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devondespresso · 2 years ago

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<< Asks temporarily turned off so i can try actually getting through all the fundraiser messages, I'm sorry >>

Hey babes and non-babes alike, I'm Devon (or Dev, or Devi, or whatever fun nickname comes to mind!)

I'm a fanfic writer, beta reader and aspiring writing consultant, and artist (DevonDrawspresso art archive) (Devonias on ao3)

Any anti, personal vent/rant, and nsfw reblogs get tagged accordingly as well as a some specific tags as requested by mutuals. This is mostly a Stranger Things blog but I am definitely dabbling in the CaitVi Arcane fandom >:3 (not fic yet tho, sorry)

have fun and thanks for dropping by!! 💕

Tags

#devon's writings | #devon's steve henderson au | #devon's drabbles | #devon's writing rambles

#devon's art | #full works | #traditional art | #digital art

#devon thinks sometimes | #devon creates sometimes | #shit you can use if you wanna | #devon's random fic recs (Masterlist - coming soon ish??)

Latest Fic:

I Wish I Never Met You - G | ~600 words | Steddie or Steve & Eddie | CW: grief, hurt/no comfort, and more listes on the post

as always, masterlist is ordered with blatant favoritism 😌

Chaptered Fics

• more than 10k words •

We'll Be Alright (aka The Steve Henderson AU) - | ~90k so far | Mature | ao3 link (to be added once posted)

Light of my life, the peanut butter to my jelly, my favorite project, and yet: no chapters officially posted. BUT you can find all the little snippets and rambles about it under the tag. i have a longer explanation of what it is and why its not posted here but basically i can promise you that there will 100% be content posted no matter what (so that entire word count, updated regularly, exists and will be shared eventually 💕)

Oneshots

• between 500 and 10k words •

Steve isn't eight years old. And he definitely isn’t 8 years old. He's nineteen, too close to twenty, sitting in the doorway of a room that isn't his, in a house he didn’t grow up in, stopping himself from getting comfortable leaning back on a door frame despite the current strain in his back, because it would only hurt the wound there more.

Ficlet for the stwg prompt "Sunshine" that turned out better than I could have imagined! Quiet, serious, and emotional, it's definitely my favorite posted work so far!

Steve opens his eyes, glances towards Hopper and finds him looking out into the dark ahead, warily. Steve follows his gaze, and his stomach turns. There’s a powder blue convertible stalling in front of his house—roof uncharacteristically up and hiding the interior—haphazardly parked half off the road. The people in the front seat are arguing, and there’s smoke billowing out the back still like they’re ready to take off at any second. Hop rolls closer, headlights lighting up everything. Steve leans forward to get a better look, and Tommy’s face turns around in the driver’s seat to look back at them.

A very late gift fic for the lovely @/momotonescreaming following the STWG prompt "Home"! Serious hurt/comfort with a sweet and hopeful ending, I ended up spending over three weeks getting this just the way I wanted and now I'm super happy with it!

Chrissy gets to keep a few moments to herself before she catches Steve glancing at her again through the corner of her eye. She pretends not to notice, holds her neutrality for a few nauseating seconds before she sighs, closing her eyes and drawing her knees to her chest in a way that turns the subtle glance into full-force attention. “Do you think…” She starts, but finds the words stopping before they can get out of her head. Does he think she’ll die? Obviously he’s not going to tell her if he does. “Eh, sometimes.” Steve answers, shrugging lightly in a way that's playful but not flippant enough to derail the conversation. Chrissy huffs from the tinge of amusement, then tries again. _ Or: Chrissy lives, and now she has to survive hell while still carrying the pain that nearly killed her. Though it can't be fixed overnight, Steve and Robin give it their best shot.

a gift for @/stellarspecter from the STWG holiday gift exchange!! Tess is the one that originally got me falling in love with platonic stobin both dating Chrissy and man if we didn't have a time limit i could've *easily* made a whole season 4 rewrite for this and honestly struggled getting it down to this (a solid 1.5k over the soft max... whoops😅). all that to say, i adore this fic! soft, goofy, and a hopeful ending, if you're not already a stobissy fan I'd love the chance to convert ya 😉

Claudia Edine Henderson never wanted to get married. Not really. But she wanted kids, so that meant either getting married or seeing if the daycare was hiring. Anthony Laurence Goldman wanted a family. She thought that meant the same thing, so they married. And it was good. They had a beautiful baby boy, Dustin Clarence Goldman, healthy save for a defect with his bones. No collarbones, and the high chance he’d need a little extra medical attention down the line, but he’d still be living long and happy, and she couldn’t ask for more.

short and sweet ficlet for the stwg prompt "Claudia", because how could I refuse Claudia?? Sweet, relatively light, half-backstory with a cute and hopeful ending, it didn't take as many hours as My Sunshine, but I still love it!

Steve went over to the media room and dug through the little bin of batteries under the phone, pulling out an opened pack that had just enough left. He took both aids off, changed the batteries, and put them back on to make sure they worked. He heard a strong thud from his bedroom, followed by muttering.

so far my silliest ficlet, using the prompt "Tell a story to stay out of trouble", set in an au where Steve is hoh from canon events and was adopted by the Hendersons! featuring brothers goofing off, cousins getting up to trouble, and the titular Mr. Crayola Henderson!

He had taken a moment and then slipped himself out of bed, across the room and down the hall, down the stairs and around the dark silhouettes of walls and doors and furniture on his way to the kitchen. He followed the countertop with a light hand, feeling over towards the sink and cabinets above to tip a glass from the cabinet into his palm. He found the faucet by the faint glimmers of moonlight reflecting off the metal, filled his glass halfway, and drank lukewarm water, soothing his arid throat. Touch ghosted over his sides, the smallest pricks against his shirt, and Steve’s reflexes took over, elbow jabbing back behind him towards the touch, force strong and urgent that spun him around, back hitting the counter as his defense met no resistance. Steve exhaled, inhaled, exhaled. But there was nothing there.

a spooky little something to practice getting into writing with greater success than expected!! Definitely dark, definitely not happy, mind the tags and enjoy some creepy shit!

Since We're Alive Now - | Chrissy Cunningham and Eddie Munson | 5843 words | T | ao3 link (soon) | cw: referenced/implied self-image issues, swearing, brief references to physical injury, strong self criticism, and canon typical tone in some areas but with happy ending

summary and little spiel at the bottom coming eventually soon eventually

Never Again (Mature) - | ao3 link |

Nancy is trying to have a good time with her boyfriend after their November from hell. It would be a lot easier if the last time they did this wasn't the same night her best friend died, but she needs the break to avoid those thoughts, even just for a night. Apparently, she doesn't get a choice.

My one and only Explicit fic for the foreseeable future because I really wasn't actually ready to write this one anyway. For anyone that doesn't want the sexual themes, the M version replaces the opening sex with barely a makeout, with everything else nearly identical! Also my first fic posted like ever! yay!

Drabblessss

• fics less than 500 words •

cause idk im the kinda guy that doesn't really scroll blog tags, i find masterlists helpful so I'm using both and you can pick your poison.

all drabbles are also under #devon's drabbles. the tag is ordered chronologically and this list is ordered with my blatant favoritism 😉

Chicken Noodle Oops! - | G | Steve & Dustin | 126 words | ao3

Sweet and Spicy | G | Steddie | 384 words | ao3

Restless (Ed, go to fucking sleep) | G | Steddie | 431 words | ao3

Surprise, Bitch Babe! | T | Steddie | 691 words (i know it breaks the "drabble" category im sorry its just got drabble vibes) | ao3 pending

And Everything Else 😅

• did i make a whole new section because i didn't know where to put this one thing? yes. yes i did 😮‍💨 •

(all ao3 posts are archive locked to avoid scraping, sorry for the inconvenience)

#im sorry i swear i change the look of this thing constantly fhalfhdjk #good news is fics and links are almost always up to date lol #as of right now works get posted on tumblr first and get cross-posted to ao3 sometimes with minor changes #often times changes get edited into the original tumblr post (though usually aren't more than phrasing format or grammar changes)#if i ever decide to change something major ill probably put a poll up to see what people would prefer i do to preserve the original #usually tho ive edited a ton before posting so my critical eye has already had its fun

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tuckedawaytulip · 2 years ago

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Hi! Im Tulip!

I originally made this blog to be able to reblog and eventually talk about my favorite ships outside of my regular reblogging and shitposting blog, as well as a few of my other interests. Now I use this blog to talk about anything I like in general. Like Jonathan Sims.

All posts will be tagged, and below is a list of the tags used on my blog currently. Itll be updated regularly and kept in alphabetical order according to its categories. Tag guide below.

OTP - One True Pairing, I go insane over this and will reblog absolutely anything I ever see potentially relating to this ship. I love these two morons so much.

Jmart - Jonathan Sims/Martin blackwood, TMA. This thing is fighting with spideypool for OTP slot I wish martin would admit his feelings. Correction, Jmart has won the OTP slot fight

Currently shipping - I currently ship these, and will reblog stuff of them

Breagan - Brett/Reagan, inside job, I ended up on this ship way too late damn it but Ill reblog every single damn scrap of these dumbasses I can find

DoorKeay - Gerard Keay/Michael, TMA. These two are very neat and I like them.

LonelyEyes - Peter Lukas/Elias Bouchard, TMA. I find it both funny and I love how it contrasts jmart. The eye is always watching the lonely reminding it of just how alone it is. Spideypool - comic spidey only, spiderman/deadpool

Characters - Characters I love enough to tag of their own accord. Will likely come with their fandom tag. Listed in alphabetical order by last name.

Elias Bouchard - The Magnus Archives character. Stupid bastard man. I hate him for his actions he does to the others and love him for his character.

Martin Blackwood - The Magnus Archives character. 2nd favorite character, I love him so much why is he being tortured? He also deserves to be hugged.

Gerard Keay - The Magnus Archives Character, he is very funny and I love him. I would wish he stuck around for longer, but he wouldn't want that.

Nikola Orsinov - The Magnus Archives character. Mannequin covered in the flesh of a dead man, she is very neat, I would let her take my skin if she wanted she deserves it as a treat.

Helen Richardson/Distortion - The Magnus Archives character. She is pretty spiral lady and I love her so much

Reagan Ridley - Inside Job. She is pretty and I like her so she gets reblogged

⭐Jonathan Sims⭐ - The Magnus Archives character. My favorite boy. I wish to squish him like a stress ball. Absolute blorbo he rotates in my brain like a microwave he deserves a hug. Why is everyone so angry at him? Be nicer to him he is trying his best.

Tim Stoker - The Magnus Archives I am crying about him constantly I loved him he's just out kayaking he's just out kayaking he's just out kayaking-

Other - Anything not a ship or character but that I like enough to put here anyways.

TMA - The Magnus Archives. Horror Podcast Ive been listening to. TMA textpost - TMA posts, but text specifically

Retired tags - These are on my blog, but Im not as big of a fan of them as I once was, if Im a fan of them anymore at all. A lot of these I found neat for a week then got immediately bored, or found neat but realized I only liked one particular person's characterization of them and didn't care about the characters themselves.

Billfiddlesford - Bill/Fiddleford/Ford, gravity falls

Billford - Bill/Ford, Gravity falls, platonic tag is 'Bill and Ford'

Bunnydoll - Ragatha/Jax, the amazing digital circus, I just find shipping Jax with people funny, platonic tag is 'Ragatha and Jax'

Davekat - Dave/Karkat, Homestuck

Fiddlebill - Bill/Fiddleford, gravity falls

Fiddlestan - Fiddleford/Stan, gravity falls

Funnybunny - Pomni/Jax, The Amazing Digital Circus, platonic tag is 'Pomni and Jax'

Guitarspear - Adam/Lute, Hazbin hotel

Paperhat - Dr.Flug/Blackhat, Villainous

Prohibited Wish - Prismo/Scarab, Adventure time and its spinoffs

Ribbun- Jax/Gangle, The Amazing Digital Circus

Scollace - Scott/Wallace, Scott pilgrim vs the world

Stanbill - Stan/Bill, Gravity falls

Stobotnik - Stone/Dr. Robotnik, Sonic movies

Superbat - Superman/Batman, DC

Voxal- Vox/Alastor, Hazbin Hotel, honestly I don't watch this show nor do I really know the characters, but I think these guys and their dynamic are neat

Winterkov - Winter King/Simon Petrikov, platonic tag is 'Simon and Winterking'

#intro post #I updated it to include categories #Since I don't ship a lot of this stuff as much anymore #But I do want to keep the tags listed #I just want them separated #Goddamn I have more old ships than I do current ones.#Yknow looking back I really just found a ship for a week got bored then returned to spideypool a lot of times

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withered-rose-unbreakable-lotus · 2 months ago

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2nd thing I wanted to say today and forgot. I wanted to make a video of it but I'm lazy, plus it can be done within way fewer words than those used to make a video; I wanted to bring up stuff that no longer exist in the vkei scene and see reactions (if any, it could be plain nostalgia or well more info for newer fans) xD. Because many things have changed and we just accepted them without so here goes nth:

Going major: After the fall of PSC, I literally never heard of anyone discussing this anymore. It's crazy to me that we live at a time that any band can get a big venue so long they can fill it, and not depending on a stupid title. It was one of the most positive changes for me. Sure it had its merits but I saw several bands say it ended up being more of a heavier duty and the negatives being more than the positives so good riddance. (For those who are new, going major was a huge deal in the scene in the past. It was vital for a band to get signed in a music label (not that indies without labels didn't exist) and going major meant that your label finally sees you as a band worthy of investing more in. You could have lives selling out repeatedly, but unless you had gone major in your company, you'd never set foot in Tokyo Dome or Budokan. You were getting connections, more promo from your label, lots of things. But that also meant you were double as overworked, you were expected to keep hitting certain expectations and many more I am not familiar with)

Stylish Wave: I am not aware if this still happens and if it does, if it is being recorded but if you dig down the archives of some of the old vkei blogs here you will find screenshots from these lives or people sharing the date it would take place. Hell many are still up on youtube. I miss it tbh. But not many bands I listen to get to these events anymore. But it's like digitally attending a show with many vkei bands, which gave you the chance to see other bands in action as well. I gave a chance to Ronocro cause of 1 Xmas Stylish Wave.

