Small Rant #01 - Certain Someone. (Patreon)

To be honest this is a LONG (like really really LONG) story, but I will try my best to keep it short…

It all goes back to 2.5 years ago, back in the summer of 2015 when this dude (we’ll call him LostSnake for now) found my Pixiv due to “Kemono Love”, and proposed the idea of drawing a parasite inside the womb of a girl. I really liked the idea so we discussed it for days using messenger, spending hours to plan stuff.

He wanted the pack to be big with a lot of variations, but his idea was to have a single drawing (1 pose) with 80 pages, which would be boring as a picture pack. So I suggested 7-9 drawings, each with 10 variations instead. It was going to cost a lot, so he started telling me about how nobody would accept his commission and how I am the only one nice enough to listen, so I gave him a discount as I quite liked the idea too. Before I had time to calculate the price, he decided to calculate it himself based on my commission info page and started throwing money at me.

It was October when I received the first payment and told him to just send me a deposit and stop, as I wouldn’t be free until at least mid-2016. Worst case scenario he might have had to wait for a year until I had time for his drawing, but he said it was fine and because the conversion rate from MYR to USD was good at the time he kept throwing tons of money at me. I kept telling him not to give me money but he insisted because it was cheap at the time. By January he had already given me $1000.

Due to my life’s situation, from 2015 to 2016 I was had a year off from Uni and was doing nothing except for drawing (though I regret not drawing enough). There were a lot of things happening and I was under a lot of pressure. For example, my graduation was in November and my parents came to the UK, so I had 3 weeks away from my computer. Even though I was jobless, UK doesn’t give a shiet and asked me to pay some sort of “council tax”, sucking 140USD per month from my income of nothing. And because of this I had to deal with the job center and pretend I was looking for a job just so I wouldn’t have to pay the council tax. After all I was going to study again in 2017… But that didn’t work out due to the fact I was away for December and so on… So all $1000 were sucked by the council tax…

Back to this client, we discussed a lot of our ideas during January, in which all poses and the flow of the pictures were thought of by me, as well as how the story flows. At least 60% of it was my opinion/suggestions. Then he suggested some stuff (scɐt, gnro), which I clearly said I wouldn’t draw on my commission info, so I refused to accept those ideas and asked for an alternative instead.

Not to mention he normally messaged me a lot and took up to 2-3 hours per day discussing his project. After 1-2 weeks I decided I needed to focus on drawing, so I ignored him. What happened is that he would spam me 3-4 times a day until I replied and it got sooo bad that he started playing the victim card, saying how he feared I would just take the money and leave, and that’s just if I didn’t reply to him for 1 fuking day….

Then in February and March he started being rude and asking when I was going to work on his pack. When he first talked to me I did tell him there would be a wait and that I had to finish the 2016 “Kemono Love” first before working on his stuff, but then he began rushing me. There were so many times that he made me really annoyed with him that by the end of this whole thing I had written at least five 5-page essays to tell him why he was annoying dafuq outta me…

Even worse he started guilt tripping me from March to April. One day out of nowhere he messaged me saying he was in the hospital. Apparently because I didn’t draw his stuff but took his money, it made him worry and he couldn’t focus on his job, causing him to get injured. I got really annoyed with him trying to fuk with my mind and blame things on me, but instead some “friend” of his (who I don’t know if he even exists), started lecturing me about how bad I am as an artist and a person, saying professionals would not take money and do nothing. He mentioned how I took the money for a year and didn’t draw anything, at which point it had only been 6 months. We got into huge argument that week and eventually I was so pissed off that I wrote a huge letter pointing out all his faults and ignored him for 2 weeks hoping he would get it.

Skip forward to May and he didn’t change at all. He commented on how much of a douchebag I am and said he didn’t want anything to do with the parasite pack anymore. I said I would still draw it anyway, as I already took the money despite being underpaid, but a promise is a promise. It was then he revealed that a lot of stuff he lied about, such as supposedly nobody taking his commission (apparently he was working with 2 more artists), the supposed hospital incident (which wasted hours of my time arguing with this so-called friend of his), and few more things such as that apparently he was going to sell my drawings to some company (like wtf???). Either way after coming clean, he say he didn’t want the drawings anymore and said just to take the money.

