So I’m on AO3 and I see a lot of people who put “I do not own [insert fandom here]” before their story.
Like, I came on this site to read FAN fiction. This is a FAN fiction site. I’m fully aware that you don’t own the fandom or the characters. That’s why it’s called FAN FICTION.
Oh you youngins… How quickly they forget.
Back in the day, before fan fiction was mainstream and even encouraged by creators… This was your “please don’t sue me, I’m poor and just here for a good time” plea.
Cause guess what? That shit used to happen.
how soon they forget ann rice’s lawyers.
What happened with her lawyers.
History became legend. Legend became myth…. And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost.
I worked with one of the women that got contacted by Rice’s lawyers. Scared the hell out of her and she never touched fandom again. The first time I saw a commission post on tumblr for fanart, I was shocked.
One of the reasons I fell out of love with her writing was her treatment of the fans… (that and the opening chapter of Lasher gave me such heebie-jeebies with the whole underage sex thing I felt unclean just reading it.)
I have zero problem with fanart/fic so long as the creators aren’t making money off of it. It is someone else’s intellectual property and people who create fan related works need to respect that (and a solid 98% of them do.)
The remaining 2% are either easily swayed by being gently prompted to not cash in on someone else’s IP. Or they DGAF… and they are the ones who will eventually land themselves in hot water. Either way: this isn’t much of an excuse to persecute your entire fanbase.
But Anne Rice went off the deep end with this stuff by actively attacking people who were expressing their love for her work and were not profiteering from it.
The Vampire Chronicles was a dangerous fandom to be in back in the day. Most of the works I read/saw were hidden away in the dark recesses of the internet and covered by disclaimers (a lot of them reading like thoroughly researched legal documents.)
And woe betide anyone who was into shipping anyone with ANYONE in that fandom. You were most at risk, it seemed, if your vision of the characters deviated from the creators ‘original intentions.’ (Hypocritical of a woman who made most of her living writing erotica.)
Imagine getting sued over a headcanon…
Put simply: we all lived in fear of her team of highly paid lawyers descending from the heavens and taking us to court over a slashfic less than 500 words long.
all
of
this
Reblogging because I can’t believe there are people out there who don’t know the story behind fan fiction disclaimers.
Yep I used to have disclaimers on all my Buffy fic back in the day. The Buffy creators were mostly pretty chill about fandom but it’s not like it is now. You did NOT talk about fandom with anyone except other fandom people and bringing it up at cons was a massive no no because of stuff like this.
I think Supernatural (and Misha Collins specifically) was when that wall between fandom and creators started to break down. It’s a relatively new thing.
I remember going to a Merlin panel down in London and a girl sitting next to me asked the cast about slash and I thought she was going to get kicked out!
Fandom history is important.
Oh, this brings back some not so-awesome ‘90s fandom memories!
Oh man, let me tell you about the X-Files fandom. Lawyers for FOX sued, threatened, and generally terrified the owners of fan websites on a regular basis. God help you if you wrote or created original art set in their (expansive) universe or worse – dared to write about their characters. Even people who weren’t creating fanworks, just hosting Geocities pages about how much people liked the show would be sent C&D orders or actually fined. When I was first discovering the concept, the first rule of fandom was you do not talk about fandom because the consequences could be devastating.
It was such a strange and uncomfortable experience for me when fans in LOTR and Potter fandoms suddenly started shoving their work in people’s faces speaking publicly about fandom and wanting to engage in dialogue with the creators and actors of the Thing they were into. Fan stuff was supposed to stay online, in archives and list-serves and zines we passed around because it just wasn’t cool to talk about it and it could get you in a boatload of trouble. The freedom we have to create and gather together in a shared space, or actually be acknowledged in any way by people outside the fandom was inconceivable to my fannish, teenaged self. I want fans these days to understand how amazing modern fandom really is, cherish the community, and appreciate what it took to get us here.
“if you found this by googling yourself, hit back now. this means you, pete wentz”
Oh hey, even more blasts from the past.
