1337mokro said:
rob_simple said:
And I'm sorry but I don't really understand your Star Wars point? Given that it's the strongest argument we have in this day and age for leaving a property alone.
I'm sorry what?
It's the strongest argument we have that we should not let the original author have their ways with their work all the time. There is a limit to an artist's power over their works because they do not only belong to him. They are as much the "property" of our culture as they are the artist's actual property.
You see the man meddling here is not some fan making bad movies, it's not a jungle book fanfic. It's the original creator. Star Wars is essentially similar to if Martin decided that he didn't like all the deaths after all and released a Directors Rewrite that removes all deaths in his books. Not to mention several pre-quel books that explain why the mad king was the mad king.
It is the ultimate example of how auteur behaviour can go wrong. How something can be destroyed by their own creator simply because they can't stop meddling with it. Solo shot first.
Like I said, the bad things you can ignore. Why are you on spending all your time on fan fic sites reading Jungle Book when you can't stand them? You created that problem yourself. I am not much bothered by jungle book fan fics because I don't read them. However the Skyrim Mods? I would have loved those. They might have been horrible. They might have been awful. You know what I'd do then? Uninstal and move on.
Bad fan works or bad works based on public domains are not some inescapable evil. You decide how many of those you actually get to see. Now a work that was never made because the children of a dead author somehow have the rights to his works despite that being the exact opposite intention of copyright law is a greater crime to culture than any 100 god awful final fantasy fan fics.
Also how amusing that you seem to think that authors are flawless. That the only two options are Author with 0 bad works or Author with only bad works. People make shit all the time, you might not get to read the shit because the publisher blocked it, you might get to read the shit if the publisher thinks it will sell anyway. Even people good at their job make mistakes. There is no such thing as the perfect artist, most certainly not Martin.
So what is it you think other people would achieve by heaping more lore on top of the already convoluted Star Wars universe mess? If I'm not mistaken, there are plenty of writers working on expanded universe stuff for Star Wars and, while some is good and some is bad, all it is doing is throwing more shit on the pile.
It's probably not a coincidence that Lord of the Rings is still considered a classic work of fiction (and I say that as someone who hates LotR) while Star Wars is a complete joke nowadays. It doesn't matter if it's George Lucas or any of the people writing expanded universe stuff, we simply don't need that much Star Wars shit in the world.
Also, at no point have I implied authors are flawless. I love Stephen King in spite of the fact that he has written some god-awful shit, but the thing is even when his stories are bad his writing is still good so it makes his crap stuff bearable. There's a reason why Stephen King is known for having written some ropey stuff, and that is because he has written a shitload of different stories. I struggle to think of any of his famous novels that are based on the exact same premise. He may be hit-and-miss at times, but he is an extremely varied writer.
The problem with your whole anti-auteur attitude is that I can think of considerably more works that have been ruined by the rights holder pimping them out than I can examples of work that has been ruined by the content creator saying 'please leave my stuff alone'.
The difference is, if I'm not allowed to write my own James Bond novel, I can just write a spy story about Bames Jond, and maybe it'll be just as successful and launch my character into the spotlight or maybe it will fail and never be heard of again, but if I write a James Bond novel and it turns out to be shite then it's permanently attached to the franchise --whether it's declared canon or not-- and slowly but surely all that shit mounts up until the franchise becomes as much of a joke as Star Wars is, today.
As to your mod example, that's a completely different story, because it was in no way official or for profit (I assume) and I agree it shouldn't have been blocked. For that reason my fanfic example doesn't stand up either. What Martin seems to be talking about is official successors to his work, and I think it is his right as the creator to ask that, as far as the official canon goes, it die with him.
Let people write their fan fiction or their alternate universe stuff --because even if it isn't published, you're never going to stop that anyway-- but sometimes people need to learn when to let go, or else by the time I'm 60 I'm still going to be seeing trailers for Star Wars Episode XCIV.
