#this is objectively bad advice

[inkskinned]

there are a lot of posts out there that are positive and healthy coping mechanisms for handling the holidays. this is not one of them :)

i think there's like. going to be times in your life you will be stuck in a social situation that you cannot escape from gracefully. i do not know why the internet doesn't believe these times exist. it's not always just that your physical safety is at risk - sometimes it's legit like "i just don't currently have the energy or time to put in the effort of responding to this." sometimes it's a coworker you hate so much. sometimes it's just like, fine, you know? like you know you can handle your aunt when she's cheerily horrible, but if you actually set a boundary around her, it's going to be weeks of fallout with your father.

i don't know why people think the answer is always just "cut them out!" or "don't let them get away with that!" because ... the real world is tricky and complicated. i think kind of a lot of us have an internal "radiation poisoning" meter for certain people. like - i'm talking about the ones who are absolutely giving you gradual ick damage. like, you can handle them, but you'll be exhausted.

and yes. you absolutely should listen to your therapist and the good posts about handling others and set good boundaries and take care of yourself. prioritize peace.

HOWEVER :) ...... since im often in a situation with a Gradual Sense of Ick person i cannot just "cut out" of my life (without losing someone else precious to me) - i have sort of developed the most. maladaptive form of mischief possible. because like, if i'm going to have to listen to this shit again, i like to have a little bit of private fun with it.

now! again, i am physically safe, just mentally drained by this man. you should only do this with people you are not in danger with. which leads me to my suggestions for when your Unfortunate Acquaintance shows up and says oh everyone pay attention to me.

my favorite word is "maybe!" said as brightly and happily as possible. whenever the Horrible Person starts in on a topic you do not want to go further with, particularly if they make a claim that you know to be inaccurate, do not respond to it. you and i have both tried to actually argue with this person, and it hasn't gone well, because this person just wants the drama of an argument. however, "maybe!" gives them literally nothing to go on. it is incredibly disarming. they are used to people having some response. they know they can't prove what they're saying, and maybe! treats them like the child they are. it dismisses them in the politest way possible.

i like to say maybe! and then, in their stunned silence, immediately change the subject. this is because i have adhd and i will have something unrelated to talk about, but if you can't think of topics fast enough, i recommend just pointing to something and saying, "isn't that lovely?" because fuck you let's bring in some positivity.

by the way. that second trick - of pointing to something and stating an opinion about it? - that just works on its own, like, 70% of the time. i picked it up from teaching preschoolers. it's an intentional "redirect". it stops children crying and it also stops grown adults from finishing their explanation on why women belong in kitchens. dual wielding!

keep it silly for yourself. i absolutely do not care if people think i'm fucking stupid (it's more fun if they do) and as a result i will purposefully misunderstand things just to see how long it takes them to realize i've completely removed them from the subject at hand. when they say "women aren't funny" i get to be like. "which women." "all women." "all women in america?" "no in the world." "like the mole people? the people in the world?" "what? no. like, alive." "oh are we not counting the mole people?" "what the fuck are you talking about." "you don't believe in the mole people?"

similarly, i play a personal game called "one up me." my Evil Acquaintance literally knows this game exists (my family & friends caught onto it and now also play it) and it always fucking gets him. i don't know why. you have to be willing to be a little free-spirited on this one, though. the trick is that when they make one of those horrible little bigoted or annoying comments they are always making, you need to go one unit weirder. not more intense, mind you - just more weird. "you don't look good in that dress." "yeah, actually, my other dress was covered in squid ink due to a mishap at the soup store." "you shouldn't wear such revealing clothes." "wait, what? oh shit. sorry, your son tears off strips when no one is looking and eats them. i swear it was longer before we left the building."

the point of "one up me" is to completely upend this person's narrative. we both know this person likes setting up situations where you cannot "win" and then they really like telling other people how badly you handled it. in a usual situation, if you respond "please don't say something that rude", you're a bitch. but if you let it happen, you're letting yourself be debased. they are not usually expecting door number three: unflappably odd. because what are they going to say when they're telling everyone how badly you behaved? "she said my son eats her dresses" ".... okay?"

if you can, form an allyship with someone whomst you can tagteam with. where they can pick up on your weird "soup store" story and run with it.

the following phrase is amazing and can be deployed for any situation: "oh, be nice :) it's the holidays!" i do not know why this works as often as it does. i'll say it for the most random shit. i think this is bc most of the time these people know they're being impolite, they just like to fight.

godbless. when in doubt, remember that you could always start stealing their pens.

the whole point of this is - if you can't escape. maybe see how long you can just be. like. a horrible little menace.

