#are three different conversations

[honestlyvan]

Thinking about image model generated art and gifmaking is giving me some weird vibrations about how there really is some weird association of the virtuesvirtues of a medium with the virtues of the people working in it. Gifmaking being associated with KPop fans doesn't make the concept of frame interpolation racist, and someone marketing themselves as a cheaper alternative to some other artist doesn't make the concept of generative art inherently class antagonistic.

It's somehow reminiscent of CJ the X's distinction between "stupid art" and "evil art", how a medium that has a low skill floor can produce things that are very stupid and easy to perceive as low-effort but how that's not the same as them having something wrong with them. If you look at my animation tag, most of it is motion graphics done with AfterEffects, and while it's probably wrong to call it a low skill floor program the way an AI art generator is... there is still a world where instead of programmatically telling shapes to whizz by on a screen, a different Van would have drawn those same animations frame by frame, producing exactly the same animation.

And I don't think the fact that I did them programmatically somehow invalidates the artistic intent that went into them, y'know? I could open AE right now and produce a 250x250 looping gif of clouds and while I know how to do that quick, to make it look good and to make me like it, I would have to spend time considering how the various elements, colours, timings and whatever the particle system/noise generator I use spits out fit together. I would have to fiddle with seeds and levels and timings to make it look good. I would have to spend a long time just staring and thinking about what I'm making before I could make it good.

I don't know enough about generative art tools to know how much fiddling goes into them once they're taught and ready to go, but I do know enough about deep learning to know it's a haphazard, frustrating process that you as the artist have only limited control over, which is why it doesn't appeal to me. But I have made gifs in the past, and I know how that process requires an eye for consistency and composition, framing and colour that a lot of other visual artists don't have because they're not working with time as one of the creative dimensions.

And like... who am I, from my high horse as someone in possession of these skills, to tell someone who is still developing these skills or who has a different aesthetic concept of what is good than me, what they're making is low-effort. That's not my judgement to make. I didn't make it. Only the artist themselves can say if somehing was low-effort or not. I don't see why I should have so little faith in other artists to assume they have no interest in putting in any effort.

[crumb-crumblet-s-crumbington]

different POV of this comic

x

[wandixx]

Seriously chaotic fashion misadventures

I realized I posted a teaser and never really followed up on it, so here is some more of that

“Hey, Dami?”

Boy hadn’t looked up from the kittens he was bottle feeding but let out a hum indicating he listened.

“I'm thinking about trying out a more girlish style. Do you think it would suit me?”

Well, Damian had no idea but if Dani wished to give it a chance, then, well, the only proper reaction was to offer his aid.

*-*-*

“Father, I require access to your rouge gallery.”

Bruce almost choked on his breakfast when his youngest made this announcement.

Rouge gallery, as his children playfully called it, was vast collection of lipsticks, which he collected to uphold his Brucie persona. Famous playboy with head constantly in the clouds couldn’t not show up with discreet signs of scandal from time to time. And it couldn’t always be the same shade. Or scent when he choose more subtle approach and used one of his more feminine perfumes.

In all honesty, he enjoyed this.

But that’s not the point, point was that Damian wanted to use it and Bruce needed to know what disaster would fall upon him if he agreed.

“Mind telling me why, chum?”

Dick, who visited Manor for a weekend, barely stifled his laughter while Tim stared at his empty coffee mug like it personally betrayed him. Cass just wore her usual knowing and mischievous smile.

Damian shifted in his chair, hands clenching on butter knife. He was nervous and suddenly Bruce dreaded the answer he was about to hear.

“I don’t see how me sharing this information would change anything. It won’t be used to cause harm to anyone but it’s necessary in the extracurricular project I just started.”

“Dami, what project?” Dick asked, voice oozing with genuine curiosity and excitement. He was almost bouncing.

“I don’t want to disclose it.”

“Is this a hero or civilian type of deal?”

Damian didn’t look any of them in the eyes, both hands clenching on his seat as he kept shifting. Bruce narrowed his eyes. Was his youngest… flustered?

“Civilian”

“Alright, great” Dick swung back with single clap, almost tripping his chair over “I think B won’t have anything against you using his rouge gallery, will he?” Man knew his oldest son well enough to recognize his ‘don’t you dare to disagree’ tone. He was confused but there wasn’t any harm so he nodded with affirmative hum.

“Thank you, Father”

Boy practically inhaled rest of his food and rushed outside. Despite all his training and all his efforts, they clearly saw his excitement. Tim pinched himself and returned to staring at his mug.

