I’m typing this unable to feel my hands because of bus woes so forgive me if this is not the most eloquent, but man, the more I look at how some of these new CCs act the more I think that creators should not be in fandom spaces.
There’s this idea that we see where creators think thar material about them/their characters is FOR them, and so they lay down rules about how things should be depicted (like you would on a gift for you) and they go into the comments to fight with people who put their tag on things they don’t like, etc. All these things that we see happening.
But they’re missing the point that— and I am not the first person to say this— things tagged with their character name are not there for them to see it, they’re there for other fans of the character to see it. I don’t post into the murderbot tag for the edification of Martha Wells, I post it for other murderbot fans. If Martha Wells showed up in my comments on an established fandom space I’m liable to panic-block and scramble for the exit.
And so these creators come in and say “this isn’t a good gift for me, don’t do this”, but that’s an essential misreading of the situation, and the thing is it’s kind of a presumptuous misreading of the situation when you’re monetizing your character. As my friend TD pointed out today, “don’t draw nsfw of my OC” is a perfectly normal thing to do within a peer to peer fandom context, but you are no longer interacting peer to peer when you have monetized your OC and are distributing them to as broad an audience as possible. You are the creator of a marketed figure. If you try to keep dictating people’s behaviour, that is how you become Anne Rice, which is never something you want to be.
But these creators are walking into spaces and saying that *everything tagged with their character name* is a gift for them and just like, no. If you keyword search your name on the entire internet you’re gonna overhear a lot of conversations that were not meant for you, and acting like it is even possible to make The Entire Internet safe for a public figure to look at is not a workable exercise.
Creators should not be walking into spaces where people are talking about their characters unless they’re ready to see a lot of things that were never made with them as the target audience. Make a fan art channel im your discord and let people bring things to you, but don’t walk onto the site where people’s favourite holidays to celebrate with characters include kinktober and whumptober and goreuary, where people explore their trauma through the lens of their favourite characters, where people experiment with different art styles and body type depictions of characters, where things that fall under the “fluff” umbrella include making characters into toddlers and making them so sad so they can have a hug, and expect that everything is going to be made with your comfort in mind. That’s just not how the fandom emotion works.
Fandom isn’t for creators, it’s for fans, and believe me that I also have creators’ comfort in mind when I say that fandom and creators should be kept separate.
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