dremagonstudio

[dremagonstudio]

Exploring @tokyonightfest in Houston!

[dremagonstudio]

Happy Halloween!

To you and all your favorite (& not so favorite) creepy crawly bumps in the night.

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Happy Leap Day Everyone!

February 29th, 2024

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Warning: Adobe is Mining Your Content for AI!!!

Just found this out today by luck and needed to share.

Adobe has added "Content Analysis" which examines any work you have on the adobe servers. It takes your content and uses it to, among other things, train AI.

Adobe automatically opted everyone with an account in. (And of course, never bothered to tell anyone.)

If you use Abode/have a subscription for their programs then you need to TURN THIS OFF YOURSELF.

How to turn "Content Analysis" Off

Log into your Adobe account

go to https://account.adobe.com/privacy

Under "Content Analysis" turn setting to "OFF"

I am so pissed to find out they sprung this on us without any notice. Some of the designs I work on are on sensitive & confidential information for clients! WTF! This is the sort of thing that could get people like me in massive trouble if information or designs are leaked or stored or used anywhere outside of their contracted purpose.

I'm lucky I store everything on my physical computer instead of ever using the cloud so my files should be safe according to the Content Analysis FAQ page.

Also, the FAQ page? Last updated SEP 7, 2023

I'm making this post Jan 25, 2024.

Since this is the page that has the instructions on how to turn off "Content Analysis" that means that this content farming has been up and running for at LEAST 5 months.

Link to Content Analysis FAQ Here.

Maybe most people already know and I'm late on the train, but please help spread the word if you can so we can reach anyone else who doesn't know about this. Protect your content, people!

[dremagonstudio]

all RIGHT:

Why You're Writing Medieval (and Medieval-Coded) Women Wrong: A RANT

(Or, For the Love of God, People, Stop Pretending Victorian Style Gender Roles Applied to All of History)

This is a problem I see alllll over the place - I'll be reading a medieval-coded book and the women will be told they aren't allowed to fight or learn or work, that they are only supposed to get married, keep house and have babies, &c &c.

If I point this out ppl will be like "yes but there was misogyny back then! women were treated terribly!" and OK. Stop right there.

By & large, what we as a culture think of as misogyny & patriarchy is the expression prevalent in Victorian times - not medieval. (And NO, this is not me blaming Victorians for their theme park version of "medieval history". This is me blaming 21st century people for being ignorant & refusing to do their homework).

Yes, there was misogyny in medieval times, but 1) in many ways it was actually markedly less severe than Victorian misogyny, tyvm - and 2) it was of a quite different type. (Disclaimer: I am speaking specifically of Frankish, Western European medieval women rather than those in other parts of the world. This applies to a lesser extent in Byzantium and I am still learning about women in the medieval Islamic world.)

So, here are the 2 vital things to remember about women when writing medieval or medieval-coded societies

FIRST. Where in Victorian times the primary axes of prejudice were gender and race - so that a male labourer had more rights than a female of the higher classes, and a middle class white man would be treated with more respect than an African or Indian dignitary - In medieval times, the primary axis of prejudice was, overwhelmingly, class. Thus, Frankish crusader knights arguably felt more solidarity with their Muslim opponents of knightly status, than they did their own peasants. Faith and age were also medieval axes of prejudice - children and young people were exploited ruthlessly, sent into war or marriage at 15 (boys) or 12 (girls). Gender was less important.

What this meant was that a medieval woman could expect - indeed demand - to be treated more or less the same way the men of her class were. Where no ancient legal obstacle existed, such as Salic law, a king's daughter could and did expect to rule, even after marriage.

Women of the knightly class could & did arm & fight - something that required a MASSIVE outlay of money, which was obviously at their discretion & disposal. See: Sichelgaita, Isabel de Conches, the unnamed women fighting in armour as knights during the Third Crusade, as recorded by Muslim chroniclers.

