Fic Commissions

maggie-stiefvater:

genello:

maggie-stiefvater:

maggie-stiefvater:

No, I’m not taking them, ha.

This is a friendly reminder that creators and publishers alike are very ok with fanfic and fan art (in particular, I am very fond of the existence of fan art), but when you charge money or accept donations (i.e. take in money) for fan fiction, you’re violating the copyright of whichever content you’re writing for. 

I know it might not seem different, but the moment you’re writing about my characters for money, that’s … what I have a contract to do. I can’t even write about those contracted characters for money without getting permission from my publisher to do so. 

I know it sucks to try to make it as an artist, but as artists, we’ve got to respect other folk’s work. So remember, fanfic for the fun of it, charge for your OCs. 

urs,

Stiefvater 

To put a super fine point on it, apart from the legal aspect: this is my
job. I pay my bills by writing stories about characters I pulled from
my dreams. Please … don’t take my job? Put the unique characters you
pulled from YOUR dreams out there when money’s on the line.

Okay, but you’re treating fan fic as if it’s separate from fan art in this respect. 

Let’s be clear, it’s not.

I’m going to lay some groundwork for copyright law in regards to the creation and distribution of fan work. 

(By the way, my argument here is mostly going to be discussing fan art because I have more examples at the ready, but really, it applies to fic, too. The medium doesn’t change the potential for legal application to copyrighted material.)

Making fan art and fic is perfectly legal, and sharing it is grand as long as the creator isn’t Anne Rice. Selling it is where things get dicey because, yes, using copyrighted material to turn a profit is illegal, regardless of whether the content is fic or art.

So why do we see artists selling fan art and not getting in trouble, even in public spaces like artist alleys at conventions? After all, over half the work for sale in artist alleys are fan works. 

Well, from a technical standpoint, they should be sued for infringing on copyrighted material. That’s the stark, black and white viewpoint.

But fan content is an incredibly gray area, which is why there are lawyers dedicated specifically to protecting artists–meaning, both the original creators and fan creators.

And let’s remember most copyright holders are fans of other content, too. They aren’t strangers to fan communities, and they have good reason to let them grow. Fans are incredibly supportive by discussing and building/maintaining hype for original content, which turns into profit as more and more people become aware of the official work. More attention turns into more fans and more people willing to spend money on official products.

Original creators want to support their fan bases as much as fans want to support the official content. Fan art and fic help keep interest in the original content alive, and when it’s free to consume, fan content clearly isn’t taking away from potential profits owed to the original creator.

When fan content is being sold, it’s taking away potential profits. This is often the hard line drawn when fan creators get in legal trouble. (It’s not the only potential line crossed, but this is going to be long enough already.)

Remember how I said fan content is a huge gray area? Depending on circumstances and the right lawyer, the fan creator isn’t necessarily in the wrong. Or at least, not as wrong as you might think.

What really makes this area so gray is the transformative nature of fan content. Illustrating or writing a scene already present in the official work is pretty different from an exploration of familiar characters in an alternate universe. And even if you’re exploring a scene already present in canon, what if you explore it from a completely different perspective? How true to character is the depiction? Is the style of writing or painting similar to the original or completely different?

If the fan content is so different from the original, how accurately can someone claim the fan stole potential profits?

A big part of the answer to that question is: how much did the fan profit? And how significant was the profit in comparison to the official work?

…and quite honestly, how much can the copyright holder be bothered to care? 

Taking someone to court is a pricey venture, and if the fan’s profit isn’t relatively significant… it’s straight up not worth the time, money, stress, and potential negative publicity.

The larger a fan base, the harder it is to police its activity. Disney has one of the strongest (read: most aggressive) legal departments as a creative company, and they have their work cut out for them. They’ve now built up such a reputation that many artists won’t risk being found out.

Anime fans who aren’t in Asia have a pretty good shot at not getting in legal trouble simply because the copyright holders would have to put in a lot of effort to find and prosecute international fans, as well as the dance between the separate nations’ laws. That’s a lot of extra work for a creative product that’s already successful enough to be translated and distributed overseas. Also, marketing is pretty expensive. Why not let the fans do the work for them? No, it might not represent the work accurately, and yeah, the fan might make a few bucks that could have gone to an official marketing team, but in the long run, it often still leads to official profits. Familiarizing potential audiences and projecting an image of popularity leads to actual popularity from actual audiences. 

