#this one wont get a lot of traction but honestly i just needed to read some quotes lol

[crushing-on-nico-di-angelo]

2023

invitation, mary oliver // the unabridged journals, sylvia plath // happy xmas, john lennon // north country, mary oliver // i am running into a new year, lucille clifton // salt, nayyirah waheed // diaries of franz kafka // bird by bird, anne lamott // sunrise, louise glück

[cutefut]

Skype Questions for 31/07/2019 wk3

Skype Interview Questions for Annie from Tearfund. This was the first communications interview where we could understand what Annie envisioned, and could answer some valid questions to go towards the project. I met up with Simone and Lauren who we are now working closely with. Below are some questions that were planned on bringing up into conversation:

What outcome would you like to see from us working with you?

Are there any aspects in particular that you would like us to focus on when designing promotional material for TearFund?

You have said that you would like to target a younger and wider audience; what do you think of creating a fun visual medium such as an app, lookbook, or subscription media page to engage the public more and better illustrate the key issues TearFund what people to know?

What do you want people to know about TearFund?

Why do you think there have been bad press regarding the fashion report?

What feedback have you received that can better the reputation of the report?

What have you found to be your most successful platform in terms of getting your message across (so far)?

In the Skype meeting Annie gave us plenty of information, and a lot of my questions were answered pretty quickly. The two other communicators prompted more information with their questions. This first meeting was helpful and gave us better insight before heading to class. 

Interview with Annie: 20 minute duration (simplified transcript from voice recording)

We wanted to know more background and information about Tearfund?

Basically, as I explained in the presentation, Tearfund is an organisation with development work in countries which is kind of like our prime target of work. Ethical fashion guide sits quite outside of it but like we still see it as an important form of work in terms of advocacy. And probably the most touchpoint of that is that we are very much into looking after the worker and thats kind of how it ties into all of other work, and its that we acknowledge that ya know workers in the fashion industry are often exploited: they don’t have many rights, they are treated pretty badly, and so it’s not so dissimilar to all the other work we do. 

And so the other side of that we are wanting to achieve in New Zealand is that creating something that gets into the consumers hands that helps them make better choices when they are purchasing and  informs them a bit better. So i guess thats like probably the most important part for us. And so the ethical fashion guide is a totally complicated one and Jennifer and I have talked about this before, lots of  people have different opinions on what or if they think its good or if they think its bad, what they think it should be doing, or if they think it does well. And yeah, lots of feedback we have gotten recently is the environmental side of the report. So historically the report was designed to look at worker empowerment which is the most heavily weighted section in the survey. The main bit of that is to check of is what the company is doing to look after the people, and how they are doing it and basically how robust are they. So up until last year it really focused on like workers but sort of this year we are introducing the environmental section and i think as kiwis, the  environment is something that we care about a lot. Obviously without an environment we wont be able to survive, so although its not directly connected to people in some ways its totally connected to us as you guys probably know. 

A lot of feedback we got this year is that companies and people, like through press or supporters coming to us saying: we like what you're doing but we think you failed to address some of the really big pieces to do with sustainability and the environment. Our environmental section at this stage addresses things like water use, chemical testing, I can send you a it of a run down of what the questionnaire asks which might be quite helpful. 

But it doesn’t really go into things like slow fashion vs fast fashion, and evaluating impact beyond like purchase, the volume of something. we often get asked “how does zara get such a good grade? How are they compared to someone like Kowtow?”  Longevity of garments, circular relationships, that sort of thing. It’s not like we don’t want to ask those kinds of questions, also, something interesting for you guys: Tear Fund New Zealand is a partner with another organisation in Australia called Baptist World Aid. They own the company, they make all of the big decisions. We try to give our two cents as much as possible to influence them. But at the end of the day, it’s their project so we hope that all of this research that are doing will be able to go towards something really cool in that space. Yeah thats just kind of a disclaimers for you guys. 

What was the name of that organisation? 

