#also i cut some bot details due i can’t do it anymore

[fr3nibackroom]

𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘵’𝘴 𝘢 𝘴𝘩𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘪 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘥

𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘪 𝘣𝘦𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘣𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘥. 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦,

𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘪 𝘵𝘰𝘭𝘥 𝘮𝘺𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘺𝘰𝘶’𝘳𝘦 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘣𝘦𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘥.

— 𝗱𝗮𝗻𝗶���𝗹 𝗽𝗮𝗴𝗲 - 𝗻𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗴𝗿𝗼𝘄𝗻 𝗮𝗽𝗮𝗿𝘁

is not that i like you ahhh relationship 💔

process in under cut :3c

[popculturebuffet]

Final Space Reviewcaps: The Hidden Light or Beelzbub’s Dad and Death Himself

Welcome back all you happy people! My regular coverage of final space continues as our Team Squad continues to be split up. Team Gary heads to the ruins of France and while HUE lives the dream, Gary finds the architect of his misery might also be the archtetcht of hope when he meets KVN’s creator.  Meanwhile Team Avacato find some friends of some friends... and an old enemy horrifically reborn and just as pants crappingly terrifying as before. Find out whose back, whose just been introduced, and whose resting under the cut!

So once again i’ts time for roll call, as our Team Squad has been split into three groups so Team Gary: Gary, Quinn, KVN, HUE Team Avacato: Avacato, Little Cato, Ash, Fox, Sheryl.  Team Bollo: Bollo, Mooncake

Same as last time and if your wondering why some names are missing from Avacato’s team, we will get to that. And since our three plots are entirely seperated from the start this time...

Team Gary: The Father of Beelzbub is A Moderaltey Tolerable Guy Picking up where we left off, Gary and Quinn gaze at earth though we do find out, naturally, the other half of the team is okay when Avacato buzzes in, confirming he’s alive at least. So with half the team stranded in the depths of final space, Gary’s next idea is naturally to plummet to earth and pick up a ship to pick them up. HUE has some flaws in the plan, i.e. the earth’s gravity field but KVN proves useful for once and helps carry them down to earth, our heroes ending up in Paris. 

We get a fun subplot of HUE thoroughly enjoying his dream of visiting Paris in a body.. even though Paris itself is pretty fucking horrific, littered with floating corpses and with a smokey, unnerving atmosphere. But the contrast works.. what dosen’t is the ships our heroes fine, which are junked, likely due to months of having no mainteince coupled with the destruction brought on by the titans. 

Gary does find something.. his worst nightmare.. a bunker FULL of KVN’s “I always thought i’d die like this”. They thankfully don’t want to kill him, and he finds a dwarf ventrixian whose a fan of his as are the KVN’s. As it turns out they somehow watched all his video logs to Quinn, and the little guy saying Quinn is even more beautful than he imagined lets him live when Quinn shows up. Gary is naturally puzzled why someone would create his worst nightmare, an army of kvns who know his personal details... until we find out who created the bunker: Kevin, the genius scientest who created the KVN’s. 

Naturally Gary has as mature, sensible and calm reaction as you’d expect and he goes to see Kevin’s dad without innocent....

Had you there for zero seconds. No he has a fairly fluid and incredibly well voiced freakout ending in him wanting to burn the place to the ground in cleansing fire. It’s.. actually a very good thing Quinn’s the one who went with him as everyone on the other team except MAYBE Avacato would’ve gone with operation BURN THEM, BURN ALLL OF THEM. 

So while Gary can’t burn them he does go to shoot Kevin’s creator in the head after finding out he’s alive and still in the bunker. And.. he actually is alive. It’s a nice change of pace as in most sci fi stories where we find the robot first the creator is long dead. But no Kevin.. is alive. It takes a bit for him to accept this is really happening due to a combination of Gary’s transmissions..and Nightfall having contacted him to make a ship. I’ts only when he tries throwing something at Quinn does he realize that nope these are real peoples and gladly welcome them for some rest so theyc an go find the ship he made for Nightfall. Relately the one major flaw I have with this episode.. is that it takes Gary and Quinn an embarassingly long time to put two and two together. Gary I get, he’s kind of distracted being caught in a waking nightmare and finding out he needs to rely on the man who ruined 5 years of his life. He’s also Gary. It’s okay. Quinn though, even with months of trauma stuck in a hell dimension.. is still the resonable one and still should’ve figured “Hey maybe the alternate future verison of me who was around back then did this”. The reveal is well done towards the end when it happens.. it’s just very weird it didn’t happen sooner. 

So the couple are FINALLY alone.. for about 5 seconds because Kevin gets into bed with them. And while part of his loopiness is probably the horrifying isolation for the last few months, after all Gary wasn’t exactly the most coherent after his stint in prison, I do feel that at least part of it is just him. It just makes the most sense: the infinity guard massed produced the guys and Kevin was one of their top scientests. He likely didn’t half ass a project of this size or importance.. so it’d make sense that instead the KVN’s suck at their job because the person who made them really dosen’t get humans, or personal space and the KVN’s are simply degraded copies of him. 

We do get a sweet moment with Quinn and Gary before Kevin decides they’ve rested enough time to go. They use the KVN’s to head to belgium, where the ship is, but have to fight Landfish, horrifying monsters that feast on the remains of dead worlds. So we get a fun and tense action sequence as our heroes sorta zipline through the monsters and KVN suprisingly turns out ot be useful twice in one episode. Our heroes make it to the ship, though HUE is down two arms and his self esteem, with Kevin asking why an AI would WANT to put themselves in a garbage bot. HUE admits he just wanted to experince life but it comes at a cost.. which granted the loss of arms seems rushed.. but it’s not like pre-AVA most of his life as a robot was that happy or fufilling so it dosen’t come out of nowhere and the person who MADE it better... is now dead and gone. He has no real reason to stay in the body anymore: He’s tasted life, he’s loved, and he’s lost. 

