Story Continuations: We Are Trying Literary Necromancy

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Let me apologize for the public dragging I’m about to do.

Now that I’ve done that, let me get this off my chest: while the content of your message was totally within the conversational bounds, the tone was absolutely unacceptable especially from my standpoint as a scholar. It’s fine to have your opinion and be against the proposal, but the flaunting and pomposity you present over the course your message is so unnecessary and so out of bounds. While I can’t do more than call your BS out, it must be called out for all to see. If we were in person, we’d definitely be having a Bernie Mac style disagreement because of the tone and demeanor you’ve presented. Just follow the Golden Rule and treat people like you want to be treated and you won’t have me coming for your neck. It’s just that simple.

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@Evan_Jackson & @cadelpdr

Just to address the “Bite reflex” remark you both seem to have taken personally.

Let me reassure you, it wasn’t targeted at you or your posts. More at the initial reaction in this thread.

I’m glad that this has now turned into a more open, productive discussion. And I hope we can find a way that agrees with everyone.

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As a writer itself, this unit likes the idea in general. As long as an attempt is made to reach out to the original authors - as stated will be done - then it sees no personal issues. Plus this feels within the free spirit of creativity too.

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It’s perfectly fine not to agree, then we will never consider one of your stories. It’s just that easy. Every author has the right to object.

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I think everyone is entitled to an opinion, I’m just shocked by the negative reaction some people are having here. This is, like, an erotic gay hypnosis archive for people with a shared kink. I just don’t think it’s as serious as some people are making it. While I’m proud of the work I’ve done, I consider it a compliment that others would want to build more within a world I built. Like, I can still finish my own stories in conjunction with what other writers may do with my characters, my plot, my world. I personally believe some of you are taking your jerk off stories a little too seriously, which is your perogative…but that’s just my opinion. Everyone has the right to opt in or opt out. But really don’t think this idea needs to be big thing before it’s even been rolled out.

Thanks, as always, to the site runners who absorb the brunt of these disagreements, @Corin and @AsisAsio : I appreciate all the hard work you do in attempting to keep this site so active with new and intriguing ideas.

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Something about this doesn’t quite sit right with me. But on the other hand, I would do anything for a continuation of Dreamweavr’s “No Reciprocation” so…

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Everyone having the right to reject is the issue though. You should have positive consent to use a story, not lack of negative consent.

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The core intention of Story Continuations is not to take stories away from original authors. It is to honour great stories that clearly meant something to readers, but never got the chance to reach their intended end.

We are talking about four Story Continuations per year, out of the thousands of stories on the site. The chances that a story is chosen with the explicit permission of the original author is astonishingly low due to the sheer number of stories on the site, and the chances that a story without the explicit permission of the original author is even lower. This is by design. It is supposed to be an exclusive rare club, not a public all-access plaza.

On issues around opt-out consent from original authors - this is purely for situations where we genuinely can’t contact the author. Guys, it’s the year of our lord 2026, we can see if authors have accessed the site to do some reading even if they haven’t written a story in 15 years, we can see who is still around and kicking. If they don’t get back to us after the 2-months, we will not take that as consent given, especially if we can see they’re still alive and contactable through their general activity and other reasonable means on the site.

The opt-out policy is for if they’re either dead or in a coma and there’s no possible way for us to detect any signs of life. It’s for extremely rare cases.

For further clarifications:

  • The original story will remain the original author’s work.

  • The original author will remain credited.

  • Any author who’s story is chosen can still always veto against it or preemptively exclude all of their stories from the start.

  • The continuation will be clearly marked as a Story Continuation and the original story and original author will be clearly linked and acknowledged.

  • The author field for continuations will identify both the author of the continuation and the original author.

We are also considering requiring each submission to include a short honour statement from the new author, explaining why they wanted to continue that story, what inspired them, and what they appreciated or learned from the original author’s work.

On the original story itself, we will not to rewrite, replace, or bury anything. At most, there would be a simple pink button/link pointing readers to the Story Continuation challenge and its results. That’s it. Even that presentation may change based on feedback during the trial.

I also want to acknowledge that people have raised serious concerns, especially around consent, ownership, wording, and whether terms like “canon” or “Story Steward” give the wrong impression. That feedback is being heard.

That is part of why this is a 12-month trial.

The trial is not because we are blindly committed to this no matter what. The trial exists so we can measure engagement, listen to authors and readers, adjust the presentation, test the safeguards, and decide whether this actually works for the community.

If, after 12 months, this proves unsuccessful, disengaging, or genuinely offensive to original authors in a way we cannot solve, then it will not continue.

