#realism is just What You Are Supposed To Do and Unevocative Of Deeper Meaning

[rxttenfish]

one of the things that particularly pisses me off about art discussions, either in how nowadays everything has to aim for more and more realism in art styles and even live action to be seen as "real art", and in dismissing more abstract styles of artwork as not "real art" and having no inherent worth, is that they explicitly do not consider realism an art style either. to them, realism is just a given of "good" art, not chosen but rather just default. which i hate, because you CAN pick realism as an intentional style and a purposeful choice to suit a narrative, and all this results in is no one noticing or understanding why you made that choice or why that choice works better than any other possible choice to tell the story you want to tell.

#all the care guide says is 'biomass' #like i like realism because i have a heavy focus on anatomy as a theme #on the body as something innately complex and with a lot of feelings to have about it in all its messy ugly states #im interested in all the complex ways the body intersects with its environment and with culture and with other people #as the outside as contrasting the inside or serving as a strange reflection of it #like im kind of going for a lot of merfolk designs to not be particularly visually different from each other #they have incredibly similar silhouettes and thats on purpose #i want all of their differences and visual traits to be things that they would find more prominent #but we would struggle to pick apart without learning about them deeper and committing these to knowledge #because thats so much been my experience with trying to tell different individuals of the same species of wild animal apart #and i want to use that as a lens to then discuss how humans would then interact with an entirely different sapient species #and what happens when you are someone who experiences that #of someone else not recognizing you as individuals like you do each other #of them not even trying to adapt or learn your differences #what damage it does when this happens to you #and how much the world opens up when someone actually does learn these little differences #but of course #no one else recognizes this because everyone just thinks realism is the default #realism cannot be a purposeful choice done for a reason #realism is just What You Are Supposed To Do and Unevocative Of Deeper Meaning