“Cass, have you seen what I’ve seen or am I overreacting?” Dick asked, barely restraining his enthusiasm. Girl nodded eagerly, shoving more crumbs into her mouth. Young man cheered, throwing his hands up.

“What have I missed?” Tim mumbled, frowning a little.

“BABY BAT HAS A CRUSH!”

Cass nodded again with wide smile.

Oh.

Oh no.

Who were they? What did he know about them? Was Protocol 3r0s started? Did someone run a background check already? What could they do if they somehow hurt Damian? Was this person a risk to their identities? Oh gods, oh no.

He probably will have to do The Talk™.

He always dreaded having The Talk, with any of his kids. He felt The Talk with Damian would be even worse. Understandably so.

“Also sleep in at least three da-”

“Fuck off, dick.”

“Was this insult or-”

His children remained obvious to how much work it meant, cheering and sassing each other like they often did.

*-*-*

Damian did not know how it was possible but he lowered his guard enough to get caught.

"What are you doing?" Brown choked out after they stared at each other for a long moment.

"It does not concern you–"

"You're rummaging through my wardrobe, not many things concern me more and also, that's frickin creepy don't do it to anyone outside of the family"

She did have a point however he was not convinced it would be the correct approach if he shared his plan. Father's wards (even unofficial like Brown) tended to make assumptions and overreact based on these conjectures. Dani wasn't easy to scare off but he didn't want to check if his family would manage. They often did things thought to be impossible.

He tried to get away but the blonde stood fiercely in a door, leaving the window as the only way out. He wasn't this desperate. Yet.

Girl looked more and more angry at his silence. He had to give her some answers.

Now that he actually considered it, she could be a useful asset. She was far better versed in women's fashion and if he phrased it correctly, he wouldn't even need to bribe her. Question was, how should he phrase it?

"I have an acquaintance- I have a friend," he corrected himself "from the animal shelter I volunteer at. She mentioned wanting to try out more 'girlish style' and asked for my opinion. I wanted to see if you had any clothes that would fit her. She is smaller than me so I thought that whatever I take, it wouldn't be missed." 

Brown grinned with an unsettling gleam in her eyes. He suddenly regretted opening his mouth if not coming to this room in the first place. 

"Say no more, I have a plan Demon Child"

[ftmtftm]

Hey — you — depressed nonbinary person struggling to find in person community! Especially you depressed unaligned/multigender nonbinary person struggling to find in person community!

I cannot promise you that finding it (or curating it) will be easy or timely (because frankly, it's taken me my entire adult life thus far), but in person nonbinary community is real.

In person nonbinary community and solidarity across gender identity, presentation, and assigned sex is real.

In person nonbinary community that is fostered around understanding and empathy and connection and isn't divided along arbitrary gender or sex lines is real.

It is possible. It kind of takes some work to create the space you want to foster, but it can be done and it's so wonderful.

[redbean-nom]

din djarin, age 10: clone wars refugee child

boba fett, age 11: in federal prison for destroying an entire venator while trying to kill mace windu

[calypsolemon]

bauhauzzo has near-omniscience over the past, click clack can percieve everything happening in the present, and huzzle has prescience over all possible futures. send tweet

[moonchild-in-blue]

You know, I'm really really curious to see how post-enlistment BTS is going to sound thematically-wise.

In these past 2/3 years, they all had the chance to get uncomfortably honest and, for lack of a better term, liberal, in the way they explore their own sound, in a way we got to see very little of previously. We got the rapline fleshing out their work, and the vocal line braving into full-fledged solo stuff for the first time.

Hoseok, who keeps refining and pushing the boundaries of his sound. Who found his footing and is making it his own. The boy who was born for the stage finally gets to be on the spotlight as himself, standing on the shoulders of BTS's j-hope but going back to his roots as Hoseok.

Yoongi and Joon, who already have an incredibly rich discography, and are digging deeper into themselves - there's healing, there's catharsis, there's grief for a past self and hope for a new one. Between Yoongi's Suchwita and Joon's work on RPWP, there's a lot of conversations about life as an artist and as an ordinary person, about mental health and identity, the creative process, about leaving your youth behind and coming to terms with adulthood and the loneliness it brings.

Jin, Jimin and Jungkook who have finally ventured into longer bodies of work, who have finally got to explore who they are (as musical artists) outside and beyond the Bangtan umbrella. Jin especially with this upcoming tour and all the entertainment content he's been a part of, and gets to do things his own way.

Tae, who went the other way and invested in his relationships, who showed us more of himself not through music, but through the way he conducts himself with his friends, outside of the stage.

