#HE DID NOT ADAPT to these problems

[il-predestinato]

.

[stagefoureddiediaz]

Thinking many thoughts about the fact that Ravi is a manifestation of bucks abandonment issues - in that he is essentially the ghost of Daniel - who always appears in the firehouse at moments when bucks abandonment issues are at their most pronounced.

Ravi first appears the episode after Buck finds out about Daniel in season 4 and has popped up at every critical point since - the sniper arc in 4 - at the moment when Buck is facing the possibility of losing Eddie.

He is there pretty much all the way through season 5 when Buck was facing Maddie being gone and then when Maddie returns, with Eddie leaving the 118 and breaking down.

In season 5 (defend in place) we also found out about him surviving childhood cancer and the parallels to Daniel become very obvious.

Then in season 6 he pops back up in the aftermath of bucks coma - when he’s wrestling with his own mortality and with the ghost of Daniel from his coma.

Then in season 7 he pops up during bucks bi arc - when buck is fearing Eddie’s abandonment (and his jealousy) because he’s hanging out with Tommy. Then he appears at the end of the season when Bobby is in hospital having had a heart attack. A representation of bucks fears around losing Bobby.

And now he’s turning up in season 8 when Eddie is going to be gone and buck is really having to face all of his abandonment issues - with Maddie being kidnapped, Eddie and Chris being gone and the end of his first queer relationship.

So Ravi seems to represent Bucks fears and issues rising to the surface - being consciously present and there for Buck to actually address. With Ravi disappearing again when Buck manages to rebury or repress them.

[thankstothe]

One liners the sequel

[aroaceleovaldez]

they cast a 28 year old for Tyson 💀

[relevant rants: here and here]

yeah, i saw - i wasn't holding onto hope of them casting a disabled actor for Tyson (still disappointed, just not surprised) but casting a 28 year old for a middle schooler is really out of left field. It's just an odd choice? Particularly given how much they've been emphasizing age-accurate casting so far.

It makes me really wonder what major rewrites they have planned for Tyson's character. Because as things stand currently there's no way to make Tyson's existing character work with this casting. Tyson is supposed to be in Percy's grade, but Daniel Diemer sticks out like a sore thumb against the child actors. Tyson being in Percy's grade is pretty important for the entire arc of Sea of Monsters with the main character arc being Percy combating internalized ableism and establishing him as a character who stands up for other marginalized kids. If they remove that, what's Percy's arc going to be for that entire season? At what point are they going to establish that about his character? Or are they just going to exposition it at us like usual with nothing backing it up and no actual character progression? And in later seasons the age gap is only going to be more prominent - like how is Tyson going to work in BoTL or TLO? Are they planning on removing his character entirely for those scenes? Are they going to remove him as a recurring character in general? It'd be really weird if they killed him off or something.

I'm also afraid for if they do try to keep Tyson's disability coding in some form - cause there's kind of no good way it can go at this point. Either they completely erase Tyson's coding because they cast an abled actor for him and that messes up the entire arc of the book and his character particularly in relation to Percy, or they have an abled actor attempt to portray a character heavily coded as having down syndrome (and i believe they're already doing similar with iirc Chiron's actor is abled but they're doubling-down in the show on Chiron being disabled) and given how they've written the neurodivergence themes (or absence there of) in the show so far there's just no way that'd end well. Like, Tyson's characterization is a little questionable to begin with in the books, but given the show's writing so far it just feels like we're very rapidly ramping up for an extremely ableist characterization of Tyson. Like i'm sure Daniel Diemer is a great actor, but... i'm just getting real tired of the show erasing the entire premise of the series :T

anyways as per my initial post about pjo tv tyson casting theories i guess it's time for me to start tearing stuff apart with my teeth ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[ghostkingdoesstuff]

Y'all ever just think about the fact that Luke has younger siblings, and like not by a huge gap from when he was born. Can't figure out how old Chris Rodriquezs actor is (Andrew Alvarez most mysterious man on this planet, apparently, if you know do share) but like if we're assuming he's the same age as Clarrise/Dior then bros 18 at Luke's 19 meaning atleast in show cannon, maybe 17 at the time of release, but regardless ughhhh yeah Hermes moved on from May Castellan QUICK, possibly while like was like only a few months old. I'm just saying YEAH bro was busy doing God stuff and GETTING LAYED AND YOU'RE SLEEPING NEXT TO THE PROOF??? While you grew up fatherless and fending for yourself against you very mentally ill with no meds or some kinda assisted living situation mother, your dad had moved on with his life completely and had several other kids, AND NOW YOU'RE EXPECTING TO BE ROOMATES??? from Luke's pov FUCK LIN MANUEL MIRANDA!!!

