Reader

We're arting the alphabet from A-Z all year long! Each challenge lasts 2 weeks from the day this post was made. You can submit a new picture every day, work on one picture for 2 weeks, or post pics randomly. This is the most laid-back art challenge on the internet, & that means you have plenty of time to make your art however you want.

Congrats on making it this far into the year! We've reached the letter J Any art subject starting with that letter is fair game, no matter how abstract. Letters like æ, ñ, anything with a diacritical mark, etc., can go anywhere you like.

J is for Jiji

Let's make wonderful art!

Use #ArtABCs & tag me @KarinWanderer so I see it!

Pick your social & post your art! Mastodon Bluesky

All art styles & skill levels are welcome- No AI, Yes alt text, CW as needed. Have a fantastic day, draw something for my art challenge, see you soon!

Tuesday I spent the afternoon turning my designs into the buttons at my local library's maker space. They had the tooling and parts to make 1 inch, 2.25 inch and 3 inch buttons. The process was very straight forward, for the 3 and 2.25 inch buttons. The 1 inch buttons ended up being a bit harder since the pin has to set into the backing ring and positioned manually.

I had 3 failed buttons out of 19 made. Two were user error on my part. On one (Icon) I forgot the plate behind the design and ended up crimping the Mylar only. The other (Rubber Duck) I loaded the pin back in flipped. I was able to salvage both, but damage was visible. On one of the one inch buttons, I did not have the pin set correctly and it punched out the side.

Final Thoughts

I think the 2.25 buttons are the best size for their value, appearance, and ease of assembly. The 1 inch buttons(without the pin) would make great game pieces for Table Top games like D&D or Fishing 28. Now for the rest of the buttons.

The other Rubber Duck buttons I made on Tuesday. Been wearing one of them on my hat.

Icons from the TV Show 'Reboot'

#MakerSpace #Art #MastoArt #RubberDuck

Like everyone else, I like things based on certain styles that appeal to me. For instance, if you've taken a look at my latest portfolio pieces, my latest entries for the Untilted comic strip, and my new personal art thing I'm doing, you would understand that I'm generally drawn towards more abstract narratives and colorful styles.

However, I have never appreciated a work of fiction or art simply because of its stylistic classification or the conventions of its genre. What this means is I don't like a work of art just because it's abstract, or a work of fiction just because it belongs to a specific genre. So, the truth is that I don't really discriminate in terms of genres or art, but then again I don't really like just any kind of work either, even within what I'm usually drawn towards.

I don't really care whether something is abstract or realist or fantasy or science fiction. I'm not the kind of artist who feels the need to specialize in any one style or genre. I do not regard a painting as worthy of praise solely because it embraces abstraction, nor do I elevate a novel merely on the basis of its placement within some sub/microgenre's canon.

Rather, my judgment is predicated upon a work's ineffable qualities that, in a given moment, stir a genuine response within me. In a way, it's mostly about the vibe it personally gives me. And I'm more interested in giving that kind of vibe I like rather than based on an existing category.

Our modern world is category-based. It doesn't care that I just like something based on the way it looks or the way it makes me feel. All it cares about is sorting things through labels that furnish convenience for marketers, reviewers, and the reading public alike. It gets to a point where it can be reductive.

Contemporary literary fiction, for instance, is often distilled into a series of marketable signifiers. Everything has to have a description that best fits a specific category. Like, oh, this book contains a dragon-fighting knight warrior as a main character, when he only does that in one minor scene. Or something generic like “enemies-to-lovers”, when the actual couple's dynamic is just playful fighting at first, not actual enemy-like fighting. Such brief descriptions, however convenient, risk eclipsing the real depth and merit of the work itself.

My own comic strip is not an exercise in demographic engineering. I've got no desire in tailoring my creations to satisfy a narrowly defined audience. My aspiration is more modest, albeit no less earnest: to make something that engages the widest possible readership while remaining true to the aesthetic and emotional standards that satisfy my own sensibilities.

While I seldom ever eschew a work of art for failing to adhere to a prescribed category, I also do not get excited over every piece that happens to occupy the abstract niche, or whatever broader category it belongs to that I'm fascinated with at the moment. The vast majority of artistic works I encounter evoke a state of indifference – neither ecstatic nor dismissive, simply neutral. Periodically, however, something will pierce that veil of neutrality, resonating with a depth that feels both intimate and unexpected. Such moments are rare, cherished, and emblematic of the selective emotional connectivity that guides my appreciation.

For the most part, I would like to take a stance that distinguishes my genuine engagement from the performative “support artists” posturing rampant on social media platforms. Although I do want to raise up underappreciated and marginalized artists, I do not aspire to curate a feed of trending artworks or to amass a repertoire of superficially boosted art posts on Mastodon. My preferences, as oddly specific as they may appear to the average onlooker, are rooted in a sincere reverence for the particularities that render art truly affecting, be it digital, traditional, or hybrid.

