Whatever you do, try.

Just don't be mediocre.

The spiral of the Void is formed by our reluctance to try. We empty ourselves into it while avoiding struggle. Death of our spirit follows, mediocrity ensues.

We take refuge in the Void formed of muffled voices all saying the same word, echoing and resonating within the empty hall between our ears. Its sound is deafening but also an oppressive silence that keeps us from moving. The world stops as our death approaches and the notion of speaking grows incomprehensible. We stare blankly into the Void waiting, yearning for an out. Everyone seems to be experiencing the same existential emptiness, most of them are enthralled by it, frantically looking for it to continue.

My eyes widen as whatever is forming in front of them gets closer until it fuses with myself and I see it while it inhabits my mind. It digs deeper than any thought I've ever conjured and unclogs my brain, every single idea that has been muted by the Void pouring out. The air cracks and breaks the silence as every sound hits me at the same time. I breathe out and fill my lungs with air for the first time in hours. I look around and the world is beautiful and filled to the brim with things to love.

The Void looms in the corner, waiting for me to forget how it feels when I let it into my life.

We give ourselves to the Entity of Trying so we may keep struggling.

Book of Nightmares, 1, 1

Should the Art portal have a Blam system?

Given that the art portal is way more active now than when it was implemented (correct me there if I'm wrong), is there a justification for it not having the same system as Movies and Games?

I think it should. I enjoy going through the portal and finding new artists constantly. I even go in the Undiscovered section and scout people who I think should be seen more. Thing is, there are days where the portal is filled with low effort sketches (which shouldn't even be there), variation spam, upload barrages from the same artist, etc. Given that the portal has 4 items per row it's easy to miss work that is buried under tons of pieces.

If you want to be less drastic, you could even have it so 'Blammed' posts are simply removed from the portal but not the profile.

I understand there is always going to be more content in the art portal due to the time it takes to make it. That said, I think the Blam/Save system makes a ton of sense to avoid saturation. Calibration would be needed because the Art portal has generally higher scores than the other portals, so there is that issue to solve I guess.

Edit:

It could even be like other sites, where there is a Blam/Save system for you first few posts and after you passed 5 or so times, you post directly to the site.

And btw, I don't like the scouting system, I think the Blam/Save system should ultimately replace it completely.

One Piece 1044 gave me sad

Beloved manga I've read for 15 years has fallen into the worst shonen trap.

[SPOILERS AHEAD]

So, One Piece is in the same group as Naruto, Bleach, and DB now, where the main character becomes a God out of nowhere and receives power up after power up to catch up with the power level the story requires. The mundane Gum Gum Fruit is now the Sun God Fruit, which undermines so much of what Luffy accomplished with it. He isn't resourceful anymore, he is a God. He isn't the chaotic disruptive force that has to try hard to beat the obstacles to his dream, he gets the power up because he lost and he shouldn't lose.

I've seen people celebrating this, and I don't really get it. The manga will now commence its last stretch, where Luffy is on the level of Kaido, BM, and probably Shanks because he activated his DLC buff.

Awakening was a shit thing to add to the story, but this... this is absolute garbage.

This is a tutorial on Thing

I'll present it assertively and reasonably so you think it's the right way of doing Thing.

Here is the body of the tutorial, where I rip-off every other tutorial I've read on Thing and present it to you without citing my sources. This way I look better and the material seems more novel, even if I'm just rehashing what an artist said 100 years ago, and whose materials are better narrated and easily accessible through the internet.

In this part I also make mistakes or assumptions I've not studied properly, but that people who read this won't be able to notice. It's not my fault if the people I'm ripping-off were wrong.

Here, have some shaming into not doing things the way I claim they should be done, it's not like there is hundreds of thousands of artist who have never ever even heard of this information and are doing just fine.

That's all for today. Please refrain from pointing out how this tutorial contradicts the way I do Thing and how its contents are only the result of trying to find something to say that doesn't make me look like the fraud I am.

Thank you! And keeeeeep on practicing!

Smiling Friends, co-created by the beautiful green and retired goblinman himself, is trending in HBO Max Argentina

LETS GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Disconnecting

A short blog about living in the real world instead of the internet.

I've been finding more and more reasons to leave the internet as a consumer of content and a commentator lately.

I've realized I talk about things I don't care about just because the option is there, and that people reply to that just because the option is there. Had we found each other in the real world we would just ignore each other and I'm willing to bet we would both be better off that way. Maybe this is because when interacting with people online I can't really relate to who they are at all, when outside of the internet I have some sense of who I'm talking to even if we've never met before. I can't hear an accent, or see how old someone is, or look at their hands to see what they've been through, or at their clothes to have a sense of their financial status, or to their default expression to empathize with what they are going through or to understand their mood.

Everything online is so generic and sterilized that it becomes frustrating to interact with anyone. My culture is so different from the general culture I encounter on the internet that I feel completely out of place. All the conversations are out of my realm of interest or the go out very quickly. Even in conversations about my country, by fellow countrymen, everyone acts so artificially I could be talking to a bot and not even notice.

I mentioned in another post how my day started in a bad mood because of a garbage comment section from AppleInsider. I happen to be interested in the upcoming Mac Minis Pro and Max, as I want one of those models to be my next working computer. For that reason I go to AppleInsider to check if there are any news about them or on the rumored March event where they should be officially announced. Alas, a news article about Texas suing Meta or something for misuse of private data regarding facial recognition. This kind of stuff is interesting to me, so I click on the thing and the first commenter is some asshole not even engaging with the post but rather just posting his gut reaction to the word Texas. After that the comment section went to shit about US elections and I was left hopelessly trying to see if anybody even cared about the article, but it had derailed already. Those bitter people just shared their bitterness and used the platform given to them to spout whatever unchangeable belief they have. It's like seeing religious zealots burning their neighbors to prove they are true believers and should be welcome to their version of paradise.

