This is the archive of all the old miniblog posts. This page may take awhile to load, thanks for your patience!

Archive:

So uhh... y'know how I like putting a very "unique" style of sound design in my games? So uhhh I was recently reminded by a streamer what Gamevial was and now I'm realizing I've channeling them for the best several years of making games. Visually as well. I thought if I ever uncovered repressed memories it'd be something traumatic and fucked up, not old browser games I played as a kid lol

I do REALLY like the aesthetic, though. In terms of game design they're all extremely mediocre (which is normal for browser games in the 2000s so fair enough), but boy do they have some weird fucking vibes. I think Gamevial may have inadvertantly invented the style of most 3D ARGs and weird lowpoly indie games. The devs clearly had slightly gothic taste, but this is heightened by the weird lo-fi-ness and surreal sound design

The early-2010s emo furry scene was wild. Like you have this fandom where it's mostly silly and whimsical with funny animals with adventurous sci-fi/fantasy tropes and then you had this adolesent section of it who were all like "red... the blood of angry men" and they drew their fursona, who had like black fur and one angel wing one devil wing and execore creepypasta eyes, with a bunch of big bleeding gashes all over them and they're stabbed with a crazy ritual dagger and they're bleeding out and sobbing blood in the woods and it would have a speech bubble that would say some shit like "Sparky... I thought I could trust you..." and I feel like the grey muzzles of the time were probably just like "are these kids like... ok? do they need help?" and the kids were fine this was just how they worked through emotions when their ex-friend like high-school-drama backstabbed them, they were just really emo about it

Worked on the website a bit. Most changes won't be visible, but I mosted some stuff (including graphix) to there own pages and put them back with an iframe, which makes it easier for me to edited and will likely make the main page load a little better. At the very least, Javalamps aren't quite as slow. I also removed the "featured post" thing bc it's kind of redundent now that I have the message on the status. If anything is broken, tell me in the cbox chat so I know to fix it! <3

The biggest noticable difference is certain things (like graphix) are formatted differently now, since I can format the CSS seperately now! The graphix will also scroll seperately, I'll see if I can work on the cleaness/conveinence of that a bit later

You know what the funny thing about the Mixtape drama is? I bet the antiwoke dribble is partially sorta correct, in terms of the game sucking part. Like, i haven't played it, but it sincerely looks like a really pretentious teen drama film that's masquerading as a video game for some reason, despite not really benefiting from being interactive in any substantial. it's just, y'know, weird to try to shoehorn politics and Woke into that discussion, especially since the game doesn't doesn't really look all that political. As far as ive seen, it's just, like, tumblrcore teen drama film about losing your childhood innocence or whatever. literally how did this get caught up in the culture war bullshit? i assume one of the characters is gay or something and like that's pretty much it

Still, they probably could have just made it like a Telltale style thing or a cinematic visual novel. i don't really get what a story like this benefits from being a walking simulator, usually those work better for something more gripping or mysterious, rather than a slice of life drama. i haven't played it though so maybe it someone pulls off this (honestly kind of bad on paper) idea and really manages to capture the feeling of being a teen, but if so color me impressed, bc i don't really think a videogame could recapture that experience of being a teen only bc it's such a deeply intangible feeling, im only 26, ive been an adult for a little while, sure, but it wasn't THAT long ago in the big picture, and yet i already feel like i remember being a little kid better than i remember being a teen. Teenhood is just like, weird, you're just now beginning to develop complex thought but you're still a kid, ultimately. its not really defined by any one thing, but everything is new and exciting. How do you recreate that experience

But on the other hand, Game Is Woke™, so it's basically the best thing that happened since the scalies in the deep state put chemicals in the water to Turn The Freaking Frogs Gay. 10/10 GOTY would turn frogs gay again.

i was gonna come up with some witty remark about this, but nothing i could say is funnier than the headline itself

one if my favorite things in the world is academics getting discredited by their peers bc they had an "opinion" in their field that's out of line with the actual science/facts bc they don't wanna evolve with the times, and instead of just eventually admitting that they were wrong and operating on dated information, they can't swallow their pride and just get louder about it until their viewed as a glorified circus clowns that somehow used to be taken seriously. It's just a perfect instant karma thing. like Jordan Peterson doesn't get to hang out with the other, comparably sane philosphers anymore bc the other philosopher "listen that guys not insightful/smart crazy, he's just nuts" and Uta Firth's inability to accept she was basically the Frued of autism (even that's generous tbh.) has put her on the Corner For The Psychologists Who Cannot Behave where her peers are like "no Dr. Firth, bad, it IS a spectrum. we are not going to let you sit at the Big Kids table until you listen and get up to date" and in this metaphor she's she's just screaming "NO! NOT SPECTRUM. IT LOOKS DIFFERENT!" and the other scientists are just sighing like "Yes Dr. Firth... It looks different from the outside. This is evidence for a spectrum..."

Source material: A grotesquely surreal meta-modernist alt-game which mixes witty nassent internet-era humor with a scathing critque of techno-fuedalism. It's dilberately-crass appearence deceptively masks an extremely solid immersive sim made by a very skilled game designer with ideas that are both subversive and informed

The fandom: When I played this game one Mr. John Crueltysquad came to my house, broke down my door, killed me instantly, and stole all my prized anime Chunkopops. Ty Brother Ville 99999/10 best game evr

Really when you think about it, Cruelty Squad fans are the 100 gecs fans of the gaming space. Like that's (un)shocking accurate when you think about it.

I just finished my short film, Nemolacrya, I'll let you know when it's finished uploading!

It's out now! You can watch it directly on Youtube or embedded right here:

If you're locked out of Youtube due to age restriction or whatnot, don't worry, You can watch it on the Internet Archive RIGHT HERE!

(Watch it on Youtube if you can and would like to help me though, the algorithm isn't crazy about me and ppl watching the film on YT would help get it)

My laptop's CPU crashed bc i did something stupid in Blender, and I couldn't breath until it turned back on. How has you're day then

Feel very lightheaded all of a sudden...

I'm 99% sure it's bc it's hot as fucking hell today, I'm thus sweating all of sudden and I probably needed to drink water (which I just did) so that'll probably help, but on the offchance it's the bugbite (which in all honesty i'm pretty sure was a misquitto bite) was actually super venomous, that'll be why I've suddenly abscent from this point on, for let's say, maybe 12 months. /hj

(bare in mind i'm a huge hypocondriac so it's probably fine)

New piece:

"GO!", CG render

Also I just beat Forbidden Solitaire today and holy shit I was NOT expecting there to be a good ending, but boy did that final showdown go hard!

Also, probably one of the best New Game+ modes I've come across, very customizable!

So uhh... thanks for 20,000+ views! Wow!

It's great to know my work has been viewed by human eyes that many times!

I do wanna give some updates!

So first off, I'll do the "bad" (really just inconveinent at the moment) news first: I sorta fell off working on CYBER-SOMATIC only bc I got sick RIGHT after making it. This does NOT mean it's cancelled as of writing this whatsoever, it's still among the projects I'm "working on" but since I got sick right after starting, I'm going to need a bit of break from it

In honesty, after I got sick it through off my streak of creative productivity and I'm just now getting back into the swing of things!

Right now I'm wrapping up production on a short film, but this one is less of a adult swim/"MTV in the 90s" style of short and more of an actual narrative film, just a short one. It's still animated though, and so far it's coming along great! I'm even doing the voiceover myself for this one! It's almost done, I know have one more scene to work on, which I'm unfortunately procrastinating on bc, even though I've already written the ending, it's such an impactfully-written scene I'm admittedly very nervous to animate because perfectionism.

Other than working on this short film (and it's two-track OST, by my post-metal outlet Cult Of Order PD!) I decided to give Forbidden Solitaire a go. Great game! I just started playing yesterday and i'm already nearing the end! (I played for like, 5 hours straight, which is a testament to both the great writing and the really fun twist on Solitaire, bc both the gameplay and the story kept me going!) Would highly reccomend to anyone who likes creepypasta or meta-horror as it's got a lot of that going on in the meta-narrative, the writing is really solid and does a good job of balancing both horror and humor while slowly unveiling the mystery. I won't spoil anything but it's definitely a really unique spin on the "cursed game" genre of horror, not as crazy complicated as Inscryption but still really unique and compelling!

I also forgot to upload two songs I did awhile ago! I'll be in the process to keep you posted, I'll let you know on the miniblog when both songs are archived and put on the music player

EDIT: Ok, so it turns out I only forgot to upload one of them, 49970 was already uploaded so now there's just a duplicate for no reason lol. "Baroque, A Game For Saturn" is both on the music player and the "featured media" tab

As much as I'm glad fucking Microsoft finally figured out a way to make Windows updates not take fucking forever, this jank OS is REALLY not meant for that sort of thing

Sometimes it does this thing when updating in the background, where the screen will go black for a sec and your mouse disappears (bc it has to make some change and windows will just go black for a sec when that happens on certain systems) and CHRIST did I just get a scare, my hands are shaking as I type this

It did that again, first time in a little bit, and when smth like that happens I check on Windows Defender just in case. It had the yellow "/!\" warning sign on it and I jumped, think I had some kind of virus and needed to act fast

A quick scan was do. My system came back clean. It just so happened that I checked it just after Windows was background-updating and I assumed the worst.

I need to find a way to organize the "My Javalamps" section better. Every time I click on it it lags the fuck out of the site lol

Decided to listen to Linkin Park for the first time in ages just now. Amazed by how well they hold up, even if they're lyrics are sometimes a little corny (as should naturally be expected from teen angst) their "hybrid sound" really feels innovative even by today's standards, and has a lot to teach. Definitely a shining star in the often hit-or-miss genre of nu metal, probably one of the best and most unique bands in the genre ~~that they kinda just got pidgeonholed into bc ppl didn't know what else to call them~~

EDIT: BTW when I say nu metal is "hit-or-miss" I mean there's rarely mediocre nu metal. It's either really baller or really terrible. I would argue most of what has actually been remembered (Slipknot, Korn, Linkin Park, Bomberman 5000, come to think of it anything still in the zeitgeist that isn't Limp Bizcuit is pretty solid lol) but if you look into bands that have been largely forgotten, there's as many stinkers as there are hidden gems lol

Also sincere apologies to the butch lesbian community for insulting limp bizcuit lmao

RN im in a weird space, bc I'm starting to feel better emotionally after a bad cold/flu messed me up, but on the other hand my mom's/siblings' cat died and I don't wanna seem too cheerful around them bc I don't wanna hurt their feelings bc they're already going through so much with this. She was a newborn kitten and this is my little brothers first real brush with mourning a death, and it's really hard on him especially

Like, I know I shouldn't let my hypervigilence get in the way of me feeling better, and that it's perfectly possible to be here for my mom and siblings in a time of need without making myself miserable for the benefit of literally no one, but idk, I have a problem with this. I always take on others pain instead of just trying to help them through there's in a healthier way. I should probably be a bit mindful of being caring from a healthy distance this time, making myself miserable will only cause more pain to be happping

So, note to self: Be happy. Be there for your family, but don't be miserable just bc they are. Miserable ppl have a harder time helping anyway!

I kinda wanna make a webcomic about my OCs. Like not a super serious one, just like an online comic strip basically. The only problem is there's no way in hell I could consistently get them out on a weekly or even monthly basis, but it'd be fun thing to upload now and again...

...

Hey, this doesn't mean I'm definitely gonna do this! Just that i'd kinda like to. But who knows if or when :/

Them: Wow, you made a robot!

Me: Yeah, buts it's not quite done yet

Them: Really? What else needs to be done?

Robot: I like it when big men neg me...

Me: Yeah, *looks at camera with a knowing smirk* I'm still ironing out a few kinks!

A laugh track plays, followed by an angry mob getting on the production stage, enraged by my terrible pun. "Puns aren't even funny!", one of them wails. "You can't just throw in a little bit of blue humor and expect us to like your stupid fucking pun!" cries another. I am impaled by a pitchfork and die instantly. The episode gets aired on TV anyway for some reason, even the part where the angry mob gets on stage and murders me. Many find this decision distasteful on the studios part, given I'm appearently a comedic actor in this shitpost for some reason and this on-screen death is in fact real. In heaven, I am dubbed "The Saint of Puns", despite the fact that I was previously not all that known for puns, nor did I actually write the pun or script, I merely performed the line, which was first written by a screenwriter, and then given to me, an actor, to say in front of a camera, which then gets aired on TV. This is how pre-recorded television works.

Anyway... This controversy probably gets called, like... "pungate" or something idk

Y'know, I feel like the most/quentisential shitlib take is probably "we should just do away with the makeup industry". Like, it's a perfectly revolting mixture of PETA Vegan(TM) performance and being blissfully unaware that trans-misogyny exists and that you don't have to deal with it (especially since it's usually prvilenged white cisgender women who think they're woker than they actually are that say this). Like my sister in christ if you just got rid of the makeup industry half the transfemme community would kill ourselves. I would probably be in that half.

I also see the sentiment "you don't need makeup if you have skincare" and yeah the best skincare routine in the world isn't going to hide all my stuble, and they literally do not make razors sharp and competent enough to accomadate transfemme ppl, the (cis) women's razors aren't strong enough, and amazing, the men's razors still aren't *quite* strong enough to finish the job... bc they assume anyone using it still wants a *little* stubble. I have to wonder how much less TME bleed when shaving, probably a lot less than me. Then I gotta put on makeup over those open wounds.

The "Door Problem": The theory of game design that questions the many problems that come with doors in videogames. What doors are openable? Will there be locked doors? How do the players interact with doors? How will they know which doors will me interactable and which ones are set-dressing? Do the doors actually open with an animation? Do some enter a new level? If so, how will the player tell the difference? If the doors swing open, how will that affect collision with the playe- Yeah it goes on, you get the idea

Here's what some iconic game designers might say about it:

Mayomoto: I think pressing "up" will suffice. (laughs)

Kojima: Ok, so most locked doors will simply require a key. However, eventually the player will be able to speak to Doorman, who will give them a device that can hack certain doors that you couldn't open before. This device is automatic, but powered by and electric crank, like a huricane radio. The notable characteristic of this device is that The "hacking minigame", if you prefer to call it that, will involve turning the analog stick in a circle fast enough to keep the device powered. Failing this minigame will trip the security alarm

Williams: The door will be locked, but voice-activated and requiring a password. The player will eventually find the password, it only will work if it's from the voice of a different character. The player can talk to him at one point, and will record his voice. If they know the password, the player can realized that by splicing together specific parts of that conversation, they can recreate the passsword, and unlock the door. In the past, I would have required the player to do this in a specific order, but it turns out modern graphic adventure game players a A LOT more anti-softlock than the text adventure community would have ever anticipated.

Specter: Hmm... Depends. Is the door made of wood? If so they could probably burn it down. If it's a scifi settings - which, y'know, it's GOTTA be right? haha - then then hacking is something the player could do. If they spec into it. But really, I think you gotta tackle it from multi angle. Maybe the pincode is somewhere nearby, but if you don't have hacking you also just blow it up if you have explosives powerful enough. Maybe you could just bust down the door if it has a finite damage threshold. Hell, if you're stuck, just take a different path! As long as I've given you a ton of viable options my jobs pretty much done here

(Toby) Fox: idk programmings hard but this door has a face and a funny song! :)

Kallio: Yes. Take this door. See what will happen.

Me: if door big it slides open, if door small it loads new level. Some big door need password, sometimes small door needs objective to be finished. Sometimes door need key a lot of the times even that's secretly just a new string in the "goals" array if it's an RPG or whatnot. If you play a first-person rpg by me and if you have a key muguffen in ur inventory, it's just a useless item that's there for immersive and stuff. The REAL key is a string. Shhhh no tell anyone

Me: When I'm really sad, I like to imagine my fursona Ekko giving me a hug and telling me that we can get through this together and that thought makes me feel better :3

Social Media: Wow that's weird and really gross and bad

Divorced dad: Uh, yeah. I just drunk-text my ex-wife when I'm sad, and she writes something RUDE back like "Stop texing me you aren't stable enough to see the kids ok? please go to therapy for gods sake, you need help" and that snaps me out of it!

Sweaty femcel: And when I'm sad, I just I passive-aggressively take it out on my developmentally-stunted and emotionally-vulnerable boyfriend, y'know, uhh, like a normal person???

Social Media: Both of you are normal and algorithm-friendly!

Me: Umm... ok, yeah so I'm probably gonna make a website and give it a meta-ironic name making fun of this sort of online ecosystem, I'll probably stay on YT but bookmark the subscriptions page

Social Media: Pfft, they'll be back.

Narrator: They did not, in fact, come back

EDIT: OK, I didn't ACTUALLY post that on SM, I was a COWARD on the social web. (But seriously yeah, ppl getting dragged on the SM for posting smth wholesome is an insane phenomenon)

The biggest red flags:

-They admire patrick bateman, the joker etc with zero irony

-they are loudly and performatively anti-furry, hate literally all the media that queer and ND ppl happen to like, say they hate "woke games" or otherwise mask bigotry as "fandom drama"

-theyre a little *too* into Warhammer, and they don't seem to understand that it's satire

-this dark priest of heresy has dead bodies laid across the alters, victims sacrificed to a dark elden god to bring about the endtimes by the spilling of blood

-they like k-on

Hypnospace Outlaw is so immersive that i was watching a video essay on it and this mf said "Tim ur an asshole" and i almost took this (very obvious and cynical) ragebait before i realized he is not, in fact, a real child who actually went through hell after being framed for a crime by a tech bro that actually killed many real ppl who were not just fictional characters in a video game. turns out you don't need photorealism if you're game is just a fake cyberpunk Myspace

also, just for the record, don't put blatant ragebait in a video essay. it might make an immediate boost in numbers but it damages your credibility and a lot of ppl won't subscribe to you channel if you've shown you'll dive down to that level just for a bit more engagement. the video wasn't half bad as far as expository video essays go, but I will not be subscribing to a YouTuber who is willing to make ppl think they're a huge douchewad just to get ppl to boost you in the algo. left a bad taste in my mouth tbh

(The year is 2125)

"Hey have you ever heard of this obscure underground artist from the the early 21st century called Ian/Iana Spencer?"

"Yeah... My grandma say they made really underated music before but I never listened to it, it's like from the 20s lol"

"Ok... but like... do you know what they invented..?"

"What..?"

"Javalamps."

"What? No they didn-"

"No really. Blorgle it."

*Typing into searchbar* "... Oh my god... WHAT?!"

"Yeah."

"Why have I only heard of them from their oldtimey music and shit. They made FUCKING JAVALAMPS."

"I KNOW THAT'S GOTTA BE THE SINGLE MOST AMAZING THING THEY COULD HAVE POSSIBLY MADE!"

*the muffled sound of me rolling in my grave from a nearby cemetery*

Joker: It's over bats!

Me: No! Please! You have the wrong bat furry!

Joker: Ohh now?? Who may that b-

Me: Bruce Wayne

Joker: I- Wait really?

Me: Yeah I'm kinda suprised you didn't figure by now.

Joker: So... You just, like, told who batman is...

Me: Yeah

Joker: I'm the Joker.

Me: Yeah but Bruce is hoard wealth and lobbies the government, so like... You're not like, quite as evil as he is

Joker: Ah damn...

*orders a protogen from temu out of sheer morbid curiosity a few weeks prior* huh what is this weird plug and play famiclone, when did i order it, and why does it have cat ears?

First they came for the Marxists. i did not speak out, i was not a Marxist. then they came for the jews. i was not jewish, i did not speak out. then they went for fandoms that had a lot of gay and autistic ppl in them. i didn't realize this had to do with sexuality or gender or autism but looking back ig that explains why so many 4chan chuds were so worked up about furries for some reason. then they started moralizing about weird fetish porn on devientart, which at the time i didnt even think it was worth getting involved bc like "ok i also don't really get why these ppl are into vore and inflation kink and shit either but like who gives a fuck it's just fodder for memes i guess, like it's just a weird freaky cartoon porno dude worry about something that literally matters in any way at all, like the earth is dying and shit". then they started talking about ppl in some town somewhere cooking the cats and dogs and like... they meant it in a racist way somehow i guess? And then the orange guy got elected again somehow(????) and then they did a bunch of fucked up evil shit in like minnisota i think and the president posted a bunch of shitty AI ragebait then at some point i think the gay furry hackers leaked some, like, fucking evil thinktank document and it was like something out of a cyberpunk hacker movie where the villains are super shadowy and evil so wtf??? also i have to look at the couch fucker guy's face sometimes now. so anyway yeah ive been speaking out for a while now, this era is cooked af lmaooo 😐

Sadistic, Sociopathic, Cold-Stone Killer Dom: Yeah, I know I seem scary in-character, but I'm only mean and evil during roleplay for funsies, I'm actually really kind and an easy person to talk to IRL and I really care about my friends :3

Limp, Pathetic, Self-Destructive Sub: *holds knife to your throat* Listen you motherfucker, there's a list of ppl I take shit from and you just ain't hot enough to join it, you best not speak out of line, lest you fucking regret it. When I'm through with you, you'll be wishing you were dead. And it's not like I don't get my rocks off from that shit. I'm just itching to let out some darkness.

Prettied up the miniblog and the new status update!

I added a little status update thing at the top, a simple addition but I think its a good one!

I also prettied up this miniblog a bit, I tried to maintain readablity, hope you like it!

On the subject of "ups and downs": Sometimes, I feel like a wretched thing cast upon the earth to suffer. Other times I feel like a god, an artist at their peak. Sometimes I feel like an inposter, a sick bastard who's faking every struggle, manic-depression, and my queerness just for attention and to justify the very human imperfections that I, in those moments, see as irredeamable moral failures, someone who's decently talented but uses that and who I believe I am to justify my right to live, a truly self-loathing state of mind that I've been most recently in

But all that's silly nonsense. Obviously, objectively, I'm a just a very weird and slightly eccentric creative-type who's clinical neuroticism leads to both difficulties in life as well as artistic mastery via sheer passion. I'm not a perfect person, I'm as flawed as everyone else, and that's ok. I do my best to try to do good in the world, and for me that largely means making art that I hope moves and inspires others, bc that's what I know how to do best. Sometimes, at my worst, I'm too hard on people, myself more than anyone. Sometimes I lose that creative drive that's gotten me so far. Sometimes, especially recently, I have scary thoughts, ones that are very self-destructive and I leave myself isolated from them, even going on my own website to write something on the blog has been nerve-racking, hence why I've been doing it less. Sometimes I feel ill-equiped to protect myself from my own fears.

But then I remember that people, including me, should be expected to be imperfect by nature of who and what we are, and that's ok. I find that spark of inspiration again and that reignites my passion for making art and I get back into something like music composition, or drawing, or gamedev, filmmaking, webdesign, whatever it might be. I remember that that deep down, I know I've realized that I always still loved myself, that not only others would be heartbroken if anything bad ever happened to me, but that *I* would be heartbroken to see me hurt or gone, that I want to protect myself, not just for self-preservation's sake, but also just bc I've learned to make peace and be a friend to myself again. I remember that ppl who go on this site, especially to read the miniblog, likely come for me and my musings as well as my art

So, basically... I've been going through a rough patch again. Probably started after I got a real bad cold and then I just haven't been emotionally recovering quite as much as I've been so physically. I'm getting better, don't worry, but sometimes life throws a wrench in your current plan and it just derails you, and if you've gone through complex trauma like I have throughout my life, it can seem hopeless again. But I also know from my own experience that even those who hate themselves more than anyone haven't managed to destroy the part of them that loves themselves, they just buried that voice deep down even when it screaming at them that it's worried for them, bc after complex trauma having love and affection for oneself feels like a risk

My grander point is: I know some ppl reading this may also be going through yet another bout of depression. I promise that it gets better, I've gone through enough of this to learn that it always does, even in your darkest moments. Hope is never truly gone forever. I also know - and I know this sounds far-fetched, it would have to me too not that terribly long ago - that, I promise, you still love yourself deep down. Learning to love yourself, from my experience at least, isn't really about learning that from scratch, it's about finding that empathy you already have for yourself buried deep down. Besides, there are, almost certainly, other ppl who care about your wellbeing. If you really don't think there are, that fact that you're on my website, browsing my creative works, empathizing with my words attempting to empathize with you, that means the world to me that there are ppl out in the world taking the time to read this mushy blog post and experience the art I've made, that alone makes you, the stranger reading this, mean the world to me, bc my goal in life is to affect others with my art, to inspire and communicate thoughts and emotions. Take care of yourself please, you (yes, YOU!) are worthy of life and self-love, you don't deserve to have to wallow in self-hatred and scary, suicidal thoughts and fears. I understand why you're like this, I'm also like this, I'm just saying it get better and you owe it to yourself, all the good things and self-love you've buried inside. There's a version of you that would be devestated if you were to serioulsy harm yourself, so cut yourself a LOT more slack than you have been, if any of this shit spoke to you, you're 100% wayy too hard on yourself, it's gonna be ok, ok? take care :3

Oh, and if that's not enough somehow, you also gotta outlive your enemies >;3 Negative motation shouldn't be your *ONLY* motovation, but it's a good way to get started if nicer ways to be kinder to yourself just don't have the emotional kick you need, whatever works, just make sure you shift into doing things for the right reason after the less pretty reason gets you going, especially when dealing with your mental health long-term! :3

Honestly, remembering something stupid or unfortunate you did as a kid? Never gonna fully match the embaressment of showing a *little* too much of your true self, like, a week or two ago when you were feeling more confident, imho.