So naturally he goes back to being the AI on their new ship, which Quinn Dubs the Galaxy 2 because naturally Gary’s name tries too hard and Kevin’s is nonsensical.. though really Galaxy 2 itself just.. isn’t a great name. Seriously call it the purple rain or something. Still it’s a cool looking ship and while i’ll BADLY miss the crimson light as Olan designed a really fucking cool ship there, the Galaxy 2 is none too shabby. So our heroes have there ship, HUE has his old Job back, and we get a sobering scene as Quinn and Gary finallyg et the nightfall thing, and Kevin leaves to go get the portal up and running and he’ll call them.. they don’t have his number but he’ll be in england where the project is so it’s not like they can’t find the crazy man when the time comes. So we end with Team Gary heading off to a huge energy signture to hopefully find someone. Who it is, if it’s even one of our groups, is unknown.. but given the stinger it’s probably Bollo and Mooncake.. but we’llg et to that. First

Team Avacato: FUCK

So on their astroid Sheryl wonders if the plan is to just stand around and wait for Gary. Tribore however.. wants to leave again. Despite being in an edltrich space nightmare, he decides to take some paternety leave and cuts off part of the asteroid to go bond with his son leaving us with five heroes who all quickly get abducted by teleportation. 

Their abductors.. are Arachnitects, the last ones left in final space who intially confuse them as part of of Invictus unholy horde before Little Cato brings up Jeremy, and thus they free them and explain what’s up: as said their the last ones left in final space, the only ones who weren’t slaughtered or escape and try to offer our heroes hope and shelter.. before brutally being slaughtered by telekensisis... and it’s with that... HE has returned. While the trailers made no attempt to hide it and it was blatant from the start of last season he woudl return.. it dosent’ make his return any less chilling or impactful or David Tennant’s performance any less terrifying after being gone for a bit: Lord Commander HAS RETURNED

And make no mistake, hopefully, this is OUR Lord Commander, as he comments on the new additions.. and is GLEEFUL to have new toys to play with. Avacato is naturally horrifed he’s back and tries to just shoot him but that’s as effective as it’s always been, and he simply force lifts all of them, and naturally, being a sadsitic bastard, brings LIttle Cato forward as he wants to know where Mooncake is, though Little Cato makes a valid point: he dosen’t know where Mooncake is and even if he DID he wouldn’t tell him. And.. that’s where this part of the plot ends till next week. I”m fucking terrified. Nice to have David back though. Especially with Ducktales over. And as a side note... it’s notable Ash doesn’t try triggering her powers. Either she can’t and Lord Commander’s even stronger than her, or she just hasn’t yet. Or third horrifying option i’m going with thier powers come from the same source. 

Team Bollo:The Forge

So with Gary hopefully coming to the rescue and the rest of our heroes trapped by a sadistic bastard who will likely gleefully kill at least one of them.. we find out where Bolo went after getting his ass kicked. He surivived.. but clearly needs a leg up.. so naturally for a charcter voiced by Keith David he goes about it in the most badass way imaginable: he has mooncake do the thing on a dwarf star so he can FORGE IT INTO A FUCKING BADASS SPACE SWORD TO SLAY THE TITANS WITH. My.. my body is ready for next week. 

Final Thoughts:

This episode was excellent. The premire while not BAD had some issues with pacing and tone, where as this one found the perfect places to inject the series humor.. while keeping the stakes incredibly high and having the chilling return of it’s most terrifying antagonist. and yes tha’t swith the people posseing murder face out there. This episode returned Season 3 to the right track. It also continues to be seralized like season 1.. but I feel at least so far they’ve learned their lesson from Seasons 1 and 2 and combined the two better, having basically one big story, but having the pacing be more on par with Season 2 where things move along at a nice clip and we get more character stuff peppered in. It’s a nice combo. if it’ll hold out I do not know, especaillly with a longer runtime but we’ll see as we go won’t we. For now.. this episode was fucking awesome. 

If you liked this review join my patreon, my current stretch goal is for a darkwing duck episode a month and i’ll be putting up a patreon exclusive review soon for 5 dollar or more patreons so check that out, follow me for more and if there’s any episodes of the show from seasons 1 or 2 you’d like me to cover we can discuss that in my ask box and dm,s only 5 bucks an episode. See you at the next rainbow. 

[imthederpyfox]

Rant About YouTube Copyright.

by imthederpyfox, Moments ago

Journals / Personal

I know nobody's here anymore, hi, nobody~

But I need to take a minute to rant about YouTube's copyright system for a moment.

I know it's come a long way in the past few years, content creators never used to be able to defend their work with copyright under YouTube guidelines, and it's great that they now can. However, there is also the problem that as content creators can fairly and justly claim others videos that include misused content off their own, creators will also claim videos just because they don't like them. AKA 'foodybeauty' and 'Amber-Lynn Reid', to name a few...

Along with this, we also have major companies who think they should copyright any video posted about one of their shows or films or games, or anything really.

Now I know, full re-uploads of these things are against copyright law, well done YouTube, would you like a gold star? Well, guess what, you don't get one. Because not only can they claim these full videos, they have also been going on binges, where as soon as ANY kind of content related to their products comes out, it becomes copyrighted before the content creator can even so much as blink or press save.

