I already answered that. (Paragraph 1.) I am intentionally leaving it unspecified whether Mary intends to expand on the idea. The point of the question is to ask whether the lack of indication of Mary's intent makes Sue's action wrong. Now that you mention the difference between inspiration and derivation: if you have read Lord of the Flies, then the analogy I used it in should clarify what I mean when I say Sue uses some but not all of the material. It is somewhere between the two extremes mentioned in the Summerhouse analogy. The plot and character design are really more like 20% Mary's and 80% Sue's, but the 20% that is Mary's happens to be the backbone. (More like Mary's top few and bottom few vertebrae and Sue's middle vertebrae.) The setting design is 100% Sue's. The rest of your post indicates (clarifying the subtext of your party analogy) that you think Mary is wronged by Sue because you personally feel insulted if someone improves upon your work -- you assume that the only reason she does so is to belittle you and prove her own superiority -- you cannot imagine that she does so purely to create a good thing. Is that accurate? Fine. Replace "hater" with "naysayer" or "objector" or "dissenter" or whatever term you use to refer to people who see me making a decision and then express disapproval of it. I do not judge their personality or character; I merely said I am learning to ignore them because there is nothing I need to defend from them. The point is that I value opinions I disagree with when it is time to debate (like now), but not when it comes time to make a decision. And as I have said several times but it is apparently not coming across clearly, I am having this debate because it interests me, not because it will influence my decision (it will not).
No. No. It's possible to assign rights to others, but this isn't how it's done. I don't even think a verbal agreement is valid, though I may be wrong here. It's better to have assignments in writing.
Well, no, you answered that she doesn't NEED to dig into Mary's sparse bag of resources. Which I suppose changes my question to, why does she? Why not just use her own resources? If there's any chance that Mary isn't done with her creation, yes, to me that makes Sue's action wrong, IF Sue's action is primarily "fixing" Mary's work, as opposed to creating a new work that is in part inspired by Mary's work. Yep, this question--exactly where we are between the two extremes--is what my opinion hinges on, and it's really impossible to tell without actually having the two works in hand. No. The fact that Mary is likely to be embarassed by Sue's superior work, the fact that Mary's work will change from a source of pride for Mary to a source of pain and embarassment for Mary, is important to me, but it's not the core of the issue. There are any number of situations where Mary and Sue's work might be compared, and where Mary might have those same painful feelings, but in which Sue will have done nothing wrong. And I don't really care whether Sue "fixed" Mary's work to prove her own superiority, or to create a good thing. I care that Sue is not creating that good thing from her own creativity, but instead from Mary's. Why is it Sue's job to give the world the improved products of Mary's mind, instead of just giving the world the products of Sue's mind? If I'm knitting a sweater and someone comes upon my knitting bag and finishes it for me, better than I could have done it myself, they might have done that for the joy of creating a fine sweater, and in order to ensure that the world will have a more pleasant aesthetic experience in seeing the sweater that they improved, than they would have had in seeing the sweater that I would have created. I don't care. I was knitting the bleeping sweater. It was my creation, my experience, my work. That person should go get their own yarn.
(Which is the reason I am having this discussion, not because I actually want people to tell me if I am doing the right thing.) I for one would have appreciated knowing that you'd already decided on an opinion right at the start and were unwilling to seriously entertain different opinions, but instead are looking for straw men to burn down.
Yep. Edited to add: Especially since it feels, daemon, as if we're being recruited to stand in for the people who have criticized this course of action, so that we can be scolded for their criticism.
I am scratching my head, wondering how what I said could possibly be clearer. Sue does not use Mary's resource instead of her own. She uses Mary's resource in addition to her own. She writes novels based on her own ideas and one based on Mary's idea. This is not 11 novels from scratch vs. 10 novels from scratch plus 1 derivative novel. It is 10 novels from scratch vs. 10 novels from scratch plus 1 derivative novel. Sue never thought "I want to find an idea for a side project, so now I will go looking through Mary's fanfics for an idea." Instead, she read the fanfic for personal enjoyment, and after finishing it, she thought "I had no interest in taking on a side project, but this fanfic's premise is so good that I will now start a side project to develop it into a novel." Not sure if that was helpful or confusing, but at this point, I am just throwing things out there and seeing what sticks because I have no idea what it will take to get this point across. That is not the only thing I said that I am wondering how it is humanly possible to misunderstand, because the sweater analogy is somehow less accurate than the party analogy. It would be more accurate if someone created a carbon copy of your unfinished sweater and then the two of you worked independently, using your own yarn. But the analogy is still useful because it helps me understand the mindset with which you perceive Sue's action: rationally or not, you think she is a jerk who sees Mary attempting to make something, steps in, takes it away from her, and finishes it in order to prevent Mary from messing it up. (Correct?) If Mary feels the same way, then that tells me Mary is an overly sensitive person who needs to grow up and realize that she is still free to write whatever she wants, not that Sue actually is a big meanie pants. (Still, it is useful to know that there are indeed people who feel that way -- I never would have imagined -- so thank you for taking the time to enlighten me.)
This entire thread is a 'agree with me only' thread. You say you want input, yet you tear the ones giving the input to the ground. What is the point? Why do you need this if you are going to do what you want to do anyway? Or I am completely off and you really aren't grtting your point across for whatever reason. Either way this thread seems pointless.
I invited you to debate me. Basically, a debate is an activity where I believe something and you believe something else. I make arguments that support what I believe. You make arguments that support what you believe. You make arguments that contradict my arguments. I make arguments that contradict your arguments. We do not do so because we intend to change what we believe; we do so because we want to. In the process, we learn in unexpected ways. (For starters, I learned a lot about the psychology of creativity, and I had to gain a much better understanding of the theoretical basis of intellectual property in order to make some of my arguments.) It was a wonderful childhood epiphany when I learned that when rational, intelligent people make arguments that contradict my arguments, it is not because they want me to shut up and agree with them; it is their way of showing that they are thinking about what I said. In adulthood, I am learning more and more what a toll is taken on society when children are not taught this. They grow up unable to distinguish between when they are being attacked and when their arguments are being refuted. I already addressed that. (Paragraphs 3 and 4.) I would be interested in this debate even if I had no interest in writing a novel at the moment.
Yes. I get that. And I disapprove of it. If Sue had all this writing and marketing talent and couldn't think of an actual idea to save her life, I could understand, if not excuse, the temptation to take someone else's. But that's not the case. Indeed, Mary is free to write whatever she wants. And Sue is free to keep on copying it, at least until Mary learns to keep her work under wraps and show it only to people who do not have a tendency to copy it. But I'm still not going to think that Sue is right.
