#Shameles

[johnnycakesb14de]

Cute date idea:

we sit next to each other and I talk about things you don't care about

[gallacrafts]

🌈Theme 22 Reveal - PRIDE! 🌈

well contrary to what the emojis would have you believe, it's hasn't been all sunshine and rainbows for our boys. their love story took them, and us, on a journey and with all the ups📈 and downs📉, we didn't always know if they would make it. but y'all they fucking made it!

this months theme is PRIDE! and that first Pride was a riot✊. So make it a trial, a triumph, a riot, or a celebration. Just make them proud

posting day for Theme 22 is next Sunday June 18th! as always don't forget to tag @gallacrafts and use the tags #gallacrafts #theme 22 and #gallapride

[hayscodings]

svetlana having yevgeny baptized is so interesting to me. she didn’t have any family in america at that point so it must have been of her own volition, unless her family was very adamant about it when she spoke with them. i wish we knew more about her relationship with religion

[jezzibelle89]

Chapter 4 is up!

[aceyanaheim]

The fact that like Domestic Dad!Lip is uh

He very much did not learn that from Frank

Which means he learned it from Fiona ;A;

[oscarhmtech]

Emmy Rossum

[manysketchbook]

Firffels: the Wuzzles Competitor That Disappeared

Recently, I found this toy at my local thrift store. I thought it was an oddly cute nativity toy, but upon closer inspection the tush tag read "FIRFFELS. I'm glad to be a SHAMEL." I did a quick search online and the first result was this page on Ghost of the Doll, a toy collector's site that archives information about 80s/90s toys and includes a forum where anyone can seek help with identifying toys. This lead me down a rabbit hole of figuring out just what Firffels were: a failed line of toys promised to be the next hot phenomenon, with minimal documentation online and a handful of toys floating around in thrift stores.

Other than Ghost of the Doll, I found info about Firffels in this 2010 blog post by Trish Babbles (written in an edgy, mean-to-be-funny style that I think is too uncharitable, but it was a different time to be online lol) and this blog post by AF Blog. My other info comes from Othello Bach's website dedicated to the book itself (her personal site is no longer functional) and from a handful of youtube videos I found of a Firffels commercial. Many thanks to these sources, without them there'd be like, nothing online about these creatures.

Firffels are based on the children's book Who ever Heard of a Fird? by Othello Bach, first edition published in 1984 by Caedmon Childrens Books (upon Googling, it appears that Caedmon is owned by HarperCollins now and focuses on audiobooks). The story follows Fird, a fish-bird hybrid, as he travels the world to find other firds. Along the way he encounters a goofy, lovable cast of other hybrid animals who have all never heard of a fird. The story ends with fird learning to love his uniqueness and find peace with being who he is. As is apparent in the Amazon link above (not sponsored, just showing my work), a used copy is $86 dollars right now. An audiobook narrated by Joel Grey (an actor that I'm unfamiliar with who is apparently known for his role in Cabaret) was also released on cassette, listed on Ebay for $75+. Luckily, there is a youtube video of someone doing a complete read through of the book, but the camera angle is poor. This is the only visual record I could find online of the interior illustrations by Michelle Dorman, other than a brief look at a few in a low quality VHS promo rip I'll get to in a minute, and the image below from an Ebay listing. There may be a few more photos in some Etsy listings that I missed.

In Trish's blog post they complain that Shamel is an ugly monstrosity and there were a few comments on Ghost of the Doll's forum of the same nature about Shamel, but I think Shamel is the cutest one! It just looks like a new breed of camel, meanwhile Fird in the background here is...he's so cartoonishly goofy. Idk how else to describe him. He's so fuckin' goofy. He'd make squeaky Spongebob-esque sound effects when he walks, I imagine.

