all for a crime I did commit
Huh. A bit belatedly, I've been reading around through the recent posts people were making about fandom and monetization and "gift economies" etc etc. It's interesting, complicated stuff. I came up in the pre-LJ days of "omg don't forget your disclaimer or you might get sued" and "we never mention fanworks to The Powers That Be" ... and I've grown up to be, among other things, a (currently rather off-and-on) independent self-published cartoonist, in a contemporary (and inescapable) social media landscape. I find the constant pressure to sell and promote everything you do exhausting and hateful, for which I blame this capitalistic hellscape; I'm also happy, when I can, to support other creatives when they follow these more or less required methods of seeking pay for their labor. (I chose to have a day job because I couldn’t bring myself to increase the pressure by basing my livelihood on those things, but I’m behind the ones who made the opposite choice, all the way.) Similarly, I like participating in fandom in part because I don't do it for money, but I also can't afford to do it often or consistently, and for people who pour more of themselves into it, I think asking for tips or commissions is a thoroughly reasonable thing to do. (I loved the comments 
recessional left on
melannen's post, comparing Kofi, some Patreon practices, etc to a busker putting out a hat. Those who enjoy the music are free to drop in a coin, but if you can't afford to do so, there's no barrier to getting to listen, too.)
I'd love to live in a world where we wouldn't all desperately need money in order to have the time and energy to create (not to mention, food to eat and roofs over our heads), but broke creators, fan or otherwise, are not the ones on whom that burden of change can or should rest.
I mentioned taking on a
chocolateboxcomm pinch-hit to my partner, and they asked if I was getting paid. I essentially told them no, that I do fandom for joy, not money. Because, now and then, I can. I'm never going to be hugely prolific, especially since I often choose to funnel more energy (and, it happens, some amount of money-making effort) into original work. (That trade-off is a whole other issue. I value fanwork and don't see it as "less" than original work, but original work is still what I would, when the chips are down, like to be known for someday. What I will sacrifice for, and occasionally to a point actually hustle for. Well, this is something I've gone back and forth on as well the last few years, but that's neither here nor there. Regardless ... fandom doesn't get the lion's share of my effort, but it gets to stay pure joy. Your mileage may vary, widely.)
Something tangential started coming up as I read through some of these posts, though, which was this notion that it is completely normal and acceptable for fanart to be monetized, but we have a huge hang-up about treating fanfiction the same way. That in itself is a complex topic, one I'm not going to go into in any great (or researched) depth, but. I can't help but remember the time a few years ago when one of my teachers, an experienced comics artist who had produced very well-known work for a major publisher decades ago and who also happens to be outspoken about creators' rights and best practices for self-protection, posted some urgent warnings about selling artwork of licensed characters (owned specifically by Marvel/Disney and DC, I think).
As he pointed out, this very standard practice largely continues at the ~benevolent whim of large corporations. There are examples of artists who created characters in the first place under problematic "work for hire" contracts who have then faced legal consequences for attempting to sell depictions of their own creations. (While many others haven’t, and do this freely. If there’s actually a predictable logic to this, I haven’t found it.) Mainstream convention Artist's Alleys full of people selling their drawings of Supergirl, Wolverine, The Little Mermaid and goodness knows what else do so based on a sort of communal tradition, but there's no actual legal guarantee that one of these companies won't turn around and start handing out C&Ds. Some obvious parody art might be protected under Fair Use, but a lovingly-rendered portrait of Captain American is not, if you stick a price tag on it.
My mother, until her retirement, worked as a legal assistant for a small IP-centric law firm with a few relatively famous clients, and they would frequently weigh the possibilities of going after quite small infringers in order to preserve copyright for various clients. When I've taken a few commissions, here and there, for art of licensed characters, she's always expressed concern. Just because the practice seems to be accepted and has a long history, doesn't mean it's risk-free.
There are old cultural reasons why things developed this way (some of which probably have to do with commercial fanart being created by the artists who created the official work in the first place - because American comics and animation, in particular, have always been enormously predatory towards their creatives and the "single author" absolute ownership paradigm has historically been a lot rarer than with, say, non-licensed novels). Meanwhile, while there’s a rich historical connection between fanfiction and profic, it has tended to go in the opposite direction (though I’m sure there are exceptions): fanfiction to “original” writer status. Somehow, that resulted in disclaimers and secrecy where the visual side has chosen to brazen out an openly commercialized approach. As an artist who came up through fic-centric fandom, it actually took a lot of soul-searching before I could be comfortable with the idea of monetizing even the occasional bit of fanart (as my public-facing cartoonist self, never in fandom circles), even with an awareness of existing practices. But I'm not sure holding commissioned fanart up as a model to legitimize commissioned fanfic (even as I do support both from an ethical standpoint) would be the best way to go.
