#I need a license to sell online

[thisshrimpisfryingrice]

Hey I see posts that suggest that you have a shop and I can't find a link/name of a shop or main account anywhere. If you have either of these things would you mind telling me where to find them?

I only sell my stuff at local markets in Europe. I wanna open an online store so bad but I still need to get 3 licenses for that.

[jellybracelet]

Buying a car here is literally impossible. I'm gonna have a hernia

[valdevia]

Hi, I love your works!! I was wondering where you find the original, unedited pictures you use for your art? Do you take them yourself or find them online?

Hey there! I get them from many different sources! Whenever I can I use my own, and sometimes my followers send me cool pics to use (or put them up in the Sacrificial Altar channel in my Discord), but I find most of what I use through public domain sources online!

For the online part, I put this little list together with some of the common resources I use! Feel free to share it around and copy it:

For an easier experience, I'll copy the relevant part below:

STOCK SITES

- Unsplash: Usually the best quality out of the free stock sites. They’ll try to sell you a subscription plan but you can ignore that.

- Adobe Stock: Select “Free” on the dropdown menu next to the search bar. The free image selection here is big and high-quality, though they feel more like stock pictures than natural photos. Note: They limit how many pictures you can download per account per day, but you can make several accounts to circumvent this if you use it a lot.

- Texturelabs: lots of free, very high-quality textures!

- Pexels: Similar to Unsplash, but it has more pictures with people. If you need a photo with models, this is usually the best place.

- Pixabay: Widest selection, but worst quality control. Go here if you haven’t found anything in other sites and don’t mind sifting through a bunch of garbage pics and occasional AI images.

PUBLIC DOMAIN SOURCES

- Wikimedia Commons: an enormous selection of CC and public domain pictures. Super useful, especially for the really specific images that you'd expect to find on a Wikipedia article. Always check the copyright conditions! To filter by license, search something and then click on the License dropdown under the search bar. Select “No restrictions” for public domain images.

- Picryl: A repository of public domain sources, ranging from ancient historical books and artifacts to fairly modern pictures. If you're looking for something old/historical, chances are it's here! This website is probably one of the most complicated ones to use, so here are three important tips before you use it:

This site added a paywall that appears after the 3rd page of search results. To remove it, install uBlock Origin, go to the “My Filters” page (clicking on the gear icon after opening the extension), and paste this filter: picryl.com##._9oJ0c2

After searching, use the timeline on the top right to narrow down the result by year.

It won’t let you download the full picture without paying, but it always has a link to the source site below the description. Click on that, then copy-paste the image’s name to find it in the original source. That way you can get it for free, and often in better quality than Picryl offers.

National Archives Catalog, The Library of Congress, NASA, and Europeana have wide selections, but they are included in Picryl so it’s usually better to search there and then download them in the source as mentioned above!

- Flickr Search: a ton of usable pictures with a generally more amateur feel, just remember to filter by license using the “Any license” dropdown menu. When you find an image, make sure to check its specific license (you can find it below the image, on the right side).

- Openverse: The official Creative Commons archive, has many sources! Includes other sites on this list, but has a lot of clutter if you don’t filter.

- iNaturalist: a repository of user-submitted images of animals, plants, and fungi. Look for a genus or species, then navigate to the photo list and filter by license.

MUSEUM COLLECTIONS

- The Met: An amazing selection of artifacts from all over the world, with top quality photographs of most of them (usually with several angles for each). You can filter images by material, location, and era.

- Getty Museum: Another smaller selection of museum pieces, but this one includes old photos as well as artifacts. You can also filter by dates, materials and cultures. Make sure you include the “Open Content” filter to only see public domain things!

- Smithsonian: Big selection of around 5 million museum pieces, with some 3D scans of museum pieces. Most pieces just have a single picture that can sometimes be low quality, but pieces with 3D models sometimes also include a lot of high quality photos from multiple angles. This collection also includes things from museums of natural history, so you can also use it to search for bones and specimens.

- Artvee: public domain classical art. They make you pay to download high-quality images.

If you guys got any others, please let me know and I'll add them to the collection!

[honeekyuu]

squeeze. [sakusa kiyoomi x reader] satin black intros.

place of (homosexual) business

masterlist.

[playlist]. satin black || vibes

a/n. im completely totally normal about this au. completely normal.

warnings: me.

✗ !!! minors do not interact !!! ✗

✗ !!! ignore timestamps !!! ✗

satin black moved into its current location about three weeks ago, and theyve tortured brews abridged ever since

they were at a smaller location for 3 years prior, but they outgrew it when each of them independently went a little viral online for their work

everyone has a license to both pierce and tattoo, but iwa/akaashi stick to tattooing and suna sticks to piercing

akaashi’s the only one who went to art school

iwa taught himself on youtube

suna and sakusa taught themselves by practicing on each other – all of suna’s tattoos are by sakusa and all of sakusa’s piercings are by suna exclusively

it went a little like this the first time around: "i can do this. i dont need instructions-" "ARE YOU FUCKING SURE ABOUT THAT!!!!"

akaashi specializes in black and grey tattoos and iwa does color; sakusa does both but prefers black and grey

iwa’s best known for watercolor style art and akaashi’s best known for geometric art 

sakusa’s best known for japanese style art

suna's keeps trying to sell people on new and strange places to get pierced. this is dangerous and sakusa has banned him from doing it 8 times already.

hes actually so good at his job, hes just an idiot

theyre total assholes who chain smoke in the shop and swear at each other from across the room

the shop motto is "make them horny until they come back" and boy does it work

every single one of their clients transferred across the city with them when they moved

sakusa doesn't actually take new clients anymore, he just keeps up with regulars. he's very adamant about this

he is most often found in his office, which is also his private studio

the shop playlist consists of music added by sakusa, suna, and iwa -- they tried to get akaashi in on it but he got apple music just to spite them and wears his headphones when he works

suna can and WILL add the most unhinged shit to the playlist. there is a near-daily incident where sakusa tries to skip past suna's songs but suna keeps going back to them just to be annoying

this results in the shop being filled with the nonstop sound of skipping songs and sakusa screaming at him from his office

iwa usually joins in too because he has a short temper

akaashi always has to put his gun down and dissociate, because he can feel himself about to fuck up his lines with how hard his eye is twitching

akaashi has the least tattoos but that’s really not saying much; they have a board in sakusa’s office with the running count for each of them

everyone who comes in for the first time always sees two tattoo artists: iwa, who sits in the corner chain smoking and frowning and generally looking like he could kill you; and akaashi, who is generally polite and looks way less scary than iwa.

and they always choose akaashi, because he looks nice

he is not fucking nice. he is mean as shit. iwaizumi is the nicest one in that shop.

iwa so often is the type to roughly grumble "oh, yeah we can take a break -- this placement always hurts like a bitch. i need a smoke anyway" (hes already smoking).

akaashi keiji is the type to whisper "oh, did that hurt? pussy." and go in even more.

he is mean as shit and everyone makes this mistake.