And fan bases serving as an unofficial marketing team is a pretty cost-effective strategy at the end of the day.

I’ve gotten away from op’s point a bit, which specifically discusses profits gained by fan writers, and I generally agree with the sentiment.

Namely, I agree with not using other creators’ original content for personal profit when the original creator could not comfortably sue me for doing so.

Let’s say someone wanted to commission me to write a Homestuck fic. I wouldn’t do it. Andrew Hussie and his team are their own distributors and have limited channels of gaining profit, even with the large fan base. (For this example, I’m ignoring the go-fund-me donations.)

However, if someone commissioned me to write a Harry Potter fic? Damn right, I’d take it. J.K. Rowling is not hurting for money, and any profit I gained in that venture would mean absolutely nothing to her.

Everything is relative, and in essence, copyright law is fifty shades of gray.

I’m reblogging this commentary because I’ve gotten a lot of questions about where fan art falls in this, and whether this is an ethical, legal, or financial issue, and also to highlight this again: “Making fan art and fic is perfectly legal, and sharing it is grand as long as the creator isn’t Anne Rice. Selling it is where things get dicey because, yes, using copyrighted material to turn a profit is illegal, regardless of whether the content is fic or art.”

This is a pretty good look at the nuances.

on fanfic & emotional continuity

13monkton:

earlgreytea68:

bigblueboxat221b:

notjustamumj:

earlgreytea68:

glitterandrocketfuel:

earlgreytea68:

meanderings0ul:

earlgreytea68:

nianeyna:

earlgreytea68:

fozmeadows:

Writing and reading fanfic is a masterclass in characterisation. 

Consider: in order to successfully write two different “versions” of the same character – let alone ten, or fifty, or a hundred – you have to make an informed judgement about their core personality traits, distinguishing between the results of nature and nurture, and decide how best to replicate those conditions in a new narrative context. The character you produce has to be recognisably congruent with the canonical version, yet distinct enough to fit within a different – perhaps wildly so – story. And you physically can’t accomplish this if the character in question is poorly understood, or viewed as a stereotype, or one-dimensional. Yes, you can still produce the fic, but chances are, if your interest in or knowledge of the character(s) is that shallow, you’re not going to bother in the first place. 

Because ficwriters care about nuance, and they especially care about continuity – not just literal continuity, in the sense of corroborating established facts, but the far more important (and yet more frequently neglected) emotional continuity. Too often in film and TV canons in particular, emotional continuity is mistakenly viewed as a synonym for static characterisation, and therefore held anathema: if the character(s) don’t change, then where’s the story? But emotional continuity isn’t anti-change; it’s pro-context. It means showing how the character gets from Point A to Point B as an actual journey, not just dumping them in a new location and yelling Because Reasons! while moving on to the next development. Emotional continuity requires a close reading, not just of the letter of the canon, but its spirit – the beats between the dialogue; the implications never overtly stated, but which must logically occur off-screen. As such, emotional continuity is often the first casualty of canonical forward momentum: when each new TV season demands the creation of a new challenge for the protagonists, regardless of where and how we left them last, then dealing with the consequences of what’s already happened is automatically put on the backburner.

Fanfic does not do this. 

Fanfic embraces the gaps in the narrative, the gracenotes in characterisation that the original story glosses, forgets or simply doesn’t find time for. That’s not all it does, of course, but in the context of learning how to write characters, it’s vital, because it teaches ficwriters – and fic readers – the difference between rich and cardboard characters. A rich character is one whose original incarnation is detailed enough that, in order to put them in fanfic, the writer has to consider which elements of their personality are integral to their existence, which clash irreparably with the new setting, and which can be modified to fit, to say nothing of how this adapted version works with other similarly adapted characters. A cardboard character, by contrast, boasts so few original or distinct attributes that the ficwriter has to invent them almost out of whole cloth. Note, please, that attributes are not necessarily synonymous with details in this context: we might know a character’s favourite song and their number of siblings, but if this information gives us no actual insight into them as a person, then it’s only window-dressing. By the same token, we might know very few concrete facts about a character, but still have an incredibly well-developed sense of their personhood on the basis of their actions

The fact that ficwriters en masse – or even the same ficwriter in different AUs – can produce multiple contradictory yet still fundamentally believable incarnations of the same person is a testament to their understanding of characterisation, emotional continuity and narrative. 

