#i would love to illustrate this god but fuck.. i have so much owed art

[wifiwuxians]

STILL PRICKLING AND IM NOT SORRY (tho if you do want me to stop, just ask lol):

The ice palace is huge. Gigantic even. Very fucking impractical for raising a toddler in, absolutely impossible to childproof.

Not that Shang Qinghua hasn’t gone through painstaking effort to go through the entire palace with a fine-tooth comb no less than five times on child-proofing endeavors. Look, it’s not that he’s paranoid, BUT HE’S PARANOID.

Screw his lovely adorable and perfect son’s human half, a human would have SO MUCH LESS TO WORRY ABOUT. Shang Qinghua is going a lot insane thinking about his son’s demon half! Demons fight, bite, and kidnap! On the regular! If anyone so much lays a hand on his little dumplings head, he is going to burn this entire fucking palace to the ground!

“Shush.”

Shang Qinghua scowls against the ice demon’s finger pressed against his lips. Mobei Jun is giving him one of those faintly amused expressions he wears when Shang Qinghua doesn’t fully realize he’s been babbling. From his spot cuddled in Mobei Jun’s arms, their perfect little dumpling giggles and looks at Shang Qinghua like his baba is the most fascinating thing in the world.

Ah, Shang Qinghua would destroy a few galaxies to see his little dumpling smile. It settles the thin veneer of panic that has begun to prickle at his senses and now he just feels soft. Shang Qinghua sighs dramatically and collapses against the side of Mobei Jun’s chest that is not currently occupied by a delighted toddler.

“...I just don’t want anything to happen to him.” Shang Qinghua admits, letting his little dumpling take hold of his fingers with delighted glee.

“Mn.” Mobei Jun hums in agreement, wrapping an arm around his husband and holding his son tighter. “It won’t.”

As if to agree, the little dumpling giggles and explodes a tiny snow storm onto the bed. Shang Qinghua snorts with amusement and decides to spend his time teaching his perfect little son how to count snowflakes.

Mobei Jun is right. He’s worrying over nothing.

❄️

[trayoftrinkets]

I think it is about time I sell my soul to Brothers Without A Tomorrow because I really do not know how else to thank them for consistently putting out such amazing works— yes, I finally caught up with Dear Zero and am currently experiencing the worst existential crisis of the year so far.

Like I want to throw myself off a cliff so bad because how can something so perfect just exist? It should be kept in a temple and worshipped because oh. my. fucking. god.

The concept? Mindblowing.

The worldbuilding? Jawdropping.

The story so far? Impeccable.

The characters? My new obsession.

The art? Should be worshipped by all of humanity for all the years to come.

I'm happy that this precious piece of media is my introduction to guideverse, a genre that I've been meaning to explore for quite sometime now but did not know from where to begin. But now that I've gotten a taste of this hidden fruit, I think I will be digging through the darkest corners of the internet to find more. But before all that, let's go back to bwat because this is a bwat appreciation post and I need to yap about them.

To say that I'm obsessed with their writing and their art would be an understatement. I will forever be grateful to the stars that allowed me to be alive at the same time as this person and I'm not even being dramatic, I really do owe them my life.

I was first introduced to their works by my best friend, who had asked me to read Taming the Tiger. And when I tell you I felt my world shift.. l mean it in the way that I finally unlocked a door that would let me experience some of the strongest feelings I've ever felt while engaging with any form of media. Like, you know I absolutely love pretty art and amazing stories, right?

So when the two blended in such a seamless way that ticked every one of my boxes, how can you expect me to not vibrate at the frequency of light and erupt into flames? I MEAN LOOK AT THIS. LOOK AT THEM.

Not to mention how some of the illustrations reminded me so much of ranwan. You know it's serious when my brain connects something to ranwan. I really was fighting for my life out here. And those side stories? Oh, I was sobbing into my pillow, alright.

A few months later, after I was finally able to take in all of Taming the Tiger, I decided it was time to read Miscreants and Mayhem. It was a spur of the moment kind of decision, but oh boy did it spur me to jump off the nearest cliff because Juicy. Fucking. Citrus.

Pleek do mind the tags on this one if you haven't read it yet and/or are planning on reading.

It was a total surprise. In all sense of the word. If you've known me long enough, you know I am always on the hunt for stories with subversive tropes, morally grey black characters and, well, downright the most problematic shit you could imagine. And this manhwa managed to tick some of those boxes. I did have an issue with some stuff but in the grand scheme of things, it was all fine.

I started Smyrna and Capri quite recently (well, almost three months ago but I've been busy so I'm still stuck in the 40s). I was not expecting to like it but to my surprise, it quickly became a favourite.

