Me and a group of people were having a Discord conversation earlier about this and I wanted to ask: Is it possible to monetize a fan comic, and if so, to what degree of separation from the source material? Is it okay if it doesn't contain the characters only or if it includes Sburb or what? I have seen Homestuck fan merch floating around so it's not like that's disallowed, so I wonder why it's different for fan adventures (including ones that don't contain any actual Homestuck characters)
I think it's also important to ask about other types of projects being monetized. Like I don't think Promstuck has a license but they got away with both selling merch and theming an event based on it. Does it come down to just using assets from the comic? That would make sense, but it kind of isn't consistent. Help me out here.
As far as I know, FRAF is the only way that fanworks have been/can be monetized. If you attempt to monetize fanwork of what is technically someone else's "intellectual property", then the copyright holder can demand takedown or pursue legal action. The fact that fans and bootleggers have been doing this mostly without interference does not necessarily mean that it is safe to do so; think about it as similar to Nintendo's behavior, where fan projects working in the open for years, even non-monetized ones, are suddenly met with aggressive litigious action.
This could apply to anything that could reasonably be traced back to Homestuck; classpects, species, characters, settings. If you don't make a splash, you might not get noticed, but the larger you get and the more money you get from what you do, the more likely that action may be taken against you.
I am not a lawyer, and anyone can feel free to correct me on these points, but unless the licensing for Homestuck changes in a way more substantial than a few handpicked fan projects getting the OK when they declare it so, it will always be a serious risk to attempt to monetize a fan project, even if you use zero original comic assets in there.
By contrast, Touhou's creator, ZUN, has a license for the Touhou franchise that allows creators to make games with full leisure of the characters, setting, and concepts of Touhou's world. This has led to a flourishing ecosystem of fangames that have enriched the fandom as a whole and led to its enduring popularity. It might be possible for Homestuck to alter its license in such a way, but this would require a complete rethinking of the peculiar philosophy of brand management that Homestuck is currently run under.
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I think technically it's a whole under the table thing, but hussie has gone on record to say that she doesn't really care about monetization iirc? I know plenty of mspfas who had their items monetized (and even kittyquest was selling merch before they were in fraf)and they didn't get into any trouble. It just depends if hicu wants to crack down on these sorts of things or not, and right now it doesn't seem like they will.
Also Im not a lawyer, this isnt legal advice, yada yada yada etc etc etc if you get arrested it's not my fault.
