Fan Art Dump

[asiananderson]

[asiananderson]

[allthingsschwab]

Victoria Schwab Tweets:

“This just in: you can love writing and also find it hard.

“I was once on a panel and another author essentially said, ‘if you don't enjoy every moment, then why are you here?’ and I was...exasperated. Creativity is a complicated beast. You don't have to love every second to be a valid participant.

“I love the ideas. I love brainstorming, and problem-solving, and I love making this better, fine-tuning language.

“I also hate drafting, claw my way through self-doubt, crawl on my hands and knees through the frustration of the unrealized.

“I'm not here because I love every second.

“I'm here because the parts I love are worth the rest.”

[muffinlance]

I feel like I have a similar head canon to you about Air Nomads- It doesn't make sense to me that they all died because, well, they're nomadic??? Aang can't be the only one travelling in the entire world, there's no way. And were there seriously no Air monks working in Earth Kingdom hospital or gardening somewhere?

This! Genocides don’t work like in the show, especially not with a group of people who are known to travel widely on a whim and who, at the time, had the most access to flight. That kind of mobility advantage would be huge.

And com'on, they’d have been staring down at the armies assembling, there’s no way to hide that there’s an attack coming, and these are a bunch of pacifists who disavow ties to the world–why wouldn’t they just hop on their bisons and leave rather than trying to defend the temples? Temples are replaceable, people aren’t. “Sorry to inconvenience you Fire Nation aggressors, but we are NOPING out of this, please enjoy your looting.”

I think the Fire Nation only got the people who couldn’t evacuate in time; I picture a low bison-to-people ratio, and a point at which it became too dangerous to make another trip back. Those bodies we see in the show are from the last ditch efforts of a few brave monks and nuns to buy time for the final bison to get clear. Gyatso, man, rest in peace. You died knowing you’d saved your people, and that is pretty far up the ‘best death possible’ list.

The day of the comet was not the end of the airbendering nomads; that’s just the glorious Fire Nation propaganda talking.

Their “end” came much more slowly. Hunting down survivor groups–there were too many people and too few bison, they couldn’t all flee quickly. Each attack widdled them down further.

Throw in bounties–on bison and people both. Spice it up with propaganda for those who have too many morals. And year by year, the population is less, until they just… were gone.

The survivers work very hard to stay gone.

It wasn’t one giant crippling attack that took them out, but a slow and steady hunting, where you can’t safely trust anyone outside your group because someone is the one who ratted those other survivors out. If you want to live you have to be smarter, more careful, less trusting.

More quick to defend yourself.

More quick to proactively defend yourself.

Witnesses, the current survivors know, are not safe.

(And this makes it very damn hard to get them on screen in my stories because my air nomads would shank the other characters and keep flying, in the vast majority of cases. Towards the Sun has one scenario that might work for getting them involved in the world again, but I’m still working out the plot implications.)

[elf-kid2]

I saw a fic where Zuko thought Aang was part of a clan of Air-Nomad survivors.

He was worried that Aang might be plotting to kill everyone aboard the ship: there was no way secret air nomads had survived a hundred years of ‘Kill-on-Sight’ laws by leaving witnesses.

[muffinlance]

That was Cheating at Pai Sho, and that horrifying Zuko headcanon was completely intentional. ;)

[muffinlance]

I am reblogging this for no particular reason

[mostly-mundane-atla]

Having finally tracked down a documentary about the Wolf Dance and seeing one performed in full, I'm even more disappointed Korra wasn't teasing cousins with Desna and Eska

Part of the Wolf Dance has the dancers in two lines and the public would run between them. If you, as a dancer, saw your teasing cousin, you would block their way and make a game out of not letting them pass. One man in the video blocked off his cousin and she was batting at his back with her fists before he let her pass. Like imagine Desna in the headdress and fancy dance mittens being a nuisance to Korra so she shoves him down and like, the rest of the dancers are still in formation but Desna continues laying there face-down for dramatic effect.

