#doing all the layouting and trying to edit

[awpples]

awpples 900+ event

info under the cut !

Hello!! i wanna thank everyone so much for over 900 followers, its been a little less than a year since i started posting and i never thought i would get this far, even if i am not nearly as active anymore every one of you means so much to me and it makes me so happy that all of you enjoy my work. anyway onto the event

info

the event will last from sep 23rd to oct 2nd so a week and 2 days to give everyone enough time to finish

anyone may join as long as ur not apart of the basic dni stuff

any kind of edits are allowed, layouts, graphics, psds, moodboards etc etc

tag me in your post and or use #awpples900

prizes

1st place will get a custom theme pack (layout, reply icons, pinned graphics etc) , 3 psds and 6 edits of their choice

2nd will get a custom theme pack, 2 psds and 5 edits

3rd place will get a layout, a psd and 3 edits

2/3 winners will be chosen randomly dont get upset if you dont win, this is just for fun!!

prompts

day 1: make an edit only using 1-3 colors

this does not include black and white

day 2: edit your favorite character with an aesthetic that doesnt fit them !

ex a rly girly chara to be edited w a darker aesthetic

day 3: free day

do whatever for this day! have fun!!

day 4: try editing in a different style !

self explanatory i think??

day 5: edit a character related to animals

ex kirara from genshin

day 6: edit only using black and white

self explanatory ^_^

day 7: edit a character that reminds you of a friend / mutual !!

self explanatory i think

taglist

@axestrl @s-sanite @kiochisato @magirical @lavendergalactic @angelesse @necroangelz @rrozeta @sanraeta @luvlel @valerihrtz @v-rtue @metalbody ++ whoever wants ! ask to be removed

[i-can-even-burn-salad]

Allosexual romance. From what I gather, you don't read it, but is there anything that might tempt you to?

From this ask game!

Wait wait wait wait what makes you think I don't read it? Then I wouldn't read anything 😂

(I currently barely read anything, but that has time reasons 😭 don't try to juggle 3 projects and a mmo, guys. I need a new number on the exhaustion scale.)

I spent years reading the genre of bodyguard/ex-soldier/whatever romance, because there's a good bit of violence and a guaranteed happy end. I also spent years digging around for queer love stories, which honestly ends up being m/m 90% of the time, which usually means there's 2 more penises than I care to read about.

Most of the books in my book recs tag are definitely very allo.

Do I think that drawn out blowjob could have been replaced by a nice whipping? Hell yeah. But oh well. What can you do. With the exception of fewer books than I need my fingers for to count, there just isn't anything out there once you leave middle grade behind.

Sure, there's completely romance-less fantasy epic, but I don't have the energy for that anymore, either. Sex scenes are easier to skip than politics.

But finding so many ace chars (and authors 😅) here has been the best thing that's ever happened to me, and they definitely get a headstart on the scale for falling in love with them.

[kazamajun]

well have you considered that maybe the unstoppable force is in love with the immovable object

maybe the reason one refuses to stop and the other refuses to move is because they both long for the collision

[icewindandboringhorror]

.. mysterious visitor... polite door to door salesmane of acorns 

[whiskeyswifty]

.

[elftwink]

am currently working on a neocities site (which i cannot give you the url for yet because im working on the css still and there's no content also it looks ugly still) and oh man does it take me back to ye olde days of custom theme editing on here. i still use a custom theme obvs but back in like 2014/2015ish when i was really into indie rp custom themes were all the rage and you would spend hours editing some character specific image for your bg and then another several hours trying to make the css line up with your image (never at any point did i attempt to actually like. learn html or css. i just read other people's theme codes and edited the parts i could understand and solved problems as they arose. i distinctly remember one time i was using a base that had two sidebars and i only wanted one and deleting the section broke the theme in disastrous ways [bc i had no idea what i was doing] so i literally just made all the elements in the sidebar transparent and moved them off the screen LMAO. the best i ever got was moving from fully built custom themes that i edited to base themes that i built off of)

anyway while im slightly better now (im even reading tutorials! am i following them? sorry i have to go i think someones calling me) i am using a layout builder to build the homepage so it is even more reminding me of mid-2010s tumblr. much like building off a base theme, and definitely easier to understand than tumblr theme building (this time i at least know what all the different pieces of code are doing, even when im not sure how or why, or how to duplicate the effect under slightly different circumstances. but progress is progress!).

