Fanfic?? there’s no such thing as VC fanfic… pfffft. What are you crazy honestly??!
^Lestat is laughing bc he knows I is sarcastic.
I have a huge list of faves. HUGE. But the thing about VC fanfic is that we still have to be sort of careful about sharing it bc of reasons (under the cut if you wanna know why).
MY faves may not be what you’re looking for as I tend to skew L/L, since they are the OTP I am hopelessly afflicted with, but I have some drabbles and links to fic saved with other characters in my #fanfic, and #damn you and your perfect headcanon perfection tags here. There’s also some fine stuff in the @vcsecretgifts archive.
has a mission statement about protecting fanworks from copyright infringement arguments, so I feel pretty safe recc’ing stuff that’s on there:
Gulfport: A British Petroleum Fanfic (Part One) by hw_campbell_jnr – There are 2 parts and it’s incomplete but this is devastatingly beautiful long!fic. Hipster modern Lestat and Louis, Lestat going by a pseudonym, politics woven in, it’s just too good. It annoys me how good it is. I am annoyed. I would be less annoyed if it were COMPLETED.
First Light by Rebness– Such feels, Claudia’s POV on her final night ;A;
The Grim Brothers by Rebness – incomplete but it’s a fun little werewolf AU! I hope the author picks it up again someday.
In short, Anne Rice had waged war on VC fanfic in the mid-90s, sic’ing her lawyers on many fanfic writers, eventually breaking apart fanfic sites (“speculative fiction” or “spec” archives/communities) and driving many of these writers to stop writing altogether or do so in a more underground way.
Currently, she’s had conflicting stances on fanfic, but hasn’t made outright war at nearly that level. We try not to tag her in discussions of it, basically, we don’t try to provoke her by making our caches of VC fanfic known. Especially on Facebook, where she’s very active and might see it. She posted this on her FB in 2014 (I think):
I’ve been seeing a lot of posts lately about how fandom can
be better to its writers. They’re all
wonderful posts, with lots of good things to say about the importance of not
just leaving Kudos, but also comments.
And this might seem self-serving, but I’m going to say it
anyway. Right now, most of fandom is
located on Tumblr, and I think these posts are leaving out a very important
step that’s just as simple as hitting the Kudos button.
Reblogs.
I cannot tell you how many people who commented on Mise said
that the reason they read it was because they saw it appear so many times on
their dash. And I can’t tell you how
excited it makes me to see it appear on my dash because someone else is talking
about it. Honestly, sometimes I think I
get more thrill out of being on someone’s rec list or seeing someone else
promote my story than I do from getting that Kudos email.
(I do love that Kudos email, though, don’t get me wrong.)
I feel like this used to happen more often. Even a year ago – I’d see the reblogs of “New
Chapter” posts for stories I followed before I’d see the original post. And it was great, because I’d see the excited
squee of other readers and that would in turn get me excited to read, and then I’d jump in even more excited than I
would have been otherwise. These days…
yeah, not so much. I can’t tell you the
last time I saw a reblog of a story I followed.
Or a story I didn’t follow, honestly.
I’m not sure what changed.
Here’s the thing: just like with artists… if you “like” that
art post, only the artist will know. But if you reblog it, then you’re giving
someone else a chance to like it too.
Want to support your favorite fandom writers? Want to make sure they get all the love and
attention they deserve? Then reblog their story announcements. Share
their stories on Tumblr or Twitter. (AO3 even has a handy little button that lets you do it super easy.) It takes all of a minute to do – less, in some cases.
You don’t have to be a fic rec blog to tell your flist you like a fic, and that they should read it too.
YES. This is so, so true. I so appreciate reblogs of fic posts, and they tend to be rare. People will like a fic post and then sometimes go back and unlike it later, which always freaks me out. Did they decide they didn’t like the fic after all? (I’ve since learned people will sort of use likes as bookmarks.)
But yes, please reblog fic announcement and fic rec posts! It’s word-of-mouth advertising and we appreciate it so much.
Yes, THIS!! I can’t tell you how excited I get at reblogs, because then I know my fic will come in contact with a larger audience! Likes are awesome, too, but reblogs means (to me) that you like it–or my writing in general– enough to want others to read it (or maybe you just want to support me, and that’s brilliant, too)!!
This is especially important because in fandom we have a bit of a thing against self-promotion—especially outside of our own blogs, but even sometimes within them, too. We need you to reblog and rec and promote us, or our stories fizzle out and die in the sand. We need you to create buzz about our stories, because we can’t really do it ourselves without treading on some unspoken lines.
