summercomfort (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
summercomfort) wrote2016-01-30 10:48 pm
summercomfort) wrote2016-01-30 10:48 pm
Industrialized Creativity, Idea Debt, Tisquantum, and Fandom
There's a bunch of ideas that's been percolating in my brain the last few weeks, so I'm going to attempt to pull them all together. (I've been thinking about creativity here).
Idea Debt is nothing new (recently mentioned here) -- I've been telling folks for the last decade+ to "stop planning that epic space opera that's been in your head since 7th grade, and ... just start doing *something*." And it's mostly worked for me -- it's much easier to hone skills and troubleshoot ideas when they exist in real life.
That said, I also want to really talk about the creative impetus, and how to satisfy that and prevent the act of creating from turning into a sort of debt in and of itself. I'm going to be pithy here and call it "Creative Obligation."
There has been 3 cases that I've been thinking about:
1) Tisquantum. This is a comic that I started 2+ years ago. At the time, I'd just aborted (after 11 pages) a retelling of Rapunzel because the amount of work I was putting into every page didn't match my desire to tell the story. It'd felt too generic and shallow. So I was looking for a story that felt "worth it" -- worth 5+ hours per page of work. And I'd settled on telling the story of Squanto. My specific motivations were that I wanted to tell a story that was centered on the Native American perspective, that showed the messiness of cultural interactions, and showed that history already had examples of what was essentially an alien abduction story and a post-apocalypse story.
I was talking with Hoosband about what drives individuals to create comics -- after all, comicking a rather long and painful process, especially for amateurs like me. I'm not the sort of literary/autobio person who wants to make a profound human connection a la Fun Home. I feel somewhat awkward doing purely "here's what I'm thinking" comics a la SMBC or primarily educational/informative comics a la the Law Comics guy. And I want to do more than just tell a fun adventure story in a genre of my choice. Which was why I'd settled on Tisquantum.
But this last year I've basically been stuck on the same 10 pages or so, and it got so painful that recently I decided to stop the project and re-evaluate whether I want to do it. What started out as clearing Idea Debt had turned into a Creative Obligation -- I felt like I owed it to *someone* to work on the comic, when in fact it'd turned into miserable drudgery about a year ago.
One thing that made it into a Creative Obligation was that, in my initial reasons for drawing Tisquantum, I didn't take into account that I got into comicking to tell stories, and the story of Squanto is, at its core, *not* a fun story to tell -- it's about someone who keeps pushing people away, who eventually builds up such a wall lies that he's lying to himself, and who dies without really recovering his home and sense of belonging. So even though I had all these Noble Reasons for wanting to tell the story of Squanto, the actual page-to-page and scene-to-scene grind just got increasingly miserable, especially as Squanto kept losing all the cool/awesome people in his life. Already I miss the emotional and physical tension from the first 2 chapters, and the arc of Squanto's life is just going to make it get WORSE. So -- *could* I feasibly continue the story? From a comicking skill and time/energy perspective, yes. And I think it's a story that needs to be told (for the above-mentioned reasons). But doing so in its current form would be a Creative Obligation. It's the feeling of "I suppose I can churn out these pages if I spend every Tuesday and Thursday night working on it. :/" It's for a Good Cause, right? After all, I'm not just drawing comics to tell stories (there are easier ways to tell stories -- as a teacher, while tabling at APE, etc). I DO want to use the medium to express ideas in a way that makes people *think* about things. But one thing that Tisquantum has taught me is that I still need to consider the sustainability from the perspective of my personal creative needs -- I want to draw sympathetic characters and fun interactions! I want active and not reactive main characters!
So: it turns out that finding the right comic to draw is harder than I thought.
2) Fandom. Fandom is rife with creativity, and there's all these intriguing, pre-made characters to play with! Plus you can do your own spin and if it's sufficiently persuasive, other people start adopting your headcanon! What a great feeling! It totally fulfills my creative impetus to both tell fun stories *and* to change minds. And unlike Tisquantum, I can bang out something quick in a week max, and then get immediate responses and interactions. I've already talked about the creating fanart vs. original art here, and the ways fanart can hone your skills (and the ways it can't) here. And fandom is such a great community! But I've also talked about creative pressures of fandom here, and that's the Creative Obligation thing again.