For many years, digital art has been viewed with both fascination and skepticism, with the former seeing its potential in making art accessible, and the latter being mostly concerns such as “it's the computer doing the work for humans, not the humans themselves” and many others like it. Now, with the rise of things like artificial intelligence, it's threatened to delegitimize the digital art world in every way, as even the most powerful large language model can put out something at least passable (though still full of errors), and there have been a lot of digital artists, game developers, and other kinds of creatives that have been caught using AI to make their work, while others have only been accused of it.

It's a very hard time for those digital artists who refuse to use AI but have been accused of it anyway. I personally haven't been accused as I'm anti-AI myself and don't get much feedback on my art due to weak popularity, but I've seen it happen to mostly popular digital artists that work with fandom stuff and anime art. I'm also seeing a lot of generative artists that don't use any AI and/or LLMs at all often get misunderstood for what they do. If some people get rightfully found out and caught, then I have no complaints about that and only hope they will genuinely improve. But the new future, the way it's been going and hurting all artists, it just worries me.

All that aside, I would like to talk about my artistic process when it comes to Untilted nowadays and my newer art in general. I have an archive of old photographs taken by my family on their external drives, as well as photographs I've taken during school, and so what I've been doing is that I use Krita to modify the photo a bit, maybe zoom in a specific part, and then just put a bunch of similar photos with similar modifications on top of each other with various different effects like Addition and NOR and Saturation (you'd understand if you use Krita yourself). Then I either give it some kind of paint filter or use the brushes themselves to give it a painterly effect. Sometimes I blur the rough pixelated spots a bit, but other times I don't and leave it as is. Lastly, I add whatever text I feel like adding. All this done with my own images and no AI.

So, what exactly is Untilted's genre? Well, in practical terms, it would be a kind of experimental, almost psychological (without the thriller or horror), gag-a-day comic strip. It shares the same plotless and randomly comedic structure but instead of the comic being mainly comedic, it encompasses many kinds of moods and experiments with many kinds of mediums, drawing styles, and more. Something that many comic strips I've read don't really do that much.

I'm easy to fall for... Uneasy to fall. I'm so hard to stand by, to keep or to call.

I will dress myself in warning signs, Put a red light flashing, Have my colours scream poison, Declare myself a hazard zone.

To keep you unharmed by My deadly mind My tongue and my touch The venom in me...

Still, I call you: Meet me at the gates of the gardens of heaven I'll take you to see the Void.

Hear, I dare you: Meet me at the gates, I'll keep them unlocked your free ride to Null is here.

–+-

Third version. The prediction has been ditched, some lines added from ideas in the first version. This time the “you” isn't left to wait at the gates.

This is going somewhere.

#WritingInProgress #Lyrics #Poetry #DarkAmbient

Introduction

This is a mildly edited version of the scolds bridle essay which was posted last year.

When I see the vitriol directed at women and other marginalised folks online I'm often reminded of the scold's bridle.

There's a push and pull between those who want smaller communities and those who want to “Facilitate Network Discovery”. You've a lot of marginalised folks on the Fediverse, LGBTQ+ folks, Women, BIPOC, disabled folks. There's complexity in our communities and reasons why some folks want to organise in the open, but don't necessarily want to be searched for.

But as usual, backlash happens, and hurt white feelings abound. Somehow the community who never asked to be collated get called out as the hysterical folks who just need to shut up.

It's the need to shame the shamers because you felt scolded. We harshed your buzz and goodness, don't you just want to make us pay for it so we never do it again.

But let's address just why there's a backlash against any push back about lack of consent in our applications. White Supremacy is fearful of rage when it doesn't come from a cis white man.

What is the Scolds Bridle?

It was a form of punishment mainly of outspoken women or gossips or Scolds. It was an iron cage with a spiked bit that would pierce your tongue if you tried to speak. The scold would wear the bridle for an amount of time, often being led around the area. It was a painful, humiliating punishment. [2]

Scolds weren't the only folks punished, it was used against Quakers preaching as well. So let's be clear on this. The Branks as they were also known were used to subjugate women. To shame them and be an example to others to not speak up. A violent state punishment to protect the status quo.

Feminine Rage

Why did such a thing as the branks exist? Why do men feel the need to reply guy back to women explaining the world and the experience they live in? Why do we have Christofacism hand in hand with Trump in the Whitehouse? Why is there such a need to undo progress?

Why is there such a push towards restricting our places of assembly online? Why is there a need to reply back with technical critique rather than engaging with the very real danger we face online? Where's the empathy guys? To be clear it is the men I'm addressing here.