So I was reading this rumination on fanfic and I was thinking about something @involuntaryorange once talked to me about, about fanfic being its own genre, and something about this way of thinking really rocked my world? Because for a long time I have thought like a lawyer, and I have defined fanfiction as “fiction using characters that originated elsewhere,” or something like that. And now I feel like…fanfiction has nothing to do with using other people’s characters, it’s just a character-driven *genre* that is so character-driven that it can be more effective to use other people’s characters because then we can really get the impact of the storyteller’s message but I feel like it could also be not using other people’s characters, just a more character-driven story. Like, I feel like my original stuff–the novellas I have up on AO3, the draft I just finished–are probably really fanfiction, even though they’re original, because they’re hitting fanfic beats. And my frustration with getting original stuff published has been, all along, that I’m calling it a genre it really isn’t. 

And this is why many people who discover fic stop reading other stuff. Once you find the genre you prefer, you tend to read a lot in that genre. Some people love mysteries, some people love high-fantasy. Saying you love “fic” really means you love this character-driven genre. 

So when I hear people be dismissive of fic I used to think, Are they just not reading the good fic? Maybe I need to put the good fic in front of them? But I think it turns out that fanfiction is a genre that is so entirely character-focused that it actually feels weird and different, because most of our fiction is not that character-focused. 

It turns out, when I think about it, I am simply a character-based consumer of pop culture. I will read and watch almost anything but the stuff that’s going to stick with me is because I fall for a particular character. This is why once a show falters and disagrees with my view of the character, I can’t just, like, push past it, because the show *was* the character for me. 

Right now my big thing is the Juno Steel stories, and I know that they’re doing all this genre stuff and they have mysteries and there’s sci-fi and meanwhile I’m just like, “Okay, whatever, I don’t care about that, JUNO STEEL IS THE BEST AND I WANT TO JUST ROLL AROUND IN HIS SARCASTIC, HILARIOUS, EMOTIONALLY PINING HEAD.” That is the fanfiction-genre fan in me coming out. Someone looking for sci-fi might not care about that, but I’m the type of consumer (and I think most fic-people are) who will spend a week focusing on what one throwaway line might reveal about a character’s state of mind. That’s why so many fics *focus* on those one throwaway lines. That’s what we’re thinking about. 

And this is what makes coffee shop AUs so amazing. Like, you take some characters and you stick them in a coffee shop. That’s it. And yet I love every single one of them. Because the focus is entirely on the characters. There is no plot. The plot is they get coffee every day and fall in love. That’s the entire plot. And that’s the perfect fanfic plot. Fanfic plots are almost always like that. Almost always references to other things that clue you in to where the story is going. Think of “friends to lovers” or “enemies to lovers” or “fake relationship,” and you’re like, “Yes. I love those. Give me those,” and you know it’s going to be the same plot, but that’s okay, you’re not reading for the plot. It’s like that Tumblr post that goes around that’s like, “Me starting a fake relationship fic: Ooooh, do you think they’ll fall in love for real????” But you’re not reading for the suspense. Fic frees you up from having to spend effort thinking about the plot. Fic gives your brain space to focus entirely on the characters. And, especially in an age of plot-twist-heavy pop culture, that almost feels like a luxury. “Come in. Spend a little time in this character’s head. SPEND HOURS OF YOUR LIFE READING SO MANY STORIES ABOUT THIS CHARACTER’S HEAD. Until you know them like a friend. Until you know them so well that you miss them when you’re not hanging out with them.” 

When that is your story, when the characters become like your friends, it makes sense that you’re freed from plot. It’s like how many people don’t really have a “plot” to hanging out with their friends. There’s this huge obsession with plot, but lives don’t have plots. Lives just happen. We try to shape them into plots later, but that’s just this organizational fiction we’re imposing. Plot doesn’t have to be the raison d’etre of all story-telling, and fic reminds us of that. 

Idk, this was a lot of random rambling but I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. 

“fanfiction has nothing to do with using other people’s characters, it’s just a character-driven *genre* that is so character-driven that it can be more effective to use other people’s characters”

yes!!!! I feel like I knew this on some level but I’ve never explicitly thought about it that way. this feels right, yep. Mainstream fiction often seems very dry to me and I think this is why – it tends to skip right over stuff that would be a huge plot arc in a fanfic, if not an entire fanfic in itself. And I’m like, “hey, wait, go back to that. Why are you skipping that? Where’s the story?” But now I think maybe people who don’t like fanfiction are going like, “why is there an entire fanfic about something that could have happened offscreen? Is anything interesting ever going to happen here? Where’s the story?”

