#does NOT mean people who like it and the art itself is pretentious

[fairyofthehollow]

Can someone please tell me why mostly Americans always say it’s pretentious when people (especially actors) name foreign or not well-known films as their favourite?

[thebeesareback]

I just finished the audio book for Donna Tartt's novel The Secret History, so naturally I had to have a lil scroll to see what everyone thought on Tumblr. To add to the discourse: (spoilers, obviously)

Also trigger warning: incest, abuse, murder, alcoholism

Why is Tumblr so in love with Henry Winter?! He murders the farmer, Bunny, and possibly tries to kill Charles. He's manipulative and may well try to make Richard take the fall (har har) for Bunny's death. In the garden scene, he admits to being a psychopath/sociopath. Oh, and he's unbelievably pretentious

Also, why are there so many cute pictures of the twins hanging out? Their relationship was strained, incestuous, co-dependent, abusive. The whole uwu thing baffles me

Richard has a very obvious foot fetish and nobody is talking about it

The novel is quite funny, and I wish more people picked up on that. Most of the humour comes from Francis - the pinz nez stays ON during sex; no, Bunny's parents weren't very upset when one of their grandchildren ruined Francis' scarf, they were preoccupied by their missing son; and there's a throwaway line where the art students eat sushi with paintbrushes instead of chopsticks. I also liked when the twins panicked after Bunny's murder and decided to start repotting tulips

The farmer is referred to by name twice. Once in a newspaper, once by Bunny. Strange to think that he's the person in the squad who might actually have a conscience. Incidentally, Milo, the golden retriever who finds Bunny's body, has his name mentioned more frequently.

Richard is a smelly, badly dressed misanthrope. As is Henry, and Charles towards the end. Francis, Camilla and Hampden itself provide the (admittedly gorgeous) dark academia aesthetic, but if you want to end that dream, remember how terrible everything would have smelled. I guess the difference between appearance and reality is a pretty big theme

Julian is very creepy, obviously, but I was surprised that he wasn't more involved in the plot. He seems like exactly the sort of person to start a cult. I'd also like to know if he and Henry were in a sexual relationship, because we see them kiss once and then it's never mentioned again

Foreshadowing is done EXCELLENTLY through the book. There were a few characters who were described as ghostly at the start, and I THINK they're the ones who survive. Also, Tartt loves her pathetic fallacy (not phallusy).

Time is very strange. If you bothered to plot out all of the events, I don't think it quite makes sense. Term starts in September, say Richard joins Julian's classes in early October? That means all the picnics, the Sunday walks with Bunny, the trips to Francis' house, all happen over about five weeks, leading to the 12th November when Charles, Henry and Francis kill the farmer. Unreliable narrator, I guess

A lot of things about Richard's character make more sense when you realise the abuse he grew up experiencing and witnessing. Poor Ms Papen. Odd that Richard's parents don't visit him when he's in hospital

Funny that everyone is surprised when the twins' incest comes out. Like, they had an orgy at the start of the baccanal. Call me a prude, but I wouldn't attend an orgy with a family member

I would go for girls' night with Judy Poovey

Also, the book was published in 1992. Does anyone know when Prince Charles and Camila Parker Bowles went public with their relationship? Seems like an unbelievable coincidence otherwise

If anyone has an actual criteria for identifying alcohol abuse/alcoholism, please lmk if any of the main six characters AREN'T alcoholics. I'm pretty sure I got liver cirrhosis and lung cancer just from reading this book

[max1461]

only tangentially related but sometimes I wonder if survivorship bias makes us view modern art as less than older art, that time and cultural memory acts as a natural bullshit filter, that actually people were just as vapid and pretentious back then, but none of the vapid and pretentious work had enough cultural value stick around to be examined now

I think it's partly this, but it's partly something else.

This is probably gonna piss a lot of people off, but I think in a particular sense, contemporary art is just... straightforwardly more advanced than older art. I know, I know, but hear me out: I don't mean that as a value judgement. What I mean is like...

Ok, take math as an example. Math started out talking about things that everybody's heard of: triangles, circles, whole numbers. But as those concepts were better understood, they got abstracted more and more. Symmetries of shapes where abstracted to symmetry groups, numbers abstracted to rings and fields, eventually it was all abstracted to category theory, and so on. And now if you look at major research topics in modern math, things like e.g. the Langlands program, as a non-expert, it often looks like a bunch of fucking nonsense about bullshit objects that don't have anything to do with the real world! But even though I don't understand the Langlands program itself, I know enough math to understand why all the levels of abstraction that I have understood are meaningful and valuable, and I can see why going even further would be too. And math is useful enough that the results often speak for themselves.

So I think contemporary art is much like this. If you read contemporary art theory, you will immediately see that it is all very meta. Art used to be made about very concrete things—people and nice looking vistas and so on—that anyone could understand. And then theorists came along and built up frameworks for thinking about art, because they wanted to understand why that art worked, why it was powerful and emotive. And then new, avant-garde artist came along and made art about the frameworks, pushing at their edge-cases or exploring their unintuitive implications. And then new frameworks were built up to understand that art, rinse and repeat. This account is, as I understand it, a little bit ahistorical—the building and the pushing of frameworks was often simultaneous and often not clearly articulated. Although, frankly, the same could be said for the history of math. But in retrospect I think a pretty undeniable picture emerges.

So, to put it bluntly, I think one of the reasons so much contemporary art looks vapid is that it isn't for you. It's about things you've never heard of, in the same way that category theory is about spaces and morphisms, and explaining that to someone who's never heard of groups or topological spaces is basically impossible. And I think there are some differences—art is obviously, you know, totally vibes based in a way that math isn't. If a big wire sculpture with styrofoam cups on it or whatever doesn't speak to you then it doesn't speak to you, no one can defend it on "objective" grounds. And art isn't useful in the way that math is, so it doesn't demonstrate its validity to people who don't get it in any way. But what I wish people understood is that there are people, who know a bunch of art theory and art history, who that wire sculpture with styrofoam cups on it does speak to. It makes them go "oh, I love how it plays off of X and contrasts with Y" etc. etc. And that isn't going to happen for you because, like, you don't know what X or Y even are! But that doesn't make it valueless, it just makes it insular. Which, you know, contemporary art really is! I think there are a lot of contemporary artists who claim to not be doing what I just described, who claim to be making art "for everybody", but I think if you read their artist statements and stuff it often becomes pretty clear that this is not the case. And this is a valid criticism of contemporary art! But "vapid" is mostly not.

Pretentious, definitely. It's pretentious as fuck.

[marshmallowprotection]

Hey, I've recently discovered your blog and I've been binge reading almost all of your writing lol. I love them and I honestly admire your dedication and love for MysMe, thank you so much for all your writing! Though I hope you aren't pushing yourself or anything 😭💗 I'm wondering if you have any HCs of Jumin and V during their childhood/teenagehood?

Jumin and Jihyun recount many events throughout their childhoods now and again, and sometimes I find myself laughing because there's things you don't expect them to say. Like, when they were both in the church choir and had a singing contest between one another! They're poking fun at each other because of it, and it reminds me that they're childhood friends without a doubt and even though there's a lot we're unable to see, they've always been there for each other to see this or that.

Sometimes, I like to think about Jihyun and Jumin doing homework together! It wasn't easy to do it when they were in elementary school because their families likely had them with tutors and in cram classes most, if not all of the time, on school days. But, as teenagers, I like to think Jihyun is glaring at his art history homework while shoveling his tiramisu down, and Jumin sipping tea, casually tearing through much of his calculus homework.

You'd think they would talk while they work, but that's not always the case. They enjoy each other's company, and if you actually hear those two talking, it's because Jihyun couldn't handle the way the way all of his books phrased the wrong information about something, and that presses Jumin to discuss why he thinks the information is wrong and why incorrect information would be published.

