For those who came in late: “Lady Sybilla” announced the publication of her very own sequel to “Twilight” entitled “Russet Noon.” She claimed that Stephenie Meyer had no copyright protection to her work (very wrongly).
Peter, in an absolute state of whimsy, decided that simply mockery wasn’t enough, and a long, sustained campaign of mockery is what was called for. So he decided to invite people to a gang-fang called “Potato Moon”.
And as Peter’s long-time stooge friend, he roped me into creating the cover for all of this, to help set the tone.
The story starts on Friday. You’ve been warned.
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Ha! Looks great, good job. Looking forward to Friday.
Great cover, very funny.
Great cover!
Awesome cover!
I have a question on this one.
Her interpretation of copyright laws is clearly absurd and selfserving. As a writer her arrogance bothers me. That said, if she were just posting a fanfic on a website it wouldn’t be a problem, right? Even if ads allowed her to profit? It’s the attempt to claim true ownership that’s wrong, right?
Posting it on a fansite would also be a violation of copywright. However, fanfics are such a minor problem that generally nobody cares.
If she got a tiny bit of profit from advertising (I would expect it to be a tiny amount, realistically), then she would probably still fly under the radar. The more money she makes and the more attention she gets, the more likely she is to draw unwanted attention.
As for what we’re doing, I doubt it’ll even come close enough to the books to be recognizable as parody specific to those books. I haven’t even read them, so my part will be a parody of the genre in general. Any maybe teenager angst in general.
Years ago I got my start writing Star Trek fanfic. Never occurred to me that I was somehow entitled to do so, or that I had any claim to ownership, or that I was part of some vast mindmeld with Gene Roddenberry that gave me fair title to Kirk and Spock.
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Between the imbroglio with Scans_Daily, the pirating of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, the deplorable sense of entitlement displayed by people who firmly believe that they should have full access to all material for free (many of these same people have copyright notices on their websites, by the way), and now this business in which ostensibly all fiction exists within a Kirbyesque unimind–as if fandom collectively put it hands together onto the Mother Box, shouted, “Taaru!” and formed the Infinity Fan–and thus copyright is wrong and theft is right and up is down and white is black…
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I’ve reacted with outrage. I’ve reacted with cynicism. Now I’m reacting with humor. Laugh so you don’t cry.
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PAD
I’ll admit that I have a copywrite notice on my website full of bad fanfiction… but I think it does the job of acknowledging that the stories are derivative in nature:
“The contents of this web site are © 1997 — 2008 by Matthew Atanian. (Stories may contain elements borrowed from sources other then the authors of Boy Scouts ½. Also, individual stories may be copywrited by people other then Matthew Atanian. Please see individual stories for details.) The contents of this site may be printed out or downloaded and distributed freely, under the provision that they are not substantially altered in any way, and that proper credit is given to the source of the material in question. However, the contents of this site are not to be used on any other web sites. Also, the contents of this site are never to be used for profit, monetary or otherwise, in any way.”
Basically my convoluted way of saying, “While inspired by and using ideas, occasional characters, and occasional settings from other things, the original stories and original characters here are mine, so there!”
And each individual story, in the authors notes, does try and make a clear listing of what bits aren’t mine and where they came from. After all, I like the people I borrow from, and think they deserve credit for their great ideas I’m steeling!
(I do need to get the next story finished, and when next updating my website remember to bump the copyright notice up another year!)
Looking forward to working on Potato Moon… Do hope I’m at least mid-way down the list, though, as I have been able to thus far in my life remain relatively free of Twilight, and thus would like to have ample story to work off of! ^_^ (Although when mentioning to a friend a few days ago about this wonderful project, he told me that all I really need to know is that vampires sparkle…)
Bloody Russet
http://www.journalfen.net/users/ari_o/1236.html
Personaly, I think the original Twilight is in more need of mocking than this, well, idiot. From the fact that every single person with a copyright has cause to see her fail to her usage of psychobabble as a defense, she is bound to go down in flames. My only worry is that she will sour things for the whole fanfic world. It seems to me that most companies let it slide as long as you aren’t making money, and some will even encourage it – I recall the Star Wars Fan Film Awards of a couple years back. As an example of the overly-entitled fan, she could end up pushing up enough of a stink she could ruin it for everybody just like the guy that sued DC over his unsolicited submission. I enjoy fanfic, but at the end of the day, as a creator myself, I side with the copyright holder.
Robert Smith of The Cure had some wise words regarding the expectation of creators to give away their product for free. It’s the hot topic on the message board at the band’s site right now (I don’t have time to look up the link at the moment).
That’s the most romantic potato I’ve ever seen.
Great… mash notes.
I am currently looking for any book that is a parody of Twilight. I just finished Nightlight, so I wish it could be possible Potato Moon would be published on to paper, so I don’t have to read it online.
Peter your work on the Hulk was the best wrting in comics at time. Only Alan Moore had effected me more. Thank you for making a crappy time in my Life Not feel quite so crappy, at least for a little while.This the first time I’ve written on somebodys blog and probley the last. THANK YOU David for entertaining a lost lonely geek, and making him part of your family.