What's on your mind?

[mangaluva]

My homework for my Storytelling in Convergent Media is to play a video game for at least three hours and then create a narrative about what happened in those three hours. I love this class so goddamn much.

Clearly I was taking the wrong classes.

So I assume if you play a JRPG it would be basically be cheating right? :V

IDK. Just throwing the lecturer a link to my AO3 profile is probably cheating, though

But actually it has to be a really recent game and it's part of our discussion on video games as a narrative art form so idk... I might just write about Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons because that still has one of the most fantastically constructed narratives I've seen in a video game even as it punishes you for having emotions.

I still need to play that. Heard a lot of good things about it.

If you play it and you can record it as an LP, please do. This game hurt me badly and the only way I can deal is by watching other people suffer. (Also it's a goddamn gorgeous game and well worth looking at again.)

[Jd-]

Someone reposted my art on a random website.

That's when ya know you've made it.

[sonoci]

Someone reposted my art on a random website.

That's when ya know you've made it.

.............................

@Yuri: I'm sorry to hear that. I know for different people the reactions to reposting can vary, but I know that they're never good

Fact of the matter is is that you put time and work into a piece and someone took it and put it somewhere without your permission. Even when people "source" sometimes it can still feel cruddy (one artist I know had some of her art reposted and it really really bummed her out). I had some of my art reposted in some places too, and sometimes with the oh so infuriating "credit to whoever owns this :3" because I know - I KNOW that no one could have gotten the art in the first place without knowing that it was by me. My username is even six friggin letters for god's sake.

It needs to be said: artists have the right to decide where their work is displayed. If people really want to "share" things, they should link them or ask the artist for permission. Anything else is pretty disrespectful honestly -_-;

[Kor]

Fact of the matter is is that you put time and work into a piece and someone took it and put it somewhere without your permission.

Like someone took that anime episode you worked on and then lumped on it some english subtitles and then let other people download it and watch it even though no permission has been granted?

It needs to be said: artists have the right to decide where their work is displayed. If people really want to "share" things, they should link them or ask the artist for permission. Anything else is pretty disrespectful honestly -_-;

Like, I understand your sentiment, but this sounds very hypocritical, especially considering where we are.

[kkslider5552000]

I think the difference is that anime adaptations are already done by people who might as well be uncredited (no one actually knows who these people are, barring maybe some writers) in a large corporate environment where individuality is not always relevant to the job. That is being subtitled by some internet site on the other side of the globe. And even then DCTP actually did cease and actually did desist over this...

I'm not an artist myself so I can't really speak on any pros or cons, but I will provide an interesting and relevant story. I was part of this gaming community back in the day, and one of the many members was a very good fan artist, who did some fairly impressive and fun animated stuff (usually gif worthy stuff). Usually related to either Kirby or Pokemon. But his stuff was frequently taken by other people and put all over the internet. And he's made some legit popular stuff, most notably this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4u810_nAGy4 (though the sound isn't his). He also had one of the most popular Newgrounds videos for a while. And people kept telling him he deserved more credit for his work but he was always accepting about all of this. Perhaps a bit too kind for his own good. Name was Kine the Genius online IIRC, just to credit him properly.

[Cider]

I wanna do some streaming of me playing random crap (slider is such an inspiration :3) but then I read about SWAT-ing and I reallllly don't wanna be SWAT-ed ever so >">

[kkslider5552000]

I wanna do some streaming of me playing random crap (slider is such an inspiration :3) but then I read about SWAT-ing and I reallllly don't wanna be SWAT-ed ever so >">

to be fair, the market is too over saturated for anyone to care enough to do that to you I assume.

But yeah, that is one of the most "why the hype is this a thing?" awful things to come out of the internet, and that's saying quite a bit. That's why I do silly videos on Youtube instead, much better.

[sonoci]

-

[kkslider5552000]

I should point out that Yuri's art is quite lovely.

[Jd-]

Lemme note here we're gonna be talking about fansubbing, which is different from fan art and such in that fan art is (ideally) going to be an original work that's derived from something else whereas fansubbing is just enabling access to something that's otherwise inaccessible to the audience. No matter how many coats of paint we put on it, those fansubs would still never really be "our" content. People would, ideally, only repost fanart while acknowledging its source and creator, of course. It's unfortunately an easy mistake to make, which is a weird sort of compliment, because some fan artists are so skilled that their work--at least at first glance--is pretty indistinguishable from static shots of the real thing. With that said--!