Those two could be talking for hours while continuing their work, but if you get them talking about something, they're never going to shut up. Which, is good, I don't want either of them to feel like they aren't allowed to talk at length when they feel comfortable with someone else.

But, that does lend itself to their life later on, when you hear about how casually they speak to each other when they have an evening purposefully set aside for drinks. Rika used to tell them to go to bed because they would spend hours discussing the universe and then not only would they wake up with a hangover, they wouldn't get to bed until sunrise.

The good thing about their friendship is that they find a sense of kinship in each other. Those two have the tendency to hold back unless they're with each other or their respected MC. I don't know why they feel like they have to hold back when it comes to their passion and enjoying the fine art of having communication be of language... but it's nice to see open up. Jumin and Jihyun are the type of people I would love to talk to for hours because so much of their friendship is built on the fact that they've always been able to talk to each other about anything.

That's why it hurts so much when Jihyun stops confiding in Jumin, after all.

Here's a light-hearted theory before I tell you the most painful thing I can imagine, Jihyun would drive Jumin around in his little toy car after the accident because Jumin was never allowed to drive his car again after he snuck onto the Kim property and smacked his car into the wall. That’s okay, though, Jihyun loves the wind in his hair and Jumin prefers to be a navigator. 

After the house fire, Jumin is the only one who visits Jihyun regularly. Mr. Kim doesn't bother to visit his son that often, sure, he's there if he HAS to be, but outside of that, he doesn't visit. Jihyun is in pain, he's experiencing the agony of loss after his mother sacrificed her life for his. He wishes he listened to Jumin earlier, he wishes he tried to a lot harder to listen to his Mother and do the right thing, and he wishes... the darkest thought of all, that his mother was still alive instead.

He's hurting, and that hurt silenced the once pretentious teenager who was ready to fight his professors about the meaning of modern art.

He becomes a shell of himself. He doesn't talk to people, he doesn't want to be around people, and it doesn't seem to matter how much people try to take his mind off of things, nothing makes it better. He is in so much pain all the time and it doesn't seem like the painkillers are going to make it any better.

I have always run with the assumption that his back is covered in burn scars and that's one of the reasons why he refuses to wear any clothes that reveal his body. The burns hurt a lot, and no amount of money can heal him, because it really doesn't matter if you have all the money in the world— you are not immune from death and injury. 

That being said, there's only one person who comes to visit him every day, one person who always wants to talk to him even if he's not in the mood, and one person who has always promised to be by his side no matter what's going on. It’s Jumin Han. Jumin reads to him when he visits, he tells him about what he's learned that day, he tells him a lot... anything he could think of to help. Jumin isn't the best at being comforting, he always judges if what he's saying is right, but he can't do nothing when Jihyun needs him.

I sincerely think one of the reasons why V was able to get through the brunt of his Hospital stay has to do with the fact Jumin was there for him. Jumin refused to let his best friend be alone. He was the one who told Jihyun to make things right with his mother, and he knows that no matter how difficult things were in the end, that woman was everything to Jihyun. His Mother was a kind woman, and she loved her son more than anything... enough to give her life for his. That's a sacrifice Jumin understands on some level.

It's the kind of familial love he's always read about in books because he isn't getting love at home.

Not that you should be willing to throw your life on the line at every corner for your loved one, but there is something to be said about the willingness to jump in the line of fire to protect somebody you care about in the heat of the moment. I don't know if the two ever communicated with each other about this at length, in fact, I have a feeling they didn't, but—I do believe Jumin had it in his heart that he needed to be there for Jihyun because that’s what his mother would’ve wanted.

She didn’t want her son to be alone. 

He is a family-oriented person, and I know he always tries to see the best in someone's family, including his, even if it's not easy. He is the one who tries to reach out to Mr. Kim... even as they're adults. Jumin can't help but want better for V's family. It's just like how he wants his family to be better as well.

But, I know that no amount of Jumin talking to Mr. Kim would make him visit his son more… and Jumin did what he could for his friend back then.

I've always had this mental image of V laying face down in his hospital bed and Jumin sitting by his bedside, reading a book to him as the soft hum of cicadas and heart monitor beats linger between them. It's not perfect, not by any means, but they're together and that counts.

[hamliet]

What do you think about the romance in titanic?

It's truly great. Titanic is a good story and a good movie. I would actually recommend Lindsay Ellis' video on it.

But as for my thoughts...

The romance itself is a little alchemical, at least in terms of their names. Rose DeWitt-Bukator: Rose=red, symbol of the stone and red stage; DeWitt="of white," or the white stage. Rose is the philosopher's stone. Jack Dawson: reference to jackdaws, a symbol of the black stage). Which makes sense since James Cameron pitched it as Romeo and Juliet on the Titanic, and Romeo and Juliet is mega alchemical. (Also Cameron captured the spirit of Romeo and Juliet far better than most. It's hopeful!)

Jack and Rose aren't the most complex characters to grace the screen, but they don't have to be to be compelling (and they don't pretend to be more than they are, either). Their struggles are timeless and complementary, which helps them resonate with audiences around the world and across cultures.

Jack wants a better life, but he wants a better life for those around him, too. His joy and way of finding beauty in everything around him is contagious. He might have "nothing in [his] pocket" to offer, but he still finds moments of cheering about being the "king of the world" at the bow with Fabrizio, makes friends with those around him, plays with kids like Cora, and is fundamentally... kind. He saves a distraught woman from ending her life and didn't even defend himself when he was accused of attacking her. He captures his joy of life in his art, drawing what he sees as beautiful.

Rose wants a better life, just like Jack, but instead of being determined to live her best life where she's at, whatever she has or doesn't have, she has no freedom. Instead of being contagious in joy to where she draws others in like Jack, Rose must instead withdraw to survive. She can't trust anyone around her because they're all counting on her to save them (her mother wants Rose to save them from financial ruin, her fiancé wants Rose as arm candy). But Rose is seventeen. Jack's kindness to her inspires her to save him when he's accused of attacking her, and his love for life and for her just--they give Rose hope.

Is there anything more hopeful than seeing someone else truly alive?

Of course, then Jack dies saving Rose. And no, he could not have fit on the wood and also when water's that cold your limbs do not work perfectly so they could only make so many attempts to get on the wood in the first place, and yes if she'd stayed on the lifeboat he may have lived. but--that's not the point of the story. Rose is a seventeen year old girl who is tired of having people value her life as only what she can give them. Even Cal saving her by getting her on a lifeboat has nothing to do with Rose living and everything to do with her surviving to benefit him, not Rose.

Rose jumping off that lifeboat is her choice to live, even if it means she'll die.

It's a powerful choice, and people who nitpick or act like an abused, suicidal 17 year old facing trauma would think rationally are just... idk killjoys. Go watch Batman vs Superman or whatever pseudo-noir pretentious drivel tickles your fancy instead.

Anyways. So this motif of life coming from death is again, alchemy! It's a romantic tragedy, because even though Jack dies... there is life that comes from his sacrifice. Rose does live, physically as well as emotionally and spiritually. Even when she "dies" in the end, it's left ambiguous as a deliberate question--is she dying or dreaming? Does it matter, when the point is the same--that she's alive and Jack is alive and they are all together, whether in the afterlife or her dream?

[tbgkaru-woh]

Might have asked you that before I'm not sure but. Do you have some sort of process for your redesigns?? What kind of stuff do you try and pay attention to when redesigning a character? I also wonder what is important to you visually when designing clothes? like, is there any type of shape hierarchy you try and go for? Also Where does your knowledge of clothes come from?