Absolutely love the chibis in this one, and the little spirits. Oh, they bring me so much joy. I also like the humour and the awkwardness. Got me giggling, kicking my feet in the air. And I kinda dig the whole concept here even if I'm not that into mpreg stuff (buzzer goes wee woo wee woo, lights turn red, a voice speaks into the mic: that is incorr—), so yeah, I hope I can pick it back up and get back to reading soon!

Another work of theirs I've been eyeing to read is Blood Link. It looks tempting, I'll be starting it once I'm done with Smyrna and Capri.

Now, all that being said, some of the main reasons why I love Brothers Without A Tomorrow is not just because of the writing and the art, not just because of the multilayered stories and complex characters, but also because of how they break the established norm in BL Manhwas. Dark skinned characters and masculine bottoms? I will be at the scene of crime!

(pc: pinterest)

[night-is-a-feeling]

Top 5 fashion design house founders :)

ahhh wtf this is such a fun question for me!!! thank you anon ✨ also anon, who are you?? please come say hi! i wanna talk fashion with you 🥺

1. Vivienne Westwood (Vivienne Westwood): i’m a bit biased about her as i wrote a fashion history treatise on her career. it’s hard to really state how much of an impact she’s had on how we dress, because she is so varied as a designer. she’s someone who started out with a small shop called “Let it Rock” who was initially just interested in creating a space where she and other “misfits” could celebrate the intersections of music and clothing. and somehow made it to be titled as the “grandmother of punk rock” this is because she was tapped to create merchandise for The Sex Pistols, more specifically the “God Save the Queen” merchandise. she was scandalous for most of her career, and yet, she’s traversed so many different styles and concepts. from her smaller beginnings as a designer of punk rock fashions made for punk rock kids, to 18th century inspired pirate clothing, not to mention the countless humorous collections she’s made poking fun of the monarchy (not subtly, in the late 80s early 90s) anyways sozzz, i’m rambling 😂 but yeah i love her. forever a rebel and an activist. still to this day.

2. Gianni Versace (Versace): okay these will be quicker now, promise 😂 gianni grew up watching his mother (a dressmaker) work and immediately fell in love with the intricate beauty of it. he worked for several italian ateliers before starting his own company alongside his brother as CEO and his sister donatella as vice president. his fashion empire was built on sensuality and sexuality. a designer who on the surface may look like they are creating for the male gaze, but in reality was creating for women who wanted to reclaim their sensuality and feel powerful within it. sadly he was shot and killed in 1997 by a serial killer, his fashion house has been continued by his sister donatella.

3. Yves Saint Laurent (Yves Saint Laurent): yves my darling! i love him so much. the design house is now called Saint Laurent Paris, but i refuse to call it that (fuck your hedi 🖕🏼) YSL initially got a job working under Christian Dior when he was 17, he got the job because he won a fashion illustration competition for the position. when dior passed away from a heart attack in 1957, yves was thrust into the helm of this pervasive design house. he was forced into the army in 1960, and suffered a nervous collapse because of it. the scandal of him being unfit to serve in the army was enough for dior to remove him from the helm of the house. in 1962 he finally was able to open his own company. where he continued to revolutionize fashion year after year, most notably his popularization of trousers for women. and of course “le smoking” the ICONIC women’s suit. he retired in 2002, and we owe so much of modern fashion to his eye.

4. Rei Kawakubo (Comme Des Garçons): ahhh this queen is basically the antithesis of all the above designers!! a self taught clothing designer who studied fine arts in Tokyo. she opened her CDG label in 1969, and the first shop in 1973. her entire concept was built on her distaste for western definitions of sexiness, whose focus was on revealing the body in some way, whether that was close form, cutouts, short hems, etc. she on the other hand found this movement completely boring. so she built a name for herself creating avant-garde clothing made with mobility and comfort in mind. or an offering that was “like the boys”. her work has often been called “anti-fashion”, but i disagree i would instead like to label her work as “hyper-fashion” just like hyper pop, i feel that she works with fashion rules, but hyper extends them past what might be pleasant for us to look at. it doesn’t make sense, and is often ugly in so many ways, and yet? utterly fascinating and captivating. her refusal to conform to the lines of the human body plus intersecting art in her fashion, is what has kept her just as influential and interesting today as she was during her first collection.

