Into the Omegaverse: How a Fanfic Trope Landed in Federal Court

Into the Omegaverse: How a Fanfic Trope Landed in Federal Court is a video essay by Lindsay Ellis published to Youtube on September 3rd 2020 related to the Omegaverse Litigation between Addison Cain and Zoey Ellis. As of November 1, 2020 it has over 1,200,000 views; 107k likes; 600 dislikes; and over 21,000 comments. The video summary reads 
The video served as a commentary on the Omegaverse Litigation case and a primer about the scandal for viewers not in the know; a critique of the “petty fandom bullshit” that Lindsay argues underpins the dispute between the authors. Lindsay also pointed out that while intellectual property claims and fandom tropes are centered in the controversy, these were of lesser consequence for creators than the legal precedent about 'owning tropes' that might be set by the case - which Lindsay argues would actually hurt current or future authors. 
Into the Omegaverse, also had an unexpected sequel; a video essay entitled Addison Cain's lawyer e-mailed me, and it only got worse from there.
==The Video==
===Summary===
Topics included: 
*An explanation the trope of Omegaverse
*Initial details about the Addison Cain vs Zoe Ellis cases
*A cameo by Devin of Legal Eagle regarding DMCA notices and why platforms often remove content without doing independent analyses to check whether the takedown notice is legitimate
*A comparison of plot points of Cain and Ellis’s books
*Examples of other times Cain has gone up against other authors claiming they plagiarized her
*A summary of the litigation between Cain and Ellis
*An explanation of why Blushing Books offered a complete settlement to the Oklahoma case
*Details of Cain’s post about the Virginia case results and an argument that the way Cain portrayed and framed the Virginia case was not accurate.
Lindsay's source material included a short excerpt read aloud from Addison's novel, a consultation segment with LegalEagle, another Youtube essayist; and a timeline based on a relevant podcast episode by ALAB [podcast] (July 3, 2020). She gave credit to individuals from a school of law and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) at the end of the essay, along with a number of other YouTube video essayists who contributed voiceover talent. 
===Excerpts===
==Discussion and Response== 
The video was circulated on a number of platforms including Tumblr, Livejournal and Reddit.Into the Omegaverse, aislincelvun reblogs seenashwrite's post on Tumblr. 3-4 Sep 2020.Into the Omegaverse: How a Fanfic Trope Landed in Federal Court discussion at ohnotheydidnt LJ comm. October 15th, 2020Into the Omegaverse: How a Fanfic Trope Landed in Federal Court discussion on r/BreadTube. 3 Sep 2020 
On September 5, whencartoonsruletheworld posted a summary explaining why fans should watch Lindsay Ellis' video. By November 2, this post had over 54000 notes with fans discussing both Into the Omegaverse and later, the follow-up video.
While Lindsay was not sued, the post above is indicative of rumors in fandom at the time. Within 12 hours of posting her video, Lindsay Ellis retweeted a cropped image of an email she had just received from Addison Cain's lawyer.Archive link to Lindsay Ellis' tweet featuring email subject line, "Defamatory and harmful video content featuring Addison Cain". 2 Sep 2020 Interest in Lindsay's video may have been encouraged by her tweets during the month of September; many of which hinted at legal trouble behind the scenes. On 22 September, Lindsay tweeted that she had been on the phone to lawyers all day, encouraging fans to believe that Cain was threatening litigation again.Archived link to Lindsay Ellis' tweet, featuring replies by fans suspecting she's about to be sued. 22 Sep 2020 
 
thebibliosphere posted the video on Tumblr, and it gained over 4000 notes.
The video also received significant additional attention after Lindsay published a second related video, Addison Cain's lawyer e-mailed me, and it only got worse from there on October 23, 2020. A bulk of fannish response to these video essays also proceeded from the sequel.
==Further Reading==
* A full video outline of the Omegaverse legal battle. And it's every bit as wild and full of petty drama that anyone would imagine, posted by u/ClancyHabbard, discussion at :/r/fanfiction (Sept 4 2020)
* The Fan Fiction Author Threatening to Treat Genre Writing as a Crime(archived link) by Rose Weatherly for medium.com. (Sept 4 2020)
* by TechDirt (Thu, Sep 10th 2020)
* [Erotic literature/fanfiction] Into the Omegaverse: a tale of lawsuits, author slapfights and kinky wolf sex a post at :/r/HobbyDrama by u/purplewigg (Sep 23 2020; dead link)
==References==
Category:Fandom Occurrences Category:2020 Meta