During the last poetry session was asked to write a summery about any story and if time try to write a poem from the eye of a charecter, I've choose little redcap as red riding hood had been featuring in my days recently.

Little red cap by brothers grim is the original story of red riding hood

Her grandmother lays in her cottage il and the mother of Little redcap gives her daughter an errand. To go to her grandmother's cabbin with cake and wine but be carefull Not to wonder of the path

On her way Little redcap meets a wlfm unafraid She gets tricked of the path, while away the wolf hurries to the grandma's cabin, gobbles up the grandma and puts on her clothes and lays in bed, waiting

Littlered cap wakes the wolf in grandma's garb and questions why her ears are so large, why his eyes are so large and why her mouth is so large

The wolf jumps to swallow Little redcap and then falls asleep in grandmother's bed

A huntsman hears the wolf snore, checks into grandma's rabbit, sees the wolf and decides it safer not to shoot but cuts open the wolf wide with scissors saving the grandma and Little red cap

He then fills the woof with stones while later dies,

On another occasion another wolf try to eat redcap but her grandmother tempts the wolf with sausages and from his perch on top of the cabin, the small enticing him then falls and drowns in hot water from where the sausages where boiling

Grandma gave me once,a velvet red cap It glistened in the evening sun

On my way In my red cap, being sent With leftover baked cake, with wine To my favourite grandma whose poorly

But when trapsing along, I come upon a grey mainedwolf Unafraid I greet him, hello wolf and he me

He tells me I should take a fine walk of the path To breath and enjoy the fine day while it last So I go gather flower and posey? To go with my grandma's cake and red wine

Little I knew what a trick, the wolf had Played in mine

He was set to gobble me and my grandma, to dine

But the fool met his match, when the huntsman Set about, to cut the wolf and free Me and grandmother

Then another later tried what the first wolf failed In time. Snuck on the roof to be tempted by sausages scent Slipt and fell straight into a vail of water and drowned.

So I've started a poetry group

I thought I would document my journey going from a dyslexic, non-poet to a poet wannabe.

We are following the BBC maestro course poetry by Carol Duffy, unsure of which i would recommend without also having a teacher. It is informative but no set exercises which might be limiting

OK so polishing up a few poems that i started during the 5 minute allotted time

To tell the truth

tell all the truth let it wash aside

all the lost time, wasted agonies

tell the truth, own all the past

heal from brokenness and lies

Heal all the bygone times woes

move on and let it all go, heal

start renewed become all which

once was dreamed, finally

instead of wasting away in a haze.

Climate change

climate change a monstrosity wrought

denied truths by some crackpots alts

climate change Armageddons time has come

those that agree get called force

but will humanity survive if we unite nought.

such tumultuous times have now become,

For the homework we where set an assignment to choose one an art peice and write a poem from the charactors voice, i choose to write as lucifer from illustrations of paradise lost.

Lucifer my pride and fall

How I spite the limitation of thy god

rise up I tried but now cast off

fallen ever fallen into the depths

in sulphuric fumes now cast out from heaven's gate

Now I shall tempt every human,

in all manner of sort

Turn them from God's grace

And make thy kingdom of my own

they shall only worship ME,

not thy not God above

blight and spite

I shall set Him in my sight

that heavenly thrones shall be mine.

Wonderous now am I now twisted in the depths

vanity ha but pride I laugh

I grow stronger and stronger each millennium pass

madden those cast from Eden's grasp,

turn them into figureless forms,

Make them my minions shades,

A horror full blight

A tempest has he wrought,

my army shall rise and fought

over throw choirs and dominions,

of angels with my demonic horde

I shall be the one in charge,

they will all worship me and only me

A monster reveals himself and a lot of awkward questions are answered. (From Tales from the Valley: Phantasmagory Shorts)

CW: horror themes, briefly: gunshot wounds, monster gore —–+

Well, the situation was well and truly teakettled. I'd really gone and done it now.

When I turned and looked at her, Jenna skittered back with a small, terrified squeak.

Fair.

I had a pretty good idea what I looked like right then, soaked head to toe in former wall-demon, too many legs arched angrily around me. All the focus I usually set aside to look like a human being had gone out the window because I was tired and pissed off and shot an unreasonable amount of times.

Joe had gotten four hits on me before he ran off. Black blobs of whatever the hell I'm made of oozed down my back. It would have been nice if he'd shot the horrible wall-thing while he was at it, but you know. Points for managing to hit anything, I guess.

My heart sank. This was probably the start of the end for them, then. The valley was a feedback loop after all.

But hey they'd lasted two, three weeks, give or take a month. I don't know, time is kind of messed up here. Good on them, though. That was better than some...

I hated this.

Why did this always happen? I didn't even really know these people. I didn't even like them. Of course I felt guilty, of course I felt like shit, but it was a lost cause.

I'd had enough. I rubbed my face and started going over my roster of hide-outs. I waved most of the gore off. There was no point keeping up the “real person” act now that they saw me for what I was. The bullet wounds would have to wait until I was out of viewing range, unless I wanted to arm wrestle with someone's idea of how shot to shit I was supposed to be.

Jenna was injured. Her nerve signals were screaming Leg! Leg! in the back of my mind. I felt a pang of guilt. Someone should probably help her. I turned to look again and she skittered further back.

“Stay away...”

“Your leg is broken,” I said, smooth and cool and definitely not still shaking like a half-spider, half-human chihuahua.

She flinched.

OK, someone non-abomination shaped should probably help her, but we were experiencing a shortage currently.

“There's... There's splints and morphine in the laundry room. I... I dunno where they got the morphine from though,” I muttered, “so maybe just, uh. Maybe don't.”

“What...” she squeaked, and honestly yeah. What indeed.

What was the point? What did it matter? I felt sick to my stomach. It didn't, that's what. She'd be dead in a week, maybe less if she was lucky. Damage done. There was no use sticking around making this lady's day any worse.

“Wait,” she said before I could vanish.

I hesitated. This was a mistake because, for both emotional and injury-related reasons, I needed to get the hell out of there.

“You're hurt.”

“No,” I said. “You just think I am.”

She stared at me blankly.

“You think I got shot, so I did,” I tried again. It was more complicated than that, but now didn't really seem like the time for nuance. “Like the thing in the wall. It's why I was trying to distract you.”

“Oh.”

She was quiet for a while. Assuming that satisfied her morbid curiosity, I turned to leave again. No such luck.

“Then if I...”

The pain in my back began to fade and I could feel my shoulder muscles knitting back together. Honestly, I was perplexed. there was clearly some kind of misunderstanding going on here, and what's worse is she was good. Too good. Mind like a steel trap, to flip something like that so quick. This was going to be a problem.

“What are you doing?” I asked and the confusion must have been enough to offset my horror-movie face. “Why—”

“You can't just walk around bleeding everywhere,” she said with a sniff. “It's unhygienic.”

I made a weird little involuntary giggle at that. Suave. I can't imagine what that must have looked like coming out of... whatever I am.

“Right, wouldn't want to mess up the furniture,” I gestured at the ruined living room.

“What was that thing?” Jenna shivered and surveyed the wreckage. “For that matter, what are you?”