Specific band shows: When I came into the vkei scene in 2012, many bands had their own show where they'd play games or discuss various subjects. It was unfortunately very hard on the bands cause back then people were dropping releases like snow (which is one of the following points btw), but dang, they were so fun and you got to see more of each member's personality. I personally watched Alice Nine's show, AND eccentric agent's, BORN's and Screw's. And I knew other bands with a show were ViViD, SuG (the Gazette were literally the only PSC band without a show xD), Kra, Nightmare, and eventually BPR bands started a show too but they chose to start theirs on YT instead of Nico Nico. Gackt and Yoshiki still have their show on Nico Nico and Hyde and Versailles members have one on YT. The thing is, the latter four cases are all paid subscriptions. The shows on Nico Nico were either utterly free so long as you had an account on there, or half of the show was shown to everyone and half to only those paying. Now we also have twitcast, where Kaya, Ikuma, Byo, Rui (ex. Screw) and many more jrockers are having broadcasts and interact with their fans but those are all paid.

Releases falling like snow: Do you even remember that? I am happy that is not a thing anymore (not forced at least). That was one of the things that I lost my mind over when I got to the scene. What do you mean sb could have 2 albums in a year? 6 singles in a year? Everyone was overworking themselves to exhaustion it was crazy. And unfortunately this mindset has stayed strong in several bands' mind, who, even though aren't always pressured by sb, they push themselves cause there's also the overworking mindset of Japan. I think the Gazette were the first band of my favorites who eventually decided they'd be releasing 1 album per year and that eventually expanded to 2-3 years, if they wished to have lives around this album abroad as well. Now many bands do it, they take some time between releases but back then, you'd get so much music in such short time it was crazy.

Joined events: Oh these were so cool! Nowadays collabs are easier to do thankfully, you don't have to be in the same label to do stuff together if you want, but back then each label was holding some annual event of their own that all their bands participated. Usually PSC had the upper hand and 3 of those times they also recorded those shows for us to see. Some bands hated it and others loved it but the fans, we definitely loved those. (still bitter the Gazette never joined, Kra at least participated in the joined interviews but oh well, the Gazette were better team players behind the scenes. They were more closed to themselves but many bands have mentioned how the members helped them in the studio and other things)

Multiple band fans: Now this is directed more to tumblr and fandoms and while there is nth wrong with liking 1 band, I miss when I didn't feel this alone liking many bands at the same time. I would visit blogs that had 5-6 bands each, but now I barely find any with more than 2 bands. Many people grew tired of losing bands I guess and stuck with more stable ones, but dude there is one thing that pisses me off and saddens me at the same time and that is how many fans walked away from bands before they even disbanded. I've seen several fans who like/liked(?) Alice Nine and, until their hiatus, posted nth about them themselves and just occasionally reblogged posts from others. You liked nth out of their work after they left PSC? Nothing? Same goes for many other bands. I see several people reblog stuff from me and when I go to their blogs, hoping I found another fan, they never post stuff from that band themselves and they reblog said band once every month or two. And then we complain only Gazette and Diru fans are left. If you like a band still, there's nth wrong about being loud about it. Luckily newbies seem to follow the old pattern and actually like more than 2 bands each so maybe someday such blogs filled with multiple bands will come back. ._.

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compactdiscscatalogue · 2 months ago

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Hello! My name is Randal Thursday. You can find me elsewhere at capitalistboyfriend.neocities.org/

This is a new blog I have created to catalogue (and digitally archive, in the case of self-published and/or unknown records) and offer my ratings of each compact disc I own. I have somewhere around forty to fifty compact discs currently in my possession and I have acquired nearly all of them from thrift shops, the local library, and bargain bins of mysterious and depressingly cheap deadstock.

If I am remembering correctly, I started collecting them in 2021 or 2022. Since then I have very quickly found an excess in my hands, a number of which I only purchased out of pure archival instinct to preserve as much of this lost 2000s art as possible. They are incredibly cheap and generally never over at most $3 per disc. Most often, about $1.50. This makes it very easy to amass large amounts of them over time. CDs today are what vinyl was in the 90s and early 2000s… dirt cheap and in exceedingly large quantities. You need to take advantage of this now if you don’t want to be 30 and discless.

Anyway, the vast majority of these records in the bargain bin at The Dollar Tree(s) are shitty pop, educational songs for children, or in the most numbers: pop punk, emo, and indie rock. This is perfect for me… because I love indie rock. And dated scene kid nonsense. I usually buy based off of the cover and, no, it really hasn’t failed me at all because I know my taste and what it usually looks like. I found my absolute favorite band and record of all time by going off the cover art of a CD in The Dollar Tree’s bargain bin.

As for the records I find elsewhere, it truly is a 100% random selection of donated goods. I shop at many locations. I do generally go off of the covers for these as well when it comes to which I select for purchase because I know I’m most likely to find records that fit my taste that way. Sometimes, I buy bands or artists I’ve heard of but never got around to listening. Despite all of this, I have never actually found an album that I already know and like so I tend to burn my own in those cases, with a huge stack of printed photo discs from my grandparents’ old church and my trusty Panasonic Let’s Note from around 2009 which seems to be at death’s door.

All that aside, I will eventually compile an actual archive on my website for downloading of all the completely unknown, self published records I simply can’t find anywhere else or are incredibly sparse with little to no information about them on the web. I find it very important to extend the life of these works and show them to the world. There is so much music we miss, and we forget about, and we just don’t care about that could be so many peoples’ favorite album on earth (re: my favorite band, Fields).

I strongly recommend you follow along and do the same with your collections or any records you see in the wild that may be the only one still in existence. And please, enjoy my catalogue and reviews : )!

Love, your friend Randal Thursday

P.S. this is a sideblog offshoot of my personal, secret blog, so please send asks instead of comments if you would like me to properly reply.

#music recs #music review #hipster #digital archive #compact disc

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wind-up-thancred · 4 months ago

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hmm. personal ramble re: creativity and value under the cut since december has gotten me feeling a specific kind of way. fairly long.

dipping my toes into another platform and trying to actively make new friends to talk about creative stuff with has revealed to me some weird internal views on how i view the things i make and the way people interact with them.

it's been spurred on by self doubt, i think. that, and comparing myself and my work to others'. for context, i first tried out bsky because i had seen from a distance how much chattier twitter felt, but i wasn't going to actually touch that site with a 10 foot pole because. well. it's twitter. i am a fairly nonconfrontational person with rejection sensitivity and quite frankly i don't think the general vibe of that site would be good for me mentally.

but i was attracted to the way it felt more like a social media site than a blog site the way tumblr is. don't get me wrong, i definitely do like having my stuff archived here, separated into tags, easy to search for. it feels good! but i also wanted more folks to actively chat with about OCs. so when i heard that bsky was significantly more chill for the most part i was like, fuck it, why not.

but i think "starting fresh" per se has revealed some internalized vulnerabilities that were probably there for a while but just have not been properly brought to light.

namely, i am not confident that the things that i create "count" as art, i think.

here on tumblr i've mostly just trawled the gpose tags and followed primarily gpose-centric blogs because that's what i initially came here for, and what i wanted to see. but being on bsky, i have noticed that i see a lot more digital art and writing compared to the amount i see here. it gets more attention, too. perhaps it's a sample bias— it may just be the group of folks i've chosen to follow there.

regardless of the reason, though, it's got me thinking— can the things i make with gpose ever hold a candle to the more traditional, widely accepted forms of what's considered to be "art"?

i would like them to. i want my gposes to tell katsu's story, because he means a lot to me as a character. to me he is escapism, and also a form of projection and introspection, and also a way to remind myself to have hope in my real life too. having him has brought joy to my life in a way i never really thought an OC could.

i am the sort of person to see inherent value in uniqueness and rarity. i think OCs are actually really fascinating because they are a culmination of all of a person's lived experiences, their likes and dislikes, the things they want to explore IRL but can't for whatever reason. nobody else will ever have that exact same lived experience, and therefore nobody else will ever create an OC that's completely identical to someone else's. i think that's magical.

so i create because katsu, his story, and his journey mean a lot to me. i think i "owe" him that, in a way. but now i find myself doubting that the things i spend time and energy on creating are worth something the way other artforms are worth something.

for what it's worth, i've dabbled in a few other art forms. i doodled almost every single day for over a decade when i was still in school, but eventually dropped it because my poor attention span made practice exercises really unenjoyable to me. i have an art tablet and pick it up maybe two or three times a year. my own technical limits make creating with it difficult because i cannot execute the things i see in my head, but at the same time i do not have the patience or the discipline to improve. so i stopped. and quite frankly i don't think i'm very interested in picking it back up.

i had a similar problem for a while with writing, where any attempt at it was super frustrating due to my own aesthetic knowledge surpassing my technical knowledge. nowadays i am very, very slowly trying to get into writing fic for katsu, but i am unfortunately also cursed with the perfectionist trait of not wanting to share things until i feel they are "good enough." so for now there will probably only be very sparse and tiny snippets of my writing shared anywhere, at least until i have more confidence in it. i will keep doing it, though, just privately.

on the contrary, i have found that gpose comes fairly naturally to me. i have the knowledge of the posing tools, the environmental tweaks, the prop making, the outfit tweaking, the shaders, all that stuff that actually lets me get the results i see in my head before i create the shot. i even learned blender and other modding programs so i can further alter the components of a shot to my liking. i'm no expert for sure but i am pretty confident in my ability to envision a scene and then execute it to physicalize my vision.

i am torn on what this perceived ease actually means. from my point of view it could mean one of two things: 1. the two or so years of gposing i've done, starting with vanilla gpose and slowly learning other tools along the way, have actually contributed to my technical knowledge bank. my gposes were not as good when i started but the many, many shots i've taken have genuinely improved my eye for aesthetic. 2. it was never really that difficult, this was never really a "skill" that needed developing, anyone could pick it up and it only came naturally to me because gposing is inherently easy.

i am hoping the former answer is the truth, but recently my confidence has been slipping and a part of myself is trying to convince me of the latter.

i think i would be be pretty damn unhappy if the latter was actually true. i am very neurodivergent and deal with a lot of anxiety, and therefore have never held a "proper" job. i am technically a contractor with a captioning company right now, but finding work has been really difficult for me recently due to dwindling clients who are being drawn away by the artificial intelligence fad, and the aforementioned poor attention span. so the two things that i try to do as often as i can in my life to actually make me feel fulfilled nowadays are creating and helping people.

if i realized that the last two years i've spent learning this medium amounted to almost nothing, and that spending it learning any of the other mediums i've dropped or ignored would've been a more valuable use of my time... i don't think that would be very good for me. or my self-worth.

i don't want to fish for compliments or pity. i hope this doesn't come across as that. if anything i think i'd like it the most if this could resonate with the self-doubt someone else might be feeling right now, because i think that's one of the most beautiful parts of public self-expression— other people may see it and go, oh, i have felt that way before. other people feel the way i do sometimes. i am not alone.

i'm not going to stop gposing, probably ever. regardless of what the answer is to my internal question, what hasn't changed is that i find the actual process of gposing, setting up a scene and framing it, to be enjoyable. the only thing that might be threatened is my attempt to make my creations public. because if they are not truly art, then they will not cause people to feel emotion when they see them. and if they don't evoke emotion when seen by others, what even is the point of publicizing them?

i do sometimes wonder how i'd feel about my creations if i had never started posting them publicly. i'd been gposing for a good while before i started this tumblr blog and i doubt i would've stopped. but i do feel like i would probably see the value in my creations differently.

there are still some shots that i take and do not post here, or anywhere, that i keep just for myself. ...mostly because they don't abide by tumblr's TOS, lol. so evidently i do still enjoy creating just to create, just for myself. and i truly hope i never lose that, because i want to believe that my own self-expression is worth something regardless of how many people see it or how it makes them feel. just because it's unique, and nobody will be able to make anything exactly like i do.

i think that's just about the gist of it. i kinda doubt anybody will read all the way to the end of this, and that's okay, i just wanted to get my thoughts out in text. perhaps it will help me process how i feel. but if you did read all the way to the end, i appreciate it a lot actually, and it means a lot to have something like this seen even when it is not performative or cleaned up. especially when i have been feeling as invisible as i have recently.

chalk it up to the winter, i think— i don't do very well when the sun is fully down by 5:30. but there is always a summer for every winter and perhaps i will feel differently in the future. here's hoping i always find a reason to keep creating.