[mostly-mundane-atla]

Here's the documentary, and the uploader added footage of other traditional dances that aren't quite as much of a process as the Wolf Dance at the end of it. If I had to guess it's all from the 80s but I couldn't find a date anywhere in the video itself.

For anyone who doesn't understand why Korra can't be teasing cousins with Desna and Eska: teasing cousins are cross cousins, the children of you mother's brother or father's sister. Korra's father, Tarlok, and Desna and Eska's father, Unalaq, are brothers, thus canonically they are parallel cousins and couldn't be teasing cousins. Which is a shame because it's such a neat little cultural thing and the Avatar franchise is so sorely lacking in cultural aspects from the peoples who inspired the aesthetics of the Water Tribes

[gianluc30]

Street Artist Transforms Ordinary Public Places Into Funny Installations 

michael-pederson miguel-marquez

[sassenachsansa-deactivated20201]

The narrative of ‘this person was disabled but their disability was cured as part of their story’ is ableist

[kipplekipple]

The narrative of ‘this person is disabled but “overcame” disability in order for them to be a hero’ (e.g. a paralysed person finding a way to walk) is ableist

[explorerrowan]

And just for clarification for the non-disabled, using adaptive technologies, like prostheses or whatever, is not ableist as long as you never forget. Ask yourself questions about the benefits but also the limitations of whatever adaptive thing you’re giving the character.

They have to take a pill every day to treat a chronic illness or chronic pain? Okay, what happens when they forget, or are in a bad situation and run out of pills?

They lost a limb or are paralyzed and now they have a sci-fi cybernetic prosthesis/exoskeleton to replace the lost functionality? Cool. What does maintenance look like? Does it ever malfunction? What happens if they don’t or can’t take care of it? Do they still get phantom pains even with the adaptation?

They’re deaf or blind or anosmic, but they’re a wizard who uses magic to adapt to the lost sense? Fine. What does it take to maintain that magic? Do they have adaptive strategies for when the magic fails?

They’re autistic or have ADHD or schizophrenia or some other cognitive disorder, and they have a chip in their head to make it easier to communicate when non-verbal? Okay. What exactly does it do for them? Does it ever malfunction or give them headaches? What are other ways they’ve adapted to their disability apart from this chip?

Other questions to ask that go for all kinds of things:

Do they have a service animal? For what tasks or situations is it trained?

Do their family/friends know how to help if their adaptive technologies/strategies fail?

Is their disability (or the adaptation) visible or observable to others? How do others react?

Has their society adapted to accommodate disabilities, and if so, in what ways? (Ramps, closed captions, sign language, etc.)

Basically, think about what it adds to the story to have your character disabled. If you were just going to completely cure it with no ongoing repercussions or adaptations, why did you bother making them disabled in the first place? What story were you telling?

[angiethewitch]

really good addition

[essekknits]

Not to be disrespectful, I genuinely want to know: I heard more than a few disabled people talking about how for them a fantasy world where the disabled character is cured of their disability/chronic pain is wish fulfilment and something they want written and also write. Where does the line go? Like, I’m autistic, and I wouldn’t want a story with a character being “cured” of autism cause that would feel ableist and icky. But I can understand why a person with say chronic pain would want a world where the character gets cured of their chronic pain.

[ruffboi-mags]

I think personally (as a person who is both neurodivergent and has painful physical disability) it’s about how it’s approached. Is the person who’s in pain cured of their pain because they’re ~broken~, or because they’re suffering and this is an attempt to reduce or remove their pain? Is their disability something that can be accommodated for and give them good quality of life, or is it just something that is physically draining and no amount of accommodation will truly improve the situation because they’re in pain?

It’s the difference from the first (I think?) X-Men movie, when Rogue bursts into Professor X’s office excitedly asking if it’s true that someone’s found a way to cure them, and Storm replies with “no, they can’t, because there’s nothing wrong with us.”

