shivana ➡️ now at @heyshivana @toastasaurus Twitter profile

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shivana ➡️ now at @heyshivana

8 months

Hi! I’m Shivana. All my art and Patreon updates on here and Instagram are moving to @heyshivana and I won’t be interacting on this account. Head to for all the 🔗

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shivana ➡️ now at @heyshivana

@toastasaurus

8 months

ok not to add to the dogpile here but i'm 40 and queer and i wanted to point out something specific. for background, yuri (百合) as a genre term comes from the first use of yurizoku (百合族; "lily tribe") from a gay men's magazine in the 70s to describe the lesbian community.

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@toastasaurus

4 years

things i would like to see return in full force instead of instagram etc: - rise of person blogs - webrings - links pages to recommend all your friends’ art - oekaki boards - online illustrated novels

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@toastasaurus

3 years

there already is a clear and legal path towards selling digital art. it's called selling digital art. nfts aren't selling art, they're selling hyperlinks to digital art that rely on someone's server to store. it doesn't protect copyright at all.

Comic Book Legal Defense Fund

@CBLDF

3 years

This open letter @mikedeodato underscores the constructive potential of the NFT moment - it's an opportunity to provide a clear and legal path forward for selling original digital art + commissions.

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@toastasaurus

2 years

all comics festivals should ban N/FTs. all of them. there is already no safeguard for artists against online theft with intent to mint. to invite them into your space is exposing your vendors to this outsized threat of theft, far beyond reasonable, normal public risk.

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@toastasaurus

2 years

the arrival creature is friend shaped and friend sized and my friend

moonie madness

@alakazammit

2 years

reading a graphic novel for class and I would die for this thing

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@toastasaurus

2 years

i think best practices, for reviewing or mentioning graphic novels by a writer and artist team, is to say "by ____ and ____". not "by ___ and illustrated by ____". drawing comics involves a level of craft and interpretation that is essential to the narrative. it's cowriting.

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@toastasaurus

2 years

the best attitude to have regarding your art is one of curiosity for the world around you, an ongoing drive to see what keeps you impassioned and engaged, and an understanding that your actually competition is with yourself from yesterday—not your peers.

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@toastasaurus

1 year

not to be a dick on a personal level but i would like to hear from these specific people why they felt a work, from a white man, so obviously dehumanizing brown people, was worth considering for an eisner

chris kindred

@itskindred

1 year

I need to see what the nomination committee looks like quickly

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@toastasaurus

4 years

once again, as it's on my mind, you can't just hire your way into workplace diversity. you can't welcome marginalized employees w/o addressing retention. if your workplace is not making it comfortable to stay, hiring alone is useless.

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@toastasaurus

1 year

i think, as a whole, every comics artist should be as loud as possible about the physical and emotional damage working in exploitative capitalist conditions has caused us. we should all be loud at once. they fucking need us, i promise you. it won't blacklist you

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@toastasaurus

8 months

i just think that to value art is to value humanity. they cannot be separated. to truly respect what art means to us all is to look inwards and ask yourself what it means to be part of humanity; what does it really mean to be human. AI “art” is to fear this.

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@toastasaurus

8 months

but specifically: framing yuri/GL as fetishistic/voyeur porn for men is the same misogyny that frames BL as women fetishizing gay men. it's about stripping sexual agency from queer women (including trans women!) and centering their work around their relationship to men

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@toastasaurus

2 years

this take is broke "the honor" honor does not pay bills

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@toastasaurus

7 months

confirming what others have been saying. the GN boom initally happened because they began to perform wildly in the kids’ section, which lead to publishers persuing middle grade (10-12) pitches that demonstrably sold well. they leaned in. 🧵

Beany Tuesday

@beanytuesday

7 months

Someone needs to write a research paper about how the entire medium of comics is basically emotionally stunted compared to e.g. film or literature-- except when it comes to the memoir genre, which so consistently produces impactful, fantastic stuff.

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@toastasaurus

1 year

this is both incredibly unhelpful and this was started AS AN ACT OF MOURNING for a community friend who was mowed under by an industry who did not love him back. many of us DID leave. many of us sacrifice to keep making comics. THAT'S THE FUCKING PROBLEM.

