original characters...
First, thank you castor for the lovely cookie!! <3
There was a little bit of an argument on Twitter yesterday about original characters so I thought I would write a bit about it... Not that I really have room to talk when there are so many hardworking creative people who even finished Nanowrimo on my flist, but bear with me. ^^
For me, the end goal of fannish activities such as writing fanfic or drawing fanart was always "to get better so I can make my own someday". This might be different for other people, but I always felt that my stories were the reason I was alive*, and I've always felt stressed when I had free time and wasn't working on them, and been afraid I would get run over by a snowplow and die before writing them, etc.
Fanworks have their own value in and of themselves but given an average original story and an average fanfic, I would vote for the original story (or manga or art). This is why I'm slightly dubious about attempts to legitimatize fanfic like the Organization for Transformative Works - on the one hand, people are doing it already so we might as well make it less problematic legally, but on the other hand, I feel like writers should be promoting original work more?
It's true that stuff with existing characters that people like already is more easily accepted by others and thus more likely to receive comments and appreciation, and it's not fun to have something you care dearly for get slammed or worse - ignored or damned with faint praise. And it's not fun to work on something and have it turn badly. Or to have people complain that they don't understand why so many people care about someone else's OCs and feel like you're annoying them by shoving your work in their face.
I mean, I get jealous sometimes when I see someone else's OCs get attention and mine don't. But that's not a reason for the other person to stop, that's a reason for me to work harder and get better.
So... for the people on my flist who do their own stuff, even if I don't comment (and I know I should), I support you all 100%.
*The reason that I never talked about them was just because I was (and still am) paranoid, not that I wasn't thinking about them a LOT of the time.
There was a little bit of an argument on Twitter yesterday about original characters so I thought I would write a bit about it... Not that I really have room to talk when there are so many hardworking creative people who even finished Nanowrimo on my flist, but bear with me. ^^
For me, the end goal of fannish activities such as writing fanfic or drawing fanart was always "to get better so I can make my own someday". This might be different for other people, but I always felt that my stories were the reason I was alive*, and I've always felt stressed when I had free time and wasn't working on them, and been afraid I would get run over by a snowplow and die before writing them, etc.
Fanworks have their own value in and of themselves but given an average original story and an average fanfic, I would vote for the original story (or manga or art). This is why I'm slightly dubious about attempts to legitimatize fanfic like the Organization for Transformative Works - on the one hand, people are doing it already so we might as well make it less problematic legally, but on the other hand, I feel like writers should be promoting original work more?
It's true that stuff with existing characters that people like already is more easily accepted by others and thus more likely to receive comments and appreciation, and it's not fun to have something you care dearly for get slammed or worse - ignored or damned with faint praise. And it's not fun to work on something and have it turn badly. Or to have people complain that they don't understand why so many people care about someone else's OCs and feel like you're annoying them by shoving your work in their face.
I mean, I get jealous sometimes when I see someone else's OCs get attention and mine don't. But that's not a reason for the other person to stop, that's a reason for me to work harder and get better.
So... for the people on my flist who do their own stuff, even if I don't comment (and I know I should), I support you all 100%.
*The reason that I never talked about them was just because I was (and still am) paranoid, not that I wasn't thinking about them a LOT of the time.