Why do Men feel the need to punch down on those who state their boundaries? Why is there the need to mansplain to folks on the internet? Specifically the femme presenting folks? Are you sure we don't understand?

Why are women harassed while men accuse us of witchhunts?

The thing that I note is that it is very often white cis men who do these things. When people push back, there are a lot of hurt feelings. There are accusations of harassment.

Every accusation is a confession.

Men are scared of feminine rage. They fear the scolding. Not just because their feelings of doing something bad may make them feel bad. There's some misogyny to work on there. There's some racism to work on. There's homophobia to work on. This is our socialisation to uphold White Supremacy.

As a cis woman, I've been socialised to keep my rage in. To be nice. To provide feedback nicely. To ask nicely and to advise nicely. I hold in my rage. It's a rather tenuous thread at this point. I'm not sure what would happen if it snapped.

I find it very hard nowadays to keep that rage in, every time I see another scraper, or pulling from the firehose tool. Sometimes it's physically painful to keep the scream of anger and tears in. But I do. My iron branks are mental, my socialisation. I know to scream out will hurt my career. There's the spike in my tongue and the spike pierces in so much further for others. The consequences for speaking out would be so much worse for some folks in our spaces.

I find it hard to keep my rage in every time we point out that we'd like to opt in for people reusing our posts. Or to have my phone not try to send back my metadata to a centralised point.

When I express mild annoyance, I get the odd patronising reply guy message. “Well that's the way the world works, Honey, Don't you worry your purty little head about it. Now just shut up and take it.”

As you ask for us to be forgiving like Mummy and your friends pat you on the back because we were so mean. As your fellow developers and fanboys talk as if we had torn you apart.

Feminine anger is seen as unnatural, monstrous. You feel we're been unduly harsh. Meanwhile we're just meant to excuse your outburst, your aggressive reply. The behind the scenes manipulation and aggression.

Dude. There's a reason lots of us push back. Very often we're not even angry. It's not rage. However it all piles up and at some point we will snap.

You see our push back to boundary and trust violations as rage. Sometimes you ignore a call in, keep violating peoples trust. When eventually enough of our community compare notes and finally from exasperation push back it's considered Cancel Culture or a purity spiral.

You put the Scold's Bridle on us. Accuse us of lies, of perpetuating malicious allegations. We're accused of a witch hunt as you put us on the pyre.

Vulnerable marginalised communities are very wary of being in public. We share notes, gather information for our safety and it's characterised by abusers as conspiracy against an upstanding Developer or Leader. When we whistle-blow the blow-back on our careers, our allowance into community spaces shows others it's best to keep quiet. We know if we whistle-blow, call out abuse in the open we are risking violence against ourselves. We know our careers are toast.

At that point it's often easier to leave a community. Even when it's something we love. Because very often the “popular” abuser is a missing stair.[3] But the work that abuser does is considered vital to the community. This is a problem in many communities, not just FOSS, not just tech. It's systemic in our societies.

So we keep quiet. The abuse continues and we offer quiet support. Knowing we are complicit in our silence.

We all have stories of abuse in FOSS, we'll never tell those stories in public. We fear our reputations being put on the pyre.

Ask us first!

So we do get annoyed when our work, our thoughts are ingested to be indexed by google. Even if they are public.

We claw our way out of the pit of our backgrounds, into the light to live, to exist, to organise. Sometimes our communities were taken away from us. We were pushed out or had to leave for our safety. We rebuild in new spaces.

Then you lot decide to take a bunch of our public posts without our permission, you don't seem to understand we'd like some control over where our public posts go. Who we want to work with. [1]

The flippant answer of “duh just don't post,” is shallow. It's exclusionary. It shows how little danger you've had to face. How little abuse. How much you've bought into rape culture rather than consent culture. Silicon Valley is very much the result of White supremacy. The meritocracy is a myth. We're reaping the political consequences of believing that lie right now. Meanwhile, you witter on about your hurt feelings and how harsh that criticism was.

Girls. It's utterly feminine to feel that rage, that incandescence. It's feminine to want to lift that baseball bat and smash. I'm the last person to police what counts as feminine. You define what is feminine. If you want to wear Jeans, a flannel and docs, that's feminine. If you tell me you're a woman, you are. Those jeans and a flanny are extremely comfy and practical. You need good boots to walk in. Or you can wear platforms. You define your femininity. No one else should.

It's feminine to say no emphatically. It's feminine to be extremely clear on where your boundaries are and to enforce those boundaries.

And so we continue ad-nauseum.

The pushback against the opt-in, that need to reply-guy back comes from the same desire that the branks came from.

To shut up the marginalised. To humiliate them, to scold them back into compliance.

