#choibok blogs

[cosmicgardencreative]

Spent Saturday afternoon with @fallenseraphs watching The End of Evangelion to conclude our NGE experience over the months.

What a trip.

[cosmicgardencreative]

Seconding everything @walkinaroundtheuniverse says here. Ismaire and I actually played this game when it first launched as an f2p action MMO. They've added soooo much to the cast, and it's really turned into some serious eye-candy for both female and male characters.

It's also pretty encouraging to come back to the game, and find that the lore still holds up when you play it from the beginning. I remember when we only had season 1-3, so a lot's changed since when it was just three MCs. It's been both refreshing and an enjoyable ride to recap from the beginning as a couple of the newer characters. If you're into lore, it's so much fun picking out where certain conspiracies starts -- with the occasional emotional damage this game can cause.

Comparing to how it played back then to now: Vindictus is a beautiful game in story and visuals, and it's quite forgiving to the most casual of players.

Come for the cute outfits.

Stay for the action.

to all people enjoying time loops and good, altough a tad bit sad stories (like bitter-sweet), play vindictus.

Just.

It's old, as of now, with kinda old graphics. But that makes it run on anything now. And story, in my opinion, is good.

Just finished season 2 (there are multiple seasons with main plots), and before, i finished season 1 multiple times. It's really fun, fun enough for replaying it.

Combat is solid. Nothing is locked by too weak gear or lack of other players, because you're gifted good equipement ( which makes it a bit too easy... but let's you enjoy the story without frustration? well, if you go far enough you will meet challange, i think)

Give it a try i guess. And yeah, finishing season 2 made me write that. fuuuuuuuuuu-

(it's also easy to get free apparell, which normally you would have to buy-

i'm just saying my mc is running around in strawberry underwear, underneath his badass armour, it's funny xd)

[cosmicgardencreative]

Job shenanigans man…

I’ve been temping for an international shipping company for a little over a month now. It started off with a mindless filing duty, and sprucing up graphics for a handbook (convincing IT to give me a workable photo editor was a journey on its own). The job overall isn't bad. Definitely am learning a whole new side to humans when it comes to employment. HR is a helluva department to be an administrator for. At least one of the HR ladies that I work with understands that I'd rather temp for them than be a full-time employee.

Then after about a month, I did a follow-up call with my recruiter, where she gave me some solid tips about treating my position like I'm the consultant, not so much a submissive peon. It was a little relieving to be able to tell her that I don't like this job if I can help it, which she understood, but advised that I do my best endure while the job market's thin. In all my years of employment, it was actually nice to have a mature discussion about how jobs work, and how to take ownership of my job skills.

Fast forward to today, where I've been assisting in planning a corporate event for the last couple weeks. I don’t know why my boss’s boss thought I would be a good person to assist her, when she's remoting in from Florida while I'm in Washington. Btw this event is in Georgia. Totally makes sense to give the Expat from South Korea to “secure a site and restaurants” in southern USA. Where I have never lived.

Suffice to say, this has been a consistent theme since my call with my recruiter:

I can’t make assumptions on people’s capacities, but there are times when I wonder how normies get through life.

Like, it's already hard enough when managing your ADHD makes your checklist look like a chutes-and-ladders game played with highlighters. All to make sure everything goes in order (cos to heck with our emotional regulation) while our squirrel-ly brains “multitask" with phone breaks as a way to cope. But then, imagine my annoyance when I found out that the normies-in-charge weren’t organized to begin with.

Izzy already reminds me enough times that people don’t think ahead, but it's still wild to me… 🤦🏻How many times have us NDs been told by normies to be more organized, thoughtful, and flexible whenever things go awry? I don’t mean to throw shade at the two people I report to, but damn…. I can only imagine how much they have to juggle while trying not to lose their own cookies. But eh, guess that’s corporate life. No time to strategize and execute — just react and get shit done 👍🏼

Despite how my inbox looks when I clock in, I'm learning a lot, and can already see how to implement improvements for future event plannings. Oddly enough, I accidentally found “enjoyment” in problem solving in this area, but the key thing is communication, which is hard to speak up on while you feel like you’re toeing the line with your busy superiors’ schedules. At least now I can rightly put on my resume Professional Fire Extinguisher.

