You bleed because you don't floss.

this rest of the thread continues after the third tweet from the reblog.

like THE FULL THREAD is genuinely so reassuring.

sometimes, it is not enough to just know, sometimes you might need that reassurance of "do you really think of me when i'm away?" and someone reassuring you that yeah, they do. and evaluate that! trust that! just like op did.

and then learning that ykw, it's NOT any of my business really. and finding comfort in that trust that like. whether they are or aren't thinking of me, they really do love me.

So some fanartist drew a “sexy” (read: booby) version of a (cartoon) character who is traditionally very non-sexualised. Fans of the character got mad about it because it’s kind of groundbreaking how that character is written and portrayed and this art totally ignores the entire point of the character. They demanded the art be deleted. In response to that other people said, well what the fanartist did may be distateful but they have every right to draw what they’re into. The two sides fight for days and each starts a harassment campaign and even report their “opponents’” accounts.

So far so typical. But things eventually come to a head and they decide that this will be settled by votes - not through a poll. Through donations to a children’s education charity via each side’s portal. Whoever can get the highest amount of donation wins.

Is this tuff

The designs belong to @sebbyisland ! I haven’t had this much fun drawing something in a while (and also I couldn’t draw cuz of busy), so ty for the inspiration

Apparently drawing muppets is like super fun?? So of course I had to make Hikaru and Karashi

To give some context for what I’m talking about, most authors have a greater or lesser ability to set aside their prior knowledge and precisely depict something they’ve seen, without adding in things that it obviously “must” be. Even if they don’t understand why something happened, they can accurately portray the fact that it happened and the way in which it happened. Terry Pratchett calls this “first sight” and waxes poetic about it, while Meg Cabot calls it “painting what you see, not what you know.” Charles Dickens is the grandmaster who shows everyone else how it ought to be done. And Nathaniel Hawthorne, as it so happens, is worse at it than any “classic” writer I’ve ever seen. Everything he writes about is filtered through the perspective of “What does my religion say about this?”, and if the things his religion says are different from the things you could see if you used your eyes, then his religion takes priority.

There’s a bit in Rappaccini’s Daughter where Hawthorne needs to describe the physical characteristics of an artificially bred plant. A normal person would describe this plant as beautiful, but Hawthorne knows that God doesn’t want us artificially breeding plants, so the existence of this plant must be a sin, and sins can’t be beautiful. Therefore, he informs the reader that the plant is “glowing with an evil mockery of beauty.” The plant, meanwhile, continues to be a plant, which can’t be good or evil unless they sing and/or eat people.

In a similar vein, a homophobe looks at a gay guy who’s talking about his husband, and evaluates based on what God wants. A heterosexual man talking about his spouse could be delivering a cute anecdote, but homosexuality is a sin, and anecdotes about sins can’t be cute. Therefore, the only possibility is that the gay guy is intentionally mocking straight people with a twisted parody of romantic cuteness.

"The more I listen, the more the scene comes to life and the more that girl seems to vanish from stage."

"As long as you make the audience think you're good, you're second-rate. That's what they always used to say. Because the listeners are so focused on the story, it feels like the performer has disappeared. I've experienced that illusion on rare occasions, during a master's performance, but who would've thought I'd feel it at the Karaku cup?"

"I thought it would backfire on her. Most of them can preform 'Jugemu.' So they're discerning. It won't be easy to get laughs from an audience like that. Though you could say that it's easy to envision precisely because it's so familiar."

"Ever since she was a little kid, she could instantly master whatever I taught her. But you see . . . because it's too easy for her, she lacks one thing. Awareness of how to empathize with her character's feelings. Because even with a scant understanding of the characters, Akane can handle them reasonably well. But at the end of the day, that kind of art is hollow and superficial. It can't move people's souls. To become, and think as the characters you're playing. Perspective. That's what I wanted her to learn."

"Now where did the Karaku Cup's usual fervor go? This is no longer a venue to vie for technical supremacy. It's a place to enjoy listening to stories. Actually, I should probably give her credit for this transformation. The more you exert yourself to preform, to express something, the more your presence as a performer expands. By considering your character's perspective and understanding it, you gradually learn how act as that person in the most natural way, without having to rely on over-the-top expressions or technical skills. Until the performer's presence vanishes in a subtle, natural manner."

"Oh crap! I was supposed to write an article on this, but I just sat and listened!"

I feel like there's a pressure to be really good at technical skills in creative writing, like having a massive vocabulary or an expert grasp on grammar- but stories can move people emotionally even without all that. Writing is about the characters themselves and bringing them to life in the narrative. Historically that was not always the focus, of course, however in the modern day with character driven stories being the expectation it's essential to grasp that as an aspect readers are looking for. Especially as a foothold, even if it's not a primary focus.

This is most obviously true through narration and dialogue, where an authors characters all talk more or less the same and you can't spot the differences when you take away the dialogue tags. This makes it difficult to follow and it wastes an opportunity to flesh out the narrative. So long as characters all sound like a product of "the author" it will continue to sound like a story. Which will prevent the falling away effect of a skilled author presenting something vividly real by removing their presence from the narrative.

Ok folks (shoutout @watanuki-chihiro) have talked abt how God of Death Duel Duet (G3D) parallels the Zenza Rensekai, and that got me thinking. Can we talk about Akane’s convo with Kaisei after losing? Because this scene was way more fucking loaded than any of us expected I think. Considering recent events.