I’ve made a lot of posts over the years about experiencing burnout. This is more like realizing I’ve been stuck in a glue trap for a decade.

This is going to be a very long post, and probably a little rambly. I could try to give a TLDR, but I honestly think it’s kind of important to understand exactly what we (myself and many other artists) are going through right now.

Recently I was going through art files to compile from the last couple years (I’ll get into that later) and I honestly just found it…surprisingly depressing. Not because I don’t like the art - some of my favorite things I’ve ever done were from those years - but because of the trends I noticed. I make, or at least finish enough to post, a little less art every year. Early on I attributed that to prioritizing quality over quantity, higher technical skill replacing shortcuts, and no longer being a teen/20-something with lots of energy and no responsibilities. But since 2020…that no longer feels like the case. I’m not doing full color paintings or fully rendered traditional graphite pieces. I’ve improved in some ways, it’s kind of impossible not to, but I don’t feel like I improved as much as I would expect over 5 years; certainly nowhere near the improvement I saw between 2015 and 2020. I definitely don’t have the energy to be streaming for 5 hours 5 days a week and crank out 2-3 commissions a month anymore like I did 10 years ago. And of the art I do have, the overwhelming majority is stream sketches with very short lifespans and no long-term payoff.

Some of this, I’m sure it goes without saying, is due to the state of the world. Our government is more hostile to our wellbeing now than it ever has been in my lifetime (which I recognize is itself a privilege other countries and even other minorities within the US are not granted). People around the world are dying in power-hungry invasions, abusive and exploitative industries, hate crimes, and a direct and intentional dismantling of the basic concept of human empathy. The environment is collapsing around us and species are going extinct at an alarming rate. Everything is increasingly expensive and the rich keep getting richer with seemingly no consequences. And this barrage is completely inescapable anywhere on the internet, no matter what kind of add-ons or blacklisting features you use.
Artists (porn and kink/fetish artists especially) have gotten an extra layer (or three) of Fuck You in just the past few years: Tumblr shunted out the people who built their platform in 2018; NFTs stole our work directly, spammed our inboxes, and scammed consumers from 2020-2023; AI has stolen our work indirectly, stolen our jobs directly, poisoned our reference and education wells, infected every single feed/FYP/etc on every single platform that permits their existence, and irreparably damaged the internet as a whole to such a sickening extent that “spamming” doesn’t even come close to a strong enough word, all since 2022. And now in 2025, we’re being ousted from platform after platform, pushed further into the shadows than we already were, banned from events and payment processors and any other ways we could earn a living from our work, and outright criminalized in multiple states. That is fucking batshit. For the first time in my life I am forced to grapple with the idea that not only will I possibly not have a job in a couple years, but my job might become illegal. The career I’ve spent literally half my life building is at the mercy of people who don’t even think I deserve to exist.

I’m not just worried about losing metaphorical progress on my career save file. I know we’ll all collectively figure it out and share resources between each other if and when the time comes. It’s just been constant blow after blow after blow for years with very little positive developments to break it up. It’s worn down our resolve and our defenses. For a lot of us art isn’t even fun anymore. Or at the very least, being an artist online isn’t fun anymore. Porn artists of course existed before social media and before the internet itself, but I haven’t been an offline artist since I was 13. I have zero idea what that career path looks like, and that is terrifying and draining.

In 2023 I was (finally) diagnosed with autism and ADHD. I’m really glad I did, cuz it has put so much hardship in my life into perspective. Unfortunately, it also really complicates my relationship with art, both as a job and in general. I’m pretty sure most of the people reading this are also neurodivergent and probably don’t need an explanation, but just in case. The short version is that I frequently struggle with things like time awareness, switching between tasks or “modes”, and managing sensory and mental input. Sometimes I am functionally incapable of doing anything but work for hours at a time with no breaks, and sometimes I am functionally incapable of working on things that provide the least bit of resistance. I can sit at my desk with my art program and canvas open and my work music playing and no distractions and still just…not be able to do anything with it. It’s like if you had a 1 in 3 chance of feeling the same dread and psyching yourself up every time you make lunch as you’d feel if you had to amputate your own finger. It’s extremely inconsistent and unpredictable, as is the effectiveness of any of the possible solutions. Energy is difficult to allocate; taking a 5 minute drive to Walmart first thing in the morning can put me out of commission for the entire day, or I can go to a day-long event and be alert and chipper the entire time I’m there, but then I need 3 days to properly recover. And all of this gets even more difficult when I feel stressed or overwhelmed, and autistic people often have a stronger emotional response to unfairness and injustice. Do you see where this is going?

But I’m not making this post because Life is Hard And The World is Terrible. We all know that already. I’m making this post because I personally am approaching a breaking point that I’m not sure I can bounce back from.

Even disregarding the abuse our willpower has been subjected to for over half a decade, I still feel like it only accelerated the inevitable for me. My job is now a constant grind with very little room for play, which is both a catalyst to and a product of a never-ending stop-start workflow. To be clear, I have always been an artist who is keenly aware that my job is in fact a job, and have treated it as such. I take the business side of my career very seriously. I have regular “office” hours, two scheduled days off per week, weekly-updated spreadsheets that record every single incoming and outgoing transaction and indicate which ones are tax deductible, commission forms that autofill responses into spreadsheets so I always have payment records and contact info on hand, etc. The hazards I keep running into are not a matter of self-discipline or poor organization. It’s more like hitting the end of my leash before I can gain any momentum. Maybe a family emergency happens, or a world event kneecaps my willpower for a couple days, or I overwork myself so hard due to financial stress that I injure myself again. I try to be compassionate to myself and take the time I need to recover, but I have bills to pay. And every time I think I’m finally back in the swing of things and can start working consistently again, I get hit with another one.

The way I work right now is not healthy and not sustainable. On paper, I work from 11 am to 5 or 6 pm Tuesday to Friday, plus Saturday streams that are usually 11-4 but occasionally stop or start a little late or early. That’s a pretty reasonable schedule…for a neurotypical person. I take longer to recharge my battery than a neurotypical person. I fail to take breaks because of time blindness and trouble switching tasks. I drain my reserves spending half my time on art for other people until I struggle to spend even one seventh of my time on art for myself. Then I psych myself up to push through one more day for a stream, and then I’m so tired on Sunday and Monday that I have a hard time getting basic chores done. Then when the next week rolls around, I still haven’t recovered, so I get a little less done each day than I did the week before. Then the next week I work a little overtime to try and catch up because I have to cover bills at the end of the month and I want to get the queue moving, and flip a coin on whether the RSI is gonna stop me this week or if i can squeak a couple more in before it does (this has happened 3 times this year and I’m unable to work for a minimum one week each time). Rinse and repeat. Sprinkle life events to taste.

