Beautiful Disaster

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.

For the time being it is TOGGLEABLE and you can TURN IT OFF!

However, we do not know if Twitch will force this to be on at all times like some other platforms, like X/Twitter, have previously done.

Regardless of IF YOU STREAM OR NOT you should TURN THIS "TRAINING FOR GENERATIVE AI" SETTING OFF IMMEDIATELY!

To do so you must go to: https://www.twitch.tv/settings/security

And then scroll all the way down near the bottom.

There you'll find the "Training for Generative Ai" setting, toggle it to OFF!

Be sure to keep sending messages to Twitch that you do NOT want this to exist.

There's also the other stuff here!

I would say that recreating the characterisation, mood and general vibes of an existing work of fiction is in fact a skill in and of itself that's acquired via practice. A common compliment delivered to fanfiction writers is how well they have captured the spirit of the original work. Inexperienced fanfiction writers fail to do this.

When creating an original character you can, ultimately, say anything about them and now it's canon bcos you created them and you said so. conversely, well, if you are covering a well known song and start playing the wrong notes people will notice immediately.

In addition: a lot of fanfiction, IMO, is in actuality a form of metafictional literary analysis. a story where two characters sit down and talk about their feelings about a canonical event? literary analysis, which is of course a skill. Sometimes fanfiction is bad bcos the writer is not good at interpreting texts.

When you hear a story about a Guy, wanting to tell a story about them is the most natural thing in the world. That's how mythology and folk tales happen.

IMO the idea of fanfiction being "bad" or "cringe" as an artform is related to how activities have to be profitable to be considered valuable, but further than that it is related to how "owning" is considered to be preferred over "caretaking" or "stewardship" where you do not own, you just participate

NO.

DO NOT DO THIS. THIS DOES NOT WORK. IT IS STILL CONSIDERED UNLICENSED DISTRIBUTION OF COPYRIGHTED CONTENT.

DO NOT DO THIS.