Storm has weather powers but could live a completely normal and fulfilling life as a mutant if mutants were accepted socially. With accommodation and social acceptance, Storm would not be significantly negatively impacted by her mutation.

on the flip side, Rogue kills people who touch her bare skin and could never live a completely normal life due to needing precautions to avoid accidentally killing people, and will also always have to live with the stress and anxiety of knowing she could kill someone if she’s not careful enough. Even if mutants were fully accepted socially, she would be significantly negatively impacted by her mutation.

So no, STORM doesn’t need to be “cured” and it would be shitty to suggest she does, but it’s understandable and even reasonable for ROGUE to desire and get a cure, even if that cure is not removing her mutation but at least removing the worst parts of it (like how she had no control over the killing-by-touch part).

I don’t want to be “cured” of autism or even (though it can be a pain in my ass) ADHD. I would take any suggestion I should be  “cured”  of these things very personally as offensive. I know a lot of people who are physically disabled (blind, deaf, amputee, just to name a few) don’t feel like they need to be “cured” or “fixed”. It’s deeply ableist to assume that someone with ADHD or who is Deaf can only have a fulfilling life if they are no longer those things.

On the other hand, I have severe chronic joint pain. I would give anything to be cured of that, because all it’s doing is hurting me an lowering my quality of life. No accommodations would actually improve that. I would still be in pain, I just might be in slightly less pain, and frankly, fuck that, I want to be in no pain.

So, no, disability or neurodivergence being assumed to need curing/being cured is not actually 100% either way, but by and large “things that can be accommodated for to allow for a full and happy life” are the ones you absolutely do NOT want to go around curing willy-nilly in fiction.

That being said, there is also something to be said for having representation as someone with chronic pain and fatigue, of someone who suffers too but still gets through the day, and doesn’t have it magically fixed. THAT is all up to the story you’e been telling and the tone you want to develop, imo, but I couldn’t tell you how to get there.

TL;DR: It’s actually not fully black or white, but generally if it’s something that can be accommodated for to relieve the burden on the disabled person, don’t cure it. If it’s something like chronic pain or fatigue, which are just. 100% miserable even when “accommodated for”, then it’s not an automatic “don’t do it”, but consider the story you’re telling with that potential either way.

[capricorn-0mnikorn]

I’ve been puzzling through a “Bechdel-Style Test” for Disability Representation for a while, now. And I think I finally pinned it down this right around NaNoWriMo (yay! one accomplishment for 2020).

And this is what I’ve come up with (with reasons for each point:

1) There’s a Disabled character

Just one necessary, ‘cause a lot of Abled writers like to stick us in flocks of (what they perceive as) “our own kind,” and a lot of disabled people are the only ones in their immediate family or (mainstream) classroom.

2) Who wants something for themselves

Rather than being an “inspiration” for an abled person, or the proverbial cat to be rescued in a “save the cat” scenario, to prove the hero’s goodness.

3) Besides Revenge, Cure, or Death,

In other words, the thing they want is not defined by their disability.

4) And tries to get it.

Again, they’re not the cat to be saved, but the protagonist in their own story – even when they’re a side character in a larger book or movie, or TV show. For example: if you have a disabled side character in your story, that’s okay, but if you decided to switch perspectives, and make them your P.O.V. character, would they still have agency and something to do, or would they be passive plot devices?

———-

I’ve decided to call it the 1,001 Problems Test, because that’s really the key for me.

What makes a “Cure Narrative” (vs. a story with a cure in it) ableist is that in a “Cure Narrative,” the character’s entire story arc hangs on the state of their disability at the end, and nothing else about them matters. Are they still disabled at the end? Then it’s a tragedy. Are they cured? Then it’s a happy ending (even if they die, it’s often framed as a happy ending, because at least they’re not disabled, anymore).