a good but annoying thing about the layout that im using is that i havent actually edited the site wide stylesheet, just used internal css on that one page, so when i go to make literally any other page i'll have to start from scratch. this is good because i am learning a lot and i think without doing it this way i would end up with a bunch of useless stuff in the stylesheet that really should be page-specific that i would have to correct with internal or inline css later. annoying because what do you mean i have to make decisions about the sizing and positions of the content? i literally just did that

also im kind of nervous to touch the general stylesheet because im pretty sure what i'll actually want to do is have a couple of stylesheets for different 'sections' of the website, to maintain cohesion between pages of the 'same' type but still allow a lot of fun customization on a per-page basis, but that requires deciding what 'sections' i want on the website and that is a whole other can of worms. but also you can't start without starting so i should probably just try to build a really simple layout and go from there (after all, if it sucks, it's not like i can't just create a new stylesheet, or do the css for each page independently until i hit a groove that's actually worth moving to the stylesheet). but also first i have to finish this goddamn homepage. which means i gotta find a header image that doesn't look ugly as shit

[night-dragon937]

why do i only get motivation at night TwT

cleaning, organizing, cooking, responding to emails/texts/calls, filling out paperwork, doing art or crafts, filming tiktoks- 10am? no chance. 3pm? that's funny but no. 6pm? ehh that's pushing it, probably not. 2am?? fuck yeahh let's get it all done right now!!

i need help and also someone to tell me that the project i want to start working on (will take a minimum of three hours) is a bad idea to start now, at 2am, when i need to get up in like eight hours

[cowskulls]

ever start sometimes and stop halfway through like what the fuck am i doing.

[endlessfuckup]

sorry about writing novels in the tags

i annoy myself too dont worry lol

need to start using tumblr on pc again instead of using the app

the tagging system on mobile is horrendous

like i just want to be able to edit individual tags again

and also have the ability to select/copy&paste the text from the tags

sometimes i change my mind about not wanting to make a post/reply AFTER writing a whole paragraph in the tags

and instead of just copying & pasting what i already wrote i have to delete it all and start over 😭

[tsukiida]

i just scrolled through my blog and i realised i have only two modes: weird pseudo-philosophical rambling. and absolutely unhinged yelling. AND I TELL YOUUUU IT'S SO FUNNYYYYYYY because i spent so long trying to curate my voice and sound like a normal, fun, easy to approach person back when i first made this blog!

then again it's been 3.5 years so i guess my voice changed naturally 🤨 i'm not smart enough for this 😮‍💨

[frogliftcertified]

(Edit 2: Closing replies for this and muting the post, if you have issues just leave a message in my PM's, I promise you it'll be my pleasure to (try to) help.)

Good news, the ReVanced project (of YouTube ReVanced fame) has added Tumblr patches to their arsenal, so not only can you patch YouTube with it now, but also Tumblr (and more, even). This can let you remove ads from the Tumblr app, and even nuke Tumblr Live.

Grab the ReVanced Manager and give it a shot. Android only, sorry.

Edit, FAQ:

Disable Play Protect in the Google Play store, it's useless anyways.

You don't need to update your app to the newest version, pick an APK of any Tumblr version you want and patch that. Not all will work, but just keep trying different versions if so.

For the old layout and the ability to go directly to previous reblogs, patch an APK of this version: 29.7.0.110

For users without root access, you need to find an APK for the Tumblr app (a version of it of your choice), then uninstall Tumblr from your device, THEN use the patcher, and install it when prompted.

Do not download "split", "bundle", or "xapk" when given the choice.

You don't need MicroG unless you want to use non-root patched YouTube.

[sm-baby]

I want to see all the carnival AU bios again, but finding Zooble's is too hard, even when using the search. I hope there's a more organized way to view them.

(Trying to come up with nicknames that said characters would give my characters.)

