#my art class involves me writing more than drawing

[koka-mi]

IT'S THE WEEKEND LET'S GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

[archie-sunshine]

ARCHIE-SUNSHINE'S FAQ!

Hi!! I'm putting this together as a quick helpful post to clear stuff up regarding my inbox, because I've been getting a lot of similar questions and I want to be able to tap a sign to let people know what they gotta know without putting in so much effort!

So, here's my FAQ for my inbox!

1: What drawing software/hardware do you use? Are you a traditional only artist?

I use clip studio paint and an ancient wacom tablet that's been chugging since 2018 :] And I also do traditional art, specifically as a way to pass the time in my college classes! my preferred drawing pens are a the 0.5 POLOP Fruits Clip, the Tombow Fudenosuke Brush pen, and the Pigma MICRON Plastic Nib, and i colour with ZEBRA mildliner highlighters!

2: Is your Inbox getting my message?

Yes it is! I just usually have around 100 other asks in my inbox that im also working through!! If your ask was super nonspecific as well, I might have deleted it because I didn't know where to start!

3. Are you taking commissions?

I open commissions typically once a month to once every other month!

4. What are your thoughts on [Insert TFP character here]/why don't you like tfp

I don't have any because I only watched half a season of that show and got bored to death! and i dislike the show because the pacing is weird, the writing is sub par, the characters bore me to death save for a few notable exceptions, the music is boring, the designs are weird and complicated, and every attempt at comedy falls flat. aka, its just not my cup of tea!

Additionally, over the year I've been posting on this blog, I have been asked at least once every single month for an answer to this question, and it hasn't changed and people still don't read my faq. and suspiciously after three of those times, my blog has been mysteriously pixelated.

... I'm not saying anyone reported me. But im not not saying that.

So thats another reason i don't like tfp.

5. Will you draw/What are your thoughts on MPREG/MECHPREG

I don't like pregnancy when it involves a fetus, though I do enjoy dirty talk and scenarios surrounding breeding! I do enjoy oviposition/egg laying, but I prefer it as part of a monster fucking scenario.

6. What would you think [insert character/pairing here]'s kids would look like/what would [insert character] look like as a kid/do you think [insert couple here] would be great parents?

I don't like talking about kids or children!! and I don't like talking about couples as parents in general!

7. Can i make fanworks of your ocs/AU/fics/art?

YES!! YESYESYES ABSOLUTELY PRETTY PLEASE YES ALWAYS AND FOREVER! All i ask is that you tag me or send me the link to wherever youve posted this, feel free to gift me stuff on ao3 if you like as well, genuinely nothing brings me more joy than inspiring other people so PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE feel free!!

8. What are your limits for commissions?

I drew up a helpful little chart for it! anything not on here, you can dm or ask me about!

[i-study-anons]

Hello, Tumblr users and Anons! I am Dr. Oren Sulien, and welcome to my SCP RP blog that is definitely just an RP blog because the SCP Foundation totally isn't real!

I'm here for the very first research project that I personally have been put in charge of: Studying SCP-8947, commonly referred to as "Anon(s)". So please, Anons, by all means, send in as many asks as you would like! Every single ask sent to this blog WILL be answered.

Oh, and I suppose it is also important that I introduce my current assistant, D-9983, who will be answering any asks that may be harmful to the answerer.

Blog Rules and such under the cut!

((OOC for this blog will be in double parentheses like this. Also, hi! You can call me Rii, and my pronouns are they/he. I'll introduce myself more properly at the end of the post. Oh, also everything below the cut on this post is OOC despite the lack of parentheses.))

RULES:

- No outright NSFW. Suggestive is fine, but nothing explicit.

- I don't do chain asks. They're exhausting and come off as pretty meaningless to me.

- Asks that sign off with an @ will not count as anon asks. This is because asks cannot be sent from sideblogs. Any asks sent as Oren or the assistant will be on anon and signed of with "- @i-study-anons"

- Don't be homophobic or racist or transphobic or any of that nasty stuff. I don't want that here

- I WILL RP with non-gimmicks

- I am RPing as a character running a Tumblr blog, hence the lack of actions or anything else that isn't dialogue. However, there are exceptions*

- If you have a question for ME and NOT Oren or the current Assistant, PLEASE SPECIFY that the ask is meant to be answered OOC!

- Be nice and polite when interacting with me OOC

*If another blog that has been deemed anomalous does an action that affects Oren or the current D-Class (ex. punching one of them in the face), the affected character will also end up having actions for the rest of that interaction as a result.

TAGS:

#Posted by Researcher - posts made by Oren

#Posted by Assistant - posts made by the current assistant

#Posted by OOC - OOC posts

#OOC reblog - mostly stuff to ask from RP/Writing meme blogs, self explanatory

#in character reblog - posts that Oren would decide to reblog (and did decide to reblog)

#someone to study! - anons, both from asks here and looking at anon asks on other blogs

#ordinary ask - non-anonymous asks

#other anomalies - post pertaining to anomalies other than the Anons

DIRECTORY TO OTHER IMPORTANT POSTS:

-List of anomalies (and staff!) involved with this blog

-Character Info

-Current File on Anons/SCP-8947 (coming soon)

OOC INFO:

You can call me Riiviir or Rii. I'm transmasc, almost 18, and my pronouns are they/he. I'm also autistic and have ADHD, both of which might be accidentally self projected onto any character I write. (I am not comfortable sharing my actual birthday, so if you want to wish me happy birthday, do it on September 15th, since that's the middle of my birth month.)

My current hyperfixations are Animal Crossing and Cult Of The Lamb, and my special interest is sound and audio. This is my first serious RP blog here, but I have been RPing outside of Tumblr for about 7 or 8 years. (I don't know when exactly when I started, but it's something around that. This has been a hobby of mine for awhile.)

Aside from RP, I also like drawing, songwriting, and probably any other sort of creative art. I'm also working on learning RPG Maker so I can make my own game!

[lordansketil]

I've been slowly reading Character & Caricature and leaving perhaps somewhat embarrassingly gushy comments - but, look, it's transcendently good. I'm curious, do you have a particular person/piece of art/etc. in mind as a visual reference for Gwen? I'd love to see your idea of how she looks. Ditto, Prinny's voice is described (beautifully) in the text - do you hear him as Peter Egan in Prince Regent, or a bit different? What about Gwen, what does she sound like?

Oh, you are too lovely! I tend to just imagine the character in my mind rather than cast someone, but Gwendolyn, with her dark brown eyes and black hair, is inspired by a combination of Regency fashion plates and portraiture, but with much thicker naturally curly hair rather than the perfectly set hair that was in vogue. I recently saw this painting of the Duke of York's famous mistress, Mary-Anne Clarke, by Adam Buck is which comes close (although Gwendolyn is thinner due to all she's been through). The amazing @suburbanbeatnik did a drawing of Gwen and Prinny that I love.

I actually gave Gwen my late mother's voice, which I realise doesn't help anyone as a description. A little hoarse (sometimes shrill) and she's very aware of this and consciously softens her voice. In terns of how I write her speech patterns, she speaks very correctly. As a poor relation from the lowest rung of the gentry, with lower class relatives, she clings to what she understands as "proper" speech to give the impression of being better educated than she really is.

Prinny's speech patterns, on the other hand, are a whole different ball game. I don't hear him as Peter Egan... except when I've just re-watched the show!

George IV is recorded as being a bass-baritone and, while his letters are very elaborate and over the top, reports of his speech tend to be fun ("give me your little paw"), dry ("I always find the day is long enough for doing nothing"), distinctive ("Kingston, Kingston, you black-whiskered good-natured fellow!"), and ridiculous ("a sort of mishmash, Solomongrundy, ollapodrida kind of business") and there's lots of reports of him being self-deprecating ("my tyrannical self at breakfast"), grovelling to his lovers ("thank you, my dear, thank you... you cannot please me so much as by doing everything you please to show that you are mistress here") and exaggeratedly boastful ("at last, godamme, ma'am, he rode slap over my favourite bitch, Ruby. I could stand it no longer, but jumping off my horse said: 'Get down you rascal! Pull off your coat!' By God, he did, and we fought for an hour and twenty minutes. He was carried off senseless, whilst I had hardly a scratch!").