As Bangtan, they have always been very vocal about all of these, but it's the first time they all got to live life aa creatives on their own. There is a newer, better collective understanding of themselves and each other, and a new layer of maturity and transparency, which has been beautiful to witness it unfold.

I'm so very looking forward to see all of this new knowledge and experience being brought into BTS, and how the new chapter will reflect that once they get together again. Personally I feel like the MOTS series was the perfect mesh of their individual identities and sounds (which makes sense since it was the last Big Thing they did pre-covid that wasn't just a compilation of things like Proof. BE was great but had a very distinct sound and purpose under the Covid context), and if their recent solo work is anything to go by, we are going to see a completely new version of BTS that is bound to surpass all we know from them so far.

[pupmon1]

Violence as Communication

Based on the Over Silken Rain au by @princess-self-shipping

Hornet had done her due. She had watched and stalked and observed as she always did, this strange creature with lopsided arms and rambling in strange melodic tones. It ripped things appart with a strange weapon she had never seen before, launching small rocks faster than her eye could see, and ripping everything apart. It was just surviving.

It spoke in melodic tones when she tried to approach. The glowing circular eye locked on to the weapon in her hand and in a snap that strange weapon was yanked upward. The rocks ripped through the air, she could still feel it against her skin, just enough to duck out of the way. She thought, perhaps foolishly, this shelless spider would help her find her way in this world.

She was wrong.

It just attacked.

Why she expected anything else is beyond her. Foolish hope perhaps, but she doesn’t blame herself. She had been ripped from her home, then ripped from her prison to a place even more foreign, full of strange creatures. The creature now trying to kill her was familiar. It was sentient, she knew it was sentient. She had watched it fight, it hunted creatures for food, it punched its projectiles-

Wait…maybe…

Hornet darted away from the barrage, then held up her weapon. The rocks bounced off the dense metal. Whatever this creature’s blue arm is armored with, it was as sturdy as pale ore, okay. She had watched it fight, she knew it was hungry and fed on death. The meat remained it drained something else from its prey.

Maybe she can feed it.

She swung her blade against the creature when it tried to burst towards her. It needed to stay away, give her enough space to run! Run through plants and worn architecture until its hostility found her. Until she heard rustling beyond her pursuer.

The beating of wings works just as well for it actually…perhaps better. She darted into the clearing and looked up. There’s the shadow and there’s the loud blast she wanted. She wrenched her weapon upward, catching the projectiles and sending them upward. The masked flier cried as its stomach was ripped apart, and finally silence.

Silence fell as the flier crashed beside them both. She made no more towards it, the spider-like one kept its weapon on her, but stared at the body. Slowly, she lowered her weapon. When it didn’t move, she pointed at the body.

“Take it.”

It looked at her, then down at the body, then back at her. The red arm pointed at itself, and she simply nodded. It dropped its weapon and dove onto the corpse, drawing something she didn’t understand from it. It smelled awful, but she didn’t stop it. It looked up at her, its orange eye smeared with blood, and gave her three thumbs up.

It was reasonable, and seemed to realize the same of her. Good…even if she can’t understand the spider-like creature, she will at the least not travel alone, for a time.

[moeblob]

Keaton and Ida (Famine and Pestilence)

Keaton really likes mobile gacha games and gets heavily invested in leaderboards and will sacrifice Quality Time with the group to stare at his phone (while in person with the group bc participation trophy). Ida likes food and if she wants to meet up with the other horsemen, she needs it somewhere with food. It also helps her be polite if she has food in her mouth so she can't say everything she's thinking.

Basically both of them are like "if I have to be around Delm, I need a comfort" and that comfort is either gacha games or eating/drinking.

[library-windows]

- The handwriting is beautiful. Almost as good as mine.

- Guy. We both know it's better.

- Your opinion is noted.

[lesbianwyllravengard]

they match each other's freak in the strangest way.

[frogaroundandfindout]

Dick: Look. I know why you’re here. You don’t want Bludhaven’s problems spreading into your precious Gotham. And you don’t trust me to contain this. But the Haven is my personal crusade. Just like Gotham is yours. And I’ve been doing all right so far.

Bruce: I never means to intrude. I’m surprised to hear you talk about Gotham that way.

Dick: it’s not my hometown. I was born in a trailer by the big top. I never really had a hometown. Until now.

Bruce: I didn’t know you felt like that. But I understand. Well. That’s it then.

Dick: Damn.

