Anyone who knows me well enough knows that there's an easy way to make me see red and try to punch you in the face, and it's the old "talent" vs "skill" argument. I hear a lot the idea that art is something you have or you don't, and that no amount of study will change that.
And I have somewhat personal reasons for hating this reasoning, because, well. It's what kept me from drawing even childish drawings for most of my life, and the thing that made me too nervous to commit to art as a career even after I realized that I loved it more than any other field. I had a lot of fine motor problems growing up, and as a result to this day my handwriting is still absolutely unreadable. I was told a lot that if I couldn't colour inside the lines, that obviously, the crayons weren't for me. I hated colouring books with a passion born only of pure unfiltered spite.
The truth is, some people have a predisposition towards skill with art the same way some people are just plain better at math, or sports, or writing. Some people learn faster, start at a higher level. But to claim that art is a field completely separate from all others, where only those with an inborn gift can even attempt it, is just plain ludicrous. It's insulting, honestly.
If you don't agree with me on this, that's fine, but I'm still waiting to hear a good reason that I could start off this fucking bad and get better. If anyone's a candidate for "no goddamn talent," I'd say 13-year-old me was pretty much that. And even if your argument is that I'm not very good now - I know I'm not - I'm still miles above most of the people who tell me they've quit, citing a lack of talent as the problem. And, ironically, I'm still a bit above plenty of people who argue that talent is fucking magic, and that they've got the goddamn gift.
All I see in this argument, no matter what, are either elitists trying to hold their throne of art away from the burgeois, or defeated fatalists looking for an excuse for their own lack of dedication. music: Dark Mean - China
Sometimes you get these pictures you start for no real reason at all except to take your mind off of other things. And then sometimes they just turn out right. Every part of them can be something you're completely unfamiliar with, you can mess up the rhythm you usually use, do things that you usually fail, and somehow they'll just work despite that, and work well.
(comments disabled because I like keeping them on the art post itself) music: Dark Mean - Lullaby
Please spread the word, and join. It's fun, fabulous prizes, and um... we have fun variety of things, it isn't just "icon whatever you want" and everyone does ff or persona games and you're left high and dry with your strange love of rabbids or zombies. =D Take a look at past themes if you're curious what kind of things to expect. music: 03 - Makou Reactor
So I just bought another game from Square-Enix that I'd already bought from them ten years ago. And this one wasn't even retranslated, sadly.
But I think the important part of this story is that this guy are sick on my PSP legally now, and I can actually give other people FFVII without the risk of them ruining my precious baby's disks.
No, wait. The important part of this story is obviously that I defiled some poor AC screencap to make Cloud crossdress. Yeah.
All I can say is, if I were the Don, I'd have chosen Miss Cloud too. Sorry Aeris, Tifa - it's not to say that he's prettier than you, but, well, he can rock that tall, strong girl-with-a-sword look while being all uncomfortable in his lacy underthings. Come on. music: Vienna Teng - Kansas
I'm sure people know I'm hilariously insecure about my writing. There's so many amazing writers online, and it's so weird to go from being the best writer in any literature class to being... lol, barely worth reading by online standards. And it doesn't help that I don't really write much, or particularly long things. Or things with an actual plot.
But um! Criticisms would be nice, since it's kind of hard to get those online sometimes. Or compliments, idk, whatever really. =) (But if no one replies I'll feel awful so someone has to!) music: Stone Temple Pilots - Plush
Interested in roleplaying, but want to skip the ooc drama, or afraid to join a group full of people you don't know? Or just looking for something new?
leadfield is a month-long anonymous original character RP, and as we're gearing up to start, more players will only make things merrier. Don't let the anonymous part scare you - it actually really makes it a lot of fun. You may not know who you're threading with, but it removes a lot of fear that people are just judging you for the things you always do, and the mystery only makes the other characters more interesting and novel. xD
leadfield_ooc has all the relevant information. The setting is sci-fi, with a delicious mecha flavour.
(PS app someone with pink,red, or orange hair. We have a streak going!) I keep thinking I should stop using this icon then I realize that that's nonsense and I should use it forever. No this is not a gip, I'm making this post to pimp a game for my dear friend, not to post this icon some more. >> What would make you think that?
I've been thinking about the hilarity a UC Gundam kinkmeme would provide. Not seriously, of course, since no one would really participate, at least, not at the levels needed to make a kinkmeme function, I suspect.
