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classroomgraffiti · 2 years ago

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(inspired by ”The End of Art: An Argument Against Image AIs” by Steven Zapata Art on youtube, watch it please)

If youve already decided ai art is bad for the art environment as a whole or have watched the video i referred to above then dont bother with this post as it was probably better elaborated on in said video, however, if you don’t have the time to watch a 47 minute video or are still either on the fence or a supporter of ai art then i implore you to read the rest of this post as im going to list arguments for ai art and try and counter them

firstly, ai art and people using references is not comparable, a person even if they follow an image as closely as possible will still have slight alterations whereas the ai can copy it exactly. to extend upon this akin to how someone may trace or use someone else’s art as a reference, these ai algorithms have databases which contain billions of images, including ones with copyright which we would normally not have access to in order to use like this, from hundreds of thousands of artists and will precisely and electrically splice your art into its results

corporations and stingy bastards stand to make ridiculous amounts from this, as people who may have hired an artist for a job or commission can now tell their ai to pull up desired images instantaneously, not to mention that the ones who sold these people their ai will be getting paid instead, and they will be getting paid NICELY with your money (openai etc)

finally, and i hope iv saved what i feel is my best point for last, is against those who argue “it gives people who were not gifted the ability to make great art” or “the ai is a tool which is dependant on us feeding it prompts”, starting with the first argument, no artist is “gifted” or “talented”, what artists actually are is determined and hard working and pillars of mental fortitude & work ethic, im no fine arts master but personally i have only gotten to the point i’m at because i would often spend all of brake & lunch at school and then anywhere between 1-3 hours nearly everyday just drawing, the fact that the act of drawing is what i use as a coping mechanism for any stressful times in my life is irrelevant as i and anyone else who partakes in art and the craft have only achieved there skill through effort which is possible and obtainable to absolutely anybody, if you are upset by your perceived inability to draw then either simply improve through practice and documentation until you create works which meet yours standards or just stop drawing until you can do it without becoming overly upset at your quality; do not steal the blood sweat and tears of honest artists so you can LARP about as somebody who is actually willing to put the time in for results (this does not refer however to those who happened to have innocently used ai art before or those who credit the specific artist/just share cool ai art as my anger is only directed at those who use this technology to pretend the work is theirs or avoid paying artists, i myself used dalli.mini to import burt reynolds onto the moon and into RGU some time ago out of pure curiosity); continuing further, referring to how this ai needs human made prompts, allow me to forwards you a question if you believe this to be the case, if algorithms akin to the ones on tiktok or other SM platforms and search engines which are massively capable of monitoring a persons searches and precisely adapt at using this info to show the users stuff that they know the user will enjoy, then what is stopping these algorithms from being applied to these ai art generators? if the ai art generator is given the capability to monitor and act upon your searches and info like the algorithms i just mentioned then what is stopping it from, for example, auto generating some images from your interests for you to look at? now consider that this ai will be making a sweatshops worth of generated images for literally everybody and that while this happens, as the the ai produces more and more, whether the prompts were manually put in or not, that it is perpetually and ALWAYS LEARNING. why stop at simple images? books, poems, animation, music, each medium with which man has used to express themselves since the start of time will receive its own ai with which to steal literally every recorded piece of art or literature ever in order to churn into automatic and spontaneous content, by then all we will be left with is this auto generated primordial pool of content puked up by the ai, you may look up references for a cool drawing you are trying to do and five minutes later youll receive a ping from your phone sayin “heres that drawing you were working on, dont sweat it i already finished it for you in color and everything just as you imagined” just so you can scroll through walls of images which each look like they were pulled from your head, 20 minutes later itll send you the drawings you were going to draw 2 years from now, and 55 minutes later it’s going to send you auto generated pictures of you next to your idealised and perfect partner going kayaking, on a picknick, getting married etc in an album under the name “your hopes and aspirations”; because these computers KNOW us, far better than you or anyone else could ever hope to know yourself or eachother, and if there’s anything that these algorithms and corporations know about the human brain it’s that it loves the quick, dopamine inducing, highly addictive, blitz krieg style content which allows tiktok and other SMs to fester in the modern atmosphere

im not saying we need to all smash our phones in tandem as that would be obviously ridiculous, neither do i have an answer as to how we should get rid of or counteract ai art, all i can say is that i believe ai art is the biggest threat to essential human expression, 2nd only to us all nuking eachother, and the we SHOULD be angry about it and SHOULD not simply sit around and let it ruin us, even if it’s jus by bringing up to someone else via conversation how awful ai art is then thats still fighting back art and i would implore that you do that if possible. thanku for reading my ramblings if ur still interested in the topic of ai art then simply search for the video i referred to at the start or do independent research on they topic outside of that, maybe what youll find may debunk me who knows anyway im very tired gn😑👍 (also again let me reiterate that those who use this technology while crediting the specific artist/ sharing cool ai art they prompted while fully acknowledging its ai art and not there own work are completely innocent, i’d rather you just share the work of actual people but whatever its hardly an issue when confined to this scale)

#ai art generator #ai art #art discussion

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storm-dragoness · 2 years ago

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I'm so fucking mad at like HBO and all these fucking people who remove content from the internet so that the only way to have it is to pirate it

I Hate Subscription based services, and I hate that the model is increasingly moving away from ever actually having a hard copy of a thing, because ultimately these corporations don't want you to ever own ANYTHING because if you own it, if you have it, it's in your pocket, it's on your bookshelf, they don't control it, and they want. Total control over, well. Everything, as near as I can tell, but mostly like. The product they are in the market of.

like look art is super extremely important and i think that that was an idea that was super reinforced for a lot of people over the last 2-3 years especially at the beginning and height of the pandemic in 2020-2021, like. We all were locked in our home with nothing to do, and we were slowly losing our minds and the saving grace that a lot of people found was in art. For some people, a lot of people, that meant like ACTUALLY MAKING THINGS like, baking, making bread and stuff, painting, writing, cartooning, etc. (for those people who weren't forced to be on the front line as "essential workers" with their whole life hanging in the nerve wracking balance because they were poor and expendable, although i think some/many of them found solace in art when they went home as well)

But for even more people, even if the solace wasn't found in MAKING art, it's certainly found in, for lack of a better word, consuming art. and like! that's what all this shit is! cartoons! Video games! Movies! Tv shows! Hell, even netflix original series! like. Fuck, a lot of the time, arguably all of the time, they're produced by these shitty megacorporations, yeah, and i don't support that. I loved gravity falls, but man, fuck the disney channel right? but like they're NOT actually produced by megacorporations! they're produced by people! artists! even if you don't like the media that is produced even if you don't like the ART that is produced, you should at least respect and understand that there are real people who put their heart and soul, blood sweat and tears into that shit! Into the Act of CREATION which is far nobler and far more important than anything that happens in the office buildings at Fucking HBO or whatever. like. God DAMN the fact that Dana Terrace can't watch Owl House without pirating it? that's fucked up. the fact that a megacorporation who produces and contributes nothing has somehow managed to gain the power and ability to wipe years of a person's life, work, and soul off the face of the earth is fucked up i hate it it makes me want to scream murder and set things on fire. Like. okay yeah pirating things is an option, and yeah, I'm SO thankful that piracy is still an option, and frankly, I think it's so incredibly important, but i think whats more important is pirating these things and burning them onto physical copies so that HBO can't just. Scrub them from existence like! fine! stop production but like the power to erase the Backlog? imagine if someone broke into your house and stole all of your Sailor Moon VHS tapes, because they don't want them in circulation anymore! imagine if someone stole EVERYONE's Sailor Moon VHS tapes! there would be riots! people have! the RIGHT to this stuff! the right to enrich their souls with art and media, for creators to create and share their product with people. With their Children! the next generation! and the fact that we've progressed to a society where some bitter lemon souled individual whose only thought, only care, only desire in life is to make money, and possibly to hurt as many people as possible along the way up that golden stepladder can simply STEAL everyones Copies of Sailor Moon (analogically speaking) is a fucking nightmare! HBO should be burned at the stake! they've apparently RUINED people's careers, because being able to point to your name on the credits of a show, was an important part of their animation portfolio! imagine if the industry you worked in suddenly said "oh by the way you have no access to fully 3/4ths of your resume, so good luck ever getting a job that isn't with us who has it already" It's it's preposterous. It's terrible it's actively evil Streaming came in as an option for people to have access to MORE things, and it has suddenly become a nightmare land, where people are paying constantly, with money and with blood, and they have no control over what they have access to, they can never again share the pieces of Art that they loved. Rant not over necessarily but like im gonna start tailspinning soon. so. im done

#HBO #Cartoon Network #Infinity Train #Mao Mao #owl house #Disney #Bullshit #I'm gonna fuckin scream

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thatonealise · 3 years ago

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On Worlds.

We inhabit them. We've christened ours Earth, but there are some who call Middle-Earth their home. I've heard many dashing tales from the Borderlands, and on all too many occasions guested in Azeroth. All these faraway lands are unique in their own right, sporting flora and fauna so diverse it really does make one wonder how such things came to be, whether out of nothing, or out of the wilds of human imagination.

I've always been under the impression that it would take a person too much blood, sweat and tears to fashion one. But here I stand, alone, and I need a place to set my latest overambitious and never-ending enterprise. It's a habit I'd always detested deep down, but came to respect over time, and now I say it is the prospect of making something grand, chipping away at it day and again, that gives me one more reason (among many, mind you) to get up early in the morning, and wonder what aspect of it am I going to work on next.

So it is, that I've been pondering on the sort of a world I would want you, the Player, to quench your wanderlust, and perhaps take your subconscious somewhere it has never travelled.

My research -- that hunt for inspiration, artistically speaking -- took me to media I have and have never ever witnessed, or heard, or read, or seen. I've browsed art, played this game and that; I've watched film and series, and I've brushed the dust off some of my forlorn literature. I've even dared to show up in the local library for once in an embarrassingly long (by a reader's standards) while, and borrow a "manuscript" or two I thought had a few interesting ideas. But, I have to admit, Stack Exchange remains my personal favourite. There are so many great minds there, with an equal knack for world-building, and even more thought-provoking questions granted inspiring answers. I can't recommend it enough.

