No Permission

Say you had an idea for a group of characters and the universe in which you’d like to set them.

What would you do with that material?

The traditional method is to develop the stories yourself. Write prose, film screenplays, develop videogames, produce a TV series. Even in the most contemporary of versions, you’ll make the webseries yourself. You may distribute through traditional channels, or you might let the internets with all their fancy new media channels help you distribute direct to your masses.

But you retain control. You’re still the only one telling the stories.

But what if you shared that ability? What if you let anyone and everyone tell whatever stories they wished with your characters? Fans, pros, whoever?

What if you gave up control?

But retained authority.

Anyone could produce whatever they wished with your characters in your universe. Or even alter the characters and/or universe to their heart’s content.

But you retain sole authority on what’s “official”, on what’s “canon” in your storyverse.

So the ’shippers can make their slash stories to their heart’s content, but they won’t be canon, they won’t carry the same weight as the main storyline. There can be character deaths, births, marriages, whatever, but unless they get the seal of approval from the creator, they’re a side-storyverse.

Could that work? Is there enough respect for the authorial voice that retaining only the right to say what’s canon would carry value?

I think it could if the voice were strong enough, if the vision was clear enough. If things got too helter-skelter, the fans would lose respect and then the value is gone. But if everything in the canon coheres, no matter who produces it, that should work for everyone.

Of course, this happens now with nearly all popular science fiction and fantasy media. What makes this different?

Go a step further with it. Let the masses sell their material, let them do whatever they wish with it. Let them make tshirts and dolls (er, “action figures”), models, collectible cards, whatever. As long as they attribute the source material back to you and they can’t call it “canon approved” without your official word. Let the splinters thrive as far as they can go with it, and if someone creates something good enough for canon-ization, you work out a deal that benefits all parties.

There’s risk here, of course.

The creator can’t start making things canon solely, or even primarily, on the basis of how lucrative it is to do so. Fans will sniff that out before it even happens. Value will be lost. Long-term damage will be done.

It’s also possible that if you’re letting anyone produce material and merchandising for your storyverse that some of them are going to do it better than you. If that’s the case, they start to win. But you’ll never lose entirely. You still own the base material. At the very least you retain attribution rights, which you can leverage to some gain no matter what (similar to today’s Creative Commons licensing, or “CC”).

A bigger risk is that an entity with more marketing muscle just runs you over with money and connections. A network produces a TV show, etc. You can’t reach a “canon” agreement, they go ahead anyway. Fans attach to that version simply because it’s better known. This one is tougher, you’re just competing with sheer power, which is a difficult spot to be in. But you do still retain basic ownership, and if done correctly, you have as much right to what they produce with your storyverse as they do. So there are ways to co-opt their muscle and make it work for you.

All in all, it’s a not a path without some serious risks. But it’s also a path with some serious potential benefits. A storyverse that doesn’t require you to do all the heavy lifting to spread the material to the masses. The masses can benefit from your success directly themselves, making them even more invested.

To me it seems like an idea worthy of deeper exploration. Something that might just work.

More on this later.