Baptist World Aid. So you will sometimes see it as BWA. I think it would be cool for you guys to help us think about ways in which we can measure that sort of environmental sustainability piece. We all know that these things should be being addressed. But we are not sure of the metrics we can use, cause theres almost nothing concrete in terms of data that you can acquire to tell us, to give us the stats on these things right. Beyond a brands power, say like when you purchase a garment, you know maybe like how many times you've washed something or how long you've had it in your wardrobe for but like there is no central data base to collect all that. So it would be really cool if you guys could have a think about that. Maybe see what else is out there in terms of metrics and research. 

I guess the other side of the thing is that the Ethical Fashion Report, as I was saying earlier, is something  that is received really well in New Zealand. but it also gets a lot of critical media attention. I think a lot of that is a lot of people not understanding how it actually works. and the purpose of it. Cause we have got the guide, and we have got the report; and hardly anyone would read the report and try to understand the bigger picture of it. So maybe, I'm sure if you guys have read the report, and i know its a really chunky document, so apologies in advance. but it might be helpful for you guys to take bit of a deep dive into that. Just to gain a really good understanding of it. Any questions so far?

No.. I think you’re covering it so well! No, you’re answering all of our questions already! It’s good.

Well yeah, so I reckon that those two main pieces and maybe to go into the positive chatter thing a bit. I mean with you guys being design students, you have such unique way of thinking, it would be cool to engage that sort of thinking to promote what we do because you know we’ve been promoting through articles and interviews sort of thing but its not necessarily promoted - other than the design field, you know in a other creative way. And possibly thats what it needs to gain bit of traction and become something really positive. Looking at it through a different lens through design. So that would be really interesting to see you guys come up with anything to do with that. 

With that, with the positiveness, did you mind if we showed people what fast fashion is actually kind of like? or do you want us to stay strictly positive? 

It’s totally up to you, but I don't see any harm with showing like a reality of it. Because i think people want to change things once they’ve seen kind of the harsh side of it. I think  if you balance it with a positive narrative, at the end  that sort of like inspires people, its yeah it balances each other out. So yeah I'm totally open to you guys revealing the harsher side behind it as well. 

What is your biggest audience? Who should we be targeting? 

Theres quite a few different audiences, so say for the purpose of the guide, essentially Tear Fund has our supporters who support our other causes, maybe they sponsor a child or are interested in the other work that we do. so thats sort of like one group and they’re, honestly about 50+. But that’s almost not the main key target of the Ethical Fashion Guide. I reckon the ethical fashion guide probably targets people maybe from 15 to - lets go with 35. That’ll be our main braces to target just because they are the groups that are like really keen to get involved in the space, they care about it. They are probably more active on social media and stuff. Is that too broad?

No that’s good.

So you said active on social media, are you looking at us to create something that is for social media? 

Well i guess, I mean we don't have a massive presence on social media, other than when we do the launch. Cause we have tear fund new zealand Instagram and Facebook page, and tear fund sees that as a strategic move to to keep sort of like all our pages in one. so probably wouldn’t be looking to create a separate account, and then put like and put the content stuff through that. but i reckon its definitkey something - its a story we should be telling on social media through our account. at all times of the year, not just through, at the peak time when we are releasing the report essentially. if that could be part of what yo guys do, great. if you wanna steer away from social media and make it more like guerrilla marketing, cool as well. whatever you wanna do. 

So what kind of promotional stuff do you do now? is it just the, like you said, the one post on social media currently?

Yeah so its kind of like, leading up to it and then at the time of the launch we will do lots of social media stuff. we will sort of try and do little bits and bob throughout the year, like through speaking at schools and churches. or just kind of getting the word out there by like seeking engagements. we do emails each month to our supporter database. which basically people who have signed up to the ethical fashion guide, we  then say like do you want to be taken on an ethical fashion journey? and so they either join or if they have been involved in the emails for a year, then they get moved to the advanced. so those are basically just emails that go out helping people to live more ethically and sustainably. so that promotes the ethical fashion guide through that channel as well. and then basically just around the time of the launch of the guide and report, we will do lots of media interviews and try and generate a lot of chatter around that time. id say thats probably the peak of our engagement. then it kind of drops off. 