The community is restricted by both the source material, and by the interests of its members. If the source material is mostly white boys crying about identity, and the members of the community are mostly Anglo girls who want to see them kiss and hug via 40k+ fics, that's what we get. And in order to participate in the fandom community, to tap into that aforementioned sense of fun creative storytelling and sharing of headcanons, [that's kind of what you have to do.] One reason that I've really tapered off my creative output in Cap fandom, is that I've pretty much exhausted the more mainstream Steve/Bucky headcanons that I feel compelled to share via art (colorblind!Steve, Jewish!Bucky, etc), and what's left are things that are too ... fringe. (Genderbends that make me wonder why I'm not just doing my own thing set in the Sino-Japanese War, trash that's too fluffy for the HTP and too trashy everywhere else, and prewar Bucky headcanons that deviate too much from the character.) And although I enjoy seeing other peoples' images of Stucky kisses, it's not something that I want to Art for. So in a way, I'm trapped by Creative Obligation here, as well -- though one that is stems from the community and source material, and not from some self-imposed Noble Cause like with Tisquantum.
Basically: I've been running low on things-I-want-to-draw that are simultaneously appropriate-for-fandom.
3) Corporate Art and Industrialized Creativity. The last part of this post brings up the point that it's only in the last few centuries that stories are considered intellectual property, and thus monetized. And mostly in the last century that it's really become a thing where corporations own stories, and not the creators: "Corporations buy and sell these usage rights. The original teams that are brought in to write these stories for them— after the show’s canceled, that’s it, even those guys can’t write the ‘official’ story anymore. [...] The rights to these stories are held by people other than the guys who wrote them." :O!!! I was really struck by that -- So many of the stories nowadays are owned by corporations, and not by the artists who create the stories, nor by the fans who transform them. Between Star Wars, Pixar, and Marvel, Disney currently owns A LOT of stories right now. And the successful stories, the mainstream stories, are often made by a whole team of people -- films, comics, tv shows, etc. And these are then the stories that are taken into fandom and transformed per the desires of the fan community.
And with corporatized art, the Creative Obligation is to sell. Idris Elba's speech to Parliament about Diversity in Media, starts with talking about how media is a major cultural and economic export of the UK, and then brings up Diversity in the context of an industry that lacks the imagination to see it: "When a script called for a “black male”, it wasn’t describing a character. It was a describing a skin colour. A white man - or a caucasian - was described as “a man with a twinkle in his eye”. My eyes may be dark, but they definitely twinkle! And I was like “I wanna play the character with a twinkle in his eyes!” [...] I knew there wasn’t enough imagination in the industry for me to be seen as a lead." Instead: "Too often commissioners look at diverse talent, and all they see is risk. Black actors are seen as a commercial risk. Women directors are seen as a commercial risk. Disabled directors aren’t even seen at all."
This isn't to say that great art isn't being done -- Steven Universe, Ms. Marvel, Mad Max Fury Road, just to name a few. Idris Elba mention the industry slowing changing through casting directors and producers who have the imagination to seek out diversity.
----
So I can't help wonder what my role is in all of this. Participating in fandom is somewhat limited in the way that it can affect the larger media franchises, but so is doing individual work. Especially when the reward for individual original work is so scant and difficult to navigate.
Should I be pushing for more diversity in the industry and supporting the positive changes through my money? Should I be pushing for more diversity in fandom by creating more fanart that reflects my worldview, Creative Obligation be damned? Or should I take the lessons I've learned re: Tisquantum, and invest my time in making my own stories more fun? Ideally all 3, but if I only have the energy for one, which one should it be? Each one comes with its own cost. I have to consume media if I want to participate in fandom. I have to deal with fandom obligations if I want community interactions. I have to draw my own thing if I want total control over the stories I tell.
