#sentimental author is feeling sentimental

[lucythornwalter]

my Anti-AI Disabled Artist Hot Take is that I think a lot of disabled AI users believe in a right to comfort that fundamentally doesn’t exist

and I know this is the piss on the poor website, the no-nuance website, but I feel the need to point this out because I see a disabled AI users talking about “the art community” like we’re a lot of elitists for believing that the process of making the art is what bestows worth upon the finished product. I saw a post where someone went “we all understand that not everyone is going to be a pro athlete because of factors out of their control, why can’t we understand that’s true of artists? what if someone is intellectually incapable of learning how to make art? what if you train and practice for 20 years and you never get good? why should I be barred from making art just because I’m not good or I have difficulties?”

and to that I say the process is the point, even when it’s hard, and I also say abled artists struggle and strive and practice too.

if you practice the flute for 20 years and never get good you will have reaped the benefits of playing for your own entertainment. people play recreational sports with no hope of going pro because they enjoy the experience of playing for their own entertainment. poems that are shitty can express emotions and sentiments authentically and bring catharsis to the author through the experience of writing. acting can be bad and still meaningful to the actors.

doing the thing is the point. the end result is not the point. a stick figure on a Post-It gave the person who drew it something meaningful, it exists as an expression of something the artist felt and the process of drawing it was an outlet for those feelings. assembling a collage requires examining your emotions and using found elements to assemble an expression of those emotions. creating a moodboard is the same. making a word cloud and arranging the words based on what you like best, creating a playlist, tracing a pattern in the carpet with a hand or foot - all of that is meaningful because it is done by a human who is doing it to express a feeling or sentiment. It is done earnestly and translates brain things into something observable. the colors, the positioning, the shapes - you, the artist, are actively making choices that best express your taste. this is why procedurally generated images aren’t art, this is why procedurally generated text isn’t art. there is in fact an inherent value to assembling the final product. the assemblage of the final product is what makes it art. even if the assemblage is screaming to express anger. even if it’s shedding a tear. art is a thing created directly by a human being. eventually when machines become sapient enough to showcase their souls they’ll be able to make art too.

if you do not care enough about the process to want to engage with it despite its difficulty or learning curve or challenge level, you are not entitled to the end result of a finished work of art. it is an unfortunate reality of being disabled that we are not going to do things or get things as easily as abled people. but abled people aren’t effortlessly creating art from perfect comfort either. doing hard things is its own reward. I believe that everyone, no matter their ability or skill level, is capable of making meaningful and important art that authentically expresses their feelings. there is no such thing as Too Disabled For Art. there is no such thing as Too Disabled For Anything But AI. you might never be good. do it anyway. keep doing it. do it badly. that’s how you get better.

(and, just to be clear, I’ve been training in drawing for 23 years, and I’m still not good, and I still get something emotionally beneficial from the act of drawing. again, if you don’t care enough about the process to engage with it despite the difficulty level, you are not entitled to the end results.)

[lovelyfirebouquet]

If you're an artist? I love you.

If you're an author? I love you.

If you crochet or knit? I love you.

If you sew? I love you.

If you're a carpenter? A painter? An architect? A shoemaker?

Create, love, continue bringing beauty in the world and leaving your mark. You are incredible, and I hope pieces of you keep making people happy long after you're gone.

[skunkes]

something so ensmallifying about not wanting to go home

[penisbilt]

hey i updated my neocities homepage for the first time in like 2 years, heres a link to it but ill also put the text in this post under the read more right there 👇

Update:

Hey everyone! I'm still not super online at this time, but as everything around us (both online and off) keeps going more and more off the rails, I just wanted to state here that, should anything happen, you can always find me here as long as neocities still stands. And even then, I'd probably just look for another website hoster and republish my site.

