So I've been- honestly a little irritated, irrationally, at people making some of the above arguments, because *I'm* going to need to make this decision, so why can't you?


Yes. I'm pretty much in the same place with this discussion. I do understand that original work can be important to your fandom experience. I have been in comic fandom for many many years and for much of that before I found online tv fandom most of fan creativity I knew was making amateur original stuff. Like the only thing I've ever published in a fanzine was an original comic I did as a teenager. Making that was certainly fanactivity by comic fandom standards, as I met with a bunch of other teenage comic fans to make a non-profit comic zine, but I was being fannish about the medium, not a particular source.

And much of SF and fantasy art is about being a genre fan, just like writing in those genres is. But if I need to make a call whether some dragon drawing that started out as Temeraire fanart, but then I didn't stick with any of the dragon descriptions there, is still fanart, then writers can do the same.

And FWIW I think an original vid would be vidding with footage you filmed yourself, or things like original animation and such, but still set to music.