#it'll be yours

[fuzzballsheltiepants]

So this has been said before and by better people than me, but the thing is, anything worth doing is worth doing badly. 

There are people talking about AI art being somehow valid because it means that “anyone can create art” but—anyone can create art [see this post for some lovely discussion and examples.]. It’s part of what makes us human. Humanity has been unique among all of evolution for creating and sharing art, whether that be stories or music or paintings or crafts. Drawing in wet sand, handprints in concrete. Kids make art on our walls; we wash it off and they do it again. We sing in the shower and doodle on scrap paper. We tell stories because we don’t know how not to, even if it’s a simple as what happened during our day. 

The oldest known instruments are bone flutes from 40000 years ago; likewise, the oldest known paintings. There are oral histories that have been passed down for tens of thousands of years. We yearn to create, to share parts of ourselves in one way or another. We yearn to learn about each other from these shared fragments. There are countless museums all over the world with millions of visitors each year who travel just to see what someone else created, what bits of themselves they gave to the world.

AI “art” isn’t art. It doesn’t create from a soul, it doesn’t share fragments of its self. It steals people’s fragments and mashes them together to make something that may be aesthetically pleasing, but that can never be more than that. It can’t tell a truth because it doesn’t know what truth is.

But in this modern world where everything is commodified, every hobby is supposed to be monetized, everything is supposed to pass some sort of “test”, it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that aesthetically pleasing is all that matters. It’s easy to want to earn those clicks, those likes, to feel validated by something that was mashed together by your keystrokes. It's easy to embrace the pleasant lies.

It’s hard to be bad at something. It’s hard to spend hours making something, to make yourself vulnerable, and have it not live up to what was in your head. But that’s also the nature of being human. Nobody is born good at something; they work at it. And sometimes that work isn’t aesthetically pleasing. Sometimes the story reads awkwardly. Sometimes you hit a wrong note, or spend the whole song out of key. Sometimes the photo isn’t in focus, and the pot is lopsided, and the cake looks like you dropped it. 

Sometimes you scare your cat with the glorious cacophony of learning. 

You can’t get good without being bad first, and looking at what’s bad, and trying again. Maybe this time, your lines will be crisper, even if your proportions are still off. Maybe this time, you’ll have one good sentence, one good paragraph. This time, you’ll play Chopsticks and only be off on a couple of notes; your scarf is lumpy but it’s warm and vibrant. You remember the crumb layer on your cake and it tastes good, and you meant to take a picture of the flower but you got the bee in focus, and the pot is still lopsided but it looks like a Dali clock and you kind of like it. 

Or maybe not. Maybe it will never be Insta-worthy, maybe it will lurk in your word processor for the rest of time, maybe the sketch never leaves the sketchbook and you never sing on stage. But even if it’s bad—it’s still truth. It’s still a piece of you. And that is still a celebration of being human.

If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing badly.

[llycaons]

rather than pretend that wwx goes back to be a jiang disciple it makes me happy to imagine wwx moving forward even with all that he’s lost, married to his zhiji and living in a place of his own choosing, cherished and safe, with his own children, a lotus pond in the back, and regular visits to his family members. it makes more sense to me. it aligns with the themes of the story. and it carries a better message

[roebeanstalk]

reblog to manifest gender euphoria for the person you reblogged this from

[free-piza]

enough about taylor swift already. reblog and tag the smallest, least known artist you listen to

[criston-cole]

[fonulyn]

since I've seen it talked about in several places recently:

if you are going to do a whump- or kink- or ANY-tober or other similar challenges please please please don't post them as one fic with 31 chapters unless it actually is one coherent fic. if they're 31 completely separate fics or ficlets then please just make a collection for them or just post them as separate fics. it doesn't matter if they're only 100 words or if you think they're too small or insignificant to post alone, they're not.

and why this?

because if you post all 31 of them in one fic the tagging is absolutely useless. if I look for things to read on ao3 I'm gonna look at the tags, and if the tags include something that's a dealbreaker for me, i won't even click on the fic. I might not even SEE the fic because I've filtered out the nope-tag! so I'm gonna lose out on reading 30 perfectly nice fics because of one fic that my nope-tag applied to.

ao3 is about archiving. it's about clear tagging and being informative. there is nothing informative about it if the tags in the fic apply to random chapters while others have nothing to do with it. it makes so much more sense to have each work as an individual fic with its own individual tags and warnings, so readers can make informed choices.

of course, you do you. I can't police what other people decide to do. but personally, I find it incredibly frustrating to weed through 31 chapters to find the ones I actually want to read. so I don't. I automatically scroll past all works posted like that. and I know some others do, too.

there is absolutely no shame in posting short things on ao3. there is no minimum word count. no one is going to look at you funny if you post a small ficlet on its own, I promise. it's just going to make some readers very happy when they can actually find the things they want to read.

so, please. at least consider the upsides of posting each work as their own fic.

signed, one very frustrated fandom grandma.

