#redraw of that one official art bc i think about it a lot

[melthlyn]

[ajora]

I never played ff5 but ngl I kind of want you to answer ALL the questions on that meme because I like hearing your thoughts about it. (and faris for the character part, because hm. yes. butch lesbian pirate. I can dig this. and your otp for the ship part, obviously.)

Oh boy, settle in because this’ll be looong.

So, for everyone else: warning: this talks about being nb/butch, a taboo ship, and spoilers for FF5.

001 | Send me a fandom and I will tell you my:

Favorite character: Toss-up between Faris and Lenna.

Least Favorite character: I don’t actually hate him because his recurring crossover character status is hilarious and he’s got great theme music, but, Gilgamesh. His final words to Faris ( 恋でもして　ちったあ　女らしくなりな | essentially: go fall in love, then you’ll become more feminine) always rubbed me wrong. The love that defines her is the love she has for Lenna, even if you don’t interpret it as romantic love, and her love should never force her to become what she’s not. 

5 Favorite ships (canon or non-canon): Honestly, just Faris/Lenna. I’m chill with other people shipping other ships, but farilenna is my forever ship.

Character I find most attractive: I overrelate to Faris and Lenna is exactly my type. Gosh, but her squeak in DFFOO is adorable.

Character I would marry: I mean, I have a girlfriend I intend to marry, but Lenna would be a nice second option.

Character I would be best friends with: I’d probably get along with all of them, but realistically Butz is just the kind of no-commitment, independent friend I get along best with

a random thought: After the DFFOO event with Butz giving everything that makes him him to his dark world clone, I unironically want to redraw a SUF screenshot with someone taking Connie’s place to say that the only one who hasn’t had Steven Butz is Steven Butz. Largely because Butz shunts his personal feelings to the side to be the supportive friend and teen girl escort everyone needs.

An unpopular opinion: The GBA localization is great, but it’s not an accurate translation and sacrifices accuracy for the lulz. Which is fine!

My Canon OTP: I’mma reach and say Amano drew my otp holding each other on official art that got plastered everywhere in Japanese GBA-release media, so that totes counts as official, right? It’s the same argument the Butz/Lenna shippers used back in the day. (I even have this art in poster form)

My Non-canon OTP: Because FF5 has no actual endgame ships, obviously my otp. 

Most Badass Character: Look, Faris dove into a dragon-generated whirlpool that could have killed her to save her crew when she was 15. She fell off a cliff and crawled back up for Lenna. Faris, hands down.

Most Epic Villain: tbh the most epic villain was one who wasn’t in the game until he became an optional boss added in the GBA revamp: Enuo. He might not have been in the game’s present, but his shadow loomed large 1000 years after his death/sealing away.

Pairing I am not a fan of: Not personally a fan of shipping Butz with any of the girls, largely because he’s shaped like a friend and has been a fantastic friend to all of them, and FF5 really isn’t a romance. I’m absolutely happy to ship him with Squall in the Dissidias though. Butz/Squall is my otp for him. 

Character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another): Eh, I feel like the ending sequence for Faris could have focused less on her being a woman and more on her actual acts of courage. Courage being her whole damn thing and defining trait and all.

Favourite Friendship: Faris and Syldra. Gosh, but all the Japanese texts on them makes me mourn Syldra’s death even harder.

Character I most identify with: Faris bc butch/nonbinary reasons and huge issues with being shoehorned into one gender (male) but not really feeling it (Faris does, in Japanese at least, identify as a woman; direct translation by me: “don’t treat me like a fool because I’m a woman”) and also not wanting to 100% be compliant with femininity.

Character I wish I could be: Look, who doesn’t want to be a pirate.

002 | Send me a ship and I will tell you:

When I started shipping them: 1997 baby. It’s been years and while I flitted out of FF5 fandom in the 2000s up til I returned now, I never stopped loving my ship

My thoughts: Yeah, the sibling incest complicates things, but also? They were separated very young, didn’t grow up together, and didn’t meet again until adulthood. There’s no actual power imbalance there. Even with respect to social status. Like, yes Lenna’s in line to be queen, but does anyone really think she’d abuse her position for anything? She adores Faris. Faris will destroy everyone in this room and then herself if anything happened to Lenna. 

