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cleverangelwasteland · 4 years ago

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The story of X and social media

X loved to draw since they were a child . X bought pencils , coloring books when they were young and they did everything they can to draw everyday. X was happy . Also X was proud and showed people their work .

X’s work was far from good but still they were content . Then in 2012 a platform called amino was created. X was sharing their work and getting feedback . X was still happy. Later on that year an app called Instagram launched .X was skeptical but at the same time excited to use this new platform . X posted everyday , and even though they started with 10-15 likes they were improving . Fast forward to the end 2015, X is no longer very young and have a message they want to convey in art .X started to get criticism about anatomy which they took well and asked for help in anatomy . X and X’s sensei ( the helper they met online ) had body drawing lessons daily for the entirety of 2016 and 2017 . X drew poses , shapes , studied the anatomy of the body , the muscles , read books and watched many many videos . X even posed for the drawings to see if the pose works . X was happy they were learning something . Also X would repeat the same pose many times and would split the body to shapes and boxes and would practice along late hours along with schoolwork so basically X’s day was full with little time to sleep. X also memorized the muscles and read many anatomy books like the anatomy for sculptors . They also learned loomis method for faces and these 2 years were just practice to the point that x drew 300 drawings in a month between poses and copied work so X can get a better learning perspective.

Opposite to X’ s sensei’s opinion , X decided to recheck on their Instagram which they haven’t done in 2 years . Not even once. X drew something and posted it while being proud of their improvement but they got way less engagement than what they had before .X was still not discouraged and decided to try again so they did a drawing that shows everything they learned , using a full body pose with an angle and shading . basically everything they could do and spend a long time working on what they thought was their masterpiece .

X uploaded and got a comment , which they hastily checked . The comment said the following : “ You suck , I’ll go away to clean my eyes , your drawings should be used as memes .”

X was heartbroken , ofc they were sad and they discussed it with sensei who said that is why they were against reopening X’s instagram account . But X is so used to not getting their way in life , that they decided to go on with it . X posted a few things and some comments were “ your anatomy sucks , study anatomy .”X felt like someone punched them and said to themselves “ But this is what I have been doing for the past 2 years .” X thought : “ I quit here , I quit what I already had just to study anatomy and that is the result?!” Still one of X’s work was featured by a big page and got 1K likes.

Nonetheless X still got back to drawing . Sensei suggested that X draws more real life drawings so X started drawing from a show that was starting called “ game of thrones “ X drew women , men , creatures , objects , perspective and would still repeat it until it looks right and would ask their old art circle to fix-doodle on their work . X felt like they have a huge bag of knowledge and a 3D camera in their head . If X focuses and closed their eyes they could see the human body from different angle realistically . Sometimes that sumo wrestler X drew to broaden their knowledge on body types would haunt them in their nightmares.

X stayed like this till 2019 . Forgot to say X was bullied ( back in 2014 )at school , made fun of and always alone. X wasn’t liked and that is where X’s habit of pleasing everybody triggered . X did whatever everyone else wanted eventhough they weren’t included in their activities and was a cast out.

X cleaned the gym area. X picked up stray balls in sports class . X made sure to please the teachers . X signed up to everything just to feel a sense of achievement . X was unhappy and no longer had the time to draw. X then bought a digital drawing tablet as they can no longer carry their art supplies around when they were in college .

X drew everywhere . In the breaks , lunch break , just name it and they’ll be drawing. X even met someone who took a course in the art department and offered to do their art homework as the other party was struggling. The other party got a 96/100 and came back thanking X . X felt a bit of validation like maybe their work is worth something debunking X’s thought about maybe being delusional . X suddenly grew quicker on social media , Not so big but since 2012 to 2018 they only had 400 followers so less than a follower a week . X suddenly jumped to 600 affirmating to them that at least they are doing something right . Previously X joined a drawing circle in their local community . And they were treated as non existent so the notion of building an audience was something new to X . They never had friends or any kind of support and they didn;t believe someone would take the time to comment on their work . Still X was still getting more and more comments about anatomy making X wonder where did they go wrong , so they decided to go back to square one and have a new anatomy study month .X went to youtube , discord servers and reddit s well as more anatomy tutorials by established artists and more books .

X would get a skeleton and lower its opacity then draw above it all the muscles shapes ( not their name really ) from memory . X compared it with the scientific schematic and found it very similar . Later on that year and after 7 years +of actively drawing , X got their first commission , at first they refused to be paid as if they weren’t open for commissions but the commissioner insisted . later on X did a few commissioned work and a customer was so happy they paid extra . This kind of boosted X’s self esteem as they were having a hard time . Forward to 2020 X did many commissions but it is the year where everyone keeps commenting on X’s work “ Go study anatomy , you lack in the basics , you look like you just started “ . X felt a big stab in the back as during those 8 years they have been active in , X studied anatomy solely for a total of 2 years and a year in short term practices . X went back and forth to the basics so many times and didn’t skip a day of practice.

X’s mental health and self esteem quickly deteriorated as they would leave social media then realize they need it to make money and come back to it . X haven’t had a commission in a while which is another blow to their self esteem.

Also X refused a job offer to draw for an animation which will be broadcasted due to the blow to their self esteem.

Also X saw online many artists making so much money by selling art where there are clear anatomical flaws and they get all the love and positive comments unlike X . X started doubting their eyes , thinking “ maybe I am really delusional “ ... Some of those artists have edgy scribbled lines in their lineart , really high eyes leaving no space for the cranium , drawing side views without thinking of the thickness of the body and drawing ears way below the ear zone . sometimes far eyes so the eyes reach the “ forbidden ear zone” necks starting from after or before the ears , people not taking into consideration the the deltoid muscle is like a “ cap “ above the biceps and so on . But these people were more popular than X and made more money/ were very successful .

X didn’t understand why they were getting the anatomy comments and why these other people were not. X felt that they cannot use their knowledge anywhere but still felt that they know a lot .X feels like their knowledge deserves more and that all the pride they felt knowing this much doesn’t deserve this . X changed their style and anatomy 20 times this year and experimented with everything but they couldn’t please everyone and more and more people tell X their improvement looks a day old not years old when they post redraws.

X lost pride in their work and the joy in drawing because of how social media and the unfairness of its algorithms affect them , instead of making really good artists popular it made a message that you need to have luck and not really the basic skills and that you could get away by tracing or copying.

Now X sent this to this account as they are asking for help , they deactivated everything and are sitting there just with knowledge and 8 years of efficient hard work betraying them .X lost their friends , their family and all support they could have . X asked the mod to share their story so others are aware how social media functions for artists and how many people are quitting because of it . Send us your story so we could feature yours too for awareness.

#art #artist #art struggles #artstruggles #popular #story #confession #instagram #algorithm

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steve0discusses · 5 years ago

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Yugioh S3 Ep 43: Tea Can Just Knock Over Joey Wheeler With Her Index Finger

Guys guys guys, my favorite Character is back. That’s right--the storyboarder!

So this episode looked helllla nice for a Yugioh episode (again, this is Yugioh, it will win no awards.) It wasn’t as nice and fluid as the episode where they temporarily killed off Joey Wheeler, but I give it a good 2nd place.

You can tell we’re getting to the climax of the season because they’re throwing down their most entertaining art people onto the screen, giving us about 5 zillion dutch angle fashion close-ups of Marik’s cabbage face, and a whole lot of zany and hard to very hard to draw fish-eye lens angles of Pharaoh.

Also, everyone wears flared bell-bottom pants now. New stylistic decision, as decided just now. Everyone in pants now has flares. Even if their pants are cargo pants. How very 00′s. (my pants were flares from like birth until 2006, it was a good trend, super comfy, bring it back.)

(read more under the cut)

First off, Evil Marik decided to rewrite Marik history a little bit with some hilarious retconning that only the most evil Marik would think is legit.

I mean I was there when Marik was introduced and was a complete asshole all of S2. I remember when Odion considered murdering the hell out of his little brother because this Marik guy was such freakin tool and his Dad was an evil cultist bastard. I...I’m gonna go on a limb and assume that calling Marik a “loyal servant” is a freakin stretch. Marik made his choices. Yes, his bad side killed his Dad, but they have made sure to indicate that yes, this is the evil inside of Marik, something that he himself caused--but most of the things that Marik has done (with the exception of killing his own Dad) is still Marik. He did that.

The fact that his evil side can’t quite connect that his good side and evil side are at all the same however, is fitting for an evil Marik to think. More and more, Marik and Marik are becoming 2 different people, and this game is the deciding factor to finally give this guy full autonomy of his other half.

We’ve seen this type of contrast before with Bakura and Ryou--where Ryou and Bakura don’t really get along but have always been clearly different people, so the culpability of what they do tends to fall on Bakura. (which is a pretty GRAND assumption, I still think Ryou is a precious but absolutely still shady little bastard) So, it’s a little different that Marik considers himself two completely different people when it’s just...not the same. Marik’s alter ego is just an ego. More like how Yami was in Season Zero but a little bit more evil. Both Marik’s have the same upbringing and the same source.

It’s been kind of an interesting progression now I can look back on it, where slowly the two have been clashing to the point that they are in fact different, disparate people now. The fact that Marik points out how his situation similar to Yugi and Pharaoh being a host is almost like “well yeah, it would have been nice to see how the whole Season Zero Yami evolved into more of a separate person over time, I’m glad you inferred that, and I’ll never get to see it, thanks” But again, all that is inferred. Whether Yami Yugi eventually became Pharaoh over time or whether Pharaoh is a big retcon of Yami Yugi for the new series in order to keep the culpability for what he does off of Yugi Muto was never directly spoken in the show so it’ll be left to your fanfictions.

Meanwhile, Yugi has decided that they’re going to try and purify the Marik situation and save the good side. This is sort of the Yugioh thing, to dispel the bad forces from people and leave behind hollow husks, so yeah...it tracks. I mean...there’s very little Marik left to save, but it’s better than a husk, amiright? Better than what happened to freakin PaniK, RIP. I’m sure erasing over half of your identity will go over real well for Marik and be absolutely painless.

And then we had a lovely scene that, for those people doing scene redraws from anime, as has been a popular trend on art blogs lately--this is your episode for Yugioh. This episode’s got moody lighting, we’ve subdued all our weird ass colors into one concrete palate (remember how green the carpet used to be?) we got interesting elements of Marik being here despite being chopped into pieces. We got so many ellipses drawn in perspective (y’all I could write an entire posts just about ellipses but I’ll spare you). It’s like Yugioh gave itself a redraw.

I can’t believe this shot came out of freakin Yugioh.

Also, this guy was an ASSHOLE for the past 2 seasons but the show was like “time to make him likeable” and so they dropped some good ass cinematography and sung that sad backstory tune on the trumpet and you know what? It works.

+++++++++++++++RANT ABOUT REDEMPTION ARCS FEEL FREE TO SKIP THIS MASSIVE WALL OF TEXT++++++++++++++++++++++++

Now I think the arc of Marik is pretty simple and people are pretty chill with it. But, I’m gonna talk about villain redemption arcs just in general--gonna sidetrack a little from Yugioh for a moment. Partly because I watched 6 seasons of Once Upon a Time, which is basically Villain Redemption Arc Controversy: The Show.

It bothers a hell ton of people when TV shows have to make a villain redeemable, but there’s only one episode left so they put their hands up and say “but I swear the good side of him was always good” But, does that mean Marik’s going to make up for all the murder and sending people to the shadow realm? No. He never will. Even if Marik was completely his bad half the whole time, it still wouldn’t make up for the damage done. Dead people are...DEAD.

Marik can’t actually make any choices right now to redeem his character. All he’s doing is accepting he will never be a full person ever again. Hence why he is in slices and pieces, and in several shots is trapped either in an empty glass or a window. The choice to redeem him is entirely on other people.

And that’s the thing about redemption arcs that I want to bring up--how much of a character’s redemption relies on what the villains do to “Make up for what they did”, and how much relies on everyone else to redeem them. I think the tendency is for people to assume that the villains should be doing 90-100% of the redeeming, but unless they have a time machine--they can’t do any. Even if they freakin die to sacrifice themselves it’s still like “that character was basically little Stalin, right?

I’ve seen like a million ways to write a redemption arc, but none of them, not a single one that I can think of, can ever truly make up for the things the villian has done. There’s no way that Darth Vadar was suddenly going to become a good Dad, no matter how many Palpatines he can toss into a...whatever that was at the end of that movie. That’s the riddle behind what makes redemption arcs so engaging--By all cultural standards these villains should always be tagged a “bad guy” but, we, the audience, are being challenged to ignore those standards.

And I know a lot of people see redemption arcs as a quasi-religious sort of adventure into atonement, where we’re supposed to see ourselves as the villain searching for some type of forgiveness from a higher, most-likely-a-reference-to-Jesus-power, but I don’t really see them that way. Maybe it’s because, I dunno, I haven’t killed anyone recently or possessed other people’s minds or strung them up to anchors and dropped them into the ocean. But if you see yourself as a Marik, then go for it, I won’t stop you.

But, to me, a redemption arc is more of a question posed for us as viewers. Since it is impossible for the writers to ever fully redeem a character, the only ones doing the redeeming are the people watching it, who’s reaction will differ wildly from person to person, and that’s what makes it fascinating.

And like, that’s my thesis here at the very last paragraph of this long meandering rant. Redemption arcs aren’t about “hey is this person good enough to be redeemed (because that will never happen)” it’s “are you too good to redeem that person?” It’s a large scale experiment on the viewers watching and that’s why it makes people so freakin pissed and uncomfortable. Every redemption arc calls them out directly, and for some people it’s just like--the world ends or something. I have seen actual internet mobs develop over...a villain redemption arc. Which is weird.

And so I’ll leave it with my other spicy take that...you don’t have to redeem every villain when the question is asked. I mean these aren’t real people. The questions of “would you redeem this person” is asked entirely hypothetically. And that’s what makes up stories, not just the interaction of the people inside the stories, but when it affects the moral structure of the readers directly, and seeing how for some people, that can be a very intense and deep reflection. (which usually leads to a hell ton of either retconning fanfiction or a hell ton of really, really angry posts)

bro’s just told me that Yugioh is just a redemption arc for season 0 Yami Yugi. Bro and his spicy headcanons. This one holds some water though, lol.