[necrotic-nephilim]

If you want to be bothered. Maybe this for dick and Bruce???

i ALWAYS want to be bothered these are always the highlight of my day tbh you're a delight for letting me just yap <3

Dick. For the canon isn't real square I am Specifically talking about the Tom Taylor Nightwing run. Usually I ignore bad runs but given this one is ongoing (though about to end THANK GOD and get replaced by Dan Watters who i have high hopes for since i adored his Sword of Azrael (2022) run but i digress) so I counted it. Especially since it's so debated if that run is bad or not, for some reason. I'm a 90s Nightwing truther. I love Dick so dearly and tbh recently I've been more enamored with him the more I read his Discowing era, I didn't used to be as big of a Dick stan as I am these days.

Bruce. Honestly where do you even start with Bruce. I want to fist fight him and also patch him up. He got me into comics and superheroes as a whole but I roll my eyes whenever he shows up in a story. He's a bastard and usually not a good father but also complex and should be dissected under a magnifying glass. I love him dearly. He's also just the worst. I think that's why I love him. I'm always a fan of unabashedly Complicated Asshole Bruce who's generally not always the best person, particularly not to the Batfamily and that being the driving force of his relationships with them, especially in shipping.

And for bonus points, Tim. Because know above all else, I'm a Tim Drake kinnie /deg. He's been my number one for a decade and I've yet to uproot him from my brain. He's literally the Worst half the time and I love him for it. And the canon isn't real refers to Tim Drake: Robin because... that sure was a comic. And that's about all I can say about it. Pre-Flashpoint Tim I miss you so dearly. I think it's fun that I want to put him in a blender and drink the juice but also want Nothing Ever to happen to him.

[cto10121]

Tell me you haven’t seen any other R&J adaptation in your life without telling me you haven’t seen any other R&J adaptation

[dhmis-autism]

i feel like the original series was red guy centered, the first season was for yellow guy, and i am BEGGING AND PRAYING that season 2 will be more about duck!! i will probably cry if anything happens to him though lol 💀 everytime writers break a comic relief character i just OUGSHGS.. it gets me.

h well I don't think you're wrong about that! Webseries being Red Guys time to shine, S1 of the TV show being for Yellow (esp the last two episodes I think? Even thought outside of that, he does get a lot of focus/he IS the one who talks to the audience the most directly). From what I remember hearing, the pilot was pretty Duck-centered.

But I think even if he GETS his big moment in the sun, so to speak, it's NOT going to be as emotional as the other twos. On top of him just not being a very um… let's say sentimental character, he's just not the make-you-cry type! It's just not him imo!

IDK, I operate under the opinion that… in his weird little head, the most important thing that he values over everything is keeping the three of them together. Both because he thinks of them as a weird little family AND because he really doesn't have anyone else outside of the trio. We also know from the interview, and you could maybe argue from the Family episode ( Who do you love?/Anyone who loves me back., I asked every member of my family who they loved the most, and they all said me ) that being loved is something that he actually values QUITE a bit! More than you would assume on first glance! He's weirdly upfront about it haha!

In that way, I imagine that if they were to TRY to pull something to put him in the spotlight in the way you're imagining (i.e. something emotional and focusing on his issues like they did with Yellow & Red) it would either focus on his desire to be loved OR his dedication to keeping the three of them together. But I would argue they both already did that in the Family episode AND put him through the worst case-scenario in regards to those more emotional aspects of his character ( here I think the worst case scenario to him is the other two rejecting him, harshly, unambiguously and to his face, multiple times and the three of them separating ). AND THE THING IS… THAT ALREADY HAPPENED! THAT DIDN'T BREAK HIM!

He had his little pout over it in his dress and was like FINE! I DON'T NEED THEM ANYWAYS! So, I really don't think that big "character-breaking" moment is coming. If the Family ep didn't get him I honest to God don't think there's anything else the house could throw at him that could get under his skin.

[skrunksthatwunk]

just finished the original devilman manga. wuh!!

[ach-sss-no]

Prompt: sailor

I don’t think he sails, so here is Gollum on a paddle log. 

