#BECAUSE OF COPYRIGHT

[hamletthedane]

I was meeting a client at a famous museum’s lounge for lunch (fancy, I know) and had an hour to kill afterwards so I joined the first random docent tour I could find. The woman who took us around was a great-grandmother from the Bronx “back when that was nothing to brag about” and she was doing a talk on alternative mediums within art.

What I thought that meant: telling us about unique sculpture materials and paint mixtures.

What that actually meant: an 84yo woman gingerly holding a beautifully beaded and embroidered dress (apparently from Ukraine and at least 200 years old) and, with tears in her eyes, showing how each individual thread was spun by hand and weaved into place on a cottage floor loom, with bright blue silk embroidery thread and hand-blown beads intricately piercing the work of other labor for days upon days, as the labor of a dozen talented people came together to make something so beautiful for a village girl’s wedding day.

What it also meant: in 1948, a young girl lived in a cramped tenement-like third floor apartment in Manhattan, with a father who had just joined them after not having been allowed to escape through Poland with his pregnant wife nine years earlier. She sits in her father’s lap and watches with wide, quiet eyes as her mother’s deft hands fly across fabric with bright blue silk thread (echoing hands from over a century years earlier). Thread that her mother had salvaged from white embroidery scraps at the tailor’s shop where she worked and spent the last few days carefully dying in the kitchen sink and drying on the roof.

The dress is in the traditional Hungarian fashion and is folded across her mother’s lap: her mother doesn’t had a pattern, but she doesn’t need one to make her daughter’s dress for the fifth grade dance. The dress would end up differing significantly from the pure white, petticoated first communion dresses worn by her daughter’s majority-Catholic classmates, but the young girl would love it all the more for its uniqueness and bright blue thread.

And now, that same young girl (and maybe also the villager from 19th century Ukraine) stands in front of us, trying not to clutch the old fabric too hard as her voice shakes with the emotion of all the love and humanity that is poured into the labor of art. The village girl and the girl in the Bronx were very different people: different centuries, different religions, different ages, and different continents. But the love in the stitches and beads on their dresses was the same. And she tells us that when we look at the labor of art, we don’t just see the work to create that piece - we see the labor of our own creations and the creations of others for us, and the value in something so seemingly frivolous.

But, maybe more importantly, she says that we only admire this piece in a museum because it happened to survive the love of the wearer and those who owned it afterwards, but there have been quite literally billions of small, quiet works of art in billions of small, quiet homes all over the world, for millennia. That your grandmother’s quilt is used as a picnic blanket just as Van Gogh’s works hung in his poor friends’ hallways. That your father’s hand-painted model plane sets are displayed in your parents’ livingroom as Grecian vases are displayed in museums. That your older sister’s engineering drawings in a steady, fine-lined hand are akin to Da Vinci’s scribbles of flying machines.

I don’t think there’s any dramatic conclusions to be drawn from these thoughts - they’ve been echoed by thousands of other people across the centuries. However, if you ever feel bad for spending all of your time sewing, knitting, drawing, building lego sets, or whatever else - especially if you feel like you have to somehow monetize or show off your work online to justify your labor - please know that there’s an 84yo museum docent in the Bronx who would cry simply at the thought of you spending so much effort to quietly create something that’s beautiful to you.

[cozylittleartblog]

worst way to start my new year, thanks. i have a lot of things to say about these companies but i'm tired and just keeping it focused to the pin side of things for this one. do not ever buy pins from these companies, literally ALL of them are stolen from small artists like me. if you want to buy enamel pins, check out etsy, and artist's personal websites and shops! (though even Etsy has some bootleg pins that ship straight from china, so tread carefully…)

Every pin I've designed is, thus far, EXCLUSIVE to my etsy. if you find it anywhere else, it's been ripped off! and once these stupid bootlegs pop up, it's basically a never ending game of whack-a-mole trying to get them all taken down...

