#I've made fanart but i never made fanfic. and I respect authors all the more now like....THEY'VE BEEN USING THIS MUCH BRAIN POWER?? THIS WH

[suusoh]

gonna get back to writing in a bit. Gonna draw some stuff first brb. 👍 Johan brain rot is taking on in a different form.

[fangirltothefullest]

Hi-a! I have a question about a post you reblogged, the one about writing commissions and fanfic. I'm a bit... confused. I get what the post is saying in how creators have reacted to fanworks being monetized, but, why is it exclusive to fic? Fanart commissioning is completely open I've seen. What makes writing different from art in that respect? I know you do art commissions yourself so I thought you might know.

Ah ok yes this can be very confusing! This is also something I have to go into detail on because it covers multiple things. 

One, fanart is an art form that is entirely visual. Visual arts are not copyrighted the same way as written works/print. Fanart commission, while it seems more widespread is not actually open. There’s a very delicate line we walk under the creative commons liscense that says we are not making an exact copy of a thing and selling it so we have the right to slight creative liberty and freedom. This is also why farce can make fun of stuff while referencing it for comedy’s sake. There’s a lot of legal stuff about it I can;t go into because I’m not a lawyer but that’s part of it. 

I cannot sell drawn pokemon works on redbubble because they have contacted redbubble and said purge all artwork pertaining to our licensed characters. Even if I draw it in my own style, even if I’m drawing pokemon fusions or whatever, redbubble kicks it off because the company which owns the licensing for pokemon said NO. sometimes you can squeak under the radar but usually they get you eventually.

It’s a lot EASIER to sell fanart but it’s still a touchy subject. At any point a creator can say hey that’s my character, do not draw artwork of my character. Disney is notable for doing this. So while fanart is much more prevolent, it’s stil la fine line to walk. 

Now onto the written word- This is all Anne Rice’s fault. I’m only barely joking.  The author got SO angry that people were doing fanfiction of her works that she literally sued people and it became a huge thing in court. This is why AO3 is what it is and why it’s run by lawyers and why they have such strict rules. The lawyers that run AO3 have the rules they have because they are your ticket to total fanfiction freedom. Their lawyers say that if someone comes after you and tries to sue you for writing a fanfic, they will protect you from harm under fair use. BUT you CANNOT make money off of it or the protections they have given you by using the site no longer count. AO3 is a place where you can post it freely, but the moment you make money off it, then it becomes questionable as fair use. Because parody or not, a good lawyer can argue that it’s not fair to the original author if you are profitting off of their original copyrighted material and that’s a fair assumption to have. 

You CAN charge for fanfics, but again you have to be EXTREMELY careful where you put it, who sees it and what you do with it. That is why you must never say on AO3 that you take commissions and that is why they say it in their TOS. It’s to protect the users. Posting on AO3 means you’ll never be sued so long as you follow those rules. It’s literally a safe haven for fic writers.

And, it’s also a matter of content- nothing is ever new, particularly when it comes to the written word. We only have so many words and there are gazillions of books, more being made every day. I can guarantee there are hundreds of thousands if not millions that have the same plots, the same character names and even the same wording here and there. Humans do that. 

But this is also why copyright is stupid and why written copyright has a limit before it runs out. (Alice in Wonderland is out of copyright, but the Disney version of Alice in Wonderland is not. This is why you cannot make disney-looking characters but you can have as many versions as you want. It’s the same with Hans Christian Anderson’s faerietales.)

No matter how much we try to be innovative, people will have the same ideas. That’s just human. But the problem is, if you are a published author you might be in the middle of writing a book and realize you have the same plot as someone else. And if you publish that book and the other person says wait I wrote this first, they could accuse YOU of stealing and claim you owe THEM money. Marion Zimmer Bradley (the article talks about this too) actually experienced this. She encouraged fanfiction because loved that people enjoyed her stories. I’m like this too, if I write something and people love the world, it makes me happy. But you can see why things like that could get touchy! 

The Copyright Act of 1957 (in America) lists parody under the protection of fair use and technically one can make the argument that fanfiction is parody. But if I published my own personal book and someone accused me of stealing, knowing full well I have read fanfiction before, I might have to pay royalties to a person whom I never even knew existed over a story I worked really hard on! 

This is why (as an example) Thomas Sanders and his team when writing for the Sanders Sides have outright stated they are not going to read, and have never read, fanfiction. Because while they encourage it wholeheartedly, if they happen to have similar ideas they can claim it came naturally and this way nobody can go to them and be like you stole my work where’s my money? This is also why his team decided to offer patrons of their patreon the ability to be part of the writers room. It’s a good compromise- get ideas from the fans which they know have good ideas, while also avoiding the whole “we stole this” thing by making them part of the team through access to that privilege, and then writers of fanfic can get their ideas maybe canonized. I think a lot of creators should think about doing this.