I was one of the ones who got a love letter from Anne Rice’s lawyers. Bear in mind that up until that point her publisher had encouraged fanfic and worked with the archive keeper (one of my roommates at the time) to drum up publicity for upcoming books and so on.
I could tell such tales of how much Anne screwed over her fans back then. The tl;dr version is that she and her peeps would use fan projects as free market research and then bring in the lawyers once it was felt Anne could make money off of it herself. (Talismanic Tours being one of the most offensive examples of this.)
But where fanfic is concerned not only did we get nastygrams but one of my friends had Anne’s lawyer trying to fuck up her own privately owned business which had NOTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING ANNE RELATED. Said friend was a small business owner with health issues who wasn’t exactly rolling in money, so guess how well that went?
On top of that when yours truly tried to speak out about it I discovered that someone in Anne’s camp had been cyber stalking me to the point where they took all the tiny crumbs of personal information I had posted over the course of five years or so and used it to doxx me (before that was even a term and in early enough days of the WWW that this wasn’t an easy task) and post VERY personal information about me on the main fandom message board of the time. Luckily for me the mod was my friend and she took that down post haste, but it was still oodles of fun feeling that violated and why to this day I am very strict about keeping my fandom and personal lives separate online.
Hence why those of us in the fandom at the time who still gave enough of a shit to want to keep writing fic DID keep writing fic, but shoved it so far underground and slapped it with so many disclaimers they could’ve outweighed the word count of War & Peace. It wasn’t just for the purpose of protecting fic but for trying to protect our personal lives as well.
Lucasfilm also sent cease-and-desist letters to Star Wars fanzines publishing slash.
My favourite bit I read from one included the idea that you weren’t allowed to have any explicit content, of which anything queer, no matter how tame, was included, to “preserve that innocence even Imperial crew members must be imagined to have”.
Yeah. The same Imperial crew members who helped build the Death Star to commit planetary genocide.
(It’s one reason Sinjir Velus, while I still have some issues with him, feels like such a delicious ‘f*** you’.)
Later on, they were apparently persuaded to ‘allow’ fans to write slash, provided in ‘remained within the nebulous bounds of good taste’.
(On a related note, if I wasn’t quite so attached to my URL, I would 100% change it to ‘Nebulous Bounds’, because that’s just downright catchy)
Anne McCaffrey had this huge long set of rules about how exactly you were allowed to play in her sandbox. Dragonriders of Pern was my first online fandom, and I was big into the Pern RP scene – and just about every fan-Weyr had a copy of these lists of rules McCaffrey wanted enforced. One of which was ‘no porn’ and another was basically ‘it can’t be gay’ (and for a while ‘no fanfiction posted online’? which??? anyway.)
She relaxed a little as time went on, but still.
Let’s not forget: the reason AO3 is called ‘Archive of our own’ is because it was created in response to some bullshit that assholes were trying to play with fan creators. Basically (if I remember the fiasco correctly) trying to mine fandom creators for content which they could then use to generate ad profit on their shitty websites. When the series creators objected, the fans tried to pull their content, only to find that the website hoster resisted, claiming their content was all his now.
That wasn’t even all that long ago…
fandom history class
To this day, *talking* about writing or reading fanfiction – just acknowledging that it exists – to anyone other than people I know are in fandom as well, feels like a dangerous act. The strict separation I maintained between my real life identity, my online identity, and my fandom identity (yes, they were separate, because some of the most vicious and mocking people were fellow nerds) has broken down a bit these days, but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to integrate them as freely as some younger fans do.
The OTW Legal Committee’s mission includes education, assistance, and advocacy.
We create and post educational materials about developments in fandom-related law on transformativeworks.org and on archiveofourown.org.
We assist individual fans when their fanworks are challenged, we answer fans’ questions about law relevant to fanworks, and we help fans find legal representation.
We partner with other advocacy organizations and coalitions in the U.S. and around the world.
We advocate for laws and policies that promote balance and protect fanworks and fandom.
And much more!
