#overall the quality of person on tumblr seems like it’s decreasing

[planetsano]

so… since its the new year can we collectively agree to get the vibes right and back to how they used to be on ani fic tumblr in 2020-2022?

[bananafishzine]

Our vendors

Hello everyone! For anyone out there looking to run their own zine, I’d like to share a bit about our process throughout the last few months :) Let’s go!

I’ll give a little background about the timeline for the project, then I’ll give some descriptions about the vendors we used and our experience with them. 

So we (@limedumplr​ and @redsketches) started the zine. I ( @limedumplr ) originally thought I’d handle everything myself but Red volunteered to help me and I’m so glad she did - It’s a lot to organize for just one person. We began around September of last year and wrapped artist’s final drawings in January. One of our artists asked me why the timeline was so long and it was honestly because I was attending a wedding in the middle of that which I was a large part of (so I’d have to split my time to focus on that). Orders opened January and closed February, we wanted to send things out in March but we ended up sending things in April because we needed to re-print the zine. 

When we recruited for the zine, we only used Twitter and Tumblr. I definitely noticed a decrease in Tumblr traffic after the great purge :p Next time, I’d probably use Tumblr as a backup instead of a ‘base’ and also use Instagram and Discord which is where most fandom seems to be migrating. 

As for our venders:

For the acrylic charms we used Acorn Press

Link: https://acorn.press/

Our experience:  We loved the quality, and the price. They don’t include any sort of clasp so be aware you only get the acrylic. It was easy enough to buy a set of cell phone straps on Amazon though. Customer service was very friendly and they held our shipment when Red and I were both on vacation for a week. I’d definitely use them again for our next project. 

For the magnets and stickers we used StickerMule

Link: https://www.stickermule.com/

Our experience:  Their customer service was excellent. I talked to a few of their team members since I wasn’t happy with the original proofs they sent. All of them were very accommodating and revised my proofs multiple times to give me something I liked. Similar to Acorn press, they took care of the shipment when I asked them to hold it while I was on vacation. The products also came out great!

For the prints we used MOO

Link: https://www.moo.com/

Our experience: We’ve used them plenty of times before and I’ve come to expect great quality and price. I’m sure others have used them since MOO is pretty popular. I especially loved that we could customize the matte back sides of our prints. 

For the enamel Pin and Lanyard, we used Erichgift

Link: http://www.erichgift.com/

Our experience: They were very responsive and great to work with. The only caveat is that their turn around is pretty long so you have to be willing to wait about a month after you begin talking with them to when they finally ship out your products. They are China-based so it may be hard to work with the time difference if you are US-based like we are. However, the quality of the products were great and I have NEVER seen prices as low theirs. They are also very nice and sincere. I’ll most likely be using them again but next time I’ll account for how long I’ll have to wait for the products :P

For the laser cut magnets, Red used her own laser cutter to make those for us :D

FINALLY, for the Zines, we used Smartpress

Link: https://smartpress.com/

Our experience: Their customer service was a little tense, I wouldn’t say it was bad, just not friendly. However, They’re prices are the BEST I’ve seen and they were very good about re-printing our zines after we pointed out the error in the first set. They also have a nice proofing process.

To sell the zines, we used BigCartel and I liked it a lot compared to other platforms we’ve sold on (Big shout out to one of our artists, @JUSTN4Z on twitter, who recommended it to us). Etsy makes you pay-per-post and doesn't have as much of a fandom culture around it. You also don’t have as much freedom to customize your shop. The last time we made a zine, we used Tictail and I HATED it. The user interface appeared friendly but it really was not :/ It was also difficult to set up shipping. 

Overall, this was a low-scale zine compared to some of the others I’ve seen. But I think the product came out fantastic and I loved being a part of something that brought so many people together. 

If anyone has any more questions about our process, recommendations, etc, please don’t hesitate to ask! We’ll answer as much as we’re able to :)

[catboyfeli]

the anti self-dx culture is honestly so... bad? i used to be anti self-dx a few years ago before realizing that no, self-dx isn't inherently harmful. there's a huge difference in someone going "i researched this disorder and it fits my symptoms, and i think i have it and hope to speak to a psychiatrist in the future" and "hm i have a few symptoms of this disorder, so i will now say i have it and use it to excuse my bad behavior, and will also ignore the possibility of this being a completely different disorder!" people don't seem to realize how fucking expensive, difficult, and time-consuming it is to get a psychiatrist or therapist, much less a regular one. and from my experience, so many proud anti self-dxers will say to me in a condescending tone, "do you even have a diagnosis?" when i talk abt a disorder of mine when it's literally None Of Their Damn Business. this kind of culture also lead to my mom, after i excitedly told her i think i have bpd, snapping at me saying i don't have ""multiple personality disorder"" and that stuff like that requires ""severe childhood trauma"" and my brother told me to ""stop trying to be special like those kids on tumblr"" imagine finally finding a disorder that fits your experiences after recently destroying your own life because of symptoms of said disorder, and immediately being invalidated and brushed off by your family because of the anti self-dx culture :) yeah, sometimes people DO self-dx as a way to excuse their shitty behavior or to feel special, but honestly? i think most of this culture stems from internalized ableism, and that's just an excuse to feel like the culture is justified. it's also very easy for people with adhd, autism, and similar disorders to find a disorder that fits them and begin to obsess over it because finallY! something that fits me!! and thus refuse to consider other possibilities. that is one of the times self-dx can ACTUALLY be harmful. but overall? self-dx as a whole isn't harmful, esp considering how fucked the health and mental health system is in the us. anti self-dx culture just seems like another way to bully and gatekeep mentally ill people you deem as "invalid," just in a way that's more socially acceptable. whatever disorders i self-dx myself with are a) ones i've done research on that i have most symptoms of or enough symptoms that prominently decrease my quality of life and b) i plan on seeing a psychiatrist about whenever i FINALLY can. like, i have schizoaffective symptoms, but i don't go around saying i have that, as i think my delusions and paranoia are more likely a different disorder or combination of disorders, possibly bipolar combined with adhd. i say i have bpd--despite not having a prof. diagnosis--because it's easier and quicker than saying "i have bpd symptoms/traits" and gets the point across. in the end, it's literally nobody's business whether i have a prof. diagnosis or not, and what matters most is how i'm affecting my own community. a toxic person with a prof. diagnosis isn't any better than a toxic person with a self-dx, and that's that. they're still both spreading harm and helping enforce stigma, and the person with the prof. diagnosis could, get this, be misdiagnosed in the end! i got diagnosed with depression, anxiety, and ocd when i was 10. it's been years since then, and i could end up having been misdiagnosed and have something completely different! since diagnosing literal children who don't even understand what's going on themselves is not easy! also, when i was 10, my doctor considered testing me for autism, and my mom declined because i'm "too normal" to be autistic. now we've realized i very well could be autistic and that her declining that test could've made life more difficult for me in the end, because imagine how much easier things might have been if i had that diagnosis as a child? people responsibily self-dxing themselves after researching a disorder is always going to be different than a person self-dxing themselves to feel special, and as long as someone keeps an open mind towards other possibiltiies and doesn't intend to use this disorder as an excuse for their behavior, there's honestly nothing wrong with it. also, when people DO self-dx for attention, it's almost always because they already HAVE some kind of disorder, likely some type of personality disorder, and that's valid. is it okay? no, but the culture of people acting like attention seeking is inherently bad is also pretty shitty, since needing attention is a) a normal human desire as we're socialable creatures, and b) a symptom of childhood trauma and various mental disorders!! sometimes people seek attention when they're too afraid to ask for it on their own! and maybe people wouldn't be afraid to ASK for attention if the culture surrounding them wasn't so hateful about it! due to my bpd symptoms, i used to do this all the time without even realizing!! partially bc of the culture demonizing anyone who wants attention!!  anyway rant over i talk too much i'm just very passionate about things that don't really matter in the end adhdjfhf

[iamjjmmma]

Sans’ Death in Handplates: WHO (I mean what) DUNNIT? (Featuring a Little Bit of Orthopedics

(Handplates is by @zarla-s)

Note: I am not trying to be morbid. I am not trying to be creepy. I’ve been studying medicine lately, and I've been reading up on diagnosing other people. I just thought it would be a fun thing to do and a great opportunity to teach others a little about medicine. Note that just like "Misery" itself, this does contain serious themes that may bring up trauma for some people, so if you do not feel comfortable with this, please hit the back arrow now. Thank you.)

In Tumblr user and artist zarla-s' comic "Misery", Sans dies of an unknown illness and Papyrus attempts to move on. Zarla has also mentioned that this comic was a "barely disguised vent [series] about death", making it a series entailing high personal expression. It's all beautifully sad, but there's just one problem...the illness is unknown.

So I, DETECTIVE PIKACHU, ask you to join me on the hunt to find this illness.