++++++++++++END OF A SUPER LONG RANT ABOUT VILLAINS THAT I HELD IN FOR THE ENTIRE 6 SEASONS OF ONCE UPON A TIME, WOW A LOT OF PEOPLE HAD OPINIONS ABOUT CERTAIN CHARACTERS THAT THEY JUST EXPECTED EVERYONE ELSE TO HAVE, AMIRIGHT????+++++++++++

Anyway, back to jokes.

Again, Storyboarder just...nailing these weird ass shoes that are somewhere between a dress shoe and a boot. Shoes are hard to draw, y’all. This storyboarder. And they even made sure that the shoes looked very small and precious the way Yugi shoes would be. Little Cinderella size 5 Yugi shoes.

Oh finally.

So it was only a matter of time before the people who actually care about being possessed noticed this situation, it just took like...a season longer than I thought it would. I’ll be honest it was quite cathartic for them to actually address for the first time in what feels like a long time “SHOOT, GHOSTS!?!?”

Although it was kind of funny that the biggest reaction to all of this came straight from Joey. Yugi still doesn’t care, Tristan’s decided to just accept this, and Duke is just slowly backing away. But Joey’s going to try and do the work that Yugi should have done last episode.

HOT DAMN.

So, lets go over the Yugioh power chart here. Tristan can punch out Bakura. Tristan can also defeat Seto Kaiba with a broomstick. Joey can kick Tristan, even when Tristan is armed with a broomstick, so hard that Tristan flew through a metal door and bent it completely over backwards. Tea, however, can knock Joey completely over with one single index finger.

How has this girl ever been abducted? Was she just bored?

Bro wants to bring up that she once incapacitated a man with her butt. Just falling on top of a guy and hitting him with her butt of steel. Was she even in danger from the shipping container when she could just bat it away? She once choked out Season 0 Yugi Muto. She was always fine.

Credit to Joey, he keeps trying, and it gives us, for the first time, a sneak peek into what it must be like for Yugi and Joey to hang out on the offtimes that Yugi switches over and Pharaoh hasn’t quite gotten the memo.

This is in fact, the second time that she’s done this.

(meanwhile, sitting next to Odion, is one single cargo pocket floating in the air, gently smoking a purple haze like incense)

Welcome back Odion! I only now just realized how freakin jacked your neck is.

Like y’all his neck is wider than his head, hot damn.

Anyway, this show is secretly all about the power of big brothers, so I assume he’s going to start the mile long crawl to the top of the tower and then just...walk in...just walk right into a shadow game...?

...no one thought to stay with Odion? Like not even Serenity? Or at least leave him a weelchair? what the hell?

Odion always gets the worst wrap, this poor guy.

Anyway if you just got here, this is a link to read these recaps in chrono order from the beginning and watch my progression of knowing nothing about Yugioh to knowing a lot about random facts about Yugioh but still knowing absolutely nothing at all just like Socrates.

And here’s that shot of Marik for y’alls anime scene redraws, knock yourself out.

#Yugioh #ygo #episode recap #photo recap #S3 ep 43 #Yugi Muto #Marik Ishtar #Tea is possessed again #Tea Gardner #Odion ishtar #Ishizu Ishtar #Joey Wheeler #Duke Devlin #Tristan Taylor #Seto Kaiba #man alive why do I list all the characters all the time there are so many characters #guest appearance by this wonderful storyboarder

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vrainsweek · 5 years ago

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VRAINS WEEKS “LINK-14″ - Daily Prompts 2019

Hello again Minna-saaaaaaan!

How are yooou? Did you miss me? Did you miss the 2 weeks we were talking about Vrains and Vrains only? Yes I missed them, too. =D So I sat down and started thinking about the prompts for these year’s Vrains Weeks. But first a little information! As some of you remember I asked for another name for the Vrains Weeks because...”Vrains Weeks” sounds too normal and kinda boring even if any of you understand what they are. (I had a minute I wanted to call them Double Week but that was even worse.) So I asked around if you guys have an idea how to call them and actually... One person had the perfect idea! So first let me introduce to you the new name of the Vrains Weeks:

Link-14 (Weeks)

And I think it fits. 2 Weeks have 14 days and everyone in the Vrains fandom knows what you mean when you say “Link-”. My special thanks for this name go to @mythicalartisttm Thank you so so much, my brain never ever would have thought this way!

Thank you! Danke! ありがとう！

Before we start with the newest Vrains Prompts for 2019 let’s take a look at the rules again (So noone can say they didn’t read or find them!)

NO Bashing of ANY content! That means no BASHING or INSULTING over any Headcanons, Theories, Shippings, Works and and and.

NO NSFW. Sexual and / or Gore content or similar for some people in a fandom are exciting ofc but since I can’t control the age of this blog’s followers I have to keep this free for minors. Also I hope this will keep triggers away from some followers.

NO Copying, Stealing or Reposting of other people’s work! Not even with credits! This is unfair and really NOT a way to show YOUR content. Also you hurt the real artist with this and we don’t want and don’t need this. YouTube Videos musiclinks or similar for special topics for a day are excluded as long as credits such as the directlink are included. (Please contact me if someone reposted your art over the #vrainsweek or #VRLINK14 tag)

Don’t forget! If you break one of those rules you will be banned from VRAINS WEEKS! Also I want to inform you that every content is allowed as long as it doesn’t break the rules. Drawings, Cosplay, Theories, AUs, everything aslong as it fits with the topic!

About the tag you have to use to find your work you can use 2 tags now:

You can still stick with the #vrainsweek from last year or use #VRLINK14

I will look at both of them to check your guys’ works. Just don’t forget to tag! Ok, here we go! Ready for the 2019 prompts?

Monday (15th July 2019)

“Favorite Headcanon” To start the Link-14 weeks let’s begin with something easy. Show me your most favorite Headcanon you had so far after 2 years of Vrains. Draw something, describe it, whatever you like! It doesn’t matter if this headcanon is old or brand new just show us you always wanted to show all of us!

Tuesday (16th July 2019)

“Androids” Wouldn’t it be great if we see the Other Ignis as Andoids as well? Or even Yusaku and the others? I wonder how they survive in the real world? Do they eat like normal humans? Will they ever feel tired? How would the Ignis look like? Aaaah so many questions~

Wednesday (17th July 2019)

“Happy Hot Dog Day!” Of course the newest LINK-14 Week again is the same date as the National Hot Dog Day as well! And again you can do whatever you like aslong as it includes a Hot Dog (I am sorry if it sounds a bit NSFW But I DON’T MEAN IT THAT WAY ///)

Thursday (18th July 2019)

“Babies”

Last year we had a prompt which I wanted you to put our favorite characters into adults. This time let’s go back in time and show them as little kids and babies.

I think Vrains has too less of some past shots from when our favorites where small and cute, let’s change that!

Friday (19th July 2019)

“Memories”

Thinking of the past can be beautiful but also pretty cruel. We all know that everyone of us thinks of the past knowing that it made us what we are today. So do Yusaku and the others. They think of the past and appreciate every memory they have no matter if they are hurt- or beautiful.

Saturday (20th July 2019)

“Gaming Champs”

Ok ok so... I played some League of Legends a while ago and suddenly I thought: “How would Yusaku look like as a LoL champ?” I went too far and even thought about his skills but hey! Wouldn’t that be a great prompt as well? If you guys are actually gaming something why don’t you put Yusaku or Ryoken or whoever you like into a game? No matter if it’s an MMO or something like Super Mario or Sims 4 or whatever you like. Maybe...I will design Yusaku as a LoL champ as well *laughs*

Sunday (21st July 2019)

“Vacations” We all are soo thirsty for a beach episode but it looks like we never get it...sadly ... *cries* BUT That’s why the LINK-14 Week is here for so let’s get the boys and girls into some sweet vacations! They really REALLY need a break! It doesn’t have to be the sea, send them wherever you want them to be. Another place, another country, wherever you like!

Monday (22nd July 2019)

“What if?” What if Ryoken / Revolver never was able to save the children from the Lost incident?

Tuesday (23rd July 2019)

“Share some music”

Music is my way to happiness I always say. What are the songs you relate the most to when you think of Vrains? It can be anything, songs to some AUs or to a special character or shipping or a scene you liked the most.

You can share Spotify playlists or YouTube Links or just the title and singers of the songs (Please don’t upload music files).

If you want you can use this prompt as well to show some relating from Vrains characters to music (For example Hanois as a band)

Wednesday (24th July 2019)

“Me when I watch VRAINS”

I am curious and maybe this prompt is a bit stupid but Vrains and the LINK-14 week only works with the people who actually watch Vrains. And I want to give you a “stage” cause you matter a lot! What do you look like when you watch VRAINS? (Describe it or draw it or even take a photo of it haha)

Thursday (25th July 2019)

“VRAINS goes Hollywood” So I have two tasks and whatever you like more is what you gonna do: Drawers: Redraw a movie cover / movie poster from whatever movie with Vrains characters. Writers: Take a scene of a movie you love and rewrite that scene with Vrains characters. Those movies can be anything (Disney, Marvel, Ghibli or other Animes, Romance movies or Hunger Games stuff) as long as they still fit with the LINK-14 Rules.

Friday (26th July 2019)

“VRAINS Manga”

I don’t know how long we will wait till we finally get a VRAINS Manga But we all have a lot of imaginations of how it will be. So share!

Saturday (27th July 2019)

“Happy Birthday!”

Imagine it’s Yusaku’s birthday. No other comments needed just be creative ;D

Sunday (28th July 2019)

“???” This day will be a surprise. Just wait till 28th July to see what’s up.

AND ALWAYS REMEMBER!! DON’T FORGET TO TAG YOUR POSTS WITH #vrainsweek or #VRLINK14!!!!!!

See ya in July Minna-san!!

Choco

Note: I got the render pic of Yusaku for the header from here: LINK ME

#vrainsweek #VRLINK14 #yugioh zexal #vrains #vrainsdays

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elstonsblog · 5 years ago

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2019

In my last yearly round-up, the goals for the end of 2019 were to have done:

365 drawings (1 a day of place and thought)

52 what I saws

12 reflective writing pieces

12 reasons to be cheerful

12 photographs of tattooed fruit

6 posters

6 punks

6 tattooed people

6 painted objects

6 zines

4 pieces of clothing

A piece of work printed/made

Learn stick and poke

Stall at an art fair

It’s obvious to say, that I didn’t complete all of my resolutions. There were tasks that I started and then fell through – like the 52 what I saw’s, then there were other tasked that changed throughout the year. Looking at these goals again I think my approach for the coming year will be slightly different. Fewer goals, bigger goals with more actions that can be divided throughout the year. Hopefully, after writing this I’ll have a clearer idea of what they’ll be so I’ll come back that at the end.

The work I’ve created this year feels a lot more together than the 2018’s body of work. I’ve found comfort in the barrel pen and the application of a colour palette which helps give the work a sense of togetherness. While in 2020 I hope to expand my processes a bit more this year has been good to build confidence and find the fun in what I’m doing again. The goal of making my work and Instagram page look more varied (as previously it was lumps of the same work) I think has been successful. It has been achieved through daily drawings of whatever pops into my head at lunchtime to then be drawn up and coloured at the weekends. This way of working has suited me well as it gives me something to do at lunch and thinking of 1 thing a day is manageable into my routine... the downfall of it would be that it doesn’t give much room for larger ideas or projects – knowing this now, I hope to set some time aside on weekends to plan those out and then I could use the lunchtimes to progress them.

My way of working is still fairly analogue as all the lines are drawn by hand, scanned and then will be digitally coloured. If I were to get an iPad the processing time would go down but I don’t feel there is a need for that yet as everything I’m doing it on my own time and it’s a process I’m comfortable with that ensures my hand stays in the game.

In 2018 I was focussed much more on observational drawing, this year I have come away from that and started to play around with things a bit more. Using ideas and objects and trying to focus on fun. There have been a few recurring pieces that I would like to continue in 2020, Reasons to be cheerful was started in 2019 and while the ones that have been created could do with a bit of freshening up I can redraw and update those while continuing it as eventually I’d like to make it into a book/poem of some kind so that it is in keeping with the original song. The half heads are also interesting to me to play with, stemming from this philosophy that the mind and body are separate yet connected – opening up the brain allows for better communication of what that person is feeling. I’m not sure what the half heads will lead to in terms of the outcome.. but it’s a nice outlet for me to communicate feelings.

The platform that I am using is starting to increase which is starting to give me a better understanding of who my audience is. Before my nephew was born I was reluctant to do child-focused things but my view on that has changed a lot seeing how he interacts with pictures and toys. For a few months in the latter part of the year, I was seeing my work as being in the soft middle of nothing as it isn’t too much one thing or much the other. With that in mind, I started to make things with soft middles. Felt soft toys that are just like physical drawings, making them takes longer than drawing does but it’s nice to have something physical at the end of it. It’s something that is still quite new to me so there’s an excitement there. Because of the material and general look of the bright coloured soft and squishy objects, they lend themselves to children. When drawing the ideas of what to make I made sure that it was things that interest me rather than trying to use the toys to make only baby stuff, this has also helped keep my interest. A goal for this year is to make stuff so that I can go to stalls – having a face on contact with people will give me a much better idea of who my audience is and meet other creative people.

I’d say that the most successful aspects of my work this year is the progression of my visual toolkit, I’ve found my eyes and my nose and my colours. Things that I’m able to apply to any drawing I do. This has been helpful and I’m hoping it will continue to progress and change as currently when I ditch the nose it looks quite kawaii which isn’t quite what I’d hoped for but with more practice, I’ll find an alternative. This year I need to focus some effort on creating body shapes as many of my drawings with people in are just headshots other than body’s that were observed. I think that’s because when drawing the half heads, I draw them naked. I can do full body monkeys and skeletons and, I’m sure, with the addition of clothes I’ll be able to do people – I just need to put some effort into making sure it happens.