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@toastasaurus

1 year

Kendra

@kendrawcandraw

1 year

Wild to see my old college department chair who vocally and obviously despised comics, considered them "low art" and made comics student's lives complete hell for decades get Eisner nominated four times over for his first graphic novel. Oh, sorry, "graphic opera".

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@toastasaurus

1 year

1. mowgli and the jungle book were a creation of a white man, kipling, regurgitating indian culture thru a colonialist lens so you're already starting off racist by not interrogating that

The Beat

@comicsbeat

1 year

Fantagraphics and Thomas Woodruff respond to the FRANCIS ROTHBART! Eisner controversy

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@toastasaurus

2 years

you want people to risk their health for your show but feature a cry/pto guest? when indie comics has been clanging the alarm bell about these grifters since day one? am i high?

TCAF The Toronto Comic Arts Festival

@TorontoComics

2 years

#TCAF welcomes PINK CAT @pinkcatdaily as a featured guest for 2022! Read her bio here: (4/7)

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@toastasaurus

4 years

not singling anyone out here, but there's been a ton of cover reveals with no mention of: - illustrator - designer you CAN ask your publisher who they are! tag them! the arts part of publishing is woefully undervalued and glossing over these credits emphasizes that.

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@toastasaurus

2 years

this one's at my home stop and it irritates me every time. between this one and the "watch the story before it streams" one, i dislike that it glosses over endemic issues at hand: undervaluation of comics artists' labor, breakneck scheduling, and exploitation of comics as show IP

🌸 KenneDuck 🌸 🔜 Anime Magic!

@KenneDuck

2 years

“Side-hustle” my ASS.

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@toastasaurus

2 years

everyone should draw. stop being fearful and just try it. connect with the deepest most human instinct we have to communicate with each other, grab a stick, and scribble into the ground. make a mark that no one else has made before. live.

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@toastasaurus

8 months

it really infuriates me when a lot of formative, groundbreaking queer work is dismissed by white western queer communities is hand-waved away as fetishistic with no critical thought as to where this rhetoric came from and is reinforced by white hegemony

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@toastasaurus

2 years

in honor of the whole art, ownership, and theft discourse (and because i have no intentions of reprinting), i've decided to post the entirety of Write Write Kill as a thread 🍽️ please enjoy

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@toastasaurus

11 months

in 2019, i worked on a book by jon j muth. afterwards, he sent me this email. i thanked him, but through the years i would reread it any time i felt like giving up on comics.

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@toastasaurus

3 years

if you are an AD or in a hiring position today and even think about dropping into the inbox of a black creator for work i want you to do two things 1. leave them alone 2. ask yourself why you only thought of them in times of brutality

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@toastasaurus

2 years

1. Pay comic artists more. Where is that money going, because it certainly isn't to us and making a living wage from our books is rare. 2. It's time for adult comic imprints at major publishing houses. You are staring an opportunity in the face.

Comichron.com

@comichron

2 years

The 2021 Comichron/ICv2 report is out — and it's a blockbuster. Comics and graphic novel sales rose 62% to $2.075 billion; up 70% vs 2019. All formats grew. The industry's biggest year ever in dollar terms, even adjusted for inflation. Read the report:

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@toastasaurus

4 years

we as a people have progressed past the need for aja romano

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@toastasaurus

1 year

you know what, fuck it time to trend #ComicsBrokeMe what happened to you in comics, esp if you left it?

shivana ➡️ now at @heyshivana

@toastasaurus

1 year

it has taken me over three years to work on my GN because i had a 7k advance (for over 120 pages of full color art AND lettering) and that meant i had to pick up not only a demanding day job (that started at 45k in fucking NYC) but also freelance. i had to prioritize money

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@toastasaurus

1 year

......different flavors of white people are still all white people, eisners. are you not embarrassed

Popverse @ Rose City Comic Con

@PopverseSays

1 year

Thomas Woodruff and the Eisner Awards controversy, from the point-of-view of an Eisner Awards insider.

