#dies again . jpeg

[darkxsoulzyx]

WOE FOOLS BE UPON YE

[i Made an lights on animatic]

(thank you to @garbagechocolate for the sun thumbs up image <3)

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Yanis Varoufakis’s “Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism?”

Monday (October 2), I'll be in Boise to host an event with VE Schwab. On October 7–8, I'm in Milan to keynote Wired Nextfest.

Socialists have been hotly anticipating the end of capitalism since at least 1848, when Marx and Engels published The Communist Manifesto - but the Manifesto also reminds us that capitalism is only too happy to reinvent itself during its crises, coming back in new forms, over and over again:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/31/books/review/a-spectre-haunting-china-mieville.html

Now, in Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, Yanis Varoufakis - the "libertarian Marxist" former finance minister of Greece - makes an excellent case that capitalism died a decade ago, turning into a new form of feudalism: technofeudalism:

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/451795/technofeudalism-by-varoufakis-yanis/9781847927279

To understand where Varoufakis is coming from, you need to go beyond the colloquial meanings of "capitalism" and "feudalism." Capitalism isn't just "a system where we buy and sell things." It's a system where capital rules the roost: the richest, most powerful people are those who coerce workers into using their capital (factories, tools, vehicles, etc) to create income in the form of profits.

By contrast, a feudal society is one organized around people who own things, charging others to use them to produce goods and services. In a feudal society, the most important form of income isn't profit, it's rent. To quote Varoufakis: "rent flows from privileged access to things in fixed supply" (land, fossil fuels, etc). Profit comes from "entrepreneurial people who have invested in things that wouldn't have otherwise existed."

This distinction is subtle, but important: "Profit is vulnerable to market competition, rent is not." If you have a coffee shop, then every other coffee shop that opens on your block is a competitive threat that could erode your margins. But if you own the building the coffee shop owner rents, then every other coffee shop that opens on the block raises the property values and the amount of rent you can charge.

The capitalist revolution - extolled and condemned in the Manifesto - was led by people who valorized profits as the heroic returns for making something new in this world, and who condemned rents as a parasitic drain on the true producers whose entrepreneurial spirits would enrich us all. The "free markets" extolled by Adam Smith weren't free from regulation - they were free from rents:

https://locusmag.com/2021/03/cory-doctorow-free-markets/

But rents, Varoufakis writes, "survived only parasitically on, and in the shadows of, profit." That is, rentiers (people whose wealth comes from rents) were a small rump of the economy, slightly suspect and on the periphery of any consideration of how to organize our society. But all that changed in 2008, when the world's central banks addressed the Great Financial Crisis by bailing out not just the banks, but the bankers, funneling trillions to the people whose reckless behavior brought the world to the brink of economic ruin.

Suddenly, these wealthy people, and their banks, experienced enormous wealth-gains without profits. Their businesses lost billions in profits (the cost of offering the business's products and services vastly exceeded the money people spent on those products and services). But the business still had billions more at the end of the year than they'd had at the start: billions in public money, funneled to them by central banks.

This kicked off the "everything rally" in which every kind of asset - real estate, art, stocks, bonds, even monkey JPEGs - ballooned in value. That's exactly what you'd expect from an economy where rents dominate over profits. Feudal rentiers don't need to invest to keep making money - remember, their wealth comes from owning things that other people invest in to make money.

Rents are not vulnerable to competition, so rentiers don't need to plow their rents into new technology to keep the money coming in. The capitalist that leases the oil field needs to invest in new pumps and refining to stay competitive with other oil companies. But the rentier of the oil field doesn't have to do anything: either the capitalist tenant will invest in more capital and make the field more valuable, or they will lose out to another capitalist who'll replace them. Either way, the rentier gets more rent.

So when capitalists get richer, they spend some of that money on new capital, but when rentiers get richer, them spend money on more assets they can rent to capitalists. The "everything rally" made all kinds of capital more valuable, and companies that were transitioning to a feudal footing turned around and handed that money to their investors in stock buybacks and dividends, rather than spending the money on R&D, or new plants, or new technology.

The tech companies, though, were the exception. They invested in "cloud capital" - the servers, lines, and services that everyone else would have to pay rent on in order to practice capitalism.

Think of Amazon: Varoufakis likens shopping on Amazon to visiting a bustling city center filled with shops run by independent capitalists. However, all of those capitalists are subservient to a feudal lord: Jeff Bezos, who takes 51 cents out of every dollar they bring in, and furthermore gets to decide which products they can sell and how those products must be displayed:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/28/enshittification/#relentless-payola

The postcapitalist, technofeudal world isn't a world without capitalism, then. It's a world where capitalists are subservient to feudalists ("cloudalists" in Varoufakis's thesis), as are the rest of us the cloud peons, from the social media users and performers who fill the technofuedalists' siloes with "content" to the regular users whose media diet is dictated by the cloudalists' recommendation systems:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

A defining feature of cloudalism is the ability of the rentier lord to destroy any capitalist vassal's business with the click of a mouse. If Google kicks your business out of the search index, or if Facebook blocks your publication, or if Twitter shadowbans mentions of your product, or if Apple pulls your app from the store, you're toast.

