Do you have any advice or things you wish you had known before going full-time with your art/comics? I'm trying to do the same, but struggle to build an audience. 🥺

Thank you in advance, if you answer this!

Unfortunately there is no sure fire trick i know of for audience building. 'relatable' comics tend to get more eyes and traction but generally don't make you money. I also didn't start making comics thinking it would be my full-time job. I was working full time at a kid lit job that paid me 17 an hour and then I would come home and make comics for fun.

I genuinely just got really lucky that people found and liked my work and told me to post it on Webtoon. I think the most important thing is to just be working on something because you love it. Also your workload should always be something that you can do in your worst headspace. I make very little money from just posting 'My Dragon Gf' to webtoon and tapas. Almost all of my income comes from Patreon supporters, going and selling physical media at conventions, digital PDFs, Etc. Many hats are worn and I also am fully prepared to just start working a trade job or pick up part time work if I'm not making enough from those avenues. Whatever I need to do to be able to afford to keep making comics because I love it even if it's not my full time job.

quotes from alex turner's favourite authors that make me want to put my face through a wall:

"although i have never been an actor in the strict sense of the word, i have nevertheless, in real life, always carried about with me a small folding theatre" - vladimir nabokov, despair

"there is a terrible emptiness in me, an indifference that hurts," - albert camus

"there is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself" - raymond chandler

"at eight, he had once told his mother that he wanted to paint air" - vladimir nabokov

"no man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self-knowledge" - joseph conrad

"everything i've ever let go of has claw marks on it" - david foster wallace

"we're all lonely for something we don't know we're lonely for. how else to explain the curious feeling that goes around feeling like missing somebody we've never even met?" - david foster wallace

"i turn over a new leaf every day, but the blots show through" - keith waterhouse

"the truth will set you free. but not until it's finished with you" - david foster wallace

"curiosity is insubordination in its purest form" - vladimir nabokov

"i'm me and nobody else; and whatever people think i am or say i am, that's what i'm not, because they don't know a bloody thing about me" - alan sillitoe

"we live as we dream; alone” - joseph conrad

"i liked, as i like still, to make words look self-conscious and foolish, to bind them by mock marriage of a pun, to turn them inside out, to come upon them unwares" - vladimir nabokov, despair

"whatever you get paid attention to for is never what you think is most important about yourself" - david foster wallace

"i continued to stir my tea long after it had done all it could with the milk” - vladimir nabokov, despair

"i remained too much inside my head and ended up losing my mind" - edgar allan poe

"all the information i have about myself is from forged documents" - vladimir nabokov, despair

"how odd i can have all this inside me and to you its just words" - david foster wallace

"you will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. you will never live if you're looking for the meaning of life" - albert camus

love it when a character that's hard to read intuitively for you has like a dedicated fandom interpreter who can just glance at their blank face in a panel and then give you a 3k word essay on their innermost thoughts & desires & fears and neatly tie it back into the themes & whatnot as if it's the most obvious thing in the world

actually i do have something to say about this chapter and it's quite critical of it but also i'm tired tonight and i've been talking about it long and hard on discord already and putting it all together in a coherent post feels like too much of a task tonight. all i'm gonna say is that part 2 was very obviously going in a certain direction from the start, and i loved that direction, and to an extent it is still going in that direction but now very obviously missing a huge chunk of what stirred it in that direction. and i'm hesitant to simply say it's fujimoto that's dropped the ball on this (though it might the idealization, who's to say) because from the actual shape of the writing + slump in paneling/art + recent bitter interview by fujimoto + japanese audience is apparently vocally not a fan of asa + my own cursed knowledge of shounen jump and shueisha editors and how they react to a fall in sales = i think the lack of focus on asa has really hurt the themes of part 2 when she was an integral part of it + i think this wasn't entirely fujimoto's doing and it's very likely because she is apparently strongly disliked in japan and there's good reason to believe that fujimoto was told to not focus on her nearly as much bc sales slump and people complain as soon as she shows up. which sucks. becaue what made part 2 work as well as it did was the synergy and parallel between the two protagonists' paths, and the absence of asa's path in the past few months (both in universe and by real time in the comic) feels like a genuine writing and thematic and emotional hole in the comic that to me shows that she WAS supposed to be there. fujimoto had fully intended to write her in there bc there's a hole in the shape of her where she is very obviously supposed to fit. it isn't simply a question of "author forgets his female character" it's a question of "this crucial part of the manga is missing and the author is painfully aware of it and bitter about it too"

...

