#I saw a couple of artist I follow post theirs so I figure it’s time

[twicetheheartx2]

Eyyyy, I finally drew enough this year to do one of these.

[minkillah]

hello everyone!! my name’s lua, my pronouns are she/her and i’m a resident of gmt+1. i’m super excited for this group to get rolling so i can write with you all. i play choi minki (kim taehyung) of lotto fame. if you���re interested in interacting with him just ♡ this post and i’ll give you all of my love.

born and raised in busan’s gamcheon village, south korea, the former underground rapper turned ambitious lotto all-rounder has been under marathon entertainment for nine years. winners  know him as the unspoken protector of the group, and his observant nature allows him to encapsulate ideas in his music with a persuasive edge, but he’s at times criticized for being too eccentric and sardonic. 

OVERVIEW

FULL NAME: choi minki

STAGE NAME: MINKI, minkillah (pre-debut/underground)

NICKNAME(S): min, key

GENDER (PRONOUNS): cismale (he/him)

DATE OF BIRTH (AGE): 1994, march 5th. (25)

HOMETOWN: gamcheon village in busan, south korea

RESIDENCE: seoul, south korea

OCCUPATION: lead rapper, vocalist and visual of lotto. 

SEXUALITY: bisexual.

HEIGHT: 181cm

HAIR COLOR: naturally jet black (often dyed for his job, currently dark brown)

EYE COLOR: dark brown

TATTOOS: upper arm white tiger (sleeve tattoo, is a work in progress), roman numeral wrist tattoos (left wrist: lotto debut date / right wrist: his mother's birthday)

PIERCINGS: several in his ears.

SCAR: small childhood scar along his knee from falling on broken glass at the beach.

NOTABLE FEATURES: intense and piercing eyes / long eyelashes / big hands / deep voice / nose, cheek and lip moles / big boxy smile. 

FACE CLAIM: kim taehyung

PERSONALITY

POSITIVE: protective, contemplative, playful, mischievous, ambitious, loyal, soulful, creative, plainspoken, focused, steadfast, sentimental, observant, intuitive, tenacious, passionate, wry.

NEGATIVE: eccentric, sardonic, juvenile, intense, pent-up, stubborn, hard to know, single-minded, competitive, temperamental, moody, untrusting, all-or-nothing.

LIKES: art, music, anything unique, reading long letters from fans, writing, working, poetry, performing, sincerity, intimacy, the sea, candles, mystery, travelling, warm hands, depth, long conversations, feeling connected to someone, driving at night, visiting home, his mother.

DISLIKES: feeling controlled, invasions of privacy, assumptions, loneliness, boredom, shallow conversations, having his trust broken, spinelessness, being lied to, self-victimizing, blowhards, people who don’t keep their word, his father.

HABITS: staying up late to work on music, collecting headbands and baseball caps, chewing gum, bouncing his leg, man-spreading, calling his mom every day, stuffing his hands into his pockets, scribbling lyrics on things he shouldn’t (napkins, his hand), clicking his tongue, quirking his eyebrows, making funny faces to relax, stretching his neck by tilting his head to the side, rolling his shoulders.

FEARS: losing his mom, never being accepted for who he is, resembling his deadbeat dad, the general public finding out his father left their family.

STYLE: streetwear, skatewear, city-ready and modern, comfortable, relaxed fits, a touch of grunge, baseball caps, logo t-shirts, headbands, thick rimmed glasses, black trousers, hoodies, worn buckle-boots, chunky sneakers, retro runners, wide-cut trousers, shirt tuck, pleated pants.

SMOKE? no. 

DRUGS: no.

ALCOHOL: yes.

HEADCANONS

minki’s outer mask of aloofness is a cover for his stormy inner life. he’s always battling between his heart and mind, conscious of how emotions can make him look; sometimes he’s cool and level-headed, and other times he’ll throw his weight around. ultimately he’s emotional and has a great desire for intimacy.  

once he lets his guard down, he’s more than willing to show how much he truly cares for someone. for special someones, he feels a poignant love strong enough to walk through the valley of the shadow of death. when these feelings are hard to verbalize, he expresses them best through action.

the promise of emotional depth and soul-level understanding shines out of his eyes. he’s a good listener, maybe because he’s often listening into the hidden layers of what people are saying. his closest relationships are the equivalent of feeling an overwhelming urge to call someone, only to find they were just about to call you.

in a world of tell-all social media, he’s quite a private person. anyone close to him has to be able to keep secrets. the classified files of his personal history are only ever revealed to those who’ve earned his trust. 

while it can be hard for minki to let others in, he also intensely needs others, and he needs to go deep with them. it’s important for him to have close friends and special someones who are in it with him for the long haul.

he’s got an animal magnetism on stage and knows how to turn it on for the effect of something tender, edgy, soulful or brutal.

prone to jealousy and paranoia and will do anything to hide it. he needs mutual reassurance in relationships, and betrayal of any kind is the death knell for any relationship with him, friendship or otherwise. a true loyalist.

ambitious and will do whatever he needs to attain his goal. he also has a strong competitive characteristic that pushes him to strive for greatness.

drops one-liners and quotables in public that, for good and bad, will follow him until the end of his career. doesn’t seem to get embarrassed even when he misspeaks in interviews and can help dispel tensions at times using poker-faced humor at his own expense.

minki knew next to nothing about fashion or make up prior to joining the company and was shocked to learn stylists saw enough potential in him to appoint him as "visual" of the group. these days he moves with more awareness in regards to how he represents lotto to the public, and sometimes jokes in interviews that his face does all the work.

shockingly good at aegyo despite his image and the intense vibes his face gives off. variety shows used to love asking him to perform cute gestures and whatnot back in the day, but thankfully that doesn't happen as much now that he's older.

sheds not a single tear all year but can be seen full on bawling at the end of annual fanmeetings.

as the third oldest in the group, he’s something of a bridge between the younger members and the oldest members of lotto.

that big goofy rectangle grin makes him look like a different person when he smiles.

one of the members most likely to slip into satoori.

plays the piano; currently learning guitar.

RELATIONSHIPS

MOTHER: choi misun (52), a writer and local artist in gamcheon culture village. 

FATHER: doesn’t know his father. 

SIBLINGS: none. 

OTHER RELATIVES: they’re rarely in touch. 

PETS: none. loves & wants pets of his own, but worries he won’t be able to care for a living thing. dotes on other people’s animals instead.

LOVERS: single.

HISTORY

CHILDHOOD

when minki was born, his mom decided the only thing scarier than being a single mother was not being a mother at all. her ex-boyfriend, minki's dad, denied the child was his and refused to support her decision to keep him. her parents begged her to give the boy for adoption, threatening to disown her, but it was too late: looking into her son’s eyes she felt certain, more than she’d been of anything, that he wasn’t a mistake. he was her miracle. she would raise him alone, an unwanted mother and the black sheep of her family.  

relatives gathering for holidays didn’t want the two of them attending, and neighbors were told made-up stories of a husband passing away, all to protect the family’s reputation. for some time, minki was too young to notice anyone’s absence: it’d always been just him and his mother and he didn’t know of anything different. this changed as he grew up and was confronted with the lack of a father figure in his life - or grandparents, aunts and cousins.

he became painfully aware of his mother’s struggles. her writing and art wasn’t enough to support them, and she worked too hard for most of her life, taking on several labor-intensive jobs to feed and clothe him. theirs was a humble but colorful life in the poor seaside village of gamcheon, located in the coastal city of busan.

at the epicenter of art, beauty and chaos, minki spent his childhood running through steep slopes and tiny alleys nestled between a mishmash of pastel-colored houses, a deep blue sky and ocean in the background. he was often alone, as all throughout school, there were classmates whose mothers instructed them not to play with him, or would tease him for not having a father. 

birds of a feather flock together. minki found friendship in the company of children who either seemed different, outcasts just like him, or those who accepted him and didn’t care about rumors and social status. his best friend was a neighboring child of an eclectic couple of local artists and acquaintances of his mother.

in his early teens, there was anger and hurt simmering beneath minki’s exterior. he was at an emotionally painful passage of his life and wanted to act out, but knew that it would break his mother’s heart if anything ever happened to him. not wanting to hurt her the way his father had hurt her, minki turned to art as an outlet for destructive thoughts, and music became his way of dealing with the sense of chronic loss.

hip-hop was raw, emotional and honest. it was a device in and of itself, a friend to play with.  twotime had a huge influence on minki as a teenager, and inspired him to start writing songs when he was 14 years old. thanks to the democratization of music through the internet, he found a way to pirate software and started producing beats in his bedroom.

CAREER

he was active in busan’s underground hip hop scene during high school, competing in rap battles under the name minkillah. it wasn’t only his rapping that garnered attention; minki eventually began establishing himself as an emerging  producer, composing beats for local talent in his hometown.  

looking for a challenge that would take his music to the next level, minki entered a hip hop competition held by marathon entertainment. when staff met with the young man in person, they insisted he enter a second audition with the potential of joining a new idol group the company planned to debut.

minki passed the second audition and joined marathon entertainment as a trainee at 16. dreaming of one day providing his mother the kind of life where she never had another day, and possibly making music with his role models in twotime, he moved away from home and enrolled into a high school in seoul to complete his formal education while attending daily vocal, rap and dance lessons.

after the grueling trainee period, he joined the final lineup of lotto and debuted as the group’s lead rapper, vocalist and visual.

CONNECTIONS

MASC.

SQUAD GOALS: masc. 20-30. (0/5)  simply put, i’d love for minki to have this big dumb friend group featuring top dog male idols from marathon ent. they’re often seen hugging at award shows, going out for bbq, travelling together, clowning each other and breaking the internet whenever they upload selfies!!

MENTOR: masc. 35+. (0/1) this is an older muse minki looks up to and confides in. whether y/m realizes it or not, they’ve become a father figure to minki. he doesn’t have to be another artist! anyone who works at marathon ent (producer, choreographer, etc) would work, as long as minki feels like he can trust them. they’re equipped with the maturity and experience to give him advice about his life, music or relationships.

SOULMATE: masc. 23-25 (0/1)  soulmate /ˈsəʊlmeɪt / noun “a person ideally suited to another as a close friend or romantic partner.” these two are each other’s, through and through. y/m is minki’s second home; they complement and complete each other. their relationship doesn’t have to be romantic at all, even if it has potential to be, in the case of complicated feelings and the crossing of lines. platonic or not, though, minki is in need of deep and meaningful connections, where he feels known. where he feels understood. he thrives off of them. y/m either knows minki since he lived in his hometown busan (there was a childhood best friend, if you’re interested) or since they were trainees. possibly they both attended the same high school in seoul, too.

RIVAL: masc. 23-27. (0/1) a little bit of friendly competition never hurt anyone. these two boys are seen as evenly matched in many regards (leave it to their fans to debate the validity of that, though) and often pitted against each other, sometimes on purpose to rack up clicks and excitement. whether there’s any truth to the rivalry or genuine animosity can be discussed! a future collab between them would create immense amounts of buzz, though.

FEM.

OLDER SISTER. fem. 35+ (0/1) quite similar to the connection above, but in this case, y/m is more of an older sister to minki, maybe even a mom away from home. seeing right through him, she knows when to put him in his place and when to offer him gentle guidance. she’s one of the people he’s come to respect the most at marathon entertainment and he absolutely loathes to disappoint her.

HEARTBREAK: fem. 21-25. (0/1)  minki’s last love was a lost love. maybe they could’ve been happy together if they weren’t both idols, but it’s too late for that now. foolishly, though, they still keep in touch and spent time with each other as  “friends.” they’ve seen so much and know so much of each other, there seems to be no greater comfort for him than hearing y/m’s voice and feeling their warmth in his arms when life goes to shit. but they’re still just friends… let’s hash the rest out to make sure we’re on the same page! inspiration for this connection comes from the lyric “isn’t that what friends are for, even if we used to be more?” from the song partners in crime. if the world was ending is another inspiration.

KNIGHT. fem. 18-23. (0/2) minki as an older brother to y/m!! growing up an only child, he never knew what it was like to have siblings, let alone a younger sister. i think his inexperience in combination with protectiveness could result in endearing and fun interactions. however, he is prone to projecting his own cynical and hostile views onto men that approach women he’s fond of, which isn’t exactly fair to anyone? having someone like y/m in his life could push him toward character-development, though.

NIGHTINGALE. fem. 22-24. (0/1) a nightingale made a mistake; she sang a few notes out of tune: her heart was ready to break, and she hid away from the moon. a small, sweet-voiced songbird that goes on singing late into the night. she's far too bright to be a nocturnal creature in his eyes, but she breaks the stillness, and she’s taken to asking him for advice. they’re quiet company, willing to sit in silence or talk for hours about who knows what, trying to figure out what they are. not even minki knows. he just enjoys her company, and perhaps they’ve found something to bond over. it's still small and precious and new.  

ALL.

ALWAYS: if you're thinking of a different connection that isn't listed here but pings you, please dm me about it!! i'd love to plot and throw in my own suggestions. as a quick aside, i'm always open to friendship, group members, platonic m/f & mf/m dynamics, mentoring, flings, exes, secret relationships, rivalries, innocent crushes, muses, staff members, co-writers, trainees, unrequited feelings, pining, etc.

[harryandmolly]

The Emancipation of Ginny ~ 4

summary: shawn and ginny could’ve ruined everything six months ago, and sticking together despite their past could make or break them now as ginny stays on as his personal assistant. but what happens on tour doesn’t stay on tour.

warnings: Language, tequila-flavored nostalgia, Gertler on the loose

WC: 4.6k

Shawn and Ginny chatter while Shawn reaches for the aux cord and scrolls through his playlists. With a gasping chuckle, he seems to find exactly what he didn’t know he was looking for.

“Oh my god,” Ginny snorts, but her knee is bouncing and she’s nodding along so Shawn knows he’s got her.

The sharp clapping starts followed closely by drums, then the pulse of the synthy keyboard. By the time the breathy vocals start, Ginny is already there, ready to imitate them perfectly, the product of a thousand sing-a-longs.

Her warm voice curls around the “ah… yeah…” but Shawn steps in with a headbang and joins her for Whitney Houston’s iconic “WOO!”

They’re buckled into the backseat, dancing and wriggling to the intro of “I Wanna Dance With Somebody.” Jake bobs his head with a barely there smile. They do this a lot, especially when they’ve clearly pregamed their evening. Shawn knows what to play to get Ginny moving and singing along even louder than he is. Whitney is always a safe bet.

Shawn claps in time with the beat and sings a lower harmony to Ginny’s eerily excellent Whitney impression. When the chorus starts, they’re both belting, laughing and shimmying and paying absolutely no mind to the relative audience they’ve gathered.

