#and any degree of introspection makes me feel pretty guilty

[2stepadmiral]

Hardly a hot take, but I didn’t like acolyte. It’s the first Star Wars show that was legitimately bad (book of boba fett, Mando season 3, and Obi Wan I would consider guilty pleasures at worst). Overall, it had a lot of bad writing, cringy acting, and poor storytelling. Yes, there were some good parts, like Qimir’s character, the fight choreography, onscreen debut of cortosis, and Sol (until about episode 7), but for me, they weren’t good enough to make up for the lacking areas.

A few highlight critiques I have:

I hated the overall theme of anti-Jediism. Not because I don’t believe that the Jedi should be criticized, I just think that the way it was handled was nonsensical and idiotic. The flaws of the Jedi by the clone war were primarily complacency to a degree that they are basically puppets of the Senate, and stale teachings that haven’t changed in however many centuries or millennia that lead to Darth Vader. These flaws are issues that the Jedi should’ve recognized and tried to address, but they don’t warrant a total demonization of the institution as a whole. That’s the tragedy of the fall of the Jedi, the fact that they could’ve prevented their fall if they had simply been self critical and introspective. In acolyte, you have what effectively feels like real world political issues and criticisms forced into this universe and forcibly applied to the lens of the Jedi flaws. It isn’t explained why the Jedi being an institution is in and of itself a characteristic of the order, let alone a flaw, except from the perspective of the stranger, who sees himself as a victim of the Jedi because they won’t let him be a galaxy conquering Sith psychopath, which is a pretty weak argument.

Too many of the main characters are obnoxious and completely unlikeable. Neither mae nor osha feel like actual characters with actual arcs or development, just caricatures who make poor decisions and throw temper tantrums at anything they don’t like. Yord is an inflexible rule stickler who never develops any character besides rigidly following the rules and expressing bland disapproval at anyone who doesn’t follow his lead. Indara and Venestra were like Yord on steroids; they both reminded me unpleasantly of Luminara in TCW, but somehow with less personality. Sol, Jecki, and Qimir were the only characters that were interesting and somewhat likable.

The lightsaber designs are bland and boring. Before now, lightsaber hilts were always unique and had a profound or at least noticeable elegance to the design (Rey’s yellow lightsaber and Ezra’s blaster hybrid lightsaber are exceptions, those two were bland or ugly designs IMO). Pretty much every lightsaber in acolyte looks like interchangeable foot long pieces of discolored pipe with different cuts at the emitters, but apart from that, they looked pretty interchangeable.

The witches are cringe and poorly written. If these witches are supposed to be dark and creepy and potentially evil, why are they not just night sisters? If they’re supposed to be benevolent witches, Why did they act so night sister like? They play too small role in the story to be an entirely new kind of witch, and trying to blend nightsisters and other tribes of Dathomir witches was just confusing. We don’t understand their motives, and if we’re supposed to sympathize with them, it’s made very difficult by the fact that they’re pretty openly cultish and their intentions, for the twins seem pretty sinister. Overall, their inclusion just felt like a very weak and forced attempt to quickly add layers of demonization to the Jedi, and most of their time on screen countered that intention by making them cringy (that ceremony was beyond weird) and frankly unsympathetic due to their openly controlling and not so subtle Sinister undertones.

The ‘twist’ made no sense. Torbin was so homesick after a mere two months in the field doing drudge work that he thought bringing these girls would get him home? And he felt guilty to the point where he willingly and knowingly drank poison as atonement because… Sol understandably struck at one of the witches when she started turning into a shadow demon? And seemed to be attacking one of the girls they were there to save? And the witches, in retaliation/defense, tried to kill him? And then possessed a Wookie Jedi to try and make him kill them? And then they all died when they were expelled from Kelnacca’s mind? What? 

I hated the bleeding scene. I love the concept of bleeding kyber crystals, and previous executions, like in Jedi survivor, and in the Vader comics, were freaking awesome. But in both of those instances, you had fallen Jedi having the focus all of their rage and pain into a crystal that was actively fighting back, and as a result, success usually meant in explosion of Force energy. This may the concept fuel more like a tragedy when a crystal was bled, and it made it seem like even building a Sith light saber was in of itself a trial. Osha casually and unintentionally bleeding Sol’s crystal while strangling him makes bleeding seem ludicrously easy or makes it seem like she is casually more powerful than Vader, even while he was using a Darkside Nexus, and then the light saber blade changing color while active after she bleeds it trivializes the whole process.

The fact is that the vergence thing does raise questions about Anakin’s unique nature in the Force. They could have said that Brendok might have some kind of Nexus in the Force, and that the witches were able to use this potentially unnatural focus of Force energy to affect the artificial conception and birth of an unusually powerful being, and could’ve left a clear implication that while the twins together might have been almost as powerful as Anakin, even together they would have been less powerful. Using the term ‘vergence’ immediately implies that they are on the same level as Anakin in strength, as well as in unique nature. It’s sort of like Kyp Durron in the early EU, randomly introducing a Force user who is such a prodigy that he easily outstrips even master Luke. It strips beloved characters of their importance.

It also raises questions about how unique Plagueis’ work is. I haven’t read the book yet, but from my knowledge of Darth Plagueis, his obsession with immortality is what led him to learn how to influence the Force to create life. His whole pursuit flew directly in the face of the Rule of Two, Which is part of what made him interesting. Now, the implication is that he stole the idea from the witches, which robs him of some of his appeal and makes his work seem like a cheap knock off instead of a bold and desperate gambit that fleshes out his character and further contributes to Palpatine. Yes, they may remedy this in future seasons if it is renewed, but for right now, it’s raising questions.

