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pictured: me swinging a bat at a hornets' nest
3 months ago
General
a weird thing happened a while back on deviantArt.
someone tagged me in a long list of several Lion King fanartists. this list was made up of artists whose work had been reposted - with credit and i believe links - to a Facebook TLK fan group. everyone whose art was posted there was added to the list, doubtlessly to alert them of the alleged "art theft" going on. i found it annoying because i publicly state i don't care about that shit and frankly i'm not 19 and desperate for peer approval anymore so i don't like being dragged into this kinda low stakes internet slapfighting, but whatever. that's not the part i find interesting.
the part of the situation that i've been thinking about is how the guy who made the group also had a dA and also became alerted to this situation. he came in to comment shortly after the list went public, seeming very apologetic and guilty indeed. he was merely a fan of the franchise who wanted to share fanart he enjoyed with other fans, a very normal thing to do with any shared passion. the OP and several of the artists they'd tagged wasted no time in multi-paragraph lecturing this guy on how awful his having posted a buncha fanart without permission was. the OP even threatened that this dude was going to get into real-world legal trouble for doing so, which is hilarious!
it'd be more hilarious if this all didn't throw the reposter guy into what seemed like a Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria fueled self-loathing crashout. within short shrift the reposter guy dissolved the Facebook page, removing all of the "stolen" artwork, and made a post apologizing to the same goddamned list of fanartists for what he'd done (again, please don't pull me into this shit). my annoyance with damn kids getting their drama all over my lawn aside, it was immediately obvious to me that this dude didn't have any ill intent and felt very badly, seemingly to the point where he was considering ceasing interactions with the TLK fanbase at large. he was a fanartist too.
what a stupid fucking thing to have happened! what a bummeroonie all around!
i'm gonna be so real with you guys, amateur artists are some of the most possessive little weirdos you'll have to contend with online. the phrase "unearned sense of self importance" couldn't apply more. most of them focus primarily on fan labor surrounding intellectual properties that don't belong to them, don't rely on their art for their income (despite how often they'll cry about alleged lost profits from reposters yoinking some of their meager traffic), and don't know the first thing about copyright law, and yet they have a massive sense of entitlement to and possessiveness of their work (and "their" work) anyway. i get the human urge to want acknowledgement for your efforts, but this is ridiculous.
when the OP of the original Shitlist threatened the reposter guy legally, i stepped in and explained something that i feel needs to be acknowledged more widely: fanartists have no legal leg to stand on wrt copyright law. we have no valid reason to piss our pants over reposts of our fan labor because we don't own it. Disney could decide tomorrow that every TLK fanartist still posting online should be served a Cease and Desist and none of us would have any legal recourse for challenging them. no amount of "© me, the artist" in the description of this fanart is going to suddenly place you in legal possession of your work, so how can you justify getting so up your own ass over other fans spreading it around? i'm more likely to get in trouble for my TLK shit then anyone reposting it!
furthermore, though the attitude is uniquely incoherent when applied to fan labor, i find it insufferable when artists are upset about things like referencing, reposting, and roleplaying with their original work too. aside from them actually being legal owners of their work this time, the issues and attitude persist from the fan labor side of things. Literally Who nobody artists with all of 1,000 followers across all their socials foam at the mouth and awaken with night terrors at the idea of other people "using" their work, and i can't help but see it as egotism.
nobody can offer me anything but artsy-fartsy whataboutisms and hyperbolic, catastrophizing hypotheticals when scolding me on why i, draw maker and piss taker i am, should give a fuck about someone "stealing" (read: sharing) my artwork. nevermind how nobody has ever, insofar as i'm aware, "stolen" my art in a meaningful way. nevermind how i haven't lost any income or puny sliver of name recognition or had my audience redirected elsewhere by any number of reposts of the thousands of art pieces i've made and posted since i began using the internet over a decade ago (i'm writing this from my nursing home desktop.) nevermind how i've actually garnered more attention and therefore more walkin-around-money from new clients and interest from audience members who wouldn't have found me if not for the off-site sharing of my work. nevermind how inconsequential it is for 15 y/os in Discord servers to use my pictures as backgrounds to their roleplay, or how i also reference others' artwork to create my own unique pieces, or even how (brace yourselves for this one!!) i genuinely think its fine if someone traces my art for either their own education OR amusement. i have, for literal fucking years, been chided and talked down to and essentially browbeat by a buncha militant internet nerds about how i am supposed to feel about the sharing and enjoyment of my own motherfucking artwork.
you all bitch and moan about how the evil capitalist pigdog wage thieves are quick to turn art into commodity and prioritize ownership of their IPs over reveling in their significant contributions to pop culture - and you're right to! bc think of how often they compromise the integrity of their best work by making slopass remakes and shitfuck fanfic-on-crack sequels for a quick buck! check out every time The Mouse House bulldozes an orphanage for painting a Michael Rat mural on the walls! - but seem to want to achieve the same thing for your hilariously irrelevant dA galleries and Tumblr blogs and Blusky feeds.
