The topic of my web essay will revolve around the topic of fanfiction.

Fanfiction are pieces of work based upon either films, novels, television programs, comics and real persons (which could also fall into the ethics).

Within the essay, I was thinking about researching the various copyright issues facing the fanfic author today. There are two kind of authors running about. There are the authors who utterly despise fanficers basing any of their work upon their published work. Then you have the authors who don't really mind when fanficers use their work for their creativity.

I think I would also discuss how modern fanfiction has changed through the years. It went from a small fandom of Trekkies writing stories about Captain Kirk suggestively rubbing Spock's ears to, uh, well, the same thing - but the way the stories are now available are much more convenient. If you wanted to read any fanfiction before the Internet, you had to subscribe to a fanzine. Now, you could easily post a story directly to the net and maybe have a hundred people read your story (of course, you probably won't get 100 replies, but that's another gripe).

Dr. Chandler, along with talking about the relationship between author & reader. Can I also talk about the different sorts of genres alive in fanfiction? Like, sci-fi, drama, comedy, romance, AU (alternate universe), slash, het, general (the last three are sort of categories), etc?