Basil. That rodent annoyed the hell out of me every time he was on screen after episode 4.

Overall, the show had potential, but I feel like poor choices in writing dragged it down and ruined the execution. At the end of the day, I literally just want to watch an enjoyable Star Wars show that I can get into, and acolyte kept dragging me out of it with these and other issues.

[thaumaturtles]

Epilogue Thoughts

So, I finished the epilogues at around 11 AM on 4/21 and spent the better part of today mulling over it internally. Overall, I think I liked ‘em. Don’t get me wrong, they were brutal and tragic and ripped my heart out, but this is my garbage and I’m allowed to enjoy it. I was planning on liveblogging the epilogues but constantly pausing to jot down my feelings detracted from the overall experience. This is probably gonna be pretty scattershot, since I have neither the ability nor the desire to order my thoughts properly. Now, without any further preamble, let’s get into it.

Jane

 A lot of people said they didn’t like the treatment of Jane in the epilogues, and, fair enough, she was pretty awful and Crocker stans have every right to be pissed. But to anyone saying it came out of left field or didn’t make sense, I’d have to disagree (for the most part). Jane was brainwashed by the Condesce for the first 16 years of her life, and we see the effects of this when she goes Crockertier. She’d almost certainly have baked-in presumptions about how trolls were “meant to be” (ie super violent) even before she was consciously aware that trolls as a race existed. Jane was also always really in denial about having been brainwashed by the Condesce and I can definitely see adult Jane flat-out refusing to do any self-analysis and just assume there are no remaining effects of the brainwashing and she’s “totally cured” now or whatever. Jane’s also not super progressive? Like the conversation where she discovers Dirk has a crush on Jake and that Jake might even reciprocate was pretty uncomfortable to experience, and she starts a business on Earth C even though there’s no real need for corporations in a world with infinite resources. This shows that she’s still stuck in the belief that capitalism is inherently good/necessary for no reason other than “it’s what i grew up with.” All in all I could totally see Jane as someone who’d grow up to become xenophobic and have this colonizer mentality of “I have to regulate the Other because they’re not capable of functioning without me”

As for the non-consensual/rapey stuff... I’m actually not gonna touch that shit with a six-foot pole. The narrative is very explicit in the fact that Jane is an abusive partner and what she’s doing Is Bad, but like if she’s your favourite character you probably aren’t going to be all gung ho about seeing her do all the things that she did, which were admittedly very upsetting to read. I completely understand if you couldn’t read past those parts because they were pretty rough.

The Epilogues do get pretty unpleasant to read though :/

The Epilogues are highly antagonistic towards Homestuck’s readers. This is a fact. Whether this is a good or bad thing is up to interpretation, but it is at the very least not a new thing. Listen to Kate Mitchell of the Perfectly Generic Podcast and YouTuber OptimisticDuelist for more in-depth analysis than I could possibly provide on this, but one of Lord English’s greatest weapons is his ability to get people not to care about Homestuck, or even better, to revile it. That’s what the aspect of Rage represents: Plot Contrivance. As Karkat says,

THERE ARE OUTCOMES THAT ARE EVEN WORSE THAN THE COMPLETE ANNIHILATION OF EXISTENCE ITSELF. FORCES MORE DAMAGING TO THE INTEGRITY OF REALITY THAN THOSE CAPABLE OF TURNING IMAGINATION INTO PURE VOID. THEY ARE FORCES WHICH IF HANDLED RECKLESSLY WILL NULLIFY THE BASIC ABILITY OF INTELLIGENT BEINGS IN ALL REAL AND HYPOTHETICAL PLANES OF EXISTENCE TO GIVE A SHIT.

This is repeated, by Hussie himself no less, later on during his smug self-insert, found here. After Hussie dies and loses control of the narrative, LE is free to try his hardest to get you, the reader, not to give a shit. Rose, in the Epilogue’s Prologue, says that if people stop caring about Homestuck, reality as they know it will break apart, which is exactly in line with LE’s plans. So the fact that the Epilogues are very hostile towards the reader is basically par for the course. That said, I can see how it kinda sounds like I’m being all “oh it’s SUPPOSED to be shitty you wouldn’t underSTAND,” but that’s. literally what’s happening. and there’s evidence for it in the text.

Of course, in the past, when the narrative would pull things like this it would be under the guise of, say, Homosuck, which is very obviously meant to be bad and is presented in a fun, satirical way. The Epilogues, on the other hand, are downright upsetting. They’re presented in a much grittier light, which can obfuscate to what degree it’s Actually A Joke, if it even is a joke in any capacity. The fact that they’re tragic, though, should not be seen as evidence that they’re bad.

