Hi all, it has been a while.
This post is not going to cover any Frozen content. Instead it is a post about my concerns for publishing the Saga of the Crocus here.
As you may know, the Saga of the Crocus is the fanfiction (i.e. fictional work using other parties’ legally protected characters) that I have been working on for more than half a year now.
Because I have recently been gearing up to finish editing and publish the thing, I have been checking some aspects of the law and site security, and I will talk about some concerns that I have, and why I might not publish the Saga on this website.
Concern 1: Legality
Fanfiction is quite illegal. Most authors turn a blind eye to it though, since fanfiction generates buzz around the original work. However, attempting to monetise it without permission is a big no-no.
Nevertheless, if I were not to monetise it, I highly doubt that the Saga would enjoy substantial copyright protection. I doubt my abilities to chase down people who might steal my work – and even if I did a court might rule that I have few rights to recognition.
Consider it an arrogant cynicism – yes, I think some may want to steal my work, and no, I don’t trust the law to be on my side.
As it is, it seems that this blog is not copyrighted. Others can plausibly use my blogs on their own websites, and I don’t think I would be able to touch them. To be fair, I have only seen US websites which state that I must send requests to a certain governmental office to request to copyright my blog posts – but I cannot help but wonder if the same applies to my country.
These concerns naturally lead me to the next concern:
Concern 2: Security
I am using a free WordPress domain. This means that I cannot use certain HTML codes or coding features.
One such coding feature I cannot use is the feature that prevents selection. So for example, you reading this might want to Google the meaning of the word ‘ante-vision’. You could select the text, in which case there would be a bluish highlight on the word, and then copy and paste the text into your URL bar.
The feature that prevents selection prevents you from selecting the text and copying as described above.
I managed to figure out how to code that into my text, but WordPress simply removes those lines of code when I publish the page properly. In the preview (before publishing), I can’t select the words influenced by the code.
Naturally this makes it easier for people to steal my work. And, as I mentioned, I shall believe that my work is good enough to merit some stealing.
Conclusion?
I dearly wish I could publish my Saga here. The Saga is meant to be the centrepiece of my blog, the thing that sets this Frozen blog apart from any other.
But my concerns about it would never let me post it here, as far as I understand the situation.
I may publish it on FanFiction.net – Disney does not yet seem to have ordered FanFiction.net to remove Frozen-related fanfiction. I’ll update everyone again when I do publish.
Thanks for sticking with me throughout.
Side concerns
(if I think I’m so awesome, why don’t I ask Disney to publish my Saga?)
I know others have written original Frozen stories and gotten the book published under the auspices of Disney. I could possibly ask a lawyer to explain to me how much ownership I’d retain over the book if I did publish under Disney.
But I don’t think I that good to get a contract of any sort with Disney.
(but if I never try I’ll never know)
I worry the Saga will be torn to shreds over the rhyme scheme and the poetic rhythm. My self-created poetic meter is not always the most lucid, and the rhymes I use adhere to the sounds of my own accent, which is very different from UK or US accents.
(or is this just a vain desire for self-made-ness?)
Queendom of the Crocus 