thinking about this and: i feel like there's some bits with the anatomy i could communicate better, but i dig that i can capture all the parts about a human face that are just kinda unavoidably *awkward* and force the audience to be like "yeah, you have to find this hot, too. no moeshit for you lol"

BUT ANYWAYS:

yeah, it's bad to think about it as "how can i set myself apart from my peers," because you're not really thinking about *why* those stylistic choices are being made in relation to the artist (sensu lato) and why they resonate with you. it's a form of communication!

i holler about this for someone who still works a retail job, lmao, but like. so many great artists have day jobs. which sucks.

the only reason i've avoided this is because musicians, who have nothing to lose, do not have this problem because they can't afford to. you have to perform the tightrope walk of marketing yourself within genre conventions *while* reinventing them to have any perceived merit.

which: there's a taboo among artists online that i never really understood where you're not supposed to draw comparisons. i still don't get it. like, the audience is trying to connect with your work by relating it to something they're more familiar with, because *they do not know your work.*

jenny, i just need to say, as someone who is less than sober and looking at her own art: what artists tend to be insecure about in their own art is generally what the audience adores, and like. i love that your art is bright!!

like, i started making art in the kinds of environments that really, really believed in the sanctity of Style As Personal Brand, and i always felt like that both made people *really* insecure about being seen as derivative and *really* unwilling to explore techniques that aren't marketable.

there's a desperation to slam the lid shut on our teetering democratic system. theres an urgency because they fear, probably correctly, that their existence has become such that a society of free people can no longer tolerate them. it's their pile of money or us, and they're choosing their money

if human civilization still exists it's gonna be full-blast Where Have All The Cowboys Gone for people whose john wayne was marshall mathers, "you couldn't make blazing saddles these days" for people whose zucker brothers were the penny arcade guys

most culture is cringe, most of the shit that isn't immediately cringe has a shelf life of about a year, prioritizing "cool" all that heavily is peaked-in-high-school horseshit, if i see you judging i'm gonna ask you for a warrant