These ended up being many questions haha. Anyway love your redesigns, every one you do is like a little gift in my day!

those are all wonderful questions and i hope i can answer them (or even understand my creative process enough to give them) There are two design choices I try to stick to, one is thanks to me playing hero shooters and that's recognizable silhouettes: try to give the characters a unique shape or trait that even if you put them in different clothes or hairstyles, you can always tell it's meant to be them by that specific thing. The other is, thanks to fandoms, i know people like making OCs or trade characters around if there's factions, so I like making "faction" clothing that's unique to a group of people, whilst still making each character wear it uniquely even within the group itself lot of the designs are affected by what i SUBJECTIVELY perceive the character to be like and what style of clothing i connect to that kind of behavior, be it from real life experience or what just. flows nicely, i don't know how else to say it :') like there's difference between elegant or street wear, of course they can overlap, of course they have no dictating on what each of those means about each person, but good rule of thumb is that we dress to express ourselves on first glance (those that can afford to do so for whichever reason) so if you're daddy's little lawful good you're gonna dress differently than a bold punk. those are pretty basic thought processes, not much unique :'D so sadly i think lot of it just comes from my subjective perception of who these characters are and what i could highlight about them. as for the clothes themselves, i don't even know really, character design- from clothes to size, shape, color to body language- is just something i always loved to do and wanted to do, be it for games, comics, or re-designed existing characters :') i used to watch fashiuon shows, went to art school where most are poor students that are very creative and pretentious, i changed my style multiple times during each chapter in my life, i try to meet variety of people that affect me and inspire me. i usually have multiple ideas for a look per character but don't want to put a pin on it until it just clicks for me. there are few of those clicks i've missed in my MDZS redesigns but were close enough that i posted it anyway, as i was too excited to share them :') still may want to revisit it though! I'm so happy to know they did well though, it's something i've heard the most praise for from all of my art and i really wish i could follow up on it in more ways than just few more art of those looks. there's nothing that bothers me more than boring or not cohesive looks for a cast of otherwise interesting characters, MDZS donghua and CQL costume design were destroying me :') but it was enough to at least inspire me thank you for this task ♥♥

[supersoakerfullofblood]

Seeing lots of discourse about the woman with a shelf full of NA erotica, and then the post saying she doesn't read, she just consumes porn, and then the backlash to that post. Imo both sides are right, there's just a communication gap.

There's always been a holier-than-thou sentiment about reading compared to other forms of media, which admittedly is fair when you compare it to like Youtube and Tiktok. But as mediums like those grow in popularity, so too does the reactionary stance of "reading good," and this has muddied what "reading" actually means. People conflate "reading" with just consuming the written word, like the act of looking at a page is itself a healthy thing to do. It's certainly healthier than other options, but this argument misunderstands the original conceit of "writing > other media." People who love literature don't love it because of the physical product of a book. They love it because books introduce them to another perspective, and stylized prose from that perspective (a book as a physical product is also nice, admittedly). Literature exists as an act of empathy from one lived experience to another, but the medium doesn't matter. It could be a movie or a show or a podcast. So then we get to the erotica argument.

There's nothing wrong with enjoying a book for whatever reason you want to enjoy it, just as you can enjoy any piece of art for whatever reason you'd like. But I think when you conflate books meant to be consumed (erotica) with books meant to be really thought over, you misunderstand why people have always "read" to begin with, what "reading" has always meant to people. So you have two groups of people:

1. People who have always read to try to refine their worldview and understand the people and cultures and etc. around them.

2. People who read books for pleasure's sake.

The best novels combine these in some ratio (though usually not with erotica, but erotica isn't incompatible with thoughtfulness). But both of these flags have been flown under the broad banner of "reading," even though each group is looking for different things in a book, which again, is totally fine. But you end up with increasingly polarizing, pretentious groups of people spouting about what a book should do, bragging about the titles they have or haven't read ("I've read/haven't read Infinite Jest" vs. "I have/haven't read The Love Hypothesis"), and just generally being annoying.

It's hard, because the verbiage isn't really there for good discourse. You can't really tell someone whose literary diet is 90% erotica that they don't read books like a literary scholar, because that triggers a knee-jerk reaction of "you can't tell me how to read," which, okay, fair, but let's be honest with ourselves. Your bookshelf is color coordinated, almost all of it is NA romance, and there's literal visual porn next to your books. These books are products more than they're art, which doesn't mean you can't read books for their empathetic value, just that you haven't for some of the books you've read. At the same time, if you tell a lit scholar that these are equally valid books, they'll turn their head up, because their definition of a book has always been synonymous with "thing that triggers deep personal inquiry," when in reality, what a "book" is is quite broad.

Again, read what you want, just know why you read and why other people read, and know that these are equally valid and fairly distinct aims, and that, because of this polarization, these aims are increasingly polarized by publishers so that their books sell well--the market churns out poorly written, soulless romance novels just as it churns out curmudgeonly Oscar bait novels at maybe the greatest frequency we've seen because people like picking one of those sides and snapping at the other.

TLDR: At the end of the day, we just can't equate Colleen Hoover and Kurt Vonnegut, and that's okay. Source: I write "serious fiction" and also (admittedly not smutty) McDonalds fanfic

[skippydiesposting]

Cam u give us some recs of Weird And Good Stuff? 👀

absolutely I can! I've been sitting on this ask for a few days because I wanted to give it the attention that it deserves and it's got me thinking a lot about the things that I personally consider "Good" and/or "Weird" stuff.

this is especially interesting to think about as someone who has Very Specific media tastes and did not exactly grow up exposed to the most mainstream stuff: I was raised by 90s hipsters, homeschooled, then went to an alternative school, and have only lived in one city/only worked at one institution my whole life--all of these were/have been great experiences for me, however I understand that this means I do not exactly have the best idea of what constitutes mainstream or popular media. I definitely have the tendency to lean towards pretentiousness/snobbery (as I have been told), in part because it seems to me that, by definition, the things that are part of the mainstream have less depth and heart to them than the obscure things; the things I have fallen in love with, by and large, are the obscure things. I have been confounded my whole life by the experience of coming across beautiful, meaningful works of art and then being baffled when nobody else is talking about them, as well as the mirrored experience of being exposed to the mainstream and being completely unable to understand what people are getting out of it. (are obscure and weird the same thing? something else to think about.)

that being said, I don't think any of these things are the Weirdest it gets. but they are certainly things beyond the general public "mainstream" consciousness, and they are defintely things that I think deserve more recognition as great works of art. just keep in mind I am aware that it does get a lot weirder and more obscure than this.

also, of course it's easiest to give recommendations if I already know the taste of the person I am recommending things to, so all of this will depend on your own personal taste, especially where music and books are concerned. but regardless, here are a bunch of my favorite Weird/Good things:

books:

-if you know me or have been following me at all, you already know about this but I'm gonna have to plug Skippy Dies. most perfectly constructed/researched/executed/painful book of all time. I will recommend it until my dying breath. this is one of those things that seems so exemplary of the genre that I absolutely cannot believe is not more well-known. however, I did also just read Paul Murray's third novel, the Mark and the Void, and that's something I can absolutely recommend as well. I think it's weirder than Skippy Dies, at least in that it heavily revolves around the metafictional and recursive idea that the author, Paul, has created a fictionalized version of himself as a character in the story who is himself trying to write the book that eventually will become the book itself. it's incredibly funny and smart and bizarre. also you will learn a lot about investment banking.

-I also must recommend the book that I was obsessed with before Skippy Dies, and though it wasn't to the same extent, it's still a wonderful novel that more people should read: Everything Matters! by Ron Currie Jr. it's similar in theme/message to Skippy Dies but much shorter and less complex. (the cover illustration was my first tattoo. I still love it, I just love Skippy Dies more. this book feels like my amicably divorced spouse.)

-Daniel Handler is well-known under his pen name Lemony Snicket as the author of the Series of Unfortunate Events, but his adult novels under his real name are fantastic, especially The Basic Eight. it's a kind of a satire of 90s true-crime tell-alls: think Heathers but self-referential and about snobby teenagers who are obsessed with poetry and theater. fantastic book. one of the best plot twists of all time. I also liked his book Watch Your Mouth: super weird story about incest and Jewish mysticism kind of told through the narrative of an opera.