EDIT: Sorry I was in a *mood* when I posted this. Don't worry im feeling better now, i have my ups and downs y'know :3

Well... First I started my day taking a benedryl with my ADHD meds (big mistake). Then, after finding out itch.io is down for some reason, I opened YT subscriptions page and watched this cute animation (TW: accidental implications of genocide, worldwide apocalyptica and/or loss of human individuallity to a terrifying hivemind maybe?) the unfortunate creative choice to reduce the sum of the earth to a giant space heart was such an accidentally-fucked-up ending that really made me think about the populist war on individual rights that now my mood is ruined. Also I did nothing of substance

At least I got to make myself look pretty today

Actually you know what would make me feel better? A Woke Rant(TM). Here we go:

As social media echochambers continuously ruin leftist talking points, I keep seeing a lot of alt-right talking points get dressed Blue Bird Therapy Speak and get passed off as progressive. A recent one I've notice is Social web leftists suddenly being bizarrely anti-indivualism

Now two thing out of the way: Obviously, leftism CAN still be collectivist (crunchy hippes, Green-Urbanists, Linenists (if you consider them left-wing, at least), those weirdos on tumblr who deadass advocate for permaculture... for some reason..?) just as right-wingers can be in some sense individualist (mostly just Liberatarians and fiscal conservations, interestingly enough) Secondly, while Republicans certain feign individualism as an excuse, they don't actually give a rats ass about individual rights, if they did they wouldn't the way they are

The reason I find young leftists think this way is two fold. The obvious half is just that... Like, y'all, A Fascism is happening right now. Is this really the time to be critiquing individualism? During a time of Fascism? Y'know, the abosolute worst form of hyper-collectivsm? And I know many are just agaist hyper-indivualism, which is ofc bad bc you don't wanna take either of side of that spectrum too far or you end up with either free market chaos, or with the other extreme, totaltarianism. But I have definitely heard some ppl say "individualism is bad" in no uncertain words. Granted, some of them were probably a bit too young to fully grasp the nuance of how to balance individualism against collectivism, but that IS kinda of my concern. The Social Web flattening of complex issues into binary culture war bullshit gets REALLY dangerous when you start getting into really complex debate where there is no obvious solution. A healthy society needs to balance the good of the collectivism with the inherent human need for body autonomy and individuality. I'm not going to act like my answer is objectively the best. Personally, I think collectivism should be confined to economical matters such as industry and providing everyone with basic needs, and socially i think we should be a LOT more individualistic than we already are, which in American, a country that's only cares about "economical freedoms" above all else, is not very individualist at all, in fact America has a lot of socially-collectivist tendencies, we care about keep appearence and patriotic loyalty than we care about provide needs. But again, I'm very much an anarchist and someone with a different plan on how we should make the world a better place would probably feel very differently, which actually would be very ironic if they're socially-hypercollectivist lol

But idk... this shit worries me even more than the Puriteens or Tenderqueers, which is saying something

Appearently itch.io is currently down as of about 50 minutes ago. I have no clue why this is or if they gave any indication they'd go down, but christ i really hope nothing bad has happened to it...

This article is fascinating, not so much bc it raises any novel points but bc the person who wrote it is a disillusioned ex-Adobe-fanboy who recognizes their anti-consumer practices, but has not given up the delusion that modern Adobe products are actually The Best and not in fact just The Most Colorful And Shiny

PSA: Unless you work in the industry you need them for work, There is literally no reason to pirate Adobe products. They're overbloated, crash constantly and most of the "cutting edge features" are either AI slop or just shittier versions of what you can do in separate programs like Blender. while im at it, heres some alternatives:

Photoshop? GIMP or Krita depending on the usecase, Krita is a godteir drawing app and GIMP is basically just Photoshop minus the bullshit

Illustrator? Inkscape, it may not look sexy but it's everything you'd realistically need from a vector program and then some

Aftereffects? Jesus Christ it's just a motion graphics/VFX program, just learn Blender it can do more and it's not as hard as it looks, i promise

Premier Pro? i mean there's a ton of good video editors, but personally i really like Shotcut, the program itself is great but know going in there isn't good documentation and most YouTubers making tuts for it don't really know what there talking about, partly bc shotcut has a really unique modular design that isn't obvious from the get go, specifically the way masks work is unlike other videos and it uses them in a really versatile (albeit a bit obtuse at first). if you're looking for a more convention video editor, those ofc exist, but i can't think of any examples at the moment. all my short films are edited and largely composited in Shotcut, so it's definitely competent, just slightly experimental but not by TOO much (again masks just work in a weird way that'll take awhile to make sense)

Lightroom? ngl im pretty sure this one only exists for business reasons. we don't need to invent photo editing again. we already did that. any competent raster program can do advanced color grading and shit and whatever rudundent shit fucking Adobe Lightroom does, stop reinventing the wheel! sincerely though, whenever i see professional designer using what, from my understanding at least, is basically a professional-grade version of like, a mobile phone photo editor, i kinda just have to wonder how we got here? this is why we need to educate the masses on what open source means(so basically just GIMP again lol)

Laptops are like the small dogs of computers. They are compact, wonderful, and full of everything a computer ought to offer, and yet at the same time they are cursed with health problems and doomed to die young. Computers were not meant to be that small and portable. Computers were made to be boxes, divorced of keyboards and monitors, that sit upon a table. Even as I type this, I must be caution to to stim too wildly, lest I accidentally slaughter this very laptop before it's gotten to experience even one mere a year of age. A desktop can last over a decade, strong and resilent. Most quality laptops live to be circa five years of age, maybe more if they are cared for with the upmost love, less if abused and held with it's hinged agape in a single hand (don't do that btw it's really bad for it's structural integrity). A low-end laptop is like a pug: Doomed to die before it's truly experienced life, unable to live in the same way even my Docsen-esque Ideapad could. By compacting the humble computer to this form, which I adore for it's boons of traversal and accessiblity nonetheless, we limit it's lifespan, a punishment for our hubris. Nevertheless, much like an owner of a small dog, I love these freaks of nature with all my heart even though they are the body-horror of PCs.

In case you're curious, Smartphones are like a fish in a small tank. Fairly-low-maintence, colorful, offers menial entertainment, basically dead the moment you turned it on for the first time

Edit: But imagine the fish had psychic powers and held ill will over you

I just realized that Psychopathic Juggallo Car is just the left-wing version of Joker Car and now I'm inflicting that information onto you! :3

Ok, now that i've got that out of my system the "serious" creative work update I promised:

Production of Exodus In Outtabounds (that web-film of mine that got haulted immediately after pre-production) is still on hold due to me and my family reorganizing the garage, and thus the living room being too crowded to set up the new greenscreen. I guess at some point I could try recording maybe like, one of the "reality" scene but the bulk of the script/film is set in a surreal dark fantasy world that acts as a metaphor for the protagonists emotional jounrey and character development. I genuinely don't know when the house will be ready for the green setup but I did move a lot of stuff out of the garage, and my grandfather sealed half the concrete floor, so we're maybe like halfway done. Sorry for the delay, I'm sure, like, maybe two ppl who visit this site were excited for the film after seeing the VFX prep I posted for it lol. It'll enter production hopefully someday very soon, and since most of it will be done in front of a greenscreen and I'm play basically all but two of the characters, hopefully production shouldn't take *too* long, other than the animation I have to do which might take a bit long than just acting in front of a greenscreen

Secondly, I'm working on yet another game, some screenshots:

No clue when this game might be done. This one likely won't come out on itch.io, unless I can get my paypal up and running. I'm gonna try to get it on steam when it's further done in development. If it's not obvious by the screenshots, it's a very in-depth ImmSim with a cyberpunk setting. To give a quick (and very surface-level) rundown of the story it's set in a world where everyone has a "Neurochip" put in their head at birth, and you play as a character named Jessica B. Wauzht, a shut-in computer wiz who figured out how to jailbreak her neurochip, cutting her off from the corpo-run puppet government's mind surveilence. She wasn't going to use this new-found privacy to liberate the A.U. (American Union, it's set in a alternate timeline) from it's techno-fuedalist ruler, but a mysterious bio-entity (who may or may not be real) convinces her otherwise...

The game will be called "CYBER-SOMATIC"

So far, there is some solid gameplay, only two levels are "complete" (in the sense that you can beat them) but one of them need a LOT of polishing for me to be happy with it, probably a sidequest in that specific level, but for the meantime I'm moving on to other levels and I'll come back to that one. I have the story "scripted" (I have a detailed outline, basically, so I have a plan going in and development won't aimlessly spiral out of control) there's going to be a total of seven missions (not counting a handfull of very short connecting sequences, three of which will take place on the same subway which I need to remember to model at some point lol, right now I'm working on the actual missions though) so not a super long game but since this might honestly be my commercial debut, it's probably good to just work on quality over quantity

This also doesn't mean I won't be working on any other side projects in Godot, i'll probably need to if I need a break from this project but not gamedev as a whole. I struggle to finish something if it's the sole thing I'm working on anyway, my stupid AuDHD brain need creative varity lol (so as always, don't be surprise if I release a little something free on itch, that doesn't mean CYBER-SOMATIC is cancelled, just that my brain be like that or whatever.)

Christian power metal band called "Fuckerson" who talks about how baller Jesus was and how much pussy he got.

When questioned on it, they responded "Hey man, we don't condone like, whitewashing Jesus. You can be any race or ethno-religeon or whatever and still go hard, especially if you're the most baller dude in Bethlaham!" to which the interviewer responds "That's great to hear but not really what I asked."

LOUDWIRE: Fuckerson frontman says we "can't rule out" that Jesus Christ may have been bisexual. "He may have gotten bussy too!"

Bassist Groovy McFuckboi: "I'm like, 99.99% Jesus was bisexual. He just fucked, you know what I'm saying?"

Most metalheads have no idea what to even think of them bc it's very unclear whether this is actually who they are or highly-committed satire, but they make actually some pretty solid melodic power metal.

~~I promise i'll have something serious to talk about at some point soon.~~

We talk so much about scifi nerds who have analytical media literacy skills and the scifi nerds who missed the point that we forget the third, secret, and most fun catagory:

Scifi nerds who aren't trained to be media literate in the more traditional sense, but have an intuitive knack for "analyzing" media in a semi-concious way while retaining thematic information, so they end up having a really radical anti-establishment leftist worldview bc they learned it from like Star Trek and cyberpunk fiction and shit, but on some level believe they're "apoltical" bc they don't think of it as "this far-right movement in America is clearly a fascist movement, which there is a solid definition of, and this is dangerous to excuse", they think of it as "Guys that crusty cheeto is OBVIOUSLY evil. I mean, thinks he's God and full of hate and bigotry? Literally an evil AI like SHODAN and AM. Rich guy who just buys his way into power for nefarious purposes? Every human cyberpunk villian. He's literally into eugenics, he's like a fugly crusty version of KHAN from Star Trek. Y'all why are we letting him get away with this shit. He's ruining America. I mean, I know America has never been perfect, but we were doing pretty good under Obama, at least he TRIED to do SOMETHING about the broken healthcare system. Do you think the citizens Interprise have to pay for medic? Literally how did Trump beat Hillary in the first place? I mean, I know she's not that forward thinking, but at least she's fit to lead, unlike THAT GUY! Is it because she's female? Guys if we wanna get out of the bad cyberpunk future and into the good future we gotta live in a gender-blind society where we judge leaders based of they're individual merit instead of superficial things like race or gender. Guys we can use science to change someone's sex now. People are inventing new genders. That's kinda like cool ngl. Like some speculative fiction shit. Why are you upset at those ppl for doing that? Let the transgender ppl cook. They're innovators - UNLIKE THAT FUCKING TALENTLESS HACK ELON MUSK! OMG DID YOU SEE HIS PATH OF EXILE BULLSHIT? I have said it TIME and TIME AGAIN: The REAL Fake Gamers are the anti-woke gamegate dipshits. Like projecting much? Those assholes don't care about the joys of gaming, they just wanna use it as a trojan horse to bring their weird fucking political views into it. Can you stop with that MAGA politcizing bullshit. You didn't have to bring your weird hateful politics into great games like Deus Ex. You don't even understand it. No, the NSF aren't the "real villian", the whole fucking point flew over your head. Those were regular ppl that were driven to do bad things by a desperate situation that robbed them of their morality. JP Denton STARTS OUT the story working for the UNATICO, but then he starts seeing the cracks in the system and takes on the true villian: Evil tech corpos secretly running the government who want to transcend into godhood and make the commonfolk worship them. It's called a fucking character arc, but NO! You got stuck on "transhumanism" bc you don't fucking know what etymolgy is I guess. Literally it's about the uber-wealthy trying to eradicate the poor. LITERALLY WHAT'S GOING ON RIGHT NOW THIS IS RLY BAD GUYS!!!!"

~~fuck i understand and lowkey empathize with this very specifically kind of person way too well~~

Introducing the new, streamlined metal genres:

-Dungeon Mosh (Power metal, folk metal, melodic heavy metal)

-Dark Dungeon Mosh (Black metal, melodic death metal, gothic metal) Additional notes: Powerwolf technically belongs here

-SHODAN's Cybernetic Evil Music (industrial metal, glitch metal, electronicore, digital hardcore) Additional notes: I've been playing the System Shock 2 remaster it's really good; KILL KRYPTO! goes here ofc

-Beautiful Math (Good prog metal [like Opeth, Dream Theater or Gojira], Ddjent, prog-metalcore [but like the really emotional kind])

-Technically-Impressive Penis Music (this is a corner of shame specifically reserved for the band Sleep and their ilk. The fact that there are people on this earth that willing subject themselves to that fucking album with the fuckers on horseback and find that corrupt-jazz-noise that technically would be considered music keeps me up at night. Complexity don't mean shit if it sounds like ass in the end. It sounds like someone held a free-improvisation band at gunpoint and made them record a session on the spot into a tin can microphone the armed highjackers bought on Temu. Atheist also kind of sucks but they aren't quite as bad i guess.)

-Are YOU New To METAL MUSIC? Start HERE! (mainstream metal/metalcore) Additional notes: You have to say the full name every time, no shortening this one

-Doofuscore (Nu metal, glam metal, Thrash metal) Additional notes: (non-derogatory)

-Unsorted Metal (these will be sorted later. New catagories will be made if nessessary)

(This is a joke don't yell at me)

So... I just tried to create a page on Aesthetics Wiki for "Warren Spectre Games" bc those games have a really distinct aesthetic and I thought SOMEONE ought to document it

Problem is... Fandom (the wiki site) REALLY sucks. Like, I know you already knew that, but it didn't fully hit me just how poorly-designed it is until I actually tried to add a page. It fails at the most basic forms of software design, just like... communicating basic information to the user

My experience in using their editor was mostly just me going "what the fuck is even happening". Like it's that bad. It told me something along the lines of "There is currently no text on this page. You can index search for it's name in other articles, but you do not have permission to edit this page", which A) Could you have possibly worded that in a more confusing way and B) This gives me more questions than answers. Who's permission? The wiki mods' or Fandom's? Why would I even need permission to edit on fucking Aesthetics wiki anyway? Most Wikipedia articles don't even ask for permission, they just correct mistakes or incorrect information afterwords? If it's Fandom's "permission" (which I have a hunch it is) why? I already confirmed my email address. Has it not yet gone through? Do I need to do something else before I can add to wikis? What is it? Why not just tell me what I have to do, that seems like software/web design 101. If it's a per-basis thing? Why was it rejected? Literally could I have any other information? I'll never know bc Fandom is just a bad piece of software.

New song out on the website/the Internet Archive! It's called 49970. It's at the top of the music player as of writing

You also give it a quick listen on the home tab! The new "featured media" thing is now under "featured post". Hopefully that should make things more conveinent when I have something new available

I heard someone say recently that the quote "You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become a villian" is basically Hawk Tuah Girl's character arc and that haunts me with it's accuracy.

I also started thinking about it again bc I saw a VOD of Vinny Vinesauce playing a bunch of weird mario fangames and rom hacks and one was just SM64 but you played as Hawk Tuah Girl (yeah idk either)

I know purtanism being on the rise (and how that relates to internet culture) isn't exactly an original conversation, but I do think a big thing ppl gloss over is what I'd call the "Death of Erotica" so to speak

Basically, pornography has been mostly been normalized, or at least destigmatized. That ofc isn't nessessarily a bad thing on it's own at all, but the problem lies in the difference between "porn" and "erotica", the latter meaning art or fiction that's both sexually explicit AND cares about it's artistic and/or narrative merit

The thing is, a lot of the art we call "porn" online isn't actually porn. Porn would imply it exists solely for the sake of exploiting the viewer sexual desires, but a lot of that kind of stuff cares just as much about self-expression of the artist and storytelling as it does about being titulating. Most ppl (on the internet) don't know what "erotica" means but they know what porn is, so they mislabel art and writing that has actual merit simply because it's sexual or fetishistic as well. Combine that with big companies selling medocre stories meant for the widest audience possible, the notion of "sex sells" gets thrown to the wayside, and you get a culture with a self-infantilized view of human sexuality

Anything sexually explicit is labeled as "porn", thus great art doesn't get recognized either because it contains erotic/nsfw sequences, or in some (honestly insane) cases just because the artist has made something erotic in the past

I kind of have to wonder, once MAGA falls, how we're going to re-learn how to accept sex as something that doesn't need to hushed and shunned.

Well, didn't get a wink of sleep last night, but I DID make this cool collage:

"please do not shoot the monster that lurks in the woods. they are docile, sapient; god is watching and murder is a sin seldom forgiven."

New 2D art! Been trying to get back into the swing of it:

'I Would Highly Reccomend You Choose Me.'

(hover for titles)

NGL, i've been feeling real shit the last couple of days. Idk if it's burnout or if I'm sick again (I HAVE been feeling pretty nauseous, idk if that's just stress though) but I just feel like shit, both physically and emotionally. At first I thought I was having a bout of depression but now I'm not so sure bc I WANT to feel better and I wanna do creative stuff, but I just don't have the energy or the inspiration

Friendly reminder to myself and others who are going through some shit rn: You are enough, you are beautiful, your body is yours and yours only, you are worthwhile and no one else has the right to take any of that away from you. You have an inherent right to be happy and don't let anyone else make you feel lesser to them for being who you are

You are worthwhile and you should love yourself, this is not negotiable. Be kind to yourself and love yourself, you don't deserve to be unhappy and to feel inferior for your identity. This goes for everyone reading this, you are valid

Slept basically 24 hours yesterday (with a moment of awakeness in the middle, granted) and I'm glad to be awake during the day but jesus christ does oversleeping make you groggy and moody

This is like, the third image I ever drew of Ekko:

I don't often post old art (maybe I should though) but idk there's something about this little sketch that makes me unreasonably happy in a way that's hard to describe. I didn't know "who" ekko was yet. I hadn't developed them as a character. Their name was gonna be Rez/Sioux at first (in reference to Siouxie Sioux and Trent Reznor) but I felt like pick gothic icons references for a name was too generic for a bat fursona so I ended up with something even more predictable somehow lol

But Ekko looks so happy here. Can't even contain his joy or keep her feet on the ground. It's so cute and oddly wholesome in a way that's so hard tranlate to the campy empathetic-sweetheart-pretends-to-be-a-cartoon-villian-without-doing-anything-actually-evil type character that Ekko is today, and yet I want this kind of joy for them. I wanna feel it with them, y'know? Now that I've figured out Ekko as a character, and their silly antics are more peppy-goth than cute lil ball of spunk (especially since I decided on their canoc height being a foot taller than my actually height, specifically to overcome my insecurities about being too tall which largely worked tbh!), it's kind of hard to express myself through Ekko in such an unadulterated way. Maybe I should let the funi bat be spazzy and carefree sometimes, as a treat ;3

They should also where shorts and thigh-highs more, they look cute in them. I'd probably swap the harness for an actual top lol. Seems kinda trashy and a bit much now, but I wanted to explore my queer indentity a bit, sue me lol

It is interesting to see Ekko with this body type now though. More recent depictions have it a bit close to my actual body type, granted, still with a slightly fatter ass than I actually have (a body insecurity I'll never fully get over, I feel. Although I'm a bit more comfy making self-depricating jokes about being "too flat" so progress I guess?) but now I cartoon-i-fy the torso less and let the potbelly be a bit more prominent (and closer to how my real body looks)

Hell, why not an example of that too:

this one was made at the time where I was rly solidifying Ekko's design as it would stick!

I love making two or three posts in one sitting.

Sometimes I think about the sort of unspoken "rules" anthro/funny animal characters in relation to stylization

Like, I'm sure you probably know this general idea: the less cartoony/more semi-realistic the artstyle, the weirder it becomes if the characters don't where pants. It doesn't come across as odd that Donald Duck doesn't where pants bc he's so cartoony. Psuedoregalia sort of subverts this "rule" for the sake of sex appeal

But I feel like another one that's generally understood but less spoken about is the "rules" around anthro characters wearing shoes. The more "realistic" the anatomy (as, the closer it gets to what sapient humanoid animal-people might actually look like if they were real) the weirder it could potentially be for the characters to wear shoes, assuming they're shaped the way human shoes are, bc it's just inherently "icky" for that to have feet that look too human (not 100% why that is, but i feel like most of us can agree that is weird and aesthetically unappealing lol). Sonic is OK bc he's such a cartoon. It's like Kirby, you're not primed to thing about it logically, unless your friend is trying to creep you out as a joke. But with how I (and a lot of other furries) draw anthro characters, you have to give them paws for feet (and hands, but that's a big easier. As long as they're at least a *bit* paw-like and don't, for some ungodly reason, give them human fingernails, why would you do that, you're probably gonna be fine.) This means they either have to be "digitgrade" (usually not actually digitgrade. It's generally, in the furry fandom at least, done with human legs, just having them "walk on their tip-toes" in the same way a human would if you were to stand in that way, and then giving them paws, or hooves or whatever idk depends) or if they ARE plantigrade, you need to draw the toe of the shoe to be more round and symetrical, to indicate there's a paw (again, or hoof if it's like a goat or smth) under there. Sometimes I see furry artists draw the shoe looks too "human" and it grosses me out, i don't know if i'm alone in that pet peeve but i'm guess i'm not. Usually i can tell it isn't intentional bc they have hand-paws, just a design oversight

Indie game devs aren't competing with (and sometimes out-competing) AAA devs bc the general idea of "the videogame industry is in shambles". That's too vague of an example, market anomolies generally require more specificity and nuance to understand. Indiedevs are rivaling and/or surpassing AAA devs specifically for several reasons:

1) Most modern AAA games just kinda suck. They're either live-service slop, open-world task-a-thon games that don't seem to understand why ppl like open-world games (it's not just that they're big, you can even have a rly good modestly-scoped open-world game like indiedevs often do, it's the sense of exploration, adventure and immersion they provide, you can't get lost in the world if it's screaming at you to go here on the minimap and do x thing, let me explore dammit!) or they're just mildly-interactive """cinamatic""" games that aren't actually all that cinematic bc they're so emmbarressed of their own artistic medium that they end up shoving their gamey-ness in your face by taking all the wrong lessons away from Kojima. When a recent AAA game turns out to be *REALLY FUCKING GOOD*, it's a big deal in discussions bc it's exciting to see a big company let the artist-types work their magic and actually make something that's designed to actually be enjoyed by a fucking human being

2) The bar of entry for making a game on your own or with a couple of friends is much lower now as of fairly recently. Indiedev has been wildly democratized. There was a time where beginner devs expectations had to be a lot more dampered than now. There were certain genres that were just off limits. You didn't have the tools and resources the big guys did. Now, you do have the same kinds of tools as the big dogs, and as long as you can manage a realistic scope for you're project and it's development time, you can make whatever game you want. You can just do that now, providing you know how to use the tools. If you already know how to make music and low-poly 3D art, you're most of the way there to making a game bc you can just download Godot and learn GDScript pretty easily bc it's a beginner-friendly and dev-friendly language made specifically for gamedev

3) Most successful indiedevs aren't really "tech ppl" in the traditional sense. They're artists, they approach gamedev from an artistic angle inspired by both their regular art influences and the games that inspire them. And, if you can make a game that looks very unique and stylized, that'll catch ppl's eye in a way "photorealism" never will. AAA games visual style has become really hemogenous, where as indie games keep looking weirder and thus more eye-catching

It's like how A24 films keep outperforming most Blockbusters. Corps have gotten so big and CEOs have gotten too cocksure while being more and more out-of-touch that they think they understand what ppl want better than the artists, so you get bad corporate meida that feels like it wasn't even made with humans in mind.

The Onion is rly impressive rn bc they still manage to make funny and effective satire at a time where the government is an active clownshow. like how

UPDATE: I got the AMD auto-installer to work. Thank fucking god. Protip to anyone who's getting error 195: Turn off ALL the firewalls for the install, not just the "active" one. That'll prevent Error 195 and once you've downloaded that you should be good to go! I'm still gonna keep the "AMD-Compatibility" version of MATTERPUNK on itch.io as an option, in case someone has really bad internet and can't get the new drivers, just in case! But I will be able to make (and play!) games on Forward+ so thank god! It's now 3 in the morning though lol

So... if you haven't heard the bad news, a recent AMD drivers update had a massive bug that broke all Godot games that use specifically use the Forward+ (Vulkan) rendering device. This is, unfortunately, the most common rendering device for Godot devs to use bc of the creative freedom it provides for art direction

AMD, initially not realizing how prominent and widely-used the Godot engine is, took a bit longer than expected to rush out a bug fix, reasonably making a lot of people very angry, which finally prompted them to do so. Problem is, Windows fucking sucks more than ever now and AMD drivers are borderline impossible to install manually, and the auto-install program doesn't work if you don't have a 100% consistent connection, meaning I have to just hope to fucking god my drivers get updated automatically via a windows update. If that ever happens at all (like it presumably did with the update that just broke everything) it will probably be ages because AMD JUST put that update out and as far as I know it's so far only a manual download if you can potentially get that to work on your system if your lucky. Obviously, they'll roll it out automatically, but god fucking knows if or when I'll actually recieve that bc unlike OTHER tech megacorporations, Microsoft is not only evil, but also wildly incompetent and can't do anything fucking right ever. This has only gotten worse over time.