A “regular” job is off the table until I have no other choice. I’ve had a couple here and there over the years, but the longest one only lasted 9 months before I had enough. Getting up early, leaving the house, and being around people all day multiple days a week is not sustainable for me either. I can’t handle the stress of not knowing my hours or days off until a week or two in advance, which is apparently the norm for entry-level jobs now. I don’t have the formal education for the other jobs I would want (I’ve applied anyway and been rejected or ignored). I’m sure I could ask for accommodations with the ‘tism, but I also know there’s always a big enough chance that they’ll never be enforced or taken seriously. If I end up in the mainstream workforce again, either I found the perfect holy grail job, or I am in strict, black and white survival mode.

I have no room for personal art. Not in my schedule, not in my wallet, not in my heart. And that is soul-crushing. I want to make personal art again, but I swear it’s almost like I’ve forgotten how. I have yet to unlearn the deep-seated idea that I should only talk about my OCs and whatnot if directly asked because otherwise people will get annoyed (because others have gotten annoyed when I special interest dumped in the past, and honestly sometimes it annoys me when others do it too). I think it’s a combination of factors, but mostly a lack of connection with my audience. It makes enough sense that original work is harder to get people invested in because I don’t have the pre-laid groundwork of a built-in fandom or the inherent connection someone will have with a commission of their own character. Also doesn’t help that some of my favorite and most personal OCs are fandom OCs that I ship with canon characters, which is apparently still Cringe ™ or whatever. I don’t know how to get people interested when I don’t have a consumable story for them, and can’t find the willpower to even doodle them most days. And sometimes it’s hard to get through a piece believing that most people aren’t going to be as enthusiastic about it as they would be for something else, no matter how many hours of hard work I pour into it. Most of my personal art stays a sketch because of that.

I tried for a while to dedicate Fridays to personal art, but it seems like every week either something else gets in the way, or I’m not feeling well physically or emotionally, or I’m just too fucking exhausted from the entire week leading up to that to actually do it. So I just end up spending my personal art days feeling tired, cranky, guilty for not sticking to my plan, and frustrated that all my commissions will sit on my queue for another 4 days for nothing, not even with different cool art to show for it. I could just do it another day instead, but then I have to either sacrifice a day on commissions and delay that even further, or I do it after hours and risk another injury. That said I’m currently testing out swapping it with my Tuesday admin work block, so hopefully that will help curb it.

I’m gonna be as transparent about the financial situation as I can reasonably be. I make about $1000-2000 a month, depending on how many stream sketches I’m able to do within that month. I am extremely fortunate to have an indescribably generous and patient living situation, and my monthly bills (rent, car, phone, etc) only totaled about $850 (though will drop to ~$500 now that my car is paid off, until I can get the title and register it under my own name and get car insurance, so I’m expecting ~$650). I also pay for most of the supplies for our ~30 animals, including some special needs and long-term medication, so that’s an additional roughly $250/mo. The monthly subscriptions that I use for business, not including other monthly business expenses, are another $115/mo. All of that, before factoring in anything else (food, gas, office supplies, art supplies, shipping and manufacturing expenses, Etsy fees, car maintenance, annual subscriptions, car maintenance, etc), is already $1015/mo assuming my car insurance estimate is close. It’s actually pretty manageable on a good month where I’m lucky enough to both fill slots and be physically capable of completing them on time, but those months are increasingly fewer and farther between. I have a little more than another $1000 to pay off on credit cards, and at the moment I am trying to save up for 3 new large snake enclosures (~$1500 total), a new computer/updated parts ($1500-1800), and new headphones (~$300). I’ve thought about doing a drive like I did for Aether’s enclosure upgrade last time, but I don’t know if it’s smart or fair to do that when I can’t even make progress on the work I have in front of me.

The grind is driving me to a grinding halt. I haven’t opened my main queue in years because my waitlist is years-long itself and builds up faster than I can work through it. I did the actual math and over 81% of my income is solely from stream sketches. I leaned into stream sketches because they’re far more consistent income than the main queue, and they offer a chance for people who maybe can’t afford to be on the main queue to get art from me. It’s just a little disheartening to see it overshadow my entire body of work when it was only ever supposed to be a sort of side-hustle to keep a steady baseline while navigating the hills and valleys of the main queue. But now they’re all I have to show, and sometimes even prevent me from getting to anything else at all. Honestly I wish I could flip my schedule, where I could do personal art 4 days a week and keep commissions to 1 or 2. I don’t want to stop commissions entirely, I do like doing them under the right circumstances, but relying on them as my only source of income is objectively bad for my wellbeing. I’ve known that for years, but I’ve never been able to get to a stable enough point to pivot and invest in another method without sacrificing my stability.

And yet I find myself at a crossroads. What I’m doing now is not healthy, sustainable, or fulfilling. It’s not working. Something’s got to change or I’m gonna completely lose my ability to make art at all.

