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*.
uses of the terms “lemon” and “lime” (apparently there was a difference. lemons were porn but i’m STILL not sure what a lime is. i also have NO idea how “lemon” came to mean “porn”. not sure i want to, tbh.)
soooo many “i do not own please don’t sue me” disclaimers
fics where the whole premise that the whole cast was trapped someplace together and the reviewers would leave questions in their comments and then the characters would answer them in-story. like “ask that guy with the glasses” except shitty and usually self-indulgent towards the author’s preferred ships. (i may have written one of these when i was 12.)
authors who legit updated on a schedule (and stuck to it). some every fucking day. (you still see this on ao3, but not NEARLY as much.)
fanfic authors who basically had a following and fandom of their own. (again, this still happens, but not as much. not sure if that’s a good thing or not.) not bad considering most of them were 13.
“yaoi!!! that means boy kisses!!! don’t like don’t read!!!”
putting “————-” or “xxxxxxx” bc ff.net wouldn’t let you insert a horizontal line to show the end of a section
very long, very rambley author’s notes
some of which had the authors interacting with/talking to the characters in the fic.
fics that weren’t so much stories as they were a chapter-by-chapter detailing of all the cliche plots and tropes used in that fandom’s shitty fanfics. (i actually sorta miss these, tbh)
songfics. no, not fics inspired by songs. fics where the lyrics were put in between every paragraph, with some lyrics altered to fit the characters. it was horrific.
fics that were up-front about the oc being a stand-in for the reader so they can read about themselves getting with their fave character. as in, it was written in second person and the summary outright said the pov character was meant to be the reader.
the forums being used for roleplay before tumblr rp was a “thing”
long, LONG author profiles, filled with things like “copy/paste if you’re a [whatever] shipper!” or obviously fake sickly sweet anecdotes (think chain email levels of bad), or worst of all (in my opinion), a pro-life anti-abortion story from the point of view of a fetus. it was as bad as it sounds, if not worse.
listing all your ships on your author profile page
seeing a title that was all lowercase letters and thinking “lazy” rather than “aesthetic”
“101 one ways to annoy [insert character here]” (voldemort was popular for these things)
it being fucking impossible to find f/f fic that wasn’t porn
writing ships as “characterxcharacter” instead of “character/character”
author’s notes in the middle of the story. literally you would be reading a fanfic and all of a sudden, in between paragraphs… “A/N: awwww isn’t it cute how they’re thinking the same thing!!! XD”
for that matter, author’s notes using the XD emoticon
people FLIPPING THEIR SHIT whenever their fave author (or just a well-established author in the fandom) changed their username. ESPECIALLY if they changed it from something fandom-specific to something more neutral.
“character x/character y. NO CHARACTER X/CHARACTER Z.” bc apparently you think i’d think your fic clearly marked character x/character y would be nothing but character x and character z making out.
trollfics trying to capitalize on my immortal’s infamy. there are still trollfics, of course, but they tend to be more subtle.
for that matter, trying to pass a trollfic off as a legitimate fic rather than just admitting it’s a parody
specifically reading fics for your notp just to bash it in the reviews
people putting replies to reviews for the previous chapter in the author’s notes (this died down a LITTLE once ff.net finally added a reply function, but not much)
the great fanfiction.net purge (ahh yes. history lesson time. basically, back in the olden days of fanfiction, when everyone actually used ff.net, one fateful day, back in biblical times – 2011 – ff.net decided to make MA rated stuff – basically porn – not be allowed on the site anymore. ofc people kept posting it anyway, but then ff.net started deleting stories from the website with no notice to the authors. just poof! gone. the aftermath was HORRIFIC. people were FURIOUS, as a lot of people had no backup and just lost their stories. so ff.net stopped enforcing the rule, but the damage was done. this was when people began to officially leave for ao3, i think.)
lots of harry potter fanfics about the my immortal versions of the characters interacting with the canon characters. some of these were actually quite funny – i think they’re still around, but i don’t see them as much. (i actually wrote one of these stories. it is still, to this day, the most popular story i ever wrote.)
drabbles that were ACTUALLY 100 words long.
fictionpress (a sister site for original fiction. it was like wattpad before wattpad was wattpad. it never really took off. come to think of it, i may still have some stuff on there from when i was 12 i need to take down)
“crackfics” that consisted mainly of “lulz iM SO RanDOm!!!111!!!!!oneone XD cheeeeeeeese!!!!!!” humor
“i suck at summaries”
“this is my first story so please be nice”
“i’ll only update if i get 10 good reviews”
AUs before “AU” was a really widely used term, so the author’s note would have a length explanation for why they had to change things for the story and apologizing over and over instead of just noting the AU in the summary
AUs out of laziness rather than for creative/plot reasons (ie, “luna’s a gryffindor in this fic because i couldn’t find another reason for her to be here”)
authors notes apologizing for late updates
being genuinely shocked when you found a GOOD fanfic
Yep, Anne reversed her opinion on Tom’s performance, but she did not care for QOTD.
