#i’m seeing a lot of artists leaving twitter for tumblr because their art is doing so well here and i’m like

[vulcannic]

why why whyyyyyy does my art always flop so hard here of all places

[cinnibelle]

I’m going to vent. Sit tight for an artist’s reflection on the acotar fandom!

I was going to use tumblr to strictly post art (at least on my end) and engage with the wonderful ppl here as well. Except what I’ve been seeing as of late is a lot of abuse (across platforms) and it’s very jarring. As an artist, I understand to make the most of your experience in a toxic fandom is to say nothing and do nothing that bothers those a bit **too** passionate about their opinions. I get it, I’m used to being content fodder from other fandoms. So I am not new to this.

But this fandom is *so* toxic that I immediately understood why artists choose to stay neutral or entirely avoid making art for this fandom at all. I have several art friends interested in the books but won’t touch the fandom with a ten foot pole from what they’ve seen. What I’ve personally witnessed the past few months is genuinely disgusting. The only reason I’m here after being FLAMED on twitter is because 1) I began posting BECAUSE people were so kind and encouraging and I don’t want to leave them and the possibility of befriending others 2) I was fully prepared to be dragged for the smallest offense.

I didn’t want to believe people would be downright atrocious to me for Elain, being starborn, holding the sword that reflects her (as I’ve stated when I paralleled quotes) but that’s what they were: awful. And what I got in turn was: why are you victimizing yourself this is what other artists deal with! Ok?? And!? Why is it appropriate AT ALL. Why is it fine for you to do that? I don’t care what anyone ships, why do you feel entitled to comment nastiness under someone’s art. To directly be in their mentions mocking the concept and the way it looks or how you hate the character. It brings me and others joy.. why are you being ruthless? For a fictional character??

It’s too much. And you know, this is my first fandom experience where the shipping is so extreme. I would’ve loved multi shipping as I’ve done it in other fandoms, I really don’t care for what sort of crack ships people make up (though I have my limitations, I think everyone does. “Notp”.) But you know what I DON’T DO as an adult? Ridicule artists for their work. They are providing content FOR FREE. And if they aren’t, they are gifting you with their expertise and talent. You are scaring people away.

I was afraid of joining and just stayed on the sidelines for months just enjoying arts in peace. I only gave in because I showed some friends some of my sketches and they ADORED it. And pleaded that I post. So I did, and I found many others really wanted me to continue posting. So I do. Were it not for the toxicity, I would’ve drawn all types of ships because I’m genuinely someone that does not care about the ship and if it’s canon or endgame or not, if I like the characters and the vibe- cool. Draw it. That’s the beauty of fanart.

But people are acting diabolically UNHINGED over it. And treating artists like they’re players and they’re revoking sponsorships. Fandom should not be a competition. That is exhaustive and tiring. I shouldn’t have to be fearful of the engagements on my posts. I don’t even have 500 followers yet on ANY of my platforms. And still, I am treated like filth. I need people to reflect on their behavior, recognize if they don’t like something ignore it or block it or what have you and be at peace. Stop giving into negativity and using artists as some pawn- they have feelings TOO! And you really turn them off to a character or a ship or a fandom in general with the way you act.

I have my comments off where I can keep them off because I simply don’t want 1) people arguing in my comments and 2) comments that are generally unhelpful or just shaming me for what I post. But twitter I really can’t help what happens. And tumblr too there’s some limits I can take and a filtering system I can take advantage of but even here people lack etiquette. I don’t understand where people get off acting like mean girls over things people made.

This is the most extreme, unhealthy fandom I have ever been in and I’m really not all shocked when I hear an artist quit and doesn’t want to partake. This is not a competition of who has it worse. Stop bullying artists because they don’t make content that pleases you. Just drop it. I can’t believe I am being called TOXIC for defending myself and my art. And I know who these people are, I know exactly the type of content they themselves post and it’s COMEDY to be telling ME I’m toxic for standing up for myself.

Most artists leave or go silent. That’s what you want, right? Or to antagonize them to the point they really lose patience with you. This is me losing patience: a call to being better. Be the change you seek. It’s funny I have people going at me and in their bio it says “ spread kindness not hate” Pardon??

Seriously, I would’ve liked to explore any theory and a variety of arts despite my preferences but the way people act with what I DO put out, I’m just sour. I don’t even want to expand beyond the two characters I really like because I have a headache already with the “you don’t really care about-“ takes that I’ve seen other artists get when they expand what they draw in this fandom.

It shouldn’t offend you that an artist has a preference and wants to share the things that they found intriguing or makes them happy. And if it does, cry about it in private at minimum. Stop dumping your grief onto the artists. That’s all. Maybe then you will see a resurgence of artists that do content for free (and frequently) or a return of artists who left.

[byghostface]

Look I dunno what this Daminika shipping drama is all about. (I followed you because I like your Rayllum art).

but it's not a cool thing to do to share stuff calling Jon Kent/ Damian Wayne ship "pedophilic yaoi". sounds homophobic.

We should only call the actual crime of pedophilia that and not use the word like a petty insult. Also all this rage gave me the impression that Jon/Damian was like a super twisted ship or something but I googled it and they are 17 and 13 y.o. which would be weird irl yes but that's still literally not pedophilia. they are both teens and people draw them looking the same age in fan art anyway.

If you are not in the dc fandom then maybe don't speak on something you think you know.

But it's not a cool thing to do to share stuff calling Jon Kent/ Damian Wayne ship "pedophilic yaoi". sounds homophobic.

Damian and Jon always have 3 years age gap, even before dc age up Jon, they are like 13 and 10, And after age up(Jon is stuck in space had lived through years and is back on earth) they are now 14 and 17. In most of the fan art, you see people who draw them looking the same age pre-age up, because Damian is really short at 13. And people started to ship them when Jon is 10 year old child. You don't date a child when you're a teen, or date a 14 year old teen and being a college student, that is weird.

In the current comic Jon Kent has a boyfriend-Jay Nakamura(Gossamer) whom he met in college and still happily dating.( then there are racist thing ppl would said about Jay on twitter just bc he is a Japanese character and the other shipper use that to attack him too bc they doesn't like Jayjon as a ship )

-[Action Comics v1 1059 (2024)]-Artist: Marguerite Sauvage-

As an asexual, I mostly headcanon Nika and Damian as nonbinary and asexual. And a lot of the ppl who like Daminika see them as trans for trans too.

You said you followed me for my rayllum art. So you don’t know what the characters I’m talking about, have been drawing about in dc fandom. In my previous vent post is referring to the weird age gap ship, and the maturity of different ages and mentalities when characters are being ship together. And that ship's shippers + incest proshippers are being misogyny towards Nika relentlessly. It's not about against mlm ship, or being homophobic like you claimed.

Maybe you are young and see the fanart and can't think clearly what the issue is. That I can understand, because a few years ago(when I was young and dumb!! and didn't/unable to use my brain to think clearly!!!) I used to think the weird age gap was nothing but now I'm looking back and regret the weird ship I used to ship and draw (Toph and Sokka), I don't ship them anymore + Suki x Sokka superior!!

I have deleted some of Toph and Sokka art and the remaining ones have changed titles and tags to platonic sense. I didn't delete them all because they are still part of my (dumb and reckless!!!) art journey and the things that I'm now getting over and will not ever draw as a ship again.

Which would be weird irl yes but that's still literally not pedophilia.

You admit that would be weird irl and yet tired to dismiss me when I express my uncomfortableness and wanting those ppl to leave the characters(Nika & Respawn) I care about alone. If you are the type of proshipper that says fictional doesn't affect reality… then stop talking to me + invalid opinions‼️ (don't affect reality?? Of course it is! You are a person in reality who argues with me about fiction and conception/representation that affect all of us)

Like I said in my vent post, I never want to interact with them and I don't go into their page or cross ship tags and comments on things or anything related to their ships before. And this is the first time I have spoken up and tried to defend Nika here on Tumblr. Because I'm the only one constantly making contents about her and love her as a character and the only person here on Tumblr who wants to talk about/express my love for her through my art for nearly three years.

And I can't speak up when they want to tools Nika and Respawn for their own ships and set them up as toxic made up characters in their head?!? And I should let that kind of blunt lies disguise as "playful! fun even!!" fanon and let it slip and damage Nika and Respawn's character!?!?? And let that MISOGYNY energy towards Nika fly into fanfic further misconception both of their character and personalities?!??? Similar things that had happened to Talia being constantly demonized through racism and misogyny by fanon?!?!?? A reappear theme by shipper/yaoi incest proshipper tools her as a bad Asian mom to make a sad and twisted background for Damian to need to be protected by the characters they ship him with?!??

Not all of the shippers/fic writers do this but still, I'm meant by the misconception fanons that spin out of control… then SOMETIMES THE ACTUAL COMICS WRITES(different ones/weird ones) WOULD MAKE IT CANON AND DAMAGE THE CHARACTERS‼️IT HAS HAPPENED BEFORE‼️‼️

I know the shippers and the fandom will always be there because of the internet. And I can't control it, so I set up boundaries now by speaking up and defend my favorite characters while I still can.

You can comment under this post if you still disagree with me(unless you're a proshipper then stop interacting with me‼️), and don't hide behind anonymity before you understand what I'm talking about and don't twist my words for your own comfort.

(Again, sorry if you are not in the dc fandom and catching strays of my discomfort and anger. But I love Nika too much so I had to speak in my page)

[sammywolfgirl]

Actually no let’s dissect this new layout as someone who has used Twitter for a bit @staff listen up @wip @changes

I used Twitter for about a year because a lot of my mutuals at the time did, and you know what?

I hated the layout.

I didn’t like how I had to keep tabs on my friends because the algorithm would show me shitty stuff I wouldn’t want to see and was so hard to curate a feed

I’m fairly certain I ended up blocking a lot of people because they kept liking pictures of boobs and I didn’t want to see that shit and Twitter never let you turn that off

I ended up blocking people who kept getting recommended because their art made me sick and I didn’t want to see untagged nsfw on my feed

And the side bar sucked, it took me a while to figure out how to post in the first place

And don’t get me started about having a trending tab always right there and how it would set off my anxiety because every day it was just “here’s a new thing to make you want to jump off a cliff!”

Twitter and the way it works is designed to get hate clicks and engage on outrage, is that the method you want to follow?

Especially for a website who’s users are very loudly against that and also like privacy and will literally use outside resources to fix the ‘improvements’ you made because you didn’t think a toggle feature was worth it

Also putting the stuff on the left or right does not draw the eye, why? Because that’s where your hands are. Blocking the features you want to engage with. My eye is drawn up so putting your stuff there works best! It gets attention. Not to the right where my big ass hand is blocking the post button. (This is also why you should put the mobile post bubble back in the bar where it belongs but that’s a topic for another day)

I understand tumblr is in debt hell, but users have stated many times that if you just ask for donations like ao3 they’d be happy to donate

Hell, crab day was thrown around to be just like that.

Listen to your users or they will all leave for the websites you’re poorly emulating.

Tumblr is surviving because it offers an experience NO OTHER WEBSITE DOES

Taking that away just means tumblr is not unique, and users would rather try their luck with a website that’s doing this better.

Like Twitter, or tic tok, or Instagram.

Lean into your uniqueness and just ask for donations like an adult, just a little add that shows up in the add rotation that’s like “like what you see? Why not throw a dollar in the tip jar?” Like frame it like giving money to an artist so they can keep doing what you love, it’ll be charming!

Tumblr will not find success or even break even if you try and appeal to newcomers, every new social media is confusing to newbies, but you know what they do? They learn, and they adapt. And changing everything is going to make you loose legacy users who again, would LOVE TO DONATE MONEY TO KEEP THIS HELLSIGHT STANDING AS IS.

Or do you just not care about the users? The users who have the money you need.

I don’t want to watch tumblr die a slow and painful death like Twitter is.

And you know there’s something oddly poetic about tumblr, the quirky kid, tearing itself apart just to fit in with the popular kids which won’t work out and only lead to hollow friendships that can turn on a dime when you could have found meaningful relationships with the other weirdos who like your quirks and flaws and would have been ride or die for you.

But no we gotta be like Twitter so let’s chop off our arms and legs becsuse that’s what they’re doing

Tkdr listen to your users and open an donations sight so you can keep being tumblr and get money for it okay? Okay. Thanks for coming to my Ted talk

[all-lee24]

do u have any other socials because i love your art a LOT!! but im leaving tumblr and just want to see if i can find artists that i like elsewhere

Yes! Instagram is where I post just art and Twitter is where I post art + yap. I’m most active on Twitter :)

And thank you so much!

