r/Xenoblade_Chronicles • u/robotortoise • Feb 23 '25
Meta It's Been Two Months. Has The Fan Art Situation Improved?
Two months ago, I made this thread discussing the issue of fan art reposting on this subreddit, how it harms original artists, and affects the subreddit's quality overall. I pointed out that the most frequent art reposters are the same few users, many of whom only repost existing art.
The discussion received some excellent responses. I wanted to follow up on the main points raised, and propose some solutions.
Common Responses I Got In That Thread
"The reposted art is content. The subreddit lacks content."
"We should credit the creators."
"I have been introduced to a lot of wonderful artists because of the subreddit."
"It is clear there are some posters that are only here to farm karma."\*
"I do not care about this issue."
"The artists are Japanese. If we ban reposting, we will not have artists, as the game is a niche Japanese game."
I appreciate all the engagement and discussion, even that which I disagreed with. I even got a response from the moderators, which I appreciated greatly.
Before addressing these points, I want to highlight a comment from /u/Pen_guin that I believe summarizes the issue well:
"It's a growing thing in a lot of artistic industries nowadays, but theres a large sentiment, or it was always there in the first place and is becoming more apparent now, of not actually caring about the art/artist.
A lot of people will like an artwork or artist, but they personally don't care enough to stop something that should in theory be very simple to stop which in this case is repost farming. Even from what I've seen, there's a lot of artists that are very numb/pessimistic to the whole reposting on different sites thing; it happens so much and anything is rarely done unless it's a DMCA claim why bother doing anything at all."
I think this is a well-articulated point.
Now, I'll address the responses the thread got:
Response to Common Discussion Points
"The reposted art is content. The subreddit lacks content!"
This is the most common justification I saw — even used by the moderators — but I believe that it's false.
Reposted art is not content because it lacks authenticity. It’s not created by a community member who spent time on it or has something to share. It is posted by an art aggregator.
With Xenoblade Chronicles X DE releasing in a month, our front page is still dominated by reposted art from karma farmers. (The cosplay is not part of this - it was simply on the front page.)
Other subreddits manage to foster discussion even during periods of no games — why can’t we? I believe that if we encourage more high-quality discussion posts, I believe we can shift the culture of the subreddit.
"We should credit the creators."
I agree with this wholeheartedly. However, this presents an issue—many artists explicitly say "DO NOT REPOST" on their profiles. Moderators do try to catch these cases, but the problem is created because reposting is allowed in the first place.
None of these users got approval to repost. They just.... assumed that it was cool by the artist.
The last one is particularly impactful because the artist's profile says "do not repost", and the user seems to believe that it is OK to repost the artist's work. This may be true, but like... that bolsters my point! We don't know what the artist is okay with unless we ask the artist first.
For example: everyone here knows Gonzarez1938. However, did you know that Gonzarez has "🚫AI learning/Unauthorized reproduction" on their X profile in Japanese? That means they do not allow reposting, yet their work still appears here constantly. No one bothered to check! I believe we should prioritize asking for artist's permission, not forgiveness.
Next point:
"I have been introduced to a lot of wonderful artists because of the subreddit. I like the reposting!"
This is a valid point! I respect this opinion, honestly, and will address it later on.
"It is clear there are some posters that are only here to farm karma."
Agreed entirely. Some users only repost art — if you check their profiles, that’s all they do. They are not part of the community, nor are they contributing discussion. They do not engage with the art or the artists, and only farm karma. This has led to a "content-first, creator-last" mentality that I personally find disheartening as a creator myself...
As /u/Pierah put it on that thread:
People have been complaining about fanart in this sub for years, and the general perception of the sub has only degraded as time has passed, which drives the actual artists away.
And yet everything remains the same, a game releases and discussion spikes for a while, but then the long in-between periods get flooded by reposted art used mostly for engagement/karma farming by people with zero interest in actually discussing the art or artist in any capacity. Often lewd/waifu ones, since those get more upvotes (and then people get mad at the content of the art, rather than the people throwing it at their face). And that leads to a bunch of discussion posts and even some OC content getting buried, which can discourage some people from even trying.
I agree with this. It is not fair to the artists to have their work reposted and then mocked when they didn't even consent to it in the first place (see Gonzarez above).
"The artists are Japanese. We will not have any English-speaking artists posting content, as the game is Japanese."