The good news is that Sans is a skeleton. This rules out all illnesses with other body systems, narrowing it down to a nice few hundred or so. (Don't worry! We'll only go through the more well-known ones.)

I’ve chosen to lay out six culprits here:

-Arthritis

-Osteogenesis Imperfecta

-Osteoporosis

-Osteosarcoma

-Osteomyelitis

-Acute

-Chronic

-Paget's disease of bone

Because most of “Misery” happened ex post facto,  we don't have the time or the interest to dive into much information about Sans' illness  However, we do know a few things. This illness is:

 -Fatal (uh, yeah) 

-Chronic. Chronic illnesses are illnesses that last for months or years. This isn't a very sudden (acute)  illness. If it was acute, it would likely result in Sans very quickly falling down and Papyrus having to take him to the hospital. 

-Progressive, meaning it gets worse over time instead of better. No, it does not mean the average Tumblr user, although medical terminology can be very confusing (that was a joke hardy har har).

-Very hard to treat. Alphys said there was nothing she could do for him, at least at the stage the illness was detected. If the current most brilliant mind in the Underground cannot do anything for him, I doubt anyone can. (https://zarla-s.tumblr.com/post/143139923780/i-dont-have-a-caption-for-this-sorry)

-Very unnoticeable, or at least noticeable enough to hide from at least one person until the final stages. 

In addition, we have to analyze Sans' demographics: Sans is male and approximately in his 20s.

So let's examine our first culprit: ARTHRITIS.

By far the most famous skeletal illness, arthritis involves the joints becoming inflamed. This results in them becoming reddened, painful, and swollen. 

Arthritis is chronic, which fits one of the requirements. In addition, it is also particularly difficult to treat, with most treatments being attempts to increase quality of life without treating the overall condition. 

Whether or not it can be hidden from others depends on pain tolerance and how severe the arthritis is. And while *some* cases of arthritis can be progressive, it differs from person to person.

But while arthritis can decrease quality of life tremendously, it is not fatal in the least. And while arthritis affects both men and women, it affects women more often than men. In addition, it famously affects older people, specifically those 60 and older. So Sans obviously does not fit in this demographic.

We can clearly see Sans does not have arthritis.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/arthritis/symptoms-causes/syc-20350772

https://www.emedicinehealth.com/ask_rheumatoid_arthritis_life_expectancy/article_em.htm

https://www.rheumatoidarthritis.org/ra/symptoms/progression/

-Arthritis

-Osteogenesis Imperfecta

-Osteoporosis

-Osteosarcoma

-Osteomyelitis

-Acute

-Chronic

-Paget's disease of bone

The second culprit is osteogenesis imperfecta. 

Osteogenesis imperfecta, also known as brittle bone disease, is very straightforward. The individual is born with brittle bones that can break easily, and sometimes for no apparent reason. is very rare, but is still relatively well-known. (And what's very interesting is that individuals who have this tend to have blue sclera from the defective connective tissue that comes with osteogenesis imperfecta. But we all know Sans' eyes are blue for a different reason...)

Osteogenesis imperfecta is definitely chronic, so we can knock it off that list. It is also almost impossible to completely treat, with most treatments aiming at boosting bone strength rather than reversing the condition. And all ages and both genders seem to be affected by the disease equally 

As with arthritis, whether or not the disease.is progressive differs from person to person.

But the only ways you can die from the disease are either respiratory complications in infancy and childhood or if complications arise from one of the factures, which both we'd definitely notice in the comic rather than Sans falling over on a hill (https://zarla-s.tumblr.com/post/141061451866/its-always-too-soon). In fact, the disease would be so noticeable that if Sans had this condition, we'd know from the first few pages.

So we can safely say Sans does not have this condition.

http://www.kjophthal.com/article.asp?issn=0976-6677;year=2017;volume=29;issue=3;spage=240;epage=243;aulast=Das

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/15807-osteogenesis-imperfecta

http://www.oif.org/site/PageNavigator/AOI_Facts.html

http://www.oif.org/site/PageServer?pagename=RES_Glossary

-Arthritis

-Osteogenesis Imperfecta

-Osteoporosis

-Osteosarcoma

-Osteomyelitis

-Acute

-Chronic

-Paget's disease of bone

Ah, yes. The third culprit. Osteoporosis.

Also relatively well-known and a meme (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3NUIrVivPhso). Osteoporosis mainly involves bones greatly reducing in density. This causes pain, stiffness, a remarkedly changed stature, and most importantly, a higher chance of fractures. (I have lots of relatives and their neighbors who have this, and most of the time, even my hugs are little more than glorified pats.) Things like playful punches, bumps into the corner of the table, and tripping and falling turn from annoying to dangerous and fatal, especially for a 20-something-year-old. In fact, there are theories that the reason why Sans has 1 HP is because he has osteoporosis (https://www.google.com/amp/s/aminoapps.com/c/undertale/amp/blog/why-sans-has-1-hp-can-bleed/YWjI_bu1GjaVaNqa0pQ61oLaD4GozkE), but this is only for the regular Undertale timeline. In Handplates, we all know that Sans has 1 HP because of the nature of Gaster's experiment. 

Osteoporosis is definitely chronic and progressive. 

As with osteogenesis imperfecta, the only way you can die from osteoporosis is from complications with a fracture. And while it is difficult to treat, it is not so impossible that the most brilliant mind in the Underground wouldn't be able to do anything about it. It would be easy to hide in the early stages, but as it advances, it would become harder and harder to hide, which is something Papyrus would notice for months.

So we can see that Sans does not have osteoporosis. Sorry, meme world!

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/11/151108084919.htm

-Arthritis

-Osteogenesis Imperfecta

-Osteoporosis

-Osteosarcoma

-Osteomyelitis

-Acute

-Chronic

-Paget's disease of bone

Osteosarcoma, the third "osteo-" on this list, is more commonly known as bone cancer.

Osteosarcoma is, without a doubt, chronic. And while survival rates continue to go up due to advancing technologies, it still sits at 30 to 80 percent (the chances are probably worse for Sans because of his HP), depending on how early the cancer is caught. And as a society, we all know that any cancer under a 100 percent survival rate is a cancer that needs, that asks to be beaten.

Is it noticeable? Can it be treated? Those can be answered with a big fat IT DEPENDS. If the cancer has affected an arm or a leg, it would be very noticeable, but a bone like the ribs, the clavicle (collarbone), or the scapula (shoulder blade), could be relatively easily hidden by, say, a few layers of clothing or a hood. And treatment depends on the cancer's stage, available technology, and the patients' needs and desires.

Since there is nothing about this that gives any indication that "no, Sans definitely does not have this", this looks like the most likely culprit so far. But just to make sure nothing else is a likely candidate, let's continue down the list.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/osteosarcoma/symptoms-causes/syc-20351052

https://www.stjude.org/disease/osteosarcoma.html

-Arthritis

-Osteogenesis Imperfecta

-Osteoporosis

-Osteosarcoma

-Osteomyelitis

-Acute

-Chronic

-Paget's disease of bone

Osteomyelitis is when a bone becomes infected. Symptoms include a fever, chills, nausea, and swelling and pain at the infection site. (It's something I use in my stories whenever I want Sans or Papyrus to be sick, wink wink.)

When untreated, it is progressive, but it is pretty difficult to ignore simply because of how painful and weakening it is.

It can be hidden from others at its earliest stages depending on where it is, but eventually Papyrus would definitely notice Sans' pernicious fever and chills, and would most likely carry him all the way to the hospital. Is it fatal? It can be, but not in most cases. 

Treatments such as removal of the infected bone, antibiotics, and even draining the bone of the bacteria are available, making this the most treatable of all the conditions we have. In addition, osteomyelitis is definitely acute. It is possible to go home and look at your foot and go "oh crap, my bone's infected, guess I'll head over to the doctors, get treatment, and go back home and move on from this". Okay, maybe not like that. But you get the picture. 

Yeah...Sans DEFINITELY doesn't have this.

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/178819.php

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/osteomyelitis/symptoms-causes/syc-20375913

-Arthritis

-Osteogenesis Imperfecta

-Osteoporosis

-Osteosarcoma

-Osteomyelitis

-Acute

-Chronic

-Paget's disease of bone

Paget's disease of bone is a disease that interferes with bone destruction and regrowth. Your bones don't normally just add on. Osteoblasts add new, stronger bone, while osteoclasts take away bone that is usually old and weak. However, in Paget's disease of bone, the osteoblasts are unusually active, which causes bones to become fragile and misshapen. 

It is chronic, and slowly but surely progressive.

However, there is no way you can possibly die from Paget's disease of bone or even suffer ill health effects that spread beyond the affected bone. And while not easily treatable, it can most certainly be helped by medicine that helps to regulate bone growth. In addition, there is no way it can be not easily noticeable, as a hallmark of this disease is unusual changes in bone structure. Also, it normally affects men in their 40's or older, and we know for a fact that Sans is not forty.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/pagets-disease-of-bone/symptoms-causes/syc-20350811?utm_source=Google&utm_medium=abstract&utm_content=Pagets-disease-of-bone&utm_campaign=Knowledge-panel

https://www.medicinenet.com/pagets_disease/article.htm

So the culprit must be bone cancer. After further research, I discovered a likely offshoot of bone cancer called Ewing’s sarcoma.

