#the commenter actually highlights it perfectly 'why not call them an artist or a writer'
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phantomrose96 · 6 months ago
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#it got fucking Yoinked from us?!
It got fucking Yoinked!
Prompt-based fandom events are when you really learn everyone’s colors like you’ll find the people who take the prompt “death” and come up with some smarmy ship-art of character A and character B walking over dead leaves while wearing scarves and drinking hot cider and then you’ll find the people who take the prompt “sunshine” and write how a bright glint of sunshine reflected off the barrel of a gun is the absolute last thing character A sees before taking a bullet to the chest
you can lead a content creator to water but you sure as fuck can’t make him drink
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buddha-in-disguise · 5 years ago
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Discourse, Supergirl and fans.
The Supergirl situation with William Dey, is far more than about William Dey per se.
I touched on this when I first posted about David Harewood.
What I have seen, and I am still seeing is while some SuperCorp fans were annoyed about the preview for episode 12, this was also coming from a diverse section of the fandom. That David (and others) have singled out the SuperCorp fandom is both unfair, and unhelpful. But that is a different discussion altogether.
So - I am going to repeat and expand on some of what I wrote at the time to try and explain why I, (and others) have found Supergirl to be really problematic at the moment.
First of all: There is no doubt Supergirl currently has a diverse cast, inc. LGBTQ representation. 
However, all the diversity in the world means absolutely nothing if a program is seemingly only playing lip service to the characters. 
Compare and contrast with Legends of tomorrow. They have 6 women. 2 Muslim superheroes (a TV first). 5 characters are LGBTQ, including Charlie; who is recognised as gender fluid. 4 people of colour. The lead is a woman, who is bisexual, in a canon relationship with a lesbian, and is a superhero. 
They do this without it being made a big deal of, enjoyed by LGBTQ and heterosexual audience alike. But it is a huge deal for many because of that diversity, and just as importantly they haven't overloaded the cast numbers, so they all get good solid storylines through a season. A season that is also shorter than Supergirl. 
Legends are an example of how you can put in a diverse minority cast, without it becoming forced or cumbersome. It isn't without fault sure, but no program is. 
So where is Supergirl going wrong at the moment? 
Let's use William, as the crux of the problems are best shown with his character, but it isn't limited to him. I will put first - this is absolutely *not* a criticism towards Staz Nair, who I respect (& like, as far as one can from limited SM interaction). All too often the accusations are made that if you don't like a character, you hate the actor. That is categorically not true for me, nor others I've seen posting about this. Of course if anyone does hate on the actor, that is not okay.
So, back to William. I get the reason he came along in regards to Russell and so the Andrea connection. That story made sense.  What hasn't made sense - William being used as a journalist, when Nia is right there! Nia has barely had any screen time, and virtually none as a journalist; you know - her actual job. I'm not sure what the minutes on screen ratio has been this season between the two, but it has felt completely slanted towards William as a viewer, at least until now. 
First instead of Kara and Nia investigating Leviathan after William was 'exposed' in the earlier episodes, now Nia is sidelined again, because they want Kara to team up with William to investigate Lex.
Why? Why do they need that journalistic pairing, when Nia - who as a Superhero, is better placed if danger from Lex occurs. But no, they're making it about Kara having to work with William because Lex threatened to kill him. Plus Nia was being mentored by Kara. Is she no longer being mentored by Kara? Are they a team? Even if the mentoring has ended, Nia is still not being utilised as a journalist.
I am utterly baffled as to why they feel this arc makes any sense. Moreso when an already established character gets sidelined. 
I'm also getting tired of seeing anyone who sees these valid opinions about current storyline as being trolls (or the comments all SuperCorp fans are just outright haters. No - SuperCorp fans are a large diverse group, that have incredible artists, fanfic writers, and social media users. Many also multi-ship. To place a blanket statement about a whole fandom as large as SC, is hateful. All fandoms have some who are problematic, but to single out an entire group is not right). 
So back to my thoughts. An episode can have some great aspects to it, but it can also be highly problematic to some fans, & receive valid criticism or valid opinions for it. For example, the latest episode of Batwoman. The Alice/Beth story was great. The acting superb. What I found worrying was the way they made Sophie feel guilty for legitimate reasons why she had led a closeted lifestyle. That lifestyle is valid, for Sophie and many LGBTQ people, and for good reason, including keeping some people safe from harm. I felt it was a clumsy attempt for Alice to get into Sophie's mind; it could've been tackled other ways, so it felt wrong they used her sexuality as a way to achieve that. Being closeted for many literally keeps them alive. So that was one hell of a poor choice in my opinion. Yet others have made perfectly credible counter arguments that it showed the difficulties faced by many LGBTQ people. So, great episode, valid criticism/opinion from both points of view. It also highlights you can have excellent episodes, but they can have legitimate issues.
Nor does differences of opinion, as long as it is respectful, makes those voicing them a bully, no matter how much you disagree. 
At the end of this, if you don’t agree, and your opinion makes you say something that is intentionally hurtful (directly or indirectly to a person or group of people), it's a bad thing. The key word being intentionally. We all make mistakes, and responses that could've been better, & we all need to be aware of that, but if it is an intended attack, don't be surprised if others call you out for your behaviour. 
So now what in regards Supergirl?  
I know ultimately that this show is about Supergirl, but it is also about those around her as family & friends. I understand there are only so many minutes in one episode. What I don't understand is why those precious minutes are going to a character, when they have one perfectly placed to do the same role. Why they have to potentially explore another relationship, when we have one canon relationship, one canon on/off again relationship & one relationship that while isn't canon in terms of romantic, it is a big story in terms of best friends, all seemingly sidelined. Which brings me to the Kara fighting for Lena's soul aspect. Again, I am not seeing a lot of fighting for anything, except more and more fans fighting themselves and cast. 
Then you just need to look at the dislikes that teaser was given on YouTube, and compare them to previous ones. I've attached screenshots to show this.
A serious misjudgment was made by someone on how that teaser would be received, and again I will stress, this dislike hasn't just been from one area of fandom, but multiple areas. For many it wasn't just about William, but the culmination of unease that has built for a few episodes. A prime example of the straw that broke the camel's back. If you are solely focused on one area of fandom for this discourse (as many blame SuperCorp fans), you need to step back and recognise you are not allowing yourself to see the whole picture. To focus solely on one thing, rather than acknowledging the wider audience are saying this, does not make you the better fan. To dismiss it as trolls, is being dismissive of good, regular fans with legitimate questions or concerns. It is insulting to many of us.
I will be honest, I had high hopes for this season. I also knew it was likely going to be pretty confusing at times since it was given as 'our Black mirror season' and 'nothing is as it seems.' I accepted that.
However, all it seems at the moment is a jumbled mess from pre and post Crisis. They just doesn't appear to be any cohesion at all, which is making it really difficult as a viewer. Add in the changes post Crisis and it feels even more of a mess.
Of course, they could bring in more cohesive elements soon, but considering that we know episode 13 is 'It's a wonderful life,' and Alex Danvers in a later episode is wearing a Super suit - I just sense this whole 'nothing is as it seems' side we appear to be getting isn't changing any time soon, & with episodes running out, with so many strings running through at the moment, it feels really discombomulated. If by seasons end, they pull it off and you can look back and see how it's played out as a whole, I will be the first to say well done for that part. 
I do though think right now Supergirl feels chaotic beyond expectation, and no end in sight. I feel there have been too many character additions this season (particularly Andrea & William) that is taking screen time away from Kara, Alex, Nia, Lena, Kelly et al.
It feels like a mess of unnecessary pairings and the crux of the story seems to have been lost in the midst.
That is causing confusion for fans, that is also beginning to become frustration. That frustration is spilling over. Add in the genuine and extremely legitimate concerns over the LGBTQ issues that have arisen (again from far more than just SuperCorp fans), and the frustration has built even more. 
I can only hope the next couple of episodes address some of this and not complicate the mess further. 
Whatever happens, Supergirl is not doing well in terms of a storyline that is gripping for fans, that is now top heavy with regulars, taking screen time from established characters, and a social media blunder that has so far only exacerbated the simmering uncertainty being felt by many.
It might improve, and I sincerely hope it does, but they are edging into the potential for the anger felt by fans to become an all out riot if they don't stop and see where valid criticism is being given. If this season continues on in this vein, then there is going to be huge swathes of fans drifting away. The concerns are legitimate. I wish it could be seen as that.
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afinepricklypear · 5 years ago
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I’m writing this largely in response to angel-rhetenor’s replies on my recent reblog with comments of the post “Why is the BSD fandom so terrible about leaving comments?” The replies I received from this person and the OP were understandably emotional responses but also problematic because they made claims of there being some hidden meaning behind my statements that wasn’t there and accused me of attacking OP, which I didn’t. I’m not posting to defend my statements or place blame, I stand by what I wrote and encourage people to read it, rather than the replies it was given, to decide for themselves. Unfortunately, I know that most people won’t. It is long and it’s easier to see the responses, and because those individual’s posed arguments that are easy to agree with (yes, it is wrong to call someone stupid or to say that their work is low quality when you haven’t read it, and, yes, it’s equally wrong to suggest that writing shorter stories, shorter chapters, one-shots, and/or rare-pairs makes your writing bad – btw, a ludicrous assertion to claim I said, not least of all, because I do and have written all of these things).
As well there were issues that these individuals claim I either ignored or did not speak to, which was simply because the primary intent behind my comments was to discuss analytics, how they work, how to interpret them, and how to use them to improve your own work.
Quick side note, I also briefly want to acknowledge remarks made about my comments being “well-researched” – I deleted the credentials from my original comment, I didn’t think it lent anything to it, but I’ll add them here: I have a BA in Anthropology, I’m two semesters from a BS in Computer Science, and I work as an Analyst for a public utility company. Data, data analysis, and interpreting data as it relates to population behavior, not to mention, research is all, kind of, my thing.
