You need more free art.
I quit my job yesterday. Well, actually I quit my job eight weeks ago, but they finally released me yesterday for good behaviour. Don't get me wrong, I love what I do - but I do it for the wrong reasons. Working for major charities, you learn very fast that 'I want to make the world a better place' is a phrase you use to ask people for money, not to give them things. I was an ass-backwards fit for that world.
You need more free art. I need more free art. Everyone has felt the shift in our media landscape over the last ten years, away from access and towards nickel-and-diming the human experience. That lack of access is making life and culture worse for all of us, across the board. Paywalled news sites leave us less informed, attacks on the Internet Archive leave us less capable of research. Algorithmic social feeds and streaming walled gardens trap us inside smaller and smaller demographic bubbles, where we are increasingly only likely to encounter ideas that have been curated for us by marketing departments. Hasty efforts to resist AI commodification have only led to more artists locking their work away and calling for even more onerous systems of copyright law. This is not good for us.
We all need more free art.
So what am I going to do about it?
This is a question I have been asking myself for years. It's easy to sit here feeilng frustrated and thinking 'boy I hope SOMEONE does SOMETHING'. It's harder to take action in a world where I still have rent to pay. But hard doesn't mean impossible. Sometimes hard just means time-consuming, frustrating and slow. And sometimes it's worth doing something time-consuming, frustrating and slow because...I want to make the world a better place.
I'm going to do this:
1. From April 1st, I am relaunching as a freelance writer and editor.
This is the one that will (hopefully) help to pay the bills. I am a very good and experienced editor. I've worked on hollywood movies, I'm a member of the Chartered Institute of Editors and Proofreaders, I have clients who have been coming to me exclusively for more than 10 years.
Alongside bigger contract jobs, I am going to refocus on offering my services to small-press creators at a reduced rate. That means you, graphic novelists. That means you, itch and amazon writers. I want to help you develop your work, the same way I help large organisations. You can learn more about what an editor even does and what kind of pricing you can expect here.
2. I'm also going to start giving shit away. Like, constantly.
Next week I'm going to launch a new free shop. If you're unfamiliar, a free shop, giveaway shop, swap shop, etc. is an anarchist tradition of setting up a storefront where anyone can take what they like for no cost. Offline, this often means second-hand clothes, tools, furniture, food etc. Online, I am going to be giving away digital art. Copyright-free, no strings attached. It will (eventually) feature everything from print-res posters to zines, poems, tattoo flash, t-shirt designs and anything else we come up with.
Yes, I said 'we' - while this is a curated collection, it will feature work from a variety of credited and anonymous artists and activists, all of whom have agreed to give their work away to the public domain. Some of it will be practical, some of it will be political, but a lot of it will be decorative or personal. This is, in part, a response to recent difficulty I had finding somewhere that would print a one-off joke poster for a friend that featured the word 'faggot'. Enough. No middlemen - no explaining ourselves. Just print our shit and enjoy it.
I'm very, very excited about this project. I'll have more to say about it closer to the launch, but you can expect it to go live on March 27th.
2.2 I forgot to mention the ACTUAL LAUNCH GIVEAWAY
To celebrate my launch, I am going to be giving away a ton of physical prints. When I went looking for my old stock to see if it was worth setting a new (paid) storefront up, I realised I had way more old work in storage than I thought. This will be announced in its own right on Monday, but this is why I've been hinting you should go follow my Patreon.
On April 1st, I will pick 8 random patrons (from across all tiers including non-paying followers!) and mail them a bundle of assorted prints and postcards. The prize pool includes A3 and A4 posters, packs of A6 postcards, and printed minicomics that I've previously sold for up to £12 each.
You don't have to be a paying subscriber to enter - this is strictly no-purchase necessary. It is purely and entirely a celebration of the concept of GIVING ART AWAY FOR FREE.
3. PORN, YOU PERVERTS
Because I still have to pay to stay alive, I am going to be subsidising all this free art with the introduction of Fuck You Fridays. Starting from March 29th, I will drop a new 18+ short story on the last Friday of every month, over on itch.io (yes I know my page is desolate right now, don't worry I'll get there).
The first edition, Go Fuck Yourself, is about, well - telling your boss where to stick it. Julia has had it with her millionaire man-child manager, and is just about ready to let him know what she really thinks. It's a short and steamy 5k words, with a gorgeous cover illustration by @taylor-titmouse, and you can pick it up for $3 starting from March 29th.
4. ANOTHER BIG SURPRISE
I'm keeping this one under wraps for now, but April 1st will also play host to one more (FREE) launch. If you've been following me for a long time, you might remember the other significance of this date (no not April Fool's day, though that is certainly thematically relevant to this entire effort). That's all I'll say right now. Watch this space.
tl;dr: I'm sick of paywalls and career ladders. I'm literally putting my money where my mouth is. More free art for everyone and I'm not kidding around!!!
