Nymphlopedia

Entry 22: Art Nymphs

"What a fantastic masterpiece!" A purple Nymph - with several color splashes all over her - said.

"Exquisite!" Said another one, fitting that exact same description.

"Pan almighty your work is brilliant!" A third paint-covered purple Nymph piled on.

"Thank you, thank you!" Nodded Sonata, standing in front of a canvas with, well... it looked like a crude doodle of herself. Surrounded by gemstones. With the Full Moon in the background. She was holding the Zenith in her hands, and looked significantly more fit and groomed than she actually was.

Also, most importantly, the drawing showed a completely nude Tania on her knees and kissing Sonata's feet. A completely naked Vince was standing next to her, fanning her. With some kind of gun-fan hybrid.

"...Shit." She said. "Did I make Tania too submissive-looking? Sorry, she pissed me off recently - mutual feeling - and I was going through something. I mayyyyy have painted that while I was mad."

"No believe me it's better this way." The first of the Art Nymphs said. "So, Vince, what have you made?"

Vince put in considerably more effort to his painting - so much that I definitely won't be able to re-create it in MS Paint. It showed a spacious cavern, one lined with various glowing red eyes from the dark cracks, mine tracks along one of the edges. In the middle was an Enchanted Sword, a sliver of glimmering sunlight shining from above on it, the light also allowing a small patch of grass to grow with a vine snaking around its burried tip.

"Wow that's a lot more boring." Said a fourth member of the Art Nymph crowd. "Doesn't really capture the common heroic fantasy like Sonata's work."

"What? Oh, come on!" Vince shouted. "I put WAY more effort in to mine!"

Sonata nodded. "Yeah, he did, I can tell."

"She just drew what she fantasized about!"

"But it is what the fantasy is that makes a work of art appealing."

"I thought you would be about the exact opposite of that! 'Oh look at me, Brave McShirtless Hero being ripped and killing monsters' isn't that not what artists want?"

That started some chatter among them.

"No, it is. Most of us in this Artland culture value tradition, and traditionally, the best and most successful art is the one that panders. Sorry, your artwork fails, so you will not be getting a premium pass to the Exclusive Wine Testing."

Vince looked over and oh fuck Sonata had the most smug smile on her face imaginable.

"Sorry." She said. "Cheap pandering wins yet again!"

"...If I had known that, I would have painted that instead."

"Maybe next judgement?"

Art Nymphs.

With the world as their canvas and their finger tips as their tools, these Nymphs don't take too well to criticism.

Preferred Environment: Artscapes/"Paint Jungles." (May also be found in magic animate paintings. By extention, haunted mansions are a popular hangout of them.)

Environment Threat Level: Moderate.

Environment Stats: Moist. Warm. Fantastic. Uncommon. A tropical environments overgrown with plants of various colors, most commonly purple, and with giant gourd-like objects containing paints of different colors, which often spill open and form colored rivers.

Other Names: Paint Nymphs, Color Nymphs, Brush Nymphs, Marker Nymphs.

Affinity: Earth.

Color: Bright Purple.

Traditional Costume Weapon: Paint splashes of random colors around their limbs, some on their stomachs and faces. They deliberately keep their groins, chests, and asses uncovered.

Vince's Comment: I really, really hate color wheels now. That's all I have to say. Oh, Sonata's reading this over my shoulder and she's laughing her fat ass off. She laughed even more when I called her ass "fat."

Sonata's Comment: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! AAAAHHH HAHAHA! Anyway. I don't understand this biome or its Nymphs too well. It's like a Jungle... minus the bigass lizard temple thing that I like hanging out ever since Vince opened it... but with WAY more colorful flowers... but it's not a Flower Forest. And it's not really "the" Jungle or "a" jungle... and also there's rivers of paint going around... it makes me think of a computer printer that vomitted all over a smaller jungle. I ran that by some Nymphs from here. They didn't take offense to that.
Also, if you're looking for the most colorful Nymphs, you've found them. We're all colorful in general, especially my type with all our "variety," but they like applying color on other things. By the way, do painted on clothes violate Rule #1? Technically, no. (I spent a bit of my Evil Years covering myself in cave creature blood. I'm fine with covering myself in liquids. Paint on me is just covering myself in liquid.) But that REALLY, REALLY comes close to breaking it. So I wouldn't do it. It's a shitty loophole for amateur permanudists. And yeah, I'm gatekeeping permanudism, because fuck you.

Tania's Comment: Art Nymphs.
Nymphae Pingere.
One of nature's biggest wonders is the forest dedicated to dyes and pigments. I am familiar with an artist (a big fan of me and a friend of Sonata's, in fact. He wants me to give credit: His name is Stefano) who regularly ventures here to get nearly endless supplies. He... as ashamed as I am to admit it, is in more harmony with the Art Nymphs than I am. Seriously, they don't like talking to me. In fact, I should just let him take it from here, he would be better at noting their biology and nature ties than I am...

Stefano's Comment: They're really sensitive to differences in not just light, but taste and smell too. They can tell two colors that are just a small splash of black or white apart, and if you gave one five berries from the same bush, he or she will usually rank them all from the most to least sour.
Finally, a group of people I can relate to!

Closing AN:

By the way, no, the mini-story is not meant to be some big commentary of pandering winning over "actual art." I mean, for fuck's sake, this is a horny shitpost, I'm in no position to act like some tragic figure being overlooked in favor of someone drawing naked people. And I actually like drawings of naked people so that's one thing I won't complain about.

(I will however complain about and parody shallow wish fulfillment stories of heroes having OP-ness handed to them with no catch whatsoever and basically getting everything they want. I don't like those. At least half of my Fictionpress output is some sort of spin on that, from Carlson hating his OP status to Lesuif and Rhislaujja being symbolic antagonists to Taro being easily hateable in-universe and out. Gravity Falls helped me realize how much I didn't like them by not being one of them, the main heroes were ordinary humans who weren't born with some god power that made them totally stronger than literally everyone except maybe the main villain, and it was refreshing.)