It's so hard to find content that focuses on actively filtering out that kind of behavior by simply not talking about it and by forcing people to not engage in that way. For this reason, I've been shedding stuff from my life. I've successfully stopped listening to podcasts that I'm not absolutely interested in because I found them to be disruptive to my own thinking patterns. Even podcasts about things I care about end up devolving into current events and news because that gives them more views, so I'm very strict on which ones I give a listen to. I've stopped watching youtube videos about current events, whether they are on the entertainment front, politics, or whatever. I actually feel bad about this, since that's how I ended up becoming an artist and how I got many of the jobs I've done over the years, but it's not worth it anymore. They are just distractions from what is actually important to me and I don't really need them at all to live or to work. There are so few shows and movies I end up enjoying that I honestly would rather enjoy them on my own and not hear anyone else have their input on them.

So, why am I making this public? The short answer that I'm making this public so people who are in this same situation know that this happens. I started getting into content that I genuinely enjoyed and over the years I've grown into a position of needing the content to be there instead of actually enjoying it. I ended up fucking up the way I think, the topics I think about, the way I talk to people, and the way I behave. I don't blame anyone in particular other than myself, but this sucks. I hate making something and while I'm making it thinking how a particular person would react, or imagine all the shitheads I dislike commenting on it. I just don't want that shit, I've gotten tired of it. Too much input from invading sources.

That said, I don't want pity comments, or 'advice'. This is just for me to make public like I would a piece of art. I don't really want any input, I've had enough of that to last me a lifetime.

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(https://www.etsy.com/listing/1166005129/steamforged-sorcery-soft-enamel-embossed)

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(I designed them for Actus :D)

Post-news regret

Just like with post-nut regret, don't you ever think 'why did I even open this site' after reading the news for any amount of time?

Every single time I read any news sites, news related twitter accounts, or get a whatsapp message with some news in it, they offer little to no relevant information for my daily life and make me feel worse.

What's the point? Why do I even go back? I don't understand it, really. It's garbage. It's like eating rotten food, it offers no benefits. It's portrayed as 'relevant information' but it never is. In reality my life was better without that information, and the information was probably wrong or biased anyway.

More and more of it seems to be trying to make me feel worse. Or to feel something toward people ('hate this group', 'follow this other group'). It's not information, it's marketing and opinion. And my problems are the same, outside of anything they present: what do I have to send to clients today? what will I make for dinner? will I go to the gym? will we hangout a bit with my gf? is my family alright? are my in-laws alright? will the Nuggets play? does the bird nesting outside have enough food? ...

Why do I add outside garbage to that? What the hell do I care about someone being mad at Elon Musk? or who does what in a country I'll never visit?

What do I care if some politician says anything at all? their job is to pretend they are capable for managing something they can't begin to understand...

'But your life is affected by these things'

Is it, really? And if it is, how does having second hand knowledge about it help me to reduce how much it affects my life? Can I really do something with the information presented or should I just feel doom and gloom? How useful is it for me to know a 5 year-old was murdered by his mom and her gf? or how a 3 year-old was murdered by her grandmother? or how a 20-something-year-old was killed after someone took his car and crashed it with him on top? or how the same people who've been in some branch of power for decades now have all the answers?

So, whenever I'm done reading the news I always think 'now I feel worse, ashamed, and with no idea on why I even did it'. I should probably just quit it, since it's shit anyway.

(this is not a partisan position; left, right, center, official communications, unofficial channels, conspiracy theorists on every side, insane wackos that seem to change positions on everything every 5 minutes, hypocrites, honest people, fact checkers [these are the worst, honestly], saints, and demons... and yes, goblins too)

An orc that cooks, yet there is more to him that meets the eye.

Great food, adventures, and comedy! MORCSTER CHEF, by my buddy Actus, is now available as a novel :D!!

Get it on Amazon! (Paperback, Kindle, and Audiobook)

PROTIP: SHAME PEOPLE INTO SHARING YOUR BELIEFS

It's the best way to make sure everyone totally listens to you.

While doing it, don't forget to pretend you are on a higher level intellectually. It is also of vital importance that you disregard the other person's life, that you bring in loads of numbers you have no capacity to understand, and a good old 'you are worst than [genocidal maniac of your choice]'.

If a concern regarding your belief is brought up, just armor up with appeals to authority and repeat this mantra 'We are right. We are rightful. We've done no evil. We've promoted no evil. We are life. They are death.'

Now, if the situation evolves and turns out you were actually wrong in blindly trusting the words of people-who-have-their-jobs-fortunes-and-influence-on-the-line-which-they-are-desperate-to-keep, don't worry. You can still parrot these people's new words, rinse and repeat every time they are found out lying. After all, how could you have known, right?

No proliferation of the right ideas would be possible without generalization. Remove individuality from all equation, you don't have time to waste actually listening and discerning a nail from a screw, you have to shame as many people in a day as possible, your group requires it. The future of humanity on the line, surely. Individuals don't matter, only the categories in which you can fit them do. If you can't fit them in the proper categories, then you are not putting enough effort. Deform anyone who requires deformation if you must in order to make sure those who are not Us are Them. You can't be heard listening to a discernable voice. To you, it should all sound like the desperate screeching of an injured beast. It just doesn't know better, even if it does.

Once again, always repeat:

"We are right. We are rightful. We've done no evil. We've promoted no evil. We are life. They are death."