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I think my brother dated Denise, are you guys from St Albert Alberta???
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Nov 3, 2011 01:51
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Ask me about studying law with a girl who thinks she's married to Sai Baba Previously: The Girl in the Sari A Note on Henriette Phantom in Honolulu As mentioned earlier, Henriette in her first study group with us revealed that she had operatic training, won operatic awards, etc. Naturally, we expected her to be pretty good in the singing department. To meet these expectations, Henriette started a new habit. She would spontaneously burst into song at all the most inopportune moments. Moments include: - walking to class; - in class, during breaks or discussions amongst ourselves; - mealtimes; and - mid-group conversations. Henriette claimed that she was a soprano, which meant that every single time we hear her sing it would be a high WOOOOOOOOOOOO or EEEEEEEEEEEEE. Imagine if you have a cat in heat that you bring everywhere and the cat shrieks whenever it sees something with four legs. It was insanely uncomfortable when you were reading up liens and easements and suddenly there was oooOOOOOooooOOOOOooooOOOOO out of nowhere. Anyway, this led in to an event the Law Society was doing in our first semester. One of the oldest clerks in the law faculty was leaving, and the Law Society decided it would be nice to do a little farewell party for her. The farewell party was a little buffet and because the clerk loves the island life, the Law Society decided on a Hawaiian theme. They put up tiki decorations everywhere, working members had little fake grass skirts, tropical mocktails and fruits were served, you know the drill. The party was scheduled right after an evening class around 5-6pm (as the clerk lived out of town), so most of us were in our everyday clothes of t-shirt, jeans, etc. A karaoke station was set up (because we are Malaysian as hell) and people sang Under the Boardwalk, If You Like Pina Coladas, and other beachy songs. Henriette asked the Law Society president if she could do a performance. None of us were still aware of how strange Henriette was at that time, and with her operatic credentials it was granted immediately. He reminded her to dress in Hawaiian theme and suggested Israel Kamakawiwoʻole's Over the Rainbow. Henriette wasn't at the party. The Society was panicking, since they promised the clerk a surprise performance from a student. Where the hell was she? Phone calls were made and not answered. Hours later into the party Henriette finally appeared. And, well, Henriette definitely did something. She was dressed up in a shimmering evening gown, her hair permed and sprinkled with glitter, her face obscured by a half-face mask. Everyone stared in amazement. Some guy was trailing behind her with a laptop. She went on stage and took the mic without any prompt. Ladies and Gentlemen, I am HENRIETTTEEEEEE [sung] and we are here to celebrate the retirement of [clerk's name, sung]! The trailing guy turned on the laptop. There was MIDI music playing (very softly). It was Think of Me, from the Phantom of the Opera. Henriette sang. Oh god, Henriette sang. The younger me, in my old private blog, apparently wrote her singing as "with the subtlety of a wrecking ball, every high note was a scream or a shriek, every low note was a high note, and every quiet note was a high note." I've managed to block out most of her singing from my memory, but that reads pretty accurate to what I feel. The performance was overtly grandiose, not in line with the whole theme, and the singing was terrible. Yes, Henriette could hit high notes, but being able to do that didn't mean you should hit them all the time. We could hear her gasping for breath constantly, and coupled with the atrocious MIDI, it just made for a long, awful, awkward night. Because it was late, the only people left were students including Law Society members (who quietly pulled out the booze) and one or two of the more fun lecturers like Parekh. To put it bluntly, it was fortunate that only so few of us were witness to the disaster. Oh, and before Henriette arrived, the clerk left for home to catch the last train. The Saddest Rhino fucked around with this message at 18:28 on Nov 3, 2011 |
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Nov 3, 2011 01:59
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Mors Rattus posted:Dudes playing chicks in tabletop games isn't the real issue - that can be fine. It's creepy dudes playing chicks. See, I have the opposite problem. The creepy guy who can't understand it's just a game. Refuses to play any female character.  "Ok, let's all play an adventure where we're female paladins. Creep, what's your character's name?" "Dan" "You can't have a female named Dan, that will be confusing." "No, it's a guy." "..."A few weeks back we were playing a Dread scenerio - a game that gets you attached to your character by having you answer leading questions about the character's background. One of the questions he got was "What will happen if everyone finds out you're gay?". He answered "Nothing, because I'm not." Why the hell do you show up if you don't want to roleplay? You can roll dice to kill monsters by yourself, you know. Anyway, to be on topic, I think the whole I-am-a-super-snowflake thing is the flip side of the way I felt when I had severe depression. See, I was near suicidal because I knew I wouldn't make a big difference in the world. My thinking was like this: All these shows like DBZ, look, those are people saving whole planets! But I know it's just fantasy, and no one can ever do that. But I want to be a hero so badly. But I can't. So I am very sad. Why should I even be alive if I'm not going to make a difference? Of course, I grew up, and realized that even if I won't ever invent the cure for cancer, I can still make a difference in the lives of other people, and that helping just one person matters. However, maybe all the soul bonders went the other way: I want to be a hero. Just like those people on TV. But if I face the reality that I can't, I will be very sad. So to keep myself from depression, I will act as if this reality is just an illusion! Then I can be secretly just like the people on TV, and be happy.
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Nov 3, 2011 02:40
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uglynoodles posted:....how painstaking the detail was. That is goddamned hilarious. I mean, that's quite a lot of attention to detail, sorta, just not in any way indicative of talent. I take it she was pretty indignant when she didn't win with it. Domus posted:
That's rich. What a knob. What's the fun in that sort of thing if it doesn't take you out of your comfort zone or at least force you to branch out? Domus posted:I grew up, and realized that even if I won't ever invent the cure for cancer, I can still make a difference in the lives of other people, and that helping just one person matters. I went in a slightly different direction. I always felt I wouldn't make much of an impression on the world and settled into a pretty comfortable existential nihilism. Besides, screw superheroes, the villains were always more interesting, plus they have the express route to impacting others' lives. 
