Kendra Kirai's House of Spamcakes @kirailabs - Tumblr Blog

So I just saw a post by a random personal blog that said “don’t follow me if we never even had a conversation before” and?????? Not to be rude but literally what the fuck??????????

I’ve had people (non-pornbots) try to strike conversation out of nowhere in my DMs recently, and now I’m wondering if they were doing that because they wanted to follow me and thought they needed to interact first. I feel compelled to say, just in case, that it’s totally okay to follow this blog (or my side blog, for that matter) even if we’ve never talked before.

Also, I’m legit confused. Is this how follow culture works right now? It was worded like it’s common sense but is that really a thing?

x0401x

Saw a sharp increase in my follower count after posting this. The legitimacy of it is driving me nuts so I also feel the need to say that you can follow anyone on here regardless of whether you’ve interacted with them or not. People like the above mentioned blog are exceptions. Perhaps they themselves think they aren’t and therefore will act like they aren’t, but they are, trust me.

Just follow anyone you wanna follow. The worst thing that can happen is maybe getting soft-blocked by the other person, but if they do soft-block you, then they were never that worth following in the first place.

starfieldcanvas

wow. really hope this isn't actually a norm taking hold with new users! this isn't facebook, you don't need to know people before following them

westiec

this is the '10 year mutuals you've never spoken to once' site

startrekgifs

Follow! REBLOG! It's how the site works!!

wooteena

are you telling me americans have stores that open up SPECIFICALLY for halloween and just. dont exist any other time of the year. you people are insane

offishly

Imagine an empty storefront. Some business that closed years ago. The building stands empty, unused for literal months. And then boom. Fall comes around and there’s a Spirit Halloween. There’s no escape.

what the fuck 😁

Yeah this is a thing

Are you serious

Yes and they are divine gifts of beauty and cheap plastic lawn decorations.

cheeseanonioncrisps

… I honestly assumed that the existence of Halloween stores was just a running joke in American TV shows.

what-even-is-thiss

No they’re very real

onepersonfriendgroup

Can confirm this phenomenon also occurs in Canada

fan-enby-anonymous

It’s fun

what-even-is-thiss

Oh, it’s a blast.

moonybyte

Wait, so during non-halloween they are just empty? Like, they don’t switch between seasonal decorations (like christmas, easter, etc), they just…close and wait for next year???

strawberrydragon

Yeah, it’s not a permanent store. A company will rent an empty building for the 2-3 months before halloween, sell halloween stuff, and then clean everything up and disappear until the following year. And they’ll usually set up in different buildings from year to year. They just find any good-sized empty store space that will give them a cheap, short-term lease.

It’s so temporary that the halloween stores don’t even have a real sign, they just hang up a banner outside:

wheeled-jack

So you’re telling me that every year for a month or two the Spirit of Halloween possesses a dead building then disappears?

velvety-vixen

that is exactly what we’re telling you

effkaytales

EFFKAY FIGHTING GAME CONCEPT 1: Freewin!!

Freeta-Korwin Aero was a hybrid project created for the express purpose of making the perfect Time Traveling Person. Spliced with all sorts of creatures, plants, animals, and even simple elements, Freewin is a strange mish-mash of a little bit of everything. Thanks to her time traveling abilities, up to 5 of her can exist at any given time. Oddly enough, all five of her have lived very different lives and grew to have unique personalities of their own...

P1: FREEWIN. The default look. All five Freewins can look like this, but it's most commonly held by Freewin 1.

P2: TWO (Jacket). Freewin Two grew up with a love of many many nerdy little things. She came from a timeline where instead of buying a black leather jacket, she bought a brown one, thus changing her life's trajectory completely.

P3: EFFKAY'S ALLEY. Down in the training wing of Effkay Tower One, there exists a mock town called Effkay's Alley, where various types of training drills are run. Freewin often finds herself here honing her various skills.

P4: FOUR (Club). Freewin Four grew into a bit of a promiscuous one. She set herself apart from the others with flirtatious behavior and often finds herself at any number of places around Effkay, Scenara, Starlight, and beyond. This is a typical getup she has while she's out.

P5: CLASSIC. In another world, another time, in the timeline designated as Operation: EXCEL, Freewin was the future child of two of the heroes found there. This is how that version of her looked when she first appeared.