On the flip side of that, my least successful aspect would be refinement and placement. Throughout the year I’ve just been drawing one thing then moving on to the next with no real thinking of what I could use this for, where could I put this.. how can I push it? I think 2020 will see some refining of existing work as now it’s been drawn and I’ve had time away from it I can think and see it differently. I’d like to make some of the things already created into gifs, prints etc. so that they’re not just stuck as they currently are.

Other than a handful of projects, most of my work didn’t involve research into an area or subject – which has led the pieces to be seen at face value, most of them aren’t trying to communicate anything deeper which when looking back over the body of work makes it feel a little light. Not by any means does this mean that my work suddenly has to become all serious or obvious – but I think I could benefit from taking more interest in the news, short stories etc. to attempt to convey messages, tales and ideas rather than just images.

Overall, I think this past year has been a good step in the right direction that I hope to continue taking forward. I’ve played around with stick + poke; made a group exhibition; redesigned my website and opened up more social media channels; made work for other people; designed an alphabet and learnt to sew (to pick my favourite few). Through focusing on drawing happier things I have also held a happier state of mind – I think both things feed into each other. While I’m not where I want to be yet (and I don’t know what that is) I’m positive that by carrying on I’ll get somewhere. My confidence in the drawing is getting better but now I think I need to focus my efforts on application and ideas of the drawings.

In 2020, my main aims are to work towards (and hopefully do) a stall in either Bristol or London along with creating a self-promotion pack to send out to possible prospective clients. I have loosely planned my year with the main recurring projects that I would like to achieve this year, it looks slightly barer than the previous year but having fewer objectives means I can spend more time on them to make it the best version possible. I will be continuing with creating image ideas at lunchtime and working towards a bigger goal in the evenings. There is a possibility of my full-time job ending mid-year so what I’ve set out to do may suffer during deciding whether to do an MA or looking for another job... but none the less, these are my goals for 2020:

Make 24 Felt toys

Make 12 Editorial response drawings

Make 12 Zines

Make 12 Reasons to be cheerful

Make 12 Cards

Read 12 comics

Take 10 Polaroids a month

Write 12 reflection pieces

Design and distribute the self-promo pack

Stall at an art fair

#writing

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heisenbergchronicles · 6 years ago

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APPRECIATION & INTERVIEW

Better Call Saul episode posters by Matt Talbot After 4 nearly years, I thought it was time to catch up with Matt Talbot about his Better Call Saul poster project. The last time we talked during Season 1, Matt was deep in the hustle of making his name as an illustrator: juggling a full-time job, freelance projects, as well as band. Finding time for personal projects like this one can be a significant challenge. (Not to mention surviving the death of your tools: During Season 1 his Mac laptop died, and this season, his Wacom tablet bit the bullet). But despite these challenges, the 43-year-old New Hampshire native has persevered to create a clever and thoughtful series of episode posters that has garnered considerable attention, and brought with it new high-profile clients and art exhibitions.

First, congratulations on all of your success and recognition with this series of posters. It’s well-deserved. What’s been the most gratifying feedback you’ve received? Thank you! Every interaction I’ve had with anyone from the show has delighted me. I've been surprised by all of the cast and crew members who have said nice things – every note I’ve gotten has meant a lot to me. That being said, Michael McKean randomly tweeting at me that he has my poster for Chicanery hanging in his home blew my mind. I was eating dinner when my phone showed the notification and I literally jumped up from the table. I’ve been a fan of Michael’s since I saw Spinal Tap in the ‘80s and never in a million years would I have guessed I’d make something he valued enough to hang in his home.

Tell me about your contributions to Gallery1988 exhibitions. How does that process work? It's a pretty simple process. They invite me to be part of a show, and I make something to send them. I’m very excited for the opportunity to show there, and I feel like it’s a milestone in my art-making career.

Across the 4 seasons, which BCS posters are your favorites? Which one are you most proud of? I’m particularly fond of Rebecca, Rico, Marco, Switch, Sunk Costs and Something Beautiful. Oh man, it's hard for me to evaluate my own stuff. I tend to like the posters where I find a way to get a different take on something they did in the episode. I would say that “Sunk Costs” is also one of my favorites because I did something differently than how they shot it, and because Mike is so recognizable even from the back. I was also pleased with “Off Brand” because it was when I finally figured out how to draw Bob Odenkirk.

How has your process for creating these posters evolved over 4 seasons? When I started this project I had a vague idea that I would focus on scenes rather than portraits or likenesses, but that didn’t even last half a season! The characters were too good not to include. In that way, the posters have evolved in my willingness to draw characters, and also, hopefully, my ability to draw them.

My process is now something like: Watch the show on Monday; think about it on Tuesday, figure out what stood out to me and do a thumbnail sketch or two; draw it on Wednesday night; post it Thursday afternoon. I’m a bit faster at drawing these now compared to when I started. And I’m a bit more decisive on choosing which subject matter to depict.

There have been quite a few changes on the visual side of Better Call Saul over the last 2 seasons. New directors (Minkie Spiro, Daniel Sackheim, and Andrew Stanton), a new cinematographer Marshall Adams, even new cameras. What are your thoughts on how the show’s visual grammar has evolved? Has any of this impacted your posters from Seasons 3 & 4? I try not to just redraw literal scenes from the show, and I don’t need to tell you that they shoot the show in an incredibly beautiful way. I mean, they always, always, pick the best angle, the best shot to capture something. For that reason, it’s sometimes hard to to come up with another take on a moment from the show.

That being said, the visual style hasn’t really impacted my posters as much as the evolving subject matter has. The show, I think, is substantially darker than it was in the early going. It was easier to depict Jimmy’s hi-jinx in the first couple seasons. But with Chuck’s deteriorating mental state, the cartel stuff, Mike going deeper into Fring’s world and of course, Jimmy’s loosening sense of morals, the funny moments are harder to spot. That’s lead me to some more somber layouts and color choices.

We didn’t discuss this in our first interview. Which typeface are you using in your posters, or is this custom typography? The main logo and episode titles are set in Sign Painter, from the excellent House Industries.

The Heisenverse is known for it’s color theory and use of color. How has that impacted your color choices in these posters? I’ve kind of adhered to their blue=good/red=bad symbolism, but I also try to balance out colors between episodes and not repeat myself in sequential posters.

Many of your posters (especially ones this season) use a monochromatic, or simple palette of 1-2 colors. Tell me more about why you chose that approach. Is this a signature of your style? I’ve seen this approach in a lot of your work. You know, in the early seasons, I was trying to use simpler color palettes, but I wasn’t very disciplined and I got away from that. I’m trying to stick to a more consistent style in season 4. It is a conscious decision. I also feel like with the week-to-week nature of this project, it helps quickly set apart each poster. And, I really do love limited color palettes. Giving myself color constraints helps me figure out different ways to solve layout problems.

I’ve heard other illustrators say that Bob Odenkirk’s facial features are tricky to capture. Do you share that sentiment? Which characters are more challenging to illustrate? I do agree with that. I had a really hard time with him at first. I kind of think I have a better handle on it now, but I’m always trying to get better. I feel like if you can get his mouth right, it goes a long way.

I found Hector hard to capture both times I drew him. Mike, on the other hand, is just pure fun to draw. Jonathan Banks is so distinctive and iconic.

What’s been the most difficult poster thus far? Why was it challenging? Maybe it’s because a lot of time has gone by, but I can't think of one that stands out as having been really difficult.

Francesco Francavilla did alternate posters for some of his Breaking Bad posters. Inevitably, when artists look back at their work, they consider revising or redoing it because of a variety of reasons – their point of view has changed, their skill/style has evolved, or maybe they were never truly content with the final product. Looking back at 4 seasons worth of posters, are there any that make you want to scratch the revision itch? Yeah, more than I would care to admit. I would really like another crack at Amarillo. I know I could do a better job and that drawing is just super flat. In season two, I decided to to experiment with style and I kind of wish I hadn't. I like Cobbler, but I wish I had drawn it in my normal style. I would redraw Nailed for sure. Oh man, if I start going down this road it's not going to end well, so I'll just stop.

You mentioned earlier this season you were excited to draw Track Suit Jimmy. Who or what haven’t you drawn, that you are eager to illustrate? Howard! It bums me out to no end that I haven't drawn him, but it just hasn't worked out. And I need to include Kim more. It's kind of criminal that her face only appeared for the first time in a poster this season.

What’s your opinion of Season 4? Tell me about your favorites – episode, scene, character. I think season 4 is brilliant so far. The Kim/Jimmy relationship has deepened so much this season, and feels so real, but full of inevitable heartache. Oh, the flash-forward to Breaking Bad’s timeline was amazing. Mike doing his audit in the Madrigal warehouse. Really, anything Michael Mando does on screen. It's hard to pick. I so enjoy the deliberate pace of this show.

Where’s your favorite place to discuss the show? I honestly don’t talk about it too much online, though I lurk in a few places and read a lot. I actually discuss it mostly with my wife!

I know you get this question a lot, so let’s cover it here so folks understand: Do you have plans to sell any of this work online? I really appreciate that people like it enough to want to buy it or hang it, but I don't plan to sell the Better Call Saul posters online. I’m doing this for fun, not to make a buck off the show, and I don’t own the rights to sell it anyway.

What’s next for Matt? Do you have any other poster or illustration projects in the works? Is you band performing soon? I have several more pieces for Gallery1988 shows coming up. I’m pulling together an art show at a local brewery for whom I design all of their labels and stuff. I’m patiently waiting for a t-shirt I designed for one of my all-time favorite movies to be announced. And for the past several Octobers, I spent the month drawing a horror poster per day. I’m not sure if logistically I can do that again this year, but I’ll probably fit at least a few in. We’ll see how it goes. Sadly, with all of my illustration work, I haven’t had any time for music making, but someday I hope to get back to that!

Follow Matt: Web site / Tumblr / Twitter / Dribbble / Instagram / PosterSpy

– Interview by Shayne Bowman, Heisenberg Chronicles

#better call saul #artist interview #matt talbot #mine #heisenberg chronicles #illustration #fan art #posters #favorites #mattrobot #bcs season 4 #gallery1988 #g1988 #house industries #sign painter

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thetourguidebarbie · 6 years ago

Note

What about Klaroline with Klaus being jealous of Caroline's close friendship with Enzo. it doesn't have to end in smut but im fine if it your choice.

Emergency fluff for one of my favorite people. @chica-cherry-lola has been reminding me for months that I promised her a mini-sequel to A Guilty Pleasure, my tattoo artist/florist au I wrote for @lalainajanes a bajillion years ago for a v-day exchange. Thank you to @garglyswoof for looking over this quickly.

This has smut in the beginning and is teeth-rottingly fluffy, so if that’s not your thing, I’d skip it. Bookshop AU will be posted once I get the edits in (sorry you’re getting a false alarm, Laine).

His chest was pressed against her back as his tongue traced a trail along her collarbone, the combination of it with his fingers curling against her walls bringing her just to the edge, but unable to tip over. Her eyes closed as he pressed soft kisses to the back of her neck, legs shaking as he brushed his fingers over her clit. “You’re so lovely,” he whispered, nipping her shoulder. “I do enjoy the sounds you make for me.”

She moaned softly in response as he pinched her clit lightly with his thumb and forefinger, her moan turning into a muttered string of expletives as she came, and she felt his stubble scratch against her skin as he smiled. She was breathing hard as she turned on her back to look at him, her lips parting slightly as she realized he was sucking her arousal off his fingers. He bent to kiss her once he was done, his palm steady on her hip, his tongue brushing across the seam of her lips. She moaned softly as he dragged his teeth across her shoulder and moved down to press kisses down to the valley between her breasts, flicking his tongue against her nipple before moving down her ribcage.

“I have a question, sweetheart,” he said, his voice muffled as his lips moved across her skin, and she arched her back as his tongue traced the flowered vine inked on her ribs.

“What?”

“What’s this tattoo from?”

She laughed. “It’s me and Enzo’s twinsies tattoo.”

Klaus froze mid-lick, pushing himself up so that he was looming over her. “Beg pardon, sweetheart?”

“A twinsies tattoo? You know, like when you and your best friend get matching tattoos to indicate that you will, in fact, be ‘best friends forever’?” Caroline said teasingly, making air quotes.

He stared at her with a look of what she considered completely unwarranted revulsion. “You and Enzo have matching tattoos?” he asked slowly, starting to withdraw his hand, clearly intent on getting an explanation. She grabbed his wrist, her eyebrows raised before groaning when she realized that he wanted the whole story before she’d get her next orgasm.

“Yeah. We were in our second year of college and Enzo and I were taking this really boring history class. It was basically impossible to study because the Professor’s study guides didn’t actually match what was on the tests or quizzes, which should totally be illegal. Anyway, the point is that it was finals week and we both knew that what ended up on the test was completely random, so we made a dumb bet that whoever scored higher could pick a tattoo for the other one. Just so you know, talking about my basically-brother-best-friend is not keeping me turned on.”

“And he won?”

“Nope, I did! I just got the same one in solidarity. I tried to talk Bonnie into it too but she said that couples tattoos were always a mistake no matter what. I thought it was kind of romantic, but she’s annoyingly practical.”

“Romantic, hmm?” he asked, and she narrowed her eyes as she watched the gears turn in his mind.

“Klaus...” she groaned, half out of exasperation and half because she wanted him to start moving again.

He bent and ran his nose along the curve of her neck. “I did tell you that I liked the idea of leaving a mark on someone’s body with my art. You even more.”

“I don’t know,” she said, the last word turning into a breathless ‘oh’ as he slipped two fingers back inside of her, her back arching. “I think you just don’t like that another guy and I have matching tattoos.”

“Perhaps,” he allowed, his fingertip tracing her hipbone before he bent to kiss her again.

“You’re such a jealous weirdo,” Caroline muttered between kisses, though there was no bite to her tone.

