Spinoff Contest

[Lorax]

I seem to recall from my dusty past , that items thrown into a public dustbin cannot be legally retrieved by a passer-by. This action would amount to theft with the proviso that the five elements are fulfilled: appropriation, property, property belonging to another, dishonesty, and the intention to permanently deprive).

This may seem absurd, until one considers that the item in question "rubbish" is disposed with the intention of it being collected for waste disposal. Therefore, the servant or agent of the waste disposal company will pick up the rubbish on behalf of the company. It is that company's property, or alternatively, the property of the local authority which provided the bins.

The relevance? The item, the discarded item, is NOT public property.

Now think of stories by a named author published on a site many years ago. The concept is similar. It may be published publicly but that does not mean it is owned by any or every member of the public. In reality, it is more clearcut as leaving a story published is clearly not analogous to discarding it.

In short, the common courtesy of approaching the author, should be extended by would-be borrowers.

[Executionus]

One of the key limitations regarding asking authors for permission beforehand is the fact that the majority of the greats of the past haven't been seen in years, with yet another group of legends who are seen only rarely. This would dramatically limit the pool of works to work with. We only have a couple dozen members total who could be considered at-all active and many of those just comment.

I've never been all that worried about that sort of thing myself. Even the people who try to steal More and More and claim it as their own (and only that story for some reason, my oldest posted story) only slightly irritate me. There was this big scandal a few years back on Dan's board where a whole bunch of people got mad and tried to White Knight me because another author used a similar scenario as one of my stories. I had to come in and explain that I don't exactly own a patent on handcuffing panties to posts or anything. I was astonished that people would get so mad on my behalf when A) I don't care and B) it wasn't even a direct copy of the scene in question. In the real world I look like a cross between Loki and Jack Sparrow, a long haired, heavy metal, youthful, intense-eyed, pretty boy Millennial with a cocky smile. I am precisely as chill as my appearance suggests.

Fan versions of things are also very common and no longer considered disrespectful by the general online community. TeamFourStar and DevilArtemis made their entire careers on Dragon Ball fan dubs, and roughly 30% of TikTok is cosplay and fanfiction shenanigans.

That being said, anybody who wants to be excluded or contacted beforehand can always post here and I would hope that their wishes would be respected.

[Hooked6]

Well said, my friend. You summed it up perfectly - fair, honest and simply said. No wonder you are a great writer. Thanks for that. And just to be clear from my standpoint, I do like the contest idea.

Hooked6

[Humilatron]

I’m a mix in between. I don’t mind if people take inspiration and base a story off of one of my works, but I absolutely do not like blatant almost word for word copies or the random continuation of unfinished pieces. I’ve has the former happen to me multiple times and my general issue is that I wasn’t even credited for the idea and it wasn’t even trying to be transformative and at that point it was just stolen with a sort of title change and maybe some name changes. I don’t mind if people want to tell their own versions or do spin-offs of sorts so long as the credit is given. Obviously my stuff on CHYOA, I often expect contribution and do like the idea of authors collaborating to throw ideas together and make a story, but on the other hand I also have attachments to my characters and stories even ones I don’t plan to ever continue. I would not want someone to just take let’s say Silena Allen for example and then turn her into a character that she is not by muddling down to stereotypes and perceptions. I try to give my characters their own voices and not just make them one dimensional target practices even if I do torment them. It’s not about just humiliation despite my name, it’s also about other emotions, other feelings. I believe Rowling and Riordan and the likes have addressed their feelings on fanfiction and most of them generally say that they don’t like it, and from a fanfiction writer's perspective that can be hurtful because their idea is that they admire their stories so they want to show that by transforming their works into something else, but if you look at it from the original author’s standpoint and look at all of the fanfictions that are out there. Can you really blame them if some people turns their characters into raging psychopaths that have no emotional connection to their original character? It’s not even about copyright or legality, it’s about the attachment a writer gets to a character and how they feel about others warping them into something they are not.

As someone who has written many fanfiction works as well as original works, I understand both sides. I also understand why authors would not be okay with people hijacking their stories for precisely the reason that another author cannot possibly understand every aspect of a character they are writing because not every information about a character is written into the stories. There is much that can’t be written but the author just knows in their head and it helps bring out the character’s voice. When another author takes the original author’s characters, you’re going to end up with different results regardless of how good the author may be. And maybe the author makes a “better” version of the original author’s story. It’s different if someone wants to have a new character added to the universe or if they want to do a parody or purposefully alter the story, it’s another to simply take existing characters and twist them to their narrative or whatever. That doesn’t mean people can’t use a similar genre or archetype or theme or setting. But I think authors mostly get bothered when you take their characters and change them into someone they’re not.

[Hooked6]

Brilliant. As an experienced author of both erotica as well as traditional literature (published by mainstream publishing houses (not Amazon e-books) I think you summed up my points extremely well. There is indeed an emotional attachment to not only the characters but the work itself. Turning a character(s) into something they are not or totally morphing a story into something it was never intended to be is like stabbing the author right to the heart.

Thank you, Humilatron. Well said.

Hooked6

[SDS]

Excellent idea ( despite getting into some trouble myself initially when writing a completion of a story by SDS )

Since SDS does not mind, I am giving some thought to a talent contest run by a well known bully !

Fun fact I was lurking with no real intention of joining the board (burnt out of writing stories!) And quickly created an account to jump in and say I loved the ending when this was all going on haha!

[SwimKid]

Well, this sure sounds fun! If I manage to get the time to write something, I may just participate on this contest!

I also wanted to explicitly give permission to anyone who wishes to use ARAYH or any of my other stories for this. In fact, I'd even encourage you to! I'd love to read what might come out of, say Elise's stripping escapades before meeting Juliette, or maybe Katrina's latest boytoy, among many, many others...

Good luck everyone!

[Revengedpirate]

I don’t mind any treble rebel story being redrafted or rewritten or changed in anyway. The mortifying shopping trip, and the work party or any of my short stories are up too. I’d prefer Amy and Ellie left alone as I’m still working both of these characters and worlds thanks

[Lorax]

I don’t mind any treble rebel story being redrafted or rewritten or changed in anyway. The mortifying shopping trip, and the work party or any of my short stories are up too. I’d prefer Amy and Ellie left alone as I’m still working both of these characters and worlds thanks

I'm very happy to hear that you're actively working on Amy and Ellie, two of my favourite characters. Shame about The Mortifying Shopping Trip, I feel that Vicky's story was stopped in mid-air and needs continuing.

[Executionus]

I'm sad that we don't have any entrants to this yet, aside from the story that inspired the contest (which hasn't had a new part since then). Honestly the whole board has been pretty dead the last week or so. We need to lure new writers. If I have to drive a creepy white van and hand out candy in order to lure folks here, I WILL do it. It wouldn't even be the first time in my life that I've done that (Totally not a joke. My life is weird).

I was thinking the other day about several old classics and deciding if I wanted to write any spinoffs for any of them myself, even though I obviously can't win my own contest. It occurred to me that several of my favorite stories from the past have largely been forgotten, so I'm gonna locate a couple that I can find and post them in the archives.



EDIT: So in my efforts of browsing the old archive of the dreambook site I ran into one of my ancient stories under a throwaway name, because I had a couple of those before I went with the Executionus name full-time. This story had enough newbie cringe to ensure that I kept it locked away forgotten forever. Let's just say that it was a nice humbling experience to be reminded how rookie I was early on.