#everything is going to get so much fucking worse if this braindead generations manages to do it.

[magnoliamyrrh]

like truly i find this americans generation insistance on this stupid idea that sex trafficking and talking about trafficking is conspiratorial propaganda so fucking gross and offensive and uncaring. bc its all satanist worshipping baby eating illuminati cults far right propaganda blah blah blah

neverminddd how this shit is offensive to hear as someone whose been through it, nevermind being from the balkans because the western europeans hold the exact same brainrot when it comes to us and our issues. american has a huge trafficking issue. absolutely huge. hell even our romanian women get trafficked to this place. california, south in particular, is one of the top states for trafficking if not the top, so idk what the fuck all these california ppl are running their mouth abt all these years (privilege)

and you know whose most impacted by sex trafficking in america, predictebly? women of colour. indigenous women and girls (high poverty rates in reservations, high rate of depression, alcholism, suicidality etc, racism, skrinking reservations etc. included in this issue the high rates of girls and women going missing and/or being killed on/near reservations), south america women and their children who may be trafficked at any point before they reach america, but also at the american border while they try to cross as some cayotes are sex traffickers (and bc of the poverty many immigrants and undocumented immigrants experience, as well as the lack of cultural knowledge making them even more vulnerable). Black women and girls from what i know are statistically hardest hit by the sex trafficking thing, some studies say at the same level as Indigenous women (40% of total both) because god knows this country hasn't dealt them enough hardship already; here all the same sort of factors are at play as in previous cases. The economically and racially disadvantaged, which live in a system which seeks to keep them down in a million ways and to exploit them continously, are hit hardest. Racial fetishization and degradion from johns and pimps also plays into this. All this is combined with the fact that bc its women and girls of colour, often police and media and society dont want to give a single shit - these cases and issues and this suffering goes unnoticed, unacknowledged, uncarwd for

Here's the thing. if this generation cared, theyd KNOW just how many trafficking cases come to light in california, in america. they would Know that every time they come out, many times many of the girls or women or both are of colour. They would Know that indigenous women are going missing at terrifying rates. they would know that most sex trafficking victims & (child) prostitutes are of colour. theyd know that most times when i see cases of american ex-prostitutes being assaulted or killed, theyre of colour. Many are white american girls as well, who also, big surprise, tend to come from the lower classes, the foster system, homelessness, abusive families, or other disadvantaged and vulnerable positions.

Except despite how damn woke this generation is and how everyone loves to pay lip service to "listen to marginalized women blah blah" "intersectionality blah blah blah" no one wants to give a shit about the whole damn sexual slavery issue this country has. and in fact they want to pretend it barely exists at all, the fabrication of republicans with their pizza gate. or they want to pretend it doesnt exist at all bc you see some well off onlyfans model said sex work is empowering and like most sex workers choose it so like you see like, its all good like, stop shaming sex workers like, stop, like, being so putitanical. jfccc

this. isnt feminism, its not intersectional feminism, its not any sort of feminism. its not any sort of woke or progressive or caring. this. its having the privilege of denying the uncomfortable reality which just so happens to hit societies most marginalized and vulnerable women and girls in one of the most horrifying ways. pretending like its conspirational propaganda is such a gross way to talk about this because outside of the general ignorance, it adds a layer of outright denying the severity of the pain and suffering at hand, on top of the sex work bullshit being pulled. wtf

[ronin-deactivated19851026]

so i've been extremely overwhelmed by....... i guess everything online lmao, it's really hard to focus on things when you're constantly bombarded with things you don't really need at the moment

i'm trying to get back into journaling but damn it's so hard. i know my head isn't empty, i spawn walls of texts almost daily, but my mind goes blank when i'm in front of an open notebook because i don't know what's truly worthy of writing down? it's kind of like with drawing at this point. i'm stuck with the art block because i don't know what's worthy of drawing. and guess what made me feel this way? the social media lmfao. i hate that literally every idea i consider cool i never depict because my brain immediately goes like, "who cares about this?", "this won't get noticed and also you're too late, so don't be cringe", etc

i hate this so much idk. anyway, i think i'm going to make a list of things to focus on, both personal projects/artistic inspirations and fandom related ones. i do have things i overfixate on for years, so why am i letting myself be distracted by some random content ideas that only matter to me for like a day or two...?