They’re stuck at a light on Curzon St. because a lorry fender bender has blocked up traffic, but the folks around them are treated to a show as Shawn and Ginny put their all into the 80s pop classic. What they also don’t notice is the stunned teenager in the car to the right and just ahead of theirs who has the perfect angle to film them out the window, capturing every wail, every head bop, every time they grab Jake’s seat ahead of them to encourage him to sing along.

Shawn and Ginny didn’t know any of this until the next morning, by which time the Twitter video had gathered 11 million views.

+

Andrew Gertler has a Ginny Dresden problem.

Andrew adores Ginny. Andrew’s pretty sure that at this point, without Ginny, he’d have lost all his hair and maybe accidentally strangled his artist to death (not that Shawn isn’t a delight 97% of the time, but his job is very stressful, ok?!).

Andrew remembers when they stepped off that first plane together in New York, already thick as thieves. He had a feeling in his gut, the kind of feeling that directs him wisely, when he listens to it. The feeling didn’t have an action attached, it was more a reaction, a sinking feeling of dread.

The feeling said, fuck, this will be complicated.

The feeling, as always, was right.

Andrew saw it, obviously, as did everyone. When three months passed and he noticed no evidence of a sneaky affair, he figured they were safe, the sexual tension would remain just that (though, Andrew would admit, it wasn’t just sexual tension. Because that would be easy to get past. This was always more than that).

When Shawn and Ginny sat him down three weeks into their secret relationship, about six months after Ginny joined the team, Andrew was frankly stunned. He was annoyed, of course, at his naive belief that they had skipped over the complications he feared, and even more irritated that he didn’t notice, especially given the way they were looking at each other like they had each hung the moon for the other.

It’s probably weird to everyone around him, anyone in the industry who heard about this, that Andrew never considered firing Ginny. He really didn’t. He just… knew that wasn’t going to fly. He accepted their fate, trusted them to be grown-ups if and when things went south.

And when they did, chaos reigned only for a night before Shawn managed to right the ship. Thank god.

But Ginny, sweet, thoughtful, intuitively organized and proactive Ginny, she was still a problem.

It’s hard to know exactly what the fans know. They were whispering about Shawn and Ginny long before it became a thing, and they’ve continued whispering long after. Some believe they never broke up at all, that they hid their relationship for privacy. Some believe he’s still in love with her and refuses to fire her so he can win her back. And then some believe Shawn’s fucking Cez, so really, you can’t spend too much time listening to fans because as lovable as they mostly are, they’re also so insane.

But the fans keep Ginny in their line of sight at all times. They monitor how closely she stands by him, how often they’re seen out in groups together. She’s never far from their minds, or their theories, or their tantrum fits on Tumblr about how if she had any self-respect at all, she’d have left Shawn’s team when he dumped her ass.

Those posts make Andrew irrationally angry -- that’s when he knows he has to log off and take some deep breaths.

But the truth is, he can’t ignore them, not entirely. Because when they start chattering about how Shawn is playing with her heart, reeling her in and casting her back out again as he pleases, keeping her on the team for his own comfort, that kind of shit gets press attention eventually, if it gets enough of a groundswell buzz on social media. And then it becomes his business.

+

It happened all at once for Shawn, kind of the way falling in love did. When it started, he lived with it for 48 hours before he piped up and let it all come crashing down.

He remembers holding her on the plane, a Learjet taking them from Sydney to Tokyo. It was an overnight flight but Shawn’s body clock told him it was noon, so he was nowhere near tired, but Ginny could always pass out on command. He envied it, but he made her as comfortable as he could while he did it.

She was curled up against his chest in their reclined seats, the armrest up between them. He had a blanket draped over their bodies, bunched up under her arm because otherwise she feels “all trapped and shit,” which he knows she hates. Her springy curls are positioned so they’re tickling his nose. When he moves his head to avoid them, somehow they follow. So instead, he embraces it and buries his face in her hair.

The smell of coconut oil and something that’s just somehow Ginny completely overwhelms him. His heart kickdrums in his chest. His breathing starts to speed, but the weight of her on his chest constricts his lungs. He holds her tighter, blinking quickly as he tries to find his way out of this unfamiliar feeling.

He’s sick with it, whatever it is. The panic doesn’t fade when she nuzzles her cheek against him and lifts her head, blinking sleepily, mumbling in a raspy morning voice something about “get some sleep, you minger,” but he can barely hear her over the rushing in his ears. He just nods with a shaky smile and closes his eyes long enough to make her think he’s trying to sleep. She goes heavy against him again and he knows he’s alone, as alone as he can be with her plastered to his side, overheating him, clinging to him. He coughs uncomfortably, choking on his breath.

And the panic still doesn’t fade over the next couple days every time he looks at her and she smiles that big, beautiful Ginny smile, perfect white teeth framed by the signature matte red lipstain that is a scientific marvel because as much time as he spends kissing her, it never leaves a smudge. It’s like she was never there.

But she was. She was everywhere.

It was terrifying.

Even with the rise of panic, he doesn’t let himself consider the Scary Solution until 36 hours into what felt like a prolonged, very well-hidden anxiety attack. If Ginny caught on to his weird feelings, she never showed it, especially not when he was cupping her breasts and rowing his hips hard into her ass as he took her from behind, fucking her a little harder than usual.

The Scary Solution, of course, was ending it. The fact that he was even considering it was scary, though maybe not as scary as continuing. Two days ago, the idea of ending it would’ve made him bark like a defensive dog. He couldn’t imagine letting her go. Now, to his combined horror and relief, because fuck, human emotions are weird, it feels like the safest option.

He let himself stew for a while longer, but he didn’t want to draw it out too much, he told himself. It wasn’t fair to her. None of this was. So the sooner he ended it, the better off they’d both be, and the less likely it was that she’d hate him forever.

He sat her down in the armchair across from his and held her hands. He forced himself to look straight into her deep, dark eyes while he spoke because she deserved that kind of attention.

The truth is, he doesn’t really remember what he said. He stumbled something out about how much he cares about her, how he’s enjoyed the last two months more than any he’s ever had out on the road, but that this had all become too much. Things had moved way too fast. He didn’t want to end things like this, especially while they were still on tour, but he had to be honest with her. He had to focus on the music, on the path he’d be taking next and that as wonderful as she was, she was a distraction.

He hopes he said it as nicely as possible. But given the stricken, dumbfounded look on her face, he’s sure he could’ve done better.

Her tears were pretty immediate. His welled up but never spilled. She stared at him quietly for a while like she was waiting for him to take it back, or like she was looking for something in his expression that told her to dive in and fight for him. Maybe she didn’t find what she was looking for.

She stood on shaky knees, swiped at her face and mumbled something about talking to Andrew, about finding a replacement for herself quickly to minimize disruption to the tour.

That’s when it hit him. She was leaving.

He did realize when he made this decision she might not want to stick around, but somehow it didn’t truly register what he’d be losing until she said it.

His brain scrambled, watching her walk out the hotel room door, sniffling gently as she unlocked her room across the hall. He blinked. She hadn’t slept in her own bed in two months.

She was leaving him.

He was selfish to panic about it. He made this decision for them. He couldn’t expect her to stay, to be his personal assistant of all things, arranging his laundry and paying his house cleaner and reminding him to call his grandmother on her birthday. He had no right to feel this empty at the idea of continuing tour without her. But it was there, nonetheless.

He let himself lose his mind over that long, sleepless night without her. When he stood outside her room early the next morning, hearing her singing Norah Jones under her breath, he felt like shit.

“Please,” he begged, voice shaky with unshed tears, “Please don’t leave. Please. I know it’s fucking unfair to ask. I hate myself a little. I really do. But, fuck, please, I can’t do it without you, Gin. Not because… because I’d forget to fuckin’ put on pants in the morning if you didn’t tell me to, but because you’re… Jesus Christ, you’re my best friend. I can’t lose you like this.”

Ginny had every right to kick him in the shins. She didn’t. She had every right to laugh and tell him to go fuck himself for even asking. She didn’t.

Ginny’s dry cheeks stung with her tears. She sniffed and toed at the floor, locking her arms over her chest. “Don’t really want to leave, you know,” she murmured, “This is a good opportunity for me. I’m learning a lot.”

“So don’t leave,” Shawn pled, lurching forward. She adjusted, taking a step back. Shawn noticed and shivered, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Don’t leave. Stay. I think we can do it. I honestly think we can. We were best friends first, remember?”

She did remember. She had never felt this way about anyone before. That had to be worth holding onto, right?

+

Andrew’s been internally groaning all morning, watching the video spring up everywhere. E!News has it on their Instagram, People’s retweeting it, Tumblr’s having a fucking field day. Even Niall reposted the video on his Insta story with the caption: “😂😂😂 go off I guess.”

Not helpful.

In the next room, Shawn and Ginny are chuckling, nursing hangovers as they pack Shawn’s shit to get ready for their rescheduled flight to Miami. They find their viral video very amusing, thank you very much. When The Rock retweeted it with three of the dancing girl emojis, Shawn and Ginny both had to stop what they were doing, they were laughing so hard. Shawn’s wiping tears away when Andrew knocks on his door.

Shawn lets him in and narrows his eyes at the grimace on his face. “What’s up?”

“Just want to talk to you guys,” Andrew begins steadily, resigned. Shawn feels Ginny stiffen up beside him. The bed squeaks when she sits on it. Shawn lowers himself beside her and doesn’t let himself reach out for her hand.

“So this video. It’s… y’know, obviously it feels innocent enough, you’re just singing, being the shitheads you are, but it’s… ugh, god, you guys know I hate these conversations.”

Andrew looks weary. Ginny is silent, curious. Shawn is tense from head to toe, leaning forward slightly.

Andrew continues, “The reality is, there’s a lot going around about how you guys are back together again, how Shawn has seduced you again, how you can’t keep your hands off each other, yada yada--”

“Andrew--” Shawn interrupts, the word so sharp it almost sounds like a swear. Andrew cuts back in before Shawn can continue.

“No, but listen, you guys both know where I’m going with this. This will become an image problem. All we need is for one outlet to start sparking stories about how Shawn’s fucking the only woman on his team, and we’re all up in smoke. We haven’t had to work that hard to preserve the good guy image because, wow, how novel, Shawn actually is a good guy. But the media will have a hell of a time batting around the idea that he’s a fuckboy if we don’t shut this down.”

It’s not lost on Ginny that Andrew doesn’t seem to be speaking directly to Shawn, referring to him by name, glancing more at Ginny than at his artist. Probably because he can see the look on Shawn’s face and knows talking him into this is a lost cause. He knows he can use logic and reason and PR strategy to get to Ginny, but Shawn’s ears are already turning red.

“What are you saying then?” Shawn seethes.

Andrew sighs. “I’m saying you guys need to spend some time apart. We can’t have you photographed together for a while, not by fans, not by paps. You need to lay really, really low. If Shawn’s at the front of the pack, Ginny, you’re at the back. If we’re all out as a team, Ginny’s on one end of the table, Shawn’s at the other. We just have to let this blow over. It’s annoying and it’s strategy and I know you both hate it, but it’s where we are at the moment. I’m sorry, guys.”

Andrew’s words are simple. There’s no talking him out of this, he’s delivering his decree and that’s it. Ginny nods, looking exhausted. To Andrew’s surprise, instead of quiet rage, Shawn opens his big mouth.

“No.”

“What?” Andrew hums, eyebrows shooting up under the frames of his glasses. Ginny also looks startled.

“I said no. I’m not doing that. It’s stupid.”

They can both see the way Shawn’s bubbling over. They pause for a moment, waiting for him to continue. When he doesn’t, Andrew starts again.

“It’s shitty, but--”

“No, it’s fucking pointless, Andrew, we’re not doing that. We’re singing. We’re singing in the car. We’re singing Whitney Houston in the fucking car and someone put it on Twitter and now I can’t be seen with my best friend? No fucking way, I’m not doing it. My fans know better than this. They know I’m not some womanizing creep who’s fucking a girl on my team just because she’s a girl on my team. They know me and they know Gin, too. What are we supposed to do? Not speak to each other in public for a few weeks and boom, problem solved? That’s so fucking stupid. I refuse to live that way. It’s false and it’s fake and I won’t do it.”

Ginny blinks. Her lips are parted. She looks between Shawn and Andrew, whose face is unreadable. After a moment that feels like ten minutes, Andrew eases up out of his chair and looks down at them both.

“We’ll talk about this later.”

He lets himself out and back in to his own room next door. Ginny swallows. Shawn drops his face into his hands and leans forward taking a deep breath.

Ginny drops a hand to his back for a second before she takes it back and wrings her fingers.

“Fucking insane,” Shawn mutters.

“Well…” Ginny sighs. Shawn sits up.

“What?”

“Well, I get it, though. I get how it might not look great.”

“I don’t give a fuck how it looks!” Shawn croaks, “You’re really ok with that? With standing minimum ten feet from me at all times just to shut up the idiots on social media who think because we’re friends means I must be some gross loser who can’t keep his hands off his female teammate?”

Ginny wets her lips. “I’m ok with playing the game we have to play so we can stay on the path we’re on. I’m ok with whatever protects us.”

Shawn shakes his head. “Ginny, we can’t live like this. We can’t live dishonestly like this. This is how this kind of shit starts. It starts with a stupid little lie to protect some lame image and then it snowballs and then everything around me is a lie. Can’t you see that?”

He looks up at her, pained and red-faced. This time Ginny does leave her palm on his shoulder, rubbing her thumb into his muscle soothingly.

“I get that, I do. I know where you’re coming from. But I also know that you know that we have to pick our battles here. And more than that, we have to trust Andrew. You know it wasn’t easy for him to march in here and lay that out. You know he hates this kind of shit, manipulating something just to keep people off our backs. But he does it to keep you safe.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not a fucking child. I get that maintaining my image is part of his job, but--”

Ginny interjects. “No. Stop right there. It is his job. It’s what he’s paid to do. And he knows this better than we do. He knows what can happen if we do this wrong. So we need to listen to him and play by the rules, just for a little while. I don’t like it either. I really hate it, actually. The idea that people think I’m some sunflower following you around waiting for you is frankly incredibly insulting. But I’m focusing on the bigger picture, which is that if I stay on your team, I learn every day, I meet people, I’m growing my network and I spend all day every day with my best friends. So… yeah. I’m going to take Andrew’s advice. If you want, we can develop a secret sign language so we can still talk even when you’re standing fifteen feet ahead of me and not looking in my direction.”

Shawn snorts, defeated and tired. “Ok. If I pull on my left earlobe it means ‘hi.’”

Ginny smirks and lifts the hand resting on his shoulder to flick at his ear teasingly. “Kay. If I scratch my nose it means, ‘Shawn, spit out your fucking gum.’”

