I have had, from day one, a very different fandom experience, yes, and one wherein the entitlement has been occasionally worse in smaller fandoms, so that even as a small fandom the Losers one stuck out hardcore as very atypical in its lack of pathology.
And given I know from fannish history that there was stuff like "I will physically block people from going to this chick's hotel room at this con because I hate what she writes" I . . . am sceptical about the universal nature of Less Entitlement Before. And I strongly do not actually see how a correlation can be drawn between some people asking for commissions/tips = more entitlement for written fanworks than it did or has inherently for drawn fanworks. (And all the arguments about "well but if you do fanworks for less than you should you create a pattern where other people are expected to also devalue it" apply as much if not more for doing free fanwork to spec, whether art or fic, and people do that plenty.)
Re pro-writer friends: oh I know. But at least they ALSO get advances and (once the advance is payed through) royalties and the people who actually read the book (ie consume the work given) have put down some form of payment for it.
Whereas when you do it for free you get all the same shit and, very possibly, nothing else. (As the pro-writers also get the same potential positive regard and feedback.)
I think the idea that there being a hat out or commissions purchasable will result into an absolute/immediate and inevitably slide into Everything Being Valued Only By Money is . . . an exaggerated one. And I think this because there is literally no other art-form in which this has happened, from music to theatre to visual art to . . . anything. There are always spaces wherein the creation of something for the love of it is still valued (and indeed some of them where it is the only thing given social value and where accepting filthy lucre would make you less worthy).
Amateur artists and creators are fantastic, amateur love is a perfectly good reason to do something, and in fact I've always found original writing really weird in its obsession with the idea that there's a harsh binary, and I haven't really had much time for it.
I do not think anyone who was going to value what you did period is going to magically stop valuing it because someone else does something similar but asks a commission price; anyone for whom the commission price suddenly makes the work valuable didn't actually value your work in the first place (and probably views all fanfic inherently as crap and is only reading Published Works anyway). hands
no subject
I have had, from day one, a very different fandom experience, yes, and one wherein the entitlement has been occasionally worse in smaller fandoms, so that even as a small fandom the Losers one stuck out hardcore as very atypical in its lack of pathology.
And given I know from fannish history that there was stuff like "I will physically block people from going to this chick's hotel room at this con because I hate what she writes" I . . . am sceptical about the universal nature of Less Entitlement Before. And I strongly do not actually see how a correlation can be drawn between some people asking for commissions/tips = more entitlement for written fanworks than it did or has inherently for drawn fanworks. (And all the arguments about "well but if you do fanworks for less than you should you create a pattern where other people are expected to also devalue it" apply as much if not more for doing free fanwork to spec, whether art or fic, and people do that plenty.)
Re pro-writer friends: oh I know. But at least they ALSO get advances and (once the advance is payed through) royalties and the people who actually read the book (ie consume the work given) have put down some form of payment for it.
Whereas when you do it for free you get all the same shit and, very possibly, nothing else. (As the pro-writers also get the same potential positive regard and feedback.)
I think the idea that there being a hat out or commissions purchasable will result into an absolute/immediate and inevitably slide into Everything Being Valued Only By Money is . . . an exaggerated one. And I think this because there is literally no other art-form in which this has happened, from music to theatre to visual art to . . . anything. There are always spaces wherein the creation of something for the love of it is still valued (and indeed some of them where it is the only thing given social value and where accepting filthy lucre would make you less worthy).
Amateur artists and creators are fantastic, amateur love is a perfectly good reason to do something, and in fact I've always found original writing really weird in its obsession with the idea that there's a harsh binary, and I haven't really had much time for it.
I do not think anyone who was going to value what you did period is going to magically stop valuing it because someone else does something similar but asks a commission price; anyone for whom the commission price suddenly makes the work valuable didn't actually value your work in the first place (and probably views all fanfic inherently as crap and is only reading Published Works anyway). hands