“You like it,” he whispered, nipping her ear and curling his fingers against her g-spot, making her gasp.

“In small doses,” she managed to pant out.

“You can’t tell me you don’t enjoy it, love. I feel that shiver run down your body when I press my hand against the small of your back as we walk, hear the way your breath catches when I tell you that you belong to me.”

“Klaus...”

“Try to deny it then,” he murmured. “Tell me you’re not mine, Caroline. Try.”

“Klaus,” she said, a tinge of warning coloring her tone.

“Yes, sweetheart?”

“You’re a smug jerk,” she muttered, her face half buried in his chest. She could feel his chest rumble against her cheek as he chuckled, curling his fingers against her walls, his other hand slipping between the cheeks of her ass, making her squeak in surprise.

“All right?”

“Fuck,” she hissed, unable to decide between riding his fingers or pressing against where he was touching her back entrance, her breathing growing shallow. “It’s good,” she managed.

“I’d like to take your pretty arse with my cock later,” he said quietly, pinching her ass before letting his hand travel down the back of her thigh, the drag of nails against her skin deep enough that he’d most likely leave a mark.

“After we unpack,” she said, taking a deep stuttering breath when Klaus pushed the tip of his finger into her back entrance as he nibbled at her neck and stroked her clit, the sensations almost too much for her to handle. She heard him hum against her skin when she came, clearly pleased, pulling back to look at her and brushing a damp curl from her face with his nose to press a kiss to her temple.

“I like you here.”

“Well, that’s good since I’ll be here every night for the foreseeable future,” she teased, sliding her arms around his shoulders to rub a curl between her fingers, the other hand tracing the lines of the triangle inked on his back. “But as comfortable as our bed is, I still have a lot of closet-invading and counterspace-stealing to do.”

“It’s not invading or stealing if it’s yours,” he pointed out, letting her go reluctantly as she wriggled out from under him and slid out of bed, reaching for the jeans she’d managed to half pull on before Klaus had coaxed her out of them earlier that morning. She looked over her shoulder to see him eyeing her hungrily and grinned.

“How am I supposed to concentrate knowing that you’re wearing nothing under those?”

“Like you always do,” she said unsympathetically. “I have full faith in your ability to get up and walk the ten feet to the shower without jumping me.”

He huffed grumpily in a way that probably shouldn’t have been endearing. “Later, I promise,” she repeated. “Seriously though. Get in the shower now so I can send you on a coffee mission when you get out.”

“So bossy,” he murmured, sitting up and stretching. She found herself tempted to throw out her unpacking plans and crawl back into bed to run her tongue down his abs, but at this point she’d committed to her non-sex Sunday agenda and she was too stubborn to admit defeat.

“Is that a problem?” she asked with a raised eyebrow, adjusting her bra and reaching for her blouse.

“Hot in small doses, as you’d say,” he teased, pushing the covers off and running his hand through his hair. She drank him in shamelessly, smiling when he pressed a light kiss to her temple as he walked past her to their master bathroom, his hand lingering on the vine on her ribs for a moment too long, thumb brushing along one of the leaves.

She took a shaky breath, glancing at the door as it closed behind him. Her skin was still burning from his touch, her heart pounding in her chest. They’d been together for almost a year now, counting the time she’d spent in denial pretending they were friends with benefits, and he still made her pulse race on a daily basis, made her feel wanted and beautiful and powerful.

She’d spent way too much time at the beginning worrying that his feelings for her would fade and the only thing to linger would be physical chemistry. She’d been embarrassingly obvious and he’d noticed, but instead of brushing her insecurities off with pretty words, he’d reassured her with every affectionate touch and warm smile that he wanted a connection with her that was more than physical.

Honestly, she couldn’t imagine being with anyone else.

She traced the swallow on her wrist that she’d gotten the week of her eighteenth birthday absently as she considered his words from earlier.

I like the idea of leaving my mark on someone’s body with my art. You even more.

She wondered if she should be scared that she liked the idea too.

“What do you want to do next week?” Caroline asked, sinking down on the couch and pressing her cheek against his shoulder, glancing at his sketchpad. He inhaled her scent, the subtle floral shampoo that now clung to his pillows on nights when he wasn’t even dreaming. It had been two months since she’d moved in and he hadn’t yet been able to get out of the habit of pulling her closer in the mornings before she woke just to savor the feel of her against him. He wasn’t sure he’d ever shake away the constant wonder that she’d chosen to stay.

“Ooh, that’s pretty,” she said, shifting so that she could get a better look without impeding his drawing hand.

“Thank you, sweetheart,” he said, twirling the pencil between his fingers before adding more shading to the dragon’s wing.

“For a client,” he said, frowning as he inspected his work. “I think it needs something else. Been redrawing it for a few hours now, but it never looks quite right.”

“Do you need a few minutes then? For your muse to visit, or whatever?”

“Don’t be silly, love. My muse happens to be sitting right beside me.”

“You are a cheeseball,” she said, kissing him lightly on the cheek. “But seriously. Next week?’

“For our anniversary? I have plenty of ideas for all the things I’ll do to you,” he said, giving her a wicked smirk and taking a bit too much satisfaction in the flush that crept up her cheeks.

“Klaus!”

He could tell that she wasn’t actually annoyed with him, her exasperation more fond than anything else, though from the way she was shifting against him he could tell that she had something she was holding back.

“Do you have any preferences?” he asked, studying her face for any hint of her feelings, and he recognized the tilt of her chin as her mentally prepping herself to say something she wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to spit out.

“I was thinking we could go to the shop.”

“For a private romantic dinner?” he asked, already planning at least ten different things they could do with her stockroom table.

She swallowed. “Yours, actually.”

“Mine?” he asked, not quite daring to believe what she was implying.

“I want you to give me a tattoo,” she said. “If you want to.”

“What do you want?” he asked immediately, reaching for his sketchbook and eagerly flipping to a new page. “Anything specific?”

“I want something symbolic.”

“The flower?” he offered, only half-joking, already trying to remember the exact slant of its petals.

“No. I want...I mean, I wanted to do something about the second I realized that I actually had feelings-feelings for you as opposed to sex-only-feelings, but that moment didn’t really have any symbolic objects that I’d feel comfortable having on my body permanently.”

“When was it?” he asked, unable to restrain his curiosity.

She blushed, unable to meet his eyes. “It was the night when we had the fight before we got together.”

“When you walked out on me?” he asked, not particularly wanting to open old wounds but needing to clarify.

She winced. “It wasn’t my proudest moment, okay? It just kind of hit me all at once, you know? I was like, in hardcore denial, and you put your arms around me and told me to stay and...” she trailed off, tangling her fingers with his and giving him a small smile. “I wanted to, and I was worried that you were just like, being polite—“

She glared at him when he was unable to restrain a laugh, setting down his pencil. “Caroline, when have I ever been polite to anyone out of obligation?”

“Well I didn’t know that then,” she said grumpily. “I mean, I did, but again, denial.”

“Right.”

“What about you?”

“Hmm?”

“What was your moment?”

He didn’t even have to think about it, his lips curling into a smile as he told her how beautiful she’d looked bent over her terrarium diagram in the coffee shop. How he’d watched her hands as she shaded the sketch carefully, admired the way her teeth sank into her lower lip as she concentrated. “I knew I’d enjoyed talking to you,” he explained, smiling at Caroline’s raised eyebrow. “But that moment...I was curious about you. Your story, your hopes and goals. I wanted to get to know you. I couldn’t resist.”

“That’s so cute,” she said, grinning at the face he pulled at the word. “Sorry. You’re just much more romantic than me.”

“I’m not sure that’s true,” he said, tugging one of her curls between his fingers. “In any case, perhaps you don’t want a tattoo of the experimental flower Bonnie gave you, but there are other options. Chrysanthemums?”

She groaned. “My least favorite flowers that I refused to sell you so that you wouldn’t poison your sister’s boyfriend? I’d rather have the sex plant.”

“Do you still have the sketch?”

She frowned. “From the coffee shop?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah. I’m sure I still have it,” Caroline said, moving off the couch and walking to the section of the bookshelf where she kept all her original sketches for her terrarium and bouquet ideas. She pulled out the one labeled ‘succulents’ and flipped through it, sliding a piece of heavy paper out of a page protector and scanning it thoughtfully before handing it to him.

“This one?”

He nodded, taking it and running the tip of his finger along the outline. “I want this here, I think,” he said, gesturing to the left side of his ribcage. “And I’ll get it in color, but I can make it subtler for you if you like. Just the outline or shadow...”

“Matching tattoos?” she asked, her eyebrows raised.

“You said they were romantic,” he pointed out, and she nodded, leaning against his side and inspecting the sketch.

“I like it,” she said. “Even if it feels a little weird to have a tattoo of something I drew.”

“I can always sketch you something, sweetheart. Whatever you want.”

“I think I want the orchid,” she said after thinking it over for a few seconds. “But in a purple or a blue. The real-life pink was really loud.”

“That can be arranged,” he murmured, already sketching the outline. “Where do you want it?”

“Same place as yours.”

“Doing it over bones is the most painful area,” he warned slowly, glancing at her, and she smiled, pecking him on the lips.

“It’ll heal, and I totally look forward to your inevitable weird obsession with licking it.”

“Is that another thing you’ll only tolerate in small doses?”

“No. Tattoo-licking is highly encouraged,” she said, her tone and expression so serious that if he hadn’t known her well he would have missed that she was trying desperately not to laugh.

“Noted, sweetheart.”

“Good,” she said, curling with her feet underneath her to peek over his shoulder at the orchid he was carefully outlining. “I love you, you know. A lot.”

“And I, you,” he said quietly

He didn’t need to look at her to know she was giving him the bright smile that she seemed to reserve for moments like this, when they were close and comfortable. He could see it in his mind’s eye, could have easily sketched it from memory.

He couldn’t resist looking anyway.

#klaroline #klaroline drabbles #klaroline drabble #klaroline smut #klaroline fanfiction #chica-cherry-lola #a guilty pleasure #my fanfiction #mydrabbles #outtake #klarolinekolvina #ask #answer

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winterironspringfling · 6 years ago

Photo

2018 Spring Fling: Gift List

A huge THANK YOU to everyone who was a part of the @winterironspringfling this year. No matter if you created something, shared our posts to get the word out, or are now leaving comments and kudos on all the wonderful stories and art, this exchange wouldn’t have been possible without all of you.

You rock, you are the best, and we love you.

And now, the thing we know you’ve all been waiting for: the complete gift list.

Enjoy! 💕

(Additional thanks to @auripigmentum for the adorable art in this post.)

One Plus One Plus One Equals Three by Zola9612 for tringic Based on these prompts:

Someone is turned into an animal and they develop an unexpected preference in cuddling partner. This may or may not remain a fact after the transformation is resolved, leading to either angst, excessive cuddling, or possibly both.

Operation Bring-Down-Barton

In which magic is involved and a degree of separation.

▫▪▫▪

an unexpected arrangement by sevedra for tisfan Stark was clearly compromised, and James was the only person in evidence. Choices here were slim at best, but honestly, there were none. No military training was going to save James from this.

▫▪▫▪

The Wizard and The Dragon Charmer

DreamcatchersDaughter

for

AlienPsycho

Dragon’s aren’t the only things he charms.

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the measure of man by Potrix for operationhades Tony doesn’t slam the door on his way out of Secretary Ross’ office, but he does grab all of the candy out of the little bowl in the waiting area. It won’t make a difference to Ross, but Tony’s feeling petty, and he has to let some of his anger out somehow.

Months of talks, of arguments and negotiations, and all for nothing. Hours upon hours Tony’d spent trying to find a compromise everyone from Ross to Cap would be willing to agree to, so much work put into preventing Ross’ more extreme suggestions while still finding a solution to placate him and the WSC, only for them to try and force Tony out at the last moment.

And for something as trivial as not having the gene.

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Run with Me by tisfan for AngeNoir There’s a demon that haunts the Loch…

And a lone centaur has captured its interest…

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Lazy Morning by Hayluhalo for house_of_lantis My gift for House_of_Lantis for the WinterIron Spring Fling!

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if only you’d be mine for a moment, I’d be yours for forever by OneSmartChicken for Stark-N-Barnes Just because the world ended doesn’t mean there’s not stuff to do. After a terrible first meeting, Bucky and Tony have to figure out how to get along. There’s betrayals, confusion, and trials, but somewhere along the way, there’s some pretty great stuff.

Featuring a lot of badassery, a little smut, and surprisingly good parents, plus dumb boys in love, cuddles galore, and a friend group that should just give up and acknowledge they’re totally a family. There might be plot too. Maybe.

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let off some steam by fiax for iCheat Sometimes Tony just needs to let off some steam in a way they doesn’t involve his workshop. Sometimes he just needs to take his carefully designed, one of a kind motorbike and a break some road rules in street races where no one knows who he is. This time it looks like he might finally have some competition.

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Operation: Quiet Time by DragonGoesMoo for TheSopherfly Bucky notices how twitchy and tense Tony is; he sets out to teach Tony mindfulness and meditation. Tony learns to relax for the first time in his whole life, and maybe catches feelings during the process.

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Is That A Yes? by GenericUserHere for celtic7irish For this prompt: AU - Bucky works a translator, and knows several languages. He’s is hired as a translator by a firm that SI is taking over. They demand that Tony comes in and does the negotiating himself. Tony goes and bypasses Bucky completely by talking straight to the other party in their own language. Bucky is not amused. Tony finds Bucky after the meeting and tries to flirt with him in that language. Bucky is still fuming and insults Tony in a different language. Tony speaks that, too. (Meet-Cute)

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Alienated Together by NotRecommended for calmena Bucky feels unsafe around Steve, between him being compared to Wanda and the team in general. He flees to his only safe haven: Tony.

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Scowl Like a Pirate Day by james for blue_pointer Bucky knows what’s coming, but still Tony surprises him. Hallowe'en fluff.

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Dynamics by celtic7irish for EchoSiriusRumme Bucky is an Omega working for Dynamics, a sex line agency that helps unmated Alphas during their ruts. Tony is an unmated Alpha recently disinherited by his father. Tony just moved into an apartment, and caught a glimpse of the hot loner down the hall. Bucky just wants to be left alone.