(ugh too late, must sleep. Will tidy up tomorrow after work??? maybe this obligation thing is too much of a stretch)
Idea Debt is nothing new (recently mentioned here) -- I've been telling folks for the last decade+ to "stop planning that epic space opera that's been in your head since 7th grade, and ... just start doing *something*." And it's mostly worked for me -- it's much easier to hone skills and troubleshoot ideas when they exist in real life.
That said, I also want to really talk about the creative impetus, and how to satisfy that and prevent the act of creating from turning into a sort of debt in and of itself. I'm going to be pithy here and call it "Creative Obligation."
There has been 3 cases that I've been thinking about:
1) Tisquantum. This is a comic that I started 2+ years ago. At the time, I'd just aborted (after 11 pages) a retelling of Rapunzel because the amount of work I was putting into every page didn't match my desire to tell the story. It'd felt too generic and shallow. So I was looking for a story that felt "worth it" -- worth 5+ hours per page of work. And I'd settled on telling the story of Squanto. My specific motivations were that I wanted to tell a story that was centered on the Native American perspective, that showed the messiness of cultural interactions, and showed that history already had examples of what was essentially an alien abduction story and a post-apocalypse story.
I was talking with Hoosband about what drives individuals to create comics -- after all, comicking a rather long and painful process, especially for amateurs like me. I'm not the sort of literary/autobio person who wants to make a profound human connection a la Fun Home. I feel somewhat awkward doing purely "here's what I'm thinking" comics a la SMBC or primarily educational/informative comics a la the Law Comics guy. And I want to do more than just tell a fun adventure story in a genre of my choice. Which was why I'd settled on Tisquantum.
But this last year I've basically been stuck on the same 10 pages or so, and it got so painful that recently I decided to stop the project and re-evaluate whether I want to do it. What started out as clearing Idea Debt had turned into a Creative Obligation -- I felt like I owed it to *someone* to work on the comic, when in fact it'd turned into miserable drudgery about a year ago.
One thing that made it into a Creative Obligation was that, in my initial reasons for drawing Tisquantum, I didn't take into account that I got into comicking to tell stories, and the story of Squanto is, at its core, *not* a fun story to tell -- it's about someone who keeps pushing people away, who eventually builds up such a wall lies that he's lying to himself, and who dies without really recovering his home and sense of belonging. So even though I had all these Noble Reasons for wanting to tell the story of Squanto, the actual page-to-page and scene-to-scene grind just got increasingly miserable, especially as Squanto kept losing all the cool/awesome people in his life. Already I miss the emotional and physical tension from the first 2 chapters, and the arc of Squanto's life is just going to make it get WORSE. So -- *could* I feasibly continue the story? From a comicking skill and time/energy perspective, yes. And I think it's a story that needs to be told (for the above-mentioned reasons). But doing so in its current form would be a Creative Obligation. It's the feeling of "I suppose I can churn out these pages if I spend every Tuesday and Thursday night working on it. :/" It's for a Good Cause, right? After all, I'm not just drawing comics to tell stories (there are easier ways to tell stories -- as a teacher, while tabling at APE, etc). I DO want to use the medium to express ideas in a way that makes people *think* about things. But one thing that Tisquantum has taught me is that I still need to consider the sustainability from the perspective of my personal creative needs -- I want to draw sympathetic characters and fun interactions! I want active and not reactive main characters!
So: it turns out that finding the right comic to draw is harder than I thought.
2) Fandom. Fandom is rife with creativity, and there's all these intriguing, pre-made characters to play with! Plus you can do your own spin and if it's sufficiently persuasive, other people start adopting your headcanon! What a great feeling! It totally fulfills my creative impetus to both tell fun stories *and* to change minds. And unlike Tisquantum, I can bang out something quick in a week max, and then get immediate responses and interactions. I've already talked about the creating fanart vs. original art here, and the ways fanart can hone your skills (and the ways it can't) here. And fandom is such a great community! But I've also talked about creative pressures of fandom here, and that's the Creative Obligation thing again.