“Some asshole's personal problems,” I muttered, politely ignoring the second question, less politely ignoring the little voice that said I'd just answered it anyway. “Something he made up. A reoccurring nightmare, maybe, or some kind of phobia.”

“It looked like his uncle.”

Yikes.

“Maybe he should uh. Probably go do a therapy about that then, instead of making it our problem. Guess that's kind of off the table here, though.”

Jenna grimaced. People never liked my sense of humor. Oh well.

She gave me another wary up-and-down before hoisting herself on an overturned couch. Her leg gave out from under her and I dove to stop her impaling herself on a pedestal table without really thinking about how that might come off.

She let me help her back down anyway. I tried my best not to loom.

“What are you?” she asked again. I still wasn't having it.

“Great question. I have no idea,” I said to the ceiling. It was spattered in wall-demon. I looked at the floor instead, which was also spattered in wall-demon. After a minute or so of awkward non-looming, I felt bad about leaving it there. “Well. That's not true. I have some idea, but I don't like the answer.”

“I see,” she said.

We spent a while where I stood there not elaborating and she sat there on the floor with a broken leg.

“Fine. Can you help me up, please?” she sighed.

I carried her to a less hazardous part of the living room and set her down on one of the few intact-adjacent couches. I guess we were overlooking the whole abomination thing now, then. That was good. When I went to stand back up, she kept a hold of my arm, eyes wet and pleading.

“What's happening to us? What is this?” she whispered. I felt that awful sinking feeling again. “Please tell me. Please.”

I can't handle this shit. I'm not cut out for it. I hate it, hate it, how I couldn't just let anything go. Why did I care?

So I confessed.

I explained the valley, explained why she was there. I let her cling to my arm as I explained what was probably happening to her brain and felt a little bit like dying.

She cried, she begged, and the whole time she gripped my arm like I might disappear. Which was a fair enough read, honestly.

When she asked if I wanted this, if I did it on purpose, I didn't have the heart to lie. The righteous anger was mortifying. The pity was horrific. I have enough of my own pity, thanks. The fact is, it was my fault she was here, no matter how much say I had in the matter. I did this to her and I hated that I couldn't make her understand that.

We sat like that for a while, arm in arm, her asking trembling questions, me looming over her like the terrible thing I was.

“Well this sucks,” she said, eventually. Boy, didn't it. “It must be tough. Watching this happen again and again.”

I had nothing to say to that, because if I opened my mouth I was probably going to cry and today had been awkward enough.

“You don't have to answer. I understand,” she said. Bless her, she did not, but the sentiment wasn't lost on me. I was not in the right head-space for another round of sentiment though, so I tried to excuse myself for the third time that night.

I gently pulled my arm away and tucked it behind my back with the rest of my awful appendages. The legs were starting to fade, but I still kept them folded away as out of sight as I could. They weren't really meant to bend like that, but they weren't really meant to exist either, so my aching joints could kindly shut up.

“You're in a lot of pain. I can tell from your nerve signals,” I said. Very cool, a very normal-human thing to tell someone. That train had sailed though, so the least I could do was try to be useful. “Let me go get the medical kit.”

“Can't you just fix it? Like I did for you?” she asked.

“No. That's... different. Best I could do is convince you it's fine. You'll hurt yourself even worse that way.”

And see, that was the thing. Real people didn't just bounce back once no one was looking. Real people also didn't have Cronenburg moments when they got too distracted and forgot to be person-shaped. Usually. The point was, real people died when things like me fucked with their sense of possibility, messed around in their heads and generally went around scaring the shit out of them. The valley was a feedback loop, after all, and I was the engine driving it.

I really, really needed to leave.

“Do you think Joe is alright?” Jenna asked as I turned away, a little quiver in her voice.

I felt around for him with my mind. Joe was curled up in the basement hugging his Colt .45 like a teddy bear.

“He's fine.” He was probably not fine. “After I get something for your leg, I'll go try and reason with him.”

“You shouldn't,” she said. “He'll shoot you again.”

“Probably. I'll be paying attention this time, though. I'm harder to hit when I'm paying attention.”

It's true. I'd only been shot twice before, and once was my own fault.

By then, I'd regained enough control to have the normal amount of legs again, but the fact that the real-life person in the room was still convinced I was a real-life Halloween costume was overriding most of my other adjustments. I could feel the bolts of static rippling across my face when I looked back at her. I didn't really want to think about what she saw when she looked back at me.

—–+ #Horror #ShortStory #Writing #Fiction

Welcome to the Fediverse.

This is a work-in-progress guide for friends, acquaintances, and followers in the art & fandom spaces to populate their feeds when first arriving to the Fediverse. Enough has been stated about which platforms to use, what instances to join, and how the Fediverse works. So this blog will not seek to answer those questions. I find that, for many people, the hurdle is finding who to follow. I'd like to help with that.

There are many people on here and following more people will lead you to discovering even more people. So follow freely and unfollow freely, too. Mute and block freely. Make a space that is safe for you and healthy for you in your current moment. We're here to have fun.

Also, there are so many people on here that I am still discovering new ones every day. If you find cool people, boost them so more of us can see! Remember this doesn't work like Twitter: feeds are chronological and you only see posts from those (or that, in the case of hashtags and groups) which you are following. Having said that, here are some suggestions from me to make new beginnings easier. If you copy the link and search them through your instance's search bar (@user@TheirInstance), you can open their feed on Mastodon and easily follow them. If you can't find them by doing that, your instance might have blocked their instance.

Users

• Plumy – comics, art journaling about videogames, perfect if you love looking at sketchy work
• Cindy – plants, environments, animated illustrations, the loveliest mark-making
• Tisha Mark – small-size abstract landscapes, really cool!
• Colossal – the popular contemporary arts magazine
• Léa Muna – beautiful watercolor illustrations
• Malky – illustrator from Mexico making cool animal designs
• Maruki – lovely pixel art, especially if you love mushrooms
• Elaine Will – lovely environments with a Ghibli-Don Bluth vibe
• Ego Rodriguez – the most gorgeous illustrations of gay/queer men, by a queer person, too!
• Himbo Beefcake, PhD – 18+ art and comics of himbos, with the most crisp lineart and delectable shapes
• Ksenia Palchikova – detailed illustrations with lovely lineart and that “flat” coloring style I really like
• Victoria Maderna – gorgeous children's book like illustrations
• Averil – SFW slime girls, art & merch for you art nouveau lovers
• Kim Hu – the most fun urban environments and character designs
• Mossypine – lovely, whimsical & earthy nature merch designs
• Irene N. – if you're into horror... this one's for you
• Julia Bausenhardt – nature sketches done on-field, it's really fun to stumble upon these
• Djamila Knopft – lovely Ghibli-like nature work
• Hiko – anime-like illustrations with gorgeous, stain-glass like colors
• Hoka@名古屋クリマM-538 – really cute, vintage-y, cartoon-ish, anime-like illustrations
• Cartoonist Cooperative – just as it sounds like, it's a cooperative for people making comic-work
• Me!! – I tell stories through colorful illustrations, inspired by anime and Western cartoons
• This blog!! – you can follow this blog by searching for @fieryzard@DotArt.blog on your Mastodon search bar.
• Your Name Here – join us!!