So, here’s some ideas I’ve been sitting on:
- Raising prices. Pretty straightforward. If I can make a little more off the same amount of work, I won’t have to cram so much work in and both my brain and body will thank me. The problem is I know we’re all tightening our belts a little right now, and I don’t want to outprice my audience. It’ll probably take some iterating to figure out what the right price point is for each commission type.
- Retooling my sponsorship commission type and pushing it harder. Right now I think it’s a little too open-ended and a little too expensive for the people who would be interested in it. I want to instead make it a monthly or bimonthly poll, and to make it so as many people can participate as possible (because making it a communal event thing will get more people excited about it, and that gets me excited about it). What I still have to figure out is how to collect money for it - pay to vote, only winning voters pay, just making it subscriber exclusive, etc - without alienating anybody. I do have some ideas though, and I’ll probably test drive one or two in my Discord server before I adopt them officially.
- Passive income, so I don’t have to rely so much on commissions in the first place, or at all:
- Merch and online stores. I’ve had an online shop for years, but haven’t made a noteworthy amount of money from it since 2016/17 when I made like $1500+ just off Overwatch dakis. This year is probably the most successful year I’ve had since then, currently sitting at $517 after listing fees (not including transaction fees, shipping fees, shipping materials…and $217 of that was from a single order lol). I have a lot of ideas for merch designs (seriously, like…pages) but I have a hard time committing to them because of the risk. I’ve tried asking my subscribers, my discord members, my general platform audiences, friends and family, and everybody else I can think of for feedback on what products and designs would interest them, but I seem to have trouble getting helpful responses in general. And if I do actually see some interest, it quite often doesn’t follow through once the item is actually for sale. It wouldn’t be such a big deal if the overhead for creating a physical item at all wasn’t prohibitively expensive; it’s one thing to crank out a sticker for ~$30-60, and another to shell out $300-500 for some playmats without any inkling whatsoever of how well they’ll sell or how long they’ll be taking up storage space in my office. But, for now at least, I can just focus on making the damn art and figure out logistics later.
- SubscribeStar. This has also been up for years, and to be fair does well enough to pay for Christmas shopping every year. I’ve tried revitalizing it multiple times, but I think it comes back to the same (and in this case cyclical) issue of missing connection. I have (relatively) few subscribers, so putting time and effort into content feels unrewarding because I’m unlikely to get much of a response, if any. But then the lack of content isn’t very enticing for new subscribers, so I never get more. I need to just sit down and find some low-bandwidth, low-expense rewards I can offer and actually stick to it without burning myself out again.
- Art packs. Digital packs of high res art files. My roommate suggested this one, and it’s actually the reason I was going through files from the last few years. I’ve thought of it in the past but never end up prioritizing it because it’s not something I personally have any interest in buying. But clearly other people do, because it’s one of the most popular Patreon/Substar rewards and said roommate has made money from selling them directly. Especially with all the porn/kink crackdowns, this might become more common soon. I was able to gather enough material to compile a couple, but it kinda sucked to realize I had very few nice finished pieces to include in them. The major roadblock here is either finding a platform to sell them that both permits the content I’d be selling and has substantial enough traffic to be worth it, or figuring out a way to accept payments and deliver files directly myself.
- Events. I miss conventions. The last one I did was March of 2020, literally about a week before COVID escalated and everything went into lockdown. By the time cons were happening regularly, I had already moved across the country and left most of my convention supplies behind. My regular circuit was too far to be financially viable, I’m completely unfamiliar with all the west coast cons, and I haven’t had the expendable income to rebuild my setup and book hotel rooms. But I miss it so much. I also had a goal around 2018-2019 to diversify into events other than furry conventions, and I think it’s still a goal now. I’d love to try tattoo conventions, horror conventions, sex and kink conventions, Pride events, maybe even take the side business to some reptile shows. This will probably have to be on the backburner for now, but I want to keep it in mind when figuring out the other stuff.


So, that’s where I’m at. I dunno what I’m hoping to get out of posting this, other than to give you all an update as to what’s been going on, and why my queue, posting schedule, and online presence in general have been so slow. I hope it doesn’t come across like I’m fishing for sympathy or asking for handouts. It sucks to be here, and it sucks to have to air it out, but I really value transparency and open communication and think the online art world could really benefit from more of it right now.

As always, questions, comments, and suggestions are always welcome and appreciated. Hopefully next time I have an update to share, it’ll be about what a great idea this all was lol

This is a shot in the dark, but if anybody emailed me about a ref sheet commission at the beginning of this month and didn't hear back from me, I tried to reply today and it says your email address no longer exists. I didn't get any other contact info so this is the best I got lol

If you think this may have been you, please message me somewhere or email me again!

I don't want to give away the full address, but it was gmail and started with a J and ended with a number

EDIT: Here's the email with the address redacted. I have no reason to believe it was a scam other than that the email no longer exists. Not impossible, but if it was a scam it's the most research I've ever seen a scammer put into the initial inquiry lmfao

I've been there for a minute, but since there's another exodus happening, here's your reminder!

I am no longer posting to Twitter either, so this is as close as it's gonna get to that hahah

https://bsky.app/profile/vicekillx.bsky.social

We leave for Canada tomorrow to import my fiancé~ Four days roundtrip and will probably take a week or two away from the internet afterward to settle.

Discord or bsky are the best way to reach me if you need to, but even that will likely be spotty

See you soon, with an extra roommate ♥

As I mentioned in my last post, I would like to spend some time this year reviving my SubscribeStar. I’m not ready to commit to anything yet, but I’m at the point where I don’t even know where to start.

So I’m trying to get a sense for what my audience would like from me in the first place. Please by all means leave comments with more ideas, and try not to vote for everything lol

What would make you most interested in subscribing, staying subbed, upgrading your sub, etc?

>>POLL LINK<<

Usually I make these kinds of post around New Years, but this year I didn't really have anything to say. But now we're a month in and I definitely do.

I feel...different, this year. In a good way, I think. I feel like I'm tired of being complacent and riding coattails. This month has been a whirlwind of getting my shit in line. So far I:

♥ handled two serious family crises smoothly and picked myself back up quickly from both
♥ called my health insurance (phone calls have historically been an hours-long meltdown-inducing debacle for me) twice to switch my PCP because the previous one was consistently booked 3-6 months out and she just forgot to mention the inhaler I pulled out of my bag to show her at my first appointment so I couldn't get a refill on it or my nebulizer when I had COVID; that's been getting put off since August of last year
♥ made an appointment with said new PCP for Feb 1, and I'm hoping they'll be able to refer me to a dentist and optometrist because I desperately need both
♥ got back into therapy with an autism/ADHD specialist who can help me manage those specifically after my previous therapist didn't understand why I couldn't just Do It™; also have assessments lined up for both to get diagnoses
♥ pay more attention to my health in general, including diet and exercise. I'm already down about 10 lb
♥ restructured my planner to include a mood tracker and sleep tracker, and have been better about staying on top of it
♥ got Trello up and running and so far it's working really well for me
♥ have been doing my house chores more consistently, namely cleaning litter boxes and taking care of my snakes and tarantulas (roommates have been picking up my slack but they shouldn't have to, they're my animals)
♥ am able to work more consistently on my designated work days; before it was a lot of chipping away and putting things off rather than sitting down and making actually decent progress
♥ am finally starting a tattoo sleeve I've wanted for a very, very long time as a belated birthday gift to myself
♥ am consistently filling stream sketch slots, which means I can actually make money and pay my bills on-time (and a huge, huge thank you to everyone who signs up, I'm pretty sure this is the primary reason I've been able to pull myself out of the hole. Financial stability is a hell of a drug)

This year I wanna try really hard to keep the train moving along this track. If things keep going the way they are, I could potentially make some pretty big changes in the not so distant future. Some things I'm brainstorming:

♥ UnholyFans
♥ merch other than stickers (seriously I have so many designs in mind, I just haven't had the drive to work on them or the upfront capital to order inventory)
♥ more monster/demon adoptables
♥ I would really like to collab with some other artists, it's been too fuckin long
♥ website restructure
♥ picking up my side business (I did literally zero pieces for it last year oof), ideally with a rebrand
♥ get back into conventions and try some new crowds: reptile/exotic expos, tattoo conventions, oddities expos, sex conventions, BDSM groups...
♥ push the stream setup to be more professional
♥ rekindling the spark for my personal stories and headworld projects
♥ more I have written down somewhere but can't think of off the top of my head

And to be clear, I'm optimistic, but also a realist. I know from experience that shit changes and I could hit a massive depressive slump in a month or two and be back to where I was for most of last year. I'm still not going to promise anything I'm not confident I can deliver. However, that doesn't mean I shouldn't try.

I already got sidetracked with this post, so I'm gonna make a second to get to my original point and I'll come back and add a link to this one when I do. But suffice to say I want to try - again - to breathe some kind of life back into my SubscribeStar. I have some ideas in mind, but I want to hear yall's opinions on it too.

Watch this space ♥

I love doing stream sketches. They’re relatively quick, easy, fun, and give people a more accessible way to get custom art from me. They’re a great way for someone who wants to commission me to “test drive” and see if they jive with my style, personality, and workflow without committing to a larger piece. I get to meet all kinds of new clients and friends through them. They’re great, everyone loves them, yada yada

What I don’t love is that all but 6 of my 20 submissions from Halloween to New Years were stream sketches. In fact almost half my posts from 2023 were stream sketches.

I don’t wanna do fewer sketches, but I think I do want to post fewer sketches. So from now on I’m gonna start trimming back how many of them I post, at least publicly. They’ll probably all still end up on Discord, and maybe I’ll put them in scraps on the sites that have that feature (I haven’t decided yet).

But I’ve had people in the past feel some kinda way about me not posting their commissions, so I wanted to make this post to be explicitly clear about it:

What me posting your stream sketch DOES mean:
- Your character happens to fall into the middle of the venn diagram of my favorite subject matters to draw and the feeling that I really nailed the execution
- I want to attract more work in a similar vein

What me NOT posting your stream sketch does NOT mean:
- I don’t like how your sketch came out
- I didn’t enjoy working on your sketch
- I don’t like your character
- I don’t like/didn’t enjoy working with you
- I never want to draw your character again
- I don’t think the art/your character is “good enough” to post


I’ll probably also go through and move a bunch of old ones to scraps on my gallery sites. Hope that clears things up, and please don’t feel offended if your sketch doesn’t get posted. I just gotta balance it out better and I can only choose so many!

Well it's taken me like 8+ fuckin years but I finally made the switch to Trello lol. I can't deal with having too much shit in one place, so I made one for commissions and one for personal/sponsored work

Hopefully it'll be a little easier to stay on top of commissions now that I have a visual layout for it. Also lets my clients have a bit more transparency with the progress I'm making. Also it looks prettier :V

Card previews maybe NSFW so click at your own risk. 18+ only please

COMMISSION TRELLO ♥ PERSONAL TRELLO

I got an idea from another artist called "sponsored illustrations". Basically you'd pay me to draw a vague idea that you provide, with full artistic liberty. Could be any of my OCs, or something generic.

Examples of some things you could ask for:
- "draw vice in a suit"
- "what if zeph and nina got captured"
- "draw your favorite pokemon"
- "i wanna see your take on a chupacabra"
- "a gay minotaur/satyr couple being cute"
- "could you redo/finish this thing you started in like 2016"
- "you should draw that character you haven't touched for 3 and half years"

I'd keep rights to any designs i made, you'd just be paying to make sure it gets drawn. I don't have a price in mind yet but they'd be notably discounted from regular commissions, of course. Maybe I'll split it between sketches and finished illustrations, or something like that?

Could get multiple people to sponsor together too. Anybody who participates would get the high res file of the end result, for sure

Is this something yall would be interested in, and if yes, what would yall be willing to pay for it? And feel free to throw any other ideas you might have at me too!

I did the thing! Hopped over to Bluesky 'cause it's where everyone else is going, and Cohost because it just seems really fuckin cool. When Twitter goes down for good, these'll probably be my new main social media platforms.

BLUESKY - COHOST - OTHER PLATFORMS

Since the end of last year, I've been trying to shift the focus of my work from furry to more monsters and robots (and to a lesser extent, humans). They've been my favorite subject matter for years, even when I wasn't drawing them much. I was content to let them take a back seat and basically be a hobby rather than my career.

Buuuuut then that wasn't working anymore. I started to feel...I guess bored, or maybe more accurately pigeon-holed. Furries like what they like, and I respect the hell out of that, but I was getting tired of drawing a lot of the same poses and character shapes all the time. And then I started really putting more of my attention into my headworlds and personal projects, all of which involve monsters or robots in some capacity, and it became harder and harder to go back to furry work. And I did actually manage to get more monster work by drawing more monsters on my own time! Shocker, I know lol. But I was still relying largely on furry work to pay my bills.

The problem with that is every post I make is an advertisement. If I post furry commissions, I am going to attract people that want more furry commissions. If I post monster art, I'll attract people who want monster art. And I could post both, but the furry fandom is a lot more localized and interconnected than the monster fandom is, so if I post a perfect 50/50 split, I will not get a 50/50 audience return. I need to put more focus into the monsters than into furries or I'm just gonna keep getting caught in the same cycle over and over again. And now I've got one project that involves four very large (seriously they're 35x85 inches) explicitly furry pieces on top of whatever commissions I'd get within that time, and I'm worried that that could either burn me out faster, or tip the scale more than I want it to. And now I'm finally in a situation where I can actually afford to turn work down, so it feels like I'd be cheating myself if I didn't seize the opportunity to get my career on the correct track.

And I want to be crystal clear about this:
1. I am NOT throwing shade on any of my clients, their characters, or the furry fandom as a whole. Everyone's got their own preferences, none of which are better or worse than anyone else's, and there is a very big difference between "this character's is boring" and "I'm bored of drawing characters like this". It doesn't mean I didn't enjoy working on any of those pieces, or with any of those people, and doesn't mean I won't in the future either
2. I am NOT leaving the fandom. Y'all have been too kind to me and too supportive (even in the non-furry stuff; especially in the non-furry stuff) to leave it all behind
3. I am NOT saying I will never do any furry work ever again. I just need to get to a point where the monsters are what's paying my bills, and the furry stuff is something I can do here and there for fun.