Some stuff I Liked

Both routes had some really top-notch interactions in them. A lot of folks seem to be overlooking how genuinely good the writing was. I said the phrase, “they’ve still got it” ALOUD to myself once or twice because the dialogue really did have that good ole Homestuck Charm. The Dave/Karkat/Jade interactions early on in Candy (before everything went to shit) were pretty great, as was basically everything that came out of English’s mouth. I dunno who the Antiquities Consultant was, but they did an excellent job at mirroring Jake’s usual speech pattern. I find that a lot of people, when writing Jake, just kinda throw in as many random old-timey words as possible and as a result it feels kinda disjointed, but the writing team for the epilogues managed to make him feel very... would light be a good way to put it? Sort of airheaded I guess. Just very goofy idk

We got to see Rosemary and they were married and raised a kid and it was the best! Rose was really well-written, as was Kanaya; I really loved seeing those personalities balance each other out again. It was nice to see them be good parents in the Candy-verse. The Vriska they raised was such a fucking scamp too! It was nice to see a Vriska who had a positive home environment but still had that same spunk

Also, Dave. Just, all of Dave. He was really solidly written throughout the whole thing. I fucking love his interest in the economy holy shit. I got to hear Dave Strider say the phrase  “neoliberal austerity measures.” That’s the best. “Economically Aware Anti-capitalist Dave” is rivaled only by “Karkat (True Leftism)”. I’ve seen a few complaints that Dave’s interest in the economy was also OOC, but for one thing he’s an adult and can cultivate new interests if he likes, and for another Dave is a pretty clever kid, and very numerically-minded. (Is that a term? I mean he’s good at maths and such). Don’t forget, not only did he manage to accumulate all the wealth on LOCAH in the span of three days by taking over their stock markets, but he also used the hash map modus in his day to day life, showing that he was able to do calculations in his head as quick as breathing. As shown here, the hash map modus is pretty complex and requires you to come up with a word that has the same value as the thing you wanna use in order to use it. That’s not easy to do on a dime and yet he uses it in his rooftop battles with Bro. All of this is to say, he’d certainly learn to be very good at economics if he wasn’t already. It just suits him.

Oh and I also love that Dave still makes SBaHJ and Karkat has a bunch of sockpuppet accounts he uses to defend Dave’s honour. it’s very cute.

Karkat also had some lines in the epilogues damn. I hadn’t realized how starved I was of VantasRage until I read a few of his rants. Also we finally got to see Badass Rebel Leader Karkat and he’s just as great as we all knew he’d be

The davekat kiss in Meat was great too. It was very gratifying to see after all the narrative cockblocking that went down in Candy.

John realizing in the Candy universe that he isn’t responsible for everything and that they’re all still just people with their own autonomy was good. Much as I have problems with the Candy universe on a whole I liked this specifically.

Also, roxygen! I love roxy/callie as much as the next guy but John and Roxy were very cute near the end of the comic and I liked seeing them grow up and have a kid. John names his son after the guy from Night Court because he’s a massive dweeb. Love it.

We got some great Terezi writing as well. The johnrezi at the end of Meat was nicely written and made me feel a whole host of emotions despite me not even having shipped them that hard beforehand.

OH MY GOD THE OBAMA SHIT. I almost forgot to put this in because I was focused on other stuff but my word the whole Obama Situation was beautiful I loved every second of it. It was so over-the-top in the best way and it simultaneously carried airs of being So Serious And Important To The Narrative and being just the dumbest load of crap. I loved it so much

Also, I was very happy with Roxy and Callie coming out. Roxy talking about how he’d already come out as dating an alien with a green skull for a head and how it felt like maybe he was being “selfish” by also wanting to come out as trans was a great illustration of something that already-out LGB people often feel when realizing they don’t identify with their assigned gender. Additionally, Calliope coming to terms with the fact that they don’t have to identify as female just to further differentiate themselves from Caliborn was great. It really helped to show how far they’d come from just being Caliborn’s foil into being their own person. However, this leads into:

Some stuff I didn’t like

Speaking of Roxy and Callie’s transition, Dirk also came out. As a transphobe. Which was disappointing, to say the least. He made a point of misgendering Roxy as often as possible and was pretty dismissive towards NB people when he learned about Calliope’s identity. (You could make an argument that Dirk is being thoughtless by misgendering Roxy and not intentionally malicious, but I don’t see Dirk as the kind of guy who slips up very often. He’s very careful with language.) I always headcanoned Dirk as trans, as I’m sure most people did, so having him just up and become transphobic was kind of the worst. I intend to talk about Epilogue!Dirk a lot more in a later post but yeah. Not a fan.

EDIT: I’ve thought about the Dirk thing a little more and he does eventually start calling Roxy by the correct pronouns, albeit in kind of a “see see look at how openminded im being youre such a manly dudely stud bro” way. Dirk’s initial discomfort with Roxy and Callie’s identity more comes from his own egotistical belief that he should have already known about it than it does from genuine animosity. That aside, he does still say “She probably would have loved being a “they” when she was a teen,” which sorta rubs me the wrong way. I might just be being oversensitive though.

Also, in the Meat universe, Rose and Kanaya split up! I’m very upset about that. Ultimate Power be damned, I want happy, married lesbians! It sucks that we either have Rosemary OR Davekat but not both

On the topic of davekat, Jade really got done dirty by both Epilogues, huh? She was used as a narrative device in one and was an intrusive presence in the lives of Dave and Karkat in the other. TBH I was never a fan of davekatjade for a lot of reasons but I would have preferred they be in a happy poly relationship than what actually happened in Candy.

Actually, the only two polyamorous relationships in the Epilogues both turned out awfully. I doubt any of the writing staff had anything against poly people; I’m sure it was just a coincidence but either way it’s pretty unfortunate. I have a bit to say about this but this is running too long as is.

Gamzee

Fucking Gamzee.

