theres a few pieces of art ive posted since FA's oopsie that you can see on bluesky

https://bsky.app/profile/lukatheott...../3loavwgtnmk2c

https://bsky.app/profile/lukatheott...../3lnwwn3rnak2g

The increasingly questionable moderation decisions by furaffinity staff following the passing of dragoneer have greatly called into question whether this website can uphold its legacy.

First was the breach which i can understand as them being taken advantage of in a vulnerable moment

Then was the unjust harassment of baby/diaper furs, which was indefensible but perhaps could be conceived as disagreements within the site management and bad actors having their way

But now we are seeing talented artists banned for "AI" art despite showing timelapses, which, mind you, is not a necessary thing for us as an artists, we generally dont save timelapses of everything we do, but in this case  YONSIA showed mountains of evidence their work is all legitimate and they were banned anyways. This is completely inexcusable behavior on behalf of the FurAffinity moderation team, and part of a string of stunningly terrible decisions that leads me to feel like I might have to abandon what's been like a home port to me for my career as a furry artist, on principle, and/or eventually out of necessity. The only reasonable explaination i can imagine is some combination of a blatant abuse of power, and brazen stupidity.


I don't have another gallery site I trust and rely on right now, I do have my bluesky account, and i try to post everything i draw there as well but i dont want to one day lose my gallery because one dumbass piece of shit on staff arbitrarily decides they dont like me and comes up with some innane excuse to ban me, or lose my gallery because everyone leaves because the staff cannot be trusted. If by some chance someone on FA staff finds themselves reading this, this is the way people feel when they see this garbage happening, stop with the unjustified bans. This place is supposed to be the safe harbor for the fandom, don't take that away. You're destroying Dragoneer's legacy with every shitty moderation decision.


Anyway, my linktree is https://linktr.ee/lukatheott and specifically my bluesky handle is lukatheott.bsky.social
I hope I never have to leave this place, but who knows.

A new series has been going up, third episode is up today, and I've been putting timelapses of the last couple pics up as youtube shorts (and on tiktok)

Plus if this is the first you're hearing about my youtube stuff, i have a bunch of videos from last year and earlier this year you can check out over at https://www.youtube.com/@lukatheott




New ep:

lukatheott.bsky.social

So yeah, with twitter obviously in an irreversible death spiral, I did manage to get onto bluesky and I already seem to be growing over there so in case any of yall are over there as well, you can find me at https://bsky.app/profile/lukatheott.bsky.social

anyway, beyond that, just a reminder that I'm posting lets plays on youtube, quite a few of them at this point, so if you're interested in watching me play games like stardew valley, or some older games from the PS2 era like Dark Cloud and Front Mission 4, those series are ongoing over at https://www.youtube.com/@lukatheott

I also post my tiktok timelapses over on youtube shorts as well, so youtube + bluesky is kindof starting to feel like a home base for me now.

For those who can access bluesky but havent pulled the trigger yet, I'd like to mention that its way better for artists than twitter was because of the way feeds operate. the furry list feed actually makes the site feel a lot more like oldschool furry social media sites and less like the toxic hellscape that twitter was. I can honestly say that bluesky in its somewhat buggy early state now, is a better experience than I literally ever had in all the years i used twitter.

Honestly, i would expect my usage of FurAffinity to continue even when the day comes that i stop using twitter altogether, once it seems like everyone who follows me and everyone i care about has managed to escape to bluesky.

I know theres still some people who primarily use furaffinity, and I appreciate the attention I get here, hell the entire time I've been on twitter, i never got more commissions than I got through here. I just don't see the same kind of activity here that I did back in the day. I feel like I got dunked on by twitter's garbage algorithm too, so I've kinda been stuck scrambling trying to make something work for years, and while TikTok was/is an interesting venture thats gotten me a fair bit of attention, its a different sort of audience that feels more impersonal. Bluesky feels like the old days, like MyFur and Like back here a bit, and I think I can make that work, and finally really grow my community.

