#letstreasurewords

[rainbowchibbit]

Happy birthday!

TYYYYYYY :D :D :D <3

[itsclydebitches]

What if you get really attached to a fan OC you made and want to put them in an original story? How would you deal with the legalities of that?

The “put them in an original story” part is where you negotiate that. Characters cannot (and should not) exist separate from their world. Their fictional world influences them in the same way they influence the world in turn, so if you change the world... you change the character along with it. Fans do this instinctively with AUs. If you have a Very Angry Protagonist due to their canonical war and then chuck them into a peaceful Coffee Shop AU, you need to come up with a new reason for why they’re so angry. Maybe they had a bad home life. Maybe there’s some oppressive system in place. Maybe they just pretend to be edgy because they think it’s cool. Whatever reason you choose, you theoretically want to maintain that anger as a core character trait because, as fanfiction, you want the character to be recognizable. Generally speaking, readers approach fic looking for some level of familiarity, so if the protagonist is no longer Very Angry they don’t feel like it’s that character anymore. So you adapt. For an original story though? Sky’s the limit! Not only can you make all the creative choices you’d make for an AU, you can make the character not angry anymore too. If your original novel is a coffee shop based romance you may decide that the OC you originally created doesn’t fit well into that world as they are. So you allow the world to change them, softening them, and in doing so create a new character. Few will look at Character B (original) and recognize that they were originally Character A (fanfic). 

Now granted, other situations are a lot more complicated. Let’s say you create a RWBY OC with a kickass semblance and that just has to stay. Their semblance is a crucial part of who they are and you like that version of the character, not the one that exists without their semblance. So then you can consider that “semblance” really just means “power.” You can give “semblance” a new name and (theoretically) be in the legal clear. “Semblance (RWBY),” “quirk (BNHA),” “mutations (X-Men),” “nen abilities (HxH),” and “devil fruit (One Piece)” are all different names for the same basic concept: a very wide variety of superpowers. But of course, you’ll notice that there are still plenty of differences among these stories. We don’t accuse One Piece of copying X-Men because one power comes from eating a special fruit while the other is a genetic ability. Then, the component “genetic ability” changes the fictional world to a staggering degree. What happens when some people are born with powers rather than choosing to obtain them? That’s one of the questions X-Men grapples with. Similarly, RWBY has a world where people can obtain power through avenues other than semblances, so not having a semblance isn’t the end of the world. In contrast, BNHA is a world where people are still just people unless they have a quirk, making quirks a huge part of the social status. As soon as you give your power a new name you have to think about the rules behind it, and once you’ve done that you can see how those rules shape your story. This leads you further and further away from where you started: another’s work. 

Now do that for every aspect of your character. If your OC is no longer living in the RWBY world, what does that world look like? If they didn’t grow up in Patch watching Atlas TV, where is their home and what did they do? If they aren’t best friends with Yang, who do they hang out with? The legal trap that fans fall into is changing the names of things and only the names. “Here’s my world of four Domains where a resource called Glitter powers almost everything. People train to become Predators, protecting the people from monsters made out of light. They can even unlock their Power. A young girl named Poppy, with incredibly rare black eyes, is set to save the world!” People are going to look at that (horrible description lol) and go, “That’s RWBY just with different terms, reversed colors, and Ruby with a new flower name.” If you put an OC into an original story, you have to make sure it is an original story, which necessitates doing that work to change the character to fit the world and the world to reflect the character. If you just try to transplant that character 100%, you’re requiring that they still exist in RWBY’s world - just with a new, deceiving coat of paint. 

This is why the Fifty Shades/Twilight is so complicated because we don’t have a firm legal foundation to determine when a story is “too much” like its inspiration. On the one hand, I can walk you through both novels and point out the glaring similarities across the cast and the basic structure of the story. On the other hand... a story about a woman falling for a BDSM obsessed billionaire in the midst of modern day drama is not the story of a teenager falling in love with a vampire in the midst of werewolf drama. The book is simultaneously too similar to and nothing like Twilight, which makes determining its difference a matter of opinion, up until there’s a court case to determine that. I’d personally argue that James didn’t allow enough of those changes to carry the story forward. Meaning, she wrote a Modern AU version of Twilight, following Twilight’s beats and characters as closely as possible within the AU, then just changed everyone’s names for an “original” novel. It’s removed enough that anyone who doesn’t know the story’s origin’s won’t notice the similarities, but others have done work to demonstrate precisely how close Fifty Shades is to its fic origins, Master of the Universe... so to say it’s murky is an understatement. 

