Regardless of how much or how little a freelance artist decides to set their commission prices at, they are in every right to do that.
If you feel an artist is charging too little for a commission, tip them!
If you feel an artist is charging too much, they’re not, but they’re out of your price range and you should not be spending money on luxury goods you cannot afford in the first place.
Every artist should be charging more for their work – but they do not for any number of personal, professional or financial reasons. That’s their individual decision – if they are comfortable bumping their price they will, in the interim, encourage tipping/them accepting tips.
There are also more and more artists that are beginning to charge more for their work, and they should – it’s a highly-valued luxury good. That is their individual decision – if you can’t afford it, that’s your problem, not the artist’s. They are charging according to a variety of wage standards, time, labor, media, tools and etc. to formulate their prices.
Art is a luxury good that requires specific specialized skill sets and prices set around hours creating unique custom digital or physical goods with expensive programs, devices, tools or mediums, tailored to client specifications. You are not entitled to cheaper prices and artists are not entitled to increase or decrease their rates at the whim of others.
If you do not want to pay for a luxury good, you are going to have to learn and invest in how to create it yourself instead.
As a side note, I can’t stress the tipping enough. A lot of artists won’t raise their prices for any number of personal, professional or financial reasons and that’s their business, so instead of telling them over and over to raise their prices, buy at the price you think is too low and then just tip them for their work.
bless the fandom and the fic authors who turn the minor/underdeveloped/just there for the plot/just a romantic interest female characters and turning them into complex, utterly human, and badass queens we know they deserve to be
A long time ago an anon asked my thoughts about drawing backgrounds, so I finally got around to putting this together. It’s more prop-centric, but it still represents my philosophy to backgrounds.
I’ll try to do something more about drawing actual background spaces in the future! Please let me know what you think, if anything is unclear, or if you have suggestions for other tutorials you might find helpful!
so I found this thing, and now I am 100% sure of my orientation, for the first time since I was aware that sexual orientation was a thing (early high school), and it’s a bigger relief than I thought it would be. I didn’t realize just how subtly stressful it is to not be sure of something so fundamental to our society’s concept of identity until I was. I’m asexual, y’all.
I see a lot of people (not so much on tumblr, but on reddit and real life) complain about the Really Specific sexual identity labels, saying shit like “wow now they’re just making it up” and “ahhaha stupid tumblerina sjw’s” etc. What I’d like to say to those people, if I could, is that people aren’t making up new sexual orientations (or genders, or what have you), people are just coming up with more specific terms to describe more specific portions of the human experience.
We’re experiencing somewhat of a renaissance in terms of sexual and gender identity liberation, and therefor we’re thinking a lot more about our experiences, and we are more able than ever before to seek out people with experiences similar to our own. It’s only natural that people would come up with more specific terms as we talk about this kind of stuff more.
People always create new terms when they start having conversations about stuff that people haven’t talked about before. Aristotle, Plato and Cicero dedicated chunks of their work to defining terms that we today consider to be the basic vocabulary of philosophical discussion. Terms are basically a shortcut to meaning. Just as a philosopher finds it useful to have a generally understood definition of ‘virtue’, people who talk about sexual and gender identity find it useful to have specific terms for concepts in their areas, as well.
A hundred years ago, everyone in the LGBT+ community would probably just say they were ‘queer’. Then the community specifically developed terms for trans, lesbian, and gay, because they found it useful to distinguish those meanings, even though they all fell under ‘queer’ (as it was understood at the time- I’m not saying you have to ID as queer if you’re in LGT, just pointing out historical use). People in the community saying “well, my experience is similar to yours, but different in these ways” and others going “me too, i’m different in those same ways” leads to more specific terms, like bisexual and asexual, and a whole bunch of more specific terms under asexuality.
Labels are useful because they tell you that you aren’t the only one, and there’s nothing “wrong” with you. When I read about autochorissexuality, it was a relief, because it meant that other people experienced the same things that I do. I can use that label to find other people like me. My first thought upon seeing the image above was a mix of “oh it’s me” and “THANK GOD it’s not just me”.
Now, I probably won’t go around telling people that I’m autochorrissexual. Because most people will have no fucking clue what that means. Hell, probably not even most people in the ace community know what it means. If people ask, I’ll say I’m asexual. Or, if I don’t want to explain asexuality and don’t think they’ll already know what it means, I’ll say bisexual, since I am interested in people of multiple genders (just not sexually). Or, I might just say “queer” because that covers it, too. So even if I don’t go around using this label in everyday life, I’m glad that it exists, because it means that other people share my experiences, and that I can finally be sure that I have a place, in terms of sexual identity.
One of the hardest things to learn, or re-learn, after any sort of emotional abuse or gaslighting, is how to change your mind.
You put so much energy and so much will into the idea that who you are isn’t bad, that you are capable of making sound decisions on your own, that the things you value aren’t dumb. There’s a lot of compensatory anger – a lot of choosing and doing things BECAUSE YOU CAN. Where material resources allow, there’s a lot of need to control your space and surround yourself with identity-laden things.
So what happens when you’ve bought a thing or gotten into a routine or whatever that was YOU and THE THING YOU ALWAYS WANTED / WANTED TO DO / WANTED TO BE, and then … it’s not exactly working out? You see something you like better?
For most people – again, resources allowing – this is not a fraught thing. Oh, you’re feeling kinda meh about those curtains, actually, and you LOVE the ones you just saw at Target? When and if you can afford it, you then donate the old ones and get new curtains. This is not a big deal. This is not even a blip of a deal. This does not have emotional significance.
Thing is, if getting that first set of curtains had been an exercise in self-expression, an assertion that you can choose things you want and not the things someone else told you to want – it gets weird. Also you spent money on those curtains that you now don’t like. You wasted that money, if you replace them. And wow, are you just going to go around replacing your curtains every few years, and like, NEVER BE HAPPY WITH WHAT YOU HAVE AND MAYBE YOU ACTUALLY DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU WANT AND SHOULDN’T BE TRUSTED WITH DECISIONS AND DON”T KNOW WHO YOU ARE BECAUSE THOSE WERE THE PERFECT CURTAINS AND NOW YOU DON’T LIKE THEM EVERYTHING YOU THOUGHT YOU UNDERSTOOD IS CRUMBLING.
… I wish this were a hyperbolic example, but I’ve actually gotten that upset about interior decorating choices.
So, for everybody else out there who may be in this too – it is normal to change. It doesn’t mean you were wrong and they were right (even if you end up agreeing with something that someone previously tried to force on you – the force was and remains wrong, the thing itself was and remains incidental). You can get the thing you thought you wanted and not want it anymore, and there are directions to go from there besides back. It’s okay. Exhale. Get the new curtains.
Push off a cliff: …. Fuck that. Kiss: Godric, just ‘cause. Marry: Hrodwunn, with the acknowledgement that if either of us ever is interested in bedding someone, there would be discussion/seeking of permission beforehand Set on Fire: Why do I have to set any of them on fire? I don’t want to set any of them on fire. Wrap a Blanket around: Nizar and Salazar and Severus. Because they all need it. Be Roommates with: Helga, ‘cause she is awesome and terrifying and wonderful.
Inspired by Doctor Who’s “Turn Left:” Pick one of my stories and tell me a point in the tale that you’d change. Something tiny (e.g. “and then Fay chose silver glitter instead of gold”) or big (e.g. “and then Rose was arrested instead of Jack”) and I’ll tell you how that one difference would have altered the course of the entire story.
There's a Mirror on the Wall 