Capitalists "still have the power to command labor from the majority who are reliant on wages," but they are still mere vassals to the cloudalists. Even the most energetic capitalist can't escape paying rent, thanks in large part to "IP," which I claim is best understood as "laws that let a company reach beyond its walls to dictate the conduct of competitors, critics and customers":

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

Varoufakis points to ways that the cloudalists can cement their gains: for example, "green" energy doesn't rely on land-leases (like fossil fuels), but it does rely on networked grids and data-protocols that can be loaded up with IP, either or both of which can be turned into chokepoints for feudal rent-extraction. To make things worse, Varoufakis argues that cloudalists won't be able to muster the degree of coordination and patience needed to actually resolve the climate emergency - they'll not only extract rent from every source of renewables, but they'll also silo them in ways that make them incapable of doing the things we need them to do.

Energy is just one of the technofeudal implications that Varoufakis explores in this book: there are also lengthy and fascinating sections on geopolitics, monetary policy, and the New Cold War. Technofeudalism - and the struggle to produce a dominant fiefdom - is a very useful lens for understanding US/Chinese tech wars.

Though Varoufakis is laying out a technical and even esoteric argument here, he takes great pains to make it accessible. The book is structured as a long open letter to his father, a chemical engineer and leftist who was a political prisoner during the fascist takeover of Greece. The framing device works very well, especially if you've read Talking To My Daughter About the Economy, Varoufakis's 2018 radical economics primer in the form of a letter to his young daughter:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374538491/talkingtomydaughterabouttheeconomy

At the very end of the book, Varoufakis calls for "a cloud rebellion to overthrow technofeudalism." This section is very short - and short on details. That's not a knock against the book: there are plenty of very good books that consist primarily or entirely of analysis of the problems with a system, without having to lay out a detailed program for solving those problems.

But for what it's worth, I think there is a way to plan and execute a "cloud rebellion" - a way to use laws, technology, reverse-engineering and human rights frameworks to shatter the platforms and seize the means of computation. I lay out that program in The Internet Con: How the Seize the Means of Computation, a book I published with Verso Books a couple weeks ago:

https://www.versobooks.com/products/3035-the-internet-con

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/28/cloudalists/#cloud-capital

[magicalmanhattanproject]

Bad's Choice Is His Own

Badboyhalo family guy death pose dot jpeg. Now what?

I've seen a couple posts already talking about how Bad has been cast out of Heaven by a cruel, harsh, judging Father with impossible standards whom Bad is now rejecting because his own love as a Father is greater than that Father's love for him and like I don't want to say anyone else's read is wrong, but it's not what I saw at all.

So, let's talk about what we all saw. First, the scales.

[ID: Towering gold scales, level. Nothing on either side. End ID]

To one side of the scales, the gates. We know from Bad's dialogue these have been chained every other time he has died.

[ID: Towering grey gates, framed in gold with gold handles. End ID]

Then, on the other side of the scales, the way back to Earth.

[ID: Small passageway framed in gold and black with flames at the base. End ID]

The first thing that really struck me about this scene is that the scales were empty and level. With the ankh on Bad's back, the first thing I thought of was Ancient Egyptian religion, where the heart of the dead would be weighed against a feather and only those whose hearts were lighter would be allowed to pass.

This doesn't happen. Nor does anything else touch the scales nor do they ever come off level. There are no other voices besides Bad's in this scene, nor any indication that he is hearing anyone except himself. He is making guesses about what is going based on the environment, but he has nothing but the environment to confirm his guesses.

There is no one else here to sit in judgement against Bad.

So what are the scales for then?

Well, there's one other line that references weighing to me, if not quite directly, it still stuck out to me.

"Why are you cutting my happiness in half?"

In half. Two sides of his happiness, each with equal weight, each set on one side of the scales, which stand equal.

I don't think Bad is being punished by being forced to choose. I think he's in a truly brutal position and being gifted the chance to choose for himself.

How many fallen angels who claw their way back to heaven would hesitate? How many of them want anything besides to fling open the gates back home? How many of them manage to teach themselves to endure the light again for any reason other than true longing and desire for the light itself? For them, there is no need for a choice. The scales weight towards Heaven and they have no reason to even glance behind.

But not Bad. It's not God cutting his happiness in half. It's just the fact that his happiness didn't come from God. It came from his children. Half his heart is on Heaven half is on Earth.

I don't think the gates will be closed to him again unless he really beefs it this time around. He's shown that he loves. He's shown that his love is enough to carry him home. But it's enough to build him a new home too, a home from which it would be cruel to wrench him away. Either choice would have been correct. The scales weigh level.

But, Bad doesn't know this. He only knows that his heart has been split in half but his children need him.

[02511213942]

I love your art style and the way you draw different body types and your username. Hello. Hi, just a fan. Also, do you have any favorite aftg fics?

🥹 THANK YOU!!! you're very kind!! ! i hope to get better at drawing different body types and i like my username too!!

i do have lots of fic recs, but i've been sitting on and incubating this ask for too long so here are just five that have been on my mind again most recently!

til death do us part by @alcego

We follow Neil's professional exy career, including the ups and downs, from beginning to end.

