shieldingwinter

Further, some authors may never even find out the lawsuit is happening. The court's suggested notification scheme "would require class claimants to themselves notify other potential rightsholders," groups said, overlooking the fact that it cost Google $34.5 million "to set up a 'Books Rights Registry' to identify owners for payouts under the proposed settlement" in one of the largest cases involving book authors prior to the AI avalanche of lawsuits.

If you're an author, please use this database to see if you could qualify for that sweet GenAI lawsuit money.

I have never ever ever in my life asked someone to blaze my posts.

But if you want to throw me some pennies blaze this. I want ALL OF THE AUTHORS to know that they have the opportunities to get some sweet sweet GenAI lawsuit money.

Like to charge. Reblog to cast that Anthropic will have to pay out the ass.

OH MY GOD??????

“I know you have been through a lot. You have no history, no family.”

Y’all are the shit. And I love each and every one of you.

But please stop apologizing when your fics are really long. I see writers in their a/n saying “this is over 5k words I’m so sorry”

LIKE BBY NO. IM HERE FOR THAT SHIT. Give me every beautiful detail your talented mind can muster.

If I want a short story I’ll go find a drabble.

Don’t you ever apologize for being passionate in your writing. & fuck anyone that has made you think you should apologize.

The importance of this, not just the stakes of this storyline, but also the importance of this chapter of all of our lives culminating in this way…   It really feels like we’re doing something extraordinary.

As you might imagine, my inboxes have been flooded over the last few days.  My fic represents, for a lot of people, either their start in Avengers fandom, or the safe place they retreat to when the angst and infighting and shipwars got too intense.  Which I get, and I appreciate, and I’m so glad if my old fics can give people a little happiness, even after all this time.

But there’s a thread I keep picking up in comments, that kind of worries me.

That things that happened in the MCU have taken the fandom away from them.  That the way things happened in Endgame have left people distraught, or angry, or just grieving.  And a lot of people have worried that they’ve ‘lost’ these characters.

And look.

Look.

I say this as a fandom old.  I say this as someone who reads comics.  Who came from the Trek fandom.  Who’s lived through bad movie adaptations and subpar ghostwriters and writing staff changes that have destroyed tv shows before they had a chance to really fly.

Don’t let canon take anything away from you.

You can be disappointed in a thing.  You can have your heart broken by a writer.  You can hope against hope that something that means the world to you will be ‘true,’ but don’t let a corporation take your heroes away from you.

Every one of us has to pick and choose what we keep and what we leave behind.  But every single version of Captain America has been fanfiction since Jack Kirby and Joe Simon put their pens down.  He’s owned by a corporation, and they can decide what’s on screen, who gets paid to write him, who gets the big platform.  They get to decide canon.

But canon is meaningless.

Canon is a way to win an argument in a bar or in a schoolyard.  It’s knowing publication dates and issue numbers and who wrote what arc and when the reboots happened.  It exists.

But when I think of Hawkeye, canon is only part of the picture.  I do think of Matt Fraction’s run on the comics.  I do think of those early years, sneaking my brother’s issues of West Coast Avengers.  I think of the weird, wild, off beat run of Secret Avengers.  But I also think of @dr-kara’s art of him.  I think of fanfic long since deleted, that introduced me to the fandom tropes of Clint living in the vents.  I think of the Tumblr posts, diving deep into the psychology of trauma, into his place as the most human and the most pointless of the original six, into a thousand stupid memes.  Caw-caw, motherfucker.  I think of the comments I got, telling me he was OOC.  I think of the Hawkeye cosplayers I’ve met, including the one guy who was in full gear at Star Wars Celebration in Florida.  I asked him why, and he shrugged and said, ‘Clint would’ve.’  I agree with him.  

I think of the first time a friend put a bow in my hands, and showed me how to shoot, wobbly and uneven, at a straw target all the way across the yard.

I think of the bruises that dotted my arms afterwards.

So canon can add new things.  Take bits away.  Make me think.  Make me hurt.

But nothing canon does will ever cause him to be different, not on any fundamental level.  Clint Barton started forming in my head when I was eight years old.  He belongs to Marvel, but the version I carry with me has a lot more sources than that.

Guys, this is a long way of saying: find your own version of the character.  Find what you need in a fandom.  And think of canon like that one fic that has a million kudos on AO3 and you just. Don’t.  Know.  Why.  That one fic, that everyone talks about, that you just can’t stand.

If canon doesn’t work for you, then discard it.  And move on.

But don’t let a corporation take a character you love away from you.