seeing someone’s work on ao3 after seeing their username on tumblr is like seeing your friend dressed up in formalwear when 2 hours ago they were eating pizza in their sweats on your couch
and then when you see a writer who you know mainly from ao3 on tumblr it’s like running into the local news anchor at the grocery store
you know who they are but they’ve never seen you before
As we sit on the cusp of changes to the Internet, after your other activities to support Internet freedom, archive your
fandom stuff.
Save the electronic files of your favorite online fandom works. Consider print-outs of your favorite online
material. And save paper
ephemera from fandom events.
Why save? Because you put the effort into a fanwork. Because you may be surprised when a fandom stays alive for years, or gets revived, or when an academic asks to cite your work. Because it’s stupidly hard to find items on Tumblr. Because, lo, in ages past, many fandom archives have risen and fallen, taking favorite fics off the ‘Net. Because it made you happy, makes you remember. Because you never know.
What can
you save?
Fanart
Stories you wrote
Epic comments on stories you wrote
Stories you love that other people wrote
Meta and meta-related discussions
Translations others did of your works
Physical items: paper ephemera, clothing, accessories, art prints and drawings.
Behind the cut…saving from Tumblr and AO3, delving into lost web sites, how to save computer files for the long term, and why I’m glad I saved physical fandom items from 10+ years ago.
It just kicked the everloving shit out of the duck for threatening you, and wishes you a good, creative day. You are Safe Now.
this is the idea chicken
she lays an idea egg every day whether you use it or not
idea eggs will be plentiful for you because the world is a vast and fascinating source of ideas and you don’t need luck or blog voodoo to have them for breakfast every morning
wasn’t gonna, but then…
…now I’m imagining the Cassowary being a superhero, the Chicken being a healer person for the Cassowary, and the Duck being a villian.
Thank you, Feathered Dinosaurs and their chicken sidekicks.
fanfiction is a story written by a person in the fandom because breaking into the creators office and telling them that everything that they did is wrong and rewriting it is considered “rude” and “illegal”
One of our favorite definitions of fanfiction, from the Fanfic Definitions survey – results coming out on @fansplaining later this month! (via fansplaining)
Only 2 years ago, George Miller blew us away with Mad Max: Fury Road. Let’s take this second anniversary as an opportunity to witness what made the film such an awesome game changer.
from the article (emphasis mine):
Another characteristic that sets Fury Road apart in its genre
is the distinct lack of romance. Furiosa and Max never share a romantic
moment, even when the story could have easily made space for it. Their
connection is gripping in its intensity, as two characters with painful
pasts and bleak prospects come together to try for hope one last time…
and while it fuels some of the best fan creations on the internet, it’s
great that it isn’t canon. Fury Road is a rare instance in which a main female character holds her own without being a love interest.
note to self: just because someone did the thing you were thinking about doing, and did it way better than you could ever hope to do, doesn’t mean it would be stupid or pointless to go ahead and try to still do the thing anyway.
Also, when it comes to creative things? There really is no “better”.
Sure, someone might be more technically accomplished than you – you might not be able to colour as nicely or craft a sentence that rings as poetically – but art is only really secondarily about that. It’s firstmost about what you, uniquely, have to express, and how the precise way you express it might be what others need to relate to it – even if it’s less flashy, less “beautiful”, and gets fewer notes.
I promise you this: there are obscure fanfics with only a handful of notes that are the read-and-re-read favourites of someone too anxious to comment. There are drawings done by 14-year-olds in poorly-blended markers that are someone’s favourite because they spoke to something that nothing else did. There are covers of songs where your voice cracks and you cringe every time you hear it but someone thinks the way it cracked just at that moment added beauty to the song. There are angsty three-line poems you wrote at 4am that someone once called “pretentious emo trash” that are loved by someone else going through the same thing as you.
And I guarantee you, there is something unique about your art. Even if you’re “saying something someone else has said”. Even if you’re the thousandth person to take on the subject. Even if you feel like you’re not at all unique. You’re bound to express something, however subtle, that didn’t exist until then.
Art is about connection. And the more you create, the more chance you have of finding other people who experience the world the way you do.
“But the one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can.“ via @neil-gaiman
The “two cakes” theory of content production.
It was only yesterday that I was lamenting thing I no longer felt allowed to do because someone had done similar.
I ought to read this post daily. Maybe twice daily.
Author: darn, someone already baked a cake
Reader: *slams fist on desk*. TWO CAKES!!!! Give me all the caaaaaake!
Hi guys! So I know we all don’t actually read the terms and conditions of things and just hit agree assuming there’s nothing important in there (I do it too oops) but if you take writing commissions or anything involving money, then there’s actually something in the AO3 terms and conditions to be aware of.
Linking to a personal website or blog/social network where you are taking donations, posting commissions or mentioning published works is permitted, but advertising it directly on the Archive is not, nor is using language which one might interpret as requesting financial contributions. For example, you can say something to the effect of “check out my Tumblr if you want to know more about me and my writing” and include the link to the site, but you cannot specifically state anything about donations, commissions or sales on the Archive.
Today someone reported one of my fics as violating this condition – presumably because I’d mentioned my patreon in the author’s note (I wasn’t actively requesting donations either… I’d literally just mentioned that it existed, and that the fic in question was written as a thank-you for hitting one of my goals).