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@toastasaurus

2 years

also: really? REALLY? (second tank girl art by @blitzcadet )

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@toastasaurus

8 months

with BL, it works by dismissing exploration of gender roles and sex from creators/readership as appropriation of male-centric queer culture. with GL, it works by dismissing this same exploration by creators/readership as male-centric straight culture

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@toastasaurus

2 years

ok but now we're looking at something supplementing "fake tribalism", visuals divorced from cultural context, use of already existing art (again) without crediting. people can synthesize their visual environment, that's what art is.

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@toastasaurus

1 year

we do artists so fucking dirty. i grieve it every day, along with the ppl we lose to overwork. comics is a beautiful, complicated medium and fair compensation for the people who make them is treated like inconvenience.

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@toastasaurus

8 months

i GET why we want to be defensive/protective of the "purity" of queer work but that's the thing. queerness is complex, personal––and queer theory is global. please, i'm begging you, kill the cop in your own head.

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@toastasaurus

1 year

who is she

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@toastasaurus

9 months

a "pause" is cruel. free palestine, now and forever.

Barra Ó Maoileoin

@malonebarry

9 months

My heart breaks. This CNN report is very difficult to watch. But we should watch. Because these are the stories that need to be told.

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@toastasaurus

2 years

To compare, I usually get 2k-4k (before taxes) for cover illustrations alone. As a designer, I receive ~70k annually. It's specialized work. While not everyone is going to be working with an expansive budget, these sites facilitate massive levels of exploitation.

Aimée | hispanic! at the disco

@hihereami

2 years

you can't possibly be serious

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@toastasaurus

8 months

either way, queer women are removed from the conversation as agents in their own sexuality, which in itself is couched in orientalism (esp. asian women being seen as hypersexual within the bounds of someone else's fantasies)

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@toastasaurus

1 year

every day i dream of where my career could be if i didn't have to scramble for work for over a decade 🥲 imagine caring about artists

ellory smith

@ellorysmith

1 year

Larry David wrote Seinfeld while living in subsidized housing for artists. We used to do things just like this. Grants for artists, public funds for them to live and work.

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@toastasaurus

8 months

and sidenote as someone who was in the fucking TRENCHES since the 90s, the majority of GL creators/fans in japan do not have the same hangups as some of y'all and are allowing themselves to be messy and human. please get good.

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@toastasaurus

3 years

mods asleep post faerie cat

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@toastasaurus

8 months

Tofugu has a nice informative 101 write-up here:

What is Yuri? Queer Women Content in Japanese Media

Wondering where the queer women are in Japanese media? Here's a brief history of yuri (wlw) content, as well as some gay recommendations.

www.tofugu.com

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@toastasaurus

1 year

you don't get to hide behind your queerness when perpetuating the same tired racist white colonialist bullshit of your forefathers. and you don't get to tie informed outrage from poc into book banning—OUR books are getting banned bc of baked-in white supremacy

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@toastasaurus

1 year

it has taken me over three years to work on my GN because i had a 7k advance (for over 120 pages of full color art AND lettering) and that meant i had to pick up not only a demanding day job (that started at 45k in fucking NYC) but also freelance. i had to prioritize money

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@toastasaurus

8 months

this is not even to touch upon the fact that a significant amount of BL/GL consumers don't identify as women, which is ALSO misogyny of refusing to acknowledge AFAB participants of a wide queer spectrum. @SamAburime has a ton of good resources on this point as a BL academic

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@toastasaurus

2 years

#HappyPride 💖💜💙🏳️‍🌈 if you have a queer crush on me you gotta tell me now, them’s the pride rules

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@toastasaurus

3 years

this really is both a love letter and an elegy, all in one. it's so much. please read it, especially if you make comics.

Shonen Jump

@shonenjump

3 years

Look Back, Special One-Shot: A huge 140+ page one-shot from Tatsuki Fujimoto, the creator of Chainsaw Man! When two students aspire to become manga artists, the paths they choose change their lives forever. Read it FREE from the official source!

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@toastasaurus

2 years

google maps was not generating maps based on stolen, complete artwork. artists have always encouraged others to draw. hell, i literally teach art. the problem here is theft, and “disruption” of an industry that never needed it and was already suffering from devaluation.

rohit

@krishnanrohit

2 years

This has made me bullish on this entire industry being disrupted. If these are the most important skills for a children's book, this reminds me of when people mocked Google maps when it came out for being inaccurate occasionally.