+

Shawn found time over the next day or so to mumble out an apology to Andrew for overreacting. Andrew accepted it graciously in that way Andrew does where he makes you feel like you never had to apologize at all.

Ginny and Shawn stick to the “strategy” and keep apart for a couple weeks in public, riding in separate cars when they can, Ginny chatting animatedly with Cez and Brian, looking totally disinterested in her ex-boyfriend. All went according to plan.

One day during soundcheck for a radio festival in Vermont, Andrew and Ginny are bopping their heads in perfect time (without their notice), standing in front of the soundbooth.

Ginny, eyes fixed on the stage, tilts her head toward Andrew’s to speak. “Think Cez should move Zubin’s mike to the left like--”

“-- five feet? I was thinking the same thing,” Andrew finishes with a laugh. Ginny chuckles and bounds away, communicating the suggestion. When they’re back in place, Ginny returns.

“Last couple weeks were weird,” Andrew acknowledges, “But I just… I wanna say thank you. Whatever you said to him, it worked. You made my job easier. So thanks.”

Ginny shrugs. “You were right. He just needed to hear that from someone that… wasn’t you.”

Andrew laughs. “But being that person isn’t always easy. I have so much respect for him, you know? I mean, I know you know. But his insistence on living a totally honest public life is so, so cool. It’s just not always the best thing for him. And I never want to feel like we’re ganging up on him. I never want him to feel too managed. So when you can step in and get something across to him that I can’t, that’s a big fuckin’ deal for the whole team. You’re gonna be a kickass manager, Gin, maybe sooner than you think.”

Andrew nudges her gratefully with his elbow and strolls away to make a call.

Ginny looks back up at the stage, watches Shawn’s eyes close, his brow wrinkle as he kicks into a “Particular Taste” high note.

And she thinks for a very long second that she should feel better about what Andrew just told her.

+

The days following the breakup were… hard. Shawn’s head reeled, trying to wrap around his own actions. Ginny was mostly numb, trying not to look him in the eye. They mostly avoided each other except when it came to professional necessity -- Ginny checking in with him about arranging his flight home, Shawn asking where his old pencil case filled with guitar picks got packed. All of this monitored very carefully by Andrew, who was looking for any excuse not to send Ginny home but knew he had to be looking anyway, just in case.

But before long, Andrew stopped watching. It became clear disaster wasn’t to strike. Shawn and Ginny slowly and surely became a new version of Shawn and Ginny, a version that had gone through a stage of innocent, flirtatious friendship, intense and all-consuming romance, and now were settling into seasoned, tried-and-true partnership.

It definitely didn’t happen overnight. Andrew doubts Shawn and Ginny could put a finger on when exactly they really would’ve called themselves friends again after the spate of awkward tension, but the fact that they did it at all meant they were gonna be ok.

But if Ginny had to guess, it would be that night in Antwerp when she heard him in the next room strumming “St. Patrick’s Day” by John Mayer and felt completely, totally comfortable snagging her Gibson acoustic and padding over in too-long plaid pajama pants to knock on his door and be invited in to play.

They sat cross-legged and pretended to ignore that the last time they were together on his bed, they were making love, and now they’re making music, and Ginny thinks that’s a pretty decent substitute.

+

In another three weeks, the video is long since forgotten.

Though, to be fair, given how much of the bottle of Patron they’ve finished between the two of them, most things are, in fact, forgotten.

Ginny and Shawn are planted on a balcony, barefoot with their legs stuck through the railings, feet swinging over the streets of… Chicago, Shawn’s almost sure. Wherever they are, it’s the kind of city where Shawn feels like he can really breathe, not like New York or LA. He can breathe in London, too. He and Ginny both love London. He’d like to go back to London with her, hold her hand, walk around her hometown, kiss her neck and feel her giggle…

Shawn sits up and sneezes loud. Tequila always makes him sneeze.

“Does not,” Ginny quips, and Shawn realizes he must have said that complaint out loud, “That’s not a thing. Tequila doesn’t make you sneeze.”

“Does, totally does,” Shawn grumbles, taking another slug of it anyway. He follows it with a sip of beer and… a sneeze. He holds out his hands and makes a face at her.

“I rest my case.”

“You’re drunk,” she accuses, pressing her face into the railings like she’s testing to see if she could get her head through. Thankfully, she doesn’t try very hard.

“I am. ‘S good, haven’t been drunk in a while.”

“We were drunk last week,” she points out, sipping at the lime wedge she’s already mostly sucked dry. Shawn watches her cheeks hollow out and turns away, feeling his face get hot.

“You know I’m like, so glad you didn’t leave,” Shawn blurts, pivoting the subject on a dime. Ginny blinks cluelessly.

“When?”

“When we broke up. You could’ve left. You didn’t. I’m glad you didn’t.”

Ginny swallows. “I didn’t want to.”

“I didn’t want you to,” Shawn sighs, dropping his head forward against the railing.

“I wondered if maybe you did,” she confesses quietly, closing her eyes. She can feel him turning to look at her curiously.

“But…”

“I know. But I wondered if maybe you felt guilty about me losing my boyfriend and my job all at once and that’s why you asked me to stay.”

Ginny chances a glance at him. He looks gutpunched.

“But that didn’t last long,” she assures him, “I know why you wanted me to stay.”

Shawn blinks. His tequila-slow body feels like it jumps into hyperspeed. He grips the railings tighter and swallows, waiting for her to say it.

I know you were scared.

“You’re my best friend, too, Shawn,” Ginny assures him, light-eyed and wistful. Shawn tries not to feel disappointment at her dodging the opportunity to poke at him, make him really talk about why he let her go.

Sweet and stupid, they drunkenly sway on the balcony for another hour, muttering to each other about Shawn’s next album, about the record company anniversary gala coming up, about a weird dream Ginny had about pancakes a few nights ago that she worries might mean she secretly hates dogs. They talk until Ginny falls asleep with her face against the railing. Shawn wakes her up before she can get an impression on her cheek from the metal. He scoops her up as much as he’s able when he’s more tequila than boy and drops her on the bed next to his, drapes the duvet over her, bunches it up under her arm and collapses onto his own bed, heavy with exhaustion.

Pls help me keep Ginny in lime wedges and buy me a Ko-fi (link on main page)!

Taglist:  @smallerinfinities @the-claire-bitch-project @achinglyshawn @infiniteshawn @stillinskislydia @singanddreamanyway @alone-in-madness @abigfatmess @shawnitsmutual @awkwardfangirl2014 @september-lace @grittyisathot @sinplisticshawn @mutuallynotmutual @rollingxstone @yslsaint @randi-eve

[wobc-fm]

Five Album Serenade: Athena Matsil

The WOBC blog is launching a new series called Five Album Serenade: we will now be posting interviews with Oberlin students and members of the community about the albums that have played major roles in their lives. This series is currently curated by WOBC Dj Benjamin Stevens. 

The first interview of the series is with Oberlin student Athena Matsil

Album that is inspiring to you:

True, Solange

I have always loved pop music. For a long time at Oberlin I’ve been trying to make my rock band Thee Hundos work, and we keep running into a lot of weird roadblocks. We have a lot of weird obstacles coming our way and I’ve kind of given up on that project. I’m trying to see how in my final time here I can write more pop music, which is something I’ve always wanted to do more of anyway. After listening to that album a lot over winter term I’ve been making stuff in Garageband that is poppier and dancier.

I also have been really inspired by Frank Ocean recently because he put out that “Moon River” cover and that’s so different from everything he’s ever done. Blonde is one of my favorite albums; I have a Blonde tattoo! The way he works with form is really inspiring because he’s a pop star and a songwriter who is defying all conventions of pop music writing. It’s so cool and so mainstream but also so critically acclaimed.

Have you seen him?

Yes! I saw him this summer! I cried so much. I had an incredible view of him right in front of the tent where they were mixing sound. That was pretty cool.

Who else did you see that day?

I saw Solange! I was doing my own thing but then I ran to see Solange and Frank Ocean. The whole dancing marching band…

I thought “How is he going to follow this?”

Yeah it wasn’t very elaborate. It was so personal I felt like I was in a studio for some sort of in-studio performance.

Favorite album from a decade:

The Doors, The Doors

In high school I was obsessed with classic rock because that’s what my dad listened to and my favorite band for years and years was the Doors. During high school when I was figuring out what my music taste was. I didn’t know any hip hop and I didn’t know any pop music until I got into college. The Doors’ first album is really inspiring to me because all the music I had listened to from the ‘60s like the Beatles and the British invasion bands were so quaint and put together, and the Doors were so loud and pissed. I remember being so into That 70’s Show when I was in high school and Hyde always wore a Doors shirt and I was “Hyde’s into the Doors and he’s cool and I’m into the Doors and I’m cool!”

What’s a favorite song off that record?

The first song is “Break on Through” and it’s such an intense and fun start to an album. I learned a lot about the Doors because I was obsessed with them and I remember reading the first song they had written they didn’t put it on the record and it was cool to see what songs they put on the record as their break onto the scene. The first song they ever wrote was “Moonlight Drive,” which has a lot of slide guitar on it and it’s not as anti-establishment as a lot of their work. They just have such a weird sound, there’s no bassist in the band and the .

I like how they sound like a Skating rink with a guy in the middle talking about lizards.

Their sound is really distinct sound too. Even if you haven’t heard a song of theirs before, you immediately know it is them because of their arrangement. Jim Morrison’s voice is so powerful, it makes me mad! I studied classical voice in High School and I think about how if he had been classically trained he could have been a great singer. Instead, he was great in a very different context. It made me feel like if he could be great without the training I had, I could be great too!”

What’s a record that’s outside of your comfort zone of stuff you typically like to listen to that you love?

Build Nothing Out of Something-Modest Mouse

There’s this album by Modest Mouse that’s a collection of singles. It’s called Build Nothing Out of Something. It’s got a lot of cool songs on it, I’ve heard its a collection of singles. The lyrics are really angsty in a way that is different than I’m used to. Karen O’s album Crush Songs is probably my favorite album ever. There’s this person called Space Show, this anti-folk person. Their lyrics are really angsty and sweet and most of the arrangements are just acoustic guitar and glockenspiel. The Karen O album is all acoustic guitar. The Modest Mouse album is so heavy and expresses the same things that those artists want to express but in such a different way. I don’t know any other music in that genre. I couldn’t name any bands that sound like Modest Mouse to me.

I get what you’re saying where albums just come out of the blue to you with no reference points that you can recognize.

My roommate a couple of years ago played me “Baby Blue Sedan,” and that was the song that put me on to the rest of the record. My roommate’s taste was so different and it was funny how that of all things was the place where we met.

A favorite record from high school?

Rubber Soul-The Beatles

When I was in high school I really loved The Beatles and I loved the album Rubber Soul. I just love every song on that record. A lot of my friends from high school were also really into the Beatles; we would listen listen to it together on the train all the time, we would listen to it in the park, and we all had it on vinyl. We went to the record store and bought a bunch of copies of Rubber Soul. It doesn’t sound like anything that came before it.

Definitely it’s a record that has a lot possibility. They seem very free to do what they want.

Banger after banger after banger! It’s so hard to pick a favorite Beatles era. I remember listening to Abbey Road in the car with my whole family we each had a song that was ours and we would each take the lead in singing it. We all had our different parts singing “Oh Darling.”

Album that reminds you of home:

Jim Croce

I really love Jim Croce. I’ve only listened to his greatest hits. He’s really special to my parents and they will always sing along to Jim Croce. They listened to Jim Croce after their first date. When they listen to Jim Croce they sing it to each other. When I listen to Jim Croce I feel like I am at home in a loving environment. His voice is so beautiful, his guitar playing is amazing, his songs are so pretty. And his music reminds me of my parent’s love and how that extends to my brothers and I.

[editors note: this interview has been edited for clarity] 

[artripoffdavidgorriz]

Love Bite: Laurie Lipton and Her Disturbing Black & White Drawings Directed, Edited & Filmed by James Scott

Today when most contemporary art is just decorative and is nothing more than commodities without meaning, art without soul and without substance, artists like Laurie Lipton have to be required. We all know many artists who could fit into that decorative art that says nothing but whom is buying for people because they have enough money to do it and thus be able to say a lot about their and theirs success. Laurie Lipton is the opposite, her art is something to trigger within you the things you may not have thought about, the things you’re frightened of, the things you don’t want to talk about , I'm sure most people would not want to hang one of his works in their homes. I came across the artwork of Laurie Lipton not so many years ago, I was living here in London and I remember that it had an enormous impact on me, I remember spending the next few days looking for most of the artwork and information about her that was on the internet, I even bought a couple of books of her artwork. His drawings are disturbing and terrifying at the same time, they make us reflect on individualism and the human condition in this consumer society and the acceptance of individual success as the only goal to achieve. The other day I saw the documentary "Love Bite: Laurie Lipton and Her Disturbing Black & White Drawings" and I thought it was a great documentary that brings you very close to her as an artist and her motivations to continue drawing. 

I highly recommend watching 

Love Bite: Laurie Lipton and Her Disturbing Black & White Drawings

Directed, Edited & Filmed by James Scott

"No one on the planet has drawn more than Laurie Lipton. With millions of tiny strokes of her humble pencil, Laurie’s haunted images seek answers to some of the most uncomfortable themes in our culture. But what compels her to live a life of isolation drawing is neither black nor white."

Laurie Lipton was born in New York and began drawing at the age of four. She was the first person to graduate from Carnegie-Mellon University in Pennsylvania with a Fine Arts Degree in Drawing (with honors). She has lived in Holland, Belgium, Germany, France, the UK and has recently moved to Los Angeles after 36 years abroad. Her work has been exhibited extensively throughout Europe and the USA.

Lipton was inspired by the religious paintings of the Flemish School. She tried to teach herself how to paint in the style of the 16th century Dutch Masters and failed. When traveling around Europe as a student, she began developing her very own peculiar drawing technique building up tone with thousands of fine cross-hatching lines like an egg tempera painting. “It’s an insane way to draw”, she says, “but the resulting detail and luminosity is worth the amount of effort. My drawings take longer to create than a painting of equal size and detail.”

“It was all abstract and conceptual art when I attended university. My teachers told me that figurative art went ‘out’ in the Middle Ages and that I should express myself using form and shapes, but splashes on canvas and rocks on the floor bored me. I knew what I wanted: I wanted to create something I had never seen before, something that was brewing in the back of my brain. I used to sit for hours in the library copying Durer, Memling, Van Eyck, Goya and Rembrandt. The photographer, Diane Arbus, was another of my inspirations. Her use of black and white hit me at the core of my Being. Black and white is the color of ancient photographs and old TV shows… it is the color of ghosts, longing, time passing, memory, and madness. Black and white ached. I realized that it was perfect for the imagery in my work.”

