foggedupforsaken
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166 posts
Latest Posts by foggedupforsaken
i unironically believe electricity is the closest thing we have to magic in this universe. consider:
it's basically what human "souls" are made of (your consciousness is the result of miniscule amounts of electric charge jumping between neurons in your brain)
when handled incorrectly or encountered in the wild, it is a deadly force that can kill you in at least half a dozen different ways
when treated respectfully and channeled into the proper conduits, it is a power source that forms the backbone of modern society
if you engrave the right sigils into a rock and channel electricity into it, you can make the rock think
there is a dedicated caste of mages (electrical engineers) tasked with researching it in ivory towers
whatever the fuck Galvani was doing with those frog legs
look at this and just try to tell me it isn't a kind of summoning circle
Solarpunk, realism, dystopia: a rant
Hopefully this is helpful to someone out there đ¸
You can find the Prompts podcast here, I drew some of the covers :D Also check out this digital library full of Creative Commons Solarpunk art (neither of these are sponsored).
đŚSomewhat shameful plugđŚ
I would highly appreciate if you threw me a couple bucks on Buy Me a Coffee or bought a commission, my money number is only getting smaller these days đđ¤
Oh my gosh. I just found this website that walks you though creating a believable society. It breaks each facet down into individual questions and makes it so simple! It seems really helpful for worldbuilding!
how to grow the fuck up
here's a list of programs/sites/whatever that were helpful to me when i was moving away from using spotify & back to downloading music:
soulseek - peer to peer downloading program, has most music you'd want. there's "rules" to it though and the UI is a little confusing, but you can figure it out. there's tutorials. i believe in you
cobalt.tools, ytiz.xyz, yt-dlp - mp3 downloaders, for the songs that you can't find on soulseek
musicbee - music player, extremely customiseable. reminds me of when i used itunes back in the day. has a lot of good features, including syncing music over to your phone
lastfm & listenbrainz - sites that keep track of your listening stats. i'd recommend this even if you still choose to use a music streaming service
syncedlyrics - cmd thing that gets you timed song lyrics, like the ones spotify has. there's no UI but it's easy enough to use. just grab the lyrics and timestamps it spits out and paste it into musicbee
music presence - program that shows what song you're listening to in your discord status, in case you use discord and enjoy the thought of other people seeing what you're listening to, which i do for some reason
i'm not going to lie to you and say that switching away from spotify/streaming services is an effortless task, it took me half a whole day of nonstop Work to get all my music downloaded and sorted out, but i will say that it was worth it!! and you should do it đ if you want to
i have turned it into a letterboxd list: good films that are free on the internet archive!!!! Each film is linked in the notes on letterboxd. this will be continually updated so it's a good link to save if you want to keep up!
great films available on the internet archive part two
first post + the archive collection with all of them
la haine (1995) dir. mathieu kassovitz
carnival of souls (1962) dir. herk harvey
andrei tarkovsky's filmography
a nightmare on elm st. dir wes craven
possession (1981) dir. andrzej ĹşuĹawski
the silence of the lambs (1991) dir. jonathan demme
safe (1995) dir. todd haynes
psycho (1960) dir. alfred hitchcock
cops (1922) dir. buster keaton
sherlock jr (1924) dir. buster keaton
when harry met sally... (1989) dir. rob rainer
the bride of frankenstein (1935) dir. james whale
man with a movie camera (1927) dir. dziga vertov
coffee and cigarettes (2003) dir. jim jarmusch
m (1931) dir. fritz lang
it happened one night (1934) dir. frank capra
casablanca (1942) dir. michael curtiz
purple noon (1960) dir. rene clement
carrie (1976) dir. brian de palma
eraserhead (1977) dir. david lynch
they live (1988) dir. john carpenter
female trouble (1974) dir. john waters
do the right thing (1989) dir. spike lee
wings (1927) dir. william a wellman
fallen angels (1995) dir. wong kar wai
velvet goldmine (1998) dir. todd haynes
black panthers (1968) dir. agnes varda
american psycho (2000) dir. mary harron
the manchurian candidate (1962) dir. john frankenheimer
girlfriends (1978) dir. claudia weill
more to come ⥠glad you all like movies.
