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Panicked Perfection

Topic: Can we use real place in fan fiction?

Okay, I was wondering are we able to use real-life place in fan fiction, or due not name any places. I would like to know for this fan fiction I am now writing.

Thank you so much for your help.

#1 Jan 18th, 8:24pm

Rowena DeVandal

It is perfectly okay to use real places, names and all, in fan fiction. It's real PEOPLE who are not dead that we can't write about.

#2 Jan 18th, 8:40pm

General Havoc

Depends on your fandom of course. If the setting is another planet, then you'd need a bit of explanation as to how you got your characters to Cleveland. Still, other than that, feel free to use real places all you like. Most of the fandoms I'm familiar with do so anyway in their canon.

#3 Jan 19th, 1:08pm

cathrl

Got to second that. Mixing real locations with made-up ones (at least, when they're giant made-up ones, such as all the countries in your fandom are invented) is odd. The best thing is normally to go with the flow of whatever canon does. It uses real places? You use real places. It has completely invented names? You invent names. Some canons have invented names which are obvious copies of real places - Gatchaman has "New Jork" as a city and "Ameris" as a country, for instance. If I was writing a fic for that, I might set it in "Francia", for instance.

#4 Jan 19th, 2:54pm

gythia

sure, why not? They do it in cannon. Star Trek IV (the one with the whales) had the original cast wandering around 20th c. San Francisco. They were on the real USS Enterprise aircraft character, and a pair of real intelligence officers got to play themselves interrogating Chekov. It was a load of fun. Especially Spock trying to use "colorful metaphors".

#5 Jan 21st, 1:28pm

Darkwinter999

What they said.

DC comics has made up many cities; Jump City, Gotham City, Metropolis, etc. They also mention New York city and even move Nightwing there. Marvel bases Spiderman in NYC, yet they (I'm pretty sure since I couldn't find it on a map) made up Salem Center and Bayville for the X-men. Look at canon, see if they ever use real places, if not just rename that place (if you absatively posalutely have to use it).

Star Trek as a whole was based on the premise that the world we know is the Earth they came from, there should never have been a question about whether or not real places can be used there. I realise you were looking for support for your position in general, but I'm nitpicking ;-).

#6 Jan 26th, 7:11am

otherrealmwriter

Like others said before, it has to have a good reason why they're there. You can't just throw someone somewhere and expect it to have go over well. I used real life places in some of my fics.

#7 Feb 12th, 7:23am

Darkwinter999

It's good people are thinking about this. Some people don't care enough to look. I, for one, have a storyline that introduces a bunch of Green Lanterns, but I care enough to do the research to on them to do anything but arbitrarily make up alien races and places and just tag them as Lanterns. Of course, that's why I have shelved the story for now and even if I didn't, I certainly wouldn't bother true Lantern fans with it until I can clean it up. Closest to canon I got was introducing Kilowog's made-up nephew.

#8 Feb 12th, 7:51am

3StarvingArtist

Interesting topic. I agree with Cthrl. Several fandoms I write for occur on contemporary Earth, and sometimes real people, like political figures, as well as real places, do appear. However, in the case of real people, I usually just say "the American President", "the German Chancellor", etc., when they're actually required to speak with or otherwise interact with other characters, as opposed to using their real names. And they don't appear all the time, so it's not like I'm writing a real person fic.

#9 Feb 15th, 4:55pm . Edited Feb 15th, 4:57pm

Michael2

Okay, I was wondering are we able to use real-life place in fan fiction, or due not name any places. I would like to know for this fan fiction I am now writing.

Thank you so much for your help.

You should mention real-life places in fanfiction whenever possible.

I do it frequently in my stories, mentioning places like the Washington Navy Yard, the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks in Fort Leavenworth, McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey, and other places.

Michael

#10 Feb 16th, 8:30am

Darkwinter999

Not necessarily. Like in Star Wars. Not the place for reality.

#11 Feb 16th, 8:34am

otherrealmwriter

True Darkwinter. It all comes down to weither or not it would work for the fandom you're writing for.

#12 Feb 16th, 5:41pm

eloramoon

Rowena Devandal writes:

It's real PEOPLE who are not dead that we can't write about.

I was curious about this answer, as well as the OP's related question.

There is a rule against using real people in fan-fiction? To what extent? Who's rule is it?

I wasn't sure if that was a ff.net thing or a general fan-fiction writing rule.

Let's say you write Supernatural fan-fiction... would it not be ok to refer to a real life/well-known ghost hunter, were there such a person? Or, what if you write in Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan-fiction... would it not be ok for someone to refer to a famous author of vampire novels? Or, let's say you write in a fandom that takes place in the future where time travel is possible... if a character traveled back to our time, is it not ok to refer to a real person alive in our present-day in order to establish the time or whatever?

I understand that such references to real people can be really corny... I'm just wondering if it's "not allowed" because it's cheesy and therfore frowned upon, or if there is some sort of legal rule... either here at ff.net or in the real world, that makes these types of references restricted.

Thanks,

~ Elo

#13 Mar 10th, 12:24pm

Darkwinter999

I think it's ff.net's rule and it extends to real people (not necessarily your next door neighbor, because who would know?) that are still alive today. Gene Hackman is off limits, but Christopher Reeve is fair game.

If you want to use a real person, give them a different name to get around that.

Not sure if mere mention of someone real is off limits (don't think so) but using them as a character is.

I really think libel or some other lawsuit-waiting-to-happen is the motivation behind it.

#14 Mar 10th, 2:30pm

eloramoon

Ok, gotcha. So, it's probably not so much an issue of refering to them, but actually using one as a character. Well, I'll have to check out the web site's rules on that one. Although, I don't post my stories here, anyway, and probably won't start, but I was just curious more than anything else. Thanks!

~ Elo

#15 Mar 10th, 2:35pm

Darkwinter999

NP, I ask questions that are really just f(M)yi too.

#16 Mar 10th, 2:45pm . Edited May 04th, 9:35am

Twilight Scribe

All right, this one's easy. I agree with pretty much all of you on most points. Now, this is how I see it:

In a fanfic you may certainly write about a real place. Set your fic there, mention it briefly, whatever you want to do. As long as the place fits with your fandom's setting, or you have a really good excuse for the characters to be there, it's fine. Like Darkwinter said, in Spider-Man most of the action takes place in New York City. It would be silly for an author writing a fic to be unable to set their story in the real-world locale of NYC when the actual source material is set there.

You can also mention or write about a real person in a fanfic. The issue here is that you can write of them in your story, but you can't write the story about them. You can certainly write a That 70's Show fic (though I don't know why you'd want to) where, say, Alice Cooper or other rock stars are mentioned. (Note: mentioned. Not shown or brought into the plot as actors.) That happens in the show itself, it's in the right time period, and is something the characters would likely be interested in.

What you can't do is write an entire fanfic wherein a real-life person is the star. If you were to write a story about Alice Cooper's adventures as he... I don't know, goes around to parties in his limo filled with live bees and anacondas, then that would be against the rules here at FF.

At least that's how I've interpreted the posted rules. I hope it's a helpful condensation of pretty much everything.

#17 May 03rd, 7:33pm

Darkwinter999

That sounds about right. Thanks.

#18 May 04th, 9:40am

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