So many of those side characters are still in my head and need an outing!

Thankfully the formatting on the scribbles page SHOULD be minimal - worth trying to load it on whatever device you're thinking of, seeing what happens!

It is about a janitor in the far future of San Iadras, same setting of my novels, who does not value himself. Society does not value him. Until he finds some art that inspires him, and slowly, he finds a way to let art be a way he loves himself and the world around him.

I hope you enjoy it.

I'm still working on my mental health, but this story? It deserves to be released. It probably deserved to be released six months ago, and I think I exhausted myself grinding at it and could have done better if I'd been more relaxed...

... but, hesitantly, I think it's good.

This is a weird short story to, finally, post. I started it at the beginning of the year and have been pecking at it since - close to the entire year. I've been caught in a cycle of weird perfectionism, wanting it to be 'perfect', never letting it be its own thing.

I have not heard of this specific project, but I've run into people broadly advocating for stuff like this... Thank you for a new research rabbit hole!

Thank you!

I believe it's because they found his work first and came to him afterward - which is also a great lesson about commissions, I think.

You can get ones that go 'bend over backwards to do it my way', and ones that go 'please do what you do with me in mind'.

Furry fandom? The second, often.

I like that as a way to explain the way Giger fused a lot of his longterm works and issues into that design commission.

That thing was 100% built on the foundation of his raw art, and raw art is impossible to replicate.

Two queer history recs: Pretty much anything by Rictor Norton, though it's sometimes very scholastic. His website is a treasure: rictornorton.co.uk Strangers: Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century, by Graham Robb, is also great.