#edit: I had to edit this post because many people were searching commission and then just sending me dms asking for art commissions

[krockat]

edit: this shit's put on ice, just saving this post for prosperity

edit: this is not about an Art com/mis/sion. this is about HTML - coding only.

do not send me messages about art com/missi/ons - i am not interested in people reaching out to me for those.

hey would anyone take com/mis/sion to unfuck my description. like make it functional html and stuff.

i would litchrally pay you. the minimum is just knowing you can actually do it n stuff.

also buyer beware: my tumblr might b a little bugged.

so if it still dodnt work and it And we make sure it ain't ur fault (cause you did hmtl like works w other tumbie blogs): you're gonna get paid still ofc cause u did the work.

anyone's free to hmu in replies or dms here if interested,or if you have a suggestion on where to search to find someone who could do that work.

i also dk what would be a fair price. wanna pay you right i just have no idea what it could be. give me an offer why don'tcha/or if u've already done similar work.

am also potench interested in tumblr desktop themes. if anyone's got any tips/sells/is commi/ssion/able for those.

hmu if this peaks your fancy!

[suzylbooks]

Who Owns a Fanfic?

Throughout the past four years, one online community has gone from niche to power-player. Booktok has transformed from a hashtag with simple book recommendations, memes, and reviews to a cultural phenomenon that has publishers scrambling to monetize. The previous success of BookTube in the mid 2010’s laid the groundwork for BookTok’s current state—filled with hauls, wrap-ups, and homogeneity about what books become and stay popular. 

This is where Manacled enters the conversation. For the uninitiated, Manacled is a mega-viral fanfiction based on Harry Potter by author SenLinYu. It’s dark in nature, with the quick, catchy premise of Harry Potter meets the Handmaid’s Tale, with Dramione (the fan-favorite pairing of Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy) at the core. At the time of writing, it has nearly eigh million hits on Archive of Our Own and sits at over 370,000 words. It has cemented itself in fanfiction history alongside Cassandra Clare’s Draco Trilogy and Tara Gilesbe’s My Immortal as fanfiction that has taken on a life and fandom of its own. A quick search on Tiktok and Instagram reveals that Manacled is treated like any other book, with the Manacled tag having over 470 million collective TikTok views in February 2024. There’s fanart, dramatic edits to favorite quotes, people recording themselves crying over the ending—and, most importantly, there are videos of people learning bookbind so that they can make themselves a hardcover copy of Manacled. 

Printing fanfiction is hardly new. In the early days of fandom, before mobile phones could let you bring your fanfiction anywhere you wanted, people would print out their fics, put them into three ring binders, and carry them to school. This stands in a shocking contrast to the Manacled hardcover copies. These look professional—they’re often printed on specialty paper, with gold-foil cover designs and decorative formatting. And, most shockingly, they sell on Etsy for over $100—though, as I was checking this story before hitting publish, I noticed that many of the Etsy listings had been removed. This cannot be said for the dozens of listings for other Dramione fanfics. 

In February, author SenLinYu announced that she had signed a book deal to see the traditional publication of Manacled, reimagined in a different, non-Harry Potter universe and retitled to Alchemised. In their post announcing the deal, they stated that her primary reason for publication was not monetary—the sale of bound versions of her books was both a violation of her intellectual property and copyright infringement on the Harry Potter franchise, and this move would protect her fanfic and fanfiction as a whole. Fanfiction has long held the defense that authors do not make any profits off of the work they create, since their existence has been a hotly contested legal issue (hello, Anne Rice) and protected by Fair Use. Those Etsy listings were putting the Organization for Transformative Works in danger, because they meant someone was profiting off of fanfiction, as well as stealing from SenLinYu. They have, as far as I am aware, never made a cent off of Manacled. Her FAQ page on Tumblr states clearly that she does not allow sales or commissions of bound Manacled copies, and that anyone who wants to create fanart, fanfic, or remixes of her work is allowed to do it so long as they do not make any money off of this.

Clearly, Booktok didn’t get the memo. In her post, SenLinYu laments how she has been unable to protect her own works from ‘exploitation,’ and she states that she cannot take the fanfiction down yet as the sudden disappearance might only make the issue of bootleg copies worse. 

While explaining this phenomena, SenLinYu’s decision suddenly appeared as a checkmate—by making Manacled into Alchemised, it alchemizes itself into copywritten material, and with the help of a major publishing house’s legal team, Senlinyu will actually be able to take back ownership of their work.

This poses a question—who owns a fanfic, and why does the modern state of fandom seem to encourage fans to think of a fic as public property? 

To be clear, the writer of a fanfic is the owner of a fanfic. Just because it is transformative work doesn’t mean it is somehow less than original work. Someone took the time to write it—it is their writing, and it is their work. Whether or not they’re able to make money off of it doesn’t make it a public good for someone else to make money off of. 

In the last decade, fanfiction has turned from a small hobby to a mainstream activity—with fanfictions being published, albeit with character names changed and typically set in alternate universes. When Fifty Shades of Grey exploded into the mainstream, E.L. James denied that her book was originally fanfiction and lied about its origins. Now, Reylo fanfictions are hitting the New York Times bestsellers lists, and Harry Styles fanfictions are seeing movie adaptations. This change in cultural awareness also comes with a change in cultural interaction. 

WIRED noted in their recent piece on the SenLinYu story that the increase in fanfiction has turned it from a tight knit community into a traditional author/reader relationship, or worse—a creator/fan relationship. Fandoms as they existed in the early 2000’s on forums or even in the early 2010’s on Tumblr are dead, and the pressure to monetize our art and creations has compounded with changing cultural awarenesses over fanfiction. It’s no longer seen as a fun thing that people put online for other fans to read—there are pressures to update and keep churning out chapters. I’ve noticed it in my own fics over the years—I’ve written fanfiction for fourteen years across several platforms, and there’s something different now. 

Kaitlyn Tiffany’s Everything I Need I Get From You details the evolution of fandom from its beginnings in the infancy of pop culture to its modern-day form. Teenage girls would share their paper zines for the Beatles and Star Trek, and it was decidedly counterculture. Once the internet became popular, fangirls used it to create blogs and forums dedicated to their favorite characters and ships. Over time, fanfiction became easier to access with centralized sites like Fanfiction dot net—and, later, AO3—and this made fanfiction more commonplace to general fandom members. 

During this time, writers would often put disclaimers at the start of their fics that they did not own the characters they were writing in an attempt to avoid legal action (even Manacled, originally published between 2018 and 2019, contains one of these disclaimers). Archive of Our Own, the current king of fanfiction, is run by a non-profit (the Organization for Transformative Works), and, as such, its formation acted as a more explicit step toward legal protection for fans. There was an awareness that fanfiction was not something to use for monetary gain and that there could be major consequences if someone were to monetize their fics, since a creator would then absolutely be able to sue an author or website for copyright infringement. In this sense, there was an awareness that fanfictions were the creation and property of the author—it was theirs, because no one could own it in a legal sense, but there was an honor rule. After all, you were enjoying something for free—why would you want more?

With the explosion of Booktok and the traditional publication of fanfiction with books such as The Love Hypothesis and You, Again, fanfiction has hit its next stage: consumption and promotion by influencers. Manacled is promoted organically, just like any other book, and someone unfamiliar with the fic could be forgiven for thinking that people are discussing a book that had already seen traditional publication. It has spawned a fandom of its own—where it might have once been elevated as the most popular fic among Dramione shippers, such as Isolation by Bexchan a decade ago, it has instead found success with readers who have never read fanfiction before. And those readers might not be aware of this unspoken rule. It’s online, and you can download the complete PDF from AO3—so, why wouldn’t you be able to make it your own? Why wouldn’t you be able to bind it and sell it? After all, you’re putting in the work of binding it, who cares if the author won’t see any money? Why shouldn’t you buy it—your money is going to the binder, and didn’t they work hard? Aren’t you just showing your appreciation for the fic? 

As I wrote this, I asked myself why people were so determined to have a ‘nice’ binding of this fic. After all, printer paper and a three-ring binder seemed to work before. Was it to get clout online? Was it for the aesthetics of displaying it on a shelf? Was it because it was your favorite fic of all time and you never wanted to risk it being taken down, like it will in 2025? Or was it because you wanted to make yourself feel more elevated, like you weren’t reading fanfiction anymore? 

I considered the option that Booktok itself had created and promoted a culture where it wasn’t enough to read 370,000 words, you had to also show it off in a physical and aesthetic way. Last year, the rushed release of romantasy sequel Iron Flame came with an explosion of think pieces asking if Booktok had an overconsumption problem. Time and time again, we’ve seen Tiktok and similar platforms encouraging overconsumption through everything from Shein hauls to Stanley cup shrines. While I feel that this culture of owning for the sake of showing off plays a major factor in seeking out physical copies of Manacled despite the author's requests to not, I can’t say for sure that it is the root cause. 

I might not know why, but I can speak to the effect it has had. With the rise of bound fanfiction being sold online, the rights that transformative authors—a fancy term for fanfiction writers—have has been violated. While there might not be a moral wrong in pirating the works of a famous, rich author, there is a moral wrong in profiting off of work that has been put online for free. SenLinYu isn’t the only author pulling their fics, either, and I worry that this could signal the death of a free, fun fandom—or online fandom as we know it. 

Just last year, Hbomberguy detailed how a single Youtuber had made a silly amount of dollars by stealing the words of queer writers and filmmakers, many of whom were never paid for their work in the first place. The video itself saw massive views and started a discussion about plagiarism across the internet. The success of the video was rooted in the fundamental understanding that stealing someone else’s work is wrong, and that people who plagiarize should not be able to make money off of it because they are, plainly, jerks. 

Publishing Alchemised will allow SenLinYu to finally be paid for her work—any other author who had sold over seven-million books would be able to live off of royalties for a long time and be offered countless opportunities—but it will also allow for her to use the laws in place for protecting authors from having bootleg versions of their works sold without seeing any money. While she was previously unable to stop people from profiting off of her work, she now has a way forward. And, perhaps most important, her two-book deal will allow her to publish more through Del Rey at Penguin Random House.

That WIRED article mentioned that years ago, the act of pulling fanwork for publication was seen as a betrayal, but now it’s seen by many as an accomplishment. Taylor Lorenz notes in her book Extremely Online that when Instagram began disclosing brand partnerships, both the app and influencers feared that they would be abandoned for ‘selling out’ and running ads, but fans instead saw them as a sign of ‘making it.’  The publication of Alchemised hasn’t been without criticism, though—a quick search through social media turns up comments calling the removal of the original fanfiction (a move that must be done for legal reasons) a ‘slap in the face.’And beyond that, there are countless, and I mean countless, posts where people say that they are actively downloading the fic before its removal. SenLinYu is aware of the downloading rush, and is giving people plenty of time to do so in order to preserve something that means so much to them—not to think ahead so that they might sell a hardcover copy of a ‘rare’ fanfic. 

This isn’t the piece to rehash tired discourse about the trend of fanfiction being edited and published. This isn’t the piece to ask why the publishing industry is beginning to look toward fan spaces for manuscripts or why agents and editors now seek manuscripts that read like fanfiction—or just are fanfiction. 

This is a piece to acknowledge that while fandom has always been a public, collaborative experiment, the work being produced does not belong to the public. Fanfiction is not ownerless in nature simply because the writer doesn’t own the original characters or world. The state of writing and intellectual integrity has never been more fraught with the rise of AI and the rapid shift away from new authors, and SenLinYu’s move to protect her work signals a massive change. 

No one, not even fanfiction writers, should be okay with people making money off of their words.

Works Cited

Alter, Rebecca. “Hbomberguy Didn’t Want to Make That 4-Hour Plagiarism Video.” Vulture, Vulture, 22 Dec. 2023, www.vulture.com/2023/12/hbomberguy-interview-james-somerton-plagiarism.html.

Bosker, Bianca. “How a Crowdsourced Novel Became a Young-Adult Obsession.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 18 Dec. 2018, www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/12/crowdsourcing-the-novel/573907/.

CarefreeDreamer. “R/Dramione on Reddit: Mancled Is Getting Published!!! And More Works by Senliyu🖤.” Reddit, 5 Feb. 2024, www.reddit.com/r/Dramione/comments/1ajl17r/mancled_is_getting_published_and_more_works_by/.

Ellis, Maddie. “Harry Potter Fan Fic ‘manacled’ Has the Internet under Its Spell. How the Author Turned It into a Book Deal.” TODAY.Com, 26 Feb. 2024, www.today.com/popculture/books/manacled-senlinyu-alchemised-interview-rcna138822.

Grindell, Samantha. “A ‘Harry Potter’ Fan Fiction That Imagines Harry Died in the Wizarding War Has Taken over the Book Community.” Business Insider, Business Insider, 25 Sept. 2023, www.businessinsider.com/manacled-harry-potter-fan-fiction-explained-2023-9.

Held, Elizabeth. “From Friends to Lovers: The Fanfic-to-Romance Pipeline Goes Mainstream.” Vulture, Vulture, 29 Aug. 2023, www.vulture.com/article/fanfic-romance-reylo-publishing-trend.html.

Jackson, Gita. “Anne Rice Really Hated When People Made Her Characters Bone.” VICE, 13 Dec. 2021, www.vice.com/en/article/88gqjz/anne-rice-really-hated-when-people-made-her-characters-bone.

Karl, Jessica. “Fourth Wing and Iron Flame Author Rebecca Yarros Needs a Reality Check.” Bloomberg.Com, Bloomberg, 8 Nov. 2023, www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-11-08/fourth-wing-and-iron-flame-author-rebecca-yarros-needs-a-reality-check.

Lorenz, Taylor. Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence and Power on the Internet. WH Allen, 2023.

Minkel, Elizabeth. “Lots of People Make Money on Fanfic. Just Not the Authors.” Wired, Conde Nast, 28 Feb. 2024, www.wired.com/story/pull-to-publish-fanfic-senlinyu-manacled-fanbinding/.

“PMJ Spellbound by Senlinyu’s Standalone Dark Fantasy.” The Bookseller, 5 Feb. 2024, www.thebookseller.com/rights/pmj-spellbound-by-senlinyus-standalone-dark-fantasy#:~:text=Alchemised%20is%20a%20standalone%20dark,all%2Dconsuming%22%20PMJ%20said.

Rizer, Addison. “Is Booktok Changing the Way We Talk about Books?” BOOK RIOT, 20 May 2022, bookriot.com/is-booktok-changing-the-way-we-talk-about-books/.

SenLinYu. “Announcing SenLinYu’s Debut Novel ‘Alchemised’ .” Tumblr, 5 Feb. 2024, senlinyu.tumblr.com/post/741499573811445761/im-excited-to-announce-that-i-have-signed-a-book.

SenLinYu. “FAQ.” Tumblr, senlinyu.tumblr.com/faq. Accessed 17 Apr. 2024.

SenLinYu. “Manacled.” Archive of Our Own, 27 Apr. 2018, archiveofourown.org/works/14454174/chapters/33390198.

Tiffany, Kaitlyn. Everything I Need I Get from You: How Fangirls Created the Internet as We Know It. Farrar Straus Giroux, 2022.

[mimibtsghost7]

Fuck you and all your little brain washed rats sending people hate because you cant take responsibility for your actions!! But go on stay silent like you always do, pretend its nothing of your business, keep being a fetishizing racist delulu like you love to be while pretending to be the best blog on tumblr!!!

NOT like anyone will see this but YOU will so LET’S GOOO!!!~~

TW: mental health and more (if you feel like this can trigger you, pls don’t read this, breathe in and out and listen to this HERE and remember I love you), loads of tea and Mimi NOT being a friendly and kind ghost. 

funny enough: 

I never pretended of said I was the best blog. But I guess the fact that you say it might be because you heard it frequently? Thanks for thinking so^^

I sent hate to no one and u r the one sending it to me rn ^^ In my whole 4 year journey on Tumblr I received a lot of love but also worse hate that you can imagine. Yes you are saying now you are receiving hate ... funny how it’s bad when It’s addressed to you but when it’s at me and my dear followers it is not. Still, I never told anyone to go hate on you. You were the idiot that tagged my old blog and as soon as my blog was gone pple searched me and found out you were the reason behind this. But as you keep hating on me. Let me tell you I am kind but don’t mistake that for me being a coward.

I am not into insulting others and I don’t care much if you insult me. BUT don’t YOU DARE touch my dear followers. Insulting ain’t hard. Let me try: The only rat here is you hiding in your hole as an anon. I went and compared your writing with this ask and previous hate asks. And it was you~ Good for you~ the sewers smell just like your filthy mouth spilling sh*t left and right. So on brand. However, I know who you are @hobisbeautifulass Hi ^^

Me racist? HAHAHAHAH you truly know NOTHING about me nor my ex-blog’s message. It was a place when you were welcomed no matter your skin color, religion, gender ... proof? well it got deleted thanks to you. but ask around this time and search for who reblogged my posts as they were always the top of the tags (even if I don’t trust how bad you are at research). I supported the BLM movement and still do and will always do but I did so veeery early without anyone telling me. Not for the notes but because of my humanity. I wished my dear followers’ happy holidays no matter their religions. And never cared about those things. Why judge someone on something based on religion or how they were born. As for the LGBTQ+ community, I was always and will always be there for love being love. I talked about mental health and opened venting nights. I helped left and right and when I was receiving hate because of people like you spitting lies about me. What did I do? Did I go online and called people bad? No. I looked back at myself and asked myself if I did anything wrong. I tried to educate myself and apologized sincerely when I had to. I read books and watched documentaries to learn how to become a better human. AND never repeated a mistake twice. You tend to forget that our cultures are different and sometimes you grow up to see some things as normal when they are not. This is not an excuse tho, so I always believed that I was lacking and if someone had something to say against me, there is a chance they are right and just in case I should reflect on myself. But for your case it was pure nonsense. ME? a stalker? how can I stalk when I have social anxiety and at that time couldn’t even leave my room? I am even afraid of taking public transportations and just the other days I was crying from joy when I took a taxi alone. they said I was in Japan stalking Jimin and Jungkook and took a pic when I was NEVER EVER was on that land. You put me on the same list as people who bought info about BTS’ flights to be on the same plane as them? I was stalked before and let me tell you it ain’t cute and fun. I am even scared of the idea of being followed. that’s why I never shared openly my age, country, or anything about me on my blog. that’s why I have no personal social media to this day and that’s why making my ex-blog was some sort of miracle in my life. 

