#call them the medium/profession they're in

[needmorekimch1]

That comment about webcomics at the end was like an isekai truck hitting an open wound. But for real though everything about zines here is plain to see if you pay attention to the culture surrounding this topic, and similar patterns happening in other similar mediums.

Webcomics used to (and still technically do) have zero barrier to entry to draw one at any level of artistry, but you did have to code your own simple site which took some basic coding skills. But with the rise of artist centered websites, you could upload them to an online artist community like dA, or free comics platforms like Smackjeeves or Comic fury or etc.

But deviantArt got sold and redesigned and fell out of wider relevancy, and the social media platforms we all migrated to were divided and not designed to actually get your comics onto relevant eyeballs.

Meanwhile Smackjeeves and other free comics platforms were driven out of the cultural consciousness by heavily commercialized platforms like Tapastic and Webtoons. (There are still some older ones around like Comic Fury!! Please go give their patreon your support!)

Now you can still put your webcomics on these newer sites for free, but smaller comics will be completely overshadowed by commercially-driven and standardized-formatted comics with relatively high quality with fast release schedules. Obviously they're all still "webcomics" but since the takeover by webtoons and tapas in the webcomics sphere of influence, I keep seeing/hearing artists say they don't know if they want to make webcomics cause they can't compete in the attention economy and subsequently can't make a living off of their works. (Also a personal gripe about these newer platforms, the artists are incentivized to make their comics formatted to be legible on phones??? because the phone apps are fostering an audience of readers that want to read comics on their phones?? The smartphone economy is wack.) The creativity of artists is stifled and molded to fit these new standards that make them more digestible for a very specific style of marketing. And artists are discouraged from thinking of webcomics as just another medium to

And arguably even the people reading the comics suffer, because the artist is being pressured by these sites to work themselves to the bone to produce comics at a high rate, the quality of the webcomics ALWAYS begins to suffer as time goes on, and some webcomics even start to gate off access to later updates behind a paywall. This is how commodification works.

Everybody suffers from the medium leaning more and more into becoming a commodified "product with the highest quality" and subsequently higher price point.

Smaller niche mediums always came into existence out of necessity and desire to exist in any way they can. The more we slip away from those roots that made it a desirable concept in the first place (affordable and accessible and easy-to-make) the more the term itself is diluted and the faster it drives itself to irrelevancy, until the concept itself vanishes from everybody's mind and subsequently we ALL lose access to a medium that used to be widely available.

Don't do that to zines, don't forget it's roots. Something like those simple instructions to make an 8 page zine out of a sheet of paper is how you keep a medium alive and well for all future generations of inspired youths. Not by gatekeeping OR diluting the term with semantics, but by never forgetting the word and it's roots and history.

It's the same for ttrpgs that can be played with pencil and paper, it's the same for passion-driven indie games on itch.io, and it's the same for ao3 fanfictions and the like, and you can go on and on with the examples. Don't get it twisted.

the whole point of a zine is that it's cheap to produce, amateur and homemade. if you're being asked to apply to participate in a print project, it is not a zine. if the final product is being printed and bound professionally, it is not a zine. if you are being asked to enter into any kind of licensing agreement more complex than "my work can be reproduced as part of this publication" it is not a zine. nine times put of ten if the final product costs more than $5 you have left zine country. im so serious about this.

[thefreelanceangel]

Tagged: Character Details

Imayo Mikomori

BASICS:

Nicknames: N/A Age: She believes she's roughly twenty-five Nameday: 15th Sun, 4th Umbral Moon Race: Raen Au Ra Gender: Cis Female Orientation: Pansexual (in theory -- she's never had a partner) Profession: Tattoo artist (specializing in irezumi) - herbalist/alchemist - exorcist

PHYSICAL ASPECTS:

Hair: Inky black, with dark blue highlights Eyes: Crystalline white with black limbal rings, no discernable pupils Skin: Deathly, ghostly white with blue undertones, with a disproportionately large percentage of her body covered with reptilian dull black scales Tattoos/Scars: A thin, ragged line across her throat, now concealed by the scales which grew over her throat when an alchemical tonic caused a physical reaction. Notably, Imayo no longer has horns. The same tonic that caused excessive scale growth also caused her horn material to die and slough off. She now must rely on a linkpearl to hear most high-frequency sounds, and keeps a linkpearl embedded into a scale where her right horn used to be.

FAMILY:

Parents: Hisako Mikomori (M) [Deceased] / Tomoki Koizumi (F) [Deceased] Hisako Mikomori, the last living Mikomori of a declining samurai family, volunteered as a miko to serve at an isolated shrine in order to provide her ancestors with the proper homage. While serving, she was introduced to the Koizumi family who wished a 'ghost marriage' made to placate the restless spirit of their eldest son, Tomoki. Hisako agreed to perform the ceremony and was cast out of the shrine five months later when it became evident she was pregnant. No one believed her tale of Tomoki possessing a pilgrim to the shrine to have a proper wedding night and she was forced to live on the Koizumi family's sufferance. Siblings: N/A Grandparents: The Koizumi patriarch, Takamori, returned Imayo to the shrine her mother had served at and died shortly after Hisako Mikomori's suicide. In-Laws & Others: N/A As a "shadowborn" (the product of a ghost marriage) Imayo is considered bad luck [at best] and shunned by the majority of Kugane's populace. Only the desperate come to her small herbalist shop for aid during daylight hours. Her closest affiliates are criminals who come to her for irezumi tattoo work. They provide protection on a "tit for tat" basis, including guarding her shop when Imayo's called away by the priests of her mother's shrine to perform exorcisms.

SKILLS:

Abilities: As a 'shadowborn,' Imayo has a particularly strong affinity for the dead and serves as a reibai (medium) or exorcist when needed. She is able to see, hear, and speak to the dead. She is also capable of creating ofuda for protection, banishing spirits, and can sense yokai. Years of careful study have given her a wide range of knowledge about the spirit world she interacts with daily. She is also knowlegable about herbalism and alchemy, concocting tonics and potions to sell as they're requested. Hobbies: With … a lot of time on her hands, Imayo practices calligraphy, sewing, herbalism, the tea ceremony, Doman mahjong… She also reads excessively and studies cookbooks, curious about cuisines in other lands.

TRAITS:

Most Positive: Imayo is resilient. Despite her precarious start in life, her precarious position in society, and her lack of… basic human connections, she still finds beauty in the world and is determined to create a life for herself in which she can find a measure of contentment. Most Negative: Imayo expects to be rejected and will often read rejection where perhaps none was extended. She's reluctant to open up about her birth, her health, her life in general as she's received poor responses in the past and just… doesn't want to get her hopes up again.