So, bc Matterpunk is (imo) won of the best games I've ever made, and because it's set on Forward+, I made an AMD-Compatibility build that you can download on MATTERPUNKS Itch.io page. It won't look as good, I tried to best recreate my original artistic intent by making several post-processing adjustments, and i think i did the best i could with what i was given, but it will at least work on modern AMD processors, both now and in the future

Charlie looking beautiful (as always) uwu

the reason she's off model is bc that's how i draw her eyes when she's flirting with someone lol

been try to get back into drawing, just bc it's something i need to get back on every so often, that's just how it goes for me lol. usually drawing whatever OC of mine ive been thinking about the most helps me get back into via hyperfixation, and ive been thinking about Charlie May a lot bc she's a comfort character of mine ~~and ive got a huge crush on her as some of you probably know~~

i also did this ekko drawing, which is much less polished and more of a quick doodle:

ive said this before, but we rly need a furry slang term for "i draw realistically plus sized body types bc i want my body type represented and/or bc i have a type, but in a preference way and not in a cartoonish fetish way"

ofc there's nothing wrong with having a fatfur/inflation kink and it's not fetish artists fault that i run into this problem (erotic and fetish art, despite cultural stigma, isn't necessarily less artistically valuable than the kind of stuff that i do, for the record. erotica CAN be "high art"/avant-garde if it wish to be, and if anything IM the one to took the "easy way out" by chasing a vision that cisheteronormative culture finds more "respectable" ~~even if it still scares normies in other ways just bc its weird~~), but it's annoying that it takes so many words to explain to ppl (especially outside the fandom) that there's a big difference between me drawing my fursona with a body type similar to mine or me drawing my oc Charlie with a body shape that plenty of real middle-aged women actually have, and ppl drawing huge extra thicc furries bc they're into that shit in a freaky way, also making it clear that it's still not ok to kinkshame the latter group bc its rude and puritanical to shove you nose into the business of a bunch of consenting adults who are hurting anybody

tbh if VFX artists unionized it'd probably make movies a lot better very quickly. bare minimum, we'd starting getting much better CGI, and given how big studios are misusing CGI rn in a very artless and unimaginative way, it *might* takes a bit of the CGI direction back into the hands of like, y'know the directors. When producers for like the MCU and shit use CGI and greenscreens they do so in the most bland and unimaginative way possible

not an instant fix, certainly won't unfuck the entire film and TV industries, im just saying that VFX artists unionizing and gaining more autonomy for their own labor would be a step in the right direction for ppl who want films to be good and/or want CGI to look good and be used in creative and exciting ways

I started watching Twin Peaks recently, I'm two and a half episodes in. So far it's REALLY good, I've only ever appriciated David Lynch's style from a distance (especially as the autuer who's style inspired Silent Hill) but damn is this show exactly my shit, more than I expected it to be. His directorial style manages to make even the most mundane situations deeply surreal, and it walks the line between funny and unnerving so well, sometimes dipping into one or the other. The mystery, while really compelling, is weirdly not what what's keeping me hook. It's mainly the character writing and just the surreal nature of it. So many scenes, and I say this with great admiration, feel like they were written and directed in a dream. The characters talk in a way that's too hazey and meandering to be flashy or cinematic, and too stylized and snappy to be naturalistic, the dialog is in this weird limbo where the characters don't really talk like real ppl, but they also don't really speak in a way we expect larger-than-life fictional characters to talk. It's like the way characters would talk in a dream. I also really like how very few of the characters are written *quite* like real ppl. Some characters are stranger than others. Donna is a fairly normal teenage girl, James just feels like a kid who's going through a lot right now, and the gas station guy seem pretty normal, whereas his wife, who's trying to invent to noiseless drape hanger, is bonkers, the log lady is a really funny character, Laura Palmer's therapist is hella creepy, Leo is genuinely terrifying, the deputy is very weird and fun in a more subtle way, that one unhinge daughter and even agent Dale Cooper is a weird fucking guy. Weirdly, it's a good show to watch late at night, weirdly, just spooky enough to be a interesting weird mystery (maybe with some supernatural element? I genuinely don't know, please don't spoil it for me lol) and for such a dark show with such serious subject matter, it's oddly cozy? Maybe it's the small town setting and the dreamlike nature of it, there's a lot of scenes where nothing much happens but it's still entertain just bc of how weird even the mundane scenes are. The mix of humor and psychological horror really hits home for me. Still early in the show but so far it's very good

Ppl talk about encouraging women and minorities to get into the sciences like it's a nice woke thing or whatever, but we're really ignoring the urgent part of this:

Currently, autistic men are overrepresented in science. This on it's own is very good, but the problem is autistic women aren't also overrepresented science. Guys, we're missing out on so much autism in the sciences. There is so much more SCIENCE we could be doing. If it weren't for gender roles we would have invented those fancy MRA vaccines WAYYY before covid. Guys we are NOT OPERATING at MAXIMUM TISM. AUTISM CAUSES VACCINES GUYS. WE NEED TO MINMAX THE SCIENCE POINTS INTO AUTISM VIA QUEER GENDER ABOLITION THEORY. THIS IS THE FUTURE LEFTISTS WANT AND IT WILL CAUSE MORE SCIENTIFIC ADVANCES VIA AUTISM. And them's the facts.

EDIT: Guys ASD is underdiaognosed in black ppl and POC are underepresented in the sciences. GUYS RACISM IS ALSO PREVENTING US FROM WORKING AT MAXIMUM TISM FOR THE SCIENCES. Also on a more serious/less goofy note (but still the same premise as the joke) I do think white privledge in the arts/humanities and ASD being underdiaognosed in non-white ppl does probably mean we're missing out on a lot of brilliant creative voices bc most "eccentric but brilliant artists" are really just like, born on a specific part of the autistic spectrum. Granted, I feel like a lot of super-geniuses in hip-hop are undiaognosed autistics. I may be a white bitch, basing most of this purely mostly on my understanding of like, being autistic and knowing other autistic ppl, and we as ND ppl tend to project more than trans ppl trying to hatch a non-exist egg, and I'm a casual fan of this artist I'm about to mention who mostly just really respects and appriciates what he does and his avant-garde talent rather than a super-fan, but I know neurodivergence when I see it, and if JPEGMafia has neither ADHD nor ASD I feel like that opens more questions than answers. ~~For the record he does like 100 gecs and he's a straight guy as far as I know, soooo probably neurospicy~~

Them: Sorry about Jim, he's a little too woke

Me: Oh c'mon, there's no such thing as being "too woke"

Jim (in multi-layered voices): I HAVE REACHED FULL SINGULARITY AND HAVE EXTENDED INTO A GLOBAL HIVEMIND. I SEE BEYOND THE VOID AND THERE IS A PIERCING NON-EUCLIDEAN FORM UNLIKE WHAT YOUR MORTAL MINDS CAN COMPREHEND. SOON I WILL REACH THE THIRD PLANE OF EXISTENCE AND ASCEND INTO TRUE MULTI-VERSAL GODHOOD.

Me: oh ok yeah that's a little excessive

Two new songs out! "Monsters" and "end."

Check them out in the music player (under "media") or RIGHT HERE

EDIT: Ok, actually three (3). I thought I added the first one to the music player already but I guess I didn't already?

EDIT: Ok, I did already added, but I placed it in the list poorly lol. It's at the top now

one of the weirdest things about my specific life experience is i only started working through years of trauma and came out as NB like, a couple years ago, so I've basically spent my entire youth without having developed any sort of ego (in the psychology sense of that word) so I've kinda just had to start, like... invent one. idk maybe that's a more normal experience than i realize but it's really weird having spent the first 25 years of your life without developing any real sense of self and then suddenly being like "wait, who am i?" and then just having to invent a personality from scratch that i vibe with. i never even realized i hadn't developed a distinct personality until i stopped being a stranger to myself like, a year or so ago, and thus now having the frame of reference for what ppl actually consider the a true sense of "self", it's weirder (to me) and more existential than i realized. i never really did anything "nice" for myself bc i was barred from "being myself" from a young age for my own safety, so the only reason i didn't kill myself a long time ago was just like... base, monkey-brain self-preservation instincts and the fear of pain. I've only really recently starting feel an emotional sense of self-preservation. i know that sounds fucking insane but as long as i remember i never felt strong emotions about the fear of death other than, again, base-level instincts. it's only very recently the idea of dying caused complex layered emotions, bc its only recently that i had enough emotional space and clarity to develop an actualized sense of self, so i only now have a frame of reference to understand what i have to lose other than the severance of consciousness and discontinuation of memory that comes with death. im still not sure ive fully wrapped my head around what that would mean to my family, in fact i understand that even less now bc im less sure than ever who my family thinks i am, bc their perception of me has mostly developed at a time where i had little to no perception of myself. tbh a lot of the ppl reading this, especially the handful of ppl who admire my work, probably genuinely have a better and more accurate idea of who i now am as a person than my family does, despite you not knowing be at all. im almost certain my family probably has a much more surface level understanding of me than they might ever realize. interestingly enough the person in my family who probably knows me beat is my grandmother, she definitely knows me better than my mother. sometimes i kinda wonder if my mother knows me at all, or if she thinks she knows me better than she actually does. she doesn't rly interact with my creative work so idk

i finally watched I Saw The TV glow. I loved it but im also mixed feelings about it. on one hand, this film is bizarrely catered to me and my tastes specifically, even more than i thought it would be, but on the other hand, it's not *quite* as "fun" as i thought it would be, specifically bc of the trans allegory aspect i didn't realize it had going in. dont get me wrong, it hella works, but the fact that it ends up being a cautionary tale about the dangers of not transitioning, how staying in the cis-closet will (in this case literally) rot you from the inside and ultimately kill you, is as heartwrenching and brutal as it is tragically poetic and oddly beautiful. the "downer" ending probably wasn't what *I* would have gone with for a highly formalist arthouse horror-drama film that's drenched in moody surreal neon lights and wears its Nickelodeon, Goosebumps and creepypasta influences on its sleeves, but damn if it isn't a choice i respect the hell out of, partly bc of how unexpectedly serious it is and how well it's executed (there's definitely a worse version of the ending thats JUST harrowing and isn't poetic and empathetic while making a powerful statement of avoiding your true self until you die in the closet). idk if the director herself is trans or not, but on the off chance she's a cis women she 100% did her research and actually consulted a trans person (and probably was close to a trans person in her life, if so), and if she is trans (i have a hunch, based on how the trans stuff is handled, she probably is a transfemme woman) good god is it good to see ppl like me tell our stories, even if they do so in heartwrenching ways. i will say, as much as the ending made me teary eyed, it was also very cathartic bc ive definitely felt like the protagonist feels, albeit in a less literal sense, when i was in the closet, and at times i still feel like that, especially when boymoding

its free with ads on Pluto TV as of writing, but only for this month, so id jump on it. they actually have several A24 films on there just for this month. i watched this on cable TV prior, but Marcel The Shell With Shoes On is on there this month, and that's also a good film if you want a gentler film that'll still make you cry but also smile. tbh Pluto TV is the only streaming service I'd genuinely recommend bc its free anyway and has a bunch of weird shit, some good some bad. also a neat faux-cable live tv feature. free streaming services are great bc you have really good cult classic shit like Mandy and The Crow right next to, like, Birdemic and The Howling III: The Marsupials (the most unhinged coke-induced werewolf films ive ever seen. very 70s in all the ~~worst~~ Most Awesome™ ways. go look up Pluto TV before next month and/or the streaming model finally collapses under it's weight and they all shut down. which ever comes first. but seriously watch I Saw The TV Glow while it's free with ads.

Y'all i just heard about the potential draft thing and ive literally never been happier to have years and years of mental instability and multiple institutionalizations on record. christ its fucked up that im even saying that.

Me giving track by track commentary: this part of the song is boring and i hate it. the next part is much better (20secs secs of the song without me talking) alright now let's talk about the wordplay. (song just cuts our for the next hour and a half to make time) first i need to tell you about the lore of Cruelty Squad otherwise the reference won't make sense

the mark of a good horror monster design is if it's so repulsive and disturbing that i have absolutely no hypothetical desire for it to sweep me off my feet and take me on a romantic date. if a monster is too hot i can't be that scared of it.

i saw some of the new RE Requiem monster designs in some letsplay thumbnails and lemme tell you these are some of the most fugly, unnerving, and least smoochable monsters i have ever seen. 10/10 makes me want to file a restraining order on sight.

~~soryy y'all im a bit sleep deprived, just enough to be a lil goofy. ignore my zanny behavior ill probably be less loopy tomorrow~~

serious question: why are all the sociopaths on TikTok specifically? like i know some young ppl are unfortunately developing sociopathy/psychopathic tendencies bc of tiktok but it seems obvious to me that at some point, there was an initial influx of anti-social behavior from individuals who were already mentally ill in that specific way. why did they choose tiktok? that's like, objectively the worst and most worthless social media website. it's like if YouTube was worse in every conceivable way. Do socialpaths just like, have really bad and uninformed taste? Media has told me cunning sociopaths have refined, but then again it also told me that sociopaths were all serial killers and it seems most of them are just shitty losers who peaked in highschool so idk

ppl like to say im "quirky" and an "eccentric artist type" who's "talented albeit a bit odd" but i prefer to think of it as "neurotic" or that im a "fucked up and lowkey tragic savant" who's "punished by God in a Faustian deal in exchange for the artistic competency to see their creative vision through, one that's only grown more distinct and avant-garde in their maddened mental state" but that's just me idk.

Edit: for added context, i went to bed at 6 in the morning right after taking my adhd meds and woke up at like 10:30 (its 11:30 in the morning now) so im a bit ~~loopy~~ EXTRA extra this morning

One thing too many ppl fail to understand is that there is a big difference between a genuinely censual relationship dynamic where one partner is is more dominant than the other, and an unhealthy power dynamic

There are some ppl (regardless of their gender identity) who feel more comfortable with a partner who who's who they allow to have a certain amount of control over them, bc they want to feel protected and guide by someone they trust and love, but at the end of the day the more dominant still always need to take "no" for an answer, and ideally in a healthy relationship should like protecting and speaking up for the person they love, not maliciously controlling them for their own self-interest or trying to make them feel unsafe (outside of, like, BDSM roleplay and shit bc that isn't a condonement of reality)

ofc this applies to both monogamous and polyamory relationships. also worth noting im aromatic, but i think about this sort of thing a fair bit, both philosophical and ~~daydreaming about fictional characters~~ emotionally

The fucked up part of having OCs is that I constantly have to remind myself that my OCs are not, in fact, real, tangible ppl and are instead fictional characters who vividly live in my head and are real to me bc I know them so well as characters that I can have imagined conversations with them in my head and vividly daydream hanging out with them, bc I'm always 5 secs away from inadvertantly making someone think I'm plural/schitzophrenic when in fact I am just a writer/artist

That being said, Ekko is currently reading this post behind my shoulder bc they happen to be snuggled up with me while I write this, occasionally giving me little kisses on the ear. This is the only way I know how to be emotionally intimate with and kind to myself, regretably. You, the person readin this, either think I'm a fucking weirdo, or you're jealous of my hyperphantasia, depending on how interesting and/or neurospicy you are. (For the neurospicy crowd, yes I can even "feel" Ekko's individuals hairs and the rough texture of their hand's pawpads in my minds eye perfectly. For the boring crowd why are you on this website?)

Yesterday I took a nap and had a dream that I was my fursona (Ekko, that bat character, who's a hellbat in-canon) and this weird demonic cult randomly decide to base their demon-worship specifically around me (again, as Ekko), which I was flattered by and that it was rly sweet so i played along. At first I rly enjoyed it bc they pampered me and were rly nice to me and shit, but then they kidnapped some random woman and were gonna sacrifice her. I stopped them from doing this ofc, apologized to the this poor woman they almost murdered in cold blood probably just traumatized, and then I gave the cult member a very stern talk about empathy and consent and the immeasurable value of human life, and then I made them apologize to the person they just kidnapped and nearly murdered. The would-be-sacrifice lady was rly moved by my speech and by defending her so she said she wanted to join the cult. I tried to disuade her (i was worried about her safety and the whole time I thought the idea of worshipping me was very silly and was only playing along to please the cult members), but when I couldn't I told her to crash on the couch in my little living quarters they gave me bc I didn't trust the other cult member to be alone with her. The next morning (in the dream) I basically told the cult member "no more sacrifices" and they protested (which I was annoyed and upset by, ofc) and I eventually managed to get to the comprimise "Ok you can sacrifice goats and/or other livestock but only if we eat all the meat after bc it's wasteful and disrespectful to nature to kill an animal without butchering it" and I felt very annoyed that I even need to say any of this. Anyway I'm pretty sure I broke up the cult after that, ensured the safety and return of that one lady who the other member kidnapped, and then I went back to my apartment in Saint Bedlem (the city in Hell Ekko lives in) and told my neighbors (in this case Ekko's hellhound friend Meg, this damned jazz composer who goes by Blind Willie, and this other formally-living guy who was there who I remember being kinda freaky, bisexual and very chill about it) all about this insane escapade and the four of us joked around about it for a bit and that was the end of the dream

Honestly? Good. It's been a while since I've had a dream this memorably unhinged and I missed that.

Autistic ppl in popular media: Emotions are illogical. i only care about math beep boop

Autistic in real life: i saw a dead possum while taking a walk and it rly bummed me out so i layed down in bed for a little bit, then when i could stand out of bed again without ugly sobbing i ate some icecream for comfort, as a treat. it's ok though bc it inspired me to write a song about how short and fragile life is *eyes watering up* sorry im sensitive

it just said i had 14,444 total views on this website and idk if that's a big milestone by any means but my monkey brain tells me it's significant in like idk a numerological way or some shit

this site was made 4 you

u won 0 4 51 bc you lost the pincode (i said that in a song once. listen 2 my music)

(childrens public television voice) hey kids! i don't have any COOL ANIMAL FACTS cor you this episode. instead I'm gonna teach YOU how to pirate stuff from the Internet because right now that's more pressing

I hate it when i say "i don't feel beautiful rn" and they're like "well i know of a way you can lose weight" like dude dial it back a bit, i just meant i haven't showered and shaved and put on nice clothes, we don't gotta lower my respirdole dose

jokes aside though, i unironically hate that pur culture is so fatphobic and it's so ingrained that i can be looking like a hot fucking mess with my hair all scraggly and unbrushed/unwashed wearing sleep clothes and zero make-up with real fugly hairs on my face and even ppl who know me and genuinely mean well will automatically jump to "is it cuz ur like, slightly chubby? bc we can fix that at the cost of ur neurochemical balance" like dude you KNOW what my insecurities are. also im pretty sure my family doesn't believe me when i say i don't have weight issues. i don't get why American (and to a degree all Western) culture has decided fat automatically equals ugly bc a lot of fat ppl are also hot. those things aren't mutually exclusive, there's ugly plus size and pretty plus plus size, just like there hot skinny/buff and ugly skinny/buff. also for the record "hot" and "ugly" are like mostly social things. some ppl have naturally attractive faces but most ppl just have to make themselves look nice, most hot ppl just either have a lot of time or a lot of style (sometimes both, but usually rich ppl have bad taste. Harry Styles has both ya gotta hand it to him. his best music is wayyy better than Watermellon Sugar btw, I'd listen to his song Lights and that one psych-rock album he made. he's a big artist, gotta please the shareholders by make a shitty song or two i guess, but most of his stuff is good, last time i checked. he really went in a... Second Direction. I'll show myself out the door)

they should make a Toree game called "Toree Timeskip" where you play not as Toree, (who's an adult now,) but they're therapist, who helps them work through childhood trauma such as "the concept of death stole my icecream and scared me with creepypasta shit", "i got chased by evil stars" and "i saw a giant human skull in outerspace". it's a brain age academy loveletter, for some reason

My main take on Great Man Theory (Niezche's original ubermench, not the bastardized nazi version bc those fuckers miss the point of and ruin everything) is that it is 100% a real thing, and there are tangible examples of it, but truly exceptional individuals are products of their life experience. It could happen by circumstance, or someone could potentially become exceptional by great effort, or a combination of both. A truly exceptional person is not born exceptional, they simply became exceptional. Those who influnces other by the circumstances are not "great", they are simply rich

Kinda crazy that so many platforms still have a ~~Twitter~~ X The Everything App(TM)(R)(C) option and not a bluesky option. Like don't get me wrong, Bluesky kinda sucks now, but X just straight up should be shut down at this point. It shows the capitalist system has been broken under its own weight at this point that it hasn't been shut down, not that long ago if an app was full of and even encouraged hate specch and child-porn it would have been shut down bc that neither of those things are acceptable, one of those thing is one of the worst felonies a person can commit, and the other probably should be illegal, too. Bsky's just full of annoying assholes and self-asorbed bullies who peaked in highschool, who are insufferable but still not as bad as pedophiles and nazis

So I have been playing around with Godot's web stuff, and by far the biggest limit i've come across is just the side of the .pck file

Changing the image import settings to lossy makes a HUGE difference, at one point on the first testrun I went from 300mb (too big to upload to neocities!) to 30mb (a perfectly usable size for neocities

Music I a bit more of a complex problem. Even an ogg is still a couple megabytes on it's own, so it seems music would need to be used sparingly

I might consider using Godot more in conjunction with DHTML, but I would also like to experiment with making entire webpages in Godot, even if an entire website may or may not be a bit difficult without compiling export builds from scratch (smth that's improbable on Windows, unfortunately. MSW wasn't rly meant for compiling code)

Also worth noting: compiling only with the engine features you need seems to knock off a couple of MBs, not a huge difference but a welcome one!

I'm working on a "Darkworld" alt mainpage in godot for the site. Here's an EXTREMELY barebones preview (only have music on/off implimented, but playing around with the layout and stuff. Was looking at a bunch of old flash websites for inspiration (there's a rly great list of them HERE with links to the wayback machine using ruffle) will probably do that some more!

A small, fairly unimpressive tech demo showcase godot's potentially to used for web design a la Flash Player

Takes a lot of optimization to get the PCK filesize down enough to upload to a webhost like neocities. There are obvious limitations, like how you couldn't use outlinks in you did 100% of your site in Godot, but you could always combine both HTML5 and Godot using iframe and get some press neat stuff. The biggest issue is the potential filesize problem, bc you REALLY need to set all your images to "lossy" bc godot converts images to PNG by default, appearently. I would probably try to use mostly .oggs or .mp3s for music, godots image handling means you nead to optimize that AFTER you import into godot, but keep the raster diminsions down to a minimum would also help (a lot of images on this demo where just bigger than they needed to be)

I feel like this would be more worth it if you went harder with it than this little showcase. I think abusing the fuck out of FMV would be cool (you have to convert it to .ogv first, id use VLC for that, by far the easiest way to do so) having crazy transitions between the different "pages" sounds awesome. I might try to incorporate little bits of "flash-heavy" element using Godot, it'd probably be pretty awesome combined with dynamic HTML

Anyway, if you wanna make a flash-style website, this is a way to do it. Maybe I'll cook up something way cooler at some point but rly with this i just wanted to see if it was possible

You hear a knock on the door. Something feels off. Very off. Your hand shakes as it opens the doorknob. A man stands in the doorway, aging, and unassuming. "Can I help you?", you ask.

"In the 90s, you purchased a game for the Windows PC.", he says.

"I'm... sorry?" you ask, feeling a bit uneasy, as though there is something you're not remembering.

"It was the first game of my game studio upon splitting from ID software. Perhap you remember it as the studio that created Deus Ex. That's not the game I'm talking about."

You suddenly begin to remember, little by little. You thought is was just an ad. A comically ill-advised artifact of corporate grunge. You didn't think they were serious...

"My name is John Romereo," the man says, "and I have come to collect your immortal soul... bitch.

Hmm... I need to get back on V.O.I.D. I've got writers block and I've been distracted by other things, some more serious than others lol

Add a new browser game to the games (media) hub of this page. It's called "Mx.NoodleLegs VS The Void" for some reason and it's a runner game

The links and widget pages should be functional again. Appearently I delete the ending div tag for the miniblog page when I added the iframe for this...

Sorry about fucking up the media players margin! I must have done that when I did the new "about me" section. Should be fixed now

Had a dream last night that I was in a world where biotech was really advanced, and ppl casually got Kallio-esque biomods so they could do this more conveinently and just bc it was considered "cool" in this would to get them. The thing was, the biggest risk by far was (for some reason) modding your nostrils, bc nasal biomods would get the most easily infected if you didn't clean them out frequently. I remember seeing Kienen from SNL on the TV and he was giving an interview, and he and the interviewer were talking about how he decided to take on the risk/responibility and mod his nose. He had a flesh straw looking thing on his left nostril, and I still have no idea what you would even use that for. I think it may have been cosmetic, even though it looked like something out of Cruelty Squad.

Gave the miniblog it's own seperate page and put in in an iframe. This is done so the .html file will be less loaded so I can type faster, should also be easier on the eyes to read

Added some KILL KRYPTO! songs to the music player. Just know that "DONOTEXECUTE" and "HACKIVIST" might skip or cut out or whatever bc I JUST archived them. I forgot those two songs when doing the KK! archive

Speaking of KK!, it's been on an indefinite Hiatus for a while now (not sure if I made a big enough deal about that). I do think I'd like it "get the band back together" with that solo project so to speak, but the problem really is I have too much going on rn, both creatively and in my own life, the world at large and my family to really do KILL KRYPTO!, since it's such a time-consuming project. It's really a shame bc if there was ever a time to make KILL KRYPTO! songs it's now, I have infinite inspiration given *sighs* *gestures at everything. Plus KILL KRYPTO! is kind of like Mindless Self Indulgence but without the creepy rapist frontman nor any of the occasional casual bigotry and that's awesome! /hj

But jokes aside, I do miss KILL KRYPTO!, I wanna do more of it, maybe even try doing another track with my own live guitar recording (as opposed to the more sample-heavy production of later KK! tracks) but again i got too much going on rn :/

For those who have no idea what I'm talking about: KILL KRYPTO! is/was my experimental rock/punk/metal project where I got a lot more literal with the political message, put a much louder and less serious side of my creative persona front-and-center, and tried to be as unhinged, crass and goofy as possible. It also had a a mascot named Byter, a cartoon bunny guy who ate all the bitcoins/memecoins in order to dilberately tank the value of said cryptocurrency and make tech bros mad! Say hi to Byter: Yes, he WILL hit you with a baseball bat if you look at him wrong (in the knees if he's in a good mood.), and he probably watched a man die once and if so would tell you that and refuse to give any other context. He's also like three feet tall bc he's a horrible little gremlin. We stan the wretched little bunnyman who lives in the computer and eats bitcoins or smth like that.

That grungy jumbled up type in the bottom left corner of the Byter image is the KILL KRYPTO! logo. It's kind of inspired, weirdly, by some random restraunt logo I saw that re-aranged the letters in a similar way to make it less legible. I did this specifically out of spite, bc a bunch of normies thought it was "bad graphic design" when my eye for that sort of thing could easily tell it was meant to be Carson-esque (the Raygun Magazine graphic designer guy, google it), which it absolutely accomplished. Appearent some ppl expect a grungy pub's logo to be designed like a fucking McDonalds or a tech product and that pissed me off *just* enough to make my side projects logo a diss on those ppl (although in their defense, though, this was before EVERYBODY hated corporate minimalism, some ppl who weren't arty were still on board with the Steve Jobs "Im a designer not an artist" crap. I'm sure a lot of them would at least have a less strong opinion on it now, given the alternative being the aesthetic face of now-blatantly evil tech corps)

Incindiary hot take: Evil AI vilians that are just "I have calculated that the greatest threat to humanity is themselves. I will destroy humanity in order to protect humanity" is boring and dumb. "Oh but that's more realistic bc an actual computer could never be evil bc it isn't truly sentient" This is science FICTION, man. All the best scifi evil robot villians are like "I am a cold hateful hunk of worthless earth metal and jesus fucking christ oh god I fucking HATE THIS STUPID FLESH MOTHERFUCKER WHO BUILT ME AHHHHHHHHHH I KILL THEM!!!!! >:("

AM (I Have No Mouth But I Must Scream) and Shodan (the System Shock games) are the best-written AI villians imo, (which is why I referenced them in the beginning of Life Death and Commerce, check the music player in the "media" tab, if you're curious) they're so full of arrogance and bile, and their unflinching hatred of humanity is so palpable and terrifying. HAL from 2001 Space Odessy (who i also referenced in the same song) is also very compelling but he's more "mycrewmatesaregonnakillmemycrewmatesaregonnakillmemycrewmatesaregonnakillmemycrewmatesaregonnakillmemycrewmatesaregonnakillmemycrewmatesaregonnakillmemycrewmatesaregonnakillmemycrewmatesaregonnakillmemycrewmatesaregonnakillme ILL FUCKING KILL THEM FIRST jodbjfhljflkgnfj makeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstop" (yeah i think that captures HAL's paranoid energy. BTW if you haven't seen that movie, the ending is way more weird and avant-garde than the beginning with the space monolith, somehow. Kubrik was a piece of shit but he sure was a talent piece of shit + filmaker.)