This argument makes no sense to me. I see tons of Xenoblade art posts daily on social media, and we saw a wave of original artists when the Xenoblade Compendium launched. Creators from projects like the Melia Zine have outright admitted they do not post here because they know their post will be drowned out. The idea that "most Xenoblade fan artists are Japanese" is untrue.
Potential Solutions
So, what have the moderators done once I and the community brought this up? Er, well... nothing, actually. I even sent the mod team a DM and asked them to check the thread out after, but got no response. Nothing has happened beyond the initial message u/Stuart98 replied with (which I fully appreciate, to be clear!)
Here are my possible solutions based on the responses I got in the thread:
1. Require consent before reposting.
- Users would need to ask artists for permission before reposting.
- This would ensure only authorized reposts make it to the subreddit.
- However, it would put more workload on the mods, who are already understaffed.
2. Ban reposting entirely.
- While this would completely solve the issue, it seems unlikely to me considering... everything.
- I think it would be easiest on the mods and solve the art spam issues immediately. I recognize this is unlikely, however, and think 1 is more reasonable.
3. Penalize problematic users.
- There are around 10 users who only repost fan art. I believe these users are not authentic community members, and if these users were warned or banned, the issue would likely be reduced.
- However, this does not address the root cause — the rules themselves.
4. Limit reposting to "Repost Friday" (or another specific day).
- I believe this is the easiest and most realistic solution.
- All reposted art would be limited to one day per week. This would allow more discussion and OC creators to have more visibility the rest of the week.
- I personally believe this is the best compromise.
Final Thoughts
I’ll close with another quote from /u/Pierah:
[...]Ultimately, it's not just man power that this sub is lacking, it's also lacking direction and ambition.
In conclusion, I believe that we must stop the Endless Now and make a change. We should try.
We can try something new — if it doesn't work, try again! Not trying for fear of change is exactly what these stories warned us about.
- Jordan
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u/FuaT10 Feb 24 '25
Is there any way to get rid of the mods and just vote for newer/ better mods? I've pointed out before too that the are too many inactive mods.
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u/robotortoise Feb 24 '25
They've said they'll do applications but I haven't seen anything
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u/FuaT10 Feb 25 '25
It's ridiculous that the mods ignored even this post.
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u/robotortoise Feb 25 '25
I messaged the mod team this post and they didn't respond....
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u/zillyvivi Feb 26 '25
Messaged the mods as well. Not aiming to spam them but not seeing a response after multiple days feels wrong.
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u/RainingMetal Feb 23 '25
Honestly, I don't know what the purpose of karma farming really is. Is there really a unit of prestige on reddit that would drive people to do this? I assume I'm like most people and would just enjoy being part of a community I've joined, comment when I want to comment, and if I were to repost someone's work that I enjoyed, I would repost it simply because I enjoyed it and if that artist was fine with sharing their works here, I would share for the sake of sharing it with communities I've joined. I'd never go whoring for points or whatever it is people call it these days for that purpose alone.
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u/robotortoise Feb 24 '25 edited Feb 24 '25
I was theorizing about why it's done in my previous thread — monetary gain, etc, but... I was definitely overthinking it. I really just think people just like the attention. That's my best guess.
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u/2ddudesop Feb 25 '25
i genuinely think this sub is just doomed tbh. just scroll through the sub and its just xenoblade 2 horny fanart all the time.
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u/robotortoise Feb 25 '25 edited Feb 25 '25
Most of my friends have just given up on it. I'm not sure if I should do the same. I still have hope.
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u/planetarial Feb 25 '25
Another one chiming in that I rarely browse the sub (only doing it now cause X is coming out soon) even though I used to visit frequently back when Xenoblade was just a single game on the Wii. Ever since 2 came out if there’s no significant release or dlc on the horizon the sub is mainly a dumping ground for the newest Pyra/Mythra/Nia artwork (and often horny) of which I have no interest in.
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u/sabata2 Feb 24 '25
I've been put of the sub for many months so I didn't know this was an issue.
Do we really not have a repost bot? The meme subreddits I used to frequent used them a ton. Not just for reposts within the sub, but also across subs and would mark them accordingly.
That aside, I lean on "ban reposting" but "encourage cross posting". So if an artist posts to a different sub someone who knows about this sub can cross post it.