Some of her latest drawings from the series "Post Truth" and “Techno Rococo"

“Meeting” Laurie Lipton 2020

“Followers” Laurie Lipton 2020

“Left Hanging” Laurie Lipton 2020

“Blinds” Laurie Lipton 2020

“Binge Watching” Laurie Lipton 2018

“I’m Fine, Thanks” Laurie Lipton 2018

“Mouthpiece” Laurie Lipton 2017

“Post Truth” Laurie Lipton 2017

“Personal Effects” Laurie Lipton 2016

“Virtual Reality” Laurie Lipton 2015

“Happy” Laurie Lipton 2015

“The Decline Of Memory” Laurie Lipton 2020

“Ossified” Laurie Lipton 2019

Drawing  “Ossified” Laurie Lipton 2019

“Newsfeed” Laurie Lipton 2019

“My Social Media” Laurie Lipton 2019

“Alone In A Room, Socializing” Laurie Lipton 2018

“Messaging” Laurie Lipton 2018

“Default Setting” Laurie Lipton 2016 

“Likes” Laurie Lipton 2017

“Selfie” Laurie Lipton 2017

“3D” Laurie Lipton 2015

“Cooked” Laurie Lipton 2015

“Wired” Laurie Lipton 2013

You can find more of her artwork here  https://www.laurielipton.com/

Hope you like it as much as I do

[breeeliss]

[Femslash February]: Aquarium

how about a short little AU just to shake things up a bit?

Day 12: Aquarium (Alyanette + AU)

Words: 1797

Link to Archive of Our Own: [AO3]

[Previous: Style Swap] [Next: Theme Park]

She could see her through the aquarium in her office. 

Apparently, all the interns had to take the desk for a couple of hours everyday, never mind how impressive their portfolios were. Marinette could accept that. Today a designing internship. Tomorrow a scholarship to ESMOD. Day after that, her very own label. She could suck up taking desk calls, staring at spreadsheets, sending emails, and following the heels of her idols for the summer. 

Besides. The view wasn’t half bad.

She checked the directory outside two mornings ago and found out that the office across from theirs was an online magazine. If she peeked around all the Rosy Barbs and Angelfish meandering around the long aquarium tank stretching along the wall right across from Marinette’s desk, she occasionally saw people bustling by with manuscripts and cover proofs. But that wasn’t even the best part. 

By far the most interesting about the office was the beautiful girl who worked the front desk. 

They looked to be about the same age, so Marinette assumed she was also an intern. She spent her days staying at her desk -- probably sending emails and working on projects -- and only leaving to run off to meetings or go to lunch. Marinette honestly didn’t mean to stare, but sometimes there was nothing to do at her desk other than wait for the phone to ring. Her eyes would drift up and see that gorgeous girl, hair piled up charmingly on the top of her head, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose every few minutes, and yawning in front of her computer screen while she multitasked on her cellphone. 

Marinette really wanted to ask her out to lunch, but she could never catch her outside the office. She sometimes meandered around the elevator during her lunch hour in the hopes that the girl would come out at the same time so that she could strike up a conversation, but their schedules never melded. Marinette tried to do the same at the end of the work day, but one of them was always staying late and finishing projects. All she had was her view through the aquarium tank. 

One of the models who worked for the label, Adrien, was about the only person who stopped by her desk everyday to have lunch with her and ask her about her day. It didn’t take him long to pick up on Marinette’s little hobby. He stopped by her desk one morning and poked her in the cheek when he caught her staring through the tank again. “You know, you could just make an excuse to go over there and talk to her.”

Marinette snorted. “And say what? ‘Hi, I’m Marinette, I think you’re cute and I’ve been creepily staring at you for the past two weeks. Wanna get coffee?’”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Everything,” Marinette complained, slumping in her seat. “Plus, she’s probably dating some dashing reporter or something.”

“Or,” Adrien smirked. “She’s single and will think you’re cute if you just make yourself known.”

Marinette pouted. “I’ve tried to catch her outside the office for weeks. I can’t guess her schedule.”

Adrien shrugged and pointed to the aquarium tank. “You don’t need to. She’s right there during working hours and you two can technically see each other. Use that.”

“What? The aquarium tank?”

Adrien winked and left her the cup of coffee he’d gone to fetch for her. “You’re a creative girl, Marinette. You can figure something out.”

For a couple of days, she was convinced that Adrien was just messing with her and saying things to make her feel better. But one day, when she was making paper cranes out of the post-its on her desk, she stopped, eyed the tape dispenser on the far end of her desk, and got an idea. 

She looked through the fish tank and saw that the girl was still sitting at her desk working. So Marinette took a pen, scribbled a quick message on the post-it note, and grabbed some tape. She rounded her desk and knocked on the glass of the tank, making the fish scatter underneath the plastic castle in the middle of their tank. The girl lifted her gaze from the computer screen and looked around the office before she made eye contact with Marinette through the tank. Marinette merely waved and attached her message. 

Hi! I’m Marinette! :)

Marinette quickly scurried off behind her desk and hid behind her computer monitor. She really didn’t feel like seeing the girl’s reaction to what was admittedly kind of a dorky idea, and she was sure Adrien was going to laugh at her when she told him about this later. But he said to use the tank to her advantage and this was the only thing she could think of. Ooooooh, but this was definitely weird. Who left notes for strangers like that? God, she couldn’t have just come up with something better? Maybe just marginally smoother? Maybe she could do all of her work for the next hour while saying behind the desk and out of sight.

But then, she heard a knock against the fish tank. Marinette poked her head out from behind the computer monitor and saw the girl standing in front of the tank, laughing and taping her own note to the fish tank. Marinette blinked and slowly walked towards the tank while the girl stayed in front of it, waiting for Marinette to read the message. 

Nice to meet you. I’m Alya <3

Marinette beamed at Alya through the tank and felt her stomach get all warm when Alya smiled at her back. Marinette took her note off from the tank, flipped it over, and wrote another message. 

I hope this isn’t weird. I couldn’t figure how else to run into you. 

Alya rolled her eyes fondly, and scribbled another message on the back of her original note. 

Not weird at all. I was hoping I’d get to talk to you eventually. 

Marinette let out a shaky breath and felt herself smiling without meaning to. She backed up towards her desk without taking her eyes off of Alya and grabbed the entire stack of post-its. She looked down the hall and made sure that none of her supervisors were watching her. She scribbled another note and stuck it to the glass. 

You were hoping?

Marinette drummed her nails against the glass, watching the fish cower away from her fingers as she watched Alya bit her lip to try and hold back her smile. The sight made Marinette bounce on her toes and eagerly await her reply. When Alya finally stuck the note to the glass, Marinette felt her heart speed up. 

Of course. You’re really cute ;)

Oh, Adrien was so going to be gloating about this when she told him. 

There were so many excited thoughts going through her head that she couldn’t get them together coherently enough to put them in a note. She could hear her supervisor coming down the hall -- probably to check on her -- so Marinette impulsively wrote her phone number on a post-it, taped it to the tank, and ran back to her desk in time for her supervisor to ask for all the messages that were left on the answering machine. Her skin was buzzing because she was so nervous and sitting on the edge of her seat in so much anticipation. Alya had gone back to her desk, and Marinette couldn’t come up with another excuse to go back to the tank to leave another message. But luckily, she didn’t have to wait long until she got a text message from an unknown number. 

Yes? <3

Marinette’s fingers were shaking, and it took her a couple of tries to get the message out, but she sighed in relief when she finally sent if off. 

Would you want to get coffee at around noon? My treat :)

She quickly saved the contact in her phone and gripped it in both hands as she watched the ellipses blinking on the bottom of her text window. She looked up to see Alya texting at her desk, laughing to herself and smiling into her hand in a way that made the apples of her cheeks pull up sweetly. When she finally finished sending her text, she sent a wink to Marinette through the glass tank and tapped on her cellphone. Marinette looked down at her screen, opened the text, and giggled in delight. 

With a cutie like you? I’d be stupid to say no. 

Marinette covered her face with her hands and screamed silently into them while she bounced in her seat. She peeked out from between her fingers to stare into the other office, but Alya was talking to her boss, probably ready to be whisked off to another meeting. Alya waved at her through the aquarium and sent her a quick text that she was going to be back in about an hour. Marinette sent over a belated wave and almost knocked over her coffee out of enthusiasm, and despite how absolutely clumsy it was, Alya still laughed as she disappeared from the office. 

Marinette puffed her cheeks out and lifted her knees up to her chest. “Aww, crap, I have a date, I have a date, what do you do on dates, oh my god...”

She slid out of her desk chair, snuck into the office, and went towards the back of the office where all of the studios were. Adrien was in the back prepping for his photoshoot set to start in an hour while Marinette snuck around all the cameras, slid next to him getting his makeup done, and pushed her cellphone into his lap. “Sorry. Don’t meant to bother you. I have a development.”

“Wait, what?” Adrien grinned. He picked up her phone and scrolled through the texts. He laughed brightly, ignoring the glare from his makeup artist as she tried to contour his cheekbones. “Please tell me you’re going to give me a play by play when you come back? And invite me to the wedding? And let me be your best man?”

“Stop,” Marinette whined, sticking her tongue out at him playfully. “It’s just one date. It’s not a big deal.”

“I don’t know,” Adrien sang. “You are blushing pretty badly right now.”

“Shut up!”

“Oh, this is so cute!” Adrien laughed. “You have to take pictures and show me! I told you just talking to her would work. To think that I can sense chemistry through an aquarium tank.”

Marinette smirked. “If I give you credit for this, will you help me figure out what I’m supposed to say and do during this date?”

Adrien scoffed and patted her on the shoulder. “You don’t even have to ask.”

[idolsrpeople2]

I saw your tags on l******i's post about clarification and wondered if you think intellectual property still works on tumblr? News and such still use it; doesnt it comply? Youre a level-headed person so I just wondered 😊

This topic has a lot of gray areas and I could write pages and pages, but I’m not going to do that. I really don’t want to get caught up in the middle of the two blogs in question, but since I reblogged and tagged about it I guess I opened myself up to it. I’ll state my views as simply as possible and in respect to the specific posts being discussed. Keep in mind that I am an outside observer, so I have limited knowledge of the situation.

First let me post a couple of definitions of “intellectual property.”

Intellectual property (IP) refers to creations of the mind, such as inventions; literary and artistic works; designs; and symbols, names and images used in commerce.

The colloquial description of intellectual property is that it comprises all those things that emanate from the exercise of the human mind, such as ideas, inventions, poems, designs, music, etc. Intellectual property is therefore about creative ideas. Dissemination of these ideas benefits society and stimulates further creative activity. However, once ideas have been made public they can be copied by others. If their originators are to control and obtain remuneration from their use they can only do so within a secure legal framework, which creates property rights in those ideas.

I’m just going to focus on the issue at hand, which is creative content on tumblr, which generally doesn’t deal in patents, etc. But a type of intellectual property still exists here because the original creator of content took time and effort, and used their creativity to choose a moment and how to present it. That content should not be taken and used as one’s own with no credit to the creator. Let’s look at the pyramid of ‘ownership’ as it applies to a lot of content on kpop blogs. A group/person performs, they own that performance. A group/person uploads a video, or a fan films a performance and uploads a fancam, the video belongs to the person uploading the video. That person can either give permission to gif or edit the video (with credit of course), or they can forbid it. If fans have permission to gif/edit, then that video is up for grabs as long as the content creator who uses it credits the source. Now, we know that fancams, or any kind of video by ekso (like a vlive) will be watched by thousands. Not all of those fans are going to create content from any given video, but there are a host of fans who will. Is only one person, out of the whole fandom, allowed to create content from a particular video/moment? The first person who uses it owns it? NO.

Okay, so does that mean that fans can only create content from the same source as long as they have a totally different take on it? NO. It’s inevitable that more than one person, many people in fact, will have similar thoughts on a subject or moment. For example, if a thousand people were shown a video of someone kicking a puppy, and were asked to caption it, most would write about how horrible it was, just with different ways of saying it. It doesn’t automatically make it copying to have similar thoughts on a subject.

Let’s just take the ekso fandom as an example, since it’s the one I’m most familiar with. Every time something cute, fun, or interesting happens at a concert or on a broadcast, we get a slew of gifs, gif-sets, photos (the exact same photo posted tons of times with different captions), and video edits. Back in the day, when I used to post more, I used to livestream ekso concerts and stalk vine to find cute and interesting moments that had just happened, and then post the vine with a caption. Now, if I went into the tag, I would often see other people who found and posted the exact same vine, but with a different caption. Do I have a right to go to that person and say they can’t do that because I did it first? No, because I didn’t create the vine, I merely posted it with a caption of my own. Do I have the right to tell them they can’t post it because their caption had the same feel as mine (like we both mention that it was cute or whatever)? No, I can’t claim ownership to a common thought.

Unless a person takes creative content, such as a gif/video edit/photo edit, uses it as if it were their own without permission or credit, or takes something written word for word, then there is no stealing of ‘intellectual property.’

In regards to the two blogs in question, I’m not sure what’s going on, and I don’t want to instigate or pit one against the other, or anyone against either one of them. I follow both. But it seems as though one is accusing the other of stealing gifs, which I have seen no evidence of (I think she just re-used her own gifs in two different posts). l******i has been making gif sets for a long time, and when she does an analysis she is good about crediting sources. If someone wants to accuse another blogger of stealing gifs, or other creative content, they should provide the proof (perhaps link the original post and the post with stolen content). If the accusing blog is upset because l******i did an apartment analysis (which may not be the case, this may just be my assumption), all I can say is that l******i posted an analysis first, then posted a second part after the accusing blog posted her first apartment analysis. They both touched on some similar ideas, and included floor plans, but they did their own work. It makes sense if you are trying to figure out the layout of an apartment to look at what you can see in videos/pics and try to put it together with a possible floor plan. It was a lot of work for both of them, and I appreciate and enjoy both, but I don’t see any stealing going on. The hidden apartment idea has been going around for a while. I even posted something about a ‘secret location’ quite a while ago, but I certainly didn’t consider that the idea belonged to me. If I wasn’t so lazy and unmotivated, I might have done an analysis similar to theirs.

I’m not trying to take sides, and make one blog feel bad. I care about the bloggers I follow and want them to be happy and enjoy tumblr. At the end of the day, I reblogged l******i’s post because I saw people accusing her of things I see no evidence of, and I’ve always thought she was good about giving credit when needed. I don’t like people to be dragged just because someone made an unsubstantiated claim. Plus, I sometimes get the impression that the accusing blog feels ownership over moments or ideas, which might prevent other kd supporters from feeling like they can post about them. I really don’t want that to happen. We should be embracing and encouraging kd blogs and content creators. I previously had a bit of contact with the accusing blog and they were quite nice, so I’m hoping it was all a misunderstanding and it can be sorted out.

