Forum: Author Hangout

Continuing an unfinished story

Soronel 🚫
Updated:

I have been considering taking advantage of SOL's policy of allowing long-unfinished stories to be continued - this one from 2007.

The one I am looking at features an unwanted but entirely complete male-to-female transformation (along with a more desired female-to-male), and has segments from various POV. When I say that it is entirely complete, this includes breeding, which is desired by the force doing the conversion even though it won't be the party doing the actual breeding.

My question is, would it make sense for the M2F character to continue thinking of themselves as the male name, even as everyone else thinks of them as female and uses a female name?

That is, the segments from the male character POV would continue to use the male name and male descriptors even as an always- male character explores the now-female body?

Mostly I am wondering just how jarring it would be for Jim (not the name from the original story) to examine "his breasts" and "his pussy" and so on. Everyone else thinks of Jim as "Gina" and as a "her".

Replies: Grey Wolf Sarkasmus Soronel

Grey Wolf 🚫

@Soronel

For me, I'd say the issue is whether 'Jim' wants to be 'Jim', is hoping to return to be 'Jim', thinks of 'himself' as 'Jim', etc.

If yes, you effectively have a traditional transgender person in a non-traditional transgender person's body. Biologically female, sociologically / mentally male. In that sense, male makes sense, and 'his' is the pronoun of choice. It probably needs an explanation to the reader.

On the other hand, if 'Jim' is resigned to / happy to be female, 'Gina' becomes the name and 'her' becomes the reference.

If 'Jim' is unsure of things and keeps changing their mind, you've got a non-binary situation and 'Jim' may use either/or depending on mood. Again, I can't imagine that not needing to be made crystal clear to the reader.

By analogy, there's a now-ended long-running webcomic named 'Misfile' in which a male character becomes unexpectedly female due to a literal misfiling in Heaven. The character never truly identifies female and, while there's a lot going on, that dichotomy (especially since he/she is slowly and confusedly falling for a girl, also affected by the misfile but not genderswapped, and doesn't know what to do with much of that), so references tend to be complicated. Everyone else in the world, of course, remembers both people as they are now, not as they themselves remember their past.

Replies: Soronel

Soronel 🚫

@Grey Wolf

Jim definitely still thinks of himself as a "him" and wants to return to being Jim among the group in question (30 people total). A couple of that group want to help him, most don't care either way and a few actively hinder.

It's also definitely explained in-story, the fact that Jim is being forced to become female and resists is pretty much the entire story.

It's mostly how jarring would it be to read something like:

Jim moaned as Trevor brushed four fingers down over his newly-grown pussy.

Usually when you read something like that it's gay-male and is actually talking about an asshole, which is definitely not the case here.

Replies: Grey Wolf

Grey Wolf 🚫

@Soronel

If it were me, I'd probably have Jim explain his use of language, then let it be jarring. The whole situation is jarring, after all.

Jim has a good case here: if he starts using 'her' even in limited cases, to avoid being jarring, 'he' is giving in to being a 'her', at least situationally. Insisting on 'he' no matter how jarring becomes a defense mechanism, a way of asserting that he is who he is, no matter what's happened to his body.

Sarkasmus 🚫

@Soronel

Sorry to jump in without actually saying anything regarding your question, but... there's a policy on SOL allowing long-unfinished stories to be continued?

Replies: Grey Wolf

Grey Wolf 🚫
Updated:

@Sarkasmus

TLDR: I am not a lawyer, but:

1) Lazeez has indicated that he will publish story continuations and is (in general) not concerned with potential copyright issues; and

2) Continuations are specifically allowed under WLPC's author agreement in some circumstances, and

3) The legal state of a continuation is probably 'Fanfiction', which is probably covered by fair use.

(Apologies in advance if that's not the perfect summary of Lazeez' position - plus, of course, it's from 2019, and things might have changed in between, but I haven't seen any indication of that)
--

Lazeez has posted on this. His comment is (in part, there are many) is:

What I do, when asked if somebody can continue a story is to tell them to post their continuation under their own name and when they do, I add a link at the end of the original story to the continuation making it clear that it's a different person. If multiple authors want to finish it, then I link from the end of the story to the multiple endings.

See Adding to a late Authors stories

Storiesonline / WLPC's Author Agreement contains this:

16. If you don't log into Storiesonline for more than 3 years, your stories will get moved into the archives which are accessible to premier members only. We may give interested authors permission to finish any work you left unfinished.

That allows Lazeez to grant permission (obviously, it doesn't require that, or grant it by itself) to continue a story should the author not log in. In the case of a 2007 story, that may be the case (or it may not - depends on the author).

If the author is still active, the new story is essentially 'fanfiction.' As of now, the state of the law on fanfiction is largely unknown, but a continuation (or, even more distinct, an 'inspired by' story) would (IMHO, IANAL) likely fall under 'fair use': it's transformative, the current work is non-commercial, it has no effect on the commercial value of the work (which is currently effectively $0), and the new use is also (presumably) non-commercial. One does not need to meet all parts of the fair use test to qualify, but this covers three of the four (the other is how much of the work one uses, which in this case would be 'all').

Replies: Soronel

Soronel 🚫

@Grey Wolf

Point 16 was definitely what I was referencing.

Soronel 🚫

@Soronel

Sigh,

I have been re-reading the original much closer and realize my ideas for a continuation just don't work. I had been going by memory and having skimmed the last couple chapters of the (very) incomplete second book.

I'll just have to re-work what I have into something completely new. Which isn't so bad, I suppose.

Replies: awnlee jawking

awnlee jawking 🚫

@Soronel

I'll just have to re-work what I have into something completely new. Which isn't so bad, I suppose.

In my opinion, for the three continuations I'm familiar with (the 'Crystals' story by Robber Baron and rlfj, 'Healing Hands' by Raven Soule and Sweet Biscuit, and the 'Magic' stories by Reluctant_Sir and irish Writer), the continuations are inferior to the originals.

So I think you're taking the right approach in writing your own version from scratch.

AJ

Replies: Soronel

Soronel 🚫

@awnlee jawking

I very much liked RLFJ's stories in Al Steiner's Greenies universe, but as I understand things he actually had input from Al, so that is a very different situation.

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Forum: Author Hangout

Continuing an unfinished story

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