Ewing’s sarcoma is a type of bone cancer that is almost eerily specific. It is almost exclusive to males around the age of 20, which is a good bet of what Sans is throughout “Misery”. Ewing’s sarcoma also has a grim life prognosis compared to other types of bone cancers. Normally, the survival rate is 80 percent if caught early, but for someone Sans' age, the life expectancy for Ewing’s sarcoma is a tragic 30 percent. And with someone with Sans’ condition, that percentage would most likely be much lower.

Again, it would be progressive, but easy for Sans to hide from Papyrus, at least in the early stages. 

Now, there is one iffy part of Ewing's sarcoma; treatment. Despite it being a life-threatening disease, there are multiple effective treatments. This would include surgery, which is impossible if we're assuming Sans would have it where he could hide it, like his ribs or his clavicle.

For radiation therapy and chemotherapy, they are both effective treatments.

But put yourself in Sans' shoes for a moment. Think about it. Both chemotherapy and radiation therapy can and will give you side effects that will greatly decrease your quality of life. But most importantly, they would put Papyrus- the most important person in your life-through watching you go through them. 

Alphys would then have to make the heartbreaking decision to send Sans home to die.

And that, my friends, is the crux of "Misery".

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/ewing-sarcoma/symptoms-causes/syc-20351071

[homestuckhiveswap]

Land of Fans and Music: the Homestuck fanmusic scene

by /u/DrewLinky, previous article here.

Introduction

Homestuck, operating as a multimedia webcomic, utilizes many different forms of media over the course of the story. Music is an enormous element of what makes the webcomic enjoyable, for many people even being one of the main attractions of the entire story. As I’ve written about previously, Homestuck even had its own Music Team dedicated to creating works that could be incorporated into the comic.

Alongside this, however, there is a burgeoning fan music community. Innumerable people who were either too late or otherwise unable to get onto the Music Team proper were undeterred, sharing their musical creations with one another on the forums...

Their works were more often than not hosted on the website tindeck, and it was so heavily used for this purpose that the website eventually included “homestuck” as its own category. A quick glance shows that, at the time of writing at least, there are still people who upload their own Homestuck music projects there—quite the dedication.

There was one such person back on the forums named OJ who was involved in this process: for some time they were happy enough to share their music directly with others in lieu of getting on the Music Team, but after a while they conceived of the idea of compiling all of the fan music thus far into an album of their own. People would be allowed to nominate themselves and others, assuming the authors of the work in question could be contacted and were okay with being included. It was in this ad hoc manner that the Land of Fans and Music album was born.

I was given the opportunity to speak with two massively influential figures involved with the Land of Fans and Music group, or LOFAM, over the course of the last several years. Ndividedbyzero (more commonly known as Cait) and Lambda have both seen and done a lot to help LOFAM along in its several year history, and they were so helpful as to sit down with me and laboriously explain the project, and the various elements involved with its development.

Cait and Lambda themselves warrant some description. I’ve already written about them at length individually, but together they’re another story entirely. Throughout the entirety of our conversation, they would unabashedly begin talking about completely unrelated things ranging from the mundane to the spectacularly weird. In one breath they could go from describing the complicated interpersonal politics of musical development to the nature of blue raspberry flavoring and back again, not to mention the insertion of some rather shocking types of pornography at various points (this latter behavior being solely attributable to Lambda).

The exchanges between Cait and Lambda themselves were actually fairly interesting to watch—they play off of each other well and together were extremely helpful in piecing together the history of LOFAM, especially the later parts that they were directly involved in. They weren’t actually involved in the organization of the first album, but they were no less informative on the subject.

LOFAM1 - Beginnings

This first album, also known as LOFAM1, was a different experience from its successors. OJ was the main person who organized it, alongside a prominent Homestuck musician from the team named Solatrus. It was organized openly, with participants posting their songs and album art directly in the forum thread dedicated to the project.

For some time, the main page dedicated to unofficial MSPA music was Homestuck Gaiden, "where a few album projects that weren't greenlighted by hussie went between 2010-2011" (Cait). Most albums there were made by the Music Team or people very close to the team, and then LOFAM1 was included there.

Released in July of 2011 with 53 tracks (giving it the second greatest amount of content in any Homestuck-related album at the time), LOFAM1 introduced a plethora of fanmusicians for the first time. It also became the technical standard in terms of organization and setup: “it set the precedent for basically every fanalbum to come” (Cait). It did suffer its problems but Lambda remarks that the quality of the music submissions overall were pretty good at this point, saying "there was WAAAAY worse [submissions] with the other lofams" that they ended up leaving out, with the other albums to be described later.

LOFAM2 – Stupid o’ Clock and the UMSPAF Bandcamp

Unfortunately, Homestuck Gaiden ended up being shut down sometime after the release of LOFAM1. There is some speculation on why this may have happened, although none of it can be verified: one commonly suggested theory is that Hussie didn’t want fans to think that the albums were official and that he wanted more control over music production, among other reasons. This would make sense: "the music team ended up really really having to emphasize the whole UNOFFICIAL bit" (Cait), and if it proved not to be enough then they would have been asked to stop. Regardless of why, this development mixed up the fan music scene for a while.

Lambda describes that this is about the point where her involvement began. At the very beginning of 2012, there was a community stream celebrating the release of Bowman’s album Ithaca. Lambda began conversing with the people in the stream chat and then later outside of it. At some point she was thusly invited to a group jocularly referred to as the “Stupid ‘o Clock Chat”.

Hosted on Skype, Stupid ‘o Clock (SOC) contained innumerable people. In its greatest incarnation—of which there were many due to Skype’s tendency to crash or fail outright—it held approximately 80-90 people, which was almost certainly part of why it would crash periodically. Many of these people were important names in Homestuck music, but it also held some art people and a smattering of others.

Time passed in SOC, and in April or May of 2012 Lambda asked around if there were any plans to make a LOFAM2—people were still creating content, and OJ had neglected to step up after heading the first project. The vast majority of responses to her questioning indicated that there was interest in creating another album, but there was basically no desire to organize it. It was then that Lambda took it upon herself to do so.

Lambda recruited a person named Liza—who currently heads the official Bowman Discord fanserver—to help, and together they led the organization of LOFAM2. Lambda was fairly young at the time and inexperienced with coordinating such projects. Between this and other influences, the album’s development was fraught with problems: "i think lofam2 ended with like / at least one person saying 'wow, never doing that again'" (Lambda), a sentiment echoed by Liza themselves.

Before LOFAM2’s release, a user named Shadolith—more commonly known as Marcy Nabors and who currently works making sound effects for Hiveswap—was working on a fanalbum called SBURB OST. With Homestuck Gaiden rendered unusable, a new place was needed to host music. Thus, in November of 2012, SBURB OST became the first album to be released on the unofficialmspafans Bandcamp page (graciously shortened into the acronym UMSPAF). At the end of the year LOFAM2 was also released. For unspecified reasons, perhaps general lack of activity due to technical problems, the Stupid ‘o Clock chat was abandoned by the end of 2012.

LOFAM3 – Administrative Delays and the Hiatus

Due to the difficulties of making LOFAM2, making another album seemed unlikely at first. However, this quickly changed: "[making LOFAM3] was only unsure for like 3 or 4 months" (Lambda). Before long, LOFAM3 was being organized. Cait comments: “the head organizer for LOFAM 3 was VeritasUnae, who was a major contributor on Sburb OST, frequented the music thread on the MSPA Forums and worked on the UMSPAF website”. As with LOFAM2, songs were nominated by being posted in the relevant thread on the MSPA forums, or by sending an ask on Tumblr.

Cait had been friends with Lambda, Liza, and others, and herself was around for the creation of LOFAM2, but she claims she didn’t have enough skill to get onto that particular project. Despite this she was still heavily invested in LOFAM2 and was disappointed in the way it turned out: "i was an extremely active follower but not a major player, so i remember being real sad when i heard all the sentiment about drama on the lofam2 end" (Cait). When LOFAM3 started being developed, Lambda asked Cait to be a music judge, meaning she would get to determine which songs got on the album. She says she "was pretty surprised but definitely above all grateful for the opportunity".

Unfortunately, in late 2012 and especially 2013 the webcomic began to suffer in earnest from hiatuses: "homestuck died for 2 years" (Lambda). The decline in updates led to a subsequent decrease in fanworks, and fan music in particular languished considerably. There were very few albums released in the ensuing pauses of the story. Despite this, work on LOFAM3 continued for much of the year, with Cait estimating that there were nearly 100 contributors.

