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Should Creepypasta and Creepypasta-derived media be allowed in our site?

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HammerStrikes219 said:
I mean fanfictions by default is technically part of the public domain.
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No. That is incredibly wrong.

And the important part is whether the initial work was in the public domain.
 
Agnaa said:
No. That is incredibly wrong.

And the important part is whether the initial work was in the public domain.
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When it comes to works, I usually prefer to separate original works and fanfics since anyone is allowed to make fanfics of any specific series or heck a original fanfic or something.
 
I don't understand what that post has to do with this thread.

Can you please not comment in staff only threads unless you have permission and something meaningful to contribute?
 
Agnaa said:
I don't understand what that post has to do with this thread.

Can you please not comment in staff only threads unless you have permission and something meaningful to contribute?
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The point is even if creepy pastas is part of the public domain, they technically need to being copy righted in order for it work ie. It is made by the owner/author themselves.
 
I don't properly understand what you're saying.

But if I try to, I've already said that the copyright status of derivative works does not matter. What matters is that the original work has a copyright status that the derivative works infringe on.
 
EnnardTrap1987 said:
While sure, it does do the story of Jeff and other Creepypastas differently, its a series that not many people are aware of when compared to the popularity and influence of Marble Hornets or EverymanHYBRID, which effectively made an impact on the internet and has a more unique and original story and characters going for it. (Not including TribeTwelve because its creator is a predator and such series is something the ARG and Slenderman communities wants to forget about, but that also shares the same qualities as MH and EMH, even if it began as a MH knock-off in earlier episodes)
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Also Marble Hornet is staying no matter what as it is not a Slenderman fanfic, it just inspired all Slenderman media after it
EverymanHYBRID however is being contested
 
Agnaa said:
I don't properly understand what you're saying.

But if I try to, I've already said that the copyright status of derivative works does not matter. What matters is that the original work has a copyright status that the derivative works infringe on.
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I do have a few issues with that as there is the original work even created by 1 individual or a collaborative of sorts?

I also have limited knowledge as I not sure if copyright laws do actually cover fanfics and creepypastas as there isn’t a direct mention to them. At best, only a implication of the two kinds of works.
 
I do have a few issues with that as there is the original work even created by 1 individual or a collaborative of sorts?

Copyright applies both to works created by individuals and works created by groups.

I also have limited knowledge as I not sure if copyright laws do actually cover fanfics and creepypastas as there isn’t a direct mention to them. At best, only a implication of the two kinds of works.

Copyright laws definitely cover them because copyright laws cover all literary works. They do not need to explicitly mention every single slightly different genre for them to be included.
 
Agnaa said:
I do have a few issues with that as there is the original work even created by 1 individual or a collaborative of sorts?

Copyright applies both to works created by individuals and works created by groups.

I also have limited knowledge as I not sure if copyright laws do actually cover fanfics and creepypastas as there isn’t a direct mention to them. At best, only a implication of the two kinds of works.

Copyright laws definitely cover them because copyright laws cover all literary works. They do not need to explicitly mention every single slightly different genre for them to be included.
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Hmmm, seems reasonable, but I heard that the only way that happens to get protected is if you own the original works and made it too.


 
HammerStrikes219 said:
Hmmm, seems reasonable, but I heard that the only way that happens to get protected is if you own the original works and made it too.
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A conversation about the copyright status of fanfics is not on topic for this thread. We can continue this on your message wall.
 
Anyways as far as I see the general consensus is that we should delete the current page barring the Marble Hornet ones?
 
I was going to reply to the point about Marble Hornets definitely 100% totally being equatable to Dragon Ball Z but with cuss words, buuut I kept reading and that was rebuffed so I have very little to add.

I will instead reiterate that I know for a fact Marble Hornets is fine if Minecraft is fine (both have aspects inspired by Slenderman!!!) and I don't know shit about the other web series. The games are probably fine as they are fully professionally published and whatnot, apparently by the same company that handled other series such as Guilty Gear, Cooking Mama, Worms, and more than a few movie adaptation games. While I can't seem to find who owns the official trademark on the character now, it was ostensibly tracked up to 2016.
 
I don’t know if this question is already been answered or not, but why don’t we just make pages out of the characters from the actual Creepypasta’s like this page on the FC/OC for example?

I can see why with Creepypastas out of established characters like Sonic.exe because those are fanfiction. But Jeff the Killer is a completely original character, so?
 
Peppypony said:
I don’t know if this question is already been answered or not, but why don’t we just make pages out of the characters from the actual Creepypasta’s like this page on the FC/OC for example?

I can see why with Creepypastas out of established characters like Sonic.exe because those are fanfiction. But Jeff the Killer is a completely original character, so?
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Creepypastas tend to be stories posted anonymously (or without much care for preserving the author) which are then copy/pasted to other places, with alterations big and small. This makes the original author difficult to track down; Sesseur claims to have written the first "Jeff the Killer" type thing on the internet, and the story they wrote is different from the more popular one that has been indexed on the FC/OC wiki.
 