That said, I don't want to automatically write off any and all furry work without even looking at it. I won't say I'll automatically accept, but I'm a lot more likely to make exceptions for the following:
- Anatomically correct reptiles (tldr if you let me draw a snake with a species-accurate head shape i'm sold; also includes dinosaurs, may or may not include dragons)
- Deer, antelope, or cows (wild or domestic)
- Big cats
- Ancient historical themes (Ancient Egypt, Norse, tribal, etc)
- Satanic or pseudo-Christian themes
- Monster-ifying existing furry characters
- Werebeasts
- I'm gonna be That Guy and separate furry and anthro for a sec - if it's natural colors/markings and not so modern/slice of life, I can probably use it outside of furry spaces. Examples are pieces like this, this, and this.
- If you're unsure please don't hesitate to ask <3

I know this is going to disappoint a lot of people, and I'm sorry for that, but it's something I feel I need to do. I don't know how long this hold will last - it could be weeks, months, years - basically, I'm just going to go until I feel it's not necessary anymore. I appreciate every one of you and thank you all again for your support <3

If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment, DM me, or email me at vicekillx[at]gmail.com

Hey yall! If you haven't seen on my other social medias, I'm going to be moving across the country! Aaaand I'm driving it. Starting tomorrow lol.

Needless to say, I'm not gonna be around for a while. I've scheduled posts in advance for socmed, but I can't do that on FA so I won't be uploading for a couple weeks until we're settled in.

I'm not going to have much access to my email for a while either, so it'll be a while before I can get back to anyone. Your patience is very much appreciated <3

Anyway, just wanted to give yall a heads up. Thank you again and I'll see you in a few weeks from sunny California ;)

It's no secret that I'm primarily a porn artist. Tbh, that's probably a large part of the reason I haven't invested too much time in DA thus far.

But, new TOS guidelines mean that's about to change! I've gone ahead and made two new galleries for NSFW content. At the time of this journal, they're priced at $2US each (or whatever the equivalent in points is), and afaik, it's a one-time payment that will grant access to those galleries for as long as your account is active and said galleries are up.

I don't super love the idea of hiding my 18+ art behind a paywall, but the new guidelines require it in order to post it at all. And in a world where every major social media platform has banned it outright (except for twitter, and even that one is tenuous at best) and many others are increasingly less tolerant of certain themes, I will happily accept charging a small fee if it means an art platform titan like Deviantart will loosen its restrictions rather than tighten them. Like...seriously, that is unprecedented. I hope it paves the way for other sites to do the same.

Anywho, I can still technically make the charge optional with a workaround. If you want to see my adult art for free, you still can on Twitter and FurAffinity I'm most active (and interactive) on Twitter, but it's not great for organizing or finding older art, and things might get lost in your feed if you don't have push notifs turned on. I still post regularly here (obviously) but don't interact as much; it has better organization and archiving, but I don't post as many sketches or WIPs here. And of course, there's always my website, but this is a curated portfolio rather than a full gallery, and doesn't allow for comments, likes, shares, etc.

Ultimately, the $2 charge can either be just a convenience fee for those who don't have accounts on those sites or just don't want to switch, or just a way to show your support and appreciation. If you want to do the latter but more than $2-4, or want a bunch of actually exclusive content in exchange, you can always support me on SubscribeStar <3

These are the new galleries:

Spicy 18+ (finished pieces)

Spicy 18+ Sketches


Happy oggling <3

Now that I'm streaming somewhat regularly again, it probably makes sense to put this here lol.

The Basics:
- $150 for G/PG rating, $175 for artistic nude or sexual content
- You DO NOT need to be in the stream to get one
- Full payment in advance via Paypal invoice unless otherwise discussed
- Artistic liberty only - You give me the design and brief personality/mood, I choose the rest. No approval stages. Make sure your refs are clear!

Not following a strict schedule for sketch streams, but shooting for roughly once a week. You can sign up any time, and I'll send an invoice asap, but the sketch won't be done until whenever the next sketch stream is.

It's good to be back <3

https://forms.gle/VSYxuEx33T8nRBn38

TLDR I'm being more or less coerced into going on vacation on Monday and would like to make some extra cash to make sure I can actually survive the week and not be in the red afterward lol

So here's the rundown:
- $150 per character before complexity fees (wings, markings, etc); originals can be purchased separately at a discount
- NSFW fee waived for 2+ character images paid by tonight (fee still applies to single character images)
- Provided there's no issues with communication or payment, or any acts of god, I intend to have them finished tomorrow.
- Because of the short turnaround, for simplicity's sake, some artistic liberty is required. You can give me total free reign if you prefer.
- If for whatever reason I can't finish before I leave, it will be finished the week after I'm back
- If I get more than 2 inquiries, extras will be put on the waitlist. Monster characters will be prioritized

Sketch samples HERE

Email ash[at]gildedashes.com to claim!

Note: Nothing happened, I'm not upset or annoyed, and this isn't directed at anyone! I just figured it's time to explain my work schedule so people know what to expect!

Art is my job, and I do my best to treat it like one! There tend to be different expectations when working with an individual than with a company, both as the artist and the client. As an individual working from home, I don't exactly have business hours or a customer service department, so there's sometimes a bit of confusion as to why it sometimes takes me a day or two to respond to emails. So this journal is your explanation!

GENERAL
- I exclusively use email for commission work. This is mostly so I can keep all the information in one place, but also so I'm able to get away from work more easily.
- Please give me a few days to respond to emails regardless of what day I received them. Sometimes I have to re-prioritize, or I need to think about a response, or life happens. I do my best to let you know I've received your email even if I can't get to it right away, but sometimes it just doesn't work that way, haha. If I haven't gotten back to you after 5 days or so, by all means poke me. Either I spaced or your email got lost.
- I operate on the EST/New York timezone.
- There are some weeks that this schedule gets messed up, such as holiday weeks or conventions. I try to get it back on track as quickly as possible, usually by the following week.

MONDAY
- I check emails and send any waiting invoices first thing Monday morning. This is when you're most likely to get a quick response. I usually have a tab open all day, but not always, and morning is the best bet.
- I schedule Patreon and social media posts. Depending on how much content is queued up, this can take a few hours to literally the entire day.
- If there's time left, I do admin work like update my website, put products on the store, make ads, order supplies, etc etc.
- I DO NOT work on commissions on Mondays.