[cosmicgardencreative]

A CGCW Yuletide

Vibing with my husband and a few online friends this evening. We don't celebrate Xmas in the way our families had in the past, but we didn't know how to do Yule until deciding that we're observing Yule this year. Merrymaking abounds in this household, and we wish you all the same this evening ♥

[cosmicgardencreative]

Got duped by an AI art account on Cara ugh.. Managed to delete my comment and undo the repost/like just to keep our distance from it, but man, it was rather disappointing to feel like we accidentally endorsed something that appeared legitimate.

It took a hot second for there to be any real reason to report the account, but then when it went from hyperfixating on babe-licious witches with titties (yes, Izzy and I are very simple, primally driven animals) to suddenly drawing a wizard "for the first time," it definitely was a head-tilter.

Like, witchy anime waifu with maybe some unevenness to eye shape styles? Not everything has to be symmetrical. Art's allowed to be free and we'll grow from our mistakes.

Or at least I thought so, until I noticed the account never showed any of its rougher works. Not everything has to be a polished piece, and yet this account would show nothing but finished pieces. It's reasonable to think that that maybe there was a back log of stuff to upload.

But then, the unexpected style change when they finally "drew" a wizard? The style shift alone from drawing anime-waifus to a singular hot black man with a white man's hair texture was such a red flag. Forget the fact that the wizard's entire left arm blended into the folds and it wasn't fully "rendered" 😑

For awhile, I felt foolish for thinking it was a legit mechanical pencil drawing with some natural messiness to it. But then to see how easily the account garnered at least 60 followers in just 4 days of activity? Clearly I wasn't the only one. Even a user with the Cara verified professional icon thought the account was legit. It's astonishing to see how much AI art is improving that it's easy to overlook a work simulating traditional graphite. The way the user tried to throw in smudges, eraser marks, and even paper edges, were actually clever touches. While I didn't know what to expect when people said that AI art is getting trickier to detect, I can now at least add this to my experience.

On a final note, it's reassuring to see how consistently Cara practices their anti-AI art stance. This would be my second time reporting a suspected account. There were times when I was nervous about hitting the report button on the accounts, because what if I was wrong? I've seen more than enough artists getting accused for being AI art when they're not. But the way the moderation team handles them professionally and discreetly instills a lot of trust into them. It's just nice to reliably go to a platform and not worry about seeing a heated discourse or a callout post that turns into a witch hunt.

[cosmicgardencreative]

after seeing the original anime series, it's wild to think that we were fed by just one episode near the end of the series for an m/m pairing to originate. I didn't even get to experience the original NGE until now, and I was seriously wondering when this Kaworu guy was gonna come out. And then he just.. dies?? The shit that Shinji had to go through e_e

Anyway, we just happened upon the NGE remastered series on Prime Video, and dang! It's been super fun to see how a lot of the lore is being filled in ㅇㅂㅇ)b Stoked to see how Kaworu showing up earlier in the first quarter while introducing a whole new Unit character is gonna fit in to the canon.

Also the animation is so superb... TㅅT

[cosmicgardencreative]

Vindictus - F2P Action MMORPG & Why We Love It

Hi all, it's been a minute since Ismaire and I got to let our hair down, so I'm just gonna take a sec to share my love of Vindictus. 

I don't always talk about how a game is underrated, but man, I will stand by Nexon/DevCat's first free-to-play action MMORPG. I've heard many people put it down for how "unoptimized" this game is. I'm not a PC gamer, but I feel that with today's technology, you can definitely play this game on today's graphics standards. 

