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I'm gonna ramble a bit about my motivations for doing ASH the way I do it, so here's an lj-cut.
Okay, for those who haven't paid close attention, here's how I do ASH, so that there's context for why I do it that way. :)
I am, in essence, the publisher and editor-in-chief of ASH. I approve the writers, I approve the stories, and I do the final cut on them. I try to keep a relatively light editorial hand, but I have said no to story ideas on occasion. I don't think I've ever said no to a writer who was interested, although I've had about a half dozen express interest but not follow through. :( I hold copyright for all stories in the ASH Universe, either solely (for the ones I write) or as authorized derivative works. Derivative copyright law is a bit hazy and largely comes down to whichever side has more money to throw at lawyers, but when the writers agree going in to work under its provisions, things go smoothly. I have, at least once, let someone take a property elsewhere (the 1950s historical series Mysterymen, which is no longer in my archives as a result, although I think the RACC archives in general have a copy). Once in a while, I'll take an idea from an aborted story and use it myself (i.e. the Ares unit in the Metropolis arc was based on something![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ezrael was toying with a few years ago but never turned into a final story he was happy with).
When you come right down to it, in a functional sense, I don't enforce my rights very much. I just make sure everyone involved knows I have 'em, just in case.
So...why do I do it this way? The short answer is "The Patrol".
The long answer is, I put a year of effort into a shared universe setting that wasn't my creation, that I took seriously (as opposed to the anarchic lunacy of the Legion of Net.Heroes), and then saw it turned into something I disliked by other writers. The creator abandoned the property, so there was no central editorial hand, and the other writers outvoted me on some key points that stomped on pet peeves of mine.
I took from that experience the lesson that if I wanted to work in a serious universe, where continuity would be important and respecting the work of other writers vital (as opposed to the LNH, where you're generally free to ignore things you don't like, so long as you don't contradict it in a flamewar-ish way), there would need to be an editor I could work with. And since there was a shortage of those on rec.arts.comics.creative at the time, I nominated myself. :)
And so, I created the ASH universe as an extension of the roleplaying game universe I'd been using in college and (with modification) in college, and had even crossed over into my LNH writing a couple of times (and my Patrol stuff, to a more indirect extent). Others were welcome to join up, and several did (including a couple of the old Patrol writers who were willing to play ball). And it's been pretty successful from my point of view. It's given me a richly detailed universe to write in, without having to worry about others messing it up, without having to worry about answering to anyone. I still listen to others, but it's a lot easier to take advice when it's up to you whether to follow it.
One thing that has helped is that while there's a hard core of Things I Won't Do, there's a huge gap between that set and the border of the set of Things I Haven't Done Yet. Or even between that and the slightly smaller set of Things I Never Would Have Thought To Do. If I had been the sole generator if ideas for the setting, there would never have been a villain-protagonist book like CSV. Not because I'm opposed to such a thing, it's just that I don't think it would have occurred to me, given that my paradigm for this setting was an RPG, where Player Character villains are a rarity. I might have come up with an urban street vigilante like Warden, but certainly not the exact character (although I did have to be careful to avoid copyrights not my own creeping into that book in a couple of instances).
And, of course, I generally don't want to try to write more than one ongoing at a time in the setting, so the Things I Haven't Done Yet set is going to stay pretty big during times when I'm the only active writer.
I suppose I should close with a few examples of Things I Won't Do.
Some are global setting things, based on pet peeves about things I see in comics or avoidance of things I have trouble writing, stuff I want to keep out of ASH because I'd have to deal with it in my own writing. I will not have the Combine or EU governments turn against heroes and pull Capekiller-style stunts (such a hero-hunter government agency was the main thing that soured me on Patrol), although other governments (like Khadam or Moslem Confederation members) can certainly have hostile-to-supers policies. I will not ramp the setting towards singularity at any noticeable pace, because I find singularity too alien and hard to write for (although individual transcendence is fine by me if someone else wants to write their character pulling it off). I'd rather not have any main characters above a certain power level be active on Earth, because then it becomes hard to explain why they don't get involved every time there's a major crisis where power alone would help a lot (Star Knight is an example of a guy I try to ship off to other starsystems whenever possible, being more powerful than I'm comfortable having around).
Others are issues of character integrity. Peregryn will never, ever cheat on Essay. Period. Oaths are too big a part of who he is. Essay cheating on Peregryn? Unlikely, and I don't think I'd personally want to write it, but not impossible, and the fallout could be fun to work around. Warden, as I see him, is dedicated to solving things non-lethally, so I'd be strongly opposed to any story that has him turn into a casual killer without it being the result of some Insidious Outside Influence. Sal Napier, for all that's happened to him, and for all that he looks like a dumb brick, is quite intelligent and sensitive. A story about him devolving into a dumb brute would be a hard sell. And so forth.
Basically, anything that would make it hard for me to enjoy writing ASH, or its characters, is out. Or at least given verrrrry close scrutiny. But I'm pretty easy as long as you don't stomp on my peeves. :)
Maybe at some point I'll clean this up, organize it some, and post it to the ASH page as an essay.