Drabble Dimanche offering from 6/8/15. Prompts used: Buried, Worse, Born.
Previously appearing OCs are pleased to witness Lestat amusing himself – and everyone else. Also, Lestat is quite proficient in all uses of modern technology, thank you very much.
Fair use is … wholly authorized by the law. That’s what the 9th Circuit said today, in a ruling that will become a terrific tool to support sharing of transformative works (like fanfic, fanart, cosplay, fanfilms, filks, etc.).
Back in 2001 and 2003, when I first started writing and speaking about fair use in connection with what we’re now calling “fan law”, we did a lot of argiing by analogy. Caselaw hadn’t really caught up with how people were actually using the internet and definitely hadn’t caught up with the idea that fans of a show or book or film or band or piece of art or work of creativity would create a “follow-on work” and share it at no cost to anyone, on the internet.
But lawyers argue by analogy – we go before a court and say “this is similar to that, and thus the laws for that should also apply to this”. That’s how it works (at least in the US) so it was reasonable to say because of court rulings in The Wind Done Gone and the 2 Live Crew case re Pretty Woman, or a 1996 case in the 11th Circuit that said “
fair use is not an infringement, that (noncommercially distributed) fanworks – as transformative works – were fair use and thus were not infringements of someone’s copyright.
By and large, over the last fifteen years (and actually, through the 90s too) the courts have agreed with this concept every time something that parallels an aspect of fanworks comes before an appellate court. Click the Fair Use tag here for examples.
However, today the 9th Circuit issued its ruling in Lenz v. Universal, a case that dates back EIGHT YEARS to a pre-Google time at YouTube, when the tv networks were all freaking out about this new way that people could get content via the internet, and the music companies were continuing their perpetual angst about the idea that certain uses of songs could be, in any way noninfringing.
While Lenz doesn’t really redefine large swaths of law, it makes a few points explicit and clear:
Fair use is not just excused by the law, it is wholly authorized by the law.
A copyright holder must consider the existence of fair use before sending a takedown notification.
The DMCA requires consideration of fair use prior to sending a takedown notification…
If a copyright holder ignores or neglects our unequivocal holding that it must consider fair use before sending a takedown notification, it is liable for damages.
A copyright holder who pays lip service to the consideration of fair use by claiming it formed a good faith belief when there is evidence to the contrary is still subject to §512(f) liability.
The court also quoted a brief from transformativeworks (OTW/AO3) where we set forth when computer programs might be of use in finding infringements where “(1) the video track matches the video track of a copyrighted work submitted by a content owner; (2) the audio track matches the audio track of that same copyrighted work;and (3) nearly the entirety…is comprised of a single copyrighted work.” As you can see, that process wouldn’t be applicable for fanworks.
The ruling doesn’t mean an end to automatic takedown notices; where a file of concern matches exactly to a single copyrighted work *and* nearly the entirety of the file of concern is comprised of that single copyrighted work, bots and automated notices would still be viable.
But a video manifesting mashup culture or a story that’s a follow-on work or a meme that includes a copyrighted photo and text that comments on or criticizes something, or educational infographs should not be DMCA-ed by autobots, and any analysis by the copyright-holder of the fanfic, fanart, etc. they’re looking at mustactually look to current law regarding whether something is a transformative work/fair use/otherwise noninfringing.
Does this mean that creative fans will suddenly start experiencing fewer DMCA takedowns? Possibly, but also maybe not. But it does mean that if a creative fan gets a DMCA takedown/notification about fanworks (especially when there’s no commercial sale) the fan can and should push back on whether the sender has actually considered fair use; if it’s obvious that they haven’t, the creative fan may be able to seek damages.
Perhaps that risk of damages will be a disincentive to copyright-holders, so they focus their attention, and DMCA notices, on works that are actual counterfeits – copies of entire movies, books or tv serieses, or high resolution copies of art.
Copyright holders cannot shirk their duty to consider—in good faith and prior to sending a takedown notification—whether allegedly infringing material constitutes fair use, a use which the DMCA plainly contemplates as authorized by the law.
Also if you haven’t yet, take a look at the great candidates running for OTW board this year (the nonprofit that supports the AO3 and the Legal Committee and their advocacy work, among other awesome projects) and don’t forget to vote! (You have to be a $10 minimum dues-paying member to vote.)
I-want-my-IWTV 