drakengard fanbook work! illustrating (abstractly) the weapon story for flamberge from the game drakengard 2. absolutely loved doing this and always glad to have an excuse to draw a dragon.
I write, I doodle, I love robots and fantasy beasts, and I will always be ready to geek out about Zoids, Portal, Half-Life, Final Fantasy, Nier, and much more. But first, I'm a follower of Christ, and you'll find I think about God a lot.
“People have always felt a sort of ownership over art, and that’s actually good. It’s why you keep a book on your shelf and return to it, it’s why you hang a picture on your wall that speaks to you. But when this gets out of hand and you mistake access or a personal connection with your rights, as happens so often in our Internet age, it leads to a dangerous sense of entitlement. That’s why readers feel empowered to complain, directly to the creator, that a book or show doesn’t have absolutely everything they want: the romantic pairing they’d hoped for, the language they find most friendly, the ending they desired. And it’s also why, for instance, the last Harry Potter book leaked on the internet before it was officially published: fans saw the book as something they were owed, not the product of labor that deserved compensation. Not that J.K. Rowling needs more money—but she, and all authors, deserve to have their work recognized as work.
“Consumers hold a pernicious power, so this trend towards free content won’t reverse itself unless we want it to. This is a sad thing, and we will all be much worse off if we can only hear stories from people who can afford to write.”
Please please please do NOT pirate books if you want to keep having books to read. The median income for full-time authors in 2017 is reported at $20,857. That means half of all authors reporting income made LESS.
And of the authors that reported that they were, in fact, full-time authors, only 63% had ANY earnings to report. The average of those who did earn something was $43,247. Which means, looking at the difference between the median and average, the average is heavily weighted by the superstars.
MOST of your favorite authors are either working a second (or third, or more) job, have a partner who earns more money, or is living hand-to-mouth, or some combination of the three.
Libraries are your friends. Most have ebook collections now. I know readers gotta eat, but writers do too.
Signed,
Someone whose book isn’t out for another 4 months, and is ALREADY being pirated :(Oh gosh :( this really hit me: “This is a sad thing, and we will all be much worse off if we can only hear stories from people who can afford to write.”
A post from Maggie Stiefvater’s deactivated Tumblr about pirating killing the Raven Cycle boxset
If you cannot afford to buy books, please go through your public library! When you get a library card, you’ll also be able to sign up to rent audiobooks; a librarian can help you if you’re not sure how. Libraries are an important part of the book ecosystem, and when you get a book for free from the library, you’re still supporting the author.
Adding to this: do not return ebooks purchased on Amazon for a refund. There are a disturbing number of people who read the whole (or nearly whole) ebook and then return for refund. The author loses money when you do that, and not Amazon. Just use the library if you don’t want to pay for it. Libraries have ebooks these days too.
The average yearly income for writers (from writing) in the UK is about £11,000. Which is not great. And yeah, piracy means that authors don’t get paid, don’t get future books bought by publishers, get lower advances and smaller print runs which means few people can buy their books which means… lower income.
Also, if you’re in the UK, borrowing from the library does directly support authors financially too! They get payments from library books being borrowed!
If you’re in the UK and want to skip Amazon, but don’t have a local indie bookstore, you can also try Bookshop.orgBookshop.org and Hive are obviously better than Amazon but the indie sellers don’t get that much of a cut when you buy via them. Much better to buy direct from an indie if you can.
If you’re avoiding Amazon, remember, Abe Books, Book Depository and Audible are all Amazon companies.
I also recommend Better World Books for both new and second-hand books. They have free, fast delivery. And they are owned by a non-profit! Which is partnered with the Internet Archive! They’re so good.
Waterstones.com is a decent alternative to Amazon, if you’re struggling to find a local indie or you need somewhere with a really huge range. Waterstones is a chain but it’s a chain that the indies need to survive - its buying power helps keen publisher prices down so Amazon and the supermarkets don’t have a monopoly.
And yeah - public libraries! You can join online for free and borrow ebooks and audiobooks as well as physically going in. It’s so easy there’s literally no justification for pirating books.
Writers need to and deserve to be reimbursed for the enormous labour that goes into making books. And it doesn’t get said enough - but so do comissioning editors, copy editors, illustrators, cover designers and all the other people who work hard and contribute to the creation of books.
Also, if the library doesn’t have the book you want, there’s a GOOD chance they will either straight up buy it for you OR they can inter-library loan it from a library that does have it. Don’t use ‘well they don’t have that book’ as an excuse! You can even request ebooks and audiobooks directly from overdrive/libby without having to talk to a human person about it.
Additional tip: if you live somewhere that does not have a great library system, trust me, I get it - reach out to other libraries. I mean it. Many libraries offer a paid (ranging in price, my experiences have always been around $50) yearly membership to non-residents of their city. I used this when I lived in one province but the city in the other province had the good English library. They may even offer a lower rate if you’re looking exclusively for digital access. It can’t hurt to ask.
And if, after all of this, you are sitting here going NO I MUST PIRATE. *sigh* please first find out if you have any friends willing to share their kindle/etc password with you. Do whatever pirating you’re going to do in a manner that will offer the least raison d'être for the would-be piraters who upload.
i love glados x wheatley for the possible outcome of them both working through the trauma of existing in aperture science and coming out of the relationship independent and more whole than before
it’s not the endgame, it’s the Growth (and the mutual respect to call it quits when they’ve outgrown their relationship)
Forgot to upload this icon commission/giveaway I made for @lostchasingsilver !
its about those who think they are unlovable being loved regardless of their flaws. its about someone else reaching their hand out to the monster and saying ‘i accept you. i cannot understand what has happened but i accept you the way you are none the less’
read —> yellowcake <— here
my conceptually abstract mgs fan comic
11/14/2016
“You may have noticed that the books you really love are bound together by a secret thread. You know very well what is the common quality that makes you love them, though you cannot put it into words: but most of your friends do not see it at all, and often wonder why, liking this, you should also like that. Again, you have stood before some landscape, which seems to embody what you have been looking for all your life; and then turned to the friend at your side who appears to be seeing what you saw - but at the first words a gulf yawns between you, and you realise that this landscape means something totally different to him, that he is pursuing an alien vision and cares nothing for the ineffable suggestion by which you are transported. Even in your hobbies, has there not always been some secret attraction which the others are curiously ignorant of - something, not to be identified with, but always on the verge of breaking through, the smell of cut wood in the workshop or the clapclap of water against the boat’s side? Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and uncertain even in the best) of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for? You have never had it. All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it - tantalising glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest - if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say “Here at last is the thing I was made for.” We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work. While we are, this is. If we lose this, we lose all.”
C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (via thecynical-idealist)
i mostly use this site as a place to check out the latest horny tags on my glados posts
Drabble - Lost Odyssey
When he went to sleep at the inn room the Council had arranged for him, Kaim had known nothing but the acrid smell of the ash that had clung to the sweat on his skin after the meteor fell. But in his sleep, a vision came. A little girl, meeting his gaze one last time before plunging over the cliff into the sea. A woman, sobbing brokenly beside him. An anguish washed over him that was more painful than the sting of his enemies’ blades, more searing than the heat of their magic. It was the agony of loss.
He awoke with a gasp, his body trembling. He knew their faces, the woman’s and the little girl’s. Their names were on the tip of his tongue, at the fringes of his mind. But as his consciousness roused, even the sensation of knowing was lost.
What was that? he wondered. Was it a dream, or a memory?
If that was remembering, then he’d rather forget.
