I don't think it's illegal. They're not selling their work just asking for contribution. It's no different from a Twitch streaming profiting from the work of the developers.

 

Does this hold true for people who write fanfiction on commission as well? Which is also quite common, or would that fall under Copyright laws?

 

It still falls under Fair Use. Fanfiction is transformative work; as long as they're not straight lifting significant chunks of the work from the original material (or somewhere else for that matter), then they're clear under copyright law. It's very similar to the reasoning why Let's Plays and streaming and the like for games is legal; you're not selling the original work, you're selling what you made from the work as a basis.

Now, with that said, it behooves folks to still be cautious with such things, because while it is legal to write and distribute such work for money, that's not going to stop, say, Disney from suing you over publishing Star Wars fanfiction, especially if you try to publish it using the Star Wars brand for recognition. And even if you win the suit, which is far from guaranteed given how stupid copyright rulings tend to be and how stacked the courts are toward copyright holders, it's (most likely) still going to be ruinously expensive for all but the largest corporations.

 

Yeah I don't mind patreons, but locking chapters behind a paywall is a whole new matter.

 

It's not new Rent a Hero was a fic that got abandoned because the author want to be paid to write it.

 

That's not true. He put up a patreon, met the goal, then stopped updating. Either the patreon was attempting to fix a flagging motivation and it didn't work, or people bitching about the patreon caused them to quit.

 

How so? A stream is someone taking an existing artistic work and then adding their own spin to it which they then sell to their audience.

A fanfic is something taking an existing artistic work and then adding their own spin to it which they then sell to their audience.

If anything, fics are (or at least can be) more transformative than a stream.

 

Blushing:

I don't know what's going on but blushing is the new lop-sided grinning. It's very annoying, primarily when:

1. It's Harry or whoever blushing while in private, reading a letter or somesuch.

2. When interaction between (usually) Harry/Interest is more or less nothing but them saying embarrassing things trying to get the other to blush.

As time goes on I hate... I don't know the word for it, bashing but accidental bashing? I'd rather have an author who just straight up thinks Ron is the devil who betrays Harry and snaps Hedwig's neck and burns the photos of his parents, than an author that is *trying to write genuine Ron* but writes him as a retarded kid who can't chew his food and literally does nothing but play quidditch and chess.

Or have a Harry who shows up twitchy at the very thought of human contact and a starving skeleton. It's been 20+ years if you're writing in the fandom have some basic knowledge of the actual characters for fuck sake reeeeeeee.

I think this has always been a problem but is much worse now because we have entire generation of people who have never actually read the books. Fandom increasingly is a derivative of the derivative.

Edit: Big plot points being retroactively jammed into the story. If you have a big butterfly effect, that should either be the start of your story, or you need to do a better job of integrating it into the story as a given.

Neville is boy who lived. Ok, that's a possible handwave plot change. Everything going along as normal and Harry gets a crush on Daphne and oh Harry then discovers that Hermione and Daphne have been friends in Arithmancy this whole time is not. Daphne is a QUEEN and it's okay to have Harry have to go through a series of increasingly crazy adventures in order to seduce her!

 

His avada kevadra emerald green glowing orbs blushed as they stared into the ice queen's icy cold blushing freezing very cold stare.

 

Wtf. How do eyes blush? I really hope this doesn't happen in fics these days.

 

Draco's eyes always being temperatures

11 year old Slytherin politicians

School board ex machina

 

Obsession with balls. They are just an lazy way for authors to show off their DASEXY OC's mad dancing/singing/violin skills and provide opportunity for general badassery in front of a crowd .

The Yule ball, the Summer ball, the Autumn ball, Dumbledore's birthday ball, Harry's birthday ball, the Friday ball, the let's-have-a-ball-for-the-hell-of-it ball, Merlin's Ball(Robst) and the V-day ball .

You liked the Welcome feast? Too bad it's a ball now .

 

I thought that was going to go an entirely different direction. That aside, I think it's quite reasonable for Dumbledore to go mad for balls.

 

How to write a cliche edgy Diagon alley scene 101:

1. Entering the alley. Getting mobbed by the crowd at The Leaking Cauldron . Going to Gringotts and being so nice to the goblins that they launch an investigation on every ministry official and Dumbledore and offer to pay for Harry's shopping. They also give you a magical trunk! For free!
2. Acromantula silk robes at Madam Malkins. Lethifold/dementor cloak for extra edge . Good place to introduce OC love interest .
3. Solid gold/platinum cauldrons are sooo 2009 .We now buy dragon skull cauldrons and bottles of nundu breath at the potions store .
4. Snake at the magical menagerie. No exceptions .
5. Eagle owl at the owl emporium . Vulture owl for extra edge and a phoenix if you are feeling particularly stupid that day .
6. Buying the latest broomstick . Bonus points for it being "experimental" or using "muggle science" to reach top speeds .
7. Trying over 100 wands at Ollivander's and finally making him open his secret collection and finally getting a yew wood wand with basilisk venom and dementor cloak core and gem encrusted wand holster . Paragraph on his deep connection with the wand .
8. Ending the day at Florian Frotesque's Ice Cream parlor, wearing your acromantula silk robes and feeling so gosh darn happy and ready to do things with that wand that no 11 year has a right to be able to do .

 

You forgot the extra books, probably the ones for muggleborns that Hagrid 'forgot' to get for Harry.

 

I'm sure this frustrates some people because it's likely spawned from the same immature motivations as a lot of the other HP badfic tropes, but in the end it's a bit of a wash, at least insofar as it relates to canon.

In canon, Harry tries a ton of wands until Ollivander finally brings out the super holly wood wand with phoenix feather that is a brother wand to THE worst dark wizard evar. If you think about it, the only difference between Harry's canonical wand and the one from your scenario is it has dark connotations and a gaudy holster, while the canon wand has light-side implications and a super rare and mysterious connection to Voldemort's own wand.

A lot of the stories that feature this sort of scene also happen to be redo/Peggy Sue fics, meaning that not only might Harry be deliberately trying to get a different wand for whatever reason, but the Harry getting his wand is a mental adult and thus an entirely different person than the one who got his wand as an eleven-year-old in canon; so, badly written or not... fair enough, I guess?

 

You forgot not using 70% of this shit in the entire rest of the story- we'll call that Chekhov's school supplies.