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suniverseastro · 2 years

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ASTROLOGY OBSERVATION #6

Teachers who have Leo/5th in Sun/Moon/Mecury/AC often come up with and help new fun games in their lessons and children often love this.

Mercury Pisces/12th may have difficulty expressing their thoughts, their mind often has difficulty focusing on imperatives, they are cheerful communicators, humorous, fond of art, but after a period of activity, they need some alone time to recharge

Mecury Aries talking to Mecury Sagittarius = lol really really entertaining, mecury Sagittarius love to speak all their thoughts honestly, frankly with different themes and stories in the world and Aries mecury likes new things, they are comfortable, fun, honest communicators

Aspect Moon-North Node in the synastry chart can talk about the predestined relationship in this life of two people

Mercury Virgo: they are really detailed, analytical, have moral standards, they think a lot about everything, this helps them to be more delicate in handling problems with others and things that require precision. They could be easily stressed, may criticize themselves and others when they do not achieve the perfection they want

People with the Ascendant who have many difficult angles may have difficulty finding love because they feel self-conscious about their appearance, they have many obstacles when approaching others, so their love story may be late

The position of Pisces and Virgo both needs encouragement. These 2 signs both have their own low self-esteem, Pisces is often sensitive, dreamy and easily overwhelmed by their surroundings, their mind easily strays from the material world, or daydreams and is very spiritual creatures. With the influence of Neptune, dreams, intuition, high sensitivity, cosmic energy that makes Pisces' energy pick up waves, combined with the extension from Jupiter makes them want to learn about everything things happen in the spiritual world and find answers, they easily dissolve into energy fields so their own identity can also be challenged causing them to become confused know " Who am I?"

Virgo are quite discreet, careful people, they also often hide their shortcomings, they always try to make everything more perfect, so they tend to put pressure on themselves, thinking that they are not always good enough, they may always be dissatisfied with themselves and others

+ So encouragement with these 2 signs help them raise believe in themselves, encourage them, help them stabilize their spirits, and have faith in them will help them feel more confident.

The position of Sagittarius and Gemini, they need people who stimulate the mind, talk, open, interesting entertainment, give them their own space.

+ Sagittarius is quite independent. They love to have fun, travel, explore and learn. They seem indifferent and it is true that they are less interested in outside bullshit and trash on social media. They like to hang out with friends, spend quality time with their loved ones, sometimes they are sad and lonely but that often keeps it to themselves.

+ Gemini love to talk and debate a lot of different topics, they are good diplomats, is the sign affected by Mercury makes them feel like the thoughts running through their heads make them need to expend energy this by talking to someone. When they are stuck with a problem, it is easy for them to think too much, leading to imbalance

+ Both of these signs are passionate, freedom-loving, laid-back, fun to be around, they can be intimidating and scary when someone hurts the people they love They need help too. A solid fulcrum to help them relax, always ready to be by their side and encourage them

An interesting thing is: Sagittarius likes to feel secure when being with Cancer

In big 3, if 2-3 positions all share the same quality, it will make them feel confused and conflicted with themselves (sun square / opposite moon) or what others feel about themselves (AC square/ opposite Sun/Moon)

The air sun seems easier to approach and get to know strangers but they can be very cold. If you don't communicate with them regularly, they will automatically withdraw from the relationship

The Libra Sun is actually quite difficult to identify, they can be pleasing and transforming themselves to harmonize with others, love to be complimented and impressed by their appearance and fashion sense. they may take a long time to think before making a decision. In a love relationship, they can stick around and watch their partner often, they want their partner to share everything with them, communication is important with air signs

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calypsolemon · 1 year

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I'm usually of the opinion that its more satisfying to turn pre-existing characters into oc's once an au has reached past a certain Event Horizon of canon characterization. And it absolutely is boring to me when people kind of just slap a bunch of unrelated tropes onto any character or ship with 0 regard to what those characters are usually about.

That being said, I really Do Not Get people who act like its a fucking... issue of morality to get people to not mutilate their faves with fanon, or like you are somehow genuinely not being a creative person if you just play with characters like dolls and don't really give a fuck about canon. Like the sort of people who just get raging mad and go on long creeds about fandom being some sort of sinkhole where artistic integrity goes to die. As if somehow if we let people enjoy media in the wrong way our brains are all going to turn to mush incapable of making anything meaningful and humanity is going to lose the capability to make original art forever.

Meanwhile I just sit here feeling like. Aside from fanon/ hc's/ au's that have offensive implications, who really caaaares what somebody does with their fandom bullcrap. They are making free writing and art. They don't owe you anything. Sure you can complain about it in your own personal space, especially I understand complaining about it when it dominates a fandom. But like at the end of the day you have to understand, what may feel like creative bankruptcy to you is just... having fun and letting loose to another. And there is simply no moral imperative to create "good" or "meaningful" art that trumps people's right to... just make the sort of art they want to make. For fun.

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therivershaverunred · 10 months

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Hello! You may remember me from AO3~

I want to ask you a few questions while giving you a few ideas~

The question is how are you able to make a Dark!Dick~? I might struggle to write him like that because I always envision him as the fun big brother~

The ideas I want to share with you~ While I already did that in the latest chapter of your NSFW art, I want to expand a little more~ Raven would be wearing a maid costume when serving the Batboys, having Dick as Slade's apprentice to capture Raven, having Raven in the mercy of libertine Batboys in a historical France (without the more messed up parts), or dark!Domestic DickRae, maybe with a crib nearby~

I hope you like these ideas~

This is the supply my inspiration needs right now, thank you! Let me just hand them over to my muse who is going to fuse them with more twisted energy and reconstruct them into more desirable form >:))

The question actually had me taken aback lol, I'm never the best author to begin with and I constantly struggle to churn out non-awkward sentences, so being asked for writing advice is new to me :)))

I reckon that you're placing Dick on too high of a pedestal, thus writing him being part of a vile, diabolical scheme (even when he only had one foot in it and doesn't actually play any imperative role) seems like a dishonorable thing to do. The only feasible tactic when it comes to molding a dubious character is to change your perceptive of them, they are human, they are breakable, they are susceptible to the effects of the drastic shift in their environments. You have problem visioning him as anything but the perfect ball of sunshine who help people get back on their feet like a good brother, and that's interfering with you being able to stain that image of him.

Dick has demons flying in his head and a scarred heart full of troubles (this is already established in the comic, it's canon so don't worry about making him OOC). Exploit this, use it as a setup for your plotline, have him listening to the voices in his mind in lieu of tuning them out, and the important thing is, let him sink. Don't bother yourself with trivial concerns like 'Is this becoming of him' or 'Nah this is way to beneath our golden boi', he has to descend into madness, that's the whole point of choosing the negative arc over the positive one and build a dark character.

And don't mistake dark with being cold, standoffish, desolate or having an angsty vocabulary and always whine about their misery, because, I'll be frank, that's how you write an epic edge lord, not a crime lord. That dark part isn't their core personality or their entire nature, it's only the result of having something inside them snapped and leaving behind a hollow space, followed by a warp of their psyche. Nothing else, though. In other words, their morals are looser and they are more willing to solve matters in a more extreme methods than most idealistic characters, but they aren't necessarily evil. They can be kind and caring without having to pretend, they can give motivational advice and hold you as you cry in your darkest moment, they can spare beggars some changes on a good day. But if they are crossed, all Hell broke loose, and they simply go Hannibal on the idiot dumb enough to do that.

I personally enjoy the concept of sweet, lovable devils. They cannot even be considered morally grey with the shit they have done, but when they are not bathed in blood, they are gentle and supportive and draw people towards them with their calm, reasonable personality. They are not masking, that's simply who they are.

They're trickier to pull off than the typical raging idiot who never stop wanting people to know how life was hard on them and they have no other choice, of course, since their actions always seem to be in conflict with their nature, and one wrong decision can ruin them for good. But I think they are interesting characters to construct as long as you know how to handle their story and psychology.

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annamarabella-grumble · 1 year

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thoughts about bioshock, episode 1

episode 2 / episode 3 / episode 4 / episode 5

i’m currently recording a bioshock let's play series (remastered edition), and here’s some thoughts on last weekend's episode

this game has everything: hyperindustrialism, unethical experiments, body horror, and: ghosts 👻

protest signs: “we are not your property” the first thing that you see — good news! citizens had self-awareness before they were rounded up and killed!

the parasite loves free markets, free health care, and free men (yes, love not having to pay for men)

“beauty is a moral imperative”

but Steinman is also bored with people having two eyes and ears and only one mouth, so

“you promised me pretty!” having a fistfight with “why do we force the beautiful to mingle with the plain?”

art, science, industry — the great minds needed to build a better world. only, apparently under the fucking ocean was the only space for it.

