FANART VS. FANFIC: TEAL DEER DEATHMATCH!!!! (or not)
mrmoonpants 's post here and amei's responses put me to mind of something I've actually been meaning to lj about for a while. So let me take my user-end seat at the fandom meta table, and start babbling incoherently!
From where I'm sitting, it looks like fanartists get a lot more respect than fanfic writers. However, I'm fairly certain that my perspective on this is because a) I have more artists/art communities on my friends list than I have writers; b) in fact, I avoid fic communities like the plague; c) I spend more time than is probably healthy on y!, dA, and 4chan; d) despite both what I perceive as the above-average quality of my work and the protestations of some of my art friends, I'm not a BNF, but; e) I know some BNF-ish artists.
Because fandom dynamics are so radically different from one another, a lot of the attention is series-dependent. Drawing-based media (games, anime, cartoons) logically tend to attract large artist:writer ratios. But once you branch into TV series (like, say, Supernatural), there's approximately one piece of art for every two bajillion pieces of fic. Megaten fandom comes off as (generally) small and smart, and tends both to produce quality and to prefer oddities. Avatar fandom, on the other hand, comes off as (again, generally) a sprawling, frothing horde of underaged fangirls. House and Wilson unironically as bunny boys may bring the scorn, but Harry and Draco unironically as bunny boys may bring the love. (Related: I love this.)
Artists also have (semi-)respectable places to post their stuff in a public, searchable, non-series-specific forum -- like, say, y! and dA. Fic writers have ... the Pit of Voles (aka: fanfiction.net).
Between fanart and fanfic, fanart is the faster medium -- not because it's necessarily faster to create, but because it's faster to consume. I can look at fanart_a_day and my updates page on y! and the other three artists who've updated their journals during the night, and still not be late for work. If one of my fic-writing friends posts something, though, it's probably going to have wait until I get home and get a chunk of time (if it hasn't scrolled off my friends page, causing me to forget about it). And that's only if one of my fic-writing friends has posted something, because I looked through my special fandom-only friends reading filter, and I got to skip=60 before I gave up looking for a new fic post.
On multiple occasions, I've gone to y! and seen art with comments that basically say, 'I don't know anything about these characters but I drew them anyway!' And 90% of the time, I can't call them on it because I don't know the source material any better myself. From a user-end perspective, the main difference is that I'll look at art for a series I don't know, but I won't read fic for it. I have people friended on y! with whom I have zero fandom overlap, whose art I like because it's lovely. quaedam's been posting some Bleach art lately, and I don't know jack about Bleach, but I know I like the art! Still, it could be totally out of character, and I'd have no clue.
Is there fanfic out there that rapes the source material yet still manges to come out a work worth reading? You bet your ass! In fact, that's part of why petronia created bb_shousetsu -- for those times you've AU'd yourself out so far that you've reached the point where you're just writing original characters with familiar names. And judging by the number of secrets on fandomsecrets that say things like 'if you use only Advent Children and Wikipedia to write your FFVII fanfic, you suck!', I'm guessing there are a fair number of fanfic writers out there in the world who try to write fanfic without knowing the source material at all, but I wouldn't know, because they post where angels fear to tread. And while I do know there are people who read fic for series they know nothing about, I'm not one of them.
mrmoonpants talks about how when it comes to really good media, she often doesn't want to do anything with it -- why screw with something that's already self-contained awesome? And I generally won't read fanfic for something (let's use Cowboy Bebop as an example) where I feel the source material is so tight that there's nothing else that needs to be said. I will, however, look for art from it, which is why bigbigtruck's been on my radar for several years.
When it comes to art, I'm more easygoing, but fic must either be written by someone I trust or thrust into my lap by someone I trust, and even then it's not a guarantee. I love my artist friends to bits and am in constant awe of the amazing stuff they produce, because I sure as hell couldn't do it, but I'm picky about writing because I could do it, and if it's bad I'm going to spend the whole time thinking about how I could have done it better, because I am a closet narcissist. And I don't enjoy doing that! So I don't read much stuff, the end.
