Define “death”.

For a book? There is very much an argument that the listed author would make sense. But… good authors tend to have ten or twenty solid pages of thanking their editors and beta readers and researchers and partners and so forth for very good reason. And while they tend to not get royalties (outside of the partner), those associated with the publisher sort of do in the sense of getting a continued paycheck in part because of their demonstrated “value”.

But let’s bump that up to a movie. Is the screenwriter the creator? What about a case where there were multiple “script doctors” brought in to punch up a premise? The director? The lead actor? The ridiculously good performance by the supporting actress that held every scene together? The people in the editing bay who turned “I want this scene to pop more” into actionable edits? The VFX team who did the entirety of every action sequence and half the dialogue because the costumes weren’t finalized until a week before it hit theatres?

And so forth. The time where works tended to have a singular creator was… closer to millennia ago than not. Even a lot of the “Willy Shakespeare was a fraud” is rooted in a misunderstanding of what editing and collaboration is.

I don’t know what a good model is. I like the concept of a fixed period with the idea that if you are continuing to use an IP then people will pay for the new stuff. Then I look at all the cash-in horror slop because Winnie the Pooh became public domain and… does that help ANYBODY?

My mind keeps coming back to the end of Sebastien de Castell’s Spellslinger series. He left a LOT of loose ends (in part because of the themes of the story he was telling which would be spoilers to elaborate on) but did a quick epilogue sequence of two characters reuniting. And then he wrote an afterward where he talked about how (paraphrasing) that is just one possible ending and that it doesn’t actually matter what he wrote because, after the years we all spent reading about Kellen and Reichis and Ferius and Nephenia and Shalla… they aren’t just his characters. They are OUR characters too. And what he can see as a potential future isn’t necessarily what we see. I forget if he explicitly said writing fanfiction was a good idea but… that is kind of the reality of it.

And in that sense? I increasingly come down on: Let the companies and creators keep their IPs. Only they get to profit. But also heavily strengthen fair use so long as there is no direct profit (we do need to understand the idea of ad revenue for a youtube channel or a website or something). Fill up AO3 with ALL the slop but keep it out of theatres unless they are gonna file the mormon off and Fifty Shades of Grey it. Beyond that? Whatever.

And just for those wondering what those themes were:

Spellslinger series spoilers

A huge part of the series, and de Castell’s writing in general, is the idea that the viewpoint character isn’t the main character. Yeah, Kellen Argos is a really cool con-man with limited casting capability who does heroic stuff. But there is little he can do against the horrors of the world other than to inspire, and force the hand of, those who can. And, in turn, he is inspired by those he loves. Kellen isn’t Frodo or Aragorn. He is Eowyn and Faramir.