Someone out there might have more time-relevant sources to link to (reblog/comment if you do!), I found this vid on YT from 2009, looks like Anne released it herself, so she can speak to this in her own words.
“Well, I didn’t care for the movie of “the Queen of the Damned” at all. I begged the studio not to make that movie. I told them that the readers really didn’t want that movie, what they wanted was a was a movie based on “The Vampire Lestat,” the second book in the series, and the studio went on and made the movie, and the movie was not really based on my work. They used the names of the characters, but they replaced original material with material that they had written for them by a scriptwriter. And the movie was a great disappointment to most of my readers.
“I still get letters to this day asking me why I let it happen and, of course, I couldn’t control it there was nothing I could do. They had the right as a studio to make that movie in and there was nothing I could do to prevent it.”
^So that’s Anne’s opinion.
You didn’t ask but it’s relevant to note that the fandom (as a whole and as individuals) went through some or all of these stages w/ that movie
over time:
When it was announced, the old guard were excited about it (did you know that in 2000 Wes Bentley was being considered for the role of Lestat??), I know bc I photoshopped him blonde and blue-eyed w/ my limited skill-set at the time and No I don’t have that to show you but I DID IT,
Then it came out, and there was disappointment that so much had been changed from canon (BRUNET!LESTAT and WTF MARIUS??? IS LESTAT’S MAKER??? WHAT?! IS??! THIS JESSE/LESTAT SHIP????% DO NOT WANT being primary grievances), the one change we mostly all approved of was Aaliyah’s performance being awesome and her being POC in a series that has few POC (although at the time I don’t recall that second part being as applauded as it is now),
There were waves of bashing the movie, even though we mostly all agreed that Aaliyah was great,
It’s still bashed today (I do it, too, but I try not to be TOO harsh),
^A combo of the above or other reasons, etc.
…AND YET, it also is loved/enjoyed by many in that:
There are ppl in the fandom who were brought in by that movie,
Or enjoyed the soundtrack,
Or find it nostalgic,
Or find it so-awful-its-great (like the Room),
^A combo of the above or other reasons, etc.
Anon, I assume that if you’re asking if Anne ever reversed her opinion on movie!QOTD, you may be looking for her approval on liking it.
Given the above, one can’t really place a value judgment on it bc so many of us have different feelings about it! As I’ve often said, you don’t need the author’s permission to like a thing (movie/book/tv series/other media), you do not need ANYONE’S permission or approval to Like a Thing! So go forth and Like movie!QOTD as much as you want!!
As a positivity exercise, what do y’all like about movie!QOTD? (ﾉ´ヮ´)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧
Historical footage of the last T-Rex serving his country in WWl.
But isn’t that a Jeep? And the T-Rex is holding a…Browning M2? Which wasn’t used until 1933…
So I think this footage is actually of WW2.
I’m living for this historical accuracy
Many people think it’s historically inaccurate because the Tyrannosaur doesn’t have feathers, but a buzz cut is pretty standard for military personnel.
Totally accurate except that that Rex is a bit bigger so it’s actually a female Rex so she may have been pretending to be a male so she could fight. What an icon she is.
Archaeologists in the Burnt City have discovered what appears to be an ancient prosthetic eye. What makes this discovery exceptionally awesome is the striking description of how the owner and her false eye would have appeared while she was still alive and blinking:
[The eye] has a hemispherical form and a diameter of just over 2.5 cm (1 inch). It consists of very light material, probably bitumen paste. The surface of the artificial eye is covered with a thin layer of gold, engraved with a central circle (representing the iris) and gold lines patterned like sun rays. The female remains found with the artificial eye was 1.82 m tall (6 feet), much taller than ordinary women of her time. On both sides of the eye are drilled tiny holes, through which a golden thread could hold the eyeball in place. Since microscopic research has shown that the eye socket showed clear imprints of the golden thread, the eyeball must have been worn during her lifetime. The woman’s skeleton has been dated to between 2900 and 2800 BCE.