On to the point, though, and it is that I've compiled a list of "archetypes" to take into consideration building my own world:

Earth-likes

What a surprise, huh? I believe it to be the most widespread archetype, and it is rather self-explanatory. An Earth-like world is more often than not a carbon copy of the blue planet (or our rather milky galaxy), with oceans and continents shuffled a notch to dodge the cosmic copyright, so to speak. It is again most common, and for a good reason: we know plenty about the science that keeps such worlds (and, by extension, our own) spinning, and the life living the way it does. It is a solid point of reference, backed with facts and studies so easy to look up on the web, or anywhere bookish, and it is always oh so tempting to use.

A few notorious examples taken from modern authors include...

...a continent under the influence of Celtic and Germanic myths; known as Middle-Earth of J. R. R. Tolkien.

...the super-continent of Stillness by Nora K. Jemisin.

...the Present World, to some extent a mirror of ours, and found in Kentaro Miura's Berserk.

...or the unforgiving deserts of Arrakis, credited to Frank Herbert.

...or Faerun, the iconic setting of Forgotten Realms.

...or even the Journey, courtesy of thatgamecompany, and the dunes one has to slide down rushing to the mountain's peak.

If at least two of the above ring a bell, you may have an idea of what brings all these worlds together, and by extension, what I think constitutes an Earth-like world. If not, then let me illustrate my point instead:

Go on, draw a comparison! It wouldn't take a particularly perceptive eye to notice that even a seemingly outlandish example, the desert planet of Arrakis, shines features not too unlike those we may find here on Earth, albeit "turned up to eleven," for the lack of a better expression. They are planets filled with oceans, and continents in between the oceans, most of them, and in general they follow the same rules we follow in our universe: desert storms rise as the wind blows, plates collide to erect mountains, and sentient life is soon to usher in an age of civilisation. Physics and passage of time progress the world as you would expect them to.

Naturally, there will be a degree of variation between Earth-likes. George Martin's Westeros, for one, is an otherwise conventional continent subject to unconventional seasons, some so abnormal they shape entire cultures -- consider the Long Night, for instance, and the impact it had on the Westerosi folklore.

Let's touch on Arrakis again: it is too an Earth-like world at the core, that suffered from a speculated misfortune of a near-miss encounter with a comet, and what once might have been an arid and bountiful world has now been left a scorching desert inhabited by massive sandworms that have evolved to swim through the sands as though they were oceans, and gobble up the teeny-tiny human wanderers crossing their "soil." A few similar worlds come to mind: Kharak, just as extreme and featured in the Homeworld series, and the much more famous Tatooine, the brainchild of George Lucas.

This big quirk -- extreme weather, unpredictable seasons, or morphed geology, or fictional species -- I prefer to dub "the Twist." It is something, a phenomenon or fact of life, that sets this world apart from ours -- something you can use to suggest that the world at hand is its own, and not Earth put in an alternate reality. Extreme biomes of Arrakis or Kharak, and bizarre seasons of Westeros, are just two examples of the Twist. Magic and magical beings found on Azeroth, or in Faerun, is another.

While the Twist is found in all archetypes, I'm of the opinion that Earth-likes depend on it more than others. Take away the Twist, and you will be left with yet another exoplanet, abiding by the rules we all know and, to be frank, find them too mundane to entertain us, or to leave a lasting memory.

As you'd expect, this was the first archetype I visited and considered for my game. The Twist I wish to feature, to go hand in hand with game mechanics I have devised, is the marriage (or clash, depending on your point of view) of science and magic, and the many ways cultures practicing either-or-both would balance them out, or tip the scales in one's favour if they so desire. I'm also very keen on endangering the Player on their journey, which I want to be perilous, and for it to matter more than the destination. Think of it as a world of vagabonds and gallivants, travelling from one bizarre place to a place twice as otherworldly, and embarking on life-threatening quests.

I've considered several worlds, most notably Kharak -- whose native species, the Kushan, traverse it on trucks and jeeps and other sand-crawling machinery. Cities on that scorched planet exist as only safe havens around, surrounded with lifeless sands, and to make it from one city to another is a dangerous affair indeed. The theme resonated with me quite a bit, but I did not find desert planets a good choice for my game, for many reasons:

It is, as the name suggests, a giant desert. There aren't that many biomes (just two, in fact, if you count largely mechanical cities as one) for the Player to explore, and there is little challenge in generating them on the fly, as opposed to a more varied world.

Throwing in arid biomes we discover in worlds like Middle-Earth or Narnia, or Faerun, felt far too conventional to me, and in my mind there would not be much room for an apocalyptic event so crippling as to make exploring this world nigh fatal.

Even if I dodged the desert altogether and rolled with a different biome or biomes, I'd still have to balance between two problems I doubt are easy to solve: featuring more biodiversity in a fundamentally monolithic environment, or more extremes in an Earth-like world that would not fit in very well.

Banality. Banality was a major concern for me, as there are oh so, so many Earth-likes out there in the industry, and the last thing I wish for my little side project is to offer yet another one. No sir!

Scope was the last but nevertheless just as important. It is difficult to fill up a giant continent, or continentS, with enough quests and points of interest to keep the Player invested. It is hard enough to produce enough scripted content, a la World of Warcraft, and it is harder still to delegate the creative matters to an automaton (Talking about you, Left 4 Dead!). Earth-likes, to my understanding, necessitate imposing scale, that I can not hope to achieve neither alone nor in company.

So I scratched this archetype off my list, and again I went searching every nook and cranny of the game industry and beyond for patterns and clues to make into archetype...

Otherlands

Perhaps not the best title to describe a world so otherworldly as to defy all laws native to our universe, but I nonetheless thought it described what I had in mind for such worlds best. Exotics, Otherlands, Alternate Realities, you name it: they spit on the natural laws we've always known, and turn what we consider to be natural upside down, from a relative point of view (I'd image they'd think we earthlings bend their ideas of what is natural, vice versa). They more often than not have so little in common with a conventional; continental world, that as a Player, you ought to be born anew, in a sense, as you have to come to terms with the new reality, and learn the rules alien to your human brain-box.

While not so abundant in fiction or film, there is an unexpected plethora of otherworldly examples found in video games. I suspect, as little more than a humble writer and not at all a qualified game designer, that the blame (the reason, rather) is at least in part to be pinned on the freedom of mechanics worlds detached from all physical boundaries allow. You're no longer on Earth; seldom even in our universe, and more often in a dimension forged by game designers to fulfill a very blunt purpose: to serve the gameplay, in full. I'd imagine it is times easier to set a game built on mechanics hostile to laws of physics somewhere abstract; mallable, in a way, to the designer's whim.

Thinking of examples took me to these fine pieces of digital entertainment:

William Chyr's Manifold Garden is, to me, a quintessential Otherland. It is set in an abstract world wrapping on itself, juxtaposing impossible geometry against Euclidean space. About the only link to our reality it maintains is the presence of gravity. Look up and down, try interacting with the objects or solving the puzzles, and you will very soon understand this is NOT the realm accomodative of your earthly instincts.

Alice: Madness Returns, too, features an Otherland (not Otherlands, fellow Alice fans!), a level set among the clouds, far above in the sky -- none other than Cardbridge! Playing cards dwell there, and glide along the windy streams to form marvellous paper castles in the sky, and bridges, and gates for Alice to cross on her way to the evil (is she really?) Queen's heartful (quite literally) domain. Like in Manifold Garden, physics still permeates this world, but the only "actor" it appears to affect is Alice herself. All that surrounds her, on the other hand, behaves in a way we would think odd.

Oddly enough, Valve's Ricochet is one more example of an Otherland, the way I see it. It's set in a pitch black void, a pocket dimension of a sort, and constricts its gunslinging inhabitants to a small archipelago of quasi-futuristic-looking platforms. It is in many ways abstract and disconnected from what we would brand a "real" world; akin more to a simulation than something even an advanced civilisation would be able to orchestrate in the vacuum of deep space. It instead serves a solitary purpose: to be an open and clear arena for the Players to pull off dextereous ricochets and physics-bending leaps from one spot to the next. There are no other earthly rules to govern this world, and beyond the dark arena is the thrice as dark abyss.

Of course, by this logic, one could consider more abstract games along the lines of Tetris Effect or even Pinball Dreams, to also fit under the same umbrella of otherworldness, and I reckon they would be right. Both games take place in places foreign to our expectation for a, dare I say, traditional setting. This is not to say, oh no, that Otherlands belong to just the games -- far from it! Otherlands are to be found in many other media.

Off the top of my head, I'd count that one scene from the cult-classic 2001: A Space Odyssey, as a "classic" Otherland in a mind-boggling nutshell:

The message I'm trying to convey, if not clear, is that Otherlands are very stubborn, and insistent on breaking you as an earthly thinker; to augment your mind and let it comprehend and utilise the new reality and the rules it enforces, like one would use the laws of our universe. "When in Rome," is the mantra they will have you etch into memory, until you think and interact with it as though you had never known another home.

The entire world, in other words, is one big Twist, standing in stark contrast to the little twists applied here and there to an Earth-like dimension. Furthermore, one could even assert that the Twist in an Otherland is turned on its head -- whereas in an Earth-like Twists were other-landish phenomena many in number but little in scope -- the Twists in an Otherland are instead few and far between, and grounded in reality. They are the links linking an Otherland to the Earth-like law. Say, physics would be very much expected in an Earth-like world, but treated as an exotic Twist in an Otherland.

To be a little more precise, an Otherland does not bother to stay true to the mechanics we think mundane and natural. It instead moulds or kills them outright, and throws itself at the mercy of the designer's wants and wishes.