Basically it comes down to having integrity and not stealing something another person has actually taken time and effort to create while, at the same time, not accusing others of stealing if you don’t show what and how the content has been stolen.

Let’s remember to be kind and respect each other, especially those of us who love and support kd. We do not need in-fighting.

Phew, that was long. And I’ll probably regret it. Either blog is welcome to talk to me if they feel they were unfairly represented. 💜

[inloveandwords]

This post was inspired by Ally’s series (which was inspired by Lia at Lost in a Story).

It works like this

Go to your Goodreads to-read shelf.

Order on ascending date added.

Take the first 5 (or 10 (or even more!) if you’re feeling adventurous) books

Read the synopsis of the books

Decide: keep it or should it go?

The Coma by Alex Garland

The acclaimed author of The Beach returns with a mesmerizing and highly original work of intrigue.

Proclaimed “a gifted storyteller” by The New Yorker and “a huge literary talent” by Kazuo Ishiguro, Alex Garland, the internationally bestselling author of The Beach, The Tesseract, and writer of the critically acclaimed film 28 Days Later, returns with yet another gripping page- turner that blurs the edges of reality and probes the boundaries of consciousness. A man is attacked on the Underground and awakens to find himself in a hospital, apparently having emerged from a coma. Or has he? Garland’s brilliant tale is illustrated with forty haunting woodblock print illustrations by his father, Nicholas Garland, a well-known political cartoonist for the Daily Telegraph (UK) and noted artist.

Date added to TBR: Jun 27, 2011 Keep or Ditch? Ditch Comments: The reviews aren’t great on this one and I honestly have no idea why I added it to my TBR in the first place.

***

Midnight Magic (Midnight Magic #2) by Avi

Mangus the Magician must free a princess from a terrifying ghost. But Mangus doesn’t believe in ghosts. Actually, he doesn’t even believe in magic. His servant boy, Fabrizio, is the princess’s secret friend and determined to prove that the ghost is real.

Date added to TBR: Jun 27, 2011 Keep or Ditch? Ditch Comments: First of all, the author doesn’t have a last name… just kidding, I’m ditching this simply because I have no idea why I added this in the first place.

***

The Replacement by Brenna Yovanoff

Mackie Doyle is not one of us. Though he lives in the small town of Gentry, he comes from a world of tunnels and black murky water, a world of living dead girls ruled by a little tattooed princess. He is a Replacement, left in the crib of a human baby sixteen years ago. Now, because of fatal allergies to iron, blood, and consecrated ground, Mackie is fighting to survive in the human world.

Mackie would give anything to live among us, to practice on his bass or spend time with his crush, Tate. But when Tate’s baby sister goes missing, Mackie is drawn irrevocably into the underworld of Gentry, known as Mayhem. He must face the dark creatures of the Slag Heaps and find his rightful place, in our world, or theirs.

Date added to TBR: Jun 27, 2011 Keep or Ditch? Ditch Comments: This just does not appeal to me anymore. I actually think I owned this at one point, but ended up donating it.

***

Pussy, King of the Pirates by Kathy Acker

A loose reworking of Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic Treasure Island, Acker’s radical interpretation is a masterfully directed, wild trek through real and imagined history, from the most famous whorehouse in Alexandria through an unidentified, crumbling city that may or may not be sometime in the future. “Acker pushes language to the tension point, explodes and reclaims it”.– Boston Sunday Herald.

Date added to TBR: Jun 27, 2011 Keep or Ditch? Ditch Comments: I remember the day I bought this at a little pop-up book shop many years ago. The checkout guy saw the title and nodded appreciatively and drawled, “niiiiice.” I do still love the cover… whether I read it or not is an entirely different story.

***

Open House by Elizabeth Berg

Open House, Open Heart

Elizabeth Berg has made a name for herself by writing provocative, engaging novels that strike a deep emotional chord with women everywhere. Her topics have ranged from parental estrangement and the death of a dear friend, to the unique bonds that can develop between sisters, or between a straight woman and a gay man. But at the heart of each is a common theme#151;a woman put to the test, stretched to the limits of her emotional boundaries by the vagaries of life. Berg’s latest, IOpen House,/I follows this tried-and-true formula by telling the story of one woman’s struggle to survive divorce.P Throughout the 20 years of her marriage, Samantha Morrow has been content with her life, though she knows it isn’t perfect. She has a nice home, a great son, and a husband she loves. But everything is turned upside down when her husband, David, tells her he wants out of their marriage. His rapid departure on the heels of this announcement leaves Sam horribly shocked, utterly confused, and oddly obsessed with Martha Stewart. Her initial reaction is to go on a spending spree, charging thousands of dollars worth of merchandise at Tiffany’s to her husband’s credit card. But when reality sets in and her husband cuts her off, she realizes that if she wants to keep the house she loves and make a home for herself and her son, she’s going to have to generate some income.P Her first solution to this dilemma is to find a couple of roommates. Between the finished portion of the basement and the extra bedroom upstairs, Sam figures she can take on two boarders and mitigate a large portion of the mortgage payment. She finds her first boarder quickly#151;the septuagenarian mother of an acquaintance#151;and is delighted. Lydia Fitch is quiet, clean, concerned, friendly, and more than eager to play grandmother to Sam’s son, Travis. Which is just as well, since Sam’s own mother doesn’t quite fit the bill. In fact, Sam’s mother has made a career out of dating since the death of her husband two decades ago and is now determined to fix Sam up as soon as possible#151;a plan with foreseeable disasters written all over it.P Sam’s life is further complicated when she starts looking for a job, for other than a gig singing in a band years ago, she’s never been employed. But then King, the gentle giant of a man who helps Lydia move in, puts Sam in touch with the employment agency he works for. Suddenly Sam is off on a variety of short-term jobs, everything from making change at a Laundromat, to working as a carpenter’s helper. When she gets the devastating news that Lydia has decided to marry her long-time beau and move out, Sam takes on a second boarder for the basement space: a sullen, depressed college student.P Meanwhile, Sam’s relationship with David has given way to an awkward tiptoeing d�tente as he starts building a new life for himself, replete with an upscale condo and a new girlfriend. Travis starts acting out and behaving as sullenly as the new boarder, and Sam finds herself eating all the time and gaining weight. Throughout it all, the one steady force in Sam’s life is King, whose implacable calm and supportive friendship provides a stabilizing rudder in the storm-tossed sea of Sam’s life. But Sam soon discovers there is much more to King than she realized and it will force her to rethink everything she has come to hold true.P One of Berg’s greatest strengths is her keen eye for the tiny details and intimate thoughts that allow her readers to relate to her characters on a deeply personal level. Watching Sam try to create a home that will nurture her soul by stocking it with the best of household items is funny but heartbreaking. Yet the journey she travels, a journey of self-discovery that shows home really is where the heart is, makes it all worthwhile. Berg’s mix of pathos and humor (and in this case, a hilarious dead-on skewering of Martha Stewart) lends her prose a tantalizingly perverse flavor that is both entertaining and oddly satisfying.P #151;IBeth Amos/IP Beth Amos is the author of several mainstream suspense thrillers, including ISecond Sight, Eyes of Night,/I and ICold White Fury./I. She lives in Wisconsin, and is at work on her next novel.P

Date added to TBR: Jun 27, 2011 Keep or Ditch? Ditch Comments: Dude. That synopsis was a novel itself. I didn’t even feel like reading it just now to decide whether I want to keep it or not. So, pass. (Also the cover is awful)

***

Princess of the Midnight Ball (The Princesses of Westfalin Trilogy #1) by Jessica Day George

Rose is the eldest of twelve princesses forced to dance through the night in an underground palace. Galen is the soldier turned gardener who falls for her. The key to breaking the spell lies in magic knitting needles, an invisibility cloak, and-of course-true love. Inspired by “The Twelve Dancing Princesses,”

Date added to TBR: Jun 27, 2011 Keep or Ditch? Keep Comments: This is actually rated fairly high and I’m always down for a retelling.

***

Quicksilver (The Baroque Cycle #1) by Neal Stephenson

Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver is here. A monumental literary feat that follows the author’s critically acclaimed New York Times bestseller Cryptonomicon, it is history, adventure, science, truth, invention, sex, absurdity, piracy, madness, death, and alchemy. It sweeps across continents and decades with the power of a roaring tornado, upending kings, armies, religious beliefs, and all expectations.

It is the story of Daniel Waterhouse, fearless thinker and conflicted Puritan, pursuing knowledge in the company of the greatest minds of Baroque-era Europe, in a chaotic world where reason wars with the bloody ambitions of the mighty, and where catastrophe, natural or otherwise, can alter the political landscape overnight. It is a chronicle of the breathtaking exploits of “Half-Cocked Jack” Shaftoe–London street urchin turned swashbuckling adventurer and legendary King of the Vagabonds–risking life and limb for fortune and love while slowly maddening from the pox…and Eliza, rescued by Jack from a Turkish harem to become spy, confidante, and pawn of royals in order to reinvent a contentious continent through the newborn power of finance.

A gloriously rich, entertaining, and endlessly inventive novel that brings a remarkable age and its momentous events to vivid life–a historical epic populated by the likes of Samuel Pepys, Isaac Newton, William of Orange, Benjamin Franklin, and King Louis XIV–Quicksilver is an extraordinary achievement from one of the most original and important literary talents of our time.

And it’s just the beginning …

Date added to TBR: Jun 27, 2011 Keep or Ditch? Ditch Comments: Anyone else a little turned off by the phrase, “monumental literary feat”? Cuz I am.

***

Trading Up by Candace Bushnell

With a brilliant comic voice as well as Jane Austen’s penchant for social satire, Candace Bushnell, who with Sex and the City changed forever how we view New York City, female friendships, and the love of a good pair of Manolos, now brings us a sharply observant, keenly funny, wildly entertaining latter day comedy of manners. Modern-day heroine Janey Wilcox is a lingerie model whose reach often exceeds her grasp, and whose new-found success has gone to her head. As we follow Janey’s adventures, Bushnell draws us into a seemingly glamorous world of $100,000 cars, hunky polo players and media moguls, Fifth Avenue apartments, and relationships whose hidden agendas are detectable only by the socially astute. But just as Janey enters this world of too much money and too few morals, unseen forces conspire to bring her down, forcing her to reexamine her values about love and friendship–and how far she’s really willing to go to realize her dreams.

Date added to TBR: Jun 27, 2011 Keep or Ditch? Ditch Comments: I feel like I added this back in my obsessive Sex and the City Days.

***

The Illumination by Kevin Brockmeier

What if our pain was the most beautiful thing about us? In the aftermath of a fatal car accident, a private journal of love notes written by a husband to his wife passes into the keeping of a hospital patient, and from there through the hands of five other suffering people, touching each of them uniquely. I love the soft blue veins on your wrist. I love your lopsided smile. I love watching TV and shelling sunflower seeds with you.

The six recipients – a data analyst, a photojour­nalist, a schoolchild, a missionary, a writer, and a street vendor – inhabit an acutely observed, beauti­fully familiar yet particularly strange universe, as only Kevin Brockmeier could imagine it: a world in which human pain is expressed as illumination, so that one’s wounds glitter, fluoresce, and blaze with light. As we follow the journey of the book from stranger to stranger, we come to understand how intricately and brilliantly they are connected, in all their human in­jury and experience.

Date added to TBR: Jun 27, 2011 Keep or Ditch? Keep Comments: I can actually picture myself a decade ago standing in Barnes and Noble, reading the synopsis of this book. I’m still pretty intrigued.

***

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Harry Potter #2) by J.K. Rowling

The Dursleys were so mean and hideous that summer that all Harry Potter wanted was to get back to the Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry. But just as he’s packing his bags, Harry receives a warning from a strange, impish creature named Dobby who says that if Harry Potter returns to Hogwarts, disaster will strike

And strike it does. For in Harry’s second year at Hogwarts, fresh torments and horrors arise, including an outrageously stuck-up new professor, Gilderoy Lockhart, a spirit named Moaning Myrtle who haunts the girls’ bathroom, and the unwanted attentions of Ron Weasley’s younger sister, Ginny.

But each of these seem minor annoyances when the real trouble begins, and someone — or something — starts turning Hogwarts students to stone. Could it be Draco Malfoy, a more poisonous rival than ever? Could it possibly be Hagrid, whose mysterious past is finally told? Or could it be the one everyone at Hogwarts most suspects . . . Harry Potter himself?

Date added to TBR: Jun 27, 2011 Keep or Ditch? Ditch Comments: OK, so, don’t hate me but I’ve tried reading Harry Potter on several occasions and I just can’t get into it, friends. I want to be super into it simply because the fandom has so many amazing things (a freaking theme park!), but gah! I just can’t!

***

  Here are the stats

Starting Total TBR Count: 1760

Previous Total TBR Count: 1849

Total Marked TBR ASAP: 132

Updated Total TBR Count: 1896

Total Ditched Today: 8

Total Kept Today: 2

    Bye-Bye Books: Decluttering my TBR February 2019 This post was inspired by Ally’s series (which was inspired by Lia at Lost in a Story…

[helenpattersoon]

How to share creative work fairly in the digital age

Reposting beautiful illustrations, inspiring quotes, and funny doodles on social media has become ingrained in our online habits—it’s a new era of digital sharing, and we’re still kinda figuring things out. But there are certainly a few fundamental things to take into consideration before sharing the next illustration that makes you feel, “it me”.

In many cases, these viral gems are original creative works by an artist—an illustrator or graphic designer who has decided to bless us by posting their work online. Artists share their own work as a means of growing their business, to build their portfolio or online presence—of course they want to attract fans and customers who might purchase from their store, hire them for a project, or recommend them to others.

But what often happens is that the original creator’s Instagram handle gets cut off in the process of reposting, or their image is simply uploaded to Twitter without any credit, shared without any trace back to where it came from. There are consequences to this which can affect a designer’s livelihood. So it’s important for all of us to know how to share creative work properly online, whether we want to repost something to a personal channel, or a brand social account. I reached out to artist and author Adam J. Kurtz to learn more and put together this deep dive on how to do it right.

  View this post on Instagram

  this is actually sorta the opposite of that old one i posted last week oops

actually just made this today during a zine making workshop i did for @wix’s design playground. it was a fully analog exercise (except for one or two designers who cheated but ok i know it’s hard to not use all our tools!!!) but i just did this little single panel version to share because i like it so much. anyway i had a great time thanks for having me etc.

event photos by @yotiroboti!