Apparently he pronounced "oblige" as "obleege", which suggests the very fruity accent that's associated with British royalty, and used ain't ("she's my daughter, ain't she?"). Beau Brummell said he could have been a great comic actor and he was considered to be an extremely talented mimic.

So with this as a base, I've given him a consciously exaggerated way of speaking. A sort of theatrical patter that involves mixing a Scarlet Pimpernel style drawl with period slang and swearing that comes across as charming, but not at all proper... right up until he gets offended by something and then his speech becomes ultra formal and intimidating. At some point I decided as a hard rule that he says "'tis" and Gwen says "it's" and there's probably something there about her careful speech and modern contractions and his more casual speech and antiquated contractions.

Thanks for the ask! <3

[rtfics]

So I'll say it yet again.

AI IS THEFT. IT TAKES THE WRITING AND ART DONE BY AMATEURS AND PROS LIKE ME AND VOMITS IT INTO SHIT USED BY PEOPLE WITHOUT TALENT, DEDICATION, OR ETHICS. THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR USING AI.

USE YOUR OWN WORDS OR YOUR OWN ART OR USE NONE AT ALL, UNLESS YOU'RE PAYING SOMEONE ELSE TO WRITE OR DRAW FOR YOU.

I DID NOT SPEND LITERALLY DECADES WORKING HARD AT IMPROVING MY WRITING AND DRAWING TO HAVE SOME TALENTLESS ASSHOLE USE A SOULLESS FUCKING MACHINE THAT REQUIRES THE ENERGY OF A SMALL EUROPEAN COUNTRY TO WRITE A FANFIC OR MAKE FANART.

IF YOU USE AI YOU'RE A THIEF. PERIOD. FULL STOP.

From The New Yorker:

Is A.I. Art Stealing from Artists?

By Kyle Chayka February 10, 2023

According to the lawyer behind a new class-action suit, every image that a generative tool produces “is an infringing, derivative work.”

Last year, a Tennessee-based artist named Kelly McKernan noticed that their name was being used with increasing frequency in A.I.-driven image generation. McKernan makes paintings that often feature nymphlike female figures in an acid-colored style that blends Art Nouveau and science fiction. A list published in August, by a Web site called Metaverse Post, suggested “Kelly McKernan” as a term to feed an A.I. generator in order to create “Lord of the Rings”-style art. Hundreds of other artists were similarly listed according to what their works evoked: anime, modernism, “Star Wars.” On the Discord chat that runs an A.I. generator called Midjourney, McKernan discovered that users had included their name more than twelve thousand times in public prompts. The resulting images—of owls, cyborgs, gothic funeral scenes, and alien motorcycles—were distinctly reminiscent of McKernan’s works. “It just got weird at that point. It was starting to look pretty accurate, a little infringe-y,” they told me. “I can see my hand in this stuff, see how my work was analyzed and mixed up with some others’ to produce these images.”

Last month, McKernan joined a class-action lawsuit with two other artists, Sarah Andersen and Karla Ortiz, filed by the attorneys Matthew Butterick and Joseph Saveri, against Midjourney and two other A.I. imagery generators, Stable Diffusion and DreamUp. (Other tools, such as DALL-E, run on the same principles.) All three models make use of LAION-5B, a nonprofit, publicly available database that indexes more than five billion images from across the Internet, including the work of many artists. The alleged wrongdoing comes down to what Butterick summarized to me as “the three ‘C’s”: The artists had not consented to have their copyrighted artwork included in the LAION database; they were not compensated for their involvement, even as companies including Midjourney charged for the use of their tools; and their influence was not credited when A.I. images were produced using their work. When producing an image, these generators “present something to you as if it’s copyright free,” Butterick told me, adding that every image a generative tool produces “is an infringing, derivative work.”

Copyright claims based on questions of style are often tricky. In visual art, courts have sometimes ruled in favor of the copier rather than the copied. When the artist Richard Prince incorporated photographs by Patrick Cariou into his work, for instance, a 2013 court case found that some of the borrowing was legal under transformative use—Prince had changed the source material enough to escape any claim of infringement. In music, recent judgments tend to be more conservative. Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams lost a 2013 case against the Marvin Gaye estate, which alleged that their song “Blurred Lines” was too close to Gaye’s “Got to Give It Up.” The intellectual-property lawyer Kate Downing wrote, in a recent essay on Butterick and Saveri’s suit published on her personal Web site, that the A.I. image generators might be closer to the former than the latter: ​​“It may well be argued that the ‘use’ of any one image from the training data is . . . not substantial enough to call the output a derivative work of any one image.” “Mathematically speaking, the work comes from everything,” Downing told me.

But Butterick and Saveri allege that what A.I. generators do falls short of transformative use. There is no transcending of the source material, just a mechanized “blending together,” Butterick said. “We’re not litigating image by image, we’re litigating the whole technique behind the system.” The litigators are not alone. Last week, Getty Images filed a lawsuit against Stable Diffusion alleging that the generator’s use of Getty stock photography amounts to “brazen infringement . . . on a staggering scale.” Whatever their legal strengths, such claims possess a certain moral weight. A.I. generators could not operate without the labor of humans like McKernan who unwittingly provide source material. As the technology critic and philosopher Jaron Lanier wrote in his 2013 book “Who Owns the Future?,” “Digital information is really just people in disguise.” (A spokesperson from Stability AI, the studio that developed Stable Diffusion, said in a statement that “the allegations in this suit represent a misunderstanding of how generative A.I. technology works and the law surrounding copyright,” but provided no further detail. Neither DeviantArt, which owns DreamUp, nor Midjourney responded to requests for comment.)

Visual artists began reaching out to Butterick after he and Saveri filed a lawsuit, last November, in the related but distinct realm of software copyrights. The target of the earlier suit was Copilot, an A.I.-driven coding assistant developed by GitHub and OpenAI. Copilot is trained on code that is publicly available online. Coders who post their projects on open-source platforms retain the copyright to their work—under certain licenses, anyone who uses the code must credit its creator. Copilot did not. Like the artists whose work feeds Midjourney, human coders suddenly found their specialized labor reproduced infinitely, quickly, and cheaply without attribution. Butterick and Saveri’s legal complaint (against OpenAI, GitHub, and Microsoft, which acquired GitHub in 2018) argued that Copilot’s actions amount to “software piracy on an unprecedented scale.” In January, the defendants filed to have the case dismissed. “We will file oppositions to these motions,” Butterick said.

Butterick told me that, given the proliferation of A.I., “everybody who creates for a living should be in code red.” Writers had their turn to be spooked in January, when BuzzFeed announced that it would use OpenAI’s new large language model, ChatGPT, to augment its creation of quizzes. McKernan, who draws income from print sales as well as commissioned illustrations, told me they suspect that the amount of work available in their field is already declining as A.I. tools become more accessible online. “There are publishers that are using A.I. instead of hiring cover artists,” McKernan told me. “I can pay my rent with just one cover, and we’re seeing that already disappearing.” They added, “We’re just the canaries in the coal mine.”

In some sense, you could say that artists are losing their monopoly on being artists. With generative A.I., any user can become an author of sorts. In late January, Mayk.it, a Los Angeles-based music-making app, released Drayk.it, a Web site that allowed users to create A.I.-generated Drake songs based on a given prompt. The results could not be mistaken for actual Drake tracks; they tend toward the lo-fi and the absurd. But they possess a certain fundamental Drakeness: lounge beats, depressive lyrics, monotone delivery. The company’s head of product, Neer Sharma, told me that users had created hundreds of thousands of A.I. Drake songs, a new track every three seconds. The site drew upon software resources such as Tacotron and Uberduck, which generate voices and offer specific voice models, including one trained on the œuvre of Drake. The Web site includes a disclaimer that the songs it generates are parodies, which are protected under fair use, and Sharma told me that the company didn’t receive any complaints from Drake’s camp. But the site has already shut down. The project was designed “just to test out the tech,” Sharma said. “We didn’t expect it to get this big.” The team is now preparing more “A.I. music drops.”