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Nov 3, 2011 02:55
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Sorry for derailing the topic even further according to the last two posts, but what the last two posters were going about is especially relevant to my interest.quote:Of course, I grew up, and realized that even if I won't ever invent the cure for cancer, I can still make a difference in the lives of other people, and that helping just one person matters. This is the way of thinking I'd like to view myself as doing. Helping other people bit by bit will add up. You won't be praised as a hero, but the sum of all you have done might as well qualify you for one. And that's all doing good is about IMO - helping others for the sake of doing good itself, knowing that what you do would benefit someone.
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Nov 3, 2011 03:08
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Domus posted:See, I have the opposite problem. The creepy guy who can't understand it's just a game. Refuses to play any female character. Sir Prancelot posted:When I was still in high school, I gamed with two groups. In one group, I was a player among about six acquaintances. In the other, I ran for a group of four relatively close friends. I have mostly good stories from both groups, full of shenanigans and absurdity on the part of my own players, and genuinely good storytelling on the part of my old DM. It was a fun time all around, and I look back on it fondly. But, as always, there were weirdos. Names, of course, are changed to protect the innocent as well as the guilty.
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Nov 3, 2011 03:35
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Knight of the 
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Those folks definitely have something going on in the closet...for a second I thought by TG thread you meant the other TG.
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Nov 3, 2011 04:16
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ookuwagata posted:Those folks definitely have something going on in the closet...for a second I thought by TG thread you meant the other TG.  I actually neglected to mention what may be the funniest part of the entire affair: Hunter, the guy whose house we used for games, lived with his folks on their expansive rural property on which they raised free range turkeys and other awesome things. It was a quiet, atmospheric place to spend a lonely weekend evening. Unfortunately for Chris, it was also on the end of a mile-long 'driveway' that plunged deep into the piney wilderness. I was Chris's ride for the night. He just walked off into the hills and shrubs in his flipflops, at eight o'clock at night, five miles from home. When the game adjourned he was gone. Come to think of it, I have a lot of Chris stories...
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Nov 3, 2011 04:20
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Sir Prancelot posted:Come to think of it, I have a lot of Chris stories... I think you know what you need to do now.
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Nov 3, 2011 04:24
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Sir Prancelot posted:
That dude's a fuckin' weirdo.
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Nov 3, 2011 04:25
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GreenBuckanneer posted:That dude's a fuckin' weirdo.  I'm somehow the godfather of his daughter now. Since there appears to be some interest, I'll throw a Chris story up later tonight when my other work's done.
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Nov 3, 2011 04:31
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Sir Prancelot posted:Chris story Haha oh wow. This is taking me back. Once had a guy who threw a tantrum in front of our gaming group when a sonic attack broke his armor that his perfect min-maxed character absolutely needed. Please tell us more about Chris. Oh this thread.
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Nov 3, 2011 06:13
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I think I'm showing my age here but this intensely reminds me of Humper Monkey's old stories where his son was raised by a crazy ex wife and dumped on him. He believed he was a super saiyan, had a fixation with incest and believed that his pregnant (before him) girlfriend/fiancee wasn't impregnated by him, but since he hosed her with super saiyan sperm it was his kid now so it was okay. Possibly bullshit but still an amazing story. Thankfully no one I know was really like this. They tended to just fulfill that sociopath niche without the extra frills of believing they were powerful gods or what have you. Selfish and cruel, but thankfully not crazy. I'm loving your thread. It is amazing. But it makes me wonder what flavor of schizophrenia and lack of discipline causes someone to become like Denise. Ice Phisherman fucked around with this message at 07:02 on Nov 3, 2011 |
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Nov 3, 2011 07:00
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Ice Phisherman posted:I think I'm showing my age here but this intensely reminds me of Humper Monkey's old stories where his son was raised by a crazy ex wife and dumped on him. He believed he was a super saiyan, had a fixation with incest and believed that his pregnant (before him) girlfriend/fiancee wasn't impregnated by him, but since he hosed her with super saiyan sperm it was his kid now so it was okay. Not to derail too much, but I read that and I'd just like to say: as cool as that thread was story wise, it was infuriating to read anything but the OP's posts. Mother of god was everyone stupid in that thread. Because GBS had (and still has, far as I can tell) a huge raging hard on for disciplined parenting, they tried to justify the father characters total inability to recognize that a)his attempts at tough love and discipline weren't loving working, and b)his son clearly had mental problems. All throughout this thread people have been talking about the obvious psychological problems that come with the behaviour shown in this thread's stories. While it has lead to some dull and pointless whining, let me tell you it's better than the old attitude which seems to have amounted to "lol no people are just like this because they're idiots." Something Awful's forum community seems to have gotten way better that way.
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Nov 3, 2011 07:32
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This thread and the Fandom!Secrets thread  OP and Kat, thanks for starting this thread and allowing others to share their own stories. Denise sounds scary. Have either of you bought up to George that she may be mentally ill? He sounds like a good man and I hope he's not blaming himself for Denise's troubles. I know a guy named Brian who is a Japanophile. He does know more about the culture than the average Weeboo and knows that it's not All Anime All The Time! He is in his late 20's, fat and divorced. He has just about every gaming system and a ton of games, books, movies and anime collectables. The amount of stuff he has is impressive and he enjoys hosting gaming parties and movie nights. He does believe that the Anime world is real and he has tried to convince me that: 1) There is a war going on and he has the power to stop it 2) He is friends with several cops and FBI agents and he can get away with anything 3) His Father has Mafia ties 4) He has powers that are locked down on this plane but he can shoot fireballs from his hands Despite his faults, that's nothing compared to his ex-wife Stephanie who: 1) Wore fox ears all the time 2) Used to live in someone's closet and believed it was her den 3) Tried to kill Brian twice. Once with rat poison baked into a pie and once by filling up their trailer with gas from the stove. 4) Believed she was soul-bonded with an Anime character (I do not know which one, sorry) and had to kill Brian in order to join her Anime husband on the Anime Plain. 5) Lives with her parents and is in counseling but refuses to take her medication 6) Still writes notebooks full of letters to her Anime husband, makes copies and sends them to Brian Edit: Soul not sole MissConduct fucked around with this message at 16:34 on Nov 3, 2011 |
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Nov 3, 2011 07:36
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MissConduct posted:
As a Bokononist I am offended especially by this. How can you boko-maru with a cartoon? 