Otherlands were an option, but not the option, that I'd choose for my world. I cherish the freedom they bestow upon you as a designer, but it alone did not convince me to opt for this archetype. Simply put, the downs outweighed the ups:

The world I wish to create will host fantasy far too Tolkien-esque to distance so much from Earth and earthly law. There is, in my view, a strong pull among many dungeon-crawling aficionados towards fantasy, and fantasy I will deliver. My own strain of fantasy, to be clear, but it will nevertheless mandate a degree of reality deemed by me too Earth-like to belong in an Otherland. I just can not see, at this time, a world of fantasy that is also an Otherland, not if I want my world to radiate welcoming familiarity.

This game being an open-ended RPG, it is difficult for me to envision it in an abstract environment. It calls, as I see it, for landmarks sensible to someone never ever "tainted" by the quirks of Otherlands, familiar and homely in a way, based in laws of physics and around points of interest grounded in our reality. Elevating it to be the Twist of an Otherland, brings the latter much closer to an Earth-like, but not quite. Neither this nor that, if you will, and that in turn leads me to the next and last archetype...

Near-Earths

Should you ever run into the same predicament as yours truly did in the paragraph above, I'd strongly advise you to consider Near-Earths. Not entirely Earth-like, but also too Earth-like to fit as an Otherland, a Near-Earth world is based to some considerable extent in the laws and traits of an Earth-like. It takes the best of both worlds -- mind-boggling Twists of an Otherland and experiential familiarity of an Earth-like -- and mixes them up to shape up something in-between.

Near-Earth remains ultimately an extension of an Earth-like world at its core, but to set itself apart it puts an emphasis on large-scale Twists -- that would be considered too outlandish for an Earth-like. One popular trope among Near-Earths is to feature earthly topology, strewn around the universe in the form of isles or even whole continents. Fundamental laws that define an Earth-like it bends to a fictional degree, but preserves the essentials, such as planets or stars or faimiliar dimensions, that make up our universe. Thus the link between our universe and that lives on, and it's easy for a newcomer to the world to find their way around with little to no hand-holding required.

I can't help but conjure up a few shots from Treasure Planet, which I gather needs no introduction, to illustrate my line of thought. Take one of the more iconic stills from this flawed masterpiece, R.L.S. Legacy docked at the spaceport of Crescentia:

It is in many ways familiar, I think, to anyone who has ever been to any run-of-the-mill harbour, except that ginormous frigate appears to stay suspended mid-air, not even ropes to hold it in place, and not at all swaying side to side on the high seas as one would assume. No, in this universe carpenters and shipwrigts build 18th century vessels propelled by internal combustion engines to fly through the breathable expanse that they call Ethereum. Indeed, there it is possible to breathe in space, so long as one stays careful not to lean too much on the taffrail and fall into the Ethereum proper, doomed forever to be a cosmic castaway.

Treasure Planet is very representative of a Near-Earth world, as I reckon the aforementioned scene proves. While grounded in culture and (partly) science of our universe, it strays a lot from what our scientists would deem feasible, to the point that it is fundamentally different from our universe in some respect, such as there existing a breatheable atmosphere everywhere in their universe, but not so fundamental as to defy every law of science we know in our world. Physics, and planets, and other celestial bodies and phenomena still exist there, albeit altered in a variety of ways.

Another such example would the High Wilderness, that we're told to travel aboard a literal locomotive, in the brilliant game and one of my many favourites -- Sunless Skies:

It, too, features all the same biomes and structures and many laws with a basis in our universe, and like Treasure Planet, it introduces a major twist: the space beyond the confines of Earth (which does exist in Sunless Skies, and generally follows our history with significant deviations perpetrated by Masters of the Bazaar) is an intricate maze of seldom interlocked and often overlapping topology, stacked on top of one another, and filled with an atmosphere reminiscent of Ethereum, breathable but named a different name.

It is still familiar enough to us as earthlings, and it would not take a seasoned Otherlander to pick the thing up and know the rules of play by instinct. Sure, we are driving a locomotive through time and space, and pass by living stars that govern all, called the Judgements, but the spaces we traverse and people we meet and phenomena we witness are not confusing in the slightest. Shrouded in mystery, maybe, but ultimately sensisble if given enough thought. There is not another dimension for us to consider, and impossible geometry wrapping on itself to comprehend, as seen in Manifold Garden. Nay.

On the Judgements, as a side note, I've found them to be an interesting twist in and of themselves: they are intended to be the law-makers that decide what is real in this world, and what is not. Kill, or posses them, and the world will return to a chaotic state, easily a contender for the quintessential Otherland.

One last sample for you to taste would be the city-state of Sigil, the center of all planes in the planar world of Planescape (pardon the tautology!). Also an earthly world in many ways, it departs from tradition by dabbling in the ideas of interplanar travel, and whole planes of existence drifting from place to place depending on the belief of its denizens. Name me a single spiral-shaped medieval town suspended miles in the air:

I hope my criteria is now clear, or clear-er, better still if as a day. A Near-Earth has some of its fundamental laws thrown away, or meddled with, but there is always at least some foundation identical to that of an Earth-like.

Enter the Wild

In the end, I had a choice to make; a choice of three options, all of which bore pros and posed cons. Weighing all of them took me several restless nights, about a week in total, and some creative encouragement from a colleague, who suggested I turn to Sunless Skies-esque worlds for inspiration: islands floating in the sky, nurturing islanders and their peculiar settlements. I fell in love with the idea in a heartbeat, and on and on I went searching for references. It implied to me a Near-Earth, and all the marks of distinguishment I outlined before for other archetypes pointed to Near-Earths as the perfect fit for my world.

I settled for a few points of reference, among them...

Variably-sized islands and quasi-continents of Dragon Hungers, complete with pocket cultures and hosts of creatures that dwell there:

"Outdated" and outlandish means of transportation between the islands, like airships or fire-breathing dragons, a la Sunless Skies:

Celestial bodies of Treasure Planet, like black holes or nebulas, making an appearance, though toned down a bit to ditch some of their more destructive and lethal properties. A black hole wouldn't spaghettify you in the blink of an eye, but falling into one will nonetheless bring a swift (albeit not quite so fast and unavoidable) end to your career:

What they amounted to, ultimately, is an amalgamation of varied islands, some as big as a continent, others as small as my balcony, and all sporting ecosystems never-before-seen on most other islands. They are suspended in the sky, fortunate to have a man-friendly atmosphere, with a devilish twist I'd rather keep a secret for the time being.

Wannabe heroes make their living sailing through this sky aboard mighty airships or fire-breathing dragons (among many other means of transportation), from one island and on to the next, undertaking quests and accepting commissions from the locals to earn themselves some sustenance. It's a floating world of vagabonds, gallivanters, and legends-in-the-making.

OR! Those same gallivanters may find a particular island, or spot upon on the island, very tempting to settle on. Indeed, if they so desire, players would be able to adopt a sedentary lifestyle, and see what the wilds beyond the comfort of their heart might bring one treacherously blissful morning...

Us locals have entitled this universe the Wild. Enter at your own risk, traveller, for you may never return. This theme seemed to me like a good middle-ground between all the problems I've outlined reviewing archetypes:

Scope was confined to the typical bounds of an island. Some are bigger than others, no doubt, but all of them are a far cry from the usual dimensions of a continent. A narrow scope, as such, is a scope amiable to developers limited in number, or readiness to tackle an enormous landmass.

Narrowed scope in turn shortens the distance one must travel to leave one point of interest for another. We're feeding two birds with one scone -- there is no need for us, as developers, to fill up the lands betwixt with something for you to do, and you won't have to drag yourself through an overstretchesd piece of half-arsed (pardon my French) filler to finally reach the objective that caught your eye in the first place.

At last, as my colleague pointed out, islands in space are capital. Done before to be sure, that road has been travelled many times (and so were most others), but it is still the Earth-likes that proudly keep at the victorious spree as the dominant archetype among the developers. A Near-Earth to me felt like a fair and much-wanted change of scenery, for once in a blue moon.

A floating world shattered into many habitable pieces by far imposes so many more factors upon the cultures, languages, civilisation, technology, and nature of the wild, that to turn it down in favour of an all-too-researched Earth-like world seemed a lazy way out the massive creative problem, I think, many people of letters and pencil and other trades would be thrilled to approach.

P.S. I do realise all my scribbled judgements are arbitrary, and the lines separating Near-Earth from Earth-likes, from Otherlands, is apparently fine, and entirely subjective. These are little more than my five cents; my five thoughts on the subject, and I personally found grouping these worlds into archetypes a good "bookmark" that I've used and will likely come back to designing my own worlds. Peace.

#worldbuilding #devlog #gamedev

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be-ready-when-i-say-go · 5 years ago

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O’ Captain, My Captain

Thanks to the Old Me music video, I unearthed this old fic. Here is Football!Calum. With a hint of Artist!Calum.

Calum took his chance. To be selfish. To have both things. Football and Art.

if you like what I write and post, consider supporting me on ko-fi. It helps me save up for graduate fees!

_________________________________________

The grass feels different beneath his sneakers. He’s already walked with the team to put the equipment up. The coaches have already clapped him on the back, smiled at him, told him that he made his team proud. Though most importantly, they had hoped he had done himself proud. His mom and dad have already wrapped him in hugs, grins plastered to their faces. They’ve already taken him out to dinner, stuffed him with the fanciest thing on the menu. He’s already cheered in the locker room. His voice is still a little hoarse. Three championship games in a row under his belt. This game, that took place less than three hours ago, was his last hurrah. His freshman and sophomore year weren’t total defeats. They made it to the finals, but didn’t quite make it all the way. And now with junior, senior, and this first year as a postdoc have felt like fever dreams.

It’s amazing to go out on such a high note. He can’t help but smile at the thought, the adrenaline that fueled him as he drove the ball downfield with just seconds left. They were up by one goal. It’s not like they needed another one. Calum was greedy for it. No, he was starving for it. It was the fire in his bones that kept him running down that field. The goalie, normally pretty good at reading fakes, took the bait as Calum juked left a little. He dove a second too early, clearing the right side of the goal and Calum watched the ball sail before hitting the back of the net. Time did not exist. He wasn’t breathing. Just watching the ball, praying it didn’t hit the beam.

