Do you ever think you'll stop drawing fanart? No offense it just seems like the kind of thing you're supposed to grow out of. I'm just curious what your plans/goals are since it isn't exactly an art form that people take seriously.
Ah, fanart. Also known as the art that girls make.
Sad, immature girls no one takes seriously. Girls who are taught that it’s shameful to be excited or passionate about anything, that it’s pathetic to gush about what attracts them, that it’s wrong to be a geek, that they should feel embarrassed about having a crush, that they’re not allowed to gaze or stare or wish or desire. Girls who need to grow out of it.
That’s the art you mean, right?
Because in my experience, when grown men make it, nobody calls it fanart. They just call it art. And everyone takes it very seriously.
It’s interesting though — the culture of shame surrounding adult women and fandom. Even within fandom it’s heavily internalized: unsurprisingly, mind, given that fandom is largely comprised by young girls and, unfortunately, our culture runs on ensuring young girls internalize *all* messages no matter how toxic. But here’s another way of thinking about it.
Sports is a fandom. It requires zealous attention to “seasons,” knowledge of details considered obscure to those not involved in that fandom, unbelievable amounts of merchandise, and even “fanfic” in the form of fantasy teams. But this is a masculine-coded fandom. And as such, it’s encouraged - built into our economy! Have you *seen* Dish network’s “ultimate fan” advertisements, which literally base selling of a product around the normalization of all consuming (male) obsession? Or the very existence of sports bars, built around the link between fans and community enjoyment and analysis. Sport fandom is so ingrained in our culture that major events are treated like holidays (my gym closes for the Super Bowl) — and can you imagine being laughed at for admitting you didn’t know the difference between Supernatural and The X Files the way you might if you admit you don’t know the rules of football vs baseball, or basketball?
“Fandom” is not childish but we live in a culture that commodified women’s time in such away that their hobbies have to be “frivolous,” because “mature” women’s interests are supposed to be marriage, family, and overall care taking: things that allow others to continue their own special interests, while leaving women without a space of their own.
So think about what you’re actually saying when you call someone “too old” for fandom. Because you’re suggesting they are “too old” for a consuming hobby, and I challenge you to answer — what do you think they should be doing instead?
This whole modern approach is also seriously undermining just how important fanfiction is - from a historical standpoint.
The concept of fanfiction formed and forged the earliest stages of literature in Europe. Because the majority of authors in France, Germany and Great Britain looked at that funky little Celtic dude Arthur and thought “hey, he’s neat. I wanna write about him”.
The entire concept of a book outside of religious purposes was born out of fanfiction in my country.
There is no “first canon” for Arthur where he came as the prince of Camelot, with his sidekicks Lancelot and Merlin and his endgame love interest Gwen.
Arthur was some random hunter when he started out.
Someone’s fanfiction made him a prince.
Someone else’s fanfiction gave him a round table.
Someone else’s fanfiction gave him Merlin at his side.
Someone else’s fanfiction gave him Morgana, gave him Gwen, gave him his swords.
And, to this day, we still write Arthurian fanfiction. Literally last year there was a movie adaptation that is, by all intends and purposes, fanfiction, because it wasn’t even close to a literal adaptation of the source material (The Kid Who Would Be King). Heck, BBC’s Merlin, itself an Arthurian fanfiction, remains one of the biggest fandoms that people today write for on AO3.
You were a joke in the middle ages if you tried to write your own stuff. Who’s interested in your stuff? You were only a respected author if you wrote fanfiction. The most famous medieval German authors are famous because they wrote fanfiction about some knightly OCs they created who served on Arthur’s court. That is the literary legacy of the middle ages. Arthurian fanfiction.
Yet somewhere along the way, this concept of “I find x story/element cool and want to elaborate on it more, shift the focus onto an aspect of this original source material” has gotten this “eh, it’s fanfiction” connotation and lost respect.
