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Today i had an existential freakout about whether i only became nonbinary out of self loathing to escape who i was. then i had a whole philosophical debate about whether whether i don't want to be a cis man bc of gender dysphoria, or just bc I didn't enjoy being a man, and if it was the latter, if it was appropriation of identity to be nonbinary simply bc i didn't want to be a man anymore bc it was unpleasant. I still feel like I feel gender dysphoria a lot, but i also can't discount the fact that being seen as a man was just not fun for me and felt very limiting for me personally. I sort of came to the conclusion that, even if I only transitioned to escape manhood, that's, i hope at least, still probably fine bc it did end up making me much less unhappy with myself than i was prior, but there's still a part of me that wonders if others would consider that a douchey reason to be trans, even if a fair bit gender dysphoria is also mixed in with that

Bare in mind, at the same time I'm pondering the ethics of my identity and why i came to it, the fascist president of America is waging a criminal war with Iran, right-wing grifter Erica Kirk continues to milk her shitstain dead husband's false legacy to fatten her wallet even more, RFK's brain continues to be eaten by worms as he spouts ableist and anti-science dribble even he clearly knows is a load of bullshit, and Pete Hegseth is probably covering up more war crimes cuz that's seemingly is entire job, he's not really doing a good job of it since his senile boss (aforementioned) is literally saying he wants to bomb civilian territory.... So yeah i really need to be worried about the ethics of my reasoning for being trans. It's not like the bar is in the pit of hell, or anything.

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Technically did this drawing for Chronicles of Sanguia: Sorrowfell (Ekko exists in that universe as one of the seven sanguine saints, Ekkolocria) but i really, really liked this drawing of Ekko so i wanted to post it here. The big wings, their makeup, the pose, their potbelly, their gentle demeanor - it all makes me just happy to look at. i wanna hug this drawing of Ekko, they look like they'd offer their IRL counterpart comfort and understanding, which i need right now...

*Ahem* anyway yeah it's a good drawing, i also really like the lineart of this one. I mean, it's all lineart, just a line drawing over a red background. The composition is also good. I have more, of the other sanguine saints (Kastrado, Somni, Marsa, Gorka, Sca'yal and yours truely!), and the six races of Sanguia! (Humans, Moon Elves, Blood Elves, Wilde, Plagueites, and ofc Echolocrians, respectively!)

A bit of a lore dump:

• Kastrado is the patron saint of humans and the god of agriculture, the individual and pride in oneself. Humans are also called Homokor, kor meaning elf, and homo supposedly meaning "ubiquitous" in the Forgotten Tongue. There are five regions in Sanguia bc humans have always existed in all of them, but don't hail from anywhere in particular
• Somni represents sleep, dreams, restoration, indifference and observation. Somni, like Marsa, is morally neutral rather than good. The Moon Elves, or Somnikor, share their stoicness with their patron saint
• Marsa is the sanguine saint of War, government, regime change, person-to-person violence, passion and emotion. The Blood Elves (Sanguikor) share her undying rage and unquenchable bloodlust. If Somni is morally ambiguous bc he's a neutral observer, Marsa is neutral bc she has positive and negative qualities. She's in love with Sca'yal, though their romance is tumultuous do to their overlap and simultaneous contradictions
• Gorka is the Sanguine Saint of the Harvest, The Hunt, festivals and lighthearted comradery. The Wilde (or Ferokor) have animal slulls for faces and thick body hair. They are very strong and gifted in martial combat and athletics, but aren't great at magic (they're kinda fantasy-jock meatheads so they have a low Intelligence base stats lol)
• Sca'yal is the sanguine saint of justice, revolution, community and academia. The Plagueites, like their patron saint, are a rat-like group of beastfolk who are very intelligent and charismatic and have a natural distaste for authority and political power
• Ekkolocria (that's me!) is the sanguine saint of creativity, the arts, and magic. It is said they took the wings of Echolocrians in the Forsaken Age, not as a punishment, but a challenge, asking them if they could find a way to fly without them, thus, the first spell - a levitation spell (yes, you can levitate with magic like in MW) was created, and then was the beginning of magic. Echolocrians are all Devients, dressing and living as hermaphrodites regardless of their birth sex (in modern terms, they're an entire race of nonbinary bats. also "Devient" is the in-universe word for any kind of queerness, bc it felt weird and forced to use modern language in a oldtimey fantasy setting - hence why i use the word "hermaphordite" rather than intersex, even though that word is seen as archiac or overly old fashioned now - but i still wanted to explore the fight for queer rights in this world, since during when the game takes place, queerness is beginning to be accepted and is no longer illegal, but the fight for "devient" isn't over yet). They are extremely gofted in magic, wildly intelligent and have great resolve, but are very feeble in body, their hollow bones break easily (they have a really low Strength and Endurance stat, but a high Willpower and Intelligence stat and a bonus in basically every magic skill, basically. They, by extension, also are nearly immune to every magic type except for poison, since willpower makes you take less fire, shock and frost damage, but poison is reduced by strength, so if you're fighting an Echolocrian bandit mage, you'd wanna use poison)

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So, an update on how Sorrowfell (that game im working on) is going: there's enchanting now! Basically you can bind spells to weapons, depending on how high you're Enchant skill is. Instead of jewelry (like in Morrowind, the game that inspired Sorrowfell's game design) there's magic wands, which don't do any damage as weapons, but you can just use as a focus for a spell you bind to them. Enchanted weapons don't have charge to keep track off, and you don't need a soul gem or anything to enchant, but enchanted weapons break faster bc casting the spell also damages the weapon a little, and failing the skill check to enchant a weapon damages it, and failing to enchant a scroll destroys it. Also, unlike in Morrowind, scrolls aren't single-use, they teach you spells, meaning spellingmaking via the enchant system is now possible, if your skill is high enough. Spellingmaking from NPCs is still possible, but if you use Enchant, you'll save a fair bit of gold

BTW, if anyone is interested in playtesting this game (not professionally or obligatorily, only if you want to try the game way early) let me know via the "contact/chat" tab on the main page. I don't want to release a public demo yet, it isn't even polished enough for that, but if you're interested on a whim i could email you a build, and if you'd like to and get the chance, I'd then love to know if there were any bugs or issues you ran across or if there's anything you think needs to be in the game that isn't yet. Not nessessary, just letting anyone who wants to try it out know I'd totally accept playtester, even if (or even especially if) youre just kind of interesting in playinf it early

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I feel like the real problem with "cozy games" is that, while sometimes it's a perfectly valid "vibe descriptor" it's sometimes used as a wokewashed way of saying "girl games", which is still at the end of the day gendering certain aesthetics and gatekeeping games with darker or more "hardcore" gaming aesthetic from everyone who isn't a cishet man, which sucks bc everyone should be allowed to like what ever games they personally like, regardless of their gender or sexuality. Honestly i feel like if there's any game that pretty much anyone could enjoy, it's the original Doom. It's simple and fun, easy to pick up instantly, has a wide range of difficulty modes for all skill levels, and has a good mix of aesthetics that range from cartoonishly silly to stylishly cool to darkly melencholic, while keeping a pretty fun ton throughout the different chapters. Like, Doom, in theory, is the game for everyone to enjoy, but gamegater types wanna gatekeep it bc they think Doom's aesthetics are for "real men" bc they conflate Stuff That Is Cool with Stuff That Is Made For Them Only, which is like... so lame, dude. Everybody should try OG Doom, it's just good and it was ofc (even at the time) made for a wide audience while still having a clear focused vision from the devs, and it works

Anyway, i use Doom as an example bc it's a very classic game with a very classic PC gaming aesthetic, and I feel like misusing the term "cozy games" as a polite way to say "games for women and smol bean queers" is doing both a disservice to ppl who don't conform to gender roles (particularly queer ppl and women, although by extension non-conformist straight cis men who just like cute cozy farming and life sims, who to be clear are also completely valid in liking what they like!) but also just doing games like Doom or Half-Life or System Shock or whatever a disservice by boiling all their aesthetics down to a pile of gender stereotypes instead of appreciating these games on their own terms and aacknowledging their influences. Doom is influenced by metal aesthetics. Half-Life is a love letter to sci-fi B movies from the 1970s. System Shock 2 is a whole creative myasma of unapologetic scfi inspiration that also tell it's own story about authoritarianism and the balance between the individual and the collective. These games are doing stuff that's cool and inspired well-executed, that are distinct aesthetics, and when you strip away the vague idea of "target demographic" (smth that the ppl actually making these things rarely think about, they're just making something they want to make and think would be cool) it's just like... good ass art direction. Stardew Valley also has superb art direction. So does Cruelty Squad. And Ultrakill, and gorey boomer shooter made by a bisexual man who's fandom is seemingly mostly trans women. And the dev of Cruelty Squad's other game, Psycho Patrol R, features a overly macho protagonist who's doing a comedically bad job of disguising his very obviously gay crush on his boss as admiration, his performative hypermasculinity heavily implied to be a product of his internalized homophobia, and the game hammers this home in a hilariously unsubtle way. look at that my ramblings have come full circle :3

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I feel like a common thing that's sort of hard to communicate on the social web (and to even a lot of ppl in general) is that you can dislike a person, think what they do is kinda shit, but still not condone them being genuinely wronged

Like, i was thinking about this time a video essayist named Jessie Gender was banned from Bluesky for saying "I wish ill upon JK Rowlin". Now, i think Jessie is extremely insufferable and completely up her own ass, and has (imo) some god awful "Twitter Shitlib" political takes, but I was extremely horrified by a trans woman getting banned for having ill will towards a literal neo-fascist transphobe that it didn't matter if it was a trans woman i didn't like as a person or creator, bc banning her for saying that was just wrong on principle

I don't say this to act like im morally superior to anyone, I'm sure I've felt the opposite at some point about someone, especially if i was in a rotten mood, but if so i was caught up in my emotions, and i think that's where a lot of evil in this world comes from: Putting our feelings and emotions over empathy, morality, or pragmaticism

I'm also not saying you or I should nessessarily strive to be perfect. If humans were perfectly rational creatures, there would be no war, no corruption, no suffering, bc ofc we'd help each other, that is the pragmatic thing to do, causing harm to or abandoning other humans impedes on our survival and achieves nothing worthwhile. But we aren't rational creatures, we're very rash, emotional creatures, and while that causes all the evil in the world, it's also why we make art or tell stories or do anything recreational at all. But we could all strive to be kinder, even to ppl who we generally find kind of unpleasant or don't personally like when they're in need

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Top 10 Gibberish Words:

• Blabgok
• Slorto
• Slimbyslam
• Haplorp
• Glokororoshire (Proper noun)
• meepmorp
• glimbeeglam
• All those fucking words from Morrowind
• Whushtoshire sauce (that may as well be spelled correctly.)
• Gleeperglorpenshmoop (Proper noun, antiquate)