P6: FREETA-KORWIN AERO (First Appearance). In another timeline, Freewin had just witnessed and participated in a series of horrible events causing her to lose the power of time travel, as well as losing her world's Drille to murder. In a fit of despair and duty, she transformed her body itself into a time travel device and set out to set right what once went wrong...

effkaytales

EFFKAY FIGHTING GAME CONCEPT 2: Drille!

One day, a mining tank came to life. That mining tank would redesign her own body and rename herself DRILLE. Her life was full of hardship and strife, but she came out the other end with a smile. Drille is well-known within Effkay Tower One. She brings her brand of happiness and joy to everything she does! Little did she or anyone know, she was actually a demigod of Chaos, born by machinations of the Goddess of Light, Verli. Wild!

P1: DRILLE. Her typical everyday wear. She has dozens of this simple outfit in her closet, which is good, because she tends to ruin it in her day to day playtime in various caves she spends her time in.

P2: DIANNE. Dianne Wintergreen Roberts, Drille's civilian form, is well known throughout Scenera City. While she looks like a normal Ferran in this form, she still has all of her normal capabilities hidden just underneath her skin if she needs it, including deployable skates within her feet and the ability to morph her left hand into a drill.

P3: DATE NIGHT. It was set to be one of the best nights of her life. But in short order, EVERYTHING fell apart thanks to the plans of her younger 'brother', DR-21. He worked hard to humiliate her for "replacing" him, down to taking over a cybernetic hive mind living on one of Astana's moons, causing catastrophic damage to an entire society, all to make Drille feel like garbage on her first date ever. On that day, all of Astana learned an important lesson. Don't Piss Off The Genet.

P4: RUMBLR. "do not seek out the tumblr rumblr. it is not a good place." One day, Drille found herself in a strange place. She had no memory of the events leading up to waking up in that warehouse in a dying city, but she rolled with it, hoping she'd find her answers soon. Fight after fight led her nowhere... This is the body she obtained after uniting with her alternate-universe counterpart, Burroe. To Be Continued...?

P5: GRAVE. At this point, her brother, Grave, has made many strides in making his battle-ready armor easy to apply to himself. This is the result of Drille taking one of his transformation belts and applying his armor to herself! She's used her chaos powers to replicate his hairstyle as well. I wonder what HE thinks of this?

P6: CLASSIC. Back in the original version of my comic, this was the body that Drille originally built for herself. This design would also be reused for another alternate universe version of herself, in a world designated as "Altana".

shinesurge

"im inspired can i use this character concept for my own work"

"im broke can i download your $0+ file for free"

"shipping is expensive can i try to make this thing in your shop on my own"

guys please stop directly asking creators this kind of shit i am going to eat glass

shinesurge

the thing about creative stuff is most of these types of activities are normal and generally healthy parts of the ecosystem, that's how this shit works everybody starts out because they see something that makes them go "ooh i wanna do that" and then the thing is, of course, derivative. if we didn't want it sold for 0 we wouldn't have listed it! we're ALSO upset shipping sucks! we cant stop you! IDEALLY copying art you like is a healthy start to your artistic growth that you will progress through and we won't ever even be aware of it! but asking for a blessing for this kind of thing is so bizzare WHY are you getting the creator's attention for this, you do not need it, there is NO comfortable way for the conversation to proceed

shinesurge

is this like part of the Morality Panic thing. are people developing such an obsessive need to never ever sit with any form of guilt or greyness that they're contacting creators to do little confessions and get absolutions for. reading something and feeling inspired.

mandyseley

I blame this constant pressure to monetize every single hobby you have. If you are creating a product for sale, and you deliberately plagiarize/copy from another artist, sure, that's unethical, but that's also a business thing not an art thing.

I think some artists have extended that mentality to ANYTHING they create AT ALL, even just "I want it for myself" or "I want to try making that" or "I want to make one like that for my friend."

