#i think tumblr would appreciate him

[foxsys-exe]

evil summoned

[whereismyhat5678]

Guys, the new year hasn’t started for me yet, I still got a few hours to go but I’ll mine-as-well make this post since I’ll probably go to bed anyways- 😂

First, I’d like to say

WE GOT A NEW BANNER LET’S GOOOOO‼️‼️‼️‼️

HELL YEAH! -I mean it’s just the characters but- HELL YEAH‼️‼️‼️‼️

SECOND. I want to show you something AMAZING and that something I’d never expect??

321 FOLLOWERS????

YOU GUYS ARE INSANE THANK ALL OF YOU SO MUCH MY GOD‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️

It really makes me think how all of you guys really like and appreciate my art, and the fact that so many people encourage me to keep doing it, it brings me to tears! 🥹

Every one of you are the best thing in my life!! The first time I got Tumblr I started in:

March 30?? That’s insane- 💀

And the fact that I’ve improved SO MUCH is just INCREDIBLE!

You wanna see the FIRST drawings of Peppino??

YEAH THAT’S ME I DID THIS-

And you’re telling me that this was in what- THE START OF MARCH?? (Or February I don’t remember-) But this is just the PINNACLE of how much I’ve changed in terms in art style and experience.

I bring this up because I think Tumblr is the REASON why I improved so much! I experimented with brushes (digitally) and I found my brushes!! I learned how to EXAGGERATE AND ACTUALLY DRAW CARTOONY LIKE I’VE WANTED TO FOR SO LONG!!

(And NEVER took an art class. That’s fucking what- 💀 I need to take one I actually need to at this point-)

Also also also- I’ve learned a lot of things! Anatomy, exaggerative expression, stretchy cartooniness, ALL OF THESE ARE JUST- I can’t believe I’ve learned all this because one day I decided: “Maybe I should ACTUALLY get a social media for my art? 🤔” AND I DID IT AND CHANGED MY LIFE‼️‼️‼️

YOU GUYS CHANGED MY LIFE!-

My followers!- My mutuals/friends- I NEED TO SAY HOW MUCH I APPRECIATE ALL MY MUTUALS, ALL OF YOU 💖💕💖💕💖💕💖💕

Everything about Tumblr has changed me in SUCH a positive way in not only terms of art but with how many people (TALENTED PEOPLE) I’ve made FRIENDS with AND ACTUALLY got to know!!!

I already said it but you guys are absolutely AMAZING and I just CAN’T FATHAM how much this year has just been a BLAST.

My mutuals:

@noodletime @moon9931 @marclef @margarita-the-pizzeria-worker @lucia-the-mii @lovestryke @lord-yiikes @ijusthavefun @linhfoxmoive @kate-bot @nomlioart @boogiestronic80s @zedortoo @jarroyave4637 @atlaslovesedm @alaskacoolkid1 @remaking-machine @average-amount-of-chaos @cherryxsapphic @dingle-dee @eyeballdrawer @tailsdollsnewlife @radaverse @gongustheawsome01 @fluffygiraffe @qwertykeyboard045 @w00den-h3ad @the-little-knight @oddpizza @misdreavusplush

(OKAY- I may have added some people on here that I think ARE REALLY COOL, I may not talk to you much but I’ve seen you guys like my art and I think ya’ll deserve to be on here 🫶💖✨)

AND IF I MISSED ANYONE PLEASE TELL ME I’M SO SORRY BUT JUST KNOW I LOVE ALL OF YOU THE SAME (Platonically) I HOPE YOU GUYS HAVE A WONDERFUL NEW YEAR AND HAVE A GOOD ONE 🎉🎉🎉

GOOD NIGHT TO ALL YOU LOVELY PEOPLE YOU GUYS MEAN THE WOLRD TO ME AND HAVE A GREAT NIGHT 💖💖💖💖

[mr-laveau]

POV: Your hot demon boyfriend was taking too long to text you back so you also texted your other hot demon boyfriends to start shit

[blueskittlesart]

i’m so used to how you draw zelda that whenever i see someone else draw her it’s literally like. skinny person jumpscare.

literally being a fat zelda truther is so hard bc why do people insist on drawing the girl like she's never had a meal in her life. put some meat on her bones please god she is starving

[not-poignant]

Hi Pia

Feel free to ignore if this is unwelcome, but have you ever thought about publishing traditionally to sublimate your income and draw in new readers? I know you've self published two books already and that you didn't feel like they did very well, but maybe the experience would be different if someone else was in charge of marketing and all the other business stuff?