I’ve written to AO3 to check whether just saying ‘thank you to those who support me on patreon’ is fine and I’ll let you guys know when they get back to me, but if it’s still going too far in terms of being a ‘commercial promotion’ then I’ll just avoid mentioning this in the future! :’)
As I said, someone did actually report my fic for this – so there are people out there who are noticing/reporting these situations. Please be aware of this if you take fic commissions, or use patreon or ko-fi, because your account could end up suspended, which of course no one wants!
❤ ❤
UPDATE: AO3 got back to me – you’re not allowed to mention or link to patreon at all, regardless of how it’s phrased. Not sure if it’s the same for ko-fi but it might be better to be safe than sorry!
❤ @kahnah23 relevant to you and possibly some others~
That’s a fucking bullshit rule, I’m sorry. They shouldn’t deny you the opportunity to advertise your own work.
this isn’t just a self-determined descriptor; that’s a legal definition that requires adherence to specific rules and laws regarding income, profit, and donations.
this isn’t a “bullshit rule” just meant to prevent creators from advertising. in op’s post, the contact from ao3 offers a roundabout way to advertise. this rule ensures that ao3 and the organization for transformative works to stay a non-profit organization – this “bullshit rule” is essentially a way so that ao3 and the other services that the organization for transformative works can stay online.
it’s not just about maintaining nonprofit status. (i question if that’s even applicable here, since the profits in question don’t go to the organisation, but i know very little about nonprofit law. just a gut feeling.)
the actual point is, they run a legal services organisation for fans who get into legal trouble. they literally exist for the purpose of helping you not get into legal trouble. profiting from fan fiction very much opens you up to the possibility of getting into legal trouble. they’re not going to let people do things on their website that they know will land them in exactly that trouble.
and to be clear, just because everyone who slaps a patreon button on their tumblr isn’t getting sued, doesn’t mean they aren’t doing something for which they could be sued.
let me say it again: profiting from fan fiction very much opens you up to the possibility of getting into legal trouble.
here’s why.
use of other people’s characters is subject to copyright law. the general principle that makes downloading a movie or a song piracy also applies to the use of a character, assuming certain factors such as uniqueness.
how fan fiction has come to scrape by in the past: by not being a commercial enterprise.
in contrast, for use music, video, images incorporated into new works: by being significantly transformative.
these two factors, commerciality and transformativity, are considered side by side. the greater the transformativity, the less weight commerciality will be given. if something is highly transformative and non-commercial, then it’s almost certainly fine. down the other end, if it’s not at all transformative and commercial, forget it.
it’s a matter of judgement as to what degree of transformativity there is in the work that will push it over the line to overcome the general prohibition against commercial use. but fan fiction in the truest sense is barely transformative. in fact the goal is to come as close to copying a character as possible.
an analogy with the use of music: a cover band, despite every part of the performance of the song being done by that band, is still playing a song that was created by someone else. you, the fic writer, as covering someone else’s character.
the cover band you see at your local bar? they, or the local bar itself, have paid a fee to obtain permission to play that song. (even if they were playing for free they would still have to obtain permission, because any public performance of copyrighted music is prohibited.) in contrast, use of a line from one song in another another song that uses the line for parody? fine (Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, 510 U.S. 569 (1994)). let’s call that the AU with the names changed, the location different, and everything about that character’s backstory is gone. they just look like the actor and have a dialogue pattern that matches.
the better you are at writing a character in character, ironically the more likely you are to violate copyright law. and that’s why the commercial factor becomes incredibly relevant.
basically, don’t get paid, keep being cool with the law*.
*this is not an endorsement of the principles of copyright law itself. this is about what that law is and how it works.
People also forget the reason why disclamers on fics became so prevalent.
Please understand that profiting off fanfiction, fanart and all forms of fan-content is direct violation of copyrighted material.
Your commissions to draw popular characters? Direct violation of Copyright. AO3 works hard to maintain fandom expression protected. You hurt their cause by not adhering to their term of use.
They’re there so you won’t get sued.
On this front, fandom creators in the US may want to batten down the hatches because the Trump administration is pretty much guaranteed to highly favor intellectual property owners–especially groups like the MPAA and RIAA–over fair use and transformative works.
We’ve got a lot more legal precedent than we used to on our side, but this kind of ‘bullshit detail’ has historically been a lever for these people to hang a lawsuit on and no doubt it will be again.
Yeah, afaik fanworks have more legal protection than they used to, but that could go away in an instant.
Anybody else old enough to remember writing at the beginning of each chapter of their fiction “I DO NOT OWN X, I AM NOT MAKING ANY MONEY OFF X, I WRITE ONLY FOR THE LOVE OF A/B. X is the property of Y, please do not sue me I am 13 and you will only get 37 cents” because I am and this is why you don’t fuck around with copyright law. Fanworks have come a long way in respectability and legality. But profiting off it can still get you in trouble. Be careful kiddos.
do u guys ever look back at a piece of half-done writing and think ‘this could be brilliant. this could be my mona lisa. my starry night. my idris elba’ but you have absolutely no drive to finish it despite an unfaltering desire to see it finished
my idris elba
The reason that you don’t finish it – or at least that I struggle to finish things – is that it locks the work into its final form. As long as it’s unfinished it still has that limitless potential to be stunning. When you finish it, that’s it, only the things you put into it are actually in it, the potential dissipates, it has to stand on its own. And that’s scary, because usually you discover the thing is not as perfect as your dreams of it imagined it could be.
BUT very often for me that initial fear and disappointment fades pretty quickly. A few weeks after I finish a story that didn’t feel ‘right’ to me just after finishing, the fantasy of the story fades and only the story remains. And usually I find it’s actually pretty neat. So there’s that.
Steel Phoenix Studios 