Unanswered Questions

Will there be any further updates? I sure hope there will, because the ending was not very satisfying and creates more questions than it answers. I can sort of see where it might be going but they left way too much up in the air and it feels very much like it’s unfinished. V has referred to it as “the whole thing” on twitter, so it might be finished for good, but i really hope it isn’t

Why did Rose say the session they’re creating will be the most important session of SBURB ever played? Why couldn’t they play it on Earth C? Surely Earth C’s inhabitants would be more used to seeing alien life forms and would know the basics of SBURB, thus making it more likely for them to survive it. Why go to the trouble of seeding a whole new planet? I’m curious.

Can a character be said to be “Out Of Character” if the character’s own creator wrote those actions? What if they passed on the actual writing to someone else but still had to verify it themselves? What does OOC even mean? Does it mean “this doesn’t fit my headcanon” or “there is no evidence for this” or “the author wouldn’t write them like this”? If it’s the last one, can an author merely saying “this interpretation is correct” absolve ANY action from being deemed OOC? I like that I’m being made to think about this kind of thing now

To what degree is each universe truly “Canon”? I’m aware that Candy lost its canon-ness when John decided not to fight LE, but the two universes are intrinsically linked: we see characters from one universe travel to another and it’s implied that Terezi has spoken to both Johns. How canon is Meat, even? Are either of them even still bound by the need to be part of the Alpha Timeline anymore, since Lord English has been created? What does anything mean?

Final Musings

I understand completely if you don’t like the epilogues. Maybe you think they’re too dark. Maybe you just don’t agree with portrayals of the characters. Maybe you hate that they gave jade a fucking tail when she never had one in the main comic. There certainly were bits of it that I wasn’t a fan of, but there are also parts I really wanna go draw fanart of right now. I like the Epilogues, but if I write fanfic or make dumb joke posts about Earth C, I’m probably gonna ignore large swaths of it (such as, I’ll probably keep both John and Dirk alive, and make them kiss a lot)

There has been a great deal of vitriol directed specifically at Hussie about the epilogues despite the fact that other people worked on them. It’s difficult to take these criticisms in good faith when so many people are blaming solely Hussie. I’m aware that he had total control over actual plot elements and wrote a bit of dialogue, but the bulk of the actual text was written by V. Another thing I’ve noticed is that people’s attitudes towards the epilogues are very much like the general attitude towards Act 7 when it first came out. I’ll admit, I left the Homestuck fandom in like 2014 and didn’t return until mid-2017, but people’s Jimmies were definitely still Rustled even then. There was a general atmosphere of “I hate Hussie, and you should too! The ending was bad and no one asked for it!” but as time went on, and people started analyzing the ending and making meta posts about it, everyone sort of grew acclimated to the ending. Suddenly, the general consensus was that Homestuck was Good Again Finally and the ending was Amazing and The Fandom Loved It. I feel like maybe that sort of thing’s gonna happen again with the Epilogues. I really hope that, as it continues to update (if it does), everyone will sort of chill out about it

[falcon6]

Learning to Create

It’s really difficult for me to admit that I’m an artist of any capacity. A lot of times, I consider that sort of term to be dedicated only to the working artist. You know, the ones who actually get paid for their work. The ones who end up creating things for everyone. The ones I admire greatly, to the point that I consider them to be living on Mt. Olympus while I’m stuck at a temple waiting for a chariot up a very steep road.

The place I work at now is a place where I don’t get to really create for myself. I create for other people. When I’m done there, I seldom get to make things for myself at home. There is an effort, of course, when I’m able to do so, but it’s hard to be that focused after toiling a retail job for 7 hours a day. You end up taking the opportunity to decompress and that ends up becoming an 8-hour decompress and you need to go to bed. That’s how it is for an adult, I guess. Don’t recommend growing up.

And that “9-5 Job, Now Do Nothing For Hours” mindset is something I need to work on, to be sure. In my mind, I see myself as someone who needs to be able to do something. I can’t make art to decompress, because art is supposed to be something important. I toil and toil, thinking about the process I need to decide on doing. “How do I become an artist like my favorite artists?” “What is the correct methods of learning it?”

How do I climb the mountain and join the greats?

In my monthly stint of introspection, I was watching a friend play Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. To this day, it may still be my favorite game. Watching it again brings back a lot of genuinely good memories, both inside and outside of the game. The charm that filled the game’s varied and interesting world and cast has still yet to be matched for my personal tastes. And for years, it was the game I played whenever I needed a good pick-me-up.

Watching him play it for the first time and getting to hear the same sort of reactions I had to it 14 years ago ended up bringing an...odd memory back to me. And it involves this image.

Low-Quality Vivian For The Low-Quality Needs

Perhaps not this specific image in particular - the internet could have phased out that one- but something similar to it.

See, back in 2004 I was just getting in on the whole Internet thing. This was back when people used what was called an “internet forum”. This was a place where people can post their thoughts on a wide range of topics, such as: “How do you jump in Metroid?”, “This game sucks”, and “Do you think Kingdom Hearts 2 will be on Gamecube?”.

I was part of one forum for a good part of my teenage life. I started at around January of 2004, in fact. I suppose I consider that a turning point in my life if I remember it to that degree.

I was fairly active in that forum. And as I began to make my posts, I began to notice something. At the bottom of every post was what you called a signature.