Silent? yes I was silent when I received hate and didn’t even vent to my dear followers or pointed fingers. Why? because I thought as my day was hell I shouldn’t make anyone’s day worse. I was worried about my dear followers with mental illnesses being triggered. I tried to take my life so many times I lost count but I still came here and smiled. It was my safe place and you took it away. Yet, I should pity you? You hated on me first for no reason and you know it deep inside but right now you are trying to convince yourself that you are the angel and feel no guilt. Compared to you. I pointed fingers at no one and didn’t name you when my blog was gone. Why? because compared to you, I thought you will not be able to manage the hate and what was done .. I didn’t want you to suffer the same way I did when you are the one who made me suffer the most the past couple of days. But the kind Mimi is someone you will never remember because you dared touch the friends I love and calling them names. I don’t mind people insulting me but don’t you dare touch my people. I know myself best. My dear friends/followers know me best. I thought ... I could leave without this mess but you keep barking in my ask box and it’s annoying. I left this backup account just to talk to my friends and yet you are here to ruin things again? I should stop being kind to the ones who deserve non of it. I ignored you when I had so many followers and you went silent too because you were scared of me. But as soon as I lost my blog because of you, you went, edited and then reblogged that stalker post. How can I be a stalker? do you even know the definition of a stalker? do you even know shame? well .. I don’t think so.. you said it yourself. You are NOT ashamed (and you reblogged that so many time lol). 

Death threats? this is no competition but thanks to people like you I have been there and wish no one to be there not even you. The only difference is that you almost killed me for real. You were not the sole reason? Great job walking away from you beloved word: RESPONSIBILITY. And I didn’t get just anon hate, I got literal tagging by people like you, DMs, and people pointing guns at me. That’s why I didn’t mention you. I was worried about the one who took away what I worked for for 4 YEARS. I was more sad and concerned about the ARMY fandom here. Do you know how many rely on my updates? do you know how many people said I helped them? do you know any of that? do you think 200k people were “rats”? Do you think if I did and say wrong thing I will not be questioned by those people. I always told my dear followers: “friends, if I do or say anything wrong or share anything that hurts anyone please tell me. I am willing to learn from everyone.” But what did you know? what did you do? Well ..  guess you love notes? As the most notes you ever got and the most attention was when talking about me? 

Love how you talk about fetishing when my blog was what people call “family friendly”. I also like BTS. I love them for their music, talent, personalities and the happiness they give me. I also enjoy BTS’ bond and love their interactions. I posted content of all kinds of interactions JM X JK, JK X V, V X JIN, JIN X SG, SG X JH, JH X RM, RM X JM ... If you are calling this fetishing asian men just because I scream over BTS as a fan and love their bonb. Then aren’t you against the idea of being an ARMY? I was a clear OT7 and you were told that you weren’t right: 

 Then you answered this without even explaining the nonsense about me: 

idk .. I am trying to find sense in your nonsense so .. wait wait let me look at the definition of fetishism first. 

Fetishism /ˈfɛtɪʃɪz(ə)m/ noun: a form of sexual behavior in which gratification is linked to an abnormal degree to a particular object, activity, part of the body, etc.

Then .. judging from your URL alone hmmm ... cute. I won’t even talk about the SMUT you write that is full of kinks and fetishism. Well I have no problem with fan fiction but the irony you spit is out of this world.

Also, I made money out of mimibtsghost? HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAH no lil one. I worked day and night for FREE. At some point when BT21 just came out and there were no products on AMAZON or anywhere but S.Korea, someone reached out to me to offer 20% off or something for my dear followers. When they asked what I wanted I said what about international giveaways for my dear followers. Basically, made gifs, found content, updates, analysis, edits, and so on for free. Again, w-wait .. Aren’t you the one asking for commissions? Well .. It’s not wrong. But again THE irony. 

So, I went to see that post you made about me with “PROOF” and it was just another person who was salty as I got them blocked I can’t even recall who they were but oh well. Their arguments according to YOU and many should be taken as FACTS just because they said them?  You said HERE that your first comeback was MOST:7 that came in just last year (2020) SO what the hell do YOU know about what happened years before you came when all the proof you pointed at where baseless without any backing?

Let’s see this so wise person you used to delete my blog and what I have done ^^

The gifs: There is a story to this. The first week I came to Tumblr, It was my first time on this site and the first time I share anything. I shared some content and my analysis had a lot of notes for a small creator that started just a week ago. But I made a mistake, I found a gif and posted it while crediting the gif maker. At the time I had NO idea it was wrong. I logged off and after 5 hours I log in and there was a WAR for that ONE gif. The big blog had me blocked and her friend was telling me to take it off. As soon as the person told me I did IMMEDIATELY and apologized againa and again and told them to tell the original gif maker to deblock me as I want to apologize directly and that they can block me after that. They did and I apologized but they just kept insulting me. Of course it was MY mistake and that’s why I apologized. But for them. for a mere gif (yes I say a mere gif because I made so many gifs and they were used on all platforms but I never thought it was necessary to hate that much on someone like they did to me). That blog was big and had big blog mutuals. Thanks to that, I became someone you do NOT become mutuals with but block and never reblog content from. Without any big mutuals. Without any shoutouts. Only my love for BTS, my dear followers’ support and my hard work.. My blog, became bigger and FAST (I got 10k in less than 6 months after I started) and that brought loads of jealousy and thus more rumors. Even if, I apologized and since then made my own gifs. And I made SO many gifsets that I can’t remember how many there were. What I can recall is at some point I made them daily and many times a day.

Ships Jikook? I posted content of ALL the members interactions. I was here at a time where Jikook stans and Taekook stans where always fighting. BUT I posted about both and even made so many posts to encourage loving all the members and all the interactions. I also used the tags solely used for shipping with other big tags to show that BTS’ interactions are all important and their bond is beutiful. That our fandom shouldn’t hate on a member just because they are not part of a ship we like. And wait .. even if I shipped Jikook? I got called ALL those names by someone who ship the members with readers and write sexual scenes? Like, wait ... I am truly confused. Like, write fanfic and do all you want as long as you hurt no one I guess but why am I getting hurt for doing non of it? Like according to you, the person you should be cancelling is yourself?! I am also not into cancel culture like you so hahah whatever.

Posted stalker pics: well wow the story changes each time. Next thing you will hear that I was the one holding a camera for a member in a Vlive lol. Let me teach you about this update thing I was doing. I follow accounts I trust and that’s how we get info circulating fast. I always do reasearch but sometimes mistakes are made. For example when lately people shared pictures of BTS leaving their virtual concerts and schedules. There was a watermark of a news outlet. Normally we trust those but only later we realized that those people stalked BTS. You clearly can’t know it all. But I still didn’t share many pics related to many events (I will not name those as pple can search them even now because some pple never deleted those). And all big accounts shared many pics then deleted later. This happens all the time but it happened like ONCE for me. However, I am called a stalker for that? 

When Jonghyun passed away ... I don’t even wanna recall that night as the memories just ... when that happened I posted about it and send my condolescences. that post had over 10k notes and was at the top the tag. Why did I do that? I was devastated. Yes, many were but I will talk about me rn: I was suicidal the days before that and one of the songs that I listened to when I was broken where by him. I has been in the kpop world since 2006. And learned about his group since their debut with ‘Replay’. I was never a stan but I still knew of many groups and listened to all the songs I liked. I was very sad when he was gone and ANGRY mostly. Why is this angel leaving? Why is someone like me still here? Why did I not leave instead of him? How much did he suffer? And in the midst I posted a post from twitter that stated how agencies usually put down pple with mental illiness and hide it in the industry. Yes, that was important but NOT at that time. I shouldn’t have posted that and I realized after 5 min of doing so that it was WRONG. So I deleted it FAST but it kept being reblogged and I kept getting hate and people telling me: “Go kill yourself”... the sad part is that I almost did as my answer was “true ... why am I still here?” I apologized and logged off then to this day won’t forget crying at 3 AM while walking outside next to my dad. I was outside as I couldn’t breathe anymore and the idea of seeing the walls of my room was hell. I cried and cried and the teary eyes that my father looked at me with are something I am ashamed of to this day. To add one more thing while I am spilling the beans. I hate learning about someone dying. My grandma passed away sometime before that and it was so shocking to me. and some people came and told me when I was mourning her: Go follow that bitch of grandmother of yours. And for what? At that moment I didn’t think I would live to see the next year but I went to therapy and took medecine that was hurting and made me shake all day just to turn somewhat sane. No one knew tho ... I smiled all day and cried all night.. Even on the blog I fought no one of the ones who hated me. I just blocked them but even that was an insult to them?

Again, you said no one should defend me. Yet, you were ready to fight whoever touched anyone around you. What about changing your URL to beautifulassirony

Also THE hypocrisy. If you are sorry then why are you answering an ask of someone isulting someone you want to apologize to? Just make a post wher you apologize or ignore it from the start?

One more thing but surely not the last. You said you were good with research which you are NOT. So, let me show you what an OG detective ARMY can do. But first, as I was scrolling I saw some of your “work” (let’s not even talk about those gifs) and I am just giving my point of view here: I hate how you painted Namjoon as this horny-idiotic-make-dog. Like I get it it’s a fanfic or Namjoon as a dad but ... Namjoon is such a smart man who is very respectful and ofc he is a human with needs like many but what the hell is this way of portraying a character? Also a character is not cool, amazing, and a strong woman just because they curse and belittle their partner. 

Oh well, only you kept reblogging that as it show 36 reblogs when only 33 as still there when I looked and out of those 13 reblogs are yours? (you might have reblogged it more) but again some people might have liked ... people have different taste ... so ... whatever. 

Let’s continue, shall we ^^. You said you were the victim here when I was the one getting robbed right? How can I believe someone who reblogged the post below and was proud calling themselves an abomination or how the Oxford dictionary defines it:  a thing that causes disgust or loathing. For once you weren’t wrong.

What can you expect from someone who has the “I am not like others” kinda mentality while stating relatable things that everyone goes through?

This is getting pretty long. So to sum this up. You are now telling others that hate is NOt ok and that they should be ashamed of themselves when you yourself is not ashamed of hating on me?

I am not the type that sends anon hate. I might ignore some barking but the past days you came and bite me hard. I face the ones I have to face without fear. I know I am not the bad guy here and I don’t care much what you think about me. Even BTS got haters. This says a lot. BUT do NOT dare talk badely of my dear friends/followers. You said you do research well? Start by deleting the post below that was originally by ME from your blog ... oh how meticulous you are. From your baseless receipts to your twisted logic. Indeed people on the internet can say anything and it will be FACTS. You painted me as the devil and painted yourself as this researcher? What’s next you receiving a Phd in ‘pity me’ after your MBA in lies and irony? Whatever~ 

Whaaatever~ Karma will have upcoming talks with you. No need for you to apologize. I never cared about you and you only got attention using me. But I am not here anymore how will you get that blog running now? Are you gonna add me in a fanfic next? No need for you to send me my appearance fee when you do so~ And no need for you to apologize to me just apologize to you conscience if you have any left.  As for me @hobisbeautifulass​ you are just someone I will forget soon anyway~~ 

And because according to what you said HERE when you described the things you hate about people and I thought that was VERY close to how you treated me. Thus, you might really not stand yourself rn.

Do.Not.Worry. BTS are starting the Love Myself campaign again and just in time for you to jump in (you are good at jumping to conclusions about me so I won’t worry about you). I know you don’t like me or my friends but be sure to love yourself at least ^^ 

You are a Hobi stan? Then learn from Hobi to share some sunshine not bring the storm. Have a good day~

[hellomynameisbisexual]

I’d go so far as to say that the nomination probably saved the site, in fact. For those who need a little background: despite being a small voluntary project the site was nominated for the 2014 Publication of the Year award by Stonewall, the UK’s largest LGBT charity, just nine months after its inception. This was a landmark step in Stonewall’s positive new direction on bi issues. To the best of my knowledge, this was the first time Stonewall had specifically nominated a specifically bi publication or organisation for an award. At this point my co-founder, who was taking care of the business side of things, had recently jumped ship and I was seriously considering packing the whole thing in. I won’t lie, I was astonished to read the email.

I’d worked on a publication which won the award under my editorship a few years previously. Unlike Biscuit, however, g3 magazine – at the time one of the two leading print mags for lesbian and bi women in the UK – had an estimated readership of 140,000, had been going for eight years and boasted full-time paid office staff and regular paid freelancers. Biscuit, by contrast, was being dragged along by one weary unpaid editor and a bunch of unpaid writers who understandably, for the most part, couldn’t commit to regularly submitting work.

Little Biscuit’s enormous competition for the award consisted of Buzzfeed, Attitude.co.uk, iNewspaper and Property Week. We didn’t win – that accolade went to iNewspaper – but the nomination was nevertheless, as I say, a huge catalyst to continue with the site. I launched a crowdfunder, which finished way off target. I sold one ad space, for two months. Then nothing. I attempted in vain to recruit a sales manager but nobody wanted to work on commission. Some wonderful writers came and went. There were periods of tumbleweed when I frantically had to fill the site with my own writing, thereby completely defeating the object of providing a platform for a wide range of bi voices.

The Stonewall Award nomination persuaded me to keep going with the site

The departure of the webmaster was another blow. Thankfully by this point I had a co-editor on board – the amazing Libby – so I was persuaded to stick with it. And here we are now. I don’t actually know where the next article is coming from. That’s not a good feeling. But, apart from for Biscuit, I try not to write for free anymore myself, so I understand exactly why that is. As a freelance journo trying to make a living I’ve had to be strict with myself about that. I regularly post on the “Stop Working For Free” Facebook group and often feel a pang of misplaced guilt because I ask my writers to write for free, even though I’m working on the site for free myself, and losing valuable time I could be spending on looking for paid work.

Biscuit hasn’t exactly been a stranger to controversy, in addition to its financial and staffing issues. Its original tagline – “for girls who like girls and boys” – was considered cis-centric by some, leading to accusations that the site had some kind of trans/genderqueer*-phobic agenda. Which was amusing, as at the height of this a) we’d just had two articles about non-binary issues published and b) I was actually engaged to a genderqueer partner, a fact they were clearly unaware of. Now the site is under fire from various pansexual activists who object to the term “bisexual”. To clarify – “girl and boys” was supposed to imply a spectrum and, no, we don’t think “bi” applies only to an attraction to binary folk. The site aims the main part of its content at female-spectrum readers attracted to more than one gender because this group does have specific needs. But there is something here for EVERYONE bisexual. Anyway, it’s a shame all of this gossip was relayed secondhand, and the people in question didn’t think to confront me about it (which at least the pan activists have bothered to do). We damage our community immeasurably with these kinds of Chinese whispers.

Biscuit ed Libby, being amazing

Whilst trying to keep the site afloat, I’ve also been building on the work I started right back when I edited g3, and trying to improve bi visibility in other media outlets. I’ve recently had articles published by Cosmopolitan, SheWired, The F-Word, GayStar News and Women Make Waves and I’m constantly emailing other sites which I’ve not yet written for with bi pitches. Unfortunately, although I am over the moon to be writing for mainstream outlets such as Cosmo about bi issues, it’s been an uphill struggle trying to persuade some editors out there that they have more readers to whom bi-interest stories apply than they might think. It’s an incredibly exhausting and frustrating process.

Libby and I are doing our best with Biscuit. I can’t guarantee that I would be doing anything at all with it if Libby hadn’t arrived on the scene, so once again I would like to mention how fabulous she is. But we desperately need more writers. We need some help with site design and tech issues. We need a hand with the business and sales side of things. We can’t do it without you. And if you know any rich bisexual heiresses who read Biscuit, please do send them our way. 😉

Grant Denkinson’s story

denkinsonpanel

Grant speaks on a panel chaired by Biscuit’s Lottie at a Bi Visibility Day event

So first of all, explain a little about the activism you’re involved/have been involved in. 


“I’ve been involved with bisexual community organising for a bit over 20 years. Some has been within community: writing for and editing our national newsletter, organising events for bisexuals and helping others with their events by running workshop sessions or offering services such as 1st aid. I’ve spoken to the media about bisexuality and organised bi contingents at LGBT Pride events (sometimes just me in a bi T-shirt!). I’ve helped organise and participated in bi activist weekends and trainings. I’ve help train professionals about bisexuality. I’ve also piped up about bisexuality a lot when organising within wider LGBT and gender and sexuality and relationship diversity umbrellas. I’ve been a supportive bi person on-line and in person for other bi folks. I’ve been out and visibly bi for some time. I’ve helped fund bi activists to meet, publish and travel. I’ve funded advertising for bi events. I’ve set up companies and charities for or including bi people. I’ve personally supported other bi activists.”


What made you get involved?

“
In some ways I was looking for a way to be outside the norm and to make a difference and coming out as bi gave me something to push against. I’ve been less down on myself when feeling attacked. I’ve also found the bi community very welcoming and where I can be myself and so wanted to organise with friends and to give others a similar experience. There weren’t too many others already doing everything better than I could.”

How do you feel about the state of bi activism worldwide (esp UK and USA) at the moment?

“There have been great changes for same-sex attracted people legally and socially and these have happened quickly. Bi people have been involved with making that happen and benefit from it. We can also be hidden by gay advances or actively erased. We still have bi people not knowing many or any other local bi people, not seeing other bisexuals in the mainstream or LGT worlds and not knowing or being able to access community things with other bis. We are little represented in books or the media and people don’t know about the books and zines and magazines already available. The internet has made it easy to find like-minded people but also limited privacy and I think is really fragmented and siloed. It is hard to find bisexuals who aren’t women actors, harmful or fucked up men or women in pornography designed for straight men. We have persistent and high quality bi events but they are sparse and small.”

What’s causing you to feel disillusioned?

