#i mean like. i have certain Ways I Draw Things

[adrianastrix]

Another thing I'll add here is something that I was coincidentally discussing with a friend yesterday: this kind of issue can only be solved if our science education (and I'm talking BOTH Natural Sciences and Humanities) doesn't rely on teachers being simply a source of "correct" information.

I put "correct" in quotes because guys. GUYS. I was in a comitee for quality control of kids science textbooks (ages 11-14), and Jesus Christ. It was a book written in the Year of Our Lord 2022 and it had a SLUR as an "alternative name" to Down Syndrome. Not to mention information that was BLATANT WRONG when you as much as googled the legal definition of a certain thing, and much much more. We obviously bombed it, but there's the kicker: the only thing our ban ensured is that this textbook collection is out of question for Brazilian public schools. Private schools can use it, if they want to.

Which means that even schools can and, as much as we try, will spread misinformation, even if it's in a small scale. The teacher in the Twitter thread very astutely identified it as a crisis of authority. If education is just a matter of relaying "correct facts", it all comes down to a matter of authority. And the poor teacher feels hopeless because she can't even say, in good faith, that her word is inherently better than ChatGPT or Wikipedia or TikTok because, guess what, she could be wrong. There's no such thing as infallible authority.

There's only one solution, one that Education Scientists (which ARE a thing, I'm one of them!) have been saying since, I dunno, THE 18TH CENTURY: giving kids an education centered in DOING science, not memorizing its products. The teacher started amazingly by asking the kid to "look it up" in front of her. But what she COULD have done, if prepared for this kind of challenge (I obviously don't fault her for freezing when confronted by something for the first time) was to ask for the notebook or cellphone and show the student what she meant by "look it up" and how the results vary. And tell him that NO single source should be trusted, either her or ChatGPT, and when sources disagree, what should be the tiebreaker?

In other words, the only antidote is showing the kids HOW science is done, HOW you arrive at conclusions, and HOW documental research is done. Science isn't something that Very Smart Geniuses do in their ivory towers to create The Truth. It's science, not a sacred religious ministery. Science is mundane, messy, controversial, and everyone* can do it with a bit of training, just like everyone* can cook or sing or draw with the proper training. [*"everyone", of course, being a rethorical generalization; obviously there are circunstances in which people might NOT be able to do it, or might need especialized assistance that others don't need, but those are the exceptions, not the rule.]

The main reason why our education is stuck in memorization and trying to out-authority the internet has a name: Standard Testing.

It's LEAGUES easier to test for how many facts someone can spew exclusively from memory (you just need a multiple choice test that can be graded by a machine) than it is to test students for their ability of create, research and communicate knowledge (the current optimal way to do it is the whole process of writing a monography/dissertation/thesis).

The whole EVALUATION system holds us down WAY more than the teaching methods themselves, because when you are teaching scientific abilities, you WON'T be sparing time to ensure that all your students are commiting definitions and formulas to mind. At the VERY least, tests should allow students to search for the info they need: this alone already demonstrate that student's ability to research, compare and choose correct information.

The idea that you can compare kids by a test that quantifies the amount of information they have on their heads, and that once they perform well on a test, that info is certified as correct and true is RIDICULOUS. Information on the brain degrades with time, unless you need it constantly. And people who grade tests are human, humans can be wrong. The accepted answer in a test can be wrong.

But we have to maintain the illusion that we can OBJECTIVELY rank students, schools, school systems and nations on how much knowledge they have. Otherwise, how investors will be reassured that they are "top quality"? How private education businesses can boast that they are "the best", thus justifying their price tag? How international banks will "ensure" that the amount of money countries are investing in education are being "correctly spent" (instead of being used to repay them)?

Soooo... ChatGPT is only the tip of the iceberg. There ARE ways for us to solve that problem, there HAS been ways for it since the 18th FREAKING century. But as long as they don't make the money people happy, as long as we expect school knowledge to take the form of a standard list of memorized correct info, we will still be ineffectively fighting the robots.

