I forget how I bumped into this, but yesterday, I ran across this promo flyer for a 7th Saga/Brain Lord/Mystic Ark fanart celebration of Saga's 30th anniversary:
Wow, how sweet! I just love this idea - a fan outpouring of love for some lesser-known, non-franchised RPGs for the underpromoted Enix side of the Square Enix catalog. Fanart tends to be concerned on the marquee titles, of course, so it's a delight to see lesser-known titles get some appreciation - to be able to enjoy new fan content for 30-year-old games. It touches my heart, honestly! I just can't wait to see everyone's great art! I go to the event's Twitter, and:
The second thing posted, right below the announcement of the event, is a pinned retweet of a ridiculously histrionic English-language Twitter thread about how if fanart is reposted, then Japanese companies will discover fanart exists! So if you speak English, don't make fanart, and don't say you like 7th Saga, and don't interact! Otherwise, no one will be able to make fanart ever again!
Like, motherfucker: DLsite has existed for over 20 years. If the metric tons of unlicensed, monetized tentacle hentai on that site hasn't inspired corporate Japan to sink the fanart enterprise, absolutely nothing will.
To reinforce this, the event's website has a special message for us filthy Anglophones:
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. That is so hostile and antisocial that it's beyond self-parody. They even went out of their way to include the English-language titles of the games in the event listing, just to bait English-speaking fans: "Hey, you! Yeah, you! English-speaking gamer! You like these games, huh? Huh?! These games listed in your own language on this Japanese-language site? What do you think about a party dedicated exclusively to these underappreciated games?! A party the likes of which these games have never seen and will never see again?! That sound good to you!? Well, TOO BAD! You're not invited!! We could have excluded you just by talking about the project in a language you don't understand, but then you wouldn't know that you're excluded!"
This is just such petty middle-school bullshit by people who need to pretend they're being victimized for attention. Why did we need to resurrect the hyper-touchy Online Fanarts Protection stuff from the turn of the century; why couldn't we have just revived, like, KISS dolls or something.
ETA: I discovered by looking through this person's work that they're an Angelique fan. Oh, God, everything makes sense now. This "no gaijin allowed" mentality is exactly the attitude Japanese Angelique fans have toward anyone overseas so much as looking at the franchise. And I had seen new doujin this artist had put out for 7th Saga and Mystic Ark and Brain Lord a few months ago, and I was as delighted as I was when I discovered this festival. I suppose I can forget about those as well.