So are these pages purely from unofficial fan-material or not? If the former is the case, we should preferably delete them. Hosting that kind of material is not the purpose of our wiki.
 
Mr._Bambu said:
I will instead reiterate that I know for a fact Marble Hornets is fine if Minecraft is fine (both have aspects inspired by Slenderman!!
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Minecraft is a indie game by a specific known dev and publisher IIRC. Also don’t forget modding is a thing in Minecraft. Fan mods to being specific so I not sure if this particular comparison is good.
 
Please stop spamming derailing posts, HammerStrikes219, especially as this is a staff forum thread.

Please do what you can to get this bad habit of yours under control.
 
Okay. I think that Agnaa had problems with your posts earlier though.
 
It sounds like most of them are, but a few aren't, and I don't know enough about every one to tell which of the dozens of verses are fine and which aren't.
 
(Given permission by Mori-Senpai)

From the discussions held above, it seems that creepypasta material does not count as falling under public domain just because it is posted for free online, even if it is posted on 4chan and on Reddit. Copyright is created when the content is created, so yes, technically any works based off creepypastas that are not ""licensed"" by the creator fall under the category of being fanfiction. There's some discussion to be had on whether it's fanfiction if the copyright isn't even enforceable (it would be seriously impossible to prove ownership of random, deleted 4chan archives), but for now it seems determinedly clear that these are all, legally speaking, fanfiction.

And for what it's worth, we should definitely try to only make fanfiction for published material. No profiles based directly off 4chan posts, please

The better question then is that should they still be allowed? Red vs Blue is a webshow that is based off the Halo franchise but it's profiles are very much up and running. but apparently Abridged series with high-quality voice-work, editing and sometimes their own semi-consistent canon are not allowed. Marble Hornets, from what I can find online, is based off Slender-Man (and as established above, Slenderman is and never was public domain), but apparently it is allowed on the wiki too because it inspired other derivatives?

It seems like our standard's on fanfiction are a lot more blurry than "if it ain't OG it ain't allowed, sorry fellas". Red vs Blue, Marble Hornets, Dragon Ball Abridged and Coldsteel the Hedgehog, legally speaking, have no distinction. They're all the same 'level' of fanfiction. But only 2 of these are going to have profiles moving on in the future.

So with that being said, should the wiki's policy on fanfiction change? It seems that if your fanfiction is (a) highly-produced, (b) very distinct from the original and (c) has it's own consistent canon, we would allow it on the wiki. These standards match the ones that we use to allow the SCP Foundation and not the Backrooms.

While I like the idea of 'not all fanfiction should be banned', we should make sure not to just turn it into nepotism. Many people already complain about the SCP Foundation because they feel like it's only allowed due to Nepotism. With that in mind, why isn't the Creepypasta Collection allowed? Many of the stories within are much more fleshed out and distinct compared to the originals (the originals mostly being a bunch of pngs for the most part), each story has it's own canon, and it seems somewhat well-produced. I mean, it's at least a properly published novel.

I'm not trying to open the floodgates for 'Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality' to get added to the wiki. I'm just curious as to where we'll draw the line, because we can't just say "No fanfics, apart from the ones we like".

Edit: Marble Hornets was specifically made to try and expand upon the Slender-man mythos; it's explicitly based off Slender-man, and is for all legal purposes a derivative work.
 
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I remember RvB being discussed and being shown to be very distinct from other examples, in the past. I don't know exactly why. Either it got official permission at some point, was originally just made in the Halo engine but eventually scrubbed itself of Halo references, or some combination of the two.

I'd consider the former fine since it's effectively licensed, and the latter fine since it'd be in the same camp as Fifty Shades of Grey sorts of things.

SCP isn't fanfiction, it's collaborative fiction, and we don't allow SCP fan creations (such as the multiple competently-made games) on the main wiki.

I'd say that the Creepypasta Collection isn't allowed since it takes some characters, even if it expands on them. But if you're talking about the new standards you suggest, it'd probably be allowed.

Your combination of standards makes it difficult to create counterexamples. HPMoR meets c, possibly meets a, and would be a bit of a stretch for it to hit b. SAO abridged meets c and a, and while some would argue that it meets b that's also a bit of a stretch. Tails Gets Trolled meets b and c, doesn't really meet a initially but as of recently starts to, so I think that'd be my best counter-example.

Edit: Marble Hornets was specifically made to try and expand upon the Slender-man mythos; it's explicitly based off Slender-man, and is for all legal purposes a derivative work.

I guess the important question is, is it derivative in the way Homelander is, or in the way Sonichu is? Since I think we'd be fine with the former but not the latter.
 
