Victoria Schwab Tweets:

“This just in: you can love writing and also find it hard.

“I was once on a panel and another author essentially said, ‘if you don't enjoy every moment, then why are you here?’ and I was...exasperated. Creativity is a complicated beast. You don't have to love every second to be a valid participant.

“I love the ideas. I love brainstorming, and problem-solving, and I love making this better, fine-tuning language.

“I also hate drafting, claw my way through self-doubt, crawl on my hands and knees through the frustration of the unrealized.

“I'm not here because I love every second.

“I'm here because the parts I love are worth the rest.”

I feel like I have a similar head canon to you about Air Nomads- It doesn't make sense to me that they all died because, well, they're nomadic??? Aang can't be the only one travelling in the entire world, there's no way. And were there seriously no Air monks working in Earth Kingdom hospital or gardening somewhere?

This! Genocides don’t work like in the show, especially not with a group of people who are known to travel widely on a whim and who, at the time, had the most access to flight. That kind of mobility advantage would be huge.

And com'on, they’d have been staring down at the armies assembling, there’s no way to hide that there’s an attack coming, and these are a bunch of pacifists who disavow ties to the world–why wouldn’t they just hop on their bisons and leave rather than trying to defend the temples? Temples are replaceable, people aren’t. “Sorry to inconvenience you Fire Nation aggressors, but we are NOPING out of this, please enjoy your looting.”

I think the Fire Nation only got the people who couldn’t evacuate in time; I picture a low bison-to-people ratio, and a point at which it became too dangerous to make another trip back. Those bodies we see in the show are from the last ditch efforts of a few brave monks and nuns to buy time for the final bison to get clear. Gyatso, man, rest in peace. You died knowing you’d saved your people, and that is pretty far up the ‘best death possible’ list.

The day of the comet was not the end of the airbendering nomads; that’s just the glorious Fire Nation propaganda talking.

Their “end” came much more slowly. Hunting down survivor groups–there were too many people and too few bison, they couldn’t all flee quickly. Each attack widdled them down further.

Throw in bounties–on bison and people both. Spice it up with propaganda for those who have too many morals. And year by year, the population is less, until they just… were gone.

The survivers work very hard to stay gone.

It wasn’t one giant crippling attack that took them out, but a slow and steady hunting, where you can’t safely trust anyone outside your group because someone is the one who ratted those other survivors out. If you want to live you have to be smarter, more careful, less trusting.

More quick to defend yourself.

More quick to proactively defend yourself.

Witnesses, the current survivors know, are not safe.

(And this makes it very damn hard to get them on screen in my stories because my air nomads would shank the other characters and keep flying, in the vast majority of cases. Towards the Sun has one scenario that might work for getting them involved in the world again, but I’m still working out the plot implications.)

Having finally tracked down a documentary about the Wolf Dance and seeing one performed in full, I'm even more disappointed Korra wasn't teasing cousins with Desna and Eska

Part of the Wolf Dance has the dancers in two lines and the public would run between them. If you, as a dancer, saw your teasing cousin, you would block their way and make a game out of not letting them pass. One man in the video blocked off his cousin and she was batting at his back with her fists before he let her pass. Like imagine Desna in the headdress and fancy dance mittens being a nuisance to Korra so she shoves him down and like, the rest of the dancers are still in formation but Desna continues laying there face-down for dramatic effect.

Street Artist Transforms Ordinary Public Places Into Funny Installations 

michael-pederson miguel-marquez

The narrative of ‘this person was disabled but their disability was cured as part of their story’ is ableist

WHAT.

This … this is JUST VERY HELPFUL. Click through for juicy characterization deets if, like me, this old news is news to you.

This is quite possibly the most amazing thing I've ever seen.

All this time I thought they were doing fist-bump, but apparently Iggy searching for his fallen specs and Noctis picking it up for him..??

Older pic that i never bothered cleaning up the background for. I should get on that...

Pic of my icon; Barbarian Link, with some added bits.

Quarantined and bored. Have some more silly fanart of Shouto.

Quarantined and bored out of my darn mind. Have some ridiculous Shouto fanart :)

Because I read Dost Thou Even Steal Hearts? by BukuBuku on AO3 and thought: Why not? So. Have a fish.

Top Technology Scholarship

My favorite kind of modern technology is the computer; more specifically I love drawing programs for use on the computer and the internet.  Its greatest impact on my life has been on my goals as an artist, because computers have revolutionized the way people see, create, and sell artwork.  With the computer I have been able to learn about a wide variety of artistic styles and mediums, research artists and actually see their work, and practice digital painting and editing with drawing programs. 

With convenient access to all sorts of images of artwork from cultures around the world has helped me to cement my decision to be an artist and art teacher, as well as greatly influenced the style and content of my own work.  Digital art, photographs, drawings, and paintings shared by others on sites such as DeviantArt have pushed me to be more creative and inspired me to try a wide variety of art making methods.  Even if such images aren’t quite like seeing the real, physical work in person, the convenience of being able to readily look at images I would be unlikely to encounter in person is a huge benefit to me and my work.  References for things or animals or people that I would never be able to see in real life are readily available, and that alone is a reason I will forever love the internet.  The entire process would me much more difficult and frustrating without the convenience of the internet at my fingertips.

As an art teacher the internet will also be an invaluable resource to teach my future students about art traditions and styles from across the world.  Different types of learners are provided with more means to learn; instead of reading about a process or taking notes during a demonstration, they can access videos or step-by-step photographed tutorials without the constraints of a classroom setting, such as the limited amount of time a teacher has to run through a demonstration.

Drawing and editing programs have also made a huge impact on my life.  In art, programs such as Photoshop have become an entirely new way to create two-dimensional artwork, and are programs that I have since come to enjoy learning about and using.  Rather than sticking solely to traditional mediums, I have come to prefer using a combination of traditional and digital painting methods, such as creating a black and white, pen and ink image and adding value through the use of an editing program, or simply creating images that are purely digital artwork.  Afterward, I can post the images online to share with a wider audience than more traditional methods would allow, and create digital prints to sell to a number of people.

The things the computer can provide are truly integrated into my life.  From the art making processes, sharing and selling that art with others, to teaching others about art, the computer has been and will continue to be an important resource that I am privileged to use.

Nejibana

Digital art inspired by the character Shiba Kaien from the anime Bleach.  Photoshop.