#and we know they will not keep the monthly payment the same if we keep leaving here giving that they've increased the amount twice already

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Penguin Random House, AI, and writers’ rights

NEXT WEDNESDAY (October 23) at 7PM, I'll be in DECATUR, GEORGIA, presenting my novel THE BEZZLE at EAGLE EYE BOOKS.

My friend Teresa Nielsen Hayden is a wellspring of wise sayings, like "you're not responsible for what you do in other people's dreams," and my all time favorite, from the Napster era: "Just because you're on their side, it doesn't mean they're on your side."

The record labels hated Napster, and so did many musicians, and when those musicians sided with their labels in the legal and public relations campaigns against file-sharing, they lent both legal and public legitimacy to the labels' cause, which ultimately prevailed.

But the labels weren't on musicians' side. The demise of Napster and with it, the idea of a blanket-license system for internet music distribution (similar to the systems for radio, live performance, and canned music at venues and shops) firmly established that new services must obtain permission from the labels in order to operate.

That era is very good for the labels. The three-label cartel – Universal, Warner and Sony – was in a position to dictate terms like Spotify, who handed over billions of dollars worth of stock, and let the Big Three co-design the royalty scheme that Spotify would operate under.

If you know anything about Spotify payments, it's probably this: they are extremely unfavorable to artists. This is true – but that doesn't mean it's unfavorable to the Big Three labels. The Big Three get guaranteed monthly payments (much of which is booked as "unattributable royalties" that the labels can disperse or keep as they see fit), along with free inclusion on key playlists and other valuable services. What's more, the ultra-low payouts to artists increase the value of the labels' stock in Spotify, since the less Spotify has to pay for music, the better it looks to investors.

The Big Three – who own 70% of all music ever recorded, thanks to an orgy of mergers – make up the shortfall from these low per-stream rates with guaranteed payments and promo.

But the indy labels and musicians that account for the remaining 30% are out in the cold. They are locked into the same fractional-penny-per-stream royalty scheme as the Big Three, but they don't get gigantic monthly cash guarantees, and they have to pay the playlist placement the Big Three get for free.

Just because you're on their side, it doesn't mean they're on your side:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/12/streaming-doesnt-pay/#stunt-publishing

In a very important, material sense, creative workers – writers, filmmakers, photographers, illustrators, painters and musicians – are not on the same side as the labels, agencies, studios and publishers that bring our work to market. Those companies are not charities; they are driven to maximize profits and an important way to do that is to reduce costs, including and especially the cost of paying us for our work.

It's easy to miss this fact because the workers at these giant entertainment companies are our class allies. The same impulse to constrain payments to writers is in play when entertainment companies think about how much they pay editors, assistants, publicists, and the mail-room staff. These are the people that creative workers deal with on a day to day basis, and they are on our side, by and large, and it's easy to conflate these people with their employers.

This class war need not be the central fact of creative workers' relationship with our publishers, labels, studios, etc. When there are lots of these entertainment companies, they compete with one another for our work (and for the labor of the workers who bring that work to market), which increases our share of the profit our work produces.

But we live in an era of extreme market concentration in every sector, including entertainment, where we deal with five publishers, four studios, three labels, two ad-tech companies and a single company that controls all the ebooks and audiobooks. That concentration makes it much harder for artists to bargain effectively with entertainments companies, and that means that it's possible -likely, even – for entertainment companies to gain market advantages that aren't shared with creative workers. In other words, when your field is dominated by a cartel, you may be on on their side, but they're almost certainly not on your side.

This week, Penguin Random House, the largest publisher in the history of the human race, made headlines when it changed the copyright notice in its books to ban AI training:

https://www.thebookseller.com/news/penguin-random-house-underscores-copyright-protection-in-ai-rebuff

The copyright page now includes this phrase:

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems.

Many writers are celebrating this move as a victory for creative workers' rights over AI companies, who have raised hundreds of billions of dollars in part by promising our bosses that they can fire us and replace us with algorithms.

But these writers are assuming that just because they're on Penguin Random House's side, PRH is on their side. They're assuming that if PRH fights against AI companies training bots on their work for free, that this means PRH won't allow bots to be trained on their work at all.

This is a pretty naive take. What's far more likely is that PRH will use whatever legal rights it has to insist that AI companies pay it for the right to train chatbots on the books we write. It is vanishingly unlikely that PRH will share that license money with the writers whose books are then shoveled into the bot's training-hopper. It's also extremely likely that PRH will try to use the output of chatbots to erode our wages, or fire us altogether and replace our work with AI slop.

This is speculation on my part, but it's informed speculation. Note that PRH did not announce that it would allow authors to assert the contractual right to block their work from being used to train a chatbot, or that it was offering authors a share of any training license fees, or a share of the income from anything produced by bots that are trained on our work.

Indeed, as publishing boiled itself down from the thirty-some mid-sized publishers that flourished when I was a baby writer into the Big Five that dominate the field today, their contracts have gotten notably, materially worse for writers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/19/reasonable-agreement/

This is completely unsurprising. In any auction, the more serious bidders there are, the higher the final price will be. When there were thirty potential bidders for our work, we got a better deal on average than we do now, when there are at most five bidders.

Though this is self-evident, Penguin Random House insists that it's not true. Back when PRH was trying to buy Simon & Schuster (thereby reducing the Big Five publishers to the Big Four), they insisted that they would continue to bid against themselves, with editors at Simon & Schuster (a division of PRH) bidding against editors at Penguin (a division of PRH) and Random House (a division of PRH).

This is obvious nonsense, as Stephen King said when he testified against the merger (which was subsequently blocked by the court): "You might as well say you’re going to have a husband and wife bidding against each other for the same house. It would be sort of very gentlemanly and sort of, 'After you' and 'After you'":

https://apnews.com/article/stephen-king-government-and-politics-b3ab31d8d8369e7feed7ce454153a03c

Penguin Random House didn't become the largest publisher in history by publishing better books or doing better marketing. They attained their scale by buying out their rivals. The company is actually a kind of colony organism made up of dozens of once-independent publishers. Every one of those acquisitions reduced the bargaining power of writers, even writers who don't write for PRH, because the disappearance of a credible bidder for our work into the PRH corporate portfolio reduces the potential bidders for our work no matter who we're selling it to.

I predict that PRH will not allow its writers to add a clause to their contracts forbidding PRH from using their work to train an AI. That prediction is based on my direct experience with two of the other Big Five publishers, where I know for a fact that they point-blank refused to do this, and told the writer that any insistence on including this contract would lead to the offer being rescinded.

The Big Five have remarkably similar contracting terms. Or rather, unremarkably similar contracts, since concentrated industries tend to converge in their operational behavior. The Big Five are similar enough that it's generally understood that a writer who sues one of the Big Five publishers will likely find themselves blackballed at the rest.

My own agent gave me this advice when one of the Big Five stole more than $10,000 from me – canceled a project that I was part of because another person involved with it pulled out, and then took five figures out of the killfee specified in my contract, just because they could. My agent told me that even though I would certainly win that lawsuit, it would come at the cost of my career, since it would put me in bad odor with all of the Big Five.

The writers who are cheering on Penguin Random House's new copyright notice are operating under the mistaken belief that this will make it less likely that our bosses will buy an AI in hopes of replacing us with it:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/09/ai-monkeys-paw/#bullied-schoolkids

That's not true. Giving Penguin Random House the right to demand license fees for AI training will do nothing to reduce the likelihood that Penguin Random House will choose to buy an AI in hopes of eroding our wages or firing us.

But something else will! The US Copyright Office has issued a series of rulings, upheld by the courts, asserting that nothing made by an AI can be copyrighted. By statute and international treaty, copyright is a right reserved for works of human creativity (that's why the "monkey selfie" can't be copyrighted):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/20/everything-made-by-an-ai-is-in-the-public-domain/

All other things being equal, entertainment companies would prefer to pay creative workers as little as possible (or nothing at all) for our work. But as strong as their preference for reducing payments to artists is, they are far more committed to being able to control who can copy, sell and distribute the works they release.

In other words, when confronted with a choice of "We don't have to pay artists anymore" and "Anyone can sell or give away our products and we won't get a dime from it," entertainment companies will pay artists all day long.

Remember that dope everyone laughed at because he scammed his way into winning an art contest with some AI slop then got angry because people were copying "his" picture? That guy's insistence that his slop should be entitled to copyright is far more dangerous than the original scam of pretending that he painted the slop in the first place:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/10/artist-appeals-copyright-denial-for-prize-winning-ai-generated-work/

If PRH was intervening in these Copyright Office AI copyrightability cases to say AI works can't be copyrighted, that would be an instance where we were on their side and they were on our side. The day they submit an amicus brief or rulemaking comment supporting no-copyright-for-AI, I'll sing their praises to the heavens.