With your process of working with the companies to find out what, what kind of is your process working with the companies to find out their grade? 

so, the engagement process starts off with a bunch of companies who we have worked with before. and we say “hey the survey is coming around again, just checking if you want to participate?” and usually they will say yes, cool send us the survey we will get started. So that will be older companies and then we will have new companies that we introduce, basically we see maybe if theres a gap in the market, maybe we have only got one baby wear company, and we want 4 so we will add a few more to that category or something like that. so its new people that we want to include, we will send them a letter saying “you have been included in the ethical fashion guide, there is two streams you can go down, either we can collaborate and we will go through a process of filling out the survey together - there will be two check points and then final submission” so basically we explain the engagement process and then we say  “if you choose not to participate, we will still assess you on public available information. let us know what you want to do.” we often hear back from them saying “we want to know more about it” and thats where we would have a company meeting. we basically try to be a collaborative as possible because  of so much that we do can be easily misconstrued - beavsue it seems like a scary thing right? to get a letter being like you're gonna be assessed. but we want it to be way more collaborative than that and not a freaky thing. we will sit down with people and explain exactly how it works. when someone chooses to participate, we have countless meetings with them, countless phone calls, i will sit down and explain question by question, tell them exactly what they need to submit. so the engagement process is really collaborative. 

so they fill out the survey, which has 5 sections that you will know. Policies, traceability and transparency, auditing and supplier relationships, worker empowerment and environmental management. so they are assessed on all 5 sections. the 5 sections have different weightings so both policies and the environment are weighted at 10%. auditing and supplier relationships and traceability and transparency is 20%. and then worker empowerment is the bigger section at 30%. 

what a company does, is that go through the survey, they answer either yes or no, depending on what the question asked, a lot of the time with the more heavily weighted sections, because they are worth more, we require quite a bit more evidence. so we ask them to provide things such as order reports, for example there will be a question in there that is saying “do you pay living wage?”  and we will need a payslip from one of the factories to give evidence that they actually do.

although that it is a self reporting tool that companies fill out themselves with help of us, its not something that they can just sit and that and then get an easy grade for cause they like ticked the box. they have to do a lot more work beyond just saying they are doing what they are doing. basically after all that, and once we are happy with their answers, there is final submission. they submit, we mark it, and then give it a grade. basically the grade are just a percentage of the score that they got based on the grading template. thats basically it for them.

with the non -responsive companies, we just dig around for what information we can find that publicly available - so reports on their website, maybe like a code of conduct on their website, that sort of thing. when you will see an F, thats basically someone has little or nothing, and we can’t find anything else so we just give them a grade like that. 

Annabelle

[bardsoverflowers]

[[ I’ve been feeling down about Adra a lot nowadays and I’m not gonna lie about that (seeing as so much has happened in my personal life in the last month, I can’t really blame anyone but myself for feeling this way about her).

I remember when I first made her; she was a Hyur Midlander and an independent young woman. I hadn’t fleshed out a lot of her story at that point, and a year after playing I had finally solidified her story. She was a woman passionate about dance, passionate about being a Bard/Archer and keen on helping anyone and everyone as one of the Warrior’s of Light and bringing good to the world.

A year or two after, I ended up changing her to a Moon Keeper Miqote; mainly due to the fact that were more likeable voice options and aesthetics (I also wanted to have a character with dark skin, not tanned). The only thing I had changed about Adra was the fact that she was now adopted by a family of kind and loving Hyur Midlanders. She very much so held onto her passion for dance, and passion for being an Archer/Bard, but I feel like in the last few months, I’ve lost sight of what I want her to become/what she actually has become.

Adra is a character I’ve worked on A LOT over the years and I feel a little upset that she doesn’t gain the same traction, or even ‘attention’ that male characters do (which is a given). The only way for me to obviously change that is to promote myself and Adra included; which seems like a scary thing for me to do on my behalf during such a difficult time thanks to my depression and anxiety (not only that, isolating myself is something I’m also used to as well). I keep telling myself that I’m going to promote her, but something almost always pops up and requires a lot more of my attention than my role play blog and my characters (e.g. assignments, work and family commitments).