Steinman/Cohen, Suchong/Tenenbaum, Ryan/Fontaine

what is "beautiful"? what is "good" art?

science to achieve ends by all means necessary

science to understand what makes humans as they are

industry, unfettered by regulations

industry to “evolve” humanity

greed corrupts, power corrupts, and Ryan reads too much Ayn Rand

what Steinman says: beauty is moral imperative!

what Rapture hears: he’s going to give us cleft chins and huge boobs

what Steinman means: listen, you’re all too symmetrical

what Steinman really means: conventional beauty standards are broke. i’m going to create a new beauty standard that is so grotesque and hideous

what Ryan says: I chose Rapture

what Rapture hears: this is where we can be free! Rapture is all we need?

what Ryan means: someone’s gotta pull the great chain and it ain’t gonna be me

what Ryan really means: plain old industrialism isn’t good enough. i’m going to create an economy that is so oppressive and inescapable

the first two hours of the game giving you a dose of Ryan and Steinman is a great introduction to what built Rapture: the self-victimisation of men already in immense power over others, but burdened with governmental and ethical oversight. “Petty concerns,” indeed. and it hands you a hero in Atlas, who won’t “leave you twistin in the wind,” who doesn’t even know you but promises to help you. it just happens that there’s something you can do for him. and you’re already in his debt, so why not?

debt doesn’t only appear as a narrative theme in Bioshock Infinite; it’s already here. Ryan owns the city, Ryan owns the scrip, the store, the stone under your feet. no-one is free, in Rapture. and as you burrow deeper and deeper into its leaky guts, neither will you be. all power flows into the city, but none can ever leave.

#bioshock #meta #grumble has thoughts #4 #5 #video games

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xxlovelynovaxx · 2 months

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AI discourse ahead, and not anti-AI either

Honestly, I find the take that ai is not "creating" offensive.

The software isn't the one having the ideas. Even putting aside that I haven't once been able to generate an AI image that actually has what I want because I lose patience well before the hours it takes to actually make a generator do what I want it to... what even is creation?

Why are you buying into cultural elitism around art? Why does art require toil and effort (*coughcough Protestant cough*) or "a human touch" or whatever? Do you realize that you're repeating the exact same thing that was said about cameras (especially digital cameras) and photo-editing programs? Do you realize that you're buying into culturally christian ideas of either "pain" or "work" as virtue? Do you realize you're buying into ableist inspiration porn where people who truly can't use their hands to make art are expected to use their feet or mouths or only make the types of art their bodies are capable of making, regardless of what they actually want to create, have ideas for, or love to create?

What about AI makes it not creation, any more than photography or collage or fucking fanart or a dozen different types of modern art? Oh, wait, you pay lip service to those being art but you don't actually consider large swathes of those to be art, don't you? Is a casual selfie art? How much theory do you have to know, how good does something have to look, before it crosses the line from "a random photo" to art?

What happens if you automate different parts of the process. If you program a robot to hold and move the brush for you, but you tell it where to go (maybe by using eye movements) is it still creation? If you run a bunch of images cut out from magazines through a random number generator and then have the random number generator determine the images placement on sets of axes, is that creation? When does automation cross the line?

Even if you create the tools, does that not count? Is science in service of art not itself art? Is science not art at all? At what point is machinery no longer sculpture and programming no longer poetry.

Your worldview is limited and your beliefs are fundamentally reactionary.

My last reblog is of a video encouraging people to "make trash art". The message so many take from that is that art is about the process, not the endpoint. But I disagree that that's the true message. The point is, SOMETIMES the process is the point. SOMETIMES the art is the thing being done.

The thing is, the idea that art is about the journey, that it's about the experience, that the product is at most an important bonus? That's only useful insofar as it is used to combat the often capitalist and elitist ideas that a polished finished product is necessary.

Not everybody enjoys the process. There is no moral imperative to enjoy the process. If you see someone making art because they want a polished finished product and you say "then what's the point?", you're falling prey to the same logical fallacies and quite frankly, same elitism and unnecessary moralization that the trash art video was calling out (honestly, whether or not the creator would even agree with me).

It's elitism and moralism to insist that someone has to engage with art in a certain way or for a certain reason. It's elitism and moralism to insist that art requires a certain amount of technical knowledge, "hard work", or abstract "heart" or "soul" to be "real art".

AI art is real art. Learn to say "I don't like it". Learn to say "I have fundamental issues with the ethical implications of how AI is created" - and then maybe actually learn what machine learning generative image programs actually are and how they are created.

Learn that almost any attempt at legislating AI, due to the program's actual nature, threatens all kinds of derivative (including fanart!) and collage-based art, due to the fact that what AI does is in fact only loosely based in those things. Learn that it is an extremely simplified process as compared to human brains of attributing pixel arrangements in an image to keywords over and over, until it will reproduce certain color values in certain arrangements when prompted. Learn that the programs themselves don't even contain anything recognizable as the images used in the original data set, but rather "when input=dog, pixel 592=#000000 and pixel 1773=#F9E29C".

Learn that yarncrafting and textile creation already have been automated, and therefore can't be sold at cost of labor. Learn that the problem is not in fact that automation "steals jobs", but that we exist in a capitalist society that requires us as artists to use our art to generate capital in the first place, or else to suffer in poverty. Learn the first thing about the actual ethical issues in play. Learn that it's a fundamentally fascist take, and especially an ableist one, to define art by how much work goes into it, the enjoyment of the process, or any other arbitrary parameters.

Seeing so many supposed leftists be so damn reactionary and just... uncritical about this whole thing? It annoys me to hell and back, if you can excuse the culturally christian phrasing there, and honestly kind of scares me. It seems to me like it belies a larger underlying issue - that leftists are more concerned with arguments that sound nice but lack substance, have failed to recognize propaganda or analyze the arguments being presented to them, and want to verbally signal their moral-ness as a sort of shibboleth to gain social acceptance.

Aside from the ableism that this discourse has introduced into these spaces, I honestly think that AI discourse doesn't do that much harm - and this specific ableism itself is again only a symptom of a larger existing problem of ableism. People thought these things about disabled people and disability and "work ethic" and such already, even if they paid lip service to the idea of people having inherent value and (approved kinds of) accessibility being important.

But I've seen the harm those larger underlying attitudes have caused - in geopolitical discourse, in identity politics, in issues that are directly about people and only indirectly via how people interact with technology.

Seeing this discourse, I've suddenly understood how people in the past could treat technology that is now ubiquitous and treated as innocuous as somehow threatening the downfall of ... civilization, or art, or the creative process - degenerate, if you will. Not because I agree, but because it's no longer a "I can't understand because no one today would be irrational enough to do that!" I understand that people have always been people because they continue to be, in the most exasperating ways.

That's really at the heart of it. "It's not real art"... because it threatens "real artists". It could be the downfall of "art as income" when that shouldn't be necessary in the first place, and also the downfall of the authoritarian gatekeeping of art that allows for people incapable of putting in the prerequisite effort or intellect or whatever other arbitrary abstract quality you've decided makes "real" art. It allows for a sense of superiority based on the fact that you "worked harder, not smarter", that you didn't "stoop" to using the "easy, streamlined process", that you don't have to find your way out of your sunk cost fallacy and acknowledge that your engagement with art in that way is now a choice, not a requirement.

It allows you to convince yourself that your refusal to engage with AI image generators is one of morality, and not simply a fear that doing so will result in severe enduring social consequences and being locked out of engaging with art in other ways that you do enjoy - being made a pariah, though perhaps not in the way that the strawman "wealthy techbros" might mean it. If you admit to or are caught using AI - you might lose any chance of making income off your art, or access to artist spaces, and so on.

It also can be treated as a threat to "what art is", again, because it threatens existing hierarchical structures dependent on the idea that art requires certain qualities to be "genuine". Whether you draw the line at materials used, time spent, effort, enjoyment, or whatever else, it is the exact same viewpoint fundamentally that is used by elitist classists to reject all kinds of art.

You are more similar to those who call graffiti, rap (hm, both primarily black art styles) and even fanfiction as not real art. You are shaking hands with those who uphold a system in which many poor artists simply are exploited out of the time and energy they could have used to create masterworks, by agreeing that those things are necessary to make art in the first place.

