epicmykix

[epicmykix]

I spent ten years building up a following on Tumblr. I had 30k+ followers, great engagement, it helped my career thrive like nothing else. I could quit my day job and live off the fan base I’d accrued.

Then, their policies changed. Half my work was no longer allowed. People left the site in droves. I left too, for awhile. I came back to a ghost town. I still have 25k followers, but I don’t think more than 10% are active anymore. I’m followed by ghosts. Same with DeviantArt, although I was never quite as big there, and I’ve been gone so much longer.

This disallowed half of my work was never allowed on Facebook in the first place, or Instagram, but their algorithms are such that my stuff rarely makes it to anyone’s feeds, and if I post a link to where people could actually pay me for my content, it’s hidden unless I pay for it. Patreon swept my work away to a dark corner where no one could see it unless I personally guided them there. Twitch is so strict you can’t even show bare feet. The death of Google Reader means nobody follows RSS feeds anymore, so I can’t direct people to my own site.

So there’s Twitter I guess, where I can post whatever I want, but again, algorithms. But more than that, I don’t have the energy to build up a following once again on a site I don’t own that can delete my career on a whim. The thought of spending time jumping around through hoops for attention just to have it taken away again has stripped any motivation I had to try.

The internet has been gentrified. All the small cute houses and mom & pop shops have been shut down and replaced by big corporations that control everything. I’ve been making webcomics for twenty years, and at the start, the internet was a beautiful wild place. Everyone had a home page. It was like having a house and people came to visit you and you would visit other people in their houses. Now, we don’t visit each other in personal spaces anymore. It’s like we have to visit each other in the aisles of a megamart. Everything is clean and sanitized and the weirdos who made the internet what it was are no longer welcome. No space for freaks anymore.

People still ask me for advice on how to break into comics, and I don’t have any wisdom because I don’t recognize the internet anymore. I don’t feel comfortable working within its boundaries which seems to be getting smaller and smaller and smaller. None of the tools I used when I started exist anymore. They’ve been replaced by things I don’t know how to use. I don’t think I could break into comics today. 2002 had so few barriers compared to now. You might have started on Keenspace, but you could reach a point where you could break away to your own site and people would go to it. Now, you start on Webtoon or Patreon and I guess you just stay there? It feels so much like owning a hardware store for years and then having to go work as a cashier at the Home Depot that put you out of business. I’m looking at my career trajectory and it all points to being a Wal-Mart greeter with uncontrolled arthritis.

I don’t want to make “content,” I want to make comics, I want to make art, and I want to do it in a space that is mine. I’m not sure there’s a place for that anymore.

[epicmykix]

If you live in America and you care about people's water supply then this video is for you.

There is a proposed pipeline expansion that will bring nearly 1 million tar sands per day from Alberta, Canada to Superior, Wisconsin. It's known as the Line 3 Pipeline. The pipeline will be carrying several kinds of tar sands crude. which is a carbon intensive oil which contains 37% more carbon than conventional oil, giving it a far greater impact on climate change.

To illustrate the pipeline would have the climate cost equivalent to 50 coal power plants!

When tar sands spilled the heavy oil mixes with the sediment and sinks to the bottom of the river or lake making it very difficult to clean up.

And the company Enbridge has a long history of spills, averaging one oil spill per week for the last 15 years.

Pipeline three also violates several treaties with the Ojibwe people.

All of this and not a cent of that pipeline will go to the American economy. There are links in my bio to help educate you further as well as where to show up for protests in Minnesota.

Please join us in protesting pipeline 3.

StopLine3

Resources In the Bio are here

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must a fictional relationship be “healthy” or “functional”? is it not enough to simply watch two made up people destroy each other, hand in unlovable hand???

[epicmykix]

Another reason I really like Marie Kondo is that in other cleaning shows the host will looked shocked at the mess and the camera will flash to different piles with dramatic music stings. When Marie sees a draw filled with clutter she smiles from ear to ear and goes “I love mess, I love tidying”. Its just so wholesome and you can see the clients are relieved that she didn’t have a bad reaction.

[epicmykix]

someone sent this to me over discord, i don’t know who made it, but i wanted to share it 

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(via)

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late capitalism nightmare

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no you dont understand, i’m obsessed with him

no you dont understand i’m obsessed with him

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[epicmykix]

You know what’s some crazy $hit?

This fabulous bitch

She makes a shit ton of poses (like 16,000 or some crazy nonsense).  I used this lovely lady to draw so much as a teen.  Whether it was some nerdy pose for my Mary Sue as fuck OCs

or for full on fight sequences

or for tragic deaths of my OCs in the arms of a totally OOC main protagonist.  

this bitch hooked me up.  

And with the wildest, craziest stuff that you could see in your head but had no way or resources to reasonably draw like

or this

or this

DUDE!  INASNE SHIT!!  So I was using her for a pose reference and decided, you know what, I owe this bitch some cash.  Lemme dole it out for her.  BUT then, I looked and saw she only has 286 fucking patrons!!  This chick gives out free shit and spends countless hours arranging these shoots and setting this stuff up.  

I’ll fork up the cash, SenshiStock.  You’re worth it.  

Check out this amazing woman’s stuff, and get knowledged:  https://www.deviantart.com/senshistock