#I don't know how to do marketing

[dustinweaver]

Wow. Just look at this REAL person enjoying 1949.

Folks, this is why I do it, right here. Just look at that face. This is what it's about, this business of creating comic books...

It's about creating smiles.

[voistly]

do you think the obsession with ‘style consistency’ in online art communities is mostly caused by this idea that your art style needs to be easily marketable & recognizable as a brand (especially when you’re working as a freelancer). i see the /least/ amount of progress in my art whenever i try to aim for style consistency. i don’t know exactly where i’m going with this but i think there’s some sort of connection between trying to monetize/market your art & limiting your growth as an artist. and i think it’s very sad.

[bonefall]

it is healing to come onto this blog and see basic respect for diasbility after being in other corners of the fandom and reading the words “snowkit could never be a warrior because he wouldnt know what anything is. he wouldnt even know what a clan is because nobody could explain it to him” said in full seriousness

Im..... That statement is so ableist I cannot even imagine the worldview you'd need to have in order to come up with that.

They really think the only way anyone learns anything is through verbal-speaking-words-noises? No one has ever observed something before? Not even once?

This is beyond touching grass, this person just fell out of the fucking Jurassic Period when all they had was ferns and stegosaurs.

I just...

OH YES. I remember my first day of Society Lessons as a hearing person, where the everything was explained to me. Via Audiobook. FIRST they spoke and said, "you are standing on the ground." It was a life changing revelation, and the world began to spin.

But it did not stop.

THEN they said, "there are fingers on your hands." The sensation of flesh and bone crackling into existence is indescribable, but I did not yet know pain, until they told me, "that hurts." I began screaming immediately.

And yet... it continued.

They explained so much. Chairs. Tables. Walls. The sky. Frogs. Ionizing radiation. Breathing. I was told all of it, in one sitting, and only then did I understand. Only when my ears were bursting with normal hearing knowledges, did they begin... my final test.

A strange wall-chair-finger emerged from the sky-of-the-wall, stood on the ground several times, until it was in front of me. A second one came behind it, this one slimmer. The audiobook gave these things names;

Human. Father. Mother. Door. Walking. It was completely impossible to know what these things were until that very moment.

I watch a human dip a hook into water and produce a fish, and I recall my Society Lessons where they called that "fishing." I am decked in the face by a nefarious hooligan, and I have only the audiobook to thank when I know I have been "punched" by a "bad guy." It was only the magic of verbal-speaking-words-noise that made me understand that there are "other people" and that they "do stuff."

Sometimes, even, in "groups."

Before the Society Lessons Audiobook, I knew nothing. I was pure, innocent, uncorrupted by concepts such as "parents" and "door." I am grateful every day that there is no such concept as "being shown things" or "simple logical reasoning" or "looking."

Blessed be those amongst us who escape the horrors of the Society Lessons Audiobook. I pray that you never learn what anything is. Be free! Free as a bird, which also knows nothing and famously cannot learn. 🤗

DEAF/HOH FOLLOWERS I'm losing my mind do you want me to bump a 'Hearing Disabilities Herb Guide' to the top of my priorities? Something you can use to bludgeon whackadoodles like that. This is ridiculous

Obviously not a MEDICINE guide but like; common causes of hearing disability in clan cats. Accommodations for hearing loss vs congenital deafness. Actual difficulties of not having that sense Clan-by-Clan. Debunking of misconceptions like... not being able to learn APPARENTLY.

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

wondering about Frank and insects but specifically about how it looks like the WH insects are highly stylized, so does Frank even know anything about real butteflies/insects?

& if he saw a real one, would he recognize it? are all of the species names he applies to the WH bugs real, or are they all made up like "Vibrant Eyespot" or "Fluttering Heartwing"?

and then there's the question - does the neighborhood have some of the more 'undesirable' bugs like moths, worms, roaches, spiders? does it have bugs outside of the generic groups of beetles and butterflies? like are there mantids? leafbugs? dragonflies? weevils? or are those too specific/complex/not-cute for the Playfellow Workshop to have included?

and then there's the question of what are the bugs? props? puppets? are they alive or do the neighbors just perceive them as such? Do they even exist outside of art, storybooks, and animated segments? I highly doubt they're alive like the neighbors are, since in the gif of Frank's head spinning, the framed butterflies' wings are moving. which is kind of horrifying if you think about it for more than a second.

just... the critters Frank loves so so so much being a complete fabrication... every piece of knowledge he prides himself on / delights in knowing being utterly Untrue... oof

[gouinisme]

i truly do not think alice can possibly stop being a character bc of previously stated reasons so now my working theory is the "i'll die down here" is mostly a distraction from "i was born down here" and alice Is some kind of reborn or construct or undead or something in the way that what she Is, her Current form of life was born from whatever weird alchemist shit is going on in the OIAR and the Magnus institute

[bookshelfdreams]

.

[autisticaradiamegido]

day 26

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

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

[ride-a-dromedary]

I would have liked to see the reunion between Halsin and Thaniel when he woke up.

