#what else do u tag fanart of someone elses stuff with. um

[brravo07]

erm.. heh.... hi...... @0ffical-xd holds my hand out carefully...

here...... take this really low effort and speedran fanart....... and before u mention it yes i did forget his freckles and yes i do feel bad but i was on a time crunch so like ummm spare me😭ALSO IGNORE IF ITS RLLY BAD QUALITY OOPS

anyways whos gonna tell him hes fucking ugly before i do it and hurt his feeljngs /j

[rennybu]

hey man, so i've been wanting to start taking art commissions, but i have no clue where to start or how to advertise for myself or anything like that. do u got any tips u can lend 2 a newbie?

HMM!!! A COMPLEX ASK i will do my best to keep my answer concise! my first disclaimer is that my PayPal account is a business account, and I don't know how a personal account is different or if it lacks any of the features! my second disclaimer is that this stuff is hard and i'm constantly adjusting my own methods around organization and pricing! READ ON

For starting out, it's good if you have a fairly active following (amount of followers doesn't really matter, as long as a handful of folks are willing to engage with your posts and share them) - you can bring up your interest in taking on commissions, and see what the immediate interest is in your circle, and plan from there.

I got a lot of my following from DA fanart, and that helped when I first started. Most of my commissions starting out were portraits of Dragon Age OCs!! So it can be helpful for the advertising/awareness side of things if you have a small niche to fill!

For your first time taking commissions I would recommend sticking to what is most comfortable for you to draw. A limited selection (for example, only portraits with some colour or line options) is less overwhelming for someone to look at and choose from, and it helps to manage your own expectations of the workload. Put an emphasis on fun style stuff or techniques you enjoy using!!

Offer what you know you can reasonably do and feel proud of! And don't be shy charging more for things like backgrounds or things outside of your comfort zone, if a request for one comes up.

PLEASE go wild with all the relevant tags when you post your information! Commissions, commission info, character commissions, character art, art commissions, fantasy, portrait, fullbody, GO NUTS! its helpful to cover everything in the post if you're worried about your reach!

as well, you can link your commission information in the captions of your other art posts. It makes it a bit more accessible and obvious that you're open for commission work! AND DONT BE SHY TO SELF-REBLOG!! and if you have multiple social media accounts, share you information on all the ones you're active on.

it also helps to spend some time making your information and examples look neat. I Am Not A Graphic Designer so this part takes me hours/days because I'm picky, but I try to keep in mind things like legibility and eye strain and lay out my information in as accessible a way as possible. Also its fun to play with fonts

I still struggle with undercharging on my work, so I think a good way to consider your pricing is to think of what you would be willing to pay someone else for a similar amount of work. Nothing should be single digits. On your invoices, allow the option for customers to tip you. If you're just starting out and your prices are low out of self consciousness or uncertainty, someone who's excited to work with you or who enjoys your style may surprise you with a very generous tip!!! Tips in the past have helped me reevaluate my rates!! If you're a commissioner who regularly tips I'm kissing you on the forehead so so sweetly

PayPal does take a % and fee on every invoice BUT for archiving and organization its great. I would recommend looking up PayPal invoice tutorials for digital artists, and writing up a simple Terms of Service you can post with your commission info and attach to your invoices. (The TOS basically serves to say what people can or can't do with the art they buy from you, whether or not you do refunds, what the turnaround time is per commission, etc. the Professional Stuff)

um. umm other than that. Try out spreadsheets or other types of organization to keep track of contact information, $ amount, type of commission, etc!!! it's nice to be able to look back at what you've done in a more data-oriented way than just the images alone!

[the-cryptographer]

miranova23 (@kaiba-fangirl​​) replied to your photo:

Hey no prob! On mobile rn (& should be doing hw <.<) but as far as the ~controversial~ ships, I know they can still be aged-up or the ship name used for just any other kind of relationSHIP. Heck, most of the characters are canonically underage, and there's even the reveal of Seth & Atemu being cousins, buuut it's Ancient Egypt, & does that mean their reincarnated spirits count as cousins??? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ btw finally wrote out a long-time-coming brothershipping post. we seem to be on the same page though 👍 As far as ettushipping i don't really have anything else rn i guess... but I'll keep u in mind =)

It took me a minute to realise you were referring to locketshipping aka tabloidshipping aka incesty Mokuba/Seto. For some reason, probably just wishful thinking, I thought at first maybe you meant battleshipping (Jou/Seto/Yuugi) or buddyshipping (Honda/Jou)...

I made the statements I did without really contextualising them within the context of the ygo fandom. It didn’t occur to me you were referring to a distaste for the fandom presence of certain ships or the way they’re presented. So... sorry I got kind of weird on you in the tags.

below the cut is tl;dr about controversial stuff and incest and sibling abuse

re: tags. I know people in fandom use the term ‘pedophilia’ as a catch all for... whatever they view as having the potential of including child sexual abuse. I personally think maintaining the distinction between pedophilic and ephebophilic attraction patterns (which people may or may not act on), and acts of child sexual abuse (for which attraction may or may not be a factor) is important. But really I knew what you meant when you said what you said, so I realised I was being pretty nitpicky. But also, even more generally, I think people should be free to write about controversial and potentially disturbing topics, so long as they realise what they’re doing and include proper tags/warning.

re: scandalship. Usually when I’m talking about incest ships I’m not talking about cousins. Not that cousin incest isn’t technically incest, but it’s allowed in most of the world today including some US states. And it doesn’t have the same kind of relational baggage as parent or sibling incest. The bigger part of what makes things incest in my mind is the person having been closely involved in the other person’s formative childhood development in capacity as a parent or sibling, and it almost without exception coincides with abuse. Malik/Rishid is an incest ship in my mind because Rishid was undoubtedly a brother to Malik during his upbringing. (Isis/Rishid is harder for me to make a call on because we see less of their relationship. It’s not clear whether they were raised together in an intimate proximity, or whether they really relate as siblings. So, depending on what headcanons you’re working with, I think both incestuous and non-incestuous interpretations of a romantic relationship between them could be valid.)