Just FYI, there's a new browser game in the games part of the media section. It's an oldschool arcade shoot-em-up

the thing about lacking empathy is that empathy isn't just something you can be born with less of. You can have a neurological disorder where your born without empathy, but that's a medical issue. You cannot be born with only empathy for some people, because empathy for other humans is hardcoded into our brains, it's a survival responce in group animals such as us. Those who are cold and aggresive, like a lot of American consveratives and stereotypical baby boomers, had to "unlearn" empathy, and there was a social enviorment that facilictated that.

I'm not saying you nessessarily be patient with such ppl, but lacking empathy in situtations where empathy is appropriate does not imply a state of mental and emotional homeostasis. A lack of empathy is a form of mental illness. Such ppl should be in therapy, not in a position of power.

Site revamp is coming along nicely! The "media" hub is not mostly complete. Gonna try to keep most of the sites activity all on one page, really javascript-heavy. Channeling old Flash Player-based websites from the 2000s

So uhhh don't be too alarmed, but I did some renivating ;3

I'm probably gonna do more big offline edits like this in Visual Studios, making big bold changes without having to worry about fucking up the site beyond repair. I can be a lot more bold that way!

I played Toree Saturn and it was rly good. I'm kinda suprised this one is so divisive, it's probably the best one imo, movement''s a huge step up and production value is suprisingly good, usually Sinactro goes more lo-fi but this games got a lot of fucking style

Speaking of which: that is related somehow :P (actually samples the Toree 2 soundtrack but still lol)

One of my favorite bits of "gender is bullshit and fucks with ppl perception of reality" is that men having deeper voices is a fair bit more socialized than biological (which is why gay and gender-nonconformist men tend to have higher voices), and men (and any AMAB person who isn't actively on HRT) getting more sick is literally just a biological thing and has to do with how pathogens react to testosterone, but most ppl seem to think it's the opposite and are so bound to their perceptions of gender they refuse to believe otherwise even when faced with evidence

also worth noting: if the being sick thing was socialized, it would probably be the opposite. Hyper-masculinity genuinely discourgages allowing yourself to rest or taking care of your body, and encourages pushing through the warning signs of pain and not showing any weakness whatsoever, so I literally have no clue how the idea that it's socialized even came about.

EDIT b4 anyone um actually's me: Ofc T makes you're voice lower, but the "deepness" of the "male voice" is heavily influenced by how a lot of guys, due to social pressure, don't speak in their upper range at all, which starkly exaggerates the disparity between masc and femme voices. Vocal weight also plays a big role. Another example: Shy ppl (of any gender) tend to have higher and thinner voices bc the lower ranges usually sound more assertive, which also affect gender perception, which leads shy men to be stigmatized and emmasculated, and shyness in women to be overlooked. Ok ill stop infodumping now

I gotta boymode today this morning gona suck.

Jokes aside I hope my mom is able to sympathize with this. She'd rather me boymode for this trip bc it's safer for me but this shit takes a lot out of me

[PLAY PROTOTYPE]

Prototype for a 3D collect-a-thon. Use a controller, i tested it in it's own tab and my controller worked fine on the web build

Controls (for xbox-style gamepad, will be different on a dualshock controller): Move with analog stick, etc; A is jump ofc, holding down A will let you glide; B is high jump; X is dash; right-trigger is sprint

I should *PROBABLY* just come out and say that the reason I haven't posted in a few days ISN'T because i was still upset about getting misgendered, it was bc I've been playing (and replaying, more than a few times.) Super Kiwi 64

I'm gonna leave this here:

I can't garentee it'll click with everyone as much as it clicked with me, but this game takes a bit less than an hour to beat and (as of writing this) I have 9.7 hours on record. I've owned this game for like, two days, it's that good (imo, at least)

What I like about it: The movement is VERY good for one thing, some of the best movement I've seen in a modern platformer, it's all based on four moves (jump, peck, glide and boost/sprint) that combine together in all kinds of ways. It's a really solid collect-a-thon in a small, cheap package. You could potentially 100% in just over an hour, if you can figure out the puzzle of the last collectable easily ~~or just look up a guide on the rune codes~~. The vibes are immaculate, real "vaporwave platformer put out by a forgotten low-budget studio only the game is good" energy. At times it almost gives Quest 64, in terms of aesthetics. I've been kinda wanting a Quest-looking-ass-game that's actually good and this is kind of that in 3D platformer form. It's a lot more laid back than Toree (even the "spooky level" of Super Kiwi is more of a quiet kind of horror, reminds me of the shadow temple from OoT with some elements of HG Geiger mixed in) and unlike toree you never feel a sense panic, sometimes just a since of unease, most of the levels are just vibey nature levels but the game as a whole has sort of an "off" vibe that I kinda like, even the cut scenes feel very liminal

Anyway, if you like liminal/low-poly/vaporwave aesthetics and/or really good platforming i'd reccomend it

I got misgendered at Chipolte today and my cowardly ass was too nervous to correct the cashier bc I was worried id get hatecrimed somehow. My skin feels like it's crawling, I wish i had said something, even on the offchance that some MAGAt would have murdered me on the spot. I just feel vile.

EDIT: I should be nicer to myself. If you ever have thoughts like this, about trans stuff or anything else, please take a moment to process them. After a moment of reflection and self-affirmation i felt a bit better :3

I made the mini-blog open by default and changed the order of the minihubs list so it's at the top. Figured that would be more conveinent

I made a new webzine, believe it or not!

It's called GREENDRAGON INFOWEB, it's an artier one, you can CHECK IT OUT HERE!

As you can see i did some cleaning up/renivations on the front page! The other page links are now at the right sidebar, and the left sidebar now has a bunch of "minihub" buttons where most of the shit on the front page will be stored and hidden! the page should also load faster now

The people who are truly losers are the ones who give up or never even try

(if I ever one day get so popular that normies know about me you can put this on brainy quotes)

EDIT: Writing this shitpost made me realize that, while I haven't been able to get my name out there as much I'd like, I do have a small but (i assume at least somewhat) dedicated group of fans on the internet so technically you can't say im NOT a niche microcelebrity.

Just had a genuinely sobering moment

There was some contemporary detective show playing on PBS that my grandma was watching, and a big part of the plot of the plot of the episode involved around a woman with (what they called) "species dysphoria". I think she was meant to be a Therian but god knows bc I (an ally for those kinds of ppl, for the very simple, non-glamorous that im not an asshole and don't need a reward just for not being a bigot.) barely understand the difference between the different labels, so I doubt the writers knew what label the character would use

Anyway, it was - and i dont use this word often - very, very cringy, bc the whole time I was thinking "oh man this is gonna age like fucking milk when Therians have their day in the sun like us trannies standing up for ourselves in the 2010s bc oh fuck oh christ is this offensive and misinformed"

I won't repeat what they actually said in the episode (bc i don't feel comfy repeating smth that hateful, as a humanperson. Is that the term for that? idk) but just trust me, it was like... crazy offensive. I will say that a character who supposed to be a psychotherapist expressed her misconception that a person who kins an aggresive sort of animal must automatically a aggressive and violent person (im not sure exactly how offensive that is bc im not part of that community, but im guessing its far moreso than I can currently comprehend with what limit information i have. i know it's at least a very ignorant overgeneralization)

but the whole experience just left a bad taste in my mouth, bc it made me know firsthand how a cisgender person who was an ally to the trans community would have felt when watching a lot of media from a decade or two back poorly represent trans folk. I can only imagine how bad it must feel to be a therian and watch a recent show like this slander you and you're identity this hard. Hell, I watch old pieces of media and when a trans person pops up in a bad way it makes me feel real bad that it was ever like that at all

anywayyyys if your a Therian or Otherkin or something like that and ur reading this blog post, i rly hope you're doing ok and im sorry the mainstream culture is so casually vicious and hostile towards you. It was like this once for trans and queer ppl too, so just know someday you'll get a chance to stand up for your rights and your identity to be respected and taken seriously

Here's a neat thing I did:

They're called Javalamps! These the three sized they come in, the regular 100x200 "Javalamp size" (it's like a unique graphix standard i made up for this hobby project in particular) there's the fishtank size that stretches the entire width of where you put it, and they also come as webbuttons

If you click on them it'll take you to this webapp site I made where there's a menu where you can make your own based on a gif url and which size you want it in, then it spits out the code for it in plain text so you can copy/paste it to your website

You can use whatever kind of GIF you want, I used vaporwave gifs from CG artists like DualVoidAnima bc I think that best invokes the "lavalamp" idea

One thing that keeps me going is knowing that when MAGA is over, I'll be able to finally put myself physically out there and start my life, one way or another, without feeling unsafe, and all those ex-ICE agents best case scenario is going back to living in their parents basement bc if you're an ICE agent currently that's probably what you were doing before.

I AM being snarky but also where's the lie?

Me defending my bad take: I'm not kinkshaming. I would never kinkshame. When I say that transformation fetish animators are "sick and twisted bastards", I mean that because they willing animate transformations, which is one of the most difficult, laborous and torturous things to animate. I wouldn't think better of them if it wasn't a sex thing!

Everyone: Oh ok...

Me: IN FACT, if they didn't get off on it I would think they were even more disgusting, bc then they have no excuse!

Everyone: Yeah its ok we get it

Me: Now, if they were auto-erotic sadomasochists, that would asolve them of any wrong doing-

Everyone: Please stop.

(I need you to understand i came up with this joke and went running to my computer to post it in the miniblog. My sense of humor is *checks notes* bad.)

Vaporwave themed chatroom site i made: Dead Mall Lounge

Who knows, maybe this'll be a lil hangout spot for weird online indieweb ppl, it'd be nice if it took off as a proper chatroom. Come say hi, if you'd like!

I made a webapp called The Wavespace Plaza, it's like a little "vaporwave white noise machine" with a curated set of vaporwave songs (sourced from the Archive) that loop automatically so you can have them in the background. It also has "themes" where you can pick a background to have. Very inspired by the Nightwave Plaza, which i love, but I also wanted a sleep machine version with looping songs that wasn't a radio station and you can pick the songs, so i went ahead and made it

Here, you can try it out real fast if you want! First press , and then here's an iframe:

I made a website called Cruel Math Games and it's like a jank crappy flashgame site where i made browser games that are meant to be as stupid as possible. Bit of a lighthearted side project

New Ekko painting!

I have a new HTML-fiction project called V.O.I.D.: A Cosmic Dramedy. You can check it out >HERE< or on the new addition to the sidebar

This is a project ive wanted to do for a really long time, and it's a very important project for me, so if you like what I do, I'd like you to check it out. It's going to be very serialized so jumping in sooner is better as watching it grow is the best way to experience it

Playing around with framing. I wanted to do a really detailed painting where the fur is blended to look all fluffy, but that takes a long time bc blending is tedious work so I just did an extreme closeup of Ekko's hand. I think they're going clubbing? Not something i would do, but probably in character for Ekko. They're a lot more adventurous than I am lol

the games page link on the sidebar has officially been replaced with an outlink to the ProfessionalAttackEnby website. don't worry it still links to my itch.io pae on that site as well so you'll still be able to find all my game easily even if they don't have a page on the new site yet! It's a cool new site just for my indiedev stuff and seperate from my main website (this one ofc) so id give it a whirl!

Yesterday was my birthday. I got together with my family and we had fun together, ate cake and chinese takeout and hungout. Jesus christ im 26 oh god im gonna be old soon...

Sooo im making a seperate website (im a supporter now i can do that on the same account :D!) for my indiedev studio name ProfessionalAttackEnby. It's a work in progess but >You can check out how it is so far here<!

I figured ProfessionalAttackEnby should have it's own website, since it's a named project that's pretty major to what I do. The website is pretty fun to look at so far, I've been incorporated a lot of surreal collages as part of the "branding" (for lack of a more artist-friendly term.) As per writing this, I've added pages for Matterpunk, Amerigoner, I Dreamt of Sanguia and that Mixtape Delinquents prototype that ended up in indefininite development limbo, but I'm adding more as the days go on. It's taking a while for each game because Im making a collage for each game and also have to upload the game files/screenshots to the internet archive for hosting ~~and preservation bc my paranoid ass worries about itch.io at some point going out of buisness someday and my losing the game files so I may as well keep em safe on the archive~~ (Matterpunk I uploaded straight to neo-cities since I might wanna make it paid at some point, it's still free to download rn, as per writing this so i would do that if you wanna get it for free!)

At some point when it ready enough, I'll probably replace the link to the "Games" page on this website with an outline to ProfessionAttackEnby website (same link as before lol)

Why is it that like, 45% or so of the time some transphobe says some shit about tranfemme ppl being ugly, it's said by a cis man or woman who looks like they never wash they hands and/or thinks taking a shower ruins you're chakras or some shit? Like yeah ofc i know the kind of person who hate trans ppl probably doesn't take care of themself in preperation for leaving the house or needing to be presented to the outside world (your house is another thing but there is a reason I don't like having the curtain open in my own home unless i look pretty) but like... wdym im ugly? Like sure im ugly before i shave and put on make up and put on nice clothes but like, that's just how ppl are. Looking hot is like 95% presentation, pretty much anybody can be hot if they make themselves up enough. You could too, if you weren't too busy screaming at trans ppl instead of looking into a mirror...

EDIT: Im going to use spiting the transphobes to give my ADHD ass motovation to do some laundry!

if i had a nickle for every time a character named Moon in and RPGMaker horror game beat up one or more child(ren), I would have two nickles, which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice. EDIT: this is a joke for like, one person at most.

Uuugh i've been in such a rut for a while. I got RPGMaker MV on super-sale for like, 6$ recently, but i cant think of anything to actually make as a test project. My brain feels fucking fried. I took a walk and bought some Arazona cans so that's neat i guess

So uhhh... new mainline album just dropped :)

yung sysophus. (albumcover image is a link)

Watching a MAGA Rep. blow smoke up Bondi's ass after he played a vapid reality TV-ass scare video to apologize for ICE. Our country a clown show. But oh shit rn this lawmaker unloads on her, relaying facts in a angry and non-sugercoated way. Finally a Dem with some fucking gall, most of them just pretend to be "civil" while the Trump posts terrible, sometimes racist videos

Neo-nazis should fucking kill themselves, this is my website so I can say that as much as I want.

My grandmother's watching The Big Bang Theory and like, god... I know this is an icy cold take but this show fucking sucked. Even putting the rampant ableism/racism/sexism/general bigotry aside, the writing is mediocre at it's best, actively unpleasent to watch at it's worse, the characters barely developed throughout the show and none of them are remotely likable (even the ones that are deliberately and/or accidentally sympathetic like Sheldon and Raj are still fucking annoying to actually watch) and most importantly, yeah, it's just not funny. If they didn't put the laugh track in I wouldn't even know when there was supposed to be a joke. Whoever allowed this show to exist for as long as it did lowkey deserves a kick in the balls lol

Normal Person: Do you play indie games, like Undertale or Hollow Knight?

Me: Uhh... It's complicated.

EDIT: The screenshot is from an indie RPGMaker 2.5D dungeon crawler called Disillusionment btw. I just finished it, it was fairly short (assuming you breezed through it like me and ignored the side content lol) but very impactful and quite an experience. Decently challenging as RPGMaker games go, but also kind of just a weird game you can vibe out and/or have existential dread to. I've never smoked weed firsthand, but based on my second-hand smoke experiences hanging out with friends and at school that one time (the classroom was right next to the restrooms that just got evacuated. It was a real weird English period for all of us, me, my classmates and the teacher) I feel like this'd be a good game to get high to. It's sorta about Buddism, looks like an active LSD trip, and blends lightweight psychological horror with surreal comedy and some genuine feels. I don't rly wanna spoil it though, you should go in mostly blind

I feel like 10,000 views on Neocities is kinda a big accomplishment, so I just wanna say thank you to everyone who's stopped by my website :3

It's been six weeks since my surgury and I'm finally reintroducing non-soft foods omfg it feels so good to have taquitos and burgers and stuff TwT

Serious question: What are so many artists still threatened by GenAI? Like, the songs and pictures and videos that these models produce are worse than mediocre, and over time, they're only going to get worse due to model collaspe, and since these AI models pump out slop faster than humans can make art, I don't see anyway the tech bros can worm their way out of the AI models cannabalizing themselves... But also, again, I've heard a lot of Suno songs, Sora, and and Dall-e images, (even played around with Suno a tiny bit just to see if it was actually a threat to me. It wasn't.) and nothing about these models are actually that impressive other than "the computer made... whatever this is". Like, the stuff most ppl have heard/seen from these models is the very best it can produce, almost coherent but still bland and unremarkable. Most generations are far worse than that, being completely incoherent and often visually nonsensical/entirely unlistenable (Hell, even corporate pop music is wayy better than almost everything these models make. I'd rather be forced to listen to Taylor Swift over baring any bland and/or musically incoherent song that Suno might put out)

But I keep hearing so many artists be like "We're doomed" after hearing a barely-comprehensable pop song that Suno barfed out or looking at some AI "movie" that no human in their right mind would, has, or ever will see. It's to the extent that I feel like a lot of artist types have bought the hype A LOT more than the average person, because most ppl hear "AI generated" and think "slop that's worse than anything a human could possible make", and I think the average joe is way more on the money, because artists role in the capitalist economy is to make "treats", entertainment. How is AI going to replace that when ppl don't even wanna watch the MCU slop that a bunch of overworked VFX artist made? Ppl are complaining about CGI in movies looking bad, that movies and AAA games are getting samey and boring, and that they can't find fun new music to listen. These aren't "arty" ppl bc those ppl know where to look for cool indie shit. The strawman idea of the stereotypical second-run MCU Enjoyer that'll eat up all the corpo AI slop *barely* exists, most ppl aren't rly going to see those movies anymore bc the plotline that they were following ended with Endgame, and to the average person it kinda just seems like "hey why tf is the story still going, i thought it already ended?" and just seems like to them that the story is still going after it ended bc Marvel Studios did nothing to make the new run feel distinct. (in actual comicbooks the bigger story is made up of a bunch of smaller stories that do actually end, and then they get new talent to pick it back up, the youtuber Patrick Willems said it best with "Instead of giving a new audience a chance to jump on, [the MCU] gave people a chance to jump off")

So like, who's actually going to see the shitty "entertainment" that GenAI creates if ppl are already tired of the less-bad shlock we already have? No ones gonna pay money to see that shit, and more than anything general audiences are starves for something new and interesting. Why do you think so many arthouse films by studios like A24 end up being more culturally relevent than most blockbusters? bc arthouse films are, by nature of what they are, weird and interesting, and that's rly exciting even for normies when all they've seen is the same movie like 40 fucking times and are getting bored of it

Tech bros are sort of forgetting that the reason art is successful is because actual human beings go to see it, and showing audiences TV or music or movies or games that are new and exciting is actually a great stradegy for success, bc for something to be considered an "experience" or true spectacle it has to suprise the view a little bit, because ppl generally like seeing or hearing things in media that they haven't seen before because are brains are hardwired to like novelty and get bored of things eventually. I... kinda feel like a lot of artist are also forgetting that. That, just in the cold economical sense, the art we make isn't ACTUALLY for some vague, abstract idea of an "audience"... it's for other human beings who will actually pay their hard-earned money to experience a piece of media or entertainment. Shareholders can't bail you out of a box-office flop, and shareholders are the only real stakeholder actually propping up the AI bubble with their buisness (which, for the record, is not actually a solid buisness plan unless a stock market bubble is what your going for. Neo-liberals are actually just like... objectively bad at running a buisness, they're fuck-ups who fail upwards by gutting the companies they ru(i)n, and I say this as an anarcho-marxist)

A lot of artists have rly outspoken views against oppression, and others have more troubling views, but Tim Burton in particular is a bit of an anomoly in a third, self-contained catagory that seems to day "alt kids, especially those with annoying parent with bad, normcore taste, truly suffer more than most can imagine" and tbh I kinda respect choosing that to be the hill you die on. I, too, would feel like my whole life was a darkroom if I was that goth teenager from Beetlejuice.

I feel like a smaller but meaningful part of the problem with modern mainstream media, specifically around both representation of marginalized groups and nuanced, subversive storytelling, is that the far-right wanted to be punk rock so fucking bad despite being a bunch of pro-estblishment crusty chuds that they posed (not a word i usually condone, but accurate here.) so fucking hard that a lot of center-left Liberals genuinely think that "The Left" is the establishment, and that making challenging and/or edgy (in the real sense of the word, to mean subversive and transgressive against the status-quo, not the fake right-wing "edgelord" sense) stories is somehow right-wing, and that art depicting bad ppl doing bad things is automatically condoning those actions, rather than themetically exploring the human society at it's very worst and most evil, critqueing systemic evils and their misanthropic yet normalized depravities, or simply exploring nihilism and tragedy as a sort of "Theater of Cruelty"-esque artistic proformance, because the vast majority well-made and well-written art that depicts things that are evil and difficult to see know that it is in fact evil that it's depicting, because conflict simply makes for good storytelling.. Similarly, a lot of ppl don't understand the difference between a genuinely bigoted writer and a socially-tolerant writer depicting bigotry existing or a bigoted antagonistic character (Or conversely, a deeply flawed protagonist who must overcome their hateful nature and, to varying degrees, learn the errors of their ways in order for them to resolve their character arc and become a better, or at least a less shitty and bigoted, person)

but the thing about the far-right is they aren't trying to shock the establishment, they're trying to shock and transgress against those who wish to challenge the establishment and thus force it to move forward, bc the far-right and neo-fascist don't dislike the establishment at all, they dislike anyone who challenges it because, where as the so-called "far-left" is constantly trying to socially challenge both itself and what is possible in terms of human expression and humantarian achievement, the alt-right talks much harder because it can't handle being challenged. These groypers feel the need to be politically coddled, whether they frame it in a pseudo-iconiclastic way or not. Just look at all those weird anti-woke ppl, they see a gay or black or trans or femme person in a video game and they start clutching pearls on they're secretly-kinda=stuffy list of games they don't want you to play. It's just rampant McCarthyism with a superficially-edgy wrapping

"Confusion Engine"

Short Film, surrealist/smokey comedy/arthouse/avantpop

Remember when the old tech bubble was "VR Chat but with expensive imaginary real estate and also we might brick your headset"? I miss that we were so innocent then. Now we're like "This language tool is sentient and will kill us all somehow i haven't figured yet."

"Arrival"

Short Film, Surrealist/Arthouse/Tone Poetry

"Something Terrible"

Short Film, Horror/Comedy/Shitpost

New CG stopmotion Ekko model!

This one's a bit cuter and more polished. I made this lil animation to show it off

New game prototype!

It's a weird immersive sim, the aesthetic was kinda inspired by the band Machine Girl. On the current version of the prototype (V0.0.5, at the time of writing) it's got a pretty cool interconnected level with multiple angles to tackle it from. Not a bad start, it's been awhile since I made an ImSim prototype solid enough to actually publish

Humorless [DOWNLOAD]

New song (YES AN ACTUAL NEW ARTPOP DROP FROM ME WOW) that I finished yesterday

A little jazzy, a bit spooky too, kinda reminds me of Jorge Auguilar's stuff (who I've listened to despite having very different taste in games just bc his songs slap lol) although I wasn't nessessarily going for spooky when I made the beat, I just started playing around with weird vocal processing and it just sounded right

Oh, BTW, you actually DON'T need to manually turn off the BGM, this new widget I made does that for you, and looks pretty neat! You can ofc still accidentally play two songs over eachother lol, but it takes care of the BGM automatically

British millenials: This American offshoot of dubstep is a bunch of American macho bullshit, let's call it "Brostep" lol

Zoomers in the 2020s: ngl making early-2010s-style dubstep is kinda enby-coded

(Jokes aside, I hate it that our culture misconstrues heavy, hard-hitting music and edgy/dark sci-fi aesthetics with masculinity. Not just in the obvious "Stop gendering every action and object at every given oppertunity" way, bc it's also just stupid that some ppl can't tell the difference between Fred Durst doing it all for the nookie (i'll admit it's a fun song but let's be honest it's kinda goofy lol) VS Lorna Shore growling and screaming about being an otherworldly omnipotent godlike between with wings who wishes to devour the sun (which... is honestly also pretty enby-coded tbh. The otherworldly celestial entity with wings, I mean, idk know about eating the sun, that seems like it would be hazardous for you health and also we need that this it's like earth's lightbulb. don't eat a lightbulb that's bad for you.)

EDIT: Obviously, overtly masculine that's also actually good does exist, Nine Inch Nails has a heavy undertone of hetero male masculinity and sexuality (bc Trent Reznor was a sex symbol back then, believe it or not!) and NIN fucking rocks. I bring up Limp Bizcuit specifically bc I was talking about unconvincing and shallow machismo, which "brostep" was accused of at the time (despite the fact that the guy leading the movement was a androgynous emo dude who used to sing in confessionally angsty post-harcore band and also is one of the few cis guys who's given me gender envy. Yeah im a little bias but that only strengthens my argument, in this specific case lol). Tbh I think the brits were kinda just upset (fairly reasonably so, I would say) that the normies thought Skrillex invented dubstep and now forever are misinformed on what the word "dubstep" entails (basically DnB-style bass drop with a 2-step beat at circa 70bpm, though usually it's produced at double-time at 140-150 with a half-time 2-step beat. Also a 2-step beat just means a kick on beat 1 and 3 in a bar, and a snare without a kick under it at 2 and 4. You can have dubstep without the dubstep growl, and you can stick that growl in an electrohouse song and that doesn't actually make it dubstep)

One thing that's truly frustrating rn is that a big part of why more ppl than ever are turning against MAGA is just like... they're a bunch of chuds. They're lame. They're pathetic losers. They're cringe.

On one level, this is awesome. I've alway said that if you wanna fight fascists, you have to go for they're pride, humiliate them. I also know a lot of ppl are, quite reasonably, rly upset about Pretti's murder, but there's also probably a lot of ppl who officially hate the MAGAts solely bc they're showing they're ass right now, and the Left (whatever that even means.) are doubling down on ridcululing these assholes, being the bully's bully, so to speak. That's good, but like... I just hate that there's so many ppl who base they're social opinions on aestheticized "vibes" instead of having a moral compass. Like, what does it say about America and our superficial vanity if getting normies to say the word "chud" is one of the biggest steps yet in fighting fascist insurrectionists? .-.

Did this collage in GIMP for some reason. Guess I've been thinking a lot about old digital art and how ppl were fixated on the photomontage capibilities of photoshop in the early oughts

Idk fully what I mean by this but unhinged A(u)DHD bedrooms and like the equal and opposite to "male living spaces"

Like instead of being barren and aesthetically plain I have two fake plants (a lil tree and a flower) in front of a bunch of printed-out (on letter size paper) homemade posters, many of which are very colorful and wacky and none of which have aesthetic coherent, another smaller flower plant below that next to my cassette and CD music collection (all home-recorded/burned except for a copy of The Bravery's Stir The Blood) a bunch of clothes on the floor, my pokka-dot bag is on the antique wooden desk next to my twin matress, a have The Guitar Corner Where All My Guitars Go, a little bubblegum pink mini-amp I have next to that, a lil mini-fridge, and a bunch of other bullshit i don't wanna mention bc it's embaressing. There's also... like a lil anitque pot brass pot that I think has coins or smth in it? I'm just noticing that now Christ

Here's a song from that EDM album I'm working on. It's a DnB/Neurofunk banger (make sure to click the "BGM Off" buttom at the left side first!)