[camembri]

usopp is objectively the best strawhat simply because he is the constant unwitting bystander slash victim. I think it's probably because he's easy to talk to (unfortunately). the man will walk into the kitchen for a snack and end up having to listen to three hours of someone's latent homosexual ramblings. whole time he decidedly Did Not Ask. and it's not like he can say anything either. it's like being the beleaguered customer service rep except the customers live in your house and will beat you up if you don't just stick to making vague noises of assent at appropriate times. truly incredible. what a man.

[reel-fear]

Wow, so umm... This looks bad, not only is it inaccurate due to using the wrong ink demon design [unless this is confirmation BATIM Ink Demon has been outright retconned... Which would make me pissed enough to make a new post just about THAT] but from an art standpoint this is just... Confusing and poorly done.

I wouldn't care if this was fanart, of course you should support young, indie artists... But for a Graphic Novel making sure your cover doesn't look like something Butch Hartman shat out in an afternoon is kind of important. Remember they're going to be asking us to give money to them to read this. The artist likely won't see any of that money and neither do the authors most of the time, not to mention this art screams of the artist being underpaid and overworked.

Like they Had to get something on someone's desk and their boss said 'good enough'. A concept Joey Drew Studios is very familiar with considering the allegations of poor working environments that Kindly Beast. Not to mention Mike Mood admitting in a Reddit AMA that they did in fact rush projects like Showdown Bandit. [Which they sold at full price]

He also says they can in fact say no or yes to designs involving their IP. Either Mike or Meatly had to say yes to this cover, according to his own damn words.

And do you really think this company in particular would care enough about its fanbase to not sell them garbage? They have done exactly that on several occasions. It's not like they care particularly about art either, considering their previous use of AI Art. There was no apology or even posts addressing it... Instead, they just rushed out an archives update to their game to get people to stop talking about it... Even forgetting an entire character in it. Again

This company is [or at least SHOULD BE] on thin ice when it comes to being suspected of misleading their fans or rushing out crappy products to them.

So with all that context in mind, I'm gonna talk about why this cover sucks ass.

The light sources are all over the place? Why does it look like someone put maces or knight armor on his shoulders but it's just flesh?? It looks both gross and weird [not in a good way either]

To explain more I'm going on a rant below but sadly this seems to have been confirmed to not just be a rough pass but the final cover and man... I am not excited about this graphic novel just at all. This felt like it really drained any possibility of it turning out good for me and I already had expectations low.

Okay first point, the light sources?? And there is no consistency here with the shadows or lighting, it looks like there's a hundred light sources all at once but none of them are even consistent!

the arrows here represent all the different light sources I can make out and yet the the shadow clearly implies there's only one. I understand wanting to use highlights to give the character a more clear shape but then just give him one or two lights behind him or in front of him? No matter how u follow the light sources, the highlights make no sense and the shadows make even less sense.

Why are the shoulders like that? Like on the legs it's a little understandable, at least those are clearly very heavily affected by perspective, for me I think they are so exaggerated it makes it look like one of the legs is either huge or one is small but that's maybe subjective.

However, the shoulders are unjustifiable, what happened there, what did they do??

I could pick on so much more honestly, how the color choices of piss yellow with no other colors being used, and the harsh pitch black being used for every part of his body is weird. How it looks straight out of Butch Hartman's recent crappy art. But to put bluntly bad start! Also what the HELL is going on with this background??

Seems once again the Bendy team is fine with sending out stuff thinking it's "Good Enough" for Bendy fans and honestly the people trying to tell me to "Be Grateful" for this are just proving that no matter how many times you betray your audience some of em will defend you!

Which is sad tbh. If anything we should be putting MORE pressure on the Bendy team to do better. Cause we deserve better than this, honestly we do. There are amazing artists in the bendy community who could do so much better for a cover. They've employed their fan artists before... Wouldn't it be great to do that for such a lore important book? The book that gives us the identity of one of the main characters in BATIM? The character you spend the entirety of Chapter 4 fighting to save? Not to mention will give several major characters their human designs?