Folding his arms behind his head, he stretches out onto the grass. It’s cool even beneath the hoodie. He’s had some good memories on this field. The summer before he started his undergraduate career, he conditioned with them. He was picked up by his team at his secondary school. He could’ve gone pro. School was never supposed to be his thing. It never was his thing if he was honest. He was bored one day in school and decided to crash one of the art classes, skipping the ever so important free block built into his schedule so he could study and work on homework that was coming up or forgotten until the last minute. The teacher knew him fairly well and he wouldn’t rat him out. They broke out another sketchbook and some pencils. “If you’re going to avoid the other schoolwork, just doodle. I’ll give ya extra credit.”

So Calum figured what the harm, besides a potentially insurmountable stack of after school detentions. He could skip class, fuck about in a sketchbook and get some extra credit. He was all for it. But he found himself skipping his other classes more often. He wasn’t terrible at drawing. He definitely wasn’t great. It was just something he wanted to get better at. He came by the art hall after class and sat, sketching the lockers lining the walls. He sketched classrooms. He was getting good and he was enjoying it. The next year he made sure he was taking art classes. Calum never thought he’d give a shit about school, but he gave a shit about art. While he cared for art, he never saw it as viable. Football was his only option.

“You thought about uni?” His teacher asked right at the end of Year 11.

“Not much. School’s not my thing.”

“But art is.”

“So is football,” Calum countered.

“Aren’t some schools looking to give you a scholarship?”

Calum looked up from the sketchbook, back out the window to the benches for lunch when the weather permitted. “Yeah, some in the States. A couple in the UK, a few local schools. But I can’t. You know, football’s my thing.”

His teacher sat down next to him, gently sliding the book out from Calum’s hand. He already knows what’s on the inside but flips through the pages gingerly. The football field, his friends, his parents and sister, scenes of everyday life. The way Calum captured light was amazing, and normally took years to get just right. It was so easy to see the sort of knack Calum had for it. “What if both could be your thing?”

It wasn’t as easy as just having both things. He needed to keep his grades up in order to play at a university. He had to give a shit and it was quickly showing in his first years that he wasn’t. He was nearly dropped from the team for his grades. The general education requirements were ridiculous and all he wanted to do was run on the field and draw not the other bullshit between. But a chat with his mother changed all that. She was never unfair but always firm. He went to the tutoring center. He got off academic probation. He kept his head above water and pushed through the general education stuff.

Now here he is, going into his second year of graduate studies for studio art. Here he is, at the end of his football eligibility. Here he is laying in the middle of the field.

He can still hear the roar of the crowd. The sidelines are still packed with people. His body is sore no doubt. Even the cool down stretch can’t take all the pain away. When he goes to sit up, he’s definitely going to feel it in his quads. Right now in his memory, he is still dribbling downfield. He is still sweating, panting, praying he can get that final goal. Right now he is the little boy in his parent’s backyard, grinning ear to ear as his mother takes a picture before his first game. He is twelve again, running drills after practice until his legs felt like they would collapse beneath him. The only thing that matters right now is the echo of his heart thundering in his chest. He will always miss this feeling, everything on the line. Blood, sweat, and pain all pushing him to keep his eyes open, pushing him to be two steps ahead.

“Hey!” Calum hears the shouting but thinks nothing of it. “Hey!” the voice calls again. It’s closer to him now. The sounds of running over grass hitting his ears. He’s all too familiar with the sound. “You’re Calum, right? Calum Hood?”

He opens his eyes, squinting up to the voice. He sits up with a nod. “Yeah. Yeah, I am.” The girl’s dressed in a leotard and leggings, duffle bag hiked up onto her shoulder.

“Sorry to interrupt. I just wanted to say congrats on the win. My brother’s on the team.” Now as the sun clears and he can see her face a bit more properly, she does resemble Hawkins. Sophomore. Good guy, pretty kick-ass center fullback.

“He never mentioned having a sister.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not exactly cool to go to the same uni as your sibling. But I got picked for academics and he got in on football.”

“Looks like you play something? Maybe the dance team?” he questions, gesturing to the bag.

She nods. “Yeah, sort of.”

“Sort of? Either you dance or you don’t,” he laughs.

“I do, dance I mean. I also do baton twirling. But didn’t mean to interrupt your moment too much. Just wanted to say congrats. I’ll miss you on the field.”

Calum nods, hugging his knees to his chest. He glances over the opened field. “I’m going to miss it too.”

“It’ll always be here though. In a way, you know?” He hums in agreement with her statement. It will be. Just won’t be quite the same. “We’ll be practicing at the other end of the field. But if it’s too loud or anything, don’t be afraid to shout at us or anything.”

He smiles. “We are outdoors. Only so much I can really complain about it.”

She grins, a small tuft of laughter escaping her. “Touche.” She takes another step. “Well, congrats again, if I don’t see you at the party later.”

“Thank you. It means a lot.”

Calum watches her cross the field for a few seconds longer and continues to sit, knees to his chest. His legs are still sore. They will be for a couple more days. He’s alright with that. Calum reaches into his bag, pulling out his sketchbook and pencils. He tries to capture the scene from memory, the packed crowd, the anticipation, the desire. His chest squeezes and his grip on his pencil slacks.

The sting behind his eyes confirms the tightness of his chest. He brings his gaze back up to the slightly clouded sky, blurry due to the tears. He’s won. He actually won and he’s leaving. The end is sweeter than he imagined. It’s bitter too, to know that he won’t ever step back into his jersey. But it’s somehow sweeter. To know that his legacy will leave on, for at least one more year as he finishes out his degree in studio art. It’s sweeter to end like this. To end on top, to end knowing that he followed a path that allowed him to chase both loves.

_________________________________

The house is loud, even from the end of the block. It’s a good thing that the football house is situated pretty close to the rest of the frat houses, or else issues would ensue. Calum’s sure something is up as he closes in on the house. The ruckus isn’t from the football house, it’s from the house next to it. He’s unsure if he should try the door. The lights are on, maybe he’s early. The text he got told him nine. He’s only a few minutes late. Public transit was a little late getting him from the stop near his apartment, which isn’t terrible.

The door’s locked. So he knocks, stuffing his hands back into the pocket of his jacket. When it opens, he’s greeted with cheers, slaps to the shoulder. “The man of the hour!”

“Nah, nah,” Calum smiles, slipping out of his coat. He drapes it over the pile forming in the corner, over the back of one of the chairs. He turns to the kitchen. There’s a fixing for just a beer hitting him. He freezes though, staring at his coaches. “Coach Ball, Coach Hobbs, what’re--what’s happening here?”

They grin at him. Coach Hobbs steps forward. “We know. It’s not cool of us to crash a party like this. But, we figured you might want to know this before ya get sloshed.”

Coach Ball steps in. “We can’t extend your contract. Shite we know. But what we can do, is make sure you always keep a part of us with ya.” He extends a white box with a red bow wrapped around it.

The air’s not even pressing itself into his lungs it feels. Calum’s hands shake a little as he takes the box, pulling on the mesh bow. Pulling the top off, there sits a white jersey, decorated in his number, 11, staring back at him in green. The school’s name and logo also printed onto it. He pulls it out of the box, tears still slightly blurring his vision. As he turns it over, he notices his name also written across the back. He’s normally got a crier. Not that he’s crying right now, it’s just a few tears. It’s not like they can retire his number. But the ability to still hold onto it, the memories make him happy. The fact that he can still hold onto this.

“Thank you,” he whispers, putting the jersey back. He pulls both of them into hugs. His lungs can now fully expand as his coaches pat him on the shoulder, whispered praises falling gently between the three of them. Both coaches leave after that, but not before taking a beer each with them. The room chants for Calum to don the new jersey. He sheds the black tee, draping the white material over his body. A can is passed to each of them.

“This round’s for Captain Hood,” Trundle shouts. He’s taking over as captain now. “He always sailed this ship to success.”

The words catch in his throat. “It-it wasn’t me. It was the team. You guys sailed yourselves.” There are another round of cheers, cans clinking together and the first seem is bitter as always but Calum gets choked as his throat seizes attempting to not let any more tears fall down his cheeks.

The party continues, the music thumping throughout the house. Less dancing but more mingling is the call for socialization. The same girl from early comes up to him, leggings traded in for distressed jeans and a lacey cropped top. “Drink looks a little low,” she grins at him, before holding out another can.

He has no clue if she’s younger than Hawkins or not, so he politely declines the drink. “Thanks though. Gonna drink up on some water right now.” She nods and then shimmies through the crowd.

When the party dies down, around one in the morning, Calum lingers around to help clean up some before his ride pulls up. The driver is nice, keeps conversation pretty short during the five-minute drive. As he walks back into his apartment, the first of his roommates to arrive from their nights of mischief, he settles onto the couch. He unzips himself out of his boots, pulling the jacket off his shoulders. He inspects the jersey, thankfully no spills, no stains. He pulls it off, walks to his room and drapes it over the back of his chair at his desk. He’s unsure of whether or not to frame it. Though, his brain is completely sober right now to even consider that. He shimmies out of the jeans and lies across his bed, sleep finding him fast.

His alarm blares, the next morning. He groans, partially cursing himself for leaving it set. But he knows he needs it. Even though his shift is later in the evening, he’s still got a paper to finish up and his portfolio to clean up. It sucks to have to worry now about tuition, his scholarship covered him for all his years as a player, but now, with one last year and no more sports eligibility, him and his parents are figuring out the best way to cover the costs.