Obviously everyone's experience is different but as an author myself who's published both trad and self, traditional publishing has been a completely different experience and has allowed me to focus more on writing because I'm not the one responsible for advertising/marketing/financing anymore.

There are a ton of literary agents nowadays that want to represent diverse and lgbtqia+ fiction, some of them even in Australia.

Websites like Reedsy, AgentQuery and Jerichowriters have extensive directories to find literary agents.

(This is lengthy folks so I'm putting the other two parts (and my response) under a read more! Also putting it under a read more so the anon can skip my response since it's very 'here's all the reasons I can't do this' and they just might not want to read that, lmao)

(continued -> )

Trad publishing houses have better resources for marketing and helping authors get more attention than any self publishing website could.

Obviously most authors, unless they're really prolific, don't get a huge advance (the average is between $1000 - $5000) but getting your foot in the door or on the traditional publishing "ladder' so to speak can have a huge benefit for your serials. Because it gives you more exposure. Plus it's in the agent's best interest to find a publishing house that accepts stories that contain darker themes and negotiate the best deal for you.

For some reason places like Amazon and the like accept and keep up more "dark" books that are traditionally published than they do with self pub ones. Maybe because they have more respect or leniency for publishing houses? I have no idea. But you could use this to your advantage. I think I remember you mentioning that writing novels felt quite isolating to you? But you already have 2 completed novels (3 if you count the fae one) that you could potentially revisit or rewrite to your liking and get them represented by agents.

You already have a loyal readership and that's very attractive to trad pub houses and agents.

As well as trad publishing, you could also make s simple website that doesn't require much maintenance. It could be just a landing page that says something about you and then has links to your tumblr and patreon where you're more active. That way you increase the chances of getting your serials found by additional readers and also come across looking more "professional". Not that you're not professional now. You are and I admire you greatly, but the unfortunate reality is a lot of people still judge by appearances and some will be more drawn to an author's website than a tumblr page, at least at first. So I think having a simple landing page would open up another door for you to benefit from.

Trad publishing is work but definitely not as much as self publishing, and you can continue on with your serials. Getting an agent can be time consuming but I personally believe the pros outweigh the cons and I also believe that your stories would be a huge treasure to the growing lgbtqia+ market. Seriously there needs to be more!

These are just suggestions and thoughts and like I said before, feel free to ignore. But I know you've mentioned wanting to grow your career in the past and I genuinely believe you can do so with some of these pathways.

~

Okay, my response. Posting this because firstly I think the suggestions could work very well for other authors reading this! And I hope they take the advice to note, and secondly because I haven't talked about this for a hot minute so let's talk about it again.

So the TL;DR is yes I have considered traditional publishing. I have actually been traditionally published in short stories, poetry, and also had my art published on covers and re: interior illustrations. But my Fae Tales works got soundly rejected when I sent them to publishing houses that were doing open calls for that sort of material. I've never heard back from an agent and I never expect to, heh.

~

Now for a bit more detail

I have been traditionally published before (it's how I got my writing out there long before I ever wrote serials), and yes, I have approached publishers with my writing since then. In fact Tradewinds was written for the traditional publishing market, and it got soundly rejected, and then shelved. The reasons it was rejected ran the gamut from 'I don't like that these fae eat humans no one is going to relate to these people' (while the editor then went on to publish vampire books idk) to 'There's too much worldbuilding you can't expect readers to keep up with this' to 'Your stories are too long, no one wants to read characters talking all the time.'

