👁 @thedoritodealerofthewoods - Tumblr Blog

the first law of tragedies: the end is already written and inevitable. the second law of tragedies: your actions are all your own and you can choose to get off this ride whenever you want. the third law of tragedies: we both know that you are never going to do that.

sturionic

"Learn the fundamentals first" seems like really sound universal advice, and as a former classical musician, I can vouch for it. You will have a more solid foundation for increasing complexity if you put in the time to study in a structured way. If you don't, you'll have a lot of shit to fix later.

As a former music teacher, I can also say that "learn the fundamentals first" is the death knell for a vast percentage of beginners, especially adult learners.

I've run into this with drawing several times, where some well-meaning artist has lectured me on needing to study anatomy properly or not use shortcuts like CSP brushes. And oh, believe me, I know. I know exactly how to learn an artistic discipline in a structured way. I just...don't want to!

The thing is, I'm not aiming to be a professional artist. I want to draw my gay little anime guys. I would undoubtedly improve at art much faster if I approached every gay little anime guy drawing as a study exercise. But I would also have quit drawing a decade ago if I couldn't just let myself enjoy drawing imperfect fucked-up little guys with whatever shortcuts I needed to body myself across the finish line.

With my adult piano students, my approach was always "What's your goal?" If their goal was to learn exactly one Elton John songbook to play at parties, then...that's what we did. We'd put tape on the keys to label the notes, and just fuckin go for it. Learning exactly one Elton John songbook is a good and noble musical goal, full stop.

Some of my students needed and enjoyed a more structured approach to learning; if they wanted to be able to play classical music, then yes, scales were going to have to enter the equation at some point. And yet others would learn the Elton John songbook, catch their white whale, and realize they wanted to explore more of the ocean. The scales were still there for them to learn!

Often the choice isn't between "learn art well" and "learn art imperfectly" - the choice is between "learn art imperfectly" and "don't do art at all." To which I say, learn imperfectly! Or, what the hell, don't 'learn' art. Just do, and enjoy the doing of it.

You have official permission from your local pretentious classical music snob: fuck the fundamentals. You can always unfuck them later (but only if you want to).

wordfather

lopkelepke

ba1laur

i kept going while you stopped growing

#deltarune #noelle holiday #noelle

ivy-saurs

randomly remembered this tweet and had to stop myself from bursting out laughing

hotvampireadjacent

Um

princesskuragina

Pride and crime and war and punishment and sense and peace and prejudice and sensibility

senatortedcruz

Wonderful photo

myeclecticdream09

thou-creature-of-the-deep

cubanpercy

what-a-catch-donkey-deactivated

lotrlocked

rinasaurusrex

andthosearesmalleragents

starlet-girls

was-the-grink-there

ishimarukiyotaka

literally the worst way of ending a series is “all the survivors are happily straight married with tons and tons of babies!”

ishimarukiyotaka

people still getting mad at this post i made in 2014 so I will add here. in 2026. that the point of this post isn’t “happy endings bad” its when the story’s only way to imagine a happy ending is a heterosexual nuclear family for everyone.

homunculus-argument

What the fuck is radiation. "Hey there's this invisible force with the magical power to move every single molecule in your body a little bit to the left. Consequently you shit blood and die."

grimeclown

I got a job at a gas station across from a casino and a guy keeps coming in to buy whole cartons of cigarettes and talks in the third person calling himself "snake eyes pete" and every time I tell him his total hes like "tell ya what if old Pete rolls a snake eyes why dont you give it to him for free?" and he rolls the same set of loaded dice on the counter and it does not matter how many times he rolls snake eyes I will not give him the cartons for free he gets so mad

homunculus-argument

I don't want to get all "hur hur that's not realistic" to amateur writers, but I want to make sure that everyone knows this: in a medieval or medieval-ish setting, someone who's seen an archer before would definitely be able to tell whether someone's an archer just by looking at them.

Archeologists can't tell for sure whether someone was assigned male or female when alive from bone structure, but they can tell whether someone was an archer. Longbow archer, anyway. The way their arms and shoulders were strongly muscled in a very asymmetrical way is pretty much unmistakable, and they were muscled enough that it's visible in their bones. If someone's seen what archers look like, they can tell whether a stranger they've never seen before can shoot a bow or not.

Finding an unarmed and unconscious, soft-bodied and narrow-shouldered stranger in the woods, the first clue that this mf is not a ranged nor melee fighter is not by whether his fingers are calloused in the right places for a bowstring. A medieval bowman was built like a brick shithouse.