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Been polishing Sorrowfell a bit. It has a day/night cycle now. I also did a enemy model I'd been putting off, so that's good. Still need to fix some outdated resource refs...

this definitely better captures the atmosphere of the original dream

Also, none of these screenshots are edited, in case this wasn't obvious, not even the first one, it's just a very cool shot lol. The stylized look of some of these shots is just color grading and cranking up the contrast, which creates "retro psychedelic album cover" effect in certain lighting situations, though it also has a lot of points where it looks comparatively more normal for a lowpoly game. I think when I had the dream that inspired this world, my subconcious mind was channeling that one King Gizzard album Nonagon Infinity

Also, yes, I got rid of the dithering shader. It was just causing problems and I think this game looks better without it

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Ok... Here it is, here's what I've been working on for the past, like, two weeks:

I'm doing it. I'm making that mini-morrowind take of Sanguia that I've wanted to for so long. I was so afraid to start it but tbh this past two weeks, while admittedly very exhausting, have been quite fun

So... a bit of an update, just letting you know how its been going! I did take a break for a day bc i was getting burnt out, which was good, bc that much needed mental rest allowed me to declog my brain, and that helped me get freah eyes on my work, and helped me work more efficiently (taking breaks is good! it makes you get more done more quickly, allow yourself a day-long break once in awhile if you're a similarly obsessive artist and/or gamedev)

Anyway, since i uploaded this trailer, I've:

• Adding several more dungeons (there is 7 10 dungeons in total, my ideal goal is circa 25 dungeons for the whole game, which does mean the compact open world will be densely packed, which is good imo. Hopefully I'll have enough room in the mountains to add the entrances for that many dungeons, im sure i will with enough efficient use of space)
• I've added several more quests! Some include: the first quest is from a series of them from a particularly whimsical quest giver; another is a quest where you help a Plagueite man find a precious gemstone, from a Gilded Shrine, to make his lover, Marco, a neckless for the 10th anniversary of their Brethrenship (that's a medieval thing that was legally similar to marriage. In Sorrowfell, "devient-love" is no longer outlawed, but devient wedlock is not recognized, so brethrenships, and another in-universe thing called sisterships, fill that gap); One is likely the darkest quest in the game, where you help a Blood Elf, who was kicked out of the Mages Guild for unethical magics, make a wicked spell that should not possible. You actually get the spell for completing the quest, but the completing the quest will involve some dark actions from the player...
• I've polished the look a bit, including adjusting the game's color grading, adding a mild omnilight to the player character so they can always see right in from of them (in case they're in a dark part of a dungeon), turned on Screen Space Reflections (so reflective materials look nicer), made the world light a little less bright (for a moodier effect) and added a film grain effect effect
• I added fall damage! how much fall damage you take at a given velocity is dependent on your Acrobatics skill (which also determines how high you jump) and it's governing attribute (agility). This means agile characters (noth PC and NPCs) really good at Acrobatics can fall from some distance with taking much damage, if any at all, but low-agility characters who have an abysmal Acrobatics skill might take a tiny sliver of damage just from jumping in place (for instance, humans and blood elves start with low base agility and a piss-poor Acrobatics base skill, so if you don't have Acrobatics in your major and minor skills and/or don't have Agility as one of your favored attributes, you might just take a tiny bit of damage and get staggered while jumping, like you're character is so fucking clumsy they jump and then they're immediately like "ow my legs felt that". I believe, if i recall what i set this as, Blood Elves have a slightly worse agility base stat than humans, and they both have a base Acrobatics skill of 5.0, so Blood Elves probably have this a bit worse)
• Other things that are less immediately interesting if you're not a game developer

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It's kinda fucked up that everything evolves into a crab bc what tf do you mean the ultimate lifeform is basically a giant ocean spider?? And why do it's creepy-ass lega taste so good? What???

Seriously though crustaceans are so funny and weird to me bc they're just like... huge fucking bugs. They are giant arathnopods, but bc they come from the ocean everyone is fine with it. Lobsters are especially funny to me bc they are very clearly just Very Large Bugs. Like if they were land arathnopods and a lot smaller, we'd probably classify them as insects

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Just FYI, there's been (for a very good, exciting and kind of unexpected reason) a major shift in priorities in my game development. I'm currently taking a bit of a break of the goat-sheep-enby hack and slash game (though it isn't scrapped, i just realized it would be a really bizarre way to introduce a fantasy world that lives in my head to Steam audiences, since they wouldn't have played a particular open-world hobby scrollslike game i made a long time ago) and im working on a mini-morrowind set in the same world, but on a, let's say, less Saintly level

More details in a bit :)

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NPC: Traveler! Perhaps you can help me. My boy, my darling little boy, though he's not so little anymore... But he's lost! In a cave! A "Goon Cave" no leas! There are goons in there! You must rescue him! I'll mark the Goon Cave on you're map

[SPEECH CHECK] I don't believe your son is in danger. This "Goon Cave" is not as dangerous as you may believe.

NPC: [FAILED] No you fool! He is in g4ave danger! They wouldn't call it a "goon cave" if it was not infested with GOONS! GOONS I tell you!

JOURNAL UPDATED: An overprotective protective mother, Marie Chudman, believed her son, Goondoth Chudman, was in danger based on a misunderstanding of what a "goon cave" is. While I failed to ease her worries, it may serve my reputation to document this on the town bulliten, under "insane parents". Perhaps first i should ask Goondoth about the whereabouts of his father, who's likely a deranged control freak like his mother, as a story about a pair of insane parents would really drive eyes to my name

EDIT: Hi, its Ian/Iana Spencer, experimental artist and webmaster of Ekkochambers. I want to apologize for any psychological damage reading this miniblog shitpost may have caused. Many people may consider this joke about CRPGs and "Goon Caves" a memetic hazard, and they'd be correct! I have contacted the SCP foundation, and they have labeled me a Keter class anomaly and are currently trying to re-contain me with little avail. Technically speaking, this joke, which is about both tabletop-style RPG videogames and jorkin' it, is now under the Creative Commons Attribution Sharealike license.

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Me, finishing my twelth jar of wax: Hmm... This candle didn't really taste like a "Falltime Festival"...

The Yankee Candle employee, emptying the last round of their gun: Dammit, this is just like the Fortune bossfight from Metal Gear Solid 2!

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70s proto-cyberpunk: Three corporations run the government. We were fools to think technology alone could save us

80s cyberpunk: This city was cast in shadow by the wealthy elite. Only the nauseous neon lights illuminate below the corporate towers. I am no hero, im as lost as anyone else.

90s cyberpunk: Hey man, if you wanna take on the corpos, you're gonna need a Cyber-Nacho so nasty it'll blow out their whole system. i know a guy...

Contemporary cyberpunk: Glory to Godhead-7279. The future is monochrome. You are cog in the crystaline machine. Even if you kill me, you cannot undo our plans. Dumbass. Fuck you. I hate you.

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I had a dream last night that I was staying in a hotel room with a few (non-existent) aquaintences that I kinda knew just well enough to travel with for practical/financial reasons, and we saw what we initally thought was a big creepy spider with thin legs, but it was moving in a way that didn't make any sense. It was moving it's legs around kind of "running" (for lack of a better word) in space, but there was no rhyme or reason for why it was doing that, nor any for the actually motion of it's legs, which seemed completely mathmatically "random" (like how a computer would come up with a random number, not technically random but random-seeming enough). It eventually started running across the ceiling, though we were starting to suspect it wasn't a spider bc it didn't move like a spider, it was almost mechanical in it's movements, and I decided to, carefully, look at it, and it was one of these fuckers:



It was a giant fucking virus (a bacteriophage), previously undiscovered by science. Immediately I was terrified of why it even it existed. After learning (just now to find this image) that these things hijack bacteria that suddenly has WAYYYY more horrifying implications that I ever thought

Anyway, that's my cosmic horror story for the day lol. My brain came up with it while I was sleeping so technically I wrote it. Between this and that dream I had about the Soviets growing human organs in eggplants my brains really got a knack for coming up with horrifying concepts in my sleep! :3

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There is something really fucking funny about the fact that if someone says "I want a Woman Who Will Just Fucking Kill Me(TM)", that illicits, in the majority of ppl, a reaction of "Yeah this mf's kinda freaky", but if someone says "My kink is being held by someone who loves me and to look up into their eyes and know just by look on their face that everything will always be ok", we're all gonna be "Buddy... Are you ok? Do you need to talk? I'm worried about you... .-."

Like telling me you're into some sadomasochistic freak shit somehow seems more healthy and normal than telling me you're "into emotional honesty" (Which to be clear, I'm not kinkshaming, I just wanna check in to make sure your doing ok...?"

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Version 1.8 of a Godot 4.6 template I made for creating immersive sim RPGs: DOWNLOAD

Should be worth noting, by the way, that this isn't a plug-and-play template, and I don't intend to make it so. It's more of a framework for making a certain type of game. It's a fork of my CRPG framework, and like that, I'm primarily making it for myself, but also open-sourcing it just in case anyone else might find use out of it. My code is also not the cleanest GDScript ever, but I'm an artist who got into gamedev so that shouldn't be that suprising lol

UPDATE: I replaced the this link with a newer version of Spectregeist (Ver. 1.8) that fixes some of the issues listed below, as well as other ones, such as fixing and improving the dialog system's functionality, making the journal properly autowrap, and making it so crouch actually effects the height of player collision (so you can crawl into air vents and stuff!). Version 2.0 will release alongside the free short imsim I'm using to test this bugs, which will be called One-Track Bandit

UPDATE 2: Fixed several major issues and retooled sprint and the Athletics skill. I may update the file again in soon lol

EDIT: Hey, just FYI, the version available here as some bugs/problems with it. I'm currently working on a tiny (only one level) imsim to test it, and I'm adding those changes back to the template as I go. There'll be a better, more functional version available at some point in the near future! For context, the most recent bug I fixed was that bioenergy cost for augs straight-up was not implemented at all, which I didn't realize until I noticed using AUGs didn't cost any bioenergy lol. The fix I'm about to retroactively add to the original project file now is to stop melee weapons from running out of ammo bc I didn't specify that a weapon only consumes ammo if it's the "weap_needs_ammo" bool is true. Game development sure is wacky!