Obviously this isn't a comparison to the new Vindi in development, but I'm just impressed to see how far this MMO has come.

PaikMyungJin (left, Evie/Choi) and Ismer (right, Lann/Ismaire) make a comeback to Vindictus in 2024.

The game can overall feel pretty simple and low-graphics to some, but frankly, I just see that as the dev team being smart with their resources. The only hang-up I can think is if you have a slow internet connection, it might be a difficult game to play with others, but it's pretty solo-friendly for the first 2-3 seasons. 

Kinkoku (left, Sou/Ismaire) wondering what Biseuri (Sylas/Haegi/Choi) is thinking about.

I'll have to do a separate post that goes into the game's history. There's so much that could be said when the game first rolled out on October 13, 2010 for the US release. Izzy and I dating coincided with us finally having a game we could play together, since a lot of console games weren't prioritizing couch co-op as much (except for Resident Evil 5-6). [[On a separate side note, I just realized where our points of influences could be traced back to about here. All the more reason why we just love some of our old fandoms...]]

The nice thing about Vindictus is that you can play it solely with a keyboard (our preferred controls), a mouse + keyboard, or a gamepad. The game is pretty versatile for people with preferences. Most of the characters respond pretty well to the keyboard controls. The few that I noticed were difficult to maneuver in combat was Kai with his bow and crossgun, and Hurk with his teide (sword + shotgun combo), more for precision reasons than anything. Ultimately, do what's comfortable for you!

Alts, alts, and more alts!

Yes, this game will make you play so many alts. And it's worth it. I find this comparable to FFXIV's multi-job branches that your WoL can unlock, but instead of it all stockpiled to one character, you have multiple MCs with various backstories and even special connections to one another! This game being so lore-heavy actually deserves to have multiple characters for the player to explore with. You'll find over time that you'll catch some things you didn't think about from your first playthrough, and it'll just hit you differently... 😭 

Kiena (Fiona/Choi) slicing through enemies.

BradieHU (bg left, Charon/Izzy) and Lycapollos (fg right, Achel/Choi), hecking over a Kobold commander.

PaikMyungJin firing her lasers at a laser cannon/golem.

Ismer slipdashing past the lasers for the finishing kill.

Can't guarantee great screenshots 100% of the time, but the more you play, the better the chances :) 

______________________________________________________________

Final thoughts:

Being a casual player, I personally can't give a testimony on how the overall MMO culture is like in Vindictus nowadays. We did have a generally good experience since we weren't the types to go ham about stat comparisons and just genuinely want to have fun. You'll likely run into cool people as long as you're a nice and polite gamer. But of course, we weren't exempt from being driven away by guild dramas, which then later caused us to have an on-and-off hiatus from the game since 2014...  (wow it's a decade already...) Just be prepared that you may get inundated with a lot of female characters in very... curvy skins. Some of the costume/outfitters come with special enhancements, and Vindictus really doesn't hide the fact that it's a rated-M game 😳🪭 Personally it does shock me, but at the same time, props to people who aren't afraid to flaunt it 😂

Moonglitter (Eira/Izzy) not afraid to flaunt her "All Curves Revealing Off Shoulder Set". 

Because there's so much content to push through, DevCat did their due diligence in balancing the first 3 seasons of content with gear that rewarded for progressing. If you do appreciate a little bit of a challenge, though, I recommend keeping on the lowbie gear till you know you need the damage boost. And if you ever find yourself not liking the aesthetics, the game is usually good about giving you aesthetic coupons for you to "rent" through events and the AP shop. 

