Immediately had to tell my husband about this new figure of speech I dreamt up. Only thing I remember was that I was being asked if I was capable of some insane feat and this was my response
went to stream the demo for Love & Fool's Gold this morning only to realize I didn't have a nonspecific image for my Stream Starting Soon scene, so of course I had to stop everything and make it immediately. It was going to be something simple at first, then I thought it would only make sense to draw myself in a bathtub, being a siren and all, and then you can guess where it went from there.
catch me on stream later, i'm tired now zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Introducing the Birthday Week Art Challenge, the art challenge that is all about YOU!
What is this? This is a week-long art challenge prompt list for visual artists and writers based on YOU, yes YOU! I made it with myself in mind, but I wanted to make a blank version just in case anyone else wanted to use it. It doesn't have to be your birthday—I picked birthday because it's the time of year most people self-reflect, while being more personal than New Years—but it can be any important date that occurs at the same time every year so you can look back and see how you've changed.
Why is this? My intent with this prompt list is to leave it unchanged and to revisit it year after year so I can compare the pieces, examining where I came from, where I am, and where I might be going. That's why I made the emphasis on CURRENT faves, so I can look back on what's changed over time. I wanted this to be like an art-based time capsule that can be added to every year. My hope is to get in touch with myself and the world around me through my art.
Explanation of the prompts (though they can be as open-ended as you want):
Whatever you consider a treat, like food, clothes shopping, time for yourself, etc., now in your favorite color (if it wasn't already). (Examples: a purple chocolate bar, a new green shirt, a relaxing bath surrounded by blue candles, etc. Why is this a treat for you? How do obtain or make the treat? etc.)
Whether your favorite animal is something domestic or exotic, they are hanging out in the place you feel most comfortable. (Examples: a panda in your bedroom, a cat in a library, a beetle in a coffee shop, etc. How did it get there? What is it doing? etc.)
To be honest, when I made this prompt, my mind was on that photo series of the person taking their child's toy on a business trip, so... (Examples: a plushie on the Eiffel Tower, a car at the Great Pyramids, a limited-edition figurine on the moon, etc. Why did you bring this with you? Did you find it there? etc.)
You can draw/write them doing the hobby with you or alone, in their context or in yours. (Examples: your partner drawing or writing, your best friend gardening, Sasuke from Naruto trading stocks, etc. Would they be good or bad at this hobby? What reasons could they have for picking it up? etc.)
At first I wanted to make this "you from a year ago," but I thought it would be more interesting if it was more open-ended. (Examples: encountering your child self in the sunshine, you from five minutes ago in the rain, you who was at a sucky job in the snow, etc. What might you do together? Do you think the version you summon this year will be the same as the version you summon next year?)
Make a prediction about yourself. (Example: the same, taller, living somewhere new, etc. How far in the future are you looking?—and again, will this be the same distance into the future as it might be next year?)
Something about your birthday, anything you want. (Examples: a party you'd like to have, a memory of a past birthday, a favorite gift you've gotten, etc. What does your birthday mean to you?)
If you want to join in, just remember: this prompt list is about you, but it is primarily FOR you. You don't have to share anything you don't want to with strangers on the internet. I fully anticipate that, when I undertake this challenge myself in July, I will inadvertently create something that is too personal, and I won't be comfortable sharing it. If/when that happens, I will make a post stating that I won't be uploading for that day, but the point of it is that I did it anyway. Thinking about the past, the future, and the possibility of change can be painful and scary, but it is work that must be done; I hope I can look back on what I've created a year from now and be glad to know my history. I hope you'll feel the same.
Chapter 3 of my butch farmer x Sebastian fic is uuuuuuuuuuuup have at ye
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
chapter 4 will be up soon-ish. i've actually been sitting on 9 chapters for a bit now—I started writing this fic in february but only had one chapter up for ages because every time I would go to upload the next one, AO3 would be down, and then i just kind of forgot about it until recently lol—but i'm not gonna go posting them all at once because this fic is so plot-heavy, i keep anxiously going back and re-reading and tweaking things so events line up properly. apologies, my brain is out of my control.
[ID 1: drawing of four non-descript characters smiling lined up, three of them have pale skin while one has brown skin and a more mischievous expression, the characters has text pointed to them reading “that one character that gets the melanin because they’re angry/agressive” End ID]
[ID 2: drawing of four non-descript characters lined up, three of them have varied brown skin and expressions while one has pale skin and a more calm smile, the characters has text pointed to them reading “that one character that gets less of the melanin because they’re passive/calm/fancier” End ID]
while it's obviously very funny and relatable and worth talking about because everyone knows at least 5 movies or shows or comics that have done this exact trope and it's old and bored and exhausting
we still need to be careful when we reduce the historical complexity of racial stereotyping to such broad simplified strokes
because it can very quickly become a problem, especially for the writers and artists who actually belong to these racial groups
because when someone actually wants to write an authentic, interesting, three dimensional character of a specific race (whether they're explicitly that race or are just some fantasy species that's racially coded as a real world race) sometimes that character will have traits that are normally considered 'stereotypes' for that race, and so it might automatically come across as a misinformed stereotype.
this isn't without good reason. the reason we're so on guard with spotting stereotypes is because those stereotypes have been weaponized against their respective cultures / races before (and many still are). there's rarely ever anything 'harmless' about the depiction of the "greedy Jew" or the "savage red-skinned Indian". so these 'less obvious' stereotypes can often be used as dogwhistles for hateful racist rhetoric.