#this is a culmination of amorphous 5am bed thoughts compiled into text 10+ hours later #so it might not be exactly how i initially wanted to word it but i think i got what i needed across

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sweet-beezus · 1 year ago

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Hiya!

I'm Sham, they/them, and I'm an ✨artist✨

Welcome to my b(l)og, I hope the water's nice :)

I mainly post OCs and reblog fun posts that I can rotate in my brain, fanart is extremely rare 'round these parts unless I'm reblogging some.

I'm a full time employee, so I'm usually INCREDIBLY busy nowadays! Alas, that means very little posting unless I find some funny posts to banish to my blog. I post and queue things at odd hours, so I may jumpscare you!

If you want tags to peruse, I have a few that might interest you!

▪︎#sham's art <- my art tag

▪︎#sweet memery <- my meme tag

▪︎#shamsbabs <- tag I use for bunching my OCs together, they are also tagged by fandoms and individual names!

▪︎#trope scope <- writing tropes that really get my brain factory gears grinding

▪︎#sham's favs <- thins it out to the things that make me giggle and live rent free in my brain, mix of both tags like a nice soup, though nowadays I tag anything as a fav... Might need a new tag-

#sham's inbox / #sham's trash posts <- for previous asks and my own silly posts, though these tags gather dust more frequently, since I never have an original thought other than about my OCs...

▪︎#other's art / #friend art <- art appreciation tags :)

I also have sideblogs!

@shams-kiddies <- OC art sideblog, it's better organized than my main in terms of tags

@the-briar-brigade <- AoR sideblog dedicated to an ongoing long form Kingdom Hearts roleplay, periodically mass updates because I'm forgetful!

@the-mighty-phoenix <- Iliana centric sideblog, I thought about using it as an RP blog but it's now just another art archive

I have other sideblogs, but I'm not quite ready to share them yet, so stay tuned I guess-

☆My ask box is open! I will be deleting donation asks and messages, unfortunately my platform is not large enough to spread awareness nor do I have enough time to fact check each blog or enough money to donate. I hope you understand! ❤️

If you have any silly questions about my OCs feel free to shoot them my way! I revisit a lot of my OCs in a random rotation, so there's plenty to ask about and I love to yap about them. :)

☆Currently, I am not accepting commissions, since I have a busy work life and chronic pain (plus I don't even have a commission sheet set up, alas-), however I'm open to art trades and conditional requests if my burnout and schedule allows!

For a more competitive art trade experience during the month of July, you can find me on Artfight as ShamSpam!

I recently started moving over and archiving some of my writings to Ao3, you can find them here!

And for a currently WIP archiving of all my OCs (aside from my sideblog) I have a Toyhouse!

That's all for surface level stuff, I'll leave some more in depth looks about me and my work under the cut :)

I have no concept of a consistent social life or media presence, so I just post whatever and whenever I want to, usually mid afternoon for me because that's my time to Survive™ my day to day stressors. Whatever hits my dopamine reserves just right will probably end up here!

I am a self taught artist who only really picked up on certain techniques and styles in recent years, I have quite a few inspirations for the directions my art is going in and I actually adore how my style(s) look right now! Which is good because it's a lot of work maintaining and improving all the time-

I mostly indulge in art and writing of my OCs, and the occasional fan art here and there when I'm in a particular mood, and everything (I would hope) is made with the love in my heart for my creations, from the 6+ hours of work on a digital piece to maybe a 10 min sketch of my OCs smooching from the confines of my canvasses.

We can ignore the musician part for now, at this time I haven't really delved too deep into making my own tunes aside from some really rough drafts, but eventually I will! I am a sucker for orchestral pieces, but I need to relearn music theory-

I have a few fandoms and things I like to participate or indulge in from time to time, so if you're curious here's a list!

Music Artists:

▪︎Josh Groban

▪︎Thomas Bergersen

▪︎Marcus Warner

▪︎Celine Dion

▪︎Phil Collins

▪︎Ricky Montgomery

▪︎Citizen Soldier

▪︎Marianas Trench

▪︎Other varieties of orchestrals, whenever they crop up

▪︎The classics from an edgy teen's childhood (Linkin Park, Evanescence, Disturbed, etc. also including Christian rock, it was unavoidable you could say-)

▪︎Also classic artists from before my time (Journey, Michael Jackson, The Bee Gees, ABBA, etc.)

▪︎Folk-y music, nothing specific in terms of bands so far, just whatever hits my brain just right

▪︎Very weird pickings from a variety of places, I'm honestly too tired to list most of them because I'm in and out of listening fixations like a pendulum- Usually it's a select handful of songs that don't have a tremendous impact on my liking for the artist, y'know? Aside from vibes-

Current Brainworms (fictional media):

▪︎The machinations of my own mind (my OCs <3)

▪︎Sonic the Hedgehog

▪︎Kingdom Hearts (KHUx era mostly and, again, my OCs)

▪︎Okami

Things I Revisit Periodically:

▪︎ARGs/analog horror

▪︎Persona 5

▪︎Ghostbusters

▪︎Wizard101

▪︎Splatoon

▪︎Ace Attorney

▪︎Doctor Who

▪︎ABZÛ/The Pathless (later Sword of the Sea and Journey, potentially)

▪︎FNaF

▪︎The Dark Crystal

▪︎Various musicals (feel free to ask which ones! This includes concept ones too, there's way too many for me to list tbh)

▪︎Lego games (my childhood <3)

▪︎Celtic mythology (or mythology in general, I'm just obsessed with the Celts for some reason)

Misc. Items That Are Ever Present But Not Constant:

▪︎Sea creatures

▪︎Pond life

▪︎Dungeons and Dragons

▪︎Phoenixes (for some reason)

▪︎Emotional catharsis

▪︎Tragedies

▪︎The concepts of grief, loss, and love

▪︎What the Tumblrinas call Whump Tropes™, I suppose

▪︎Red pandas

▪︎Moss (especially in ball form)

▪︎Religious imagery/history (mostly the Mormon church, but others creep in periodically)

▪︎Tarot cards

▪︎Vincent Van Gogh

▪︎Ravens

I have SO MANY OCs I could talk about for hours, so if you ever see one that interests you don't hesitate to send me an ask about them!!

And I think that's all for now, I'll probably add stuff on if I ever remember anything I need to add-

Anyway happy browsing!!

#sham's trash posts #reusing a flop post for an introductory pinned post #how efficient of me #anyway welcome to my blog where i ramble incoherantly and draw characters that make my brain become goo

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potteresque-ire · 4 years ago

Link

Not sure if this has circulated before, but here’s a link to Henry Jenkin’s reactions to 227, largely as responses to an interview he did with Sanlian Lifeweek magazine (三聯生活周刊), a publication modelled after TIME magazine and published under China Press Publishing group (中國出版集團), the largest and state-owned publisher in China. The magazine asked for Jenkin’s opinions on the fandom-related aspects of 227 back in March, 2020. Henry Jenkins, as many may already know, is among the most renowned scholars of (Western) fan culture ... if not the most renowned.

Personally, I find this article to be quite limited in perspective, because 227 had a significant non-fandom-oriented, sociopolitical component ~ and hence its scope, its chaos, its damage. IMO, 227 stopped being a fan war, stopped being about solos, cpfs, and even Gg the moment AO3 was shut down ~ the powerful Chinese state had intervened, and the incident necessarily became a political incident. That One Fic on AO3, the conflict between solos and cpfs about whether and where That Fic should exist was at most a lighter left at the scene of what would become the blaze; it wasn’t even responsible for igniting the first fire. Most i-turtles (i-fruits?) are probably aware too at this point: if fan wars are sufficient to start 227, then there wouldn’t have been a 227 ~ because 227 would have been every date of the year.

Fan culture is fundamentally transgressive, and what that means can only be defined in the context of the subculture’s “mainstream” sociopolitical and cultural environment. I therefore find the article’s attempt to transplant Western fan culture’s observations / theories / analysis / conclusions to the incident without explicitly comparing, addressing in depth the differences of the pre- and post-transplant environment to be ... prone to rejections (as organs are after transplantations!)—exclusion from being useful or valid. And this article was very short on such comparisons or address. Jenkins being a fandom expert aside (and he was careful about not treading outside his area of expertise), early “antis” of 227 presented themselves as crusaders for the freedom of speech and, by late March when this article was published, the heated debates surrounding the incident on Chinese social media had already led to embarrassment for multiple powerful state publications. It was probably a wise choice to not make another dive into the political aspects of the incident.

Being a new(-ish) turtle who joined the fandom a full half-year after 227, I’ve been backtracking, trying to really understand the incident, which remains very much beyond comprehension in many aspects. The discussions I’ve dug up that have most fascinated me have been those in non-fandom spaces, by non-fandomers / politics enthusiasts who barely knew who Gg was, who didn’t know That One Fic involved more than one idol and had zero knowledge about solos vs cpfs. In these discussions, “antis” are not referred to as “antis” because while the action of the so-called “227 coalition” was to kill Gg’s career, that wasn’t considered its ultimate goal ~ its ultimate goal was to warn whoever tried to clamp down the freedom of expression that their opposition was strong enough, populous to fight back and take away whatever, whoever those who attempted the clamp-down care the most about. In this case, “Gg fans”—I put this in quotes because eventually, no one would know who would lurk behind those pro-Gg Weibo IDs (and the anti-Gg ones as well)—were the perceived enemies of creative freedom. Gg, assumed to be the one, the symbol of what “GG fans” cared about the most, naturally became the target of the coalition.

Gg wasn’t special in that sense ~ and that was perhaps, the saddest thing I found about this incident as a Gg fan (without quotation marks); Gg could be any idol who achieved top fame at the moment, who had enough fans to make the point known. The coalition was therefore not “anti-Gg” in its ideological sense. It was anti the fan circle culture that had cemented Gg’s popularity, that had already been known to deal extremely poorly with dissent—complaints had been abound that c-ent was no longer fun for bystanders because the latter could issue no critique, not even doubt, about an idol without the fear of being reported, torn down by fans. The coalition eventually grew to include anti the many happenings, the many censorships and imprisonments in the past few years that had silenced the creative crowd in China, happenings people dared not speak about beyond a loud grumbling ...

The coalition tried to take down Gg, because they couldn’t take down the force that had shut down AO3, that was truly responsible for the silencing. They played the Hunger Games in the Weibo arena instead of challenging Who The Real Enemy Was, because some might not have given much thought about The Enemy; some might have thought the Enemy too invincible to be worth the effort; some might have got too carried away by their blood thirst, the cruel schadenfreude of shredding a beautiful, successful young man into pieces, and forgot why they were there in the first place ...

And that was only the political side of 227. 227 was also widely suspected to have a commercial component, which added another layer to the symbolism behind Gg the Idol ~ pretty much as soon as 227 happened, netizens investigated, tried to uncover the chain of capital behind Gg. With the scent of money was the memory of filth associated with it, in a country not exactly unknown for its corrupt business practices. Much like in The Book of Exodus in the Bible, the Idol is believed to be forged with gold; it is ungodly, tainted. Whether Gg the Person was identical to Gg the Idol, Gg the Symbol mattered to few. That Gg *was* a person seemed lost to many ...

I’ll have to dive into the non-fandom aspects of 227 with more rigour. As much as I'd love to leave 227 behind, every time I see Gg, I see its legacy on his face, in his smile, and perhaps, I’m not the only one ~ ADLAD cast him as Patient #5 because of 227′s effect on him. Put it another way, 227 is already modifying, writing Gg’s career trajectory ~ a trajectory that is undoubtedly under scrutiny by many who wish to duplicate his success but circumvent his pain. And every time I see a young idol—Gg, Dd, and anyone else—I wonder if the hurt of 227 can happen to them (again) because the crux of the incident has never been resolved; the oppression and silencing have remained strong as ever.

Anyway (sorry for the rant) ... what I found noteworthy about this article was the quotes the magazine highlighted in its published form (in Chinese), which weren’t highlighted by Jenkins on his own website. They reflected what the magazine would like to be the take-home messages of the interview. I’ve listed them below; all of which had Jenkins as the speaker:

[Pie Note: About Real Person Fiction (RPF) in Western fandoms]

“American fans often do have some shared norms about what is and is not appropriate to write, mostly having to do with protecting the privacy of other people in the star’s life. Writing about the star is seen as fair game; writing about their family members is not.”

---

[Pie Note: About GG being “cast” as a transgender woman in The One Fic that started the incident; gender in fandom]

“We write fan fiction as a form of speculation and exploration. For some people, it may be one of the few spaces in the culture where they can express who they are, what they are feeling, what they are desiring. And for others, it is a place of “what if” where they explore in fantasy things they would not necessarily desire in reality.”

---

[Pie Note: Whether GG should be held responsible for his fans’ behaviour]

“Under these circumstances, I would not hold a performer responsible for his fans’ behaviors but the performer is responsible for their own behavior and fans may respond negatively to performers who over-react to the existence of alternative fantasies and insult or hector their audiences.”