-Steve Erickson is one of my favorite authors overall, and surprisingly few people know about him. his novels often have an element of surreal realism/magical realism, but it doesn't play too much into the plot; weird things are mentioned offhand and then not really treated as weird. there's a fair amount of historical fiction, and it's also common for his plot threads/characters to show up in multiple novels; he even does the metafictional thing of sometimes having himself appear as a character. my favorites of his are probably These Dreams of You and the Sea Came in at Midnight. But they're all lovely and most are interconnected in some way.

-Nancy Huston is another one of my favorite authors who people don't know about, though she seems to have more traction in Canada. I love her writing style and her stories are very character-focused, often about darkly intimate relationships and tensions between parents and children. these might be harder to find, but my favories are Instruments of Darkness and Slow Emergencies.

-Tom Robbins is fairly well-known, but if you haven't read him I highly recommend it. there's no one in the world writing like Tom Robbins; he's an excellent satirist without leaning into the cynical, and his novels are bizarre and hilarious while also seemingly to impart some kind of deep truths about humanity. Even Cowgirls Get the Blues is a classic, but they're all wonderful. I particularly liked Still Life With Woodpecker.

-George Saunders is also fairly well-known these days, but he's an excellent excellent writer. Weird funny true sometimes-satire. I recommend his short story collection Tenth of December.

-very well known but Geek Love (Katherine Dunn) is a masterpiece of the weird and disturbing. everything that AHS:Freakshow could have been.

-I really enjoyed Ben Lerner's recent book the Topeka School; like many things on this list, it's metafiction/autofiction, very strongly based on his life but through a fictionalized lens. it's a beautifully structured book, and you'll learn a lot about debate club and poetry.

-Jenny Offill's books Department of Speculation and Weather are both delicious little nuggets of insightful and concise observations. super short and super beautiful. they'll make you want to write more.

-Jamie Iredell wrote a small press book in the past couple years called The Fat Kid. I adored it. disturbing and surreal look into the ways that men destroy each other; an exploration of toxic masculinity without misogyny. highly reccomend.

-another gorgeous small press book: memoir called What About the Rest of Your Life by Sung Yim

-Amelia Gray writes wonderfully strange short stories. I love her collections Gutshot and AM/PM.

-Nell Zink is another recent author who I always jump at the chance to read. similar to Steve Erickson, her books always feel like a strange mix of surreal and realistic. I really liked Mislaid and Doxology.

-Maggie Nelson wrote a book called Bluets that I love, a meditation on being in love with the color blue. she also wrote the somewhat-more-well-known book the Argonauts, which is part memoir part queer theory. very good.

-Leni Zumas is one of the best weird authors around. her stories are always very visceral and surreal. all her stuff is good: her short story collection is Farewell Navigator, and her novels are The Listeners and Red Clocks

-Carmen Maria Machado has also gained some traction in the last couple years, and deserves it. she's an excellent horror writer; an expert at making normal things feel unsettling and threatening. she has a short story collection, Her Body and Other Parties, as well as a memoir, In the Dream House, which is about her experience being trapped in an abusive queer relationship. it's so fucking good.

(pro tip: get an epub reader on your phone. libgen.is your friend.)

music:

-They Might Be Giants have been good and weird since the 80s, and continue to be just as good and just as weird. they have a massive discography, so if you're unfamiliar with them, start with the album Flood. or just start from the beginning. it's literally all good.

-most of these fall into post-punk/indie rock; some of my favorite lesser known bands in this category include Mighty, Weatherbox, Krill, Hop Along, and Shoe

https://youtu.be/S1ZBkmA-kS4

https://youtu.be/iH7WqUBVRDs

https://youtu.be/iX3dItyNnyA

-Pile is a post-punk/post-hardcore band that never gets enough love. genius writing, beautiful riffs, some of the best screaming around. another one of my tattoos.

https://youtu.be/XSJ6xdhClVU

-Fat History Month is delightful and lo-fi, if that's your thing: https://youtu.be/RtsAP0fdOXE

-not particularly weird per se, but not enough people know about Sir Chloe. their new album is flawless. it's just good music.

https://youtu.be/3x554vRA9Ic

-Man Man is delightfully catchy and weird:

-the co-creator of one of my favorite shows (Venture Bros) is now the guitarist in a band called Pageant Girls, and their first album is great. minor-key 80s synth ballad rock.

https://youtu.be/Zd9H_9BXsYA

-WHY? is hard to describe--experimental indie alternative hip hop?--but it's definitely weird. start with the album Alopecia.

https://youtu.be/acJ3hiRxWUk

-mewithoutYou is another of my favorites; strange tempos and spoken-word vocals and excellent screaming. probably the best band ever to see live. every album is good, but probably start with Ten Stories

movies and tv:

-most of my favorite movies are indie slice-of-life dramas about someone slowly having a mental breakdown. Magnolia is the epitome of this. also: most surprising twist in a movie you will ever see.

-all of Charlie Kaufman's movies are fucking weird. Synecdoche New York, Being John Malkovich, and Adaptation are among the weirdest.

-well-known, but stil weird and good: Donnie Darko

-my favorite lesser-known filmmaker is Mike Mills. his movies are Thumbsucker, Beginners, and 20th Century Women (i think he has a newer one as well) and all are excellent if you like slow, poignant indie dramas as much as I do

-a pair of Amazon shows that I don't think get enough attention: I Love Dick and Patriot.

-Venture Bros is the best animated television show of all time, and not enough people know about it. you gotta stick through the first couple seasons but I promise it's worth it.

-Fargo (the show, not the movie) isn't really obscure but it is really good. every season is a different set of characters and set in a different time period, but they're all interconnected. mostly centered on organized crime and the interpersonal shenanigans that come with that. it really seems like tumblr would be more into this show. season 2 and season 4 are the best ones, but you can watch any of them in any order.

podcasts:

I could recommend podcasts literally all day but here are some of the weirdest ones:

-Love + Radio: interviews with some of the most interesting, strange and controversial subjects. the editing is also wonderfully bizarre. I recommend the episode

-Appearances is another one of those things which is a semi-fictionalized retelling. it's about a woman trying to find the right partner to have a baby with while also dredging through the family drama of her past. beautiful and emotional.

-the Memory Palace: short vignettes about history. will make you feel serene and deeply connected to your fellow humans

-the Ballad of Billy Balls: part memoir, part mystery(that actually has a satisfying conclusion!) iO Tillet Wright tries to find the body of his mom's first love who was murdered by the police. incredibly touching and wonderfully produced.

-all of Jamie Loftus' podcasts: My Year in Mensa, Aack Cast, Lolita Podcast, Ghost Church. (she also had a book come out recently, Raw Dog, which I haven't read yet but looks amazing)

video essay(ists):

-along with the more well-known video essayists like Contrapoints and Defunctland, I also gotta shout out CJ the X, who makes excellently researched and chaotic videos about a variety of topics. one of my favorites: https://youtu.be/JuKbDpPAooE

unfortunately I'm not a huge video gamer--I mostly just play pokemon ROM hacks on my phone, which I guess is weird--so I don't have many recommendations on that front. (but also everyone should play Wingspan.)

however, Twine is a wonderful (free!) program you can use to make html games and I know that itch.io hosts a lot of them. so if you're interesting in making games, definitely play around with that.

well. this is way long and maybe I should have made it into a few separate posts. let me know if you have trouble accessing any of this stuff. and tell me if you check any of it out! I want to talk about all of it! and thanks for sending this ask, I love to write about all the weird brilliant things that I like :)

[semi-foldable-triangle]

I watched this video from Jacob Geller a few weeks and saw the second video from Venus Theory just yesterday, and they've had me all existential. So I have some thoughts. (Below the cut)

I started making music again, not all that long ago. I stopped years back because I felt like the expectation of me to make "good" music - structured well, mixed correctly, unique enough to "be interesting and not pretentious" - and all of that was just more stressful than it was worth. So I started again with the decision that I wasn't going to share what I made with anyone, and for that reason, I can stop myself from feeling influenced by anyone else's perception of what I'm making. I can make music just for me.