“I’m fed up of bi things just not happening if I don’t do them. Not everything should be in my style and voice and I shouldn’t be doing it all. I and other activists campaign for bi people to be more OK and don’t take care of ourselves enough while doing so. People are so convinced we don’t exist they don’t bother with a simple search that would find us. We have little resources while having some of the worst outcomes of any group. I don’t want to spend my entire life being the one person who reminds people about bisexuals, including our so-called allies. I’m not impressed with the problem resolution skills in our communities and while we talk about being welcoming I’m not sure we’re very effective at it. I’m fed up with mouthing the very basics and never getting into depth about bi lives and being one who supports but who is not supported. I’m all for lowering barriers but at a certain point if people don’t actively want to do bi community volunteering it won’t happen. Some people are great critics but build little.”

What do you want to say to other activists about this?

“Why are we doing this personally? I’m not sure we know. How long will we hope rather than do? Honestly, are there so few who care? Alternatively should we stop the trying to do bi stuff and either do some self-analysis, be happy to accept being what we are now as a community, chill out and just let stuff happen or give up and go and do something else instead.”

Patrick Richards-Fink’s story

085d4de So first of all, explain a little about the activism you’re involved/have been involved in.

“Mostly internet – I am a Label Warrior, a theorist and educator. Here’s how I described it on my blog: “One of the reasons that I am a bisexual activist rather than a more general queer activist is because I see every day people just like me being told they don’t belong. It doesn’t mean I don’t work on the basic issues that we all struggle against — homophobia, heterosexism, classism, out-of-control oligarchy, racism, misogyny, this list in in no particular order and is by no means comprehensive. But I have found that I can be most effective if I focus, work towards understanding the deep issues that drive the problems that affect people who identify the same way that I have ever since I started to understand who I am. I find that I’m not a community organizer type of activist or a storm the capitol with a petition in one hand and a bullhorn in the other activist — I’m much better at poring over studies and writing long wall-o’-text articles and occasionally presenting what I’ve gleaned to groups of students until my voice is so hoarse that I can barely do more than croak.” So internet, and when I was still in school, a lot of on-campus stuff. Now I’m moving into a new phase where my activism is more subtle – I’m working as a therapist, and so my social justice lens informs my treatment, especially of bi and trans people.”

What made you get involved?

“I can’t not be.”

How do you feel about the state of bi activism worldwide (esp UK and USA) at the moment?

“I feel like we made a couple strides, and every time that happens the attacks renewed. I hionestly think the constant attempts to divide the bisexual community into ‘good pansexuals’ and ‘bad bisexuals’ and ‘holy no-labels’ is the thing that’s most likely to screw us.”

What’s causing you to feel disillusioned?



“It is literally everywhere I turn – colleges redefining bisexuality on their LGBT Center pages, news articles quoting how ‘Bi=2 and pan=all therefore pan=better’, everybloodywhere I turn I see it every day. The word bi is being taken out of the names of organisations now, by the next group of up-and-comers who haven’t bothered to learn their history and understand that if you erase our past, you take away our present. Celebrities come out as No Label, wtf is that. Don’t they make kids read 1984 anymore? It’s gotten to the point now that even seeing the word pansexual in print triggers me. I’m reaching the point now that if someone really wants to be offended when all I am trying to do is welcome them on board, then I don’t have time for it.”

What do you want to say to other activists about this?

“Stay strong, and don’t give them a goddamned inch. I honestly think that the bi organizations – even, truth be told, the one I am with – are enabling this level of bullshit by attempting to be conciliatory, saying things that end up reinforcing the idea that bi and pan are separate communities. We try to be too careful not to offend anyone. Like the thing about Freddie Mercury. Gay people say ‘He was gay.’ Bi people say ‘Um, begging your pardon, good sirs and madams and gentlefolk of other genders, but Freddie was bi.’ And they respond ‘DON’T GIVE HIM A LABEL HE DIDN’T CLAIM WAAHHH WAAHHH!’ And yet… Freddie Mercury never used the label ‘gay’, but it’s OK when they do it. And he WAS bisexual by any measure you want to use. But we back down. And 2.5% of the bisexual population decides pansexual is a better word, and instead of educating them, we add ‘pan’ to our organisation names and descriptions. Now, this is clearly a dissenting view – I will always be part of a united front where my organization is concerned. But everyone knows how I feel, and I think it’s totally valid to be loyal and in dissent at the same time. Not exactly a typically American viewpoint, but everyone says I’d be a lot more at home in Britain than I am here anyway.”

[intersex-ionality]

I’m sorry for asking but I cannot seem to find any answers. I see a lot of stray anti posts complaining about hazbin hotel, and I can’t for the life of me understand them because I haven’t seen the show. I read a summary of the plot, but perhaps you could explain better. What is it and why do so many hate it (and why have I seen no fewer than 4 unique posts claiming it’s “what happens when you let billdip shippers make things”?)

Now, I was never a billdip shipper, but I suppose I can see the, like, similarity in vibes between Alastor (a demonic radio host with untold evil powers and who speaks in a 1930s radio jockey voice), and Bill.

And since antishippers hate Bill and they also hate Vivienne Medrano, the attempt to compare “billdip” to an entire original cartoon property is, I guess, a logical connection for them.

But let me be clear: there’s absolutely fuck or all that can be said to parallel the popular interpretation of billdip, in no small part because there no Dipper character, and in much larger part because of Alastor extremely rejects all romantic, sexual and even platonic advances.

Antishippers hate Hazbin Hotel because they hate the woman who came up with and spearheaded the project. They loathe Vivienne Medrano for being a successful independent artist capitalizing on the desperate need in the general viewing public for the bright colors, musical numbers, and zany antics that only animation can provide, but without the stifling restrictions of being targetted towards children. Most “adult” animation is focused on being drab or viscerally disgusting as a form of schadenfreude humour. And while children’s animation certainly fills that bright and zany niche, because it is obligated to adhere to the morality of various broadcasters, it’s often very suffocated in what it can or cannot do or say.

The aesthetic that HH/HB has created is clearly a callback to two major styles of animation: the adult-aimed slapstick of early Warner Brothers, and the long-and-lanky exaggerated flailing limbs that were popular as a design choice in low budgets (TV, off-brand film) and fandom animation in the late 2000s.

Since this style of animation is also associated heavily with fandom’s last big burst of creative and sexual freedom before the whole “no boundaries, no barriers, the search algorithms can and will put porn on every child’s dashboard” disasters of 2013-2015, some people are naturally off-put by it, because it reminds them of the time a bunch of corporate overlords decided that they should destroy their own platforms. For whatever reason (it’s the capitalism, probably), people blame individual artists for this trash fire rather than the platform holders that purposefully destroyed organization and boundaries between groups in a desperate bid for ad revenue.

Antishippers have a deep-seated reflex reaction towards hating that art style. You can see it in the hatred of HH/HB, but also in the hatred of things like, “cringey once-ler fans” and of “people who draw all the homestuck like twinks,” and "people who draw Pearl like a man” and all kinds of other places.

Additionally, Vivienne Medrano was at the centre of a few other antishipper fiascos, because her previous projects involved what they call a “pedophilic student-teacher relationship between a child and an adult.” Of course, in truth, the relationship in question is between an 18 year old student and her 19 year old student-tutor, but when have anti-shippers let facts get in their way.

Likewise, she made a living for a while taking commissions for (SFW) furry art work, and has always had a very positive relationship with the furry community (despite not being a furry herself). People upset by her success as an artist are also quick to say that she has sex with animals, “like all furries do,” because as we all know, calling queer artists sexual cirminals is Good Praxis that has Never Caused Harm /sarcasm.

In effect, Vivienne Medrano is a perfect storm of things anti-shippers hate: successful queer creators who refuse to assimilate to heteronormativity; successful creators of color who refuse to assimilate to white respectability; unrepentantly proud of her art; unafraid to engage with sexual themes in a fun rather than puritanical and hateful way; popular in the late 2000s/early 2010s; an ascended fan who was able to turn her fandom credentials into a successful professional project.

Their hatred for all of these facts about her are presented in a way that lets them feel good about lashing out at someone they dislike/are envious of. Namely, by saying that her work is an act of sexual, racial, or gendered violence, rather than, you know, fictional and fun.

HH/HB is not somehow a perfect piece of art. I have made my own discomfort with facets of it very clear. And there are flaws other than my wariness of rehabilitation themes.

Some of the sound design is overwhelming, with a few scenes bordering Johnny Test levels of excessive sound effects; in some cases the editing has clipped too much quiet-space between the presentation of a joke and its punchline; those traits combined with the lack of closed captioning can make the show very hard to process for someone like me who has difficulty with speech.

The immense budgetary constraints of the animation can sometimes be seen in framerate dips or in peculiar background details. Zoomed out shots of the cast as an ensemble are particularly identifiable as places where what would have been filler art in a higher budget production were ultimately left in because there wasn’t time or money to replace them.

The show is extremely upfront about sexuality and especially queer and professional sexuality, which can easily be off-putting to people. Conservative Fox News hosts’ extreme homophobia and violence are put on full display--for the purpose of mocking them for being enormous sacks of shit, but on display nonetheless--which can likewise be uncomfortable.

At one point you see the clearly exposed brain of a cartoon egg, which I won’t lie, makes me gag every time it happens, no matter how stylized and brief the shot. (Why! Does the egg! Have a brain inside it!!!)

But, unironically, HH/HB is the best series of adult animation I have seen in probably a decade or more. Maybe in my entire life. Prior to this, the only option for adult animation that isn’t rooted in sadism or grey-beige palettes was anime, and the design direction and acting of anime are ultimately very different than that of western slapstick.

Obviously, not every anti-shipper is so outraged because they envy the success of an artist other than themselves. But a great many are fuelled by envy, either that they aren’t the success story, or that someone they perceive as The Enemy is a success story.

This is far from the first time that anti-shippers have proudly taken the same side as anti-queer bigots and as open and avowed racists, who also hate the show (for being gay, for featuring an interracial relationship, etc). It won’t be the last. But, for all that their actions are often indistinguishable from the queerphobes and the white supremacists, their motivations are at least meaningfully distinct.

[oveliagirlhaditright]

Wish there were some Sokai pregnancy fics or new parents fics out there. I can't seem to find any on fanfictionnet or ao3. Do you have any recs?

Here’s one from AO3, that’s really good and probably right up your alley: https://www.archiveofourown.org/works/20639528.

And an old, but classic one from fanfiction (and from the former queen of SoKai, sunflowerb): https://www.fanfiction.net/s/5753933/1/Letters-from-Home (edit: although, note that Kairi miscarries in this one:().Edit: Oh! Two more from sunflowerb. https://www.fanfiction.net/s/4153395/1/Glass-Half-Full (and then this one https://www.fanfiction.net/s/4131077/1/ON-SWiTCH is its companion piece) and this one: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/4939579/1/Plus.

Another one from fanfiction (from a semi-famous author, back in the day) https://www.fanfiction.net/s/5660464/1/Fear, but be warned that it has a tragic ending: it’s highly implied that Kairi dies after giving birth to the baby:( But I still enjoyed reading it, years ago. The parts before that happened, mainly. Haha. 

...What else? Uhh, there’s this one. 

Oh. Here’s a really good old one, by Gray-Rain-Skies, who many of us oldies in the fandom loved back in the day. https://www.fanfiction.net/s/3401903/1/Fluttering-Capes-and-Secret-Identities

And this author is continuing their one SoKai lemon into this fic https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13408514/1/Island-Life, where Kairi’s pregnant and she and Sora have to deal with being parents. But it happens when they’re still teenagers/still in high school, so it has all of that kind of drama that you’d imagine.

And there used to be another good one--where Sora gets Kairi pregnant before he leaves on another adventure, and comes back years later to a daughter and Kairi is not happy with him at first (which is how she should be acting in that situation, tbh)--but I think it got deleted...

My fanfiction friend, Shadowjc32, once wrote a story about Sora and Kairi’s daughter, but I think he’s deleted a lot of his work:(

But I’m sure if you search things on Google, or perhaps even on fanfiction, “Sora and Kairi’s daughter (or “son” or “kid” instead, you might find stuff.

And while Sora and Kairi don’t have kids in this one yet https://www.archiveofourown.org/works/20297497/chapters/48117517 yet... I feel there’s a lot of foreshadowing that Kairi’s going to get pregnant. But if nothing else, Sora and Kairi talk about wanting to eventually start a family with each other and stuff. And this is just a really interesting story overall (Sora absorbs the darkness in the Black Box to save the world and Kairi--so it’s sort of a dark!Sora fic, but also not really. He’s still very Sora--and after that became the king of Kingdom Hearts, and Kairi has married him and become his queen to try and return him to the light)... but just note that there’s a lot of sexual content in it, if you’re not into that kind of thing: but the author has warnings about it on each chapter that has it, so you may be able to avoid it that way... or at least know what you’re getting into.

And while I fell behind on Shire Folk’s pretty famous “The Annals of Darkness” series https://www.fanfiction.net/s/3425579/1/The-Annals-of-Darkness-The-Beginning long ago (I read more of the original first fic than its rewrite here. And I don’t know if I’ve read much of any of the sequels), it’s prophesied in it that Sora and Kairi or Roxas and Naminé’s kid will eventually save the world for good. Whether they’ve had that kid yet... or are close to it, or ever will (maybe the prophecy was wrong or a lie), I don’t know. But they may have a kid in this... at least eventually. -shrugs-

Oh! And ParadiseAvenger writes some of that stuff. Like, here’s a SoKai lemon she wrote where Kairi’s pregnant. https://archiveofourown.org/works/693738/chapters/1275721?view_adult=true And then she also has written other stories where Kairi is unfortunately raped (ugh. I am so done with that trope in this fandom. But whatever.), and then Sora steps up and treats the kid like his own. Here are links to two of those that I can think of https://archiveofourown.org/works/709324/chapters/1310746, https://archiveofourown.org/works/1032787/chapters/2058058... though I think they actually end weirdly or tragically (usually she has happy endings). But just note that she writes some really dark and messed up things (I say with love, as I’m acquaintances with this writer), to try and draw light to some of these tragic things that happen to people:( I should also mention that a lot of her stuff is AU. Edit: And since my OCd won’t leave me alone if I don’t post this https://www.archiveofourown.org/works/18773989/chapters/44539129, ParadiseAvenger also wrote that one... where Kairi is forced into a brothel(:() and her captors make her unable to have kids (using dark magic); and once Sora and Riku save her, Sora’s sad for Kairi that they took that choice away from her. But at the end, her pure Light gets rid of the spell and she’s able to have kids again. The fic ends before she does or anything, but this story at least has them talking about kids (if you’re that desperate for SoKai + kids stuff), amidst all the bad things these poor babies go through.

This is all I can think of off the top of my head right now. But I know a lot of the SoKai fandom has talked about wanting to write domestic SoKai with kids lately, so maybe even more will pop up soon:)

I know I’ve had a headcanon about a SoKai daughter for, like, eighteen years now. Maybe I should finally write it...

Edit 2: And this one by PhoenixDowner https://www.archiveofourown.org/works/17243366/chapters/40550033 at least has them thinking that they want kids eventually, but not quite yet. It’s a sequel to her “Dear Sora/Those Who Dreamed” series, that she wrote before KHIII--trying to predict it--that’s now ended up an AU. You can read this whole oneshot without reading all of that. All you really need to know is that Sora died instead of Kairi (and Kairi and some of the others were in the X-Blade that Master Xehanort used to kill him)... before Sora received Kingdom Hearts’ power, became a god and used his powers to make the world better, before deciding to become human again to be with Kairi in particular.

Edit 3: And it looks like Xion92 is having SoKai kids stuff in their fic “The Red-Headed Prince”? Here’s a pic they drew about it at least. https://xion92.tumblr.com/post/616398709375303680/another-drawing-from-my-fan-fiction-the. And I know chachacharlieco from here draws a lot of SoKai family stuff for their Yakuza AU in particular. Here’s another art with them as a baby: https://www.deviantart.com/tenchufreak/art/commission-SoKai-Family-205787927

Edit 4: And I just found this fic last night. https://www.tumblr.com/search/sokai/recent/blog/leather-and-lace-lookbook

Edit 5: And this one has no kids or no kid talk, tbh, but it’s some domestic royal SoKai that you might like. https://www.fanfiction.net/s/3423111/1/Just-Like-That

Edit 6: And this text post https://oveliagirlhaditright.tumblr.com/post/616251158947823616#notes.

And someone on here wrote Stella as SoKai’s daughter and Yozora as Riku and Nami’s, etc. But I don’t know where it is.

Edit 7: And there’s another one that I wish I had the link to still... so if anyone reading this knows it, let me know. It’s SoRiKai, though (but actually balanced well on all three sides, instead of being the SoRiku show with Kairi on the side). Where our heroes have finally defeated all the Big Bads and now they just have to politic because Kairi’s the princess of Radiant Garden and has to rule their now. And the people hate their polyamorous relationship... and that Kairi was with Riku at all, when they heard what he did in KHI. The people threatened to literally tear them apart... and SRK went to Mickey for help, but he said he couldn’t help them since his hands were tied and he had to play the game. This made Sora go crazy, and he killed Mickey (as ridiculous as it sounds--and it was--the fic was written so well, I could suspend my disbelief) and was attacking the town people... and Riku and Kairi had to use their combined powers to lock him away. But during this time, Kairi had become pregnant with Sora’s child... and Sora remained in stasis for years, and Riku and Kairi had to rule as King and Queen (who now the people loved for protecting them from the “evil Sora”) and raise Sora and Kairi’s son together... But I think Kairi eventually dies in her grief. And years later, when SoKai’s kid is a teen with his own Keyblade, he wanders his castle and finds the legendary Keyblade wielder in the basement and accidentally releases him. Sora doesn’t know he’s his son at first, and that that much time has passed, but (even though he wishes they had just killed him), I think he finds peace in knowing he can teach his son now, be with Riku (perhaps), and probably live on and do what Kairi would have wanted him to. The story actually starts out with the prince finding the Keyblade wielder (that you don’t know is Sora at first), and goes back and forth between present and past until you get it all figured out... and it ends in present, of course. It’s actually written really well.

Edit: And I just wrote one where Kairi gets pregnant. https://www.archiveofourown.org/works/24226009

[scottedwardfowler]

Hey guys! In this post I’m to talk about the top three websites I’ve personally use to get work as a freelance video editor. If you’re just starting out, and you’re part time or on a budget, I’ve got a few places you can check out that won’t break the bank.