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Nov 3, 2011 08:20
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MissConduct posted:This thread and the Fandom!Secrets thread
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Nov 3, 2011 08:32
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SmokeyXIII posted:I think my brother dated Denise, are you guys from St Albert Alberta??? No, we are not from there, and Denise has never had a romantic relationship of any kind.
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Nov 3, 2011 09:50
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uglynoodles posted:No, we are not from there, and Denise has never had a romantic relationship of any kind. Surely you jest. What about all of the hot animu men? Bitch be pumping out spirit babies. Also, please don't do the internet detective thing, goons. It never accomplishes anything positive. It just kills the thread. Dr. Witherbone posted:Yeah, it pretty much was. Not all, but some posts were painful to read. To be fair, HM came from a military background. Up until only a few years ago you never, ever talk about how crazy or hosed up you are in the military. And he had a traumatic brain injury to boot. And it is easy to tell someone about how it should have been in retrospect when you're just trying to maintain your life and discipline a young child. So I tend to give someone a pass when they're trying and doing at least something right because I'm not there and when someone is telling stories, they're telling from the past tense, not in the moment. I figure that admitting to yourself that your flesh and blood is loving bugnuts is hard as well. As pertaining to Denise, it sounds like her dad is overworked and can only do so much with the limited time he has. And that for a good long while she did pretty much whatever the hell she wanted. He sounds particularly wonderfully intentioned and probably all around decent human being, but one can only do so much. He's justified as he has to work every day, but some preventative tough love is what straightened me out at that age. My parents had a zero tolerance policy with my dumb teenage bullshit. For example: Don't do your homework? Teacher is supposed to contact us. He or she does. You spend a day in your room and you do it regardless if you get a grade for it or not. You get all non-homework/schoolwork items taken out of your room. Specifically my books (no computer in there until years later). Clean up the rest while you're in there. The next day you're free to do whatever. Just make sure that you're passing your classes with a B average at least and there won't be any problem. Eventually I was so drat bored that I did my work and kept doing it. Otherwise I'd spend however long after school in my room doing nothing but work. Thankfully my history book kept me sane. I suppose that me being sane made the choices more mundane. Denise needed/needs psychiatric help and a general lack of discipline probably didn't help. I wouldn't even know where to begin if I was her father past normal discipline. Ice Phisherman fucked around with this message at 10:33 on Nov 3, 2011 |
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Nov 3, 2011 10:09
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Sir Prancelot posted:Hey, some insanity I can contribute to! Crossposted from long ago in a TG thread: Jesus christ, that brought up bad memories about the group of people I first tried DnD with. drat creepy neckbeards only took 3 hours before they ended up having some orc try to rape my elf character (I was 15 guys! I just wanted to play a pretty elf!) I pretty much swore off DnD until I was 20 because of those sperglords. uglynoodles posted:She would say this and talk about how awesome she was, and then in the next breath whine and gripe about how it'd totally never go anywhere and oh-won't-you-compliment-me. She laboured on this for hours, taking frequent breaks, and often talking about her struggles as an artist and how painstaking the detail was. I laughed so hard when I scrolled down and saw that picture, because it's exactly what I did back in highschool when I drew dragons. There's just something so childishly pure about someone sitting down and drawing out EVERY SINGLE SCALE for no reason other than it adds a lot of unnecessary detail. Did she ever get to the point where she started trying to colour things digitally? That in itself is a hoot to see. I don't think you can really compare her "art" with someone who does it professionally or draws to improve. People like this only draw because it brings in attention and you can easily surround yourself with yesman. Visual art is strange in the way that you can make incredibly terrible looking poo poo and still have friends and fans, but if you were terrible at the guitar nobody would want to listen to you or really humour you.
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Nov 3, 2011 14:10
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At first glance, Denise's artwork isn't that bad, at least as far as lazy art goes. I definitely agree with the others who say that it kind of looks a lot like she just copied off other anime art, though--it must have taken a while to draw all of the scales on that dragon, but they just don't look very good when you look closely at the detail. :\ I think she could be pretty good if she applied herself, but she probably won't. Reading about Denise's artwork is kind of sad since it reminds me of a couple of close friends of mine who were awkward anime kids in high school. I remember that the entire anime clique regarded me as this gifted, amazing artist for no reason at all. I'm actually really sub-par (not fishing for compliments here, I'm just realistic about my abilities), and I was only better than the folks in that group at figure-drawing because I would practice drawing from real life every day and made myself go to museums with western art rather than just drawing influence from anime. I tried to explain the benefit of this countless times, and I even got one of my friends to practice outlining her forms before adding detail*, but nobody ever seemed interested in challenging themselves--or worse, it'd cause some meltdown about how they just weren't any good at drawing, and how they had no innate talent, and I'd try to explain that drawing gets easier for everyone with more practice, but eventually I just gave up. Like with Denise, a huge feeling I got was that the anime-obsessed artists were afraid to challenge themselves. They were really resistant to learning anything about art school because that would entail dealing with criticism. For the folks reading who have never been in art school--it's generally expected that all college-level art students draw realistic things with great accuracy, and realistic pieces will be expected in your portfolio as an example of your technical skill. The better schools expect a great deal of technical skill and very competitive bodies of work, and it's even more competitive with the better animation schools. My city had an portfolio-review day for high school seniors to meet with advisers from prestigious schools around the nation, and I didn't see a single member of the anime clique there