I was cleaning up some broken links on my old silly Pokemon fansite, the Neglected Pokemon Lovers Unite (NPLU), and I realized that it has now been open for 25 years. TWENTY. FIVE. YEARS. That is an ASTONISHING amount of time for a site to stay open! Even if the last substantial update was like back in 2009 lol. The world around it has changed so much, but I think it's still valuable as a time capsule of a certain time on the internet. I wrote up a new essay about it on the site and did some general clean-up here and there.
Anyway to that end, since so much of the fic and art there is so old, I decided to compare Radic's oldest form to his newest! Radic was always a human boy but I just couldn't draw humans at the time so I made him a furry lol. Eventually I figured it out.
I also thought it'd be a neat challenge to mimic my own style back when it was really wonky and bad. And it was! It was kind of fun actually. I don't have too many shots of Radic from back then (it was hard to get art on the internet in the late 90's-early 00's), but I do have a few - hugging Kitsune, two old kiribans if you want to compare. I had a lot more old shots of Parasects though to reference unsurprisingly, they were very triangular lol. I think I did a pretty good job of matching what my art used to look like. I had a clear see-through Gameboy back in the day if you can't tell what Radic is holding lol.
("Isn't Radic the faceless avatar of your gamer self as depicted in Handplates-" yes, but Pokemon!Radic is the only one that actually became his own character, all the rest are shells)
If you do go poking around the NPLU, please keep in mind that almost everything there is very old and most of the fic and art is pretty bad (and shockingly violent). Plz do not judge me! My younger self was a cringey weeb but she was trying very hard. :<
[patreon]
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I don't know who needs to hear this, but as a creator -
I am fine with "the audience" -
downloading my fics
printing my fics
copy/pasting or screenshotting my fics
sharing your saved copy of my fics with anyone else who might want them in the unlikely but never impossible case that my fics are no longer available on ao3
making a book of my fic(s) and running your fingers across the pages while lovingly whispering my precioussss
doing these things with anything I create for fandom, such as meta, headcanons, au nonsense like 'texts from the brodinsons,' etc
I am not fine with "the audience"
doing any of the above with the purpose/intent of plagiarizing my work or passing it off as their own in any capacity
feeding my work into ai for any reason whatsoever
Save the fandom things. Preserve the fandom things. Respect the fandom things.
Enjoy the fandom things.
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mob tells reigen to shut up accidentally... two!!!
abbreviated ID: An mp100 comic. Teru tells Mob "shut up" can be a reply to something funny. and mob later tells reigen to shut up after he tells a joke, shocking reigen. Full ID under cut
[ID: A black and white Mob Psycho 100 comic. Mob smiles and says something marked as “[funny comment]” and Teru laughs hard, clapping Mob on the shoulder and exclaiming, “Oh, shut up, Kageyama!” Mob sweats and says, “Oh, sorry.” Teru, frowning, asks, “Huh? Why?”
Mob says, “You told me to shut up?” and Teru holds up his hands, looking apologetic. He exclaims, “Oh! No, no, no! That means I thought it was funny!” He flusters, smiling weakly and trying to explain. “When someone tells you to shut up and they’re laughing it means it was funny! Like uh... uh... Okay I can’t explain it but you know what I mean.”
Mob looks away and says, “Not really...” He smiles at Teru. “But I'm glad you thought it was funny.” Teru rubs the back of his head and says, “Ahaa yeah! I did!”
The view cuts to Spirits and Such, where Mob is writing at his desk and Reigen is scowling behind his. Arms crossed, Reigen says a “[snide but funny remark]”. Mob gives a “hehe” and smiles, “Good one, master.” The background turns dark gray as the view zooms in on Mob and he, still smiling with big eyes, says, “Shut up!”
Reigen’s mouth parts as his expression goes to blank shock. The background behind him is stark black. End ID]
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Baby April and Raph playing <3
When I was little, and we had first gotten our dog, it was recommended that we annoy him (so that when children inevitably yanked on an ear or something he didn't go for the throat). I IMMEDIATELY volunteered for the task, and would bother him constantly (mess with his ears, poke his teeth, etc).
This ^ is something we do as a byproduct of the training. I hook a finger around one of his teeth and he'd gently shake. It reminded me of Raph and April for some reason, so I drew it! :D
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the rise of AI art isn't surprising to us. for our entire lives, the attitude towards our skills has always been - that's not a real thing. it has been consistently, repeatedly devalued.
people treat art - all forms of it - as if it could exist by accident, by rote. they don't understand how much art is in the world. someone designed your home. someone designed the sign inside of your local grocery store. when you quote a character or line from something in media, that's a line a real person wrote.
"i could do that." sure, but you didn't. there's this joke where a plumber comes over to a house and twists a single knob. charges the guy 10k. the guy, furious, asks how the hell the bill is so high. the plumber says - "turning the knob was a dollar. the knowledge is the rest of the money."
the trouble is that nobody believes artists have knowledge. that we actively study. that we work hard, beyond doing our scales and occasionally writing a poem. the trouble is that unless you are already framed in a museum or have a book on a shelf or some kind of product, you aren't really an artist. hell, because of where i post my work, i'll never be considered a poet.
the thing that makes you an artist is choice. the thing that makes all art is choice. AI art is the fetid belief that art is instead an equation. that it must answer a specific question. Even with machine learning, AI cannot make a choice the way we can - because the choices we make have always been personal, complicated. our skills cannot be confined to "prompt and execution." what we are "solving" isn't just a system of numbers - it is how we process our entire existence. it isn't just "2 and 2 is 4", it's staring hard at the numbers and making the four into an alligator. it's rearranging the letters to say ow and it is the ugly drawing we make in the margin.
at some point, you will be able to write something by feeding my work into a machine. it will be perfectly legible and even might sound like me. but a machine doesn't understand why i do these things. it can be taught preferences, habits, statistical probability. it doesn't know why certain vowels sound good to me. it doesn't know the private rules i keep. it doesn't know how to keep evolving.
"but i want something to exist that doesn't exist yet." great. i'm glad you feel creative. go ahead and pay a fucking artist for it.
this is all saying something we all already knew. the sad fucking truth: we have to die to remind you. only when we're gone do we suddenly finally fucking mean something to you. artists are not replicable. we each genuinely have a skill, talent, and process that makes us unique. and there's actual quiet power in everything we do.
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god i really feel like the mcrp fandom and the wrestling fandom are cousins. we should hold hands. we both have to deal with people not quite understanding the idea of keyfabe ("don't you know wrestling is FAKE?"/"they're using their real names so clearly it's all the real youtubers"), with ao3 tagging nightmares (did you know the wrestling fandom still has the rpf tag problem the mcrp fandom had for years because apparently ao3 doesn't understand keyfabe either?), with people who don't understand keyfabe but from the other side (yes it's not real but i should still harass the player/wrestler about it right?), with complicated plots with goofy characters, with outsiders being dead convinced that the people inside are writing rpf, even if we explain it's not real... i'm just saying. we're cousins. buddies. we should hold hands. we should understand each other. that's all i'm saying,
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