Even though this very concept is still being used - even outside of the actual medium of fanfiction - and it is still being used for the very same purpose it was used for in medieval times. Original movies often don’t get as much recognition as adaptations of existing source material that the audience is familiar with. People see a movie about a character they’re familiar with and seem more inclined to buy a ticket to see the 10th new interpretation of Batman or Superman or Snow White. How are these new interpretations of familiar source material that usually add to the lore, reinterpret characterizations and dynamics, any different from fanfiction?
But heaven forbid we call The Dark Knight Nolan’s Batman fanfiction. No, fanfiction is that silly thing that we can’t take seriously, but that new Joker movie, that however is high-end art.
SO IMPORTANT
This. Fanfiction is variations on an existing theme, simultaneously making use of and satisfying people’s existing love for a story that they’re happy to consume more of, and cultivating the synergy between an existing story/mythos and a new author who, in interacting with characters they’d never have created themselves, creates something that neither they nor any of the story’s previous tellers could have made all by themselves.
Fanfiction is the new whole being greater than the sum of its parts, and fanfiction is the story being made limitless, retelling by retelling, and it is wonderful.
It’s also worth noting that Batman himself only came into being because of The Scarlet Pimpernel, a series of books about an extravagantly rich foppish playboy by day, daring hero in disguise by night (I mean, loosely. He also fopped by night and heroed by day, but you get my drift). Written by a woman no less.
Batman is a transformative work with a modernised crime-fighting SP but also borrowing strongly from earlier comic books, and yet it is seen as definitive.
Coming back here to say that I think the derision for fanart also has some of its roots in our capitalist hellscape.
It’s the age old “If thing not make you money, why you care about thing?” that’s so prevalent in the system. Of course some people do make money with their fanart, but I think that is still part of the scorn.
It’s supposed to be something you do not just for fun, but for practice, people like this think. Once you’re good at it, you can drop it and make money by focusing on your OCs and original work!
I can’t express how much I NEEDED to read this!
I started bookbinding for my fav fics bc I still love books, the feeling of a hardback in my hands and the smell of paper and ink, but fanfiction cannot be commercialized. Still my friends and family were always saying that I would regret it and that it will grow away from me.
Some even tried to put a price to my hobby as to create a business model, and as soon as it came out of their mouth I knew I didn’t want that!
I want to spend time putting together the text that someone I deeply admire put together and I have the absolute pleasure of reading and loving, I want to spend time searching for the perfect “fanart” that encompasses the content. I want to spend time on choosing fonts and the placement of the pages’ number and I want to spend time putting together the colors and the drawings for the front and the back!
That’s me trying to honor and respect the work of someone else, that’s me trying to have some closure for something I love and until THIS, this right now I felt so much GUILT for loving something “childish” for putting effort and money on it…. And at the same time I hated SO MUCH when authors replied to me “I’m honored you want to waste paper and resources in such project!” And I was always confused because I could read how much thought and effort they’d put into the book they wrote! But now I know many struggle to grow up and to take pride in what they do just because it’s not acceptable as an “adult.”
Reading this was a deep fresh breath, I let go of that guilt and that shame I’d been carrying for so long and I hadn’t even noticed!
For me it is an honor that you authors give me your blessing to bookbind your works, it is an absolute delight to lose myself in each project and it is all the reward I need when you authors like the end result.
I will continue to live the fandom and try to give back as much as possible, and I thank EVERY creator out there for the amazing work and the fact that you share your talent with the rest of us!
Different anon, piggybacking off of that last post... what if Eskel was their omega? Like, big beefy witcher actually an omega when people expect him to be an alpha. he takes suppressants while on the Path and goes into heat over winter, with Jaskier and Geralt there to take care of him 😏 Do we like?
Oh fuck yeah, we like. Hmm…so I see two scenarios here and I’ll ramble about both. So option one would be Geralt and Eskel hooking up when they were younger. It’s an unspoken thing that when an omega goes into heat or an alpha goes into rut the others help them out. It’s not like they’re going to find a human partner, right? So they’ve been going at it for years. Sometimes Lambert helps out, but lately he’s been shacking up with Aiden. So Geralt shows up at Kaer Morhen in a relationship with Jaskier and Eskel is a little pissed. They’re not bonded or anything, but it’s just assumed Geralt will help him through his heat. Since no one can actually talk about things, it takes awhile for them to figure it out. In the end Eskel has his best heat ever care of the two alphas.