Those blank canvases that are titled "take the money and run", the toilet on display in a museum, and so many similar cases - you are on the side of the people who claim that these aren't "real art". Sometimes those pieces even lack the exact qualities that you claim are necessary for "real art", and you're left scrambling because you either have to admit that what you decide is art is ENTIRELY arbitrary, come up with some cover about the "level" of human engagement that went into its creation while ignoring that a higher level of human engagement often has to go into wrestling image generators into submission, or ignore the cognitive dissonance and insist that you're right because you are.

Like I said, fundamentally reactionary, and fascist. Not calling AI art degenerate just means you're not admitting that's what you think it is. Why? Because that language is frowned upon and you might get someone shaking their head and clucking their tongue at you with not so much as a slap on the wrist? Because it's really about social standing and assimilation into existing social hierarchies, especially where they hold power over access to basic survival needs.

This is why I especially can't stand self-proclaimed anarchists doing this. Just admit that the label anarchist is in vogue in your subculture and that you haven't actually bothered to examine whether your ideals actually align with any of the sets of political and personal tenets of anarchism.

Idk. I'm so over it. Hopefully this will blow over sooner rather than later. Just because you don't call AI the "work of the devil" or if you're actually a little aware of ableism, the work of "narcissistic tech bro sociopaths" doesn't mean you're not treating capitalism like a pseudoreligious force instead of an actual structural system that can be broken down and resisted. Capitalism isn't Satan.

(Oh, and maybe evaluate why you avoid learning about AI in the first place as well. I'm not saying it is, but if it's worries about propaganda insidiously convincing you to abandon your morals or whatever, you might want to examine the fact that your views of nonfiction are puritanical in the exact same way you rightfully decry when it's in regard to fiction.)

#aicourse

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dukeofriven · 2 years

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Saw a really bad take today that basically boils down to "why bother separating art from the artist when there's so much other art out there: just go enjoy the other art. Nobody cares if you have fond memories of the old art just go make new ones lol."

It’s bad for a few reasons. Let’s get down to cases. (Warning: I talk about Barthes.) 1) That's not how brains work. I can’t tell someone to stop being in love with someone. I can’t tell someone that their favourite city is a hellhole. I can’t even tell someone to stop enjoying kale. I mean... I can, but not with any expectation of a serious result. Neither you nor I can usually meaningfully affect the desires, wants, and tastes of others: we can provide counterfactuals to taste, such as ‘the person you’re in love with is cruel to me and other people you care about maybe you shouldn’t love them,’ or ‘LA is a vapid town full of vapid people and it smells bad you shouldn’t like going there,’ or especially ‘kale was forged in the darkest pits of Utumno by the dark lord Melkor in mockery of spinach and your mouth cringes at the flavour stop eating that shit,’ but that usually has no effect. And that’s fine. That’s how brains work. Especially in the neuro-divergent community, in which hyper-fixations are something people can have really no control over, swanning-in and telling someone to just... like something else, telling someone to just abandon the thing their brain has subsumed into its quintessence as a form of day-to-day stability, their wellspring of pleasure in a brutal word—that’s not going to work (and a smug little ‘lol’ at the end of your post does not change the fundamental rudeness of the imperative.)

2) Especially in regards to bigger media franchises (and speaking as someone who finds critique really important), there's something unhinged in acting like we can all just divorce ourselves from things that have had inescapable impact on culture because we don’t like them, either from a taste standpoint or a moral standpoint (although the two are far too often conflated these days.)

To pick an example at random: The Mists of Avalon is one of the most important books in all of feminist fantasy. It is extraordinarily influential and traces of it can be found in the writers who followed in its wake, writing homages, writing counters, all encouraged or driven by these later writers relationships to Mists. Mists of Avalon’s author is, alas, someone whom we would now, socially, very much like to shove down the memory hole, but we cannot reverse the effects of Mists. It will never go away, and to pretend that it has—to act as though it never existed, or that by not acknowledging it and its influence (or, perhaps more crucially, by not studying it or engaging with it to understand why everything that came after it owes it a debt) is the morally correct choice is an approach to art that I reject. It is based on a wrong-headed belief that art should only ever be a form of comfort, both textually and meta-textually. The viewpoint seems to be that if the art has a ‘problem,’ if it cannot be fully comforting, then it should be abandoned. Absurd. Idiotic. Juvenile. We hobble ourselves as critical thinkers (which we should always strive to be) when we ignore these nested layers of understanding—the strata of pop culture—that everything is built on. I find that dangerous. If you don’t know what came before then you can’t understand what got you here or where you’re going, and you don’t really comprehend all that a text might be trying to say. All sorts of important things fall through the cracks when you start ignoring any art you find personally distasteful.

3) If you cannot separate art from artist then you're going to lose a lot of good, interesting, or challenging art, particularly in places where the divergence between your opinion and the artist is relatively small. For every criminal whose work you might reasonable find no longer palatable, there's other nuanced authors for whom you are simply not similar. I disagree with Tolkien in several major ways, but I think excising his art out of culture or simply my life results in a much poorer experience of living. Which leads to:

4) The farther back you go the more art and artist are intrinsically divorced because we simply don't know all that much about the artist. Most great paintings are functionally anonymous, and there are entire centuries where biographies (at least to the degree modern fandom content consumption seems to demand) essentially do not exist. We cannot study Shakespeare and know if the man was more distasteful than we might like in his personal life. I cannot promise you that Shakespeare was never gross to someone in a bar. I cannot promise you he never pressured people unduly, or scammed people out of money, or defended a really gross friend. I cannot prove that away from his writing he wasn’t gross to women, or queer people, or foreigners, that there was not the Tudor equivalent of Twitter receipts for scandalous, problematic behaviour lurking in his life. We just don’t know enough about Shakespeare to speak with much certainty on his moral virtue as an artist—and that needs to be okay. We actually need to separate art from artist more, because the assumption that social media has brought is that we should have intimate, daily access to an artist’s life, opinions, political beliefs, and even location. That’s wrong. That’s grotesque, and intrusive, and it is just messed up! No! You don’t need to know anything about an artist to enjoy their work! Shit, you shouldn’t have to know anything about an artist to consume their work if the work gives you pleasure, or interest, or does anything to you that art is meant to do. Despite the extremely bad fandom interpretation, Roland Barthes’ Death of the Author (which, hey, opens with an sentence that some might well consider transphobic, so are we going to declare Barthes problematic and stop using Death of the Author to justify our awful fan fic choices? I mean that would require any of you to have ever read it, but, y’know...) does not argue that the author had no influence on the content of a work, that an author’s beliefs, politics, and choices can be separated from (or, more specifically, ignored-in)the text—especially if we don’t like it. Barthes’ argument is, in fact, that that act of transmission, the alchemy of art-creation, forever sunders a work from its author by the very nature of language itself. Even should I tell you the extremely autobiographical short story of “yesterday I went to see Bob’s Burgers: The Movie. It was a delight and I think you should go,” that sentence is not truly about me, but the crafted “I” of the story: I, the real person, am not the I of the thrilling tale of the trip to the cinema. The author is dead: they cannot live in their work because the moment it is transmitted is no longer a living moment. (Italo Calvino covers the same strange nature of I-as-Character in his seminal work of metafiction If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller...)

In other words, though the author can never be absent from their work, meaning in art can only ever come from what you, the observer, bring to it. As Barthes puts it: “Every text is eternally written in the here and now.” No understanding of an author as a person is needed, necessary, or arguably even desirable when approaching art: your connection to it, how you understand it, what it means and how you are shaped by that meeting, exists only in the present, in the act of engaging with the art. (For the record I think Barthes is somewhat too encompassing in his beliefs, I don’t agree with him in full, but the underlying point is: art can not only be separated artist, art is always separate from artist. The artist cannot be the art.)

5) Purity culture is boring. According to these bad takes, we must demand ideological compliance with all our consumed art, and we are somehow bad or stupid people when we form connections with art made by problematic, challenging, or perhaps even reprehensible people> This is such a childish complaint. This standard to which all artists and art-consumers must be held is an irrational one. Modern fandom culture seems utterly unable to accept artists as humans: people who err, who have biases, blind spots, and beliefs. I have been around ling enough to see the term ‘problematic’ lose all meaning, to mutate into a yimakh shemo, a denunciation from which there can be no remorse. Modern fandom culture frequently seems to expect a certain level of investment nomadism: you stick with a work until its author errs, at which points you are to immediately move on, abandoning the old thing completely. Again, it is the quote up at the top that inspired this whole tirade: we are to know all aspects of an artist, we are to judge those actions unceasingly, and at the first ‘error’ we are to just abandon the art and find something new. We should simply like something else at will. It’s tiring. It’s boring. And I am sick of the animosity, the smug judgement, the crucifixions and the damnatio memoriæ. I’m just tired of this puritan impulse in which I must justify my pleasures to the masses in order to prove that my free time is spent virtuously. I must be quick to denounce all that is ungodly, and allow no wickedness to sully my heart. I read no evil, I listen to no evil, I ship no evil. Piss off. [Edit: in response to some comments, I should note that yes, there is a distinction between engaging with the art of a problematic artist, and handing them money. While we cannot often just ‘stop liking something’ we discover comes from a morally complicated place, we can quite easily not support an amoral person financially.]

