Warrior King Katsuki, ruler of Dragons, enters a tense alliance with Queen Mage Izuku, ruler of the magical kingdom of Yuuei. Mages and dragons have been at odds for centuries, but now they must unite against the growing threat of the League of Necromancers.

I went with a lot of Norse and Viking themes for this piece! I know all the runes aren't visible but they are Elder Futhark translations of lines from William Ernest Henley's poem "Invictus"

Izuku, son of Poseidon 🔱 and Katsuki, son of Athena 🦉

And another one

there's a lot to hate but i think my least favourite thing about AI generated images is that now every time i see a really cool artwork on the internet, instead of childlike wonder i experience suspicion

art tips

Gonna add on to this, if that's ok, because I think a lot of people don't know how to categorize their work:

You don't have to be a professional (ie get paid) to be any of these things. You can claim the title without making any claims to the quality of your work. It's ok.

This is a great post, but I think it's important to highlight why it's a good idea to move away from "content creator" as a self-identifier. Be specific. Defining your niche and line of work not only helps you find resources and communities, it helps you find ways to further your career or studies if you need to figure out what you want to do.

Some of the streamers I watch call themselves content creators when they are genuinely entertainers, performers, hosts, etc. They are professional personalities, which requires know-how and skill when it comes to managing and catering to an audience. Even commentators are skilled. "Do it for content" is a silly thing to say. "Do it for the bit" is way more fun and accurate.

Exy Fans on Twitter (Championship Final Edition pt.3)

me when i fucking get you

This is the funniest thing anyone in the fandom has ever done

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#like...why use this baby word when you can just say how you feel about it

Found this in the original post tags and I just... SIGH

Here’s the thing, anon. Squick isn’t just ‘I don’t like this’, it’s ‘I think this is gross and it makes me deeply uncomfortable but I pass no judgement on those who enjoy it, because I acknowledge that everyone is different and those same people may have the same visceral reaction some of the things I enjoy’ and was originally made popular in the kink community.

So yeah, if you want to say that every time you come across a trope or whatever you find icky then go ahead, say that every time.

Also, this term dates back to Usenet in the early nineties, so sure, go off.

This frustrates me so much because squicks and triggers are fundamentally different things and as someone with PTSD, the distinction is super useful!

Squicks are things I find personally gross but may not be gross to someone else. They don’t upset me or provoke my PTSD, they simply do not pop my corn. Example: Omegaverse. I don’t like it, it makes me uncomfortable and I’m not going to read it, but if you like it, you do you.

Triggers are things which directly provoke my PTSD. This means that my triggers may seem completely normal and innocuous to someone else, because my triggers are so personal and intrinsically linked to a specific event in my life. My reactions to these triggers can include panic attacks and flashbacks to this traumatic event. Sometimes being triggered can affect me for several hours or even days.

Describing something as either a squick or a trigger allows me easily establish the difference in my potential reaction to something without having to go into painful detail about why bodily fluids might make me back button quickly but poker games might leave me a crying wreck. 

Making this distinction, and having a specific word for something that is not your slice of pie, but also not an actual psychological trigger, is also REALLY important for making sure that the word “trigger” can retain its original, specific, purposeful, and collectively understood clinical meaning (both inside and outside online fannish communities).

If we encourage everyone to lump things that just make them slightly uncomfortable or simply aren’t to their taste in under the word “trigger”, it actually dilutes the meaning of the word. It makes it harder for us all to, for the most part, collectively agree on and understand what exactly is being described when the word gets used.

And that destruction of shared precise definitions is a problem! It is really useful to have the communal language to be able to clearly and quickly delineate between “this grosses me out, no thanks” and “this is going to set off a trauma episode, rattle my brain, and probably throw off the rest of my day/week as a result” while also maintaining your privacy, and to know that you will be understood in what you are saying. Not having it is actually detrimental to the effort of making our communities safe and navigable for people living with trauma. Which is a goal that is much more important to me, personally, than the idea of not being “cutesy” (a word which in this case which sounds a lot like it’s being used as a euphemism for “cringe”).

(Also, one has to wonder if people told Shakespeare he was being childish when he made up entirely new words that are still widely used in the English language today...... 🤔)

My understanding is that “squick” was also created to avoid using more judgmental terms like “gross” or “disturbing”--like yeah, I do find X kink gross or disturbing, but that’s my personal feeling, not an objective fact about the world, and if I’m explaining to my friend who is super into X that I’d prefer they leave it out of the story they’re writing me in the fic exchange, I want to use politer language!

“Squick” does sound silly, like onomatopoeia, but I think that’s part of its role--it’s a word that defuses if, again, you’re saying something squicks you in front of an audience that may include its connoisseurs. When I say I’m squicked, I’m clearly not getting onto a high horse of dignity and moral righteousness. At the same time I’m not being so indirect for the sake of politeness--”oh, it’s not my favorite thing, I’m not sure it works for me, I haven’t found a fic about it that clicks for me”--that someone could misunderstand how much I do not want to see it.

And, to reiterate, it is a grown up word made by grown up nerds in the 90s so if you think it was somehow born on and limited to Tumblr I'm going to need you to actually do some fandom history research before you ever speak authoritatively again about anything fandom-related or adjacent.