sakusa and suna met in high school -- they would skip class together and sit behind the school smoking and blasting bass boosted music

theres something about running from campus security every day that bonds two people into brotherhood

theyre like,,,, fucking carbon copies of each other, these two -- two tall as fuck, tatted up, pierced up dudes with matching judgmental expressions and chipped black nail polish, standing outside the shop smoking, talking shit, and glaring at anyone who comes out of the stupid ass 3-in-1 shop next door

they met iwa and akaashi during their apprenticeship. they really didnt get along at first, but it takes a very unique combination of crazy to be able to open the kind of tattoo shop sakusa wanted.

and he had his combination of crazy right there in front of him.

iwa’s the most normal one and just wants to be akaashi’s friend. thats all he wants. he wants to make his silly little money and be akaashis silly little friend. 

iwa is the only one akaashi trusts for literally anything related to the shop but he wont ever say that

it's so painfully obvious that suna named their group chat. sakusa stopped trying to change it back years ago.

taglist = [open]

@mollyrolls @nectardaddy @onlytendoguesses @scinclaitnoir @marsoverthestars

@bookskeepers @choerry-picking @siheez @introvertsince2003 @eggyrocks

@atrashsith @beckixwsm @kakeru-eem @atsumusc0ck @seroh

@reignsaway @a-little-pebbl @bakingcuriosity @dondoncool @corvid007

@asthmaticcchoeee @liliumaraneae @savemebrazilhinata @whydoyoucare866

she put my hand up on her throat and told me // squeeze that shiiii-

squeeze [ghostemane].

[genericpuff]

completely off topic but regarding something that i saw pop up in my FB feed and i need to rant about

please do not fall for this shit

nintendo is NOT anti-AI.

it's really easy for them to say they're not going to use generative AI to create their games, because this statement has nothing to do with the very real issues with AI art such as the blatant theft of artists' work, environmental impact, replacement of humans in the industry, and just flat out unethical shit that AI has been designed around

it has EVERYTHING to do with their intellectual property rights, which Nintendo is NOTORIOUS for protecting with an iron fist even at their own expense. and i'm not talking the usual sensible argument shit like "ofc Nintendo wants to protect their IP's, they're a business!" i'm talking about the fact that this is the same company that just recently did a major takedown of the vast majority of Nintendo-licensed games on Vimm's Lair which aren't even being sold legitimately anywhere anymore-

i have so many fucking bones to pick with the flaccid bootlicking anti-piracy arguments out there but basically it comes down to this:

Nintendo is not a small indie company. They are literally one of the biggest, richest, most powerful gaming companies on the planet, rivalling Disney in just how many major franchises they own and profit off of. Many of their games are cultural classics, not just through the sentimentality and nostalgia of our childhoods, but also for all the innovations they made through games like Super Mario Bros, Super Mario 64, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and many others that we, within the world of gaming, owe a lot to and should be able to access and play. It's not a matter of "wanting these games for free", it's a matter of wanting to be able to access these games, period, and Nintendo is deadset on making it as difficult as possible, even when it doesn't necessarily profit from them (need I remind you that many of the games that were taken down from Vimm's Lair are NOT available through their shitty, poorly-ported emulation subscription service - plus that subscription service can be altered and/or removed at any time, regardless of what you paid for, just like the Wii Virtual Console was, meaning you do not own any of the games you're paying to play on there.)

This isn't about being "cheap" or "not wanting to pay for games". This is about media preservation and the virtue of actually owning the things we pay for. If these games were resold at official outlets for reduced prices or made more accessible through e-shops that don't close down in between console generations or drip feed the odd legacy title every few months or release crappy ports on their outdated af tech for only a few months at a time for three times the price of their original value, people would gladly pay. It's the fact that people are having to put up with all of the hoops that Nintendo has put in place to prevent them from even handing them money to play their favorite titles that even drives them to piracy to begin with, and Nintendo will gladly shut those sites down to protect their IP even when it's an IP they're no longer profiting from and aren't making active efforts to sell.

Like, I would gladly hand over a reasonable amount of money (i.e. not the cost of a brand new triple A title in 2024 which is like $80-$100 here in Canada) for Diddy Kong Racing on the Switch, but ofc it's not on the fucking online play store and even if it was, I'd have to deal with paying an overpriced subscription fee for a port of the game that would undoubtedly run WORSE than it does on my PC, and that subscription service can be taken down at any time. But Nintendo wants me to not pirate the game that's not available on their shitty subscription service because... just don't do it, pretty please??

Nintendo is not anti-AI. They would gladly use AI in place of manual labor to scour the internet and dish out DMCA's to every emulation site, archived ROM hub, fan game, and artist alley creator if they could... oh wait, they already are.

Do not fall for the virtues of anti-AI when it comes to companies like Nintendo. They are not anti-AI. They're anti-ownership. They're anti-preservation.

[rqbossman]

I couldn't find this answer in your blog so I hope this is okay to ask. How do you feel about artists selling fanart and merch of TMA? I saw somewhere that this show was copyrighted, but I know they're a lot of artists in this fandom who make a lot of cool art and with many different character designs. And if it is copyrighted and no one should sell anything related to tma, is there a specific design that is copyrighted, or just anything that draws inspiration from the show?

Hey so I get this question a LOT and so will give an answer here but it will be the same as previous. 1) Questions like this should be addressed to mail@rustyquill.com as they will give better answers. My socials are NOT official company anything. 2) Our Podcasts are distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Sharealike 4.0 International license which means People can duplicate, modify copies, sample it and generate fanworks on condition that: a) NO money changes hands. A lot of people interpret this to mean they can't make profit but it actually means money isn't allowed to be involved in anyway, even to cover costs. (it's just too easy to exploit loopholes if that isn't the case) b) Anything based on our work must ALSO be shared with the same licensing. c) Full credit needs to be given to the original work including links on where to find it etc. d) People do not claim we endorse their work

3) We can choose to allow certain extra stuff on a case-by-case e.g. we have granted certain permissions for charity or educational use etc. In my experience our fandom is pretty respectful (and creative!) but there are a few known bad actors who keep trying to flood online stores with copycat merch and spam duplicate Youtube and podcast content for a quick buck. To be clear though this is a personal social media channel not a business correspondence so this post is NOT an official edict or anything.

TLDR: As a gross over simplification, if the fanwork is distributed with the same licensing, with no money exchange and the original content is credited properly, it's fine. Otherwise they are open to legal consequences. As always just consume responsibly I guess and any questions on this stuff are better sent to mail@rustyquill.com

[actualbuckybames]

All of the points being made here and the undeniable fact that 2FA is less accessible than not having 2FA are valid reasons to critique the widespread implementation of 2FA - particularly when it's made a new requirement with little warning or education for people using those systems.

At the same time, systems aren't implementing 2FA for no reason, and the article doesn't mention the security reasons at all, just that 2FA is a kind of security. That first example in this chain - someone who is not the owner of the account trying and failing to log into a system containing valuable health and billing info because they do not have access to the second factor of authentication - is 2FA working as intended. It's inconvenient, financially burdensome, and outright aggravating in that instance, yes. But it's doing its job.