To sum up: WHO WANTS ICE CREAM? Also, this is 100% just me and my own fandom experiences. Feel free to share differing perspectives!
From where I'm sitting, it looks like fanartists get a lot more respect than fanfic writers. However, I'm fairly certain that my perspective on this is because a) I have more artists/art communities on my friends list than I have writers; b) in fact, I avoid fic communities like the plague; c) I spend more time than is probably healthy on y!, dA, and 4chan; d) despite both what I perceive as the above-average quality of my work and the protestations of some of my art friends, I'm not a BNF, but; e) I know some BNF-ish artists.
Because fandom dynamics are so radically different from one another, a lot of the attention is series-dependent. Drawing-based media (games, anime, cartoons) logically tend to attract large artist:writer ratios. But once you branch into TV series (like, say, Supernatural), there's approximately one piece of art for every two bajillion pieces of fic. Megaten fandom comes off as (generally) small and smart, and tends both to produce quality and to prefer oddities. Avatar fandom, on the other hand, comes off as (again, generally) a sprawling, frothing horde of underaged fangirls. House and Wilson unironically as bunny boys may bring the scorn, but Harry and Draco unironically as bunny boys may bring the love. (Related: I love this.)
Artists also have (semi-)respectable places to post their stuff in a public, searchable, non-series-specific forum -- like, say, y! and dA. Fic writers have ... the Pit of Voles (aka: fanfiction.net).
Between fanart and fanfic, fanart is the faster medium -- not because it's necessarily faster to create, but because it's faster to consume. I can look at fanart_a_day and my updates page on y! and the other three artists who've updated their journals during the night, and still not be late for work. If one of my fic-writing friends posts something, though, it's probably going to have wait until I get home and get a chunk of time (if it hasn't scrolled off my friends page, causing me to forget about it). And that's only if one of my fic-writing friends has posted something, because I looked through my special fandom-only friends reading filter, and I got to skip=60 before I gave up looking for a new fic post.
On multiple occasions, I've gone to y! and seen art with comments that basically say, 'I don't know anything about these characters but I drew them anyway!' And 90% of the time, I can't call them on it because I don't know the source material any better myself. From a user-end perspective, the main difference is that I'll look at art for a series I don't know, but I won't read fic for it. I have people friended on y! with whom I have zero fandom overlap, whose art I like because it's lovely. quaedam's been posting some Bleach art lately, and I don't know jack about Bleach, but I know I like the art! Still, it could be totally out of character, and I'd have no clue.
Is there fanfic out there that rapes the source material yet still manges to come out a work worth reading? You bet your ass! In fact, that's part of why petronia created bb_shousetsu -- for those times you've AU'd yourself out so far that you've reached the point where you're just writing original characters with familiar names. And judging by the number of secrets on fandomsecrets that say things like 'if you use only Advent Children and Wikipedia to write your FFVII fanfic, you suck!', I'm guessing there are a fair number of fanfic writers out there in the world who try to write fanfic without knowing the source material at all, but I wouldn't know, because they post where angels fear to tread. And while I do know there are people who read fic for series they know nothing about, I'm not one of them.
mrmoonpants talks about how when it comes to really good media, she often doesn't want to do anything with it -- why screw with something that's already self-contained awesome? And I generally won't read fanfic for something (let's use Cowboy Bebop as an example) where I feel the source material is so tight that there's nothing else that needs to be said. I will, however, look for art from it, which is why bigbigtruck's been on my radar for several years.
When it comes to art, I'm more easygoing, but fic must either be written by someone I trust or thrust into my lap by someone I trust, and even then it's not a guarantee. I love my artist friends to bits and am in constant awe of the amazing stuff they produce, because I sure as hell couldn't do it, but I'm picky about writing because I could do it, and if it's bad I'm going to spend the whole time thinking about how I could have done it better, because I am a closet narcissist. And I don't enjoy doing that! So I don't read much stuff, the end.
To sum up: WHO WANTS ICE CREAM? Also, this is 100% just me and my own fandom experiences. Feel free to share differing perspectives!