despite my telling all of them WEEKS in advance that animation schools would be there, and that they needed to meet them. I really wanted to help these folks, and I knew they'd meet some harsh criticism, but I was desperately hoping that it would be the thing that motivated them to push themselves. But not a single one showed up. Months after this, one of them had a whole portfolio full of anime-style art that they planned on submitting to animation schools, and when I gently told him that the school would expect him to show some figure-drawing work and take figure drawing classes he just looked extremely crest-fallen and surprised. (note for clarity: I don't talk about this person for the rest of the post--he's just an example of how many of these people would go on and on and on about becoming animators, but never actually researched what they needed to do to get there) One of my old friends actually seemed to be a mildly popular anime fan artist on DA (the same friend who I told to outline her forms), at least enough to make commissions, so at least there's that. She ended up moving across the country to date this furry artist that she met online, and then she dumped him for his best friend (also a furry). I always got the sense that she was jealous of my technical skill, but the truth is that I think she has a better sense of story-telling and aesthetics than many people, including myself--she just never challenged herself, and I wonder if she'd have had a career in animation or some kind of media if she hadn't gotten so drat wrapped up in anime. I remember she just gave up on improving her drawing and was just drawing the same furry stuff over and over again, and one day she told me she just wanted to be a storyboard artist because you don't need to have very good drawing skills to make storyboards (from what I understand about the animation industry in the U.S., this is not true in the slightest). But she didn't want to storyboard for Disney, because you have to work very hard to get hired by Disney for animation. :I Like with Denise, there was a really strange disconnect from reality and resistance to anything resembling criticism. Another similarity to Denise--this friend also later cut ties with me when academics caused me to take different classes than her. I started taking AP art classes, but she didn't pass the portfolio review (which I believe many folks in our clique definitely could have, if they had only just practiced figure-drawing). I had always studied a ton and been in upper-level classes because I was always really worried about being able to afford college, but she had some excuse for failing classes which boiled down to her playing video games instead of studying. We didn't have any more classes together, and I started to lose interest in anime so I lost touch with my older friends. Then I got into college and had a new social life, and apparently she tells people that I am too much of a party girl for her these days. There is a slightly happier story about my anime clique. This other fellow pretended to have multiple personalities--One of which was Trunks from DBZ, another was a super saiyan, and I think there was an evil one based on Tony Montana from Scarface that he would emulate by putting his hair in his face and walking around while cackling. I think part of this was due to his lovely home-life; he once confided in me that he'd pretend to be a super saiyan so he'd feel motivated to go out when he was feeling very exhausted or depressed. That was the only time he admitted the super saiyan thing was fake. Needless to say, he drew nothing but really bad DBZ-inspired art and was failing his remedial math and English classes. I brought him to a figure-drawing event a couple of days before his art school portfolio was due and he used some pieces from that in his art school application. He got into one of the less-competitive art schools with those pieces and a whole bunch of DBZ drawings. I lost touch with him for a few years, then he started posting his stuff on Facebook, and not a single piece of it was anime. He's actually improved substantially--it's almost like looking at a different person. I suppose he just realized that he could either sink or swim, and it just wasn't worth screwing around when he was taking out tens of thousands of dollars worth of loans. He doesn't ever talk about going super saiyan or DBZ anymore, and I suspect it might be related to getting married to a nice girl, getting his career together, and escaping his family's drama. He also confided in me that he never watches anime anymore except maybe with his younger siblings and doesn't even talk about it at school because he feels so embarrassed by the folks at his art school that are still anime-obsessed. His exact words were "I can't believe that used to be us," and he even talked to me about trying to talk sense into them. Good for him!  Sometimes I really wonder why I put up with those folks for so long, but I am confident that he was being held back by a dysfunctional household and I do feel very glad things worked out for him.Another sad story was this fellow who really liked Rurouni Kenshin (the Toonami cartoon about the samurai with split personalities) and would draw nothing but Kenshin. He even had a small blond curly ponytail growing. I remember he was very withdrawn and quiet. The Super Saiyan guy told me that he had an alcoholic mother and that he was also getting beaten up by gang members because of his brother being a drug dealer. I don't know if this is true, but it honestly wouldn't surprise me--the guy was just so very withdrawn and would never talk to anyone about his home-life. He had the worst crush on this other girl who liked manga, and he was in tears when she turned him down because he didn't share her religion (she was very Christian). He bragged a lot about being in remedial classes because he refused to suck up to the teachers. I remember getting annoyed at this, because I was in upper-level classes due to worrying about affording college and I resented the implication that I was always studying and panicking about my GPA and generally a nervous wreck just so I could lord it over everyone else (I tried to get folks to draw better since they would sometimes ask me how I was so good at drawing, but I never ever mentioned my other classes). I also am confident that he slipped through the cracks due to a lovely home situation. Last I heard, he was working part-time at Walmart. Now that I think about it, everyone I know who's ever had a weird Japan obsession has had some kind of messed up home life. The girl who married the two furries had parents that were on the brink of divorce and always using her to spy on the other one--and if she feigned ignorance about what the other one was doing, she'd get in trouble, but if she fessed up, then she would get in trouble. Sometimes she was blamed for fights that had nothing to do with her at all--for example, one parent would catch wind of the other parent's shenanigans somehow, and so she'd get blamed for snitching. She once told me she was very afraid of being hurt one day. Her older siblings got the hell out of dodge and never visited. It really explains a lot about how she got so wrapped up in gaming. The