Tagging art as ‘me’ or ‘kin’
I personally don’t think artists have any right to allow/disallow people to say any specific things about art they release publicly. If you’re putting your work up you’re opening it up to critique, or any other response people have to it, including a kin response.
I say that as an artist myself.
I can understand wanting to disallow it only for the reason that “this is me” might make people think that the art is a commission drawn for them. But if there’s no chance of misunderstanding that, people can say what they like. I can say the Mona Lisa is me but people don’t need to pay attention to that, and no one has to take my claim seriously.
If something is so deeply personal and sensitive, that you can not handle a particular reaction to it, whether its criticism or intimate identification with it, it should only be for you and your friends. You shouldn’t put it up in a public forum if you can’t handle a reaction to it. Once work is public its public. That doesn’t mean people can steal it. But it means they can say what they like about it
With a forum like tumblr, its entirely possible that thousands of thousands of people will see any scrap of art that you post. Someone famous could reblog it and suddenly its on 10k plus dashes, and you have no way to control that. And you have no way to control how those people react to your art.
Honestly, I wish tumblr had a friends-lock mechanism, or a group mechanism like LJ used to so we COULD have private/gated communities for smaller distribution. But until that happens, tags are public, and anything posted to them is posted in a public forum, for public consumption.
Saying someone can’t tag your art a certain way is like like making a tv show or commercial, and saying people can’t say what they want about it. Just because its probably smaller scale doesn’t change it. Just because you didn’t get paid to draw it doesn’t change that.
Honestly with all the hateful remarks Ive gotten about my art in the past, I can certainly understand wanting more control over your work, but I personally don’t think its either feasible, or in the long run, desirable to control reaction to public works. Toward that way lies censorship.
That being said, you don’t have to be *happy* about anything someone says about your art, either. But you can’t stop them.
hello! i hope that it isnt intrusive that im replying to this and i am in no way attacking your opinion; id just like to explain why people do not like this.
as and artist who is fictionkin and has many friends who are fiction/otherkin, i personally do not want people tagging my works as me or kin (i wont stop anyone but it does irk me a bit). my own reason being, and possibly/probably why people are not ok with this is because while it is being released on a public domain, they are still the rightful creator and owner, which means that it belongs to them. they are showing it off for recognition and to share their work with others, but not everyone is comfortable with people saying “me!!!me!!!!!” because no, that was not made for you specifically at all. it was made for my own artistic gain and for you to enjoy, but not to adopt as your “own”
and i am not saying that it feels like others are claiming it as theirs when they tag kin/me, because i tag lots of pictures of bunnies and on occasion pics of veigar as me, but never kin. i only do it when i know the artist has not spoken again it, because otherwise, that is blatant disrespect, really freaking rude, and if i asked someone to stop tagging as certain things and they didnt, i would block them.
by this logic, you are stating that if someone tagged a pic of me as “i want to cum in your mouth” or some perverted comment, i have no authority over what i should allow people to say or do with things that were created by myself (pics of myself, art, stories, crafts, etc) and that i should not speak out against that.
besides this matter, i feel a deep connection with ALL of my pieces of art. and i am PERFECTLY OKAY with others sharing a similar connection, but its almost like someones tearing off a part of it and slapping it on their skin without any regard to what i feel when i say i dont like people tagging things as kin/me and i see someone do exactly that, yknow?
the art belongs to the artist… they should be able to decide what is and what is not comfortable with them, and what may happen with their art.
It seems that we have a fundamental disagreement about the rights of the artist to control their work. (and that’s okay!)
Question, if an author or creator of a book, television show, comic, etc, asked that fans please not draw fan art of their work, or publicly criticize their work online, would you respect their request?
