Why I Do Not Support Emerging Artists
Apr. 28th, 2021 09:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingI've been lazy about this recently, but for years I posted and reblogged things on Tumblr at regularly scheduled intervals throughout the day. My account on Tumblr exists so that I can scroll through the front page of my own blog when I'm bored or stressed out. My main criteria for what I reblog when is therefore the creation of eye-pleasing color coordination on the vertically-scrolling column, but there are some loose themes. No Ganondorf before 9:00pm, for example.
Because people are petty and awful, I would generally lose one or two followers almost every time I reblogged art that wasn't 100% professional and polished. Around 3:00pm EST was (and probably still is) a general deadzone on Tumblr, so I took advantage of that to reblog the work of emerging artists with supportive comments in the tags.
My tags are mostly descriptive so that people can block ships and characters they don't like, and I tag in descending order of specificity, with the most general tag at the top. The top tag is usually something like "Zelda art" or "Zelda comics." So far so good, right?
Unfortunately, one younger artist saw that I reblogged her fancomics and fancomic characters with "Zelda comics" instead of "Zelda art," and that upset her, presumably because I was suggesting that her drawings weren't "art." She got so angry at me for doing this that she started to make a lot of posts saying things like "pedophiles do not interact" and so on. I didn't actually follow this person, so I was completely oblivious to what was going on until someone called me out for being a pedophile.
I'm somewhat infamously interested in older characters, and age gaps seriously squick me out. I don't reblog anything drawn in anime art styles that make characters look younger, and I tend to keep sexual content off my blog entirely. I was therefore upset and confused by the accusation; so, instead of ignoring it like a sane person, I made the mistake of asking what was going on.
It turns out that, by "pedophile," people meant "an older person who exists in the same space as younger people." By that definition, I guess I was indeed a pedophile, but what the fuck.
By responding in good faith to the artist and the group of (significantly older) people supporting her, I had somehow inadvertently convinced them that their ridiculous claims were legitimate, and for two or three years I was blacklisted within certain circles of Zelda fandom, with people adding comments to my translations like "do not reblog, this was written by a pedophile" and so on.
Ironically, a lot of those people are still in the Zelda fandom, and they're the same age now as I was then. I've actually encountered some of them on Twitter, where they're hardcore lying about their ages in their bios. I guess, if you live long enough, we're all "pedophiles" in the end.
So this is why I try not to interact with the posts of anyone who has an "immature" art style. I also don't know how old anyone is on AO3, which is one of the main reasons I started to move away from that site as well.
I just needed to get that off my chest so I can get over it and move on, because damn this nonsense has been living in my head rent-free for the past five years.
Because people are petty and awful, I would generally lose one or two followers almost every time I reblogged art that wasn't 100% professional and polished. Around 3:00pm EST was (and probably still is) a general deadzone on Tumblr, so I took advantage of that to reblog the work of emerging artists with supportive comments in the tags.
My tags are mostly descriptive so that people can block ships and characters they don't like, and I tag in descending order of specificity, with the most general tag at the top. The top tag is usually something like "Zelda art" or "Zelda comics." So far so good, right?
Unfortunately, one younger artist saw that I reblogged her fancomics and fancomic characters with "Zelda comics" instead of "Zelda art," and that upset her, presumably because I was suggesting that her drawings weren't "art." She got so angry at me for doing this that she started to make a lot of posts saying things like "pedophiles do not interact" and so on. I didn't actually follow this person, so I was completely oblivious to what was going on until someone called me out for being a pedophile.
I'm somewhat infamously interested in older characters, and age gaps seriously squick me out. I don't reblog anything drawn in anime art styles that make characters look younger, and I tend to keep sexual content off my blog entirely. I was therefore upset and confused by the accusation; so, instead of ignoring it like a sane person, I made the mistake of asking what was going on.
It turns out that, by "pedophile," people meant "an older person who exists in the same space as younger people." By that definition, I guess I was indeed a pedophile, but what the fuck.
By responding in good faith to the artist and the group of (significantly older) people supporting her, I had somehow inadvertently convinced them that their ridiculous claims were legitimate, and for two or three years I was blacklisted within certain circles of Zelda fandom, with people adding comments to my translations like "do not reblog, this was written by a pedophile" and so on.
Ironically, a lot of those people are still in the Zelda fandom, and they're the same age now as I was then. I've actually encountered some of them on Twitter, where they're hardcore lying about their ages in their bios. I guess, if you live long enough, we're all "pedophiles" in the end.
So this is why I try not to interact with the posts of anyone who has an "immature" art style. I also don't know how old anyone is on AO3, which is one of the main reasons I started to move away from that site as well.
I just needed to get that off my chest so I can get over it and move on, because damn this nonsense has been living in my head rent-free for the past five years.
no subject
Date: 2021-04-28 03:16 pm (UTC)I'm really sorry to hear you had to encounter that.
no subject
Date: 2021-04-28 04:41 pm (UTC)I don't fucking understand people. I just... don't. I'm sorry people are shitty.
Also, I've always enjoyed your tagging system, especially when I wasn't familiar with the exact Zelda game/character. It was a nice lil' reference thing you had going on and always made me smile to see your archival process (and the thoughtful comments!). I remember scrolling past your reblogs the other night and noticed the tags missing and just thought, "Huh, they're probably just tired and needed a break; that's a lot of work to maintain!" And here we are :\ I'm so sorry.
no subject
Date: 2021-04-28 08:08 pm (UTC)Still sorry all of that happened :( fuck those morons.
no subject
Date: 2021-05-05 03:52 am (UTC)