IF IT FEELS LIKE THIS FIC WAS MADE IN A LAB FOR ME IT'S BECAUSE IT WAS!! COMMISSIONED FROM THE BRILLIANT AJ :)) if you loved reading the games in the books u will looove this... sports-heavy outsider pov and media snippets, neil gets a concussion, andreil being odd and cute, kevin day is there. all is well in the world.

Signs of Life by moonix @annawrites

In which Kevin works the graveyard shift, Andrew is the witching hour cryptid, and Neil guards the ice-cream freezer.

if i were andrew i'd make out with neil in aisle ten too... kevin thinking about his breakfast sandwich and andrew needing to touch of the roots of his box blonde hair I LOVE YOUu....

burning with you by @seasy33

The crowd whistles and cheers. People on the dance floor start to pair together, pressing close and swaying. As the song really begins, Neil realizes he knows it and starts humming along, playing idly with the ring on Andrew's finger. Andrew's hand twitches. "You know this song." Neil nods against his shoulder, still humming. "You don't know who Aerosmith is, but you know Shania Twain." Neil shrugs. - Neil and Andrew go to a bar and end up sort-of serenading each other --with country songs. That's it, that's the fic

feral stick figure on all fours dot jpeg. whenever you're still the one or johnny and june come up on my spotify shuffle i think of this fic and my aura acquires a gentle pink glow. i love country music :)

Every Sinner Has A Future by OfficialStarsandGutters

Canon divergent Neil x Aaron. - Neil Josten. A shock of red hair and ocean blue eyes. Pretty faced, but nothing special. Except he makes a throwaway comment about Andrew being off his meds and it’s like everyone in the room forgets to breathe. Even Aaron, his body still and tense with surprise that he can tell them apart. Without even having met Aaron, he knew Andrew wasn’t him. That shouldn’t mean anything. Aaron rubs his sweaty palms on his skinny jeans and tells himself it doesn’t, it doesn’t, it doesn’t.

my fav rare pair and the fic ever for them 🥹 aaron minyard i've really come around to you and i'll even let you take my son out if you have him home by 10.

sunset, like survival by animediac @jaywalkers

The first time Neil dies is devastating. The second time is just as bad. The third time has them wondering if there’s a way out of this loop that doesn’t end with Neil dead. - Night, after night, after night. Baltimore isn't something that just happens once.

kandreil neil death time loop fic you are SO famous to me. on my mind again recently because róisín is very good at being a paramedic and knowing what really happens to the body when you are critically horribly injured, and i asked them what would happen if neil got hypothetically specifically tortured, and they did not let me down.

[cin-cant-donate-blood]

I think there is something really tragic about those posts that are like "man can you imagine future archaeologists reading our posts" because I don't actually believe even a fraction of all the things we say will survive for very long.

We supposedly live in an information age where everything is recorded, and people say that once something is on the internet, it is there for ever, but this is clearly not true.

Most of the internet is managed by corporations, and when a certain website dies, there is absolutely no incentive to spend all the money necessary to preserve ecerything that was ever posted. Maybe Archive.org will have saved a lot, but it can't save everything.

Even right now internet history going back as recently as the 90s is really spotty. A lot of forums and sites are simply lost to time.

And maybe one day Archive.org will run out of money too, and everything they preserved will be lost, not in a dramatic bang like the fire in the Library of Alexandria, but with a whimper, like the many thousands of times more documents that have been lost simply because no one copied them in the few decades they had before the mold or worms or whatever else got to them.

Think of Sappho and Catullus, two of the most celebrated poets of ancient Greece and Rome respectively. Both were prolific, and both were titans, widely celebrated for their extraordinary work, long after their deaths.

Both had a single century or two where people got tired of them, and almost every single thing they ever wrote was irrecoverably lost, because books do not last forever, especially not the ones written on papyrus, which was the dominant medium at the time and has a quoted life span of about 70 years unless stored in nearly perfect conditions (desert conditions, which is why we associate papyrus with Egypt).

All we have now are a handfull of fragments of their work. They are, once again, and perhaps forever, celebrated as geniuses, but we can't ever undo that single, brief moment where the majority of their work was lost forever, not out of malice, but out of indifference.

Everything not actively, painstakingly, expensively maintained will be lost, inevitably and irretrievably. Stone carvings last longer, but they're horribly space inefficient. The invention of parchment, which can survive centuries, greatly improved things, but that too is extremely expensive compared to paper or papyrus. Modern digital storage is the same; we just made the copying process easier.

One day, tumblr will die. It is as inevitable as your death or mine. Or the death of the sun. In fact, tumblr will probably die within our lifetimes. When it dies, some things will be saved, but many will not. Some will miss it, but most will forget. Out of millions of posts, perhaps a few hundred thousand survive as jpeg screenshots on reddit, instagram, or whatever sites survive tumblr. Then, as those die, perhaps ten thousand screenshots of screenshots carry on to new social media sites, as of yet not made. And then a thousand of those survive as those sites die.

And maybe those will be the thousand best, and maybe some expert will even be able to tell you that they're screenshots of tumblr, and in a few words what tumblr was, but what even is the thousand best? Every copying act is a choice by someone who thought it was worth copying. Tastes change, and as they do, maybe one generarion's favorite is destroyed by the neglect of the next.