Calum sits up, the jersey staring back at him. It’s real. He didn’t really dream up the coaches handing him that jersey. He didn’t conjure it up in his subconscious as his own selfish desire to never part from it. That jersey is real and his, his number with him forever. It continues to hit him that his time is up during the week. More and more people stop him in the hallways, on the paths that lead to buildings, in the library, in the cafeteria to congratulate him. The older ladies serving him, heap his plates with extras, smile at him in the way that only older ladies can that make you feel fuzzy on the inside.

He settles down at the benches in front of the library and works on sketching the fountain. He’s been working on it for his final portfolio for a long time. He watches some kids, kicking a football around. His chest warms as they laugh amongst themselves. He decides to put them into the drawing too. He wishes he could capture their laughter, the way they grin at each other and shout at what should be a foul. He wishes he could capture the smiles on their parents' faces as they watch their children. Glancing down to his watch, he notes that his whole break is just about up, so he packs up his things and starts towards the art building.

In his brief walk, he realizes he could’ve chosen pro. That would’ve worked out for him. But he wouldn’t have these opportunities to still feel human, to chase for that rush of getting the lighting just right in a drawing, in the huge release when his brush hits that canvas. Art is the same need to emote like on the field. It’s just on canvas this time. He could have both things and he’s glad he got them.

#calum hood #calum hood fic #calum hood fanfic #football!calum #calum 5sos #calum hood imagine #5sos #5sos imagine #5sos fanfic #5sos fic #h writes #5 seconds of summer #5 seconds of summer fic #5 seconds of summer fanfic #5 seconds of summer imagine #artist!calum

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kamari333 · 5 years ago

Note

I had to actually look back to see if I made any tumblr posts about these guys. I couldn’t find any??? So I guess this is my oppertunity to scream about these absolute fucking bastards.

Now. Um. Forewarning: I don’t actually know a lot about the original dreamtale. Or, I don’t keep up with it, at least. I read the first origin comic (and a bit of the cream ship comic) one time a while ago and... i dunno. found it lacking? I liked the premise but there was something distinctly missing in it for me. So these headcanons are more like an AU (an AU of an AU, surprise surprise, I’m on my shit again XD) that I thought up to help me enjoy the concept more when writing it. I’ve been calling it ‘Dr33mtal3’ in my head, but a friend named it ‘Dryad Dreamtale’ so either of those names work.

So. Dream and Night are tree spirits shaped like skeletons, born of the tree of duality to be its guardians. They were made to be more like monsters to better protect the tree and put its power to use.

Now, plants and gods (and especially god-plants) have very different ideals, morals, and expectations than mortals and humans and monsters. Dream and Night are half plant/god, but they are also half monster/mortal, so they cannot relate entirely to their tree mom or completely understand her. Likewise, she could not completely understand them. Thus, the twins understandably had a stressful, dysfunctional childhood and have long lasting mommy/daddy issues.

They also suffer from significant other kinds of trauma inflicted on them by their villager guardians.

So they are both psychologically fucked up.

They both have “wings” and “tentacles” but Night hides his wings and Dream hides his tentacles. Night’s wings are smaller than Dreams.

they aren’t actually tentacles though. they are roots and vines. because they are tree spirits. using those roots/vines, they can directly soak up energy and water. likewise, the “feathers” on their wings are actually leaves (except near the base and ridges, which are more like flower petals). they use these leaves to breathe in ambient emotions.

when injured, they bleed resin. that goop on nightmare? excess sap/resin he’s overgenerating thanks to consuming so many apples.

usually only strong internal emotions would make them do that. its only because of such strong internal emotions that nightmare continues to do that even after a thousand years.

i think that, being plants (which are terribly spiteful and innovative creatures) night and dream can control the consistency and nature of their sap and resin. dream keeps his sweet and sugary at all times, but nightmare switxhes between spicy-like-ghost-pepper-in-the-face caustic and rubber, and mild maple syrup, depending on his mood and how much he wants the person he is touching to hurt.

i think that dream is both terribly selfish and painfully selfless all at once, both kind and cruel. i think he is a very seelie fae who will never break a promise, but will not let you go unpunished for breaking yours. i think he has no problem breaking your legs if it means saving you from something else. dream will happily beat someone within an inch of their life, then nurse them back to health, if he thinks for a moment it is for the greater good.

nightmare goes to great lengths to make people hate him. at the end of the day he is as disgusted with himself as anyone else, but he does it and will keep doing it because if no one fears him, they will destroy him. nightmare is a terrible unseelie fae, but he will never speak an untrue word or break an oath once struck. it is not in his nature. he will rule with an iron fist, but he is just as capable of selflessness as he is of cruelty.

i think dream is so concerned with the big picture he sometimes forgets little details. i think he is the type to take in strays before he has a home to keep them in. he befriends ink and ink makes him a multiverse home to keep his people safe in. dream then takes it upon himself to make sure it stays operational, despite eventually accumulating a city’s worth of people in what was originally a 4 bedroom townhouse. lucky him that ink has his back, continually expanding as needed.

i think nightmare is far more artistic and clever than folks give him credit for. i think he enjoys making things. i think he is the type of man to take great pride in building everything he has himself. his castle is made out of his own power: stone made of his own resin, hardened into amber; wood grown from his own bones; tapestries woven of textiles made from his own leaves, pets, and processed wood. his castle of black amber is constructed of his own blood, sweat, and tears, lovingly handcrafted art for him to live in. all natural. all his. (such a shame he never got around to furnishing all of it, having only enough time and drive to do the first floor with how long handweaving the carpets took; such a shame no one noticed or cared because the fear for their lives overshadowed any awe they could have had upon seeing the delicate craftsmanship of the arching ceilings and looming statues).

i think dream and night both love fresh water and sunlight. they get incredibly sleepy if its too hot or too cold. they are terrified of fire, squirrels, fungi, and insects. they dont like birds much either. they easily get jealous of other plants (comically so, to the point of sassing or threatening or passive-aggressively insulting non-sapient rose bushes or fica or succulents they come into contact with). they are scared of mistletoe (being a plant that eats other plants, kinda).

i hc that dream with faint dead on his feet if he gets too scared, and nightmare screams like a white girl in a horror movie.

i like to think that because they are trees, they have a “season” (like heat, but for trees) where they are very pro-affection. their leaves turn pink and they involuntarily cover themselves in pink pollen that drives nearby creatures�� libido into overdrive. neither brother likes this, so when their season hits they hide away so nobody notices (night because he does not want to seem weak, dream because he does not want to inconvenience anyone else).

i like to headcanon that a holdover from their human attributes means each brother can only formulate one set of sex organs. i’ll give you a hint: nightmare is trans in my hc (be gay do crime). he takes great pains to make sure nobody knows this.

i like to think that both brothers hide all of this, hide all of their tree-ness as best they can, and instead hide behind the aspects of being an angel and a tentacle abomination in order to throw off anyone who might look for weaknesses. so nobody knows what they really are.

These are all superficial HCs of course. The big thing is that i wanted their natures to be... more complicated than simply good and evil. They believe and say that they are guardians of positivity and negativity (and in a way thats true), but only in its most simplistic of forms.

Dream is the aspect of Giving: he radiates pollen and magical influence to embue those around him with his power. He can give them emotions. He eats positivity, thats what sustains him, but his power is to give. He could just as easily give his people bad feelings as good ones (not that he knows this). However, Dream only knows and cares about giving positivity. So he does. He leaves his magic and influence on the souls of anyone who will give him the oppertunity, and once the door is open, he will continually feed them his power to make them happy. He will eat/breathe that happiness, converting it to energy, perpetuating the cycle.

But unmitigated mania has its drawbacks. There is a price to be paid in the end.

Nightmare is the aspect of Taking. He takes and takes, taking the emotions and energy of others for himself. He can even take the entropy out of an injury to heal a wound. Nightmare can take positivd feelings out of others, but for some reason his body doesn’t like him doing that and makes him sick/hurt. He has a much easier time taking negativity, draining away the hurt and fear and exhaustion, leaving a calming emptiness behind. Nightmare cannot process or use everything he takes for himself, needing to expell it as a waste product. He converts negative feelings (and the wasted energy disipated through entropy) into energy, which lets him continue his taking.

You cannot fill a hole that is already filled, after all. You must empty it first.

These two aspects are neither good nor evil in and of themselves. There are good and bad things about them. But these aspects have been oversimplified and misinterpreted by those around the twins that even they themselves do not fully understand what it is that they are.

and i think a story about them coming to understand themselves would be so much more interesting than a simple story of good vs evil.

#kamari333answers #kamari333headcanon #dr33mtal3

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raccoonfootproductions · 6 years ago

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An important comment from a Glitch Techs board artist!

Left on a Vailskibum94 video about the show’s production being halted:

Hey guys! Phil here. I'm actually a board artist on the show (I'm the dingus in the bottom right corner of that crew photo.), and I wanted to chime in here for a sec and give you guys the lowdown. For starters, thank you all SO much for the support in the comments. We've been working on this show since.. man.. 2016? It's been a long ride. My fellow crew members and I have really put everything we had into it, and it's hopefully going to blow you all away. The last two days have been super weird. We were just as surprised as you all are now. Most of the story team actually got up and went on a hike this morning because, hey, why not right? But it's been a long two and a half years on GT. Eric and Dan are amazing showrunners. Trust me when I say this one is something special. Which brings me to the second bit- and this is something I really want to clarify- Glitch Techs is NOT cancelled. It is still going to air! I know Vailskibum talked about this in the video and definitely did mention it, but I wanted to reiterate. If you're already interested in the show, please, please tune in and watch! That being said, I don't have an air date to give to you all. I'm 100% sure Eric will put it on his instagram as soon as he's able, but for now, stay posted. I'd leave my IG handle here but that seems too self-serving and most of my content is just dogs and post-it doodles so... maybe not. Go follow Jules at wolfsteak on IG. He was the guy in that interview in the video, and he's one of my best friends. He's also talked about this whole thing a fair bit on his twitter. But legit, look up any of the board artists that work on glitch, and I guarantee you'll see us shouting the airdate from the mountaintops as soon as we find out.