---

[Pie Note: About AO3 and why fans were so upset about its closure] “Keep in mind that AO3 is a particular kind of platform. Alongside Wikipedia, AO3 is one of the greatest accomplishments of participatory culture in the digital era.”

---

[Pie Note: About the “problematic” content on AO3]

“Among my findings were that fan fiction sites can be a valuable space for young people to acquire skills (and receive feedback) on their writing from more experienced writers who share these same passions ... That said, while teens have participated in fandom, a large part of those on AO3 are adults, engaging in adult conversations on adult topics.”

---

[Pie Note: About media text in the new media era]

“First, I would stress the proliferation of media texts at the current moment ... We have access to a much broader range of media content than ever before and in this context, fans play a constructive role in curating that content, helping some shows get greater visibility ... Second, these texts have become more malleable”

---

[Pie Note: About idols not producing “good” media texts]

“Rather, the question should be what are fans finding meaningful about these performers and the texts they generate. I start from the premise that human beings do not engage in meaningless activities. I may not immediately recognize why something is meaningful but my job as a scholar is to understand why cultural materials are meaningful to the people who cherish them.”

---

My understanding of this selection of quotes is this: this state publication (as others) was quite ready to forgive Gg, to put this incident behind. It could choose to not publish this interview; it could choose to leave out certain quotes, or not do the highlighting that cast both AO3 and Gg in a positive / innocent light. But it did all these things. This article furthers my impression that the state never intended 227 to blow up the way it did, and that it did—enough for stories about it to be found in non-China websites, and in English—was what I’m still trying to comprehend. 227 was, admittedly, how I was first introduced to Gg beyond Wei Wuxian. And as I got to know Gg, like Gg, my want to understand 227 only becomes stronger, perhaps because only through comprehension I feel I can find peace for the GG fan (again, without quotation marks) in me.

Maybe I should email Dr Jenkins and ask if he’s looking for a PhD candidate. 5 years of research and thinking ... maybe that’s what it’ll take.

I feel I’ve already started anyway.

#pie metas #yizhan #bjyx

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mostlysignssomeportents · 4 years ago

Text

Github pledges legal aid for interoperators

Last October, the RIAA launched a bizarre campaign of legal bullying against youtube-dl, a free/open library that lets people save Youtube (and other) videos for a variety of purposes, including critical analysis, offline viewing, archiving and remixing.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/24/1201-v-dl-youtube/#1201

The RIAA attacked youtube-dl under Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA1201) a 1998 law that indiscriminately bans helping people remove DRM, even if no copyright infringement takes place.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/28/trumpcicles/#yt-dl

DMCA1201 is a pure hazard. For decades, manufacturers have weaponized it to prohibit otherwise legal uses of their products: if a product is designed so that a use requires removing DRM, then using it that way becomes illegal.

That’s true even if no copyright infringement takes place — it’s true even if the DRM gets in the way of a copyright holder selling their own work to their audience.

That’s how Apple uses it, with the Iphone and the App Store: Ios devices are designed to reject programs unless they are delivered via the App Store, which takes a 15–30% cut from software authors, who hold the copyright to those programs.

So Apple can use copyright law to stop a software author from selling a program to a software user, that the user wants to run on a device they own, unless the author gives Apple 15–30% of the price. This doesn’t protect copyright — it protects Apple’s business model.

If the software author were to supply a tool that jailbroke their customer’s Iphone so the customer could install the program they just bought, that would violate the criminal provisions of DMCA1201, with a $500k fine and 5 years in prison for a first offense.

This is “felony contempt of business model” (in the memorable phrasing of Jay Freeman), and it’s everywhere — it’s how car and tractor manufacturers ban independent repair — and how Keurig locks you into using its coffee pods (and how HP locks you into using its ink carts).

DMCA1201 is a dumpster-fire and it should have been repealed a long time ago. EFF has a long-running lawsuit to overturn it on constitutional grounds:

https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-lawsuit-takes-dmca-section-1201-research-and-technology-restrictions-violate

But even in a crowded field of abusive corporate DMCA theories, the RIAA’s attack on youtube-dl was a new low. Youtube-dl doesn’t bypass any DRM! It just de-obfuscates a hidden URL. The idea that finding a hidden URL is the same as bypassing DRM is legally laughable.

Nevertheless, Github responded to the initial demand by removing youtube-dl. But the good news is that once EFF lawyers worked with Github’s counsel to assure them that the RIAA’s theory was bunk, Github restored youtube-dl.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/16/pill-mills/#yt-dl

Github also pledged $1m to a legal defense fund for bogus DMCA1201 claims, and this week, they rolled it out, and it’s just amazing.

https://venturebeat.com/2021/07/27/github-offers-open-source-developers-legal-counsel-to-combat-dmca-abuse/

The fund doesn’t just make money available to pay software authors’ legal fees — it also establishes a partnership with Stanford law school, which means that programmers will have a much larger pool of legal talent to draw on.

And those law students will graduate with real-world experience of fighting bogus DMCA1201 claims.

This is a fantastic outcome, and it has historical precedent.

Back in 2005, Stanford’s Center for Media and Social Impact produced a groundbreaking “Documentary Filmmakers’ Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use,” which demystified the farcical world of copyright clearances for docs.

https://cmsimpact.org/code/documentary-filmmakers-statement-of-best-practices-in-fair-use/

Documentary filmmakers had been forced into a cramped and legally incoherent practice of paying for — or avoiding — even the most incidental uses of copyrighted works, because their insurers demanded written permission for every use.

The CMSI statement — and access to a huge pool of law students who’d work on cases — prompted the Media/Professional insurance company to offer fair-use friendly policies to filmmakers, and completely changed how doc makers related to fair use.

https://web.archive.org/web/20070225090909/https://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/003713.shtml

It’s not just elite law-schools like Stanford’s that can make this kind of difference. Brooklyn Law’s Jonathan Askin and his law students run a successful clinic that overturned bullshit patents wielded by trolls against local startups.

https://blipclinic.wixsite.com/blipclinic

And as Derek Slater pointed out in his seminal #noimnotgoingtolawschool essay, this kind of clinic work is crucial to equity for law students.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/12RirEN-FcQB3vTfb0aMqPD-V26aqVhUhKY1hQ2dipJU/edit?hl=en_US

Without clinic work, law students graduate without actually knowing how to practice law (!), and must go into harness for large firms that can get away with horrific abuses as a result (law school debts are massive).

These kind of clinics don’t just provide an invaluable community service that checks corporate abuse — it also equips new lawyers to resist the workplace abuses of Big Law.

There’s no better subject for a tech-law clinic than fighting DMCA1201 abuse — because that’s the law that is most often invoked to shut down Competitive Compatibility (AKA comcom/Adversarial Interoperability).

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability

Without comcom, we will live in a high-tech society whose devices and systems are designed to configure US, rather than the other way around. Every one of us will eventually have a need, a disability, or a desire to do something that a product wasn’t designed for.

If we let companies pursue felony contempt of business model as a strategy, those needs will be forever subordinated to the corporate priorities of tech giants. That’s not a pretty future.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

#pluralistic

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elitegymnastics · 4 years ago

Photo

Q: What is this?

A: It’s a flyer for a virtual fundraiser on June 4th that Elite Gymnastics is playing. You can access the show at quietyear.com

Q: Hasn’t Elite Gymnastics been inactive for like, ten years?

A: Yes. This is the first Elite Gymnastics performance of any kind since November 30th 2012, at the Horn Gallery at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio.

Q: Why did Elite Gymnastics stop playing shows?

A: Elite Gymnastics started out as me (Jaime) and a bunch of my friends agreeing to help me play my songs live back in 2009. I made a lot of weird demos in GarageBand and my friend Dominique Davis from the band Dearling Physique got tired of watching me sit on them. So, he booked me to play at a show he was curating as part of a small local music and arts festival called Clapperclaw. For several months that’s mainly what EG was. At some point the focus shifted to making recordings rather than playing shows, to participate in the emergent culture of new music distributed via MP3 file-sharing. The lineup winnowed to just me and Josh Clancy, who began creating digital EPs that we posted on this Tumblr page as ZIP files full of MP3s accompanied by a PDF of artwork. This is the incarnation of the group that most people are familiar with.

This was before Patreon existed. If Bandcamp was around, we’d never heard of it. Though MP3 file-sharing culture and file transfer sites like MediaFire and MegaUpload allowed anyone to distribute music freely across the world via the internet, it was still pretty difficult to get people to pay you for it. I think it was for this reason that a lot of internet music back then featured a lot of sampling. A lot of artists’ first forays into the world of DAWs and production took the form of mash-ups, bootleg remixes, and DJ mixes. Artists like Animal Collective, MIA, Kanye West, and Daft Punk for whom sampling was a pillar of their creative process were extremely influential. Elite Gymnastics was no exception - the first song of ours to gain traction online was “Is This On Me?” which made no attempt to hide the fact that it heavily sampled Faye Wong’s “Eyes On Me.” The fact that it was so difficult to make money off MP3s pushed people to make different creative decisions than they would have otherwise. It was sort of a free-for-all.

Eventually, all of this started to change. The major labels started getting a lot more aggressive about trying to destroy MP3 file-sharing culture. Platforms like MegaUpload were raided and taken offline. The replacements that sprung up to replace them were increasingly infested with ads and malware. Corporate platforms like YouTube and SoundCloud adopted Content ID filters to prevent the proliferation of copyrighted music there. Blogs and private torrent trackers being taken down meant thousands of hours of labor were wiped out in an instant. Some of the best archives of the history of recorded music ever created were destroyed without hesitation. Even the most devoted participants lost the will to keep repairing and re-making the stuff that cops and record companies kept obliterating.

Josh and I both dreamed of being able to make a living as musicians. We still do. Back then, we were willing to accept a lot of changes in order to make that possible, which seemed necessary. A lot of the stuff that we were great at just didn’t make any money. Once, we were asked to do a remix of a song called “Sa Sa Samoa” by the band Korallreven. I did the remix by myself, which was normal for us, and Josh was so inspired by it that he spent a week working non-stop to create a video for it. People loved it - the day the video dropped, Pitchfork designated the song as a “Best New Track” and New York Magazine wrote about it in their “Approval Matrix.” The video led to a ton of exposure, but from a financial perspective, it just did not make sense to put that much effort into promoting a remix of someone else’s song. The stuff we were personally excited by just seemed to have less and less to do with what actually makes money.

A lot of internet bands during this era began to palpably shapeshift in an effort to succeed in music as a career. Artists who’d first attracted notice for sample-based bangers they made on a laptop started posing with vintage hardware in their press photos and trading in their laptops for live bands and recording studios. It became harder to distribute DJ mixes or mash-ups that contained copyrighted music in them. Influential bloggers either closed up shop or were absorbed into the traditional music industry in some way. Feeds that once touted bizarre songs by laptop-toting weirdos with no industry connections started to become populated mostly by artists with labels and publicists. The bottom rungs of festival lineups started to consist mostly of new major label signings who have lots of money to spend on stage production but not much in the way of grassroots fan enthusiasm or media buzz.

Internet music and what people tend to refer to as “indie music” split off into two separate streams. Today, there’s a pretty intense firewall between internet culture and whatever you want to call the culture of vinyl records, mid-sized indie labels with publicists, and positive reviews from the few remaining websites that still pay people to write about music. I call it “publicist indie,” “lifestyle techno,” or “prestige electronica” depending on whether or not the music features guitars and/or vocals. The recent online kerfuffle about NFTs really emphasized this split. The worlds of digital illustration and game development campaigned aggressively against mass adoption of cryptocurrency - if you saw any Medium posts explaining crypto’s environmental issues, chances are they were written by someone from those fields. Every new announcement by an artist that they had minted an NFT was met with a swift and vocal backlash from fans. Though I’ve never really been much of an Aphex Twin fan, it was still pretty startling to look at the replies under his NFT announcement tweet and see hundreds of furious people announcing that he was now dead to them. That’s an artist who has seemed more or less unimpeachable for most of my life up until this point! All of that seemed to change in an instant.

There is a massive disconnect between the insular world of the industry establishment and the cutting edge of online counterculture. We saw this again a couple of weeks ago with the online response to the crisis in Gaza. We saw passionate advocacy for Palestinians from games journalists and developers much more often than we saw it from musicians. This is a very serious problem for music! I do not believe it is possible to please both sides - that is to say, I do not believe it is possible to be part of internet counterculture and the industry establishment simultaneously. The music industry is too conservative, too compromised, too corrupt. If it weren’t for the ocean of valuable copyrights that labels are sitting on, most of them would be bankrupt within a year. If the industry was forced to live or die based on how they handle what’s happening right now in the present, it would most assuredly die. The only people who don’t realize this are those who are being paid to stay ignorant.

Josh and I did not know this back then. From where we were standing, it looked like internet culture and established media industries were on track to converge. A career in the arts seemed genuinely, tantalizingly possible, right up until the moment that it no longer did.

In my case, I had really been struggling up until that point. My life had been this ongoing sequence of evictions and hospitalizations, and it seemed to be getting worse, not better. I donated plasma twice a week to pay for groceries and while I was sitting there with a giant needle stuck in my left arm for an hour I would see my picture in The Fader or my songs being recommended by one of the Kings of Leon on Twitter or whatever. Music seemed like the only thing the world thought I was any good at. It felt like my only chance at a peaceful, happy life was somewhere out there in a world I could only perceive through a laptop screen.