I'm talking about videos where you can barely see what the creator's watching, i.e - an UNLISTED video I just posted of a review/reaction to a Netflix show called Haunted.

Now, I have posted another reaction for Riverdale, and spent months trying to figure out the best action to take. Bare in mind, these videos are 'unedited' for my patrons, and the links are only available to my patrons. But guess what? I HAVE NO PATRONS! First of all, HOW do these big companies find an unlisted video? Are they my patrons? I mean that'd be nice, but no. They Aren't.

Second of all, why the fuck would you block an UNLISTED video, when so many people upload full copyrighted re-uploads of films and TV with no issue?

Third of all, how did you even know my video contained any of your program when it's not even named after the show AT ALL because I KNOW you'll copyright it immediately if the title has so much of a WHISPER of the show included.

Now, I will admit, I understand why my first video got copyright claimed - despite being unlisted, which I'm still annoyed about - because most of the screen was taken up by the episode of Riverdale, rather than my reaction. I get it, fine. So, I edit it, I make myself the main focus - ew, I know - and I lower the opacity of the original video, and I cut out any songs that go on for too long, and I make sure that 1/4 of the video isn't even FUCKING VISIBLE!

Safe to say, this is not a re-upload of the original content. This is an upload of a reaction to said content. My reaction, in which I am constantly talking throughout, constantly cutting in, constantly ruining this series for everyone that decides to give me money to watch, what a good YouTuber I am indeed.

So, because I couldn't let sleeping dogs lie when I earned my SECOND COPYRIGHT CLAIM ON THIS UNLISTED PATREON VIDEO! I decided to look more into the company trying to claim it. Was it Netflix? Nope. Was it a TV company? Well, sort of? A french company that distributes TV shows, or so it claims. See what I did there? Good right? No, ok, moving on. So upon my research I happened to come across multiple videos, saying that the company was a scam, that they were fake and shouldn't even be copyrighting things.

SO, what did I do? Well, just to make sure I checked which part of my video was still listed under their 'copyrighted content' thing, because if you check it'll tell you time stamps and give you the option to trim. So, there was about 5-6 minutes of my video that for some reason was still being claimed as copyrighted, so I went in, and edited little bits out, where there was no dialogue, no important things, and then I saved it, and waited for it to process, and then I went into that copyright claims and I said, ya know what? I'm not taking this shit, I worked hard for this video, I made sure to do everything I needed to do, and since these videos fall under fair use due to the cutting and editing and the fact you can't SEE 1/4 OF THE VIDEO, I sent a dispute.

Now I have to admit, I was nervous. If the company that copyright claimed my video didn't like the fact that I'd done that, they could CHOOSE TO COPYRIGHT STRIKE ME. Like, no review from YouTube, nothing like that. If this company didn't like that a tiny channel with only 57 subscribers put in a dispute against them, they might get pissed. They might not like the fact that someone's done that, and they might turn around and say to YouTube, FUCK this channel, bye bye, bitch.

So I was worried to say the least, but I have never been one to back away from bullying, and in this case, I class it as bullying.

I filled in all the relevant details, including a very in depth explanation as to why my video was counted under fair use, and how my channel is tiny, how I don't have any Patrons to see the video, how my video was unlisted, and heavily edited to make sure the copyright did not count against me, including the use of disclaimers in both the video and the description.

I was professional.

I was right.

And I won the dispute.

A day later I get an email telling me the company decided to release my video of all claims and it is now available for all none of my viewers to watch! How exciting, right?

Well, today I decided that I'd upload my second reaction that I'd recorded, I did the same as with the last one, having learned something. I lowered opacity, I covered any nudity, I cut off 1/4 of the video, I made it so the focus would be on my ugly ass mug instead of the TV show itself. And I spent hours trying to upload it for it to fail and me have to do it again.

And low and behold, after all my troubles, all my trials and tribulations, all my blood, sweat and tears and turmoil... I got copyright claimed once again.

Now, it's safe to say, I'm a little bit pissed, ya know?

My video - much like last time - hadn't even fully been uploaded, around the 97% mark, and boom, claim. So I took a deep breath, ya home boi is NOT happy, and I see where exactly it thinks my video is not covered under copyright law. And this is where I think these companies don't care if you are actually covered under the law or not, because it's always a random part of the video, it's always about a 5 minute chunk of the video regardless of what you do.

Which leads me to my next conclusion, in order for these companies to be finding these videos - especially with them being in the unlisted category (needing a specific link to be able to view), and the title not being related, and the video being edited to make sure it isn't eligible for a copyright claim, they MUST have a bot, or a program running that searches YouTube for clips of their content, regardless of how it's presented, or whether it's a review or not.

Which I have to say, is unfair. Especially in the case of the unlisted thing. I know, YouTube can't help it if these companies have bots and programs and code, they can't stop that from happening. But what they can stop? What they SHOULD stop? Is these companies being able to claim videos that aren't even eligible for it.

YouTube, man, you gotta work on this.

We were rooting for you! We were ALL rooting for you!

Anyway, seriously, YouTube really needs to find a way to make sure copyright is fair and just and not maintained by just programs and bots. YouTube, why not create a part of your company that reviews these claims, checks the videos, guarantees that the claims only go to those ACTUALLY abusing the copyright system? Instead of those of us who just want to make fun content for our viewers, who strive to just make good reaction videos? Because that's what they are, REACTION videos. Not re-uploads, not someone else's content.

'Great poets imitate and improve, whereas small ones steal and spoil.'