Agnaa said:
I guess the important question is, is it derivative in the way Homelander is, or in the way Sonichu is? Since I think we'd be fine with the former but not the latter.
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As with most discussions on this topic, we quickly run into the irritating brick wall of examples like the one above. It takes only common sense to know that Homelander is fine and Sonichu isn't, but unfortunately, common sense doesn't write rules and will serve to cause problems the moment someone starts pushing a dubious edge case that doesn't have any outright rules against it.

The point of this thread seems to be defining where that line is.
 
How is this discussion even exist? Perhaps I imagined it to myself, but didn't we already covered it in Backrooms thread? The profiles aren't directly connected to creepypasta in any way. These aren't creepypasta profiles, nor fanfiction profiles, but profiles based on one specific book series, which just happens to be called a certain way, and about a certain topic. We previously discussed that these are published books, and if they aren't referencing things outside said books, they are fine, no? I mean, it's not like the contents change overtime to spark this thread into being.
Same with Slender Mythos profiles aren't based on the things anonimously posted on the forums, but on the things directly written/shown in books/games/web series.
 
No, the Backrooms thread was about collaborative fiction rules, this is about fanfiction rules.

They are directly connected due to being based off of them, which makes them pretty fanfic-y.

Just because they're published doesn't stop them from being fanfiction; there is published Minecraft fanfiction you can find in book stores.
 
I was given permission by @Agnaa to post here.

As someone who once followed the Slender Mythos, I would say that the Marble Hornets, TribeTwelve/EverymanHYBRID, or most Slender-inspired ARGs in general aren't just fanfic.

The original story of Slenderman was just a story written by Victor Surge and the SomethingAwful Paranormal Thread between 2009 and 2010. The Marble Hornets were the first series to conceptualize the idea of the Slenderman we all know today. They basically create their own version of Slenderman and expand it in their own way.

Most of the following ARGs were actually inspired by Marble Hornets instead of the original story, and as their story goes on, they turn Slenderman into a rather different being to fit the plot.

In TribeTwelve, it was a higher being that controlled the world through mortal puppets. In EverymanHYBRID, Slenderman only appeared for the first arcs, and his role became less relevant and the story eventually switched to something else. In DarkHarvest00, it was an eldritch creature worshiped by a cult.

One thing to be noted is that most of these works above don't refer to the entity as Slenderman (except for EverymanHYBRID): The Administrator, The Operator, Gorr 'Rylaehotep, etc. It's a way that the producer is trying to make their character as distinct from Slenderman as possible.

Now, the problem here is how the Slender Mythos page is indexed on the wiki. It's basically a composite page that covers every appearance of Slenderman ever, which is a fault because most of them aren't canon to each other or anything. I do remember that EverymanHYBRID and TribeTwelve once had a crossover, but none to other stories/games on the main page.

I cannot say much about The Creepypasta Collection, but I don't think grouping it with any of the works above is fair because they are each their own story and should have their own separate page.
 
If they're just inspired by/expanding on Slenderman, in a similar manner to how Homelander is inspired by Superman, they should be perfectly fine. But they should not be linked to under the disambiguation page for Slenderman on the wiki.

If they're more like characters in Tails Gets Trolled (same name, same appearance, somewhat to significantly different personality/powers/history) they'd have to be disallowed if we don't also want stuff like TGT.
 
So what are the staff conclusions here so far?
 
Mr._Bambu said:
I was going to reply to the point about Marble Hornets definitely 100% totally being equatable to Dragon Ball Z but with cuss words, buuut I kept reading and that was rebuffed so I have very little to add.

I will instead reiterate that I know for a fact Marble Hornets is fine if Minecraft is fine (both have aspects inspired by Slenderman!!!) and I don't know shit about the other web series. The games are probably fine as they are fully professionally published and whatnot, apparently by the same company that handled other series such as Guilty Gear, Cooking Mama, Worms, and more than a few movie adaptation games. While I can't seem to find who owns the official trademark on the character now, it was ostensibly tracked up to 2016.
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Bro, we all know that the rage of filming Marble Hornets is far greater than Dragon Ball’s cosmology
 
Okay so as far as I understand Marble Hornet and TribeTwelve are good to stay while the rest can be nuked?
 
Should we contact the users who made the other profiles first so they have a chance to defend their profile?

Aside from Marble Hornet and TribeTwelve one, of course.
 
Headless made most of this pages and he's inactive on site so
Also bump, I think we can start deleting stuff?
 
Everyone seems vaguely in favor of deleting stuff that goes over the line, but we haven't really rigorously defined the line.

I've said that I want the line to be "Originally created by one person or cohesive group, and then licensed out to others. Taking inspiration is fine, ripping off isn't." Others have been pretty vague on their lines, but I think Damage and Bambu agree. DDM seemed to want to allow any that have episodes, original story/setting, and prioritize original characters.
 
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