There were a number of issues that were raised by these individuals, and some points made in their replies that I’d love to address, but there is one I really need to talk about that was brought up in angel-rhetenor’s reply: reposting fanwork. This is a big issue in regards to any kind of intellectual property, and angel-rhetenor posed it as being analogous of the issues regarding feedback and whether people “owe” fanfiction writers or, really, any content creators compensation (in the form of likes, feedback, comments, etc.) for enjoying their work when it is provided free of access. This person concluded their statements with the bold, and yes, true assertion that artists and writers deserve recognition for their work.
So, if this conclusion is true, what can I have to say about it, right? This person must’ve really proved me wrong.
Well, the biggest problem I have with this argument is that, as presented, it is a false equivalency. Meaning, the issues behind reposting and giving feedback are not the same. In fact, the issues behind reposting and giving recognition, as this person indicated, are not even the same.
To be clear: The issues behind reposting are not about feedback, not about showing appreciation/gratitude to content creators, and not about recognition.
Now, before you run to your keyboard to react to this statement, let me explain.
These may seem on the surface to be the same thing, they may even feel related to one another, they certainly feel like they derive from the same place in the audience, but it’s important to understand the distinctions between them if you are posting your work online especially because reposting someone’s work, unlike the other issues discussed, can be a legal matter. If find yourself in the situation where your work has been stolen, you need to understand the difference between these issues and why. Although some of the concepts behind these other issues do inform legal problems in the real world, it is not in the way that you may think. 
Feedback
One of the things that really set me off about the post that started all of this was OP’s comments to another individual reply on this post that Kudos/Likes are not showing gratitude, that she doesn’t even look at them, and they aren’t real feedback. To an extent, she isn’t wrong. Feedback/Comments and Kudos are not exactly the same. Kudos/Likes are a form of positive feedback only, they do show gratitude for the work, they do indicate that the work was liked and appreciated – that is their entire meaning exactly. An author may decide that they want more than kudos from the readers, but it is up to the author to determine what they are looking for in return from posting their work online and then finding the appropriate forum to get that return – in which case, if you don’t want Kudos, AO3 is probably not the place for your work.
If all you want is praise for your work, that’s what Kudos are, but feedback in general isn’t always given because someone liked your work. In fact, feedback in an open forum is often given by people who just felt strongly about your work one way or another. That is unless you’ve directly asked someone to read and give you feedback – in which case, these kinds of obligatory transactions need to be arranged with the individual up front rather than after the fact, otherwise you are getting into ethical issues of scamming, conning, and manipulation ß this is actually the basis behind “Unordered Merchandise” complaints, which you can read about more on the FTC website. There are ways to encourage people to give feedback that don’t include any of these sticky problems, such as, starting the conversation for them (via the notes section of your story) by asking questions or making your own comments about the work, or simply being clear about what kind of feedback you’re looking for from the readers. Some good examples might be:
·        Making speculations about the plotline, “I wonder what this character is really up to…”
·        Highlighting parts of your writing you really want people to notice, “Feeling proud of that dialogue, really hope you guys agree…”
·        Or calling attention to areas of the writing you feel shaky on, “Not really happy with how that action scene went, felt clunky…let me know what you guys think?”
Additionally, if what you are looking for is feedback to improve as a writer, I might mention that the fanfiction community is probably not the best place to go for it. I love the readers, I’ve been highly impressed by the quality of comments I’ve received on AO3 over the comments I’ve gotten on FF.net, but many of the readers are younger, not writer’s themselves, and, while they can tell whether something is “good” or “bad”, they can’t necessarily tell you why or give you the constructive criticism necessary to develop better writing skills. Additionally, readers tend to be more generous in their feedback because they have received the content for free, in which case, you’re not getting the most honest feedback. Feedback is better received by joining/starting a writing group, teaming up with beta-readers, or hiring an editor. But I don’t want to turn this into a discussion about how to get feedback or use it to improve, that’s not the point of this post.
Given this definition, I hope you can better see how feedback and reposting are not the same thing. While reposting poses the issue of diverting feedback from the creator, there is a vast ethical difference between whether I should be required to give you my opinion on your work or not and me posting your work elsewhere.
Appreciation/Gratitude
Many arguments presented by the OP of the “Why is the BSD fandom so awful at leaving comments” post and angel-rhetenor are predicated on the idea that everyone who read or looked at your work liked it, they were entertained by it, and, thus, should show appreciation or gratitude to you for it. Of course, this is the understood socially accepted behavior, isn’t it? I’ve given you this ‘gift’, and now you tell me “thank you”. As I’ve already argued, this is what Kudos are designed to do. However, beyond gratitude and appreciation, Likes/Kudos also serve as forms of endorsement. It means, I’ve read this and I approve of it. Now, this type of endorsement is stronger in social media systems like Instagram, Twitter, and Tumblr, where the newsfeed algorithm is going to push to me those posts that people I follow (read as: opinions I trust) are liking and, therefore, helping to grow that person’s audience. In AO3, public bookmarks are actually a better form of an endorsement in this sense. That said, if I’m trying to decide if something is worth my time to read, I might jump to the Kudos to see who else liked it, furthermore, if a story has a large number of Kudos, that means that a larger number of people endorsed it and stamped it with their seal of approval. You might feel that Kudos is meaningless to you, but that is someone giving you a show of support that serves as a visual indicator to other potential readers that your work is worth reading.
Of course, this also touches on the concern raised by angel-rhetenor of audience entitlement. The issue as stated was that audience members feel entitled to a creator’s time and that they are allowed to demand that a creator makes work or delivers new works for free.
The thing is, they are allowed to make those kinds of demands of a creator, at least, until that creator blocks them on social media. In the same vein, you are perfectly allowed to demand people leave comments on your fanwork that you’ve posted to AO3. But just as readers are not obligated to leave you feedback, creators are not obligated to provide free content. You can scream into the wind as loud as you want: GIVE ME FEEDBACK! GIVE ME CONTENT! No one has to listen to you or deliver on it. There’s nothing obligating them to do so. That said, if they like your work and want to see more of it, then yes, they should understand that showing support is going to be the way to ensure new work appears without shaming or guilting or emotionally blackmailing them into it. As I said in my last post, if I have one reader that likes my work, I’m going to write for them. If I don’t have any readers liking my work, I’m less likely to continue that story, I’ll probably just keep writing and posting until I lose interest. But that’s fine. Yes, once again, I get that it can be frustrating especially when you see other works that you, maybe feel aren’t as good as your own, getting more attention because they hit the nail on the head of what their audience was looking for. But you can’t force or obligate the readers to give you that feedback, especially if they, maybe, aren’t interested in supporting your work even if they did enjoy reading it.
As for the comments regarding monetization, and the attitude that “because this is provided free, why should I pay for it from you”…uh…they’re not wrong. This is ECON-101, supply and demand, and, despite popular belief, it is NOT exclusive to fanwork. Every business has to overcome this problem. What are you offering consumers that goes beyond what they can get elsewhere and is worth them spending their money on to get from you?
angel-rhetenor also accused my comments of promoting, rather than discouraging, what they feel is an erroneous and harmful thought process, that “Everyone can make fanwork”. Here’s the thing, everyone can make fanwork. Everyone out there in the fandom is capable of it, that’s what makes it great and accessible to people that want to create. You have to figure out how to set your fanwork apart and how to effectively sell that. It might help to pose this in real world terms: Microsoft Office is a relatively expensive word processing software. Microsoft Wordpad is also a word processing software that comes free with your Windows operating system. So why do people spend money on Office, when Wordpad accomplishes the same thing without additional expense?
You set the value of your own work, you determine how much your time is worth, but the harsh reality is that just because you’ve decided that this is how much you want for your work, that doesn’t mean everyone, or anyone for that matter, is going to agree to pay that much for it, especially not if they can go to someone else and get what they’re asking free. Does that mean that those people are right and you need to start giving your work away for free? No. It means you need to figure out what it is that you’re selling that they should want to pay for, market yourself. Is it higher quality, is it a cleaner more polished work, do you have a better vision or take on the characters, is it a better display of skill. Are you selling them Microsoft Office or are you charging them for Wordpad when it’s a free software? You’ll still have people that are willing to settle for less, Wordpad is still around for a reason, but there are those who will pay you for your work because they want your work.
However, if no one wants your work for the price you’re asking, you need to revisit your business model, and that might mean that you need to improve what you are trying to sell. In terms of artists, there are decidedly better artists out there than others who are posting and sharing their work. Now I may hit the ‘Like’ buttons for a beginner artists’ shared artwork to show them support and encourage them to keep trying, but I’m not going to buy their artwork until they have developed their skill. A slightly better artist, I might pay for their work, but I’m not going to pay as much as I would for artwork from a master artist. This isn’t to say that the beginning artist sucks and didn’t work hard on their artwork, but to claim that they should receive the same return on their product than a more experienced artist who has spent many more years developing their skill is unfair to those artists that have put in the hours to develop their craft, and actually does more to harm people who are trying to monetize their work than helps by belittling and devaluing what it takes to develop a skill and build a following around their work.
Now I know where people are going to go: doesn’t saying it’s okay for people to share their work free with no obligations support the idea that people can also just take your work if they want it? You can go ahead and jump to the Reposting section to get the full answer on this, but in the meantime, consider this example: Imagine you’re shopping for a couch. You go to the store and decide its way more than you’re willing to pay, decide to shop around some. On your way home, you come across someone dragging their couch out to the curb, you go to speak to them, turns out it’s brand new, past return date but too big for their place so they’ getting rid of it and yes, you can take it if you want. Does that mean I can now go back to the store and just take the couch they had on sell there for free? No. The idea that because someone else is giving their work away for free, doesn’t then justify you taking someone else’s work for free.
Posed like this, I hope it’s obvious to see why demanding endorsement (in the form of Likes/Kudos) is, once again, not the same issue as reposting someone’s work, and, a bit of how these concepts relate to monetized works. In fact, many people who are reposting works when confronted with this perspective would easily counterargue that they are showing appreciation/gratitude by reposting someone else’s work. They see it as a sincere form of endorsement and support to that creator. They say “imitation is the highest form of flattery”, right, so outright copying must be the height of love? Which brings us naturally to recognition.