Option two, no one is together yet. Sure the witchers help each other through heats and ruts, but that’s it. Jaskier gets an invite for the winter and there’s mild pining but they’re not quite there yet. Add Eskel to the mix and all three of them are yearning like crazy. Let’s say witchers don’t have regular heats. Maybe they go like 7 or 10 years between. But damn, do they go hard. Eskel goes into heat and Geralt knows they’re going to need more knots than he can provide. Lambert isn’t there (I love all 4 but this ask was for 3 so here we are) so Geralt and Eskel ask if Jaskier will join them. He is so on board with that plan. They fuck for days and feelings get involved and by the end of it they’re mostly bonded. All 3 of them set out on the path together come spring.
I wish this feeling upon everyone who wants to wear a dress, its really the best
this makes me so happy as a fat hairy guy who likes skirts and dresses i never get to see guys like me in dresses it’s always skinny twinks this makes me so happy 🥺🥺
If you are a larger gentleman, and wish to partake of the dress-wearing experience, please accept these tips to help fit your first dress!
1) You want something with stretch in it. Dresses are (often) built for people with boobs, and until you get familiar with how they fit your specific body, trying something super-stiff will 100% end in tears. I promise you, I am 32 years old, I have been wearing dresses all my life, and I still get pissed at dressing room mirrors because who the fuck designs some of these. There are fitted, tailored dresses designed by sane people who expect that their clothes will be worn by human beings, and they will make you look fine as fuck, but make your life easy and don’t start with them.
2) Dress sizes were designed by sixteen ferrets on crack and are not consistent between brands, styles, or vintage vs modern. Use them as a guideline, not a rule, and don’t let them upset you. Very often they’re adjusted in order to target a specific audience.
3) Lauren by Ralph Lauren is an amazing plus-size brand. Both of my fitted dresses are Lauren dresses, and that isn’t because I’m a label snob, it’s because I try on a dress that I think looks good and I go “YEEEEEEEEEESSSSS” and then pull it off and look at the label and go “ … . why am I surprised?” When you’re ready to branch out into fitted dresses, I strongly recommend finding your local Macy’s or Nordstrom and checking out their Lauren section. Even if you don’t buy anything from that section, it will give you a much better idea of how fitted dresses should look (flattering!) and feel (comfortable!).
4) Empire waists are your enemy. Those are the ones with the raised waistline that, on someone with boobs, sits right beneath said appendages. They will 1) ride up and 2) make you look pregnant, and without breasts to fill out the cups it’ll look like you don’t know how to fit your size. It does not matter who you are or how tall you are, if you’re above like a size four, empire waists are not going to be comfortable or give you the look you want. Just save yourself the time.
5) Arm holes on a sleeveless dress do not fit like arm holes on a tank top. They’re cut differently. Before you buy, MAKE SURE you cross your arms over your front and give yourself the biggest hug you can. Then put your arms behind you as far as you can. If you feel the fabric snag or chafe, you will end up wasting your money because the dress will be stupidly uncomfortable. You might be able to fix this by getting the same dress one size up, but if you choose to try one size up, prepare yourself for disappointment first. It’s often a sign of poor design or craftsmanship.
6) Part of trying on your dress should be SITTING DOWN. If this isn’t a dress you plan to wear with tights or leggings, you need to make sure it covers the backs of your thighs. (Either that, or you need to resign yourself to peeling yourself off chairs, and that fucking hurts.)