Gender, for me, was a big factor in all of this. The more invested in the craft of songwriting I became, the harder it was to repress or ignore my gender stuff. At that time I’m not sure I even knew what the word “transgender” meant - I just knew that when I showed up at a venue wearing a skirt, no one would talk to me or look me in the eye, and that reading about people like Anohni or Terre Thaemlitz or on the internet made me feel like if I could get out of Minneapolis maybe I could find a place where people would accept me. The internet was like, a pretty toxic place for someone in my position. When I tried to find people to talk to about what I was feeling, nobody tried to tell me to read Judith Butler or ask me what pronouns I preferred. The internet was just like, overrun with predators who just wanted to fetishize me and exploit me. Music seemed like the only way I’d ever have an actual life as myself. I was desperate for that. I was well and truly desperate.

Between all the big changes that were happening to us individually and the music industry moving farther and farther away of the anarchic free-for-all of MP3 file-sharing culture, the strain on us just got to be too much. We stopped trusting each other. We became the unstoppable force and the immovable object, crashing haphazardly against one another’s resolve in a dazzling display of youthful futility. Our partnership ended, and after finishing out the remaining live shows on the calendar by myself, I retired the name “Elite Gymnastics” and started making music on my own under other names. That was that.

Q: Why is Elite Gymnastics coming back now, then?

A: Over the years, Josh and I eventually started talking again. Though there was a lot we did agree on, and potential future projects were discussed, nothing truly felt right. We haven’t been in the same room since Summer 2012, and we’ve both changed a lot since then. We both have other projects and we’ve both developed other ways of working since we stopped working together. It’s a pretty big commitment to put all of that aside in order to join your fortunes together with someone you haven’t seen in a decade.

Recently, Josh decided to leave Elite Gymnastics. His reasons are his own, and I was very surprised by his decision, but after having had time to adjust, I’m really grateful to him. I had kept these songs at a distance for many years, because it seemed foolish to allow myself to get too attached to songs I didn’t feel like I was allowed to think of as mine, if that makes any sense. The songs felt like casualties of a conflict that I had to bury in the ground and try to forget about. Being able to embrace them again felt like re-growing a severed limb or having a loved one come back to life, almost. Feeling like it was safe to love these songs again made me feel whole in a way I didn’t expect to. I became really excited by the prospect of revisiting them, so that’s what I decided to do.

Q: Does this mean you’re going to put RUIN back on Spotify?

A: No. Taking the record off Spotify was the right thing to do. That record was only ever intended to exist during the era of MP3 piracy. I never envisioned a world where the music industry would be so aggressive about policing the way that copyrighted music is allowed to exist online. If we hadn’t opted to take the record down when we did, someone would inevitably have forced us to. If you want to hear those specific recordings again, you’re going to have to do it the way we originally intended: by downloading MP3 files from the internet. Try SoulSeek.

Q: What’s next for Elite Gymnastics, then?

A: Here’s the situation currently. There is no Elite Gymnastics music available to stream or purchase in an official capacity anywhere on the internet. It wouldn’t really be possible for me to put the old stuff on Spotify or Bandcamp now because of all the samples. Like I said before, it was a different time. Those records were created to thrive on a past version of the internet that no longer exists. They weren’t designed to be compatible with the 2021 internet.

Technically, Elite Gymnastics didn’t ever release a debut album. We had EPs, a compilation, and a remix collection. We didn’t make an album, a record that existed as the distillation of all that experimentation that contained all of the songs that fans of the EPs would want to hear, all in one place. It’s like we did Good Fridays but stopped before we made My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.

So, I am currently working on the first Elite Gymnastics album. If you were following my stuff as Default Genders, you may have noticed me posting demos on my SoundCloud page from 2015-2018 that were all eventually reworked into the album Main Pop Girl 2019. The album I am making is taking that approach to all the old EG songs, including some unreleased stuff. I’m collaborating with others on some songs and I honestly feel like it has resulted in some of the best and most exciting music I have ever been involved with. It is a drastic reinvention, but iteration and reinvention have always been a big part of what I do. I want to make something that feels like the culmination of everything that came before, and so far, I think I’m succeeding.

Q: When will I be able to hear this new music?

At a virtual fundraiser on June 4th, 2021, where there is a suggested donation of $10. You can access it at quietyear.com

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weemsbotts · 5 years ago

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The Not-So-Secret Secret Society of Dumfries

By: Lisa Timmerman, Executive Director

Visitors often ask about the origin of our town’s name noting it seems odd until we discuss our connections to Scotland. However, the name of the town was not the only odd feature of our community – the Independent Order of Odd Fellows (IOOF) instituted a Grand Lodge on 02/22/1901, membership attracting people throughout NOVA and from Quantico. So, what is an odd fellow?

(Source: Potomac Local News, 09/01/1971)

The American Independent Order of Odd Fellows trace their origins to the Seven Stars Tavern in Baltimore and credit Thomas Wildey and his affiliation with the Independent Order of Oddfellows Manchester Unity. These early unincorporated lodges generally modeled the European Grand United Order of Odd Fellows, but never incorporated, objecting to black member chapters. Peter Ogden secured membership with the English Grand United Order of Odd Fellows and promoted affiliation with them as the English welcomed men of any color. The official affiliated group opened the Philomathean Lodge and eventually the Hamilton Lodge in New York as membership grew and the Order expanded. In Virginia, Alexandria hosted the Odd Fellows Hall built by George Seaton, funding provided partly through the Freedman’s Bureau, providing a place for community and social events, particularly crucial during the Jim Crow era. While the official organization continued to affiliate with their international family, the American Independent Order also expanded although membership declined during the Civil War. Industrialization and the need for social and worker reforms revived the order and by the 1930s, you could find a lodge in every state. We should note that the IOOF formed a branch known as the “Daughters of Rebekah”, which evolved to “The Rebekahs”, originally for females only, founded in September 1851. The Grand United Order of Odd Fellows established the “Household of Ruth” – a separate organization for women, forming around 1857.

The current purpose of the organization is to “visit the sick, relieve the distressed, bury the dead, and educate the orphan,” with a mission to “improve and elevate the character of mankind.” In order to do this, the organization committed itself to promoting principles such as friendship and truth, aiding each other and those less fortunate in their communities, and promoting “good will and harmony through principle of universal fraternity, all men and women regardless of race, nationality, religion, social order, gender, rank, and station are brothers and sisters”. The name’s origins are still unclear. Two theories noted by the IOOF reflect the character and jobs of the members. Was it odd to be so dedicated to assisting the community in the 1700s? Or perhaps the early members worked many “odd jobs”? We will not even attempt to answer this question as it would mean determining everything from societal perceptions to expressions (example: when did the phrase “odd jobs” even become a thing and does it mean something different today?)

(Source: Potomac Local News, 09/01/1971)

Based on interviews with Dumfries Lodge Members, such as James Williams, the Dumfries order sponsored square dances and dinners with proceeds supporting orphanages and elderly assisted living facilities. Williams noted, “Today [1971] if someone is sick or injured he is taken by the rescue squad to the hospital, but in the old days the nearest doctor was in Occoquan and someone had to ride a horse there to get him. Members would take turns staying up throughout the night with the sick and doing chores for him. Sometimes they would get together and cut the corn or do the haying for him.”

The original R.E. Lee Lodge burned in the 1927 Dumfries blaze (spoilers if you have not read that blog…), but the members, including many marines, decided to rebuild. In 1990, William F. Keys, one of the three original Odd Fellows still alive stated, “…so when the building was layed off the ground was found to be of pretty nice white sand and as there was no back hoes and heavy equipment picks shovels and wheel barrows were put to use and Will Gallahan was hired to make the cement blocks from the sand out of the basement…all of the cement blocks were made on the lot”. He recalled the building’s need for a sewer line and septic field, with members purchasing the cement blocks for $1.00 to help raise funds. He concluded, “Another way of raising money was by Square Dances but that put such a strain on the building by the swaying of the dancers that it had to be stopped and a wooden floor laid in the basement and a second entrance and exit made to the basement…”

In August of 1990, HDVI and the Town of Dumfries contacted the Virginia Department of Historic Resources regarding placing the Dumfries Odd Fellows Lodge Hall Building on the National and Virginia Register. While ultimately the initiative failed, this unique and eclectic building remains standing in Dumfries on Main Street. One almost wonders if you could still hear pounding feet and laughter as the wooden floor and walls are witness to a very odd time in Dumfries history.

Special Note: Would you like your story about Dumfries and/or PWC country to be archived by Historic Dumfries Virginia? Contact us today to discuss digital interviews! Please consider supporting us through this pandemic – whether by purchasing our extremely low-cost memberships ranging from $10-30 (click here) or a donation (here).

(Sources: AfroVirginia Virginia Humanities: Odd Fellows Hall; Barga, Michael, “Grand United Order of Odd Fellows in America (1843-Present), VCU Libraries: Social Welfare History Project;; HDVI Archival File Folder: Interview with William F. Keys, Preliminary Information Request with the Department of Historic Resources; Independent Order of Odd Fellows: The Sovereign Grand Lodge; Mead, Eileen. “Over 50 Years of ‘Friendship, love and truth’ Potomac News, 09/01/1971)

#american history #oddfellows #archives #architecture #secretsocieties #community #pwhistory #princewilliamstrong #destinationdumfries #museumlove #museumfromhome #fellowship #virginiahumanities #black history #ioof

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kopykunoichi · 5 years ago

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The Legacy of Star Wars: An Open Letter to the Writers and Creators of A Galaxy Far, Far Away

“Suddenly the Rebellion is real for you. Some of us live it. I’ve been in this fight since I was six years old!” ~ Cassian Andor

I saw a great meme once that played off that quote, meant to depict an older fan describing to a newer fan how they had been invested in the story of Star Wars from childhood. I could relate. Though I am not old enough to have seen the original Star Wars movies in theater, they were a significant part of my childhood. I remember renting the original theatrical VHS from our local video store all the time when I was little. Then we bought the digitally remastered Special Edition VHS Box Set and I spent the next decade wearing them out! We would have popcorn and Star Wars marathons all the time. My friends and I would always pretend we were in the story. My swingset was the Millennium Falcon. I was that 11-year-old girl who would argue with my friends over who was hotter - Luke or Han. (The correct answer is Han, of course!) My mother would read the Expanded Universe novels to me in the afternoons and we would talk about the characters. All my spending money went to Jedi Apprentice books and 6 inch action figures. In short, I loved Star Wars.

I was 13 when The Phantom Menace hit theaters, and I couldn’t believe how lucky I was to get to see new stories from my favorite fictional universe play out on the big screen. Though I struggled a bit with some of the acting, the story was absolutely amazing to me. Star Wars felt all the more real to me with the amazing graphics and intense action sequences - not to mention the layers of politics and the complexity of the story. I watched Revenge of the Sith several times in theaters, and though it broke my heart to see Anakin’s fall, I never considered it to be a sad ending overall, when taken as a whole with the original trilogy.

When the Clone Wars aired in 2008, I was ecstatic. Here was an Anakin I could actually get into (sorry, Hayden). I loved him. I adored Ahsoka. I wanted to marry Rex. The character development and the plot deepened my attachment to that era, and made me question everything I had previously taken for granted as good and bad. The whole system was flawed - the Republic and the Jedi. It wasn’t just a matter of mistakes being made and the wool being pulled over their eyes, there was deep rooted corruption in the side that I once felt was “good”. The light side and the dark side were not as black and white as I thought. I found myself strongly disliking some of the “good guys” and deeply sympathizing with some downright detestable people (I don’t know how you got me to care for Maul, Filoni - but well done). While the series had not yet ended, we knew where it was going. But still, we had already lived through the pain of Order 66, and we knew that the story would eventually culminate in a victory at the end of Return of the Jedi.

I couldn’t believe our luck when the first installment of the sequel trilogy hit the theaters in 2015. It had some of the feelings of a reboot, but I was beyond thrilled to have a series of Star Wars movies that I could now share with my children, as my parents had shared them with me. Though it was hard to say goodbye to the first love of my life, Han Solo - I just knew that Ben would be redeemed and Han’s sacrifice would be worth it...

2016 brought us Rogue One. We knew how that one was going to end too, but we still ate it up. I fell in love with a whole new set of characters, only to see each and every one of them die in the end. Talk about tragedy. But Leia’s line about hope reminded us that five minutes later, a whiny little farm boy was about to have his whole life upended in the best sort of way...so it was okay. Sort of.

Four years of Rebels ended in 2018, and it was so, so lovely - but it hurt so, so much. My perfect, beautiful space family had been torn apart with Kanan’s death. Ezra was missing. Rex was a 29-year-old man who should have been in his prime, but was instead struggling with the wear and tear of a 60-year-old body. Ahsoka was separated from him - AGAIN - and then she left with Sabine to look for Ezra. The ending still held the promise of the fight to come with the Empire, but the majority of our characters were left in a place of grief and brokenness.

