Approval of God

"Apocalyptica, we love you boys!"

—James Hetfield, on their performance of Metallica music with him as the guest vocal.

Some creators at least accept the presence of a fan work or a parody of their work. After all, there are creative fans who are willing to make anything based upon a work they love. Also, there are some other creators who not only accept such works existing, but also enjoy the fan material and sometimes even showcase it to other fans.

While not everything that the creator would enjoy would become Ascended Fanon, some works, ranging from fan art to song parodies and fan films, would be good enough to catch the attention of creators, or at least those involved in the source material. Not only could the creators outright state their enjoyment for the fan material, but they can even link that work to share with other fans. Sometimes such works can become Ascended Memes.

Compare with Ascended Fanon, Promoted Fanboy, Official Fan-Submitted Content.

Examples of Approval of God include:

Anime and Manga

• Those who worked at 4Kids! Entertainment have actually enjoyed Yu-Gi-Oh the Abridged Series, despite the fact that it has many jokes about them.
• Several of the original English voices for Dragonball Z have expressed approval for Dragon Ball Abridged. There are several YouTube videos of the actors quoting lines from the series in-character.
• Hidekaz Himaruya of Axis Powers Hetalia fame has not only expressed approval and respect for fanworks (his only real condition being that people don't make money off of his work without acknowledgement). But he also tends to intentionally give material for fans to work on.

Comics

• Garfield Minus Garfield, a webcomic that takes Garfield strips and airbrushes out all the characters except Jon, leaving a strip about a crazy man who talks to himself. Jim Davis enjoyed it enough to approve publishing a book of the best ones.
• Sonic the Comic Online, a fan-made continuation of the long-defunct Fleetway comic, received messages of support from most of the creative team behind the original publication, some of whom have since contributed artwork and consulted on storylines.
• Alan Moore has said that Harry Partridge's Saturday Morning Watchmen is the only adaptation of his work which he approves of. Dave Gibbons loved it, too.

Film

• Even though Downfall's distributor, Contantin Films, had temporarily blocked the Hitler Rants parodies from YouTube at one point, director Oliver Hirschbiegel has stated that he enjoyed them.
• In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Christopher Nolan said he saw The Lion King parody of The Dark Knight Rises trailer and thought it was epic.
  • Tom Hardy also had good things to say about his parodies. "I have seen some brilliant stuff online about [my mumbling] 'Mmmm ... Batman doesn't beat up retards!"
• Alan Rickman was interviewed by MTV at the New York premiere of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, saying, "[Potter Puppet Pals] is very beautifully done, that little piece of work. Can you get rich from that? I hope they did."
• Lee Unkrich, the director of the Toy Story films, is a huge fan of the The Shining. Hearing this, artist fan Kyle Lambert made some digital paintings combining the two films into one horrifically funny mashup. Unkrich was elated.

Literature

• The authors of the Warrior Cats books enjoy the fanimations that fans have made - most notably, they've linked to SSS Warriors and AlliKatNya's "Gravity of Love" AMV.
• Zig Zagged with JK Rowling and the Harry Potter Lexicon, a fan-made website which indexed everything in the Potterverse. Rowling was more than happy with it as a website but once the owner published it as a real book she sued, because it was essentially the entire Harry Potter series as written by her only organized differently and with him as the purported author.
  • Rowling has a section on her website to honor fansites who catalog her books, like Mugglenet or The Leaky Cauldron. She's also expressed that she wishes she had thought up the shrunken head on the Knight Bus in the third Harry Potter film. She takes a "go ahead, I won't look" view toward fanfiction, though.

Music

• Weird Al Yankovic's parodies are sometimes met with this from other artists.
  • Michael Jackson was a big fan and he enjoyed the parodies of his work. He also lent Al the set from the music video of "Bad" to shoot the music video for "Fat".
  • Kurt Cobain of Nirvana was incredibly flattered when Weird Al asked for permission to parody "Smells Like Teen Spirit". Cobain only requested that the lyrics to the song not be about food.
  • Madonna actually suggested "Like A Surgeon" as the parody for "Like A Virgin".
• Corey Taylor of Slipknot was asked what he made of "Psychosocial Baby", a mashup of the Slipknot song "Psychosocial" and "Baby" by Justin Bieber. Contrary to the opinions of many Slipknot fans, he loved it and found it hilarious.
• None of The Beatles objected to The Rutles, and George Harrison liked the idea enough to produce and appear in the All You Need Is Cash Mockumentary.
• They Might Be Giants post many fan videos of their music on their Facebook page and website, among various other things. A popular flash for "Certain People I Could Name" garnered much attention from them.
• Apocalyptica started out their career covering songs by Metallica on 4 cellos. Metallica liked their arrangements so much that they played with Apocalyptica playing music written by the former in arrangments done by Apocalyptica.
• One-Eyed Doll made this post on Facebook .