Copyright Falcon 2018, filed under the Trademark of Best Girl 2004

They were a cute little way to signify that you were the one who was making the post. It was one of the small creative outlets this particular forum had given users, though you still needed it to be both 45-ish pixels tall and kept at a low file size to help those with 56k modems.

Typing that out makes me feel really old.

There were people who were making these small images underneath their posts and the cool, hip guy I was as a teenager was like “OH BOY I WANNA DO THAT TOO!”. Of course, in order to create this sort of stuff I had to be...sneaky.

Back then, I found a pirated copy of Paint Shop Pro 7. It worked decently enough for me, but as I was a young lad with strong moral values - I didn’t even curse until well into my later teens, the frickin’ twit - I felt extremely guilty doing this. So for my birthday that year, I ended up getting a legit copy of Paint Shop Pro 8. It was at that point, I suppose, that my desire to create stuff was ignited. I was thrown into the wide world of graphic design, making sigs for myself and others.

I eventually upgraded to Photoshop 7 - after throwing away all of those moral values and growing the confidence to say the fuck-word - walking even further into this new world for me. I started making signatures for people in flashier ways, abused lens flare to the point of blinding half of Nintendo fanboys, and even dabbled in creating wallpapers for people to use. This was back when 1024x768 was the norm, if you can believe that.

I talk about this because when my friend was playing TTYD, I decided to look up art of some characters again, and found Vivian - one of the party members in the game - once more. Only, this time, in a way higher fidelity than I had 14 years ago.

Best Girl in A Good Resolution.

In general, I’d consider TTYD as the game that first got me encroaching into graphic design. This was not due to the game’s art, which is still fantastic, but because of so many people suddenly wanting signatures of their favorite new party members in that restrictive 48 pixel height.

I would get private messages in the forum asking for sigs with Mario, Goombella, Koops, Yoshi, Vivian, Bobbery, the X-Nauts, Bowser, Peach...Rawk Hawk a few times...even had Zess T. the cook in there. It was wild.

So imagine my surprise going through Google Image Search for a post about Vivian and finding an image of her that was extremely close to the kind of art I had to work with back then. I worked for a long time trying to figure out how to deal with the blur of the pisspoor scan with its low resolution and JPEG artifacts. Back then, finding official art was pretty difficult alone, and official art that actually looked like it was scanned with proper care? You were basically stuck with what you had and needed to figure out how to hide it. The people who could find clean concept art became our dealer providing the good shit while we provided our services to others.

Otherwise, you just worked with what you had. This was problem solving. Back then, you didn’t have access to as many tutorials as you do now. You absolutely didn’t have as much access to tablets. Those were from Wacom only and they were expensive. So you were essentially on your own, only getting help from the occasional artist who decided to make small tutorials on the forum.

Thankfully most of the people for signature requests were also teenagers as well, who just thought you were amazing for doing this for them.

I suppose all this reminiscing got me thinking about that mountain again. The paths up the mountain are long but they’re rarely ever getting longer or shorter, just easier to traverse. Nowadays, tablets are so much easier to acquire and art programs have gotten a lot more manageable. Art you want to look at or study or even use for your small projects are readily available, with services that makes buying personalized art easy and supporting artists even easier.

The knowledge about art programs and processes is nigh-infinite at this point. You can get a young artist’s commentary about their own virtues of art in a single tweet at lunch and get an experienced artist’s commentary at dinner. You can get atelier-level art lessons for free on Youtube.

Almost anything you want to learn is feasible now. Climbing the mountain is easier than ever.

So naturally, with my inferiority complex in full swing, I always have to ask myself why I haven’t started climbing the mountain yet. Why haven’t I just started the trek up the mountain pass already towards becoming a technically-skilled artist?

And the answer is, I am.

It’s just at my pace.

When I was a kid playing make-believe with others in the playground, I was making steps. Throughout all my teenage years of making signatures for people, making wallpapers for others, and even making a properly-awful sprite comic, I was making steps. When I was getting people stealing my sketchbook and making marks over my drawing of a Sonic character at lunch in high school, I was still making steps. When I was being critiqued by people for my skills in ways I felt were unfair or spiteful, I was still making steps. Every time I open Photoshop or SAI and stare at a blank canvas and will myself into making a mark on there, I’m still making a step.

Every step further from the start point, which is far and away from where I am now.

In my mind, I still can’t help but feel like where I should be is as some sort of master of art, but it’s really not fair to me. In hindsight, if I had drawn something every single day with intent, I could be a technical genius with knowledge of all the principles of design lodged firmly in my mind. It sounds amazing, but that’s not something I did.

Considering “what could have been” ignores what I am now. I am someone with knowledge in these various programs for over 14 years. I’ve dabbled in multiple projects, some in my own design. I can consider those things invariably shit, but the stuff I did there was stuff I did on my own terms, which I learned from. I wrote fanfics, did signatures for people, made wallpapers and webcomics, designed websites, did roleplaying, made a storyline based on friends’ characters in an MMO, and played tabletop games creating characters that became some of my favorite creations in my lifetime.

I would never want to trade that away for some sort of technical skill level-up. I’ve made too many great friends because of all of this. I am who I am because of how I’ve gotten here.

Learning how to create is all about taking the opportunities as they come along. Even this post is, essentially, me seeing one image online after a game session with friends and getting a nostalgia blast for something completely unrelated to the game itself.

The act of creating is simply doing. If you do, you create. If you create, you create art.

If you create art, you are an artist.

Don’t let your inner thoughts dissuade you from that fact, ever.

