u/currentlyinthefab

This is coming from my own personal experience as someone who held a well paying job in tech for several years and would generally commission something every month or two, including several generally high profile artists, owns a partial fursuit, and has many friends who have worked with countless artists throughout their time in the fandom. There is obviously some level of generalization, and not everything I say is universal. I've worked with wonderful artists from the US, Canada, Western Europe, Australia, etc, and I have been flat out scammed by artists from Eastern Europe, Asia, Latin America, etc.

Also, this has nothing to do with money. I've taken an economics course before. I ultimately understand why an artist in Buenos Aires would charge $100 for something an artist from Boston would charge $300 for, and I don't want this to come off as just me complaining over how much people chose to charge for things.

That being said, many artists and creators in the West, especially American ones, tend to have an issue with professionalism. They tend to treat what is ultimately a business transaction as a simple hobby, and have no issues taking your money, and sitting around for weeks and months (or even years) on end with few to no updates. Ultimately blaming things like art block or just being busy on why they haven't been able to work on your piece. Sometimes, they end up completely ghosting you or end up lashing out at you over simply asking when something will be finished.

Also, many of these artists will do things like take on additional commissions and publish extra pieces while you still haven't gotten what you paid for back. I personally went in on a $500 comm with a friend 3 years back at this point from a very high-profile artist, and we only got a basic sketch back and haven't heard anything since, despite the fact that he still regularly posts new pieces online.

I also know many people who have spent years waiting for a fursuit or who were promised that they would have their suit ready by a certain date and ultimately didn't get it on time. It's also not an unheard of occurrence for fursuit makers to go completely under leaving everyone who ordered from them left hung out to dry.

On the other hand. I generally have an excellent time working with artists from places like Latin America, Eastern Europe, and South East Asia. Most of them tend to do their work very quickly. Many won't even take my money until they at least do a basic sketch, and always keep clear lines of communication and don't just randomly drop off the face of the earth in the middle of a project. I remember one time working with an artist from Brazil, and he told me he would have my piece done in 3 days, and it ended up taking 4, and he started apologizing profusely for taking so long and I had to tell him that 4 days for a comm was about as fast as they come.

I'm sure many other people have had similar experiences, so honestly, what gives?

This is just a generalization and mostly directed at white middle class North America. I'm not going to pretend that someone growing up in France or Italy ate bad food, and I'm not going to act like someone who grew up in an immigrant household was eating the same things I was, and also maybe your dad was a professional chef or whatever, who knows.

With that being said, however, as someone in my late 20s, I feel like so many people around my age can kinda relate to growing up eating quite bland and mediocre food. Think overcooked pork, steak always well-done and with the fat chopped off, chicken with the skin removed, boiled and unseasoned vegetables, canned peas or corn or maybe some potatoes for a startch, and plenty of lazy casseroles. Looking back, the only dishes I remember fondly where some of the things my Russian grandmother made that sort of broke that mold. On top of that, I feel like my parents were pretty picky eaters. Panda express was their idea of exotic food, and getting them to try something as simple as sushi was kinda impossible.

In contrast to that, I feel like so many people my age are just super passionate about cooking, like, probably every second or third person I know would probably list cooking or baking as a hobby, and damn near everyone I know is always geeking out about how they're going to be sous viding a pork belly and finishing it with a mango habenero glaze in their smoker and serving it with roasted brusselsprouts with a truffle chili sauce at their next house party, or won't shut up about how good the Thai-Ethiopian fuzion restaurant that just opened up in town is.

What gives? I swear it's like a night and day difference.