Join me, won’t you? On PATREON

Join me on the journey that is my life of random sketches, (fan)artwork and some writings. This is the place to interact with me that is a lot easier than here on tumblr. Any suggestions for artwork to work on next, this will be the place to engage with me. Also, a very good perk is -you get access to my spicy NSFW artwork too (this will be a 18+ patreon). I mostly do Kalluzeb currently but will have other fandom (and non fandom) stuff to share too! So join me, won’t you?

aurorajay:

modmad:

themightyglamazon:

glumshoe:

nowlander:

glumshoe:

what do I have to do to go to events where people are dressed nicely and there are plates of free cheese cubes

Go to the inaugurations of littlely known artists’ exhibitions.

We are always begging for people to attend, there actually is the “hack” to invite your whole family but tell them to pretend they don’t know you. People with money are more willing to buy your work if they think many people likes it, so your mere presence eating our cheese and canapes will be a great helps. Please bring whoever you want too.

Don’t mind if I do!

I will dress like an eccentric weirdo if that helps.

one time a pal of my pals was having a tough time selling their work in an art exhibit and called us up on the last day, ‘us’ being about 8 students who were Very hungry and also bored. We put on the nicest/artsiest clothes we had available (one dude had a legit fancy suit and put on some shades which were Bright Pink he looked like a movie star I swear) and rolled up to the show in pairs, separately. Fine Art Pal has some nice paintings! but nobody is really paying attention to them, so after getting some fancy cheese cubes in a manner that did not betray that we were actually a ravenous pack of starving students we casually wander around the show and then, fairly individually, drift to a stop by their work. Some of us even walked away, then came back a bit later ‘captivated’ by the art (it was actually really nice but recall we were all poor as shit and this was a help hustle). Our group’s interest naturally caught other folks, and eventually there was a small clump of about 15 people musing over this art, and within ten minutes the biggest piece had been snatched up by a shrewd investor. by the end of the exhibit every single piece was sold. It helped pay off the artist’s student debt and on that success they got into another exhibit! They’ve been doing well ever since.

So yes, please attend new artist shows, you get free cheese, get to look at nice art, and you can really help out people who deserve more attention.

YES! THIS 100% The opening night of small-time art shows, particularly for students, are an excellent place to a) wear some of your more out-there ensembles, and b) get free food and free/very cheap wine. It’s also encouraged to pause and say things like “Mmmm, yes, what an evocative juxtaposition”.

And if dressing up isn’t your thing, no problem! Classing it up might encourage buyers, but casual clothes are perfectly acceptable too. Art shows are a weird cross section of fancy people with money, us semi-feral art goblins, and proud but slightly confused parents.

Things I have personally worn to openings that illicited 0 comments:

-T-shirt and jeans

-Body hugging sequins

-Interview clothes

-Punk jacket with shoulder spikes

-Stained coveralls

So go nuts!

(I mean, also use your discretion. The weirdness threshold for student shows is high, but once you cross it you’re liable to be mistaken for one of the arts.)

greediee:

greediee:

My laptop has died and I am broke T^T

So! Im gonna be reopening commissions in about 2 weeks and please excuse a shameless plug for my ko-fi if anyone is feeling generous!

https://ko-fi.com/quin_mon

Buy Quin a Coffee. ko-fi.com/quin_mon

Thanks to everyone who’s tipped so far, it’s very appreciated ❤️

Commissions are open again!

Full price list is on my Ko-Fi page, linked above.

Reblogs are appreciated, and thanks so much to everyone who’s supported me so far ily

Okay. It’s rare for me to discuss…incidents within social media. Social media was is and will always be a mistake, for it brings out the worst narcissistic tendencies of people. I’m not usually one to engage in such garbage. (And the meta-irony of criticizing social media on social media is not lost on me. I certainly don’t like it.) But the recent flood of posts regarding the incident Monday is forcing me to call out this utter bullshit.

I am not directly referring to, of course, the Tumblr Purge of 19 November 2018. I’m referring to the outrageous apocalyptic response to said Tumblr purge. @vogolsart and his self-aggrandizing post deserves particular mention for its wankery.

Has everyone lost their fucking mind here?

Yes, there was an incident. Yes, it’s unfortunate and scary that a lot of erotic artists were kicked from the site, even accidentally. It is definitely worrisome for many people who have accounts here. I’m not disputing any of this.

But that’s no reason to suddenly turn into petty, spineless, nigh-suicidal and extremely apocalyptic conspiracy mongerers. This is ridiculous behavior and we should know this.

Did we forget the nature of our business?

Yes, it’s adult content. And adult content, by and large, exists in an area of bare tolerance in the world of capital. Yes, there has been significant gains of social acceptance in the field, especially in many parts of the Western world. But it is still, in the parlance of the financial world, “high risk.” There are many places in this world, both economically and socially, where we are undesirables. Even in America. Especially in America.

And before you say as an artist, “but my girlfriend knows! My family’s cool with it!” Let me ask you this: How many of you are willing to state your real name to the public, and that you create this art? I doubt many hands are being raised here. Hell, not many porn stars use their real names or even something resembling them.

I know many artists who live in parts of the world where their work is illegal (one of whom I haven’t heard in months and worry for their safety in particular). I know quite a few who live in parts of the United States where having such a profession is cause for ostracism. It doesn’t help that there are more than a few forms of adult content that are highly illegal and will get you thrown in jail. One artist, who I will not name because I cannot verify the record, was jailed this year for likely that reason.

We often forget that here, in this cesspool of narcissism. Then reality hits.

Yes, A Corporation™ Is Blocking and Banning Users…As Has Always Been Their Right.

