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I'm sure you're aware about the recent issue with the ts fandom. And one thing I noticed is it isn't talked about as much as it needs to be talked about. It's as if fandom just wants to ignore it. Like where are all the big blogs who always have something to say? Like they're so ready to jump on things and give their opinions on trivial things but on stuff that matters they're all hush hush?

It’s a matter of what they wanna talk about. It’s all ok until it has to do with the man they idolize

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Ok do people not understand that Thomas Sanders is a grown man, a white grown man.

Like da fuck bro stop defending him HES FINE

He’s also a grown ass man who knows what he’s doing he’s not a child in need of defending and he’s certainly not the victim OR always right

Fuck man I’m so sorry I’m just really fucking annoyed rn and will absolutely talk more I’m just fucking Hhhh rn

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Ok racism isn’t discourse

Its not negativity

It’s not anything besides racism

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But I don’t idolize him, I’m just a fan who is worried about being a fan of a bad person.

Ok so like I could but there’s legal reasons I can’t share everything

Like actual legal reasons

But it’s not that he’s a bad bad person it’s just that he’s done questionable things and a lot of it is harmful

1) the way both him and Joan respond to people is extremely harmful especially because they know they have a large fan base who will absolutely attack anyone on sight

2) playing the victim is something Thomas does. Or rather acting like he’s always right or can never be wrong. This is extremely harmful aswell as a mindset that is gained through idolization

3) (for legal reasons I cannot talk about this) but look up animators and Thomas sanders and do a bit of digging

4) his patreon and membership shit. I could go into many detail about that

5) the whole Roman and Blm thing ( @lamp-calm-sanders has or will have a post explaining all of this in detail I highly suggest you check it out) it’s important as shit to see how he responded to people of color as well as conducted himself

There’s a lot more and I’m sure I can talk about it all. But it’s not that you have to stop liking him or stop supporting him ig it’s more just know what he’s done and what kind of person he is and know that idolizing people is never a good thing

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I’m sorry did Thomas do something racist recently? I’m just confused what the last post was about, hope it’s ok to ask

I mean unless you count his attitude during the b.l/m stuff earlier this year where he didn’t acknowledge how he contributed to making this fandom very painful for POC fanders than no.

But that post was more a commentary to this strange protectiveness some of y’all have over him. He’s a thirty year old man, if someone criticizes Sanders Sides it’s not the end of the world. He can take someone criticizing a plot or detail of the show, especially something problematic (like DWIT) or a criticism of something technical like the pacing of this show.

Like Jesus y’all, some of y’all think someone having issue with something is the same as a personal attack. I’m begging y’all to look up parasocial relationships. Please. Me taking issue with TSS or a character you like is not the same as me thinking you’re bad.

I do not say this lightly, but if you value yourself on another person, especially one you’ve never met, or a character, and you can’t comprehend the idea of someone who wouldn’t like them or would hurt someone for them and can’t comprehend them not being perfect, please acknowledge how that mentality is not healthy. Comfort characters are fine. Looking up to people is fine. Not wanting to see criticism of a character you like sometimes is fine. But if you idolize someone to a point can’t stand to think that they may do wrong or think you will be over if they do so, please understand that that is not good. That is not healthy.

Thomas is a man, he creates content I like, but he’s a man. A man who, like all of us, will make mistakes. And if that happens, y’all have to acknowledge what it is. He’s already made mistakes that he hasn’t owned up to. (Said b.l/m Roman thing)

And for his art itself, you have to acknowledge that art is subjective. Some people are not going to like what you like or have incredibly valid criticisms. They are allowed to share those. It’s not hate. It’s a criticism, which is a very important part of making things, especially Thomas who profits off his content.

I’m a personal believer that once you start profiting off of something, it is open for criticism. I’m not saying that I condone death threats or hate, I condone people going “hey I didn’t like this thing” or them going “hey this episode wasn’t good for me for this reason.” Again those aren’t personal attacks and I implore you all learn the difference between hate comments, constructive criticism, and “this thing is actually misrepresentating/harming a group of people and we should acknowledge it”. All three of which I have seen people in this fandom think is hate.