7) If you wear a mix of different underwear types, make sure you wear boxers when you go to try on dresses. Nothing will suck more than throwing on your dress and realizing you can see your shorts very easily underneath.
i re-watched it several times, looking for what he does differently. finally i spotted it. look at the line of motion in his strike. it’s not especially fast, he doesn’t wind up more than the others, and it’s not a matter of strength – the guy who knocked over the stand probably put more muscle into it. but there’s a unity of movement he has that the others lack. his body and sword are all one curve. everything moves at once along the same line.
from a physics perspective, that means all the force he’s applying is concentrated at the point of contact between his sword’s edge and the target, and it moves at just the speed that breakage propogates through the material. too slow and it wouldn’t have enough force; too fast and he’d get ahead of the break, shoving the target over instead of cutting it.
from a writing perspective, that means that i should focus on describing a master swordsman’s smoothness more than their strength or speed, and can also have witnesses be confused at the effectiveness of strikes that don’t actually seem all that fast.
From a martial artist’s perspective; you nailed it, and the difference is obvious to someone who’s trained for a long time.
Everything moves in synch with the master. He’s got perfect technique, or near to it. Most of the others don’t, and are trying to compensate with more snap in their wrists or more force, trying to muscle their way through it. They’re largely trying to cut with the motion of arms and shoulders, rather than their whole body.
The master knows that true power comes from the ground, from the stance, and his motions are never choppy or forced. Several of them are stepping or twisting their hips, but not truly starting the cut from a good stance. The master knows better. He flows through it, and the movement starts with his feet, not his arms, and he cuts the targets as smoothly as butter.
A reminder that itâs illegal in the USA to collect or sell the feathers of wild birds (and their eggs, bodies, and nests) even if you find them lying on the ground, unless you have a permit to do so. As in, actually illegal, not âoutdated law everyone has forgotten about and is no longer enforcedâ. Eagle parts are extra illegal.
How about bones?? Not like bird specifically just animal bones in general. Also why is it illegal?? There so many birds ergo so many feathers no ones gonna miss em
The specifics depend on your state, the situation, and whether the species is a game animal, but usually, itâs illegal unless you are licensed (ex for educational purposes).
There really arenât âso many birdsâ. The populations of many species are rapidly declining due to habitat loss and pollution. Iâve seen birds of prey autopsied and their insides are often coated in plastics. Pesticides and rodenticides wipe out truly horrifying numbers of larger birds - please only ever use mechanical traps for mice and rats, not poisons.
The Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 was passed four years after the last passenger pigeon died. It discourages the personal and commercial collection of bird parts for very good reason.
Oh, Ship! Tag me in on this one, Iâm ready!
So, the history of Wildlife law in the United States goes way back, actually, to the history of wildlife law in Great Britain.
See, in Ye Olden Days, the King was in charge of deciding who was and wasnât legally allowed to hunt. This was a Big Deal, because many people needed to hunt to feed and clothe themselves and their families. If the King said âyou canât hunt anywhere near where you live because those are My Deer,â you were, well, fucked.
Eventually, this power of wildlife ownership was technically redelegated to parliment, but hunting often remained super inaccessible to anyone but the wealthy, privileged few.
So when people started coming here from there, it was a total free-for-all. You could hunt anywhere, anything! There were things to shoot in the US that had been extinct in the British aisles for centuries, even!
So not only were people hunting for food, clothing, to drive out unwanted animals (see: wolves), but also for the hell of it because they were allowed!
For a while though, hunting was still very much an âI need to eatâ business. Canât fault âem for eating, ya know?
But once Europeans became really established here, with cities and leisure time and fashion, things got way out of hand.
There were pretty much No laws dictating how many animals a person could take, or when and from where they could take them.
Whatâs more is, suddenly, it wasnât just for food, it was for MASS PRODUCTION! You know what women REALLY wanted? Hats With Feathers. Lots Of Feathers.
People were already killing Many Birds, but not Enough. âWe need to kill WAY MORE BIRDS and FASTER,â they said. So they made These Big Guns.
They were made for mounting on boats, and who gave a damn about ammo? ANYTHING that could presumably maim a duck was a go. They loaded them with pieces of tin, metal, shards of broken glass, ya know. The usual.