Recognition
It is a true statement that artists should be recognized for their work. Recognition is not feedback nor is it appreciation or gratitude. Recognition is just saying, “This person created that”. This is the most flummoxing part of angel-rhetenor’s argument regarding reposting because in terms of reposting, it is not enough to say that the artist needs to be given credit, and giving credit is not the issue regarding reposting. Someone can repost my story on Wattpad, complete with name on the byline, a link to my AO3 profile or email so that readers can contact me and ensure that feedback comes to me, and then they could even leave a comment praising my work and telling me that they’ve posted it on Wattpad for me, “You’re welcome!”.
So, what’s the problem here, huh? They’ve given me feedback, they’ve given their readers a method to forward me feedback, they even let me know that it was posted there, made sure proper credit was in place, and I can’t think of a higher form of endorsement, or show of gratitude/appreciation, than going to the trouble of reposting my work elsewhere for me in an effort to help give my work attention and grow my audience. Gosh, aren’t they nice? Isn’t this wonderful of them? They seem like they did all the right things.
Except, I don’t want my work on Wattpad. That’s why I don’t post it there.
Reposting
It is easy to get confused on what the real issue is in regards to reposting someone else’s work, especially because there are so many other concerns that get lumped in with regards to it that, reposting may affect, but those issues don’t have any relevance to the ethical reasoning behind reposting. I hope I made it pretty obvious in my last example, that there are ways that reposting work can look, on the surface and, in some instances maybe even truly, be beneficial to the creator. The reposter can seem to do all the right things in terms of addressing those issues, but it’s still wrong. At this point, many of you are probably thinking, “Well they needed permission before doing all of that, duh!”
But permission isn’t the issue either. The issue is ownership.
It is incredibly important for a content creator to understand the concept of ownership in terms of intellectual property, because this is the way it will be argued in terms of the law, and this is the information you need to gather before you post your work online (what are you agreeing to in terms of your ownership of your work when you post to a platform) or make claims of theft. It’s also important not to conflate this issue with things like recognition, showing appreciation/gratitude, or giving comments/feedback, because those are strawman arguments that are easy to counter. They don’t actually support the notion that you shouldn’t repost another’s work even though they may all represent reasons that a creator doesn’t want someone else reposting their work.
When I post my work to AO3, I am only granting people access to read my work for free through AO3, I grant AO3 permissions to distribute my work through its various networks, and while a reader is able to download my work from AO3 for their own individual use, no one else is allowed to distribute it. This is the explicit contractual agreement that authors and readers make when using AO3, and in that sense, exactly as I have stated, no one owes you anything for reading and enjoying your work, because you are giving them that access to it for free. Arguing that they are then obligated to give you feedback after the fact falls into the same realm as ‘Unsolicited Merchandise’.
However, you are not giving anyone ownership of your work just because you have made it available for them to read or view. Retaining ownership of my work means that I get to dictate where and how it is distributed and displayed. For a real-world example, let’s take into consideration holiday decorations. I might decide to decorate my door with a Holiday Wreath, it is free for people to see, they are not required to come to my door and thank me for the decoration, but they also cannot take my wreath and move it to my window or to their own door or to the door of a neighbor down the street. Depending on what they do with my wreath, it can be classified as vandalization or theft.
This is a problem that just about everyone that shares their creative content online is going to run into, and it is difficult – in many instances, impossible – to fight against. This is not a widespread issue, as angel-rhetenor suggests, in the sense that the majority of people are purposely doing it despite knowing the reasons for why they shouldn’t. Most people actually want to do the right thing, they just don’t know what the right thing is, and when you confuse all of these elements and complaints within the fandom, it can be difficult to determine what is right. You will see people reposting artwork asking who the creator is, unintentionally contributing to the problem and if they don’t know who the source is or what the permissions are for sharing that work, they should not be reposting it. You’ll see people remarking to a reposter that they need to give credit to an artwork, when, no, unless they can prove they have permission to post it, they need to take it down. These people are not trying to do wrong in most of these cases; they just may not recognize that this is a problem at all. Some might even misunderstand and argue that “because it was posted in a public place, it is now public property”, but the flaw with that argument is that it was not posted in a public place. It was posted to a private platform for the use and purposes of that private organization that owns that private platform as contractually detailed in that private platform’s Terms of Service, which you agree to when using that private platform’s services. AO3, Tumblr, Twitter, etc., all have written into their ToS that their content providers retain ownership of the content they share via these platforms. When you repost someone’s work from AO3 or Tumblr or Twitter or…so on and so forth, you are not just stealing someone’s property, you are in violation of that platform’s Terms of Service.
Does that mean that there aren’t individuals in the community that do it knowing full well that they shouldn’t, and having been given the reasons why? Absolutely not. Criminals exist. They are a thing. The question is, how many of these people fall into that category? Not as many as you think, most are willing to take it down when they understand why it is wrong, but it is made more difficult that many people don’t understand IP to be property owned by someone, IP Theft is often considered to be a victimless crime, and the fact that when you post something on the internet it becomes difficult to control where it is spread.  
Unfortunately, if your work is not monetized, damages are hard to prove over IP Theft and usually take more effort/resources to combat than what you’ll get out of winning the fight, you may not have much in the way of a copyright claim unless someone has commercialized your freely distributed work. In other words, if someone stole a story, I wrote to share with people free on AO3, and posted it to their website which is monetized through advertisement, they are now profiting off my work and I have grounds to sue them. People who do monetize their work have a bit more of a leg to stand on in terms of copyright claims, because they can demonstrate financial damage caused by the theft or plagiarism of their work. But it is still an arduous process that causes more than just emotional distress over “nobody likes my work”.
So here is the bottomline: If you are posting your fanwork on free-to-access platforms, no one is obligated to give you feedback and no one is obligated to Like/Kudos your work. That is endorsement and support that goes above and beyond what you’ve agreed upon by posting on that platform. It is a nice thing to do and does help to ensure that your favorite content creators continue to create work. They will most assuredly stop if you do not give them encouragement. That said, content creators should not be telling their audience that they need to or they are required to give feedback or comments on works they’ve read/enjoyed, or to shame those who do not, on the grounds that they are “not being grateful or appreciative”, because that is emotionally manipulative and, overall, unethical. If you want feedback on your work, that needs to be arranged and agreed upon before sharing it.
Reposting someone’s work without their explicit consent isn’t just morally wrong, it is a crime. Equating it to asking for feedback or showing appreciation trivializes the severity of the issue. These are not equivalent, and while not giving someone feedback on their work may hurt their ego or lead to them feeling discouraged from continuing to create, reposting someone’s work can have real world economic consequences for the creator and cause tangible damages.
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gimmesomeclout-blog · 6 years ago
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The Final Blog Post
For my final blog post of my first year, I wanted to highlight the two topics that intrigued me the most, orientalism and the avant garde. Orientalism is a concept that blew my mind; it made me question the things around me, whether it was a social issue or a product, it stimulated me to ask whether or not it was a produce of orientalism. Orientalism revolves around history; I kept asking myself the question, 'What if history was different?' and would begin to imagine the various timelines that the world could have fallen into. The avant garde fascinated me ; it was interesting for me to research different pieces of art and artists and finding out what was considered groundbreaking for it's time, when you compare these innovative new methods to the pieces that are created today, you can really see how the influence of such an artist or piece has slowly and gradually developed into another style or merged with other ones to create a completely new style or genre.  The various lectures throughout the year have encouraged me to ask more questions than ever about everything around me, the tantalising subjects of each lecture were what made me look at things differently and sparked my curiosity into the world around me and it's origin.
Edward W. Said said in his groundbreaking book, Orientalism, said that Orientalism is the basic distinction between East and West as the starting point for elaborate theories, epics, novels, social descriptions, and political accounts concerning the Orient, its people, customs, ‘mind,’ destiny and so on.”
In essence, Orientalism is a thought process that imagines, emphasizes, and distorts differences of Arab peoples and cultures as compared to that of Europe and the U.S. It often involves seeing Arab culture as exotic, backward, uncivilised, and at times dangerous, whilst simultaneously viewing European culture as civilised, innovative and prestigious.
Because of Orientalism, the Western Civilisation saw themselves as more superior and civilised; since the Western civilisation is the dominant one in history, they painted an untrue picture of those in the Eastern culture. Art, history and all other historical accounts of the Eastern civilisation paint a darker picture for them; showing them to be misogynistic and savage.
An example of this would be the French colonisation of Algeria from 1830 to 1962. French entrepreneurs produced postcards of Algerian women that were circulated in France. Rather than actually capturing the Algerian women in their day-to-day lives, French photographers actually set them up in a studio which made them look strange in the French colonial perspective. The postcards depicted them in a way to make Algerian customs to look exotic, backwards and strange. This is an example of how Arab women were exoticized and eroticised for the pleasure of male European voyeurs who had fantasises of penetrating the harem.
Although Orientalism only refers to the places within the orient, Africa is still effected by the views of the occident. The Western people looked down on Africa when they first arrived there, they saw them as exotic, uncivilised and savage people and then decided that their culture was superior and started the slave trade. To this day, black people are still prejudiced by Western culture; after Hurricane Katrina, people would go to stores and take whatever they could, but when the media showed this: black and other ethnic people were ‘looting’ rather than ‘gathering supplies’ when white people were shown doing the exact same thing.
The historical impact of Orientalism can be seen in both a negative and positive way. The positive way of looking at Orientalism is that it has benefited our technology, standard of life and social life. Because of the history we currently have, everything that has happened thus far has brought us to this age of technology; where we’re able to connect with those on the other side of the world, get information and broadcast our opinions instantaneously. The negative way of looking at the historical impact of Orientalism is much more complex. In this way, orientalism paved the way for white supremacy: we can only make assumptions as to what would’ve happened differently if the moments in history where the occident didn’t see the orient as inferior; would we still have the technology that we do today? Would it be more or less advanced than the present? Would racism between Western cultures and everywhere else still be present? What would beauty standards be like? Unfortunately, there's no way of knowing and all we can do is speculate about what could have been.