Artwork is a COMPLETELY different ballgame in that regard because the styles vary SO much more than writing. It’s also a different process to get your art copyrighted as a style itself. So like... that’s also a thing. That’s why it’s hard for artists when people repost their art without credits because copyrighting a style and each artwork? I don’t even know how you’d begin to do that, much less uphold it. But writing you can uphold, writing is easier to prove because you can match things, character, places, scenarios word for word. 

This has been a little back and forth but does this all make sense? 

[eileen-crys]

Ok I know this post is long and going to trigger some people, I hate dramas as almost everyone in this fandom but I'm honestly exhausted of finding a**holes around and I can't keep pretending nothing happens. I'm a polite person and I don't like to make names and point my finger at people, so let's keep this a general discourse.

So this happened between yesterday evening and this morning, I've posted this photo on my instagram stories this morning.

As I've already mentioned before, there's a bunch of people who hate Veronica Deacon (mind: this is not a simple "dislike her" for personal reasons/vibes, here's literally a movement of hate and canceling) and are adamant in spreading their hate towards her, intoxicating posts where she's mentioned or John's family role is mentioned, canceling her whenever there's a confirmed pic of her ("that's not her! That's *imaginary person never heard about*") mocking people for even liking her, let alone who enjoy John and Veronica together (I've been personally harassed on Facebook by some of these people) behaving very childishly despite their older age (also using the "I'm old so I know better" card to prove their points) and believing in absurd made-up "theories" on Wattpad that twist interviews, real facts and actually try to warp reality mostly with the function of "making Deac*ry real in real life". (Censoring the ships name just to not disturb sane shippers as I had already said once) For them every reliable source, included words by the direct interested, are lies to cover up these relationships. They use songs to "prove facts" when nothing is confirmed, pretending to be woke or smth I don't know really. Some time ago some idiot even told around that Veronica isn't the mother of John's kids, she used to abuse him and other stuff coming out of nowhere, but honestly that's an old discourse that thank the gods has been closed (because honestly even the dumbest people could sniff that it was all made up). ((They also hate Jim Hutton because of the same reasons, if you were asking.)) ((I feel so bad for responsible shippers that have these idiots on their boat, guys get rid of em plss))

This leads me back to this fanfic I found and that line that has been added in a petty way after deleting that comment.

You know I'm the last person who would say "stop writing fanfics about real people", we're a fandom that deals with real people and real or fanmade relationships, that's not remotely the issue here. It's not even the plot that as much basic it is it's quite common and I've read every kind of version of it with basically any ship in this fandom (tho Veronica is the most common one to fall in this trope, followed maybe by Chrissie) and that's kinda okay, I'm not here to judge anyone for that, write what u want, there are lots of well written fics with the same plot.

The issue here is the existence of that statement, "Veronica is a real cold hearted manipulative person". It implies that the author actually believes what they wrote is real. And what they wrote is a Veronica that's and absolute bastard with no reason to be it, she's just evil because yes, gets pregnant on purpose to stay with John, sends him away from Fred and enjoys seeing John being absolutely crushed after he had to leave fred like idk some kind of Scar who enjoys watching Simba running away after Mufasa's death. Because she's evil ok? That should be even ok (not really but you got the point???) if the author wrote that just as a dramatic angsty story with a boring villain, but the addition of that line is the issue here, the author feels like that woman is seriously like that. I honestly struggle to believe anyone could be so serious about this but yes there are people who are and try to spread their hate like this, towards a person they don't even know and has done nothing against them to "deserve" to be hated.

When I posted that pic in my stories today I had numerous people writing me that they couldn't believe someone would seriously hate Veronica to the point of doing this, that's why I'm making this post. There are lots of ppl who have no idea of this issue of the fandom that's more serious than it seems, it has to be put under the sunlight.

You don't have to love Queen's real relationships if you prefer fanmade ones, but please at least respect them. Respect Queen's wives and husband, they are real people. Respect Queen's real lives even if they made questionable things and mistakes. You can't fix them anyway and you're not entitled to change what happened in the past. Please be aware of the sources you get informations from, use reliable sources and believe them, keep songs as they are: poetry, be aware that what you find/create in fanfictions (and some fanarts) is not real. Respect creators that draw/write ships that aren't your faves.