So she was an extraordinarily tall woman walking around wearing an engraved golden eye patterned with rays like a tiny sun. What an awesome sight that must have been.
CAN WE TALK ABOUT HOW AN ANCIENT CRAFTSMAN WAS PRESENTED WITH PEOPLE LOOKING FOR HELP TO NORMALIZE THEIR DISABILITY. AND THEN SAID ‘NAH FUCK THIS WE’RE GOING TO
MAKE YOU LOOK BADASS.’
i love her
i still love her
No, but.
She might have come in asking to me made badass. Like.
“Hullo, people.have been giving me grief for losing my eye, so I want to convince them that I traded my left eye for super-powers. Can you do that?”
“Yeah, sounds awesome, just let me in on the con too!”
While I don’t roleplay as any Italian Renaissance characters, it is one of my areas of knowledge and I have many books that I think would be helpful or useful to the roleplayer who wishes to add historical, political, economic, and intellectual context to their work.
Lisa Jardine & Jerry Brotton, Global Interests: Renaissance Art Between East and West
Highly recommended for any Armand player. Explains how Ottoman Empire and Venice interacted through economic and cultural exchange. Lots of stuff to be learned here, and just a great and easy read. If you can’t get to anything else in the book, at least get the preface and the first chapter (I think; it’s been years since I’ve read it though I remember all the lecture slides), which give a great summary and taster about the topic and the authors’ approach. You probably would want to continue after that. This is one of my favorite books.
Gene Brucker, Florence: The Golden Age, 1138-1737
Tons of pictures, giant book, great survey of the feel of the time period.
Joanne M. Ferraro, Marriage Wars in Late Renaissance Venice (2001)
Venetians be suing each other, guys, all the freakin’ time, over marriage contracts. First-person stuff, lots of records, it’s awesome and lively and oh my god how sassy must Armand have gotten?
Okay to be honest, it’s mostly legal gossip, actual depositions, legal records, etc. Give it a skip if you really don’t care about he-said-she-said.
Jerry Brotton, The Renaissance Bazaar: From The Silk Road to Michelangelo (2002)
Really lively read about how Armand probably shopped, told by a recently deceased scholar who was a giant of European Renaissance history. Really cool depiction of how East and West exchanged culture and also created some serious problems that we deal with today.
Ulinka Rublack, Dressing Up: Cultural Identity in Renaissance Europe (2010)
Because Bianca’s pearls in her hair and Armand’s hose and doublet meant something. Also, lots of fun pictures here, and you can imagine the various costumes Marius would have used to disguise, perform, and hint at a different identity.
Lisa Jardine, Worldly Goods
Super awesome street-smart history (with pictures) about how multicultural the economics of Ottoman Empire-infused Italy was. Just super cool and wide-reaching.
Heather Gregory, Selected Letters of Alessandra Strozzi
Probably the best book for figuring out what Marius would have nagged Armand and Ricardo about. It’s this awesome Italian lady who just writes letters to her sons nagging them about stuff they forgot to do.
Francesco Petrarca (trans. David Marsh), Invectives
Stop giving Armand boring essays to read for homework, Marius.
Jon Thiem, Lorenzo de’ Medici: Selected Poems and Prose (1992)
Lorenzo really liked making dick jokes. Let Armand write some, too!
Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Artists and Painters
Pretty much Vasari going around Italy throwing shade at everyone and gossiping.
Paolo Uccello really hated cheese and Michelangelo was a dick who snatched really nice pieces of wood from competitors by auctioning early.
Peter Robb, M: The Man Who Became Caravaggio
To be honest, this is a pretty controversial biography of Caravaggio, or as Robb claims, “Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio”.
It’s Caravaggio shittalking, dueling, and fucking his way across Italy until the fuzz finally comes after him. Oh, and he apologizes to his patrons a lot and then paints horse butts next to priest faces, so this book kind of made him my childhood hero.
Books I have NOT read but know of:
Guido Ruggerio, The Boundaries of Eros: Sex, Crime, and Sexuality in Renaissance Venice
Find out if Marius (and those gold-painted giggling guys testing Armand) were legit.
Judith Brown, Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy
I think this is just a fun title about an important topic that probably gets ignored a lot.
Michael Rocke, Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence
I have more sources I can recommend, but these are nice to get started and were sitting on my bookshelf.
I-want-my-IWTV 