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november 2022

hi! i'm exhausted (have been all month -_-) so this log'll be short! my thesis is mostly wrapped up though (at the time of posting, all that's really left to do is defend it (← saying it like that makes it sound soooo fancy), in just a week), so i'll be free from this mortal coil and into neet-dom very very soon :3

since i've implemented screenshots into the project (it was pretty simple all things considered ^-^), i've got a bunch of nice images to share from it, but the executable itself i'm still not 100% sure when i'll post. plus there's a very central issue here: i like to keep a certain degree (or illusion) of anonymity online that i don't think i can manage if i do post it. which kinda sucks, because i want to! it's work i'm proud of and want to put in my online spaces!

as far as non-thesis art goes, still in the trenches. there's some ceramics that'll get fired soon, i'll post them next month. i don't think i'll do too well in this class; i've said it before and i'll say it again, prof's a bitch, and i don't really wanna talk about this project tbh. it speaks for itself right? they're androgynes, that's all there is to it.

speaking of that, remember this wip from september? hadn't really touched it much since then lmao. could have polished it more, but i decided it was better to just have something finished quick, even if it's kinda rough.

as usual, this is a compressed version, and the full res painting is on my socials (cohost link this time, though it's on tumblr too). truth be told, i could be hosting these here on neocities (it's not like i'm scraping for storage; i'm at around 46mb right now — out of 1gb)

i really like this kind of color play in shadows, and half of me wants to keep working with fucked up colors just for the fun of the process. the other half is thinking about sticking to greyscale / sepias for the (short-term) future though. or at least low saturation in general.

i dunno what i'll do once all this is over and i have more time for art tbh. i'd like to take commissions again, i had to stop lest i went cuckoo bananas but i miss drawing people's silly little guys. purely figurative art can be pretty relaxing (when i'm not worrying about it looking stale). in fact, i miss a lot of things; the only thing worse than making art is not making it.

interesting reads:

• ghost pines: the haunted forests of a machine learning dataset
• digital rocks: how hollywood killed celluloid
• i was gonna put my cohost reading tag here but, embarassingly, posts i tagged with it don't show up on tag search because. well of course they don't, it doesn't make sense for them to show up (unless i added text to the rehost probably). anyway, this will have to wait until they add per-page tag search, because i don't wanna go after them and link them all individually. this is so embarassing i made a pinned post and all :^|
• aquazone — expensive digital fish ← sharing just one of them though. just for fun
• my favorite toki pona song, explained in english ← oops actually sharing two posts. because this song fucks SO HARD. i haven't practiced toki pona in forever and honestly never understood more than very basic sentences anyway. i wanna go back to studying it etc. whatever. listen to the song, read the post, read up on toki pona if you never heard of it. here's a nice little toki pona course too, it's mostly what i used to study way back when (like. last year)

media

games

• lunacid (2022): i love how simple and straightforward the mechanics are. it's kinda cozy tbh. i've grown so used to rogue and soulslikes where death is mostly inconsequential that it took me a bit to adjust to losing progress when i die, and it made me hesitant to explore at first but tbh the levels aren't that big. very excited for the full release!
• american mcgee's alice (2000): insane that i never played madness returns back in the height of my alice in wonderland love as a ps3 owner. like the timing and aesthetics align super well but i only found out about these games this year. anyway, if you know me you know that platforming is not my thing, especially 3d platforming, but i really liked this game (even though the platforming is often drifty and annoying too) — up until the water level, when i canned it. i do plan on going back and finishing it if i can figure out if there's a godmode or something, because that was just sick and twisted. here's a download + guide on how to run it on win10.
• risk of rain 2 (2020): oh hell yeah it's like ultrakill except i enjoy it. i love roguelikes, i love the mix of structure and randomization, and the multiplayer is really fun and chill too! it's like paralel play kinda :)
• apocryphauna (2022): neat little horror game, fun use of glitches. did not actually work on linux for me (i'm on mint) though :(
• approaches (2019): an impeccable mini atmospheric vignette. the sound design here is show stopping, the sound of keys is perfect. you have got to play this.
• the barnacle goose experiment (2022): "an abiogensis body horror idle clicker", i think it also resembles those alchemy type games where you put elements together. really really cool
• mapfriend (2022): style over substance, but my god is it stylish. i didn't find it very scary but the atmosphere is solid, and it's really nice and short (and free), so give it a shot anyway
• stargazing 64 (2021): fun short little vignette ^v^
• stories untold (2017): this is a short(-ish) horror interactive fiction divided in four chapters (the titular stories), and it's made me even more excited for no code's silent hill game (townfall), you have no idea. it's really good, with a gameplay that's beautifully pared back and elegant. my favorite segments were the text adventures for sure, they're really effective

movies and series

• wendell and wild (2022): it's pretty fun, the animation and score are great, but the pacing struggles a little bit in places, like there was supposed to be more stuff that got cut. it's ultimately fine though. like. i'm 21. whatever.
• interview with the vampire (2022): duplicate entry from last month, but the finale only came out november 6th. god what a waste of a great cast. the quality just went downhill after the first two episodes. don't wanna repeat myself so i'll just confirm that yes, the series' climax really was lestat's murder, and even that was entirely undercut by molloy talking his usual patronizing shit as if the audience is full of babies. i'm glad it's over and won't be coming back for season 2. SAD. well there's 70's sexploitation lesbian vampire movies.
• barbarian (2022): there's a minor tooth brushing motif in this movie. enough to be noticeable but it doesn't mean anything. it's a mess overall, like three movies in a trenchcoat (negative). could have worked as a game maybe? like resident evil vii and village? ugh idk maternity horror is seldom done well. there's a lot of setup, weird rushed payoff in the third act. eh idk it's interesting but i don't necessarily reccommend it. my friends liked it though, and it was fun watching it with them.
• the godfather (1972): god this movie is far too good. stunning shots and scenes and acting. but yall already know that.
• vulvine: reine d'extase (2022): short animation. the art style is beautiful at times and kinda awkward at others imo, but it's interesting regardless. it was taken down! not sure where it can be currently watched, just... idk poke around. edit: it's back up (as of 10 july 2023)
• le frisson des vampires (1971): first thing about this movie is it has a killer soundtrack, and often very pretty cinematography. surprisingly i even like the husband in this one, he's kinda got butch swag. of all the 1971 lesbian vampire movies i watched this year (← normal sentence), this is probably the weakest (and least sexy, and really only a "lesbian" movie on a technicality imo), but it's also quite good. it's like a 3 and a 9 at once, and i recommend it just for how silly it gets at times, if nothing else. i've some other jean rollin movies on my watchlist too, how could i not
• v for vendetta (2005): good thing i'm not british for many reasons but in this case so i can't tell whether or not natalie portman's doing a good accent lmao. i'm sad that the annihilation movie kinda ruined her for me (it was not my intention i promise i have nothing against her really), but i think she'll get redeemed. i'll probably watch black swan eventually. anyway, nice documentary about life on england! it gets a little lame at points (my fault for not having watched it in high school like my friends i suppose) but it's earnest ^⁻^

books and manga

• the hellbound heart (clive barker): yea it's hellraiser, it's pretty good, not much to say about it :)
• blood meridian (cormac mccarthy): on one hand it might have been a mistake to read such a dense book in its original english, but in the other mccarthy's use of language is so beautiful and raw that i'm glad i first encountered it directly. i need to revisit this book in the future, and probably as a portuguese translation instead lmao
• watchmen (alan moore): for some reason i thought this would be harder to get into? idk. it isn't though, it's just comics. very good comics nevertheless.

be seeing you!

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