#Roland barthes #death of the author #fanfic #fandom culture #purity culture #literary critique #criticism #literature #mists of avalon #melkor #neurodivergencies #hyperfixation

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its-ohsoquiet · 5 months

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today's reads and rereads

pieces that have glued my eyes to the screen today

i have read "everyone is beautiful and no one is horny" before, but it seemed only right to read it again following "the puritanical eye".

from the puritanical eye, by Carlee Gomes:

"It is a revolving door of commodification and alienation — commodification of ideas, of bodies, of feelings, and alienation from ourselves, from our own bodies, from others. The way we consume and talk about films and art in this hyper-mediated environment (largely on individualized and individuated digital platforms) has not only impacted how that media and art is made (the modes of production), but also what types of media and art get prioritized (what gets made at all). Can it be talked about in 240 characters? Can it be distilled down into an easily digestible, uncomplicated binary deciphered in the millisecond of a scroll? Or better yet, can it be made into a meme?"

"Moreover, as control over our own material realities becomes less and less feasible, the last lone place we believe we can exercise agency is within the landscape of that which we consume. This has resulted in the consuming public approaching all media and art with a moral imperative — that which we consume must be perfectly virtuous, sanitized of all problematic or complicated ideas and depictions, because it has become the stand-in for our very realities, our very political action as citizens; consuming has become our praxis."

i don't entirely agree with the conclusions of "why have people looked the same for the last 20 years?" from Dazed. while there are many good points being made, i feel like we need more distance from the 2000s and 2010s before being able to create strong visual archetypes, with the intensity we atribute to the 90s. and also, people absolutely do not look the same. sure there are many references being reused, but i believe in a distinctly 2000-2010-2020 way. we can look to the athleisure craze, or the pandemic trends, and we see that very clearly. fashion people do not necessarily reflect the general public.

the idea that there weren't big political, economical, social and cultural changes in the last 20 years is also ridiculous.......

it would be a lot more interesting to focus the article on the current creation of subcultures or its perceived absence imo.

(just wanted to share my opinion, because this interests me very very much)

#me #personal #dazed #opinion

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skitariiposting · 1 year

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funct.print ("[statement] so. Just a little update on the imperator titan situation. I decided to sit down with the .stl files just to see what I'm working with. First off, most of them seem to be set up for a larger build plate, which is fine, I can cut most in half and just baaaarely fit them on a Mars 3. The problem is before I even do that there's already a funct. ton of models. Like holy shift so many models. I got like 4 or 5 sliced, just to see what I'm working with here and just those 5 added up to a little over 24 hours of printing. So when I say this'll be a long project, it's gonna be a long project.");

funct.print ("[optimistic] on the bright side, the poll I made is looking pretty positive, so if I did start the project, I know that at least at the beginning I'd have a couple people watching, which is a confidence boost. I wanna bring this up for people questioning the quality of the videos: I'm about to graduate as a Creative Media Production major. Producing high quality things is what I've spent four years of my life learning how to do and what I intend to do for the rest of my life to make a living. The question will be if it's entertaining or not, which I'm still worried about.");

funct.print ("[statment] I mentioned it in the replies, but if I started this project <and this is still a big if> I'd open a patreon to go along with it, because I don't think I can manage this project without a bit of support. One of the patreon rewards that I think would be cool is if you get the tier, I'll send you one of the pieces to paint however you like. No color scheme, no set amount of detail or quality, just paint it how you want to paint it. Scrawl your name in leadbelcher after painting it light pink for all I care, just no bare plastic. After I get everything printed, the patrons will send back their painted parts and then I'll assemble this big patchwork chaotic conglomeration of paint schemes and colors and we'll have a big art piece that the community helped to put together financially and physically. I've also been thinking more on the whole "giving me money" thing with patreon, and I have a morality thing I've reached a conclusion with. On top of paying for me to continue the project, any money I'd have left over that I didn't spend that month won't go to me. The budget will focus on the print first, video production second, helping with rent and groceries third, and then the excess past that. I'd feel guilty taking the excess money to pay for anything besides those three or four things. So instead, I'll use it to make donations to small upcoming creators in the community and artists, without sending it to the patreons for benefits or whatever. Just direct donations from my community to them. Because while yes money to buy more fun stuff for me is cool, I feel like if I'm taking money from the community, it's only fair I spend it on things for the community and give back to the community anything I don't spend.");

funct.print ("[statement] Now. I want to specify. This is all still hypothetical at this point. I'm still a college student living in their parent's basement with a part time job for three to four more months. While yes, I've been making connections with full time jobs, prepping for moving out again, <my roommate graduated, so I couldn't afford the dorm room anymore> and making plans, my future is not set in stone by any means. So, I'm not making promises that this is going to happen. More than anything I'm just sharing my idea to see if it's even a good idea and if there's anything I can do to improve it, or make it more enjoyable for people. So don't go holding this to me like it's 100% going to happen, it's just a project I'd love to do if I have the capability to. -Jerry");

#adeptus mechanicus #warhammer 40k #admech #skitarii #warhammer 40000 #warhammer #40k

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leporellian · 1 year

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🔥

i think a good doctrine that people forget when directing operas is that Everything is a Choice and things in opera don’t just Happen.

they love cutting arias and character moments out, or switching around orders, because it’s boring. and yes maybe sometimes they are boring, but why do they exist? sometimes i’m asking yourself why you find was just to showboat some tenor who only existed 200 years ago and so it’s fine to cut it. but other times you realize it’s extremely important to the work as a whole. take the don giovanni act 2 finale sextet, which i will defend to my dying breath. “oh it only exists to provide some kind of happy ending” yes. Why? why did mozart decide it was imperative to give the work a happy ending for the remaining characters. and don’t say “oh bc the morals of the time made him” Stop and maybe think for like 10 seconds and do a little bit of research. a little bit of dramaturgy. things exist in operas for reasons and the reasons have to be interrogated firsthand.

there’s a brilliant bit in one of hannah gadsby’s specials where she does an impromptu presentation on historical art and points out all sorts of weird shit in them while reminding us, “that was a choice!!!” and while that’s meant to be comedy it’s a very apt description of one of dramaturgy’s most important skills. people have got to ask why things exist more.

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yukiwrites · 8 months

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Robin, Submitting

Thanks for the support as usual, @xpegasusuniverse! I got carried away and wrote a bit more, but it was so funny I couldn't stop it x'D I hope you like it!

Summary: Robin thought that the whole titspetacle was behind him. They were deep into the war between Good and Evil, Grima and Naga; Fell Dragon and Divine Dragon. Now was not the time to be reminded of his dark past. And yet, there were people interested in his bountiful bosom even down in Plegia...

Commission info HERE and HERE!

______________________________

Fate beckoned. After each passing moment, Lucina’s ruined future descended upon them like a crashing wave.

With the Fire Emblem stolen and Validar supposedly in possession of all five Gemstones, it was only a matter of time before Grima was called forth to bring destruction upon the land once more.

The skies darkened as purple clouds swirled above the place called The Dragon’s Table, which was located in the middle of the desert, east of Plegia’s royal castle. The Shepherds had to fight their way through the Grimleal that swarmed the desert like fanatics, while trying not to harm the innocent villagers who seemed drawn by the Table like moths to a flame.

They fought their way against Aversa and her Twelve Deadlords, but there was still a vast desert between them and their goal — and the Grimleal’s numbers were not diminishing.

Morale was at an all-time low after the loss of the Fire Emblem, especially since the one who had delivered it to the enemy had been none other than Robin. Sure, their inner circle understood that Robin had been possessed and tried to appease the foot soldiers’ minds each in their own way, but with the impending doom of the world happening right in front of their eyes, there wasn’t much that could be done to encourage them.

Taking all that into consideration, the Shepherds had a summit regarding their advance.

