A note: we have received 700+ submissions in 29 days. I can buy 4-6. CONSIDER THE ODDS. Imagine if all 700 submitters were also supporters of the magazine. Imagine how many I could buy then. Join our Patreon before 12/31 to get in before rates go up Jan 1.

YOUR ENEMIES LAMENT YOUR VERY EXISTENCE. HAVE YOU TAKEN YOUR MEDICATIONS?

The thing I am taking from 2025 is that the main feedback I got from many teams at work was "we knew we weren't alone, that things would be OK, we felt supported by you" and "don't ever quit, here's several teams who will happily take you in and make sure you're not bored"

Sriracha mayo, Japanese mayo and salsa Valentina. (It's always a gamble trying to steal my fries, it could be ketchup or it could and most probably is hot sauces mixed together)

Dear bluskeeters! I'm doing research with a friend. If you're a Black Author with a speculative book publishing in 2026, could you please pitch and link me, please? This a difficult to sus intersection. Please add your friends' work. Please tag people. Please share

Void scream: I am not loving two vibes I'm seeing circling circus/aerial spaces: - Exercises if you feel guilty/that you ate many sweets and good food during holidays. (take your guilt and fatphobis away). - Ignore rest and recovery and just keep grinding.

As we enter the New Year remember fear of making bad art is holding you back. Fear of people not liking your work is holding you back. Rejection is holding you back You'll make bad art, you'll have people not like your work, and you'll be rejected. Moving past it is half the job of being a creative

I absolutely conferm this. Every single good work opportunity I’ve had in comics has been obtained like this. I was reliable I was friendly I did the work I communicated I’ve lost count of the people I’ve had to deal with (in any creative field, not just comics) that did NONE of these things.

#procreate #timelapse

I am here wishing for good manga and graphic novel recommendations. Tell me why you loved it, or what made you feel something due to it. Current last read was Detective Beans (both books), sweet art and kitten does detective mostly trying to find a case in a town that's nice to them.

Here's a simple happiness hack: Do something for someone that is truly altruistic. Do it in secret if you can, and take no credit, if you can manage that in a world that sees everything. Do this as often as your circumstances allow, which may be once a year or once a day. Try it and see.

I just finished both Detective Beans books (they are adorable). Have Shadow Baron on the go. And I think my favourite was The Isle in the Silver Sea, but there were many great books out this year it was hard to choose.

I have officially launched TrueRef's new timed gesture tool (Flow) & free pose library (Pose)! Both are linked on trueref.io. While limited right now, both will contain our full free library by the 1st. 🤍 Flow: community.trueref.io/trueref_gest... Pose: community.trueref.io/free_referen...

I could not have anticipated that my next millennial civic duty, after years in the trenches teaching boomers how to export PDFs, is to spend the rest of my life telling them that the video they shared of a fox bringing a woman cut flowers is AI.

So ever since that fuckin' writer guy said that AI learned just like Picasso I've been reading, thinking, reading some more and I have some things to say about this concept that what AI image generators do is at all similar to what artists do About why it's bullshit & misunderstands artists and AI.

My books are still on sale, so here are a few reasons why you should buy them: -Adult fantasy with sex, swearing, and violence! -It's queer! -Godless heathens fight against gods. -12 unique fantasy worlds with 12 gods that dominate their 12 races. -Not a romantasy, but romance as a side plot.

Oh hey by the way do you want to preorder those books? If you save your receipt there will be a preorder reward

boop

If the creator, who claims to be a 3d artist, actually made the ice age video Instead of asking stolen training data to do it, thousands of copycats looking to boost their follower counts wouldn't be able to make near identical copies. Replicating prompts is easy. Actual work/skill? Not so much.

You don't need to know everything that's happening. Just do the part that you can do.

Most of my creative friends were made because I am here to make friends, to support people and because we had fun talking about stuff we like. And because regardless of their success, we're there for each other anyway. It has never been about "how famous you are" or "what can I get from you".

