So I wonder if Alec is rewriting his Axanar story, now that the dates and events and even ship designs of Prelude to Axanar have been thoroughly contradicted by canon Star Trek?
CBS/Paramount sues to stop Axanar
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Nah he's rewriting it to fit in Orville prequel, telling the story of Admiral Halsey, and Mercer's uncle, Albert.
Lord Precious Pants has taken over another group? Already deleting "offensive" posts? Well, I guess a leopard can't change his stripes. He's like the gift that keeps on giving.
Stage one. Soon presumably to move to stage two, taking the list of 'offenders' and purging them from anything else he can get control of or influence over. As has already been seen.
Its a hard question. If someone in a GOT discussion group wanted to start a thread about GOT fans helping Puerto Rico, is it on topic? If someone wanted to discuss animal rights because there are animals in the show, ok? Gerrymandering in the USA because there is politics in GOT? Antiwar? This is where mods who understand they are assisting a community of human beings comes in. There's a balance and not everyone is going to agree with everything.
This is how dictator moderating gets its teeth in. Someone puts themself forward as a "keeper of the faith" rather than a "moderator" and is allowed to simply purge anything not extremely specific to the "we are here for fun and official fantasy as defined by us" interest group.
Its way tighter than "on topic" of the group, and it means the group is simply a venue for a small group of like minded thinkers enthusing over the common shared interest in a safe space. That can be ok, but it seems to have the fate that it will die out by comparison to a more open venue. Which this will, if Alec is allowed to go his full nine yards on it.
Exasperation and anger will be glimpseable here and there before it is purged and eventually 80% of members will realize they prefer a more open group. The core that remains will be happy (or at least trying to salvage some value while walking on eggshells) in their safe space where Trek is "Axanar pure" even in parodies. Newcomers will spend some time saying WTF before moving on.
Alec will be able to say that he has another group of fans who agree with him (funny how that works). And there will be new potential donors.
Probably will take wind out of the sails of fans who have been thinking of making their works in the "Axanar universe". Their audience will say "wha?".
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"The Orville" Facebook group has now a new title (in my head): The CENSOrville™
I've only passively checked in on the whole Axanar debacle... and not clear where things truly stand. There's... 1605 pages in this topic and would require far too much time to hunt down the details. Is there a single post in the topic or a page on some other site that adequately "sums it all up"? Thanks!
I'm sure there are the occasional sum ups. But sorry, I'm not taking the time to search them for you. If you skim through the last 20-30 pages I'm pretty sure, you'll find what you are looking for.
Anything else can be found here: http://axamonitor.com (Courtesy of Carlos Pedraza - @carlosp ) A perfect site for all the details.
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Axanar (and its principal, Alec Peters) were sued in federal court for copyright infringement by CBS (the overall IP holder) and Paramount (they have a derivative license).
Lots and lots of discovery came out, indicating a pattern of spending on tires, sushi, rent, cell phones, health insurance, etc. Basically, it was a lot of things that were neither a feature film nor perk fulfillment. The financials were about to be released in January of this year when the parties finally settled, just after Judge Gary Klausner ruled that the fair use defense was not going to fly at all. Defense essentially didn't have a leg to stand on, they didn't have a good theory, jury sympathy likely would not have been on their side, damning financials were about to go public (including the boondoggle of a warehouse converted to a 'studio' on the donors' dime which wasn't finished yet and proved far more expensive and headache-inducing than simply renting a stage for a few months, something which is easy to do in the LA area), and the law firm representing them pro bono, Winston & Strawn, had already devoted hundreds of freebie hours to them so it was not only a time sink, it was potentially a major revenue sink for them as well (after all, when people are doing that much pro bono work, they don't have the time, energy, or imagination to do a lot of paid work or network to bring in more paid work).
In the meantime, a part of the settlement was that plaintiffs permitted Axanar to be made but only under the Guidelines. Axanar's only real 'win' was being able to use the people they had used before. That was Kate Vernon, etc. Tony Todd had left the production early in 2016, and director Christian Gossett and IT guy Terry McIntosh were also gone. Gary Graham hasn't committed to the project, and of course Richard Hatch has passed away.
They tried to run an IndieGoGo to try to 'save the studio'. The IGG failed spectacularly, getting only something like 1/4 (others can correct my figures of course) of what they wanted. Hence Peters worked with the landlord to get out of the lease in order to save some bucks. As a result, he left behind fixtures and moved his props and a semi-finished bridge set to Lawrenceville, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta.