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Idk who needs to hear this, but i feel like someone reading the miniblog today might: Mental illness isn't always pretty

It's not always quietly sobbing yourself to sleep and laying in bed with a sad look on your face. Sometimes it's not taking a shower for days on end. Sometimes it's needed to socially isolate yourself because the sight of others human beings makes you head hurt. Sometimes violently sobbing until you're nose is running. Sometimes it's manic episodes where you're so afraid and distressed that it looks like anger from the outside. Sometimes it's breaking or damaging a possession you need or love or your own enviorment, maybe bc your having an episode, maybe bc you think you don't deserve nice things and want to punish yourself, probably both. Sometimes self harm isn't cutting yourself, but hitting yourself so hard you skin turns red and it leaves bruises. Sometimes self-sabotage isn't tragicly bbeautiful but so pointless you feel like a ln idiot. Sometimes gender dysphoria isn't not knowing your beautiful, but not currently being beautiful in a particular moment bc you haven't shaved yet and loathing yourself for it, but then not wanting to shave bc you have to look at your gross hairy face in the mirror. Sometimes paranoia isn't second guessing what is real, but visibly shaking bc you're trying to remember whether you locked the door

What I'm saying is, you aren't a bad person or inherently disgusting just bc you're mental illness isn't romanticizable. There are probably ppl who love you, and, even if not, i want you, whoever is reading this, to feel better and overcome these issues. i know therapy is probably too expensive for a lot of ppl (myself included) but anything you can do to work through all your trauma is worthwhile. You are worthwhile

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The irony of the indie web is that indie web ppl know how to act like human beings who can interact with one another without insulting ppl or being aggressive randomly, and thus would probably be perfectly acceptable in public (aside from just making references that most ppl might not get, which doesn't really matter that much), whereas many, many social web ppl are really rude and aggressive and probably annoy the fuck out of regular ppl bc they don't understand they can't act like they do on SM in public, and they generally have no concept of what is actually important or what most ppl care about. And yet, i feel like, with some exceptions, most indie web ppl are introverts who prefer to stay indoors, and social web ppl often do go outside and do cause problems with like TikTok challenges and shit

i also find it interesting that, if we consider the indie web the most countercultural, and consider ppl who don't go online much at all the most normcore, most indieweb netizens seem to have more in common with the stereotypically normie ppl than we do with the social web (unless you consider not going online a different kind of counterculture, but most ppl don't actually use social media that much by numbers, so i feel like it's still pretty normcore, to put it into classic counterculture terms: if we're the punks, the social web is the skins)

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I have once again softlocked myself in Deus Ex. I will beat it one day.

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If I met a new person who was like really normcore, and they found out I was a furry, they'd probably be like "Wow you seem really normal for a furry" and I'd to explain to them that furries aren't really any weirder than any other fandom ppl and their cultural perception of how weird furries are is blown way out of proportion

Then, as they got to know me better, I'd have to explain that I am in fact deeply weird, but that has nothing to do with Having A Fursona, I'm just like that as an individual. I'd have to explain that when I say shit like "We're all the malformed creations of a uncaring stillborn god /hj", most furries would just say "Hai :3"

But before I could explain any of that, I'd probably have to walk them through the fact that, no, in fact I do not have a fursuit and that most furries don't have (and maybe don't even want) a fursuit bc they aren't into cosplay. Yes, you can be a furry without a fursuit. There is art and music and stuff. This would be the hardest thing to explain, for some reason, and probably flip their understanding of reality on it's head, somehow

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So... In case it's not obvious, I entered a huge emotional rut just before I finished up development on a small short indie game project which sucks. I haven't been in a great place emotionally, but I'm starting to claw my way out and as typically escapism, daydreaming about my sona and OCs and whatnot has gotten me through a lot of this. I'm trying to be more mentally and physically active again, even if that just means pacing while listening to music and convincing myself to at least play a a videogame which is preferable to lying in bed and/or doomscrolling (I really need to ween myself off YT entirely)

I'll be ok, I go through this sometimes

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Tbh most discourse I've seen in America rn is so fucking stupid. Like we'll be debating fucking economics and social isolation among Gen Z and i wanna be like "dude we're a fascist dictatorship rn maybe we should focus on that"

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Tbh so-called "jobless behavior" is just hobbyless behavior, but also that's irrelevant bc 99% of the time its just

Hobbyless employed person: *cares about some stupid shit*

Less self-aware hobbyless employed person: jobless behavior

Unemployed person: I made a conlang for the space cat ppl in my novel that I'll probably never write

H.E.P.: Umm think again honey I work in IT

L.S.A.H.E.P.: Actually IT isn't a real job bc computers are witchcraft invented by Elon Musk to sell the lie that is math

U.P.: I have too much time on my hands. I need to go play Cruelty Squad for 7 hours straight and then draw crackship fanart of the protagonist with V1 from ultrakill just to feel something. gtg

H.E.P.: MF UR LITERALLY ON A PHONE!

L.S.A.H.E.P.: THAT'S NOT A COMPUTER THAT'S A PHONE

Hobby-having employed person: Have you guys played this new game called Mewgenics? It is very fun and has a scathing yet hilarious social critique of unethical cat breeding, would recommend!

both hobbyless: STFU!!!!!!!!!? >;(

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Dude being trans, dealing with OCD, and having a giant fucking forehead is a terrible combination bc I'm constantly being irrationally paranoid about balding despite the fact I have the most oily hair and scalp of any human being ever. Like it's so oiling i gotta use the Herbal Essence the same day I go out of the house bc my hair oils upon being left alone from time to time. But bc im paranoid and my forehead is already fucking massive i think for a second "is this hairline higher??? D:" and like no dude it's where its alway been you just have a freakishly big head that's why you have the side part. And the sidepart makes my paranoia worse bc it almost seems like, if your judgement is clouded my paranoid gender dysphoria that it's receeding when really its like that only on that side BECAUSE THAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU PART YOUR FUCKING HAIR TO ONE SIDE, IANA

Anyway just know that while i feel very fortunate to thick, healthy, very oily hair, if it makes you feel any better I'm still also paranoid about going bald anyway so it definitely doesn't need to always be a rational concern to bother you! :3

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I feel bad and very anxious when ppl talk about the "Gen Z Loneliness Crisis" thing, not bc I'm worried it'll never end, but bc I understand that human society is a pendulum and that someday, not quite as far from now as you might think, this era of isolation will end, and I'll *really* miss not being around other people regularly. The world might suck but at least I have so much time to myself. I know ppl talk about introversion, but personally I'm just asocial. I get very little if anything out of the vast majority of so interactions. At best I meet someone nice and kinda interesting, at worst I feel anxious and unsafe around others

What makes this much worse is that getting myself out there as a creative would be really good for exposure, so I'd have to pick between my immediate safety (perceived or tangible, it can be hard for me to tell the difference) or potentially a whole group of new fans and local exposure for my body of work

//

There was this girl on TikTok (I hate it too but this particular kid seemed smart and had a good point) who said she does something where she asks strangers about furries, and if they're even a little open minded like "well, i don't really understand it at all, but they aren't hurting anybody and they seem like their having fun, so that's good for them i guess" then she knows they're chill bc they're willing to accept that there are experiences outside their own. This genuinely a smart way to gauge bigotry (or lack there of) that I've advocated for myself, but as a furry whos wayyy too political educated than is healthy for literally anyone, i think it could benefit from a more advanced version if nuance is needed

So I think here's the deeper meta gor the "furry test":

• If someone is even a little terminally online and they aren't at all open-minded and/or act performatively grossed out about furry culture, they're at best the kind of shitlib who only support queer/nueordivergent ppl who don't make their cisheteronormitive understanding of the world uncomfy, probably just queerphobic and/or ableist (whether they'll admit it or not) and at the very worst possibly neo-nazis or some other form of fascist. If they do this despite being a big fandom person themself, run.
• If you meet someone kinda normcore irl who finds furries "kinda weird", ask them about anime fans drawing anime fanart and dressing as their favorite anime characters. If they respond with "well yeah that's also weird", they aren't nessesarily a bigot, just a dull and likely joyless person to whom fandom and whimsy are foreign concepts. Not a bad person, just not a wildly interesting one
• If they're fine with furries "but as long their not into it for WEIRD SEX REASONS" this could go one of two ways. They could be the very worst kind of shitlib, who wants to control marginalized people (at least queer and neurodivergent ppl, potentially others), or they could be a woke-washed puritanical conservative, potentially one of those creepzoids who stalks and doxxes kink blogs who specifically told them to DNI. Either way, they are a pathetic asshole who wants to control the sexual automony of others. This is a toxic person to avoid
• If they genuinely don't hate furries, but still are say mean shit about furries in a "casually razzing my Tumblr neighbors way" whether you want to avoid this person entirely depends on the circumstances of your relationship with them, and your tolerance for casual bigotry. This is the kind of person who makes gay jokes that are far less "haha gay exists and is normal but is still stigmatized enough that pointing its existence breaks the conservative status quo just enough that's its funny when i call the cops sirens The Forbidden Bisexual Lighting" and far more "c'mon, it's just an eDgY jOkE". this is the kind of person who says something racist and is like "I have a black friend" even though the joke was about South Asian people and their singular Black friend tolerates than anything
• Ok, this next one's weirdly specific. The kind of person who will comment on on an indie anthro artist song with "I don't really like furry aesthetics, but your song is awesome! Your music is really cool, you've a new fan!" or responds to someone's anthro oc with like "I'm not usually into furry characters, the design is REALLY cool". When i first encountered some like this, it sort of turned my understanding of the larger cultural meaning of the fandom bc you would think this person is either doing a dogwhistle or embarrassed to admit they wanna join the fandom. But no, there is no malice or hostility, nor any shame in liking a piece of furry media, just an explanation that this one is an exception to their usual taste, which they present as a sincere compliment to the artist. Like, "I'm not a fan of furry aesthetics, but this piece is just really good and that's a testement to your taste, vision and skill as an artist!" Now... what are the "furry aesthetics" they're talking about? As someone who has been in the fandom for over a decade, I'm gonna be honest with you, I have no fucking clue, there are aesthetic tropes in the furry fandom, but there is no one "furry aesthetic" bc there are so many semi-nameless genres and styles in furry art, multiple of which are both very popular and very different from one another. Depending on what furries they shared art spaces with (i think these people are largely artists, we'll get to that) they could mean angsty emo-furry art or Falviecore poppy furry art from the early to mid 2010s (if you aren't a furry or are too young to know who Falvie is, she was basically the Taylor Swift of 2010s furry art. Yes we had a normcore popufur artist at one point and then every forgot. The 2010s were a really weird time for furry culture but that's a topic for another post). They could also be talking about the more general concept of "anthropomorphic animals" but that's not really an aesthetic and is actually pretty universal in both scifi/fantasy and animation. (Everyone is a little bit of a furry, after all). Anyway, this is all a long winded way of saying i don't have a flawless read on this kind of person, but my current theory is that they are a rare one: Well-adjusted artists. They probably know about "furry discourse" but recognize it's stupid blue bird bulshit, but also just view furry art as it's own genre, that they aren't fans just it isn't their personal taste in art. Anyway they can hang