LIKES:

Colors: Vibrant sunset colors are Imayo's favorites. Rich, warm colors seem so out of place in her life (she tends to wear black and grey as she feels that beautiful colors are wasted on her particular coloration) that she appreciates them whenever and wherever she encounters them. Smells: Pine (which she loves the scent of, but also can't smell without feeling a pang of sadness) and roses Textures: High quality silk, worn tatami mats, book pages, warm living skin beneath her hands when she's creating a tattoo Drinks: Green tea, hibiscus tea, sakura tea, sake, fresh well water

OTHER DETAILS:

Smokes: Never. Imayo's health is particularly fragile and she can't risk anything that might cause her chronic illness, such as smoke-damaged lungs. Drinks: Rarely. She will very occasionally have a small cup of sake. Drugs: Only medicinal herbs. Mount Issuance: Animals dislike Imayo's presence, becoming unruly and edgy when she's nearby, so she's never sought to purchase her own mount. If she needs to travel, she's made arrangements with a fellow merchant who has an elderly chocobo that is… as accustomed to her presence as an animal can be. Been Arrested: No.

Tagged By: @gatheredfates

Tagging: @luck-and-larceny; @dumb-hat; @otherworldseekers; @chainsofaether; @sealrock; @ungrateful-cyborg; @iron-sparrow; @ahollowgrave; @shroudkeeper; @pettyeti and I think Sea and I will overlap if I'm not careful, so if you see it, YOU'RE TAGGED.

[eriyu]

Ehryu Raav

B A S I C S

Name: Ehryu Raav (don't mind that all the paperwork spells it "Ehriyu") Nicknames: Yu (to her family only) Age: 26 (at the beginning of ARR) Nameday: First Sun of the Second Umbral Moon Race: Keeper of the Moon Meracydian Miqo'te Gender: Female Orientation: Bisexual, greyromantic Profession: Adventurer :)

P H Y S I C A L     A S P E C  T S

Hair: Bubblegum pink, 2A, medium-long Eyes: Right: light blue. Left: light purple, pinker after rejoining with Ardbert Skin: Medium-light grey Tattoos/scars: No tattoos, miscellaneous scars (a couple from Endwalker, the rest from when she was younger and half her friends weren't absurdly accomplished healers)

F A M I L Y

Parents: Kinoh and Tavh'li :) Siblings: She's the oldest of five! There's Dyaala (1 year younger), Yuhl (6 years younger), Mhet (7 years younger), and Kinoh'a (10 years younger = the twins' age). Grandparents: ...around, I'm sure... I have vague ideas of a large extended family, but they're staying vague until I know more about her home. In-laws and Other: She's adopted the twins as additional little brother and sister if that counts. Pets: Her family had miscellaneous creatures around when she was little, but none of particular note. I don't think chocobos are considered pets.

S K I L L S

Abilities: The big (obvious) ones are fighting, singing, playing instruments, and dancing. Is "inspiring people" an ability? Beyond that she's a jack of all trades — loves picking up every skill she can, but doesn't usually dedicate enough time to them to become a master. Hobbies: Again, everything she can get her hands on, at least briefly. It's a bit difficult to categorize things separately as "hobbies"... like she doesn't really put aside time to do certain activities; she just starts going in a direction and keeps going until she stops lmao.

T R A I T S

Most Positive Trait: Selflessness :) (alternatively, unflagging optimism) Worst Negative: Selflessness (: (alternatively, failure to think things through)

L I K E S

Colors: Years ago, Yuhl told her that purple was "her color" and she ran with it, but honestly she loves all sorts of bright colors. Hot pink and yellow are up there. Smells: Grass, and rain. Streets full of different kinds of restaurants. Fresh laundry. Textures: Silk. Grass again. Marble. Not a whole lot that she dislikes, though. Drinks: Water with lemon or mint. Anything she's never had before. Whiskey.

O T H E R    D E T A I L S

Smokes: Nah, zero interest in it. Especially since she values her voice so much. Drinks: Socially. She'll enjoy getting completely trashed on special occasions when she's quite certain the end of the world isn't nigh. Drugs: Anything with significant health effects is off the table immediately, but she could be tempted to try anything that's fairly harmless by a friend. It's also possible that she and Thancred got super fucking high on their first trip to the Great Work due to a slight miscommunication about dosage differences between Arkasodara and smaller races... Mount Issuance: Her black chocobo and Argos are canon. Other MSQ-relevant ones like Maggie and the Yol are still around but probably not really "on call." Everything else is nebulous. Realistically does she own a flying car? Probably not. Can I still say she loves blasting the stereo on the Regalia? I sure can!!! Been Arrested: If she managed to avoid it from the bloody banquet all through Heavensward, I'm gonna say she's avoided it everywhere else too.

Tagged by: Nobody, I stole it from a long-dead blog :)

Tagging: @gatheredfates @lilbittymonster @tallbluelady @starrysnowdrop @calico-heart @nhaneh @wildstar25

[namelesschurch]

Alexander Luthor - hello-mrpresident

The President of the United States in his universe, which he calls Earth 0. He keeps his political image in mind when it comes to certain topics, but when it comes to other topics, he will show a very strong stance despite the political controversy. It makes me wonder about whom he is worried about monitoring him on Tunglr or if the political environment on his earth is completely different from what I expect.

There is a very clear diplomatic air and a matter-of-factness that is subtle but present to his writing. He writes to maximize clarity and to prevent misunderstandings. He has a tendency to elaborate when he doesn't need to, which again goes back into the need to clarify. If that trait was not developed due to his profession, there may be some bad personal history there.

His sentences tend to be extremely long as a whole, even when split up based on its independent and dependent clauses. Assuming he types as he speaks, this tendency may be related to his profession as president or his status of billionaire - he does not worry about people not paying attention if he speaks - and thus can afford to keep his sentences long.

His writing style does change when he gets flustered or talking about his kids. His sentences get short as if he cannot afford the time to think and must act, despite the online medium. In regard to his kids, the change in cadence may be related to the fact he feels like he may not quite understand them as much as he wants to? It feels like there's hesitancy there.

His argumentative tone tends towards disappointment rather than anger. More of a lecturer. There is probably a belief that logic should win the day, but he seems capable of cutting his losses. This style of arguing is likely related to his work in research to help his son.

However, his response to becoming angry is probably similar to Lev in a way - they get sharper when they're angrier, as if adrenaline fuels their ability to consider all the angles. An intellectual's rage.

His humor tends towards the deadpan and potentially the absurd, and he will use it to deflect an awkward question he knows he can't politely deflect away.

Miscellaneous:

In hindsight, his sentences got much shorter when I asked him about his hobbies.

His sentences also got shorter when talking about his kids. This could be useful in terms of breaking conversational momentum.

After testing various voice pitches with his sentences, he likely speaks in more neutral or even lower pitches. It maximizes the carrying power of his long sentences.

He uses "I" a lot but not in the manner of a egotist. This is likely related to his diplomatic nature - "I think, I don't think" - trying to make the other person know it's his opinion.

