THEY'A TRIMMED THE HERBS!

I've got nothing to say on the MCM or AO3 - but in The Very idea of Consumption Graeber tries to tease out the necessity of marketed, individualised desire and consumption for the development of capitalism.

Graeber identifies a shift in the philosophy of desire. Medieval moralists constructed a conception of desire as an internal sensation that whilst motivating action, can never be fulfilled in the material world (a relation that sounds relevant to the cast of Zero). If acquiring power over objects of desire is futile, this precludes a development of a consumer class; "Economically, the Middle Ages were still the time of target incomes, in which the typical reaction to ... almost any increase in popular wealth was immediately diverted into communal feasts, parades, and collective indulgences."

Just as Red Dust tries to focus on the on-the-ground developments that force policy change, Graeber recasts the instigator of a philosophy of individual desire away from Descartes' division of "Imagination and experience" that could lead one to "try to satisfy one’s desires in what we have come to think of as the real world" and to MacPherson's "possessive individualism" where people "increasingly came to see themselves as isolated beings who define their relation with the world not in terms of social relations but in terms of property rights."

And this is perhaps how the enjoyment of media began to be cast as capitalist consumption, even as nothing is destroyed or consumed in any way. "When you eat something, you do indeed destroy it but at the same time, it remains included in you in the most mate­rial of senses. Eating food became the perfect idiom for talking about desire and gratification in a world in which ... all human relations were being reimagined as questions of property."

So is there any artistic production anymore that is not shaped by the environment of capitalism? Otaku or Trekkies; the act of writing shipping fic is the act of a person engaged in unanalienated production within a community and is hardly defined by its embedding in media produced for capitalist gain.

Insofar as social life is and always has been about the mutual construction of human beings, the ideology of consumption has been endlessly effective in helping us forget this. The misuse of consumption to refer to a range of activities from the destruction of the climate for games of speculative accumulation to a amateur rock band practicing in a garage makes it impossible to see how to build a better world; it blinds us to the possibilities @canmom​ suggests of using the social and physical infrastructure capital as left us to build a empowering and sustainable world, neglecting and forgetting those aspects tainted by capital.

I think the distinction between tropes/fanfic and "real literature" (which imo can be independently published and not part of the western academic canon and still be 'real') is not necessarily a semantic distinction but moreso one of quality. If it's something mass-produced or cliche or pandering it's a trope. If it's something meaningful it's an archetype. Of course there's a high degree of subjectivity there, but, there's that much subjectivity in this entire discussion as a whole since we're talking about high-brow vs low-brow art in the first place. But personally what I would consider low-brow is what's popular, but not popular as in 'well-liked', popular as in 'this was very obviously made for no other purpose than to generate profit and it did exactly that'. Artwork that's essentially just product, made for mass-appeal and marketability, and all the fan-works that simply reflect and reproduce those writer-slash-advertiser's same capitalist values. That's the connotation I get for 'tropes'. Just mass-appeal for the hell of it. Why is it fair that the zeitgeist of the old days contained characters and stories made for creative and expressive purposes whereas nowadays we have characters and stories made to sell toys and movie tickets.

here is something i'd like you to think about: like comrade Bela Belasz you use 'popular' and 'commercial' interchangably. Belasz argues (2010, pg 212) that the production of a film takes place on an industrial scale. it is the "collective achievement of the scriptwriter, director, cameraman, set designer and actors" along with the "producer's perpetual meddling" (today we'd add CGI animation studios and so on). because of the cost involved and because of the level of coordination in the production, for Belasz, a film relies on its "universal comprehensibility and popularity, in other words, [its] profitability" (pg 211). every (collective) artistic decision will be tempered by the injunction not to put this popularity in jeoprady. this is the extent to which popular and commercial are interchangable in mass culture; if a work is to succeed as a commodity it has to be capable of achieving popularity.

[1.2k words, obtuse]

but look here: for Belasz, this popular imperative snatched cinema from the bourgeoisie. "An art form that has grown into a major industry could not remain the privilege of the ruling classes. It is a dialectical feature of the capitalist economy that on occasion a privilege has to be sacrificed for the sake of profit" (pg 212). the commodification of cinema in some sense democratizes cinema; it is forced to move from a vehicle of élite valorization to a Volksgeist where several contradictory aspirations contest. so for Belasz this popularity is not irredeemable. while popularity, as he sees it, "inevitably lowers the level of expression initially," the audience is educated by the medium, is quickly bored of the safe and trite, and itself demands more challenging work. the audience and the medium develop together. soon the appetite for challenging work is placing strain on the limits of universal comprehensibility. the availability of niche cinema waxes and wanes (there was a time when Sony set a high watermark for sponsoring independent cinema, then quickly stopped supporting it; Netflix and Adult Swim both license a lot of small shows and give their creators an essentially unprecedented level of freedom to make television, at the same time as mass market toy-driven shlock like Disney's Marvel is reaching its zenith) the reasons for which deserve an adequate empirical explanation. but as i see it, commercial forces actually habitually clear the way for sophisticated art.

now it sounds like i'm defending the Value-form. that's not really what i mean. it's just that your criticism of art under capitalism is reactionary. to rescue art you would restore feudalism. then whenever Disney starts making films you actually like you'll stop complaining. but what is frightening about capitalism isn't what it takes from us, it's what it offers us. Orwell's 1984 of repressed and deluded prisoners isn't half as frightening as Skinner's Walden Two of free-range happy lemmings. the only question worth asking, to my way of thinking, is what emancipatory potentials are opened by the dynamic under discussion?