I love and deeply miss the term “squick” and really want to see it brought back. It allows dislike for its own sake and without judgement. It’s polite, gentle, and has an air of “you do you.” A squick is not a trigger. Triggers are related to trauma. You’re allowed to not like things and not have them related to anything other than just finding them unpleasant. And that aversion can be strong! That’s okay! I really don’t like watersports. Like, gag-reflex levels of aversion, but it’s not triggering. I just really don’t like it.  I feel like we’ve lost the right/ability to just... quietly not like things and move on with our lives. Not everything is for everyone, and you don’t need a reason to not like something. Just politely and quietly excuse yourself. No need to draw attention, and if someone asks you why you just say, “No, it squicks me out.” No judgement. No narrative necessary. 

There is a sad trend of trying to make everything you personally dislike morally reprehensible in some way to justify your dislike of it. You're allowed to just not like something for no real reason. You do not have to justify why you dislike something, and the word "squick" is perfect for that. It say "look I really really don't like this thing, but it's ok if you do" and that is useful.

I think the biggest problem is that a lot of these kids are VERY into the whole fandom purity culture thing, so they actually DO want to make it out to be morally reprehensible, and they DON'T think it's ok that other ppl might be into it.

Cheerfully using “squick” since 1992, because it means a specific thing and other words do not mean that thing.

Very much SAME.

Everybody always thinks that a large amount of time in writing goes into stuff like editing, making an outline, or character designs, and I'm here to tell you that no. While that is time consuming, it is no where near the time we spend on pre-writing — which means scourging all pieces of media to find if someone wrote the story you want to read and then admitting defeat and writing it yourself.

Sparring to win

#this is one of those things that's obvious when you see it laid out#but I never would have realized it on my own I don't think

It kind of sucks that being pro-fiction has been reduced to just "person who beats it to lolicon and ships incest" because, well, besides the fact that's a weird uncomfortable thing to assume about people, being pro-fiction is about so much more than supporting the freedom to write or read that kind of thing in fiction. 

It's about supporting BDSM in fiction, "cringe" queer art/fic, "cringe" stories, badly written fanfic, rare pairs, ships that are unpopular, fanfiction that ignores canon, people being able to post their stories online without being bullied, being able to be in fandom without being bullied over everything I listed above and more, not to mention basic pro-fiction beliefs (like knowing you can read something without it corrupting you) and being against anti-fiction outside of fandom too (fuck book bans). 

I don't know; a lot of pro-fiction people just want fandom to be a nice place and for people to realise that you can read something bad in fiction critically, and suggesting otherwise feels kind of ignorant.

I hope they reincarnate into a shojo manga

pokémon au doodles

hot artists don't gatekeep

I've been resource gathering for YEARS so now I am going to share my dragons hoard

Floorplanner. Design and furnish a house for you to use for having a consistent background in your comic or anything! Free, you need an account, easy to use, and you can save multiple houses.

Comparing Heights. Input the heights of characters to see what the different is between them. Great for keeping consistency. Free.

Magma. Draw online with friends in real time. Great for practice or hanging out. Free, paid plan available, account preferred.

Smithsonian Open Access. Loads of free images. Free.

SketchDaily. Lots of pose references, massive library, is set on a timer so you can practice quick figure drawing. Free.

SculptGL. A sculpting tool which I am yet to master, but you should be able to make whatever 3d object you like with it. free.

Pexels. Free stock images. And the search engine is actually pretty good at pulling up what you want.

Figurosity. Great pose references, diverse body types, lots of "how to draw" videos directly on the site, the models are 3d and you can rotate the angle, but you can't make custom poses or edit body proportions. Free, account option, paid plans available.

Line of Action. More drawing references, this one also has a focus on expressions, hands/feet, animals, landscapes. Free.

Animal Photo. You pose a 3d skull model and select an animal species, and they give you a bunch of photo references for that animal at that angle. Super handy. Free.

Height Weight Chart. You ever see an OC listed as having a certain weight but then they look Wildly different than the number suggests? Well here's a site to avoid that! It shows real people at different weights and heights to give you a better idea of what these abstract numbers all look like. Free to use.

Homie gonna share this

*SIGHS*

Another AO3 app that's pretending to be official when it's not (or at least isn't making it clear its unofficial.) They're using AO3's name and logo, and embedding ads.

There is no official AO3 app

Someone else is gathering your data, potentially your log in information etc and making use of it how they please. (They say they're not but their privacy policy says otherwise)

They are making money from the ads without the fic writer's consent.

They've also rated it Pegi 3 (which is ludicrous)

Please, even if you care about nothing else, for the safety of your data, please don't use this app. Certainly don't give it your AO3 log in details.

I've told AO3 that it's infringing on its copyright. I will be requesting they remove access of my work as I do not consent to my creative content being used to generate ad revenue for them.

I will be reporting it as incorrectly rated.

The only email address I can find is Narusta@gmail.com which is included in their privacy policy, and boboxway13@gmail.com as their developer.

Your friendly reminder that AO3 does not have an app, has never had an app, and has no plans to have an app. Don’t use this (or anything similar)! And please for the love of god don’t read my work on there and let them make money off of me. I don’t even make money off of me.

Kacchan doodles