5. Alexander McQueen (Alexander McQueen): “lee” as his friends called him, dropped out of school when he was 16. he dropped out to pursue his hungry desire to work in fashion. he quickly got work at a tailor shop, but was far too theatrical for the elegance of tailoring. he worked under italian designer romeo gigli for a time who allowed him to be theatrical. he eventually went to school for fashion, and immediately had eyes on him. he quickly rose to fame through his bizarre fashions, many seeming unfinished or torn apart. his raw take on fashion was something that could apparently be felt as an energy surrounding the rooms he worked in. he worked briefly as the head designer for givenchy, but hated his time there as he felt he was being constrained creatively (something he HATED). he revolutionized what we see as fashion, he used his tailoring knowledge to create the most intricate, stunningly crafted sculpture like pieces, and then he’d tear them apart, like an animal broke into his work room. but somehow that raw emotion plus his raw skill, was something to behold. i still get chills thinking about his “joan of arc” collection or “VOSS”

honorary shoutout: Patrick Kelly, i just love him so so much, and he absolutely would have gotten one of these spots, but his brand did not continue after his death. so he’s not technically a “fashion house”

ask me my top 5 or top 10 anything

[jejciu]

i wish u branched out more in ur art ... :'( its so sweet and soft and still can be so rich and dark theres so much potential ughh u never miss ........and gawd i know its never gonna happen but! whatever midground is id love to see snippets of the story expressed in drawings and such ah! anyhow have a great day or night, ur drawings and Especially watercolors never cease to be a source of inspiration and ily pls remember that im always here refrshing ur blog in excitment :3

idk what is this ask im drunk and sappy and felt a need to write it

ugh yeah sadly im aware my art isn't really diverse.... that's mostly bc I really really suck at most stuff outside basic bust portraits. but also it hurts when some people just assume I share everything i draw, that I never look up references or tutorials and never even try to experiment or go for something more ambitious.... the truth is, i practice a lot, I just really hate how most of those drawings turn out (God, just yesterday I was drawing for the entire afternoon, i wasted so much paper and still have nothing to post......). when I go for full body drawings, my artstyle seems to have gone m.i.a. and it just looks as if I traced another drawing, and when drawing dynamic poses everything still feels either terribly stiff or unrealistically bended in uncomfortable ways, it really sucks. I wish i could draw scenes from midground! maybe short comics, even! i really do. I wish I could give more to people who happen to think my artstyle is pleasant or are somewhat interested in my ocs. its all really disappointing, even tho I know I don't really owe anyone artistic growth, that even if i literally never did anything besides front-facing mercies, I wouldn't have to change for anyone, as long as it would bring me joy. But I do wanna evolve and get better as an artist..... and god, I feel like the more I try, the more inferior I feel to all the real artists who post a detailed realistic and fully rendered portrait with a caption of "Just a simple warmup sketch" and like, get 15k notes and their commissions cost like 200 dollars. like I'm so far fucking away from that it's unreal.

Anyway thanks for the kind words, I'm happy my drawings bring u joy and since I've done a lot of illustrations to midground in the past (back when I thought I'd draw one illustration per chapter and put it in the pdf of the story lmao... Or drawing covers for each book and all that) maybe I could try to redraw some of them as practice.... I don't know. But still, thank u, it's really sweet of u to say all that, I really appreciate it! Messages like that make me feel like its all worth the work, if I can inspire even one person. Thanks again, I hope alcohol went easy on u and u didn't have to wake up hangover this morning.

[sauntered-vaguely-downward]

Swollen. Loki x Reader

Ask anyone to describe Loki and most would say something along the lines of cold, cunning, or wicked. If you asked Tony Stark the answer would quickly slip through his lips, without missing a beat. 

“Evil,” he would spit, not caring to elaborate on that opinion. 

Whoever it was you chose to ask, nobody would describe him as caring, or gentle. Which is why the events of this day brought a great deal of confusion but also warmth to Y/N’s life. 

-

“I am so sorry Y/N!” Bucky called from behind as Steve and Thor supported Y/N’s bruised and battered body. 

“Buck it’s fine, I promise,” she laughed, leaning into Thor as to avoid putting weight on her ankle. 

Bucky and she had been sparing, nothing new there, it was something they had done a million times before. However, this time, she must have lost focus for only a second, which meant when Bucky came hurtling towards her she was by no stretch of the imagination prepared to be thrown across the room by him. As she landed she heard a small snap under her, and when she tried to stand it became very apparent by the pain searing through her left leg that something was not quite right. 

“We’ll take you to Bruce, so he can x-ray you, see if anything is broken. If it is you are actually going to have to rest it Y/N,” Steve said sternly as he held her up with very little effort. “Not like when you broke your elbow and decided to go and train anyway even though you were told not to.”

“I was told to rest the arm, which I did in my defence. I was practising kickboxing, which would have been fine had I not slipped,” she laughed, earning a chuckle from both Thor and Bucky who was still following behind, feeling a little better about the situation now. Steve, however, was unimpressed but had no time to comment as they had finally reached Bruce’s lab. 

Much to everyone's surprise, Loki was standing with Bruce, watching as the scientist jotted down notes on some paper. Hearing the footsteps behind them, the pair turned, both looking concerned as they saw Y/N being essentially carried in by the two men. 