As Sharma sees it, the increasing accessibility of A.I. means that “everything just becomes remixable.” The artists who might thrive in this scenario are those who have the most replicable or exportable “vibe and aesthetic,” he said, among them Drake, the rare pop star who has embraced his status as an open-ended meme. Fans could already dress like Drake or act like him; now they can make his music, too, and the line between fan and creator will blur further as the generative technology improves. Sharma said that the company has heard from executives at music labels who are interested in exploring the creation of A.I. voice models for their artists. He predicted that musicians who resist being “democratized”—giving creative agency to their fans—will be left behind. “The people who could win before just by being there will not necessarily win tomorrow,” Sharma said.

A startup called Authentic Artists is seeking to bypass human artists altogether by creating musician characters based on A.I.-generated styles of music. Its label, WarpSound, features “virtual artists” like GLiTCH, a computer-rendered figure derived from a Bored Ape Yacht Club N.F.T., who plays genres such as “chillwave” and “glitch hop” in endlessly streaming feeds of auto-generated music. Authentic Artists’ founder Chris McGarry told me that the character is meant to give a face to the A.I. machine. “We wanted to answer the question, what is the source of the music? A semiconductor or cloud-based server or ones and zeros didn’t seem to be a terribly interesting answer to that question,” he said.

Listening to Authentic Artists’ music, however, is a bit like trying to enjoy the wavering buzz of highway traffic. If you’re not paying attention, it can serve as a passable background soundtrack, but the moment you tune in closely any sense of coherent sound gives way to an uncanny randomness. It called to my mind a much-memed comment that the Studio Ghibli director Hayao Miyazaki made after being shown a particularly grotesque A.I.-generated animation in 2016: “I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself.” I wouldn’t go quite so far, but Authentic Artists’ project does strike me as an insult to human-made music. They can manufacture sound, but they can’t manufacture the feeling or creative intention that even the most amateur musicians put into a recording.

Kelly McKernan sometimes snoops on conversations about generative A.I. on Reddit or Discord chats, in part to see how users perceive the role of original artists in the A.I. image-making process. McKernan said that they often see people criticizing artists who are against A.I.: “They have this belief that career artists, people who have dedicated their whole lives to their work, are gatekeeping, keeping them from making the art they want to make. They think we’re élitist and keeping our secrets.” Defenders of A.I. art-making could point out that artists have always taken from and riffed on each other’s work, from the ancient Romans making copies of even older Greek sculptures to Roy Lichtenstein reproducing comic-book frames as highbrow Pop art. Maybe A.I. imagery is just a new wave of appropriation art? (It lacks any conceptual intention, however.) Downing, the intellectual-property lawyer, argued in her piece that the prompts that users input into A.I. generators may amount to independent acts of invention. “There is no Stable Diffusion without users pouring their own creative energy into its prompts,” she wrote.

McKernan told me about Beep Boop Art, a Facebook group with forty-seven thousand followers that posts A.I.-generated art and runs an online storefront selling prints and merchandise. The images tend toward the fantastical: a wizard hat or a lunar landscape in a Lisa Frank-ish style, or a tree house growing above the ocean. It may not be a direct riff on McKernan’s work, but it does reflect a banal over-all sameness across generated art. McKernan described typical A.I. style as having “this general sugary, candy look,” adding, “It looks pretty, but it tastes terrible. It has no depth, but it serves the purpose that they want.” The new generation of tools offers the instant gratification of a single image, shorn of the messy association with a single, living artist. One question is who gets to profit from such works. Another is more existential. “It kind of boils down to: what is art?” McKernan said. “Is art the process, is art the human component, is art the conversation? All of that is out of the picture once you’re just generating it.” ♦

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

HELP your time travel shenanigans fic idea about toji being very much alive but still putting the fate of his two little ass kids in the hands of a bunch of 16-17 year olds even if he’s still breathing. if i was megumi then my abandonment issues would’ve gone crazy if that happened to me 😭. mamaguro is looking down from the pearly white gates IN ANGER at toji’s audacity i just know it.

but now i’m curious on other ideas (that you have) for fics about jjk that you may or may not get to after sea glass gardens.

see the sad thing is that letting a bunch of 16-17 year old bitchy disaster gays discover the magic of teen parenthood is actually a step up because he had already sold Megumi to the Zenin and feral wolverines would be a better alternative to them. This was the best parenting decision toji has ever made.

(Time travel!Megumi: look we don’t have any other options. Anything is better than the Zenin.

Gojo, in the distance: they’re what three? That’s old enough for a red bull

Geto: I will actually kill you over this satoru

Time travel!megumi: *deep breath*)

A loose catalogue of my jjk fics, which may or may not exist one day:

Sea glass gardens verse:

I am forever compelled by the siren call of expanding my fics into universes because one story is never enough for me. I’ve got threeish stories in this universe, with no promises of how many, if any, I’ll write.

1. The Teen Parenting Chronicles: Gojo, Nanami, and Shoko’s expert guide to raising children when you are, in fact, children. Featuring what the fuck happened with the Zenin the first time around.

2. Megumi’s pov of what just happened leading up to sea glass gardens: someone asked me if I’d ever write this and it has the highest chance of existing because I have. Sort of. Started writing it. I have impulse control issues.

3. Okkotsu Yuuta and the world’s longest distance panic attack: crack fic of Yuuta on his study abroad trip becoming increasingly more frantic at the other second year’s updates as to how His Boy’s first year as a jujutsu sorcerer is going. What do you mean sukunas there. What do you mean he doesn’t have a shirt. Well put one on him!

Time travel AU:

1. The Time Traveler’s Guide to Fucking Shit Up And Living Well: following another attempt on their lives by the higher ups, the first year gang is forced into a desperate, high stakes gamble with a time-centric curse that puts their very existences at stake. If they want to survive, they have to complete one task of their choosing in the past before the clock runs out. Their mission?

To punch fushiguros shitty bio dad in the face, something which will surely have no long term consequences on the timeline.

See this one has the most chance of actually existing one day because it is by far my FAVORITE jjk fic I have. It even beats out sea glass gardens. I desperately want to write it.

2. The 2006 Gang and the Art of a Good Union: following a confusing incident with the star plasma vessel and three unknown sorcerers, the 2006 Tokyo jujutsu high first and second year class inexplicably goes off the rails and retires from jujutsu sorcery, claiming that they’ve discovered the magic of teen parenthood and can in no way risk themselves in such a dangerous profession now that they have kids to think about. At least, not with the way things are run now.

No one knows where they got the children from.

3. Toji Fushiguro and the Dead Beat Dad Chronicles: in which toji fushiguro succeeds at being a dead beat baby daddy to two teenaged gay boys and their crew of bitchy lgbtq compadres, who in no way want him to be involved in their children’s lives.

Standalones:

1. “Fushiguro is unleashed in junpei’s school like an invasive superpredator” AU: I’ve talked about this one in way more detail in another post for an ask game, but the idea is that itadori discovers junpeis abuse at school and says Not On His Fucking Watch and escalates the matter to gojo, who decides the funniest possible solution while they try to draw out mahito is to unleash his all star delinquent son into junpeis high school to bully the bullies.

Fushiguro resents this as a problem solving strategy.

2. The Zenin raise Megumi AU: also discussed in more detail in an ask game. In which people took Tsumiki’s little brother from her, but she’s trying to get him back, she promises.

Or, in which the Zenin take megumi, leave tsumiki, and they both spend every day after fighting to get back to the other.

3. Sort of a no curse AU: Itafushi romance story, in which local himbo Itadori Yuuji falls for delinquent Fushiguro Megumi when his grandpa is placed in the room next to Fushiguros comatose sister. Starts as a no curse AU… except there’s totally curses, Tsumikis mom just moved them to Sendai without telling anyone so the Zenin never found Megumi, and he’s just never told anyone about the curses he sees because he’s worried he’s schizophrenic. He thought the shikigami thing was a metaphor for self actualization or something.

4. Fushiguro Megumi and the World’s Most Inconvenient Custody Battle: pre JJK0, Geto decides to be a shithead magic terrorist at a local school that represents all the worst of monkey society: it’s known for a rampant bullying issue, which is a breeding ground for cursed spirits, and it contributes to the risk to jujutsu sorcerers by feeding a local legend of a haunted bridge that could explode into a serious curse any day.

What he didn’t count on? Finding the new Ten Shadows in the student body, who’s fully willing to kamikaze them both if it means saving his sister’s life.