Speed was imperative, seeing as the very ground they stood on shook with the waves of power that emanated from the table; however, the soldiers would not be able to fight through the hordes of Grimleal scattered all over the place between them and their goal.

Ergo, a proposal was set up.

Why not capitalize on Robin’s resemblance to the Hierophant and have him lead the Shepherds right through the Grimleal’s camps? Since the fanatics were scattered around the desert and not present at the Table, they would probably be too far down in the chain of command to be able to assert the Hierophant’s true whereabouts.

Robin was skeptical about it all, but, as pressed for time as they were, reluctantly acquiesced after Chrom persuaded him.

“It’s worth a shot, Robin. The men are in no condition to fight. I don’t want any more needless sacrifices,” the prince — no, the Exalt — said so, placing one hand on Robin’s shoulder.

“Still, it’s too risky,” the tactician advised against it, but Chrom was adamant.

“Don’t worry, we’ll go armed to the teeth. If things go south, we can always fight our way through,” he repeated the same words he had said a few months ago, before they agreed to a summit with King Validar. The circumstances were slightly different, but the course of action would mostly be the same.

Go in, speak a few words, and pass through.

“I just don’t want our people’s lives to be treated like fodder for us to walk over,” he finished, putting the last nail on Robin’s coffin.

Sighing, the tactician nodded. “Alright, but I’m not confident in my acting skills.”

“Worry not, O Father of mine!” Owain flapped the entrance of the tent dramatically as he struck a pose once inside. “I, Owain Dark, the one most versed in the art of histrionics, will be with you!”

Stunned by the sudden appearance of his son, Robin exchanged glances with Chrom and Lucina before sighing. The moment he opened his mouth to retort, however, Lissa appeared right behind the loud young man.

“The art of tomfoolery, you mean, right, darling?” Lissa pulled Owain’s ear. “Don’t get in the way while the adults are talking okay, dear?”

“Owowow- But Mooom! I’m not a kid anymore— ouch!”

“No ‘buts’, c’mon, let’s get out of here and prepare. Sorry ‘bout that, Robin, Brother.” Lissa winked, exiting the tent while pulling Owain by the ear, his screams of pain still loud enough to echo minutes after she left.

“Well, that was that,” Chrom shrugged with a smile as Robin scratched his ear in embarrassment.

“Yeah, uh,” Robin took a short breath, shaking his head to clear his thoughts. “We need to secure a Sorcerer outfit. Do you think Henry has a few spares?”

“It’s worth asking,” Chrom nodded, then glanced at Frederick.

“I shall confirm,” the knight bowed, competent as ever, and left.

While waiting for Frederick’s return, Chrom and Robin smoothed out the details of the operation. Even if Henry did not have a spare Sorcerer outfit, procuring one wouldn’t be hard, considering their location at the moment.

Thankfully, however, Frederick returned with the smiley plegian mage, bearing good news.

“I heard you needed a change of clothes, nyaha! Boy, aren’t you glad I keep lots of spares since they keep getting stained with blood?” Henry giggled airily, setting absolutely no one off.

“Uh, yeah. Thanks, Henry,” Robin nodded, receiving the outfit with a slight bow.

“Buuut are you sure it’s gonna fit?” Henry wriggled his eyebrows as Robin unfolded the robe. “I mean, we’re pretty much the same in height, but I don’t think I’m… abreast of the situation as you are, nyahaha!”

Chrom sputtered. Robin froze in place as he closely analyzed the outfit.

It was transparent.

It was transparent right around the chest area. It was a dark transparency, but still, one could see everything there! Oh no.

Oh, that wasn’t good at all.

Was it too late to pull back from that deal?

Robin snapped his head at Chrom, desperation so woven into his face he looked almost pitiful. Still, Chrom shook his head silently, hearing Robin’s innermost pleas but deciding against them. As the mirth that came suddenly left just as quickly, Chrom’s gaze reminded Robin of the gravity of the situation they were in.

“Think of the soldiers, Robin.” Chrom said in a deep voice, though the sight of the giggling Henry in the tent made it very hard for the Exalt to keep a straight face.

“Chrom, I can’t do that again. I’m not strong enough,” Robin almost sobbed, but the more pitiful he looked, the harder it was for Chrom to stifle his laughter.

“Robin,” he said simply, ending the discussion.

With a sigh, the tactician moved towards the exit, holding the outfit with both hands.

Frederick stepped in front of him, preventing him from leaving. “And where do you think you’re going? My lord has made it clear that—”

“I’m not changing in the same room as you two demons!” Robin shrieked, very much traumatized by the day he was forced to be a model for a painting he would rather pretend that it did not exist.

“Oooh, juicy!” Henry clapped from the side as Chrom put one hand in front of his face to stop himself from laughing and Frederick grimaced at the slander towards his lord.

Regardless, Robin still dragged his feet to his own tent to change, exiting it after fully covering himself with the outfit’s long cloak. If he tied the knot really closely, the cloak would hide all the transparency underneath it, so it wasn’t all so bad in the end.

Honestly, that had been such a huge weight of his mind that he actually managed to walk into a plegian encampment with the straightest face in the world. Chrom, Frederick, Henry, Tharja, Owain and Gregor were part of his immediate entourage as the others guarded their own camp further south.

If they were granted safe passage, Owain would ride back and bring the others through, so it was imperative to be as inconspicuous as possible in their acting.

However, perhaps all that preparation and heart-steeling had been for naught, for the moment the camp’s commander landed his eyes on Robin, he cracked a big smile.

“Master Robin! When the forward scouts told me of your arrival, I could scarcely believe it!” He opened his arms in a warm welcome, though kneeled until his forehead brushed on the sand, kissed the hem of Robin’s robe and got up before continuing. “To think that our lord Grima would be so magnanimous as sending the Hierophant himself to check on us lowly servants before the feast! I am deeply humbled.”

“That was the setting?” Owain murmured behind Robin, receiving a well-deserved elbow to the ribs in response.

“... Indeed, Lord Grima is magnanimous,” Robin forced a smile, opening his arms as if he were a Bishop ready to start preaching. “However, although He is all-seeing and all-knowing, I am but one man, and a quite busy one at that,” he said, his voice somehow charismatic enough to captivate the audience. He truly looked like Owain’s father for a moment there. The crowd of Grimleal around them only grew as he spoke, all nodding as if in deep understanding. “Because of this, my stay here must be brief as I have many other encampments to visit.”

“Oh, Master Robin…” The Grimleal sniffed as if either pitying or envying him. “We understand,” the commander spoke up amidst the crying fanatics,” however, before you go, could you please listen to our plea?”

Robin sneaked a glance at Chrom, who narrowed his eyes under the full-face helmet he wore to hide his Exalt-blue hair. They both nodded, the entire entourage ready to take up arms at a moment’s notice.

“Let’s hear it,” Robin nodded and the man’s expression was coated in such pure delight it looked as though Robin had just saved his entire family and future generations or something.

“Oh, Master Robin,” the man murmured, and a few others behind him followed. Soon they swarmed around Robin, their eyes glowing in greed mixed with elation. “Master Robin, Master Robin,” they all chanted under their breaths.

“Please, allow us to rest our heads on your bountiful bosom!” The commander spoke up, his face flushed and his gaze unfocused.

“Please!”

The fanatics behind him shared his plea and expression, all of them looking, frankly, like a bunch of perverts.

The request was so unexpected that Robin’s brain stopped working for a moment.

He didn’t even react. He just stood there, his eyes glazed over as his mind went out of service for a few seconds.

Taking his silence as a negative, the men started to explain their petition. “It is told that Master Robin, under Lord Grima’s ever magnanimous graces, gives blessings to the most devout of our faith at the castle. As we’re stationed so far from the Table, we will probably never have another chance like this! We beg of you, O, Master Hierophant, please, bless us with your bounty!”

“Pfft—” Chrom choked behind him, but a swift kick to the chin from Frederick made it all seem like it had been the wind. Gregor and Henry laughed openly behind them, patting Robin on the back.

“Nyahaha, what a way to BLOSSOMING — get it, blessing and bosom? Nyaha! — the relationships between devouts, huh?” Henry said as Gregor nodded, crossing his arms.

“Robin’s bosom is much bountiful, yes. Won in many competitions, it did.”

“Truly, a work of art!” The commander gasped in awe, turning back to Robin, his eyes even more dangerously pervert-like than before.

This was a nightmare. It had to be.