[xellandria]

I... have a lot of feelings.

For a long time now, I’ve been considering “dropping everything” and completely reinventing myself.  It’s kind of a cruel thing to do to friends and family so it’s never really gotten very far, but it’s one of those persistent, nagging desires that just hasn’t gone away.  Four or five years ago, I thought about a “partial reinvention” wherein I’d create a pen name and associated identity--real, normal people have those, right?--and use that to get back into writing, which is something I haven’t wanted to do publicly as Xella, because I’ve been Xella on the internet for 24 years now and I don’t necessarily want to have writing that I know won’t be up to a standard I’d like to set associated with myself like that. Plus, having a pen name is a Real Actual Thing that Real Actual People do or have done, so it’s not like it’s weird.

Not that Xella doesn’t fill that same niche in a way (since it’s not my legal name), but you can kinda see where I was going with this.  I spent a lot of time workshopping it and came up with something that I liked, that abbreviated nicely, placed itself well in the theoretical bookshelves of the mind (just so I wouldn’t have to start over again if I ever got good enough for that), that didn’t step on the toes of existing people but still sounded like a real, genuine name that a person could have, and I created an email, twitter, and Ao3 accounts for it, did the set-up to make them all not look like the current wave of tumblr bots, and... nothing.  Just kind of stalled out, realizing that I had no real starting point on writing, and that my lack of ideas was not just limited to visual art.

But it’s been sitting in the back of my brain for the past five years, safely tucked away and keeping me company in the bad times.  If it all goes wrong, this pen name, this other identity, is sitting there waiting to be used, waiting to let me start over and leave all my past mistakes behind. I could begin again, start new, start fresh, not worry about dumb shit that happened in 2003 that hasn’t actually come up since 2007ish and isn’t likely to come up again, not worry about the brand and just be able to do what I want to do.

I’m not really sure why “the brand” keeps coming up for me, but it does.  I’m not a popular artist, despite having gone so hard on trying to become one that I burned myself out on everything.  I’ve never been big and at this point it’s kind of a given that I never will be.  My style is recognizable, but doesn’t have mass appeal, and I wish I was fine with that.  There’s been a lot of uproar in artist circles about AI lately and I absolutely understand where friends and colleagues are coming from when they get upset about it, but AI will never take a job away from me because I don’t have a job to take.  Legality and morality aside, a lot of the “AI vs real artists” examples I see on twitter? I can’t tell which is supposed to be better or which was created vs. generated. I can’t tell which I’m supposed to be siding with. AI can do what I do better than I can do it, and I have spent my entire life getting to the point I’m at. I haven’t even bothered looking at the big “has my art been used to train the AI” lists because I can almost guarantee you that my stuff won’t be there.

There was such a gigantic push in the mid-to-late 2000s and early 2010s that if you were an artist on the internet, you had to sell yourself. You had to take commissions, have a storefront, make money from your hobby, make it more than a hobby. I spent so much effort, worked so hard trying to create things that people would want and it was absolutely the wrong thing for me to do.  It destroyed the thing I enjoyed and turned it from a thing I was successful at to a thing I had failed at.  Nowadays, that push is still there in the background, but the big thing is views, engagement, social media metrics; even if you don’t turn those metrics around into customers, your art has failed if you don’t get The Numbers.

Which is ridiculous!  It’s absolutely ridiculous, but my brain just won’t internalize that message.  That picture of Alex I reblogged at the start of the year had one note when I RBed it, and that one note was my own RB from here to @xellart.  It’s up to 12 now (4 RBs including my own), thanks to Tev RBing it and some of his folks getting eyes on it, but it sat around dusty for a full year.  It was a little more successful when I originally posted it on twitter, with 18 “engagements” (6 RTs including my own), but most of what I post on twitter just goes there to die; outside of Bash stuff (which is usually RTed by myself, the bash twitter, and anybody whose characters happen to be in the pic, and thus typically blows my non-bash stuff out of the water exponentially) I’m usually lucky to see one other person RT a piece I’ve spent hours on.

I tried for years to convince myself that it was because I was posting WIPs, so people got bored of pics before they were even finished, and that if I didn’t share the joy of creating and progress pics with folks, that they’d like the finished product more.  I don’t really know if I ever managed to convince myself that that’s how it would work, but in reality I think it’s a combination of my style, my content, and my presentation.  As I said earlier, I think my style is recognizable (for the most part), but it definitely doesn’t have mass appeal; the colours aren’t vibrant or poppy, the lines aren’t smooth and elegant or chunky and interesting, and my compositions don’t typically wow the brain.  As much as most of my recent work is technically fanart, it’s not the kind of fanart that has mass appeal; World of Warcraft or Dungeons & Dragons player characters typically fall into the same vein as original characters in that there are a few that garner some attention in various corners of the internet, but by and large the subject matter won’t carry engagement and it falls on the technical aspects of a piece to drive its social media standing.  Then there’s presentation, which in this context is just “how shit looks on the social media sites it gets posted to” and which I have repeatedly failed to take into account (or chosen to overlook) when spending hours/days/weeks/months/years on a piece; my Wall of 60s looks god-awful on both Twitter and Tumblr, because neither website handles images with a ratio of  2:1 or more very well.

For a long time now, I haven’t been enjoying art because I’ve been feeling the crush of those three failure points.  Sometimes (albeit VERY rarely lately) I’ll have an idea for a piece, get excited about it, actually create it, be happy with it, and then... post it to social media to crickets.  And those crickets come rushing in and make me feel that not only was posting it a bad idea but that somehow, the joy of creating retroactively didn’t happen and that if social media doesn’t like it (because if they liked it they would RT/RB it or comment on it or something), then I must also be wrong to have originally liked it myself.  Which, again, is ridiculous!  And I know it’s ridiculous even as I’m thinking and feeling it; you can’t take loved away and you can’t change the way you felt in the past just because you’re looking at it from a different perspective in the future.  But it’s a persistent feeling, and it’s been this way for years at this point, and is why all I had to show for 2022 were two commissions (both friends who specifically sought me out for art, which should also tell my brain/heart something! but we’re not gonna get into that rn lol), the beach bash, my Wall of 60s, and a couple refined sketches from the first couple weeks of January when I was trying to work on a new years resolution to draw more, even if things weren’t fully-realized masterpieces, and was using the art jam discord’s characters as practice (before I hit a huge depression spike and stopped completely, whoops).

It’s factually incorrect to say that there’s nothing I can do about my style; obviously a person’s art style is fluid and can change, and you can mimic others to varying degrees of success, and you can definitely improve (or devolve) in areas like composition, but of the three areas my art has been failing in, this is the area I think will be most difficult to do anything about in the short-term. Content and presentation, though? Those are easier.  Go into art projects knowing where you’ll be putting the final results and make sure you have a plan for display. Posting to Tumblr? most people’s dashes don’t display images wider than 500-700 pixels and taller images can (theoretically) thrive. On Twitter, a single image should be wider than it is tall but not significantly so, and it should be saved as a jpg because pngs will convert to jpgs anyway and you can’t control the quality and transparency is a nightmare and so on.  Content is also easier; if you care about metrics (and unfortunately, apparently I do), make fanart. Real fanart, with canon characters, for series that people are currently into.  Now is probably not the time for Slayers or Homestuck (unless you’re really feeling it), but its descendants are out there, ripe for the picking, and there are always the evergreen fandoms like Sailor Moon or Star Trek or the like.

Circling back around: when I was creating all those accounts for my (never-got-off-the-ground) writing project, I didn’t create a tumblr account for it, because that was right when the Tumblr Porn Ban stuff was happening, and everybody was jumping ship.  When the new year rolled over, I spent a lot of time thinking about it again, and decided it was finally time to Do Something With It, even if the Something was not the thing I’d originally intended.  I can talk all day about the Three Areas Where My Art Has Failed but the big fourth area is that I post to @xellart, on Tumblr and Twitter both, with the expectation that People Will See It, and that it will Get The Numbers.  This is obviously patently false, and has never been true (except that one time during the Lik the Bred meme era where Ancillary Justice was super popular and I combined the two), but I constantly set myself up for disappointment on this front, because it’s been 24 years that I’ve been at this, and I spent so much of that time working myself ragged so surely I have enough of a following by now to touch a handful of hearts?  That’s not how it works, but I swear I do it every time.  But, see... this pen name person, this person who is me but is not Xella... they don’t have a following.  They’ve sort of existed on the internet for five years, but also not really.  They’re starting fresh, which is what I’ve always wanted.  There’s no expectation there; any posts they make are literally shouting into the void, which is how I’ve always wanted to treat my personal twitter account anyway (even if it doesn’t actually work out like that most of the time).

So at the start of the year, I finally dusted them off, made them a tumblr, populated it a little bit with some stuff from my dash and my likes so it didn’t look like a bot, and started posting art again.  I haven’t wanted to talk about it because talking about it (here, there, or even in private to select friends) defeats the whole purpose, but I’ve never been great at keeping my mouth shut with my own secrets.  I’m still sitting here hesitating, now that I’m on paragraph eleven of this ridiculous ramble, because if people know, won’t it lose the magic? But given the recognizability of my style and how little I’ve done to try to alter or obscure it, there was always going to be the chance that the dots would connect anyway (even if that chance seems minuscule because there are billions of eyes on the internet but only a handful of them are likely to fall in my orbit, let alone fall there twice) so maybe it’s a moot point, I don’t know.  The point is, they can chuck art into the void and if it’s not “successful,” it doesn’t actually matter because there’s no expectation of success there. There’s not 24 years of building a following or a brand or friendships or anything there; it’s just another anonymous person on tumblr posting things that they like and if other people like it too, so be it.

Anyway it turns out that the whole thing has kind of backfired, because despite having 0 followers and no expectation of anything, the most recent post--which is not even especially good--is Getting The Numbers.  But more than that--SO much more than that--it is Getting The Tags.

I’ve talked a little bit in the past (albeit mostly on twitter, I think) how much tag-commentary means to most artists I know, especially here where we’ve got our own language and system and how much more genuine people tend to be in the tags (because only the OP, whoever they reblogged it from, and that person’s followers are likely to see them).  It’s something I definitely want to do more often myself, but often find myself paralyzed by (which is a rant for another day).  The Tags mean so much more than The Numbers, and I am getting so many warm fuzzies from The Tags on this post, and I am terrified of what that means for the future.  Which, yet again, is an obviously ridiculous emotion to be having about this, because there’s no expectation of anything here, and that ought to include expectations from me, as well.  But can I avoid raising my hopes so high after unexpected success? Will not the next offering automatically fail in relation? How can I avoid seeing things this way? And how in the name of all the gods and everything that’s holy can I ever explain any of this to a therapist in any way that makes sense to them so they can give me actionable advice for once in my misbegotten, miserable life?

(I think I'm also a little taken aback from the sheer volume of response because it confirms my theories about Content; not only was this a piece of art for a popular fandom, it was arguably a piece for a popular ship in a popular fandom.  Well, not even arguably--I absolutely tagged the ship name, because it contained both characters, even though it’s not remotely a romantic piece (to me. evidently this is not a universal experience, though? lmao))

Anyway the more I talk about it the more I get it off my chest but also the more anxious I get about talking about it so I’d better stop there, even though I have Many Other (somewhat-unrelated) Thoughts. They’ll have to wait, I guess.

[myonlypen]

Gosh, I get so nostalgic about the MLP fandom. I miss it. I’m going to go on a bit of a ramble, sorry:

I wasn't all that active in the fandom, having stopped watching the show at around the time season 3 aired, but I do remember I originally made my tumblr account in 2011 to follow MLP ask blogs.

I've described the MLP fandom in the past as "the last hurrah" of the old internet. It was so welcoming and full of creativity and positive energy.

There's so many differences between the fandom experience then and now that I can't think of them all, and I'm not sure how many of them were inevitable. The internet itself has become bigger in terms of population but so much smaller in terms of sites we visit and diversity of content (no more flash games :( ). While there was a "hub" for the MLP fandom found in Equestria Daily (which I followed by RSS rather than on social media) there were plenty of other sites out there. Ponybooru and later derpibooru for images; active places for discussion on ponychan, reddit, 4chan, and a load of small forums too; active communities on twitter and tumblr; people uploading a variety of creations to deviantart and youtube and soundcloud; plenty of independent blogs that posted podcasts and reviews. Heck, dedicated websites specifically designed for pony fanfic were created, separate from FF.net and AO3.