And who doesn’t seem to be aware that he more than has the potential to take suguru in a fight.

In which Fushiguro just wanted to shut up, go to school, and go home, and instead finds himself in a binding vow to give cult life a whirl to save the lives of classmates he doesn’t even like all that much.

It involves oddly more parenting than he expected.

5. Fake Fiancés AU: prodigy and noble prize winning physicist Gojo Satoru, following a very ill advised fuck buddies arrangement with fushiguro toji, has settled down into domestic bliss with the two kids he took from the relationship despite them not, in any way, being related to him. The problem? His ex is back in town. The hot one. The one who broke up with him and started a cult. The one who he wants to convince he got over when he absolutely did not do that.

The solution? Tell everyone he’s happily engaged to Nanami Kento, who cannot express enough how much he does not want him to do that.

… until, all of a sudden, he needs a show of domestic bliss himself. His adoptive son’s older brother, sukuna, has crawled out of the woodwork and decided to make a play for custody himself. And Nanami does not know what Sukuna truly wants, but he knows it does not have Yuuji’s best interests at heart.

I share custody of this story with my best friend, who cocreated it with me over deranged text message. I may convince her to joint write it with me if I ever get her to publish her fanfic.

6. Todo Aoi and Schrodinger’s Boyfriend: Todo’s beloved brother, who is most assuredly a man, suffers some kind of terrible brain damage that leads him to confess he loves an assless boy. Todo cannot abide by this, until it’s pointed out to him that if Fushiguro’s type is his brother, that would make him the most interesting man alive. If it is not, he continues to be a boring and uninteresting boy.

Todo sets off on a mission with two goals: determine if fushiguro megumi is interesting, and get him to do some squats. because there’s simply no ass there.

Fushiguro wonders why his life is suddenly harder.

7. Choso and the Art of Being a Big Brother: choso discovers the truth of kenjaku early and does the only logical thing in response: he kills his father in his sleep, cuts out his brain, and delivers it in a jar to his new brother Itadori Yuuji as the first step in wooing him into domestic sibling love.

Megumi doesn’t know where these people come from. Or why all of them think itadori is their brother.

8. SatoSugu realizes their little boy is all grown up when he gets his first crush on a boy when he meets yuuji.

They do not fucking take it with grace.

Also co-written with my best friend via text message.

9. The instagram chronicles: crack fic in which the jujutsu sorcery personnel crisis gets worse, because nobara Kugisaki keeps trying to hard launch her instagram influencer career, and keeps accidentally making every jujutsu sorcerer instagram famous except for her

10. So I don’t actually ship Yuuta and Megumi, but I do really like the idea of low stakes relationships? Like, especially for teen romances. You tried it, decided you were better off as friends, and just went back to being friends. I just like the idea of fumbling around in relationships and getting a sense of boundaries and what you’re interested in without it being a big, world-shaking romance. It seems like a more realistic portrayal of high school relationships than every one of them being this world-defining mature love.

Pre season 1 but post JJK 0, Yuuta and Megumi dated for maybe a month and half, held hands maybe twice, and decided that they were better off as friends and parted on good terms. The issue?

No one realized they were dating. And when it is realized, everyone thinks their relationship was torpedoed because the second years kept inviting themselves onto their dates.

Cue the jjk high school students trying to amend old mistakes and get Yuuta and Megumi back together, who do not, in fact, want to be back together. Headlining Inumaki Toge, who is half in love with Yuuta and does not know why he’s helping get him together with someone else, and Itadori Yuuji, who is half in love with Megumi and also does not know why he’s helping get him together with someone else.

[httpstes]

Hii hru??<3 Can u write a little about Taurus Venus in 10H?

Hey :)) i’m doing good i just finished majority of my exams and i am so over it 😭 anyways i’ll get on with the req so y’all don’t have to hear me complain ab how much i hate school🧏🏻‍♀️

⍣♀ in 10H:

Venus in 10H individuals garner a lot of attention from everyone around them. They’re viewed as being full of love. Regardless of whether they understand the beauty they hold or not, others can easily see this. They could be seen as that one random pretty person in class or at work that everyone looks forward to seeing.

Venus in 10H individuals have really good reputations unless Venus is negatively afflicted to malefic planets. These people have something special about them that just draws others in. It’s always something unique and random as well. On a individual level, Venus 10H natives may have certain hobbies, interests, beliefs that others just find endearing. This and, well, they’re hot 🗣. Need i say more ?

Venus 10H individuals may be interested in or pursue careers to do with the arts and or cosmetology. Anything that involved you expressing you’re pure creative talent is best suited. A career where you can design, invoke desire, draw, paint, beautify etc. My aunty has this placement and she does interior design and also is like really good at cutting and styling hair ??!? Y’all have a natural inclination towards beautiful things as well as wanting to create beauty wherever you go, even if it’s on a subconscious level.

This is unless Venus apsects Pluto harshly from the 10H, this creates a dynamic of wanting to create a peaceful atmosphere but also craving destruction and wanting to see how chaotic things can get 😭

⍣Taurus Venus:

Taurus Venusians. ah i love you guys sfm. literal princes/princesses. but not one that is easily woo'd over. they have a lot of self respect and know when someone is overstepping their boundaries.

Taurus Venusians radiate such calming energy and this is why they are considered to be many people's safe space :) The best at comforting and making someone feel welcomed. They’re love language is probably gift giving/receiving and or physical touch and quality time.

One of my closest friends has this placement and she is constantly spoiled by people 😭 Do y’all attract people who like giving gifts all the time bc if so, hook me up i want some free gifts 🤭 Ofc Taurus Venusians themselves also give pretty good gifts but it’s a all or nothing type of situation. They either don’t get anything or go all out and give you the most thoughtful gift (possibly an expensive one but it’s more so thoughtful and based on things they know you want/need)

⍣Summary:

ok now putting both placements into perspective, yea ur pretty and gorgeous and i will continue to say it. Like cmon taurus, the sign of sensuality and luxury (taurus is obv much more than that but yk) and Venus in 10H, you appear aesthetically pleasing to everyone who comes by you, like you’re charisma and beauty is just so mesmerising.

Individuals with these placements definitely love artistic things and or creating art/beauty themselves. Yall be decorating your room, drawing/writing, and putting a lot of time into your makeup and skincare routine and ily for that. This is the ultimate self-love placement and they know when people are over-stepping their boundaries.

And so, both these placements equate to a individual who is not only drop dead gorgeous and literally divine, but one who won’t take shit from anyone and knows how to stand their ground. If you’re currently struggling with setting boundaries as a Taurus/Venusian, do understand that you will get there and you will prove others wrong that you are not a push over or one to be easily fooled. Keep your head high and stay stubborn I love you bitches 💗

[hannahyesss]

Last year was a remarkable one for me. I started a new career that I love and find challenging and rewarding. I fell in love with exercise and gave up feeling guilty about eating, and now I’m getting into the best shape of my life. I turned thirty. I jumped back into writing fanfiction and drawing fan art. I made new friends (and gave up on some friendships). And I’m poor as hell because I spent a month in Europe during the summer, and my school district hates teachers! But honestly, I’m so happy to be here. We’re already a week into the new year, and I can really sense that this is going to be a tough one, yet I feel ready to take it on.

Instead of a New Year’s Resolution, each year, I pick a word or theme. Every time I have a choice, I ask myself: which action would align with my overall values for the year? My theme last year was “Health.” Mental, physical, emotional, etc. I’d ask myself “Is this healthy for me?” Should I take a solo trip to Portugal? Should I eat pastries for breakfast? Should I go for a run? (The answer to all of these was yes.)

Here is how I embodied “Health” in 2023.

I had ADHD for nearly thirty years and didn’t know it. In that time, I graduated from high school and college and earned my graduate degree. When I reflect on how I achieved these things without the slightest idea I had a combination type ADHD, there are two things that stand out to me.

First, for most of my life, my anxiety has been debilitating and has kept me on track in a very rigid, uncomfortable way. Fearing that I would miss a deadline, my brain used to cycle through checks almost compulsively—which assignment is due? Did I pay my doctor’s bill? Do I have enough money in the bank? I was always at least twenty minutes early to everything because I was terrified of being late. I did my homework in class during work time because I didn’t want to bring it home and forget. (I was also very lucky that I took naturally to traditional education—I had good teachers in high school, but the curriculum was also very easy for me.)