Meanwhile in my online serials I was getting feedback like 'my favourite chapters are the ones where the characters just sit in a room and talk' lol.

The traditional publishing world is also not quite as utopian for most authors as you make it seem. I'm friends with a lot of authors who are traditionally published because that's the world I came from, and unless they're solely in KU and doing generic rapid release formula romances, none of them are making that much money. Certainly not enough to live off. It may have been that you were very fortunate, anon, but I know hundreds more traditionally published authors that left trad pub to make money, and I know about 5 in trad pub personally who are making enough to live off of.

Only one of those is really writing what she truly loves to write, and even then, publishing houses have refused to commit to her entire fantasy series (and she's regularly in 'Top 10/20 Women Fantasy Authors in the World' lists) and forced her to finish the series prematurely. Something I never ever have to worry about in self pub.

The reality is that in trad pub these days, you're still in charge of most of your marketing unless you're one of the big earners for the publishing house. In fact I'd be expected to keep even more of a social media and marketing presence than I do now. I don't do almost any of the things you're supposed to do as an author in marketing to be appealing. I don't have a Facebook author account. I don't have an Instagram author account. I don't maintain or regularly send out newsletters (which automatically puts me in the like 0.05% of authors who make money doing this lmao).

I don't know if you ever have looked that closely into what m/m publishing houses expect from most of their authors, but the newsletter swaps, cover releases, review circuits, interview circuits and more are fucking grueling. We're expected to be responsible for our advertising and our marketing to a fairly massive degree. Some traditionally published in m/m still have to pay for their release blitzes out of pocket. These publishing houses, by and large, do not offer advances. You say most authors don't get large advances. I don't think most authors in this arena get offered advances at all unless they're somehow miraculously acquired by a Big 4.

We're expected to have an already established social media presence because of that (that's why it's so appealing to publishers that we have social media presences already, anon, so we can market, they can save money, and we still see only a minimal cut from the royalties).

And you still have to focus on your finances, because publishing houses like Dreamspinner straight up didn't pay a whole bunch of authors for so long they destroyed careers. They still haven't paid some of their authors. And they're still running a business and people still buy their books.

Trad publishing houses have better resources for marketing and helping authors get more attention than any self publishing website could.

This is true if a) they're a big publishing house and not an indie publisher of which most LGBTQIA+ publishing houses are and b) they're willing to use them on you.

The authors that make the most money get the most resources. If they believe you're going to earn back your advance and move thousands or tens of thousands of units per book, then yes, you will get those resources.

I have been told so many times now - even from friends who run publishing houses, including one who works at HarperCollins - that my work will never be mainstream enough to have broad appeal. They literally told me not to keep trying re: trad pub, because that was my dream for a long time. These folks have given me rock solid advice in the past, it's one of the reasons I'm doing so well now via Patreon + Ream. But they were like (paraphrasing) 'you don't write 60-80k romances and you don't want to and that's not your strength anyway, you're multi-genre which makes you hard to market, you write psychological and literary trauma recovery which is hard to market, you write character studies which are hard to market, publishing houses often don't commit to series anymore if the first two don't move units and if they pulled the plug you'd be contractually obliged to never finish that series until your contract was up.' I could go on, but it was like yeah...actually. Fair.

For some reason places like Amazon and the like accept and keep up more "dark" books that are traditionally published than they do with self pub ones. Maybe because they have more respect or leniency for publishing houses?

They do, but most publishing houses want very formulaic dark romance which is not what I write.

I have a 300k omegaverse slowburn that still hasn't had any penetrative sex in it, anon. Publishing houses don't want that. They don't expect anyone will wait 4 full length novels to get to literally a single penetrative sex scene.

But you already have 2 completed novels (3 if you count the fae one) that you could potentially revisit or rewrite to your liking and get them represented by agents.

If I rewrote them to my liking, trad pub wouldn't want them. They'd be too long! I think agents etc. take one look at me and go 'oh god, no thank you!' I'm not an easy sell, by any means.