New Media

• Doug Walker is rather receptive about fan works based upon his characters, Rule 34 or otherwise. For instance, he sung a fan-made song to the tune of "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch", relating to The Nostalgia Critic's review of the live adaptation of The Grinch, in his section of the 2011 Channel Awesome Holiday Video. He also linked to a Newgrounds cartoon featuring TGWTG characters on his Facebook page.
• Rooster Teeth, themselves subject of a Fanon Showcase, has also shown off fan videos of their works, such as putting ^{[dead link]} Caboose in Halo: Reach's Firefight, or creating compilations of ^{[dead link]} Geoff's laugh.
• The introduction to The Angry Video Game Nerd's review of Super Mario Bros 3 and The Wizard (film) had several fan covers of the theme song with James Rolfe and Justin Kyle watching and laughing, with a title screen thanking the fans. The Cinemassacre site also hosts some fanart and fan-games as well.
• Jason Steele of Film Cow was quite amused by the German dubs of Llamas with Hats.

Stand Up Comedy

• Eddie Izzard has said he's impressed with various YouTube videos that take his routines and make them into stop-motion LEGO films.

Video Games

• Valve posts fan-works of Portal and Portal 2 on the games' Facebook page. These have included "This is Aperture" and a video of "Still Alive" done with lasers.
  • In an earlier example, Valve approved and publicized a Half-Life 2 fan-film Escape from City 17.
  • Every once in a while, the official Team Fortress 2 blog showcases fan-works for the game.
• Bungie is pretty benevolent toward all fan works of its material, regularly showcasing notable ones like Red vs. Blue or Halo: A Fistful of Arrows on its news.
• Hideo Kojima said he was very impressed by Metal Gear Solid Philanthropy, and was moved by the filmmakers' passion and respect for the Metal Gear Solid series.
• Reverge Labs puts up fan art of Skullgirls every Friday as part of Fan Art Friday on their developer blog.
• Tim Schafer tweeted about A fan-made mashup of Psychonauts with Inception audio and thought it was very well done!
• BIT.TRIP COMPLETE (the Compilation Rerelease for Wii) includes, as Unlockable Content, remixes of songs from the first three games by a fan named Mike Dannebaum, and songs inspired by the games by PreciseHero.
• There was a project to remake Duke Nukem 3D using the Unreal engine. Gearbox, the current holder of the Duke Nukem IP, approved of the effort.
• Capcom has not only acknowledged the existence of Maximillian's Assist Me series by linking the videos on their website, they even sponsored the Ultimate Assist Me series so Max and the crew wouldn't have to pay for the production costs out of their pockets like they normally do.
• The Creative Assembly, the developers behind the Total War series, are known for their general acknowledgement and support for modders.
• Jake Solomon, the lead developer in Firaxis for XCOM: Enemy Unknown/Enemy Within has expressed his admiration for the XCOM: Long War mod, to the point of calling his own game a tutorial for said Game Mod. Not only would the features in Long War help inspire the gameplay improvements in XCOM 2, but Firaxis would also make modding support a major aspect of the game itself; the developers even went so far as to give modders the very tools they used to create the game months ahead of release.

Webcomics

• Penny and Aggie and QUILTBAG writer T Campbell often links, in his Twitter feed and Facebook page, to fics, fan art and Remix Comics he particularly likes.

Western Animation

• Equestria Daily was formed in 2011 as a fansite for My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic, and is regularly updated with fan material. Not only does The Hub acknowledge its existence, but it also sent official material, from an extended cut of "Equestria Girls" to exclusive interviews with the show's creative staff.
• Ponyphonic's cover of Winter Wrap Up received praise by the composer of the song Daniel Ingram.