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I've seen someone go into detail about it, which did prompt responses of "wait we're aloud to talk about it?" Go off on it

Ok well

ONE FUCKING DOLLAR ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ONE DOLLAR PER FUCKING SECOND??

And don’t fucking come at me with the they didn’t have the money to pay the animators THATS BULLSHIT

That’s BULLFUCKINGSHIT

This is a YouTube account, A MONETIZED AND SPONSORED YOUTUBER, with TWO CHANNELS, with over 3 MILLION SUBSCRIBES AND ATLEAST 500 k VIEWS PER VIDEO

And you paid them ONE MOTHERFUCKING DOLLAR per second

This is peoples lives

What the fuck don’t even I did the math you should have and could have payed them what they were mother fucking owed

Also what about all that patreon and membership money?? You know the money you’re using to make content?? Well where the fuck is that content??

Anyway

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An animator’s insight about the current Thomas situation

Quick explanation since I don’t see many people talking about it: the last Storytime madlibs video was animated by fans, each of them was paid around 1.80usd per second and the credit was not given until after the animators asked the team to have their links included.

I asked my friend @siriwesen​, who is a freelance animator from Germany, for her opinion in the matter. Here’s what she had to say, everybody say “Thank you Siri” because she spent a lot of her time checking every detail with me in order to give me a good perspective.

Disclaimer: all of this information is based on a freelance self-employed base for the central european market, it may vary by country.

tldr: the animators did an amazing job but were grossly unpaid, even for a passion project/beginner gig.

First, I gave her an hypotetical about a job offering to pay 25usd for 19 seconds of animation

I wouldn’t even type a response for that. For 25 USD I’m not even turning on my pc. Or I’d do a nitty grity break down explaining how long animation takes by the hour with a past work example. I am always saddened with people selling their work at under 20.

When I gave her a rough explanation of the situation, specifically about Alex’s situation

So just as an idea. Even when working on a frame saving project like I did til yesterday, where you have a lot of still images and hold in between several frames. 5 frames can take 1-2hours depending on complexity, if you have a line test to follow, etc, not to forget lipsync. Lipsync takes forever. I’d expect 1.80 per frame not per sec. Like if they need 15 min for a full coloured frame, at 4 drawings they should get an hourly wage done. So 20-40 USD, and 20 is the utter lowest you should go.  20 sounds much as an hourly wage but it is not when you have to pay insurance and retirement savings.

After I showed her the madibs video

From what I can tell everyone hat freedom in what to do and how to do their scene, that means they spent time on design and thinking the scene.

Some of these movements are really flowy and smooth

Like either they pay one fixed budget to one animator or a team of animators, which would still be scummy but a beginning artist would usually not depend on the money for rent  as they usually have other jobs and get a good portfolio piece out of it.

However with so many people on this… In order to get the video done in time I assume… This is outrageous. Because some artists will have just gotten bad luck on their scene and not have had the inspiration etc to create cool fucking showreel shit, so the got barely paid.

I’m gonna say some of those are relatively simple. Like you can make them within 4h, but it’s still not enough pay. Motion graphics people make 30-40 an hour minimum.

I remember one time I ended up applying for a story time channel as editor and they wanted to pay editors 10usd per hour, which is absurd. If you can’t afford animation, don’t trick people into doing it. But be clear from the get go that this is a passion project. If its a sponsored video you better get the money for the animation.

Generally id say you could pay all the animators easily, if you have a well paid sponsorship/ product placement on the video.

Also, Im impressed they have partly fully animated clips there? Like the artists clearly went all out.

Her opinion on how to pay when you have a low budget

It’s a fun video but if you wanna make it collaborative you either say: hey this is not being paid or you say: I’m sorry I have a set budget for this video and this is it so you would work underpaid, I can only offer you letters/reviews of recommendation for further work applications on real jobs, but be transparent and let the artists know, that’s all im asking. They need to have the choice.