Then, at night, during Mating season, theyâd go out onto the water, shine a light so that all the ducks raised their heads to investigate, fire the gun, and instantly decapitate hundreds of ducks a shot. It was wild.
So this was happening
And the REASON this was happening was there was a demand for these ducks, feathers, mainly. Meat second.
The demand is whatâs imperative here. It didnât matter if you had the means to kill 100 or 1000 birds in a night. If you shot âem, someone would pay for âem.
You can see where this started going wrong, however. Eventually, there were like, uh, no birds left to shoot.
So now everyoneâs starting to say, âwell, what the hellâŚit seems that shooting All Of The Birds At Once has somehow wiped them out. Maybe we should do something about this.â
NOW, that was NOT a popular move. People were really loving the whole âI can kill anything any time I wantâ thing going on. They argued that limiting their take would violate their rights and freedoms (never mind the hypocrisy of claiming any rights to the wildlife of this land that had been taken from the indigenous peoples theyâd killed and driven out).
But responsible hunters knew that wildlife and hunting laws were imperative to the continued existence of wildlife.
This wasnât a new concept, mind you. Responsible Wildlife laws are even in the damn Old Testament:
âIf you come across a birdâs nest in any tree or on the ground, with young ones or eggs and the mother sitting on the young or on the eggs, you shall not take the mother with the young.â Deuteronomy 22:6
Makes sense, right? Eat the eggs but make sure the mother remains to lay more.Â
And more than a century before, John Quincey Adams is quoted in reference to the issue:
âI went with my gun down upon the marshes, but had no sport. Game laws are said to be directly opposed to the liberties of the subject; I am well persuaded that they may be carried to far, and that they really are in most parts of Europe. But it is equally certain that where there are none, there is never any game; so that the difference between the country where laws of this kind exist and âŚwhere they are unknown must be that in the former very few individuals will enjoy the privilege of hunting and eating venison, and in the latter this privilege will be enjoyed by nobody.â
ANYWAY. Point was, people were realizing that if things didnât change fast, thereâd be nothing left to hunt, to eat, or to use for Fancy Hats.
So we got the Lacey Act of 1900, the first federal wildlife law.
âI have always been a lover of birds, and I always been a hunter as well, for today there is no friend that the birds have like a sportsman-the man who enjoys legitimate sport. He protects them out of season; he kills them with moderation in season.â Â John Lacey.
It limited market-hunting and commercial wildlife trafficking. People with Super Duck Guns were especially unhappy about this. However, if ducks understood federal laws, they wouldâve been thrilled.
The problem was, there was still a HUGE demand for feathers, for meat, and absurdly, for specimen for peopleâs private collections. âI donât CARE if thatâs the last known living Auk. I want it.â
So they had it.
What we needed to do was to destroy the demand for bird products. And to destroy the demand, we had to stop products from being made. If no one is walking down the street wearing a Fancy Bird Hat, no one else is going to say âoh! I want one too,â and no one is going to pay a Fancy Hat Maker to pay a Big Duck Gun owner to shoot 1,000 birds.
So we got the Migratory Bird Treat of 1918, which made it almost totally across the board illegal to own Any bird parts (excluding legal game birds, but laws about when and how many you could hunt were forming to protect them).
 There is a misnomer that taking something off the legal market will increase demand because people love what they canât have. Thatâs proven untrue in this case. Very few people are actually willing to break Actual Federal Law in order to own a hat they canât wear in public. The issue was larger society and for the most part law-abiding citizens who wore this stuff while it was legal but moved on once it wasnât.
The reason it still exists is to keep the demand for bird parts non-existent, and itâs WHY you canât legally collect feathers even when they fall off a bird naturally.
Because hey, YOU may live in an area with a healthy golden eagle population. Or a Blue Jay population. Or Red headed woodpeckers. YOU find their feathers all the time! They just fall off, no harm done.
So you pick them up, make them into cool jewelry and art, and post them on your etsy and pinterest.
Theyâre super popular! People love them!
Now I want in on that business!