Give a little back to the people that got you where you are today YouTube. None of these big companies had you raking in money to begin with, it was the little guys, the small content creators who now have millions of viewers, because they enjoy what they do. Well, most of 'em anyway...

Just think about your content creators, rather than appeasing the companies that give you a bit more money. I know they won't, because capitalism rules despite how shit it is.

Is it really a wonder that so many creators are turning to streaming through sites like Twitch.tv instead of uploading to YouTube? Even the other day, on a live stream I was doing myself, me and my friends talked about how much better streaming is, how you don't have to constantly be worried about making sure the video is friendly for 2 year olds. 2 YEAR OLDS SHOULDN'T EVEN BE WATCHING, OK?!

My goal has been to be a YouTuber since I was about 12. I'm now almost 22. That's just under 10 years of my life, where my goal, my one finish line, has been to become a YouTuber. But the more and more things like this happen, the more and more I want to listen to that voice in my head telling me to give it up and go to Twitch, become a streamer, not stress so much about copyright strikes and issues with monitisation, and having such UNREALISTIC goals in order to achieve being monitised and YouTube partner in the first place.

I have edited this video, the parts it told me to, I have made sure to cut out the music bits and make sure it's up to par with copyright based on where they claimed the video. But my issue with sending off this newest in what I assume will be a long line of copyright disputes, because someone, even as small a channel as mine, with my 57 subscribers and my 5 views a video (at a push), has to push back and say 'NO. THIS ISN'T OK.' and not let themselves be pushed around, my issue with this?

The company that claimed the video this time was Netflix itself. And we all know Netflix has money. And Netflix doesn't care if it shuts down a tiny little channel like mine. All my content? All my videos? All views and subs and likes I've somehow managed to accumulate? All gone. Like Thanos snapping his fucking fingers.

Regardless of what I do to make these videos fair use, big companies like this get the final say over them, and as far as they're concerned, us little creators who don't make YouTube money yet, but still hold onto that hope that, maybe, hopefully, one day we will be able to do it, we're the 50% they want to snap and get rid of.

And it'll stay that way for a long time, unless people actually stand up and talk about it. Heck, it'll probably end up staying that way even then, but at least we TRIED.

I have respect for Matpatt, I watched his video explaining the work he and other creators have done in bringing awareness to the higher ups in YouTube, using their platforms to help each other and millions of other creators, people who just want to make other people laugh or forget about their problems for a while, or just upload stupid, 2 minute clips because of inside jokes, or they find it funny, they enjoy doing it.

If we as humans have been taught anything recently during this quarantine, it's that a lot of our societal structures are flawed, some may even say broken. Big companies scam us, use us, and give nothing back in return. If peoples eyes aren't open now, when will they be?

This won't get views. This won't get likes or favourites or shared to other people because of some powerful message.

But maybe one day, someone from YouTube will be randomly scrolling through the internet, and find a random post on a crude fanart website amongst all the sonic and Mario at the Olympic fuck games art, and maybe they'll read it and take note.

But we all know that'll never happen.

So I'm gonna wait for the video to finish saving the changes I made to it, and I'm going to dispute the claim Netflix made against me. And I'm going to anxiously wait to see if I get to continue making content for another day, or whether I get taken down by the snap.

------------

If you made it this far, thanks for listening to my rambling.

I feel strongly about a lot of things, and my friends often tell me that I should post about them, because I have such an... Eloquent way or wording things. Well, I finally decided to, because I need to vent as much as the next asshole. They're right, I AM eloquent!

Seriously though, thank you for reading, I know nobody would have but hey, maybe you're one of the 3 views I get on my YouTube videos!

I am blessed.

With like 50,000 curses going on at once.

Such a time to be alive.

Stay safe, look out for each other, and I may do another rant at some point, because this was fun I guess.

-Exza~

[oathkeeper-of-tarth]

From Down This Low

The fateful first meeting of Bismuth and Rose Quartz, or: Bismuth can’t help but care far too much. From Working Title: eeEEeeeeEE BISMUTH, same source as Quite Contrary and other snippets.

(Back when I wrote the first draft of this, ages ago, it was pretty straightforward. Now it’s suddenly got a dozen implications per anything Rose says, a ton of bittersweetness, and altogether is just sad where I never originally intended it to be, but here we are and that’s just how it is in this post-ASPR world.)

~2400 words. Briefly featuring a ruby (who isn’t our Ruby) and a pearl (who isn’t our Pearl), and a warning for Homeworld is Horrible brand content and minor character death.

---

From Down This Low

For centuries to come, Bismuth would remember with perfect clarity the well-respected Benitoite architect coming to inspect a relatively fresh arena building site on the promising new colony, her ruby guard escort and pearl by her side. It was hard to forget, too, all the warnings and instructions the overseers had made sure every single bismuth on-site was well aware of, had drummed into them under pain of a variety of terrible fates.

Then, almost as soon as the inspection started, the slip-up and the bit of earth that was supposed to have been flattened long ago, the shouts of one of the ruby guards and the bismuth next to her desperately trying, and failing, to regain control of a long girder.

And it would be downright impossible for her to forget the growing horror of the pearl staggering and slipping backwards into the mouth of one of the recently dug foundation pits, trying desperately to keep herself together, her form glitching and increasingly out of her control, hands clutching at the cracked gem on her throat like it could possibly help stop the webbing, flaking damage.

For a moment Bismuth felt something like hope - the Benitoite actually looked upset, even concerned. But that got snuffed out quickly enough, as soon as she spoke, in that drawl that made Bismuth shiver and feel like the refraction of her entire form was slightly off.