Mind you, it is more than a bit weird to me to reflect on the pro/anti-fanfic arguments I used to get into with classmates in college, which had no bearing on legality but were all about “stealing the author’s baby.” Those were uniquely leveled at fic, not art, and I have no idea why. (Because of a history of frustration with different kinds of value being attached to different forms of creative labor within fandom, I’m inclined towards a knee-jerk opinion about writing being somehow considered a more legitimate or essential form of creation/authorship than drawing, but that’s almost certainly unfair.)
This entry was originally posted at my dreamwidth. (
comments)
recessional left on
melannen's post, comparing Kofi, some Patreon practices, etc to a busker putting out a hat. Those who enjoy the music are free to drop in a coin, but if you can't afford to do so, there's no barrier to getting to listen, too.)
I'd love to live in a world where we wouldn't all desperately need money in order to have the time and energy to create (not to mention, food to eat and roofs over our heads), but broke creators, fan or otherwise, are not the ones on whom that burden of change can or should rest.
I mentioned taking on a
chocolateboxcomm pinch-hit to my partner, and they asked if I was getting paid. I essentially told them no, that I do fandom for joy, not money. Because, now and then, I can. I'm never going to be hugely prolific, especially since I often choose to funnel more energy (and, it happens, some amount of money-making effort) into original work. (That trade-off is a whole other issue. I value fanwork and don't see it as "less" than original work, but original work is still what I would, when the chips are down, like to be known for someday. What I will sacrifice for, and occasionally to a point actually hustle for. Well, this is something I've gone back and forth on as well the last few years, but that's neither here nor there. Regardless ... fandom doesn't get the lion's share of my effort, but it gets to stay pure joy. Your mileage may vary, widely.)
Something tangential started coming up as I read through some of these posts, though, which was this notion that it is completely normal and acceptable for fanart to be monetized, but we have a huge hang-up about treating fanfiction the same way. That in itself is a complex topic, one I'm not going to go into in any great (or researched) depth, but. I can't help but remember the time a few years ago when one of my teachers, an experienced comics artist who had produced very well-known work for a major publisher decades ago and who also happens to be outspoken about creators' rights and best practices for self-protection, posted some urgent warnings about selling artwork of licensed characters (owned specifically by Marvel/Disney and DC, I think).
As he pointed out, this very standard practice largely continues at the ~benevolent whim of large corporations. There are examples of artists who created characters in the first place under problematic "work for hire" contracts who have then faced legal consequences for attempting to sell depictions of their own creations. (While many others haven’t, and do this freely. If there’s actually a predictable logic to this, I haven’t found it.) Mainstream convention Artist's Alleys full of people selling their drawings of Supergirl, Wolverine, The Little Mermaid and goodness knows what else do so based on a sort of communal tradition, but there's no actual legal guarantee that one of these companies won't turn around and start handing out C&Ds. Some obvious parody art might be protected under Fair Use, but a lovingly-rendered portrait of Captain American is not, if you stick a price tag on it.
My mother, until her retirement, worked as a legal assistant for a small IP-centric law firm with a few relatively famous clients, and they would frequently weigh the possibilities of going after quite small infringers in order to preserve copyright for various clients. When I've taken a few commissions, here and there, for art of licensed characters, she's always expressed concern. Just because the practice seems to be accepted and has a long history, doesn't mean it's risk-free.
There are old cultural reasons why things developed this way (some of which probably have to do with commercial fanart being created by the artists who created the official work in the first place - because American comics and animation, in particular, have always been enormously predatory towards their creatives and the "single author" absolute ownership paradigm has historically been a lot rarer than with, say, non-licensed novels). Meanwhile, while there’s a rich historical connection between fanfiction and profic, it has tended to go in the opposite direction (though I’m sure there are exceptions): fanfiction to “original” writer status. Somehow, that resulted in disclaimers and secrecy where the visual side has chosen to brazen out an openly commercialized approach. As an artist who came up through fic-centric fandom, it actually took a lot of soul-searching before I could be comfortable with the idea of monetizing even the occasional bit of fanart (as my public-facing cartoonist self, never in fandom circles), even with an awareness of existing practices. But I'm not sure holding commissioned fanart up as a model to legitimize commissioned fanfic (even as I do support both from an ethical standpoint) would be the best way to go.
Mind you, it is more than a bit weird to me to reflect on the pro/anti-fanfic arguments I used to get into with classmates in college, which had no bearing on legality but were all about “stealing the author’s baby.” Those were uniquely leveled at fic, not art, and I have no idea why. (Because of a history of frustration with different kinds of value being attached to different forms of creative labor within fandom, I’m inclined towards a knee-jerk opinion about writing being somehow considered a more legitimate or essential form of creation/authorship than drawing, but that’s almost certainly unfair.)
This entry was originally posted at my dreamwidth. (
comments)