But this change to PRH's copyright notice won't improve writers' bank-balances. Giving writers the ability to control AI training isn't going to stop PRH and other giant entertainment companies from training AIs with our work. They'll just say, "If you don't sign away the right to train an AI with your work, we won't publish you."

The biggest predictor of how much money an artist sees from the exploitation of their work isn't how many exclusive rights we have, it's how much bargaining power we have. When you bargain against five publishers, four studios or three labels, any new rights you get from Congress or the courts is simply transferred to them the next time you negotiate a contract.

As Rebecca Giblin and I write in our 2022 book Chokepoint Capitalism:

Giving a creative worker more copyright is like giving your bullied schoolkid more lunch money. No matter how much you give them, the bullies will take it all. Give your kid enough lunch money and the bullies will be able to bribe the principle to look the other way. Keep giving that kid lunch money and the bullies will be able to launch a global appeal demanding more lunch money for hungry kids!

https://chokepointcapitalism.com/

As creative workers' fortunes have declined through the neoliberal era of mergers and consolidation, we've allowed ourselves to be distracted with campaigns to get us more copyright, rather than more bargaining power.

There are copyright policies that get us more bargaining power. Banning AI works from getting copyright gives us more bargaining power. After all, just because AI can't do our job, it doesn't follow that AI salesmen can't convince our bosses to fire us and replace us with incompetent AI:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/11/robots-stole-my-jerb/#computer-says-no

Then there's "copyright termination." Under the 1976 Copyright Act, creative workers can take back the copyright to their works after 35 years, even if they sign a contract giving up the copyright for its full term:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/26/take-it-back/

Creative workers from George Clinton to Stephen King to Stan Lee have converted this right to money – unlike, say, longer terms of copyright, which are simply transferred to entertainment companies through non-negotiable contractual clauses. Rather than joining our publishers in fighting for longer terms of copyright, we could be demanding shorter terms for copyright termination, say, the right to take back a popular book or song or movie or illustration after 14 years (as was the case in the original US copyright system), and resell it for more money as a risk-free, proven success.

Until then, remember, just because you're on their side, it doesn't mean they're on your side. They don't want to prevent AI slop from reducing your wages, they just want to make sure it's their AI slop puts you on the breadline.

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/19/gander-sauce/#just-because-youre-on-their-side-it-doesnt-mean-theyre-on-your-side

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[caffichai]

Food Bank Fundraiser

Hi everyone!

First of all, I want to say thanks to everyone who's been leaving such nice tags/comments on stuff I've posted! It's been really encouraging (o^▽^o)

Anyway, I think we all know it's very dark days on the economic front for many of us. So as such, I'd like to help raise some funds for Food Banks Canada! In exchange for you making a donation to the food bank, I will draw a character suggestion!

I know this is not really the sort of thing I normally do or post here but... many folks are struggling to put food on the table right now, and the food bank is a source of support for many and provides an absolute necessity. I've seen many people struggling in my own city, and food security has become an even bigger issue than it already was in the last couple of years with the food bank struggling to keep up with demand. Of course, food security is an issue across the whole country that's putting a huge strain on food banks, with nearly 5% of the entire population making use of food banks monthly, and 23% of the population reporting food insecurity (CBC, 2024; Global News, 2024). Unsurprisingly, those who are already most disadvantaged suffer the effects of food scarcity even more (Statistics Canada, 2023). To make matters more desperate, Canada's food bank system is on the brink of collapse (CTV News, 2024).

I know this isn't going to something big enough to change the world or anything, but being able to make even a small impact for individual people is important too!

✨Incentives✨

Of course, I'm sure people aren't just in it for a reward, but rewards make things all the sweeter, right?

For those who want to contribute, I'll take a character suggestion and add it to a poll (depending on the number of contributors, it may be split up into multiple polls), and then I'll draw as many as I can from top to bottom ranking! If you contribute, please send me a DM with your donation receipt and your character idea! They won't necessarily all be drawn in the same style, and they'll be done according to how much time I've got. (I know that commissions are probably the biggest incentive, but realistically, I struggle to get them done quickly and they're probably not that affordable to everyone)

If you prefer SFW or NSFW, you can let me know (But NSFW will be posted to Cohost). If you make a bigger contribution, I'll reach out to you and ask if you wanna see more specifics/details in your piece. How's that for sweetening the pie? :3

For those who can't make a donation (which is completely understandable), simply spreading the post is also helpful, and I appreciate that greatly as well!

Don't forget that giving a donation allows you to get a tax break based on the amount donated as well!

Alternatives?

If you'd rather donate to your own local food bank, that's great too! You can DM me and send me a pic of your receipt and I'll still add your suggestion to the poll.

If you REALLY want a commission, you can also DM me and I'll do my best to fulfil it! I won't be taking commissions for this till/if there's at least a couple of items on the poll though. The proceeds will go to my own local food bank. The commission will be done later though, and may take some time to fulfil. I take payment only after starting.

When do we start??

I guess once there's a good number of poll options? I have no idea how long that will be, but rest assured I'll keep you updated!

Where do we contribute?

You can make your donation to Food Banks Canada! They really need it!

Alternatively, you can make a donation to your local food bank or equivalent charity.

Other Questions?

Feel free to send me a message or an ask! I'll get back to you ASAP. If I need to include more details or clarify something, let me know! It's my first time doing this!

TL;DR

I want to help raise money for food banks! Anyone who contributes to Food Banks Canada (or donates to their own local food bank or equivalent charity) can DM me with their receipt and give a character to add to the poll. Poll characters will be drawn in order of their ranking, as many as I can manage, over as long a period of time as I can manage!

No pressure to donate of course, I just figured this would be a fun way of raising a bit of money to help out, and allow us to donate more than what I personally can

Current Contributor Count: 13

Suggested Characters:

Imagine your beloved, obscure or popular character here on this poll list! Oooooooh, how lucrative :3

Total funds raised:

780.36$!!!

[8-evil-annoying-catboys]

please help a disabled latine trans couple and their two pets stay housed

ok fuck. here we are. i’ll try and make this short. if you’re following me you already know, if not, hi, i’m a bisexual chicane mexican trans person with a weird ass gender, and i’m in a relationship with a bisexual, first-gen usamerican, latine trans man and we live together. we both have lifelong mental disorders that manifest as disabilities, and i am temporarily(?) physically disabled and dealing with chronic pain from an injury, while also dealing with chronic fatigue for as long as i can remember.

due to my aforementioned injury and subsequent surgery, i’ve been out of work for 6 months. now that it’s past 6 months since i was injured, my hospital’s rules are stricter around allowing me to continue getting work status notes that say “this person cannot work at all” and even though my surgeon did his best to give me a note with strict enough modifications that it would be effectively the same, my SSDI is now in peril, and for all i know i will receive nothing for this month. if i do receive anything, it will take a lot of jumping through hoops and time.

i am job hunting but it is slow-going. because of a move, i cannot return to work at my previous location, and because of targeted retaliation, i might not even be able to transfer to a different location and stay employed at the same company. i need shampoo and conditioner. i need to buy cat food and litter. i only have like $10 of room left on my credit card and a huge fucking loan to pay, and need to pay off $100 on each of those asap for a total of $200 in debt payment for the month. i need $60 for my internet bill, and idk how much it’ll be but i’ll eventually need to pay my utility bill too, and, thank god i was able to pay november’s rent, but even if i got a new job today i would still be worried about if i can pay $700 for december’s rent at the end of this month. basically if i can’t get SSDI this month, before the middle of the month when my debt payments are due, then i’m fucked.

disability has been paying me $1032 per month, which has been just enough to scrape by. i will set my goal for the month just a little higher at $1100, so maybe i can buy cat food, litter, shampoo, and conditioner too.. but most urgently, i need $300 to put towards my credit card and loan and shampoo/conditioner and cat needs. unfortunately, there’s no way i can ask for this money from my family, neither can my boyfriend ask from his family. and my boyfriend is employed, but his monthly pay isn’t enough to cover our full rent, so we’d be screwed if i can’t pay my share.

please help me keep my cat fed and myself, my boyfriend, my cat, and his dog off the street!

v3nmo: catboycecil8

dm for z3lle or p4ypal

short term: $0/300

long term: $0/1100

i am hoping against hope that enough people can chip in for this to work out for me, and that i will be employed again soon enough to not need any assistance for next month, but i’m at a loss for what to do right now. i know everyone is struggling rn, so if you can’t donate or choose someone else to donate to instead, please don’t put yourself at a financial risk, but please share this, and if you can donate, please do and i’ll appreciate it so much.

thanks for reading 😭

[toms-cherry-trees]

Don't Hold My Hand (I'll Break Your Heart) || Tommy Shelby x Fem OC ~ Ch. 2

Summary: A doctor's visit changes Charlotte's perspective of things, and she begins to worry about her patient

Word Count: 4k

Warnings: Talks of medical injury, talks of cuts and headwounds, talk of blood and medical procedures. No beta readig we die like John

Author's note: Once more sorry for the delay but I am writing so many WIPS at the same time things slip through the cracks, but I am really hyped for all the things I have planned

Requested taglist: @call-sign-shark @zablife

《 PREV PART -  NEXT PART 》

Steam rose from the kettle’s spout, the high pitched whistle indicating the water had boiled. The teapot had been filled with fragrant tea leaves and two slices of lemon. Sugar and milk side by side in the tray, alongside a plate with homemade biscuits and a platter of elegant tea sandwiches. Two white teacups with golden rims and matching saucers, one of them prefilled with a shot of white rum. Linen napkins embroidered with an S, silverware from Italy and a touch of affection from the hands that prepared the tray.