The book was allegedly a hit and Remco bought the merchandising rights. They went all in, as is detailed in the 5 minute promotional video below. Based on a cast of 6 characters, plush toys and posable action figures hit the market with a promise that Hanna Barbera would develop an animated tv show starring Firffels, housewares would be made, there'd be a clothing line, and Design-a-Firffel contests would be held. A few housewares seem to have been made and plush toy sewing patterns were released, but I was unable to find evidence that anything else moved forward.

Absolutely fucking insane fact: according to this video, Caedmon Publishing was owned by Raytheon at the time. Thanks Raytheon for these cuddly children's toys and also, uh, horrific weapons of war?

After I bought Shamel, I went back to the store to see if there were more. There were! I found Bertle and Elephonkey, who still had the original tags. I swear the day earlier I had seen a frog toy with butterfly wings but it wasn't there anymore. I remember passing over it and thinking "eh, butterfly wings on a frog aren't cute," and did not bothering even looking at the tags. My mistake. Turns out that toy was worth a decent amount of money and was part of this whole story.

Bertle's pink belly super bright in real life, like neon. There is a sunbleached spot on it's front.

Elephonkey is the only one with original tags. I also included an image of the tush tag. For each toy the tush tag is the same but displays the character's name.

Hybrid animals are not a unique concept. Wuzzles, a line of plush toys that were animal hybrids with wings and likely made to compete with Care Bears, are brought up in most posts and forums where Firffels are mentioned--usually to disparage Firffels as being knock off, less successful Wuzzles. Wuzzles weren't exactly successful either, though they definitely lasted longer and had more reach, likely due to the backing of a Disney/Hasbro budget. AF Blog in 2015 makes a good point that I agree with: it's unlikely that Wuzzles and Firffels were ripping each other off due to production timelines. Toy lines can be in development for years before any information is made public. It takes a long time to design toys, then get them to a manufacturer, then go through the revisions process. Not to mention the time it takes to ship things out, negotiate contracts at every step of the way, etc. And, as AF Blog notes, Whoever Heard of a Fird? was released in 1984, a year before the first Wuzzles tv episode aired, and Firffels hit the market a year later.

People draw hybrid animals all the time. For example, furry adoptable artists draw hybrids all the time (take a shot every time you find a closed species that is a feline with a fish tail or deer feet or some other animal's defining trait), the Lego movie had Unikitty, and I literally went to Walmart today and in the toy section there was a miniature rabbit-like rainbow animal with wings and a unicorn horn there. The thing that makes these toys potentially appealing, in my opinion, is that they choose safe and popular traits: sparkly horns and feathery wings, for the most part. Things that are easily marketable.

The thing with Firffels is that they combined animals with traits that are less immediately appealing. Image below from Ghost of the Doll.

Some of them are cute but the others miss the mark. Personally I like Shamel and Bertle (the plush version only tbh).

Worth pointing out is that the character illustrations do not match the toy designs. If you go back and watch the commercials included in the 5 minute promo video, you can see that the Bertle plush and action figure are brown and green rather than pink and blue, and that Shamel's hair is brown instead of purple. I saw varied photos of the Butterfrog plush: some were lighter green while others were darker. Could be an issue with differing cameras, but I don't know for certain. And then there's Elephonkey, who is the most inconsistent of the bunch:

The first image is the prototype toy as it appears in the commercial. It is grey and flesh colored, with odd looking plastic hair. The second image is from Ghost of the Doll, of how the Elephonkey action figure actually appeared in stores. Third is a photo of my Elephonkey plush. Compare it with the official character art...well, he's not my favorite design in any incarnation.

I think the toys in the commercials were prototypes that were changed to brighter colors so as to appeal more towards girls. In the 30 second plush commercial there are 4 girl actors and 1 boy actor, with the camera shots getting closer to and focusing more on the girls' faces, so it would make sense. In contrast, the action figure commercial features 1 girl and 2 boys, and most of the camera shots are of the kids' hands playing with the toys, giving off a more boyish, gender-neutral vibe. Classics of gendered marketing, am I right? lol. But I think the change was a good one. I wouldn't have picked up Shamel if I hadn't seen the purple hair, and I definitely would not like Bertle if he wasn't pink. It gives the toys more of a cohesive style, a unique identity, and they fit in more alongside the Wuzzles/Care Bears visuals with the vibrant, happy colors. There's more of a toy-like quality to them, which increases the cuddle-ability and inspires more of an urge to play.