super saiyan guy had parents that were constantly fighting, a ton of younger siblings that he'd take care of, and his dad constantly told him that he was a mistake, that he was dumber than his younger brother, that he'd be lucky to be hauling luggage at the airport like some of his older male relatives, etc. And yeah, I used to really like anime too, and it's very nostalgic for me since so many of my friends in middle school and high school watched it, but it was the only thing she could ever talk about. I feel like I quit watching anime around my junior year of high school. I was just way too busy with school and my part-time job (ironically, I worked at a comic book store, and was hired because I knew a lot about which manga and anime were popular...). I also think that was around the time when my parents quit fighting as much. I am really enjoying this thread though. It's really reminding me of my high school days, and making me think a bit more about it all. Keep posting! * Not sure if that's the right way to phrase it--but you know, when you draw out the general pose with gestural lines, and circles for joints, and then you add more details. (Eeee, I've edited this a whole bunch to make sure it's readable! Also, I just keep remembering more things.) EDIT: I don't want to derail the thread, but I want to add this note--I never went up to someone who was just enjoying doodling and said "You need to stop that anime bullshit." I was aware that many of them just wanted to live in their anime bubble, so I would only ever talk about figure-drawing with people who would come up to me and talk about how much they hated their artwork. I figured that if someone was going to feel bad about their work and if they were talking about becoming an animator one day, why not tell them that they could get noticeably better just by drawing for 30 minutes from real life every day, or doing the assignments? So I'd talk about it for a little bit, then stop since it was clear they weren't interested in doing anything besides fish for compliments. Super Saiyan guy did end up asking me about figure-drawing when he put together his application--I think when he realized he was gonna pay an application submission fee and fill out these super long forms just so he could turn in DBZ fan art, the reality of the way he'd spent the past four years just sunk in. He was the only one of the crowd that applied to art school, as far as I know, and I think he's the only one of us who's making a living off of his art work (furry girl's DA page says that she takes commissions, but it hasn't been updated in a couple of years so I'm assuming that she's moved on). legsarerequired fucked around with this message at 06:37 on Nov 4, 2011 |
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Nov 3, 2011 16:03
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legsarerequired posted:true My sister is like this. She is, as far as copycat anime "artists" go, extremely good and does put a lot of effort into her artwork in terms of proportion, anatomy, and shading, but she absolutely will not budge when someone tells her she needs to go back to basics and drawing from life if she wants to get anywhere. A while ago she was intent on going to art school, but the more people told her she needs to start working on realistic things, she would pitch a royal fit and type out an angry self-pitying journal on deviantArt. She's mellowed out a little since she's started college, but she's changed her excuse from "BUT JAPANESU ARTWORK IS BETAR DESU!" to "But I really suck at realism and I can't do it." I doubt she's fishing for compliments when she says that because she does honestly believe she's no good at anything but animu, but you can't tell her that that's the purpose of practice without her flipping out. She gave up on her dream of art school her senior year of high school, and that combined with her obvious skill and talent and myopic view of her art makes it all really, really disappointing. I really don't like looking at her work because at this point it all just seems like a waste. 
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Nov 3, 2011 16:26
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redmercer posted:As a Bokononist I am offended especially by this. How can you boko-maru with a cartoon? drat. What an embarrassing typo. Sorry I offended you. Please don't send legions of feet after me! WebDog posted:Brian and Fox lady were married? Yes. Married for less than 6 months, IIRC. MissConduct fucked around with this message at 16:40 on Nov 3, 2011 |
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Nov 3, 2011 16:35
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tifosibella posted:She's mellowed out a little since she's started college, but she's changed her excuse from "BUT JAPANESU ARTWORK IS BETAR DESU!" to "But I really suck at realism and I can't do it." She's right in a strange way about figure drawing not helping her draw anime, though it will help with a lot of other things. Anime is usually constructed out of 3d shapes and more focused on the line quality than western cartoon art. Plus, you have over 60 years of Japan changing the way they take shortcuts from the time they started basing their work off disney's old stuff. It's why anime artists usually have incredibly clean work with complex backgrounds but lovely noodle people, while western artists have detailed figures and simpler backgrounds. Anime Painting versus Concept Art. You can't really compare the two methods, they just focus on different skillsets, but she is hindering herself from not doing any sort of work to improve herself. That's probably why a lot of people disregard art advice when they draw anime (like Denise, the chick I knew, and everyone else's weird buddies did) is because you say "let's draw real people who look nothing like anime, and that's going to make you better at drawing anime!" The only thing that's gonna make them better at drawing anime is to learn how to draw perspective and cubes sitting on cubes, but that's boring too! So they just copy anime they like since it's easier, and end up spending hours drawing individual scales on a wobbly snake instead of anything good.
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Nov 3, 2011 17:43
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Horrible Smutbeast posted:That's probably why a lot of people disregard art advice when they draw anime (like Denise, the chick I knew, and everyone else's weird buddies did) is because you say "let's draw real people who look nothing like anime, and that's going to make you better at drawing anime!" The only thing that's gonna make them better at drawing anime is to learn how to draw perspective and cubes sitting on cubes, but that's boring too! So they just copy anime they like since it's easier, and end up spending hours drawing individual scales on a wobbly snake instead of anything good. It's interesting that you say this. I felt like my anime character drawings improved significantly after I started paying more attention to my actual art classes, but I just could not do the super-deformed styles any more. My animu drawings no longer had that weird misshaped super-stylized eye thing that very bad anime art has, my noses looked more like human noses, my hair looked like cosplay hair rather than a bunch of weird shapes (you can kind of see what I'm talking about in Denise's drawing of that human demon's bangs)--in general, the proportions and anatomy were much better, and paying attention to real life made the little details look nicer. However, I couldn't do the super-deformed chibi thing anymore, and it was harder for me to emulate certain styles that were really exaggerated because I'd feel strange doing it. legsarerequired fucked around with this message at 17:53 on Nov 3, 2011 |