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Constructing (a relationship) An Arm by AngeNoir for james Bucky and Steve had come to the fae to get a limb for Bucky. It’s always tricky to ask a fae for a favor, even if it’s a straight business transaction, and it’s even trickier when the fae has a secret themselves.

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A Lick of Dragon’s Breath by beir for fiax Bucky gets some help from his “assistant.”

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Sweater Weather by ezazahaz for WritingThroughTheMess For WritingThroughTheMess’s prompt: High school AU - Adorable, sweater-wearing nerd Tony has been pining over Bucky Barnes from afar for years. When, on a dare from Rhodey, Tony starts to act on these feelings, Bucky is certain that he’s trying to gain the favour of his best friend Steve, because why on Earth would someone as kind and intelligent and rich as Howard Stark’s son be interested as someone as rough as Bucky?

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Heavy With Hope by TheVagabondBoy for Fancy_Dragonqueen Tony’s freezing to death in a Siberian bunker.

Bucky’s searching for his past in a Siberian bunker.

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Tony Stark doesn’t do walk-ins (except for when he does) by calmena for Shi_Toyu In which Tony is not Iron Man, but still a genius inventor, and somehow ends up acquiring a rogue Winter Soldier.

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The Problems of Pie lantia4ever for DragonGoesMoo After finally leaving the hospital, Bucky and his son Peter move into a tiny apartment outside of New York City to try and continue living their life. Days and nights go by, mundane and boring with nothing for Bucky to do other than mope about, stare into walls and listen to his neighbor’s strangely lively nights.

Leave it to Peter to make new friends, one of which happens to be their mysterious neighbor.

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Just One Dance by IronEyes for singingwithoutwords Tony attends an event that everyone is pretty sure is a trap. The usual candidates for bodyguard/fake date are too well-known now, so Bucky gets volunteered for the job. He can do this. The fact that he very much wants to date Tony for real doesn’t need to complicate this at all. Right.

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Darling, It’s Better Down Where It’s Wetter by Fancy_Dragonqueen for JacarandaBanyan When Tony makes the wrong woman angry he suddenly finds himself in the ocean. With a tail and amnesia. It’s a wonderful life until he finds something very nice, very shiny falling into the ocean. Could this be his soulmate?

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Mystery Loves Company by MarvelousMenagerie for lantia4ever Tony is fine. There have been no attacks on his person or any increase in attacks on the Tower. He’s fine. It’s just a few emails. And if this does blow up in his face, as things tend to do, then it will probably blow up in Malibu, which means everyone he cares about will be back in New York and outside the detonation zone. That’s what matters most.

Tony isolates himself in Malibu with the excuse of needing to get work done, but he’s not as alone as he thought. Eventually Bucky and the Soldier might be able to convince Tony that he doesn’t have to handle everything on his own, but first they have a threat to neutralize.

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The Consultant by Grovehove for oceanhearted Rumours of 007 death had been exaggerated. Barnes was back. His Country needed him and he needed to avenge his soulmate’s death. His Stevie, Steven Grant Rogers, 006 had been iced by the terrorist group Hydra just when they were within reach of the evidence that confirmed Stark Industries were funding and supplying weapons to the terrorists.

M knew they had a mole in SHIELD, he also knew that the return of James Barnes had to be kept off the grid so that he could use his resurrected asset properly.

Barnes would have to be sent to the Consultant.

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I Knew You And Not My Name by camichats for Hayluhalo The Winter Soldier was sent to kidnap Tony Stark in Afghanistan. When Tony escaped the Ten Rings though, things don’t go the way Hydra wanted them to. Bucky finds himself, a mate, and a family.

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i don’t need anything (but you) by WritingThroughTheMess for GenericUserHere Together, Bucky and Tony dismiss the need for bitten tongues and whispered apologies. There is no need for anything but them.

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December 16th by pitifuis for NotRecommended When he was a child, it used to be just another day. It was just another day until Christmas. Just another day of winter. Just another day of trying.

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By Hook or by Crook by ZeeK for OneSmartChicken Bucky is sent to assassinate the King and Queen.

The last thing he expects to happen is for the Prince to get in his way. Of course, that’s exactly what happens.

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Engineering, With Love by house_of_lantis for Politzania Working at Stark Industries comes with a lot of perks. Bucky gets to be part of a quirky group of people; he gets access to world-class assistive technology; and he gets to work on projects that will become something that will make life better for people. While working late one night, Bucky receives a digital blueprint to review, obviously drawn by a madman engineer. It’s for the public good that Bucky makes corrections and redraws the plans, sending it back to the unknown engineer. This continues over a few months until Bucky discovers that he’s been correcting the work of the infamous genius, playboy, philanthropist billionaire himself - Tony Stark. He’s so totally going to get fired…or is he?

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Shifting into Being by siyuttov for Fluffypanda As a child James thought his mother’s stories were only myths. Growing up, they became a source of amusement in hard times. Now they have to power to give him afresh start. If only the corner of the world he chose to make his new home wasn’t also inhabited by Tony Stark.

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The Way the Pagan Gods Are Half-Remembered Here by badgerling for sevedra It was probably Tony’s fault that he kept going to bars to deal with everything after Ultron. It was probably even his fault when he followed a beautiful man into the bathroom. It was definitely his fault when he didn’t run for the door when he realized that that man was Bucky Barnes. It was not his fault for getting attached.

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Under a blanket of blue by Bill_Longbow for Juulna Tony is past the point of caring about having a soulmate or not. He has searched, failed, and bought the t shirt. Now, after New York, he has bigger concerns. But then a mystery assassin comes snooping around, turning his world upside down again.

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Bring me back (Home) by MassiveSpaceWren for a_salty_alto Tony couldn’t quite shake the feeling of being watched. The streets were empty, but the hairs on the back of his neck kept tingling. Every now and then, he could see a shadow pass over the gap of a building, or hear steps from above.

Whoever was up there was clearly after him and, if his experiences with this sort of thing so far were anything to go on, it probably wasn’t for a friendly chat.

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The Tide Comes Rushing In by JacarandaBanyan for endof_theline Tony has run away from home, and is living out of a backpack in California when he accidentally stumbles across a mermaid with his name written on it’s arm.

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Drowning Without You by whenfairieshelp for slippin_into_darkness Mermaid!AU for WinterIron SpringFling 2018. A colorful mermaid!AU because who doesn’t like mermaids.

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The Arrangement by Goda for Potrix For the prompt: Werewolf AU. Steve and Howard are alpha wolves of neighbouring territories, both facing difficulties; human threats, other packs, Pierce/HYDRA, dwindling food supplies, something else. They decide that an allegiance between their two packs is the only chance they have to survive, and, traditionally, an allegiance is made by marrying the oldest children of the respective alphas. Howard offers Tony, his only son, and Steve, having no children of his own/only very young children (with Peggy?), offers his childhood friend, Bucky. Neither Bucky nor Tony are particularly thrilled, at least at first. (Preferably not set in medieval/old times. Modern werewolves ftw!)

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Forgiveness (is earned) by AngeNoir for camichats After Obie, and his kidnapping, Tony shouldn’t be surprised he’s a bad judge of character.

Still, sleeping with someone who turned out to be a reporter, someone who spilled personal information onto the pages of the local newspaper for his fifteen minutes of fame…

Tony hadn’t realized he was that bad at judging people’s character.

Still, how did that saying go? Fool me once, shame on you… Tony’s not going to give him another chance to fool him, no matter how persistent reporter James Barnes may be.

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1100 Degrees of Separation by blue_pointer for DreamcatchersDaughter Tony Stark is just your average wealthy boy genius who opened his own bakery instead of going into the family business in order to spite his father. Bucky is a middle-aged firefighter who desperately wants to start a family. With a man. Tony’s been fantasizing about Mr. March for 3 years. But what will Tony do when he finally meets him?

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Teenage Dream by Shi_Toyu for tarot_card When AIM had hit the Winter Soldier with some sort of de-aging ray (Tony was still taking it apart and examining it in his lab) it had apparently been intended to reduce him to a toddler or somewhere thereabouts. Instead, the super serum running through his veins had somehow counteracted the machine enough to leave Bucky in an uncomfortably barely-legal state. Uncomfortable not because he was at least self-sufficient and retained an array of combat skills, but because it was also the exact same Bucky Tony had spent his formative years jerking off to.

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Hide Your Face, Hold My Heart by Shi_Toyu for MassiveSpaceWren Bucky had learned early on that life had a way of going to shit on very short notice. As a kid, that had meant running around and goofing off with Stevie only for an asthma attack to come out of seemingly nowhere. During the war, it meant creeping through the wilderness or a town or a base only for bullets to start flying. One minute you could be fighting back to back with your best friend, the next you could be falling to the bottom of a snowy chasm. That was just life.

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Can’t Help But Worry About You by a_salty_alto for TheVagabondBoy It wouldn’t be fair to take his frustrations out on the others anyway. It’s not like they knew.

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gene silencing by operationhades for Zola9612 GENE SILENCING: noun - the process(es) whereby certain genes in the genome are prevented from being expressed by chemical modifications and other means.

After a run in with AIM, Tony Stark finds himself once more changed. This time though, Bucky’s there to help him, to help him come to terms with his new body, and, apparently, to help the team as a whole heal from the rifts created from past mistakes. Thank god for FRIDAY, then.

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His Omega by Gothic_Lolita for phantomas Bucky is a werewolf in secret, working with a team of werewolf hunters. He hides from his closest friends and himself. But when an alpha of a pack Bucky’s supposed to be hunted declares Bucky as his, things get just a bit more complicated.

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Who We Weren’t by marsmaywander for Niki So Tony’s lost some memories? Bucky can relate.

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Wait and See (if it’s the best you ever had) by Politzania for Gothic_Lolita To celebrate him finding a full time job after a rough patch, Bucky Barnes’ friends – Steve and Sam – take him to a burlesque show. Antonio, (who may or may not be a drag king), catches Bucky’s eye, and vice versa. Bucky also strikes up a friendship with Ton-E, a possibly-genderfluid barista working at the 24-hr coffee shop in the lobby of Stark Industries, where Bucky now works. Will he be able to choose between one or the other?

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Just because something works, doesn’t mean that it cannot be improved by tringic for ezazahaz Shuri refuses to let Tony mess with her designs for Bucky’s new arm. This is her white boy to fix, and she’ll damn well do it right. Tony Stark can take his overprotective non-arguments somewhere else.

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I’m not a half, but you make me whole by Menatiera for its_inherited Tony has a hard time focusing on anything when Bucky Barnes is around. Suddenly having two Barneses - happy and dandy, charming human and broody, metal-armed supersoldier - didn’t help the matter. Not at all.

And then there’s a mysterious Valentine’s Day card in Tony’s workshop.

Or: Tony’s year from January to May, including a new teammate, some special dates, and lots of love.

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Family Dinner by tarot_card for starsandsupernovae Tony and Bucky are idiots hopelessly in love with each other. They’re also completely unaware that it’s mutual.

Steve and Sarah are sick of it.

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the most undefinable yet paradoxical of things by Fluffypanda for Forlorn Kumquat Bucky Barnes falls right out of 1945 into 2007 - and Tony Stark’s car.

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Silver Scraps by iCheat for Grovehove JB Barnes owns a business. SI want to buy him out and shut them down. His old friend Capt Ed Jarvis asked him to give a summer job to one Tony Carbonell . He can’t shake the feeling that he knows the kid, but its’ drowned out by the unwilling attraction between them.

Bucky had to deal with attacks on his business; daily harassment from SI lawyers: resisting a snarky sexy genius college kid, so he doesn’t get shot by Jarvis. ( No super powers Not Canon compliant)

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Interruptions by Breyito for IronEyes When Tony suddenly finds a coffee and a note waiting for him one morning, he thinks it’s cute. When it starts happening every morning, he gets curious. And JARVIS won’t help him, so…

What is an Omega to do, except hire a former assasin/spy to help him out?

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I Am Aching Now, To Let You In by Stark-N-Barnes for kenshincha When Bucky Barnes is assigned undercover as Tony Stark’s new PA, the last thing he expects to happen is falling for him in the process. He doesn’t expect the heartache that it would bring either.

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A Love That Lasts Forever by endof_theline for Goda When a damaged Phoenix comes to a Werewolf and a Vampire for tattoos to cover up some scars and maybe he finds a family along the way…

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Yield by Reioka for Breyito All Bucky has ever wanted was to win the contest for Tony’s hand in marriage. It’s a bit harder now that he’s down to one arm, but luckily his friends are willing to help make up the difference.

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The Billionaire and the Bodyguard by Forlorn Kumquat for Cee_Jaii Tony doesn’t need a bodyguard, okay? He can take care of himself just fine. Now if he can just convince everyone else - including the handsome new bodyguard.

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Hey, Read My Lips! by plirio for badgerling “But I think–It was so much easier before,” Barnes finishes, obviously upset. “A gesture, an introduction, an invitation, a dance. Now it’s all texting and messaging, and codes I don’t even– I knew how to– It’s so frustrating!”

Tony has– feelings-like things inside him for Bucky. Everyone makes fun of Steve - out of love, really. And Bucky needs advice.

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Room 154 by Briz for Bill_Longbow The the night shift was peaceful and quiet, and Bucky liked it that way.

Too bad the patient on room 154 didn’t get the memo and took it upon himself to spoil his night by pressing the damn nurse call button every fifteen minutes since midnight.

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Game of Love and Chance by EchoSiriusRumme for plirio After sharing his worries about the man he’s supposed to marry, Tony’s guard Clint comes up with an ingenious plan to switch places with him, so that he could observe this James fellow from the background. The Prince’s own servant, Steve, arrives first, claiming the Prince is running late, and the two get to talking in the meantime. When Tony and this tall, dark and handsome man hit it off instantly, Tony may or may not be reconsidering this whole arranged marriage deal.