This post is a response to a question that I got on my last video, “How to Get Started Editing In Premiere.” Which you can find on my youtube channel here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhj-GmQTgjs&t=1s

The question came from Izabela who asked, “Id love a video about getting started on becoming a freelance editor. What are the best freelancing websites to apply for jobs, tips, and suggestions for anybody who’s starting out. Thank you so much, great video!” 

I think that’s a really good one to ask, a lot of people (including myself) when they’re first starting out struggle with how and where do we find work.

There’s actually tons of freelancing sites online that you can search for and try out. So here’s a couple of Honorable mentions:

Guru & Freelancer - Best suited for beginner freelancers on a budget

There’s a Low cost to get started and bid on jobs, with a decent amount of various editing jobs available. I haven’t used them as much, because when I was first starting out, I signed up for a bunch of freelancing websites, and I ended up having more luck landing gigs with these other sites first, so the first one is

Fiverr - is a website that’s normally Best for one time, or short term gigs. It has it’s advantages of being easy to sign up and start using, because Unlike other freelance sites, you Don’t have to bid for clients. After some time, and you’re established, Fiverr pushes clients to you by listing your profile near the top of searches. And Fiverr makes tipping very easy, so you can make extra money on top of what you earned for the gig.

However the cons are that Fiverr takes a 20% Commission, and Most gigs are low pay. So that 20 percent really eats into your profits. You get to set your rates, and what kind of editing jobs you can offer and what the turn around time would be. However, there’s a strict policy on no contact outside of Fiverr, so you can’t make a deal with a client outside of the platform and cut Fiverr out of their commission. 

Now we come to UpWork, which is the site I’ve had the most success with. It’s the Most popular freelance site, and offers high quality gigs, as well as not so high quality. It sort of ranges all over the place. But once you’ve been on the platform long enough, you can sort of get an idea of what great job postings are before you even bid on them. I like to think of Upwork as a long term lead genitor, because I have several clients I met years ago who I still work with today. And it all started with one project. It can be difficult to get that first client however, because it is very competitive but once you do, it gets much easier to land future clients. 

You also have the the Flexibility of what kind of projects you can do, such as getting paid hourly vs project based. The negatives of UpWork are that it’s kind of Expensive to get started, you can sign up for free, but in order to bid on any jobs it costs 15 cents per credit. And most jobs postings range from 4-6 credits. So if you were to bid on a ton of jobs, that 15 cents starts to add up. Also, Upwork has a complex Commission rate, I’m not going to go too deep into it but essentially it’s 20% for first 500 you make per client. And roughly 10 percent after that first 500. And that’s per client, so every time you land a new client, UpWork takes 20 percent of your earnings on the first 500 dollars. 

Also, when it comes to disputes between freelancers and clients, Upwork almost always sides with the clients. So I would recommend doing hourly gigs, because typically hourly gigs tend to be more long term and Upwork has hour tracking features built into the platform that make it easier to prove disputes between yourself and a client over work done. 

This next one may surprise you, I’ve also landed some great clients from Craigslist. The cool thing out craigslist, is that the jobs are local to where you live. So you can meet the client face to face and discuss the job in detail at that point. Meeting in personal and developing relationships, really drives what the ultimate goal is which is to create long term client relationships. Plus, there’s no bidding on gigs, or commission rates getting in the way. You look for gigs on the site, reply to a posting, and hopefully you can connect with some great people. 

Now, on the flip side Craigslist does have a sketchy reputation for being a place where weirdos hang out so you have to be on guard there. Also, there’s no gig protection here so if a client stiffs you after you’ve done the job for them, that’s totally on you. There are things you can do such as ask for half of the project payment upfront, or even a quarter of it to protect some of your costs. But it’s definitely a risk you take. The last negative, is that it’s more of a time commitment to drive out and meet a potential client somewhere. If it doesn’t work out on a place like UpWork or Fiverr, oh well, you never had to leave your house. So those are some things to be aware of.

The thing about freelancing is, not everyone is doing it full time. Some may freelance as a part time- side hustle, others might be doing some every once in awhile as a hobby. And not everyone has the same budget in order to get started freelancing. So I understand that everyone’s situation is different, but I just wanted to list out my top three sites that I’ve personally used to get clients. There’s a lot more information I could deep dive into on each site, and Ill probably do that in future videos, so stay tuned for that, But I think those sites I mentioned are definitely a great place to start, if you’re looking to get into freelance video editing.

Ok so the next part of Izabela's question was about what tips and suggestions I have for getting started with freelancing. I think a great place to start is trying to have an understanding of what it takes to build a business. No one knows what it’s like to build a business when they’re first starting out, so you have to seek out sources and people who do have that information And I know it’s weird, especially when you’re first starting out, to think of yourself as a business. But that’s the reality, you have to go clients and try and sell yourself and your services in order to get jobs. 

So I think a good way of becoming more confident in building your freelancing business is to actively learn as much as you can from different sources. So the fact that you’re here watching my video, is a great thing already. I’m always trying to learn what other people’s strategies are, and how they became successful so that I can pick up a few things here and there to apply to my own business. 

In fact I recently just finished reading a book called “Three Simple Steps”, it’s by  Trevor Blake. And I think it’s a really good book to inspire people who are just starting out freelancing or creating their own business. Ill just quickly read the description blurb from amazon:

“Despite stock market crashes, dot-com busts, and the specter of recession, the author started a virtual company from home, using a few thousand dollars of his savings. A few years later, without ever hiring an employee or leaving his home office, he sold it for more than $100 million. As the economy slipped into another free fall, he did this again with a company in a different field. He accomplished this through no particular genius. Rather, he studied the habits of the many successful men and women who preceded him, and developed three simple rules that, if followed diligently, virtually ensure success. Using them first to escape poverty, then to achieve a life of adventures, he finally turned them toward financial independence...

Written in a straightforward and no-nonsense style, Three Simple Steps shows you how to take back control of your destiny and reshape your mind for increased creativity, serenity and achievement. While building on the wisdom of great thinkers and accomplished individuals from East and West, Three Simple Steps isn't a new age text or guide to esoteric fulfillment. Rather, it's a practical guide to real-life achievement by a pragmatic businessman who attributes his incredible successes to these very simple ideas. Three Simple Steps, a 2013 Small Business Book Awards winner, is a must-read guide for everyone who wants to achieve more, live better and be happier.”

The three simple steps in case you were wondering is, number one is to spend more time thinking positively about the things you do want, rather than thinking about the things you don’t want. For example, in our case as freelancers, no one likes having to bid for jobs or chase down clients, you could reframe that as the more jobs I bid for the better practice Ill have at understanding what clients want.

Second, spend 20 minutes a day (preferably in the morning) in quiet time by yourself so you can clear your mind and from that, creativity and inspiration for your business can spring from it. 

Third, the author talks about setting intentions rather than goals. The difference as the author describes it, as an intention is a goal but with the doubt of it’s attainment removed. So as freelancers, a goal might be I hope to make enough money this year to quit my regular job. An intention is, I know will make enough money this year to quit my regular job. You have to set your mindset to that intention everyday. Which is hard, but in the end that’s what will make it rewarding. 

I would highly recommend this book, I found it be really insightful about starting and growing a business from the ground up. But I will say, the first couple of chapters were kind of slow because they were mostly about the author's life journey, which did tie into the rest of the book in the later chapters. But it gets into some really great stuff after the first few chapters. 

So if you’re interested in that book, I’ll leave a link below that you can check out. And that about does it for today’s video, let me know in the comments below what freelancing sites you guys use or prefer the most? I’d love to get a comment thread going, so we can all help each other out on where and how to get jobs as freelancers.  Three Simple Steps (Book): Amazon - https://amzn.to/3bS5uao (affiliate)

[eye-of-enigmatic-thought]

2019, a retrospective to this year and decade

Long post in-comin’

I’m gonna be honest, I’m not really sure how to describe this year and by extension, this decade, I guess that’s to be expected in a way, so many things can happen in 365 or more days to the point of a information overload, but I suppose the best way to describe this year was ‘complicated yet also stale’. Not much happened in the beginning aside from therapy and support group appointments, which were pleasant albeit I don’t remember much from them aside from drawings I’ve done that I showed to the other members, nothing of significance happened that I can recall during the middle of the year, and around near the end I took part in art therapy groups that I managed to make a few friends out of (though I sadly don’t chat with them often), at September I was beginning to try and get into college after being out of education for a year and managed to enrol (though court issues made me miss the first five weeks that I had to quickly catch up to), most of my memories of this year actually came from college.

College has been going good, so far! I have been learning a lot and my tutors are very kind, of course it can get stressful due to the long days I have and also due to some of my more rowdier peers, but I’ve managed to also befriend a few others that I am very happy to have met. Currently I’m in my break and I will use it to advantage as much as I can to post as much art as I can.

Also, I’ve just recently been exploring my gender, and well, I’m now transmasc rather than a demigirl, I still go by whatever pronoun and still see myself as nonbinary, but I am more masculine leaning now? I guess I might be a ‘demiboy’ but I still feel a bit more ‘fluid’ than that, sooo... masculine leaning demifluid? I dunno, but overall I’m not a girl anymore! :D

Rebirth is still being rewritten, admittedly I haven’t been focusing entirely on it due to some things in the way, but some of that is now gone so really my only enemy is my lack of motivation and poor time management, but even times where I’m not writing and/or editing the rewrite I’m still thinking of how I want certain scenes to go or what things I want the characters to say, so it’s still being worked on! I do feel incredibly bad that I haven’t been doing a lot of my Undertale-related stuff lately or even attempting to at least finish off the HS’ blog’s first arc (I at LEAST wanna finish that arc before I go on a official hiatus to fully know what to do with it), but you can rest assured that I have NOT forgotten about it and I do want to continue on with it, I guess that’s probably one of my goals for 2020, ‘more Undertale fanart’, yes, good, very good, mwahahahaha.

And now, a little something more personal, mostly in regards to this decade as a whole. Warning for mentions and discussions of pedophilia, bullying, suicide, and trauma for the next three or so paragraphs.

(Warning starts here)

My memories from around the beginning of this decade are hazy, but very notable, I’m not going to sugarcoat it by saying that from 2010-2013 were some of my worst years of my life, I was only 11-14 around this time, but when I wasn’t going through awful bullying at school that the teachers did nothing about, I would come back home to a toxic friend circle on DeviantArt that was filled with constant irrelevant drama and some REALLY creepy adults that would do smut rps with the minors in our group. Thankfully I never was a victim of this due to mostly staying in my corner and didn’t interact with others much, but I saw it happen to many of the other minors in said group, it left me disturbed but I rationalised it by thinking it was just some ‘teenager thing’ that I was too young for (because I was a little cretin that lied about my age and said I was 13 when I was really 11 when I first signed up haha), it was only when I was late into being 17 I realised ‘Oh my god the people who I called my friends and RP’d with were pedophiles and groomed the other minors what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck’. 

This whole shitty ordeal with that dA friend circle and the constant bullying I went through in secondary school were so bad that it literally led me to have a suicide attempt at the age of 13, I survived of course, and I’m really glad I did, because I wouldn’t have met friends that through them I would manage to get away and abandon the old dA group because ‘fuck you guys I have BETTER FRIENDS NOW!’ Unfortunately all of that dA friend circle are now deactivated or are no longer active with all the evidence deleted so there’s no use making a callout or name dropping any of them or even searching for the other minors in attempt to rekindle with them (and I don’t think my heart would be able to handle it in that regard...), but I did find out that one of them who was a pedophile apologist at one point commissioned a ton of Darkrai pregnancy porn with one of it being fucking mpreg, so I can at least get a laugh from that shit, doubt she’s reading this but if you are... 

You may be gone, but your darkrai mpreg porn will live on FOREVER... Forever for ME to laugh at!!! >8DDD  So anyway get rekt and suck my non-existent dick you fucking creep.

(Warning ends here)

Phew alright, all that nasty stuff out of the way...   2014 was where things began to improve, I had moved secondary schools and I switched from a mainstream to a specialist school for other autistic children and I found the people who would become my closest friends, through one of them I also got a tumblr blog, and when Undertale came around (so late 2015 to around 2016 when the fandom was most active), through it’s fandom I managed to gain really kind and lovely friends that I love dearly, it’s somewhat strange to me, in the beginning since childhood I never had any close friends and the only ‘close’ ones I had were ones that either kept me around out of pity (because I was a awkward autistic kid), kept me around to constantly bully and push my buttons, or (in this case with the dA friend circle) were potential predators that I thankfully was never THAT close to, and actual close ones I lost contact with too quickly, to this day I’m so thankful for these friends and I dunno if they’d be comfortable with me namedropping them here, but if you’re reading this, you know who you are <333.

I of course had rough patches throughout the years, recovery from my traumas wasn’t easy and I was constantly having issues with pretty much everything from my mental health problems to environmental factors that were out of my control, I’m not going to go into detail on this one because this post is long enough already, but I am much better now than how I was when I was younger, I still have a long way to go, but I have definitely improved and I hope I can still improve, hell, I’ve even improved my art! Wanna see an example?

I drew this back in 2011 on mspaint on a mouse! Yeah! Can you believe that? Whilst to me my art right now isn’t exactly ‘artist goals’ I have definitely improved a lot since!! And I’ll keep on improving forever because that’s what this decade was like anyway! I’m not sure what the future holds, but I want to set these goals for next year:

Create more digital art Finish my unfinished short comic ideas and parodies Continue to chip away at Rebirth’s rewrite and finish Hissterical Scientist’s first arc. Work on my original stuff Continue to improve my mental health Get proper time management skills Learn to do commissions (I be gettin munz lol) Thank you to all my friends and family who have helped support me and stuck by me throughout all these years, I am so happy I get to spend a life with you and I hope we’ll continue to go through the future together, you mean so much to me and I can’t say thank you enough. Thank you to any followers who have sticked by me for so long and if you’re new, I hope we’ll make memories together! 

Onward and upward, and leave behind the pain! <3

[ryukoishida]

QZGS Rarepair Week 2018 | Day 4: Cooking | In which HST and ZZK are popular food vloggers.

QZGS Rarepair Week 2018 | Day 4: cooking / thunderstorm / battlefield

@qzgsrarepairweek

Title: Of Dumplings and Secret Admirers Fandom: The King’s Avatar / Quan Zhi Gao Shou Character(s)/Pairing(s): Zhou Zekai/Huang Shaotian (featuring Jiang Botao) Summary: In which the two food vloggers bond over their love of dumplings. Rating: PG A/N: Just a quick note – because there are so many types of “dumplings” in China, I will be using the Chinese names/pinyin to differentiate them! I’m craving xiao long bao now, btw. Damn.

Writing Commission | Editing & Translation Services

---

“Speaking of dumplings, does anyone know the origin of this tasty, tasty food? No? Well, let me tell you this heart-warming story!” the young man in the video was talking with such enthusiasm that it was emanating from the brightness of his eyes and his excited hand gestures.

The video then shifted to a short animation of stilled drawings as he continued with the story.

“According to legend, during the end of Eastern Han dynasty, many people were sick and dying of epidemics, but there was a brilliant doctor named Zhang Zhongjing, who not only had excellent medical skills but also treated both the poor and the rich. So anyway, after he retired and returned to his hometown, he saw that many of the townsfolks were suffering from starvation and the cold, even their ears had become frozen and infected. That sounds absolutely nasty, doesn’t it? In order to treat them, he had his assistants cook a big pot of soup made with lamb meat, chili peppers, and medicinal herbs that helped deter cold. The cooked ingredients were then chopped up, wrapped with dough shaping them like ears, called “jiao er” — or “delicate ear”, and were cooked once more. After people ate them, their bodies quickly heated up, their blood circulation became more efficient, and their ears instantly felt warmer. And after eating these “jiao er” for a while, their infected ears were healed! Isn’t that amazing?”

The camera focused on the young man again, who now had a plate of what seemed to be boiled jiao zi in one of his hands. He carefully used a pair of chopsticks to pick up a dumpling, cooked to perfection with its delicate, ivory outer layer, and dipped it into red vinegar before taking a bite.

Some of the juices ran down the corner of his mouth, which he quickly wiped clean with the pad of his thumb while trying not to laugh.

“Mmn, that is a damn good dumpling,” he nodded appreciatively after eating the rest of that dumpling and continued with a sunny smile, “so for the next… hmm… few weeks, I’ll be making a series of videos completely focused on the best variations of dumplings that are popular in different parts of China, including several recipes and restaurant recommendations! I hope you’ll all be able to join me on this soulful dumpling-searching adventure! And remember: The Q&A live stream will take place tomorrow at 8 p.m., so have your questions all ready to go, and I’ll try to answer them as best as I can. Bye for now!”  

Just as he did every time he finished watching Troubling Rain’s videos, Zhou Zekai clicked the ‘Like’ button at the bottom of the screen the moment the video ended and leaned back against his chair with a soft sigh.

“Xiao Zhou, you’re watching Troubling Rain’s channel again?” Jiang Botao asked from behind and leaned in a little to see the content of Zhou Zekai’s screen.

“Mn,” Zhou Zekai nodded once, probably not realizing that there was a hint of a smile hidden in the curved corner of his lips on his usually impassive face.

Though Jiang Botao saw the subtle expression, he knew better than to bring it up. After all, he and Zhou Zekai had been childhood friends since elementary school; now they attended the same university — though in different faculties — and rented an apartment complex together.

The smile, however, quickly disappeared as Zhou Zekai suddenly remembered something, and he turned his panic-stricken gaze towards his friend to speak with a soft but urgent tone, “Jiang, his Q&A tomorrow.”

“Ah, you said you have a group project tomorrow evening, right? Is the Q&A session happening around the same time?” Jiang Botao immediately comprehended Zhou Zekai’s concern despite the minimal number of words the dark-haired young man had spoken.

Ever since they were young, the adults had called Jiang Botao’s ability to understand Zhou Zekai’s intentions when others around him could barely grasp what the quiet-spoken boy meant “mindreading” when really, Jiang Botao just happened to be a person who paid special attention to other’s facial expressions and body language.

And perhaps there was something to be said for growing up together, but Jiang Botao never had any issues getting along with Zhou Zekai, who, to someone who’d never interacted with the boy, might appeared to be unfriendly, stuck-up, or even downright hostile just because of his placid nature and sparse explicit display of emotions.