As far as solo/duo-ing experiences go, Izzy and I were able to catch up to Season 3 on our own. We found that we're not able to go through Redeemers currently, but I'm curious to see how well we might be able to duo the battles soon as we're properly geared from endgame :) I'm only hesitant to pug with others because we're not sure if our internet connection could handle a crowd of 2+ external connections. But then again we're working adults who pay for good speed so maybe? lol 

By the way, you get to choose two paths of either a Dark Knight or a Paladin:

Scaley Edgelord

Shiny Sparkle Knight

Thanks for taking the time to read my little appreciation post for Vindictus. If you're another Vindi-fan, feel free to comment on your experience here! Vindictus/Mabinogi Heroes is such a niche fandom, so I'd be happy to chat with others who love the gameplay and lore ^_^ I'm very inclined to share some Vindictus fanart in the near future, so let's have fun!

[cosmicgardencreative]

Something that I've been meditating on since I started getting more serious with digital art is pressure sensitivity, specifically calibrating with the tablet's global settings as a first step. It's a topic I don't see come up often for art tips. Probably because it's intuitive for some, or maybe it's something that's not given much thought. I never really had anyone sit me down and explain how hand pressure works beyond the various brush settings, while practicing varying your hand pressure to achieve line weight.

Those are certainly good principles to have as a digital artist, but what if you could make your transition from traditional to digital more intuitive, especially with traditional-like brushes that are supposed to simulate the real thing?

Personal experience/study under cut [7 min read ]:

Art doesn't have to be rocket science, but I believe you have to understand how your tools work if you want to be productive with your art, like how you need certain mediums to paint with oils on a primed canvas.

I had seen so many tips on how to use flow/opacity/jitter, or how to adjust settings for the perfect line weight for Photoshop, but it never worked right for me. Then there was PaintTool Sai, where its ink brush was perfect to customize to your own pressure while giving the right amount of smoothness in edge. But ever since the copy that I had broke on an old laptop, I began transitioning to Clip Studio Paint. I love using CSP, but ever since I started using it, I was on a hunt for the one brush I could naturally draw with and achieve the same effect.

I didn't ever want to fall into the trap of "What brush are you using?" because ain't nobody got time for that. I remember back then how only a few software like Sai and Corel Painter had the exact ink brush everyone was excited about using (2000s). But where I'm at with CSP today? I made 8 brushes so far, each one having a significant tweak from its predecessor, hoping to achieve a certain line aesthetic and weight. I'd get close each time, though I'd usually just settle by the end, feeling resigned that maybe that's how brushes are.

I've been using CSP for about 7 years now, and I know that I've improved on drawing in general during that time. Even so, I hadn't drawn as much as I'd like as I upgraded to an Intuos Pro large tablet, and I'm pretty certain it was because I never adjusted from having used to draw on a Bamboo small on Sai and FireAlpaca, which is 1000 levels of pressure as opposed to Intuos's at 8192! I've always drawn with a light touch, which is why I favored using mechanical pencils and erasers for my sketches before digitizing them. Transferring the pics using old tools was easier back then, but with my current tools? I'd ruminate why I couldn't ever seem to settle with any of the drawing brushes, whether default or by someone else's customizations. That ended up being a buzzkill for many of my drawing moods.

To clarify, I definitely found and customized my own brushes to my liking. It still didn't stop the feeling that I was under-utilizing the local brushes that CSP made with their own brush engine, which is supposed to be pretty good (something that could be compared to Corel Painter back then).

[*]

Here's my first brush study where I was getting a feel for how the Tapered, Rough, Mechanical, and Pencil brushes worked at their default. Tapered was especially difficult to work with because it felt like I had to apply more pressure to get the lines down. Rough and Mechanical were fine for the fine lines, but it didn't build up as nicely as the Pencil did.

When I mused about this on an art server a couple days ago, a fellow member had brought up that I could just adjust each individual brush to my natural pressure. Which they weren't wrong about, but Ismaire can attest to you that there are days when I've spent hours fussing over brush settings only to still be dissatisfied. I know this looked like an unnecessary fixation to others, but I was determined to have a brush that I didn't have to think twice about, like how one expects to pick up a mechanical pencil and draw on paper.