Now, realtalk. First off, thanks to Vailskibum for making this video. Having you guys on our side is a good feeling. Again, we've put blood sweat and tears into this show, and to see you all so excited for original content is heartwarming. I keep searching the internet for leaks every day, hoping you guys have found more art or made more fanart, etc. SO many awesome sketches of Miko that I've seen, and a few of [redacted]. Actually, have y'all found out his name yet? I know 4chan leaked some stuff. Anyways, there's one bit that I want to talk about here, and that's a line around the middle of the vid that discusses why Nick halted season 2. I'm going to be blunt- straight up, I have no idea. But it isn't for lack of enthusiasm. The network, the show runners, all of us- literally everyone at Nick is SO hyped for this show. I'm telling you, Ian Graham, our SP, worked on Avatar, Korra, Zim, etc- and I can't quote him directly, but every time there's a lock animatic screening all he tells me about is how hyped the execs are for this. And he's seen some amazing work come through this network. To Vailskibum's credit, his guess makes sense. I'm not trying to undercut anybody here or jump in at the last second with a "well actually" comment. I just want to have a dialogue with you guys- the people we're making this show for. The viewers that seek out this content and want it, and support it before it's ever even seen the light of day. I'm not going to lie and say that there are some things I can't talk about. But I want you all to hopefully know and believe me when I say that Nickelodeon, and specifically the Glitch Techs show-runners, are flat out amazing. It's easy to think of a big network like this as a machine sometimes, and I certainly wont defend every decision that has been made in the past (mostly because I've only been there for 5 years), but I also don't want you to walk away from this video thinking that they're some evil corporate monster that set out to shut us down. I think Nick is on its way somewhere great. Glitch Techs is a huge stepping stone towards that path.

I've said a lot, so bare with me. Ultimately, I'd ask that you guys check the show out when it comes out. It's going to freaking rock. I know that sounds like a no-brainer statement from someone that worked on it, but trust me on this one. I can fully admit when my art is bad. I'll be the first person to tell you- but this ain't that. Everyone on this crew has a passion for storytelling, games, movies- you name it. We want to entertain you guys. I live for those "hell yeah" moments in movies. Han Solo taking out those tie fighters in A New Hope still gives me chills. And I don't claim to know what the future is for Glitch Techs, but I'll say this- if you want to see more, watch more. Let the network know! Nickelodeon has a social media team that actively DOES listen to you guys. I know Narbeh pretty well, and he WANTS to hear from you all. Like, if you've made a video about Nick in the past, I guarantee you that we've all probably watched it. We love seeing you guys get hyped for things. We read these comments, and so does the network. We live in an age where social media is so omnipresent, and fan influence has the ability to do amazing things. Be respectful of course, but if you're a fan of the show when it airs and you want more, voice it! I know I'm beating the proverbial horse here, but I love this show. It's true, season 2 is on pause. It happens, and that's just life sometimes. There's no denying that. But YOUR reaction shapes this. We do this all for you. Without you there is no Nickelodeon.

I'm going to cut this off before it gets too cheesy. It's already like half the length of Dune. Thanks for reading this far, and for listening to us and, furthermore, for supporting us. I cannot express how thankful I am. You're all Techs in my book.

TL;DR: Glitch Techs is NOT cancelled, Nickelodeon is actually enthusiastic about it, and it needs our support when it airs.

#glitch techs #nickelodeon #nickelodeon animation studio #nicktoons #animation news #animation

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strongcoffeestrongeropinions · 6 years ago

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Be a guest, or: how to not be an appropriative assh*le

We’ve all been guests before. Whether it’s at a dinner party, a wedding, or a friend’s house. We’ve all been guests, and hopefully, relatively decent ones.

The concept of being a guest isn’t particularly difficult. It means you’ve been welcomed into a space, to enjoy it respectfully – but you don’t have ownership over it. You don’t get to destroy it, alter it, or make executive decisions involving it. You’ve simply been invited to share in something special. Something that belongs to someone else.

Being a guest is a privilege, and we are taught how to be a polite guest at an early age. It’s not an outlandish concept. Don’t draw on the walls. Don’t tell the host how they should have decorated their home. Ask permission to do or touch certain things. Don’t demand that the host cater to your every whim. Say thank you for having been invited. Basic stuff, right? None of this should be controversial.

So why does it seem to get so complex when it comes to appreciating vs appropriating cultures different from your own? When you think about it through the lens of being a guest, it really isn’t that complicated.

The first and most important thing is: you have to know when you’re a guest.

If you’re at someone else’s house, it’s pretty crucial that you know you’re not at home. Because the way we behave is different at one’s own home versus someone else’s. In your own space, it’s okay to leave clothes on the floor or dishes in the sink sometimes, because you know you’ll get to it later. But at someone else’s house, that would be extremely rude. A level of respect, extra care, and deference is required when it comes to things and spaces that are not your own.

So look around and ask yourself: did I grow up in this house? Did I paint these walls? Am I paying these bills? If the answer is no, be aware that you are not at your house, and act accordingly.

Now that you know you’re a guest, be a good guest.

You don’t (and shouldn’t) get to do whatever you want at someone else’s house. As the saying goes, “my house, my rules” – when not at one’s own house, a certain level of submissiveness to the host and compliance to the host’s way of living is the norm. Even if you don’t take your shoes off at home, you would at your friend’s house, right?

Being a polite and respectful guest also means not trying to dictate the rules of someone else’s home. Don’t redecorate, for example. Try the food that is shared with you. Appreciate the generosity of that offer and savour the flavours. You’re more than welcome to enjoy it. But don’t try to suggest “improvements” to a treasured family recipe, and don’t rename the recipe to something you think sounds cooler. Again – you’re a guest, and as such, don’t have the power to make executive decisions.

And lastly: don’t steal credit from the owner.

Imagine if you went to a friend’s house, liked the interior design, and claimed to have picked out all the furniture yourself. Or, imagine if you claimed you built the actual house, when it was in fact your friend’s great-grandparents who painstakingly built their family home, brick by brick, and lovingly passed it down through their family. That would be appallingly arrogant, wouldn’t it?

This is a large part of why cultural appropriation is so obnoxious and damaging. Credit gets lost, histories get erased, and people wrongly get adulation (and often, lots of money) for stealing something another group put blood, sweat, and tears into creating.

So in summary: everything isn’t yours. That’s okay. Make peace with it. You are not the authority on all subjects. Make peace with that too. Often, someone else will be the expert on a topic, and you have the privilege of being there to listen, learn, and show gratitude. You’re a guest.

If it’s an art form, like rap music or drag for example, and you enjoy it – wonderful. Soak it in, let it inspire, delight, and entertain you. Appreciate it to the fullest. Support it with your money, if you can. But if you’re not a part of the culture that owns that thing (in this example, black culture and queer culture, respectively) – just know that you’re a guest, and behave accordingly.

If it’s another culture’s language, food, history, attire, experiences, or traditions: be respectful. Don’t claim ownership over it, don’t try to define what it is or isn’t, and listen, instead of interjecting yourself when members of that group are sharing their experiences or expertise. And crucially: immediately stop doing something if people from that culture tell you that action is causing them pain.

Stealing credit can happen accidentally or on purpose, but if you claim to love something, educate yourself on it enough to at least know a bit about its origin, so you can give credit where credit is due.

Because if one more person tries to claim that the Kardashians popularized cornrows, or that Kim’s makeup artist invented contouring, I’m going to scream.

#cultural appropriation #cultural appreciation #opinion #social justice

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miniwolfsbane · 4 years ago

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I was two seconds away from posting a quiz result. Then I considered it, because the result uses fan art. And it’s probably fan art that’s used without the artists permission, even though it still retains their watermark.

I’m all for share and share alike. If my art were worth diddly squat, I’d say use it for things like that, but credit me. I know what it’s like to work days or weeks on something. I do not get a lot of feedback on DA or here with what little art I do post. If I wanted an IG account, I’d have one, but I saw something completely horrid on there once and it just put me off the site forever. But, anyway, I know the struggle. And it’s not fair of personality quizzes to just repost people’s art without permission or any kind of “Okay, you can use it.” Fan art is free most of the time, unless you’re doing commission work. We put our blood, sweat and tears into something just for the love of the fandom or the love of drawing, or both.

And then, IF we’re good enough, we get it stolen by shady companies making personality quizzes online looking to make a quick buck from ads or however they make money. Or people selling shirts/mugs/aprons/etc. through bootleg means on Amazon or eBay.

I know, fan art is just drawing already copyrighted characters, but, technically, we created the scenario, so we own the art, just not the characters. And using our hard work isn’t fair or right or a good thing. Every time I see it, I get a little upset, but feel like there’s nothing I can do. It would take time I may not have to track down the artist and tell them XYZ is using your art. And even then, they may not see it because they’ve left whatever site they’re on. I’m tired of it. It’s a small, nothing problem in the big picture, but it’s one of those things that just rubs me the wrong way. Don’t support the quizzes or the people that re-sell fan art. (I’m not saying boycott all of Amazon, because they are handy, but try not to buy from whomever is peddling other people’s stuff for quick money.)

No one person can stop it, but we can all do little things not to support these things.

#rant #fandom #fan art #sad #frustrating

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cutegirlmayra · 7 years ago

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Hello:D I was wondering if you could do a prompt where Sonic and the gang are going to a Halloween party. Amy dresses in a costume to impress Sonic but ignores him the whole time. Then she starts getting unwanted attention from other guys and the blue blur has to come in save the day. Maybe in the boom!universe?

Sure thing!

(x) Please support the Artist: kitties-and-heavy-metal, thank you for your preview image!

*If you draw or have friends who draw, please let me know if it’s okay to use your art as preview images with crediting links to you. Thank you!

Prompt:

Amy was scouring the stores and looking in every nook and cranny. She desperately was trying to find something worth all the blood, sweat, and tears of laboriously working for enough money to pay the ultimate price.

The perfect costume.