[jinxeddetectivve]

listening to the old speedrun 4 songs makes you feel like youre a soda that just got shooken up actually /pos

I ramble a little but most of it is in tags

I STARTED RAMBLING IN TAGS AND I DONT FEEL LIKE RETYPING THEM ALL BACK SO HERES A SCREENSHOT !!

no cause a lot of games got just removved and destroyed cause of copyright and its so upsetting

main example of this are the pokemon games !! THEY WWERE AMAZING !! this is a completely seperate example but on roblox there used to be this trilogy of vvery good pokemon fangames that I wwill wwell explain a little bit on right noww it wwas my favvorite and 1st pokemon experience and it wwas amazing OK 1. BRICK BRONZE. pokemon brick bronze wwas an AMAZING LITTLE GAME !! it had a silly little storyline and all the pokemon and it wwas great and I had litten and azumarill and it wwas great and the models wwere 3d and they had calls and wwowww Nowwadays, it's gone BUT roblox devvs are insane and persistant so they just made their owwn vvery pokemon inspired game called loomian legends wwhich is kinda eh to me but still 2. another game that got hit wwas called something like the pokemon project ?? I may be mixing this up wwith the next 1 but from wwhat I remember this 1 wwas not as good on the vvisuals but amazingly fun wwith the gameplay truly challenging tbh the replacement that the devvs made for this 1 is called doodle wworld. I ADORE DOODLE WWORLD. ITS ADORABLE AND AMAZING AND THE CHARACTERS ARE SO LOVVABLE AND I WWANNA SEE FANART OF THEM IM NOT EVVEN JOKING THE CHARACTERS IN DOODLE WWORLD ARE TOP TIER AND SO AMAZING I LOVVE MR RIFFRAFF SO MUCH IM BEGGING PEOPLE TO GET INTO DOODLE WWORLD WWITH ME BC MY FRIENDS DONT LIKE IT noww that my doodle wworld rant is ovver (please get into it) 3. umm i dont remember the name for this 1 tbh I do remember i 100%'d it tho cause it wwas more or less a pokemon rp game wwhere you collect pokemon by doing tasks and solvving puzzles and other such methods but it wwas really time consuming and fun and after you got a character by playing as it's model you could levvel them up and fight people and wwin cause I WWAS OP IN THAT GAME AND I COLLECTED THE MEGA EVVOLUTION STONES (hard to get) and also I appeared in a youtube vvideo once for it bc i wwas showwing some kid howw to get a character (I think it wwas lucario) and he put it on his youtube channel that had like 2 subs it wwas great there is alsoa replacement for this 1 but i dont remember the name its something like creatures of alternia i think ANYWWAYS POINT IS THERE WWERE GREAT AMAZING GAMES and although there are replacements for them noww the old fans lost all their progressa nd the neww 1s dont get to experience the old fun it wwas to run around as gardevvoir and destroy people wwith your op powwers this started off wwith speedrun 4 and just delvve into pokemon fangames but like still roblox fun also I havve doodle wworld fanart... if.. if anyone cares...

[prokopetz]

The reason why we're suddenly seeing a bunch of indie video games – particularly American indie video games – using vintage music is because the US finally has a public domain in sound recordings.

For context, until 1972, there was no federal copyright regime in the US for sound recordings; intellectual property law for sound recordings was devolved to the individual states, meaning there were fifty different sets of rules that might apply to any given recording, and some states allowed sound recordings to be protected for an indefinite term – i.e., in essence, perpetual copyright without expiration.

What changed in 1972 was the Sound Recording Amendment, which established unified federal copyright on sound recordings for the first time, but which allowed any pre-existing state-level copyrights for sound recordings published prior to February 15th, 1972 to run for their full term. Since most state-level sound recording copyrights had no fixed term (see above), this was capped at the "publication plus 95 years" rule which applies to other federal copyrights – with the twist that the 95-year cap on previously perpetual sound recording copyrights would count from 1972, not from the date of publication.

This effectively meant that no sound recordings in the US would enter the public domain until February 15th, 2067 – which doesn't do anyone a whole lot of good right now!

Fast forward to 2018, when another piece of federal legislation, the Music Modernisation Act, was passed. Though this act was mainly concerned with streaming royalties and such, it also contained provisions to grandfather certain sound recordings into the public domain earlier than the Sound Recording Amendment's all-or-nothing 2067 deadline. Specifically:

On January 1st, 2022, all sound recordings published before 1923 would enter the public domain

Sound recording published from 1923 through 1946 will enter the public domain 100 years after the date of first publication

Sound recordings published from 1947 through 1956 will enter the public domain 110 years after the date of first publication

In practice, what this means is:

All sound recordings first published before 1923 entered the public domain last year, on January 1st, 2022;

This year, 2023, is a "gap year" in which no sound recordings enter the public domain (i.e., being the 100th and final year of protection for sound recordings first published in 1923); and

On January 1st of next year – that is, January 1st of 2024 – new batches of sound recordings will begin to enter the US public domain on a yearly basis for the first time in history, starting with sound recordings first published in 1923.

