I Can't Keep Being Fundamentally Changed As A Person By Animated Movies, It's Just Not Sustainable.

Ahhhhhhhhh this gives me life

[ID: A digitally drawn comic of Toph and Zuko from Avatar: The Last Airbender talking about Zuko’s scar.

It begins with Toph approaching Zuko, who is sitting near a campfire. “You have a scar?” she asks. Zuko replies,  "Oh! Uh, yeah… You didn’t…?“ Toph cuts him off and says, "Came up in passing with the other guys.” Toph casually makes herself a seat out of rock and sits down next to him. “Must be pretty badass if everyone assumes I know it’s there, too,” she continues. Zuko looks aside awkwardly and says, “… It’s on my face.” “Ah.” Toph replies.

Zuko says, “Maybe you could… feel it?” “Huh?” says Toph. “I guess, if I concentrate hard enough.” Zuko reaches for Toph’s hand. “Uhm, just with your hand, if you want,” he says. “I don’t think I can describe it.” “… Gotcha. Guide my hand then, boss,” Toph says. Zuko does so, and there’s a pause as Toph touches his scar. The fire reflects in her eyes.

As Toph pulls her hand away, Zuko says, “…. You know, my left eye is almost blind, too.” “Seriously?!” Toph exclaims. “Why aren’t we a tag team yet?! The blind bandit and the half-blind dweeb!” “Come on…!” Zuko moans. End ID]

id by @strawberrygiorno , thank you!

i’ve had this comic sketched out for months but only decided to finish it now, it’s based on something i drew a couple years back of toph and zuko….don’t think too hard on when or how this takes place because i don’t really know either! it’s just a concept i’ve always wanted to draw

There’s a protest going on against AI art over on artstation, so I feel like now is the time for me to make a statement on this issue! 

I wholeheartedly support the ongoing protest against AI art. Why? Because my artwork is included in the datasets used to train these image generators without my consent. I get zero compensation for the use of my art, even though these image generators cost money to use, and are a commercial product. 

Musicians are not being treated the same way. Stability has a music generator that only uses royalty free music in their dataset. Their words: “Because diffusion models are prone to memorization and overfitting, releasing a model trained on copyrighted data could potentially result in legal issues.” Why is the work of visual artists being treated differently?

Many have compared image generators to human artists seeking out inspiration. Those two are not the same. My art is literally being fed into these generators through the datasets, and spat back out of a program that has no inherent sense of what is respectful to artists. As long as my art is literally integrated into the system used to create the images, it is commercial use of my art without my consent.

Until there is an ethically sourced database that compensates artists for the use of their images, I am against AI art. I also think platforms should do everything they can to prevent scraping of their content for these databases. 

Artists, speak out against this predatory practice! Our art should not be exploited without our consent, and we deserve to be compensated when our art is exploited for commercial use. 

Cod you guys knock it off?

What type of fish is made out of two sodium atoms?

2Na.

That's 100% weed

Get out of that art block! Maybe what a character has in their bag/pockets?

I have theories

I’ve been cooking this one for a while, but with the most recent “The Bad Batch” episode, I feel this is timely. 

Before I go into it, I want to get it out there that there is NOTHING WRONG with HC-ing an autistic character or an autistically-coded character as Aro/Ace, and there is NOTHING WRONG with being an Aro/Ace Autistic/Autistic person. My issue is with a PATTERN and not any specific HCs that I’ve come across. I also need to say that my Autistic experience is not the same as anyone else’s, I cannot and do not speak for all Autistic people. We exist on a spectrum here. I will also be using Autistic and Autistic person interchangeably here because I have no personal preference, though others might.

That being said, I notice that A LOT, if not MOST Autistically-coded characters are popularly headcanoned as Aro/Ace in their respective fandoms. Sometimes there’s canon evidence and sometimes there’s not. Some of them I agree with and others...make me wonder if they’re just being thought of that way because of the pervasive stereotype that Autistics are incapable of romantic or sexual feelings. 

In my own experience, I’ve had a handful of encounters where people are really shocked that I’m in a committed romantic relationship and that I am very comfortable with my sexuality and sexuality in general. It goes hand in hand with the typical “you don’t LOOK Autistic” response from people. It’s all part of a wider stereotype that infantilizes neurodivergents, separating them from commonly recognized markers of adulthood (and by extension, personhood) like a developed sex drive, desire to be romantically close with others, and independence. None of these things actually define what an adult person is, by the way.  

In those encounters, I usually feel infantilized and talked down to. It’s an unpleasant reality of my life that I can usually escape from in my fandoms, but echoes of it resonate in previously safe spaces with this pattern. I have to wonder if everybody is actually thinking their HCs through or if they’re just slapping “Aro/Ace” onto the character because they subconsciously don’t think of Autistic people as capable of romantic or sexual feelings, especially with characters that actually have canon romantic/sexual feelings ON SCREEN or CONFIRMED by the creators. (I thought about providing examples of Autistic/Autistically-coded characters that get Aro/Ace headcanoned often here, in spite of canon evidence to the contrary, but headcanons are supposed to be fun and I don’t want to start an argument about these characters here, especially if that headcanon is important to someone).

In summary, the Autistic community is an incredibly diverse one with people of all walks of life. Please don’t shunt us into just one way of being because of stereotypes, even if we’re just fictional characters.

Also, please watch Overly Sarcastic’s Trope Talk on Robots for a nice little lesson on coding and how it affects the Neurodivergent and Aro/Ace communities. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZGRdxP_8Js&t=1s

I'm fucking OBSESSED, Horizon is one of the best games ever and I just love the boys in this setting ksokdjdjplqjshduis

Heyyy who remembers this old AU from a couple years ago? Decided to revisit it and rework the designs I made :)

Old designs under the cut:

I’m concerned when people seem to be incapable of conceiving that a character can have a good heart while occasionally being a jerk, selfish, hypocritical, unfair, unreasonable, hurtful, etc etc because last I checked, that’s what real people were like

CIYS @ashwii

I absolutely had to, your style is so expressive and I wanted to use this flower background as a color palette to challenge myself :3

I'm trying so hard because this is what me caring about people looks like

But it's insincere apparently.

I'm exhausted.

I have empathy I swear

But if you accused me of insincerity I don't know what I'd say