Sometimes I get around the ‘only night and underground lighting!’ thing by putting him outside at dawn or dusk where there’s some natural light... I think he was sometimes out with the hobbits in the early morning in LOTR and only starts freaking out when the sun is over the horizon. 

This here is probably evening, because his attitude is more of someone who’s lazily eyeing a candidate for second breakfast than someone who’s going to be panicking and fleeing the Yellow Face in the next few minutes. 

That bird is something called a ‘bar-tailed godwit’. I looked up UK-region marsh birds, saw that name, and decided that was the bird I wanted to use.

I want to finish this challenge up tomorrow so that on the 25th I can post a collection of the prompt art, so tomorrow two prompts will go up, and on the 25th two posts collecting the highlights of this challenge will go up. Tschuss!

[queerofthedagger]

That Show really made a lot of questionable casting choices and I'm mad about a lot of them but absolutely nothing is more hateful than their finrod casting. like that is not finrod felagund that's a big bang theory cast member and i do mean this entirely derogatory. like. what the fucking fuck

[twinklingwatermellon]

Perpetually in a love-hate relationship with Gerwig films

[fortune-maiden]

A little over halfway through Season 1 of DNT now, I thought I was starting to warm up to it.

But then I got to the Castrop Rebellion Episode.

Soulless doesn't even begin to cover it......

[thebubblesareevil]

Mistaken identity

We’ve all seen Danny getting mistaken for a bat. But what about a bat being mistaken for a Fenton.

When Danny took responsibility for Dan the first thing they did was get him a human form that wasn’t his corpse. Between vlad, clockwork, and his parents they managed to get him a new body that had him looking more alive than ever.

He was a bit tanner than expected, but they figured that came from Danny’s ghostly side.

When it came time for Danny to go to Gotham for school, he refused to leave Dan behind. Instead, using the funds he got from the ghost kings treasury and child support from Vlad, Danny got them a studio apartment close to campus.

His parents outfitted the apartment with all the latest security, of course.

Everything was going great, all expect for one thing…

People in amity park accepted Dan and adapted almost immediately, having gotten used to the many quirks of ghosts long ago. Gotham….was a bit less understanding.

Luckily for him, unlucky for the rest of Gotham, the police there were incredibly corrupt and easy to bribe anytime he had to bail Dan out or, in the case of that one Karen that decided to give Dan shit for painting his nails, bail himself out of any trouble they came across.

Danny did his best to spend plenty of time with Dan, even when he was exhausted, he refused to ignore his little brother.

So after going through hell during finals week, Danny decided to take Dan to the zoo. Danny did his best to keep an eye on Dan, he really did! He had only sat down for a moment, just to rest his eyes, next thing he knew though he could hear someone yelling about violent kids.

Danny immediately jumped to his brother’s aid.

“I’m sorry,” Danny started as he interrupted the screeching woman. “Is there a problem here?”

Dan tried to speak up but the woman wouldn’t let him.

“This brat pushed me out of the way while I was looking at the exhibit and then spewed profanities at me!” She howled.

Danny flinched at the offensive noise on his sensitive hearing.

“No offense mam, but somehow I highly doubt that. My brother may not have the best manners, but he sure as hell wouldn’t push someone for no reason.” He couldn’t comment about the language, Dan knew more curse words in more languages that this woman could speak thanks to ghost speech, and he used every one of them.

“You little brat! How dare-“

“Of course, if you feel that strongly about it, we could always ask to see the cameras.” Danny suggested with a smirk. “I for one would LOVE to see what they have to show us.”

The woman paled before turning away in a huff. “I don’t have time to deal with annoying brats like you.” She said before turning away.

Danny’s eye twitched, “Good, because I don’t have time to deal with an entitled bitch like you.” Danny replied, ignoring the woman’s offended screech.

“C’mon Dan, let’s go get a snack and go see the penguins.”

——

Damien was thoroughly confused by what was going on. This was not how he was expecting this day to go.

He had snuck out of the Manor earlier, desperate to get away from his families judging eyes. The night before, he had encountered a smuggling ring, and after seeing the state the animals were in, he didn’t hold back against the traffickers. It was only because of his training with father that they hadn’t died.

His father called it overkill, he called it Justice.

After what he saw the previous night he decided to spend the afternoon at the zoo and bask in the presence of the animals, knowing that they were all well cared for.