“What happened?” Loki asked quickly, noticing the slight twinge of pain in Y/N’s face as they tried to help her sit. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, it’s probably nothing, Bucky just threw me off a little harder than expected earlier and I landed on my foot a bit awkwardly, and well it made a weird snap noise and those three think I need an x-ray even though I’m sure its nothing,” she smiled, watching as Bruce scurried around the room, rolling out an x-ray machine. 

Looking around at the guys in the room she realised that Loki actually looked very concerned, and that concern grew, even more, when Bruce confirmed everyone's fear in this. 

“You’ve fractured your third and fourth metatarsal,” Bruce sighed, going to the medical supply cupboard in the lab (they never used to have a whole cupboard for medical supplies, but as Tony became more adventurous with his plans, the injuries he sustained were usually a bit more than a bandaid could deal with). “It’s not the worst fracture but it is going to be painful and swell a lot. You’re going to have to stay off that foot for a few weeks too, rest it. Here, this boot will help you move around a bit but I’d prefer it if you stayed off it for as much as possible.” 

“Seriously? We’re meant to be going on a mission tomorrow, I can’t miss it because of some stupid fracture.” 

-

Turns out when Steve is in charge of the mission, she can miss out. Even though she had tried very hard to sneak into the car to help them with the mission, Steve had found her, picked her and her luggage up and took her back into the compound. Protest as she might, Steve decided to just tune her out before rushing back out to head off on the mission. 

She would have usually run after him and the others but right now she was struggling to even stand. 

“Ugh fuck this shit,” she cried as she struggled to walk to the kitchen. Yes, she was capable but damn it fucking hurt when she tried to walk. The boot clearly did not fit at the moment, her foot was too swollen for it to be comfortable. 

She was very hungry and determined to get something to eat, but when she opened the cupboard she realised that anything she wanted to eat was out of reach, so she would have to go on a little climb in order to reach the snacks she wanted. 

“Y/N!” Loki shouted as he saw her attempting to climb onto the worktop to reach the desired snack when he entered the kitchen. “Don’t do that, you stupid human! You’re meant to be resting,” without much thought for it he picked her up, from the counter and carried her back over to the sofas in the living room. Plonking her down on the sofa with a soft thud he removed the boot on her foot and took it with him as he went to retrieve the snack she had wanted. “Your foot is far too swollen to be in this.” 

“Hey! Give me back my boot! I can’t walk without it!” 

“Exactly! I was there yesterday, Bruce told you only to use it if it was really necessary, so until such a time I will keep hold of the boot and be your legs while you rest,” he huffed, bringing back the snacks along with some drinks. 

“Why do you care? You're the god of lies and mischief, surely you of all people would understand that rules are made to broken,” she smirked. 

“I care because it's you, Y/N you're the only person in this whole world I don’t despise, so I need you in the best condition,” he stated plainly, as though this was something she already knew. 

“Didn’t realise that,” she muttered, a small blush creeping across her face. Loki had always been relatively pleasant to her, and thinking on it, in comparison to everyone else, she was the only person he was ever nice to. She hadn’t thought much about it until now, but the idea of being the only person he could tolerate was a rather wonderful feeling. “Thank you then, for tolerating me more than everyone else.” 

“You’re easy to tolerate,” he smiled. “Now, seeing as you are meant to keep off the foot, and I believe everyone else has disappeared on a mission, I will be your legs until the swelling goes down and you're able to walk properly with the boot.” 

Loki did just that. He became her legs while her foot was too swollen to fit into the boot. Everything she needed he brought to her, never leaving her side. He helped her shower (she wore her bikini so he could help), carried her to and from her bedroom, made her meals and drinks. Anything she needed, he was there to provide it. 

In the few days that passed, Y/N and Loki spent all their time together. Loki would read to Y/N as while she laid in his lap. Y/N showed Loki the wonders the world had to offer through documentaries like Planet Earth. 

When Y/N could finally walk again (still with the boot though), she found herself missing Loki. The time they had spent together had been unexpected, but wonderful. She found herself falling a little for the trickster god, and while she did not yet know it, he had felt the same for a very long time. 

She decided to buy Loki a gift as a thank you for taking care of her. It wasn’t anything major, if she had the ability to go for a full day out shopping it would probably be better, but she knew he would love it none the less. It was an illustrated version of The Hobbit (a book in which Loki had begun reading while he was looking after her. She wrapped it neatly in a beautiful emerald wrapping paper before making her way to Loki’s room. Knocking, she was quickly met with a happy looking Loki on the other side of the door. 

“Y/N,” he grinned, welcoming her in and urging her to take a seat. “To what do I owe this pleasure?” 

“I wanted to say thank you, for looking after me,” she smiled softly, handing him the green gift. “You didn’t have to look after me for as long as you did, you were so kind, I loved spending time with you, and I honestly can’t thank you enough so I got you a little something.” 

