Phenomenon

listen to Odie Leigh in the dark in some headphones when the world is asleep send tumble

I’m upset we never got to see Dondus in a matching outfit with Caracalla btw

Copy Right and Public Domain in 2024

Happy 2024 all! its also Public Domain Day! a magical holiday here in America where things enter the public domain. Works published in the year 1928 (or 95 years ago!) have entered the public domain, which means they belong to us, all of us, the public!

Mickey's Back!

Yes! I'm sure you've heard, but Mickey Mouse (and Minnie Mouse too) is entering the Public Domain today. This has been news for a few years and indeed Disney's lobbying in the late 1990s is why our copy right term is SO long. So what exactly is now public domain?

Most people know about Mickey's first appearance Steamboat Willie, but a second short film, Plane Crazy was also released in 1928 so will also be public domain. So what's public? well these two films first of all, you're allowed to play them, upload them to YouTube or whatever without paying Disney. In theory you'll be allowed to cut and sample them, have them playing in the background of your movie etc. Likewise in theory the image of Mickey and Minnie as they appear (thats important) in these films will be free to use as well as Mickey's character as he appears in these works will be free to use. Now Mickey's later and more famous appearance

will still be protected. Famously the Conan Doyle Estate claimed that Sherlock Holmes couldn't be nice, smile, or not hate women in works because they still held the copyright on the short stories where he first did those things even though 90% of Sherlock Holmes stories were public domain. It's very likely Disney will assert similar claims over Mickey, claiming much of his personality first appeared in works still copyrighted.

Finally there's copyright vs trademark. Copyright is total ownership of a piece of media and all the ideas that appear in it, copyright has a limited set term and expires. Trademark is more limited and only applies to things used to market and sell a product. You can have a Coke branded vending machine in your movie if you want, but it couldn't appear anywhere in the trailer for your movie as thats you marketing your movie.

Where trademark ends and copyright begins and how trademarked something in the public domain is allowed to be are all unsettled areas of law and clearly Disney in the last few years as been aggressively pushing its trademark not just to Mickey in general but Steamboat Willie Mickey in particular

Ultimately the legal rights and wrongs of this might not matter so much since few people have the money and legal resources of the Walt Disney corporation so they might manage to maintain a de facto copyright on Mickey through legal intimidation, but maybe not?

And Tigger Too!

All the talk about Mickey Mouse and Steamboat Willie has sadly overshadowed other MAJOR things entering the public domain today. Most people are aware Winnie the Pooh entered the public domain in 2022, but they might not realize his beloved friend Tigger didn't. Thats because Tigger didn't appear till A. A. Milne's second (and last) book of Pooh short stories, The House at Pooh Corner in 1928.

Much like Mickey Mouse only what appears in The House at Pooh Corner is public domain so the orange bouncy boy from the 1960s Disney cartoon is still on lock down. But the A. A. Milne original as illustrated by E. H. Shepard is free for you to use in fiction or art. His friend Winnie the Pooh has made a number of appearances since being freed, most notably in a horror movie, but also a Mint Mobile commercial so maybe Tigger too will have a lot of luck in the public domain.

Other works:

Peter Pan; or the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up

Peter Pan is a strange case, even though the play was first mounted in 1904, and the novelization (Peter and Wendy) was published in 1911, The script for the play was not published till 1928 (confusing!) meaning while the novel as been public domain for years the play (which came first) hasn't been, but now it is and people are welcome to mount productions of it.

Millions of Cats

The oldest picture book still in print, did you own a copy growing up? (I did)

Lady Chatterley's Lover

The iconic porn novel that was at the center of a number of groundbreaking obscenity cases in the 1960s and helped establish your right to free speech.

All Quiet on the Western Front and The Threepenny Opera in their original German (but you can translate them if you want), The Mystery of the Blue Train by Agatha Christie, and Orlando by Virginia Woolf will also be joining us in the public domain along with any and all plays, novels, and books published in 1928

for Films we have The Man Who Laughs who's iconic image inspired the Joker

Charlie Chaplin's The Circus, Buster Keaton's The Cameraman, Should Married Men Go Home? the first Laurel and Hardy movie, Lights of New York the first "all talking" movie, The Passion of Joan of Arc, The Wind, as well as The Last Command and Street Angel the first films to win Oscars for Best Actor and Best Actress respectively will all be entering public domain

For Musical Compositions (more on that in a moment) we've got

Mack the Knife by Bertolt Brecht, Let’s Do It (Let’s Fall in Love) by Cole Porter, Sonny Boy by George Gard DeSylva, Lew Brown & Ray Henderson, Empty Bed Blues by J. C. Johnson, and Makin’ Whoopee! by Gus Khan are some of the notables but any piece of music published in 1928 is covered

Any art work published in 1928, which might include works by Frida Kahlo, Georgia O'Keeffe, Alexej von Jawlensky, Edward Hopper, and André Kertész will enter the public domain, we are sure those that M. C. Escher's Tower of Babel will be in the public domain

Swan Song, Public Domain and recorded music

While most things are covered by the Copyright Act of 1976 as amended by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, none of the copyright acts covered recordings you see when American copyright law was first written recordings did not exist and so through its many amendings no one fixed this problem, movies were treated like plays and artwork, but recorded sound wasn't covered by any federal law. So all sound recordings from before 1972 were governed by a confusing mess of state level laws making it basically impossible to say what was public and what was under copyright. In 2017 Congress managed to do something right and passed the Music Modernization Act. Under the act all recordings from 1922 and before would enter the public domain in 2022. After taking a break for 2023, all sound recordings made in 1923 have entered the public domain today on January 1st 2024, these include.

