Me And My Friend Talking About Rengoku:

Disney's writer wage-theft is far worse than reported

Back in November, we learned that Disney had pulled a breathtakingly criminal wage-theft manuever on one of science-fiction’s most beloved authors, Allan Dean Foster, an elderly cancer-patient caring for his sick wife.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/19/disneymustpay/#disneymustpay

Foster is the bestselling author of some of the most successful movie novelizations ever, from the first STAR WARS novel to ALIENS novels and more. Thanks to Disney’s monopolistic buying spree of companies like Lucas and Fox, they now owned the movies and Foster’s contract.

Here’s where things get criminally weird. Disney argued that when they bought out Lucas, Fox, etc, they acquired their assets, but not their liabilities. In other words, they’d acquired the right to sell Foster’s work, but not the obligation to pay him when they did.

This is not how copyright contracts work, period. If it were, then any publisher with a runaway bestseller novel could incorporate a new company, sell its assets - but not its liabilities - to that company, and stiff the writer.

Both Foster’s agent and the Science Fiction Writers of America tried to negotiate with Disney quietly on this, but they were stonewalled and insulted (Disney insisted that they wouldn’t even *discuss* a deal without first getting nondisclosure agreements from Foster, another unheard-of tactic).

After failing to make progress with private negotiations, they went loudly public, launching the #DisneyMustPay campaign. The good news is, the campaign was successful, and Foster has been paid.

The bad news is that the campaign flushed out *many* writers who are also having their wages stolen by Disney. The company is stalling them, too - refusing to search its records or volunteer info unless the authors can name the specific instances in which they’ve been robbed.

In response, SFWA has joined forces with the Romance Writers of America, the Horror Writers of America, the National Writers Union, Sisters in Crime and the Authors Guild to form a coalition called Writers Must Be Paid.

https://www.writersmustbepaid.org/

They have a form where writers who suspect that Disney has stolen their wages can report it, anonymously:

https://airtable.com/shrE1hJbqMHsjP9Ll

There’s a reason for the anonymity: Disney’s anticompetitive mergers (culminating with the destructive Fox merger) has created a monopoly with vast market-power to destroy creators’ livelihoods by excluding them for speaking out.

The coalition has five modest demands for Disney:

I. Honor contracts now held by Disney and its subsidiaries

II. Provide royalty payments and statements to all affected authors

III. Update their licensing page with an FAQ for writers about how to handle missing royalties

IV. Create a clear, easy-to-find contact person or point for affected authors.

V. Cooperate with author organizations who are providing support to authors and agents.

More broadly, I hope this brings more creative workers into the discussion about competition.

Specifically, “monopsony,” the excessive buying power that happens when a companies dominate access to a market, which allows them to squeeze their suppliers, especially workers.

Lloyd Ninjago casually reminding us that they/them singular pronouns are grammatically correct and just easier than saying ‘he or she’ 😎✨

hey! as an artist do you ever feel discouraged by the like/reblog ratio here? ive been postin art here for some time and ive found for every 20 likes i get maybe 1 reblog and while i dont wanna come over as greedy it like kinda discourages me :( i would rlly like to stay on tumblr bc it feels much more anonymous than insta/twitter but i also crave Validation ykno. ty in advance!

Okay, but I fear you won’t like my answer... 

My reply is - no, I don’t, because tumblr actually makes it super easy to ignore the reblog/like ratio. The two are lumped together into a category called ‘notes’ so unless you are looking for it, you won’t know what your reblog/like ratio is, and it’s super easy to view it as a lump sum of people who saw your art and smiled.

Here’s the thing; liking vs reblogging is not personal. And it isn’t something to try to change the tide over. I’ve seen my fair share of posts on here AND twitter, with most of them CONDEMNING liking - going so far as to call it useless. But I disagree. Strongly. 

My opinion on the matter is this - if people wanted to reblog the post, they would reblog it. If they don’t, the cards weren’t right. The stars didn’t align. It isn’t a matter of quality - it’s a matter of the right content being there at the right time for the right audience. Because let’s face is - PLENTY of stuff gets reblogged.... when the circumstances are right.

