look…………….. write as much shitty fic as you want. nobody can stop you. you’re learning constantly and it’s better to write hackneyed implausible ridiculousness than it is to not write at all out of fear of fucking up. you’re good
There was an experiment a professor did. I think it was pottery students. He did an experiment of “quality” vs “quantity”. One half of the class he told; you have to make as many pots as possible. Good pots, bad pots, shitty pots, whatever. The more pots you make, the higher your grade.
The other half of the class were told, “you can make only one pot”. But that pot had to be perfect. The quality had to be high; the highest quality pot would get the best mark.
But when it came to the grading, they noticed something weird.
All the best quality pots were in the ‘quantity’ group.
The guys who were literally churning out pots, trying to make as many as possible, not concentrating on the quality. But every pot they made, made them better at making pots. By the end of the month (I think it was a month) – they had some pretty awesome pots coming out, because they enjoying finding all the ways and all the things they could do to make all their pots. Where as the ‘quality’ guys had spent their time reading up on pots, and technique, and researching and planning; which was all great but they’d had no further practice at actually making pots.
The best way to get really good at something, the only way to be really good at something, is to make lots of shitty attempts at that thing several of which will fail. If all you create are perfect things then you won’t improve, because how can you improve on perfect?
The thing that puts me off shipping so badly is that when a pairing is popular, the shippers tend to only focus on the characters in shipping terms. Important moments from canon about one of the characters are turned into ship moments, even if the other character isn’t there. I respect everybody’s right to do as they wish, but not everything is about fictional romance. It just irks me how a characters individual qualities and important moments in canon are always reduced to shipping.
You know that thing where the crew for zootopia put effort into making sure the world they created reflected real life predjudices without directly correlating with any groups in reality and how people totally missed the point of that and assigned races to all the characters based on stereotypes?
Lets not do that ever again
I know, right?
Leaving everything so ambiguous in regards to which group was meant to be the “privileged” demographic was the entire point.
It was done to explore the issues of prejudice and discrimination at their core without social politics interfering. Also to show things aren’t simple and there’s ways groups can be prejudiced on both sides.
It’s why we see both Nick AND Judy each face different kinds of prejudice instead of having a straight “oppressor vs oppressed” narrative.
To me tackling it the issue with such nuance and complexity instead of having a easy, black and white narrative is what made it so brilliant.
The nuanced narrative where there was no clear line drawn
between “victim” and “oppressor” was also what made Tumblr absolutely livid. They
like a nice, clear-cut narrative of racism as the poor, helpless victims who
did nothing wrong being oppressed by the mean, evil sociopathic oppressors who
have no motivation or drive other than maybe greed or selfishness.
We really need more stories where the narrative of bigotry
shakes up Tumblr’s world view a little more.
>Is shown to be cruelly isolationist, turning their backs on African refugees
>Is so dedicated to their self-serving ways that its ruler thought nothing of murdering his own brother for suggesting that maybe they use their technology to help other people, not to mention abandoning a little boy because he wasn’t pureblooded Wakandan and might somehow threaten their precious way of life
>Is an unstable monarchy that uses ritual combat to decide who will rule, which leads to a homicidal maniac who came out of nowhere usurping the throne and them not being able to do anything about it
>Is repeatedly confirmed not to give one hot damn about any Africans or American blacks outside of their tribe
Ya’ll: “Yaaaaas Wakanda is Black paradise! Wypipo gtfo cuz this is for us! Wakandans would hate white people but would totally let our American asses even though they absolutely would not do that!!”
Wouldn’t that make blank panther an alt-right movie?
Let me tell you, if Wakanda was a fictional *white* country this website would be having aneurysms screaming about how it was an analogy for alt-rights.
I’m a little grateful though. This aptly demonstrates that a lot of these people aren’t so much offended by racism as they are angry someone else is doing it (but they’d be more than willing to act like Nazis with different flavor text if given the chance)
Any story claiming to be a deconstruction of fairy tales but has nothing to offer except new types of violence, more explicit sex, and a general attitude of “lol happy endings aren’t real” is like. such a cultural waste of time tbh
know what actually is a good deconstruction of a fairy tale? Shrek. It fucks up just about everything in a normal fairy tale and still manages to have a happy ending with a good message and never once has to be ‘gritty’ or ‘dark’. It’s actually really well done.