“Oh dear, no... I'll never get a replacement in time for the hosting next cycle…”  

The callous disregard was, perhaps, the worst part of it all. It was just a pearl, yes, but Bismuth wanted to scream, it’s your pearl. Surely you owe her something, some small speck of feeling? She has to be more than an inconvenience to you, in the end.

Benitoite then proceeded to make a big fuss about destruction of property and compensation. The bismuth ended up harvested and the inattentive ruby guard shattered on the spot with the most sickening of sounds. The pearl…

Well, the pearl was left at the bottom of the pit, right where she'd fallen, twitching and glitching out and grasping at her throat as the crack in her gem deepened, and as it became clear that nobody cared about her save as an argument anymore.

Once the visitors finally left, and work was done for that rotation, Bismuth sneaked back on site and made her way down into the pit, and quietly held the pearl’s more and more immaterial hand. She did her best to try avoid looking too long at the tiny leftover ruby-red shards scattered about them, but they glistened, and they played in front of her when she closed her eyes, and they deserved better.

She stayed with the pearl as long as she could, took her with herself when the pearl couldn't hold on anymore and retreated into her crumbling gem, then hid her away in a nook in a half-built wall, next to a tidy pile of red shards - as many as she’d managed to find. The pearl never came back out.

(Rose could have helped her, was a thought that would resonate, centuries later. But Rose had burst onto this particular stage just a little too late, and her healing tears even later.

It built and built and built into the realisation that she couldn't sit around and wait for Rose to save everyone.)

-

Bismuth had no patience for meddling guards, not after the day she’d had. So when a rose quartz with the curliest cloud of bright pink hair Bismuth had ever seen trotted over to the edge of the construction site and very conspicuously tried to catch her eye, she kept her back turned.

“There are no delays. The arena will be ready for you all exactly as ordered,” she grumbled, barely managing to bite back just in time for you to wreck it and reduce good, hard, costly work to piles of rubble. Typical. “Did you need something else?”

“I just wanted… to ask you a few things.”

Bismuth turned, despite herself. The rose quartz looked sheepish and awkward, toying with the pink diamond emblazoned on the front of her uniform, with an air of having just sprung out of the ground about her. Everything about the situation seemed to slot into a familiar place, and Bismuth sighed.

“Okay, listen, I know I’ve helped some of you out in the past, but I can’t go around secretly fixing every barracks wall before your regiment gets in trouble with the agate, not with the schedule they have us on here.” Bismuth rolled her eyes, “Pink Diamond needs her giant statues, yesterday! And besides, I remember telling your pals to keep it on the down low when I last gave you a hand. Who told you to come get me?”

The quartz hastily waved her concerns away. “Oh, no, you misunderstood. I really do just want to talk. Nobody sent me here.”

“Talk.”

“Yes! Talk. Maybe…” the quartz shot a vaguely nervous look around them, pointedly catching on the few stragglers still on-site, “in private.”

Bismuth narrowed her eyes. “You’re a strange one. But fine. I know a place we can go.”

It took her a few more minutes to finish up the chiseling on her current block, then she shapeshifted her hands back, dusted them off, and motioned for the quartz to follow.

She took them to a small stretch of beach at a nearby lake that was due to be drained soon - probably as soon as the terraforming unit could spare a lapis for an hour or two. But for now, it was a pleasantly quiet place to sit and think - or brood, which she’d been doing quite a bit of lately.

Bismuth sat down on a beached log, and the quartz followed suit. She was almost comically entranced with the play of sunlight on the lake’s surface, it seemed a shame to interrupt. But Bismuth doubted either of them could afford to hang around indefinitely.

“So,” she prompted, toying with a bit of driftwood she found at her feet. “Can’t say I’ve really talked to a rose quartz before. Don’t you lot usually get nicer assignments? We just get amethysts who’ve gotten on their commander’s bad side keeping us in line here, officially.”

The quartz ignored her words completely, choosing instead to lean over. “What’s that you’re drawing?”

“Hm? Oh,” Bismuth noticed she’d started doodling in the dirt. “A habit. Nothing much. Sometimes when I come here I just like to… get some ideas out, visualise. That sort of thing. Does no harm, and gets washed away eventually.”

The quartz was staring at her so wide-eyed and so fascinated, Bismuth couldn’t suppress a chuckle. “Okay, look, you saw the scaffolding back there, right? For the pillars?” A nod. “Well, I was just thinking, and honestly when I draw it out it really seems to hold up - instead of the stuff Benitoite has us doing with them, we should do something like this.”

She’d already sketched out the supports, and added some detail to indicate where she’d have the load distributed and the arches go, just to make it clearer for the uninitiated - or, well, her entire audience.

The look the rose quartz gave her turned oddly pointed. “So you don’t think the pillars should be handled the way they are? Surely… surely Her Diamond’s Architect Benitoite is right?”

Bismuth huffed. “No, of course not. They’ll be gone in a couple thousand rotations, worn down to tiny floating bits. Besides, they’re ugly. Now this,” she pointed out the swirling lines in her hasty mud sketch, “this would be much better, much more durable, and it would look spectacular. And even Pink Diamond might be pleased with something, finally, instead of having us do everything over and over again. Benitoite is as clueless as a chunk of shale.” Then she thought back to the architect’s haughty drawl, and her pearl, and the nook in the wall, and she found her mood rapidly darkening. “But hey, like anyone cares what I think. Might as well be the dirt under their feet. And that’s exactly where I’ll end up anyway.”

