okay having ragey feelings about that one post that basically invalidated fanart, fanwork, and derivative work in general but

cannot express myself in words properly

should I try anyway? sure let’s do that

I was going to mention the hypocracy involved when invalidating “amateur” or unpaid fanwork but still upholding and praising a lot of commercial derivative works (Hello Disney! Hello Dreamworks! Hello Marvel! Little Mermaid, Snow White, How to Train Your Dragon, the fucking Avengers, you guys, all examples of derivative but commercial work, and some of them just fucking rehash the same story but with CGI or 3D or something) but I don’t know how to do that right now without sounding like I hate those films, which I don’t.

What bothered me the most about the post was this part:

I also don’t think you can really be an artists and be immersed in Fandom at the same time, because (for me) in order to make art you have to view the world critically. You have to constantly be questioning, deconstructing, and asking why other creators did AB&C instead of XY&Z. It’s a way of improving your own craft as well as gaining a better understanding of art in general.

I really have to disagree with that. The fandom circles I haunt are often the biggest critics of the thing they’re built around. I don’t weigh in on these things much myself because words frequently fail me, but the fandom as a whole tends to pick apart motivations, reasonings and dive into character development, world building, and the sheer number of possibilities already present in existing works on a level approaching or even exceeding that of the creators. There’s a thirst there to understand why the creators gave that attribute to character A but not character B, and whether or not it would have been better for character C to act this way but not have done what she did. I look at fandom and fanworks (particularly for people interested in pursuing their own creative careers) as a fantastic jump start in thinking creatively and learning how to really see and understand the intricacies of plot and character development, how to tell a story, and how to communicate their views with others while taking criticism and advice to make their personal work (and fanwork!) more sophisicated.

I guess essentially my issue is that the post seems to say that you can’t be a fan of something while also viewing it critically, and even if you aren’t inclined to analyze the shit out of something you love, your fanwork and the enjoyment you derive from it are invalid, and from my experiences on the internet and in the real world, that simply isn’t true.