Credential stuffing attacks simply do not work when 2FA is involved. Those massive data breaches dumping millions of usernames and passwords onto the net go from catastrophic for the affected accounts to merely inconvenient as people who can log in - because they have the second factor - change their password.

Again, I don't mean to downplay how 2FA can prevent well-meaning individuals from aiding friends and family members or how it can be yet another barrier for disabled individuals trying to access certain services. However, websites guarding your information - PHI, financial info, etc. - need to be confident that the person accessing the account is A) who they say they are and B) authorized to access the account. 2FA is one way a site can check off point A. Username and password pairs just aren't enough anymore. Wondering why? Just ask haveibeenpwned and every major data breach in the last few years.

(As an aside, you may have noticed that security questions have also generally gone the way of the dinosaur. This is because the answers tend to be from a limited pool and otherwise easy to guess with information that's available with just a bit of digging.)

No matter what we do, at the current technological moment, security and accessibility are largely a zero-sum game. New developments with webauthn and public-key cryptography show promise for reducing some of the tradeoff, but the tradeoff will still be there. Not everyone can have a cell phone. Not everyone can have an email. Not everyone can keep track of a little usb stick that generates codes every now and then.

2FA isn't going away anytime soon and, unless a 2FA implementation is so horrible it impacts everyone's ability to access the service, it's unlikely to be rolled back. Don't let that stop you from continuing to talk about your frustrations with 2FA. Highlight specific pain points in the process that present difficulties for you. Write them down, make them public, so developers involved in implementing those systems can make them as painless and accessible as possible.

resharing this oldie because i just got a new laptop and the number of times i am being required to login to things, login to a DIFFERENT app/program/password manager/authenticator, provide a number, and then login again is making me fucking INSANE

[holylulusworld]

The captain at a sex shop

Summary: You’re just doing your job when you catch the eye of a certain captain…

Pairing: PostWS!Steve Rogers x Plussized(short)!Reader

Warnings: mentions of sex toys, incorrect law terms and stuff, fluff, kinda love-struck Steve, size kink

“Do you have a license to sell these,” you huff as the clerk at the sex shop ignores you. “Hello,” you snap your fingers. “You can either show me the papers or take these out of the display.”

“Who do you think you are?” the blonde snaps at you. “You can’t come here and demand shit.” She clicks her tongue and turns to walk away.

“Well, I work for the Avengers initiative, little miss plastic boobs,” you sneer at her when she dips her head to look you up and down. “Captain America for sure didn’t sign shit for you to sell dildos claiming that the trader measured Captain Rogers’ dick himself.”

“Show me your badge, inspector,” she bites back.

“Fine, you want it the hard way then,” you smirk as you get your badge out. “Tony Stark hired me to make sure no one sells illegal shit any longer. Last year, someone sold an Iron Man toaster, and it exploded. It almost killed a kid.”

You put your hands on your hips and size the woman up. She swallows thickly as you impatiently tap your foot.

“I-I…” she stammers while nervously looking around the shop. Customers stopped looking at the products and followed your conversation. “I found them online…”

“Where? Who sold this shit to you? You know, it’s illegal claiming that Captain Rogers let someone measure his dick. I will confiscate them all.”

“All? But—but I paid a thousand bucks for the dildos, miss. Will I get the money back?”

You laugh. “Miss, you’re lucky Captain Rogers doesn’t sue you. Now pack that shit up.”

“I only wanted to make money.”

“Copyright infringement is a crime, lady. You shouldn’t sell stuff you know is not licensed,” you grunt. “If only people would learn, I could have a very relaxed job.”

“Copyright infringement?” she stares at you. Bewildered. “That’s insane!”

“Well, you claim to sell Captain Rogers’ cock. But it belongs only to him, don’t you think? It’s on his body after all,” you grin when she looks a little flustered. You’re bold and downright cocky. 

“I’ll get them all…wait,” she caves in, but gives you a stinky eye. “I hope you’re happy now.”

“No. Why would I? I got to drive around with hundreds of dicks in my trunk and can’t even use one of them,” you snicker when her cheeks turn red. “Now hurry up. I got to check on three more shops. One of them claims to sell the serum turning you into Hulk. I bet it’s a hoax, but you never know…”

While you fight over the dildos Captain America style with the woman, a pair of blue eyes watch you. He grins and chuckles as you try to snatch one of the dildos out of a customer’s hands. 

“Hands off! I just confiscated all of them.”

The woman won’t give up. She presses the dildo to her chest while throwing insults at you. “That’s mine!”

“Listen, lady. If you don’t hand it over, I’ll call the cops,” you purse your lips, “Do you really want me to call them?”

“Ladies,” you stiffen as a familiar voice stops the woman from fighting for the dildo. She pales and drops the sex toy to the ground. “Please don’t fight. She’s only doing her job.

“C-captain America!!! What are you doing here?” the clerk asks. She’s as shocked as you, the customer, and the rest of the people at the shop.

“I was walking past the shop and heard a commotion, “Steve lies. “I thought someone needs help. I was right, I guess.”

“Uh-I’ve got this handled, Sir-I mean Captain. You can leave this to me,” you glance at Steve Rogers, the golden boy. He stuffs his hands into his pockets, nervously looking down at you.

“I can see that,” he smirks when you turn your attention back toward the shelves filled with Captain America dildos.

“Phew, that’s the last one,” you pant as you put the last box filled with the confiscated dildos on the ground. You stored them at your office for the time being, or until one of the people with a higher pay grade decides on the dildos' fate.

You fall into your chair, groaning as your back hurts after carrying all the boxes into your office. All those strong men in the building, and not a single one offered their help.

Of course not. You’re just a little ant, a tiny wheel in the machinery called the Avengers initiative. No one but the colleagues working next door knows your name.

“So…what are you trying to ask me?” Tony rolls his eyes as Steve came to his office only to not say a single word. “Capsicle, I’m not a telepath. If you want to get information, you need to ask questions.”

“The woman working for you, what’s her name?”

“Woman? Which one, Steve? I got a lot of employees,” as Steve tries to describe you, Tony rolls his eyes again. 

“Short, cute, and cocky?” the billionaire chuckles. “That’s the worst description of a person I ever heard. I need more information.”

“She confiscates things for you. Uh-she said something about a toaster,” Steve clears his throat. He doesn’t want to tell Tony what you confiscated today, or that he was at a sex shop. “I don’t know what this means.”

“Oh. This sounds like Y/N Y/L/N. Pepper hired her after the incident with the toaster,” Tony explains. “Someone sold toasters, claiming to be my partner, and that I helped produce them. A kid almost died.”

“Hmm…” Steve nods thoughtfully. “What’s her job? Where’s her office?"

“I don’t know,” Tony shrugs. “Pepper knows more about Y/N’s job.”

“Do you at least know where her office is? I want to thank her for doing a great job,” Steve believes he will go to hell for all the lies he told today. “Tony?”

