thebiballerina

[thebiballerina]

oh boy i sure do love having tons of trinkets

the nefarious dust particle:

[thebiballerina]

I think there is a difference between the comic as a sequence of images with text and the comic as a comic. it's a subtle difference that an untrained eye might not see but the more one as artist draws comics the clearer this difference becomes, because one who first aspires to draw comics will soon find they are merely drawing sequences of images with text.

when people say an artist is clearly inspired by anime they often use "anime" to refer to japanese pop culture in general, but if you look more closely you can often tell it really is specifically anime rather than manga that inspired them, because the paneling and camera angles in their comics will read like a series of anime screenshots rather than a manga page. similarly, when I was a teenager really popular manga that had anime adaptions would sometimes get "animanga" reprints where they replaced the panels with the equivalent anime screenshots of the scene, and they often looked like dogshit because the very premise showed blatant disregard for why the original comic worked in the first place. these two examples are both about anime because i am a weeb but it applies outside that context too. a cartoon storyboard can be read as if it were a comic, but what it really is is a sequence of images with text that has yet to be refined into its actual intended format.

there are many artists who only employ the medium of comic because what they actually want to draw is a video, or a video game cutscene, but the only tool actually at their disposal is the ability to draw a series of images and add text to them so that is what they use. there is no shame or mistake in doing this, you have to make your art with the tools that you have available, and if the sequence of images with text is enough to convey the idea then it was the right tool for the job. but these are different mediums with different visual languages, languages which have a lot of overlap and can occasionally be used in each other's stead to achieve similar results (especially when drawing a fanart comic of a video game for example), but which are still ultimately different. the comic and the video and the cutscene are all different forms that a sequence of images with text can take but they are far from completely interchangeable.

there is a key difference in approach to the comic as a series of images roughly interchangeable with other forms of series of images like the video and the cutscene, and the comic as specifically the comic. this difference in approach is not always necessary to achieve results, an artist who wants to convey a scenario they came up with needs only the sequence of images with text to achieve this. but the difference between a comic with good writing and art, and a comic that is a good comic, is in whether it was treated as a comic rather than a sequence of images with text. I say this as an artist whose nearly every comic has been simply a sequence of images, because I just don't have the patience to refine it into a comic when I merely want to convey my idea rather than draw a comic. it takes a particular skill and insight that have to be developed and practised separately from the ability to draw well and the ability to write well in order to become good at making "the comic" as synthesis of the two.

it's hard to specifically point out the essence of this difference between the sequence of images and the comic because it's kind of a vibes thing honestly, and it depends on where and how the comic was meant to be published too. comics meant to have paper print editions have different constraints and requirements and frameworks to work with than webtoons meant to be read on slim mobile screens in a continuous scrolling format. a good traditional comic will consider not just how each individual panel looks but also the way each page as a whole looks, and how the pages look next to each other in a spread, and how it feels to turn the page towards the next spread. a good webtoon will consider the movement of scrolling down and how this affects the transition from one moment to another in its composition. time is time in videos and cutscenes but space is time in comics, and the space your have available determines how you can divide time across it. when you make a webcomic on your own website you have no constraints but the ones you set for yourself, and sometimes this leads to things like homestuck, which would not work in any other format than the one it created for itself.

the best comics are good because they tell their story and present their images specifically in the form of a comic, in a way that would not be possible if it were not specifically a comic. I think this is true for basically every medium, I'm just thinking about comics specifically lately, because even though I don't really consider myself a comic artist - because I usually draw sequences of images rather than comics - the thing my clients want to pay for is often still "a comic", and they don't know or care to tell the difference. it's a difference that, as established, is often fairly moot anyway, because as long as it successfully conveys your idea it's good enough. but it's precisely because the sequence of images is often good enough that the specific skill of the comic artist is often overlooked.

[thebiballerina]

have you watched Leverage/Leverage: Redemption

[thebiballerina]

It reminds me of how people talk about accessibility. Where getting certain kinds of assistance or living a certain way is pathetic/lazy/entitled/childish/etc. "except if you are disabled, of course!" While it isn't entirely unhelpful to have it recognized that certain things are necessary for certain people, and it's better than outright denying the worth of people with those needs, it is still really sad that people cannot reframe their worldview any more than making exceptions for the people who can't help it. Not to mention, it is genuinely harmful, because "exceptions for those who need it" in theory will always translate to some people slipping through the cracks in practice.

This framework hurts people regardless of whether they don't "qualify" for the exception or not. It is exhausting, costly, time-consuming, and demeaning to have to constantly prove your needs just to go through life; sometimes it doesn't even work and you are deemed undeserving anyway. It makes it harder for people to realize when they have those needs. It makes things harder for all the people and systems who help meet those needs. It turns those needs into an artificial limited access scenario, where the "wrong" kind of people using the exception is treated as an existential threat, so much so that harm to the "right" kind of people is an acceptable sacrifice for the sake of gatekeeping. It never actually pushes people to question the default, or their judgments about the morality of deviating from the default.

It's fascinating how much these experiences align, now that I think about it. OP, you have given me much to ponder.