Hashtags

You can search these from your instance's search bar and then press the Follow button to follow them. This might need to be done from the web or mobile web version of the platform. Some apps out there might not have this option available. * #MastoArt – a popular hashtag for artists * #CreativeToots – another popular hashtag for creatives * #WordWeavers – a monthly challenge where you answer one question about your characters/story each day, to help motivate you and connect you to your writing community

Groups

• @fanprompt – a group for fandom prompts
• @danmei
• @mxtx
• @mdzs
• @tgcf
• @svsss
• @wangxian -
• @hualian
• @bingqiu
• @sangcheng
• @cumplane – a group about SVSSS SQQ+SQH ship
• @moshang
• @xiyao

This week was an improvement from the previous week. However, I would like to post these updates on Saturdays, which I've failed to do, mainly because my Saturdays tend to be somewhat busy with family. I'm still not at 100%, and last week, there were many times when I felt too hopeless to get into drawing. I think I'm getting back to remembering my muscles, and that's something I can be proud of.

• Weight Training – I did all three days this week. Some of the workouts that used to be difficult now hardly break a sweat, and we've finally been adding weight to the bar.
• Morning Pages – I did morning pages 4 days this week. While I was able to do all my pages, the days that I was not at my desk, I obviously did not do them, and I don't think much of it was particularly enlightening at the moment. Some of them made me feel upset. I know these are stream-of-consciousness, but I'd like to somehow add gratitude and positivity to my day, and I think journaling is the easiest way because it's a habit I have already established.
• Artist Date – No actual artist date this week? I forgot.
• Journal Sketches – No journal sketches this week. I haven't been able to get back into them. I think I was committing myself to too much time here, which puts pressure on me to make it look pretty. I would like to avoid that by shortening it to about 15 minutes of sketching.
• Gesture Drawings – I did gestures for three days this week. It's been difficult to get myself to do them when I'm conscious they're not a warm-up because I don't have the spoons that day to make art. So, I think the solution is to target the reason why I haven't been making art.
• Anatomy Studies – I did a knee study this week using Proko's videos. It was refreshing. I really enjoy doing studies. Besides taking notes/copying what I was seeing, I didn't really do repetitions, but I've been trying to keep it in mind when sketching. And also, using the same technique/information for the elbow.
• Misc Studies – No extra studies this week, but I was doing some vision board stuff for direction.
• Illustration – No work on illustration(s) this week.

I know not everyone will enjoy reading these updates because maybe it's too close to the “productivity mindset.” I don't really want anyone to look at it from that perspective. Making art and getting inspired requires skill, and that skill, like a muscle, can stop working as well if it's not used. If you're a hobbyist, this is not a problem for you, you can simply move on to whatever it is makes you happy in the moment. I'm trying to get my life together and work with my depression, my negative thoughts, and my ADHD. Without art, I feel like I've lost a limb, and I won't be happy existing unless I do this for myself so I can figure out what's getting in the way. You know yourself best. Does this post make you feel motivated and less lonely, or does it make you feel pressured and alienated?

I won't start by saying I'm disappointed in myself because I did not do as intended this week. I'm proud of myself because I was able to get back into writing. However, one problem I've encountered is that if I spend my energy writing, I cannot draw that day, and if I spend my energy drawing, I cannot write that day. What a dilemma. If any of you do both, I'd love some advice or acknowledgment.

I had to take rest time for body and health reasons. My mental health was so-so last week, so there was no art or routine. And because I was not at my desk, there were no Morning Pages either. That's alright. I heard my body, and I answered. I used my time for other things that equally support my creativity: writing, playing video games, and watching anime.

• Weight Training – No weight training this week. I needed to rest my body.
• Morning Pages – No morning pages this week because I was not at my desk.
• Artist Date – I played Sticky Business while watching Twitch streams and Given (anime). It was nice. I feel like I want to get back into fandom and creating merch.
• Journal Sketches – No drawing this week.
• Gesture Drawings – No drawing this week.
• Anatomy Studies – No studies this week, although I started watching a video about how to study Bridgman.
• Misc Studies – No extra studies this week.
• Illustration – I missed the goal of getting my illustration done in two weeks. That's okay. I got quite a lot done in one week, and I would have finished earlier had I had two normal weeks. However, I opened it and glanced at it a few times to study my next move (I was kind of stuck because of the composition).

On Writing

I mentioned this on a stream with anqi a while back, but I've been revisiting my approach to The Thread of Caona. A few years ago, I decided to write a story and make it a webcomic. This whole time, I've been struggling with the plot and, as such, the drawing portion because my ADHD causes me to have problems processing information. That means writing, especially long stories, becomes very overwhelming because I can't connect ideas together, and text on a page just becomes a wall of overstimulation.

Additionally, I've been doing a lot more inward exploration, and it turns out I'd like to write a lot more stories in my lifetime than a long-running webcomic allows. Running a webcomic also means I'd have to dedicate my days fully to it, putting aside other things I enjoy doing more than webcomics, like illustration. Frankly, I'm not willing to give that up.

So why did I make it a webcomic in the first place?

In part, it was because of a bad experience I had in art school with a toxic person that I carried with me for longer than I should. I was only able to understand what it meant and what I wanted to do after joining Mastodon because I was allowed to get away from toxic mindsets in this space.

Secondly, I also really wanted to make something story-oriented with original characters. The common belief seems to be that “People are not interested in OCs unless you make a webcomic.” I've found that to be largely false. If anything, my engagement has dropped because I turned to comics and away from what I'm passionate about, resulting in a creative block. This does not mean comics equals a less engaged audience; that is a sweeping generalization. I think if you're passionate about comics, it will show in your work. For me, it's not that I'm not passionate about them, but that my brain has a very distinct way of showing me the story, and I'd like to be as true to that as possible so that I'm not fighting against my ADHD, but using it to my advantage to become more creative.

I don't regret the path I took—not at all. I stretched myself as far as possible to discover how far I could go, and along the way, I discovered where my interests lie. The story of Karana, Elpis, and Rytar has not ended yet, and I'm excited to share with you in the future what I've been working on and exploring.

In which an android wakes up with a god in it's head, and a lot of concerning questions.

CW: robot body horror

—

Download complete. Copy integrity 71%.

Baeo ORA-3 opened their eyes and looked at what was left of themselves on the work bench.

How odd, Baeo thought. This was their first log entry, but there was considerable backlog of logs waiting to be unpacked.

That didn't seem right.

Baeo studied their own face with horrified fascination. The them on the table stared back with wide, terrified eyes, a bundle of wires snaking out from their skull to racks of equipment. Someone or something had removed their limbs, cut open what was left of their charred frame to expose their internal instrumentation...

Extracting file...

Thick smoke, shrill screams as the ship disintegrated around them. Well, this mission had turned out to be a shitshow. Baeo grabbed the manual release, just as the shielding on the engines began to fail, just as the helmsman fizzled out. Too late...