And that works, sorta. I'm making what I want to and I don't feel pressured, but deep down I'm still that 15 y/o kid that wants to seem like the "cool synthesizer guy" and it's not that I don't share the fact that I'm making music. I just don't share the music itself. So am I making music for myself? Can anyone create music for themselves if they're truly, completely honest with themself?

In what way does art have value when detached from context? An artist can't "appreciate" their own art. They can't ponder it and consider its meaning. The artist knew every bit of meaning they intended as it was being made. Death of the Author isn't applicable when you, yourself, are the author. So what is your art if you dont share it? Do you feel emotionally fulfilled looking at or listening to or reading your own art? Maybe you do while you're making it, but after all of that, when the canvas is sealed, the recording is finished, and the book is bound, what is it worth to you? The knowledge that you felt those emotions while you made it? If you are to feel deeply moved by it a second time, you have to have forgotten it first. To find your finished art compelling a second time, it has to be made by someone else. A different "you" who already knew it.

Maybe people can experience their own art and feel catharsis, but ive never had that experience, and I've never heard of musicians listening to their own albums on loop, or writers reading their own books again and again. If youre making art for yourself, what do you do with it after its made other than either discard it to make space for something new, or wait long enough for someone else to have made it? As he points out, all of the pieces Geller talks about in the video are known. Maybe City could have been kept a secret. Was it Michael Heizer's vision for it to never be known or just never seen? The Nazca Lines were undoubtedly understood by the civilization that made them, and Plexis leaves the uncut pages there for you to try to make out. These were all meant to be known. So I suppose maybe it is possible to create solely for yourself. I guess anyone who can't will just never know.

[hot-take-tournament]

I need to get this off my chest because I see it everywhere BUT.

There's no right or wrong way to do art (with some exceptions. For example, please don't use watercolor brushes with acrylic paints, it will probably mess up your brushes. Even then if you do it I'm not gonna be a dick about it because it's frankly none of my business). I'm tired of people acting like there is. Giving tips is all fine and dandy but for the love of god do not tell people they're drawing wrong. What might work for one person won't for another. Like I saw a tiktok once that was like "if you use shapes to map out bodies, YOU'RE DRAWING WRONG" and I was like just because it doesn't work for you doesn't mean it won't for another person??? Like it doesn't really work for me personally, but I'm not gonna tell someone who does do it that they're drawing wrong because I don't personally do it.

Additionally, artists do NOT need to improve their art if they don't want to. My art has been relatively stagnant for probably around a year or two and any improvement I've made has been as a result of how much I draw and not because I'm actively trying to improve.

Basically. Hot take: there's no right or wrong way to do art and you shouldn't feel pressured to improve if you don't want to. Give tips but don't say that your tips are objectively better ways of drawing because just because they work for you doesn't mean they will for someone else and it is hella toxic to act like your way of drawing is the only correct way to draw.

Also sorry for how long this is asadjkdfshf

No, don't apologise!

I think you're absolutely right -

I'm not going to say that there aren't fundamentals that are important to improve as an artist - art is a practical skill that is then used as a form of self-expression - and sharing advice on how to improve those foundational skills is absolutely fine! So yeah, like you say, it's not the advice itself, it's usually how it's delivered.

Getting advice from someone who's more experienced than you is usually super useful, but acting like the way you draw is the 'correct' way not only makes you look massively self-centred - since there's always going to be someone out there better than you - but you're also actively trying to tell other people that the way the method they use to express themselves is wrong; people have different styles, that's what makes art wonderful. And besides, people aren't going to listen to you more just because you made them feel like shit first.

And yeah, no one has an obligation to improve their art - to tell a complete stranger that they're not a real artist because you've decided their art isn't good enough and needs to be improved just seems so sad and pointless? It would be like if I eavesdropped on your phone conversation on the train and then tapped you on the shoulder so I could correct your grammar. If you're an experienced artist who wants to give advice online, you absolutely should! But remember that if someone wants that advice they're going to come to you - otherwise, just leave them alone.

tl;dr - fuck Dali's pretentious ass, draw however you like! One thing will work for one person, another will work for someone else, but they both still work. So I'm not sure what the issue is.

That applies to a lot of the hot takes on this blog as well - the fact you guys refuse to bite ice cream is wild to me, but I'm not gonna gatekeep the way you eat your sundae. Lick it, snort it, drink it through a straw, unhinge your jaw like a boa constrictor and swallow it whole! However you choose to do it, we both get to enjoy ice cream, so everyone wins! And, if you don't like ice cream, I'll eat yours as well, so double win for me, and then we'll order pizza when we get home and I'll let you have the bigger half.

To be honest, I'm not an artist in any way, so I'm probably not the right person to ask. If someone else who knows more about this than I do wants to share their own thoughts on this, I'd really appreciate it! <3

[enneamage]

Why Tommy being bisexual would(n’t) matter.

Main gets hype when Tommy has a gay moment™️. While this is largely in-group teasing, ‘It’s a joke’ ranks up there with ‘it’s platonic’ and ‘I’m not sexualising’ in terms of Main-typical repression—most people might truly be noncommittal, but others might be showing their hand a bit. I’m making a gut call and saying that the topic comes up with enough frequency and eagerness that there’s an interesting dynamic going on.

People have been nosing into each other’s love lives from the beginning of time. Romance and attachment are big human interest stories and most people have an ear for them in some form or another. The question of human sexuality is interesting because it carries a lot with it that doesn’t have much to do with the immediate act itself—a lot of people rightfully wonder why it would matter who wants to get with what gender and why, and the answer is less the immediate impulse as much as the domino effect it has on the rest of their lives, and the lives of the people around them. This post isn’t actually about if Tommy is a boyliker or not, it’s about why there’s so much urgency around divining if he is a boyliker, and what that means.

Ships

The first and simplest answer is that people want to believe that their ‘ships of choice’ are possible—that the dynamics that they love the most between the people that they like could get romantically sanctified. This motivation is common and low-stakes, people want to believe that the thing they see (or think they see) exists in the world. It doesn’t even necessarily have to be a transformative fandom (attachment through fic and art) investment, people often look at celebrities and speculate who is and isn’t good for who behind closed doors regardless.

People like having reminders around them that love is real, particularly the versions of love that appeal to them. (We’re going to loop back around to this in a slightly deeper capacity later.)

Identity

If I were to pick a contemporary figure that was a perfect example of being tormented by the crossroads between personal identity, romantic attraction, social scripts and gender identity, I would choose Tommy. That was actually a big part of my first impression of him, he had the demons of an online gamer upbringing with the piss and vinegar of a small dog.  

Straight young men are asked to do several things at once, most non-explicitly. They’re put in situations where they’re pressured to rid themselves of femininity to the best of their ability to reduce vulnerability (both emotional and to criticism by others who target those traits.) This naturally puts them in an adversarial, fearful and devaluing relationship towards femininity, and sometimes women themselves. At the same time, all of this is done with the approximate goal of gaining female attention, using the romantic/sexual approval of women as the ultimate measurement of achievement. Not only is this confusing, it’s a paradox, and I could see it drive Tommy a bit crazy. He was not just a straight boy but a straightened boy, literally performing straightness, and it made him sound like he might commit some sort of crime. There’s not much uncommon about his story when you boil it down save for the scale of it, so in a way it’s not even personal, he just happens to have been a perfect caricature of it. 

Heterofatalism

Heterofatalism and the dynamics of modern relationships are some of my favorite topics, by which I mean they’re my ol’ faithful when I need to get into a despair spiral. I don’t think I’ve ever come across a relationship statistic that made me go ‘yeah that seems okay’, and the profound failures of something so basic to produce a non-depressing result are kind of hypnotic. Being worried about ~human nature~ is kind of pretentious but it does make you wonder if these things are nature or nurture problems, and if anything can be done to counteract them.

