#like when i say its impossible i fucking mean it

[joffyworld]

FURTHERMORE,

PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD,

IGNORE THE NUMBERS

They mean nothing.

One thing I forgot to mention is that there's this expectation some people I've spoken to have that if their post doesn't do its usual numbers of notes or comments or likes, whatever the platform you're on uses, then it wasn't "worthwhile" or people "didn't like it".

Dude. Bro. Girly. They. It.

Whatever notes you get, whether it's 10k or 1 is a genuine life touched. People don't come on here and reblog or share or like without having felt something. Okay, yeah, sure, maybe you didn't explode and reach 50 thousand people and they didn't all simultaneously explode from excitement.

BUT THAT'S OKAY.

Social media platforms are designed around algorithms to push content they assume people want to see. Quite frankly, however, these algorithms suck balls. Tumblr might be one of the better in terms of posts reaching audiences and old posts gaining recognition for a long time after they were posted, but it's still just a computer throwing shit on a screen.

I see, and talk to, a lot of artists that feel they can't OC post or that they have failed because "my usual audience size didn't all see the post I made" when there's a dozen things beyond their control that affect whether or not people even know they've uploaded. Here's a short list of shit that can affect whether or not your post is seen by the average joe:

Tags

Notes

Fandom or OC

Followers

Time of Day

The weather outside

The Algorithm™

Luck

Hype around a fandom at a given time

Trends

A total of ONE of these you can control, being the tags. You have literally no say whether your post does well or not, at it SHOULDN'T MATTER. As discussed in the original post, do art for you! These numbers are genuine people behind a screen that have felt touched by what you have made. It doesn't matter whether that's one person ever, or a million people at once. People were altered even in the smallest ways by your creation, whether it was a smile or a happy cry, and that's beautiful. That's what art is, an expression of self that others can find comfort in when shared. But the key words are "EXPRESSION OF SELF." Not what the audience wants, not what God wants, but what you want.

Let me put it this way:

If you open a hospital, and are used to treating a million people a day but then suddenly have a day where only 5 people show up in need of help, is that a bad day? Or is it just good that people didn't need help? One day they might and you'll still be there because hospital equipment doesn't just vanish into thin air one day.

Audiences will see your work when they need to, and when they don't they won't. There's no two ways about it, you're fighting impossible odds if you try to make it any other way. So just let it be, do art for you and fuck everyone else. Because ultimately, the only person you're fucking by doing otherwise is yourself, and the world does plenty of that for us by default.

So go ahead, OC post! Create porn! Create the most angst-riddled depressing shit you possibly can! Don't worry about whether or not it'll do numbers and blow up big, because it doesn't matter! All that matters is that you had fun, and every life you touch with your work is a genuine human connection made over impossible distances that otherwise would've never occurred. Even posting this I'm speaking to people all the way from China to Mexico.

Will they see it? Who knows! But it doesn't matter, as long as one person sees it then that's a good thing. If nobody sees it that's great too! It means nobody needed to, so the world didn't need more lecturing on how to be happy.

Live life folks. No matter who you are, someone loves you, whether they know it yet or not, whether you know it yet or not.

Thank you for coming to my inane rant, have a good day! :D

From,

Jofferson

DO ART FOR YOU! 🫵

FUCK EVERYONE ELSE!!!

Seriously.

I'm so sick and weary of logging on here and seeing creators I adore, and people I don't even know alike, apologising for not uploading or basically begging for a break like they're not a human with needs.

You're literally a human being, with thoughts, feelings and emotions. You're not an art factory, you're not some positivity pump, you're nothing other than a genuine human being living a genuine life experience.

SO GO LIVE IT!!!

YOU OWE THE INTERNET NOTHING!!!!

There should be, and realistically is, no shame in just fucking leaving if you want to. There's no contract you signed, there's no permit you bought or lease you hold. You're a person who decided to share their art with the world, FOR FREE, and garnered an audience of faceless people behind screens who enjoy that art because YOU wanted to make it and share it.