[emuanon34]

Disney is not slick hiding the fact that the duet between Asha and Magnifico obviously started out as a love song between her and the Star Boy.

We almost had the second coming of Jelsa but without the copyright infringement.

The lyrical difference between the official song and the demo song is that the demo says “Love” but it’s replaced with “Promise” in the official version.

[royalarchivist]

Federation Rabbits: 👍🥚

Cucurucho: No.

If you missed today's QSMP stream (or chose not to watch) here's all you need to know.

(The other important thing to know is that all the Eggs have canonically been moved to a safe location, which is probably for the best while things are being sorted out).

[kingofmyborrowedheart]

This saga is cracking me up.

[olessan]

SO Warner Bros just announced their new LotR movies, one of which is called The Hunt for Gollum.

There are two old, fairly well-known and high-quality Tolkien fan short films called The Hunt for Gollum and Born of Hope.

The Hunt for Gollum, which had accrued 13 million views on Youtube over its lifetime, released May 9 2009;

Born of Hope released shortly afterward on December 12 2009 and has accrued 50 million views on Youtube.

WB just got it removed.

They fucking filed a copyright claim on the 15 year old fan film whose name and plot they reused for their own film. They did this within the past 24 hours, after some reporting pointed out the fan film and generated a bit more buzz for it.

Born of Hope remains up, but given there is a second Warner Bros LotR movie with an unnanounced title, I'd bet money on it also being an Aragorn origin story and they'll strike Born of Hope next year.

Also, given the new WB film is apparently only now starting production and is supposed to release in 2026, it will have 1-1.5 years of production time, which is less production time than the 50 minute fan film.

The original LotR trilogy had nearly 3 years of production time, not including finishing the second two in the proceeding 3 years after filming them all together.

[starry-bi-sky]

I am absolutely loving your Danyal Al Ghul au. While I have a soft spot for the whole plotline of Danny becoming his canon personality almost right after breaking away from the LOA all because of Jazz, I'm just as much for your take in which he goes through the same character development as Damian.

Now I'm curious. You already tackled his relationship with Dani, will you eventually take a stab at when he, Sam, and Tucker meet Gregor? Given that it's one of my hated episodes as I couldn't stand Sam's infuriatingly hypocritical attitude to Danny's suspicions of him, I'd kill to see your spin on it.

Aw, thank you! Danyal Al Ghul aus are what got me into DPDC first, so I have a major soft spot for them. That being said, uh, its exactly that soft spot that causes me to have Many Opinions about the trope you just mentioned. Like the trope is all fine and dandy, i don't blindly hate it, my main issue with it is that most aus i've seen treat his backstory as an ex-assassin more like a pretty cosmetic accessory rather than something that actually should have had an impact on him. Especially if he remembers being in the league.

Like i cannot stress enough the fact that being in an ecofascist assassin cult (regardless of his standing in it) should've left him, in some way or another, screwed up morally and psychologically because that's just how development works. Nature vs. Nurture is like a game of tug-o-war that never ends, where they are constantly fighting against each other and one side usually has the upper hand or greater influence. Children model the behaviors of the adults around them (ex: bobo the clown doll experiment), and what impacts them in childhood can stick with them permanently.

Like how my psychology professor put it: a baby's brain is like wet cement; if you slap your hand on it, it leaves an imprint, and the cement dries that way. The same rings true for small children.

I could go on, but I frankly have so many thoughts on that alone that I would end up completely derailing from the second half of your ask, and I don't want to be more critical than I already have. Especially since you just mentioned you have a soft spot for the trope.

[Okay, hold onto your hats because this is long. Naturally lmao.]

Gregor! Man, I'll admit I last watched the show back in middle school on a dodgy illegal website (it had surprisingly good audio and visual graphics, and full episodes. But really annoying porn ads.) but I only made it to like season 1 before my hyperfixation faded and I lost interest. So I never actually saw the Gregor episode.

But... it is relatively easy to find free websites that stream Danny Phantom :), so finding the episode took me like. Thirty seconds. Plus the Tv.Tropes recap page because my damn earbuds just died and im out in public as of rn.