now here's where i really disagree with you, anon. according to you, fan works "reflect and reproduce" the "writer/advertiser's" "capitalist values." my disagreement is twofold. my first case is already obvious: even the original artistic commodity doesn't simply or exclusively contain capitalist values; it is forced by the conditions of its production to accomodate multiple aspirations, such that even completely uncritical fan work can express values antithetical to capitalist domination. but here is my second complaint: fan works are NOT commodities. further, they are not even mass culture; they are the immediate, personal expression of a single creator (or doujin circle). therefore, they are under no obligation to hitch themselves to universal comprehensibility, popularity or profitability. they are not determined by the same market conditions as the original work. this means that fan works have complete autonomy and can achieve any level of sophistication without anxiety. this is a luxury only enthusiasts have access to today. even Alexandre Dumas was paid by the word. and if you actually go and read any fanfiction you'll find out that their authors do not recognize any obligation to reflect or reproduce the values of the original work. in fact it's an absurd idea. most fanfiction authors tear the original to pieces; they ruthlessly criticize it and then submit their own corrected version.

but i think when we talk of fan works like this we're sometimes missing the point. perhaps all fan works are works of art, but they are often also other things too, and artistic values might not be the guiding values in either their creation or reception. fanart of a character often serves a devotional function; people have a favourite character who becomes something like an imaginary friend (or a waifu), and to satisfy this companionship such a person will surround themselves with fan art, draw it all the time or comission someone else to draw it for them. at other times the character appears in fanart as an ubermarionette, something like a stock character, not substantially different from other tropes(!) like the maid outfit. in this respect Touhou is comparable to Harlequinade: every character is reducible to a handful of memorable relationships and quirks and can be arranged in an endless number of comic situations. meanwhile most fanfiction seems to serve a function within the fandom community, establishing the writer's identity, satisfying, shocking or pleasuring their peers, and so on. these are uses of drawing and writing other than artistic expression that people find worth doing.

to you this will all sound horrifying. by absorbing characters as imaignary friends and mediating interpersonal dynamics with retellings of light novels these fans are brainwashing themselves with the Value-form! gasp! but it just isn't true. let me tell you something: commodities don't exist for very long. a use-value is a commodity insofar as it is being exchanged. when i am making it it is not yet a commodity; it merely expresses a potential to become a commodity. and after i have purchased it, when i get home and unwrap it, it is no longer a commodity. now i am embracing a use-value. its potential to become a commodity expresses an influence over its production (as we have expressed), and it might express an influence over how i interact with it at home (if i hoped to sell it later, for example). but when eating spinach, the commodity-form is not nourishing me, it is the actual protein that i'm consuming. when i fuck an onahole i am not reproducing capitalist values any more than i am the human species. it's a silly idea.

now let's apply it to characters from commercial properties: how often do i encounter Zero from Drakengard 3 as a commodity? in fact never; i cannot buy Zero, only a token of zero (a game featuring her, a 3d figure, some lewd fanart; or an NFT, the token on everyone's minds). characters can never actually even become commodities (with the possible exception of 'adoptables', characters associated with a customary form of ownership). i might encounter Zero as someone's property, for example if i tried to sell my own Zero tokens at a large enough scale that it attracted Square Enix's attention. but what is being limited is my right to make products derived from this character, not my access to the character herself. in fact, what is limited is only my access to elements of her specific design and so forth. the breathless moments i spend with her in my imagination are completely authentic, unalienated, impenetrable to the form of Value.

Lamo@tumblr. Im coral@empty.cafe we’ve got 95% uptime and a I know you in real life signup policy

I’m getting transphobe coworkers coming to me for absolution like I’m a priest

Im like girl. They don’t let trannies in the church you’ve got to forgive yourself

Rather than reading my book pile I’m rendering it!

pouët.net

shape of a thought [first demo]

demo for Linux / Windows, n/a at MountainBytes 2025

I put my demo on Pouet. I'm a real demoscener now :D

Source code (Rust+Bevy) here; and for that matter, video:

on a personal journey to get hot again

some stuff.

I havent been linking my youtube videos, or posting much at all lately. Because I’ve been ill, and so even when i do post videos (produced a a much slower rate than i used to) I forget to link them here or on twitter.

I have managed to pick twitch streaming back up again though (go check me out also i have a discord server where i announce schedules etc) and the last few days ive been working on a new overlay and start/end panels etc.Example of how it looks in context:

I’ve gone with a vaporwave design and I’m really pleased with how theyve come out. And now that I’ve settled on a style i can make banner art etc and update all my channels and so on to match!

These were all made by me, to the point of hand-dithering the frame corners, and all the photos used were hand-edited by myself from cc0 stock-photography.

under the cut: the thanks for watching panel, and an overlay for 4:3 aspect ratio games (which is still a WIP)

Keep reading

🌊

If this resonates with you, and your device suggests "would you like to use a passkey", do it.

grug hate two factor authentication. first grug have to remember password. then grug have to point out which cave painting has birds. now they want grug to hunt and gather new thing called numbers. grug won’t do it grug miss the bird paintings grug was getting pretty good at birds.