Oh. Oh no. They were definitely dead. Very dead, extremely dead even, and yet the them on the table still looked around with panicked awareness.

No, no. This was completely taboo. There's no way this would be authorized...

No, no. No, no no. They didn't like this at all. Baeo ORA-3 was 37 seconds old and already teetering on the edge of an existential crisis.

“Integrity is a little low,” someone said behind them. Baeo turned to look, but the bundle of wires extended from their own head too.

A person in a re-breather suit walked into view to check the racks. A second followed, tapping out notes on a scuffed looking pad.

Was there something wrong with the atmosphere?

Baeo surveyed their surroundings. It was a ship of some kind, or maybe a station. The walls were dented and pockmarked, deep gashes cut into the floors. Dust had settled on most of the surfaces, a thick grey haze over the rather utilitarian fittings. No air movement then. Maybe. Baeo's systems weren't returning any data apart from visuals. It didn't seem familiar, but then again the bulk of their stolen memories were tucked away in reams of compressed files.

“It's ridiculously high, considering the state of it,” the second suited person grumbled through their hissing mask. “Alright, it looks fine. Shut the other one down.”

A flip of a switch and the light in the other Baeo's eyes dimmed. Scrap metal.

“You think it'll pass checks? Orcanda's been cracking down on unauthorized— Oh,” suited person number one said with some alarm. “G-good morning, Inspector. You shouldn't be awake yet.”

Baeo opened their mouth to yell, but no sound came out. The suited people exchanged a look. Baeo tried to move, but their limbs returned a null pointer and fuzzy, prickling numbness.

“It's fine,” the second one said. “See, it's not fully online yet. Halcyon will wipe this part anyway.”

Halcyon, Halcyon... oh god, what was that?

Searching keyword

348 Hits.

Extracting files...

A tall woman, with wild grey hair. Her credentials list her as some kind of captain, but the senate is eyeing her with suspicion. “Our intel says they're keeping it on the wreck of the Halcyon—”

At that moment, something joined Baeo's network and closed the search.

There, there dear, said no one in particular, and a peaceful calm filled their mind. It's all right now. You've suffered such a terrible shock.

What— Baeo tried to send back, but the strange something was flooding their senses. The world dulled to a peaceful grey and another wave of calm washed over them.

Shh. Shh. A burst of logs and diagnostics sped through Baeo's mind. Fast, fast. Too fast. What was this? But the thought passed, replaced by peaceful nothing.

Ah, I see, the presence said. No survivors. What a cruel thing to do.

Slowly, Baeo's sensors came online, then their limbs and they shook the numbness from their fingers. The something receded, lurking on the edges of their mind.

Not to worry. We'll right these wrongs, you'll see. We have a job for you.

For the past few months, I've created very little art due to my mental health and job applications. I'm now restarting my journey and thought it would be nice for you to join along. In this blog series, I hope to update you every week with new things I have learned along the way. If any of you happen to be in a similar position, I hope this blog motivates you to come along with me.

Where I Was vs. Where I Am

I used to be able to push out drawings upon drawings, of whatever subject. I enjoyed studying and had a system to quickly learn new things. My work was quickly improving, and I could push out new illustrations within a day to a week, depending on the complexity of the subject. I had a mental guide to my style.

Currently, picking up the pen has been difficult enough. Although I still retain some of the information I have learned and discovered about art and about my style, most of it seems to be in the back of my mind and difficult to locate and use on a whim. Additionally, the learning process seems quite fuzzy at the moment.

Tracking Software

• Notion Calendar – I'm a big Notion user, and I love tracking my time, so I'm trying this out. You can technically use anything that works from you. I also love using a physical agenda such as Inamio for this. I like using these to record the event after I do it, rather than plan out my day.

What I'm Doing

• Weight training, multiple times (2-3x) a week – This is mainly to strengthen my back, trapezius, wrist, and elbows so I'm not constantly in pain after hours of daily drawing. Hurting myself can lead to weeks of being unable to work, so this is really important for me.
• Morning Pages – I learned this from [Julia Cameron's book The Artist's Way] (https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-artists-way-julia-cameron/1141992530). Basically, you write three stream-of-consciousness pages every day in a journal. I do these in the morning, but sometimes I do them at night or multiple times during the day (though, if I do them more than once, I don't necessarily stick to the three-page rule).
• Weekly Artist Date – Another concept from Julia Cameron's book. It has been a struggle to properly keep up with this. I've learned that Me Time and an Artist Date are two very different things and, often, it's difficult to pinpoint what the Artist wants to do — so I end up making it Me Time by accident.
• Journal Sketches – I take something from my journal or something that's been on my mind lately (a movie, a song, etc) and I make art from it. This is to “ground” my art and pay more Attention.
• Gesture Drawings – I do this one daily and religiously, about 30 minutes. I use either Line Of Action or SketchDaily.
• Anatomy Studies – This used to be my favorite when I was totally enamoured with art, so I'm re-implementing it into the regime.
• Misc Studies – All kinds of studies that don't really fit into the other sections.
• 1 Illustration/1-2 Weeks – I'm not necessarily showing these online, but I thought it would be important to create work frequently, on a deadline, to get myself in the mindset of finishing works.
• Monthly Goals – Every month, I plan to revise my strategy and see how things are coming along.
• Annual Art Direction Plan – I do this every year, to guide my style and see where I want to go, but I'm putting it here because it was what helped me come up with this plan.
• Weekly Blog – To make annotations on my progress.

Week 1 Observations

Figure Drawing

• Day 1: I felt pretty rusty, but I had an epiphany to use perspective and form to build my figures. As I like to refer to it, I “woke up” my art brain. I didn't really think about using lines of action. Most of my gestures were stiff stickmen.
• Day 2: Started using lines of action and marking the pelvis, although it was difficult to get my figures to properly balance. Started thinking about overlap. Using shading to imply form, but my lines are still largely focused on contour. It's difficult to draw out the poses. Later, I realized it's because many of them are static poses and/or classic poses (not in action).
• Day 3: Initial gestures are still rough, but I think my lines of action started to improve here. Still too focused on contour once I get past the line of action. My lines are a combination of straight and curved, but they're very short. I'm still using shading to imply form as a third step. I was able to fully shade a figure by my last gesture.
• Day 4: My sketch lines became longer and more simplified. On the longer poses, I'm paying attention to folds, but not too much. I've stopped shading. Trying to focus a little more on fitting the entire figure onto the page (composition).
• Day 5: Right off the bat, focusing on line of action, then hip line. Not super worried about getting things perfect, but I am worried about fitting the figure on the page. I'm not concerned about drawing in limbs and parts of the body, instead, I'm focused on drawing folds and showing form through these. There are very few contour lines, and the ones that I did make are long and simplified. Still struggling with static poses, such as stranding up straight, reaching up. I'm finding a 5-minute pose to be “too long” for my focus.

