— James Hetfield, on their performance of Metallica music with him as the guest vocal.
Some creators 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 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. Contrast Fanwork Ban, Sincerest Form of Flattery. Creators may even offer Parody Assistance.
Several of the original English voices for Dragon Ball Z have expressed approval for Dragon Ball Abridged. There are several YouTube videos of the actors quoting lines from the series in-character. In fact, Kyle Hebert (the Narrator and Adult Gohan, among others) is a guest voice in a few of the episodes. It seems to be the mark of a successful Abridged Series whenever this happens, as Yu Yu Hakusho Abridged has also had a voice actor cameo in The Movie.
This appears to be the stance of some mangaka and creators, such as CLAMP and Type-Moon. This could be due to their own ties with Doujinshi.
Hidekaz Himaruya was found to be this to his fan base. To the point that he posted a drawing showing his thanks to them for all their work and even makes stuff every now and then explicitly 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. The book also features a section of minused strips created by Davis himself.
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.
Gary Larson wrote a The Far Side comic in which a female ape accused her mate of "doing more 'research' with that Jane Goodall tramp". As he related in his book "The Prehistory of the Far Side", Larson received a hostile letter from the Jane Goodall Society, threatening legal action over the strip. Shortly after that, he received a letter from the editors of National Geographic, who wanted to print the strip in an anniversary issue. When Larson explained his difficulties with the Jane Goodall Society, one magazine editor commented, "That doesn't sound like the Jane Goodall we know." After some research, they found out that Goodall enjoyed the strip and was not aware of the Society's actions against Gary Larson. Larson later met with Jane Goodall at her research facility in Mgombe. In his words, "Everything's cool."
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.
Zero Dark Thirty: In an interview with Esquire Magazine, the anonymous shooter of Bin Laden had complaints about several technical details of the raid but praised the film for its depiction of Maya, saying it showed her as the tough lady that she really is.
Rob Schneider stated that he loved the South Park parody trailers from the episode "The Biggest Douche In The Universe", even saying that were too easy on him.
Zig Zagged with J.K. 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.
George R. R. Martin was impressed by Russian artist Amok's amateur portraits of characters from A Song Of Ice And Fire that he sent notes to make them more accurate and eventually commissioned him to make official A Song of Ice and Fire art.
James Riley, author of Half Upon A Time, regularly posts fan art he receives for the series on its official blog.
Music
"Weird Al" Yankovic's parodies are sometimes met with this from other artists. This isn't surprising, since he insists on seeking approval from them first before he records them, so they know what to expect.
The most notable aversion was Coolio, who felt that "Gangsta's Paradise" was too serious and intense a song to be parodied, and was upset when "Amish Paradise" was released. Yankovic felt bad about it and had been incorrectly told that he had Coolio's approval.
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.
The entire band reportedly laughed hysterically when they saw the video, and Cobain called Yankovic a "musical genius" in his journals.
Chamillionaire of "Ridin'" fame loved the parody "White and Nerdy" and even featured it on his MySpace page shortly after release. He was even impressed by Al's rapping abilities.
Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo congratulated him for "Dare To Be Stupid" and called it 'the perfect Devo song'.
Cledus T. Judd has also gotten approval from original artists on some of his parody songs. See Parody Assistance for more info.
Despite her reputation as a serious, intense ballad singer, Celine Dion has a really good sense of humor, and is really good at taking a joke. When SNL was doing their parody of her in the wake of Titanic, she thought it was so hilarious, she invited Ana Gasteyer to her show in New York, where she did her Celine Dion impression to the crowd. On another occassion, when promoting her French album Sans Attendre on TV, she invited another imitator, Véronic DiCaire on stage.
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 Cashmockumentary. John Lennon loved The Rutles so much that when their first film came out, he watched it almost nonstop on loan from the studio, and when time was up he very reluctantly gave the film back. Apparently Paul McCartney was a little bit wary at first, but his wife Linda assured him that it was all right.
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.
Further case: Beatallica, a band whose oeuvre consists entirely of Beatles/Metallica mashups (example songs: "The Thing That Should Not Let It Be" and "And Justice For All My Loving") was aided in a minor legal dispute with Sony (who currently holds the rights to most of Beatles songs) by Lars Ulrich.