It's the desire by others to perpetuate the harassment that Folks face on the Fediverse for stating their boundaries loudly and clearly. To hide and re-frame the issues of harassment marginalised folks face. We're interfering with the Fediverse Utopia by stating our boundaries.

But I should be fair because the devs aren't the only tech folks scolding the marginalised for requesting that their human rights be respected. You only have to look at the debate around alt text and see some high-profile accounts call folks “Scolds” when all they asked for was some alt text for a screenshot.

Sometimes I suspect that if the branks were around today, some of you would be the first folks to put it over my head. To slide the bit in, to tug on the bridle and break teeth. You'd take pleasure from me not being able to speak. To express my rage.

So yes, this is a scold.

The Internet form of the Scolds Bridle is politeness, it is tone policing. It is the threat of doxing and violence. It's the anonymous message threatening legal action. The violence of the status quo online.

For the same reasons, we disrupt the idea of the status quo. No one likes to be told they are harming others. [11]

FOSS still causing harm

We don't like the idea that we perpetuate harm, particularly in FOSS.

I'm tired that we have to protect our safety and justify our existence in public. I'm so tired of the fact that LGBTQ+ and BIPOC folk have to hold in that rage. Even if on occasion we do want to tear it all down. So we leave and we don't take part in your community. We form our own spaces. When we work together and make those spaces ours, we enforce our boundaries. So we get criticism, when we exclude people who share harmful ideologies and when called out on it, shout how they are being abused. It's unfair! How dare we enforce our boundaries! How dare we call out your violent language!

Here's the thing. Language evolves within communities. Sometimes it makes it way out into the mainstream. When issues happen to break apart groups, it's not particularly a feature of the left or the right. To frame breakdowns in community as a purity spiral is disingenuous. Breakdowns in community happen for a variety of reasons. Sometimes because it is the abuser in progressive clothing. Moving from community to community hoping we never compare notes.

So we see the same story play out at scale even here on the Fediverse. The purveyors of the abusive algorithmic walled garden are here. Our own Developers are welcoming them in. Because we must have Context Collapse 3.0. Some of our Developers seem want to get in on the gold rush that they missed out on with Web 2.0. So the welcome mat rolls out. We have threads and build bridges that ignore our consent. We have our projects being invaded by the latest bro fad.

I want something new. I want hope. I want consent and freedom of association built in.

I'm so tired and angry that our human rights of free association in safety are ignored.

I'm so tired of the rapey vibes I get from developers who would prefer us to opt out rather than consider building the opt-in. It's not that hard. It's what just my toots do. You look at my mastodon profile you see a link to just my toots. Which I opted into.

Why is it so hard for some folks to get the concept of consent? Why do we keep having to do this? Holding in my rage is tiring. So I try to direct it, to use my rage at the world and to speak up for others if they haven't the energy at the moment to do so themselves. This post isn't my first scolding and nor will it be my last. [5 to 8]

If you're a guy and you're wondering what to do? Take a look at the culture around us. When you see your friends doing the reply guy thing? Call it out.

Keep calling out predatory behaviour, whether it's apps or real life. I know they are your friends, but if you're scared of losing their regard. They aren't your friends. You're their fanboy.

If you don't see what's wrong with their behaviour but you're feeling a bit attacked right now? Be brave, step back. Take a breath and listen to what folks are saying rather than reacting. Don't try to point us at the technical information. Some of us do understand the technology. We're asking you to consider the human aspect. The very real dangers many of us face, it's not something to be poo-poohed. You need to expand your experience, you need to listen to the folks at the sharp edges.

We are at a stage in history where we need to band together and I want to work with people who don't want to bridle me but to work with me.

Be braver. It's braver to take the hit to your idea of yourself, rather than punching down on the vulnerable.

Further reading

[1] https://cathode.church/fedi-scraper-counter.html

[2] https://allthatsinteresting.com/scolds-bridle

[3] https://pervocracy.blogspot.com/2012/06/missing-stair.html

[4] https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v36/n06/mary-beard/the-public-voice-of-women

[5] Ignoring Boundaries https://www.onepict.com/20230906-boundaries.html

[6] Consent and the Fediverse https://www.onepict.com/consent-fediverse20230627.html

[7] Consent and the Fediverse part 2 https://www.onepict.com/consentpartdeux20240215.html

[8] On Bears https://www.onepict.com/20240506-bear.html

[9] UN report on STEM. https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/02/1160041

[10] https://www.tastesofhistory.co.uk/post/about-history-the-scold-s-bridle

[11] https://youtu.be/BxQ15OEEuLM?si=30KIw8qWQpp5d797
Polite Women Are Not Safe – Parkrose Permaculture

I remember the first time I found a childrens book that covered Greek mythology in the Buckie Public Library. It was illustrated, yet for a childrens book it was incredibly detailed. It was the first time I learned the word “ravished”. I didn't realise what it meant until I was a teen.

