| |
|
Hey, Able/Qalyn. Good points. I hope you don't mind my rambling nature.
I don't think the way Jenny was conceived is backwards at all. It is for you and many other people, and happily, they have alternatives. I never imagined Jenny would appeal to everyone or to the way they enjoy creating. Jenny was, at least initially, intended to allow those who wanted to create short, vibrant, potentially but not necessarily shallow pop comics to do so. Which isn't to say she can't or hasn't evolved beyond that. I happen to enjoy those kinds of stories above most other types, as do many other people. Some don't, and I hope that they don't torture themselves trying to find a way to bend their creative energies to a concept that has no joy in it for them. There are many different ways to create, with the Jenny model being one of them. And even within that model there are alternatives, such as established characters that have fallen in the public domain, like Sherlock Holmes. In a way, they're legal fanfic, with the expansive backstory, relationships and motivations you find lacking in Jenny's stories. I would never dream of foisting Jenny or the way the project works upon anyone as a superior way of working.
On fanfic, I'm sure you're right that it's written because people see something within it that sparks creativity within them and they want to elaborate and expand on those aspects. The reason, it seems to me in my mildly uninformed opinion, is that for fanfic to work there has to be a canon , which usually comes about because of a singular voice, or by tightly-controlled editorial dictates. This would be incredibly hard to accomplish for a recently created public domain character, and nearly impossible with Jenny . Again, this may seem like a fault to you, and in some ways it definitely is, but that's the way we roll.
Which brings us to Future Boy. I think it would be great to establish a different model for a newly created public domain superhero. I would hope that someone would look at Jenny the same way that I looked at other supposedly free-to-use characters and modify the concept in various ways to accomodate different ways of working, including the possibility of continuity. So, I'm not trying to stifle the idea when I say that you may want to work out the rights issues before figuring out the character's favourite food. The description for Future Boy seems to indicate that there will be an official site, a canon for the character, and therefore there will be stricter editorial control. Will people be allowed to create Future Boy stories outside of the site, or will someone own the rights but dole them out to acceptable applicants? There's no wrong answer here, but you must determine these things beforehand otherwise you may run into trouble eventually.
Part of the reason that the Jenny project is the way it is was because, like you suggested, Qayln, I realized that there really is very little incentive in using the character. I mean, really, it's not hard to create your own character, or use one that's already public domain, or even use one that isn't. There are so many ways to create using characters already existing or not that I still have a hard time imagining why anyone would choose Jenny. But in establishing specifics to a character (such as relationships and goals) you are either going to have to retain some sort of rights to enforce editorial control or ignore inevitable misinterpretations or contradictions, such as, in Jenny's case, "the magic power to get out of absolutely any scrape you put her in" which was established from the beginning as something Jenny would never do. By doing the former, you're not creating a public domain character at all, and people may wonder why they should contribute to something with such rigid rules when they can just create something on their own much easier. And with the latter, you're right back where you started from.
One possible alternative, and one I find incredibly interesting, is to establish that the rights to all characters and concepts created within a particular setting, in its conception and in the future, be usuable by all, whether there's editorial control or not. This could get really messy real quick. I think part of the surprising popularity of Jenny is due to the simplicity of the concept. At no point will anyone ever be able to change their mind over ownership and render your hard work null and void. With the concept laid out above, you would at the very least have to get individual creators to proclaim all character and concepts for a particular story copyright-free, and keep track of which have done so and which have not to avoid confusion, legal issues and hurt feelings. And even then, there's no guarantee that a person won't sneak in someone else's creative property, whcih will be used by others, until such time that it's called into question and those stories will have to be dealt with, which will in turn affect all the other stories. It's beyond my means to think of a way to make that work, but it would be damn cool if someone could pull it off. |
|
|
