Derivative Works/ Namespace (formerly On Fairytale Franchise Pages)

A project thread for the new Derivative Works/ namespace. The sandbox for the project is here.

The discussion agreed that adaptations of public domain works are not part of that work's "franchise", and their Franchise/ pages have to be reformatted and moved to the new namespace — DerivativeWorks/.

The current progress is handled at Sandbox.Derivative Works Namespace. Do not move pages to DerivativeWorks/ until the corresponding DerivativeWorks/ page draft is approved and stick to one work at a time.

Edited by Synchronicity on Oct 14th 2022 at 12:42:47 PM

I personally don't see an issue with it, they still take the same fairy tale and make it again, not every single franchise has every installment made by the same person or company.

I mean...yes, they do, that's literally what a franchise is, both with our rules and the actual dictionary definition:

A franchise is literally a corporate concept. Public domain works can be part of franchises, but works made by different people are not a franchise in any sense of the word.

Several franchises get passed around from company to company and are still considered part of the same franchise. Besides keeping these around are convenient for the purpose of having a list of all adaptations so I don't see the need to get rid of them.

I never said to get rid of them, just that they're in the wrong namespace. Which they are, by our rules, as a franchise namespace is reserved for works that have at least three media namespaces, and I cannot stress this enough: These franchises need to be within the same copyright or brand or something. If you can't connect these works to some parent company or copyright holder or creator, it's not a franchise, it's just a heavily adapted work, and there's a massive difference there.

Because think about it. I mean, really think about it. What else would be a "franchise" in this case? Classical Mythology? Romeo and Juliet? The Bible? All of these have had various "adaptations" of sorts, but you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who'd consider these sort of things a franchise in and of themselves, especially the former and latter.

I just can't see any justification for calling these things "franchises" when by every definition of the word, they're just not.

Edited by WarJay77 on Jun 16th 2021 at 10:53:55 AM

Well if that has to be done we could create a new namespace for these kinds of situations.

I would just fold it into the description, like what Theatre.Romeo And Juliet does. Literature.Snow White already devotes a fair chunk to it anyway.

Edited by Synchronicity on Jun 16th 2021 at 10:46:14 AM

I agree that they're not really franchises and most of these can be folded into descriptions. Maybe consider an Adaptations/ Namespace if they get long enough.

Edited by Piterpicher on Jun 17th 2021 at 2:05:43 PM

I'm inclined to think that an "Adaptations" namespace sounds like a good idea.

As pointed out, these generally aren't franchises, as such, and it could be quite unexpected for them to be located there. Both when looking for adaptations and when looking for franchises, for that matter: I can easily see someone in the former case not thinking to try the "franchise" section, and someone in the latter case being frustrated by apparent clutter encountered there.

Further, I imagine that there are a number of sources that might have entries in such a namespace: various mythologies, quite a few fairy tales, possibly even some biographies, and so on.

Thus, I support the idea of a new "Adaptations" namespace.

That could work.

What about Star Wars? Do we have to split it into two franchises, one for episodes I to VI, and another for episodes VII onwards, simply because of an administrative business that the audience hardly cares about?

...no? The franchise is still just Star Wars. Why on Earth would be split it?

False equivalence my dude.

Crossover time!

I’ve been considering expanding the Adaptations/ namespace to include various Marvel Comics franchise pages that just index without listing tropes, in order to diverge Adaptations/ from Franchise/.

It's not a Fairy Tale but I am wondering would Sherlock Holmes fall under this.

Maybe? The character isn't completely PD yet. Adaptations often need to go through the Doyle estate. I consider it a Franchise in spirit...

Technically the character is public domain, but we are waiting for 2023 in America before everything about the original works are public domain. There are a few works that have been made based on Sherlock being public domain, even if Americans (and because of how international copyright works, many other countries) have a couple more years to wait. It's complicated and we should really figure out the not-Sherlock cases first.

Edited by crazysamaritan on Jun 28th 2021 at 10:08:55 AM

Well, the fairytale ones seem really cut-and-dry to me. They're not franchises in any definition of the term.

Well, I guess I'll give an aye to an adaptation page. The closest thing that fairy tales could be considered as part of a franchise is the Disney adaptations I suppose IMO.

Well, the Disney Animated Canon is a franchise in and of itself.

Edited by WarJay77 on Jun 28th 2021 at 10:21:26 AM

True, and while Disney does own their adaptations, they don't own the fairy tales that they based their movies off. Soooo, maybe the Disney adaptations should keep the franchise page while the originals don't?

There are some cases of Disney adaptations spawning a franchise of its own like with Tangled

Yeah; if we use trope terms, "Tangled" would be the subtrope.

But those are all valid franchises of their own. The basic story of Rapunzel, however, is not.

Tangled is easy though since the name is different but the problem comes with the fact that sometimes the Disney movie is the same name as the fairy tale so all the Disney stuff would be a valid thing to put in the franchise namespace but not every adaptation of like Snow White for example.

Well, the franchise in that case would be Franchise.Snow White And The Seven Dwarves.

But I question if works like Snow White, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty would even count as franchises unto themselves, since they've been absorbed by "Disney Princesses", which would definitely count as one.

Edited by WarJay77 on Jun 28th 2021 at 10:35:56 AM