2019 brought an end to the sequel trilogy. Once again, we had characters who pulled at our heartstrings, and an interesting struggle between “light” and “dark” that reminded me of the complexities introduced in The Clone Wars. It became more apparent than ever that balance in the Force did not mean the light triumphing over the dark, but instead a harmony between the two. At least, that’s what I thought. Until I watched every person I loved from the original trilogy die, Palpatine come back (and die) again, and the same exact ending of Return of the Jedi played out before me - except not as happy. Why? Because Anakin’s legacy had been reduced to ashes - his rise, fall, redemption, and sacrifice rendered null and void. The last Skywalker was redeemed and promptly killed, just like his grandfather. But because Rey Palpatine decided that she identified as Rey Skywalker, it was supposed to be okay. She then went to go hang out (or live?) alone on Tatooine because that’s where it all started. I was dumbfounded. This was the satisfying, hopeful, ending we were promised? How?

Believe it or not, I’m not here to trash the sequels - I enjoyed them very much - right up until the last 20 minutes. But in that space of time, the entire legacy of the Skywalker family went up in smoke, and the legacy of Star Wars along with it. Since Return of the Jedi, there have been no happy endings to a Star Wars movie trilogy or TV show. And with the ending of The Rise of Skywalker, that one happy ending we did have was ripped from us as well. Star Wars is now a never ending series of tragic endings. The lessons we are left with: Don’t fall in love in Star Wars, it will end badly. Your actions ultimately result in failure. As soon as you turn good, you die. There is no balance in the Force, just a pendulum swinging back and forth for all time.

Then The Clone Wars finally got her last season. I didn’t think Order 66 could have hurt worse, but Filoni set out to prove us all wrong...and succeeded. I’m still not over it. And once more, the bitterness I felt over the ending to the sequels (which had begun to subside) flared up all over again. What was it all for? All that pain. All that sacrifice. No happy endings.

I still love Star Wars. Nothing can take that away from me. No amount of bad writing can change that. And there are still plenty of good writers and creators working on Star Wars content. But good writers spinning tales of tragedy and endless pain negates the power of good writing. The Star Wars of my childhood is not the Star Wars of today. We wore out those VHS tapes because we loved the stories and the people. But my kids are not going to wear out DVDs where everyone they love dies or ends up alone. They aren’t going to queue up those digital movies and series over and over - because who wants to subject themselves to that kind of torture?

Just about the only safe space for Star Wars fans right now is fanfiction archives where the people who love the characters are busy writing fix-it fics to squeeze some sort of satisfying ending out of the canon content. The Mandalorian is literally our last hope for a Star Wars story that has the potential to end well. I swear, if Din Djarin ends up dead or alone at the end of this series, I’m going to lose it. The overwhelming sentiment of the Star Wars fanbase - from original trilogy fanboys to Tumblr blogging Reylos, and everyone in between - is that of dissatisfaction with canon content (with the exception of The Mandalorian). So much so, that many fans are just saying “screw it” and churning out a myriad of fanfiction AUs because there is no way to salvage what has been written. Half of Tumblr is in therapy after The Rise of Skywalker ending and the last episode of Clone Wars - but they weren’t exactly stable to begin with. The other forums and social media platforms are not much better, though.

It’s not just about the quality of writing - because Filoni and co. have done exceptional work with The Clone Wars, Rebels, and The Mandalorian. It’s the tragedy, guys. We can’t take it anymore. Is this really what we want the Star Wars legacy to be? Sadness? Despair? It’s a story about war - people are going to die. I get that. Victory comes at a price, but the cost can’t be worse than the victory. I want to sit down with my kids and watch Star Wars over and over again. The Mandalorian has given us a taste of that - but I’m almost afraid of where it will go. We’ve been burned so many times, I’m beginning to know what Anakin felt like on Mustafar - writhing in agony and screaming “I hate you” to someone he once loved.

I remember happier days when Luke and Leia and Han were laughing and smiling with their friends while Yoda, Obi-Wan, and Anakin looked on. I want that back. Filoni. Favreau. Creators. Writers. Producers. Directors. You are our only hope for canon content. Use The Mandalorian wisely. Use Din’s story to bless other characters. Here’s some ideas:

Let Din have a happy ending! Preferably with someone he loves and respects at his side (like Cara).

Let Cara become a Mandalorian - and put Paz Vizsla in charge of her training (we need to see them spar).

Let what’s left of the Tribe establish a new Mandalorian colony - and let Sabine Wren lead it. And give her that Darksaber back - she earned it.

Let Ezra come back from regions unknown with a deeper understanding of the Force, and have him train the child in the new colony.

Forget the Jedi and Sith, let’s start a medical training center/hospital run by Force users who can help heal people when modern medicine fails!

Ahsoka can use her talents for that too.

Find the rest of the child’s race and bring any of their Force sensitives onboard.

Let Boba Fett and Din have their epic showdown, but then use a sample of Boba’s unaltered DNA and some mystical Force healing to restore Rex’s body to what a 43-year-old should be (and then he can marry Ahsoka so we can have the Clone/Jedi couple we always wanted...thanks to you, Filoni).

Let the Mandalorians partner with the New Republic in the Outer Rim as law enforcement instead of bounty hunters, so they can get their reputation back.

They can train new recruits and pilots, just like Fenn Rau trained clones.

Let them keep their autonomy and traditions, while helping keep the New Republic honest.

Let them be a force for good in the galaxy, for once.

The Mandalorian could serve as the vessel to give a lot of characters with unresolved or tragic storylines some closure and better endings. If not The Mandalorian, then other new shows. My 6-year-old daughter wants nothing more than to be Ahsoka Tano. My 3-year-old son asks me to watch The Mandalorian every day. My 18-month-old daughter walks around in her brother’s Mandalorian helmet babbling “Way”. Please let me share the Star Wars legacy that I grew up loving with them. Let me show them the happy endings I enjoyed. Let me show them that even in the midst of conflict, not every life has to be ruined. Let me show them a Star Wars story with a satisfying ending. Hope. Redemption. Love. That’s what Star Wars means to me.

May the Force be With You (and your pens),

Rebekah, A Star Wars Fan

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hexadecimalmantis · 6 years ago

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Argonaut Games Research

This post was originally going to be an absurdly long documentary video, but I realized it would have been a bit boring, so I ultimately decided on making a glorified blog post.

When I joined BioMedia Project last year, I was tasked with researching Bionicle: The Game and its sequel Bionicle 2: City of Legends. I have talked about both games in great detail many times before, and I think we all know about the issues that plague both of them by now. Bionicle: The Game is seemingly incomplete, and filled with content that was cut early on, and Bionicle 2: City of Legends never made it past a private movement demo. For context about Bionicle 2: BioMedia Project managed to obtain an Xbox build of the movement demo a few years ago. It has a few issues, such as broken audio and some missing graphical effects. I began reaching out to former developers in an effort to piece together the entire story of Argonaut Games, and uncover more secrets about both games. (Initially) With the assistance of Liam Robertson of DidYouKnowGaming?, I began contacting some of the developers. For those of you that are unfamiliar, Argonaut Games was split into two different facilities during the development of Bionicle: The Game. The first being Argonaut London, and the second was Argonaut Sheffield. I decided to reach out to the former developers from the London branch first. I initially didn’t get any replies, but I remained persistent. After waiting a few weeks, I eventually I got a reply from a former artist. Keep in mind that personal details about the former developers I contacted will be expunged in order to protect their identities and to prevent harassment and spam.

This is the first message I received after I inquired about Bionicle: The Game:

“Hi, yes I was lead artist on Bionicle. I'd say that it was a game that we cared a lot about, and to be honest we had high hopes for, at least initially. As always with game dev there wasn't just one cause of the games problems, but probably the biggest was we fell in love with the games setting and bit off far more than we could chew. We should have started with far more cautious goals, but we wanted to tell the whole story. I'm surprised if there was that much unused content on the disc TBH but the original scope of the game is definitely visible in naming conventions etc. we had intended each character to have toa levels and toa nuva (if thats the right term?) their powered up versions - before adding the 7th. Given that they have different abilities that was a huge ask of the team.

(Redacted)”

This message was about what I expected, the devs were a bit too ambitious and were unable to complete their ideas during the given development time. I later asked about the developer signatures stored within the BIGB archives, and asked them if they had worked on any of the Kopaka areas, since I found their signature within a subset of those files:

“the 'signatures' probably just refer to the designers - which is a relatively small subset of the team as a whole. I oversaw the project from an art perspective, so characters env, frontend etc then I ended up doing some animation work on the bull, onua, the weird door thing. I didn't work on Kopaka - that work was done up in Sheffield, I used to visit their studio to review stuff & sign it off.”

I’m sure the Bull was probably the Kane-Ra seen in Onua Nuva’s level. There are some pre-release trailers that show a Kane-Ra attacking the player with unique animations too. After that, I asked him about Argonaut Sheffield and their work on Bionicle 2: City of Legends. To my surprise, I got this:

“No, I didn't I thought they were disbanded alongside Argo”

This essentially meant that nobody from Argonaut London was aware of the development of Bionicle 2: City of Legends. With this information, it was easy to conclude that Bionicle 2 was created solely by Argonaut Sheffield as speculated. After failing to get more replies from former developers from Argonaut London, I shifted my focus to Argonaut Sheffield, intrigued by the messages I received from the former artist.

After a bit of waiting, I got a reply from another former artist.

“Hi,

Yes, I worked on Bionicle as a character artist along side artist (redacted). He was my mentor back then as it was my first industry job. I think we modelled about 130 odd characters/modular models back then between us. The character concepts we're drawn up by (redacted).

Argonaut Sheffield was previously Particle Systems who made I-War, the PC Sci Fi game and some other iterations. It was a technically adept small team and great to work with. I didn't have much to do with the London branch. We went on to try and make some failed movie tie-ins alongside them at a later date. Catwoman, Zorro, Star Wars, Charlie And The Chocolate Factory and also Bionicle 2.. which was going to be a fluid parkour type platformer. Which never materialised as after being there just shy of two years, London shut us down.

I'm actually working back in the offices where it all happened now. Which seems strange. I did work at Sumo Digital as a lead Char artist for ten years in between. I know there's a basement full of hard drives still here as one of the old directors still rents some space here.

(redacted)

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

(redacted)”

I received concept art for both Bionicle: The Game and Bionicle 2: City of Legends in this message. The art was later posted on my Twitter: https://twitter.com/HexMantis/status/1099883979942084608

Aside from the plethora of art, this message provided some insight about how Argonaut Sheffield came to be. It was previously known as Particle Systems before it assimilated into Argonaut Games. After this exchange, I reached out to a former programmer from Argonaut Sheffield. This time I provided a set of questions for the developer to answer in an effort to obtain specific information. After waiting for nearly a month, I got a reply:

The questions I asked will be enclosed within [ ] to avoid confusion.

“Hey!

There's some incomplete credits here (redacted)

but you could try contacting (redacted) as he was the lead programmer there. He used to work at PKR too, also owned by (redacted).

(redacted)

[Asked about the main development platform for the games]

1) Yep it was PS2. The PS2 version was handled by Argonaut Edgeware and programmers in Sheffield did ports for the other platforms

[Asked about the cut content from Bionicle: The Game]

2) Sorry, I wasn't involved with that bit. I was responsible for adding the hyper threading features on the PC (redacted)

[Asked about interactions with the London branch]

3) Yep, we worked together on it. Designers and Artists in Sheffield were working on assets for the main game.

[Asked about I-Ninja’s compatibility with Bionicle: The Game]

4) I think they should be compatible with each other. I-ninja came out a bit later though.

[Asked about Bionicle 2: City of Legends]

5) Maybe, not sure as it was a long time ago and I then moved to the Edgeware studio. If they did I guess it was just a prototype for a pitch

Good luck with your fact finding!“

I later asked if they knew of any early builds of either game, and I got this reply:

“Hey!

Sorry for the late reply. I believe everything was archived by Argonaut and EA. I'm not sure if anyone archived it personally at Argonaut or not but there were a lot of people working on it. They created archive PCs with everything you need to make the game from the source assets.

Thanks,

(redacted)”

The concept of the supposed “archive PCs” was interesting, but I doubt any of them are still around after all this time. After this, I contacted another former programmer from Argonaut Sheffield. This time with a focus on Bionicle 2: City of Legends:

“Hi William, I must admit, I'm curious where you found my name in the demo. Do you have a source code drop to go with it, or did I leave my name in an error message in the binary package itself?

Either way, yes I did work on the demo, albeit briefly. The engine the demo is built on is largely the same engine used in Bionicle (the original PS2/Xbox/PC game), Catwoman, and I-Ninja. It has an older pedigree than that too, but those were the games it was used on while Argonaut Sheffield was part of the Argonaut group. I was one of the programmers who ported the engine over to PC & Xbox for the original Bionicle, which is why I was involved in the demo in some capacity.

I'm still in touch with a lot of the designers who worked on the movement demo; the lead designer, (redacted), has said that I can pass on his contact details if you'd like to get in touch with him. You can contact him at (redacted).