A post shared by Adam J. Kurtz (@adamjk) on Jun 18, 2018 at 7:49pm PDT

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Meet Adam J. Kurtz, an artist and author whose work often goes viral—often without credit

Adam recently published a vlog about his experience of finding his work posted to a company’s social media channel, without his permission or credit. Adam’s first step was to contact the company directly first, asking for the post to be deleted. He received an apology, and was promised that it wouldn’t happen again, however it totally did happen again with the same company. So Adam decided the next step was to request a payment for a ‘retroactive social media license’ for the use of his work—he invoiced the company and was successfully paid. Adam’s vlog is a great explainer on how to share creative work properly online, whether for personal or work use:

When I first saw Adam’s video I was instantly struck by how well he addressed this new aspect of digital sharing. “I don’t think many of us can exist without sharing our work online”, Adam told me by email, when I asked him about being a very shareable creative in the digital age. “Whether it’s a creative studio portfolio showcase, or individual creatives sharing new work, process, daily warm-ups, or other bits and pieces. It’s how we build our brands, find new fans, and get more clients. This is how the business mostly works now. It can be scary enough to share your work with an audience when you’re worried they might not like it,” Adam explained.

Adam makes a living from his creative work—he’s designed products for the likes of Fish’s Eddy, Urban Outfitters, Tattly, and some of his other clients are Adobe, Instagram, The New York Times, Penguin Random House, Pepsi. Adam’s products, his writing and graphics tap into universal themes that resonate deeply (and are super fun)—it’s understandable that many people connect with what he does and that his work often goes viral.

  View this post on Instagram

  the bitch (ur undeniable responsibility for ur own actions) is back

A post shared by Adam J. Kurtz (@adamjk) on Dec 23, 2017 at 9:35am PST

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While an artist can choose to share their work online to build their own following and establish a presence online—Adam for example has built a following of nearly 200,000 followers on his Instagram account—we need to be more aware of the best way to share designs when it’s created by someone else—whether it’s on our personal account, or when sharing something for a business.

What are the best practices when sharing creative work online?

  View this post on Instagram

  inspired by the response to my lil “f u pay me” vlog, here are some guidelines on how to repost my work. in general i’m rly chill and grateful about this but i’m not trying to directly help you sell your granola or meditation classes… when a company wants to use my art for business purposes they can hire me or license something. and of course use your best judgement! . if you’re coming to my instagram or anyone else’s and thinking it’s just a stock image service, you’re mistaken. if you’re enjoying something or feeling encouraged, that’s totally awesome (and the point) and i’m so glad. this post is really more geared towards stopping companies from posting for their own profit, under the guise of “friendly reposts” that undervalue creative work made by real human people. . and if you wanna hear me talk about this for 13 minutes head to YOUTUBE.COM/ADAMJK

i kinda just went in on how our creative work has value and how it’s up to all of us to educate others, especially if we work for a company with a social media team.

the response has honestly got me inspired to talk more and put more videos up. . p.s. i’m not here to publicly shame anyone! that’s not usually the best way to get things done. but if you wanna repost these guidelines or privately share this post with an account you see doing this stuff often, that’d be cool. remember that kindness is often more powerful than anger, especially when trying to educate someone!

A post shared by Adam J. Kurtz (@adamjk) on Jun 18, 2018 at 4:44am PDT

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Of course if you find something funny or touching, you want to share it with your followers—and there are soooooo many social sharing buttons which make this super easy. But this also makes it easy to accidentally or otherwise cut off the original creator’s handle. When people repost artist’s work to a personal network, this is no doubt a very beneficial action for artists, but you still want to just check quickly that you’ve credited the work properly.

Adam’s tip: When sharing to your personal account, tag the creator in both the image and caption, don’t alter the image, or edit out the creator’s handle or watermark.

Here are some best practises based on Adam’s suggestions, that we encourage everyone (whether for personal or biz use) to consider when sharing creative work—that could be a cartoon, illustration, quote, photo or other image. It’s super helpful advice that can generally be applied to all creative work:

Check that the artist’s credit is not buried under a long comment and paragraph of hashtags. Be mindful of tagging the artist in the first couple of lines underneath the post.

Feature the artist: Is the work being shared because it’s going viral and you want to get in on that, or to showcase the artist? In Adam’s case, he is only ok with brands sharing his work if the point is to showcase the work itself.

Communicate: Brands should not share work without a credit or if the image has been altered. A partnership should not be implied, and the post shouldn’t advertise a sale or promotion if there isn’t one. If you want to set up a partnership with a designer based off an example of their work you like, reach out!

Some of this is common sense, but it’s always good to remind ourselves that there are living, breathing humans behind these designs whose livelihood depends on being properly credited for their work. Why do they post it online if they don’t want us to share it, you ask? Good question! The point is, artists are quite happy for you to share their work—the right way, and with a proper credit. And if you’re a brand using someone’s creative work to build your following online, there should be compensation involved for the artist.

  View this post on Instagram

  checklist for getting over common fears — read the book for the actual advice broken down!

. i’m donating 100% of my pride month royalties for @thingsarewhatyoumakeofthem to the @teganandsarafoundation to help them support economic justice, health, and representation for LGBTQ girls and women. . you might remember we raised $7,500 for this great organization with the book preorder campaign last year, but I’m hoping this is a continued opportunity to use my art for good in the same way that @teganandsara continue to use theirs, leading by example for so many of us. . i earn $1.05 per book sold (in bookstores, on amazon, at my 6/13 @strandbookstore event, etc) so we’ll see how much it ends up being! if you haven’t got a copy yet this might be a perfect excuse to help yourself and others. . more details at thingsarewhatyoumakeofthem.com/pride. #thingsare #pride

A post shared by Adam J. Kurtz (@adamjk) on Jun 5, 2018 at 12:47pm PDT

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I don’t want to scare you from sharing your favourite artist’s work, just be careful about how you share it. Creative people are tired of being told that the ‘exposure’ will be great—if it’s for personal use, a credit can go a long way to bringing new fans (and possible buyers) to a designer’s website. If you’re a brand, unless you’re showcasing the artist’s work only, there’s a responsibility to pay the artist for using their creative work—bills can’t be paid with exposure.

Tips for creators: what to do when you find your work shared without credit

Adam also pointed out to me that the risk for artists these days is not only if the work will be received well, but if it might take on a life of its own without any connection back to the artist, spiralling off into the digital sphere across the umpteen platforms we’re all constantly updating, streaming and scrolling through.

“Now you have to be kind of worried that they will [like it], and might help themselves to it for any number of reasons,” Adam explained. “My perspective is kind of the same for both—make your work and share it. If people don’t like it, they keep on scrolling. If one bad apple out there does repost or otherwise use your work unfairly, you can deal with it then.”

For designers who might be hesitant about sharing their work online, Adam feels that the positive results outweigh the possible risk. “If you don’t share, nobody can ever see anything,” he says. “That is worse than any other negative outcomes. We can’t worry about what we can’t control, so try to let go of those concerns until they become relevant. That’s just good life advice in general, really.”

  View this post on Instagram

  sometimes laughter is the best medicine… sometimes it’s mood stabilizers! this pin is for anyone working towards balance. about to be sold out for good, i’ve got 20 left.

A post shared by Adam J. Kurtz (@adamjk) on May 19, 2018 at 9:17am PDT

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If you’re a designer and you find that someone has posted your work without permission or without a credit, here are some tips for creatives that Adam shared with me.

Ask accounts to update their caption: Adam says, “It sucks when it’s already been up for a while, so there’s not the same benefit of having your work seen and a possible influx of followers. But I have a keyboard “text replacement” shortcut on my phone now. With a few taps I can easily paste a little comment that basically says, “Hi thanks for sharing my work but please credit me in the caption so your followers can find my art and books.” It’s not written aggressively, and since I started doing it, most people have responded positively.

Send a private email or direct message first: “There are plenty of people tweeting at big brands and seeing no retweets, no comments, and no response from the brand. So my approach is typically to be direct and discreet first. I DM the brand, email a listed address, or something like that. It keeps people from being on the defensive. And while I can’t really spend the time to educate everybody, it can make a difference later.”

Adam also told us how a proper credit can go a long way for an artist, if their work is featured and shared with a big audience:

When ‘exposure’ is maybe okay but probably not legal:  Adam says, “I’ve had one or two popular Instagram accounts […] share my work properly, with clear credit, to audiences of several million. That’s the kind of reposting that we’d all like, where a huge audience gets exposed to our work, and maybe 100+ new followers find us as a result. Reposting content might be questionably legal in the first place, but in the case of those big meme accounts, you can get your ‘payment’ in the form of that proper crediting.”

At the end of the day, if you’re a creative person who’s producing artwork, you should get to decide how that art is used.

Remember, it’s your work—decide how you want your work to be shared: Adam says, “When it’s a company, you are in charge. You might not want a certain business using your art to promote their stuff. You can ask them to delete it, and if they really keep ignoring you, you actually can file a copyright claim through Instagram support. Your work has a value and if a brand hasn’t asked or paid for it first, then you can decide how to respond. It’s your work.”

So, what’s the best way to share my next favourite relatable #content?

In an ideal world everyone would stop and think, “Where did this come from?” before sharing the next pug cartoon or cute illustration which is going viral. When posting to your personal social media channels, make sure you credit the original artist properly with a visible tag, and if an artist has added their name at the bottom of an artwork, don’t cut it off if you’re using a tool which resizes an image (the work should really not be edited at all).

What to do if you’re not sure where an illustration came from? Try to trace it back from where you found it, or use Google reverse image search.

If you’re working for a brand and want to share original work to showcase an artist’s work, at least seek permission first with an explanation as to why you want to make the post, and make sure to add a link to their handle at the top of the description. If the post is being used to promote a business or build brand awareness, contact the artist first to discuss compensation—or commission something especially for you!

Finally, if you notice someone sharing original work without an artist credit, give them a polite heads up and encourage them to repost it with a correction. The artist will love you for it.

Want something created especially for you?

Work directly with a designer to make it happen.

Let’s do it!

The post How to share creative work fairly in the digital age appeared first on 99designs.

via https://99designs.co.uk/blog/

[pamelahetrick]

How to share creative work fairly in the digital age

Reposting beautiful illustrations, inspiring quotes, and funny doodles on social media has become ingrained in our online habits—it’s a new era of digital sharing, and we’re still kinda figuring things out. But there are certainly a few fundamental things to take into consideration before sharing the next illustration that makes you feel, “it me”.

In many cases, these viral gems are original creative works by an artist—an illustrator or graphic designer who has decided to bless us by posting their work online. Artists share their own work as a means of growing their business, to build their portfolio or online presence—of course they want to attract fans and customers who might purchase from their store, hire them for a project, or recommend them to others.

But what often happens is that the original creator’s Instagram handle gets cut off in the process of reposting, or their image is simply uploaded to Twitter without any credit, shared without any trace back to where it came from. There are consequences to this which can affect a designer’s livelihood. So it’s important for all of us to know how to share creative work properly online, whether we want to repost something to a personal channel, or a brand social account. I reached out to artist and author Adam J. Kurtz to learn more and put together this deep dive on how to do it right.

 View this post on Instagram

 this is actually sorta the opposite of that old one i posted last week oops

actually just made this today during a zine making workshop i did for @wix’s design playground. it was a fully analog exercise (except for one or two designers who cheated but ok i know it’s hard to not use all our tools!!!) but i just did this little single panel version to share because i like it so much. anyway i had a great time thanks for having me etc.

event photos by @yotiroboti!

A post shared by Adam J. Kurtz (@adamjk) on Jun 18, 2018 at 7:49pm PDT

Meet Adam J. Kurtz, an artist and author whose work often goes viral—often without credit

Adam recently published a vlog about his experience of finding his work posted to a company’s social media channel, without his permission or credit. Adam’s first step was to contact the company directly first, asking for the post to be deleted. He received an apology, and was promised that it wouldn’t happen again, however it totally did happen again with the same company. So Adam decided the next step was to request a payment for a ‘retroactive social media license’ for the use of his work—he invoiced the company and was successfully paid. Adam’s vlog is a great explainer on how to share creative work properly online, whether for personal or work use:

When I first saw Adam’s video I was instantly struck by how well he addressed this new aspect of digital sharing. “I don’t think many of us can exist without sharing our work online”, Adam told me by email, when I asked him about being a very shareable creative in the digital age. “Whether it’s a creative studio portfolio showcase, or individual creatives sharing new work, process, daily warm-ups, or other bits and pieces. It’s how we build our brands, find new fans, and get more clients. This is how the business mostly works now. It can be scary enough to share your work with an audience when you’re worried they might not like it,” Adam explained.

Adam makes a living from his creative work—he’s designed products for the likes of Fish’s Eddy, Urban Outfitters, Tattly, and some of his other clients are Adobe, Instagram, The New York Times, Penguin Random House, Pepsi. Adam’s products, his writing and graphics tap into universal themes that resonate deeply (and are super fun)—it’s understandable that many people connect with what he does and that his work often goes viral.

 View this post on Instagram

 the bitch (ur undeniable responsibility for ur own actions) is back

A post shared by Adam J. Kurtz (@adamjk) on Dec 23, 2017 at 9:35am PST

While an artist can choose to share their work online to build their own following and establish a presence online—Adam for example has built a following of nearly 200,000 followers on his Instagram account—we need to be more aware of the best way to share designs when it’s created by someone else—whether it’s on our personal account, or when sharing something for a business.

What are the best practices when sharing creative work online?

 View this post on Instagram

 inspired by the response to my lil “f u pay me” vlog, here are some guidelines on how to repost my work. in general i’m rly chill and grateful about this but i’m not trying to directly help you sell your granola or meditation classes… when a company wants to use my art for business purposes they can hire me or license something. and of course use your best judgement! . if you’re coming to my instagram or anyone else’s and thinking it’s just a stock image service, you’re mistaken. if you’re enjoying something or feeling encouraged, that’s totally awesome (and the point) and i’m so glad. this post is really more geared towards stopping companies from posting for their own profit, under the guise of “friendly reposts” that undervalue creative work made by real human people. . and if you wanna hear me talk about this for 13 minutes head to YOUTUBE.COM/ADAMJK

i kinda just went in on how our creative work has value and how it’s up to all of us to educate others, especially if we work for a company with a social media team.

the response has honestly got me inspired to talk more and put more videos up. . p.s. i’m not here to publicly shame anyone! that’s not usually the best way to get things done. but if you wanna repost these guidelines or privately share this post with an account you see doing this stuff often, that’d be cool. remember that kindness is often more powerful than anger, especially when trying to educate someone!

A post shared by Adam J. Kurtz (@adamjk) on Jun 18, 2018 at 4:44am PDT

Of course if you find something funny or touching, you want to share it with your followers—and there are soooooo many social sharing buttons which make this super easy. But this also makes it easy to accidentally or otherwise cut off the original creator’s handle. When people repost artist’s work to a personal network, this is no doubt a very beneficial action for artists, but you still want to just check quickly that you’ve credited the work properly.