Discovering and logging all this inconsistency has been pretty fun. But it makes me think that these toys were probably doomed by a chaotic, unorganized development process behind the scenes. And given that the book was published in '84 and toys hit the market in '85...the signs seem to point to production being rushed.

To be fair to Firffels, it was probably a little harder in the 80s to hit it big with kids. You had to be lucky, you had to have connections with the right distributors, you had to anticipate what is universally appealing to children--one of the most unpredictable audiences out there--and you had to pay to air your commercials during prime child viewing hours. These are all things that are still true, but we have the internet now and the advertising power of the internet is scary. Going viral on TikTok has the potential to skibidi someone's toilet career. iPad babies are growing up into grade school kids who throw birthday parties every year and get toys as gifts. We are living in an era where mass-producing cheap little polyester plushies and plastic figures is easier than ever and corporations have massive budgets to pump into kids' eyeballs through every advertising avenue they possibly can. They don't even need to come up with the designs anymore, they can just partner with whatever Roblox game is popular right now and capitalize on that. Maybe Othello Bach should get on Roblox.

Actually, it appears that Bach was given the short end of the stick by the time Firffels were pulled. Though her personal website is no longer up, her other website dedicated entirely to Whoever Heard of a Fird? has some info:

At the height of Fird's success, with over 100 licensees cramming the store shelves with children’s merchandise and an animation contract with Hanna-Barbera, the book and all the merchandise suddenly vanished from the shelves.  Although she lost the rights to several other published children’s books at the same time, Othello has never received a reasonable explanation for what happened.

So this passage actually clears something up for me. This whole time something that hasn't really lined up is that I had assumed that Othello Bach published the book first and then was approached for merchandising rights after the book sold well. I actually think now it's possible that from the get-go the book was written with the intention for it to become a worldwide sensation. Not so much Bach's intent, though. I have some professional familiarity with licensing and other such creative publishing contracts, particularly with books. Based on what I know, I believe it's more likely that Bach pitched her manuscript to Caedmon Publishing and Caedmon, seeking to create popular IP, was like, "this has potential and we are going to sign you on not only for the book, but for more." That might be why the character designs are so strange: they were trying too hard to get famous quick and had instructed the illustrator (it is regular practice for publishers to pair authors with an illustrator and given how much was on the line for this IP, Bach might not've had much input here) to design characters that could also become toys. It's unlikely that Michelle Dorman, a kids book illustrator, had product design skills needed to make standout, awesome toy designs. Not a knock on her, illustrators just have niches within their field that they're best at it. It's why you see so many illustrators complain about how often they get approached to design logos--that's not what we do, thank you.

What's sad is that clearly Bach had signed a bad contract that gave away most of her rights as the writer to the publisher. She openly says so above. My guess is that Caedmon told her they needed more rights than usual to be able to conduct so much merchandising (like signing contracts with Remco, much easier to do when you don't have a third party also involved), and because they were pouring so much effort into it on their end. Bach is just the writer, so while the original idea is hers, Caedmon would have matched her with an illustrator and taken charge of all the licensing and merchandising. For a publisher this is a huge commitment financially and personnel-wise, so it makes sense why they would have put forth a contract that gave them so many rights. If Firffels had become as popular as they'd hoped, they don't want to not own the IP. They would have poured all those resources into it and not be able to reap all the rewards because that pesky author would own it. It's almost like contracts like these are predatory and only serve the interests of the publisher. Almost like publishers are companies existing in a capitalistic system and therefore only serve profit, not people. Almost like companies will never truly have artist's best interests at heart, and if you are ever to sign a contract with a big publisher you need to have a good lawyer by your side.

