Y'all, Some of you may know I've been suffering with an RSI on my right hand for a while now, and well, it's been a process to get my hand feeling better, a big part of it has been trying to change my art process, doing stretches, working less, taking more breaks, that sort of thing.

Well, as it happens, completely parallel to that, I've been overhauling my Patreon page, and one of the new benefits I introduced were timelapses for my bigger projects that I recorded using Clip Studio Paint's in-built feature to post for $10 patrons.

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Introducing this feature a bit to those unaware, under "file" you can find a timelapse menu, and from it you can choose to record a timelapse, you have to pick that option as soon as you start on a canvas since it won't save anything retroactively. The feature can't record actual movement, instead, each stroke and action just appears instantly in the canvas, like with the undo and redo feature.

Be warned though: It'll make your files explode in size, like in the order of gigabytes. Thankfully once you're done with the drawing and export your timelapse, you can uncheck the "record timelapse" button and it'll stop recording and delete all recording data, bringing your file back to normal size. Just DON'T FORGET TO DO IT!

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So anyways, when you're exporting, you can choose the duration of the timelapse. 60 seconds is the default option and the one I just went with for my first experiments with the feature, but there's another option, one registers each individual stroke and action. With that option, a comic page created a 10 minute-long timelapse. And well, I didn't really plan on sending files that big to my patrons, but I thought it'd be interesting to see what that looked like.

What I saw left me speechless.

I don't know how to explain to you the abject terror that coursed through my blood once the sketch part of the timelapse ended, and the lineart began... My friends, it was like every line jittered into place. Every. Single. Stroke. Repeated at least 3 times. I had no idea I used the undo button this much. Completely unneeded too, it was some subconscious perfectionism that I didn't realize I was struggling with until I was forced to spend 10 minutes just, looking at it. In complete silence. Looking at the horror show displaying in my monitor at 10x speed, and then at my aching drawing hand.

I had my fucking answer. This was destroying me, that was the worst case scenario of a Repetitive Strain Injury. And I only realized because of the timelapse, otherwise it wouldn't even cross my mind to question why my lineart was taking longer and longer with every drawing.

People often compliment the colors on my art, wanna know how much of the timelapse time was taken up by coloring? 20% of it. Just, the final little 20%. The rest was taken up by redrawing the same pose and rearranging sketches... and then redrawing the same lines another countless times, chasing this self destructive perfection.

If your drawing program doesn't have a timelapse recording feature, try using some recording software and then speeding up the results. I don't know if you'll have an epiphany as large as mine, but I'm positive there will be some insights to gain from it.

I've finished doing the lineart for another comic page since learning of this problem, now running with my mistakes more often, letting lineart be imperfect, and it looks fine. And my clock reads that it took half the time to do it all.

(or you have problems with 'social norms' which is the other excuse I've seen.)

I though this was obvious but like, yr neurodivergence isn't an excuse for doubling down on something once someone points out it's kinda racist (or any of your other bigotries). that's a thing you should have been working on for decades -- deferred maintenance on your part.

sure, while you're getting there you might fuck up from time to time, but that's for you to own, not for you to throw up your hands and go 'oh this was inevitable woe is all'.

same with RSD -- it is not other people's problem that you had a reaction that made you push into them, it's a thing you have to actually work on instead of shrugging your arms and saying it's inevitable. People will get that you're trying to change and learn, but I've seen RSD in general, across multiple platforms, used as excuses for like, tearing into people for pointing out yr racist and that's like... you're still being racist, and you're still being an asshole at best even if there might, somehow, be nuance that's relevant.

the thing about actions and words is you have to actually do both of them but a whole lot of people have this wild-ass learned helplessness that's like, basically a billboard saying fixing the bigotries and ignorance you hold is a lower priority than like, hanging out with friends. A priority that has been held low for over a decade at this point.

apologize and actually change when people point things out instead of escalating out of defensiveness-adrenaline-shame-whatever that white people who haven't worked on it get when people point out something. It's easier for everyone, and also like... don't tell me you don't have the skills or knowledge to figure this out, I've seen people who otherwise devour game wikis or who can recite rocketry wikipedia from memory whine about how hard it is to learn and change.

and while we're at it, touch less grass. It's clearly not helping.

If you think this post is about you: it totally is.

Not leave Cohost, leave the internet.

When you can be around other people in ways that actually have any form of understanding and self-awareness that you aren't the main character and you do need to actually like, not be racist, you can come back. Until you can meet the bar that's so low you have to call digsafe before lowering it any further, you probably shouldn't be around other people your bumbling can harm, outside of looking at resources for fixing your racism (AND OTHER BIGOTRIES).

For white folks who are stressed out about trying to be good ones, try as much as possible to remember that racism is a structural phenomenon, not a sin which you have to purify or be purified of inside your heart. Your intentions and feelings about it are largely irrelevant to the structural and systemic realities people are dealing with.

That may sound mean at first, but it shouldn't make you feel bad. The point is that you just need to focus on your behaviors and how they impact others, and if you can identify ways that maybe you've been unintentionally reinforcing white supremacy, try to remedy those behaviors going forward. You don't need to worry about being seen or judged as something different from who you really are. The goal in any of this is not to divide people up into good and bad allies.

One of the strongest traits of the sort of deep cohost user culture is a desire to maximize control over how one is perceived. People want to be perceived always and only by the people they choose to perceive them, in the way they choose to be perceived, to the degree they choose to be perceived. There is a deep fear a lot of folks on here have of being seen as something other than themselves.

I understand where that comes from, but when dealing specifically with stuff like "do people know that I'm one of the good whites," you will have a much happier and healthier experience and be less harmful to others, if you can let go of the desire for that particular control.

That's not to say that you shouldn't work on internalized racism and how you feel about it inside! All human beings should! But that's more of a thing to work out through self-reflection and maybe therapy and less of a thing that you need to hash out in a website's comment section.

I generally am trying to stay out of online discourse because I am exhausted from life shit on so many levels right now but if I can offer one bit of unsolicited advice to basically everyone, it's to understand that when the topic is something that isn't in your lane - if you're white and the topic is racism, if you're cishet and the topic is queerness, if you're abled and the topic is disability - one of the most important and valuable things you can do in these situations, especially when you find yourself upset or uncomfortable, is to suppress your desire to react, and to just remain silent and listen.

Don't take this as hostile advice. I mean this in a positive sense. You will begin to understand so much more if you just try to hear other people out, even when your first reaction is to be upset. Let silence shield you until you have the time to process it and come out the other side both more informed and less immediately emotional. I promise you'll find it makes things better for everyone. You may find yourself coming completely around on things after introspecting on them for awhile, once the immediate "someone's mad at me!!!" response fades. Maybe that "awhile" is multiple months. Years? That's okay too. Emotional is the worst time to be Posting, especially on sensitive topics. Maybe talk to your friends in private about it instead.

Maybe you'll decide to say something different afterward. Maybe you'll decide your opinion wasn't needed after all. That's not a bad thing. The world is full of takes; a few questionable ones, made in the heat of the moment, won't be missed.

Anyway, just consider it IMO.