Charlotte picked it up carefully, carrying it close to her body to bear the weight easier as she took it to Thomas’ rooms, where he currently sat with his main physician for his monthly evaluation. Doctor Foster rarely had anything new to say or any glimmer of hope to offer them; he only came the first week of every month to tell them what they already knew and collect his payment. One of the very few visitors whom Thomas didn’t welcome with a scowl, perhaps because he secretly harboured the hope of one day getting the words that he wanted from the old man.

The scent of fresh flowers accompanied Charlotte as she walked to the second floor. Ever since that conversation with Mrs. Gray, she had redoubled her efforts to brighten up Thomas’ life. Vases with freshly picked flowers decorated various surfaces of the rooms, the bouquets swapped as soon as the first petals began to wither and fall. Every morning she drew back the curtains and opened the windows, to allow sunlight and fresh air inside. She encouraged him to rise from bed at appropriate times, not allowing him to linger between the sheets for days on end. Books, board and card games and even a typewriter had been brought up, in hopes of encouraging him to find anything to keep his mind and day occupied. She hadn’t managed to do something about his hair and beard yet, but she would soon get there. 

She pushed the double doors open with her shoulder, the teacups tinkling in their saucers and the tea sloshing slightly. When the doctor came around, he and Thomas met alone behind closed doors, not even his aunt allowed in, although she always received a briefing before handing in the money envelope. Whether the man spoke or not the truth of those sessions to her, one couldn’t know.

Lottie cleared her throat, barely enough of a sound to alert them of her presence as she placed the tea tray on a low table. She tried her hardest not to snoop, but curiosity can be a wild and untameable thing. She looked through her eyelashes towards the bed where Thomas lay, stripped down to his underwear. The doctor held Thomas’ foot in his hand and urged him to push against it as hard as he could. She noticed his hand fisted on the sheets, teeth gritted as he put all his efforts on heeding the simple command. As Thomas looked down at the doctor, his gaze crossed with Charlotte’s. The blue melted to pure ice, and he grabbed the closest thing he had at hand to toss towards her, which happened to be a harmless pillow.

“Out! Out of here! Now!” 

She didn’t need to be told twice. Charlotte scurried out of the room and down to the foyer. Mrs. Gray already stood there, nervously drumming her fingers against her arm as she stared out the window. On a side table lay a closed envelope with the doctor’s name scribbled on elegant calligraphy. Charlotte noted it to be slightly thinner than the previous one she had seen, just a couple days after her arrival to Arrow House. Maybe the doctor had lowered his fees for them, or maybe Mrs. Gray had decided he got paid far too much to do nothing except bear bad news.

Both women waited side by side, submerged in their own thoughts each, the silence interrupted only by the ticking of the grandfather clock. Three quarters of an hour had passed when Doctor Foster came down the stairs. He had bread crumbs on his shirt and moustache and a biscuit on hand. For some reason, that ticked Charlotte off. 

“Well?” Mrs. Gray asked harshly, also noticing that the man had surely spent more time eating than being helpful to his patient.

The doctor had the decency at least to stuff the biscuit in his pocket and brush off the crumbs before speaking. He stood straight, arms behind his back, a nervous twitch of the lips making his moustache quiver. He appeared to be intimidated by Mrs. Gray, a feeling that Charlotte shared.

“It is all just the same. His legs are weaker than in my last visit and he has started to lose sensitivity in some areas of the soles and calves. I am afraid it’s just a matter of time before he can no longer leave the chair, not even with the cane”

The news settled in the bottom of Charlotte’s stomach like a chunk of ice. They knew, all of them, the severity of Thomas’ lesions, and the limited prospects he had of recovery. But they thought, his aunt most of all, that they had more time before the inevitable. A few more years before he became completely and irremediably wheelchair bound and maybe worse than that. Charlotte knew all too well what sort of future would await then; bed sores, loss of muscle, infections. A lifespan cut in half.

And if she had come to learn something about Thomas during her time working there, he wouldn’t stand to live needing assistance to take a piss.

Mrs. Gray’s lips tightened into a line, eyes narrowing just enough to seem darker than usual. She put her hand on Doctor Foster’s bicep,the wool of his sweater straining a bit under the strength of her grip. The man didn't show it in his face, but that surely hurt. 

“May we have a word, you and I?” Her tone sounded more like a demand than a petition, as she led the doctor towards her private studio. Charlotte waited until they disappeared from sight to release a shaky breath. She steadied herself for whatever hellstorm would rain upon her and headed upstairs slowly. But halfway up, a loud crash cut through the silence, accompanied by the sounds of broken glass and muffled words that could only be curses of the thickest calibre. She picked up her skirts and broke into a sprint.

“Thomas?!” She called out as soon as she crossed the doors.

Thomas laid on the floor amidst broken porcelain and bits of food. The tea table had been flipped over, as had the delicately prepared tea tray. His wheelchair remained by the bed several feet away, with his cane carefully propped against it. Judging by the way everything lay on the floor, Thomas had tried to leave the room alone and unaided.

“Christ in Heaven what happened here?”

Charlotte rushed to his side, her keen eye immediately noticing the myriad of minuscule wounds in his hand and face from the tiny shards, along a more concerning cut on his temple from the table corner. She tried to help him sit up, but Thomas only smacked her hand away

“Leave me, I can do it. I can do it!” He growled, fighting her off like a child refusing to put on a coat in winter, or rejecting having dirt wiped from his cheek. Groaning due to the effort he rolled onto his back, but he had not enough strength to sit up without laying his wounded hands on the floor.

She paid no heed to his stubbornness and instead hooked her arms under his armpits, putting all her strength into dragging him away from the dangerous mess before he could injure himself further. She grunted with every pull, managing to move him only a few inches at a time, her muscles straining against the dead weight.

“Do you think I am a sack of shit to be dragged around?” Thomas hissed, but at least he had stopped thrashing about like a fish out of water.

“For fuck’s sake you are as heavy as you are obtuse” She retorted back, clearly not caring about the properties of their caregiver-patient relationship in that moment. At least not enough to watch her language. She only cared about somehow putting him back on the wheelchair and assessing the damage. 

It took her no small amount of physical strength and skill to get Thomas back onto his chair, even with him doing what little effort he could pushing with his legs against the floor. By the time she had managed to prop him back into place, a thin layer of sweat pearled her forehead, and she felt the dampness of her skin under the thick fabrics of her uniform. She hastily wiped her brow with her sleeve, all her attention focused on the bleeding wound on his temple. The crimson stained the left side of his face and neck and soaked the fabric of his shirt and waistcoat. Charlotte pulled off her white oversleeves to use them to stem the bleeding, but as expected he rose to battle the second she tried to touch him. 

“I said don’t fucking touch me. Get away. Get away!” He barked the last words, his hands slapping hers away repeatedly. It would have been comical if it had not been so irritant. But Charlotte finally snapped, her never ending patience finally fading into naught as the blood continued to pour and her patient continued to fight. At last, she got hold of Thomas’ wrists and forced his hands to the sides, her grip firm but not painful. She leaned in, their faces closer than they had ever been before. 

“I am going to take a look at those cuts whether you approve or not. So I suggest you make both of our lives easier and stop being so difficult” Her tone rose steadily with each word, surprising even herself. She had never spoken to another person, let alone a patient, that way. But Mr. Shelby had effectively exhausted all her reserves of compassion and in that very moment, with him wounded and pricked with glass, Charlotte couldn’t find it in herself to coddle him. In that moment he didn’t need her kindness, he needed the firmness and determination of a war nurse.

And Thomas seemed to know it too, deep down. For he fell silent the second her words rang through the air, eyes widened and lips parted, shocked to have someone speak to him that way. Slowly, like admitting defeat, he placed his hands on his lap, fingers digging tightly on the fabric of his trousers. He evaded Charlotte’s eyes as she took a seat by his side, having grabbed a small first aid kit she kept in hand. 

It seemed that Thomas Shelby couldn’t stand up to a woman who spoke louder than him.