[kwillow]

regarding romance involving your characters, im aware you've talked about how you likely wont engage in making content surrounding that topic (WHICH IS ABSOLUTELY FINE obviously), but do you mind if others do? i personally find a lot of enjoyment in those kinds of scenarios and itd be good to know if thats something you're fine with when it comes to your own creations. (im sure you get enough asks about romance already, apologies!!)

and related to this, are there any strict boundaries or hard lines youd prefer not to be crossed when it comes to fan content of them? even anything that just makes you uncomfortable; if youre alright with sharing, that is <:-} i would really like to know just to be certain

Hi there! This is a very kind and conscientious message; thank you for that. ^^

Short answer: sure, I don't mind if people want to make romantic-themed art or writing with my characters. It's flattering!

I don't really have much in the way of hard limits when it comes to depictions of my characters (not counting nsfw/kink art, where I'm also pretty permissive but want to be communicated with in advance), but here are some personal boundaries when it comes to how people treat me, the human:

My characters aren't able to be "claimed" by people for exclusive shipping purposes (either with other characters or for self-shipping). When people get jealous of either other people who want to ship themselves or their characters with mine, or jealous of the characters' in-story love interests, it creates a highly uncomfortable situation for me.

I'm happy for people to enjoy their romantic fantasies with my characters, but I am not included in that bargain. Liking my character does not mean one knows or is in any kind of relationship with me, platonic or otherwise (especially not otherwise).

Likewise, I probably won't reciprocate a lot of self-shipping or Your OCxMy OC type stuff. Of course I'll comment and appreciate the effort and the expression of being interested in my silly stories! But I won't necessarily make a lot of ship art in return or trade head-canons or what have you (again, I just am not super into shipping and I have my own story stuff I already don't have time to draw orz).

My characters aren't made to be boyfriend material. I also have not drawn/written/shown every part of their awful personalities or actions. In the future, I might reveal something about them that makes them unappealing or unsexy. People can ignore the unpleasant qualities I give my characters in their fantasies/fics, but I won't change how I write or draw the character to make them better suited to someone's tastes (yes this is something people have asked me to do).

I feel like stating some of these things makes me look a bit neurotic, like "oh come on, that's not going to happen," but unfortunately all of these things have happened to me before when people got, I guess, a liiiittle too romantically invested in my characters.

So really, I don't have many boundaries in the way of content. Go forth and write or draw or just imagine what pleases you (general you). Write them getting married, having unrequited crushes, being one of the last survivors of the Titanic and sacrificing themselves so that the other character can live her best life beyond their doomed romance, etcetera.

All I ask is that the appreciation is centered on the character as an imaginary being, and I, the real and very boring human woman, am largely ignored in the equation and not pulled in to do matchmaking, officiate any weddings, or act as a conduit to manifest a tulpa.

[gideonnavtheninth]

FINALLY name time! Abigail name time!!!!

Once again, Pent and Quinn are 5 in Greek and Latin respectively, which we all know is the pattern. NOW, first names are fun! Abigail, meaning-wise is biblical. It shows up a couple times, as the name of the wife of Nabal and one of David's wives, and as the name of David's sister. Jewish Women's Archive describes Abigail (Nabal's wife) in this way

Abigail, the wife of Nabal of Carmel, is the only woman in the Hebrew Bible who is described as both intelligent and beautiful ... She is “of good sense and beautiful in looks,” while he is “hard and evil in his deeds” ... Alternatively, according to the written text he is just “like his heart” Later, the narrative recounts that “his heart died within him and he became like stone". Mean and inhospitable, he meets his fate, measure-for-measure, in the petrification of his hard heart. It accounts for Abigail’s motivation: why she intervenes secretly to provide a feast for David and his men without consulting her husband. In a subtle twist, she simultaneously saves her household and allies herself with David, eventually in matrimony when she is fortuitously widowed.