Tumblr isn't special. This is the future of all social media. Echos will persist, but so much will be lost.

So maybe, one day, an internet archaeologist will find your silly tumblr post about how crazy it would be if someone was reading what you said centuries from now. Unfortunately, there will be so much context missing. Maybe your post will be one of a mere hundred remaining, most of which make references to in-jokes and memes long forgotten: incomprehensible and empty. Like the statue in Ozymandias: nothing beside remains.

I'll end this with a poem from the lost poets I mentioned, and since this is tumblr, why not a gay one? Both Catullus and Sappho have their share of love poems dedicated to members of the same sex, but the partial poem known as Sappho 31 is probably the most well known. This is Edward Storer's translation:

He seems like a god to me the man who is near you,

Listening to your sweet voice and exquisite laughter

That makes my heart so wildly beat in my breast.

If I but see you for a moment, then all my words

Leave me, my tongue is broken and a sudden fire

Creeps through my blood. No longer can I see.

My ears are full of noise. In all my body I

Shudder and sweat. I am pale as the sun-scorched

Grass. In my fury I seem like a dead woman,

But I would dare...

... and that's it. The ending has never been found. Scholars think anywhere between a few lines and half the poem is missing.

[edgyedgelord]

With Instagram suddenly diving into the AI hay wagon head first full speed I feel like people need to be reminded about something.

ofc warnings for talk about AI and AGI but this is a hopecore post because i'm tired of the fearmongering

From my own personal look into the state of things, AI is starting to look more like a scarier version of NFTs so I choose to believe it's going to fall harder than they did after this high point. NFT's died out when the markets crashed due to courts coming in and commenting on the legality issues in their economy and cryptocurrency. Once they didn't make a good enough profit anymore and the get rich quick scheme died out so did they into obscurity.

I believe AGI and AI as a whole will soon have their theft of content and data exposed to courts or some sort of more powerful folk, like what happened to NFTs after the art theft with that one artist, and we'll see the models quickly fade out and return to just being chatbot partners for the losers who live in basements and swear their ape JPEG is still relevant and profitable.

And if I'm wrong they can't legally stop us from making art nor can they stop us from making counter programs that poison their models, lil reminder that those do exist and some programs are starting to put those into their stuff so you can easily poison your art in the program. It doesn't matter how advance their models get because since the renaissance an artist's main supporter were other artist's. As long as we continue to make and do what we love to do and support one another then that's all we really need.

So, I propose a form of counter attack.

Go to your local stores and look into making a business deal with them to sell your art or offer to produce advertisement flyers, signs, whatever they need. That way you get your art out there and you're supporting other folk struggling in this capitalistic hellscape.

Using the funds you get from that, go through commission pages and support your fellow artists. If you can, try and find the younger or beginner artists to support. We often look over them and they deserve as much support and encouragement as the experts.

And of course don't forget to share around commission ads as much as you can. The only form of advertisement we get is from us reblogging each other's stuff or recommending one another to other folk.

A large reason as to why artists aren't getting support against AGI right now is because of the public eye seeing us as nothing but a bunch of nerds who draw anime all day. We need to prove that we're people with a passion in this stuff and how we're useful. We also need to speak out how most of us are neurodivergent and careers in art are what fits for us best since it plays into our interests and our skills are best equipped for this.

In summary, don't lose hope. The moment you start talking about how advanced AI is and how nobody is supporting us you're basically saying you give up and that is not how you should ever think about anything. In the theme of pride, when everyone else is against you remember that there are others like you who will continue to support and protect you no matter how long it takes for things to get better. Those who led the queer revolution didn't quit when they were being threatened or detained, they kept on leading the parades and now we have openly queer characters and people in mainstream media. Change happens, sometimes for worse, but time and time again do I see that what is right will always come back on top.

I choose to live through this artistic struggle of an era with hope that in the end human produce media with love and passion and talent will come out on top and prove it's worth over artificially generated content. Even better, I keep hope that after this obstacle for us all it will only go to show our resolve and the public eye will finally look at us with awe at the strength and determination that we have.

Art by human hand has existed since we lived in groups in caves as our first form of communication and it still is such. Stories are told through art, messages are delivered through art, and that is something a robot can never recreate no matter how much techbros want you to believe it can. We are some of the most important and strongest people to be on this planet because we are a community of people who have struggled so much that our understanding of human emotion allows us to put that into images made with ink, pencil, pixels, words, sound, voice, whatever medium you may use. We are masters at what makes us human, communication and complex thought and emotion, and that can't be taken away from us.

[demvalhaken]

Welcome to, I’m having an unnecessarily hard issue trying to get the Western Hornets into a smaller size~ (Fancy squiggle)

I think I fixed it?

WOOHOO, JPEGS ROCK!

FUN FACT: THE WESTERN HORNETS AREN’T EVEN THAT BIG?!

Muahaha, the canvases are all different sizes because I just scaled it up as I progress farther in the drawing >:]

I WORKED MY ASS OFF TO DRAW ALL THESE AND IM SO PROUD OF MYSELF FOR NOT ABANDONING IT!!!

Yes, the Eastern Hornets stick out because they were done first

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…

THIS IS WHERE THEY LIVE (YES ITS A MESSY MAP BECAUSE I’VE NEVER DRAWN ONE DIGITALLY)

Berry Hive was bombed

Luna Hive is so awesome though!