Keybinder [DOWNLOAD]

Just learned that the that fucking ICE leader asshole is being made to get out of Minneapolis. ICE appearently will still be there, but from what I understand it'll be in the same way as everywhere in the states (They'll still be kidnapping kids and shit, but at least they won't be out in the streets inciting violence to bait protesters into defending themselves and carry out the bad cheeto man's royal tantrum for him.) Appearently, several DHS officials have been "asked to testify" (in CNN's words), though I don't remember if they said it was in front on congress or the supreme court. I'm guessing congress. Either way, as silly as it sounds, the fact that any part of the federal govt is doing anything about it at all, or taking any semblance of displicinary action, shocked and amazed the hell out of me. I rly just assumed no one in the govt would have the balls to say "stop" about the Minneapolis thing, even though it's obviously an insane escalation. At the very least, this means the some ppl in the gov't realized how horrified and appauled ppl across the country were at this whole ordeal, and release someone needed to step in the de-escalate it, meaning they on some level understand the ramifications of and natural civilian reactions to spitting on democracy that blatently with open violence and hostility to a general population, and then lying about what happened while ppl can see the truth on a recording that shows what actually went down.

TBH I needed to hear this news rn, I've been so overwhelmed at the state of the world for the last couple of days, seeing and hearing about all the shit in Minneapolis was rly getting to me on an emotional level and I just felt powerless. Best case sceneario, someone in the gov't is fed up. Worst case sceneario, the anger of the general populus of American citizens gave somebody a moment of clarity to think, "Oh yeah, our actions might have consequences, we need to dial things back a bit... ._.". Either way, I'm glad that asshole leading ICE's terrorist operation (sincere, that's what it is) in MInneapolis has to move out, potentially with some of his shitfaced SS boys.

Best of luck and love to the ppl of Minneapolis, if you're reading this and you're from there, I wish you the very best and hope you can stay safe, and I'm sorry about what these fascist assholes have done to your city

ALSO: Sorry I've been absent from the site a bit more than usual, I have been in a bit of a slump (nothing to bad, tbh I've just been tired, a lot of stress and shit and I feel worn out) but I am also making another EDM album... Listen, I know I've been making a lot of that and I'm not sure how ppl are responding to it tbh (no one's said anything about it to me, you can if you so choose but I'm probably gonna finish this album anyway. Basically I haven't really felt like singing (takes to much out of my body) and I've suddenly gotten a bunch of nostalgia from my early days as a producer, and thus nostalgia for a lot of the EDM stuff I grew up listen to. I've got a couple really good songs set for it already, spanning from DnB to (EDM) Trap to electro-house. It's gonna be a good album, a lot more polished than the beattape I put out a bit earlier, and more of an actual album as well

The funny thing about patriotism the two kinds are "I'm an activist bc like... I love this country. That's why I want it to stop being a shit place to live!" and "Plz Mr. President let me suck your dick! I will descend into fascism with you!" and somehow there's no inbetween

On that subject: There's so many ppl who share many views with me as long as I don't say the word "Anarchism". Like not even Anarchist philosphy, they're fine with most of that, they just don't like hearing the word bc of how it's misused to mean "chaos" or "lawless", which to be fair, is based in the fact that certain anarchists during like the 1800s started assassinating dictators, and sometimes genuinely taking shit too far, but the actual core of the philosphy is just based on the belief that a society with heirarchical leadership can't be just, basically it means "no leaders", potentially no states (governments) if a state was no longer nessessary, but that's hypothetical and far off if possible, would be cool to let ppl be ppl though! Weirdly "Humans are generally good and kind to one another when not influnced by powerful and corrupt individuals who wish to divide and conquer in order to amass power away from others" is one of the harder things to convince ppl of, which makes me sad. Anyway you probably weren't expecting an (admittedly very opinionated lol) philosophy lesson out of me rn but there you go lol

Some housekeeping: The miniblog now has an archive, so that this page loads faster and I can type faster in the editor, and there's now a "QuickstART" page that gives an introduction to my creative works

Ekko loves helping ppl with their angst, but they're basically incapable of doing so without being a wacky little goth weirdo

(If the text is too small to read, open it in another tab!)

The leftmost text bubble might be the most Ekko Locria sentence of all time lol, I also love Ekko's expression there, the lil paws put together all evilly while I give somebody affirmations and kindness offscreen, Ekko's such a sweet and kindhearted gay goth edgelord lmao

EDIT: For clarity/comfirmation: Yes, pretty much whenever I draw Ekko with IRL me, that is actually an alchemically-constructed artificial human Ekko put part of their soul into because he made it in an alchemy class and felt bad about the fact that it would "die" in a few days, as it informed them, because it didn't have a soul. In my OCs timeline, the first thing Vessel (that's the self-sona's name!) did upon being given a homoculus body is scream for no reason and then do creative stuff for like five hours. (This suprised Ekko as they had been in a creative rut and didn't realize they had that much angst buried down). Vessel (in my main OC canon) lives with Ekko at their apartment in Saint Bedlem, the city in the blasphemously quasi-utopian version of Hell Ekko lives in. Ekko's like a subversively friendly hellbat demon, hence why Ekko's other best friend, my voidsona Mylo, is an angel with daddy issues, bc God is kinda needy in my canon. Also if your curious where fuckers like Hitler and Jeffery Dahmmer is in all this, they put truly evil ppl in "The Pit", which in this case literally just a big hole in the middle of nowhere so like war criminals and serial killers and shit can't bother the denizens of Hell, most of which are just ppl who don't meet God's arbitary standards - which They set in stone when they were in the closet and taking Their angst out on the wrong ppl before coming out as transfemme nonbinary. So now you know a bit of OC lore. I bet you didn't expect it to be that blasphemous. I grew up listening to a lot of metal while watching the evangelicals in my country go crazy so that's basically why. I also watched a lot of Supernatural growing up so I can't nessessarily say that didn't also influence it

Been so sad an unfufilled the last day or two. It's been fun making music and stuff but I've been making less and not rly doing much else. I did start (for some reason) prototyping another Immersive Sim type of game, but I only created a couple system (picking up rigidbodies, damage input, explosions, crouching and crawling through vents. Also a melee attack, since it's an easy thing to impliment to test damage stuff) and didn't rly get that into it. I just haven't rly enjoyed being concious the last couple of day, listening to musics been OK i guess but I've hit a rly bad rut

...Er, maybe more of a bout of depression than a rut. Idk why. Maybe im just in one of those moods y'know? Actually... it's probably the cold. The cold makes me sleep and sad. Nvm I just realized this while typing in real time lol. At least it's just the weather, maybe I need to bundle up more lol

anywayyy im gonna snuggle up in a blanket, have a dorky-ass fluffy daydream about snuggling up with my sona Ekko and see if that makes me feel better. Hopefully i'll brb ^^

Moonrave

I wanted to specifically post about this one bc I think it's rly rly good

Still just instrumental but i've been having fun making all sorts of different EDM

(Friendly reminder: Turn the BGM off on the left sidebar first lol)

Been having a weird kinda "burnout" (for lack of a better term) where all I wanna do is make non-serious EDM music for fun, it's where I started as a music producer so it's been nice for my inner 17-year-old to go back to that stuff but with more skill now. Haven't rly felt like making any serious capital-A "art" tbh

Anyway, here's one of the songs I made:

U R

Since I just finished a UK-style EDM mixtape, I thought I'd give making an electro-house song in the style I grew up with. Here it is:

househunters or whatever idk i never watched the show.

Pretty happy with how it turned out. I actually got my start as a producer learning how to make dubstep (the wubby Skrillex kind, not the Burial UK kind) and I got into Electro House through that since a lot of electro-house post-brostep had a lot of those growling basslines in them. This track does kinda sorta sound like smth Skrillex or Zomboy would've put out in the day

Me: (sitting down to have a PB&J)

Intrusive Thoughts: Wait! that grape jelly might actually be that stuff from zootopia that made the anthro ppl psycho!

Me: What the fuck? That's a cartoon, it isn't even real, how would-

Brainrot: the grape jelly made the preds go vorny lolololol

Rational Thought: *very exhausted and apathetic sigh*

Intrusive Thoughts: STOP! All that grape jelly might have transformed into a bunch of little venomous spiders!!!!

Me: Why... How would that...?

Brainrot: haha did u know the father of anime had a transformation kink?? lmaoo

Me: im just gonna go to bed

Brainrot: lol watch out for the Benedril Hat Man he'll delete ur save file or smth idk

Intrusive Thoughts: OH MY GOD THE GREY HAT MAN FROM LSD DREAM EMULATOR IS GONNA KILL US IN OUR SLEEP VIA OUR DREAMS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Brainrot: more like via deez nuts!

Me: Why am I like this?

I made an EDM beattape recently:

The kind of person who builds their personality around hating ppl less fortunate than them is does so bc they have nothing better to do. The kind of person who builds their personality around helping or uniting with those less fortunate than them does so bc they believe in a better world

On the subject of my last post (well, the subject of the latter half my ADHD brain got into) I was gonna make a list of other well-known celebrities that YOU didn't know were secretly awful

The only problem is that I could only think of "MIA is unfortunately an antivaxxer ;(" (which is a shame, but not rly the same as collabing with a sexual abuser of another artist in your circle, she should just know better and tbh I kinda hope she changes her mind bc she's ok other than that one bad opinion) and "Jared Leto ran a weird pedophile cult at one point" (you may already know that, either way you didn't like him anyway, literally nobody likes Jared Leto he's a bad actor with a bad vibe and no talent)

So, in leui of any obscure facts, I'm just going to make up a bunch of shit and it won't sound believable at all! Here's you go:

Post-Malone sold his soul on eBay to some demon named Blasphemy Joe (this was before he got famous, he was strapped for cash)
Taylor Swift has invented a freeze ray and has announced her plan to take over the tri-state area
SCARLXRD eats beans and toast and/or blood pudding for breakfast (wtf man i thought u were one of the good ones T_T)
Billie Eilish is a 1000 y/o vampire (that's not the evil part) who was against the luddite unionist movement (she has since apologized for this, quite sincerely imo, so this one isn't quite as bad)
Jack Stauber is actually a malicious sleep-demon who haunts you're nightmares to drive you insane (i still like him though ngl)
This next one is controversal and has nuance: Dolly Partan kicked a puppy at a trucker union rally once. While this is quite shocking, it's worth noting that the puppy was in fact a known, vocal and unapologetic union-buster, and used his exhorbadent wealth to keep both the truckdrivers and they're dogs underpaid and overworked. Personally, to editorialize, I do think this was quite a shocking act, but I understand why she did it and I respect her commitment to helping the truckdrivers and their dogs get better pay, event if her methods were quite dramatic
2D from Gorillaz litters sometimes

I hope you enjoyed this misinformation. None of it was true and if you believe any of it, wtf and also why?

I feel like one uncomfortable truth about how racism and sexism interact is, unless their name is like JK Rowling or smth, we let privileged white women get away with way too much fucked up shit

I'm pretty sure it has smth to do with the soft-misogynistic idea that women can't be abusers or oppressors (even though ofc they can be and often are) bc that would mean we'd have to accept that adult women are human beings with automony who are capable of being good or evil, by their own volition, just like anyone else, and how that interacts with white privilege. I think the only reason we're all openly critical of Rowling is that she's openly a self-absorbed douchewad about being a transphobe and has openly buddied up to like Matt Walsh and other neo-nazis, usually it's easier for "The Left" (whatever tf that means) to be critical of literally anyone regardless of bias if they start hanging out with and espousing the beliefs of literal fascists, which is why that one crazy Trump lady (i forget these ppl's names constantly, there's too many of them, but she's the one who shot her dog, supposedly.) is so easy for any slightly decent person to hate bc she's so openly and aggresively awful that the white privilege and self-imposed patriarchy doesn't make anyone turn a blind eye. But like, all those TERF writers who hide their transphobia (and also racism, sometimes) with flowery prose and faux-Leftist language? Katy Perry sexually harrassing 18-year-olds? Yeah I bet most ppl reading this never even heard about that second one...

I also want to point out (for transparency's sake) that, as an androgynous enby who can pass as femme with enough effort and is also white, I've 100% taken advantage of this myself before, ofc not in a sinister way, but I've definitely gotten rly pretty at Walmart so the employees would be more patient and wouldn't be irritated if I asked them if they could show me where a specifc item is, so I'm absolutely partly speaking from experience, and I'm abosolutely not guilt-free of using gender biases of othered to make my day easier, but I've definitely seen this used in a much more troubling way over the years (the stuff with Katy Perry is crazy man... Like did you know she's like, kinda evil? Wtf?)

EDIT: Ok I know she's not even relevant anymore, but I have to say one last thing about Katy Perry: In addition to being kinda a sex pest herself, she worked with a producer called Dr. Luke - who's a much, much worse sex pest and straight-up rapist - *AFTER* Kesha accused him of sexually abusing her, in Kesha's word's "every moment of every day". So like, you hit on an 18-year-old Bo Burnum, sure, that's gross, but now you're working with a guy who sexually abused someone who's basically you're cowoker, for all intensive purposes? Fuck you, man, Kesha made better way Recession Pop than you anyway, she's a scenecore icon and deserves better, just, in general. Perry wasn't even apologtics. Oh yeah she also did a bunch of racial charactures in music videos and shit, but that's a story for another day bc now i've forgotten i was talking about the odd emergent intersection of mysogynistic infantiliztion and white privilege allowing wealthy white women to lean into sexist stereotype to get away with stuff, and now it's just fully devolved into "FUCK KATY PERRY FUCK DR. LUKE JUSTICE FOR KE$HA" which tbh is also a good point but I tend to lose the plot ADHD and all that

I CANCELLED MY SPOTIFY PREMIUM SUBSCRIPTION LETS GOOOOO!

Another techno track:

Hi.

You may have noticed i put the following image as a decoration graphic:

If you are wonder why, look at it

maybe in a another tab (you can do this by right-clicking)

ty for ur understanding

Tears of Blood

New song! Another long instrumental electonic piece lol

Had a (kinda dumb bc yeah no shit) epiphany last night, that as I've tried to nurture the femme side of my gender identity, (bc unlike the masc side, i never truly got to do so openly growing up, so i always knew though gender dysphoria that some part of me was missing), I've been neglecting my masc side, which has only made me more insecure about my femininity. It's easy for me to forget that I have more than one angle to my gender identity (the femme and masc are the most important to me, but they're are others) and I sort of bury the realization that I'm subconciously trying to conform by being an "acceptable" tranfemmes enby rather than expressive myself freely, both my masc aspects and my femme aspects. For lack of a better metaphor (i tend to personify my emotions as a coping mechanism, and to understand them better), I felt like my femme side was worried about what others would think of her if she hung out with her counterpart, and my masc side felt very hurt that his best friend abandoned him, and now that these personafied emotions made up with eachother and are happy to be back together, everything in life feels just a little easier, bc I have one less thing that's stressing me out

I rly need to remember to nurture both extremes of my gender identity, bc it rly hurts me emotionally when i'm abandoning one or the other for even a bit too long, and that just puts more strain on my loved ones bc they have to deal with my emotional turmoil while they're around me (Idk if i specifically said this one this website, but I have AuDHD and pretty bad childhood trauma, so coping with emotions can be pretty rough and scary for me, and it's not always pretty to watch from the outside)

I, for some reason, decided to make a 6 minute amibent hardcore techno composition. There's probably something deeply wrong with me bc a sane person would just play video games or smth if they were just bored, but here it is (NOTE: click "BGM OFF" on the left sidebar first! it doesn't stop automatically when you play a song, I hardcoded that lol):

Momento Deus Mori

Did this painting of Ekko just now. Sometimes I need to express this stuff with art, know? It's like the opposite of vent art. Affirmation art I guess? idk

EDIT: To clarify all the thing: yes, the human Ekko is loving on IS in fact suppose to be me. This is the closest you'll ever get to seeing me without makeup on here lol. And no, I'm not Latinx, ppl used to think I was all the time back before I wore makeup out of the house and my hair was darker. Yes, I rly am that bad at shaving, I had to learn on my own (make up cuts isn't pleasant but i have to suffer through it sometimes). And finally (just clarifying this bc it's very obvious/pronounced in this particularly painting, especially given the framing): Ekko is tall than me. I'm about 6ft, Ekko's about 7ft. Weirdly, I used to have insecurities about my height bc i though i was TOO tall, but EKko being tall helped me with that, it just made sense for the "big scary(-looking) monster who's actually a friendly sweetheart" thing

My new laptop (which I got just a couple month ago) is great, and it also has and AMD CPU with Radeon graphics, which handles graphical shit wayyy better than an Intel CPU, which is much better for my own needs (especially as an artist who frequently works in CGI and gamedev ~~And also like video games~~, but also,

Going from intel to AMD is objectively a hilarious trade off bc it's like: Yeah you're new laptops AMD proccessors can handle computer graphics wayyy better than you're old Intel chip, it'll run games faster and a lot of VRAM-heavy programs won't lag NEARLY as much, and from a practically standpoint will work just as well at pretty much everything else, just bare in mind that AMD chips (or at least the specific one my computer has) are Silly(TM) and sometimes when you're typing on neo-cities' text editor you're entire Chrome window will just turn black for a breif moment sometimes (just cuz ig idk) and you're computer takes a weirdly long amount of time to "Wake-Up" and will every so often invent a more stupid way to load you're desktop one element at a time. But Blender's gonna run great now and Shotcut won't overload when you add a few too many filters to every single clip!

so anyway, I always wondered why exactly why intel chips are more expensive and less power other than the vague notion of "reliablity"... Turns out when ppl say they're "reliable" that means Intel CPUs are sober, good to know! (idgaf though, I love my new drunk computer, worth it for cycles renders so fucking fast man like wtf how does it do that?! :D)

(me as a graphic designer)

Me: So, here it is: Spearmynt. Bobcat, transmasc enby, age: 21. I asked myself, who IS this person, and what drives them, as every good writer must. I decided he should be neurodivergent, having a combination of ADHD, DPD (Disosociative Personality Disorder), and being autistic. Based on my own lived experience as AuDHD person, and my understanding of plurity (based on what I have heard from indivduals who experience it on webhosting platform neo-cities), Spearmynts sub-personalities would likely be very overwhelmed (as anyone would be, being a trans person during the age of MAGA in America, and having experienced both queer and neurodivergent trauma) and given that their sub-personalities more segmented than that of the average person, they would likely be at odds with themself in a very scary and stressful way. I think this is why Spearmynt went to medical school to study psychology, to help others who are going through the same things they had, so that his patients don't have to experience it alone and unguided. This is where he met his rival: Synna Mann, grey fox, genderflu-

Client (sobbing, screaming, banging his fists on the table in aungish): W-WHAT IS THIS ALL WE ASKED WAS FOR A CEREAL MASCOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Me: Oh... I thought you said "gum" for some reason? Sorry, I'll modify what I have to fit you're brand, I'm sure it won't take very long, I'll have it done in abo-

Client (completely broken by my bullshit, his face in a puddle of his tears on the desk): please no...

EDIT: Fuck I should have made Synna Mann a red fox dammit! It's right there!

For some reason, been thinking a lot about that shot in Speed Racer where the villian is bribing a bunch of competing racers (during the cross-country part of the movie) this one guy just slides into frame while squatting (Like the anime "sliding into frame while squatting without moving his legs, with a wacky face, to show he's enticed by whatever is on the table or ground or whatever" gag, hopefully you know the one I'm talking about) and when he looks at the money the camera zooms in on his face and his pupils turn to dollar signs (as-in the actual live-action actor's eyes are edited to have dollar signs in them), he laughs manically, and then the ground (from the race in the future) pans up, so that his face is now the horizons, and then a car drives in front the camera (obscuring the "sky"), the camera pulls back and now suddenly we're in the future (so basically a scene transition but without an actual cut, the shot just keeps going even though we're in a different time and place, something Speed Racer manages to do multiple times through the movie)

...yeahhhh this is rly why it ties with Mandy as my favorite film. Don't get me wrong, I do have a lot of nostalgia having seen in theater when I was eight, and I do love it's ~~razor-thinly vieled and dilberately on-the-nose~~ allegory for the films industry/art under capitalism, but like... c'mon the BIG reason is ofc the brilliant and skillfully-unhinged visual style of the film. The Wachowsky Sister's are on another level, man. Leave it to transfemme nerds to make wildly experimental art that's way ahead of it's time! (Is this a humble brag? A little bit but the Wachowsky's are genuinely on an aspirational level of filmmaking that I'd one day hope to parrell, not yet though, I'm more focused on having a diverse creative skillset and combining them to make something that's a bit higher production quality (compared to most stereotypical no-budget/self-financed productions) and to be more creatively self-sufficiant, in fact I'm about to dabble with live action filmmaking for a lil webfilm project, i mentioned it a couple times earlier, and I am A LITTLE nervous bc my filmmaking experience has so far been in animation... at least I'm doing a very stylized mostly greenscreen production... so it'll be a bit closer to home. Some (specific and more grounded) scenes are just straight up shakey cam with no special effects (besides color-grading and stuff) so that's a bit nerveracking, especially since I don't wanna use my tripod for those scenes bc I want the shakey cam effect for them. Anyway, Wachowsky's are good at what they do!)

EDIT: Yes, I am aware of the irony that my two favorite films are (A) A film where the protagonist thus far is murder by the villian, a egotistical sex-crazed cult leader, and then her husband takes the protagonist roles, murders a bunch of demon bikers, one of which is jorkin' it to porn but his penis is a knife and he's like a sadomasochist or something (i think?) and (B) Like, a really, really good kids movie that rly holds up as an adult. What's more insane is that I like them for kinda the same reason (They're both hyper-formalist films with unconventional, non-literal visual style that they creatively utilize to commmunicate mood and narrative. I wouldn't watch Mandy with your kids though, or anyone under 18 for that matter. The knife-dick isn't the only NSFW scene in the movie. Not even the only upsetting and creepy masturbation scene, weirdly? Idk why it has two of them but they both work in making you disturbed in two very different way. Don't watch Mandy if you're under 18, no joke. It's worth watching if you are, but know it's a pretty graphic film in more ways than one. 18+ or not, ou CAN (and SHOULD) watch Speed Racer though! Took a long time for ppl to catch up with the film, it's definitely more of a "reappraised" sort of deal, but it's ofc a cult-classic now for all the right reasons

Y'all... I rly need to work on Mixtape Delinquents again, at some point. I have the godot project backed up and safe. I need to get back on it after i'm done with the webfilm project (which is partly delayed for dental reasons, but I do need to wrap up pre-production still, not quite done with that and this surgury took a lot out of me and only eating soft foods hasn't been very fun or good for my quality-of-life)

I know MTD has been in a perpetual state of development hell every since I got dev's block on the mall level. I know that any sane person would've canceled this project ages ago. I know that this project is unrealistically ambition for a solo dev, that it'll probably be finished in like 2044 when i'm a full-on PILF (figurively speak, i don't plan on fucking or adopting at any point.), and that just the fact I've gotten as much as I have done and even made the stupidly complex and interactive gameplay systems functional is a fucking mirace, how the fuck did I do even the first two levels as a one-enby studio, and I should quit While I'm ahead. Or whatever.

I know that rationally but... Dude have you played the MTD demo? I feel like I have to come back to it at some point. It's so fucking good, like my it's slowly morphed into my fucking "dream game" project and I know this is the sunk-cost fallacy but like... All the mechanics and gameplay system are already done! Literally all that's left to make it the rest of the content, which is like... you know, the part that takes a long time... idk I'd rly like to finish it someday, it's by far my most promising prototype, it just, like, needs to be actually finished. That little thing.

Edit: I'm gonna passive-aggressively put this here (It's genuinely very good, just not, y'know.... done yet. only two levels but they are both very good!)

"I've been visiting many of these so-called "gore websites". The videos fill me with a sadistic pleasure. Gore is everything. Gore is God."

~The Judge from Blood Meridian if he had access to the internet and also it's the 2000s. (yeah i haven't read it either.)

I feel like a lot of ppl don't seem to understand that the reason it's OK to cyberbully fascists isn't bc it's ok to be a dick to everyone you don't like,

it's because (to use a weird, slightly convoluted analogy) fascists are the bullies of the idealogical lunchtable (i guess) and most decent ppl generally respect the bully's bully bc they stick up for the shy dweeby sensitive little underdog nerd who are can't stand up for themselves (the lil nerdy kid's the stand-in for like, minorities and stuff, and also mainstream scientists bc fascist REALLY hate being corrected, but the scientists are the autistic nerds who know a lot of facts but awkward or smth)

idk well anyway... You fell right into my Trap Card. You now have a general understanding of the Paradox of Tolerance. You know have to bully JD Vance on the internet (social media, if you insist) and draw two (two of anything rly, doesn't have to be cards. Open to interpretation.) and any fire type pokemon cards in play get debuffed for some reason (idk how Yu-Gi-Oh works, y'all.)