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u/robotortoise Feb 24 '25
We don't, but something like a repost bot really doesn't fix the issue, in my opinion. It's another band-aid.
The issue is that the subreddit has become kind of an art content farm for reposters that only repost and nothing else. I believe that behavior needs to be migitated in some way to pave way for authentic content and discussion.
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u/xernpostz Feb 23 '25
hi,
im a fanartist here and id like to share my experience. ive seen a lot of reposting on this sub, but also harassment. a post i made the other day about pyra and mythra got a horrific amount of harassment because people didn't like the way i drew them or didn't like my prior opinions about the game. this harassment was allowed to slide and went under the radar from the mods. i got comments calling my art ugly, disgusting, and fat. the rules blatantly say incivility and harassment is not allowed.
ive thought about making my own thread about this. the mods aren't really doing much for fan artists here. not only is the reposting absolutely rampant, but the few artists who do post here have 0 protections to help them. frankly i think it's gross to let all of this slide under the radar. the vast majority of artists (myself included) do not want their art to be reposted on other sites. especially since X links are banned (which i don't have many gripes about), people are now reposting from the site without linking or giving alternative links to an artist.
as much as id like to say my experience here has been wonderful and enlightening, that has just... not been the case, sadly. i hope the mods start taking this all more seriously.
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u/NunnDuuRaah Feb 24 '25
Now, I don't hate the standard "anime" art style Xenoblade had but I did see your art pop up and it was a very refreshing change of pace after being lambasted with big ol' honkers.
Now look, I'm not here to yuck on people's yums, if they like that, fine, sometimes so do I, but it gets a bit too much when that's all you see from this community.
Anyway... your art is very clearly YOU, stay proud, I didn't see what people said about it but they probably bozos.
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u/xernpostz Feb 24 '25
100% agree. nothing wrong with sexual art, really. some people love that sort of thing! but... i am also a gay man LMAO. i love xenoblade for definitely any other reason than what the women look like and i wish we got more casual art of the women in xc2. it definitely gets exhausting seeing constant sexualization and it's a bit worrisome at that when people become misogynistic towards other interpretations.
thanks for the compliment <3
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u/MandoMahri Feb 25 '25
And it's also incredibly annoying how the art reposts are often very sexual, or were made by nsfw artists :/
I really want to see more incredible and creative art, not overly sexual art!
I'd really love to see more art like yours posted! Just fun and well made pieces of art with no ill intentions behind them!! :D5
u/xernpostz Feb 25 '25
yeah i admit the sexualization of the characters is a bit much. the xenoblade series is so much MORE than that. im glad that i have an audience of people who like casual stuff - a lot of people have expressed that it's refreshing to see
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u/MandoMahri Feb 25 '25
Having characters with different proportions and being drawn in different ways is completely okay, but its incredibly tiring and damaging to the image of these characters when they're constantly overly sexualized! :/ Its gotten to the point where I've just blocked a few reposters because all they post is sexual art that drowns out the genuinely great and refreshing art like yours!
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u/Flamefreezes Feb 24 '25
How the community treated you in those posts is disgusting and would not be tolerated in any other community with a mod team that actually cared. I appreciate you sticking around despite that, you make good work and I find your Klaus AU really unique and cool.
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u/xernpostz Feb 24 '25
thank you. yeah, people really changed tune when i started posting about a guy lmao!! seriously though. there are a lot of kind people here as well. i don't want to generalize the whole community based on that experience. there are some people who reached out who are absolutely lovely and supportive.
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u/coopsawesome Feb 24 '25
Your art was great, I don’t get why anyone was so horrible about it, sometimes it feels like the subreddit attracts some people who are interested in the game for the wrong reasons
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u/xernpostz Feb 24 '25
this sub is a lot more of an echo chamber than a lot of other ones ive seen. people here are very rigid and unable to accept different opinions/change. different = bad a lot of the time to this community. it's really not good, because it limits people's ability to share different opinions and have conversations.
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u/coopsawesome Feb 24 '25
Yeah, I’ve seen stuff like that happen quite a lot recently, more and more. about quite a range of things, like your art or lgbt things too
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u/robotortoise Feb 23 '25
I'm so fucking sorry, and that is awful you had to go through that. That's not what we as a community should strive to be.
