A Feud in Wolf-Kink Erotica Raises a Deep Legal Question (original) (raw)
Business|A Feud in Wolf-Kink Erotica Raises a Deep Legal Question
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/23/business/omegaverse-erotica-copyright.html
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Omegaverse stories typically feature characters arranged into a wolfpack-like hierarchy of dominant Alphas, neutral Betas and submissive Omegas — plus lots of lupine sex.Credit...Alamy
What do copyright and authorship mean in the crowdsourced realm known as the Omegaverse?
Omegaverse stories typically feature characters arranged into a wolfpack-like hierarchy of dominant Alphas, neutral Betas and submissive Omegas — plus lots of lupine sex.Credit...Alamy
- Published May 23, 2020Updated May 29, 2020
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Addison Cain was living in Kyoto, volunteering at a shrine and studying indigenous Japanese religion. She was supposed to be working on a scholarly book about her research, but started writing intensely erotic Batman fan fiction instead.
It happened almost by accident. It was 2012, and Ms. Cain — who grew up in Orange County, Calif., under a different name — was three years out of college, alone abroad with a lot of time on her hands. Her command of Japanese was halting, and English titles in bookstores were wildly expensive. So Ms. Cain started reading things she could find for free online, and soon discovered fanfic — stories by amateurs that borrow characters and plots from established pop-cultural franchises.
Ms. Cain began devouring works set in the world of Christopher Nolan’s “Dark Knight” trilogy. She decided to write some of her own, featuring Batman’s nemesis Bane as a sexy antihero, and posted them for free online. She quickly developed a fan base, becoming something of a star in her sub-subgenre.
A few years later, she was living in Arlington, Va., and working as a bartender when she began to wonder if she could turn her hobby into a business. Her husband and parents discouraged her from pursuing something so impractical. Agents were equally dismissive, rejecting or ignoring Ms. Cain’s queries for more than a year. Then, a fellow writer helped Ms. Cain send a manuscript to Blushing Books, a small publishing house in Charlottesville. An editor read it overnight and sent her a contract the next day.
In the spring of 2016, she published “Born to Be Bound,” an adaptation of her fanfic. The story takes place on a future earth where most of humanity has died from a plague and survivors live under a dome, divided into a wolfpack-like hierarchy of dominant Alphas, neutral Betas and submissive Omegas. A powerful, brutish Alpha named Shepherd takes an Omega woman named Claire captive, and they engage in rough, wolfish sex.
Ms. Cain’s fans posted nearly 100 positive reviews on Amazon, enough to get her some visibility. “Unapologetically raw and deliciously filthy,” read one glowing blurb. The debut was a hit. She rushed out several more titles, and the series grossed some $370,000, according to her publisher.
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