The Avant Garde is defined as the new and experimental ideas and methods in art, music or literature; avant garde is the word ‘vanguard’ in French, the vanguard are soldiers who fight at the front line and push forward against entrenched opposition, and the artists, composers and writers who were pushing and innovating past the norms of their time were very much comparable to the vanguard. 
Real progress can only be made through failure and whoever wishes to advance must be prepared to fail. The avant garde is all about constant innovation, taking risks and thinking forward, so that the boundaries are always being pushed. Without the avant garde, the creative arts would be stagnant and would be full of artists, composers/musicians and writers etc. that all do things the same way; there would be no originality and we wouldn’t be able to innovate and improve anything around us.
The avant garde started in the nineteenth century, with artists such as Kirchner, Gaugin and Courbet who were challenging long-established concepts and ideas about art and fighting an entrenched establishment. Kirchner was an expressionist painter from the nineteenth century; he was part of a group called Die Brücke (The Bridge). They were called the bridge because they were trying to abstain from the traditional academic styles and find a new way of artistic expression, therefore forming a bridge between the past style and the present. Kirchner was able to express freedom, energy and feeling through his use of brush strokes and evocative colours. This approach and style is why Kirchner is considered to be an avant grade artist. Unfortunately, Kirchner was labelled a ‘degenerate artist’ by the Nazis, leading his works to be censored and denied the work public exposure. Because of artists like Kirchner, artists were inspired to express themselves in their own ways, this birthed many art movements of the twentieth century such as expressionism featuring artists like Van Gogh and Munch, cubism, futurism and many more.
In the contemporary creative arts, the avant grade are still pushing boundaries of their respective arts and are probably more frequent than ever. Because of the sheer number of people who are now involved in the arts, there are more and more people everyday trying to innovate and expand beyond the norms and beyond what should be possible.
I believe that the avant grade and creativity go hand-in-hand, one cannot exist without the other. One of the most avant garde creatives of our generation, Steve Jobs, said this, “Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesise new things.” Jobs put it perfectly; because of all of these creatives who are able to synthesise new things, the bridge between the past and the present is getting bigger. Creatives are becoming more and more frequent, and there will be a lot of things that will be seen as weird or crazy, maybe it's simply pushing the boundaries of it's respective art, or maybe it's just avant garde.
I’ve learnt a lot from my first year on this course; I’m leaving my first year at Kingston knowing that I picked the right course for me, I have a very good set of lecturers and course leaders and that I’ve gained more than just institutional intelligence from them. I found the subject matter of each lecture very engaging, but it was the lecturers that drove the topics into me and made me question everything around me and within me. As a British-Filipino growing up in a lower-class area, there were social, ethical and racial issues that I witnessed and experienced first hand; it was only because of the lectures that I attended, I was able to understand why such things were and still are happening. The course content is so much more stimulating than I had anticipated; the creative and cultural industries looks at many more problems, issues and stigmas within society and the industry, I didn’t know more than half of the things we were taught before coming onto the course. Hopefully this final blog post has done justice to my lecturers and course leaders, that I am more than capable of being able to talk about concepts and social issues and their effects on society and the industry; that I am more than the fashionable (?), loud-mouthed, quick-to-comment young Asian adult that I appear to be on the surface, and that maybe, just maybe, some of the intelligence, social awareness and understanding of my inspirational lecturers and course leaders may have been passed onto me.
References:
Name unavailable, What is Orientalism? | Reclaiming Identity: Dismantling Arab Stereotypes, Arabstereotypes.org, Website, http://arabstereotypes.org/why-stereotypes/what-orientalism
Name unavailable, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, En.wikipedia.org, Website, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Ludwig_Kirchner
Name unavailable, What is the Avant-Garde? Art Movements & Styles, YouTube, Website/Video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0hQydmGdYA
Barbara I Gongini, Avant-Garde Fashion: A Modern Definition - Barbara I Gongini, Barbaraigongini.com, Website, https://barbaraigongini.com/universe/blog/avant-garde-fashion-a-modern-definition/
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sparxwrites · 6 years ago
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I've noticed recently that I've become accustomed to capitalising words for Emphasis, both in the absence of italics and in tandem with them. As a language nerd, what does this suggest of language mutation going forward?
this isn’t language mutation! at least, not in the way i suspect you mean it. it’s more of a linguistic adaptation to the inherent limitations of text-based communication - which is a bit of a mouthful, and a lot to unpack, so, let’s start with the basics:
in spoken english, we have words and grammar and sentences, the same as we have with internet english. however, we also have facial expressions, and body language, and hand gestures - and most relevantly here something called prosidy, which internet english is lacking (at least in the traditional sense). prosidy is the changes in pitch and volume of your voice when speaking. this gives rise to stress and intonation in speech, which serves several purposes - one is distinguishing between words (ie. record the object, and record the action), another is conveying emotion, and another is providing emphasis.
the last one is the primary purpose of both italics and initial capitalisation in internet english. since we can’t have prosidy over the internet via pitch and volume, we’ve adopted other methods. 
words with the same spelling are usually disambiguated by context, so they’re not hugely relevant here, but there’s some interesting things going on with emotion and emphasis.
emotion is usually done with memes, emoticons, gifs, or other “verbal tags” - stuff like “/s” for sarcasm or “uwu” (which, interestingly, started off as a genuine expression of “i’m not mad at you!” and is now sarcastic and passive aggressive, so that’s a- lexical? possibly-lexical mutation there), or even acronyms like “tbh” and “lol” and “lmfao” which are now more often used to indicate the mood of a particular statement. for example: when was the last time you saw someone using lmfao to Actually Literally Mean “laughing my ass off”? now consider when the last time you saw someone using lmfao to mean “the previous statement is intended to be mildly humorous in a bleak and self-depreciating kind of way” was. think of the number of posts about “adults need to learn to text!” where people think their parents are angry because they ended a text in a full stop. think of all the wonderful variations on ellipses we have!! the way people use question marks as rhetorical devices, to indicate uncertainty in their statement, or to point out how obvious something is!! i love it. emotion tag-words are my favourite.
emphasis / stress is usually (or at least traditionally) done with italics in written english - it isn’t particularly a internet english thing, it’s been done by writers and comic book artists since well before the internet. this is part of what’s called prosodic stress in spoken english, and it’s used in a couple of different ways. aside from general the most relevant one here is to point out new information in a sentence (called focus in linguistics):
“However, it’s not enough to assume that turtles merely like the taste of pineapples. We must consider the possibility that turtles are deeply, sexually attracted to fruit.”
there’s also contrastive focus (a sub-type of focus, where the person you’re speaking to makes an assumption, and you’re contradicting / correcting them). wikipedia has some nice examples of how it’s often used both online and out loud:
I didn't take the test yesterday. (Somebody else did.)I didn't take the test yesterday. (I did not take it.)I didn't take the test yesterday. (I did something else with it.)I didn't take the test yesterday. (I took a different one.)I didn't take the test yesterday. (I took something else.)I didn't take the test yesterday. (I took it some other day.)
other things italics can do include indicating sarcasm (“Oh, of course, no one else has ever thought of this, because you’re so clever.”), and highlighting important/argument-relevant (“As I mentioned earlier: fish can feel love. This is just one reason amongst many, however, that fish-human marriage is undeniably ethically sound.”). i’m 90% sure that that latter one is probably also focus-related, but i don’t know enough about information structure generally to commit entirely to calling it focus - tbh, given how many different theories of focus there are, it may be focus under some theories, but not others (see also: that one theory on the wiki page where anything not given is focused, so if you’re specifically bringing up or reminding people of a relevant piece of information it’s probably not given and therefore focused). if the important / argument-relevant use is not focus-related, though, then it’s at least somehow related to information structure; perhaps italics are more generally useable to indicate something about information structure, without it specifically needing to be focus.
stress done with initial capitalisation, however, seems to be a little different - or at least, seems to occur in broader contexts than the one above. i suspect you could do an entire postgrad thesis on the similarities and differences between the two (and i also suspect that i don’t remember enough about syntax and phonology and information structure etc. to offer the best insight possible here), but let’s see if we can’t at least pick the differences apart a bit.
so! initial capitalisation can certainly be used in the same contexts as italics, for focusing new / relevant information and for contrastive focus. this evidenced by: (a) “omg, have u considered that turtles are Sexually Attracted To Fruit??” and “pls remember that Fish Can Feel Love” are both perfectly a-okay in internet english, and (b) by an edited version of the wikipedia examples:
I didn't take the test yesterday. (Somebody else did.)i Didn't take the test yesterday. (I did not take it.)i didn't Take the test yesterday. (I did something else with it.)i didn't take The test yesterday. (I took a different one.)i didn't take the Test yesterday. (I took something else.)i didn't take the test Yesterday. (I took it some other day.)
