While We Wait: Boredom Strikes Back

[nutranurse]

Then why not rip the idea/alter it and use that?

 

[thomas.berubeg]

that's what I'm going to do

 

[nutranurse]

Loopholes!

 

[Adrogans]

Hey I'm with you I like the setting...but yeah not going to rehash that issue. Rip it and Simply say ASB's cause effect xyz and have at it.

 

[SKILORD]

It isn't the most original idea in the world anyways..... which makes EQ's story so much funnier.

 

[Kraznaya]

Oh man

I have like

the biggest grin on my face right now

there's nothing like bold text for internet hilarity

 

[Adrogans]

TEXT

you laughing yet?

 

[EQandcivfanatic]

Yeah, it's not the most original idea, but considering the circumstances and then adding in an impossible to moderate ruleset and a particularly annoying player, it was for the best to kill the original incarnation of that NES. Still peeved though at the spark for it all. He's not even a particularly good author anyways. Dies the Fire is the sole work of Stirling's I find even remotely interesting, can't abide the tedious Draka books.

 

[nutranurse]

Spoiler I dunno guys, he looks like a goddamned rockstar :

 

[Kraznaya]

Adrogans, you're missing the long winded butthurt followup

sorry

 

[Lord_Iggy]

Yes, the author (85% sure about this) did actually turn up in relation to that particular NES and that was the cause of the death of that NES. Not going to elaborate beyond that though, but I will say, not very happy about the course of events.

You'd think he'd be happy to see something done like this. Maybe it was a copyright issue.

 

[Kraznaya]

You'd think he'd be happy to see something done like this. Maybe it was a copyright issue.

There are certain authors who are vehemently against any form of "fanfiction," which they see as copyright infringement.

Considering the quality of most works of fanfiction, can you really blame them?

 

[thomas.berubeg]

I was under the impression that Fanfiction is not a violation of copyright law.

 

[Kraznaya]

I was under the impression that Fanfiction is not a violation of copyright law.

I said what said authors saw it as, not what would actually hold up in a court.

That said, fanfiction is pretty weak as a literary medium. It's like, some people don't have the creativity to achieve idea genesis or something.

 

[Adrogans]

Adrogans, you're missing the long winded butthurt followup

sorry

Ah well this amused me on some level at least. It was a low level but amusing none all the same.

As to fanfiction - I wouldn't bother with it directly (I do not see stealing a setting and using it for a game as fanfiction).

 

[Kraznaya]

Ah well this amused me on some level at least. It was a low level but amusing none all the same.

You unwittingly pointed the remark for me by making it necessary to elucidate :<

 

[North King]

That said, fanfiction is pretty weak as a literary medium. It's like, some people don't have the creativity to achieve idea genesis or something.

Pretty silly criticism of fanfiction. That's like saying every shared universe is "weak".

 

[Kraznaya]

Pretty silly criticism of fanfiction. That's like saying every shared universe is "weak".

There's a difference between shared and agreed upon idea genesis and just blatantly ripping off a universe because you were too lazy to create your own, often twisting aspects of it against the author's original intent (usually unintentionally, but this is pretty much bound to happen in this circumstance). The former is not fanfiction. The latter is.

 

[EQandcivfanatic]

Well there's different scales of fan fiction. I mean, look what they've done with the Ring of Fire stuff and the 1632 series. I don't like most of it personally, but someone must. In some of these cases Kraznaya's right, it's just ripping off someone else's ideas due to a lack of your own. On the other hand, I frequently find myself wondering about unexplored ideas in various books, and expansion on these ideas seems like a flattering type of fan fiction to me.

On the other hand, there are types of "fan fiction" I don't blame authors for discouraging. Some of these abominations I may never be able to purge from my mind.

 

[North King]

There's a difference between good and bad fanfiction. The former is a well-written work that explores the world that has already been established because the author has ideas within that continuity. The latter is "blatantly ripping off a universe..." etc.

To claim that a person writing in a universe created by another author is "lazy" is quite silly. It's like saying that a composer who writes variations on a theme by another composer is "ripping off" that composer because he has no original ideas. This is, in fact, completely missing the point. Fanfiction, like any and all shared-universe fiction, is simply written not because other ideas do not exist -- but because you have ideas that bloom from the setting already created.

Settings, just like any other aspect of a story, are not some sort of sacred relic that only one author can use. If you borrow a plot, then are you using it because you can't dream up another plot? Do you think Shakespeare was just an uncreative lout when he used the story of Hamlet? What if you borrow a theme? A moral? What, then, are you a lazy bastard?

Was Wagner a lazy plagarizer when he basically stole the story AND setting of the Nibelungenlied and Norse mythology for the Ring Cycle? What about Tolkien?

And so on, and so on. Your implication -- that an author must in all things have an independently generated story -- is completely unrealistic. Is fanfiction a universally good medium? Of course it isn't, and there are legitimate criticisms that you could raise about it. Does it take the "sharing" further than most stories? Why yes, yes it does. But if you spit on it for being "uncreative", then you're completely off-base.

Because the beauty in a story does not lie in its creativity, not wholly. The beauty lies in the telling.