And then the annoying shrew decided to ruin his day. He was ready to verbally eviscerate her when a large man stepped in. One that decided to claim him as his brother.

The man grabbed him by the hand after chewing out the woman and walked him over to the penguin exhibit, only stopping to pick up snow cones.

“I could have handled her on my own.” Damian said, before taking a bite of his treat, “you didn’t need to lie.”

Damian took a good look at the man before him, he had basically collapsed onto the bench when they stopped, the bags under his eyes made drake look well rested.

“What are you talking about?” The man asked before releasing a massive yawn. “I didn’t lie. Believe it or not, you’ve improved a lot since you came home to us. Sure, I could see you pushing someone out of the way a few years ago, but now?”

The man grabbed him by the arm, tugging him into a hug. Damien was too stunned to push back as the man gave him the most comforting, caring hug he had ever had.

“We’re all so proud of you Dan, you’ve come a really long way.”

Damien suddenly felt a pit form in his stomach as realization struck.

He carefully extricated himself from the hug.

“I think there’s been a misunderstanding, my name is not Dan.” Damian explained, pulling down the hood on his hoodie.

The man looked at him confused before rubbing his eyes. Taking a second look, his eyes went wide.

“Fuck.” He then proceeded to pull out his wallet. “Do I have enough to bribe a cop?”

Damian frowned, “why exactly would you be bribing the police?”

“Because I apparently just kidnapped a kid.” The man shrugged. “My names Danny by the way.” He said before sluggishly getting up from his seat. “Let’s go see if we can find your parents and my brother.”

“My father is not aware of my current location.”

Danny paused, giving Damian a long look before nodding, “We’ll if your gonna sneak out, at least you went someplace educational.”

Damian looked at him confused as the man stretched.

“Well then, let’s go find Dan and get something to eat before we get you home. I’m sure your father is worried sick.”

Danny then grabbed Damian by the hand and started to lead them back the way they came. The crowds parting at the sight of the large man.

“I do not need an escort, I am more than capable of returning home on my own.”

“That may be so,” the man started. “But I wouldn’t be able to get any sleep tonight if I didn’t make sure you got home safe. You wouldn’t want me to be deprived of sleep, would you?”

Damian considered the statement. The man was clearly on the brink of collapse. “Very well.” He nodded.

The approached the tiger exhibit to pure chaos as the animal handlers tried to retrieve a boy from the tiger cage. Danny sighed before Damian could try to sneak away and jump into action.

“And here I thought I wouldn’t have to bribe anyone today.” Before he cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted “DAN FENTON! IF YOU DONT GET OUT HERE IN THE NEXT 2 MINUTES, ILL TELL JAZZ!!”

The zoo keepers nearly panicked as the boy immediately jumped up, completely ignoring the tigers and climbed out to join his brother.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Happy Public Domain Day 2025 to all who celebrate

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/17/dastar-dly-deeds/#roast-in-piss-sonny-bono

In 1976, Congress set fire to the country's libraries; in 1998, they did it again. Today, in 2024, the flames have died down, and out of the ashes a new public domain is growing. Happy Public Domain Day 2025 to all who celebrate!

For most of US history, copyright was something you had to ask for. To copyright a work, you'd send a copy to the Library of Congress and they'd issue you a copyright. Not only did that let you display a copyright mark on your work – so people would know they weren't allowed to copy it without your permission – but if anyone wanted to figure out who to ask in order to get permission to copy or adapt a work, they could just go look up the paperwork at the LoC.

In 1976, Congress amended the Copyright Act to eliminate the "formality" of copyright registration. Now, all creative works of human authorship were copyrighted "at the moment of fixation" – the instant you drew, typed, wrote, filmed, or recorded them. From a toddler's nursery-school finger-painting to a graffiti mural on a subway car, every creative act suddenly became an article of property.

But whose property? That was on you to figure out, before you could copy, publish, perform, or preserve the work, because without registration, permissions had to start with a scavenger hunt for the person who could grant it. Congress simultaneously enacted a massive expansion of property rights, while abolishing the title registry that spelled out who owned what. As though this wasn't enough, Congress reached back in time and plopped an extra 20 years' onto the copyrights of existing works, even ones whose authors were unknown and unlocatable.

For the next 20 years, creative workers, archivists, educators and fans struggled in the face of this regime of unknowable property rights. After decades of well-documented problems, Congress acted again: they made it worse.