The quartz looked sadly at where Bismuth had thrown down her stick and smudged away most of the drawing in one frustrated swipe of her foot.

“You don’t seem to have much love for your superiors, or... Pink Diamond,” she began, slightly hesitantly.

“Love?” Bismuth snorted. “Love your Diamond is something meant for other Gems. All I’m supposed to do is get my work done as quickly as possible and get out of the way even quicker, so it can be properly enjoyed by those it’s actually meant for.” She turned to the quartz. “Listen, er-”

“Rose,” she happily supplied. No facet or cut or any sort of designation. Bismuth raised an eyebrow, but decided to shrug and roll with it.

“Right. Rose. You look like a fresh face, so here’s a friendly hint: the arenas are for you to wreck, but best keep out of the fancy places, yeah? They don’t want you there any more then they want me. If some upper crust tries to make you believe that she does, stay away from her. It’s not worth getting entangled in any of that, and it can get real dangerous for you real fast.”

Rose frowned, but nodded. Bismuth wasn’t sure she was coming across properly, but she’d done her best with the warning. She seemed to have gotten her to think, at least - Rose certainly looked like she was mulling over something serious.

“I actually… I wanted to ask you something,” she spoke up after a stretch of slightly strained silence.

“Yeah? Your big secret that we needed to talk in private for?” Bismuth had no idea what it could possibly be, but she also couldn’t see any harm in it. And hey, if she could help a newbie quartz with something that was bothering her, why would she not?

Rose didn’t respond immediately, but spent a while looking out at the lake again. A breeze started up, and made her rich, pink curls dance around her shoulders - she was certainly a sight to behold, as impressive as quartzes generally went. Then she turned back to look Bismuth in the eye, gaze heavy with something unrecognisable. “What would you want to build?”

“What?” Bismuth laughed, far too loud. “Listen, princess, I just hammer away, I don’t make the calls-”

“But if you could!” Rose sounded breathless, and had drawn closer, wide-eyed and expectant and oddly excited, then took one of Bismuth’s hands between her own. “Imagine if there was a place- if you could get the chance to figure it out for yourself. If you could pick anything at all to build, what would it be?”

Anything at all.

It felt like a thousand ideas and wild thoughts were flitting through Bismuth’s mind, yet not a single one wanted to stay and become solid. But rubies and pearls featured prominently, and supports and safety nets and sanctuaries and things she couldn’t even begin to put into words, and she knew yesterday was still messing her up but it was just so hard to put any of it out of her mind for long-

Bismuth pulled away and forced out another nervous laugh. “What do you want with me, you weird hunk of quartz? What’s gotten into you?”

Rose became far more serious - solemn, even, and her dark eyes seemed to bore into Bismuth’s very core. “I saw you yesterday. With the pearl.”

Bismuth tried to hide her flinch behind a grin she knew had to be terribly unconvincing, and found herself scrambling to come up with a believable excuse. “Well, you know how it is… no way am I ever getting one for myself, so why not make use of a chance to play a little pretend...”

Rose shook her head, the endless curls following the movement almost entrancingly. “You don’t have to put up that front with me.”

“Front? Hah, what? Come on-”

“I saw you,” Rose repeated simply, “and I saw that you cared.”

Bismuth didn’t have an answer to that, so Rose continued.

“You were so gentle. You sat there and let her cling to your hand right until the end, when there was nothing but risk in it for you. Not many Gems I know would do something like that.”

Her companion didn’t seem quite so innocuous anymore, and that air of newness and innocence and curiosity seemed to have an altogether different feel to it now, and an odd undercurrent. “You’re right,” Bismuth admitted, with an anger that somehow felt very old. “That’s how they have such a tight hold on all of us. We help them keep us down and use us, because we do it to each other.”

Rose raised an eyebrow. “They? Sounds like dangerous talk.”

Bismuth shrugged. “Maybe it is. Maybe it should be, because we could be dangerous. Maybe I’m tired of so many Gems like me being… underestimated. Or worse.”

Bismuths were easy enough to make, she knew. They were built to be sturdy and durable, capable of withstanding heavy loads and gruelling work and punishing conditions of colonies-to-be. The investment just made sense, but once they wore down or fell victim to some inevitable workplace accident, that was that. It was a loss, yes, but an entirely bearable and replaceable one, and what were a few bismuths compared to a glorious newly erected spire, or a magnificent temple to honour the Diamonds? What was a handful of rubies if the fight was won, in the end, or a string of pearls gone out of style?

The way Rose was looking at her, though. The things she was asking. That was new. “Who are you?” Bismuth finally asked.

Rose lowered her voice conspiratorially, even though a quick glance around confirmed they were still alone. “I’m someone who’s had some dangerous thoughts, too. And I’m looking for Gems who want to help.”

Want.

“Well,” Bismuth said, feeling the beginnings of something oddly like promise, or that bit of hope she’d felt - or feared - snuffed out yesterday, “what did you have in mind?”

The smile on Rose’s face would have been terrifying, had it been aimed at her. As it was, she felt almost compelled to match it.

“Sabotage.”

[applegelstore]

Hey! Just wanted to drop by and say I really love your art and seeing your content! Along with the ideas you speak of sometimes. It's so nice to see because it looks like you enjoy what you do. It's an inspiration, really. I also wanted to ask, what's your inspiration? And what keeps you motivated? And this next one might be a bit personal, but do you have moments of self doubt? How do you deal with it?

Hi! First of all, thanks a lot for the ask, I don’t get personal questions about my art very often, so it’s very cool to see that some people are actual people and not porn bots, and are actually interested in the things I post!