Let me be frank as best I can. You owe the internet nothing, you owe the world nothing and you owe yourself EVERYTHING. You are the only person who can live your life, you are the only person who can create the things you create and you are the only motherfucker that should matter to you when you create those things.

Art is supposed to be a wondrous joy that inspires the mind and indulges ideas that other creatures can't even comprehend. It's supposed to be a magical and fun fantasy land where anything is possible because you make it possible. It's not a 9-5 unless you make it one, so stop making your hobby a 9-5 unless you're getting paid for it, and even then put in limits because no job that you choose to do should end in you burnt out and wishing you'd never started in the first place.

Remember when we were all kids? When we all drew and wrote for fun simply because we could? We'd show people are shit and be like "Mama look!" and she'd clap her hands all proud. But she wasn't why you picked up that crayon, you just did it for you because you wanted to make some shit.

That's how it should be. That's how it is unless you let those fake ass numbers on a screen rule your life. It's all meaningless, the praise may be genuine but that doesn't mean you should spend your whole life running in circles and performing for an audience.

Be a human being! Be an artist! Fuck everyone else!

Just be yourself <3

[sanstropfremir]

I'm really enjoying reading through your blog, and of course it has to do a lot with the fact that I also love to bits everything Taemin puts out. Unfortunately tumblr makes it really annoying to try and get to older posts, so sorry if you've already spoken about any of this T-T

A big part of why I love Taemin's solo work so much is his unique style, which shines through both technique and performance.

Taemin has many times spoke about how he's heavily involved in everything concerning his work: styling, picking out the samples, lyrics, themes, choreo, you name it he took care of it at some point. "The taemin genre" couldn't have emerged simply out of him being an above average dancer, his signature is on everything.

But surely, very often he can't do much more than express his opinion on something, and a lot of the end product is still created by other people? It would be silly to expect him to dance, sing, produce, write lyrics, style all at once, right? Or would it?

I very, very often hear people take pride in the fact that their fav is an "all-rounder", that presumably does most of the "creating" purely by themselves, or at least can shine all alone, even without the support of a group. But does that imply that artists that only do the performing part are somehow less "authentic", or worthy of praise? Or that idols comfortable in their position as a team player aren't talented or into what they do? To call yourself a master you probably have to spend a decade on just one skill, so why expect teens and young adults to be Da Vincis?

Now, of course it's still amazing when an idol puts in the work and branches out. Taemin's vocal improvement undoubtedly gave him more creative opportunities and made his stages that much more impactful.

But even just being an idol and maintaining an attractive appearance (for criteria as harsh as it is in k-pop) would easily count as a full-time job, so I would go as far as to say that this expectation of total creative control is a little delusional.

haha it was really funny watching you go through everything! yea tumblr is really bad about that, but if you go to my blog on desktop/not the mobile version you should be able to page back through ALL my asks, which are all tagged by 'answers'. there are like probably around a thousand of those now tho.

i have kind of talked about this before, but i'm very happy to talk about it again, because i always think it's worthwhile to clarify what the actual process is like for creating a collaborative work.

you are right, taemin and every other idol who says they're 'involved' in the process in some way is most likely just picking options and expression opinions about things that designers and stylists have already curated for them. it is physically impossible for a single person to do EVERYTHING involved in something like creating a kpop cb, because there are just too many tasks. and if one person DID try to do it all on their own, it would take probably 100x as long to finish. let me use styling as an example: lots of idols have professed to have input on styling choices, but this can range anywhere from bringing in moodboards and having discussions about what styling they're interested in at design meetings, to just picking which thing they like best from a selection of clothes already provided by the designer. in NO fucking world is an idol:

taking measurements

shopping for fabric

shopping for clothing

sewing and altering clothing

doing the budgeting

labelling and collating all the pieces together

taking fitting notes

these are all extremely specialized skills that 1) take TIME to learn how to do and how to do well, and 2) just take TIME to DO. you want to know what i spend probably 40% of the total production time of a show doing when i costume design? fucking SHOPPING. an idol may contribute ideas to a design and make executive choices, but in NO way are they solely responsible for everything about styling. the only idol that i would believe to have a heavier hand than most in this regard is kibum, who does actually have a good knowledge of fashion and fabric and i could see him going shopping with a designer. but if you think that man is sewing anything? cmon.

