Haters Gonna Hate

[rynling]

I recently wrote a review of Adam Ellis's upcoming comics collection Let Me in Your Window, which is going to be released on September 9. I'll link to the review here when it's posted (ETA: it's here) but the TLDR is that the collection is good. It's my favorite book of 2025, and I love everything I've reviewed this year.

I've been spending time on Ellis's Tumblr (here), and he's so fucking good at responding to haters. As someone who reviews comics by queer and progressive artists, I get the sense that many of them (especially ones who didn't grow up speaking English as their native language) self-censor their work to preemptively ward off exactly these types of shitty comments from the Tumblr moral purity police. Needless to say, I'm always sorry to see this happen. It's so nice to watch Ellis snapping back at that sort of reactionary culture, and I appreciate him.

One of the main reasons I stopped drawing comics myself was precisely because of these sorts of comments.* But honestly, fuck it. If even Adam Ellis gets nasty comments based on aggressively bad-faith readings, then I think that's as good of an indication as anything that the problem is the haters. Let them hate. The mental illness of random people on the internet shouldn't stop anyone from drawing silly comics.

* Literally the one that broke me: "This person claims to hate capitalism, and yet they have a job."

Comments

[bluapapilio]

Thank you for bringing this comic to my attention! Also I love your 'sweaty and upsetty' tag omg. Your * note made me remember the time someone said to me 'you hate capitalism yet you have a phone' in this gotcha tone of voice. I'd used a free basic cellphone for years and years and had only got an older smartphone that year for one of those deals.

[rynling]

> the time someone said to me 'you hate capitalism yet you have a phone'

I've been sitting with this for a few days, and the conclusion I've come to is that I'd like to punch this person directly in the face. Even if this happened back in the days when smartphones were relatively rare, what an asshole. Fuck that person, and fuck capitalism, and may we all have smartphones and Switch 2 consoles and whatever other consumer electronics we want simply because we all deserve nice things.

If you get a chance to read Let Me in Your Window, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. 🍹

[lassarina]

staring at your footnote and despairing of critical thinking (as usual).

[rynling]

I think this particular person had a grudge against me in particular for silly fandom reasons, which makes the context even more ridiculous. Back when I lived in DC and was able to take on a lot of freelance work, I used to commission artists to create stupid fancomics, and some of them did some numbers. I think the person who said this in response to one of the comics I drew myself was jealous. They couldn't say "I don't like it that you're supporting indie artists," so instead they tried to imply that having money to spend on art made me a class traitor.

Thankfully, that was around the time I learned the magic of the Block button.

But still, I got the same sort of immediate negative pushback on the GYWO community here on Dreamwidth just last year when I made a post about "How to Commission an Artist." If I had to guess, I'd say that there's still a pervasive misconception that "being a socialist," or simply "being opposed to neoliberal capitalism," means that you have to be economically impoverished. Which is a shame.

[lassarina]

[shakes head] people, man.

I'm so sorry.