How important are fanworks to you?
Buttercheese
Member Posts: 3,766
A fandom - a loose collective of fans of one franchise who talk about said franchise - can take many shapes, but more than often - if not almost all of the time - it also includes people who make art of some form based on that that franchise. Drawing, writing, music, modding, etc. You know the drill.
How important are those fanworks to your over all enjoyment of a fandom?
Do you create fanworks yourself?
Which medium and styles of fanworks do you like the most?
Are there any fandoms that made franchise better for your thanks to some fanworks?
Or maybe the other way around, where certain fanworks managed to make it worse for you?
Disclaimer: I am not here to talk about my fanworks, I want to hear about others'
How important are those fanworks to your over all enjoyment of a fandom?
Do you create fanworks yourself?
Which medium and styles of fanworks do you like the most?
Are there any fandoms that made franchise better for your thanks to some fanworks?
Or maybe the other way around, where certain fanworks managed to make it worse for you?
Disclaimer: I am not here to talk about my fanworks, I want to hear about others'
- How important are fanworks to you?34 votes
- I wouldn't really participate in any fandom if there where no fanworks.2.94%
- It's only important to me in the fandoms for my favourite franchises.14.71%
- I do enjoy fanworks, but they don't make a difference for me.26.47%
- I don't really care about fanworks.11.76%
- I could do without most kinds of fanworks, but occasionally there's good stuff.20.59%
- I usually can't stand fanworks.8.82%
- Other (please comment)14.71%
5
Comments
2. Yes! Usually fanfiction. Sometimes art.
3. I'd say fanfiction is definitely my favorite medium, since anything that adds to the story and character development of established characters is my favorite thing. Especially for such minimal storytelling styles such as the first Baldur's Gate. I used to obsessively read Golden Sun fanfic for this reason (though sadly my own fanfic got deleted years ago... *sigh*).
4. As I said above, anything that expands on lore and character growth of an established work is only a good thing for me. The Golden Sun fandom did this a lot by shipping the huge cast of characters together in a variety of different pairings and writing stories about them. Romance wasn't really present in the games, so the fanfic community filled that hole and--to me--made it more fun.
5. I personally haven't run into a situation in which the fanworks turned me off to a particular fandom I enjoyed...though I've heard horror stories.
Mods can help keep a community alive, while artists being inspired by the subject matter itself, their writing, music, and art can help inspire others. It's not a requirement, but it adds something invaluable. Without some form of creativity, a fandom stagnates—there are only so many times a particular opinion or fact on a given (unchanging) detail can be discussed before the topic gets boring.
I am interested in drawing, digital drawing in particular, thought their quality is still not even close to a level I would want them to be. Unfortunately, I have master thesis to deal with and I can't spend as much time on practice as I would like to.
As for Baldur's Gate fandom in particular, I've never made anything more complete than quick sketches. And even then, the only published digital sketch from BG I have would be of a Caelar Argent. If you want to have a look:
This holds especially true for game mods and even fully fledged fan games. For example: it has become a daily ritual of mine to check the nexus pages of games which I don't even own yet. Weighting whenever its fanworks are interesting enough to justify the purchase of said title.
I myself don't actively participate in the creation of fanworks at the moment. Limiting myself to draw occasionally on my wacom graphics tablet and creating smaller mods for my personal enjoyment.
It depends.
Fandoms may point me towards a cultural phenom that I haven't heard of or seen before. But I do not actively seek out new ones.
Do you create fanworks yourself?
Only fanfiction for Baldur's Gate. Shameless Plug #1 Shameless plug #2
Which medium and styles of fanworks do you like the most?
Easily consumed ones like drawings and videos.
Are there any fandoms that made franchise better for your thanks to some fanworks?
Ummm, nope.
Or maybe the other way around, where certain fanworks managed to make it worse for you?
Ummm, nope.
Often, some of the best content in a franchise comes from the collective imagination of thousands of demented fans.
I especially love some of the humorous, absoulutely insightful RPG inspired cartoons that make me chuckle. They are mostly really well scripted and also graphically executed.
The most feel-good on-line community that I am aware of is fanart focused - if I feel rotten, and want to overdose in cutesy smileys, those chuckles or awesome pics, and encouraging peer-uplift attitude, that's where I go.