Difficult to determine how much power and influence he wields in his universe, but given one superpowered son, his money, and his power suit - and the ability to go head-to-head of a "Crime Syndicate" which likely represents a bunch of superpowered people, it's probably considerable. Doesn't really matter much to me though, since I'll get squashed by everything and everyone.

Negotiation Considerations:

Location should probably take place outside typical restaurants or locations housed by the rich or famous - no five star restaurants, no country clubs, no golf carts, and definite not anywhere near the U.S. Capital. A more exotic location may prove more useful in getting "home ground" advantage or at least reducing it to neutral.

Despite his comments to the contrary, he probably can wield his image pretty well. Being the President is an incredibly imposing weapon after all. It is difficult to determine if he will offer to close the "distance" so to speak such as "call me Mr. Luthor" as opposed to President Luthor, but assuming his sense of fair play on Tunglr is real, he would probably offer that if I call him President Luthor first.

He's probably more of the patient type regardless of whether the negotiating power is in his court or mine. He's willing to let someone else do the talking at first - and to trap them with their logic. Any argument used around him must be ironclad and well-researched. From that perspective, I'll be at an a disadvantage since I am not that scientifically smart.

He likely can't ride out a silence very well though. I don't think the lecturer in him could take it.

He does seem the type to get into the zone the more he talks, and once he gets going and assuming he speaks like he types, the fact he uses long sentences as his default will make it difficult to get a word in edge-wise without outright interrupting - which is a faux pas in etiquette.

In other words, if I talk, I fall into the game he's best at, countering arguments. If I don't talk, he gains both confidence and momentum instead - which increases his negotiating power.

I should note silence can be used periodically as a weapon on the negotiating table, given his need to clarify. Psychologically, it may shake his confidence and make him believe his argument is weak if I use it.

Appealing to emotion may be better than the logical argument in this case.

[dzpenumbra]

3/1/23

Well shit, I guess it's March, huh.

I, yet again, did not get a good night's sleep. I might as well get this out. I wrote a comment on a post on an artist's group on Reddit. They were in a similar position to me. All-in on art, 7+ years no other work history, battling with mental health. They were saying they were worried they would have to get other work, another job.

I wrote a whole thing, several paragraphs, you know how I am. I just.. wrote from a place of being able to deeply relate. And a bit bitterness because this isn't really a thing with a lot of careers. For some reason, art, which used to be one of the most revered and sacred professions since before we even invented spoken language... is viewed as a child's hobby now, in many circles. As in, it's not viewed as a legitimate, sustainable career. And modern western society is most definitely not built to sustain fine art as a career. No-sir-ee. Modern western society is built to turn fine artists into contractual laborers, who supervisors and tacticians can use for profit. Like pieces on a factory line. Like Assemblers in Factorio.

It's a really fucked up thing in the end, because they're so short-sighted that they genuinely can't see why their corner-cutting and exploitative practices don't work the way they want them to. They want to emulate art. They want to create the illusion of art. Of passion. Of vision. Picture acid-washed jeans. That. But with passion, with inspiration, with vision, with a personal message. But, as with most of western society, they are always looking forward. They try to emulate the end result. They try to emulate the product.

It's a very industrial concept, like China reverse engineering iPhones to make clones. It works in that industry. And you see it in gaming a lot, when a big soulless company buys out a small indie passion project, then they release a cheap straw-filled scarecrow wearing that indie game's skin. They try to emulate what a good game looks like, what it feels like, what it sounds like. But it's just an imitation.

I found that in watching a lot of streams of newer games. If you see a chat saying "oh wow, that's just like BioShock" or "oh wow, that's just like Minecraft" or "oh wow, that's just like Call of Duty". Then you know that game is not really standing on it's own two feet. And they can get by, and make a good product... but you will rarely find art this way. Those games, art games, legendary games... some may start as "wow, this is just like ____" but they quickly break free and have their own unique, memorable experience.

Fine art is the purest form of this "lightning in a bottle" I know. And it's different for everyone. My form is trying to capture my inspiration, my passion, things that are incredibly meaningful to me, in whatever medium feels right, even if I don't know how to work in that medium. The picture in my profile here, or whatever, idk what it's called. The Barred Owl. I have a few incredibly vivid memories of that bird. One, I was going up the mountain with my friend to find a bar we were told about that had pool tables. There was nothing to do at night in our town, so we were searching for the holy grail, essentially. It really felt like a quest, you know? And we end up on this dirt road in the middle of nowhere at like 10PM and neither of us know where we are, and this is before GPS and all that, of course. And we're driving along and up ahead we see... these fucking figures in the middle of the road. I'm serious, this was like... horror movie shit. Like I thought they were kids wearing the same hoodies with the hood up at first, it was really weird and surreal. Like a fairy tale or something. And there were like... 5 of them? As we got closer they seemed like they were around like 1.5-2 feet tall, and we started to suss out that they were Barred owls. Just standing in the middle of the fucking road, with us coasting towards them with the headlights on and the windows open. They were just... dead silent. And as we crawled towards them, they inched to the side and let us pass, but like stared directly at us as we passed, heads on a swivel. And I was really sketched out having the windows open, I was convinced they were going to like attack me or something, they were like... a foot away from me. It was really scary. Then right as we passed by, they scattered and they started flying tree-to-tree behind us, following us. Some overtaking us and perching in trees ahead, the rest following behind, swooping from tree to tree. It was nuts. We never found the place either, never even figured out if we were on the right road.

The other owl story was from my post-breakup days, the summer after, when I revisited my hippie self - who is firmly hybridized in my personality now, thank god. I kept getting the image of owls come to me in dreams, and I tried to do some kind of spirit guide meditation thing, like a summoning ritual or some shit (as though I've ever really needed that, good lord, they seek me out constantly) and I kept getting images of Barred Owls popping into my head. Just the head, for a long time. It's a very distinct face. And that summer, I had a family of Barred Owls hunt in my neighborhood at night. Maybe they'd always been there? Maybe I was just starting to go outside more, and finally heard them. But I lived right next to a pond and I would hear them calling to each other and coordinating. And I could hear them relocate from the north eastern corner across the pond... to the south eastern corner... then through the woods on the southern side, then looping around to where I lived on the western side. And they'd sometimes do a really slow loop, like over the course of hours, and sometimes they would just stay on the eastern side and then head out or go quiet. So, I started working on my owl call. Someone taught me how to do an owl call with my hands when I was really young, I've always remembered how to do it, I'm just very rusty. And I started to get it back really well that summer. And one night, I decided to call them. Just to see what happened. The cool part is, the leader (or whatever, I don't really know how their psychology works) had a distinctly different call. It's hard to articulate how, but when I heard it I knew it was them. And that one responded to me. And I went back and forth with them for a few calls. And then they went silent. They were across the pond (like a soccer pitch sized pond, not huge), on the eastern side, directly across. And after about 5 minutes of silence, I called again, and I got an immediate response from the leader... from due south. They had relocated. Then I heard a call to my north, a bit closer. That... was a very unique feeling. Then I called back, and the leader was a bit closer, and one or two other calls from varying locations. They had split up, and were coordinating locations. They were... surrounding me... I should mention at this point, I had no porch lights and a pretty poorly lit home. It was super dark at night. Like... super dark. Like walk out to the edge of the fenced-in yard and you can't see your hand in front of your face on a new moon. There was definitely moonlight that night though, I remember distinctly summoning my courage and walking out to the fence (about 30 feet from my porch, as though the roofed porch was "safer" or something...) and being able to see a tree about 10 feet away from me. So... decent visibility. And I called again, but got no response. And then one last time, and I got a response from the leader... I still don't know if they were in the tree 10 feet in front of me or the tree behind it, but they were fucking loud. Like, they were right there. Like... it made me freeze up a bit. But I got really excited at the same time. But like... it was one of those feelings, like... this animal and it's entire family can see me clear as day. And I can't see or hear a single one of them. And they're predators. So there's something very instinctual about that, it's a very unique feeling. But the coolest part about that scenario, I had summoned them, and they willfully sought me out. But having them that close? It freaked me out a little too much, and I headed back in.