But I guess this is... Good enough...

[fishandshesmygills]

been back in my little earthquakes era lately and it's healing me

[steakout-05]

art tip youtube videos be like "NEVER DRAW THIS!!!" "Do This To Get Better At Art!!" "These Art Styles Are BAD" "STOP DOING THIS!! Top 10 Bad Art Mistakes" "You NEED To Improve Your Art NOW!!!" how about this tip: draw however and whatever you want forever and don't worry about it

[pixlmonkeys]

louie’s notes for the sphere of truth hit too hard sometimes. “I should draw the boss's face on this and roll it far, far away.” i definitely have some people I’d like to do that to COUGH COUGH the priest at my church COUGH COUGH HUH WHO SAID THAT

[futuristicbarbie]

sometimes i think maybe i should cut my hair shorter(like waist length/boob length) so its easier to style and maybe it looksmaxxers me or something, because although long hair down to your butt is pretty (when healthy) its also difficult to style and maybe even drags down and weighs down your face but idk, maybe it looks good on me

[nopoodles]

I saw a post about world building and I didn't want to derail it becauseni don't think they're wrong... I just also don't think their perspective is the end of the story.

To paraphrase: they claimed that you need to know how food production works in your fantastical worlds because otherwise it undermines the entire story and world state. They referenced how Inca people didn't invent the wheel for transport because they lived in places it wouldn't have been useful and how thinking more widely can help make your fantastical world more well rounded.

And, fundamentally, the logic behind these statements is something I can get behind. Thinking more widely can and does make for better worlds and filling in facts or asking these kinds of questions can make for a better story.

But

And this is where I wanted to disagree and what triggered making this whole post

You don't have to.

If you want to make a story (whatever length) where you set it on the backdrop of a comfortably accessible landscape for you/your target audience, there's actually nothing wrong with that.

I know people say lots of things about it, there's lots of criticism levelled at fantastical worlds with no specific and on-page world building. But if you, like me, tend to skip description in books you might be intentionally very light handed with it, in which case there probably isn't space within the narrative to write where the grain comes from or why they have chocolate filled pastry but no coffee. Whether you, personally, know the reason and the logic is almost irrelevant if it never makes it to the page.

And again, it's fine that it might not make it to the page. Not all of your world building has to be on the page. You don't have to please readers who want that, because there are plenty of readers who don't and would actually be out off by that.

All this to say (as usual): take the time to figure out what works for your writing and also for the readers you want to attract. If you're going to use a comp title with heavy world building and not offer the same, you gotta make that clear. But, similarly, if you used my Guardian Cadet Series as a comp and spent pages talking about how the grain production worked, you'd probably end up with some frustrated readers.

[daisywords]

actually my toxic trait is that I've never ever thought that my writing was bad idk what you guys are talking about

[honeyblockm]

1 8 and 21

1: the character everyone gets wrong

i just answered this but yeah it's fundy and ponk. come to think of it possibly also happyduo. the whole eggpire maybe.

8: common fandom opinion that everyone is wrong about

despite my best efforts i suspect i live in an echochamber but. spaces out for 10 minutes trying to think of common fandom opinions. you know i cannot really think of a take that has not caused awful awful discourse on my dash. i mean i guess re: the attachments advice that phil gave tommy that caused everyone to try to kill each other on my dash: i dont think it's that big of a deal? if phil gave some bad advice? if said advice was even bad in the first place? <didn't get too invested in that discourse

also i don't think las nevadas had to be destroyed for the. waves hand. narrative. or smth. it wasn't like. the root of all cquackity's evil or whatever. and i think it's good and reasonable that the LN arc ends with q deciding to build it back up again. sorry its my girlfriend

21: part of canon you think is overhyped

bedrock bros ^_^

[fox-bright]

hi any life advice for 21yo

Don't date thirty-year-olds until you are at least 25.

Having a glass of water for every glass of alcohol will give you a 50% reduction in hangover viciousness.

Bad people will use your willingness to be quiet as a weapon against you. If someone's being awful to you and trusting you'll be quiet to keep from making waves, surprise them.

