Keeping up with myself here, making sure I don't go inactive too hard :I

Anyhoof, the first week of Telecommunity has come and gone, and I think my classes have been going well for the most part. Some parts, however, still seem to slip through the cracks, and by parts, I actually mean a few particular students. And so I am faced with my greatest challenge: Teaching students and coaxing them to make a good product when they are determined to not care. At first, I may cite the question, 'if you don't care about art, why are you even here?', but I did ask that question, and I was given a concise answer I must admit I'm not surprised I found.

"Oh, I'm here because my mom signed me up. Also, because she says I need to do something other than play the Xbox all summer."

Maybe my disappointment at the latter half is a little hypocritical, in a so-says-the-guy-typing-this-in-the-early-morning sort of way, but I would say my disappointment in the former is fairly legitimate. Of course, parents want their kids to go out places and meet friends and, ya' know, DO things over the summer, but Telecommunity isn't just some summer camp. It's a place for kids who have a serious interest in art to brandish their skills, and when we have a kid in there who is there only because mom and pop wanted to not need to watch over their shining star for about five hours for only two weeks, sometimes less depending on the situation, their lack of interest really does distract everyone else and weighs the whole group down as a result.

That aside, I'm happy to say that my lessons, for those willing to listen, have impressed many of my students in the best of ways. Though I admit I have not given much time to work on these projects, I will correct that in the days to come, by both request and necessity, as the end of the week steadily approaches.


As per my own workings, I've come to the decision that I am no longer particularly wishy-washy on the concept of mind control. My opinions, however, are still not perfectly concise. Either way, my final ruling ended somewhere along the lines of:

"I am okay with all MC that I create, and I am not comfortable with any other MC that I did not engineer."

I don't think I could have possibly made that sound any nit-pickier. Herein lies the loop in my logic, though. See, I suppose that what I mean to say is more along the lines of:

"Most people prefer MC at a far more 'hardcore' level than I am comfortable with."

Personality erasing, rewriting, permanent MC, corrupting, all of those things make me uncomfortable in a serious way. Like, not even just sending a shiver down my spine; I'm talking sending a shiver through my WHOLE body. It's a level of discomfort that makes my finger itch to select more than a few Unwatch buttons.

It's to that point I realize I am being far too sensitive about this subject. I mean, people just do this as a fetish, they don't actually take this seriously, it's not as though that character they just drew was an actual living thing. Though sometimes I wonder if that's exactly what bugs me about it. I find myself asking the question, "If they were able to, would they?" And I fear on a personal level for those who might say yes. To be interested in depriving a creature of its free will, to treat it as a simple canvas to paint over what you desire, that strikes me as vandalism of the primest fashion. To me it is not even inhuman. To me, it's perfectly monstrous, no matter the reason.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not religious, far from it in fact. But I do have a very high regard for the idea of life and what it represents. Slap in my extreme sense of individualism, and you have a recipie for a serious hatred of any and all MC-related ideas. I guess when it boils itself down, I am only okay with hypnosis fetishes that I myself formulate, as in a strange twisted way, I don't trust the intentions of other MC artists, as much as I know it isn't a necessary worry.

So yeah. Grump. How was your day? <:I