While he held the rolled up fabric to his knocked temple, she took hold of his left hand and held it up to the sunlight. With a pair of alcohol soaked tweezers she began the delicate process of pulling the tiny shards off. Every now and then he hissed in pain and tried to pull away, but it took only a sharp look and a tightening of her grip on him to put him back on track. The pieces of porcelain tinkled on the lid of the first aid kit balancing on her knees as she dropped them, one by one. When she finished she pressed an alcohol soaked rag to his hand, forcing his fingers to curl around it. Thomas’ jaw clenched, but he refused to display any sign of pain besides the flaring of his nostrils. 

Charlotte inspected the cut on his head next, her eyebrows furrowing in concentration as she pushed aside the blood matted hair, her face so close to him her breath fanned over his face. That close she noticed even his hair smelled of cigarettes, since he refused every effort of her or anyone to help him wash.

"The cut is not deep enough to require stitching but I will have to bandage it"

Tommy snorted "I am not going to let you wrap me up like a fucking mummy"

Charlotte rolled her eyes "Mummies have their mouths wrapped shut. I cannot afford that luxury with you" She quipped, gently dabbing at the wound with a wet gauze, being as careful as she could to spare Thomas further discomfort. But that wouldn't save him from her stern words now that they had been allowed to emerge. Gentleness had proved ineffective against him, so now Charlotte had to retort to cockiness, a quality of hers she had kept buried for being ‘unbecoming’ but which now would prove useful to crack Thomas’ stone walls.

“Deep breath” She instructed, pressing the alcohol soaked cloth to his temple. Thomas bucked like a startled horse, nails digging on the armrest of the chair and teeth gritted, his head instinctively trying to escape the sharp burning, but forced to remain still by Charlotte’s firm hold. She held him against her body in an almost maternal gesture until the pain faded into a manageable sting and he relaxed his muscles and stopped huffing. 

“Are you always this much of a brute with your patients?” He asked in between heavy breaths, although his tone had dropped some of the usual sharpness in favour of something akin to amusement. As if he saw something in Charlotte that sparked his interest.

“Only with those who deserve it” The diverted smirk made it to her lips without permission. A faint hint of pride rose upon her chest, for the very first time she had managed to make Thomas comply, even if it took a head wound and raising her voice to do so. The first step had been taken for him to finally see her as an aid and not a threat or a nuisance. And Charlotte couldn’t wait to take the next. 

After she bandaged his head, having added in between a teasing comment of how things would have been much easier if he didn’t sport the haircut of a caveman, she set up to put the room back in order. The maid brought her the broom and dustpan, but Charlotte took it upon herself to clean up, knowing he wouldn’t take kindly to having others in the room while he changed out of his blood soaked upper clothes. While she swept crumbs and pieces of porcelain, the little bug of curiosity nagged at the back of her mind.

“I take it the doctor didn’t bring the news you expected” She often spoke to him, perfectly aware he wouldn’t reply, but she did it nevertheless. She always talked to her patients back in the ward, even if they couldn’t hear her or talk back. Giving them the reassurance that they had someone at their side looking after them, even if they couldn’t see her. 

Much to her surprise, however, this time the patient spoke back.

“He knows nothing, that man. I pay that man to heal me and all he does is come into me house, eat the fucking food and flirt with the maids” He pulled out a cigarette, rubbing it against his lips twice before lighting it with a black and golden lighter “He’s not coming here again”

Lottie refrained from rolling her eyes “He has been looking after you for years. Ever since you were injured during the war. He knows you better than anyone else Thomas. He is only trying to help you” As I do, she added in her mind.

“And what a great help he has been, eh?” He drummed his fingers against his thigh to emphasise his words, his piercing eyes following Charlotte’s every movement as she rolled the heavy and soiled carpet to put it aside and set the table back in place.

“I know this concept may seem foreign to you, but I beg you to show some basic kindness to the new doctor when he comes next week. I am sure Mrs. Gray had the best intentions when she asked him here and-”

He cut her words with a single statement that completely flipped her “Oh she didn’t call him here. I did”

Charlotte felt compelled to clean her ears and ask him to repeat himself in case she had heard wrong. He? Thomas himself had called a doctor to help him? It made no sense, for the man who rejected most fervently to be helped, to ask for help of his own free will.

He picked up the astonishment in her widened eyes and continued on without having to be pressed further.

“He’s been working with many veterans after the war. He seeks them to try on his new treatments. Treatments he devises himself” He snuffed his cigarette in one of her pretty vases before tossing the stub inside, letting it float around the fresh daisies Charlotte had brought that morning “He says he’s made them walk again”

A mixture of feelings flooded Charlotte, all at the same time and with such intensity she couldn’t focus on only one. Once more she had to fight back the pity, but it couldn’t be helped. How could she not feel sorry for that man who clung to the first ‘medical miracle’ that crossed his path in hopes of restoring what war had cruelly taken from him? She had seen it before, men who drank questionable syrups and tinctures, swallowed handfuls of nameless poisonous pills and subjected themselves to the most horrid types of torture medicine could invent in hopes of regaining some semblance of a past long lost.

Close second in her heart came suspicion. Thomas had mentioned that this man, this doctor whoever he was, sought the veterans himself. Which meant he utilised less than orthodox methods to retrieve confidential medical records from private practitioners and maybe even from the war offices. And those treatments created by himself? It screamed charlatan all over, a trickster who exploited desperate men and robbed them of all their life savings and more just to give them reused saline in clean vials and sugar pills in medicine bottles with handwritten labels.

Charlotte couldn’t comprehend how a man like him, so careful and methodical, a man whom everyone regarded as possessing an incomparable sharpness of mind and an overflowing resourcefulness; the man who had Birminghan quaking in their boots at the mention of his name, could be fooled by false promises of medical prowesses that smelled rotten from a mile away?

She swallowed, trying to find how to best bring up her concerns without making it sound like a direct attack on Thomas' judgement. Lottie sat on the edge of an armchair, her hands folded in her lap, fingers intertwined as she pondered her words.  

“Thomas” She rubbed her thumb and index together, a nervous tic of hers that nothing had managed to suppress “Doctor Foster has been seeing you for years now, and he has not once changed his prognosis. Don’t you find it a bit suspicious that a new doctor just comes to you and offers you a miracle?” She watched him carefully, her head slightly tilted to the left, studying his expressions. He grabbed a new cigarette, gently tapping it against the box as he spoke. 

“Doctor Foster is old and behind the times. Did you know he was the last man in Birmingham to have electricity in his house?” He sighed and scratched his brow with his thumb, pushing the edge of the bandage out of the way “He thought the toxic fumes would poison him in his sleep” 

Lottie snorted. She failed to understand how a man scared of electricity gave credit to this new physician. “Okay, I understand it. Doctor Foster is afraid of progress, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t good at what he does” Charlotte wondered if her reasoning would find home in his brain or if she just wasted saliva talking to the walls “But this man? Thomas, don’t you find it at least a bit suspicious? Did you even question him on where he got your medical file from?” Nothing made sense, that after they checked her background before even summoning her for a mere interview, they didn’t hold the same standard to the man who would be juggling Thomas’ health in his hands.

He didn’t acknowledge her concerns, obviously. In fact, he seemed to not have heard them at all. He turned his wheelchair towards the double doors, the sunrays warming his skin as he closed his eyes, dried up blood still glued to the side of his face and clinging to his beard. He brought up the cigarette to his mouth but never made it quite there, hovering just an inch away from his lips as he stared out towards the vast woods. 

“The doctors make progress every day. They create new medicines, new treatments, they heal more and more people every day. If one doesn’t help you go to another, and another, and another until one does what others can’t” As Charlotte approached him slowly, she noticed he had a sort of dreamy look in his eyes, and for a moment she worried he had gone too hard on his nighttime visit to the morphine bottle. But the dazed gaze didn’t come from opioids. It came from hope. Endless, boundless, foolish hope.

And it worried her to no end.

Charlotte crouched next to Thomas slowly, her hand coming to rest in the crook of his elbow. Surprisingly, he didn’t shake her away; perhaps he didn’t even notice her at all, lost for a moment in a daydream of miracles and a bright future.

“Thomas” Soft words, pleading even, fingers digging into the fabric of his shirt “Think this through, think carefully. If something sounds too good to be true, then it is too good to be true. If this physician is such an eminence, then why is he not sharing his discoveries in the Medical Society of London, or being named director of a large hospital? Why is he not speaking before the King and being put in the list of honours of the year? Why is he seeking his patients instead of them flocking to him?” She shook his arm, hoping to shake his senses too “This is a scam, Thomas. He is a liar. I am sorry, but you will not get better, and you know it Thomas” 

Those last words hit the sensible fibre in him. He shook Charlotte off with such roughness she lost her balance and toppled back, landing on her ass on the floor. The dreaminess had cleared from his eyes, swapped back to his usual coldness and the everlasting hint of anger, anger at the world and destiny and everything and everyone that had led him to that state.