The overall process was smooth but festooned with numerous delays due to the sheer number of people involved. Finally LOFAM3 was released almost exactly one year after LOFAM2 on the 15th of December. Due to the lack of other albums in production at the time, it was a chronologically isolated event. There was a small stream to commemorate the affair, but this only heralded an intense quiet to follow after: for two and a half years, LOFAM3 was the last album to be released by the unofficial MSPA fan group.

Beforus – Decline and Resurgence of the Fan Music Scene

As mentioned earlier, Homestuck’s numerous pauses led to a drastic decrease in fan music production. Most of the so-christened “old guard”, the original members of the fan team, had moved on even before LOFAM3 came out. This trend only worsened over time:

it's hard to get inspiration for fanmusic when the music team itself has resigned to fate / ... / homestuck being on break drastically correlates with breaks in fanmusic production / except after homestuck ended / for some reason (Cait)

In this manner, the fan music scene for all of 2014 and part of 2015 was essentially dead.

At some point in 2014, however, a spreadsheet for LOFAM4 was created. It began relatively small, with a smattering of general concepts and "whatever we pieced together from the ashes" (Cait). At first, progress on developing LOFAM4 was extremely slow. There wasn’t a lot of material to work with and musical creativity was at an all-time low, so naturally LOFAM4 lay dormant for some time (although it was gradually building up steam, according to Cait).

Then in early 2015, a member named Josie began organizing a new fan album conceptualized as “the Beforus project”. Without going into too many details, “Beforus” refers to a portion of Homestuck that is oft-debated as being one of the worst facets of the entire story, so the subject of the album was already of major contention. To make matters worse, there appeared to be no quality control exercised throughout the album’s development, which lead to tracks that were extremely unpleasant to listen to, if not literally painful to the ear.

While many of the songs seem to have missed the mark ("i'm pretty sure like everyone on lofam4 was like ‘yeah, we'd... never let this touch a lofam’", said Lambda), Cait stresses that some of the songs were good or even great. Regardless of how one perceived the album’s overall quality, people who were fans of the subject material ate it up indiscriminately. It signified a new beginning for the fan music scene: scores of fresh artists and musicians were drawn in, and this lead to LOFAM4 being kickstarted into serious production: "in terms of lofam4, it absolutely helped us with contributions" (Cait). From there, the pace only seemed to quicken in leaps and bounds.

LOFAM4 – Conflict, Reconciliation, and Success

Following the release of the Beforus album, there was a significant upswing in activity: "the bottom line is that basically, starting in early-mid 2016, A Lot Of Shit Was Now Happening" (Cait). Not only was the fan music scene picking up, but this all happened to coincide with the release of Homestuck Volume 10 in June of 2016. "this was important specifically because we'd decided long ago that lofam4 shouldn't be released until homestuck volume 10 was" (Cait). Thus, with a significant personal barrier out of the way, speed picked up exponentially.

Some setbacks in the form of real life problems for many members of the team manifested: "this caused a few problems, namely that judging all the songs was a months-long task" (Cait). As soon as they caught up on their workload, more songs would be submitted that made the cycle repeat: "it was clear that some things had to change / luckily, things were changing whether we wanted them to or not" (Cait). This change would come in the form of the Cool and New Music Team (CANMT).

CANMT’s first album, cool and new voulem. 1, was released on the 2nd of July in 2016, serving as a second wind for the fan music scene. Ost, the founder and then-leader of CANMT, was later invited to be a judge for music submissions on LOFAM4 and were extremely active with the work, "which was exactly what we needed" (Cait). Makin was similarly invited to work on LOFAM4 about a month later (although he claims, perhaps appropriately, that he bullied Lambda into letting him on).

The first LOFAM Discord server was created on the 11th of November, 2016 as a replacement for the Skype chat that the group had been using. This switch happened at Makin’s urging, because Skype is generally regarded as an inferior program that people were very eager to drop. With an enormous group project like LOFAM, it was clear that more space was needed to facilitate their work just as organizers, let alone the countless content producers that would eventually be involved. Makin also suggested that switching to Discord would lead to an increase in popularity for LOFAM.

Unfortunately, at this point a rift grew between LOFAM and CANMT where some members of the latter group felt bitter about involving themselves with the former. CANMT had built itself a reputation as a music group with less of an emphasis on sheer quality and more on working with a theme, namely the Cool and New Web Comic (CANWC).

CANWC is a loose retelling of Homestuck in the style of Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff, which by nature connotes an outward shittiness that has carried itself forward in CANMT’s music. This is all completely appropriate: much of the early music in CANMT consists of bastardized versions of original Homestuck music and is predictably difficult to listen to, which is thematically appropriate. However, as time went by the music became less thoroughly dedicated to shittery and began actually improving. When their seventh album was released, it contained a significant number of songs that were considered of decent enough quality to be put on LOFAM4.

However, there were a select number of people who felt that working with LOFAM was inappropriate:

when canmt started to develop a distinct culture, there was definitely a subgroup who felt either that lofam was the establishment, or that the songs in 2/3 were too boring and canmt was better / so amongst people (i have no idea whether this was common opinion or a vocal minority) there was an idea that submitting to lofam4 would be to give away your True Loyalties (Cait)

This behavior ended up frustrating even the CANMT members who were working as judges for LOFAM, such as Ost.

Despite these naysayers, in 2017 LOFAM4 kept growing in intensity. Further elaboration:

on january 17, 2017, the second LOFAM discord was created, this time to facilitate contributors to the album instead of just the organization team. as makin had deduced, the floodgates opened fast and dozens of potential LOFAM 4 musicians + artists began joining, now under a much more conductive environment for sharing work, receiving feedback and communicating in general than the previous decentralized approach. many of these musicians, as it happened, were from CANMT, which eased the apparent problems between our two groups significantly (Cait)

In this way, the first half of the year saw the rate of development for LOFAM4 rise from already-quick to nothing short of a fever pitch.

Team restructurings happened: with such a dramatic increase in the number of people available for projects, the scale of projects they were willing to pursue increased substantially. LOFAM4 was of course being actively pursued and was wildly hyped up for release, but team members also began work on the Xenoplanetarium album. The music scene in general seemed to escalate in intensity, with another group known as FLSA creating a Problem Sleuth album known as Weird Puzzle Tunes.

FLSA itself is “perhaps best described as a short-lived music collective branching off mainly from the members of CANMT, but others such as myself also joined” (Cait). FLSA was the group that conceptualized Xenoplanetarium, but eventually they realized they were being subsumed into the larger group. In this way, “WPT could be said to be the first album released under the reinvigorated UMSPAF banner” (Cait). For the next several months, things ambled along at a fine pace with some unelaborated-on personal drama (never threatening projects), and a few amusing or exciting projects independent of LOFAM4.

Rather unexpectedly in June of 2017, a new album was uploaded to the bandcamp by Jamie Paige and Marcy Nabors. Entitled 『H☯MESTUCK VAP☯RWAVE 2016 RUH​-​RUH​-​RUH​-​ＲＥＭＩＸ』アンドレア・ヒューシー・グーグル翻訳 (seriously, go look at it yourself), it’s “mostly full of ironically shitty vaporwave remixes of Homestuck tracks by Jamie Paige and Marcy that was first uploaded to Soundcloud in 2016” (Cait). This was followed by another project called Ancestral; headed singularly by a person named Josefin at first, UMSPAF eventually stepped in to help master the album and upload all of the songs to bandcamp.

All of these things were happening quickly, and then suddenly in August a bombshell was dropped: act 1 of Hiveswap would be released on September 14th of 2017, only a month away. “This posed a problem…: LOFAM 4 was… probably going to be released in September, but if it were released after Hiveswap, there was a huge chance of the album getting buried in the hype surrounding the game.” (Cait) Thus, the team officially launched itself into overdrive to try and get the album completed before act 1 was released.

This proved very stressful at times, and it can't be understated that we were working hard; by the final 2 days, I had gotten in about 3 hours of sleep within 48 hours. But the deadline was met. On September 9, 2017, Land of Fans and Music 4, which ended up at a truly unprecedented 105 tracks spanning over 6 and a half hours in total length, was streamed on Twitch, then released… Seeing this many people react to the work that we had all compiled and worked on for years with hype and praise was a vindicating experience, to say the absolute least… A significant chapter in the Homestuck fanmusic community- and oddly enough, my personal life, as well- was over. (Cait)

Naturally, with this momentous occasion now passed, the group began to slow down in its efforts.

Xenoplanetarium – The Current Day

For a while there was some quiet, but eventually the aforementioned Xenoplanetarium album was published in December. “… the smallest in the discography by design” (Cait), it featured only 12 tracks, but was very well received in general. Another, less serious album called Gristmas Carols was put out by Christmas (even smaller at 9 tracks). As of this writing, Gristmas Carols is the last album the UMSPAF group has put out.

