#sorry but i needed a rant on the subject

[privaterecording1clips]

I have been away since the MCC, and I haven't been really posting things or keeping up with the group activity. Imagine my fucking reaction when I wake up on a Sunday morning to Discord exploding over night.

I have some conflicting emotions towards CCs talking so openly about fanfics. Part of me is glad that they acknowledge our existence, like I know a few of them are here, and even seen my own posts, like OMG MY STREAMERS KNOW I EXIST. And fanfics, it's huge! It's a step up from liveblogging and headcanon posts, it's a fanart in its spirit, but painted with words, and similarly poured the author's soul into.

But there's like that thing with...prejudice? I've seen people mention fanfiction in Chilled's streams before, and in yt as well, and there were not exactly positive opinions. I know they were talking about there being very few smut works, but it feels like they were bringing them up the most, and it's just frustrating to not be understood in the right way. After all, everything we do here, and everything we write on Ao3 is us expressing our love and support in the ways we can, none of us have any malicious thought or want to be hurtful and spread hatred or smth.

Do you think there's a world where they could speak of Tumblr/Ao3 part of their community from a bit of a different angle? Do you think that fanfiction should be acknowledged and spoken about more?

(Also, I know it's stupid, but I feel just the tiniest bit salty. I wrote good stuff, why won't they talk about me too?!)

Yeah, I have very conflicting emotions about it too. (Mostly I feel betrayed by whoever was linking Platy fics LMAO)

Tumblr and Ao3 get a bad rap for being “cringe” I guess. Personally I think that they are the only places left on the internet that are well-known and not too corrupted by capitalism and algorithms (especially Ao3 my beloved). But I really don’t give a shit - I hate cringe culture with a passion.

But yeah. It’s the whole thing of like. You can’t post works on the internet and expect people (especially the streamers themselves) to just not see it? Because it’s out in the public. They have every right to view it.

But, I’d personally rather my fics NOT be spoken about on a livestream, in front of thousands of people. That’s just my preference, because honestly the reason I post fics at all is this is a very small fandom, and they won’t blow up or be noticed and judged by multitudes of people. I’m far more comfortable with a small audience, and I would not want my fics to be mentioned on stream where lots of people (far too many for my liking) may go looking for them. (This is why I post more about PR1 than mcyt, even tho I love both equally).

But i think if the streamers are fine with fanfic being posted, I see no reason for people to hate on fanfic??? In fact, I see no reason for people to hate it at all? You can inform someone that a creator is uncomfortable with fanfic/certain types of fanworks and ask them to take it down without being a hater. Decency is not difficult, and when you’re in a fandom that is not against fanfic and stuff I don’t see why you’d ever waste your energy hating on something that literally doesn’t effect you?

It’s the same thing with any type of hate comment. If there’s no reason to be upset by something other than the fact that You Don’t Like It, take some preschool advice and walk away. It doesn’t concern you. (Btw Tasha, I don’t mean you specifically, I mean the Royal You!!! Sorry if this was confusing I just realised lmao)

Sorry for getting pretty serious, but I am just quite upset by people who discourage artists when they haven’t done anything wrong.

That said, if a creator has expressed a desire to not have fanworks made of them, then I implore you to respect their boundaries. It’s just the kind thing to do.

[goldensunset]

i don't really know how to word this but like i feel like i'm gonna forever have to deal with the pain and heartache of one of my very first pokémon games- the first 'normal' pokémon game i've ever played, that i will have lasting nostalgia and love for as a result of it being formative to my introduction into the series- being the one that will forever be looked down upon for bad graphics and technical issues as a result of the game having been rushed

like i honest to goodness want to scream and yell and cry into the void about how this means everything to me and will always be one of my fave games just in general. but how am i gonna do that without someone being like 'the broken overpriced mess? the one that's missing all this stuff from the older games that was great? the thing with all the cringe? that one?' or whatever. and the thing is they aren't wrong for their criticisms either like i know the fact that they rushed this wonderful game hardcore is a massive stain on its reputation and it hurts me too but like i cannot turn off the brain full of love in me and be a mean critic. or even an impartial one. i mean i criticize everything i love don't get me wrong i am constantly running my mouth about what i like and don't like. but at the end of the day i approach all media with an unusually optimistic mindset. if you see me talk a ton about something no matter what i'm saying you can bet it means i love it.