Nightwing Vol.2. #14

[paldogangsaan]

source

the ending of the umbrella academy is frustrating on several levels but primarily bc it feels like the the showrunner was watching an entirely different show than the rest of us and this quote proves it. more under the cut bc the post is a bit long

the show wasn't about them being superheroes, it's literally a metaphor for childhood trauma and how it manifests in adulthood. reginald treated the umbrellas like weapons, never even gave them NAMES, and now they struggle to live as people with their own autonomy. the point was never that they were superheroes, that's quite literally the LEAST important part of the show! all their superheroes days are from when they were children!! the show focuses on the fallout of that!!! it's about how the umbrellas don't have coping mechanisms for what happened in their childhood and they keep ending the world because of their inability to work through their trauma. we've seen time and time again that they're borderline incapable of empathizing with each other, and they blame each other for coping 'wrong' and having different traumas despite having the same parent. and somehow the show ended with them being the problem bc they're inherently evil and their births are wrong rather than, you know, the person that abused them in the first place being the problem

like ?? reginald literally and metaphorically created the umbrellas. he released the marigold, he bought them from their birth parents, he raised them into his weapons. the way he treated them in their childhood/developmental years shaped them into who they are, and the world keeps ending because they blame each other rather than the real villain: the abuser. ending the show with them realizing this, thus breaking the cycle, and killing/erasing their abuser so he can't hurt them or anyone else makes much more sense thematically. if they erase him and he never releases the marigold, they still lose their powers and they technically never exist bc he doesn't create them. those versions of them we've seen for the past 3 seasons don't exist anymore bc they were never traumatized and raised to be soldiers by reginald. ending the show with the timeline restored and the umbrellas living different lives (bc they weren't only born from the marigold, they were also born from their mothers) would've still been the tragedy blackman wants. they're not siblings, they don't have powers, they're not superheroes, everything we saw them go through for 3 seasons technically doesn't matter bc it didn't happen to these versions of them, and they don't exist as famous public figures that'll be remembered for something grand. they're just regular people. this ending works because, again, they're not inherently evil. they don't need to atone for the crime of being born. the problem isn't that their very existence is wrong. the problem is that an egotistical fuckface decided to use them as accesories (he literally BOUGHT THEM from their parents) for his own gain and gave them the tools (powers and/or trauma) to cause harm. if reginald was, like, normal and not a piece of shit, he wouldn't have chosen to raise a bunch of children into weapons, traumatize them, and then release them into the world after years of denying them autonomy and barely even treating them as people and think hm this is fine. and by how the first season's flashbacks played out, it seemed like he never even planned to let them leave the academy, meaning he literally saw them as little soldiers that only existed for him. point is, if reginald hadn't intervened with their lives, if he had never existed, the world wouldn't have ended.

the ending message of the show as of right now doesn't come off as 'are u a superhero if no one knows you exist 🤓☝️' it comes off as 'you were born wrong. your birth destroyed everything and the world would be a safer place if you (the abused child raised to be a weapon by your fucking asshole of a parent) had never existed'. and what kind of a message is that.

[vaguely-concerned]

as I am replaying origins -- a game which, to be clear, I love very VERY much -- I can't help but feel that people do don the rose coloured glasses on it a bit specifically when it comes to the range of dialogue options you're actually given to work with at any given time (something I've seen my fair share of silent vs. voiced protagonist discourse about over the years *smokes tired cigarette in survivor of a decade of DA tumblr*). like... there are a couple of situations where you're given a decent range of responses, but the vast majority of the time you have about three dialogue options, and often they're presented sort of like 'polite/bland/unprovoked near-cartoonish levels of assholery'. arranged like, y'know:

I am [BLANK]. It's an honor to make your acquaintance.

You can call me [BLANK].

How dare you speak to me. Fuck you and your family back five generations. I'm going to rob your mother's grave before your eyes.

(sometimes if you're real lucky you get the secret extra 'Something else/I'm bald/but I'm a dwarf!' option)

I'm not at all saying it's worse in that aspect than the other games (Dalish Inquisitor 'Who's Mythal' just entered the chat), but I do think it's worth considering that this might be a bit of a franchise original sin that has been present since the beginning, as indeed it is in most rpgs because making rpgs is real hard, and you notice it more with the dialogue wheel format than when the responses and questions you can ask are all laid out in a list together

[asurrogateblog]

this week I lived out the dream of knowing so many beatles facts that someone asked me out on a date but unfortunately because of the way my life works it was a straight man and also the president of the militant vegan organization that stands outside the library handing out free samples of fake human meat

[cozy-the-overlord]

I love horrifying my friends by telling them about how I never watched any of the animated Barbie movies growing up (didn’t even know that they existed) and instead would just get the picture book versions at the Scholastic Book Fair in elementary school and read them religiously to the point that it *feels* like I grew up with the movies