“Sure…wait…let me check the…” Tony huffs. “I’ll call Pepper. Give me a minute.”

“Hi, can I come in?” someone knocks at your door right when you were about to have a snack. “Hello? Anyone in there?”

“Come on in,” you sigh. You will eat something later then. 

“Hi,” Steve Rogers pokes his head in. He doesn’t enter your office, only glances at you. “Can I come in, or do you have too much to do?”

“You can come in, Captain,” you jump up to open the door wider for Steve. “Hi. Uh-what brings you here? Is it about the incident at the shop?”

“I wanted to thank you,” he hesitantly enters the room. “You defended my…honor…I mean…you know what I mean.”

“Oh-that was nothing,” you play it cool. Steve Rogers makes you nervous. Like really nervous. He’s so tall, bulky, and pretty. You stare up at him, feeling a little lightheaded as he holds your gaze. “I only did my job, Sir.”

“What are you going to do with all of these?” he glances at the dildos in his colors, stored in boxes. Steve licks his lips.

He can’t tell you that the fact you are tiny compared to him makes his size kink go worse, or that he can’t think of anything but you since he saw you at the shop.

“I’m waiting for instructions,” you shrug. “I store them here until my boss tells me what to do with them.”

“What about the serum you mentioned at the store?” his eyes drop to your chest, wandering further down, stopping at your thighs. He inhales sharply as he images your legs wrapped around his waist.

“It was a fake. Someone sold green slushies tasting like spinach,” you drop your eyes to the boxes filled with dildos. “Most of the time they sell dildos or crap, nothing dangerous.”

“How about I invite you for lunch to properly thank you,” Steve offers. He shyly glances at your hand, itching to just grab it. “It’s the least I can do.”

“I was about to have a snack,” you lick your lips. “I could go for lunch, though. I haven’t eaten anything yet.”

He hums as you turn toward your desk to grab your bag and jacket. His eyes glued to your ass he feels his pants grow tighter. Steve bites his lower lip, chewing on it as he imagines putting his hands on you.

“Ready?” you glance over your shoulder, catching him staring. 

“Ready,” he clears his throat, acting as if he didn’t stare at your ass. “I’m glad you want to join me.”

“Me too.”

>> Part 2

Tags in reblog.

[luthwhore]

Sooo how was the Smallville con?! 😁

it was awesome! i do wish there had been more people from tumblr there bc most of the people i recognized were from the talkville patreon, but it was very cool being at a con dedicated solely to smallville.

the trade off is, of course, that it was a lot harder to get a good seat in the auditorium during panels and the lines tended to be long for autographs and photos, especially for tom, but i don’t remember any of the lines being crazy long. (i’m used the anime conventions so ~30 minutes in a line is nothing to me lol.)

not sure if it was creation or the venue but they had a table with free chilled water that was constantly being refilled which was really nice and i wish all cons did that.

not sure if you’ve been to a con where tom and michael do smallville nights before, but the auditorium was completely sold out and they had kristin and erica join them which to my knowledge they’ve never done before. the down side is, of course, that because smallville nights is participation based, you’re a lot less likely to get to participate when the crowd is bigger.

my one major criticism is that even compared to other creation events, the vendor’s section was pretty sad looking. i’m not sure if it’s because of how litigious warner bros is or not, but they don’t allow fan art or any merch that could be seen as infringing on copyright, so there were two tables selling stuff like the trading cards, pop figures, and random other officially licensed DC merch (including stuff that had nothing to do with superman), one booth selling fan merch that didn’t technically use any copyrighted material, one booth with someone selling their original fiction, the creation ent official booth which was selling a lot of t-shirts, and then a booth for one of the smallville fan podcasts.

that said, the person running the one booth with fan merch (the only one where i spent money) said that part of why it was so small was because the con was so new, so a lot of people didn’t want to gamble on a brand new con.

they’ve officially confirmed they’re going to do another smallville con next september in chicago as of the last day of the con, though they haven’t announced it online yet. (they’re also considering doing a cruise next year too but i do NOT have cruise money lol.)

i’m hoping more people from the tumblr community will be there next year bc i need more clex shippers lol.

[misscammiedawn]

"Your mind makes it real"

So I was watching the new Folding Ideas video on meme stock and how a cult formed around a number of ideologies regarding financial systems and short selling.

I like watching videos like this. Dan Olsen does a number of good videos on different online conspiracies such as Flat Earth and NFTs and then you have HBomb doing the same thing with anything from Colecovision to the war on christmas and alt right grifts.

And whenever I research these sociological trends I become uncomfortably aware of the fact that I exist within one of these little closed circles. (Well, more than one given the communities and support groups around psychology and mental health, but I'm here to talk about Kink today)

Hypnosis, especially within our community, is entirely held up by a series of beliefs with an internal language that creates a massive divide between those in the know and those out of the know and it literally only works because we believe it works.

In many ways what we do is as much sociology as it is psychology.

And I kind of that it's okay for that to be true so long as we all occasionally remind ourselves of that fact and never abuse the power we each possess as authors of that shared narrative, because much like under hypnosis our hypnotees are suggestible and need to have care in what we provide to their open mind, educators within the community have an eager and open audience that stretches further than we know and regardless of intent, our beliefs and teachings will become their facts and reality as surely as had we have programmed a hypnotee to believe them as they wake on the count of 1--2--3!

Okay. Let me break this up a little.

Does this mean I think hypnosis is fake and we're all just going along with it?

One of my partners and I have had conversations about subjectivity in both hypnosis and mental health spaces before and we hate that one of the most approachable quotes comes from an author that leaves a bad taste in our mouths.

"Of course it's all happening in your head [...] why on Earth should that mean it's not real?"

One of the big differences between the online erotic hypnosis community and the NGH (National Guild of Hypnotists) who rue our existence is that we do not require legitimacy to function when they themselves exist in a half-truth state where when receiving both of my certifications it was impressed that we needed to perform an uneasy dance of providing services without practicing medicine because hypnotherapy is not licensed psychology in the same was that chiropractors are not performing medicine.

Within *certain portions* of hypnokink we are perfectly okay with the idea of being wrong and of sharing ideas.

Wiseguy said it best in his class "The best induction is the one that works" and what works works because it is effective in that moment between that particular hypnotist and that particular hypnotee.

Likewise, the more educated a person becomes, the more effective hypnosis becomes. Understanding trance is a tool to achieve it faster. Even a cold hypnotee who is being introduced for the first time receives an education via pre-talk which we tend to believe is more important than the induction itself.

You know what I mean when I talk about pretalk, right?

"We all go in and out of hypnosis multiple times a day" "Highway hypnosis" "Flow state"

These are all real and observable things and we can view hypnosis impacting a mind on an EEG.

Hell even Oh No Ross and Carrie (a podcast where they join insular communities with intent to learn if they are cults/grifts) did an episode on hypnosis and conceded that the principals of suggestibility, hypnotic state and conditioning are all just... how the brain works... and that you can't really dive into fact/fiction when it's essentially telling a person to do something and they either do it or they don't.