you don't seem, from where i'm standing, to care about art as experience, the sharing of ideas, or even a creative compulsion shared for the sake of selflessly enriching others' lives. you're too possessive and bossy for that, and i have to wonder why. does this feel like power? are we all so starved for control in our own lives that we feel an ego bruising when someone colors their wolf OC a similar shade of blue to ours? what is with this juvenile impulse to OWN our ideas instead of simply disseminate them?
only real point i'm trying to make is in reference to my own personal "policy": i mean it when i say you can reference, repost, and otherwise play with my art without asking me or caring what i think. this isn't just a concession i'm making because i understand, seemingly in a way a lotta others don't, that there's nothing i can do to prevent these things from happening anyway.
this is because i love art and i love when others love my art and i want people to love my art in ways that benefit them and not just me. if some kid traces my TLK fanart, recolors it, turns it into an OC, and becomes obsessed with that OC, brother that's my fucking dream come true. i hope one day they look back on whatever hideous neon purple lion cub they made in their pre-pubescent years and smile at both their own naivete and their past innocent wonder and unbridled sense of derivative but earnest enjoyment for creating anything at all via any means they could consider.
the ownership of art, in my mind, will always be secondary to what it means to people. don't alert me to reposts of my art, i genuinely could not care any fucking less.
someone tagged me in a long list of several Lion King fanartists. this list was made up of artists whose work had been reposted - with credit and i believe links - to a Facebook TLK fan group. everyone whose art was posted there was added to the list, doubtlessly to alert them of the alleged "art theft" going on. i found it annoying because i publicly state i don't care about that shit and frankly i'm not 19 and desperate for peer approval anymore so i don't like being dragged into this kinda low stakes internet slapfighting, but whatever. that's not the part i find interesting.
the part of the situation that i've been thinking about is how the guy who made the group also had a dA and also became alerted to this situation. he came in to comment shortly after the list went public, seeming very apologetic and guilty indeed. he was merely a fan of the franchise who wanted to share fanart he enjoyed with other fans, a very normal thing to do with any shared passion. the OP and several of the artists they'd tagged wasted no time in multi-paragraph lecturing this guy on how awful his having posted a buncha fanart without permission was. the OP even threatened that this dude was going to get into real-world legal trouble for doing so, which is hilarious!
it'd be more hilarious if this all didn't throw the reposter guy into what seemed like a Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria fueled self-loathing crashout. within short shrift the reposter guy dissolved the Facebook page, removing all of the "stolen" artwork, and made a post apologizing to the same goddamned list of fanartists for what he'd done (again, please don't pull me into this shit). my annoyance with damn kids getting their drama all over my lawn aside, it was immediately obvious to me that this dude didn't have any ill intent and felt very badly, seemingly to the point where he was considering ceasing interactions with the TLK fanbase at large. he was a fanartist too.
what a stupid fucking thing to have happened! what a bummeroonie all around!
i'm gonna be so real with you guys, amateur artists are some of the most possessive little weirdos you'll have to contend with online. the phrase "unearned sense of self importance" couldn't apply more. most of them focus primarily on fan labor surrounding intellectual properties that don't belong to them, don't rely on their art for their income (despite how often they'll cry about alleged lost profits from reposters yoinking some of their meager traffic), and don't know the first thing about copyright law, and yet they have a massive sense of entitlement to and possessiveness of their work (and "their" work) anyway. i get the human urge to want acknowledgement for your efforts, but this is ridiculous.
when the OP of the original Shitlist threatened the reposter guy legally, i stepped in and explained something that i feel needs to be acknowledged more widely: fanartists have no legal leg to stand on wrt copyright law. we have no valid reason to piss our pants over reposts of our fan labor because we don't own it. Disney could decide tomorrow that every TLK fanartist still posting online should be served a Cease and Desist and none of us would have any legal recourse for challenging them. no amount of "© me, the artist" in the description of this fanart is going to suddenly place you in legal possession of your work, so how can you justify getting so up your own ass over other fans spreading it around? i'm more likely to get in trouble for my TLK shit then anyone reposting it!
furthermore, though the attitude is uniquely incoherent when applied to fan labor, i find it insufferable when artists are upset about things like referencing, reposting, and roleplaying with their original work too. aside from them actually being legal owners of their work this time, the issues and attitude persist from the fan labor side of things. Literally Who nobody artists with all of 1,000 followers across all their socials foam at the mouth and awaken with night terrors at the idea of other people "using" their work, and i can't help but see it as egotism.
