#meli has been liking a lot of my posts recently | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

weresodiscxnnected · 2 years

Text

Relationships: Peter Parker/ Original Female Character Warnings: Swearing Word count: 4862 Notes: Surprise! A Friday update! Okay, I said earlier I try to post during weekends, and Friday is the start of the weekend. I've noticed that when I write about Harley I keep thinking Luke Hemmings for some reason, so, I've just gone with the flow. For Harry I kept thinking Timothee Chalamet because of all the fancasts in tiktok. Also, a small head's up; I have a lot of important deadlines coming up, and I'm already doing everything last minute, so I'm not sure if there will be an update next week (I'm doing my best to finish both, by essays and the next chapter). I think it's good to note that the following updates will go unedited and proofread only by me since my lovely friend who is doing the proofreading for me is travelling. Thank you to everyone who is reading! I never thought someone would read this since it's something I started writing for myself for fun.

Link to the series Masterlist

Chapter 5

It was Monday morning; Peter was getting ready for his visit to the Daily Bugle before his work. The news played in the background while he was loading the coffee maker. He adds one more scoop of coffee grounds into the maker as he hears Melissa’s door go. The clicking of high heels on the hardwood floors echoes in the hallway before Melissa arrives in the room. She was wearing a lavender coloured pants suit with high heels, and her hair was in a low ponytail. It was different from what Peter had used to seeing the girl in.

“What’s the occasion?” Peter lifts his eyebrow, leaning into the counter next to him.

“There are these end-of-the-year development interviews for all the staff, and they’re making me sit through them with Aida to take notes. Or, how I put it, I’m just there to look pretty and pretend I understand what they’re talking about.” Melissa sighs, sitting on the barstool.

Peter remembered how Tony used to hate those interviews, yes, they were beneficial, but they were also tedious. First, every head of the department would interview the people working under them, and then the director would be interviewed by Tony or Pepper; usually, Pepper and Aida did the job. He had been in that interview once, and it had been enough for him.

“You’re going to the Bugle today?” Melissa asks when Peter hands her a cup of coffee.

“Yup,” Peter nods, pouring himself a cup.

“So, are you an aspiring journalist or something?”

“Not really. I just sent these shots I got of Spiderman. Thought it would be a nice way to get more money” the boy sips his coffee.

“Harassing superheroes in your free time, Parker, I would’ve never guessed.”

“No, we’re cool; we’re like buddies.”

“You sold your buddy to the media who mocks him all the time?”

“It was his idea; he wants to keep his identity, so, instead of thousands of people taking pictures of him, he just has one whom he knows.”

There was something behind Peter’s words that Melissa didn’t swallow. She knew he was lying; she could see it. However, she didn’t say anything, she didn’t want to scare the boy, knowing she would out herself in the process. So, she just decided to play it cool.

“Okay, Paparazzi Parker. I can give you Daredevil’s address or Deadpool’s if you want to harass more masked vigilantes.” Melissa winks.

“No thanks, I think I'll stick with Spiderman,” Peter scratches his neck.

“Good choice”, Melissa mumbles in her mug while she scrolls her phone.

They spend the rest of their morning coffee in silence while Melissa scrolls Instagram and Peter watches the news. Nothing new for either of them, it was comfortable silence. The girl likes pictures of people she knew distantly, like Gwen, the girl who worked in the lobby of the Stark Tower. She posted a picture of her cats cuddling. Or Ned, the IT intern she had met twice, but he seemed to be friends with Harley and Harry, so she had followed him back. Apparently, Ned had recently gotten engaged and was now posting a picture with his fiance. Melissa’s Instagram moment is ruined by Happy, who has just texted telling her he was waiting downstairs.

“I need to go”, she mumbles, getting up from the barstool. Peter glances at the girl first, then the clock and realises he needs to leave as well. The boy shuts down the Tv before turning off the coffee maker and cleaning the mugs in the sink. Melissa pulls her coat on when Peter meets her in the hallway. Grabbing his jacket and back bag, Peter follows the girl out of the door, locking it on his way.

The elevator ride was quiet, but the silence was quick to end when they reached the front door and saw it was pouring outside.

“Shit!” Peter curses; he had forgotten his umbrella upstairs. He was never going to make it dry to the Daily Bugle. Melissa looks at the car where Happy was waiting for her. She then looks at Peter, who had already started to walk back to the elevator to get his umbrella.

“Happy can drive you; the office is close by the tower, it’s; it’s not a big detour” Melissa shrugs, knowing Happy wouldn’t be happy, but they had plenty of time, and she felt bad for Peter.

“Really?” Peter turns around.

“Yeah, let's go” Melissa nods towards the car, opening the door. They sprinted towards the car, holding their coats over their heads to cover themselves from the rain.

Finally getting into the car and relatively dry, Melissa and Peter look at each other, smiling; their mission was successful.

“Hey, what’s this? Who is this?” Happy’s head snaps to the backseat.

“Happy, this is Peter, my flatmate. He has a meeting in the Daily Bugle, and I couldn’t let him walk there soaked. It’s not a big detour. Please, Happy,” Melissa explains, batting her eyelashes at the man sitting in the driver’s seat.

Happy’s eyes scanned Peter, and Peter could feel the nervousness rising. Part of him hoped Happy would recognise him, and part of him feared that he’d recognise him. He had only met him once, on May’s grave, but he didn’t remember him. Happy then sighs and looks at Melissa, still making her best puppy impression.

“Fine, but I’m not a taxi, Mel.”

“Yay! Thank you, Happy!”

Twenty-something minutes later, the car stops in front of a large building with massive screens that play the news clip from the Bugle. The letters Infront of the building are written in yellow. Peter thanks Melissa and Happy before getting out of the car. Covering himself with his jacket, he jogs into the lobby.

People ran around the lobby, waving papers around and trying to catch the elevators. It was something you’d see in TV shows and movies, not in real life, or that’s what Peter thought. A big silver coloured desk with Daily Bugle written stands in the middle of everything. Behind it was a girl with blonde hair, staring at the computer with a troubled look on her face while trying to explain something on the phone. Peter couldn’t believe his eyes; it was Betty Brant, his High School classmate and Ned’s girlfriend. When he had seen her last time, she was still in college doing her degree in Journalism. Her degree and passion for journalism were only clear that she’d work somewhere like the Daily Bugle. Still, Peter wasn’t expecting to see her there.

Peter fixed his jacket and hair before he walked toward the desk. The girl glances at Peter, holding up a finger to ask Peter to wait for a second.

“Mr Jameson, I have already sent Mercado to investigate and write a report. She’s the best we have; I’ll send someone to take pictures with her.” She mumbles a few yeses and okays before putting the phone down and giving Peter her full attention. She looked the same as Peter remembered; she had shorter hair and was dressing more mature, but any other way, it was the same Betty Peter remembered.

