#basically it'd just be one listing with like. a bunch of the art I've done and you could just select which one you wanted a print of

[mayorofcattown]

Just a heads up that my shop is gonna be closing for the year on dec 1st NZST, a week from today (cause I don't wanna deal with holiday shipping lol) so if there's anything you want get in soon!

I still got a bunch of stuff in the clearance listings (I will probably keep the sale going until I run out of clearance stock, but obviously once they sell out they won't be that cheap again)

[solarpunkani]

Solarpunk Aesthetic Week Plans... 2!!!!

It's the official second-ever Solarpunk Aesthetic Week tomorrow, and so I'm gonna share my plans for the event!

Let's be real, the odds of me doing everything on this list are low--I'm easily distracted, the bed is oh so cozy, and The Christmas Weekend means I've got Christmas Things to do.

However, as one of the co-hosts of @solarpunkaestheticweek, I'll try and do what I can, so here's what I'm hoping to get done!

In the perfect ideal world I'll finally turn some old jeans I've been holding onto into a vest that I can turn into a cool battle jacket-vest-thing! I'll wanna get it dyed (probably after I make it a vest though?), but I've got a sewing machine and I just bought some denim needles recently so fingers crossed!

I have an embroidery kit I'd gotten started on, and another one I still haven't opened yet, so maybe I'll try finishing those! I got stuck on how to do french knots, but one of my friends said they're easier than I'm finding them, so I'll probably ask her for advice.

I'm learning how to crochet! I actually just started learning Tuesday the 12th! I'm decently far into a tote bag out of granny squares, and maybe if I'm corageous after that I'll try and make a hooded scarf! Or if I'm feeling super daring, I might even make a hooded cloak!

Maybe I'll learn a recipe! I at least want to bake some cookies, which is a bit basic but it feels solarpunk to me so its on the list.

Writing! I have a solarpunk short story I was working on thats almost done (endings are hard) that I might post when I finish and get it beta read! Otherwise, I also have a solarpunk zombie apocalypse story I've been poking at off and on.

Art! Ideally, I would work on some of the more solarpunky drawing ideas I have--solarpunk train cars, greenhouse-friendly societies, zine on milkweeds of Florida, stuff like that. Unfortunately I have a long list of people I really should be drawing Christmas art for, so we'll see if this actually happens.

I have some collard greens growing in the garden, and I planted carrot and bunching onion seeds on the 6th, so I'm gonna count 'water the garden at least once' as a Solarpunk Aesthetic Week event so I actually remember to do it.

If my family goes out anywhere and I see a bare patch that looks like it'd work well for wildflowers I always carry some wildflower seeds in my purse so uh. We'll see if any guerrilla gardening happens but who knows.

I need to go biking more often so my knees stop being cringe while I'm biking so I'll count that as participating because bikes are pogchamp

[cs-discourse]

here we go

https://cs-discourse.tumblr.com/post/179953845684/uuuuwuu-every1-whos-concerned-abt-biased-judging

ok this attitude has been pissing me off long enough that it's time for one of my Big Ole Posts (tm) about how shitty this is! thanks. 

uuuuwuu every1 whos concerned abt biased judging in comps is just soooow entitled !!!1 i cant bewieve ppl wouldnt want some1 whos literally explicitly stating at this point that they trust their friends more to "demonstrate dedication to the character" they assign to a design to b an influence in judging comps !!!!!11 bc artists Never weigh in on other artist's comps, so obviously thes ppl just want fwee merc designs !!!1!!1 also my last braincell just died pleas h

so here's the og post in question for quick reference

i honestly have no idea why people keep bringing up this idea of bias in judging competitions because, while i do think there is a type of bias that certainly exists, i think a lot of so-called "bias" that people have is ... not whatsoever like what people think it is lol. artists are people and there's always going to be SOME kind of bias no matter what you do, because it's literally fuckin impossible to NOT be biased. by that i mean:

your taste in plots/types of characters/medias influence your judging

quality of writing or art can influence your judging

the person who's applying for the adopt you may have previous judgement about

even if you say you aren't biased, you STILL have preferences and tastes in things that you prefer more than others, which in of itself is a kind of bias

people who know you (friends for example) will naturally know what your taste is. 

a competition is judged based on what form the artist thinks is best, right? 

NEWSFLASH EVERYONE'S IDEA OF "WHAT'S BEST" IS DIFFERENT FROM PERSON TO PERSON ..... "BEST" is literally the most subjective thing there is, and while i agree that there are certain aspects of art and writing that you can use as objective measurements of tangible skill, it's... still subjective. what people think is "best" will vary from person to person because we all have different tastes. so, essentially, this boils down to the idea that the winner of an adopt competition will ALWAYS be the form the artist liked best, because that is what the artist perceives as best. so like. when people appear biased in adopt competitions towards friends or certain circles, it's probably because they're literally friends because they have similar tastes in things, and therefore the form the artist likes best is naturally going to be from someone who shares similar tastes. 

so whenever i hear about """bias""" in competitions i just kind of roll my eyes tbqh because it's usually followed by complaints of "BUT I PUT IN SO MUCH EFFORT" or "I WROTE SO MUCH MORE THAN THE WINNER" uhhhh. if adopt contests were won by effort alone it wouldn't be a contest, it'd be an endurance test lol. literally just "who has the most time to waste writing out 60000k words of absolute meaningless fluff"... because, i hate to break it to you, but ANYONE can write 5000 words of mindless drivel that has literally no substance to it. 

now in caps for emphasis. takes a deep breath

THERE IS NO SKILL NEEDED TO BLOAT YOUR WORD COUNT. 