If you grab a magnifying glass, you will see the borders! North, East, South, and West!

Okay soooo, the Northern Hornets live in the coldest region

The Eastern Hornets live in like, forests, plains, and cool little mountains

The Southern Hornets live in a tropical area. Imagine a humid, jungle with a ton of water

The Western Hornets are parched… they’re dehydrated grapes… deserts are not that wet

Late Warning: This probably gonna be reallllllllllyyyyy long

Is that what I think I hear?! Their economy? Oh yeah, I’ve got it all figured out and totally not making it up on the spot with scarce prior knowledge

Northern Hornets Economy Trade

What is an economy again? A thing about goods and services? Ha! Yeah, we’re just gonna talk about trade because I don’t got that kind of patience!

Traded items!

The Northern Hornets often trade iron, jewels, glacier honey (An ice-coloured honey that comes from the ice flower that grows on the mountains) They also trade a ton of ores as well

Northerners aren’t that popular in the Klaudin trade

Eastern Hornets Trade

Traded items: Silk, cotton, most other fabrics, exotic fruit and spices, and astronomical stuff

The Easterners are a huge part of the Klaudin trade

Western Hornets do not trade that much with the Eastern Hornets

NETR (North-East Trade and Relations) is a major thing in both the North and East for their trade

The Easterners are also often known for trading literature

Southern Hornets Trade

Traded items: Most exotic fauna used in dishes, lumber/wood, medicinal plants, and most animal products

The Southerners are a lesser known part of the continental trade.

They mostly are known for food products

They have an alliance with the West but not a fancy acronym name

Western Hornets Trade

Traded items: Desert fauna, pottery and clay, textiles and woven goods, and straight up salt.

The Northerners get most of their salt from the Westerners, despite having a bad history with each other

They are mostly just known for their pottery, woven/textile stuff, and art is general

The West Hornets are in an alliance with the South Hornets

I guess we go on to appearance differences?

Now if you look at the Hornets, all of them are unique! They have different mouths, antennae, wings, and eyes

Largest Wingspan to Smallest: Southern Hornet, Western Hornets, Eastern Hornets, Northern Hornets

Best Eyesight: Western Hornets

Longest Antennae: Northern Hornets

Best Average Strength: Northern Hornets

Worst Crime: Western Hornets

Best Reputation: Southern Hornets

Worst Reputation: Western Hornets :(

Each species has different mane styles

Northern Hornets: Often left alone or braided Eastern Hornets: Well-kept and sleek, often just left alone but came be styled in every way

Southern Hornets: Left long and untouched, some braid their manes, some stick colourful things in it like feathers

Western Hornets: Tied back or cut short

Palaces!

Northern Palace

The Tyvin Palace (Could be changed later on) is a massive structure built in between two towering mountains. The palace is insulated and heated. It’s made of timber, iron, stone, and probably other materials.

Halls are lined with carvings and tapestries featuring wildlife or cool events!

Eastern Hive(s)

Berry Hive: Bombed by ? It is still unknown. The hive took half of Queen Berry’s ruling to build, unfortunately, she died with her creation from burns

Luna Hive is a hive constructed by her daughter, Queen Luna (Formerly Princess Luna) The hive is situated in the trees, being elevated. It can be warmed or frozen during winters or summers. It’s made of mostly timber.

Southern Palace (Skra Palace): Just a bunch of buildings built on trees. It’s made of timber, mud bricks, rope, and leaves. It has no insulating, but Southern Hornets don’t get that too extreme cold weather. If necessary, fires will be lit for warmth

Oasis Hive (Palace by some locals): A palace made of sun-dried bricks (Adobe), quartz, and sandstone. It has thick walls and a giant shaded courtyard. The windows are often covered with tapestries during the day if it’s too hot. It’s decorated with wind chimes, tapestry and other woven things, and a ton of greenery!

Everything hurts…. My back, my wrists, my fingers, my legs. I HAVE BEEN SITTING FOR LIKE THREE OR FOUR HOURS WRITING THIS!

I can’t write anymore, maybe I’ll add more in a future post!

Okay, soooooo! Final thoughts!

BYEEEEEEE, I WORKED SO HARD ON THIS

Their older selves! Plus this silly thing!

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR READING ALL THAT IF YOU DID!!!

MY BACK HURTS

[quoteasks]

LETS TALK ABOUT DEATH!

Okay, this is a TOUCHY subject, and I can't decide whether to be serious about it or keep it lighthearted. But here we go.

PURPLE ANIMATIC - This guy was magic!anoned into existence then immediately shot dead by Doodle. April 18th Not to be confused with Sketch.

DOODLE - Got bitten and... deflated? this happened on the 9th of May! But then he kind of came back on the 11th. OUTLINE - Spooky Anon killed them! This happened on May 12th. They came back on the same day though! AND THEN THEY DIED AGAIN! Aaaaaaaaaand then they got revived again. Wow!

Next one on our list is ..

SCRIBBLE! - This fellow also got killed off by Spooky Anon! Their mod PROBABLY really wanted her to die! This happened on May 13th. Scribble was dead for a while, then the mod generously let him live as a GHOST for a bit. Xe came back to life 'fully' on May 22nd.

