If arrogance is holding opinions that don't meet with the approval of everyone, then HOORAY for arrogance. This thread turned into a "what is art" kind of thing, but your original theme was: I think that if we look at our flames from an outsider's perspective would see something different from what we keep telling ourselves here. After looking at 100 or 200 flames, an outsider would start to see that maybe flames are a dime a dozen, that they are easy to come by - which they are. Outsiders don't care that a tremendous amount of work went into gifting us all with Apophysis and they sure don't care about the math. All they see is a bunch of fuzzy shapes and patterns, which at first glance are beautiful, but after 2 or 3 hundred of them, they all start looking the same. I agree with you 100% on that. That doesn't mean flames aren't beautiful, but that the variations in them may be only vaguely perceptable to the non-Apo eye. And to be completely honest, I am just amazed how often flames are raved about as if they were Rembrandt's museum pieces, when I know they're simply a variation on one of the original set of starter flames, with some gradient adjustment...pretty, yes, but unique? I don't think so, particularly when day after day that same image is presented with some minor adjustment. I do those myself, by the way. :) I just don't expect other Apo users to commend me for my creativity. beebee (unafraid to be unpopular) :)