If you wanna be able to message and keep up with me, your absolute best bet is my discord channel https://discord.com/invite/VxnvU3Q

I'm still my same old reclusive self but I do try to engage and answer questions and stuff, and discord is probably the easiest platform to take commissions on (what with twitter nuking itself and email being kinda antiquated (I will still happily take commissions over email. If you note me here I might be slow to get back because I don't check FA as often as I used to, but my email is definitely a reliable way of contacting me as well)

Anyway, for all the links condensed and others, https://linktr.ee/lukatheott is my linktree. I'm not going anywhere, as long as it exists, FurAffinity is always gonna be my gallery and I will continue to post here

see title

Stardew valley:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?li.....R5i7wvQ7vTbFG0
There's already 25 episodes and more on the day

Ill be playing more stuff too

I dunno how many of yall read these, i know I've not been as active as I should have been.

I want to change that, but at the moment I'm kinda split across a bunch of different platforms, and I've got both a personality type, as well as mental health stuff that makes it very hard for me to even be active and outgoing on even one platform, let alone all of them, but I've been told again and again diversification is key. I've tried to post my linktree in the descriptions of my posts so if people wanna keep up with me they can track me down wherever. https://linktr.ee/lukatheott

Anyway, status update, gonna address a few different things

First, my art and community locations and growth:
1. I've always viewed FA as my home base, of sorts, but there's a lot of functions that are stale and outdated here, and I've always seen it as kindof a terrible platform to promote any sort of community growth. I am doubling down on Discord. you're free to join, the link's available, but I need to spruce it up again before I do a big push to try and round people up from every platform to join up. its SFW all ages. When its properly ready ill make another journal and maybe even draw a promotional pic for it, we'll see. I feel like its pretty important to not just be a black box, because my anxiety tends to force me to be. I want to find and coordinate with other artists of my size too but I'm pretty anxious to interact with people, anyone bigger than me im extra anxious around though.

2. Things have been admittedly good, in terms of growth. I dunno if I ever really touched base over here about how much I grew on TikTok last year, but that's definitively my largest audience, at over 1100 followers. Youtube is steadily growing, every timelapse seems to get me another couple of subscribers, and it's on pace to overtake Twitter unless I make something happen there.

Twitter I probably overvalue, but it's where the fandom is for the most part, so I feel compelled to keep trying to make it work. It's also among the most social platforms even if it's terrible for sharing art, and where I follow a lot of creators. All the same, I'm at 90 followers there, and in the 50s on youtube at the moment. Reddit I have 27 followers but truth be told I don't know what to make of that, I mainly view Reddit as a conduit to my other platforms. FurAffinity is still second place, though I don't know how many of my watchers are active I'm always happy to see faves and especially comments, and I'm hoping some of you do decide to read this, as I really do want to form a real community and be able to engage with yall more.

3. Mental health. I've gotta pretty good understanding of my triggers and sources of anxiety and ways to cope and mitigate things to hopefully minimize downward spirals and such. I also have new things I'm doing to be healthier and happier, its a long road, and i was very sick last year and went though some real rough shit in my personal life at the same time, so I'm just physically not great, but slowly and steadily on the path back to good health.

4. My Friends. I tend to neglect them, cuz my anxiety insists me interacting with them annoys them, but I wanna be better for them. Two are streamers, and that's gotten me thinking about streaming again. I'm not making any promises, but I am going to make a PNGtuber so I have it if i need it, either for my own streams, or for appearing in there if I ever do. Given I'm a mod and roommate of one that seems more likely. At any rate, I want to be a better friend, and make more friends as well

I'll plug em cuz they deserve it, Lilly (she/her) and Nalan (they/them)

Guess I'll probably be more active here with twitter likely dying. Even if it survives this current bout of troubles It doesn't seem smart to keep it as my primary base of operations so to speak.