CARNIVAL AU MASTERPOST + BOUNDARIES

Augh... I never know how to organize stuff! But here is a mini master post of the TADC Info Cards (edited):

The Main Cast (Minus Zooble :C)

Zooble ( Plus Zooble!!! :3)

Shiny Cards ✨

Lesser AI

THE GLOINKS!!!

Level layout

OFFICIAL COMIC:

The Entire Comic has also been dubbed by @volticglitch !! If you're not a reader, You can watch their dubs instead!! Here is the dub

Your best friend!

Jesterly duties

The hallway

Crying

First clue

Special event!

Foul language - a silly

Excuse me?

Leave!

A word with Bubble

Let it Settle

CONCEPT ART:

Characters Relationship Chart ( Bonus, OC relationship Chart!)

The Tent

The Funhouse

Cutscene

Pomni expressions

Character design

Meet Pomni

ALT character skins (Bonus, Maid skins because of course I did)

Pomni expressions AGAIN!!! (and a bonus)

The Jester's Circus tent (and a bonus)

References

Shape language ramble

LOREEE:

Neck pieces

Neck pieces (prt 2)

Neck pieces (prt 3)

Silly Frilly

Toxic Positivity Duo

Quick Ragatha Doodle

The Rabbit

Non-sentient Pomni

Pity Laugh

First act of violence

First and only visit

DOODLE DUMPS:

First look

Meet Jax

Meet Ragatha

Meet Kinger

Meet Able

Zooble's room

Theatre shinanigans

Thanks for listening

Jax Doodles

Ragatha doodles (Feat. Kaufmo)

Caine doodles

Queenie?

Colored doodles

Eye popping

Jax Ko-fi request!

SILLIES!!:

The "Sillies!!" Section is moved HERE becuase the mastpost couldn't take any more links!

╔══ ❀•°❀BOUNDERIES/FAQ❀°•❀ ══╗

"Can I make OCs In Carnival?" - Yess!! Multiple people already have and they make me so happy! do whatever, as long as you're happy and having fun!! " Can I make NSFW?" - Yas and slay, just be sure to warn and spoiler it, etc. etc. be responsible when posting NSFW! " Can I make Fanfics?" - Yes and please show me!! that would be lovely!! " Can I dub/voice your stuff?" - Yes but, I have only one rule... show me pleaaasseeee pls pls pls 🥺🙏 " Can I ship the characters/self ships/ OC x Canon?" - Aughh.. this is gonna suck to explain cuz its a lot to ask.. You're allowed to ship any ship! My only boundary is that it doesn't include either Pomni or Caine being with others who are not eachother! For example: Ragatha x Jax ✅ Pomni x Jax❌ Kinger x Queenie✅ Kinger x Caine❌ As long as the ship does not include Pomni or Caine individually, I'm all aboard!! I respect Jax x Pomni shippers, as well as Kinger x caine shippers, I just don't like them myself and don't want to accidentally stumble upon them in the tag! I do apologize if that's a lot, it just makes me uncomfy! Bounderies can be very tight! :')

[jasmineoolongtea]

― in between ⋆⭒˚.⋆

― the ways in which they act around you when you're in that in-between stage ༘ ⋆｡˚

contents: gojo x gn!reader, geto x gn!reader, nanami x gn!reader, megumi x gn!reader, yuji x gn!reader, yuuta x gn!reader, headcannons/drabbles, fluff a/n: heavily based on in between by gracie abrams. if she releases it in the secret of us deluxe edition, i might just explode with happiness. btw thank you sm for blowing up my last post, literally insane of you guys and a big kiss to all of you. also genuine question for you guys, do you prefer the layout i have for my headcanons, drabbles or longer fics? i'm trying to see which one you guys prefer

gojo satoru never lets his phone ring for more than a couple seconds when it comes to you. doesn't matter where, when or what it could be about, the second he hears your personalised ringtone or sees your name flash across the top of his screen, he's scrambling to try and answer it as fast he possibly can. he could be in the middle of fighting a curse, deep within the throws of battle with a laser focus on the target in front of him and it all goes out the window the moment you call his phone.

you'll never know about it though. for some reason, satoru keeps this fact to himself like it's the biggest secret in the world. he'll always pick up the phone with a carefree lilt to his voice, sometimes even choosing to tease you for calling him when you could have just texted instead. quietly inside, he thanks the universe for giving him the opportunity to hear your voice again.

