, from what I've seen in passing. Haven't actually read more than two or three of 'em, personally, but I've seen a fair number get pretty good response from folks that are fairly critical of what they read. Seems to be one of a handful of fandoms that are on a notable upswing.

[Flying Dice]

I like how I managed to set that off by referencing pretty much the only good story in that fandom. For the record, it's praised in large part for being virtually indistinguishable from Martin's own prose.

Also, I lost all respect I might have had for Martin when he turned out to be so rabid about the subject. I understand the desire to protect your ickle creative babbies from the nasty teenaged smut writers, but it's a frankly astonishing display of ignorance about the nature of storytelling. Literally everything is derivative, and some of the oldest and most venerated of the classics functionally are fanfiction, insofar as that they're stories created by people taking characters, settings, and ideas which already existed and shaping them to their own vision.

Yes, it sucks there are literal tons of terrible writers in the world. Yes, it sucks that some of them want to play in your sandbox. Tough shit, that's the price of being part of a highly active creative species.

Oh, and the old excuse about how failing to file takedown notices on explicitly derivative work will somehow void your intellectual property rights? Pure unadulterated horseshit. The closest that we've ever seen to that in living memory is a couple hacks who tried to rip off Rowling with their own "original" stories; those attempts were not only not fanfiction, but did absolutely nothing to her intellectual property rights.

--

And, on a more personal note, if anything I wrote was ever successful and popular enough to make people want to play in my sandbox, I'd be fucking ecstatic. Even if a bunch of them were terrible and wrote nothing but cracky smut. Because, at least for me, writing is as much about trying to craft something which other people will take pleasure from as it is my own pleasure with the creative process. But maybe that's just me not being an arrogant, egocentric douche. :|

[Xantalos]

Wait, The North Remembers was good?
Differing opinions I suppose.

[Bauglir]

Okay, back to being me.

[Vector]

.

[KingofstarrySkies]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

DUUUUDE

[Truean]

This has been a big scary week.  Things are happening that I never saw for myself.  I never saw myself climbing the ladder.  I never wanted to see myself as someone who had such aspirations.  I identify with workers, not managers.  I especially never saw it happening in a business environment like this.  But I think it's about to happen anyway.  I do and don't want this.  I hate the business world.  I hate the people that operate it.  But I'm suddenly finding my personality, talents, and work ethic recognized and respected by those people, and now I'm being invited closer to them.  Even by someone who I've spent most of my time in this office avoiding, because every interaction with her felt like being stalked like a predator.  I'm now realizing that's completely reversed.  A week ago, I was dead set on escaping this place as soon as I could.  Now I'm thinking about how I'm going to make it better.  All in the midst of swallowing down emotional turmoil, because the two people I'd grown closest to at work, who supported me so much towards growing into the position I'm in now, have left within the span of two weeks.  One had her last day today and I actually teared up over it, because of how overwhelming everything has been, knowing that the last person who went out of her way to teach me and support me when I needed it is gone.

Life is fucking bizarre and terrifying and oh my god this is going to suck so bad.  But... I have to grow up and take an opportunity to build a better future for myself and my family someday.  I may never see a better opportunity than this, and as I close in on 32, it's sunk in pretty deeply that the opportunities I really want may never come.

In other words, I'm being practically handed a team lead position (at a small but rapidly growing company doing really big business, so it's significant... I'd be shouldering primary responsibility for the majority of air freight imports for a major corporation).  My boss has been making references to "my future at BDP" almost every time I talk to her.  She announced the position being opened today, just as the last person who took on the position stepped down, because it basically broke her within a span of 4 months.  She's the second person I've seen torn apart by this position in the less than 2 years I've been here.  And as my boss was leaving today, she... indirectly said to me "I'm opening this position back up so you can take it."  But... I'm being told by the person one step down from her, who I respect, and realizing to a large extent myself, that the way I've evolved in my time here I have practically turned into the de facto team lead anyway.  Everyone looks to me for guidance, and I spend most of every day providing it.  And it's been that way for a while.  And higher ups look to me for my analysis of both the workload and the people of the team.  I can't deny that it makes sense... and maybe I am suited for succeeding at this where others have failed.  And maybe this is a first step to making something of myself.

It's about time. Long overdue.

"just as the last person who took on the position stepped down, because it basically broke her within a span of 4 months."

You may already know this; you may not. NEVER take it, anything, personally, no matter what anybody says. Whatever tore them apart is still out there. This isn't to warn you away from it; but to have you forewarned and forearmed against it. Understand that changing it will be slow and drawn out. Use the position to fulfill material security concerns you have, use the health insurance it provides for your family, etc. That greater purpose may not be there at first from this. In the end, it's just another challenge, trend carefully, but confidently.

I say this as a person chronically afflicted with a pervasive tendency to tell people exactly what to do with themselves when wrong, and the ingrained thought, "the hell with everybody with a side of lack of faith in humanity," and I don't say it often so when I do I fucking mean it:

I know you can do this....

Prove. Me. Right.

