Here Comes Justice

Hello, I know I don’t have a lot of followers over here but I’d like to get a really serious, really personal message out that’s been on my mind for a while.

It’s with regards to art theft and how prevalent it is in roleplay communities. I know a lot of you use fanart for icons and reaction images and the like, and I would be otherwise fine with that if I knew each and every one of you got permission from the artists themselves to use these, but that isn’t always the case.

In fact, it’s become popular to just sweep over character tags in pixiv and take art at random without having once notified the artist. We’re talking hours of work put into these pieces versus five minutes it takes to crop and edit them. Look, I don’t want to harp on the obvious, but the effort it takes to crop and edit something will never be on equal terms with the effort it takes to create the art. 

As an artist myself, it’s incredibly exhausting to see this rampant use of unsourced art that, to be frank, the artist themselves didn’t permit the use of. It’s really not hard to reach out to a pixiv artist, a simple google translate will get the general inquiry through. If you ask them if you may use their art and they say yes, you can! If you ask them and they say no, you can’t.

I’d like there to be a better, safer, less damaging community for artists (pixiv and tumblr alike) to share their art, one where they don’t feel the constant threat of art thievery. It’s 2015, let’s do a better job of respecting artists’ wishes.

Helpful Links

Pixiv Artists who don’t allow their arts be posted on Tumblr (multifandom) 

Sourcing Art Is Not Enough 

A good reminder

Also a good reminder!

Support Artists on Tumblr

Reposting issues and asking an artist if their post has been allowed on other sites

Pixiv Artists’ Struggles with Art Theft (Very important!)

Pixiv Permissions FAQ / Masterpost

Sourcer-er in general is a wonderful blog with helpful tips and posts (some linked above) about what to do with regards to reposts/asking for permission as well as extremely educational posts about the issues pixiv artists face with these complications.

No, seriously, who? She’d like to know.

Defense attorneys, prosecutors, a detective, assistants…

“Nice to meet you, Apollo! I’m Kay Faraday—and right now I guess I’m studying combat, though I’ve been thinking of taking some law classes.”

Which would be awkward, considering who the law department comprised of, but oh well.

He said something about her costume didn’t he—ah, right! “Oh, and thanks! I was trying to think of something…fitting.” She was kind of like a pirate of sorts. More of the information kind, less of the booty kind.

(Kay Faraday… why does that name sound familiar?) Apollo was pretty sure he’d heard it before—

Oh, that was it. There had been a big blowup about the prosecutors’ office back when he was still in high school, a few weeks before Mr. Wright had been disbarred, and he vaguely recalled reading her name as having been involved somehow in the whole convoluted mess. (It’s a small world. …Er, multiverse, I guess.)

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Faraday.” She “guessed” she was studying combat, though? (I’ve heard of undeclared majors, but not at this age…) The law interest was somehow unsurprising, though. (Is it endemic to LA or something?) “If you’re interested in law courses, they’ve certainly got a solid department here — depending on what exactly you’re interested in.” Though if he was remembering right where he’d heard of her from, that had all sorts of potential for awkwardness…

Seeker’s Academy might have a translation spell that took care of languages, there were glitches. One of them was names. She had to remember to reverse the order of her names when she introduced herself. It was a work in progress. “I’m also studying at the college. What’s your major?”

She titled her head, glancing over his outfit. From what she could see, he was supposed to be a magician. The outfit fit him well enough, but she had the distinct feeling that he was uncomfortable with it. She wondered why he was wearing it.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Tohsaka,” Apollo said politely, shaking the offered hand. Her grip was warm and strong — it reminded him a lot of Athena’s, actually. Another student of martial arts, perhaps? Likely a Japanese school, judging by her name and costume… assuming she was from Earth and not any of the other weird places some of the apparently-human folks around here came from. Made it a lot harder to figure things out about people, that was for sure.

“Well, I’m not majoring in anything, really. I’ve already received my law degree, and I’m working on some continuing education credits.” Apollo had been somewhat (okay, very) surprised to receive a response from the bar association that this place was indeed accredited for such despite being who-knew-where, but hey, the tuition was certainly nothing to sneeze at, especially when compared to the price tag per credit of more local institutions. “How about you?”

The young woman’s next question took him by surprise. It was more common for people to ask him (skeptically) if Justice was his “real” last name (or just laugh about it) than inquire after his first name.

    This party of Trucy’s was truly an amazing thing to be at. After all, Athena never gotten much of a chance to celebrate anything (except for the dinner after the resolving of the UR-1 incident). For a change, it was nice to go to a costume party—which unfortunately, she has never attended before.

    The junior attorney would take the liberty in dressing up like a pirate as if she was from the Swashbuckler Spectacular. She did put in a lot of effort into her outfit and props so obviously, she walked through the crowd feeling prideful of her creation.

    “Hey Apollo!” Her hands flew up into the air as she waved at her colleague with enthusiasm—perhaps too much. Athena’s feet tapped as she dashed over to the demon lawyer. “It’s a surprise to see you here, I thought you were too old for this kind of thing.”

    Of course, she was just jesting around—she didn’t really mean that.

    “We should go look for Trucy shouldn’t we? It’ll be a pity if we didn’t say hi to her.”

(Of course she was a pirate. Why was he not surprised?)

“Hi to you too, Athena,” he said dryly. “I don’t think you can say I’m ‘too old’ for this when we got Mr. Wright over there looking like… well, like that.” Apollo gestured across the room at their masked boss. He had no idea what Mr. Wright was supposed to be, but as long as nobody asked him it didn’t really matter much, did it?

For once, Kay decided as soon as she crossed the threshold into the costume party, she was not going to physically run into someone. She’d had quite enough of that, as of late. Both the getting of bruises as well as causing them was not fun.