But there arenât many golden eagles, blue jays, or woodpeckers around me, so I donât find their feathers often. But you know whatâs way easier than looking for one, fallen feather? Shooting a bird and getting a lot at once.
And thus an innocent market has once again created an unsustainable demand that will threaten bird populations.
And thatâs why itâs just flat out against Federal US law to own, collect, or sell almost any wild bird parts!
And MAKE NO MISTAKE! This law is Very Enforced. Wildlife officers Do pay attention to people talking about collected bird parts, and they Will throw the book at you. The fines are wild. Donât risk it.
THANKS FOR READING THIS LONG-ASS EXPLANATION!
This is a beautiful history of why wildlife protection laws matter. This is why Iâm so stringent about people adhering to the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.Â
Jaskier is blue. Geralt doesn’t know how to describe it other than that: Jaskier is blue.
He’s the cloudless sky on a summer’s day, he’s the refreshing stream of ice-cold water running from the mountains in spring. He’s the ocean in the middle of winter, he’s the bite of frost at fingetips, if need be. He’s ink stains, he’s brightly-coloured fabric. He’s Forget-Me-Nots. He’s the rarest of Roses.
Yennefer is purple. She’s streaks of brightness between the stars, she’s the sky when light is fading. She’s the colour of royals, the hardest dye to find. She’s sweet-smelling Lilac, she’s Wisteria, creeping into the walls of a house, slowly and patiently.
Ciri is green. She’s grass in summer, she’s the first leaves on the ancient trees. She’s the deadliest of poisons, she’s the most nourishing of vegetables. She’s rebirth and death and everything in between.
Triss is orange. She’s the flickering of candles in a ghust of wind, the roaring of a bonfire on a sandy beach. She’s the soft shades of dawn and the dying rays of sunlight in the evening. She’s a field of flowers, she’s a colour so bright it almost hurts to look at.
Eskel is pink. He’s the rosiness of skin after a cold day, he’s the healing of old wounds, slowly but surely. He’s Oleander, surprisingly deadly in all his beauty. He’s the colour of sunset and the colour of sunrise, his presence consistent and sure.
Lambert is red. He’s the blood that spills out of fresh wounds, he’s the scabs that keeps them from reopening. He’s the outer edges of the fire, warm but dangerous, the first warning before you reach something worse. He’s the embers in the ashes, he’s the blooming buds of the most beloved of Roses.
Vesemir is grey. He’s the mountains reaching for the skies, he’s the crumbling stones of ancient times. He’s the ashes, he’s the hours before dawn. He’s the deepest layers of the earth, he’s the fundaments upon which everything is built.
And Geralt? Well, if Geralt ever had a consistent colour, he doesn’t remember it. Instead, he takes on other people’s colours, takes the things he admires most about them and makes them his own - to fill the colourless void he is, to give them a reason to love him the way he loves them.
And sure, he doesn’t always manage to take their colours the way they give them to him - oftentimes darkening or fading. Jaskier’s wanderlust becomes a tendency to run. Yennefer’s persistence becomes stubbornness. Ciri’s selflessness becomes self-deprivation. Triss’s courage becomes foolhardiness. Eskel’s care becomes over-involvement. Lambert’s fire becomes a short temper. Vesemir’s steadiness becomes inaction.
A myriad of colours, taken from the ones he loves, clashing beautifully and horribly within him until he’s a patchwork of inconsistent traits, one added every time he starts to care about someone else. It’s a terrible way to be, yet glorious in all its fluidity, in all its changes.
Jaskier is blue. Yennefer is purple. Ciri is green. Triss is orange. Eskel is pink. Lambert is red. Vesemir is grey.
And Geralt is a rainbow of everyone he holds closest to his heart.
I have a lot of feelings about a lot of characters. Currently that's mostly Poe Dameron, Finn, and Rey of Star Wars, Derek Hale and Stiles Stilinski of Teen Wolf, and most of the Marvel characters. So basically I geek out. A lot.
WhoGeek just about everywhere else I'm online.
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