TUESDAY-THURSDAY
- I usually check emails once in the morning and once in the evening.
- I work on art most of the day. Commissions take priority. I do personal work if I run out of paid work to do or I'm having an off day and the quality of commissions will suffer for it.

FRIDAY
- I usually check emails once in the morning and once in the evening, but not always.
- I work exclusively on personal work. No commission work at all.

SATURDAY[b]
- Day off. No emails, no commission work, just fun and relaxing.

[b]SUNDAY
- Day off. Chore day. Cleaning the house, cleaning snake cages, feeding snakes, grocery shopping, etc. No emails or work.


So there you have it, that's why you might not hear back from me til Tuesday morning when you emailed me Thursday night, haha. Generally speaking I have no problem replying within 24 hours, but promising that would just be unrealistic.

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask!

New year, new prices, as is tradition. This year though, I'm also making a lot of changes.

A few years ago I went back through my gallery and realized…there was none of me in my gallery. It was all fanart and commissions. And sure, I had fun working on a lot of them. But I didn’t fully own the overwhelming majority of my own art, very little I could safely say “I made everything in this piece by myself”. It was actually kind of soul-crushing, and lit the fuse to this slow burning artistic depression cherry bomb. Since then I’d been trying to steer my career back in the direction I wanted it to go, but it’s really hard to turn down a commission that doesn’t fit your vision when they’re offering you a substantial pile of money to do it. And that kept happening, because I like eating and having a roof over my head, but every time it would weigh me down a little more heavily. One more drop in the Old Me bucket, taking away from time I could have spent putting a drop in the New Me bucket.

So my relationship with art has been rocky, to say the least. Most times it’s awesome! I get to make cool art, work in my pajamas, be my own boss, and meet some of the coolest people on the planet. I’m living my dream, which is more than a lot of people can say, and most of the time it’s even enough to pay my bills. There are no words for how appreciative I am for that and for the opportunities I’ve been given.
But when it’s not awesome, it’s definitely not awesome. A lot of artists have a hard time separating their work from themselves. It’s not like a “muggle” job, where you go to work, clock in, do as you’ve been instructed, clock out, go home, and spend the rest of the night unwinding. The lines between “work” and “relax” get blurred or erased. Which, as I said, can sometimes be great if you’re really jiving with a particular piece or client. But sometimes you’re not. And it’s through no fault of your own, or the client’s, or the piece. Sometimes you’re just not feeling it, or you’re not as into the subject matter as you thought you’d be, or there’s a communication gap or personality clash with the client. And that’s okay, but it can be extremely difficult to push through it. And usually it is a matter of pushing through it, because we can’t always afford to refund and move on.

And yes, that is just part of working any job. Hell, it’s part of being human. But when it happens a lot, or for an extended period of time, it’s incredibly draining. And that’s how you burn out. And boy, have I burned out a lot. More often than I care to admit, and sometimes to the point that I worry the spark will never come back, and this is the end of my artistic career. Fortunately, that has yet to happen. But each time it becomes more and more obvious that I have to take steps to make sure it never happens.

This year I did that. Largely thanks to my wonderful boyfriend @shadderstag, who I’d quite frankly be lost without. He called me on my bullshit early this year, kept me accountable, and most importantly, pushed me to work on personal projects and my original characters. And I was kind of blown away by the response. I’ve run into enough people at conventions who spend hours explaining every minute detail of their worldbuilding project and every character’s tragic backstory to know that I never, ever want to be That Guy. If you ask me, sure, I will absolutely tell you everything you want to know and then some, but just...offering it, unprompted, always made me pretty uncomfortable. But y’all just...ate it up. The love for Corbin, an OCxCanon ship for a very specific version of a not-terribly-popular character of a steady but comparatively quiet-in-the-background fandom, especially took me by surprise. I learned pretty quickly that cringe culture is dead, and my followers - you guys - followed me because you like what I make and you want to know about my characters and worlds. So from the bottom of my heart, thank you for showing me as much support as you did. I’ll keep doing it, for sure.

This year I also took a massive leap of faith and signed up for The Fantastic Workshop in November. It’s a workshop where established, successful fantasy artists come together, talk shop, and help students set up a successful and fulfilling career - whether they need technical help, business advice, or guidance in finding their voice. And when I say a massive leap of faith, I mean it. I took a substantial chunk of my earnings from three different conventions to pay for this workshop, leaving me essentially breaking even at one or two of those. And I spent all that money to stand up in front of a room full of artists far more successful and skilled than me, who I look up to and admire, and ask them to tell me what I’m doing wrong. I was so ready, so terrified to have them tear my work apart, violent and bloody, to get to the still-beating heart of it.
But they didn’t. In fact they did the opposite. They helped me realize, on the first day even, that I hadn’t done everything wrong, that my work was actually really close to being what I wanted it to be. Some of it was even there already. I just needed to make sure it was being given the time and attention it needed to flourish.

I think I actually realized that to some degree on my own while preparing for the workshop. We had to bring 4-6 pieces to show at a critique group. While I was doing that I realized that my favorite pieces - both in terms of technical execution and emotional attachment - were consistently traditional, fully rendered pieces of monsters, robots, and animals. Some were graphite, some were watercolor, some were mixed media. And in the weeks leading up to this point, I’d been working on a piece in colored pencil, and fell in love with that all over again. But the majority of my gallery was digital, flat colored or loosely rendered, semi-toony furry work. It didn’t reflect who I was as an artist, and for the first time in a long time, I think I knew what kind of artist I wanted to be.

Which brings us to today. I’ve spent the last month and a half evaluating my options and preparing to make the necessary changes. I’ve learned a lot about the art world outside the furry and fanart circles, and what each has to offer that the others don’t.

Let me preface this by saying that I am NOT nor do intend to leave the furry fandom for the foreseeable future. You guys are the ones who brought me to where I am now. You gave me confidence and experience and support through my invaluable years of growing as an artist. I’ve been in this fandom for fifteen years or more, over half my lifetime. I’ve met too many wonderful people, people I consider lifelong friends, people I consider family, through this fandom to consider leaving it. Without you guys, I would not be the person I am today, and I can’t imagine leaving any of that behind.