Yes! Exactly! This!!!

This crystallized for me when I taught my first class of fanfiction to non-fic-readers and they just kept being like, “But nothing happens. What’s the plot?” and I was so confused, like, “What are you talking about? They fall in love. That’s the plot.” But we were, I think, talking past each other. They kept waiting for some big moment to happen, but for me the point was that the little moments were the big moments. 

This is such an awesome conversation, but I think there’s
even another layer here that makes ‘fic’ its own genre. And it is the plot.

Everyone who’s experienced in reading fic has their little ‘trope
plots’ we are willing to read or even prefer in order to spend time with our
favorite characters. We know how it’s gonna end and we genuinely don’t care,
because the character is the whole point of why we’re reading. And that is
unique. That’s just not how mainstream media publication does things.

But there are also hundreds of thousands of fics people
might call ‘plot driven’ and they have wonderful, intricate plots that thrill
their readers.

But they’re not at all ‘plot driven’ in the same way as
other mainstream genres.

The thing about ‘plot’ in fic is that it tends to ebb and
flow naturally. There’s not the same high speed, race to the finish you’d get
from a good action movie. There’s no stop and start of side plots you get in TV
genre shows. The best fic plot slides from big event to restful evening to
frantic activity to shared meals and squabbles and back, and it gives equal time and attention and detail to each of these
things
.

Like @earlgreytea68 said, “There’s this huge obsession with
plot, but lives don’t have plots. Lives just happen. We try to shape them into
plots later, but that’s just this organizational fiction we’re imposing. Plot
doesn’t have to be the raison d’etre of all story-telling, and fic reminds us
of that.”

Fic plot moves at a pace similar to the life of whatever
character it’s about. Not the other way around. There’s a fundamental difference in prioritization in fic.

I think this only adds to the case of ‘fic’ as its own,
distinctive genre. Stylistic choices of writing that would never work in
traditional, mainstream fiction novels work for novel-length fic. Fic
adventures spend as much time fleshing out the little moments between romances
and friendships as they do on that plot twist. The sleepy campground
conversations are as important to the plot as the kidnapped princess, because that’s
how the characters are going to grow together by the end of the story. It’s not
a grace note, it’s not a side episode or an addition or a mention – it’s
integral and equal.

That’s just accepted as fact by fic writers and readers. It’s
expected without any particular mention. And it gives a very unique flavor and
pace to fic that makes a lot of mainstream stories feel like stale, off-brand
wonderbread. They are missing something regular fic readers take for granted
(and it isn’t just the representational differences, because we all know that’s
a whole different conversation). There’s a fundamental difference in how ‘fic’
is written, detailed, and paced that is built on its foundations as a ‘character
driven’ genre.  

And it isn’t only action/adventure/mystery plots that have
this difference in fic. Those ‘everybody’s human in today’s world’ AUs, those ‘friends
to lovers’ slow burn stories have it too. They have a plot, but it’s the life
the grocery shopping, the dumb fights and sudden inescapable emotional blows, those
moments of joy with that person you click with, managing work and family and
seasons – that’s the whole plot on its own.

And that’s almost impossible to explain to someone who hasn’t
really experienced fic as a genre, who’s used to traditional person A and person
B work together/overcome differences/bond to accomplish X. In fic accomplishing
X might be the beginning or the middle, not the end result of the story, and A
& B continue to exist separate from X entirely. X is only relevant because
of how it relates to A & B, not the other way around.

Fic is absolutely its own genre and it has a lot to do with plot. I’ve been calling this ‘organic
plot’ in my head for months, because I knew something felt different about
writing this way, how long fic plot ebbs and grows seemingly on its own
sometimes. ‘Dual plot’ could be another option, maybe, though the character plot and
life experience plots aren’t really separate. Inverted plot? Hm. I’m sure a good term will develop
over time.

OH MY GOODNESS I LOVE THIS. 

I was always fond of saying, about my own fics, that my plots show up about two-thirds of the way through, because it takes me that long to figure out where I’m going, and then I would lol about it, because, ha, wouldn’t it be great if I organized it better. 