Outline.. uh. Also kind of died again? maybe? On the 23rd. They just kind of. Family guy death posed, spontaneously combusted, and exploded into confetti.

I'm... pretty sure Bugmatic has also died numerous times. Too many to keep track of, actually.

Oh! I nearly forgot!!!!!!! Jpeg was transformed into a hotdog and then someone ATE HIM on May 29th!! It was brought back on the 2nd day of June!

HOPEFULLY I didn't miss anything.  If I did please let me know!

[hatchetfield-bang]

2023 Teams Roster!

We had a very successful claims night! Here are our teams moving forward! Get excited!!! :D

Printing Euthanasia Author: Cass Artist: Sam Artist: Stef

Time Stands Still Author: Ash Artist: Kaz

A Touch of the Gift Author: Kinko Artist: Maddy

The Summer That Charlotte Died Author: Emmelie Artist: Cass Artist: Stef

Final Bow Author: Lucy Artist: Stef Artist: Chibi

lets get lovecraftian babe Author: Madd Artist: Ghost

Killer Tie Author: Marc Artist: Indigo

Me, You, Him, and These Monsters We Live With Author: Brooke Artist: Banana Bread

The Most Human Color Author: Andi Artist: Marc

can you hear the thunder? Author: Cas Artist: Em Artist: Cami

howie dies dot jpeg Author: Madd Artist: Cami

Take The Night Away Author: Charlotte Artist: Marc

lifetime achievement award Author: Indigo Artist: Kostya Artist: Marc

Respawn, reset, don’t die on me yet Author: Cal Artist: Elliot

Drowning Author: Clover Artist: Teddy

We’re Not The Angels Heaven Sent Author: Myth Artist: Chibi

Choking on the Petals of My Love Author: Ash Artist: Paxton Artist: Teddy

he is arriving (ready or not) Author: Nicola Artist: Maddy

Thy Neighbor Author: Sophia Artist: Szol Artist: Henrie

(there’s a dream in the back of my mind) across the tracks Author: Amy Artist: Ghost

When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again Author: Nier Artist: Maddy

Grace Chasity’s Night Out Author: Em Artist: Gwen Artist: Maddy

Too Old to Lose It, Too Young to Choose It Author: Ember Artist: Green

With Emma Front and Center Author: Nier Artist: Pamela

Not a God but a Devil, Evil with a Damned Design Author: Hayley Artist: Ella

[rayatii]

Okay so in my Art of Theater class, we were each asked to do a presentation on a topic of our choice relating to theater, and the topic I chose was opera, as a form of theater. I presented it in late March, it ended up being rather successful, and my teacher liked it well enough to ask me to present it to her other section of that same course, which I did. And so today I had my final exam for this course, so this inspired me to post the slides of my presentation (well, I already had this idea on the day of the presentation, but it’s a convo with @smile-at-the-stars​ yesterday that truly motivated me to work on it), alongside an approximation of the extra stuff I said orally while presenting.

(Note: the star-shaped bullet points are actually gold-colored, for some reason, when I converted the slides into either JPEG or PNG format, they keep getting colored white. I have no idea why.)

“When I say ‘opera’, you may think of a singer standing on a stage and singing in a style some of you might find weird or even unpleasant. Yeah, that’s not opera. That’s just singing. Lyrical singing, or classical singing, or whatever you want to call it. Opera specifically is when this type of singing is placed within a theatrical context.”

(To show the difference between an aria and a recitative, I sang the first 8 measures of Vedrai, carino, and used this audio, which I cut at around 0:32)

Here, I emphasized why I highlighted the word “acting” in the grid above, and also explained that opera students at my Conservatory are given the basics of Italian and German, in order to better understand what they are singing about.

As an example of how singers have to properly convey the emotions of the character they are portraying as they sing, I mentioned an anecdote about the time I was practicing L’ho perduta, which is about a young girl who lost an object and is desperately searching for it, and my voice teacher told me something like: “do not sing it in a grand manner, you are not La Contessa with a big voice. You are this little girl who is desperately searching for that pin she lost”. In order to show the difference to the students, I sang the first couple lines of L’ho perduta in a somewhat grand way, and then I sang it again in a more subdued way that better reflects the context.

(I mentioned that in L’Orfeo, the living world is represented by string instruments while the Underworld is represented by brass instruments, but that’s not very important.)

I also added that even in upcoming opera season announcements all over the world that had come out recently, you can find L’Orfeo in quite a few of them.

“I’m gonna stop here, because otherwise this would take WAY too long. I highly recommend you read more about the history of opera.”

To give the others a better idea of what I mean by “vocal virtuosity”, I briefly sang the first 2 measures of Lütgen’s Etude No. 8 (the clarinet part; up till 0:05).

My commentary on Barber of Seville: “This is the opera that ‘FIGARO, FIGARO, FIGARO’ comes from”. And Lucia di Lammermoor: “You might recognize some of the music from it if you’ve watched The Fifth Element, the scene with the alien singing opera”.

I described Wagner’s operas as having “MASSIVE orchestrations, requiring HUGE voices, lasting like 4 hours”.