There's tons of copies of the Mona Lisa made by Da Vinci's students. No respectable creator will get mad if you see a sweater they made and decide "I'm going to make one like that for myself!" I've applauded younger artists for their drawings that are straight up copies of my work - I'm not going to pretend I didn't start off by copying my favorite characters from video game manuals and the like. It's a normal way to experiment and learn and have fun. If you see a cool thing and want to try making your own version of it to hang up at home or give to a friend or whatever, do it. Do it and learn and enjoy!

kirailabs

The thing is, I have personally seen people flip the fuck out over somebody using their character as inspiration, calling them thieves and all that, or making their own copy of a thing that the creator is selling And creators guilting people for not paying for something they've put up for $0+,

So it's not just a morality panic, it's *self defense*.

shinesurge

So I've been seeing this response of Self Defense against batshit creators a lot. Aside from my thought that we shouldn't be validating that sort of behavior at all, my question is, if you're terrified a stranger is a vindictive nutjob who will ruin your life if they even THINK you might be emulating anything of theirs, what good will it do to get their full attention and put yourself on their radar as someone who has, already, consumed their work. If you're not plagiarizing, and you know you aren't, getting their attention in the first place to personally make them aware you CONSIDERED riffing on their Thing seems a lot more dangerous than just going about your business does it not. If the 40-60 feral fandom people looking for blood show up they would have regardless of a permission slip, because as we have seen even in this post, people do not check beyond the version of the thing that ends up in front of them, so they likely wouldn't ever see permission was granted. Again, assuming you've done nothing wrong, wouldn't it be better to just keep your head down and abstain from the interaction entirely.

kirailabs

Hell if I know, the one time I asked somebody first, I just straight up offered to buy the design somebody made as a doodle because I didn't want there to be any question about ownership of it later. He seemed confused but accepted the pittance I offered and that was that.

But at a guess? Asking first lets them say 'no', giving them the power of rejection, while just doing it would make them think you're stealing it, and their power/authority, making them feel threatened and lashing out because of it. There's also the fans to account for, even if the creator doesn't care/thinks as y'all do - some fans are rabid and will accuse anything remotely similar as being a 'knockoff' or 'IP theft' and kick up just as much fuss, if not more, as a creator who flips the hell out at you.

My personal take is that I just think it's polite to ask permission before you do something that could be seen as potentially appropriating somebody's idea.

Creatively, with my own things, I just consider everything I consume (which is a lot) to be fair game. I steal anything that isn't nailed down and flaunt it in my works.

shinesurge

"im inspired can i use this character concept for my own work"

"im broke can i download your $0+ file for free"

"shipping is expensive can i try to make this thing in your shop on my own"

guys please stop directly asking creators this kind of shit i am going to eat glass

shinesurge

the thing about creative stuff is most of these types of activities are normal and generally healthy parts of the ecosystem, that's how this shit works everybody starts out because they see something that makes them go "ooh i wanna do that" and then the thing is, of course, derivative. if we didn't want it sold for 0 we wouldn't have listed it! we're ALSO upset shipping sucks! we cant stop you! IDEALLY copying art you like is a healthy start to your artistic growth that you will progress through and we won't ever even be aware of it! but asking for a blessing for this kind of thing is so bizzare WHY are you getting the creator's attention for this, you do not need it, there is NO comfortable way for the conversation to proceed

shinesurge

is this like part of the Morality Panic thing. are people developing such an obsessive need to never ever sit with any form of guilt or greyness that they're contacting creators to do little confessions and get absolutions for. reading something and feeling inspired.

mandyseley

I blame this constant pressure to monetize every single hobby you have. If you are creating a product for sale, and you deliberately plagiarize/copy from another artist, sure, that's unethical, but that's also a business thing not an art thing.

I think some artists have extended that mentality to ANYTHING they create AT ALL, even just "I want it for myself" or "I want to try making that" or "I want to make one like that for my friend."