Cheers,

(redacted)”

I was not surprised to get confirmation that Bionicle 2 used the same engine as Bionicle: The Game, since most of my existing programs I wrote for Bionicle: The Game were compatible with the Xbox demo. I asked if a PS2 port of Bionicle 2: City of Legends ever existed, since the Xbox demo we have has DualShock button mappings present in the game:

“Ah, I'll bet that's because I'll have compiled and built the disc image, so it's embedded my PC's name into the image. The level select would have just been for test levels where I was looking at specific bugs, performance problems or new features.

I really can't remember if we did PS2 or PC builds of the demo, other than the development binaries the design team would have been using. It's unlikely we'll have done a full ISO for the PS2, because the spiders caused real performance problems and we'd have wanted to show it to the publishers on the fastest available hardware.

By the way, the Xbox version will have reference to PS2 hardware because the original engine was PS2 only. The easiest way to port the engine was to, as far as possible, just get the Xbox and PC versions to pretend they were doing exactly the same thing as the PS2. For example, the game scripts don't need to know that when they get a button press from Cross or Circle, they're actually getting button presses from A or B. So although the names are going to be PS2-centric, they're still doing Xbox specific stuff.”

I was surprised to find out that the Morbuzakh Spiders were the primary reason for shifting Bionicle 2 to the original Xbox. I guess it makes sense, given how little time Argonaut Sheffield had to optimize the game. Switching to the original Xbox appeared to be a quick and easy way to avoid the hassle of optimization.

I later asked about the audio issues present in the Xbox demo, and for some general information about Bionicle: The Game.

“Hi William,

I'm afraid I've got no idea why the demo would be silent - it's been far too many years for me to remember the exact details, and I have no idea which version of the demo is the one which has been circulated. The full code for the audio system will have been present, because it was just a continuation of the engine used on Bionicle, and I'm sure the designers would have had at least some placeholder audio to hook up.

Audio is habitually the last thing to get hooked up in any game development, and since most developers prefer to have a silent build and listen to their own music while they work, it's not unusual for it either to be neglected in early internal builds, or for it to have been hacked to be silent (assuming the demo was one built locally rather than for showing to a publisher).

In terms of the development situation on Bionicle, although we weren't directly in the body of main developers, I think most of us were aware that the game wasn't progressing as well as it should. As well as the code team doing the porting work, our design and art teams were making the 'adrenaline levels' - which were the short lava/ice/tree surfing levels. They were only supposed to be short breaks between much larger levels, but it became increasingly obvious towards the end that these relatively small levels were still a large percentage of the actual content, and the other larger levels weren't coming online as fast as they should. QA in particular do full play-throughs on a regular basis, so they have a very good view of how fast the game as a whole is coming together.

I'm not 100% sure on all of the reasons for the delays in development, having been a relatively junior developer in a satellite studio at the time, but the reasons discussed at the time with leads and producers are fairly common ones that I've seen and heard about on other projects since. Inexperienced publishers or IP holders who haven't worked with game developers before often don't understand the lead times involved in producing content.

It's very hard to explain to customers who are used to working with companies like advertising agencies, who can turn around a complete change of direction in a matter of days, that you need to make and lock down decisions months or even years in advance. I think the penny finally dropped for Lego about three months out from submission that if they kept holding up approvals and kept requesting changes, they weren't going to get any game at all on the shelves - which of course meant we all had to crunch like hell to get the content in good enough shape to ship!

Cheers,”

An example of the aforementioned “Adrenaline sections” is the Tahu Nuva level from Bionicle: The Game. This level is actually internally named “Ta Adrenaline” as well. It’s obvious at this point that Tahu Nuva was originally going to have more than just surfing sections in his level, given the evidence in this message and the fact that he has a full set of unused walking animations.

I eventually contacted the designer mentioned by the former programmer, and got a reply after a month. (This designer was kind enough to restate my questions in his message):

“Hey,

I'm so sorry it's taken so long to get back to you. I was launching a game and I completely forgot about this.

1. What was your role as a designer like when working on both games? What kind of work did you do?

I was lead designer at Argonaut Sheffield, and we were brought in to help out on Bionicle the Game. We were responsible for what was known internally as "the adrenaline sections". The game was split into third person. exploration and combat levels (which were developed by the main Argonaut office in London), and the fast moving on rails sections that we created. As well as leading the team on these sections I was directly involved in the Tahu Nuva Boss Race near the end of the game.

2. Were you aware of content being cut or removed when working on Bionicle: The Game? Did you work on anything that didn't make the cut?

Like with any game there's work that involved that never sees the light of day. There were a lot of changes to the design over time, sometimes for practical reasons, other times because Lego wanted them. I seem to recall that in the original design you would play as each Toa normally and each one again in their Nuva form in large open levels - with the platform adventure and the adrenaline sections seamlessly blending into each other. Quite soon after we were brought into the project a much clearer separation was made between the two, but I'm sure there was lots of the preparatory work for that ended up on the disc.

3. Do you know if any other character models aside from Matau (The green character) were created for Bionicle 2?

No other characters were made for that demo. I think we had a matter of weeks and everything had to be done very quickly. That build represents a build that we sent to Lego (And Giant who eventually became TT Games) for approval and hopefully for more funding for the company. And we spent a lot of time agreeing the visual look of the character, as it was very different from what we'd done in the first game.

The work done on Bionicle 2 was entirely done up in Sheffield so we had a lot more control over the content. We knew that the Bionicle audience was getting older, and their gaming needs were becoming more sophisticated and we wanted to do something that would appeal both to that audience and be an interesting game in its own right. We felt that the first game had been so compromised by production issues that it ended up being very disappointing. We wanted to make something fluid and interesting that was a joy to play as a platformer, and had the dynamism and the sense of scale that the Bionicle world deserved.

4. Do you know if any other builds of the Bionicle 2 movement demo exist? Like a build that has working audio?

I don't remember for sure if we ever ended up with a build with audio. But it feels a bit unlikely that we would have got to the stage that we did without their being something in there, especially if the audio assets were on the disk. Somewhere in the depths of my home I think I have a PS2 version of the demo, so I may see if I can get that up and running and find out. As I think - so far - the only people who have had access to the game have played on Xbox, right?

Thanks”

Of course LEGO was being difficult during Bionicle: The Game’s development. They did something similar with Bionicle: The Legend of Mata Nui, and that certainly did not end well. This message was a big deal for us at the time, not only did we get a lot of information about both games, but we also got confirmation that a PS2 build of Bionicle 2: City of Legends actually exists! Unfortunately, this developer never replied again, and I was beginning to lose motivation.

I decided I had enough of Argonaut Sheffield at that point, and shifted my focus to Argonaut London once more. After waiting a bit, I got another reply from a former AI programmer.

“Hi William, sure thing, although it was a long time back so may not remember too much :)

probably easier to use my email (redacted) though as I rarely login to Linkedin.”

We later communicated via email:

“Hi William,

on the unused level front, it’s entirely likely that a bunch of the designers and strat coders ’play areas’ would have ended up in the build. Not sure if you’ve had any background info on how a lot of the Argonaut games were built, but here’s a brief rundown :)

So, when I started at Argonaut in 1997 , I joined the Croc 2 team, who were using the first updated iteration of the engine they built for Croc that had its own scripting language written (originally for the level designers to use) to write all the gameplay elements, while the engine coders focused entirely on the main engine for the PS1 (and a separate small team handled porting the engine to GameCube/Dreamcast, PC etc.). The idea being that ASL (Argonaut Strategy Language) Strats would be cross platform as they were just interpreted by the engine.

As it turned out, ASL strats were a bit too complex for the level designers to write themselves without coder assistance, so Argonaut let them focus on the actual level design itself (using the editor that just became known as the Croc Editor) and got gameplay specialist coders (like myself) to work on the strats. This worked out great as we could focus on individual items or groups of them independent of what was happening with the engine and we could quickly tweak a strat and run it on the devkit without doing a full build of the game (which took *AGES* back then ;) ) as well as some basic debugging capability.

This meant that most of the level designers and strat coders usually had a level slapped together with all the bits they were trying out. I don’t know if my one with all the Matorans following you in a chain still exists, but there were some pretty strange ones. In theory these wouldn’t end up on the disk but the build system was pretty clunky, so it’s entirely likely that some ended up there.

So by the time I got drafted onto the Bionicle PS2 project, I’d worked on Croc 2, Aladdin Nazira’s Revenge, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and Bionicle Matoran Adventures on GBA. All but the last one using revisions of the Croc Editor and ASL. (The Emperor’s New Groove, Harry Potter 2, Malice, Catwoman & iNinja also got written with the engine). I say revisions as not a lot was actually added to either over time. Also, by Bionicle PS2 I was kind of an emergency response coder for strats, as I got parachuted in after the project started to help fix a lot of problems with how ASL was being used and design issues with the levels.

There were a lot of issues with Bionicle (not as many as Aladdin or Catwoman started with and my 4 days on Malice were certainly interesting, but they’re entirely different stories ;) ). Mostly from inexperience as the team working on it had a lot of new hires or ones that had been drafted from other teams that didn’t use ASL or the Croc Engine, so they weren’t familiar with its limitations. There were some HR issues going on too, but I’m not going to get into those. The team were mostly all professional and good at what they did, but struggling with a relatively clunky engine. By this point Argonaut had split off most of the engine coders to the “Tools” team and we had to officially request any engine or editor changes we wanted through their chain of command (and they weren’t interested in working on the ‘old’ engine).

There were also some issues with inexperience in games from the Lego UK side too. So a lot of the overall design rules were a bit flaky and lead to a lot of levels and gameplay getting changed. The “No Weapons” rule was one we thought was pretty odd, considering the swords, pikes etc. in use. Apparently they’re tools, not weapons. So we weren’t allowed to use them as direct combat weapons for gameplay, only for magical ranged effects. There was also a lot of issues of really big levels being designed without consideration for what could actually be rendered on screen at the required frame rate on PS2 with the old Croc engine. Even updated to PS2 and with everything the engine coders could do to optimise it, the engine and ASL were struggling to do what the designers wanted.

I don’t think it’s a case of biting off a bit more than they could chew (we successfully wrote Harry Potter from scratch in 9 months in time to release with the film using the engine but that was very much a dream team of all the right people with the right skills and a publisher working well in sync). More a case of it being a new team of people not so experienced with the system and a publisher that wasn’t entirely sure what it wanted. So things were that bit harder to get done in the time available.

In theory, some older gold disks are likely still around. (redacted) was one of our engine guys on the project and “Master of the Build” (he was the only one who had enough tasteless Hawaiian shirts for the numerous submission build days). I’ll have a dig through my CD collection, but it’s unlikely I’ve got any Bionicle builds surviving. I *might* still have some strat code floating about on an old hard disk. I do seem to have some of the Catwoman build code that used mostly the same (although slightly updated) engine though.

One thing that I think got axed was my chain of Matorans. The idea was a level where you’d be picking them up from around the level and they’d follow you to a rescue point. Normally this wouldn’t actually be that difficult to code, but ASL never actually had any arrays! I’d been asking for them for a couple of projects by that point but they never got added, so my Matorans were each working as their own array elements and frantically messaging one another in a chain, which never quite worked reliably enough with ASL, so we shelved the idea.

(redacted) was one of the strat coders working with me on Bionicle. I think he’d just joined Argonaut then, but luckily, knew his stuff.

(redacted)”

I guess a few of the unused levels I found in the PS2 port of Bionicle: The Game are examples of “play areas” given how small some of them are. This message also provided some insight about ASL, the proprietary language both games were created with. This gave me a good idea about how difficult ASL was to use as well. The fact that Arognaut also had many new hires that couldn’t handle ASL’s idiosyncrasies certainly didn’t help Bionicle: The Game at all.

I later reached out to another former AI programmer affiliated with the previous one. They had some interesting things to say:

“Wow, I'm really surprised that anyone is that interested in Bionicle, because I didn't think it was a very good game, but I'm happy that you felt strongly enough to do this, I guess. That's quite an impressive bit of digging.

[Asked about ASL]

Q1) ASL wasn't a great language to use, it was being developed at the same time as the engine so it was constantly changing and was occasionally broken as well. The turnaround from making a change in code to testing it on the target device was quite slow. And coming from C++ the lack of modularity was frustrating. There was some talk in the team about wanting it to be object oriented, but anything that made it cleaner and less prone to repetition would have been good. My memory of it isn't that good since it was 20 years ago. I remember the collision and animation systems being awkward and crude as well though. Do you know about the other games that the system was used for? Catwoman took the animation engine a bit further, but it was really horrible trying to program the animation blending for finite state machines with a language that was so hard to debug.

[Asked about scrapped content in Bionicle: The Game]

Q2) I don't remember much about what was scrapped. There were different teams working on different levels and playable characters, I mainly worked on the Tahu levels and the final boss. I think there might have been some stuff scrapped from the other characters. One or two of them were developed by the team who were doing the cross platform conversion for us, and we didn't see much of what they were doing and only saw it quite late.

[Asked if any early builds of Bionicle: The Game still exist]

Q3) I have no idea - perhaps Sony or EA have archives of the earlier builds. Someone on the engine team might do, I can't think how or why a strat coder would have one.”