i should also start limiting inspirations in general, looking at my folder rn and realizing that there are just WAY TOO MANY things i want to incorporate into my work and it really overwhelms me. reminds me of various artists saying that "less is more" and holy crap i should start limiting myself. this is something i slowly started to realize on my own when i did some pixel art, which is limited already due to its nature, with some color palettes instead of randomly staring at a color wheel for half an hour, not being able to decide which one to use.

also i found out about artfol, social media for artists, and so far it seems promising? haven't tried it yet, maybe i will upload some stuff there later. also maybe i'll finally sort everything here on tunglr dot com and make a separate art blog and will use this one as my "main"-diary-esque blog where i won't post much. it's not like i'm on here anyway, my dash feels overwhelming so i don't even scroll past 3-4 posts a day anymore on here. i'm tired of social media. it doesn't feel personal anymore, it's not fun, not interesting...

fomo effect used to fuck me up before something clicked and i stopped scrolling things. because due to nature of the modern internet, i have more chances of stumbling across useful/interesting information if i just keep scrolling through junk. since as you know, google is dead anyway, shit is hard to find these days, and indeed, every cool thing i managed to find was through random braindead scrolling (post 2016 i mean, i miss mid 2000s era when stuff was actually GOOGLEABLE and you didn't need to scroll long ass feed to stumble across cool things, you could get there at your own pace while just surfing the web). so the habit was made worse by "damn what if i miss some obscure post that features obscure cool thing that will matter to me once i get to know it??" but i'm just so fucking exhausted... everything i love about the internet because so dormant, niche even. the internet, as i define it, is dead to me. it's really heartbreaking

[horrible-monstrosity]

mothermom 3 is a baaad animine

part 1: fuck these characters I thought the bit about not being able to go through a certain way because there's ants (that the player can't see) you wouldn't want to trample was going to introduce a theme of kindness and gentleness, but the game sure... tramples that early on by having your oh-so-kindhearted-and-mournable mother trample the fuck out of a sentient talking mole cricket to death right the fuck afterwards. Like, you were just talking to and playfighting with that mole mere seconds ago, and now it's thoughtlessly and meaninglessly dead, and it's supposed to be funny. And then you're supposed to forget all about it when mom dead because care and have emotions for this characters you've barely known for like one minute worth of interactions dragged out over like an hour. ok Then after bumbling along being a hollow little bag of nothing for like ten hours Lucas suddenly proves himself a detestable little cunt by just straight up stealing something he's told was a precious item, a yo-yo belonging to Porky's friend. Because, like... fuck Porky, I guess, in this geame franchise about love and heart and healing there's just this one fat kid we're all supposed to just disregard and piss and shit on and detest by default for no fucking reason just because the game narrative said so. Porky's existence was pretty weird already in Earthbound- he's apparently being abused by his fat parents, and aside from being a bit snotty and show-offy, he does at least make sure his little brother gets home safely at the beginning. He just seems like someone who needs a friend, which... actually makes Ness look like an asshole in retrospect for not just giving him some kind of help. It was kind of fine in that game because he was just a minor character, but making him some supervillain in the next game just because he was some dumpy abused kid is just... what the fuck. But anyway, whenever the plot expects us to care about Loocus and his dumb dead mom I just think about things like the yo-yo and the mole cricket and I lose all empathy. These people are assholes. You're trying to make sympathetic victims out of assholes and an asshole out of a sympathetic victim. Get your meaningless fucking sunflowers the fuck off my screen you bitch fuck

