Iâm typing this unable to feel my hands because of bus woes so forgive me if this is not the most eloquent, but man, the more I look at how some of these new CCs act the more I think that creators should not be in fandom spaces.
Thereâs this idea that we see where creators think thar material about them/their characters is FOR them, and so they lay down rules about how things should be depicted (like you would on a gift for you) and they go into the comments to fight with people who put their tag on things they donât like, etc. All these things that we see happening.
But theyâre missing the point thatâ and I am not the first person to say thisâ things tagged with their character name are not there for them to see it, theyâre there for other fans of the character to see it. I donât post into the murderbot tag for the edification of Martha Wells, I post it for other murderbot fans. If Martha Wells showed up in my comments on an established fandom space Iâm liable to panic-block and scramble for the exit.
And so these creators come in and say âthis isnât a good gift for me, donât do thisâ, but thatâs an essential misreading of the situation, and the thing is itâs kind of a presumptuous misreading of the situation when youâre monetizing your character. As my friend TD pointed out today, âdonât draw nsfw of my OCâ is a perfectly normal thing to do within a peer to peer fandom context, but you are no longer interacting peer to peer when you have monetized your OC and are distributing them to as broad an audience as possible. You are the creator of a marketed figure. If you try to keep dictating peopleâs behaviour, that is how you become Anne Rice, which is never something you want to be.
But these creators are walking into spaces and saying that *everything tagged with their character name* is a gift for them and just like, no. If you keyword search your name on the entire internet youâre gonna overhear a lot of conversations that were not meant for you, and acting like it is even possible to make The Entire Internet safe for a public figure to look at is not a workable exercise.
Creators should not be walking into spaces where people are talking about their characters unless theyâre ready to see a lot of things that were never made with them as the target audience. Make a fan art channel im your discord and let people bring things to you, but donât walk onto the site where peopleâs favourite holidays to celebrate with characters include kinktober and whumptober and goreuary, where people explore their trauma through the lens of their favourite characters, where people experiment with different art styles and body type depictions of characters, where things that fall under the âfluffâ umbrella include making characters into toddlers and making them so sad so they can have a hug, and expect that everything is going to be made with your comfort in mind. Thatâs just not how the fandom emotion works.
Fandom isnât for creators, itâs for fans, and believe me that I also have creatorsâ comfort in mind when I say that fandom and creators should be kept separate.