I haven’t been involved in fandom stuff all that long, but I find this stuff so fascinating!
whew, i feel old, but that’s mostly bc i was on forums way way waaaaay too young. but this? yes. all the way.
people had password protected forums on the weirdest, most unconventional websites. before you could even be approved by the mods they would search your blog, your other accounts, question you, everything, all because we were broke teens and preteens trying to do something for fun and if someone got in who could doxx you or send your work over to a lawyer? that was it, you were OVER. that’s also part of where fandom wars and the defense of fandom came from: quote unquote “enemy” fandoms would infiltrate just to hurt you.
@theglintoftherail makes a very good point: ao3 is a goddamn haven. and they’re a great team of lawyers and people dedicated to protecting fanworks! part of the reason it’s so great is because they know there’s no one like them out there. they also go to the ends of the damned earth to protect you and to be inclusive, which is why there’s shit like tentacle porn and underage and dubcon. because they’re dedicated to protecting readers and creators to the death. they don’t advocate for it and they have the extensive rating and tagging system because of that (legit the best tagging system i’ve ever seen) but they don’t know if you’re dealing with trauma or if you need to get something out.
do not forget your fandom, kids. jesus
Who else knew nothing about this? A show of hands
I’m just the right age to remember the disclaimers and to have HEARD about the Anne Rice, Anne McCaffrey, and X-Files fiascos, but I was never in any of those fandoms and I was more or less on the tail end of that. I can’t imagine having to be scared to tell people I write fanfic. So glad we’ve come so far.
20+ years ago, I used to be terrified someone would try to sue me for the fanfic I was writing. I covered my work in disclaimers and posted it from school PCs on the ‘guest’ account so no one could track me. I remember looking up at the school security camera as I posted my work, wondering if the school got a Cease & Desist letter if they’d trawl through the footage and discover it was me and know I was writing naughty gay fanfic. I imagined the entire school finding out what I’d written.
Conversely, last year, I featured in the ‘notable fans’ section of the Tomb Raider 20th Anniversary’ book – an official publication – as a fanfic writer.
It’s fantastic how fandom is becoming a part of enjoying content and is slowly, slowly being normalized ❤
This is a Very Important Fandom History Class – all newer/young fans should read this, and if you’re interested, check out more of the creators vs. fans history on Fanlore. I vividly recall the days when we were regularly threatened (and, in fairness, legally they were right) by cease-and-desist letters or calls from lawyers from Universal, Fox and other studios. I was in the X-Files fandom from its earliest days, and I know this happened to friends of mine. This was back in the days of actual paper zines – there was no FF.net or AO3, or really much of an Internet.
The Internet, though, had really just become a thing right about the time X-Files hit the airwaves in the early ‘90s (we had some of the first fan chats on the old Delphi forums – ah, the days of waiting for a line of text to slowlyyyyy unfold across the screen!), and so everything was already in the midst of a shift…it would be a little while before the studios realized that fans sharing and creating content was, bingo, FREE PROMOTION for their properties, and something to be encouraged, not shut down.
I never cease chuckling now when I read an issue of Entertainment Weekly that tries to analyze and parse fanfic or fan art, or see studios sending out content directly to Big Name Fans whom they know will blog and create buzz about it. Or see actors and talk show hosts sharing fan art and stories on the air, for good or for not-so-good. We would never have dreamed this would happen back in the old days, when we had to run scared of most of the studios in order to create fanworks. We’re actually pretty mainstream now, and although that, too, has its good and bad points, it’s SO MUCH BETTER now for fan creations than it ever has been.
Treasure that freedom – but know the past, too.
When I read Ngozi’s policy on fanworks for Check, Please, I nearly cried. The idea of a content creator encouraging fandom, LOVING fandom? That was revolutionary to me in 2016. IN 2016. But even there, she does ask that people acknowledge that the characters belong to her.
I grew up in fandom as an X-phile, and was doing kind of a lot of fanart/t-shirts and was METICULOUSLY careful to make no profit of any kind on them because it probably WOULD have gotten me sued. I wasn’t out money, but it worked out to the dime covering costs and no more.