So... my point with these stories? That's what Barred Owl means to me. And so much more. It's not just something cool to draw (I mean it's that too...), it's a deeply personal part of my life. And the act of drawing that piece? I streamed it. I streamed the entire process, start to finish, it took like... 40 hours total. And I met some cool people while I was doing that, and we talked about a lot of important life stuff. Point being, that piece wasn't something commissioned off some random dude on Fiverr. That piece wasn't focus grouped in a graphic design or illustration firm, then tasked to the most capable illustrator, then sent to print, mass produced and available on-demand as a postcard or a t-shirt. It's something special. Made by me, with my memories in it, with my emotions in it, with my skin oil in the paper. It's an artifact of a memory, or a concept. Or both.

So... when someone says... go get a job working for someone else, in a related field? It's like... they come from another world. It's like they don't even understand what this life or profession is. It's like they interchange "logo designer" or "basket weaver" or "candle maker" or "landscape painter" and they throw them all in the same pile and label it "not-normal jobs". Or "not real jobs". Or "hobbies". Usually "hobbies". It upsets me so deeply. Not just because I have devoted so much of my life to this, but because... I love these things so much. This way of living so much. This way of looking at the world. It's my everyday experience. I see art everywhere. I see art in the architecture of my building. I see wooden beams from different eras, some machined, some seemingly hand-hewed, at least in parts. I see brickwork that is quite old. And I envision the people constructing this building back... probably 100 years ago? Maybe even earlier. Let me google real quick. Yeah, it was originally constructed in 1880. 143 years. 143 years ago, some dudes were mixing mortar and placing bricks to make a gigantic mill. There are relics of different time periods, different constructions; all telling a story, like a fantasy movie scene that plays out in my head. And I see stuff like that everywhere. And it fascinates me, and I want to share it with people. Because it makes life so much more deep, and rich, and romantic, and fascinating. Art and writing allow me to do that. For anyone who chooses to participate. Unfortunately, not many have been interested.

So yeah... all this... because some dude sent me a reply to my comment at like 3AM saying that the OP should get a "normal job". And I was fucking livid all day. I was surprised I feel asleep. And I woke up angry. And I carried that anger all day long, until like 5 or 6 PM, when I finally talked to my mom and was able to get those thoughts out.

An interesting thing happened when I was talking to her about art. I was telling her this, the stuff about how... like... I'm basically looking for private collectors. For these relics, essentially. These artifacts. I don't know what else to call what I make. I say art and people just roll their eyes. But they really are so much more than the end product, they are the product of intellectual exploration, of memory, of my personality. They are concept pieces, most of them. My necklace that I'm wearing now is a concept piece. It's a bloodstone centerpiece, which was a stone I was given at a very difficult time in my life, and I lost it. And it always upset me very deeply that I had lost it, and I always pledged to get a new one. Now it's the heart of my necklace, and sits right above my heart. The wooden beads are stained with my tattoo ink that I have injected permanently into my own skin. The large beads are Tiger's Eyes, which were my favorite stone as a child. And the filler beads are Black Obsidian which is cool, but also a pretty important mineral in the advancement of humankind. Maybe that's a reach, it doesn't have a ton of personal sentimental value, it was a later addition. I got it because it called to me. Because my eyes kept being drawn to it, and it fits perfectly in the necklace thematically. It's more than just... something thrown together because it looks pretty - which is respectable in its own right. Every single direction in it was picked deliberately. The rhythm and pattern of the beads. The number of square knots used for spacing. The transition into braiding at the end, to emulate my symbolic braided mohawk that I used to have, as a reminder of where I came from. Every step of it is intentional.

I was telling my mom about the stones I've been sanding and faceting, that she sent me from her driveway. Sounds silly when I say it that way, wait til you see what they look like now. They are absolutely gorgeous. And I'm like 80% sure some of them have tiny veins of silver in them. And I asked her... if I approached a gallery and I just told them "here, here are some stones that my mom was drawn to, that she sent me from her driveway, which I sanded by hand into these shapes that somewhat mimic their original organic forms, but take on their own unique geometry, which I sanded while I was caring for and then eventually grieving my beloved cat." I asked her... "do you think they would put this in a gallery if I told them that." And she took a minute... then she started telling me about a woman she knows who does a lot of stuff that I would be interested in - candlemaking, beekeeping, making soaps and stuff, you know... someone who would make my life fucking awesome if I were dating them. But she's married so, whatever. XD And she's a vet, a traditional and alternative vet. So she does all kinds of stuff, and... she said this woman might be interested in these pieces.

So... she asked me, "how are you going to package it? Or present it?" And I went... "I'm probably going to go up to her with the stones in my cupped hands and say 'you want them?'" And my brain started getting fuzzy and quiet. Like static or white noise or something. Meaning like... thoughts just started not being there, going blank, like I was getting really tired or something. And I told her, "I could like... put them in a box, or a bag or something, maybe she could put them in a fountain and the light could play off them or something? Whatever, once they're out of my hands it's up to them." And then from there on out, my brain was just... struggling to keep up. Very blank and slow and having difficulty focusing. And I really brought attention to this very transparently, saying "this is my problem". I have trouble even envisioning the scenario. I don't believe in my ability to make a successful sale. I don't like it. I don't like the process at all, and I don't believe I'm skilled in it, and I don't want to be. I would be more than glad to tell the insanely personal story behind them, and burst into tears in front of them, but figuring out money? Making a sale? I naturally reel. I naturally pull back and freeze up. And I literally froze up, which is what my mom helped me learn. My mind froze, I was having trouble thinking, I couldn't envision the scenario or any options of what to do, the whole white noise thing. My brain would just go blank of thoughts.