It's not mind control. It's suggestion and even within our circles we all agree that mind control is a fantasy.

So I guess... it's as real as we all agree it to be.

The issue is that group agreement of all the little elements is held up by The Community as a whole and... maybe we should talk about the vulnerabilities at play there.

What do I mean when I talk about insular communities?

Recently I read a REALLY good line on a quote on Twitter that speaks to what I mean here:

And this is what I mean when I talk about belief systems inside and outside of the community. It's a good post as I firmly agree with what it communicates.

The Online Hypnosis Community is a term with no specific borders. In my reality it's the orbit that happens to take place around those who are known, trusted and teach at the primary US erotic hypnosis convention circuit.

However I know that in reality the online hypnosis community contains multiple pools and factions that I either strictly ignore, such as ones surrounding dangerous figures like NeuralNets and Nimja or ones I am not close to, like local kink scenes for cities across the world including those where English is not a first language or mlm communities where I do not really have a place, to niche pockets such as the furry hypnosis community, dronekink and even the tiny little subniches such as Empty Spaces and HDG which have splintered off into entire little separate universes with their own language and core beliefs.

For the most part this is a beautiful thing. What I'm describing is no less a divide between interests as being a member of the "Video game horror" scene and not visiting the niches of Indie Game Horror, Japanese Horror, creepypasta mods and such.

Every community has pockets like this.

But the more specific and tight a community becomes, the more "insular" it is. Language and widely held beliefs begin to gather in tighter pressurized windows. One need only look at how brainwashing and conditioning are viewed collectively in darker corners to see the difference and this is to make nothing of things like political and social beliefs in certain corners.

In those dark corners "You can't be hypnotized to do anything you don't want to do" is an essential lie WITHIN their insular community so that they can maintain a degree of plausible deniability and power over their people.

So what's your point?

That is the question, isn't it?

I guess the answer to that is... "always question what you believe, why you believe it and don't assume everyone around you does or should think the same thing."

When discussing red flags in the community on Discord and Twitter with other educators, I've always said the biggest red flag an educator can have is teaching that there is believing they have all the answers.

ALL OF US are working in this space from a belief system. An organic and living one which is impacted by our interactions with the kink, with one another and with the world around us.

No one individual in our community holds all the answers. Not me, not the authors of the manuals that we push, not Richard Nongard, Milton Erickson.

It also means we need not be defensive about our hobby and beliefs. Many will never accept what we do as actually having any basis in reality and that's okay. We're making spaces for play and some will just see us as overactive roleplayers who are tricking ourselves into believing things and to that I always say:

"You're dang right we are. That's the point."

It's not magic. It's not hard science. It's just belief, confidence and a willing to play along.

I could bust out the EKG studies or describe the altered states of consciousness and I will ALWAYS preach how suggestible a person is in and out of hypnosis and the dangers of what we do because those dangers are real and present. But at the end of the day, I want to take a moment and evaluate "what if I'm wrong?"

And the correct answer to that is "will I or someone else be hurt by my ignorance or misaction" and act accordingly.

But that's me. That's my belief system and I am aware of the fact that what we do is entirely built upon our belief that it works and that we are being safe and sane and fun.

That doesn't make me right. That doesn't mean I didn't learn some bad lessons.

It just means I want to keep doing better and I trust that the people around me are all doing the same. With hope of growing. Learning more about individuals and the community as a whole and trying to make this place better.

Because... if I stand in front of a room and teach a class that carries some bad ideas. They'll take seed.

And let me tell you something...

This community is FULL of bad ideas

I've been here since the early days. I was there when Warp My Mind and Wendi.com were the two sites that popped up when you went searching for files. I was there during the implosion of Inraptured and the transphobic meltdown of Isabella Valentine. I have witnessed hypnocon board after hypnocon board fall apart. I've seen scandals and dramas and chaos.

I was there when Bimbopolitic was outed as a CIA plant for fucks sake. Please don't ask follow-up questions. My head is still spinning from that saga of events.

and that inevitably means I have internalized some dumb shit in my day. I've been unlearning it as much as I can over the past 5-6 years. But it's there.

Likewise a lot of the books I read and grew up on are based on the beliefs of less than wonderful human beings. Milton Erickson is no rolemodel, but damned if his theories aren't worth looking at.

This is one thing I respect about sleepingirl's NLP Book. The conceit was to study what PUA instructors taught and see what could actually be used from an objective standpoint. Actually interrogate the beliefs of NLP from a "I don't know anything" standpoint.

If I have any point in my whole ramble of a post it's that. Approach learning things with the curiosity of someone who is willing to learn and doesn't know any better but with the wariness of someone who has been burned too many times and knows that there's bad actors all over and everything needs to be turned over a few times to examine.

At the end of the day I just want a safe community full of positive ideas and if there's one thing I've learned about hypnosis it is this "positive associations stick, negative suggestions are harder to ground"

Both in the good way and the bad. Unlearning things is hard.

Let's just be aware that we're all playing in the same sandbox. Share our tools and try to build something beautiful.

and never stop asking "...am I sure about this?"

*Shrug* Or don't. It's just a suggestion <3

[pwhl-mybeloved]

omg!! I'm curious what the various strategies are, I guess? to collecting? I have completion autism and usually avoid collecting things bc I then have a need to have a fully complete collection, but given that cards come randomly in packs that seems difficult, so I imagine there are different approaches that people take to collecting cards. Where do people get women's sports cards? obvs upper deck, but does anyone else make them? is buying from resellers typically possible/cheaper/a secret third thing?

if I think of anything else I'll send but that's my initial round of thoughts, thank you so much for sharing your expertise 😭

hi hi

I’m hoping I answered some of this with my other posts, but I wanted to talk specifically about resellers and completionism in collecting.

Firstly, resellers do sell full sets on eBay after the fact, usually the base cards you can get pretty affordably. Sometimes you’ll also see complete insert collections, like ‘all the UD Portraits from 2023’ etc.

here’s an example of someone selling the PWHL cards from the Tim Hortons Duos release from last year. I think this seller does not include the captain connection card, which was the highest value card of the set, and it likely sold individually.

Now completing a FULL set, with all the inserts, is a pretty tricky thing to do, and can take a long time. It depends on the size of the set! I know some Pokémon card collectors who are working on set completion for sets that came out over a decade ago. But once they are done, they are very satisfied!

The other thing I want to answer is that right now, Upper Deck holds the exclusive rights to the PWHL cards, so they are going to be the only ones printing licensed cards. If you are interested in collecting cards from before the PWHL era, lots will be from Upper Deck, but not all!

It’s also pretty normal for people to collect on a theme or particular inserts. I know someone who collects exclusively Leafs cards, and someone else who collects exclusively UD Canvas cards. When they get cards in their packs that don’t fit their theme, they trade with others to try and get the ones they want.

Card collecting is a pretty social hobby, if you want it to be. The network of people you meet can be what helps you get the card you’ve been chasing! I’m hoping shops start to open up more to women’s sports card collectors, there’s definitely an old boys club at play. But I’ve also met very cool people online and in person at shows through collecting.

