#and and and look how much they've grown as creators and artists

[sensiblethingtodo]

Brittany Snow Talks Picking Anna Kendrick’s Brain As Both Pitch Perfect Actors Go Into Directing

[wolfstarlibrarian]

Re-posting fics: How not to be an asshole

I know, kind of salty for a heading, sorry, but we got some stuff to talk about. (Also, sorry I haven't been around as much but my life has been WONDERFULLY full, so thank you to everyone who's checked in. ❤️)

I've gotten a few asks in my inbox and I don't want to embarrass anyone and I also don't want to inadvertently give any future scoundrels and any tips.

"I love this fic but the author took it down, so I'm going to repost it on AO3, and just mention that I'm not the author"

NO! ABSOLUTELY NOT! *sprays you with water*

You have a copy of the fic. Kudos. But if they author wanted it on AO3 then IT WOULD BE ON AO3. Taking a fic not on A03 and putting it on A03 is a massive "fuck you!" to the author. The ultimate sign of disrespect to someone who put HOURS AND HOURS of work into their. FOR FREE. The LEAST we can do as fans is GIVE RESPECT.

Authors are not corporations. Authors are not sponsored. Authors are not "content creators". They are HOBBYISTS who are sharing their HOBBY with you.

Enjoy the fact that you have the fic.

If the author wanted it shared in ANY WAY they would put it back on A03.

Also I hate that I have to say this, but this same logic goes for Wattpad, Goodreads, Fanfiction.net, PDFs on reddit, and every site ever. Please stop.

"But no one is getting hurt"

Many authors took down work because they don't want their art mined by AI and you're putting it back up for AI.

Many authors took down their work as a rebellion against JKR and you're spitting in their face while they're trying to protest something.

Many authors took down their work because they're trying to pitch it as a book and they can't because agents and publishers search for the phrases and go "Well this exact story is already up for free and it's got gross, X-rated material I didn't see in my draft, so I'm definitely not giving them a book deal now". Congrats, now you'll never get a published and bound copy of your favorite fic.

Many authors took down their work because they are no longer proud of their work and they've grown as an artist and having the work up brings them daily shame, but you put it back up anyway.

Many authors took down their work for reasons that WE WILL NEVER KNOW and it's still our place to respect that.

Look, I support piracy. Corporations don't let us own anything anymore, so pirating isn't even stealing. But fanfic authors are not corporations. And you can't own a fic that isn't yours.

These authors have NOTHING but control over their work and you are stealing that. You are ruining their art, after they made it for you, for free.

If you love something, respect it.

I know you think you're helping fans by reposting a fic but I can't tel you how many authors I know that no longer post their fics BECAUSE THEY KNOW PEOPLE WILL STEAL THEM.

Reposting fanfics is killing fandom.

What do you do as a fan when you see reposted fanfics?

If you can, find and tell the author so they can take legal action.

Bully the author. Respond to every single comment on A03 and tell them exactly why the fic shouldn't be online, and why they shouldn't be supporting the non-author who published the fic without the author's consent

Go to the re-poster's social media and spread the word there. IDC anymore.

Talk about it with your friends and in servers. Every time you see someone asking for "PDFs of a fic" on tiktok go ape shit in the comments and get all your friends to help.

Okay, rant done. And remember, if you feel powerless, you will always have the power fanfic authors. You're part of this community. Your value and actions matter.

[hollow-prey]

some thoughts that are probably petty and silly (and not exactly self ship related, but more about the source material(s) for one of my f/os) but that have been on my mind a while:

I really miss the old ego stuff. I know time moves on and things are different, we've all grown up more and gotten older and circumstances have changed. The pandemic fucked up a lot of things. Creative projects evolve over time to expand and experiment and improve, or they get scrapped and reworked or rewritten. I get it. but I still miss stuff like the cryptic clues and teases and small glitches and glimpses of what was to come. that period between 2016-2018 when the ego stuff was most prominent was such a fun, cozy time for me and I wish the ego stuff could still be like that. I understand why it can't be like that anymore, why it has had to change and evolve, why S.ean is pulling away from YT in general to move towards bigger and better projects and opportunities. I understand that we've all grown older and changed between 2018 and now, especially after the pandemic. but it makes me sad that things aren't the same anymore.

At many points during the hiatus (if that's the right word for the gap in this case), between 2019 and early 2022, I genuinely thought all the ego stuff had been scrapped and abandoned. Especially in the midst of a quarantine when we were all struggling mentally, I thought maybe the spark had died and S.ean just didn't feel like making ego stuff anymore, so he would just...stop, and that would be it. Or I figured he was probably looking towards bigger and better things, and I held my breath waiting for him to say that he wasn't coming back to YouTube because he found better stuff to work on elsewhere. Not that I could blame him if that was the case (and I mean. I already know things are shifting in that direction), but at the time, I would have been crushed to see him go. The mere thought of never seeing A.nti again in official stuff was devastating to me.