Aside from Xenoplanetarium and Gristmas Carols, the peaceful quiet post-LOFAM4 has lasted well into 2018. However, Cait assures me that UMSPAF is hard at work on its next project, labeled “Cosmic Caretakers”. She further describes that everyone is anxious to see it done, as it’s been “in the works for quite a while now”. Whenever it does happen to release, there will undoubtedly be a community stream and a large number of eager fans waiting for them.

Looking back over nearly a decade of community history is no easy feat, and something as richly storied as the LOFAM albums is something else entirely. The fanbase’s reception to these works and the group’s fierce, unmitigated dedication is quite something to behold. A community thrives when its members are creatively engaged and passionate—more than almost any other group I can think of, UMSPAF is exemplary of these qualities. Cait made a remark about the upcoming album, but I feel that it also serves as an excellent summation of LOFAM: “it's shaping up to be quite an experience.”

[icequeenstudios]

Old Post that I decided to bring to my new tumblr blog

Reducing Your File Size on Renpy

I recently saw a post about Katawa Shoujo and I was curious to try their game, but as soon as I saw the file size I changed my mind.

The file size would, generally, have been a none issue if my internet wasn’t prone to act funny recently and as such, trying to download a 173 MB sized game was not high on my to-do list. Just two weeks ago, it took my computer an hour to download a 23 MB file! How much more would it take just to download this file?

This is something that I’ve been worried about recently. Not everyone has a stable internet connection and not everyone can download huge file sizes and some of them don’t want to. Visual novels tend to be very image heavy. Add that to music files and your ‘small visual novel’ can develop a large file size rather quickly. Bunni and Kitty proved that to me and the last time I checked, my art images were only 8 MB, but my beta release was 22-27 MB.

It was my personal goal to make no game exceeding the file size of 20 MB and I’m already losing that battle and I don’t fully understand why. ATP Projects seem to have this down to a science since many of his games are positively tiny compared to visual novels being released from lemma today. Luckily, I’ve been searching around and found some tips along with this article on lemma that may have some suggestions for my goal.

First thing on the list is artwork:

Artwork is a huge contributor to the large file size. I won’t even tell you how big the folder for Sprites is even though I only finished a third of it. But as much as I want to shrink my file size, I don’t necessarily want to sacrifice art quality either. I luckily found some tips that can help me find a happy medium.

Shrink the window size of your image. 800×600 is the standard screen size set for Renpy, but that doesn’t mean you can’t change it to a smaller and perfectly workable size. Rule of thumb: The smaller the window size, the smaller the artwork, and the smaller the file size.

Limit your color. The less color information the image has the smaller your game overall will be.

Try out different file sizes. You’d be surprised at what image formats save the most space between JPEG, PNG, and GIF files, though the size can vary depending on the image. GIF is excellent for compressing simple images and is great for icons, logos, and line-arts. JPEG is usually suggested for photographic images, and PNG provides a nice quality overall for art images, but keep an eye on the file size.

Optimizing your images. This step is something that hard-core file conservers are most likely to do to save space. There are also image-optimizing programs that get rid of useless color information and reduce file size. The difference is size may not be worth the effort sometimes, but for large files, it’s worth giving it a shot. You can find some online versions here.

JCC compression. It’s an option that is offered by Renpy that is said to take away as high as 56% of your image size by splitting your PNG files into two JPEG files. I have yet to test it out myself though.

Use fewer images and art set. The Visual Novel format is already art heavy as it is, so saving yourself time by planning exactly what you need without going overboard is a good way to save time and become more efficient will making games.

Music: An important element in a game that can more than triple your file size if you are not careful. A single high-quality music clip can even reach as high as 15 MB, which is overkill considering that it’s only one track. Below are some tips I read, though I am not an expert on this:

Use .ogg music for your game. If your files are not .ogg files, then you can convert them using Audacity

Reduce the length of your music files down to what you need. For example, you don’t need a whole five-minute music clip for a scene in your story you can shorten it to your desired length to save space. 

Compressing the music file to 44khz. It is said that this can chop the file size in half.

Limit the music files you have. If you don’t need to have it, then it’s best that you get rid of it.

Etc:

Renpy Orientated: Delete excess files you’re not using. Example: themes you aren’t using, .rpy files, 00developers.rpym, the layouts you don’t need, etc. This is even a little extreme for me, but I thought it was best to list it anyway.

For anyone who has any corrections or things to add, please leave a comment so I can add this to my list. I want this to be a growing article that can help everyone out and any help that is given will be greatly appreciated.

What tips do you have to share to decrease the file size of your games?

[longlivefeedback]

AO3 and Feedback: general overview

If you’re reading this, you’ve probably seen this post about ao3, feedback culture, and problems we have as both authors and readers. 

We (as in, the two people who wrote that post) got, uh, a lot more of a response than we were expecting, and so that’s shifted the project from an open call for brainstorming to something originally much further down the line. However, before getting into that (because we’re still sorting things out!), we want to discuss some of the general opinion trends. This isn’t meant to be taken as comprehensive or any sort of statistical analysis, since we’re not able to sort through everything at this time, but rather to further the discussion as a whole. 

Under the cut - why people don’t leave comments, the most popular suggestions, the most controversial suggestions, and what they tell us about the strengths and shortcomings of feedback culture and features on ao3. 

Why don’t people leave comments? 

“I don’t know what to say.”  This was a reason given in support of comment ‘templates,’ or some sort of feature that gave outlines for possible comments (for example, “quote your favorite line in the fic and explain why you liked it/how it made you feel.” 

“I’m shy”/”I don’t feel like I have anything important enough to say.”  This is another reason given that points to a gap in our basic commenting abilities as a community. While tutorials for commenting exist, they’re not enough. Many readers simply don’t feel that they can give valuable feedback, which is understandable, because commenting is a skill. It’s something that has to be learned and practiced, and it can be hard to start out. Because feedback is such a vital part of fandom, we should look for new ways (and promote old ways!) to teach and learn how to leave comments. Once again, these were reasons cited in support of the comment ‘template’ idea. 

“I’m on my phone.” MOOD, though. It can be incredibly difficult to refer back to the fic while leaving comments on mobile, and this is the trickiest problem to address because it’s purely a matter of difficulty with the format itself. 

Which ideas were the most popular?

Native floating review box.  A userscript for this is available, but accessibility (eg knowing about this, knowing how to use it, knowing how to keep it running, and being able to use it on your phone) is a major issue.  Pros: basically everything  Cons: ??? 

A per-chapter analogue to kudos (not leaving multiple kudos) This was by far the most popular suggestion, but not without its potential pitfalls.  Pros: many authors said that they would love this feature to maintain motivation and a connection to their readership while writing multi-chapter fics. Many readers mentioned always wanting to leave extra kudos, and that this is a way to give some sort of love while binge-reading a fic.  Cons: Authors worry that readers would opt to leave an impersonal “like” instead of a comment, thus decreasing original feedback. Other authors said that they would get too discouraged if the number declined as the story went on. This also adds another number for authors who are anxious about the kudos/hits ratio to worry or agonize about. There is a root problem here of measuring your worth as an author through these numbers, but that is a discussion for another day.  AO3 has already encountered this idea, though at this point we don’t know if it was as multiple kudos or a separate system. Dialogue incoming! Conclusion: reader response for multi-chapter fics is one of the biggest problems and frustrations authors on ao3 face, and one a common reason as to why fics end up abandoned. Addressing this on an individual and a community level should be a top priority for fandom as a whole. 

Native feature to quote specific lines/ability to interact or comment on individual parts of a fic. This has implications for both how we interact with fics and how we comment. First, it shows that many readers prefer to make their comments very specific to individual lines, phrases, or paragraphs, and find that their ability to do this by quoting manually isn’t ideal for reasons of convenience, character count limits, and... well, because we’re all on our phones.  Once again, there is a userscript to address this, but the aforementioned problems still apply.  Conclusion: how we interact with stories as readers is more specific and piecemeal, and it doesn’t always mesh well with having one big comment at the end. Much of this could be addressed with a native floating review box (and seriously, everyone who can should install that userscript, it’s increased my comment quality and frequency dramatically). 

Comment templates/outlines of suggested comments/questionnaire or prompt to help people get started This has already been discussed, so we’ll keep it short here. This is one of the more complicated ideas, so people had a lot of different ideas of how it could look or be implemented - think of it as a rough sketch.  Pros: provides a basic jumping off point to get readers started with a comment. Non-native speakers who are commenting in a second (or third, or fourth, etc.) language have said that this would help them structure their comment. Readers were often fairly positive.  Cons: Authors are concerned that this would result in a lot of generic, cookie-cutter comments and a decrease in overall original feedback, as well as happiness regarding receiving comments at all.  Conclusion: A bonus for people who don’t know what to say, another hurdle to climb for our inherent laziness. As for which way it would end up going... there isn’t really a way to know unless we can watch it in action. If anyone knows of other sites that have tried this, please send them our way. Secondary conclusion: writing comments is often described as “easy,” but the topic is a lot more complicated than that and we should address it. 

