#and not particularly marketable

[thestuffedalligator]

Curious Archive’s newest video about the cultural history of unicorns draws a connection between the huge market of selling “unicorn horn” in sixteenth century Europe and the modern presence of the unicorn as a commercialized symbol across unicorn stickers and unicorn toys and unicorn breakfast cereals and comes to the conclusion, “From the moment we first captured the unicorn, we’ve been selling it”

And I had to stare at the wall for a bit

[trans-axolotl]

i think one of the things that was most helpful for me in considering my own relationship with drugs prescribed by psychiatrists was meeting and talking to people who used those same drugs for fun. i was able to get a lot more accurate information on what those drugs actually felt like and what parts people liked and why they sought those drugs out. being able to know that people took xyz drug because they liked the way it was a downer, or that xyz drug was great for feeling relaxed and they liked the combination with other drugs they chose, was a lot more accurate and helpful information then anything that had been provided to me by a psychiatrist (pretty much exclusively the disease model of psych drugs, where psychiatrists told me that i was deficient/chemically imbalanced/etc and that this drug was manufactured for specific diagnoses and could target an underlying "disease process." none of which is particularly accurate or helpful information.)

and don't get me wrong, i don't want to take any of the psych drugs that have ever been prescribed to me ever again, i very recently was forcibly instituionalized and forcibly drugged due to my refusal to take meds. but talking about psych drugs like the other drugs i do choose to use was helpful for understanding the actual ways these drugs function and then identifying the multitude of harms within the prescription of psych drugs (forced drugging, coercion, lack of informed consent, misleading explanations of function, lack of explanation of side effects, low threshold for "effectiveness" on the research + development side of psychiatry, the ideology of cure as eradication, irresponsible polypharmacy/refusal to manage withdrawal, denial of prescriptions +labeling patients as drug seeking for wanting stimulants, etc etc etc).

anyway. solidarity between drug users of all sorts forever and always.

[thissying]

Alex: "Okay US Grand Prix, there was a radio message from GP. He said: 'That exceeded track limits. Don't answer me!' in that British-Italian accent of his."

Max: "Sexy accent."

Alex: "Sexy accent."

Max: "Hmm."

[aroaceleovaldez]

i would like Rick to stop making books. i was going to continue that sentence with "for advertising or blatant PR reasons" but yknow what i can also just stop it at in general too tbh.

[letterful]

Jean Madar, chairman and CEO of InterParfums Inc, recently told Bloomberg that fragrance is part of a person’s “core identity”. And while cosmetic companies can face criticism for conflating external products with existential outcomes [...] perfume conveniently sidesteps the problems of the flesh. It’s not trying to change how you look, but how you feel, and, for the span of a spritz at least, it does. In the age of wellness-as-beauty and neurocosmetics, the science of scent is marketing gold.

[...] I wonder if what we’re after here is not a sense of self but a (related) sense of life.

I say “we” because – despite my documented skepticism of beauty brands – I, too, am powerless against a good perfume ad.

Last month, casually depressed and subconsciously seeking comfort and some sort of release, I spent $240 on a scent called Tears by Régime de Fleurs. “What a luxury to weep,” the website read. It described the perfume as “emotion in liquid form, the romance and the sadness”. It promised “nostalgia” too, with notes of lilac to remind me of my grandmother’s front yard and frankincense to call up childhood Sundays spent in incense-blessed church pews. I suppose I wanted Tears to take me back to a time when someone who loved me baked me cookies every week, when I believed in God and goodness, and life stretched ahead of me in an endless expanse of hope and potential.

Of course, it didn’t do that. It smelled fine. I felt something, for a second. But I was still me, and I was still mostly numb.

I thought of that perfume the other day while reading the preface to Henry James’s 1902 novel The Wings of the Dove. James summarized it as the story “of a young person conscious of a great capacity for life” – someone “passionately desiring” to “achieve, however briefly and brokenly, the sense of having lived”.

Something clicked: how to explain Tears if not a brief and broken sense of having cried?