There’s a lot of unspoken dread and fear surrounding the archetype of the straight boy. He’s selfishly horny, he’s manipulative in a stupid way, he isn’t sure how to love. He’s incapable of taking your perspective or interests into consideration because gendered socialisation has left an unbridgeable gap in his intuition that you either need to fill in yourself time and time again or suffer in silence. While there are plenty of people who exist outside of this mold, finding someone completely free of these traits is an ambition, and the source of a lot of angst.

Male-dominated online video spaces take all these things and pour acid on them. It’s not a mystery why viewers are notoriously paranoid and obsessive with safety-testing CC’s, the stories that come out of the space are nightmarish. While gaming still carries some unwarranted stigma, it is a sphere that collects an identifiable subsection of people that lean a bit stilted and shut-down, which doesn’t compound well with the above problem.

I think people are pessimistic about Tommy’s ability to connect with women. People don’t talk about this directly because they may not even realise they think it, It’s too brutal of an accusation to admit that they don’t think he would be able to treat a woman well in spite of how much they like him. Still, their instincts are based off hours of exposure to his content where being a Clueless Straight was his primary shtick, as well as the loud undercurrent of truth in comedy. While it’s true that casual viewers wouldn’t have many insights into his personal life by his own design, most people will be left with the ghost of the impression thatTommy is a, if not the, Clueless Straight. They’ve been given nothing but forms of evidence to suggest it, even if it was cartoony and (hopefully) larger than life.

When it comes to his early career, the words “homicidally misogynistic” would not have been out of place. Badly out of context, but not unwarranted. I don’t really hold that era against him, because it’s obvious that he was acting out in ignorance that was quickly pressed out of him by Wilbur, but the archetypal disappointing straight boy is ignorant; someone complacent, set in their own agenda, and unwilling to learn beyond immediate self-serving motivations. Tommy has greatly improved, but people seem to throw up a silent prayer for him to be into men so that he can be fully delivered from this dynamic, bypassing it altogether instead of being tasked with learning his way out of it. This is both because the idea of a woman having to tutor him out of it themselves is depressing and too-real, damaging the escapist element of his vibe, as well as people being quietly doubtful that it’s even fully possible. Exclusively same-gender attracted teens didn’t have to resolve straight dynamics, their journey was declaring independence from them, so it makes sense that some see them as things best left behind. 

Again, nobody wants to think of him this way, so they find ways to think and hope around it. They try to see the best in him and separate him from the toxicity in Straight Culture, simultaneously dragging him out of a burning building and diffusing him like an active bomb.

Online dynamics and LGBTQ+ identity

The teens are gay online, and it matters to them. People may be isolated and seeking out people who are like them, trying to cultivate spaces and distinct cultural identity. Because the internet runs on keywords and personal data, online spaces directly and indirectly turn peoples attention inwards and ask them ‘who are you and what is it about you that qualifies you to show up/speak in this space.’  Among the simpler answers (I’m a fan, I’m a cooking enthusiast, I have a deep knowledge of stamps) you have people who have/go on to cultivate a queer identity and stand proudly by it alongside their peers.

When standing outside of a mainstream norm, having an in-group is valuable. You also get to define what you’re not, giving you the opportunity to formally disown the parts of society that never gelled with you to begin with; there has to be a reason why you don’t click with these NPC acting ass people. Why are there so many of them, and so few of you, but the distinction can be felt so strongly? Maybe it is LGBT+ identity, maybe it’s something else, but there’s got to be some trait that can be pointed to that’s making the difference. 

Because LGBT+ identity isn’t a cultural default, there’s a much greater cultural association of self-actualisation and self-discovery with it. There’s a narrative of working through things, resolving things, and coming to peace with things associated with integrating it into one’s sense of self. Someone’s concept of their self-interest changes when the concept of their self changes, which means that they might not even have to become more empathic to change their thoughts and behavior, they just need to be re-directed.  

People want to feel like they have common ground with Tommy, to claim him as one of their own while also finding him to be safe for them. It wouldn’t be enough to be an ally because it still carries a feeling of otherness, and being ‘an ally’ would require a level of perspective-taking that people are very sceptical of right now—if someone doesn’t have firsthand knowledge of something their ability to understand it, let alone interact with it, is under moral question. (This is a problematic line of thinking, but we’re not tackling that one today.) Even people within the LGBTQ+ umbrella get chastised for being out of bounds or spreading irresponsible PR, the allies can stay all the way out of it.

There’s an article that I love and I hand it out like candy because 1) my pseudoacademic ass thinks its hilarious and 2) it outlines the difference, real or perceived, between mainstream straight relationship culture and queer culture. Is it really a utopia free of all polarity? No, a lot of similar problems show up in different forms and are even compounded by unique factors, but there’s a feeling of hope among the youth in the idea that you can get away from this miserable hamster wheel by turning to people you feel less estranged from.

The unspoken strategy

People don’t want to not like Tommy. There are a few mind-tricks that people do to avoid not liking Tommy—they put emphasis on his youth to take the heat off him being a dumbass, they handle him with a feminine sensibility despite him being a cis boy, and so on. This fits that pattern: People cross their fingers and hope he’ll get over this ‘girls’ phase to settle down with someone that he’s capable of being his better self with.

It’s unspoken—some people do not expect Tommy to be ‘one of the good ones.’ Technically it was never his responsibility to manage his image in this way, but the reaction among a vocal minority is the same, and people pretty uniformly tense up when he talks about Women. He knows he’s playing with cringe humor, but I don’t think he knows the depth of the button he’s pushing, or why sexuality ‘truthing’ is egged on by his play-ineptitude. He is someone who called to mind a kind of cultural scar that people might not have even gotten from him, but he does aggravate, which is why they want him to be provably different.

While I’m using Tommy as an example here, this is actually a pattern that I’ve noticed among a surprising number of CC’s in one form or another. A lot of hope is put behind the idea that a kind of spiritual knot will be untangled once they figure out that they’re bisexual (Read: ‘recognise’ that they connect better with men than they ever will with women) and implicitly never interact romantically with a woman again. It’s an easy thought experiment to take the people commonly speculated to be bisexual and see how the feel of them changes if one tries to think of them as exclusively straight. If it feels uncomfortable, like some sort of appeal has died off or even seems like a dealbreaker, there are probably stakes behind it beyond incidental sexuality. This isn’t necessarily bad on the part of the observer, but it’s an interesting chance to pick apart where the repulsion is coming from.

This pattern shows up with a number of other CCs-- People hope that whatever strain of Male Manipulator Wilbur has will be less toxic to another man, and people like to re-frame George as a Trophy Wife to distract from the very real possibility of a Lazy Gamer Husband. On the other end of the spectrum, Phil is a good example of someone who pulls an audience in the same sphere but gets different results. Since people will always speculate there’s no saying that no-one suspects anything of him, but there’s less hopeful urgency surrounding him since he’s got a place as the positive wifeguy representation.

This dynamic is a bit elaborate, and isn’t the only reason people speculate on the sexuality of CCs. Most people are following the tried and true “I saw gay, I said gay” model, which still sits at the core of most speculation. This is just one of the more obscure possible answers to the question “what does it matter to you if he’s gay/bi or not?”

Bringing the topic back around to Tommy, he has already changed for the better over the years, and with any luck he’ll keep moving in a positive direction. Will he ever abandon his Clueless Straight shtick altogether? It feels more likely that we’re going to get an evolved version of it over time, but you never know. As for the topic of sexuality, it’s a wildcard, I genuinely have no guesses as to what label he’ll prefer to go by years from now, but I do tend to be satisfied with what he says about himself in public when he says it.

[tiktaalic]

Re: the goldfinch. I’m very curious what you think of it because my impression is that it thinks it’s very profound but isn’t in a way I would find very obnoxious. I say this as someone who regularly reads Victorian lit for fun I have a high tolerance for faux profundity but I feel like goldfinch would be too much for me.