and this is just for ONE aspect of a cb. you think an idol is also painting the set? shopping for props? setting up the lighting? most idols that are known for dancing aren't even choreographing their own work, INCLUDING taemin. it is absolutely and unquestionably delusional to say that an idol has total creative control over something. this whole idea doesn't originate in kpop (it's auteur theory's fault), but kpop does suffer from an acute version of it, because there's a general collective concensus that devalues the creative work of the labourer. basically, people will only classify you as a "true artist" if you're the one who comes up with the ideas, because ideas and concepts are given more importance and weight. it's a type of because 'being in charge'/'at the top of the food chain that's been perpetuated by capitalism and western postmordern art theory that intentionally places value of conceptual skills higher than those of craftspeople. no type of person is a ''true artist'' and most art takes many people with many different skills in order to create. i find it unintentionally very funny that you use da vinci as an example of an 'allrounder' (or 'renaissance man' as they used to be called) because he, like every other famous painter from the era, used apprentices to help paint his paintings!!!!! he was even an apprentice himself for verrocchio!! da vinci's legacy would not have been possible without all the other people who helped him create the work that he did!

what is the real kicker about this whole mess is that downplays the beauty of the fact that art is made collaboratively. an 'ideas' person cannot realize those ideas without a craftsperson there to help them. everyone who takes part in creating something is important, and it's fucked to only acknowledge specific people in that process.

[nemotakeit]

i think that if we dig all the way down to the roots of tøp's musical theme, it all comes down to that constant internal conflict between desperately wanting to be seen and desperately wanting to stay hidden. we can see how they've been making gradual progress in "managing the tension" but it's still there on Clancy. dare i say it's the central theme of the lore as well.. the reason the character & the era Clancy feels so rebellious is because he's actively fighting to Be Seen. the oscillation continues, but a subversive variable has emerged.

[paging-possum]

on some level I understand that welcome to hell is probably a little harder to sell than hazbin given the *gestures vaguely* entire main plotline of w2h THAT SAID im going to be mad about it forever. because one of them is actually funny and has good character design and compelling dynamics and a good plot and its not the one about the freaking hotel.

[queervegancryptid]

What's funny to me about this is that I have Medicare and Florida Medicaid, and let me tell you: compared to other countries with socialized medicine, we are getting absolutely shafted. It's been going on for a long time, at least since George W. Bush was in office. That's when Medicare Advantage plans started becoming a thing, and in Florida and at least some other states, there is no public option for Medicaid. You HAVE to pick a private "managed care" plan. (UHC, Humana, Florida Blue, Molina, and Sunshine Health are the companies that come to mind. I think there's one or two more in the mix for Florida Medicaid. YMMV.)

My Medicare and Medicaid benefits are administered in one dual special needs plan (D-SNP), which is the best option for me in a lot of ways... except here's the thing: I get those benefits because I'm disabled. Legally, my disability benefits were approved on the basis of PTSD, eating disorders, and severe anxiety.

It is impossible to find an eating disorder recovery program, online or in-person, that accepts Medicare. So I have a disability, and I wouldn't even have insurance at all if I didn't go through the process of sitting in front of an ALJ after nearly three years of waiting time, for her and the hired assessor and fuck knows who else to determine that my eating disorder is a major factor in why I can't work.

So you might say I only have this insurance because of my eating disorder.

So you might even go so far as to say the reason I have this insurance (any insurance, really) is CATEGORICALLY excluded from the benefits offered by this or ANY OTHER plan available to me that includes Medicare. Almost no Florida Medicaid plans are accepted by any eating disorder specific program or facility, and the way it works is that Medicare is billed first, and it seems like no one really knows what that means for people like me.

