User blog:Princess Callie/Spinoffs and Blacklisted Subjects.

It's occured to me as of late that people have failed to realize what the admins and others refer to when they say something is a spinoff.

Well, skipping the fact that they obviously did not read the Blacklist, a spinoff is something that is considered not wholly original.

By that, I mean that it uses the ideas of other stories, not them being spinoffs to the stories themselves.

For example, you can say all day long that your sadistic murderer who decided to cut open his mouth and ears isn't a Jeff spinoff, but guess what? These are all "original" too. They're called "Jeff-Inspired" stories, most of which, if not all, follow this formula. Boom. Jeff Inspired story at its base. Explain to me how that isn't a spinoff.
 * 1) Killer has a bad life or is bullied.
 * 2) Killer goes insane.
 * 3) Killer mutilates self.
 * 4) Killer kills family.

These stories are on the Blacklist for a reason; many of them are incredibly subpar and aboriginal (I would know this; I deal with said reason every day.) Many of them are similiar to each other, if not a direct knock off. For example; MLP grimdarks that would be posted here were often times pitifully made carbon copies of Cupcakes. Sonic pastas would be knock offs of Sonic.exe (Thank heavens that pasta is banned no matter where you go). Zelda? Knock offs of BEN. I could go on, but yeah.

Anyhow, this wiki is very... specific, I would say, about spinoff content. (They basically say a spinoff is a knockoff, but they ban spinoffs nonetheless. There are reasons for this.) Spinpasta, I will mention, won't even take the spinoffs the rules were made for if they are direct knockoffs. Spinoffs, yes. Direct knockoff, no.

The thing is, stories on this site need to be extremely original. That's the point; to find original creepypastas. Many of the spinoffs uploaded here made me facepalm; I couldn't tell you how many times (note I was an anon at this time) I found a spinoff of Jeff the Killer or something else that basically had that all too familiar feeling of "Dear Freakin Jesus, they must of copied and pasted this!"

The basic premise to banning spinoffs was due to them primarily being a make your own pasta template. The "spinoffs" had no original value at all whatsoever.

But now, I return. A spinoff is basically a story inspired by another story. What makes "Muffins" any different than "Cupcakes"? The fact that Derpy is the one killing all the ponies? Or "Knuckles.air" any different than "Sonic.exe"? The fact that it's evil Knuckles in an Adobe Air file? It's the idea they're referring to, not the story itself. You can say how original it is, but that doesn't make it any less a spinoff.

Many people whose stories are deleted for such content decide to rant about it, and it irks me. This is my general reaction:



For example, I've seen a few rants where users would rant about their pokepasta being deleted. Let's see what's been said about that:

"NO. MORE. POKÉPASTAS. The Poképasta genre had what little originality it had left sucked out of it ages ago due to writers endlessly rehashing the same three or four formulas over and over and over again. If you are actually, physically incapable of not writing a Pokepasta, post it to Spinpasta Wiki instead."

See the boldened part? That's why it was deleted. When you posted it, it used the Lost Silver formula, the Creepy Black formula, the Lavender Town theme formula, or some other aboriginal formula. Think about it: How many times has some guy recieved a game cartridge that was hacked/haunted, and then the Pok'emon dying, the characters looking angry/ghost white/odd in some way, characters dying, etc? If it contains that kind of thing in that sentence, generally, then it is by no means original. And therefore, the constant rehashing of said sentence or some other formula, led to it being banned. Kapeesh?

I don't know if I can actually be clearer than this, but as usual, feel free to add.