A note to all creatives:

Right now, you have to be a team player. You cannot complain about AI being used to fuck over your industry and then turn around and use it on somebody else’s industry.

No AI book covers. No making funny little videos using deepfakes to make an actor say stuff they never did. No AI translation of your book. No AI audiobooks. No AI generated moodboards or fancasts or any of that shit. No feeding someone else’s unfinished work into Chat GPT “because you just want to know how it ends*” (what the fuck is wrong with you?). No playing around with AI generated 3D assets you can’t ascertain the origin of. None of it. And stop using AI filters on your selfies or ESPECIALLY using AI on somebody else’s photo or artwork.

We are at a crossroad and at a time of historically shitty conditions for working artists across ALL creative fields, and we gotta stick together. And you know what? Not only is standing up for other artists against exploitation and theft the morally correct thing to do, it’s also the professionally smartest thing to do, too. Because the corporations will fuck you over too, and then they do it’s your peers that will hold you up. And we have a long memory.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking “your peers” are only the people in your own industry. Writers can’t succeed without artists, editors, translators, etc making their books a reality. Illustrators depend on writers and editors for work. Video creators co-exist with voice actors and animators and people who do 3D rendering etc. If you piss off everyone else but the ones who do the exact same job you do, congratulations! You’ve just sunk your career.

Always remember: the artists who succeed in this career path, the ones who get hired or are sought after for commissions or collaboration, they aren’t the super talented “fuck you I got mine” types. They’re the one who show up to do the work and are easy to get along with.

And they especially are not scabs.

*that’s not even how it ends that’s a statistically likely and creatively boring way for it to end. Why would you even want to read that.

Muriel Fahrion, the creator of Strawberry Shortcake and Care Bears, was under a work for hire contract when she created them and as a result has received no residuals over the last 40+ years. If you like either of those properties, consider purchasing something from her website. She has art and cute jewelry!

not to Discourse but I’m a cis man and my partner is an afab enby and if you call us a “straight couple” I will personally come to your house tie you to a chair and make you listen to a podcast about gender identity on endless repeat

this is specifically @ the people who saw us at pride together and saw them wearing a “THEY/THEM” button and still referred to them as my “girlfriend” you’re all cancelled thanks

it’s called respecting queer people juice

y'know the really amazing thing about the notes on this post - apart from just the sheer number of people who are, like, viscerally terrified of the existence of a person who isn’t cis - is how many of them are responding to things that aren’t here. specifically, you’ll notice I said nothing about my sexuality. I didn’t say I identified as non-het, or that I considered myself part of the LGBTQIA community. on the flip side, I also didn’t give you any reason to believe I’m not bi, or that I’ve never been in a relationship with a cis man. y'all know nothing about my sexuality from this post and you don’t need to and I’m not going to tell you about it now because! this post! was not! about me!

it was about respecting my partner’s identity. and the fact that they don’t get that respect from people in the exact community that they should be able to count on getting it from.

ie, you.

they are not het or cis, and no relationship they are in will ever be a “straight relationship” because they. are not. het. or. cis.

everyone in the notes gatekeeping me because I’m “not oppressed”? I never said I was. the person you’re really attacking and invalidating by shitting on this post is them, a pansexual nonbinary person who is unerasably queer.

huh. it’s almost as if the whole “we can’t let straight men use queerness to worm their way into our community” discourse is just an excuse to hate trans people, isn’t it.

I reblog this every time I see it–

thinking abt all the ppl constantly posting abt afab nonbinary ppl who are dating cis men and saying that clearly their partner just thinks they’re a woman. and how they’re the same ppl on this post disrespecting op’s partner’s identity. almost like y’all don’t respect afab nonbinary ppl and think they’re just “basically women” (unless they physically transition in which case they’re “basically men”) but don’t want to admit that so you project that shit onto their partners.

HELL YEAH FUCK HIM UP YOUR HONOR

This morning I was reading a fanfic (ao3) and everything was fine until in the comment section the author answered a question about the writing AI she was using. I felt such visceral disgust at that. I dropped the story like it was acid.

To those that use AI. How dare you? How dare you to have the audacity of using a program that steals people's creativity? How dare you feed it, taking that which was granted with love and passion and then transform it into a soulless program? How dare you bend yourself to these corporations that only seek to exploits us further?

I would 100% prefer to read a fic that has mistakes but that has care into every word and a person behind it with immense love for the fandom, than to read Shakespeare vomited by a code that it was written by a thousand cunts that wank themselves at a picture of Mark Zuckerberg.

If you're doing mental gymnastics to justify art theft and exploitation, then there's no mistake. You are wrong. Nothing will change that.

reblog to kill an HOA manager

i spent an insane amount of time trying to make that gif on my phone lmao please validate me 🥲

OK! OK!

Oh my gods they’re adorable! Have a nice day at work, Employment Jelly

But what if the job you deserve is not a job you’ll love??

Its very simple. You intrinsically deserve to be content with your work.

Whatever your job right now, you deserve better.

I’m curious as to where you all stand

Reblog for demographics!

Has either union called for a boycott? Because boycotting can disrupt their plans and make negotiations harder unless they’re actively asking for one. I’m boycotting reality TV (which every studio is going to be pushing because it’s the only content they can make cheaply and without writers or professional actors) but nothing else unless we are asked to.

