#sad day for intl art community

[sekaides]

for anyone interested in following my bluesky~

i had a decent amount of people on there already so i feel motivated to use it and finally let the bird app die a slow death

[the-bjd-community-confess]

I was an active faceup artist for years, took intl. commissions and all. I was forced to go on a hiatus due to moving for work and health reasons. I feel better now and my life is stable, and I still get a lot of requests to open up shop again, but I just...I just can't. Working on my own stuff, and having a day job that covers my living costs, made me realize how much I actually dread it towards the end. 

 It's just not worth it for how little a faceup artist earns in this hobby, and how much one has to do to even get that meager payment. Hours and hours of leaning over a tiny head, destroying my back/eyes/wrists in the process. On top of that I do Photoshop mockups, take a lot of WIP and final photos, have to discuss matters with the customer, handle shipping and customs. Materials are expensive, and sometimes difficult to get. Even when a commission goes smoothly it's still a lot of work for very little pay. And often it doesn't even go well! 

 No matter how hard I try to reduce any risks/issues, I still have customers who try their hardest to make the whole commission an absolute nightmare to deal with. Like thinking it's okay to change their mind in the middle of the commission, as if it's no big deal and I should just start over (for free, of course). Hounding me for updates several times a day, even though I had just received the head a day ago and am extremely open about my schedule (like only painting on weekends). Approving WIP shots, and later admitting they actually disliked something early on but deciding not to tell me. Arguing about my prices, as if I am not already crazily undervaluing my own work out of fear of being harassed. Wanting me to change my style completely, and then being pissed when my work looks like...well, my work. Not replying to messages for a long time, and then complaining about how long the commission takes. On a more heartbreaking note, showing absolutely no enjoyment or enthusiasm throughout the whole commission and leaving me doubting whether I made them happy and did a good job. Never confirming they actually received a package. 

 And what for in the end? 60, 70, maybe 100 bucks per head when the customer is nice and willing to pay so much? Health issues? My own doll projects waiting to be finally customized by me? In other doll communities customizers are treated so highly, just look for how much Blythe customs go and that weird cult-like fanbase some artists have. But BJD faceup artists are just seen as little painting robots. Good enough to help you get that perfect face for your doll, but not good enough to be paid a decent wage or be treated with some respect. A lot of people don't even think of what we do as art. And I am not interested in the drama if I would open up "artist choice, 300$ per faceup, I decide who gets the slot" commissions. The community is just not made for that. 

 Sure, I made good experiences too. It felt nice to help people own the doll of their dreams, or to make that character they wanted for their doll come alive. I had some great customers that were a joy to work with. Creative, patient, friendly customers. Commissions I felt helped me greatly to get better at my craft. Moments of warm fuzzy feelings when a customer received their doll and was just so happy about the face-up. Interesting dolls I was happy to see in real life, or ideas I just thought were great and wanted to execute. 

 But all this isn't enough to make me return. I dealt with this all for a very long time cause I needed all the extra funds I could get, but I just can't muster up the energy anymore. I feel bad for my nice customers who had hoped to commission me again, and all the new people who just found my work and are sad they can't commission me anymore. 

 Sorry guys, offering commissions just sucks.

~Anonymous

[cospinol]

charlotte can i get a like Factions And Locations Overview TM for scverse im trying to decide where my scverse oc would be

YES sorry this took ten thousand years. as you can see i spent most of my time on this ultra high quality map↓. click it to actually see anything on this

theoretically it wraps around, all one sad little planet. OKAY with that visual reference in mind let's do factions/locations !

The northern Four Kingdoms (area labelled West Realm/Rose Domain/East Realm here it doesn't say four kingdoms on it sorry) is the setting of centre of the sun. Verdant & idyllic fantasy kingdom without much intl political clout or significant military power (tho it did recently experience a very bloody civil war); it's united primarily by devotion to sun deity Akadia, who blessed it with the four chosen ones known as sunborn, you know the drill (but even moreso by dislike of the realm due south)

The South Realm (due south of the northern four kingdoms.. you know) has been the fourth of the Four Kingdoms for several centuries, but spent nearly a thousand years as an empire that spanned much of the world; people still often refer to it as the Tasier Empire to this day. Its territory was already much decayed when one of its sovereigns chose to cut his losses and declare allegiance to the high king of the then-Three Kingdoms, but every Tasier king since has had ambitions of reclaiming their former glory, (up to and including their current sovereign Ehen . you may have heard of him). Because of the centuries they spent at best encroaching on the borders of the northern 4k, there's some ultra-enduring bad blood between the two lol