(initial capitalisation with “I” is always a little tricky (is it emphasis, or is it just normal capitalisation?), and in my expereince people tend to default to italics with it wherever possible for this reason. i’m also… unsure about how happy i am with the grammaticality (how “okay” a particular sentence is within a given language / dialect) of examples 4 & 5 (“The” and “Test”), but that might be because those two are a little unusual even with italics - “i didn’t take The Test today” looks much better, i think, and can mean both “i took a different one” and “i took something else”.)
however, it’s clear that initial capitalisation can occur in places where italicisation is either outright incorrect, or at least looks kind of weird:
[cute picture of a cat lying on its back, pulling a face, having knocked a plant pot off the table]
commenter A: “Why Do Cats Do These Things”
commenter B: “why do cats do these things”
commenter A’s statement is perfectly correct internet english; commenter B’s statement is just about interpretable, but quite clearly clumsy / not really acceptable in the opinion of most “native internet english speakers”. but why?? well, we’re clearly not focusing “do these things” (because it’s not really providing any information, it’s just sort of… pointing out that the cat in the picture is being weird and then asserting that this is prototypical cat behaviour. it’s trying to tap into a shared knowledge of “what cats do / are like” between “speaker” and reader), and though it’s somewhat humorous it’s not actually sarcastic, so italics are a no-go.
what commenter A is trying to do, however, is to indicate a specific usage / meaning of “do these things” via a specific “tone of voice”. commenter A is not just asking why cats behave specifically in this manner re: knocking pots off and pulling faces, they’re trying to indicate that they consider cats in general to act weirdly and look goofy; typing “why do cats do these things” would be mostly fine if you are indicating frustration / anger with a sudden plague of cats-knocking-off-plant-pots, but that’s not what commenter A is trying to communicate.
additionally, when i say “Why Do Cats Do These Things” out loud, there’s a specific tone of voice i use for it, that i suspect others do to - this kind of flat monotone, with a heavy weight on each word that’s not so much emphasis but a very careful over-pronunciation. it’s not quite emphasis, and definitely not focus-emphasis; it’s almost a comedy thing, or a joke; it’s drawing attention to a specific interpretation of this sentence that’s both humorous and typical within internet spaces; it’s indicating a kind of emotion (exasperation / affection / despair) more than anything.
some other examples of this, where capitalisation is a-okay but italics are somewhere between weird and entirely unacceptable:
“nah it’ll be fine, i’m Basically Immortal lol”
“getting run over would be Suboptimal”
“if word crashes and deletes this essay then, i swear to god, I’m Gonna Die”
“you’re a Terrible Human Being and i love it”
(if anyone can think of any examples where italics and capitalisation is okay, but are in the same style as the above, then let me know! or if people disagree with my analysis of what initial capitalisation sounds like out-loud. this sort of thing relies on native speaker judgements, usually, and although i am as close to a native internet english speaker as you’re gonna get, i’m only one person. other people may have other judgements.)
i suspect, from all of this, that the function of initial capitalisation is to indicate any kind of change in prosidy in the speaker’s voice (though primarily weird monotone), usually with an emphasis on a specific interpretation of the particular phrase that’s initially-capitalised. this is why it can be used for focus, and for sarcasm, and for more general emphasis the same way - but why it can also be used to represent a monotone (“I Would Prefer Not To”) in a way italics can’t, or to indicate that specific “you know what i’m talking about / i am referring to a concept we both share but that cannot be put into words” tone (“Why Are You Like This”), or that looping-up-and-down voice people use when they’re winding someone up (“I Am A Joy And A Delight, idk what you’re talking about :3ccc”).
italics can kind of be used for some of these, but only really as an extension of its function as an indicator of sarcasm - which means that italics are intelligible in that context, but just look weird, and like the person using them isn’t very fluent in internet english. that’s because initial caps don’t quite indicate sarcasm, though it occupies a similar teasing-dramatic tonal area; in some / most instances, initial caps seems to function similar to adding “lmfao” or “lol” onto the end, which suggests it’s also indicating a self-depreciating or bleak humour / drama to the sentence. initial caps seem to function, then, as a focus / emphasis device, but also as an emotion indicator, which is a sort of fascinating crossover of function - but very similarly to the way we see voice and prosidy being used for both focus / emphasis, and for conveying emotion.
so, you probably use italics + capitalisation in conjunction because you’re trying to convey two different things. for a sentence like “drinking three cups of coffee in a row is a terrible, awful, no good idea and oh my god Why Would You Do That”, the italics are conveying where you’re putting stress / emphasis in the sentence (on “oh my god why would you do that”). the initial capitalisation, however, is indicating that on top of emphasis, you’re saying “why would you do that” in a specifically unusual kind of prosidy, probably quite a flat and monotone one, and that it’s designed to be teasing / humorous.
i also suspect that italics + capitalisation can be used as a kind of “double emphasis”, or marking out an emphasised section within an already emphasised talking point. kind of the way bolding sometimes works?? (except the internet tends not to use bolding fsr, or only uses it for headings / as a way to highlight the most important sentences in a wall of information. it’s a structural-level organisational device, essentially.) so you can re-parse “it’s so important we feed cats and dogs different food, because cats are not dogs and have different dietary requirements!!!” as “[...], precisely because Cats Are Not Dogs and have different dietary requirements!!!”. in this instance, you’re emphasising that the reason for different treatment is that cats are not dogs and therefore have different dietary requirements, but also emphasising the fact in and of itself that cats are not dogs.
i also also suspect that, when we just need one form of emphasis and are choosing whether to use italics or initial capitalisation, we consider the context of our writing. in this “essay”, i’ve mostly used italics - they’re a little more “formal” as far as internet language goes (so, not very formal at all, but still more standard than initial caps), they’re more semantically accessible (i.e. if non-tumblr people find this essay, whereas they might be able to proactively work out what initial caps are intended to convey from context, they’ll probably intuitively understand the use of italics here), and they’re more visually accessible / they disrupt the visual flow of the text less. when i’m talking with friends (especially on platforms like skype and discord and tumblr messenger which, if they support italics at all, do so in a “non-intuitive” way, i.e. not using ctrl+i like word processing software does), in shorter / less formal settings, where the visual flow of the sentence is part of the meaning / emotion of the sentence in and of itself (how long are the sentences? do you use full stops? do you capitalise the beginnings of sentences? do you send each sentence as a new message? on a new line? how many dots do you use for ellipses? keysmashes? ?!??!??!?!?!?!!!! ?), i tend to use initial caps.
so tl;dr: italics seem to be primarily used to indicate focus - you’re pointing out a new or specifically relevant piece of information, or you’re correcting / denying a piece of information that your conversational partner has provided (or perhaps being sarcastic). initial capitalisation can Also/also be used for this purpose, but is additionally used to represent Any/any kind of change in prosidy that would occur if you spoke the sentence aloud (since we also mess about with intonation for other reasons beside focus). ...i sincerely hope someone has done / is doing / will do a thesis on this bc honestly this probably has some fascinating implications for information structure or prosidy or Something/something tbh.
regarding the “mutations” comment: these sorts of internet english quirks are not language mutations, per se, because we already have features for distinguishing this kind of thing in spoken english - and also because a lot of this stuff is what we call paralinguistic phenomena, which means that sarcasm and emphasis etc. communicate something, but it’s not actually strictly part of the language itself. it just adds an extra layer of meaning on top of the stuff being conveyed by the actual words.
instead, they’re adaptations of our orthographic (writing) system to cope with the increasing demands of written/internet english to convey these sorts of things. online, we don’t have people’s prosidy and their body language / expressions to read, so we need altered orthography or other visual indicators to ensure that people correctly understand the intent and mood behind your communication, not just the raw word-content of it. that’s why internet english has developed these quirks. essentially: our communication has always had these paralinguistic phenomena, these ways to convey emotion and emphasis; we’re just finding different ways of expressing them in response to environmental restrictions, i.e. the fact we’re all increasingly communicating via text on a regular, intensive basis. historically, we’ve primarily communicated verbally, so it’s not developed due to lack of need - but the internet has has created a heavily-used, text-primary environment, so now we do need it, and we’re collaboratively creating it as a result because humans (especially young humans) are excellent language innovators. it’s pretty neat!!
(as an interesting aside, i suspect that there’s also an element of in-grouping going on here. people want to mark out the community belong to, the people they’ve chosen as their “tribe” - irl, we do this via slang, and accents, and sometimes through certain types of wordplay or forms of prosidy / gesture etc. obviously, online, we can have slang (think about how often you’ve seen someone on tumblr say “top kek”, versus how ubiquitous that phrase is on reddit), but accents are a little harder. so we instead develop different ways of typing, different ways we use italics or capitalisation or emotes. some of this depends on platform constraints - if your community’s site doesn’t allow bold/italics, or automatically converts emotes into weird yellow smileys, you’re gonna have to develop workarounds for that - but some of it is us going “these are my people, and i can tell because we talk differently, and we’re Not Like You People”. this is why it can sometimes be linguistically disorienting going onto a different platform; i often find posters’ “tone” on reddit hard to read, because they seem to signal emotion differently to on tumblr!!
this may, perhaps, also be a reason why we’ve ended up with both capitalisation and italics - if one social group developed italics as emphasis, and a second social group (perhaps on a platform without capacity for italics) developed capitalisation as emphasis, and then the two groups merged or interacted, you’re gonna get this linguistic transference where the groups adopt one another’s styles without dropping their own original style. and then- voila! both italics and capitalisation for emphasis. but because language often tends towards getting rid of redundancy, the two styles specified out into having slightly different connotations / occuring in slightly different pragmatic environments. or, perhaps, the capitalisation style was always broader than italics, and there’s not been any change yet to reduce redundancy, but there will be in the future. who knows!)
(as a second interesting aside, all of this is probably partly why autistic people often report online friendships being easier / report preferring textual communication to face-to-face. whereas expressions and prosidy can be exceptionally difficult to learn to read if they’re not instinctual - think of the infinite variations of muscle contraction and relaxation in the face! the number of different pitches and volumes and patterns we can make with our voice! they’re very difficult to categorise because they overlap a lot and tend to gradient into one another - these kinds of “emotional tags” are usually quite easy and clear-cut. “/s” indicates sarcasm every time it is used, entirely unambiguously. stuff like “lol” or “tbh” are a little more ambiguous, but even then, they have a more limited set of emotional contexts that they’re used in than, say, the corners of your lips moving upwards. gifs and memes are even better; if they don’t outright say what they mean on the gif or in the meme, there’s entire websites dedicated to cataloguing and explaining memes should you be unclear of the usage.
additionally, internet environments can be a little more forgiving wrt people not picking up on tone, or using an incorrect / weird tone, when conversing; it’s hard to display tone online, and even allistic people (especially internet newbies or older people) struggle with it, so tonal faux pas or misunderstandings are a little more expected (and therefore forgiven) than irl.)
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la-fille-en-aiguilles · 7 years ago
Text
James McAvoy x Female Reader: Bloody Numpties
A/N: I had a major writer’s block these past months… Until I came across this imagine of James McAvoy that just made me sit down and write this entire thing in one go. It may feel a little rushed at times, definitely not my best work, but I had quite a blast writing it. There are no warnings, except maybe an occasional curse and my awful portrayal of Scottish accent, which I learned to really love these past months… Oh and James’ mimics, because having that much charisma should be illegal. Enjoy x
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None of these gifs are mine.
