APRILSCHILD'S PROFILE

So I was bored and the internet swept me away to a magical land called "Youtube," where I found out about a girl named Megan Meier. This girl was already emotionally unstable, and at the young age of 13, she hung herself due to some exceptionally cruel Myspace shit:

Her suicide was attributed to cyber-bullying through the social networking website MySpace. The account through which the bullying took place purportedly belonged to a 16-year-old male named "Josh Evans." However, it was actually created by an 18-year-old employee of Lori Drew, the mother of a former friend of Meier. Several people contributed to running the faked account, including Drew.

This was a few years ago, and Lori Drew ended up being indicted on three counts of accessing protected computers without authorization to obtain information to inflict emotional distress, and one count of criminal conspiracy. When the case went to trial, there was a mess of controversy surrounding the violation of Myspace's ToS. Some people were of the opinion that violation of ToS should be made illegal.

Setting aside the fact that this woman was probably the most immature human being to date (seriously, a grown woman CYBERBULLYING someone?), I feel that her actions were definitely the least of the cruelty that can come from the internet. For example, several people have personal photos spread around to strangers, spouses contacted and harassed, and - definitely the most detrimental - had their PERSONAL INFO (such as their address and phone number) posted to sites like Encyclopedia Dramatica. Not only is this a gross violation of personal identity, but it's also very unsafe.

I love free speech. I'm all for defending peoples' rights to say things that I disagree with, no matter how provocative. If someone wants to come online and talk about how great Hitler was, and what an awesome group of people the KKK are, that's fine with me, as long as no one is standing in the way of my being able to say the opposite. If you want free speech for one group or one opinion, you can't discriminate - it's all or nothing.

But I think it crosses the line when people post addresses, phone numbers, photographs, and other personal information. That's a violation of the safety of others, and I think the people who do that - and the webmasters who allow that kind of harassment - should be jailed.

But I've always found that this is an interesting topic of conversation. What do you think should be done about "cyberbullying?" When does it become serious... and when should the law be involved?

Hey guys. Since I'm not actually a game maker, though I do hope to start learning my way around the programs and make a very short and simple little game of my own, I thought I'd offer my services to those who are not artistically inclined.

There are a lot of fantastic artists on this site! I'm amazed at the array of talent RMN has got going on.

Here's some of my crap. I do a lot of different styles. I'm very bad at drawing backgrounds, and pretty okay at drawing people.

Here is an action shot (lineart) that's still one of my favorites. It's somewhat anime style.:


Obligatory anime-style big-breasted woman with sniper rifle (yes I know her eyes are too big, it's a stylistic choice ; )). That is an uncolored rock she's sitting on.


My most recent drawing, more ladies, in my normal style (I try to steer away from Anime):


Max's avatar, full picture. I really love the Pieta and I also love the IG series, so... fanart. It still needs to be shaded, but the lineart alone took an ungodly amount of time and effort. Oh, and the binary on the GAIA's dress, I think, is part of the word 'mother,' though I drew it so long ago it's hard to remember if that's correct:


For IG fans (lol):


Lastly, not people at all, but a set of emblems I did from scratch on Photoshop with pen-tool:


Also, play Ruptured Souls to see my litemaps.

Any feedback from the resident artists would be appreciated. But be gentle - most of this stuff is over a year old.

Thanks for checking it out!