//

One thing that'll make life easier is knowing and accepting that actual "good people" are so rare that when they exist it's remarkable. There are far more truly evil people than truly good people, but evil people are still very much an outlier to the norm. Most people - myself and probably everyone reading this included - are kind of shitty but well-intentioned individuals and that is perfectly ok. Most people aren't wholly good or evil, they're just regular, morally-complex people, if human beings were perfectly rational creatures we would act morally all the time because always being good is what logically makes the most sense. But we aren't rational creatures, we are mostly emotional creatures, and emotions don't always lead us to altruism. But if you find yourself recognising morally-subpar aspects of yourself, thats actually a very good thing, because if you recognize parts of you that aren't great, that means the good parts of you are also there, and that you have enough of a conscious to feel guilt about not being morally righteous 100% of the time, and that means you aren't a bad person, your just a fucked up little guy with baggage who's at odd with themself, and you literally could not be less alone in that. The world is a fucked up place so pretty much all of us end up a little fucked up, and while it doesn't hurt to try to be a better person, you (and I, and most people) will never be a morally-perfect being. We are all flawed, imperfect people and thus we'll always have some sort of moral failing or two. There will always be days where we aren't as kind to others as we wish we were, where we can be rude and on-edge and frigidly-dispositioned. But then, on other days, we'll be the best version of ourself, and maybe we'll take the risk of helping a stranger or saying something nice to someone just because we wanna make they day better, and it's that good within us that makes the worst version of ourself worth forgiving

//



Reasons why this is morbidly hilarious:

• If Trump isn't secretly behind this, I'll eat my hat
• This is definitely being paid for with taxpayer money
• If this was done not by a fascist and with due process, it would be cool, actually. Subsidized gas is actually a great idea in this current moment
• Trump presumably knows this, but doesn't want his loyalists to know he's doing a a socialism but also knows the effects of doing a socialism will make him look good as long as you don't know that it's secretly socialism
• No one with a shred of dignity would ever buy gas from here without at least being very covert about it, because buying the MAGA Freedom Gas makes you look like a huge fucking loser
• This basically if a fancy restaurant let you order whatever you want for less than the price of a big mac, but unless you wanna pay full price you need to wear a full clown costume with a dunce cap that reads "I am a Teeny Peepee Boi!" in comic sans and the waiter is real patronizing about it
• We are fucking clown nation for clowns omfg

//

Peptide Warning Label: Not Approved For Human Use. Legally speaking, do not actually use this product that we just sold you.

Tiktoker, sweating violently and bleeding slightly from their facial orifices: Dude you gotta try these'll change your life!!!

Their audiences: Ok I guess sure I'll inject this into my bloodstream why not

Ok seriously though, what the fuck is happening on the godless vertical video app? Why are they doing this to themselves? How is this allowed? It's like... gotta be illegal somehow, right..?

//

Social Biases I have but they get increasingly specific, weird and unimportant:

• Whenever I hear a liberal cishet able-bodied/neurotypical white woman with a disposable income speak out for minorities and those a less fortunate than her in such a way that would imply she's extremely educated on these issues, I'm always wondering whether she actually cares about these issues because she genuinely a kind, high-empathy person aware of her privilge with a desire to lift up those who don't have it, or if she's just insecure about her privilge after making "being the underdog" her whole idenity and wants to make herself feel better, even if it's at the expense of the people she's speaking out for but not actually listening to, in which case she probably holds some secret bigotry and lowkey kind of sucks as a person. When this type of person is a man, I assume he's probably an extremely sweet soul with a good heart if he isn't (either secretly or very obviously) literally the most insufferable self-important narcissistic hipster you've ever met, who probably listens to stereotypical stomp-and-hollar backed by a big label and think he's cool for listening to an "indie" band and just wants to look woke while not actually putting in the effort of being woke. Extremely privilged liberals are kind of a mixed bag, is all I'm saying
• If you consider the written-word novel the end-all-be-all of storytelling mediums, I'm going to assume that you think your a lot more "cultured" than you actually are, and that mayonaise is too spicy for you.
• I'm cautious around Attack On Titan fans. Not hostile, just VERY cautious.
• I know Warhammer 40k is critiquing fascism, but if someone brings it up unprompted and I haven't gotten any sort of feel for who they are as a person, I'm probably gonna avoid them
• If I learn that you like FNaF, I'm urgently awaiting to learn (if I don't know already) whether you are an extremely likable and cool person (with genuinely and unironically peak taste in music btw, i don't know shit about FNaF but ck9c just slaps as dark experimental pop music!) or an insufferable drama queen I've ever had the misfortune of meeting, logically I know there are more types of FNaF fans, but in my mind it's just "The cool ones, the rude meangirl ones, and the ones that are too young for me to want to have any opinion on at all bc they're just being kids"
• I don't even watch Riverdale, but out of principle, if you think season 1 is the best season, and everything after that is bad, I feel like you're either an idiot or just very boring. Buck-wild deranged high-quality dumpster fire garbage where they say shit like "If the wedding reception is still happening, that means the Gargoyle King has won" with full sincerity and a long-building plot thread is resolved with Time-Traveling Ghost-Lesbian Sex Magick Lasers detroying an apocolyptic astroid, THAT is always going to be infinitely better than generic teen drama mediocrity. Also a tangent: Appearently, both of those are things that actually happen in Riverdale, I have seen the clips from the show and it's insane. From I understand there is also a plot-line where a cursed TTRPG gets ppl into a cult, and who worship the afformentioned Garoyle King, who's revealed to be mutliple different characters at different points somehow? And there's also an organ-harvesting rapture cult in the same season but it's two completely different cults. There's like aliens and mole people and robot ants and shit?? The only plotpoint I've heard about that I'm not 100% sure is a real event in this narrative and not just a joke a fan made (I've seen convincing but mininmal evidence for it, and it's a crazy non-sequiter even for this show) is that appearently there's a brief subplot where the popular mean girl becomes a furry and makes a bunch of money on selling furry commisions. The clip of this I've seen DOES show an oil painting she did of herself as a anthro fox (and it's very clearly meant to be a representation of herself), but the clip was very short and idk if there's a different context for that painting (idk what other context there could possibly be but honestly who knows it's fucking Riverdale) and if the person saying that was purely joking, because simply saying something that actually happens in Riverdale is itself a form of comedy, clearly. How did this show start as a modern reimaging of fucking Archie comics, again?)
• If you list your favorite media, and it's all like really disturbing fucked up grimdark psychological-horror stuff, I'm going to try to be more understanding around you, and gentler with how I speak to you, bc you seem very sensitive and I don't wanna hurt your feelings
• People with edgy fursonas who will kill you on sight and/or ruin your life if you look at them wrong make me nervous. Not because they're actually evil or violent people, quite the opposite, this type of fursona usually belongs to some of the kindest and warmest people you have ever met, ironically. Now, the problem is that if your one of those stereotypical Tumblr dipshits such as myself, and you, too, simp after villains, when someone who pretends to be a joyously-sadistic murder-dragon or something on the internet says something really sincerely sweet and kind to you, that can cause cognitive dissonance, and lemme tell you my aegosexuality does NOT help with this
• If your that kind of person who is reading this post on my miniblog, I'm going to assume you've forgotten by now that this initally started with a serious critique of indiviuals feigning progressive politics for the sake of their own ego rather than actually helping people less fortunate than them, and that you forgot about that at some point during that long tangent about Riverdale. I'm also gonna assume that your pretty cool :3

//

Somewhere out there, there's someone with a weight loss kink, and they are either the most eccentric nasty sex freak you've ever met, or just like, a deeply unpleasant person with bad political takes on Twitter, and we may never know which one unless we find them.

Edit: wow i say a lot of fucked up stuff in some of these shitposts lol. Anyway yeah fucking weight , huh? (this joke was obligotory)

//



BREAKING: Economists discover "fashion".

Y'know, it's actually kind of crazy we haven't started calling modern blockbusters "slopbusters" yet. like dude it's right there!

Related: have y'all seen the Masters of The Universe trailer? It looks like a fake movie that would play in the background of a real movie. Like i don't think I've ever seen a blockbusters that looks so uncinematic. The lighting is weirdly naturalistic and flat for a movie about an American Isekai™ protagonist fighting a skeleton dude.

ALSO HOW ARE WE SUPPOSED TO TAKE SKELETOR SERIOUSLY WHEN HE'S A FUCKING MEME FORMAT

//

Happy July 4th everyone. May the hot dogs and cheese dip provide you with a fleeting release from the dumpster fire this nation has devolved into.

Jokes aside, don't feel too bad about having seasonal treats today. As long as your not actually expressing any sort of patriotism right now, there's nothing wrong with using this undead corpse of a holiday just as an excuse to have some harmless fun and eat nice food. We as a nation need treats and escapism to get through this. (It's like I sang in a song once: "Escapism is a nessessary evil")

//

Ekko: What's the word for when numbers are microtonal?

Mylo: You... you mean decimals?

Ekko: Oh yeah

//

(Reddit but it's the future)

AITA for calling my boyfriend's organs "biocomponents"?

I (23m, cyborg) and my partner (25m, non-augemented carbon-based humanoid) took a vacation to an intergalactic spa recently, and at first it was a really good trip! It was the nicest spa in our budget (we have to factor in replacement augments for my health) and we were pleasently suprised for the price.

For context, me and my boyfriend have been dating for about 7 earth years, and it's been serious for awhile. I sincerely believe my boyfriend isn't fleshist against cyborgs, I've even introduced him to my android friends and he's gotten a long with them great. We love eachother very much.

However, there was a very scary moment where my boyfriend slipped on a wet floor, and landed belly-down on the concrete. He was bleeding a bit. I was more worried about internal damage.

I was like "Oh shit, babe, are your biocomponents ok?"

he looked up at me and they looked at me like I had three heads. "My fucking what?"

"Your biocomponents! They aren't damaged are they?"

"Don't call them that!"

We went to the medic bay, turns out he was fine, which I was very relieved. But I felt kind of hurt that he snapped at me like that

So, AITA for calling his organs biocomponents?