Now for the actual ask, which I’ll totally have to divide into parts. I’ll also set a cut because it got hella long. Now, let’s go!

I have a very bad habit of word vomiting whenever I post art. It’s not only ever since I’ve started binge drawing Zesty fanart, I’ve pretty much always been like this ever since I started posting art on the internet about… 12 years ago at the very least?It used to be a lot of musing about the art itself (like, “what do you think, should I have tried this or that?” or “I had trouble with this thing” or “I actually like how whatever turned out”), which is probably due to the fact that teenage me had still a lot to learn and wasn’t afraid to admit that and ask for advice. I mostly posted my art online to get some peer advice.Nowadays, I am still aware of my shortcomings, but I don’t talk about the technical aspects of my art that often anymore. Nowadays, I have two reasons for posting art online: 1) I’m trying to make a living out of this shit, so naturally I’m trying to make as many people as possible aware of the fact that I exist. 2) I just wanna talk about the thing ™. Honestly. Never underestimate either of these points. That’s why there’s very often so much text and ranting in the tags. Because. I. want. to. talk. about. the. thing. I have an unholy amount of sticky notes on my desktop with ideas of things I’d either like to do because I think it would be subjectively cool, or because it might be a good addition to my portfolio. (spoilers: the former usually gets done like a decade earlier)I’m very glad that the sparks fly over and it shows that I love the things I love! ♥The result is novel-length descriptions for single sketches and tag vomit, though, lol.

“I also wanted to ask, what’s your inspiration?”

There’s no easy answer to that. First of all, it sounds a bit as if I was actively looking for inspiration. Which I am not. As I said, I rather have too many ideas and end up scrapping an unholy amount because even if I only do doodle shitpost sketches there’s no way I can do it all in a lifetime. I don’t know whether you had been implying that I actively look for inspiration or not, but if you did, let me tell you that I don’t. If you didn’t mean to imply that, no harm done.However, that doesn’t mean I don’t GET any. Because of course I get my inspiration from all kinds of places. I don’t watch a lot of movies, but I love going to the cinema and hearing the sounds and get eye candy (I love epic shots with the camera panning over landscapes and cool action scenes. Also, go watch The Secret of Kells, everyone). I always come out of blockbuster movies feeling like I wanna do something epic, too. I always listen to a whole lot of music, too, and there’s way too many songs that make me want to tell stories, and that plant pictures in the cinema in my head.(there was a time before Tales of Zestiria when I did original art and most of my paintings had some kind of musical inspiration lol. My stories, too).

Then there’s style and subject matter.Style first. I stopped aiming for a specific style pretty early on (like, late teens), and just accepted what came to me and works for me. The result is the weird anime not quite anime semi realism mixture that I have going, and the ratio usually varies depending on what I currently want to do. If I gave you a list of my favorite artists, you’d probably be surprised how little my own art has in common with theirs.Subject matter? WELLLLLL my original stuff comes from what I told you above, additionally, I studied medieval literature for a reason, and I loved mythological tales from my teenage years onwards. I’m much less enthusiastic about them now, but it used to influence my original art for quite a few years.…Also, I obviously like to do fanart. Like, a lot.

Also spoilers: I obviously love Zesty a tiny bit too much, because for no other fandom the streak of fanart has ever been holding up for two years and still counting without an end in sight, and I’ve never come up with any AUs, either. Usually my ideas went straight into original material, and this original material usually got top priority, but here it’s different, and I’m not sure whether it’s a good or a bad thing, haha. So basically don’t wait for my original stories* until I’m either a) done with the Zesty fandom or they’ve united and kicked me out or b) I’ve actually drawn at least four more full scale elaborate illustrations, have created the four or five AUs that I keep doodling for and ranting about, and I have finally run out of steam. Bets are up what happens first.

If you want specifics, it’s always easier to determine inspiration for a particular piece than in general. It can be so many different things.

* Although I still very, very much like some of my ideas and would actually love to do them. I just love to do low-effort Zesty fanart more XD. Shocking! But honestly, I am as surprised as anyone else that my muses shifted as much as they have, and mid-twenties me would never have guessed she’d fall into this rabbit hole in no time…

“And what keeps you motivated?”

I never… really needed to push myself to be motivated. It’s always been intrinsic. I had pictures in my head, I wanted them out. So I had to learn how, and do it. I have ideas in my head. I want to share them. I very much like this thing others have made. I want to tell the entire world how much I love it, so I do by drawing fanart. Simple as that.Positive responses (and asks like this!!) are a great motivator to POST art, but not to DO the art. The latter is intrinsic.Actually, probably TOO intrinsic. Because I keep drawing the things I WANT to draw and not those which would teach me new skills and thus help with “make money with art” thing. So I guess it’s a bit of a mixed bag, haha.I started drawing daily instead of just regularly at some point during my master’s studies, so roughly 8-5 years ago? Whenever I’m on the road or beaten by illness or bad feelings, I sometimes only manage very simple, super bad sketches, but it’s better than nothing. Luckily, it’s not like that every day (still more often that I’d like to, though).

If you’re wondering:Yes, I’ve had artblocks. Usually not in the sense of “I don’t have ideas”, but VERY MUCH in the sense of “I don’t feel like any of the ideas I have right now” and also “nothing I touch turns out the way I want it to turn out”. To all artists out there: it goes away. Believe me. Your stupid period will be over next week (to the guys out there: that’s not a joke. It DOES affect my general condition). It will be better the moment YOU feel better from whatever you’re currently suffering from.Yes, I’ve also scrapped ideas not because I didn’t like them after all, but because I tried and just failed repeatedly at executing them. Yes, I’ve had such bad times in life that I didn’t want to do ANYTHING. That included art. I just. didn’t. want. to. do. anything. Sometimes I still have these phases, but at least it no longer lasts for months straight without break.