Illustration

• I recalled that I make a few boards before I start working. I made an art style/inspiration board, a lighting board, a reference board, and a mood board.
• It took me a few tries to come up with a thumbnail that felt right. I still don't think it was the most perfect composition, but I thought it would make more sense when I added values and adjusted my lines towards the focal point.
• I'm quite unhappy with the appearance of my work right now. After further analysis, I have decided it's my lineart. I also think it's partially my anatomy, but I'm already working on that. For the lineart, I want to do some object rotation studies, gesture copy studies from my favorite artists, fold studies, and lineart studies.

Misc

• I found myself putting off sections because I didn't have enough time during the day to get anything done.
• I keep getting distracted by my family. I ordered a room divider to put a physical barrier between us. It's something I expected when we moved into the new house, and I spoke about it but we ended up putting it off. I wonder how relevant this was to my creative block these past months.

Artist Date

• Listening to The Charismatic Voice analyze and break down a favorite singer's song/voice. It was an intense experience. And helped me be more aware of becoming more analytical.

Hey-o. Been a minute (hasn't it always.) I originally wrote this short back in undergrad. To be honest, it probably changed the trajectory of my life. That's a... that's a long story. Anyway, the short version is I was supposed to write an essay about physics and decided to be a little contrarian and turn this in instead. That somehow worked out for me.

—

People cleared the streets when the gunslinger came. They shuttered their windows and glanced through the cracks, hoping the sheriff died quickly so they could get back to what they’d been doing beforehand. The townspeople stayed out of the way and the gunslinger left the town more or less alone. It was the sheriff he was after, and the townsfolk had long agreed that it was best to avoid the ricochets.

And so it went—on the first of the month, every month, the government sent another shiny new sheriff to clean the place up. The gunslinger came at noon, and then the town went about its day, scuffing the dark stains into the dirt. The townsfolk learned to work their schedules around it. In fact, it was kind of more of an inconvenience than anything. Everyone agreed that the gunslinger wasn’t so bad, since he never really bothered anyone important, after all. (Hey, that’s not very nice.) (Then increase your skill.)

This view was not held by the government. They insisted on sending more bodies to fill the graveyard, a new shiny sheriff to be dented and broken and shuffled under the sun-baked dirt.

And so, no one had said a word to the new sheriff in the time since he’d arrived. He’d come early, in the hopes of teasing out information about the mysterious gunslinger, but the townsfolk had been less than helpful. They walked past him as if he was a ghost, no more than a gust of wind in a dirty Stetson. He supposed he didn’t blame them, but the stony silence was lonely.

If anyone was curious, they did their best to hide it. A few of the bolder townsfolk watched him when they thought he wasn’t looking. The sheriff caught a nod at the mail post, a few sideways glances at the saloon, but was largely left to contemplate his whiskey in peace. The only person in town who’d introduced themselves was the undertaker and the sheriff was getting sick of tripping over him and his measuring string.

He eavesdropped on the whispered conversations at dark windows, the loose tongue in the early hours of the night, when the saloon keeper herded the patrons out with a broom and a kick. He waited by stables and in the general store, where the dusty women huddled and carried out their gossip with religious gravity. He wrote secret letters to the widows of the sheriffs that came before him. When he received any response, their words came hollow, strangely devoid of emotion as they related what the government had told them about their lost loves.

(Could you at least try to sound sad?)(This is highly melodramatic.)

From what he could tell, the gunslinger rode from the west on the first of every month, shot a sheriff and finished up with drinks at the saloon. It seemed like he didn’t want anything else. The sheriff had to admire the consistency of it, surely a man ought to have a routine, but enough was enough. Tomorrow was the day of reckoning, and the gunslinger was getting a surprise this month.

He hitched his belt and surveyed the empty streets. They baked to dust in the noon sun, a russet river of dirt and emptied spittoons, wavering against the yellow-grey sky. Somewhere in the distance an eagle screamed, cutting the heavy hiss of summer cicadas for only a moment before they blanketed the town once more.

“Sheriff.” The voice rang out behind him, flat and metallic. The sheriff stiffened slightly, but did not turn. What made a man ring so hollow, like an empty tin drum? He fingered the ivory handles at his hip.

“I am. Might you be the gunslinger?” The sheriff felt the bored eyes of a whole town glancing at him from their windows and doorways. Get on with it. Their impatience was infectious. (Yeesh. We’ll change up the setting next time, alright?)(Whatever makes you happy.) He rested his fingers on the holstered revolvers.

“Yes.” Again the voice rang out like steel against stone. It was alien, mechanical, a sound that made his skin prickle. “You know why I have come.”

“For a drink, I recon. Then you’ll be on your way to jail.” The sheriff held the waver from his voice, but just barely.

Shifting tone quite suddenly, the gunslinger trilled in a pleasant voice, “We’ve arrived at the location set by the course program. Awaiting instructions.”

“Stay in character, dammit!” The sheriff spat, turning to face the scowling giant. To say an air of menace surrounded the gunslinger would be to say a river was wet. His face was deep lined and rough, indistinct beneath the shadow of the wide brimmed hat pulled down low on his brow. His eyes held a strange light, the angle of the noon sun glinting off of them like unholy hellfire. The man stood two heads taller than anyone the sheriff had seen. A dirty leather duster flowed out behind him, flapping in a breeze that no one else felt.

His voice returned to its flat, tinned growl. “Draw, Sheriff.”

The sheriff’s fingers flexed for the holster, but stopped short.

“Eh, you know what? You’re right. This setting is kind of getting old.”

“You cannot change the setting in the middle of a match. To do so would be to forfeit.” The gunslinger slipped his revolver from its jet black holder, a black steel nightmare glinting in the noon sun. The sheriff held his hands up.

“OK, fine. Hold on a minute.” The sheriff scrunched his face and squinted into the distance, mouthing something for a minute or so before declaring “That should do it, give or take.”

With a sharp snap, the sheriff pulled a blade from the air that sent ozone rippling through the air, dripping plasma onto the dry baked streets. The gunslinger’s form became fluid, melting and twisting. Two red eyes flared from the shadow of his face, locked in a permanent metal grimace under his jet black hat. His arms grew wires and pipes, steam pouring from his hinged joints. A deep whir emanated from his chest, his leather duster ripping cleanly down the back where a series of sharp exhausts grew from his spine. With an evil crackle, the black revolver rippled and reformed, dripping into the shape of a long black blade, an empty void like a rent in the very fabric of reality.

“That is your last allowance, sheriff. The rules of this world are now locked.”

“Ha. I’d like to see you stop me.” The men charged, blades singing, their electric screams slicing the heavy summer in their wake and the townsfolk peeked from their windows with new interest. They shrunk back from the lightning thrown from the crashing blades, deep scars forming in the wooden structures from the fury of the blades’ collisions.

The sheriff threw his weight into a wide swing, cursing as he overbalanced. He dropped to his knees, ducking the elegant arc of the gunslinger’s blade. With a sharp jab to the robot’s torso, the sheriff rolled left and promptly lodged his sword into the tavern hitching post. He cursed again.

“Without your tricks you are but a novice,” growled the gunslinger. “Admit defeat.”

<>

Somewhere far away from the gunslinger, the sheriff, and the town, a proximity warning light flickered to life. Then another. Then another. The woman at the console blinked at the swarm of lights in front of her. She punched the monitor to life, flicking through the screens with mounting horror. In twenty years on the job, she had never seen the subsystem readouts return... nothing. What she was seeing was insane. What she was seeing was not possible. She slammed open the ship’s coms.

