B5 & Mongoose - Straczynski not pleased

[Darrin Drader]

Imagine you've always aspired to be a novelist. Imagine that you achieve some success ina related field, but it still isn't novels. Imagine that of all the different fictional universes, there is one that really speaks to you. You love the brilliance behind it, you tape all the episodes, you learn the backstory, you eventually buy the DVDs. Imagine that you consider the guy behind it to be kind of an impersonal mentor - someone who has shown you how to spin a ripping good yarn, and do it better than anyone else is who is working in a similar vein (OK, that may be stretching things a bit far, but I will say that B5 is better than Star Trek on so many levels). Then imagine that not only does your dream of becoming a novelist come true, but you're able to do so in the universe you love so much. Now imagine that the guy whose style you have partially modeled your own style after, your mentor, says that the people you're working with are jerks and your novel doesn't amount to anything in the grand scheme.

Yeah, welcome to my world.

Regardless of the bickering at the top, I'm just going to write the best damn Babylon 5 story I can, and I'll let the powers that be take care of the rest.

 

[Ranger REG]

I thought Matt did that because he'd been trying, unsuccessfully, to reach JMS for some time.

Maybe JMS is a RPG-hater. It's not like it's the first time we've been giving this kind of mistreatment from the rest of the world.

 

[DaveMage]

Regardless of the bickering at the top, I'm just going to write the best damn Babylon 5 story I can, and I'll let the powers that be take care of the rest.

You could dedicate the novel to Claudia Christian....

Edit - or even better, Gene Roddenberry.


I'm kidding!!!!!!!

 

[DaveMage]

And if 2200 words is too damned long and marks me as a stupid n00b, then I guess I’ll wear my noobiness proudly.

Peace,
Anthony Pryor

Somehow I can't see you as being described as a n00b on a board dedicated to D&D....

 

[Eosin the Red]

Hi – I haven’t posted on these boards in a long time, but given my interest in the issues being discussed here, I feel some compulsion to weigh in.

I can agree with the general tone of your post but you are in greivious error in many portions of your analogy. The water is murky, but it is possible to tease some of the "stipulated facts" out of the slime and those contradict your POV at many turns.

 

[Eosin the Red]

Regardless of the bickering at the top, I'm just going to write the best damn Babylon 5 story I can, and I'll let the powers that be take care of the rest.

I wondered who would be left holding the "ugly bag" at the end of the day. Best of luck.

 

[DaveMage]

You could dedicate the novel to Claudia Christian....

Edit - or even better, Gene Roddenberry.

Or...

Dedicated to the Cast and Crew of Deep Space 9.



I'll stop now.

 

[sniffles]

Somehow I can't see you as being described as a n00b on a board dedicated to D&D....

And I didn't even know he had a forum membership! Jerk.
[edit: ssspaladin, I mean, not you, DaveMage!]

 

[Aesthetic Monk]

The first thing any artist should learn is how to take criticism. The second thing they should learn is that once they let their 'child' out into the world, it's no longer purely theirs. I knew a couple painters, for instance. One could not stand going to showings of his work, because it drives him nuts when people saw something entirely different in his work than he intended. The other loved talking to people as they perused the gallery, because she got a thrill out of seeing how different people interpreted the art.

Interpretation in this sense, though, is beside the point. We're not talking about a general "thick skinnedness." No one's questioning whether someone's got the right to like or not like B5, to love Season 5 or think it was a big letdown, to write B5 fanfic, or just in general to have a different aesthetic sensibility. What we're closer to talking about is ownership and canonicity. I don't think that JMS has questioned anyone's right to interpret B5 as he or she sees fit; it's a question mostly of whether you can label your interpretation as canon.

Both of them, though, have said that if the person who buys it takes it home and let's their kid fingerpaint over it, it's no big deal. If they didn't want to let it go, they wouldn't have sold the painting.

Messing around with something you buy for your own private enjoyment (or vandalism) is one thing. But I doubt your friends would be OK with someone fingerpainting on the painting then getting it hung in a different gallery and claiming that it's an "authorized interpretation" of the original painting based on the fact that it contains elements of the original.

Assuming Mongoose is following the letter of their agreement with WB, they have no obligation, moral, ethical or otherwise, to consult with JMS.

I suspect we won't convince each other on this. I know how I'd want to be treated were I the creator, which in some philosophical systems suggests the presence of a moral/ethical issue.

Mongoose is the creator now, or co-creator anyway, and if they want to take B5 and metaphorically fingerpaint over it, that's their perogative. It would be a courtesy, I suppose, to consult the original author, but given the tone of that post and the reputation of the person in question for being hard to get along with, courtesy might be wasted.

I have no idea what the licensing agreements look like, and I wouldn't be qualified to interpret them anyway even if I had seen them. The issue may ultimately be legal as much as anything else. I do see a moral/ethical issue here, at least in the abstract.

 

[WizarDru]

Maybe JMS is a RPG-hater. It's not like it's the first time we've been giving this kind of mistreatment from the rest of the world.

One would think that an RPG-hater would have prevented one RPG from being from his work, let alone TWO.

One thing that I haven't seen mentioned was the whole 'canon' issue. One stated goal JMS claimed, years ago, was how the B5 books and extended media would be canon. Unlike the Star Trek novels, which were always disavowed by Paramount, the books were going to be approved by JMS as canon. This proved out when elements from the Psi Corps trilogy and Technomage trilogy would also appear in the unfilmed scripts for Crusade.

I'm under the impression the issue about use of the work, it's about trying to represent JMS as being involved with the project and that by virtue of that, the material is considered canon. Especially when JMS is currently working on a new B5 writing project of his own.

My suspicion is that this is a case of WB's left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing, which was a frequent problem for the TV series both during and after production.