This is not an emergency - This is a test of the Drama Broadcast System

[brenna]

I apologize to everyone who has received a PM from tori out of the blue recently. She is upset with me right now. I do not know exactly what was in these messages, but I can guess. If you care to know what is going on, ask me. If you don't, enjoy your day.

Comments

[luludi]

brenna, I'm going to say this last thing and then be done with it. I sent one message, to flurgh, who was also on my access/friends list, to inquire about their opinion on the situation, as a mutual friend. I assume, from this post, that you are under the impression I assaulted your friends list with messages, which is simply not true.

I'm sorry that my post obviously upset you. I attempted to explain, but you had already made your decision and removed me from your list. If you feel it necessary to draw this out further, so be it. Obviously, I can't stop you... but, I hope you realize that taking a private disagreement to multiple sites, in fact, to complete strangers and then posting about it here, assuming everyone is somehow involved and exaggerating the situation further just makes you look like the dramatic one.

Thank you, Woman Who Imploded Her Entire Journal In Fury

[brenna]

I could not know how many of my other friends you sent that to, and I wanted to make it clear that it was your idea to involve them, not mine. That was not "drawing it out further," it was damage control, and it was based on the only information I had. I had not mentioned it to anyone not already directly affected (see below) and did not have the slightest intention of doing so until you did this. As to your seeking solace in mutual friendship, flurgh sent me a confused message asking me if I knew why "dw user Tori" was contacting him out of nowhere, accusing me of harrassment and apparently including no other details.

Quote: "I replied to her saying that I really had no idea what she was talking about. By that time she had purged her journal of everything and unadded everyone. So I have no idea if she even got my message or will take the time to read it or even cares."

Last I heard, admittedly a while ago since we both quickly decided we'd rather talk about food instead, you were still ignoring all the questions he'd asked you about what was even going on. He still has no idea, as far as I know.

I include this as a handy example of your talent for misinformation.

You losing your access to my locked posts, of which I try to make very few anyway, in no way prohibited us from having a conversation. You may be thinking of your removal of access from me, barring me from the One Post To Rule Them All, where, apparently, a great deal more action took place in my absence. I wouldn't know.

You are using my sparing people the details of the situation to your advantage here, to put it very lightly. It was not a private disagreement. Bringing it to the attention of the person (singular) in question, who does not happen to have an account here and thus can be found at one (1) other site, was the entire point.

Re: Thank you, Woman Who Imploded Her Entire Journal In Fury

[luludi]

Well, first off, this response shows how good of friends you and flurgh are, since "he" is a girl.

And, your timeline is a little skewed. I privated all my entries right after I found out you linked my journal on another site. I didn't purge my journal. I moved. My reasons for that (thought spurred by your action) actually have little to do with you personally, or your backwards allegations. Your last comment ended with "Finally, as a professional designer, just a note: if you ever decide to liberate anything of mine from its corporate shackles or whatever the hell you think intellectual property is about, I won't just be shaking my tiny fist in your comment box-- I have the money, the time and the temper to do something about it. Bye now.", which doesn't exactly invite further conversation.

Your 'friend' is aware now of the situation, as of yesterday afternoon. She has seen the post (and comments) in question. Forgive me, the both of you, for having a life outside my computer. I can't always respond to things on the internet immediately. This doesn't mean I'm ignoring anyone. It just means I have other things to do.

I sent a message asking her if she knew you personally, and why you might be reacting so strongly to something that really was nothing. Her response was that she doesn't know you in real life, and that all she knows is what little you choose to post and that the two of you live in the same area. She said (direct quote) "I don't see how saying 'I think X by Ms.Y would make a great tattoo' " is the same thing as stealing, followed by "So many copyrighted things are turned into tattoos. How many Harley Davidson, or Tweetie Bird, or sports team logos.. or famous classic artworks.. etc etc have you seen on a person". Then, in response to my actions, said "I also don't see how going "Holy #*@#*!! The internet is after me!!" and deleting all your reading people, possibly deleting your journal, and moving all your stuff and generally going into self-induced chaos helps things either." She said we both overreacted, based on the situation.