And then on the other hand there's Duster. The character who's absolutely the most deserving of empathy out of all these cunts and we're supposed to see him reembracing his shitty old life as something he should be really happy about. Like for one thing, the entire plot where he reenters the cast is stupid and makes no sense. When we hear he's at the club playing with the band, I could think of a lot of reasons for it- he could be laying low to protect the egg (seeing as how Tamzilly got pozzed and going back there would accomplish nothing), he could have just decided to fuck off and do something he actually enjoyed rather than go back to his shitty asshole dad, he could have somehow ended up far far away from the town and joined the band to make his way back home travelling with them/earn a living so he could get back. But no, before we even get to see him and see how he's acting Strong Female McDerpa Character tells us that he most definitely has amnesia. Because, like, why would he ever give up on his jackass dad and that braindead town otherwise? And then we meet him and it's exactly what we were unceremonously told it was, how rivetting. Then for some reason he decides that if he's really who you say he is he needs to... give up his life as a band member entirely to get the egg back. Can't just come with you to get the egg or until the adventure's over, nooo he needs to abandon his new life forever and ever and just go get fucked and fuck himself. fuck. let my man play guitar and also that "thiefs but good somehow because derp" shit is retarded and I hate it

Finally there's Girl Character who I refuse to even remember the name of because she's... nothing. Even her being kinda cunty about how she's sTrOnG and nOt lIkE ThoSe OthEr gIrlS is just bland. The other girls from the past two games were cute and girly and still credit to team with their strong psychic powers, why the fuck is she like this?

part 2: i've stopped giving a fuck about making this into parts fuck you What the fuck is the story of this game? You spend hours dicking around with a fucking timeskip and a ghost mansion or some shit and the game randomly namedrops the needles at some point, and then... the six or seventh chapter is just titled GUYS THE NEEDLES ARE ACTUALLY REALLY IMPORTANT YOU GUYS. Six or seven fucking chapters in, and we've barely gotten to anything resembling a coherent plot. What the fuck have we been doing up until this point again? Why the fuck do we even need the dragon needles plot anyway? Just have the main cast move from one pigmeng plot to another with things like the thunder tower, slowly working their way up the chain of command until they reach the final boss and his ultimate plan. You don't need to introduce an entire plot worth of fucking shit a third of the way into the game you fucking fuckers

The themes are a fucking dumpsterfire. Just plop some fucktarded work bad money bad bullshit in there and call it a day... Evil monkey man could have given that fucktard anything and got him to hide it in the well and it would have caused a ruckus when he came back and stole it. He could have convinced him to hide his grandma's ashes in the well- would the takeaway from that have been that honoring the dead bad? That's how fucking flat it is. If anything it just comes off as if the people of Tamzilly are just a bunch of mindkilled retards with no defence against humanity's own nature aside from shutting themselves off from the outside world entirely- the slightest contact with normal human interactions like money or having to contribute to society for a living, they all self-destruct. It's not le capitalism that made the old people home bad, it's whoever the fuck actually built it... which, if the outside world weren't basically strawmanned with the le evil pigmans and monkey abuser guy, would have been Tamzilly themselves. Which, because the strawmanning is so unbelievably absurd, makes it seem like Tazmilly is just a retarded place that somehow managed to make the old people's home this bad on their own or some shit I don't know I just can't buy it

Speaking of empathy, the game somehow manages to make the Pig Heil guys endearing even while they're actively working on the thunder tower that's cooking the dumbass town residents. Are they supposed to be abusing the electric catfish when they're cutely telling the things to hang in there and do their best? When Lucas got a jerb hustling the golems around and they managed to make it like a positive thing (the pigmangs encourage you, seemingly pay a decent wage, and even the doggo enjoys running on the treadmill once he gets into it), I thought there was going to be a tweest or at least some nuance, but the absurdity of the nice ol' piglins in the evil tower just makes it seem like it's just entirely unintentional, by writers who just have no idea what the fuck they're doing. The generic braindead modern-bad messaging and the generic brainless funny-characters-ha-ha sides of the writing clash horribly and somehow manage to mangle each other even worse than they already were.