“And I’m done here.”
You felt the soft ends of the brush caress your forehead one more time before you forced yourself to open your eyes. Hair and makeup were the best parts of your routine these days: sitting in front of those huge-ass mirrors with light bulbs burning bright and illuminating your features, you remembered once in a while that you were actually a human, and not some mutant with 5 kilo bags under your eyes and skin so pale it almost seemed transparent.
Mutant. Ha. James would love that. 
Quickly checking you reflection in the mirror, you gave the makeup artist assigned to you a warm smile. She smiled back, quickly putting her things away and silently admiring her work.
You turned back to face your reflection, your eyes traveling down your highlighted cheekbones to your perfectly contoured dark pink lips.
You had to give it to her, the woman could work miracles.
“So beautiful, lassie”, you almost jumped, adrenaline rushing through your veins. Chuckling slightly, Michael distanced his face from your ear before you could smack him, thus ruining all the work Kimberley the Makeup Artist had done on him.
“Fass-ass, I swear to God, if you use that fake Scottish accent on me again…” you whispered through gritted teeth, watching his shit-eating grin’s reflection in the mirror. 
“You’re up in ten, you guys”, Kimberley’s melodic voice interrupted your very improper, even downright scandalous train of thought as you turned to face her. “I’ll send James to fetch you after I’m done with him”.
Both you and Michael hummed something incomprehensible in response before she walked out of the room, closing the door behind her. 
“Don’t,” you immediately shot Fassbender a killer look, watching him open his mouth to speak already. “We’re not having this conversation again, Michael. I knew there was a reason for you coming to my makeup station out of the blue”.
Leaning back on the table right next to yours, the actor you currently hated the most in this world crossed his arms, his whole being exuding annoyance and a healthy dose of disappointment.
“You can’t go on like this forever, you know”, he finally let out, staring at you, unblinking.
You raised your eyebrows at him as if saying watch me, before hopping off your chair and leaning closer to the mirror, running your fingers through your locks to give them some more volume.
Not that they needed it. Leaning closer to the mirror meant blocking Michael’s face from your field of vision and thus avoiding his heavy, judgmental stare.
“I have no idea what you talking about”, when it came to this kind of conversations, as always, you thought your safest bet was to play dumb; as always, Michael rolled his eyes behind your back, getting more and more exasperated with his own helplessness. 
“Y/N…” you knew that tone, just like you knew exactly what would follow. So in order to cut the crap, you turned your entire body in his direction, copying his pose by folding your hands on your chest. 
“What do you want me to say to him, hmm, Michael? James, I’m sorry, but I fucked up? I sucked at being your best friend by lying to you? By wanting to feel that jawline of yours cut my inner thighs open they are so sharp? Please,” you snorted, turning back around, biting your bottom lip hard, your teeth ruining your lipstick. 
“Shit,” you muttered, trying to spread the color evenly on your lips now and only making it worse. 
Michael snickered, looking at your pathetic attempts to fix the damage. 
“Come here, you fool,” you felt him grab your hand, and pull you closer. With millions of thoughts orbiting in your head like a hoard of fireflies, you gave in. Carefully sliding his thumb over your lip, Michael almost fixed the entire thing, making the view a lot more bearable. 
“Thanks for that”, you muttered sincerely, looking back at yourself in the mirror. Your eyes now fixed on his reflection, you swallowed hard. “He is going to hate me”, your lips barely moved, but still, Michael understood, responding with a frown. “I know him far longer than you do, and trust me, he is going to freak. I swear if you tell him…” it took you a gargantuan effort not to bite your bottom lip again. “I’ll tell Alicia all about…” you stared daggers at him as a smirk bloomed on his lips. 
Michael came closer to you, sliding his hand up and down your back, a smile that would put a Cheshire cat to shame stretching on his thin lips.
“Who’s Alicia?” he interrupted you mid-sentence, gazing into the mirror, catching your eyes with his, so wicked and full of intent. You scoffed at his lame joke and squirmed at that horrible Scottish accent Fassbender had put back on, like an old wool jumper that didn’t fit him one bit. “You are underestimating yourself, Y/N. Honest to God, if it weren’t for Alicia, I’d be thrilled to show ye how sharp my jawline can be…”
You gasped at his comment, staring at him in disbelief. Hysterical sparkles danced in his eyes as he smiled contentedly at his comment which he apparently thought was going to make you feel better. On the verge of bursting into a fit of laughter at the sight of your scandalized expression, he pouted his lips and winked at you, obviously trying to mimic James. 
Irritated out of your mind, you turned around swiftly, ready to smack him across his chest when he caught you by the wrist.
“You bloody…” the door to the room flew open, hitting the wall with a loud screech and not letting you finish. Uneasy smile vanished from your face as soon as you saw who was behind it.
“James,” you managed, your throat suddenly going dry.
McAvoy avoided looking at you, of that you were certain. His beautiful eyes, framed by those incredibly long eyelashes were now dodging you like you were fucking plague. 
Your stomach dropped as soon as your best friend spoke, his voice cold and distant, so unlike anything you’ve ever heard come out of that plump mouth of his…
“It’s showtime,” he almost spit, the venom of his tone crashing into you like a splash of acid. “Sorry tae interrupt.”
And just like that, he was out of that door again, without looking back.
You didn’t dare to look at Michael, your heart beating so frantically you felt it crash your ribcage. The shit has hit the fan. He knew.
Watching Michael crack third joke in a row in response to Jimmy’s antics, you gave them both a smile so fake you probably looked like a psychopath straight from a horror movie. Normally, you would be the one teasing both Fassbender and McAvoy mercilessly, and they would look like they are about to call for their respective mothers. Normally, you would be the one interacting with the public, making them laugh and whistle at your comments. But this wasn’t normal you. Normal you stayed in that makeup room curled in the corner crying her eyes out, humiliated by the fact that your best friend knew you dreamed of his head in between your legs. And what was worse – wait for it – that same best friend knew and wanted, apparently, nothing to do with you anymore.
Michael was obviously carrying the entire happening on his shoulders. James would throw a line in occasionally, let out a throaty laugh now and then and give those screaming girls his trademark wink. You, on the other hand, were tense and silent, like the sky right before a thunderstorm. Asking yourself again and again how much he’d heard and trying to convince yourself that you had been freaking out over nothing and imagining things, you stayed completely out of the entire conversation, smiling occasionally, not even caring enough to know why you were, in fact, smiling. 
That was until Jimmy Fallon, his prying eyes fixed on James, let the only question you dreaded most fall off his lips. His voice broke you out of your stupor, making you shudder, sending fat drops of sweat down your back. 
“So James,” his gaze switched to your face, and unable to hear anything because of the blood pumping in your ears, you managed to read his lips. “We all agree that you’ve got pretty lucky landing yourself Y/N as your love interest in this part of the franchise”, the audience screamed at Fallon’s bluntness approvingly, while all you wanted to do was to strangle the man. “What was it like to work with her? This wasn’t the first time you guys shared intense looks… I mean the chemistry between the two of you is a real deal!”
The audience yelled in approval again, yet all you could hear was your own heart beating in your throat now. 
Good lord Y/N, what are you, twelve? Get a fucking hold of yourself! you internally screamed, looking at all those people and laughing silently.
Because the entire situation was so bloody hilarious, obviously.
“I’ve got tae say…” As soon as James opened his mouth, you felt your knees go weak, and you prayed to whoever would listen nobody would notice the state you were in. You earned a bloody Oscar for this show alone.
“Marry her, James!” just when McAvoy started to speak, a male voice rang in the air, attracting all the attention. You turned around swiftly, followed by Michael, trying to spot the screaming person. Laughter erupted in waves all around you, Fassbender doubled up in his seat. Switching your gaze back to James, you noticed the Scotsman look in that exact direction from where the voice came as his lips parted in a genuine, beautiful smile you loved. He winked at the stranger, as if saying I’m on it, bro, before continuing.
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You did your best not to stare at James open-mouthed but failed. Luckily Fallon found your reaction hilarious, teasing McAvoy about it, but you heard none of it, utterly stunned. 
“I’ve got tae say,” James raised his voice, interrupting Jimmy and the cheering crowd, his face still lit up with a smile. “Working with Y/N is outtae this world. I mean, look at her,” with both of his hands he motioned towards you, exhibiting your beauty. “Man, how can all that talent, elegance and splendor fit in one and the same person? She’s incredible.”
And that’s when his big beautiful eyes finally met yours. Together with what you recognized as sadness and pity, that despicable feeling you were so afraid of, you also saw hope, half-hidden behind those ocean blue irises. 
He was secretly hoping you could stay friends, you suddenly realized. He didn’t love you back and he probably never would nurse this kind of feelings for you, but maybe – just maybe – you could still be friends!…
“Jesus, James,” …and then Michael just had to bloody open that big mouth of his. “I might actually get jealous, you know”.
And just like that, that smile you’d sell your soul for, was gone. The moment was lost, together with a tiny flicker of hope you were holding on to so hard.
James’ stare suddenly grew firm as soon as his eyes quit yours. His pupils, like barrels of two guns, aimed at Fassbender’s chest. 
“O’ course ye might”, once those bullets made of pure disgust cut through Michael’s body, James turned back to face Jimmy, a smile back on his face yet never reaching his fuming eyes.
It was at this moment that you felt your blood boil in righteous anger. So he’s pissed at you for having fallen for him, whatever. This was indeed a really fucked-up move on your end. Michael, however, deserved none of the shit James was giving him. He only tried to encourage you to come clean, and honestly, this wasn’t quite an apocalyptic situation to deal with. 
With the oncoming waves of anger, rising in your chest, you forgot all about that hope you saw glimmer in James’ stare. He could be a dick to you, for all you cared, but Michael literally did nothing to deserve any of this. 
By the end of the interview you were so riled up you imagined quite graphically how you would call James out on his bullshit once you were alone. However, the minute the show was over, McAvoy rushed out of the place, barely saying his goodbyes to Jimmy and his crew, not even bothering to wait for you and Michael. 
