#captainsphasma

female awesome meme: [5/9] female dynamics | flaca & maritza (orange is the new black)

Hi Ruby @ruebella-b! Well, um, I guess I’m going to say that I don’t really have an answer to this question? Here, have a little ASOIAF fanlore instead:

Way back when we thought the show and the books were basically the same fandom, the lovely queencersei was the first to suggest a special tag for the ASOIAF fandom with the #gotedit tag. The point of the tag was to avoid spam and have a single tag to check for ASOIAF/show visuals:

I have been into the Game of Thrones tag once or twice before, i never returned because it was appalling. Which is a shame, because I seriously think the ASOIAF fandom is crazy talented, and sometimes pretty things don’t get noticed because of all the wank.

The idea is, let’s create a tag for graphic stuff. Graphics, gifs, photosets, gifsets, whatever, as long as it’s a visual. Let’s make a tag that one won’t be scared to check because of stupid “unpopular opinions”, or “hey jaime lannister looks like the dude from shrek!” or “i just started game of thrones and [insert long list of character dissing here]”.

Tag your graphic stuff with #gotedit, and let’s create a clean environment. It’s possibly the best way to discover new graphic makers, and that’ll help make your blog pretty. [x]

Then #gotcharacter tags were spawned, and Lord help me, unpopular opinion but I hate those tags, I hate having to track both #joanna lannister and #gotjoannalannister. I have to check TWO character tags for all the pre-series characters (that don’t even exist on the show) for my sideblog!!

And then later I spearheaded the #gotfic initiative, because obviously fic is words, not visuals, and there was no single place to go on tumblr for ASOIAF fic. (And there still isn’t; some people use #gotfic, some use #asoiaf fic, and some use #asoiaf fanfiction, so finding ASOIAF fanfiction on tumblr is still a bit of a disaster.)

And still later, I created the #asoiaf meta tag for opinions/discussion of ASOIAF because of wank directed at me and my blogs (Lord give me strength) meta doesn’t fit into either the “visual” category or the “fic” category. I haven’t tracked the #asoiaf meta tag since May 2014, so I can’t comment on it. 

But where does ASOIAF fanart fit in? Original fanart is visual, it’s clearly not spam, and fanartists work just as hard as graphic and gif makers and often go unnoticed, which is the problem the fandom edit tags were trying to rectify. In the past, fanartists have occasionally posted in the edit tags, but it was very rare. 

@cerysehightower is the person who formally proposed the #asoiafedit tag and who is the owner of @asoiafedit, so perhaps she might weigh in? Is fanart acceptable in the #asoiafedit tag?

@captainsphasma and I have spoken privately about an #asoiaf art tag and some fanartists already use that tag, and some people track it. I think there are pros and cons to such a tag, because it’s yet another tag to track and it’s very difficult to raise awareness for fandom tags and get people to use them (and use them properly ie tag in the first 5 tags). Personally I think it would be easier if asoiaf artists could use an already established tag that people already track.

And fanart has another dimension to consider, where people who are not artists post art (presumably with proper credits/sources) from deviantart to their tumblrs. The edit tags are meant to be for original creations only. If it became common for fanart to be posted in an edit tag, I think it would have to be original work created by the person posting it, and not something someone found on another website. 

*I* personally think original ASOIAF fanart posted by the original artist should go in the #asoiafedit tag. It’s not like anyone has made ASOIAF into a proper tv show or movie yet, so the #asoiafedit tag is already just people making use of various other footage to create ASOIAF visuals. I don’t know why people wouldn’t want fanart in #asoiafedit, unless they really dislike fanart?? But I know some people are very aggressive in blocking people in edit tags, so I’m always very careful about what I put in tags.