I'm not sure if I'll write something for the gregor episode like I did with Dani, since Dani's a bit of a special case in that she's a clone and tends to be a reoccurring presence in DPDC, and I thought the new dynamic with Danyal would be interesting.

Plus, I'm not a big amethyst ocean shipper for the pure reason of I'm just not all that interested in it; its kinda bland to me. I'll admit I've entertained the thought in this au due to the whole balcony scene i wrote, but I would've entertained the thought anyways if it was Tucker in that position instead. Big multishipper, me.

But, if I had to make it official? Danyal is not interested romantically in Sam when the Gregor episode happens, regardless of his relationship with Valerie. Who, speaking of I'm trying to think about how that would go, and I'm torn between including him almost-dating Valerie or not.

Because on one hand it helps point out Sam's hypocrisy (and i love her but i am always happy to point out her flaws and address them in au) in this episode in terms of Danny spying on them, but on the other hand I'll want to include a lot of set up in order to make Gray Ghost work in this au and wow will that take a while.

Especially with the Flirting with Disaster episode because it happens due to Technus' meddling, and Danny is, well, the son of the Batman? A trained assassin? An ex-assassin nonetheless, but still an assassin? A prodigy child in this au? He might not have needed to use most of his skills in the last few years, but like... there's just a bunch of 'what if' and 'well technically...' and 'would he? he could, but would he?' things that is getting in the way of my thought process and making my head spin.

.

Mmm. Okay. Flirting with Disaster occurs relatively the same as canon with a few exceptions; like Danyal noticing the strange coincidences, and he might take the idea into proper consideration because Sam has a point it is strange, especially out of nowhere.

However,,, he really enjoys Valerie's company, and he does really like her. He's been adjusting to civilian life for the last four years and while he's made a lot of progress, he's still. an ex-assassin child living like a wolf amongst sheep. This is normal, typical teenager stuff, and usually his friends like to encourage him doing normal teenager stuff.

So he's stubbornly holding out on the thought that this is normal, that ghost stuff isn't interfering here. He's a little hurt that his friends are discouraging this, he's not bothered by the fact that Valerie is a ghost hunter and he a ghost -- his mother is an assassin, and his father is Batman, and they still had a relationship. (Granted, he's not gonna tell them that)

If anything, being diametrically opposed to each other but still being in love is part of the family! Granted, usually both parties are aware of said opposition to each other, but he'll make a special exception this time around.

(And man now that i'm thinking about gray ghost, im now thinking about various like. scenes i could write between the two of them. maybe in a reblog.)

Anyways uhhh things relatively go the same as canon. Yeah. I think Sam still has a crush on Danny and still spies out of jealousy with Tucker.

.

Now, the Gregor episode! With that out of the way; the TVTropes recap for this episode isn't the best because it doesn't go into detail about the entire episode like it does with Flirting With Disaster and Shades of Gray.

(which i looked at earlier because I made a section of this post talking briefly about what changes I'd make to the Shades of Gray episode to help set up Gray Ghost, but ended up deleting because it was kinda irrelevant for the matter at hand.)

So I'm taking in bits of the episode clips at a time, I'll try not to get too nitpicky about how each scene goes because then it's gonna take me a longer time to write this.

But! First thing's first; since Danny is not romantically interested in Sam, he is also not jealous of Gregor. He is however, a bit eyebrow-raisey at him in their first introduction, but that's because Gregor is coming off as obnoxious.

Danny thinks he's kinda annoying, and it doesn't take a genius to see that Gregor is trying to impress Sam. But since they've only known him for five minutes he takes the good faith assumption and assumes that Gregor is genuinely trying to show interest in Sam's interests too because he likes her, so he keeps mum. The fake hungarian accent is weird, but it's overall harmless, so he doesn't point it out.

He does do the spying thing when he starts suspecting that Gregor might be working for the GIW. The episode only has this happen twice, but for the au this happens a handful of more times over the course of the week, with Danyal's suspicion steadily rising more and more each time.

Hah, when he brings up wanting to spy on Sam and Gregor because of this reason, Tucker still does his "woah! you wanna spy on Sam?" thing.

Danny immediately turns to him, completely unimpressed, and crosses his arms. "Tucker," he says, deadpan, "you and Sam spied on me and Valerie."