Biting your bottom lip so hard that it hurt, you followed him with your eyes until he was out of the door, suddenly feeling tears burning at the back of your stare.
“What is his problem?” Michael frowned, standing beside you, his eyes still fixed on the closed doors. 
You bit your lip harder, keeping the answer from sliding off your tongue, the answer both you and Michael knew.
You were his problem. You and your stupid feelings.
By midnight, you have passed all stages there were to this both tragic and ridiculous situation. Wrapped in your blanket, curled up in your bed, after denial, anger, and feeling sorry for yourself you’ve finally crossed the Rubicon of acceptance.
So you fell for your best friend and he now knew it, big bloody deal. Although you still couldn’t gather up enough courage to go talk to him about it like adults that you were, you’ve pretty much made peace with him knowing about your feelings and visibly being uncomfortable with them. If he was not ready to face you from now on because he was feeling embarrassed or whatever, well, he was shit out of luck, because you were not going anywhere. You were here with him because you were doing your job and you weren’t just going to leave because some James bloody McAvoy was feeling distressed. 
He was going to have to live with his embarrassment till the press tour was over, at least.
You had to admit, it hurt like a bitch though. You’d be lying to yourself if you didn’t acknowledge that sometimes, in the early hours of dawn, you would think about all those ways James would react to your confession. And how you would then drive into the sunset together, holding hands and listening to Ed bloody Sheeran. 
What your imagination didn’t work on though was how you were going to react if McAvoy almost literally showed you his elegant middle finger and closed the door to his life right in front of your face for good. 
Just when you finally thought you’d come to terms with everything that had happened today, a couple of loud bangs cut the silence of your hotel room, instilling fear in you. 
“Sweet Jesus, what now…”, you whispered when the night guest continued to hit on the wailing door again and again, quickly jumping on your feet and rushing to the door. You threw it wide open, not giving yourself time to think twice about it. 
You were pretty sure Michael’s face was a tiny shade lighter than the tapestry behind him, a beautiful Bordeaux color. It didn’t become him at all though.
“What’s wrong?!” you exclaimed almost instantly, prominent lines on Michael’s forehead screaming volumes about his state of mind. 
Fassbender was furious.
“You are going to tell James how you feel”, he had hard time controlling his temper as his voice trembled greatly. “And you are going to do it right now”.
You stared at him as if Michael was mentally retarded and just said something so stupid it lowered the IQ of the entire city.
“Come again?” you spoke, your eyebrows almost reaching your hairline. “Sorry to break it to you, sweetheart, but he already knows”, you fought to keep the sarcasm in your voice at bay, but it didn’t quite work. Actually, it didn’t work at all.
Your words only seemed to aggravate Michael’s pissed off state. Barely containing the anger, he grabbed you a hand, and headed down the corridor, dragging you along.
“Hey!” you yelled in protest, only now realizing all you were wearing was a silk nightgown. Covering your breasts with your free hand, you tried if not to talk some sense into your friend, then at least learn what the hell was going on.
“What happened?” you asked carefully, following Michael – he was forty times stronger than you, plus your were pretty sure that if you refused to keep up, he’d carry you all the way to James’ door. 
“He’s out of his fucking mind!” Michael barked, as you shuddered at the sound. “He’s raving mad, poor bastard…”
“I don’t understand,” you interrupted, you voice small and sincere. 
That’s when Michael suddenly stopped and softly pushed you towards the closed door of the suite he shared with James. 
“You will,” he said, more sure of himself than ever. “Just tell him. Now is as good fucking time as any”.
And with those words, he knocked on the door so hard the entire hotel must have heard. Reaching past you, Michael turned the doorknob and pushed the door open, silently inviting you in.
“I’m going to have a whiskey”, he informed you. “And when I’m back I expect this entire madhouse to be over.”
You sighed, looking at him, searching for mercy in his eyes. Yet they remained tough, telling you that if you didn’t come in, Fassbender would carry you inside, thrown over his shoulder.
You rolled your eyes at him and stepped into the room, finally resigning to your fate.
Deep inside you knew that Michael was right and the two of you needed to talk… You just didn’t know why this embarrassing and bitter conversation couldn’t wait till morning.
“James!” you called, clenching your fists and walking into the main area of the presidential suite. “Come out, come out, whenever you are.”
Looking around, you couldn’t help but smile at the idiocy of the entire situation. You must have been dreaming, none of this seemed real. Neither you, standing in your nightgown in the middle of this huge open space with a bar corner and a gigantic sofa. Nor the sounds of the water running somewhere further in the suite. Nor that huge puddle of red wine on the floor, looking like a bloodstain littered with green bottle glass…
It was only when the sound of the running water stopped that you actually realized what it meant. 
As you opened your mouth to let James know you were there, he walked out of one of the corridors with nothing but a towel covering his hips.
Small drops of water still littered his naked shoulders and his toned torso. Prominent veins run along his hands, muscles taut and his biceps bulging. His hair stuck out as he ran his fingers through it, only now noticing you, feeling exposed for a millisecond. 
The sound of you letting out a breath you didn’t know you were holding seemed to shake him out of his stupor. Lines littered his face here and there almost instantly, his eyes sliding down your frame. You suddenly realized your nightgown must have left nothing to imagination, but instead of crossing your arms on your chest in hopes of covering yourself up, you just dropped them.
Let him bloody see what he’s missing.
You noticed how his Adam’s apple moved slightly in response to your challenging glare before he turned away, biting the inside of his cheeks, obviously trying to gain some self-control.
The atmosphere in the room had shifted so drastically from the way it was when you first walked in. Everything – you, him, the puddle on the floor – all seemed real all of the sudden, and you fought with all your might not to come up to him and touch his bare skin, run your fingers down his abdomen and then…
“Wha’ are ye doin’ here?” his voice was cold and loud, too loud for the moment you were currently sharing. He still refused to look at you. “Can I help ye with anythin’?”
You cleared your throat, caught off guard. Not reciprocating your feelings was one thing. Refusing to face you when he talked to you, however, was something else entirely. Biting your lips fiercely in order not to scream bloody murder, you forced yourself to remember why you were here. Instead of walking up to him and kicking him in his balls, like you ached to do, you just continued to stare at him, burning holes in his naked body.
“Sure thing, yeah. You can start by telling me what the hell is wrong with you!” you came off strong, stronger than you originally intended, having trouble to control your emotions. 
He finally turned your way and narrowed his eyes at you but said nothing. This only served to piss you off more, his unfairness from earlier fueling your anger.
“You know what? I get it!” you felt a lump rising in your throat and pushed it down with all your might. “You think I’m sad and pathetic for falling in love with my best friend. I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry I fucked everything up”, you felt tears pulling in your eyes but commanded yourself not to cry, effectively keeping them back. “But you are just… You’re disgusting!” you finally found the right word and watched James’ squirm at the sound of it, rage distorting his handsome face as he finally acknowledged your presence. Before you could continue, something spectacular happened, something you’d never seen before. 
James McAvoy exploded.
“I’m disgustin’?!” he roared like a wounded tiger. “oh tha’ is rich, coming from ye! I stood by ye every time, no matter what ye did, but this… How fuckin’ could ye, Y/N! I trusted ye! I gave ye me all and ye just… It’s pretty clear ye don’t give a flyin’ fuck ‘bout me, but wha’ bout her?! She’s your bloody friend!!”
You stared at him wide-eyed. What in the world was he talking about?!… None of this added up. 
James literally just growled making two more steps towards you, his gaze leaving flash burns on your bare skin. Brushing nervous fingers through his hair again, he turned away from you, pacing back and forth. 
“I honestly have no idea what you talking about”, you managed, feeling the heat pool in your lower stomach.
Now is not the time, you thought, biting your lips and trying to keep a clear head, a burning ache for him consuming you all of the sudden. 
“Alicia, Y/N! Does tha’ name ring a bell for ye?” he turned back and you just looked at him dumbfounded, completely losing the thread of this conversation. Taking in your lost state, James threw his hands in the air in desperation. “Did ye think about her when ye thought about Michael’s fuckin’ head in between yer thighs?”
The words sounded as if he had to force them out, scarring his throat, cutting it raw. It took a minute for their meaning to settle in. 
“You are insane,” you slowly countered, realization dawning on you. “Sweet Jesus, you are such a moron!!…” 
“Tha’ I am alright!” he bellowed in agreement, disappointment and hurt in his every gesture hitting you like a runaway train. “Another fuckin’ pathetic moron ye scored for yeself, princess! All this time it has been him, all this fuckin’ time, while I’ve been livin’ for the crap ye give me!…”
“You think I’m in love with Fass-ass?! Are you shitting me, McAvoy?!” you screamed at the top of your lungs now, mad for hell knows what, a weird, warm and overwhelming feeling spreading in your chest as you finally understood the reason for him acting like an asshole all along. ““I love you, you bloody idiot!”
James was quite a sight to watch. All the anger seemed to evaporate off his body. He stood straighter now, his red lips half-parted, his eyes glowing like the surface of the sea reflecting the starlight. He looked like a man who wanted to believe yet didn’t not dare to. A deep frown still darkened his features, but it didn’t look so carved-in anymore. James looked like he needed you to give him a reason, one single reason to end this entire mess, because he’d be happy to oblige. 
He only needed one reason.
And suddenly you knew exactly what it was.
“It’s you that I want, it has always been you!” you let out, your hands shaking for some reason. “It’s your touch I yearn for, it’s your stupid head that I…”
He didn’t let you finish. All you heard was a gasp, but you couldn’t tell to save your life if it was him or you. Soft and muffled, like a secret told in the dark of the night, it slipped from someone’s lips before his mouth crashed into yours, his hands tugging at your hair as he aligned your bodies. The cold tip of his nose caressed your skin as his lips moved against yours.