They were allowed to keep their donor list and, presumably, lean on that list for more private funding, probably via newsletters and/or Paypal. Perks were never sent out and were last seen (patches) being sold at Dragon*Con by a 'fan club' which was not permitted to do so by the con and was shut down after a day or two.
In addition, this crowd will label you a 'hater' for so much as questioning their motives. They have moved in on several dormant Orville FB groups and are injecting their own special brand of moderating, which means that anyone who disagrees is ridiculed and then booted, and then ridiculed again after they're gone. They're also trying to sell the narrative of being the one true Trek or at least that the Orville is, trying to get their supporters to accept them or at least the Orville instead of the actual licensed product which is currently out, Star Trek: Discovery.
See: http://axamonitor.com/doku.php?id=start
(I wrote this one) http://www.semanticshenanigans.com/axanar-settlement-ends-star-trek-case/
LoL, I see I've been removed from this group without even typing a single letter... It's like my pinnacle of fame has finally been achieved.
Jespah's summary is backed up by the materials at Axamonitor.com.
One thing that a retrospective can't really capture is the endless assertion of false statements and misdirects all along the way by the Axanar production on about everything that had to do with money and with how much work they had actually done.
Much of what you would find in this thread is trying to run down this christmas tree of branches away from the truth, only to find a poop emoji ornament at the end of each needle of Axanar misdirection. Its been that bad.
If you dive into the thread you will probably find yourself at some stage in some chasing down of one of these paths.
Did you know that:
- there's no such thing as a Vulcan as a copyrightable concept, because a pointed ear taken by itself is not something you can call Vulcan?
- you can say you are 'operating as a nonprofit', implying you are preparing for nonprofit status by working that way, even though what you are really referring to is 'after you as a for profit corporation spend all your income on whatever you want including personal perks and salaries for yourself and buddies, there's nothing left in the bank'?
- if you donated and you want to know if they spent the money on production or saved it for eventual production, you are a hater and a 'loser who has never created anything in your life, as compared to the Axanar operators'?
- it takes endless years to go through a mailing list of a few 10s of thousands, email them to verify their address, and get to the state of a clean database so you can send their delayed perks?
- you don't have to pay license fees to CBS/Paramount when you sell chess pieces with their own ships mixed in with yours, if you are a fan film? But you can require distributors to sign a license agreement with you?
So Axanar said.
and on, and on, and on, and on....
The basic thesis of this project turned out to be make a commercial production company to compete with Trek on their own IP for funds, and branch out into other SF, and equip this production company with a studio. Funding based on donations from Trek fans to do a Trek fan film, with the fan film forever receding and more cycles of donations needed while endless cash is diverted to the private asset build.
Alec even tried to pre-sell Axanar to Netflix.
There's no master list of ornaments; Axamonitor has a lot, though. Maybe someone some day will make it a master's thesis in media studies or something. But entertain yourself, dive in any spot you want and see it happening.
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Phase II in operation first day.
One other thing its helpful to keep in mind. There is a group of Axanar fans who somehow have stayed on and buy the idea that this was all caused by studios who want to crush a superior competitor.
They conclude everything can be explained by it being sincerity that wasn't executed in the most adept fashion, and which faced overwhelming dishonest pushback. But that the intention and goals of their leader are right and honest nonetheless.
The thesis discounts the existence of laws, the need to actually produce something before you claim it exists, the need to practise what you preach, and the need to tell what is actually happening instead of spreading endless insults and misdirects while directing all wealth to yourself.
This disconnect is spreading everywhere, like Mantrid.
I don't "Axanar" on Facebook. I only use "Dmac" if I'm quoting something from a script I'm working on. If someone wanted to make me out as an "Hater" they scrolled it from here and spent far too much time making the link.
I'll give you three guesses who.
No one should require Alec's leave to express an opinion in public. Feel sorry for the innocent Orville fans there.
There is the matter of the Axminions riding in the slow lane
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What really sucks is that this particular group has about 3,000 more Orville fans than the official group. I'm sure with the way Alec runs things it will be 300 in a month, but it's still frustrating to see him working another room full of unsuspecting innocents already.
"Warning: this group is taken over by the following persons who are Axanar supporters, and is modded by the Axanar project manager, even though this has nothing to do with Orville fandom. If your views upset them, you will be ridiculed and ejected from the group. Go ahead and waste your time here anyway? (yes/no)"
To clarify, Jespah is our resident legal expert and a retired practicing lawyer. Not just "trained as an attorney," as His Most Precious Lord Fancy Pants Alec Peters declares himself to be.
Just sayin'.
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