THE BLUEPRINT WAS ALREADY WRITTEN.

An Open Letter to Fashionista: Before the Conglomerates, There Was a Fandom.

I would like to take a moment to address something that deserves far more than a passing acknowledgment: the history of the Maasverse, the artists who helped shape its creative identity, and the deeply misguided narrative that the latest wave of corporate licensing partnerships is somehow establishing the “blueprint” for Sarah J. Maas merchandise. A narrative recently perpetuated by Fashionista.

Because while it may be convenient to frame the arrival of major retailers and global brands as the beginning of a new era of creativity, doing so without acknowledging the people who spent nearly a decade building the very market these corporations are now entering is not merely an oversight.

It is an erasure.

An erasure of the hundreds, if not thousands, of small businesses, independent artists, designers, and creators who were bringing these worlds to life long before the Maasverse became an irresistible commercial opportunity. Long before the licensing landscape shifted under IMG. Long before corporate boardrooms began discussing the profitability of a fandom that had already spent years cultivating its own creative economy. And perhaps most importantly, long before anyone thought to call what they were doing a blueprint.

Because the blueprint already existed.

It was written by the fandom. Built by independent artists. And carried, brick by fucking brick, by small businesses that believed in these stories before the rest of the commercial world understood their value.

For nearly a decade, these businesses, many of which began as passion projects side hustles, or modest creative ventures, transformed the words on Sarah J. Maas’s pages into tangible pieces of the worlds readers had fallen in love with.

They did not have the multinational marketing departments. They did not have the purchasing power of, for example, Target, Walmart, Hot Topic, or Alex and Ani. They did not have the luxury of established retail distribution networks, enormous licensing budgets, or the security of knowing that tens of millions of books had already been sold. What they had was imagination. What they had was talent. And what they had was an extraordinary devotion to a world that, at the time, was still finding its place in the larger literary landscape.

They saw the beauty in the words before anyone could calculate the revenue attached to them.

They took descriptions of places that existed only in our imaginations and gave them form. They created jewelry, artwork, apparel, collectibles, and countless other expressions of literary devotion. They made pieces for the readers the bookish community affectionately calls the “Purists” or the “Originals.” The ones who were there before the hype, before the mainstream retail displays, before the commercial explosion.

They were creating when licensing was complicated, when the audience was still growing, and when taking a financial risk on a literary-inspired product required something far more personal than a promising sales projection. They were creating when readers were still debating whether tattooing a certain blond man’s name on their bodies had been a terrible mistake or an extraordinary act of foresight.

And they kept creating. Through every new release. Every theory. Every heartbreak. Every midnight conversation about characters who felt as real as the people sitting beside us.

These businesses did not wait for the Maasverse to become a commercial phenomenon.

They helped make it one.

And now, after years of independent creativity, after an entire ecosystem of artistic expression has been established, after more than 75 million copies have been sold, major corporations have entered the room. There is nothing inherently wrong with that. An author reaching this level of success deserves the opportunity to expand her brand, protect her intellectual property, and establish the licensing infrastructure necessary to support a literary legacy of this magnitude.

But let us be exceptionally clear about one thing.

Entering an established market is not the same as creating it.

Recognizing the profitability of an existing audience is not the same as cultivating that audience. And acquiring the financial means to participate in a creative economy does not retroactively make you its architect.

What makes the narrative particularly insulting is the suggestion that these newly arriving brands are somehow operating without a preexisting creative roadmap. Without direction. Without inspiration. Without a blueprint.

Respectfully, where exactly do we think the last decade of designs, products, fandom conventions, independent storefronts, and artistic communities disappeared to?

The creative foundation of this industry has been publicly visible for years. Its designs have circulated across social media, marketplaces, conventions and countless other platforms. The audience’s tastes, purchasing habits, emotional connections, and appetite for merchandise were not mysteries waiting for corporate discovery. They were demonstrated, repeatedly, by the small businesses already serving them.

The creative landscape these companies are entering was not barren ground.

It was an entire city, already illuminated.

And in a fandom that knows the beauty of Velaris, perhaps there is no more fitting analogy. The artists built their own Rainbow of Velaris, filling it with color, imagination, and devotion, long before anyone arrived with the resources to commercialize the view. To suggest that the newest occupants somehow laid the foundation profoundly misunderstands the very history of the place they now wish to inhabit.

And that distinction matters. Because what began as an extraordinary relationship between an author, her readers, and the artists inspired by her work was about something far greater than merchandise. It was about belonging.

It was about giving creative people a place in a literary world that mattered to them. It was about artists who might never have found a place in traditional commercial spaces discovering that their imagination had value, that their craftsmanship mattered, and that their work could connect thousands of people through a shared love of storytelling.

Sarah allowed a creative community to flourish alongside her growing literary universe. And that community did not simply participate in the success of the Maasverse. It helped establish the culture surrounding it.

The demand.

The traditions.

The expectations.

The emotional significance of owning something that brought a beloved fictional world into reality.

That is not a footnote in the history of licensed merchandise. That is the foundation upon which the current industry stands.

I say this as someone who has been part of the Maasverse from its earliest beginnings, when Sarah’s work first appeared on the internet, through its evolution into published stories, novellas, and eventually the sprawling interconnected literary universe we know today.

To have witnessed that evolution is something extraordinary. There is an immense amount of pride in watching an author you have believed in for so long reach a level of success that demands an entirely new business infrastructure.

Sarah J. Maas is building a literary legacy that will outlive us.

I firmly believe her name will one day stand among the defining fantasy authors of generations, in conversations alongside Tolkien and Rowling. Not because their stories are identical, but because of the extraordinary cultural footprints their worlds have left behind. And for those of us who finished Throne of Glass and have apparently managed to go exactly zero days without shedding another tear over that series, the emotional investment is not something that can be measured in quarterly revenue.