Robin had finally managed to get over — or mostly get over — everything that had happened with Lord Bellom and whatever it was that he had going with body-building and male bosom and tits— chests…

He was almost able to change in front of Chrom andd Frederick again, but now… What was going on? Why was this happening to him?

Was submitting to Grima the better choice, after all?

“Master Robin!” The soldiers urged.

No… No, submitting to Grima would warrant more of such nonsense, by complete strangers.

Robin had had enough of people fondling him and painting his bosom for a lifetime, thank you very much.

“I, uh,” Robin’s eyes swirled in panic as he looked back for support from his comrades. Chrom was stifling a laughter, Gregor and Henry were asking soldiers about the blessings and what they entailed; Tharja and Frederick wore varying shades of purple and blue on their faces, each mortified or surprised by the situation in their own ways.

And Owain… He was uncharacteristically quiet, which in retrospect should have been a red flag for Robin at the time. However, the return of the tactitcian on the table… or Dragon’s Table, was enough to shock Robin out of his skin.

Still, he had to protect his chastity! At least in a foreign country where no one knew him… Or at least knew this version of him— oh, by Naga, if they all knew his face and knew the other Robin handed out such blessings… then, nowhere was safe!

Robin would be plagued by tit—chest! By talks about his chest no matter where he went!

Nowhere was safe, oh, by Naga, nowhere was safe.

Desperation rising the bile in his stomach, Robin managed to croak out, “I’m afraid we are too busy to be able to bless everyone so… warmly. Forgive me, soldier, but know that Lord Grima is watching and sending out blessings to us all,” Robin made a sign with his hands that signified the Grimleal seal, receiving varying murmurs of disappointment from the fanatics.

“Oh, that is a shame—” the commander sagged his shoulders in defeat, but then… A step.

No, a stomp.

No, an explosion?

To Robin, all of his senses were basically short-circuiting, so any small noise seemed to be multiplied by a hundred fold.

“Fear not, O wretched lambs! For I, Owai— Odin Dark, scion of Master Robin, yours truly, and true descendant of the Immortal, Perfectly-Toned, Wisest and Most Charismatic Hierophant Robin! Behold!” Owain reached for his collar, immediately ripping his shirt off to reveal his male bosom.

His skin almost glistened in the darkness, making all fanatics stand in awe.

Betrayal!! Betrayal by my own flesh and blood! Robin bellowed in his mind as the devouts swarmed closer to Owain’s Divine— or rather, Damned bosom.

Robin inadvertently held the cloak closer to his body, though he felt a looming presence approaching behind him — it was Frederick.

Oh no.

No, not again.

Robin looked up in horror as he saw only the shadows of Frederick’s face.

“Betrayed by my comrades once again? Once again I am thrown into the pits of despair?” Robin trembled in his boots, though the enemy commander’s shift in emotion made him ground himself in reality.

“But… is this young man truly your son, Master Robin? The bosom speaks for itself, but for a man of your complexion to father a young man of that age?”

“I keep a very strict skin care routine,” Robin blurted out. Chrom almost laughed again, but managed to keep it in this time.

“Truly, Lord Grima’s blessings know no bounds.” The man held his hands in prayer.

Still, Robin feared that Owain’s antitcs might be the end of them, so he opted to sacrifice himself.

Much like how he had decided the fate of thousands, the fate of the previous Exalt and his own fate not to die by Lucina’s blade, Robin had made a decision.

He would throw himself into the wolves.

“If you do not believe us even so, then…” he glanced at Frederick behind him, who was ready to force him to ‘bless’ the soldiers, and took a step forward himself, stripping down the cloak.

He revealed the transparent bosom he had been hiding himself, his face so red his entire upper body shook in shame.

“See for yourself, how these,” he put his hands akimbo, protruding his chest, “run in the family.”

If it had been Vaike there, he would have put both hands behind his head and wiggled his tits—breasts! — for a bit of fanservice, but Robin still had some shame left in him.

“Father!” Owain’s eyes lit up. He ran to Robin’s side, crossing arms with him so their chests were almost touching. “Behold, our family’s treasure!”

“Kill me… Kill me… Kill me…” Robin said under his breath as the soldiers all let out ‘oohh’s and ‘aaah’s of amusement as they rested their heads on both Father and Son’s bosoms.

That’s it.

Submit to Grima. Robin would submit to Grima and allow the darkness to take over his consciousness. He couldn’t handle being alive anymore.

Now it wasn’t just one man fondling his breasts, but dozens — nay, hundreds! — of fanatics rubbing their faces all over his chest! They were even blushing!

Some looked up at him like he was their mother or something.

It was so disgusting Robin would have nightmares about this for years after the war had ended — it would scar him even more than realizing he actually could submit to Grima due to his bloodline, but that was a story for another time… For now, Robin was stuck in a never ending loop of perverts, nay, fanatics, nay, batshit crazy people rubbing their faces on him.

He was gonna die. Physically, mentally; whichever way one called it. He was gonna die.

#robin fire emblem #owain fire emblem #chrom fire emblem #fire emblem awakening #fea #my writings #yuki's commissions

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zlhg · 2 years

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Is the” Earnest Internet” impossible to achieve on contemporary social media?

My professor Cristian talked in class about how they were looking at daily information sharing on private messaging apps. People don't spend a lot of time entering content, but they tend to express their opinions, share personal experiences, express their stories with emotion, and talk about the world rather than simply describe it in words. And most social media mobilizes the need for messaging, for example WhatsApp, Facebook, people can share their lives with familiar people, and share with strangers, but they also carry the risk of network transmission. As Hedrick et al. (2018) have mentioned that based on the "Earnest internet", communication science generally assumes that people behave rationally. There are also findings that social media has the greatest impact when social media use is measured as political expression. The web and social media provide ample opportunities to share text-based and multimedia expressions of personal political views. (Boulianne, 2017)

But without the premise of the "Earnest internet", social media can be a tool of contradiction. For example, “Disaster gilr”meme, she was standing in front of a burning house with a smile, and photographed by her father and quickly became popular, but the girl didn't mind the internet spreading her picture, which eventually sold for a high price. (Fazio, 2021)

Figure 1(Fazio, 2021)

On the contrary, “Star Wars Kid”, without his knowledge, his private video was uploaded online by a friend and accidentally 'exploded', he gained notoriety for his video content, which received 28 million views on YouTube, eventually resorting to the court system, a series of lawsuits were filed. (Zittrain, 2014) In addition to the accidents of people around us, there are also threats from social media strangers, as I have studied the negative effects of digital media on people with autism including online fraud, bullying, this is still a topic we need to study, how to reduce cyberbullying. This also goes against the core of the "Earnest internet", which is to act rationally and in good faith.

youtube

The development of the Internet has led to the rapid penetration of social media in all corners of the world, breaking the limits of time and space. If people do not look at what is happening with rationality and goodwill, public opinion will be misdirected, the following video addresses social health and the values that underpin them. If people are to be active in political discussions, and the video emphasizes 'active', then they must believe that the decisions of the decision makers are for the people and not for their personal benefit. But people usually interested in the boredom, the social hotspots and people's concerns may never be in focus, so it takes everyone's efforts to build a sustainable development area, this includes the responsibility of the media as well, as most people may not question the results of the reporting. But the contradictions of social media still exist due to the intertwining of interests, differences in knowledge levels, and the height of political thought, and the foundation of social trust is also unstable, so it may still take time to achieve the "Earnest internet" on cotemporary social media.

Reference:

Boulianne, S. (2017). Revolution in the making? Social media effects across the globe. Information, Communication & Society, 22(1), 39–54. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118x.2017.1353641

Fazio, M. (2021, April 29). The World Knows Her as “Disaster Girl.” She Just Made $500,000 Off the Meme.. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/29/arts/disaster-girl-meme-nft.html

Hedrick, A., Karpf, D., & Kreiss, D. (2018). The Earnest Internet vs. the Ambivalent Internet. International journal of communication [Online], 1057+. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A560927079/AONE?u=anon~cb6bca13&sid=googleScholar&xid=3e5c989e

Zittrain, J. L. (2014). Reflections on Internet Culture. Journal of Visual Culture, 13(3), 388–394. https://doi.org/10.1177/1470412914544540

#earnest #social media #internet #Youtube

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hairtusk · 2 years

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Hi! Sorry if this is a weird question, feel free to ignore it. I thought to find to you because you are always level-headed and insightful in your literary analysis and I could use some help. I recently found out about Anne Sexton and the abuse she perpetrated against her daughter. I deeply love her as an author but now I don’t know how to reconcile this fact with how meaningful her work is to me. How do you do it? Do you have any suggestion? Thank you so much in advance. I love your blog.