Opening the gift, a wide grin spread across his face. His hands run over the cover, feeling the art beneath them. 

“Y/N this is wonderful,” without really thinking, he leant down to give her a kiss, one which Y/N happily (a little surprised, however) responded too, her heart leaping in her chest when his hand softly held the side of her face. Pulling back, both had a soft blush on their cheeks, smiles wide across their faces. 

“You liked it that much, huh?” She giggled.

“Very much,” he said, kissing her once more. “Perhaps I could read some more to you now?” 

“I would love that.” 

Neither were quite sure where this would go, but right now both were happy in each other's arms, Y/N listening as Loki read of lands far from their own.

[mountainsarecallingbabe]

Gobbledigook

I feel like I’m going slightly insane. I don’t really have friends here in Virginia other than the three friends that have full time jobs and significant others and live 30+ minutes away from me. I’m trapped at home and have $15 in my checkings and no savings. Like I’m bottom of the barrel broke. The saddest thing is even if I had money I don’t know what I would do with it because I’m so lost. I don’t have anyone to talk to most of the time and I’m realizing being home how much my parents limited beliefs have hindered what I’m capable of (especially my Dad). Any time I’ve ever wanted to pursue anything artistic he’s ridiculed it. My mom has to. Pretty much criticizing the way that I play music, create art. Almost as though its a way to push me down. I’m at the level now though that I truly don’t know what to do and I feel like I don’t believe in myself at all because what exactly do I have to believe in? A big part of life is making money to pursue the things you want to do. I have none. So my options are continually trying to pursue shitty jobs just to have spare change or selling my soul to a job I hate and sucks up all of my time. I don’t think I’ve ever been this depressed before. It really reminds me of middle school and being trapped in this cycle of hating my parents and myself. When I try to think of what my skills are, like what I’m good at and what I would like to do with my life.. I have none of those skills? Is it even possible for me to “pivot” at 26??? And If I choose to pivot careers to something more artistic what is the financial outlook going to be like? Will my dog and I have to live at home for the next three fucking years just to gain enough traction to make this a reality? Or am I being an idiot to even think that I could 1. start from scratch in an artistic field and build enough “know how” to be good at it. and then 2. make any kind of money from it? Fuuuuck like why is life so hard. I hate how everything is about money. I just want to live in Washington State, make art and have a community of friends. I really thought thats where I was headed in Philly and in a moment it was all stripped away from me. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be learning from this anymore. Like is this my life now? Doomed to be a bum who lives at home working low paying gigs with no end in sight? On top of all of this, part of the unhealthy part of my relationship with my parents is fostered through the fact that I continue to borrow money from them because I ran out of money months ago and to hold myself accountable I’ve created a list of debt that I owe them to pay them back. I KNOW that the second I try to pay them back my Dad will scoff and say he won’t take it and my Mom will not give a fuck and say if I’m going to pay her this money then what about the one time I went to get a bagel. Or just petty stuff. If anyone reads this, it’ll be clear I have a lot of baggage. For me having financial stability and freedom is HUGE and through basically no fault of my own I was fired a couple of months ago forced to break a lease paying thousands of dollars I didn’t have, paying moving costs and on top of that I had already planned a trip to the UK that my job knew about and fired me the day before I left for my trip. Just a lot of things hit me I was in no way expecting and living in my apartment in Philly was expensive. I was only making enough to pay my rent and the essentials for the most part each month/paycheck.

I just feel so unbearably weighed down. I’m someone who thrives off of having a community of people to do things with and I don’t have that here in DC. I just have my mom and brother and a hangout with a friend once a month. It’s exhausting weirdly to never have an outlet to vent or just hangout with a girlfriend. Especially since now everyone has a boyfriend and they have to tag along or they’re all guarded in some way. I never feel like I can share what I truly feel or bare myself to anyone anymore. I’m very alone. Basically, I’m 26 and I feel the same way I do when I was 14. Like an angsty teenager who doesn’t know a way out. Maybe this is folks. Adulting is just throwing in the towel and getting that 9-5 job. I just don’t know anymore. 

I started drawing and I love it, but now I’m latched to it thinking it might be my financial escape. Which is hilarious because I’m in no way that good? I just started seriously drawing a month ago. Idk I don’t feel good at anything. gaaaaaaahhhh. 

God forBID I tell anyone I want to pursue illustration, they would laugh in my face. I’m just trying to figure out where to go from here. There are positives in my situation since its such a clean slate (no money, real job, community, location dependence, paths). But many of the positives bring negatives (i.e. living at home, loss of independence and friends and career trajectory). 

I just need to know if anyone out there has felt this way and if they were able to start from zero and climb themselves out of such a deep dark pit (yes, me being dramatic). 

thankfully I get paid from house/pet sitting and my online teaching ESL side gig next week which will give me SOME substance to start living my live again. Being 100% broke is miserable.  

