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Re: 500 word essays
Date: 2018-08-10 03:38 am (UTC)I realized after I posted my comment that the 30-second-consumption thing could come off as very dismissive of the work that does go into art, so I'm glad you elucidated further on this! Speaking honestly, fic for my ships will always excite me more, but I very much remember my favorite, prolific authors in the LJ days, losing their shit over the idea of ever getting illustrated for. It was such a magical and huge deal to them. I am more of a consumer than a creator either way (and my art is not fit for an audience, but it takes so much less out of me than my writing does), but it is interesting how differently received the mediums can be, often based on perceived quantity. In both directions, as you point out. (Can you draw this for me for free?/art is so easy and effortless to make!, vs. fanart is more normie/less nerdy than fanfiction because it leads to comics deals and creator approval.)
Re: 500 word essays
Date: 2018-08-10 12:38 pm (UTC)Oh no prob! I know full well how fast it is to consume, and actually that's one of the most frustrating parts of drawing comics. By the time you're on page 2 you feel like you've already spent half your life on this, and you realize you're now up to about 45 seconds to consume. Animation is the worst of the worst for that. I usually animate at 10 frames per second, which is lower than most pro work (though IIRC the original Evangelion got away with like 8 FPS?) because it's a compromise between looking like complete shit and spending too damn long drawing one second.
I drew as a kid but I didn't write as a kid, so putting my writing out there was much more stressful to me as a young adult, even though realistically I was shit at both at the time. Back in my LJ days, my art was honestly pretty amateur--old friends catching up with me always remark on how much I've improved! I actually have done the thing of getting some of my art officially licensed/approved in one of my fandoms. Though that does happen with writing too, in theory. I know a lot of tie-in/novelization authors started out as fanwriters, and then you have older fandoms where the inmates run the asylum, like Russell T. Davies and Steven Moffat (regardless of anyone's opinions on either) were both Doctor Who fanwriters back in the day. And early Star Trek fandom blurred the lines a lot, with some fanwriters from zines being tapped for tie-in novels, which is why some of them are full of subtext. :) But it feels like that's a rare exception, and most female (and other non-male) fanwriters, if they do get careers as writers, have to bootstrap, either by just writing different original fic, or filing the serial numbers off. E. L. James certainly made her paper, but she didn't do it with any kind of recognition from Stephenie Meyer or whoever owned Twilight. (Not saying she deserved to be, but no one else did, either!)
Only slightly relatedly, I have seen some familiar names writing the Star Wars tie-in novels, names like Elaine Cunningham and Christie Golden. I know them from old 90s D&D tie-in novels (god I hope they've improved as writers, though the 90s were a long time ago). Even though I know them from previous tie-in work, I wouldn't be surprised if they had some tie to zine or early internet fandom somewhere back in there? A lot of nerdy female writers were mentored by fandom. Some people think there's a link to that and the mostly female-dominated and fairly nerdy YA field, which has a lot of authors raised in fandom. I know I'd never be a writer without fandom, and that would've been a real loss for me! But the LJ culture of writing was a big part of that. I think that was kind of a golden age for mentoring writers, and maybe it's that I haven't been looking for it, but I haven't seen that kind of mentoring of young writers around anymore. (Certainly, the zine era had a lot of that too! But it was more underground, you had to be in the right place at the right time. 00's fandom culture was there for anyone who had home or school internet or access to a library.)
I've seen some fanartists that are only barely "fans" in the sense you and I would describe it. Art school students or grads with eyes on their careers, some of whom disdained fanart until a classmate told them it was an easy way to go viral and get your name out there, doing thematically generic but technically fantastic art for the most popular characters in the most popular fandoms with prints available, mostly pinups/things that would make pleasing posters, some "ship" art but the two characters never even touch or make eye contact. Just making a cashgrab if they're smart, intermittent whining about how their original illustration that they really care about never gets as many notes and you just want your fandom bullshit don't you at their own followers if they're drama llamas with no sense.
It's rare to see that level of open disdain for nerrrds from fanwriters, though honestly, I've met fanwriters writing total AUs who've confessed to me they were just writing their original fic with a find/replace on the names to get free feedback, betaing, and cheerleading, and the moment it was done they were deleting it off the internet, restoring their OC names, and selling it. But the writing end of fandom tends to dislike that kind of mercenary attitude more, especially if they catch you at it. We can be a very giving community who help writers grow, but how dare you if you're here to get stuff, either intangibles like free betaing or actual cash--though especially actual cash. The vehement hatred of that and how fast it'll get you ridden out on a rail keeps a lot of interlopers out, and keeps the smart ones from showing their hand. E. L. James was totally one of those mercenaries, but she was smart about it.