He uses a combination of his ghost powers and his regular stealth ability to spy on them. He's hiding in a tree when they're skipping rocks, close enough that he can use his powers to hear them talk but far enough away that he has a good view of their surroundings.

He's invisible in the cinema, but doesn't accidentally get in front of the projector. He checks the inside of the room for the GIW, and then waits outside the actual room itself, keeping an eye on the area and occasionally flying in to watch the movie out of boredom. It reminds him of being back on a recon mission with the League, but it doesn't end with him orchestrating someone's death.

Then when they're at the mall he stays in human form, blending in with the crowd. He runs into the GIW there, but realizes that they're not there because of Gregor; they're just shopping. They didn't show up at either of the last two locations, and he follows them to make sure they're not also trying to blend in. But they're literally just there for shopping.

Danny is rather pleased with this turnout; so far Gregor isn't a spy, he's just annoying. The next day at lunch he asks Sam how her date with Gregor went, and that's how she figures out he spied on them, because well, she didn't tell him that.

"Have you been spying on me?"

Danny messes with his food a little bit, and Tucker is sinking into his seat with embarrassment. He frowns, "Only last night. Those incompetent government dodos--"

His lip curls up; he gets all 'Shakespeare-y' (as Sam and Tucker put it) when he's insulting someone, "--kept appearing whenever Gregor did. I followed you and him last night to make sure he wasn't a spy."

A roundabout way of saying, "I was worried".

Sam is, as canon, furious. Danny understands why, he knows generally speaking that people don't like being spied on. But he's confused on just how angry she is, and is a little irritated by it.

"Why would you do that!" She exclaims, "That's way out of line, Danny."

"How? You spied on me when I was going on dates with Valerie." He narrows his eyes, and points his fork at her, "I'm not blind, I noticed."

"That's different, we told you why we were suspicious. And we don't have ghost powers like you do."

"I don't need ghost powers to sneak around, Sam, you've seen this firsthand. And I just told you why I followed you, I thought he was working with the guys in white--"

"So you think someone can only be interested in me if they're after you?" (this is a paraphrased quote, folks ;D)

"No! If that was the case I would have voiced my concern the moment I thought it. I don't get why you're so angry, you spied too."

Iiits.... a mess. Sam storms off with Gregor, Tucker tags along because okay, yeah, maybe Gregor isn't with the GIW, or maybe last night was a fluke. Either way he ends up tagging along. Danny overhears that conversation between the GIW and Mr. Lancer, and maybe he's right, maybe he's wrong; but something is up.

I've gotten to that scene in the locker room where Gregor tells Danny that he knows he doesn't like him, and I've paused at Danny's reply to say this: Danyal doesn't even bother trying to deny it.

"I know you do not like me."

"You're right; I don't."

"Ah, let me finish. I know you do not like me because you want to protect your friend, Sam, and I respect that."

"...That's correct."

"Good! Because I am going to ask her out."

"I had a feeling you'd say that," he stands up, claps his hand tight on Gregor's shoulder, and leans close to him with a threatening smile, "so you understand me when i say; if you break my best friend's heart, you're as good as dead, right?"

"Ah,, yes. I am so glad we got that cleared out of the way, and now I hope after we can.. how you Americans put it, hang out?"

In the episode he hugs Danny and gives him a la bise (which is that french greeting where you kiss someone on the cheek two or more times) after they end their conversation. But here, when he goes to do that to Danyal, Danny leans away, points an accusatory finger at him, and says; "Absolutely not; we are not close."

The next scene after that is like, end of day. Sam, Tucker, and Gregor walking away. Sam looks over her shoulder to glare at Danny, then gets forlorn. Tucker looks back and just looks forlorn.

(When did I start narrating each scene?? Eh, I'm writing this in brief spurts of time throughout the day. Don't fix what's not broke)

After that there's this whole scene with the two GIW agents that have been chasing Phantom all episode. They're there because they have Tucker's PDA that Skulker took, and it's got the information of their purple backed gorilla assignment on it. They've been going around seeing who Tucker associates with in hopes of catching Phantom.

Uhh ahaha and that is where this gets a little interesting imo, and also allows me to mention that im retconning Danyal's (already) redesigned ghost form. Which I've wanted to retcon even before this moment bc it was just too busy. I'll get to that in a moment.