Hello! Firstly, I'd like to thank you for how polite this ask is. Generally, people come into my inbox with all guns blazing at the mention of a controversial writer - this was genuinely a breath of fresh air.

Secondly, your question isn't a weird one at all, I promise - this was something I used to struggle with very deeply a few years ago.

I found out about the actions of Anne Sexton the very same day that I bought her collected works of poetry. Due to this, my perception of her work has always been coloured through this lense. At this time, I was quite mournful about this. Now, I think it was a blessing, because it taught me something very important.

In the western, Christian-influenced artistic tradition, we have an association between beauty and morality. A beautiful person is inherently a good person. A creator of beautiful art, therefore, must also be a morally good person, to have the capability to produce such work. Additionally, in the past decade or so, there has been a huge fixation on identity and biography when it comes to artists. Who a writer is as a person must heavily influence their work - it must be drawn from their life, from their morals, from their emotions. Poetry especially is relegated to a non-art; it becomes a memoir, true to life.

One of the most important things I've done as a reader in the last few years is to unlearn these internalised biases I held when it came to literature. The subjects and themes a writer tackles in their work are not reflective of the writer as a person. They are an artist, working on a craft, not a person in a confession booth. They are a flawed human being, not an untouchable angel being sang to by the muses. Keeping this in mind is imperative when I read literature these days.

Additionally, I've tried to be very careful about attaching affection to artists and celebrities because I am fond of their work. It's an old cliché, but an artist is not their work. They are separate entities. In the age of social media, when we have the-artist-as-consumable-product, the fictional protagonist as a mirror for the reader to project themselves onto, this line becomes blurred. It can still be blurry for me, even now. However, literary critical thinking asks us only to recognise that while a writer may inflict their flaws onto their work (i.e., a writer's prejudices making themselves known in their texts), they are, ultimately, entirely distinct from one another. We can love the work that an artist has created while recognising its flaws, and recognising that its creator was not someone we admire.

When everything is said and done, Anne Sexton is dead. She has been dead for nearly fifty years. Buying her books does not fund to her life, allowing her to continue the abuse she perpetuated. She does not continue to win awards. We can acknowledge that she created valuable, and beautiful, works of literature, while at the same time respecting her victim and listening to her story. We have to hold both of these things to be true at the same time, in order to have a clear picture of her. Moral purity is not something we can expect from any living human being. Writers are human: they can be admired for the work they create, but it isn't helpful to us or to them to place them on a pedestal.

#i know this was very long and maundering and not very well written #and very spur of the moment without all of my thoughts gathered #but i hope it makes sense and maybe helped in some way

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yegarts · 1 year

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“I am YEG Arts” Series: Cindy Baker

Things I’ve Forgotten, performance at Southern Alberta Art Gallery 2018, photo by Jane Edmundson

Cindy Baker: a contemporary artist with an interdisciplinary research-intensive practice, working at the forefront of queer, gender, race, disability, fat and art discourses. From early on as a performance artist with what she describes as a “taboo body,” body politics and fat liberation have been integral to her artistic practice. Cindy’s next project not only pairs exceedingly well with some of her most-oft visited themes, it will also exercise her well-honed research chops. The Edmonton-based artist was recently recommended for the Coronation Recreation Centre public art project. Currently under construction, the Coronation Recreation Centre will serve as a community hub for central-north Edmonton that meets the leisure, health and wellness needs of residents of all ages. For the project, Cindy will create site-specific freestanding sculpture(s) for the facility’s large exterior entrance plaza.

This week for the blog, we talked with artist Cindy Baker about her initial plans for her new public art commission and got the scoop on her solo show currently on at dc3 Arts Projects.

Tell us about yourself and your connection to Edmonton.

I'm a queer, fat, disabled, contemporary, interdisciplinary and performance artist based here in Edmonton. I was born and raised in Leduc, and I moved to Edmonton in the 90s to go to school at the University of Alberta, where I got a Bachelor of Fine Arts. And I worked at the Fine Arts Building Gallery, the Works Art & Design Festival, Latitude 53 Gallery, Harcourt House Artist Run Centre, and Metro Cinema. So, I was deeply involved in the arts community before I decided it was time to move away. I was away for several years but Edmonton's home to my family, my support system, all my networks of people, my communities, and I just couldn't stay away.

States of Resolution, performance at Edmonton private residence 2021, photo by Grace Lee

How did you get your start as an artist? Was it always plan A for you?

My parents were both teachers, so I always thought that I had to grow up to be a teacher too, but I always really wanted to be an artist. My mom's sister was an artist and I just idolized her and everything she did. And I was always drawing, painting, sewing, sculpting, crafting — doing crafts and art of all kinds. I never had a preferred medium, but I was just always making and working with my hands, so I always knew that no matter what I did for a living, I was always going to be an artist. I don't think I ever expected to make a living at art, but there is no way that I wasn't going to make art throughout my life.

Is there a narrative or discourse you find yourself returning to in your work?

I have a few major themes running through my work. To start with, the body, especially fat bodies and othered bodies are a major theme in my work. As a performance artist with a fat body and — what I call a taboo body — I knew it was always going to be read into the content of my work, so very early on in my career I made a point to become involved in body politics and fat liberation, to really inform the work and enrich the content. Productivity is another theme running through my work, questioning and resisting the moral imperatives of body, health and self-care that imply there are good bodies and bad bodies. That to strive towards being a good little productive cog in the wheel is a moral good. Therefore those who can't, or who fail to be this really strident definition of productive from our work lives to how we enact self-care, are inferior humans and less worthy of care or social support. So that's one of the major themes I think that has run through my work in the last decade.

And there are a lot of beds in my art and not on purpose, that's just kind of how it goes, beds and relaxation and toys and leisure activities like hot tubs and tricycles and swimming pools. I just keep coming back to rest and that idea of resisting productivity in the name of privileging and honouring the body's needs and care for one another being just as important as self-care.

Dream Come True, installation at Remai Modern 2020

These are subjects that have become very topical in recent years, have you noticed a difference in the reception to your work?

I think my work used to be a bit ahead of the curve and now I think it's very sort of right in what's being talked about in the world right now, especially to do with self-care and these neoliberal impulses towards productivity. And the world falling apart has us all questioning what we should be doing with our lives and our time. I think, especially since the pandemic started, we've all been rethinking what it is that we want to do with our time and our lives.

Tell us about the Coronation Recreation Centre public art commission that you've recently been awarded. What drew you to the project?

I'm really excited about it. I think the fact that the work will be connected to a leisure centre, which is also paradoxically basically a triathlon training facility, meshes so well with the themes I come back to again and again in my work. There's nothing leisurely about athletic training. It's work, and it should be valued as work, even if it's not the productive kind of capitalist labour that we've been taught to value. And on the flip side, I want to talk about leisure in a way that disconnects it from any need to perform, to perform work especially. I want to honor those who train and who engage in leisure activities as well, and those who can't or don't or won't, for any number of really valid reasons connected to bodies and time and desire and priorities and ability. Whether that's a body ability, financial ability, or what have you.

Is this your first foray into public art? Tell us about how it overlaps or differs from your overall art practice.

It's not exactly my first foray into public art, considering that my performance practice is often interventive and happens in public spaces, and is meant to be encountered by and engaged with by a general public. But it's definitely my first permanent public sculpture project. I don't consider myself a sculptor in the traditional sense, but I do make a lot of objects. And in my object making practice, no matter how hard I try, I can't seem to stop making big things that really have a presence. So, I do feel like this project is a natural extension of my practice and hopefully a new direction for my practice to grow into.

The Three Graces, performance with Mary-Anne McTrowe and Shanell Papp at MacEwan University 2021

Tell us about your interdisciplinary research-based approach. Will it be an important part of your creative process for this commission?

Yeah, I don't think any other project that I've done has put my research chops to the test as much as this one will. It'll be a really integral part of the creative process for this project. In research-creation practices in general, the research exists as much in the making as in engaging in traditional research methods. Which for me, and for this project specifically, means that all the making I've done in my practice to date exists as a body of research that's led me to this commission and will really inform and shape the work, and then in turn, the making of this work is its own research that will lead me to my next projects; be they new artworks, journal publications, conference presentations or incorporation into my university teachings. They're all one big whole in my work.

As you're working on this commission is it spurring on new ideas or potential new directions that you'll take from here in your practice?