Part of my problem with accomplishing my drawings is that I deal with a lot of distractions in my workspace, like cats and ADHD. The last thing I wanted was to be distracted by my dissatisfaction of my brush settings. Like seriously, once you've tweaked a brush, it should be one and done, right? Even from trying other people's pencil/ink brushes, in spite of the benefits that somebody else figured it out for me, it still wasn't exactly what I was looking for as far as hand-feel goes.

I remembered in the past there was one art tip that showed up on my dash about how adjusting the pressure sensitivity on your tablet could help an artist not wear down their pen nibs as quickly. The feedback was generally positive, but it mostly came from people who had a harder hand pressure. This was something that I tried figuring on and off over the years, but couldn't figure out how it applied to my drawings until tonight.

[*]

Taking that old tip in mind, I went into the tablet settings and started playing with how much my tablet could detect my pressure:

1) I started experimenting with the pressure graph, where I pushed around the click threshold and max pressure, taking into account that I have a lighter touch. The test pad for the pressure sensitivity showed me what I thought I liked, but then my pencil sketches started coming out too light. I really had to start pressing harder to even get the darkness and line weight achieved.

2) I then resumed to the default to compare how much my pressure was being detected, which was back where I normally worked with. But when I tried one point over to the firm setting, the pencil brush turned out even lighter, and I had to apply more unnecessary pressure to get that scribble to be visible.

3) I tried putting the tablet at a softer tip once a long time ago, but it blew up my brushes like i was leaving blobs of color with hardly any pressure. Trying again today, though, I was more conscientious of how I applied my pressure from lightest to heaviest. It felt counterintuitive from what I was seeing in the graph and the tip feel, but then I started noticing the same CSP pencil brush was starting to act like a pencil. In the past I never understood how tilt could work, though everyone said it was supposed to simulate how you tilt a pencil to get broad strokes. I never was able to achieve that with this brush until now.

Victory at last!!

4) Now that I understood how the tilt function actually played with this brush, I reverted to default tablet settings to see what it would look like. At the default pressure setting, the fine line sketches were okay, but then I ended up having to apply a more significant amount of pressure when tilting the stylus. I don't think CSP would've wanted to give you a difficult pencil to work with because it should come out effortlessly.

5) Maybe I'm a slow bloomer, but I'm really stoked to finally understand how to use the pressure graph in conjunction with me using a soft pressure, which is no wonder why I jived with my blending brushes but couldn't ever be stay satisfied with my drawing brushes. Any art tutorials and tips that I've seen come my way don't seem to address how to first adjust your tablet pressure settings to your specifications. They just dive right into the mechanics of how to make a brush look a certain way, assuming that you'll figure out the rest if it still doesn't go your way.

[*]

Below is a sketch that started this whole essay. I started working on it after watching Love Hurts (highly recommend), but I was running into that same exasperation that kept me from finishing drawings, so I was determined to get my crap together. I'll be damned if I let one more sketchy WIP go gather dust because I couldn't get my workflow straightened out!

1) Rose and Marvin (gray sketches) were used with the same pencil brush at default settings for both Wacom tablet pressure and CSP brush. I'm estimating 40 minutes for both the characters, which isn't bad, but I knew the time spent was subconsciously not being happy with how the brush felt in my hand. 2) Raven (purple) was drawn much more comfortably once I adjusted to the softer tablet pressure, with the pencil finally feeling like an actual sharp pencil since I typically like sketching with a fine point. 3) Granted, Knuckles (red) was just a headshot, but if I had been working with the settings from before, I would've been angsting why I couldn't get past the sketch stage and then just straight up give up on the drawing because I mentally fatigued myself. I ended up adding more details (in green) on Marvin, all thanks to having a little extra energy left over :)

[*]

Everyone's hand pressure is different, but I'm finding it's sort of an underrated discussion. Again, maybe this is something that everyone else has figured out and don't need an explanation. At the same time, I feel like if we as artists were cognizant of how we use our tools, we wouldn't be constantly chasing after the latest brush pack thinking it would solve all our art woes, or worse be like me and suffer wondering why your drawings don't look the same when you switch between mediums.