[babacontainsmultitudes]

So you wanna sell your art on Redbubble but you don't know how?

(Or, I meant to write this months ago but better late than never lol)

OKAY okay. I have a bunch of friends as well as mutuals who have lovely lovely art and have considered selling it online (specifically on Redbubble lol that's what's being covered today anyways) but don't really have any clue how RB works, if it's right for them, or what to expect. SO I'M HERE TO GUIDE Y'ALL THROUGH ALL THE BASICS and hopefully, if I've done my job right, this tutorial will help you set up your RB shop and start selling your art online (or help you decide that RB isn't for you lol).

Table of Contents:

What the heck is RedBubble and should I use it?

How to make your account and set up payment

How to add a new work

Pricing? Markup?

Extra: Checking sales and payment history

Extra: Taxes and copyright, in case that scares you.

Extra: The Partner Program (or how to make "officially licensed" fanart)

What the heck is RedBubble and should I use it?

>> RedBubble is a site that allows you to upload your artwork and sell it on quite a variety of different products.

>> The main benefit of using RedBubble, aside from reach and visibility, is that RB handles *everything* when it comes to the manufacturing and shipment of your product. You are literally not responsible for anything other than making the art, uploading it, and deciding how you want it to look on different products. If there is any kind of problem with material quality or delivery (though in my experience they're pretty good with both of those things), it's not your responsibility to correct!

>> RedBubble does not charge you to sell on their site, but they do set a base price for all products to cover manufacturing and to ensure that they make some level of profit for each sale. We'll look into the specifics of this in a later section when discussing pricing and markup, but it would be considered pretty standard, for example, for an item to cost $20 and you to make $4-$5 upon making a sale.

>> At the end of the day, whether or not RB is right for you largely depends on whether or not you feel their pricing and payment is fair, and whether their available products correspond to what you wish to sell.

Okay, so how do I get started?

Well first you're gonna need an account!

>> Head over to the RedBubble main page and click "Sign Up"

>> Select "Artist Signup"

>> Fill in your email, shop name (this is your username also), and password

>> Click "Sign Up"

>> You will be brought to this dashboard page:

>> We will discuss creating products in the next section. Everything under "Set Up Shop" is optional and I'll let you explore that on your own so we can focus on the essentials. That just leaves... Getting paid!

>> First, check the email you used to confirm your email address. If you didn't receive an email to confirm your email address, don't worry, we can resend the form- keep going with the steps for now.

>> Then, under "Get Paid", click "Add your name & address". Note that all of the options in the "Get Paid" section actually lead to the same form, but selecting this option starts us near the top.

>> Fill out all the fields on this page. If you didn't receive the email to confirm your email address, click on this button:

Then check your email again.

>> Note when choosing your payment method: if you are from Canada, like me, then paypal is your only option. Same for parts of Europe that aren't in the UK. Otherwise, you also have bank transfer options:

>> Once you've finished filling in everything on this page, click "Save Changes" at the bottom and... That's it! Now you can get paid :)

**Note: I believe RB still requires you to make a minimum amount of money before they do a transfer (for me in Canada I believe it's $20 CAD?), so do keep that in mind!

>> Payments are made to your account monthly, generally on the same day every month (assuming you've made profits!).

How to add a new work

So you've made your account, fantastic. Now you're ready to actually add your works to RB and make them available for purchase to the wider public! To demonstrate the process, we're gonna use our pal Nicky here (who was a gift from my lovely friend @llumimoon) and pretend that we want to upload him:

Ain't he a doll? Anyways, let's begin.

>> Hover your mouse over your pfp in the top right corner to make this drop down menu appear:

>> Click on "Add New Work"

**On a new account with nothing uploaded, this will look a bit different. instead choose "Sell Your Art" from this dropdown menu, then "Add New Work" from the top right corner of the same dashboard page from earlier.

>> Click on "Upload New Work" (and note the file type and resolution requirements at the bottom. I always stick with PNGs, but in theory JPEG or GIF works as well.)

>> Select the file of the image you want to upload. In our case, that's Nicky.

>> Now write a title for your work, tags, and a description if you want. The tagging system is how people will actually find your work, it works a lot like Tumblr's! Try to choose things that are relevant to whatever your piece is. If you're uploading fandom-related art and aren't sure what tags are used for your fandom on RB, try looking some up and seeing what generates the most relevant results!

>> You may have noticed the "background color" section right below Nicky. This sets the default background color for your piece on different products. We're gonna keep this as the default white here, and I'll show you how to adjust this for individual products very soon.

>> Scroll down. This is where we decide what products we want this design to be available on and how we want Nicky to look on each thing we've enabled.

For example, if I were actually selling Nicky here (if that wasn't clear obviously I'm not actually selling my friend's art lol don't do that ofc) I would definitely want people to be able to buy him as a little sticker :]

>> In this case, "Stickers & Magnets" have been enabled by default. If you wanted to disable them, you would simply click that little "Enabled" button. Similarly, if we want to enable a product type that is disabled, just click that same button (which will be grey rather than green and say "disabled").

>> If a product is disabled and you are being prevented from enabling it, that's because the dimensions of your image are too small for the product in question! You'll wanna resize your image (preferably in a manner that retains its resolution of course) and come back.

>> Hm. Let's use the hats here as an example of how we might make edits to the layout of a specific product.

He's kind of cut off, as you can see actually that's pretty in-character, and I think I want this hat to be pink rather than this default beige-looking color.

>> Click on "Edit"

So, the first thing I'm gonna do here is use that "Scale Image" slider to scale him down a bit. I'm also gonna click the image and drag him up a bit to re-center him.

Next, I'm gonna pick from one of the default colors and choose the pink one.

>> Notice the two arrows beside the words "Bucket Hat"? This lets me go through the different types of hats available and change the background/base color for each of those, like the dad hat:

>> Before we apply our changes, click that little gear icon right under the pencil icon

>> This lets us adjust the markup price for each individual hat. It is 20% by default. Changing the markup percentage affects how much you will make off of a sale, as well as how much your product will cost. More on that in the next section!

>> Click "Apply Changes"

The "dad hat" was the last hat I had selected (when setting its color), so the display has changed to show that one in the preview. Here's our bucket hat from before:

Nice!

>> The specifics of how you can adjust your design will vary depending on the product. With pillows & totes, for example, the editing menu looks like this:

Using the "Choose pattern" option, I can make the Nicky image repeat as a pattern like so:

(note that I also scaled the image down a bit here too).

>> One last thing. See that "Replace Image" button near the top?

You can use this when you want to use a different version of your image altogether for a specific product.

>> That's the gist! Play around with the settings for each item as you see fit. You can always edit them again later.

>> Scroll down. Select up to 2 relevant media types.

I'm pretty sure this affects search results when users choose specific filters, but tbh otherwise I don't think it's all too important.

>> Let's look at what remains.