In 1998, Congress passed the Sonny Bono Copyright Act, AKA the Mickey Mouse Preservation Act, AKA the Copyright Term Extension Act. The 1998 Act tacked another 20 years onto copyright terms, but not just for works that were still in copyright. At the insistence of Disney, Congress actually yanked works out of the public domain – works that had been anthologized, adapted and re-issued – and put them back into copyright for two more decades. Copyright stretched to the century-plus "life plus 70 years" term. Nothing entered the public domain for the next 20 years.

So many of my comrades in the fight for the public domain were certain that this would happen again in 2018. In 2010, e-book inventor and Project Gutenberg founder Michael S Hart and I got into a friendly email argument because he was positive that in 2018, Congress would set fire to the public domain again. When I insisted that there was no way this could happen given the public bitterness over the 1998 Act, he told me I was being naive, but said he hoped that I was right.

Michael didn't live to see it, but in 2019, the public domain opened again. It was an incredible day:

https://archive.org/details/ClosingKeynoteForGrandReopeningOfThePublicDomainCoryDoctorowAtInternetArchive

No one has done a better job of chronicling the fortunes of our fragile, beautiful, bounteous public domain than Jennifer Jenkins and James Boyle of Duke University's Center for the Study of the Public Domain. Every year from 2010-2019, Boyle and Jenkins chronicled the works that weren't entering the public domain because of the 1998 Act, making sure we knew what had been stolen from our cultural commons. In so many cases, these works disappeared before their copyrights expired, for example, the majority of silent films are lost forever.

Then, in 2019, Jenkins and Boyle got to start cataloging the works that were entering the public domain, most of them from 1923 (copyright is complicated, so not everything that entered the public domain in 2019 was from that year):

https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2019/

Every year since, they've celebrated a new bumper crop. Last year, we got Mickey Mouse!

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/15/mouse-liberation-front/#free-mickey

In addition to numerous other works – by Woolf, Hemingway, Doyle, Christie, Proust, Hesse, Milne, DuBois, Frost, Chaplin, Escher, and more:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/20/em-oh-you-ess-ee/#sexytimes

Now, 2024 was a fantastic year for the public domain, but – as you'll see in the 2025 edition of the Public Domain Day post – 2025 is even better:

https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2025/

So what's entering the public domain this year? Well, for one thing, there's more of the stuff from last year, which makes sense: if Hemingway's first books entered the PD last year, then this year, we'll the books he wrote next (and this will continue every year until we catch up with Hemingway's tragic death).

There are some big hits from our returning champions, like Woolf's To the Lighthouse and A Farewell to Arms from Hemingway. Jenkins and Boyle call particular attention to one book: Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, its title taken from a public domain work by Shakespeare. As they write, Faulkner spoke eloquently about the nature of posterity and culture:

[Humanity] is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance…The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

The main attraction on last year's Public Domain Day was the entry of Steamboat Willie – the first Mickey Mouse cartoon – into the public domain. This year, we're getting a dozen new Mickey cartoons, including the first Mickey talkie:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mickey_Mouse_(film_series)#1929

Those 12 shorts represent a kind of creative explosion for the Disney Studios. Those early Mickey cartoons were, each and every one, a hybrid of new copyrighted works and the public domain. The backbone of each Mickey short was a beloved, public domain song, with Mickey's motion synched to the beat (animators came to call this "mickey mousing"). In 1929, there was a huge crop of public domain music that anyone could use this way:

Blue Danube, Pop Goes the Weasel, Yankee Doodle, Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush, Ach Du Lieber Augustin, Listen to the Mocking Bird, A-Hunting We Will Go, Dixie, The Girl I Left Behind Me, a tune known as the snake charmer song, Coming Thru the Rye, Mary Had a Little Lamb, Auld Lang Syne, Aloha ‘Oe, Turkey in the Straw, My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean, Habanera and Toreador Song from Carmen, Lizst’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, and Goodnight, Ladies.

These were recent compositions, songs that were written and popularized in the lifetimes of the parents and grandparents who took their kids to the movies to see Mickey shorts like "The Barn Dance," "The Opry House" and "The Jazz Fool." The ability to plunder this music at will was key to the success of Mickey Mouse and Disney. Think of all the Mickeys and Disneys we've lost by locking up the public domain for the past half-century!