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Silver and Gold by its_inherited for beir It was a good day.

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Her name was Betsy by Cee_Jaii for Arboreal How two men, who did not know what exactly they were, seduced each other. With a motorcycle.

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Baby Winter Soldiers and Jealous Spiderlings by AlienPsycho for tarot_card The Prompt “de-aged” Bucky - only whatever was used to de-age him, because of his super-soldier serum, brought him back to his 20- something self from the 30s/40s. And young, not brain-washed Bucky sees Tony, and turns into his young, charming, flirty self.

From Peter Parker’s point of view. Brief, and not very detailed. He doesn’t like the idea of sharing his father figure/mentor.

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A Second Chance by kenshincha for marsmaywander While Tony tries to figure out why Bucky hit a roadblock in his treatment with the BARF, they end up stranded with Bucky’s arm damaged.

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Is It Starkbucks or Snarkbucks? by slippin_into_darkness for Reioka Tony puns it up whenever he sees his favorite barista. Bucky is having none of it.

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Mend (Our Brokenness) by Juulna for siyuttov Written for the prompt: Post-WS, Bucky gets his memories back fairly quickly because of the serum, and then commits himself to doing what he can to make up for what Hydra made him do. He starts with small things, draining Hydra bank accounts to pay off the student debt of his victim’s next of kin, scaring off abusive boyfriends of victim’s spouses, etc. Tony is the hardest one on his list, because what can he do to help a billionaire?

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Save Me A Dance by TheSopherfly for whenfairieshelp Pre!serum Steve and Bucky live together. One day, Steve brings a new friend home. Bucky is not prepared for that friend to be the cute guy who rejected him at a dance a few months ago.

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Trying Too Hard by Arboreal for pitifuis The Winter Soldier’s appearances were usually few and far between, which made it all the more confusing when suddenly Tony couldn’t seem to go a single day without setting the Winter Soldier off.

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Trust Falls by Niki for ZeeK Doctor Strange has a plan to tie Bucky Barnes to someone who can be trusted to never misuse the command words, someone who will always do right by him. The spell has side effects. It also chooses a person no one – including Tony himself – expected.

#winteriron spring fling #winteriron #tony stark #bucky barnes #gift list

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laikagohome · 7 years ago

Text

Introduction: This is an interview with the manga author Yoshida Takashi. The original article is here: http://mangaonweb.com/news/2018/01/27/448. There are some interesting opinions in it, so I decided to translate it.

If you asked which ebook people are talking about the most right now, there would probably be many people who would mention the name “Yaretakamo Iinkai.” It’s always up there on the sales rankings of each of the digital bookstores, its live drama adaptation begins on January 27th on Abema TV, people are always talking about it on the net whenever there’s a new chapter, and its paper publication is slated for a second printing -- just to name a few things it’s got going for it. It really is a major-level grand slam.

The reason for its success is, of course, how interesting it is. But that’s not all, there’s another unexpected hidden aspect to this work that deserves some attention. The creator of this work, Yoshida Takashi-san, actually manages the copyright of this work on his own and takes care of everything from the writing to the sales. The publication of “Yaretakamo Iinkai” isn’t exclusive to any magazine put out by a publisher. The creator publishes his works on each web platform independently and makes a living using the royalties he earns from them as a source of income. The only contract he’s signed with a publisher is for the paper edition of the work to distribute it to bookstores, but he manages the digital version, drama adaptation, and such all himself. He doesn’t have to deal with any restrictions and can create his works freely. In other words, the work is one that is produced in an almost completely indie style.

It’s quite rare for a creator to be able to make this a reality. If you consider all the ins and outs of the publicity and distribution for a work, the contract negotiations, production costs, etc., taking care of it all on your own would require an extraordinary amount of labor. A single creator standing against the world without that ever-critical factor -- the backing of a major company -- would face extreme difficulties.

Why did Yoshida-san choose a path filled with such hardships? What’s really going on behind the scenes? How was he able to parlay that into the success that he has now? Let’s hear what the man himself has to say.

“Yaretakamo Iinkai” Yoshida Takashi Special Interview

The Royalties from Digital Publications Exceeded 1 Million Yen per Month

The drama adaptation has begun airing, and now people are talking about “Yaretakamo Iinkai” even more, but it’s not being serialized in any particular magazine. It’s a comic that gets tweeted about pretty regularly, but there are also probably a lot of people who are wondering how the creator makes money. Could you tell us a bit about what’s actually going on and how that works?

Yoshida Takashi:

To begin with, there are four platforms that my work is published on. “cakes,” “note,” “PixivFANBOX,” and “Manga on Web.” The way things are structured on “cakes,” “note,” and “PixivFANBOX” is that you only get the royalties for your works that people buy on each of the sites. From those three sites combined, I make around 100,000 to 110,000 yen a month. “Manga on Web” is an online magazine. You can buy it in all of the domestic digital bookstores. The agreement there is that I make a fixed amount of money from it, the minimum publication fee, as well as royalties that correspond to the amount of sales that the magazine makes. If anything could be called a "manuscript fee," then that would probably be it.

And then there’s income that I make from the royalties on the paper tankoubon as well as the digital versions. The other day, I got the royalties from the digital books for the first time. It was over 1 million yen for a single month. I’m a bit anxious about what will happen to the taxes I’ll have to pay for next year, but it’d be great if it kept selling at this pace.

Making over 1 million yen in a month on one book is pretty amazing. If you were talking about royalties from a paper publication, that would be about the amount you’d make if you sold 15,000 copies. It’d be a dream to get that much every month. Why did you decide to make your money writing in this way anyway? Please tell us a bit about the circumstances of how you came to draw “Yareta Iinkai.”

Yoshida:

Well, it’s not like I intended to do things the way I’m doing them now from the very beginning. At the start, I was just going to try to do things like any regular mangaka. I did the normal assistant thing, sent in an entry for a newcomer’s award that a publisher was running, and my gag manga “Finland Saga (Sei)” got serialized in Morning Two, but that ended in 2011. The tankoubon didn’t seem to sell very well. After the series ended, I brought in the name for my next work to the Morning editorial department, but I couldn’t get it past them at all. Like, really… it was almost like they had tacitly decided they weren’t going to allow me to have another series (laugh.)

I had no other choice, so I took the rejected names and turned them into manuscripts and sent them all over the place for newcomer awards at other publishers and magazines. One of the shorts I included in those was “Yaretakamo Iinkai.” It got noticed in the newcomer's award for Shougakukan's Superior magazine, and received an honorable mention. That was in 2013, but I had actually written “Yaretakamo Iinkai” a long time ago before that. I was assigned an editor, and I wanted to write the second chapter of it, but the editor said that the material was only good for a oneshot and wouldn’t let me draw a follow-up. I drew another name on some other subject and brought it in, but that didn’t get greenlit either.

While I was doing all of that, another 2 years passed, and in the meantime, I continued to send out my manuscripts to other editorial departments and win awards for them. It was like I somehow ended up with an editor in each of the editorial departments. I started thinking, “I really can’t let this go on,” and that’s when I came up with the idea for my work named “Share Body.” I felt like I was onto something that was sort of new, so I drew three chapters worth of names and sent them around to all the editors that I’d met so far. That ended up catching the eyes of the editor at Spirits.

I Still Haven’t Read the Last Volume of “Share Body”

You didn’t get to writing “Yaretakamo Iinkai” right away, did you?

Yoshida:

That’s right. At the time, I still wanted to have a series in a commercial magazine. But that ended the worst way possible and was quite traumatic for me… The editor in charge of me at Spirits who read the name for “Share Body” said it was interesting and wanted to make it a series. I should’ve been happy about that, right? But they wanted to use it as the original story and have another mangaka draw it. Of course I wanted to draw it, since it was my own work, but none of the names I had drawn were going anywhere, and I really wanted to do a series. So, after agonizing over it, I ended up accepting that condition. Someone else did the art, the series began in September of 2015, the first tankoubon came out in January of 2016, and 5 days after it went on sale, they told us to end it. So I was out of a job by spring. My dream was over in an instant.

So after bringing in all those works to be evaluated all those times, you didn't even get to draw the series that you finally got. And it even got cancelled too. I can see how that might be traumatic.

Yoshida:

Around the time the 6th chapter got printed, the editor in charge said “It’s not doing well in the surveys, so redraw the name.” I’m the type of person who can’t draw when they’re pressured, so before the series started, I had drawn about 30 chapters worth of names ahead of time. Of course, I showed all of those to the editor, and they said it was good back then. Fixing the names was really difficult. For example, if I revised the 7th chapter, then I’d have to adjust the 23rd chapter as well, otherwise it’d be inconsistent. There were important scenes, and that’s why I’d drawn them, but when I explained that things wouldn’t make sense later if I changed them, the editor wouldn’t budge and kept going on about how the survey results were poor. Even when I brought up the fact that they’d said it was good before, they just said, “Well, it’s not.” You’d hope that if an editor said something was good, then they’d stick by it till the end.

Anyway, I couldn’t change something that I thought was already interesting into something that I found boring, so the editor and the artist came together and changed the story. The artist probably didn’t want to do something like that either -- and I don’t really want to badmouth anyone -- but I felt like if I were drawing the pictures myself in a situation with a deadline, then I could’ve at least forced my way and drawn what I’d wanted. The survey results just kept getting worse, and the series got cancelled.

In the later half of things, it was being produced in this inexplicable way where I was drawing the names for the original work, and the artist and editor would base things on that, change it, and draw the manga. Now that I think back on it, it’s a complete mockery of how to go about producing anything. We were making fools of the readers. After the name were getting changed, I couldn’t read the magazine it was being published anymore. I kept having nightmares about running people over in a car with a broken steering wheel.

From the second half of the second volume onward, it pretty much wasn’t based on what I wrote. I told them myself, “The 3rd volume isn’t really based on what I wrote, so please downgrade what I’m being credited for.” I thought that might convey to them how I felt about having the original work changed, but they replied, “Then it’s okay if we lower your percentage of the royalties, right?” So I got in a fight with them, saying, “That’s not what’s in the contract!” It was a total quagmire. In the end, I still haven’t read the last volume of “Share Body.”

I couldn’t forgive myself for releasing something that didn’t live up to my original intentions into the world, and more than anything, I had done something inexcusable to the readers. The experience was traumatic for me, and I decided not to trust the judgement of others.

I Decided on Four Things that I Would Not Give Up

You were now pretty far off from the “regular mangaka” that most people would imagine. So is that when you started to draw “Yaretakamo Iinkai” for real?

Yoshida:

No, I had already tried bringing everything I thought up, and my series failed, so there was no way left for me to do things. I started uploading my manga onto twitter. I’d upload a 20-page manga that got rejected at Morning, 1 or 2-page manga, 4-panel comics, and I had a tons of rejected names. At the time, I was doing this livestream once a month on Nico. I’d announce that I was going to go viral on the program and keep uploading my manga. Deep down, I did wonder if there was any point to it, but there wasn’t anything else I could do.

And then, around a half year later, because I was uploading stuff every day, eventually there were some things that’d get retweeted 5,000 or 10,000 times. People began taking a look at my older works from that, and it caught the attention of sites like Omokoro and net celebs like Yoppii-san. In September of 2016, “Yaretakamo Iinkai” saw the light of day.

Oh, finally! It’s easy enough to say, “I’m going to go viral in half a year,” but it’s another thing to be able to accomplish that when you have nothing to guarantee it. That’s amazing.

Yoshida:

It’s going to sound like I’m tooting my own horn a bit, but back then I really felt like I was working hard (laugh.) The first chapter hit around 200,000 views at the time. I got a flood of requests to turn it into a book right away. I think it was about 4 or 5 publishers that asked to publish it, but because “Share Body” was such a big failure, I decided to be quite careful with everything, right down to dealing with the editors. That’s when I decided there were four things that I would not give up. They were basically, “I would decide the title myself,” “I wouldn’t have any meetings about it,” “I would do the art myself,” and “I would manage the digital publication myself.” The first one may sound quite obvious, but when you get a publisher involved, the title reflects on their brand, so they make you change it often times. (Though I was able to decide the title for “Share Body.”)

The second item had to do with the same thing. There are a lot of editors that will meddle with the work, and there are a lot more people than you think who will be very heavy-handed when dealing with you because they feel like they’re the ones paying you. When I would go to meet them after they invited me to turn it into a book, they’d say, “Let’s have some meetings about this and make it together.” I turned them all down. They’d say things like, “I can come up with all sorts of ideas that could fit the story,” and go on about all these different plans they’d have, and I’d just listen to what they had to say with a smile, and then leave. I was asked if it was possible to participate in the selection process for the different episodes, but I even said no to that. It was pretty brazen of me, but my stance was, “You’re the ones that said you wanted to turn it into a book, so please just do that.”

I also wanted them to accept that I was going to do the art as something that was a given. The publisher was coming on board after the planning, so handing over the digital rights would be strange too.

That all makes sense, but it must’ve been a perilous path. I can’t imagine talks proceeded all that smoothly once you made your stance clear to the publishing companies. They probably felt like they were setting the stage to make the chances of profitability higher, and you were refusing to go along with it. Did they feel a bit like, “Why is this guy even meeting with us then?”

Yoshida:

I did get told with a sigh that they didn’t want to talk to me anymore about that sort (negotiations about the rights) of stuff (laugh.) They’d laugh and ask me, “What happened to you to make you feel this way?” “Yaretakamo Iinkai” was the first piece of work out of all the manga that I had drawn that I actually felt like was going well, so I didn’t want to change the system that I was using to produce it until it was over. The things I was asking for came from a place more of fear rather than desires. I didn’t want to have the work get messed up anymore.

You felt like you were cornered. Thinking about it normally, a company offering to publish your work would have you take down the stuff you had put up publicly on “note,” serialize it exclusively on their own media platforms or magazines, and want to sell tankoubon. Did the conversations ever turn into something like that? That’s usually the pattern of what happened to other manga that got popular on the net at least, which is why I think it’s truly impressive that you were able to present a different method of success.

