Well I had planned on getting in touch with some artists over the weekend and get some plans set in motion for new stuff I wanted to see. Naturally this would take time but instead of just being a case of "Alright, who isn't grossed out or annoyed by these topics..." it became me just removing a bunch of artists from my watch lists for multiple reasons.

Some busted out the tried and true "Only people who follow me on patreon get a real shot at commissions" while other just mocked this site while slobbering all over FA. Predictable really. Disappointing but, yeah, predictable. Then there was the other classic: "I don't do works with trademarked or copywritten characters...despite my gallery being full of them." Honestly, I'm getting to the point where this community is starting to annoy me again.

It was all cute when artists were everywhere and prices seemed constant but now we've hit the point where this furry supernova is about to collapse in on itself. There are people charging $125 BASE for colored digital work now, did you know that? Sure, it's shaded, but come on, don't BS me like this. Did every three out of four artists just leave and now we're stuck paying insane per piece prices? Or did they just go to Patreon to milk people that way?

Oh and, before anyone starts, let's be clear here: Most artists who use Patreon don't do it correctly if they want to keep a fan base. Some go the route that makes sense to me, that being the people who contribute get to see the work first while others have to wait a set amount of time. I get that, makes perfect sense really. But then there are the people who post little, teeny, tiny thumbnails of what could be a foot or a face or something and then just link to their patreon page.

Not sure how many times this has to be said but if I like you're work, I'M GOING TO TRY AND COMMISSION YOU. You posting a clipped, horrendous quality icon isn't going to make me follow you...in fact it caused just the opposite by leading me to remove most of the people I used to follow on various sites. If you don't give me the option to give you an idea and then, you know, pay you to do it, why should I bother? Just to have you lock it away from me so your backers can see it before me? Is it really that hard to just open for normal commissions anymore?

Oh and, on a related note: If you have a patreon that you claim to be doing well on, that locks all the content away like some kind of JPEG hostage of course, feel free to take that "I'm broke" guilt trip nonsense in your journals and shove it. I ain't buying it.

So what does this mean for me? Honestly? Not much. I tried to get some non XXX stuff done featuring characters from games that have released recently but instead found a pay wall so high it threatened to pull into itself like a neutron star. So, instead, I'm just going to bank my cash and once again get nice and passive with the community.

To people who just started following me, I'm sorry that you won't be seeing anything for a while. For artists, well, who am I kidding? You're either not open, too expensive, locking your content behind absurd pricing structures or some combination of all these.

Oh and Happy Valentine's Day everyone! Hope you all enjoy your ill gotten candy.

P.S. In case it wasn't obvious, I'm being facetious and referring to your borderline black mailed cash as "candy." I was going to let that hang there but people seem to not be able to tell when I'm saying these kind of things. Ah, the internet and it's lack of intent..

P.P.S. To anyone who actually treats their fanbase right and to just overall cool people going about their day to day: Have an actually happy Valentine's Day!