The whimsicality is fucking dead. It's just all so forced and one-note... or, very consistently two-note in every single thing, because absolutely every single monster you meet is just two things funny stuck together. The first two games could glide smoothly between fighting enraged possessed zoo animals and weirdo people, weirdo fucking blended monsters that don't look like anything in particular, and then just sometimes the taxis that're used for decoration on roads will veer off course and engage you in battle. It's simultaneously wildly unpredictable and smoothly cohesive. And it's wonderful. But M3 is just... it leans over, shoves a megaphone down your throat and loudly informs you that "the PIGMEN have FUSED the THINGS toGETHER" and proceeds to beat you over the head with "this thing is THAT thing and THAT thing" over and over again. It's forced, mechanical, hamfisted and just not whimsical at all. And it's not just because the pigmengs aren't Giiigigigigiyasass (which could have been fixed by having them harness traces of Gig's power if that was the problem anyway), because it extends to absolutely everything- the ghosts at the mansion for example are just all absolutely fucking nothing. Like the main big bad boss is just "he's GHOST who THROWS FURNITURE and is BEETHOVEN and plays BEETHOVEN MUSIC". Because Beethoven is old thing therefore old mansion and ghosts, geddit? How fucking pathetic. Oh there's another thing, the weird aliens/conspiracy bent the first two games had is gone entirely. That's something that really helped it feel so wild yet at the same time cohesive... Actually, the game also seems to have done away with the surprise overworld sprite encounters like the aforementioned taxis. ... No wait that's right, they blew their load in the first levels with the rock lizards, which were fucking boring.

The dialogue fucking sucks. just fucking drags the fuck on endlessly for fucking ever to say barely anything, and barely anything you need to actually hear. Did Earthbound ever stop you to inform you that the TAXIS are AFFECTED by GIGUDUGDSAS like you couldn't figure that out yourself? No, they say Gigi's affected shit in a couple sentences near the beginning and let the rest of it speak for itself, pretty much. It's hard to give exact examples because I can't fucking remember any of this shit because it just slides right off my brain like ducks off of water, it's so bland and pointless. The sparrows drone on endlessly with worthless tutorial shit and then take an entire extra sentence to chirp at you and remind you that it's talking animals oh wow wacky!!!!!!! And when Duster decides he really is what you say he is he stands there going "ME IS DUSTER" over and over again like he's fucking Bimpson. You don't have anything interesting to say about finally figuring out who you really are? Okay... There's multiple fucking scenes of slow-scrolling walls of fucking text telling you absolutely nothng you don't already know except that the writers are wanking the fuck off over their own dumbass writing where in Earthbound there was like one scene of this towards the end that really just set up the emotions of the final sequences and underlined how far you'd come and shit and was a good moment of reflection and shit.

I also find it exceptionally intersting that all the people in Tazmilly before the timeskip have names and unique appearances, but anyone who only shows up after is just some generic design called "Man" or "Woman" or what have you. It feels weirdly dehumanizing towards outsiders.

This game fucking feels like the writers just fucking dumped a bunch of absolute shit down like they expected everyone to just eat it up, either because of the success of the previous games or because of the emotional manipulation the plot is laced with. The characters are all either detestable cunts or desperately need to be airlifted out into a better game pronto. And it's unsettlingly... modern in what's wrong with it. The capitalism-bad-tradition-good-mindkill-yourself messaging, the spunky female character(tm) who rubs it in your face how strongk she is (and who keeps talking even when you're controlling her while the other characters all become silent protagonists)... even the weirdly random spite towards characters the narrative has decided aren't "deserving" enough, or characters only being allowed to handle said spite and retain sympathy by cucking to it completely (Duster)... I suppose that's just a sign that these sorts of writing problems and hangups are older than that and have just become more popular/visible in recent times, but it's still really fucking weird to see.