//

Ok, the video announcing what the hell "Lagopomps" are. Long story short, I've created a Blender model for "virtual" performers, basically cartoon characters to add into my future music videos, and probably other projects, and then I gave them lore

Also, a side note: I really wish I knew before hand about the "strip" option under the curve settings in EEVEE. I swear to god, I've been using Blender for years and somehow I never knew about this. Video still looks cool, but they'll have more lifelike hair in the future

//

I'm lowkey terrified about the appearent upcoming remake of Resident Evil: Code Veronica remake, bc the villain is a really messy and dated portrayal of a person with Dissociative Idenity Disorder and the protagonist is kinda weird about crossdressing in relation to that, the villain lost his twin sister and has assumed her Idenity bc he cannot handle the grief of her loss, meaning there are several possiblities of how this could go:

• They try to update to modern times, and they manage to make it a really poiganant and empathic portrayal of a villain who has DID, is not evil BECAUSE he has DID, but that struggle is what makes him a deeply sympathic anti-villain. The anti-woke weirdos get mad, but everyone else is happy (best possible outcome)
• They try to update it to modern times, but for some reason decide to make the villain a trans woman, which may or may not be handled well, but regardless the character is fundemental different and the messaging is confused. Anti-Woke will be EXTRA angry, everyone else will have mixed feelings and/or be divided in opinion
• They try to update date it, but do a bad job of modernizing it and it's handled clumsily. Anti-woke will still be mad, everyone else will also be mad
• They try to update it for the time, but the characters talk about it in "therapy speak" and the writing will be worse bc of it. Instead of changing the Clair's line of "you crossdressing freak!" to something sensible like "you bitch!" she'll say some shit like "While I respect your experiences with plurality and gender-fluidity, I cannot condone your actions outside of it". This is the worst possible outcome. This is Velma The Game. Literally everyone would hate this.
• In a bizarre and tonedeaf creative choice, they don't try to update the villain. They just... depict it the same way. This would obviously get a lot of backlash. The anti-woke crowd might feel vindicated, but given a lot them probably haven't played the original, they'll probably be upset by the fact that a gender-bending plural character even exists in the story, even if they're handled poorly

Honestly though, if this is done well, it might be a rare remake worth making!

//

A teaser...

No, I will not further elaborate at this time ;3

//

No, Trump isn't "literally hitler" bc Hitler died, like, a long time ago dude. Why are you getting fascist dictators confused, bro? Those two are different ones, it's not the same one every time. Even if he hadn't of killed himself he'd probably be dead by now anyway so like, I'm pretty it can't be the same guy???? They don't even look alike????

//

My current mood is alternating between "Gawd, being non-binary is miserable. I hate that nothing is made for me and that a large majority of trans allies - and even some fucking trans ppl! - forget and disregard that I exist. It feels like every other thing said is a microaggression and I worry I'll never be accepted. Sometimes I wish I could have just settled for being a trans woman instead, it's not authentic to who I am, but at least I could have some kind of transition and be taken seriously by more ppl. Why'd I have to have a gender identity that has only social downsides? Why'd I have to pick the least respected gender catagory? How am I gonna be a respected artist if the world I live in has zero respect for people like me? Female artists are still not as respected as male ones, trans women even less, and even so society still respects women far more than enbies. I'm fucked and I'm losing hope..." and "thinking about anthro bunnies who are grumpy rn :3 "

//

You (bad monster, my enemy): Luring humans into your liar for cruel and violent purposes

Me (big fuzzy bat monster [cute], fren): Luring humans into my liar and then asking them if they'll please, please hang out with me for a little bit?? yes that was a pizza and cookies you smelled, i can share it with you if you want and we can watch a movie, i just don't really wanna be alone rn hi my name is Ekko i would would really like if you hung out with me for awhile if that's fine with you i think humans a really neat btw :3

(in character for my sona and a sign of my current state of executive dysfunction turned melancholy ill be fine. Also kind of a cute concept though, i love playing up the "dark scary villain-coded but actually a big softie sweetheart" thing lol)

//

I was watching Eyepatch Wolf play Omikron (the worst David Cage game by far, which is saying something bc he's famously not very good at what he does) and it made realize David Cage is basically just the Anti-Warren Spectre

Spectre:

• Cared about player choice
• Strived to make games more interactive than they ever had been before
• Lowkey kind of had a thing for sadistic, domineering and violent women (Agent Nevara, ofc, but also he did end up marrying the voice actor who played Shodan. Dude knew what he liked lol)
• Created original scifi universes, but still proudly wore his influence on his sleeve, giving credit where credit is due
• Seem shockly down to earth for a gamedev autuer, based on the interviews ive seen. It seems like he did what he did bc he wanted to capture the problem solving magic of dnd in video games
• Made critically acclaimed games beloved to this day, bankrupted several companies in doing so

Cage:

• Oh, you thought you're choices mattered here?
• "We're not making dragons liar!" I mean you kind of are
• Has a thing for submissive sadgirls with pixie haircuts (and that's perfectly fine in a vacuum, but not as baller as your ideal women being a dominatrix-coded Austrian cyborg goth baddie.)
• Could probably benefit from studying better storytellers.
• Is really narcissistic for the guy who made Heavy Rain and fucking Omikron
• His games benefit Sony by looking nice in a portfolio, and impressive as you are not actually playing them

ngl i don't know what to do with this information either

//

I feel like one piece of higher-level art theory I've been realizing that we overvalue profoundity when we what we really want and is important to us as humans (and thus i feel is more inherently valuable) is emotional resonance

I feel like ppl often point the fact of "just bc something moves doesn mean its profound" but i while that IS true, it's weird, backwards way of looking at it. I think it's more than, just because something is profound, just bc it's saying something meaningful, doesn't mean it does so well enough to evoke emotions (which imo is the whole fucking purpose of art). Just bc something isn't "deep" (in the conventional understanding of that word) doesn't mean its less poignant. I feel, personally, that there is more value in a simple story written with poignance and humanity, than a text that's thematically dense but emotionally vapid

Art is, after all, about grand ideas second, and invoking emotions first and foremost

//

I don't really miss the 2010s overall in the same way as the 2000s tbh, but i do miss old Monstercat, Skrillex giving me gender envy and TikTok not existing so that was rly cool i guess.

i also miss the 90s which is weird bc i was born 2000. it just sounds like it was neat.

//

The past two days have been a weird mixed bag. On one hand, I got my bathroom clean, which is needed and then I watched Terrifier 2, which I enjoyed a lot more than I thought I would (actually a very great film, I thought'd it'd be total shlock since they used the gore as such a selling point, but it actually turned out to be a really excellent homage to 80s slasher films that was clearly made with a lot of filmmaking prowess and passion for golden-age slasher films. Moody of neon lights, stylized cinematography gory practical effects that were actually really well done, and even a lot of editing tricks like overt use of film grain. I was genuinely suprised by how much this movie seemed to be made for me in particular)

On the otherhand, here's my current level of mental health (TW mental illness, cringy-ass way to work through said mental illness.): Been unpacking a lot of trauma from my childhood, which was pretty rough. I can't afford a psychologist (my family needs that money for a psychiatrist.) but I am I pretty strong character writer, and I can do that "writer thing" where I can just know what a well-defined character would say in responce to something bc I understand who they are as a character and what makes them tick. (Yes this is going to the embarressing nerd place you think it is.) So what I often do is imagine a conversation with an OC of mine and use that to vent my problems and talk to someone about it without actually talking to someone about it. Usually this OC is Charlie, bc A) She's my go-to comfort character and I have a big doofy fictophile crush on her B) She's a character who's very kind to others and cares about her friends, and it's very in character for her to want to help someone who's hurting talk about their feelings and C) She's the kind of character who can tell when someone she cares about is lying about being ok and she's assertive enough to say something like "I know you're hurting, tell me what's wrong, sweetie, I promise I won't judge." So anyway... I have discovered several things:

• My fear of being rejected by other queer ppl and not being "queer enough" is likely rooted in the fact that the only queer friendgroup I was a part of, in highschool, being a weird fit for me and ending poorly for reasons I was not present for and never knew the cause of
• As this relates to my comfort zone of being around accepting/ally left-wing cishet men, in the other highschool friend group I was the only openly queer person (not out as NB yet, at the time I was calling myself bisexual bc I didn't know any other term) and I was closer to those guys and had more in common with them due to shared musical interests
• My fear of going outside has nearly as much to do with being socially-rejected by my peers in middle school and elementry, and the way the school system made that worse by doing things that actively othered me, as said fear has to do with contemporary fascism
• The reason that I'm more afraid of far-right bigoted women more than far-right bigoted men is probably bc most of the authority figures who emotionally (and sometimes physically, which was allowed for autistic kids at the time.) were largely conservative women who either didn't think autism was real, thought I didn't have it, or just didn't like me personally bc I had emotional issues, and either way didn't want to accept that they were the problem (I assumed this was just bc alt-right men are usually pissbaby cowards who are 85% talk and lowkey kind of know they're in the wrong, whereas alt-right women/TERFs are usually unhinged, insane, and genuinely think they're oppressed solely for having to exist in the same space as a trans person with zero self-awareness, but the this psychological reason likely makes more sense from an emotional standpoint bc crazy unhinged MAGA/TERF women still scary me more than equally unhinged and delusion incel men, even though rationally speaking they present the same serious threat to me as a transfemme enby)
• I lowkey think I'm an awful person who deserves to die just for existing while not being inhumanly perfect, and this is, appearently, a really awful thing to think about myself and I should be kinder, more forgiving to myself and value my life and inherent worth more
• I don't give myself nearly enough credit for what I've achieved as a creative person, and I should be proud of myself for getting as good at my crafts as I have bc most ppl probably wouldn't have to patience or ambition to put in the time it took me to get good
• I have tons of interalized transphobia and it negatively effects how I view myself. On some level it does not register to me that I've transitioned and that has and will continue to effect how ppl look at me as a nonbinary person, and it's not that I have never noticed that ppl started treating me differently, it's just that I haven't fully emotionally registered that ppl won't view me or treat me as a man if I introduce myself as "Ian/Iana" and tell them my pronouns (emphasised by that fact that I don't go out without noticable makeup anymore bc I feel more comfortable that way), and this mental disconnect basically summons gender dysphoria out of the ether for no reason

Bare in mind all of this was unpacked by daydreaming conversations with a cartoon bunny lady who lives in my head. I guess if there's a takeaway, it's to pretend talk to your OCs more (assuming they're nice). Or maybe the takeaway is to watch Terrifier 2, if your eyes glazed over read all of this AND your into that sort of thing (I wouldn't watch it if gore bothers you, it doesn't bother me very much as all, but I did still wince more than once bc it somehow both viceral AND over-the-top. Nothing too cerebral or lingering about it though, it's still just a slasher film)

//

i feel like one thing that's holding me back rn in life is my fear of never being accepted into any in-group

Like, i should understand by now that I'm never going to fit in any mold and any group of ppl I'm in or want to associate myself with will see me an an outsider or at least an outlier. im too aggressively queer for the cishet crowd but not culturally-queer enough for other ppl. My taste in art and media is too weird for the normies but too fun and accessible for the arthouse croud. I'm a weirdo even among weirdos. I'm someone who wants to champion community and mutual air, but deep down i know I'm the rare soul whose life would be destroyed by a collectivist future. I want human connection even though i know that no one could really fully get behind me as a person, not bc I'm unlovable but just bc I'm too singular of a voice to be fully loved or hated by any group of ppl. If i were to succeed, ppl on my side of the political spectrum would love who i represent but hate that the particular a-spec neurodivergent enby has taste in media and a creative vision. They'd hate that my films,could, at times, be liked by a film bro if there weren't so many nonbinary and gender-ambiguous characters. They expect the artsy queer indie gamedev to make quirky walking simulator or visual novel or JRPG games that make you cry, not mostly crunchy western RPGs that draw PC games in the 90s.