>> I have the "Who can view this work?" section set to "Only You"- THIS IS SO I CAN FINISH THE STEPS HERE AND SAVE THE WORK WITHOUT ACTUALLY MAKING IT AVAILABLE TO THE PUBLIC. In practice, you'd only use this option if you wanted to buy your own work on something but didn't want other people to be able to see or buy it. Otherwise, you're always gonna choose "Anybody (public)".

>> Collections can be created to organize the pieces in your shop (for example, by fandom), but we won't cover the specifics of how to do that here.

>> Set whether or not your work contains "mature content".

>> If you want, you can set which product shows up in the preview for your work when people view your shop. If you think your piece looks especially nice on a mug, for example, you can make sure that's what people see first.

>> Finally, agree to RedBubble's User Agreement (read that little blurble, since that's basically all you generally need to care about when it comes to what you can and can't sell on RB, but more on that later).

>> Click "Save Work" and voila! Your piece is now available in your shop, and can be found in the search results of whatever tags you left on it (this may take a few minutes to take effect).

>> If you want to check out your design in your shop, navigate to your pfp and click "View shop"

>> Don't fret if the design doesn't appear in your shop right away! Again, this can take several minutes.

>> To edit your design again (and to view/purchase privately uploaded designs like Nicky here), click the "Manage Portfolio" option instead:

>> Here is Nicky as he appears in my portfolio (again, your portfolio and your shop are different things- Nicky will not appear in my shop at all because he is set to "private")

>> You can click that little gear icon to do a variety of things, like return to the editing menu from earlier. The three icons below Nicky refer to the amount of comments, sales, and likes your design has received in total.

>> Click on your design either from your shop page or your portfolio page. Wow! Your cool art is now available on all the products you enabled. Be sure to look through them and make sure that everything is to your liking!

Pricing? Markup? What's that about?

Well good tumblr user, RB handles everything regarding the production (and shipping) of your product, which means that they set a base (minimum) price for every kind of product to account for materials and production, and of course make some amount of profit themselves. The *markup* is a percentage that you the artist set (see the previous section on how to do so), and will determine how much you actually make off of a sale. Note that increasing the markup price means that your product will increase in price as well!

>> An Example (using hypothetical but more or less realistic numbers):

Let's say that the base price (0% markup, i.e. no profit for you) of a phone case on RB is $15. You set the markup to 30%. 30% of 15 is 4.5, so the public price is increased to $19.5, and if anyone purchases this phone case with your design on it, you will make $4.5.

And that's really the gist! Ultimately the markup price is up to you and what you feel is reasonable, though RB sets it to 20% by default.

Extra: Checking sales and payment history

Eheh, unfortunately I've reached the image limit for this post but:

To check your sales:

>> Click on your pfp

>> Click "Account Settings"

>> Under "Artist Tools" (on the left side), click "Sales History"

To check your payment history:

>> From the same "Artist Tools" menu (see above), click "Payment History"

Extra: Taxes and copyright, in case that scares you.

>> Do I need to report the income I make on RB when I do my taxes?

Yup! But dw, it isn't anything special. I mean, I'm not here to do your taxes for you, but money you make on Redbubble counts as "Self-Employment Income", same as if you sold your art just about anywhere else really!

>> So what am I actually allowed to sell on Redbubble? Is fanart okay?

Generally speaking... Yes! Obviously work should be your own, and it should not contain any company logos or names that you don't have the right to, nor photos of actual people unless you have their explicit permission.

>> Hm, okay, but what if I *do* accidentally sell something that isn't allowed?

In most cases, it'll just get taken down 👍. And no, you won't be asked to pay back any profits you made off the work in the meantime.

**A more extreme case: Story time. So, years ago a friend of mine uploaded some official Rick and Morty art that he forgot to set to "private". Overnight he made... Let's just say he made quite a bit of money. RB responded by taking down the work and banning his IP address, effectively preventing him from ever selling on the site again. But they still let him keep the money he made, and he didn't get into any actual trouble outside of that. What I'm saying is, even if you really fuck up, it'll be alright. And again, this was a pretty extreme scenario.

***Note: if your work falls under one of the brands in Redbubble's "Partner Program" (see the next section), it will be temporarily removed from the search results and your shop while it undergoes review. So don't panic if you see your fanart suddenly disappear from your shop!

Extra: The Partner Program (or how to make "officially licensed" fanart)

Very briefly, Redbubble has their partner program, which I won't explain in full detail here, but basically it means that if you upload a work and tag it as one of these brands, it will be inspected for review and, upon passing that brand's guidelines, will be considered "officially licensed" merch for that brand. Just felt worth mentioning!

So that's really the gist folks! There's certainly much more to play around with when it comes to RB, but that's all you need to know to get started! Hopefully this was useful? Hopefully lol. In any case, good luck out there!

[campbyler]

if i may ask, i am v curious when the party got their cars/how long theyve had them

ella i hope you don't hate me from harboring this ask since the end of august bc i really did mean to answer it sooner. i love u mwah.

mike: some of the lore surrounding the mustang has now been revealed through chapter 9.1, but to reiterate for the purpose of this ask: mike really wanted to get a car with manual transmission, and wanted something used so it could be a purchase he made himself. he did a lot of research online and in person before finding the mustang, which he did think was a little gaudy, but to me he's also a pretty big car buff and likes a lot of classic models -- no matter anyone's feelings on mustangs as a whole, it is a very iconic car with a lot of history, so mike definitely appreciates that a lot. he had nancy co-sign but he paid for everything himself! as of acswy, he's had it for just over a year!

will: will's car is also used, and also something he (mostly) paid for by himself! originally he was going to inherit jonathan's car but like in the show, it died. rip. but hopper Knows A Guy who works on and then sells a lot of used cars and that's who they ended up buying will's car from. he got it when he turned 17 for around ~$2500 since hop's friend cut them a deal, and he paid for Most of that himself (using money he's saved up from camp and the part-time job he had during the school year when he was in hs) and hop and joyce covered the rest. that said, will does pay them back on a monthly basis and pays for his own gas and insurance, so to him they didn't help at all (even tho they helped more than mike's parents did lol). by the start of acswy, he's paid his parents back in full and now just worries about the insurance payments.

lucas: lucas's parents and smart and invest and told their beautiful talented son that if he worked hard and got good grades they would buy him a car for graduation. so he did. and then also got a full ride scholarship to uconn to play basketball and his parents said oh ok slay boy. thanks so much. so since they are saving on a LOOOT of tuition and room and board fees they said we will get you a nice car. and lucas said bet, hellcat? and his mom said ABSOLUTELY NOT and his dad said ABSOLUTELY. mike was fuming btw. if you care.

max: tbh we haven't so super fleshed out a lot of max's family lore so i'd have to consult w suni re: current arrangements BUT 2 me max shares her car w her mom. i think her mom works from home and when she needs to go somewhere uses max's step dad's car just so that max can have some extra freedom. it's also my headcanon that max is the oldest in the friend group so she got her license first and was will and el's designated chauffeur for a while <3

el: el Just got her car and license before the start of acswy! i think she's the youngest in the party and she had will and max to drive her places so there was truly no need to get her license or car until now, plus i think she had some driving anxiety. she also got her car thru hop's friend but it was a little more expensive than will's since it's a bit newer and a nicer model, but she's had more time to save up for it! she mostly got one because she wanted to be able to have something to drive back at school, and also because she's more willing to admit than will is that the cobalt is not going to last super long, so one of them needs to have a car lol.

dustin: dustin got his car from his mom when she upgraded to a new one and while most people would complain dustin said FUCK YEAH because he loves his mom's car and also didn't have to spend a single dime on it lol. i think he got it when he was 17 as well so he also drove lucas and mike around for a bit before they got their cars as part of the indy crew!