And now I read this and I’m like, WAIT. YES. THAT’S WHAT’S HAPPENING. IT’S BEEN HAPPENING ALL ALONG. I NEVER REALIZED IT. The idea that the primary importance is the throughline of the characters, and that’s what we’re following, and the plot is what’s dangling off the side of their story, that is SO IMPORTANT. You’re right, that usually we’re told as writers to construct stories from the plot outward. “Here are the beats your plot needs to hit, here’s the rising action to the climax to the falling action, now make sure your Character A makes this realization by Point X in order to get your plot into shape for Point Y to click in.” It’s *such* a plot-centric way to write and I am *terrible* at it. And I’ve always said, whenever I sit down to “outline” a story, like, How do you this? How do you know where the characters are going until they tell you where they’re going???

But it’s not that I’m “bad” at this, which is what I’ve always thought, it’s just that I’m coming at it from the opposite angle. I can’t plan the plot before the characters because I’m sticking close to the characters, and the traditional “plot” is secondary to whatever’s going to happen to them. And that’s not a wrong way of writing, it’s just a different way of writing. And it’s wrong of me to be thinking that my stories don’t get a “point” until they’re almost over. THEY’VE HAD THE POINT ALL ALONG. What happens when they’re almost over is that the characters come to where they’ve been going, and then the traditional “plot” is what helps shape the ending. The traditional “plot” becomes, to me, like that epilogue scene after the biggest explosion in an action movie, where you’re told the characters are going to be okay. I spend the entire movie telling you the characters are going to be okay, and then my epilogue scene is tacked on “oh, p.s., also they saved the day.” 

There is so much here that I want to say I don’t even know where to begin. @earlgreytea68 you’re not alone. Hit me up. I’ve studied plot and structure forever. Fics are pure, uncut, internal-motivation-drives-everything storytelling and they are so very different from the monomyth that drives most commercial fiction these days that they almost have to exist in a liminal space like fan fiction. I could go on…

LET’S BE FRIENDS. 

Hahaha, this is my week to just want to be Tumblr friends with everyone, all the FOB people, all the fluff people, all the fandom anthropology people, LET’S ALL BE FRIENDS. 

<3 <3 <3

@earlgreytea68 and @glitterandrocketfuel and OP and everyone else who contributed – this is beautiful, and I’m saving it to read and consider again later. probably with a glass of wine or something. <3

Smart idea. 😉

This! Is what I have been unable to articulate to my family.

actuallylotor:

my favorite kind of fanfics are “canon divergence” because it’s always like handing back a reviewed essay with comments like “I enjoyed the strong beginning but here is where you lost me, I’ve made some notes”

Here’s what fanfiction understands that the Puppies don’t: inversion and subversion don’t ruin the story – they just give you new ways to tell it, and new tools to tell it with. Take a platonic relationship and make it romantic; there’s a story in that. Take a romantic relationship and make it platonic; there’s a story in that, too. Take a human and make her a werewolf; take a werewolf and make him human. Don’t try and sidle up on hurt/comfort like it’s something you’re ashamed to be indulging in; embrace the tropes until you have their mastery. Take a gang of broken souls surviving the apocalypse and make them happy in high school; take a bunch of funny, loving high school kids and shove them in the apocalypse. Like Archimedes, fanfic writers find the soul, the essence of what makes the characters real, and use it as a fulcrum on which to pivot entire worlds, with inversion/subversion as their lever of infinite length.

So

lucianajellyfish:

cloakstone69:

jahnyanovak:

My mom is an First Generation TOS Trekkie. I really wanna ask her if she’s ever read any fanfic from ‘back in the day’ but then again I’m not sure I’m ready for that conversation. She’s 70.

Please ask her. She may have been waiting 50 years for someone to ask her.

Idk what your relationship with your mom is like, but my mother-in-law was super excited when we visited for christmas.  See, she’d just found fanfic (I think Harry Potter and Supernatural are the specific fandoms she mentioned) and wanted to share it with us/know if we’d read any.  Me, my hubby, and my brother-in-law all sat there awkwardly going ‘uh…yeah.  I’ve read fanfic.’ and desperately trying to end the conversation before specifics got involved.

