a font of nothing!

[dragonyphoenix]

In the Circle of Friends remix, the story I'd chosen to remix is itself a remix of another story. Since my transformative works policy, if I had thought it out formally, would pretty much be "You want to play with my stories? Whee! Go ahead. (Just link back and credit me)." it never occurred to me to okay a remix with the author of the original story.

Right, that sounds confusing. So, I'll give them names. In the CoF remix, I was assigned the works of IAmPrincessX. So I looked at her stories and the one I picked is a remix of a story by Y_TheLastMan. (Note: genders should not be thought of as descriptive of the people in question. I picked X and Y because they are, mathematically, the first unknown variable identifiers I go with, and those are the first names that came up for X and Y.) Since IAmPrincessX is participating in the remix, I already have her permission to remix a story. Until yesterday, basically the day I finished my draft, I did not think to check if Y_TheLastMan would be okay with a remix, and actually I didn't think of it so much as stumble across a transformative works policy which says I love having work created off of mine but "Please do not remix my written works. I am much more comfortable when that is done in the context of a remix fest that I am participating in myself." So I explained my situation and Y_TheLastMan said please don't post that story.

By the way, I completely agree with Y_TheLastMan's right to squelch a remix of the story -
(I really mean this. No dissing of Y_TheLastMan. I don’t understand why an author might say “you can’t play with my story” since we are all already playing with stories created by others, but I do understand that some people can get quite upset when someone else has played with one of their stories.)
- but ...

*sigh*

I put a lot of time and energy into it. It's a crossover. I not only watched two seasons of Buffy, I also watched all of the Harry Potter movies. I've written three drafts of 2930, 5831, and 8566 words respecitvely. After shifting years around so that Harry Potter events could happen during Buffy seasons, I made a 20 page timeline. The story is told all in letters; I created a spreadsheet to say if this letter left from this place on this day, it would get there on what day.

Even more frustraging, I was so excited about the story. One of the things I adore abut the CoF remix, is that I write outside of my box. The format for this story comes from Helene Hanff's _84, Charing Cross Road_. (It's a charming story. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it.) It was quite exciting to work out the contents of all those letters and show the growing relationship through them. *sigh* again.

Hugs? Please?

Comments

[punch-kicker15.livejournal.com]

Man, it sucks to put so much work into something that's not going to happen. And I know what you mean about getting excited and invested in a story that you're working on. So--hugs to you, and I hope you have fun with whatever replacement remix story you decide to do.

[velvetwhip.livejournal.com]

*lots and lots of hugs*

*more hugs*

*see icon*


Gabrielle

[snogged.livejournal.com]

*hugs to you*

[rbfvid.livejournal.com]

Ummm... If the authors in question are so opposed to remixing that story, why not to rework yours a little and post it as an independent, non-remix fic?

ETA: Yes, and while every author has a right to not allow their story to be transformed, executing that right when their story already is a transformative work looks... um, lets say, arrogant.