(1/2) Okay, late as fuck but I couldn't remember how to spell your blog name for the life of me, RE: disclaiming fanfic. Like, I joined fandom in 2008, and it... was extremely common practice for a disclaimer on every chapter? I just kicked that habit myself - now it's just one in the first chapter and being told to look there - but it's so... strange to see fic on AO3 and not even see one disclaimer? Even when it's the first piece written for that fandom by a person? And I'm both in awe

hai-hai-sictir-deactivated20170:

(2/2) and just waiting for that to bite people on the ass, even though I have a little more faith in people than I did a few years ago.

Honestly, I’m cynical enough that I never really expected disclaimers in and of themselves to do much of anything, even when someone plastered them all over a fic, backwards and forwards. In my view, if an author was truly determined to go after fic of their work, they’d have done it regardless of whatever disclaimers people used. See the examples with Anne Rice and Anne McCaffrey. 

With fic, it’s all a question of what risk you’re willing to take, disclaimers or no disclaimers. I’ve been in fandom since 1999, so I caught the tail-end of a lot of fucking nonsense in this regard. I and older fans are more than prepared to batten down the hatches and use things like closed, members-only communities, if anything changes and the tide ever turns against fanfic, from a legal point of view.