You have to remember that the brush pack is customized by the creator, which may or may not match your own hand pressure. People who are aware of color monitors talk about calibrating their screens. We ought to make it a common practice to calibrate our tablet's pressure sensitivity as a global setting before changing all the brushes you plan to use. Perhaps this wouldn't apply to everyone, but I imagine if you're a tactile artist who's worked with various traditional medium, it probably wouldn't hurt to figure out how you apply pressure to your tablet beforehand and adjust accordingly.

[cosmicgardencreative]

social media musing under cut

I'm not as worried about trying to maintain multiple SMs nowadays, compared to the past when things were blowing up and I was trying to navigate through all the migrations. As much as I still sideeye tumblr [e.g. izzy's last sketch not showing up in the Stellar Blade tag, who knows why at this point], I do appreciate that we still have friends we can follow and just generally vibe. Between this and Pillowfort for blogging/sharing art, and then Cara for its portfolio and socializing, I'm pretty content with what we have.

but goddamn bsky is the one platform that I can't seem to jive with.

Unsurprising, really, since I was just as slow on figuring out twitter/X. I feel like it shouldn't be that hard, but for some reason sharing art and connecting over fandom on those platforms is unexpectedly harder??

Anyway, I only bring it up because we somehow managed to get a following with what little I posted of some old and current art. A few of the followers I've blocked because they were waifubots (???), but then we still have more followers than what's showing. Which could mean we were blocked by them...? But then why follow?

But yeah, just had to say my piece about the latest SMs as they continue trying to grab our attention for their own mission, as we users/netizens are just trying to get through life, whether through enterprise, hobby, and/or passion.

Just gonna end this thought with a music share:

[cosmicgardencreative]

when you're organizing your platforms in a spreadsheet, and the queerness just pops up naturally after filling in the cells by their respective website colors.

[cosmicgardencreative]

Not all art has to make sense

It's been a really busy couple weeks. We managed to accomplish a couple things in between, but it's mostly behind the scenes and storyboarding, so nothing we can show quite yet.

Even with the break that we could manage this Sunday, I got frustrated that I wasn't in the mode to draw my OCs. Instances like this was a reminder that sometimes you just gotta let your brain defrag itself with warmups that aren't character designs.

I don't know many others who do their art therapy like this, but I get a lot of satisfaction with playing with various brushes and colors.

First round was using the different airbrushes in CSP. Second was mixing some airbush with the realistic watercolor brushes, sort of a digital mixed-media feel.

It got pretty telling afterwards that my mind was brewing some dark clouds. The moody rainstorm I ended up painting, though, wasn't ominous but rather cathartic. Looking back at it now, it's weird recognizing how busy my internal workings can get, to the point where it's full of rolling clouds and flashing lights. Still, it's a pretty accurate visualization as I was then contemplating over how I'll be dropping my two weeks' notice on my manager tomorrow.

Although current budgeting prevents us from investing in a sub, I've gotten to appreciate CSP's unlimited doodle mode sans the export feature. MediBang's one hour free session just doesn't quite compare especially against CSP's brush engine.

When I refreshed the canvas for the next round, I played around a lot between the pen, watercolor, gouache, lasso tool, pencil, chalk, charcoal, and crayon subtools. I couldn't really care what I was doing then. I felt like a tired parent sitting on the bench while I let my hand run free like a 5-year-old at a playground.

This particular canvas session was more fun because I felt like I reconnected with how my hand naturally behaves. Who knew that stimming doesn't have to take fidget spinners and squishing colorful sand.

It was about at this point that I started taking notes on what brushes I was using and how they interacted with colors as I got more conscientious of the pressure sensitivity and tilt angles of the apple pencil.

Even though none of this was related to producing concept art, or finishing my queued WIPs, I'm not mad that it's not usable art. Not all art has to make sense, and we just need to be okay with drawing stuff that no one else would care except yourself.