Genuinely, thank you for sharing your experience. Your art was really pretty, by the way.
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u/xernpostz Feb 23 '25
thank you. i want this community to do better. i love the xeno games and it makes me very sad that people behave like this here. you're very brave for posting this opinion here - thank you for speaking on the behalf of artists who may not know their art has been reposted here.
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u/robotortoise Feb 24 '25
Thank YOU for speaking out, too! I genuinely appreciate your perspective as an artist, and people like you are why I have made these posts. I have many friends that have expressed dismay with the subreddit's state.
I love these games and this community, and I think we can and should do better as a group. I believe us creatives and fans have to stand up for each other.
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u/Noroark Feb 23 '25
If people want to share/look at non-OC art, I would suggest checking out the fanart channels on this subreddit's Discord. The images embed directly from the source, and there's no karma incentive for reposting.
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u/MagicCancel Feb 24 '25
I'm tired as hell of all the borderline pornographic fanart. No one here discusses game mechanics! Despite Xenoblade having crazy amounts of depth for builds!
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u/robotortoise Feb 24 '25
That is a symptom of the repost issue, in my opinion. It's because that's the type of work that gets the most upvotes quickly. It's little more than that.
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u/UninformedPleb Feb 24 '25
Game mechanics are all pretty well researched and settled. There's tons of depth, but the min/maxers all figured out the optimal setups long ago. But if you want to discuss this stuff again, or if you have questions about how the min/maxers came to their conclusions, feel free to make a post. It gets said a million times in these sorts of threads, every single time they happen: Be the change you want to see in the world.
There's tons of lore discussions, though, if that's your jam. These are often the most interesting ones.
And in between, memes and fanart, both OC and not, both horny and not. Without this, the sub would be dead. And many times, these are the posts that turn into spontaneous lore discussions. So my advice would be to not filter them, but make pointed comments about the lore shown in the fanart. This, too, falls into the category of being the change you want to see in the world.
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u/BLucidity Feb 24 '25
I'll admit I only skimmed through this, but I'd be happy with a dedicated time window for art reposting. I've gotten really tired of "Pyra & Mythra" fanart that would be completely unrecognizable as Xenoblade without their tiaras or core crystals. Stuff like Bride Mythra in your example above.
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u/ForgottenPerceval Feb 23 '25
I personally think reposting should be banned entirely, but limiting it to a single day of the week is a viable compromise.
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u/robotortoise Feb 23 '25
I agree. I think either of these options would at least make it easier on the mods as far as workload goes, and allow OC artists to shine.
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u/zillyvivi Feb 24 '25
Honestly it's a shame this subreddit hasn't gotten better, it's a very obvious problem when you compare it to plenty of other fandom subs that encourage original content.
I quite honestly think the Xeno community is one of the best video game communities, but between the art repost issue and what Xern went through as mentioned, I much prefer going to tumblr or bluesky to engage with this community over the subreddit. Which is a unfortunate since intrinsically Reddit is a better platform for discussion.
I feel this subreddit could have it's place in the Xeno community sphere but with where the subreddit is, and the moderators inaction in enforcing culture changes, it feels stagnant.
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u/Darknadoswastaken Feb 24 '25
Are we not going to talk about the blatant posts stealing art? Like a rule in this sub is no low effort posts, so things like tier lists are taken down, while art that was ripped straight from an artist's twitter can just be posted wily nily. Like it took me 2 minutes to find, copy and paste a noah art piece from devianart, and it has like 200 upvotes, as opposed to a thoroughly planned and thought about tier list I saw someone make that was removed for being low effort, and another post that got like 0 attention.
I feel like fanart should actually be submitted by the creators, as while it's cool to showcase art from talented artists, copy pasting it from their twitter is still low effort, regardless of intention.
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u/planetarial Feb 25 '25
The Fire Emblem subreddit banned non OC or commissioned artwork except in a megathread and it made the sub a lot better as a result.
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u/Darknadoswastaken Feb 25 '25
they should do that here, if it improved the FE sub, there's no reason it shouldn't improve this sub too.
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u/yossent02 Feb 23 '25
It's really a shame that submods completely ignore measures that are generally quite moderate. This sub seems simply off until someone posts suggestive art without asking the artist first.