I mentioned that Bohème is one of my favorite operas, and that it’s the opera that RENT was based on.

I explained that operetta tends to contain spoken dialogue.

“If you mention microphones in the opera circles on social media (e.g. Reddit), you will be sure to start a war” (it’s kind of an exaggeration, but 😝).

“You cannot cry while singing, because it messes your vocal cords.”

“I chose these two opera houses to show you the difference between a proscenium stage (the format of most opera houses around the world, just like theatres) and an arena, as we learned some time ago during this course.”

Palais Garnier: “which is where the Phantom of the Opera lives”.

The Sydney Opera House “is much more well-known for its exterior than its interior, but it actually houses several venues. The main venue is just concert hall, but the one in the picture here (the Joan Sutherland Theatre) is where operas are typically performed”.

The Bayreuth Festspielhaus: “which performs exclusively works by Wagner. I chose to show you this one because it has a bit of an unusual structure; it rather resembles the thrust stage format, and the orchestra pit is located kind of under the stage”.

The video in question (subs by Yours Truly, except the ones in the last footage, which were already there, when I downloaded it from the Met’s channel).

The following week iirc, the teacher mentioned Diana Damrau’s Queen of the Night as one example of stylized makeup, as opposed to realistic makeup, and I added that it’s because that opera is a fairy tale opera or sorts.

[schnuffel-danny]

I keep having nightmares that somehow I end up with several new guinea pigs, and usually I neglect them (since my subconscious is aware .Jpeg and .TIFF are real, but not the others) and then it turns out one of the pigs is a boar and he gets both of my girls pregnant, and .Jpeg dies during birth..... I have horrible OCD regarding animals (I was having frequent panic attack the first couple of months after getting my girls, because the intrusive thoughts were so bad, and also I had to check them constantly and pray every day for their safety) these dreams bother me so much, because I would NEVER take on more pets than I could handle.... but when I got .Jpeg, I got her along with a sibling of hers who was supposed to be female, but turned out to be a boar. I named this little guy .Png, before I quickly noticed his behavior did Not at all line up with a dominant girl piggie. Thankfully, they were both very young at the time, and too stressed from a new environment to properly mate, and I did actually notice the unusual behavior less than a day after getting them! We separated .Png, hoping to get him neutered eventually, but then we learned we'd have to wait months for the procedure to be safe, and the poor little guy has already almost killed himself a few times trying to reach .Jpeg. So, we returned him to his brothers, and brought .TIFF home instead... I guess I still haven't gotten over that mistake, and I'm scared it will somehow happen again? Even if it's impossible

[iantimony]

[thru gritted teeth] tuesday! again! no problem!

laptop charger got delivered over the weekend so i once again can use my computer. also, revival of the 'playing' section of tuesdaypost!!

listening: more friends at the table but at a slower clip, on episode 41 now though!!! that's like 2/3 of the way thru! then i can power thru partisan and finally get to palisade lol. also new SSHG this week was fun.

reading: didn't read anything besides comsol documentation this past week EXCEPT i did go to the library today to get some paperwork notarized and while i was there i got some books as a treat. finally going to read every heart a doorway, and i also grabbed haunting of hill house, the gnostic gospels (pagels), and a beefy nonfiction book on the fucked up exploits of the roman catholic church through the ages. book :)

this was also my first time in my local library since it was remodeled and it's sooooo nice inside, im kinda obsessed

watching: some nicole rafiee videos, also the age gap one and the fatphobia one just as some easy background noise. also started on the well there's your problem train again

playing: BOLD RETURN OF THE PLAYING SECTION!!! i finally started playing disco elysium. it's fun! i am definitely enjoying it so far! wow my computer can Barely handle it!! it's crashed at least twice and it took some settings finagling to get it to run with any sort of bearable frame rate. quick save is my best friend but i have had to repeat convos a few times. it also drains the shit out of my laptop battery but that might just be normal for Games. my first shot at playing i died after trying and failing to ask the sweet old lady for money which rules. i also understand now why everyone would die for kim kitsuragi.

making: compromise for resurrection of the playing section means that i made Nothing this week. i did start Posting some old art on insta and here though. it's not too late for me to become an art influencer or whatever

misc: gritted teeth because hoooo baby i have been Doing Tasks. had to get some aforementioned paperwork notarized, had to file an insurance claim (waiting with baited breath to see how much my premium will skyrocket lol) (i did have the funniest interaction with a long island mechanic. just some old guy named vinnie, extremely italian, was asking what he though out of pocket price to fix would be and he was like "why the fuck do we even pay for insurance if you're not gonna use it" like yeah, fair,), miscellaneous household tasks because Puppy is A Lot Of Work, driving upstate this weekend for my brother's graduation, only like a week and a half before going abroad for two weeks (!!!), accidentally skipping a tabletop game because my schedule is a disaster rn,

sbahj 'it just keeps happening bro' dot jpeg. puppy tax

[some-creep]

Bayonetta 3 thoughts in no particular order:

Most of the music was mid. Some of it just sounds like movie score to me.

Let's dance boys third climax is a better song but a worse dance than the first game.

Lumens are mentioned once at the start of the game as creating the island and they are never brought up again.

Too much of this game's plot was shoved into files I didn't read.