I currently have a D-SNP, but I could switch to having separate plans for each of Medicare and Florida Medicaid. It might be worth doing, but I can only switch plans once a quarter, and it seems like switching is the only way to find out. But if it doesn't work, and it might not, I could be without benefits I desperately need for months before I even get an answer. I've heard of the whole being more than the sum of its parts, but somehow, Medicare + Medicaid in one plan may do less than two separate plans.

Oh, and my plan? I won't name it, but it's UHC. Private insurance companies run Medicare Advantage plans and D-SNP plans like mine. I have this plan mostly because it covers my prescriptions. (Well, for now, anyway. Fully expecting to lose coverage for HRT within the next year or two.)

The psych facilities in-network to me are okay... if you don't actually have to do anything above outpatient therapy. I would be goddamn terrified to be sent to one of them for inpatient care. Just based on the Google reviews alone.

But who cares about mentally ill poor people. If I had a drug or alcohol problem, I'd have no problem finding a rehab in-network for that, but I'd still never check into one on an inpatient basis. The only ones of those in-network to my plan have the same problem as the general psych facilities near me. I would survive, but I'd probably come out worse, not better.

Original Medicare (Parts A and B) is more predictable in some ways, but it doesn't cover all of what the Medicare Advantage plans (Part C) cover (no prescription drug coverage at all without enrolling in either Part C for all your Medicare or at least a Part D plan, which deals with prescription drugs). Also, you still have to pay a monthly premium unless you're dirt poor and qualify for Medicaid and "Extra Help." So calling it socialized medicine the way Canada does it or the way the NHS does things in the UK or whatever, for example, is seriously stretching the limits of that idea.

Anyway tl;dr I've been dealing with this for a while and have a lot more to say about it, but the point is, if you think Medicare and Medicaid are examples of "socialized medicine" the way other countries use the term, you have been misled and will end up extremely confused and frustrated if your situation actually demands complex care of any kind. And for certain specific conditions, apparently, you're just fucked. You end up nearly dying of anorexia three or four times because there's literally no help for you that won't cost tens of thousands of dollars out of pocket.

Sorry for the rant. I'm incredibly frustrated about these things and just venting a little, I guess. But I also feel like this kind of shit should be common knowledge, because I'm definitely not the only person dealing with it, except somehow no one ever seems to talk about it.

I can hardly wait to try to get an autism assessment covered.

saw someone say the only people who don't approve of Luigi are old enough that they basically DO have socialized health care (medicare or whatever) and as such literally don't understand what everyone else is going through. made me think.

it definitely matches up with the idea that people's political and cultural positions are largely a superset of their material interests

[faaun]

ok let's catch up quickly

[acerikus]

Someone being extremely annoying in the replies of my flowey and clover gif and I'm running out of patience 😭

[carcarrot]

do i really want to make individual drinks again

[emotinalsupportturtle]

idk this is probably a very personal experience but I find it so annoying that every therapist, counsellor I talk to just seems to go ‘oh looks like you can deal with it’. Like I know enough tricks to be productive, I fucking understand why I’m failing and I intellectually know if I don’t procrastinate I’ll get so much more done. I get it’s probably meant as empowerment but it feels dismissive I don’t keep going to appointments for fun.

like this is not even blaming them idk if there is anything they can do other that encourage me but with study related stuff specifically they give the impression of not caring if you’re doing okay academically. Like I know my grades indicate I’m doing decently but I’m not even doing as half as well as I could and it’s killing me

[maeamian]

tbqh it's weird as hell to me that there's this given understanding about fictional aliens that they'd be surprised or confused by adaptability, but like, as far as we know and understand that is a fundamental quality of life itself not life on earth. In order to become a spacefaring species any spacefaring alien would've had to survive whatever space threw at them for billions of years as well as whatever their planet in specific threw at them, even the 'good' planet we know about is pretty fucking hostile to life. It's just implausible to me that like, among all the possible sapient species we'd be unique or interesting for the level to which we have the ability to adapt to situations, something that any biological creature of any origin would also need to survive long enough as a species to figure out how space works.

