Originally published at: Fan who claimed Amazon copied his Tolkien fanfic ordered to stop selling his Tolkien fanfic - Boing Boing
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Tokien
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I feel that suing the Tolkien Estate and Amazon is a bit like fucking around with a Palantir; it attracts dangerous attention.
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He claimed the Tolkien estate and Amazon stole his ideas. The claim is bullshit, as is his fanfic. I’ve read some of it, and it’s honestly crap. Tedious, unimaginative, clunky; a classic example of bad fanfic that isn’t even bad in an entertaining way.
People write ten times better Tolkien fanfic all the time, just for the love of the books and of Middle-Earth, and they aren’t trying to make a dishonest buck with it.
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Vaguely surprised no one has thought to do a CGI rendition of Bored of the Rings.
(“too dated! …imean: ‘Bay of Milhous’?”
(still quote “The Land of the Knee-Walking Turkeys”)
)
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This is like trying to go after Marvel because you think the Disney+ show stole the idea from your DeviantArt posts depicting Loki making out with himself.
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For a fanfic author, the Eye of Sauron is nothing compared to that of the copyright holder.
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‘Do not meddle in the affairs of authors’ estates, for they are subtle and quick to anger.’
Actually, scratch the ‘subtle’ bit.
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Yeah, he’s claiming his fanfic, published in 2022, somehow influenced the writing of the tv show that finished filming in 2021 (and was written starting in 2018). He’s claiming he sent a manuscript to Simon Tolkien in 2017 (Simon not being involved in running the estate, the Amazon show or anything else relevant), and then subsequently “tried” to send it to the estate (though probably at a point where the show had already been written).
So despite the people writing the show being unable to have read his manuscript (except perhaps via the use of a time machine), he’s sure any similarities can’t be coincidental, even though his stated goal was “to stick as close to canon as I could,” and that was also presumably a major consideration of the tv writers… It’s like, “Oh, no one else could have possibly considered this obvious, logical extrapolation of existing plots and characters…”
After there was already a Marvel comic published where that idea had already at least been hinted at…
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The Fellowship of the King? Does this mean we’ll also miss out on The Return of the Ring? The Three Towers, The Four Towers…
Considering they made TSR change their hobbits™ to halflings quite some time back, he should not be surprised
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Not so classy.
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I loved Bored of the Rings (just yesterday when I bought christmas dinner I thought of Legolam), but yeah, the references to 60s politics and advertising almost required a few pages of footnotes by the time I read it in '82.
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… so to speak 
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Well sure, why, I’m publishing Right Now 
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HOLD THE FRONT PAGE!
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i always wondered what those clunky machines were. thank goodness someone finally invented a portable lighter!
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Demetrius Polychron sounds far more like a character from WH40K than LOTR anyways.
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I assume it was self-published, but it was being sold (ironically) on Amazon…
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Brb, just suing Disney for ripping off my original intellectual property “The Back-Striking of Skywalker” and “The Menace of the Sith”, two gripping adventures from my “War Stars” universe, featuring my original characters Duke Flytalker, Jan Onesie, and Countess Layla.
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The worst part of this story is making me side with Amazon on a copyright issue. Did he represent himself? Because I cannot imagine any lawyer, even a bad one, would have taken this case.
ETA: Nope, he did not represent himself. This was his attorney. I hope she took the case on contingency.
ETA, pt.2: I actually meant, I hope she didn’t take the case on contingency, because this case was super weak sauce.
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