But the circumstances HAVE to be right. EXACTLY right. There has to be a CHAIN of the exact right circumstances. That’s how sharing ANYTHING works. 

Let me put it this way - say we have a hypothetical follower called J. 

J is scrolling his dashboard and comes across a post he likes, say, of a frog picture. He likes the post and has to make a decision - to reblog or not reblog the frog?

Say he likes the frog enough to reblog. It’s  a natural thing - he wants to show it to his followers. He may not think of it consciously, but he’s following an instinct to share information with people. 

But what happens after? Well, it’s not RANDOM. The thing is, J’s followers are NOT the followers of the blog he reblogged it from. They’re a degree of separation from the OP, and are therefore that much less likely to share interests that align with the OP’s content. 

SO what happens is this:

Some people on J’s follower list see the frog and like it. 

Of the ones that like it, a percentage are just liking out of habit and politeness.

A few are liking it to find it later and show it to their irl friends.

A few are liking it because they DON’T want to reblog it, because it doesn’t align with what they want to show to THEIR followers (who are, let’s be honest, even MORE removed from the OP’s frog-centric content).

And who’s to blame? 

ABSOLUTELY NO ONE. Because you cannot force people to reblog stuff any more than you can force people to show their friend their phone when they see a funny meme. 

Can you imagine something like this happening?

This is ridiculous, right? We cannot presume that people are not reblogging because they’re out to be malicious on purpose. Most likely they just aren’t motivated enough to share it in their own social circles for their own reasons - and that’s FINE. 

Look, I get it. People not sharing your stuff gets you less notes. I get how that is disappointing. But if you put ALL of your motivation into internet clout, then you have to put effort into making your art VISIBLE. That’s the only way to get more reblogs. 

For example, if you’re prioritizing visibility:

Get more social media accounts. Make sure the usernames are the same, or at least recognizable, across all social media. 

Organize your art tumblr and twitter. Make a pinned post that shows off your best work. TAG! Learn common tags used for artwork similar to yours.

Interact with other artists! Comment on posts! Reblog others’ artwork! 

NETWORK!!! That is the only way to guarantee that the flowchart of reblogs gets more than once branch.

Twitter circumvents this issue by shoving likes in your face as often as Retweets and that’s certainly one way to give your reblog-tree a boost, but it’s not foolproof. Tumblr has tags you can follow - and that DOES give you more of a possibility of getting reblogs of the content because if people are in a tag, they are LOOKING for stuff. On purpose. They already like what they see.

I feel your pain, I really do, because it took me literal YEARS to find an audience that consistently likes and reblogged my stuff. And your audience deserves to find you - but your followers aren’t your agent. It’s not their job to advertise on your behalf. 

They’ll reblog when they want to - and that’s a good thing. It’s more genuine that way. 

that same anon just sent me ketchup 15 times what did i do to deserve this

Hi I'm back

Allow me to introduce:

Hestia, the traveling performer that uses magic fire! She's my Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild oc!

I'm aware of how cringey and cliché she is but I just make my characters that way for fun :3

This first picture is her character sheet, the next is a little gorey, showing blood and some bone (not colored) so fair warning ⚠️

⚠️ TW:// SLIGHT BLOOD + BONE (Black and White) ⚠️

Haha death by guardians go brrrrr (seriously I hate those things)

As a teenage artist who only started drawing seriously three years ago on crappy notebook paper during math class.... I seriously wish I found this sooner

being a self-taught artist with no formal training is having done art seriously since you were a young teenager and only finding out that you’re supposed to do warm up sketches every time you’re about to work on serious art when you’re fuckin twenty-five

felt like i should put this out there:

IF YOU SHIP ADULTS WITH MINORS, THIS BLOG IS NOT FOR YOU

IF YOU SHIP INCEST, THIS BLOG IS NOT FOR YOU

IF YOU SHIP ANYTHING ILLEGAL, THIS BLOG IS NOT FOR YOU

IF YOU THINK THAT ANY OF THAT IS OKAY, LEAVE MY BLOG. IT'S NOT FOR YOU.

100 likes and I'll kiss my crush if she gives consent and feels comfortable with it

*distant screeches and squeaks of happiness that people like me*