By all means, go see the movie. It’s a wonderful story that is exciting and captivating. But please, stay out of the fandom. Let black people have this for themselves, they need it. We will just fuck it up even more. Leave them well alone.
Who’s gonna tell Stan Lee?? 😂😂😂
“They need it”
Imagine thinking black people are so fragile that they need this movie like it is some sort of racial panacea.
I’m fucking dying
Seriously what is with this idea that black people can’t share a fandom with anybody? I’ve never had anybody try and stop me from being in the Star Wars fandom or any other “white”/mainstream franchise. Besides white comic book nerds know a hell of a lot more about BP than black bandwagoners who only heard about him last year.
Also because everyone on this hellsite seems to forget: STAN LEE AND JACK KIRBY ARE WHITE. BLACK PANTHER WAS CREATED BY WHITE PEOPLE. BLACKS DO NOT OWN BLACK PANTHER.
Now get the stick out of your ass and stop policing fandoms. And virtual signaling white people like OP? Stop patronizing me.
Wow, she waved to a nameless female. I had no idea waving to someone means you want to fuck them. Guess I must be gay cause I’ve waved to my male friends before.
I’m a teacher. Today I was covering for a grade 9 science class. Decent kids, if a bit rowdy, and didn’t want to do their work. Wtv, it was textbook work. Not the point.
1 girl (reminder that these kids are, like, 14/15) was doodling bust portraits (head & shoulders) in an art book. I had a squiz and asked her if they were her characters. She said they were and excitedly told me she had so many characters for this one story of hers. I laughed about how I wished I could draw mine, and moved on.
Later in the class, I hear her enthusiastically telling her friend all about her main OC – a gay kitsune prince with a tragic past. It was so, pure, classic Deviant Art: my first OC. And you know what? I loved it. I was just sitting there half overhearing, smiling to myself and glad that her friend was engaging and interested in her story and characters.
This is a girl who will become a creator. She will draw and write and imagine, get better and better. She’ll probably move past this stage and start making more nuanced characters (she was already lamenting she didn’t have enough girl OCs). But this is where she started. This is where so many of us started. I had a tiger catgirl, goth witch/sorceress OC in high school. I found my original design for her recently. Look what I create now.
Let kids be kids. Let them explore and invent and go wild and be cliche and make overpowered OCs. Let them have their anthropomorphic animal OCs. Let them try everything before they settle into maturity.
For fucks sake; let them have fun.
I know we’re all jealous of the pure joy that kids are able to feel while we are all withering husks shambling around trying to recapture that light, but let the younglings have their moment. One day the internet soul shredding machine will turn them into shadows of their former selves just like it did to us, and if we can delay that for as long as possible, we’ll get to read the cool stuff they make.
Reblogging this again to add that if the internet back in 2002, when I started putting comics online, was anything like it is today, I wouldn’t be here. None of my work would exist. I’d have put my first story out into the world and been immediately crushed. It wasn’t all sunshine and roses back then, but any negative feedback I got was pretty gentle, compared to the constant abuse now that even as an adult I struggle with.
The fact that I use my real name for my work is a testament to how safe I felt on the internet in the 00′s. I tell anyone just starting out now to use a pen name. I wish I had. I didn’t know how bad things were gonna get. The fact that we have people sharing their work at all anymore is a testament to their bravery.
Do you know what kills creativity? Perfectionism. No, really. And by making fun of anything that isn’t perfect, by setting the bar too high and not giving people space to have fun make mistakes and get messy, we destroy art.
Not everything needs your commentary, not everything needs your snarky jokes, not everything needs your input and your unsolicited constructive criticism. You don’t have to hold everyone to professional standards. If they’re not explicitly asking for your advice, be cautious about giving it.
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