#NET-IE

[wokeskarra]

errr does anyone like very strange ocs or

Anyways... Supa Strikas OC but the thing is she's merely digital and not physical! At all! She's called NET-IE or NETTIE. Her color palette is literally just black and white erm

Oh and her voice is basically just. Siri. She got too lazy and decided to use a robot voice instead of her real voice. Helps to hide her.

She only hijacks when IU is playing and "helps" them by changing the score on the scoreboard. (This isn't her true reason for hijacking) She only shows her "true" form as an announcer (when she's bored or frustrated, she'll show up on the scoreboard to passive aggressively tell the team to get their shit together)

Despite being a bot, many people theorize that she's actually a human behind the screen due to her uncanny human behaviour. Many say she's sentient, but who really knows?

Also, she's this blog's mascot! She'll show up periodically.

[jenfoundabug]

I caught this rambunctious creature flying around the kitchen. Outside you go.

Life pro tip: a cheap butterfly net with telescoping handle is excellent for relocating small friends, especially if they’re skittish and obsessed with the ceiling.

Yellow-legged mud dauber (Sceliphron caementarium)

Northern California

[duckyfann9871]

Kyle deserved to live

[rookontheice]

Taking bets now: are the Sceptres going to go empty net?

[reikunrei]

standing under a boiling hot shower last night talking to myself about how odd it is that people still think “the duffers wouldn’t do something that deep/complex/intricate and hide so much information because the general audience wouldn’t be able to pick up on it” is a valid argument as if the show wasn’t immediately massively popular to the point that they probably could’ve ignored the general audience this whole time and as long as they had a coherent story it would’ve continued to gain traction. it’s their show, they’re gonna do whatever they want with it and hide as many secrets as they can and they will get away with it. why should they "dumb down" their work when they want to live up to their own standards. i think i'd rather die than only do surface level shit to "appeal to the most people."

[zoueriemandzijnopmars]

[muirneach]

woahhh i was not paying attention to basketball world i cant believe kat got traded. why tf would the wolves do that. ant about to be miserable. however as a knicks lover this is good news

[wokeskarra]

[roger-elizabeth-debris]

oh, and they only pay like? $15/hr or something or have it listed like, "Make up to $60,000 a year! ($2/hr + tips!)"

people are like "no one wants to work anymore" when every job application is like upload your resume and cover letter. okay now manually type out your resume and cover letter in our text boxes. okay now answer these 10 riddles. okay now take a rorschach test. okay now upload a photo of your childhood bedroom and explain the relationship between its layout and the adult you are today. okay now show us your youtube watch history. okay now define the color "red." okay now walk into a patch of poison ivy and take a selfie of you holding up a paper saying "i <3 ivy." okay now wave your hands in the air if you just don't care. that one was a trick to cull the applicants who don't care. okay now choose a loved one to sacrifice. great! thank you for submitting your application we will not be calling you

[the-physicality]

this election discourse reminds me so much of finals discourse…. (Obviously much higher stakes but)

[futurefind]

//sa's 'turning point' at 16 is so funny bc sometimes it's primarily emotional marked w monster encounter. sometimes it gets her feral ass scruffed into j.j.k hs. sometimes she's just killed a normal man and Dont Worry About It :)

[applescabs]

anime karakter die Anouk heet maar fucking. duits is ipv nederlands. fuck alles.

[stealingpotatoes]

Hello, fellow artist here! I love your comics and I want to create some of my own at some point. Do you have any advice or tips for that?

my number 1 advice for comics is DO NOT GO DIRECTLY INTO A NICE SKETCH. STOP. DONT DO THAT. what you need to do instead is A THUMBNAIL SKETCH. this is basically the crappiest sketch possible and the reason you need this is bc doing a comic can sometimes be like doing 5D chess while you balance panelling storytelling scripts timing composition yada yada

but what does this terrible little sketch need? basically it's a safety net while you work out the composition of the panels and their contents, so you don't end up doing a lovely sketch only to realise you need to change literally everything about both that panel and your layout; so it needs whatever YOU need to work out how to panel/composition/do this crap

there are only 2 rules for thumbnail sketches: make it SIMPLE and make it USEFUL for future you

(and you can always leave yourself little notes!! the x2 ↑↑ on panel 3 is a note to say duplicate the panel that's two above (ie first panel))

and once you're happy with your messy little whatever, go ahead and do your nice cute good sketch over the top without worrying that everything you're drawing is about to go in the bin <3

[nubinublado]

Man, Yang Cheng's arc really gives some new perspectives on characters from Lin Ling's arc, and yes I am talking about the Enlightener. Cause, I fear he was a very important man in exposing the corruption of the big hero companies and defeating him may have been a net bad lolol.

Cause with little hesitation and presumably little compensation this man waltzed into an office and told a *very* powerful man off for trying to frame a young man for setting up the kidnapping of a child, while also sprinkling a little "this kid has cause to sue you!" on top.

Now, looking back on Lin Ling's arc I will say the Enlightener was in the right but how he went about it was wrong, because the person he put on the hot seat was Lin Ling as opposed to Miss Jay, which would have been cathartic to see her called out for covering up her top hero's death.