Still need to figure out exactly where that will be because even twitter wasn't ideal

I made a tumblr, that might be it, if FA returns to its glory days of usage ill probably focus here. We'll see i suppose. Discord would be nice and communal, feel free to join up,

all links in my linktree https://linktr.ee/lukatheott check em all out to make sure you dont miss anything

https://twitter.com/LukaTheOtt/stat.....71434736115712

Just retweet for a chance at free art! Ends tonight!

https://twitter.com/LukaTheOtt/stat.....71434736115712

Raffle ends May 23rd

Retweet the tweet to enter :3

I'll probably do more in the future too, for now just one winner
https://twitter.com/LukaTheOtt/stat.....71434736115712

Gonna resume work on Sunset Marauder. Starting with drawing chapter 6.

Sorry for the big delay, a lot has happened between now and then, and I was not doing that great in the past, and the comic was becoming a source of stress more than anything. On the upside I've written out several chapters and several prequel stories that I'm still deciding on the best format to depict them.

I'm in a better place now, mentally and physically, and I think the best thing for me at this point is picking the comic back up so I have a sense of direction again. The past two years hasn't been wasted either, though, and I at least personally feel I'm substantially improved in style and technique, established better habits, and actually have an office/studio set up to work on art in which has been a massive boon to my mental health truth be told.

I'm excited to pick the comic back up, but like usual, the volume of work left to create rolling around in my mind, and to a lesser extent my google drive, can be easily overwhelming and discouraging to me, so bear with me

https://artfight.net/~MacheteTigre

Hopefully actually going to try and do more than a couple attacks this year. Seems I am on team steampunk


Whiskey hopefully will help take the edges off my anxiety around it as well XD

This year I'm going to make a change. How it will look exactly I'm not quite sure yet, but I will never get anywhere if I continue to hide away because of anxiety. My career will go nowhere and my friend circle will continue to shrink. And I've clung on to friends who didn't necessarily deserve it because my circle was so small already I was afraid to lose more. And relationships with other friends died away because I didn't put effort into continuing them, and from their perspective, they probably assumed I didn't want to associate with them anymore when in truth I just convinced myself I was a burden to anyone I spoke to.

I will commit myself to interact somewhere each day, outside of my immediate friend circle, as well as inside of it. I don't want to commit to a certain platform for a couple reasons; I don't want to make a second small bubble and hide again, and I don't want to chain myself to something that's not working. So I'll try and do as much as I can in as many places as I can but that may be difficult for me.

Twitter, facebook, various discord groups, maybe PMing friends I don't keep in touch with enough on telegram or twitter, here, I don't know. Something somewhere each day if not more than that. And more art.

Fox and I plan on moving out of our apartment and into a house soon, a house where I can turn a room into my own studio so I can get the necessary isolation to work on my art, I anticipate my output to increase this year. But that won't mean much if I'm otherwise a mute and unapproachable. I need to not be afraid of social interaction and get more used to it, especially with people I don't know, and people I only kinda know.

I've been battling a severe ear infection for awhile, resulting in going to the ER at 3 am yesterday. I'm treating it, and while I am improving, it may still be a number of days before I get back into the swing of things, I find it very hard to focus on what I'm doing even for more minor things so my art will have to wait

Ever since I first thought up Machete about.. 9 years ago? something like that, I kinda always knew or at least wanted to believe that my fursonas had a theraputic impact on my mental health, a personification of part of me that by giving them a face, a name, a voice, a character, they could be more impactful on me. Years went by, my anxiety worsened, but I think part of what kept me from completely falling part was having, what was essentially personified determination + anger + pride of Machete. I didnt really know that at the time though, but it's basically what he has always been.

A projection of masculinity, power, strength, anger, and individualism, a mental anchor to tie myself to while I was figuring out who I was in highschool and college, and a buoy against an anxiety disorder I didn't know I had.

Once I did finally begin going to therapy I learned that the notion I had of him being a significant part of my mental health wasn't far off. The practice of characterization of automatic thoughts, emotions, parts of your personality, etc, gives you the ability to both empower or work against and silence those parts of you. In essence, I have other sonas, that I won't draw, because they're dead or dying, negative parts of me i work to oust.

Anger is a powerful emotion, and not necessarily bad, but it's not a good basis to repair yourself and build yourself off of. I'd become an unpleasant person over the years, something that came to a head a few years ago. I viewed myself as the 'righteous asshole'. Thing about that, though, is I was still an asshole. Machete continues to serve a purpose, especially when im facing down my anxiety, or dealing with conflict, but this is where Luka came in.