Sorry, im just catastrophizing in my fucking miniblog again. I guess I've just been really upset that i spent my whole life (while i was at least partially out of the closet) trying to find anything about queer culture that i could relate to and cherish on a personal level, but the only thing i could latch onto was furry culture. There's thing i can appreciate from a distance. Drag performance is cool, i guess. most drag queens are really excellent entertainers and performers, i dont really thinking my feelings on drag are all that strong or passion, it's an artform i appreciate far more than love on a personal level. But i don't really fit any queer stereotypes at all, other than being kind of androgynous (which isn't even really a stereotype, it's just not how every enby presents). To some ppl i sound a little gay, but mostly i just talk in a wider vocal register than a stereotypical straight guy, which I feel like doesnt really mean all that much bc I'm non-binary

but then a lot of the stuff i do like ISN'T "gay", a lot of it is stuff you'd expect a cis/straight person - usually a guy - to like, and that both gives me a bit of gender dysphoria and a lot of worry that other queer ppl won't feel any/enough kinship with me. I like slick, stylized action movies and dark, moody thrillers. I love classic cyberpunk and grungy aesthetics. I'll always far prefer Linkin Park and Rob Zombie over Queen and R.E.M, I don't really relate to the ballroom scene, but I fucking love Skrillex and bass music

And to be very clear, I am absolutely not trying to "distance myself" from queer culture whatsoever. In fact, I really, REALLY want to be closer to it! i keep trying to find anything at all in queer culture I can love on a personal level, whether it be a type of music, a film, and artform... but those are few and far between. There are some, i just wish they weren't so much less frequent than the many stereotypically-straight things I like. like i know it's better to be any individual and that stereotypes don't define us, and the fact that I'm unique is a wonderful quality to have in an artist. but idk i wish could fit in a little more, especially with ppl are like i am :(

TL;DR: I don't really fit into queer stereotypes, and that's been bumming me out recently bc im worried I won't fit it

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ppl calling Hobbyless Behavior "jobless behavior" is in and of itself some real hobbyless behavior.

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My song "Life, Death and Commerce" as a music video now!

This is a film reel for potential clients! I decided this is something I should make, I labeled this "Vol. 1" bc maybe in the near-ish future there could be more!

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MAGA Youtuber: Comedy is legal again! I can say slurs!!!

Leftist: You really put your face in the thumbnail a lot for some chud who looks like they chew on their own toenails.

MAGAt: ... help im being oppressed >:(

Edit: Idk not every joke is gonne be a winner or that original

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Practice shot I made to practice smoother animation and cinematic presentation. This is animated on 2s btw, I just used tighter slow in slow out! I also really like how this turned out, I need to remember to add letterboxing and use gaussian blur to mimic depth of field on the backgrounds more often

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My biggest critique of furry culture (other than issues that apply to other queer/neurodivergent spaces*) is that too few of us have bigger creative ambitions than just making fun art of our OCs. Like, I know furry culture isn't exactly known for taking itself all that seriously - it is about drawing "funny animals" after all - but the ambiguity that anthro characters create, just by nature of being non-human but effectively human in practice, makes it very easy to empathize with them even if the style isn't that simplified. I know this sounds meaningless coming out of my stupid mouth (I think it's obvious that I have ambitionious goals for my art and strive to make the most visionary art I can manage to make, and that I very much take autuer theory to an extreme some ppl might feel borders on comical in it's singularity. I'm also admittedly very pretentious and will not apologize for that.) but I really think we're all starved for visionary furry art. Not that it doesn't exist, it clearly does and I'm super not the only one striving for that grand ideal in my work, but it's not common and unfortunately not what we're known for (most art-respecting leftists kinda just seem to see us as Silly Little Guys Who Are Just Being Gay And Doing Their Silly Gay Thing) but I really think there's a semi-untapped potential in furry art's ability to create detailed character designs who's stylized subject matter makes them easier to relate to, and ofc the very core of what makes furry art special - the ability to use animal features to signify human personality traits - is a REALLY powerful storytelling tool that we don't give enough credit to. Granted, I understand most ppl in the fandom just wanna draw their OCs, escape their daily lives a little, and/or make a bit of fantastical nerd smut. And that is understandable, I love my OCs too, I also need escapism sometimes (frequently tbh.), and sexual expression is normal and healthy, and it's good that the fandom is a safe heaven for neurodivergent ppl to infodump about characters they made, for disadvantaged ppl to escape to a world of their creation, and for at times a space for queer adults to explore their sexuality through fantasy/sci-fi worlds and characters. But like... We can have multiple good things? I have to wonder if a lot of furry artists WANT to make some ambitious project but feel like they need to "stay in there lane" bc of the more silly and cartoonish connotations of furry culture, even though ppl can and have made really smart, well-crafted and well-written stories and projects with humanoid animal characters, both in and outside the furry fandom

*By "other issues that apply to other queer neurodivergent spaces" I mainly mean how, like in many such space, Black and PoC furries often aren't given the voice they deserve, due to the whitewashing of queer culture and Autism/ADHD being underdiaognosed in the Black community. I just wanted to acknowlegde this bc it's probably a much bigger issue, if not the biggest and most troubling issue, in furry culture. Please listen to what Black furries have to say and take their input seriously, they don't always get the equal spotlight the deserve

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As pretentious as i admittedly am, I'll never put down music JUST for being "butt rock" bc Headstrong by Thrice is considered buttrock but easily could have been written by Tool. Like if a song using a time signature that wonky isn't consider "head rock", it becomes kind of obvious the label of butt rock is less about music and more about culture and (yeah that's right im about to get pretentious about butt rock) socio-economic class

anyway this all to say you should listen to Headstrong by Thrice it's secretly really well written.

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The more i watch Patrick William's videos on the state of the movie industry, the more i wonder if he knows what the Hollywood collapse is, bc we're definitely heading for another one and he doesn't seem to realize that

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The four horsemen of bad drawing advice:

Dont Shade With Black (Death)

Draw Cleaner Lineart (Pestilence)

Don't Use Reference (Famine)

Don't Draw [Thing Speaker Personally Doesn't Like] (War)

//

So I've been thinking about my gender identity a lot and trying to step out of my head and see what's actually bothering me, and what i realized is that, for me, the label of "non-binary" is still another box. I'm starting to realize, while I'm not a man or woman, i don't think im nonbinary in the traditional sense. When i speak to a lot of nonbinary ppl, while their experiences are all different, they have certain constants in how they express gender and feel about themselves in relation to the gender binary they're not a part of. They generally view themselves as a community in the broader queer community

This might surprise some ppl, but while I am queer in an objective sense, I've never really felt like part of the "queer community". It was never really a place that felt very welcoming to me specifically, so while I've had plenty of friends who were queer, I think I've always been happiest when I've tried to relate with ppl based on interests and passions rather than identity. Personally, I've never found what gender or sexuality someone is to be as meaningful of a commonality as having shared hobbies and similar taste

So i think this gender dysphoria ive been feeling, feeling like Im stuck between a rock and a hardplace second-guessing who i was is just me still not wanting to be part of the gender binary, but still trying to be nonbinary in a way that enbies and queer ppl would find recognizable. Granted, i don't think most cishets will really distinguish between me and "conventionally non-binary" ppl so that's something ill have to live with

to elaborate more, i don't think im really nonbinary in the way ppl understand bc every nonbinary person ive met still views their "genderlessness" from the lens not being on the gender binary, but still in relation to it's existence as something they are not on, whereas i feel like my gender identity doesn't feel like it exists in the same imagined plane as the gender binary. i don't think i feel nonbinary bc for me the gender binary isn't even something i exist in relation to

I know ive spoken a lot about queer identity on here, so this might come as i surprised, but the distinction between "queer" and "cishet" doesn't actually matter to me as it seems to matter to a lot of other queer ppl. I speak about queer rights bc i want me and other ppl on the queer spectrum to be accepted as equality valid to those who aren't on the queer spectrum, and, importantly for me, that we aren't all that different from cishets, we just experience gender identity and sexuality in a different way

Sometimes I can't help for feel I'm "culturally straight" in the same way a a lot of cishets ppl are culturally queer. I really WANT to relate to queer culture... but other than like, furry art and hyperpop, i kind of don't. Most of my taste is "straight guy coded" and that in and of itself gives me gender dysphoria, but it also means i feel alienated from other queer ppl. I feel like the one group/demographic of ppl I feel really comfortable around are left-wing cishet men, bc they're accepting of who i am bc they're left-wing, but bc they're also overtly non-queer they don't really call my credibility as a (on paper) member of queer culture into question, bc they don't see my interests and personal tastes as anything out of the ordinary, to them i can be a like-minded person who happens to be a queer trans person. I'm always terrified to be in queer spaces bc it makes me feel like such a "black sheep the family". I'm not on the gender binary and I'm an aegosexual with no particularly gender preference, but I'm just different from other queer ppl in a way I'm worried I'll be socially rejected for, no matter how hard I try I'll never be able to fit myself into queer stereotypes, and i don't really wanna fit a stereotype just to be accepted. I wanna be me, even if who I am isn't really who you expect a queer like me to be like, I'm genderqueer and aspec but im also my own person with my own tastes, interests, thought and feelings that don't fit into any box you could try to put me in based on how i identify and express my gender/sexuality, I'm more than a aroace enby, I am my own person

Damn... that all feels really good to say! I'm probably never going to fit neatly into any one box, expectation or label, and maybe if i stop trying to, I'll be a healthier and happier person. and maybe I should be proud of the fact that my existence disproves the notion of a lot of queer stereotypes being true or universal, rather than ashamed of it. I don't try to fit my art into a box, why do that with who i am as a person?

//

Someday far from now, i will no longer be with us, but at my funeral, i don't want it to be sad. i want the ppl i love to celebrate my life. not tastefully though. like don't have a quiet funeral reception with sentimental music and quiet chatting i want Because Maybe by Renard blared at full volume through a subwoofer. Have not only alcohol, but also a fun selection of soda for ppl who don't drink. The food bar should have nachos, several different kinds of pizza, and bunch of those Little Debbie cakes and like a ton of other junk food. After the neighbors inevitably call the cops and everyone books it, you should all go to a second location where you have a marathon of all the films and other videos i made, have a listening party for all my albums, and huddle around a computer to play the games I've made. In terms of burial, a regular casket is chill, but it'd be cool to be mummified, as a power move.