That's not true, I did not realise it's full meaning until my late teens. As a woman who's nearing her fifties, the meaning becomes more loaded as I look around the world we have.

Greek gods went around ravishing folks. Sometimes they were defined as affairs. Consent wasn't really a concept.

The Greek myths after all, were collected up by Empire and compiled. We translated the translations. We added our own interpretations to a culture that when we started writing stuff down was already patriarchal. The original meaning and true history got distorted.

It filters down to a joke sequence in the Marvel movie Thor: The dark world.

“You look ravishing” says Loki as he casts an illusion on Thor so that he looks like Sif.

It's a clanger of a joke when you consider the meaning of ravish. The casual way we use language, clangs for many of us. As if looking rape-able is a compliment.

“What were you wearing?” We ask victims of sexual assault.

This is rape culture and we're deep into it. From Zeus taking his sister wife Hera, to the Manosphere. Women and femme folks are objectified. Androgynous folks are objectified. If you're not white, you are objectified. We aren't seen as human, merely objects to have power over.

Which is what this is always about.

Power.

Men get violent when we question their right to exercise power. They need to barge in and lash out when we say no.

When Zeus went around ravishing goddesses, nymphs and humans, this was about explaining how local gods, heroes and heroines fit into the dominant culture. Even this lens of interpretation is through our own lens of empire. The colonisation and homogenisation of culture. Forced into the box of white comfort, to be appropriated at will.

Organisations have a memory, and they shape humanity. We are so easily moulded.

When I read about Echo, it was a tale about a Nymph who was punished to repeat the last word other folks said.

Hera did it to Echo, because she'd helped Zeus with another of his “affairs”. As if a Nymph or any object of Zeus attention had a choice. When you're a child you accept the framing. You ignore Hera demanding that Echo should have acknowledged her power. Betrayed the King of the Gods. As if that's a choice Echo could choose. To defy power.

Hera, the goddess of Marriage framed as a Karen.

Meanwhile Echo fell in love with Narcissus, forced to echo back what he said, while he was cursed to fall in love with his reflection. Nymph and human wasting away. A dark reflection indeed.

This is the Patriarchy. Stealing power and ravishing us. Accusing us of being the scold, and refusing to acknowledge the harm they do. Then framing that harm as being our fault. We had it coming.

Forced to echo back Men's opinions, to be docile, polite.

If we smiled more we'd find a man.

How dare we have power? How dare we be happy? How dare we not rely on them for our happiness? How dare we prefer independence?

It's only as an adult you start to question the framing of it. Some of us never get the chance to start questioning. The Patriarchy trapped us all. It harms us all.

Tech and Power

As I've said elsewhere our political stances frame how we create our code. We cannot separate code from our politics. Our political beliefs inform our designs. How we solve a problem. How we see a problem to be solved.

Our humanity and communities inform the software that we want to use, how we communicate.

So when we hear technologists throwing around the words “Echo chamber” we should be concerned.

Last week a member of the Mastodon advisory board Scott Jenson posted a screenshot of a tech influencer's post on Bluesky and asked if Mastodon is becoming an echo chamber. He then proceeded to equate folks being unwelcome of AI enthusiasts to be the same as the existing issues we have on the Fediverse and the racism of some of our communities on the Fediverse. There was then a lot of DARVO and gaslighting. Folks weren't amused, there was discussion and many of us didn't do it in Jenson's replies. We know that is not a safe space for us.

Folks on the Fediverse are highly technical. A lot of us know what Machine Learning is. We studied it and some of us still work in the space . We know that AI, specifically LLMs is grifting hype now. Any true use of this technology is drowned out by the grifters. We will be cleaning up the mess in our projects for decades. So folks on here aren't polite.

We weren't particularly happy with the Blockchain or NFT grifter bros either.

We see the harms that LLMs are doing around us. As our columnists and politicians grasp for attention like Narcissus looking at his reflection. Allowing the LLM to reflect back our own narcissism and opinions back at us for a price.

We see the harm that LLMs and Diffusion are doing to our communities. As Milliardaires hoard our computing hardware and then welch on their deals. Personal computing is in danger of being out of the grasp of the general population.

So no. AI bro's are not welcome here.

The Fediverse is a very queer driven set of interconnected spaces. Mastodon just happens to be the most commonly used software to put your instance of like-minded folks on. The Fediverse is more than Mastodon.

Encoding Human Rights

The Fediverse encodes two very important human rights. Freedom of Expression and Freedom of Association. Freedom of Association is the most important one.

Article 20

Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association. No one may be compelled to belong to an association.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

When instances defederate they are exercising the second part of Freedom of Association.

No one may be compelled to belong to an association.

