As many of you already know, DeviantART is a site where vast amounts of artists get together to showcase their art and artistic abilities. Sadly, though, over half of these so-called "artists" lack this artistic ability, can't even write worth dookie, and have egos the size of Mount Rushmore. They can't take critique even of the most mild magnitude, and are deluded into thinking that these are "flames," which causes them to retreat into their "hugbox" of so-called "friends," whom they are aware will defend them for the sake of getting their asses kissed.

As I said before, this makes up over half of DA, and yet another sad thing is that a good chunk of this part of DA happens to delve into the "art" of copying and tracing and happen to only embrace one style: anime. Now, I don't have any problem with the style of anime; I do enjoy drawing it, but only to an extent. I do, however, have a problem with how much this style is embraced; it's hardly something that could be called original anymore. Why can't one develop their own style anymore? That deviates away from what could be called the anime norm?

While I don't find any problem in experimenting with different styles to find and develop one's own niche, I just wish most people wouldn't be so set in one specific style, particularly anime. Jeez, go out and explore; get yourself taken seriously. It's a harsh world out there. Can you really be expected to get by with just your "anime" or Jhonenesque styling? No; look in a damned artbook, observe other stylings of art, experiment, improve, and take critique even of the harshest quality (it won't kill you). That's what a REAL serious artist does, and if you aren't able to do any of this, then you may as well not even consider yourself an artist. That's all I have to say about that.

Now, another thing that bothers me on DA, especially of late, are the vast amounts of OC/canon character pairings there are in fandoms. I'm not going to name names, but... what the fuck? I've seen this one girl who draws a self-insert for Casper the Friendly Ghost, and the more screwed up thing is that she pairs herself with one of the Ghostly Trio members: Stinkie... In all honesty, each and every piece of art I've seen from her makes me want to bang my head on my desk repeatedly. She also has a self-insert for The Lion King whom she pairs with Timon the Meerkat and another to be paired with this guy named Gwizdo from Dragon Hunters, which, as far as I know, is a cartoon barely anyone's heard of. Oy, and then there's this one kid who has a self-insert with Captain Hook from the old Peter Pan Fox series. Creepy crap, no? Ohh, and next is just the tip of the iceberg.

This one girl, she has a Disney self-insert reminescent of every Disney princess ever created who is friends with Mickey, Donald, Goofy, basically every Disney character ever involved in Kingdom Hearts (and more that aren't even AFFILIATED with Disney), but there's only one character whom she appears to... *ahem* love: Long John Silver from Disney's Treasure Planet. Um... No comment, even less of a comment on the fact that she claims to actually love this character, turning down the affections from this guy who actually works for Disney. Yeah, that's definitely where you should draw the line between reality and fiction.

I swear, what the friggin' heck is wrong with people on DeviantART? Granted, I have seen worse things (inflation art being one of them) than what I have ranted about here, but wake up, people. Stop being children; if you call yourselves artists, take your artistic aspects more seriously: experiment with more styles than what you're familiar with; don't just set yourself on ONE specific style, grow a backbone and learn to take critique of any level, and don't be so wrapped up in yourself; stop being selfish, egotistical, boneless, spineless assholes. As for those of you "in love" with canon characters of certain series, get your heads out of the clouds, slap yourselves in the face a few times, and repeat after me: "There is no such thing as *Insert character whose pants or lack thereof that you wanted to get into*; I will wake up, go outside, find a nice boyfriend or girlfriend who's actually REAL, and get on with my life." There. Now that wasn't so hard, was it?

I'm done now. That is all I wanted to say for right now.