And then it would just turn into me requesting terrible, horrible things for a while and then giving up because I know, really, no one else will ever write me the bad things I want. Me and my perfectly reasonable requests of Puru-stitute/Mineva Zabi (dubcon, Puru redirecting her vengeance at Mineva), or CCA!Char/Kamille/Amuro (Kamille can't be a vegetable, and all involved must get punched in the face at some point. Bonus points if Kamille is with Neo-Zeon), or even the most normal of them, Haman/Sayla (must be consentual on both parts) would all be denied. I understand that no one quite loves my terrible wonderful UC Gundam ideas as much as I do, sob.
But I just keep coming up with more and more bad ones, and I felt like sharing with everyone.
Icon, obviously, relevant. music: Cirque Du Soleil - Alegría
In other news, it's the 30th anniversary of Gundam, which makes me think of a few things. One of them is that my three main fandoms are all pretty fucking old, since Gundam isn't even the oldest (Star Wars beats it by a few years), and that by the time FFVII makes it to that milestone, I'll probably be punching infants if it hasn't been remade.
And speaking of remakes, really, that picture up there is worth a thousand words. All of them being shit like "Fuck, Sunrise, Tomino really won't kill you if you remake it. Seriously. Just keep him on his meds, I have gif proof that he's happy and does silly dances now!"
I mean, there's a lot of things I notice when I look at that picture. The first is that lol non-widescreen screencaps look pretty silly to me these days. Also, that Amuro really does hold his beamsaber in a pretty stupid way. And that anatomy is still important to understand, even if you're only drawing giant robots. Also, that I'm really pretty sure that for all the lovely texture that old-school cel-painting and lines give animation, christ, I'd take overly-shiny, overly-smooth digital over shit that looks like that any day.
But yeah. Happy Gundam day or something. Turns out I switched my gaia avatar back to something that works for it on time by sheer accident, and that's amazing.
No review of family reunion, other than to say that I hate being without internet, without camera, and without being able to work on half the pictures in my sketchbook without seriously weirding out my family. But it's cool. Kevin and Uncle Dwight liked what they saw when they each got an unauthorized search through it, then again, I'm pretty sure they were both chemically altered enough at that point not to even properly remember that there was probably some weird-ass shit. Family substance issues ftw? Or maybe not. Idk, it's kind of creepy when a 60-year-old insists to you that mimosas are a breakfast drink. music: Funeral For A Friend - The Great Wide Open
I hate you guys for last night, because somehow you've woken Sam back up and now I'll never get any goddamn peace. D=
I've always found it weird how perfectly easy it comes to write in Sam-voice. He has the strangest way of focusing on completely unrelated things when I try to write him, and it's a genuine departure from me trying to do horrible text-chunks of visual descriptions. I struggle to not loathe any other character voice and somehow Sam affects even my third-person way of writing and it just kind of happens without thinking. I actually really miss getting to write him a lot because I've never found any other character as easy to play as him. I really don't want to think about what that might imply about me.
Actually saying something would require energy, and right now I want to go to sleep and just sleep through my test, sob. It's not that I'm not prepared for it - I do feel pretty damn prepared. I'm just tired and have a headache from somewhere that is hotter than here. And it was pretty damn hot here today. Mainly because someone left the heat on when it was damn near 90 degrees outside.
Someone who, when questioned about this, responded that it was winter. music: Vienna Teng - Augustine
23 Feb 2009 9:25 pm
So I realized that my rate of actually finishing stuff seems to increase when I post WIPs. In the interest of this, I will proceed to picspam everyone. Apologies.
Okay so, a lesson in interpretting fiction because I think I'm just getting sick of this. Obviously, started by the gundam 00 fandom, but really, there's a lot of fandoms that I notice have a problem with determining what is the writer's perspective, and what is the character's. I have a huge petpeeve when fandoms assume that just because a writer writes an antagonist saying something that you think is wrong means the writer thinks it's right.
Character A says something obviously stupid and wrong, that we as the audience knows is wrong. Audience knows it's wrong, and figures, lol, the character is just telling other characters falsehoods.
Character A says something that's not obviously wrong, but that contradicts the point the good guys are trying to make. Audience wonders for a second, but in the end, figures that if the good guys are disagreeing heavily on this point and it's an important one to the series, that obviously charater A is wrong on this.