Thomas pushed open the double glass doors with his fingers and rolled his wheelchair forward. The sun framed him, making him seem like a shadow stepped out of golden light. He lit the cigarette at last, puffing out the smoke in rings. He leaned back his head, as if relaxing to take a nap, but his eyes remained open, focused on the clear skies. He spoke the next words softly, but they resounded loud and clear for Charlotte.

“I will walk again. I know I will” A long drag of the cigarette “And if I don’t, then there is nothing left for me in this life”

[niuniente]

I have multiple favorite characters. They're all equally beloved. I don't get to choose which one of them is on the spotlight - they come and go on their own.

Because of this, I have assigned a personal meaning to each character: this character means have more fun; this character means that keep your eyes on the price; this character means a time of transition; this character asks to rest more. Always works!

A month ago, Dragunov from Tekken appeared on the spotlight (this didn't happen with Tekken 7 so we can't blame the new Tekken being out).

Now, the first time he was on a spotlight was 15 years ago. I was in a horrible place back then. There was a legal mess which, if the shit hit the fan, would ruin the rest of my life. Literally. I wouldn't be able to get a rental apartment, make any new contracts like electricity, phone, internet, buy anything with monthly payments, get subscription services, I would lose part of my income. I was THIS CLOSE to lose it all and the worst thing was that there was nothing I could. I hadn't caused the mess but I had no way out of it either. I even went to a lawyer to ask for a legal help but he couldn't help.

I feared for my life and future, hoping it would turn out OK. What kept me sane was playing Tekken 6. I played it hours every day and always as Dragunov. I even did my art school final thesis of fan culture and Dragunov (I had much fun with a Russian fan who drew really pretty pics of Dragunov and gave me an access to her screencapture collection of Tekken 6 for my thesis)

Then, one day I figured what was Dragunov's assigned meaning; you will survive. No matter what the odds, even if it was the 3rd world war, you will survive and come out alive without any harm.

That's exactly what happened. Took 2 more years but I got out alive, unharmed. It was horrible time. I'm glad it's over.

So, when Dragunov NOW suddenly appeared on the spotlight after 15 years, my initial thought was "WHAT WHAT, WHAT'S THE BAD NEWS??? WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN?? WHAT DO YOU MEAN THE ODDS ARE HORRIBLE BUT I'LL SURVIVE????! "

Two weeks later, in a span of a week, without any prior warnings:

I got laid off because the company bankruptcy and fell on a social welfare

this happened while the current right-wing government made big cuts to social welfare and housing benefits (so I don't know if I can keep my current home)

while at the same time prices keep getting higher due to inflation

The IUD for anemia treatment came out on its own

Because of that I'm without any help to my iron anemia and the only solution will be hysterectomy in my case; doctors aren't giving those easily (even when needed)

I lost my workplace healthcare which would have been the easiest and the best way to get to hysterectomy

the sudden removal of IUD is causing me horrible withdrawal symptoms

my Japanese friend told me that she's unable to come to Finland this year and has to postpone her trip till 2025 :(((

(which also means I won't get my favorite cigarettes I smoke for fancy treats a few times a year because I can only get it from Japan - ordering tobacco online is illegal here)

noticed that wasps had made a nest to my balcony (that's being taken care off)

couldn't attend a free(!) ice-cream tasting for a feedback and for a free 15€ gift card because of the IUD withdrawal symptoms

found out that trains aren't operating normally and my home station is under construction and causes some issues

So yeah. He wasn't lying. It's been so bad that the first thing this morning when waking up was to take stomach medicine and have a smoke. And I'm not a smoker.

Horrible times are up ahead but I trust that I'll survive out of this phase just like I did 15 year ago.

(:::з」∠)

[babacontainsmultitudes]

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

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

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

Table of Contents:

What the heck is RedBubble and should I use it?

How to make your account and set up payment

How to add a new work

Pricing? Markup?

Extra: Checking sales and payment history

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

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

What the heck is RedBubble and should I use it?

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

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

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

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

Okay, so how do I get started?

Well first you're gonna need an account!

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

>> Select "Artist Signup"

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

>> Click "Sign Up"

>> You will be brought to this dashboard page:

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

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

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

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

Then check your email again.

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

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

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

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

How to add a new work

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

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

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

>> Click on "Add New Work"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

>> Click on "Edit"

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

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

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

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

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

>> Click "Apply Changes"

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

Nice!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

>> Let's look at what remains.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pricing? Markup? What's that about?

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

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

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

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

Extra: Checking sales and payment history

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

To check your sales:

>> Click on your pfp

>> Click "Account Settings"

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

To check your payment history:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[dreambones]

No Content November

The goal of NCN is to show what would happen if everyone stopped creating free content.

Your dash would be empty. No art. No fics. No comics.

The idea is that for the whole month of November, creators of all kinds (artists, writers, etc) don’t post any sort of content, this to create a simulation of what happens to posts when you only like them instead of rebloging them, the art/fics/comics/ don’t get circulated, and eventually there’s nothing to see and enjoy.

Every content creator has experienced the unbalance between Likes and Reblogs.

Likes look nice, but Reblogs give exposure, which results in even more people finding your work.

Reblogs help creators grow, and be encouraged, which means even more content than before!

What can you do to help as a non creator (and creator)?

During November support your favorite content creators by Rebloging, Commenting or sending an Ask!

Even a short “Nice work! Love it” is great to cheer up and encourage the content creators whom work you enjoy.

(You are also encouraged to do this the whole year!)

The long term goal is to one day, make Reblogs as abundant as Likes, plus with this small but very meaningful support, we could all end up enjoying even more content than before! 

And if you are not a creator but the content you enjoy has ever made you happy, helped you in some way, even to just brighten your day a little bit, please, consider giving those creators your support! It will be very appreciated.

FAQ bellow the “Read More”

I don’t want to participate because [insert reason here]

That’s alright! Just like any other monthly trend in the internet, you are not forced or expected to participate. It is true that the more of us that do this, the more impactful it can be, but if you don’t want to do it the whole month, or just do a couple days, that’s fine.

You are just a big, popular blog trying to trick and damage smaller blogs

I get this assumption a lot, and I am not a big blog. I have been posting my content online for about 16 years and currently have 794 followers after having to move blogs in 2021 because I found out Tumblr was hiding my content in the search engine for being a side blog (and for reference, I had around 593 last year and 150 followers the previous one). This is not an effort to “jeopardize” smaller creators, nor a sneaky way to harm others, I am doing and have been doing this because year after year, the share vs like ratio has been worsening, and I plan on keep doing this as long as needed, even if I become a big blog, I won’t stop.

I want to help but I don’t want to stop posting, how else can I help?

Reblog! This is the perfect month to spam your followers by rebloging the work of other creators you follow, you can also leave comments and send asks! This is the moment to let know your favorite creators you appreciate their hard work and presence on the internet!

Artist and creators are not entitled to reblogs, you can’t ask that

You are right, we are not entitled, nor in the right to demand reblogs, comments or any sort of support. But in the same note, people that enjoy our content, are not entitle to demand more content, specific content, or faster content when it is being given to them for free. And sadly that happens way too often.

I want to participate but I depend on my Commissions / Patreon to buy food/survive

That’s alright, you can still participate! NCN aims towards Free content that we post, the one that we share with no sort of payment back, you can still do and share paid content you do.

I participated last years and nothing changed

Unfortunately, we can’t change the world in a single month. This is NCN fourth year, and granted, it’s not abysmally different now, but the worse that can happen is that nothing changes, and I rather keep trying than sit down and wonder if maybe it could have worked. On the other hand, I’ve received and found a lot of artists that enjoy this month because it gives them an excuse to rest and not focus on their blogs and just enjoy making, and that is enough reason for me to keep trying. 

As closing notes please remember I am just another human being behind the screen. You are 100% allowed to not like this idea, you can block me and the tag if you don’t want to see any of it. There’s no need for mean messages or attacks.

