i hate you ai art i hate you “unalive” i hate you youtube premium i hate you twitter 8$ checkmark i hate you nfts i hate you therapy app advertisements i hate you non-chronological timelines i hate you instagram reels i hate you subtle tiktok filters that cant be turned off i hate you family bloggers i hate you ads on true crime episodes i hate you facebook i hate you vr glasses on chickens i hate you dystopian social media
The curse of modern fandom is that it has allowed fans to get even closer to artists, but they won’t view the artists as people.
Human limits, human mistakes, human feelings, human needs, are never ascribed to artists, and when other fans rightfully point out, “hey, humans are making this, maybe don’t harass them or demand they cater to your personal tastes,” it gets shut down under, “uh, people who make popular mainstream things are automatically Public Figures who are also probably rich, so eat the rich and destroy artists over every perceived minor fault. <3”
Even though there’s, y'know, a really big strike currently going on because those artists are very much not rich or influential or in control of the bullshit.
The more friends I make in the various facets of the entertainment industry, and the more widely my own art gets shared, the more I realize that a lot of y'all genuinely don’t see artists as human beings if they meet some arbitrary standard of Being Known Online.
There is no amount of online fame that makes someone subhuman and a valid target for blatant disrespect and harassment.
Contrary to popular belief, you do not actually own and control a piece of art just because you like it a lot. The artists are not subject to your personal whims and tastes. They owe you nothing.
hey can you do me a favour?? Can you go get that nice pristine sketchbook or journal you’ve been hoarding and put some kind of mark on the first page? Anything will do, like a smudge of graphite or a blob of ink, or perhaps a very scribbly dinosaur. Just put something there. Please, or the dinosaur will be sad.
I was SO SAD for this dinosaur that I grabbed the nearest notebook (a calendar) and drew a little sailing ship for him
oh thank goodness!
IT’S OKAY IF YOU MESS IT UP
SKETCHBOOKS ARE FOR MESSING UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
THEY ARE!!!! It’s right in the name! Like @sleepnoises said a while ago, they’re for the quick putdowning of ideas! to catch the stuff that comes out of your brain! (I don’t mean to say that pretty sketchbook pages are bad, but it’s important for your health to do quick scribbly stuff too. if not in a book then perhaps on small scraps of paper)
The dinosaur is very glad to see so many doodles in the notes! Also lots of comments with very good suggestions for people who have a hard time starting, like starting on the second page, just signing & dating it, numbering the pages, or using the first page to put samples of all your usual pencils and pens and such.
Here’s how I started my new sketchbook, which I got for 5 dollars at Dollarama. I would have drawn on that first blank page instead of just signing it, but it was partially glued to the endpaper and wouldn’t lie flat.
(Also, since the sketches are about making velvet mites with little wired legs, I must mention that if/when I get around to doing that it’ll be posted on @vincentbriggs where all my non-dinosaur arts go.)
Imagine my shock as a neurodivergent teen when I first realized that using large vocabulary and eloquent speech doesn’t make you less likely to be misinterpreted, rather it adds an entirely new layer of misinterpretation I had never even realized existed in the form of people thinking you’re being snobbish or condescending when you’re just trying to be specific
I’ve seen a few ~aesthetic~ photos of rock stacks in rivers recently and this is just a reminder that you are destroying habitat when you move rocks around in rivers and streams.
In addition to dragonfly nymphs, rocky river beds are home to lots of other larval invertebrates like damselflies, mayflies, water beetles, caddisflies, stoneflies, and a bunch of dipterans. Not to mention lots of fish and amphibians!
Plus large scale rock stacking can change the flow of a stream and lead to increased erosion.
Just finished To Shape a Dragon's Breath and found it absolutely engrossing, so excited for more.
One of my favourite aspects of the worldbuilding was your playing with the roots of Western terminology in a way which rendered them unfamiliar but comprehensible, in a way which perfectly mirrored Anequs grappling with new terms for familiar concepts.
Do you have even a ballpark figure for when book two is coming?
Many thanks, and congratulations.
-Steve
I’m so glad you enjoyed it! Alas no ETA yet on book two, but I am working on it!
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