What makes me happy about them: Oh, gosh, they are so good together. Also? I adore how muddled up they are together. Lenna is the Light Warrior of Water, her defining trait being conscientious kindness. Faris is the Light Warrior of Fire, her defining trait being courage. But Lenna will absolutely kill that dragon if she has to. She’ll hare off into the unknown with only a knife to find her father. She’ll trudge through poison to save that dragon she was gonna kill. Her sky dragon turns into a phoenix. She’s the spirit of Water, but everything about her screams Fire. Conversely, Faris is bonded to a sea dragon, nearly drowned twice that we know of, and over the course of the game she does become a kinder person than she was. She’s the spirit of Fire, and yeah she does have courage aplenty, but she’s so inextricably bound to water that her skills in DFFOO are water-related. 

What makes me sad about them: That they could never be together openly. Also? That modern/post-GBA fandom will absolutely shit on the ship’s fans. You’ve seen me talk in Discord about the hate I run across often enough. And it’s absolutely wild to me because I’ve been here since 1997, I’ve heard all the jokes about Faris/Lenna back then, and no one threw a fit about it like they do now. Nevar 4get the off-color FWAKs that were common back in the day. 

Things done in fanfic that annoys me: Mostly just... treating the girls as Butz’s personal harem. And this is a small thing, at least. 

Things I look for in fanfic: Anything with my ship. Alternatively, anything where at least Faris isn’t straight. 

My wishlist: God I just want to talk to fellow Faris/Lenna shippers! And if I have to improve my translating-to-Japanese skills for it, I will. Also, I wanna get involved in a Faris/Lenna doujinshi someday. Or an anthology!

Who I’d be comfortable them ending up with, if not each other: their dragons

My happily ever after for them: A cottage by the sea, all regal responsibilities forgotten, with new dragon companions because theirs died over the course of the game and Highwinds must have dragons.

003 | Give me a character & I will tell you:

How I feel about this character: Superb. Fantastic. When I was a young butch in the closet with only Oscar to look up to, Faris stormed onto the scene with all her flaws and character development and a dragon friend! and yes, I dig this. Still favorite, though Lenna unseats her ever so often. 

Any/all the people I ship romantically with this character: Lenna. That’s it, really. World of Final Fantasy floated the idea of Quistis/Faris, but didn’t provide a lot to go on. 

My favorite non-romantic relationship for this character: Syldra! Although I have been known to ship her with Syldra too, back in the day. 

My unpopular opinion about this character: Faris is a very, very Asian trope character, her roots being in Oscar of Rose of Versailles, Takarazuka, and East Asian legends and histories of crossdressing women. I just feel really uncomfortable when white people, especially white cis people, ignore that, ignore that she herself says that she’s a woman, and insist that she’s a trans man. 

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: I do wish the epilogue slideshow focused more on her deeds than on her feeling uncomfortable complying with traditional femininity.

Favorite friendship for this character: Syldra!

My crossover ship: Faris and Quistis becoming friends in WoFF after Quistis challenged her to a fistfight is just so Faris that I’d love to see fics exploring that. 

[sovonight]

Hi! Sorry I don't mean to bother but I love your artwork and it always makes me so amazed at how talented you are whenever I see it! Just a question, but how do you draw your eyes? I'm an aspiring artist and was hoping you had any tips. :) Your artwork is AMAZING keep being awesome!!!

thank you so much! and though i can’t say it’ll be of help, i can definitely tell you how i do it!

okay so i don’t actually do a lot of the official, generally accepted, guide line work. to be clear that is indeed a weakness and it’s not cool to be different in this case, please don’t model anything off of my method, i didn’t learn any of it from an actual book. but in the interest of just letting you know how i do it, i start out by finding out where the eyes should go. to make that really easy on me, i might draw everything but the eyes and then just fit the eyes in last. just like i have here:

(^ these totally look like sketches i’ve posted and will continue posting in the future, nothing can stop me from just implying eyes instead of drawing them)

there’s a guide line across the face roughly where the eyes should be. i erase my guide lines as i sketch, but i typically leave and refine this particular one to help me place the eyes. another thing i like to do is, if you’re drawing someone with lines under their eyes, draw those in like i did on the right! kinda gives me an additional feel for where that eye socket is.