“Uh, yeah, I’m Peter Parker, I sent material about Spiderman a few days ago, and I was told to come here for further discussion,” Peter stutters under Betty’s firm stare; he was a total stranger. It was hard not to ask how she was doing since it had been a while since they’d seen each other. Not to mention the urge Peter had to ask how Ned was doing, but he couldn’t. Betty’s face softens, and she clicks something on the computer. A few more clicks, and she finds the schedule she was looking for.

“Right! Welcome; I was told you’d be coming this morning. Let me call my boss” she smiles, taking the phone and placing it on her back again.

When she lifted the phone, a ring on Betty’s left ring finger caught Peter’s attention; that was indeed new. Has Ned gotten engaged? Peter’s guts turned, and his heart ached. The slow realisation of how many important things he was going to miss. Peter remembers how Ned used to talk about how Betty was the one and someday he would marry her. Back then, Ned had told Peter that he wanted Peter to be his best man; all of it felt distant then. Now it was happening, and Peter couldn’t be there for his best friend.

“Mr Jameson, the Spidey photographer, is here. I’ll send him up.” She speaks, pulling Peter back to earth. “He’ll see you now, the last floor; take a right from the elevators.”

Peter thanks the girl before heading to the elevators and pressing the button to the top floor; the doors close in front of him. The gut-wrenching feeling didn’t ease. Meeting Flash was easy, but Betty was more challenging; she was closer. He never had thought about what he would do if he met people from his past. Until now, it had been easy just to avoid everyone and the places they might be. It had worked for almost a year now, but somehow, Peter felt like everyone was slowly creeping back into his life. Happy, Flash, Betty, he had managed to pretend he was a stranger for them but knowing himself, it would only get harder to act. He was afraid that he’d slip something, and it would blow his cover like it would be some counteracting to Strange’s spell, and everything would rewind into last year’s mess.

Peter jumps slightly when a man walks into the elevator on the sixth floor, nodding to Peter as a greeting and pressing the same button Peter had pressed earlier. When the elevator informs them that they’ve reached the top floor, they walk out and head right.

Peter didn’t know what to expect, he had just sent the pictures, and they told him to come around. He wondered why they didn’t just make him send his information over the email but made him come to the offices. The man from the elevator enters first into the room, followed by Peter right after.

“Well, get into that warehouse. I don’t care if the police have closed it! It’s not a coincidence that Deadpool and his little sidekick were seen there. We need to find out what is going on!” a man with slicked back grey hair yells into his phone, smashing it down in its place. “What the hell are you standing there?”

Peter jumps back, a bit shaken by surprise. He quickly fixes his position and clears his throat.

“I’m Peter Parker; I send pictures of Spiderman to you.”

“I don’t know what I was expecting but certainly not you! Anyway, I liked the material. Not the best but the best we have right now.”

“Thank you?”

The older man turns to look at the person next to Peter.

“Abernathy, How much can we pay the guy?”

“If our people had taken pictures like that, it would be around fifty bucks per pic, hundred for video and double if we use them. He sent five pics and five videos; it would make seven-hundred-fifty to cover the base and add commission after choosing what we use.”

“But he’s not working for us; I say four hundred.”

Peter was sure that the two had just completely forgotten that he was still in the room as they went on about how much he should be paid. They go back and forth before Mr Jameson speaks to Peter again.

“How did you get the pictures? How did you know where to be?”.

Peter freezes. He wasn’t expecting questions, or he was, he just wasn’t ready to answer them.

“I-I have my ways. We’re kind of like acquaintances.”

“Acquaintances? So, you know the menace underneath the mask?”

“No, Sir. I’ve never seen him without his mask. I’ve just met him multiple times. He swings a lot in the area I live in.”

The older man squints his eyes; he can tell Peter hides something. If he knew Spiderman, he could be a valuable source for the Daily Bugle and perhaps, he could help them unmask the son of a bitch.

“I’ll give you a deal, kid. I’ll pay you a thousand if you bring me new pictures by Wednesday, and I’ll hire you as a photographer for Spiderman.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Peter would have to double-take if he heard the man correctly. He can’t be saying what Peter thinks he’s saying.

“You heard me; I’m offering you a job. I will get more pictures by Wednesday; I’ll give you 1000, and you’ll become Spiderman’s photographer since you can do the job better than our current photographers.”

So, Peter’s ears and mind weren’t deceiving him after all. Mr Jameson was offering him a job. Peter nods and crosses his arms on his chest.

“What would that job include except taking pictures of Spiderman?”

Now, it was the man next to Peter who talked. “Like I earlier mentioned, it would be fifty for a picture, a hundred for video, double if used, plus minimum wage for the first year. Office hours would be nine to five every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. On other days you’d come if needed. Almost every photographer here works as a freelancer under the same rules.”

“Take it or leave it; I’ll pay you four hundred now, and you leave or thousand on Wednesday, and I’ll hire you.” Mr Jameson leaned back in his chair.

Peter might be losing his mind, but the conditions he was given sounded like a dream compared to his current job. No more yelling customers, no graveyard shifts where he had to sit behind the counter and hope someone would need something at four in the morning, no itchy bright green polyester vest. He could make money for being Spiderman and show up to the office three times a week.

“It’s a deal.”

“I’m waiting for those pictures on my desk at nine on Wednesday morning, Parker. And they need to be publication quality!”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good, now, get lost. I need to figure out what Deadpool is up to.”

Without saying anything, Peter leaves the room, heading to the elevator. Before he can reach it, he is stopped by Abertnathy.

“I have to say; you’re a crazy kid. The deal is good, but you have no idea what you got yourself into.”

“He’s waiting for me to fail, so he doesn’t have to pay?”

“Pretty much. Our team has been chasing Spiderman for a year now, and the best we got was pixelated CCTV material and blurry pictures from afar. One guy swears he was taking pictures of Spiderman when it was clearly a woman”

“Well, I have my ways, trust me” Peter walks into the elevator, leaving the man to just stare at the closing doors.

Peter pulls out his phone, excited to tell the news to his friends already typing a message, but when he’s about to press send, the realisation hits him. He didn’t have anyone to tell. It would be weird if a random number sent “Guess what! I just got offered a job!” nowhere. So, he deletes the message. When he’s about to close the messaging app, one name catches his eye on top of his message list. Maybe he did have someone he could tell the news about; hesitantly, he clicked the name. Peter was sure she wasn’t going to answer him, and he was probably interrupting her work, but still, he typed the message.

Peter: Guess what? I got offered a job at the Daily Bugle!