These days pretty much everything would be concentrated on social media giants. Twitter for community and discussion and following the news and artists, reddit for better formatted discussion threads. Think about it: if you want to ask a question about a cool game you just played and you find a largeish subreddit called /r/gamename you're going to ask there. If you don't like the moderation? You're hardly going to be able to found a /r/gamename2 and expect it to become popular. How would you even advertise it? But on the old internet independent forums could and did coexist without one of them sucking all of the oxygen out of the room. Not to mention those forums actually had a community. Reddit isn't the best place for building communities since the size of the website is too big. On twtter you might have a circle of mutuals but there's always the risk that a tweet will leave its intended audience and draw the ire of randos.

Another difference is the structure of internet communities. People used to share art or make videos for fun, to be a part of the community. The community structure was much flatter; except for mods or admins on forums no user was privileged over others and they posted what they wanted. These days, your posts don't matter unless you have loads of followers or subscribers. Artists were an important part of the community, but they were not structurally more important, if that makes sense. If a newbie joined and posted art a lack of "followers" wouldn't cause it to go unnoticed.

On a similar note to the above, everything is much more explicitly about money now. It's really hard to phrase this without making it sound like I don't think artists should be paid, but when there's lots of posts saying "support me on patreon" it just feels kind of... soulless? I want to see people share things due to their passion - which they can and should get money for if they are able! don't get me wrong! But once the financial incentive is there it has an insidious effect on the culture as a whole. People will get into producing the art in the first place because there's money in it, instead of producing it anyway and happening to monetise it. Or you might see artists follow the money, drawing characters who are currently popular. Artists that aren't in it for the money will draw the one character they like over and over and over again. I enjoy the second kind of artist's art more, because there's passion behind it. I sometimes rewatch youtube videos from the late 00's that I remember. There is no "like and subscribe", they aren't padded out to be be 10 minutes and 1 second long so they get more ad revenue. The videos are made because they wanted to make it, and it was just as long as it needed to be. The stuff that was created back then just feels less bullshitty. Meanwhile these days "artists" and "musicians" and "authors" are all bundled together into the sickeningly corporate phrase that is "content creator" because their work is what is valued, rather than them as people. I want my communities to centre around people, not "content".

And because money is involved, you have to make sure advertisers are happy. That's why everywhere is so sanitised now. Fewer places allow NSFW content. Places are quick to ban anything too controversial in case the skittish investors flee. There was just something soooo liberating about browsing tumblr back in the day and see porn in the same tags as the moodboards and discussions. Seeing people actively giving each other shoplifting tips. Sharing links to torrents in the open. Not only that but you could send anonymous asks without being logged in, browse people's "archive" pages without being logged in. Things like this are slowly being removed and the place slowly but surely feels much less free.

There are some causes for the change in the way the internet works that we can definitely pin down.

The internet becoming more widespread and instantly accessible due to smartphones becoming ubiquitous. It it only takes a few seconds to pop out an angry tweet you can do so, but before if you had to wait until you were home and log on to your PC first you might realise before you posted anything that it doesn't matter after all.

Apple not supporting Flash on iOS devices. Okay, Flash wasn't the biggest or most important thing online, but it was one mode of expression that no longer exists (or at least, not unless you only want to reach people like me who still like to seek that stuff out)

Google killing Reader. This happened 10 years ago. I still haven't forgiven them. This is the point where my opinion of Google went from "company that makes cool stuff that I can use :o" to "just another company that doesn't care". RSS readers still exist, but they're not nearly as widely used as they used to be. Another contributor to the decline of RSS was twitter dropping support for it at around the same time so that you could no longer follow a twitter account via RSS. Probably because they (correctly, unfortunately) thought that people would just use twitter to keep up with all the articles and artists they wanted to follow. RSS was a competitor to them.

Laws being passed. Various countries have passed laws that made hosting web content much harder to do. Whether it be copyright related or trying to stop harassment, lots of places stopped allowing user generated content to avoid liability or started being much more restrictive about what they allowed.

Discovery is now driven more by "the algorithm" than by seeking things out or word-of-mouth. Viral used to mean something that was so compelling that the people who saw it decided to pass it on. It spread between people like a virus. Now, something only needs to be promoted by an algorithm enough to be considered viral. In fact, last year I decided to check out if some of the videos I remember watching in the early days of the MLP fandom were still around. They were still there! but they only had like, 6k views. I was shocked at this. Today I wouldn't bother watching a video unless it has over 100k views because I unconsciously judge things by how many views they have on the youtube search page. Compare to 10 years ago when I discovered youtube videos not through youtube itself but from links on other websites. This is a change to the way the internet worked that was so gradual I didn't even notice it happened. And because of that, it's hard to explain to people who didn't experience the internet before what it was like. I've also seen it suggested that this is what caused people to stop curating their internet experience. Now it's something that's curated for you by someone/something else. And if someone came across something they didn't like, they were more likely to want it banned rather than just ignoring and moving on.

Politics. 2016 saw both the US and UK become incredibly polarised, and I wouldn't be surprised if other countries had similar experiences. While this may partially due to other factors rather than a factor in and of itself, it's bled into pretty much all of social media and kind of become unavoidable. "I don't want to talk politics" is seen by some as taking the "other" side in a debate. No! Fandom is my escapism! I want to talk about things and not be reminded of the horrors of reality.

Ramble over. That sure was a stream of consciousness. I just have a lot to say about how the old internet felt and how I preferred it that way. It wasn’t perfect but it was easier to avoid toxicity, I feel. Which is ironic considering a lot of changes to laws/terms of service are made in order to tackle toxic behaviour and yet we’ve been left in a much worse place overall.

the show: an all-ages fictional animated series that preaches inclusivity and freedom of expression, where the main villain is a puritanical witch hunter who fully believes he's in the right and is saving and protecting the innocent

the fandom: routinely witch hunts its own members for enjoying or creating content they personally do not like, fully believing that they are in the right and are saving or protecting the innocent

[eternalglitch]

Hi there! First of all, I’m not kidding when I say lfls is one of the best stories I’ve had the pleasure to read in a looong time and I can’t thank you enough for sharing such a wonderfully written story :D

When I started reading the fic it had about 5k kudos and not many chapters were plagued with comments. Now there’s like more than a hundred comments in the latest chapters with 10k kudos and still growing. How does that feel? Does it get overwhelming? What kept you motivated when the numbers weren’t as high? I’m so curious to know how the growth in popularity has been on your part!

I’m also loving the lfls playlist. Have you heard Karma by AJR? Idk why but I feel like it goes really well with the story.

Hoping you’re having a great time in your day to day and once again thanks for sharing your work!

The numbers and statistics on every single one of my social media accounts don't feel real to me, I will be honest.

In 2017 I had another decently big fic (or so I thought), and I was (positively) overwhelmed by waking up to about 24 new comments the next morning when I posted a chapter and that was about it for that chapter's comment count. Now I get maybe 50 within the hour of posting and about ten new ones every day.

I think the first three months of writing lfls I had no concept of anyone really watching. Chapter two got maybe two comments within the week it was posted, but I was also studying abroad at the time and had plenty of things irl to keep myself busy with over in Singapore.

I never had an issue by the (lack of) numbers in the start, because I thought the fandom was too small in the first place to get numbers. I was just writing this for myself. In a fun reversal, sometimes it's harder to write with the bigger following because of stage fright for me. What if I make the wrong call on a plot twist? What if I leave an embarrassing typo that thousands of people will now see? These weren't issues when it felt like no one was watching. But if I get stuck in that mindset for too long, I simply vanish for a break. Make like Avatar Aang and go hibernate for, say, 6 months away from my fic. I've done it before, long enough that I forgot that there was anything to really be nervous about. That was back when this first started really snowballing in attention though, and I think I've grown a bit more used to it all.

Still, my friends make fun of me because my brain can't fully understand just HOW MANY people follow me. It feels like I have 50 followers, when this is not the reality. As a fanfic writer surrounded by very talented artist friends my entire life, I had grown used to the idea that on social media I would never really get a following and would just cheer my friends on for that. The usual script is that the artists get more attention on Tumblr and Twitter, and the writers get their time to shine on ao3 or fanfic.net, but not elsewhere. And I was totally okay with that! I am always very happy for my friends' success. Visual art gets consumed faster and is quicker to draw attention and that's that. But then suddenly this was not the case AT ALL for me. I made it as one of the exceptions. It's really nice to have this weird power to boost other people on social media and get their work seen and recognized in turn.

Because of this popularity, I'm also exposed to a lot more opinions about my work because usually people only find and talk about the fanfic that meets what they are looking for. Now that lfls has fully escaped containment and is in most Rise fandom areas, people that do not seek out or read angst are trying angst. My condolences to those poor souls, I would say my writing is not actually that dark to people that enjoy these tropes but it sure is quite the shocker (lol) if you're new to the scene. Or maybe I'm just terrible at judging how dark I write, I genuinely think some chapters are breathers and yet have seen jokes online that those are some of the most emotionally heart wrenching ones.

But yeah, getting fanart and comments every single day is SO GOOD for keeping up enthusiasm for a long fic. I dread the final chapter a little because it's been an awesome ride that I don't want to end. Excited to show everyone the rest of the fic too, though! And maybe some people will stick around for my next writing adventure.

I think the real crisis is I'm about to maybe even OVERTAKE in kudos one of the fics I really look up to and have aspired to write in that kind of quality for the past 6 years. Which sounds fake. That is FAKE, I haven't gotten my skills sharp enough to do that yet.

And yes I do know that song!! I can definitely see it for lfls. I found it with a Steven Universe amv a few years back.

Thank you for reading and enjoying my work in turn! :}

[thenerdyindividual]

I know there had been a lot of back and forth about reblogging and my contribution will probably just get buried under other posts, but it’s been on my mind. I feel like there’s a disconnect between how we’re addressing creative endeavors and reblogs, so if my post helps find a middle ground at all then great. There’s a tldr at the end since this got away from me.

Here’s the thing. Whenever anyone makes a post venting their frustration about people not reblogging their art, writing, gifs, etc. it gets reblogged by a bunch of other people who share that frustration. Only because it wasn’t worded with the best mutual understanding in mind, to people who aren’t frustrated it comes across as aggressive and guilt trippy. It UNINTENTIONALLY ends up reading as “if you don’t reblog you are terrible person and directly responsible for the death of the site.” Which isn’t true. Not reblogging something doesn’t make you a bad person, and you shouldn’t feel guilty for not putting every post you come across on your own blog.

This inevitably leads to the people who interpreted it as aggressive and guilt trippy making posts about enjoying the creative process, and numbers not defining the value of art. To people who are frustrated by the drop in enthusiasm as compared to previous time on tumblr, these kinds of posts UNINTENTIONALLY comes across as holier than thou preaching, that ignores that sharing is different from creating. It ends up reading as “you’re all just big babies. Create for yourself and your friends, that’s what true art is. I’m the real artist here” which isn’t true. Whatever emotion or motivation you use to create, your art is true art.

Now, those posts aren’t wrong. If your only enjoyment from your creative hobby comes from the endorphin rush after you share, then there are hobbies better suited for you out there. You should be able to enjoy the process, or at least enjoy the finished product enough to suffer through the process regardless of interaction. Numbers don’t define the value of your art. It has value simply because you put something into the world that wasn’t there before. And that is wonderfully and deeply human!

On the flip side, no one shares something to get it ignored. What the above type of posts seem to miss is that there is plenty of art that isn’t shared to the site, but was still created because the process was enjoyable. I know for a fact that I have tons of writing that will probably never make it to ao3 and tumblr. I created it because the scene or dialogue wouldn’t leave my head, or because I was messing with an aesthetic, or I started something and realized I wasn’t enjoying it so I put it down to write something else. When people post something, it’s because they are proud of it and they want people to see it. They are sure that other people out there will enjoy it or think it’s cool.

