Librarianon

Have you ever wanted to do a thing, really had enthusiasm for doing a thing, and then realized you have no talent or capacity to do such thing? And your repeated failures to do the thing bring you sadness and frustration? Particularly in light of the knowledge that so many others do the thing really really well?

Part of being alive, I guess.

EDIT: Hey the original version of this post said that you can't draw him wearing gloves or different clothes but somebody pointed out some important things in a rechost of this that I am wrong about some of the details. They also said a few things I'm not 100% sure is the case but I'm DEFINITELY wrong about the gloves thing. I edited the image to make that clear.

As for the other things they said, I am not convinced that we can put Mickey in whatever clothes we want and not run afowl of some gacha somewhere, or have the mouse Speak. I think that that's up to the judge and I hate that kind of shit. Either way, big error. I love that cohost lets you edit images. I'm never going back to some other site.

If the developers of the Nazi Mickey game or Slasher Mickey game are careful enough to not actually call their mouse Mickey but instead stick to Willie, they have a very compelling case for no trademark infringement because no reasonable person could confuse their adaptations of this public domain character with Disney's adaptations of this public domain character because Disney isn't in the business of horror (for the most part.) Same thing happened with Pooh.

Now, could they win against Disney in a courtroom? Probably not, you don't fuck with the Mouse's lawyers and our system is broken.

BUT.

For horror specifically it's "Probably not", not "hell no." And if Disney takes them to court and loses that suit, there's a serious gamble for them that the ruling could actually weaken their trademark, not strengthen it. So right now Disney is going to not take immediate action but watch very, very carefully for anything actionable. The moment something that is clear cut happens - the first few notes of Disney's whistle theme, the slightest resemblance to anything from Disney World, even a hint of Mickey's well known speaking voice - Disney's lawyers are going to swarm like frenzied army ants.

The public domain is important. We need more properties from the 1900's to be public domain. Right now though, all we're going to get is trickles and drops that immediately get made into horror properties (which I'm fine with for the Slasher Mickey movie thingy even though it'll be bad, and...Steam needs to stop Mickey Does a Genocide: the Game because it's a hate crime in video game form, not because of Disney's trademarks.)

I still can't stop laughing every time I see this goddamn image

Ah, the glorious landscape of American commerce.