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@toastasaurus

10 months

the people who will be exported (EXPORTED!!) are most likely going to be the underclass—dalits and other ethnic minorities that m*di's ultraconservative government will be happy to rid themselves of

South Asia Index

@SouthAsiaIndex

10 months

Just IN:— India to export more than 100,000 workers to Israel to replace Palestinians workers amid Gaza war. — Israel has cancelled work permits of more than 90K Palestinian workers and will replace them with cheap Indian labour.

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@toastasaurus

1 year

heidi. there's fucking money in the banana stand.

Heidi MacDonald

@Comixace

1 year

I'm saddened by the low page rates and advances that people are quoting, but it isn't free to run a publisher or any other kind of company! What I hope the #ComicsBrokeMe conversation brings up is concrete ways to improve sales, call out bad actors and set norms for rates.

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@toastasaurus

1 year

it is not worth your life. never keep your head down and accept a pittance then destroy your wellbeing to earn it. better you work on your own for yourself as a hobbyist than accept punishing schedules for fucking nothing

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@toastasaurus

2 years

once again, i'm not fearful that AI and AI proponents are coming for my life's work––as a comic this is barely functional if that––but that the convergence of ongoing art illiteracy + capitalism means this will become yet another avenue of exploitation.

Alex MacCaw

@maccaw

2 years

A comic book.

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@toastasaurus

4 years

i am the last person to dismiss fandoms/transformative fiction but at some point we gotta address how many white participants managed to leverage influence in those spheres for professional platforms and leave behind YEARS of racism and bad behavior.

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@toastasaurus

3 years

i’ve been super sleepy and only belated realized i could do zoloft-colored spot for #hourlycomicday but better late than never right #HourlyComicsDay2022 part one:

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@toastasaurus

1 year

not even touching the idea that a panel awarding comics would have 1. zero poc and 2. ZERO ARTISTS.... why was this book considered??

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@toastasaurus

1 year

2. views of the "mystical savage" are already gendered and shunted into the feminine, as white hegemony views brown men as less than white men—it's the same tired racism flavored misogyny from day one

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@toastasaurus

1 year

3. being called a slur is not the same as being rightfully critiqued for both your derivative imperialist work and your destruction/gatekeeping of young marginalized students in your care paying you MANY MONEY for your instruction

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@toastasaurus

1 year

@kendrawcandraw when will we stop rewarding white men for their deranged fetishizing, the opera

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@toastasaurus

1 year

i think it's hilarious to see this take from people who think it's a skill issue. yeah capitalism sucks in every job. but this is the corner of capitalism a lot of us live in and we need to air out dirty laundry before things change. should we just roll tf over?? what the hell

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@toastasaurus

1 year

i don't have much to say about ian's passing as only a casual acquaitence but please: get rest. the grind is not worth it, dying for people who don't give a shit about you as long as your comics nab them profit is not worth it.

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@toastasaurus

1 year

4. this is the oldest shit i have seen SO MANY TIMES from cis white gay men. white gay push for assimilation into mainstream het society > they're no longer a cool outsider > they resort to racism for shock value to reclaim that queer cultural outsider cache.

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@toastasaurus

3 years

It absolutely disgusts me that their solution to the actual problem (wage inequity and devaluation for artists) is by creating more, larger problems (artificial scarcity, environmental damage, siphoning funds away from working artists via fake picrew)

Insider Tech Business

@insidertechbiz

3 years

The creators feel humbled by the collection's success. Before, the idea of being a digital artist while having enough money to pay the bills felt out-of-reach. Now, it’s on the horizon.

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@toastasaurus

1 year

these rates have not gone up in many years, long outstripped by inflation. we don't have public healthcare. we're in debt or going into it to finish work. comics success should not hinge on the physical destruction of your body and mind. i don't want to lose any more of us.

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@toastasaurus

1 year

and while i'm at it the artists and voices we lost during the AIDS epidemic would think you're a piece of shit. get the fuck off their graves.