But I do need to expand my horizons. I want to keep one foot in the furry sphere and dip my toes elsewhere with the other. I want to try showing my work in new places, like reptile expos, tattoo conventions, fantasy and comic conventions, horror conventions. I want to be able to be more selective with the commissions I take, and only work on things I’m excited to work on, and that support my brand and IP. Eventually it’d be nice to wean myself off commissions at conventions, or even at all, and just make my living entirely on Patreon and merchandise so I can really dig deep and focus on making art that’s meaningful to me.
The first step to achieving any of that, I think, is to overhaul my commission system. This is the scariest part, but arguably the most important. The commission process itself, the interaction between me and the client, is actually more or less the same. The changes are mostly on the front and back end.

First, and perhaps most obviously, I'm taking that big step that's been haunting me since November: I'm cutting out digital commissions. Well, mostly. Character design and ref sheets will probably still be digital, because trying to fit all that on one piece of paper is a nightmare I don't care to relive.

Second, I've added a 50% fee for explicit content. This isn't because I don't enjoy doing it, or even that I want to do less of it (believe me, I don't plan on stopping that any time soon), but because between my website, three gallery sites, and three social media platforms, I can only post explicit work to FurAffinity and Twitter. And who knows if and when Twitter will change their mind on that. The less I can post to all those other places, the less traffic they'll receive, and the harder it will be to sell adult content in general. If by some miracle some of my sites loosen up on that rule, I'll consider removing this fee, but for now, it's an unfortunate necessity.

Third, the original is no longer included in the commission price. This is a rare practice in the furry sphere, but far more common in other indie art circles. Clients will have first dibs on the original, and at a steep discount from the retail price, but it will not be included automatically. I'll go into this in more detail in my updated terms of service before these prices go live.

And finally, I am no longer advertising reference sheets. I will still take them if asked for one, but I won't be openly offering them anymore. This is partially because they're all digital almost by necessity, and partially because they have exactly zero long term value after the commission price. No one sells prints of reference sheets, or puts them on merchandise. I like doing them sometimes, but there are just smarter ways to invest my time.

I know it’s a pretty major - and for those of you who aren’t Patreon subscribers, perhaps somewhat abrupt - shift, but I think it was inevitable. Necessary, even, for my art, for my business, for my mental and emotional health.

I’m incredibly excited (and yes, terrified) to take this step, and I hope you’re all excited to take that step with me. I owe everything I have to you, and I hope I continue to deserve your support going forward.

Happy New Year <3

I can finally talk about this now: guess who was invited to be Guest of Honor at Fursonacon 2020!

Being a GOH at a convention has been a goal of mine since my wee babby days as a convention artist around 2013 or so. I'm eternally grateful to the people at Fursonacon for making this dream come true!

I'll see all you young witches, wizards, and warlocks next year! Don't forget your cauldrons, wands, and owls ;)

Fursonacon is held in Virginia Beach, VA every August/September. For more information, check out their website or follow them on twitter!

Where are you staying?
The Courtyard!

When will you be arriving and leaving?
Arriving Wednesday afternoon, leaving Monday morning

Who will you be rooming with?


What is the best way to find you?
Table M17/18 in the dealer room during dealer hours, running around all willy nilly otherwise. You can try to grab me on Telegram if you have it or Twitter, but it's hard to keep up with phone stuff with so much going on.

Are there any panels you will be attending?
Not likely. Too much work to do!

Are you hosting any panels?
Nope

Where will you be most of the time during the day/s?
Dealer's den, my room, and every restaurant we can manage

What/where will you be eating?
Nicky's and Condado are definites, everything else we'll play by ear

Will you be having a room party?
Maybe an art party, but that's about it lol

Will you be drinking and/or getting drunk?
Social drinking at dinner, maybe one or two in the room, that's it

PERSONAL STUFF:

What is your gender?
Fluid. Any and all pronouns are a-okay!

How tall are you?
4'11". Short jokes unappreciated :V

If I approach you, will you chat with me?
As long as you're polite and we're not trying to get somewhere, sure!

If I see you, how should I get your attention?
Just say "Hey Sparta!" or something similar. I also answer to Alex or AJ, but there's probably a lot fewer other Spartas than there are Alexes and AJs.

How many furry conventions have you attended?
God I've lost count. About 3-5 per year since 2013

Do you own a fursuit?
Not one I still wear lol

PERMISSIONS:

Can I hug or snuggle with you?
Hugs are good as long as I know they're coming - no surprise attacks please! Snugs are reserved for shadderstag

How can I find you?
At my table in the den. Otherwise I'm the short person with the neon green hair and bridge piercings.

Can I buy you drinks?
Closed container or direct from the bartender only, and only if shadderstag is okay with it

Can I look in your sketchbook?
Sure! Just ask first so I don't wonder where it went

Can I take your picture?
Just let me know you're gonna take it first!

MISCELLANEOUS:

Do you do free art, trades, commissions, badges?
Commissions and badges will be available in the dealer den. Trades are case-by-case, but probably not. I don't do free art.

Do you have a table in the Artist Alley / Dealer's Den or a panel in the Art Show? If so, what are you selling?
Yes to all of the above! I have originals in both the general and adult art shows, and I'll have prints, merch, and commissions available at table M17/18

Do you plan to volunteer?
Ah yes, with all of this copious free time I have.... (no)

What's your goal for the con this year?
To introduce shadderstag to as many of his art idols as possible and see how flustered I can make him :V Money's also nice I guess


LET'S GO SHOPPING MOTHERFUCKERS

Relatively short and simple explanation:

- My boyfriend shadderstag is visiting for a few weeks :D
- AC is a week away and con prep is my life until then
- AC is a week away and I will be in recovery mode for a bit afterward

You'll still be able to reach me and I'm gonna try to get some more things uploaded before I leave, but I may be slow to respond and I make no promises.

Thanks for your patience and understanding!

Some things about it have my head tilting, but I suppose it doesn't hurt to try! My shinies are open. You should be able to send them from my front page, right under my favorites.

If you enjoy my work and want to support me, but don't have the desire or ability to commission me or pledge to my Patreon, please consider a $5 tip of shinies! Of course it's by no means obligatory, but it is greatly appreciated!

I've been meaning to do this for quite some time, but it kept getting pushed off. No longer!

For those of you who have commissioned me in the past, I want to know what you thought of your experience doing business with me. I'm collecting written reviews so I know what specifically my clients like (and don't like!) about my commission process and the commissions they receive. And I'd like to pull some quotes from these reviews and put them on my website as testimonials!

So, this is your opportunity to help my future clients by letting me improve the process, and also hopefully help me get future clients as well!