The main goal is to bring the treasures buried deep into the huge backlog of stories back to the front page and honor them with the best continuation and maybe conclusion the community can come up with.

It’s not meant to alter, violate, taint, replace of water down the original work of any author.

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31

Thank you all for this thoughtful discussion!

I would be (and have been) so excited to get fanfic of my works!! Honestly, I find myself wondering why we can’t just call this “fanfiction”? It’s what the acceptable-to-most-people-in-this thread version that is being described would actually be without infringing on authors’ intellectual property or the very valid in my opinion moral objections to some of how the project (which I do think is very cool in some ways!!) has been framed.

I also fully agree that affirmative, opt-in consent should be the standard here. Opt-out feels a little ethically dubious to me. I teach BDSM and kink consent workshops in my community and we often teach the “FIRES” approach (or FRIES, if you prefer to think about what’s on the menu): Freely-Given, Informed, Revocable, Enthusiastic*, and Specific. Authors who have published in the past have agreed to something specific that doesn’t include this use-case.

*I put an asterisk around Enthusiastic because of discussions with neurodivergent kinksters around performing enthusiasm or still wanting to do something even if they don’t feel super super gung-ho about it but just “okay” with it.

I think it’s an amazing idea to reach out to authors to get their permission, but if you don’t hear back, I think the most ethical thing to do is not include them in this initiative. Or, alternatively, sure, have people write fanfic in their worlds! That sounds delightful!

Again, much respect and appreciation for the folks trying to do new initiatives on the site and who help keep it around, and for the people involved in voicing important concerns in the community.

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32

Just popping in to ask an aside - is this going to replace the current Story Challenge format we have, or running alongside it?

And just throwing in my two cents - I’m pretty neutral on the idea myself. There’s a lot of information that’s being introduced about this new idea - maybe the first trial run should be on a story written by one of the admins or approvers? That gets around the whole “consent” argument so people can actually see how it functions in practice.

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I think this is an excellent way to build a sense of this site as a community of authors, readers, and the stories they love, and creates a sort of historical throughline that connects the past culture of the site to its culture today.

It sounds to me like it has always been legal on the site to publish a story which you call an unofficial continuation of an old work you loved, as long as you don’t copy it. That means that authors who didn’t consent may end up having their stories ‘continued’ by some intrepid writer who wants to do their own spin.

The difference here, however, is that these will be ‘officially sanctioned’ story continuations, which gives them a sort of stamp of approval by the site. I think it’s a positive message to send (‘we want to show your story an outpouring of love and genuine sincerity by the community’) but could have a negative connotation (‘my metaphorical publisher, GKS, is extending my works against my will for the entertainment of the community’).

Ultimately I think there’s a simple material way you can keep the opt-out system without harming the authors who didn’t opt out but would have if they could have. Just don’t add the pink ‘story continuation here!’ button to the stories of authors who didn’t respond in the two-month period. When someone reads one of these old stories, they won’t see the story continuation button at the end, and there’s no message that the original author sanctioned this.

In this situation, story continuations that don’t have the pink button become part of ‘the list of story continuations’. Readers who want to find story continuations because they think the concept is cool can go to the list and discover that ‘woah, one of my favourite stories had a continuation challenge! which one was the best one?’ If you do that, you effectively reframe the story continuation as an encouragement to homage an author’s past work, rather than an official statement that “this is what the community now considers to be the continuation, period”.

You could do this with all continuations, or just with the ones that didn’t get opted out.

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34

If it is only 4 stories per year why not require explicit permission from the author for it to go ahead? I feel like most people’s issue with this idea would be solved by that consent being gained

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Run alongside, hence the stressing of the colour pink (versus story challenge orange). Story challenges will remain a main feature of the site and have longer periods to write for etc. Story continuations are sub-challenges.

For the first two sub-challenges, we were only going to choose stories we had specific permission for.

I think people are underestimating just the lengths we will go to to get permission, and the times we move forward without permission are rare, because the community would have to select an author who not only we can’t contact or get a response to, but has no “digital pulse” for a while - as in, no evidence of any life or interactions with the website for several years.

My honest estimate is that if this ran over a 10 year period, of the 40 stories only around 2 would be done without explicit consent from the original author, and if they returned and rescinded that consent, we’d make the necessary changes to respect that.

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See I like this a lot, and it feels like a good compromise. I’m even willing to put a message above those no-pink button stories to say that we weren’t able to secure consent, we tried our best and if you’re the original author to please reach out to us - we will find a way to allow authors who can’t access their original accounts to reach out to us and prove they’re the original to either provide consent or withdraw it completely.

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I hear you, however, I don’t think you’re hearing us.