(oh and, if you’re drawing someone with glasses, drop those right on in! if the guide line doesn’t do enough to help me tell what angle/direction the head’s tilted in, getting the glasses correct definitely does. but i’ll keep going without the glasses bc not everyone wears em.)

i draw circles roughly where eyes might feel right, and usually tilt these circles with the direction of the head: 

and add in rough top and bottom lines to define the eyes. i never close these lines at the corners of the eye, even when i’m painting this; that’s more like something i’d do if i were attempting a realistic style.

erase the guide line, and…whew! kinda close, but not right yet. but that’s fine, because all i needed was to get in the general vicinity: 

i can now go back and erase, redraw, repeat, until i get here:

annnnd put the glasses back on to see if i did things right. i usually have to fix the glasses a little after the eyes are on, but this time i did the entire process and then went back to take progress pics, so you don’t see the part where i fixed the glasses to match.

and that’s what i do! this works when i’m painting/doing lineless art, too. i’ll just carve out a space for the eye sockets, place the iris and wrap the top and bottom of the eye around that, and mess with it until it feels right. sometimes i do the top line of the eye first, then the iris, and then the bottom line.

but as for shaping the eye itself once you know where it goes, i’d suggest thinking constantly about how it’s an eyeball. it’s an eye sphere and you should make your lines/colors/brush strokes suggest it. i’m definitely still working on that myself, but like, if you study & keep in mind that everything’s a 3d object, you’ll train yourself to anticipate where everything should go– then all you have to figure out is how to draw that on paper.

[domesticangel]

ok ive been wanting to do an OC redraw/redesign for a while now and uh, well here it is !!! top is obv the revamp and bottom is these three’s original designs ,,, the bottom pic is 9 years old (holy smokes) so i made them during my middle school emo/scene phase when i was like 12 so thats why they're.........Like That lmao but left to right in both pics is jude, elliot, and skipper!!! this was? so fun honestly

ummm lots of info/backstory about them under the cut lol

so in the original pic/designs… if I remember correctly jude and skipper were in police academy training to be cops and elliot was some punk ass kid theyd end up seeing around a lot cause he was in and out of holding for Delinquent Things, and ofc they magically became friends. Im pretty sure they were all 16/17 when I first made them which makes no sense at all (teen cops??? Ok) but like when ur 12, teenagers are Practically Adults BUT none of that is Canon TM anymore. In their redesign they range from early to late 20’s; I usually peg jude around 26-27, elliot is probably 23-24, and skipper is 21.

jude was the very first oc I ever made so shes always had a special place in my heart… I started churning out rapid fire ocs when I was in middle school that id toss when I was bored with em but shes the one that always stuck around!! Shes been a big honkin lesbian ever since her conception, so id use her a lot to express BabyGay feelings I didn’t really know how else to process. design wise I kinda just simplified her look; I have no fucking clue why she used to have an eyepatch and cat ears (I mean, I do, its because I was a weeb) but I got rid of those along with the scene hair and gave her longer hair with more natural waves and some freckles from spending a lot of time in the sun. her gray eyes and hair were always kind of her signature, so those got to stay! She mostly just wears anything that’s easy enough to move around and get work done in; tank tops, loose long skirts, etc. think futch hippy. anyways jude is now just a simple plant witch who uses her skills and connection with the elements to run a modest local farm, and even though shes fairly content in her lifestyle, she wants nothing more than a gf/wife that she can work hard to give a good life to :3c shes a hopeless romantic and has a bad habit of falling a little bit in love with every woman she meets, but shes mad shy when it comes to flirting, so more often than not shes just a sweaty ball of pining and infatuation. Whenever shes feeling some type of way about a girl she either obsessively takes on projects around the farm or house to distract herself or rants to her plants about how shes too afraid to express her feelings. RIP useless lesbian jude. Anyway shes the oldest of the trio, so shes very protective of elliot and skipper in a mother hen kind of way. She gets embarrassed when she realizes shes lecturing them like a cranky old maid, but they secretly don’t really mind it and often come to her for general life advice. I think her sign would be Taurus :3c (and probably an air moon since she’s kind of a space cadet)