This year, we're getting some outstanding new old music for our public domain. The complexities of copyright terms mean that compositions from 1929 are entering the public domain, but we're only getting recordings from 1924. 1924's outstanding recordings include:

George Gershwin performing Rhapsody in Blue, Jelly Roll Morton playing Shreveport Stomp, and an early recording from contralto and civil rights icon Marian Anderson, who is famous for her 1939 performance to an integrated audience of over 75,000 people at the Lincoln Memorial. Anderson’s 1924 recording is of the spiritual Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen.

While the compositions include Singin' in the Rain, Ain't Misbehavin', An American in Paris, Bolero, (What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue, Tiptoe Through the Tulips, Happy Days Are Here Again, What Is This Thing Called, Love?, Am I Blue? and many, many more.

On the art front, we're getting Salvador Dali's earliest surrealist masterpieces, like Illumined Pleasures, The Accommodations of Desire, and The Great Masturbator. Dali's contemporaries are not so lucky: after a century, the early history of the works of Magritte are so muddy that it's impossible to say whether they are in or out of copyright.

But there's plenty of art with clearer provenance that we can welcome into the public domain this year, most notably, Popeye and Tintin. As the first Popeye and Tintin comics go PD, so too do those characters.

The idea that a fictional character can have a copyright separate from the stories they appear in is relatively new, and it's weird and very stupid. Courts have found that the Batmobile is a copyrightable character (Batman won't enter the public domain until 2035).

Copyright for characters is such a muddy, gross, weird idea. The clearest example of how stupid this gets comes from Sherlock Holmes, whose canon spans many years. The Doyle estate – a rent-seeking copyright troll – claimed that Holmes wouldn't enter the public domain until every Holmes story was in the public domain (that's this year, incidentally!).

This didn't fly, so their next gambit was to claim copyright over those aspects of Holmes's character that were developed later in the stories. For example, they claimed that Holmes didn't show compassion until the later stories, and, on that basis, sued the creators of the Enola Holmes TV show for depicting a gender-swapped Sherlock who wasn't a total dick:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/dec/22/lawsuit-copyright-warmer-sherlock-holmes-dismissed-enola-holmes

As the Enola lawyers pointed out in their briefs, this was tantamount to a copyright over emotions: "Copyright law does not allow the ownership of generic concepts like warmth, kindness, empathy, or respect, even as expressed by a public domain character – which, of course, belongs to the public, not plaintiff."

When Mickey entered the public domain last year, Jenkins did an excellent deep dive into which aspects of Mickey's character and design emerged when:

https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/mickey/

Jenkins uses this year's entry of Tintin and Popeye into the public domain to further explore the subject of proprietary characters.

Even though copyright extends to characters, it only covers the "copyrightable" parts of those characters. As the Enola lawyers wrote, the generic character traits (their age, emotional vibe, etc) are not protected. Neither is anything "trivial" or "minuscule" – for example, if a cartoonist makes a minor alteration to the way a character's pupils or eyes are drawn, that's a minor detail, not a copyrightable element.

The biggest impediment to using public domain characters isn't copyright, it's trademark. Trademark is very different from copyright: foundationally, trademark is the right to protect your customers from being deceived by your competitors. Coke can use trademark to stop Pepsi from selling its sugary drinks in Coke cans – not because it owns the word "Coke" or the Coke logo, but because it has been deputized to protect Coke drinkers from being tricked into buying not-Coke, thinking that they're getting the true Black Waters of American Imperialism.

Companies claim trademarks over cartoon characters all the time, and license those trademarks on food, clothing, toys, and more (remember Popeye candy cigarettes?).

Indeed, Hearst Holdings claims a trademark over Popeye in many traditional categories, like cartoons, amusement parks, ads and clothes. They're also in the midst of applying for a Popeye NFT trademark (lol).

Does that mean you can't use Popeye in any of those ways? Nope! All you need to do is prominently mention that your use of Popeye is unofficial, not associated with Hearst, and dispel any chance of confusion. A unanimous Supreme Court decision (in Dastar) affirm your right to do so. You can also use Popeye in the title of your unauthorized Popeye comic, thanks to a case called Rogers v Grimaldi.

This all applies to Tintin, too – a big deal, given that Tintin is managed by a notorious copyright bully who delights in cruelly terrorizing fan artists. Tintin is joined in the public domain by Buck Rogers, another old-timey character whose owners are scumbag rent-seekers.

Congress buried the public domain alive in 1976, and dumped a load of gravel over its grave in 1998, but miraculously, we've managed to exhume the PD, and it has been revived and is showing signs of rude health.