The best way to avoid any legal issues is simply write an original story. Don’t try to re-create the world that your OC originally inhabited, use your OC as inspiration for something new. 

[seventeendeer]

Dude, you can't just say you have headcanons for Sonia and Manic without explaining further! ... Could you share them please?

absolutely! and I’ve got some for Queen Aleena too! they’re mostly, like, little tweaks that help them fit into game canon and lightly rewrite their personalities for added depth, but here you go:

- in my headcanon for his origins in the game-canon, Sonic was originally from a hidden magic kingdom that was at war with some kind of Secret Evil (I like to think that the kingdom was hidden deep under ground because ... you know ... Sonic Underground lol). soon, it was prophesied that the kingdom would fall and the queen’s children, Sonic among them, would die, ending the royal bloodline along with the country, unless Aleena separated from her children and sent them out into the world on their own. Aleena initially refused to believe in the prophecy, but in the end, a battle broke out between her people and their enemy, and as her soldiers fought a losing battle around her, Aleena was forced to realize that the prophecy had been correct. as the battle raged on, she took her children, only 4-5 years old at the time, to a secret escape route and instructed them to run away while she prevented the enemy from finding the exit.

- after fleeing their home, Sonic, Sonia and Manic were separated and wandered the world by themselves for a while, trying to find each other as well as a new home.

- Sonia was eventually taken in by a rich family and raised as one of their own children. however, she found the upper class environment and her adoptive family’s attitudes stifling and selfish, and as soon as she turned 15, she hit the road. these days, she cruises around the world on her motorcycle and helps people in need. she’s still on relatively good terms with her adoptive family and she does have a taste for the finer things in life, but she strongly prefers to get her hands dirty and make a difference instead of whatever her adoptive parents were doing. she has a distant memory of her true origins, but her family never believed her when she told them about it, so she doesn’t fully trust it herself and hasn’t tried to pursue more information about her past. she has the power of super strength. in this continuity, she’s the one who can play electric guitar.

- Manic was adopted and raised by a group of thieves, and, while poor, had a loving home and a supportive family. at a young age, he gained an interest in extreme gear and became involved in illegal championships. his heavily modded gear had a habit of exploding before he could reach the finish line, but except for that little detail, he became a master at the sport and more than a little famous in certain circles. he also made many friends because of his friendly nature. he doesn’t remember much of anything about where he originally came from, and so has decided to let it lie. unlike Sonic and Sonia, he doesn’t have any powers, but he’s the craftiest of the three and gets things done regardless.

- what happened to Sonic in between losing contact with his siblings and the series’ present time is anyone’s guess. he doesn’t like to dwell on the past and prefers to live in the moment. if he remembers anything about his mom or his siblings, he at least never talks about them. it’s possible that all his travelling around may initially have been an attempt to find his way back to them, but nothing ever came off it.

- later down the line, when the triplets are in their late teens, they will eventually find each other again and discover where they came from. together, they will locate what remains of their old kingdom and find their mother still ruling the remnants of a mostly destroyed civilization, which now lives in fear of the evil returning and wiping them out for good. Aleena has lost hope for her people, but when her children return, they’ll help her defeat their old enemy, so at the very least, the people who remain there will be safe. all three of them, being free spirits in their own ways, will be uncomfortable when they find out that they’re royalty, and reject coming home so they can go back to their own lives - but they stay in contact with their mother and visit often. a few years later, when her kingdom has stabilized, Aleena will abdicate and allow her people to rule themselves, so she can go live closer to her children and finally have a normal life under the sun.

and that’s that on that! it’s not much, but I really just wanted an excuse to import these characters to my favorite canon haha. I also did some v cute redesigns of all three of them way back in 2018 that I don’t think I ever uploaded to tumblr, so here they are! Sonia and Manic are at the age they are when Sonic first meets them (18-20-ish?), which is why they look older than he does now.

