The Public Domain

Hello, Rv. Xen here, bringing you the latest of my infamous fine messes: The PUBLIC DOMAIN forum and artshare.

Most likely, I will be updating this thread regularly with news and announcements and refinement of my mission statement, yet I am so excited by this venture and full of coffee right now, that I'm going to just spill it and get the basics for this site out of the way...

What is The PUBLIC DOMAIN?

The PUBLIC DOMAIN is an art-sharing, story-telling, world-building, role-playing, and fun-loving forum based around one idea: All ideas are everyone's. However, most people in this world currently don't believe this and blanket their creations with holy symbols such as: (C), (R), TM, Inc., etc. to somehow preserve the freshness of the idea from the taint of OTHER PEOPLE'S INTERPRETATIONS!! Most fear that others might do something which in our capitalist society is the SIN OF ALL SINS: make money off of ideas that aren't theirs! GASP! Quickly, copyright it so that it can lay dormant in your skull... you may never see a profit from it, but by Gawd, neither will THEY!

I think this fear is silly. I think this maniacal attempt to control and contain every thought you've ever had is silly. I think to see everything you create in terms of how much money you can make off of it is silly. I think copyrights are silly. That's why The PUBLIC DOMAIN.

So, what do we do here?

Think of The PUBLIC DOMAIN as a sort of artistic recycling center. Look through your sketchbooks and journals or just think back a few months: how many characters have you created in that time, how many worlds, how many stories? For me, dozens, hundreds... the majority of them just half-thoughts, half-completed. When i thought of them i wanted to conquer the world with them, i felt they were that good! but as soon as i got about a page in, my interest waned and i put them on the ever growing 'back-burner'. This is not mentioning the multitudes of ideas that didn't even make it out of my pencil.

These ideas started to pile up. I felt bad because they weren't being used, they were just hanging out in a part of my brain in an eternal waiting room. I didn't want that for them because i knew that even if i couldn't find any immediate use for them, perhaps others will. One man's trash is another's treasure, right?

I want this to be a place where people give over these ideas, these characters, worlds, strories. This is not for money, this is not for fame, this is for the equal exchange of ideas so perhaps these ideas can change from half-thoughts into masterworks. Through art-sharing and prose-swapping to role-playing and world-building, this site will be a haven for those who are sick of fending off the world by themselves and are ready to bring their creative skills for the sake of community and for the sake of art.

The sections will be explained individually in more detail but i hope this is enough of an intro.

Until the next time,
Keep Moving and Keep Having Fun.

Rv. Xen