Like Machete, he kinda just.. was obvious at a certain point. This different part of me, repressed parts of my personality that i had shoved away in my teenage years, buried under lies i told myself about myself as a result of depressin and anxiety. I started doodling this otter character. He didn't remotely fit into my story, and i tied these ideas in my mind to hime, and i know now, he's passion. He's trust, he's 'feminine' but in so much as he doesn't care about masculinity. End of the day I'm still pretty masculine, after all my 'feminine side' is still a male otter who wears thongs some times XD But more to the point, he's my social outgoing urge, he's the part of me that thrives off being myself with my friends. He's my primary fursona now because I'm happiest channeling him.

There was an issue though.

Anger and resilience, and passion, trust, and outgoing energy, these two don't mix to create a particularly productive individual.

Theres a part of me thats been underserved, and personifying him took a different path than usual. My biggest issue is being consistent, reliable, healthy, and balanced.

This is Kieron. He's been there the whole time, but buried and muffled. It took so long to figure him out because I was looking for the wrong thing. I've always taken pride in being a contradiction, a patchwork of many things that work together tho on the surface others might be taken aback by it, scoff at it. A catholic gay libertarian furry artist, for example. Kieron embodies that. Part machine, part plant, part pine marten. A combination of himself and his creations, in the same way I am with my sonas, my creations, that keep him alive when he would have died otherwise. The will to live, the will to survive, and not only that but thrive and succeed following my own path. Taking care of things that need to get done.

My sonas are each a foil to my big 3 mental issues, as I have defined as depression, anxiety, and resistance.

Machete's raw anger and Luka's passion and social need, plus extended therapy, have helped me deal with depression and anxiety. They'll never be gone, but I have control over them. Resistance has been my biggest problem for a number of years now. Resistance hides behind other issues, like depression "why bother doing anything", anxiety "things will go wrong if you do it", and behind procrastination. Its root is to conserve energy, keep things the same, probably rooted in the psychology that I am alive because of the situation i exist in so I shouldn't change it, meanwhile it's actually slowly killing me. Its the priotization of comfort over anything else, including health and happiness.

Kieron's the foil to Resistance, in theory anyways. The personification of the desire to make myself a better, more productive person, and keep standing, keep going, keep improving and healing with every step.

His appearance is never set in stone, because he tinkers. He's a harbinger of change, and plants are always changing, robots are modular and can swap parts whenever. Always making himself better, and maintaining himself.

I just thought i'd put this out there incase people were confused whered the hell Kieron came from, and he's kinda hard to explain, and he's still in the process of being created to be honest.

Super quick summary of Kieron: Irish Pine Marten computer scientist who was building a body for his personal AI, caught in an explosion, his AI rebuilds him with itself merging into one being to keep Kieron alive. They become one, and incorporate the plantlife that grew into the ruins of his workshop for energy and strength, etc etc. Don't worry about the specifics, I'll likely never write his story out because the point of him isn't to have some story to live out, it's to empower me to live my own.

this weekend I figure. Things got busy again, and i think instead of being down on myself about missing stuff ill just make an event out of the opportunity, so I'll post 3 pages this weekend here, get the last page of chapter 5 done, then take a break so i can get a backlog built up, and focus my attention on getting commissions and setting up streaming. I'm feeling more energy to fight past my anxiety these days, and I wanna try and do more things and not let my mistakes drag me down

My Stylus has been slowly degrading, occasionally malfunctioning every once in a while, but now it's bugging out like crazy, and it has become a bit of a nightmare to try and draw with. So I've ordered a new one now, and once it arrives, I'll hopefully be ready to tackle art that's been backlogging out of frustration and other issues.

I have to figure out how to fix it or rebuild elsewhere. I'll post the remaining pages here every wednesday but page 15 is the last till I resume.

The artist who made the template I was using abandoned squarespace so I don't have a simple fix.

