As funny and inevitable as my Twitter run coming to an end is, I'm still not happy with having to rebuild elsewhere. The DeviantArt AI crap took me by surprise, and while they backpedaled on that pretty damn quick, it's a sober reminder that the walls are closing in, so to speak, for artists everywhere. I don't even know that it matters anymore. It isn't like I'm a big time artist getting my top work scraped from ArtStation, but I do have to wonder if at least one of my works has made its impression on some neural model somewhere in the depths of some data center.

Maybe it's inevitable, but I certainly don't feel like running full-tilt towards that future, even with as pro-AI that I am.

Twitter wasn't helping out much, honestly. I had the sneaking suspicion my tweets were getting shadowbanned, and my ability to grow was crippled. Probably my fault somehow, I'm sure, but with how much of a black box these algorithms are, it's next to impossible to figure out how to escape from that pit.

As for DA, well…

I'm working on presences on other sites, but DA was a load-bearing site for me, especially in terms of income. I may be able to fudge Itch into being an income stream, but it'll be weird. This isn't as easy as just signing up for Ko-Fi or Patreon and calling it a day. I love drawing adult art, I want to get paid for drawing adult art, but that's so dangerous to do these days if you want to use the standard payment processors and subscriber services. Some of these sites exist in a superpositioned limbo of being okay/not okay with NSFW art that only takes the wrong person looking your way to end access to your pay account.

It's so hard to juggle personal stuff, be an artist who needs to make money and eat food, and work on DNF2001. All of this happened at the worst possible time, right before we're trying to release a demo.

Ah well.

It's occurred to me I haven't done a proper introduction post here. I'll have to put one together once I've finished setting up my presences elsewhere.