just. aaagh. it's always tough being a new fan of an old series. i'm like too embarrassed to express my opinions bc i feel like they're invalid y'know? i feel so exhausted every time i see something to the effect of like 'oh those poor kids these days having to deal with such bad quality everything what a bad time to be a fan of pokémon wow y'all make me feel so old' well see the thing is i actually am thriving and i love it here. and i'm also an adult myself so i have more critical thinking skills than people who played red when they were like five years old did. and even with the power of critical thinking i manage to be in love with this. join me in marvelling at the beauty of life

[prettyokwizard]

with the conversations of TAG negotiations and wages bubbling up I'm thinking again about when I had my first storyboard supervisor role in 2022 I didn't find out til months later that I was getting paid 7k less /year than someone I was supervising. Extremely cool and definitely not humiliating ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

anyways. no matter the industry please talk to your coworkers about wages and advocate for yourself and others, I'm begging

[lecliss]

I'll never be able to take the theory that Vincent is Sephiroth's real father seriously cuz I cannot stress enough how important I think it is to the plot that Vincent wanted to fuck Lucrecia and did not get to.

[volfoss]

it is beyond infuriating how anne rice seems to insist on marius being a positive force in anyone's life ever. like she can't fully commit to exploring the fact he groomed armand and has repeatedly taken away his consent for what marius thinks is best (take the end of TVA as an example) and just kind of flatly puts it in the narrative. there's not really much interest in how these horrific events make marius come across as the worst because EVERYONE loves him. for gods sake, lestat learns from armand exactly what marius did to him in TVL and then proceeds to go find marius and be super friendly to him in the same fucking book. even armand and pandora, two of the people who have MORE than enough right to hate him, do not. it doesnt feel like shes trying to explore the toxicity of the abusive dynamic he traps them in, it just is there. and like yeah ofc the toxic vampire romance series but i think that this should be handled with more care. and it is not ever really framed in a way that she is interested in exploring how marius should easily be one of the most horrific characters in this series because it kind of feels like sa/rape/grooming/other things of that sort are just put there to further plot and not to really get the respect that they deserve in a medium.

[mauricemylittlemeowmeow]

*coughs blood* thinking of convoluted regency romantic literature-esque a/b/o burda

thoughts too long so ill just keep it under a read more instead of the tags

initial thought was dankovsky fixing artemy's posture which led to daniil teaching him manners which led to "oh my god governess daniil"

but i have no idea in what world hed give up being a bachelor of medicine so ofc my first thought was structuralised sexism which my brain helpfully interpreted as hell yeah omegaverse babyy

so now i have daniil with a sexist military father who lowkey loathes that his son who was supposed to work his way to also become a general can't bc hes an omega and omegas cant be enlisted. daniil still wants to pursue his own goals but bc of structuralised sexism, all hes seen as is a homemaker and someone to give birth to children.

he gets a basic education ofc complimentary to his rather well off upbringing but instead of finding an alpha and settling down, he decides to strike his own path and a la jane eyre and ends up as a governess. for years hes used the salary hes earned to fund his own higher ed self-study. hes not a bachelor bc hes not allowed to be, but he works his way to have practically the same knowledge+skillset as one in his own time.

at present hes using his money to fund his own private research into thanatology. it's all done in secret ofc but he publishes some of his writing under a pen name (it's caused quite a stir in the medical field bc it's not published as a scholarly work--danko can't bc if he submits it for peer review, hed have to expose himself--but as very technical "fictional" work which upon testing, proves true results)

his current job eventually ends and he finds new employment under a well known doctor and minor rural noble: isidor burakh. he writes to danko asking for him to educate his son and heir. daniil accepts, hoping that hed be immersed in an environment that would allow him to stealthily learn more medical stuff to aid in his own pursuits. he also accepts expecting a young child to look after as usual.

imagine daniil's surprise when said son is a whole ass 25 year old man.

anyways turns out burakh (the younger) is a bit of a wild child who prefers being in the steppe+town rather than acting as a noble. isidor called daniil in as a last ditch effort bc he feels like hes abt to die soon and artemy rlly needs to learn how to commingle properly w noble society once he officially takes over the family title.

anyways thats the premise!!!! idk abt plot i just want silly etiquette lessons and bullheaded artemy+frustrated governess!daniil bonding. daniil trying to tame artemy but then getting dragged into having fun himself. artemy finding out abt daniil's real dreams and ambitious, passionate personality. him trying to help but daniil being stubbornly independent (he doesnt want to be another omega being saved by an alpha or whatever)

just good old jane austen/brontë sisters romance shit!!!! no plague :)

[rollercoasterwords]

As a fic writer, how do you stay positive and not stress yourself out with constantly comparing?