[the-ghost-king]

actually no we don't talk about nico who likes pirates enough. we don't talk enough about how he probably has a favorite pirate. we don't talk enough about how he probably has a favorite ship. we don't talk enough about how he probably has a favorite shipwreck too. we don't talk enough about how he probably spent all day on the canals with the gondole, asking the gondoliers all sorts of questions about their boats until his mother had to pull him away. how many hours did he spend on the port of venice just watching the boats come in and leave? just.... how far does the love of pirates go? is it a love of boats too? like we know he loves (I refuse to believe it's past tense) pirates, but we don't even know if he knows how to swim, or if he likes being on cruises, or at the beach or what. it's sad.

[birlwrites]

one of the things that i've accomplished due to the low barrier to entry in writing fanfiction is writing novel-length stories as a matter of course. like, i used to think of writing a book as this massive, monumental task - and in some ways, it is! but in other ways, it's still just a story. and it feels much more approachable to me now that i've done it multiple times, posting chapter by chapter because that's something you can do really easily with fanfiction. i didn't go into it believing i could do it - i found out that i could by just giving it a try and seeing what resulted.

there's also a certain wild creativity you can find on ao3, the result of people just doing whatever they feel like doing - sometimes it results in incoherence, sometimes in incomprehensibility, sometimes it falls flat, but there's so much variety in storytelling forms, if you look for it. people will deep-dive into anything. 'marketability' is laughably far from being a concern. what is a story, anyway? people will strip the idea down to its bare bones and rebuild it in infinite ways if they have the space. that space doesn't exist in barnes & noble.

i'm a firm believer that you should read the types of stories you want to write, and that you should also read broadly, because that's how you avoid getting stuck recycling the same handful of ideas over and over. i think the same thing applies to writing. write what you want to write - but also, experiment. try other things, even if they seem silly or impractical or irrelevant, even if you don't think they will work. even if you don't think you can make them work.

if you don't feel like you have creative freedom, then you'll fall back on the tried-and-true. you'll recycle. it won't feel like your voice, because it's been filtered through layers upon layers of 'acceptable' and 'marketable' and 'reasonable' and 'broadly appealing.' the only way to understand your own creative limits is by testing them, constantly. you can't truly believe that you can write whatever you want until you prove it to yourself.

and even if your voice turns out to be acceptable and marketable and reasonable and broadly appealing after all - if you try all sorts of things and find out that's where your creativity flows best - you still know it's yours. you still know you're writing the truest possible expression of your own creative abilities. you owe it to yourself to find out what it feels like to write unfettered.

write something weird.

[herd-reject-arts]

Manic // Depressive

Finished (??) this today. A piece I've been slowly revising over the last few days. I can't draw hands, and I have just as much trouble painting them.

Little personal cathartic piece. Better to do a bad paint job on some goat horns than kill yourself because the only person who's ever made you feel like you're a real person left you, just like everyone else.

Now off to, like, run a bunch so I can't think, even though I already did a 4-5 mile hike this morning 👍

[heartofstanding]

Can we please agree that this shit is not okay to do to an author?

If an author wants their fandom life known, fine, talk about it all you want. Don't out them as a fanfic writer when they clearly don't want to be known as one. And yeah, maybe it shouldn't matter but that doesn't mean that it doesn't matter and that it's your place to decide that for anyone other than yourself.

[dyrewrites]

Amazon is awful, but I am forced to use it

Who sends someone an email to inform them they're getting a payout of less than a dollar this month? Amazon, apparently.

So, in the interest of not curling into a tight little ball and wondering why I tried to do all of this in the first place as I slowly sink into deep, dark, squelching dread...

Here is a link to short stories what you can purchase!

If that is indeed a thing you are into.

They are quite spooky, most are bloody, one has a horrible thing happen to a generally nice dude (that one is Don't Look, and if you're not comfortable reading about assault of the sexual variety then I insist you obey the title).

I apologize for my face, it has no excuse to exist, but it does and I was told to put it up...so it is there.

[caesarclowningaround]

i need fics where caesar is a strawhat. give me that sweet villain decay. give me that "he's awful but this other villain is worse and uh-oh we accidentally adopted our old enemy" vibes. give me the "he's still awful but now he cares... a little" shit. give me the enemies-to-friends-to-lovers inter-crew crackships with him. give me the resistant bonding and befriending. give me the "and now he's just here forever" scenarios. give me the avengers living together and loki is also there types of fics but make it one piece. heck, give me the missing scene fics in-between plot stuff when caesar was their hostage. give me more caesar with the strawhats in situations that would never happen but would be fuckin hilarious. give me scenarios where caesar begs to join because he has no where else to go. give me the delights of a strawhat caesar. give them to me. i need them

[marsmall0ws]

⋆˚⋆˙‧☽Reminder that my commissions are open!☾‧˙⋆˚⋆

── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──

OCs, Self-inserts, selfship, all that stuff is so epic and I'm so down for 👌

I also have adoptables being made to sell here and here

Just read the first page and be aware of my BYF/DNI please!!

[birdmenmanga]

what's baffling is that I'm pretty sure I explicitly told him I was transgender... to be fair everyone with my aesthetic style (short hair, neutral clothing on a feminine build) is read as a tomboy or lesbian so... is he actually picking up tgirl vibes from me??? then again the only other transmasc guy I've met here grew up outside of Taiwan as well... where are the tboys. I'm begging. what am I supposed to wear to telegraph I'm a guy.