The things that feel noteworthy here are A. Abigail being very defined by having a husband (But, in this case, her husband sucks) B. Several mentions of the heart, which... they are the heart of the emperor! and C. She's widowed! Continuing down her story, we see some more stuff that feels of note

She further portends that God will establish a “sure house” for David, foreshadowing Nathan’s prophecy of an everlasting dynasty for the king. She ends her speech with a hint: “when the LORD has dealt well with my lord, then remember your handmaid”. David then praises her good sense and expresses gratitude that she restrained him from bloodshed, uttering an oath to counter the prior violent one

Every time I see the word "house" alarm bells start ringing. Anyway, an everlasting dynasty feels particularly familiar here. I mean, Abigail doesn't have all that much to do with Jod, but it still feels relevant to be drawing connections when I see them.

Based on her prescience, the Talmud identifies Abigail as one of the seven female prophets in the Hebrew Bible. More likely, she is keenly perceptive about the shifting tides of history.

Not anything extraordinary here, but the concept of Abigail being "keenly perceptive about the shifting tides of history" feels pretty accurate to our Abigail!

When Abigail returns home, she finds her husband drunk from feasting “like a king” and waits until the morning to tell him what she has done. His heart then strangely turns to stone and he dies ten days later, struck by “the Lord”. David, hearing that she has been widowed, sends for her. She obsequiously prostrates herself, calling David “lord” and herself “maidservant prepared to wash [his] servants’ feet”; though, ironically, she follows the messenger with five maids on donkeys in tow. She then becomes his wife

Feels like she's very defined by being people's wives. If anything, I feel like Magnus is the wife guy in TLT. But, again, we're seeing a whole lot of heart talk, which feels like it has to mean something. The whole point of this reread is rereading so I'm certain I'm missing things, but I never got the impression Abigail was all that zealous in her religion. I will say, I will be keeping an eye out for anything that really makes Abigail feel particularly Jod-sympathizing. In GTN, we don't really blink at people supporting the emperor outside of times where it really stands out, like the Eighth, but I do wanna watch out for Abigail mentioning the emperor at all. Just something to keep in mind.

Good old' Wikipedia describes her name as derived from the Hebrew word ab, "father", and the Hebrew root g-y-l, "to rejoice," Meaning it probably means "father's joy". Again, not all that sure how this relates to Abigail the character, but still gotta cover my bases.

Abigail's self-styling as a handmaid led to Abigail being a traditional term for a waiting-woman, for example as the waiting gentlewoman in Beaumont and Fletcher's The Scornful Lady, published in 1616

The aesthetic makes sense to me. Abigail is very gentlewoman in my eyes.

Nooo Magnus don't get your own post. Nooo don't make the fifth house like 4 different posts nooo Magnus

[mars-ipan]

do i even have. a consistent "artstyle"

[fenicearts420]

I’ve been seeing lots of art of Mr. Puzzles with a tail and people wanting to bite it, lately. And that reminded me of something which gave me an idea so have this late night sketch.

Bonus:

Oh yeah, btw, my self-insert (in the SMG4 universe) can turn into any dragon from the httyd franchise except for the books and the games. I wanted her to be a shapeshifter but I figured it was too over done so I opted to limit what all she can turn into and something in line with her/my personality/personal interests. So, yeah :D

ENJOY!!

[sysig]

Size difference.png (Patreon)

[ethereiling]

im going to be so real i think im going to snap if i see one more person talking about how There Is No Objective Quality In Art because yes there is!! there arent strict rules about what objective quality is, theres no one size fits all metric, but high quality art is effective in evoking emotion and thought in ways that low quality art isnt. there are so many ways that people can choose to evoke certain feelings through art but the effectiveness of that Is a pretty solid means to determine quality in my experience

[freebooter4ever]

The tech guys are hanging out in my office again and chatting about $10,000 week long vacations like this is normal.