Which were the most controversial?

Comment templates Bet y’all didn’t see this one coming. Lots of people love the idea, lots of people hate it. There does seem to be a split between reader opinion and author opinion, which tells us that authors love personalized feedback. So, comment! We’ll love you for it! Quote a line, liveblog your emotional reactions using a floating review box, find your favorite sort of comment and use it to create a template you can copy, paste, and personalize for the specific story. 

Upvotes on comments  General consensus seemed to be that commenters really want to interact with each other, but don’t want to commit to leaving an entire reply. On the other hand, this would be abused to leave hate, deteriorate into #discourse and flames, and could make comments feel pressured or competitive, all of which detracts attention from the fic itself and makes it an altogether unpleasant experience. In addition, no one’s really sure how many people (other than the author) read the comments. In conclusion, we want to talk to each other about the fic... somehow... and it would be great to find a way to encourage this part of the community. Since a lot of us spend most of our time online on tumblr, it can be difficult to have a multi-person discussion about stories, which is evidently something people want. 

So, to conclude this whole thing, it’s been a hell of a day and we’ve gotten a lot of information about why people don’t comment, what people want from comments, and what people don’t want to risk losing with respect to what we already have. 

We’re working on another post to discuss ideas that were proposed but didn’t get much discussion, but that’s another talk for another day. 

Thank you all! 

[northgeorigap]

via The WordPress.com Blog,

Following the massive Australian bushfires earlier this year, I was motivated to act within my role as a data scientist at Automattic to help fight anthropogenic climate change. Together with colleagues from across the company, we formed an employee resource group focused on sustainability. We are pleased to announce that as a result of our efforts, Automattic now offsets data center power emissions produced from non-renewable sources. This means that the servers running WordPress.com, WordPress VIP, Tumblr, and other Automattic services contribute net zero carbon emissions to our shared atmosphere.

Measuring and offsetting emissions is not a trivial task. In the interest of transparency, this post provides more details on the decisions we made and answers questions that readers may have on the topic. We hope that this will benefit other organizations that are in a similar position to Automattic. We welcome feedback and are happy to answer any other questions you may have.

The decision: For 2020, we decided to purchase offsets from Simoshi via the United Nations’ offset platform. These offsets are produced by improving the efficiency of cooking stoves in Ugandan schools. Emission reductions are achieved by using less wood to cook the same amount of food. This project also has third-party certification from the Gold Standard, and it contributes to nine of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, including No Poverty, Quality Education, and Gender Equality. See the project page and the following video for more details:

Why did we choose this project? Anyone who’s tried to purchase offsets knows that it can be complicated. We don’t have in-house sustainability experts, so we relied on publicly-available information to better understand the topic. Resources we found useful include: Carbon Offset Guide, atmosfair, and Greenhouse Gas Protocol. As the price of offsets varies widely, we chose to follow Microsoft’s approach and set our own internal price of $15 per metric tonne of CO2e. Simoshi’s project stood out because it matches our budget, has a clear emission reduction mechanism, is certified by the United Nations and the Gold Standard, and has many benefits beyond emission reductions, which align with our company’s values.

What emissions do our offsets cover? Automattic has servers in many data centers around the world, operated by different providers. As we don’t control the data center providers’ choice of energy utilities, we treat the emissions from data center power use as being in Scope 3, i.e., as indirect emissions from our value chain. For each data center, we used publicly-available information from our providers to determine whether they’re powered by renewable resources. This led us to conclude that approximately half of our data center energy use is covered by renewables paid for by the data center providers. For the other data centers, we used our servers’ power consumption logs to get the estimated power used over a period of one year. We then multiplied these figures by 1.5 to obtain a conservative estimate that accounts for power usage effectiveness. Using a variety of resources on grid carbon intensity, such as those published by the American Environmental Protection Agency and the European Environment Agency, we converted these power use estimates to emission estimates. This gave us an overall figure of 1,850 tonnes of CO2e for 2020.

Why offset rather than reduce emissions? We are aware that offsetting is an imperfect solution. Ideally, we would source all our energy from renewables. In a perfect world, it wouldn’t even be possible to buy energy generated by burning fossil fuels. However, given the current reality, setting our own price on carbon and offsetting non-renewable data center emissions is a good temporary solution. This also gives us a financial incentive to work with providers and shift toward greener data centers. In fact, this sort of shift happened last year when we changed our main European data center to a provider that operates on 100% renewables. We hope to continue making such changes in coming years, i.e., reducing emissions where feasible and offsetting the rest.

Why aren’t we doing more? From watching the climate action space, it seems like every announcement is greeted with demands to do more. This is a positive thing — society should hold companies accountable for their actions. As a company, we believe that we can always do better: The opening sentence of our creed is “I will never stop learning”, and we know that we are “in a marathon, not a sprint.” It is our hope that as we learn more about the space and our impact, we will be able to take stronger climate action.

What are we planning to do next? Automattic is a fully-distributed company. This means that our employees aren’t required to commute to central offices, which leads to significant savings in carbon emissions. However, we historically relied on flying to in-person meetups a few times a year to foster collaboration and bonding. Since March 2020, all business travel has been suspended, and it is still unclear what travel will look like in the post-pandemic world. In any case, as an employee resource group, we are planning on quantifying our travel emissions, and advocating for reducing avoidable trips and offsetting emissions from trips that are deemed essential. One change that is already taking place is aligning more teams around fewer time zones. In addition to helping with synchronous collaboration and decreasing isolation, this will reduce the distance traveled per person once meetups resume. We will share more on other actions we take in the future — watch this space! We also welcome feedback from our customers, so please comment on this post or contact us to share your thoughts.

[hercrazybookshelf]

*Click on images for better quality. Tumblr is stupid and decides to lower the quality of images unless you click on them for some reason.*

TITLE: Turtles All The Way Down

AUTHOR: John Green

GENRE: Young Adult | Fiction | Mental Illness

LENGTH: 286 Pages, Twenty-Four Chapters

DATE STARTED-FINISHED: November 25th, 2017 - May 17th, 2018

ORIGINAL PUBLICATION: October 10th, 2017

FORMAT: Hardcover, Borrowed

STARS: ★★★☆☆ (3 out of 5)

BOOK REVIEWS | COMIC REVIEWS | GOODREADS | GOODREADS REVIEW

Sixteen-year-old Aza never intended to pursue the mystery of fugitive billionaire Russell Pickett, but there’s a hundred-thousand-dollar reward at stake and her Best and Most Fearless Friend, Daisy, is eager to investigate. So together, they navigate the short distance and broad divides that separate them from Russell Pickett’s son, Davis.

Aza is trying. She is trying to be a good daughter, a good friend, a good student, and maybe even a good detective, while also living within the ever-tightening spiral of her own thoughts.

In his long-awaited return, John Green, the acclaimed, award-winning author of Looking for Alaska and The Fault in Our Stars, shares Aza’s story with shattering, unflinching clarity in this brilliant novel of love, resilience, and the power of life-long friendship.

As a casual fan who has watched a few of John Green’s YouTube videos and read a few books of his, I can honestly say he seems like such a genuinely honest and funny person. Plus, I have read a book or two of his in the past (Example: Paper Towns) and while I did enjoy this book there were quite a few things that made me stray away from a five or even four-star review.

The first thing that I felt was a let down in this novel was the fact that the book was actually not a mystery novel but instead dealt with more of Aza’s own anxiety. While I do love the fact that the book dealt with the topic of anxiety and mental illness in what I felt like was a realistic way I am disappointed that there was not as much mystery. To me, it seemed like the book was marketed around the fact that Aza was trying to solve the mystery of Russell Pickett and where he went. I incorrectly assumed that this novel would be some kind of Scooby-Doo mystery. We did see the characters wonder about Mr. Pickett’s “magical” escape and we did get an ending where everything was wrapped up and solved but it didn’t seem like the characters worked that hard towards it and the book was more about Aza’s own self-realization.

Speaking (or technically typing) about Aza’s struggle with anxiety and mental health I felt like the book did a good job of realistically representing the struggles and many difficulties people experience. I will say that I have personally never had a problem with mental illness and while I do have people I love and care for go through it my experiences are mainly from trying to help them. Therefore, I am not necessarily an accurate source when it comes to the reality of mental illness. I am able to see what my loved ones experience but those are on two different scales.

The simple fact is there is nothing pretty about struggling with mental illness. No matter how hard people try no one is able to always able to stay above the rainbow. Everyone has their bad days and Aza’s experiences, while cringe-worthy in some cases (Ex: digging into her fingernail and swallowing hand sanitizer) is the reality for many people.