I have no clue what you are referring to when you say "You may be thinking of your removal of access from me, barring me from the One Post To Rule Them All, where, apparently, a great deal more action took place in my absence. I wouldn't know." My comments to you were the last on that entry. I'm not sure what you think happened in your absence, other than my removing your access to my journal because you took a locked post and made it public. As I see from looking at the deviantart site where you were so kind as to post multiple pictures and links of this journal, I see that not everyone agrees with your take on the situation. The point is, it doesn't matter if the post was a banana bread recipe - you don't take someone's content that you know isn't public, screencap it and post it elsewhere. You can certainly disagree with me, even contact the artist (privately) and let them know the situation if you feel so inclined and let them interpret it for themselves (there is such a thing as private messaging on deviantart, as there is here) but you didn't do that - you left a threatening comment for me and left my journal, and then took your assumptions and accusations to another site ~ you say that the conversation wasn't over at that point when clearly, you'd made up your mind already.

I'd say I'm sorry to see you go, but since, looking back, this is one of the few (if only) comments you made in my journal while we were "friends" (and looking at how, even though flurgh recently made a post about going bra shopping, you still think she's a he) you apparently don't care all that much about your readers.

I'll admit that I probably overreacted to your actions, but I don't see how my making my entries private and moving elsewhere is the same thing as your making several dramatic posts (here with this, assuming [again with your assumptions] that I'd contacted everyone to defame you and several deviantart comments). I'd explain to you the thought process behind moving my journal and the reasons behind it, but again, like with the post that started all this, you seem more comfortable with your assumptions than finding out the truth.

[brenna]

Eep, my bad on flurgh. It didn't say in the profile, and scrolling through posts for evidence I saw a photo of a dude biking in a post about "I went biking!" and stopped there before I got to the bra-shopping one. (So sorry, flurgh.) :( I am dead to rights on this one.

However, your evaluation of my relationships is unsubtly manipulative padding of a comment that has, percentage-wise, relatively little to do with the issue.

Now. I base my assumptions about your intentions on this: when I first called you on taking someone else's art, while it was still private, you didn't correct my stated assumption that that's what you were doing. It would have been a perfect time to do so, because I really did accuse you of that in so many words. "Oh, I'm not really using this picture. It's just a starting point/a rough example of what I'd like/etc." But no. You listed a bunch of reasons why it was okay to do so. "It's on the internet so it belongs to everybody now and someone did the same thing to my husband and it's no different from getting any other kind of generic Apple tattoo because the work of an unknown hobbyist is the same as the universally-recognized icon of a major corporation and LOOK MICKEY MOUSE!" It was only after I left word for the artist, who you didn't bother to link to or even name, which is extremely bad form, that you started talking about how clearly you simply meant to use it as inspiration. Now, maybe that's what "I'm going to get this except maybe with a dragonfly instead of a bird" means (and no, no words to the effect of "something like this" appeared anywhere in your post). Clearly some people think so, and as I said at the dA thread, if the original artist is one of those people, that's all that matters. But I think she had the right to know about possible art theft and judge for herself, because art theft sucks.* That's all. I mean, by your own admission, that's all.

I'm just going to repeat that for emphasis. At every turn in this ridiculous saga, you are the one who has tried to make sure that evidence of what actually happened remains hidden, so everyone who wants to know what happened has to rely on your or my description of events, both biased and pre-interpreted and unreliable. When I thought you meant to appropriate the design outright and were counting on nobody finding out, I didn't approach it by just bad-mouthing you, pointing and shouting "SOMEONE NAMED TORI IS TAKING YOUR STUFF, GRAB A PITCHFORK!" If I had only claimed that, that would be me taking my assumptions and starting fires, yes. But I let your words speak for themselves. If I was so unhinged and your intentions were so obviously innocent, why try to have all the evidence removed (although the Photobucket one, supposedly pulled, actually still seems to work for me-- maybe it's my cache)? As for this post of mine, it is low on facts because I started out simply trying to address some odd behavior I had no way of knowing the scope of-- all I knew was that people connected to me were being told I was the aggressor in some ill-defined grudgematch-- without adding another front to the war, and have tried to keep it confined only to the points necessary to counter your portrait of me, in my own journal, as an unstable psychobitch.