EDIT: I honestly dunno whats going on, the problem resolved itself, but I'm not confident it wont happen again

Over the weekend I got some nasty food poisoning that I'm still dealing with, AND our A/C unit went out. Now I'm hoping I can get back on track for the week but in case I'm not, I wanted to put something out to let people know what's up. The next page of Sunset Marauder will go up here on FA either way, but on my website the newest page might not be done on time, as well as the commission I'm working on.

Sorry about the delays, it's been a rough couple of days, but the A/C is fixed, and I thiiink I'm near the end of the stomach issues, so hopefully I can catch back up with these and with other plans I had in mind

New page of chapter 5,
sunsetmarauder.com/comic/2019/9/21/p3-ch5-wayward-son

Reminder that the comic updates twice a week over there and its currently 3 pages ahead of FA

https://sunsetmarauder.com/
Im posting twice a week on the site!

Don't worry, Ill still be posting every wednesday here, thats not changing, but as time goes on the website is gonna get further and further ahead of the gallery

Sorry about the delay on the last two free pic winners, and such. Been a lot of stuff the last few weeks and a bit more to come but next week and into the future everything should be opening up more for me, with even a bit more time in the week to get work done and a new work flow designed and working on getting myself a bit more organized.

dealing with mental stuff

I've got a bunch of projects in the works, and plans for the future, and I figured I oughta share some of that, and the status of them and priority for me.

The biggest priorities for me: Developing my audience here on FA and making myself more 'commissionable'
Ramping up the production speed and quality of Sunset Marauder and making better merchandise for it and fostering a community.
P.S. I love that even after the ad campaign stopped, I got more visitors and pageviews on my website on wednesday this week than even back when the ads were running, I'm glad people are enjoying the comic enough to be coming back every week to see more! I really wanna get more out and I know I can

I need to design the new ads as the old ones have run their course and I don't wanna just put old art up again, gotta put my best footpaw forward with the ads, and make them fresh. i already have the Sunset Marauder one underway.

I also need to finish setting up and then publicize my patreon page + set up a tip page

Then theres all my side projects and secret projects

I want to develop my twitter, and put my NSFW twitter account to use as well, right now they're just kinda there parrotting Sunset Marauder.

I do want to do something with The Fall, too, maybe make that one for printing physically? I dunno, it's my original story, and I'm getting more and more comfortable with comics as a format for story telling so I'm really leaning towards turning the pages and pages of disjointed storyline for the fall in my google drive into something real I can share, cuz thats what I've been doing with Sunset Marauder. Rest assured, SM is barely even started and i have tons of exciting story and twists down the line, i cannot wait to bring it all to life in the comic, we have barely scratched the surface and I only get more excited about it every day.

Now, secret projects.

Sadly, a couple of them are kinda dead in the water. Freecon Galactic, major TL;DR, its the game Starport: galactic empires, but polished up and refined except development stalled out, and a bunch of us argued with one another, multiple people bailed out, and the head developer got busy with other projects years and years ago. Back then I was a writer for it, and wanted to get my art up to snuff to produce character art for it too. I'm there now, but the project is dead, which is sad cuz a lot of us put a lot of heart into that.

The unnammed dating sim thing that me and a friend who was also a former Freecon Galactic dev were working on. It has currently stalled out, and maybe we'll revive it later, I'll be a better artist then anyways, and i have bigger priorities. If you guys like that otter and fox character that i said were for a secret project, they were for that.

Right now though, I've got an entirely different thing brewing, based on recent trends in the fandom. It's a big work in progress, and Its completely new territory for me so I'm gonna make sure I do it correctly.



Aside from that, I need to get better about taking care of my other sites. FB i kinda fell off from, Reddit ive been trying to post everything I can to, DA i've neglected again, as well as FN and e6.

Enough rambling for now i suppose

https://www.zazzle.com/store/machetetigre/products

I added a bunch of products that use that new Sunset Marauder design, check em out!

Also, as always, I am totally open for commissions, working on a sticker set for my boyfriend and once i get that process streamlined i think ill be coming out with a whole pricing scheme to make that convenient. I'm trying to increase the volume of work i get done in a week, or even a day

And I'm considering doing a free raffle too