When Zhou Zekai nodded in the affirmative, Jiang Botao basically knew what his friend wanted to ask of him, and so he continued with a knowing smile, “want me to record it for you?”

“Please,” Zhou Zekai’s gaze could only be described as grateful.

“As long as I get to keep the leftovers of whatever you’re making for your next video. It’s matcha green tea cookies, right?”

Zhou Zekai nodded again.

“Do you still need help with filming your next video, then? I have some time now, but I need to head out in two hours and won’t be back ‘til late tonight.” Other than best friend, schoolmate, and roommate, Jiang Botao was also Zhou Zekai’s voluntary cameraman for his vlogs.

Speaking of his vlogs and channel, one might think it strange that a quiet man like Zhou Zekai — though having been voted the handsomest male student in their university’s campus for three years straight — would want to be in front of the camera and be the focus of attention. It all started with Jiang Botao’s casual request that one time: one of his female friends wanted to learn how to make the strawberry cupcakes that Jiang Botao brought to school, so he asked his friend to make a video tutorial. What Zhou Zekai didn’t realize was that Jiang Botao had uploaded the tutorial onto the school’s online forum, and from there, the popularity of the “cute college boy baking cupcakes” video just spread like an uncontrollable wildfire.

There were tons of cooking videos on the Internet, but what made Zhou Zekai’s stood out, at least according to Jiang Botao, was the fact that he never spoke in his video — not even once; instead, he filled the silence with grainy, lighthearted jazz music in the background, which made the entire mood of the tutorial somewhat more… aesthetically-pleasing and intimate.

Zhou Zekai wasn’t sure what his best friend meant by that when he tried to explain to him the amazing reactions he was starting since the video was posted; he was just glad to help out. Baking and making sweets had always been Zhou Zekai’s favorite way to relax, and since he started learning by watching and helping his mother in the kitchen at a young age, his interest in the culinary arts had been carried on to his adulthood. Making professional-quality videos, however, was mostly Jiang Botao’s idea; Zhou Zekai just sort of followed along.

Besides, having Jiang Botao, one of the top students in their school’s multimedia design department, filming and editing his videos was the icing on the already very appetizing cake.

Zhou Zekai nodded again in response to Jiang Botao’s question, and the two men started to get to work. Soon, their shared apartment was filled with the gentle sweet scent of baked sweets.

-

It’d been about fifteen minutes into the Q&A live stream, and Huang Shaotian was having the time of his life answering his viewers’ questions, which ranged from actual queries about culinary skills and methods (“Best way to make the silkiest steamed egg custard? Oh man let me tell you how Mama Huang make hers. Usually you’d just mix water or broth with eggs and beat them and then pour the mixture directly into the utensil, right? Wrong! The most important step to achieving that silky smoothness of the custard is to use a fine mesh strainer while you’re pouring the mixture through — the smaller the holes are, the better! And then! Let it settle for a few minutes so any bubbles will rise to the surface, and then you can skim them off with a spoon. Voila — egg custard as smooth as a baby’s butt!”) to inquiries about his personal life and interests (“Do I have a girlfriend? Come on! I expect more creative questions from you guys! Anyway, I could have a boyfriend, couldn’t I? By asking that question, you have offended all the potential boys who could have been interested in me. Shame on you!” he said, and laughed at all the exclamation marks and colorful emoticons that followed his answer.).

One of the questions flashed by in the lively chat and Huang Shaotian caught it right away, his eyes flashing in excitement for a moment. “Oooh! Someone just asked whether or not I’d be interested in working with other vloggers again. Yes, I would as long as that person is not goddamn Lord Grim, who — if you missed the video that bastard had posted on his channel a while ago — almost murdered my taste buds. Just because I’m from Guangzhou doesn’t mean that he should take advantage of my intolerance of spice! So rude, so rude! Never again, nuh-uh!”

The viewers on the chat who knew what Huang Shaotian was referring to expressed their amusement of the hilarious aforementioned video, in which Lord Grim — real name Ye Xiu –who was a good friend of Huang Shaotian’s in real life, challenged the popular (both for the variety of his content and the cheerful chattiness of the vlogger himself) foodie to the notorious Fire Noodle Challenge.

Huang Shaotian had initially ignored him because he knew his stomach was sensitive to spicy foods in general, but him being him, he could never backdown from a challenge, especially when Ye Xiu was practically verbally rousing him up in all the right ways. In the end, Huang Shaotian realized belatedly that this — eating this insanely hot and spicy Korean ramen that had numbed his entire mouth and lips, the spiciness having exploded exponentially after Ye Xiu “helpfully” gave him a glass of water — was a mistake. Needless to say, he’d completely embarrassed himself in front of his audience in that video. At least most of them found it hysterical, and the rating and number of viewings had only increased.

“Other than that asshole friend of mine, who else would you like to see me collaborate with?”

The chat flooded with usernames; some he didn’t recognized while others he knew and were mutual followers of each other’s’ channels. One name did stand out amongst others: Cloud Piercer. Unbeknownst to his followers, Huang Shaotian was a bit of a fanboy of Cloud Piercer and his calming cooking videos and had started following his channel with his personal account some time ago. The vlogger rarely showed his face on his videos, and even when he did, it was mostly blurry so all that could be seen was his dark hair and the vague shape of his face, but just watching those elegant hands meticulously measuring ingredients and kneading dough was enough to make Huang Shaotian’s imagination wander at times.

“You guys want me to collaborate with Cloud Piercer?”

Lots of ‘!!!’s and variations of ‘yes’s’ flurried past the chat, which made Huang Shaotian grin because he’d finally found the perfect opportunity to approach the vlogger he’d been admiring from afar for far too long.

“I’ll try to contact them and go from there!”

-

And this was how two weeks later, Huang Shaotian travelled over 1,100 miles on the high-speed train and ended up in the city of Shanghai.

Their first meeting, which took place at the busy Hongqiao Railway Station, was an awkward one. Through the exchange of their emails in order to arrange this meet-up, Huang Shaotian would have never guessed that Cloud Piercer — or Zhou Zekai, as he soon found out the vlogger’s real name — was such a reserved individual. After a quick introduction, which involved a brief greeting and exchanging their real names, Zhou Zekai decidedly started walking in the front to let Jiang Botao do all the necessary talking. What Huang Shaotian missed — and Jiang Botao definitely caught from the corner of his eye — was the hint of blush that tainted Zhou Zekai’s cheeks right after they’d shaken hands.

Still, after that initial greeting, Zhou Zekai didn’t say anything more as they winded and dodged their way in between locals and tourists. Not that he was rude or cold or anything like that, Huang Shaotian observed while he allowed Zhou Zekai and Jiang Botao to lead him out of the station to get on the public transit, but when he tried to initiate a conversation, all he received from the dark-haired man was prolonged “……”, nodding, or shaking of his head, with the occasional nervous smiles that vanished whenever Huang Shaotian looked at him with genuine curiosity.

He glanced over to Jiang Botao, who was comparatively easier to communicate with and seemed like an amiable person overall, with silent plead in his eyes, as if he was asking, “what am I doing wrong? Why is your friend ignoring me? Why is this happening??? How do I talk to him???”

To that, Jiang Botao only chuckled in response and patted Huang Shaotian’s shoulder in consolation, “Xiao Zhou takes a longer time to get used to people he’s not familiar with. Don’t take it too personally. In fact…”

He paused and quickly checked to see if Zhou Zekai was looking at their direction before he leaned closer to Huang Shaotian and whispered covertly, “…he’s a huge fan of yours, actually.”

“No way! He is?” Huang Shaotian frowned in confusion, once more fixing his attention onto the man walking a few steps ahead of them. His frame was lean and tapered from the well-fitting jeans and black leather jacket he was donning, and at his full height, he was at least a few centimeters taller than him, which made the man slightly intimidating, even if he had the most dazzling ash-grey eyes and cheekbones sharp enough to shred paper-thin slices of prosciutto, but that had never stopped Huang Shaotian before.

“Sure is. So, imagine how surprised he was when he saw your email,” Jiang Botao continued, returning to walk beside his new acquaintance, “he could barely talk — he was that excited.”

“Huh,” Huang Shaotian made a non-committal sound and stared at the back of Zhou Zekai’s head. He wanted to say something like “you mean the guy’s capable of talking even less than this?” but he didn’t because that would be incredibly rude and he wanted to be on his best behavior during this short trip in Shanghai. It wasn’t as if he was trying to impress a certain someone… Oh, who the fuck was he trying to fool?

“Anyway, we were thinking that we’d let you rest during the afternoon, get something to eat together, and then start filming the first section tonight. We already have all the ingredients that you’ve requested prepared at our place. What do you think?”

“Sounds good!” Huang Shaotian’s grin returned, vibrant and infectious, and Jiang Botao could understand a bit what his best friend saw in Huang Shaotian despite his chattiness and almost too-cheerful persona that he presented in front of his audience in his vlogs.

-

“Hello everyone, this is Troubling Rain of the Blue Rain Eatery channel! Guess where I’m currently at? This is Cloud Piercer’s apartment! Can you believe it? Yeah, me neither. But as promised, the two of us are collaborating for the next two videos. This first one will be posted on my channel, where, with the assistance of the wonderful and beautiful Cloud Piercer, I’ll be making a Cantonese style-fried dumpling — gok jai. In the second video, Cloud Piercer, who’s born and raised in Shanghai, will take me to his favourite restaurant to try one of the city’s most well-known delicacies: xiao long bao. So, without further ado, let’s welcome our special guest: Cloud Piercer!”

Huang Shaotian clapped with as much enthusiasm as a child being told that he could run free within a candy store.  

The camera panned out to reveal Zhou Zekai, wearing a simple black long-sleeved t-shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows and a light grey, yellow-trimmed apron, standing adjacent to Huang Shaotian. He gave a slight wave and a small but sweet smile, and introduced himself with a soft voice, “Hello, I’m Cloud Piercer.”

“You Cloud Piercer fans should thank me,” Huang Shaotian faced the camera and said with mock seriousness, “apparently this is the first time the man is willing to show his face properly in front of the camera. Oh my, I think I could hear your fangirls and fanboys screaming in the distance, Cloud Piercer.” He grinned slyly, aiming the teasing expression at the dark-haired man who only scratched his cheek bashfully, grey eyes darting to the side with a helpless but adorable smile.

“That’s…not nice,” Zhou Zekai managed three words — an actual complete sentence, even if it was a rather short one — but it was more than Huang Shaotian could ever hope for.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry! It was meant to be a compliment, I swear!” Huang Shaotian burst out laughing when he saw Zhou Zekai’s expression.

“All right! Let’s get started! Since Cloud Piercer here is too shy to speak, he’ll be doing all the hard work while I do the talking. First, let me just say that we’ll be making the sweet version of this tasty dumpling, which, granted, is usually only served during the New Year, but what the heck, I heard this man likes his desserts so that’s what we’ll be making. Also, the original recipe calls for deep-frying, but I know all you ladies out there are probably weeping about the oil and cholesterol. Don’t worry! We’ll be baking ours instead! So, have as many of these as you want!”

“But too much…” Zhou Zekai, to Huang Shaotian’s pleasant surprise, spoke up again, and if he weren’t wearing a lapel microphone on his apron, his voice would definitely have been lost, “…unhealthy.”

“True,” Huang Shaotian nodded in agreement, and began to list out the ingredients and the required amounts of each. While he talked about each step with a flurry of hand gestures and animated, rising and falling tenor, Zhou Zekai followed along silently in graceful and efficient movements beside him, adding dry and wet ingredients into a glass mixing bowl, combining them thoroughly with a wooden spoon, and then kneading the dough — already a nice, golden shade from the egg yolks — until it transformed into a smooth, glistening sphere.

All this time, Huang Shaotian made sure that he wasn’t talking too fast, as he sometimes had the tendency to do when he got too excited, but he realized that he’d been worrying over nothing because as little as Zhou Zekai seemed to speak in words, the man carried himself in the kitchen as if he owned the place, and the ingredients and pieces of equipment were under his perfect control and manipulation.  

It wasn’t the first time Huang Shaotian watch Zhou Zekai cook (let’s face it, he’d watched some of the videos more than once… fine, more than five times) but seeing him on screen and being there with him were two entirely different experiences. While Zhou Zekai’s videos were mostly peaceful, calming, and almost therapeutic, standing beside him while he was preparing the ingredients and gradually assembling them was strangely intense and entrancing; in fact, Jiang Botao had to wave at him vigorously to get Huang Shaotian’s attention because the blond had been staring at Zhou Zekai rolling a small piece of dough into an almost-perfect circle without the use of a cookie-cutter, quickly placing a spoonful of peanut and coconut filling in the middle, and folding the edges together into an elegant border of flourished twists.

Zhou Zekai’s fingers, slender and pale with nails trimmed neatly, were precise in measuring out ingredients and kneading the dough for only as long as necessary, like a gunner flawlessly hitting his intended targets, yet laced within that precision was a kind of grace found only in an artist’s bones.

“Uh, yes, um, so keep repeating these steps,” Huang Shaotian blinked and forced himself to turn away from those attractive hands before continuing in a more steady tone, “don’t worry too much if your first few don’t look as perfect as the ones Cloud Piercer’s making right now because hell, I don’t think I can make them that pretty myself, and put them in the oven, preheated to 180 degrees Celsius, for 18 to 20 minutes or until the surface looks golden-yellow.”

By the time the baked gok jai had been cooled down enough, Huang Shaotian picked up one of the golden dumplings, baked to a crisp and warm to the touch, with his thumb and index finger, and offered it to Zhou Zekai.

“Taste test time! Go on then, Cloud Piercer, take a bite!”

Zhou Zekai’s gaze strayed from the dumpling dangled between Huang Shaotian’s fingers to Huang Shaotian himself, who was giving him an encouraging smile almost too bright for Zhou Zekai to handle; his gaze landed back onto the dumpling, which was held only an inch away from his mouth that had sudden gone very, very dry.

“……”

“Come on, man, don’t be shy now,” Huang Shaotian misinterpreted Zhou Zekai’s hesitation, though he wasn’t really that far off.

“…you first,” Zhou Zekai finally spoke, his voice so small even his microphone was having a hard time capturing what he’d said.

“Oh nonono, I insist you should take the first bite,” Huang Shaotian shook his head vigorously, his fluffy blond hair flying every which way so that it reminded Zhou Zekai of a golden retriever shaking himself dry. The image almost pulled a smile from his lips, but he somehow managed to control himself. “You did all the hard work, so you deserve to have the first one. Now be a good boy and open your mouth — say ‘ah’.”

His face remained impeccably neutral, as if he wasn’t about to be hand-fed by someone whom he might consider to be his online crush, but the red tinted at the tip of his ears, thankfully concealed by his dark hair, betrayed his troubled thoughts. All too aware of the camera’s lens focusing on him, Zhou Zekai just wanted to get this over with as soon as possible; he swiftly lowered his head and bit a small mouthful before pulling himself straight, one hand politely covering his mouth while he chewed.

The crispy texture was utterly mesmerizing, but when combined with the chewiness of the wrapping and the crunchy sweetness of the filling, Zhou Zekai’s taste buds were very blissful indeed.

“How is it? How is it?”

Since Zhou Zekai was still chewing, and he honestly didn’t trust his voice at this point, the best he could do was to give a thumbs-up at the camera to show how much he enjoyed the taste.

Without even thinking about it, Huang Shaotian popped the remaining of the gok jai into his own mouth, and Zhou Zekai could only stare at him as the blond mumbled with his mouth full of the dumpling. Meanwhile, Zhou Zekai’s brain was running wild with the colourful comments from the viewers, especially those very zealous fangirls, this video was about to be consumed by.

-

“It’s too bad Xiao Jiang can’t join us for dinner,” Huang Shaotian commented as he placed his phone down on the table after watching the video they’d filmed and edited two days ago. He grabbed the menu to inspect it even though they’d already placed their order about fifteen minutes ago, but he couldn’t let Zhou Zekai see the blush spreading on his cheeks.

What the hell had he been thinking? Huang Shaotian’s mind was running a marathon — a marathon of a never-ending circle. Hand-feeding Zhou Zekai like that as if… as if they were anything more than acquaintances! He hadn’t been thinking — that was the problem. He’d been so distracted by Zhou Zekai’s presence that he thought nothing of the gesture until after Jiang Botao shouted “cut!” to end their filming session and the man sent him an amused but knowing grin.

He tried to redirect his attention to elsewhere: the reaction had been even better than both vloggers had expected, and that gave them the motivation to film the next video as soon as possible, which was how they ended up in a hole-in-the-wall diner in one of the back alleys in the city near Zhou Zekai’s apartment.

“God I haven’t had xiao long bao in ages. You have no idea how long it’s been! Like, you’d think Guangzhou would have some good restaurants that serve half-way decent xiao long bao, but they’re either way too expensive or way too overrated,” Huang Shaotian rambled on until he felt like he was about to be suffocated by the way Zhou Zekai was staring at him with those ash-grey eyes and slight curve of his lips. “So, anyway, uh, I just wanted to thank you again for accepting my invitation to do this collaboration! It’s been really fun, and I can’t wait to try the food here. Here’s to another successful video from us both!”

Huang Shaotian raised his tall glass filled with beer and clinked it against Zhou Zekai’s, the foam overflowing the rim and sliding down the glass in rivulets of white.

“Mn.”

Zhou Zekai sipped his liquor in a slow and steady pace but Huang Shaotian seemed either very thirsty or very nervous, for he gulped down three-quarters of his beer in one breath.

Since they’d settled into their seats, Zhou Zekai hadn’t really spoken other than placing their orders. It wasn’t like he was ignoring Huang Shaotian though, because the blond could tell that the other man was listening to him attentively and gave the appropriate responses like nodding in agreement, or tilting his head to the side in puzzlement, or even occasionally giving one-syllable replies.

Before he allowed the silence to get any more insufferable, however, Huang Shaotian began to fiddle with his camera and tripod. Since their voluntary cameraman was not available today, Huang Shaotian had taken on the responsibility to record their session tonight.

When the dishes they ordered finally arrived, Huang Shaotian released a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. With another one of his signature sunny smiles, he turned to Zhou Zekai and asked him if he was ready to start.