The elevator blings as it reaches the ground floor, opening the doors and revealing a group of people waiting to get in. Awkwardly the boy walks out of the elevator, making room for the people wanting to go up. He waves Betty at the front desk before heading out. When he steps outside, he is reminded that it is still pouring. For Peter’s luck, the closest Subway station where he could get a train to work was next to the Stark Tower, an almost ten-minute walk away.

He had no choice but to walk. Sprinting towards the station like him running would make him or his journey any drier. The water splashed under his sneakers, soaking his jeans. Peter didn’t even bother to cover his hair. It would be wet anyway. Because of the rain, the streets were relatively empty; no one wanted to go outside in weather like this unless they had to. He finally makes it to the station, putting his super-speed and reflexes into work, dodging the umbrellas of the one poor tourist group roaming the streets.

When he finally gets into the train, he’s dripping wet, like he had gone into a shower with his clothes on, hoping his phone and headphones in his pocket weren’t soaked as well. Pulling out his phone, he sighs in relief, seeing it is dry. Checking the phone, he finds out that he has one new message.

Melissa: oh, wow, congrats? not sure how to react, if it’s a good thing or a bad thing.

Peter: Thank you! I took the offer, so I guess it was a good thing. How’s your work?

Peter writes and deletes the last sentence multiple times before leaving it and sending it.

Melissa: i guess it’s time for proper congratulations! paparazzi parker ;) and boring; they keep talking about growth rates, marginals, and sales volumes.

Peter: Oh, I’m sorry! Am I interrupting? Didn’t mean to.

Melissa: nah, it’s okay. i’m texting Cindy as well. they don’t even notice. so, tell me about your new job.

Peter: Well, I don’t have the job yet. I need to bring them new pictures of Spiderman by Wednesday morning, and if the pics are good, they’ll hire me.

Melissa: that sounds sketchy, but if they like the previous ones, they will like the new ones as well.

Melissa: okay now aida is giving me a funny look, i better stop. talk to you at home x.

Peter: Good luck with the rest of your day!

*************************

It was almost two o’clock when Melissa was freed from the Interviews. It didn’t mean that her workday was over; no, it meant Morgan would be home from school soon, and her job as some sort of secret agent turned into a nanny. Happy was picking Morgan up since it was still pouring, and Melissa refused to drive a car in New York City.

So, Melissa decided to spend the little break she was given doing what she did best, annoying her friends in the labs. She strutted towards the engineering lab on the 12th floor. She could see two heads standing next to a computer through the windows. One with dark, almost black curls cleanly slicked back and one with messy blonde hair pointing everywhere. A big grin forms on Melissa's face as she parades into the lab after swiping her key card.

“What are we doing this afternoon?” She walks behind the figures.

“We’re doing the finishing touches on Cindy’s new suit,” The brunette says, nodding to the table on their left. A black and silver suit lays on the table, with a red spiderweb on the chest piece.

Melissa walks closer to the table, looking at Harry and Harley to ask permission to touch the suit.

“Go ahead”, Harley nods, knowing that the girl was aching to touch the suit.

Melissa carefully lifts the suit's sleeve, studying the red fingertips on the glove. Running her finger up the sleeve to the chest, she traces the red S that looks like a lightning bolt when you first look at it.

“This is so much better than mine”, She breathes out, fascinated by the suit.

“I’m not buying that; Lily made your suit.” Harry shakes his head.

“Well, it’s not that bad, but it could use upgrading. And I look like I’m cosplaying Taylor Swift when I wear it.”

“I thought you liked Taylor Swift”, Harley smirks.

“I do, but I’d like to have a little more coverage and lose the gold details. Wade keeps calling me Honeybee. It sounds like a lame version of the Wasp.”

“Technically, it is your name,” Harry points out.

“Oh, piss off, Osborn,” Melissa rolls her eyes. She plops into the chair next to the table, kicking off her heels before crossing her feet on the chair, barely fitting. Harley lets out a small laugh at sight, commenting that she never knows how to sit correctly in chairs. The girl answers with a middle finger and tells him to go back to work and pretend she doesn’t even exist.

The girl tries to listen to the boys' conversation, debating how they’re going to implant the sensory chips into the suit and how sensitive they need to be. This is where Melissa zones out; she had no clue about the technical side they were discussing, like the type of chips they’d use and what was the difference between the two chips. When they talked about chips, she thought about the French fries she had for lunch. She wasn’t super bright like the boys or a miracle child genius like her sister used to be; well, she was still a genius, just not a child anymore. Melissa could write code, she was pretty good at coding and programming, but that’s about it; her expertise lay elsewhere.

She blankly stares at the table where the boys have now flipped the suit inside out and started to attach the sensor chips to their places. Harley had put his hair into a small bun and put on his glasses. His tongue slightly peaked between his lips as he tried to place the chip in its place with a pair of curved tweezers. He carefully pressed the chip to seal it, and Harry next to him confirmed if the chip had correctly attached and it was showing up on the computer.

Melissa sometimes forgot that her best friends were engineers and scientists, straight out of university, working for one of the biggest companies in the world. If you’d met them during free time, you’d think they were just normal twenty-three-year-olds, partying, making all the wrong choices before settling down, having pizza nights in someone’s living room while watching movies and drinking beer. They made her feel normal.

When Melissa had first met Harley, it was Tony’s funeral. Melissa had stayed back from the crowd with Lily and Aida. A tall, lanky figure with messy blonde hair had approached them, dressed in a black suit like the rest of the men there, introducing himself as Harley Keener. Tony had been a mentor to Harley over the years, helped him get into Empire, and was always ready to answer his calls when he needed help with his projects. They had met when Tony had broken into Harley’s family shed when he was 15. During the funeral, he mentioned looking for an internship to finish his engineering degree. Lily had suggested he apply to Stark Industries, as Harley already had connections, and her department was looking for two interns.

Harley then told Harry, his classmate, about the internships, and they applied; both were excellent students, and they got in with ease. Harley and Harry started the training at the same time as Melissa began her job as a nanny, meaning she spent more time in the Stark Tower. Melissa would visit her sister in the labs, who was the boys' trainer and every time, she spent more time with the boys than she spent with her sister. Cindy joined their group later that spring, she had started an internship with Dr Banner, who mainly worked in his personal laboratory, but sometimes they’d do collaborative work in the Tower labs. They studied gamma radiation and how it affected different organisms, primarily insects.

Melissa really couldn’t remember all the details of that study since it had big ‘science words’ that she couldn’t understand. Cindy had explained everything a million times to her, but she’d zone out when the words turned into something she couldn’t understand. All her friends were intelligent and successful, and she was just Melissa, a girl who dropped out of primary school at ten and had to do the rest of her education at the ripe age of nineteen, barely passing.

