darika-chan

A quick announcement from me, a disappointing one for those who have excitedly followed along with my stories in the Avatar fandom. After some upsetting experiences with plagiarism, I won’t be posting any more works in the Avatar fandom on Tumblr or AO3.

This is because my one shot “Stolen Laughs” about Spider and Quaritch was plagiarised by another person on Tumblr. My original ideas and writing were copied word for word, butchered, then reposted by someone else. This person knows who they are, and has been called out by my friends and followers in this community.

What made it worse is after this person was rightfully called out, instead of doing the responsible, respectful thing by apologising and deleting my stolen work (and stolen works from other creators they plagiarised) they decided to harass me on Tumblr by sending me anons and messages and deflecting the blame.

I, and other creators in this fandom are the victims, but this person has wrongfully painted themselves out to be the innocent person. They hurt me and others deeply by stealing art and writing that take a lot of time, energy, and creativity to make.

Then, they wanted ME to forgive them for stealing said writing, and asked me to stop telling people to be mad at them. I did not make the call out post or ask my friends to send them polite messages to take down the stolen works from their blog. But I am so, so grateful to my friends for standing by me and supporting me through this difficult time. It’s very appreciated.

It’s incredibly disheartening to see that this person is antagonising the creators they have stolen works from and won’t accept responsibility by admitting their blame and righting their wrongs. This could have easily been fixed by an apology and deleting the stolen content and refraining from reposting stolen works again. But no, they chose not to do that.

I know this because the original account who stole my writing actually blocked me instead of apologising, and as mentioned above, chose to send my anonymous messages to harass me into making me feel guilty for their faults.

For the people waiting for the next chapters of “Live And Let Die”, I am sorry but I won’t be continuing the story or writing any new works in the Avatar fandom. Otherwise, I am done sharing my work here. English is not my first language. I put a lot of hard work, time, and effort into writing something good and improving myself as a writer.

I won’t be going anywhere and I’m still writing because I’m passionate about it and not going to let this experience put me off what I’m passionate about. In the future though, I won’t be posting any Avatar related works on my blog.

I’m very excited for the next thing I will be creating, only the future will tell what that is, and for those of you who have supported me as a friend and as a creator, I cannot wait to show you what it is.

@Cibergilr2005 and/or @true-justice take responsibility for your poor choices and do the right thing. Stop stealing the artwork and stories of others and claiming them as your own. Apologize to those creators you stole from. Stop trying to pass the blame onto others.

Realize blocking people that call you out doesn’t do anything, yes I called you out and yes you blocked me but I know you haven’t removed all of the stolen works because many of my followers have told me the works are still up. When I say stolen works I mean: stories, artwork, and characters.

I am friends with some of the creators you have stolen from and see how you have hurt them with YOUR actions. @roxynmae is an amazing author and artist and they will not be posting any of their stories because of your actions.

@Cibergirl2005 and @true-justice grow up. Do the right thing. Make your own original content. Take responsibility.

similar things happen to me before: my edits have been stolen too and now I see this awful case when thieves make artist leave the fandom

I just have no words...

Render and lineart practice with Lyle Wainfleet

Notes: I thought drawing Lyle would be fun and a good rendering challenge, I had a little panic because I underestimated him (his facial features were difficult for me, even using exact references), but I don't regret it. 😂

I also have some other lineart of my babygirl Quaritch in progress, I hope to show them to you soon.

My mood last week:

And then, some Mowgli looking kid appears outta nowhere, and now one of your squad suddenly has that piece of their identity you all desperately crave, and have to watch as this person slowly, painfully builds a bond with him, how he comes to life, becomes less of a corporate asset and more of an individual thanks to this sudden responsibility, a priority that is not the mission.

And you’re left behind with the rest. Still a nobody, still made for nothing more than to bark on command.

.

.

like, look at the Mansk, he looks so sad before the last battle:

This ship's had my friend @roxynmae and I in a chokehold for months, long before the pairing became a mainstay in our fics we're writing hehehe. 

Decided to share some of my favourite headcanons that I have for Japez based on how I write them in my longfic “Left For Dead” on AO3. 

If you’d like to see another awesome take on Ja x Lopez, go check out @roxynmae's fic “Live And Let Die” (we've collaborated on a couple of these headcanons together).

Very excited to talk about the boys. Let’s get into it!

Ja’s parents weren’t present during his childhood. He was raised by his paternal grandparents, a retired veteran and a nurse. He was a quiet kid who liked books, and only came out of shell after someone picked a fight with him. 

Lopez was raised by a single father, but belonged to a big family surrounded by lots of people. His family indulged and enabled him, especially when he got into trouble (which happened a lot).

