Fan Fiction Authors and the Grey Area

Writing and posting fan fiction has always been a grey area when it comes to intellectual property of the source materials. Normally, the original owners turn a blind eye for the most part to it because it is a great way to drum up more fans who go out and buy or watch the original source. Fan fiction started out as something shared in pulp mags, and BBC boards, but as time has gone on it has grown into a huge part of the internet experience for most people who love to read or write.

A new trend has started to appear in the fan fiction arena, paid stories. Some fan fiction authors have started to move their work over to Patreon and other pay sites. This is actually illegal, but, at the moment they are being let to get away with it since it is such a small number of authors. Today I had two stories that I have been following on Archive of Our Own from the same author get an update. In that update they say that they are moving all the stories they have been writing on AO3 to their Patreon and that if we wanted to keep reading them to go follow them there. They are basically demanding to be paid for stories that legally should be free. I left a comment on one of the stories letting them know that they have lost my respect. That what they are doing is actually illegal. Then I wished them well and unfollowed the stories. I then made sure that I hadn’t yet bookmarked one of them as I will not recommend a story author who does this.

If this trend of demanding money for fan fiction continues to grow the consequences are going to be bad for everyone. Fan fiction will be wiped from being accessed by the masses and we will have to go back to private clubs, bulletin boards, and the like in order to find new things to read. That is if we are lucky. Not everyone is like me and has been keeping a private archive since the mid-90’s of different stories they love to read over and over again. The owners of the various intellectual properties will lock their stuff down and sue people. I guess it has been long enough that people don’t remember the fight that a lot of fan fiction authors and readers had to go through in the 90’s that made the various archives possible today.

To sum it up. Fan fiction is considered Fair Use. It is considered that because the authors of the stories don’t make any money using the intellectual property they are writing about. Fair Use for written things is already a very grey area compared to other media types. Please, please, please keep in mind that if you ask to be paid to write fan fiction you are no longer in compliance with Fair Use law when it comes to written works.

Bathing products and smells

I recently bought a set of soaps from Outlaw a small soap company in Sparks, Nevada. They have milled and handmade soaps as well as other bath and body products in smells that I haven’t seen before. The fragrances are western inspired and so are the names for them. Even though you can buy the products direct from the company website you can also get them on Amazon. I bought them through Amazon because I have Amazon Prime and could get no cost shipping for a small amount of product.

On Amazon I was reading the reviews and most all of them complain about how the smell of the soap doesn’t seem to last long outside the shower. This made me facepalm. As I continued to read the reviews I came to the opinion that most people aren’t taught or aware of how our sense of smell functions.

When we smell something for long enough that isn’t a threat to us our sense of smell will slowly ignore it. An example is when you are baking something be it cookies or a roast. Eventually you stop smelling them unless you leave the area. Like if you go outside for a few minutes and come back in.

When you use a soap that has a fragrance in it you’ll be getting a heavy continuous dose of the scent in the shower or bath with you. Once you leave the area and it is only the smaller amount on your skin or hair giving off the scent your nose will eliminate it. Other people that are just meeting you will still smell it on you as part of your general smell because your natural body odor will mix into it. This is why in the past it was so important to learn what different fragrances would smell like on your skin instead of just in the bottle, soap, lotion. Our body chemistry will change the smell that others detect on us. It’s why I was taught as a teen that less is more when it comes to cologne. Just put some on your wrists, neck behind the ears, and sprits a little in your hair. You will be set for hours if not the whole day from just that little bit. It’s why I love the fact that solid cologne is making a come back. You can slide your finger tips over your wrists and along your neck instead of spraying it everywhere and causing an asthmatic issue for a little bit and take a little and mix it into your hair product if you have wax, grease, etc. to spread it out evenly in your hair.

To get back on topic. This ability to cancel out smells is why some people don’t realize that they smell bad. Like people with strong body odor or someone that works a hard labor job all day. They won’t be able to smell themselves because it isn’t an immediate threat to them so they’re subconscious eliminates it from their notice.

Anyway, I just really needed to get this teaching moment out of the way because it was bugging the hell out of me.