I’ve been pondering fanwork-friendly fandoms as a concept for a while now, and have some ideas for ways of protecting both content creators and fans. Anyway.
Learn this history, young’uns. And then get off my lawn. *shakes cane*
Oh, you precious children. I’ve got 20 years in online fandom under my belt and I remeber, or was part of, *all of this*.
Bonjour! Happy very belated NYE to you, too, and I’m sorry this took so long, to be honest, your first question deals with a potentially very controversial topic.
I’m answering this publicly so other ppl can chime in if they feel comfortable doing so.
1|2 [How would you say Daniel’s relationship with Marius and Armand differ from one another but still hold similarities?]
^[X] I don’t know if this is a legit quote from Angelina Jolie (it’s more poignant now that they’re broken up, if so ;A;), BUT. I think the quote makes a good point.
A real relationship may not always be rainbows and sparkles. Someone seeing you at your worst and still loving you. It’s complicated. I know of relationships that seem to be all fluff on the surface, but underneath, resentment grows, when someone in it feels like they’re giving more than they feel is fair, but can’t communicate for fear of making it worse. When you confront your loved one with your issues, sometimes it gets ugly. That’s healthy, to be able to have those difficult conversations to improve things.
So when we compare fictional ships, like real life, there’s much that happens off-screen, whether in individual reader’s headcanons, or reported by unreliable narrators. We get info from canon and work with it.
Both ships you mention have potentially major controversial stuff about them and this is a blog for entertainment, so I don’t want to get deeply into that. But I would say, in my own reading, that I see both ships as having pairings who deeply care for each other, and express that love in different ways, and they’re not always able to do that smoothly.
Without meaning any disrespect to other fans, my own interpretation of these two ships is pretty superficial, as they involve characters I haven’t spent as much mental space exploring.
Daniel/Armand helped each other in many ways during the time that they were together. Daniel taught Armand about the modern world, gave him a will to live, and Armand was endlessly fascinating to Daniel, not only for being a vampire, but because of Armand himself. I do believe Daniel really and truly fell in love with Armand. Their sass was so complementary! And it was NOT all rainbows and sparkles for them, they had a feisty and rocky ship for 10 years!
The beginning of Daniel/Marius isn’t as explicit in canon… I remember just suddenly finding out sometime after QOTD that Daniel had gone to live with Marius and I was like, “Really?” and it seemed like Marius was in more of a caretaker role with him, as Daniel was somewhat mad, reeling from everything he’d experienced in QOTD, as can happen with fledglings for the first few months/years, and this developed into a legit canon ship between those two. Marius seems to have learned from the past that he can’t have a teacher/student ship and expect it to last, at least to my mind, he treats Daniel with the respect of an emotional equal. Maybe we’ll get more info on them in the next book.
2|2 [What if Louis’ brother had been turned and not Louis. How do you think Paul’s (( That’s his name right? )) story would have played out?]
[X] Yep his name is Paul. That’s really tough bc we barely get to know Paul, except that he’s 15, and deeply religious, ppl think he’s gone mad, so much so that he believes he really had visions of St. Dominic and the Virgin Mary. I think the killing-to-live aspect would have been totally rejected by such a religious person. He probably wouldn’t want to see his own family in his damned state, ever again ;A; Paul would probably rather go into the sun than feed on animals and enjoy any of the vampiric gifts.
The other way Paul might have gone is in deciding that Lestat was an actual angel, and choosing to redirect all his religious fervor towards Lestat… and we don’t need anyone doing that! Lestat says he wants to be worshiped, but I think these are the words of someone who was starved for affection in his formative years. He doesn’t want the unconditional love of a religious zealot, not really. He wants love that has to be earned, over and over again, and the reward of that love is that it’s genuine and not because he’s just that pretty.
So I think Lestat would tire of such a sycophant and move on, Paul would go into the sun.
I was digging around in my archive bc I was SURE I had ONE fanart of Louis and Claudia fighting with the European zombpire, but I can’t find it :[ Maybe someone else knows of it?