Melissa was glad Morgan was in the first grade, and the subjects she was learning were easy since it was her job to help the kid with her homework. Morgan didn’t really need help since she was a genius like her father, but sometimes she needed some push to do her homework since ‘it was too easy’ as Morgan had put it. Those times Melissa asked Harley to help. Morgan adored Harley, and Harley would give the girl more complicated stuff to work on to motivate the girl to do the easy stuff first. It had been under discussion if they’d move Morgan up a couple of years since she was already reading and writing fluently; her maths skills were almost the same as third graders, but Morgan herself had wanted to start from the first grade since all her friends were there.

Just then, Melissa’s phone beeps. It was Happy asking where Melissa was as he was back with Morgan. Melissa tells him to send Morgan into lab twelve D. Melissa knew that the boys wouldn’t mind Morgan; her dad had taught her well. She knew how to behave in a lab and what she was allowed to do. She loved wearing the white lab coats and safety goggles, parading around being the little scientist she was.

It didn’t take long, and Happy let Morgan into the lab before excusing himself and disappearing into the hallway. Morgan drops her school bag on the ground next to the door and tiptoes herself an oversized lab coat from the lowest coat hook. She pulls on the white jacket over her school uniform and marches toward Melissa, sitting on the chair, who greets the girl with open arms, ready to pull the girl into a bear hug.

“How was school today?” Melissa asks, letting go of the little girl.

“It was okay; we had maths in the first period, I already knew how to do everything, then in arts and crafts, we made hand turkeys since thanksgiving is this month, and we’re learning about it in history. And we ended the day with spelling exercises,” Morgan explains, barely taking any breaths between her sentences.

“That sounds like a day. Did you get homework?” The older girl takes the one sleeve of the lab coat the younger one was wearing, rolling it up, so it doesn’t get in Morgan’s way

“Yes, spelling and maths. But I know everything already, so can I go to see what the boys are doing?”

“We’ll do the homework later; you can’t start skipping homework on a first-grade, Miss. And yes, you can.” She finishes rolling up the other sleeve and pats Morgan on the shoulder.

Morgan shrieks in excitement, skipping over to Harley and Harry, carefully peeking between their figures what they were doing.

“Seems like we have top-level quality control” Harley smiles, putting down the tweezers and pushing his glasses on top of his head.

“This must be important since our boss is here”, Harry laughs, messing up Morgan's hair.

“What are you guys doing?” the girl asks, fixing her hair back.

“We are installing sensors into Silks’ new suit,” Harley explains.

The little girl looks at the inside out suit on the table, scratching her head in confusion.

“It looks weird.”

“Well, it’s inside out now, but I can show how it looks the right way.” Harley pushes himself with the saddle chair next to the computer. He clicks open a picture of the suit, and Morgan looks at the picture in amazement.

“Wow, that looks like a Spiderman suit! You’re making a suit for Spiderman?”

“No, we’re making a suit for Silk. She’s like Spiderman, but a girl.”

“There's a girl Spiderman?” Morgan exclaims.

“Yes, darling, there’s girl Spiderman.” Melissa walks up to Morgan, smiling.

“Does she know Spiderman? My daddy knew Spiderman; he talked about him a lot.”

“I don’t know. I haven’t asked,” Harley admits.

“You should ask! And then since you know girl Spiderman, she could bring the other Spiderman here and I could meet him! I want to meet Spiderman and girl Spiderman!” Morgan rambles.

“Since it's the boss’ order, we ask Silk if she knows Spiderman the next time we see her”, Harry promises.

Morgan and Melissa spend a little more time watching the boys install and test the sensors in the lab. Harley even let the girls try to install a couple of chips. Morgan gets it on right away and boasts about it to Melissa, whose shaky hands made her drop the chip on her first go. But when Morgan’s stomach rumbles, Melissa announces that it would be their time to leave to have something to eat and do Morgan’s homework. Morgan reluctantly heads out with Melissa, saying bye to the boys before the lab door closes.

#peter parker #peter parker fic #peter parker series #mcu spiderman #angst #eventual relationship #eventual romance #eventual smut #fluff #spiderman no way home #no way home #tom holland #tom holland series #tom holland fic #tom holland spiderman

11 notes · View notes

cleocazo · 4 years

Text

hey hp rp + rpc tags ! i’m popping by to make a public service announcement / callout ? regarding blatant plagiarism from the admin of @impiushq. so far, i’ve discovered the plagiarism in question taking place in two rps under the details ELENI / ADMIN E, 18, est, she / her ( o worm#5862 on discord ). i have no idea whether it goes further than this, but where my initial concern was simply my creative property having been swiped and used in another rp, i’ve since discovered that eleni was brave enough to open her OWN rp at the above url knowing full well that her ‘interpretation’ of her character was stolen, and i think the rpc should know exactly who they’re shouting out and supporting by joining her rp. anyway. onwards with the necessary info, right ?

so the first penny drop was when i saw that petrificushq had a lily evans on an activity check with a martyr related url ( @mcrtyris ) which at first was just SUPER funny to me, since i play a lot with the theme of lily being a ‘little martyr’ and have used it in the past as blog title, playlist title, label, etc. i opened the blog and immediately felt as if... the layout to everything was very similar to my own and that the use of a theme made by the same person who made a previous one of mine ( subsequently changed due to the fact that it came out the themes had all been stolen, but i digress ) was... weird. fast forward to me knowing with complete certainty everything they used on that blog was stolen from me, i messaged the rp to let them know and began to search the marauders rp tags on the off chance they had taken my lily elsewhere, since they were on an activity check in that rp.

here’s the thing : i’d like for this to be the ONLY instance i had to screenshot, but as it turns out, it’s not. so stick with me, please !

the search ended at @impiushq, which is an rp RUN by eleni. in it, she’s playing lily evans ( @puermiles ) - once again with my information. it was one thing to take my bio to another rp, but it’s another thing ALTOGETHER to open a roleplay with my information for your singular character, and it seemed to me that eleni got braver when she was finally in a space created by herself : my tag system, my musing posts, even character development things i did were taken there.

i couldn’t work out the best way to go about this, so while i do in fact HAVE screenshots and all of eleni’s information copied and pasted to google documents in case she deletes her blogs, i’m choosing just to link the major instances because frankly : its a LOT, and all of it was stolen. screenshots just won’t do, here. i’ve gone with the oldest google doc i actually own of this information ( last edited june 17th ) because i want you all to know that my lily predated eleni’s by MANY weeks, and i’d be happy contact the first rp i was apart of with her for the may timestamp of my application, lmao. my lily potter blog has always been @flevrdelis, currently privated. the two blogs of eleni’s where she is using my information are @mcrtyris & @puermiles. as of now, you can view both. if they go down, i will still have screenshots & copies of both, so eleni : there’s no point in removing the proof of your plagiarism in hopes of it not being seen.

