a handful of (probably) unpopular opinions on writing:
a kiss scene doesn’t have to lead to sex. it can, ofc, but it doesn’t have to. your characters can kiss for the sake of kissing and nothing more. kissing is hella enjoyable in and of itself, so it doesn’t always have to be a means to an end
a story doesn’t have to be steeped, marinated, and executed with tragedy to be a Real Story. obviously you can and should put your characters through the wringer, but if you don’t tell a story with hope and happiness it’s not really a story worth telling. be brutal but don’t be 100% dismal and bleak
a fantasy doesn’t have to be centered on a war, especially if you don’t feel fully capable of writing about war. they’re tricky and unruly beasts, and if you aren’t willing to give them the proper treatment (read: not romanticizing them), you’re better off not writing about war in the first place
your royal character can be fine with arranged marriages. they don’t always have to run away to escape them only to fall in love with the betrothed they were running from in the first place
on the note of romances, your story A. doesn’t need a romance if it doesn’t fit and B. doesn’t necessitate every character getting into a relationship by the end. for some people, romance isn’t their idea of a happily ever after, so you don’t have to force that into your book
perhaps the most unpopular, but it needs to be said: your female character shouldnot slap your male character. ofc there are times when a slap is warranted, but if he’s just being a dick he doesn’t need to be slapped. that’s physical assault and abuse, which should never be acceptable, even if it makes some people laugh (it shouldn’t and yet it always does 🙄)
your female character A. doesn’t have to be thin, B. doesn’t have to be a Strong Female Character, and C. doesn’t have to go through nauseating hardships (read: sexual assault or physical abuse) for her story to be worth telling
these are all i can think of off the top of my head. feel free to add on if you think of any!
just because a story has “literary merit” doesn’t mean it’s actually good. there are no superior genres.
just like fantasy doesn’t need to be centered on war, it also doesn’t need to be centered on medieval england. fantasy can happen at any time in any region of the world with any level of technology.
traditionally feminine values/traits in characters of all genders doesn’t mean they’re an inferior or weak character.
a female character can want power or have a desire to rule and not be evil.
poc and lgbtq+ characters deserve to be in genre fiction, and there doesn’t need to be a “reason” to justify their existence.
if you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to live in the midwest, this is it.
You missed some of the best ones
the best part about it is that the art installation isn’t actually called the Bean. It’s called Cloud Gate, and artist Anish Kapoor (yes, THAT Anish Kapoor) hates that we call it the Bean.
But i mean, look at it. It’s a bean.
How could you forget this one though
I HAD NO FUCKING IDEA THAT THE BEAN WAS CREATED BY ANISH KAPOOR.
someone help me why is anish kapoor important what did he do?
Alright sit down for some Art World Drama bcause this is what I live for.
So, sometime last year (?) science invented Vantablack, which is the darkest possible shade of black. Art world got incredibly excited. But as it needs to be very carefully made in a lab, it’s hard to get a hold of, and is extremely expensive. Enter Anish Kapoor, aka FuckFace McGee. Anish Kapoor buys the rights to Vantablack. He is the only human being on the planet that can legally use it, and he’s kind of a prick about it.
Art world is not thrilled with that.
Enter Stuart Semple.
Stuart Semple is an artist, and also makes pigments to sell in his free time. Stuart Semple is astoundingly pissed about this Vantablack nonsense, and Anish Kapoor’s dickery. Stuart Semple makes a new pigment, the brightest shade of pink ever, called Pinkest Pink, and puts it for sale on the internet. To be bought by everybody except Anish Kapoor. Literally, to purchase, you need to confirm that you are not Anish Kapoor, do not associate with him, and will not sell or give the pigment to Anish Kapoor or his associates. Art world has a good laugh, everyone buys Pinkest Pink because it’s awesome, and damn it we deserve something.
Anish Kapoor however is a penis, and will not take this lying down, because HOW DARE he not have literally everything.
Anish Kapoor gets his London associates to buy him a thing of Pinkest Pink, and being such a classy human being, posts a picture to instagram of him with his middle finger covered in Pinkest Pink, captioned with “Up yours. #pink”
Everyone flips shit, because. Y’know. Fuck that guy. Especially Stuart Semple. For context here, Anish Kapoor is one of the richest artists on the planet, and has repeatedly been referred to as everything wrong with the art world, and the epitome of the art worlds elitism problem. He’s a giant douchebag. Meanwhile Stuart Semple makes pigments just to get them out there. He turns 0 profit from his now enourmously popular pigments.
Stuart Semple launches an investigation as to who the fuck leaked Pinkest Pink, and plans to strike back. He does so by releasing two new products. First is Diamond Dust, which is a glitter made from glass, so that a painting is still visible after it’s applied, but glitters like a mofo. It’s the most reflective glitter out there, and is available to everyone who isn’t Anish Kapoor. And it being made of glass, if you stick your finger in there, it’s going to hurt quite a bit, so that was Stuart Semple’s way of saying “shove your middle finger in this, asshole, see what happens”. Except without saying that, because he can get an insult across while still being fucking classy.
He also releases Black 2.0, created with the help of over a thousand artists worldwide.
Black 2.0 is the answer to Vantablack. Black 2.0 is a slightly less black black, but looks functionally the same to the human eye. It’s completely safe, smells like cherries, and costs four pounds. Vantablack is highly toxic, potentially explosive, needs to be applied in a special laboratory and sealed properly, can’t be moved across borders, can reach 300 degrees celsius if you’re not extremely careful, and costs thousands of dollars. Anish Kapoor is the only human being who can use Vantablack. He is the only human being who cannot use Black 2.0.
