Commission informations!

My first chibi base is now available on hipolink (‘∀’●)♡ Comes with 3 expressions and 5 skin tones.

Grab it here.

TOS below:

• you may use it for personal art and commissions
• credit me when using
• enjoy! ^.^

My newest chibi base （*´▽｀*）
Grab it here.

TOS below:

• you may use it for personal art and adoptables
• you may not use it for commissioned art
• credit me when using
• enjoy! ^.^

i am begging you all to stop treating this site like instagram if you dont want it to be content free by next year

actually i'm reblogging this again with commentary, fuck it.

There's people in the notes talking about "not basing your worth off numbers", and like. that isn't what this post is about. It's not a threat, either, it's a comment on how this site works, at a mechanical level.

Likes are worthless. Let me say that again.

Likes. Are. Worthless.

They don't do anything. They're a bookmark. They were never part of how tumblr works - in the early days we didn't even have a like button, and the site still more or less acts as though we don't. They're personal bookmarks and the only people who "get" anything from them are you (you bookmark the post) and the OP (maybe a very slight serotonin boost), but they don't keep the post in circulation, they don't keep it alive.

Without reblogs, a post will be dead in the water within an hour. No matter how good it is, no matter how many hours of painstaking love and attention its creator put into it, it will be dead within an hour and never seen again. It gets pushed down the dashboard and nobody aside from the followers who were online when it was posted will see it.
And there's a huge difference in engagement on posts that get even one lucky reblog from someone with wider reach - that one reblog shows your post to five, ten, fifteen other people, and if one of those people also reblogs it, and so on and so forth, that's how posts stay alive and in circulation.
It's like a contagion, but we're sharing creativity instead of disease.

And that matters. That "lifespan" of the post matters, artists and writers give up on this site and go to sites where posts have longer lifespans because it sucks to spend hours of your life, maybe even days, to get two notes and some fucking pocket lint for your efforts.
We create for ourselves, but we share because we want people to see it, because that engagement offers positive feedback and encouragement to continue.
But more than that, if every post (whether art, fic, gifset, whatever) is dying within an hour or a day of being posted, that means it's not making it onto your dashboard. And if it's not on your dashboard, you won't see it. This kills the site, after a while. You stop seeing the posts, because nobody is putting them on your dashboard, because this site doesn't have an algorithm like twitter and insta's and it shouldn't, it's the last bastion of chronological timelines.

Forgive my giant fucking rant I am so tired right now and full of the plague but like stop acting like artists and writers are just being whiny little babies, or "threatening" to withhold our fucking work (you're not entitled to it! it's ours! if we get nothing out of sharing it we're well within our rights to keep it private!) when we say this site will dry up without reblogs. We're just stating facts.

also I’ve seen some people in the tags say ‘oh there have always been more likes on posts’ no there haven’t ???? 

these are posts from 2013, look at the ratio

not to sound like a nursing home resident but back then people know that the point of this site was to reblog things and share them, not to bury them away among your other 23k liked posts

This is straight up why I reblog my own stuff, because otherwise it just sits sometimes for months on end without any activity and then when I bump it people are like "omg! This is great!! How did I never see this one?"

I have also had people tell me it's weird to do or unfollow me for it or say that they find it cringe, but like

I like my art! I would like to share it! I would like others to see it!

And frankly attitudes where people want to tell artists and other creators that they're weird for liking what they make compounds the issue of creators feeling worthless about what they're making, and adds a weird kind of power to the viewer that their opinion in addition to their likes or shares (or lack thereof) dictates whether a piece of art is good or not

genuinely mystified by the kind of person that would produce this image and not realize "oh, I'm being fucking ridiculous"

personally, when I see someone press a heart-shaped button to denote that They Like My Work, the conclusion I draw is that They Like My Work. but perhaps I'm the crazy one, and I should instead be taking it as one step above "shooting me three times in the head."

#liking it is a bookmark for them. no one else sees it. it's a nod and acknowledgement my work was seen. clearly not good enough for#them to share. not good enough to bring me more business more clients more customers. how does that like button help the artist#or help the writer? it doesn't. call me cynical if you want but i've been here long enough to know the like button is only a bookmark.

listen. I get it. I am also Out Here, chronically unemployed and trying to make ends meet by monetizing my music. I also get frustrated and demoralized when something I worked hard on fails to gain traction.

that being said:

this attitude can only ever corrode your connection to your own work. "not good enough to bring me more business" - I'm sorry, but strangers on social media do not owe you free marketing. meanwhile, what you call "only a bookmark" signifies that your work appealed to them, even if they didn't reblog it. isn't that the fucking point of doing any of this? to make someone else's day a little richer, or to make them feel seen?

to put it in simpler terms:

if you consider someone liking your work "meaningless," why are you making art in the first place?

figured a little self promo is a good thing~

I know writers like this, but fanartists, genuine question:

Asking this genuinely because some times I DO want to leave nice comments about art I found pretty, but usually don't since I've found it's not really the culture around fanart as opposed to fanfics.

Please reblog because it's been bothering me.

My first chibi base is now available on hipolink (‘∀’●)♡
Grab it here.