I've been really struggling with that. I start spiraling when a certain chapter doesn't get as many comments as usual, comparing my hit counts and kudo counts to other fics, and it's really not healthy but I'm struggling with knowing how to stop, how to just be happy and proud of the response I've gotten. Any thoughts or suggestions would be much appreciated.

honestly? i know this might seem counterintuitive but my best advice in that situation is probably to stop posting for a while

like. for me the thing that helped most/still helps most when i find myself falling into the trap of comparison was taking a step back and reevaluating why i wanted to write and what i got out of writing in the first place. like, for me, the core reason i write is for the joy of creating something, and getting to share it with others is all just a bonus. but i haven't always felt that way, and it definitely took a lot of reflection and having to unlearn a lot of social messaging to get there.

i think we are all very much blasted with the message that the most important metric for how worthy art is = how big the audience looking at it is. and i think, because of the way capitalism conditions us to interact w art, it's really really easy to feel like your art is only meaningful if people are seeing it and telling you it's good. like, the focus turns to outside affirmation rather than an interior sense of worth.

but the act of creating art has merit in and of itself. art is worth something because the act of creation is beautiful and joyful, regardless of who sees or doesn't see the final product.

writing fanfiction has helped me find the joy in writing again by removing it from the sort of profit economy that conditions me to think art is only worth something if it can be sold. before i got into writing fic, i felt this sense that creative writing wasn't worth anything unless it was something that i could one day publish which really just stifled me, and it wasn't til i went "fuck it i'm just gonna write something for the fun of it with no plans to ever try and get other people to read it" that i started to really enjoy writing again. and i think that's why i tend to be really wary of anything that starts to treat fic like books or pull fanfic back into this pseudo-profit economy where worth is measured by online popularity/tiktok virality--bc for me, fanfiction is an escape from that sort of mentality.

now, i try to be really vigilant about when i'm starting to fall back into the habit of feeling like my writing is more or less valuable based on whether it gets more or less hits/kudos/comments etc. i think this winter i finally reached a point where writing fic was starting to feel too much like a job w the pressure i was putting on myself to write a certain amount of words or meet certain deadlines, so now i've just been writing without posting anything for like 2ish months and i've found it really helpful! it's good to remember that writing is fun and rewarding even if nobody is seeing it in the moment and there's not that constant feedback loop of affirmation.

and if getting that outside affirmation is a driving factor in why you're writing, and it's draining because it's driving you to constantly compare, then i think it's worth taking a step back and evaluating why you want to write and whether it's like....emotionally sustainable. there's nothing wrong with wanting affirmation and wanting people to see your work, but at least for me anytime i've prioritized outside affirmation it's weakened my own interior sense of worth and made me much more likely to burn out or abandon writing projects. it's difficult bc like i said we are all very much conditioned to prioritize outside affirmation when it comes to art, but for me reframing the way i think about what makes art worth creating in the first place has literally made my writing experience a million times better. so, the most concrete advice i have for giving yourself space to do that is just--stop posting for a bit. stop seeking an audience in any way shape or form. give yourself some time to write by yourself and for yourself, to figure out what about writing brings you joy when there is no outside affirmation and make that the centerpoint of your creative endeavors.

i think there might also be a skin on ao3 that hides kudos and hits and comment numbers, so it might be a good idea to look into that if you're really struggling to stop comparing! also, i highly recommend cj the x's video essays the kronk effect and 7 deadly art sins, as well as jamie berrout's essays against publishing if ur looking to challenge/reframe/expand/adjust the way you think about art + literature :•)

[nostalgia-tblr]

You know, a lot of Loki fandom wank could be avoided if people just stopped assuming that everything Mobius says is definitely the literal truth and that he would never tell lies for whatever reason (like to GET A REACTION!) and can never just be wrong about things.

[fandomfloozy]

Ever think about how fucked up it was that our desperate need for escapism led us to believe we could go to different realities if we manifested it well enough and meditated hard enough?