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@toastasaurus

1 year

i would REALLY love to hear from THESE SPECIFIC PEOPLE why a work so blatantly making pageantry out of indigenous visual markers and culture was even considered

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@toastasaurus

1 year

they don't know. i'm telling you they really have no fucking idea. i've had to explain the recovery time from PERMANENT NERVE DAMAGE multiple times. if we're all being loud about this at once it makes it so much harder to ignore. we owe it to the people we lose.

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@toastasaurus

3 years

i know it's probably obvious but for new followers: i will not, in any way, be involved with NF/Ts. it's a hard no. unfollow or block as you wish.

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@toastasaurus

1 year

i cannot express enough how hungry and desperate publishing is for comic artists. it's a big industry and so few of us are at a professional level by sheer dint of resources. we all should be blunt about what this labor does to us for how little it pays

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@toastasaurus

10 months

this is exactly what the british did in my family's country, trinidad, when black slaves were emancipated and they needed cheap labor to fill the colonial coffers. this is colonizer behavior

Censored Men

@CensoredMen

10 months

🇮🇳🇮🇱 Israel is looking to import between 50,000-100,000 Indians to do jobs that were once done by Palestinians.

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@toastasaurus

1 year

lost my job today, so uh. if you'd like a comic this is a great time to get one. i will also be overhauling my patreon with new stuff, so keep an eye on 🍀

creating is creating indie journal comics!

www.patreon.com

shivana ➡️ now at @heyshivana

@toastasaurus

1 year

Hello! My little 42 page comic collection PDF is now up ⭐️ Help me make up a budget gap before SPX 🥲 Get great comics in return! Ko-fi: Itchio: Please RT and share so the algo doesn't murder me!!

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@toastasaurus

2 years

(also a reminder once again, if a book has a writer and an artist and you don't tag the artist, you haven't fully credited the book.)

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@toastasaurus

4 years

DECENTRALIZE COOL SHIT TAKE IT ALL BACK

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@toastasaurus

2 years

there's still time to apologize and say you got got.

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@toastasaurus

2 years

nothing makes me happy like inking hair

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@toastasaurus

4 years

Your designers, later, in pain and wondering whether that stray dot is on Layer 150, Layer 27, Layer "colorb", Layer "asdk"––

• 🐾Southpauz 🐾 •

@SouthpauzArt

4 years

@ artists drawing with 200+ layers

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@toastasaurus

1 year

supremely fucking stupid. fully embarrassing response from both thomas AND fantagraphics. if the man was cooked into a pie i would not shed a tear.

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@toastasaurus

4 years

ESPECIALLY the links pages?? the amount of artists i found in the 90s-to-early aughts by link surfing everyone’s recs: innumerable

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@toastasaurus

2 years

simping for a billion-dollar franchise is fucking embarrassing, you are paying for rights IN PERPETUITY that is fucking money and they know it you smooth-brained idiots you smell BROKE bitch!!!

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@toastasaurus

1 year

i didn't prioritize my health. i never saw my friends, i never saw family. i could only grind away bc i am a brown queer who has been fucking broke and that desperation to not go back to skipping meals to pay rent still haunts me

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@toastasaurus

1 year

important thread from chris i have been tracking the tag (i just want to bear witness and not be alone in this!) and a lot of the chatter about how cool comics are and posting neat panels started with bad c/gate actors who wish to derail a convo about labor exploitation

chris kindred

@itskindred

1 year

I'm seeing comics and tweets in #ComicsBrokeMe talking about why comics are Good and Cool, why they do it, why the job is awesome. That's cool, but look. That's not the point. Never was. #ComicsBrokeMe is explicitly about the physical toll working in this medium has on the body.