[fisheito]

[comic-sans-chan]

cursed modern human garashir au where ds9 is an old ruined resort that was built by some evil rich motherfuckers years ago and was recently seized back by the native people whose land and economy it had destroyed. it's since been converted into an affordable apartment complex sort of situation (just... with a pool, bar, restaraunts, spa and tennis court built into it lol) and is run by sisko and kira. since it is rundown, odo gets hired back on to keep kids from further vandalizing it and o'brien's team gets hired on from the nonprofit organization sisko works for to fix the place up best he can. dukat is the old overseer of the property who drops by sometimes to remind them he and his hospitality business still exist, and my, what a fine job they’ve done renovating the place! it’s actually nice again. sure would be a shame if someone bought the property out from under them (lmao jk kardasi hospitality and starfleet are friends! no hard feelings. they should collaborate on some future projects, actually).

garak's a sad bitch who just lost his amazing morally dubious nepotism career at obsidian corp. (which absorbed kardasi hospitality) and moved into the complex just for the comfortingly familiar architecture. even tho he's not on the payroll for his (secret) dad's evil exploitative company anymore he's still vital to its continued efficiency and is an absolute sucker who still does unpaid shady work for them from time to time. so no one in the complex likes him, but also he's a very pleasant and fastidious queer man who pays his rent on time and has completely taken over the laundry room, to the benefit of everyone, because all the machines actually work now, it's always tidy, and there's a variety of forever-stocked detergents and soaps available, plus an iron?? there was not an iron before garak moved in. which is how it eventually becomes public knowledge that garak has an online tailoring and fashion design business, and he's actually pretty good at restoring clothes that get fucked by the washing machine or eaten by rats, soooo. yeah. they let him stick around.

meanwhile julian's a hot doctor who works at the local hospital and is absolutely buried in student debt that he refuses to let his moderately-wealthy family help him with because they're awful people who had him on illegal drugs without his knowledge since he was a little kid. they were afraid he had something wrong with him, apparently. he was too far behind in his class or w/e. they couldn't handle having a kid with special needs, so they pumped him full of dangerous experimental stimulants. only reason he found out is because he snuck off somewhere to start transitioning and had some tests done that revealed all the crazy shit in his system. he's insanely lucky he didn't end up in the hospital with seizures or fall into a coma or worse. not to mention his parents still dead-name him left and right over a decade later. it's a whole mess and a huge secret, because he technically has a history with illegal drug abuse, and it's a partially ongoing history because going cold turkey off drugs he's been on since he was six is Not A Good Idea, so??? fuck his life, actually. he lives in the apartment just down the hall from garak's. 

garak hates the country his dad's company expanded into and would like nothing better than to move back home, but it's not really logistically possible. especially since everyone there hates him cuz his (secret) dad's company is a mega-corporation that's completely taken over everything p much and is a complete monopoly nightmare, and he did... kinda... work there for decades. no one would hire him if he went back. it would be an extreme conflict of interest, since everyone wants to stay on tain's good side, including garak. but starfleet is interested in him, so he does some begrudging contract work for them sometimes, but he really has no desire to join them. he just wants to resume his old career and reclaim his assets.

julian's hospital is owned by starfleet, tho. his scholarship into medical school was also from starfleet, in fact--they're the only reason he was able to (sort of) afford becoming a doctor at all. so he's a big fan, even tho they are pretty hardcore anti-drugs in a way that's made him have to forge medical records and risk serious legal charges and prison time. julian comes across as a squeaky clean medical professional and an adorable idiot, but he's intimately familiar with back-alley dealings. which is kind of how he ends up helping garak with his drug addiction, and keeps said addiction off the record.

but basically, how it begins is julian likes to support the local restaurants in the complex and garak finds him there and thinks he's gorgeous, and it proceeds as expected. they fuck nasty and become codependent. ten years later, julian lives in a modest house with garak in his home country and garak irons all his old university hoodies.

[dailypokemoncrochet]

Y'all it is killing me that so many of these advertise "functional website" as a specific selling point. What do you mean that is extra. What do you mean your base websites are not functional. What's the point??

[ilovedthestars]

why are all the queer stories romance (unless they're about the 1 token ace person)

[mercymaker]

bruv comparison is truly the mind killer like damn...

[b-plot-butch]

since the celeb casting isn’t going to stop anytime soon and i may as well personally get something out of it, what do we think of emilee petersmark as eurydice

[maddie-grove]

I can’t find the post now but I just saw a poll about celebrating the ides of March and I cracked up at one of the options being “I don’t celebrate it because I don’t celebrate people’s deaths even if they’re historical.” Because technically that describes Good Friday and many if not most Catholic saints’ days.

[daz4i]

european followers i need you to do me a favor and go to the nearest city's christmas market. a big one. a very colorful one. go there. for me. bc i can't. do it in my stead...

[crossdressingdeath]

Morrigan: I carry only [Mythal's] memories. Not her strength, nor her capacity for strategy.