Corporations and businesses have an extreme amount of latitude regarding their operations, especially in the United States, where our labor history has been one filled with exploitation (through chattel slavery and other means), repression, and fear of dem Commie reds. That latitude extends to customers and users. Their rights have been enshrined through extensive legislation and legal precedent dating back to the 19th century.

The immediate claims of censorship and “muh freedom of speech” fails to understand what either means. The First Amendment’s reach has been defined repeatedly through legal precedent to mean that the government has no right to impede upon people’s speech if it is not threatening to the government itself (see previous bold text as an example of how that latter part’s been abused).

And, by legal definition, Corporations are People. Funny how that works…

In short, much as there is nothing stopping us from telling some asshole to shut the fuck up, companies like Tumblr have wide scope to silence employees, customers, users. They always have because we gave them that. This is a country where a boss can fire you because you looked at them funny, and you would have no recourse for such a petty action. And we worship these businesses for some dimwitted reason. Just today, I saw a blatant partisan condemning someone’s suggestion to make Election Day a federal holiday because “but businesses won’t close, and we should respect business hours before democracy.” I shit you not there. Why would it surprise us that a company would try to shut up its users? I mean, it’s in the Tumblr ToS.

Consequently, We’ve Always Been On Borrowed Time Here.

Our existence on Tumblr and other social media platforms has always been at the tender mercy of this company, and its parent companies. That is the risk we took when we created our accounts here, on Twitter, on Facebook, on Patreon…anywhere that is a business. The moral gray area we reside in, no matter how socially legitimate we may seem, has always put us in this position. And it is again not helped by people who commit blatant crimes or create illegal works related to this field. Tumblr’s moves to restrict our visibility is not unprecedented. As it stands, even before this happened, our posts couldn’t be searched on Google, most of the search and exploration functions in Tumblr didn’t work for NSFW posts, and we were getting “Restricted” filters on the top of our posts over the last couple of years.

That borrowed time became all the more apparent last year, when the alt-right lost their shit because their eye candy did a nigh-suicidal run in the Mediterranean worthy of ponces and Patreon banned her for such stupidity. Who did they first target when they bitched at Patreon for its supposed hypocrisy in throwing her out? Us adult content creators. I’m hesitant to make direct connections by correlation, but the evidence is pretty overwhelming that this caused subsequent purges. Ditto the whole mess between XHamster and No Nut November this year.

The thing is, we should’ve seen this coming ages ago. For us to lose our shit now is pathetic and belies a shameful narcissistic tendency that has become so obvious in American (and to a lesser extent by export, Western) culture since the rise of social media. Who are we to be so fucking apocalyptic?

What Is To Be Done?

Now, this is not to say that we should lay down and just assume things are all right. We know it’s not all right, it’s not even close to all right. But it hasn’t been all right for a long time either. That we are seeing this freakout occur may be a wake-up call, but we must recognize some basic things moving forward:

1. Calm the Fuck Down, This Isn’t The Holocaust

It does us no good to reduce ourselves to petty conspiracy mongering. That includes suggesting that every glitch or mistake that Tumblr makes is part of some broader conspiracy to suppress us. It’s stupid, it makes look like nutjobs, and more importantly, it impedes and drains us of any effort to actually address the situation. So, step away from the computer, go outside, eat some delicious cookies, take a few deep breaths. 

2. Don’t Get Too Comfortable

This is a line that my closest friend has said time and again. And it’s a god-damn good phrase. The reason this has been such a freak out is because we got too comfortable. We got complacent. We forgot that our position has always been somewhat tenuous in big platforms such as this. Now that the reality has hit, it’s time to plan accordingly and never step into such complacency again.

3. Organize And Support One Another

There has been some motivation on this front to make moves. Examples of this are Kupaa Networks’ offers to discount hosting for artists. (By the way, Renezuo wrote a decent piece on the subject on the Kupaa site) That’s a start. More can be done, though. Artists should start talking with one another with one question on their minds: “What canwe do next?”

Another big reason this has happened is that we have never organized in any coherent fashion to push back on Tumblr en masse. It’s hard to say whether doing so now will save our position long term here, but that shouldn’t stop us from doing it anyway. When you go it alone, businesses will always crush you. Speaking of which…

4. Remember That Corporations Aren’t Your Friend

Tumblr was a corporation. It got bought by another corporation. It has been sold to yet another corporation, where it currently resides. Corporations often pay little attention to people like us, and they have investors and shareholders they are very beholden to. The bottom line matters above all, and if we are a heavy enough impediment to that bottom line, you can be sure we’ll be removed.

There has been talk of platforms to migrate to, such as Minds and Mastodon. However, despite the song and dance routine they do about “free speech” this and “no censorship” that, they haven’t been tested on that front with sufficient profit and clout. When a sexual predator, or organized gang, or other criminal aspect slips through their cracks - and they will, believe you me - and they get busted for it, that’s when we’ll see where they really stand. When some enemy of ours - and we still have so many, some of whom will be using these same platforms - campaigns to push us out, that will be where we see who they’ll defend. Especially if/when that got that precious VC money bankrolling them.

(The same goes to any existing big platform, like Reddit or Twitter, that are lax enough to allow us to post.)

Not to discourage you from going to these platforms. But you must see them as what they are: Businesses that will dump you the moment it’s in their economic interest to do so. Do not rely on them.

Yes, a lot of bad shit happened on Monday. That shouldn’t be cause to panic and kvetch like the narcissists that so overwhelm our social media and regular media outlets today, as well as the partisans that are little more than blowhards looking out for themselves and their place in their political tribe. We are of a stronger stuff than that. If we weren’t, we wouldn’t be making this art.

Stay on the level.

AG out.

I hope all you unapologetic unicorns are having a fantastic Friday! Only two more days left in my @teepublic featured artist sale! Follow this link to get your Moonicorn merch!

Image description: a headshot of sailor moon but instead of a human head she has a pink unicorn skull