THIS IS MY LILY POTTER TIMELINE / biography. here & here you can find the watered down copies, stolen by eleni.

THIS IS MY STATISTICS PAGE, copied from my blog as i’m not taking it off private now. HERE & HERE are eleni’s. in the first, the first time she copied and pasted my work, you can see she left ( evans ) when she shouldn’t have in ‘meaning of names’. on top of stealing my work, here, she’s also stolen my ‘only the good seasons’ joke about tvd in character parallels, lol.

THIS IS MY INTRODUCTION, the earliest iteration of it. HERE & HERE you can find eleni’s ‘abriged bios’ / intros, which are both also blatantly ripped from me, and contain all MY jokes and information.

CLICK HERE TO BE REDIRECTED TO AN IMGUR PHOTO ALBUM, containing all instances if theme stealing, etc.

AS OF NOW BOTH BLOGS ARE DOWN, PLEASE FIND PUERMILES INFO HERE & MCRTYRIS INFO HERE.

please also note that where my go to fc for lily and the fc i was using when she would have stolen this information was melis sezen and that my lily potter, regardless of where played, identifies as NON BINARY. both times eleni has changed my lily to a abigail cowen, and has turned her into a cis woman. if you’re going to steal from me, can you at least keep what you’re stealing intact ?

look : as a wise individual has since said to me... the level of no concern that she has of the consequences for this to do it TWICE is baffling. the fact she could KNOWINGLY steal my writing ( because whatever the excuse, your finger doesn’t just slip for you to steal so much information directly from someone ) in one rp was bad enough, but that she went on to create her own and think it would never come out is... shocking. my lily potter / evans is a carefully crafted character that i’m attached to for a lot of reasons, but most especially because she’s the only character in recent years i attached so much personal information to. she’s formed out of people and situations specific to my family and me, and it’s FUNNY, but it’s also absolutely shocking behaviour. this is illegal. i don’t OWN the rights to lily potter, but i own absolutely EVERYTHING that went into her. eleni, this is illegal. it’s shockingly bad, disgusting, HORRID behaviour, but it’s also illegal, and you should absolutely be aware of that.

obviously, i would like first and foremost an apology from eleni for this. an explanation. absolutely anything at all. but second to that, i’d really appreciate the rpc seeing this and making sure that MY creative property isn’t taken to another space yet again by this person.

#rpt #rpc #rph #hp rp #harry potter rp #marauders rp #marauders rpg #appless rp

53 notes · View notes

justwinginoverthings · 5 years

Note

meli I don't give a shit about Sansa but her fans are the worst they really are making a thousand of teories e wrong netas to make her appear more importante than the key 5

and like in a level headed argument I’ll be the first to say that sansa is definetly an important player, a minor character, she is definetly not. she is protegée and a window to one of the men who’s pulling the strings in westeros, she’s married to whom will surely be the last lannister standing by the end of the series and is a stark by name, closely tied to houses tully and arryn.

before the term “key 5″ was brought up again (i think it was by one of the actors) and it was (fandom-wise) only used quoting to that original outline from the 90′s by grrm, i definetly vouched for the idea that the original outline had evolved and grrm was now working out some form of 5+1 (t, d, a, j, b + sansa) or even a 5+2 (t, d, a, j, b + sansa, jaime), based on how their evolution has given us seeds for so many other theories and future importance, truly, i supported that! or rather, i didn’t cross it as a possibility, and trust me, i took tons of crap from even mutuals of my own for not dismissing it outright. then of course the term was brough up again in more recent material so it was clear the term remained alive and vital.

[btw “pov” chapters count is and always has been tricky, cat has more than sansa, despite being less of a major character, and bran has less than both. i think this has a lot to do with how much we need certain pov’s. what we saw thought cat no other character could give, unlike sansa in king’s landing (we had tyrion’s) and in bran case, well, if we knew too much of the magic, then plot twist and surpirses would be gone (which is why i assume we won’t get an euron one, and why i am so frustrated with melisandre’s sole pov chapter) so never ever ever use that as measurement of importance]

as you say, the annoying thing is making her more than she is, particulary, by viciously attacking when it’s pointed out she has flaws and/or does not posses certain characteristic/habilities/power/significance. as a feminist, it’s quite harsh for me how the idea of “not liking her” became equated to misogyny (annoying as some dany stans could’ve been, i have never seen passive agressive post of “if you don’t like dany just admit you don’t like women!11!”). even more annoying as you say, is the trend of making metas granting her aspects of other characters (almost 85% of the time, from arya’s which just... makes it worse, becuse arya was bullied by her). so yeah, perhaps 90% of our annoyence just comes from her fans, and not form her character.

but i definetly believe the actress was given instructions to potray her as haughty, and definetly, always thinking she’s right (the bad script making her right by shitting on logic development and dumbing others doesn’t help her case). book!sansa is definetly much cooler a character with all her ladylike poise, not dressing like freaking armor but actually just being her fabulous pretty self. i just??? show!sansa is annoying, i said what i said.

#anti sansa #tagging it to be safe

15 notes · View notes

longmismocy1985-blog · 5 years

Text

Batista doesn have the same charisma the Rock had to get into Hollywood. The Rock first role was as Scorpion King, then got his own solo SK movie and then started starring in Walking Tall/Rundown. When the Rock gets older we see how much range he has, as he won be getting this muscle man hero roles.. If not, clean and trimmed nails look great too! Shoes! Don go for comfort over looks on an interview. I rather suck it up for an hour or so if it means my whole outfit looks good and makes me feel confident. Hair. I brought up the tooth fairly and tried to brag about all the money I'd receive for my tooth. Still not impressed. He didn't believe I would actually get money exchange for my worthless tooth and wanted proof.. PPOC reports to PayPal reimbursements for items purchased 파주출장마사지 the same way as it reports money received for taking surveys, earning points, etc., as INCOME. I have sent multiple support tickets to PPOC since they are actually reporting inaccurately to PayPal but they do NOT care. Unfortunately PayPal has no way of distinguishing which is which since these monies are sent to them the same way regardless of source. I have been to Japan recently both in the rural and urban areas. I have 파주출장마사지 also been to Korea and based on my observation, I say that beauty standards are far more relaxed in Japan, at least in the cities I went to. I skipped Tokyo so I can say the same for it.. I might be in a small minority here but everytime I swatch the PMG palettes in Sephora I get so underwhelmed, like I want to love them or covet them but I dont see anything about them that sparks joy in me. There were a few colors that looked special across the palettes but all the rest were very generic colors and the textures werent buttery smooth by any means. I tried bare mineral eyeshadow palettes that felt a lot more buttery and pigmented. Hes one of the top tier heroes for 1v1 because only two characters in the game can punish his forward bash and chained bash, and it confirms 20 dmg. He also has 0ms guardswitch on dodge so he can react to 400ms lights which shouldnt be reactable. He has superior block lights so when mixed with parrying and not overused they make for great option selects. At the end of two months Kayerts often would say, "If it was not for my Melie, you wouldn't catch me here." Melie was his daughter. He had thrown up his post in the Administration of the Telegraphs, though he had been for seventeen years perfectly happy there, to earn a dowry for his girl. His wife was dead, and the child was being brought up by his sisters. It seems like kind of a backwards idea to me. This isn to say that timeless classics don exist, but it a little arrogant to assume that these works will likely fall into that category. Yet publishers and libraries will still exist. That motivated her. She worked hard in school, fondly recalling her mother's insistence on a perfect attendance record. She would eventually go on to to be the first person in her family to graduate with a bachelor's degree. This sounds like solid advice. I throw my own experience in; due to some unfortunate family circumstances, I came into a lot of money after I was 18. My parents had invested a good amount for me, and it also turned out that I have an annuity that I get monthly payouts from. I not sure why no one is bringing this up, but these new Morphe x J brushes look nothing like the pink chrome brushes he teased a few years back. From what I remember (please correct me if I wrong), the brushes J teased were smooth, pink chrome handled. Those, at the time, looked luxe and potentially exciting.