The issues with the collision system they mentioned are definitely present in Bionicle: The Game. It’s quite easy to glitch out of bounds, as speedrunners have demonstrated many times. We later talked about general programming concepts and discussed ASL further:

“Reassuring to know that I'm not imagining Bionicle being pretty bad! I think object oriented was just flavour of the month in 2003, Java was a highly respected language at the time and we thought it was the future. It would have been nice to work in a language that was used in other places, because having ASL on your CV was a pretty crappy prospect for seeking other work. At least if you used Fortran or Pascal it was recognised by employers as a mainstream language. WTF is ASL? I worked in two other organisations that had proprietary languages and it was annoying. The good thing about starting work at Argonaut at least was that ASL was a proven language that you could make games with, and it did let you get down to the relevant bits of gameplay you wanted to take control of. Before that I worked at Phase 3 studios where they had never made an action game before, and we spent a lot of time programming systems that had hardly any effect on gameplay. So I was grateful for ASL and the toolchain for making it easy to do some limited things. I was very impressed by someone on the iNinja team for getting ropes to work with a vertlet algorithm, we stole that later for the green Bionicle to use. I think the High Voltage Software studio might be using a different language with the same initials? I can't see how it could possibly be Argonaut's language. I'm pretty sure there was some talk about opening it up as middleware to sell other studios but I don't think we ever got there. Many of the staff from Catwoman went on to work at Rocksteady, Sony and Ninja Theory, but I think they just started using whatever engine was in place there. You could find hundreds of people who had brushes with the language.”

I asked about other studios using ASL for their games:

“What release date were the games? Argonaut folded in 2004 I think, so the creditors might have managed to sell off the technology as cheap middleware of last-gen consoles

or perhaps they were licensing the tech while we were using it, and I just hadn't been aware of it”

I sent him some notable examples of games using ASL from other studios, such as The Conduit and Ben 10: Protector of Earth:

“That fits the picture then - liquidation in 2004, sell the technology in 2005, two years of learning the systems and developing content, release in 2007

The PS3 would be the current gen console by then, but the PS2 had a large enough user base to make it a viable market, especially for movie tie-ins and children’s games”

I later asked if there was any possibility that Argonaut received parts of ASL from other sources:

“That's an interesting question... I don't know but I think Argonaut were using strats since 1993 and the language gradually evolved from Starfox to Croc and so on. I think it was around before High Voltage existed. It does seem like a massive coincidence that the header is VOLT but there aren't many words that sound cool to programmers so I still suspect it is just a coincidence. Programming was Argonaut's strongest suit, it doesn't make sense that they would buy tech in like that. I was only at the company for two years or so, ask someone who was there longer.”

Then out of the blue, another former designer from Argonaut Sheffield reached out to me about Bionicle 2. After that, I asked them a few questions:

“Hi William,

Great to hear from you. Let me see what I can do to answer your questions!

[Asked about the development process of Bionicle 2]

1. Designing the demo was a bit of a break from the usual licensed Dev. We had creative control so got to decide what direction we'd like to take things in (hence a departure from the 'standard' platforming fare of the time!) My role was predominantly as a technical designer - that was, creating ideas and prototyping/building in the tools. For the demo I was responsible for populating and scripting some of the functionalities in the level.

[Asked about the broken audio in the Xbox port of Bionicle 2]

2. Not sure on the silence in the build tbh... I seem to remember doing some work on creating and implementing some spot FX and seem to remember we put some audio track on the front end screen. With this being a closed pitch demo, I honestly can't remember if we'd created the track or sourced it from elsewhere!

[Asked if they knew about any other builds of Bionicle 2]

3. I believe a have a variety of unreleased games and demos on various formats somewhere. Most of them will be PS2 from that period.

Thanks”

When they mentioned owning a variety of unreleased games and demos, I was immediately intrigued. I later asked if they had a PS2 build of Bionicle 2 and offered to send him a copy of our Xbox build of the game in exchange for it, and to my surprise I got this:

“Hey William,

Cool, I'll have a search when I get some time and attempt to extract it for you!

Thanks”

I was ecstatic. Finally, after months of searching, I was about to get something tangible! But the days passed, and those days turned into weeks. I was beginning to lose hope until I got this message:

“Hey William,

Quick note on my progress - I've not forgotten! I delved into my garage over the weekend and came away with 3 CDs labeled bionicle 2 with various dates on!

I'll attempt to create an ISO of the latest date and share with you when I get a mo (most likely the weekend again!)

Thanks”

Not only did he have a build of the game for the PS2, but THREE of them! After seeing this, I decided to wait for the weekend to arrive. Unfortunately I would be very busy on this particular weekend, but Bionicle was still my top priority! So I proceeded to bail on my friends to wait for an obscure as hell prototype game from a discontinued children’s toy line to show up in my inbox. However, on Sunday, the weekend was coming to a close, and I had heard nothing from the former designer. My waiting and persistence later paid off after I got this message:

“Hi William,

Give this a go - no idea if it works - let me know!

(redacted)”

At last! I finally got it! The latest known PS2 build of Bionicle 2: City of Legends! But there was a problem. The game didn’t boot. Just my luck. But I wasn’t ready to give up. I ended up rebuilding the entire iso with some proprietary tools, and by some miracle, it booted up in my emulator. It’s about what you would expect: It’s similar to Xbox build in many ways, but it is also different. Unlike the Xbox port, the audio works, and there are some extra graphical effects and animations. I was also able to get the game to boot up on a real PS2 without issue.

I can’t say exactly when BioMedia Project will release this build to the public, but I'm sure it will happen soon. Until then, feel free to watch some gameplay footage of the demo on my Youtube channel: https://youtu.be/Dvmzz92F3oo

These past couple of years have been pretty crazy for Bionicle. The Legend of Mata Nui was found TWICE, and there has been so much more activity within the community as a result. I’m glad I was able to make my mark and get this unreleased build of Bionicle 2: City of Legends into the hands of the Bionicle community where it belongs. If you made it this far, Thanks for reading. If you liked this post, don’t forget to share it. I spent a lot of time researching this, and I would really appreciate it. Special Thanks:

BioMedia Project

Liam Robertson

Fraug L. Coolman

#bionicle #lego

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kindabraveandlittlestupid · 6 years ago

Photo

Why Tumblr Chooses Censorship

It’s a strange day to jump online and suddenly hear about a major policy change on Tumblr from a few people I talk too. Words like “Total Bullshit”, “End of Tumblr”, “Burning Garbage Heap” and so on tossed among them to describe the policy change. Curious enough I logged on began reading over all the purposed changes and I admit I am a bit disheartened. Usually when a digital institution like AOL, Yahoo, Napster, or MySpace falls it because they didn't evolve and became stagnant in what they were providing the internet. I can’t think of a time where a site willfully regressed its own freedom of speech on a broad scale and basically swallowed a poison capsule that destroys their user base (perhaps deservingly so) but here we are.

That point aside, I am trying to have insight and hindsight to understand how/why they were pushed to this reckless conclusion (I will be leaving foresight out because I think Tumblr lacks foresight, the exodus from Tumblr will dramatically change the culture of this site likely for the worse). Tumblr like any social media medium is struggling in the current age of the internet; Bots, Far Right Extremists, Fake News, Illegal Porn, Data Theft, and so on. Many companies are walking this fine line between trying to combat these problems while preserving freedom of speech.

I struggle to find my own footing on this topic because I believe that society with LESS censorship historically does better. You look to countries in the past that repressed sexuality, individual thought, and so on; those countries were often the ones to invite the rise of repressive groups doing atrocious acts in history. While on the other hand because of this open and free social media platform we all see the echoing of those same repressive groups (who are also on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, and Youtube) and to simply say/do nothing about their posts will inevitably allow them to rise still. This is where I struggle as I believe in that concept of a free society but I do feel that removing fake new stories is essential for the health of democracy.

I imagine the reason why sexual images are the target is that Tumblr makes things so easy to post. It's not hard to imagine pictures of minors getting liked or reposted from one blog or another happening. The problem is many of those pictures will circulate for a long period of time not being flagged as underage and there is good chance that every user has knowingly or unknowingly looked at an image like this on the web. I explore the porn side of Tumblr and have once or twice encountered a Tumblr full of these images at which point I couldn't close that tab fast enough and get the hell out of dodge. So Tumblrs solution of handling this problem instead of playing whack a mole with these underage accounts? Ban all adult content.

I can understand this motivation being a foolproof way of making sure there is no underage porn because there will be no porn. I imagine the result will be very effective, so effective that the various members of the community be they straight, bi, or gay who had their own private collection of legal adult material on Tumblr will stop visiting the site. A slow-moving exodus of users from Tumblr this site to perhaps a new blogging alternative that isn't so restrictive. I don’t suspect Tumblr will be closing its doors the week after the policy kick in (though they will see a HUGE decline in traffic) but even the PG accounts will likely move on because a sizeable user base shifted away and people want to be where the party is at. And much as I love Tumblr, it will not be here (sadly).

PC Culture VS Censorship Culture

One thing I noticed on the various posts is some people attempting to blame this policy change on the PC Culture. I am not sure I believe that as a valid argument. While I don't get along with PC Culture all the time (part of my free society is believing that humor is apart of it and PC Culture doesn't always like humor), I do think PC Culture has a broad/accepting view of orientation and sexuality. Just important is people having the right to explore those thoughts and feelings of their own free will. Tumblr has been one of those sites allowing emerging gay men and women to find others like them but also explore their sexuality with images/gifs/videos. What Tumblr might have not noticed is that the site itself is kind of a cultivation of the best images from the web, sure you can find some pretty hard porn on occasion but of all the adult sites on the web, Tumblr provides an almost artistic lense to the images that come thru the site.

Censorship can come from various political/social/religious groups but this sort of censorship against the human body, sex, and sexuality, in general, comes from a very conservative mindset. People who don’t wish to see nudity in any form on any medium; people who think a woman's nipple is lewd, that breastfeeding publically is disgusting, and that anything remotely sexual is a sin. And by the nature of Tumblrs policy change their beliefs align themselves alarmingly close to these individuals.

There is a thin veneer of progressive views on the site that remains where they say they are ok with this and that like gender orientation surgery but its just that a veneer. Once a person has transitioned anything that is shared of their new body (nudity or sex wise) beyond the initial transition falls into the realm of ‘smut’ by Tumblrs policies. I imagine the perception they are trying to sell us is “Hey we are still the same progressive safe haven for LGTBQ community! Stay with us!” but secretly thinking “Everything you enjoy in the bedroom is horrible and we fucking hate you.”

Perhaps I am being hyperbolic in that statement but damn if it doesn't feel like a vast policy of censorship on the human body. And whenever this happens (historically) it always comes from hyper-conservatives.

A General Attack On Expression and Orientation

I touched on this topic a little bit above but I feel it's worth stating again that Tumblr might be losing its safe-haven status for gender expression and sexual orientation. When scrolling through Tumblr you will likely see those new expressions of genders that is beyond that of ‘traditional’ male and female definitions. And while I don’t have any attraction to some of these new expressions, I understood why they are there and don’t get upset if/when the cross my feed. Like two men having sex my mind thinks “Not for me but I am sure that will make someones day”. I view sex (in all its forms) as natural, I don’t have to be into it for me to be ok with it (if that makes sense). It’s visual participation if that image you see isn't a turn on for you and does nothing for you, simply move on.

Tumblr’s policy doesn't seem to care about this concept of visual participation and while it is taking away my straight/lesbian porn I enjoy. It is also sweeping up all these new forms of expression and orientation in the process.

I am not sure what else to say... I am a straight male and I try to have a deep empathy for other people when I can. I feel this argument can be better structured but I also come from a position where I don’t know all the details. I add this to the post because Tumblr seemed to go out of their way to suggest that they would protect this community but from a long view that doesn't seem to be the case.

A Lessons To Be Learned

I am not going to say fuck Tumblr. I don’t want to see them fail. I liked what this space was about and what it provided. I prefer they reconsider changing the guidelines and consider a different course of action but I also understand why they want to do this. It’s “The Easy Way” to do things. If they ban all porn then it simplifies managing underage nudity and allows the site to have less criticism drawn to it.

I do, however, think this broad censorship approach will ultimately hurt the site and the community though. People will leave, alternative websites will arise and Tumblr will eventually become no more. I am not going to tell anyone to boycott or delete their accounts. I plan to collect my writing and images, backup my favorite adult gifs (might need to buy a hard drive) and settle into this new reality. I know I will personally be visiting the site less as I used to look at porn here at some of the better cultivated Tumblr archives. That lack of traffic by me and all the other users will hurt the company. I hope they understand eventually I won't show up at all and over time, eventually, no one else will either. Maybe the site will survive and change into something else but right now under these conservative policies of censorship, Tumblr won't last.

Sad Regards, Michael California

Update: Posted this originally with a woman in a shower with large censorship bars over the naughty bits. Flagged despite the fact she was more covered than most Sports Illustrated models. I know I just wrote above I am not advocating leaving the site... but after all this and the fact that Tumblr Support finally responded to a far-right Tumblr blogger photoshopping/doctoring a PM conversation we had before posting it to his blog. I feel as though Tumblr A) hates sex and sexuality B) not only enables but protects racism and harassment on this website. I think it’s time to move on.

#Tumblr #Tumblr Suppor #Staff #Policy Change #Tumblr Policy #RIP Tumblr #Censorship #Tumblr Ban #Tumblr Purge #Community Guidlines #Tumblr Community Guidlines

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