fissionforcompliments:

shacklefunk:

yknow theres a lot of pressure to be successful, particularly on artsy kids whose professions are seen as useless unless theyre famous, but life is fucking hard and sometimes things dont turn out

but i think thats not bad. my dad has wanted to be a musician forever, and hes rly pretty good. but then he joined the military to get away from an abusive family, and then he got married, and then he got divorced, and a lot of horrible shit HAPPENED. he has ptsd and severe anxiety and he could never really get back on the horse. and he never made it as a musician, and now hes 53

but i grew up in a house full of instruments, and he can play all of them, and some of my earliest memories are of him playing guitar on the front porch and me thinking there wasnt a better musician in the world. so. even if you dont get to the stars, exactly, what you do isnt worthless. its not a waste of time if life is difficult and you cant make it, or if you arent famous, or if your work doesn’t influence thousands of people. it will influence someone

there are a million ways to be happy and a million ways to be a successful artist. we create what we do to enhance the human experience and relate to each other and improve ourselves. theres something to be said for just doing that,,,for the sake of doing it, yknow

^ And let’s always remind ourselves how intrinsically ideas of success, fame, influence, ambition, achievement and performance are tied to capitalist society anyway.  Always examine your own goals and wants.

sammyborras:

A friend of mine stopped doing the small press comics circuit in 2015, and it’s made me think a lot about how we need to be more careful about ‘encouragement posts online’. You might say something that would kick yourself into action, but there’s actually people out there who don’t respond in the same way, and it can actively discourage them. So yeah, I think it’s important to tell you about what happened (because other wise you’d just never find out about this stuff, right?) ….

So it started with arguments over fan art which caused the scene to get sour and hostile to new people. To me it highlighted a divide in attitudes. Relaxed ‘zinesters’ who believe in using self publishing to make whatever you want, whatever the quality VS. those pursuing a professional career, striving for the very best they can achieve and ultimately trying to use self publishing as a stepping stone to greater things. 

At that time people would say things along the lines of ‘if you can’t afford to table at a convention without the fanart, then your work isn’t good enough to be here.’ … I think the thought behind this was to encourage people to ‘STEP UP YOUR SMALL PRESS GAME.’ but it’s completely without context right? You know if you’re not trying your best and it’s ok to tell yourself to up your own game. But we’re all coming from wildly different backgrounds! You don’t necessarily know who is working full time with 3 kids and drawing comics whenever they possibly can, and who is working part time with no responsibilities to anyone. What if I’m already regularly crashing from the work load and I can’t work any harder? my comics could technically be at a high standard, but the ideas aren’t mainstream enough (we are self publishing them in the small press after all.)  (this is also ignoring that both comics and illustration industries have fashion styles which change over time - you could just be unlucky with how you prefer to draw)

My friend responded to the situation with ‘well if I’m not good enough, I guess I’ll stop self publishing comics and zines then. I’d be making a loss without the fanart anyway.’ … my heart broke a little bit.

And this unhealthy ‘STEP UP YOUR GAME’ attitude towards work seems to pop all all the time online. People beating themselves up over not working hard enough. Kicking themselves loudly in public (online) and everyone agreeing with them. Reinforcing this weird idea that we could all always be doing more and that we definitely have to become some sort of crazy obsessed comics machine that does nothing else. Sell your soul to the comics gods or GTFO.

I’m actually guilty of doing this myself. I’ve mellowed out over the years though. When I was being treated for an unrelated anxiety disorder, my therapist pointed out that I was regularly working myself up if I thought any amount of time had been wasted rather than used efficiently. We’re people, not machines and we don’t have to work all day every day, it’s perfectly ok to take breaks. In fact it’s probably healthier to regularly take scheduled breaks than to work until you burn out.

My friend read some more posts recently which have lead them to quitting freelance comics and illustration work altogether. Which is just crazy because they’re very skilled at drawing (better than I can draw). I think we need to remember that you can’t just write something like ‘be prepared to give every ounce of your being to your comic project or you may as well just give up right now’ without considering that someone with a different disposition to you might read the same thing and think ‘Welp. OK. Bye.’

Keep kicking yourself into action if it works for you, but consider whether or not you need to air it publicly? And choose words carefully if you do decide it’s important to you to share it.

I really hope that my friend ends up coming back to the small press world some time in the future. But until then - please be kind to each other - AND TAKE BREAKS <3
Sammy

roachpatrol:

thepalatine:

fuckmorgan:

discody:

Hasn’t Mark Hamill been playing The Joker for 20 shitzillion years? How come he never got “consumed” by the role?

cause hes not an ass

seriously–that’s one of my favorite things. while jared leto is over there talking about how playing a PG-13 Joker has irreparably turned him into a dark and twisted psychopath, mark hamill, who has played the meanest and scariest versions of the joker for years, is running around being an actual ray of human sunshine.

nothing makes you be a dick. you decide to be a dick, then find an excuse.