The GIW suspect Gregor for being the Phantom because of his white hair and green eyes, which is all fine and dandy until you remember: Danyal (and by extension Phantom) has that very noticeable, rather identifiable facial scar that goes across the middle of his fucking face. The GIW could easily suspect that Phantom hides his scar with makeup if he's in disguise, but if they meet a kid with a seemingly identical facial scar and similar disposition? Hoo boy.

Solution? I've got two: Gregor is canonically a kid from Michigan who faked everything to impress Sam. Considering he knows she's gothic and knows that she's ultra-recyclo vegetarian? He probably watched her from afar or got information on her somehow. His hair is dyed, his eyes might just naturally be green, but if he notices that she's got a crush on either Danyal or Phantom? A little sfx makeup could help him recreate a similar looking scar.

My second solution that's gonna happen anyways bc its that suit redesign; Danyal does hide his face as Phantom. Ghosts are emotional creatures and its a popular headcanon that their interests, ambitions, etc, influence the way they look as a ghost, not just their death. A big reoccurring theme of my au is that Danyal did not leave the League unscathed, and that being an assassin is an important part of his identity.

So i'm discarding the hazmat suit look entirely and leaning into the 'assassin' thing. But the general (stylized) feel is like, white ribbon/cloth vambraces that he has used as a garrote at some point, a hood, a gaiter scarf-type thing. I'm keeping the cape. I did a doodle a few days back that's not the official redesign, but a redesign for Phantom. I may reblog this post with that attached because it's got the general feel down. There's very little white involved, but the inside of his cape flares out and looks like the night sky.

Now, the hood and gaiter scarf gets rid of most of the problem, but Danny's hood doesn't stay on all the time, so the GIW have likely seen the upper half of the scar. :] Gregor's own drawn-on scar doesn't have to be 1:1, but it looks close enough, right? A small scar cutting through the edge of his brow and ends right below the corner of his eye. A 'cool, badass' one opposed to Danny's 'garish' scar.

But! Back to the episode scene. Canon Danny gets written off as being 'too prepubescent' to be Phantom, and honestly it'd be hilarious if Danyal was written off for the same reason (he's calling them idiots in his head if they do). But instead -- leaning into the GIW's incompetence here -- he gets written off as being too mature or too talkative. Or something equally as absurd.

Sam breaks up with Gregor for canon reasons, but when Gregor does his "i really like you, but, come on-!" and gestures to tucker, he adds on "and that scary friend of yours too, seriously!"

Things go relatively the same as canon after that. Danny does end up apologizing for spying, however. Sam does it first. Sorrows, prayers, all that.

.

Things usually end up changed or different when I actually write it down, so I'd likely add more or adjust different scenes according to the flow of the oneshot. This is just like, a general vibe of how things would go, and where some of the more obvious changes would be if I did write this oneshot.

Hope you enjoyed! Thanks for the ask :]

[kudouusagi]

Sk8 Infinity Week Returns Drama

Sorry I needed to sleep after the event so it took me a while lol

You can also download (you can stream it here if the embed isn't working....)

[galaxynajma]

Can’t believe my boy Yuuta from jjk0 gets to have Adidas but not anyone in blue lock

[ligbi]

I think we should be allowed to burn corporations to the ground

even aside from all the current residuals&streaming availability fuckery, I was looking at  978-0786847655 one of the Disney Fairies books with some lovely illustrations and the artists listed are

The Disney Storybook Artists

That’s nothing. That’s less than nothing. I want names and proper credits. SO many books are published by the mouse with only this catch all name listed for worlds of work. What if I want to track down the artists and support their individual work? Do you keep them in a cave and not let them see the sun? Or do you just not believe in proper crediting.

‘oh but there was probably a contract and they were surely paid’ yeah and ???? paid how much what about residuals are the artists even allowed to put these books on their work history since without their name credited anywhere. The contract or job listing or internship clause or whatever tactic disney uses to get away with this is scummy while sure this type of thing should be low on the list of priorities on how to de-shitify the world, it should be on the list.

yes some of the artists who have worked on the franchise are listed on the artofdisneyfairies tumblr, but that’s a fan account and it’s incomplete. A book should have full proper credits in it

The corporation may own the art but they didn’t make it and they shouldn’t hide who did the work as neither artists nor ‘consumers’ benefit from that.

