Nepenthe

Ok. Mini-rant because I can’t contain myself atm. Do you wanna know a badly-kept secret? I’ve been making art on and off for 29 years. My ass wishes I could draw too. A ton of artists wish they could draw.

Talent will only give you a leg up, and mainly just at the beginning. The rest, all of us have to struggle for and I’m quite sure very few of us appreciate having to do so. And no matter how good they get, there is always something they have no idea how to do yet or they have some idol whose style they envy more than their own. Or they’re the type that only hates what they make because they’re the one who made it.

Van Gogh had a painter friend named Gauguin, and they were both jealous of each other. There is no magical point that one hits where you feel like you’re Good Enough. The best you can aim for is the kind of steady improvement you don’t even notice happening except on a scale of years, and the confidence to acknowledge those improvements instead of hyper-focusing on every way it isn’t what you saw in your head (it never is).

Go get a pencil or your ipad or whatever. Youtube is by far your biggest friend. Go look up videos about how to actually see what’s in front of you instead of what your brain insists must logically be there. USE REFERENCE. Trace a photo over and over, then immediately try the same thing freehand – this one is super useful, because a lot of drawing is also muscle memory. Break things down into simple shapes and then build on those. Use the open space between objects if you need to, to trick yourself into drawing something complex without getting lost in intimidating structural details.

When you’ve got those down, move onto perspective and composition. Cry a little if you have to, then get back to it. Because now you’re able to do whole backgrounds. People? Do tons of deliberately imprecise gesture drawings. Give your OC a terrifying robot head, a pillow for a torso, and springs for limbs. But go get. Your pencil. And be ok with drawing at first like everyone thinks they draw.

Barring that, my second choice is singing.

In that case, I also choose NZ 802 years ago.

The post can, yeah. The predictability with which all posts or comments containing the word “Google” will have several responses underneath evangelizing Firefox almost certainly will not, after it exceeds a point it very clearly routinely exceeds.

Not because you guys are wrong, (you’re not), but because you’re annoying, which is almost as bad. There is something in psychology called reactance theory, and it’s the reason why, when you’re just about to do the dishes and then someone else tells you to do them, it’s suddenly the last thing on earth you want to do.

It is a choice so small it isn’t worth arguing over, but it’s no longer your choice born out of your own free will, and now you feel cheated and resentful and you are not doing it, both out of spite and more truthfully to regain your sense of choice.

This is the same reason everyone hates vegans so much. They’re not wrong. They’re annoying. Firefox has vegan PR.

I held off listening to Hamilton for three years for no other reason than nobody else I met would shut the goddamn fuck up about Hamilton. Same with the TV version of Good Omens, whatever stupid cartoon jester thing has been in a third of the memes lately, and a hundred other things.

I am very likely to switch over to Firefox myself in the ever-nearing future. That ice is breaking. But it will not be because a bunch of strangers whined at me over my own choices for over a decade. It will be because the cons of whatever Google, Windows, etc. have done finally outweigh the pros of not having to exert effort to maintain my experience.

It bears consideration that in the meantime, Firefox users have a tendency not to even read the several duplicate comments before they start jacking off into them, not uncommonly in a way that’s loudly judgemental towards their own target audience.

The resultant spam cements a mental association between Firefox, the brand and the feeling of being annoyed and insulted. Don’t be those vegans. If I had to think, be like the art community treats Adobe. Fuck Adobe, but I’m not just gonna overload someone with aggressive pompousity who’s only using the industry default.

The thing is — not trying to sound snarky about this — do you honestly believe there is someone on the fediverse that hasn’t heard of Firefox before.

When I get deeply emotionally attached to my data analyst, I might care if they’re moonlighting on the side. Sex, work or not, is still an emotional topic for most of the human race and it’s not new knowledge to anyone.

Enough that it would not naturally occur to me that “please do not engage in prostitution while we’re together” needs to be said out loud. I will casually ask if you’re monogamous and if you say yes, that’s how monogamy works.

Even aside from that, yeah, tbh, I would consider it good form to let your partner know you’re considering a new job regardless, just so they generally know what’s going on. If you have to hide it, maybe something is wrong.

Imagine half your backyard being in another country. Do you think they still mow it?

Defender of the basic is a video to live by

Because homonyms are the worst part of any language and Noah Webster agrees with me.

for the metric system they don’t even use.

British people will fund pirates to steal our measuring weights, only to convert themselves 200 years later and then act like the US doesn’t have a single STEM field. And then drive by the mile for a pint of milk.

I used to have one that did that. He was aching to get on the counter and the first time he actually succeeded, I was terrified he was about to burn himself.

Nope. He just wanted to watch me cook. Sat very politely the whole time. It became a thing. Never even asked me for any of it. He just wanted to spend time with me. I miss him.

I’ve actually never had anyone in a monster truck tell me I should buy a monster truck. So…by unfortunate definition…

Even Jesus said imagining adultery is the same as committing it. They can still think, ergo they are worthy of punishment

How do you just make the bed with no pillows

I was up at an Airbnb in Boston years ago and I still very much remember one entire third of the bed I was given being covered in different throw pillows. It was bad enough to actually be funny, and more intrusive irl than the photo I had to take would have you believe. Where the photo cuts off is the edge of the mattress.

I had to move them every night in order to go to sleep, and put them back every morning when I made the bed. I counted. There were sixteen of them. Everyone else’s beds were the same way.

I’d prefer if it weren’t, though

Depends on the life, I would think.

I was actually gonna say my peak was 23 because 1.5 months later, I’d just gotten my first place with my then-fiance. But that was also after nearly a decade of being completely homeless, so yeah, that can tip the scales a bit. It was a first place, not a nice place, and we didn’t always have food and running water. It was more me just not caring much about those things.

And then I remembered how freeing it was to leave after he metamorphosed into a drunk little cheating piece of shit. Very exciting. Had a solid support system for the first time ever. Aceing college despite never having been to high school. Happy cried a few times.

So I’m gonna call it at 28 and it’s all downhill from here, but OP needs to remember Life sometimes happens and it isn’t a cookie cutter TV sitcom.

I can be well into my 30s with no driver’s license because I missed the whole “Loving parents teach me to drive to high school” situation. I was eating out of a garbage can out back behind the Food Lion and sleeping in a park when that was supposed to happen. But I could also just go get one.

French: barbe Ă papa (daddy’s beard)

You know how, especially because in ancient Greece court cases could be based more on individual character assessment than any physical evidence, people would gather in marketplaces and workshops or outright hire someone to spread gossip about their opponent? If you knew anything about anything, that was the place it would spread?

Women have the bathroom. The mere suggestion of taking a piss to avoid drama

Oh, you’re the lifeblood of @gameart, aren’t you? I tried to contribute once, but then my favorite screenshot I ever took never even federated at all and I got too discouraged.

Still sad about it, tbh. No idea if it would happen again or not. I should dig through my folders again. I don’t think I have much, but I must have something

Problem being, “There are several vegan dishes I, a curious meat-eater, continue to enjoy to this day and everyone should at least give it a fair shake :D” is always going to come off better and likely pique someone’s interest more than “But think of the animals you are deliberately murdering!”

I’m well aware. If that were enough to sway me, I’d already be vegan. When your target lacks the morals you’re trying to capitalize on, you’re going to have to make it worth their while. In this case through the thing they care about: deliciousness.

Don’t leave us hanging

Found the bat.

One of them is probably a plankton, by the way. 95% of all marine life is plankton.