It makes me so sad to read that they didn't even give her a reasonable explanation as to why everything was cancelled. She does not even appear to have any of the merchandise on hand, as all the photos on her website are from Ghost of the Doll. In hindsight we can guess, obviously, why the cancellation happened but I'm in the moment it was probably upsetting. It's still upsetting, given that she has included this in her website for the...revamped book!

However, like Fird, Othello refused to give up. For the next 20 years, she tried to regain the rights to her work. Entertainment attorneys assured her it would never happen.  They said, "It can't be done!" But... it could be done and Othello did it, regaining the rights back to all her work.

Yeah, so, I actually think this is the saddest part about the whole thing. She managed to get some of the rights back and republished the book with...new art...that looks so fucking BAD. Image from her website:

Sorry to this illustrator, but got damn. There is no sauce to this art whatsoever. It is unseasoned, not even salt and pepper. This looks like ass and would never fucking fly with any editor worth their chops. It took me ages to figure out that the long yellow curved line is Fird's tail. Like, this is so unbelievably sad to me. I don't even really like the original art a whole lot, but compared to this...

My informed guess as to what happened is that Bach lawyered up and fought. As we know, Caedmon is now owned by HarperCollins. I can't say for certain but there was probably some case to be made that Caedmon being sold breached the contract, or nullified parts of it, or perhaps the contract expired. It could even just be that HarperCollins didn't care about an old, unprofitable IP and granted Bach her rights back. There is also Remco to consider: they also hold some of the rights, but probably just for the merchandise? Given how prominently their logo is displayed on the toy tags, they might actually own a significant share. Perhaps they were happy not to have anything to do with the book so long as the merch rights weren't touched. I don't know! There's no info about it on the site and this stuff is usually under NDA.

So Bach got her rights back, but she's just the writer. She doesn't own any of the art, so in order to republish the book she had to hire a new illustrator. She likely did not have a huge budget for it, maybe even paying for it out of her pocket because the Choice Books logo she has in several spots on the Fird website appears to be for a distribute on demand service, in place of a traditional publisher.

As the writer, she also would not have gotten the rights to use the original audiobook, so she had one re-recorded. It also appears like she does not have the rights to the name "Firffels" either, as the only places it appears on the site are in photographs of merchandise and in titles specifically referring to the work that is still owned by Caedmon. She carefully refers to her own work as "Fird" for short or the book's full title, probably because she cannot legally imply that she owns or made anything else.

I dug into this thinking it would be a quick look at some strange, forgotten toys from a bygone era. Instead I found a story about how an artist can so easily be shafted by publishers. Everything always loops back around to workers' rights, it seems. Stories like this about shitty publishing contracts (see: Webtoon if you want to get into something current) still appear so often, man. It's depressing, and indicative that the publishing industry needs some reforming ASAP. Like, Illustrators, when are we getting a proper union?

But I'm glad Bach got her rights back and got her book republished within her lifetime. I'm sad she didn't have the budgets for a better illustrator. Sorry to bring that up again, I work as an illustrator irl and I have opinions about craft, lol. Also I just think that given how hard Bach had to fight, she deserved to have better art made. That being said, here's another link to her current website. There's not much there but what is there is a monument to a battle she fought and won, and is proud of.

The lack of detailed, clear, centralized documentation of these toys frustrates me. One of the most frustrating things about the internet for me is that there are few easily accessible, publicly available archives of toys--even for modern toys. I've had to use Amazon reviews and Ebay listings and broken online stores to decipher publication years. With this in mind I decided to do a write up and provide clearer pictures of the toys that I have (I'll take hi res pics in natural lighting too someday). Archives are important to me and the internet kinda sucks for it, I say as someone who started this blog for that purpose. If Tumblr goes down, so does everything I've posted here. As an artist who works primarily digitally, one of the scariest things is knowing that I'm laboring over an ephemeral body of work. It's just not going to exist for very long unless I print it out on archival materials. Data is not the same as a physical object. My Firffels have survived for 39 years but the digital art I draw every day is unlikely to last past 10 years because websites die and files get deleted.