"gojo," god, he loves the way you say his name, maybe one day he'll manage to get you to call him satoru. "are you sure you're at home right now?" there's a tinge of concern that permeates your voice and he swears his heart beats twice as fast just thinking about the fact that you might be worried about his well being.

"of course! why'd you ask? don't tell me this is your way of asking to come over right now?" you sigh at his antics and he laughs it off, it's like a routine you two do. he keeps jokingly throwing out these more than friendly offers to your constant dismissal but secretly, he hopes one day that he can stop pretending like they're just that.

there's a loud crash coming from his side of the call which only serves your suspicions as you quip back. "no, gojo. i'm asking because i'm hearing noises like you're beating someone up." he curses faintly under his breath at the curse who's off groaning in pain in the distance after being punted into a wall with a flick of his wrist.

you pause for a second as your voice softens "is this a good time to call because if not i can just-"

"no, no." he cuts you off, "i've got all the time in the world for you."

geto suguru hates it when you cry and hates it even more when you're away. he never thought it would be possible to hear a heart shatter in front of him but that's what he hears every time you shed a tear. you're the definition of angelic as crystalline tears stream down your face and his heart swells with warmth when you allow him to comfort you in his arms.

silently, he pledges to burn down whatever has brought you so much grief and pain as a newfound sense of anger courses through his veins. but before he can do anything, you turn to him with watery eyes and a quivering lip as you ask him to do the unthinkable.

"stay." you plead quietly.

"okay." he responds, a soft, comforting smile gracing his expression. he'll never say it out loud but he knows that it's a request, just like many others, he'll accept a thousand times over if it means he gets to stay close to you, even if it's nothing more than this.

if he thought it was painful to see you cry, then being away from you was possibly a fate worse than death. whenever he has to bear the misfortune of being separated from you, there's a part of him that you've taken away with you and is only reunited when you return to him. absence is said to make the heart grow fonder but he's pretty sure it's humanly impossible for his to do that as you're already the one it beats for. even across the distance of a phone call, it's still not enough for him to hear but not see you as it simply makes him crave your presence next even more.

he's rarely ever let anyone in like this before but the day you see him exhausted, dishevelled and broken and still choose to remain at his side, despite his protests, is the day he's sure that you're the only thing he'll ever want for the rest of his life. you claim it's under the guise of being friendly yet even satoru hasn't seen him like this. you might not know it but he does.

he doesn't say much, instead choosing to bask in this moment of mutual comfort and closeness as even at each other's worst, you both know that you'll still be okay.

nanami kento says that he's new at this when you toe that delicate line between the two of you. you're new to this too. he's scared and you're scared, however, the fear is not enough to stop this. when does the line of being just friends end and the line of calling each other lover start? or is there a secret in-between stage that the two of you are stuck in like right now, where the other waits with bated breath to see if someone takes the risk to make the first move?

you've been friends for as long as you can remember running into each other that one fateful day within the rectangular walls of jujutsu tech. however, there's always been a whisper of something else there as well. it's been something the two of you have danced around with lingering glances and silent, 'accidental' touches in public spaces. the two of you have seen each other through the growing pains of adolescence, nights of broken hearts and awkward first dates and now with an added layer of professionalism as recent coworkers.

when it was nanami who was the one who rescued you from those times when you were left cold and alone in a random restaurant somewhere, you know that you've had enough of waiting on somebody who doesn't care about you. as he places his hand on your shoulder, ushering you into his car with his jacket dropped across your figure with the utmost care, he knows that you deserve so much more than whatever this world can offer and he can only dream of being the one to give this to you.

between you and him, there's an invisible wall of all the labels you have each barricade the other behind in an attempt to hide under a sense of familiarity but now in this moment, you want nothing more than to tear it all down with your bare hands. he reaches out to you, threading his fingers through his and in one swift move, he's done the impossible and has crossed over the holy ground that lies beneath you.

"do you think this is a good idea?" you ask him, your voice barely above a whisper.