So I think we can guess who got the better deal.
And thus the feud ends, Kapoor defeated.
…But not quite.
Kapoor, in this entire afair, has made exactly two comments to the public. The first being his charming message about aquiring Pinkest Pink, the second being claiming to Buzzfeed that he and his small army of lawyers will be suing Semple, an extremely poor artist who cannot afford a lawyer.
No lawsuit has been made yet, fyi.
The point is, Kapoor is a prick, and doesn’t like talking to the lower classes. So one day in July 2017, he decides he needs another floor on his London studio apartment, and starts making arrangements to have it built. His neighbors are fucking pissed, because this will ruin the light of their apartments. They call to Semple to save them, or at the very least piss Kapoor off some more.
Semple answers to the call, and releases two new paints, Phaze and Shift, as always, banned to Kapoor. They change colours, Phaze with temperature, and Shift is just iridescent. Shift needs to be painted over Black 2.0 to work, and Phaze just works on its own.
So that’s been the art world for the last two years.
Basically, get fucked Anish Kapoor your bean sucks and so does your vantablack.
Stuart Semple is organising a bean-kissing event for Anish Kapoor’s birthday.
Reblogging for “By attending this event you confirm that you are not Anish Kapoor, you are in no way affiliated with Anish Kapoor, you are not attending on behalf of Anish Kapoor or an associate of Anish Kapoor. To the best of your knowledge, information, and belief this event will not be attended by Anish Kapoor.”
ALSO HE JUST POSTED THIS!!!!!! LIGHTEST LIGHT!
I know this isn’t my art blog but this entire post gives me life
im sorry is that man holding a real actual miniature star in his hands
Y’all missed the best part about the lightest light, called aptly ‘Lit’. This is from their product page:
Two things:
1. “Anish Kapoor is however a penis” is the best line in this post.
2. I wish to be half as petty and half as awesome as Stuart Semple
I hope Stuart Semple is making a lot of money. What a good person.
Go support him the paint’s are pretty cheap and you get the added bonus of being one of many to help piss off Anish Kapoor
He is my fucking role model for pettiness oh my god
It got better! I’m also excited because he just released biodegradable glitter in non plastic containers! How amazing is that?! Stuart Semple, good guy for the planet and artists, fighter against the rich elite artist like asshole Kapoor.
“When I was growing up, my parents spoke to each other in Spanish, but they didn’t speak to us in Spanish because they were told not to. In school we weren’t allowed to speak it.”
and also???
“… But America is the only country that promotes monolingualism. Here it’s English, English, English. Every other country makes their children learn a second language very early on. So as my political and social activism grew, I was like, ‘I really need to learn Spanish.’ So I did.“
idk how many people i’ve known growing up in texas whose parents speak fluent spanish but they don’t speak a lick solely because their parents were afraid or told not to teach their children. it’s unspeakably common and doesn’t in any way shape or form diminish someone’s claim to or pride in their heritage.
fuck that guy. you go eva.
lack of intergenerational language exchange is one of the leading causes of language death for endangered and indigenous languages because of this culture of shame attached to “lesser” coded languages so frankly if yr mocking people for not speaking their mother tongue without taking the colonial reasons for this into account, you’re an ignorant prick and you can go fuck yourself like
ppl are so annoying “you can’t paint ur bedroom pink you’re an adult” i did not spend my entire life waiting to grow up and control my life to paint my bedroom beige
I had a sales woman in furniture store try and tell me not to buy a hot bubblegum pink loveseat because she wanted me to “think about the future”
Bitch, I am thinking about the future. I already got a hot bubblegum pink couch at home and now I need a loveseat to go with it.
when I first bought my house, I announced my decision to paint my bedroom purple. I had wanted a purple bedroom for thirty damn years, you fucking bet I was gonna have one now. My friends decided, for some reason, that I meant what one of them referred to as “14 year old girl purple” (through what’s wrong with the colors a 14 year old girl chooses, I don’t know, even if they’re not what I want as an adult). They didn’t believe me until they saw the color on the actual wall, even thought they helped me pick out paints. My mother, meanwhile, decided to get worried that if I painted my bedroom a “dark purple”, it would be “depressing”. As if, with an entire house to live in, I would spend all my time in the bedroom, which I wanted to be dark because I would be sleeping in there. In the damn dark.
I had like one, maybe two friends who were all like FUCK YEAH YOU PAINT IT WHATEVER COLOR YOU WANT, PURPLE BEDROOMS ARE AWESOME.
But when they actualy saw the finished bedroom, every single one of them was like, “Oh yeah, that’s really pretty.” (Well, the ones who supported me from the beginning were more like WOOHOO.)
And the moral of the story is: Fuck ‘em, please yourself. Either they’ll come around, or you can safely ignore every question of taste they opine about for the rest of time.
This applies to other adulting activities, too. When I was a kid, I decided that I wanted to have a wedding cake made of doughnuts. When I got older, I figured that I would be “mature” about it and get a traditional cake, which the older adults approved of. Now that I’m 25 and facing the possibility of actual marriage in the near future, I’m just like “marriage is a social construct but it comes with tax & insurance benefits, so just give me that goddamn doughnut cake.” If they don’t like it then they don’t have to come to my wedding.
I would like you all to view my office. I’m thirty and my rainbow room is awesome, people can fight me
Spousul unit and I bought a house in the beginning of the year and have turned the formal dining room into a game room affectionately nicknamed “the tavern” that is most filled with old timey style video game ladies portraits.