I bought the Firffels from my thrift store thinking I'd resell them. I'm low income so I sell many of the things I thrift. I prefer to buy the older toys or the ones that need cleaning because it makes me feel better about being a reseller (I don't want to take away options from low income kids in my area, ya know?). But I'm putting in the labor to freshen them up and I'm putting in the effort to make unavailable toys available again, at least for one person. And I don't have a whole lot of shelf space to display the toys in my collection...but for now I think I'll keep them.

[avispatr]

Humatanam huxtanam hvarshtanam Ahurem Mazdam Ashem vohu vahisthem asti, Ushta asti ushta amai, Hyat ashai vahishtem ashai.

[dark69skin]

Shamel Kendrick

[nofatclips]

Formwela 8 by Esperanza Spalding from the album SONGWRIGHTS APOTHECARY LAB

[lupeloto]

ending the night with some soft bedroom mickey/ian headcanons i thought of:

ian always sleeps on the side of the bed closest to the door, no matter where they are he claims he doesn’t know why and that it’s just a habit, but mickey knows it’s a protection thing…and he doesn’t mind

ian has trouble sleeping when his meds are out of wack and mickey is a light sleeper. ian doesn’t typically get up to go to bathroom in the middle of the night, so when he does every once in a while, mickey wakes up and waits for him to get back until he can fall back asleep, just to make sure he’s okay

mickey kicks in his sleep and is always kicking the covers off of him and ian. ian whisper-screams at him to “fucking stop” before he yanks the comforter back up, always making sure it’s covering mickey too even though he knows he’ll just kick them off again

[todaysbird]

KITTY HEADSHOT COMMISSIONS OPEN!

I’m doing simple headshots to practice more and get a little money! I can either post these on tumblr when finished or keep them private on request :) I’m only doing cats at this time, but they don’t have to be Warriors OCs or even natural colors - I just really like doodling cats :)

I’m asking $8 per headshot, $14 for 2. DM me with a reference and payment method, and I will get your piece done within 72 hours!

[kategorema]

the way lo became the father donnelly never had im not ok

[dailytomlinson]

Louis at Rough Trade: a compilation 

[wwriothesley]

  “ People have this tendency to see me as an all-knowing figure with mystical powers━ ”

   indie, priv. and sel. portrait of VISUALLY IMPAIRED WRIOTHESLEY from G. IMPACT. 

    “ ━In reality, I'm just one man with two eyes and two ears. ”

[thaboah]

SHAMELESS HEADCANONS BEFORE THE SERIES

OKAY, I love shameless, although I don't know if it has a fandom, I'm going to write a couple of headcanons (I have to admit that this series has a very important place in my heart)

Que bien me cae Lip-

Frank tended to disappear a few times a month, come back in days. Fiona was used to it by now, but still every time he disappeared she couldn't help but worry a lot.

She would even ask people if they had seen him, when she would pass by a bar she would try to see if she saw him inside.

Although in the end that situation normalized him and he no longer worried unless he was away for a long time or it was the day of payment.

Fiona sometimes seemed to be forever mad at everyone for her situation. Shortly before Debbie was born, she used to argue a lot with Lip, about things around the house.

Sometimes it seemed like they hated each other, Ian was much calmer, he didn't like to fight with Fiona or Lip, when there were problems he would leave the house for a walk.

Lip and Fiona were practically throwing things at each other one day. It was a horrible fight, Frank wasn't home, Monica had been gone for months, and Ian was tired.

They had reached the point where neither of them could be at the same table without fighting, which was normal, Lip was 12 years old, Fiona 16 and they both have a lot of character.

To be honest, neither Fiona nor Lip remember what the discussion was about. They both yelled at each other before locking themselves in their room and didn't come out until it was time for dinner.