Anxiety is an excellent mask for ADHD—but the cost is constant exhaustion.

Second, I have always gravitated towards jobs that keep me on my feet and running around solving problems. I managed a retail boutique for about five years which suited my ADHD very, very well. I was never involved with a task for more than fifteen minutes at a time. If I’m creating a book order and a customer walks in, I’ve got to stop my current task for a short amount of time and come back to it. I could always switch my brain very easily from one task to the next. Very stimulating! I’m a teacher now, and it’s basically the same thing.

By 2019, however, my anxiety had become so unmanageable that I couldn’t look at my bank account, I couldn’t keep my apartment clean, and I couldn’t even begin to think about doing laundry. I began working with my therapist specifically on getting my anxiety under control. It was really hard work! It involved identifying triggers and sitting with exceptionally uncomfortable feelings without judgment of myself. The story of getting a firm handle on anxiety is fairly long, so I’ll skip over several years of work to say that my anxiety is manageable now.

It took years, but my constant state of high energy anxiety has calmed significantly. While this is good, I had no idea what it was masking. ADHD symptoms began to take over my life. I cried all the time because I kept losing my phone or I set my keys down somewhere stupid or I was starting to be late to everything. Laundry was even more of a herculean task and keeping my apartment clean was a constant battle. Tackling anxiety with my therapist helped me see that untidiness is not a moral issue, but damn! I was still frustrated that I tripped over stuff or that my clothes were never clean! My therapist started squinting at me as these problems cropped up, and eventually, they were like, “These are fairly classic ADHD symptoms.”

I really, really resisted this diagnosis. I had been fine fine fine for my whole life. I have a Master’s degree! I’m a teacher! If it’s hard for me to do laundry, it’s just because I don’t like doing laundry. If it’s hard for me to brush my teeth twice a day, it just means I’m a person with poor hygiene. And the thing is, I was completely capable of doing these things. I did them all the time! It’s just that I felt so tired, and it was just a matter of forcing myself to get it done. After all, does anyone really like doing chores?

“But I don’t think you understand how much harder you’re working to do them,” my therapist argued.

“It’s hard for everyone,” I remember saying.

“Right, but for the ADHD brain, you have to use a lot more energy to get started and to get finished the things you don’t want to do.”

All right, fine. That might be true.

So I started to accept that I miiiiiight have ADHD. My mom was shocked when I told her and insisted she didn’t remember me bouncing around or having trouble keeping up with assignments in school. (Except that wasn’t…actually true. I had a gazillion late assignments in elementary school but then I switched from private school to public in sixth grade, and school became much easier. I could keep up because I was usually finished before other kids.)

But diagnosis seemed impossible. I didn’t want to go through the whole debacle of setting up a doctor’s appointment, calling insurance, finding someone to assess me, yada yada yada. (Side note: the cruelest thing to do to a person with undiagnosed ADHD is to make them jump through a lot of administrative hoops to get to their diagnosis. Which is exactly what you have to do.)

At the same time, my sister was going through her own journey of getting an ADHD diagnosis. However, when she began treatment for ADHD, I wasn’t particularly surprised because her behaviors looked much more like classic symptoms to me. She went on meds as soon as she could and told me that it just felt like she wasn’t so tired anymore. That she could just… do things. And like, yeah, speed can do that for a person. But honestly, I was thinking I could use some controlled substances to boost my brain energy if they’d give them to me.

By the time I was able to get in with a psychologist, I was already most of the way through my first year as a teacher. I couldn’t sit through curriculum planning meetings without getting lost in the conversation, I couldn’t keep my mind focused during my own lesson planning, and I couldn’t fucking grade papers for more than ten minutes at a time. Damn, though, I was really good at pretending I was a well-functioning adult. I can lie my ass off, and I am a fairly good actor, so I was terrified the psychologist was going to tell me that it wasn’t ADHD—I’m just lazy and dumb and I need to try harder.

Shockingly, this is not what he told me. He said I have combined type ADHD which means hyperactive and inattentive. Hilariously, he said since Covid started, he has seen a huge influx of teachers getting diagnosed. It’s a job that attracts ADHD types because you’re never doing the same thing for long and it’s just constant stimulation. (I was chatting with a fellow teacher friend about it who also has ADHD—two other teacher friends overheard our conversation, grimaced at each other, and muttered that they might need to make appointments with their doctors too…)

Pretty soon I started meds, and it was life-changing. I realized that I was using food for stimulation for most of my life which was why it was so fucking hard to keep a healthy weight. I can now run longer distances because I’m not sabotaging myself by constantly remembering how bored I am or how much I want to stop. Grading papers still sucks but I can now grade for a few hours at a time, take well-planned breaks, and then jump back into it. Although not officially designated a symptom of ADHD, my Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria is much more manageable. I’m not constantly critiquing myself in the mirror anymore.

It’s truly been fascinating to see these changes in the last six months.

That’s not to say I’m cured or things are super great all the time. Laundry is still a struggle and I spent most of my weekend just lounging around the apartment (and called it rest). Last week, I increased my Adderall dosage to 15mg because what worked in the summer when I’m off work is NOT enough during the school year. In any case, I’ve been reflecting on how my diagnosis has helped me to see areas of growth in my life. Instead of “oh, I’m just an impulsive shopper,” it’s more like, “Oh, you are very susceptible to targeted ads. Let’s be cognizant of that and create a check system that helps you decide if you really need to buy that thing.”

I’ve learned that ADHD is NOT an excuse. I do NOT get to opt out hard things because of neurodivergence (I mean, sometimes yeah, I do, but not all the time, lol). Instead, it’s been a fun challenge to assess what I feel like I can’t do and figure out a way to trick my brain or work with my cute little weirdo brain to get shit done. I love puzzles! And damn if my brain isn’t one huge puzzle.

So here’s my advice: there is no such thing as laziness. If your problem is that you think you’re lazy, but since laziness doesn’t exist, it has to be something else. It could be ADHD—it could also be that you expect someone else to do the thing for you or that you’re depressed or that doing that thing you’re ignoring just isn’t something you care about.

Keep reflecting and remembering that you are not static.

Book recommendation: How to Keep House While Drowning by KC Davis

[fool3]

I've realized that most of my interested are involved in or have at least a little bit of escapism inside. I love acting, and I've never really asked myself why until now. I think it's because of the fantastical and outlandish things I get to do as someone else or even multiple people sometimes. The thought of being something completely different than yourself for even a minute in a strange or familiar place excites me. In fact I can't think of an example of any of the arts not having escapism, even in my comic book style illustrations it's a way to just forget about everything and let your hand move, creating whatever you want, and in that moment you are separate from the world you actually live in. Or if you're making art of something that already exists, like a character that you possibly love, it's a way to surround yourself and meet that character again in a new way, your way. It's the same with reference art, drawing something that does exist in the world. You can find escapism in reality just as easily as watching a television, look at things differently, think about how they were made or the idea behind them, and the new ideas in your head about them.

Things that I escape through in reality are animals. I've thought about why I like them so much but I still haven't come to a definite answer. It could be because they are some of the only things that remain of the world before humans, and that makes me happy. Perhaps it's their huge complexity, their cellular components all functioning together as machines in a machine. It's probably because humans are awful and boring, because I'm one and why would I want to learn more about myself, and looking into an unfamiliar duck's eye and seeing emotion and though, is so much more interesting than seeing it in a familiar human's. These bring me escape because it is a trip out of my world and into one I've never seen before. In a way this secret side of Earth is it's own fantasy land that I want to explore, with its own races and languages.

The last thing that I love the most (I can't decide if I love animals or this more) is Lord of the Rings. Before freshman year in high school I was a fan, I had watched the movies and loved them very much, but only perhaps as an average enjoyer. I got put in the class Reading for Pleasure and decided to take up the Hobbit because my mom and I were talking about it, I even bought my own copies. I read it in nine days and fell in love instantly. After reading the entire thing, I was already hooked, but going to the Hobbiton set in New Zealand, seeing where they filmed Gollum's Pool and the plains of Mordor, and crying while watching them just days after the trip filled me with more joy than I could ever imagine. Middle Earth to me is not just a place in a book with fun cool races, it is a world I think about every single day, full of courage and herosim and inspiration. It is hard to put to words how much I feel about this series, and reading the Silmarillian has only made it better. Just hearing Howard Shore's shire music brings tears to my eyes as I am transported to Bag End, and Bilbo's little Hobbit hole at the top of the hill. The history and world created by Tolkien is so rich that it is just REAL, it has inspired me to create and write things that make me feel the same way, and that is the ultimate escapism.