Have this, anyway, at least this creature doesn’t have to waste money on lipstick, no lips!: [X]
[I’m re-reading the original trilogy (IWTV, TVL, QoTD), and I was wondering if any of the later books ever talk about the revenant Louis meets in Transylvania with Claudia? Is it ever explained? What do you think caused it?]
I don’t think those European zombpires
are ever explicitly explained in the first 3 books or mentioned in later canon (except in a vague way in TVL by Armand and Marius, quotes further down this post). I might be wrong. If they are mentioned in canon again, I don’t think it was explained what they are :-
TL;DR: The Dark Gift is not an exact science. Your theory could be right! Personally, I don’t think the zombpires share the same origin story as the conscious vampires in VC. Some fans think AR included the
zombpires
as a way to sort of low-key slam the older vampire mythos, since her vampires are SOOO much better… with no issues with crucifixes, having reflections, etc.!
I don’t think we know enough about the zombpires to say definitively how they’re made, so it’s kind of up for grabs in that sense. However each reader sees it! Your theory about the mortals closing their minds during the Dark Trick could be the answer!
If a mortal was deliberately closing their mind to a vampire intent on turning them, thus locking the vampiric parasite out of their head/memories… that could be a reason for the mortal MIND not accepting the vampiric parasite, resulting in THE BODY turning, but NOT the mind, the mortal LOSING their mind to madness, having lost control of their body, thus, zombpire. Quite possible! Would random mortals know how to do this? Could be an unconscious defense mechanism? Maybe!
Hit the jump for more on this, cut for length and/or spoilers.
[My personal theory is that when a vampire makes someone with their mind closed (the way we know some can do), it results in a revenant, as all the making-scenes in the series describe sharing memories and emotions; it seems pretty vital!]
That’s possible, in VC context, closing one’s mind is smtg you do to protect your mind from being read by others, and it takes practice and skill. Talamasca members seem trained to do it.
Refusing the Dark Gift or accepting it, a strong will to live does seem to be a necessary element. Even the vampires who were turned against their will (Lestat, Marius, etc.) actively refused it right up until their last breaths, but that shows a strong will to live, not a closed-off mind. Just in IWTV:
Lestat tells Louis to be still and listen for their blood flow, keep his consciousness during the process: “It is your consciousness, your will, which must keep you alive.‘”
Learning from this, Louis tells Madeleine to keep her will to live, “" `Hold fast to me when I take you,’ I said to her, seeing her eyes grow wide, her mouth open. `And when the swoon is strongest, listen all the harder for the beating of my heart. Hold and say over and over,“ I will live. ” ‘”
And other Dark Gift scenes have some variations on that, I think.
In IWTV, Claudia is fascinated by the European zombpires, tries to puzzle them out, she’s considering how much blood needs to be exchanged and how strong the heart of the mortal is:
“But Claudia’s waking thoughts were of a far more practical nature. Over and over, she had me recount that night in the hotel in New Orleans when she’d become a vampire, and over and over she searched the process for some clue to why these things we met in the country graveyards had no mind.
… ” `After all, what does it take to make those creatures?’ she went on. `Those vagabond monsters? How many drops of your blood intermingled with a man’s blood … and what kind of heart to survive that first attack?’
But how would his blood get into them? He’d have to have an open wound, idk, it seems kind of awkward to imagine Louis accidentally turning any of his victims, and it makes him super uncomfortable to talk about it with her.
Later in canon we see vampires giving drops of their blood to mortals to heal them or as a sensual gesture, and those mortals aren’t given enough to turn them, so that little isn’t enough to make a zombpire.
Claudia seems to think it’s really about the strength of the heart of the victim:
“ `That pale-faced Emily, that miserable Englishman …’ she said, oblivious to the flicker of pain in my face. `Their hearts were nothing, and it was the fear of death as much as the drawing of blood that killed them. The idea killed them. But what of the hearts that survive? Are you sure you haven’t fathered a league of monsters who, from time to time, struggled vainly and instinctively to follow in your footsteps? What was their life span; these orphans you left behind you-a day there, a week here, before the sun burnt them to ashes or some mortal victim cut them down?’