//

For all the antiwoke ppl talking about Wokeness Gone Too Far, it's really insane that even today ppl bring the Bochel Test up like it's the fucking 90s and queer ppl don't exist. Like if your ONLY reference point for how progressive a stories gender politics are is "two women have a normal conversation" i feel like you must be a cishet shitlib with the respectibility politics of a privileged white suffergette eager to throw women of color under the bus bc you only care about sexism if it effects you or someone you personally know (sorry for the hyperbole but the state of politics and media literacy makes me angry sometimes)

ofc the example of "most stories centered around gay men loving each other technically fail the bachel test" was probably a point of contention even in the 90s, but my favorite example has to do with ppl like me

If you write a story where every character is nonbinary, one of two things would be true:

A) It wouldn't pass the bachel test bc there are no female characters, nevermind the fact there are also no male characters

Or - much, much more troubling - B) One might try to argue that nonbinary people are "adjacent to women" so it still passes. To be clearly, not all of us are "woman lite", as that's a form of misgendering levied against us a lot. While SOME enbies consider themselves mostly femme, we are a lot more diverse than that and a lot of us (myself included) really don't feel comfortable with the notion that we have to lean one way or the other. I consider myself a masc/femme genderfluid person, some enbies (especially some of those assigned female at birth, but also some AMAB enbies who just don't quite fit into a box) consider themselves masc-leaning, some enbies are agender and others have a more nebulous or abstract sense of gender. So yeah don't argue this, please, we aren't just "kinda women" we're our own thing

TL;DR The Bachel Test was made in the 90s, was probably useful for straight ppl for a brief period of time, but doesn't include queer ppl and lacks nuance. I would recommend actually trying to practice media literacy and analyze instead.

//

A philosophical question that's bothered me for a while is "As a socially-transitioned enby who isn't on HRT and hasn't had any kind of surgury done, what actually seperates me from a very non-conformist cisgender man?". Like I've been losing sleep over that shit

After a moment of reflection today, I've come up with several reasons: I have gender dysphoria, especially around this question and about being put into a box or being seen as "just a man" or labeled as such; I hyphenated my name to add a femme version of it (Ian/Iana instead of just Ian); I don't like it when ppl exclusively use "he/him" pronouns for me (I'm still fine with he/him pronouns sometimes, but I'd prefer if ppl used other pronouns like "they/them" and "she/her" sometimes as well, so I don't feel like they see me as a man); I get a feeling of deep gender euphoria when I see my hair looking pretty and my face with make-up (Big caveat on this one: I actually have no idea if regular femboys get a similar feeling or not)

These reasons aren't nothing, but I wish I had something more tangible :(

A lot of these are aren't that different from "Well I don't indentify as a man, I indentify as genderfluid/nonbinary" and that answer has never really statified this concern of mine

If you're reading this, I'd REALLY like your honest opinion on this, either on my neocities profile or my cbox (under "CONTACT/CHAT" button). Whether it's just affirmation of my gender identity, or more serious advice, I'd like to hear it, I don't always trust my own thoughts and feelings on their own when it comes to this stuff

I'm sometimes really unsure who or what I am. I spent years just accepting that I was a non-conformist man, but eventually I came to the conclusions that I must be nonbinary, though I sometimes wonder, in intrusive thoughts, if I just adopted that label bc that's what it seemed like I was "suppose to do" based on what I had learned from the trans content I was watching at the time, and if I really should be calling myself trans/nonbinary when my experience seems different than the experience so many trans ppl. I'd really rather be nonbinary than a man, I never liked the box of manhood and being nonbinary has always seemed so much more authentic to how I feel, but sometimes these thoughts creep in and I wonder if I really have the right to call myself genderqueer when it seems so many trans ppl's trans experiences are so different than mine when it comes to the details .-.

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I was watching Super Eyepatch Wolf playing Faith: The Holy Trinity on a VOD, and it looks like an excellent game, but I'm kind of suprised the anti-woke grifters don't bring it up more, bc it might be the only game with a conservative outlook that's as good as it is, instead they bring up games that either suck or obviously aren't conservative like Fallout or Bioshock

Then again, I don't hear the anti-woke ppl bring up The Excorsist that often, even though that movie, Faith and catholic horror in general is inherently conservative without being preachy

So... do they not know catholic horror is generally a conservative genre that people across the political spectrum generally agree can be quite good... or is it just that catholic horror isn't conservative in an aggressively bigoted way?

(Not to say catholic horror is never troubling at all, it just usually isn't like "We hate the gays and blacks!!!" bc it's focused on arguing for traditional religeon, and even when the writers are racist/homophobic/whatever else they know it's distasteful to express those belief and it'd alienate most audiences. But it's usually better-written than most conservative or Christian media, both bc the fear of the devil makes for good horror, and the writer of The Excorist could actually write a compelling narrative bc unlike the PureFlix ppl he was good at writing lol)

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You're not going crazy, I just deleted two post that used to be right here bc I decided they SUCKED!!!!11one

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One problem I've had with this site is figuring out how to create a space to gush about my OCs without clogging up the miniblog...

I've struggled with format a lot since infodumping OC lore is such a nebulous thing, for me at least

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I can't speak for all enbies, but personally I feel like "being trans is a choice" is stupid argument because why the fuck would anyone choose to be nonbinary?

Like, choosing to be a man makes sense for the privlege

Choosing to be a woman makes sense bc you're allowed to express all of your emotions freely and you aren't quite as isolated in society

Being nonbinary is the only of these three options that has zero social benefits whatsoever. It's the worst of both worlds and then some. No one takes your emotions seriously, (albeit not quite in the insanely toxic way it is for men), ppl who infantilize women will also infantilize you, you will be isolated, being don't take what you have to say seriously,, ppl don't treat you like a human being, ppl will be distant from you and see you as a threat, AND on top of all that stuff some ppl won't even acknowlegde that your gender identity even exists! Why would I "choose" this if it wasn't undeniably who I am (ngl I'd still be trans if it was a choice, but I would choose to be a woman just bc that's a better fit for my personality, but ofc I didn't go with woman bc that's just another binary box that I don't fit in)

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A genre of person I really like are neurodivergent cishet men, bc they are so consistently unpredictable, and I have to sincerely admit, far more so than most neurodivergent queer ppl, bc there are literally no stereotypes you can go off of that are ever really accurate. Like, I think in the queer community we have our own kind of quiter fragility around being queer in the "right way" (not as nearly loud and overzealous as toxic masculinity, but queer ppl below a certain age have embraced stereotypes far too much, and even I, non-conformist that I am, have caught myself trying to conform to how a genderqueer person "should be"). But straight boy autistic/ADHD ppl just like... Don't do that. Their disability doesn't fit within the hypermasculine mold, so they don't even give a fuck or try to perform anything in terms of sexuality or gender idenity. Ngl I think us queer neurospicy ppl could take a page from these guy's book, and I mean that with zero irony whatsoever. Many of them are also a good example about how you can be "woke" and still come to your own conclusions rather than parroting an echochamber which is kind of what Leftist did before social media anyway but critical thinking has unfortunately been taken out of that equation in favor of using the "right" words, deeper message be damned.

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Render of version 3 of my CG faux-stop-motion sona character model:



Three big upgrades in this one: First is that I think I found the right balance between "cute" and "fucked up goth" on this one. The first ekko model of this caliber was too ugly, but the second (the one used in Nemolacrya) I felt overcorrected that a big. Secondly, this model is segmented into parts, so it's a LOT easy to repose with Blender's sculpting tools! Third is just that I managed the polycount a lot better this time

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So... appearently (as of writing this) if you filter by the tag "furry" (and only then, granted) I'm on the first page of Special Sauce, somewhere in the lower-middle of it

This acheivement is not big enough to be overjoyed, but still significant enough that it's kind of a mindfuck

Ok UPDATE: I don't show up in "art" (not a suprise, very common tag and there's a lot of impressive sites using it that are more well-known than mine) but I DO show up under "music", albeit towards the bottom. However, THIS was a suprise:



How did this happen???

Also:

I'm #2 in experimental????

So, naturally, I immediately new I needed to check out #1 in experimental, and, yeah... It's warrented

I'm gonna add their webbutton right under here and then paste that into the links, but be warned that their comic, Suzu and Jack, is a pretty harrowing pitch-black comedy based on the artist's experience as a childhood trauma and domestic abuse survivor. I'll add a heads-up in the tooltip, but DEFINITELY check the content warning if you're worried about that sort of thing. I've read everything out so far, and it's frequently funny and profound, but it definitely is unsettling and at times heartrending. The webmaster themself describes their comic has a "psychological horror-comedy intended for mature audiences"

Anyway here's the webbutton:



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Is it ethical to kick (BILLIONAIRE)'s ass?

Jeff Bezos: Well of course, it's amazing a disgrunted amazon worker hasn't done that already

Elon Musk: Gang up on him and then give him a wedgie

Tim Cook: Ehhh sure why not?

Taylor Swift: Kicking her ass is going too far, but while she doesn't really deserve that, vitriol against her is very understandable given her parasitic place in the music industry. I would personally reccomend calling her a "rich dip nepo baby" and a "talentless hack" who "woulnd't be here if not for her rich parents and extremely boring cisheteronormative beauty standards mattering to big wig label execs more than actual talent" and then unfavorably contrast her with the likes of Sophie, Bjork, Charli XCX, or any other talented femme-presenting musicians. It's best to bring up as many extremely musically-talented women as possible so she really know that you're not just another chud that hates women, but actually a Super Woke Person who just hates her as an individual bc she's a nepo baby with too much money ruining the enviorment with her private jet trips. Or you could just say "her music is hella mid ngl", that also works.

George Soros: Listen, technically the answer is a resounding "yes", but the person who does it NEEDS to be Jewish, bc unfortunately neo-nazis hate him as much as leftists for a much more stupid and hateful reason. SUPER don't do it if your Muslim bc the far-right LOVES to push forward the narrative that Jews and Muslims hate each other and aren't just two ethnoreligeons marginized in America. Like, you'd have to be REALLY cautious with this one. In fact, I think it'd be much better if Jacob Geller made a video essay where he draws parrels between George Soros and the billionaire guy from Jet Set Radio. Yeah, that's way better! If you are famed youtuber Jacob Geller reading this: You have my FULL permission to use this idea. Or another way to tie in the music industry into a video game narrative. Or make it about literally anything at all, I'll probably watch it on the grounds that it's a new Jacob Geller video

Kelsy Grammer: This guy is probably the last billionaire you would ever want to beat up or really be all that mean to at all. "Good Billionaires" do not exist, but if one did exist his name would be Kelsy Grammer. At most, Grammer deserves to be told "You have way too much money, but you're not so bad for a billionaire :)"

(also this is just a shitpost, please don't take it seriously or as advice. Also don't call Swift a nepo baby on social media, only bc Swifties have more aggresion than class solidarity by a long shot, they frighten me.)