The Illyn Islands/Shallow Sea (east of the 4k) is the only place with more bad blood with the South Realm than the north, lol, the Tasiers have always been at war with all their neighbours but they've REALLY always been at war with the Illyns. The Illyns also spend most of their time at war with each other; it's not really a nation so much as a collection of micro-principalities ruled by dozens(hundreds?) of little branches of the Illyn family. It's also not really a sea; though it does have some larger bodies of water, in many parts the 'sea' that separates its 'island'-principalities is only a foot or two deep, and large stretches of it are actually just dry land. false advertising

The Izar Empire, a dry and arid nation on the east side of the shallow sea, prides itself on being the world's oldest empire, with its royal line going unbroken for upward of two thousand years; whether that's serving them very well is up for debate since that imperial core is historically poorly-governed, and it's supported mainly by the prosperity of semi-independent provinces around its edges + thru trade deals with its little neighbours. Fwiw they do boast of some pretty impressive temples designed by Akadia herself to commemorate where the deities first touched down on earth (though the Illyns contend hotly that Akadia's first step on the planet was actually in the shallow sea)

The most notable of the Izars' more successful neighbours btw are the Moon Twin City-States, the three cities lined up along the eastern edge of the Shallow Sea; they're well-placed b/w the izars/4k/sea and have historically prospered on trade. Also worth mentioning is the Laevin Administrative Region to the Izar's southeast (or kevin to its friends. whatever), a collection of cities ruled by an oligarchic council created specifically with the intention of (profiting by) mediating relations between its neighbours

Due north of all of this btw (chain of islands all across the top of the map, i know they look very great) is Ciellan, a technocracy historically devoted centrally to magical & technological progress, especially piecing together partial designs/ruins of ancient pre-divine machinery/etc. They boast some of the world's best libraries & a great education system but huuuge economic disparity/it’s a miserable place to live for most ppl, and in the past several centuries they haven't advanced much at all. They're the home country of the coalition of architects that worked to create floating cities according to whose blueprints the deities' city was built, and they also later built their own floating city; in retribution moon god Ilida (seeing their 'imitation' city as a slight to his mother's sacrifice) hit them with the first of his three curses upon humanity; this one prevents anyone born in Ciellan or w/ Ciellais ancestry from wielding magic relics in any capacity ww

Anyways, back to main continent, to the east of the Izars is the Aua Empire, which also claims to be the world's oldest empire, and is also technically correct; Aua was founded first, but has spent much of its time split into 1-7 provinces viciously at war with each other. Its sovereignty changes hands often, & it's tradition for its aristocrats/royals to send their children away to be raised by other people so that they can select their heirs with as much objectivity as possible... Aua is resource-rich and largely prosperous despite its political instability; it's currently been under the same very successful leadership for the past few decades, though those current sovereigns are ambitious +tending towards war w/ their neighbours

East of Aua (and west of the four kingdoms) is the Dai Empire, which is referred to as an empire basically as a joke; it's not even really a country, it's scattered with towns and settlements and stuff but they really are scattered and there's no larger governing body of any kind. Dai is commonly considered a land forsaken by the gods both because it's the only area of earth that none of them ever took to/chose to live in/acted as patron to and also bc it has a lot of other weird stuff going on; it's very difficult to navigate and downright impossible to map, a random collection of biomes in random orders that seems to change every time you come back to it. It also has the highest yield of relics (more on them later) than anywhere else in the world, but they're also considered weird/undivine. It's also affected by a wide variety of curses, some divine & some others, also more on those later lol

with factions out of the way we can now do species / special features!!

Human ok you know what humans are. Worth noting that all humans on earth are descended from fish ppl who were given the ability to live on land by the deities, but functionally they're humans yeah

Magic users make up about 30% of the world's population, though it's a hard number to measure since magic here mostly manifests in pretty mundane ways; its three branches are prophecy (visions of the future, to varying degrees), communication (over long distance, & with plants/animals), and body (healing, mainly). It's largely an academic art (healing magic requires an understanding of the medical process you're trying to recreate, star prophecies are more useful with knowledge of standard star charts etc), but there are always little prodigies who can talk to bugs perfectly from birth or w/e. Magic use can manifest in members of any (sub)species !