Finding someone to ship her with was something that almost ALWAYS bothered me to a huge extent (well, her having a life-long partner). Not so much in the beginning of her creation, but as the years progressed, I was kinda bummed at the fact that I couldn’t find anybody IC who was just like me or a close friend of mine on a server like Lamia (which is impossible to find on a server as such). I’ve never been the one to say to someone “Hey, I ship X and X together, maybe we could come up with something? (e.g. a story)” to someone EVER because of the negative implications it can have on both parties. Heck, I was even scared to even imply that I shipped Adra and another OC to the OC’s creator; I just found it really rude and invasive for me to throw my character at someone even after knowing them for some time. I’m not the one to initiate things myself, but if someone brings up an idea about a ship or wants to ship with me, there is a 99% chance I’m going to agree with the idea or ship concerning Adra.

Since May this year, I’ve had no idea what to do with my character or which direction to take with her prior to Stormblood. Plot was a thing that was brought up a lot in some chats, which instilled some sort of anxiety within me because I just did things with Adra as I played the story in terms of ARR and HW. I didn’t put much thought or detail about if or any injuries that Adra would sustain, or her thoughts about the Heavens Ward or other events as a collective. Sure, she has a large dislike for Ser Adelphel and grieved tremendously over Haurchefant’s death (heck, I was hesitant in buying SB because I didn’t want to move on so quickly from the story that was HW and Haurchefant himself). Adra was just very hesitant to move on so quickly and so was I.

Surely enough, Stormblood came around and my muse was inclined to help and assist Ala Mhigan women affected by the Garlean Empire’s conquests. She’s sustained a scar from Zenos, and prior to SB she permanently called off the ‘one night stands’ she had with her ex for a few months before the conclusion of HW (all done to fill the loneliness in her heart and to actually feel somewhat ‘loved’ by someone). The latter event saw the end to her emotional trauma per-se, and even meeting D’ucimel, she kind of has her reservations about him. At the same time though, he’s from a similar upbringing to her in terms of being adopted by a non-Miqo’te at a certain age, so she’s not as scared of what he might bring to the table for her.

As for her friends... I’m not sure how Adra sees them at the moment due to my current mental state. One moment, she wants to be around them, and the other, she just doesn’t want anything to do with them (perhaps save for a few). A close friend of mine ended up removing her character, of whom was Adra’s best friend, due to that character having romantic ties with another; of whom moved servers with their boyfriend without even saying goodbye. We’ve spoken about this multiple times to each other about what has happened to said character, but there is no way that I would want to force her to bring said character back as it is associated with a lot of negativity, unfortunately.

Plot wise, I’m not going to stress about it anymore and just do what I did with her in ARR and HW. I also want Adra to get to know some other people as well. I’ve planned out starters for certain people, but I just haven’t gotten around to finishing them due to my concentration and motivation levels die at the thought of it, or in fear that my writing would be just far too terrible for a starter and not up to a specific standard.

I also want to be open about talking about ships with Adra, and it’s something that I’ve ALWAYS been hesitant and nervous to talk about. I’ll probably think of something the ship would do but... 80% of the time, I wont end up confronting the person and telling them about it. I just feel like a pain in the ass (which I’m certainly not, I know that) or just a burden honestly. I have also wanted to send asks pertaining to ships in the last few days, but again, I haven’t because I said to myself; “Nah, I might be bothering them. I better not.”

Overall, I just feel that I may need to be more open with myself and Adra included. Perhaps when everything has smoothed over and I’ve been through the grieving process after losing my grandfather, maybe everything will be okay again. At this current time... I’m not entirely sure as everything seems uncertain. I also plan on drawing and posting some art when I get the time too, and maybe some writings. I’ve always had horrible confidence when it comes to my creativity, so we’ll see how that goes.

If you’ve read up until this point... Thanks. I’ve just been meaning to put my finger on what has been bothering me and ways that I can fix it, and my thoughts together on a character I’ve worked on so much.

In the meantime... I’m just gonna kick back and see how things go from here. ]]