This is what the Free Speech bro's want to attack when folks are very clear at pointing out that some ideologies, or technologies aren't welcome.

We criticise and we aren't nice when we do this. We won't be polite. We know that if we give an inch, Fascists will take a mile. Tech and Fascism have a long history together. We'd like to try something different.

So I don't think this echo chamber is a bad thing. I mean there are those who want the Fediverse to scale, they want it to be as big as Facebook. But there are just as many who don't think that's a good idea. I don't for one.

Some of us helped to build the internet and we can see the harms we helped to cause.

We will not help you steal others work, or enable genocides by using the companies that provide the infrastructure for governments to do harms to their peoples. We won't be polite to the people that allow the sloppy auto correct to cause extra work in an already overloaded technical community.

We will judge you. Which is what you fear really. Being an outcast and not being welcome in our spaces. The spaces we had to build for our safety.

You're not welcome here. You have plenty of other spaces online to peddle this. Leave our spaces alone.

There's a difference between ostracisation and persecution. But the tech bros sure do seem to love claiming that when we ostracise and mock them, they feel scared. But then men do become dangerous when we mock them. They push on, they gaslight us. They ask us to be “reasonable”

I'm not reasonable. I took off my bridle a long time ago.

Walk a mile in my shoes buddy. Go back to your own echo chamber.

We're the echo that's left and we don't want to reflect your narcissism.

Leave me and mine alone. We are ostracising you, you aren't welcome here. We reject you and your values they are incompatible with our values.

Take the hint.

If you destroy our spaces, we will recreate our communities and find our folks again. We have that right of Freedom of Association.

We will rebuild the internet that you broke.

Well, it was broken from the beginning really. It was never designed with consent and privacy in the first place.

Perhaps this time we can rebuild our internet with those rights in mind. With networks that have the consent built in.

1 I took the first breath and exhaled existence.

2

Yearned and deadly is Love. Drives to, from and mad. But still... still... is yearned.

3

I've seen Death, Beautiful, waiting, Cruel, loving and caring, With all the time in the world.

#Lyrics #Poetry

In the past, I have stated that my purpose in starting the comic strip Untilted was to capture the experience of being - not just feeling - mostly alone. Like, always meeting an endless stream of new potential acquaintances, yet never maintaining a lasting association with any among them. Always finding constant opportunities for intimacy, though somehow never truly forming a definitive union with a single soul. Always finding someone you think gets you, only to find out that they really just “get you” in a way that is incompatible with your values or personality or whatever.

But, I also wanted my webcomic to focus less on the plot-heavy “relatable” drama that is so prominent in every well-known story on the subject, and just focus more on the whole random meaninglessness of it all. Now, obviously the decision to make it a no-plot genreless thing in a world of people that expect consistent and anchored stories with the usual tropes in them will garner mixed and often negative results, especially when it comes to building an audience these days. The common criticisms are: who is this story for, who will like this, what is the purpose of this story if it doesn’t seem to have a clear purpose?

On the other hand, I have found that I tend to be more motivated and do better when there is no complicated arc to think about because there is more room for creative freedom and I don’t feel constrained by a bunch of plot devices and other details to think too deeply about. So I don’t feel that Untilted’s narrative structure is the big issue that I’m struggling with here.

Since the start of the 2026 year, I’ve been finding it increasingly harder to translate my experiences into a narrative form, even a purely visual and abstract one. You see, I have discovered some personal revelations about myself that I feel are a bit too sensitive to talk about here, but for honesty purposes I will try to explain in a way that doesn’t make me feel too exposed. In order to do this I will talk in mostly obscurities, but not so much that it seems like I’m vaguely referencing people, because I’m not having any issues with anyone right now and I haven’t been having them for a while.

Generally, I clean up (i.e. delete) some old and half-baked stuff in order to reflect new content, but I’ve noticed that I may also delete stuff even outside of Untilted for different reasons. For example, I have had to delete a personal blog post I made about my challenges with emotional regulation, because, when I tried to expand on some of the points I was trying to make about how nothing really helped me even when it seemed that way, I realized that no matter how differently I tried to approach it, I kept hitting a nerve within myself. Like I haven’t processed things sufficiently yet for me to talk about it more openly.

This does not mean that I’m hiding things on purpose or deleting them just because I’m worried about what other people think, but rather; it began to feel less like I was telling a more honest and coherent story and more like I was building a case against something in order to defend myself against a common stereotype. It felt like I was just proving myself against a perceived opposition that:

1. I’m not just a “landmine” type (apparently that’s the new trendy term they’re using now?),
2. I don’t have or at least neatly fit in certain mental health diagnoses that others who may or may not be professionals may ascribe to me without my consent, and that
3. I’ve been more stable lately, honest to God.