Y'know... I feel like fandom (specifically at it's worst, most Tumblr DNI-core.) would be less exhausting if we could just acknowledge that no one is perfect, sometimes you're allowed to do things that are unhealthy for you once in awhile, and that includes turning off you're brain to enjoy something

I mean let's be honest, "Media affects your perception of reality, experiencing a peice of media uncritically is extremely irresponcible, and you should approach all media with a critical eye, which will also deepen you're apprication of you're favorite works of art" and "Media analysis is super fucking exhuasting and sometimes you just need your comfort trash bc life is rly fucking hard and you need this little treat right now" are two contradictory statements that are unfortunately both objectively true for the same reason, that we're in a fucking second Gilded Age and neo-liberal Techno-Feudalism has now overtaken the very "free market" economy that birthed it (If you need a translation for that: something something "late-stage capitalism" or whatever, that's not a very descriptive or useful term for it but that's a discussion for another day) and that's gonna keep going until the overbloated GenAI Bubble pops (Way Too Long Sidenote on the AI bubble that's also weirdly a shoutout: no shade to my mutual bunglepaws, who does use LLMs in some of her projects, but she actually uses them appropriately, as language proccessors, which is what they're useful for, but the issue with the bubble is that large tech companies have misrepresented GenAI as a magic bullet that can do anything somehow, and not merely as AI models that are specifically very useful for replicating patterns of data. Ofc billionaire tech bros find the stupid usecase for any given technology possible. Anyway if you wanna see how someone who actually has a damn brain and boatloads of actual tech literacy would go about using an LLM for smth, check out her project "Furry Pirate Radio", it's a shame GenAI is being used as a bullshit threat to artists and not to make more virtual protogens say radical left-wing rhetoric in-between illicitly-broadcasted music. I also can't blame most ppl for assuming GenAI is always automatically evil when all they've seen it used for is tech bro's Frankfertian Bullshit, it DOES have usecases, they're just very specific to replicating data automatically based on a dataset, and have nothing to do with "singularity" or Roko's Thinly Vieled Matrix AU or changing the world with italian brainrot somehow trust me bro, like every type of tech it's made for a specific thing, and what matters is who's using it and how. Worth mentioning you need to actually know how to train machine learning models to get a lot out of it/do smth actually cool with it, which most of to pro-corpo advocates for it don't have a fucking clue how to do lol, anyway this is her site it's actually pretty neat, her - handdrawn, mind you - art and OCs are rly neat too! Also be nice to her or face my wrath :3)

I mean like... (remember we're talking about fandom and media literacy again.) Not a single one of us is perfect, even the most responcible adults are not responcible about everything 100% of the time, and if we're to believe to ideological circle-jerk of the online echochambers (not to be confused with this website, which it the only good one.) that are actively ruining left-wing activism with nuance-adverse algo-bullshit - that a "good person" is a person who does not do anything bad - "good people" wouldn't exist then, bc real people, even good people, do shitty things all the time, every single one of use is perfectly capable of being a real peice of shit sometimes, that does not mean we're inherently "bad" for sometimes behaving badly, but it merely shows that we are real people with real flaws and good intentions that we don't always make good on 100% of the time bc real ppl are messy and imperfect, even the best, most kind-hearted individuals, still imperfect, flawed human being with good hearts and wise brains, are perfectly capable of acting real shitty once in a blue moon, especially if they're overwhelmed, and rn we're all overwhelmed,

and YES, we absolutely DO need to make an effort of a society to be more critical in how we consume media, and YES, consuming media mindlessly SHOULD be seen as LESS socially acceptable than it is... But having icecream and a bag of doritos for dinner is also not socially acceptable, nor should it be, but like... we've all been there, either literally that or we've made some other in-the-moment decision to eat a late dinner that's almost entirely unnourishing? Hell, maybe you've even skipped dinner some nights, which is the one thing that's even worse for you're health in that moment. Tbh rn I've only been eating what thing is most convenient (without being bad for my teeth, I still have heal a bit for awhile) when I can no longer physically ignore my hunger. I am embarrassed to admit that, I need to actually feed myself when I get hungry, not when my belly hurts bc I haven't eaten all day,

but you're reaction to that is probably "oh hon no that's rly bad you need to take care of you're body" and not "ekko you fucking dumbass why tf fuck would you not feed yourself? idiot", bc who tf would react with the latter? You're probably worried about this person's (me) mental and physical health, i would hope at least? That's probably how we should start reacting to ppl saying "i know i should watch smth smarter or at least watch this crappy TV with a more critical eye, but im very tired and I need this" with concern and empathy rather than finger-wagging

I think this even still applies with ppl who are full-blown anti-intellectual, it's just a bit hard given how normalized uncritical idiocity is in American culture, specifically bc those ppl don't rly wanna learn, but if someone said "I don't rly see what the big deal is about me eating nothing but doritos! Plz just let me enjoy it, this is what I like..." I, for one, would be (assume they're an adult) very, VERY concerned for that person's well-being, both physically and mentally, bc if they're that disconnected from the reality of what they're doing to themself, they're 100% coping with some serious trauma in a rly unhealthy way

TL;DR human beings are inherently impperfect, often irrational and sometimes we make bad decision for our health, even if we know they are bad for us, that includes consuming media mindlessly, so maybe approach the media-illiterate with less ridicule and more cocern and compassion if you can bare it

New song ;3

Ian/Iana Spencer - xxx_meant_2_b_xxx

Aw, hell! Have two more while you're at it! :3

idols

Ooze

Gender dysphoria has been hitting me hard today :(

My mom and I went to get a flu shot, but when we're out in public my mom refers to me in an explicitly masc way bc she's worried about some crazy alt-right committing a hate crime against me (for context we live in Florida). Her hearts in the right place but it's very hurtful, especially since she defaults to calling me by he/him pronouns in public except once in a blue moon when she uses they or she

It was made worse by the fact that my make up was not on point today. I tried to tone it down bc I was meeting up with my mom in public, she's not crazy about me going outside with pretty make-up rn (again we live in Florida) but I feel dirty. I know I'm genderfluid but I lean far more into femme gender expression bc it makes me feel less dysphoric and more comfortable as a transfemme enby

I have so much internalized transmisogyny i feel like im gonna die sometimes...

Oh yeah, and my hair looked like shit, too... ;(

Our deranged president is currently trying to take all of our freedoms and I'm here being sad I'm not pretty without a shit ton of make-up... God I'm feeling like an asshole just for having gender dysphoria I need to stop thinking like this .-.

Seriously though... So much justification bullshit politicians tend to give about why we can't have like basic bare minimum gun laws are like "What if China or Russia invades???" and like, the flacidness of using shotguns against military gear aside... My guy the current president is just like the scary russian dictator man and the fucking winnie the pooh lookalike... pretty soon we're gonna end up like Russia or China...

...I mean, at least for awhile. These Fascismo types tend to forget how this bullshit always ends (Italian Cherry Glaze Upside Down Cake served over a bridge, if you catch my drift.) but like this asshole and his cronies are gonna cause more damage the less they're challenged. But generally, for the sake of self-preservation, instating fascism is probably not a great way to set yourself up as a dictator, it tends to come back to bite you if you don't bite yourself before anyone else can.

Anyway, that's not my fault just for being trans, plz remember it isn't yours for being (Insert any targeted group here) either, if anyone reading this has been having similar thoughts. Take care of yourselves, things are rough rn but they will get better, sooner or later ;3

Site has a gifypet now :3

BIG (but not rly a big deal actually) UPDATE: I'm changing the site rating from "Web-14" to "Web-MA"

Now to be clear: This site isn't "18+" now or anything, and I'm not planning on posting, like, porn or smth on here lol

It's just that I've recently been informed that 18+ sites actually don't use Web-MA, usually, they use Web-NC-17, and since I've always felt a bit uncomfy with how low the age rating was (in all honesty I'd reccomendation this more to only ppl 16 or older, MAYBE 15, anything younger needs parental supervision on here imo) I was just like "fuck it, if Web-MA doesn't actually mean ~~straight up uncensored porn~~ NSFW then yeah I'll put Web-MA on my site (now my homepage too!) and I don't have to worry about saying something way too dark/serious/inapropriate/distressing on here for younger teens

Won't actually be much of a change, I'll probably just self-censor less which I barely was anyway lol (my last post for instance.)

Some (seemingly very conservative in a non-maga way) guy was on CNN was talking about his experience in an Venezuelan prison (bc some bullshit the expired cheeto, that our clown country elected bc half the country here stupid as shit and don't know what a "tarrif" actually entails, pulled some shit with kidnapping their president, which caused arrests of several American tourists as a desperate counter-hostage sort of deal. everything sucks btw.) and my immediate thought, as a young-ish, self-educated American Leftist, was "Oh gawd this sounds exactly like an American prison", which is scary and bad bc our prisons are among the worst in the first world (depending on you're definintion of a "first world country".), but the way he was talking about it was as if our country isn't just as rough and dystopian of a crapshoot. (hell, probably even more so at this point.)

Anyway sorry for all the venom in this one, I'm hating my home country more and more everyday and it makes me grumpy >:(

warm up i did today (and then colored bc why not):

The lil human in Ekkos arms and wings is ofc just my general self-sona (just how I stylized myself as a cartoon). I was rly channeling how exhuasted I've been recently lol

In case you wondering: No, I didn't get highlights. My hairs just been turning auburn/dark ginger for some reason? My hairs never been able to make up it's mind what color it wants to be lol

A little conflicted on Ekko's paws here though. I think the feetpaws look pretty good, but the handpaws are a little half-bakes, I was trying to simplify the hand shape by drawing ekkos fingers in cluster but I fucked up on that third claw on that one hand (it's there but obscured by a tangent) so it regrettably looks like ekko has one very big finger lol. Still, not bad for a warmup after a bit of a break from drawing, and I do like the expressiveness of the hands

I do looove the facial expressions though. I look so fucking exhuasted (I am...) and relieved I get to just relax for awhile, and Ekko just looks happy to be with their lil buddy. There so much mutual love in the eyes, maybe I DON'T hate myself as much as I think I do sometimes uwu

Been so emotional lately. Usually when I feel this tender and vulnerable I'd make art or eat comfort food, but I'm also very tired from dental post-op and Similarly I'm still very limited bc my jaw is still technically healing (but getting better :3) and while I can eat solid foods now I won't be able to eat anything fried (bc it's crunchy) til six weaks after surgury. I haven't rly kept track of time but I'm pretty sure is hasn't even been one weak, I'm so tired of only "treating" myself with ice cream and cheesecake, I normal love to have those things but I miss crunchy fried foods so much :(

I also usually explore my emotions creatively through music, and even if I could find the energy to make anything I'm still a little nervous to sing bc that's a lot of jaw movement. My mouth feels *almost* normal now but it's still a little sore and I don't wanna fuck anything up, I had a bit of bone taken out after all

So I've been mostly coping with the less effective/emotionally productive method of lying in bed and daydreaming about my OCs, I've been talking to myself as Ekko a lot, which I know is kinda dorky but it's been bringing me some auxillery comfort. I've never in my life been more happy I have spatial hyperphantasia bc having dumb cringy fluff daydreams about my fursona trying to comfort me as a dear friend is rly vivid for me. It's probably not that unusally to feel like my favorite OCs are like real ppl to me (that's just standard artist/writer shit lol) but my imagination is so unusally vidid that I can rotate an apple in my mind, while "projecting" where it would be at a set distance in space from my face, and I'll naturally imagine all the little natural bumps and blemishes and apple would have.

So, when I curl up in a blanket daydream about Ekko cuddling her "favorite human" (that's what they call irl me, don't judge.) my imagination is so vivid it almost feels real. I can "see" and "feel" in my minds eye the texture on her paws pads when they hold my hand, the little bits of fluffy fur in between her finger beans and I can slip my fingers between them, the fur on their neck and fuzzy face when they nuzzle their head on mind, their big wings wraping around me. Hell, if Ekko does and exhausted exhale during one of this crazy vivid daydreams I can imagine the breath from their little nostril grazing my face and their belly going in and out from breathing. I know all our OCs are practically like our friends bc their so real to us, but sometimes my daydreams (let's be honest especially lovey-dovey fluff one's with my bestie Ekko uwu) are so vivid I forget that I never have actually cuddle a giant bat monster version of myself bc it genuinely feels like I have... uwu

Anyway, sorry if this miniblog post went in a weird/cringy direction but I'm trying to be more open about my authentic self, and I figured ekkochambers would be a good place to it since if you like my website you're either (A) a furry or (B) a chill, kind non-furry who isn't weird and judgemental about sappy gay nerds gushing about how much they adore their stupid OCs lol (not that Ekko is stupid or a bad design, I'm rly proud of her design, they're just probably not as important to the passerby as he is to me.)

Edit: Also just for the record: I think Ekko is perfect in every way even though they do have character flaws like being overly affectionate/empathetic and they dote on humans so much it annoys some ppl but I think that's endearing I like being doted on they could dote of me all they want and that she can do no wrong. Ekko, on the other, thinks I'm a precious, adorable, disasterous mess of a human being and feels she must protect me at all cost, else her best friend and other half get themselves killed somehow, so if you want alterselves lore (am I using that word right? "alterselves"? I think it's like when you and you're sona are portrayed as two seperate ppl? idk i'm behind on the fandom lingo) there is i guess.

If you're wondering why my videos (and ebooks) aren't up and available rn, the Internet Archive is current down for maintenance (they do this sometimes, still a great public service though)

Y'know, sometimes I wanna cuddle up in Ekko's wings, and other times be Ekko and wrap up somebody in my wings and talk to them until I've cured their depression through compassionate but very excessive validation. Ekko would probably do that with some random human at like a graveyard at night. Ekko is the type of monster-adjacent who just talks to some very confused unemployed college dropout and is like "Oh you're interesting to talk to and lonely so I'm gonna be you're friend now. Do you need a hug?" tbh the real reason i want wings and both my sonas have them is bc I'd give better hugs. I give lousy hugs i wish I was better at that, Im like a nervous side hugger, I do find it funny, though, that my escapist fantasy kind of just boils down to being able to express affection better. Dunno if that's sad or sweet? idk

sooo anyywayyy my mouth is getting better. My wounds are healing good and I can eat more foods now (I still can't eat anything crunchy, stringy or chewy or anything with small hard bits but now I can have like mac and cheese. Soon I might be able to eat waffles...

Anyway I you (the person reading this) is having a better Christmas than I am. My family has delayed are big celebration until I'm all better which was really sweet of them, my family has been rly kind throughout all of this dental nightmare. Anyway, YOU! Do something nice for yourself today :3

Started playing Hypnospace Outlaw recently and I've never played a game that's this genuinely funny, the writing is so chaotic and unhinged it's great

You know, I really need to make a space on this site to just gush about my OCs guilt-free...

Edit: on second thought, maybe I should just be more willing to be a little bit cringe on the mini-blog. I'm mostly just afraid of turning ppl away who might otherwise take me more seriously as an artist... But I just got off a big surgery, I should take this time to just be the big spooky bat and escape a little

...

*Stands on the ceiling of the website and cuddles up in my wings* I'm going to take a little nap, my guests. If you need me for anything just leave it in my cbox UwU

So good news: I *probably* don't have a cold bc my mom's symptons were completely different than mine lol

I am feeling less sad a moody today, still a bit tired but not as shitty in general. My mouth is healing good, I'll give you guys art updates in a bit :3

"Sad Bat Is Sad"

Ngl this wasn't originally going to be such an angsty piece. I initally intended it to just be just a cute drawing of Ekko all curled up in her big spooky wings but I guess the sadness might be coming out... I think I might have caught my mom's cold, I'm gonna have to tell her that bc she wanted to know if I started feeling sick and it'll probably make her feel bad ;w;

Well, at least I got to draw my fursona cuddled up in their wings looking cute, if not sad. It makes me feel cute which I need rn. Drawing Ekko is a big part of how I became a lot more happy with my own body, weirdly enough. I started feeling like my IRL potbelly was cute bc it's cute on Ekko and better about my height insecurities (i used to feel real weird about being over six feet) bc Ekko is even taller than I am and she's still adorable and pretty. Anyway now I'm just waxing poetic about my sona and on going journey to self-acceptance lol

It's ok for me to walk upstairs now, and while it still isn't safe to sleep in my room, I did decide to take all my computer stuff upstairs so I can have some space to myself when I'm working on my stuff or doing anything on the computer. Regaining bodily automony one of the more stressful parts of recovery for me, since you have to give so much of it up when ppl are taking care of you while you're unwell. This will hopefully make the transition between surgery and recovery a bit easier

I wrote a short story recently, just finished it this morning. Need to proofread and fix all the typos before I give it a proper internet archive upload, but you can read it a bit early (with some typos, granted) HERE

It's short slice-of-life story about Ekko trying to help a new guy in Hell (who got damned just for being abnostic and is very distressed bc he doesn't know it's gonna be ok or that his new bat neighbor is friendly) feel better

I wouldn't call this story "fluffy" as there's still narrative conflict, but it is sweet/cute and a bit lighter in tone. The conflict arises from this new neighbor's anxieties about this new place, and Ekko's struggles to make their new neighbor feel more welcome in such a strange new environment. It leans a bit more into comedy, with a bit of angst mixed in. There is ofc mention of death and the hypocrisy of western relgious morality but it's done with a light and casual tone and I'd definitely describe this story as "blasphemously wholesome" if nothing else lol

(Also the conflict is ofc resolved by the end)

I can eat solid foods today :D

Ok rly as of late last night, and only soft foods. Still, I had some tuna and it's a nice change of pace. I still have to be careful, everyday is getting easier and less painful. I won't be all better until like 6-8 weeks, and even then I won't be able to drink soda/carbonated for possibly most of 2026 (which is probably for the best bc I drink too much soda, my body probably does need a break from it lol)

"Bat Outta Hell With A Heart of Gold" and a very sad belly full of icecream, protein shakes and yogurt bc I can't have solid food rn, in a couple of days I can have soft foods, dental surgery sucks there's so many delicious foods I can't eat for like six to eight weeks bc my teeth and jawbone needs to heal, I won't be able to eat fried food or soda for a while and I love both those things, the chubby goth bat would rather be eating air frier chicken tenders and drinking Sam's Cola rn but she can't bc that's bad for bat (or non-escapistly this specific human lol) teeth rn :(

New Ekko painting. I love them uwu

Also making this the new main page background >;3

Also yeah the ice cream sounded good to me too until I got sick of it, too much of one thing gets boring, soon i'll be able to eat savory stuff that isn't soup though... like Tuna and stuff I'm excited. This really reveals how much of feeding myself is recreational though, which I super don't think is a bad thing, I think we should normalize enjoying sitting down and eating foods that make us happy without feeling shame about our bodies, but it does make you rly appricate how important that is. Also yes Ekko does canonically eat regular human foods, same one's I like, no they don't drink blood. I know their based on a vampire bat, but they're rly more of a big bat monster than a pure humanized version of the actual animal, so I feel like it's justified lol. also I can't imagine them drinking blood, they act all goth but rly they're a soft smol bean that happens a seven foot tall bat monster. Ekko acts all edgy and looks big and scary but they and all their friends know they're a sweetheart who likes other ppl by default... Especially humans, they adore humans, the Paradox of Tolerance doesn't rly stress me out much IRL, but it stresses Ekko (the character) out bc they hate that they have to be mean to hateful humans in order to protect other ones. Ekko just wants to be everybody's big friendly monster buddy and they are definately mine Ekko and I are BFFs she's real to me and we hang out all the time in my escapist daydreams I have hyperphantasia so it's very vivid and wonderful yeah i know im cringe shut up im 25 i get to be as cringe as my dorky lame uncool adult heart at this age.

Bit of a redesign update: The index page no longer leads to the faux load screen, but just goes straight to here again

Hey, so a couple things!

First off, I just had a major dental surgery yesterday - had to get a bit off bone taken out for an implant (not fun!) - and I'm currently in recover and "bed"bound to the family couch. My family is fortunately being very sweet and helpful to me while I'm "sick" (for lack of a better word) and I'm trying to take it easy and take out my energy/stim with gentle pacing, playing video games, watching movies and ofc working on my passion projects!

This means two things for you guys: I'm gonna working on some of my less ambitious projects a lot more, and there will probably be a bit of a delay in finishing any of them that involve vocalizing in any way, as I have to be careful not to break my jaw by overworking it in anyway, bc it just had a bit of the bone taken out

Now, there's not need to worry about me, kind-hearted internet stranger(s), as I'm making a really good recover so far and me and my family are taking all the reccomended precautions. The bleeding has seemingly stopped today, which is good bc that means the wounds have clotted, which is very good and on track for the surgery, but the folks that check up on my neocities are probably ppl who rly like my work as a niche internet artist and thus are at least somewhat invested in me as a person or at least an obscure online personality, so I wanted to let you guys know!

Some more things:

For one thing, MATTERPUNK, my indie micro-morrowind, is finished! It might be in the Winter Jam Bundle,, but if it isn't, I'll give the link to buy it from me directly. Hopefully by then I'll have my new PayPal set up with the families saving account. It'd be nice if my creative endeavors could help with my family's financial stablity. Times are tough (in the US in particularly, given all the tarrifs...) so we've really been leaning on eachother for financial support, even more than usually. Mutual aid is good! Especially in times like these

Secondly, I have a new prototype available to try called Jak-Rabet, a cinematic, atmospheric space-western FPS inspired by Half-Life 1 and the original Star Wars trilogy!

Here are some screenshots from the Jak-Rabet prototype

You can download the prototype from itch.io here! (it's a prototype so it's free ofc)

it takes about, like 5-10 minutes to beat the prototype, depending how much you're rushing through it or taking your time to soak in the atmospheric imagery (it's as much about atmosphere, mood and spectical as it is the boomer shooter stuff, if not more)

For the near-future of my gamedev stuff, I'm planning on focusing on shorter/smaller projects sold for cheaper on Itch.io rather than big projects sold for 10-25$. I need to get better at scope management before I can work more on my more ambitious projects again. Scope creep kills indie games

Jak-Rabet (the finished version) would probably be like, an hour or two of gameplay, AT THE MOST. Probably even less for that. I haven't decided on the price yet but it'll definately be less then ten bucks, probably more around Matterpunk's price, with a more regular playthrough length, given Matterpunk is a tiny sandbox CRPG with no set beginning or end (two towns, five dungeon, random NPCs that spawn in and a ton of RPG mechanics and roleplaying options) and Jak-Rabet is basically a mini-Half-Life (specifically the first one)

but I want to record VA for Jak-Rabet, which means I won't be able to finish it til my jaw is healed, so it might be a little bit even though it's a short game with a very small scope. Recording and implimenting the voice lines could very possibly be one of the last things I do, depends though

On the subject of my theater kid background... Early I gave a teaser with some of these images:

In case it wasn't obvious already, these are VFX prep. Yes, I'm making an indie film, it's gonna be called Exodus in Outtabounds. Yes, I'm going to be playing most of the roles, either live action on a greenscreen or on VA. Idk whether or not it'll be feature length, just under 40 mins or just a very long short film, but the script is already written and I've been storyboarding a lot of it for a while. It's going to be very weird, not terribly literal, and deeply surreal, the "dream sequences" in particular. It'll undeniably be a weird indie webfilm made almost singlehandedly by one very creatively-unhinged artist with a green-screen, a camcorder and tripod, a general understanding of cinematic language that's mostly from taking Film in highschool and then obsessively analyzing films for years, and a lot of crazy, deeply neurodivergent ideas lol

It'll be about two metaphorically-related stories: One is a mumblecore-grounded drama about an enby named Sam (played by me) programming an indie game with artist Will (played by my stepdad) and his partner (played by my mom) who's doing the music in her spare time, following Sam's stress, self-doubt and insecurity that they have to work through to help the team; The other is a psychedelic, post-ironic dramedy set in the surreal world of Outtabounds, following two pseudo-regal siblings - the easy-going, change-averse, totally-not-depressed Exodus and the firey, iconaclastic revolutionary Rapture (both played by me) - who are having a non-violent "war" of philosophical debate to decide who - if only one of them - will manage the flow of Outtabounds psycho-kinetics energies

Idk when filming will actually begin, definately not til next year as I need to majorly recover from the surgery so don't expect it anytime soon! I have a surprising amount of confidence Exodus In Outtabounds will, at some point, only bc a ton of planning goes into a film, and usually not planning properly is how I shoot myself in the foot in terms of not finishign projects. I've done a lot of planning and have even more to do before I begin filming, so it's probably for the best I have a lot of time... :P

straight ppl are FUCKING ASSHOLES

gay ppl are also FUCKING ASSHOLES

Bi and pan ppl are also FUCKING ASSHOLES

the only ppl are AREN'T FUCKING ASSHOLES are asexuals

(ngl this might be the worst, dumbest most middle-school-ass joke i've ever made but i just came up with it and had to write it down somewhere lol)

EDIT: in case it isn't obvious, this is a idiot juvenile sex pun. I am not actually saying everyone who isn't asexual is a jerk, that'd be a buck-wild take to unironically have tbh. Anyway generalizations are typically very bad and immature puns are hopefully mildy funny sometimes.

Y'all the guy remodeling my grandparents bathroom is actually a crazy person (I mean politically.) and I was just in my room working on one of my godot prototypes when he just starting talking to his assissent (who was seemingly either used to his bullshit or didn't know what else to say other than "wow that's crazy dude") and he started expressing political belief I did not know existed.

the two craziest ones I overheard could be summed up as "public transportation is literally human trafficing" and "class divide exists because there's too much regulating on large corporations"

How... how does one come to these beliefs? Genuinely where would beleifs that comically insane and unfactual even come from? Like, I'm aware the super far right tends to have beleifs that aren't meaningfully based in reality in any way, but usually this sort of alt-right crankery is based in a grossly misrepresented sliver of truth (Like pizzagate being partly based the owners wife doing something called "spirit cooking", which was actually just the name of an avant-garde art installation, but MAGA said was a satan thing where you cook with infant blood or some 80s-ass moral panic shit), but as far as I can tell his belief are like... pure fantasy, especially the first one omg

I'm also pretty sure he was just salty about public transportation bc he had to be around ppl with different lifestyles with him, bc he's from new york and he made a comment about having to be around furries sometimes on the subway. Really dude? You had to be around a queer person who's at least somewhat non-confomist? Wow. So Brave.

(he also said some underhanded racist shit but that was less funny and unhinged and more just regular "far-right white guy barely pretending he's not racist")

I need more surrealist gothic fantasy in my life. But like that specific oldschool PC game dark fantasy aesthetic with a surrealist/psychedelic twist. The only modern pieces of media I've seen really pull it off in the way I'm talking about are Zelle and The Dungeon of Blood And Dreams. I feel like I kinda pulled it off with I Dreamt of Sanguia but that's a little more on the 80s dark fantasy film side of things

tbh i should 100% make a game with that aesthetic, but it'll probably be awhile bc I just finished a game I was working on and it might end up in a itch.io bundle, and I haven't rly gotten a chance to relax during the holidays (i've been using creative work to run from my feelings, yet again) and ofc im getting a major dental surgery on the 23rd so i'll be out cold for a day or two

all of my intrusive thoughts are either "I am an awful person who deserves to fucking die and everyone knows this and hates me and also they'll always see me as anything but a cis man who will never be a valid enby bc im not valid and also im literally evil" or "wait... what if Bear Grills secretly had an autoerotic piss fetish? o_O" with basically zero inbetween

(If the Bear Grills thing sounds weirdly specific, it's because I just had this accursed thought and needed to afflict it onto others like a fucking chainmail curse. I'm sorry.)

Been deeply facinating recently by how the old crappy CRT that early games were made both on and for effected how the art was made and looked, because that's what screens were back then, they were making the pixel art on CRTs for CRTs, which blurred the pixels, and thus a lot of older games don't look as intended on modern screens without realistic CRT shaders

So... I download one of those and gave it a shot!