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@toastasaurus

1 year

again, i'm privileged. i have health insurance and enough to pay bills ok. my writer and agent are supportive and want to help me get better pay. but for every one of me there are countless others being trod under. we owe it to each other to stay loud about this

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@toastasaurus

1 year

so i am here now with wildly exacerbated PMDD, PCOS, and a panic disorder. for 7k. paid out in piecemeal. working in publishing and watching my cartoonist peers get ripped off from both sides. burning out while trying so hard to make it Better

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@toastasaurus

7 months

keep in mind that until very recently (and honestly even now to a great extent), traditional publishing does not understand why manga sells with adults. they barely understand manga as phenomenon in general. most houses use editors that transitioned from prose

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@toastasaurus

2 years

i think a lot about the licensed five nights at freddy's comic being a breakout hit on the regular and everyone scratching their heads wondering why kids love horror, man, did we learn nothing from goosebumps, are you scared of the dark, scary stories to tell in the dark, etc

Cathy G. Johnson🏴‍☠️

@cathygjohn

2 years

Reading a new horror teen prose book from a major publisher and feeling very jealous they get to do all sorts of bloody stuff, haha yesterday I asked a teen what graphic novels she liked and she says "all the new ones are for little kids" and I could not argue with that lol

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@toastasaurus

7 months

what this means for comic artists: there is a glut of very talented, VERY capable and thoughtful cartoonists who have little choice but to skew towards K-12 with their work in order for it to get picked up at all. you’re stuck between paying your bills or making what you want.

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@toastasaurus

1 year

if i wind up in the grave early bc the stress killed me you have my permission to riot. no funeral. throw bricks.

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@toastasaurus

3 years

i also think we have to have a reckoning about wanting, a year into a pandemic, to maintain a pace of work that was unfeasible even before coronavirus.

🐰 gale galligan 🐰

@robochai

3 years

I do think it’s useful for established cartoonists to model healthy practices and help upcoming creators avoid burnout. Buuuuuut I think we also have to be very vocal about the external causes of that burnout and stand up for upcoming creators there as well.

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@toastasaurus

7 months

to maximize profits, they scooped up all kid-directed books/series/franchises instead of pushing further in a direction they did not know how to market––adult comics. the money was already in the banana stand for kids’ books, so to speak.

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@toastasaurus

3 years

and it does all this at extremely high environmental cost PER TRANSACTION, which is something i keep seeing y'all skirt. my use of the internet is not w/o energy cost but even my annual use is not the consumption of a country for every commission.

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@toastasaurus

1 year

this should've been between you and your therapist, chief

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@toastasaurus

4 years

and yes. i read it. and no. i will not be critically engaging in it, the same way i will not critically engage with a large screaming bird outside my window

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@toastasaurus

11 months

do one thing that gives hope: call your reps for a ceasefire. check for local protests to join. check in on palestinian friends, help with little tasks that may seem impossible right now like cooking or cleaning. support your jewish friends speaking out against atrocity.

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@toastasaurus

2 years

my worry is not that this is good. it's that it is Good Enough for people with zero visual literacy, no investment in the craft, no understanding of the medium, and no interest in fairly paying actual comic artists for quality work.

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@toastasaurus

2 years

we can't use it to our advantage because it was made to replace the artist. AI art generators can be fun but ultimately are created out of a capitalist drive to replace workers and cut corners for profit.

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@toastasaurus

7 months

so they are not particularly comics literate, and very often not ADULT comics literate. (shout out to some of the few editors who actually consume this media!) as such, they both do not know how to market it AND do not have interest in adult comics.

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@toastasaurus

1 year

Hello! My little 42 page comic collection PDF is now up ⭐️ Help me make up a budget gap before SPX 🥲 Get great comics in return! Ko-fi: Itchio: Please RT and share so the algo doesn't murder me!!

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@toastasaurus

4 years

@JamesJeanArt @sterlingcrispin it is maddening to me that you can compare the energy expenditure on a *personal scale* to that of *entire industries* and not break your neck from the cognitive whiplash. it's not cool and normal to have to scale up to justify this crap. say you like money and go.

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@toastasaurus

2 years

this is in addition to steep environmental cost, a burden globally born primarily by marginalized people. if you are in the business of supporting indie cartoonists you cannot support N/FTs without being in opposition to our community welfare.

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@toastasaurus

4 years

a cultural correspondent! of what! of WHAT culture! you're telling me Vox couldn't find actual SEA journalists and creatives to discuss this? we had to hire someone legendarily incapable of research or responsibility?? WOW.

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@toastasaurus

1 year

skill issue. my fucking ass.

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