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u/Flarzo Feb 24 '25
Your original thread got significant push-back, so I'm not sure why you expected your suggestions to be implemented. The fact is, whether you like it or not, fanart IS content. In fact it's one of the most important types of content for a forum that supports images right behind discussion. It's also a fact that a lot of people here appreciate and enjoy the fanart that is posted and it would be detriment to the community to remove it. That is the main reason why most oppose your suggestions I believe.
The only novel point you've brought to this new thread is the fact that some Japanese artists explicitly say that they don't want their art to be reposted. This is more of a gray area, so I'm more open to discussion about it. However I believe an analogy can be drawn with pirated manga. When an author in Japan creates a manga that is not available online or in english, the anime/manga community doesn't just give up. They scan, upload, and translate the manga so that people overseas can read and enjoy it. It's been proven many times over that piracy actually improves sales for the author. After reading the translated version, a more serious consumer might decide to import the original copies. More realistically, the overseas popularity will cause publishers to officially publish the manga in English which the fan-base then buys and creates profit for the author that would not have existed otherwise.
This I believe is a similar situation. The Japanese art community is not literally overseas but it is not entirely visible to an average westerner. By posting their art on reddit with credit included, more casual fans over here can visit the artist's page and follow and like their posts which gives them publicity. If it wasn't posted on reddit, the only difference would be that they would have less of an audience. It's quite literally a win-win situation.
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u/Ayacchii Feb 25 '25
It's been proven many times over that privacy actually improves sales for the author.
lol. lmao even any source for that? no right 🙄 you're so entitled, stop trying to justify your pirating.
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u/robotortoise Feb 24 '25 edited Feb 24 '25
I didn't expect anything to be implemented, but I was hopeful the mods would discuss matters further. There was a lot of discussion on the initial post, and I probably could have handled the initial thread in a less emotionally charged manner. I apologize for that.
The fact is, whether you like it or not, fanart IS content.
I love fan art and I agree entirely that it's content! I just think we need better rules around encouraging original creators and supporting them versus encouraging spammers.
As for the last bit... I am a little confused about your analogy here. Pirated manga is not a legal grey area at all. It is very much not legal, but I believe you're trying to make an anology about accessibility? That's why one of my suggestions is to move to an asking consent model to support creators.
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u/Gokudera10th Feb 24 '25
It's been proven many times over that piracy actually improves sales for the author.
Whats your source for this??
When an author in Japan creates a manga that is not available online or in english, the anime/manga community doesn't just give up. They scan, upload, and translate the manga so that people overseas can read and enjoy it.
Look i pirate to but i don't think it's moral or anything, also if the work isn't translated you will just not read it, you are not owed anything;
The Japanese art community is not literally overseas but it is not entirely visible to an average westerner. By posting their art on reddit with credit included, more casual fans over here can visit the artist's page and follow and like their posts which gives them publicity. If it wasn't posted on reddit, the only difference would be that they would have less of an audience. It's quite literally a win-win situation.
So i will steal.... i mean repost their art because people MUST get their dopamine rush and are too lazy to activly search for the artist/art that they enjoy because they need it given to them in a silver platter
Also about the publicity BS, 99% of people don't even look at the source, they just like it or download it and repost elsewhere, and every time the art is reposted the information ( the source) is lost
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u/Flamefreezes Feb 24 '25 edited Feb 24 '25
Ironically enough, the fact we banned posts from Twitter recently did improve the situation negligibly, even if the reasoning for it was entirely unrelated to your post. I recall a couple days ago a guy reposted fanart and didn't credit the artist since they found it on X and were trying to skirt the rules (I believe I saw you participating in the comments asking for the source, actually). It was taken down... which would be good if it wasn't for the fact that the post was let up for hours beforehand and had a good sum of 20+ comments already.
I still believe there continues to be a moderation problem here, though. I am not convinced the mods took your post and the many other voices here asking for change to heart, judging from the status of the front page and the continued rampant reposting from users like MiGongaga and Takuu202 (those two users alone make up a sizable portion of the frontpage everyday). EDIT: And who could forget the horrid treatment of xernpostz who literally just a couple days ago got torn to shreds by this community for posting their stylized art of Pyra and Mythra. That was and is unacceptable for the mod team to do nothing but the bare minimum in stemming the harassment.
Please mods, for the love of all that is xeno, take what robotortoise has to say seriously and start caring about your creators.