Sitting inside the bamboo steaming basket was the star of the video, the piping hot xiao long bao — the soup dumplings with their pale-yellow skin, glistening with moisture, the crown cascading with spiraled ripples, and their bodies plump with meat and stock inside just waiting to be bitten into. Huang Shaotian positioned the basket between himself and Zhou Zekai while moving the other dishes out of the way; they’d have to enjoy those a bit later, unfortunately.

“Welcome to the second installment of Cloud Piercer and myself Troubling Rain’s collaborative video about one of China’s most delectable and versatile food — dumplings! Today, Shanghai local Cloud Piercer takes me to his favourite restaurant in town that serves excellent xiao long bao, ta-dah!” Huang Shaotian tilted the basket to display the jewels towards the camera and continued, “And of course, when we’re eating these delicious little things, there are some courtesies that must be followed so that you can enjoy the dumplings with maximum level of scrumptiousness and minimum level of danger, i.e. accidentally letting that hot soup burn your tongue!”

As they’d discussed beforehand, Zhou Zekai took the cue and carefully picked up a xiao long bao with his chopsticks, placing the dainty dumpling into his soup spoon, which had already been filled with a dash of black vinegar.

“First, if you don’t dip your xiao long bao in some black vinegar, that should be a food crime and you should be put into food jail! Shame on you! The sourness of the vinegar and — yeah, don’t skip out on those ginger either!” Huang Shaotian added as Zhou Zekai delicately topped the dumpling with some finely-chopped ginger slivers, “the sourness of the vinegar and the mildness of the ginger will balance the slight saltiness and oiliness of the pork filling, so remember—”

What they hadn’t discussed, but what Zhou Zekai was currently doing, was the dark-haired man holding the dumpling a few inches away from Huang Shaotian’s lips, his eyes expectant and the corner of his lips slightly tilted upwards in what seemed to be a teasing smile. Maybe.

The scene was all too familiar.

“Uh, hmm? Cloud Piercer, what’s up?” Huang Shaotian didn’t dare back away but he was raising one of his brows in bewilderment.

“…”

The spoon with the plump xiao long bao sitting snugly in it was moving a degree closer, Zhou Zekai’s intention clear as day.

“F-for me?” Huang Shaotian wanted to be sure anyway, because what if he misinterpreted the whole thing and made a fool of himself in front of this gorgeous man? …Again?

Zhou Zekai nodded with a faint smile, and Huang Shaotian gulped noisily.  

And since, as previously mentioned and demonstrated, Huang Shaotian was an infatuated fool who was too easily distracted, all his attention was focused on how pretty Zhou Zekai looked with a smile on his face, how sincere he seemed in offering him the first dumpling, and how insanely long his eyelashes were, a perfect frame for his ash-grey eyes that were also smiling warmly at him. His attention was so askew that he forgot about the one taboo any experienced xiao long bao-consumer would never commit: he took the entire freshly-steamed dumpling into his mouth and sank his teeth into it.

He regretted it instantly.

“Huang Shao!” Zhou Zekai yelped in forewarning, the loudest Huang Shaotian had ever heard from him. His eyes were widened almost comically, but it was too late.

Scalding, fragrant soup filled Huang Shaotian’s mouth, the heat of the stock burning its way around the tender flesh of his oral cavity and the back of his throat as he tried to swallow as quickly as he could without choking himself in the process. He coughed in the most unbecoming manner, soup dripping down his chin messily, his eyes turning red and watering from the heat, “Fuaaaah! Shit, shit, owwwww…”  

Armed with several napkins, Zhou Zekai leaned in to dab Huang Shaotian’s chin and cheeks dry, his movements nothing but gentle, all the while his brows frowning with obvious worry, “…hurt? Need ice water?”

His face was only a few centimeters away from Huang Shaotian’s, and he was too preoccupied by his task of cleaning the blond up to realize that said blond was staring unabashedly at him.

‘Too close,’ Huang Shaotian thought to himself, blinking slowly and appreciating the flawless cheekbones and rosy pink of the other man’s lips in such close proximity. ‘Oh god.’ He had a feeling he was about to do something he was going to regret again.

“Water would be nice, but…” Huang Shaotian finally located his voice, slightly raw and hoarse from hot soup sliding down his throat just minutes before, and he glanced up to maintain steady eye contact with Zhou Zekai, his topaz irises blazing with a sudden burst of daring, before the words rolled out of his mouth, “a kiss from you might be better though.”

“…….”

At Zhou Zekai’s pause, though his hand remained on Huang Shaotian’s chin with a clean napkin, Huang Shaotian’s cheeks began to grow warm and he wished the ground would swallow him up already because hadn’t he embarrass himself enough in front of this guy today?!

“I-I mean— mmf?!”

His lips were warm, was Zhou Zekai’s first thought as his eyes fluttered close when their lips touched tenderly for the first time, warmer than expected, and so, so soft, like the fluffy chiffon cakes he liked to bake. On the other end, Huang Shaotian’s lips felt oversensitive due to the burning soup from the xiao long bao, but the slight tingling verging on numbing sensation was addictive, and he found himself leaning in closer, his arms hanging loosely on Zhou Zekai’s shoulders to keep him in place, their breaths gradually becoming more and more unsteady until Zhou Zekai pulled himself away and opened his eyes.

They were dark but glimmering with the kind of desire not unlike wanting to swallow his favourite dessert whole.

Huang Shaotian’s breath stuttered at the sight, but he still managed to grumble convincingly with an accusative tone, “Zhou Zekai, you realize we’ll have to film this from the beginning again, right?”

“Worth it.”

[lonedailydoodle]

The End of the Daily Doodle

This is it, this was the last doodle. I inspired and motivated so many people to take on this challenge and I'm really really proud to have seen their progress firsthand, regardless if I didn't interact with them much To the ones that followed the doodles from the very beginning, you got to see a lot of my biggest ups and downs throughout these 4 years. From a breakup, to a new relationship. From a hurricane to surviving daily on a drastically changed lifestyle. From some of the most stressful college days and all-nighters, to fun days out with friends at lunchtime. I can read back on these days and I sure miss them so much.. I miss old friends that I don’t see or talk to as much. I also miss feeling a bit more like I have a strong goal to work towards. I’m glad I archived most of my college years so I can fully relive them just by seeing the drawn doodle and remembering that whole day, and if not, the written story will do just fine~ As stated before, the doodles have also been affecting my health to the point of also being outright dangerous. My neck injury some time ago was caused by me falling asleep while doodling late at night! I can't manage time well at all and having to draw the doodles didn't help, but I did have my fun, I just need to rest more now At one point I had planned to keep the doodle going for DECADES, but after the hurricane last year, I realized the doodles took a lot of my time and I started to realize it wasn't that enjoyable, especially after graduating and falling into a boring routine where I spent most of my time alone.. it just wasn't fun and my doodles all looked the same even though I mostly figured out a way to make them all different each day. Still, I felt that the quality of my writing plummeted and got repetitive with shorter and shorter paragraphs being written down. If they got this repetitive by me not attending university anymore, imagine if I got a job! I just.. wasn't having as much fun as before, it felt more like a responsibility to keep them going and to keep my readers happy. I used to feel a lot of pride when someone mentioned how cool it was that I kept drawing these every day and asked how I got inspiration. Nowadays I don't feel that pride, it's just a small drawing I do but spend way too much time writing and remembering, analyzing in a map which places I visited, what I did there and for how long since my memory can do so much now. Browsing my own search history to see how much time I wasted doing something until I realize I didn't do anything aside from that, it's sad.. and brings me back to why I started the doodles in the first place. I was seeing my yearly art summary which was empty and that depressed me, now I'm doing the same but documenting it in detail.. I didn't progress much at all in my motivation to draw, I just draw lineart better and faster.. Which is good but not what I aimed for. Now, to be fair, 2016 was a year where I progressed a lot in animation and putting my name out there, but I’m afraid I gotta work to rebuild what I started that year Back in 2016 when the doodle was still going strong, I saw myself doing daily doodles about my life at work in whatever workplace I would be working at in the future. Since doodling now felt so pushed and forced, I think the doodle would have ended up repetitive or even intrusive in terms of potentially spoiling a work secret or just getting in the way of my work schedule.. it just wasn't gonna work  By 2018, because of how hard it was to return to doodling again because of the hurricane and the fact I had to drop around 100 doodles from being drawn because I was so behind. I was fully planning on ending the doodles whenever I got a job. (I'm writing this in September and hope that I do end the doodle before the end of the year, it'll mean I actually landed a job before 2019! :D) (2019 Edit: I didn’t) Friends have told me it's okay to end the doodle and rest, I wanted to keep it going for many years but I realized it’s unrealistic with my current scheduling issues. Distracting myself into the night and ending up drawing the doodle at 3am instead of earlier to sleep. I remember I used to STRICTLY doodle at 10pm back when I started, but the doodles were a 5-minute mess and were very hard to understand These friends have also told me that out of everyone they know, I was the one to hold onto this challenge the longest. I end the doodle feeling proud to have done this much, it was a fun project, experiment and motivation to keep going as well as observing closer to everything happening around me every single day

Either way, I’m hopeful that taking some stress off of me might improve my health and even more hopefully, leave time and create some motivation to tackle other projects like my commissions, animation skills and hopefully create a nice portfolio to land a job with.. Here’s hoping for the best The daily doodles will remain untouched and archived. While my more active pages will push the doodles back and will be harder to read back upon, there are places where you can see them without having to search much: 2015 Doodles - https://www.deviantart.com/jeany545/gallery/52571699/2015-365-Challenge

2016-2017 Doodles - http://lonedailydoodle.tumblr.com/

https://t.me/lonedailydoodle (April 2017 and up)

2017-2018 Post hurricane doodles - https://imgur.com/user/jeany545

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1MP5JsPaXPK1X54z_nDVd6RlYIVbFfD1W?usp=sharing (Written stories)

2018 Doodles - http://lonedailydoodle.tumblr.com/

https://t.me/lonedailydoodle

TUMBLR DOODLES MIGHT OR NOT HAVE A FEW MISSING BECAUSE OF FAULTY NSFW BANS The doodles might make a return some day.. Maybe some day when I learn to keep a good schedule.. But right now, I rest. Thank you for reading these 4 years of my life, everyone~

[sunxsurfxkpop]

Burning sun scandal timeline

January 28

News Desk airs report where a man, Mr. Kim, says he was assaulted by Burning Sun nightclub staff on November 24, 2018, while helping a woman being sexually harassed. When police arrived, he was arrested as an assailant.

It is reported that BIGBANG’s Seungri is involved with management at Burning Sun and was at the venue that evening.

CCTV footage from the club also reveals a separate incident, with a woman shown being dragged down a club hallway. The woman reported the assault to the police who did not take action, and it was reported that Burning Sun deleted the footage.

January 29

Burning Sun CEOs Lee Sung Hyun and Lee Moon Ho issue a statement and apologise for Mr. Kim’s assault and plan to cooperate fully with the investigation. They take disciplinary action against the staff member in question.

The CEOs provide more CCTV footage from the second incident and state that the woman was removed from a VIP table for causing a disturbance and then assaulted their staff, for which she was arrested. The woman had since apologised and given assault settlement money.

The CEOs state that Seungri was not at the club on the day of the incident, and that he is someone they don’t see often.

January 30

A Burning Sun representative tells Kyunghyan Shinmun that Seungri managed Burning Sun but is not really the owner.

KBS News reports that Seungri had been a director of the club but resigned from the position a week prior.

KBS News also reports testimony from a former Burning Sun employee about VIP room CCTV footage that has gone viral, showing a woman being sexually assaulted by a man. The employee also suggests that illegal drug use occurred in VIP rooms.

https://youtu.be/hKWM7SbG_e8

February 1

YG Entertainment CEO Yang Hyun Suk confirms Seungri is no longer Burning Sun’s executive director and that he is resigning from all current business roles as he prepares to enter the military.

He states that Seungri was at Burning Sun until 3am on November 24, and the incident involving Mr. Kim took place past 6am.

Mr. Kim is accused of lying by the woman he was supposedly saving. She states that he was sexually harassing her. Mr. Kim is questioned by police.

February 2

Seungri shares statement on Burning Sun incident via his Instagram. He states that he was not there when it occurred but heard about it a few days later. He was shocked by the footage and does not condone any violence. He states that he had been the executive director in charge of promotions at the club, but that the club’s operation and management were not his role.

Dispatch reveal group chat conversations between Burning Sun staff where they discuss tactics for bringing girls into VIP rooms, looking for drunk women as easy targets and watching VIP clients engage in sexual intercourse via CCTV. Seungri is not part of these conversations.

February 4

Burning Sun CEO Lee Moon Ho issues a statement in which he apologises to Seungri. He states that Seungri only helped as a consultant and assisted in contacting foreign DJs. He confirms Burning Sun will remove VIP rooms and increase CCTVs.

February 15

Police raid Burning Sun and the Yeoksam District police unit. They confiscate programs related to alleged collusion of police officers as well as CCTV footage. At Burning Sun, they take data necessary to investigate on suspicions of drugs, sex crimes and collusion at the club.

February 16

At his solo concert in Seoul, Seungri apologises to fans saying, “I am very apologetic to all those who care for me. I’m sorry for causing disappointment for so many people, and I am reflecting on what has happened”. (Source)

February 17

Burning Sun shuts down as the investigation of drug dealing widens to more clubs in the Gangnam area.

February 18

Burning Sun assault victim Mr. Kim is suspected of a third count of sexual assault as police review CCTV recordings. He is already accused of two counts.

February 20

It is reported that police are investigating Burning Sun executives, including Seungri. Police summon staff members to make statements about Seungri’s role at the club.

February 26

SBS funE release text messages that were allegedly shared between Seungri, CEO Yoo of Yuri Holdings and an employee in 2015. The content implies that they were hiring sexual escort services at Club Arena for foreign investors.

A few hours after the report, YG release a statement that the texts are fabricated and untrue. Yuri Holdings issue a similar statement, stating that they believe someone with malicious intent towards Seungri fabricated them as a grudge.

Seoul Police Department confirm that they have launched an investigation into the escort service claims reported by the media.

YG Entertainment’s stock prices fall amid the controversy.

February 27

SBS funE journalist Kang Kyung Yoon responds to accusations of fabrication and says: “There is no reason to fabricate or edit the reported messages… If a request is received from the investigative agency, I will actively cooperate”. (Source)

Seungri states through YG Entertainment that he wishes to submit to drug tests as well as cooperate with investigations regarding the allegations surrounding him.

Seungri attends a police station for questioning that evening and is released 8.5 hours later. He submits to urine and follicle tests, and answers questions about drug and sexual escort allegations. He asks that people wait for the results of the investigation.

February 28

Seungri’s drug tests prove negative, barring the hair follicle test which takes longer to confirm.

Seungri cancels all scheduled activities, including upcoming concerts in Osaka and Jakarta.

https://youtu.be/Y4V1t1pR7LMMarch 1

SBS funE report that a whistleblower submitted the text messages of Seungri ordering sexual escort services to the Anti Corruption and Civil Rights Commission on February 22. The source says they submitted to the Commission because the messages suggest a deep connection with the police.

A source from the Seoul Metropolitan Police agency initially states: “We have yet to secure an original copy of the messages. We are contacting people [who are tied to the messages] in order to confirm [the existence of the original copy]... Not only have we not confirmed its existence, but we also have received a testimony that such messages do not exist”. (Source)

Burning Sun co-CEO Lee Sung Hyun admits to bribing a policeman with 20 million won while being investigated for possible entrance of a minor into the club.

March 4

News report reveals that the Seoul Police Department were aware of the Commission’s original copy of text messages on March 1. The police formally request for the organisation to cooperate with them regarding the documents.

March 6

It is reported that Seungri promoted a club in Hongdae in the past, which is owned by YG and now suspected of tax evasion. Three more clubs become implicated in the tax evasion controversy, with two residing in a building owned by Yang Hyun Suk.

March 8

Seungri confirms he will enlist as an active duty soldier on March 25.

MBC News share Burning Sun internal documents showing Seungri invested 225 million won in the club and listing him as a corporate promoter. He is also listed as one of four executive directors alongside Lee Sung Hyun, Lee Moon Ho, and an individual referred to as Kang.

Burning Sun’s list of shareholders includes Yuri Holdings with 20% of shares, of which Seungri is co-CEO.

March 9

BIGBANG fans on DC Gallery petition for Seungri to be removed from the group and YG’s roster.

March 10

Police begin searching Club Arena. It is reported that they find evidence of pimping allegations but no confirmation of who is involved. Arena is also investigated on suspicion of tax evasion.

Police confirm the December 2015 messages are not fabricated.

Seungri is booked and questioned by police on charges of violating South Korea’s Acts on Pimping and Prostitution and its Punishments. He is currently considered a suspect pending further investigation. Three to four other people in the chat group are also booked.

Results on Seungri’s follicle drug test prove negative.

March 11

SBS funE report on a KakaoTalk chatroom where hidden camera footage and photos are shared between Seungri, two male singers, CEO Yoo of Yuri Holdings, two regular citizens, and Mr. Kim- an acquaintance of Seungri’s who helped him run his restaurant business and also worked at Club Arena. According to the texts, Mr. Kim posted illegal hidden camera photos and videos, to which Seungri and others responded.

Police say they are aware of the chatroom allegations and are investigating.

Seungri announces his retirement from the entertainment industry in an Instagram post. He cites protecting the honour of YG and BIGBANG in it.

Police prohibit Seungri from leaving the country.

SBS 8 O’Clock News report that one of the celebrities in the KakaoTalk chatroom is allegedly Drug Restaurant frontman and variety star Jung Joon Young. The report states that he uploaded illegal hidden camera footage to the chat several times, some showing himself engaging in sexual intercourse with women filmed without consent. At least 10 victims are confirmed.

March 12

Jung Joon Young’s agency respond to hidden camera allegations, saying they are unable to ascertain the truth at this time but that the artist is returning to South Korea cooperate with police investigations.

Jung Joon Young is removed from 2 Days & 1 Night, Salty Tour and 4 Wheeled Restaurant. He will be edited out of episodes that have already been filmed but not aired yet.

Police book Jung Joon Young on arrival in South Korea and prohibit him from leaving the country.

The Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission transfer the KakaoTalk data to the Supreme Prosecutors' Office after 15-day analysis.