This isn’t about what other people think in the pure sense, but rather, it was more about me myself and I specifically becoming increasingly burnt out about feeling like I have to build a case that shows I’m “one of the better ones” who stay out of trouble. So I ended up deleting that post because I felt that this was a personal thing of mine that really didn’t need to be shared, and therefore my own responsibility to deal with it myself.

Not because of any stigma. Not because of any feared pushback. But because I became tired of building cases.

In addition, the reason I haven’t been consistently or efficiently updating things for the past few months is because I’ve been experiencing a resurgence of old interests, old thoughts, old desires that I thought I had gotten over by now. I’m not just casually remembering old stuff with basic nostalgia. There’s something significant about these old things coming back that’s been distracting me from my usual work, that’s been keeping me awake, etc.

The fact that I’m not entirely sure whether I’ve been suppressing it all this time, or whether I just haven’t been paying attention to the obvious signs, means that I haven’t really been fully in touch with what I know about myself and what I really want.

It doesn’t help matters that some of my feelings are being made amplified by some of the things that have been going on in the world today, the things I’ve been looking up related to them, the connections I’ve been making between what’s happening and what I’m feeling personally - well, it’s just all been so… weird.

But I think what disorients me about it the most is that I’ve noticed a strong emotional component that wasn’t there before. Most times, when I like something I’m usually just mildly interested in it or just casually like it. But in this particular case, it’s been getting more sentimental, as I've been discovering some old things that I thought I just casually liked but realized that I deeply loved all along, and I've been discovering some new things I never knew or acknowledged before. To the point where I sometimes find myself lying in bed crying about it.

It’s not like I’m considering giving up the whole Untilted thing. I’m still sticking to it; it does speak to me still. However, there’s just been a kind of moment where the most overlooked parts of myself have been demanding my attention, and I have reached a point where I can’t just ignore them anymore.

A lot about Untilted is based off of my experiences, and I usually have no problem with communicating them in the form of the most typical fun gags or some sort of deep, semi-cryptic message for the audience to gauge (I don’t really embed any subliminal or hidden messaging in my comics, I’m not very good at it). But I’ve been having a hard time doing that precisely because of how personal some of my experiences are - sometimes way too personal to the extent that I’m not able to put things in coherent words or even images, relatable or not. That or I haven’t processed things sufficiently.

Am I running out of ideas? Not really. It’s more like I’ve been having trouble executing them.

I will dress myself in warning signs Put a red light flashing Have my colours scream poison

At 18 I was told “You're gonna break hearts and not even know it, You are going to break hearts and not even notice”

Meet me at the gates of the gardens of heaven I'll take you to see the void

Meet me at the gates, I'll leave them unlocked Just be there, be there and wait

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Documenting an ongoing process of lyric writing. First version just below this one in blog view.

The prediction (which was actually said to me) doesn't that well fit here. We'll see if it sticks or gets thrown out.

#poetry #lyrics

Too easy to fall for too strange to parse

Each of my touches seem to leave scars

Too old to hold to too young to die

Too cold to fondle too quick to cry

I will dress in warning signs:

Toxic waste, Beware of mines

********

Beginning last summer I posted a bunch of old lyrics of mine. Early drafts, scribbled down ideas, unused bits, unfinished thoughts.

Among these I posted some final forms, with sometimes only a line or basic consept remaining from those early versions.

The short piece above is what will in the future be an early draft. It was written on Sunday, 8th of February 2026 and by the time I got it written down I knew: this won't do.

The piece is raw and emotional, but the rhyming makes me feel like I'm going to get on stage on a local village culture night's open mic with a bunch of other uneducated in the arts of poetry but having a lot to say villagers.

Not that I'm anything but for village culture nights and uneducated in the arts of poetry folks writing rhymes anyway. At least in this I don't have double standards.

By the following day I was ready to ditch everything but the last four lines. While the feelings expressed in the beginning of the poem/lyrics piece come from trying to express heartfelt things, do I sound whiny? Granted, the lines were not written without tears, but still...

On the other hand, dressing in warning signs takes control of what happens to the narrator, be as it may the end result remaining the same.

We'll see.

#poetry #lyrics

Let me start off by saying this: I create work and express ideas that I believe should stand on their own merits without relying on networking, trends, or the whims of a fickle audience or a handpicked group of elite critics or judges. And yet, I am acutely aware of the paradox that confronts just about anyone wanting acknowledgment that translates into visibility and validation that is genuinely of substance despite not always being able to immediately please everyone: the tension between merit and what people determine is worthy of that acknowledgment.