The thing is, on tumblr the number of reblogs directly effects how many people will get to enjoy it. There is no algorithm on tumblr and we like that (I’ll touch on why in a bit), the closest thing we have is blazed posts. Liking a post is a way to show that you enjoyed the thing posted, but that doesn’t help it get enjoyed by more people because there is no algorithm. Liking it doesn’t generate the interaction-promotion loop like Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. What it does is leaves a little heart for the poster, and bookmarks the posts in your likes. Reblogging it is the only way that posts spread around the site because it shows up on your followers feed (or dashboard as we call it on tumblr).

This has the unintended side effect of low interaction on tumblr being even more frustrating than low interaction on platforms like Instagram and TikTok. On social media with an algorithm, if your creative project doesn’t do well, you can blame it on the elusive algorithm not promoting it to people properly. On tumblr, it ends up feeling like no one likes your work enough to show it to their followers. It’s like if you baked cookies for the office, and two people came in said “oh your cookies are good” but didn’t like them enough to let the rest of the office know you made cookies.

At this point those of you who find the pressure to reblog to be more annoying than the lack of reblogs are probably thinking, “in this metaphor you should enjoy the process of baking, not just the reaction of your coworkers” and you would be right. If no part of the metaphorical baking of these metaphorical cookies brings you joy, then why are you metaphorically baking them? However, part of the joy of creativity is getting to share the outcome with people. If no one shows enthusiasm for the metaphorical cookies, then you might still metaphorically bake but you probably won’t bring your metaphorical baked goods into the metaphorical office. And that is what creatives on tumblr mean when they say “if you don’t reblog this site will die” or “people won’t post if they don’t get notes”. It’s not that they demand 100 notes before they post their next creative project, it’s that they don’t see the point of going the extra step to post that to tumblr if no one will see it. Which will lead to a decline of tumblr because like it or not tumblr was built on the backs of fan-creators and is still the primary website for fandom stuff.

As suggested, they will create for themselves. And unfortunately, that lack of positive reinforcement may create a lack of enthusiasm on the artist’s side, even if they previously very much enjoyed the craft.

Having your efforts noticed is also a very deeply human need.

Some might be thinking, “reblogs aren’t the only way that blogs can be found. Tags are a thing.” And that certainly helps! Tagging your post properly is more likely to get it noticed by people who don’t follow you than if you don’t. The thing is, people tend not to go into the tag search unless they are really desperate. Tags are a free for all. Any post with that tag shows up there including posts like meta you don’t agree with, art that might squick you, and hot takes about characters that are so frustrating that you have to call a friend and rant about it. When you just want to come on here and unwind at the end of your day or on your lunch break from work, you’re going to want to stick to the safety of your dash where the posts you see are from people you know are far less likely to post something that is going to irritate you.

Which brings me back to my point about the algorithm. It’s not a solution to the frustrations of the people begging for reblogs for the same reasons people tend to avoid the tags. They like getting to curate exactly what is going on on their dash. They like knowing that someone they disagree with isn’t going to wind up on their dash because a post saw an uptick in notes. Besides that, algorithms naturally reinforce what’s popular. So writers who write fluff of the most popular pairing will automatically get promoted, while writers who write rarepairs or less popular tropes will get nowhere. Artists who focus on subjects that aren’t in the aesthetic mainstream won’t get anywhere either, where as artists who depict popular white mlm pairing of the month will have enthusiasm for their work sky rocket.

Weirdly, tumblr is about as fair as you can get when it comes to what gains traction on social media. But that only works as long as we utilize the reblog function.

TL;DR: Not reblogging something doesn’t make you a bad person, and anyone trying to make you feel bad for it is silly. Enjoying your creativity for its own merits is important, but it’s important to delineate between why we post something and why we create something. Creating resolved a fundamental itch of humans to engage with the world around them, posting is sharing that creativity with others and hoping they will like it too. When creatives ask you to reblog their work, it isn’t because they think they deserve a certain amount of notes, or are owed a thank you, it’s because on tumblr unless the work get reblogged it doesn’t spread at all. The reblog cycle is what makes tumblr unique, and we want it that way.

[avarindigenous]

I’m sort of peripheral to silm fandom- I’ve read it enjoyed and I like that people make things about it but I don’t remember enough about the characters to really engage, I just hang out. Also I’m white. When I first found the silm fandom on tumblr one of the things that seemed really exciting about it was the racial diversity in fan works (HEllo Black Galadriel) but I also agree that I’ve noticed a decrease in the diversity of characters in the fanart I’ve seen recently. I wonder if it has anything to do with the new show? I wasn’t in the good omens fandom before the show was made but the impression I’ve gotten is that the characters were much more regularly portrayed an non-white before white actors played them. I wonder if fan artists/writers who were not particularly dedicated to diversity in arda are seeing the predominantly white cast (except for random ocs? What’s up with that?) of a Silmarillion-adjacent show and going oop! guess they were white all along! I don’t know if that’s what’s happening, but I’ve wondered what the effect of the show is going to be on fandom and this might be one of the first things we see. I’m glad to have found your blog and I hope that the trend doesn’t continue.

I think there are a lot of factors at play when it comes to the question of why this has happened, and the frustrating part is that most of it has very little to do with conscious racism.

as I mentioned in other reblog chains of the post you’re referring to, there’s been a downgrade in general fandom activity the past two years or so. the Silmarillion fandom tends to have a “cycle” of three to six years when people are most active - a new blog comes in and starts posting about a particular topic, it attracts attention and other like-minded blogs join in the conversation, the same points get rediscovered and newly discussed and litigated by each group of people, and then eventually people cease actively posting as much, either by leaving the fandom, leaving the site for somewhere else like Twitter, or by simply being less present online. because the conversation can get very toxic and political (from an intracommunity perspective) those of us who do manage to pay attention for years, even by lurking, usually refrain after a while from taking part in discussions and focus on content creation or on appreciating others’ art and fanfiction.

on that note, I don’t think it’s much of a secret that the Tolkien fandom is not a particularly chill or calm fandom space, even excluding questions of bigotry and prejudice. people get very attached to their interpretations of canon (myself included) and many will react very harshly to perceived bad takes or bad-faith engagement, or will take someone disagreeing with them over a characterization detail or a plot point as a personal slight. friendships have been ended, harassment campaigns have been launched, and groups of people have been bullied into lifelong trauma, all over questions of textual analysis. even if there’s no harassment present, a larger blog posting a “controversial” opinion is almost guaranteed to lose followers and receive anon hate or passive-aggressive DMs. you’ll note I’m not giving specific examples of what kinds of opinions trigger this behavior, and that’s because no one is immune to it. the reason I separate this from bigotry is because it truly is about scholarship. it’s the equivalent of giving a controversial talk at an academic conference and having all your friends cease to talk to you because they’ve decided you’re abrasive and rude simply for voicing your own opinions. why this is relevant in a conversation about diversity is that I need to make it clear that in order to be comfortable in this fandom space in the first place, you need to be comfortable with everyone in the world finding fault with your ideas and interpreting them in the most bad-faith way possible even if you’re white and you never talk about racism or diversity or LGBTQ+ issues at all. the people who endure this (which is anyone and everyone who develops some sort of large following on Tumblr and probably Twitter as well) and who decide to stay in the fandom will usually become extremely uninterested in anything but reblogging other people’s work and shitposting, or will else block everyone they never want to see their posts and threat monitor to avoid discourse and backlash.

fanartists, more than fanfic writers and editors and meta writers and analysts and even shitposters, are the backbone of the Tumblr Tolkien fandom. all of the other kinds of fanworks - including songs and fanvids! - are significantly less likely to get serious engagement. what the Silmarillion fandom “looks” like is crafted by the artists, and fandom activity lives and dies by fanart. graphics, fanfic, and other works get more engagement if there is an active fanart scene. the trouble here is that fanartists never stay in the fandom long, usually averaging two or three years. right now, almost all the fanartists regularly posting are drawing white characters, and there aren’t a lot of fanartists period. as a result, nothing is really getting noticed - @arwenindomiel mentioned trouble getting graphics to crack a hundred notes, and other friends of mine who aren’t white and make diverse edits have had trouble for years getting more than twenty or thirty people to like and more than five or six to reblog. even when they include white people, the situation isn’t much better.

as mentioned once more in other posts on the subject, being a POC and not having anyone engage with you is depressing. no asks, no fanfic prompts, no edit prompts, no interest in the creative work we do - even if we never face racism through direct slurs or criticism, the silence is exhausting and isolating. additionally, since several of us had a limited platform only a few years ago that now seems to have dried up entirely, we face the question of why we bother, why we create. this becomes even more frustrating if we love the canon and aren’t constantly angry about Tolkien, and want to reblog and talk about the things we like rather than assuaging white guilt, validating posts made by white allies about how they noticed something problematic (which also comes under assuaging white guilt; no one is helped by self-righteous “look, this thing in the text is bad!” posts because nothing in the text is mysterious or hidden, and fans of color have been aware of the problems for many years), or talking about how the text has problems. I genuinely like the story and the worldbuilding and it is my right to choose not to engage with the racism in ways dictated by an online fandom because I am always engaging with the racism in everything I do, but the posts that get noticed and that start conversations are posts about the problems in the text. this creates a space where fans of color are only allowed to be fans of Tolkien if we always hate him and hate being in these spaces, which is a negativity that takes a serious psychological toll and makes fandom feel like a duty. on top of this, we’re uniquely vulnerable to being singled out for bad takes as mentioned above, which makes wanting to speak out in the first place a daunting proposition. there’s very little room for error, or for opinions that go against the grain, and what little room there is is usually reserved for white fans.

the end result is where we are now - very little fanart, relatively little queer content, and almost everything featuring white faces. I’m unsure if I want to blame all of this on the show, as it’s a consequence of people cycling out and people being less proactive as well as general unexamined bigotry (it’s as if we reserve our vitriol for our fellow fans’ perceived bad takes and not actual structural problems in the community). it’s a frustrating problem that could be solved both by an attempt to be kinder to people we disagree with (and I am including myself, I am making a conscious effort to be as calm and as compassionate and as understanding as possible, but I’m certainly not perfect) and by resolving to champion diversity and diverse voices.

but this is a mess, all told, and I’m not sure how we can solve it.

[withcolebrock]

I Drew That

Corpse Husband x fem!reader

Summary: Corpse finds out that Y/N has a drawing of him as her background

Warnings: swearing :)