“And this next one might be a bit personal, but do you have moments of self doubt?”

Pfft. Of course. Show me an artist who hasn’t. I’ve learned by now that you can acquire every skill you want. The question is whether you have the time and the will for it. If I had started drawing daily much earlier in life, and if I’d practiced more of the things I’m not good at instead of doodle shitposting, I’d be at an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT level than I am now. Even if I had STILL studied what I studied as I did (as I said, medieval literature, nothing art related). I’ve been drawing ever since I could hold a pencil and my parents have always been supportive, so that wasn’t a problem, I just wasn’t aware all these years that it could be something future me might want. Past me couldn’t have KNOWN. It’s okay, in a way. I can do the things I WANT to do by now. Not always as majestically as the ideas deserve, but it does the job. I don’t need to be able to do hyper realistic portraits, or hyper detailed interiors of space ships, for example. (it would be cool to be able to draw musical instruments tho. I’d love to learn 2D animation, too, but WHEN??) In short, am I aware that I’m not god and that my skills are limited in comparison to many other artists? Yes. Is that a problem? No.Do I doubt whether I can do my job, though? Very much yes. Because successful freelance artists don’t only need skill, they need to sell themselves, and I suck at that most epically. Do I miss the times when I didn’t even think about becoming better but simply drew for fun? Pretty much, yeah. Do I miss the times when I still had the ability to concentrate on elaborate, large paintings? Yes, I do. But I can’t turn my brain back to 10 year old. So I’ll have to deal with what I have now.

If you’re wondering whether I had moments of self doubt about my ideas, then, yes, very super much yes. I am convinced that the things you produce should be what YOU want to see. I want to draw what I want and tell the stories I WANT TO SEE AND READ. As I said, I’m doing it because I want these things to exist. Does it still hurt if nobody else likes these ideas? Yes, yes it does very much. It’s not even that I start thinking my ideas were bad, but that I start thinking “Nobody understands me and nobody will ever be able to like me because they don’t like my ideas, and my ideas are part of me”. Which is true, but it is ALSO true that you do not have to like every single idea some other person has to like them or be friends with them, I am aware of that, but if I may be honest here, it’s still a thought that I can’t quite get rid of, and still gets me angsty whenever I share some of my story ideas with anyone.

“How do you deal with it?”

I don’t. Ahem. Truth be told, I never really developed a proper coping mechanism for failures, and I don’t exactly like that about myself, but I still haven’t found a proper solution. As much as I stress that I do the things I do because I actually want to, I also told you that it scares me to see people disagreeing. It’s not only art related, whenever I feel I messed something up (school ie. marks, socialisation, whatever), it eats at me for days or even weeks until something positive happens (like, better marks, a compliment, anything). I don’t really like it, mostly because it starts a vicious cycle, but that’s how it is. I had surprisingly little problems with that during my university years because I had good marks, but I still mess up at least 50% of all the social interaction I do. It’s not always that easy with art, either.Story time.I remember one conversation with an artist who’s teaching art classes at my (ex) university, like, portrait drawings and flower paintings. So at some point when I started trying to live on art, I asked her whether she’d be interested in offering classes for other art styles as well, like comic drawing classes. She said she’d be interested, so I wanted to talk to her in person, but she never replied to that email reply. I decided to be bold for once, grabbed my portfolio, and went to her after one of her classes to show her what I’m doing. Put on the spot, she admitted that she didn’t reply any further because she didn’t like what I was doing. It was good from a technical aspect, but it seemed dull and uninspired to her, like something she had seen too many times already.I was devastated.I’ve always had to deal with underwhelming responses from peers and friends, too, but I also got some really sweet reactions and genuine support, so it was kind of a mixed bag, overall. I wasn’t used to that kind of harsh rejection of who I am.

Am I also very, VERY petty and jealous? Hell, yes. I get VERY jealous whenever I see people whose art is on my level or below but they still manage to make money with it, and have 10-100 times the amount of followers I have and/or get more enthusiastic responses online. It just makes me angry. The only way of coping I’ve ever found is stay the fuck away. I KNOW that it’s not these people’s fault if I’m jealous, and goddamn, freelance artist life is hard enough as it is. We don’t need to tear other apart. Surely they worked their asses off to be where they are. Heck, I’m friends with some. I keep away from those people so I can calm down and stop being angry, before I start lashing out at artists just because they get the attention they need and deserve. It’s not THEIR fault that I need money and also reassurance.

The only thing that ever worked for me to overcome any of these issues is just continue nevertheless. Keep doing what you’re doing. Remember what you love and why and JUST KEEP DOING IT. Even if you don’t see the point right now. Chances are you will see that point again. Maybe you never will. But IF you ever do, you want to make damn sure that you didn’t drop the ball in the meantime. There��s that saying that you can lose if you fight, but you can’t win if you never fight. It’s true. Be stubborn and show the world your middle finger.Spoilers: I’m teaching comic style drawing classes for the “rivaling” institute now. Always only in super small groups and it’s badly paid, so I don’t know for how long I’ll be able to keep it up, but it’s a start, right?

I hope that answered your questions!

Last remark: always remember, kids: you HAVE to produce the content you want to see yourself. Nobody is gonna do it for you unless you pay them. So. I’m doing it. Against better judgment, lol.…and watch The Secret of Kells.