#i always understood that boycotts and strikes were sort of two opposing strategies#if a strike is happening you want demand to continue as normal because the point is to prove what would happen without your labor#a boycott is reducing demand and the point is usually in response to a practice that cant be solved by employees walking out#for instance a boycott might be ideal for protesting AI generated content (via @displacedlabrat)

This is correct. If anything, I want the execs to be terrified because the consumers are demanding more from them and they have nothing in their reserves to sell and no way of making anything else to sell.

Also "new" content is going to keep coming out for a while because it's already been written and acted and edited. (I'd actually expect a lot of bad-but-finished movies that would normally never be released to get released once they start running out of the good stuff) There is less than no point to boycott anything right now.

1) Nobody in the unions has called for a boycott.

2) Boycotting takes away the residuals/initial payout due to the actors and writers right when they aren’t working.

3) Boycotting let’s the studios say “See? You aren’t valuable; nobody wants your labor” which is precisely the opposite of the message to be sent.

The debate of all time

If you don't like brownies then this poll is not for you. Please move along

Please rb if you vote

Okay so I did some research, very basic research, on the user base of tumblr and how many of us there are.

There are at least 300 million unique visitors worldwide on this site. Over 500 million blogs.

Listen. Tumblr is $30 million in debt. This is Super easy for us to solve.

If each user gifts one blog crabs, which costs slightly over $3, that would be roughly $600 million at least. Far more than enough to get Tumblr out of the red zone.

If we want tumblr to stay afloat and not change something as integral about their operating system, we need to show them they can be profitable without reducing themselves to common social media sites. What we have here is special. It is different. We are the social media site people run to when theirs collapses and for good reason.

If we want this to work, we have to make it work. We can even make it into a game. Just how long can we outlast the other social media sites?

Yes that’s exactly what I’m saying.

It needs to be a holiday. Pick a date a few weeks from now, and just make it Crab Day. Maybe a Saturday as a lot of people are paid on Fridays. Just in case this post becomes more popular than any I've had before, lets set the date as the last Saturday in July (which for us in 2023 will be July 29th.)

On July 29th, gift as many crabs as you can without breaking the bank. Post crab memes if you cannot afford a crab.

Tumblr can pull this off. Tumblr likes doing things like this.

Guys there's an account for this now @crab-day-counter

Come on Tumblr, don’t be fucking cowards

Alternatively -  come on nameless intern #102, you have a chance to be the fucking funniest person on staff.

cowards

Time for manual blazing, tumblr can be a coward but they can't stop us.

jesus fucking christ

"i wish i could do something 😔 / i wish the wga had a kickstarter or a gofundme, i would throw money at it" good news! it's amazing how you can literally go onto the wga strike website or the wgawest linktree from their twitter and find links to support writers and other workers affected by the strike

listen I say this with patience bc some people may genuinely have not thought about this before but if you firmly say “AI art is terribly unethical and steals from artists” (which is correct) but then turn around and use voice AIs to generate songs/voice lines that sound like your favourite voice actors or singers……………………………………that is also AI art and it is also terribly unethical

just a few examples of voice actors making their stance clear for all the ppl who are trying to disagree w me

Reblog to send care packages to our troops on the front lines (ao3 volunteers) in their fight against this eminent threat (DDoS attacker).

god this tickles me

(OP's tiktok here)

Leona's post is here.

Her YT video is here.

Please spread Leona's story, and her evidence, as much as you can. She has a mountain of evidence proving Bethesda/Zenimax a hostile work environment for trans women, and she deserves to be heard and to receive justice for being forced out of her job.

FUCK YOU DISNEY

Anyways, y’all better start saving your fave fanfics and fanart under the Disney labels cause it looks like they’re trying to curb fair use/fanworks and I’m sure there’s going to be mass panicked deletions even though it’s probably unnecessary cause AO3′s legal team will fight for us.

You know that 400K yall were so fucking mad about OTW raising? Yeah, its gonna pay for the travel expenses and court costs that the legal team at AO3/OTW when they protect your shit from getting C&Ded. DO NOT DELETE YOUR STUFF! IF YOU GET CONTACTED BY DISNEY - GO TO THE ORGANIZATION OF TRANSFORMATIVE WORKS , CONTACT THEIR LEGAL ADVOCACY DEPARTMENT! ASK FOR HELP!! THIS SHIT RIGHT HERE IS *WHY* *THEY* *EXIST*

Note that Disney would have one Hell of a time serving C&Ds to authors at AO3 - because there is no “contact author” option other than leaving a comment.

They’d have to contact the SITE, which is to say, the Organization for Transformative Works, to deliver a C&D order or a DMCA takedown order.

And the OTW is not going to remove fics because someone sent a letter that says “actually those characters belong to me and you can’t use them that way.” The OTW was created to FIGHT that kind of claim. They are ready. 

Don’t delete your fics out of fear. WE OWN THE SERVERS. They can’t threaten the hosts into deleting anything.

And if Disney thought they had a strong legal case against fanfic, they’d’ve shut down the archive a decade ago, when it was penniless and unknown, instead of waiting until it had won several battles in Congress and got worldwide acclaim for a Hugo Award.

This is important!

This is why we say you aren’t allowed Patreon and Ko-Fi links on AO3. Because it gives these parasites their legal back door to fuck your shit up.

Reblogging it for that last point. We can do this because it’s free. Don’t be an asshole and have the fact that you are charging people to write about another organization’s intellectual property out in the open because you can ruin it for everybody.