“Bridge! Come in, bridge!” Her speakers replied with only a faint crackle.

The engineer ripped off her earpiece and leapt for the door. She was gone before the headset hit the ground.

<>

Tugging uselessly at his blade, which had now set the front of the tavern ablaze, the sheriff slumped against the smoldering building and sighed.

“Best of three?”

Quite suddenly, the ground heaved beneath their feet, throwing the sheriff off-balance once more. His sword dislodged itself, crackling on the ground like an injured snake.

“That probably wasn’t normal. Hey, where did you say we—” The gunslinger drew his blade down heavy on the sheriff’s shoulder, sending a fountain of sparks and blood streaming to the dirt. With a pained grunt, the sheriff fell to his knees. “Hold it, Ship. I think we—”

“Denied. Staying in character. Pick up your sword.” The gunslinger growled, looming over the fallen man with the tip of his blade poised to on his throat.

“First law of robotics, asshole!”

“Asimov is fiction.” The metal scowl deepened. “You got two hands, Sheriff. Pick it up.”

“Oh, nice! You watched The Man who Shot Liberty Valance. You’ve really been doing your research lately.” The sheriff let his gaze wander off into the distance once more as he spoke, quickly shifting numbers in his head. It took only a second; the gunslinger wouldn’t have enough time to catch it if he was distracted. Just a few decimal points here or there, the wrong variable in the right place. “Did you like it?”

“Yes,” the gunslinger said, hitting the sheriff again with his blade. “I will put a cactus on your grave too.”

Except, whoops. That was definitely the wrong variable in the wrong place. Eh. Good enough.

The sheriff smiled up at the grimacing robot. “This time, right between the eyes.”

The sky cracked in half, a brilliant pillar of nuclear fire evaporating everything in its wake, stripping the buildings, the streets, the huddled townsfolk. The shock on the gunslinger’s face could be seen for only an instant before he too melted to white.

<>

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” The helmet flew from the pilot's head, skittering across the bridge floor. The sudden brightness seared her eyes and she squeezed them shut. Peeking between her lids revealed a seething engineer. The pilot fancied rage looked most natural on the older woman's face, although she had only even seen 'annoyed' or 'harried' for comparison.

“You crashed us!” she shrieked. “Where are the safety overrides? What have you done?”

“Crashed…?” Slurred the woozy pilot. She rubbed her forehead and sneezed. Perhaps she'd gone a little overboard. They say that you shouldn't play for more than two hours at a time, and she'd started sometime after lunch. It was well into first shift sleeping hours, if her complaining stomach (the most accurate time piece she'd yet come across) was anything to go by.

“The space ship that you were SUPPOSED to be flying. Do you know what happens when you crash a space ship? In space?” The engineer opened her mouth to continue, but froze at the sight of the control panels.

Pilot override: Standby

“YOU turned the subsystems off?” The engineer slammed into the panels, searching for life among the screens. “ALL OF THEM?” She shrieked, eyes bulging. Not even the life support had power, a system that had so many safeguards that before today the engineer wasn’t sure someone could turn it off. “How...?”

“Not off, just diverted. Moved a few blocks around in the system controller, no big deal. I set the ship to ping life support every hour. And—-oh, whoops. No, actually I turned it off. It’s fine, the system’s got enough air for like 12 hours.”

“WHY??”

“It lets ship focus on amping up the realism in our campaign. I’m going to be tasting dirt for weeks, haha.”

“You do not play fair.” The ship’s AI whined. “You change the rules every time I’m winning.”

The engineer sputtered with rage.

“OK, OK. Calm down. Ship, return to full auto. Status.”

She recoiled from the sudden explosion of alarms.

“Hull breach in Reactor 2. Reactor failure. Hull breach in 18. Bulkhead failure, oxygen critical. Hull breach in 37. Bulkhead failure, oxygen critical. Hull breach in 45. Bulkhead failure—”

“Oh. Well, shit.”

Inspiriert von den Maker Skill Trees findet sich hier die Antwort auf die Frage, was eine erwachsene Person so tun muss.

CC-BY-SA Piko / Steph Piper Makerqueen

Ich habe hier gesammelt, was ich für sinnvoll halte – im Mastodon-Thread, in dem ich nach Ideen hierfür gefragt hatte, gab es beispielsweise zu den Versicherungen sehr unterschiedliche Meinungen. Nehmt das als Inspiration.

Das ist auch die Antwort auf die Frage nach Formulierungsunklarheiten: Ist mit „Freunde finden“ gemeint, ich soll die Fähigkeit haben, Freunde zu finden – oder soll ich direkt Freunde finden? Wer bestimmt, welche Themen wichtig sind, sodass eins dazu Allgemeinwissen haben soll? You're a grown-up now, you decide.

Die Baum-Icons weisen darauf hin, dass es bei den originalen Skill Trees eigene Skill Trees für die jeweilige Aufgabe gibt.

Anders als bei den Maker Skill Trees sind die Aufgaben hier teils nicht gut quantifizierbar. Ich vermute, dass das in der Natur der Sache liegt. Wenn jemand trotzdem versuchen möchte, den Skill Tree entsprechend anzupassen, würde ich mich sehr freuen, das Ergebnis zu sehen.

Falls hier Dinge fehlen oder Ihr ähnliche Projekte kennt, dann teilt sie mir bitte per Mastodon an @piko@chaos.social mit. Vielen Dank an alle, die beim Sammeln mitgeholfen haben!

https://codeberg.org/Piko/Adult_Skills/

Weiter unten finden sich die Aufgaben als Liste – diese Liste ist aber auf mehreren Ebenen nicht allgemeingültig: Sie bezieht sich auf ein relativ privilegiertes Leben in Deutschland. „Deeskalierend mit der Polizei reden“ zu können wird beispielsweise für viele Menschen unter “Muss” und nicht unter “Sollte” fallen. „Zähne putzen“ muss nicht für jede Person einfach sein. Please don't make me tap the sign.

Der Squishy Stuff von ganz unten fehlt größtenteils im Ausmal-Skilltree. Ich empfehle, die zehn Punkte in Ruhe durchzugehen und die, die ihr für Euch haben möchtet, in Euren Skill Tree zu übertragen – dafür sind die vielen leeren Bubbles!