While I am pleased by the fact that this book dealt with mental illness and the struggles that come along with it there are a few things that I am disappointed by besides the let down on the mystery front. Overall, the ending was not satisfying. While yes, we were able to see Aza grow and confront the fact that she will always have bad days and good days I felt like certain endings or wrap-ups were not satisfactory. One huge thing I felt strongly about was Aza’s relationships. With Daisy, her best friend, we eventually find out she has been writing about Aza in her fanfiction. But that isn’t the issue. The issue is that Daisy finally exposes her true feelings about her best friend. Turns out Daisy more or less has a lot of bottled up issues resolving Aza and reading Aza’s reaction to this is simply heartbreaking. I also felt that the ending where they simply go back to being friends was not good enough for me. If I found out one of my best friends had been writing hurtful things about me behind my back I would, of course, do what Aza did and confront them but I also do not think I could go back to being friends. Friendships are based on trust and respect for one another and Daisy was not being a true friend.

Now that I have gotten through my thoughts and let downs of the novel there were redeeming qualities. As mentioned above I am a huge fan of representation from several different areas such as mental health as is represented in this novel. This book gave representation to people who on a regular basis may not receive the care they are entitled to or feel like they are alone in the world. This book gives these people ownage and that is a truly beautiful thing. John Green, I believe, wrote this based on his own experiences with anxiety (though obviously, it is not his exact account) and I, therefore, feel like this is a fairly accurate source to read when wondering about the realities of anxiety. Now, I know this book is fiction but I personally feel like it did a great job on that front, which is what I believe John Green was aiming for.

Maybe. I do enjoy certain aspects of this book such as the amazing representation of mental illness such as OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder) and anxiety. Not to mention I truly loved the mentions of fanfiction. However, there were a few bits here and there that made my rating decrease down to three-stars. One of the main things was the fact that the book, from my point of view, appeared to be marketed with the mystery factor and while it was solved the solution was a letdown and the book wasn’t truly focused on the mystery. Plus, Aza’s relationships with her friends seemed to be unhealthy and the last chapter or two of the book did not hold a satisfactory ending for me.

[georgiahnd2photography]

Review and Reflect-Portfolio

I am very pleased with what my portfolio has concluded to, i have a mixture of images that show my personal skills and qualities and also show my personal aesthetic which can be tricky sometimes to incorporate with certain briefs but i managed to do it with most of them. My latest 7 additions to my portfolio show more of my own creativity and also i see in my self that i have increased in quality of my images. My 13 portfolio images that show my skills and qualities that this years course has helped me develop. Folio 3 basically consisted of completing our portfolios and being able to explore photography in our own ways by letting us create photoshoot plans instead of having an outlines brief on what type of photoshoots we should do, which was a refreshing thing to do.Completing my portfolio has gave me a sense of pride  and confidence as i have a folder of images i’m proud of and i want to continue adding to it in the future. Throughout the year i had this sort of routine when it came to optimising and editing my photographs, i started by only using photoshop but now i’m religiously using my own routine were i use camera raw then photoshop, i have gotten a lot more confident with all softwares, Lightroom, bridge and photoshop but i always go to photoshop more as i’m more comfortable using that. My retouching process included; cropping, increasing saturation, decreasing saturation, correcting exposures, adding and minimising the light and dark areas using dodging and burning. For studio shots i also learned how to spot heal, make the skin more smooth and how to brighten the eyes. Before i started this course i had only been using either apps on my phone to optimise my images or using photoshop (barely) so i have became more confident and open to using these softwares and becoming more knowledgable on them. Due to completing this portfolio it definitely has helped me gain confidence in a lot of different fields; editing, shooting with strangers and taking control. Even doing things that are not in my portfolio like using the darkroom. I had only used a darkroom once in a workshop i had done previously before starting the college course, so i was very anxious and worried incase i messed anything up but by the end of block 2 i was very confident with the equipment and soon loved it, it was like a new realm that not many people et to see anymore because everything is digital but its something more personal and rewarding getting to see your prints being literally hand made. This is most likely one of the reasons as to why i love my portfolio images so much is because they are a physical copy of my hard work, and its just after spending hours shooting and optimising these images and you get to see them enlarged and up close is rewarding. Even though its mostly all positive quality wise  images i post on tumblr,  there is a lot of work and energy i put into behind the scenes which is why i like the idea of posting my contact sheets as it shows the different techniques, angles and lighting. For example with one of studio portrait shots i had used gel lighting and i was not happy with the results of the gel but with further experimenting with adding and subtracting light sources i got my happy end result. 

With the presentation of my prints i didn’t want to have them glossy and i felt that having a full matte finish would have suited my images so i chose Lustre finish and i’m glad as i did as they look great on this paper. I wanted to show different skills i have through my portfolio, so i therefore chose images in the studio and on location, i completed multiple still life studio shots and also portrait shots that show different light techniques such as Rim lighting, 45 degree lighting and frontal lighting. For the location shots it showed some editing skills and i used black and white for a couple of images and how to edit so it fits with the atmosphere of the shots, for example my location portrait shot it was during golden hour therefore it was a happy warm toned shot so i kept that atmosphere in the shot, and for the protest one i wanted to make more of an impact with that shot and make it more documentarian in a way so i decreased the saturation to make the image more grim and fit in with the atmosphere. I chose to use Loxley Prints to print my portfolio images as i done research and they seemed to have good feedback also they had next day delivery. 

Overall i am happy but there are a few things id say id change if i were to do this again, which i will be doing in the future. For example i would like to have included a few film prints to further my qualities in my portfolio. I included a few location shots but if i was to go back i would have shot more location shots, such as architecture/ urban landscapes as my shots are more natural environments. This has also showed that i should have better time management as i had 4 photoshoots all planed around the same few days and it got really stressful to complete all the shooting and editing at once. 

[ruthemerymedia]

Question 4: How did you use media technologies in the construction and research and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Tumblr 

The blogging site Tumblr was useful during the planning stage as it allowed me to accumulate all my research in one place. This included theories and theorists, audience research, a production log and analyses of music videos and digipaks. The chronological structure of the site allowed for sections to form naturally, showing the progression of our music video from basic research through to evaluation.

The ability to embed videos and images is invaluable as it allowed me to visually punctuate any point I made, whether on my music video or during an analysis. This can be seen in my analysis of Dead End Street by the Kinks or Another Brick in the Wall by Pink Floyd. However, when it came to posting my digipak on my blog, the quality of the image decreased. This was frustrating as I couldn’t work out how to fix it and the image seems to be decent quality before posting. 

I have also had issues with Tumblr because of poor wifi connection. If there isn’t a strong connection, Tumblr has at times taken hours to submit a post or even embed a video. This was especially tricky in the research phase when it came to analysing music videos. At one point the video took so long to load I tried to cancel it to start again and ended up losing the essay I had just written. 

Overall, Tumblr’s layout and accessibility to my whole group is beneficial in organising research and keeping track of progress because of its linear structure, but its technical flaws have been a detriment at times. 

Prezi 

Prezi has enabled me to create an in-depth critique of my own work, in which I was able to break down individual points and section off answers into appropriate and easy-to-navigate sections. It includes many sleek designs for free that presented my work in a succinct and flowing manner and allowed me to provide evidence or visual aid to my points through embedding videos and images into sections.

This program came into most use during my evaluation in which I was able to analyse each of my original media texts in appropriate groups (e.g., discussing the ‘minimalistic style’ in my music video, digipak and magazine cover). My biggest problem with it was that it ran very slow, with each action taking twice the time that it would if running smoothly. This is again most likely because of poor internet connection. The only real drawback was that it was tedious and took longer. 

Mobile Phones

These were beneficial in the traditional sense; I was able to keep in contact with my group whenever I needed them, mostly for help organising filming days during production. We were able to set up a group chat through Facebook and having that easy, reliable communication between everyone meant that we were all ‘in the loop’, receiving the same information and discussing the video as it was being made. 

Mobile phones also came in handy when we needed to take photos of filming days for the production log. This, coupled with the social media access it brings, allowed for easy sharing of pictures and thus, improved blogs.

PCs

The computers at school were what the music video itself was edited on and it caused a lot of trouble. While the extensive storage space on the iDrive is useful, the speed at which post-production had to go because of the poor processing speeds was tragic. 

This was mainly an issue with rendering, which can take up to 3 hours to complete with lots of footage. This forced us to be selective from the get-go with what shots we actually wanted to import and render, which ultimately meant that Premiere Pro didn’t become cluttered and only the best shots made it into the final cut. 

Similarly, the slowness of the PC meant that cutting in time with the beat of the song was more difficult. There were lots of lagging issues that meant we couldn’t tell with any accuracy whether our edits lined up with the beat of the song. It was partially because of the trouble we had with these PCs that resulted in me editing the Directors’ Commentary, Final Focus Group and Animatic on iMovie on my laptop from home.

DSLR Camera

Using a DSLR Camera is a significant technical step-up for me from year 12, where I used a camcorder to film our film opening. Getting used to the digital camera was relatively easy as I never found the need to white-balance or anything like that, something that I would have to do several times every time I used a camcorder.