Yoshida:

Naturally, I insisted on not taking down anything on the sites that I had already put up. I had all these people on the net reading my work, so what would be the point of taking it down? Even if you go viral, what you really need to value the most aren’t the publishers that will give you work but your readers.

When I see people tweeting, “My series is starting,” or, “My book is coming out,” and fans respond, “Congratulations,” I end up thinking, “It’s not worth getting that happy about,” because I got cancelled after a half a year. Delivering your work to the reader is the goal, and having a series or putting a book out is just one way to do that. I know I’m being mean about it, but it’s almost like people just want to do a series so they can tweet about how it’s about to start. Having the publisher validate you and starting your series… it feels real nice for a moment, but then they suddenly stop tweeting for a month, and you see they’re getting cancelled. The story ends in the middle of things, and they end up letting down all the readers they worked so hard to build up.

After that, the mangaka that had their series cancelled are regarded differently. They won’t let you do things by yourself next time. They’ll have you adapt someone else’s original work or pair you up with a different person to do the art. The mangaka could just part ways with the publisher at that point, but they think to themselves, “If I just listen to what I’m told, something good might happen,” so they follow the rules that get set for them. Whenever I see someone talented just doing whatever they’re told by the publisher and the original work they’re adapting is no good, I wonder why they’re doing that. Like, “They’re so talented, and it’s such a waste!”

Starting your series or putting out a book, it’s not really something to celebrate. You may not be able to see it with your eyes, but delivering a work to the readers is what you should be most happy about. Having a series or putting out a book isn’t even a completely effective way to deliver something to the readers nowadays.

Tweets Are like Dust or Pollen

If delivering something to the reader were established as the goal of the process, then the landscape of this scene should look different. It’s certainly true that just drawing whatever the publisher tells you to do won’t always lead to good results. Did you have some plan you’d concocted to succeed without joining up with a publisher though?

Yoshida:

Not at all (laugh.) It feels like it just ended up this way because I decided what I didn’t want to do, like it was a process of elimination. I went viral once, so I thought if I just quietly drew a volume's worth of material and sold a digital version, I’d probably make some money. Even if I didn’t make that much money, as long as it was enough for me to draw my next piece, that would be enough.

A big reason why other mangaka-san get fixated on the idea of a series probably has to do with getting paid a manuscript fee. I understand where they’re coming from too, but if I were aiming to become a mangaka with everything I know now, I’d draw the manga that I want in the way that I want while working a part-time job or something, and put out an ebook once a year. I probably wouldn’t sell anything at first, but I’d polish my skills while seeing what works through trial and error, and then when someone comes across my work and it goes viral, I’d sign a contract that would be advantageous for me with the publisher. That’s the method I might choose to pursue. You can still dream like that.

Futabasha, the publisher that put out the tankoubon, didn’t pay a manuscript fee, but they were okay with me keeping the works I had up on “note,” “cakes,” and “Manga on Web,” gave me the freedom to put out a digital edition, and allowed me to have creator control over any application of it for derivative works, such as movie adaptations and the like. If I had made it my goal to put out a paper book, I don’t think it would’ve turned out this way.

After hearing everything that you’ve said, I can see that you have a deeply rooted distrust of the publishing companies at your core. But at the same time, although you make use of the internet and social networks in a very proactive way, there’s also this sort of vibe that you don’t believe they’re completely awesome either. It feels like the existence of the net was indispensable for the success of the work. You could even say that the success of “Yaretakamo Iinkai” was only possible because someone famous on the net picked up on it. How do you feel about that?

Yoshida:

I was honestly thankful that they were spreading it around the net. But it didn’t really change anything about my fundamental distrust in others. I might need some counseling or something (laugh.) It’s obvious, but it’s not like I think that everyone at the publishing companies are evil and everyone on the net is good. People who work in marketing or other internet-related fields are always looking for the next big thing that people will be talking about, and are incredibly fickle, so I’m trying to remember to not get consumed by that.

Also, people in IT can create places and spaces for manga (manga sites and applications,) but they can’t actually create the content itself. They can only make the restaurants and plates; they aren’t cooks. There are tons of sites out there with someone famous supervising but no views or ones with views but no monetization system in place. There are more apps and sites now, and the places you can draw manga have exploded in number, but the creator has to be careful and needs the power to carefully examine the place where they’re going to serialize their work.

If all you do is believe in the word “serialization,” you’re going to get turned into a dancing bear to attract attention. And you might even be made to do your jig in front of an empty audience. You want to at least have an audience if you’re going to be a dancing bear.

It’s true that there’s this idea of people who work in internet-related fields swarming around something in a flash, eating all they can, and then leaving. It’s common for new services to pop up one after another, and then disappear. They all seem very transitory.

Yoshida:

I was contacted by someone working for a certain application, asking me if I wanted to put my work on it. When I went to meet that person, they kept on saying things like, “You should do it now,” “It’s now or never,” “If you do it now, it’ll definitely do well.” They just kept saying the word “now” over and over. I said to them, “It’s true that “Yaretakamo Iinkai” might just be a flash in the pan, but you don’t really have to be so blunt about it, do you?” They responded, “Sorry, that’s not what I was trying to say. Please consider putting it on our service…” The conversation didn’t go anywhere. They were trying to make things go viral in the now, and I was wanted to continue drawing manga for the long haul. It got me feeling like our sensibilities were pretty different.

Recently, I’ve gotten quite skeptical of people who approach others just because they get a lot of retweets or have a lot of followers and ask them if they want to put out a book. Numbers make things easy to distinguish, so people tend to see retweet counts and follower numbers as having some value, but is it really okay for professional editors to be trusting them?

Are you talking about how editors are starting to resemble people who work in internet-related fields?

Yoshida:

They have, haven’t they. An editor I met the other day said to me, “I found this promising creator recently with around 6,000 followers. It’s my job to turn that number into 30,000,” and I was like, “Seriously?” Apparently there’s some data that came out that said if you have 30,000 followers, 1 in 10 or 1 in 20 will buy the book. I don’t think you can really believe in any of that, but they were telling me all this sort of proudly, so I started thinking, “What’s with this guy? I really shouldn’t trust him! I can’t trust him!!” (laugh.) I think everyone’s reacting too much to numbers. I mean, we’re not dogs here.

It would be simple if all you were trying to do was get people to clap their hands together and tell you it’s good, but you need some sort of action to get people to open up their wallets and give you their money. I think the act of pushing a “like” button is about as minor as patting the head of a Jizou statue. No matter how much something gets posted on the web, when it comes to which ebooks are selling, it’s always “One Piece” or “Shingeki no Kyojin” or “Dungeon Meshi.” Twitter has nothing to do with it. I think tweets are like dust or pollen. The lighter the dust is, the further it can fly, but nobody is going to remember what was flitting around last year.

I think that something a person will pay for might need to have a certain kind of weight to it. I believe that it’s not about likes or retweets, but rather that it’s important the person who put down the money for it feels like they bought something worthwhile and will want to buy it again.

The reason why books aren’t selling has nothing to do with people reading less manga, pirate manga sites, the internet, the end of paper publishers, or ebooks.

The people who determine that lightness or weight are supposed to be the professional editors, but are you saying that’s not really the case anymore?

Yoshida:

I think so. There’s this negative current of completely trusting in fabricated numbers the worse that books sell. There’s been some recent news about how “comico” has been driving down the price they’re paying for manuscripts (though “comico” denies that to be true) and that manga tankoubon sales are half of what they used to be in the heyday of manga.

I think the two are connected. Around 2013, IT enterprises like “comico,” “LINE manga,” “GAMMA,” “Mangabox,” etc., came into the manga marketplace with ample amounts of funding. But fast forward 4 years, and I don’t think they’ve made much money. As for why, it’s because they’re using a business model where they depend on selling paper tankoubon to make money. If they could come up with a single “Shingeki no Kyojin,” then they could make it all back, but it’s not going well. Why isn’t it going well? Because tankoubon aren’t selling. And why is that? I think it’s because the number of publications have increased too much.

IT companies enter the market, comics increase, as if in opposition to this, the publishing companies make their own manga sites and applications and create even more content, they cut down on the page count to increase the numbers of volumes, and the result of that now is that the comic corner at bookstores are in complete disorder. I think it’s too much of a pain for readers to choose, so they just don’t buy manga anymore.

It’s like when a non-native creature is introduced to a pond and it ruins the ecosystem. The water gets muddy and people don’t want to approach it. They don’t know what’s interesting anymore. There are even too many books that recommend manga like “Kono Manga ga Sugoi,” “Manga Taishou,” or “Kono Manga wo Yome.”

In my opinion, the reason why books aren’t selling has nothing to do with people reading less manga, pirate manga sites, the internet, the end of paper publishers, or ebooks.

Mangaka are drawing manga that suit their editors, editors are trying to proceed with projects that suit the editor-in-chief, and IT companies are trying to hit it big on a single jackpot manga. This is the natural result of nobody paying attention to the reader.

If the market goes back to being healthy, I think that manga will start to sell again. It’s not like you can drain all the water out of the pond though, so it’s pretty tough. I don’t think you can expect much from paper tankoubon until the water is clean again. The ones that have it the worse here are the people running the bookstores. But I believe that the ones that do a good job of selecting what they carry will be able to survive.

Right now, I have the good luck of being able to just focus on the reader and draw my manga. There’s no greater joy than that.

(My Own) Commentary:

At https://note.mu/shuho_sato/n/n657d9e19f18f, there are some additional notes on this article written in a blog post by Shuuhou Satou. If you’re familiar with some of the details of Shuuhou Satou and Yoshida Takashi, then the interview would’ve come off as maybe slightly disingenuous. The mangaka that Yoshida Takashi was an assistant to was Shuuhou Satou, and Shuuhou Satou runs “Manga on Web.” Shuuhou Satou is a very vocal person about these issues (publisher vs creator rights, digital publications, etc.) and even manages a consulting service for mangaka contracts as well as a ebook distribution consulting service (Densho Bato.) In the blog post Shuuhou Satou confirms that the interview was meant to help a bit with the sales promotion and that Yoshida Takashi did go through his service with his ebook. He talks a bit about the perceived success of the article in boosting its position on Kindle’s comic ranking, but there are some more interesting points that he makes. One of them is that he made sure to not include his own name in the interview (though he was the one who authored and conducted it.) For anyone not familiar with the history, it probably doesn’t make a difference, but if you do know who he is, then it comes off as a bit underhanded. I think a lot of the things Shuuhou says are interesting, even if I don’t particularly think his comics are. Not putting that out there upfront for the reader when the interview is going to touch on the issues he’s known for getting into just makes Yoshida seem more like a parrot than his own person. It should be noted that Shuuhou and the people that he represents are really among the most successful in terms of making money off digital distribution, but Shuuhou is also pouring tons of money back into marketing and promotion.

Also, some of the numbers that they mention people talking about always strike me as a little humorous. At the moment I’m writing this, Yoshida has about 7,000 followers on twitter, and Shuuhou has about 10,000. Most of the retweets for the interview come from someone else’s account. Many of the authors that I enjoy reading and follow have lower numbers or no twitter account at all. That makes the editor’s comment about getting an author’s follower count to 30,000 pretty funny. In context, with the “data” that was getting mentioned, you’d move 3,000 units at best, which is close to the minimum of what you’d want to make profitability feasible on a tank’s print run.

Regarding the comments Yoshida makes about the marketplace currently, I do think there’s a lot of shit in the water, but I also think it’s worth mentioning that this shakeup also allowed for the existence and development of manga sites like Torch (Leed) and Mavo. I never would’ve expected the publisher that puts out Comic Ran, a magazine that is basically all samurai comics, to be behind something as forward-thinking as Torch. Shuuhou’s own Manga on Web is also one that was built in the muddied environment, though Manga on Web has been running in the red just like all of those other IT based sites. It’s not as though editors at paper publishers were making amazing decisions all the time prior to this marketplace flooding either. They may not have been looking at follower counts, but they definitely were stressing sales numbers, and a lot of them went with veterans that drew crap that sold rather than developing and fostering younger authors. At least in this environment, younger authors have some places online to put work up when niche magazines are getting shuttered, even if they’re all working side jobs at the same time. For the general consumer, it may be too confusing to choose, but for someone who will invest their time into finding works they want to read themselves, it’s not the chaotic environment he makes it out to be.

As for “Yaretakamo Iinkai,” you can actually read some of it in English “officially” on pixiv at https://www.pixiv.net/user/3130738/series/22797. My personal opinion of it is that… I’d rather read this than Shuuhou’s comics :T

#translation #manga #shuuhou satou #yoshida takashi

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hidden-otaku-stuff · 4 years ago

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(1) Hello I am back!! I'm sorry it's been long, these past couple of weeks have had me swamped with homework :( and yet I still didn't do it all 🤡 also get ready for a bunch of messages because 1.) responses and 2.) my thoughts on Lockscreens. Spoiler: I am Emotional haha. Aww, thank you :') I used to think it was weird to give yourselves nicknames but I'm past that now haha. Another one I go by sometimes is "Lizard" because I stick my tongue out a lot when I'm talking??

(2) and people think I'm cold blooded because I get really cold easily and like to bask in the sun. I mostly just did traditonal sketches and a lot of screencap redraws. I want to get into art again, but I'm taking it slow for now and focusing more on my writing. And I feel that too LOL. I'm going to start a blog dedicated to reblogging x reader fics that I like because I'm too embarrassed to do so on my main blog (I tell all of your followers 🤡)

hey Honeymoon! as long as you’re taking care of yourself, that’s all I care about 💞 i’m gonna post my responses into two parts. a Lockscreens segment after you send in the rest of your thoughts and a get-to-know-you part for now!