Like, I dunno, we're in an age where the business model of the modern internet seem to be failing even the biggest companies. I never used to get too freaked out over the years as tumblr's userbase faced the occasional 'we might be losing tumblr, everyone panic!!' trend. However, particularly with the recent death knell of 4chan, which always felt like such an immutable force on the internet, it's just kinda made me realize just how little the continued existence of any website is a given. Tumblr is a dumpster fire run by a skeleton crew of wildly unpopular transmisogynists. I just can't bring myself to care about my presence there anymore.

So anyway, with that in mind, I turn back to neocities, and sites like it. Here, this website is mine. I have full access to the html, css, and scripts that make up my website. If I jumped my entire life from one burning ship (like tumblr or twitter etc) to another (like insta or bsky or anything Run By Someone Else), then who's to say I won't spend a year breaking my back to reestablish my online presence based out of a site like that, just for it to also close or disappoint in some way?

Along that note, it's also just hard to Want to get into a new social media site, if I'm being perfectly hornets right now. Mega networking sites certainly do have their uses for many people, but for me, it just does not feel good anymore to feel so constantly in the eyes of so many unknowable strangers. Right now, I want my online presence to move out of the loud, busy city, out into the remote country, where it's mostly my friends and the occasional passersby that are the only ones that ever come through.

I don't really have anywhere specific I was going with this. I guess I just wanted to say that, if the sites or services we use to interact ever go down, you can always find me here. If I ever do get set up on any new sites, I'd plan on linking to them from here - this is probably just gonna end up being my primary presence on the internet once tumblr finally smolders out. If you want to follow me across the internet, you'll be able to find the stuff I get into here.

By the way, one last note. This is just an open letter to my friends, the people I've interacted with, or the people who wanted to but for one reason or another, never did. I am so sorry you had to watch my highspeed social crash-and-burn in real time over the past several years. Maybe I'll write more on it later, but for now, just know that I hope I get to talk to you again someday. I really do. I'm sorry I can't keep up with you all through the crash-and-burn of the rest of the internet along with my own, but if you wanted to keep me bookmarked to come find me again someday, I would be so immensely grateful. I hope I can stay in touch with the people I care for, and the people who care for me.

And at the end of the day, I just hope the world is kind to us all.

[cologona]

I’ve gotten oversaturated on good sibling Tim and Dick stuff they’re all members of the deeply toxic family dynamic how about we let them suck just a little bit 2024.

[kateofthecanals]

The first step is admittance, George….

[azaablue]

i write fanfic today because of the me who was 16 and sad and couldn't sleep so she started writing and it felt good and different and fun and overtime it became the thing that saved her in a very silly and also very real way.

also, i write for like five people on the internet who i think are nifty.

[sskk-manifesto]

Atsushi's back in the game!!! ۶( ˆ o ˆ )

[pynkhues]

Not a baiting ask: I don’t recall any of the characters dressing more androgynously as the books went on, save Gabrielle? There are passages of Louis and Lestat wearing lace, pearls and velvet frock coats in the modern day, in reference to 18th c. fashion: Is that what the other Anon may have meant? That’s not an androgynous sartorial choice with historical costuming in mind, though, it’s Louis dressing in the fashion of his human era. (Perhaps there is a misconception from a passage in which Louis wears lace and pearls at Armand’s urging, or someone sharing such passages with intent to mislead other fans about the canonicity of Femme Louis or Femme Lestat beyond Anne’s personal identification with them, which has happened before and will happen again.) In the show, Louis dressing in lace, pearl and velvet would be Louis dressing in a colourful three piece suit in the style of the 1910’s.

(x)

Ah! Thank you for the correction, anon, I didn't remember any either, but I'm hyper-conscious of only having read through Memnoch (and having read most of the books I have quite a while ago, although I've been re-reading TVL recently) so I chose to take the ask in good faith and assume perhaps something happened in later books. That could very well be what the anon meant, but perhaps you're right too that there are scenes being taken out of context.

[ifievertoldyou]

JUST FOUND AN OLD FIC RECS GOOGLE DOC WITH ME RECOMMENDING ATOL AGES AGO

[sentimental-idiot25]

I realized I’m a paragraph by paragraph writer.

