#ive always felt terrible for making 'kin' art. especially now as an adult. because im like if its truely about me and me alone why do i nee

[luckyshouse]

almost all of my fear about plagerism and the creators hating what i've done to their characters comes from my internalized fear of people taking my characters and warping them into something i explicitely didnt want them to be (common occurrence in rp spaces i was in as a kid) and even deeper than that it comes from my dads fucking insane ramblings about people taking his beloved comic book characters and twisting them into "mary sues" or "self inserts" or GOD FORBID...! MAKING THEM GAY!!!! and his constant rants about it that would typically end in me getting punished. morally, i see nothing wrong with taking characters from popular fiction or media whether or not it's SUPER mainstream or not. the only issue is if small artists are getting properly comped for their already existing work. it's the same exact logic i apply to shoplifting, but arguably even more lenient. can you even steal an idea? a character? if everythings already done can it be stealing at all? a character will mean a different thing to every single person in the audience and one artist could never produce another artists same thoughts and ideas in the same symbolic and metaphorical ways. all of this is accumulates to a frustrating internal dialogue about worrying about making fanart and what the creators might think about it vs believing that fanart itself doesn't even really exist. needless to say, i think i've gotten over my whole dilemma about drawing fanart and what it means about me morally, and what it means about the creator. it doesn't matter. i'm not getting paid for the things i do, and all fanart i make is reimaginative and interpretive, i make fanart to be about myself instead of about the creator. and if the creator doesn't like it, well, it's certainly not the worst thing anyones ever done with their work. and if i became famous, i have accepted that people will warp my writing and characters either way. i have the autonomy to ignore it. i have the choice to disengage. and i think that has given me a lot of calm when it comes to my gripes about fanart. if the artist doesn't like it that's fine. they have the autonomy and choice to ignore it.