[anlgbtrelatedblog]

Hi, I'm writing a genderfluid character, and I want to know if you know of any stereotypes that I should avoid using or offensive things, whether it involves coming out, how they present themself, or how others interact with them. Thank you for your time.

Hello there!

-Bury Your Gays. This should be obvious but..... please...... just let them live....

-Remember! Not all genderfluid people are fluid between male and female! Of course, some are, but not all! 

-Going along with that, they can be fluid between more than two genders!

-Gay angst stories can be amazing when handled right, but you should be careful! 

-It is always soooo nice to read a story with a happy LGBT+ character because while the majority of LGBT+ people do go through difficulties (at the very least) with coming out to the people around them, seeing one with people around them who support them is amazing.

I can’t think of any more right now, but followers are encouraged to add on!

-Madeline

[aangvanced]

Manny is such a ham. At least he's using his hammy powers for good now. I hope.

Or at least he’s TRYING now!

[seventeendeer]

The Sonic Underground show is a guilty pleasure of mine. His siblings are cool, and I like the wide variety of songs. I'm just mad that they've never ever done a proper resolution for the show. Not even in a comic like they promised.

honestly, you’re so valid ... I could never get into it, but I also love his siblings and I’ve got a line of personal headcanons that fit them into the games’ canon just bc they’re cute and I want them around in the universe that I like myself

though I am also secondhand frustrated that the story was never resolved, honestly! the song in the intro is such a dramatic banger, even if I never watched more than an episode and a half, I still wanna hear how the story ends, damn it!

“they made a vow, their mother will be found” OK BUT WHEN

[rainbowchibbit]

Whenever my cat, Magic, just starts meowing to the household, my grandma will sometimes answer back with "hewwo." Unironically. I don't think she's ever heard of this meme; she just does it. It's funny/insanity-inducing.

GOOD NFNGNGNFNFN I’m so glad. That’s incredible.

[itsclydebitches]

Can I just say thank you for your commentary on nonconsensual kissing? A similar event happen in my story where one girl got very flirty with a guy and close to kissing him even though the guy was clearly giving signs he was uncomfortable short of actually saying it. Their friends reacted negatively to her behavior: one left the room embarrassed, and the other was furious and slightly protective on the guy's behalf. 1/2

Thank you! (And apologies for the billions of years that pass between me getting asks and actually answering them...) Precisely though. That’s why I hate perpetuating this trope and will call it out whenever I see it. We’ve reached a point where people watch someone be completely blindsided by physical intimacy or are even outright uncomfortable with it and still presume that the automatic solution to this is to put up with the advances. Whether you’re no interested, not ready for that, not inclined towards that kind of intimacy... doesn’t matter. If your loved one wants it enough---and if the readers ship it enough---those concerns aren’t considered a priority. And I can’t tell you how often I see this translating into real interactions. People who don’t feel like they can speak up against unwanted attention, or who feel like they’ve created a situation where they “have” to say yes now, or who were uncomfortable with an act but aren’t willing to admit as much because they know precisely how others will respond: you’re overreacting. Get over it. And make no mistake, this is 100% a part of rape culture. The more we insist in our storytelling that a lack of consent is “romantic,” the more we normalize it and perpetuate interactions where people will take advantage of that supposedly blurry line (“Well, they look super uncomfortable but I’m sure that’s just nerves. I’ll go ahead and do it anyway”) as well as continually come up with excuses for why a signal wasn’t enough to stop them (“Sure they look uncomfortable but they didn’t say anything. Sure they said something but they didn’t explicitly say the word ‘no.’ Sure they said the word ‘no’ but we all know they play hard to get. Sure they tried to push me away but that’s just part of the fun...”) By undermining that consent is necessary from the get-go you allow everyone to define for themselves what consent means...and when you really want to kiss/grope/have sex with someone many will continually push that line until it ceases to exist. 