Adam’s tip: When sharing to your personal account, tag the creator in both the image and caption, don’t alter the image, or edit out the creator’s handle or watermark.

Here are some best practises based on Adam’s suggestions, that we encourage everyone (whether for personal or biz use) to consider when sharing creative work—that could be a cartoon, illustration, quote, photo or other image. It’s super helpful advice that can generally be applied to all creative work:

Check that the artist’s credit is not buried under a long comment and paragraph of hashtags. Be mindful of tagging the artist in the first couple of lines underneath the post.

Feature the artist: Is the work being shared because it’s going viral and you want to get in on that, or to showcase the artist? In Adam’s case, he is only ok with brands sharing his work if the point is to showcase the work itself.

Communicate: Brands should not share work without a credit or if the image has been altered. A partnership should not be implied, and the post shouldn’t advertise a sale or promotion if there isn’t one. If you want to set up a partnership with a designer based off an example of their work you like, reach out!

Some of this is common sense, but it’s always good to remind ourselves that there are living, breathing humans behind these designs whose livelihood depends on being properly credited for their work. Why do they post it online if they don’t want us to share it, you ask? Good question! The point is, artists are quite happy for you to share their work—the right way, and with a proper credit. And if you’re a brand using someone’s creative work to build your following online, there should be compensation involved for the artist.

 View this post on Instagram

 checklist for getting over common fears — read the book for the actual advice broken down!

. i’m donating 100% of my pride month royalties for @thingsarewhatyoumakeofthem to the @teganandsarafoundation to help them support economic justice, health, and representation for LGBTQ girls and women. . you might remember we raised $7,500 for this great organization with the book preorder campaign last year, but I’m hoping this is a continued opportunity to use my art for good in the same way that @teganandsara continue to use theirs, leading by example for so many of us. . i earn $1.05 per book sold (in bookstores, on amazon, at my 6/13 @strandbookstore event, etc) so we’ll see how much it ends up being! if you haven’t got a copy yet this might be a perfect excuse to help yourself and others. . more details at thingsarewhatyoumakeofthem.com/pride. #thingsare #pride

A post shared by Adam J. Kurtz (@adamjk) on Jun 5, 2018 at 12:47pm PDT

I don’t want to scare you from sharing your favourite artist’s work, just be careful about how you share it. Creative people are tired of being told that the ‘exposure’ will be great—if it’s for personal use, a credit can go a long way to bringing new fans (and possible buyers) to a designer’s website. If you’re a brand, unless you’re showcasing the artist’s work only, there’s a responsibility to pay the artist for using their creative work—bills can’t be paid with exposure.

Tips for creators: what to do when you find your work shared without credit

Adam also pointed out to me that the risk for artists these days is not only if the work will be received well, but if it might take on a life of its own without any connection back to the artist, spiralling off into the digital sphere across the umpteen platforms we’re all constantly updating, streaming and scrolling through.

“Now you have to be kind of worried that they will [like it], and might help themselves to it for any number of reasons,” Adam explained. “My perspective is kind of the same for both—make your work and share it. If people don’t like it, they keep on scrolling. If one bad apple out there does repost or otherwise use your work unfairly, you can deal with it then.”

For designers who might be hesitant about sharing their work online, Adam feels that the positive results outweigh the possible risk. “If you don’t share, nobody can ever see anything,” he says. “That is worse than any other negative outcomes. We can’t worry about what we can’t control, so try to let go of those concerns until they become relevant. That’s just good life advice in general, really.”

 View this post on Instagram

 sometimes laughter is the best medicine… sometimes it’s mood stabilizers! this pin is for anyone working towards balance. about to be sold out for good, i’ve got 20 left.

A post shared by Adam J. Kurtz (@adamjk) on May 19, 2018 at 9:17am PDT

If you’re a designer and you find that someone has posted your work without permission or without a credit, here are some tips for creatives that Adam shared with me.

Ask accounts to update their caption: Adam says, “It sucks when it’s already been up for a while, so there’s not the same benefit of having your work seen and a possible influx of followers. But I have a keyboard “text replacement” shortcut on my phone now. With a few taps I can easily paste a little comment that basically says, “Hi thanks for sharing my work but please credit me in the caption so your followers can find my art and books.” It’s not written aggressively, and since I started doing it, most people have responded positively.

Send a private email or direct message first: “There are plenty of people tweeting at big brands and seeing no retweets, no comments, and no response from the brand. So my approach is typically to be direct and discreet first. I DM the brand, email a listed address, or something like that. It keeps people from being on the defensive. And while I can’t really spend the time to educate everybody, it can make a difference later.”

Adam also told us how a proper credit can go a long way for an artist, if their work is featured and shared with a big audience:

When ‘exposure’ is maybe okay but probably not legal:  Adam says, “I’ve had one or two popular Instagram accounts […] share my work properly, with clear credit, to audiences of several million. That’s the kind of reposting that we’d all like, where a huge audience gets exposed to our work, and maybe 100+ new followers find us as a result. Reposting content might be questionably legal in the first place, but in the case of those big meme accounts, you can get your ‘payment’ in the form of that proper crediting.”

At the end of the day, if you’re a creative person who’s producing artwork, you should get to decide how that art is used.

Remember, it’s your work—decide how you want your work to be shared: Adam says, “When it’s a company, you are in charge. You might not want a certain business using your art to promote their stuff. You can ask them to delete it, and if they really keep ignoring you, you actually can file a copyright claim through Instagram support. Your work has a value and if a brand hasn’t asked or paid for it first, then you can decide how to respond. It’s your work.”

So, what’s the best way to share my next favourite relatable #content?

In an ideal world everyone would stop and think, “Where did this come from?” before sharing the next pug cartoon or cute illustration which is going viral. When posting to your personal social media channels, make sure you credit the original artist properly with a visible tag, and if an artist has added their name at the bottom of an artwork, don’t cut it off if you’re using a tool which resizes an image (the work should really not be edited at all).

What to do if you’re not sure where an illustration came from? Try to trace it back from where you found it, or use Google reverse image search.

If you’re working for a brand and want to share original work to showcase an artist’s work, at least seek permission first with an explanation as to why you want to make the post, and make sure to add a link to their handle at the top of the description. If the post is being used to promote a business or build brand awareness, contact the artist first to discuss compensation—or commission something especially for you!

Finally, if you notice someone sharing original work without an artist credit, give them a polite heads up and encourage them to repost it with a correction. The artist will love you for it.

Want something created especially for you?

Work directly with a designer to make it happen.

Let's do it!

The post How to share creative work fairly in the digital age appeared first on 99designs.

via 99designs https://99designs.co.uk/blog/marketing-advertising-en-gb/sharing-creative-work-fairly/

[catherinesnyder]

How to share creative work fairly in the digital age

Reposting beautiful illustrations, inspiring quotes, and funny doodles on social media has become ingrained in our online habits—it’s a new era of digital sharing, and we’re still kinda figuring things out. But there are certainly a few fundamental things to take into consideration before sharing the next illustration that makes you feel, “it me”.

In many cases, these viral gems are original creative works by an artist—an illustrator or graphic designer who has decided to bless us by posting their work online. Artists share their own work as a means of growing their business, to build their portfolio or online presence—of course they want to attract fans and customers who might purchase from their store, hire them for a project, or recommend them to others.

But what often happens is that the original creator’s Instagram handle gets cut off in the process of reposting, or their image is simply uploaded to Twitter without any credit, shared without any trace back to where it came from. There are consequences to this which can affect a designer’s livelihood. So it’s important for all of us to know how to share creative work properly online, whether we want to repost something to a personal channel, or a brand social account. I reached out to artist and author Adam J. Kurtz to learn more and put together this deep dive on how to do it right.

  View this post on Instagram

  this is actually sorta the opposite of that old one i posted last week oops

actually just made this today during a zine making workshop i did for @wix’s design playground. it was a fully analog exercise (except for one or two designers who cheated but ok i know it’s hard to not use all our tools!!!) but i just did this little single panel version to share because i like it so much. anyway i had a great time thanks for having me etc.

event photos by @yotiroboti!

A post shared by Adam J. Kurtz (@adamjk) on Jun 18, 2018 at 7:49pm PDT

//www.instagram.com/embed.js

Meet Adam J. Kurtz, an artist and author whose work often goes viral—often without credit

Adam recently published a vlog about his experience of finding his work posted to a company’s social media channel, without his permission or credit. Adam’s first step was to contact the company directly first, asking for the post to be deleted. He received an apology, and was promised that it wouldn’t happen again, however it totally did happen again with the same company. So Adam decided the next step was to request a payment for a ‘retroactive social media license’ for the use of his work—he invoiced the company and was successfully paid. Adam’s vlog is a great explainer on how to share creative work properly online, whether for personal or work use:

When I first saw Adam’s video I was instantly struck by how well he addressed this new aspect of digital sharing. “I don’t think many of us can exist without sharing our work online”, Adam told me by email, when I asked him about being a very shareable creative in the digital age. “Whether it’s a creative studio portfolio showcase, or individual creatives sharing new work, process, daily warm-ups, or other bits and pieces. It’s how we build our brands, find new fans, and get more clients. This is how the business mostly works now. It can be scary enough to share your work with an audience when you’re worried they might not like it,” Adam explained.

Adam makes a living from his creative work—he’s designed products for the likes of Fish’s Eddy, Urban Outfitters, Tattly, and some of his other clients are Adobe, Instagram, The New York Times, Penguin Random House, Pepsi. Adam’s products, his writing and graphics tap into universal themes that resonate deeply (and are super fun)—it’s understandable that many people connect with what he does and that his work often goes viral.

  View this post on Instagram

  the bitch (ur undeniable responsibility for ur own actions) is back

A post shared by Adam J. Kurtz (@adamjk) on Dec 23, 2017 at 9:35am PST

//www.instagram.com/embed.js

While an artist can choose to share their work online to build their own following and establish a presence online—Adam for example has built a following of nearly 200,000 followers on his Instagram account—we need to be more aware of the best way to share designs when it’s created by someone else—whether it’s on our personal account, or when sharing something for a business.

What are the best practices when sharing creative work online?

  View this post on Instagram

  inspired by the response to my lil “f u pay me” vlog, here are some guidelines on how to repost my work. in general i’m rly chill and grateful about this but i’m not trying to directly help you sell your granola or meditation classes… when a company wants to use my art for business purposes they can hire me or license something. and of course use your best judgement! . if you’re coming to my instagram or anyone else’s and thinking it’s just a stock image service, you’re mistaken. if you’re enjoying something or feeling encouraged, that’s totally awesome (and the point) and i’m so glad. this post is really more geared towards stopping companies from posting for their own profit, under the guise of “friendly reposts” that undervalue creative work made by real human people. . and if you wanna hear me talk about this for 13 minutes head to YOUTUBE.COM/ADAMJK

i kinda just went in on how our creative work has value and how it’s up to all of us to educate others, especially if we work for a company with a social media team.

the response has honestly got me inspired to talk more and put more videos up. . p.s. i’m not here to publicly shame anyone! that’s not usually the best way to get things done. but if you wanna repost these guidelines or privately share this post with an account you see doing this stuff often, that’d be cool. remember that kindness is often more powerful than anger, especially when trying to educate someone!

A post shared by Adam J. Kurtz (@adamjk) on Jun 18, 2018 at 4:44am PDT

//www.instagram.com/embed.js

Of course if you find something funny or touching, you want to share it with your followers—and there are soooooo many social sharing buttons which make this super easy. But this also makes it easy to accidentally or otherwise cut off the original creator’s handle. When people repost artist’s work to a personal network, this is no doubt a very beneficial action for artists, but you still want to just check quickly that you’ve credited the work properly.

Adam’s tip: When sharing to your personal account, tag the creator in both the image and caption, don’t alter the image, or edit out the creator’s handle or watermark.

Here are some best practises based on Adam’s suggestions, that we encourage everyone (whether for personal or biz use) to consider when sharing creative work—that could be a cartoon, illustration, quote, photo or other image. It’s super helpful advice that can generally be applied to all creative work:

Check that the artist’s credit is not buried under a long comment and paragraph of hashtags. Be mindful of tagging the artist in the first couple of lines underneath the post.

Feature the artist: Is the work being shared because it’s going viral and you want to get in on that, or to showcase the artist? In Adam’s case, he is only ok with brands sharing his work if the point is to showcase the work itself.

Communicate: Brands should not share work without a credit or if the image has been altered. A partnership should not be implied, and the post shouldn’t advertise a sale or promotion if there isn’t one. If you want to set up a partnership with a designer based off an example of their work you like, reach out!

Some of this is common sense, but it’s always good to remind ourselves that there are living, breathing humans behind these designs whose livelihood depends on being properly credited for their work. Why do they post it online if they don’t want us to share it, you ask? Good question! The point is, artists are quite happy for you to share their work—the right way, and with a proper credit. And if you’re a brand using someone’s creative work to build your following online, there should be compensation involved for the artist.

  View this post on Instagram

  checklist for getting over common fears — read the book for the actual advice broken down!

. i’m donating 100% of my pride month royalties for @thingsarewhatyoumakeofthem to the @teganandsarafoundation to help them support economic justice, health, and representation for LGBTQ girls and women. . you might remember we raised $7,500 for this great organization with the book preorder campaign last year, but I’m hoping this is a continued opportunity to use my art for good in the same way that @teganandsara continue to use theirs, leading by example for so many of us. . i earn $1.05 per book sold (in bookstores, on amazon, at my 6/13 @strandbookstore event, etc) so we’ll see how much it ends up being! if you haven’t got a copy yet this might be a perfect excuse to help yourself and others. . more details at thingsarewhatyoumakeofthem.com/pride. #thingsare #pride

A post shared by Adam J. Kurtz (@adamjk) on Jun 5, 2018 at 12:47pm PDT

//www.instagram.com/embed.js

I don’t want to scare you from sharing your favourite artist’s work, just be careful about how you share it. Creative people are tired of being told that the ‘exposure’ will be great—if it’s for personal use, a credit can go a long way to bringing new fans (and possible buyers) to a designer’s website. If you’re a brand, unless you’re showcasing the artist’s work only, there’s a responsibility to pay the artist for using their creative work—bills can’t be paid with exposure.

Tips for creators: what to do when you find your work shared without credit

Adam also pointed out to me that the risk for artists these days is not only if the work will be received well, but if it might take on a life of its own without any connection back to the artist, spiralling off into the digital sphere across the umpteen platforms we’re all constantly updating, streaming and scrolling through.

“Now you have to be kind of worried that they will [like it], and might help themselves to it for any number of reasons,” Adam explained. “My perspective is kind of the same for both—make your work and share it. If people don’t like it, they keep on scrolling. If one bad apple out there does repost or otherwise use your work unfairly, you can deal with it then.”