[metamodel]

Lamb of God Returns From Pet Sematary as Zombie Content

This email is powered by the trouble between metalworkers, AI, scratched CDs and the cloud. Doing strategic design, I’m always navigating tensions around narratives of change, often ostensibly involving “technology” or some desired or feared “disruption”. What do such narratives mean? Is change always good? Is there anything interesting in the detritus left behind? I’m always drawn to ambivalence.

So it’s no surprise that in the wake of Easter, my thoughts hover above the border between death and rebirth, collapse and resurgence, obsolescence and renewal. And as Passover season led into May Day, I was reminded that in order to find new life, we sometimes need to do more than just hustle like good neoliberal subjects, and actually mess up the one around us, like the plagues visited upon Egypt, or industrial action. 

I keep thinking of that awesome first-season finale of American Gods: wily old Odin tells Ostara, the ancient pagan goddess of Easter, that she’s sustained only by the meagre echo of Spring festivities that survive in our contemporary chocolate egg rituals. It’s time to demonstrate her true power to the New Gods, he says. So in the devastating penultimate scene, Ostara decides to withdraw Spring from the world, leaving the land withered and gnarled.

[caption align="alignnone" width="980"]

Easter (the ever-delightful Kristin Chenoweth) withdraws her labour.[/caption]

Says Odin:

Tell the believers and the non-believers. Tell them we’ve taken the Spring. They can have it back when they pray for it.

Such chutzpah: it's the Earth, going on fucking strike against the World. So if a Norse god union organiser calls on you next Passover/Easter/May, on which monstrous powers will you draw? How will you Show Them Who You Really Are?

Happy May.

• • •

STATION IDENT: After returning to design after a year away, I find that Everything Now Looks Very Strange Indeed™. This is another one of my updates on restarting a creative practice, with added cultural and design commentary.

(If someone’s forwarded this thing to you in the hope you’ll find it interesting, you can subscribe here to secure my everlasting love. And please, pass it on if you think it might be of interest to anyone.)

🔂🌏 The eternal return of post-human-centred design

Giles Lane from Proboscis took some time to wrestle with my recent ambivalence about human-centred design. Recapping: back in Issue #2 I asked, “Isn’t putting humans at the centre of things what got us into this climate disaster?”, to which Giles replied:

I have a very different understanding of Human Centred Design based on needs rather than desires, including the need to co-exist within a healthy environment/ecosystem. It draws on its 1970s roots, based in radical response to exploitation of people & communities by privileged elites.

Those of us whose work has always embraced a dialogue about ethics, values and been infused by a genuine concern for human centred, participatory design will always be on the periphery of the mainstream.

The thing is, Giles and I don’t have a very different understanding of human-centred design — I completely understand where he’s coming from. When onboarding new designers at Digital Eskimo, I was always at pains to emphasise how the heritage we were inspired by — the Scandinavian participatory design tradition, amongst others — was a truly radical seam of practice that had been papered over by the rather less exciting idea that “listening to customers is common sense for business.” 🤮

[caption align="alignnone" width="980"]

"From Fra Burmeister og Wain's Iron Foundry" by Peder Severin Krøyer, 1885.[/caption]

I would argue that contemporary design methods, whether they acknowledge it or not, owe a massive debt to organisations like the Norwegian Union of Iron and Metalworkers, who in the 1970s were disruptively intervening in debates about automation and computerisation. Rather than simply being “for” or “against” the machines that were threatening to replace them, workers became high-level designers of workplace technology systems. Now that debates about automation have again recurred in this age of AI, we would do well to pay attention to these traditions. 

But I’d still argue that in spite of the traditions Giles and I both still cherish, the balloon of “human-centredness” has nonetheless semantically burst, and was never completely tenable in the first place. An analogy: “Third World nationalism” presided over some heroic moments in the struggle against colonial domination, but I nonetheless think that nationalism was never exactly a good thing in the first place, and also tends to yield ever-decreasing returns as a corrective to very real global inequalities. 

I think we simply need new beacons for navigating our more-than-human design landscape. These landmarks might include the work of people like Anab Jain from Superflux (see this talk at the IxDA’s Interactions 18 for a good overview of her work), Anne Galloway from the More-Than-Human Lab and others. Let’s all watch that space, and please let me know if you find anything interesting — I’ll feature it here in a future issue.

🐕🤖 Old dogs, new

I was at the City of Sydney’s latest CityTalk, “Our Future With AI and Its Rise In China”: a keynote from Robert Hsiung, chief of the online tech education platform Udacity in China. I found the evening singularly unimpressive. Rather than indulge in wide-eyed liberal panic about Chinese authoritarianism by mining a seam of yellow peril rhetoric, the subsequent conversation went in the other direction entirely, studiously avoiding any discussion about machine learning’s use by the Chinese surveillance state. 