I love the concept of the IR.IS project and the way the lore and characters are slowly getting fleshed out. "An.omaly Found" and all the community hype and chatter about it made it feel like old times. Just knowing that the egos weren't abandoned helped quell some of my anxiety, and I was once again content to wait for more updates. But I admittedly feel a bit conflicted about future ego stuff being split into different formats across different platforms/media. Like right now, they've just started releasing comics that tie into the over-arching lore and focus on different characters. Admittedly, I haven't looked into it much or ordered any of the current issues because...I'm kinda not interested? I don't know if they would really hit the same as the videos. It also makes me a tiny bit worried that if canon, plot-relevant ego stuff gets split up across a bunch of different formats and platforms, in order to get the full story and understand what's going on, we would have to keep up with all the different releases and the timeline and pay to buy or to access each thing. we'd basically get paywalled out of the full story/experience, or at the very least, it might get confusing to try and keep up with.

and that's probably not fair to say because I know YouTube is fucking abysmal for creators trying to make money off their work. Ad restrictions, copyright claims, demonetization, all of which are absurdly easy to get hit with no matter how hard you try to avoid it etc. etc. And I know S.ean puts a lot of heart and effort into what he does. He wants to do it and do it well, and stuff like IR.IS and An.omaly Found ain't cheap to make. Dude's gotta make money somehow. He's gotta pay for production and pay the crew/actors/editors/artists/etc. he hires and he has to pay his own bills. We've been spoiled for a long time, getting a bunch of ego stuff on YouTube for free over the years. And I don't think he'll completely stop posting ego stuff to YT once it's ready to be shared (at least not in the immediate future...I hope), but I know logically it makes sense to want to branch out into different creative avenues and try new things and ultimately, the price of a comic book is a small one to pay for cool new content from a project you like and helping to support the creator and the writers/artists at the same time.

idk, my little gremlin brain always dislikes change anyway, especially with stuff I like. I guess I just worry that this will be like. A New Thing and it will lose the heart and core of what made it special. Which is honestly pretty unlikely, since (to my knowledge) S.ean is definitely still very involved in everything and working on writing a lot of it...idk. many thoughts head full

[ablackburnarts102-02]

Process Blog Four

Reading Responses:

Chapter Eleven of the textbook reading (Becoming a Graphic and Digital Designer: A Guide to Careers in Design, by Steven Heller, pages 186-203) is about understanding change in the world of graphic design. As someone who has grown up with digital media and design, it's interesting to think about it as something new that people would reject, however I can definitely connect the idea to people in my life who reject the use of technologies such as social media. I like how the textbook mentioned that some people considered it, "nothing more than advance production tools," as I think that is the best way to think of digital design. While it makes it more accessible to people without design knowledge, you do still need those skills in order to make something effective that uses digital tools in order to enhance the product rather than relying on it to create the product that otherwise couldn't have been created. The textbook also discussed how there isn't much that graphic design can't improve in some way, which I agree with though it is fun to consider cases where this might not be the case. One such example is furniture that is made to be very visually appealing and artistic, while leaving the function of the piece less than optimal. There have been many chairs designed with beautiful curves and bold colored plastics that are uncomfortable to sit in, as well as tables and shelves with similar traits that aren't flat enough to serve as useful surfaces.

Chapter Twelve of the textbook reading (pages 204-219) is about original and unique design. This chapter begins by tying to describe and define 'eccentrics'. It goes on to say that, "you cannot replicate what they do - nor would you want to," which does not seem to be accurate to the example images that follow within the chapter. Not only do plenty of the works look familiar in style (such as Charles Anderson's poster designs and the art style that Nick Ace directs in 'Chapter 48: Doom Lyrics'), but these 'eccentric' designers are clearly of some renown if they've been interviewed and used as examples in this design textbook. Who wouldn't want to replicate what they do? There is nothing wrong of course with recognizing the unique talents of designers, especially if they might drive and inspire design trends, but I feel as though this explanation of eccentric is off.

Chapter Thirteen of the textbook reading (pages 220-229) is about transitioning and new opportunities. The section at the beginning of the chapter discusses how with the shifting and changing of language, graphics will be able to, "speak deeper than words". I definitely agree with this sentiment, but I think that it's ironic that it feels like a rewording of, "a picture is worth a thousand words," as that simple phrase gets the meaning across very well, especially for originating about one-hundred years ago (found with a quick google search). There's also an argument to be made that graphics tend to depend on cultural and societal symbols, which can be just as prone to change and evolution as language is.

Chapter Fourteen of the textbook reading (pages 232-245) is about interactive design. The beginning of the textbook discusses how interactive design leaves much more of an impact on people in today's society, especially since they consume hundreds or thousands of images, posts, videos, etc. every week or even day. I completely agree with this, and I think that it is important to consider how to make things more memorable. Making the target audience a part of the experience is a wonderful way to do this, and as an example part art or design, interacting with fans on social media inspires them to keep reacting and make a more personal connection with a creator. Back to interactive design, I always find the experience of moving through websites with animations that follow the mouse and graphics that shift as you scroll are typically more visually appealing than those without.

Reflection:

The class project that we are currently working on is about making logos for fictional characters. I feel very comfortable doing this project, as I've done logo design for previous digital art and design classes. I was very excited to read the project requirements and see that characters from the movie Beetlejuice were an option. Beetlejuice is one of my favorite movies from my childhood, and I have a preference for the "strange and unusual". Lydia Deetz was my first choice because she is my favorite character from the movie (and one of my favorite characters in general) and because I love Winona Ryder. My second choice was Betelgeuse, because he has a lot of typical imagery that could be used such as his green hair and pinstriped suit. Another reason I chose these two characters is because they are the natural choice to choose if picking characters from Beetlejuice. I started off with thumbnails for Lydia based on just a bit of looking her character up on fan-made wikis just to jog my memory on some traits for her that I could be inspired by. When I moved on to Betelgeuse, I used the sheet provided that was mean to be lined with traits and attributes of the character in order to try and spark ideas to combine them. I then redrew the best of these ideas larger in my sketchbook next to my sketches for Lydia.

So far I have picked favorites for both characters. I chose the raven skull holding a quill for Lydia (to represent her love for poetry and the macabre) and a combination of two for Betelgeuse: the triple "BEETLEJUICE" as well as the beetle headed suit. I have already made the font and many color options for the "BEETLEJUICE" text.