What she was going to do, was approach someone who at least looked vaguely familiar and start a conversation. Couldn’t hurt. It would at least help her get to know more people around here.

She scanned the crowd, looking for someone with at the very least a familiar costume. Eventually, she spotted a somewhat grumpy looking man wearing….a Gramarye costume? Okay so it wasn’t to-a-T Gramarye, but it was close.

Not to mention, she got the vague feeling she’d seen him somewhere before. Perhaps back home or on the TV somewhere. Seeing as there was apparently a great deal of people from LA attending Seeker’s, it wasn’t too far-fetched.

Well, whoever he was, she was going to approach him.

"Hey there!" she greeted once she made her way over. "I like your costume!"

Two, she was out there in this crowd somewhere wearing his badge (he still wasn’t quite sure how she’d managed to convince him to lend it to her), and he wanted to make sure it didn’t end up disappearing via one of her magic tricks.

If only she’d stop disappearing among all these people herself.

Apollo hadn’t really paid much attention to the voice calling out to him (the owner at a glance: dark-haired, pirate costume, fit, maybe about Ema’s age) until it became obvious that it was addressing him, and then he felt a little embarrassed. “Oh, uh, my costume? Thanks,” he replied, adjusting the (ridiculous) top hat a little. “Can’t really take the credit, but… well. Yours is pretty nice too,” he said politely, even if his feelings on pirates were… lukewarm, at best. (Still can’t believe I was stuck office-sitting for most of Mr. Wright’s first case back…)

folk: who is the most fantastical being u have known?

“…”

Rin carefully adjusted her fox ears as her headband threatened to slide off her hair. Choosing to attend the costume party as a Kitsune had been a good idea. She was wearing a kimono from home with a set of fox tails tied under her obi and the previously mentioned fox ear headband. 

Easy, cheap (she had actually managed to borrow all of the fox wear from the costume department) and comfortable to boot.

Her eyes wandered the room, looking at the guests gathered. Her lips quirked a bit as she noticed a young man on the other side of the room, looking rather put out. She wasn’t sure what it was about him that caught her attention, but for some reason she felt the urge to create mischief. 

Apollo bit back a sigh as he looked around the room again. He wasn’t a party person in the least, but it had gotten a lot harder to say no to Trucy since they’d found out they were siblings, and so here he was, wearing a costume that had been picked out for him by the party’s eager organizer. Sure, he was wearing regular clothes underneath, but he supposed the top hat and swishy cape served well enough to make him look like a magician (even if it wasn’t a “true Gramarye costume”).

“Why so glum? This is a party, after all!”

The question caught him by surprise, and he smiled crookedly at the young woman in the kimono. “Eh, I’m just not much of a party person, that’s all.” (But when the organizer is your kid sister, who also happens to be your boss’s daughter…) Well. He should at least be polite; making some conversation would probably help this whole thing seem less tedious (and preemptively get Trucy off his back for being a “fuddy-duddy” or whatever).

"I really hope people aren’t usually magnetized to fall on you," he twittered through a laugh. He certainly wouldn’t have called it fine, but he wasn’t going to argue if the guy didn’t feel like reporting the mishap. "Right," he muttered in a slow realization. "A ladder… That would have been smart. But it’s all good. I’ve got this!" Famous last words if he’d ever heard them, but really, he could get down from there.

Probably, anyway. He pulled himself up to step onto the branch before hopping down a few feet from the stranger, who he noticed had very odd hair as he turned to properly face him. “There. We’re all good,” he smiled. The branch responded with a sharp crack just before it fell to land directly between them, leaves rattling wildly.

"I’ve got this!"

“Are you su— Ah.” The person in the tree jumped down easily, and Apollo envied his athleticism for a moment— until the branch the other person had been on fell with a sharp sound between them.

He yelled (loudly in spite of himself, quickly jumping back. (Geez, how embarrassing…) Laughing a little in embarrassment and eager to change the topic, he asked “Why would they fire you? A single broken tree branch doesn’t seem that much of an offense…” Sure, the grounds were beautifully maintained, but still, everything broke sometimes.

Trucy laughed. She had indeed, gotten exactly the reaction she had expected. It was good to know that she could still pull Polly’s chain if she tried to. He had scared her a few months ago when he had withdrawn from them. She knew why he had, of course, but that didn’t make it any less worrying.

"Hmmm. Sometimes they can cause trouble." Her daddy had told her about what had happened with his first girlfriend - not all the details, of course, but enough that Trucy knew how important it was to have real communication. 

Also not dating murderesses. Or twins of murderessess.

 ”I’m not too young at all! Now’s the perfect time for me to be dating. After I graduate I’ll be reforming the Gramarye troupe. I won’t have time for it then!” A mischievous glint entered Trucy’s eye. “What do you think about Prosecutor Gavin? He’s pretty cute and he’s famous! He’d be a great boyfriend plus he could teach me about touring.” 

“Absolutely 100% out of the question, denied, rejected, no, not happening! Older brothers are supposed to look out for their younger siblings, and so I refuse to allow it! First off, he’s way too old for you; secondly, he helped get your dad disbarred, remember? And thirdly—”

Wait. He recognized that look in her eye.

"I sure hope so… It’s just that Daddy has been alone for so long I really worry about him." Maybe she should make them both disappear into a nice small closet. She’d heard that was supposed to work.

Daddy did have incredible luck, but it had the tendency to be equally bad and good. Trucy just hoped it would stay good. She never wanted to see him that sad again. 

…Apollo had gone for years (or… well, forever) without dating anyone, after all, and everything was perfectly all right for him. Sure, he thought about it sometimes, but it wasn’t exactly high on the priorities list, y’know? Maybe it was the same for Mr. Wright.