"positive." he responds, more resolute in his answer than in anything he has been in his life, and you swear sparks fly when you kiss.

fushiguro megumi loves your eyes and your smile and you love how he talks late at night when there's no one there. it's like a silent agreement between you two, one that you always honour. whenever one of you guys can't sleep, you will go to each other's dorm rooms and knock twice and you guys will stay up and talk until either the sun comes up or you both fall asleep.

it doesn't take a genius to say that megumi is a guarded person, with his walls so high you might even lose sight of him behind them, so it only makes it even more precious when you're able to see him like this in the dim light of the moonlight pouring in through the window. his skin is illuminated by the glow and the way he sounds when he's speaking with his soul bared open in its entirety makes you want to forever immortalise this moment in your memories. you think about all the people who have missed out on experiencing him like this with how his eyes sparkle with passion and how he breaks out into a grin at the slightest joke, leading you to mourn silently for their loss. however, you think of how vulnerable he lets himself become around you, knowing that you'll stay here with him no matter what, and the sweet nothings you hear him whisper to you when he thinks that you've fallen asleep and you realise this a secret you'll want to keep just between these walls.

on the rare occasion that megumi loses his battle to sleep first, he'll silently reach out for your hand and pull you closer to him. you're not sure if he's doing this consciously or unconsciously but you chose not to comment on the growing red glow of his ears as you sink into his touch.

usually, however, what happens is that you fall asleep first as you make your way onto the pillowy fortress that is either of your guys' beds. as you begin to drift off, he's always there watching over you like your very own moody guardian angel. this is the most he'll let himself indulge in your closeness, for now, as he takes comfort in the familiarity of this in-between stage.

itadori yuji tells you that you're beautiful, funny and smart like nothing he's ever seen. he swears on everything he loves in this world, a list that includes you but you don't need to know that yet. you brush off his compliments with practised ease as you try to fight the burning sensation that is spreading across your face. deep down, you can feel your heart fluttering at his compliments but then you think about how you shouldn't be feeling this way about someone who's your friend.

"itadori, you're exaggerating," you say, shoving his shoulder playfully. he pretends to feign hurt, rubbing the impacted area with a slight pout. adorable, you think to yourself before bringing yourself back into the present moment.

"no, it's true really! if you don't believe me, i'll just keep saying it over and over again." he asserts, ever so confident in his stance. it's all true to him, just like how the sky is blue and the grass is green. he'll be the first one to say how pretty, amazing and talented you are in a room full of your biggest supporters and he'll be the first one to say it again when there's no one else.

you roll your eyes half-heartedly at him, trying your best to act nonchalant despite wondering if he might ever feel more for you than your current state of friendship. "you don't say that to your friends. what about nobara, you don't say this to her, do you?"

"yeah, but she isn't you," he responds back. you don't answer him, choosing instead to point out an ice cream stand in the far distance and he lets you tug him along with you. it's okay, he knows that you're scared of whatever lies ahead for you two. he understands that you're worried that he might like you in that way, although he thinks that it's a bit stupid you're still so unsure about it when he wears his heart on his sleeve whenever it comes to you. whatever is it, he'll be happy to go along at your pace, just as long as it means he gets to be by your side like this.

okkotsu yuuta is so good to you and it makes you want it more than everything in between. is it greedy to say that you want more than whatever you two have right now? the longing stares, the lingering touches and the way your faces light up when you spot each other in a crowded room. sure, those were all fine for a bit but how long were you able to survive on just that when he was right there next to you as a constant reminder of the possibility of something more.

you never thought that you would be able to meet someone like him, someone who treats you as if you were the best thing to ever happen with so much care and love radiating from his very being. the way his hand brushes your cheeks when you get even the smallest cuts makes your heart feel like it's about to fall out of your chest with how he takes extra care to scan over your appearance for anything, pausing for a second on your lips. you think to yourself, he must be doing this on purpose, and you want to curse at him for playing with your heart but when he smiles at you with those half-moon eyes, you can feel all of that melting away and more.