Ja joined up with the army to follow in his grandfather’s footsteps. He also wanted to provide for them, the way they had for him. Lopez joined the marines out of necessity, and because he was out of options. But by then he’d developed an issue with authority.

Both signed up for employment with the RDA after different but similar experiences with grief. Ja’s grandparents passed away. Because they were all he had, he saw no reason to stick around on Earth. Lopez’s father was ill, and he took the contract to send back money to support him. Sadly, his father passed away during the six years he was in transit to Pandora. 

They rose through the SecOps ranks to be among the first candidates that Colonel Miles Quaritch selected for Project Phoenix. Before that, they were good friends, viewed as a dynamic duo when it came to giving assignments. 

Ja and Lopez were decanted as recombinant assets at the same time. Ja’s awakening was disorienting, but he was more level-headed. It was Lopez who became violent, thrashing on the table, damaging medical equipment. He only calmed once Ja pinned him down and spoke to him. 

They’d been dorm mates since their earlier days as humans. They become dorm mates again to maintain a sense of familiarity to their old lives. They also just prefer each other’s company, even if they have different ideas of house rules and cleanliness. 

Their feelings, unspoken in their former life, and only recently revealed in their present life, are built on a strong foundation of friendship. There’s a lot of trust between them and they balance each other very well with the other’s rationality or chaos. 

On the surface, a sort of “Lopez, No” “Lopez, yes” dynamic; one’s quiet, the other’s loud; one thinks things through, the other only has 1 brain cell and it’s barely functioning.

Below the surface, there’s a lot of grief and rage there. For both of them the other is a strong grounding force. In their new lives, they’re the most familiar thing. 

Lopez, more than Ja, is known for resource guarding and becoming very protective over his squad; namely Ja and the Colonel’s son, Spider. But like him, Ja can switch in an instant from the quiet-natured medic to a cutthroat soldier when it’s needed. 

Both are equally in denial about the feelings they have for each other. Inevitably, and only through a serious set of circumstances, will Ja be the one to express those feelings and act on them (very vague spoiler, I guess, sorry).

Though Lopez can be loud-mouthed and unhinged whenever Ja is around, he’s actually very private about his love life, and has to be persuaded into talking about it. 

It’s impossible to mention them without mentioning Spider Socorro. Kid’s gonna throw a b*tch fit when he finds out they’ve been secretly dating all along. 

My biggest anti-Quaritch take is that I feel like he’s somewhat responsible for the sins his human counterpart committed, since he took full credit for them. What I mean is, he shows zero fear, sadness, guilt or remorse at the memories of his predecessor, which means that he embraced those actions as his own and they do not bother him. If they did, we’d see that on screen.

Now, I WILL say that he is, in my opinion, only responsible for those crimes as long as he embraces the identity of Miles Quaritch (which he does, despite saying the opposite, which we see very clearly through his actions), so if he diverges from that identity and becomes his own person, if he stops seeing his past life’s actions as his own, then I say he’s in the clear. Not from his current wrongdoings ofc, but from things human Q did. If recom Q doesn’t claim credit for those actions, when we can’t hold him responsible since his body was growing in a tube at the time.

If he shows too many and/or any major signs of deviation there’s no knowing what they could do to him or his squad or the whole Project Phoenix in general. Despite having the rank and name and tattoo of a human each, the Recoms are military hardware to the RDA that they have absolute control over. If they show signs of being “defective” and not following their neural programming, what would happen to them?

The signs that the genetically altered Na’vi bearing the name and title of “Colonel Miles Quaritch” hates a lot of the actions of the human he’s supposed to emulate are right out there in the open if you know what to look for. But he’s unable to say out loud what he thinks because of the potential repercussions. Not even to people he otherwise trusts.

Watching the behavioural cues and his word choices (or lack thereof) paints a very different picture to the attitude he’s “supposed” to have. When Spider throws the tags, his face has an expression of “I don’t blame you. I would”. He thought it was funny. He says “I’m not that man” not just to try and convince him to follow with his plan as well as stating a fact, but there’s a tinge of venom there. He calls him “that man”. Not “him”. He has very little respect for the human he shares a name with. When he’s watching the video log, he looks over at Recom Wainfleet with a shrug and a look bordering on an eye roll with how much he dislikes the guy in the video’s attitude and retrospective arrogance.

When he says “You betrayed me” to Jake, there’s a discomfort there with referring to them both as one and the same. This is the first time we see him actually directly refer to himself like he is the same person. Before then, he doesn’t.

He’s distancing himself as much as he can without outright saying “I hate that stupid ape“ that would kick off RDA alarm bells.