1 note · View note

foodfilmaboutus · 4 years

Text

The Full Interview

Michael Roulier and Philippe Lhomme, directors of foodfilm Interview:

1. Could you introduce the work experience of both of you? When did you two begin to form the team to work together on creativity?

We both have quite a long advertising background, and one thing we have in common is that when we started we did not take advertisement very seriously, at least at first, being more interested into art creation.

In the nineties, if you aspired to exhibit artwork in galleries, it had to stay "secret". So both of us entered the advertising world almost "by accident". After finishing his studies at Penninghen art school, Philippe started painting and installed his atelier in Mesnilmontant district in Paris with no heating. Living and breathing only for his art. Still today he is the one who draws all our scripts, and it is important for us to keep it that way since it is the very first contact we have with clients to seduce them with our stories.

I take care of the writing. I started as a photographer hesitating between photo- journalism and fine arts after having passed a master in Philosophy, but absolutely passionate by all forms of photography. We where both introduced to the advertisement world almost by chance. We did not know each other at that time. It was a golden age for advertisers.Ten years later Philippe was a Creative Director at DDB mainly in charge of an iconic French award winning food brand that French people loved because of the quality of communication and visuals.

On my side I had become a studio still life photographer working mainly for luxury brands and cosmetics subjects. One day Philippe called me and asked if I was interested to do some "food tests" for the brand, and I must admit I was not too excited about it.

Food was not really glamorous in those days...it was called "alimentary photography". Restaurant Chefs where not considered like the Rock Stars they are today, and I cared more about my personal research considering advertisement like a lovely job, but not like a finality, even though I was lucky enough to work for beautiful brands like Hermes, Gallery Lafayette etc... In the end it was a revelation. I discovered a completely new world into which I had a total creative freedom, which was not at all the case for others kind of advertised subjects. Usually Art directors had no clue about what to do with food, and it was very much 'comedy' orientated as they felt more confortable doing that. It was not the case of Philippe who already believed that there was a lot do in this field and really tried to bring the visuals to a very artistic level. We inspired a lot of other food brands with our images, and the brand became a real visual reference for food. Finally we ended up becoming food specialists, but it had never been our initial projects. We collaborated together for 15 years always trying to focus as much as possible on textures. Food can be naturally ugly and somehow you need quite a lot of experience to master it. We noticed at that time that the food film industry was still surfing on a quite archaic imagery, where the heroes where definitely not the food. In parallel amazing cook books where being printed as editors understood there was a huge market in selling this very artistic food approach. I did 36 books and had the chance to meet these amazing Michelin star chefs who where all desiring to do their proper "food manifesto". It was part of their "business plan" to do such books. A necessity for them that made photographers very happy.

The brand we where working for was only doing print, but one day they asked us to film some recipes for viral videos. They where short on budget but we where given "carte blanche". We just loved doing them, and applied our print workflow to this new experience. We where both passionate about films in our personal life. I was interested in doing experimental research around cinematic experiences inspired by people like Stan Brakhage or Maya Deren. Philippe was spending a lot of time in contemporary art galleries watching artists using video as a medium. Strangely the brand hardly used these film recipes we did for them, and it stayed completely confidential until we decided to post them all in one batch on Vimeo. It became like a tsunami: phones started ringing all the time, and many production companies scouting on Vimeo made us tons of propositions. It all went really quickly, and a year later, Philippe naturally quit his job as creative director at DDB, and on my side I switched from still-life photography to film directing.

2. Which clients do you serve currently?

Our website is built like a simple blog, so the very first page represents our actuality and the clients we lately served.

We have a lot of different clients, and we have enlarged our "film perspective" in exploring other field like the cosmetic world.

Usually cosmetic brands would hire purely still life directors specialized in jewelry, watches, or shooting very "static" items. They had a very "contemplative" approach. Almost robotic. We brought "life" and action, avoiding the 3d representations mainly used at that time. Agencies where seduced by our food background and tried to apply this "spirit" to selling cosmetics...they where seduced by our organic approach.

We love also working for cosmetic brands (L'Oréal, Garnier, Yves Rocher, Décleor, Neutrogena) because the visual grammar has to be very metaphoric, so there is a lot of creativity involved in the process, and they are really expecting this from us: "unseen ideas" to illustrate the benefit of the products....

As far as food it stays our main subjects. Our clients are very eclectic. When you shoot food films you have to collaborate with the big agri-food groups like Neslté, Lactalis, Mondelez etc...and the creative validation process tends to be quite heavy. We can vigorously defend our ideas until a certain point, but at one stage "the big machine" can easily "laminate" your creativity. We are used to that. So what's really remains is the quality of the CRAFT. Our background in print photography really helped us here. I have always been passionate by the digital world and started working early with computers. We try to control in-house as much as we can: compositing, post production and coloring. Our workflow is very direct and since we don't have "a complex post-production pipeline" our approach is very "boutique" in a way. We do hire some digital artists, but they come to work in our studio under our supervision before the film presentation.

We do a lot of this post production job directly on the set: we have great people around us helping us to achieve "live" what is usually done a few weeks later, which is quite an unusual workflow, and spend the nights coloring the clips to be able to show them the next day.

2bis. What’s your core concept of making creativity for clients?

What inspires us most is graphics, architecture, contemporary art, constructivism, Bauhaus, Melies (a French director of the beginning of the century creating illusion) and I am forgetting a lot of other things. Being two "brains" enlarges the perspectives and the approaches. We don't use any DOP, so it's really a duo work.