the only person you can blame here for your current predicament is yourself really, you were the one who drew the line in the sand when the two of you first met. just friends, you said but in your defence, you had just learned about his history and how cold and empty his has been as well as how much you've been hurt in your own past, so you decided to do what was, at the time, what you thought was best for the both of you. only now, every day you spend with him makes him wish that you would one day wake up and finally take that jump.

yuuta also shares your sentiments, actually ever since he first saw you he knew that you were the one he wanted to live and breathe for, but he doesn't say anything for fear of scaring you off. he knows about your worries, your doubts and your fears and as much as he wants to tell you that you should throw caution into the wind and that he'll take that step for you, he also knows that he can't. so for now he'll do his best to quell your nerves with a gentle hand on the small of your back and a fleeting kiss on your cheek that you'll someday trust in yourself and him to fall headfirst into this new unknown territory, outside of this in between.

[thewingedwolf]

anyways one of our managers at work basically emailed to me say she didn’t realize i did so much work for our social media & i know she meant it as a compliment but i almost called her a bitch on our work email for it aksjdjdnd i KNOW she feels bad about telling me i’m bad at my job a month ago and she should feel bad, i was not just posting to insta willy nilly, i did research & worked with our community engagement department like i’m supposed to because i’m what? GOOD AT MY FUCKING JOB.

[fudgecake-charlie]

"They think I’m the least dangerous person in this car, do they? Well, they’re about to learn very differently."

Decided to redraw a moment from On the Getaway Mile by Odaigahara on AO3/ @droidofmay !

This may have taken a ridiculous amount of hours condensed into a few days and I went through it drawing cars and car interiors, but this was an absolute blast to do :D I hope I've done the fic sort of justice.

Process shots and long comparison rambles under the cut!

Welcome to my secret lair!!

I spent roughly... 18 hours working on this, the majority during this week and over the past three days, so I need to share my toils with people <3

Character/car references and page thumbnails! Featuring an incorrect scene placement and bad camera position. I reread the scene and placed it properly in the actual page. I hate drawing cars!! I was actually the most worried about panel placement when I started this— I was a guy who only did non narrative/illustrative panel pages and layout-less comics, but it wasn't that bad with a script! I could separate beats into panels, note which panels should be emphasised/larger, and assembled that into a page.

If you compare the fic with this comic, you can see how much dialogue I edited and moments I cut out. I couldn't fit it all on without having to draw even more pages, I wish I could though! Poor Mumbo only gets one line here. I'm so sorry my darling man <3 I also gave him a slight cyborg design because his implants are really important for his character and I needed some way to visually show that, even if it's not canon/mentioned.

The colouring method for this was really fun! It's similar to my aggie rainbow painting method but with less steps, hence narrow value range. It looks pretty and gets the vibe across well though.

Rapid fire points!

I was planning to do 3 different fic comics! Not anymore!!!

This is absolutely for the hotguy comic zine applications. <3 "Can I try rizzing you up // PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE" /ref

I drew page 2 first, then 3, then 1. I think you can tell!

Mumbo is sitting on the wrong side and should have his seatbelt on. He's also not carrying the stolen laptop as described.

It's explicitly noted that Mumbo cannot scan Grian like he can with Scar. Whoops!

Transmissions from the Foundation are via Mumbo and Scar's implants, but I couldn't think of a good way to portray that.

Despite guns and weapons being mentioned, I somehow didn't get the opportunity to draw a single one.

I love hand lettering. I also hate it! I will continue to do it.

Here are the no colour pages as a thank you for scrolling <3

[mostlysignssomeportents]

AI art has no anti-cooption immune system

TONIGHT (July 20), I'm appearing in CHICAGO at Exile in Bookville.

One thing Myspace had going for it: it was exuberantly ugly. The decision to let users with no design training loose on a highly customizable user-interface led to a proliferation of Myspace pages that vibrated with personality.

The ugliness of Myspace wasn't just exciting in a kind of outsider/folk-art way (though it was that). Myspace's ugliness was an anti-cooption force-field, because corporate designers and art-directors would, by and large, rather break their fingers and gouge out their eyes than produce pages that looked like that.

In this regard, Myspace was the heir to successive generations of "design democratization" that gave amateur communities, especially countercultural ones, a space to operate in where authentic community members could be easily distinguished between parasitic commercializers.