For designers who might be hesitant about sharing their work online, Adam feels that the positive results outweigh the possible risk. “If you don’t share, nobody can ever see anything,” he says. “That is worse than any other negative outcomes. We can’t worry about what we can’t control, so try to let go of those concerns until they become relevant. That’s just good life advice in general, really.”

  View this post on Instagram

  sometimes laughter is the best medicine… sometimes it’s mood stabilizers! this pin is for anyone working towards balance. about to be sold out for good, i’ve got 20 left.

A post shared by Adam J. Kurtz (@adamjk) on May 19, 2018 at 9:17am PDT

//www.instagram.com/embed.js

If you’re a designer and you find that someone has posted your work without permission or without a credit, here are some tips for creatives that Adam shared with me.

Ask accounts to update their caption: Adam says, “It sucks when it’s already been up for a while, so there’s not the same benefit of having your work seen and a possible influx of followers. But I have a keyboard “text replacement” shortcut on my phone now. With a few taps I can easily paste a little comment that basically says, “Hi thanks for sharing my work but please credit me in the caption so your followers can find my art and books.” It’s not written aggressively, and since I started doing it, most people have responded positively.

Send a private email or direct message first: “There are plenty of people tweeting at big brands and seeing no retweets, no comments, and no response from the brand. So my approach is typically to be direct and discreet first. I DM the brand, email a listed address, or something like that. It keeps people from being on the defensive. And while I can’t really spend the time to educate everybody, it can make a difference later.”

Adam also told us how a proper credit can go a long way for an artist, if their work is featured and shared with a big audience:

When ‘exposure’ is maybe okay but probably not legal:  Adam says, “I’ve had one or two popular Instagram accounts […] share my work properly, with clear credit, to audiences of several million. That’s the kind of reposting that we’d all like, where a huge audience gets exposed to our work, and maybe 100+ new followers find us as a result. Reposting content might be questionably legal in the first place, but in the case of those big meme accounts, you can get your ‘payment’ in the form of that proper crediting.”

At the end of the day, if you’re a creative person who’s producing artwork, you should get to decide how that art is used.

Remember, it’s your work—decide how you want your work to be shared: Adam says, “When it’s a company, you are in charge. You might not want a certain business using your art to promote their stuff. You can ask them to delete it, and if they really keep ignoring you, you actually can file a copyright claim through Instagram support. Your work has a value and if a brand hasn’t asked or paid for it first, then you can decide how to respond. It’s your work.”

So, what’s the best way to share my next favourite relatable #content?

In an ideal world everyone would stop and think, “Where did this come from?” before sharing the next pug cartoon or cute illustration which is going viral. When posting to your personal social media channels, make sure you credit the original artist properly with a visible tag, and if an artist has added their name at the bottom of an artwork, don’t cut it off if you’re using a tool which resizes an image (the work should really not be edited at all).

What to do if you’re not sure where an illustration came from? Try to trace it back from where you found it, or use Google reverse image search.

If you’re working for a brand and want to share original work to showcase an artist’s work, at least seek permission first with an explanation as to why you want to make the post, and make sure to add a link to their handle at the top of the description. If the post is being used to promote a business or build brand awareness, contact the artist first to discuss compensation—or commission something especially for you!

Finally, if you notice someone sharing original work without an artist credit, give them a polite heads up and encourage them to repost it with a correction. The artist will love you for it.

Want something created especially for you?

Work directly with a designer to make it happen.

Let’s do it!

The post How to share creative work fairly in the digital age appeared first on 99designs.

via https://99designs.co.uk/blog/

How to share creative work fairly in the digital age syndicated from https://www.lilpackaging.com/

[itsworn]

Dodge Demon Unboxing: A First-Hand Customer Experience

In the music world, Kenny Wayne Shepherd is known as one of the most dynamic recording and performance artists in the blues rock arena. You’ve likely heard his music (even if you can’t place the name), and you may even count yourself as a fan. What you may not know is that Shepherd is also a bona fide gearhead and a hardcore Mopar nut who spends all his free waking hours (when not performing!) working on and driving his Dodge and Plymouth machinery. We were lucky to tag along with Shepherd as he navigated the special-order procedure and took delivery of his personalized 2018 Dodge Demon. What follows is his account of that very special experience—a process that was the clever vision of Dodge’s Tim Kuniskis (previously president and CEO of the Dodge and SRT brands), and which has had the very intended effect of creating a legion of dedicated über fanatics. Down the line, we hope to bring you more from Kenny as he gears up to hit the drag strip later this year! – Johnny Hunkins

Three hundred and eighty days. That’s how long the journey was from the first viral video of the Dodge Demon to having one in my garage. It’s been a fascinating experience and the wait has been more than worth it. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know the highlights of the new Dodge Demon: 840 HP, the quickest production car ever made, 0-60 in 2.3 seconds, a quarter-mile of 9.65, and banned by the NHRA.

Over a year after jumping in line for a 2018 Dodge Demon, it arrived at Dependable Dodge on a Reliable Carrier truck. The dealership thoughtfully stored it in the showroom for two days before we could pick it up.

After watching every video Dodge spoon fed us leading up to the unveiling of the Demon at the 2017 New York International Auto Show, I became more convinced this car was for me. The day after the debut, I secured an allocation for an SRT Demon—number “18” in the sequence, and significant for denoting the 2018 model year. When order banks opened on June 21, 2017, many placed their orders at that very moment, hoping that being an early submitter would help them be one of the first to take delivery, but that’s not exactly how the process works. The build sequence considers many factors when deciding which Demons get built in what order. I don’t claim to know the secrets of how that all works out, so my resolve was to be as patient as possible and my car would get here when it gets here.

Passenger-side ac vent is serialized and matches the VIN as car number “18.” The number is significant as the model year is 2018. Once the “Demon crate” arrives, the surround will be replaced with the updated one with Kenny’s name.

Once I was 100-percent sure of the options, I formally placed the order on what would be Demon number 18:

White Knuckle paint: Some will slam me for not choosing a high-impact color for a car like this. One of my best friends was dogging me as soon as he found out I was considering it. I love a Challenger in white. It reminds me of the movie Vanishing Point. I’ve had a couple of black Challengers and the struggle to keep them clean is real. Half of my driveway is dirt and gravel, so just imagine what that’s like if you keep your car clean like I do. White just looks cleaner longer. All the available colors look great on the Demon, but my short list was White Knuckle, Octane Red, F8 Green, and B5 Blue. White won out for both looks and practicality.

Comfort Audio group ($2,495): This includes the passenger seat, adds leather instead of the base cloth material, an 18-speaker Harmon Kardon stereo system (as opposed to the standard two-speaker system), heated and cooled front seats, heated steering wheel, power tilt column, floor mats, and bright pedals.

Rear seat ($1): This is the practical thing to do since one can always remove the passenger and rear seats, but buying them after the fact would most certainly cost more than a dollar.

Demonic Red Laguna Leather interior ($295): This provides a rich two-toned red and black interior that gives the car a splash of color, which looks perfect.

Power Sunroof: Some refer to it as the “golden sunroof.” Dodge priced it at $4,995 to discourage people from buying it. All my previous Challengers had sunroofs and I used them frequently on nice days. That extra 35 pounds isn’t going to slow the car down enough for anyone to notice.

Trunk carpet ($1): This can easily be removed in a matter of moments. Why wouldn’t you get it for a buck?

Demon Storage Package: Includes a custom Demon car cover and Mopar-branded battery tender for $495.

Mopar-branded battery tender was part of the Demon Storage Package, which also included a custom Demon car cover.

The only three options I didn’t opt for were the Satin Black hood ($1,995), full graphics package ($3,495), and the engine block heater ($95). Once I placed my order, the real waiting began. I passed the next few months by joining www.hellcat.org, which has a Demon section full of other soon-to-be Demon owners sharing excitement, knowledge about the car, order details, and the constant refreshing of the Demon Concierge page to get updates on production status—which is a whole lingo unto itself. There’s even an anonymous insider who gave everyone loads more detailed information as the factory got things moving. As production slowly ramped up, we all watched a saga unfold via the forum.

Only time will tell what all these scribbles and initials mean on the Demon’s UPC-code windshield sticker, but we’re documenting this one for posterity.

There were lots of people who wanted their cars yesterday and seemed to have little patience for the process. Many compared notes as to what date and exactly what time their orders were placed to try and make sense of why someone else’s car is moving along the queue before theirs. Once the cars are built, they have to go to an up-fitter for the 18×11 wheels (with drag radials) to be installed. The wheels and tires are too big for the factory assembly line to accommodate. Also, if you choose the full graphics package (satin black hood, roof, and trunk lid) an up-fitter does that paint work as well. At some point there’s a secondary QC inspection that takes place and the car is cleared for shipment. Reliable Carriers then has to schedule an empty truck to come pick up five or six Demons at a time that are being delivered along a route that makes logistical sense.

Kenny points out this clear blue plastic protective sheet placed over the Demon’s supercharger, presumably to protect the engine while it was being installed at the factory. It was tagged with a white marker: “30 OKF.”

There are many steps in the process of making a Demon that are new to the SRT program. Tim Kuniskis (now head of Maserati and Alfa Romeo) stated that production would be a slow ramp-up, most likely to ensure they figure out the best way to get these cars built right and to a high standard. Finally, on Halloween of 2017, we caught wind that the first truckload of Demons was making its way down the road when tragedy struck. Three of the cars caught fire and were reported a total loss.

We don’t have an exact report as to the cause, but it’s been clearly stated that the cars were not the culprit. An unfortunate event? Yes, but in my opinion this only adds to the mystique and urban legend for what could be a once-in-a-lifetime vehicle. (Demons experiencing spontaneous combustion on Halloween?! You just can’t make that up.)  Day after day, it was exciting watching the reports of VONs (vehicle order numbers) being turned into VINs as the cars rolled through various stages of production.

All Dodge Demons arrive at dealerships in enclosed Reliable Carrier trucks. This paper floor mat was left by the Reliable crew to safeguard the carpet while being moved.

It turns out there’s a whole new alphabet of secret code to decipher. If you want to know what’s happening to your Demon build, you can translate the order status code into real information. Here’s a list of those posted on the Hellcat.org message forum:

Demon Order Status Codes

BA new order that hasn’t been checked BB review by fleet department BD special equipment processing BE edit error BG passed edit n/a for schedule BGL edit ok, parts unavailable BX passed edit, available for schedule C sub firm, tentative schedule D firm schedule, dealer has allocation and all parts available D1 gateline schedule, scheduled to be built E frame F paint G trim I built not ok’d J built ok’d JB shipped to upfit center (for stripe) JE emission check JS shipped to storage KZ released by plant, invoiced KZL released, not shipped KZM first rail departure KZN first rail arrival KZO delayed/received KZOA plant holds KZOB zone/distribution holds KZOC carrier delays KZOD carrier holds KZOE mis-shipped vehicle KZOF show/test vehicle KZOG damaged vehicle KZOH all other reasons KZT second rail departure KZU second rail arrival KZX delivered to dealer ZA canceled

As the weeks went by, we saw production begin to ramp up, just as Tim K said it would. Once the factory really got into their groove, my car hit the queue. The condensed timeline of events for my car unfolded like this:

August 12, 2017 order submitted October 26, 2017 VIN assigned December 6, 2017 car enters the build process December 11, 2017 detailed inspection January 25, 2018 Demon arrives at the dealership via enclosed carrier January 27, 2018 I take delivery

Once the car hit the line, it didn’t take long for it to be built. Considering it had to go to the up-fitter for wheel installation, it needed to be inspected, it had been stored for shipment, and the plant was closed from December 23 to January 15 for holidays and an inventory adjustment, it was built and delivered in a reasonable amount of time, especially for the quality of the product.

A technician at Dependable Dodge in Canoga Park, CA performs the pre-delivery check while we look on. We asked the dealership to wait on this until we could be there, and they happily obliged us.

Having waited for this moment just over a year, we wanted to document every detail of the car in its as-delivered condition. I asked the dealer not to do any prep work and keep the car “as is” so we could see the little details of what a car looks like fresh off the truck. There were a number of interesting little signatures, decals, and protective plastics on various parts of the car that we documented and saved. Aware of the new secondary QC inspection process Dodge was implementing, I crawled over the car searching for a flaw and couldn’t find one. I’m impressed, and would say the hard-working people at the Brampton assembly plant should be proud of the product they’re turning out.

What will certainly be a sought-after piece years down the road is this protective yellow spoiler guard. It’s different than the Hellcat’s protective corner pieces (which are already collectibles). It’s used only during shipping, but it’s actually pretty attractive.

Ordering a Demon has been an unforgettable experience. The passion and talent that come together to make a car like this could be a once-in-a-lifetime event. Thanks to everyone at Dodge who made this car a reality for all of us enthusiasts. Now another wait begins for me: the Demon Performance Crate. It’s time to go drag racing!

Standard Demon trunk goodies include floor mats, license plate bracket (we’ll bet these never get used!), and a pair of Demon supplemental booklets.

Besides the standard stuff, Kenny got the Demon Storage Package (car cover and battery tender) which are the two white boxes. The brown box is the pedal kit, which is a customer-installed item.

The happy new owner sits behind the wheel of his new Dodge Demon for the first time. Note the “caution” hang tag warning delivery personnel of the scraping hazard from the front spoiler.

Ahh! That new-Demon interior smell will be long remembered.

The Dodge Demon pedal kit is an owner-installed item, and strangely does not come with parking brake and dead-pedal covers as similar aftermarket kits do.

Demon pre-delivery inspection at Dependable Dodge’s service department, Canoga Park, CA

Heat-shrink wrapped Dodge Demon owner’s manual supplement.

Dodge Demon number 18 awaits its new owner in Dependable Dodge’s showroom.

Hieroglyphics on the plastic sheet protecting the Demon’s supercharger read “30 OKF.”

Part of the Demon Storage Package is this boxed car cover, labeled as Mopar part number 82215727.

Also located in the trunk was the 2018 Dodge Demon Driver Supplement booklet.

Dodge Demon fender flares house extra-wide 315/40R18 NT05R Nitto Drag Radials. Kenny says those will be replaced for street driving by a set of 20-inch Widebody Hellcat wheels and tires for better tread life.

Window sticker claims 22 mpg on the highway. Who has that kind of self control? According to the graph on the window sticker, the Demon does NOT have the worst fuel economy in its class.

This box in the trunk contained the stainless steel accelerator and brake pedal covers, and was labeled with part number 05181565AB. They appear to have been sourced from Sequoia Tool in Clinton Township, MI.

This pick ticket was found in the trunk, and is a list of items to put in the Demon’s trunk prior to leaving the Brampton, Ontario assembly plant.

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