Hi all, recently I was messing with AO3’s CSS and HTML to recreate the visuals of a ChoiceScript game. This is a screenshot of an unpublished work. The grey button does not work but it’s definitely possible for it to (though in my amateur knowledge, that’s as far as functionality can go). I was wondering if it’s allowed to recreate such a thing in AO3.
I’m holding onto the hope that it is allowed, because it’d be pretty cool to write fanfiction with it… but most likely, the answer is no, isn’t it?
Good question. I prefer having fanfiction on AO3 rather than hosting it on DashingDon, Neocities, or itch.io. Besides that I think I could potentially be in more hot water if the source material is also a ChoiceScript game. I’m trying to compromise wanting to do what I want + respecting author’s work.
I don’t really see why anyone would forbid you to replicate surface-level visuals of a ChoiceScript game. I suppose the company (not any of the authors) could theoretically claim copyright infringement over the style, but it would be a legally dubious way to pick a fight over nothing. You can publish an actual ChoiceScript game anytime you want, as long as you either don’t make money off it or give CoG a 25% cut, so why would they care if a fanfic kinda looks like something generated by their programming language? What’s the possible motive for objecting here?
Like Omeg, I can’t see what there is to object to? You can copyright CSS, but if you aren’t making money or misleading people (e.g., pretending your fanfic is officially affiliated with COG), I don’t see them minding. You could contact them if you really wanted to be sure.
As for authors, if an author feels disrespected by a fan work, I don’t know that it being HTML that merely looks like a ChoiceScript game (as opposed to HTML that is a ChoiceScript game) will make any difference to how disrespected they feel?
If that is a legitimate concern, I would reach out to the author in question, personally.
If it’s a matter of wanting to be on AO3, I believe you can have an entry on the archive that links to an external site.
If you really want to host it on AO3, you could probably write a custom script to embed it. Someone ported Colossal Cave, one of the OG IF titles there.
Thank you for your excellent points! It’s clear that I haven’t really thought through my reservations. I will take a look at Colossal Cave and see how it works, and maybe I could see if I could host something similar to ChoiceScript on AO3.