Relic Bearers are people chosen to take care of divine relics (mysterious objects with some unusual magic property or other, artifacts from the mysterious civilization that existed on earth before current humanity; a handful were discovered by the deities during their time on earth, and the rest were discovered after their arrival and dedicated to a deity by their followers), generally by way of a gentle glow appearing around the relic when the new bearer is in its vicinity. Most relics' locations/bearers are kept track of by the followers of the deity they're devoted to, and bearers generally live a life of relative luxury. Dai relics btw are usually not devoted to any deity/traced by a specific church, tho they’re generally just as potent

Seam Holders are a new phenomenon; about ten years pre-hbtw the first large-scale divine manifestation since the deities left earth occurred, in the form of weather god Aema physically appearing to announce to a whole city that he was dedicating a portion of his power to a human chosen one (Emery Illyn! :)) and that other deities would be following suit soon. Word spread immediately, obviously, since a full-body manifestation/projection a deity hadn't happened since the deities left earth (& it wasn't his real physical form obv, but even a large-scale projection like this is completely unprecedented), and many other deities manifesting to announce chosen ones did follow suit. The mechanic behind this is that those chosen ones are stumbling across 'seams', portions of the deities' power used to 'stitch' the world back together when evil god Jarun tried his best to tear it apart back in the day... 2500 years on those deep-buried seams are resurfacing them again, when a mortal with potential comes across them they enter into a contract with the deity that allows them to channel a pretty big portion of the deity's power+ they get a direct hotline to the deity at all times +can sometimes manifest projections of them. Whee!

Dead Sea witches are a small portion of the population of one small kingdom (Pelagia), who can interact with the ghosts of the creatures that lived in the primordial sea where their dry-land country now exists. Many of them can also interface with a little pocket dimension referred to as the Dead Sea which may or may not be a preserved version of that ancient sea!

Back to more basic stuff, dragons are a human subspecies, who got slightly different biology from regular humans from [perpetually unnamed deity of strength]. Io a pretty typical example; they're blue, their skin is scattered w/ little inset scales, they have big flaps for ears (+sometimes horns), they're several times stronger and more durable than humans

Worms are another human subspecies, optically identical to humans (their skin colour always nearly exactly matches their hair colour, but that's not necessarily a tell) but several times stronger and more durable even than dragons. They're also even more devoted to the pursuit of strength (their deity is battle-focused); while most dragons live as part of regular society, most worms live in travelling mercenary-bands and spend most of their time at war. They have a fun feature where they can regenerate lost limbs (albeit slowly) and relish losing em in battle bc they generally come back stronger

Anemones are the only amphibious species on earth, and aren't considered fully human since they took a slightly different deal from the rest of humanity, which allows them to divide their time between land and sea at the cost of being much more fragile than humans. They come in a fun variety of colours & patterns & often have tentacles for hair :)

Moonblue is the term used to describe bearers of moon god Ilida's second curse upon humanity (this one on the aua empire for its participation in the floating city coalition, but it also affects large portions of the dai empire too because ilida's aim isn't great); it's randomly occurring and not hereditary, & gives its bearers unusual magic powers in exchange for severe physical remunerations. There are a number of other curses that occur in dai w/ similar features, but the moonblue curse is recognizable because its bearers all have blue/white skin and hair

Demons are the result of Ilida's third and final curse (chronologically the first, i'm all out of order here rip), bestowed specifically upon first demon king Ruka+his village+all their descendants entirely for pissing him off on a personal level. This one gives you cute horns + a lifespan about double that of humans, because it really was tailored to piss of one specific guy & most of its inheritors don't consider it a curse / they're essentially just another human subspecies

IS THAT EVERYTHING AHHHHHHHHH... i wish i had cute imgs/chara examples for all these areas/factions. theres also mooore if theres a spot on the map i haven't explained let me know... but that's a general overview :D!!!

[itsyourturnblog]

It’s not that I couldn’t understand his point.

The scene: an outdoor dinner table, surrounded by people sharing food and coming down off a community salsa dance lesson. As we ate, one of our guests and I got into a rather impassioned conversation when he took me off-guard by saying, “There’s no such thing as talent.” His contention was that everyone, if they work hard, can do anything well. I answered that this is the kind of “everyone gets a medal!” thinking that is making us weak. So who was right? Is talent a myth?

I was born in 1981, which means that I was part of that strange transition that happened in the public school system — I saw the beginning of teachers removing grade curves and handing out participation ribbons while at the same time I was living with parents who believed that you should bring home A’s. The days when a less than perfect report card meant losing your TV privileges to make more time for homework, not your mom making an appointment to argue with your teacher about why you deserved better. We were sorted and labeled; put into advanced classes or held back, told we had talent or told we needed to work harder, sometimes still within the new paradigm of ‘everyone just needs to try their best’. The underlying message seemed to seep up through the collective like a sign in Animal Farm, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

This is not meant to be a review of the education system, but rather thoughts about whether or not ‘talent’ really exists. Like many others, I first heard about the idea that talent is a myth by reading Malcolm Gladwell and seeing what he had to say about famous people that we think of as talented, but where the truth came down to just a ridiculous amount of hard work; the classic example being the Beatles. I understand the idea that it takes 10,000 hours for someone to truly excel at their craft and there is no debating the power of hard work. The debate here is would someone else have had that same success if they put in the same work? If I spent all those hours practicing music with my bandmates in Germany, would I have been as successful as John Lennon?