The primary reason digital cameras are superior is the video quality which far exceeds that of a camcorder. Similarly, using the DSLR meant I was able to use a 35-millimetre lens to create a small field of focus and giving a sense of intimacy and insight into Lola’s life through the slider shots and still shots of alcohol bottles. 

The one problem I ran into with this camera was that creating effective zooms is very difficult as it requires a perfectly smooth manual extension of the lens, something that I couldn’t manage to perfect, resulting in some zooms in the video looking uneven and unprofessional. 

Adobe Premiere Pro

This software was ideal during the post-production process as it was logical and accurate with cuts, transitions and video corrections software, such as colour, lighting and rotation. It was easy to cut to the beat of the song when things were running smoothly as the audio track allowed me to view the frequency of the song and judge confidently where the edits should be. 

The main issue we ran into during post-production was that the tool Warp Stabiliser, used to stabilise shaky footage, was missing from the program, resulting in us having to resort to importing the clips into Adobe After Effects and stabilising it there. This led to complications during our re-edit as some of the clips that had been put through After Effects vanished or stopped working, meaning that we were unable to tighten up a few minor sections of the video.

Adobe Photoshop

This was my first time using photoshop and at first, I found it tricky to get the hang of. I used it for my digipak and magazine cover. My design for the digipak required me to use an Intuos Wacom tablet in order to effectively draw in the black and white block design of the final product. Once I started using photoshop in conjunction with the tablet it became easier and I enjoyed being able to work in layers. 

The lasso tool, magic wand tool and paint bucket tool made the blotting out much quicker and smoother, meaning that I was able to finish the panels for my digipak in two days. The style was to mimic somewhat the style of the original album cover while incorporating a Banksy-inspired graffiti style to appeal to my youth audience. I also utilised the blur tool and added a yellow and red tint to some of my panels to convey a 70s style to the photography. 

Youtube and Facebook

After all the editing and exporting was complete, our final music video for Lola was uploaded to YouTube, where it currently stands at 666 views. YouTube is the most convenient and effective way of publishing video content as it is the leader in the online video market and has almost zero competitive alternatives. It was the best way to get our video online in an easy-to-share format, such as through Facebook. Meg shared Lola through her Facebook account and received lots of positive feedback, encouraging us that the purpose of our video (to show the struggle a person goes through in discovering their gender identity) was conveyed. 

[alexandriatilleyphotography]

Making Pictures - Commercial

Making Pictures is an artist management and production agency for advertising, design, brand agencies, TV film and record labels.  Making Pictures is an agency that help to develop, nurture, and maintain lasting careers for artists through curating high quality portfolios and encouraging artistic and personal projects.  MP provides the artists with a platform through which to identify, direct and facilitate commercial work.  They have a team of 8 industry specialists to develop and manage our artists and work across both traditional and new media platforms.  Making Pictures is seen to understand the changing face of the visual industry and offers a forward thinking approach combined with the ability to create fully integrated campaigns.

Photographers that Making Pictures represent include; Finlay Mackay, Spencer Murphy, NABIL, Marcus Smith, Tom van Scheleven, The Wade Brothers, Neil Bedford, Dan Burn-Forti, Olly Burn, Paul Calver, Alexander Coggin, Matt Henry, Sam Hofman, Mitch Jenkins, Jean-Yves Lemoigne and MP Arts.  

Within Making Pictures I found numerous roles within the business that made me think about what would be included in myself and Sam’s company, Making Pictures involved;

Agent Support

New Business

Head of Production

Visual and Content Manager

Head of Photography

Managing Partners

Agents 

All of the roles above has not only given me an insight into how Making Picture is structured, but also how myself and Sam (once running) can begin to look at roles and how to manage them.

Making Pictures also have an Award  that offers six months representation and mentoring, showcasing and promoting an emerging artist, offering portfolio, professional and creative development alongside an introduction to the commercial world. In 2016 the award ran in collaboration with Source Magazine's Graduate Photography online 2015 entrants.  I think doing events like such is a good idea to get your name out there, to find new talent, but also engage with the community, which is important as people that apply for the award will begin to follow you and support you.  The award can gain new marketing opportunities as well as more promotion for your company.  When starting a company with Sam, I want to look at creating Awards, events and talks to create a sense of community and engagement that will not only benefit the company, but the community also.  

MP Arts is the sister agency to photographic counterpart Making Pictures.  They currently represent 30 leading designers, image-makers, and illustrators.  They aim to develop, nurture, and maintain lasting careers for our artists through high production standards, curating quality portfolios, encouraging artistic and personal projects, much like Making pictures.  

I took a look at Making pictures social media and website to gain an understanding of their online presence, and looked for any tips or elements that I found could be beneficial to myself and Sam when creating our own online platforms.  

Facebook / Twitter; https://www.facebook.com/makingpics / https://twitter.com/@Makingpictures -  this is one of the first agencies that advertise their Facebook page on their website.  The statuses consist of updates on their photographers, including commissions, new projects, new published books and exhibitions.  The statuses are much like the Twitter statuses (or vice versa) and include small amount of information of the projects (who shot, who it is for, who it features) and an accompanying picture.  The profile picture of the Facebook is also the same as the Twitter profile image, the title of the company in the same font, emphasising the branding.  Using Facebook does access another audience that other agencies may not, however I am unsure of yet whether it is worth using Facebook due to the popularity of Instagram and Twitter.  

Tumblr:  http://crumpetsandpoetry.tumblr.com - Making Pictures uses tumblr very frequently, however I see this as a more personal use of social media.  The posts are images of the team out, having fun, or meeting new people, it is highlighting the agencies more fun side and what they get up to.  I find this really interesting as it makes the agency much more approachable due to seeming friendly enough to show personal images, it creates a more intimate rapport between the agency and the viewer.  These posts are also shared on the Twitter page.  I again, am unsure whether to use Tumblr due to its decreasing popularity.  I also think myself and Sam need to think about what agency we want to be - more personal on social media - more approachable, friendly, or less personal - more business like / professional.  

Website; http://making-pictures.co.uk - The home page, photographers and directors pages are all the same.  The slideshow at the top of the page is a good and exciting introduction to photographers due to the diverse range of images as well as the vibrancy within them - again something we want to do - intrigue the audience.  The photographers / directors are then listed below in a structured square layout, which is something I think I want to avoid as many agencies have this layout and I want our website to be different.  The layout of the artists page is rather different to other agencies, you are introduced to sections of work listed with various categories, as well as selected projects. 

 When clicking on the page, for example a project or a category, you are redirected to a page that features a slideshow of the said images.  The slide show is not automatic, and has to either be clicked or moved by the slider which gives control to the viewer.  I think this is a good idea to give control to the viewer, however I much prefer a your like Webbers due to the contemporary element.  The artists also have a news page dedicated to them and a bio.  The bio includes; background / personality (more personal), what they specialise in, their processes, and individuality.  The writing is more more laid back than other agencies, and talks about much more personal elements to do with the photographer.  

It is useful to know how other agencies write about their photographers, however I think with our website, I won’t want to be personal, I want concise, to the point information that entices people to become interested in the photographers work, and book them.  The news page has again a square layout to keep in style with the other pages, and features news from the photographers which are also included on Twitter, Facebook etc.  This reminds me how linked every online platform is - everything must be linked together to gain a concise, and detailed portrayal of our company and to keep people interested on all platforms.  The about page is one I have no seen as the about / contact is different, with all other agencies they are together however Making Pictures have them separate.  The about page features; who the agency is, what they aim for, what they do for photographers, how they are special and a small idea about the team.  This page is highly detailed about the agency and has new elements that I can look at for inspiration for when writing our own ‘about’ .  I especially find the ‘how they care about the photographers - what they can offer’ an extremely important point - what can myself and Sam offer?  The team page is also highly personal, with images of the friendly images of the team in a square format once again, keeping it consistent and still personal.  There is also an awards page that features images that are contributed to the award (I think - it is not clear) as well as information about it.  The award is a great idea to continue with the personal relationship to the agency and a sense of community.  Lastly, the contact page details location, contact details, general enquiries, internships and portfolio reviews.  The portfolio reviews are accepted for review every Thursday - this could be another aspect that myself and Sam can do to create a following, this could also be useful to scout out new talent.  Myself and Sam have always wanted to do portfolio reviews, and hearing about Making Pictures doing this encourages me further.  

Overall, looking at Making pIctures has made me think deeply about what agency myself and Sam want to be; less / more personal.  Making Pictures is a huge example of a more personal / portrayal of fun company that makes you want to follow them and become apart of their company in any way.  Whilst Webber has that elegance and portrayal of prestige that is something I want to become apart of.  They are two completely different agencies, and it is interesting to see the differences and what I can take away from both.  Making Pictures has inspired me and given me ideas about portfolio reviews, awards, what social media to use as well as an insight into what can be offered as an agency that is portrayed in a different light.