Now, let's be honest: I am not and never have been a social media person. I don't have as much of a childlike susceptibility to finding literally every kind of well-produced art or comedy or similar entertainment to be easily amusing and so good, as I'm much more discerning about what I like and what I choose to engage with. I don't reply as much to literally every single trending post I see, partly because responses are often misread and partly because of me feeling pressured to reply to these posts for every repeated time I see them. I do not widen my social circle by default, and I reserve warmth and attention for whom and what truly interests me; this does not mean that I find the people I choose not to engage with literally unworthy of that interest, but rather, I haven't found that kind of spark in most people and things yet. (Basically, what I'm saying is, it's not you, it's me.) Because I'm very selective in my warmth, don't believe in joining niche groups on the premise that “common interests bring people together” (in my experience, they don't, and reality is much messier than this childlike premise), or otherwise play the social game of being more entertaining or interesting in a way that attracts others, my work doesn't generate those signals and so it stays mostly invisible to those not susceptible to what's immediately engaging.

As a result, everything I do becomes discoverable only when someone actively seeks it out, when an aggregator surfaces it, or when one or more people (I refuse to use the word “algorithm” or blame it on an abstract “system”) choose to amplify it, hence my reliance on word-of-mouth marketing. Because I don't engage or connect or immediately impress people the way others want me to, I become socially deprioritized, no matter how good I am at my craft or how interesting or useful or talented I could be.

When I say I want my art to be recognized by its own merits, I don't really mean that I want a handful of professionals or a large community to decide whether I am worthy of awards or accolades or grant money. I mean that I want anyone to come take a look at what I do and decide for themselves whether they want to engage further with what I do or what I stand for or not. Experience, expertise, or even an interest in art should not be prerequisites for that judgment. My ultimate aspiration is not recognition from elite circles or mass validation (or even external validation itself!), but something more fundamental: genuine connection with other artists, especially with those in my situation. The ones who aren't immediately recognized and stay hopelessly deprioritized by the masses. That is part of the reason for my selectivity, not because I think I'm too good for everyone else or that no one could ever understand me. And I hate that people default to that kind of bias against me.

However, I don't like how one of the consequences of taking this stance has resulted in what appears to be a consignment of my work to silence, whether intentional or not. Currently, I have had to stop making Untilted constricted to a membership because of how I was not getting any subscribers whatsoever (though I did receive a thoughtful $1 donation), and it's getting harder to work with a lack of engagement and feedback on my work. I feel like everyone has become either too scared or too quick to overlook things to meaningfully criticize others. Constructive feedback and meaningful dialogue become substituted for dismissive one-liners and absolute black-and-white thinking. I also dislike that the populace that privileges visibility often forces this kind of compromise, and I resent that this is read as disengagement.

Let me tell you a personal anecdote about me. When I was still in high school, I would get mostly honor rolls and certificates of excellence and stuff like that. Sometimes, some of my art would be exhibited in the classroom hallways and in-school art festivals. I even had a self-portrait of mine get accepted to be published in the Spring 2017 Celebrating Art Anthology, though it never was selected as a Top Ten or a High Merit Winner. I don't really remember receiving any harsh criticism of my work or anything like that, but I did mostly get vaguely praised – think compliments like “Wow, she's so good!” or “How is she so talented?” But I don't feel like I ever received any real genuine praise or criticism that was actually willing to delve deeper into more than just the techniques I choose to enhance my artwork or the subjects I choose. This is especially noticeable when I make realistic paintings and drawings of things like flowers, plants, nature, animals, and other similar subjects. Part of the reason I don't depict as much realism as I used to back in school is because it seems that the majority of today's viewers only superficially see that I'm good at portraying it and nothing more. It's why I'm increasingly preferring to do nonrepresentational art nowadays, even if the majority mostly ignore it, don't quite understand it, or prefer a stereotypical depiction of it to my unique interpretation of it.

I may have to figure out a way to develop more nuanced strategies of visibility that align with my constraints and philosophy. But what would that mean for me? I don't know. All I ever wanted was to cultivate a small and discerning yet close-knit and thoughtful audience of people. I have no interest in controlling what and how people interact with me, or what they say and think of me. I just want to put my art out there without requiring me to have to actively impress others or justify myself existing. That's all. And frankly I already do some form of that, but I admit I have to try other things as well.

Anyway, now that I've made my point clear, I would like to announce that the Untilted comic strip is now on Comic Fury (has been, since 9 days ago at this time of writing) and I have uploaded all of my comics on there for public viewing, though the website is still technically under maintenance (I still have to manually add descriptions, tweak the website layout a bit, etc.).

I am also thinking of adding new digital products to sell this month soon, as soon as I make some time for it somehow. It will be mostly pay-what-you-want.

I've got so many ideas to experiment with that I often have trouble articulating them and sometimes even implementing them in practice. Not a rapid flight of ideas but rather a disorganized pile of them building up like paperwork. I know, I'm not efficient enough. But I want to test my own limits.

Well, take care.