2024 saw the blockbuster film adaptation of Wicked, based on the public domain Oz books. It also saw the publication of James, a celebrated retelling of Twain's Huck Finn from the perspective of Huck's enslaved sidekick.

This is completely normal. It's how art was made since time immemorial. The 40 year experiment in life without a public domain is at an end, and not a minute too soon.

You can piece together a complete-as-possible list of 2025's public domain (including the Marx Brothers' Cocoanuts, Disney's Skeleton Dance, and Del Ruth's Gold Diggers of Broadway) here:

https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/cce/

[humanjarvis]

i'm sorry for scaring you

synopsis: caleb shows a new side of himself during one of your fights. it almost makes you believe he's changed.

tags: angst, suggestive (psychologically), fluff (sorta kinda), caleb kneels, caleb crawls, caleb is pathetic, caleb is overprotective and unwell pairing: farspace colonel!caleb x reader word count: 1.7k

a/n: this is angstier than i intended i wanted it to be hot, maybe it's still hot, when he tries to lock u up in his house but he has lethal booboo face ⬆️

“I didn't ask for any of this! I didn’t ask for your protection, and I sure as hell don’t want it.”

“You not wanting it doesn’t change the fact that you need it,” Caleb replied blankly. 

In the four months since you’d reunited with Caleb in Skyhaven, your relationship had taken a hit. In the first few weeks, you’d barely seen each other; he’d stop by to check on you, assume you thought him the scum of the earth, and abruptly retreat back home. It wasn’t until you’d grown fed up with the awkwardness and uncertainty that you began approaching him again—asking him about his day, initiating phone calls, and even starting the rare video call, if he was lucky. 

Around the last month or so, things had gotten better. During your increasingly frequent visits, you’d gone out together several times—to see the new cyberpunk action movie, to window shop in the pet store, to marvel at the Skyhaven nightscape from the safety of his personal aircraft. Just as you thought you’d both been making progress adapting to your new dynamic, a wave of highly dangerous wanderers had infiltrated the city, and Caleb had had the nerve to essentially place you on house arrest until the threat was dealt with. Fast forward to now, his composure threatening to overpower your impassioned rebuttals. 

“Did you honestly think I’d let you leave right now?” he asked. “You’re here for a week. The Fleet will take the next couple of days to sort out the problem, and we can go out together when it’s done.”

“We can go out together. Right. So you can rush me back here the second someone looks at me the wrong way?”

“No one will look at you the wrong way. Not here. Not while you’re with me. But you need to understand, Pipsqueak: you came to Skyhaven for me. You’re in skyhaven for me. I won’t stand by and watch you put yourself in danger, and you won’t change my mind,” he replied, his large frame looming over you as he stepped closer. 

You’d had enough. You’d spent almost an hour on the losing side of this back-and-forth, and you were too exhausted to pull your punches anymore. “My first time seeing you after the explosion,” you started, voice trembling. “Do you know how it felt? When you stepped off that plane, when you interrogated me behaving like you never have in your life—I didn’t know what to think. But when you brought me back here? Started spewing off that shit about a world where my only world is you? I was scared, Caleb. I thought I’d needed to be afraid for you, but I was afraid of you. That you’d lock me in this house forever, that I'd only see the sun when you decided it wasn’t top bright for me. I was afraid that I’d die here having grown to hate the person I’d wanted to live for,” you finished, your words dripping with venom.

Seething, you spun around, ready to storm out of the kitchen and into the quiet of the guest room Caleb had remodeled for you. 

You’d taken three steps toward the door when you heard something hit the ground with a heavy thud. 

Body still facing the door, you stopped in your tracks. This was new. Unexpected. You’d been prepared to hear a few calls of your name, some “Wait!”s, maybe even a “Don't walk away from me.” Worst case, you’d expected him to pin you in place with his Evol, preventing your exit and prolonging your fight. 

But a thud? A thud could mean many things. Enough things for you to remain frozen contemplating the possibilities before the voice in the back of your head broke through your thoughts, reminding you of the very real chance that you’d spiked Caleb's blood pressure so much that he’d fainted.

The fear that he was hurt made you finally turn around, only for Caleb to catch you off guard yet again.

Caleb the Loathsome, the overprotective, obsessive, now cold-blooded colonel of the Farspace Fleet, was on the floor before you. Kneeling.