Philippe and I have very different personalities and skills, and strangely it works really well. But what really unifies us is a desire for elegance and fluidity. A lot of food studios sometimes lack this little something related to external input. Our respective personal passions in life keep enriching our professional work.To resume, it's about "good taste" as we say in France.

We have been too much categorized as "graphic" directors, and that saddens us a bit because we are very much about filming "sensuality". This is probably due to our long collaboration for Marks & Spencer, and to the number of films we did for them.

Our camera angles are usually very simple, frontal and direct. We do have an in-house Kuka robot, but actually don't use it so much, considering that the most important part of our job is composition, more than just a robotic technical achievement.

The editing is the other part into which we have put a lot of energy. The rhythm is not only achieved by the editing skills, but also by the use of visual patterns within the individual clips. We don't "contemplate" too much with long travellings, our work is all about action and the smart ways we have to find in order to animate our textures. And finally the transitions within clips are to our eyes as important as the clips themselves, and we always look for little tricks in order to help the editor's work.

3. Why do you want to be specialized in food films and why began? What’s the benefits of working in this specialized area? How is this area special among creative films?

Food was up to quite recently an unexplored territory. This is what makes it fascinating for us. We are artists using food as our playground. Being French also means that we have a cultural respect for it. Colors, shape, complexity of textures, infinite visual associations and concatenation, and in a certain way "porn".

Pornfood meaning that we can induce by the visuals the viewer to "drool" when we film organoleptic textures that provoque desire and satisfaction.

The other challenge was to totally erase human beings. It's more a philosophical and artistic choice than a necessity for us, and every time we are asked to shoot actors we are happy to do it. But to be able to captivate audience without the acting support is a really an interesting direction. The concept of no-hands-films has led us those last years, but we are in constant evolution, and I am sure it will change.

Being specialized in food give us more freedom than working for other subjects. Everybody has to say something about fashion, cloths, talent acting etc...but very few can have a clear vision about how to stage food, and it gives us a real license for creativity. It's a niche, and that's what's great about it.

4. What kind of experience can you share about food films making? What is the critical thing when making them? Could you explain with 1-2 examples?

One of the critical point is always Time management. When you work with textures you are always surprised by the fact that you cannot really know in advance what shots are going to take more time than others. When you have a long shooting on multiple days your can "deal" with a certain time-elasticity, much better than a single day shoot, when you know that in the same day, whatever happens, you have to "deliver".

We have to obtain the "visual miracle" in a very short time and sometimes it just does not happens, and you can feel the production team and clients become stressed. We learned how to deal with that quite well. Experience will help of course, but sometimes a simple action like just filling a glass of wine in front of the camera can become a nightmare. Of course one could rely on robotics to do that, but then you might lose all the beautiful accidents that can make the quality of the shot. So it's all about making the right choices at the right time.

The same critical point goes when writing the scripts. We have to constantly evaluate the "is-this-going-to-be-possible?". It's great to have ideas, but they have to be somehow realistic and credible, and sometimes we are not really sure of way the texture will behave. There is a lot of randomness that we don't control. We often start over and over again to get the right movement or action. We do work with some great SFX teams that we constantly challenge with our crazy ideas, as we took an ideological posture with Philippe not use 3D, and to always film everything for real. Many people think we use 3D, but I can assure that we don't. We do composite a lot though.

5. Why do you think your work is attractive to the audience and help the brand grow? Can you share one of your favorite works?

I think that what attracts people to our work is that we are often "on the edge of credibility".

We play a lot with illusion, like a magician who will suddenly speed up a gesture to hide the tricks. The rhythm will help us to create this magic. For example we also very often defy gravity, or normality, in order to give a sense of quirkiness. Make it a bit "weird" to get more appeal or unexpectedness. We also try to show details that people usually don't really see, emphasizing a certain playfulness with our camera. The slow motion Phantom camera really helps the observation of the unseen.

The other attractive thing is that our scenes are always "in action". The common question for us is "how are we going to activate this image". No time to contemplate, the textures are always animated in order to keep the tension of the viewer.

6. How’s film creativity different from the general creativity making?

To accept to work as a team with other people. Even more, to admit the power of a team, like a football player.

It is much easier for Philippe who is an ex Creative Director used to commission other artists. I am a bit of "a control freak" and that makes me makes me suffer more than him, and probably others too. This is where we are really complementary.

Nevertheless our team is much smaller than a conventional cinema team, and we try to keep this "boutique" home-made atmosphere. The idea is to never lose the "primal vision" of the film, and keep an eye on everything. We always work with the same team, and we all know each other really well, and that gives a lot of fluidity to our relations. When there is a difficulty, we naturally team up all together to find solutions. It's very democratic!

A good team is like a good wine and it's years of maturation. We where lucky to achieve this.

7. How do you usually allocate work between you two and collaborate with other members in your company? How’s your creativity making process usually?

We both do everything, it's democracy again. We try to put our ego's on the side of our relation.

We do fight a lot though to defend our personal vision of the film, but this is what makes our treatments so rich.

We usually take two days to write a script. The first day is only dedicated to brainstorming, and we throw as much as ideas as we can. Phillipe does quick drawings as we

speak to keep it as a memo. The next day he does the drawings, always in black and white. I love the simplicity of his style, and he really has a camera in the eyes. His drawing treatment is very different of what would provide a rough-man or illustrator . I take care of the writing, and I am extremely precise in our explanations. It's the main secret to win bids. We also try to control as much as we can the art direction of the treatment, and exchange a lot with the creative team doing the lay-outs in the production house. Same goes for the mood boards.

8. Could you tell me an unforgettable thing during you two’s collaboration?

Sometimes the shape of an object, a texture or anything else can slowly become sexually evocative. We remember this time when breaking a poached egg was really reminding a close up of a "very different" scene that could have been extracted from an X-rated movie. Nobody was saying anything, but everybody was thinking the same thing. It was at the same time really evident, and somehow quite understated. At one point the producer "played" his job, and said it, which meant that we had to reshoot the whole scene. It was a good laugh for everybody. It's foodporn after all !

We have hundred of anecdotes with our job, but that's another interview.

9. How will Foodfilm or you personally partner with Stink? What do you think you will bring to Stink’s team through this partnership?

We are very excited with this new partnership, and as we are quite easygoing, it should work really well.

Being represented by Stink is a caution of creativity, so we might have to fight less to defend bold ideas. I don't really know if Stink represents a lot of other table top directors in their international "spiderweb"? I think that the food film market is really huge, and still

growing. So if we can fill this gap for them it's really a great win-win association. Let's talk again about it in a year time!

0 notes

endenogatai · 5 years

Text

Depop, a social app targeting millennial and Gen Z shoppers, bags $62M, passes 13M users

The rising popularity of omni-channel commerce — selling to customers wherever they happen to be spending time online — has spawned an army of shopping tools and platforms that are giving legacy retail websites and marketplaces a run for their money. Now, one of the faster growing of these is announcing an impressive round of funding to stay on trend and continue building its business.