Thanks for reading.

[gringoslur]

honey, I'm south american.. the reason I only bring up the subject is because whites and mestizos in south america will get on their pedestals and clap their hands when the u.s. is being called out... which is literally all the time on this site, but will never make a peep about their own nations imperialistic ways. often times they will also try to escape their whiteness/white privilege through the ignorance that a lot of the anglo world has thinking latin americans are a homogenous race

so and coopt the opression that indigenous and black looking latin americans especially face. yeah, the other anon was right.. but you know why? because the u.s. has the resources to be this massive power.. trust me in the times some nations in south america had a similar degree of resources they did the same, during the brazilian empire the invasion of paraguay costed the population the majority of its male citizens, almost eradicating the guarani population that was left in the nation.

the rubber industry when the empire expanded into the amazon brought to the massacre of many indigenous people. and honestly, there are examples from the last 30 years all over latin america of literal genocide like targeted massacres of minority groups during wars and ethnic cleansing.. like via sterilization of indigenous and black people. my issue is that I only see people pointing blame at americans or the spaniards, french, or portuguese.. I never see any introspection at all..

ok.. so your argentine, if you want an example.. how about the fact that in the paraguayan war afro-argentines were purposely deployed.. because if black soldiers died as causalities, it would killing two birds with one stone? this literally (alongside an epidemic at the time, sure, but the war did more damage) lead to close to the entire afro-argentine population being eradicated as well.. so not only was the government partaking in imperialism but also ethnic cleansing of their own countrymen.

I’m not sure how many I sent sorry lol, I think 5… but I’m finished.. thank you for taking your time. Sorry, my annoyance was not with you but in general with many white (and mestizo) Latin Americans on tumblr who will smugly reblog things about the United States and their crimes, but sit silent about their own.

I’m gonna try to answer this the best way that i can, please tell me if i missed anything. And i’m talking with my personal thoughts, i’m not trying to represent latin americans…because i know that A LOT of what you said it’s true. 

I don’t feel like its “all the time”, because people talk shit about US because things that happen in US. Not so much about what US did to the world, and thats something that a lot of people don’t want to talk about or the country itself silenced people. I think that it’s ok to call out US and remind them about their history, but i don’t put myself (or my country) in a pedestal when i do it, if you ever feel like i did, i’m sorry and please, correct me. But you are right about everything else. 

Yes, i’ve seen latines trying to do that. That’s why i hate the thought that latines are “a race”. Some many people try to fight me in that topic, but they don’t realize that the argument of “we are one race” was already used in the history and present of Latinoamerica to not recognize the racism, colorism and the murder of black and native people here. Also, Latinomerica history and racial issues are more complicated than “white people are guilty for everything”. I call myself white even though my father isn’t white, but i personally don’t call europeans “colonizadores” or other people “white” because i have “white” blood too. And that white blood that you can recognize in my skin and features lets me be really privilaged in Latinoamerica. I’m a liar if i don’t recognize that.

Why people don’t talk about what happend/happens INSIDE of Latinoamerica?

I think that there’s different reasons. 

Yes, because of latines that don’t want to talk/accept/recognize that latines are also guilty of something and they don’t like being called out, knowing that what they consider they people also helped to destroy Latinoamerica. I can’t really speak for everyone, considering that i’m a “whitepassing” latina and i call myself white, but that’s a fact that no one can deny. But i don’t feel comfortable doing an “analysis” for every non-white latine because i’m not educated enough about it and it’s not my place.

I’ve noticed that a lot of latines don’t know about their own history. That’s why i always talk about how important it is to know the history of Latinoamerica and not only use the latine card in some situations. I’m not only speaking about a lot of latines in US that don’t even know the basic of the history of their country or in latinoamerica, but also latines IN latinoamerica. And for the latines in US, please try to look for good sources if you don’t speak spanish or portuguese. English sources tend to be…not so good. 

Everything that you mentioned, i knew about it (but there’s a lot of it that i don’t know, to be honest) I’m not saying that it’s common knowledge, because my country it’s pretty racist. But it wouldn’t be strange to hear a talk about this at least in my university. But still, every argentinian knows the name of “soldier Cabral”, but they don’t know that he was probably a black man, a slave. I thought about doing posts about it, but some things stopped me: here, is really weird that a post in spanish gets attention. the few sources of it (even documentaries) are in spanish, and i’m not fluid enough in english to translate them, i don’t want to misform people. I don’t trust english sources of the history of Latinoamerica, like i said. Can you talk to me in private about this? I think that you might be one of the people that i would trust helping me with this.

Don’t worry about it! I understand your feelings. I’m sorry if i reacted like that, it’s just that i’m used to get a lot of ugly asks when i talk about US (and that’s why we need to keep talking about it) but you are right, we need to remember OUR history as well. We should change that. And i’m sorry for making you wait for this answer, i had some issues. I’m gonna repeat something very important that you said:

My annoyance was (…) with many white (and mestizo) Latin Americans on tumblr who will smugly reblog things about the United States and their crimes, but sit silent about their own.

Non-latines, you can like and reblog but don’t comment (or tag comments) in this post. This isn’t your place. 

[tap-tap-tap-im-in]

So as I've alluded to, I've got some interpersonal drama going on, and one of the things that's happening is this person is lashing out at me by targeting their perception of my masculinity. Basically, in their eyes I am not the man they thought I was.