Review – Ben & Jerry’s TOPPED Thick Mint

I generally like Ben & Jerry’s. They make good products and don’t seem to cut corners on ingredients just to make an extra buck on the bottom line. My favorites are Mint Chocolate Cookie, Americone Dream, and Peanut Butter World.

While I was out at the grocery store I saw that the pints were on sale 2 for $6 which where I am is a great deal! So I decided to grab one of the new flavors TOPPED Thick Mint. I figured it would be like having Mint Chocolate Cookie but with a topping added.

I was completely wrong.

The topping is a thick almost fudge like chocolate ganache, which is just a fancy word for icing wish I had known that before writing this review, with hard little lumps, shaped like bon bon, of mint cookie in it. The ice cream, once you get to it, is the same mint ice cream that I love from them but instead of whole cookie chunks there are the hard little lumps once more with a too sweet cookie/chocolate ganache swirl.

Other than the mint ice cream the whole flavor was just too much. I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone I know for a nice summer time treat and now find myself leery of trying any of the other TOPPED flavors.

Doppelganger – Reilly Dolman x Jonathan Brandis

I was watching this Netflix show called Travelers. I’ve given up on it after about five episodes because everything is stupidly convoluted and the vague over arching plot makes my head hurt. However, this is not about that show. This is about one of the actors. His name is Reilly Dolman and he plays the character named Philip.

I spent a good portion of my viewing time trying to figure out why he seemed so familiar to me. It was driving me nuts. So I looked up his name and Duck Duck Goed him. I didn’t recognize anything other that Percy Jackson in his filmography so I looked through pictures and I saw this one.

It’s from his Instagram posts from what I understand. It spooked me and sent me running through another search because he looks almost like Jonathan Brandis to me. See example below.

Jonathan BrandisCirca – 1990Credit: (Mandatory): WENN

Seriously they could be brothers or cousins. Reilly Dolman was born in 1988 so he is too old to be his kid since Jonathan Brandis was born in 1976. It blows my mind that these two guys look so much alike. I had to talk about it a little bit. One last set of pictures and then I will move on to watching a different show.

Opinion – Tom MacDonald

Let me say that I am brand new as of today to Tom MacDonald. I had seen videos in my suggestions on YouTube with reaction videos and such, but, I am gun shy when it comes to modern music because it has turned to shit. I don’t like all the sex, drugs, and crap that has seeped into music especially the hip-hop, rap, and r&b scenes.

I grew up listening to Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Tupac, Biggie, and more. I’d listen to the local hip-hop and r&b station for hours everyday while I hung with friends, did homework, or rode my bike to and from school. I grew up in a neighborhood where I was the minority and I didn’t care because we all liked the same things and dealt with the same crap. It wasn’t until the second year of high school that my mom moved us across town to a neighborhood that was mostly the same color as me. I still didn’t care because I was raised better than to judge by skin color or how people look in general. The different culture from my younger years however got me treated like I was a dangerous thug. I talked like I was from the hood, I walked like I was from the hood, I dressed like I was from the hood, because I was from the hood. As much as my mother had tried to shelter me back then I still was exposed to it. I got jumped for my bike multiple times and had to defend myself. I got picked on for being weird. I got picked on for being fat. This was the 80’s and 90’s before zero policies got put in place. The most memorial moment in my younger years was a group of girls surrounding me and threatening to beat the shit out of me if I didn’t quit choir because they didn’t want me in there. The teacher had made the mistake of having me audition in front of them and telling me that I had a fantastic voice. Since I didn’t have any true friends back then to back me up I quit. The teacher tried to have peer counseling do something about what was happening but it never resolved anything, ever and made me feel like I had done something to make them treat me like that when I hadn’t. But, I digress.

I went to Tom MacDonald’s song called “Snowflake” because one of my favorite YouTubers, Blaire White, was called in to be in the music video. I loved the song and the video so I went to Mr. MacDonald’s channel and started watching more. I also watched an interview he did with Officer Tatum. I am amazed at his talent. You can tell that he was influenced by a lot of the same rappers I grew up listening to. On top of that he has gone through a lot of crap that has made him realize that he was slowly drowning in what the rap scene was trying to push on him. He woke up, he decided to be himself and to try and reach out to those that actually think for themselves. He cares and isn’t just doing this to make money, though that is a wonderful byproduct. In his own words in the video from before they filmed the music video for “White Boy” he talks to the actors he hired. He wants to make people think. He grew up in Canada which has it’s own problems, but, generally the racial stuff isn’t as intense as it is here.