The community is restricted by both the source material, and by the interests of its members. If the source material is mostly white boys crying about identity, and the members of the community are mostly Anglo girls who want to see them kiss and hug via 40k+ fics, that's what we get. And in order to participate in the fandom community, to tap into that aforementioned sense of fun creative storytelling and sharing of headcanons, [that's kind of what you have to do.] One reason that I've really tapered off my creative output in Cap fandom, is that I've pretty much exhausted the more mainstream Steve/Bucky headcanons that I feel compelled to share via art (colorblind!Steve, Jewish!Bucky, etc), and what's left are things that are too ... fringe. (Genderbends that make me wonder why I'm not just doing my own thing set in the Sino-Japanese War, trash that's too fluffy for the HTP and too trashy everywhere else, and prewar Bucky headcanons that deviate too much from the character.) And although I enjoy seeing other peoples' images of Stucky kisses, it's not something that I want to Art for. So in a way, I'm trapped by Creative Obligation here, as well -- though one that is stems from the community and source material, and not from some self-imposed Noble Cause like with Tisquantum.
Basically: I've been running low on things-I-want-to-draw that are simultaneously appropriate-for-fandom.
3) Corporate Art and Industrialized Creativity. The last part of this post brings up the point that it's only in the last few centuries that stories are considered intellectual property, and thus monetized. And mostly in the last century that it's really become a thing where corporations own stories, and not the creators: "Corporations buy and sell these usage rights. The original teams that are brought in to write these stories for them— after the show’s canceled, that’s it, even those guys can’t write the ‘official’ story anymore. [...] The rights to these stories are held by people other than the guys who wrote them." :O!!! I was really struck by that -- So many of the stories nowadays are owned by corporations, and not by the artists who create the stories, nor by the fans who transform them. Between Star Wars, Pixar, and Marvel, Disney currently owns A LOT of stories right now. And the successful stories, the mainstream stories, are often made by a whole team of people -- films, comics, tv shows, etc. And these are then the stories that are taken into fandom and transformed per the desires of the fan community.
And with corporatized art, the Creative Obligation is to sell. Idris Elba's speech to Parliament about Diversity in Media, starts with talking about how media is a major cultural and economic export of the UK, and then brings up Diversity in the context of an industry that lacks the imagination to see it: "When a script called for a “black male”, it wasn’t describing a character. It was a describing a skin colour. A white man - or a caucasian - was described as “a man with a twinkle in his eye”. My eyes may be dark, but they definitely twinkle! And I was like “I wanna play the character with a twinkle in his eyes!” [...] I knew there wasn’t enough imagination in the industry for me to be seen as a lead." Instead: "Too often commissioners look at diverse talent, and all they see is risk. Black actors are seen as a commercial risk. Women directors are seen as a commercial risk. Disabled directors aren’t even seen at all."
This isn't to say that great art isn't being done -- Steven Universe, Ms. Marvel, Mad Max Fury Road, just to name a few. Idris Elba mention the industry slowing changing through casting directors and producers who have the imagination to seek out diversity.
----
So I can't help wonder what my role is in all of this. Participating in fandom is somewhat limited in the way that it can affect the larger media franchises, but so is doing individual work. Especially when the reward for individual original work is so scant and difficult to navigate.
Should I be pushing for more diversity in the industry and supporting the positive changes through my money? Should I be pushing for more diversity in fandom by creating more fanart that reflects my worldview, Creative Obligation be damned? Or should I take the lessons I've learned re: Tisquantum, and invest my time in making my own stories more fun? Ideally all 3, but if I only have the energy for one, which one should it be? Each one comes with its own cost. I have to consume media if I want to participate in fandom. I have to deal with fandom obligations if I want community interactions. I have to draw my own thing if I want total control over the stories I tell.
(ugh too late, must sleep. Will tidy up tomorrow after work??? maybe this obligation thing is too much of a stretch)