Bob Rivers parodied Joan Osborne's "One Of Us" into "What If God Smoked Cannabis". Osborne liked it so much, she covered the parody herself.
Robert Plant has said that comedy tribute band Dread Zeppelin is his favorite of all the LZ tribute acts out there.
In an interview Rebecca Black was asked which parody of "Friday" was her favourite, which was the Brock's Dub version.
When asked in a radio interview about his opinion of Time Lord rock band Chameleon Circuit, David Tennant said that "They're quite good, aren't they? It's like proper, decent music."
Because of the closeness between the contributors and the site's fans, and the fact some of the contributors are Promoted Fans of the site themselves, it is not perhaps suprising that the contributors of That Guy with the Glasses are fond and receptive to fan works.
To Boldly Flee, Terl of Battlefield Earth spelled his name as Turrell. This led to fan speculation that Turrell was so busy learning to conquer galaxies that he doesn't actually know how to spell his name. While Turrell was named that for legal reasons, a commentary by some of the reviewers indicated they heard of this theory and found it hilarious.
The introduction to The Angry Video Game Nerd's review of Super Mario Bros 3 and The Wizard 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.
Serris of Darwin's Soldiers has given his explicit approval for others to create fan works set in this universe.
Hillary Clinton loved Texts from Hillary on Tumblr, and even contacted the blog's creators and gave them an autographed copy of a "Hillary Texts" post she made herself.
Matt and Pat, the main characters in Two Best Friends Play, stated that they enjoy the fan-made crossoverTwo Best Sisters Play, enough to feature the series's youtube channel on their personal channel page (probably also because its creator is the animator for their own episode openings).
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.
Most recently, there is Black Mesa, a Fan Remake of Half-Life 1 in the Source Engine, which Valve added to Steam through Greenlight. Valve allowed it on condition they remove "Source" from the name (so people wouldn't think it was an official Valve release), and on condition that they got first dibs on playing it.
There was a project to remake Duke Nukem 3 D 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. Taken even further in the finale of Retro Assist Me: where Yoshinori Ono makes a cameo at the end. The only thing preventing it from being Ascended Fanon at this point is that it's still a fanmade work and not official.
Double Dragon creator Yoshihisa Kishimoto praisedAbobos Big Adventure and doesn't mind unofficial derivative works as long as they're good and have something to do with the franchise.
SWERY, the game directior of Deadly Premonition, loves any and all fan-works of the game, and regularly links to pieces of fanart and writings on the game on his Twitter account. In a Game Developer's Confrence presentation, he even explained that creating fan-friendly characters and worlds is a part of his game design philosophy, because it gives fans a way to enjoy the game even when they're not playing it.
The original Dreamcast release of Soul Calibur contained an extensive, unlockable fanart gallery. Unfortunately, these galleries don't exist in later ports of the game due to the fact that over a decade has passed since the original release and thus it is difficult or impossible to track down the original artists so they can re-sign the usage rights for new consoles, as well as some of the art being blatantly sexual in nature (and thus affecting content guidelines from other companies.)
Equestria Daily was formed in January 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.
"Weird Al" Yankovic posted a link to a mash-up of MLP and one of his polkas on his Twitter page, then later did the same thing with another mash-up by the same editor. Al even hinted he might be / would like to be on the show at some point.note It's not a surprise, really, considering Al's long history as One of Us, plus the fact that his children are the right age to be the show's target demographic.
It's worth noting that William Anderson, FIM's background music composer, used to play for Weird Al and remains friends with him and his band. It's also worth mentioning that, before FIM, he was the composer to The Weird Al Show.
Dream Theater keyboardist Jordan Rudess once linked to a PMV featuring the band's song "Octavarium", saying he thought it was cool.
The not-for-profit, fanmade episode Double Rainboom got approval from Hasbro for its creation. It also got approval from Cartoon Network for the use of the Powerpuff Girls.
Several of the writers from Galaxy Rangers lurk on the fan list, and Chris Rowley admits to have read some of the fanfic.
Samantha Newark, who voiced the titular character of Jem is a fan of the extremely vulgar parody series Jiz, and thinks that it's hilarious to make something as sweet as Jem so profane.
