#don’t get me wrong they are good gifsets and it is not the gif makers fault. and obviously I know why the tiktok makers do that

[daebom]

Please read.

I’m making this with no anger or frustration left. I am genuinely sad. You could say to the point of hurting. And honestly, the way I’m treated as not just some content creator, but as an actual human being behind a computer screen - I AM hurting.

I was just looking through my notifications as usual and randomly came across a fellow The Lost Boys fan...

Be warned, this is very screenshots heavy.

I noticed they were using one of my gifs from THIS gifset as their header.

I’m making it no secret, that when I randomly come across these things, I always politely DM (or send it via ask) the person and ask them to take it down, since I do not allow my edits to be used in any way (see my bio) apart of the basic appropriate Tumblr functions. I feel like I have to be clear - I am no “huntsman” and so I do not purposely go on and “hunt” people who use my edits without my permission. I only politely, without any aggression intended, message them to let them know about my T.O.U. whenever I randomly come across situations like these. And that’s what I did.

Now, I did not screenshot the very moment I sent this person a DM, but the screenshot above was made partly out of habit to have proof in case they try to “play me” (speaking from experience, sadly) and also partly to have a quicker “note” of the person’s username to message them later, because I didn’t text them immediately. I was busy, so I did a few hours later.

Now here’s the thing.

They did not text me back, which is fine. But a few hours later I did check and see they were online. A few more hours later, they did what I took as an unspoken answer and was genuinely thankful for - they changed their header from my gif to some kind of image (I believe it was a photo of Michael and David). All is fixed and done, no hard feelings (at least from my part). Right..?

Just a side note, but I found it weird at the time, that they also deleted their reblog of my Star gifset (as you can see in the screenshot above). But what followed next makes me now think, in a bitterly humorous way, that they did it to “disassociate themselves from my blog”.

While DMing my own friend through Tumblr app, I decided that I should probably clean out my DMs and in turn delete this “conversation” as well, since all is fixed and there’s no point in keeping it. But then I noticed something.

They turned off their DMs. Okay, that’s maybe a bit weird. But then I went to their profile...

And let me just say, the whiplash I got from all this............ Do I even need to explain what’s wrong here?

Before anyone says otherwise, here’s the proof.

My gif:

Size: 1,14MB

“Their” gif:

Size: 1,11MB

My gif:

“Their” gif:

My gif:

“Their” gif:

They cut off a few inches from the top to get rid of my watermark.

That’s it.

That’s all it takes to claim you made the gif from scratch..?

And in case anyone’s not aware of how much “blood, sweat and tears” it took to colour a gifset like this one from two years ago, here’s an original, in no way edited screenshot of this scene from the movie:

Why did they do a 360 degree turn around is beyond my comprehension. When they changed that first Marko gif to a photo, their description was still the old one, their DMs were still on, etc... I am honestly confused.

And since this person turned off their DMs and sending a message via ask from my side is pointless, reaching out to them again via public post by tagging them will surely result in them blocking me. Which I don’t know if I should take as a good or a bad thing, at this point.

Let me end this by saying that, as I am finishing to write this, I feel like I no longer care if this person keeps that butchered Marko gif of mine as their header. What hurts me the most is what they wrote in their description, stating the “truth” and in a way mocking my attempts of politely reaching out to them.

To all original artists, be it writers, gif makers or people who draw: I genuinely wish you all to have the least possible amount of encounters with fellow fandom people, who steal your passionate hard-work and claim as their own. 💔