I feel like I should be concerned that the team behind the Earthbound series also started Gamefreak and created Pokemon, though since the split obviously happened before Mo 3 I don't know how much overlap there is between staff members there specifically... seeing as how these exact same sort of writing problems have started to rear their heads in the Pokemon franchise, starting weakly in gen 6 (cough zinnia cough abandoned ship plotline cough) and absolutely fucking exploding in 7 (cough LILLIE COUHG FUCKING TAPUS COUGH AGAG V HIC CUFGH VOMIT AAGHK); I haven't yet fully witnessed gen 8 but everything I've seen of it so far looks no better, except there's no shill character (Marnie is just kinda... there), just suffering. But that's all for another post.

welp time to go watch the remainder of the game until my brain rots off

[eftb]

What happened to CC? And other thoughts regarding the future of Entertainment for the Braindead.

So... Yesterday my EP “Sun” has been released, not only on Bandcamp, but also Spotify, Deezer, iTunes, all those platforms, and.. well, the CDs are still lost in mail delivery limbo, but they do exist. That’s new, right? I had help from Motor Entertainment, the publisher I am actually contracted to now, and everything feels and sounds a bit less personal than it used to. You will also notice that for now, the songs aren’t CC-licensed anymore. What happened to hand-crafted artwork and painted postcards? To the idea of free music, the netlabel vision, this whole crafty DIY authenticity? Did EFTB join the dark side of power? Everything seems more detatched now... and what? I finally gave in to the GEMA as well?  Well, yes. Sort of. And it’s weird to me, too. Those who have followed me for some time know I've always been very seriously idealistic about the concept of free music, of DIY stuff, of keeping stuff small and  real and non-commercial. It might look a bit like I’m losing my indie-integrity now. It feels like that to me.. But maybe - I hope! - not completely. However, since I started recording songs and crafting CDs, things have changed on so many levels - in my personal life, but also in the music industry, net culture, everything.. So a change seemed necessary and appropriate. 1) Life circumstances and a change of perspective Let’s start with personal life. Ten years ago, when I made Hypersomnia + Hydrophobia and got in touch with the netlabel aaahh records, I was a student, living in my parents’ house in Cologne. No rent to pay, no job eating away on my time schedule, working with the cheapest equipment available – it was easy to make and give away music then. Now adult life has its weird grips on me, full time work and health care bills and a fridge that doesn’t just refill by default: And when I look at my surroundings I see that many friends who have been doing music “on the side” struggle to create enough space for that in the long term. It fades out. When your career lead you elsewhere, when family comes into play,... you have to weigh if you can afford to keep it up, in terms of money, time, focus... I’m afraid that if I don’t make music my “real job” to at least a certain degree, it will become increasingly hard to prioritize it and keep it alive, not allowing it to get buried under piles of other tasks and things to do. The music has been the defining force in my grown-up life so far, everything good that came to me over the last years was somehow rooted there. Thus I don’t want this to become a hobby that always has to stand back behind other tasks and missions. But for that I need it to be at least self-sustaining.  2) Motor as an opportunity // Why not CC this time? Thus the decision to work with Motor. I was being offered a contract that means that yes, it’s about monetizing my music to some degree now (but I managed to protect EFTB from actually being used for commercials), but also getting a bit of a structural backbone and support, and then it also meant that I had to join the GEMA, which I did teeth-gnashingly. Anyhow, they already help me a lot with actually getting the music out there, reaching an audience, dealing with bureaucratic stuff, giving me a loan for CD production, etc. So you see, I don’t love every aspect of this, but if I want to have the pleasant and helpful sides, there’s a certain trade-off, and I’ve decided that since I’ve been given this opportunity out of nowhere, I owe the gods of serendipity to give it a try. The disadvantage: GEMA is working on some non-commercial licensing programs too, but for now it doesn’t go very well with CC, or at least I don’t yet understand how. So my hands are a little tied there at the moment. I genuinely hope stuff will change over time though.