SBS funE report on messages from July 2016, where Seungri opened a club named Monkey Museum in Gangnam. The alleged messages suggest police covered up issues with reported illegal structures in the building.

March 13

Jung Joon Young admits to hidden camera crimes in apology letter. Investigations will commence on March 14.

MAKEUS Entertainment terminate their contract with Jung Joon Young.

YG Entertainment confirms that it has terminated Seungri's contract with the agency.

YTN report that FTISLAND's Choi Jong Hoon used his connections to police to cover up a drunk driving incident from February 2016. It is alleged that he shared information about the incident in the group chatroom that includes Jung Joon Young and Seungri.

SBS 8 O'Clock News report that a police officer in charge of Jung Joon Young's 2016 illegal filming case requested the digital forensics company say the data couldn't be restored on Jung Joon Young's phone, the key evidence in the case. The police closed the investigation before receiving the data.

SBS 8 O'Clock News report on alleged text messages between Choi Jong Hoon, Jung Joon Young, Seungri and other non-celebrities, discussing payment being made to police to cover up Choi's drunk driving accident.

The former Korea Police Commissioner General, Kang Shin Myung, denies allegations that he is tied to the chatroom including the three idols.

The current Commissioner General, Min Gap Ryong, holds a press conference acknowledging the possibility of high-ranked officers abusing their power in the past to protect celebrities. He says he will investigate further.

FNC Entertainment share statement confirming Choi Jong Hoon was caught drunk driving in February 2016. He denies any ties to police. He halts all solo and FTISLAND-related activities while under investigation.

March 14

DC FTISLAND Gallery demand Choi Jong Hoon withdraw from the band.

Yong Junhyung announces his departure from HIGHLIGHT, after revealing he was aware of Jung Joon Young's hidden camera footage and had discussed it in one-on-one chat conversations. He states that he was not part of any group chats.

Commissioner General Min Gap Ryong announces plan to investigate corruption in the police force, as well as a nationwide investigation of clubs across South Korea, looking into drugs, sexual assault, the filming and distribution of hidden camera videos, and police connections.

Seungri, Jung Joon Young and Mr. Yoo report to Seoul Police Agency to start questioning

Seoul Central District Prosecutor's Office takes over the case from the police

Choi Jong Hoon announces retirement from industry and departure from FTISLAND

Sisa Journal shared messages from 2014 of Seungri providing sexual escort services to his business partner. He is also revealed to have gambled overseas - an illegal act for Korean citizens.

SBS 8 O'Clock News reports CNBLUE's Lee Jong Hyun messages with Jung Joon Young in one-on-one chatroom, including sharing of illegal hidden cam videos. It is reported Lee Jong Hyun has also filmed women without their consent.

March 15

Jung Joon Young completes police questioning after 21 hours

Seungri completes police questioning and states he will be asking the military to delay his enlistment date so he can complete the investigation.

The military say it is unlikely they can delay Seungri's enlistment, but if he puts in the request they will look over his reasoning before March 25, when he is due to enlist.

Yuri Holdings replace their CEO, effectively making Mr. Yoo resign from his position.

FNC Entertainment issue statement confirming Lee Jong Hyun watched hidden camera footage sent to him via KakaoTalk, and had inappropriate conversations degrading women.

We'll continue to update this timeline as events unfold.

Original post

[sarahmarshall3]

Lesson 1: The social, audience and growth roles within newsrooms

Not the modern journalism course timetable. Private Eye.

I’m about to meet my fourth cohort of  Interactive Journalism MA students at City University, London.

I step out of my role as head of audience growth at Vogue International for two hours a week to teach the practical element of the social media, community and multimedia management module; Adam Tinworth teaches the theoretical side.

Here are my notes from the first lesson. This covers:

What does a social media editor do?

What’s audience development?

What is a growth editor?

How have these roles changed within the past year?

What are news publishers looking for in entry level social journalism graduates?

What does a social media editor do?

News organisations started to introduce social media editors about a decade ago to gather and distribute news via social, predominantly using Facebook and Twitter. Here’s an interview from 2009 with Alex Gubbay, the first social media editor at the BBC, explaining what his role would be.

Asked in the Guardian interview if he would play a role in the distribution of news, he said: 

“Indeed, part of my work will be to extend the news and distribute them into the social networks, so that people can discuss them. We learn from the discussions that built on the stories themselves, pick up details we missed, or factor them into how we are approaching a story.”

The role was fairly similar – though needed less explaining to fellow journalists – when I joined The Wall Street Journal as a social media editor in December 2013.

I remember explaining back then that there were four areas to the role:

Engagement

Traffic

Reach / Brand awareness

Social newsgathering

Engagement

I first got interested in social media when, in 2007 and 2008, I was a broadcast journalist. The commercial radio station I worked for had fantastic community of people who would text in. This was the time that Facebook and Twitter started to gain traction and I enjoyed similar listener and engagement online. Ten years on and social provides a way for news brands to host communities of readers. This happens through commenting on site and social and Facebook groups, for example. A social media editor may respond to comments or take an action as simple as liking an Instagram post or Facebook comment, showing the reader the news brand is listening.

In 2014 I wrote how engagement is key to keeping people returning to a news site or brand.

Traffic

Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Reddit and other social platforms have been an important source of traffic to news sites. News startups sprouted up as Facebook and other platforms provided millions of eyeballs to stories. And while Facebook traffic has dropped significantly over the past year (more on that later), it still provides 28% of traffic to the news publishers that use Parsely, an analytics tool.

Reach / brand awareness

A social media editor also plays a role in increasing the brand awareness of a publication. I remember hearing Buzzfeed UK editor in chief Janine Gibson speak at Hacks/Hackers in December 2015 when Buzzfeed traffic had exploded. She made the point that even though the site of course cared about on-platform engagement, it was equally as important for Buzzfeed to have brand reach, whether logo on a social card on Twitter or a native post on Facebook.

Social newsgathering

Social newsgathering has become a whole field in itself, with agencies such as Storyful and organisations like Bellingcat being the pioneering experts. But for many social media editors, their role extends to monitor trends, hot topics and news events via social.

What is audience development?

Audience development roles have developed over the past five years. As this 2014 Digiday article notes, “The New York Times’ Innovation Report pointed out the need for audience-development specialists to get Times content in front of more readers.”

This 2017 Digiday article explains the current climate – and how audience development a focus for both the newsroom and for the commercial side of the business.

“Audience development has become core to how publishers scale and make money. But now the question facing publishers is how to ensure it serves all sides of the business, whose interests often conflict.”

“Once a role that mainly focused on SEO, audience development has become more complicated because of the explosion of ways publishers can find and distribute content, from their own platforms such as newsletters and apps to external ones such as social media outlets and bots.”

“At the most fundamental level, both the business and edit sides want to reach new and existing audiences. But from there the interests can diverge. Whereas the newsroom wants to maximize the reach and impact of its journalism, the sales side is rewarded for growing ad revenue, which could lead it to prioritize certain audience segments over others. And then there is driving subscriptions and marketing other products like events and commerce.”

Blogging about an ONA conference on audience development in 2016, I offered this definition of audience development

“Audience development is about taking the overall goals of the news organisation, whether they be advertising revenue and/or a growth in the number of paying subscribers, and working backwards to develop a strategy to help the news organisation achieve those goals.”

I still agree with my definition from a couple of years ago and expand it to say the field involves identifying a target audience and reaching those people and keeping them engaged.

And, of course, audiences may be engaged off platform. For example, launching Vogue on Snapchat has delivered millions of new, loyal weekly readers. But our owned and operated sites get zero traffic from Snapchat. So what’s in it for the publisher? Brand reach, young audiences and revenue share from the Snap advertising.

What does an audience growth editor do?

Julia Haslanger wrote this Medium post in 2015 answering that question. She quotes Thomas McBee, Quartz’s inaugural director of growth. 

“McBee says that when there’s an obstacle to growth, it’s most often an editorial obstacle, such as a story not being framed or headlined in a way that will resonate with the audience.” 

That still holds true. As head of audience growth I spend a lot of time guiding headline changes.

Here are Haslanger’s points on the role of a growth editor:

Identifying potential new audiences

Reaching out to people who might be interested in a specific story or event.

Shaping stories — and particularly headlines — to resonate with readers

Following up with new readers to build a relationship

Pushing the organization to go beyond the regular sources for stories

Analytics. Analytics. Analytics.

Assigning and shaping stories on trending topics

Events

I manage an eight-person audience growth team and consider our function as supporting the audience growth of the network of Vogues and GQs.

I’m advertising for a maternity cover and state in the ad that the primary function of my role as "responsible for audience development strategy, guidelines and a consistent approach to headlines, content packaging and SEO and identifying editorial opportunities based on audience data.”

Audience growth, in my view, relies on a three-part strategy:

Content strategy

Distribution strategy

Community strategy

The content strategy part includes:

Shaping stories. It’s helpful to think that every digital story starts with an audience of zero and it is our job as audience growth editors to find the right audience for that story.

Thinking audience-first in how people will find stories. That might mean commissioning a story that plays into a Pinterest trend, for example.

Guiding a broad offering of stories that appeal to large numbers of people

That includes evergreen content that delivers long-tail audiences

Shepherding in-depth, quality reporting that delights and keeps readers returning

Developing series to attract loyal readers

The distribution strategy part of the role includes:

SEO, social, email newsletter, and off-platform strategies

Working with product to ensure sites and platforms are optimised for search

The community strategy part includes:

Ensuring the brands host conversations and communities to keep people engaged and connected

And all of the above are underpinned with data.

What’s changed in the past year?

As this is my fourth year of teaching and updating my slides, it’s apparent that this year the social, audience and growth roles have shifted due to the Facebook algorithm change.

The move by Facebook to prioritise friend and family posts over those from news organisations and brands was announced in January. But Facebook traffic had been dropping for several months.

Data from Chartbeat (the first chart) and Parsely (the second chart) shows Facebook traffic declined throughout the previous year.

This algorithm change particularly hit VC-funded, ad-supported news startups including Mashable, Vice and Buzzfeed. But there have been positive stories for some publishers this year. Chartbeat noted in May that mobile direct traffic started to eclipse Facebook traffic, suggesting readers were going direct to sites rather than accessing via Facebook.

And social, audience and growth roles have shifted with the algorithms. The editors’ roles still include Facebook but there’s renewed focus on the following:

Search / SEO. You will have noted the rise in Google traffic in the charts above

Email newsletters, which offer direct relationships with audiences

Diverse and distributed traffic, including Flipboard, Pinterest, Upday, for example

What are news publishers looking for in entry level social journalism graduates?

In the final part if lesson 1, I take the students through the skills that publishers are looking for by going through job ads (such as this one, this one, this one, this one and this one. 

I see my teaching role as equipping the trainee journalists with those skills so they are employable on graduating from the MA in 9 months’ time.

[imagine-your-kh]

Holy damn it really has been a long time since I last checked your blog! I actaully have a question for you and one for the blog: Question for you: How have you been lately? owo I hope it doesn't sound too random if I'm asking you this out of the blue ^^" I can see that you're doing pretty well with the blog and I'm happy to see you improving, since you were so insecure at the beginning. And now my question for the blog: Which Oragnisation members would be into (hardcore) videogaming? :)

Ok,I’ll answer the one for the blog first and put the rest under a cut for people who doesn’t care *fart noise*

Which Oragnisation members would be into (hardcore) videogaming? :

Luxord, obviously. The challenge, dissect the game to understand how to beat them, the pride to finish the game…

He’s the one.

That’s really nice of you to ask??? You deserve a big hug!

I’m actually still insecure about my english’s level. Really. I wrote two days ago a oneshot (lemon, threesome, OC x Canon) that I still hesitate to post on my nsfw blog *snort*

But, surely, my english improve! This blog help me as much as the Discord I created a moment ago (link on the top of the blog, on computer) where we’re talking about our OCs (mostly) and self-insert (mostly me). I met some people there I really like and learn about many great OCs…! At least for the most active on this, we’re like a big familly already, that’s great.

Now in my personal life, this isn’t that great.

The last school year, I was attempting to have my degree/diplom (I’m supposed to have already, but depressions and health problems took my chance away to have it in a normal way)… Which one is a obligation to go in University (I think this is the right word?) or simply do some random and the majority of jobs later. I started to do Photography (because I needed a Qualification I didn’t have too) which was for 2 years. I had some lessons in addition to have the whished degree/diplom.

But I failed.

Because of my dyscalculia that we (my parents who doesn’t believe I have it and myself) doesn’t anything to work with, I failed everything that included numbers. And what I didn’t expect is that there is a LOT of numbers in photography. And my so tender teacher told me that if it was difficult for me this year, it will be worse next year. That and the fact that I had science, which I didn’t have for years and discovers stuff that others already learn in the normal run. The teacher simplified the calculs… and sssoooo when I was looking for tuto online, I understood nothing at all. And math next years. Which I don’t have for years too.I can’t do it. I can’t.

I realised that enough is enough.

I’m 28 years old, 29 in two months, I never worked in my life (depressions, living with my parents, agoraphobia and such)… It’s time to bury some dream like be a psychologist.

In the same time, I noticed that I don’t evolued in photography, be with people who started the last year and become better than me when I do photo for years make me realise that my old friend who throwed at me in her final goodbye that I should take lessons because I’m doing shit wasn’t maybe wrong after all. I hesitate to sell my old ooolllddd reflex.I still have drawing on my side and I always was more into that, so even if I’m sad, I still have something.

Like if it wasn’t enough, I’d do something with the admistration, like, the last year for how much months passed aannnddd… We recieved a call from it to told us something was wrong and we need to do it again. And wait 6 months again. My papers are actually… wrong? If something happen to me, I’m in a deep shit because somebody didn’t do their job and told us too late.Plus that, I need a surgery (more comfort than something else, don’t worry, but it make my life difficult) and we don’t know when it will be.

So yeah. I’m supposed to search a job but it’s actually not a good idea at the moment and we don’t know how long it will be like that when my father will took his pension in not that much time.

I think to open Commissions, drawing and even maybe some Edit Render, I still have one to do, but not that much people follow me on my personal blog, I’m still insecure and my focus change easely so… I never took the courage to do it.

Life is a bitch

But I have friends, familly and the people on the Discord. Beside, some people have worst than that.

Not really a happy post hu? Sorry Sweetie. I hope it’s better for you! LOve on you!!

[multipandadom-blog]

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Points to Outsource to a Virtual Assistant

Working with a virtual assistant can shave hrs from the workweek, but knowing which tasks to delegate could be tricky, no matter if you happen to be commencing or increasing a small business. Most virtual assistants are contract or freelance employees who do their jobs from household and focus on administrative tasks which are very similar to those of an executive assistant or secretary. Sites that specialize in contract workers, this kind of as odesk.com and elance.com, have 1000's of listings for virtual assistants.

Using the amount of virtual assistants are expanding, their skills now runs the gamut, producing it a lot easier to seek out someone that fits your organization, says Jaleh Bisharat, vice president of marketing and advertising at oDesk.com, which can be based mostly in Redwood City, Calif. In 2012, oDesk had 25,000 postings for virtual assistant jobs, in contrast to about 2,500 in 2008.

Entrepreneurs can use virtual assistants for every little thing from generating vendor or customer support calls to sending out thank you cards to prospective customers. It is crucial to construct trust, just while you would which has a everlasting worker. "They turn into a workforce member who just happens to perform remotely," Bisharat says. Not positive the place to start out? 

How do I become a virtual assistant? I worked like a virtual assistant and I have employed my personal virtual assistants likewise. Right here are my suggestions to obtain started.

1. Come to a decision in the event you will operate as an independent contractor or an worker Independent contractors are self-employed and run their very own enterprises. For the other hand, some VAs prefer to perform for an established organization that matches VAs and clients.

The best way to Develop into A VIRTUAL ASSISTANT Updated February one, 2018

Numerous many years in the past I wished to enhance our family’s cash flow, but I did not want a typical work. I had responsibilities I couldn’t immediately drop or hand off to someone else so versatility, producing my personal hrs and working from house were essential. Also, I didn’t have a large budget for new gear or elaborate coaching. I became a virtual assistant. It turned out to be an ideal runway for a full-time on-line career.

How you can turn into a virtual assistant.

Disclosure: Some links below are my affiliate backlinks, that means, at no extra value for you, I could earn a commission should you click by means of and make a buy. Read my full disclosure policy right here.

What on earth is a virtual assistant? A virtual assistant (VA) delivers solutions to men and women, organizations or firms, nevertheless they deliver the results on the net in place of going into an office.

It is a great work-at-home chance and 1 from the most cost-effective approaches of earning profits on the web simply because it is merely a matter of charging other folks for any ability you presently have.

Staying a VA (virtual assistant) is good mainly because you just charge to get a skill you already have. CLICK TO TWEET What do virtual assistants do? The internet has produced it attainable to complete a broad variety of points remotely, or, “virtually.”

A lot of people hear “virtual assistance” and feel only of administrative duties like typing and answering emails. However the selection of tasks VAs do is way more broad.

There are numerous providers you'll be able to offer pretty much. Right here can be a partial checklist:

E-mail management Calendar management Travel arrangement Writing Ghostwriting Graphic style and design / creation Internet layout / advancement Studying Editing Tutoring Audio / video / photograph editing Consulting / counseling / coaching Bookkeeping Copywriting Promoting / Promotion Social media management Undertaking management Customer support Transcription Programming App improvement Data entry Visioneering (folks send you images of their room/house/yard and you also provide ideas for improvement) Something else you'll be able to do devoid of obtaining for being inside the same bodily place as your consumer Simply how much do virtual assistants make? It is dependent upon your talent degree as well as the form of support you supply.

Tasks like data entry may possibly fetch $10-$15 an hour, but if you've got a specialized ability or skills, you may make $100 dollars an hour or more.

Most VAs set their own charges, so that you are in control. This is often an additional motive many people are making the leap into virtual support.

How do I develop into a virtual assistant? I worked as being a virtual assistant and I've employed my own virtual assistants as well. Right here are my recommendations to get started off.

one. Come to a decision if you will operate as an independent contractor or an worker Independent contractors are self-employed and run their particular businesses. Around the other hand, some VAs want to operate for an established enterprise that matches VAs and clients.