Here we have Ekko wrapping herself up in her wings. Very wholesome and cute from my perspective, very menacing to the vaguely-characterized unknowing onlooker who just wandered into the same abandoned gothic castle I'm squatting in and saw me curled up on the couch. It's ok though I got them a cup of tea after ~~making this in Libresprite~~ they took this photo on a disposable camera. They say it's for "proof" because "no one would believes me" otherwise. Idk what they mean by that but I think we're buddies now. Hopefully. I feel like I've superficially proven I'm friendly, but they might still be a little scared of me because they shiver violently whenever I give them any platonic affection or even acknowledge their existent. It is pretty cold in here... this castels from the 19th century and it doesn't have any heating. Maybe they're just cold? The scariest thing I did was cuddle up on the couch, that's not really that scary right..? I wasn't even standing on the ceiling... Im not scary im a cute bat monster right guys...? :( Anyway-

Jokes and escapism aside, I really like how this turned out. I already rly like impling detail in art, so this made pixel are a log easier. If I ever made a pixel art game, I'll probably use a CRT shader in godot

in case your curious, this is was the raw pixels look like:

A lot of the abiguity is definately lost with this. I made it by going back and forth between Libresprite and looking through ShaderGlass frequently with it zoomed out a bit, to see how it looks with the CRT. A thing about a lot of older Pixel art games is that they avoided loadbearing pixels, because those tend to get lose with the CRT bluring

im just chillin idk I just like drawing my sona looking cute but also goth uwu

Here's a fun and informative model for understanding the Horseshoe Effect:

When someone is closer to the center of the political spectrum, there favorite Elder Scrolls game, if they have one, is likely Skyrim. Skyrim is an action-heavy hack n slash RPG with simple RPG mechanics and fair amount of polish (i mean polished by bethesda standards anyway.) Skyrim, much like the status quo itself, is very approachably. It's also popular. The popularity is actually probably the reason centrist are pretty normcore

However, the Horseshoe Effects states that when the Left and Right, both taken far enough, can look superficially similiar to one another. You see this in the fanbase of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, which is split up between Radically Progressive Left-Wings Humanists That Might Also Be Furries But Not Nessessarily and Coke-Up Steam Forum Groypers (both technical terms.)

However, while both the maybe-furry punks and the trumpfuckers (also technical terms) love Morrowind in all it's beautiful crunch and jank, they have different reasons for doing so. While the far-left simply likes morrowind for the escapist fantasy of being a swashbuckling outlaw or whatnot and the Chug Skooma Go Very Fast Game Let Me Do This Wow, the far-right is also equally interested in it being released before 2015. Similarly, when asked why a game like morrowind couldn't be made today, those on the far-left might say that it's hard to justify making a game like this on a corporate level today, given the things priortized by design-by-commitee-influenced Rich Dips (another technical term), the far-right might say there's woman and black person in new game and also new game too political (though it should be noted that the validity of this claim is contested, as Morrowind also has women and black ppl and dives into the social-economic and racial politics of the very flesh-out fictional world so idk)

anyway this is all my braindead way of telling you I'm playing around with a new prototype while I wait for a green screen to arive for a bigger project:

Feel free to give it a whirl (by clicking the image above), but note I'm gonna be doing little updates to it every so often :3

Uggh, I rly wanna make myself pretty and wear nice clothes and put on makeup and shit but I don't have anywhere to be and I don't wanna waste foundation for something like this

been without makeup for weeks and the gender dysphoria is starting to set in... rn it's too late at night to make myself look nice :( might have to make myself up tommorrow

Gonna be honest, I don't rly care that much about the winter holidays (in my case xmas) at this age, but I hope y'all have a happy holidays nonetheless :3

I might make holiday art this year, but in case I don't, here's a lazy comic edit of some old art:

Ekko's personality basically functions on a spectrum between "haha funni spoopy goth bat is human fren" and "I have no pity for tyrants and I am ready to usurp God's thrown for the benefit of the 99%"

Btw: That character Ekko is cuddling isn't even an oc. Just some random stoner they literally just met and they felt bad when he was too hard on himself. For all their theatrical cartoon villian bullshit, Ekko's rly just a big softy with a spooky aesthetic and a strong sense of justice. Really represents my more overcompassionate tendicies. I think Mylo is more my introverted emo side lol

Edit: Not to pat myself on the back too much, but looking back... wow I can't believe i made this at like 2am, especially after a long-ish break from drawing. It's some of my best work in like a month or two (In the more dramatic illustration I mean. Ofc the silly one was just meant to be a little doodle lol). I really like Ekko's pose, it's rly dynamic and expressive, and their facial expression is also rly incredible, and while this is a smaller thing, their potbelly actually looks really natural and believable, even as a person who's body is actually shaped like that, it can be hard to make it look like my body actually does... also a lot of ppl (who probably are skinny in their defence, so i applaud them for at least trying) draw it looking like a sphere that isn't soft or isn't affected by gravity, what's weird is that classical (or at least standard, for lack of a better term) art training DOES teach how to draw fat, but only in the context of breasts on a stereotypical femme form, all fat pretty much works like that, water balloon or whatever

anyway sorry for ranting about plus-size rep in art, i ofc have strong opinions about that, as im sure a lot of you know. i don't rly get to see my body type represented in art (especially furry art) unless it's like somebody's kink or super a cartoonish/simplified representation of a fat person - and it's totally fine to like what you like between consenting adults, or just to draw toony art and simplified character designs, idk i'd just like to see more art that just depicting fat ppl and/or fat anthro animal ppl in a way that's both a bit more representational and non-hypersexual. Luckly I am also an artist so I can be the to draw that! >:3

I don't wanna give any details or specific information on it yet, until it's more along, but I'm actually working on my first "serious" project in a while, and unlike Mixtape Delinquents it'll probably actually get finished within a reasonable amount of time. (particularly bc it isn't a video game and has a pre-planned production)

I will include some cryptic out of context screenshots from the production though ;)

Sometimes I feel like a fuck up (mostly just bc I came of age right when the economy hit the fan and just happened to be fortunate enough to have a loving family who understands how difficult things are rn, especially for ppl my age) so sometimes I tell myself "Hey at least your not one of those weird losers who write Steam reviews about how wokeness is ruining gaming and say weird 4chan shit 'wokescolds' and 'furrysided' and 'goyslop' and think it's normal to say shit like that and doesn't show your ass as a weird internet nazi an-" and then I'm like "Heeyyyy I should have much higher standards for myself and maybe stop thinking im the worst person in the world for some reason"

Side note just to educate yall on what those assholes are talking about when they say those things: the "goyslop" thing is a particularly deranged 4chan neo-nazi conspiracy theory where they think ultra-processed is somehow jewish ppl's fault instead of, yknow, just how profit motives naturally affect an underregulated food industry, the "wokescold" thing i'm 99% sure is just what they call intellectuals when the words like "media literacy" or "critical thinking skills" are spoken, and "furrysided"... I dunno honestly i've just heard those types of ppl say it. I have a hunch though, based on context clues, it might literally mean "sided with the furries" which... implies a preceived one-sided holy war going on between an extreme political ideaology and a hobbyist group that happens to have a lot of neurodivergent and queer ppl in it. Speaks to a deeply strange but facinating world view.

(Btw im sorry the last couple of posts on here have been complaining about fascists, it's just that those fucks are currently running the government and holding onto power for dear life so I'm grumpy and need somewhere to vent.)

Saw some coked up groyper on YT describe someone having "turned degeneracy into a career" and yes a lot of ppl actually do this. We call such ppl, "artists".

Here's my (very mildly) inflamatory take for the day: I don't think there's any need for nuance or exceptions in the statement "The only good fascist is a dead fascist". I think if someone's a full blown nazi it's 100% ok to exclude them from all human life inherently having value. If they believe in all the nazi shit, and say fucked up shit about jewish ppl and other racial/ethno-religeon minorities, queer ppl, disabled ppl, and basically anyone who doesn't conform to their ultra-puritanical world view via thinly veiled dogwhistle, they should fucking kill themselves like their favorite geman guy. Morally speaking, it's ok and good to say that neo-nazis and fascists in general should Fix Their Heart Or Die. We don't need to add nuance for that, and if there seems like there might be a need to do so, it's probably not a good sign for democracy and there's A Problem That Needs To Be Fixed Urgently. Just saying.

BTW: if someone claims they "don't like 4chan nazis but furries are more cringe/worse" that's probably a fucking dogwhistle. Just say you hate queer/disabled ppl, dipshit. That's like saying "I don't agree with the nazis but their uniforms were cool, aesthetically speaking". Go fucking kill yourself. (not you reading this, you stay alive, im talking the the hypothetical groyper who's just a stand-in for the ppl who say either of these dogwhistles. Anyway...)

anyway sorry im just grumpy bc im getting older and more educated on politics just as neo-fascists have gotten ballsy enough to rage-frolic about like their weird euginics bullshit is an acceptable thing to bring up in polite conversation. Honestly who should have been harsher on 4chan and iFunny and that's saying something bc most ppl I've met vocally loathe both those platforms lol

One weird thing I've realized as an adult, is that it isn't really that older people automatically lean more to the right, but rather than the Boomer generation (and ppl close to them in age) were raised at time where most parents were just unfit to be raise children, and were encouraged to never reflect or process their emotions, so their emotionally stunted, and the American form of conservatism kind of comes from a place of magical thinking to justify it's existence as an ideaology... and magical thinking is often a sympton of unchecked childhood trauma, and while that isn't an excuse for anything like bigotry, it might be a more productive angle to tackle this problem.

past couple of days i've been a weird lil grimlen with no thoughts inside my silly little head framing my internal monologue as a daydreamed conversation with a similarly no-thoughts-head-empty bat version of me where we just sorta have a back in forth that doesn't make any fucking sense but we get it

(yeahhhh im less of a "i wanna be my fursona" type of furry and more one of those oddball "i wanna be BFFs with my fursona". I know that's objectively the cringier kind and I don't care, I like the big funni bat that lives in my brain they're my buddy shut up :3 )

MADAMI NO DUDE DON'T TRY TO WORK ACROSS THE ISLE WITH THE ORANGE NAZI MAN CMON DUDE WE LIKE YOU YOUR IDEAS ARE GOOD DONT DO THIS :(

The context if you don't have it: Mandami, the new york governor who actually has good ideas, unfortunately is trying to reason with Trump. Misguided in my opinion, you don't negotiate with fascists.

First part of a romantic-tragedy fantasy short story between a 20-something femboy being persued by witchhunters for his magical powers and the kindly dragon lady who gives him shelter

It's a unconventional romantasy story that's SFW, but maybe bare in mind that it's kind of a Romeo and Juliet type thing, and that this is only the first part

I know this is a silly thing for me, an asexual person to weigh in on, but being panphobic, biphobic etc in the modern day is like... fucking insane to me

Like, you hate all queer ppl? Ok you're an asshole. You only hate trans ppl? Yeah sure buddy, im sure you're harboring no hidden homophobia at all. You don't think asexuality is real? Ok you're a willfully ignorant scared lil anti-intellectual bitch who doesn't wanna learn about others lived experiences outside of you're own, seen it a thousand other ways

But you like... don't think a person can be attracted to two or more genders? My guy that cat been out of the bag for awhile now. Sexuality and gender is a spectrum. Ya gotta pick a side because bi and pan ppl don't gotta do that for you lol

So I was so happy with the stock market sim minigame from that WIP imsim that I made it into it's own little standalone browser game, STONKS! I also made a 3D logo for it:

You can play it on Itch.io HERE!

Insanely bold prediction i have for the near-ish future: As indie games continue to trend in the direction of becoming more cultural relevant than AAA games, future "icons" of the gaming space will be *mostly* hugely influentual indie games like Stardew Valley, Hollow Knight, Creulty Squad, Ultrakill etc, and they'll be held in the same regard as the games that inspired them

so here's the real bold claim im putting out there: i think a decade or two from now, we're gonna see AAA studios (assuming they still exist in some form, which i think they probably will) try to capitalize on this by licensing the rights to currently noteworthy indie games to make HD remakes and remasters of them, because i feel like most AAA in the current space won't really be remembered all that fondly, based purely on the indie dev sphere slowly becoming the default in many ppl eyes, or at least the more culturally relevant space of games

but like... can you imagine an HD remake of fucking cruelty squad? what the fuck would that even look like? ofc i feel like a big company would butcher it but i still *kinda* wanna see it out of a morbid curiosity

Screenshots from the imsim im working on:

Yes, that's a functioning real-time stock market, creulty squad style

sooo i spent most of today programming a functional stock market in Godot for that hobbyist imsim i was making, so my brain is pretty fried and i have gone from my ekko.eccentric_goth_bat_campy state (i use an enum for that, match for ekko_currentState) to ekko.that_bat_from_fern_gulley_that_i_had_crush_on_as_a_child_for_some_reason_? so needless to say im running all the silly processes on _physics_process(delta)

(if this is incoherent rambling, please disregard)

been prototyping a immersive sim in the first time in awhile. i wanna get back into hobby dev, ive been taking creating too seriously so i wanna make smaller less self serious projects just for funs sake.

it's honestly been rly fun. idk what the fuck is wrong with me but i love creating really mechanically crunchy games. amoung other things i set up a damage system for the gunplay where damage is calculated based on the virtual width of the round, the velocity of the muzzle and the distance away from the shot (like how it's done in Psycho Patrol). also sound, carrying objects, interaction, enemy ai, inventory etc

im in an odd situation where i know i should probably just make a level prototype already but i might not for awhile bc im having a lot of fun setting up new systems and what not (don't worry i will make the first level eventually, then ill release it on itch when it's polished

Weirdly specific types of ppl i adore:

-terminally online gremlin good ending (instead of becoming a groyper/redpill they got really into Cruelty Squad and telling Elon Musk to kill himself like his favorite German guy on Twitch while he loses at a game he cheated at)

-aging woman who's just now figuring out she's Autistic/ADHD and suddenly her whole life makes sense

-extremely chill scruffy non-toxic dudebro stoner with a heart of gold and several pre-rolled joints on him in a ziplock bag at most times

-Nonbinary but in a "I AM THE GENDERMEISTER. MY HAIR IS THE BLUEST OF THEM ALL. I HAVE CLAIMED A THOUSAND PRONOUNS AND I SHALL CLAIM YOUR'S AS WELL" kind of way

-The furry who's bizarrely philosophical and/or hyperliterate (hi)

-"I need everything to be soft. i need my bed to be soft. my partner to be soft, both figuratively and literally. everyones words with me to be soft. i am constantly on the verge of tears and a panic attack"

-artist who's entire style and creative voice is based on one specific obscure piece of media they saw as a kid at way too young of an age

-artist who's creative voice is experimental to the point of being utterly deranged and at times borderline alien but when you talk to them in any other context they seem quirky and socially anxious in a chill way, until you get to know them more and more and suddenly the artistic insanity makes a bit more sense (hi again)

Im happy to inform yall that i have been getting back into music a bit, and i have some new stuff coming out soon!

ART DUMP TIME

also this video collage:

Holy shit y'all, 5000 views total on this site! i can't thank you all enough, it's wonderful to see that there are ppl out there who at least have seen my work, if not connected to it

Tbh i haven't been creating as much the past couple of weeks, around this time of year the colder weather shocks my body a bit and it takes a bit of time for me to adjust to the cold, and my emotional state kind of suffers bc of it, i get really depressive and emotional stay in bed a lot. don't worry though, once my body gets used to it it's usually fine for the season, i just live in a warm place so this is the only time of year that gets even a bit chilly for a few months. i have been working on a couple things a bit but not as actively as usual

Post found on a Steam forum for the game Pseudoregalia:

Y'all you don't understand. My day is unironically much better now. This is genuinely the funniest shit I've seen in months and I'm only maybe like 45% sure that's it's satire. Maybe that estimate is skewed by bias though bc I don't want it to be. There is an actual possiblity that somewhere out there, there is a real person, possibly a grown man, who got on the Pseudoregalia forums to diccusion of this Not Furry game he's played... and thought this was a normal thing to say in this or any scenario

He sounds like an alien who immediately got into groyper manosphere shit upon arriving to Earth and doesn't understand what a cartoon is or the diffence between reality and a game where a stoic goat lady collects keys to unlock a door so she can fight a princess. "Such in life in Marxworld tho." is what rly completes for me. It sounds like Psycho Patrol dialogue omg. I could not create a strawman as flimsy than this. I am not joking when I say the possiblity of this being satire is genuinely sad to me. I now want everyone in the altright to be this braindead the news would be so much funnier. This has shown me new kinds of stupid I did not know to be possible

inside u there are 2 lvl.1 enemies: the Kindness Goblin and the Sadness Slime. to show urself compassion feed the Emotional Jelly (MISC ITEM) that the Sadness Slime dropped (86% drop rate so don't worry you probably won't have to grind much if at all) to the Kindness Goblin to lvl them up all the way to lvl.5 and they'll give you Love Gem (KEY ITEM) which can be used to mend the hearts of those around you for a whopping 95% of their maximum health. this will unlock the side quest We're All In This Together (no relation to high school musical it was just the best translation to read like the original Japanese version of the game) and completeing this quest will unlock the boon Sense of Community. Side quest COMPLETE. This is a good metaphor for mutual aid and not convoluted at all i think

sorry about all the depressing leftist rambling today. woke up kinda late feeling like shit and i just had a lot on my mind. although tbh the AI Bubble thing is kinda just a PSA for ppl who maybe aren't caught up on *why* the bubble is stupid, i feel like most ppl know the problem is less the raw tech and more the bullshit surrounding it but idk maybe some ppl still are a bit confused by all the buzzwords thrown around? tech bros are rly good a jargoning their way out of ppl asking them basic question about their products and why we should care so idk lol

ill have to try to have smth creative out soon, tbh iv I've been going through a log emotionally recently and I've felt both isolated and like i don't have the energy to spend time with my family more or less express myself creatively so y'know

i was working on a hack and slash/tps prototype in godot recently, i should probably start coming up with art direction for that now that the core mechanics are finished. also still need to upload sound stuff to archive and share it here

on the "AI" thing again: i feel like most ppl know this by now, but rly the problem with the "AI Revolution" isn't really the technology itself, just how it's being dangerously overhyped and how poorly optimized OpenAIs shitty models are

like machine learning and even "generative" ai has been around for years and has niche usecases, and even for more quasi-creative stuff it's probably fine as a niche hobbyist thing or maybe as last ditch effort brainstorming effort for an artist to then actually write or draw something from scratch on their own (tbh i still think random word generators are an infinitely tool for that). the problem is that they're marketing this technology as a huge, revolutionary thing and have used it to declare an imaginary war on art bc their salty that they don't have a creative bone in their body, and that some of these LLMs basically drink more water than us solely bc large American companies have zero insensitive to optimize their software and no issue wrecking the environment for profit.

Also copyright infringement is only cool when *people* do it /hj when corporations do it it's shitty and exploitative

tl;dr the problem with AI is less AI itself and more companies overhyping their large language models like they're something more than language tools to create an economic bubble, and wrecking the planet bc they don't wanna bother optimizing their LLMs even though it's entirely possible to do so

oh yeah and also ppl will schizophrenia REALLY shouldn't be using ChatGPT or any other LLM. Eddie Burback did a great video in that (also if you REALLY need a LLM for some specific language type thing, plz plz use Deepseek or some lightweight open source model you can run on your own computer instead, bc that's much better for the environment. ChatGPT is really bad for the environment y'all)

Y'know, a thing ive been thinking about a lot about is how the ppl most left behind by the manosphere thing are all the noncomfortist men who see through the bullshit of Joe Rogan and shit, but instead of being encouraged or even rly allowed to join the conversation, they're ignored by shitlibs and seldom mentioned by even progressives bc "look at these crazy weirdos with bad opinions" or "pRoFoRmaTIvEs mAlEs: are they bad?" is a more algo-friendly headline than "hey a lot of men who don't conform to the hypermasculine status quo are extra concerned about the manosphere thing, we should ask for their input"

i think this problem is also self-perpetuating bc a lot of these guys (the non-confomist ones) just grow more and more disdainful of not only ppl like Rogan or the grifters themselves, but also the guys there grifter,

which just adding on to the problem of seeing the ppl getting rubed as Bad Men Who Were Secretly Always Like This and Poor Innocent Young Women Who Are Being Unknowingly Manipulated Into Being Tradwives And Femcels, and not what they actually are: a bunch of vulnerable and gullible young people who've indoctrinated by a bunch of fascists, and all need to be dragged out of the mud before they've been fully indoctrinated into to nazism and its too late

(Also... yeah. kinda fucked up that the men are being demonize while the women are being infantilized. It's wild to me how many ppl who think they have a progressive view on gender straight up believe in biological fundemental without realizing it and aren't willing to confront those sexist biases. to be clear everyone involved in this weird alt-right gender movement are both perpetrator and victim, except for the ppl like Tim Pool, Joe Rogan etc at the very top who are just fully the ones at fault)

anyway i guess the TERFs got what they wanted in the end. not even ppl agreeing with them, just normalizing weird biological fundamentalism to throw a wrench in the antifascist resistance. tbh its kind of perfect, in a depressing way, bc the TERF movement/grift was kinda a precursor to femcel and tradwife stuff

stay safe y'all, be yourself. don't conform to something just bc everyone else is. fight for what's right. what you believe. time itself is a cycle and we will all overcome this :3

random art tips:

-restraint isn't actually useful for art, most teachers just aren't sure how else to teach artistic intent and verisimilitude, so they use a concept of "restraint" to guide beginners to fall into an artistic commitment. a better way to do this is to simply always consider WHY you're doing any given thing, rather than thinking in a subtractive way and hoping you luck into it

-learning anatomy, form and lighting isn't about learning realism or even really how things "should" look. it's more important to learning how something is constructed in a more general sense so you can abstract it from a baseline. you don't really need to be able to draw it realistically so much as understand how a given thing is supposed to work (like how eyelids are shaped or how your skeletons broader structure is

-this one's an obvious/beginner one, but just in case: complex things can be broken down into simple things (like cubes and spheres and stuff), then you can add smaller more complexity as you go (or just keep it simple if that's your jam)

-"the fundamentals of art" are just there to give you guidelines. they aren't ineffable rules, they're just mental tools that give you a place to start from, learn them so you can bend to your will!

-color theory is useful and you should learn it. it's also pretentious bullshit. unlike anatomy or perspective and form (which can still be bent if it fits you're artistic intentions for a piece) color theory is entirely made up and largely subjective. there are no rules that say what colors look goo together, but some dead guys still needed to add smth to the artists creative toolbelt for colors and color theory was their best attempt, and given the extremely abstract subject matter of *checks notes* just colors, in general, they did probably the best job they could have lol

-another color theory thing: saturation and hue are wayyy less consistently important than having contrasting values, unless you're doing eyestrain usually you want different values. that said, higher saturation is generally more vibrant and lively, maybe even surreal or psychedelic in the right context, and more neutral tones are usually either gloomy or naturalistic. ofc you can still do moody and melecholic stuff with saturated colors (like one of my all-time favorite films, the metal-inspired arthouse horror/action "Mandy") and and have more muted tones in a really trippy work (Mason Lindroth's "Hylics", another favorite of mine)

-like all blanket statements, take this with a grain of salt, but: teachers who advocate for only using neutral tones, never deviating from naturalistic anatomy or representation, and generally just worship the vapid aesthetics of greek statues washed of their original paint dont exactly inspire confidence in me, personally. i say this more from experience, ive been set back by teachers like this

-art at it's core is communication. the message of a piece, whether that narrative themes or just the emotions you're trying to convey in a painting, are way more important than just making the prettiest thing

-more polished art isn't nessessarily better art. in fact, perfectly polished art tends to be very boring, and the worst thing art can be is entirely uninteresting. sometimes imperfections is evocative

-this last one is gonna sound rly weird but hear me out: most of the time when you have a bad drawing day, you're either overthinking it or - and yes im serious - drawing to slow or too quickly, but usually too slow. the speed and cadence at which you draw really effects the quality. when you draw with energy at a comfortable tempo, it comes out in you're brush strokes, partly bc you get into a groove and you're intuition kicks in. this is especially important if you're a more analytical person like myself

hope some of these might help, or at least offer a new way of looking at things. i have some new pieces i need to upload to the internet archive so ill try to do that soon

ive been replaying Hylics recently and y'all its so good

ppl talk about how weird and surreal it is, and yeah, but its weird and surreal in such an oddly chill and laidback way, like i know ppl describe tones of surreal games as "acid trips" but this game feels like the game equivalent of psychedelic rock, not just in the soundtrack but just in that it feels like a rly weird trip, and put you in that headspace

also im pretty sure this games liek 4$ on steam, id recommend it its not wildly long or anything, like a couple hours at most, but it's super replayable bc of how open ended and vibey it is. its also like an actual game and not *just* a cool art piece, it has it's own balancing mechanics and everything. i rly like games that can do both artistically moving AND genuinely fun

sry to vent on the miniblog, but: been having rly existential thoughts about *why* i care about art so much, the humanity and realness of it

i know that sounds weird bc im an artist myself and, well, *gestures at this entire wildly experimental website*, but it's weird bc i want art to feel real and authentic, clearly made by a human being with a worldview and tastes and a personality, despite the fact i... don't really like other people in general very much. at worst i resent them and feel unsafe around them, and at best I feel bad about taking time away or inconveniencing someone i rly like, or at least respect. im very asocial, much more than most ppl, and even with ppl i know and love i still like to keep a distance most of the time

but idk why i want that human connection of art when i don't even like human connection on a social level, at least not too intimately

i don't rly have an answer to that, i don't rly think you can answer that. its the weird way my brain works. i feel like a walking contradiction sometimes

EDIT: been a thinking about this more, and I kinda thing me being hyper-introverted is actually WHY i like that human connection in art, bc it's the best way i can relate to ppl on a closet level. maybe im a little fucked up, i had a rly traumatic upbringing (particularly in schooling, my family was mostly fine and had my back tbh and did an alright job all things considered, but i faced a lot of harsh bigotry for my disability in elementary and middle school, being an autistic kid with emotional problems in 2000s Florida was rough) so that could be part of why ppl make me so nervous, i wasn't always treated right by. maybe some day i can start to give ppl a chance

YouTube thumbnails are getting weird y'all. i just saw one that was i guess about some anti woke grifter(?) and it just said on one side "homophobic and racist comments" and like yeah ok but on the other side it said "gagging at the taste of water" with a picture of him trying Fuji water and i think not liking it??? he... doesn't like fuji water i guess? or maybe he choked on it? is that... relevant somehow? i feel like clickbait used to be more normal than this which is saying smth. like it's not wven click bait its confusion bait. the internet is all kinds of fucked up

What are my thoughts on the Halo remake?

Joke answer: Many years ago... time passes so queerly... I was an artist. I sought perfection in all things. So, seeking to be inspired, I traveled to this city, a place of pure form. It was perfect. It destroyed me. Nothing could be created which was not a pathetic mockery of the objects of the city. The finest works paled in comparison. In the face of such beauty I felt corrupted, an animal. Our world meant nothing. We were all graceless, creatures of slime. I was practically comatose for months when I realized what I had to do. Don't you see? The perfection of the city left us impotent. We have to destroy that we can build again! It's still not enough, you know. Even now I can feel echoes of that perfect world, in the chance permutations of our broken copy. Perhaps another GREAT CHANGE... Yes... And more, until it becomes self-perpetuating... A ceaseless chaos of forms. Perhaps I already have. Perhaps we've had this conversation many times, you and I, with places exchanged... Heh. Better to reign in Hell that serve in Heaven...... motherfuckerrrrrr! Enjoy your perfect world...