My favorite song so far is “Helluvit”. It rings so true to me on a deep level. I spent a lot of my teen and young adult years trying to fit neatly into boxes and fit into society so I get where he is coming from. I am going to binge the rest of his work.

If you like rap with an actual message. You aren’t easily offended and like being made to think check this guy out. I know that I am going to start collecting some of his albums when I can afford to and I am definitely going to be bumping him through Spotify when I am in my car.

Opinion – Sea of Thieves Crossover Event – Microsoft x Rare x Disney

Let me first say that I will be doing the event because I love Sea of Thieves, but, I still think that what the companies involved did is very rotten.

So, Rare announced that they are doing a Pirates of the Caribbean crossover event at E3. I was super hyped about it because of I love Captain Jack Sparrow and I love Sea of Thieves, but, when I voiced a hope that Johnny Depp had voiced the character in the event on a Discord channel I am a part of I was told that he did not. The voice for Captain Jack Sparrow is not he but a voice imitator instead.

I know that right now a lot of people in the media think that Mr. Depp is damaged goods. They don’t listen to both sides of the story, they don’t care that the law suit he lost in the UK wasn’t a criminal trial but a civil suit for libel, and they don’t care that Amber Heard is just as to blame for things that happened in the relationship as he is. There is ample proof that she was toxic as hell to Mr. Depp. The mainstream just wants to believe that all men are bad, toxic, etc. I get that, I don’t agree with it obviously, but I get it. It is also not completely why I am irritated at the moment.

Disney owns the IP for the character Captain Jack Sparrow. However, Johnny Depp’s voice is his own. If they had used tweaked movie quotes for the game I wouldn’t complain because they own those. However, the fact that they hired someone to imitate Johnny Depp’s voice so well that a lot of people couldn’t tell the difference? That is identity theft. If you don’t want him back as Captain Jack Sparrow fine. Reboot the character with a new actor and be done with it. This event would have been the perfect platform to start that process in fact.

Don’t see an issue with them doing this? Think about it like this. Put yourself in Mr. Depp’s shoes.

You get hired as an actor for a part that is completely unique to launch a franchise based on a ride at an amusement park. You are allowed to completely invent the character from body language to speech patterns as long as it fits in with the role they hired you for. You do so well with the character that it turns into a cultural icon and actually leads to one of the people you based part of it on asking to get a cameo in the series.

Then something that happens in your personal life gets blasted all over social media. Something that should have been private because it wasn’t a criminal proceeding nor a civil suit for injuries and emotional damage. Suddenly you are banned from that role because the company is so scared of any negative PR that you are guilty without a trial. Other places then ban you too just because they want to be seen doing something. They are pandering to a small portion of the public and think they will continue to get more money in doing so. Then to add insult to injury they decide to let the other company they are working with hire someone that can speak just like you to fill the role, and then consult your body doubles that you trained in how to act like the character to make sure it will be on point that way as well. Because the companies are working as a team in being shady dicks.

I’ll say it again. Disney may own the character. But, what all these companies conspired to do with it in this event shady. So shady that if I was Johnny Depp I would be ramping up to sue them over it since the new stuff could be considered a violation of likeness rights since they were imitating his voice.

What the hell were they thinking?

Review – Netflix Original show “Ragnarok”

The concept in this show is compelling. The story of a modern day Thor growing up and into his powers after they are fully activated by an old woman in the town he was born as his family moves back there. Magne is a great character with a lot of potential. The actor is very good at making the emotions believable.

It is a great shame that the storyline is so messed up and unbelievable. I get that this is supposed to be urban fantasy so there needs to be a portion of the story that isn’t quite realistic. However, the writer or writers for this show are so worried about making the show about evil corporations and climate change that they managed to horribly screw up the focus of the show. The show is supposed to be about Thor learning who he is and becoming the champion of man. I get that they needed to have a protagonist, but, the character of Magne already had issues and struggles that he was learning to overcome. From having glasses initially, to having a learning disorder and more. Within the first couple of episodes they kill off the only lesbian character who also was the only friend of Magne in this new town. Even his own little brother was being a dick to him both in and out of school. No surprise that he is Loki considering the lore and who I suspect is his father. I couldn’t even finish the last episode of the first season.