The immediate predecessors to Myspace's ugliness-as-a-feature were the web, and desktop publishing. Between the img tag, imagemaps, the blink tag, animated GIFs, and the million ways that you could weird a page with tables and padding, the early web was positively bursting with individual personality. The early web balanced in an equilibrium between the plunder-friendliness of "view source" and the topsy-turvy design imperatives of web-based layout, which confounded both print designers (no fixed fonts! RGB colorspaces! dithering!) and even multimedia designers who'd cut their teeth on Hypercard and CD ROMs (no fixed layout!).

Before the web came desktop publishing, the million tractor-feed ransom notes combining Broderbund Print Shop fonts, joystick-edited pixel-art, and a cohort of enthusiasts ranging from punk zinesters to community newsletter publishers. As this work proliferated on coffee-shop counters and telephone poles, it was visibly, obviously distinct from the work produced by "real" designers – that is, designers who'd been a) trained and b) paid by a corporation to employ that training.

All of this matters, and not just for aesthetic reasons. Communities – especially countercultural ones – are where our society's creative ferment starts. Getting your start in the trenches of the counterculture wars is no proof against being co-opted later (indeed, many of the designers who cut their teeth desktop publishing weird zines went on to pull their hair and roll their eyes at the incredible fuggliness of the web). But without that zone of noncommercial, antiestablishment, communitarian low weirdness, design and culture would stagnate.

I started thinking about this 25 years ago, the first time I met William Gibson. I'd been assigned by the Globe and Mail to interview him for the launch of All Tomorrow's Parties:

https://craphound.com/nonfic/transcript.html

One of the questions I asked was about his famous aphorism, "The street finds its own use for things." Given how quickly each post-punk tendency had been absorbed by commercial culture, couldn't we say that "Madison Avenue finds its own use for the street"? His answer started me down a quarter-century of thinking and writing about this subject:

I worry about what we'll do in the future, [about the instantaneous co-opting of pop culture]. Where is our new stuff going to come from? What we're doing pop culturally is like burning the rain forest. The biodiversity of pop culture is really, really in danger. I didn't see it coming until a few years ago, but looking back it's very apparent.

I watch a sort of primitive form of the recommodification machine around my friends and myself in sixties, and it took about two years for this clumsy mechanism to get and try to sell us The Monkees.

In 1977, it took about eight months for a slightly faster more refined mechanism to put punk in the window of Holt Renfrew. It's gotten faster ever since. The scene in Seattle that Nirvana came from: as soon as it had a label, it was on the runways of Paris.

Ugliness, transgressiveness and shock all represent an incoherent, grasping attempt to keep the world out of your demimonde – not just normies and squares, but also and especially enthusiastic marketers who want to figure out how to sell stuff to you, and use you to sell stuff to normies and squares.

I think this is what drove a lot of people to 4chan (remember, before 4chan was famous for incubating neofascism, it was the birthplace of Anonymous): its shock culture, combined with a strong cultural norm of anonymity, made for a difficult-to-digest, thoroughly spiky morsel that resisted recommodification (for a while).

All of this brings me to AI art (or AI "art"). In his essay on the "eerieness" of AI art, Henry Farrell quotes Mark Fisher's "The Weird and the Eerie":

https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/large-language-models-are-uncanny

"Eeriness" here is defined as "when there is something present where there should be nothing, or is there is nothing present when there should be something." AI is eerie because it produces the seeming of intent, without any intender:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/13/spooky-action-at-a-close-up/#invisible-hand

When we contemplate "authentic" countercultural work – ransom-note DTP, the weird old web, seizure-inducing Myspace GIFs – it is arresting because the personality of the human entity responsible for it shines through. We might be able to recognize where that person ganked their source-viewed HTML or pixel-optimized GIF, but we can also make inferences about the emotional meaning of those choices. To see that work is to connect to a mind. That mind might not necessarily belong to someone you want to be friends with or ever meet in person, but it is unmistakably another person, and you can't help but learn something about yourself from the way that their work makes you feel.

