Oh god this again.

It’s a legal minefield for a working writer. I literally can’t read any fanfic.

For everyone else? Honestly, you do what you’ve got to do. In a real way, it’s a relative waste of your time… but it’s your time to waste. All writing improves you, and while it would be better for you as a creative to build something of your own rather than an existing world as a prop, that’s a little like saying, “You should only eat bran breakfast cereal and you’re a fool if you want to nibble bacon.” If you’re loving it, you’re loving it. Enjoy yourself.

(I’d say this: I’d urge people to try and create their own setting which evokes what they love in other people’s settings. That’s a useful stepping stone. And, on a personal way, the only times I’ve ever written in someone else’s universe for kicks — which was normally linked to playing some manner of role-playing game set in there — I’ve only ever written my own characters in a setting.)

But honestly? That’s still Bran-flakes-style advice. If it feels good and hurts no one, do it.

       —Kieron Gillen

Kid Loki was pretty much the reason I started reading and spending money on comics this year, and while I’m not super into being blatantly trolled by TPTB (except when I am), I’ve enjoyed sharing a fandom with Kieron Gillen so far. But this was just too condescending, and too tired (and tiring) an argument to not have a violent reaction in bullet point form right here.

- First of all, wow, this is pretty rich coming from a guy who’s getting paid to write fanfiction. Not just fanfiction, but fanfiction *of* fanfiction. Fanfic squared. You might be a “working writer”, but Kid Loki is still an AU version of Loki, who is himself embedded in a giant, sprawling fanfic universe about Norse mythology. The fact that Marvel pays people to write and draw this fanfiction and then charges money for the product only means I don’t technically get to call it fanfiction, because fanfiction is free. The point remains.

- Imagine here a long, bitter rant about literary tradition being nothing *but* people taking other people’s shit and embellishing it. It’s why we have literature. Which is all written by “working writers”, obviously, and thus could never be lazy or unimaginative or derivative. Meanwhile, “creating their own setting which evokes what they love in other people’s settings” is not, like, the definition of what fanfic writers do or anything. Anyway, instead of this long bitter rant I will just link to this tl;dr post by someone else instead. You will not get into legal trouble if you read it!

- “Authors are sometimes advised to avoid reading or acknowledging fanfiction transforming their own work, as it is in theory possible that an author could read a story, go on to write something similar, and face a claim by the fan that they copied the fan’s work. There are many reasons to discount this risk, the least of which is that U.S. case law is all in the first author’s favor” and also you wouldn’t be able to read anything else ever again, for risk of accidentally stealing an idea.

- Those Loki drawings and Leah graphics you reblog sometimes? Fanart. Fan. Art. Same concept, different medium. You might want to start telling these people they’re wasting their time, possibly *while* reblogging their work. I imagine they’d be delighted.