[figula]

not wanting tumblr to die isn't really a good reason to give them money considering staff actively and maliciously drives off trans women and people of colour for the heinous crime of... existing peacefully and talking about their lives. consider giving that money to the hundreds of thousands of people seeking mutual aid, or the families escaping genocide, or... literally anything else. reevaluate your priorities and your morals

ok im going to answer this one time bc people keep saying the same thing

you have no idea who i am or where i put my money. you have no idea what i pay for and what i do with my time. you see one monthly payment and you have decided you know where i put my money? you are not morally superior to me bc i pay £6.99 a month to tumblr.com lol. you have no idea who i am friends with and the conversations we have had about tumblr. to neatly sum it all up: you don't know me

of course i don't like the CEO. ofc i think he behaved awfully. punishing a CEO should not come at the expense of the communities already on tumblr. losing tumblr entirely would be an enormous loss to a lot of niche communities INCLUDING those you mentioned. you dont have to agree with me but this is how i feel and how my friends feel. and tbh i am more inclined to listen to my actual friends than random anons on the internet. you wont even put your name on your opinion? lol at least i'm not embarassed about mine

[coldalbion]

Like Covid, climate change will force more artists away from traditional opportunities for community and inspiration. The pandemic turned drag Twitch streamer DEERE into a full-timer; as a makeup artist, her gigs vanished. So she focused on her passions: drag, horror games, and streaming. Early in the pandemic, comedian Jenny Yang created and hosted Comedy Crossing, a twice-monthly standup show streamed over Zoom from inside the game Animal Crossing. Throughout 2020, it raised more than $40,000 for Black Lives Matter. “I’m in this industry and have dedicated my life to it because I want to be part of a conversation,” she says. “To me the collective conversation is what makes life meaningful.” BOARLORD is an indie game developer who “pivoted to porn” (and Patreon) during the pandemic after working in tech, where she discovered “the naked hatred they all have for cultural production.” It was there she found her place. “I am not trying to capture the largest audience. I’m being hyper-specific, sometimes to my detriment," she says of her work. Or, to put it another way, DEERE, Yang, and BOARLORD all found their own ways of seizing the means of production, of audience-building. It's the same thing Black Girl Nerds CEO Jamie Broadnax discovered live-tweeting Scandal years earlier. “I didn’t know I was building a community,” Broadnax says. “I was tired of waiting for a seat at the table, so I built my own table.” The appeal of becoming one’s own studio head is obvious. “Take TikTok,” says Clifton. “You have teens with a more polished presence online than most companies, who have become TikTok experts seemingly overnight, and their work just keeps getting more and more professional-grade.” But in a world where everyone is a brand, no one can be a star. And influencers have discovered what porn performers already knew: Platforms are fickle. Content guidelines, corporate ownership, and payment structures can change overnight, without explanation. Much like humans have permanently altered and unsettled the natural world, online ecosystems for fans and creators have experienced rolling shocks in response to technology. Just as users find another den, it’s burned down. The story of the internet is the story of America itself: a seemingly limitless landscape transformed into a shopping mall populated by the same handful of brands, products, and voices. MacDonald tells me that what’s important about pornography isn’t what it can tell us about entertainment but what it can tell us about how platforms will treat people in the future. “Porn workers are the canaries in the coal mine. They are the first ones to be censored, demonetized, deprioritized in recommender systems, shadow-banned,” MacDonald says. And their vulnerability will soon be everyone’s. “Porn workers are at the bleeding edge of showing that if we don’t address this unilaterally and quickly, next it will be queer video gamers, and after that it will be certain political opinions, and that is alarming. That should concern everyone.” To understand how the American media landscape fractured, one must first understand the brands that forged it. According to Faris Yakob, cofounder of creative consultancy Genius Steals and author of Paid Attention, advertisers created the neutral “view from nowhere” voice in media. In the 19th and 20th centuries, national brands looking to grow customers wouldn’t partner with biased publications. But everything changed when ad tech arrived. “People started tagging their digital media buys so it wouldn’t appear next to topics like homosexuality, or Covid, to avoid getting into clusters,” Yakob says. “But that means that the news isn’t being funded. If you can pick and choose what topics to fund in news, you can distort what is being reported on, to some degree.”

This a fantastic article that touches on so much

[inkofamethyst]

March 3, 2024

It's so weird to already know what instrument I'm going to learn next (and also to have purposefully selected a time to learn it). Like, I didn't know I was going to want to teach myself the saxophone in high school, it just kind of happened (though these days I do lowkey wish I had gone for alto rather than tenor (will not make the same mistake with the bass, will prob go for a short scale)). Same with the uke--I was just bored one summer. But knowing that the bass is coming up (but that I'll be waiting over a year for it still (not a bad thing, as I'll be able to use this summer to learn more about my community at large)) makes me a bit antsy to just start playing. I'll be listening to music and will have to make a mental note of a cool baseline I'd like to learn (the "Life Will Change" bridge !!!!!!!!! (though I'll prob have to learn something like "Mask" from P5 before that if I want to play while singing (supposedly notoriously difficult on bass which is lovely)--slower, more repetitive)) but like, that's over a year away. I mean the wait gives me time to save and plan, sure, but I also just want to play something sometimes.

Speaking of planning, when I get to that fateful day next May of picking a bass (not sure if I want to go the cheap route and grab something used online or the Main Character route and have some hot guy in a guitar shop help me pick one out based on his expertise and then offer to give me lessons and then we fall in love (can you tell that Hadestown has pushed the dial right back over to R??) (though the guitar shop plan makes more sense for my first one (of one? of many? who knows) since I don't know any bassists and I don't know what I'm doing (yet))), I'm also going to have to decide whether I want to go for lessons. Honestly? I'm considering it. I know my whole deal is like "hur hur hur im a self taught multi-instrumentalist" (!!!! I'm a multi-instrumentalist !!!!!) but also if I can't find good videos on/am unsure about technique, might as well talk to a professional.

God I'm so excited to learn that instrument. Can you tell?

Speaking of saving, one thing about my savings goals notion page is that I wish it was more.. dynamic. In that, sometimes I save extra towards a goal one month, and it'd be nice if the suggested monthly savings amount went down to reflect the new minimum needed to reach that goal by the desired date. Or alternatively, change the end date based on the amount saved if the minimum payment stayed the same. I don't know how to code either of those, but they'd be a nice touch.

Though, kind of on a similar note, saving so aggressively in January and February has meant that, after typical spending habits, I've been left with basically nothing at the end of the month lol. Everything else taken into account, I've got ~$200 for random discretionary purchases monthly. That's been perfectly fine (aka just enough) but it also feels a little tight? Idk. I suppose I can rationalize it by the fact that it will keep me from overspending and will allow me to reach other goals quicker but it still feels like I'm livin paycheck to paycheck hehe. But this will only last as long as my ultra-aggressive saving strats do, so for about another year, then I start letting up (if all goes to plan).

Also, went ahead and did the per-day calculations because I've always heard that it's cheaper to make your own food than to buy it, and I am actually saving so much by making my own meals every day*. Like, so much. Now, at my uni, getting breakfast or lunch a la carte isn't terribly expensive, but it certainly can and likely would add up.

*Granted, I do benefit from the occasional free lunch or dinner.

Can you tell I'm rationalizing anxiety with over-strategizing? I truly do not make enough money to be so focused (rationalization: start good habits early). The moneydiaries subreddit has fried my brain I think.

Thinking about putting on some fake tattoos at the end of spring break. Partly because they make me immensely, unreasonably happy, partly because I'm curious if anyone would ask about them hehe. The last time I did a full sleeve and met up with some friends (years ago) they were a lil shook.

Today I'm thankful for.. a lazy weekend. And nighttime rain storms.

[trannyradfem]

I seriously can't fucking believe the people on this website sometimes I swear to fucking GOD ugh.

I was visiting my grandpa in hospice!! grieving... Sometimes, a block is just a block. and not about you.

Like, please! For your own sake, even. Don't take them that personally. There is no shortage of people who disagree with me on this site, and I'm open to discussion, but I don't have the resources to fully entertain discource with every single person I interact with. Especially as this blog surprisingly grows more popular than any blog I've ever had. I did NOT see that coming. It's absolutely nothing personal.

If you're fighty about it, or I see other comments by you-- after I've interacted-- that indicate you're going to be hateful or cruel back at me, then yeah, I probably will block you. And honestly I feel more validated in my block after being shown said person saying "no debate is a TRA tactic" and "TRA trolls infiltrating radblr" when describing what I did. It's dehumanizing, acting like we can't possibly be genuine. So no, I don't want to interact with you. I do not genuinely have the energy for that.

Do the same-- curate your internet experience more, seriously, it has such a positive impact on your online experiences, and in no way waters down your radfem beliefs. sometimes posts and threads are just not worth ur time. And there is genuinely research out there on how the things you view and scroll on social media drastically influence the way you think and feel in very subtle ways that can compound over time. Seeing shit you vehemently disagree with that upsets you to that extent on repeat would have a negative impact on anyone's psyche.

Activism should be much more than just Tumblr anyways, yes?

Anyways. For anyone who's followed me, some venty updates under the cut. Sorry I haven't been around or checking notifications. I keep telling myself that I'm going to check every single one of them because I truly do appreciate the interactions and love talking with y'all, but lately I've been stretched thin and on heavy pain meds most of the time. And it's been months, even years for some of you, and the list just keeps growing longer.

I don't know when I'll get better, and it's scary. I've been sick and getting sicker for a long time now, and a lot of it is indeed from the childhood abuse and what they did to my body. But there's things happening that those factors doesn't explain, and given what I know about how the nervous system works, it might not be a great diagnosis. I love y'all and hope y'all forgive me for not being active on here. If I somehow recover I will be more responsive, promise.