So... I'm gathering... this is not just... something I don't like or don't want to do... it's something that's actually triggering a panic response and sending me into "fight, flight, freeze, fawn" mode, and this is my "freeze". Earth element out of alignment? Meh, I don't know enough about that kinda stuff to even speculate, I understand the language of psychology much better. I just have more experience in that tongue. So... that's a bit of a problem... if you want to ever have a career doing anything ever... and you freeze up any time the topic of asking for money comes up. As an artist, this makes you a golden fucking target for scammers, especially if what you produce is valuable. But more than that, I just... never get a chance to even get started. Because I don't care if I sell my shit or not, in fact, in some ways... it even benefits me to not sell my shit. And I really just want my art to go to a good home, where someone really appreciates it and lets it run free in the yard and feeds it food scraps under the table when no one's looking. And I wish life could be that simple. That I make really cool shit for people who really want it, whatever they want, whenever, we'll work together and make it work. And I'll cook for them and entertain them, and tell stories and teach them what I've learned in my travels. In exchange, I don't have to worry about housing or food. That's all I really want. But I'm afraid I'm... about 4000 years too late for a life like that. Apparently that life is not available to me, and I need to get a "normal job" to make "money" to pay for things to stay "alive" so I don't "die on the street" and then maybe in my free time I can dick around with paints or whatever lame shit I do that no one actually cares about. Yay.

But yeah, identifying how bad that anxiety/panic mechanism is getting, and how... I had a complete blind spot for it. Like... I was insanely disoriented and had no idea why my brain was just going blank. Luckily, perspective from my mom helped me connect the dots. No wonder I've been so adamant to get help around that, I had no idea it was so bad, because I wasn't like... physically feeling the fear. Fight is a very unique feeling. Like boiling water or something, like pressure building. Flight is very... sharp. Tightness, tension, gripping. Fawn is weird, it's like a hollowness and then like... a release... when it's genuine. When it's a fake fawn, like... going along with what a scary person is doing... it can be more like flight but... I don't know, like... cold and spooky. I'm pretty well acquainted with fawn, unfortunately. But freeze... at least this one... This one barely even registered to me as a panic response. It was just like... emptiness. Stillness. Blank. So, like... I didn't even associate it as a feeling, an emotion, let alone Fear.

Fear is so weird, it takes so many wildly different forms of experience, yet it's all the same emotion. So odd.

So yeah, we wrapped up, got the electric skateboard ordered, hopefully it'll be shipping before too long. It seems like it's a final plan. I'm gonna be doing the skateboard and car share thing, that plan. Hopefully it goes well, if not, we'll just reconvene and talk options again. I'm cool with it.

Okay, I wanna get to this because it's getting really late, I had no idea I had so much to say tonight. I went skating tonight. I was debating between streaming or playing a new game, and I said fuck it and went skating instead. I'm really glad I did. As always!

I spent most of my time at the handicapped access sidewalk that has that plateau section that ramps down, so it basically makes a little natural kicker. I landed some pretty good ollies and a shuvit, and really went after 3 shuv for a long time. I got really close a few times but I never stuck it. Though I'm pretty sure I have landed it at that spot before. I packed in a flatground section and just practiced kickflips for a good half hour. It was exhausting. It's weird, but I think flatground is actually more tiring than skating a gentle hill and then climbing back up. It's hard to really tell which is worse, but I feel like flatground might be. Because you just... don't carry speed... so you end up having to run and push more. Just a theory. I landed one kickflip, out of probably... I don't know, if I was to hazard a guess, probably 30 attempts? Not a great ratio. But I was really focusing on something specific today. I watched this video from a pro skater on common mistakes skating, and noticed something that I do a lot snowskating that I don't do as much skateboarding (though I still do it, just not as much). Leaning my torso forward rather than squatting on anything that isn't a straight ollie. Even ollies I get that sometimes, especially when landing a drop. But I noticed it a ton on backside 180s and heelflips. Correcting this by keeping my weight above my board, keeping my hips and shoulders lined up more (thank you, yoga!) made me much more consistent in proper 3-shuv landings, I was just... having trouble focusing on catching the board. The path turned to solid ice really quick, so when I popped... it felt like trying to jump forwards while wearing skate shoes (flat bottomed, little grip) on an ice rink. Your balance just immediately goes fucky. So regaining balance, staying above the board and looking at the board for catch and foot placement was just... too much for me all at once while mid-air. The "look at the board" part was usually too late, because all these moving parts still haven't been committed to muscle memory yet. The foot position, riding and correcting balance, steer correction, the pop and flick, those are all committed pretty well to muscle memory, I don't have to think too much. I just go 3-shuv and my feet go to the right place. But weight placement, posture and looking at the board aren't intuitive yet.

The "squat, don't bend" method definitely made kickflips much more consistent, and they actually popped higher too, which was an unexpected bonus. But sticking them moving on very uneven terrain... it was a battle. But I landed one. And it was much higher than my other kickflips. It wasn't clean, but it was enough to call a land.

I started to head back... then I eyed the 6-set at the bottom of the hill. Yep. I was tempted. It's weird, it's diagonally angled, so... it's a little weird to hit it? It feels much bigger than it really is. I decided to set the goal of bombdropping it. And I refused to leave until I landed it. And I tried and tried and tried. Over a dozen times, easily. I ate shit on that over and over. I just couldn't get my balance right. Too far back, too far back, too far back, too far toe edge, too far forward. At one point, I spooked a young woman and her dog who were out walking, it was like... 11PM. I think I scared her a bit? I don't know. I tried to be friendly, but she just... seemed to want to keep walking. I get it, it's late at night, your dog's barking at me, I'm some dude with a weird board thing alone in a park wearing all black. Probably not the place she felt the most safe in the world. I tried to be really friendly, told her I used to have a german shepherd and it was cool, I wasn't upset by it or anything. Then wished her a good night. Then it was like... probably another 6 or 7 more tries. And I was so fucking close, I just kept sliding out. And I was just about to give up and getting so tired. And I just went, "I'm fucking landing it this time. And I'm just riding away." And I tried to envision it, like... envision what it feels like, what it looks like. Really get that in my head. Then just clear my head and immediately go. And I came really close but I didn't land it. So I bolted back up and just said. "Nope, this time. This is it. Just do it." And I ran, and jumped, and put the board under my feet, and... rode away. And I did it. And I scared the shit out of some dude across the street who was walking and didn't see me because of the sound of the board smacking the packed snow. And I was beaming.

It wasn't an ollie, but it was the biggest stairset I've ever done. And the only one bigger in the park is the 7-set above the flatground section. Talk about progression. I don't know if I'm brave enough to try to ollie that 6-set this winter. Ollieing is so different from bombdropping. I'll leave the option open... but... it spooks me.