But, in terms of what you were talking about in your post here - I haven’t run into a lot of Mokuba/Seto personally - not enough to view it as some sort of fandom problem. But admittedly I haven’t gone looking for fics specifically featuring the two of them, so maybe that’s why. I know I’ve seen someone else also complain about the abundance of Mokuba/Seto in the search for gen fic, and I also had a similar experience pretty recently, so presumably it is a common fandom experience. I was searching through doujinshi on pixiv and opened something that I assumed to be Kaibros gen but was not. I had actually long since thought the internet has massively desensitised me to everything, but I actually shuddered irl. This isn’t to condemn the artist - admittedly I think everybody should label/tag things like that but I assume they did and I was the one that went around clicking links without taking the time to read the Japanese. But from a perspective of what I found disturbing was the kind of ease that you described in your post - that kind of moves between something I’d consider part of a very close and caring and acceptable sibling relationship, to something unacceptable that immediately undermines the validity of Seto and Mokuba hugging or sharing a bed in a nonsexual context, but also tries to capatalise on and continue off of the ‘cute’ vibes set up by what could have once been reasonably interpreted as a platonically intimate gesture, instead of a symptom of abuse.

(Yeah, for the record, I don’t think it’s abnormal for siblings to be physically affectionate to a degree. A lot of siblings aren’t as close as you and your brother, even siblings with more or less amiable relationships, but I agree it’s odd and unfair to assume that you guys can’t or shouldn’t be platonically affectionate. Otoh, though, I feel like it’s not always easy to spot a family resemblance, so I get how people may be confused. And also just wanna throw out there that sibling sexual abuse is more common than anybody wants to admit, and there’s a critical lack of attention towards the issue compared to rarer types of child sexual abuse, so it’s unfortunately possible that people are projecting their own unhealthy histories and dynamics onto you.)

But, hmm, there was another case I had where I ran into (appropriately warned for) Mokuba/Seto that I think handled the topic pretty delicately. It was about a Seto that had a plethora of sexual desires (including feelings for Mokuba) that he felt unequipped to find an outlet for - partly because of the ferocity with which he isolates himself and pushes away human contact. It was an unsettling story - but what made it palatable for me was the way both the narrative and Seto himself were keenly aware of how inappropriate acting on such desires would be. Seto’s guilt-ridden, convinced of his own monstrosity, and desperate to escape to VR (or wherever he can go to not deal with anything even remotely like an emotion). Seto immediately understands this attraction poses a threat and threatens to topple every way in which he’s tried to protect Mokuba. And Mokuba’s increasingly worried for his brother, and too naive to really understand exactly what the big deal is - even when Seto crosses the line and kisses him (and immediately pushes Mokuba away and runs off and curls up into a ball of self-loathing). And, when VR proves to be an insufficient method of escaping his own humanity, Mokuba finally convinces Seto to reach out to Yuugi, and Seto agrees because - even thought the last thing he wants to do is reach out to anyone - he cares more about remaining a good brother to Mokuba than maintaining the comfort of his own emotional isolation. So it becomes a reassertion of how much Seto values Mokuba as a brother and puts him first, rather than an expression of sexual violence.

I’m not saying this story is something for everyone (it’s not. it made me uncomfortable at times. and the solace that it was meant to make me uncomfortable was enough to soothe me, but I realise that’s not enough for everyone.) It also doesn’t blend with my personal headcanons, tbh, and it’s not something I would be interested in writing about with regards to Seto and Mokuba. But as a reader and letting the author take the reins, I enjoyed the fic, and I see the merit in it exploring the concepts it did. Far more than I see the merit in exploring Seto and Mokuba in the context of ‘aw, cute they’re hugging. now they’re kissing. uwu’ But, idk, I’m also not the arbitrator of what fiction has merit or isn’t too irredeemably creepy for anyone other than myself.

idk, like I said, I haven’t run into much Mokuba/Seto during my (mostly relatively recent) run of the fandom. Maybe it’s a bigger issue than I envisioned. And, well, I can’t stop people from creating fanart of Kaiba and Mokuba cuddling with whatever understanding they have of the circumstances behind the scene. But- yeah. I don’t support locket-/tabloid-/brother- shipping them in that manner. I’ve heard a lot of people just say ‘Kaibros’ to refer to Seto & Mokuba as a unit. But I don’t know if there’s a consensus on what people use as a tag for gen Seto & Mokuba things *shrugs*

(And, um, just more generally regarding the Kaiba brothers - I think they can be pretty unhealthily codependent, but no more than I’d expect two brothers having been through foster care and alone against the world to be. I don’t mean to undermine how important and loving and their relationship with one another has been, and how much it has been a saving grace for them.)

Anyhow, sorry for this upsetting tl;dr but- Thank you again! And, lol, yes! Keep me in mind for all things ettushipping related! And polarship and pupship and rivalship and battleship and 5000 other things tbh, lol.