Gaining explicit permission implies that it’s always possible to do so. In situations where we are trying to engage community and honour older golden stories, that simply may not be possible.

If we were able to, we would, and we will very much try with all the tools we have at our disposal until all options are exhausted. I know this might be upsetting but quite literally some of these authors have passed away. In the same way that we can’t ask Homer for permission to make renditions of the Odyssey or Shakespeare for renditions of the Hamlet. If they were alive, we’d ask, but they’re not. Would it not seem unreasonable to tear down the Lion King or Christopher Nolan’s latest film because we never got the explicit opt-in from Bill and Homer?

I stress, it is an opt-in system in 95% of situations, and an opt-out situation in the 5% where people aren’t able to be asked, and even then, they retain opt-out rights should they return from their off-grid living situation and/or the great beyond.

And even then, the chances a story is chosen that puts us in opt-out territory is up to the community via their requests. They’d have to choose a story by an author who is no longer with us, in many forms that may take, and can’t be contacted in any way.

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Yeah but that means you just don’t use the story. It doesn’t matter if you tried and failed to get consent. In that case there is no consent.

There are thousands of stories on this site. There are so many stories people would like to be continued. You’re finding four. Surely gaining the consent from four authors won’t be impossible for you. If you don’t have time I’ll do the work to get the consent.

I know that some people might never reply but if I was asleep and someone asked me if I wanted to have sex, just because I didn’t say no doesn’t mean I said yes.

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“I’ve slept with 40 people over a 10 year period and there were only two times that was done without consent surely you can just let it slide”

Maybe I am being dramatic but that’s what it sounds like you are saying. It is still violating the intellectual property of the writer.

If the community votes on a story and you can’t get consent just move to the second place one and then the next one, then the one after that.

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@Hypnofiend23

I know that some authors feel very strongly about this. And I have to be frank, one our most proficient writers has decided to get all of his stories deleted from the site, just because this thread exists.

I’m very sad about this. Like people assume we do this to hurt them in some way, when the exact opposite is the case.

All of this on the site is done for the authors first and then the readers.

But the backlash we’re faced with constantly is getting at us.

We respect if an author doesn’t want his material to be used in that challenge. Of course we do, because we respect our authors and their wishes.

But once your story is out there in the public, you, as an author, have to live with the fact that other persons might use it as inspiration and might even continue the idea in their own way.

That’s just the way it is. There is no legal or practical way to avoid this. Do you think that we check every new submitted story if it could be inspired by an existing story? Or even continue it?

Your statement about “violating their intellectual property” is simply wrong and hurtful. It’s offensive.

So this whole discussion is truly blown out of proportion. And that authors are actually leaving us because of it is beyond frustrating to me.

So much so that I’m once again close to the point where I question everything and my own involvement in all of this. Sometimes I’m just so tired.

– Corin

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I’m now very confident you’re not reading what we’ve been saying. I’ll put it in bold for you.

It is an incredibly small amount of situations where we will move forward with the original authors permission. That is why it is 4 stories a year. It keeps it rare, controlled and selected.

We aren’t just throwing an email and hoping they respond. We are trying a multitude of ways to contact the original author both on and off the site, bar invading their personal privacy to ask them in case that jeopardises the safety and security of their life. We are not going to expose their hypo kink to their family or workplace if they’ve moved on from that, just for them to find out we only went to those lengths to reach out to them because of the demands of internet lurkers. We will take reasonable and fair action to contact authors.

It is also incredibly disingenuous and inappropriate to use rape as an analogy for this situation. Rape is traumatic and leaves very long-term negative psychological effects and scars on a lot of people, including myself and members of this community. You very much overstepped there. Making a chapter 2 from an authors abandoned chapter 1 does not leave those kinds of scars.

I’d also note that when you’re asleep, you can be woken up, and asked for consent, so even in your poorly chosen analogy, it doesn’t work. We would shake you awake and ask for consent.

Dead people, however hard one tries, can’t be shaken awake - nor can people who physically aren’t in the bed, or in any bed we can get to.

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I’m so upset with the very poor choice of words you’ve chosen to describe this situation, that I’m going to do myself a favour and not dignify this with a response to the material subject matter.

Yes, you are being dramatic. Please don’t use rape as a comparable analogy as it is insensitive and totally misapplied. I’d ask you be respectful of the traumatic experiences of others and make wiser word choices.

The situation you described at the bottom will occur in most cases. The point I’m trying to get through and have apparently failed to multiple times is that for an opt out story to be chosen, a lot of fail safes would have to occur, which include going down the list while stories with more demand are getting their permission status ascertained.

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