Independent contractor vs. worker Not confident if you want to operate for on your own or possibly a business? Right here are the advantages and disadvantages for every:

Pros of currently being an independent contractor

You function for oneself, which means you contact each of the shots. You set your individual pricing, you decide on your personal clientele, you may be your very own boss. Your operate hours are set wholly by you. Any revenue you make goes right to you, in place of being funneled through your employer who keeps a percentage. Cons of becoming an independent contractor

Working and being liable for your very own business. Like developing any small business, this choice will take quite a lot of time, energy and hustle. The accountability rests thoroughly in your shoulders. Finding your individual consumers. This can be troublesome, especially in the beginning before you have satisfied clientele who can advise your providers. Here while in the U.S., you're responsible to withhold and spend your own personal revenue taxes, like Social Safety, Medicare, and so forth. Pros of getting an worker

You may be only accountable for your function at the agreed upon times. It’s a fantastic scenario for anyone who want to clock in and clock out without the need of having to fear regarding the business otherwise. Customers are ordinarily matched with you by your employer, or, provide a platform wherever it’s effortless to connect with new consumers. No need to have to search out all of your clientele your self. You have a built-in support technique. A lot of corporations supply assets, equipment, community and assistance for their VAs. Cons of staying an worker

You should solution to an employer. This may possibly imply you could have recommendations to comply with. You may have less flexible hrs depending to the clientele your employer matches you with. Your spend is generally established for you. You could possibly favor staying an independent contractor if:

You like networking and hustle. You are an entrepreneur at heart. You like obtaining total handle. You dislike currently being an worker. You really don't will need quite a bit of revenue suitable away (within the event it requires a though to construct up your consumer list). You could favor becoming an employee if:

You choose currently being ready to clock in and clock out. You’d rather another person locate clients and inform you when and in which to demonstrate up. You like clear boundaries so get the job done doesn’t spill above into other elements of the existence. You will need revenue ideal away and really don't have or vitality to “pound the pavement” or setting up a enterprise. What about commencing at a VA organization then moving out on my very own? This is certainly attainable, however it will be difficult. There are legal and ethical challenges to take into account.

Most VA organizations include clauses inside their legal contracts prohibiting you from taking their clientele with you should you make a decision to depart. For instance, you can expect to really need to agree to not get in touch with any of their clientele for any specified time frame. Put simply, in the event you get the job done for any VA enterprise and therefore are matched that has a consumer, you can’t leave that company and motivate your client to retain the services of you on your own.

Having said that, if you ever choose to depart a company and start your very own VA business enterprise as an independent contractor, and uncover your very own customers, this may be an alternative.

2. Obtain a web-site This is certainly very important for independent contractors. Individuals want for being capable to locate you, so a presence within the net is essential. It gives you a even more qualified look, a chance to highlight a number of your techniques and a chance to make clear your approach.

Use my step-by-step manual to create a web site, or maybe a blog if you need to on a regular basis include content articles. (Note that the post title is “How to start a Blog” however the exact same actions get the job done to begin an internet site with this one particular modest tweak).

Independent contractors: a must-have An employed VA: optional (but not a terrible strategy in situation you wish to venture out by yourself later)

Be valuable As you interact on social media and network with other VAs, be very cautious not to run into as spammy. Mass emails or “cold” emails to those that do not know you happen to be hardly ever profitable.

I understand the need to make an earnings, but take the time to offer practical information to start with. This may well can be found in the kind of seriously practical articles written in your weblog, or it might come in the kind of genuinely useful (and respectful) recommendations to an individual you meet on-line.

In my situation, I casually provided some suggestions to a buddy on Twitter and it turned out for being the commence of the operating connection that lasted rather a whereas. Exactly where can I do the job as being a VA? If operating as an independent contractor and finding your personal consumers is just not your point, take into account functioning for any enterprise that matches VAs with customers. For some VAs, the aid in discovering consumers is well worth sharing the earnings.

Providers to take into account are Belay Solutions (formerly eaHelp) and Upwork. I’ve personally hired VAs from the two. Belay is usually a more elite service with quite thorough employing and matching processes. Upwork is known as a bigger platform and much easier to join, but you will be competing with additional VAs to the exact same jobs.

Some other suppliers to take into consideration are Priority VA or Fancy Hands. I really do not have personalized encounter with either, but have heard good important things about them.

trabajos virtuales desde casa Colombia

http://orvilleporterfield7838.over-blog.com/2018/05/important-things-to-outsource-to-a-virtual-assistant79.html

[notdeadjusttrash-blog]

My Friend has been Falsely Accused of Tracing So I Will Defend Him

Okay I accidentally deleted the blog I posted this one because I’m a dumbass, so I’ll just repost it here even though I don’t use this blog anymore, but apparently I still have followers. Bless caches because I was able to get this back from google caches so I don’t have to retype everything. I added further evidence and refutes to claims that were not in my original post btw.

Anyways, I am making this post to help out my good friend @5ru9 aka Falco who has been recently accused of tracing/copy pasting other people’s / official art!

I’ve known Falco for over 3 years, and we’ve grown as artists together. Once in a while we give each other advice on art (thanks for the mech and armor advice and teaching me how you line and color!), but most of the time we just meme each other.

Anyways, a lot of people have pointed out that they’ve seen him livestream before, and he’s already posted some of his block outs and other wips as proof that he does not trace in his post here:

http://5ru9.tumblr.com/post/168277137427/hello-i-have-been-informed-about-a-callout-post

To further prove his claim with solid evidence, I shall present to you!

Times he’s asked for advice on his art, or I randomly decided to mention things I notice in his WIPs!

Exhibit A-1:

A Tenkai Knight he made up! I pointed out a few things I thought were awkward about the perspective in his WIP.

Exhibit A-2:

He started working on this way back in July and didn’t finish it until much later because he was working on several other pieces at the same time. I suggested lowering the eyebrows and drawing the eyes a bit narrower to get more of the playful expression he was aiming for. In his final piece here, you can see that Falco continued to refine the piece.

By the way! The reason he sometimes posts a lot of detailed artworks one shortly after the other is because he sometimes works on multiple pieces at once! And then finishes coloring them around the same time.

Exhibit A-3

Falco and I spent good time trying to figure out why he felt like something was wrong with his sketch! I thought maybe it was the trapezius and I decided to red line (or blue line i guess) it so it’d be easier for him to see approximately where i thought the line should go to fix it.

Exhibit A-4:

The gif-ing process turned white bg into blue… anyways! Falco showed me an early version of his Tenkai Knights OC that he eventually used in an April Fool’s joke to pass off as a new character in the series. He mastered the tenkai style enough that at first glance, people really did believe it was official! Like you had to get a good look to realize Shiyu was not really a real new character! Btw I had to go into my old twitter acc to find this…. (Edit: the gif wasn’t working bc it was too big so i had to make it smaller… and choppier and stuff to fit the mb max)

Well now that brings us into!!!

Exhibit B

Some of his old art!! (I’m so sorry falco i’ll be exposing your ancient art to ppl now)

Here you can see his progress from 2014 Tenkai fan art to early 2015! It starts looking more and more like the official art, which is what he was going for.

For reference, here’s what the character Ceylan Jones/Washizaki looks like:

I blocked out fan art by everyone except falco (which i marked) that shows up in this google search. Everything else is official art. The two fan arts by falco you see here are more recent, the angel one being from 2016 and the chicken one from 2017 (i think he also made a version with sonic instead of the chicken? lol). They’re both on his dA accounts btw! The 2017 one really looks like official art, doesn’t it? But it’s his artwork! He practiced a LOT to reach that point, and I hope the earlier arts I showed above this one are enough to convince you in his art progression! Side note: i only used images w/ceylan because 1. i’m biased because ceylan is my favorite character and 2. he drew ceylan a lot because ceylan is his favorite character Also you can see his handle change from s3iwashi to burningbraven. 5ru9 is is a pretty recent handle.

ANYONE WHO HAS BEEN IN THE TENKAI FANDOM FOR A WHILE CAN VOUCH FOR HIM!!!!!

And now for the last one,

Exhibit C

WHAT? WHO IS THIS???

This is my favorite character from a Chinese series called AOTU World! His name is Grey, or 格瑞。I commissioned Falco to draw Grey for me, and let me tell you it would be IMPOSSIBLE for him to have copied any of this. Why? Because the donghua is 3D and the manhua’s art is very inconsistent!

Let me show you the reference pictures I gave him to work with!

They’re all in my gdrive folder here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1CqwH5KS-pHX0ZqLHQpoIZBi6W-gsU_Tz

This is all official art from the manhua, except the 3D model is from the donghua. Look at how inconsistent the references are! There’s no way he could have copy and pasted or traced this! Grey doesn’t even do this particular pose anywhere. lol. I told Falco “give him a cool sword pose”. (I’m sorry for being so vague, Falco! But it turned out great!!) The style he ended up drawing in was a mixture of all of them.

Btw!! here’s the blockout and the sketch he sent me before I sent my payment for the commission!! You can see his construction in the block out!! The arm construction and leg construction is light, but it’s there. You can also see the block out below the sketch. Notice he actually fixed the leg length from block out -> sketch?

ARGUMENTS AGAINST SPECIFIC ACCUSATIONS

LOOK, thte actual drawing doesn’t even match the sprites that closely. Pay attention to the collar especially. The whole frankensteining the image and then painting over it thing is just way more effort than drawing it himself. They don’t even match that well in the overlays. Like wow it’s such a crime to try and stay on model.

WHO WOULD EVEN NEED TO TRACE A MOUTH LIKE THAT? IT’S SO EASY TO DRAW. I CAN DRAW IT PERFECTLY JUST BY LOOKING AT IT. (well i AM an animator so I also do style mimicking)

Doesn’t the fact that you have to edit the sprites to match his artwork prove that you’re just a tryhard in making up fake evidence and not a tryhard enough at art since you think it’s so impossible for people to draw characters on model?

Yes he referenced the broom and possibly the heels from this image, but your overlays for the leg and arms are disingenuous and you know it. The leg positions are different, and the overlay doesn’t even match up. Face tracing also makes no sense. You literally stretched the mouth to try and make it fit but it still doesn’t fit. Do you really think it’s that hard to draw mouths and eyes in the DR style? DR faces are really simple to emulate. Also you fool, if you follow Falco’s artwork enough, you’d realize the way he draws bodies is actually rather consistent even as he does different styles. Especially when it comes to hands. His way of drawing hands is how I recognize his art and know right away it’s his art and not official art or a trace (also his coloring style). The heels he drew are also reminiscient of how he typically draws shoes/feet. he draws them bulkier. The other art has dainty heels. At most he referenced how backside works because he’s used to drawing sneakers.

Also come on, if all you referenced from an image was a broom because you liked the style (his is also clearly drawn by himself since you can’t overlay it on the other one. like i said he mostly used the style as a reference for how-to-broom) and you referenced pieces from many other images, are you going to list every single thing you referenced? While yeah it’d be nice to, it’s a little ridiculous to expect all 5-20 references whenever they post the image. It’s a thing where, if someone asks, you’d tell them, but it’s too much to list all of it. This isn’t a 20 page thesis.

If it’s such a crime, then holy shit sue all those people who parody other people’s comics and sue everyone who dares!!! to ever draw something remotely similar to someone else. Dang.

Art doesn’t live in a vacuum.

Okay, this one is just plain stupid. You distorted the sprite to match it up with his, but what would be the point for him to distort it just to trace? Also if he traced, can you explain the rest of the fingers that are drawn nicely but clearly different from the sprite? Also the thumbs don’t even match up. His faces more downward while the sprite is facing more forward. Also explain the turned body in Falco’s sketch, then!! And the hair! OH WAIT YOU CAN’T EXPLAIN IT BY ANY OTHER WAY THAN HE DREW IT HIMSELF!!! BECAUSE NO SPRITES MATCH IT AND YOU CAN’T FIND ANY SPRITES TO DISTORT ENOUGH TO EVEN GET CLOSE TO MAKING FAKE EVIDENCE FOR IT.

By the way, the style he drew it in is closer to the drv3 than this sprite. while it’s pretty much the same style as the older games, drv3′s art is more refined than the older games. Falco’s art is also more refined as you can see. (wow not only did falco’s art improved from back when we first met; even professional artists improve. shocker. /s)

Dude what the hell? The overlays don’t even match up even ifi you tried to frankenstein them. And these are really common poses at really common angles, and once again, must every single thing we reference from be listed in the description of every place we post an image? Let me just list all 30 videos and 50 images i used as reference for one of my prints. jfc.

As for the saihara animation based on the digimon opening animation? It was pretty clear to everyone that it’s some kind of parody. Many people when making parody animations don’t mention the original video either?? It’s a fun thing for fans of the franchise to recognize the reference themselves. Yes he could have said it was the digimon opening on the description, but at least he didn’t say he thought of the idea himself? And if you talk to him about the animation, he will openly tell you it’s from digimon. And the fact that you think it’s a trace despite how much the overlays do NOT work out is practically proof that you’re just doing this maliciously and hoping that saying he traces enough with shoddy evidence will make people believe you.

ALSO PEOPLE LITERALLY TRACE ANIMATIONS TO MAKE PARODIES OF, DOWN THE STYLE WHERE ALL THEY CHANGE IS THE HAIR AND OUTFIT, AND YET SOMETHING WITH DIFFERENCES EVEN DOWN TO THE STYLE LIKE THIS IS SOMETHING YOU THINK IS A TRACE? Do you need a new pair of glasses?

I was gonna ignore this one because it was the same as a lot of the others, but you literally erased Falco’s face line so it would match the sprite, and you covered the bigger boobs Falco gave her, and totally ignored that the angle doesn’t even match properly. Like you covered parts of his sketch in your overlay just to make it look more like it matches, but if you actually fucking overlayed it correctly, even with squashing it, it won’t fit. (Also sorry to point this out Falco, but the circles on your goggle lenses are too small compared to the sprite; Maybe if you actually traced like this person claims you’re doing, they’d be perfectly like the sprite. OH BUT WAIT YOU DREW IT YOURSELF SO OF COURSE THERE’S SOME DIFFERENCES. JUST LIKE HOW EVEN THOUGH ALL YOUR OTHER WORKS ARE REALLY CLOSE TO THE STYLE AND PRETTY MUCH ON MODEL, THEY’RE NOT EXACTLY THE SAME WITH THE SPRITES! SHOCKER...!)

HOLY FUCK. I already pointed out and gave evidence that Falco started on the Nier Automata drawing waaaaaaay before he posted the actual picture. The 2 sketches are sketches! They don’t take a super long time. I busted out 10 inktobers in 1 day. (thumbnails of my artwork below)

Look I even even lined and colored 5 fairly detailed chibis in 1 day (i did the sketches earlier though. btw i hand drew the plaid on ray. it was annoying)

At the moment I have 5 wips. They’ll likely all be done around the same time. I know Falco often has multiple wips as well, and sometimes he also finishes some of them close to each other. Some artists (like my friend Fish) can pump out extremely detailed paintings in less than a day. WOW some artists can draw at a fairly fast rate. WHO KNEW? (manga artists in weekly magazines pump out 15-20 pages of manga in a week)

He’s still developing a style; he’s mostly doing style mimics of series he likes in the mean time.

At the moment he’s mostly experimenting with the drv3 style, but he was practicing p5 earlier. By the way, he DESIGNED a phantom outfit for mishima. Who the heck would he copy that from? He made it up because he loved mishima and wanted to make him part of the gang in some AU fan art. Mishima doesn’t have artwork like this for him to trace, so it should be obvious it’s his own work.

And the pokemon and crash bandicoot ones are actually not that close. The pokemon one looks like a good attempt at imitating the pokemon style, but since he hasn’t practiced it enough, you can tell it’s a little off model because, well, he drew it himself and doesn’t practice the pokemon style a lot. Same with the crash one. Had it been a trace, with his level of control over his lines (which you can’t refute), it would have been much closer.

And you act like it’s a crime to imitate others’ art style. It’s really not. What is wrong with you? Do you want to slow down animation production by only letting the character designer draw everything? Or do you want animation where the art has 0 semblance of consistency because all the artists draw in vastly different styles? lol. What do you have against artists that try to stay on model?

LOL THIS IS ONE IS SO STUPID WHERE DO I EVEN START?

Oh, I KNOW. Why don’t I do that same pose with my own hands?

IT’S A MIDDLE FINGER, YOU IDIOT.

Just because YOU don’t know basic anatomy and can’t tell a middle finger from a pinky, doesn’t mean everyone else is as incompetent as you. He wasn’t doing the rock-on hand pose (sry idk if that pose actually has a name lol), and he’s drawn the rock-on hand pose properly before.

Closing statement

I believe I covered a lot of things and provided a lot of evidence here that Falco and his other friends did not cover in his defense against the false accusations.

I even added more counter arguments in this repost because apparently my original post wasn’t enough to convince people.

Perhaps the person calling him out meant well (no, I doubt it because they made a new side blog just to diss him because they knew if they did it on their actual blog, they’d be called out for being a jerk), but they did not do enough digging to find out if their claims were true or not (and they probably know well enough that they MADE UP THEIR EVIDENCE).

If you’re going to make a call out post, please make triple sure sure of everything before you accuse people. Talk to them first. Talk to those who know them too.

Many jobs require you to be able to draw characters exactly in the style given. Animators for example! There are multiple animators working on one series, and they all need the skill to draw consistently! Some games also have teams that need to be able to draw in the same style so they don’t have to leave everything up to one person. Comic artists often have assistants that help them draw background characters, but those background characters can’t be too different from the main style either.

As for the people who believed the call out post before, it’s perfectly understandable. I am also guilty of falling for similar posts in the past. Due to that, I decided it was best to double check before retweeting (i say retweet because i use twitter far more than tumblr these days. heck i almost never post anything on this blog) things, and if i wasn’t sure, I would just leave it be.

I hope my post was able to convince you on Falco’s innocence and all his hard work. And if you already believed him but checked out this post anyways… Thanks! ObligatoryPleaseWatchAotuWorld.

And again:

Art does NOT exist in a vacuum. All artists are influenced by each other and MANY artists, especially professionals, use a lot of references, whether it be from photographers, their own pictures, others’ artwork, life, or whatever. We all use many different resources. If you’re going to say that’s wrong, you just dismissed millions of artists in the world.