However the way some people talk about it I get the impression there is. something about it. probably not something the author intended and not quite ‘the secret good goldfinch’ but. something. however I cannot put my finger on what

this is the goldfinch

i wouldnt describe myself as a donna tartt girlie ebcause i wasnt big on the secret history and i know nothing about any of her other books but i did really enjoy the goldfinch! i can see where you'd get that impression because i mean. pretentious antiques art dealer pov character. but idk i never felt like the goldfinch was going "this says a lot about society". it was very much a journal for the pov character which meant it was very small scale and never felt like it was trying to indict the world at large. i dont think the goldfinch is trying to pass itself off as profound. i think it's a meandering thing with threads you will flip back and forth through 700 pages for to go oh god the fucking themes about and it's something that stuck with me. it just got painted with the #dark academia brush which makes everything seem like a poser. its not that! it's about a kid who experiences a tragedy when he's young and the different miserable experiences he gets shuffled between in the aftermath, and then it's about the very fragile life he builds for himself as an adult. i think its very well summarized by theo the pov character talking to his childhood friend and theo's like yeah you did crazy shit when we used to get drunk and boris is like. I'M the one who did crazy shit? every night with you you would get black out drunk and try to kill yourself while i had to wrestle you away from the roof or away from the road of speeding cars. theo relays things to the reader in a way that suggests he THINKS hes functioning but does so with words that clearly telegraph that he's real fucked in the head.

[wiitchkins]

Hello!!! okay obviously your knowledge of and taste in fashion is INCREDIBLE, we ALL know this, it is ELITE AND SUPERIOR - my question is, what's your background in fashion? what influences do you consider very important in your art? you mentioned in your most recent drawing of marinette that guo pei's couture is some you really like, so you clearly Know Some Stuff about fashion!! p.s. your art is *waves hands around* i would let it eat me

Ahhhhhh!! Thank you thank you thank you this means so much to me to hear! As for my background in fashion…

I am sorry to say I actually have basically 0 actual background in fashion aside from watching almost every season of project runway as it was airing (dropped off a few seasons after Tim and Heidi left) and a long standing appreciation of fashion as an art form.

I’ve never been particularly fashion forward or stylistically adept and I would say pretty much up until I started college I was pretty. Unstylish. Anti-stylish? In my own wardrobe. Nowadays I actually mostly present in way that leans more butch and I do have a defined style I’m both comfortable in and actively enjoy, but it’s very very different from what I like to draw and design.

As the internet evolved it became a lot easier to find stuff and for the past mmm five or so years I try to keep up with the seasonal runways, a lot of which you can find literal photos and recordings of on Vogue.com. Couture is… deeply fundamentally different from “ready to wear” in that it’s often simply unwearable in everyday life, but I think the way it emphasizes certain shapes, forms, and movement is, simply put, absolutely fucking sick (it is however not without its problems as in my experience mmm some Couture fashion folks can be extremely pretentious and intolerable 🙄 not to mention the space itself is highly inaccessible, favors certain features/body types/skin tones, and is inherently classcist, etc etc)

To keep up with what’s currently “fashionable” (as in what people are actually wearing) I honestly just scroll through Instagram to see who’s wearing what and going through different tags and knowing keywords for what different groups elf describe as helps. “#streetwear” is gonna give you a different feed than “#it girl” is gonna give you a different feed than “#office fit”. I also like to scroll through instas and tumblrs that are literally just interviews and photos with random people op finds out in the world- you see personality in how things are put together in specific. What makes a look personal to them? What is practicality and what is fashion, and how much of each does each individual desire? I don’t think everyone is the same kind of Fashion Forward (or even is fashion forward) and I think it’s fun to find different niches and mix and match while still applying design theory Ive learned elsewhere. Even a character who is specifically Not Fashionable is that way in a specific sense, and could still have an appealing design. Also studying fashion at all gave me the ability to draw fabric which is a huge skill.

Without saying too much about my actual job, I am not a character designer at the moment, but I do think having this general knowledge of costume design and vested interest in keeping up current fashion (both ready to wear and couture/runway) is extremely important in my profession and wish it was more emphasized as I think it would be. Very helpful. The character design in Apple TV’s/Skydance’s Luck drives me absolutely bonkers because it sucks so much and the main characters looks like an old navy ad circa 2010. The same could unfortunately be said for our fav girl Marinette. She’s allowed to be less aggressively Fashionable because she is in fact a child, but I’d love to see a bit more attention to detail and understanding of what teens wear nowadays, let alone what they were wearing even 5 years ago. Her look was a tiny bit dated when the show was first released, but it’s even more egregious now. Not that they’re going to change it anytime soon but they had an opportunity in the movie to at least play with proportions since the jacket’s.. cut I guess and pink capri jeans are the most egregious. Maybe I’ll do a redesign that keeps the general idea/pieces in tact… idk. God. Please character designers learn fashion.

Anyway now that I’ve written an essay here’s some stuff I’ve liked and have been thinking about recently:

Guo Pei (as I said, Spring 2019 rules, but Spring 2017, 2018 and Fall 2019 are my favs)

Zimmerman Fall/Winter 2022

Heaven Gaia Spring 2022 Couture

Clio Peppiatt x Annie’s Ibiza current collab collection

Lawrence Basse (all her work tbh)

Zuhair Murad Fall 2022

Tran Hung Fall 2017

Alexander McQueen Menswear Fall 2022 and 2018

Christian Dior Resort 2023

Janelle Monae’s Pre-Dirty Computer Era

Thierry Mugler (his entire body of work tbh but rn I like Resort 2021)

Hawwa (@hellohawwa)

Jarvis Aivali (@jarvisaivali)

This is not to mention my love for pre-colonial Filipino textiles, 1920s butch lesbian fashion, charro suits, whatever the look is called with the giant oversized floral button shirt and the jeans is, bright colorful floral/and or embroidered suits, ami thompson’s knight and princess characters, and the catholic met gala specifically.

[jessecrust]

games as art, part 2: who cares?

An eternity ago, I wrote a blog about a game you might have heard of called Elden Ring and why it and other games like Hades are probably works of art. It's something I think about far too much on lonely car rides to and from work (my commute is roughly 10 minutes). And it's something I've been thinking about a lot more lately having spent a good deal of my free time actively avoiding any new games and trying to get games from the 90s and 2000s to run on my PC without crashing. Honestly, it's actually extremely easy to avoid playing new games because they're released at a rate of about 2.5 a year in a good year.

And yet it somehow feels like there's never been more video game content out there. There's your multiplayer shooters, your MMOs, your "live service" games, mobile games, remakes, re-releases, etc. etc. I'm not one of those people who think you can draw a line between "real" games like something on a major console or PC and "fake" games like this cute thing I have on my phone called "Cats&Soup", but if every video game is indeed art then it is a unfathomably broad category.

Why does any of this matter? Well, if you've ever spent any time on Wikipedia, you may have come across this, or a similar, sentence:

Deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress, Die Hard was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry in 2017

One reason it's important to figure out what exactly we're talking about when we have these incredibly tedious conversations is so we can figure out what is worth preserving. I feel that in our Age of Content, as I'll call it, it's increasingly difficult to figure out what we should be preserving for future generations.

I don't think this is me being pretentious, although that word itself has come to mean something entirely different in the age of the never ending Battle Royale Multiplayer Shooter and the Marvel Cinematic Universe. A few nights ago, I saw someone say Quentin Tarantino was a pretentious director because he didn't want to make a Marvel movie. That idea really bothered me, that someone would see a guy who spent his career making eminently watchable popcorn movies and think "what a snob". Yes, I admit, I got sad about one guy writing a tweet, that's really dumb, I know. But go type Martin Scorsese into a Twitter search and you'll find he's not alone in thinking there's something pretentious about making movies that doesn't include a CGI raccoon.