but we always, always, ALWAYS have to be careful when taking the offensive towards perceived stereotyping and casting such a wide net over what could be considered malicious.
because if you affiliate one simple normal trait as being an automatic stereotype when assigned to a person of a certain race, you're simultaneously limiting what people of that race are allowed to be, which is also in itself extremely harmful, and often was even the point of these stereotypes becoming weaponized in the first place - to force people of these races to be ashamed of who they were so they'd conform to a majority ideal of who they should be.
writing in this way can more often than not make for weaker characters, especially when it results in budding writers with good intentions (or even professionals within the industry) becoming afraid of their own characters and story because they immediately fear writing something that could be harmful. audience members can tell when a work is afraid of them.
yes, it's always important to do your research! it's always important to study the relationship between stereotypes and the races that these stereotypes were weaponized towards. if you're not the race you're trying to depict in your story (esp if you're trying to depict cultural-specific stuff like setting your story in Japan or writing about a Polynesian tribe), for the love of god, speak with someone from that culture who's willing to help out so you can get an informed opinion. this is bare minimum shit.
context also matters. obviously a white person taking from Indigenous culture to write Pocahontas set in space isn't gonna come across as helpful or sincere as an Indigenous person writing that same story. trust me, this trope of the "angry wild brown person" is EXHAUSTING when you know for a fact it was made by someone who's never actually seen or met an Indigenous person before. it's not representation at that point, it's just cultural tourism / theft.
but remember, before they were stereotypes, they were just normal human traits, oftentimes traits that were culturally significant to these groups before they were weaponized against them by majority groups in power who stood to benefit from turning their own traits against them, as a means to disempower them on a social, economic, and political level.
speaking from personal experience as an Indigenous person, the stereotype of the "angry savage Indian" wasn't created in a vacuum, it was propaganda created by English colonizers specifically designed to villainize Indigenous peoples who didn't conform to oppressive English norms and were simply fighting back to defend themselves.
so when I write about my Indigenous-coded fantasy OC whose aggressive small-attack-dog personality was largely influenced by the experiences of the angry little undiagnosed Indigenous-in-an-all-white-school teenager who came up with her 15+ years ago?
please for the love of god don't reduce her to a stereotype. we both deserve better than that.
ofc I'd like to believe most people who see the above graphic will know it's an oversimplification for the sake of comedy. But I also know from experience how much budding writers - especially younger folks - tend to internalize these ironic gags that are pulling double duty in trying to make a point. They see the point and immediately go "wait, shit, am I doing that?!" and then they panic and stress out and lose their capacity to understand nuance or context because all they might interpret on their end is, "DON'T MAKE BROWN CHARACTERS ANGRY!!!" (especially neurodivergent writers, hello, it's me)
Yes, it's important to check! Because sometimes you really are misinformed! But that doesn't automatically mean you're racist or that your work is now exclusively propaganda material.
A lot of us write from what we know, and the unfortunate but inevitable reality is that we're all susceptible to propaganda from the moment we're born, and much of that propaganda is often extremely subtle and designed to not be noticeable. That's what makes it propaganda in the first place.
So take a step back and examine your reasoning for writing the character the way you did. Analyze the works you were inspired by. Always be willing to look at your work and the works that inspired you through new angles, as that's the only thing that will help you gain confidence and figure out if what you're writing is authentically you or just misinformed.
These things are way more nuanced and complicated than we give them credit for - but also way more flexible !
Just do your research, and be open to learning and changing and growing ~ヾ(・ω・)
maybe i'm just biased but brother they were perfect the way they were, it wasn't broken and it didn't need fixing
like that's why we're so pissed about your work now because it lacks the structure and character it had back then
the glow is nice ig but like the anatomy is so much worse which is really a bummer for this piece in particular because it was originally the framework for the composition in the original and that's completely missing in the draw (like this is a perfect example of how rachel's 'intentionally broken' anatomy ykwim? like it wasn't perfect anatomy but it was way more STRIKING and served the composition a lot more, like in Hades' shoulders and Persephone's legs and hair)
persephone's flowers are gone , hades' laurel crown is gone
it's too dark and it feels like the vignette effect was used purely to cover up mistakes / anatomical issues and not because it was actually necessary
i'm sorry for picking on shit rachel posts but every time rachel redraws one of these old pieces it feels like such a disrespect to the original work, like these are pieces i STUDY FROM and still thoroughly enjoy from the original series, so seeing them redrawn like this is painful
and the worst part is most people (i.e. casual viewers) probably don't even realize this is a redraw to begin with, because she posted it on its own as a promotion for vol 10 and a lot of casual consumers of LO aren't aware of the older art pieces that existed way back in the day
i can understand wanting to redraw older pieces (i do it all the time, it's a great exercise!) but this is one of the few times where the artistic development has gone so backwards that the redrawn pieces feel like the work of someone making a DTIYS redraw that doesn't capture the spirit of the original vs. an actual redraw of the original work by the original creator herself
like if this WERE a DTIYS piece from someone else that would be FINE but it's NOT and that's what's so baffling and upsetting about it
i've said this many times before and i'll say it again, it's giving rcdart and i'm sobbing, this is a hate crime towards me specifically (/j)
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