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Imagine if I ever got an interview as a creative. They would ask me "What are your influences?" and I'd be like "Uhhh..." and then pull like five random influnces of mine out of a hat and every single one would be a curveball from the last. They'd be like "So you use biblical allegory and theological concepts a lot in your work. Are you yourself relgious?" and I'd be like "Oh god no" and then two minutes later I'd be waxing poetic about how religeon itself is a metaphor for our understanding of the world in a sense. Then, seeing the influx of angry comments from religeous fruitcakes, they'd switch the conversation to "So uhhh your a furry or something? Tell me about your experience with the fandom" and then after 5+ minutes of just talking about my fursona and OCs we'd somehow end up on the topic of the artistic capablilities of video games where'd I'd come in swinging with the take "I don't think 'fun' and 'art' are at all at odds. I think a good 8 out of 10 artistically-inclined video games are still better off trying to be actual games with mechanics and gameplay. I don't like it when games try to be movies, at that point just make a movie, y'know?" and then they'd suprised about that bc they're and art person but I'm also an art person and I have the polar opposite take about that. Then I'd explain what an "Immersive Sim" is and why I think it's the medium and gaming at it's most artistically-impressive, imo

EDIT: It's oddly fitting that this post just uncerimoniously ends lol

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Ok, so that annoucnment: My sixth album, Anti-Villain, is now out on Bandcamp and the Internet Archive!

You can listen to and download it here!

This is probably one of my best albums in a long time. I think this one might be the best mainline artpop album I've made so far, but I'll let you be the judge of that. It's far more high-energy and at times almost club-inspired, but there's still ups and downs. Each song feels super distinct while still coalessing into a greater whole

I would give this one a try if you like any of my music at all

There's also a lyric video for the lead single, Mr. Faust:

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I forgot to post this yesterday. It a drawing of Ekko and also one of a weird little gnome for some reason (the latter was a warmup drawing lol)

I also have a major announcement to make, though I'm gonna wait til I wake up a bit more. It's very exciting and on the offchance that you follow me on Bandcamp you might have already noticed it ;)

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New luna moth OC that I'm already hyperfixated on:



I HAD to draw Ekko giving him affection in the two right corners bc I can't not love on the moth femboy with social anxiety. HE'S SO CUTE KNFSLBDOFDFJBDJBWBRJEBTK

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One of my most mundane (and extremely specific) anxieties around being trans is well-intentioned individuals who aren't very educated on trans stuff having trouble wrapping their head around the idea that I am transfemme, but not a woman. Bc I bet a lot of ppl assume all tranfemme ppl are transgender women, and do to the "feminine" part of "transfeminine", I feel like a lot of ppl would struggle with the idea of someone with a feminine trans idenity not being a woman, and I'm not sure I'd being to best communicate it to them in a way they'd understand

My best crack at it might be that I'm genderfluid and have masc and femme aspects to my overall androgynous gender idenity, but I use the word "transfemme" bc I wasn't allowed to express or idenify with the feminine aspects of my gender idenify, and so my femme side is more important to my journey as a trans enby bc I was so starved for expressing myself effeminately and expressing that I didn't belong in the closet of forced manhood, which was something that I never consented to. Even this definition might be a lot to parse just bc it's so much new information

Speaking of being tranfemme... I just tried these razors - they're called "Bic Flex 4" - and y'all I always past these up bc I assumed they were a Gellette clone and wouldn't get my facial hair off. Nope! These get me baby smooth, no bleeding required. These are the exact kind of razor I've been looking for! They only come in packs of three, but they also last longer and are meant to be more reusable

//

Added some cool new fonts

It may take awhile for the miniblog and status to update!

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Y'all... I'm fucking pissed with myself rn for the stupidest reason

I've been using the term "lithosexual" to describe my sexuality. Apperently, that's not the right word. Appearently, I'm "Aegosexual", bc lithosexual ppl, appearently, DO feel sexual attraction, but don't want it repricated. I thought it just meant you liked the idea of sex but don't actually want to have sex or be involved in anything sexual. Appearently the term for that is "Aegosexual"

I've been using the wrong word since highschool FML.

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A useful thing to understand about acceptance is that "I'm not a bigot to queer ppl/racial minorities/women/etc" just means "I'm not going to hate or descrimate against queer ppl/racial minorities/women/etc just for existing", but it doesn't (and shouldn't) literally mean "I love and vouch for all queer ppl/racial minorities/women/etc on an individual basis, will never critize a single one about literally anything, and will be friendly to each individual one, even if they're an asshole"

Listen, I know I am stating the obvious here, like "no shit", but I've genuinely seen a lot of ppl (weirdly both on the left and right) who seem to think the opposite. With liberals and leftists, it's ppl not holding someone accountable for being an asshole and/or a piece of shit bc the offending party is a woman or minority (and when they're a woman, there's a lot of weirdly misogynistic self-infantilization of her, bc "she's a girl she can't be an abuser", like women aren't, y'know, adult humans who are capable of both good and evil, as adult humans tend to be. Don't infantalize woman and act like that's woke!). With right-wingers (especially the "anti-woke" braindead crowd, they'll point to some woman or minority who IS an insufferable asshole, and then use that person as a strawman like "All woman/minorities are exactly like this asshat that I cherry-picked. No further research nessessary." Left-wing version is troubling (especially coupled with abusive ppl appropriating therapy-speak to hurt ppl) and when the anti-woke crowd does it, it's annoying as shit.

EDIT: But hey, Katy Perry doesn't seem to be fooling anyone anymore, and the anti-woke crowd now more than ever is a laughing stalk, so maybe things are on the up and up? Hopefully! I'm tired of infantalizing minorities/women, that stupid anti-woke shit, and the dumbing-down of Leftism on the social web, all in equal measure but the anti-woke crowd slightly more.

Anyway probably this'll probably not reach anyone who actually need, most of those ppl are on the social web lol

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Here's a screenshot from a (VERY) WIP prototype I'm working on



It's going to be another sandbox RPG. All the gameplay mechanics are already programmed and largely test. (I made a framework for making CRPGs not that long ago.) It'll have a lot of the same mechanics as MATTERPUNK, but I hope to flesh the open world (which is about the same size as Matterpunks, but already looking a bit more lively looking thanks to the surreal spooky blood lakes!) by adding NPCs with actually dialog, and enemies in the overworld is predetermined places that'll stay dead when you kill them. It'll still have Some dungeons and a town or two, and maybe I'll even add a narrative sidequest or two! I'm kinda trying to take the lessons I learned from making MATTERPUNK and combining them with the lessons I learned from making I Dreamt Of Sanguia and combining them together. I'd also, if I like how this turns out, maybe expand it into a paid version for Steam that adds new content, including new "realms" (basically more small open worlds you can explore, as oppose to just expanding this one into an overblown one. It'd add more world while keeping scope in check!)

Oh, and in case your curious, this is what the world looks like without the pixel art filter:



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There are two kinds of passionate artists:

Type 1: I am the way I am in defiance of a constructed god we call Normalcy. I wish to subvert expectations, push past the so-called rules of what we believe to be true

Type 2: I drew a buni :3

unfortunately, I am Type 1.

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The problem with the alt-right trying to offend me (in particular) is that the shit that makes most ppl cringe I have a post-ironic adoration for, most of the shit that tries to be offensive just kind of makes me cringe, and the shit that actually offends me has got to be *creatively* offensive. Like, you can't just say the R-slur and expect that to work. I'm just gonna make a face like "ewww", it's gross but overplayed. You gotta be a complete douchewad in a way I've never seen before.

The alt-right is not known for creativity.

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John Poisoneater: What's up guys? it's me, John. As you know i love rat poison. Today ill be trying rat poison from Italy

John's doctor, begging: plz... not again...

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Morrowind seems broken, until you learn it's RPG systems and realize that your walk speed was slow bc you had a low Speed and Athletics stats, those "bad hitbox" were actually just you missing an attack do to a subpar weapon skill and/or bad rng, etc

At least until you understand Morrowind a little too well, by that point your downing so much skooma you noclipped out of the world by moving to fast. And then after that you'll be killing daedra at level 3 with your stupidly overpowered cheese build that uses four major skills (I was just doing that before I wrote this. What's insane is my level 3 khajiit kinda floored a couple of late-game enemies and rivaled other. One killed me no problem though, bc I couldn't jump-dodge it's thunder spell bc the room was too small. My one weakness.)

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(Gaming in 2013)

AAA: Here's a gun! Go shoot the baddies!

Indie: You see, in this game you merely walk, but it's a very meaningful game. You play as Herald Sadman, who has severe depression but cannot afford therapy because he is poor. You experience life as Herald, who's suicide attempt is presented as a fake bluescreen of death, so the player really feels the weight of the mistake they made in order to progess the story. In the end, Herald realizes that he can overcome his trouble, even if it will be difficult.

(Gaming in 2026)

AAA: No, you don't get it, this game is actually really meaningful. It's sort of like a movie crossed with MSG2, you play as John Badman, who must confront the fact that all these enemies he killed were actually refugees. *checks notes intently* War Is Bad. Press the "grenade" button to throw grenade. Why did you just throw a grenade at those refugees? Just because the game told you to? Really makes you think about how humans are terrible to eachother...

Indie: We made Karl Marx into an anime girl and gave her a gun! Go shoot the CEO of Misanthropy Incorporated! Woah! Watch out for the allegory about how what a lot of Americans think is Communism is actually just Capitalism, she's personafied as a buff wolf lady with twin katanas, which are gold to represent greed and also cuz it just looks awesome! Holy shit, look at her healthbar, this'll put your schmovement skills to the test!

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I would be a terrible streamer, bc I would play into chat's antics to a mischievous degree, but as soon as they started acting puritanical I would start sounding like a middle school biology teacher

If there is anything the hit game Clickolding has taught us, it is that the entity known as Chat becomes unstable at sexual themes in even an artistic context. It's honestly probably for the best twitch doesn't allow actual porn games.

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Made this 3D pixel art shader for Godot. It's pretty cool, very convincing in a screenshot, in movement feels like walking through a pixel world but in full 3D!

I put up the shader on Godot Shaders here

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So... I have a couple shaders up on Godot Shaders!

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cleaned up the graphix iframe page a bit, removed some i felt like were fluff/page filler. this might help with proformance, but tbh i mostly just wanted to tidy up a bit

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Started learning Godot shaders. This is my first real shader in Godot, a bit inspired by 90s CGI (although using more modern techniques). I made this surreal landscape with it

If anyone wants to use it here it is for copy/paste:

It's modular and has several parems, so if you want to get a look like this you'll need to raise the "flow" value and check to "glossy" box on. It supports both textures and normal maps, I just used the built-in noise textures

This might also be a good way to modernize pre-rendered background, as well

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That's all the posts on the mini-blog! For older posts, check out the mini-blog archive