I explained omegaverse to my mom (and she’s in her 60s)

A note for fanfic readers.

mrsmarymorstan:

scifigrl47:

keyofjetwolf:

seananmcguire:

I am currently in the process of porting a lot of my older fanfic onto AO3, because I want it all in one place/don’t want it to be lost/want to revise it to be a little more in-line with my current standards of both quality and language use.  It’s so quick and easy!  I can’t remember why I didn’t do this before!

…oh, right, she says, as the hit counter goes higher without the comments, or even the kudos, to match.  Because I feel like I’m screaming into the void.

I come from very comment-heavy fic environments, and like most fanfic authors I have known, I am a little twitchy about “what if this is awful what if I am awful what if nobody likes my shit at all.”  So when I have 50 hits and one kudo, I actually feel pretty rotten, which makes me less eager to do the job of cleaning and posting.

This is hence a plea on behalf of all fanfic authors: remember that the people who write the stories you enjoy are not getting paid for their time in anything other than “you did good, have a cookie” comments from people.  Please consider commenting if you liked a story.  Please consider leaving a kudo if you read all the way to the end.  There are stories that are qualitatively bad that I’ve left kudos on, because hey, I read them, they gave me an hour of enjoyment, they deserve a cookie.

We have infinite cookies to give.  We should share them freely, because wow, does it suck when fanfic makes fanfic writers sad.

That’s all.

This feels particularly relevant to a lot of chatter I’m seeing cross my dash.

Writing is hard. Writing is scary. Writing takes time and effort and care and love love love. Which is true of any fanwork of course, but fanfiction also requires a significant investment from its audience before it can even begin to be seen. With art or gifsets or any other visual medium, the work can be consumed, appreciated, and commented/reblogged/whatever within seconds. It takes longer than that just to read the description on a work of fanfiction.

But in the same vein, your fanfic writers give you hours of entertainment in return. Whether it’s a smile or a sob delivered in ten minute ficlets or 100k monsters you’re still reading at 3 am, fanfiction will give you a level of immersion unique to the fandom experience. With fanfiction, the characters live forever and the story never ends.

Still, that commitment from the audience means we’re already looking at a sliver of the same attention, without hope of the same scale of interaction and response. That makes what we DO get so very critical.

If you read something, take a moment to click those kudos or likes or whatever. If you liked it, leave a comment, If you loved it, love your fanfic author back and tell them. TELL THEM EVERYTHING I PROMISE YOU WE WANT TO HEAR

Remember that the only thing that nourishes fandom creators are your responses. Your fanfic writers are timid, starving creatures. Feed them. Love them. I said the characters live forever and the story never ends, but that’s only true if the storytellers keep telling stories. To do that, they need an audience. Make sure they know they have one.

Think of your fan creators as skittish, timid forest creatures.  If you speak in a kind voice and leave scraps of food around, chances are, they’ll keep visiting the yard of your fandom.  Yell at them, ignore them, or make your fandom yard an unpleasant place to be, and they disappear, leaving you wondering why your yard is so empty and boring.

I’ve made so many friends in the comments section as well. So you know, if you’re sitting there thinking “Oh man, there’s no fic out there!” Comment! Say something nice! If it’s a long fic post a theory and see how the writer responds! I don’t know about others but sometimes I’ve read a theory so good I’ve ended up including it in my fic! Get chatting! Make friends and together you can rule the galaxy create new works to spread the love!

Leaving Kudos doesn’t take much time at all, a comment of “Great Fic!” can mean SO MUCH like I LOVE getting those notifications from my email, they really brighten my day!

As someone who writes for a Rare Pair, it can really get disheartening when you don’t get any feedback at all. You see the hits but they don’t reflect what people are saying. So if you want to show your love and get more fic out there for your rare pairs: COMMENT! KUDOS! BOOKMARK! Do all these things and you’ll soon discover the tag is getting a heck of a lot fuller! 

hannza-pie:

meariver:

racethewind10:

romanimp:

I can’t wait for the days where scholarship has to muddle through ff.net and ao3 pseudonyms like “guys, I have evidence to believe that starfucker69 was a pseudonym for one of our landmark literary figures of the 21st century and that they in fact first began their writing career with filthy sinful Steggy smut.”

As an academic and a fan I both want and fucking dread this day because academics trying to tackle things like A/B/O, magic!cock, g!p, mpreg, rule 63, sex pollen like… the language academia is going to have to invent my god  

#this makes me happy#in a deep deep place in my blackened soul

…to be a fly on the wall of those discussions…