[novuit]

Sorry I'm aliveeeee. I spent too much time thinking and not enough drawing :')

[snekdood]

people will be so terminally jealous of you that they’d rather you reexperience your trauma but somehow in a worse way than just let you live your regular happy life as it has been

[peapod20001]

Cracks me tf up how Ozzie is literally. He looks exactly how he did when I first drew him

[sysig]

Leftovers gone bad (Patreon)

[celestialmancer]

As much as I can take pride in how I can draw mouths well & how fun it is to do like unique stuff w that, I always am antsy that it'll end up getting me looked at weird for drawing them or get me weird unnecessary comments.........

[crest-of-gautier]

MORE PQ TIME!!! i'm determined to make good progress on it!! i played for around 4.5 hours today, and got around 52% of the 4th floor done. we have a total of 31 hours in the game and most of my main party is at like level 30/31, i think!

i'm feeling pretty content with my mechanics/persona fusions... there are ways i feel that this operates differently from mainline persona (the way petrification is a status that carries over between battles surprised me!), but i feel like i've really gotten into the groove with the boost system (and i have enjoyed using status ailments more than ever).

i'll probably be getting to see destined partner stuff soon... like as early as next session... i'm very interested in it :3

this time i don't actually have anything to say about the scenes i saw today. there were a few times i was 🔪 at atlus choosing to focus on certain traits for some characters (akihiko with protein and making teddie... very... teddie) but idc to talk about that bc everyone's beat a dead horse abt it. actually wait. i have one thing to say and it's about zen (under the cut)

so when we started spot 4 there's this... scripted battle after you open the door immediately after the staircase- where you get to face the golden hands.

i thought it was interesting to have a forced encounter with them (when it's possible that you might've run into them before) at this stage. game design wise i thought it was nice because it lets the players experiment on their own and come to their own conclusion on how to handle these evasive fucks who are the pain of my existence (i find golden hand movement to be entrancing, actually).

and if you didn't figure out that you could agility bind/panic (via tentarafroo or other means). after the battle, regardless of the outcome (i defeated them), zen just... spells it out for you, tells you directly what strategy you could use.

and i just found that... so very interesting? like yeah, to some people they may look at this and go, "yeah, forced tutorial moment." and i can see that (not that i felt that this instance was a bad thing!).

the point that i'm trying to get at is that i'm particularly interested in how zen knows this. like... to know an innate weakness and countermeasure to them... and when the vr attendants very early on discussed that you shouldn't be able to find living humans in the culture festival, and if you do, they're probably tied to persona/shadow-like entities. i'm like. zen are you pulling this out of your ass because you were a shadow once. i'm shaking him back and forth like a tree in animal crossing!! rah!! tell me your secrets!!!

or of course. the game could just have chosen zen to be a vehicle to give this information to the player and i'm looking way too much into things. i don't think persona should give me another amnesiac character again. i will go crazy over trying to dissect them and see if they challenge the norm of amnesiac persona characters or not. i probably sound like im beating a dead horse but GUYS IM ONTO SOMETHING I THINK.

in any case, i feel the game has had really nice ways of emphasizing the importance of status ailments. way back earlier near the start of the 2nd labryinth, the quest legendary medicine required you to agility bind some lust snakes, and i feel like this kinda alluded to the importance of certain status effects over others? idk. i just think its neat to see how certain quests and monsters can teach you things, y'know? video games...! 🥺💛

i'm reallly looking forward to playing more! while i'd like to finish the group date cafe who knows how sidetracked i'll get... but the floor feels pretty straightforward lol so. we shall see!

[practically-an-x-man]

For the random asks. I know you're a traditional artist and draw mostly animals as far as I know. But do you think you'd ever draw something based off your fics? I'm not sure what but plenty of people design covers for their fanfics. Would you ever attempt small edits? Like maybe using photopea (free browser photoshop) or are you perfectly fine just sticking with traditional? /gen

oh interesting! let me think on this one...