Looking at lots of the “how do I break in” discourse going on and let me just say that the making friends part is (and remains) key. The difference between colleagues and friends becomes exceedingly visible once one leaves/steps back/is no longer actively working at the creative thing. 1/

So much of this feels like when my parents first got email in the mid 2000s and could not comprehend why it would be used for malicious purposes.

illustration but I think in creative fields generally a lot of 'success' is just hanging in there as long as you can and it is natural that you'll make friends with people who have similar points of view on the industry and share your same irrational 'not giving up' mental illness

Your internet gunkle is here to bring you gay tidings for the holidays. My gift to you: the ebook or audiobook of Jack of Thorns, completely free for Christmas. Merry Christmas. I love you. You're doing your best and it IS enough ❤️ Repost to spread joy. shop.ravenswordpress.com/products/jac...

Artists, quote with your most detailed art The Fox and the Wolf

Some of you have forgotten that only three years ago you were perfectly capable of writing a text, writing an email, telling a bedtime story to a child, and it should worry you that powerful companies have convinced us we can’t do things we’ve been doing since the dawn of time.

I think this policing of actions and how one behaves so heavily that "allies" aren't allowed to be allies unless they're perfect is partly due to this need for control that has somehow been artificially built online. "Curate, curate" and therefore, expect curated people.

Hi, not everything you don’t like is AI and I need you to have better media and social literacy than that. Be a real hater and know your enemy.

This can be a difficult and nuanced discussion, especially for people that are out of the tech loop. I try to break it down as AI = shit you've been using for over a decade. Predictive text. NPC enemy AI. Specialized machine learning. GenAI = shit built on stolen/scraped assets from the Internet

This is my story about growing old, regrets, and choices taken or not taken. I was quite pleased with it.

"it seems far, but just be where you are" (stardew by purity ring 🎶) Something I need to remind myself at times. Live today, it is the first time I'm doing that.

100% agree here. Like it's hard enough in localization where they have paid translators but they don't have the technical background to understand context and will choose incorrect words (I've flagged this at all tech companies since I will use both language versions)

You are going to see a lot of people today saying that if you want to be a writer, you have to do the work of writing. And to that I want to add, if you are having trouble doing the work, what you need is /rest/ and /replenishment/ and /community/.

People seem to enjoy my art & I can 100% tell you that whatever style I have was arrived at through letting go of the things I couldn't do and leaning into what I could do. I bet the same is true for many of the artists you admire. That is how process & experience informs and shapes human made art

So, since we have Yet More Discourse going on, I wanna toss out a thing because I keep seeing it come up. Writing is not always fun, and that’s actually pretty normal.

+ it doesn't matter what level of skill you are someone will dislike your work. even if you're absolutely best at it people won't like it because it's not what they want made in the exact way they want it done. answer is: do the art you like and and you'll find others that share the sentiment.

I *like* looking stuff up. I like pulling at a thread, asking if the source is reliable, looking for more context. It’s like a scavenger hunt and I learn something new at the end. Or when I’m lucky say “Ah, ok, that was right” pretty quick. The point is, I don’t want to be told. I want to find out

Aw man I love seeing this thing made the rounds again, drawn because I was tired of seeing historically inaccurate Luteces smut 😌🙏🏼

alright! for Bon Appetit i wrote about why some pans cost way more than others, how these pans are made, and where you can find value in cast iron, carbon steel, and stainless steel clad pans www.bonappetit.com/story/how-mu...

Above all else, you have to love and support creatives MORE than you hate generated slop. Show us that you care because you value and love what we do, and that you want us to keep doing it.

As I've said before. You can make anything for your Christmas tree

✨ 🧵 ✨

You do not become a world builder by reading everything everyone else has to say about world building. You do it by the actual act of creating, the continuous and dedicated practice of the skill. You fail, you learn, you create again. This is what makes you a world builder.

Bring this energy with you int 2026 (yes this is a threat)

scrolling social media lately has been very depressing 🫠 i just wanna make art in peace and stop having rich people destroy the world we live in