Depop, a London startup that has built an app for individuals to post and sell (and mainly resell) items to groups of followers by way of its own and third-party social feeds, has closed a Series C round of $62 million led by General Atlantic. Previous investors HV Holtzbrinck Ventures, Balderton Capital, Creandum, Octopus Ventures, TempoCap and Sebastian Siemiatkowski, founder and CEO of Swedish payments company Klarna all also participated.

The funding will be used in a couple of areas. First, to continue building out the startup’s technology — building in more recommendation and image detection algorithms is one focus.

And second, to expand in the US, which CEO Maria Raga said is on its way to being Depop’s biggest market, with 5 million users currently and projections of that going to 15 million in the next three years.

That’s despite strong competition from other peer-to-peer selling platforms like Vinted, Poshmark, and social platforms that have been doubling down on commerce, like Instagram and Pinterest, but on the other hand the opportunity is big: a recent report from ThredUp, another second-hand clothes sales platform, estimated that the total resale market is expected to more than double in value to $51 billion from $24 billion in the next five years, accounting for 10% of the retail market.

Prior to this, Depop had raised just under $40 million. It’s not disclosing its valuation except to say it’s a definitely upround. “I’m extremely happy,” Raga said when I asked her about it this week.

The rise of the bedroom entrepreneur

The funding comes on the heels of strong growth and strong focus for the startup.

If “social shopping”, “selling to groups of followers”, and the “use of social feeds” (or my headline…) didn’t already give it away, Depop is primarily aimed at millennial and Gen Z consumers. The company said that about 90% of its active users are under the age of 26, and in its home market of the UK it’s seen huge traction with one-third of all 16-24 year-olds registered on Depop.

Its rise has dovetailed with some big changes that the fashion industry has undergone, said Raga. “Our mission is to redefine the fashion industry in the same way that Spotify did with music, or Airbnb did with travel accommodation,” she said.

“The fashion world hasn’t really taken notice” of how things have evolved at the consumer end, she continued, citing concerns with sustainability (and specifically the waste in the fashion industry), how trends are set today (no longer dictated by brands but by individuals), and how anything can be sold by anyone, from anywhere, not just from a store in the mall, or by way of a well-known brand name website. “You can now start a fashion business from your bedroom,” she added.

For this generation of bedroom entrepreneurs, social apps are not a choice, but simply the basis and source of all their online engagement. Depop notes that the average daily user opens the app “several times per day” both to browse things, check up on those that they follow, to message contacts and comment on items, and of course to buy and sell. On average, Depop users collectively follow and message each other 85 million times each month.

This rapid uptake and strong usage of the service has driven it to 13 million users, revenue growth of 100% year-on-year for the past few years, and gross merchandise value of more than $500 million since launch. (Depop takes a 10% cut, which would work out to total revenues of about $50 million for the period.)

When we first wrote about Depop back in 2015 (and even prior to that), the startup and app were primarily aiming to provide a way for users to quickly snap pictures of their own clothes and other already-used items to post them for sale, one of a wave of flea-market-inspired apps that were emerging at that time. (It also had an older age group of users, extending into the mid-thirties.)

Fast forward a few years, and Depop’s growth has been boosted by an altogether different trend: the emergence of people who go to great efforts to buy limited editions of collectable, or just currently very hot, items, and then resell them to other enthusiasts. The products might be lightly used, but more commonly never used, and might include limited edition sneakers, expensive t-shirts released in “drops” by brands themselves, or items from one-off capsule collections.

It may have started as a way of decluttering by shifting unused items of your own, but it’s become a more serious endeavor for some. Raga notes that Depop’s top sellers are known to clear $100,000 annually. “It’s a real business for them,” she said.

And Depop still sells other kinds of goods, too. These pressed-flower phone cases, for example, have seen a huge amount of traction on Twitter as well as in the app itself in the last week:

Ordered a new phone case off this woman from depop who makes them with pressed flowers n she sent me this :’) pic.twitter.com/oBtRtQ1MJc

— megan (@__meganbenson) June 1, 2019

Alongside its own app and content shared from there to other social platforms, Depop extends the omnichannel approach with a selection of physical stores, too, to showcase selected items.

The startup has up to now taken a very light-touch approach to the many complexities that can come with running an e-commerce business — a luxury that’s come to it partly because its sellers and buyers are all individuals, mostly younger individuals, and, leaning on the social aspect, the expectation that people will generally self-police and do right by each other, or less risk getting publicly called out and lose business as a result.

I think that as it continues to grow, some of that informality might need to shift, or at least be complemented with more structure.

In the area of shipping, buyers generally do not seem to expect the same kind of shipping tracking or delivery professionals appearing at their doors. Sellers handle all the shipping themselves, which sometimes means that if the buyer and seller are in the same city, an in-person delivery of an item is not completely unheard of. Raga notes that in the US the company has now at least introduced pre-paid envelopes to help with returns (not so in the UK).

Payments come by way of PayPal, with no other alternatives at the momen. Depop’s 10% cut on transactions is in addition to PayPal’s fees. But having the Klarna founder as a backer could pave the way for other payment methods coming soon.

One area where Depop is trying to get more focused is in how its activities line up with state laws and regulations.

For example, it currently already proactively looks for and takes down posts offering counterfeit or other illicit goods on the platform, but also relies on people or brands reporting these. (Part of the tech investment into image detection will be to help improve the more automated algorithms, to speed up the rate at which illicit items are removed.)

Then there is the issue of tax. If top sellers are clearing $100,000 annually, there are taxes that will need to be paid. Raga said that right now this is handed off to sellers to manage themselves. Depop does send alerts to sellers but it’s still up to the sellers themselves to organise sales tax and other fees of that kind.

“We are very close to our top sellers,” Raga said. “We’re in contact on a daily basis and we inform of what they have to do. But if they don’t, it’s their responsibility.”

While there is a lot more development to come, the core of the product, the approach Depop is taking, and its success so far have been the winning combination to bring on this investment.

“Technology continues to transform the retail landscape around the world and we are incredibly excited to be investing in Depop as it looks to capture the huge opportunity ahead of it,” said Melis Kahya, General Atlantic Head of Consumer for EMEA, in a statement. “In a short space of time the team has developed a truly differentiated platform and globally relevant offering for the next generation of fashion entrepreneurs and consumers. The organic growth generated in recent years is a testament to the impact they are having and we look forward to working with the team to further accelerate the business.”

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8204425 https://tcrn.ch/31fTo5u via IFTTT

#IFTTT #RSSMix.com Mix ID 8204425

0 notes