Bartkira: The Simpsons and Akira
bartkira.com
bartkira.com
Here is a popular example of these rules for reference; https://old.reddit.com/r/coolguides/comments/k2s4lq/guide_fo... ; there are more recent and more detailed ones.
This article actually does a great job explaining the whole story behind the project (and its status re: legality/copyright): https://www.engadget.com/2017-09-01-bartkira-volume-6-simpso...
> The team needed to tread carefully. Harvey knew that Otomo and his son, Shohei Otomo, were fans of Bartkira, and for a while Shohei was interested in getting involved with the project. James Stacey, a friend of Harvey and the owner of Tokyo, Japan-based comic publisher Black Hook Press, had been in touch with Kodansha, the company behind Young Magazine. Eventually, he received a letter that said Kodansha would never be able to endorse the project but was aware of its existence. A Bartkira book could be printed but never with the pages in sequential order, because this would create a direct competitor to Akira and give readers another, potentially cheaper way to consume Otomo's story.
> "Which was, I feel, forward-thinking of them," Harvey says.
> It was a similar situation with Matt Groening. The Bartkira organizers knew that he had seen a copy but to date have never received a cease and desist order. As an extra defense, Harvey decided to donate all of the book's profits to charity. Some went to the OISCA Coastal Forest Restoration Project in Japan's Miyagi Prefecture, where Otomo grew up. The rest went to Save the Children, a charity preferred by the late The Simpsons co-creator Sam Simon.
It's also the case that most successful mass market "original" works are thoroughly inspired by other work and exist as careful synthesis of influences with bits of inspiration and new ideas worked in.
(Also for when it's getting the hug of death as it now is.)
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Tn3PNewzF4t2nT9etXeq...
It would have been nice if they had David Lapham in there, but you can't have everything in life
"There is ongoing debate about to what extent fan fiction is permitted under contemporary copyright law. Some argue that fan fiction does not fall under fair use, as it is derivative work. The 2009 ruling by United States District Court permanently prohibiting publication in the United States of a book may be seen as upholding this position." [1]
Unless we can greatly reduce the length of copyright terms and/or clarify that fan fiction is allowed, you might as well create only original works so your months or years of work doesn't go to waste.
Update: From the link another HN user found, it says, "The Bartkira organizers knew that Matt Groening had seen a copy but to date have never received a cease and desist order. As an extra defense, Harvey decided to donate all of the book's profits to charity [including] Save the Children, a charity preferred by the late The Simpsons co-creator Sam Simon."
So the creators are walking on eggshells, making sure they don't earn a cent and hoping the copyright holders don't sue one day.
I found a good exercise in learning passions and values is asking “what would you do if you knew you would fail?”
So it helps learn what is really important and what you like if you knew that you would need to destroy it afterwards.
Also it's worth noting that despite the memes online, the vast, vast majority of fan works are left alone and survive online for decades. The chance of a fan project actually going to waste is incredibly low, since a decent percentage of creators either like, support or don't care about fan projects based on their works, and even those that dislike them or try to shut them down only do so a minority of the time.
It just sometimes doesn't appear to be the case because 'fan project in development for 10 years shut down by [large company]' is an easy to write/attention grabbing news story, in the same way 'plane explodes in mid air, no survivors found' is for the mainstream media (with similar effects on people's perception of plane safety vs car/train/whatever safety).
A great example of this is Sand Mandala https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sand_mandala
Much as the hoarder inside me wishes we could preserve everything, I’m grateful that we can enjoy these temporary works even if they do just become fleeting experiences.
[*] also not eternal.
> To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries
The current copyright not only does NOTHING to progress science and the arts, it actively STIFLES innovation.
We need to move back to 10 years of copyright with an optional 10 year extension.
https://arstechnica.com/ai/2024/01/george-carlins-heirs-sue-...
As someone else pointed out, since it was posted on the internet it will be available somewhere forever.
If you look at the spreadsheet at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Tn3PNewzF4t2nT9etXeq... then you'll notice that there's about four hundred people involved, most of whom did a mere two pages. That's really not a ton of work for any one artist.
If you go to a comics convention you will find a ton of stuff along these lines, at a smaller scale - here's two or three things you like, put together in a funny way, maybe you'll buy that, maybe that'll draw you in to a person's table to look at their original work and become a new fan of theirs. Batman but it's Adventure Time? A DeLorean driving out of the TARDIS? Portal but it's the Muppets? Whatever.
Fun, passion, love, creativity, curiosity, so on and so forth.
Applies to both fan fiction and animated fan works like Bartkira. The work is not the end for the author.