Seriously the game reveals that Sigurd is Singularity but it's revealed in a file that no actually he isn't. What was the point of that

There should have been a lumen bayonetta. That's such an obvious au I don't know why they didn't do it.

In fact bayonetta probably should have just been singularity. No I haven't thought this through it would require plot restructuring but it would be more interesting if still incredibly stupid.

This game really hates Jeanne. The first alt Jeanne we see dies. China and France don't even have Jeannes.

Egypt Jeanne and Bayo switching princess roles could have been interesting except Egypt Bayonetta is fucking annoying.

Why do you only play as e girl Bayonetta in Japan and this never comes up again.

China bayonetta is in the trailer and barely features in her level even though her design was the most interesting.

Bayonetta never reacts to uhhhhh well anything really. But especially seeing her other selves die.

She kills a bunch of humans and this is kinda just a thing that happens and doesn't matter.

Rosa existed just to die again only they never interacted so who cares.

I like Viola :)

I hate PLAYING as Viola. Changing the button for witch time just confuses me so I do very badly as her :( #skillissue

Bayonetta 1 2 and 3 all being different people with baby cereza from 1 specially being bayo from 3 suggests that as a child bayo from 1 had a beehive haircut since apparently they never change their hairstyles.

The part you play as b1 bayo in the singularity fight at the end with the HUD from b1 was cool if not shameless nostalgia bait. But why didn't 2 get a feature? That was disappointing.

Luka being a magic fairy werewolf is so fucking stupid and he isn't a substitute for a proper rival fight I don't care what anyone says

Luka being a magic fairy means his dad died like a bitch for no reason and that's funny

Apparently seeking the one truth is why he became an investigative journalist meaning it had nothing to do with the very obvious things he was investigating in 1

Viola being able to do witch time suggests that umbra magic is passed through hereditary when it isn't. Umbra and lumens are just humans who learned magic

I guess bayo could have taught her but I don't think it's ever mentioned and since fairy transformations are hereditary I guess so is being a witch

One of the cut chapters was another Jeanne chapter. The game really really hates Jeanne and I don't know why.

Enzo's family is killed and it's played for a joke I guess even though it's not actually very funny it's just tonally really weird.

Was Bayonetta always an important title you pass on because I don't think it was and none of my friends seem to remember that either.

A lot of individual parts are really good but this game is truly less than the sum of its parts.

Bayo saying she and Luka have always been together is just straight up actually not true. It's actually weird how not true that is.

I don't care if it's an au that doesn't mean it has to be bad :(

Viola still could have been bayo and Lukas daughter from another universe without them getting together in the one we play in. What's the point of an AU if the outcome is always the same

No one mentions jpegnetta at the end of the game because they're not on screen very long but am the extra bayos are just crude jpegs of concept art it's really funny

Is no one gonna talk about the optics of rodin being a demon slave. No? Alright

Secret chapter was cute I liked the outfit but it looks bad in the main game. Actually she kinda looks like Katzy (?) From sailor moon

I assume the fairies + this are setting up for dlc or a sequel but it'll be incredibly funny if neither of those things happen.

"You bitch!"

[uservarric]

Which dropped plotlines would you want to see come back? (and/or which ones do you really hope stay forgotten?)

again i’m doing this from the top of my head so i’m probably going to miss out obvious things!!!! chip in!!

i talked about about cammi on another ask but that one is definitely up there regarding dropped parts that should make a comeback

in a category of its own, not dropped but not addressed either…. is the fact that 616 phyla literally DIED and an alternate ‘perfect’ phyla has come in and took her place. it was addressed with the two heathers yet with phyla??? crickets. i feel like ben affleck smoking dot jpeg whenever i think about it.

j’son and the universal church of truth disappeared!!! the church is massive!! what’s up there!!

dropped and I hope doesn’t come back (any time soon) is the infinity stones/infinity wars. I could be totally wrong because I’m only up to date with gotg (and I’ve only read the first issue of the new run!!!) but they all flew off sentient and whatever as if it was gonna be a THING and then it wasn’t. thank god. power stone coming back for prince of power was allowed cause that was funny.

and a cheat answer is literally everything that happened in the last three years and the current run. master of the sun in particular was dropped for so long it making a comeback was huge and I don’t trust this current run to do literally anything right with it.

not gotg but gotg adjacent is rich, ko’rel and her kid zam. he just left that kid in the void by himself lmfaooo

[bbg100]

*absolutely hazed in special interests* I think if Harry dubois was in Homestuck canon he'd be killed so very dead and then come back to life godtier. But the most relevant funny timeline wise moment for harry to show up is when the sufferer is dying so he can be like volition [failure] yeeowch. And then skill check until the dying part and rant is over and then he joins the cult and gets involved with endless OCs until his big meaty hands make sweet love with a troll and oh my god. Who's that asshole. Harry du Bois love child is-EQUIUS???? Anyway then harry dies again but haunts the narrative like a sexy colonel sassacre and karkat has posters of him on his walls and he's like. The first troll to invent masturbating and self contained kismesistude. Then when karkat does his self hate past karkat future karkat nonsense someone can be like just like your dumb pitch crush Harry du Bois and he can slaughter them with shitty forum esque jpegs. Do you see my vision?