*The fact that you refer to my advance warning of asserting my rights to my work, should you infringe on them, as "leaving a threatening comment" suggests to me that you do not fully get this, and I have little patience for that. This stuff is serious, and it's why I simply can't agree with your assertion that it should have remained a secret because that's how you would have preferred it.

[luludi]

I didn't correct you because I was addressing the issue of internet image distribution and deviantart's penchant for unreliability when it comes to who made what, and not your assumption about my intentions. If you read what I wrote again, you'll see that my comment about people taking mine and my husband's graphics on deviantart and posting them as their own in the past coupled with the fact that I did not even get the graphic in question from the artist that you linked to, in addition to the fact that I wasn't even out searching for tattoo graphics I was browsing for Apple themed wallpapers all go towards proving two points... 1) I didn't link to where I found it because I had, literally, a hundred wallpapers (all downloaded from the little 'download' link to the side, which artists CAN block if they don't want people taking them for personal use) on my desktop at the time, and I was just grabbing the ones I liked, one after the other. When I looked at them again while choosing which one to change my background to, I got to thinking what a cute design that was but couldn't remember the artist's name with which to credit the image (or god forbid and actual link). The image, as I found it, was part of a wallpaper, one that is not listed on the artist's site that you linked. There was no intention of not crediting anyone or stealing stuff ~ I didn't claim it as my own. 2) How am I (or you, for that matter) to know, even if I did remember where I got it from, which artist to credit? Do I credit where I found it, or do I credit the artist you linked? I found it while looking under "apple mac wallpaper" as keywords, while you found the same image from a different artist under "apple tattoo" or whatever you said in your last comment in that entry. You said it was the first image that came up, while I looked through (literally) probably 50 pages or more of wallpapers.

If you look at my icons (and, yes, many of them are still there, there is just no default at the moment), you'll see that I do credit people for their work, and if I don't know, I'll say that. I make it a point to grab names and such when I am using images publicly or in a journal, but I don't necessarily do that for wallpapers that may be from Google or deviantart or what-have-you that are for my own personal use, on my own computer. I brought Mickey Mouse and other well-known, highly used images for tattoo art for the same reason flurgh did... to make the point that people use images/logos, etc. for inspiration for tattoo art all the time. Frankly, when I say I'm planning on changing the design, I would think that would spell it out very clearly for you that the piece is an inspiration, an idea, not an exact copy of what I want.

Look, brenna, to be honest, your reaction to this whole scenario is way out of line ~ you mentioned that you are a graphic designer/artist yourself, and maybe you've had a bad experience in the past which makes this a knee-jerk reaction for you, and if that's the case, I get that, but I have to tell you, this was my thought process:

I like Apple.
I think I want another tattoo.
I think I want an Apple-themed tattoo.
*looks up "apple tattoos" on Google - finds many black Apple logos and rainbow Apple logos, some with 'Think Different' across the bottom*
I think I want a black Apple logo tattoo.
*husband gets ink pen, draws black Apple logo in size desired on my person - colors in with black sharpie so I can see how it will look*
*looks good - decision is solidified*
*several hours go by - looks up "apple mac wallpapers" on deviantart because I am tired of my current image on my MacBook*
*finds lots of cool backgrounds, saves them under new names, places in 'Wallpapers' folder*
*looks through wallpapers recently downloaded - finds cool Apple tattoo-like image in one of them - posts to journal that this is a direction I may go instead of plain black Apple logo previously mentioned*
*massive misunderstanding/wank ensues between us while everyone else just says "oh, that's really cute!"*

So, there it is.... my whole evil plot. Satisfied?

I get that this is serious business ~ I'm a published writer and a law student. What you don't seem to get is that this whole thing was blown WAY out of proportion. I don't mind that you disagree, or even that you interpreted my intentions differently... I don't even care that you passed those assumptions on to the alleged 'original artist'. What I don't appreciate, though, is you breaking trust by posting my locked entry elsewhere, publicly, and linking it to my journal, inviting future wank. You didn't say "there she is, GO GET HER!" but that doesn't mean others wouldn't take it that way, just as you took what I said in your own interpretation.