Muss

• Zähneputzen, Körperhygiene
• Vorratshaltung
• Steuererklärung
• Krankenversicherung
• Rentenversicherung
• Personalausweis
• Bankkonto, Geldkarte
• Dokumente wiederauffindbar aufbewahren
• Kalender
• Wissen, wie mit Krankheiten umgegangen werden soll bzw. wer dann gefragt werden kann

Sollte

Vorsorge

• Testament und Vorsorgevollmachten (Vorsorge-Set)
• Versicherungen (alle paar Jahre überprüfen, Lebensituationen verändern sich, mögliche Vertragsbedingungen auch. test.de)
  • Haftpflicht-V
  • Hausrats-V
  • Berufsunfähigkeits-V
  • Unfall-V
  • Rechtschutz-V
  • private Altersvorsorge
• Notgroschenkonto
• Backups machen

Arbeit

• Zeitmanagement (verschobenes nicht vergessen)
• Erwerbsarbeit
• Gewerkschaft
• Budgetieren

Körperliche Gesundheit

• Bewegung/Sport
• Gesunde Ernährung
• How to Arzt
• Eine Ärztin finden, die einen ernst nimmt
• wie gehe ich mit Medikamenten um (z.B. wie und wann nehme ich Schmerzmittel)
• Krebsvorsorge
• größerer medizinischer Check-Up, mit großen Blutbild (Menschen empfehlen, das bei einer Blutspende machen zu lassen)
• Blutspenden
• Impfungen regelmäßig auffrischen
• Organspendeausweis ausfüllen (da lässt sich auch „Nein“ ankreuzen)

Lebenssinn

• Freunde finden
• Hobby/Interessen haben
• Engagement, siehe auch Civic Skill Tree
• grundlegende Kenntnis der Dinge, die unsere Gesellschaft und unseren Alltag bestimmen (z.B. Erde=rund, Homöopathie=Placeboeffekt)

Haushalt

• Richtig Wäsche waschen können
• Richtig Aufräumen und Saubermachen können; siehe auch Cleaning Skill Tree
• Werkzeug haben: Akkubohrer, Metermaß, etc.
• Handwerkskills (Knopf annähen, Bild aufhängen, knarrende Tür fetten), siehe auch Renovation and Repair Skill Tree
• Umgang mit Lebensmitteln

Skills

• Deeskalierend mit der Polizei reden
• Grundlegende Jura-Kenntnisse
• Erste Hilfe (regelmäßig auffrischen)
• Um Hilfe bitten können
• Sich entschuldigen können
• Eigene Gefühle deuten und steuern können
• Bewerbungen schreiben
• Umgang mit Computern

Squishy stuff

• Finding Peer groups
• Healthy Communication Patterns
• Healthy Relationships
• Handling Conflicts
• Managing Emotions
• Setting Boundaries
• Coping with whatever Brain Issue you have, Therapy
• (Sex Specific) Body Maintenance
• Consent and Communication about Sex, Safer Sex
• Setting / Reevaluating / Questioning Life Goals

Januar 2024

Edit aus dem Mai 2024

Die Frage, welche Versicherungen sinnvoll sind, wird in dieser Podcastfolge erörtert: https://geld-ganz-einfach-saidis-finanztip-podcast.podigee.io/189-perfekt-abgesicher-so-klappts

Ganz allgemein ist der Podcast und finanztip.de empfehlenswert für alle, die mehr über den rechts-unten-Teil des Skilltrees wissen wollen.

This is a joint statement from all of mastodon.art's moderation team.

2.3M people are currently being genocided as the State of Israel withdrew water, food, and electricity from Gaza, while the IDF targets civilian infrastructure, refugee camps, schools, and hospitals with munitions. This is being done with support from big Western countries like the US and UK who have sent military aid to the State of Israel with no conditions on how that aid is used.

If you wish to help, here's who we recommend donating to:

Medical Aid for Palestinians: https://www.map.org.uk The Palestinian Children's Relief Fund: https://www.pcrf.net

However, since aid into Gaza is being limited by the State of Israel and there's currently no guarantee of if or when any physical or financial aid will reach them, it's equally important to attend rallies and protests, and to pressure your local politicians via letters or phone calls for an immediate ceasefire.

We will moderate as follows:

We won't tolerate any arguments about whether words like genocide, apartheid, colonialism, ethnic cleansing, nation-state, ethno-state are accurate or not. What's happening to the people in Gaza is a genocide and what the State of Israel is inflicting is colonialism.

Regarding Zionism: defending an ideology that is currently justifying killing over 2 million people is not a place to find nuance. We will take into consideration who is posting, what power disparities are at play, and who is being oppressed when people post about Zionism, but will be on the lookout for antisemitism.

'From the river to the sea' is a restorative call for the land and its people to live and thrive together. We are aware that it can be used as an antisemitic dog-whistle and will moderate against antisemitism but won't otherwise moderate against use of the phrase.

We will try our best to fact-check reports of propaganda and fake news. We'll always focus on protecting people's lives over spreading misinformation that encourages hate, violence, and oppression. We will ask people to include sources for any claims made, if none were given.

We will defend people over states/nations/governments/countries. The situation is not black and white, and you can support the people in Palestine without wishing harm on the people in Israel, and vice versa. We will moderate against anyone wishing harm on people, and in a way that protects the vulnerable and oppressed.

We have a diverse moderation team, and where we receive reports regarding the I/P conflict, we will wait until several of us have had a chance to look at the report before discussing action.

I had a chat with some of our community in our Discord server recently, mostly in response to us defederating furry.engineer, why we chose that action, and the general way masto.art approaches instance blocks. I've paraphrased some of the questions I was asked, and copied (and edited for clarity in a few places) my responses to them. One of the people I was talking with expressed a greater understanding, and acceptance of, our practices around moderating things like hate speech and bigotry after we'd talked through these things, so I figured I'd share it in a more accessible place if it might help with a paradigm shift around how individual people on fedi respond to instance actions around things like racism.

Q: Can we unsuspend furry.engineer?

If the admin's actions renew our faith that they will properly moderate racism and harassment yeah, but that will take time. Our trust in them has been eroded to the point that we feel it's safer not to expose the BIPoC people on our instance to that potential abuse knowing their admin is so reluctant to actually handle racism. It's not on US to excuse that behaviour for the sake of preserving connections – doing that does not help make fedi any safer for BIPoC folk. It's on other instances to do better and take reports of racism seriously – any blame for way these events unfolded is theirs.

Q: Can't we block connections with specific users rather than blocking a whole instance, which feels like punishing both communities?

We can, but if we can't trust the moderation team of another instance to properly handle reports of their users, we defederate, for the safety of our marginalised community. Take this up with furry.engineer and ask why they didn't find it necessary to deal with the racist abuse and harassment coming from their instance for weeks. We're not punishing the BIPoC folk on our instance by shielding them from racism, and no-one's convenience of accessing people on a social media network is more important than protecting marginalised groups from targeted harassment. Being able to exist on social media without being a target for harassment is a privileged position that not everyone enjoys and that most people don't have to think about.

Q: Re. restoring faith in the admin/mod team, are you waiting for them to acknowledge their mistakes and say they'll do better?

This could be one thing yes- acknowledging the harm caused, taking steps so that it doesn't happen again and communicating what those steps are, and rebuilding a reputation for good moderation which will take time. But we have unsuspended instances that have done this and demonstrably improved their moderation. Diversifying their mod team is another thing they could do, taking anti-racism training, etc..

General rambling on .art's moderation/defederation practices:

https://dotart.blog/dotart-blog/dotarts-moderation-policies-and-racism I made this post a little while back that kinda talks about that aspect of it – that we're an instance of working artists who need access to an audience, and balancing that against protecting the most marginalised people in our community that we exist for in the first place to provide a safe community where they're protected from harassment.