elliot was REALLY FUN to redesign bc I honestly just wanted him to look like one of those people who had a HUGE scene phase way back when and just… never completely grew out of it lmao so I gave him the two-tone mullet he deserves, grown out roots hes definitely not gonna bother to re-bleach and re-dye, and piercing scars under his lip from where he used to have some tacky ass snakebites that he probably had to take out to get a job or something lol. he couldn’t completely give up piercings though, so the labret and gauges got to stay. Dudes not COMPLETELY stuck in 2007, but he does still enjoy a lot of the OG emo/punk bands and the fantasy of making it big in his own band and touring the country in a fashionably clunky van. He doesn’t exactly have a band, but hes working on that. Hes halfway decent on vocals and a guitar so he spends a lot of time combing through the local college town he lives and works in in hopes of finding some people who’d wanna play some gigs with him. But in the mean time, he works as a barista in a local café, which usually hooks him up by letting him do some acoustic sets at night every now and again. Hes a very warm and upbeat person, and will happily engage and talk the ear off of anyone close enough for him to do so, stranger or otherwise. He also regularly reminds jude and skipper how much he loves both of them and how glad he is that theyre all friends; He doesn’t really have much in the way of embarrassment or apprehension when it comes to what hes feeling. Hes the official unofficial “plan-maker” of the friend group and is able to bring them all together for quality time, because hes not at all passive like jude or skipper, and… usually has the most free time out of all of them lol. elliot is pure Leo and that’s about all there is to that

And finally, congratulations to skipper, who against all odds, looked normal enough that I didn’t really have to change anything at all about his design! Just had to ditch the uniform for your typical Tired Gay mustard sweaters. Skipper is an English major in his sophomore year of college who, like most people in their 20’s in liberal arts programs, is desperately trying to figure out what he wants out of life and also doesn’t know what sleeping or self-care is. He really enjoys writing, but doesn’t really know if he wants to do it for a living or if he even could. He grew up with pretty cold and distant parents, so on top of knowing they don’t really approve of his major, he pretty much always operates under the assumption that if hes not working himself to death hes not justifying the space hes taking up or the air hes breathing. Emotionally speaking hes more emo than elliot will ever be and his blood is probably 75% caffeine. He having kind of a rough time tbh but hes gritting it out in hopes that things become more clear eventually. He’d be way worse off if he didn’t have jude or elliot, who hes more thankful for than he can ever bring himself to express. They were essentially his first real, close friends, and despite skipper being incapable of asking for help, they always seem to know when he needs someone to talk to or even just a brief distraction; Jude has an open door policy for her farm and will let him come over and cuddle some rabbits or sit and talk over tea on her porch whenever he needs to, and elliot cant remember the last time hes made skipper pay for anything he ordered from the café, or the last time he even had to ask skipper what he wanted. Because hes the youngest of the three its sometimes their instinct to protect him, which embarrasses skipper out of his mind, but he knows they mean well. Hes the physical embodiment of Just Doing His Best and is a stone cold Capricorn

They’re still besties but basically met just from living in the same town; jude and elliot met when jude started providing the café’s local roast from the coffee beans she grew on her farm so elliot saw her fairly regularly and of course was like Oh Friend? Jude always liked how forthcoming elliot was as it complimented her generally reserved nature, and elliot always thought living on a farm and growing your own food was pretty punk rock and therefore pretty dang cool in his book. They both got to know skipper because he came to the café every. single. day. to ingest ungodly amounts of espresso and study all day, and when elliot took an interest in skipper, jude suggested he invite him to one of his gigs since the poor guy kinda looked like he needed a break. Skipper initially kind of politely shot elliot down, but jude took a chance and found skipper later to tell him how much itd mean to elliot, and that if it made him feel better she’d go with him, since going to events like this was different for her too. skipper apprehensively agreed at that point, and the rest is history !!! they all kinda hit it off after that

tl;dr

[simkjrs]

assorted fic/msa asks

Anonymous said: msa izuku while an Official Of The Law tries to stop him from doing his usual cryptic stunts: hey where can i go to file a complaint? its not formal. fuck you.