nobody can offer me anything but artsy-fartsy whataboutisms and hyperbolic, catastrophizing hypotheticals when scolding me on why i, draw maker and piss taker i am, should give a fuck about someone "stealing" (read: sharing) my artwork. nevermind how nobody has ever, insofar as i'm aware, "stolen" my art in a meaningful way. nevermind how i haven't lost any income or puny sliver of name recognition or had my audience redirected elsewhere by any number of reposts of the thousands of art pieces i've made and posted since i began using the internet over a decade ago (i'm writing this from my nursing home desktop.) nevermind how i've actually garnered more attention and therefore more walkin-around-money from new clients and interest from audience members who wouldn't have found me if not for the off-site sharing of my work. nevermind how inconsequential it is for 15 y/os in Discord servers to use my pictures as backgrounds to their roleplay, or how i also reference others' artwork to create my own unique pieces, or even how (brace yourselves for this one!!) i genuinely think its fine if someone traces my art for either their own education OR amusement. i have, for literal fucking years, been chided and talked down to and essentially browbeat by a buncha militant internet nerds about how i am supposed to feel about the sharing and enjoyment of my own motherfucking artwork.
you all bitch and moan about how the evil capitalist pigdog wage thieves are quick to turn art into commodity and prioritize ownership of their IPs over reveling in their significant contributions to pop culture - and you're right to! bc think of how often they compromise the integrity of their best work by making slopass remakes and shitfuck fanfic-on-crack sequels for a quick buck! check out every time The Mouse House bulldozes an orphanage for painting a Michael Rat mural on the walls! - but seem to want to achieve the same thing for your hilariously irrelevant dA galleries and Tumblr blogs and Blusky feeds.
you don't seem, from where i'm standing, to care about art as experience, the sharing of ideas, or even a creative compulsion shared for the sake of selflessly enriching others' lives. you're too possessive and bossy for that, and i have to wonder why. does this feel like power? are we all so starved for control in our own lives that we feel an ego bruising when someone colors their wolf OC a similar shade of blue to ours? what is with this juvenile impulse to OWN our ideas instead of simply disseminate them?
only real point i'm trying to make is in reference to my own personal "policy": i mean it when i say you can reference, repost, and otherwise play with my art without asking me or caring what i think. this isn't just a concession i'm making because i understand, seemingly in a way a lotta others don't, that there's nothing i can do to prevent these things from happening anyway.
this is because i love art and i love when others love my art and i want people to love my art in ways that benefit them and not just me. if some kid traces my TLK fanart, recolors it, turns it into an OC, and becomes obsessed with that OC, brother that's my fucking dream come true. i hope one day they look back on whatever hideous neon purple lion cub they made in their pre-pubescent years and smile at both their own naivete and their past innocent wonder and unbridled sense of derivative but earnest enjoyment for creating anything at all via any means they could consider.
the ownership of art, in my mind, will always be secondary to what it means to people. don't alert me to reposts of my art, i genuinely could not care any fucking less.
Just because they have more high powered lawyers doesn't grant them any inherent rights to the material they've stolen.
Sounds as though we're quite simpatico here, but hey, I'm an anarchist, so whaddya expect?
Wasn't TLK itself basically stolen from Simba?
i'm more pissed that Disney pretends they invented the story of TLK all by themselves without having acknowledged the story of Sundiata Keita and its clear influence even once. that and the trying to take credit for the creation of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" and trying to copyright the Kiswahili phrase "Hakuna Matata". i may like their big cat movie but Disney The Company is still dogshit to its core
Good Lord! that came from a Zulu song called "Mbumbe".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxBvblr_BrE&t=27s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73Bzm36N-Fk&t=10s
I'm less of a 'jump' to scold someone especially if they link back to the artist, do it out of just wanting to share their favourite art pieces of TLK, but the TLK community has some huge holes that need patching up with a bit of understanding.
I personally, like drawing. Thats all. I post, I draw, I use it as therapy at times and a way to express myself, if it comes out looking weird, all good. I've seen many look alikes of my sona, similar combinations of colour, markings, but i'm not gonna jump unless I know its spitefully being vaguely copied for their own uses.
Sorry to ramble, I hope that make sense, i'm very tired haha.
I honestly think this is blunt and very honest of you to speak about it. x
i agree. TLK fans are like any fans of a huge fandom with a huge art component: bitches lmao. the main holes we have to fill within our community ime are those caused by the anti-social behavior of our most dedicated/emotionally dysregulated members. we all need to calm down and be more charitable in how we approach each other instead of letting our first kneejerk instinct dictate whether or not we start any harassment campaigns. chill people who didn't hurt anybody get chased off the internet for shit like this :[
thanks for sharing your thoughts on the topic. guess i had a buzzing in the back of my head i had to get out because i'm very frustrated with how this attitude brings more grief then it has ever resolved. we're all here to draw goddamn cartoon animals we love cus we grew up with them, why are we socially stoning each other to death over what's meant to be nostalgic make believe?