Hsiung emphasised the importance of “mastering the machine” to staying relevant as humans in an AI world, citing case studies in which “even” blue collar Chinese workers with a mere secondary education were successfully retrained by Udacity as AI programmers. Sure, they want to democratise tech skills, and I agree that adaption is preferable to sticking one’s head in the sand, but when Hsiung characterises people on society’s periphery as “people who didn’t study enough in school” (actual words used), I’m not seeing Norwegian metalworkers taking power into their own hands. I can’t help but wonder there’s an implicit element of patronising, tut-tutting disciplinary action in this imperative to retrain before the Singularity overwhelms the uninitiated. 

Hsiung’s keynote ultimately devolved into a stiff, extended advertisement for Udacity, reminding me of nothing so much as a dystopian propaganda spot for a corporation like Omni Consumer Products in Paul Verhoeven’s RoboCop. If this deeply uninteresting event is the best the city’s public sphere can do on the AI front, Lord Mayor Clover Moore ought to be embarrassed. 

💿☠️ Obsoletely nothing

I’m alive / I’m dead 

— The Cure, “Killing an Arab”

[caption align="alignnone" width="980"]

Image by Rishi Deep at Unsplash[/caption]

When I realised not long ago that some of my primary school art students were habitually getting stuck in their creative endeavours, I got them to look for stimulus in unlikely places. “Look at what’s been thrown away at your feet,” I told the class. The next day, my own advice returned to me as a gift.

Local government rubbish cleanups are the rhythmic heavings of the suburbs. A few times a year, we find the unwanted and the outmoded disgorged onto the street (and more often than not, you can find me rummaging through the junk). As I got off the bus that afternoon, an object on the pavement suddenly came into focus as having joined the the ranks of the obsolete: a CD tower. A tall, narrow shelf, made solely to hold a large collection of compact discs. 

A few years before, it had been cathode ray tube TVs and VHS tapes on the nature strip. Today, a piece of furniture had lost its one purpose. Next to it, victims of the streaming moment, were endless shiny platters: redundant CDs and DVDs. I felt a pang of melancholy at this diorama of churn, but couldn't muster up any actual nostalgia for CDs. I suspect that I’m not alone in this. 

In 1998 I wrote a short science fiction story that touched on the possibility of being nostalgic for media formats that were then only just beginning to be challenged by new forms of media like the Internet. Mirroring what I was then seeing with the fetishisation of vinyl records, my 21st Century protagonist, Sebastian Tan, was a CD fetishist. While I gave Seb the ability to hack into streaming media services to get lasting access to the discrete music files themselves, this streaming pirate still preferred physical media. 

And the act of opening the digipak and sliding the antique CD in place was a ritual. Trainspotting. When he first found Silver Rocket, it was a revelation. It was a place. He’d just stood there, soaking it in – the lost garage punk compilations, the late ’90s Skint family, the Anokha artists. All the music physically in the same room. Old silver platters and everything. 

Since this was 20 years ago, I don’t remember how much I actually believed how likely “CD fetishism” would actually be in the 21st Century, but the idea certainly seems ridiculous to me now. Naked optical discs like the CD and the DVD seem to be missing the qualities that would guarantee their fetishisation. There’s something fragile, bare and unromantic about them. It strikes me that this is perfectly illustrated by two Kanye West album covers:

[caption align="alignnone" width="980"]

[/caption]

On the left is his 2013 masterpiece Yeezus, which unfortunately affects the style of a blank CD. To the right is its recent sequel, the not-so-great Yahndi, which makes up for its mediocrity by aping a magnificent Sony MiniDisc, a fabulous storage format that was largely outmoded by the turn of the millennium. 

Don’t be fooled by the similarities, because these two things are chalk and cheese. MiniDiscs were cool. CDs are not. In addition to enclosing a rewritable magneto-optical disc inside a permanent case, giving them a more tactile quality, MiniDiscs were also smaller in the hand. And in the cinema of the mid- to late-’90s, they were a shorthand for “vaguely futuristic storage media”. 

MiniDiscs played a significant role as storage for VR contraband in Kathryn Bigelow’s Strange Days (1995). Ralph Fiennes furtively stashes old VR recordings of happier times with Juliette Lewis in a shoebox of MiniDiscs, but one particular disc that comes into his possession becomes the MacGuffin in the film’s thriller plot.

[caption align="alignnone" width="980"]

[/caption] [caption align="alignnone" width="980"]

[/caption]

Gotcha: VR proof of racist police brutality… captured on disc! (See how actually compact it is in the hand?) And in the Wachowski’s The Matrix (1999), MiniDiscs return as contraband, this time stashed heavy-handedly inside Neo’s copy of Jean Baudrillard’s Simulation and Simulacra. By this time they’d become almost retro-futuristic, somehow at home with the acoustic coupler modems and Bakelite handsets.

