Friendly reminder that fan-made content (fanart, fanfic, fanvids, etc) are:
- extremely time consuming. Remember someone actually took time out of their life to create that, time they could’ve used to, idk, sleep, for example
- entertainment you’re consuming for free. I can’t stress this enough: you’re enjoying someone else’s craft for free. You paid exactly zero money to look at/read/watch it.
- S H A R E D with you, not made for you. This is the most important point: someone created that, put it online and you found it. No one forced you to consume that fanwork, you C H O S E to do it.
Whenever you feel like leaving a mean comment, anonymous hate or make a ~clever post about how ‘lol look at all of these overused tropes every fic writer crams into their fics’ remember you’re being a dick to someone who shared their work with you. You’re not being funny, you’re not being edgy, you’re not being brave for calling something out – you’re being a dick.
Tag Archives: fanworks
I love ideas, and story tropes, and headcanons. But what I really love is the fanworks that explore these things. The idea, the trope, the headcanon…those alone don’t give the work value, for me. What I love is your unique perspective.
I would never tell the story the way you would. We all have completely different lives and experiences and values. You’ll think of things I’d never think of, and beyond that, you have skills I don’t have. Your craft has developed differently. The way you structure your story or render your art…it’s unique to you. No one else can do it your way.
I love seeing creators leverage their individual skills, the culmination of their lives up to the point of creation, to bring forth a wholly unique work.
It doesn’t matter to me if there are 500 bedsharing fics. I’ll read yours because it’s yours. It doesn’t matter if a thousand people have drawn a bridal carry. Yours will delight me because it will show me you.
You don’t need to have a completely unique idea. That’s impossible. What you need to do is put the effort into developing it and creating a finished work. That work will be yours, a work only you could have made, regardless of the original idea.
“There’s already a fic about…” Doesn’t matter. There isn’t already your fic about it.
Show me your art. Show me your craft. Create something.
VAMPIRE CHRONICLES WORK DOODLES. Something to do when I don’t feel like talking during lunch lol.
1. Armand and Daniel with morning coffee.
2. Sybelle and Armand (lil papa Armand)
3. Louis, concerned.
4. Lestat with a puppy, inspired by the adorable puppy drabble by @monstersinthecosmos
5. Armand taking Louis on a flight.
6. What we’ve all been waiting for. Armand and Lestat finally bury the hatchet.
When the ending sucked, but fan artists and fic writers got your back
I just realized that in TVL Marius calls Armand ‘Armand’ during the Venice flashback and the discontinuity hit me like a brick in the face
(It’s this line, right?) “Rise, Armand, we must leave here. They have come!”
[^I don’t have a pic of Armand from the scene you mentioned, so have Claudia in a library w/ a bunch of studious older dudes who are probably concerned about what an 11 yo is studying for all these hours so late at night]
Armand’s Venice flashback was in Mind-Gift-Vision™ (or whatever you want to call it!), blasting out of Armand at Lestat and Gabrielle like water from a fire hydrant, and Lestat later transcribed it all for us about 200 yrs later. The Mind Gift is not exactly like reading a book; it seems to be more about sharing images, snippets of sound and feeling. Why did Lestat use Armand’s name in that quote and not “Amadeo”? Some ideas:
- Lestat wrote it 200 years after experiencing it, and yes, vampiric memory is supposed to be perfect, but he also went through a few assassination attempts, so it’s possible that a few brain cells were lost along the way.
- If Lestat ‘heard’ an “Amadeo,” in the vision, maybe he thought he must have misheard bc he knew Armand as “Armand,” and transcribed the name he knew.
- Maybe Armand concealed the name Marius gave him, maybe it was too painful for him to share that information with someone who had just wrecking ball’d his coven like Miley Cyrus in a red velvet tank top & undies.
- Maybe Armand had been successfully brainwashed to the point of sealing off that name off from his memory after all those years with the Children of Darkness, to remember it after Lestat left Paris at that time.