[shadystranger]

When sam dies dean's frantic with his tunnel vision his mind and body practically shut down on all levels that matter and the only thing he knows is world-ending irrational desperation and his one-track minded sam-grieving tends to explode in his own face for the most part. He keeps it contained to himself or only a selective of people he's willing to sacrifice meanwhile when dean dies sam becomes just as frantic and desperate but with it he becomes way more orthodox, he's crazy smart and scarier than a lunatic is a lunatic who is calculative who is creative who can do evil in ways not even predictable. He'll come up with things and loopholes no human even dared think about like the immortal zombie organ trafficking or massacring every angel in heaven or unleashing a force even more powerful and dooming as god on earth. All to get his brother back. In his grief sam is a danger to himself and the entire world rather than have it explode in his face like dean he lets it absorb him and everyone in close vicinity (or not). If dean is a knife edge that cuts anything it falls on then sam is a fucking war nuclear in his brother-grieving

[skullzy20]

I am not exaggerating when I say I live with one of the worst cishet men I've ever met in my life and its horrible

Pretty big vent incoming in tags, just a warning. Feel free to scroll past /gen

[rearranging-deck-chairs]

OH THEYRE GONNA GIVE HIM THERAPY

[hazeism]

hi!! wanted to ask if you have any favorite books, either that you've read recently or of all time. Your prose is insane and I need to broaden my own vocabulary so if you have any book recs, fiction or nonfiction, I'd love to know :')

Hii :D ! ahaha, what a well-timed question; lately I've become the kind of guy who just really wants to talk about what people are reading, or are planning to read, and responding in kind, so thanks for giving me an opportunity to indulge that, haha. What a wicked invention the printing press was!!! (Also--thank you!! I'm glad my prose is to your taste. I'm happy !💕)

If you don't mind, I'll put a cut on this right away, because I know I'm very talkative, but let me put a TLDR above for all the novels/authors I mention here. Disclaimer also that I am kind of a dunce (I think you know this) so I like silly shit a lot of times . please be nice to me adfhbjkdg. :D

(No nonfiction also because I'm a frivolous and unworldly little sprite or something but if you want straight philosophy [which counts] come back and I'll do my Top Ten Epic Platonic Dialogues Compilation for you .)

TLDR: Read any UKLG you get your hands on, Cain by Jose Saramago, or any Saramago (though maybe not Skylight, which is not a good introduction to Saramago), very much enjoyed Sartre's The Age of Reason recently, Shadow & Claw or The Fifth Head of Cerberus by Gene Wolfe. If you feel like it, come off anon and tell me what you like, so I can give more tailored recommendations!!

Now if you're asking for favorites, like just the particular and arbitrary objects of my partiality, that stir my stupid little heart, the true answer is probably UKLG's The Farthest Shore, just because it is very special to me. I can't, of course, in good conscience, recommend the third novel of a six-novel fantasy series to someone (but of course read Le Guin, everyone should be reading Le Guin, it's dire for universal soteriology that we all read Le Guin; You'll probably get told to start with Left Hand of Darkness, and that's pretty solid. I liked The Lathe of Heaven as well. And if you read any Le Guin it doesn't hurt to pick up a copy of the Tao. I love the Tao man.)

Some friendlier recommendations, though:

José Saramago is someone I really consider peerless; There's no way to pick up a Saramago and not know who's written it. Cain is a bit drier, a bit more abrasive (almost accusatory, in that particular way you'll find in a Buddhist parable) and bleak than some other Saramagos, but it's one I like (perhaps for the trite reason that I like bucolic atmospheres and Classical antiquity as a setting) so it's the one I'll put forward.