After I finished it in early August, the whole thing except the initial idea was pretty much my creation. The writing was mine, the story flow ideas were mine, the drawings were mine, the picture layout was mine, and even the character name was mine. He contacted me days after asking for a copy of it despite saying he didn’t want it anymore. I refused to give it to him for 2-3 weeks. At first he was begging for it, saying he was wrong and sorry (but didn’t mention why). But on the 3rd week he lashed out at me, calling me a loser, and going on about how he would tell the industry to blacklist me so I would never find an art job in this world (wait… who is this kid again?). He compared me with one of his current artists, saying how despite he isn’t as good at drawing, as a person he is 10x better than me. In the end after discussion with my dad, I decided to give him the pack on the condition of him taking his words back, which made him relieved and he thanked me. But I told him to never contact me again, as the stress he put me through that year really affected me (part of the reason why I become so emo last year…), and he agreed. I posted the packs onto Patreon (which I shouldn’t have at the time) and he got super mad and started calling me the worst of humanity and a loser, and that I shouldn’t have shared his commission on Patreon. At the time I drew the pack I didn’t have a Patreon so I didn’t have an agreement with him beforehand, and since it is my wrongdoing I deleted it from my Patreon very quickly.

In the end just when I said I wanted nothing to do with him, he even made a ridiculous lie about how he was in Japan. Supposedly he was signing me up for some professional manga university, and after I said all those things he wouldn’t recommend me to the university anymore, but if a letter came to my house in a week then I would know it was him. Fuk off?? Like how the fuk does he know my address? Like he knows everything about me?? He really thinks after so many lies I will still buy his bullshiet?? 

Fast-forward again to the summer of 2017. He suddenly talks to me and asks me what I’m doing after graduation now and if I was interested in doing a parasite pack sequel. Despite my promise to family and friends to never talk with this guy again, I feel like I shouldn’t hold grudges. The parasite pack was quite a success too and so I talk to him. With all the stress and lies from before I told him I would only work with conditions and only if he pays the full payment this time. But instead he thinks he can bargain, telling me story about how poor he is, and saying if I can do it at 40% of the current price then he will commission me.

If he is so poor, why is he commissioning at least 1 artist at the moment, and also trying to commission me? If you don’t have money, why not stop working with multiple artists on multiple big projects? So I reject him and on whatever message he sends I use the minimum amount of replies to get back to him. In October of 2017 he asks if he can buy the whole upcoming “Kemono Love” for $20, but because I don’t want to have anything to do with him anymore I say $20 will not be enough.

Okay, sorry for such a long story, this is the end bit.

Today, he messages me again asking for my status on the “Kemono Love”, which feels like sarcasm. Since I know he is also working with another artist, who now still hasn’t finished the project despite it having been 1.5 years now, I mock him back with that. Then he requests to see my sketches, to which I asked why I should when we are not even friends. At this point he starts getting all dramatic again, saying how I am trash for dissing his artist, and how much of a piece of shiet I am. I reply to him saying that I have no trouble with the artist but with him instead. It’s him I hate and that I don’t want to talk to him. After the incident before there is no way we are friends, so I tell him to stay away from me.

Before I block him on Pixiv, he manages to slip through one message. It says that I am such a pu55y for remembering stuff from 2 years ago, and that back then when he called me a loser he was right. He says that supposedly my commission clients all hate me for uploading their artworks on Patreon and if they knew it is that bad they wouldn’t commy me in the first place. He calls me a shiet artist because I refuse his demands, saying I refuse not because of the bad ideas, but instead because I simply can’t draw it and refuse to learn. He says all I have done for 2 years is get slightly better with lines and colours, but that it’s pretty much the same shiet art. And lastly he says he hates me a lot and that a lot of people on the internet hate me too…

So that’s the whole story… Throughout 2016 my parents and friends told me to just send back the money. Despite the fact that I didn’t charge him for all my time he wasted on discussing and arguing and didn’t charge him for the character copyright or design fee (thanks to the lies), I still finished the whole pack in the end after all his bullshiet. I should have listened to my dad and refunded him the money back in February instead of going soft thanks to his lies. But I really shouldn’t have been naïve enough to believe he would change, giving him chance and talking to him the year after. He did agree to the terms when he first commissioned me (which I needed to explain to him as he clearly didn’t read my commy info), yet he comes to rush me and bash me, and to create drama to mind fuk me.

For your information, for all new commissions that are in Patreon content packs from October 2016 forward, the clients all agree that their commission will be featured in the content packs. In addition, 85% of the clients are returning customers, and a few are still paying me for new commissions. So unless this is the wrong universe, I really don’t think my commission clients have a problem with me posting their commissions in content packs.

Another thing is that I refused his idea due to the theme which I clearly stated I would never draw. This isn’t because I am not capable of drawing it or willing to try, but rather I set a line I set to not cross, as a person, to control myself and setting a limit.

Maybe out of this whole thing it isn’t him being a retard it’s just me being crazy. Maybe my art hasn’t changed much in 2 years, and maybe the internet hates me. But as long as I’ve got you guys around, the haters can go fuk themselves. Seriously.

Anyways, thanks for reading.