I got paid for some prints today.

That makes me officially a professional artist.

I suppose I'd better go change my deviantART status WHOOPS I ALREADY DID.

That said, I did something I regret today. I got a little snippy to someone I shouldn't have, because I was pissed off at myself for making a mistake.

Also, I find myself getting pulled right back in to the Social Justice on Tumblr, when I should be Working on the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magical Girl project I'm on.

Fic thanks its beta readers.
Latest chapter has about a dozen grammar errors that would've been noticed by any reasonably-alert seventh-grader, including basic tense usage.

Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes announced in March 2007.

BBC's Sherlock announced in August 2008.

Elementary announced in late 2011, and is promptly decried as a ripoff by fans of the BBC's Sherlock.

GLASS HOUSES.

You don't need to give them big words, for starters.

I read what's probably an unhealthy amount of fanfic. One of the trends I've noted is the whole smart people=big words thing, even when the character in question does not talk that way in canon. Notably, Twilight Sparkle from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.

As far as I can recall, almost every time Twilight appears, even if only for a few seconds, she

1. Learns something.
2. Teaches something.
3. Organizes something.
4. Tries to understand something.
5. Some combination of the above.

The show is remarkably consistent with this. Take "A Friend in Deed", where Twi shows up for about five minutes. She spends all of them reading a book or advising Pinkie Pie. That's 1, 2, and 4. These traits became even more important in Season 2, where Twilight became one of the main cast instead of the main character of the series. And since they couldn't resort to the old glasses+sweatervest=smart symbolism, they were forced to pay special attention to how they wrote Twi, especially since they couldn't have her busting out the big words on a show aimed mostly at kids. I can't really remember how Twilight was characterized in it, but Lilpip of "Fallout: Equestria" similarly shows herself to be a clever and resourceful protagonist by being clever and resourceful.

You know that gag where the smart person says something in technical language, and then the regular folks get others to explain it? MLP's used that gag exactly once in two entire seasons. But fanfic has her using big words all the time.

There is a reason the pollysyllabic genius is rarely the/a primary protagonist. Even Holmes has Watson. One notable exception is Cryptonomicon, which has two really smart guys, WW2 Cryptographer Lawrence Waterhouse and modern day computer guy Randy. Waterhouse is, as his dialogue, actions, and thought processes show, really smart. And more than a little eccentric. He doesn't talk quite the same way as everyone, but is still accessible. Even his contemporary, Marine Cpl. Bobby Shaftoe, is fairly smart himself. Randy is a 90s guy, and he talks just like everyone else unless it gets technical, and so, more or less, do his colleagues. Here's a sample of all three!

Y'know, X-arielle? I saw her tumblr. Turns out she's gay.

I am now mildly uncomfortable with my criticism of her--no, wait, actually, I'm not. I'm sorry, shipping a 14-year old girl (Violet from the Incredibles) with a grown woman (Mirage) is creepy, end of story, regardless of the artist's preferences. It would be entirely hypocritical of me to claim otherwise. It would be a double standard, and I can't help but wonder how many of her fans rationalize her more questionable art with "she likes girls, so it's okay!" Even leaving aside the whole ephebophilia thing, she seems to have a bit of a fetish for what's euphemistically called "dub-con" by fanfic writers, "RAEP FACE" by 4chan, and "NOT OKAY" by scans_daily.

Well, when it's het.

Pinkie Holmes by ~u63r on deviantART

I REGRET NOTHING.

Drawn after “Mmmystery on the Friendship Express”.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6501955/6/Project_Gethinator

"These are no longer Protheans," EDI replied. "There are signs of extensive genetic rewrite: Reduced heterochromatin structure, deletion of superfluous 'junk' genes, and the phrase 'U GOT REAPED LOL' encoded into their genome."

No.

Just...no.

For the record, Mass Effect: Interregnum, covering what Garrus did while Shep was dead in ME2, does shout outs so much better. I generally prefer to put mine in where the story happens to have room for them, like when Alex needed an alias in inPrototype and I chose "Sly Cooper". Broadly speaking, if you can't remove or replace  the reference without the story ceasing to make sense, it's too vital. If you need to know what the shout-out is in order to make sense of what its doing in the story, it's too vital.

In ME:I, there's a scene where Garrus and co get their hands on weapons reminiscent of those from Team Fortress 2, even discussing how much it costs to fire the weapon. This helps to underline the amount of money their employer has. Thing is, it's not a one-off. Garrus keeps thinking of how expensive the mini is during the following action sequence. It's integrated into the story, and can be understood even if one doesn't catch the reference. It's not just some joke shoved in without consideration for whether it fits the tone or not.

Project Gethinator is a light-hearted story, but it at least supposedly has a serious core. Think some of the latter Discworld books. Once you stop portraying the Reapers as an ancient and incomprehensibly powerful force--think space robot Cthulhu--and reduce them to the level of a script kiddie from 4Chan, you might as well be writing a crackfic.

Imagine, say, Inception, or the Dark Knight. Now imagine the dudes from the Hangover suddenly show up. It's not going to work very well.

http://www.fimfiction.net

Pick a story. Any story. Now use your spacebar or Page Down to scroll. Notice anything?

Yes, that's right, that stupid bar always covers the first few lines. So you have to constantly scroll up to keep reading those few lines. There's a reason FF.net keeps those options parked at the top of the page, where they can't interfere.

And that's not the only usability flaw. The header takes up over half the vertical space of the screen, and there's no way to turn it off or minimize it that I've found. So if you're, say, in the options section, clicking a link to a new subsection means scrolling down every single time. It doesn't use AJAX to switch between sections without having to load a new page, but it does use Javascript to make what should be an unobtrusive page element obtrusive.

Sheesh.
-J

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/03/19/showbiz/movies/bay-teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles-ew/index.html

"When you see this movie, kids are going to believe one day these turtles actually do exist when we are done with this movie," said Michael Bay as he took the stage to discuss his new vision for the reptilian reboot. "These turtles are from an alien race, and they are going to be tough, edgy, funny and completely loveable."

The funny thing is that the franchise always had a load of aliens and sci-fi, and the goo that turned the turtles into mutants in the comic turned out to be from a research institute run by aliens. There was a whole arc about it. Yet fanboys are absolutely flipping their wigs. They are buying wigs in order to flip them. I am schadenfreuding so hard.

This is just another example of people saying Hollywood is original, then complaining when they change something in a way they don't like. And then there's the possibility that Bay meant "alien race" as in "strange and weird race".