But I'll tell ya, that first bombdrop on the stairset? That took a bit of pumping myself up to do it. I was tempted to just jump first, no board under me, but... I was actually worried that might do more damage than good. I feel like landing flat-footed with nothing to move your momentum... all the impact just goes to your static feet, right in the ankles. And I don't really know how to like... tuck and roll out of that to distribute momentum, especially with a phone in my pocket. I do know how to tuck and roll and slide out of landing on my board to distribute momentum, pretty well too. So I actually opted to just skip the test jump and go right to the first bombdrop. And that was... a literal leap of faith. It took a big "fuck it" to get me to override my survival instincts there. I often feel like a baby because there are kids half my age that jump down stairsets twice that big, and they don't even have snow to break their fall. But for me, it's spooky. For me, these sets are the biggest thing I've done. So... I'm gonna let myself have that fear. Because the fear = the challenge. And overcoming the challenge, conquering the fear = the reward. Otherwise, I'm kinda cheating myself out of progression just because others have progressed further in their own journeys... That's kinda silly.

I ended skating on that note, it was a great feeling. I am so glad I stuck it out and pushed the last few attempts. It was worth it!

[pikagatogirltits]

I've been thinking about this, and I think a lot of that is because all the changes they did make still fit the spirit of One Piece.

It helps that they worked closely with Oda, and that Oda held a lot of power in vetoing any changes he didn't like. And it's also clear when reading what Oda had to say in interviews that Oda understood that there would need to be changes and that the point wasn't to stick super close to the manga or anime, but to play to the strengths of a live action show. Like dialogue for example, Oda mentioned in one interview that he has to carefully balance how much dialogue there is in the manga because lots of dialogue means less art. But that's not something a live action series needs to worry about, and in fact that kind of minimalist approach to dialogue can be bad for live action.

But even aside from Oda's involvement, I think it also really, really helped that a lot of the cast and crew were fans of One Piece. More importantly... they're the kind of fans who actually respect the source material.

Like...you see it with stuff like comics or Star Wars or other long running nerd media...a self professed fan will take the reigns on some new project and it's clear from how they talk and how their project is written that they see themselves as a true fan that sees the flaws in the source material and this is their chance to fix it, make it appeal to other real fans like themselves.

But the live action One Piece clearly doesn't view the changes it makes as attempts to fix things (well, except maybe toning down Sanji but that's a genuine criticism about One Piece that's pretty valid and toning down Sanji's creep factor and reverting him back to his initial "chivalrous simp" personality was 100% the right call.) It treats them more as chances to express themselves and lean into the limits and strengths of the medium they're working with. And they're clearly trying to balance making this a love letter for fans and something accessible to new watchers.

Sorry to randomly gush on your post but I was pouring through a lot of the prerelease interviews and promo stuff and I just...as a writer myself, as a media buff, and as a One Piece fan, I really am in awe at how many elements were carefully brought together to make this as good as it is. You're right that it's impressive. There's a lot of lessons to be learned from this about what makes a great adaptation, I can only hope that Hollywood can learn at least a fraction of them.

Its actually extremely impressive that the team behind the live action one piece managed to change so much of the show but still be so good that the hardcore fans of the show arent rioting about the changes. Like there has never been an adaptation i’ve seen that has changed so much and gotten so little flak for it

[maxwell-grant]

What’s the difference between a pulp hero and a super hero?

There is a common sentiment when discussing pulp heroes, when compared to superheroes, that positions the two as if they were separate by entire eras, with pulp heroes being as distinct from the superheroes as the dinosaurs are to mankind. But then again, the dinosaurs never really went away, did they? 

Oh sure, they endured a great extinction, they downsized and ceded their thrones to the tiny little rats that scurried in their shadow, who then grew to become just as big, and then even bigger, but they never went away. They simply adapted into new forms and formed new ecosystems. We call them birds now.

The gap between Superman and The Shadow is merely 6 years, hardly much of a generation. There are those that argue that the Marvel and DC universes still have pulp heroes, that Batman is (or was) one, that characters like The Question and Moon Knight carry on the tradition. We have characters like Hellboy, Grendel, Tom Strong and Zack Overkill as original, modern examples of pulp characters, strongly identified as such. Venture Bros had in 2016 the best modern take on the Green Hornet. Lavender Jack is still going strong. So the idea that pulp heroes are defined solely by being old and outdated isn’t exactly true, when clearly there’s still enough gas in the tank centuries later for stories with them to be told.

Is there any meaningful distinction between pulp heroes and superheroes? If not, can we identify one?

Costume is definitely a big part of it, as Grant Morrison famously argued in his own summation. Of what he considers the big difference between the two: 

“What makes the superhero more current is the performance aspect. That's what The Shadow and those other guys don't really have. Their costumes are not bright, and they don't have their initials on their chest, and everything isn't out front and popping like the superheroes. I think we can relate to that about them because in the world we live in, everyone has a constant need to be a star. I think superheroes are keyed into that parallelism. They're performers. They're rock stars, and they always have been.

And he’s right, to an extent. It’s definitely tied into the central differences between The Shadow and Batman, as I’ve elaborated. While The Shadow was far, far from the only type of pulp hero, the superhero’s costume has long been defined as THE thing that sets it apart from every other type of fictional character. At least, when it comes to American superheroes. 

Because the “criteria” for superheroes is nowhere near as set in stone as some would like to believe. Our basic definition of superheroes is based around comparisons and contrasts to Superman and Batman, and how they fit into what we call “the superhero genre”. The existence of a superhero genre is, in and of itself, debatable, and any working definition for superheroes is inevitably going to have too many exceptions. 

Superheroes are not defined by settings, like cowboys or spacemen, or their profession, like detectives. They can’t be defined by superpowers (Batman), a mission statement, having secret identities (Fantastic Four, Tony Stark), being good people, or good at their jobs. The costume, the closest there is to a true, defining convention, still has a considerable share of exceptions like Jack Knight’s Starman, a great deal of the X-Men who do not wear uniforms, or most superheroes created outside the US. The most basic definition of superhero is of comic book characters with iconic costumes and enhanced abilities who fight villains in shared superhero universes, but even that falls short of exceptions by including characters who are not superheroes (John Constantine and other Vertigo characters, Jonah Hex, the Punisher). Some people would call Goku or Harry Potter or Lucky Luke or Monica’s Gang superheroes, Donald Duck has literally been one. “Character with a distinctive design and unusual talents who fights evil” includes virtually every fictional hero that’s ever achieved a modicum of popularity in a visual medium.

Even telling stories with super characters doesn’t mean you’re going to be writing a superhero story (Joker). Superheroes are not defined by settings and genres, but they can inhabit just about any of them you can imagine. Horror, westerns, gritty crime drama, historical reconstruction, romance, space adventure, war stories, surrealism stories. As Morrison put it, they aren’t so much a genre as they are “a special chilli pepper-like ingredient designed to energize other genres”, part of the reason why they colonized the entire blockbuster landscape.