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Nov 3, 2011 17:48
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Ask me about studying law with a girl who thinks she's married to Sai Baba Previously: The Girl in the Sari A Note on Henriette Phantom in Honolulu The Girl who Thinks She's Married to Sai Baba Before the events in Phantom in Honolulu, and even before the ooooOOOOOOooooooOOOOOOoooo in class, Henriette got wind that I was the most IT-savvy person in the law faculty. I'm not tooting my own horn (I can't even do basic programming), but most of the students are terrible with computers. I was practically a wizard for showing them that you could use the AND, OR and NOT functions on lexisnexis and westlaw. One of the lecturers, who was IT-phobic, got himself the Internet finally when he realised through me what you could do online. ("I want to buy an Internet, Rhino, how do I do that?") There's something amazingly odd about him that I'll talk about in another entry, where I will describe some of the more interesting members of the Thespian Society and the law faculty. Henriette asked me to fix her laptop, which she claimed had a virus. I asked her to bring it to class, but she insisted on making it a date in a coffee place nearby. I agreed without thinking much. When I got there, she was in a shimmering sari (she loves the shimmers), jewellery in her hair and bangles around her wrists, and blue contacts. Oh, it was that kind of date. To be fair to Henriette, she wasn't a hambeast nor was she ugly. It just so happened she wasn't really my type, and having just come off from a bad breakup I wasn't aching for a girlfriend. Well, I kept my cool and started fixing her laptop, which was a cesspool. The last time I saw a computer so badly infected it was a dude who loving loves his online porn. I'll see a computer like that some time later. We got to talking as the computer was being fixed, stuff like the Narayana, her love for musicals, law stuff, etc. All the while, she was shifting her weight suggestively and kept blinking and staring at me with her blue contacts. It was obvious she was flirting with me. I responded a little to her flirting, but not enough to actually give the idea that I was interested. That probably was a mistake, because it didn't stop the flirting. Henriette had her bindi on. I wasn't exactly 100% retarded about Hinduism (just 99%, enough to confuse Sai Baba with Hare Krishna  ), so I asked her about it. : Is that a sign of marriage? Why do you always wear it? : It's to remind myself constantly, to keep myself pure. : Pure? : See, it's my religion. I need to be pure for the one I love. : Oh, you're engaged? : No, I'm already married! : I didn't know! Who's the lucky man? : The one who loves all of us equally. I'm married to Sai Baba. : Uh, I didn't know he's, uh, married... : Oh yes, he is married to all of us who believe in him. : You mean you're spiritually connected to him? : No, I'm spiritually married to him. And I'm keeping myself for Sai Baba.[continued next post] The Saddest Rhino fucked around with this message at 18:28 on Nov 3, 2011 |
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Nov 3, 2011 18:09
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[continued from previous] : I... see...? : Oh, but, Rhino, I am in such a dilemma now! It's so painful. I'm so conflicted these days. : Why is that? Is it about Sai Baba? : Yes! And, oh, it's just not him alone! : Who? : It's just... oh, I don't know! If I'm spiritually married to Sai Baba, can I still marry someone else? : Um, I think that's possible considering you're not legally married to Sai... : No, you don't understand! This is beyond the laws of man. I'm spiritually married to Sai Baba, and I am spiritually engaged to another man! : Yes, I... well, who's that other man again, sorry? : He's a famous politician in India, and a philanthropist. That is why I'm so attracted to him. He's just like Sai Baba. You wouldn't know him, by the way. : You met him? : Oh yes. : You've been to India or he came here? : Oh no, I've never been to India. I would like to go there. I met him in my dreams and I knew I should be his betrothed. : I... um, so how did you get married to Sai Baba in the first place? : I read Sai Baba's teaching, and after he came to my dreams I knew he would be the one to lead my way of life. Then one day, he came to my dreams. He took my hand and we were at a golden altar. When I woke up I knew we were married. : I'm glad he came to your life like that. : OH YOUR COMPUTER IS FIXED : I WILL SEE YOU IN CLASS TOMORROW GOODBYE I never got a second date. The Saddest Rhino fucked around with this message at 18:18 on Nov 3, 2011 |
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Nov 3, 2011 18:10
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I know it's late, but...Zenostein posted:But really, what the hell kind of demon name is Parrier? That's just weird.  I'm aware it's spelled with an E, but regardless, it's still what I think of every time I read the "name" Parrier.
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Nov 3, 2011 18:16
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legsarerequired posted:Lot's of stuff about anime artists. I think part of the reason these folks get so downtrodden about your helpful advice is because drawing in the anime style is what makes them happy about drawing, while drawings things realistically (and doing a poor job at it) makes them not enjoy drawing. When you're forced to see how bad you really are at drawing by not being able to accurately, realistically draw something that's right in front of you it makes you feel like poo poo. Why draw things that you find boring and miserable when you can draw the anime stuff that makes you happy? It's a form of escapism, like any other. These people draw for themselves. I should know because I've been going through something similar. I've sat in at a few life drawing sessions, but drawing in a hyper realistic style can be incredibly hard when you've spent your whole life being profoundly influenced by drawing styles from Disney, video games and Western and Eastern comic books. I try to break things down to the simplest, smoothest line and basic shapes, but you can't do that when you have to try to go for realism. It's hard to unlearn years of drawing. It's likely that many of your friends knew full well that they were crap at drawing and just didn't want to get out of their "safe and happy" zone. They don't want to toil and suffer over art that they don't even care about. They just want to make themselves happy by drawing the things they want to draw in the style they want to draw in.