AND THAT IS IT. THAT IS ALL. I HOPE THIS WAS WORTH IT AT ALL

[elminx]

Things that I have learned this weekend:

Almost nobody talking about AI right now understands how AI works or how to read a Terms of Service agreement.

Ai is absolutely terrifying and I suggest you don't use it since it is almost all propogated by stealing from other people. That part is true.

But every system that uses AI or offers AI is not stealing your data and feeding it to their AI. A lot of companies that are currently offering an AI option aren't creating their own AI, they are licensing from an existing AI made by a third party.

If their user agreement says that they don't share your data with third parties, they aren't using it to feed an AI because the AI they are associated with is a third party. (unless you want to believe their Terms of Services is not true...and let's be real here, that gets into conspiracy theory territory really damn quick)

If you don't want your work fed into an AI, there are a couple of things that you can do RIGHT NOW to stop that.

Set every single thing shared on a Meta platform (Insta, Facebook, Threads) to private. Their Terms of Service says they will feed PUBLIC content to their AI.

Stop using Cloud Storage and store everything on your own hard drive. Some cloud storage seems to be safer than others - Docs does scan your writing to improve its suggestions to you, for example. But Adobe says it scans ALL items on its cloud. They say it's to check for illegal content. What you do with that information is up to you.

Change your Tumblr settings so that Tumblr can't share with third parties - Tumblr is selling your data, but there's an opt-out button. This is by far the best I've seen out of any of the "major" media options online right now. Tumblr already protects our work from being crawled by AI which is far more than other platforms are doing.

Read the Terms of Service on any sites you use. Yeah, this sucks. But that's where you are going to find out the truth of things. There's a reasonable chance that I could be wrong about something, or that information may have changed since I wrote this. You are responsible for your own data and making your own decisions. If you don't understand the legalese, find a reputable (that part is important) source that explains it well. TikTok is not a reputable source.

Remember that anything you put out on the internet can be stolen or copied - this has always been the case. If you really want to keep it for yourself, you need to keep it off of the internet.

[drachenmagier]

Hi! Saw your post about commissioners using AI as a skeevy way to get cheap fully-rendered art from artists (thank you for spreading the info btw! Deeply concerning the ways these AI programs are being used to make an already difficult field of work even harder 🥲).

But it also got me thinking a bit about TOS's and pricing your work, particularly commercial work... I'm in the process of preparing to open up for commissions for the first time in years myself, and was wondering if you had any advice/resources for putting together a professional looking TOS and figuring out how to handle commercial licensing? I know this stuff tends to be super regional, but it's so hard to find consistent information online on the topics 😞

I can only tell you how I handle it. :) For normal commissions, do feel free to copy whichever part of my TOS you think will work for you from my private commission info. If you're not Swiss, the last line on the page won't be usable. 

A lot of doing art and illustration commissions is trial and error. I know it was for me. Tons of mistakes and hopefully not repeating them. 

For pricing, a friend told me two things that stuck with me and helped deciding on prices since then. 

First thing she told me is that exclusive rights for a simple caricature for a newspaper go for USD 800.- and up. Mind ya, she said that YEARS ago. And prices change. But if a simple black and white doodle goes for USD 800.-, don't sell exclusive rights to your full colour A4+ artwork for less. 

If in doubt, don't sell your exclusive rights at all. Most clients don't need them and if someone tells you they will give you USD 25.- and a voucher for -10% off their own product for it, tell them to fuck off.

People will try. And you will learn to say no. 

The second important pricing tip I got from said friend: decide on a price that makes it easy for you to let go. If you regret having sold it, the price was not high enough.

Most companies have their own contracts and their own price lists. It helps if you are able to adjust your work to their budget and deadline. 

Read the contracts carefully, don't skim anything, only sign them when you understand them. Especially US-contracts have a lot of complicated looking clauses in them, like the Indemnification clause. If they tell you that a clause is just there and you don't need to understand it, you can sign the contract as it is: run. 

Most clients won't actually need or even want exclusive rights, simple print licenses will be enough for them. A rough over-the-thumb minimum pay would be around CHF 200.- to 250.- per work day. 

I will add a third point here:

If you really want something to exist and be a part of it, then do it. Have fun. We mostly regret the things we never tried and never did. And if you only do things for the money and don't get paid, it leaves you with nothing (my thanks to Neil Gaiman and his commencement speech "Make Good Art").

Some of my most amazing commissions were orders from people who couldn't pay a lot, but were awesome individuals with fantastic ideas. And I don't regret a second of the work I put into those commissions. But THAT is your decision. And purely yours. Don't let people tell you what to be exited about. 

Maybe the thing you will be exited about is a kid that wants to pay you three shiny rocks for a drawing of their super hero princess cat wizard. 

And you will make it the fucking best super hero princess cat wizard for one of the rocks, because you don't want the kid to have no shiny rocks anymore~. <3 

[beyondthisdarkhouse]

Hi! I love your Blackwork patterns, and the one with the acorn and leaf garland especially is PEFFECT for a project I'm currently working on.

only thing is, I have about 5m of edge to embroider, and also shipping internationally is pricey.

Would it be okay if I copied the pattern off the pictures you posted and sent you like $15 for it?

(if in the future you'd ever consider pdf patterns I'd also be very 👀)

I have some GREAT news for you! What you want is actually already out there, perhaps beyond your wildest dreams.

The acorn border you like is not actually my design. I'm using it with permission from its designer, Kim B. Salazar, who freely shares a lot of patterns online in addition to having published many books of patterns. Her terms are that they may be used for free by any person making a non-commercial craft project for themselves.

Here's the PDF the acorn border is from. (It's in the second column from the left.) Take it, enjoy it, go wild, send back pics (optional).

What copyright means on these patterns is that the designer has the legal right to say who can make and distribute copies, or use them to make money. I'm allowed to use her patterns in my shop because I emailed her and worked out a license arrangement where I can sell a certain number of copies; once I've hit that limit, I'll have to go back and make a new arrangement. I am guessing I got a different deal from her than a factory wanting to print off 10,000 of them might.

So yeah, the pattern is already free for you! The idea behind my shop/the value I add to the equation when I'm using someone else's designs like this is being the person to acquire the interfacing and ink, prepare the computerized pattern layout, print, cut, package, and ship the results.

I will think about selling PDFs of my own patterns. Safe to say, copyright in these matters is intensely complicated, and I need to have all my ducks in a row before I really dive in.