Aviation became a thing in the war years, so they started producing en masse aviation pulps as a subgenre. Zeppelins became popular, so they had a short-lived zeppelin subgenre. Celebrities starred in their own magazines. The American pulps were different from the German pulps, or the Italian pulps, or the Canadian pulps. In China, wuxia arose at a similar time period and with similar themes and distribution. In Brazil, we have “folhetos”, short, poetic, extremely cheap prose often written about romantic heroes and “cangaçeiros”, the closest local equivalent to the American cowboys. In Japan, “light novels” began life as pulp fiction, distributed in exactly the same format and literally sold as such. Pulp fiction has long outlived any and all attempts to define it as 30s literary fiction only.

Likewise, “pulp” and “pulp heroes” are terms employed very, very loosely. Characters like The Shadow and Doc Savage arrived quite late in the history of pulp fiction. You had characters like Jimmie Dale, Bulldog Drummond, Tarzan, Conan, a billion non-descript trenchcoat guys, and before those the likes of Nick Carter and Sexton Blake, dime novel detectives who made the jump to pulp. You had your hero pulps, villain pulps, adventure pulps, romance pulps, horror pulps, weird menace pulps. Science fiction, planetary romance, roman-era adventures, lost race adventures, anything that publishers could sell was turned into pulp stories starring, what else, pulp heroes. 

How do you make sense of it all?

The main difference to consider is the mediums they were made for. 

Pulp heroes were made for literature, superheroes were made for comic books.

Superheroes NEED to pop out visually, to have bold and flashy and striking designs, because comic books are visual stories first and foremost, who live and die on having attractive, catching character designs and the promise of an entertaining story with them. Pulp heroes, in turn, can often just be ordinary dudes and dudettes and anything in between in trenchcoats or evening wear or furry underwear, or masters of disguise rarely identifiable, because the only thing that needs to visually striking at first glance in a pulp magazine is the cover, so your imagination can get ready to do the rest. Smoking guns, bloody daggers, a romantic embrace, monsters hunched over ladies in peril, incendiary escapes. The characters can look like and be literally anything.

Comic books are a sequential art form where art and writing come together to tell a story, and every illustration must serve the story and vice-versa. It needs to give you an incentive to keep being visually invested in whatever’s going on. Pulp literature stays dead on the page unless animated by your expectations; you may have the illusion of submitting to an experience, but really it’s you expending your imagination to otherwise inert signals. You have to provide the colors and flashy sequences and great meaning yourself, and as a trade, you get much more text to work with in novels than you do in comic books, where the dialogue and narration are fundamentally secondary to the visual, whether it’s a superhero punching stars or a monster covered in blood.

Each art form has its strengths and weaknesses, of course, which are only accentuated when each tries to be of a different kind. There's been pulp heroes that tried making the jump to comics, and comic heroes that made the jump to literature. There’s good, even great examples, of both, but even at their best, there's always some incongruity, because that's not the medium these characters were made for. 

Superheroes are characters defined by being extraordinary. The pulp heroes are too, in many cases, distinguished from their literary antecessors because they were too uncanny and weird, a middleground between the folklore/fairy tale heroes and the grounded detective and adventure characters such as Sherlock, and the later far out superheroes. But they don’t necessarily have to be extraordinary. Sometimes they can very well just be completely ordinary characters, caught in bizarre circumstances and managing them as best they can, or simply using skills available to anyone who puts in effort to do good. Often enough the extraordinary comes in the form of a bizarre villain, or a tangled conspiracy, a monster from outside the world, a unique time period. The extraordinary is there, but it doesn’t have to be in the hero. 

That is, I’d argue, the other big fundamental difference between the two. "Superhero” is a name we use to define a type of character who fits an extraordinary mold, a Super Hero. It’s a genre, it can be every genre, it’s a shared universe and a stand-alone epic. There are guidelines, structures at work here. Grids, page count, illustrators. The Big Two and their domain over the concept. Academic usage of the term, standards that rule the “genre”, when it is defined as a genre. Malleable and overpowering and adaptable and timeless as the superhero may be, it’s still bound by a certain set of rules and trends.

The term “pulp hero” is a term that we use to label just about any character that happens to star in something we recognize as “pulp fiction”, even if it isn’t literally written in pulp, even if it’s decades later. It’s a “metaphor with no brakes in it”. Superheroes can be pulp heroes. The most powerless, unlucky, homeless bum can be a pulp hero, there were entire subgenres of pulp stories based on homeless protagonists or talltale stories told in bars. The cruelest villain can be a pulp hero. Boris Karloff about to stab you with a knife named Ike IS a pulp hero, and so is a space slug on a warpath (look up what happened when Lovecraft and R.E Howard collaborated).

As much as I may dislike the idea of pulp heroes largely only existing in the shadow of superheroes nowadays...that is kinda appropriate, isn’t it? Of course they are going to live and make their homes in the place where the sun doesn’t shine. Where Superman and co would never go to. 

Of course the 90s reboots of these characters failed. Because they tried turning these characters into superheroes, and they are not superheroes. They can visit those world, but they don’t belong in them, or anywhere else. They live in places where the light doesn’t touch, worlds much bigger and darker and more vast than you’d ever think at first glance, worlds that we still haven’t fully discovered (over 38% of American pulps no longer exist, 14% survive in less than five scattered copies, to say nothing of all pulps and pulp heroes outside of America). Not lesser, not gone, despite having every reason to. Just different, reborn time and time again. The shadow opposites.

In short: One is represented by Superman. The other is represented by The Shadow. There are worlds far beyond those two, but when you think of the concepts, those are the ones that things always seem to come back to.

[natureintheory]

Art, Science, & Knowledge Bias

For (digital*) artists terms like low poly, HUD, VFX, pixel art, vector, graphic vs illustration — they're routine. Many take these for granted, they seem like cultural staples. But it's always interesting to learn what's actually alien to others: even just "3D" as a concept, for one.

It's genuinely a cool opportunity for a "reality check" about your knowledge bias. Something that's now mundane or cliche to you is still magic (or meaningless jargon, or stuck with certain connotations) to others.

It also surprises me (I don't know if this is generational) because I'm constantly googling. If I don't know something, I just look it up. Unless it's complicated / esoteric, then I'd go to a person or forum. Again not a slight at all, it's just a point of interest.

Expanding on the examples in first paragraph:

If you're a pixel or low poly artist, you might be interested to know that you might not be hired more generally because there's still very much a connotation of video games. For artists it's just a medium, some of us grew up with it. But when a medium has such firm associations, it can be a hard sell (no matter how much the art director likes your art).

I recently had to explain HUD & VFX, even though we're entrenched in movies and other media where these things are ubiquitous (I'd even think culturally inescapable).

Graphic design / illustration — many have no idea that they're totally different skillsets & professions.

And in science (frustratingly) the words graphic / illustration used interchangeably. Usually they mean graphic, but often any figure/chart/graphic will also be called illustration.