Word Count: 1,818

Author’s Note: I’ve spent weeks trying to write this piece :/ I just couldn’t find a way to make it how I wanted it if that makes sense but I tried my best. This idea was very cute because I can totally see this happening lol. Especially with like the whole flirty voice thing Corpse has been doing with like Brentman and like James and stuff haha. I hope you guys enjoy it!!

~~~

Tonight was one of the many nights that she was playing Among Us. It had taken over her life, a flood of success followed her once she had played with Sean and Felix. She had gained over two hundred thousand subscribers on her YouTube channel. It had changed her life for the better, in many ways.

For the last three rounds, it had been strict imposter wins. Felix won two of those. Everyone was shocked when it was him the second time, Felix was getting great at the game. The group then decided to switch lobbies because Felix was throwing a fit about getting imposter too much. It was the usual group of Felix, Sean, Poki, Rae, Sykkuno, Leslie, Toast, Dave, Corpse, and Y/N.

Over the last few months everyone in the group had gotten a lot closer. Especially Corpse and Y/N. After the first time they played together, a lobby Sean had created, they had talked for hours after the first game they played. This had continued almost every time they had played  Most of the time, Corpse would be editing his videos while talking with her. It calmed him as he worked. She would be working on her art or scrolling through Pinterest or Tumblr.

They had even FaceTimed several times, where Corpse revealed his face to her. He made a big deal out of it, saying a whole monologue before he turned the camera to his face. She followed in pursuit being very dramatic as well. Whenever they would talk he would play her his music, waiting to see if she liked it. She loved any song he put out, despite it not being her usual music taste.

One night she was scrolling through Tumblr and found an artist who was drawing Among Us players with their little characters. One particular character made her smile and her heart flutter slightly. It was an amazing drawing of Corpse and his little character sitting on his shoulder. It was an art style she was familiar with, she loved supporting smaller artists. It was the cutest thing she has ever seen. Weirdly, it perfectly described him. She loved it so much, she decided to keep it as her phone Wallpaper.

The round started on Mira, where Y/N was a crewmate again. Throughout the whole night, she still hasn’t gotten imposter. “Dammit,” she groaned at the screen. She stood still at the start of the map, waiting to see if anyone would fake tasks at the start. Everyone ran off, not doing them. She quickly followed.

After a long thirty seconds lights get shut off. She ignores the emergency and continues doing her tasks, she stood by the vending machine when Felix killed her. “It’s fucking Felix again!” she leaned back in her chair groaning. She covered her face with her hands. “He’s gotta stop killing me first,” she shook her head. She tried to hide how annoyed she was.

Her body was called by Poki, she was the only dead one. “Oh my god,” Poki said once the screen popped up.

“Y/N no!” Rae yelled, “You guys, she’s died first the last three rounds,”

“Wait really? Oh Jesus, sorry Y/N,” Sykkuo said, a breathy laugh leaving his lips.

“I’ll protect you next round, Y/N, I promise,” Corpse said. Y/N tried to hide her smile and the heat rushing to her cheeks.

“We’ll avenge you, Y/N!” Sean yelled. Soon after everyone grieved her death they began asking each other where they were. Everyone had a solid alibi making it impossible for them to figure out who did it.

“Guys, guys, Y/N died first the last three rounds right?” Toast started, everyone hummed, “Who was imposter these past few rounds?” he explained. Everyone gasped.

“You really think I would kill her first three rounds in a row?” Felix tried to defend himself as the voting time clock turned red.

“You’ve done it twice already!” Sean yelled, voting Felix. Felix was saved since half of the group skipped. She floated around the map trying to get her tasks done quickly so she could talk to her chat without holding back the rest of the group.

She glanced towards her chat, reading a few questions, she shifted her gaze to the game and thought about the questions. “I’ve been working on a cute little animation for you guys, I might do another art stream with you guys. Only if you guys want it, of course.” she read through a few more questions while answering them, while she waited for the meetings to end.

Once all of her tasks were done, she began to talk about her art and fanart. “Yeah, there’s an artist on Tumblr, they are amazing, they deserve so much more recognition,”  she explained as she showed them her lock screen with the drawing of Corpse; without thinking about her chat being curious as to why it was him. Turning her phone back towards her, her eyes widened as realization dawned on her.

The chat began to flood in with questions, begging Y/N to tell them why she had Corpse’s drawing as her background. She chose to ignore the question and continue talking about her own art and showing fan art. Despite trying to change the subject, she sighed dramatically. “Chat, there’s no reason why Corpse’s character is my background, the artist is just good, stop talking about it,” she giggled as the victory screen popped up on her screen.

“Felix what the fuck!” she unmuted in discord. He began laughing as he began to defend his actions. “No, no it doesn’t matter if I know your liar voice, Felix-” After about five minutes of everyone talking the next round started. She was a crewmate again, “I feel like I’m bugged,” she groaned as she started running around doing her tasks. Corpse’s little black character was following her.

“Looks like I got myself a little body guard,” she smiled as she spoke. They walked passed the medbay room, as Corpse moved his character dramatically. She rolled her eyes as they both walked into the medbay room. She didn’t have medbay, but she sat waiting for Corpse to finish. They continued doing tasks together until a body was called. It was Sean’s.

“Y/N’s cleared I was with her the entire time,” Corpse said confidently into his mic. She said the same about him. Poki was acting a little weird during the call, which made Y/N a little suspicious of her.

~~~

When the lights were shut off Corpse was killed by Poki, and he groaned as his body was killed immediately. Poki called out Y/N right away, saying that she was with Corpse the whole time. Corpse glanced towards his chat, finally able to try and read everything everyone was saying. His eyes lit up as he saw her name flash the screen several times.

One person kept spamming the chat saying, Y/N’s has your Among Us character as her background, he smiled as he read it. He knew exactly what the picture was, “Oh really?” he hummed as he continued reading. Everyone was saying how nervous she got when they kept asking her about it. He pressed his lips together nervously. He decided to drop it for now, but he was curious. He looked back up to the screen and began to listen to what was happening during the meeting.

“...You really think I would spend this whole game marinating Corpse for me to kill him in front of Poki? What about that double kill that happened, there was no way I would’ve done that if I was with him.” Y/N explained, over Poki trying to defend herself.

“I think she’s got it guys,” It was down to Toast, Y/N, Sykkuno, and Poki. Everyone quickly voted for Poki. The Victory screen popped up. “I knew you had it, Y/N,” Corpse said as everyone started shouting into the discord.

After a few minutes of them discussing the round, they decided to switch over to Polius. “Hey, Y/N, can I ask you something?” Corpse asked, the group quickly went quiet.

“Sure,” she giggled.

“My chat keeps saying you have my character as your phone background, is that true?” he asked, teasingly. He smiled widely. The entire group started cheering while teasing Y/N and Corpse.

Her mouth dropped open as she tried to find a way to explain it, “Well, uh,” she cleared her throat, “I do actually, it was great art, what was I supposed to do?” she laughed.

“Oooo, someone has a little crush,” Sean teased, Felix quickly joined. The rest of the group was simply laughing along. Corpse stayed silent while the group was teasing Y/N, and Corpse for that matter.

He pulled up Y/N’s Twitter and began to scroll through her feed to find the perfect drawing. He took the drawing that Y/N did of her own Among Us character. It was a drawing of Y/N holding her little character in her hand. It was his favorite piece of art she has done. Mainly because she drew it while on FaceTime with him. He quickly changed it to his iphone background, he glanced back towards the screen, seeing if the game started. He took a screenshot of it and immediately texted it to Y/N.

“Y/N, look at our messages,” he said simply into his mic. The group slowly stopped talking as they waited for Y/N to open the message.

“Corpse, I’m scared,” she whispered, everyone started laughing.

“Just open the message,” he giggled.

She sighed dramatically while she pulled up the messages with Corpse, seeing the screenshot. Her lips fell into a pout as she saw it. “I drew that,” she mumbled into the mic.

“You did,” he whispered, as he felt heat rise in his cheeks. He loved hearing her voice. “It’s my favorite,” he continued.

“Corpse,” she whined as her eyes began to tear up. She didn’t know why, but her heart felt so full. “You didn’t have to do that,” she mumbled, readjusting herself in her chair. She shifted her gaze towards the contact name, Corpseyyy.

“Of course I did, It was beautiful art,” he muttered while he looked back towards his phone, admiring his new phone background.

“Is this..a possible.. New relationship starting?” Sean whispered dramatically into his mic.

“It sounds like it,” Rae interjected. Corpse rolled his eyes dramatically, but he didn’t oppose the idea; neither did Y/N. Rae quickly started the game, letting the tension ease between everyone. Corpse and Y/N got imposter together.

“Oh my god finally,” Y/N said into the mic as she started faking tasks, “Chat, please stop saying I’m blushing, you aren’t helping,” she giggled as she continued the game. She raised her hand to her cheek, feeling the warmth.

[lwt28brave]

LT2 masterpost

If it was up to me, we would get an autumn or winter EP. Since it’s not up to me at all, here, enjoy this post with everything we know so far of LT2, which is to say, not much at all. Everything here is hypothetical. I’ll be updating every time I see something relevant. A little disclaimer that while this is a masterpost (kinda), it could be read as discourse (duh, it’s also a theory), AND it’s also by me, and you shouldn’t expect me to be serious at this point.

Due to me restraining myself, there’s no reference to any of the times he’s mentioned his guitar skills and him improving but I hope you know I cried every single time.

I’m also linking my old pinned here. It was written before AFHF and around the free merch thing that didn’t lead to much, but I still think I made some good points.

Possible tracks:

Copy of a Copy of a Copy

Change

Faith in the future??

369??

Possible names:

369

Faith in the future

When is the album coming out?

Your guess is as good as mine

Friday 28th of January 2022. Almost two years after Walls. It’s a Friday. It’s a 28th. What else can I say?

Here you can find @want-to-be-loved timelines for every month.

Here you can find @berlinini’s timeline of what Louis has been up to this year (2021).

The rest is under the cut. And here you can find a PDF version where Tumblr can't tell me how many pictures I can add.

2020

He said back on May 2th 2020 he wasn’t writing anything new yet.

(x)(x)(x)

Interestingly enough, he’s said many times after that that the album’s not ready cause he has no new experiences to drawn from. I won’t call him out because he does it himself.

May 4th. He liked a tweet from DMA’s Johnny Took saying they had to go write together again. Louis has been credited as an influence for them and (kind of) participated in their previous record, so I’m assuming he meant for their music and not his, but you never know.

Nothing(literally nothing??? how did we survive) until 11th of July. We all know what happened that day. We all celebrated it. Nonetheless, that’s not what I’m talking about here.

(x) So, by the beginning of July 2020 he was working on concepts and ideas for the new album. That was fifteen months ago. I know perfection takes time but…

Brief summary of important things that happened from then until the next mention of new music:

Louis left Syco!!!! 10 days later he rescheduled the tour for the first time. He followed Matt Vines on Twitter, probably so we could publicly shame him into doing something. Also, the 10thanniversary. He followed more people I wish he hadn’t.

Then more nothing until September. Not even a single tweet. The first merch drop was on the 28th of August but he just RT’ed the tweet. He first mentioned Free my Meal on the 25th of September. Then on October 1st Walls hit #1 on a lot of countries and Louis was incredibly happy and excited about it ^^

And then, that same day, October 1st, 2020, he dropped this bomb:

(x)

He also said it was too soon to be sharing new lyrics with us (x)

And, obviously, this tweet which is actually what made me start this whole post. I would hope you know mate.

(x)

He also told us he was cooking "banger after banger" and that he was incorporating more social themes into his music (x)(x) (I believe any social issue is a political issue but that’s not the point rn).

COPY OF A COPY OF A COPY?!?!

These next paragraphs are brought to you by my mind not remembering things and me not having any links. I’m assuming COACOAC came from those writing sessions that supposedly happened in October. Or in LA but I have no idea if he actually was in LA at any point other than a Daily Mail article putting him there on December which would have been too late, but I do remember that someone said he was in the studio in LA last autumn???? A rumor. Maybe. IDK. Did I mention already all of this is very hypothetical?? Well, this is it. I can’t even remember if this was October or November or what. So, take this with a grain of salt.

I’m also… taking the liberty to assume, if you must, that Copy wasn’t meant to be a Walls reject because it sounds more mature and darker and it has a vastly different tone that Walls songs. I know he’s said that song probably isn’t getting into the album, but I want to have faith (in the future) that I’m getting a studio version. (But also, Louis, if you’re reading this, first of all GET OUT OF MY BLOG second of all, please don’t ever feel pressured again to add a song to the album because we have already heard it before. It’s your art and it should always be under your own terms).

So yeah, I believe that Copy is either one of those four songs (then imagine the other three??!!) or was written around the 1st of October date.

---End of the Intermission---

Then not much important (other than sharing more about Marcus Rashford fight against food poverty and the 2nd merch drop) until he announced the livestream on the 24th of November. (x)

It wasn’t until a few days before the livestream date we even thought again about new music (jk, I know we’re always thinking about new Louis’ music). So, December 9th/10th, 2020. Nine months ago. We got our first taste of new music!

He made sure we knew Copy of a Copy of a Copy isn't a cover! (x) (x)

(x)

Ok, so that’s it for 2020. (I feel like I’m missing something from September 17th because tweet was deleted but maybe he was still talking about cucumbers. We might never know. Unless I understand how Tumblr tags work). Expected, cause Walls was released in 2020. We needed to let it sit for a while.

2021

Another Summary: Louis third tweet of the year was telling the UK government off. So was the fifth. What a good beginning. On the 26th of January, he said he prefers pancakes over waffles. I hope he meant pancakes other than his own. More importantly, he tweeted the infamous “you lot read into things too much”. Don’t get me started, Tomlinson. Don’t. Then the 31st came around and Walls was one. He tweeted this. How wise. And Project Defenceless happened!!

15th of February!! Who cares about Valentine Day when the next day we got this? ♥

(x)

(x)

So…AN EP?? AN EP?? PLEASE RELEASE AN EP.

“I’m sure I will have something out this year but unlikely that will be the album”. Unlikely but not impossible. Also. A single would be good. This is the second time he mentions releasing something in 2021 and he sounds surer about it than the first time around.

He also said that he isn’t sure we will get a studio version of Copy. And that the best bridges from Walls to LT2 are Walls, OTB, KMM and Copy. Can’t wait!

