CHYOA: Lady-Land edition

[personunused]

https://chyoa.com/story/CHYOA:-Lady-Land-Edition.15412

This is meant as a collection of all female reinterpretations of other stories. The Intro's TL;DR is that a man has been the granted the wish that humanity has always been %100 lesbian and the first thing he/she does is get on CHYOA. At the moment I want to focus on identifying stories that are well suited to this purpose and adjusting their intros but I also worry readers want some action soon AND that the content should have some genuine originality. For that purpose I put in that "Lady-Land" is far more prudish in the notes (https://chyoa.com/chapter/Notes-for-writers.414328). This site emphasises subversion after all. So...

Is copy -> paste -> edit cheating?
If not what stories do you want included?
How different should the stories be?
Is the meta-back-story a good idea?

 

[Nemo of Utopia]

I would be very cautious about this, and secure the permission of other authors BEFORE you edit their contents...

 

[personunused]

Yeah I should go and retroactively do that for a few right now... Also thank whoever made "The lonely god" for the term "Lady-Land".

EDIT: Sent messages offering to delete if requested.

 

[Xenolan]

First of all, I'm always a fan or more woman-on-woman sex, so anything that puts more of that out there gets extra points from me.

The idea of an AU where everyone is female is intriguing, and re-interpretations of popular CHYOA stories isn't a bad idea; but, you'll DEFINITELY want to ask permission from the original authors if you're going to be doing essentially word-for-word transitions with only genders changed. It's not like there would be legal issues or you'd run afoul of the site rules; none of this stuff is copyrighted. It's just polite.

I think you'll have a hard time finding stories which strongly feature male-female sex in their original form which can be smoothly transitioned to all-female. Many of the stories on the site involve the lone male in an otherwise all-female setting; for instance, the one guy at an all-girls school. Any story in which the end goal is pregnancy is pretty much out (post-apocalyptic repopulate-the-species scenarios, for instance). And even when the characters are only pursuing recreational sex, there's usually some form of gender politics involved between the male and female characters.

A story which takes place in some kind of all-female alternate universe is an intriguing enough idea to hold its own, I think; you don't really need to borrow plots and characters from other CHYOA stories to do it. I've read your opening intro and I think it's a good piece of groundwork; the idea of having the main character be a man who wakes up in this all-female universe, and finds that he is now also female, is a good way to allow for exposition and explore things which would be second nature to those who have always lived in a universe with only X-chromosomes. I would contribute to such a story, but I think I'd be less likely to contribute and follow a story which is essentially a copy of others which already exist on the site.

 

[Nemo of Utopia]

I would contribute to such a story, but I think I'd be less likely to contribute and follow a story which is essentially a copy of others which already exist on the site.

With certain caveats and stipulations regarding permitted contents, I agree with the above quoted statements.

 

[gene.sis]

but, you'll DEFINITELY want to ask permission from the original authors [...] It's not like there would be legal issues or you'd run afoul of the site rules; none of this stuff is copyrighted.

WTF? Of course, it is copyrighted. If you create something, you own the copyright. How else would you get copyright for your stuff?
That said, you probably won't run into serious legal issues as long as you don't sell something.
If the owner of the original material doesn't agree with his story being plagiarized, they could ask for deletion. Actually, there was a case on CHYOA had that option after finding a translation of their own story. In the end, they were happy with a note about the creator and a link to the original story.

So, no matter if you translate or plagiarize, you should ask for permission.
This isn't necessary for using ideas as inspiration, but not most of a concept.

man who wakes up in this all-female universe, and finds that he is now also female

Men waking up as females in a mixed gender world are a common idea...
So... how would it be for a (once straight) woman waking up in an all-female universe, finding out that her boyfriend/husband is a girl?

 

[personunused]

Any story in which the end goal is pregnancy is pretty much out (post-apocalyptic repopulate-the-species scenarios, for instance)...

But I think I'd be less likely to contribute and follow a story which is essentially a copy of others which already exist on the site.

My rough plan is for the first chapter of each thread to be a near copy with the following chapters diverging due to the differences biology, psychology and sociology. One place I have already done this a little with "Changing the rules" and I'm planning out a route for "In space no one can hear you breed" that only makes sense given magical lesbian pregnancy.

Admittedly part of my motivation is that I feel too new to this to start from scratch but also genuine curiosity about how this site would differ.

 

[personunused]

Men waking up as females in a mixed gender world are a common idea...
So... how would it be for a (once straight) woman waking up in an all-female universe, finding out that her boyfriend/husband is a girl?

That sounds like a good spin off. The existing framing story already has John/Jane Doe's wish to be in an all female universe have unexpected consequences. I could write in that he/she included a clause about having the same girlfriend.

EDIT: The spin off would be said "same girlfriend" waking up at the same time in her home to find that she's the only non-lesbian in a world without men. Does she forgive John/Jane? Can she learn to love a woman?

 

[Xenolan]

If you create something, you own the copyright. How else would you get copyright for your stuff?

If an author is serious about copyrighting a work, they need to take certain steps to protect themselves. The work should have a copyright notice; I've never seen a story on CHYOA that did. That's not a requirement, but it does preclude someone "accidentally" violating copyright. One should also register the work with the U.S. Copyright office, and it's a good idea to take the additional step of sending oneself a hard copy of the work via registered mail, which is hard proof that the story existed upon a certain date. All of this is overkill for something like a CHYOA.com story, of course, because we're not making any money from this and we obviously don't intend to.

In a strictly legal sense, one could claim copyright over a story posted on CHYOA. Enforcing that claim in any way would be next to impossible, though. First, it would be hard for most of us to prove that we're the authors of our work in the first place; every story on this site is written under a pseudonym, and the accounts are associated with Email addresses which are probably NOT registered under anyone's real name (mine certainly isn't!). Second, an argument could be made that CHYOA is designed explicitly with the idea of sharing one's work freely; the fact that multiple authors can contribute to a given story helps to make that case. Finally, this is a muddy area in general, legally speaking; very little has been firmly established how to handle copyright claims on material posted on the internet and made freely available to the public. In a legal case where someone took work posted by the author on a freely-accessible website, copied it and re-posted it on the SAME website, I doubt a copyright claim could be made to stick. If credit is given to the original author, then there's no case at all.

 

[gene.sis]

because we're not making any money from this and we obviously don't intend to.

So wouldn't you mind if someone uses your content, publishes it "officially" to make money of it?

Second, an argument could be made that CHYOA is designed explicitly with the idea of sharing one's work freely; the fact that multiple authors can contribute to a given story helps to make that case.

You actually create chapters, so the piece of work is not the whole story but the chapter.
CHYOA is rather designed to be able to read the work for free, not to be able to use it just as you like.

Finally, this is a muddy area in general, legally speaking; very little has been firmly established how to handle copyright claims on material posted on the internet and made freely available to the public. In a legal case where someone took work posted by the author on a freely-accessible website, copied it and re-posted it on the SAME website, I doubt a copyright claim could be made to stick. If credit is given to the original author, then there's no case at all.

You might be right about not having good odds, legally speaking.
But that shouldn't lead to encouraging users to copy without permission. If you can do it without getting caught doesn't mean it's allowed.
Same site... the work could already be available on several other websites, having your permission while the other submission on the same site doesn't. Credit can't replace permission.