All of which isn’t to say that every romance in every story needs to be Perfectly Healthy™. That would make for a boring and limited fictional landscape. Rather, when we introduce problems it’s the author’s job to acknowledge that they are problems, either thematically (this is meant to be a messed up relationship and everyone knows that. The joy is in reading about this dysfunction) or, as you do, through the characters (someone made a mistake and they’re presumably going to learn from that. Others have acknowledged the problem here so that the reader knows where they should stand). There are a thousand ways to make consensual kisses romantic and a thousand ways to write a non-consensual kiss that acknowledges that this isn’t something to emulate. RWBY ultimately failed to do either.  

[itsclydebitches]

As someone who has an extremely manipulative antagonist that I eventually want to redeem, you gave out good advice for doing it right. Anything else I should know for her?

Nice, nice, nice! Good luck on your writing! Let’s see… 

As said, give them time. We expect growth to be semi-realistic, which means it’s not going to happen overnight. Make sure you create enough space for your character to develop in a gradual, believable way 

There can (and depending on the genre perhaps should) be backslides. When people do change they rarely change linearly. We can think of her manipulation as a kind of addiction, one where there are good days, bad days, days that in no way seem to connect with the days that came before. If you want, you can even play around with how changing intention is often easier than changing the behavior itself. A manipulative former antagonist might still be inclined to manipulate people, but now it’s “in their best interest/for their own good.” You can give us someone who doesn’t yet understand why their actions remain bad even though now their intentions are good

Give them motivations. Why are they changing? What’s the point? What’s in it for them? Humans (and most human-like characters) are inherently selfish. I don’t mean that in a bad way, just that our choices always lead back to us even when there are major benefits for others. Someone does charity to help out their fellows AND because it leaves you with that wonderful sense of pride/usefulness. You take care of a child because it’s your responsibility AND because you love them. Losing them would emotionally harm you. So what drives your antagonist’s change? What happens if that motivation is taken away? 

Let other characters react with variety. Depending on what your antagonist has done, not everyone needs to forgive them. Not everyone has to become their BFF the moment they’re “really” good. There’s a lot of potential for growth on their part as well—a hero is forced to work with the former antagonist and comes to grudgingly respect them—but not everyone needs to end up in the same emotional place

Connected to this is the acknowledgement that your readers won’t all end up in the same emotional place either. Some will fully support them. Others defend them. Still others insist that they’re irredeemable. We see this in fandom all the time. So depending on who you want your antagonist to eventually become, you can acknowledge that wide range in your writing. The antagonist who straight up committed genocide should probably be reminded of that every once in a while, face up to the responsibility of those actions even after they’ve been reformed because, chances are, both your characters and your readers can’t just forget that. The antagonist who just… idk, stole some shit can probably go through their life without owning up to that as much. Treat their crimes with respect, whatever that means for you and for the other characters. 

Make sure that there is atonement and (if appropriate) punishment in relation to the crime. Having your character go through bad things is not the same as having them own up to their mistakes. If you know BNHA, Bakugo is a great example: just because he experiences traumatic events doesn’t mean that these hardships suddenly erase all the harm he’s caused. They’re two separate things and developing sympathy for an antagonist shouldn’t act as a stand-in for the antagonist’s growth. We need to see them change, not just suffer with the assumption that this is some kind of karmic justice. 

Finally—most importantly—write whatever you want! All the writing advice in the world won’t mean shit if, in your attempt to follow it, you find yourself crafting a character you don’t feel connected to anymore. There’s no point if the story isn’t serving you as its writer, so chuck out any and all advice that you feel isn’t working. Try something different and see where that takes you. There’s no approved checklist for “How to Properly and Entertainingly Redeem a Character” because if there were all these stories would look the same and that would be boring as hell. So give it a whirl. Maybe it’ll go over well with readers. Maybe it won’t. But at least you’ll feel confident in whatever it is you’ve chosen to produce. 

[itsclydebitches]

So this racial coding, what do we do with them? Disregard them as much as we can? Mix and match? Break sterotypes and avoid hurtful implications, obviously, but... I'm not sure how to go about this racial coding. Avoid like the plague? Somehow use it in a positive way. I'm sorry for my ignorance; I wish to learn and be better. I don't want to hurt any of readers so what can I do?

What’s first important to remember is that coding of all sorts happens in fiction naturally (as said, we’re obviously basing things off of real experiences in one way or another) and it’s not always harmful. The harmful stuff just gets the most attention and makes for the easiest examples. You can also get plenty of stories in the vein of, “Hey! This awesome fantasy group is clearly based off of [insert culture here]. Nice” and everyone moves on with some happy coded rep. 