this is just the right level of irritation, sarcasm, and wit to come straight from msa izuku’s mouth. i love that

Anonymous said: someone asks msa izuku what he wants to be when he grows up. he stares at the floor angrily. "a concept. if even that," he says. no one knows how to respond. the silence stretches.

god this is PRISTINE. the silence stretches. im laughing you’ve captured the quintessential msa izuku experience!!!

Anonymous said: msa izuku's saving grace yet achille's attention-pulling heel is his ability to circumvent the powers people use to attack him, linear narratives, and any expectations placed on him

nfljsdfjsd yeah. his greatest strength and greatest weakness... it’s so funny to write. i love it

Anonymous said:  kirishima: deku we actually dont want to screw you over msa izuku: that sounds fake but ok

YEP! thats pretty much it

Anonymous said: Thinking about the wording of MSA!Izuku's deal with Kirishima, Kirishima might actually be able to take advantage of Izuku abusing the wording of the deal. So Kirishima could use the fact that he literaly cannot keep Izuku anywhere and that Izuku could ditch at any time in order to have an actual conversation with him. After all, Izuku always has a way out.

you fucking got me there. completely nailed it

Anonymous said: does msa iz/uku have to deal with shitty dreams too? like trauma from spirit shenanigans comes back to bite him in the ass in his sleep?

yeah there sure is a lot of trauma going around. like, look at this comment i got from crossy, i feel like this is one of the funniest things anyone has ever said about msa

Anonymous said: Okay... blink if the adult supervision in MSA is Aizawa....

you all know me so well!! fucking called me out!!!

Anonymous said: eyy u know that art u made of ritsu on ur art blog, "ritsu's range of normal human emotions?" the part where it said disattached from the social dogma? i imagines that as ur msa!izuku and skdnfsj o h m y g o d

im laughing!!! youre completely right. i need to redraw the panel now

Anonymous said: where is izuku's guardian spirit, you ask? theory: izuku is his own guardian spirit. he finds out and "well i must be doing a pretty shitty job. i hate myself. bye"

Anonymous said: ..... izuku is a gaurdian spirit but his ""quirk"" is being alive...... thats why getting his quirk shut off by eraserhead compeltely shut his body off

YOU ARE... almost completely correct

Anonymous said: since msa mido is like half a quirk himself does that mean he's his own guardian spirit? because if that was true and you told him that he would be so so tired. "my life's a sick joke already but thanks for that addition" or something. this poor child.

that’s pretty much the mindset he wakes up with every day!

Anonymous said: Ok so idk if im the only one who does this but whenever i read fanfic/any kind of writing i kinda come up with like a general color palette that fits with the whole story or like colors from a certain time of day or somethin as a general base for any fanart i might make for the thing but for Byggualom i imagine pinkish, orangey golden sunset colors with hints of plant greens and reds and for msa i imagine a lot of things happening in almost completely grayscale with gold highlights and-(1)

(2)- surreal moments where a bright/contrasting color is present(like the scene where the fox spirit appeared with the red eyes against the silver fur

that’s really cool! i love the sunset colors for byggualom, and the black and white is certainly a fitting ominous atmosphere for msa :^) 