[cosmicgardencreative]

I was just noticing how our Cara media was turning out, and had to take a sec to record this cute arrangement. Outer 4 corners are my sketches, with Izzy's in the cardinal directions.

In all my years online, I finally made a compressed GIF on my own. Nothing fancy other than the snipping tool's record and exporting with Clipchamp. Making that lil gif up there really got me to appreciate gifmakers who create hi-def gifs under the size limit and still make it look good. Hats off to you folks 🫡

[cosmicgardencreative]

50th Follower 🎉 Kiriban Event 🎉

To celebrate our growth so far, we're hosting a kiriban for the 50th follower count at our Cara profile cosmicgardencreative! If you like discovering OCs and getting invested in their misadventures, and would love to see it all in a comic or game some day, come check out our portfolio 😄 1st comment spotting the 50th follower count will win a sketch request of their favorite fandom character or OC (yours or a friend's) ⬅️see pinned post in link⬅️

Maybe this'll be a plus to some, but we've got some built-in lore with even how we arranged our portfolio folders... Did it especially for you analyzers out there 😁✌🏼

[cosmicgardencreative]

Disclaimer: Not something I would recommend without seeking guidance from a mudang (Korean shaman).

Just wanted to take a moment to appreciate being able to find solutions in getting past some metaphysical obstacles. Tbh I feel like I would get “that stare” from my Korean relatives (Buddhist) just as much as my white American family (a third of them being Mormon).

Still, it’s nice getting in touch with my heritage through the occult. And now to mentally prepare myself when people come in and go, “Is that a security system…? 🤔”

[cosmicgardencreative]

To those who see this post, go to your browser/desktop version of tumblr and toggle this option on under your blog(s)' settings. This'll prevent your blog to be shared with third parties (i.e. Midjourney, OpenAI).

That all said, Ismaire and I aren't leaving tumblr, though it has given us some pause on uploading up here. We toggled the same option, so hopefully that'll mean something while tumblr makes this final transition to the third party partnership(s).

For now, we'll just continue working how we usually do, only now it's with Nightshade & Glaze.

Moving on...

This blog will be kept for project updates, the occasional inspiration tag, etc. If you wish to see more art and give us a follow to show your support (we'd be so grateful♥), you can find us down below:

Pillowfort (feel free to contact us for an invite key!) Unvale (semi-active since 8/19/2024) bluesky (dipping our toes in) Instagram (paused updates)

The world's taken quite some turns against the creatives, but to echo a friend, please do whatever you can to support artists in whatever platform they choose, whether monetarily or by word-of-mouth :)

[cosmicgardencreative]

Some thoughts

Everyone's heard someone's own tale of woe of missing the old days of the internet. Never once during my 20s did I think about what kind of struggles NSFW artists would go through into the 21st century.

But after departing from y!Gallery for transphobic rules, then tumblr's poor handling of the porn ban, and now Twitter/X for just general wtf-ery, it's not easy uploading anything adult content nowadays and hope to build rapport.

Needless to say, I think tumblr is a fine platform if you toe the line just right. After Ismaire's sequel Halloween piece was hidden then red-flagged, it got me thinking about our experience so far on tumblr:

1) I follow #dark fantasy with the intent of seeing dark/gothic artwork, and yet somehow "dark fantasy" is conflated with dirty talk. I didn't think much on it cos whatever, everyone has their thoughts. Recently, though, the algorithm suggested a post where someone openly talks about masturbating to a porn vid and getting lost in their orgasmic headspace. It left me impressed when I realized how many people are willing to express their kinks with such explicitness -- without any mature labels. Surely Community Safety has bigger fish to fry, like those porn spam bots👍

2) An artist I follow shared a nsfw link to an old post with the Mature community label, and the image depicted an obviously explicit penetrative sex. Surprisingly, it's still hanging on because I guess a cleverly placed sticker was a good enough censor. You'd think this is somewhat encouraging that maybe we too can share some creatively drawn sexy times. The same artist also managed to hide an explicit pic of their OC getting finger banged under a "keep reading" link, and that was definitely not censored. I'm glad they're able to show it off, but personally, that's way too many mental hoops to jump through just to share the conclusion to the OC's horniness.

