Still hilarious to me (and frustrating as hell) that fandom wank 10-15 years ago was “oh, that character is too perfect. Special snowflake. Mary Sue. Give them some flaws to make them more realistic.”
and now it’s “that character isn’t pure enough. They have all these flaws. You must be a bad person if you like them.”
how old is the person being called out? adults hounding a teenager over saying something dumb they’ll regret in two years… it’s not cool, folks.
there are xkit mods that let you modify someone else’s post in a reblog, but most people don’t know about it, so make sure that you view any “incriminating” posts on op’s blog
does the person who wrote the callout have any reason to lie? (for example, a personal disagreement)
what’s the context?
^^ a couple months ago i saw a post calling out someone for “fetishizing trans men,” only to check the accused person’s blog and see that he was a trans guy himself, who made a lot of positivity posts about his body type.
how old is the post?
did the accused person have a chance to apologize or address the concern before the details were exposed to thousands of strangers?
what’s the purpose of the callout post? is it just to say “this person is bad and you should hate them,” or is it to say “this person has been sending slurs and violent death threats to bloggers in [x] group, here’s some reasonable proof, please block their url for your safety”?
Hey, people who go to conventions, let’s have a chat.
This past weekend a whole bunch of my friends were at 3 separate conventions and all of them were tweeting very similar experiences with convention goers: being told their art was the wrong ship, or their favorite characters were bad, or that their art was in some other way unacceptable. People placed food and bags on their work, or complained about their prices to their faces. It’s happened to me. I’ve had people tell me they hate the characters I have prints of to my face. I’ve had adults tell me my ship is disgusting. I’ve had people complain about the quality of my art. These are my favorite characters, that I’ve made art of, in the hopes to share my art and my love for those characters with other people.
Artists at conventions are at work. For some people, this is their full-time job. And they put passion and love into the things they create. They put time and money into creating the things we take for granted at cons.
Can we stop treating artists like they’re not people, with feelings? If you think something about the work at a table is a genuine issue, bring it up with con staff. If you don’t like a character based on something in the show, that’s fine. You can discuss it with your friends, not with the person who has put time into making art of that character. Don’t put your food and water on paper merchandise. If you don’t like the price of something, you are not obligated to buy it.
Please, just. Think before you speak. Be kind. And if you don’t like something, you just walk away. The artist isn’t going to change who they are or what they draw because you told them you hate it.
gayfeline 