There's tons of copies of the Mona Lisa made by Da Vinci's students. No respectable creator will get mad if you see a sweater they made and decide "I'm going to make one like that for myself!" I've applauded younger artists for their drawings that are straight up copies of my work - I'm not going to pretend I didn't start off by copying my favorite characters from video game manuals and the like. It's a normal way to experiment and learn and have fun. If you see a cool thing and want to try making your own version of it to hang up at home or give to a friend or whatever, do it. Do it and learn and enjoy!

kirailabs

The thing is, I have personally seen people flip the fuck out over somebody using their character as inspiration, calling them thieves and all that, or making their own copy of a thing that the creator is selling And creators guilting people for not paying for something they've put up for $0+,

So it's not just a morality panic, it's *self defense*.

thankskenpenders

Part1: Thank you for the reply! Sorry if I keep pushing the subject, but what I don't understand is Penders' disdain/hate for Chronicles. For someone who always boasts about his contributions to the Sonic IP, one would have thought he would have been elated to be the inspiration and starting point for what would become a plot and setting of the IP's core media, games. Plus, you said it yourself, to everyone's knowledge (Even Penders, maybe?) they were seen as fair game at the time of production.

Part2: I would understand if he was asking for acknowledgement/compensation, but his ownership claims seems to be made out of malicious spite, rather than a proper sense of injustice. Like if DC would have dressed Superman in a red & white costume for a few issues after the Fawcett case (I know it's not exactly the same legal case). But why do you think he acts like that? I would love to read your thoughts as you are one of the few capable of reaching unbiased conclusions when it comes to him.

So the thing with the Sonic Chronicles case is that by that point Ken had discovered Archie had lost his contract, cooked up the story that it never existed, and started filing for copyrights for his work. As such, he argued that Sonic Chronicles taking inspiration from his work was an instance of copyright infringement. In his eyes, Shade literally is Julie-Su, and the Nocturnus Clan literally is the Dark Legion, just with the names changed, and if he never signed a contract then that stuff wasn't fair game for other Sega projects to touch. To him, it wasn't uncredited inspiration, it was theft.

The case was dismissed in court because the Archie v. Penders case to determine who actually owned the copyrights for his work was still ongoing, and then by the time that was settled the statute of limitations for the Chronicles case had passed. (In basic terms: it had been too long since Sonic Chronicles came out to sue over it.) So it ended in a stalemate, with both sides still arguing ownership, and Ken would only be able to revive the lawsuit if Sega did something new with Sonic Chronicles or those characters - a sequel, a port of the game, Shade appearing in new stories, etc.

Since then, it's basically turned into a game of chicken with the copyrights. Ken believes Sega has just washed their hands of Chronicles because they don't want to deal with the legal trouble, which is honestly probably true. Meanwhile, Ken has been testing how far he can push his claims of ownership over Shade before Sega does anything, such as when he announced that Shade NFT that declared she was literally the same character as Julie-Su. (Or at least it would have if he'd ever released it.) If Sega doesn't do anything about it, then they're at risk of forfeiting the copyrights, which Ken will take as a sign that they've fully abandoned Sonic Chronicles as their property and therefore he can do whatever he wants with its elements.

So, basically, yeah, he's still just bitter and spiteful over the plot of Sonic Chronicles being based loosely on his Knuckles comics without his involvement. And to a certain extent I'd get that. Comic artists and writers are paid in table scraps and get no benefits, then they see the companies who own their work turn it into billion dollar movies and video games and mountains of merch, and they don't see a penny of those profits. They don't even tend to earn royalties off of their comics' sales. It's unfair. But while I think he deserved some form of credit and maybe some form of compensation, there's a difference between adaptation and inspiration, and Ken's just being a copyright troll here.

There's immense irony in Ken believing that Bioware's homage to Julie-Su should be seen as the same character as Julie-Su in the eyes of the law, while he's out here publishing a comic featuring K'Nox, The Legally Distinct Character Who Is Totally Not Knuckles. Also, like, one of his pet characters has always been a blatant homage to James Bond. He was out there basing Archie Sonic stories on Star Trek episodes and Superman comics and shit. My favorite Sonic story of his literally just ripped off the plot of "For the Man Who Has Everything." I don't see him out here cutting Alan Moore a check. He's nothing if not a hypocrite.

kirailabs

On top of everything said here, it's clearly a case of use in good faith. Like buying a car that would later turn out to be stolen but you have what you *thought* was all the appropriate paperwork. It could only have been in his favor if Bioware had known that Archie didn't have the rights, and then used elements inspired by it anyway. Short if finding a memo or an email saying 'Hey, let's use this stuff that Archie stole from that guy with the porno 'stache' he'd have no real case. It should have been dismissed with prejudice.