My man hardly ever reads my blog, and never without prompting. While he isn’t looking, can any of y’all hook me up with an artiste that spray-paints t-shirts who can do a likeness of Biggie Smalls? To order, in time for xmas?
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As I’ve been feeling the concept of leftover people lately, I’d like to do something with them. But I dunno, I’m pretty busy in life. Could I make the time? The ones I’m most inspired by at the moment are the TTRPG Kult‘s “Children of the Underworld.” Back in the day when I was inspired by something in an RPG I’d just make a character or scenario in that RPG, but for every hundred character sheets I may have played one or two sessions. A lot of waste. Now I’m like, how do I steal this without stealing it, so I can use it in my personal arting or writing?
The CotU are a lil’ HR Giger, a lil’ Clive Barker. There are comparable concepts in lots of stories. How to make this thing mine? Also, in the spirit of not starting new projects until I get some of the old ones done, do I have an existing project I could wedge them into? Of my recent spooktobers, maybe Conrad’s Sojourn, maybe Josefina y Blasfemina? I dunno. Of last year’s spooktobers, maybe Blasted? Of the year before that, maybe Hot-Handed God of Beasts? From MonsterHearts events, maybe Die Monstervitches? I’m Your Turbo Lover? Daphne?
Speaking of last year’s spooktobers and totally off topic, you can see me deliver an extemporaneous performance of Len Ross in one of the FtB podish sortacasts.
Anyhow, I percolate. Anything you’d like to see in dismal gothique leftover peoples?
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thinking things, not anything sensible enough to call a post, but stuff i might want to remember. call it memos to myself.
one – being manicesque last night when i shoulda been sleeping, i was thinking again about how the raddest music is all epic bombastic, but not sustainable for a full album. if i ever tried to make music, it might be fun to take those over the top songs from different genres and try to match their level of ruckus, make a multi-genre showcase of over-the-top musique. could digital underground’s doowutchyalike, bonnie tyler’s i need a hero, and judas priest’s sentinel ever share an album?
two – find out if fables is anything i’d ever want to do anything with, bc hey, free IP lol.
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Life’s so real, bro. Life’s so real.
Some of what I regard as the best content on my bloge is just talking about a random day I had, with bits of how it connects to larger themes of life for all of us. It’s “deep” and probably a skosh pretentious, but these posts do reflect how I genuinely think and feel about the days in question.
I’m curious, what do you think about those kind of posts, broadly? Not about one of them in particular, just in general.
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I know a guy who uses AI tools to aid his imagination. For example, he’ll think of a subject to put into a story and then discuss it at length with the chat bot, see if any other cool ideas emerge from that discussion. I gave this a try with a novel I’d begun a few years ago but never finished. I had some broad notions but hadn’t drilled down the specifics for a lot of the story, and didn’t remember what the hell some of the notes in my outline were talking about.
Anyway, I mention a character and a few details, then asked ChatGPT to come up with some more information about them, and it was always the most bland, obvious, and generic ideas possible. A modern person with life-themed magic working as a medical professional, a death-themed magic user living in a cemetery. Need a little pathos in backstory? Mourning loss of a spouse. Ooh. I’m not using it the same way as my home boy who was having more success. This probably isn’t the best use for it, but it’s kinda funny to see. Not only is the bot bland and inoffensive with its language choices in normal discourse, the ideas it generates are also as safe and tap water as possible.
Like others have said, any writer that’s even a little offbeat, a little wacky, is not about to be threatened by bots. It might be interesting to behold what the first gen of formulaic genre fiction bots shit out. Or will it? The very way in which this technology works might be incompatible with making interesting happen. The funny thing is that the less creative writers out there are very much the same.
So many people on the internet are yakking with so little individuality that they may as well be bots, and sprinkled among them are indeed a lot of bots. Aside from the deceptive aspect of skewing perception of how many people hold this or that belief, of spreading advertising or propaganda, does it really matter whether or not those people are bots?
My boyfriend was writing a book where the coterie of villains were culled from archetypes of internet creeps – various ‘gaters, incels, terfs, nazis, etc. In his research he attempted to understand each of these types of shitlords as human beings, and the one he could never get a handle on was incels. They speak in memes and catchphrases so much that – in addition to repeating each other endlessly – it was impossible to detect a core personality or reasoning. They dehumanized themselves before we even had a chance to do the same.
Bots, boring people, they’re indistinguishable from each other, and I don’t think that really matters. We have to moderate both categories in much the same ways. This is our lives now, in the cyberpunk dystopia.
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You may recall I have occasionally treated my boyfriend like a cat, in moments of unconscious error. Today I almost put cat food on my own plate. Perhaps, rather than seeing my boyfriend as a simple animal, I see all humans as socially interchangeable with beasts – myself included.
OK, that doesn’t explain why, but at least it looks less like I’m demoting my lovin’ man to domestic creachur status.
Corvide continues. Paxlovid NyQuil and DayQuil are surely helping. Science suggests the vaxxing helped, and as bad as it’s been I have to imagine I’d be dead as fried chicken if not for that. Still, no alternate universe view of me being foolish enough to antivax for comparison, so I admit room for error.
I spilled pop on my computer so this was made on a phone, slowly and painfully. I won’t post much til I get that resolved. Also not answering comments much, but thanks for the support, really.
See y’all later!
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I am gonna have to take about a week off work for surgery soonish, without pay. Since I live pretty close to the wire, it would be a lot more comfortable if I could raise about $500 somehow. What would work for this purpose? I’d rather not have to do additional outside work, like say, $500 worth of art commissions. Maybe something arty, I dunno. What would make you shower me with fliff like a stripper?
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Russia invaded Ukraine, which blows. Murderous dickbags gonna murder. Anyway, I’m supposed to stand in judgment of that, but I’m in a glass house. Gotta check out the periphery before I throw Slava Ukrainis. Who is the US military occupying this week? Who are we raining mutilation and ruin upon? How about our buddies, like the Saudis? Israel? I’ve lost track again.
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End of February, 4 MonsterHearts as yet unposted. Well, I’ll see about getting them out within a week or so. C’est les artes.
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My old roommate Jed was more amused by the cruelty of nature than I could ever be, and coming from a rural place, was fond of anecdotes about city slickers being mangled because they were too affectionate or trusting with wild carnivores. Once he told the rest of us a story about watching a video where somebody filming a baby seal got their face bitten nasty.
Around the same epoch of my life, I became acquainted with the Wu-Tang Clan’s first album. In the song “Shame,” Raekwon the Chef says, “When you see me on the reel, formin’ like Voltron, remember I get deep like a navy SEAL.” Perhaps because of Jed’s rude little tale, I really thought that guy was saying, “Remember I got teeth like a baby seal.”
It makes sense. Like, a baby seal is cute, but harbors deadly weapons. Beware, despite Raekwon’s good looks, he can hurt you. But no, he was not likening himself to a juvenile pinniped. All these years later, my dreams remain crushed.
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