[[EDIT]]

He came back to me and offered to do something different. It's still probably not something that I would have actually ordered on my own, and I'm not sure that it was great value... But it wasn't horrible value either, and when given the choices of either accepting it, or getting nothing, it was definately the lesser of two evils. I consider this resolved, and not entirely unfavorably.

Learnt from it, moved on.

[[EDIT]]

I've actually written about this situation before, but I took it down because I thought it had been dealt with, and I just wanted everything to be under the bridge. At this point, I don't know what to think, I realize I'm a hot head, when someone pisses me off, I tend to rage... But I don't think that I'm unreasonable when I rage. Rude? Possibly. Crude? Maybe. But you can be crude and rude and still be completely right. So, At this point, I leave it up to the court of public opinion.

More than a month ago, Drayk organized a three picture series for 12 people on the page cboys of fa. I'm not sure what individual rates were, but I paid $30. Math that out... 12x30=360... range of 300-400 is probably fair. To get started, the artist, deja-blu required that the participants pay in advance, which is I suppose necessary, with so many people involved, especially without repoire, and with the amont of deadbeats in the fandom.

Money was paid, patience was given. Around three weeks ago, blu sent out a message, the gist of which was that the series wasn't getting done, and that he would instead offer individual pictures.

When I asked him why, he originally lied to me, saying that one of the participants was underaged. When I pointed out that any individual character could be replaced, he said that the whole project was just plain above his skill level... Which I still don't get... He basically said: "I'm too untalented to do you all in a group, so instead, I'll draw the same thing, just in more images" 

Well, at this point, I'm building rage, this hit me then (and still hits me now) as a bit of a snafu. So I fire back that I'm uninterested in his offer (I'll explain why later) and would just appreciate my money back. This was refused, because blu had already spent the money. This did not help my rage.

To explain a little more on why the offer was unapealling... As a character who plays a cboy, I admired the people who popularized (or at least broke out) the genre. Drayk and Xianos at the top of the list, but there are others as well. As such, I spent a little more on this than I normally spend, I don't need Wolfy-Nail to draw my character, and I like supporting the artists starting out. Anyway, the appeal of getting an image done with Drayk and Xianos won out, and removing that, the offer had no appeal.

So to summarize: Gear spent money, artist cancelled project, made counter offer, Gear refused counter offer, artist refused to refund. Gear angry.

So I wrote a journal basically outlining the conversation between me and Blu, I was definately unhappy, and maybe colorful about it, but completely accurate. He didn't comment on it. But who did surprised me.

Drayk took the artist's side. His arguement was basically that although the artist had taken commision money, spent it, cancelled the commision and refused to refund, that the offer the artist made was worth more than the money I paid, that I should take it, shut up and quit drama-ing. I still don't feel it was appropriate to try to bully me into taking work that I had no interest in. Even Xianos got involved, although I thought he was much more reasonable.

One thing that Drayk did that I thought more unusual than his takingthe side of the person that had just robbed him was that he offered to pay me out. To this day, I don't understand why he made that offer, I mean, he didn't know the artist, does he want the fandom to come begging every time someone gets stiffed? More than that, I didn't want his money.

At this point, it's kinda like meeting your hero, only to find out he's a douche. I realize that I'm not going to see my money back, not getting work done, and I was kinda winding down. I deleted the journal, sent a final farewell to the artist, (which basically said 'I'm tired, you're a deadbeat, have fun with my money) and he replied that he would ask certain people if they wanted a threesome pic, and if that would be acceptable. I agreed, half to just get it done, an half because the idea did appeal.

That was three weeks ago. He just messaged me back saying the characters we had in mind didn't want the work done, and that we were back to square one. I'm just as interested now as I was before, so we're basically at an impasse.

You know... I probably never would have brought it up... But he brought it all up again, and just HAD to throw a jab in the note he sent me, I admit, it's rekindled a bit of rage. So here's the journal again. Wha do you guys think? I'll defend myself, but all opinions are welcome.

Is what the artist did acceptable?
What is your opinions on deadbeats, artist or commisioner?
Should I have just taken Drayk's money?
Should I have just taken something I didn't want to make the issue go away?
Or was I just completely wrong, and if so, why?