I've become wheelchair bound, I'm out of work on medical leave, and every single day I feel like I'm fucking dying from my back spasms. My docs don't know what's wrong with me and I'm fucking terrified for my life after this election. My friend's parent tried to strangle her and we're trying to move her into our place to get her out of there. I have the equivalent of a full semester of revamped medical coding content to learn before I return to work. I'm not ready to lose Papa.

I have. So fucking much on my plate. I am. so tired. vhhbvghn. and I'm running out of money and my debt is catching up to me. I feel so fucking stupid now for buying a vacation plan back when I was healthier because holy shit I can't even leave the house now. The monthly payments are suffocating being out of work.

I worked so hard to build my credit score I'm so scared to lose everything I've worked so hard for. I want to be a doctor so badly, I'm already a licensed professional!! But you can't get hired as a doctor if your credit score is fucked!!! You can't get housing if your credit score is fucked... If I ever had to go back to homeless sex work I think I'd just kill myself. I don't want that, I'm not a suicidal teen anymore, like. FUCK. I want to do something meaningful with my life, I want to make this world a better place.

Today, after picking my brain on my career and the ideas I have to fix the medical industrial complex, a doctor told me I have more experience (wrt how the medical system works from several different angles) than most DOCTORS have and I was stunned. Like I squealed out a "thank you..!" and just clammed up.

That meant so fucking much to me. I feel like I have so much potential and being disabled and sick is just so fucking frustrating. Like holy fuck I'm on the right track, there are doctors that barely know me who are impressed with the very little I've been able to accomplish. Like, I gotta keep pushing forward, surviving wasn't all for naught. It's a bit of hope for me.

My nerve ablation is coming up soon, I can't wait. It's been 7 long years of that compression fracture bullshit. I'm so ready to be able to stand and exercise again.

[jordanrosenburg]

I just need to rant for a second because I'm so aggravated. Amazon Prime is $139 annually or $14.99 monthly. It used to only be like $100 annually, or $50 annually if you were a student. I do the $139 annual charge because it's actually cheaper overall than the monthly plan. (14.99 x 12 = 179.88) A lot of services are cheaper annually. But most people see the "lower" monthly fee and figure that's more manageable.

Amazon Prime Video is one of the "perks" of having an AP premium membership. The movies and tv shows on there don't have commercials, rightfully so. However, subscribers will soon start seeing ads unless they want to pay an extra $2.99 a month. So, for those monthly folks, that's now $17.98 a month. FOR WHAT?!

"We are writing to you today about an upcoming change to your Prime Video experience. Starting January 29, Prime Video movies and TV shows will include limited advertisements. This will allow us to continue investing in compelling content and keep increasing that investment over a long period of time. We aim to have meaningfully fewer ads than linear TV and other streaming TV providers. No action is required from you, and there is no change to the current price of your Prime membership. We will also offer a new ad-free option for an additional $2.99 per month*..."

That's funny because, they cancelled The Wilds after 2 seasons. (Netflix does the same thing! And Netflix just very sneakily got rid of their $7.99 a month low-res option. So now if you don't want to pay $11.99 a month which is the new "basic" plan, you have to pay for ads.)

"Access to exclusive and broad streaming video content (including Prime Video exclusives like The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, The Boys, Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan, Citadel, The Wheel of Time, Reacher, and The Summer I Turned Pretty, as well as blockbuster movies such as Air, Creed III, Dungeons & Dragons, Candy Cane Lane with Eddie Murphy, and exclusive live sports including NFL Thursday Night Football). Access to Prime Video Channels, which provides an unmatched selection of subscription channels like Max, Paramount+ with SHOWTIME, BET+, MGM+, ViX+, Crunchyroll, PBS KIDS, NBA League Pass, MLB.TV, and STARZ—with no extra apps to download, and no cable required. Customers only pay for the ones they want, and can cancel anytime."

All of those "channels" are extra costs. And they're saying this as if you can't just download the apps to your TV as if everyone only has firesticks or Amazon TVs these days nowadays.

And also, what if I don't like any of the original programming? What if I didn't care about football? All of the original programming I was invested in, was cancelled! I'm hoping The Summer I Turned Pretty doesn't get cancelled after the third season, but who knows?!

And what's different with APV as opposed to other streaming services is that this is just included with AP. This isn't something you can opt out of to save money. So, you may as well use it, right? What aggravates me the most is the fact that when I go to search for something, it'll either say, "Video not available, watch with [insert extra channel I'd need to pay for here], rent for $x.xx, or buy for $x.xx". I SHOULDN'T HAVE TO PAY EXTRA TO WATCH SOMETHING ON A SERVICE I ALREADY PAY FOR! NOR SHOULD I HAVE TO DOWNLOAD ANOTHER APP OR CHANNEL THAT ALSO REQUIRES PAYMENT.

I am so sick of having to surf between Hulu, Netflix, APV, MAX, Paramount+, Peacock, Apple TV, or Disney+. My Hulu is included in my Spotify because I was grandfathered into that option, so I don't pay extra for Hulu. However, I can't watch everything on Hulu unless I want to pay for the Hulu Live option which is $76.99 a month WITH ADS! So, between paying that or $10.99 for my Spotify/Hulu plan, yeah, I'm gonna keep the $10.99 a month plan. With Hulu Live, you still have the issue of not being able to watch everything you want to watch! There are still movies and TV shows that are unavailable. And I'm not talking about original content. I'm talking about if I have the urge to watch an old movie or binge an old TV show, I should be able to do that without flipping between services or having to pay extra!

I'm aware that rights and ownership come into play here. I know these services have to pay the networks to be able to stream certain shows. However, Amazon is a multi-BILLION dollar company. I think they can afford to eat the cost. They wonder why piracy is still a thing. How could it not be? All of this costs so much money and you still can't watch the things you want to watch!

People turned to streaming services so they could go ad-free and to save money on cable. Now, it all costs the same, even more, as cable depending on how many services you're paying for.

I also think APV is pulling this bullshit as a punishment for the strikes. "We lost so much money because the writers and actors were gone for so long, so now we need to make up for that lost time and also we have to cancel certain shows because they take months to put together and cost so much to film. So now we have to raise our prices so we can try to salvage what we can afford to do." That's essentially the message they're sending.

Amazon has generated approximately $553.7 billion in revenue over the last year. So, this is clearly just the usual corporate greed. Breaking even isn't an option anymore. Every quarter, every year needs to make more money than the last. Meanwhile, Amazon treats their warehouse workers like garbage. (I hope the workers keep unionizing because they literally keep the world running. We're able to get just about anything delivered same day or overnight because of the warehouse workers and drivers.)

The writers went on strike because they were being run ragged and so were the actors. When you have a speedy three month production, that means those people need to find other jobs for the other months of the year. That's why the next season would take a year to make because people found other jobs, so they needed to work around those schedules. And that's not to say some writers and actors and behind the camera workers aren't working multiple jobs at the same time, because they are, but this creates more and more time conflicts. They weren't, and probably still aren't, paying these people enough. So, now that things have been renegotiated, the streaming services are upping their fees for bullshit reasons all because they legally have to pay their workers more and god forbid they don't turn a billion dollar profit.

It costs more money to market towards new subscribers than it does to maintain the ones you already have. But who am I to say anything?

[isthatbloodonhisshirt]

Oh My god I love the PJO show! I know they tweaked a bit of the storyline but to me it was still so so good. (Keeping it vague in case you haven't seen it). And the casting was 👨‍🍳💋 (Chef's kiss, but emoji form 😂). I *think* I successfully turned my asks on now if you wanna squeal into the void with me, or rant about changes. Either is fine.