As I develop the ideas for this project, I can see the threads coming out of other work that I've done. I don't think that that's unique, I think most artists have common threads that run through the work. But it's really interesting as I've grown and progressed in my career. It used to be that things felt very individual and from one project to the next, I didn't necessarily see those threads, but now I really see them throughout all the work.

What does community mean to you and where do you find it? What will your community engagement approach be for this public art project?

Community for me is family, whether that's blood family or chosen family, social networks and support systems. Community is my stomping grounds, workplaces, and favorite haunts. So, I find community where I find my people and that's for me, artists, fat community, queer community, thinkers and lovers of culture. For this project, more than talking to geographic community, I want to consult with people and organizations that are attached to communities that are traditionally underserved by public art projects and by recreation centres too; people with reduced access to financial resources, people who feel disconnected from that kind of facility, queer people and disabled people, people with mental health concerns. All those whose various demographics put them into the categories of those who don't fit those definitions of moral good, as defined by their abilities or their bodies or their productivity.

Tell us about your current solo exhibit at dc3 Art Projects.

The show is called Things I've Forgotten, and it's part of an ongoing work about my dreams. I spent about 10 years collecting a journal of my dreams. I would wake up every morning and write down my dream from the night before, and then never look back on it again. After 10 years I decided to start rereading my dreams and I was fascinated by the fact that they were so old and had long been forgotten because even though I wrote them down, I would forget about them shortly afterwards, like I think most of us do. I would read these dreams and they would be completely new to me and were completely foreign. So, I got to experience them for the first time, but then slowly the memory of the dream came back to me, and I could see all the images vividly and hear the sounds and smell the smells. It was as though the dreams had really happened and I was remembering them as a memory and at the same time I was kind of going through having heard stories about this trauma that happened when I was a kid but not remembering it, and I thought what if by reliving these dreams and pulling them to the surface what if I could bring this trauma to the surface as well? So, it sounds a bit like it was meant to be therapeutic, but I'm an artist and nothing is quite so literal, so I went about this project of working with my dreams to try and change myself as a person and see how I could be affected by this.

One of the works in the show is a collaboration by Scott Smallwood and me — he's a local audio artist — and together we recorded 20 different voice actors reciting my 10-year journal of dreams and created this really beautiful cloud of sound of all these overlapping voices, it's an 8-channel audio installation of all these overlapping voices. It's difficult to pick out any individual dream or any individual voice, but it does create this soundscape when you go in, that adds to the surrealness I think and beauty of it. It's very dreamlike.

What excites you most about the Edmonton arts scene right now?

I think Edmonton is exciting in general. I've only been back in a permanent way for a few years, but I think growth and change is what's most exciting to me. The arts scene here kind of feels like it's breathing and changing and growing and maybe that's exciting to me because I feel like I'm changing and growing too, which is exciting in its own way and makes me feel connected to Edmonton. I have to say that I love Edmonton cinema, theatre, festivals, music and dance, but my heart really belongs to visual and performance art. So, the galleries and the artists and the public art are what really grounds me to this city.

Want more YEG Arts Stories? We’ll be sharing them here and on social media using the hashtag #IamYegArts. Follow along! You can catch Cindy Baker’s exhibition Things I’ve forgotten at dc3 Art Projects. It’s on until May 13, and as part of the exhibit programming, there will be performances on April 27 at 7 pm and a closing reception on May 13 from 6 – 10 pm. Keep up with Cindy on Instagram, Facebook, or visit her website.

About Cindy Baker

Cindy Baker is a contemporary artist based in Western Canada whose work engages with queer, gender, race, disability, fat, and art discourses. Committed to ethical community engagement and critical social enquiry, Baker's interdisciplinary research-based practice draws upon 25 years working, volunteering, and organizing in the communities of which she is part. She moves fluidly between the arts, humanities, and social sciences, emphasizing the theoretical and conceptual over material concerns. Baker holds an MFA from the University of Lethbridge where she received a SSHRC grant for her research in performance in the absence of the artist's body; she has exhibited and performed across Canada and internationally. Helping found important community and advocacy organizations over the course of her career, Baker continues to maintain volunteer leadership roles across her communities.

#iamyegarts #yegarts #yegpublicart

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"Does it matter if women ‘lean in’, to quote Sheryl Sandberg, and get positions of power? These sorts of ambitions are only open to a small number of women by definition, and increasing the number of women in positions of power doesn’t seem to change much, ultimately. Succeeding here perhaps only reinforces a particular system of domination and exploitation. [...] Far from possessing great power, men are frequently trapped in systems of other men’s making. […] Patriarchy, if we accept that this term refers to something real, absolutely hurts men too."

— Nina Power, What do Men Want? (2022)

"In the eighteenth century the conviction that man is endowed with certain rights was not a repetition of beliefs that were held by the community, nor even a repetition of beliefs handed down by forefathers. It was a reflection of the situation of the men who proclaimed these rights; it expressed a critique of conditions that imperatively called for change, and this demand was understood by and translated into philosophical thought and historical actions. The pathfinders of modern thought did not derive what is good from the law—they even broke the law—but they tried to reconcile the law with the good."

— Max Horkheimer, Eclipse of Reason (1947)

"Men who choose the terrain of reason, as opposed to emotion, place themselves in a position of authority. Only someone in a position of dominance can permit himself to be calm and reasonable in any circumstance, because he’s not the one who is suffering. [...] The thing is, no one likes emotions spilling over, even less so when they’re from a woman, and so it took a long time to reclaim this anger. Now it’s begun to find its voice, and the taboos that have stifled it for centuries are being stripped away: people have started to write about it, to reflect on its causes, to compare it to male anger. It exists. We must cherish this voice and feed the flames of our anger deep in our breasts, heed its calls for justice and reparations, its insistence that we not lose heart."

— Pauline Harmange, I Hate Men (2020)

"If we are to change, it won’t be through rational knowledge, but through emotionally charged values."

— Paul Verhaeghe, What about Me? (2012/2014)

"Intentions are how we enact values in specific situations. They’re ways we turn values into action at a specific time and place. […] There is the basic choice in life: doing what matters, doing what you care about, or having your days focused on trying to escape pain.”

— McKay/Greenberg/Fanning, The ACT Workbook for Depression and Shame (2020)

"What matters to us depends on what we care for, and there is no reason that we must all care for the same thing. Morality should be part of the art of living, not a dictatorial authority ruling over us." — Nietzsche, narwhals and the burden of consciousness (2023)

"When people talk of morality they do not know what it is they are talking about. At the same time they are unshakably certain in what they say. This may seem paradoxical. But it is not, since what they are doing is expressing their emotions. Apart from any facts they may cite in support of them, there is nothing true or false in their judgements of value. That is why there cannot be agreement in morality. If value judgements merely express emotions, there is nothing to agree (or disagree) about." — Feline Philosophy (2020)

— John N. Gray

"The power of rhetorical discourse is often based upon its ability to harness this motivational power of emotions to encourage new beliefs and actions. A rhetor who wishes an audience to reject something will inspire repelling emotions, while attracting emotions will be attached to the preferred belief or course of action. However, emotions do not guarantee action. The larger challenge is to use emotions productively rather than simply arousing them and then leaving them to fester or dissolve away."

— Nathan Crick, Rhetorical Public Speech: The Art of the Engaged Citizen (2007)

"No one has been as effective at mobilizing popular resentment of the [Professional Managerial Class] as Donald Trump. He merely stepped in to take advantage of decades of successful conservative propaganda positioning PMC liberalism as the enemy of the people and popular interests. Trump never pretended to be virtuous: his id-driven politics and lack of self-control formed the core of his appeal to those who felt scorned by the liberal superego. To defeat reactionary politics masquerading as populism, we need anti-PMC class struggle from the Left, not more identity politics, which has become just another vehicle of PMC virtue signaling. The Democratic Party, however, is not the political organization that will lead us in a struggle against capitalism and its deeply destructive system of exploitation and rent seeking.”

— Catherine Liu, Virtue Hoarders: The Case against the Professional Managerial Class (2021)

"As long as enough people can be convinced to see men as the bourgeosie who have always unjustly benefited from their exploitation of women and women as the proletariat who have always been forced to toil and slave without benefit under the boot-heel of those privileged men, you can justify anything. It becomes acceptable, justifiable, and appropriate for women to expropriate men's undeserved and unearned power, wealth, and privilege by any means necessary—including state coercion."

— Karen Straughan, Feminism: Socialism in Panties

#value #power #values #reason #pleasure #ambition #women #men #patriarchy #discourse #mattering #rights

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