Plus I'm very e.e about all of that with the knowledge that they then give me only about 10-15% of the royalties on the sales, vs. self-pub where I get around 70%, or subscription where I around 80% of it. When someone subscribes to me, they don't have to worry about 85-90% of their subscription fee going to a publishing house. I don't have to think about how many thousands and thousands of books I'd have to sell to make the same amount that I do now via subscription.

As well as trad publishing, you could also make s simple website that doesn't require much maintenance.

If it was that simple, I'd be doing it. I don't mean this in a facetious way, I mean it in a: I've made a lot of websites, in fact I run one at the moment not connected to my writing (I've been running it for so long it's now in its 20s and can probably has a driver's license). I find it so tedious that I barely remember to check in on it. But forgetting about it means there's always maintenance to keep up with when I get back to it.

Running websites is simpler than it used to be, but it's still not simple. There's hosting and hosting costs, there's server changes, there's back-end maintenance etc. I'm considering it for down the track, but there's a reason I decided to go the route of Patreon over my own site. There are authors (like Christopher Hopper) who actually do subscription through their own domain, but it's a lot of work.

Even placeholder sites are still work. They need updating, details change, story titles changing etc. Maintaining my Patreon + Ream About pages is enough, they're always both a little out of date, lol.

Not that you're not professional now.

Oh no, I mean from a 'traditional publisher looking at me to see what kind of candidate I am' I'm really not though. Like I said, I don't have the newsletter (100 subscribers who get one newsletter a year is not really a newsletter), I don't have the Facebook/Tiktok/Insta/Twitter/Bluesky/Threads accounts, etc. I write multi-genre across multiple steam levels, and I'm allergic to writing serials shorter than 150k. One of my best performing original serials was an 800k contemporary story with no sex in it but a lot of BDSM. It can't be marketed as clean or sweet, it's not high steam, an entire chapter is 'boy saves snail from rain.' Also he was cruel to animals, so not exactly what I'd call a sympathetic main.

And yet that story did so well for me via Patreon + Ream, because people want the kinds of stories that publishing houses generally don't want and I happen to be writing them.

Trad publishing is work but definitely not as much as self publishing, and you can continue on with your serials. Getting an agent can be time consuming but I personally believe the pros outweigh the cons and I also believe that your stories would be a huge treasure to the growing lgbtqia+ market. Seriously there needs to be more!

Anon I just literally do not believe an agent would want to represent me. I have 0% belief in that. Not from a self-deprecating angle but from a 'I am not a good bet for the trad market' perspective. From a 'I have so many friends who are trad pubbed authors who stare at me like I'm insane for writing serials as long as I do' perspective. From a 'professionals in the industry have told me it's amazing I'm doing so well in serials because there's no way they'd take a risk on what I'm doing' perspective. From a 'just because it's queer and diverse doesn't mean it hits literally any other thing a trad pub is looking for' perspective. I've been doing this for 10 years. There are agents who represent work similar to mine who know what I'm doing and wouldn't touch me with a ten foot pole. They're not missing out on a trick, they know I'm not broad appeal, and they're right.

Also the only way I'd have the energy to manage trad pub is by quitting serials. And honestly, I never found trad pub all that much fun while I was doing it for non-novel stuff. It was fine, and it is nice to have my stuff out there, but it was a ton of admin and a lot of going back and forth between people who really only care about marketing a product, and that's great and what they excel at! But I'm too disabled to turn this job into something crushing just to potentially make more money, I'd rather just quit and go back onto a full Disability Pension. I can't see any way I still get to write the stories I want to write, in the way that I write them, and be remotely appealing to a single reputable trad pub or agent.

Also *gestures to everything in this article*

[apollokyler]

my contribution to russian-blorbo-rumble tournament poll propaganda - it had hyoga vs gena the crocodile!!!🤯 can you feel my pain!!! that round is over so i decided to repost this picture separately as well👉👈 got the original conversation reblogged earlier

hyoga was probably watching gena the crocodile cartoons on tv when he was a kid actually🥺💖

i saw a (🦢 vs 🐊) and made it (🦢🤝🐊)😊💖

("who's the best fictional russian?" tournament!! original poll picture below - hidden under 'keep reading' if it works right🤔)

see? i'm like. hyoga turn around instantly!!!