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Nov 3, 2011 18:57
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legsarerequired posted:At first glance, Denise's artwork isn't that bad, at least as far as lazy art goes. Dude, her art is loving terrible. Presumably she was trying to create this:  Now I don't consider myself to be an "anime art critic" but the Dragon Ball dragon wasn't the best source material to begin with. The series is older than Denise, as is the art style. The medium (serialized manga / TV animation) heavily influenced the style, and while the style begat many great creative works, the style doesn't really exist anymore. Any modern manga / anime / cartoon from even five or ten years ago looks drastically different, much in part due to illustration software.  Here's a loving dragon. Look how big that fucker is. Daniel Dociu didn't paint in every single scale into this dragon, but it has orders of magnitude more detail. Everyone sucks when they start making creative works. That's just a given, to produce any worthwhile creative work you need to create a thousand lovely ones first. But you also need taste and you need to know how to be constructively critical of your own work or else you just spiral into a vortex of poo poo. uglynoodles, please post as much of her art as possible because it's a wonderful compliment to the stories. (Also, you might want to try searching them on tineye to make sure they're not publicly searchable)
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Nov 3, 2011 19:01
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Nessa posted:I think part of the reason these folks get so downtrodden about your helpful advice is because drawing in the anime style is what makes them happy about drawing, while drawings things realistically (and doing a poor job at it) makes them not enjoy drawing. When you're forced to see how bad you really are at drawing by not being able to accurately, realistically draw something that's right in front of you it makes you feel like poo poo. The problem, as I see it, lies in that a lot of people like that that I have known (those who draw for their own enjoyment alone are not included because you know, do what makes you happy) want to be professional artists and that just simply cannot be achieved without going outside your ultra-safe comfy zone. No one is perfect at everything immediately and some people might be better at a certain technique than others, but that's something you have to suck up and overcome if you want to get anywhere. Add to this the general attitude problem they tend to have about being given any sort of criticism beyond "zomg kawaii desu~!" is met with hard-headed hysterics. I'm a classical singer, not a visual artist, but there's a lot of overlap in that sort of attitude. Either you get over your personal blocks and improve or you don't and you sink. It sucks and it's most definitely not for those who are hyper-sensitive, but that's how it is. I get the impression from people like Denise, though, that they aren't interested in what makes them happy so much as what gets them attention.
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Nov 3, 2011 19:05
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Denise wants to put in zero effort and have everyone praise her for her art. That seems to be a common theme in Denise stories -- she doesn't want to put the effort in to shower, but she wants anime dudes to find her attractive. It's actually a common theme across a lot of American culture. Most movie and book protagonists, especially those targeted at girls, involve being born awesome and not having to do a lick of work for it. Bella from Twilight is the "clumsy awkward girl", but literally everyone in the entire school is head over heels in love with her. Why? She does nothing, she's not even particularly attractive so as to be identifiable with readers. I imagine a lot of anime is the same way where the main character is just born with magical powers or guys fawn over them for no discernible reason.
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Nov 3, 2011 19:15
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tifosibella posted:Add to this the general attitude problem they tend to have about being given any sort of criticism beyond "zomg kawaii desu~!" is met with hard-headed hysterics. You hit the nail on the head. People who draw for enjoyment usually want to become professionals because it's fun and what else are they going to go to school for? The issue arises when you have the clash of being their friend versus being their classmate. Everyone wants to help each other out and get better when they're dedicated to something, and some people just don't care about that, their focus is being on friends and having fun with it. A lot of the time these people do want to draw well or improve, but they deliberately keep themselves at their current level so they can fit in with their clique. I knew one girl in college who graduated the art program I dropped out of, and went on to redraw a picture she did 7 years ago. The older one looks better because she whined endlessly about how trying to paint still lifes of lemons were boring and didn't help her because she wasn't going to draw lemons professionally. It's childish and stupid, but what do you expect from people who literally believe they are an anime? Don't ever bother with these people because you can't help them, and they will only bring you down (like all these stories about Denise). Worry about your own life and work. Tasty and Delicious posted:It's actually a common theme across a lot of American culture. Most movie and book protagonists, especially those targeted at girls, involve being born awesome and not having to do a lick of work for it. Add in the fact a lot of people think being good at something is literally "you are so lucky to be talented" and not "you put in so much work", I can definitely see that being true in general about more than just Americans.
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Nov 3, 2011 19:15
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ZanderZ posted:
You're not the only one. I wish I had some crazy friend stories, but honestly, my friends who were into Anime and roleplaying and so on were just too lazy to come up with and/or express bizarre fantasies like these. Some of these guys always asked me to draw Evangelions (Evangelia? I don't know anything about the series or what the plural is) once they discovered I could look at something--in this case, an EVA action figure--and draw it so that the drawing looked like the figure. I didn't really know why someone would rather have a 2-d representation of something they already had in 3-d. After reading some of the posts and links here, though, I think I don't want to know.
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Nov 3, 2011 19:20
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Let me sing for you The Ballad of Chris. When I was sixteen and working in a failing grocery store, I made the acquaintance of a young man named Chris. Chris exhibited all the trademark signs of a useless goonchild, from his obsession with late-90s anime to his vast and lovingly described collection of mail order knives. Still, as evidenced by the stories in this thread, adolescent nerds don't always feel they can afford to be picky with their friends. We liked some of the same geeky things, and he didn't reek of filth. Good enough. To this day, I'm not sure I ever considered Chris a true friend. I didn't exactly trust him with my emotional well-being or anything else beyond getting to games on time and not being a complete poo poo. Chris's home situation was, by his own admission, not great. His family was perpetually impoverished, living in a converted (immobile) trailer in the boonies. His dad was insane, which will come up later on. Chris himself was a typical neurotic, scrawny geek. At five and a half feet tall, he probably weighed 98 pounds soaking weight and carrying a mid-size dog. Despite this, he was convinced that he was a ripped killing machine, and often tried to demonstrate his physical prowess to female co-workers by carrying industrial sacks of rice up and down the aisles, huffing and wheezing the whole while. As someone who was (and is) shaped a little too much like a Hobbit and perfectly at peace with that, it was embarrassing to watch. As a matter of fact, much of Chris's geeky insanity