As I said on another post with a similar topic: Living life without sex and/or romance is not an accommodation that you get if you have the "right" reasons; it is a choice on the same level as living life with them, and we should frame it that way.

There’s also a thing that people who think they’re being accepting do where they go “Not wanting romance is SO SAD AND LONELY! Not wanting to read romance novels is SEXIST! Not wanting a partner makes you a FREAK! Not having sex with your partner is BAD and ABUSIVE! Not feeling sexual attraction to your partner means there is SOMETHING WRONG WITH YOU!… unless you’re aromantic or asexual, of course! Then you get a pass.” The only acceptable reason to deviate from the amatonormative and sexnormative societal norm is to claim an identity label that exempts you. The actual thing you’re doing is still bad… but don’t worry it’s OK for you to do it! It feels like, we haven’t actually challenged any norms at all, you just get a pass on them because you can’t help it, poor thing. If you have the capacity to feel these, you have the obligation to; you are only exempt if you claim an identity that says that you are unable to. It implies that we would if we could, but we can’t, and it’s merely unfair to punish us for our shortcomings. Romance and sex are still social requirements, that hasn’t changed, we just are allowed a pass on it because we are unable to meet them. (And we’re still expected to reassure everyone that of course we recognize that their romance and sex is far more important than anything we will ever be able to have!)

I don’t want aros and aces to get special exemption from the requirement to have romance and sex and romantic attraction and sexual attraction; I want that to not be a requirement for anyone.

[thebiballerina]

It gives the vibes of a corporate worker dutifully stating that they don't use the business account for personal expenses.

"We don't use the artifacts!" they say as they frequently use artifacts

[thebiballerina]

it is a truth universally acknowledged that a blogger making one (1) flippant post will be in want of every unsolicited opinion known to man

[thebiballerina]

Exactly! Doing the thing is not a yes/no question; it is question of which things you are choosing between.

Alternatively, think of it as having a limited supply of "doing unpleasant things" energy. Hitting the bricks is how you ration that energy for when you really need it.

i wish there was an easier way to tell the difference between an "if it sucks hit da bricks" situation and a "sometimes being an adult means doing things that you dont wanna" situation

[thebiballerina]

one of the guys in the kitchen at work got called irritating and replied “I am not irritating. You just find me irritating. There are many people who love me.” I think we should all adopt his attitude

[thebiballerina]

It may seem like Hardison is the one who makes their HQ's because he's the tech guy and hes the one with any real space requirements, but I think it for the same reason that Elliot cooks. He is making a home for his people, a literal tangible home that will house those he loves.

[thebiballerina]

Merlin, after fixing yet another love enchantment attempt: Why did the potion work on everyone, but Leon?

Gaius: Well, love potions can be tricky. If a persons heart is already completely in love with and wholly devoted to someone, the effect might not take hold

Arthur: But Leon isn’t courting anyone?

Merlin: I wonder who his true love is

- - - - - -

Leon, alone in his bedroom: Man, I love The Knights code

[thebiballerina]

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[thebiballerina]

ya gotta stop caring what people think and start being extremely weird. but never cruel. i think that might save you

[thebiballerina]

Also:

Imagine seeing someone pull out a pocket knife and use it to painstakingly whittle down a random twig to have a sharp end. Then they attempt to cut open a parcel using the sharpened twig, which doesn't really seem to work any better than ripping it with their hands. So you ask them why they did that. And they respond, "Well, I needed something sharp to cut open the package!"

That is about how inexplicable it feels learning that people are using AI chatbots for things like mathematics and research papers.

nothing funnier to me than when AI does math wrong. like I get why it happens, it's a language model that's treating the numbers you feed it as words rather than integers and then giving you an answer based on how those words typically appear in a block of text instead of actually performing a calculation. but the one thing computers are genuinely incredible at. you fucked up a perfectly good calculator is what you did, look at it it's got hallucinations

[thebiballerina]

There is an inane sort of tragedy in being unable to recognize the very art one was born of.

nothing funnier to me than when AI does math wrong. like I get why it happens, it's a language model that's treating the numbers you feed it as words rather than integers and then giving you an answer based on how those words typically appear in a block of text instead of actually performing a calculation. but the one thing computers are genuinely incredible at. you fucked up a perfectly good calculator is what you did, look at it it's got hallucinations

[thebiballerina]

(This post is brought to you by the fact that tumblr are, hilariously, claiming that 50% of current users are gen z, and i wanna see how accurate claim that is.)

[thebiballerina]

I know that's not "most likely to name a child after" but I believe in skewing data through biased survey design on Tumblr.com. (Also, if we make the names a thing now, we can start to see returns in the baby name arena in a generation or two.)

sort the us states into most to least likely to name a child after it. georgia goes somewhere near the top while the bottom would probably be a tie between new hampshire and rhode island

[thebiballerina]

There are enough people on here naming themselves in adulthood that we could skew these rankings. New Hampshire is a beautiful name for a nonbinary midlife crisis.

sort the us states into most to least likely to name a child after it. georgia goes somewhere near the top while the bottom would probably be a tie between new hampshire and rhode island