momentary

fascinating that when you tell people "you have to learn the rules to break them" when talking about drawing/painting etc everyone nods and agrees but the second you say "you have to read books if you want to write better" there's a horde of contrarians begging to be the wrongest people ever all of a sudden

if one more person in the notes of this post says "omg op has clearly never talked to a beginner artist!!" as if im not a literal professional artist and was making a broad point........ this time im really gonna do it

and reading only fanfiction does not count as reading books to get better at writing. Fanfiction, where everyone reading it already knows who the characters are and what their relationships are and what the setting is and all that crap, is not the same thing as reading an original self-contained story.

If you only read fanfiction, you will not be able to write original stories well.

Reading books does not have to be expensive. It can be completely free. Project Gutenberg exists. So does the Internet Archive's lending library.

Fanfiction works in ways that original fiction doesn't. You can't write original fiction like it's fanfiction if you want your story to actually be well written and interesting.

I think it's important to point out why fanfiction is different - so much context and interest hooks depend on you already being interested in the source. You are familiar with these characters and therefore don't need to have the basics built into the story. With original work, you need all that underlying character development to be in the story you're writing to make us want to read it. You could 'cheat' and give us a modern Sherlock Holmes - but we still need your version explored in narrative to actually care about it. Dr. House is more than just Sherlock Holmes in a hospital, he has his own issues and foils and quirks. The Holmes from the TV show Sherlock and Elementary are vastly different takes on the same character. You need to read original fiction in order to learn how to do that in your own original fiction. Fanfic is great, but it intentional has gaps that make it a different form.

there's a really funny 3d printing controversy going on btw.

if you don't know, there's a very popular 3d printing model out there called "benchy". this is used for benchmarking your 3d printer because it's a difficult print and will help test it out.

this is so widely used that people make their own little versions of it, remixing the 3d model to make benchy look cooler and stuff. however, a new company owns the benchy license. they are sending copyright takedowns to all those who wrongfully uploaded the benchy model.

of course, this is pissing off the 3d printing community greatly. everyone loved benchy and have used it for years. so someone on reddit decided to make a new model that is designed as a 3d printing stress test. one that works a lot like benchy, and people are freely able to edit it as they please. you know what they called it?

boaty.

i literally dont care what your excuse for using AI is. if you didnt put your own effort into making it im not putting my own effort into interacting with it.

"buhbub uhbubuh its just a tool!!" yeah youd know about being a tool wouldnt you

maybe ask chatgpt to generate someone who gives a fuck

A really fun ballet thing is when they have like a bunch of actual child extras and also there's clearly some twink jumping around who's meant to also be a little boy but the role involves a level of dancing far too strenuous to make a kid do ethically. This isn't me nitpicking it's not a medium that's remotely focused on realism or whatever I just chuckle a little

It's just really funny visually. To me. There'll be like children prancing in the background & this guy who's like 20 serving unfathomable cunt & he's supposed to be like 8

(Flawlessly executing a deathdrop) how do you do fellow kids

cats being capable of understanding accidents and even giving you a little head bonk to let you know you're still cool makes it infinitely funnier that they don't understand when you're trying to help them

cats when you step on their tail: i'll admit that was rather ouchie, but given the lifetime of goodwill and trust between us, one must conclude this booboo is but a fluke.

cats when you try to get their claws unstuck from the couch covering: this nefarious bitch has never had a single honorable intention in their dishonest and shameful life, this must be one of their sinister plots or perhaps even an attempt on my life,

!!

brooding men who cannot communicate their feelings if their life depended on it are only hot when they're fictional. if i have to deal with one in real life i will curse him and pray for his downfall every night before i go to bed

It's because the writer communicates their feelings for them. If people wanna pull that off in real life they need to hire a guy to walk around behind them narrating.

#can i be the guy#ill narrate SO incorrectly#theyll all learn how to talk for themselves just to shut me up (via @cirrus-grey)

i'm loving the implication that this isn't something they hired you for, but something you'd do as some sort of public service.