For the less nice stuff, yeah, be critical of your own work whenever you can. The other day I was working on a fic, was toying with various characteristics for this character, thought about making them Deaf, and had an immediate response of, “No. That wouldn’t work for their job.” Then I paused. Wait. Why do I assume they couldn’t do this job? Or at the very least, why am I assuming that the job would be significantly harder for them? Am I basing this off of something legitimate, or just the pervasive stereotypes I’ve been immersed in my whole life regarding what a Deaf person presumably can and cannot do? I eventually realized it was the latter, but I was only able to stop and re-evaluate my assumptions at all because I’ve had three years of ASL lessons and cultural studies. Just enough immersion for a little BS light to come on in my brain. As you say—yay learning! So yeah, sometimes (often after you’ve learned to be Aware Of The Thing) you can think through your reasoning and your choices. Why do I think this disabled person couldn’t be the hero? Why am I inclined to give these antagonists a darker skin color? Why did I make the math nerd the only Chinese kid in the group? All of which isn’t to say such combinations can NEVER happen, but now I’m aware that it will probably send a particular message. Am I willing to stand by that? Or, how might I adapt the story to allow for this combination without the negative side-effects? Example: you’re not saying something about the entirety of Chinese people by making this kid the math nerd if you include a bunch of other Chinese people in your story. Oh look, human variety. 

A lot of times though—most of the time even—we’re not aware of these kinds of influences. Either because we haven’t been taught to be critical of that thinking; the thinking is still too ingrained; the stereotypes are far more subtle than the above examples and thus harder to understand, let alone spot; there’s too much going on to analyze each and every choice we make (if you’re crafting a whole world chances are you’re gonna make at least some decisions without a big song and dance debate). Regardless of why the potentially problematic coding got in there, chances are it is there somewhere—writers are human. We’re gonna fuck up in a variety of ways—which is why listening becomes important. For all types of representation. Listen when minority groups, different cultures, just people who are different from you in any way say, “Hey. This Thing? It was a bit not good…” The good writers aren’t the ones who get everything perfect the first time around (again: human) but the ones who work to improve. Be the John Green, not the JK Rowling. The one who goes, “Oh. A huge portion of my readership finds this manic pixie dream girl trope both offensive and outdated? Okay. I’ll address that in future books.” Not the one going, “Oh. My appropriation of your culture done without good research is highly offensive to you? Yeah, I’m gonna just ignore all this…” 

And we acknowledge that none of these issues have easy answers attached to them. What one person finds offensive another might not even blink at (and both are from the same demographic). You might try to undermine a stereotype—Jaune is gonna be the useless character instead of the hero—and find that you haven’t totally succeeded (see: previous metas on Jaune’s continued trope-ness). And even if you do succeed there will always, ALWAYS be debate. You will never produce a text that pleases everyone. Or it it seems that way at first glance? Give it ten years. Let your readership grow up, the world evolve, and see if everyone still thinks your story is perfect (again: Harry Potter). For every fifty people cheering that we finally got a woman-led Marvel movie, there’s at least twenty-five screaming about how everything is too PC nowadays; the feminists are taking over. The question is, will you use the support of the twenty-five to justify a potentially horrible position? 

Ultimately it comes down to each individual author deciding for themselves what’s important. Continue educating yourself (for! your! whole! life! it never ends! hell yeah asking questions on tumblr!!), do your research, and then be open to people suggesting that you’ve made a misstep. It’s then up to you to decide whether you think they were right in their assessment of the work and, if so, what you’ll do about it moving forward. 

[itsclydebitches]

Yep, this controversy is why I revealed one of my OCs as genderfluid sooner than I wanted. I wanted it to be a casual "This is who they are, but you already know there's more to them than that." But I worried people would think I fed them a lie or made them fluid on a whim for brownie points so I rushed it. The end result is okay-ish, but looking back, it could be better. (It's a webcomic so there'd be more to edit than just the writing). Only thing I can do is do better next time.