Ever think about how fucked up it was that it was mainly teenage girls that partook?

[immortalsins]

the way im paying £9250 per year for my professors to screenshot a textbook, paste it onto slides, and read from the slides for an hour. then i buy the textbook for £4.44 on ebay and its much easier to learn from than any of my lectures

[eli-is-an-idiot]

god fuck i need to work but its all so hard

[alienaiver]

im kinda starting to accept that despite my best effort to curb it, my seasonal depression has appeared full force and its my first time going thru it without seeing a therapist, so if i write more vent or rant posts than normal, please just hang on, i usually get better again by april !!!! luv u all sooo much!! ✨

[naein]

.

[moonysfavoritetoast]

“gym is the best subject in school”

i’m sorry what? it’s not even a subject. it’s just a pervy teacher who went to watch the girls on the run 5k in may even though he doesn’t have a daughter or neice or sibling or ANYTHING that would be in it because he has two adult sons and a twelve year old niece and girls on the run is third through fifth grade and he stares at girls running and makes girls feel like they shouldn’t eat because they’re fat (they’re not, i was in classes with some of the skinniest kids in my school)

why is gym your favorite subject the teacher makes you do jumping jacks sometimes for twenty minutes straight for warmups if health class is there bc if ONE PERSON stops you have to all start over again and go for a full minute why is gym your favorite subject

[loregoddess]

Ok I'm curious, could you elaborate on art school education when you have the time?

Mainly because my friend went to art high school and feels she wasted all the years there while I've been self-teaching myself for a few months by just messing around, so I was wondering just how different the two approaches are :0

Oh, I have lots and lots of thoughts on art education. I do feel that I need to preface this with the whole "my experience is not universal", bc all my feelings about art and art education stem from my own experiences of being self-taught and then getting actual formal college degrees in art.

The shortest version of my long rant, under the cut, is that there isn't a superior way to learn art. With art education, you run the risk of getting bad teachers who don't teach the subject well, and you can also run into teachers who aren't open-minded about approaches to art that differ too much from their own--the flipside, of course, is that there are sometimes amazing teachers who can challenge you to try new things you'd never had thought of on your own, or who have already made a lot of mistakes that they can tell you about so you don't have to make them yourself. With being self-taught, you have to figure out everything on your own, and sifting through online tutorials or reading books can be difficult to find "actually useful and well-explained" advice, but you do also get the freedom of doing literally whatever you want and really focusing what you learn based on what you're actually interested in. Each has it's pros and cons, but neither is technically better or worse, per se, although education of any sort comes down a lot to each person's situation in life, as not everyone has access to education or even the tools for making art.

For the long, long expansion of my thoughts and some of my personal experiences with art education specifically...

In short, I'm technically entirely self-taught, despite holding two different art degrees. Aside from some feedback I got from my 8th grade art teacher (who had agreed to look at my hobby art in her own spare time outside of class), I basically taught myself to draw entirely on my own, using various "how to draw" books, online tutorials, and just a lot of general experimentation and continued drawing on my own. Which meant I made a lot of mistakes, or didn't try out certain things, or got frustrated bc I couldn't figure out how to do something, but overall I had a lot of fun. The actual art classes I took in middle and high school? Well, I took a life drawing class in high school that taught me how to draw from life, a skill I never would have acquired on my own bc the process for learning that skill requires a lot of patience, and personally, I find life drawing to be extremely boring. My high school art teacher was also allowing blatant copyright infringements to occur in her class, which was something I learned years later when taking a media law class in college to learn about copyright law specifically, so I guess I learned what to not do as a teacher if I manage to become one, but I didn't learn a whole lot of actual art skills or even really improve my art in any significant way. I never actually learned anything like the elements of art and how to use them, or color theory, or any of that, in class or even on my own, but because I was constantly looking at lots of art online, and making art on my own and experimenting with new things, I ended up learning all of the "essentials of art" intuitively, sort of like how children learn the grammar of whichever language(s) they grow up speaking without learning the actual formal grammar of the language. Which I think a lot of artists actually do as they continue to make art, even if they don't realize it.