Uhh, I've also been enjoying Sartre's Roads to Freedom lately, starting with The Age Of Reason. I'm partway through the second novel and umm... despite all the other things you could say about Sartre, lmfao, let it not be said that he is not a serious literary force. Serious is maybe the only word for it. Dire, too. I keep a commonplace book, so usually I take excerpts, but this was the first time in memory that I felt compelled to commit entire pages, ahah (I just took pictures though, fuck copying all that).

If you're itching for esoteric language, Shadow of the Torturer (as usually collected with Claw of the Conciliator in a single omnibus edition titled Shadow & Claw; the first of the give-or-take five volume Urth series) by Gene Wolfe will scratch you BLOODY. If you're particularly fussy, you might be irritated by your compulsion to Google, but I find it really makes the experience when you type in a word and the only results are "what the fuck did Gene Wolfe mean by this?" hahaha; Honestly, though, those kinds of complaints are borne from a lack of immersion, but you'll notice pretty quickly that the verbiage is a pretty crucial vehicle OF the immersion.

It may or may not become a commitment, though, if you like Urth enough to want to read through, so if you want Wolfe without the strings--though less of the exciting vocabulary, which is pretty necessarily constrained to Urth--I'd really highly recommend The Fifth Head of Cerberus (the novella OR the novel, I mean the former is volumized in the latter so just start it and if you feel like stopping then stop, haha). Mr. Terminal E is incredible but I scrape enough time out of my daily life to gush about his crazy literary density so I won't do it again here (you should ask my coworker, lmfao, who one time went "stop, hold on, hold on." because my face started getting really red while I was explaining to him some Wolfean gesture). If you read any Wolfe, and I mean ANY Wolfe, because his permatypes and his manipulations of them are endlessly interesting, feel free to come back and chat with me over it!!!

I guess I have to disclaim that my habit is mostly to pick through an author's corpus over a course of, usually, a couple years, and then sometimes I'll read things that will inform my understanding of the genre conventions or currents that the author is writing in (been enjoying Golden Age sci-fi recently)--it's not really as deliberate of a process as it sounds, but I think if you were to map my habits, that's the landscape of it. This means, though, that my reading is actually pretty narrow in scope, and I am not very well read or very knowledgeable in general (who is, in this economy) but it does mean that of the authors I do like, I can probably find the novel that'll work best for your taste.

If you want to come off anon, or I guess just leave another message, haha, (or if someone else wants to, idgaf, we're all friends here at tumblr user hazeism) describing the things you like or look for in a novel I can probably give you a more relevant recommendation. I've been dosing people up a lot lately tbh, it's like a parlor trick I've been doing; I have a conversation with someone and afterwards they'll have a PDF with a relevant Asimov story in their messages, hahaha. I can't help myself sometimes.

Come back anyway, though, if you read anything I talked about, okay? I want to hear about it 🥺

And alsooo (turning to face the audience) if anyone ever wants to put recs in my inbox (or my dms : ) slow replies though sorry I'm a hermit) I'd be happy to take 'em down. Can't guarantee I'll read them in a timely manner, or that you'll ever find out if/when I do, but it's good for me to leave my comfort zone.

[transgender-catboy]

I love my friends

[lovingk9z]

So many people don't understand how severe mental illnesses and disorders can be; instead of asking questions, people just sit with the assumptions that lead them to treat us poorly.

I get the same with OCD, I have to think way too hard about how I talk about my disorder because hardly anyone understands how awful it actually is.

This is undoubtedly the case for anyone else suffering from an illness or disorder, but it shouldn't have to be.

anxiety is so insane bc ppl will treat it like it's no big deal, like it's "one of the "easy" mental illnesses" or something, and then you have it and it's insanely debilitating and you lose most of your life and your time and energy to it. yesterday i spent 2 hours sitting in my bed trying to convince myself to go to a water fountain to get some water. one time i got so scared to take a bus i passed out. like sure it's a spectrum and i'm definitely at the more severe end of it but the fact that milder cases exist doesn't mean it's not still a problem? and it doesn't mean that those people aren't struggling too