centered around his longing to be good at things. If most geeky girls escape by imagining relationships, most geeky boys escape by imagining skills. Both groups have the loonies for whom the pretending leaks into reality. Chris had many skills: -Chris could run five miles without stopping (Chris had trouble walking a single mile without wheezing). -Chris was an elite hacker cracker who took down the entire Yahoo network in a single night (Chris did not know how to configure his own router, or set a password on his eMachines computer). -Chris had been trained in the art of throwing knives in combat by his dead grandfather (Chris owned no throwing knives and could not demonstrate this; both his grandfathers died when he was an infant). -Chris could outrun a car (Chris was actually struck by a car in the parking lot of our work). The list goes on, but you don't want that. What you want are stories. For now I have a couple of short ones, both centered around Chris's love life. This was before we formed the gaming group. Chris in Love: Chapter One: The Courtship Throughout our time at the grocery store, Chris nursed an affection cum obsession for a checkout girl named Lisa. His attraction to Lisa, to my knowledge, was motivated by three factors: She was not abjectly hideous, she played Magic: The Gathering, and she had not yet told him to leave her the gently caress alone. He never really spoke to her, just paraded around in front of her and brought her things he thought she might like, like some kind of half-retarded cat. One of Chris's gifts to Lisa, handed off on the sly like a packet of condoms, was a home-burned mix CD of anime songs that reminded him of her. Lisa did not watch anime, and at the time I wasn't even sure she knew what anime was or what language all these mystery songs were in. When she received the gift, she didn't even thank Chris. All she could do was mouth, wide-eyed, "O... kay," and tuck the CD into the pocket in her apron. I think Chris's fevered nerd mind interpreted her awkward acceptance of the gift as a reciprocation of his affections, because after that he took to calling Lisa 'my girl,' though never in her company or the company of anyone liable to talk to her about his creepiness. Basically he made up a little pocket reality in which they were dating and kept this from her so that she couldn't burst his bubble with the truth. Of course, this didn't stop him from continuing to pull absurd stunts in an effort to impress her. Chris in Love: Chapter Two: Chris Defends a Fair Maiden's Honor I mentioned before that Lisa played MTG, which was at least half the reason Chris imagined he had anything even resembling a chance with her. Being a moderately attractive hirl who played a nerdy, nerdy game, she occasionally got poo poo for it from some of the insecure un-nerdy guys at the store. She owned her geeky interests and had a social life (more than most of us could claim at the time) so it was no big deal to her. But oh, how Chris stewed in hatred for those who spoke against his one true anime mix tape soul mate.His simmering hate cauldron didn't tip over until Lisa started playing Yugioh with her younger sister and getting poo poo for that. In a remarkably mature move on Lisa's part, she grew to enjoy and reciprocate the guys' mockery. After all, Yugioh was a kids' TCG and taking it seriously when you're any older than twelve is just weird. Chris either missed the friendly nature the sarcasm between the guys and Lisa had developed or saw it as some kind of threat to his claim to her heart. I'll never be sure, but it all culminated in Chris barreling into the break room one stormy evening with a busted lip and what appeared to be crushed ice in his hair, a manic and satisfied expression on his face. Lisa, myself, and a guy called Carter who will figure into later stories, were enjoying our microwaved vending machine sandwiches when he burst in. Carter : Uh. Hey Chris. The gently caress happened to your hair?Prancelot  : It hailing outsi-Chris : LISA.Lisa : Yyyyes?: I found- *swallows, gasps for breath* I found Paul and Joseph. And they were mocking you. You know like how you play Duel Mosnters and they make fun of you? I came up to them and I was like. I was like you better give that the Hell up. : They pop you in the face for that? : NNNNNNO!  See this? See it? *pointing with great gusto to his bleeding mouth* This is where I headbutted Paul when he challenged me? And I said- : Get out, Chris. : Wh- what? *looks to me helplessly, hoping for backup* : Get out, go back to work, go away. : Well. I. We'll discuss this matter later! *gathers himself up in a teary huff and whirls out the door* : Don't look at me, I ain't gonna follow him.Chris in Love: Chapter Three: Chris is Rebuked After the 'I beat up your friends over Yugioh for you' incident, Lisa no longer suffered Chris to speak to her. Everyone involved recognized that this had been a long time coming. Everyone, that is, except for poor Chris. Chris bitched and sulked endlessly about how his valiant effort had been wasted and how clearly no one cared about him or wanted him to be happy. Any friendly advice along the lines of "That was weird and uncalled for, maybe you ought to step back from what this girl does to your brain," was met with derisive, self-pitying sighs and the insistance that I just didn't understand. Eventually, Chris's fixation on Lisa seemed to abate. After a few weeks of sulking he stopped mentioning her, longingly staring at her, and trying to slip gifts into her apron. All was well, or at least as well as it could be. Then Joe arrived on the scene. It should be noted that I already knew Joe from the comic shop my gaming group met at. He was a cool guy from a broken family and gamed to take his mind off the fact that he couldn't see his younger sisters in their own house since his mother had decided she hated him for deciding to live with and support his disabled dad. It was all very heartbreaking. One evening Joe came into the store, arms flung open and a huge smile on his face. Lisa practically leaped out from behind her register corral and into his arms while the older employees looked on with fond smiles. They knew Lisa's parents and their troubles, and what their disagreements did to their kids. Chris did not. Like a man possessed, Chris let out a primal scream of rage and loss and began what would be a long tradition of dramatic exits. Filled to bursting with grief at his perceived betrayal, Chris made a mad dash for the automatic sliding doors, surely intent on running out into the night to go mad with grief and leave Lisa mourning him. BLAM. The doors did not open. In our poverty-stricken store, they often didn't. Chris bounced off the solid panel of glass and metal and flopped onto the linoleum like a stunned fish. After a moment of stunned silence he managed to gather himself up, slide the now off-track and broken door to one side, and stagger out into the night. It was, at that time in my life, the saddest and most hilarious thing I had ever seen.
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Nov 3, 2011 19:27
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Action_Bastard posted:Haha oh wow. This is taking me back. Once had a guy who threw a tantrum in front of our gaming group when a sonic attack broke his armor that his perfect min-maxed character absolutely needed. Please tell us more about Chris. Oh this other thread. The Saddest Rhino posted:
I want you to know this is a beautiful thing.
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Nov 3, 2011 19:34
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Sir Prancelot posted:It was, at that time in my life, the saddest and most hilarious thing I had ever seen. This one is the best.
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Nov 3, 2011 19:40
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Hey guys, found this thread searching "cum obsession"
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Nov 3, 2011 19:44
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What? How?
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Nov 3, 2011 19:46
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| # ? May 29, 2024 12:04 |
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Pretzel Rod Stewart posted:Hey guys, found this thread searching "cum obsession"
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Nov 3, 2011 19:58
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