I wrote about your artwork for my Visual Storytelling class
A fandom I like is the Tales from The Gas Station fandom, which is mostly active on Tumblr blogs. The story started as a CreepyPasta back in the late 2010s, being published to Reddit’s r/Nosleep and the author's personal online blog before being picked up by narrator MrCreepyPasta on YouTube which boosted the story’s popularity. Currently, there are six published novels, multiple extra stories not included in the books published to his website, audio books narrated by the aforementioned YouTuber, as well as theatrical readings of the published novels. At the moment, the last related work author Jack Townsend has published was released to his blog on December 17, 2024. The work released was a continuation of the plot after the events of volume four but has been left with the notion that the story is yet to be completed for almost a year now, leaving the fans' imaginations to run wild with ideas to fill the space.
One user on Tumblr going by the name Clockworkreapers is very active in the fandom, and they often make digital art pieces portraying either scenes straight from the books in comic form, or an artistic rendition of certain events. Their artwork was even featured as the cover photo for the most recent publication on Townsend’s blog. In the story, a lot of the writing becomes very trippy, for lack of a better term, as it delves into the supernatural, dream sequences, and mind control. In a piece posted by Clockworkreapers on August 28th, they portray the characters falling down Alice’s rabbit hole from Alice in Wonderland. They take different important things featured in the books, like a missing poster, radio, and a glowing caterpillar, and have that surround the characters as they’re shown falling deeper into the rabbit hole. At the bottom of the art piece, it shows the main character falling towards an employee’s only door surrounded by eyes which symbolizes the major climax of volume four that changes the course of the entire story as we know it. They use psychedelic colors, like neon green, magenta, and yellow to display the dream-like state the character was in during this significant event.
Jack Townsend introduced a new plot line with his blog posts published after the publication of volume four. In this new plot line, there is a significant time jump between the events of volume four and now, and in that time, it is explained that the characters have been through many other experiences during this gap, but they’re not explained in great detail. Because of this lack of detail, fans took it upon themselves to create storylines. Clockworkreapers took that challenge and created art pieces depicting events they believed to have happened in the gap. One such piece shows the characters in a field lit by glowing green lightning bugs as they have a run in with the Californian cryptic, the Fresno Nightcrawlers. In the blog post, Townsend (also the character’s name) tells us how they had been traveling across the country, seeking out supernatural encounters or cryptids, so Clockworkreapers took that and ran with it, creating pieces to depict other encounters they may have had to further the story along and fill in the gaps were not privy to.
I don’t believe that it is possible for fan work to control the story, the original creator is always able to ignore it, and a lot of times creators take inspiration from fan work and make it cannon, which in turn creates a stronger fan base. Visual storytelling in fandom helps empower fans because it gives them the opportunity to create works related to something they love and possibly form a community from it. In my eyes, the only way to overstep is to claim your work as cannon (not as a joke) and try to take away from the original creator, but that usually isn’t the case and is quickly shut down by other fans if it is. Visual fan work is a great way to express appreciation for another creator, and it helps build strong, thriving online-and sometimes offline-communities where everyone is able to connect over a shared interest, no matter how niche.
Wahhhhh I read through- I'm honored to be worthy of a mention- I hope you ace the assignment in your class!
Very true too-if u don't mind me going on a tangent- the lil ecosystem between fans and creators, artists, writers, narrators- all of it is such an important part of fandom- even just general social groups where we have community built up on shared love for someone's work. The imagination is something we probs take for granted but I don't think we would get anywhere without stories. Being able to bring some of those stories to life, to imagine them play out in your head and to capture a moment in them is something uniquely human. Art is like the first a universal language and its a language any and everyone can learn if they try. I think there is something so special about that and funny enough so taken for granted. Its just part of us, we don't even think about but if you do sit with that for a moment its like... damn yeah that is one of the things that make all of us as a whole so special
Either way I'm just happy to contribute
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