Actually, the difference in attitudes towards money in fandom is another huge difference between the fic movement and the art movement. Artists have been selling prints at cons and doing commissions since forever. The fanart movement is in some ways more closely linked to furry art fandom than it is fanfic fandom (since furries have always had a thriving art community and economy!) and money is absolutely a thing in the furry community. Of course, there's no legal problem with drawing someone's leopard OC getting wolf dick in the butt. However, the feeling of a lot of fanartists is, if you put the work into drawing it, it's yours to sell, regardless of if you own the IP or not--the only true taboo is selling someone else's work, i.e. plagiarism, or plagiarism via tracing. Another factor in this is that historically, anime has had a very artist-heavy fandom, mostly because artists are attracted to pretty art, and because anime designs are less intimidating to draw than either real people or book characters with no visual model. And anime fandom has been shaped by both the language barrier--and the fact that, until recently, many Japanese titles were unlicensed and unmonitored outside Japan, so you could do what you liked with them--and Japanese standards on what counts as copyright violation. While Japanese law is not that different from US law, the culture of it and how it's enforced can be different, because many animanga creators started out as doujinshi (fan comic) creators--as fans. And unlike Western fanfic culture, which has a strong taboo on money, doujinshi are produced in small, limited runs, and are sold--and doujinshi circles can make small profits. So making a little side-cash on fanworks isn't the huge taboo there it is here, and since it wasn't a legal threat that attitude persisted even outside Japanese-language fandom--if anything, we were even less legal danger, because of the complexities of the creators even reading what was going on and trying to litigate internationally. There was a lot of moral panic and unrealistic fears in Western creators about fanfic, scares that you might lose legal rights to your own work or it would legitimize non-transformative copies of your works (piracy), or that you'd be sued somehow for stealing a fanwriter's ideas if you coincidentally wrote something similar! That just wasn't a thing in the fanart community, and we remained much more lax about cash. We weren't getting shot down--if anything, we got winked at and the occasional real job offer.
And of course, some fanartists are unmistakably nerds. There's the fanart, of all levels of skill, where you can feel the love, the obsession, the in-jokes, the "outsiders would not get this, but I do." The weird kinks, the art drawn for fic, the obvious woobification. And artists do run risks of endangering their careers and reputations with that stuff, too. There's still fuss over Rebecca Sugar's old underage Ed, Edd and Eddy porn, and while I'm glad no one at Cartoon Network gave a single fuck, I worry if artists like her could still get hired today.
There are still the times art culture is closer to fic culture than we think--a lot of people forget that Strikethrough was over fanart, not fanfic! An artist in pornish_pixies posted graphic Snape/Harry art, which got reported for being underage. Fanartists have always struggled much more against Pedo Panic, because of the potential of drawings to be indistinguishable from a photograph (which is approximately 0.000000001% of fanart, but legal possibility!) and the terror that someone's Narcissa/Hermione art could actually be a doctored photo of a real child being abused. Plaintext fic has no possibility of containing the image of a real child, so it's legally less thorny. When Imzy was briefly courting fandom before it bit the bullet, they cleared written erotica of all types, but were much more hesitant on fanart. Which hey, this is what started Strikethrough. Even tumblr, which explicitly allows NSFW, including IRL porn, has deleted quite a few blogs for "underage" drawings. But it seems to matter less when there isn't a culture of anxious writers with a long history of Cease and Desists on their zines and archives, to worry how this will apply to them. Artists, like vidders, seem to sigh, shrug, and accept their work as ephemera. Perhaps this lack of need for permanency is part of why the risk of selling for cash seems more acceptable too. It's okay if they DMCA us! We'll just remake.
On writers loving getting illustrations for their fic--it's true! One of the things that got me sucked into tumblr is when I started posting fic, I got people drawing art for it, and that was incredible! Being able to draw myself didn't make it any less amazing. It's a bit like getting fanfic of your fic, which is also rare and incredible! But little did I know this was part of fandom's transition into centering art over fic--something which helped me grow as an artist to an amazing degree, but also traded artblock for writer's block a lot of the time. It's silly, but being in a community that values you really greases the wheels.
All I can say for both fic and art is, if you want to make it, do, even if it comes out like crap. And share your crap! Find people at a similar level to yours, and grow with them! I had a long slog through being shitty at everything before I started to feel I could express myself anywhere close to how I wanted, and I still have fits of anxiety where it feels like I can't do anything right. But the effort, the attempt, it attracts people who like that you're trying, who want you to succeed, and those people help you get there. Or I hope it still works like that.
Re: 500 word essays
Date: 2018-08-10 01:22 pm (UTC)Re: 500 word essays
Date: 2018-08-10 01:30 pm (UTC)Re: 500 word essays
Date: 2018-08-10 03:36 pm (UTC)Re: 500 word essays
Date: 2018-08-10 03:47 pm (UTC)Re: 500 word essays
Date: 2018-08-10 01:32 pm (UTC)Re: 500 word essays
Date: 2018-08-10 01:34 pm (UTC)And I should add their only SW fic on AO3 seems to be Qui-Gonn/Obi-Wan so, uh, don't get excited.
Re: 500 word essays
Date: 2018-08-10 01:38 pm (UTC)Thank you! I read Claudia Gray's book focusing on Leia (shipping her with her female co-workers the whole way, sue me) and enjoyed it, and also remembered thinking I got a sort of fannish vibe off her and not just because it was a tie-in novel, but I didn't want to namedrop her without knowing more. I did know she's said some pro-Reylo things, which shows a certain degree of fannish awareness.
Re: 500 word essays
Date: 2018-08-10 03:43 pm (UTC)Re: 500 word essays
Date: 2018-08-10 03:49 pm (UTC)Re: 500 word essays
Date: 2018-08-10 03:59 pm (UTC)Re: 500 word essays
Date: 2018-09-06 03:54 pm (UTC)Re: 500 word essays
Date: 2018-09-06 03:53 pm (UTC)