So yes, you're right that I'm a traditional artist, and you're right that I mostly use animals as reference for my realism pieces. I've done a teeny tiny bit of digital art too (namely, I did a cool Venom wallpaper for my old laptop, and sadly I do not still have a picture unless I scroll wayyy down my Facebook or something) but overall I find traditional art more comfortable

I've drawn my fair share of fanart too (hell, my banner is fanart, and in terms of original compositions I've done a few tattoo designs and at least one Good Omens piece), and when I was younger I would draw some of my characters. In my old sketchbook I believe I have drawings of a few old OCs - funny enough, the OCs survived (though they're ones I haven't written about yet), but they've gone through a bit of refinement. I've even done a picture of one of my OC's pets, since he's a species I completely made up and I figured a visual would be useful. I'd like to redraw that one, actually.

I suppose if I needed to, I'd be comfortable with little edits. I've used Photoshop before and I know the basics, but I'd definitely feel more comfortable sticking to traditional art. I don't think I'd necessarily make covers for my fics, but idk, if I ever need inspiration or art references you might see drawings of my OCs' faceclaims or canon characters in the movie or show.

The biggest hurdle for me drawing content from my fics is that I can only draw human beings effectively if they're full realism with a reference.... which means I can't really draw a scene from a fic I made up, especially without faceclaims for most of my characters.

And idk, I feel like whatever I draw isn't going to match up to the imagination of the scene from the writing itself, so I don't want to risk that and taint the image in my mind. If I spend hours drawing a scene, the drawing is then always going to be associated with that scene, and it's never going to have the same realism in my head again. it's hard to explain.

[maidenvault]

During my last rewatch of the prequels I was actually shocked by how much I've misremembered or decontextualized certain moments in my mind because of how they're often talked about in fandom as showing the Jedi as too arrogant, too bureaucratic, generally just burying their heads in the sand while everything goes bad etc. So I'm gonna try to address every individual scene that typically gets brought up to argue that this is an actual theme in Lucas's portrayal of the Order.

The Council doesn't take Qui-Gon's account of meeting a Sith seriously.

Mace and Ki Adi Mundi do both express doubt this guy could be a Sith. (Understandably! Historically they've never known Sith to be able to hide their existence, and for them to have survived totally in secret for a thousand years is a pretty wild thing for Qui-Gon to be so sure of.)

BUT Yoda admits that the dark side is hard to see, and Mace assures Qui-Gon they'll do everything to find out the identity of the attacker. Later he's ordered to go back to Naboo and try to draw out Maul to discover more. Qui-Gon accepts this and doesn't ask for backup. Why should he? He held his own against Maul before, and Maul's probably not gonna show himself again to face a ton of Jedi. They end up missing the chance to learn who trained Maul because of how things go down, but Qui-Gon's death isn't the result of the Council mishandling the situation.

At the funeral, Yoda says the presence of one Sith means there's another out there. They know they've got to be on guard now and will be, but they've got no more leads for now.

2. Qui-Gon's not here to free slaves.

There's this idea that slavery existing on Tatooine shows the Order is apparently too tied up doing shady things for self-interested politicians (footage not found) to help the people who really need it. But Padme's shocked to know the Skywalkers are slaves for a reason. The truth is there isn't a lot of slavery in the galaxy at this time because the Jedi have helped keep it that way for centuries only by working with the Republic. In TCW we see that Zygerrian slavers have a particular hatred of Jedi because they're literally The Anti Slavery People and did so much of the work to crack down on their trade. But Tatooine is controlled by the Hutts and they simply don't have the resources to start a war with them.

(And honestly, it's crazy how people talk like Qui-Gon's a monster for honestly and apologetically telling Anakin no, that's not why he's here. This is a child he's already indebted to and who has a hero-worshipping idea of Jedi, it would be fucked up for him not to be clear about how he can't help him and his mom.)