Charleston by James P. Johnson

Yes! We Have No Bananas (recorded by a lot artists that year)

Who’s Sorry Now by Lewis James

Down Hearted Blues by Bessie Smith

Lawdy, Lawdy Blues by Ida Cox

Southern Blues and Moonshine Blues by Ma Rainey

That American Boy of Mine and Parade of the Wooden Soldiers by Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra

Dipper Mouth Blues and Froggie More by King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band, featuring Louis Armstrong

Bambalina by Ray Miller Orchestra

Swingin’ Down the Lane by Isham Jones Orchestra

Enjoy your public domain works!

Struck by a realization.

Caracalla, a horribly disease ridden forceps baby, seemingly forgets his involvement with his brother’s death a matter of hours, or days, after the fact.

I see people attributing this to neurosyphilis, the psychological effects of lead poisoning, etc. Obviously. But I feel like it could also be some flavor of a trauma response. Whether he is unintentionally repressing memories of violence, or deliberately refusing to accept reality and thus losing the thread, I’m not quite sure.

Yeah, the man is obviously deeply sick. But him and Geta have also been through a history of physical abuse. A cocktail of drinking, desensitization to violence, trauma, brain damage, and psychosis all contributed.

If Caracalla was experiencing some type of severe complex trauma or delusions (or both;) it would be incredibly easy to completely discard anything that doesn’t adhere to the reality his mind had created. Especially when that reality is a place where he is correct, protected, or vindicated. Caracalla’s deep fried and shredded brain tissue would have absolutely no problem tossing out the memory of literally sawing Geta’s head off. Caracalla might have simply dismissed it as an intrusive thought he ignored, a nightmare he had. I dunno, him being conscious of the event but not recognizing it is MISERABLE!! And I am nothing if not a creator of miserable fiction.

I don’t have all of the right words here. But god. I am sick to my stomach thinking about my blorbos.

Of Boys and Wolves

Relationships: Marcus Acacius/Lucilla, Emperor Geta & Emperor Caracalla Rating: Mature Chapters: 3/? Words: 15 321/?   Warnings: Violence, detailed depictions of physical and mental illness, referenced child abuse, trauma (varied + sexual) Tags: Canon divergence (Macrinus isn’t there), “fix-it”, found family, accidental adoption, politics and war, healing and learning to trust.

Summary: Taking over the Palatine Hill is not the end of an insurrection, but merely the beginning of a new Roman era. As dust settles, it leaves in its wake triumphant and devastated men on uncertain foundations: what will dawn bring with its first light? What is the will of the people, and how to best guide it when it is known to be so fickle, and so often at odds with its own best interests? How to convince an Empire that it needs no Emperor, when a thousand shadows are watching through the cracks, waiting for an opportunity to claim the throne for themselves?

And what to do with two orphan boys, abandoned by their gods and their people, in this lair of wolves?

( AO3 )

I hope everyone I ever hold a grudge against gathers to become a small community of rival Yak farmers in Kazakhstan. Send post

okay let's go

1. Intimate stabbing

2. Outright obsession

I feel like I don't really have to prove this one, this is literally the whole show.

3. Confused pining

4. No one knows me like you do

"I've never known myself as well as I know myself when I'm with him"

"You wanted to be seen" "By you"

"He knew where to find me"

Again, literally the whole show.

5. Lifelong promises that always sound suspiciously like wedding vows

Case closed.

posting some poetry bc why not :) (also go and follow my friend @stardust-stains , they're amazing! ). Anyway this is based off what gerard way said in that one show in Australia (:

I stand to trial.

The whispers of the audience circle me

menacing

gnashing their teeth

Liquid Ruby drips off their anatomical weapons,

glass melts off my skin.

I am on trial, for the murder of myself

Bills are thrown in as evidence

nothing scientific

a (forcibly) retired surgeon is questioned for mutilation

she did nothing wrong

I am kept silent

faith is questioned

I am faithless but still going against a deity

they call me too young, too old

they ask me what my name is

they remove my clam restraint.

Silence falls around the madhouse.

My voice croaks

I say "fuck you" to the exterminator.

im always surprised how many people think venetia is the younger sibling. i feel like we get so caught up in those scenes defined as shocking and grotesque by media and pop culture at large that we skim over the quiet, lurking horrors of saltburn. poor, poor venetia, who was born first but will never be first, not to the boys, not to her parents, not to oliver, not to anyone. mommy's emotionally battered and neglected firstborn daughter. felix was born when venetia was still a baby, not even two years old, the perfect golden boy, son and heir, sun and air. and he's getting it all, the title, the estate, everything ("I will look after this house just as felix would have"). do you think they ever talked about it? which catton was getting saltburn? i dont. venetia, the butt of every joke. desperate, embarrassing, lighting her body up like a neon sign on an empty highway. if felix is the sun, venetia is the moon, shrouded in darkness when he's not near. venetia, destroying and remaking herself in her mother's eyes. always hungry, a scavenger of love, picking over felix's scraps, sucking up the detritus at the bottom of a dark, lonely ocean.