But the advantages: There are two things out of this collaboration that are really precious to me. One is not having to deal with all the logistics of making music, being able to delegate a few draining tasks and therefore having more space for the actual creative part. What a relief! The other thing is wildly underestimated, but it’s as simple as that: Creating a network that pushes you a little, also through creative crisis and self-doubt. You see, I haven’t been releasing anything in a long time. It’s not like I didn’t write or record anything, but as pathetic as it sounds: it needed someone to come along and pat me on the shoulder and go: “No, do this, this is nice!” to get me out of a dark cloud of “who the hell gives a shit anyways” when it came to releasing stuff. I was stuck, two album-length collections of songs rotting on my hard-drive for years. And now here we are! 3) But why not another netlabel release instead? Look around, what happened to the net audio scene? What is your favourite netlabel doing now? 9-10 years back when I started out as a musician, there was a certain hype about the topic. The idea of free access to music – legal! aside from piracy! – was new and netlabels sprouted manyfold, curating hidden music, uncovering gems, becoming a scene of their own. Even mainstream media caught up to it. Where did they go though? Since streaming services came into play, the whole perception of accessing and “owning” music changed once more, most people, especially the young millenial generation, wouldn’t even bother putting up with music piracy anymore because they can access anything anywhere all the time anyways. The convenience-oriented USP of CC-music (as opposed to “commercial” music) towards the consumers dissipated now that everything is equally accessible  - and thus netlabels just more or less disappeared from the digital horizon, or at least drastically decreased in relevance. Correct me if I got this wrong, but at least that’s my impression. Also, as a musician, “Are you on Spotify?” became the new “Are you on Facebook?” – you remember the moment when it became hard to stay in touch with your friends if you didn’t follow the pack into the social web? Yeah, it’s similar now. You’re not on those platforms, people won’t bother looking for you elsewhere. I don’t know, maybe it’s bullshit to follow those trends, but... maybe it’s ok to try to stay visible. And after all, even Creative Commons was never supposed to be a religion, but a concept designated to create a change in perception of music distribution. This change is now happening anyways, whether better or worse, we’ll see (for now: worse, but I don’t want to get into this now) - but thus I guess it’s fair to stray from that path (and maybe come back later if the circumstances allow).

4) And the CDs are professionally produced, does that mean the DIY days are over? Well I sure hope not entirely. But this connects to the first paragraph – spending days on my bedroom floor crafting CD sleeves and putting up with getting my printer not to fuck up the label prints is simply a luxury I can’t afford these days, as life is already too stuffed and the day still only has 24 hours.. That doesn’t mean I won’t keep trying to add some ideas and details here and there that will make stuff a little bit more personal, doesn’t mean I’ve only been waiting to delegate all the crafty tasks. I did love them, after all. Maybe the priorities have shifted these days, I spend more effort on working out live performance quirks rather than drawing pictures to mail out, but that might just be a phase, too.

--

Bottomline, I think what it comes down to for me: I was presented with this chance to give my musical path a slightly new direction that looks like it could end up being be more productive and sustainable. And while having no idea whether it’s good or bad in the end, I felt like I had to take it, like it would be ungrateful not to take it for the sake of stubborn principles.  At the core, things haven’t even changed all that much. I still record alone in my bedroom with a computer and two mics bought second-hand somewhere, still make the artwork pictures myself. Moving things to a slightly more professional level doesn’t imply that I suddenly strive for the big fame or money or anything fancy – only to find a balance that will allow me to keep doing this. As I said, I don’t even know yet where this is going either. If I haven’t bored you to death at this point with self-indulgent banter.. I’d be happy and grateful if you’d like to stick around with me and find out.