^This seems to fit in line with the needing a strong will to live.
The Children of Darkness chose their fledglings with care, and even then it’s unpredictable. Armand in TVL:
But let Armand understand here also that the effect of the Dark Trick is unpredictable, even when passed on by the very young vampire and with all due care. For reasons no one knows, some mortals when Born to Darkness become as powerful as Titans, others may be no more than corpses that move. That is why mortals must be chosen with skill. Those with great passion and indomitable will should be avoided as well as those who have none.
Marius confirms this, still in TVL:
But no matter, only so many children can be made by one in a century. And new offspring will be weak. However, this is not necessarily a bad thing. The rule of the old covens had wisdom in it that strength should come with time. And then again, there is the old truth: you might make titans or imbeciles, no one knows why or how.
Nicolas might have become such a zombpire, the way he was barely functional as a fledgling at first.
By midnight it was clear that [Nicolas] would not speak or answer to any voice, or move of his own volition. He remained still and expressionless in the places to which he was taken. If the death pained him he gave no sign. If the new vision delighted him, he kept it to himself. Not even the thirst moved him. And it was Gabrielle who, after studying him quietly for hours, took him in hand, cleaning him and putting new clothes on him. – TVL
^But he does move when prodded and Lestat thinks Gabrielle can telepathically communicate with him, which makes him more functional than the European zombpires. Lestat is finally able to rouse him with the violin, so was Nicolas just refusing to talk, etc, or was he really unable? We don’t know.
First in my series of Vampire Chronicles playlists.
No Light No Light-Florence and the Machine/ Devil in the Details-Placebo/ Misery Loves Company-Emilie Autumn/ My Demons-Starset/ Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)-Emily Browning/ Everybody Wants To Rule The World-Lorde/ King-The Romanovs/ Fresh Blood-Eels/ Broken Crown-Mumford & Sons/ The Devil Within-Digital Daggers/ Short Change Hero-The Heavy/ Undisclosed Desires-Muse/ Pompeii-Bastille/ Duvet-Boa/ Psychobabble-Frou Frou/ Exogenesis Symphony Pt 1-Muse
Hello anon! 😀 I’m not the best at making tutorials and giving tips but I’ll do my best to answer your question! ^^
I sure do love drawing lips! It might be in fact my favourite part of the face to draw.
Let’s see what makes them so irresistible 😉
tip 1: let them shine! that tiny shiny spot does wonders for the lips – it makes them fuller, softer and more three dimensional. It also makes the lips look slightly wet. Sexy!
tip 2: Build the depth with some darker spots. Quirking corners are great for that, and if you make the darkest spot in the middle of the mouth it seems like it’s about to part. And maybe whisper something seductive 😉
tip 3: The very middle of upper lip is my favourite area, it gives the mouth its distinct character. It’s also a great spot to play with shadows, one lighter stroke, one darker stroke and you have a very dramatic shading going on!
tip 4: When drawing lineart it’s good to keep the line varying in width and pressure. Equally thin, flat line might look good in anime, but even there it’s rarely the case. Making the line thicker in the shadowy part of the mouth adds depth to your drawing.
General remarks:
I almost never outline the upper lip, it tends to look weird. Just a thin “U” shape in the middle is usually enough.
Upper lip is usually in the shadow, at least half of it. Lower lip tends to catch the light, especially with pouty plump lips. The more shadow you add under it, the fuller the lips look.
When drawing male characters I usually play around with skin tones instead of pink and red (see the third row of examples). But it’s not a rule. Some boys rock them rosy lips. 😉
Never paint the teeth white, never. Gray, yellowish and pinkish tones are great.
And the final tip: use reference! Look for pictures of people with beautiful lips, with thin lips and full lips, try to see which line goes where and how it changes the shape and expression. I hardly ever draw without a reference.
I-want-my-IWTV 