3) So then I post a drawing of a queer triad wearing scantily-clad costumes, no labels for potential mature content. We'll ignore that MyungJin was showing of their breasts, albeit no obvious nipples, and Vance's package was implied under the skirt. Meanwhile, Ismaire's sequel piece, labled as "Mature" + "sexual themes" gets hidden right after uploading. We were left confused why it wouldn't show on our dash or in the tags. After a few attempts of troubleshooting, then we saw why: Community Safety deemed Vance's hand going down Bidan's panties as sexually explicit, even though no genitalia was exposed. After meditating on it, though, we both figured it may as well have infringed the community guidelines🤷🏻 There's no reason why we should be confused by this, right? Especially after point #2.

While I'm on this topic, I need to point out that tumblr failed at being transparent how their Community Labels work. Yes, it works by helping people who don't want to see mature content. But was there ever a mention on how tumblr will hide your post from tag search if it detects infringement even with the Mature label? Maybe we're late to the party, but I guess it now makes sense how some posts are able to fly under the radar. Gotta get that visibility somehow.

For those that do, remember how some people's posts were randomly flagged for mature content before the purge? I had to wonder if tumblr was able to refine an automated bot/AI that can visually detect mature themes, and flag it for staff to review. Or maybe they just straight up queue in a mature post pool for people to manually review and release.

This happened to an upload I did on a fandom blog this year. It was a Leon/Ada pic that showed a lot of bite marks on Leon, Ada's skirt was hiked up exposing her butt, and the post was clearly marked "Mature". I contacted support about it, asking why it's taken more than a day for it show up in the tags. All I got in response was that I should give it time, but they'll also look into the community label for me.

The conclusion was laughably redundant: "We deemed your post as mature and labeled it for you." I mean, sure, I guess I needed their stamp of approval that it was indeed "Mature". Least I got a win when it was now allowed to be floating in the tags after a couple days of the initial upload 🙄

It's tiring to compartmentalize your art when sexuality is part of the experience. And to be clear, I'm not complaining. It's just discouraging thinking that you're being compliant, to put all this thought and energy into creating a piece, only to have it hidden with no communication that it's even being reviewed until you get an email saying the post has been flagged. Meanwhile, there are people out there who'll just explicitly talk about their kinks without the community labels, or have the post appropriately labeled, but then share the real spice under read more links.

Sure, we could've appealed, but honestly, we're just here to have fun and post. Neither of us care to spend the energy debating nuance and the subjectiveness of mature content with a company who didn't find solutions to not shaft their community from the beginning. Tumblr has evolved, and it's made it clear that queer artists just can't be true with their art.

That all said, we're planning to keep the blog, but just like Instagram and X, it's a lower priority to update when the engagement is already difficult to cultivate.

In a fit of frustration, I got us a key generated to Pillowfort because at this point, where else would we share our stuff? And man, am I glad I did. It's only been a few days, and honestly, we feel a lot better for it. We're not here for the numbers or clout, but it's a pleasant surprise seeing that we gained a few new followers in less than a day after we introduced ourselves to the community.

And I'm gonna be real: it's refreshing to have people actually like your stuff without worrying whether someone's gonna judge them for it, or that there's some pending horny jail waiting for them. The like function is pretty much like an AO3 kudos, and I think that's for the better really. If I liked something enough that I want to find it again, then it's more meaningful to share it so others can see it too.

If you've read this far, and are interested in participating on a platform where engagement and communication is encouraged, with an easy NSFW label system, hmu. I'm happy to generate keys for anyone to try out :)