ADMIN: Mission Report Clarification (aka "Running Challenges Is Harrrrd")

[cesperanza.livejournal.com]

Whoa, whoa--okay, okay! We hear you! While we remain philosophically committed to the idea that people have the right to make art based on other art provided that due credit is given the original artist, this is supposed to be fun, not a referendum on the nature of derivative works.

Also, we'd like this to be less work for us.

So here's what we're gonna do. DO ask permission if you want to try option C in the Mission Report challenge. In order to make it easier for this to happen, I'm going to make two other posts--a global opt-in and a global opt-out (to spare people who don't want to be bothered asking or refusing individuals.)

If you opted out already--and opted out without exception, because a number of you said "just ask for permission" which is now the default--so if you opted out without exception, I'll put your name on the global opt-out post, so don't worry; you're covered.

If you would like to opt-in globally, please drop a comment on the opt-in post.

If you're not sure, do nothing! Wait for someone to contact you, or not! (I actually personally think we're not going to get many option c)'s in general, because I think they're going to be hard to write--but I'd love to be surprised.)

While I'm here, another couple of points of clarification:

1) I suppose I'm to blame for using the word "remix"; please note that this is NOT a conventional remix, but a mission report. The idea of c) is to tell the same story, differently--in mission report form--not to change the original story in a radical way; if something really weird happened on mission, how might that come across in the formal report?

2) We were surprised by how many people feared having gen stories or other-pairing stories mixed into McShep. That was certainly not the intention of the challenge--again, this was supposed to be a mission report challenge, so it's supposed to reflect (distort, embellish, conceal) what actually happened on the mission, the original story being the mission.

3) corinna_5 asked a great question: "Can ONLY stories in mission-report format can be submitted? Or is it that the idea of the "mission report" can be played with in the way, say "documentation" was in that challenge? " Answer: No, you can write stories about or that feature mission reports as key plot points; we continue to preach latitude in the hope that we get as many good stories as possible.

If you have any other questions or comments or DO want to keep debating the nature of derivative art, please comment here. If you are GLOBALLY OPTING IN or OUT, please comment in one of the two next posts!!

Out for now--

Comments

[coffee-and-cake.livejournal.com]

I only read fanfic, I don't write, but I've been following the discussion caused by the latest challenge. I don't want to ruffle any feathers, but I'm curious about the somewhat double ethics here.

On a personal level, I absolutely agree with asking for permission first - it's the polite thing to do. But, can someone demand that kind of politeness if they don't apply it themselves? Obviously there is a differentiation: on the one hand, the relation between the creators of the show and the fanfic writers, and on the other hand, the relation between the fanfic writers themselves. If a fanfic author does not ask permission from the creators of a show to use their characters, is it okay to insist on being asked permission if their fanfic is being used by someone else? Or is there a reason I'm not aware of (and the likeliness for that is pretty high) for this kind of differentiation?

[(Anonymous)]

You are asking for the impossible. With the exception of a blanket yes or no by authors like Anne Rice or Joss Wheadon, a fan can not ask for such permission.

• Authors are advised not to pay too much attention to fanfic for legal reasons.
  
• The nature of email contact to writers makes a direct communication unlikely.
  
• It might be generally impossible to contact the authors in several instances. In the case of SGA, there are several writers whose email address are unknown, rendering you unable to ever contact them. Are you able to tell me the email address of the writer who wrote the episode introducing the Wraith Queen?
  

In conclusion: You can not apply this kind of politeness to yourself.