SGA Fandom on SGA Fanfic: It's *all* just theft anyway, right?
Over in SGA fandom, where the men are women and the women are... also women, there's trouble brewing in the paradise that is sga_flashfic, home of possibly even more crackfic than the rest of the fandom has. Speranza (cesperanza) has come up with a new idea for a challenge: Mission Reports! It's got three different possible options, and options A and B are about par for the course, but option C is a little different:

"take another author's story and write a report of type a or b for it."

But what makes it truly special is this:

"Now to clarify about option c)--if you choose to write a mission report of somebody else's story, we'll ask you to credit them, but we won't require you to ask their permission (though obviously, you're free to do so and it's always a good idea). HOWEVER, if you want to opt OUT of option c)--i.e. tell people that they can't write a mission report of your story or stories, even with credit--please leave a comment in this post ASAP."

For those of you lost, she's basically saying that anyone can write up a story based on and remixing another author's story without needing their permission, and if you don't want to have someone do that to your story, you need to speak up now or it's assumed you're down with it.

As you might imagine, this does not go over well.

At all.

Four comments down, things get jiggy, when kyrdwyn asks the fairly sensible question:

"Also, sorry, another thought I had - are you limiting the writers we can choose from to sga_flashfic members, or is anyone who has ever written SGA fic fair game? Because if they're not on the list, they won't know to opt out, and I know a lot of writers who might like to opt out for whatever reason."

And just about everyone shows up to take exception!

You've got hth (hth_the_first):

"Right, because God forbid we write stories that make use of ideas someone else came up with. I personally write to Martin Gero before each and every story I post on the internet to clear it with him; I keep his postcards in a little file folder in my fireproof safe so that I can pull them out and show them to anyone who asks."

Sarah T (harriet_spy):

"Especially if it's a Sheppard/Teyla spin! That's *extra* gross, you know! I feel violated just thinking about it."

Livia Penn (liviapenn) hastily defending Sarah T with links:

"Er, I assure you, she was definitely just being sarcastic."

An anonmouse replying to Sarah T:

"i hope someone remixes one of your fics so rodney kills teyla."

And that's just within the first real subthread.

In the other comments, people scold, and scold, and scold, and scold--there's even preschool teacher scolding--and grant very odd forms of permission. That little condition is apparently a bigger source of concern than you'd think, because it also shows up in rosewildeirish's post on the subject, if not the countless other posts about it. But not everyone disagrees--some people think they haven't gone far enough.

And the best thing is: this hasn't even been up a full twelve hours yet. Pass along a link to the unfolding drama and get a cookie!


ETA: And at just barely shy of the twelve hour mark, Speranza freezes the original post and puts up a new post revising the rules and proceedures for this challenge. However, it's worth noting that they "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".

I'd offer to take bets on whether more wank is in the offing, but I don't believe anyone around here is that naive.


Links at this point provided by just about everybody. Thanks, y'all.