The last straw for me was that when Magne actually found proof that the company was the source of the pollution in the area he went to the police and his teacher with it to have them come look. The cop decided that she needed to inform the company that they were coming to have a look! That would not happen! If a serious allegation like that were to happen along with photographic evidence which he had from his friend’s phone she would have gone to her boss the sheriff, then they would have gone to a judge to get a warrant. From there the police would have put eyes on the area to make sure nothing hinky was going on before serving the warrant to the company. They wouldn’t have brought Magne and they wouldn’t have brought the teacher. If they did or didn’t find anything THEN they would have brought the witness into the station to either accuse them of false reporting or to have them verify from photographs of the crime scene that this is what they had seen before.

Of course this was set in Norway so they could handle things differently than here in the USA so that could be a cultural difference. However, it pissed me off. Especially when there is an obvious pattern of behavior from not only the family that owns the company but signs of corruption in the town that are blatant. Like how the cops changed how his friend died at least twice. The fact that Magne’s own mother is so morally corrupt that she had more concerns in keeping her job than believing him with evidence that she betrays her own son to those very people is infuriating. If the woman that raised him assumingly alone since his father died when Magne was six years old is that corrupt then how in the hell did Magne himself end up with a strong sense of right and wrong.

If you want to see Norse Mythology turned into modern urban fantasy I would suggest watching The Almighty Johnsons instead of Netflix’s Ragnarok. At least then the focus is on where it should be instead of trying to be Woke and convoluting a storyline with crap that just doesn’t make any sense.

Rant – Source Material is Source Material

Okay, I have been having an argument on YouTube with a bunch of people about this comment I made on a video where they analyzed “The Shining” for a theory called The Wendy Theory. I watched one minute of the video and then stopped wrote my comment which is my opinion backed up by an apparently old school education and then went on with my life.

The comment was on the fact that in the creators stated research list for the video he did not list the book for which the movie was inspired. I said that the fact that he didn’t read the book makes the rest of his analysis invalid since the book is the source material for which the movie came from. All these people, not the creator mind you, came forward to defend the video. Telling me that the book has nothing to do with the movie, that Stephen King disavowed the movie since it deviated from the book so much, etc. Not one of their so called arguments is actually valid to my point.

When I went through middle school and high school I was taught how to research for different types of things from papers, to debates, and finally to be able to defend a scientific hypothesis or analysis. The first rule of research for any of these is to READ THE SOURCE MATERIALS. If you don’t make sure that the research you are basing all of your analysis on is as thorough as possible then anyone can come along to topple your tower because the keystone is missing.

I don’t care if later on Stephen King disavowed the movie. Stanley Kubrick himself stated that the movie was inspired by the book. It shares a lot of the same main story elements up to and including the characters and their motivations.

If you are analyzing something that is inspired by something else and sharing that with the public then you should be able to proudly state that you made sure to read/watch what inspired it as part of your thorough research and also be able to publish a bibliography so that others can do and see the evidence of your argument. Though the bibliography isn’t always necessary especially when it comes to visual media.

To me this video that everyone is harping on me about is trash. It is on par with people who have only watched the Harry Potter movies and then they trying to analyze the storyline and such. If you haven’t read the books then you are missing HUGE pieces of things that were left out or out right changed for the films. The movies by the fourth one especially deviate sometimes drastically from the books they were inspired by.

My final message to all those who where criticizing me was to state that either I was being trolled, which is a distinct possibility, or the people that were arguing with me have almost no education in how to research and analyze anything properly.

I don’t like intellectual laziness. It is my opinion that it is unfortunately becoming more and more common from what I can tell.

In need but don’t know what to do…

So, in order to stave off depression, anxiety, and to connect to the world I play video games as my main hobby. I also read, and watch movies/tv shows, but, gaming is my thing. Everyone I am friends with knows this about me. My issue is that I can’t upgrade my video card. I have the money for it. That isn’t the issue. Well, I have the money for the card if I avoid scalpers (resellers as they like to be called).