[Frumple]

Frumple is glad you weren't dragged under by the undertow to drown, molested by death jellyfish, or eaten by sharks. May your next beach incursion be similarly survivable!

May you also never inadvertently encounter a jellyfish bigger than you. That sucks. Really, really sucks. Something you need to approach with foreknowledge, lest the body be not ready.

[Rolan7]

I worry a lot about jellyfish every time I visit the beach 
Yet another reason why I hate the beach.  Mountains 4 evar.

I'm happy because I've been listening to this sweet retro playlist from a game I played in an Egghead years ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uHBX6X1uKU&index=1&list=PL4F25840A6F57065D

And because a forum game I just joined finally fucking updated (not on this forum).

And because I went for a brisk walk today and barely had to interact with anyone

[SalmonGod]

Thank you for that show of confidence, Truean.  I mean it.

Spoiler: TLDR rant about work and the crazy situation I'm in. (click to show/hide)

I've definitely learned my lesson regarding taking things personally.  And this is one of the major reasons I'm the only person in the office who gets along with everyone.  Even the people nobody else likes.  Even the people who disliked and sought conflict with me in the beginning have turned around to showing goodwill towards me.

I know what tore the last person apart.  I did everything I could to warn her against it, and help her survive.  I rescued her from multiple disasters.  I'm probably the reason she only stepped down, instead of storming out or being fired.  And this was someone with 20 years of management experience.

I think what this will ultimately mean for me is this.  And this is totally my head still spinning trying to come to terms with this and mentally prepare myself... assuming it happens.  I'm going to be quite bold on what I ask for as a pay increase, knowing how fucking difficult this role will be to take on.  So they may change their mind about me based on that.

When I joined this team, it was chaos.  I learned how to work through the chaos like everyone else, and then I started doing things on my own to bring order to it.  Anything I could do to offer support and make things run more smoothly, I did.  In most cases, I didn't even ask or make a big deal out of it.  I just did it.  There was no ambition behind what I did.  I just wanted shit to work.  I wanted work to be easier.

After about a year, I found myself at the center of the workflow, putting together the entire team's daily workload, assigning priorities, and going out of my way to gathering and distribute any information I thought anyone might need to get their job done so they wouldn't have to.  At about that same point, we entered a golden period where everyone was pretty happy and things operated incredibly smoothly for several months.  My understanding is this was the first smooth period in the operation's entire history of something like 8 years. 

And it's because I found myself to be really, really good at just getting everyone working together and offering support.  That's really all I did was offer support.  I was the glue that held all the components together.  To the point that our boss was convinced that I didn't do anything for a very long time.  But when she tried to take stabs at me on that subject, the rest of the team would immediately jump in and literally shout her down.  Looking back on it, this is huge.  I didn't realize it until much later, but this wouldn't happen for anyone else.  Our boss is someone that everyone fears.  Who has a reputation for making people cry, and enjoying it.  I've seen people who were normally friends with one another throw each other under the bus in front of her, just to avoid her wrath, and not even be upset with each other about it.

So we had this golden period, but things would still go wrong.  Our customer is really absolutely horrible at their supply chain management, and there's no saving them from their own stupidity all the time.  But our boss would still always find some way to blame us and treat us like shit.  She paid no attention to the challenges we actually faced, and couldn't see the customer as ever being at fault.  So... we lost a person to bad morale, because of this.  We managed to keep things together without him for a couple months, but we begged and pleaded and warned that he needed to be replaced before the shit hit the fan.  I had to get involved in doing work I had previously drifted away from, and didn't get to focus on acting as the glue  anymore.  Then we got hit with projects that literally doubled our workload overnight, and things began truly falling apart.  After 6 months and a ton of crisis and drama, we lost three workers, two of them being our most knowledgeable, dependable veterans.  This leaves me, one other veteran, and the person who just stepped down from team lead, who has only been here 4 months and nearly had a complete nervous breakdown.

And that's where we are now.  They're finally taking shit seriously.  They're hiring new people as fast as they can.  Our boss has jumped in for the past 3 days to help make up for the lack of manpower, and is finally genuinely realizing what a horrible position we've been in.  Her attitude really seems to have completely reversed. 

So me taking on team lead now... I'm not sure it will really change much.  I'll be the support.  I refuse to be a spy for upper management or a mini-iron fist.  I'm going to go back to what I was doing.  Keeping things organized and helping everyone work together.  Except now I'll actually be held responsible for it.  And for re-building this failed operation from scratch with a team of entirely new people.  And for taking tons of shit from lots of people.  Tons and tons and tons of shit.  And I fully expect that my boss will return to her old ways when things settle, and most of the shit I take will be from her.  But for the time being, it seems like I've genuinely earned her respect.  Which is a feat.  She (who thrives on meanness) even told me today that she thinks my niceness is a strength.  I think I can do this. 

And hopefully, this experience will open the door to other opportunities down the road.  Moving further up, or just having management experience and impressive stories to brag about, which can hopefully be applied to a wide variety of positions elsewhere.

[Orange Wizard]

It sounds like you're going to do splendidly in this position.