barefootliam

All through my life there have been people in the background, quietly helping me. Sometimes when i was a child by protecting me from hurting myself, of course. But also protecting me from being bullied.

Are there people who help you? Can you add a comment about it?

Later, at school, at university, in the workplace, there have been people who have said, Don't bully. Leave alone. Stand back. Or who have supported me. Without ever asking for praise or thanks. Without ever being seen. Sometimes they were other students or colleagues, sometimes teachers or managers.

Of course, there were bullies, and a difficult lesson for me to lean was that I don’t have a right to protection, that no-one has an obligation to help me.

Even so, i know i’m only alive today because of those people and their support. Sometimes it was visible, but i only ever saw a tiny fraction of it.

When i had cancer, i made a gofundme and over 100 people donated. It meant i could take the time off work i needed to recover.

Perhaps this is true for most of us: there are people who whisper in someone’s ear, nudge someone away, or leave a cupcake on your desk when you’re feeling down.

Can we do the same for others? Have you helped someone recently? Add a comment to say so, even if you don’t want to share details.

Did something unexpected happen to you as a result of someone helping? Share your story.

Let’s try to notice that people care for one another and let’s share our gratitude.

I’ll visit the gallery of everyone who comments with a story, even just a single sentence, about how they helped or were helped, and then i’ll leave a gift behind.

A quick index to stories.

It turns out you can’t have subfolders in premium galleries, so the story chapters are all intermingled in Adult Writing, BUT each chapter links to the first and to the next in the series. Adult Writing is a Premium folder, but if you can’t pay the $3 or whatever it is, e.g. because of the country where you live, feel free to send me a note.

Some of the stories are in the Gentlemen In Distress folder, which is open and free, although i’ve marked them as mature and you need to be logged in to read them.

Unless otherwise marked, all characters are eighteen years old or over.

People come and go on every online platform. They might be online in evenings while they’re a high school student, or really engaged with art while they’re at art school, and everything is super important and every message demands a reply. Then they are unemployed for a while and are online 48 hours a day

Then they find work sweeping the floor at a fast-food place or being CTO of a bank and suddenly have much less time.

Or, they have become interested in occult gravy sock-hockey, and are spending most of their online time finding out about that, and then playing it with friends.

So, over time, the people who watch you and comment on your work will naturally wander off, not because of anything you did but because of their lives changing, because people change.

Every couple of years you need to harvest new watchers. One way is to go to a busy mall with a large net, but there’s probably laws against capturing people, so here’s some legal ways instead…

The trick is common interests.

Find people who faved one of your deviations and see what else they liked. Or go through your own favourites and see who else faved them (you can click on 136 favourites to get a list).

Now, you can give each of them a llama (the one-click llama script makes that as easy as it sounds). If they return the favour (and this is the important part), go look at their gallery. Thank them for the llama.

If they have deviations you like, you can of course favourite them, and also comment. Try to leave comments that are not just “awesome snapshot” or “wow, lucky paint dabs everywhere” but “Wow, i love the way the light reflects off the victims’ shackles” or “This is a really strong composition of a rose, I love the way the ivy leads the eye to the main focus.” This sort of comment gets a lot easier with practice, and people really appreciate it.

If they have quite a few deviations you like, or they interact back with you in a good way, watch them, of course, and maybe they will return the favour.

If they only have favourites, you can look at those, maybe find some cool deviations, and maybe repeat the process by seeing who else liked them. You could also check their About page and see if they leave lots of comments, and, if so, consider a watch - it’s not going to fill up your feed but they might start commenting on your work too.

You can also notice people who comment constructively — especially on deviations similar to yours — and visit their galleries, favourite some items, watch them.

Posting to active groups and forums can also get you more watchers. DeviantArt is unusual in how well integrated the groups and forums are (even if they’re not switched over to the new system fully yet). I find that posting to the forums may require a thick skin, so i don’t tend to do that much, but that’s just me. The groups, on the other hand, can really make a big difference.

Of course, doing this takes work and time, takes engaging with people. But that’s what you want, right? Engaging involves both people. It’s how we build up a community. There’s a lot more competition now for social media than when DeviantArt started. If what makes this site special is the active community, we have to work to keep it that way.

What else has worked for you? What else have you done to have watchers and get comments, and to enjoy being here?

I've noticed a few people i watch talk about what equipment they use. I’ll do a separate post about calligraphy. For photography, i should say that it doesn’t usually matter - some of the best photos have been taken with low end equipment. But here’s the jargon for people who want it

I use a 2007-vintage Canon dSLR, the EOS Xti (also called the 400D); i think in 2008 or so i got a 17-85mm f/3.5-4.5 EF-S IS lens; eventually i replaced this with the much sharper 15-85mm EF-S IS lens. I also have a 50mm f/1.8 lens, which was Canon’s best-value lens by far.

For software, i use Darktable to process raw files, and then GIMP, on Mageia Linux. The workflow is colour managed, with a calibrated Dell display.

None of this makes me a good photographer - i like to think i’m slowly improving. I want to make images that invite the reader to tell their own stories.

The other part of being a good photographer is looking at 1500 shots you did one day, and picking out a few good ones. I’ve been doing that more often these days since i no longer travel much for work, something i really miss.

There's several stories here waiting for me to finish them and post them... after Mr Andrews' Boy.

1. a School trip to Africa goes horribly wrong (tickling, mostly)

2. Naked Revenge (in a sixth form college - naked in school) (free, not behind paywall)

3. Naked Revenge II (goes much further, some fairly extreme bondage)

4. Master Jasper's Boy (or was it Master Jarod's Boy?), slave of a sadistic master (enslavement)

5. Bohemia - parallel-world science fiction with slavery

6. Khadi's Story (dark fantasy, continues Lohric's Tale)

7. Nathan (boy discovers at 14 he's a slave... some parts already posted but i got stuck, now unstuck, yay)

8. Temple Boy (also in the same fantasy world as Khadi and Lohric; i wrote a novella once about this, years ago, but then lost it in a disastrous backup event)

9. Wimpdog - not sexual at all, Gentleman-in-Distress (GiD), schoolboy is forced to be a doggie... (although there could be a more... adult... version maybe)

10. Something else entirely...?

Any preferences out there?

Maybe no-one likes any of it and i should try going back to bad jokes and poetry?