I know I'm wayward on this subject compared to the norm, but the amount of times that my work was stolen wholesale and used for other purposes is basically incalculable. Just in terms of stuff done in the Conan and surrounding communities, people have stolen my designs, writings, releases, and tons of other things I've done, without any acknowledgment of any kind. One thing I wrote ended up on a very well-known Asian media marketplace as essentially a copy-paste job for the description.

The thing is... it has never bothered me. The reason is two-fold: Foremost, I hate being credited with anything like this. I would rather never be mentioned at all and would MUCH rather hear that someone enjoyed whatever it is I worked on for what it was (a certain episode, movie, music video, whatever it may be) instead of talking about my specific contribution. To be succinct: I already would have thought the release was good, because if not, I wouldn't have released it in the first place. As such, my preference was to always hear someone say they thought that movie or episode was good--that would mean our time was well spent trying to represent it in English to the best of our ability. It seemed to me that the best thing I could do was to always do something that was exceptional to the point that it would pass as being a perfectly acceptable alternative to the real thing. I don't know if that makes sense, but that was always our team's mindset going into it.

Secondly, a portion of the people who "borrowed" those styles, ideas, techniques, methods, and foundations did so for foreign releases. Any contribution I could ever make to help make things I liked enough to work on available to audiences I would otherwise never be able to help has always been worth any trade-off surrounding being "stolen from". In that example of something I wrote being used as a product description, I especially didn't mind that one. I was already trying to promote that to others anyway, so if they felt my write-up was substantial enough to possibly facilitate that, I obviously had no problem with it. I understand why others would, still.

As some of you may remember, I took credits out of the DCTP anime releases soon after the group started. I hated seeing myself mentioned for more than one job, because it wasn't like my contributions should overshadow anyone else's (if I could do their job as well as them, I would have just done it myself--thus, if anyone deserved commendation, it should have at the very least been equal instead of just directed at the person occupying the most positions).

In short, I guess my take has always been: It's fine to take pride in your work, but allowing that pride to overshadow the work itself is something to be wary of. Everyone should be proud of their accomplishments and make sure there's no secret of it should they wish. However, if it's something that's meant to be consumed by others, ensuring that audience is put at the forefront is what has always seemed of greatest importance to me.

[kkslider5552000]

I think the thing about the internet is, is that unfortunately, you frequently don't have an option. I think anyone who wants their work to be respected as they want it should be respected. But that's not how the internet works, and I think it's kinda hopeless to stop people from posting things. I mean, people will pirate super cheap indie games, the internet does not give a hype about anything. So unfortunately, opinion is kinda thrown out the window. The internet will take anyone's work without mercy.

[MoonRaven]

My eyes feel so tired...

[kkslider5552000]

My eyes feel so tired...

I hate that feeling. So annoying, and almost necessary if I want to sleep at halfway reasonable times.

[char13happy]

I finally got the Eon Ticket. Soooooo happy~

[mangaluva]

I AM SO READY FOR IT TO STOP BEING COLD. It's so bright and sunny outside and looks so nice and IT'S STILL BELOW FREAKING ZERO.

My two cents on reposting art: IMO, reposting art isn't really comparable to fansubbing. Fansubs are, as has been pointed out, making content more accessible to a foreign audience, and also fansubbers don't claim to be responsible for the creation of the original anime. People who repost art without a source, though, are half the time pretending that the art is their creation.

I've had my fanfic reposted multiple times in different ways. In one case, it was by somebody taking the text of my fic and putting it up verbatim (on the same website, to be fair) under their own name and without a source. That was rude and uncool. But I've also had some of my fics reposted in Chinese, Vietnamese and Korean, and in all of those cases the translator first PMed to ask me and included a link naming me the original author. I am completely okay with that because it's making the fics more accessible to people who can't read English and I'm also really flattered that the translators liked my fic that much. There might be other translations that I don't know about, to be fair.

I wasn't hugely pissed off at the person who posted unsourced or anything, but it was hurtful. My writing means a lot to me, even if it is just fanfic; I started writing to deal with some major self-esteem issues, and on my down days the fact that some people like what I write and think my writing's good really feels like all I've got. So this is probably just me and my issues talking, but somebody reposting that and claiming that it's their own really kinda feels like they're trying to take that away from me. Some days that kind of thing doesn't bug me, but on my down days it really feels hurtful.

TL;DR: I know the internet will be the internet and it's pretty hard to prevent people being rude and shitty, but I think if an artist feels that they want to be credited for their work, they have a right to be and it isn't wrong for them to feel upset when theft and unsourced posting happens.