Also.... I tried sending the following story in as an ask a while ago but it got lost to the void and I originally didn't wanna retype it all, but decided to anyway for you, so enjoy the story of why my grandma had a slight beef with RR himself. (Just a warning, it's kinda long bc I don't know how to compress my ramblings, and I also don't remember how I wrote it the first time. Plus, my original submission was before I found out it was totaled and now have to make an extra $300 monthly payment bc of my recklessness. And final FYI, I'm 99% satirical when I say she has beef. I don't *think* she remembers saying this but who knows 🤷‍♀️. I'll just avoid grandma and RR in the same room to avoid the 1% chance 😂

Ok, so on Sept. 28th, 2023, I was going to the Chalice of the Gods book tour in Houston. I had to go straight from work, pick up my younger cousins, and then head to the venue which was like 15 minutes away from their house, but bc I had dealt with Houston traffic getting home we would've gotten there right after 5. OK, no problem. EXCEPT I'm a dumb-dumb who did a really stupid thing and caused a wreck right before we got there (within sight of the venue), but luckily, no injuries were caused to either party. My car ended up being totaled out a week later, and I'm assuming the other car was, too, bc their airbags deployed. I felt so horrible and guilty, and my mom had to come get us, and we ended up missing the entire presentation. (Again - my fault). We did stop by the venue, though, to try and get the "goodie bag" (signed book, shirt, and reusable bag). On the way into the venue, my mom took us to the back way bc it was at my cousin's school and she knew a shortcut. As we were getting out of the car, there was a black SUV in front of us that had just had the occupants enter, and a school officer/HPD officer was walking away back towards the building. The side windows were tinted but the brief glance I got at the front windshield looked like Rick himself, along with Becky and some other people (probably the publisher and driver and whoever else). Anyway, they were trying not to be noticed, and SO WAS I bc I was still processing the wreck and randomly crying again everytime I stopped, so I didn't try to bring attention to him or ourselves. We got in right as the presentation ended and the hallway starts filling up with people and we have to navigate to get our books and stuff. I got a hug from the bookshop employees after explaining what's happening, and then we left. We get home, and I'm talking to my grandma and mentioning about how I possibly saw the author IN HIS CAR ND she goes "well the least he could've done was given you a hug and said sorry you missed it" I was like "I don't think he noticed us" and she said "well still..." (I tried explaining that not everyone who went stayed for the presentation, some people just get the goodie bag and leave (also like the other car I hit) but that still wasn't a good reason for my grandma.

This is so oooold omgggg I am sorry orz I watched the whole show too, and casting was definitely top tier. I really like the main trio, they had really good chemistry together, and Walker has the Percy "why me?" look down soooooo well, we love that XD But all three of them were so good (and don't get me started on Hades, what a freaking legend, absolutely phenom casting on that front lol)

I will admit I was kind of miffed about some of the changes though. Like, why did Grover stay behind during the whole getting the scarf mission, except it wasn't a scarf it was Ares' shield? I don't remember. But like, we didn't learn about Annabeth's fear of spiders or see the flying shoes in action, so??? And also Annabeth peacing out early in the Underworld, why was that necessary? ;~; Idk, overall I did like it and I had fun watching it, but some changes I was kind of confused on because they felt like changes used just to split up the cast and without any real purpose. Buuuut I'm nitpicking lol.

I AM SORRYYYYYY your other ask did come through, I was just not on Tumblr for like, ever. I am sorry orz and I'm sorry your car did end up being totalled :( I had said in the other message that I hoped your car ended up being okay, but it sounds like it wasn't and I am super sorry to hear that :( Hopefully things have calmed down (a year later ahaha |D) and you're doing better since that ordeal ❤❤❤❤❤❤❤

[slightlytoastedbagel]

hello slightlytoastedbagel recently due to the influx of carrot growth at my house the deer in my garden have begun migrating in hoards to my residence and honestly i didnt mind when it was just a few of them but now theres quite a lot to be honest i dont know if theres enough rooms in my house for them and theres a much more suitable forest nearby and i think thats where theyre all coming from anyway i would make them pay rent but i dont know if they have jobs or the mental means to understand the concept of monthly payments and they dont tend to make a lot of noise either so its hard for me to learn how to talk to them but its nice not being so lonely i just wish they would be a little less invasive maybe i should start teaching them manners anyway keep up the great work

hey @ace-and-the-rpg-horrors I think we have the same carrot and deer anon

thank you I shall keep up the great work

[tittyinfinity]

Went ahead and had to take out a loan since donations aren't coming in – this is the only place that would approve me bc I used them before.

My KNOWN expenses right now are $635. $300 for car insurance and $335 for this bullshit charge from my apartment complex (they COMPLETELY changed everything they told me).

I make $760/mo on disability and all the money I had put back for moving had to be spent on a $150 set of new car keys and $80 to take my cat to the vet.

I need to pay off this loan ASAP because it will be $2867 if I pay the minimum monthly payment.

Please help if you can!

P*ypal: yanidork

C*shapp: $yourdestinymae

V*nmo: nicework_bonedaddy

More info on my apartment situation under the cut

I have argued with them that none of this is correct. I never signed anything that said that my rent would be set up this way.

I'm currently trying to find my own paperwork and waiting on more calls back. I'm going to be bringing this up with a lawyer.

First off, my rent was $635 ($665 with pet fees) and my portion of it was $210 with the rental assistance.

They said if I signed another lease, my rent would be $765 a month, or $965 a month if I did month-to-month.

I called a couple of months ago and we got it worked out to where I'd pay the same amount for this month without any increase. Apparently they didn't keep documentation of it, but I have a paper that says something about it, I just can't find the damn thing.

As you see here, it says the rent paid by section 8 was $775. My portion (minus the pet fee) being $155, this would put my rent at $930 for this month, meaning they DID charge me the extra $300 for month-to-month while also decreasing my portion of the rent. (???????)

However, it also says that there is an EXTRA $100 charge for month-to-month, bringing the rent to $1,030 + the $50 late fee for a grand total of $1,080.

Another thing that makes no sense is that the section 8 office said they only paid $620 of my rent. Which is about $200 more than they usually do, but still not $775.

I have to pay the 355 by the 10th or I get another $75 late fee. I'm trying to get it fixed before then, but if I don't, I have to bite the bullet and pay it off anyway.

If anyone else can make sense of this shit I am totally open for advice because I don't know what the FUCK is going on.

[orphanedwolfandfriends]

So fellers, I can't promise that this'll be the last post I make about them. They don't fucking listen when they're the reason why nothing's going their way. I may be petty, but blocking, reporting, and IP banning them with the handy dandy statcounter is STRONGLY recommended (if you can afford to anyway, statcounter has a monthly payment thing).

I personally suspect that they have an alt account that none of us are aware of, and I'll say with full confidence that I could be wrong.

I started knowing they existed on account of their dry writing and their godmodding, and after, they'd start to ask a mutual some intrusive and condescending messages on why they're so kind to me. Not my character apparently, me. They don't bother to learn character names and just use URLs to shit talk. They'd ask why there's fanart of my woof child and their muse, which lmao, why's that a fucking problem? Mind your own beezwax. They would also bombard that mutual with asks about their shadowban issue, why can the mutual see other people's asks instead of theirs, and the most the mutual could do was tell them what it means and how they can fix it (which they never did). And as you might've seen earlier, they said me drawing fanart of fictional characters was "weird" and talked about it like it was self insert art I was doing. Self insert art's not even an issue to begin with but yet they took it personally lmao. Perish. Also I wouldn't make my self insert be a fucking child, and the art wasn't even shippy in the slightest.

It got to the point where my mutual blocked them, and they moved onto a Vegeta blog, and really milked that cow dry for how long they'd keep messaging them and whining about them not jivin' with the godmodding, along with complaining to that Vegeta and someone else about everyone making bad comments about their oc. If you look into their blog, you'll see that this person does not have a bio what so ever. Not even in a separate post. So quite clearly they're just expecting everyone to submit to her Mary Sue powers despite the fact we know nothing about them. They even info dumped the same Vegeta through an ask which, dude. Limited text. Look it up.

And then, they would bombard a Raditz rper and bitch about how he's not submitting to their random stranger shit while Raditz accepted a fucking BLT from one of my adult muses, bombard an oc blog like "you're flirting with Raditz, I can tell, your oc's not any better than MINE", AND, try to act like they're such a hotshot at writing, which as you might've guessed, they're not. And they're actively painting themselves in a bad light instead of listening to people and accepting boundaries. They also bugged the shit out of a Beerus mutual, and another mutual who writes ocs, just 'cause the other's muse was just vibin' and giving Beerus food. There's literally nothing wrong with that, yet they'd keep bugging the other mutual with shit like "oh beerus is only keeping you around 'cause you're giving him food, beerus isn't nice blahblahblah".

Do you see a pattern here? They'll get pissy when they don't get any attention from all four of those characters, and send jealous, petty bitch-sounding messages over two friggin children that are just being nice. Imagine being jealous of a fucking child. Actually suck in that shame like a juice box, 'cause that is PATHETIC. Jealousy is legitimately not a healthy thing to have, especially over something like roleplay, and when you actively guilt trip or shit talk them just 'cause of that, that's even more pathetic. And hella possessive. Good luck being possessive when the muns aren't interested in your oc to begin with lmao.

They also chased off somebody after stalking them for a full on year, as I've been told, which from people saying "that explains a lot" when I said who they were, that's...unsettling. Not surprising, but unsettling. And they're suspected to be another individual named Skye. I dunno if that's true but that's why I say "suspected."

TLDR; Please for your own sanity, block @phoenixissims and report them for their harassment. Do whatever you can to keep them far away from you as possible. The Dragon Ball side of the RPC is not the only RPC they've harassed over the years, so it isn't their first rodeo with being annoying and creepy. Do not waste your time with a message.

Now with all that out of the way, phoenixissims, go fuck yourself with a pitchfork, and everyone else? Have a nice rest of the month. I'm going back to my usual tomfoolery.