[Originally posted to dA]

It's funny how some artists within my lifetime online used to be my heroes/the reason I started art until they stopped fitting that bill or I'm not as enthusiastic about them as I once was. It's hard to admit, but I've stopped looking for people to look up to, and so far it's boiled down to just "if I like your work enough, I'll make a collection for it-- heck maybe I'll shout you out if something I created was made with the thought of your own art." OR maybe if it gets me hyped like a monkey in the middle of a boring day and I get noise complaints celebrating your work, then that's the closest amount of childhood-level, parasocial joy I can ever provide to some stranger's artistic expression.