I feel like the Enlightener has been building up a case against Nice for a while, or more broadly against the company Nice is under, Treeman. Cause from the looks of things, Treeman as a company seems to fabricate *a lot* when it comes to their heroes, not just with the obvious fake relationship between Nice and Moon but with how Wreck is a hired-on nemesis who fights with Nice (at least sometimes) outright scripted and staged.

I feel like Enlightener's approach would have still been flawed if he had gone after the OG Nice since he would still be going after the most sympathetic party in the situation. Like, sure you can fault Nice for going with Treeman's plans, but there's still room for sympathy for a man who just wanted to be a hero and was just doing what the company that was making that dream come true for him, and then said company puts the weight of the world on him. So, in that sense I don't 100% believe that the Enlightener was the ultimate secret good guy in this there are flaws to his approach (and also probably a lack of nuance in his investigations ie why these heroes would agree to do what they do).

Now this all sort of works into an overall theory I have for the show, that being the big companies were planning on rigging Nice to not only break into the top 10 but to become number 1. My reasoning for this theory is that the companies secretly hate X because he is an independent hero, which would give civilians the impression that they do not need the companies to be top heroes, so they were willing to help set up Nice with opportunities to gain trust. Should they have succeeded in this plan not only helped bring up another powerful company to the top, but Nice, being the embodiment of perfection to the public, would have made dreams of being a hero seem more unattainable to the general public. But this plan ultimately failed because, at the end of the day, Nice is only a person who can only take so much, especially with the knowledge that he is constantly and consciously deceiving those who give him power.

But ya those are just my thoughts lol

[micahulrichdraws]

I come in peace! I don’t wanna try to convince you to take commissions! But I am curious about why you’re so strongly against them, did you have a bad experience working on one? Anyway, love your stuff, your tarot designs go so hard

Thanks for the love!! The reason isn't a bad experience or some such, it's 19 years of being a professional artist and knowing the field!

TLDR: I'm a traditional pen and ink illustrator, so it's not financially viable or creatively fulfilling.

I'm always down to talk art business, so here's a brief breakdown wall of text:

On the financial side, commission designs are almost always done at a net loss/break even for the artist, and I'm no exception. They're alright for starting out, or if you're looking to incorporate them into your marketing (IE: doing a poster design for a band to gain exposure), but typically they're roughly half the cash-per-hour for any established artist VS making an original design, and creating a print run of it.

Example: while tons of folks would look at someone charging $1k USD for a commission and think that it would be crazy cash, once you break down the math, it's pretty bad. An average design for me takes on average 30-40 hours, and that's because I don't have to communicate with anyone else. I'm just drawin' my idea. Assuming this is a dream client who has the mind-meld with me, wire transfers the $1k straight into my bank account the second it's done, that's roughly $25/hr. Once again - this looks *great*, that's around $50k/yr from drawing custom stuff! But that's not how it works. First of all, most folks would lose their *minds* at paying $1k for a commission - over the years I graphed it out, and back when I was a less-established artist, most folks would start with a budget of $100, have their limits pushed at $300, and outright refuse $500. You have to sift through all of those folks in order to get that reasonable commission. That includes folks who aren't willing to commit to a commission, don't want to say no to the price, but will still take up your time. Roughly, for me at least, 10 hours a week of it. You'll also have to run collections on roughly 20% of your customers - they may pay the deposit, but you'll have to chase them for the final payment. Even if you take the payment *in advance* you'll end up having to chase them down/get ghosted. So, realistically: you end up taking the $500, for *at least* 50 hours of work. On average, it clocked in closer to 65-70. $7.14 an hour. That's less than a third living wage and less than minimum wage. You cannot grow an art practice while actively starving. It's easier to make a design, sell it/license it/etc. to make more cash without losing your mind.

That said - After 2020, I reached a point in my career that when I take on custom work, it's typically from a larger brand with a larger scope and larger budget, ranging anywhere from $5k-$30k. That said - these businesses are typically ones that understand the industry and are far less of a headache to work with than individuals, and will give several months worth of work at a time at a living wage.

On the creative side, I enjoy making my own designs and work as opposed to other folks. I have a ton of drawings and projects I'd rather work on and share with folks of my own that are infinitely more fun than the 200th identical commission request (a biblically accurate angel that also is the grim reaper that is also Baldur's Gate 3 thirstraps/Dark Souls fan art/primarchs because Y'ALL AIN'T CREATIVE BUT MY ASTARION X SANGUINIUS SHIP CAME FIRST.) Also, most of the fun of my career is knowing as many folks as possible get to enjoy my art junk. I'd rather go through a few extra hoops and have thousands of folks see my stuff vs something only one other person gets to see.

If you made it this far, congrats, here is my favorite image I have saved in my camera roll:

[qiu-yan]

from a utilitarian pov, the character who did the most good (ie. had the greatest net-positive material impact upon the world) was jin guangyao. while saving people on an individual basis is heroic and makes for more inspiring narratives, what ultimately improves the material conditions experienced by large numbers of people is institutional reform.