We are proud of her. Profoundly proud.

We understand why an author operating at this level needs experienced representation, structured licensing agreements, brand protections, minimum guarantees, and multiyear contractual commitments. Those are legitimate and, at this scale, often necessary components of protecting and growing intellectual property.

But celebrating an author’s commercial evolution should never require rewriting the history of the people who helped her fandom flourish.

And this is where the conversation becomes particularly uncomfortable. Because licensing becomes more financially demanding, the very businesses that helped establish the demand for these products can find themselves unable to afford a seat at the table they helped build.

Minimum guarantees. Multiyear agreements. Financial commitments that can be manageable for a global retailer but extraordinarily burdensome for an independent creator.

The result is a painful contradiction. The small businesses that helped demonstrate the commercial viability of literary merchandise now face barriers to participating in the very market they helped develop. Meanwhile companies with significantly greater capital can enter that same market and receive headlines celebrating their supposed innovation.

There is something deeply and innately troubling about that.  

And when concerns arise about larger companies producing designs that resemble the work of independent creators, the need for proper attribution, research, and accountability becomes even more urgent. Allegations of copied designs deserve careful examination, not dismissal simply because one party has a greater commercial influence or a larger bank account and the legal team to bury any concern.

Access to capital does not automatically signal originality. A licensing agreement does not erase the creative history that preceded it. And a corporate launch does not transform an established idea into a pioneering achievement.

A larger platform does not make an idea more original. It simply makes it more visible.

There is a difference between innovation and expansion. There is a difference between building a community and discovering that a community has become profitable. There is a difference between being a pioneer and being a well-funded participant in an industry whose foundations were laid long before your arrival. And there is certainly a difference between honoring the history of a fandom and presenting its latest corporate partnerships as though creativity only became legitimate once it was accompanied by a sufficiently large licensing agreement.

To Fashionista, and to any publication covering the growing commercial influence of the Maasverse, I would offer this:

Do the research. Tell the entire story. And give credit where credit is due.

Journalism has a responsibility to distinguish between the emergence of a new corporate licensing strategy and the origins of the creative marketplace that strategy now serves. Those two very different stories. One is about the commercialization and expansion of an established intellectual property. The other is about the independent artists and entrepreneurs who spent years transforming literary devotion into an industry.

Both stories deserve to be told. But one should never be permitted to erase the other.

And the corporations now entering this space should understand that there is room for growth, collaboration, and extraordinary new possibilities. No one should begrudge Sarah the opportunity to see her creations reach an even wider audience. But there is an expectation that should come with entering a community this deeply rooted in creativity.

Respect its history.

Respect its artists.

Respect the businesses that were here when the financial outlook was uncertain, the storylines were still being shaped, the market was unproven, and the only guarantee was that someone, somewhere, would recognize the love poured into every piece.

Because you cannot purchase the distinction of having been there from the beginning. You cannot manufacture a decade of devotion through a marketing campaign. And you cannot claim to have pioneered a road simply because you now possess the resources to travel it at a greater scale.

You are not the beginning of this story. You are the beneficiaries of the chapters that came before you.

Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of this entire conversation is that it reflects something our industry has struggled with for far too long: a diminishing regard for integrity, historical context, and the simple act of acknowledging the people whose work made subsequent success possible.

We should be able to celebrate corporate growth without diminishing independent achievement. We should be able to applaud an author’s extraordinary success without forgetting the artists who grew alongside her. And we should certainly be capable of recognizing that the size of a company’s balance sheet has absolutely nothing to do with the depth of its creative contribution.

So, to every small business that ever took a chance on a design inspired by a world you loved: To every artist who spent sleepless nights bringing an idea to life. To every creator who invested money they could barely afford because they believed someone else might love their work as much as they did. To those who knew the audience because you ARE the audience and immersed yourself in your buyers at book launches, reading retreats, book clubs, fandom meetups, etc.

To those who navigated uncertain licensing landscapes, built communities from nothing, packed orders at the kitchen tables, traveled to conventions, and turned their love for a story into something another reader could hold in their hands. To those who were there before the headlines, before the licensing agencies, before the global retail partnerships, and before the corporate world recognized the commercial power of the Maasverse:

We see you.

We saw you then. We see you now. And we will not let your contributions be quietly erased from the history you helped create.

You were never merely vendors capitalizing on someone else’s imagination. You were artists giving physical form to the emotional worlds an author entrusted to her readers. You build businesses, yes. But you also built connections, communities, traditions, and an entire creative culture that still shapes what this industry looks like today.

You helped turn a literary fandom into something people could wear, display, collect, gift, and carry with them long after they closed the final page. And you did it without the promise of global recognition or a net return on your bottom line. You did it because you loved it.

That is the difference between recognizing an opportunity and believing in something before the opportunity exists.

And that difference deserves to be remembered.

So let the conglomerates arrive. Let the licensing programs expand. Let Sarah J. Maas’s extraordinary universe reach every corner of the world. There is room to celebrate it all.

But let us never confuse the arrival of corporate investment with the birth of creative ingenuity. The Maasverse didn’t suddenly become worthy of merchandise when the largest brands decided it was profitable. It was worthy when the first independent artist looked at a page, imagined something beautiful, and dared to create it.

And to every small business that followed, every creator who contributed, every artist who helped lay the foundation for what this industry has become:

Thank you.

You were the blueprint. You built the foundation.

And no amount of corporate money, marketing, or editorial revisionism will ever change who laid the first brick.

The corporations may now have the keys to the kingdom.

But they should never forget who built its walls and its foundation.

Respectfully,

Rachel Riddle

Editor-in-Chief

Romantasy Illustrated