And honestly, nope. That's kind of the point I was making with the whole coming out as non-binary. It won't do me any good to say any of this directly to them for a bunch of reasons I won't get into here to protect them and their identity (because I love them and while all of this hurts I don't want to hurt them back), but they got me heated and thinking and I just wanted to word-vomit some ideas here so I have an excuse to better formulate them.

CW: There's going to be some discussion of some difficult subjects after the break, namely dysphoria, death, depression, and grooming, so if those will do you more harm than good skip the rest of this. Although, I don't intend to go into any graphic details I just wanted to be honest about that upfront.

My first interactions with a gay man were with someone who used his position to attempt to groom me. I don't want to go into details here, but I was lucky enough to talk my way out of it in the end, and either because he worried I would tell my parents, or because my parents knew something was wrong and didn't tell me, we weren't in contact with him after that. Honestly, I still feel guilty about that as I don't know how many children he might have been successful with because I didn't speak up, and I've been scared to try to look into him.

I've talked in the past about the fact that I grew up in the same town as the Westboro Baptist Church, a hate group that's pretty free with the bigoted causes it takes up but focuses mostly on homosexuality as their call to arms. They're the angry people with the "God Hates Fags" signs. And to make matters more complicated, in my early teen years my sibling was diagnosed with a partially inoperable brain tumor, something they and my family dealt with until their eventual death late last year.

I am the eldest, and in the wake of all this information I decided early on that my problems weren't important enough to trouble my family with. As I understand it, this is not an uncommon belief in siblings of cancer survivors and is almost universally unhealthy.

These three things created a pretty perfect storm that led me to be overly introspective, unduly critical of myself, and publicly unemotive. From the outside I'm sure this read as unflappable, independent, and confident in my actions to anyone who wasn't close enough to see the cracks. I'm almost positive of this because it's what I tried to convince myself of until I had to confront the reality of my own sexuality in college, this along with some truly bad coping mechanisms lead me to have a mental breakdown that ended in me dropping out of college only a few hours from completing my degree. In the wake of that I found a great community here on Tumblr, and I learned a lot about myself and things I had taken for granted about the world we live in.

The depression didn't magically go away. For years after this I had an abusive relationship with alcohol, and things got pretty sloppy as I was attempting to challenge my own complex relationship with my sexuality by attempting to sleep with anyone who would have me. My wife met me at the very end of this stage, after I had decided I was ready to start pulling my life back together, and is still surprised when I talk about this stage of my life.

All of this is important because one of the weirdest things about being non-binary is that it can't really be affirmatively defined. There is nothing about womanhood that is more comforting to me than manhood. But I do know that my entire life has been filled with a pervading and constant feeling that no part of me, from the truth of my body, to the truth of my mind, has ever fit into whatever skewed idea my mind has created of what a man is. The last decade or so of my life has been dedicated to reconciling that disharmony. I started first with accepting that I was bisexual and that there wasn't anything wrong with that, and now I've moved on to tackling my discomfort with my gender. And along the way I've found happiness and comfort I was denying myself.

I'm going to turn thirty in a few months, and a part of me (a part that I used to personify as a chiding voice in my poetry) thinks that there's no way I could have made it this long without recognizing such a fundamental truth of my own self. It thinks that despite the joy I've found outside my previous gender role that considering myself trans is just a little bit extreme, don't you think?

So you can understand why its so surreal to be attacked because I'm no longer living up to a gender role I'm choosing actively distancing myself from. You can also understand how much it hurts because I've had that same voice inside me for years, and that voice has been the most vicious violence I've ever done to myself.

[stephantom]

here comes some drunken, uncapitalized and badly written, introspection and whining

the thing i dislike about teaching is that bad days aren't just 'unproductive' days. bad teaching days are days where you feel like you're failing a bunch of kids. of people, in a vulnerable/impressionable/crucial time of their lives. and maybe you also feel like they're failing themselves a little too. but you feel kind of guilty about that, because it’s part of your job to believe in them no matter what, and to push and support them. and then you feel torn between coming down hard, thinking "it's more important that they learn this than that they like me"--and the suspicion that they’re on to something "IS the assignment actually that important? important enough to force it on them against their will? more important than the friendships they’re forming here or the hobbies they’re pursuing? maybe they've got it figured out fine. they saw through this lesson plan, saw the bullshit, and they're gonna move ahead in the world just fine by doing what they like and making connections with people."

i don't know, but it's. just so much shittier than just being shitty on your own.

and then there's my one TA who i like a lot but who also really stresses me out a lot of the time because she talks SO much and shares SO much, to me, to the kids, the warner brothers people, the parents, ANYBODY who is in her presence. and maybe i resent it? maybe it makes me feel anxious, and maybe there's some secondhand embarrassment when she overshares about all her weird experiences like they’re unique and amazing, and swears excessively to the kids to be “edgy” and “relatable” (she’s 22 lol she’s just a kid herself and i’m an asshole for judging her, honestly--and isn’t that what i’m doing right now anyway? i just can only bare to do it in written form (/when drunk)). but fuck, she can get it, you know? she's networking, she's getting interviews. and i just cannot. fucking. do that. watching someone else do it makes me want to sink into the ground. the thought of doing it myself is. impossible?

i don't know how i can have a future, if that's what it requires. i think that's how you make dreams happen though lol. like, i think that's how you get a job you actually like, with people you feel comfortable with. maybe. or maybe that's impossible too.

