I'm going to talk a bit about fanfic. And about 'feature-based' RPGs or RPGs based in somebody's world.
Some authors hate fanfic. Some are terrified that a fan writer will sue them if something too similar to a 'published' piece of fanfic shows up in the original authors' work, resulting in authors demanding nobody ever write fanfic or, in at least one case, game in their world or, more commonly, in authors publicly declaring that they will not read any fanfic set in their world or using their characters. They can then use 'I never read it' as a defense.
I admit. I do the RPG thing. I don't write and post fanfic...I have enough ideas of my own not to have to base things off of other people's, but I am a gamer. And sometimes I game in published worlds.
Over ten years ago I was involved in an online RPG and created a character who was a close relative to a comic book character.
Today I opened GLC #0. There, on page 3, was my RPG character in a cop uniform. Same appearance. Same name. Different relationship to the original character and different role...but those differences were timeline differences. MY Gloria Gardner was Guy Gardner's daughter and successor. Theirs is his cop kid sister...but it was recognizable immediately as the same character.
Am I going to go after DC for stealing my character? Heck no. I started this blog post when I finished laughing about it.
The chances of anyone at DC knowing about my version of the character are slim. And obviously Guy's daughter and his sister are likely to look a lot alike. The name 'Gloria' is an obscure in-joke only long-term fans will get, referring to an early obsession Guy had with the Silver Age character General Glory...so the same name? Not likely a coincidence.
And, above all, these things happen. It's frustrating if somebody publishes a comic with a character that has the same costume, codename and powers as one you were about to make, as happened to somebody I know.
But I certainly have no moral claim to Gloria even if I *did* come up with her first. Morally, a fanfic writer or gamer has *no claim* to what they create using somebody else's world. Now, you can file the serial numbers off and publish the story as original...and even have a lot of success. (Fifty Shades of Grey started out as fanfic). Being inspired by other people is no crime.
Going after an IP owner because they 'stole your idea' that you made using their property...that's the kind of thing that gets people to decide they won't sell the RPG rights to their books and will send nasty legal letters to teenagers. If you're playing in somebody else's sandbox, have the respect to acknowledge that it is their sandbox and your work would not exist in its form without that.
And accept that sometimes two people working off of the same basis might come up with the same idea completely independently. There's a reason you can't copyright *ideas*.
Ha! Cool, Glory. Yeah, probably a coincidence, though. Now, if she becomes a Green Lantern herself and then has occasional run-ins with a young mage named Clay Riley who is accompanied by the ghost of his dead teacher, that might be a little more of an obvious link. :-P
ReplyDeleteClayton and Elias, of course, were actually somewhat inspired by the main characters of Hikaru no Go, which was about a boy and his friendship with a ghost who taught him the game of Go. So yeah, we're all inspired by something, even if the end result is a pretty different story.
I was actually fascinated by a recent article--and I wish I'd kept the link--about a robot being developed for use for surveillance or searches that sounded a lot like Samuel Black's "Mind's Eye Mobile Surveillance System" devices--those little metal snake things that he used to search areas or keep an eye on things. Again, I really doubt they had read any of the logs from the Samuel character or anything, but it's neat to see an idea that I was thinking of kindasorta ending up as a real invention.
In this case I'm pretty sure that whoever at DC decided to add her, whether it was Tomasi or somebody else, was just thinking along the same lines as me.
ReplyDeleteI'm actually really kind of chuffed about it. When somebody steals your idea...or coincidentally copies it...it means you had a good idea ;).