I joined a Discord call with friends this morning, expecting the stream to be of Jackbox - but actually got a collection of reaction video VODs from streams - a form of media I never seek out under normal circumstances, even with a furry VTuber as the host.

A couple of things struck me - that as was stated in a few videos about plagiarism, this is the bare minimum to be fair use; a large part of the content added was screaming, responses to text-to-speech redeems, and very obvious statements such as "this bar is disgusting" while watching a Bar Rescue compilation.

But also it got me reflecting on my own media consumption habits, because there is no shade intended at the friend who really wanted to watch these things.
I've tried to be better about it recently, but it's all too easy to fall into the enticing trap of challenge videos for games once played (Can you beat Skyrim with a gun? Can you beat The Simpsons: Hit & Run, with a car that makes things no fun?)
That, among other things, is my "junk food" - and while we're trying to be better about sticking to things that might be useful or interesting in some way later, we definitely don't always manage it.

Ultimately, while these videos weren't my thing, this was still a better use of time at 6am than I'd have had otherwise; it's not exactly our most productive hour, and time spent with friends is rarely wasted - especially when still dealing with anxiety issues.

(guitar riff starts)

shout out to the "how do i even attempt to construct this from the front" side doodles

one of the things someone once praised my doodles for was leaving in the construction lines; transparent but mostly never gone unless things are really unreadable with them
a reminder that anyone can draw, to some extent

if i were to actually take things further, maybe they would disappear
but my goal with drawing has always been first and foremost to convey the idea
i could give this to someone who actually knows what they're doing
a handful of other reference images; dragon-me, yinglet-me, a landscape from the game and the car
and what we'd get would be very close to the mental image

and if i'm not giving it to an artist, then hey, maybe it'll at least raise a smile

"i have a few mins on this bus, what should i doodle"

(sees a friend post a red dwarf clip as a reaction)

:>

this week has been a freeing reminder that i am allowed to make and post bad art

i feel like (de)construction and anatomy are always going to be challenges, at least without dedicating a lot of time that executive dysfunction often doesn't let us give

but for quickly conveying exact framing to an artist for those times we have a really strong mental image? yeah, i can do that
being able to come not dead last at certain jackbox games
i can and have made people smile

for better or worse, there's more confidence in the strokes as well; lines actually flowing

i've also been thinking about this this morning in the context of "ai will democratize art!!!" techbros

like, i know that i will never be on the level of picasso
or for a more attainable goal in terms of artistic skill, tim buckley ¹
but entire fucking artistic careers have been built off stick figures ², compensated for by other factors

--

just for fun, i put the alt text of yesterday's drawing into diffusionbee - i keep a copy of it on my machine as the most ethical way to "know your enemy" in this area; at least i'm only exposing myself to sludge and none of it is further feeding back into the machine

parody of the kelly comic "shelter from the storm"
storm clouds are labelled "ANXIETY", "GENDER WORRIES", "(THERIAN SYMBOL) SPECIES CONFUSION", "'RETURN TO THE OFFICE' JACKALS", shooting out rain and lightning
a yinglet stands under an umbrella, labelled YINGLET GARBAGEPOSTING, and happily whistles
the cartoonist, off to the side, says "Come rain or shine"

and i was expecting it to have a problem with yinglets
and maybe not understand what a "kelly comic" is, particularly with the onion seemingly breaking all old links at some point
but of the 50 pieces of garbage generated, approximately 4 of them contained something i would reasonably describe as an umbrella

and of course, i could spend a long time tweaking this input
making more probable sequences of words, repeating and rephrasing (newspaper comic, editorial cartoon, monochrome, simple)
wasting electricity with more processing for each generated image, making my laptop probably overheat in the process

but you know what took less time than all of that
and gave some form of transferrable skills on the off chance all i have is a pencil and paper
actually doodling the fucking thing

simple, sloppy, and absolutely the easiest, fastest method of conveying exactly the thing i was going for.
i would rather post 50 things that i couldn't figure out how to properly construct than any of that shit

1. as mockable as it is, i could not draw loss.jpg. i also would not draw loss.jpg, but that's beside the point here

2. i don't think i've ever actively gone to the official site read xkcd, but "little bobby tables" and "correct horse battery stable" are still part of my vocabulary just by osmosis