maybe i'm just fundamentally a pessimist in a way that makes "the good life" a non-reality.

not that i'm really convinced her approach to life leads to that either. it seems like it might lead to happiness but also Drama. and i do not need that. and the people who pursue happiness and success with that same kind of aggressiveness while studiously curtailing drama are repulsive in a different way. the people who value discipline for discipline's sake, ambition for ambitions’s sake. shallow, self-serving pursuits.

the role models i found for myself as a teenager--what i aspired to be--were early/mid-20th century writers and philosophers, who themselves were already a bit antiquated in their aspirations and role models. cambridge/oxford types. i was a philosophy major in college, you know (not computer science--what i’m trying to do now). fucking... wrong generation i guess?

philosophy. lol i learned to think too much and then i learned to unlearned it, mostly. eventually. and i'm pretty happy right now, i think. maybe happier (in the steady happiness sense) than i’ve been since i was a little kid? i feel like i'm... actually pretty good at navigating and regulating my own moods and at self-acceptance. and those were hard-learned skills. but i'm less sure about self-evaluation. i still just don't really know what to do with myself and i don't at all feel justified in selling myself/my skills/my competencies. i don't think i have anything that another human being should pay me for.

so how can i exist?

when it comes down to it, i think maybe that's the feeling that's stopping me from pursuing things. from networking or asking for jobs. and what stops me from being an actually good teacher, too. because a teacher has to have something worth teaching. some knowledge and wisdom, etc. i'm just, you know, existing. i've got a few skills under my belt, but they're not anything anyone else couldn't just teach themselves if they wanted, and i haven't mastered them to the point of being an expert or. or anything.

faith in yourself. how do you get that? some people seem to just already have it?? where do they get it? i feel like they actually just never feel like they need to justify it, like their starting point is “qualified until proven otherwise” and that is NOT a point i feel like i can achieve, ever. i don’t know how to rescind that skeptic’s approach to life, especially concerning myself.

i just. fucking. i want a really simple task assigned to me that i know i can complete and that i know does a service. i want to be a garbage pickup person. you know? a sandwich maker. anything. things that need to be done! things that people want done! that i can do! but everyone in my life keeps telling me not to do those kinds of things. i like learning but i have NEVER felt like learning has opened doors or lit up paths for me.

i did have a really straight-forward clerical office job for a couple of years. and that was pretty good. except that there was still weird office drama for reasons i could never discern and i did still kind of have this feeling that i should do something "more".

but i wonder if that "more" should be on the side. hobby time. personal "real" life time.

people in the office resent you for not thinking of your clerical work as your real life though. i guess that was the main problem.

but idk. there must be a place where that's the way it goes.

but would everyone else in my life be ok with it? especially after all the time and money i've spent on various degrees and classes?

teaching might be ok except that there's that doubt of WHYYYY am i making them do this if III didn't do anything with it?

and there are still big, professional, rich "successful" person jobs that i, on occassion, daydream a little about (being in the film production assembly line, writing software for animators, doing VFX, being part of a cool development/support team for some new software that benefits the world) but when faced with that circumstance, "right place at the right time! go talk to that person and get them to want to hire you sometime!" i just... fucking shrink away. i say “i’m actually really not qualified” or i assume it’s impolite to say anything at all. it seems completely and totally foreign to me that some people's instinct is to actually approach that moment, to go talk to that person. to talk to any person. 

honestly, people are scary. lol i think i'm really bad at... life

how do you be.... good at life? and do good things for people? when you just want to get by but also be good but you feel like you actually only have enough energy to... sort of just quietly exist?

probably most or many people do actually feel this but they just push past it without making this big THING of it and i’m just being ridiculous and making a big deal out of a feeling that’s normal and manageable. and i feel like i’ve been told that all my life, really, in different ways. and i know it’s probably true. but i also think that i have always looked around at people (people in general, people just doing life things) from time to time and thought: ...how??? lol

reading this post over again, i feel like i should find some kind of conclusion to end it on that’s not “how??? lol” but i don’t know what to say. i think that’s a genuine admission, that that’s a thing i feel pretty conclusively about myself and my relation to the world pretty frequently. 

and i find myself pulling up bias-confirmation data from my life. any time someone you cared about criticized you in a way that felt really heartfelt and accurate (my mom, my sibling--especially that one sister of mine that one time), or when your cousin told you that her mom/family has always thought of you as “just... spacey” and “a lost soul”, or finding out around age 12 that your dad once had a sister, and then finding out at age 26-ish that she probably killed herself (but you still can’t actually get a straight answer from anyone??? does anyone fucking actually know the physical cause of death even?) and your mom described her as a “lost soul” to you and she was very certainly an alcoholic (like your grandfather, like your father)), AND then finding out that your dad’s uncle tried to kill his mother and spent some time hijacking cars before eventually ending up on a prison bus where he died after trying to shoot his way out (wow, thanks, ancestry.com!! i was told he died in an “accident”!)... i don’t believe in genetic determinism, really, but... i don’t know. i do sort of feel like that stuff is kind of in me, in a way? (and a lot of the time i’m afraid to tell people about that uncle story, even though it’s sort of an awesomely-crazy story, because i’m worried people will believe that it makes me 1/4 murderer or something, genetically.) but, at the same time, i guess by such extreme standards, i guess i should conclude that i’m doing just great!

that was a weird paragraph to add.

fwoo. lol so i’m going to just go to bed and listen to podcasts now i guess.