Ugh, that sucks and I’m sorry your webcomic (in that regard at least) isn’t how you’d prefer it. What’s far more worrisome than just whether media is introducing queer rep the “right” way is how this sort of thinking bleeds over into real life. I’ve had people imply/straight up tell me I made up my sexuality for attention because I didn’t show any of the “signs” when I was younger (ignoring for the moment how good I got at hiding any signs/convincing myself they didn’t exist). “You’re just jumping on this queer bandwagon” because I don’t look or act queer “enough” for them, we’ve known you for X number of years and you never got bullied for your sexuality in school, or had a breakdown over it, etc. ... so can you really be queer? Unless you fit my very narrow idea of what the queer narrative looks like then no. You can’t. 

One of the reasons we need variety in the media is so that people likewise become accustomed to a variety of experiences, thereby lessening the chance that they’re going to challenge someone over how “real” their experiences are in everyday life. Not every gay person knew they were gay at age five. Not every trans person hates their body. Not every genderfluid person is going to tell you that the moment you meet---or display a handy check-list of signs so that you can figure it out early. Just because someone’s experience doesn’t align with another’s doesn’t make either less real or valid. We need that variety of stories not just for the benefits of seeing your story told, but so that people have that language to fall back on. “You know that awesome webcomic where so-and-so is revealed to be genderfluid, but not until later and they’re super casual about it? Yeah. That’s me.” 

[itsclydebitches]

I think I get what you're saying about the blurry line between fandom and an author's wishes, but I have a question. Toby Fox expected that people would make stories and stuff with his characters and sell them at cons. He said people could sell such merchandise if they're sold personally and not through a big distribution company. So fans can use his OCs to make a little profit, but they're still his own and his wishes are being respected. Do you think this is a fair balance?

I do! As with so much of my own fan content, I’ve played Undertale but haven’t researched much about Toby himself—so this response is based pretty much purely on this ask. That being said, a stance like that sounds very similar to what @valasania-the-pale​ and I were discussing in terms of personal transformative works vs. corporate transformative works. Why it’s important to keep some legal control over your intellectual property since, if it really is a free-for-all, you might be faced with not liking the resulting creation AND its level of influence. 

Big distribution companies and big corporations have a staggeringly different level of impact. If you’re a fan, out of hundreds of thousands of other fans, and you create a transformative piece that Toby doesn’t like… he can easily ignore it. Or even encourage his fanbase not to engage with that piece if it promotes something he finds unacceptable. In the end though it’s just one piece out of thousands, all competing on roughly the same level. That right there is the important bit. Someone is at a con selling Undertale fanart you don’t agree with and you’re pretty sure Toby wouldn’t agree with either? It sucks, maybe you’ll push back against it (like informing those who run the con, telling your own followers not to buy from this person, whatever your personal response might be), but in the end you walk two feet and find another table with fanart you do love and approve of. And everyone is trying to sell it in the same space for the same amount of (comparative) chump change. 

That’s nothing like if Undertale was in the public domain and, say, someone like Blizzard decided to have a go at it. That right there is a platform. A level of distribution and influence that would flood the market—both mainstream and fandom—with their products, products perfectly capable of choking out everyone else. Toby let’s people sell their own Undertale prints? Great! But why would you buy this grad student’s prints when we’re making higher quality prints at a much cheaper price? Do you even know about their prints considering we have the budget to advertise in a way this random tumblr user never could? Suddenly it’s not fans expressing their love of a piece while making a bit of money for their hard work… it’s corporations out to make more money in whatever way they can. Period. The essence of “I did this primarily because I love the canon and I wanted to” is mostly, if not totally, lost. The same can even be said of the fan who uses that distribution company themselves. I designed this t-shirt and now I’m trying to sell as many as I can to as wide an audience as possible. Obviously that isn’t bad. Everyone who creates a thing wants it to spread and if they’re looking for money, they hope more people will buy it. Artists deserve to be paid for their work. But there is a difference between selling shirts here on tumblr, putting them on a private website, even using something like Redbubble if you don’t have the ability to create the clothing yourself—and selling a product on a scale so large that it feels like it’s competing with what Toby himself might put out. Though as I’ll explain in a moment, I don’t think that feeling is necessarily accurate. 

