Warning: Long blog post ahead. Please check attention span, sleep and snack status before continuing.
Aw, you seem sad. Today's a happy day~!
At least, without people being stupid on the internet. This is why I'm friends with people who can hold civil debates with each other without fighting. I love people like that.
I'm thinking the City in my head works like this: (It's an opt-in law.) When an author publishes something, that version of the story and relating material is hers. BUT. Other versions, including fan interpretations of the same characters in the same universe belong to those fans. You own your version, not everyone else's. This means no publishing the original, canon material but fan stories, art, artbooks, fan comics, etc. are fine - fine to make and fine to sell. This is because A) if there is someone out there who can do the series in a different way and do it better, I think they should be handling it, for the sake of the story and B) if the fan work isn't up to snuff, it'll die a quiet death in the market. The audience is often the best gauge, in that sense. Art doesn't belong to the artist, it belongs to the community. Does that mean I think copyright law is stupid? No, not really. I would want my original material protected to a point (like, I don't like people making money of off something that is entirely mine, (work, time, effort and all) but to me that applies to the original canon material, not the offshoots. If I can't involve the audience in some way... well, I think I'd feel rather lonely.)
I realise I'm way, way in the minority here but I think people forget just how important your audience, your fans, are in the process. As I've said before, I don't really care what you write, I care that you write.
So there's that. Personally, I think copyright law, at least in the US, has gotten a little insane and if and when I am famous, I would like to call attention to it - likely by allowing the things stated above with at least a good portion of my work. I like open universes; they're great fun.
Of course, this is all speculation. I guess I'm just not as worried about 'This is mine' as most people are. I'm not sure if that's good or bad, really, but it's there.
I guess I'm just seeing that a lot of really talented writers get shoved aside because they do fan stories. Now, to do a fan story well, you have to stay in character (or believably out of character). To do that, you have to understand a character, which is a wonderful habit to get into, whatever you're writing. If nothing else, writing a lot forces you to improve. It makes you think, it makes you change things around and it makes you pay attention.
I guess I just want a more open world in terms of creativity and community than the one we have right now. Allowing the fans to jump in and get their hands dirty allows for this kind of background collaboration in which the most popular (and in dealing with fandoms, popular often does mean 'more thought out') theories to rise to the top and be noticed as they're used more and more and accepted more and more as a kind of shadow canon that reflects the fans much more than reflecting the original author's own mind, as the original material did. While canon belongs to the author and is a reflection of them and their inner world, this collaboration and shadow canon (fanon) is a reflection of the fans' interconnected world. If nothing else this can add layers and angles to character and world interpretations that might not have existed on this 'fandom and author connected conscious' scale without the background collaboration created by allowing the fans in in a much more active way than as the passive consumers of media that are typical now.
I think the creative community in general benefits not from pandering to our fans and changing things we don't want to change but from listening to our fans. Often times the fandom will pick up on character quirks and elements that authors fail to see because of their emotional proximity to the work. This can help to clean up future volumes or future stand-alone books in terms of character and interaction. This can work even in closed universes where discussion of the work is allowed and encouraged. As always, the key is take everything into account before you rule out any interpretation.
Open Universe or Closed Universe Licenses would be a simple way to tell which authors and artists encourage fan involvement and which do not. It also clears up the issue of different works under different licenses by the same author. For example, this:
is pretty clear. This took me all of three minutes and a quick search of NASA's images. Admittedly, this is grainy and not that professional-looking but it gets the point across. A version can also be made to say 'This work is placed under a Closed Universe License. Fan work is not allowed.' It's simple and quick and clear - no real legalese to sift through. These could even be made to specify a different version of the license. Say, 1.0 is fan stories and fan art allowed but no cosplay costumes, while version 1.2 allows cosplay and character or world-inspired fashion. Version 2.0 allows all of that but restricts fan films while 2.5 allows them. Attribution would work in much the same way, with a license containing how the original should be mentioned - 'Based on the world/novel', 'Inspired by', etc.
That may get confusing but having an agreement for artists who want the input but aren't too keen on leaving the world completely open, it may strike a good balance.
What it boils down to is this: Art, while great fun, a wonderful means of expression and perfectly viable even if kept completely to one's self, thrives when shared and changed. The climate in the publishing world is changing as publishers begin to notice writers that haven't been knocking on their door for months already. Who's to say the future isn't with the artists themselves?
Of course all of this is rather irrelevant currently unless someone wants to start it up. I don't really expect that but it would be nice, still...
All right. Now that's out of the way. I'm sorry for the length of this but apparently I had a lot to say on this topic. I guess I just feel that things are too locked down and separated as they are, is all. It's as though authors are the only people socially allowed to really enjoy all certain and potential elements of certain fictional characters because they wrote about them first.
*End of Serious Post*
So... yeah. I have my U.F.O. license! (Yes, it's a dollar twenty-five, little laminated thing and it makes me smile so shut up.) And today... today a text post I made got like 4 notes. I know that's not much but it's several for a text post that wasn't a really relatable (that doesn't even look right and probably isn't) quote or something. So EEEE!
I want to work on a story. Thing is it's a creepy story. Normally, that's just fine but this one... ugh. In a psychological way.
It's getting close to three here and I should probably eat. I hope I made some degree of sense in this post, even if you don't agree with me. I know Creative Commons is kind of a similar thing but it often doesn't quite cover what I'm looking for so I figured why not do something else? Besides I like the idea and it's my blog so there.
Yeah. I'm probably going to scrounge around the kitchen, hopefully find something to help my stomach, and then...maybe outline? Maybe.
See ya~