This is why corporate work is so often called "soulless." The point of corporate art is to dress the artificial person of the corporation in the stolen skins of the humans it uses as its substrate. Corporations are potentially immortal, artificial colony organisms. They maintain the pretense of personality, but they have no mind, only action that is the crescendo of an orchestra of improvised instruments played by hundreds or thousands of employees and a handful of executives who are often working directly against one another:

https://locusmag.com/2022/03/cory-doctorow-vertically-challenged/

The corporation is – as Charlie Stross has it – the "slow AI" that is slowly converting our planet to the long-prophesied grey goo (or, more prosaically, wildfire ashes and boiled oceans). The real thing that is signified by CEOs' professed fears of runaway AI is runaway corporations. As Ted Chiang says, the experience of being nominally in charge of a corporation that refuses to do what you tell it to is the kind of thing that will give you nightmares about autonomous AI turning on its masters:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/09/autocomplete-worshippers/#the-real-ai-was-the-corporations-that-we-fought-along-the-way

The job of corporate designers is to find the signifiers of authenticity and dress up the corporate entity's robotic imperatives in this stolen flesh. Everything about AI is done in service to this goal: the chatbots that replace customer service reps are meant to both perfectly mimic a real, competent corporate representative while also hewing perfectly to corporate policy, without ever betraying the real human frailties that none of us can escape.

In the same way, the shillbots that pretend to be corporate superfans online are supposed to perfectly amplify the corporate message, the slow AI's conception of its own virtues, without injecting their own off-script, potentially cringey enthusiasms.

The Hollywood writers' strike was, at root, about the studio execs' dream that they could convert the "insights" of focus groups and audience research into a perfect script, without having to go through a phalanx of lippy screenwriters who insisted on explaining why they think your idea is stupid. "Hey, nerd, make me another ET, except make the hero a dog, and set it on Mars" is exactly how you prompt an AI:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/20/everything-made-by-an-ai-is-in-the-public-domain/

Corporate design's job is to produce the seeming of intention without any intender. The "personality" we're meant to sense when we encounter corporate design isn't the designer's, nor the art director's, nor even the CEO's. The "personality" is meant to be the slow AI's, but a corporation doesn't have a personality.

In his 2018 short story "Noon in the antilibrary," Karl Schroeder describes an "antilibrary" as an endlessly deep anaerobic lagoon of generative botshit:

https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/08/18/104097/noon-in-the-antilibrary/

The antilibrary is a generative AI system that can produce entire librarys’-worth of fake books with fake authors, fake citations by other fake experts with their own fake books and biographies and fake social media accounts, on-demand and instantly. It was speculation in 2018; it’s possible now. Creating an antilibrary is just a matter of investing in a sufficient number of graphics cards and electricity.

https://kschroeder.substack.com/p/after-the-internet

Reading Karl's reflections on the antilibrary crystallized something for me that I've been thinking about for a quarter-century, since I interviewed Gibson at the Penguin offices in north Toronto. It snapped something into place that I've trying to fit since encountering Henry's thoughts on the "eeriness" of AI work and the intent without an intender.

It made me realize why I dislike AI art so much, on a deep, aesthetic level. The point of an image generator is to buffer the intention of the prompter (which might be genuinely creative and bursting with personality) in layers of automated decision-making that flense the final product of any hint of the mind that caused its creation.

The most febrile, deeply weird and authentic prompts of the most excluded outsiders produce images that feel the same as the corporate AI illustrations that project the illusion of personality from the immortal, transhuman colony organism that is the limited liability corporation.

AI art is born coopted. Even the 4chan equivalent of AI – the deeply transgressive and immoral nonconsensual pornography – feels no different from the "official" AI porn churned out by "real" pornographers. "Shrimp Jesus" and other SEO-optimized Facebook slop is so uncanny because it is simultaneously "weird" ("that which does not belong") and yet it belongs in the same aesthetic bucket of the most anodyne Corporate Memphis ephemera:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_Memphis

We call it "generative" but AI art can't generate the kind of turnover that aerates the aesthetic soil. An artform that can't be transgressive is sterile, stillborn, a dead end.

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/20/ransom-note-force-field/#antilibraries

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