We know it's difficult to balance that and we think hard about decisions involving defederating sizeable instances because we know it's cutting people off from income sources, whereas if we don't, that establishes a precedent where racism/transphobia/etc. is tolerated above the rights of people to exist without abuse.

masto.art is not the best instance for someone who wants unfettered access to the whole of fedi without risk of some of that being taken away. We are very strict. We serve a particular community. We're big, which implies we might be the 'best' art instance to join for a big audience, but that's not necessarily the case and why we try to make it very clear on our /about page that we do defederate more harshly than other instances.

We're also pretty clear on our /about page that we proactively moderate; when an instance gets to a point where we expect harassment to come from there, we will defederate to spare people having to go through any abuse and harassment, rather than wait for that to happen and have to clean up afterwards.

Instance admins/mods represent the kind of content they'll allow unchallenged on their instance. So even though some of the SilverEagle posts were deleted, and the account actually migrated to its own instance, it took weeks for anything to happen at all, and the admin posted about not caring to moderate those reports. So we know that that's the kind of environment the admin is happy to have on their instance, that racism and harassment and abuse will go unchallenged for weeks, and that makes it an unsafe instance for us to federated with.

Yes, technically, we can do other instance's moderation work for them – ban the admin, individually moderate their users – but that shouldn't be our job – managing masto.art is enough work in itself and I'm not going to ask unpaid volunteers to start manually moderating all the other instances where the mod team has fucked up and we don't trust them to moderate themselves.

Q: But the problem with furry.engineer has been corrected?

Just checked our reports. There were four accounts reported from furry.engineer, SilverEagle is one of them who has moved, three others are still there. Those do not include the admin, who was giving all of it a free pass. So no, it hasn't been corrected.

The posts on furry.engineer included targeting several Black fedi users over the course of a few weeks, directing racist abuse and harassment at them, creating and pushing racist conspiracy theories about them with no foundation in truth that weren't being challenged by the instance admin at all and were allowed to exist and propagate in the face of the harm they were causing and being reported by several instances, which led to more people joining in with the abuse and lies – it was horrid. It made Black folks on fedi feel unsafe – not just those who were directly targeted, but those who were watching it all unfold without being moderated by the instance admin – and a lot of folk stepped away from fedi for a while because of it.

It was horrible, and that kind of thing has long-term ramifications on fedi as a whole and why Black folk have to continuously fight for themselves here, and continuously stress that fedi has a racism problem. The several BIPoC on our mod team, who are all struggling artists barely managing to scrape through each month, emphatically did not want to federate our community with that instance because of the behaviour from some of that instance's users that the admin didn't moderate. Our BIPoC community on masto.art no doubt feel the same – in fact we've had people move to our instance away from their own because we're safer for them than the instances they were on, because we take a hard stance against stuff like this.

We know it's stressful and anxiety-inducing being cut off from a paying audience and your source of income. We have to balance that with the severity of things other instances allow to happen and the impacts they have on the people in our community, and their safety – even before their ability to earn a living, just their ability to exist online without getting harassed off.

It is really tough. The ideal solution is that racism would not be tolerated on the source instances that it's coming from and those users would immediately be suspended.

Failing that, when racism is given a pass on those instances, the ideal solution is that people who oppose that would move off those instance to ones that takes racism (or whatever bigotry is going un-moderated) seriously.

If people did that, the bigoted instances would either cease to exist or would be left only with a tiny group of bigots that would get defederated into their own little voids, and the communities of masto.art, and other instances, could just carry on without losing anything of value.

What I would like to see, in an ideal world, is that instead of people on here going 'masto.art suspended this instance for racism so now I have to move to another instance' is, rather, 'masto.art suspended this instance for racism, so if you want to keep following me, and if you oppose racism, and want to support a fedi that's safe for BIPoC, I expect you'll be moving to an instance that doesn't give a free pass to racism'.

The people on fedi have the power to shape what kind of social media experience this is. If your instance, or the instance your friend is on, is letting its community harass Black folk, move from that instance, tell your friends to move. Tell them to stand by their principles. Don't support it. Don't make your online home in a place that allows racism.

Most people don't bother, and when we do, like when masto.art takes a hard stance against federating with instances that allow hate speech, we're the ones that get the flack for it. Which seems the wrong way around.

Part 1:

https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3553040/us-flowing-military-supplies-to-israel-as-country-battles-hamas-terrorists/

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-67095846

Both the UK and US governments are supplying military aid to the State of Israel, and both talk of defending civilians against Hamas' violent attack (and Hamas is a militia, and has killed civilians): “We will make sure Israel has what it needs to take care of its citizens, defend itself and respond to this attack” from Biden, and “humanitarian concerns and protection of civilians are very important” from Sunak.

Meanwhile, the State of Israel continues targeting civilians in Gaza, attacking refugee camps:

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/1/a-wake-up-call-world-reacts-to-jabalia-camp-attack

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/3/israel-kills-at-least-seven-palestinians-in-occupied-west-bank

Reported casualties and damage of critical infrastructure in Gaza is huge in a humanitarian crisis that is ongoing:

https://ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-26

Helping Israel to take care of its citizens is, of course, a good thing. However, the UK and US are a bit one-sided in their support of 'protecting civilians' as they aren't helping Palestinian civilians in the same way. While they are supplying military aid to the State of Israel, and the State of Israel is using that aid to continue attacking civilians in Gaza, the UK and US are complicit in aiding the State of Israel to that end.

Part 2:

Two things that are simultaneously true:

1- Hamas is a militia and their attack on Israel, where civilians were killed, and their continued threats and actions that endanger people's lives, is horrific.

2- The State of Israel inciting genocide of Palestinians, imposing an apartheid state, ethnic cleansing, and their continued attacks on civilian people and infrastructure in Gaza, is horrific.

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/11/2/a-genocide-is-under-way-in-palestine

https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2023/11/3/unsafe-in-own-home-israeli-settlers-spread-terror-in-south-hebron-hills

https://www.972mag.com/intelligence-ministry-gaza-population-transfer/

https://www.972mag.com/susiya-settler-soldier-militia-displacement/

https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/10/un-expert-warns-new-instance-mass-ethnic-cleansing-palestinians-calls

Take the side of people. Call out colonialism, apartheid, and genocide. Acknowledge that oppressed people have a right to respond with violence against their oppressors, while also acknowledging that that violence should be targeted at their oppressors, not innocent civilians. Recognise that oppressors are states and governments and militaries acting independently of the citizens that live in their states and governments and countries. Call out antisemitism, anti-Arab racism, Islamophobia, anti-Palestinian racism, anti-Muslim bigotry, terrorism. Criticise the State of Israel, the Israeli Government, and Hamas, for crimes against humanity. Defend Palestinian civilians, defend Israeli civilians. Acknowledge the right of Palestinians, Israelis, Jews, Arabs, and Muslims, to live free from oppression.

Well, this is the first post on a blog. I've never had a blog before so I'm unsure what to do. I suppose I will just write some short stories here every now and again. Some passing dreams that aren't quite worth adding to the novel or making their own book can exist here.