Tolkien's Eowyn is a great example of this medieval attitude to class trumping race: complaining that she's being told not to fight, she stresses her class: "I am of the house of Eorl & not a serving woman". She claims her rights, not as a woman, but as a member of the warrior class and the ruling family. Similarly in Renaissance Venice a doge protested the practice which saw 80% of noble women locked into convents for life: if these had been men they would have been "born to command & govern the world". Their class ought to have exempted them from discrimination on the basis of sex.

So, tip #1 for writing medieval women: remember that their class always outweighed their gender. They might be subordinate to the men within their own class, but not to those below.

SECOND. Whereas Victorians saw women's highest calling as marriage & children - the "angel in the house" ennobling & improving their men on a spiritual but rarely practical level - Medievals by contrast prized virginity/celibacy above marriage, seeing it as a way for women to transcend their sex. Often as nuns, saints, mystics; sometimes as warriors, queens, & ladies; always as businesswomen & merchants, women could & did forge their own paths in life

When Elizabeth I claimed to have "the heart & stomach of a king" & adopted the persona of the virgin queen, this was the norm she appealed to. Women could do things; they just had to prove they were Not Like Other Girls. By Elizabeth's time things were already changing: it was the Reformation that switched the ideal to marriage, & the Enlightenment that divorced femininity from reason, aggression & public life.

For more on this topic, read Katherine Hager's article "Endowed With Manly Courage: Medieval Perceptions of Women in Combat" on women who transcended gender to occupy a liminal space as warrior/virgin/saint.

So, tip #2: remember that for medieval women, wife and mother wasn't the ideal, virgin saint was the ideal. By proving yourself "not like other girls" you could gain significant autonomy & freedom.

Finally a bonus tip: if writing about medieval women, be sure to read writing on women's issues from the time so as to understand the terms in which these women spoke about & defended their ambitions. Start with Christine de Pisan.

I learned all this doing the reading for WATCHERS OF OUTREMER, my series of historical fantasy novels set in the medieval crusader states, which were dominated by strong medieval women! Book 5, THE HOUSE OF MOURNING (forthcoming 2023) will focus, to a greater extent than any other novel I've ever yet read or written, on the experience of women during the crusades - as warriors, captives, and political leaders. I can't wait to share it with you all!

[dremagonstudio]

Happy National Bubble Tea Day 04/30/2023!

I didn’t color it, but the exclamation mark is a boba and boba straw.

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alla mingalёva

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You’ve been sentenced to 400 years for multiple murders. It’s been 399 years and your jailers are starting to get nervous.

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Image prompt

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Novel/Storytelling vs Structured Informational Reports basically

Whole-heartedly BEGGING writers to unlearn everything schools taught you about how long a paragraph is. If theres a new subject, INCLUDING ACTIONS, theres a new paragraph. A paragraph can be a single word too btw stop making things unreadable

[dremagonstudio]

We need like “unclench your jaw” posts but for eye strain. Like

Go look at something 20ft away for 20 seconds.

[dremagonstudio]

Dear fans:

Due to the recent news we've decided to postpone the event until further notice. We'll eventually put a new date in which we hopefully can smile together again.

Hope to see you there with us 🧡 and thank you Takahashi-sensei for everything 🤲

[dremagonstudio]

they have exactly one brain cell

[dremagonstudio]

067 Organizations in eastern Europe; in Russia

Well, I certainly can rant about this in the current political climate.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Dewey_Decimal_classes

The last three digits of your current follower count is the Dewey Decimal Classification subject on which you must immediately give a 15-minute presentation.

How would you do?

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「have a good day!」

[dremagonstudio]

Spring is actually two seasons

One much shorter than the other

[Alt text: First Image - a girl standing peacefully in the breeze with trees and flowers in the background. Caption: Spring, lovely weather, cool, green, Duration: ~2weeks. Second Image: Same girl sneezing with a swollen face, eyes, and runny nose. Caption: Allergy Season, Duration: The rest of it.}

[dremagonstudio]

some spooky art 🎃 happy halloween everyone!