Anonymous said: of fucking course fucking msa/villain izuku was there, MSA/villain fucking Izuku is always there. it’s like one of those universal laws of reality. whenever life takes a turn for the utterly insane, and or disturbingly lethal, msa/villain izuku is somehow right in the middle of it. looking innocent. like a fluffy bunny rabbit. with an innocent look in its eyes and an entire city reduced to rubble in the background, on fire. (I did both b/c I love both the dysfunctional dorks(and both made sense

i think this is more applicable to villain izuku. msa izuku will also be there in the middle of whatever chaos is happening, but he will not look innocent, he will look pissed and tired. you think YOU’RE tired of this bullshit? hah! you should hear about what he’s been doing all day. and no he’s not going to tell you, he’s just going to gripe about it endlessly while also furiously trying to fix everything that went wrong. 

other than that... this is rlly good. i love that. thanks for sending it in

Anonymous said: since i found out u listen to sea wolf the song "spirit horse" has just been violently playing in the background when i think of msa like thanks (not even sarcastically i love seawolf)

hell yeah, love that.... the song’s a bit too horse-y for me to put it on my msa playlist but you know what? its good

Anonymous said: Hey! Just wanted to let you know I ADORE your writing. Your OPM AU (that's what I always call it, I can never remember the acronym) is amazing and I've reread it twice. I decided to give your MSA story a try the other day and I LOVED that one as well. I was initially hoping for a OPM AU update but now I'm psyched as hell for MSA. Thank you so much for your amazing work. Just wanted to let you know how much I enjoy both stories :) Have a great day

thank you! i’m happy you enjoy both fics so much <3 

Anonymous said: hi you’re an amazing artist/writer and I hope you have a great day :)

thank you!! i have been having some pretty great days, which is nice, i hope you are doing well too!

Anonymous said: ive reread msa for the like 5th time today and just wanted to tell you what an awesome job you did and i absolutely adore it and hope you have an amazing week!!!

i cant believe you’ve read it so many times!!! i’m glad you like it so much, and i hope you have a great week as well!

Anonymous said: Hey, *finger guns*, I really love your writing!

well guess what... i love you,

Anonymous said: All your stories are so good! I cryyyyy x

thanks! im crying also

Anonymous said: I'm so fucken hyped for literally all you bnha fan-fiction/head-cannons like seriously how do you even come up with ALL of it?!?!?!

mostly i just... actively put characters into situations that i think would be hilarious, or dream up bits of dialogue that spur me to craft an entire backstory just so i can lead up to the one moment. helps to have friends who encourage you to become increasingly unhinged from canon though.

Anonymous said: have *clap* a *clap* nice *clap* day

you too! 

Anonymous said: Okay you prolly get this loads but I freaking love everything you write! Everything is written so well and I die every time you update bc it's so good! I will happily wait five years to read any new chapter if it's written this well okay I'm rambling I love you have a nice day!

this is so nice.... thank you.... 

Anonymous said: HOLY SHIT, ANOTHER NONBINARY FIC WRITER!!! YO WHATS UP!!! WE'RE A P RARE BREED... HELL YEAH THOUGH!!! UR FICS R SUPER COOL UR SUCH A BIG INSPIRATION TO ME!! I HOPE U HAVE A FANTASTIC DAY + YOU NEVER GET WRITERS BLOCK + YOUR HANDS NEVER CRAMP UP!!!

hello there!!! it’s fantastic to see you!!!! hell yeah [i try to dab but accidentally knock over the stack of papers on my desk instead]

Anonymous said: Hey, I just wanted to say that I think you're doing a really super job with trying to write and do school at the same time. I know (personally) that it's really hard to do even WITHOUT extra stuff piling on top, but you handle the blog with a lot of humor and clumsy grace and I just wanted to let you know that you brighten up my day a lot. Thanks! I hope you do really well!!!!!!

hey! thank you, i put a lot of effort into running this blog, as can be evidenced by the week-long stretches of time between short bursts of activity

seriously though... thanks... i appreciate this ask a lot. hope you’re doing well!

Anonymous said: I just wanna say thank you! MSA Izuku gives me life XDDD

hell yeah! im glad to hear that

Anonymous said: dunno bout you or anyone else, but i see your izukus as homoromantic demisexual(s), just wanted to share

nice... 

im cool w/ whatever as long as it adheres to my one guideline which is that izuku is a mlm

[yukipri]

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!)