[juney-blues]

when you're part of a group with structural power over another goup, you really do gotta just learn to say "i am not exempt from 'fuck 'em' when relevant" whenever someone expresses frustration with you or people like you.

[starry-bi-sky]

danyal al ghul memes because i don't think i've done those yet for this au.

(the jason one is in reference to the fanon headcanon/au that Jason and Damian potentially knew each other and interacted while jason was in the league. I've thought about it before in context of this au, but haven't thought about it enough to feel inspired or motivated to make a post exploring the idea)

(diablito means, as you can guess, 'little devil'. while i'm neutral to latino jason, i think the nickname is cute as fuck and was danny's main nickname from Jason. i don't wanna touch that timeline so im not gonna decide how old they were when Jason was there.)

Skulker: i am the ghost zone's greatest hunter! i capture and hunt creatures both rare and dangerous. Danyal: a poacher?? you're a poacher?? you poach animals??Skulker:...i sense i've made a mistake of some kind.

anyways that was the day that Skulker cemented himself as Danny's no.1 opp, and still remains there to this day even if he and Vlad are both viciously fighting for second. Out of everyone in the the AP rogues gallery, Skulker will be the first to be thrown under the bus in terms of 'o shit here comes phantom fucking RUN'.

[sambeckdraws]

colour palette requests - Gale

[lightasthesun]

thinking about Obi-Wan and Cody's last scene together in revenge of the sith but specifically the NOVELIZATION and how Cody flirted with Obi-Wan in a way that made Obi-Wan Kenobi 'Master of Sass and Trolling', the FAMED Negotiator blush and duck his head!!! and wondering if perhaps the fact that this was potentially their last battle and that Obi-Wan had just killed Grievous and they all could practically FEEL the end of the war brushing against their fingertips had given Cody that spike of courage, hope, peace that had made him pursue the drumming of maybe maybe maybe to his heartbeat that led to Obi-Wan blushing so profoundly he tried to fucking laugh it off and then zoooooomed tf out of there on bogas back.

[waxcloth-din]

I can't believe I failed outta medical school for this.

[what-am-i-doing-in-this-fandom]

sweet child, you didn't even stand a chance

[ghuleh-draws]

did someone say soft, domestic terzo?

commission for the extraordinarily talented and wonderful @angellayercake inspired by Banchetto—one of my all-time favorites.

corresponding excerpt under the cut.

‘Careful Papa! They are still hot from the oven,’ you chided him but he turned to you with a grin on his face. Even covered in crumbs he was handsome enough to take your breath away.

‘But Sorella, this is the best time to have them, si?’ After popping the final piece in his mouth he starts cleaning his fingers, sucking one at a time into his mouth, moaning obscenely as he picked up the last traces of flavour. You are transfixed by his display so you barely notice when his eyes flick open and catch you watching. He draws the last finger out of his mouth so slowly, catching on his bottom lip and you have to swallow as you suppress the thought of his finger in your own mouth. You meet his eyes and feel the blush blooming on your face.

He saunters closer to you never taking his eyes from yours and you can’t breathe in anticipation of what he is going to do. He stops just in front of you and you feel yourself leaning ever so slightly forward as if he had his own gravitational pull. Then in the blink of an eye he has snatched another three and is halfway across the room.

‘That will be all today Sorella, grazie.’ And then he is gone but you can hear him whistling on his way. You collect yourself as quickly as you can, not wanting to dawdle when you had been so clearly dismissed.

Read the rest on AO3 here!

[chubsette]

Someday could you give us tips to draw chubby bodies?

i once put together some tips on how I draw fat for a friend so i suppose i can share those right now :) just keep in mind that these might not help everyone and that i mostly don't know what i'm talking about. it's just how i personally draw idk

and i cannot reccomend the book morpho: fat and skin folds by Michael Lauricella enough. it's an amazing resource for learning and it really changed the way i understand fat as an artist

edit: excuse all the typos on the images fml

[lazylittledragon]

ok i swear i'm not going to talk about my breakup forever but the thing that just keeps bothering me:

i know that not getting what you need in a relationship is a COMPLETELY valid reason to end it but also. i feel like having a very vulnerable moment where i opened up about my struggles with intimacy and being relieved that i didn't have to keep doing things i wasn't comfortable with, then being dumped a YEAR later because of my lack of intimacy. is something i should be allowed to be very hurt by???

[vaspider]

It is truly wild how much that, like, having a Following on any social media makes you this weird poppet onto which people project their weirdest hangups. Does the thing have anything to do with who you really are? Nope! But it sure says a lot about that person, the things they project onto you.

Like, my friend, this is a parasocial relationship you have with that person. It's just a negative one. Your obsession does nothing to them, and it's bad for you.