To quote one article that I read, “The verdict in the scientific community seems to be in line with Aesop’s fable: The tortoise beats the hare, but only because the hare took a nap. Hard work beats talent if talent doesn’t work” This is based on a paper published in Psychological Science (2011) entitled: Limits on the Predictive Power of Domain-Specific Experience and Knowledge in Skilled Performance. Authors David Hambrick and Elizabeth Meinz basically point out that the higher the IQ, and skill levels you are born with, does in fact make a difference, unlike the view of many pop-psychologists who state that, after a certain baseline point, it doesn’t matter.

Part of the issue is that it is very hard to scientifically study talent. What level of ability does someone need to intrinsically show for us to call this ‘talent’? How do you separate this from the positive effects of a supportive home environment, social economic class, etc.? The research tends to be tucked into the Nature vs Nurture debate, and many of the scientists performing the studies already have their feet in one camp or the other, making it difficult to be truly objective. So one study seems to show that characteristics such as IQ, artistic talent, and ability with numbers and languages is innate and unchanging and the next seems to show that it is influenced heavily by cultural and parental factors.

As a mom of three, I have watched all my children be naturally good at some things and (let’s face it) pretty terrible at others. As an instructor of various modalities of holistic health for the last 12 years, I feel like I can train anyone to be competent, and yet, there are certain people who definitely display a natural aptitude — where it seem to come easily and they are good right off the bat. Why are we so afraid of that? Why isn’t it OK to say that someone is blessed with a certain ability?

One of my favourite family movies is ‘The Incredibles’ and there is that wonderful line of Syndrome’s (the ‘bad guy’) in the movie; the theme that repeats itself, “when everyone is super, no one is.” Denying talent and praising everyone equally doesn’t seem to have the effect of making everyone perform better — rather than making ‘everyone super’ it makes ‘everyone normal’. Perhaps we have become uncomfortable with the idea of talent because we have become a little obsessive about everyone being equal. The fear of praising someone’s talent here seems obvious; if I say that you have talent in a certain field, then that means that someone else is not as good in comparison and that’s simply not OK to imply, especially if I am talking to my own kids.

Bring it back to my friend who was arguing with me; one of his points was that everyone should be able to enjoy the arts without worrying that they aren’t good at it. As this conversation took place after a salsa class where I revealed my lack of rhythm and musical ability, but managed to have a fabulous time anyways, I have to agree with that. But that doesn’t come from denying the talents of others. I can embrace the fact that I will never be a professional dancer (probably not even if I practiced everyday from now until I die) and still enjoy the act of dancing. Looking at someone else who is naturally gifted does not take away my joy, rather it can give me something to aspire to. Great art shouldn’t make us feel inept and sad; it should elevate the human experience. Me denying your abilities doesn’t make me better and my denying your kids’ abilities won’t help mine succeed. Instead, maybe we can each embrace our own superpowers and use them to be heroes, not just of our own stories, but of everyone’s.

It’s not my job to pretend to not be good at things in order to make someone else more comfortable, and I don’t want my kids to live like that either.

Article: Hard Work Beats Talent, (but only if Talent Doesn’t Work Hard), Piers Steel Ph.D. 2017

Paper: ‘Does Talent Exist? A re-evaluation of the nature-nurture debate’ Paul Ward, Patrick Belling, Erich Petushek, and Joyce Ehrlinger, In book: Routledge handbook of talent identification and development in sport, Publisher: Routledge, Editors: Joseph Baker, Stephen Cobley, Jörg Schorer, Nick Wattie, pp.19–34 January 2017 https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/the-procrastination-equation/201110/hard-work-beats-talent-only-if-talent-doesn-t-work-hard

About the Author

Instructor, practitioner, speaker and writer for Specialized Kinesiology. Homeschooling homesteading in the jungle. Mother of Dragons.

Originally published at http://www.alexiscostello.com on June 3, 2019.

If Everyone is Super, No One Is was originally published in It's Your Turn on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

by Alexis Costello via It's Your Turn - Medium #itsyourturn #altMBA #SethGodin #quotes #inspiration #stories #change #transformation #writers #writing #self #shipping #personaldevelopment #growth #education #marketing #entrepreneurship #leadership #personaldev #wellness #medium #blogging #quoteoftheday #inspirationoftheday