I never did end up writing something here huh

I am proud to announce:

The noir detectives tournament!

And also characters that are just film noir coded and not from classic film noir (for example, Juno Steel) or even actual detectives (my baby The Obituary Writer).

Submissions can be done through the ask box. I need the name of the character and the media they're from, images of them and/or propaganda are not necessary but appreciated.

Murphy Law (SCP-3143, SCP Foundation)

Juno Steel (Juno Steel, The Penumbra Podcast)

The Obituary Writer (Death By Dying)

Jimmy Hawkins, Private Investigator (Death By Dying)

Detective Hunch Curio (Mentopolis, Dimension 20)

Detective Kagawa (That Night's Wife, その夜の妻, Sono Yo no Tsuma 1930)

Tracer Bullet (Calvin and Hobbes)

Benoit Blanc (Knives Out trilogy)

Sokichi Narumi/Kamen Rider Skull (Kamen Rider Double)

Sam Spade (The Maltese Falcon)

John Doe (Malevolent)

Arthur Lester (Malevolent)

Hellboy (Hellboy comics)

Jessica Jones (Jessica Jones, MCU)

Jim Gordon (Batman, DC)

Orange Splice (The Department of Variance of Somewhere, Ohio)

Ford Phillips (The Case of the Gilded Lilly + The Case of the Greater Gatsby, Shipwrecked Comedy)

Fig Wineshine (The Case of the Gilded Lily + The Case of the Greater Gatsby, Shipwrecked Comedy)

Ivo Sharktooth (Private Jäger, Girl Genius)

Spider Noir (Spider Noir)

Jonathan Sims (the Magnus Archives)

Castiel (Supernatural)

Nick Burkhardt (Grimm)

“heh… remember strawbebby…. And ranibow spramkle… always made me laugh”

“Don’t talk like that man. We’re gonna get out of here i prommy.” [mortar fire sails overhead and land nearby] “christ its like a childrens hospital out there”

[through shallow breaths] “I always loved…… the color of the sky…………”

[ID: Photos of an oxidized copper plate, an oxidized copper pipe, and oxidized pennies. End ID]

Look at me.

Look me directly in the eyes while I say this.

You can just make things.

You can simply create something and put it into the world.

That's allowed.

People have been doing it for centuries.

They sell blank VHS tapes. They sell blank DVDs. Blank CDs. You can buy flash drives by the bucketful if you really want to. If you create a movie, an album, a game, a documentary, or a four-hour video essay about the mating habits of fictional space goblins, you are entirely permitted to put that thing on physical media and sell it.

That is not piracy.

Piracy is taking something that belongs to someone else and reproducing or distributing it without permission.

If I buy a DVD of a movie, I own that copy of the movie. I do not own the movie itself. I didn't acquire the rights to duplicate it, press a thousand copies, and start selling them out of my garage like I've become the regional distributor for Warner Bros.

The copyright, distribution rights, and intellectual property still belong to whoever created it or whoever legally acquired those rights.

If I start burning copies of Iron Lung and selling them myself without Markiplier's permission, that's piracy.

If Markiplier, who made and owns the rights to Iron Lung, burns copies and sells them himself, that's just distribution.

He's the rights holder.

He's distributing his own work.

If you made it, if it came from your own mind, your own work, your own time, your own resources, then congratulations. You own the thing. You don't need a corporation to bless it with legitimacy.

The corporation is not what makes it real.

The fact that it exists is what makes it real.

I think we've accidentally spent so many years living inside a world dominated by mass-produced media that some people have developed the strange assumption that all media emerges from a factory somewhere. As if films naturally occur in shrink-wrapped plastic cases and descend from the heavens aboard a pallet truck.

But independent artists have been burning discs, dubbing tapes, printing books, pressing records, and mailing things directly to people for longer than many of us have been alive.

That's not a bootleg.

That's just a product.

It's not "bootleg."

It's just... leg.

The normal kind.