[incomingalbatross]

Finished my first week (I don't go in on Fridays) of Commute Listening! (Plus a day technically because I did have to go in last Saturday.)

Here's the summary of the undertaking so far...and of just how much car/public transit time I've logged:

Bach's Brandenburg Concertos 1-6 My beloveds--the only classical music that IS for sure on my faves list, because in the period when I had a CD player in my bedroom and about three CDs, these were two of them. Still not sure how well I could identify them, but I recognized them once they started playing and greatly enjoyed them.

Artifexian podcast ep 1. Interesting! All about worldbuilding. Just far enough removed from my own interests (yes I love fantasy, no I don't enjoy worldbuilding, it took me years to process that) that I can listen as, like, a spectator, but also listening to two people who do love worldbuilding makes me feel more positive about it. Like the energy.

Several Masses by Haydn (St. Cecilia, Mass in B flat, Mass in honor of the Blessed Virgin). Beautiful, obviously, but... did not grab me. Might just be that Masses and commuting are not the right combination. Might be my chant-inclined mind going "you're drawing out the words too much." Idk.

Art of Manliness ep 1, about Easy Company. INteresting and informative—a window into a subject I wouldn't have sought out on my own.

Out Alive ep 1. About a skier buried in an avalanche! Again, not something I would have sought out myself, but hearing the skier and the other people involved talk about the impact of a crisis situation and near-death experience, without any polish or dramatization... oof. Really interesting.

Reply All Billed as a "podcast about the internet," the first ep was about a social situation enabled by the internet. Also interesting as a window into someone else's personal experience that I don't think you'd quite get in any other medium than this unpolished interview format. This time about relationships instead of death, though.

In the Wind (album) by Peter, Paul and Mary. Branching aside from classical for some folk, since I was in the headspace for something between podcasts and instrumentals. Good! I recognized several of the songs but definitely not all. They also reminded me of several other country and folk artists I could listen to if I want to keep going down that road, in addition to listening to more of their work.

Vivaldi Concertos for Diverse Instruments GOOD. I loved these! They got stuck in my head afterward! Definitely want to try more Vivaldi. Also reinforcing my theory that any kind of music is good music if it involves violins going wild.

Mozart Violin Concertos 3-5 ALSO very very good. And I think I could hear the cleaner/plainer sound of Mozart as opposed to the baroque I'd just been listening to.

My Writing Sucks podcast ep 1, in which an author lovingly roasts her 14-year-old self's writing. Very fun. Endearing. Kinda makes me want to pull out my oldest, worst writing and approach it from an outside perspective, which I think would be Growth if my fragile ego could actually follow through on that. :P Maybe after a few more episodes of this.

Pints With Aquinas episode 1. This is an introductory episode giving background on Aquinas, as opposed to later episodes which will have more actual theology. Already good, though. Little harder for me to stay focused than some of the more fun ones, but I'll be coming back.

Classics for Kids Short and educational segment about classical music. Definitely told me things I don't know! A little short and a little flat in delivery for my needs, but good stuff.

Stuff You Missed in History Class ep 1. Interesting, but same issue as the above—it was just short. I need to check if episode length varies, and if they're all short I might load up six or so at once to give it a better trial. It was interesting but I couldn't get much flavor from one segment.

In conclusion, this project is definitely a success so far. I've been enjoying my commutes even when there's traffic, and I feel like I'm taking in things that I enjoy and are constructive in some way! It's fun for me. And I have a bunch of podcasts in store for next week that I haven't even touched yet.

[candythepuppy]

Insanely basic tips for writing fights:

So... You wanna throw some characters at other characters and tell them to kill each other, huh? Well, in order to make all that interesting, ya gotta consider these tips first.

1. I've been in martial arts for over six years and animation for just as long. So of course I'm going to suggest you plebs do a little research first. Wanna know how it feels to punch someone? Punch someone. Wanna know how it feels to get punched? Come over to my place.

Even learning simple stuff like rolls, stretches, differing exercises, and the most basic of techniques can help out a ton. At the very least, it'll keep people from making this face at you: ಠ⁠_⁠ಠ

You don't have to go all out like me, but at least learning the fundamentals of physics and how certain injuries will affect the fight can help. Take these fun little tip for example: there's a vein on the neck that, when hit properly, will make you instantly pass out. It only takes eight seconds to choke someone out to the point of fainting as long as you're holding them right..and if you keep it up, then just wait five minutes and they'll be dead. Anywhere in-between can give them serious head injuries they'll likely never recover from. There are a thousand more, but I'll stop there. Trust me. I've learned more about biology from karate than from actual Biology class.

2. I feel like this is also a given, but at the very least, know what your surroundings are. Find ways to implement the setting into the fight creatively.

Example: two people are fighting in the desert and one tosses sand into the other's eyes. Or, two people are fighting in that same desert, but the one currently losing is being shoved into the sand, choked alive by all the granules.

Also please remember that when your characters are in extreme heat or freezing settings, they will fight differently. Maybe it's even the setting itself that is slowly killing the fighters, and the battle is really all about who can last the longest.

At the very least, I'd suggest you do two things in case you have a hard time with this one. (1) gather images of the setting, or at least settings like it. Then, take note of all the elements, obstacles, and even ambiance involved. (2) pick out objects to scatter about the setting that your characters can later pick up and use in the fight. Just make sure they have to do with the setting.

3. The destination of the fight can greatly impact the "vibe."

In the sky: superman level fights, typically very grandiose, larger than life, and impressive (even if written realistically). These are great locations for if/when you're trying to make your character look cool in some way.

On top of buildings/canyons: similarly grand but with more emphasis on stakes. You typically want that sense of uneasiness every time the main character sways or is knocked a little too far away. These scenes are often used around a climax thanks to the perfect level of grandiose tension and realism. It's a great way to get your character on edge and reveal their true feelings, mainly fear.

On the ground, outside: these fights are often much more grounded than most. Often deals with a lot of running/trying out other options beyond fighting. Typically, you're trying to establish what kind of a fighter your character is in these fights + what their morals may be.

On the ground, inside: oddly enough, this is where it gets personal. Mostly because I usually think of someone's home or a grocery store where every action means something. This is typically where the most drama takes place. I'd definitely suggest you lean into the importance of the setting they are fighting in much more than the setting of other fights. (This is also where every word counts.)

Underground: by far one of my personal favorites. The claustrophobia one can draw from these settings is truly something else. The most grounded of any other fight setting. This is where I like to strip the flashy powers and magic from my characters and let them brawl the old fashioned way, getting dirty and going all out. Down here, every punch matters.

There are of course more, but these are the basics!

4. Similar to the first step, please know how the weapons your characters are using work!

5. And of course no fight is complete without (A) build up, (B) understandable reasons for the characters to fight, and (C) clear stakes/what would be lost or gained if either were to lose. Remember, a fight is just an argument acted out. Keeping that in mind will make the whole process so much easier.

Anyways, that's just about it. I could ramble some more, but these are supposed to be the basics!

Anyways, I hope to see you guys again. Thanks for your time. And, seeya!

[tmntkiseki]

TMNT Art Diary 2: The Importance of Art Goals and Focusing Your Attention

Happy March, everyone! How are we doing? It's been almost a month and a half since my last turtle art diary, so I figured it was about time to type up yet another set of ramblings talking about my experiences learning how to draw the 2003 TMNT.

Before we get started, I feel it's worth mentioning that the future of this blog is kinda up in the air at this point? From the beginning, I've been against AI generated images because of the ethics involved and like many in the Tumblr art community, recent going-ons with the site have me concerned for where things might be headed. I'm not planning to jump ship just yet, but there is a pretty good chance that I'll be posting less and less original drawings here and start utilizing my newly created Pillowfort instead, as the staff has taken a very firm anti-AI stance to the point of completely banning both AI generated images and writing on the site (the official Tumblr post regarding their decision). If you're a fellow artist, TMNT or otherwise, they might be worth checking out as a potential alternative to Tumblr.