[larabar]

colors redraws to (probably) end the year 🎉🎉

[allenwalkerbitch]

I went looking for D.Gray-man opening 3 on youtube earlier and couldn't find any versions that weren't covers or weird filters. I'm assuming someone got fussy about copyright and had all the good uploads taken down, so I figured I'd put this up for anyone that wants a decent copy of it on hand.

[whatlovelybones-if]

Hi, what happened to the Percy Jackson IF? I can't find it in your itch.io profile

i decided to do a complete rewrite since some people have informed me that it’ll infringe on copyright laws. even with proper credits and disclaimers, it will be liable for legal repercussions since it technically counts as me distributing the source material out for free (with or without monetisation). and because i have no wish to tussle with disney’s lawyers, i’m going to do a rewrite more along the lines of differing from what rick riordan has already wrote.

the storyline will be the same, but the overall wordings will be different. i don’t think the updates will take too long and i’m open to any suggestions you guys might have (discord: @fall3ngod) as this is largely a fan-made project.

[anghraine]

Okay, breaking my principles hiatus again for another fanfic rant despite my profound frustration w/ Tumblr currently:

I have another post and conversation on DW about this, but while pretty much my entire dash has zero patience with the overtly contemptuous Hot Fanfic Takes, I do pretty often see takes on Fanfiction's Limitations As A Form that are phrased more gently and/or academically but which rely on the same assumptions and make the same mistakes.

IMO even the gentlest, and/or most earnest, and/or most eruditely theorized takes on fanfiction as a form still suffer from one basic problem: the formal argument does not work.

I have never once seen a take on fanfiction as a form that could provide a coherent formal definition of what fanfiction is and what it is not (formal as in "related to its form" not as in "proper" or "stuffy"). Every argument I have ever seen on the strengths/weaknesses of fanfiction as a form vs original fiction relies to some extent on this lack of clarity.

Hence the inevitable "what about Shakespeare/Ovid/Wide Sargasso Sea/modern takes on ancient religious narratives/retold fairy tales/adaptation/expanded universes/etc" responses. The assumptions and assertions about fanfiction as a form in these arguments pretty much always should apply to other things based on the defining formal qualities of fanfic in these arguments ("fanfiction is fundamentally X because it re-purposes pre-existing characters and stories rather than inventing new ones" "fanfiction is fundamentally Y because it's often serialized" etc).

Yet the framing of the argument virtually always makes it clear that the generalizations about fanfic are not being applied to Real Literature. Nor can this argument account for original fics produced within a fandom context such as AO3 that are basically indistinguishable from fanfic in every way apart from lacking a canon source.

At the end of the day, I do not think fanfic is "the way it is" because of any fundamental formal qualities—after all, it shares these qualities with vast swaths of other human literature and art over thousands of years that most people would never consider fanfic. My view is that an argument about fanfic based purely on form must also apply to "non-fanfic" works that share the formal qualities brought up in the argument (these arguments never actually apply their theories to anything other than fanfic, though).

Alternately, the formal argument could provide a definition of fanfic (a formal one, not one based on judgment of merit or morality) that excludes these other kinds of works and genres. In that case, the argument would actually apply only to fanfic (as defined). But I have never seen this happen, either.

So ultimately, I think the whole formal argument about fanfic is unsalvageably flawed in practice.

Realistically, fanfiction is not the way it is because of something fundamentally derived from writing characters/settings etc you didn't originate (or serialization as some new-fangled form, lmao). Fanfiction as a category is an intrinsically modern concept resulting largely from similarly modern concepts of intellectual property and auteurship (legally and culturally) that have been so extremely normalized in many English-language media spaces (at the least) that many people do not realize these concepts are context-dependent and not universal truths.

Fanfic does not look like it does (or exist as a discrete category at all) without specifically modern legal practices (and assumptions about law that may or may not be true, like with many authorial & corporate attempts to use the possibility of legal threats to dictate terms of engagement w/ media to fandom, the Marion Zimmer Bradley myth, etc).

Fanfic does not look like it does without the broader fandom cultures and trends around it. It does not look like it does without the massive popularity of various romance genres and some very popular SF/F. It does not look like it does without any number of other social and cultural forces that are also extremely modern in the grand scheme of things.

The formal argument is just so completely ahistorical and obliviously presentist in its assumptions about art and generally incoherent that, sure, it's nicer when people present it politely, but it's still wrong.