[caption align="alignnone" width="980"]

[/caption] [caption align="alignnone" width="980"]

[/caption]

There’s something reassuringly tangible about the MiniDiscs in these movies. Their secret hiding places are enticing. And the sight of these contraband objects being exchanged for physical cash is just too delicious.

In short, I wish I could be nostalgic for CDs like I am for MiniDiscs (which, truth be told, I never used that much). It’s as if MiniDiscs occupy in my imagination a subjunctive road-not-taken that would have made disposable optical media less crass. I almost feel like mad old King Denethor in Lord of the Rings, wishing that it was his less favourite son who died in battle.

🧟‍♀️💾 Zombie content

[caption align="alignnone" width="980"]

[/caption]

There are folders on my laptop that owe their structure purely to having originated on random old floppy disks that I found in the cupboard. Some of these files are unreadable, despite being Microsoft Word documents. Microsoft are amongst the most slavish followers of backwards-compatibility in the technology industry, even to the extent that they replicate the behaviour of ancient bugs in newer versions of Windows in order for apps to run smoother, but it seems that documents created in versions that predate Word 98 are lost to me. (I’ve learned my lesson: these days, everything’s in plain text Markdown.)

[caption align="alignnone" width="980"]

[/caption]

I’m intrigued by the file titled “WHOREBOY.doc”. From what I recall, it contained notes for a graphic novel I was planning about an undead sex-worker-of-colour in the antebellum South. A black 19th Century superhero, Whoreboy kicked arse. At least, that’s what I remember. 

Update: turns out that plain text editors can glean most of the content from old binary Word files. My memory proved largely correct. Whoreboy was a runaway slave rent-boy who could sprout tentacles from his back and rise from the dead. In moments of crisis, the old slaver’s brand on his shoulder would glow, perversely triggering latent superpowers. (I’d flagged the branding of African American slaves for further research. These days I’d be in Wikipedia rabbit-hole instead.)

A snippet:

Whoreboy’s mentor, an old “witchdoctor”, mentions Jimbo in the Mirror, the terrifying folk spirit that you can only see at midnight. 

“Really?” asks Whoreboy. 

“No, I made it up,” he says. “Them white folk love that shit. Brown Eye for the White Guy, I call it.”

Okay, perhaps it needs more work. But think of the possibilities! 

What’s the funniest skeleton in your digital closet?

🎼🔁 Refrain, with key change

It’s apparent that I often think inordinately about the past while navigating change, even if it involves a kind of “meta-nostalgia” (as above: when nostalgia doesn't seem possible, I feel “nostalgic” about “feeling nostalgic”). As I’ve said earlier,

I often look to the past when I think about the very idea of the future, not just so we can avoid repeating “the mistakes of history” (as important as that might be), but because as designers trying to make the world a better place, we really should honour the creative friction that happens when the weird fragments of the past we continue to live with rub against the potentials of the present moment. (For a future-oriented person, I do an amusing amount of hoarding! In my view, forgetting to deal with legacy systems, even if “dealing with them” involves actively destroying them, is tantamount to vapourware dreaming.)

But I’m also realising that to hover in the futurepast in the way I do means more than just coming to grips with the past, with all its traumas and potentials. I suspect that my own retrofuturistic tendencies are an instinctive way to express the bind we find ourselves in as makers of newness (designers, strategists, “change-makers”) under late capitalism: so much of our work these days seems to involve making organisations more adaptable, resilient, nimble and innovative, but how this might also be a friendly form of neoliberal shock therapy? How much is the agility of the contemporary design-led organisation a way to produce subjects who compliantly flex with the ever-shifting sands of the market?

I love to tell people about my work facilitating cultures of design possibility in organisations. After a productive co-design session, a client team-member will express joy about the concepts they’re helping to flesh out. 

“You realise, don’t you,” I say, “that you’ve nominated yourself as a key part of the leadership for this project, right?” 

The resulting look of terror on their face — the one that says, “B-BUT THAT’S NOT IN MY 12-MONTH WORK PLAN!” — is one that I always relished. And so I drag them kicking and screaming into the future. While I’m not about to defend calcified organisational cultures of bureaucratic planning, I’m now a bit more equivocal; I can see some continuity between my own gleefulness and the forces that are casualising workforces around the planet. 

Perhaps my hovering, with my face turned to the past as I explore futurity (and like Lot’s wife as she looks back at Sodom even as she flees), is an admission that security and belonging are worth something in these times. So as we experience the churn of obsolescence and innovation, let’s keep our wits, sympathies and sense of revolt about us. 

A sustainable portion of all my love,

Ben