With that out of the way, let's begin!

Okay, so let's talk about something that applies to most anything when you're learning how to do art; the importance of art goals and taking things one step at a time. Whether you're a beginner artist or someone who already has years of experience under your belt, it's important to not only have goals in mind of what you want to learn, but also to try and not do everything all at once. There is a lot that goes into successfully drawing the turtles; their anatomy, applying their less human features like their shells and three-fingered hands, their expressions, their colors, etc. HOWEVER, if you're trying to learn to draw too many aspects of their designs all at once, you are going to become overwhelmed very fast and you will not see improvement as quickly, which inevitably results in frustration and loss of motivation. Ergo, you need to take things bit by bit, breaking down the turtles designs into bite-sized pieces and focusing on specific areas that you are having trouble on.

For instance, early on, I realized pretty quickly that one of the areas I was struggling in was the turtles heads; I love their shape, but damn are they hard to draw. Subsequently, there was a point where I was largely drawing turtle heads and ONLY turtle heads so I could learn what shapes went into them, what they looked like from different angles, etc. Within even a few days, I already saw massive improvements just because I wasn't trying to draw EVERYTHING all at once; just one very specific aspect of their designs. Compare the very first Donny I drew on the 5th of January to a quick doodle of Mikey I did a couple of weeks later on the 25th and you can see how much I learned in such a short timespan.

Speaking of shapes, you wanna know the biggest hack I've discovered for learning how to draw the 2003 turtles? Studying the Fast Forward art style. Yeah, you heard me.

At first glance, this seems kind of stupid. I'm pretty sure most people aiming to draw fanart of the 2003 turtles are planning to draw them in a similar style to the first five seasons, so it makes more sense to study screencaps and model sheets from those seasons rather than FF. However, the reason why Fast Forward is so useful for TMNT 2003 fanartists is because, at its core, Fast Forward is 2003's art style simplified. Anyone who has ever taken a professional art class or looked up tutorials online knows that basic shapes are incredibly important when drawing, as they are the building blocks of literally whatever illustration you're trying to make. Now, I absolutely love how detailed the designs from the first five seasons are, but because they are so detailed, a lot of the basic shapes do get lost under everything as a result, which can make it hard to figure out what actually goes into the turtles designs at a fundamental level.

Because the designs in Fast Forward are less detailed compared to what was seen in the first five seasons, many of the basic shapes that go into the turtles designs are much easier to spot. If you've been following me long enough, you know that I was absolutely LIVID to discover that one of the things I genuinely don't like about the Fast Forward style--the pentagon shaped heads--makes drawing the 03 turtle heads so much easier. To explain it in detail; a pentagon basically maps out the five "points" of a turtle's head. What these points represent can change depending on the angle from which you're drawing your chosen turtle, but if you're doing a turtle head from a front/three quarter view, the five points denotes the top of the head, the cheeks, and the chin. It requires some practice to get right, but by building off this initial pentagon shape, you can easily draw a turtle head in the style of the first five seasons. A hexagon works just as well and is especially useful if you're going for a rounder/softer head shape.

Beyond that, I think making to deliberate choice to draw in the Fast Forward style rather than the OG style is helpful for other reasons. When a turtle's head is only a pentagon, you don't have to worry as much about details and can focus on other areas you might be neglecting, such as figuring out the positioning of the eyes/mask, or developing the way you draw the turtles' expressions. (Seriously, the white pupil-less eyes are cool, but they do make conveying emotions a hassle, especially when the turtles are lacking for proper eyebrows.)

It's been about two months since I drew my very first 2003 turtle and while I'm still very far off from where I want to be, I've already made some leaps and bounds in terms of overall progress. I do sometimes feel annoying yelling about my turtle art learnings and struggles (especially when I know there is stuff that potentially comes off as Captain Obvious territory to others) but I personally find it helpful to write down everything I've learned and experienced in case I forget something and need to look back on it. And hey, maybe someone will see these disjointed ramblings as helpful. You never know.

Anyway, here's a lil Donny doodle from today to finish this entry off. See ya later!

[emerulynn]

hi!! i saw a post where u mentioned u go to wdka, im also applying for illustration and im super nervous. whats the worst thing about the school? or do you have any tips for the portfolio?

oh shit sorry I haven’t been checking my asks, but I think yesterday or Friday was the Open Day, idk if you could’ve gone bc that would also help but I hope my rlly late answers help as well 😭

Hmmm the worst thing about the school and I’m gonna be honest here is how it sometimes feels like some of the assignments aren’t helping me all that much?? Like wdka’s concept of illustration is broad, it’s less than just drawing and more of visual storytelling through any medium. So sometimes I find myself struggling with an assignment that doesn’t involve drawing and pushed way out of my comfort zone.

I think it gets better now that I’m in my second year tho because I know how to navigate things better and also learn how to put a bit more balance on personal work and assignments. You just have to get through the Practices and Second big assignment in first year Illustration tbh, that’s the point where most people dropped out 😭 The most useful thing in the school is the facilities, teachers (ask for suggestions or networking opportunities from teachers you think have the same career path/vision as you) and ofc your peers, sometimes classes. Also if you don’t feel like you align with illustration that much you can always switch majors after the first term without having to repeat the year.

Note that I might also be harsh about the academy bc I’m paying international fees which is like 10x the tuition EU students have to pay.

As for the portfolio, they love to see you explore and experiment with different mediums and methods of art-making, so include photography, clay, mixed media work if you have them. If you don’t, don’t worry because my portfolio barely has any range, that was their critique for me after receiving my portfolio too since I mostly drew digitally and only included some analog drawings and photos. but i got in heyy

Another thing is make your portfolio easy to navigate ofc, you don’t have to go over the top with the design, just write concise texts of your work and make it not look confusing. Number your works and number the pages.

That’s it I think they love versatility that’s the main takeaway. Good luck and hope this helped!!

[kaycode1999]

Hey, if you're still doing match-ups, I'd like to request one for mha and kny (I'm giving you two to work with cuz ik there aren't a lot of girls in either 😅)

Age: Minor (over 16)

Sexuality: Lesbian

Pronouns: They/them

Gender: Agender

MBTI: INTP

Zodiac: Gemini

Kins: Bakugou, Jirou, Dabi, Tamaki, Hawks

Aesthetic: Casual grunge/alt fir clothing style, but I love alternative and soft emo

Talents/skills: Drawing/art, writing, dancing, marksmanship/shooting, singing

Love languages: Acts of service, gifts (but I don't know how to respond when given gifts 😅), I HATE physical touch. No touching for me lol

My type: Someone patient and understanding. Supportive and encouraging, but knows when to back off a bit. Also rational, who'll hear out both sides of an an argument and will be willing to negotiate and debate

Physical appearance: I have short (A bit longer than buzzed) blonde/dirty blonde hair and green eyes. I'm 5'6" and have a slim body type

Personality: Around people I don't know, I am very quiet and reserved and barely talk. But I've been told I'm the "class comedian" by people I know. Around people I know, I can be very obnoxious and/or annoying, always making jokes. Despite that, I wouldn't say I'm irresponsible or reckless. I have been told that I'm the parent friend of the group because I'm cautious and care for those around me. I also overthink everything lol

Simply explaining my kins:

Bakugou - I tend to have a short temper and can't handle losing very well. I have a strong desire to excel at everything I do

Jirou - Her and I's aesthetics are similar in terms of clothing and likes. I have a good singing voice and am obsessed with music 😆

Dabi - I have a bunch of traumas and bitterness involving mentally and emotionally abusive parents and spoiled/favourited siblings.

Tamaki - My social anxiety and nervousness around new people. I tend to have a few select friends that I have contact with. I am also very insecure and unsure of myself

Hawks - I am loud and funny with friends and am always doing goofy shit, but I can be serious when the situation calls for it.