I go into a prompt or a fanfic and have no clue what I’m going to write. I just start typing and hope it works.

You know how many times this works— for me personally….only like half the time so you know what happens to the other half…. they just rattle around in my brain for years. I’m thinking about my fic True Blue and Error.

No idea what I’m doing with them personally.

But thank you for enjoying Error!! Since you know that one is out……. justice for true blue….

Error started off as a request/suggestion by a mutual and I just rolled with it and now I’m scared that I don’t know how to end it lolol

I say this and will dedicate the next days of my life just thinking about the plot lolol

[todayisafridaynight]

HAVE BEEN ROTATING Y7 ARAKAWA IN RGGO ARAKAWA'S DRIP IN MY MIND FOR AEONS YOU SEE THE VISION....................

Listen. I think. I think it would work. I think we could've still won. The physics probably would've been a pain, but if I think about it as an echo of the red iin his costuming in the play at the start, and link it back to how the plot of the play comes to represent part of his life, it would [unintelligible]

But no for real, the sliver you can see of the snakeskin on Jo and the fact it's the lightest thing you can see on his whole outfit feels purposeful. It's still incredibly funny to me that whole thing was treated as a twist at all. But.

And the progression on account of the timeskip is sick too from a symbolic perspective. It's things like the 2019 tie having the exact same pattern as in 2000, but it's also now the only real color in his entire ensemble, the purple from his shirt relegated to the tie and the pink completely gone. Hanging on to the past (although I guess this is more RGGJo's thing), forcing his "self" into a smaller and smaller space, that kind of thing. If we go with Sololiquy for a moment, maybe there's also something there about things being livelier when Ichi was around, for better or worse.

All the leather is ostensibly much more luxurious, befitting of his rise in status, but it's also burying him further in these additional layers of security. The gloves DO pull it together, and they also leave him basically completely covered-up from head to toe, which I can't help find fascinating.

So, you know, he looks sick with the gloves on, but there's also a different Flavor when recognizing he had them on the first battle when he was hiding so much from Ichi, but in the second battle, where he hopes to come clean, he's bare-handed ("Ichi-vision" notwithstanding).

And I think it's also worth recognizing that the gloves would've offered some protection when he went to grab the blade, but he grabs it anyway in his bare hand. With the amount of force you apply when you swing a blade and it actually connects, that'd hurt him just as bad, but it shows he's past the point of caring about what happens to him even before he says so. (I still think we should've probably seen his hand cut and bleeding when out of Ichi-vision, but y'know.)

Much to think about...

NO I SEE YOUR VISION I SEE WHERE YOU'RE GOING they could've done that.... true the physics would've been a pain but I think we can trade some of the effort that went into The Bread and put it towards the scarf and coat.....

The evolution of Jo's outfit in conjunction with the surrounding environment and circumstances really is mad interesting, and as someone who really enjoys 'storytelling' (idk if that's the exact word rn but i aint ever been good with words in the first place) through character design/wardrobe. Any note I coulda said you've already said for me, yet I still wish I had some more words to express how much I love the changes in his outfit and how it reflects himself and the story at that particular point 😷

[pristine-wilderness]

southern reach headcanons (spore) you’d have to pry from my cold dead hands:

gendernull biologist and ghost bird

transfem lowry (egg uncracked)

transfem control (egg also uncracked)

[onethousandrbirds]

on the one hand, that last post is right--making art paranoid about what people who read it in bad faith will say/do on twitter/goodreads/etc doesn't solve anything. but on the other, treating "you should create art for you and 5 specific weirdos and get dogpiled with dignity" as a solution to that particular problem is kinda crazy b/c there is no dignity in suffering--every person who's been bullied knows that. especially if your 5 weirdos cannot/will not support you by being as loud if not louder than the the bullies!

[silkhy-john]

And yet another WIP for your perusal:

[daydreamerdrew]

Strange Tales (1951) #150