I have my eye on a RTX 3060ti or a general 3060. EVGA is the only company that I currently trust.

My current card is starting to not be able to keep up with some of my gaming titles and in some cases I have to put the settings down to the lowest they will go in order to not have my GPU get too hot especially in the summertime when my house is 80 f and up. I am running a GTX 970.

If I could throw money at the issue I would just buy a new PC, but, that isn’t an option for me unless I miraculously win Publisher’s Clearing House.

Demand is high but it has also been inflated because of scalp bots which is super frustrating. You want to make money? I get that, but, this is at the expense of other people who don’t have wads of cash to throw at shit.

I’d give in and just buy a PS5 except the lifecycle of consoles is worse than PC.

Sorry, I just needed to rant because this is the third or fourth month now that I have been waiting to get my chance to get a new video card and now my games are lagging and crap because of it.

Brightside, I have a roof over my head, food to eat in the house, and I am breathing. I also still have some games I can play with no issues, a PS4, a PS3, and lots of stuff to read/watch to choose from.

Movie Review (Spoilers) – Jennifer’s Body (2009) – Opinion

I’ve seen some good reviews about this movie on the internet, but I have also seen a LOT of reviews ripping into it as well.

I have been a fan of horror since I was a kid. I started watching them at around twelve, but, that wasn’t the first time I had seen one. Just the first time I started enjoying them. This 2009 movie is the last modern one that I have seen and enjoyed.

The movie is a campy, raunchy, dark comedy throwback to the 70s – 80s horror movie. It is done very well, the acting is better than the throwbacks that it makes me recall, and of course the special effects are better.

To sum up the plot a popular small town girl is mistakenly thought to be a virgin by a big city band as they look for a sacrifice in order to cheat their way to stardom by making a pact with evil. Because the girl wasn’t pure she was possessed by a demon instead of just killed. Her close bond with her best friend compelled her to come back to the small town where she proceeds to kill multiple teenage boys in order to keep herself powered up and looking perfect. The best friend figures out that she is evil and starts to try to defeat her but not before the popular girl kills her boyfriend.

There is a undertone to the movie that makes me believe that the movie plot can be seen in multiple different ways. The writer and director talk about girl power, and other themes in the film that I just don’t see when I watch it. You can listen to their commentary on the DVD. I like to do that once I watched a film at least once.

For me it seems to be a coming of age, sexual confusion undertone. Jennifer and Needy seem to have this weird emotionally co-dependent and slightly romantic nature to their friendship. When Jennifer comes back possessed she decides not to eat Needy even though everything in her was telling her to do it. Two of her targets are boys that made her jealous or angry because of the attention they gave to Needy or that Needy gave to them. The demon because of Jennifer’s psyche chose to revolve around Needy. I fully think that had Needy not decided to kill her that the demon would never have hurt her physically. Though she also would have continued to isolate, mentally/emotionally abuse, and use Needy because the demon enhanced the worst traits of Jennifer who also did a softer version of that before hand.

There are scenes in the film that showcase how confused Needy is about her emotional and romantic responses to Jennifer even from the beginning of the film. Jennifer however seems to know what is going on and uses it to manipulate Needy ever so slightly. Though the demons actions ultimately show that under the surface Jennifer cared more for Needy than she cared to show or even tell Needy. In the final scene when Needy eventually rips the BFF necklace off her and throws it the floor the demon just stops fighting as if realizing that it had pushed too far or like a small portion of Jennifer was still in there and forced the demon to allow Needy to kill her especially after it was able to bite her to transfer some of itself to Needy to continue the mayhem. With the passion and revenge that Needy has within her the demon HAD to know that she would go after the evil band Low Shoulder who had benefited from corrupting her BFF and all the death that surrounded the demon the way she had gone after it for the death of the boyfriend.

Ultimately I think that people watching this movie that decided to call it crap, bad acting, etc. just went in with too much expectation. Even when I first saw a trailer I knew it was going to be a campy fun horror movie not some award winning artistic film. If you like things that will make you laugh, give you some hot girl/girl vibes, and not take itself too seriously I really do think you need to watch this movie. I didn’t give everything away above and in order to really appreciate the movie you need to watch it with all the awesome dialogue in it.