All at once, your anger dissipated, melting into shock at the assertive man before you’s sudden display of submission. 

Realizing you’d turned around, Caleb lifted his head, meeting your flustered expression with his pained one. His furrowed brows, shining eyes, and pouted lips—he looked pitiful, honestly. And as much as it tugged at your heartstrings, it awakened something dormant inside you. 

It made you feel powerful. It gave you an idea. 

Biting the inside of your bottom lip, you took several steps toward Caleb’s kneeling form, closing the distance you'd been so eager to put between you all of ten minutes ago. A slight gasp escaped Caleb at your movement, and he swiftly lowered his gaze back to the floor, as if worried that daring to watch your approaching form would make you retreat. 

When you came to a stop, you were just in front of his knees, looking down your nose at his bowed head. For a few moments, Caleb’s heavy breaths were the only sounds between you, thickening the cold air in the room. 

Then, finally—finally—you touched him, lifting his chin up before resting your palm on his cheek. At your touch, he leaned forward, nuzzling his head against your thigh. 

“…You want this that bad, huh? Want me that bad?”

“More than anything,” he breathed. 

You stared at him. 

“Please,” he whispered, turning his head into your hand to brush his lips across your fingers. 

At this, you hummed softly, running your thumb across his cheek twice before turning away from him once more. When you break contact, Caleb freezes in the midst of rubbing his face on your leg, his eyes popping open in panic. He only calms when he sees you heading for the armchair tucked into the right back corner of the room, slowly taking a seat, your legs spread. 

“Relax,” you call out, settling in your chair. He didn’t move a muscle.

You decided you’d had enough of the tense silence after a few more beats. It was time to test him.

“…Come here, Caleb.”

In an instant, his head snapped up. His gaze, abruptly ending its budding relationship with the floor tiles, held yours for more than a few seconds this time, your slight smirk challenging his slight disbelief.

Caleb had all the cunning in the world. Since joining the Fleet, nothing got by him—and on the rare chance that it did, he’d chase it down and make it beg for mercy. He was a prideful man. He was a calculated man. So when you called for him in your sweet voice, slightly breathy with unadmitted nerves, he figured you out quite quickly. 

You were testing him—to see if he’d walk or crawl to you—and he knew it. 

And unfortunately for his dignity, any reservation he held about the latter was overshadowed by his desire for you: to be in your space, to breathe your air, to be close enough to feel you—even if he rarely did now, out of fear that his touch would repulse you.

He needed you to need him. So he crawled. 

Inch by inch, Caleb crawled toward you, the only person who would ever see him reduced to this. The only person who could reduce him to this. And all the while, as the fabric of his dark pants dragged across the floor, his violet eyes never left yours. In them, you saw resignation. You saw anticipation. You saw the shattered remnants of a pride that he’d let be broken, and you saw them rebuild themselves in lust the closer he came.

A few inches away from you, Caleb stops, sitting demurely on his heels. His hands twitch in hesitation before falling into his lap. His vulnerability is palpable, and you can feel him banishing himself back to his hell of self-deprecation, the guilt-eroded space in his mind where he repeats how little he deserves you. Before he can lower his gaze again, you beckon him upwards,  guiding his palms to rest on your knees. His kneeling form almost equals your seated one in height.

“I used to love watching you scare off the boys who were mean to me,” you tell him, placing your palm back on his cheek. “But as much as I like you intimidating, this little act might be my new favorite.” 

His nervous breaths come to a momentary halt before he brightens slightly, chasing your touch. He nuzzles into your palm like he did your leg earlier, and you sigh. 

“You scared me, Caleb,” you murmur. 

“I know. I'm sorry.”

“I know you want to keep me safe, that you have kept me safe for as long as either of us can remember,” you say, continuing to stroke his head. “But I don’t want to be afraid of you, Caleb. I won't be afraid of you. So if you want to keep doing this, if you want us to move on, if you want me—it can’t happen again. Tell me it won’t happen again.”

Your movements still as you tighten your grip on his jaw, forcing him to meet your eyes. A grimace flashes across his face as he goes quiet for a moment. But you wait for him. You have to. As exhilarating as it’d been to see him crawl before you, this was the true test—if you extend your trust, will he extend his lenience? You have to believe that he will. To give him the chance to. 

And as you’re wrapped up in your optimism, your fantasies that he’ll acquiesce and let your relationship go back to normal, Caleb responds. 

“...I’m sorry for scaring you.”