Okay, for those who haven't paid close attention, here's how I do ASH, so that there's context for why I do it that way. :)
I am, in essence, the publisher and editor-in-chief of ASH. I approve the writers, I approve the stories, and I do the final cut on them. I try to keep a relatively light editorial hand, but I have said no to story ideas on occasion. I don't think I've ever said no to a writer who was interested, although I've had about a half dozen express interest but not follow through. :( I hold copyright for all stories in the ASH Universe, either solely (for the ones I write) or as authorized derivative works. Derivative copyright law is a bit hazy and largely comes down to whichever side has more money to throw at lawyers, but when the writers agree going in to work under its provisions, things go smoothly. I have, at least once, let someone take a property elsewhere (the 1950s historical series Mysterymen, which is no longer in my archives as a result, although I think the RACC archives in general have a copy). Once in a while, I'll take an idea from an aborted story and use it myself (i.e. the Ares unit in the Metropolis arc was based on something
ezrael was toying with a few years ago but never turned into a final story he was happy with).When you come right down to it, in a functional sense, I don't enforce my rights very much. I just make sure everyone involved knows I have 'em, just in case.
So...why do I do it this way? The short answer is "The Patrol".
The long answer is, I put a year of effort into a shared universe setting that wasn't my creation, that I took seriously (as opposed to the anarchic lunacy of the Legion of Net.Heroes), and then saw it turned into something I disliked by other writers. The creator abandoned the property, so there was no central editorial hand, and the other writers outvoted me on some key points that stomped on pet peeves of mine.
I took from that experience the lesson that if I wanted to work in a serious universe, where continuity would be important and respecting the work of other writers vital (as opposed to the LNH, where you're generally free to ignore things you don't like, so long as you don't contradict it in a flamewar-ish way), there would need to be an editor I could work with. And since there was a shortage of those on rec.arts.comics.creative at the time, I nominated myself. :)
And so, I created the ASH universe as an extension of the roleplaying game universe I'd been using in college and (with modification) in college, and had even crossed over into my LNH writing a couple of times (and my Patrol stuff, to a more indirect extent). Others were welcome to join up, and several did (including a couple of the old Patrol writers who were willing to play ball). And it's been pretty successful from my point of view. It's given me a richly detailed universe to write in, without having to worry about others messing it up, without having to worry about answering to anyone. I still listen to others, but it's a lot easier to take advice when it's up to you whether to follow it.
One thing that has helped is that while there's a hard core of Things I Won't Do, there's a huge gap between that set and the border of the set of Things I Haven't Done Yet. Or even between that and the slightly smaller set of Things I Never Would Have Thought To Do. If I had been the sole generator if ideas for the setting, there would never have been a villain-protagonist book like CSV. Not because I'm opposed to such a thing, it's just that I don't think it would have occurred to me, given that my paradigm for this setting was an RPG, where Player Character villains are a rarity. I might have come up with an urban street vigilante like Warden, but certainly not the exact character (although I did have to be careful to avoid copyrights not my own creeping into that book in a couple of instances).
And, of course, I generally don't want to try to write more than one ongoing at a time in the setting, so the Things I Haven't Done Yet set is going to stay pretty big during times when I'm the only active writer.
I suppose I should close with a few examples of Things I Won't Do.
Some are global setting things, based on pet peeves about things I see in comics or avoidance of things I have trouble writing, stuff I want to keep out of ASH because I'd have to deal with it in my own writing. I will not have the Combine or EU governments turn against heroes and pull Capekiller-style stunts (such a hero-hunter government agency was the main thing that soured me on Patrol), although other governments (like Khadam or Moslem Confederation members) can certainly have hostile-to-supers policies. I will not ramp the setting towards singularity at any noticeable pace, because I find singularity too alien and hard to write for (although individual transcendence is fine by me if someone else wants to write their character pulling it off). I'd rather not have any main characters above a certain power level be active on Earth, because then it becomes hard to explain why they don't get involved every time there's a major crisis where power alone would help a lot (Star Knight is an example of a guy I try to ship off to other starsystems whenever possible, being more powerful than I'm comfortable having around).
Others are issues of character integrity. Peregryn will never, ever cheat on Essay. Period. Oaths are too big a part of who he is. Essay cheating on Peregryn? Unlikely, and I don't think I'd personally want to write it, but not impossible, and the fallout could be fun to work around. Warden, as I see him, is dedicated to solving things non-lethally, so I'd be strongly opposed to any story that has him turn into a casual killer without it being the result of some Insidious Outside Influence. Sal Napier, for all that's happened to him, and for all that he looks like a dumb brick, is quite intelligent and sensitive. A story about him devolving into a dumb brute would be a hard sell. And so forth.
Basically, anything that would make it hard for me to enjoy writing ASH, or its characters, is out. Or at least given verrrrry close scrutiny. But I'm pretty easy as long as you don't stomp on my peeves. :)
Maybe at some point I'll clean this up, organize it some, and post it to the ASH page as an essay.
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