John Davis Chandler, Jack Palance & Alain Delon Once A Thief Dir: Ralph Nelson

I love the approach to alien cultures in the chibnall era, I feel like we're always finding out so much about alien worlds and what things are like there. Both in more serious ways, like Angstrom talking about her planet being cleansed, and in more fun ways, like Yoss thinking the idea of people giving birth to either gender weird

tired of people thinking i have a “talent” with kids. getting along with children doesn’t require any special ability. it’s as easy as being understanding and patient. if you just stop and open your adult brain you might discover kids have very important and smart things to say

Do you think Jodio might find Wonder of U horrifying on a deeply personal level? Since it can essentially subvert and manipulate your "mechanism" to benefit it's wielder Jodio might be very bothered in a philosophical way?

Ooooh, I haven't quite reached the Wonder of U arc yet but I do have a basic idea of what it does and this is interesting. Tbh I don't have a good grasp of the Mechanism thing yet outside of it seemingly being like your fate? I'm admittedly waiting for it to be explained more before I speculate on it too much BUT I definitely think it will tie into a lot of Jojolion's themes.

This ask has also made me consider the possibility of the main villain stand tying into the Mechanism. I don't know exactly how that would work BUT if this idea turns out to happen, we might just see Jodio's struggle with this concept. I really hope we see Jodio's philosophy and psychology challenged and explored in The Jojolands, and this would be a great way of doing it.

Okay I just have to say, I was SO impressed by the aesthetics of WAD. Dan said he paid so much money for the lights, and you know what? Worth it. The circular light concept looked so cool even just as a light, and then having it also be a screen to project images and a pseudo phone screen that Dan scrolled on, like it was SO COOL. And I am with Phil, the cubes falling effect is absolutely one of the coolest parts of the show, I love Dan and his theatre kid roots. The black jumpsuit was also such a serve, and the moment of him pulling it down and then having the orange tank top, even with the audience heckling him, was SO GOOD. Like I know I’m not saying anything revolutionary here, but just needed a moment of appreciation for the aesthetics of WAD, because all these design choices totally paid off and the show looks AMAZING, even though it means Dan has to suffer through four ad reads a week for the next couple months to pay for it all.

"every gambler has a tell, modesty was gambit's"

THIS SHOW DID NOT HAVE TO GO SO FUCKING HARD OH MY GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOODDDDDDDDDD

Taken from their Homes and Raised...

Jane Fairfax (Emma) and Fanny Price (Mansfield Park) have a ton in common:They are both taken from their poverty-stricken childhood home at a young age (8 and 9/10) and are raised in a much wealthier home to share in the education of the daughters living there.They both return home after a long time away and have difficulty when they do.

Notably, both of them can't eat the food. Miss Bates talks about how Jane never eats except for a special food, baked apples, not made in the house. Fanny also cannot eat the food cooked in the house and sends her brothers out for buns and biscuits.

Fanny, we know, is oppressed by the noise at her home in Portsmouth and there are hints from Mrs. Weston and Mr. Knightley that Jane goes to see Mrs. Elton to get away from the constant talking of Miss Bates. So they are probably both hurt by how loud their homes are.They are also both very reserved and except for Jane's forced friendship with Mrs. Elton and Fanny's friendship with her sister Susan, neither attempts to reconnect with the people who live in their childhood home. Fanny, we know, finds everyone vulgar. It's never completely clear why Jane acts the way she does. Jane is hiding a secret, but it sounds like her and Emma have never clicked in the past either.

The big difference between them being how the Campbells actually love and support Jane. Jane ends up being highly accomplished and Fanny gains very little from her haphazard education. It makes me wonder what Fanny could have been if the Bertrams actually took care of her properly. Or maybe Jane was just more driven.

Importantly, even though Jane was raised with love, she knows her station and doesn’t expect the Campbells to do anything more for her. Almost like all of Sir Thomas’s distinction of rank and Mrs. Norris’s cruelty wasn’t required. They could have just treated Fanny well? Maybe? Please!

How does gmmtv determine which actor gets which role - do they hold auditions? Or do they just offer roles to people and ask if they accept/ decline?

that's an interesting question but I have no idea lmao.

I've heard of multiple cases where a director or producer recommends or even requests specific actors that are signed with gmmtv to be in their show but other than that I think they hold normal auditions. For gmmtv-artists that's probably up to their management, who probably have internal connections etc. but for non-gmmtv artists it's probably regular auditions.

xxx

thinking about neil recording demos a couple months before he met chris

After graduating, the Master was involved in "field work" studying historical interplay and temporal structures. However, he was reprimanded for various minor breaches of the non-interference policy. (PROSE: CIA File Extracts) Still maintaining a "friend[ship] of sorts", the Master and the Doctor were pioneers and inventors among their people, (AUDIO: The Destination Wars) agreeing that Gallifrey should be more interventionist, although the Master's theories in this regard seemed excessive even to the Doctor. (PROSE: CIA File Extracts)

thinking about the master’s early years

real talk i think anyone who wants to understand greg and specifically have a grip on his personal brand of gay repression should read john rechy's City Of Night