YOU DO NOT NEED TO KNOW HOW TO WRITE WELL TO WRITE 5000 WORDS.

YOU JUST NEED TO KNOW HOW TO TYPE AND PUT SENTENCES TOGETHER.

quality > quantity, always. like, i'm sorry you put in so many hours of effort but, those people who win with MUCH smaller wordcounts... did they not work to get as good as they did with writing? you put in 5 hours into one tryout. but others, take me for example: i have been writing for over 10 bloody years. i've worked hard to improve my writing, so you can't tell me i "didn't put in as much effort" as you because i did. i put in YEARS of work to get better so doing simple things would take me LESS time now. inb4 IT'S UNFAIR! dude, the literal definition of a contest is for the best to win. it wouldn't be a contest if it wasn't like that lol. it'd just be charity. what you should be doing instead of complaining about it is ASKING FOR CRIT and WORKING TO IMPROVE like a good sport? i get that it's discouraging but you should be prepared to lose when you join a contest. it's valid to be upset about but the moment you say you deserve it more than others JUST because of your effort, then i have a problem. 

and you know, there's gonna be times where i think a comp winner is objectively less skilled than other tryouts. honestly i just kind of shrug that off on account of different taste lol. sometimes that's just how it be, bc of those predetermined biases i mentioned before, and maybe a judge and i are just in completely stages of life so what i call quality might not appeal to the judge. that's also fine. anyway this really got off on a tangent but i'm leaving it in bc i think it needs saying. back to the og post

 > i cant bewieve ppl wouldnt want some1 whos literally explicitly stating at this point that they trust their friends more to "demonstrate dedication to the character" they assign to a design to b an influence in judging comps !!!!!11

wtf didn't i address this in a different post

here let me link it for you

https://cs-discourse.tumblr.com/post/179841459154/post179838988303-the-difference-is-that-you-have

which was replying to this: https://cs-discourse.tumblr.com/post/179838988303/179837734509-idk-anon-i-kinda-agree-with-the

i said it once but i'll say it again: artist entries aren't main adopts lol. people don't work for artist entries. all you fucking do is post on one like "can i have this pls" .. there is... no effort put into that lol. main adopts you WORK for. it's a CONTEST. claiming an artist entry is NOT a contest. if a bunch of little nasty gremlins come running up to me like a hungry horde trying to be the first one to claim my design, i think giving friends first pick is COMPLETELY FINE, BECAUSE WHAT DID ANYONE ELSE DO TO "DESERVE" THAT DESIGN? nothing. you did. nothing. you're literally coming here with this attitude that NOT GIVING THINGS AWAY TO STRANGERS FOR FREE SOMEHOW EQUALS BIAS? i literally do not understand your logic whatsoever. like. i'm trying really fucking hard. at least with main adopts the "payment" is the effort you put in trying to answer the artist's prompt. i know i sound super dumb repeating myself but i don't know how much simpler i can make this concept tbh

and this is EXACTLY why i say ya'll are fucking entitled because merc and any of the kal artists could be making REAL $$$$ selling their own designs and adoptables and art and NOT deal with all the bs ya'll throw at them. they're literally here because the ENJOY MAKING ((( FREE ))) CONTENT for you, and they're not obligated to do this. they can stop whenever they want. if you had to pay per hour for the length of time collectively worked by ANY species artist staff, the lot of you would be fucking broke. i'm actually constantly shocked that species artists work like, 8 hours or more on some of these gorgeous designs just to give them away for free in a contest. 

so, yeah, as someone who hasn't spent my entire life on CS (i've only been here for a year and a half), ya'll seem pretty fucking entitled to me lol. the world outside CS rarely gives out such gorgeous designs in write-to-adopt contests so i'm honestly baffled at the amount of bloody entitlement i see

>bc artists Never weigh in on other artist's comps, so obviously thes ppl just want fwee merc designs !!!1!!1 

this part i don't actually understand what you mean. do you mean they... help judge other comps? or like, enter them? i don't get what you mean by "weigh in" but listen, lol. just because something DOES happen doesn't mean it gives you a good reason to assume the worst. i mean... of course it happens. it's statistically impossible for skewed contests and bias to NOT happen, because there's always going to be cases of it happening. but like, what proof do you have that merc will be biased lol? like, real proof? because your main point i've basically debunked and don't believe in at all. do better than "i cant bewieve ppl wouldnt want some1 whos literally explicitly stating at this point that they trust their friends more to "demonstrate dedication to the character" they assign to a design to b an influence in judging comps !!!!!11" because this doesn't make any sense to me for the reasons i already listed above lmao. if artist entries were supposed to be contests they'd be contests. what the hell makes you important enough to get first dibs on a stranger's work. ARTIST ENTRIES AREN'T EVEN MADE TO BE GIVEN AWAY, THEY'RE MADE AS ARTIST ENTRIES.... LIKE.... JESUS i struggle to understand ya'll

anyway im done here, if you wanna actually talk and debate this hmu on discord at lysander#9229 bc if you actually talk to me instead of spew this hot mess on the blog i might actually listen to you and change my mind and be nice about it instead of being a condescending bitch. 

wait one more thing

>also my last braincell just died pleas h

yea clearly

p.s., why do you ppl keep going to the blog to give critique on merc's designs when on literally every other design merc makes there's this:

https://www.chickensmoothie.com/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3950980

here i even linked it for you. idk why it's so hard for yall to give constructive crit like decent human beings