So yes, there are gray areas. What if a single fan suddenly finds that level of influence (as we’re seeing more and more as “average” creators acquire followers in the millions). What if a hardworking, dedicated fan creates an Undertale sequel, something capable of standing up to the original in terms of quality and with an author capable of competing with Toby in terms of distribution. Does he have the right to shut this down? Legally, yes. Morally? That’s up to you. I’m not gonna pretend like there’s an easy answer. Personally I’ve always subscribed to the “Holy shit, two cakes!” argument as well as the “Fans are pretty devoted to the canon, so even if there was an Undertale sequel in competition with one Toby wants to create, I think fans would happily play both.” But I can understand how a situation like that feels like it’s veering too much into the corporate territory for comfort. And we’ve already seen it happening. Easy example is the Harry Potter Lexicon case. Rowling was perfectly happy to let librarian Steve Vander Ark create a lexicon in his free time, going so far as to give the website her Fan Site Award. The moment Steve wanted to turn it into a physical book though, something that reads as more in direct competition with something Rowling might write in the future? Lawsuit. Despite the fact that making money is the only real change here. Steve was still just a fan creating a fanwork in his free time. The website was already in competition with anything Rowling wrote (arguably it was more competitive as a free website, given that ease of access). I still believe wholeheartedly that whenever canonical authors publish something official, people are inclined to buy it. Regardless of how many unofficial works there might be out there. Yet we still have that knee-jerk reaction of, “No, no. Your work can’t be next to mine on the shelf.” 

Steve eventually was able to publish a (revised) version of the lexicon, given our rulings on reference guides. Nevertheless, the reaction from Rowling demonstrates the overall mindset: fanworks are great until they’re potentially too good, too popular, too capable of standing next to the canon as an equal. And it’s that blurring line of when something becomes too ____ that we’re all struggling with; when the fan is no longer just a fan, when the influence and quality of their work is in competition with the original. And is it really in competition at all? 

[itsclydebitches]

I really like reading your meta insights. It gives me an idea of what to do, what not to do, and what to do better when it comes to my own original stories. I just wanted to tell you that and to keep it up. When you wish to, of course. :)

I’m so glad you enjoy them!! 💜Yes, I’m hoping to carve out more time for  “formal” metas. AKA stuff like RWBY recaps as opposed to just answering asks. I’ve also got a couple of non-fandom specific posts that I want to get written at some point. I’m almost finished one on TV title sequences, so if anyone is interested in diving a bit into Dexter, Dead Like Me, Star Trek, The Good Fight, and Good Omen’s opening credits, that’ll be appearing at some point in the soon-ish future!  

[seventeendeer]

I am a curious bean. 🌐 and 👻

nice, I love talking, thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk!!

🌐 Languages you can speak and/or are learning. Which are you fluent in

my first language is Danish, and I’m fluent in English. knowing Danish means that I can understand Norwegian pretty much with no trouble (and to a lesser extent Swedish). I’ve also learned German and Spanish in school and can understand a good amount of it, but I can only speak/write extremely limited amounts of Spanish and I’m totally lost when it comes to speaking/writing German even though I had both languages for three years

I also took half a year of Latin once which is surprisingly useful?? you just shove English and Spanish together and add some consonants and then you get Latin? it’s wild

finally, I like to try to pick up words and grammar from Hawaiian and Japanese, just because they’re cool languages with very little relation to the languages I’ve already learned/tried to learn

I really like languages even though I’m not very good at learning new ones, which is why this list is so long and disjointed, I just like. mouthsounds. and literature. it’s neat

👻 Do you believe in ghosts

I am a firm believer in the notion that humanity doesn’t know Most Things, so while I don’t actively believe in/worry about ghosts, I also wouldn’t at all be surprised if they were a thing

I like to keep an open mind about most supernatural stuff just because the world is already super weird and I don’t wanna pretend that I am personally smart enough to make the call regarding what’s real and what isn’t

I do love watching supernatural sightings on youtube ... regardless of how fake or real it is, it’s just fun to get in on real life ghost stories

[seventeendeer]

Is Mountain Dew okay?

definitely, that is a welcome addition to the household

[rainbowchibbit]

This is one of the best things I”ve ever opened up my ask box to.