(also I’M FROM CA TOO AND WHY ON EARTH ARE YOU SENDING ME MESSAGES AT 3AM OML)

ngl, i feel like the best person to give you a nickname is yourself! i jokingly gave myself the nickname ‘Daddy’ and that’s literally become my “rave” personality LMAO. but i can understand why some people think it’s weird 🤷 honestly lizard is a bad-ass nickname !! i’m the same way - being in the cold makes me sooo sleepy and i’d rather bask in the sun 😂

i’d love to see your artwork or writing sometime! please feel free to send it over 🥰

(3) Honestly even with all my issues it's kind of nice being a hopeless romantic! Like you said it gives me the chance to day dream haha. Maybe I have my head in the clouds a lot but sometimes it's nice to be there. There's so many, but I think it's a tie between enemies to lovers and friends to lovers. I love the drama and comedy from the former but I'm so Soft for the latter, and that's highkey how I want my relationship to start.

(4) I think building that bond with someone before you even start dating them is really sweet, and having that connection by the time you commit to each other is 💓 I'm sorry you've been having writers block, that's the worst :( if it helps, the past two chapters have turned out amazing, I love them so much!! I think the closest I got to hardcore shipping something that wasn't canon was RinHaru? But there was also a lot of tension and affection in their relationship so I could see it being canon

there’s nothing wrong with having dreams! just so long as you can ground yourself at the end of the day.

enemies to lovers is always the funniest for me to read TBH. because it’s such an inevitable cliche haha. friends to lovers though -- oooo my heart.

the best relationships start with friendship. it’s the most authentic imo. like for me, it’s exhausting bearing my heart open to new people each time i want to get involved with someone romantically. but having someone who already knows you inside out??? swoon. what about a trope you dislike?

ah tyty, i’m glad you enjoyed them! the writers’ block wasn’t too bad for these chapters. i’ve had them typed up for a few weeks now :’)

rinharu is so cute though! but Harukoto (or whatever the ship name is tbh) is super cute too. but maybe i just really like the best friend to lovers trope LMAO

(5) I just looked at their insta and !!!!!!!!!! that's so cute! I like bokuaka but I've never looked into it as much as others, but their art made me have Feelings lol. I think that is a good view to have on family tbh. I've developed a relationship with my blood family and we're close, but there's something special about the relationships and love you have for people you choose to stay with. I love Tiana!! I think she's a really underrated Disney character :(

(6) She really encompasses Disney's message of working hard to achieve your dreams, and she's a strong, independent woman without being closed off and rejecting her feelings. I think it's so cute and cool that she had that much of an impact on you :D Oof, I get that 💀. Men are gross 🤢 I don't get it very often because I live in SoCal and tbh to a lot of other people brown just equals mexican lol. They're right but I really don't look full mexican. Portuguese and Islander people can tell though

bokuaka art makes me have ~ feelings ~ i also really like @/liann1009 and @/maddox_rider on IG! (tbh idk if they have a tumblr whoops) liann1009 does a lot of OiHina whereas maddox_rider does bokuaka which is ridiculously cute too 🥰

DUDE OMG YES!!! Tiana and Kita (from Atlantis) are under-rated QUEENS who deserved better!! we need representation out here in this b*tch!!!

idek why, but some people think i look hispanic 🙃 but yes bby, men are gross and should be better!! i have yet to meet a man who deserves to stand on equal ground to me, imma be real. (2d men don’t count but y’know). does it bother you when people mistake your ethnicity?

(7) Thank you!! Ngl it's kind of scary wondering about what the industry is going to be like because I'm sure I will run into a lot of biased people and sources, but learning to navigate that is just part of the job. Of course there's people who will read biased sources and attack you too, but you can't always escape those people :/ and thank you love, you're so sweet 💕 That's really admirable! It takes a lot of work and creativity to start a business, I'm sure you'll be successful 😊

(8) what kind were you thinking of? and psych is super cool too! Having that understanding of people and the world can be really eye opening and fun :D It's okay, he was one of my favorite teachers but looking back he was an asshole. He had his good/funny moments and did a lot for me, but he also abused some of editors in my journalism class, and some friends of mine :/ He wouldn't appreciate their work, sometimes insult them, and even encouraged my friend to not sleep for the sake of the paper

i’m positive that you’ll do just fine once you get out there! it seems like you have a pretty thick skin :)

i really wanted to open a business to help support under-represented groups receive an education - with major focus on minority groups such as orphans/foster children, veterans, and the homeless. there’s so much logistics that tbh i’m too ~stressed~ to think about so i’m tabling that for awhile :’)

bruhhh fuck that teacher. drop his addy, i just wanna talk real q 💞 if you can’t support all of your students, then there is no point in being a professor!! there is literally 0 reason to be rude when you’re in a position of power, especially when it involves someone’s passion, career, and/or education.

(9) I just remembered that there's a limit to how many asks you can send in a certain amount of time so if these suddenly stop I'm sorry! I'll come back when I can haha. I wouldn't say I'm all that great tbh, but I'm proud of a lot of my works LOL. My favorite part about it is using makeup and tools to just turn into something else. Wounds are always fun, but making yourself a gargoyle or some other creature is what makes it so interesting to me.

(11) I'm OBSESSED with the makeup and costumes from LOTR. It's my biggest inspiration. I can go on about it haha. That's so cool!! Being a part of the whole production, especially all sides to it, sounds so fun. Do you have any favorite memories from your time in high school? I'd love to hear them if you have any :O Confession: I have never seen any of those asdfkljvk. I know I really should though and it's on my to do list ! I've heard really great things about all of them !

imma be real, i didnt know there was a limits on asks LMAO. i did hear that they sometimes get eaten though, so i really hope that doesn’t happen 😅

we all start somewhere. your first step will never look like someone else’s, nor should it. as long as it’s something that you can look back upon and be proud of and know that you’ve grown from, that’s all that matters!

just imagining someone using makeup to turn themselves into a gargoyle has my head spinning 🤣 like ya girl can barely do her eye-makeup, let alone anything as intense as that! what’s been the most difficult project?

DUDE, I LOVE MEDIEVAL-HISTORICAL WORKS! like the dresses from that Mary from Reign wears has my heart so softtttt. dfsnosdf. please!! tell me some of your fav things about LOTR 💖

omg high-school was so long ago, i don’t think i have any favorite memories from it 🙃 i think the opening night of a production would be the best. listening to the audiences reactions as the performers left their hearts on-stage, seeing all the pieces fall together, that was always absolutely incredible. wbu, what did you enjoy about hs?

i have very strong opinions on those musicals LMAO. i can talk about them forever 🤩

#skye's asks #firebonbon

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yukipri · 7 years ago

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I never experienced art theft until one of my works became unexpectedly popular- since then, I've found my work reposted, redrawn, and used as reference for cosplays. It's been exhausting, both seeing it, and not knowing WHERE I should stand on the issue. I've let redraws slide (with credit), but I plan on not allowing future ones from occurring. How do you deal with art theft? How do you continue drawing without thinking about the disrespect thrown at you during bad/failed confrontations?

I am so, so incredibly sorry this happened to you, and empathize very strongly with you. Art theft SUCKS, few things can be quite as demotivating as a creator than having something you’ve worked your ass off on swiped by someone else. And unfortunately, given the current internet culture, if you continue as an online artist it’s inevitable that it’ll happen at one point or another.

Because sure, of course part of the reason why we create is because we want to, but a large part of the motivation for sharing it is to hopefully get some response that people like it, whether it be in the form of likes, reblogs, comments, asks, tags, or anything else. That is the tangible PROOF that our work touched someone, and for someone who put in zero effort and has no idea how we felt while creating to receive all of that instead of us…sucks.

I think where you stand on the issue is up to you, and it’s okay for it to change. YOU always have the right to decide how you’re comfortable with people sharing your art, and your feelings are valid regardless of how they change.

Ironically enough, I just had another art theft on Instagram (my Anniversary post) super recently, so I was like HAH when I got this orz

This rant got a bit long, so the rest beneath cut but here’s a rundown about how my feelings towards art theft have evolved over the years.

For example, over the years I’ve gotten much, MUCH stricter. My earliest online art, I just put it up, no url, oftentimes no signature, no warnings in the comments or my blog bio. Admittedly I was starting out and didn’t have much viewers anyway, but the point was I still had Trust at the time.

Then the art thefts began. I started adding my url to all my illustrations, even if it was just small in the corner, as this’d let people at least find my website. Most people are too lazy to type out a url though, and I’ve seen people asking “Who drew this??” on art theft comments EVEN WHEN THE URL IS LITERALLY RIGHT THERE…

And then people started cropping my watermarks. I made my url bigger, and started adding an additional “DO NOT REPOST” to the image itself. I used to allow reposts with credits on platforms I’m not on, like fb, until I realized that people were then reposting from THOSE communities without credit and putting them into their videos and fics and I just…decided it wasn’t worth it.

I switched to no reposts PERIOD. I have lengthy disclaimers on all of my art that leads to an even lengthier FAQ post that, should people wish to look, leads to even an even more detailed post about WHY art theft sucks, as I’m explaining now.

(EDIT: ALSO, reduce the quality of the images you upload, and NEVER upload the full resolution, and try to keep you unmerged original files. This is for several reasons: no matter how much an art thief reposts your work, they’ll never have access to the higher resolution, and if they ever decide to try to print to sell for profit it’ll be shitty quality compared to anything you make with the original. ALSO, you having the maximum resolution with no watermarking with additional unmerged psd files will be proof that you are the true creator should you need to prove it, which I’ve heard is sometimes necessary to show when your art is stolen at say, an artist alley)

I also used to bother trying to talk to art reposters. I’d comment on the post, try to send messages, etc. It’s fucking exhausting, and while there are some exceptions, the VAST majority of art thiefs will feel attacked and immediately get rude and defensive. (the failed confrontations and disrespect you mentioned orz) If it’s a large community, they may even try to gang up on you. I’ve unfortunately experienced this most frequently in communities centered around other languages (mainly Spanish) because of different mainstream attitudes towards art reposting etiquette combined with a language barrier.

You will, and no doubt already have, encountered people who will argue with you, like the people I describe above. “You should be grateful for the bigger audience!” “We just want to appreciate your art, how can you be so horrible?” “We’re all fans together!” “This is fanart and doesn’t belong to you anyway!” Etc. etc. etc. It’s exhausting, it’s repetitive, it’s neverending, and you already felt awful before it even began and the stress just continues to build.

So I personally have just begun reporting people, if the service allows it. Use DMCA takedown request forms (and YES, even if it’s fanart it’s still yours if you drew it). This is stressful too because it sends your real name + info to the reposter (and wow I clearly can’t trust these people to begin with, why would I want them to have that???) but most sites (facebook, instagram, certainly tumblr, twitter) are very efficient and responsive, and in the end the relief of receiving that email that the art has been taken down is worth it. Especially with facebook, they also send a scary official warning email to the reposters which I sincerely hope will help educate them and discourage future art thefts.

I try to avoid posting public urls because yes I’m aware how mob mentality Tumblr can get, but sometimes it’s just too much. There’s no convenient form of getting my content removed (perhaps bc it’s in a compilation with a ton of other content), or for some reason my attempts to communicate have failed. In those times I have occasionally asked my followers to help, with a reminder to PLEASE always be polite and respectful, regardless of the offense. Y’all have been amazing, and this has saved me many nights of crying in the past.

I will sometimes also write lengthy posts (like this one!) to help educate. Because I do feel that art theft will continue so long as people don’t understand what it does to artists, and it’s up to the community as a whole to make that change, which also depends heavily on the consumers not just creators. A lot of art theft really isn’t intentionally meant to harm, but IS super ignorant.

But in the end, all I’ve ranted about so far is how I’ve dealt with actually removing/dealing with the shit. But the emotional pain, it builds. Sometimes, when it’s too frequent and the stolen art gets way more attention than my original that I worked my ass off on that basically flunked on my own platforms, I feel a bit of me break.

And in the end, it’s up to you what that threshold is, where posting art and feeling good about it is overwhelmed by the pain, fear, and anxiety of art theft. I’ve crossed my own threshold too many times, and once had to take an art hiatus because of it (fandom was BH6). This lead to a break in my productivity and motivation and my eventual complete departure form the fandom. I’ve seen many other artists just stop posting art entirely or moving everything to private. It’s terrible, but my feelings are with these artists, and I feel so, so sorry that they were hurt so much to the extent they had to do this.

With my current fandom and followers, I feel that regardless of how niche an audience my content tends to be geared for, I have a community that is really satisfying for me to create for, one that is responsive to me and gives me tons of feedback. This is the number one reason why i continue to feel motivated to post a ton of online content despite the risks.

The takeaway form this long meandering post: Posting online is a hobby, it’s for fun, and I don’t make any money off my public audience (unless they come to Patreon! LOL!), so I’m a firm believer that once the anxiety + misery starts outweighing anything positive you personally may get from sharing online, which for me heavily depends on my audience and their responsiveness, there’s no reason to subject yourself to that anymore and you are in no way obligated to stay. There are various methods to more efficiently get rid of art thefts without dealing with them in person which is stressful AF, and also ways of marking up your content in ways that may look less aesthetically pleasing, but will hopefully discourage art thefts, and at the very least give them very little leg to stand on should they do it anyway. How forgiving you are in art thefts also depends on you, but the more forgiving you are, the more it can get away from you. And in the end, YOU as a human are more important than any complaints about art looking less pleasing or the feelings of art thefts who don’t get to do what they want with YOUR hard work.

Sorry this was so disjointed and literally just me spewing at you, but I hope some of it was helpful ^ ^; Please let me know if I can give you any other advice, and I’m sorry again that you have to deal with this ;_;

(and to respond to your second ask, I do try to respond to most of my asks, but sometimes it takes a while (sometimes even months orz), especially if it’s one that requires a lengthy detailed answer like this one ^ ^; thank you for your patience!)

#YukiPri replies #Anonymous #art theft #I hope this was helpful ^ ^;#started getting really distressed myself writing this haha #in general i'm okay with my art getting little to no attention #i just asked that i don't get hurt for the trouble of posting which i feel should be fair #and sometime yeah it does get to be too much #hopefully won't happen in the near future for this fandom but #we'll see sigh #another reason i like drawing niche hyper specific content LOL #fewer people tend to want to reblog/share it #but fewer reposters are also interested in it haha #long post #longpost

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