Just wanted to give a shout-out to fanfiction writers out there. My job is pretty stressful sometimes, and y’know, after a tough meeting, there are times I come back to my desk and get excited cuz one of favorite stories got updated.
Or I stop and think, “Hey! That cool story updates on Saturday!” and it’s Thursday. Little things like that are quick pick-me-ups, so thanks for sharing your awesome talent and stories with us!
I don’t mind if people use my art for RP blogs just please tag/credit me if you’re going to repost an ENTIRE image. I know I got my url on there buuuuut….
The jealous cruelty of this anon aside… there’s such a weird expectation that artists need to be creating some kind of socially-valuable “art” at all times… or that what’s created needs to be for the consumption of others. Artists are allowed to make things for their own pleasure, things that are meaningless to anyone other than themselves, things that are practice, things that are ugly.
Happiness is valuable. It’s like, y’know, how much time do people “waste” making themselves happy? Why is it better to spend your free time watching football or playing video games or reading articles on Reddit? Why is it that as soon as you’re making something, the thing itself needs to be valuable, rather than the joy of making it?
Fanworks are valuable too, particularly for women. They’re empowering to create because you are usually taking male-created, male-marketed media and recreating for female consumption. It’s validating to consume because it gives women a place to enjoy media spaces. Its also a way to network and form communities in empty places. It’s not “wasteful” to spend time on fanworks for this reason as well.
Ugh. I wonder if guys drawing Black Widow getting nailed by aliens get these sorts of “what are you doing with your life”/“why are wasting your talent” messages. Prolly not, because this sort of hyperbolic go-kill-yourself missive is pretty much tailored to female recipients.
This is important. When I dabbled in art classes in college I had one teacher who was deadest that all our projects had to have a ‘meaning’ and be ‘socially relevant’. If you were me, and just wanted to make a faerie house full of miniature food because that sounded like a fun way to fulfill her architecture assignment, this teacher would berate you. She spent a lot of time calling me unoriginal and uncreative. She made me cry in front of the class after a particularly nasty insult suggesting what I wanted to make was meaningless drivel and that she ‘expected better of me’.
It feels shameful to admit now, but I seriously considered leaving the art field all together because of this teachers insistence that the things I enjoyed, and enjoyed making, weren’t worthwhile. And looking back now, I think that teacher did a real disservice to countless young artists. Creation itself is valuable. Every act of creation has social significance and is a product of its time. You don’t have to be political for your art to matter. You just have to love making what you make. That’s it. That what makes it art, that’s what gives it value. Anyone who tells you otherwise has bought into the bizarre status-based BS I see sometimes in the fine art world.
And if my old professor from community college happens to see this: making life-size animal sculptures out of recycled plastic in order to send a message about the environment isn’t any more unique than the faeries I wanted to make in your class. I’m glad it makes you happy, I’m glad that message resonates with you and your collectors. But try to look outside yourself and recognize putting others down when you can tell they are passionate about creating is not the right way to teach. Ever. Encourage and nurture more young artists in the world. This isn’t a race to find out who can ‘make it’ by putting people through tests. There is enough room for all of us to shine.
This tumblr will go back to posting photos of gothy eye candy and cute animals very soon, because *I* need things that make me feel better, and I’m sure the rest of you do too.
With that said: what can we do now?
Stand with those at risk. Suport PoC, GLBTQ folks, women, folks with disabilities, anyone who is “other” and is going to be a target.
VOTE IN THE 2018 MIDTERMS. 33 Senate houses will be up, and all 235 seats in the House. We need to flip those.
Donate, if you can. Time, money, energy. Planned Parenthood, local food banks, local shelters for at-risk folks.
“I’m a troll, but I come equipped with good grammar and flattery.”
“I think art is a holy and sacred institution governed by peens.”
“I have probably never opened an art history textbook.”
“When male artists draw hot naked babes, they don’t call the naked babes unhealthy crushes. They call them inspiration. And a lifetime of naked babe indulging is called an oeuvre.”
“Once you stop with this whole being a girl nonsense, you can become a real artist.”
"This is 17th century Massachusetts, and the village elders decree that masturbation is a sin, and Eliza should be set in the pillory with her ears nailed until the next Sabbath.”
That post by @euclase that I reblogged has enraged me. I keep seeing time and time again, on Tumblr specifically, posts about how women are ‘too old’ for fandom.
I appreciate that the average age of Tumblr users is lower than other social media platforms but let me tell you fandom is not something you grow out of. I’ve been part of some form of fandom since I was a teenager. I am now coming up on 40. The only real difference is that I can’t stay up until 4am reading fic anymore because I need sleep. The passion I have for fandom is still there, I still write fic. You don’t suddenly stop caring about the things you love when you hit a certain age point.
If you think someone in their 30s or 40s is too old for fandom
I should introduce you to some of the amazing women in their 60s that I met through the Man From UNCLE fandom. Hell, some of my friends that I met through the Buffy the Vampire Slayer fandom back in the 90s are now in their 50s and 60s.