She pulled out a fluffy looking bunnies attire, and swished it back behind her, “Not really ‘me’.” she mused, before pulling out an Egyptian outfit. “Ohh~ But kinda last century.” she flopped it behind her again.

She began to grow irritable.

She dug her head into the rack, flinging out costume after costume. “Dragon, warlord, fairy, mermaid-AH!” she leaned up and gripped her head, “No, no, no! I can’t wear something tacky that fades into the background! It has to be perfect! A stylish witch! An alluring enchantress! A Shakespearian elite could work if it looked different than every other Cinderella!” she looked and looked before finally wearing herself out. (pun intended.)

She landed hard to the ground, sliding against the stripped and spinning, circular clothes rack that looked dizzy from Amy’s assault on it.

She leaned against the cold metal beam, and banged her head back on it, letting her back drop further down its spine.

“It’s no use…” she sighed, “I wanted to impress him this year… but everything is old-hat. So… melodramatic… if I just had one perfect costume… something to really make him stop and stare. Then-..!”

She turned, seeing something sparkle from a store-working moving it with a clawed instrument up to hang on the wall.

She walked towards it, slowly rising up and having it glimmer in her glossy eyes.

It was just her… and that outfit.

“Oh-ho-ho…” she giggled, before swiping it away from the true object she was looking at,”Nuh-uh. That one!” an ugly looking fall-dress that seemed to be something to add to a scarecrow outfit.

She squee’d, her hands shaking in her excitement as she bent forward, still holding the ‘ideal’ dress in her hands that she had yanked away. “Perfect!”

Once home, Amy got straight to work.

The black dress with the fall-leaf design that was loose fabric over the shoulders, the side and down the dress, and elsewhere that she began to change and alter.

She bit down on her thread and went straight to work crafting jewels into the dress, making a patch and giving herself a stylish adventure pouch.

She was going to be unique this year! And Sonic wasn’t going to walk by without a double-take!

The party at Meh-Burger’s special Spooky deals started already, and the team waited with their make-shift costumes on Amy, wondering where she was.

Tails was stuck in a half-tin, half-cardboard box which was equipped with a phony twirling gun that glowed when he hit the trigger. He called it his cyborg death-ray.

Knuckles was a roman lancer, though everytime he struck the pose and threw his large prop of a spear, it would crash and he would flinch at some poor cat squealing in fright or pain.

“Eh-heh… opps.”

“Where’s Amy?” Tails waddled in his claustrophobic outfit over to Sonic, who was tapping his foot, wearing a metal-band outfit with face makeup.

“I don’t know. But it’s not like her to keep her ‘adoring public’ waiting.” Sonic fanned a hand out, a slight mock in good spirits. “You know Amy.. she always likes to take every and any opportunity to look good and show it off.” he grumbled a bit, looking annoyed at waiting before Tails saw his eyes droop down in impatience.

He chuckled a bit, “Yeah, I wonder why she always does that.” he gave a sly smile to his friend, shifting his eyes to him and then waddling to turn his back to him.

“And why you’re always around when she does…” he quickly wandered off, leaving Sonic confused at his words.

He huffed and pouted, folding his arms as Sticks crawled around, looking on guard and trying to attack a kid with an alien costume. “She’s not trying to be better than me!” he clearly didn’t get the implied subtext…

“I know the aliens are hiding out here…” Sticks jumped on a table, her boomerang held high, “Show yourselves, you cowards!” she hunched herself down and gripped the edge of the table, shouting out a battle-cry before Sonic zoomed over with a sigh and caught her in midair.

“Sticks. Who are you dressed as?” he looked bored saying this, not even looking down at the poor kid he just saved from Sticks’s wrath.

“I never put on a mask! Ek-ehhh!” Sticks swiped at the air towards the kid, trying to reach him. “Humm…” she gave up and Sonic let her down.

“You know? The scariest thing you can be is yourself.” She put her hands on her hips, and looked for a second almost wise with her head held high… then she saw a kid in an octopus costume and charged them, ramming them over. “AHHH!!! Show yourself you, alien scum!”

“Mommy!”

Sonic shook his head, “Knnucckklless..! Sticks is being weird again.” Sonic leaned over his shoulder and called.

“I can take it from here…”

A hand lightly grazed his backspines and lingered over his shoulder.

Sonic froze with a jolt and watched the odd, spider-design laced gloves trace his curve and then flick off to carry his gaze down to the woman’s side.

“Sticks?”

The woman held herself with confidence, something Sonic had only seen in one… other… girl…

She placed a seductive hand on her hip and then flicked her finger out to call Sticks again. “Sit.” she instructed.

Sticks looked away from the kid she had pounced on and growled towards Amy.

“Hey! What makes you think you can-!” she wagged her boomerang at her, not like being ordered in such a way, before Amy took her hands and scratched under her ears.

“W-wo-woah, momma…” Sticks’s leg suddenly started tapping widely like an animal, as Amy lured her down to the ground and then got her to sit down.

“Now… play dead.” she rolled her over and Sticks lay with her tongue flung out to the side as if hyped up on catnip.

“I don’t know what you are… but it’s some kinda voodoo magic…” she mouthed out, still in her lulled sense of submission. “But I will find you.. and I will stop you..”

“Hehe, it’s me, Sticks.” Amy drew back her black hood with lace lining its surroundings.

Sticks turned to Amy with absolute shock, “Woah!” she stood up on all fours. “You gotta be kiddin’ me! I thought yous were a hypnotic witch!”

“Nope.” Amy rose up from her squat, as the boys gathered behind her and she removed her hood to reveal her patterned makeup was that of flowers, vines, and other natural beauties. “Mother Nature.” she turned to the men, “But having fallen from the natural law of things.. she now seeks to restore her throne… any means necessary.” she removed the draping cape from the front of her and placed it over her shoulders.

The men gasped, as the party music stopped and everyone’s eyes were on Amy’s amazingly detailed workmanship.

She swayed her hips out, acting older than her age and strut right by Sonic, turning to the DJ.

“Something I can move to, please?” She placed an elbow on Dave’s workplace, trying to act friendly.

“Oh, I don’t know… My mom said not to touch it so much… it can get temperamental..” he whispered the last part to her, worriedly.

She winked and leaned further up. “I’m sure she won’t mind… if I supervise you…”

He gulped and quickly fumbled with records. “This goes out to the only girl who didn’t hurl fruit at my face.” he then sighed and played a dancy tune.

Sonic snapped himself out from the effects of the pause button his brain had defensively turned on, but then he worried that Amy really was trying to steal the spotlight from him, and was angrily thinking of ways to make an outstanding comeback.

But before he could even get a thought in there, a group of men gathered behind him.

“Who is that?” “She’s gorgeous!” “I wouldn’t mind dancing with her tonight!”

Sonic shifted his head to them for a moment, before rolling his eyes and looking at Amy from the corner of his eye, shrugging. “Dudes, chill. It’s just Amy…”

“Amy~” the boys swooned, as Sonic– for some unknown reason to himself– panickily looked to each in awkward concern.

“Wait! C-come on, you guys, you… You know her!” he gestured back to her, dancing so carefree, before showing Sonic a mischievous smile and curling her fingers for him to join her.

The men slipped to the ground, “Yeah… I know her… in my dreams..”

“Ugh.” Sonic face-planted,… but peeked through his fingers at her seductive eyes.

‘What she playin’ at..?’ he asked himself, before pushing the dazed men back and walking briskly towards her.

“Whatever this is-” he started, “You’re not winni-NG!” he stuck a finger out at her before she took his hand and pulled him out on the dance floor.

Take a sip of my secret potion. I’ll make you fall in love~ For a spell that can’t be broken, one drop should be enough~ Boy, you belong to me! I got the recipe!

….And it’s called black magic~

For a moment, Sonic was awkwardly fumbling along with her, as she laughed and broke from her previous act.

She twirled under the raised hand she held up for him and then moved her back closer to his. She flicked some glitter that was in her hair out of her face and swayed back and forth with him.. flickering her eyes to try and look to his face but then away. ‘I can’t let this advantage just slip by me! This time- You won’t be able to back down from me, Sonic!’

“W-woah-hey!” Sonic was pulled along as she danced before a man swiped her out from Sonic’s forced dancing she was putting him through.

He spun away, before flailing his arms out to gain some balance and turned back to see her pushing away from the man

“Ugh, let me go, you creep!”

“Hey, toots. Just one dance, eh?” he wrapped an arm around Amy’s waist as she turned her head away from his and grimaced, annoyed.

‘I didn’t think I’d get this much attention… I just wanted Sonic to see me decked out, not for these guys to get fresh!’

Instinctively, almost as quickly as the man had done the action, Sonic had yanked the arm off from around her and thrust the arm away, causing the man to stumble back.

“H-hey, what gives?”

“She’s not your date.”

The record skipped to a halt as Dave looked down a second.

Rah rah ah-ah-ah! Ro mah ro-mah-mah, Gaga oh-la-la! Want your bad romance~

He quickly and with great difficulty of ‘grace’, stopped the track.

“Are you.. her..?” the man pointed to Sonic.

“Dance partner?!” Sonic avoided in all seriousness, and did a breakdancing move to intimidate, before landing with flare.

The crowd cheered, especially Tails, Knuckles, and Sticks, who thought this was interesting.

“Come on! I bet you can’t top those sick moves!”

Suddenly, Sonic lost confidence when he saw the man and his boys start breaking out moves too.

Tails, in his getup, and Knuckles suddenly strode up behind him.

“Dudeittute!” he almost summoned them, but they folded their arms and nodded, doing their routine.

The dance battle went on before Amy stepped out, shocking everyone before Sticks joined and the Sonic gang all got together to push the man out from the dance floor, making him stumble into the punch bowl where the mayor got sprayed with the splash.

“Hoho, I seem to have been in the ‘punch-zone’ hoho!”

“is that a fact?” A fancy man with his fist raised smirked.

“Oh no! Last year’s runner-up!” he ran off as the other man followed him, “Oh dear!”

