SailorQuaoar
Art categories are gone. Why
You know how DA has had categories for art like digital paintings, photography, 3D models, etc since the site's inception? Well that's all gone now, for submission and search.
So for example you can't filter for "literature" to search for just writing. Jesus fuck this is a terrible idea. It doesn't make things more simple, it makes them more cluttered.
The reasoning is probably "other sites where people post art don't filter by category"; yeah and those places (like tumblr and twitter) are terrible for hosting art, I come here BECAUSE it's not like other social media.
They better fix this shit soon because it's a goddamn mess now.
Dare you enter my magical realm
10 years on Deviantart
I've been on the internet for an entire decade. Holy fucking shit.
Online communities have changed so much since then...I miss the times when social justice wasn't dragged into fucking everything. We were just kids who loved Japanese culture and laughed at simple things.
Damn it, I can't believe I'm nostalgic for my weeaboo days.
come join Project Afterman
Remember Bionicle? That Lego line about robots with elemental powers living on a tropical island? The original run lasted from 2001-2010. The fanbase persisted through the 5 year hiatus because they were just that passionate, and also because there really isn’t anything else to fill that niche.
Lego rebooted it in 2015, but it was barely promoted or advertised at all, to the point that many Bionicle fans still don’t know it happened.
Not like it mattered though, because the reboot was a dumbed down piece of crap. It tanked so hard that Lego ended the line early (the story was planned to run 3 years) and the last wave of sets weren't even released in some countries.
Bionicle won’t be coming back for a long time, possibly ever, because of how bad the G2 sets sold. But the concept still has so much potential.
So a few people thought “if Lego won’t give Bionicle the respect it deserves, maybe it’s time to make our own elemental robot story, with blackjack and hookers”, and so Afterman was born. (not the final title, I’m just bad at names)
It’s not exactly a fanfiction. It’s inspired by the themes, motifs and aesthetics of Bionicle, but it doesn’t use the same characters and does not follow the same storyline. It’s an attempt at creating a universe inspired by Bionicle, but legally distinct from it.
Bionicle deserves to have a nuanced, richly-layered story…but we can’t rely on Lego to do that. Not anymore.
It’s time for the people who truly care about the series to take it into our own hands and make the stories we want to see.project-afterman.tumblr.com/
Check out the tumblr and google docs, we need more writers!
Fanart, Copyright Law, and You
(reposted from my tumblr to spread awareness)
Fans on the internet are some of the most passionate and dedicated people I’ve met. There’s lots of fan work being churned out every day. And even if we don’t make fanart ourselves, we share and reblog the works of others.
If you are a creator, and more specifically a fandom creator, being aware of copyright law is extremely important.
Parodies are generally permitted under copyright law, but what exactly constitutes a parody isn’t always clear-cut. Copyright laws also vary by country. A work that is public domain in one country may still be under copyright in another.
For the most part, the media companies who own the IPs turn a blind eye to fanart, as it generates and sustains interest in the IP. Some have even embraced fan works, with fanartists going on to work on official material.
However, that is not always the case.
Commissioning an artist to draw fanart is technically illegal, as the IP owners are not receiving royalties for the use of their copyrighted characters and elements.
If a fan work gets too much publicity, or its creators try to make money off of it, the IP holders can slap a cease and desist order on the fan project or even sue them, which is a legal nightmare for pretty much anyone.
If a Youtube video is determined to contain copyrighted content, the video will be removed and the account will receive a strike or may even be banned if the infringement is serious enough.
A My Little Pony-themed fighting game called Fighting is Magic was a nonprofit production, but it still received a C&D from Hasbro because a game where MLP characters beat each other up could damage MLP’s reputation as a children’s franchise. Fighting is Magic later resumed development with new, non-MLP characters under the name Them’s Fightin Herds.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Them%27s…
The nonprofit Metroid fangame Another Metroid 2 Remake also received a C&D from Nintendo.
Some other fandom-based things I’ve seen that are technically illegal:
- Kickstarting/crowdfunding a fan project
- Selling adoptables of fan-characters (like Sonic OCs, Gemsonas, etc)
- Selling shirts/mugs/stickers featuring copyrighted characters on Redbubble
To sum it up: Creating fanart is (mostly) legal. Making money from it is not. Most of the time IP owners won’t bother to pursue legal action against ordinary people, but it is a possibility if a company believes fanwork infringes on their copyright, and it could happen to you if you’re not careful.
Copyright law is serious shit, kids. Don’t fuck with the law or the law will fuck you up.