Of course this is by no means obligatory, so if you don't want to share, or don't want to be quoted on the website, you don't have to be!

Here's the review form:
https://forms.gle/buCcGVbitKi9k8YS9

Any and all feedback is greatly appreciated!

I've been in the mood to draw some dragon porn lately, but I haven't been able to settle on who. So I'm turning to Twitter for help!

NOTE: Patreon will get an additional poll after this one to help me determine the theme/kink/etc, so pledge if you want to vote for that too!

Poll:
https://twitter.com/SpartaDog13/sta.....27973758185473

Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/SpartaDog

WARNING: This post contains photos of animal neglect. Viewer discretion advised.

I apologize for the slowdown in productivity this past week or so. If any of you follow me on Twitter or are friends with me on Facebook, you probably already know. For those who don't, the short version: I took in some new animals and between them and my day job, I haven't had a ton of time to devote to art.

The long version:

Someone was selling these two and their cages on Craigslist. As soon as I saw them I had to take them.

The first one is, admittedly, not in the worst possible shape. It has some stuck eyecaps, and maybe slightly underweight, but ultimately pretty okay condition.

The second is a goddamn trainwreck. It’s extremely dehydrated, covered in stuck shed, and underweight bordering on emaciated. According to the previous owner, this snake is 5 years old and weighs 500-600 grams. For reference, when Ramses was 5 years old, she was starting to approach 1800 g.

http://tinyurl.com/yxtvg3lt

http://tinyurl.com/y49oaeqa

http://tinyurl.com/y2t2v87z

It’s clear the owner did no research whatsoever when buying these snakes. They were in 18x18x24 ExoTerra/Zilla vivariums, which are great tanks - for arboreal species. Ball pythons are completely terrestrial. And even if they weren’t, there were no sticks or climbing perches allowing them to make use of that space. Their existence was limited to an 18 inch square covered in their own feces and shed skin with only one hide box that basically took up the entire floor. The water bowls were bone dry, and I know he didn’t just empty them out for the drive because there was dried poop and shed stuck to the bottom of them. It took me two days of intense scrubbing with hot water, Dawn, bleach, and steel wool to get rid of the layers and layers of caked on grime, and even then it's not completely gone.

Heat was provided through ceramic heat emitters in dome lamps, which in itself is fine....except they’re 2 ft above the snakes. There was no temperature gradient, and at that height, I wouldn’t be surprised if the ground temperature barely broke 80F, nevermind the 90-95F hot spot that ball pythons need. And that's when they were functioning. He told me when I picked them up that one of them was not working. I decided to try putting one on my future tarantula cage because I've had a hard time keeping temps up. It raised the temperatures up a whopping 4 degrees Fahrenheit. In a 10 gal aquarium, with 6 inches of substrate. And this was 2 feet above the snakes.

When I asked what size food they were taking, the answer was “white mice”. He claimed one of them is "farsighted" because it wouldn't react to things right in front of it, but apparently "watched cars go by on the street". I would bet $10 it's just because the poor thing has like 3 layers of retained eye caps from bad sheds.

http://tinyurl.com/y4yt88ye

http://tinyurl.com/y4626y95

The sad thing is that ball pythons are one of the easiest reptiles to care for. They’re easier than fish or any bird or mammal. They require absolutely minimum effort, with the right setup.

There is absolutely no excuse for this. You have a limitless library of collective knowledge at your fingertips. If you take on the responsibility of caring for a living creature, you owe it to the animal to know at the very least the bare minimum of its requirements and meet them. If you’re not willing to spend a couple hours googling, you’re a fucking moron and you don’t deserve to have animals.

They are now in proper quarantine tubs with two hide boxes, a water bowl, and a heat mat regulated on a thermostat. Once they're back up to par, I'll most likely rehome them. I don't really want more balls, but I had to get them out.

The night I took them home, I posted about them on Twitter and Facebook and a huge number of people wanted to help. Overnight I had $145 to get them to a vet, and I booked an appointment for that afternoon.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that the smaller one had shed a lot on her own overnight. All it took was a misting on an absorbent substrate.

http://tinyurl.com/y5sj77xv

I tried a new reptile vet with them as well. The last one was wonderful, but after moving, it's much farther away. This one is about half the distance and right by my job and my doctor, so it's super convenient. And I'm in love with them. The staff was all very enthusiastic about having reptiles in while the previous ones were intrigued but nervous. In the exam room, they even brought in a space heater and some heated cushions to keep the snakes comfortable. Excellent first impression, so shout out to [url=https://www.facebook.com/WillowRiverVet/]Willow River Veterinary Services.[/b]

The vet visit went very well. No signs of internal parasites, mites, mouth rot, or plugged heat pits. The larger one did have a slightly plugged vent, but that was easily removed and resulted in a nice big (and very dark, dehydrated) pee on the vet's hand lol. He determined they're both probable females, though I might want a second opinion on that before I'm convinced. He didn't seem completely convinced lol

In any case, he advised me to just keep doing what I'm doing. Keep them hydrated and misted, give the small one a soak and start her on fuzzies so as not to shock her system. So that's the plan.

http://tinyurl.com/y6qwyejv

And today we got all that nasty crap off!

http://tinyurl.com/yy9t3j4x

I did also get their old cages clean. They'll never be in them again, but they're really nice tanks, so I'm gonna keep them for future animals.

http://tinyurl.com/y43mupdw

So that's where we're at. I'll try feeding them soon, and hopefully that will go well, and then they can get back on track.

And that's been my week. How's yours?

So I asked this on Twitter and got a weird mixed bag of answers, and even though I asked for an explanation, only one person actually gave me one.

Anyway, if I were to start a Discord server for people who enjoy my art, would you join?

This would be a public server, but with Patreon-locked channels. I could share rewards there, which would be great for those who don't get/see email notifications often, and there would also be a discussion channel or two that only patrons would have access to.

For the public channels, I'm not sure exactly what I'd have yet, but some ideas include: general chatter, sharing your art, q&a, sharing your pets (and plants), announcements, questions to you guys (much like this), and more.

I already own and/or moderate six other Discord servers, so lord knows I have the experience haha. And of course I'd appoint some other moderators to help keep things in check while I'm not available. Honestly I've wanted to do a server for a while, especially linked through Patreon, but I'm not sure if I should just jump in and do it or wait until there's more interest.

SO. Would you be interested, yes, no, maybe so? And please tell me why or why not! What would be a dealmaker or dealbreaker?