Anyhow, moving on. I personally really enjoyed my undergrad illustration degree. Now, to be fair, if someone was willing to pay me to attend college for the rest of my life as my actual career, that is what I would do bc I love learning, and I love the challenge presented by college courses. But do I feel like I learned anything new about art in those classes? Yes and no. I took a lot of art history classes bc I had never had any art history before college, and found I loved the topic a lot. The life drawing classes I was required to take felt like a waste of time bc I already had that skill from the one high school class, and I spent most of those classes fighting the teachers about why we should have less nude models (bc nudes are super easy to draw from life, but clothing is very, very difficult, and I wanted to learn how to draw clothing as a challenge bc I was bored in those classes). I spent one class teaching the entire class how to use Photoshop bc the teacher's method was absolute BS and I could do everything faster and easier than what we were being taught bc I had been using the program for years (the teacher even joked about how I had hijacked the class, to which I'm still not sure was meant to be friendly or malicious). The "Anatomy for the Artist" class I took was one of the most useful classes I've ever taken, and really helped me with drawing not only humans, but anything with a skeleton and muscles, since the teacher's approach made it so I learned the skill of using actual real-life anatomy as a means of creating art from the knowledge of anatomy (and I lucked out for this class bc I had an adjunct who was there to cover the actual teacher who was on sabbatical, and from what I heard from classmates I would have learned nothing from the usual teacher's approach to the class; I hope the teacher I did have found a good stable job bc she was amazing). Most of the actual core illustration classes helped me improve my art a great deal, but not bc they taught me anything--more so, it was that I had to create a lot of art for them, and find creative solutions to the challenges the projects would present (there were lots of "illustrate this abstract concept without using x, y, or z imagery" or "create an illustration within these specific parameters" which really required me to think about how to plan and go about completing the final project). Somehow, the actual "foundations classes" that I took--where I was supposed to learn things like design theory, the elements and principles of art, color theory, etc.--well, let's just say the teacher was on his way to retirement, and didn't teach any of that really well, so I still ended up going through my undergrad more or less on intuition and the art skills I had cultivated on my own. Mostly, college art classes were useful in helping me to improve my art, not because I learned new things (although I did learn some new things), but rather because I needed to make lots and lots of art in a relatively short time, and making art constantly is the fastest way to improve.

That all said, I still never really got the point of things that I kept seeing or hearing as common art advice. For example: "Use references." Okay? What does that mean? What does that look like? How do I do that? I was never taught that once, and it was only partway through college that I figured out that people meant "look at a photo of a real person to figure out a pose or something" and not "learn about the subject you're trying to draw so you have an understanding of that subject that allows you to draw it from your imagination how you want". And honestly the former advice is useful but...only useful to a point, so I'm kinda glad I never learned it bc it would have stunted my development and presented a roadblock. In either case, I was never taught how to use a ref or what "use a ref" meant in my formal art education, and by the time I figured it out on my own, my repertoire of art skills made the advice moot.

So what's all the long and short of this? Is art education a sham and useless? Well, not entirely, but maybe sort of. It really comes down to which teachers are teaching the subject, and how they do it. I only had a handful of art teachers who were really able to get me to think about art differently and push me to learn more and improve. But I also had a friend in my undergrad class who had never drawn in his life and he found most of the classes super useful bc he wasn't coming in being self-taught and already drawing. We were at different places in our art journeys, and so we got different things out of the college classes.

I do feel overall that the focus of my college classes was more productive than the lack of focus from my high school classes. Would I tell everyone who wants to get better at art to go to art school? Hell no. I got a degree in art because I love it, and because I had hoped to work as a video game concept artist (for which one does need at least a BFA to get hired by most companies). Of course, by the end of my degree I had figured out the video game industry in America was absolutely not a place I wanted to be working for my own health, but my frustrations with how my art education had been structured, paired with the fact that I spent a few classes actually teaching my classmates things, made me think I might make an okay art teacher. But even my wanting to be an art teacher still comes from a place of deep love for art. For those who just want to take up art as a hobby, self-taught is fine, and sometimes it will be better than getting stuck with a bad teacher who'll crush the enjoyment of art. Yes, I think a well-structured art course could help someone learn art and become confident in their art, which is part of the reason I want to try teaching it (esp. bc it took me years to learn some things that a good teacher would have just like, covered in a core class), but like...self-taught or school-taught, there isn't a superior way to learn art. They're both just very different approaches.

[lovevalley45]

i have a spicy take which. prob not as spicy when i've said smth kinda similiar before. but i truly never understood where gerard as a dad figure came from especially when literal mother timothy goose is also right there