And as we’re talking about cure as a wish-fulfillment narrative, I’d like to point out that my third point says “besides cure,” not “instead of cure.” It’s fine if your protagonist wants a cure for their chronic pain, or “accidentally-killing people” condition. But give them something else to want, too – like falling in love, or being an architect, or figuring out how to save the world from a giant, star-eating Space Dragon, or, or, or…

If the only problem you can imagine your disabled character wants to solve is disability, then you’re ableist. You are revealing the fact that you can’t imagine disabled people as complete, fully formed humans, who live real lives.

[every-lemon]

big ups to this whole tumblr account (does anyone say big ups any more? no? just me?). it’s an awesome resource for writers trying to … i mean, i was going to say increase disability representation in fiction … but really, writers trying to write better.

[every-lemon]

r/FFXV - [Reference] Conversation Chemistry Chart Transcript with HQ Images

40 votes and 24 comments so far on Reddit

WHAT.

This … this is JUST VERY HELPFUL. Click through for juicy characterization deets if, like me, this old news is news to you.

[nyaawn]

All this time I thought they were doing fist-bump, but apparently Iggy searching for his fallen specs and Noctis picking it up for him..??

[asiananderson]

This is quite possibly the most amazing thing I've ever seen.

[asiananderson]

[asiananderson]

Older pic that i never bothered cleaning up the background for. I should get on that...

[asiananderson]

Pic of my icon; Barbarian Link, with some added bits.

[asiananderson]

Quarantined and bored. Have some more silly fanart of Shouto.

[asiananderson]

Quarantined and bored out of my darn mind. Have some ridiculous Shouto fanart :)

[asiananderson]

Because I read Dost Thou Even Steal Hearts? by BukuBuku on AO3 and thought: Why not? So. Have a fish.

[asiananderson]

Top Technology Scholarship

My favorite kind of modern technology is the computer; more specifically I love drawing programs for use on the computer and the internet.  Its greatest impact on my life has been on my goals as an artist, because computers have revolutionized the way people see, create, and sell artwork.  With the computer I have been able to learn about a wide variety of artistic styles and mediums, research artists and actually see their work, and practice digital painting and editing with drawing programs. 

With convenient access to all sorts of images of artwork from cultures around the world has helped me to cement my decision to be an artist and art teacher, as well as greatly influenced the style and content of my own work.  Digital art, photographs, drawings, and paintings shared by others on sites such as DeviantArt have pushed me to be more creative and inspired me to try a wide variety of art making methods.  Even if such images aren’t quite like seeing the real, physical work in person, the convenience of being able to readily look at images I would be unlikely to encounter in person is a huge benefit to me and my work.  References for things or animals or people that I would never be able to see in real life are readily available, and that alone is a reason I will forever love the internet.  The entire process would me much more difficult and frustrating without the convenience of the internet at my fingertips.

As an art teacher the internet will also be an invaluable resource to teach my future students about art traditions and styles from across the world.  Different types of learners are provided with more means to learn; instead of reading about a process or taking notes during a demonstration, they can access videos or step-by-step photographed tutorials without the constraints of a classroom setting, such as the limited amount of time a teacher has to run through a demonstration.

Drawing and editing programs have also made a huge impact on my life.  In art, programs such as Photoshop have become an entirely new way to create two-dimensional artwork, and are programs that I have since come to enjoy learning about and using.  Rather than sticking solely to traditional mediums, I have come to prefer using a combination of traditional and digital painting methods, such as creating a black and white, pen and ink image and adding value through the use of an editing program, or simply creating images that are purely digital artwork.  Afterward, I can post the images online to share with a wider audience than more traditional methods would allow, and create digital prints to sell to a number of people.

The things the computer can provide are truly integrated into my life.  From the art making processes, sharing and selling that art with others, to teaching others about art, the computer has been and will continue to be an important resource that I am privileged to use.

[asiananderson]

Nejibana

Digital art inspired by the character Shiba Kaien from the anime Bleach.  Photoshop.