I match you with

Itsuka Kendo

*you did say minor and over 16 and what I found said she was 17 so I hope this works*

From what I remember of her she is definitely someone who is; patient and understanding. And she will always be supportive and encouraging, to those she cares about she's their #1 fan *seriously, no matter what it is she’ll be there cheering the loudest*

She will also give you your space when you need it

She is very logical and needs to hear out all the evidence or sides before making her mind up about something

She isn't the most outgoing or talkative herself, so if you're more quiet that's not a problem

She enjoys when you're more joking and outgoing too, and she wouldn't call you annoying or anything like that

She is also caring and the mom friend of the group so you can work together to take care of everyone

[whiterosechrista]

Introduction

So. I'm realizing (with the vent time post kerfuffle) that it'd probably be a good idea for me to give people a basic understanding of who I am and where I come from, so that they can reference it if any of my posts come off odd/offensive/etc. out of context.

Basic Facts

I'm 24 years old, Caucasian, American, biologically female, comfortable with she/her and they/them pronouns. I'm an introvert who doesn't get out often, but I'm not some basement-dwelling Neckbeard-equivalent. I have a strong sense of empathy, which leads me to want to play mediator often (though thankfully I'm aware of my limits and don't act on every want). My likes include anime, storytelling, art, history, SCP, Kpop, science, outer space, and mac n' cheese (among other things). My dislikes include racism, ablism, homophobia, transphobia, and basically anything else involving unreasonable hate.

History

I grew up as effectively a single child, moving back and forth between houses because my parents were already separated, though not officially divorced. They both loved me, and tried their best to raise me well, but (for reasons I'll touch on later) I definitely bonded more with my mom than my dad. There was one house that at least one of them always lived in consistently, so I think of it as my childhood home.

I was a fairly happy child, I think, though there were some issues with bullying that I can't remember clearly anymore, and it did affect me, though maybe not as much as the school itself; I used to love to draw/paint, and I stopped after I got into school because art class convinced me I wasn't doing it "right."

The teachers (some, at least) didn't like that I learned differently than other kids (e.g. making connections between concepts in Math and English at age ~8), and so made me take one of those "morality tests"; multiple-choice questionnaires about moral decisions like returning a lost wallet (which, btw, I left blank because they hadn't given me enough info about the situation; they decided that meant there was something wrong with me).

(Ironically, this was a Montessori school, which are supposed to be less rigid about teaching styles than standard schools.)

So I transferred to a different Montessori school at age ~10, which had a system where kids would sign their name on their class sheet when they came in, and didn't like that I stopped to say hi to kids in other classes first (for reference, my class was on the second floor, the other kids' were on the ground floor).

Thus, for either this or some other reason, they recommended I go to therapy. My mom, thinking "well, she might have reason to need it", agreed. I spent a while there before the therapist said "this is the most well-adjusted child I've ever seen, please leave so I can tend to people who actually need me."

After about a year of this school, Mom asked if I'd like to try homeschooling, and that's what I've been doing ever since (though technically what we did was unschooling, which is a bit different).

It was after I started homeschooling that I started writing, got really into anime to the point of learning Japanese by watching it, and made my best friends to date.

I've done things like ballet, gymnastics, parkour, circus arts, piano, roller derby, and sang/played at Girls' Rock Camp/Club Boston (though I think the name's changed to be more gender-inclusive). I don't do much of this stuff anymore, though I might get back into it at some point.

Pre-Covid, I was taking drawing classes and Japanese classes (mostly for reading it, since anime didn't teach me that), and back in 2022, I got officially certified to teach English as a second language (though I've yet to find a job, unfortunately).

I'm currently living in an apartment with my mom, sitting around with a sprained back, hoping that it'll heal in time for my best friend to take me on a Duck Boat tour in Boston on June 2nd, and blogging for the first time in my life.

I hope this has helped. It feels like an info-dump, but apparently I can't make anything concise, so here we are.

Feel free to ask/comment/dm me for more details about anything (or just to chat). I might not be comfortable with sharing some things, but most things I should be fine with. Just be respectful about it and we should be good. :)

Edit; just realized I didn't touch on why I bonded more with my mom than my dad. The short version is that mom is open-minded, gentle (though she can definitely be stern), and always asks what I want before doing something, and my dad sort of doesn't always "get it." For instance; the moment I turned 16, he started badgering me about getting my driver's license, even though I barely went anywhere that wasn't in walking distance and anywhere I didn't could be accessed by either public transport or someone else driving me. He also wanted me to do SAT prep and similar things, got stuck in the "Alternative Medicine" rabbithole and somehow still manages to be surprised that my mom won't make me try it without my consent (for reference, this was after I sprained my back; it's not the first time he's wanted me to try Alt Meds and definitely not the first time my mom's refused). So, yeah. He's not a bad guy, and he definitely tries, he's just a bit too stuck in his own world sometimes.

[keii]

Okay so I watched these two One Piece movies over the past couple of nights and the different experiences that I have gone through with both of these movies... First of all... I had A LOT of fun watching both of them (tbh more fun than when I watched the One Piece: Red) and I want to watch it again just from recalling it. I won't go super in depth, this is just me going on a tangent about em.

One Piece Gold (left) was a lot of fun, I loved the premise where they entered this huge ass island/boat city of gold filled with entertainment and casinos (I'm like "ohhh they're on the strip! LOL). I liked the build up of the plot and backstory of the villain. Tbh I think this movie did a way better job at building up the villain in comparison to One Piece Red where it just... IMMEDIATELY went into action??? I enjoy being able to immerse myself in the specific plot and feel of a movie, and so I think this movie did better in that aspect. ALSO, THERE WERE SO MANY OUTFIT CHANGES IN THIS MOVIE!!! It's so cute that for a number of them, they're all matching??? Also... um... Zoro in the beginning of the movie where he just had the baseball cap and he's shirtless... uhhhhh he looked so good wtf... wished they had him in that for longer LOL I also thought Luffy looked SO CUTE in the all white outfit with the orange shades and cowboy hat. Really enjoyed the Sabo appearance in this, tho wished I saw him crush a guy's head!! LOOOL Anyway, really liked this movie.

One Piece movie 6: Baron Omatsuri and the Secret Island is what I watched last night after holding it off since FOREVER AND TBH I DON'T THINK I'LL LIKE A ONE PIECE MOVIE MORE THAN THIS ONE LOOOL. So the main reason why I wanted to watch this movie was primarily because of the ART STYLE. I LOVE HOW CUTE AND EXAGGERATED IT IS. The flat colors, lanky limbs, thin lines, angles, and expressiveness UGH EVERYTHING. I kept wondering why it felt so familiar and it's because the director of this movie is Mamoru Hosoda! And he directed movies like Mirai (my Goro projection movie), Summer Wars, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Wolf Children (I watched this movie when I was in a 3 hour life drawing class and was bawling), etc. ANYWAY-- his influence was STRONG in this movie because the thing I like about his style is the human INTERACTIONS he has between the characters and showing the closeness, with their touches, or expression, and even utilizing the awkward silences in the conversations. It was SO nice seeing the Straw Hats interact in this kind of way and I am just IN LOVE WITH HOW LUFFY LOOKED IN THIS MOVIE HE WAS SO CUTE I LOVE HIM!!! I also love how when Nami wanted Luffy's attention, she would just GRAB HIS FACE. So anyway, as I was looking more into who was involved in this movie, I saw that Masahiro Ito did the screenplay. I had to do a double take on that name. BITCH. OF COURSE HIS NAME WAS FAMILIAR BECAUSE THAT MAN IS THE ART DIRECTOR FOR TEAM SILENT? MR PYRAMID HEAD CREATOR MAN HIMSELF. WHAT IS HE DOING WRITING THE SCREENPLAY FOR THIS ONE PIECE MOVIE. The whole time I'm just thinking "Oh my god. This movie is going to get REALLY weird." And my god... for One Piece/shounen standards... yeah. There are scenes where I had to turn around to Hun while I was watching and go "... You seeing this." LOL LIKE... I KNOW THIS MOVIE WILL NOT BE EVERYONE'S CUP OF TEA BUT I ABSOLUTELY LOVED IT??? It was like watching the weirdest collab One Piece fanfiction come to life. I just really appreciate the direction and vibe this movie had and seeing One Piece in this kind of style. Honestly would love if other anime directors wanted to take their own spin of One Piece and just make a movie. Yah well that's my tangent, I love One Piece LOL