“Amy! That was-!” Sonic excitedly ran up to her, arms out as if to embrace her.

She smiled with a flutter in her heart, holding a hand to her heart before he stopped himself, and leaned back, growing shy and awkward, and scratched the back of his head.

“I-I mean… great moves back there.” he smiled, sheepishly.

She chuckled in a bit of nerves, shifting her eyes about after realizing he wasn’t going to embrace her and got equally as awkward as well. “R-right… thank you.”

So you wanna play with magic? Boy, you should know whatcha falling for~

The music started again as Dave cowered while it scatched the record as if devouring it in place before it setlled into it’s ring. The two stood awkwardly in front of each other, swaying on heels or bobbing with the music, pursing their lips, looking down or around behind them, hands either together in front of them or behind their backs.

“…Oh, dance with her already!” Percy cried out, as the twins pushed the two together, and they startled into each other’s faces.

They froze as they were so close, closer than any other adventure in their life… any other time in the milliena they’ve ever known each other.

Baby do you dare to do this? Cause I’m coming atcha like a dark horse~

“W-well… heh, shouldn’t spoil the party.” Sonic was frizzled up, his chest out to her before he calmed his body down and moved back a bit.

immediately, she stepped up, not wanting the distance to lengthen between them. “O-oh, sure! you should take my hand…t-then..” she dipped her head down a bit, her eyes staring with a nervous excitement into his.

They paused in the electricity around them… before Sonic gulped and took her hand. “I’ll lead.” he smiled, charmingly, and this time did, in fact, guide her to the dance floor again.

She giggled, swaying to the music.

Are you ready for, ready for~ A perfect storm, perfect storm~ Cause once you’re mine, once you’re mine….

They stopped, but not before Sonic pulled her closer and had his nose to the side of her cheek, staring as close they may ever go to looking directly in one another’s eyes.

There’s no going back.

(I took creative liberties and made this AU, hope that’s cool XD)

#sonamy #sonic #amy rose #sonamy prompt #sonamy boom #sonic boom #halloween #sonic prompt #sonic boom prompt

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shay-has-moved · 7 years ago

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Hi there fellow artist!

May I ask you this, do you like having your art reposted with no credits back to you whatsoever and having strangers get more likes than your original post after you spending hours and putting in your blood, sweat, and tears to finish that piece?

No?

Than I recommend you stay as far away from the My Hero amino as possible, or better yet check in to make sure your art hasn’t already been stolen because wowie, there’s a lot.

And get this. The leader does not care about you artists. :’)

Want some proof?

A little background about this amino. Back then, this amino did not have a crediting rule, which caused a mass amount of art theft and reposted artwork with zero respect for the artists. This made a lot of members leave, to which in a desperate attempt for them to stay, the leader added the crediting rule. Fun fact though, she didn’t even make it herself, her staff did, which were more supporting of the crediting rule than she was. We had a small team that made sure credits were given to all artists on any post that had artwork that did not belong to the poster, the team was called the “Post Monitor Team” or PMT for short, hence the chat name in the screenshots. We’ve had multiple fights with the leader about what does and doesn’t need credit, and this one conversation just so happened to catch my attention.

After all of that however, the leaders have been planning on removing the crediting rule! Which means:

Stolen art

Art being reposted with no permission/the artist not wanting their art reposted

Stolen Ocs (There’s is A LOT of Ocs that get stolen on that amino)

TRACED and RECOLORED art (This happened so often we had to make a post about it)

Stolen fanfics (Oh yeah, this goes to you too writers)

Stolen theories

Stolen fanart in edits

And all of these will happen with no penalty whatsoever. Great right?

Yeah I didn’t think so.

Sadly, the only thing artists can do to fix this is to either comment and ask it to be removed or report the reposted art. However, all reports usually go to the leaders of the amino. Which is obviously a problem when the leader does not care about you or your art, and your report will likely be ignored. Thankfully there is another option.

Report the leaders.

There are so much more problems with the leadership aside from the lack of credit and respect for artists. They remove staff for not agreeing with them, they disable posts/hide or ban members that give them critiques on their leadership, they manipulate people by either playing the victim card or lying/only telling their side of the story, and hire/promote staff purely based on favoritism. Doesn’t sound too good does it? We’ve got all the proof compiled together in multiple folders here if you’re willing to either read them or use it to report them.

How to report them?

A wonderful fellow decided to make an entire post going into detail on our amino about how to report leaders here, so go check it out since they explain it much better than I can, but I’ll sum it up to the best of my ability. However, you may have to be an existing member to report them.

Compile the information. This includes links to the amino, the leader, as well as your account on the amino you’re reporting.

Screenshots. Team Amino will most likely look past your report if you don’t provide screenshots as proof, which is why we gave you the link to the documented screenshots.

Fill the form. Make your report as long and excessively detailed as possible, also please include proper grammar/spelling and no profanity to the best of your ability, they may not take the report serious if it’s filled with constant mistakes and swearing.

Hope. Team Amino may or may not do anything about the leaders, but hey, who says we can’t try? The more people who actually report the leaders the more of a chance Team Amino will likely intervene and do something about the situation.

The My Hero Academia fandom is a true blessing when it comes to things such as art, fanfictions, theories, merchandise, and cosplaying, and that amino is one community which could tear all of that apart by causing content creators to be too afraid of posting anything. So please, help us get this fixed and help those lovely users that provide us all of this content - for FREE mind you - in order to keep it from spreading!

Thanks for your time to read this!

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kitetae · 7 years ago

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Dear Taehyung,

There is no distinct way to express this; this unimaginable and incomprehensible feeling that you’ve bestowed upon me. No amount of combined words and phrases could ever hope to describe what you have done. Between now and when I first heard your sweet-honey deep voice, a lot has changed. I am no longer the boy I was, trapped between four ever closing walls; squeezing my life away, trying to mold me into something I’m not. Without even knowing you personally, you’ve managed to permanently influence and inspire me.

Growing up was lonely; not in a physical sense but I was always different. Physically and mentally I was bullied for not being masculine enough. I found comfort in my friendships; however, the majority if not all of my friends were girls, and while I could be myself around them, there is no denying there was always a barrier. I lived in a bubble, constantly hiding myself depending on the environment. In a way it protected me, whether it was from the horrifyingly toxic male locker rooms, my family who have been kept separate from my real life, or the people who thought it was funny to use gay as an insult. I was never in any way, shape, or form comfortable within my skin. I could pull out a list and distinctly remember the innumerable amount of times and ways people tried to put me down for the way I talked, looked, and expressed myself. Gender separated gym classes were the bane of my existence; my clothes were ripped from my locker, sexual harassment ran rampant, and if I was thrown a dollar for each time the word faggot was thrown around I would have skipped college and moved to San Francisco to sip on lavish orange juice while I sat on my skyscraper balcony. However, if it’s one thing I will give myself credit for, it’s having a crazy amount of determination. I never wanted pity and I never wanted anyone to know. My story--I concluded--was not meant to be a sob story. I devoted my time into anything I sought interest in, and those became my pillars. I had an affinity for art and while middle school was when I was hurt the most, the dance class I attended after school made it the best years of my life. No one handed me anything, no one taught me how to be a “man”, it was just me figuring it all out on my own; and to be honest it was all fine. As I got older the harassment stopped, but the lack of a male figure was all too prominent. Who I was and who I wanted to be were unanswerable questions and while I was emotionally sane, I was still afraid; afraid to be myself, afraid to express, afraid to create, afraid to just live. I had no fellow guy to talk to, no one to prove to me that who I was, was okay. One day, I stumbled upon your Hug Me cover on Youtube, I had no idea who you were, but your voice moved me. That song sat downloaded on my phone, played over and over again; I discovered the power of music through your voice and resorted to Hug Me when I needed it most. Yet still, I only discovered the surface, I had no idea you were apart of BTS. It wasn’t until my second year of college, my best friend was a huge Kpop lover and “Blood, Sweat & Tears” had just dropped; she decided to show it to me while we sat in her car in front of my house before going to school. You immediately captured my attention. The look on my face when I found out you were the same person who covered Hug Me--a song so precious to me--was priceless. For some reason I never realized it was you; that day I decided to watch the video again and when I saw “performed by V”, my heart sank. I decided it was some kind of destiny.

Time passed, and I learned everything I could about you; what I found, is someone who I’ve grown to love in the most genuine way possible. I was never one to be in any kind of fandom, let alone, love an idol; but you, you were different. Your persona, everything about you sends shivers down my spine. Your smile alone, is enough to make any shade of blue vanish. As I got to know more about you, I discovered things about myself as well. Through you, I’ve been able to grow as a man and as a person; you validate my entire existence just by being yourself. I look up to you, and it brings me unprecedented joy when I discover something about you similar to me. When you expressed your love for art, as an aspiring artist, it made me so happy. You are unapologetically yourself; your taste in fashion, your ideas, your photography, your art, it’s all you. When I stumble upon a crossroad, I find myself having two choices, to conform to an idea of myself someone else wants, or to fight back and step closer to the idea of myself that I wanna be.Taehyung, you inspire me to fight back, to be whoever I wanna be. This past year has been a journey inwards, to find parts of me I concealed behind shame and fear. My art as a result has expanded, and my interests continue to grow. I love to sing, dance, create, inspire, and help others. I can push forward knowing that someone out there embodies everything I strive to be, and does a marvelous job at it. When in the confines of my own mind I find it easier to escape now that I have you. Thank you. It pains me that you couldn’t possibly know all that you’ve done for me and countless others, but I truly believe that if we feel it within ourselves hard enough, you’ll feel it too. I hope your birthday is special, however you choose to spend it. I wish nothing but the best for you and want nothing more than happiness for you and all your loved ones. I genuinely love you, so much.

Happy Birthday Kim Taehyung!

Love, Jonathan 💜

#happy birthday 💜#we 💜 you #taehyung #i poured my heart out #hopefully it made sense!!

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