swiriko

[swiriko]

@mtfoxx3 in memory of Ube.

phrasing of this is taking me out

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monster in motion

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#it's called lust

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1.1.2024

In Spite and In Celebration of Everything Else:

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Mr. Beast and Netflix sharing the same rotting braincell before recreating Squid Games.

i love this image sooooososososo much

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The difference between milk and skim milk is that one is water that's lying about being milk.

the difference between a lake and an ocean is whether it feels like it can swallow you whole

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Lovely. Exquisite. Phenomenal. Outstanding.

It's that time of year again

[swiriko]

The Greatest Pilot That Could Not Keep My Attention

I watched the Digital Circus pilot beginning on Monday, it took me watching bits of it throughout the week to just FINISH watching one viewing of it.

The animation? Stellar, stylistic and wonderfully designed.

The Voice Acting? Top notch, and you could tell the VAs had so much fun with their lines.

The Concept Plot and Writing? Intriguing, and the pilot set up a good story that leaves you wanting more, and with good jokes all around. The characters themselves are well rounded and have good dialogue and personality.

So when everything is at least and 8 or 9 out of 10, why could I not spend more than 2 minutes watching it at a time?

The Answer: The show doesn't give me ENOUGH of a reason to care.

The characters are lovable in their own ways, and you're meant to root for Pomni in wanting her to get out. And yet, The central theming of the show off the bat is... apathetic nihilism. That nothing matters and this thesis is only reinforced by the most "grounded," yet equally the most malignantly neutral characters so far: Jax.

Jax is the kind of person, and I say person instead of character, that is fully content with watching the world burn with a bag of popcorn in his hand. While everyone is suffering, Jax is lapping up a heaping fill of schaudenfreude, relishing in everyone's torment. Jax in this scenario, is as much the story's "villain" as Caide is. As a horror, this isn't necessarily a bad thing.

However, when you hammer in the idea in the audience's skull that it's pointless to try, you've already made the villain win from the get go, and so watching the villain KEEP winning is your narrative irony that you've made the audience subconsciously MIRROR Jax's sentiment:

"The story doesn't matter, as long as I get to see something funny."

So, instead of the self proclaimed psychological horror, What Digital Circus presents is a SOCIAL horror with comedic elements, and thus narratively remade Seinfeld: a show where nothing matters and shitty people, the audience included, get to make fun of other's suffering.

Apathetic Nihilism.

NOW, to its credit, The third act was the part of the pilot that DID keep my interest, but by the end of it reinforced the thesis even more, with a LITERAL SNAP of Kaide's fingers, the episodic conflict is deus-ex-machina'd away, the CENTRAL conflict is nebulously brushed under the rug, so the only thing left to hold onto the interest is the mystery of the show's symbolism and imagery to tease us, which, while a good thing to do, is not enough when your biggest message to the audience was already SHOVED down was that it's useless to try and figure everything out when none of it matters and you shouldn't care, which could be found insulting, but therein lies the rub:

The theming and thesis that this narrative has effectively told its audience is that it's childish and naive to care, and you should just sit down, shut up, laugh, and try not to go insane watching it.

There's writing to purposefully make your audience uncomfortable, there's writing to make your audience squeamish, there's writing that make your audience challenge their ideas and preconceived notions. There's writing to make your audience feel conflicting emotions

This is writing that purposefully makes your audience not care. It's written incredibly well, standing out and executed with shining applaud, but it's writing that makes your work mirror your thesis mirror your characters mirror your narrative mirror your audience mirror your writing mirror your message: It's meaningless and we're all Jax just along for the ride.

"Full of sound and fury... signifying nothing." - MacBeth

#writing #digital circus #amazing digital circus

[swiriko]

All of your concerns ARE valid, and you ARE heard. BUT:

Both the Jekyll and Hyde Musicals and The Phantom of the Opera Musicals gave us disgustingly good bangers of character driven songs. I WILL fight anyone who disagrees with me on this.

Frankenstein's monster's movie portrayal has become the ICONIC design of frankenstein's monster, even though the actual original description is nothing like it. Whoever was the Makeup designer for that movie knew damn well what they were doing.

If I see fucking Dorian Gray become Tumblr's sexyman of the year, I'm turning this website into a fucking crime scene.

And no faithful 1:1 Dracula adaptation is topping Hellsing: Abridged and Netflix Castlevania's Dracula.

The point being this: Adaptations can be a 1:1, but shouldn't be beholden to the original source material. A good adaptation is not necessarily a faithful adaptation.

Satoshi Kon's Paprika is an adaptation of a book.

Howl's Moving Castle is an adaptation of a book.

Planet of the Apes is an adaptation of a book.

Star Wars is an adaptation of a book.

And all four were examples of adaptations that, anecdotally, when asked, PEOPLE DIDN'T EVEN KNOW WERE ADAPTATIONS!

Adaptations, at least GOOD adaptations, should be good enough to stand on their own as separate works, while also drawing inspiration and aligning with the themes of the original source material.

And what people have with BAD adaptations is they are so disgustingly uninspired that they fall flat as bland and mass produced.

So don't demand faithful adaptations, cause you're going to get a monkey's paw wish of a faithfully BAD adaptation. Demand CREATIVE adaptations. Adaptations that take risks, or take an artful approach to a work, or use the art direction to enhance the work, or hell, even adaptations that take the source material and flip it on its head and make you see the work from a completely different and fresh perspective!

(But yes, also give us the monster mash.)

I’m not bitter

#art #creativity #adaptation

[swiriko]

Happy Sharktober!

