A fandom is a subculture composed of fans characterized by a feeling of camaraderie with others who share a common interest. Fans typically are interested in even minor details of the objects of their fandom and spend a significant portion of their time and energy involved with their interest, often as a part of a social network with particular practices, differentiating fandom-affiliated people from those with only a casual interest.
Slash fiction is a genre of fan fiction that focuses on romantic or sexual relationships between fictional characters of the same sex. While the term "slash" originally referred only to stories in which male characters are involved in an explicit sexual relationship as a primary plot element, it is now also used to refer to any fan story containing a romantic pairing between same-sex characters. Many fans distinguish slash with female characters as a separate genre, commonly referred to as femslash.
George Edward Barr is an American science fiction and fantasy artist.
Shipping is the desire by followers of a fandom for two or more people, either real-life people or fictional characters, to be in a romantic relationship. Shipping often takes the form of unofficial creative works, including fanfiction and fan art.
Remix culture, also known as read-write culture, is a term describing a culture that allows and encourages the creation of derivative works by combining or editing existing materials. Remix cultures are permissive of efforts to improve upon, change, integrate, or otherwise remix the work of other creators. While combining elements has always been a common practice of artists of all domains throughout human history, the growth of exclusive copyright restrictions in the last several decades limits this practice more and more by the legal chilling effect. In reaction, Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig, who considers remixing a desirable concept for human creativity, has worked since the early 2000s on a transfer of the remixing concept into the digital age. Lessig founded the Creative Commons in 2001, which released a variety of licenses as tools to promote remix culture, as remixing is legally hindered by the default exclusive copyright regime applied on intellectual property. The remix culture for cultural works is related to and inspired by the earlier Free and open-source software for software movement, which encourages the reuse and remixing of software works.
Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., 510 U.S. 569 (1994), was a United States Supreme Court copyright law case that established that a commercial parody can qualify as fair use. This case established that the fact that money is made by a work does not make it impossible for fair use to apply; it is merely one of the components of a fair use analysis.
Bryan Konietzko is an American animator, writer, producer and director. He is best known, together with Michael Dante DiMartino, as the co-creator and executive producer of the animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra.
Fanfiction has encountered problems with intellectual property law due to usage of copyrighted characters without the original creator or copyright owner's consent.
In United States copyright law, transformative use or transformation is a type of fair use that builds on a copyrighted work in a different manner or for a different purpose from the original, and thus does not infringe its holder's copyright. Transformation is an important issue in deciding whether a use meets the first factor of the fair-use test, and is generally critical for determining whether a use is in fact fair, although no one factor is dispositive.
Vidding is a fan labor practice in media fandom of creating music videos from the footage of one or more visual media sources, thereby exploring the source itself in a new way. The creator may choose video clips in order to focus on a single character, support a particular romantic pairing between characters, criticize or celebrate the original text, or point out an aspect of the TV show or film that they find under-appreciated. The resulting video may then be shared via one or more social media outlets and online video platforms such as YouTube. The creators refer to themselves as "vidders"; their product as "vids", "fanvids", "fanvideos", "songvids", or the more recently adopted name "edits"; and the act itself is referred to as vidding.
A video mashup combines multiple pre-existing video sources with no discernible relation with each other into a unified video. These are derivative works as defined by the United States Copyright Act 17 U.S.C. § 101, and as such, may find protection from copyright claims under the doctrine of fair use. Examples of mashup videos include movie trailer remixes, vids, YouTube poop, and supercuts.
L.H.O.O.Q. is a work of art by Marcel Duchamp. First conceived in 1919, the work is one of what Duchamp referred to as readymades, or more specifically a rectified ready-made. The readymade involves taking mundane, often utilitarian objects not generally considered to be art and transforming them, by adding to them, changing them, or simply renaming and reorienting them and placing them in an appropriate setting. In L.H.O.O.Q. the found object is a cheap postcard reproduction of Leonardo da Vinci's early 16th-century painting Mona Lisa onto which Duchamp drew a moustache and beard in pencil and appended the title.
Fan labor, also called fan works, are the creative activities engaged in by fans, primarily those of various media properties or musical groups. These activities can include creation of written works, visual or computer-assisted art, films and videos, animations, games, music, or applied arts and costuming.
In copyright law, a derivative work is an expressive creation that includes major copyrightable elements of a first, previously created original work. The derivative work becomes a second, separate work independent from the first. The transformation, modification or adaptation of the work must be substantial and bear its author's personality sufficiently to be original and thus protected by copyright. Translations, cinematic adaptations and musical arrangements are common types of derivative works.
Fan fiction or fanfiction, also known as fan fic, fanfic, fic or FF, is fiction written in an amateur capacity by fans as a form of fan labor, unauthorized by, but based on, an existing work of fiction. The author uses copyrighted characters, settings, or other intellectual properties from the original creator(s) as a basis for their writing and can retain the original characters and settings, add their own, or both. Fan fiction ranges in length from a few sentences to novel-length and can be based on fictional and non-fictional media, including novels, movies, comics, television shows, musical groups, cartoons, anime and manga, and video games.
A parody is a creative work designed to imitate, comment on, and/or mock its subject by means of satirical or ironic imitation. Often its subject is an original work or some aspect of it, but a parody can also be about a real-life person, event, or movement. Literary scholar Professor Simon Dentith defines parody as "any cultural practice which provides a relatively polemical allusive imitation of another cultural production or practice". The literary theorist Linda Hutcheon said "parody ... is imitation, not always at the expense of the parodied text." Parody may be found in art or culture, including literature, music, theater, television and film, animation, and gaming.
DeviantArt, historically stylized as deviantART, is an American online art community that features artwork, videography, and photography, launched on August 7, 2000, by Angelo Sotira, Scott Jarkoff, and Matthew Stephens among others.
Art and culture law refers to legal aspects of the visual arts, antiquities, cultural heritage, and the art market and encompasses the safeguarding, regulation, and facilitation of artistic creation, utilization, and promotion. Practitioners of art law navigate various legal areas, including intellectual property, contract, constitutional, tort, tax, commercial, immigration law, estates and wills, cultural property law, and international law to protect the interests of their clients.
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic is an animated children's television series produced by Hasbro that ran from 2010 to 2019 as part of the My Little Pony toy franchise. The series tied in with the 2010 relaunch of dolls, play sets and original programming for the American children's cable channel The Hub. Lauren Faust was selected as the creative developer and executive producer for the show based on her previous experience with other animated children's shows such as The Powerpuff Girls and Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends on Cartoon Network. Under Hasbro's guidance, Faust developed the show to appeal to the target demographic of young girls, but created characters and settings that challenged formerly stereotypical norms of "girly" images, adding adventure and humorous elements to keep parents interested.
Doujinshi (同人誌), also romanized as dōjinshi, is the Japanese term for self-published print works, such as magazines, manga, and novels. Part of a wider category of doujin (self-published) works, doujinshi are often derivative of existing works and created by amateurs, though some professional artists participate in order to publish material outside the regular industry.