There is no physical object in the world that is worth as much as your honor.

Honor is not the same as dignity. Retaining one sometimes means leaving the other aside.

Don't have any sex you don't want to have; have as much as you want of the sex that you do, whether that's a lot, a little, or none at all. Nothing you can do to your own body is immoral, unless you're doing it as an act of self-punishment.

Food is morally neutral. You do not have to earn the right to eat calories. Fat and sugar keep your brain from eating itself.

Learning to sit still and breathe--in, in, in, hold, hold, hold, out, out, out, out, out, out--can give you five feet of clear space around yourself in a maelstrom.

Find out how to make three good meals: A comfort meal you can make for just yourself relatively easily, a fancy meal you can use to wow a date, and a meal you can feed a bunch of people. All the other cooking can come later, but you can build a community on those three meals.

If you ever get to the point that things are so bleak you can see no other way forward but to die, make any other choice. If that means leaving everything you own and being a beach bum, or quitting your career, or taking up or leaving a religion, or deciding to bicycle across the country, so be it; living means more chances, dying means everything stops and you don't get to see any more interesting things. As you have not yet seen all the things that can interest you, it is better to live.

[biboomerangboi]

More reasons why Zuko being the Firelord is objectively the funniest thing on earth:

HES SEVENTEEN

He hasn’t been civilised in 4 years, his entire teenage experience consists of living on a boat and sleeping rough. The most stable bed he has was probably in Ba Sing Se he probably will just nap anywhere.

He has customer service experience which means he probably uses his customer service voice on his minsters.

Additionally he probably just wanders into to kitchen to get his own snacks and tea because he forgets what servants do.

He probably has no idea why he can’t just chase after an assassin he used to hunt the avatar for Agnis sake why is the captain of the guard demanding he stay in his room he’ll find the guy first (he’s probably right)

Katara probably has a free pass on Eco terrorism because what’s he going to do challenge her, she’ll beat his ass.

If he saw a minster doing something shady he will either invite lady Beifong to detect their BS or commit B&E and look for evidence himself.

He somehow found a baby dragon and raises it.

He will be far to willing to give Kyoshi island anything they want cause he feels bad and Suki scares him.

He randomly insisted on giving some earth kingdom village 100 ostrich horses.

The Avatar will just show up call him Hotman and demand the go on adventures and the Firelord will just dip because he’s been confined to long and has the Zoomies.

He takes far to much advice from Sokka and will genuinely believe if someone doesn’t get Sokkas plans they must be an idiot because Sokka is 16.

Sokka and Zuko also get into a lot of teenage rebellion phases by accident.

Toph just walks in breaks a wall of his palace and demands a field trip that always involves the Firelord having to explain himself to the cops.

He somehow knows every dangerous teen in the world and they all come for tea uninvited.

He has broken into both the NWT and Ba Sing Se.

He has a really well documented facial scar and official portraits but still disappears to be Lee the tea guy like no one knows.

HES SEVENTEEN.

[knxfesck]

If art school is as lame as it is in fanfiction written by art school students I feel very bad for all of you. Personally if someone told me a sketch wasn't art because it didn't meet their standards I'd lose it on the spot

[alteredbeast]

in the context of "learn the rules before you break them" and seeing people get really mad about it i just always think of the online art tutorial/advice industrial complex and how since you get taught the short version First you don't actually learn the theory behind it and they're at best incomplete at worst straight up Wrong

[punkedupclowns]

I KNOW I AM NEW BUT DAMN AINT NO ONE WANT MY MOTHERFUCKIN ADVICE? I GOT GREAT ADVICE. 💪

[rfallfish]

Can we please all agree to stop framing modern trends as objectively good writing advice? I'm not trying to say that there aren't ways to give people pointers on their stories, but just because a style of writing has fallen out of fashion doesn't mean it's bad.

I am primarily referring to people saying antagonists need to be morally gray and to people who say you "shouldn't rhyme poetry" full stop. Sure, modern trends don't align with those things, but are you telling me Sauron isn't a good villain? That Golding's translation of The Metamorphoses is bad?

It's genuinely okay to try to help people with their stories when they ask, but pretending like modern trends are the only things that could possibly work in writing just isn't it.