There will always be people who stay for the sake of the project because the love the channel or sth, but let people know you can’t afford a proper pay for them but that you will do what you can to rectify or validate their work.

Give them shout outs, feature them at the end of the video, share them on insta tiktok and so on.

I feel like reducing the staff to 10, and paying each 100-200 would have been still a better “beginner” gig…

About the way the animators were credited

The description is the worst place to put them. Obviously they should be there but no one reads the description, especially when the vid gets embedded. Shout out your artists ffs.

About the project in general

It’s just really a shit situation and I think their choice to make this such a large body of people working on it also doesn’t necessarily help.

I just want to stress, that my estimates are based on a freelance self-employed base for the central european market, the prices for US Market may be different,but from what i know it is still common to pay 20+ upwards to your animators.

In Korea/Japan and other countries it is popular to pay animators per drawing,Idon’t know the exact amounts but it’s peanuts less than a dollar per drawing, but this is first off part of why people criticise the outsourcing in animation, because many times it is bad labor practises at bad wages to the point that animators have to have 1-2 other jobs in order to afford animating.

I dont know how things have improved over the past years but I reckon not much.

Also you can lower prices, when the major creative decisions, such as character design, colour palettes, background design, and storyboarding / timing has been pre done by other people/staff in the production, aka you just draw the characters. or you just colour them. that’s how you can manage a feasible rate of drawings per day because you do a single task in a pipeline.

I can’t tell how strict or coordinated and split their production pipeline was, but I think it is counter intuitive to pay young artists really bad wages because it discourages them from further engaging with the art/craft.

About hiring fans

This is a very double sided edge. I’ve seen people in a former fandom of mine being heavily disappointed in finally getting to work on the actual show,also the creator - fan dynamic is often an unfair one, because it is an uneven power-balance in which the creator/idol does not only hold the financial power over the fan, but also an emotional one. it’s a predisposition for an unhealthy relationship, which the one with the power has to make the active effort to break it even and remove the worship-aspect and make clear to the artist,, that they’re on a job-relationship playing field.

I also think it’s important to figure out if any minors were contracted. Depending on countries, it may be, that they were technically not be legal to employ, there are places where you can only set up your own business aka freelance, once you hit the legal age.

Advice for new animators

Generally speaking, I’d also give the advice to never! start work without a contract.

Also if you can avoid it, never give out a custom demo example work or custom sample tailored to the project you’re applying to, if you can help it, UNLESS you get compensation for the demo. I’ve wasted so many hours on providing potential clients with customised demo animation/drawing design and never heard back from them.

Only do this when you really trust your client and have worked with them previously, or if this is a specific pitch for project platform (which does basically work on this basis).

About working on passion projects

The job I completed yesterday, was definitely underpaid, but the director did basically show me his financing for this passion project, he got finance and funding, but it was still more a small drop in the pit of money you usually use.

I went on board with the project because he did take the time to reply to me, explain the project details, shared history on the project, and because he has ties to animation studios and work areas that I’m interested in. I got some really amazing character animation shots out of the project which I am allowed to use in my showreel/portfolio, I got some shout outs and minor cloud due to social media and in the end I WAS PAYED (1300 Euros to be precise). It’s not as much as it would be for the work usually, but it’s still a decent amount and,at the time I took the job, my livelihood did not depend on this money.

Even though this project i took was technically “underpaid” the conditions and favours i got out of it were absolutely fine. (also got 2 switch games out of it as a compensation for late hour work, lol).

Maybe this put it into perspective of what type of “underpaid” beginner jobs are good and which ones are not.

About working for exposure

I remember back in uni, we had a lot of industry speakers who had reputable careers in british animation, and there always was this thing about “is it okay to take unpaid jobs / jobs for exposure"and the answer always was either “never unpaid” or “it depends.” and i think this is pretty much the best way to answer.

