omkdear

[omkdear]

Today I was accused of using AI to generate my artwork. Not with curiosity or care, but with judgment disguised as concern. I'm making this post because I am venting, and I have cropped out the persons name. This is for my sake, because this is my fucking blog and I can write what I want. This piece took me hundreds of hours, this is just one version with the timestamps. Over 30,000 plus strokes. 100+ layers. It’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever made and it is still not perfect or accurate. Not anatomically flawless. Not beyond critique. Because I’m a learning human. Because I painted it. After hundreds of hours of work I finally said ‘good enough.’ But apparently, that’s a red flag! AI detection isn’t magic. It’s not some righteous litmus test. The “evidence” cited against me? Hair blending into skin! Slight changes in shirt detail and a pinky that looked a little off. (okay the thumb and pinky are way friggin off, but hands aren't not my strong suit y’all. I spent so fucking long on this, I did just kinda give up at the end.) But it’s a painting. It’s my ambitious and imperfect digital painting from someone who is still trying to hone my digital process. It is a painting that pulls from source photos, gesture mockups, and vintage studies. References. I am a trained studio artist. I am an art historian. I don’t throw these things out willy nilly, or to FLEX. There’s far more talented artists! But I know how to build a composition, and I also know how my work, like many artists', has likely been scraped and fed into the very datasets people now use as false authority to accuse others. I had my art stolen off deviantart when I was 12 years old. When more than half y’all weren’t even ALIVE. When you accuse someone of using AI, when they have receipts (or even if they don’t!) It’s discrediting their labor, it’s centering your feelings over their process and it’s choosing your suspicion over their evidence. It’s not asking, “Hey, how did you make this?”

It’s saying, “I don’t believe you made this. Prove it.” And when someone does prove it? When they show you the WIPs, the timestamps, the mockups, the raw sketch layers? You apologize. Flat fucking out. Not with caveats. Not with “I was just looking out for you.” You apologize because you were wrong — and your suspicion caused harm. I am really fucking raw rn y’all. My dog—my literal best friend of 13 years, who saved my life and kept me afloat passed away at the beginning of the month and we JUST picked up his ashes. Today. So my reply back to this person was not the nicest, and I admit that. But seriously. I’m so fucking tired of this climate right now, it makes me want to pull down ALL my art and writing. Two fucking art degrees. Two. I went in fucking debt just to have children invade my DM’s with this. I should have just become an accountant and really doubled down on being the robot people think I am.

[omkdear]

Ngl folks. Just had to pick up my dogs ashes today after someone accused me of using Ai and uh. Kinda wanna just nope out of existence rn.

[omkdear]

do you have any tips for someone who wants to get serious about making comics/comic panels? love your art btw x

JUST DO IT

Have a read through Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud, extremely great book talking about the medium of comics, it's long but my god is it good. I think chapter 4 is particularly useful for ppl w/o a lot of comic experience.

Remember that comics are not storyboards for tv/film, they do things way cooler than that (see tip #2) 😎

Read lots of comics!! i consumed manga in my teens at an unholy pace + learnt a lot unconsciously while doing so. (I read a lot less now unfortunately and maybe manage a graphic novel every 6 months)

JUST DO IT, DONT THINK, JUST MAKE COMICS, THEY MIGHT BE BAD OR A LITTLE UNCREATIVE AT FIRST AND THAT'S GREAT BC YOU MADE A COMIC AND YOU ONLY GET BETTER WITH PRACTICE, JUST DO IT!!!!!!!!!!

[omkdear]

If the presence of center-right democrats in office *comforts* you into complacency, you were never really a leftist in the first place. Stop cosplaying care and actually do something for your community. Mask up. Stop the spread of a deadly and disabling disease.

[omkdear]

[omkdear]

oh ok

[omkdear]

it's honestly kinda hilarious how people keep making videos about how things "feel off" and "nothing has been the same since 2020", and yeah babes, we lived through a pandemic that had a virus that effects every cell in your body. peoples brains are literally changed. like of course things are different now, the CDC estimated that 77% of americans got covid by the end of 2022. we are physically different now. not to mention the horrors we witnessed and the absolute failure of our government to do anything meaningful to help us (I am not getting into that now).

it just kinda baffles me how people keep being like, things are so different! and they ignore the blue whale crashing through the roof into the room.

[omkdear]

[omkdear]

the shame of making a connection irl and them being like omg can i have your insta??? snapchat????? and having to be like sorry i live in a gap between two tree roots youre just going to have to normal text me like some kind of animal

[omkdear]

🔹 Someone else's fiction cannot cause you physical harm.

🔹If someone else's fiction is causing you emotional or psychological harm, or distress, you can put it down and not read/watch it.

🔹Your emotional well-being is not the responsibility of fiction writers.

🔹Someone else's fiction is not about your personal trauma.

🔹When reading or watching fiction, you always have the power. You can always stop. You are never reading fiction without your own consent.

🔹Fiction writers are not responsible for other people's mental health.

🔹The content of a piece of fiction does not reflect on the morality of its author.

🔹Just because someone writes about bad things happening, doesn't mean they want those things to happen.

🔹Don't like? Don't read.

[omkdear]

I've gone fifteen years on this website without absorbing any information about homestuck and I'm not about to start now

[omkdear]

fandom spaces were better when the media creators didn't know we existed and we didn't want them to find out.

[omkdear]

in general I think I have a weak spot for sunk cost fallacy characters. no point in trying to change because there's no going back! can't stop now because the possibility of being wrong is too unbearable to face head on and would destroy me if I tried!

[omkdear]

Israel would keep fabricating supposed associations between palestinians they assassinate and hamas.. from ridiculous things like calling Anas Al sharif a head of a cell or like labeling municipality workers hamas because hamas is the governing party responsible for everything. The truth is that the resistance is good actually, it's righteous, we should be supporting it, and we shouldn't get dragged into debating within Israel's own logic that 'well, they weren't hamas.. etc so that's why murdering them is wrong'.

[omkdear]

Americans discover eating outdoors while having a cig

[omkdear]

once you recognise the ubiquitous and inevitable fandom life cycle it becomes much easier to free yourself from it and just keep enjoying things in a more healthy way while still thinking critically about them