- Or it was our usual *~unreliable narrator~* situation, assign the blame to Armand or Lestat 😉
- … Or, LASTLY, and most likely, it was AR who hadn’t come up with the “Amadeo” part yet. *sighs*
I can understand why discrepancies and discontinuities can be jarring, and people do bash the authors of novels for delivering what the readers see as some kind of inferior product :-
IMO, I don’t think an author, artist, or musician is obligated to serve to you a complete and perfect story/picture/song, w/ complete and perfect facts. AR has never said that was her intention. Even the Bible has discrepancies.
Instead of being jarred out of the story, why not make our own headcanons? You can call them “excuses” if you want 😉 Like I just did above. It’s reasonable to assume Armand didn’t want to share that name. It’s reasonable to assume Armand didn’t remember it in that moment, or that Lestat failed to catch that detail, or thought it was incorrect.
Fanworks can criticize but they can also repair what’s confusing, can fill in the interstices of canon (check out this types of fanfic diagram!). You can engage with the material to criticize it, or you can engage with it to repair it, so many ways to engage with canon and, specifically, its discrepancies.
People doing this with fanfic, fanart, and meta-analysis have made the VC so rich! Shared ideas have cured many things that were jarring for me. The missing musician vampire bothered me for so many years, and then, before PL was even a twinkle in AR’s eye, I had at least one strong answer for his disappearance and it gave me a new appreciation for him, for Lestat, for his part in the fabric of the story.
Your headcanon is up to you. You can enhance canon with it. You have that power. Ask other people for their ideas, they can help, too.
Now I’m not saying every discrepancy can be explained, but it is somewhat more manageable in the earlier books. I would love to see people do it with the later books! With the larger things… that are harder to explain.
Hit the jump for more, cut for length.
Some of my favorite art misleads or leaves things out. Here’s, basically, fanart of Jackie O by Al Hirschfeld:
^She has the slightly cartoonish distortion all around, there are strong gesture lines, there are detailed areas (the necklace, the hair, etc.), there’s her face w/
distorted features, and then there are missing lines. The back of her left arm, most of her right arm, but you as the viewer can fill those in yourself. They’re not drawn but they’re there.
It’s not a photograph, it’s an artist’s interpretation of his subject, how she occupies space, maybe how she moves through it, her inner spirit.
Idk, not everyone likes Hirschfeld. I’m sure some people do not consider it to be Art. We all have our own experiences and our own ideas of what Art and Beauty and Good Writing are. Fanworks are a form of engagement with Art.
To the Anon re: the scissor fic: Thanks for the link, I’ll give it a chance and let u know what I think, altho my opinion is just an opinion. I will say I don’t think it’s legendary bc I’ve never heard of it before… but others may be aware of it.
^Kitty by @berrym [X]
In general tho, I support everyone in their pursuit of fanworks: as an audience member or in the writing of fanfic, drawing of fanart, RP of canon or original characters, and whatever other fanwork (discussion, etc) they want to do.
Fresh novels and official adaptations are great but fanworks also do their part to keep the fandom alive, and all are welcome.
With fanworks, my preference is a great idea over technical prowess. Meaning, if the writer struggles with English as a second language but their idea is engaging and stimulating, I’d prefer that fic over one that is perfect grammatically but boring as a concept. Same with art, I’d take a great idea or hilarious dialogue in a comic strip that may not be very well drawn over a gorgeous but lifeless portrait, bc talent with drawing can be improved.
Of course if you have a great idea AND the beautiful writing/art, well, that’s obviously great, too! But I wouldn’t want ppl giving up in the beginning just bc their technical skills are not at the level they see others at. Rome wasn’t built in a day.
Me when reading your writing
submitted by @trench-coated-angels
When I’m 80 years old and sitting in my rocking chair, I’ll be reading Harry Potter. And my family will say to me, ‘After all this time?’ And I will say, ‘Always.’
RIP Alan Rickman (1946-2016)
^Apparently Rickman did not say this but I think he’d agree with the sentiment
I-want-my-IWTV 