Character A makes a sexist remark. Character A is not known for their wisdom or their wide worldview. Character A repeatedly says things the audience figures they should know are false. Audience flips their collective shit, calls directors and writers sexist.
Pardon me, what?
No really, what, guys? So Revive can say that humans are cattle and lesser and all that, and we all accept that he's an idiot for this, but the second he says women are dumb, we assume that Mizushima is a sexist pig forcing his opinions on us? I understand that maybe there was some ambiguity to whether or not we're supposed to believe that Revive is just an asshat, but let's be frank, have we been shown thus far that Revive is a particularly well-learned, wise, accepting individual? Have we been shown that Revive knows the truth about everything, or that he has a broad perspective? FUCK NO.
We've been shown that Revive is an idiot. Revive doesn't understand what love is, he doesn't understand what it's like to be a normal person, he doesn't even understand his own brethren. He's a nasty little snip.
Fandom, I'm sorry guys, I'm all for bitching about female characters being abused but I have to say, I get the feeling you guys are doing it wrong.
A writer should not have to go back over everything they've said and state their opinion on everything their characters say. A discriminating audience should pick this shit up just by who says what, and how they say it. I mean, if you as a fan sincerely think Revive is a source of the director's personal opinions, I think you need to start paying closer attention to the show or stop watching it through the Innovator-fangirl-goggles. music: Yuna Ito - trust you
Why I'm so sorry I shouldn't have aim when working on a programming assignment.
me: okay, so my code is crashing with segfaults so I inserted lines to display, as the code operates, "I'm shark," "I'm a shaaark" and "suck my dick" me: it printed HILARIOUSLY, since it's a series of loops me: Pages and pages of me: I'm a shaaarksuck ma dickI'm a shaaarksuck ma dickI'm a shaaarksuck ma dickI'm a shaaarksuck ma dickI'm a shaaarksuck ma dickI'm a shaaarksuck ma dickI'm a shaaarksuck ma dickI'm a shaaarksuck ma dickI'm a shaaarksuck ma dick me: and ended with I'm a shaaarksuck ma dickI'm a shaaarksuck ma dickI'm a shaaarksuck ma dickI'm aSegmentation fault me: Yes. You ARE a segmentation fault.
me: ...am I the only person who hums the FFVII battle victory thing to myself when I succeed at something that's been frustrating me?
Things I have done lately, a list
come up with new swearwords to call segfaults
decided that anyone who gives chocolate strawberries as gifts is god tier ♥ ♥ =D
actually finished the assignment. Most surprising thing on the list, given my constant swearing about it on aim.
Wondered if I actually use a computer to do more than harrass people and crash programs
If anyone's offended by the vulgarity of this, I'll cut it. I'm tired and braindead and not quite able to tell how bad it is after I've spent half the day swearing at my screen. music: Vienna Teng - Antebellum
One of the my not-new-years-resolutions (I hate the whole culture of setting goals you won't really try for, but between december and january I did set myself a number of resolutions that I'm insisting have nothing to do with the holiday), was to do new things with my art. The funny story is that neither of these images are the "new things," actually, but all the experimental things were something of a failed experiment.
I'm not disatisfied with my art, which is kind of the problem. I've come to realize that over the last few years, my art has improved but my standards haven't really gone up accordingly. I feel like I'm actually really meeting my own standards. That might sound great, but the more I think about this, the more I realize that the problem is that there's no challenge in it if I'm pretty cool with where I am. (God it sounds so arrogant to admit that, because it's not like I'm anywhere near the level I want to eventually be, but it's like I forgot that in order to eventually get there, I need to continuously raise my standards until they reach that level) So I'm trying to make myself draw more, and more importantly, actually show my art more online.
My scanner is probably happy to be an actual piece of machinery again, instead of a battlefield for gundam figures. So, WIPs. I might not actually end up doing much more with the Louise one, since the anatomy of it's pretty lol.
Okay, whoever did that, I'm hunting you down and taking your lightsaber for my trophy.
As soon as I'm done laughing. You're getting an incredible headstart with that.
Best drama ever. A+++ would read and crack my shit up again. No one's ever going to believe I didn't post that, are they? Sob thanks for the heads-up at least people, but little birdies who link me with anon drama are at the top of the suspicion list. And I didn't make that texture, guys. =(
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powercorrupts: AC wasn't any fun. You knew Cloud was going to live. It's okay when you know Sora will live in Kingdom Hearts. It's Disney. Of course he will.