There were people who did amazing music videos in the 80s and who basically got only 100 pounds from it but that kickstarted their career,but it was high risk, it’s a gamble and 80 percent of the time “exposure” gigs are useless.

Thanks again to Siri for providing all this insightful information, let’s hope @thatsthat24​ @thejoanglebook and the rest of the team not only adress the issue, but also take the time to pay the animators correctly. They are artists and animation enthusiasts, they should know better than doing this.

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big names in the fandom or being a fandom mom/parent 

scare me

literally no joke

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Hey, i wanted to come foward about a Logicality fanfic that a found that had something really fucked up. So, last week, i logged into my Wattpad account and searched for Logicality fanfics and i found one that looked ok. I started reading and it was pretty good at first. I was wrong. At a certain chapter in the book, a original character was introduced and i was a little iffy about this character, but continued reading none the less. And that same character ended up sexually assulting Patton on the story, i was so disgusted by that, but i continued reading just to see if the creator of the story was going to address this, and they did in the worst way possible. They basicaly just excused everything that the character had done just by saying: "He has a bad home life" and the comments were horrible, people just started to forgive him just because of that, and with that, i stopped reading the fic. Sorry if it's to much to get through, i just had to take this out of my chest. (Sorry about the bad english)

That sounds awful. Having topics such as sexual assault In your works isn’t necessarily bad, but having them glorified, romanticized or excused is absolutely not ok. I’m very sorry you had to see this anon

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Hi. I've been afraid to come forward because of all Eva's supporters, until a friend of mine told me about this account (her blog is the one im sending this from because I dont know if she will be able to track this back to me) but I was one of the people she keeps saying told her KHS was ok. The opposite is true, really. We told her that she should think about how bigoted her writing was, but she never listened. Thank you for giving me a platform to be able to speak out against her. - V

Of course, and thank you for being brave and coming forward.. it’s people like you who help us reach the goal of trying to inform the world on these problems. Thank you ❤️

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EVA REBLOGGED A POST ABOUT HOW IF YOU DON'T LIKE FIC JUST DON'T READ LIKE THAT'S NOT THE ONLY THING WE'RE MAD ABOUT? WE DON'T JUST NOT LIKE YOUR FIC? THERE'S MUCH MORE TO IT

Yeah I sent her a ask after I saw that

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God I’m sorry I can’t get over HOW FUCKED AOT is

Y’all really stanning this nazi/military propaganda as if it isn’t heavily anti Semitic and highly FUCKED...

First of all the characters called “eldians” wear arm bands with stars on them... because they’re different...sound fucking familiar? And get sent to a place called paradise if they don’t wear their armbands

Second a shit ton of characters are named after war generals, nazis or war ships

Third, the mother fucking creator is a eugenics supporter and belives Koreans aren’t human he also thinks to live without imperialism is complacency

Fourth I will be making a post a long one to articulate the problems in detail

In conclusion fuck aot amd fuck hajime isayama

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just realized you can’t send her asks or dms anymore. Way to handle the situation

Yikes ™ seriously this is a grown woman does she just not care

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Did Eva ever apologize? I haven’t heard anything about her in ages. It’s the least her victims deserve

She hasnt though she has promised one, I don’t have high hopes for the apology I atleast expected one

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are you aware of some of the sanders sides DID aus on AO3?

Oh no...oh no this no bueno

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oh my god, she literally reblogged something about not reading a gif you don’t like as if the only reason people are mad about her fic is cause they personally don’t like it, not the fact that it’s racist and transphobic

LiterALLY

It’s not about not liking your fic it’s about the fact that it was deeply racist and ignorant and we can’t just ignore something so popular when it’s causing harm

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OH DAMN OKAY I JUST CHECKED SHE NEVER APOLOGIZED AND NOW SHES POSTING ABOUT DISABLITY RIGHTS BITCH-

Yeah...