3. They doubt Dooku could be behind the assassination attempt.

This I understand shows the Jedi to be a little naive. But they knew Dooku as a good man, and at this point he and his followers are still putting on a show of wanting to secede for idealistic reasons (and a few of them, manipulated by Dooku, actually do have good intentions). Only later do the Jedi learn they're illegally building an army before they've even officially left the Republic and clearly have no interest in the peaceful resolution Padme's been advocating for. And they only find this out because they have Obi-Wan investigate the assassin and this very quickly leads him to Dooku.

4. "Arrogance, yes. A trait more and more common among Jedi. Even the older, more experienced ones."

In context, this line from Yoda is clearly not meant to be taken so seriously. Obi-Wan says he fears Anakin is too arrogant, and this is Yoda's light-hearted way of telling him not to be so hard on him. Part of training a Padawan is learning to trust them so they can grow, and Obi-Wan perhaps needs the reminder that he isn't done learning himself.

Of course Yoda saying this could be partly motivated by them having been caught off guard before by the existence of Darth Maul and the dark side clouding their awareness, as we're told repeatedly throughout the PT they know is a problem. But it's kind of contradictory to take this as confirmation that this is a serious fatal flaw of theirs. If someone acknowledges their own arrogance then they're aware of their ability to be wrong, which means they can't actually be that arrogant. If truly meant in a general sense and not just as a gentle reproof of Obi-Wan, it's a pretty self-deprecating comment coming from Yoda.

5. "If an item does not appear in our records, it does not exist."

Chief Librarian Jocasta Nu gives this haughty response to Obi-Wan looking for Kamino, a system that's not in the Jedi Archives. So being so overly confident in the infallible knowledge of the Jedi, he takes her word for it and totally drops this lead.

Except no, he goes to someone older and wiser to figure out what this actually means. And he and Yoda are forced to conclude that the unthinkable - a trusted person among them somehow had reason to erase information from the archive - must nonetheless be what happened. This is honestly an exception that proves the rule: Kamino, and we can assume only Kamino, is missing from the archive only because it was removed, which is so suspicious it just shows he must be on the right track to discovering something. Jocasta is kind of snooty about it but theirs obviously is supposed to be one of the most accurate and complete databases in the galaxy.

6. Obi-Wan doesn't believe what Dooku tells him about the Senate.

For one thing, in this conversation Dooku's lying about basically everything but this. And I can't ever stress enough that Palpatine is a threat unlike anything the Jedi have ever dealt with before, who's already taken control of so much before they even know they're fighting anything, so the idea that a Sith is controlling the Senate would be really hard for anyone to believe.

Still, we know Obi-Wan reports this to the Council anyway. But it's a vague statement and they still don't have any information to act on. Palpatine soon has them very busy putting out fires in the war, and naturally fighting the Separatists who are led by Sith seems the best way for them to get to the bottom of what exactly is going on with the dark side. And they do finally turn their attention to how power-hungry Palpatine is getting once the war is nearly over and they've got the bandwidth for it, and think about what they might have to do if he's the threat to their democracy they fear, but of course he's too many steps ahead of them all the time.

---

So basically, what we see the Jedi being so guilty of in these examples are thought crimes. When confronted with the crazy explanation that happens to be true, their instinctive reaction is "No, I don't think that's possible." And then they do their due diligence to uncover as much of the truth as they can anyway. And Yoda, the Grand Master of them all, is often the first to admit that their first assumptions could be wrong. But Palpatine wouldn't be a good villain if his moves were predictable and he couldn't get an advantage over the good guys - that's just how storytelling works sometimes and it's not that deep.

It honestly felt stupid typing so much of this out because it's 90% just describing what actually happens in these scenes. But I guess it's a lot to ask that people actually carefully watch the films they discuss. 😒