Webring

4/6/23

Ever since I've started encountering and joining some webrings I've always wanted to create my own but, 1. Back when I was just starting to get accustomed to the concept, I didn't think I was "known" enough to create one and 2. I could never come up with a good enough premise that wasn't already done by someone else. But now that I have just above 100k views on neocities (holy shit) I've gotten more and more interested in the idea. And even if it's just stagnant in the background of my website, it'd still be pretty good code practice for me, and just something fun to create overall.

I'm thinking of making it about the band Nero's day at Disneyland since they're my no. 1 favorite band ever, and because music is a pretty unexplored subject on my site despite it being a huge part of my life. Anyway, no promises i'll actually get around to making it especially since there are about 100 different things I want to do with this site.

AI Art

1/16/23

There's something that's really irked me about AI art for a while, (other than the theft) and It's that when an AI makes a piece of art, it doesn't understand why it's doing what it does. It doesn't understand why some colors go well with others or why shadows are placed where they are or how to create symmetry or emphasis etc etc.

When someone uses an AI to create art, there's a loss of technique and of personal style and of creativity and a significant loss of control. In the end, no matter how many keywords you use or how many pieces of art you pull from, you will never be able to have full control over the final piece. Even if someone were to create an AI that goes into excruciatingly small detail.

There's also the fact that you can only pull from preexisting art. What if you wanted to draw a memory? Or a specific feeling? Or a dream? Or literally any other concept that doesn't have a single interpretation? There is no artist or AI on this planet that is able to perfectly depict things that you feel/believe for you.

I feel like most of these non-artists who use AI art don't want to have to put in the work to get good at creating and just want to have the absolute best no imperfection outcome without any effort. If you use an AI to make art and have never picked up a pencil (or brush or tablet pen or whatever to fuck else) to draw, this is your sign to do so NOW!!! No matter how good or bad you are, CREATE!!!!

Also, for the love of god, stop making the same carbon copy blemish free white women, I'm tired of it!!!

Schrodinger's Queer

9/22/22

I am in this very weird place with my parents where I think they know there is something gender going on with me, but it's not actually confirmed for them? I don't know if they even think that?

Like, I have the nonbinary flag up in my room, they know my friends call me he/him and Boa rather than my deadname, and my mom has bought me a binder. But I've never outright told them, "hey, I'm trans." And I'M not even sure if they completely understand, either?

I've gotten exactly one question about it from my dad along the lines of "are you gender?" (of course I said no, like a freak) and that's it. It's such a fucking weird situation, and now that I'm actually capable of getting T I have to ask my mom for the insurance that I'm covered by. Do I finally break this silence, or do i just vaguely ask, "hey, how do I find this out?" Would she know? Would she even ask me if I did? Jesus.

Socializing

8/24/22

I have no idea what happened, but somehow my social anxiety has significantly lessened since the start of college. Yes, I did have normal run-of-the-mill 'new place I have to go to' anxiety but, when it came to talking to strangers or even talking in front of a group (!?) I was mostly calm.

I blame it on that guy I talked to during that English 101 icebreaker, he single-handedly shattered my quiet kid everyone avoids mindset I had in high school. I just hope this bout of confidence lasts long enough to get me through to the end of the semester, or at least until I've learned to actually manage the anxiety.

Thoughts on Those Proship People

8/5/22

I, like many others (probably), have seen callout posts and vitriolic comments about a group that call themselves proship. For a long time I saw proshippers as this conglomerate of people who hid behind an ideology of "stop policing fiction" to freely participate in romanticizing things like pedophilia, incest, rape, and disgusting shit like that.

There's absolutely people who actually do stuff like this, but after actually searching out what proshippers themselves say and reading some good faith critiques, I've kinda changed my mind. WAIT, WAIT, I know what you're thinking. No, I am not a proshipper and I never will be, but I am also not an "anti" or whatever the other side calls themselves.

The idea that fiction should be completely devoid of anything problematic or even remotely outside the norm of "happily ever after" is fucking stupid. People should be able to write about taboo things like rape, incest, and pedophilia, in fact I think that we should encourage them to do so.

By writing about things like that it brings them to light, it's a way of acknowledging their existence and encouraging more people to talk about it. What really matters is how people portray these topics, and this is largely where my thoughts and proshippers diverge.

The main difference between correctly portraying these topics and what (most) proshippers do is a type of romanticization that is obviously fucking disgusting. Making a fanfic about an adult and underage character having sex is vastly different from creating a narrative around a pedophilic relationship and portraying that relationship in a sensitive and appropriate way.

Another point I want to make is the difference between writing about kinks and writing about actual events happening to characters, this is where the line gets a little blurred. As an example, CNC (Consensual Non Consent) and actual rape are basically indistinguishable in fiction and portrayal plays a large part in how it gets perceived.

Making an opening scene where your characters clearly talk about the scene or just putting a CNC tag or disclaimer in the summary makes it miles better than just writing a rape scene full stop. Kinks, fetishes, and sexual fantasies should never reflect on the actual person imagining them. But, when you put those fantasies online for everyone to see, you can't rely on everyone knowing that it's just a fantasy and not something you actually want to do in real life.

I guess what I'm really trying to say is that the main problem I have with proshippers isn't their ideology, but the way they go about creating fiction. The difference between writing about a taboo kink between 2 consenting adults/story that contains something like rape being portrayed well and whatever the fuck (most) proshippers are doing is portrayal and portrayal fucking matters when writing fiction that's supposed to be read by other people.

IDK if this is even coherent, and my thoughts aren't that refined yet, just wanted to get this off my chest.