3D is my favorite: despite movies etc, a non-artist can question what that means — after all, it's still a 2D image on a screen, right? I've been asked to explain this before and I thought that was super interesting because I never really questioned it.

Worse is if you sketch / blockout in 3D as a 2D artist — that can take some explaining. There can be a lot of "is this what it's going to look like?" and similar. 3D is tough because it has a sort of "finished" look even when raw.

And for me, Gradient Maps: useful... and boring. I try to escape them (just in my own art, I really don't mind them generally) because it's easy to become over-reliant. That is, by wasting time (like messing around with filters), or the final work having an overly "canned" look because these effects are super recognizable when left unchanged.

When you're a pro in a field, visible tools and processes can start to look cliche. E.g. when you see something and know exactly what they did, or when it's clearly tutorial work. IF you know about them! Newer practitioners / non-experts and most of your audience likely have no idea.

For better and worse, I'm always reminded that most people are just looking at what's in a picture, not technique.

—

For a bit more context: I think about this a lot working in art / design / science / journalism. All of these can get kind of insular; easy to forget that people outside your field have a vastly different range of knowledge. It's important to be aware of & facilitate communication & education. Include, not exclude. In my opinion, a good leader is also a good communicator, a good teacher.

—

*Not all, of course.

[luminarily]

i am thinking about writing the response for a specific artist for class and honestly i have so many thoughts. i'm still enraged at small things that just. !!! i think she could have delved more into a cultural historical study, like i get that isn't her practice, but i don't have the cultural context to understand why some of this is meant to challenge expectations?

she started her talk with "don't leave during the q&a because that will disrupt people" and then showed us her artwork of a woman running away from her marriage with the money the guests gave. like. leaving in both cases is inconsiderate? it's hypocritical to say that the runaway bride is a good thing because she's a girlboss subverting expectations, leaving her groom at the altar, stealing people's hard earned money, but i can't leave because that's a dick move to the people in the room?

she mentioned that she really likes drawing women smoking as some form of sexual liberation because it's a white girl pinup thing, which like whatever, BUT she made a series called "badass brides" (the brides aren't doing anything badass they're just sitting) and she titled the full-indian one "og badass bride" and all the other ones by their races, because she wants to critique the treatment of mixed-race people in india, right, but i don't think she engaged in the bicultural context at all. one of her brides was "badass indo-chinese bride" which like. i'm chinese, i'm doing my degree in east asian studies, i think i can think about this one, and right off the bat.

the lady, like all the other ladies, are depicted in indian dress, and i don't really know what part of them links to the other culture? like dress is super important and it shows a lot and putting her in some kind of bridal dress relating to the other culture would be nice, it would have less of a "indian is prevalent and more important" (i think this is the opposite of what she professes to go on about). the only thing that i can see about this painting that has to do with "chinese" more than her other paintings are the bun (which is... weird... because have you SEEN the intricacies of ancient chinese hairstyles?). and i want to talk about the cigarette. none of the other badass brides are smoking. i get that this artist likes painting women smoking BUT. i don't think she did ANY research on the other cultures, she just made shit up, because in what world. in WHAT world. are you going to show me a series of images of people from different cultures and the only the person smoking is from the country that went through the fucking OPIUM WAR. look. look. this is a lot of cultural background, which i think that the artist SHOULD HAVE CONSIDERED if she wanted to make a piece about cultural backgrounds!!! the british empire was heavy in debt because empire is expensive, so what they chose to do was plant lots of opium in india and sell lots of opium to people in china, so they could fund their other things like the slave trade. ohhh i see that's the link, that's why the artist did that. she's trying to link india and china through opium. BUT at the time social darwinism was a hardcore thing, and the british justified their conquest and absolute slaughtering of china with "they are a weak, backward race for being addicted to opium, unlike us, so we have a moral obligation to subjugate them." and if you want to talk about the atrocities that their ideologies created. you can look at things like the eight nations alliance. the unequal treaties. the rape of nanjing.

anyway i'm sure i have more to say on that point but! let's talk about something else. this artist paints from models a lot, which i think she could have elaborated on (she's doing her masters in the university of toronto, where the guy who coined the phrase "the medium is the message" works. i think she could honor mcluhan that much). but what i'm concerned about is the??? the RPF???? she did a painting of a lady actress in India who is super influential about some of the things she wanted to talk about, but our beloved artist felt that it was also imperative to talk about how trans women are treated in the media in this piece also, so... she decided... to draw the actress... a trans woman? i don't know but this kind of gender-blind casting doesn't sit well with me. why would you decide to headcanon a living woman as trans, instead of... choosing a transwoman model in the first place? instead of not treating a real person as an image for you to project your ideas on?

moving on, one of her other artworks was from the "badass bahus" series, and she chose to depict a woman smoking and resting as she was making some kind of food, except 1) the sanitation standards were ghastly 2) the model was smoking with one hand and her other hand in dough and flour 3) the model was sitting on the stovetop. i think this is just a really dumb position to sit in but if you wanted any kind of serious analysis out of me you could say that sitting on the stove while holding fire and flour (flour explodes under pressure) is dangerous, and by juxtaposing "rest" with "danger" is the exact opposite of her point, which is supposed to be that "the perfect industrious daughter in law is a negative stereotype perpetrated by the patriarchy and we should criticize it." also on that point she goes off about how patriarchy sucks but i don't think she had any kind of investigation on it. i would have liked if she mentioned that the industrious daughter in law and other things are often enforced by women, onto other women, and how it's not unilaterally "the patriarchy." things... can be complex...

she also talked a lot about how her art had lots of negative reception from conservative indian people. someone in the audience told her that "if people feel uncomfortable that means they're in the wrong and they're sexist" and she agreed. she agreed! ten years of questioning patriarchy and you have suuuuch a nuanced point of view? THAT IS NOT HOW THIS WORKS. THAT IS NOT HOW ANY OF THIS WORKS. i was born a female woman and i was so incredibly uncomfortable with this entire presentation. something making you uncomfortable is meant to be an opening! the artist is trying to make you see something the way they see it. you have space to engage critically and question your perspective-- why does it make you feel this way, is there a meaning, what is the artist trying to show you? well what i fucking saw was "the artist is lazy and insensitive in the way she is addressing patriarchy, stereotype, race, gender, and media."

even worse to me: she also started off her presentation with something about how she finished her undergrad making other work but felt it was too banal and useless "wanted to make art that was meaningful" which was... lol. as an artist who simply makes art for funsies, that came across poorly, but also i don't see the deep meaning behind her art. it would have been okay if she explained stuff, but she didn't, and she billed this to "it's hard to fit 10yrs of work into 1h." if it's hard to do that and to make yourself sound like something who is not a twat... then don't! it's that easy! god!

she ended off asking if anyone had any questions. at this exact moment the guy in the front row, kitty corner in front of me, got up and left. fucking legend, i wish i did that. i hate this artist so much