Ian was long gone, his initial plan was to take a long walk, return shortly before dinner, or dine somewhere with the few bills in his pocket. Then he saw the train and wanted to catch it, who knows, maybe it was a little late, but who cared?

Take a little detour, avoid the conductor, if he pretended to be asleep when he went for the tickets, everything would be fine. Pretending to be asleep, not really falling asleep. Perhaps it was the fatigue accumulated over the rest of the days or perhaps simply the comfortable constant rattle of the train that made him fall into the arms of Morpheus.

The conductor woke him up, the train had finished its journey and it was time for him to get off.

"What? Where I am?" He asked.

"You're on Lake view kid." The man answered.

Ian woke up fully, got up and ignoring the conductor, rushed out of the station to check that it was true.

On the other hand, Lip and Fiona were starting to worry, Ian was nowhere to be found, but instead of looking for a solution they preferred to start blaming each other.

"Fiona, didn't you see him leave or what?" Lip looked somewhere between worried and angry.

"I was sleeping, plus your window faces the street, you could have seen him leave easier. It's not my fault!" Fiona replayed on an even worse tone.

"Then whose fault is it? Because Frank wasn't even here. You can't blame him for once." He said pretending to be sarcastic.

Both were arguing when the door opened, they ran thinking it was Ian, but instead they found Frank. Reeking of alcohol, as always. The boys' look showed clear disappointment, and Frank, thinking it was because of him, responded.

"What?" He said confused.

"It's not because of you, Frank." Fiona said rolling her eyes.

"Ian is missing." Lip answered, but Fiona smacked him on the arm and whispered.

"Why do you tell him?" "Because maybe he knows where Ian is." He answered quietly.

"Little vermin, I'm drunk, not deaf." He said unsteadily a bit. "Although no, I have no idea where the red-haired creature is."

"God Frank, his name is Ian and he's your son." Said Lip somewhat annoyed.

"Are you really surprised?" Fiona said mocking Lip's comment.

By that time, Frank had already settled on the sofa, preparing to sleep without worrying about his son.

Lip and Fiona were too busy arguing loudly to let him sleep. He put the pillow over their ears and squeezed hard to see if they would shut up.

Then the minutes passed and the discussion got worse, like this morning and like every day. Frank was rarely there and didn't usually pay attention to them, but this time it was annoying.

He got up without warning and raised his voice, much louder than Fiona and Lip, he could be heard perfectly from the street.

"It's enough, fucking normal that Ian has taken off if you spend the day like this." Lip and Fiona fell silent instantly, not that they had never seen Frank yell at them before. It was just weird that he would do it for a topic like that. "You're brothers and if Ian is missing the way you say, you should go looking for him. Don't waste time arguing over whose fault it is, because it's clearly both of you. For being insufferable."

Something in Lip and Fiona made them listen to Frank and they went out looking for him. For once together and without arguing.

They searched everywhere and were about to give up the search, because it was useless, Ian was nowhere. Fiona was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, Lip was holding her shoulder as they walked home, trying to hide it but he was just as worried. Hours had passed.

Then at the door there was a red-haired boy, who curiously had left the keys inside his home. He wouldn't stop yelling the names of his brothers, even though he had assumed that surely they would all be asleep by now.

Lip and Fiona ran out to hug him, nearly taking his breath away. Then the door of the house opened, it was Frank, he had woken up by the noise.

He knew better than anyone that all he had done was sleep, that there was no place for him in that embrace, so without saying anything he left the door open and turned around. Although he smiled nicely when he saw the situation resolved in the best way.

"I'm so sorry, Fiona." Ian said, his voice shaking. Ian felt guilty, he really didn't want to worry them, he just wanted to get away from that environment for a while.

"It's okay, we're glad to have you home again."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

That's all! I'm so glad you're reading this because it means you've read it all! Let me know if you liked it and in case you didn't know I have the requests open. :)