You moaned into his mouth, cupping his face in between your hands. His lips seemed to be drawn to yours as one open-mouthed kiss followed another, his tongue skimming over your bottom lip tenderly but demandingly, promising so much by doing so little. When you felt him trying to distance himself from you, in order to catch his breath, no doubt, you grabbed the back of his neck and pressed your lips into his harder, feeling him smile, his breath hot on your mouth. 
“I’m so sorry, I…” James whispered, his thumbs rubbing soft circles on your cheekbones.
“Shut up,” you ordered softly as your breaths mingled together before you captured those red and plump lips with yours, your nails scratching that sensitive skin on the back of his neck, your fingers crawling down his bare shoulder blades…
“About fucking time,” Fassbender pressed his ear to the door to the room as soon as the screaming ceased. “Better fucking name your first kid Michael and make me a godfather, bloody numpties”.
And whistling some cheerful song for which he didn’t know the lyrics, he made his way down the corridor thinking now was the time to hit the bar, for that whiskey he just made sure he deserved. 
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complexfemaleprotag · 7 years ago
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A Day Late and a DIME SHORT disprove that adage that people become too feeble to be of any use...
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Welcome to the diner of the downtrodden in writer Laura Carson and Director, Krista Gano’s beautifully realized tapestry to humanity in the face of loss.
This tender drama screens October 21st as part of a slate of provocative shorts by female filmmakers at the Flicks by Chicks Film Festival!
6 PM - SHORTS BLOCK SCREENING at Alamo Drafthouse Cedars 1005 S Lamar St. Dallas (https://prekindle.com/event/33691-flicks-by-chicks-fest-dallas)
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We were thrilled to find that both Laura and Krista were going to be able to fly into Dallas for the festival and we had the chance to dialogue about their film via email prior to their arrival - here’s the scoop!
FXCF: It’s really amazing to me how many characters you jam into a 10-minute short and do them all service.  It’s very nuanced writing – for example a throw away line like “I’d be using my MBA” tells us in a very organic way that Laura’s character is not a career waitress, but has fallen on hard times.  It’s important because it gives us a tangible reason she has so much empathy for everyone else in this diner of the downtrodden.  Did you have any qualms about the amount of characters and backstories you were exploring in such a brief page count?
LAURA (Writer/Actress) One of the key themes I wanted to explore was the concept of community being critical to people who've fallen on hard times and how they might find the support they need in their neighbors. So I needed enough characters to paint a sense of community. There is also a lot of pride and shame woven into Bob's character and I wanted the reveal of his "secret" witnessed by many to deepen that wound for him.
Also a large number of characters helped me show the scope of how many people are challenged by our "new" economy in ways that might not be readily apparent to an observer. I LOVE the "diner of the downtrodden" phrase.  Thank you; I'm going to steal that going forward. Yes, Donna, looks over her charges, seeking to remain "relevant" in a job that is clearly beneath her education but not beneath her humanity. Thanks for appreciating the economy and efficiency of the clues and dialogue planted to show rather than tell the story. These little bits of info are always around us, thrown away and so we don't notice them or connect them to what is the bigger story of a person's life. Like in the case of Pete, wondering what his life story might be that has him homeless yet knowledgable of Kleptocracy. Or the Young Woman's "dead dreams" comment about Bev.  Or how Bob refers to the photograph of his family and says, "heartbreaking, right?" I have to give the wonderful Tim Brennen credit for improvising that line - it is perfectly in alignment with the intentional mystery of these characters. I want each viewer to make their own assumptions about what these clues could mean. So I didn't have qualms at all about several characters. 
  Krista (Director/Producer) I was actually excited to work with so many characters and had encouraged Laura to really make sure that each community member had a clear story of their own.  We were really playing with the notion of how much we put of a front that everything is okay.  Whether it be because we trying to impress, or we are in denial, or because it's too hard to ask for help, we are masters of hiding our internal worlds.  Laura and I kept talking through the ways that we could show this.  The written script is largely the mask we are wearing to others, while the unspoken details (just as carefully crafted) are where the internal truths leak out.  So, because the idea is that we all engage in this behavior, it was important to explore that wth all the characters in varying degrees.
My favorite things to explore are relationships in groups of people....families, neighbors, etc.  I love working with actors to subtly show the complexity that is inherent in those relationships.  My next project, Comfort Food really looks at those same dynamics through the lens of a grieving family trying to re-connect.  Working with the actors on Dime Short to show those differing layers of character was intensely fun.
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FXCF:  Two things are always important to me beyond the storytelling when watching a short film – really good acting and really good sound.  Both were stellar in Dime Short.  Okay, I have a good idea how you convinced Laura to take the part (lovely, lovely work!) but what was the process of casting for you?  Everyone was just terrific.  You were shooting out of LA (or at least it plays to be Colorado) and no one makes much on a short film – so, how’d you get such a great cast?
Krista (Director/Producer) Thank you, so much!  What a huge compliment.  Laura and Tim are both friends of mine from our time together at The Groundlings Theatre in LA.  Laura had really written this script with her and Tim in mind (which was an amazing start in terms of casting).  I'm now living in Denver and have a company called The Working Artist Group, which consults actors on how to move from hobbyists to working professionally in television and film.  So, I know and work with a lot of local Colorado and NM actors.  As Laura was writing more diner characters, I knew exactly who was right to play each one.  We have some really wonderful local talent and it was important for both Laura and I to highlight them in a piece that was shot and set in small town Colorado.   I think because I work with actors all the time on both their business and their craft, it gives me unique insight in working with them as a director.  I was an actor, I have spent a career working with actors, and ultimately love actors and the craft.  My hope is to always cast to their strengths and create spaces and opportunities for them to do great work.  We were also tremendously lucky to have Jon Diack, Jennifer Anguiano and Jen Piech from Nogginsauce as producing partners because they really allowed Laura and I to drive the creative part of the ship.   Thanks also for the note about the sound.  My husband, Greg Upton, is a musician who hales from Texas.   So, we were really blessed to have his work on this piece.  Our sound guy on set, Patrick Badgley did an amazing job capturing the sound and Matthew Polis was wonderful to work with in post.  I actually didn't really start to "see" a finished film until the sound came together.  Those kudos go straight to that entire sound department. As a side note, Tim Brennan brought in a different take on Bob than what I initially saw in my head.  I had to make the decision on set to either let him steer that character his way, or to try to negotiate something closer to my vision.  I made a hard, but very clear decision to support his vision of Bob.  I was watching the macro, but he was focusing on Bob in a clear, thoughtful and discerning way.  As a result, we needed to change some of our plans and do some quick dancing on set, but it was really worth it.  Tim Brennan imprinted something that I couldn't see on this project and ultimately re-taught me the lesson of collaborating and trusting your artistic partners.
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FXCF:  I love that this piece isn’t over written and it has so much humanity, depth and feeling.  But much is left for the audience to assume or fill in – what inspired this piece and what are you hoping the audience takes away from the experience?
Laura (Writer/Actress)It was very intentional to paint an unfinished picture and let the audience walk away hopefully curious about these characters; turning over the clues in their minds and piecing the puzzle together. Like why Bob takes the longest pee ever.... Could that lead to a curiosity about other people in their lives? A lofty goal perhaps but I love how Krista Gano's direction made a quiet, slice-of-life film that tonally speaks to the quiet desperation of Bob. It's a gentleness with the material that I just love and it elevates it to tragedy in my mind. But with hope. A tenuous hope but hope nevertheless. The story was inspired by a vision that popped into my head many years ago of a homeless man drinking a milkshake. I have no idea why it showed up and there was no other context for it. Just a homeless man drinking a milkshake, getting lost in the goodness of it. Strangely enough, I would kind of see this image a few years later when my father was in a nursing home and required me to bring him an almost daily milkshake. It triggered that image again and that is when I started writing the script in 2010. My mother used to make me milkshakes when I was sick as a kid and the cold milk flowing over my inflamed throat, the sweetness and the richness were wonderful. Despite feeling awful, that milkshake made by Mom created a momentary physical and emotional oasis of security and "sweetness" in my life. So I wrote "Dime Short" with the hope that we as a society can find the sweetness, find security, find our own emotional oasis, if just for a moment, when we've lost possibly everything. More importantly, how do we do that for each other? Krista (Director/Producer)I read this script when it was in the first draft form, and I could already see this world.  My hope is that audiences leave with different impressions of this film.  That they talk about how we see other's struggles and how we support each other when the chips are down.  I hope they question the action of treating one person's worst day as their day's entertainment   One of my favorite things is to hear people talking about is what happened to Bob's family, how did Donna land here, what happened to Bev, or how did Pete's son die.  It's been really interesting to hear the different theories.  Our greatest compliment is hearing that people would love to know more about this world and these characters.  They stick with you as you leave and that's a pretty remarkable outcome as a filmmaker.
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gilraina · 6 months ago
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#we don't have a replacement ready either#the commenter actually highlights it perfectly 'why not call them an artist or a writer'#because im not talking about ONLY artists and writers!!!!#this applies to cosplayers this applies to gif makers this applies to people who do edits#this applies to video makers this applies to animators this applies to voice actors#this applies to knitters this applies to web weavers#i guess i GUESS ''''artist'''' kinda sorta can be applied loosely as a catch all#but when you hear 'artist' most of the time you're not thinking of half the people i mentioned#content creator used to be 'someone who made content' where content is ANYthing. just something you made#fandom content creator was anyone who made anything for the fandom#and i dont like that this is the new Controversial Term because some fuckos ruined it by commodifying it#they took whatever blight is all over 'Influencer' and smeared it on content creator too#idgaf if someone calls me a content creator because thats what i AM. i create CONTENT.#now that term gets you yelled at or whatever and there's not even a back up we have ready to go (tags by op)
Prompt-based fandom events are when you really learn everyone’s colors like you’ll find the people who take the prompt “death” and come up with some smarmy ship-art of character A and character B walking over dead leaves while wearing scarves and drinking hot cider and then you’ll find the people who take the prompt “sunshine” and write how a bright glint of sunshine reflected off the barrel of a gun is the absolute last thing character A sees before taking a bullet to the chest
you can lead a content creator to water but you sure as fuck can’t make him drink
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