Well what good are you then, you glorified taxi service. Go get Quiz instead of talking to me. Seriously, unless you go for the redemption ending (where her involvement massively weakens the themes of the game by making it so that Solas totally refuses to listen to Rook or Quiz encouraging him to do the right thing until he gets blandly forgiven by Mythal and only Mythal and "released from her service" like that makes it all okay instead of him having to accept how badly he fucked up and move forward knowing he can never be forgiven by the people he hurt and can only try to do the right thing in the future, not that I'm bitter about fucking Morrigan being forced into the plot at the expense of other characters again or anything) her only involvement in the endgame (everything from Tearstone on, to be clear) is catching a fucking rock. Maybe blasting a couple guys. Which... I mean my Rook is also a mage. He could also deal with a rock, he's good at blasting things. Also Rook has dodged stuff moving equally quickly before. And everyone can kill people. She's there just so that we don't forget Epler thinks she's totally awesome, not because she actually serves a meaningful purpose. Why do I have to talk to her again before I can go up against the gods anyway, she's not going to provide any assistance that couldn't be given just as well by literally anyone else. Hey Epler I know you said she's super important and all but since I don't intend to do the redemption path in the future (because it sucks as previously stated, at most I'll go back to get screenshots but honestly probably not) all I'm seeing is a fantasy Uber.

[heph]

Hey, I remember you mentioning on your IG something about two types of popular artists and one being good at social media and the other being good at art or something like that (I can't really remember lol). But it got me thinking, any tips for how to be good at social media? Cuz I'm certainly not even after posting art for six years lol

Heya!

What I meant by that is that there are traits that allow you to grow on social media, and traits that determine what a highly skilled artist is, and those traits do not always necessarily overlap.

I've seen so many amazing artists that post artwork that blow my head off, and yet they don't have many likes. On the other hand, some artists at the same skill level who draw more popular things will get way more attention.

That is not to say that either is the correct way to create art, but there is definitely a formula to social media that is in play.

There are a lot of posts about how to grow a social media account, particularly on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram art spheres, and imo you really need to examine what you want from your art before jumping into social media mode

The stuff you create to pander to social media might not be art that you want to create at all - I'm lucky, because I am less artist more storyteller, and what I enjoy is telling jokes and silly stories to liven up people's moods :] this, of course, conveniently does well on social media. On a personal note, I have a history of being a recluse and not connecting well with people, and art is my way of trying to communicate my feelings, one way or another.

So of course, if you draw for any reason other than my own, my approach to art and it's relation to social media might be inappropriate for you.

All that being said, if u take a look at those "get big on social media" videos they always cite the same few points... And you can look into that, for sure, but this video sums up how I feel about all that.

I spent like 20 minutes drafting words after the above paragraph, but I really ended up regurgitating sentiments from the video... So really don't listen to me, listen to that video

EDIT:

I just realised I didnt actually answer the question with my anecdotal experience, so here's a list of things I did

1. Posted like 3 doodles a day on social media

I did this for 6 months on a side account on Twitter recently and got the account to 11k followers... And I did this for 3 months on Instagram a few years ago and I think got 3.5k followers. Of course, do not spam maliciously and make sure your art is still of good quality, but for those artworks I posted quickly, I did not colour, and mostly did clean sketches. This also trains you in the matter of line confidence haha. Again, this worked for me because of my set of circumstances (love for the media, want to tell stories, simple art style)

2. Focus on my favourite aspects of media

This helps with respect to burnout - kinda hard to burnout when you love what you're making! For me, it's character interactions and comics. I want to see my blorbos kiss and if I'm not the one drawing it who will?!

3. Interact with people

People eat up work that they can interact with. A choose your own story situation, one of those like/rt to strip a character 😭 those do numbers for a reason.

Additionally, if you post stuff people love, people will respond to it with comments, maybe their own headcanons, adding on to the work... I've gone into long looong Twitter thread conversations with people who added onto my ideas that I threw up onto the screen and I think it's also a nice thing to do to respond to positive comments haha... I'm not very good at this (read: bad at communication)

I think that's the key points... Hope this helps!

[autisticaradiamegido]

day 26

someday if i can figure out how the hell people get these things made i would like to do some little destiny & malice acrylic charms. i think those are so fun. and while i mostly want them for Myself i figure that if i DID figure out the process, i should maybe open up the option to anyone else that might want them, soooo...

informal poll: if i figure out how all that works, would any of y'all be into that, and approximately how many of you?