And please ignore these idiots who claim to ""know the truth"" about Queen's private lives. They feel empowered by their age and by the doubts and misteries around some aspects of Queen's lives and they won't change their minds if you present them facts. Shut them off with an "ok" and ignore them. Thanks for reading until now, I hope this has been somehow helpful.

[shapeshiftersamirah]

Ahh someone else who started on ffn!!!! I've found it's soooo different from tumblr, some of the stuff you see on there....

I… apparently have a lot of thoughts on this (??) which I was not expecting. There’s a mini essay beneath the cut that includes minor culture analysis done by an amateur, how I joined the pjo fandom, and CAPITALS because emphasis, but the short answer is: yeah, tumblr and ffn cultures are continents away from each other, and (kind of surprisingly, especially considering the DISCOURSE on tumblr), tumblr is better.

I cannot for the life of me remember how I found it, but ffn was my first foray into fanfic and wow did I ever learn stuff. Some of it was good and is still useful to me (like how to tell if a fic is well written just from the summary, fandom terminology, good writers aren’t always good people, but they always bookmark good fics, etc) but a lot of other stuff was a little scarring, especially for a kid with no prior fandom experience. Looking back, a lot of stuff on ffn is horrifying. And I’m not just talking about the writing/plots.

I remember skimming author’s notes on fics and the writer would seem so tired and annoyed as they asked readers to stop demanding updates or explaining “so I got hit by a car and was in the hospital for a while which is why this is late sorry about that” (or some other completely legit reason for not posting on schedule). Or even in the description, I saw a lot of “this is my first fic please be gentle!” or just flat out “no flames”. And that’s a little unnerving to think about. These people feel the need to explain their lives and then APOLOGIZE for it to avoid criticism. I feel confident in guessing that the writers putting “my first fic please be gentle!” in the description were mostly pre-teens to early teens. They were kids. They were seeing all of these amazing writers producing amazing content and getting hate for it and they were terrified of the same thing happening to them, so they had to come up with a way to protect themselves. The fact that they even felt the NEED to protect themselves blows my mind and breaks my heart. And some of the people putting “no flames” in their description were likely doing it as a precaution, but it started for a reason: people were getting so many hate filled reviews it was a problem, so they found a solution. (And I know this type of hate and demanding updates still happens, and it still horrifies me, but I feel like it was more frequent back in, like, 2012. Or at least, I heard about it more back then.)

(Friendly reminder that fic writers don’t owe you anything so don’t bother them demanding updates. Tell them how much you love their fic instead, ask questions about it, show that you’re interested and want more and you’ll get it and a much happier author.)

There’s a lot of design features I don’t care for on ffn and the tagging system there is ATROCIOUS I have no idea how I found ANYTHING, but I liked visiting ffn. Until I found tumblr (and later AO3).

My favorite pjo writer linked her tumblr to her ffn profile and mentioned she had more fic posted there, so I immediately went and devoured it. In doing so, I discovered that tumblr was a better website (I cannot believe I just typed that. That shows you how much I hate ffn). I stalked her tumblr every day and through her, I found more pjo writers, some I recognized from ffn and others who were totally new to me. Through those new writers, I found even more. And most of them had FIC REC TAGS which became my favorite thing. During this time, I didn’t visit ffn once. I had everything I wanted and MORE because on tumblr, you could post FANART and GRAPHICS and DISCUSSIONS ABOUT THE SERIES! There was a better communication system on tumblr. I didn’t see hate everywhere. I didn’t have to sift through piles of things I wasn’t interested in or that were written so poorly I couldn’t follow to find a few mediocre fics or that one professional quality fic. I could see evidence of internet friendships! It was just a nicer place to be.

When I finally made my own tumblr account in 2015 and subsequently started this blog in 2016, I really immersed myself in the pjo community and learned all sorts of stuff. Like: there are people here who I swear to god are actual rays of sunshine. Some people have ingenious insight into the series and the characters and holy shit my understanding of everything is so much better now. There are so many talented people, but they’re all human just like you. And more of course, but the bottom line is that for the most part, the fandom was a good place to be. I rarely saw hate being sent. The discourse wasn’t fandom ending, though most people were Done by the time it’d run its course. I saw a lot of nice messages being sent to people and there were a lot of excited, happy responses in return. People respected each other.

For the most part, I really enjoy being a part of the pjo fandom here on tumblr. There are so many incredibly talented people and the vast majority of people are so sweet and nice and good to be around. Almost every day I see something that deepens my understanding of the series. It’s just a nice place to be for the most part. There are things I have really started to hate, but it’s easy enough to avoid them. Tumblr is a pretty shitty website sometimes (in design and fandom), but I would never in a million years trade it for ffn.