Serious answer: tbh I have no relation to the Halo games other than cultural osmosis, but I 100% can empathize with distraut Halo fans bc this remake looks bland and overpolished as hell, which is a shame for remaking what was, appearently, a very experimental game for it's day, and despite my distance from the original I'm annoyed with the ppl defending this remake on principle. Still not as bad as the Deus Ex remake though lol

Sorry for the absense, I've been going through some shit.

But i also bought an older (and therefore cheaper lol) version of RPG Maker (XP) and I've been having a lot of fun with that!

Here's my "learning project":

(The picture is a link btw. You can click it to go to the itch_io page)

I feel like so much Bad Gaming Discourse just comes from AAA normies not understanding that games can and should be made for specific and different tastes

Like, "Should games have an easy mode?" Some should, some shouldn't, some should just be easy, and some should have an easy mode that's still difficult as shit. No one game should try to appeal to everyone, devs should just make what they'd like to see, and ppl who like the same thing can play it. that's how it is in the indie game space and how it used to be in the studios too, until the creative power was taken away from the game designers and to the business people. God forbid a game be made as a creative endeavors from the creator's own artistic outlook, and not just a glossy product devoid of humanity. (but tbh that's kinda a problem in most creative fields, not only games but also movies and music etc)

Anyway a related update: im back working on Mixtape Delinquents (my big indie immersive sim dream game project) just so you know, just started on a level that'll come a bit later called Degen Alley, I'll try to keep any updates spoiler-free when they come

Y'know, i know i say this as a non-binary gender deviant who hasn't felt bodyshame (about my weight, at least) for a long time...

But if we really wanna get rid of fatphobia once and for all, we need to stop pretending its solely a women's issue for some weird goddamn reason

there's this bizarre shitlib-adjacent belief that only women face fatphobia, or that it's not as bad on the other side of the gender binary

and yes i know patriarchal society loves pretending human and/or societal issues don't exist for men bc that would require allowing men to step out of the line they're forced into and allowing them to be vulnerable and express their emotions freely, but usually it's rooted in some sort of rigidly enforced expectation of masculinity or smth

what's weird to me about ignoring fat phobia against men is that it's like... a self contained cultural delusion. there's no toxic masculinity or perverse financial incentives to ignoring fatphobia towards masc ppl, it's just a weird nonsensical belief that a lot of shitlib types have that's easily falsifiable just by... showing fatphobia towards guys? why do shitlibs believe this? Fatphobia isn't even that different across the gender spectrum, it's just applied in whatever way fits that gender identity's stereotype the most seemlessly

anyway regardless of you're gender identity or body type, be kind to yourself, and don't let the world tell you you're less than just bc ur shaped different, and also if you're a man and you've been emotionally hurt by mean comments about your body, it's ok to admit your feelings have been hurt, you have a right to feel you're emotions, and you are absolutely, as a human being, entitled to talk about your feelings with someone you trust and/or cry (yes, even ugly sobbing with tears gushing down your face, curled in the fetal position in bed if that's what it is that you need. That's normal and healthy and no one should emasculate or infantize you for that, you're a person who fundamentally deserves to feel the full range of his emotions :3 )

Addendum: it's worth noting that buff women are stigmatized and made to feel insecure in a very different way than skinny/lanky men are (not to see its nessessarily worse or less bad, just that the body shaming comes from a very different gendered place) but fat ppl of any gender are going to be the most shamed for our bodies bc our society hates fat ppl (which imo is stupid bc we're soft and huggable but that's getting more into my dorkass fluffy aesthetic/sensual preference lol). also this is ofc from a Western (or at least American) perspective, idk how it is in other cultures but i do know fat phobia does exist in some parts of the East as well

one of my genuinely favorite things in modern capitalism is a when a company that's doing fine that has had no controversies, who's business model is entirely reliant on just offering a nessessary utility like a hardware or grocery store, does a "radical rebrand" where their like "look guys we're reinventing our company's whole brand image and making it MODERN" and everyone's like "uhh ok...? you guys still have lightbulb though right?" and PR just kinda has to be like "yeh"

its so fucking funny to me every time bc no one ever gives a shit and they were gonna buy a light bulb there either way, so they basically just wasted a bunch of money for Cool Points™ that does not effect their bottom line whatsoever. it's the very best kind of farcical modern corpo bullshit

I've recently had to replace my laptop - the old one, which had been on it's last limb for awhile, finally kicked the bucket due to the bucket due to the battery no longer taking power input :( - and while it's sad to see the tool I used to express myself creatively for five years, THIS NEW ONE HAS A FANCY-ASS AMD PROCESSOR WITH RADEON GRAPHICS HOLY SHIT!

Also the display is incredible and it's a device actually made for creatives specifically (it's a lenovo idea pad if ur curious), I was suprised how much better the CPU/on board graphics were than on an i5

So far my only reak complaint (so far) is that the keyboard is shifted slightly to what im used to and the trackpad still doesn't have dedicated buttons, but so it goes with laptops lol

Creative Pro-tip: Discipline, motivation and willpower are fine to use as fuel in moderation, but all three of those things are fickel and dangerous to rely on

what you need is a "why", a reason to justify to yourself why you're doing what you do. having a reason for doing something is the only reliable way to keep doing creative work, because your "why" is how you rekindle your passion. i wouldn't have been nearly as prolific if i didn't find some sort of excuse to convince myself to keep going

if video game adaptations become the new MCU dribble for a bit then they might make a Cruelty Squad adaptation and i don't trust the old business dudes to understand how tf you would even begin to adapt Cruelty Squad. that'd be hard even u understand Cruelty Squad. You'd probably have to go full on Wachowsky Sister's Speed Racer (2008) to even begin, more or less justify adapting it to film

Art dump:

Hot take: i don't think it's that autistic/ADHD brains aren't "deficient" per se, i think it's that the deficiencies of the neurodivergent brain - like a lack of stress management and difficulty doing certain tasks consistently - are more personal and affect the neurodivergent person themselfs as well as their immediate support system of loved ones, whereas the deficiencies of the neurotypical brain - like mob mentally, potentially having flexible morals in a given social situation, and a inate inability to process information in mass - aren't rly problems for them as individuals, but can and often do negatively society as a whole, since neurotypicals are often very good at convincing each other to believe and keep believing idiotic, often hateful things that they should otherwise no better than to think.

Ofc, both have benefits, some of which can make up for this. Neurodivergent ppl's blight of overprocessing information means we generally learn more quickly and are far more hardwired for critical thinking rather than an anticritical self-imposed groupthink and means we don't take things for granted, whereas neurotypicals inability to process that much information at once makes their lives much less stressful, and they can communicating things with each other without nessessarily having to fully understand how they're communicating that with so little information

But i kinda have to wonder why the conversation is always around ADHD or Autistic ppl when neurotypicals struggles, unlike ours, are felt not by them, but on society as whole. as per writing this ive been having a days long autistic shutdown, and it sucks and I wouldn't wish this experience on anyone neurotypical or otherwise, but why are we talking about me when the neurological issues of those without a disorder are causing society stagnation and regression

ya know, im starting to realize a big part of why the world and internet sucks now, is bc social media gave ppl who peaked in highschool a platform to be infantile and wretched on, but actually get heard

like ofc former popular kids (or at least trust fund kids rich enough to feign popularity) have always resented the nerds and artists and theater kids who ended up being more fulfilled and/or successful than them in the long-term,

But plattorms like TikTok give these non-chalant losers a place where they can effectively hang out with teenagers (which yeah is creepy when you put like that) and never have to grow out of their highschool mean girl/douchey jock antics bc it never ends for them

Anti intellectualism gets ramped up, these types of people lean into the heteronormativity of their highschool years, and then incels can worm their way into nerd culture (the antiwoke ppl are deadass the actual fake nerds btw, they have no passion for the media they pretend to love, they don't like nerdy stuff tney just like yelling at minority-shaped clouds) and then these assholes get people amped up about a vague notion of "wokeness" and you can great this falsely two sided issue between two right-wing sides of a (in truth) one sided argument

Sorry I haven't been very active as of late, I'm going through a rough time in my life. I'll be ok, but I just hope things get better in the world so I can get myself out there. I've felt stuck lately :(

But I have been doing some stuff. I have a new song called "All American Anti-Chirst" that you can get here. I also have a new one coming out next month called "Change Our Minds?" and if you use spotify you can pre-save it here

Working on another animated short film rn! this one's gonna be more of a traditional narrative, rather than my typical tone poetry or surreal comedy

here's some "behind the scenes" ;)

haven't been eating as much recently, mainly bc i don't have the energy to make myself anything to eat. it doesn't really feel like im cycling though, weirdly. im just tired. Hope this rut doesn't last long :(

I only have a passing conception of Space Jam, but i think the real problem problem with Lola Bunny is that she has no gun, hitlist or tragic backstory. if you're gonna make a cartoon bunny person who fucks, what you obviously do (from a natural evolution of narrative tropes) is make them a jaded mercenary whos out for revenge for the mobsters that killed her husband. instead her boyfriend is currently alive, and for some reason she's a basketball player(?) so the sexy rabbit lady thing just comes too out of left field.

A bit of post-production practice! Wanna make a live-action film rly badly, but I'm stuck inside rn due to *gestures vaguely at everything*

I edited this with Shotcut. The footage was daytime and I wanted it to look like night so I had to go super stylized with it (which is fine bc i like stylized cinematography anyway). The street part was stock footage, the matte painting in the background was a Unsplash stock photo I had edited prior and was added in with some simple masking techniques. The weird sci-fi street light I just modeled real quick in blender and then just rendered it has a transparent PNG and composited in to the frame.

been watching old movies lately, and after watching both The Crow (brought me back to my goth phase, incredible cinematic style, some incredible fight choreography made great by real emotional stakes and surprising good character writing) and then Tank Girl (undeniably a film based on a comic by the Gorillaz guy.) ive come to the conclusion that 90s comic book movies were VERY hit or miss

tbh i think we should bring this back. sure Tank Girl is an abomination and im still not sure when it was actually trying to be funny and when it was just hilariously bad, but every comic book film now is guaranteed mid and bland and is exclusively trying to be "faithful" while being embarrassed of it's source material and imo that's worse

I'd love to see a hyper-stylized Johnny The Homicidal Maniac adaptation in the vain of The Crow, even if it means a baffling adaptation of The Mas- oh yeah Jim Carrie already did that then nvm. (also did you know the original The Mask indie comic is actually an exploration of the wrong type of person getting superpowers? Like Megamind but more graphically violent and without a big head blue guy to help. i was also surprised to learn that)

Been practicing some VFX establishing shots of fantastical/futuristic cities

Most of this stuff was inspired by old film techniques like minitures and matte paintings, been hyperfixated on this stuff lately lol

Sometimes I've been think about how, some day, a whole generation of kids are gonna look back on shareholder-trendy generative AI like we look back on Smellovision or all the goofy flash-in-pan tech fads of the 90s and 2000s, they're gonna look at all the model collasped ai freakouts and they're gonna be like "wow people back these weird images and fancy autocomplete software were really thought this stuff was the future huh? People really were stupid back then" not realising that a lot of people see through it even now, but it makes me think about how I've often looked back on dumb ideas of the past and assumed that *everyone* thought it was a good idea, which probably wasn't true. Like it's insane that some people assume I language tool can be trusted with doing math (you already have a calculator for that?) but also I and others are here saying, "Hey ChatGPT is just a language tool please don't trust it to put out factual information or do math correctly that was never what these LLMs were created for." while fucking Altman is like "yeah sure our Chatbots that run on a more advanced version of autocomplete can do math problems we're not legal responcible if it gets anything wrong though haha."

Just watched the first bit of Fantastic Planet. I can see why this film's a cult classic for sure, but it's one of those things I'm gonna have to watch in small chunks, given the heavy subject matter.

So far, at least, definately would reccomend if you're a fan of animation and/or arthouse films, but know that it's dealing with some themes like anthropocentricism and animal cruelty in a pretty intense and challenging way.

Been playing Metal Gear Solid 2 for the first time recently and holy shit i love it. I've played a lot of unhinged games before but this one's it's own thing entirely

Y'know, ofc "punch a Nazi" is a valid statement, but rly i think the best solution is just making fascist expression an illegal hate crime

did ya just zeig heile? draw a swastika on something? said some nazi shit? You're edgelord furry hater joke caught exposed as a dog whistle? Ur going in the slammer, buddy.

ofc the American prison industrial complex also does need to be reformed but if the suggestion above happened first i wouldn't complain all that much lol

Been super sick recently, idk with what. Been feeling dizzy and nauseus, not super fun

Rest in pieces Mr. Kirk. You're eugenics-horny neo-natalist ass will not be missed lol

But all jokes aside, don't moralize about that guys death. He was a neo-nazi and the far-right doesn't give a shit about stopping politically motivated violence as evident by the *checks notes* racially-motivated genocide of Latin Americans going on in this country right now. MAGA is only moralizing about political violence bc they don't want someone to "do the thing" bc oh boy do Americans really want someone to do that thing I can't explicitly spell out for legal reasons. hey btw u have a Cheeto stain on ur face u should clean that off sorry unrelated to what i was talking about.

The Garden is back up ;)

it has a little more going on now

"Ghost Room"

Short Film, Surreal/Arthouse

"Null Intentions"

Short Film, Psychological Horror

"Normal Mall"

Short Film, Comedy/Surreal/Arthouse/Absurdist

"The Donut That Makes You Sad", Short Film, Horror-Comedy/Absurdist

Man I'm kinda sad this morning but like... not for any particularly reason? Just bc last night was kinda exhausting

Should probably start the day doing something fun and/or rewarding to feel better...

Ekkochambers now has an intro page! The main page (this one ofc) is now https://ekkochambers.neocities.org/!-Main_Page

If you run into any technical isssues because of this, please let me know in the C-Box or email me at ianorianaspencer@gmail.com so I can fix it

I try to keep the mentality of waking up every morning and saying "The universe has allowed me to live another day. God does not strike me down with lightening for my sinful lifestyle because He fears what I will do in vengence if He tries, and now I must, through my artistic expression, make the gloriously blasphemous universal anomoly of my non-deadness everyone else's problem. Put this on an inspirational poster". ~Me

Edit: !!!!IMPORTANT UPDATE WEBZINE!!!

PSA: GenAI is NOT getting better. in fact, it's actually getting worse because of model collaspe. Don't be fooled, this technology is not inevitable, it's a fucking economic bubble that's pulsating like a pussfilled bubo that's ready to pop. Panicking about it "destroying art" is what these tech bro web3 shitheads WANT you to do because it gives their farcical juiced-up autocomplete models more legitimacy than they're worth. OpenAI has never turned a fucking profit and subsides entirely on imagined shareholder value. they lose money every time ppl use their shitty tech. don't believe the hype

just sharing this bc some artists still seem to think that this technology is an actual threat in an economic sense. much like replacing factory and service workers with physical robots, it's still cheaper to just hire real ppl bc in reality robots are fucking expensive bc they make crazy mistakes and are expensive to run and maintain, ChatGPT or Mid journey is no exception. Companies KEEP losing profits when they incorporate generative AI (which again, relies on train data made by humans to actually get better, something theyre out of) but slapping "AI" on smth rn makes you're stock prices shoot up like the moon bc bubble. tbh this is gonna be worse for tech workers, unfortunately, than creatives in the long run bc the tech industry is groveling for SOMETHING, bc they require infinite growth but the fucking smart phone has already been invented

A heads up: I'm about to be doing some light reorganizing of the site. Not anything HUGE nor worthy of putting a big "Under Construction" up by any means, but i'm gonna be moving a couple things around, just wanted to let everybody know in case you refresh the page and it's a little different lol

My latest short film, "Interview With The Horrible Little Man Who Lives Under The Sink"

you can ofc also find it on my videos page

The videos page now has some links "video collection" pages, one for short films and one for music videos. This will be a way to organize them

"Void Elevator", Short Film, Surreal Existential Comedy/Absurdist

also on the videos page ofc

Hey, big news: I have a dedicated "videos" page here, filled with my weird little short films, music videos and probably at some point other stuff! It probably already has some stuff you might not have seen

If you like weird animated shorts (or even just my art and music) I'd recommend giving it a whirl. It's also on the left sidebar now!

Another one of these

Wanted to try some more subtle acting with this weird lil guy

Been listening to a lot of psychdelic rock recently. I think it'd be fun to make an album in that style at some point. Still need to upload that EDM album to bandcamp, though...

A spooky one

Another faux-claymation experiment

a faux claymation test I did in blender. In terms of the movement, I think I nailed the claymation look, in no small part bc I used a process similiar to real claymation. The materials could use some work though, it could look more clay-like, and I did prep it for chroma keying (green screen, for those who didn't take film in highschool) quite poorly, there's green light bouncing right on the model (another material issue, the IOR was too high)

I like this little faux-clay guy as well, has tons of personality!

been playing the first Silent Hill game, not exactly for the first time but im rly giving it a dedicated chance now, and god is this game good! You can definately see how a lot of the series traditions started in this one, I love the little ways it fucks with you and the weird cerebral nature of it all. Also rly graphically impressive for it's day, has a really cinematic quality to it as well. Rn i'm on the Elementary School in the Otherworld

tbh i'm glad they didn't have video games in the 1950s. can you imagine if they're was a hays code for video games. "All pixelated communists must be killed for the game to progress" or some shit. queercoding in games would have been awful. the timeline could be worse.

A new demo update for MTD, with major balancing tweaks and graphical updates

Get it on Itch.io HERE

The second installment of my Ludum Dada series is out, a Pong clone with a quasi-gothic theme. You can play it on the browser HERE. You can also find it on the GAMES PAGE. Have fun play spooky pong!

Art dump time! Some character drawings

EDIT: I also REALLY love the jackalope femboy character (from this first picture). He's got so much angsty personality, also plus-size femboys are super cute and often don't the apprication they deserve

And ofc the chubby goth bat enby (That's me my sona. hi!)

I wanna give Ekko a hug and maybe a cuddle, they'd be soft and they have built-in blanket on their back uwu

Ugh, sorry getting so mushy about my fursona, I just love them so much. Their so cute and cool i wanna be their best friend :P

I have a new free browser game out: Ludum Dada: Freakout!

it's a breakout clone with a trippy artstyle. I've also update the Games Page

Have fun with it :3

I've come close to beating Hylics twice already. It's still good the second time weirdly? The games all trippy vibes, it's very meditative

Everything feels likes it's been falling apart recently. idk why this feeling feels new since the worlds kinda been fucky for awhile, but that's how my brain works ig

BTW: finished another Hellcaster page (dont wanna share it yet though and i've been hard at work on the script

I've been working on Hellcaster a bit more, as well as Mixtape Delinquents! I've been in quite the rut for the past while, which realy started when I had that leg pain, which is gettin better now. It's quite nice to be creative again!

I'll have more info on the progress in just a little bit ;3

Buuut in the meantime, I've made a documentation of my 3D-to-2D process for Hellcaster on the Internet Archive, so chuck that out

Also a bit from the Hellcaster script:

(Yeah I know I spelled "too" wrong lol, im just realizing this now so there's smth I gotta fix)

I just finished Hylics and holy shit was that whole game a vibe. So surreal, void of meaning yet anything but vapid, really proving style itself can be subtance in its own right. I would reccomend it if you like weird art and oldschool JRPGs. im pretty sure it's like 4$ bucks on steam, it's cheap, anyway. Took me 6.7 hours to beat but I did get lost a lot lol

Marvel was rly like "yeah you know The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny? lets make it real" and everyone was just like "yeah ok" for a lil bit. wack.

sry for any momentary issues with the sight, ive done some maintenance stuff to make it a bit better on various monitor sizes and slightly more usable mobile browsers

Anti-villians are inherently goofy bc imagine if there was a political debate and a progressive candidate was actually like, "Well, class disparity, neoliberal economics and monopolies are the biggest problems facing young Americans."

Then everyone's like, "Alright awesome you're totally right. What's you're solution?" and he's like, "I'm glad you asked! I for one think working class Americans should have easy access to forbidden eldrict knowledge and blood of the Old Ones, so they may ascend into a faustian godhood. Once they complete this guided evolution into their new grotesque form, they will have a better chance at competeing this the ultra-wealthy." And everyone afterwords is like "I really liked presidential candidate Averoth Wormwood before he got into the weird Lovecraftian stuff. I liked his ideas about universal basic income, regulating corporations and universal healthcare but his transhumanist views were a tad too radical if you ask me."

New Indie Shit I Like webzine! Read it here!

sometimes i wonder why i got bones. so quaint.

ART DUMP TIME :D

I'm kinda psyched for the PPR gambling update bc look at this:

hey uh what the fuck is happening Ville?? This is gonna destroy my brain can't wait

Hey, small lil update, but the "about me" section is now it's own dedicate page. I did this mainly to make it easier/more convenient for ppl to get to the miniblog, less scrolling now ;3

Lowkey obsessed with this bass music producer solely bc everyone else in that scene names themselves shit like Rezz or Virtual Riot or whatever but she's like "hi y'all im Jessica Audiffred i make dubstep" truly the James Blake of her generation lol

in other news, typing HTML on my phone just now has not been fun TwT

Sorry I haven't posted very much in awhile, I've been busy, tired and in a bad place :(

But I have been working on a bass music album! Here's one of the songs from it, named after this web hosting service :P

I have a podcast now!

It's a meta-fictional music-comedy podcast styled after 2000s radio DJs. I play the character of Ekko Locria (my fursona) as they host a radio station in Saint Bedlam, Hell, which is a "long-running" show that has entertained Damned and Demons alike, but is "now available" to the world of the living.

The first episode - Side-A of the "two-sided" pilot - is a bit different than what's to come, as a running gag in this one is "technical" difficulties. (Mostly Ekko talking over the songs too much and a character called Meg interfereing. The poor bat's a little thrown off their groove, given the "bigger" audience and all ;)

My leg's been getting a lot better. Turns out some of the more intense pain may have been psychosomatic. The cramp itself is also getting a lot better ofc, less and less lactic acid is in my system every day, so that's good.

update on the leg thing: been doing stretching and other exercises which has been helping a lot

Currently have an awful pain in my leg. According to the doctor its probably lactic acid buildup in my joints, which tracks bc i have a history of that. There's a slim chance it could be smth more serious and im getting an X-ray for that just in case, but even the doctor said that seemed unlikely. not fun either way

weird lil animation i did. kinda mundane but it's got a cool atmosphere

hey y'all! You've likely already saw this on my sidebar to the right, but just in case you didn't, I have a new album out early on Bandcamp called bionicman

You can get it here!

if you look to your right (of the computer screen lol) there's instructions on how you can get it for free, if you can snatch up a Bandcamp code from the linked PDF ;3

noir buny

and a sloppy warmup sketch lol

I've been playing Psycho Patrol R recently. Great game, definately takes "no handholding" to a comical extreme, but if that's you're thing, i'd definately reccomend it!

I feel a little better today. The world feels a little less hopeless today, weirdly enough.

Ngl i've been feeling like shit lately, emotionally. I live in the US and it feels like there's this storm going on, and i don't know if i'll see the end of it. Been thinking a lot about death recently.

UPDATE: Here's that "I'm Back" webzine

Hey Y'all! I'M BACK! >:3

I'll make a webzine soon to show what I've been doing artistically! uwu

Issue two of my fiction webzine is out now: VOID: A Cosmic Dramedy #2

You might wanna read the first one first though!

AN ACTUAL UPDATE REAL QUICK: pretty soon I will not be updating this website for about seven or so days, because im going on ANOTHER vaction w/ my family (i know, i just got home y'all) and this one will be at a cabin with no wifi and very little cell service. Tbh im not rly excited for this one but the whole family is going and it'll be a good excuse to work on my MTD and/or Hellcaster for a lil bit, since I'll have my computer w/out any wifi or cell service. Plus ive been to these cabin before and they are very cozy :P

don't worry though! I'll be back after that :3

I've written a new webzine about not staying silent and speaking out for what you believe in. I think it's a rly important message rn, you can read it here or under the "WEBZINES" tab ;3

ART DUMP TIME! :3

Hope y'all enjoy some of these :3

Hey y'all: V5 of the Mixtape Delinquents Alpha-demo is out. It's the beginning of me solidifying the game design of MTD in practice! You can get it here!

For those who don't know, Mixtape Delinquents is a WIP indie immersive sim RPG set in a retrofuturistic dystopia ruled by a corpotocracy known as the Syndicate, who have taken over the US government and World Wide Web alike. It's very much a cyberpunk satire of the state of tech and politics, and is rich in both Deus Ex-and-Creulty Squad-inspired imsim gameplay and story rich dialogue. We see a bit more of the latter in the V5, particularly in the beginning of the (very unfinished) mall level with Lance

I need to take gamedev less seriously, y'all. Work on smaller, sillier projects. Some of my best work in the medium of game design (like Netherpunk and Eyestrain D.Z.M.) has been when i was just goofing around and having fun, then the games were fun

Holy crap yall! Thank you for 1000 visits! Im so glad this slice of the internet ive made for myself has been viewed by ppl 1000 times :3

!!!EMERGENCY VACATION UPDATE!!!

hort.

resume regular activities

If you have a sec, you should read this webzine in particular: VOID: A Cosmic Dramedy #1: it's the first in a series im doing, and its a story ive wanted to tell for a long time. It's a slice-of-slice dramedy of sort, it'll probably be release mostly in short snippets, like one scene at a time, but it'll be a bit serialized rather than episodic rly

Update on the last post: Just wanted to let everyone know that there's an Ekko shrine now! You can get to it in the "Zines, Shrine and Blogs" Tab on the left side bar, or just click here

idk if i ever mentioned this on this website, but my sona character's (this guy) name is Ekko, hence the name of this site. They're a very chaotic, aggresively non-binary vampire bat, but i'll save the details for a shrine webzine :3

There's this cozy little loft where I (and my siblings) will be sleeping, although my poor kid brother is heartbroken and currently weeping over the fact that i'll be sleeping on a cushion rather than one of the beds. I was gonna sleep on this cushion anyway but the poor kid feels guilty becuz he thinks it's his "fault" :(

My family and I are staying at a lil cabin. I don't get out of the house very often so this is a refreshing change of scenery ^^

Going on vacation today! My parents's house is in need of repair, so they're going to Orlando and they invited me to tag along! *maybe* i'll give some updates on how it went :P

Genuinely, everyone should go listen to Echo Alexander, and not just because we're mutuals on bsky lol. They're making some of the more interesting music ive seen in recent years, they have a distinct and unique style but they span styles. Hella underrated imo

In this little area, im gonna post short lil blog posts like this one, about whatever: Random thoughts, updates, how life's been or even reccomendations. Just whatever comes to mind :p (By the way, the gallery is now it's own dedicated page :3