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Today in, "Conservatives keep making me side with Disney"...
So, Gina Carano is suing Disney. And Elon Musk is paying for her lawyers. And they released the complaint document.
It's... a doozy.
I can't decide if her lawyers are not taking this seriously at all or if they are taking it super duper extra seriously.
Like, that's a real thing that a lawyer wrote.
As you know, judges are famous for enjoying levity in official court documents. I think in law school you are encouraged to add comedy bits. True facts.
Gina wants money for emotional damages. But she also wants to be rehired, which sounds like another funny comedy bit. They scrapped an entire show because of her nonsense.
Most are saying this will get thrown out with haste due to the fact that Gina wasn't actually fired. She had already done her contracted work. Disney decided not to hire her for any *new* work. So I guess she wants them to honor an imaginary contract that was in her head.
The entire document is just as ridiculous as the opening crawl. It starts out by listing Gina's show biz bona fides. Her myriad accomplishments in Hollywood were listed one by one in a section titled...
Well, I'm intrigued.
Let's take a look at this illustrious career, according to this document.
"Carano is the first-ever female star in mixed martial arts cage fighting to successfully transition to a career in movies, breaking down substantial barriers for women in the sport."
Off to an interesting start.
All the cage fighting gals can act in movies now and they all have Gina to thank for barrier busting.
"Carano received roles in Hollywood and independent film productions such as Haywire, Fast & Furious 6, Heist, Deadpool, Almost Human, Extraction, Daughter of the Wolf, and Madness in the Method."
I've heard of several of those things! And I think I almost remember her in Deadpool! Very impressive.
Oh wait, they're not done...
"On May 13, 2008, “Gina Carano” was the fastest rising search
on Google and third most searched person on Yahoo! while being ranked no. 5 on Yahoo!’s “Top Ten Influential Women of 2008” list."
In 2008 she was popular on Yahoo for a bit. Got it.
Has she won any awards?
"In 2012, Carano was the first recipient of the ActionFest Film
Festival’s Chuck Norris Award for Best Female Action Star.
In 2017, Carano received the Artemis Action Warrior Award.
In 2019, Carano received The Rising Star award at Ischia
Film Festival."
Very prestigious. I'm sure Chuck Norris has a lovely basement where that ceremony was almost certainly held.
You know what, why don't we just skip to The Mandalorian?
"Although her character instantly became one of the most
recognized and popular characters in the series..."
Gina, no... that was the little green puppet.
You were the one who couldn't act very well but you made up for it by punching things good.
"Carano was again instrumental in the success of Season 2 of The Mandalorian."
Nope, still the puppet.
End of "accomplishments."
The next section is titled
For some reason they left out "bigoted" before speech. Weird.
In most of it, it legit sounds like they are making a case *against* her. They show that everyone at Disney and Lucasfilm tried very hard to give her chance after chance. They did everything but point blank tell her, "Either learn and relieve yourself of this ignorance or stop posting shit online."
She totally had the option to keep her shitty views to herself and shut the heck up for the duration and enjoy the money and success a Star Wars show can bring. It's like swatting away a lottery ticket.
I'm all for free speech. And if the government tried to arrest her for saying dumb shit, I'd be against that. But that freedom to speak does not mean there are never consequences. People are also free to not like what you have to say.
The entire last section of the document is just tweets that Gina screencapped. Like, her lawyers didn't even redo them so they had consistent formatting or pixel dimensions. They were literally just off Gina's phone.
She thought she was collecting receipts but it was mostly just her co-stars standing up for marginalized groups.
Based Pedro Pascal posted this...
And the document commented...
"Pascal was not disciplined, required to review documentaries on any of these topics or speak to individuals with contrary points of view, or pressured to apologize for any of his posts. His employment was not terminated, and Defendants made no public statements about his social media posts, much less refer to them as “abhorrent.”"
Yes, why wasn't Pedro forced to listen to MAGA dipshits tell him why they hate his sister? Why wasn't he told to watch a Dinesh D'Souza documentary? Why wasn't he told to apologize for posting cool ass muppet memes?
The most telling part of the document for me... the part that really showed her ignorance... was when she compared one of her tweets to one of Carl Weathers'.
First, her infamous tweet comparing the holocaust to conservatives being moderated on social media for spreading misinformation...
And then Carl posted this in response to conservatives banning books...
And the document says...
"Even Carano’s male co-star, the late Carl Weathers posted the
exact same message, but no action was taken against him. Nor was
Weathers accused by Defendants of denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identity."
THE EXACT SAME MESSAGE
THE. EXACT. SAME. MESSAGE.
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