Then we jump to March 6th when he announced he was going to create his own management company. “Sometimes action is needed first to encourage the motivation and belief”. As we can tell he was already manifesting some stuff which will lead us to the numerology stuff/Tesla… kidding. Or not. We might never know.

On the 22nd of March he answered some questions:

He told us music was still his main focus ♥ mwha. (x) I included this tweet to guilt-trip him into giving us music in case he’s reading this even after I told him to leave. ILY.

(x) I’d love to get a visual EP this autumn. Just saying. It sounds like a lovely concept.

(x)

…next (I will get into it, I promise. I’m just mad).

On the 25th he left for Mexico until April 10th. You could assume it was just for the documentary where we got ten seconds of footage or admit the obvious: LT2 its a Mexican baby!!

On the 26th (so, not so far apart from that first 369) we got the first Faith in the Future mention: (x)

Back then we were innocent people who had no idea what was coming upon us. We still have no idea because what the fuck does he mean with these. Please explain. I have one braincell and I don’t use it enough for this. I’m linking some theories.

On the 30th of March he confirmed he was already working on the documentary. So AFHF was already on the works. Will it take this long for us to get the Veeps numbers? We also got this tweet: "Got a decent chorus idea down" (x).

Same person that got the “something out this year” exclusive. If you know something share with the class. Also. Is this Change? I feel like this could be Change but I also assume he wrote Change after hanging out with his friends or being in Doncaster. But who knows.

(x) And the second mention to 369.

(x) 15th of April. The second "Faith in the future".

On the 19th of April he announced that he had something BIG for us later on the year which turned out to be the Away From Home Festival ♥♥ (x) I love him so much.

Then on the 28th he announced the 369 merch drop (which it’s probably the Walls drop? Except that the TOU and KMM ones were “drop 1 and drop 2” and this was drop 369 which, again, makes no sense) but we still don’t know what 369 means.

Into May’ 21 we go.

He rescheduled tour again. And dropped another bomb (x).

He announced he has signed with BMG as an independent artist by RTing this tweet on May 10th. The article also says that he’s already working on writing and recording LT2. The timing… we don’t know. What this deal involves… we don’t know either. Bear with me here because I have a lot to say about this.

I think the deal is only a distribution one, but that BMG are interested in Louis and what he (us) could bring to the table. They were either present at the festival or watching it, but officially they had no involvement at all with it (everything is credited either to Louis own company, 78 Productions, or Charlie Lightening’s company). That’s the case for both giveaways too; the vinyl one and the tickets for the festival.

I think it would be an unbelievably bad move not to test the waters with BMG now or soon-ish. At least a single, to see how it performs. Due to the circumstances, it’s obvious there’re certain limitations on place but I want to see how they push it, whether the radio play exist this time around and if the song is playlisted and promoted and all that… I would also love to know, since it says he signed with BMG UK, but it also states it’s a global deal, how things are going to go on the US and other countries.

Yes, yes. I know those are all questions and no answers. But I know the same as you, sadly. If any of you know more than you’re letting on… again, share with the class.

Where was I? Yes, on the 25th of May Louis had a great day writing (x). Since the first time he had mentioned he was officially writing to this date there’s almost eight months. And I believe he was writing before October’ 20.

He followed Robert Harvey that day and, on the 28th of May (why is it always the 28th???) he was spotted at the studio for the first time.

June was an interesting month for the fandom ♥. Lots of LHL content which I will love and cherish for the rest of times. On June 4th, June 9th, and June 10th he was spotted at the studio, but I believe he was there more days.

(x)

This was posted on June 6th and captioned Studio. Charlie also shared it with “Mega tunes being put down, can’t wait for this @louist91 #louistomlinson #LT2” as the caption. This gives me 2019 (Elton-Joint) vibes. I like it. Feels like we’re getting closer to something.

He added the Milano date on the 9th too which I’m mentioning because I’m going alone. Anyone wanna go with me please? I’m nice and I never eat anything before a concert so you can have my food. On other news. It didn’t come home.

During July he was at the studio at least three days too. Probably more. Feels like more with all the fan pictures we got. Or was that June? Anyway, July 1st and 9th we got some videos from Robert Harvey and wearesuperhi, which is who Louis has been working with the most, that we know of. I don’t know for sure they’re from that day. And on July 5th we got an article and lots of pictures of Louis looking really good outside the studio.

On the 12th of July the first fans started getting the free, 369 bucket hat and print. We still don’t know what the purpose was other than to thanks fans. Maybe that was it. I want answers and I still think it relates to a future project (see theories above), but it could also just be a bridge with the Walls breaking.

He didn’t tweet about anything interesting for a while, mostly because he lost his phone (he either throwed it in the air or smashed it who knows). Then on the 29th of July he announced the festival!

I’m glossing over it because there’s already been a lot of talk about it (rightfully) and while it was a wonderful thing, it doesn’t have much to do with LT2.

Let’s talk Change!

On August 3rd he tweeted this about the setlist.

(x)

And this (x) on the 28th! I can’t stand him.

We didn’t get it, obviously. Because who was going to get that. But we read too much into things. Alright.

On the 16thof August Dave Gibson shared this post tagged #LT2 with the eyes emojis 👀👀👀. I believe this has to do both with Change but also with whatever else came out of that Mexico trip.

(x) Last relevant tweet related to LT2 is this one.

So, on the 30th of August we got Change and we cried, and we know that Change is going in the new album. He said it. With those exact words. He also said he was “getting a feeling for it”. This has to meant he already has a general idea of the vibe of the new album and what’s going in it!!!!!! (Right? RIGHT?).

Anyway, let’s go back a few weeks because some other things happened on August. He was at the studio a few more times. Or it was suggested that he was there. On the 17th and the 18th. (Why was it so time-pressing to be at the studio instead of rehearsing for the festival? There was no studio at all on the documentary. Which makes sense, but again, then why?).

On the day of the festival we got another mention of Faith in The Future that made me feel part of a cult ngl. The words were flashing on the screen for less than a second. Okay.

And then he tweeted those words again after watching the livestream/documentary on the 4th of September (x). This is what makes me suspect it's either the name of the album or of the single.

On the same day, we got some interesting quotes about LT2 on the documentary.

“Soon I’ll have to think about me second album, which in my head I’ll get the tour out of the way and then I’ll address that. So, I hadn’t really given it much thought, to be honest”.

“When every day is the same is hard to feel creative and it’s hard to have any kind of proper inspiration”.

“As season started to come back, I started writing again and it was great and some of these songs turned out alright”.

And I think this is it. I might be overlooking some important details but that’s what we know and what we don’t know.

So. Conclusions. That’s what you missed on Glee. I do believe the album is, if not mostly done, partially there. And yes, this post is pointless and never-ending but it’s all in here if you need to tell Louis “Hey, you said this, mate”.

[fiblertsos]

About IZ’s fandom policies, and why they are like this

Ok, since I’ve seen people taking screenshots of my tweets on this subject, I thought it’d be better for me to just make a Tumblr post.

I’m sorry for not putting this under a readmore, but I want people who visit the tag to read it all.

tl;dr: No, IZ isn’t LGBTQIA+phobic, nor do they hate your hcs and AUs. It’s just literally how JP fandom works.

-

JP fandom etiquette functions as thus: the main tag is ONLY for content that complies with canon. This is done so anyone who searches for it has accurate information and the right “image” of the fandom they’re looking at.

“Image”, in this context, is not “oh I want new people to think this series is good and not icky like the icky fanart those fans make”. The “image” is, quite literally, a reflection what you see in official media. JP authors, while ok with headcanons, want people who get into the main tag to get what their series is about from the getgo, without confusion.

This is why shipping, “hard” headcanon content and AUs go into separate tags on Twitter: # whnoc (WH non-official content) and # whnos (WH non-official shipping)

What got IZ splitting hairs was not the headcanons themselves, but people using official art and the main tag to claim characters have canon sexualities when they do not. 

In JP fandom, the notion of “fantasy” is prevalent: fill in the gaps left by canon, and project anything you want in there. Characters having ambiguous sexualities and identities is something authors do on purpose, in order for a fan’s “fantasy” to take control in fandom.

What we see when someone edits official art to include a sexuality/identity flag and going “X is gay now! It’s canon!” is a fan acting on “fantasy”; semi-ironically declaring a character’s sexuality to express their love for the idea.

What a person engaged in JP fandom sees when someone does that is someone willingly breaking the ambiguity the creator put there on purpose just to selfishly declare their headcanon as truth, denying everything else. The main tags are for canon information, so if something like this is there, it’s seen as a declaration of canon truth.

Same with AUs! What a JP person thinks when they see an unspecified AU in the main tag, they go “oh that must happen in canon at some point”. It causes confusion due to the different views on tag etiquette, and that’s something IZ wants to avoid. 

(JP fandom has certain keywords to help them identify AUs, but we don’t have that system.)

About art edits, well. As an artist myself, not editing someone’s art should be pretty damn obvious. Not only do edits in the canon tag cause confusion, but it’s also the defacing of someone else’s art! 

About that, IZ has said cropping and resizing their art for video thumbnails, headers and such is ok, along with very light edits (like brightness or saturation, nothing that distorts the characters at all) that are positive towards the characters.

(Also, I know they don’t hate AUs and hcs because they’ve liked a bunch of them on Twitter, including when I made Wilardo and Ashe in FFXIV. If they’re fine with my ugly ass FFXIV models they’re fine with anything.)

The rumors of IZ hating LGBT fancontent were born from an earlier declaration of theirs, where they said “any LGBT content is not official nor intentional”. People took that as meaning IZ was denouncing shipping and sexuality headcanons as bad, but it was just them trying to reiterate the point about authors leaving sexualities vague. If I recall correctly, this was shortly after the whole siri/claire debacle, so people already wanted to pick a fight with them. A lot of the people who spread this rumor had blocked both Aster and myself, the two people who translate IZ’s tweets into English: so they had no source of translation except machine translators, which predictably enough did not do their job very well.

In summation: This is all a misunderstanding, JP fandom etiquette is literally just like that, and IZ just wants canon compliance in the main Twitter tag. You’re free to post hcs and AUs in another tag, and IZ even encourages it.

Edits are banned though.

[petite-madame]

Hi I've seen your art on tiktok I'm not sure what your rules for this stuff is but I'd assume you don't want your art reposted at all. The account I saw it on is @ itzzz.marvel it's in the first few videos and I think I saw another but I don't remember the name I'm sorry. If I find it I will tell you. Your art is beautiful and I can imagine how much hard work went into it ❤ 💙 💜

Hi anon ^^

Thank you so much for your message and for taking the time to let me know, it's very kind of you 💜

I'm going to be honest, I hate edits and I don't want my art to be used for edits but on the other hand...what do you want me to do (because there's not much I can do)? 😅 😭 I'm not on TikTok, I refuse to open an account there (Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr is enough) and when you don't have an account, you can't read the comments (just watch the vid on your browser) or even leave a comment.

What drives me mad though is that people don't give me credit most of the time (I’m speaking in general, not itzzz.marvel who apparently gave me credit). I spent two months working on The Order of The Avengers (Part 1 & Part 2), one month on my baseball cards (Part 1 & Part 2) so the least that these people could do is giving me credit. It's basic politeness. But hey, apparently writing somewhere "Art by petite-madame on Tumblr" or "Art by petite_madame on Instagram" seems to be too much to ask and is going to cause eczema to Tiktoker's delicate fingers, which proves that they don't care about the art, they don't care about the artist, they just care about the views and the clout as apparently, the videos featuring my art are getting a lot of views and are generating tons of comments. I mean, I'm happy that people seems to enjoy the drawings but giving the artist some love/credit shouldn't be optional.

But I shouldn't be surprised: TikTok is "repost central", nobody gives a flying fuck about credit and when the reposters are called out, they block you (that's what happened to people who contacted me and asked politely to reposters to give me credit. Once again: too much to ask)

I'm sorry if I sound bitter but I'm fed up. I wasn't born yesterday, I know you can't avoid reposting all over the place on the Internet but people not understanding WHY they should credit artists in the year of the lord 2021 is getting old.

Anyway, it's ok, I see TikTok as some kind of parallel universe in the multiverse, I'm trying to pretend it doesn't exist.

Thanks again for your message and your kindness. Have a great weekend.