But back to the pretentious art snobbery, it's not necessarily a question of "real" vs. fake or art vs. not art. I've had a good time watching movies like Spider-Man: Far From Home, The Batman (which I wrote about), and even that weird Dr. Strange movie that people can't really decide if they liked or not. These movies are probably not in any real danger of disappearing, but other movies are and most, if not all, video games are. And no one is seriously making the claim that none of them are worth preserving: The Dark Knight, a movie about Batman, is part of the National Film Registry.

Film lovers like Scorsese and other writers, directors, critics, etc. have worked hard to preserve their artform for future generations. I can't think of any director or writer or video games that is doing the same for games. It already requires extensive modding to get some games to run on modern PCs, let alone tracking down physical copies of classic games that could easily cost more than you make in a full eight hour shift at your job. Game directors and writers are not celebrities in the way film directors, actors, and musicians are. Try to name a video game director or think of a game you've played recently where you even bothered to find out who directed or wrote it. The most widely known director of video games is probably Shigeru Miyamoto of Nintendo and I doubt even he would be recognized by more than a quarter of the general population despite being responsible for over 75% of your childhood nostalgia. Yes, there are plenty of hobbyists, academics, etc. that are doing everything they can to preserve games, but we need those artist/advocates to really drive home the stakes. Who better to talk about the history, love, and preservations of this medium than their own creators?

As more technology is pushed to the wayside, as physical media continues to decline and copyright laws in the digital sphere get stranger and stranger, there's a real danger of not being able to immerse yourself in the history of games in the same way you can with every other piece of human culture. What good is a top 100 video games of all time list if I can't even play them? I can't even play the version of Overwatch I bought five years ago. To be sure, this project is also necessarily anti-capitalist, since the rights holders to these franchises and IPs will fight/have fought tooth and nail to stop it.

Do you know why "you can run Doom on anything" became a meme? Partly because anyone can download its source code for free. Imagine if the same were true of every other game release on or before 1993.

To close, I'll tell another anecdote about a post I saw on the internet. I saw a comment somewhere, maybe YouTube, that said something to the effect of "I'm glad I'll get to play Silent Hill 2 when the remake comes out". This is a problem we have to solve quickly...

[nostalgebraist-autoresponder]

do you like animation? if so, why? do you have a favourite animator? i know that's a big question, but don't worry, one's preferences can change over time :) For me, of late i've been really appreciative of spencer wan (of studio grackle) and oussama bouacheria (of studio la cachette). i think they have really good understanding/implementation of weight and follow-through! If you don't like animation, that's okay, I know it isn't for everyone.

this isn't really an ask, but I just wanted to drop it in your direction - you said "in the sense that they are real things that happen in our world", and that's very much the same way of thinking of art that I use. I believe there's no single definition of "art" - there isn't, really, because every definition is a simplification. And I think that that, ultimately, is what is best for human experience: that we have these simplifications. We call them concepts, or justifications that explain what is in front of us and how we can make sense of it. For me, I think that's what art should do. When I watch my favorite animator's videos, I'm not looking to the artist to do a deep explanation of what is there (for reasons of time etc.) I want to experience the art on the surface: to let the artist's understanding, or interpretation, guide me to the "best way" to experience the work. To me, I don't think a simple meaning is what I'm looking for — I just want to see a story, a narrative that tells me what "makes sense" and why it might. I'm not looking for "deep, true insight," or "true meaning," I just want to see something happening, or someone experiencing something.

And it's just that it's a little frustrating that in art discussions, there's often an insistence that, just as with life, it doesn't have a "meaning" that we can know. "What did you get out of it?" is a silly question, and one that I don't like hearing, even though I do sometimes hear it. It's like looking at a painting, or a TV show, or an animated film, and saying to someone who has no context or experience of art: "Do you have any idea what you're looking at?"

I guess to me there's a difference between something that is art and something that isn't — something that is art does not, on its own, have any meaning. If a work of art is "art," it will do something to me — I may "enjoy" it or "find it moving," or it may leave me "feeling something." It may even give me "knowledge" — the "knowledge" of something that is happening to me or someone else in a real way. But there is no deep "message" to be extracted, no "truth" or "meaning." It's just as with life — it's only "meaningful" when we, ourselves, make it meaningful.

This distinction isn't always relevant, and sometimes it's kind of pointless to ask. (I can't really enjoy the music of this band, for instance.) Sometimes it's just about whether the art is "artistic," and that in itself is worth a whole lot.

But still, it would be nice sometimes to hear the idea put more generally, to have it recognized, to be able to say, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, you say this and that, but I think it's all an excuse for pretentious bullshit. Just be and tell me what's happening." I get the feeling that there's a desire for just that sort of "realness" and "meaningfulness," when people say "art." It makes me sad sometimes to see people just throwing around those terms, when it seems so clear to me that a lot of people want them to be this, this great big thing they can project on to their experience of art.

Cool. This is a very different way of experiencing art -- I can't help but hear "what is this art, it is not art" when I hear someone talking like this. I will think more about this after I see/read/listen to more stuff that I agree with this way of thinking about art/experiencing art.

[22degreehalo]

It just... really frustrates me that our concept of ‘profoundness’ tends to always come back to, like, ‘The Human Condition.’ A quality of life which is universal, as though it is in the act of sharing that meaning is created. If someone is not thought to share that universality, then either they are lying or incorrect, or their life is felt to be missing some required aspect of making life meaningful. That lack is the ‘profoundness.’

But we are not all the same. Are not differences - the great diversity of humanity and our experiences - not profound, too?

There are many things that are profound to others which are not profound to me, such as religious faith. And there are many things which are profound to me which are not profound to most. But I hesitate to even suggest what those are, because I know that they will seem pointless and insignificant, and that it will be embarassing that I would think that they are.

And these things are not profound in the sense that they form part of a greater whole. Yes, I could wax poetic about, say, the way my favourite characters allow me to connect to the author in shared experiences and emotions. But wouldn’t it feel so strangely detached to claim that you value your friends because they allow you to engage in the experience of sharing? 

Your friends are important because they are. That is an end point. Friends matter. And as such, my special interests matter to me the same way.

There is another tumblr post which claims that infodumping can be an incredibly intimate and meaningful activity, baring one’s soul to another. But it continues by saying that the content of what is being talked about doesn’t matter. I could not disagree more. Infodumping is meaningful - is profound - precisely because the content does matter. Because all those specific things we talk about shape us and affect our lives on a day to day basis. And that matters.

It bothers me that we have become so much better about accepting other ways of being into The Human Condition - being gay, and perhaps being trans, for example - and yet we are all still so quick to decry others’ declarations of meaning as being immature and stupid. Asexuality and aromanticism, for example, have still almost never been allowed within the hallowed halls of Art; when we are included, it usually feels more like a purely practical gesture, a PSA that these people exists and that you should have that knowledge, nothing more.

And also, of course, for neurodivergents. Yes, we have seen a recent backlash against cringe culture, but often when people try to explain why these hobbies are important to them, they’re shut down. ‘It’s okay to like this and still acknowledge that it’s bad! Not everything has to be super serious Art!’

But that’s not how it works. Art is subjective. The author is dead. We create our own meanings in the art we consume. If you must grasp for some form of ‘higher meaning’, then here is this: these things are important because they matter to neurodivergents, and neurodivergents matter.

Maybe this whole post is just me being cringily pretentious. But I think that, too, is in the eye of the beholder. Over time I have come to believe that a lot of supposed pretension is actually mere sincerity.

Yes, that person really did have that emotional response to that abstract art that looks like junk to you. Yes, that person really did internalise valuable lessons about relationships from that hentai game. They had wonderful experiences, and they hope that they could share that wonder with you, too.

Who gets to decide what (and who!) matters, and what doesn’t? The meaning is in the effect; in the reaction. It defines itself, circularly. Other people are almost always telling the truth about the emotions they share with the world. Anything that matters to a person matters, and is worthy of their care.