Snowball in Hell, acrylics, 30cmx20cm

I used a random piece of wire to paint the smallest details..!

Once again I´m thinking of Snowball in Hell, one of my favourite paintings ever

I’m gonna suggest at minimum quadruple checking all “medical” advice from social media for quackery because odds are it’s quackery. Even when it’s got citations, quadruple check those. Assume anybody on social media who’s pushing medical advice is trying to kill you, actually.

had a dream that there was this new tiktok trend called "scrubbing" where people would take images of fictional characters and put them in images of bathtubs and drag around transparent pngs of soap and brushes with their tiktok art tablets and like liquify tool their hair down to mimic giving them a shower. and people would get into flamewars in the comments of every single video over the types of soap they picked and if the images had decently removed backgrounds and if they got soap in their eyes. and it got onto the news because it turned out everyone doing the trend was doing it compulsively like they physically couldn't stop and each video was a solid few minutes long because they were just collectively obsessively recording themselves fake-showering these fictional characters and arguing about it online

for the record I have never used tiktok and like explicitly in the dream I learned about it secondhand from a discord server so there's that also which is funny I think

String identified: a a a tat t a t tt t ca "cg" ta ag cta caact a t t ag att a ag a taat g a a t t tt at tat a t t a t c gg t a . a gt t aa t ct g t t a t c a t ag a ct acg a t gt a t . a t gt t t ca t t t g t t a g t c t ca c't t a ac a a t g ca t t cct cg t a-g t cta caact a agg at t t c a tt a ct t a a at t ca a c t' tat a c t

Closest match: Mya arenaria isolate MELC-2E11 chromosome 1 Common name: Soft-Shell Clam

[image id: drawing of the head of a snake, with the text "dog ." next to it. /.End id]

i think they shouldve taken me on a polar expedition not because i would be useful or especially resilient but because my preexisting mental health conditions would have made me an interesting wildcard

IDK how humanity will ever recover from the damage created by COVID conspiracy theories. Like, of course we are seeing a huge spike in serious respiratory illnesses, we just experienced a period of time where it was common to travel long distances and be in confined spaces with multiple people while sharing food and drink. And COVID is still kicking about, not to mention it is flu season and N5N1 just claimed its first victim. Your local health authorities and medical professionals are not fucking lying to you. Wash your hands, wear a mask, avoid crowded places and stay home if you’re sick. Many hospitals are already feeling overwhelmed. Try not to end up there.

“It looks like they’re trying to lock us up again! 🤪” Like it’s good for the economy? Like there is some conspiratorial governmental benefit to not letting you go to fucking Pilates? People are trying not to fucking die.

and don't forget the noroviruses are around again, so wash your hands with soap (because that kind of virus is immune to hand sanitiser)

and don’t forget to GET VACCINATED!

apparently norovirus is spiking a lot this year (like, more so than the last several years), and having had it this weekend: it sucks! it’s extremely contagious! it turns your digestive tract into a smoothie! wash your fucking hands!

2024 Art Wrap

This was a big animation year for me. It’s really nice to do these art wraps to remind myself all the work I’ve accomplished.

See how I make room guardians on my Patreon!

Oh my god. Oh OH oh hi hello. This is incredible and my heart grew seventeen sizes this day

Ideal collab shit

@sketchfeathers relevant to your everything

Omg I'm pretty sure that this is the person whose work inspired The Gentle Void and The Spybird. I was fully obsessed with one of their pieces while we were working on The Hedge and just kept the tab open and kept switching over to stare at it before writing.

(The Hedge, CtL source book from @theonyxpath)

EDIT: yes! Yes, here they are! The Voids! I wanted one so badly but I can't afford one bc they are correctly priced and I'm broke so I did the next best thing and put The Gentle Void in an RPG book so I can play with it in my games:

Specifically it's #4, Cosmos.