[lanshappycorner]

I was doing some remote work today and when I finished I went out into the living room and started talking to my baby cousin (age 8) and I mentioned I was helping one of my students a sec ago and he was like "STUDENTS? LIKE...UR...TEACHER ?"

And I was like yeah sure and he just looked at me with these big eyes and in the most shocked voice he was like "what are you....?" does he think teachers are a different breed or something

[phierie]

only ghosts left

[arsenicflame]

hey does anyone wanna bounce bellhands/they all went to pirate school together ideas with me? im trying to figure out the missing pieces of my personal set up and it might be easier with someone else!

[iamfuturepixels]

[icewindandboringhorror]

Baby boy brother birthday photos from last year that I just realized I never uploaded!

[unproduciblesmackdown]

reread the rest thus far of lackadaisy and there's the both v easy & difficult task of gathering a shit ton but only a shit ton of excerpts (like every single page is a highlight i'm not exaggerating)

and every single element is superlative and the way it all only becomes More So....already mentioned the way the like smooth gradient shading made the successful evocation of 3D Shapes more noticeable, along w/the consistent geometries of character design & details in fabric folds; the way Lighting & Coloring only goes on to become more prominent elements only enhances that further. the compositions, backgrounds, pacing, angles....everything is so dynamic & expressive, such as including the expressions which you know i also Love / absorbed

going "hell yes for people to discover this superlative comic" then having to occasionally refresh past site traffic overloaded server errors like "nooo" but actually yes

whilest clapping & cheering for the fun of everyone who's been here a minute. My God the invigorating reward when again i started reading in '07 & the concept of rocky & freckle on a "proper" run had only manifested via fun official bonus art, then a literal decade later as it was actually happening in the comic like screeeeaammm i can feel it coming in the air tonight oh lord etc....i've loved following it, again, if i see another new comic page. i am going to be Enriched

i also really was right on the ball myself this time around like okay okay yep i have picked up on Everything, at least to the degree i can lmao. i love the mysteries. i love how Character Focused it is too ofc and there's no characters i'm uniterested in / dislike. you gotta point to one of them, truly, and i have been a [pointing at freckle] enjoyer these fifteen years but fr i am a connoisseur of everyone, i love that so many characters are a weird mysterious chaos element story driver in their own right. i considered mordecai more intently than ever, love his like ultra mystery (and that we leave off on him doing some detectiving even) and truly fun that like, the source of the more Immediate problems he keeps having in every damn interaction isn't the like [wow mordecai with the just diving into the hatchet murdering] factor so much as it's that he's generally like "i am just standing here" and is not nt in any way that matters and people insist on fucking with him on that front. the peak tragedy of him in a bonus comic getting bullied into having to dance with someone to Be Polite like i'm so sorry i wish you could be that ficus too. anyways intrigued with the marigold &/or mordecai mysteries including that it's like, how coincidental is it that he talks about marigold having a thorn in its side & the savoys' nickname for him is peekon = thorn. there is so much to consider, love that for us truly. and i'm rooting for mordecai & nicodeme's dynamic out here, is another conclusion....very enriched by comparing & contrasting that serafine nicodeme mordecai triumvirate with the rocky ivy freckle one, to be sure. im enriched

i'm also enriched by every footnote that's got like historical facts / research notes / [this is inaccurate for xyz prioritization but here's the disclaimer] explanations. i Love information. and everything else like i loooove this comic it's Soooo Fucking putting my hands to my temples and inhaling at length through my teeth

[idiosyncraticrednebula]

People on social media will get mad as hell and call you problematic if you enjoy a villain for being, well, a villain.

[yaboieif]

the childhood crush to autistic obsession blorbo pipeline goes crazy

the romantic component dissolves after a year or two but the urge to watch them rotate in a microwave keeps skyrocketing

[dennisboobs]

[apocalyptic-byler]

having a crush is just the worst