for the price of one emote i will complain | open.
this isn’t exactly a single complaint, but i want to take a second to talk about icon etiquette and the rph community’s entitlement when it comes to fanart.
ever since icons became a big thing, people have used both materials from the source (official show/film/comic/manga caps) and supplemental icons from fanart. the former is generally fine, yeah, since most people know the source material and can track it to there.
the latter, however, is… really not okay at all.
a quick search on google of “[character name] icon,” will give you dozens upon dozens of masterposts full of icons cropped from fanart (generally from pixiv), made by people asking for credit to them, but who neither credit nor get permission from the original creators, like this one (x) or this one (x). hell, there are entire blogs dedicated to effectively stealing fanart for icons, banners, and even transparent sidebars, and that’s not acceptable!
when using others’ art, crediting isn’t really good enough. lots of people have voiced a displeasure with having their art used, with credit or not, and since they are the creators of that content, their wishes deserve to be respected and their voices heard. artists cannot track down everybody who uses their art and state how they feel about it, bud. it is your responsibility as somebody using a service they offer to make sure they are okay with it. permission is required when using art from others, and feeling the lack of need to get permission implies an entitlement to the fan content people produce on their own time, generally for themselves or friends.
this isn’t even an issue in just the rph fandom, though – people will use others’ art for blog icons, sidebars, banners, edits, etc without permission as well, and even rplayers will get their stuff stolen from time to time, like icons, themes, and headcanons. it stings when things you’ve put thought and effort into are stolen, but people will go through great lengths to protect their edited content without even asking if they can edit the content to begin with! it’s just wild and upsetting how convoluted these things are and how much people take fan content for granted.
it’s not that hard, folks. respect your content creators and their wishes. it’s their stuff. you do not own any part of it, and even if they just want you to remove a tag or not desaturate it, you have no reason to ignore them.