[thechekhov]

Hi Chekhov! Really enjoying your white diamond au! I had a quick art question: How do you start comissions? I've been improving my drawing skills and thinking about drawing for others after having fun in artfight, but I don't know where to start? How much to charge, how to get paid, etc. Do you have any tips? Hope you're doing well! :)

Alright, since a few people have asked, I’ve decided to put together a few things about how to get started on commissions - what you need, what you should make, and how to keep things organized. 

This will get a little long, so I’ll divide it into 4 main sections:

1) Draw Art - Getting started

2) Get Commissioned - Making a commission sheet, Advertising

3) ??? - Communicating, Setting Limits, Running the Business

4) Profit - Pricing Yourself and Getting Paid

* Disclaimer: I’m an artist, so this How-To will be illustration-focused. I’m sure many of these tips can apply to ANY types of commissions, but I will be focusing on the type I know best. If you are proficient in other types of commissions for other types of art - music commissions, photography, etc - feel free to chime in and leave a comment or make your own tutorial!

1) Draw Art

I think this is probably the most obvious part, but it needs to be said:

Before you start making art for other people, you must first be comfortable making art in general.

I’m not saying your art has to be Disney-quality, or industry-level! Not at all. 

BUT! You must be comfortable creating what you sell. If you try to sell something you have little confidence in, you will stress yourself out and possibly end up losing time AND money.

Don’t shoot for the moon if you haven’t landed on it even once. Sell what you know you’re good at. Your commissions don’t HAVE to include full-body illustrations if you don’t know how to draw feet/solid stances. Limit yourself to what you can do.

Things you need to should probably have before starting commissions:

1. Access to art materials or a fully downloaded art program

DO NOT - Use a free tutorial version that will expire in a month and leave you without a way to draw! If you are having trouble finding a program, try free ones like MediBang Paint Pro. 

2. Free time to complete the amount of commissions you want to take.

DO NOT - Take on or offer commissions if you KNOW you’re going to be overwhelmed with school or personal life for the next 2+ months. Pace yourself, otherwise you’ll burn out, get stressed, and get discouraged.

3. A reliable way to communicate with your customers like a commissions-only email 

DO NOT - Use your friend/family/college email. It’s hard to keep track of things as it is, and creating new emails is easy and free. And keep it professional if you can! Not many people will reach out to dong-wiggles20434 to ask for a design. Ideally, your email should be close to your brand - however you want to brand yourself. Usernames are fine!)

DO NOT - Use Instagram/Twitter/Tumblr to collect commission info unless you are ready to do the organizing yourself. Some people make it work, but in my experience, if you use these SNS sites to communicate with friends and network... you’re going to be losing commission inquiries right and left and accidentally ignoring people. Email is much easier to organize and sort into folders.

4. A portfolio or at least 2-3 pieces of each type of art you’re planning to sell. 

DO NOT - Advertise commissions without having any examples of the art you plan to sell. People will find it difficult to trust you if you can’t even give them a vague idea of what sort of drawing they’ll be getting. 

Disclaimer: These are not hard ‘do not’s. If you have had a different experience, I respect that. I’m simplifying for the sake of streamlining this advice. 

.

2) Get Commissioned

So - you have your art, you have your art program, and you’ve got all the time in the world. That means.... that’s right! It’s time to let the world know you’re taking commissions.

One of the most common ways artists signal to their audience that they can do commissions is by creating a commissions sheet. There are MANY ways to make this - and they range from simple and doodly ones to VERY complex designs. For example, here’s mine! 

There are many ways to organize a commission sheet. At its core, a commission sheet should display the types of art you WANT to be commissioned to make. Let’s go over a few ways they can be done!

#1.... Body Portion Dividers!

This sheet is most common with those who want to capitalize on drawing people and characters. If you want to draw lots of characters, this is a great way to offer several tiers of pricing based on how much of their character your customers want to see. 

#2... Complexity Scale

If you’re open to drawing many things but want to base your pricing off of how complex something is, you can split your tiers into done-ness. This type of commission is popular with those that draw characters AND animals, furries, etc.

#3....  Style and Type

If you’re more on the design side of things, or if you have various niche art styles that you can’t quite lump together, display a variety of your skills alongside each other! It helps if all the ones you have can be organized under a common customer - like those looking to advance their own business and get logos, websites, or mascots made for them!

.

3) ???

You got your first commission... what happens now???

Well, ideally you have the time, tools and motivation to make things happen! Now all you have to do is... sit down and... draw.......

I’m going to say something that may be a little controversial: 

Commissions aren’t fun. 

No, no, hear me out: I have fun doing commissions! I genuinely enjoy drawing characters and coming up with designs. But even with all that said, commissions are, first and foremost: WORK

I’m not saying this to discourage you, I’m saying this to keep things realistic. When I first began commissions, I thought it would be just like any other type of drawing. I would sit down, imagine a thing, draw it... it would be fun! 

But then I realized that I couldn’t just draw what I wanted - another person had an idea in mind and had asked me to do it. I stressed over getting the design correct from descriptions. I stressed over not having the right reference for the pose the commissioner wanted. I stressed over not being able to draw the leg right in the way I had promised I would do. I stressed about billing. I stressed about digital money transfers. It was difficult, and time-consuming, and I did not enjoy it. At all. 

And a part of that is definitely on the commissioner - we, as artists, NEED to demand proper references or descriptions. We, as artists, NEED to limit the amount of changes we’re going to make at the flick of a finger. We NEED to demand clear instructions and set boundaries. That’s also super important. 

But also - don’t be discouraged if you find yourself exhausted drawing your first commission. MANY artists go through this. Adjust your rules, fix up your limits, practice putting your foot down on finicky commissioners who expect you to read their mind! It does get easier, but you have to communicate and put in the effort and act as your own manager AND your own customer service AND your own accountant. That’s what you’re looking at. 

Good limits and boundaries to set: 

Limit the amount of changes a person can ask to make. “I want blue hair.” Next email: “No wait, yeah, make it red.” Next email: “Actually I changed my mind, can I get the blue but like, lighter?” Next email: “No, not that light.” ... At some point, we have to stop. I personally allow 2-3 changes on the final stages of a commission before I start refusing or start asking for extra money.

Demand clear instructions and/or references. If something isn’t described, you have to take artistic liberty and design it, but that’s difficult! And if the customer is not happy with it but can’t tell you more? That’s not your problem - the burden of reference is on THEM. You cannot read their mind, and that’s not your fault.

Get at least half the payment up front! This is a good balance between the ‘pay before art’ and the ‘pay after art’ conundrum that will limit the amount of woes between artist and customer. (I’ll touch upon this a little more in the Profit section.)

Organization:

Where possible, create good habits! Tag your emails and organize your folders. I have a tag on my emails for active and finished commissions. I also keep my emails on Unread until I have time to sit down and properly look at/reply to them.

My Commissions in the folder are also organized chronologically and I mark down which ones are paid and which ones are not.

(I understand not everyone can do this, but if you want to give it a try, it does make things easier in the long run. Again, this advice is just what I have found personally helps.)

One last thing - I do not want to shame ANYONE for taking their time with commissions! Commissions are complex, and they take time and work. You can draw in 8 hours, but some things take research, materials, etc. Some illustrations realistically take up to half a year, or, depending on what’s involved, several years!!

THAT BEING SAID - it’s good manners to be upfront with your customers about how long you expect the commission to take. If you think you’re busy, just say that! Explain that you have a lot going on, and you will probably take (insert time period here).

And if your commissioners are worried, work out a system to keep them updated! I send my commissioners updates when I finish the lineart/flat colors/etc and I try to be clear about how long everything will take. I try to estimate with a +3-5 days buffer to give myself extra time... and recently I’ve been using it. Always say a bigger number than you think you’ll need. 

If someone wants a rushed commission... make them pay more. If ANYONE wants a commission done ‘by the end of the week’ - that’s an automatic rush-job for me because I’m juggling an irl job and several commissions at once. I WILL charge a rush fee and I won’t feel bad about it. 

If someone wants a commission within 24 hours...... Well, they better be paying you 3x your normal amount, or more. And remember - you CAN refuse! It’s perfectly reasonable to say ‘No, sorry, that sort of turnaround time is not realistic for me.’

Food For Thought - Invoicing

Many artists I’ve commissioned in the past have not used Invoicing, but I’ve recently begun to fill out invoices and file them in my Commissions folder just to keep track of things. It’s not necessary until you start getting into the Small Business side of Freelancing, but it’s not a bad idea to get into the habit early in case you might need to do it later for tax purposes. 

Here’s what my Invoice looks like, for example. 

I’ve optimized it to help me remember who, what, and how much is involved! It also contains important info for my customers like where to send the money.

Which brings us to...

.

4) Profit

One of the hardest things for artists is pricing themselves. I’m not going to tell you which way is BEST - there is no BEST way, only the best way for YOU. 

One of the options available to you is pricing by the hour. It includes averaging out how long it takes you to draw a specific type of art (whatever you’re offering as a commission) and multiplying that by an hourly wage you’ve decided on.

When you do this, I stress - do NOT price yourself below minimum wage if you can help it. When you first start out, aim for the $15/hour mark and adjust accordingly. 

Other ways to price your art:

- Per complexity: Portraits vs full body should be scaled based on how difficult you find one vs. the other. You can also easily decide on a price for a sketch and double it for lineart, triple it for full color, etc.

- Per type: Look up for industry prices for website design and logo design. They may surprise you! You don’t have to charge that much, but it helps to keep things in perspective. 

It’s okay to change your prices! Keep your commission sheet image handy so you can update the amounts as you grow. :)

Payment up front or after completion?

Some artist take full payment up front. Some only demand payment after they’ve finished and sent out the piece. I personally think these are both risky for everyone involved. 

I recommend doing at least HALF of the payment BEFORE you start the commission. Calculate your full price and ask for half before you start working on it in earnest, to make sure the person can actually pay you. Then, when they receive the full piece and are satisfied, they can complete the payment. 

I personally work in this structure:

> Someone emails me with their idea/reference

> I send back a rough draft sketch that shows the idea/pose (only takes me 10-20 minutes so not a huge loss if they ghost) and quote them a price

> They can pay the full thing upfront OR pay half

> I finish the commission and send updates when I do the lineart/colors to double check anything so they have multiple chances to spot any errors

> If the person paid only half on completion, I send them a low-res version of the finished thing, they finish up their payment and THEN I send them the full-res version plus any other filetypes/CYMK proofs, etc. 

Many of the people who commission me pay me up front even though I offer they pay half - and I’m really flattered that they trust me that much! Because of that, I feel encouraged to update them frequently and ask for their input as I work, so they have the peace of mind knowing I’m actually doing their commission. 

Great, but how do I get PAID????

There are NUMEROUS ways - these days money is relatively easy to transfer over digital means, and you have a few options. 

Paypal is perhaps one of the oldest digital wallets and is geared towards businesses. By setting up a PayPal and connecting it to your debit card of bank account, you can tunnel a pathway from your online business directly into your hands in a matter of days. 

Paypal also offers Invoicing - you make an invoice, price it and send it to the person’s email and they can pay whatever way they need! (It also allows partial payments.)

Pros: transfers from PayPal to bank account are free, and take a couple of business days. It also has no upper limit to the amount of money you can move in/out each month. It can force refunds due to the nature of its business-oriented payment system.

Cons: Because it’s used by businesses for larger transactions, PayPal may demand a more rigorous proof of your identity. It may also take longer to set up and be harder to get used to. I’ve also heard that they can be a hassle when it comes to closing your account. 

Venmo is another type of digital wallet that acts much like paypal, except for a few key differences - it is NOT made for businesses (so depending on whether you’re officially registered as a freelancer, you may not be able to use it). I personally don’t use venmo, so I cannot speak to its usefulness, but I know a few people that use it for casual transactions. It’s easy and quick! :) 

Keep in mind that you cannot force a refund over venmo! The transactions are final.

There’s also CashApp, GooglePay (which could load gift cards but also allows peer-to-peer transactions) and I’ve heard good things about Due, though I’ve never personally used it.

Other ways to pay: I’ve had people pay me over Patreon by upping their pledge, and I’ve had people pay me over Ko-Fi by donating a specific amount. 

Many people even use Etsy - the website specialized for independent small businesses selling art - by listing their commission sheet and offering up several ‘slots’ of commissions, which allows you to track taxes AND allows your clients to pay using whatever they feel comfortable with.

If you’re in Canada, you can even pay by emailing money directly from bank account to bank account - check whether your country offers this type of service! There’s no shortage of ways to move money in the digital world.