Would if i could: I'd totally love to combine BioWare crafts-fandom with my favored shoebrand, Sergio Rossi.
I have purpe-pinkish cagegrid-stiletto-booties ("scale" pattern) from Sergio, and I'd love chibi-DA:2 characters that could be sawn unto that shoe...
If I had any handicraft skills, heck, I'd give it a try - but I lack both drawing and handicraft! But I bet some cool gal might have those shoes, out there...
There are always some aspects like restored content and unofficial fixes I really feel dependent on though.
I was just thinking of a cartoon that I loved, which was about DA:O, and one of those "first playthrough jaw-drop moments."
If you catch my drift, is there such a game for you, actually?
A horrible question to myself...
Would I, Anduin, still be playing BG if that fan made mod, Dark side of the sword coast, was not made...
...
Honest answer. No.
Dark side actually called itself an unofficial campaign I think. It was the first mod, for any game, I had come across. It led me to more... And more, fan work ... And kept the game fresh!
Art in BG is important for portraits and has always been a big thing.
...
Does it work for all games and titles? No. BG is a special case. Not that it is a special case in isolation. But only a few select games rise into the collective consciousness and and set alight the creative fires.
Baldur's Gate burns bright. It burns still.
I used to write a lot of fanfiction, most of it in the 90s on USENET and mailing lists. My writing partner and I then spent a few years writing a truly epic (in length, at least) deconstructionist story, and having actually finished that, I haven't written anything other than snippets of fanfic since. Mostly felt like I said all I wanted to say with that medium, and nothing's compelled me to want to say anything else. Which is probably partly related to the answer to the next question:
I mostly only look for fanart/comics (or a very occasional fan game). I don't read fanfiction anymore, because I don't read fiction anymore, for the fairly idiosyncratic reason that I spent six weeks in a hospital in Ghana unable to walk, unable to sleep more than an hour or two a night, and literally nothing to do but read stacks of novels that were brought into me. As a fast reader, I polished off two or three every day. For six weeks. And when I got back, I lost most interest in reading prose fiction, once one of my primary hobbies. I still read nonfiction books (biographies, Tim Flannery stuff before he went all weird and Gaia-y, Dawkins stuff before it became obvious what a douchebag he was), but I can count on my fingers the amount of fiction novels I've read in the last fifteen years. Sorry for the LJ; I just always feel strange just leaving "I can't really read prose fiction" out there without explanation.
There's a few fandoms I think are notably better for their fanworks. I was tickled into actually trying out MLP: FiM because there was a mod for it for Victoria II, an 1836-1936 economic and political simulation/strategy game (so, not exactly where I'd expect a My Little Pony mod), and some of the initial burst of creativity for the franchise (animation, music, and so forth) were really impressive and unusual for a Western fanbase.
On the Japanese end of things, obviously without the massive fandom for it I'd never even have heard of Kancolle, and while I don't care that much about the actual game (certainly not enough to try to get on it with a VPN account and play in Japanese), some of the translated doujinshi for the franchise have been genuinely interesting and touching. Seeing how so many people interpret the series' absurd and extremely-vaguely-explained premises, as well as the WWII history and themes inherent to the series, has occasionally been well worth a few hours trawling.
I can't think of any fanworks that hurt my interest in a series, since a) fanwork is always pretty diverse when it exists in numbers, and b) I don't think I have any trouble keeping fanstuff mentally separated from the works. Some fandoms have put me off things in the past (I didn't watch any Haruhi Suzumiya for years entirely due to that, and I've still never looked at Gurren Lagaan).
The crossover art can be interesting and well done, especially when reimagining set characters in a completely different context; when not done well then the fan art looks like a right-handed person drew it while holding the pencil with the toes on their left foot.
The best fan-created content I have seen to date has been Nuka Break, which was a wonderfully well-done homage to the Fallout world. Sadly, I don't think they will ever get around to making season 3...but who knows?
For the most part, fan-created content helps keep a franchise alive. The worst problem with fan content I can imagine is when too many of the fans all gravitate to a particular idea or scenario then expect the original creators to adopt that idea as canon, becoming upset if they do not.
Even badly written fanfiction can be entertaining simply because it has some interesting ideas presented. And, well, I do enjoy my fair share of wtf fics >.>