TL;DR You are never too old for fandom and if you think that’s true I pity you when you reach whatever arbitrary age you think is the cutoff point.
The other day I was showing my bff some of the stuff I made with ps and while he was very enthusiastic about it, he also said something that made me think:
“Is this hard to do though? I have no idea how photoshop works, so I don’t know if this takes a lot of time and skills or if it’s something that anyone could do in five minutes.”
I snorted pretty hard at the “five minutes” part, cause I wish, but then it occurred to me that most people are probably like my best friend, and having no idea how we do what we do, take for granted our gifsets (which are indeed not made through witchcraft, though I’m convinced some of us must have sold their soul to the devil).
I’ll forever remember that one person that commented under a colour porn gifset of mine “wow, I didn’t remember this movie was so bright and colourful!”
… That’s cause it wasn’t. I made it that way. Everytime you see a gifset, someone made it that way.Bright, dark, very pink, very red (or in my case very cyan), very colourful.
And it’s not just a matter of choosing all the scenes to gif (and consequently capture all those screencaps, decide where to crop them, resize them and, only after that, beginning the adventure that is colouring).
There’s a huge difference in what a movie/video looks like before we get our hands on it and after, and I think that’s probably one of the things that people who don’t make gifs tend not to realize.
Let me show you!
This is a gif of a scene taken from Iron Man 2. The only thing I did was resize it to 500pixels. This is what the actual movie looks like:
this is the exact same scene after I coloured it and applied my sharpening settings:
Now what you may think is “you just made it bright!”
It took me 12 layers of careful adjustments to just make it bright (which is not all that I did, btw) while trying not to bring out pixels (impossible with a scene as dark as this one) while at the same time trying my best to keep it under the 2mb limit (over which you can’t upload your gif on tumblr or it won’t move), and trying not to whitewash Rhodey as I lighten everything else. Let me tell you, none of this is particularly easy. It’s not impossible, but it’s not something you learn in five minutes.
Here’s another example:
actual movie:
colour porn:
Now the point of this post is that I’m hoping that people will see and understand that there’s a lot of work and effort on our part to make these gifs, so that everyone can appreciate them. And yet we see that effort easily dismissed every day when our works are stolen and reposted and people have no qualms about rebloging them anyway, cause after all they’re just pretty pictures made with a computer, what’s the fuss.
It took me two years of almost daily practice to get where I’m at now (and I still have a lot to learn), and that kind of attitude hurts me as a person before it hurts me as a content maker.
Blocking reposters and spreading the word doesn’t help much if things like this keep happening and no one cares.
This website is mostly made of gifsets and graphics (that’s not to undermine the importance of art and fics, I’m just saying that you see more gifs and graphics and photos than those other kind of wonderful content) and it would be a dream come true to see a bit more respect and appreciation for our category.
Leave nice tags under someone’s gifset you really really liked. Tell them how much you loved how they used that particular song/quote on that particular character. How happy you are they’re making gifs about your favourite ship.
Encourage content makers, you’ll be rewarded with more content.
Stop condemning and judging people for their fucking ships. What you like to read about does not reflect what you care about, approve of, or want for yourself in real life.
Can people be skeevy about ships? Certainly. Are there fandom trends that reflect the racism and sexism of society at large? Definitely! Does harassing individual fans for what they like help any of that? No.
Promote the ships you like, instead of using them as a stick to beat other people with.
Meanwhile, people have been into fucked up ships forever, and somehow the internet hasn’t burned down in an inferno of abuse apologism.
And do you realise what you’re saying, when you talk about young girls and women being drawn into abusive relationships because of the fic they read, or the art they draw, or the meta they write?
You’re telling them it’s their fault.
THAT. LAST. PART. I’ve been saying this for ages. Women and girls do not have to be protected from their own fantasies, and telling women that they are putting themselves at risk for liking “impure” ships or fictional relationship dynamics is 100% victim-blaming bullshit that is also pretty fucking condescending.
So I’m re-reading the Vampire Chronicles, and discovering all over again that I love the way Anne Rice depicts sexuality, attraction, and affection in her books, not just among vampires, but among humans as well.
People in platonic relationships never hesitate to say that they love each other, to show affection, to kiss.
Sexual orientation doesn’t seem to exist, really, especially with the undead. It seems that a century or two of immortality has rendered most of them indifferent in regards to gender.
I love the repeated narrative of “I hate you, but I haven’t seen you in a really long time, and I missed hating you in person, so come here and let me hug you and tell you how beautiful you are.” There is something very poignant in the way that they treasure the familiar.
Consent is super important in sexual situations in her books, and in simple social situations, and in regards to the giving and receiving of blood.
It’s recognized that people who have been made vampires without their consent are victims of trauma, even if they are men.
I-want-my-IWTV 