Just like everything else, there’s no singular ‘Best’ way. It just depends on what works for you.

I think that just about wraps it up! I can’t quite think of what else to put here - but I’m sure other artists will chime in with their own advice. :) I’m very sorry this became so long but I hope it was helpful! 

Obligatory Disclaimer: I’m not qualified to give legal or accounting counsel. Please double-check the laws in your own country/state in regards to taxation of freelancing work and do your own research. If you are underage, DEFINITELY get an adult’s permission before you start doing commissions, and have the adult help you through the process.   

. . . . . . . . . . . . 

OTHER POSTS YOU MAY FIND USEFUL:

An Extended Post on Pricing Yourself for Commissions

Dealing with Imposter Syndrome/Feeling ‘Not Good Enough’

Growing Your Audience

Advice for Starting Digital Art

[mack3030]

Things the Sims 4 Community Can Do About Paywalls...A Post...

[This is going to be a bit long, so you may want to save it and read it when you have time, or just...you know, buckle in.]

I thought I would ring in the new year by talking about something that I feel we as a community need to finally decide on. (It’s been debated since 2017 or so, and it’s now 2021...) I’d like, if possible, to try to suggest some real solutions and choices that we can make that will hopefully create a better and more honest community out of all of us.  Now I would like to start by making some postulates. In geometry, postulates are facts that do not need proven with a mathematical proof. They are assumed to be true. Thomas Jefferson and the founding fathers would call these “Self-Evident Truths”. I would like to use these as a bit of a basis for my arguments. 

Truth: The Sims 4 has been enough of a cash cow for EA.  If you buy the base game ($40) plus all expansion packs (40 each x 10) + all game packs (20 each x 9) + all stuff packs (10 each x 17) you would come to a total of seven hundred and 90 dollars ($790) plus tax. This is of course, without sales, bundling, etc, which many people DO take advantage of, but STILL. That is a TON of money for EA’s pockets.  EA makes a majority of its money on the fact that the Sims 4 is an “incomplete game”. It “completes” the game further and further by adding more “expansions” to the game to the point that it seems almost useless to buy the base game alone without adding to it. 

Even with sales and other things, it’s easy to spend over $500 dollars on the sims 4 game + expansions. Still a lot of cash for a game that is years old. This is just money that is spent on the game that goes to EA. This does not account for:  * Money spent to buy a new computer because your old one wouldn’t run the sims.  * Money spent supporting CC artists who have donations open or early access.  * Money spent on access to sites that have ads/paywalls/exclusive sims 4 CC such as Leosims, etc. (Which are the problem, frankly)

We should be able to respect the fact that a majority of us paid a hefty amount for this game. It is unfair, and frankly greedy to REQUIRE people to pay MORE just to unlock or gain access to specific user created content. 

I am not talking about a VOLUNTARY support or donation because they like what you offer. I am talking about FORCING people to pay if they want to ever be able to use the CC or mod you offer. 

Now, the typical defense for this is “Well, I’m an artist! I spend time/effort/etc working hard on these meshes, the code, etc to make this content!”  Which leads me to point #2. 

Truth: Mods, CC, and other content for the Sims 4 are useless without the game. Once they are created/uploaded to the game, all copyright to those objects IMMEDIATELY transfers to EA. 

I teach art in a Missouri public school. Our state standards dictate that when art students are in middle school grades, they have to learn about copyright, fair use, and creative commons. While I am not a copyright lawyer, I have had to learn enough about this subject to teach it. So allow me to break down a few facts about copyright: 

First, when ya make it, ya own it. There’s not a process to apply for a copyright. The moment you create something that is 100% your own work, you hold the copyright to it. 

Second, when you make something that is created based off of or USING someone else’s intellectual property as a reference or resource it is a fan creation. In art, we call this “fanart”. It is not 100% your own work. Someone else’s intellectual property is involved. 

Fan creations always have tread a very thin and shadowy line when it comes to different companies and the legality of them. You can easily search google for various articles explaining it, but to summarize it in a short method: 

Most companies do not actively go after those who create fan creations unless they are making profits that could instead be going to the creators of the intellectual property. If the fan creation is discovered to be making profits and/or taking the intellectual property in a direction the creator does not approve of, they have legal options to pursue (court, cease and desist letters, etc). 

Third, Copyright can be transferred from person to person. In most cases this is done through a written document that both parties sign, however there IS an exception to this that EA uses to allow itself to transfer your copyrights to your content to them: 

EA’s agreement with you is non-exclusive, meaning that the moment you hit “agree” on the sims 4 terms and conditions, you have handed over your rights to any CC you create for the game. 

If you want to maintain full creative rights over the mesh/mods/etc you make then, you have to not make that content for the sims 4 and make your own platform to host it on. This is way easier said than done. 

Truth: There have been various examples in the past of CC creators who have stolen meshes, bases, bits/pieces of work, or “inspiration” for CC from other sites/companies, who have been called on it publicly. 

The most recent event concerning this was drama concerning itsbrandysims and their use of meshes from imvu/secondlife (you can see my opinion on the subject HERE), but there have been other documented cases. Leosims, for example, has been listed as an example of someone taking meshes from secondlife creators and reuploading them (when it was told to me, I was shown THIS thread as evidence). Another well known creator was accused by a former sims 4 cc creator (who now makes content from second life), and was called out in THIS post in 2019. 

The horrible part of this? Many of these creators are charging people (often at not so great rates as well), for STOLEN content. Content they don’t even own, that they ripped from another place. This should not be accepted by a community that loves a game as much as the Sims 4 community.  Truth: EA has provided a way for people to make money while not hiding content behind paywalls entirely, and the INTENT of this was to OFFSET COSTS.  Almost every post about content locked behind paywalls features this post found on the Sims Forum from 2017. In it, SimGuruDrake, who was the community manager at the time (she has since left the Sims 4 team for another job).  Most of you who have seen this discussion topic before know this post by heart, but I’d like to highlight one important aspect of it: 

One thing that is always important about communication is the intent behind it. The intent for people to be allowed to make patreons and allow early access wasn’t so people could just make money for themselves, the idea was to offset costs to buy programs to make the content. For example, a yearly subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud (which has photoshop, illustrator, etc) costs a couple hundred dollars US a year. If someone was using photoshop to help them create their CC in addition to blender or other free programs, EA/Maxis wanted to allow the creator to not have to pay for making the CC out of pocket.  Can EA/Maxis control what people spend the money they make off of patreon on? No. But it should be noted that the intent of this action was to help people pay for supplies for their hobby more than to make a business out of it. 

Onto the next truth! Truth: There is an image that disputes this post above, however the authenticity of it and timing of it are very disputed. 

This image is often thrown around by people who lock content behind paywalls, but I would like to take a second and try to provide an honest assessment of it.  First of all, I have a bit of a problem with the fact that the original person who “messaged” SimGuruDrake this question has not been identified. This image was not posted on the tumblr of a CC creator who claimed “Hey I reached out to a sims guru and this is the answer I got!” The main pages that have this image are either tweets from CC creators using it to defend their stance on paywalls (ex: here), or tumblrs/tweets “debunking it” (ex: here, here).  I even reverse image searched this image using google, and another platform and could not figure out where this originated from. Of course, I’m not an expert, but...still. 

The fact that the origin of this picture is unknown casts doubt on it. If it were a well known CC maker who is known for being honest, that’s one thing. But the fact that we don’t exactly know where it came from is suspicious. Because frankly, anyone with some decent editing ability could photoshop this. 

Here’s my imperfect edit, but I’m just a self-taught graphics nerd and I am not as dedicated at faking screenshots as some. (And the crap photo quality didn’t help.) Another common issue is that at the supposed “time” that this question was being asked, some state that SimsGuruDrake had already left the Sims 4 team. I will admit, this photo is within the correct timeline, as SimsGuruDrake did not officially depart the sims 4 team until February 2018. (There is a post on the sims forums that has a timestamp that confirms this.) But, if you were in the process of leaving your job within the next month (as a two week/30 day notice is common when leaving a job), would you REALLY be answering questions in DMs on twitter, or be focusing on packing up, and training your successor?  The last thing that really makes me doubt the validity of this picture is the fact that it’s not really easy to message the sims gurus on Twitter. This appears to be twitter from the screenshot (although there are some things that are a little out of place from the current UI): But when I attempt to direct message a sims guru I get this message: 

I even tried seeing if I could reach out via DM to Drake herself, (who now posts under a different twitter) to see if it was possible: 

Could the policies have changed since 2018? Possibly, but I feel that opening up direct messages is just asking for Sims 4 team members to get angry messages, so this could very well be a long running EA policy. I have also reached out to her via a twitter tag (as of 1/2/21), and will update y’all if I get a reply:

Okay, so now that we’ve gone through all of this, let’s talk about the last truth that’s really important:  Truth: Putting content behind paywalls has generally been considered disgusting by many in the sims 4 community, and TAKES AWAY the choice of people to support CC creators they love/appreciate WILLINGLY.  A few notable posts sharing the disgust with this practice can be found: HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE & HERE). And these are just what I can find from a simple precursory search.

Okay, Brainiac. So what can we do to solve this problem? 

Well, there’s a few methods we can employ, and sadly, it’s going to take a bit of a commitment and concentrated effort from the community. 

Step #1: Make the COMMUNITY the VICTIM instead of EA. 

Now when I say this, I don’t mean we’re actually victims, but mean that instead of constantly saying things like “WHEN YOU DO THIS YOU VIOLATE EA’S TOU!”, thus making EA the “victim” of the crime. We change the dialog to saying “When you lock stuff behind paywalls, you cheat the sims 4 community and disrespect their choice to support you or not.”  Because let’s be honest. Maxis/EA really doesn’t give much of a care about if people aren’t following this rule. You can report people to the team, but as far as most people have seen, it doesn’t get anywhere. But if we make it where the community is the party being “wronged” it is much harder for those who have paywalls to not be scared. Because the community, in the end, has to be with them.  DepthofPixels had a really amazing post about this HERE. 

Step 2: Decide to not support anyone who puts their content behind exclusive paywalls and do not hesitate to spread the word about why you choose not to do so. 

By that, I mean

not paying any patreon accounts that don’t offer either their content 100% for free, or offer early access.

And sharing about why you choose to do that on your social media. Something I might suggest would be to make it a bit personal and share something like:

Instead of spending $15 a month to get exclusive content from Leosims (or any other patreon/paywall creator here) I’m spending that $15 supporting creator x, creator y, and creator z, who don’t put their work behind paywalls! 

Link their patrons, share why you like their content, and why you take the stance to make the community better. Make it a positive thing, praising the people who are doing RIGHT by the community. 

Yes, you may not get their content for a while (although there are some different places (

x

,

x

) to find them *cough*. But in the end, is it worth supporting someone’s content when they’re treating the community badly? 

Step 3: Report creators who actively steal content from IMVU/secondlife to those respective companies, and all others to EA. (Even though nothing may happen.)

Here’s the deal. When people steal from either of those sites, they are infringing on someone’s copyright, as well as Imvu/secondlife’s copyright as well. It’s not okay, and they should be held accountable for it. Here’s the LINK for submitting a ticket to Secondlife. I haven’t been able to find one for IMVU, but maybe someone else will find one. Let those companies know and allow them to handle those specific creators.  As to the other creators, EA may not handle them at the moment. But IF (and this is a wishful thinking “if”) there were suddenly a flood of messages about certain creators...? I think they might have to pay attention to some of those messages. There is an official report form, but it might even be worth tweeting to SleddingGuruFrost, who is the current community manager asking about their stance on paywalls.  And last but not least: 

Step 4: Make sure that those who are doing the right thing and not putting their work behind paywalls feel appreciated. Show them some love via a tumblr ask, or by tagging them on twitter, or by going up a tier on their patreon (or pledging for the first time). Celebrate these heroes who are creating content and not forcing it on us. 

Us asking for people to give us a choice to support them isn’t being greedy, or disrespecting their time. We just want transparency, and respect from those who create content for the game we love so much versus them treating us like we’re just a source of income. I know it might seem a bit hard to do this for some of you, and for some it may seem like I’m preaching to the choir, but we have to decide where we stand on this issue and stop letting those who abuse this system keep doing it. We can make a difference if we decide as a COMMUNITY to work together.

With commitment,  ~Sunny