#art #halloween #sharktober

[swiriko]

A Pencil and Paper

On September 12th, 2023. Unity announced that it would be adding a "per-install" fee towards developers. [X]

There have already been many indie developers that have already spoken out against it, so I will amplify their voices here:

Inner Sloth, developers of Among Us: [X]

Aggro Crab, developers of Another Crab's Treasure: [X]

However, there's been some interesting takes on where developers are going from here. And the top contenders seem to be two vastly different engines: Godot and Unreal Engine.

Godot, an open source, yet still fledgling game engine.

Unreal Engine, an engine that's been one of the heaviest hitting professional engines for literal decades.

It reminds me of a parallel situation: People fucking off of Autodesk Maya to use literally anything else, people fucking off of Adobe to use literally anything else. Except not everyone can afford to just switch to something else, due to logistical reasons, or that they're entire franchise has been using this engine/software/tool for literal years, and they can't afford to relearn something new.

And to those that switch, there's a siren waiting for those sailing through new waters: Unreal Engine is literally owned by Epic Games, who also own Artstation, who literally ostracized their entire userbase in support of AI art. [X] You're telling me THAT'S one of the main alternatives to Unity? You don't think Epic Games given enough time and greed will pull this same kind of shit or worse once you've built your entire business model upon being dependent of their product?

The internet simultaneously has an entire archive of history, yet the collective memory of a goldfish.

The Unfortunate reality is that it IS one of the main alternatives.

Adobe's main alternatives for digital art has been Clip Studio Paint and Paint Tool SAI, both great software for digital painting, and yet parallel's this same situation. CSP was supposed to be the herald of a new standard, yet fell hard from grace when CELSYS decided to adopt the same dreaded subscription model as Adobe once so many digital artists latched on and became dependent on it. [X] While Paint Tool SAI's lone developer has been rather struggling due to SAI's wide spread userbase being mostly pirates. [X]

At the same time, for 3D Art, the many many other 3D Software packages are also hilariously expensive, with many also requiring subscription models now... EXCEPT for Blender. But blender still isn't considered the industry standard. And yet it's one of the few 3D software I still have installed.

History tends to rhyme, so most likely, Godot will never become an industry standard game engine. But if it has enough people behind it, it can and will be the Blender option for Game Development, with a rich library and marketplace of user-made add-ons and plugins. Open Source, and free.

There is something to be said, however. The Tools DO matter, as much as we hate to admit it, good tools DO matter, ACCESS to good tools matter, the affordability of good tools matter, being able to use the RIGHT tool for an art piece matters, being able to use the most comfortable tool for the artist matters.

That's why Unity's new business model, hell even UNREAL ENGINE'S business model is an insult to game development as an art. John Riccitiello and Tim Sweeney have said to the game industry, "I make the pencil you use, so I get a cut of what you make from it, even if you've already paid to use it."

Fuck off with that shit. Motherfucking RPG Maker had a better business model.

It wouldn't be such a huge issue if it didn't matter. After all, you can make art with just a pencil and paper, but a pencil and paper alone is only a mere FRACTION of the tools we have used to make the raw, unfathomable library of art in the history of art itself.

#unity #unreal engine #godot

[swiriko]

You Coward. You Flim-wristed fool. You Sweat-cheeked pretender.

The term has always been T-Bagging. It will never NOT be T-Bagging.

Mutuals, I'm crouching and uncrouching at you so fast right now

[swiriko]

I Hate That We'll Do Effectively Nothing

No matter what happens, no matter how many rights we are stripped of.

We'll do nothing.

We're a frog slowly boiling alive

Except we know it's happening

and we'll do nothing.

We'll protest in the streets and bitch on twitter and tumblr and reddit and tiktok

but we'll do nothing.

We'll let the orcas do what we should be doing

but we'll do nothing.

We'll let the ocean do what we should be doing

but we'll do nothing.

We'll let a god we don't believe in do what we should be doing even though we hate their guts

but we'll do nothing.

We'll scream to the lungs that someone needs to drop a meteor or throw a molotov or Eat the rich for the literal millionth time

but we'll do nothing.

Because it's easier to do nothing.

Because it's easier to slowly boil alive.

Because it's easier to suffer and wait while someone or something else does the hard shit for us than the fear and uncertainty of doing it ourselves.

But what happens when there IS no one else?

And it hits me why it was so easy for 1 person to kill millions of people.

Because we were too kind, too gentle, too timid to do anything.

We'll never eat the rich because it's easier to say it and feel good about it then to have that bad taste in our mouths when we bite.

We boiled alive waiting for someone else to turn off the gas. For someone else to kill the big bad. For someone else to save us.

I hate it.

Either do something, ANYTHING.

Or shut up and boil.

I want to die young, because dying old means I've failed to die for something worthwhile, even if it means dying for the right to die on my own terms.

[swiriko]

These are actual things called Drop Leg Bags--I'm not even joking-- and despite their small size, THEY CARRY EVERYTHING.

Phone, Wallet, Ammunition, flashlight, pencils, arsenic, dog treats, keys, post it notes, brass knuckles, Nintendo Switch, Ballistic Knife.

Forget Lesbian purse, this is the perfect non binary purse. Unisex, comes in all different colors, and are pockets, ON TOP OF YOUR POCKETS!

The internet agrees with me:

#not sponsored #but I will sing the praises of whoever designed drop leg bags

[swiriko]

@elesbreee

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REWRITE THE AGGRO OF MY FURIED HEART

#Big Squishie