im sure someone already made a post about it but i came across a ublock origin add-on that blacklists around 950 AI websites and disables AI overview âď¸ so u can be free from seeing AI in your search
genuinely wild to me when I go to someone's house and we watch TV or listen to music or something and there are ads. I haven't seen an ad in my home since 2005. what do you mean you haven't set up multiple layers of digital infrastructure to banish corporate messaging to oblivion before it manifests? listen, this is important. this is the 21st century version of carving sigils on the wall to deny entry to demons or wearing bells to ward off the Unseelie. come on give me your router admin password and I'll show you how to cast a protective spell of Get Thee Tae Fuck, Capital
"its not safe for me to transition right now" girl have you read the news its not safe to drink milk or eat medium rare cheeseburgers or go in public without a respirator anymore stop making excuses lets get you some estrogen
The Archangel and His Machine, V1
yes its based on 'Ivan the Terrible and His Son'
some in-progress screenshots/behind-the-scenes under the cut~
Sketching, lineart (which was abandoned eventually, as you can see lmfao) and basic color/lighting blocking:
I created mockup poses using DAZ3D, as well as using Dotflare's 'HD Gabriel' model and Xetirano's 'V1 model' as visual references for drawing some of the details correctly.
I modelled the background by hand in Blender and aligned it with my previously-created DAZ3D poses to get the perspective correct and kinda just...slapped some colors and perspective blur on it and called it a day.
This is about 12 days' worth of work, ish. I can't remember if I worked on it every day or not.
I still think the most devastating enshittification I've ever seen has been picrew. One of the few dress-up game websites left that's not flash-based and it's become DRENCHED in ads. You can't open the home screen without being blasted by at least three or four ads. You can't open two picrews in a row without watching a video ad first. When you have a picrew open the ads cover up the different options and sometimes even stack on each other so you have to hit like 2 or 3 different x buttons to get it to go away, only for more to appear seconds later. Evil world
some fucking resources for all ur writing fuckin needs
* body language masterlist
* a translator that doesnât eat ass like google translate does
* a reverse dictionary for when ur brain freezes
* 550 words to say instead of fuckin said
* 638 character traits for when ur brain freezes again
* some more body language help
(hope this helps some ppl)
i think the near-extinction of people making fun, deep and/or unique interactive text-based browser games, projects and stories is catastrophic to the internet. i'm talking pre-itch.io era, nothing against it.
there are a lot of fun ones listed here and here but for the most part, they were made years ago and are now a dying breed. i get why. there's no money in it. factoring in the cost of web hosting and servers, it probably costs money. it's just sad that it's a dying art form.
anyway, here's some of my favorite browser-based interactive projects and games, if you're into that kind of thing. 90% of them are on the lists that i linked above.
A Better World - create an alternate history timeline
Alter Ego - abandonware birth-to-death life simulator game
Seedship - text-based game about colonizing a new planet
Sandboxels or ThisIsSand - free-falling sand physics games
Little Alchemy 2 - combine various elements to make new ones
Infinite Craft - kind of the same as Little Alchemy
ZenGM - simulate sports
Tamajoji - browser-based tamagotchi
IFDB - interactive fiction database (text adventure games)
Written Realms - more text adventure games with a user interface
The Cafe & Diner - mystery game
The New Campaign Trail - US presidential campaign game
Money Simulator - simulate financial decisions
Genesis - text-based adventure/fantasy game
Level 13 - text-based science fiction adventure game
Miniconomy - player driven economy game
Checkbox Olympics - games involving clicking checkboxes
BrantSteele.net - game show and Hunger Games simulators
Murder Games - fight to the death simulator by Orteil
Cookie Clicker - different but felt weird not including it. by Orteil.
if you're ever thinking about making a niche project that only a select number of individuals will be nerdy enough to enjoy, keep in mind i've been playing some of these games off and on for 20~ years (Alter Ego, for example). quite literally a lifetime of replayability.
wikipedia no longer being anywhere near the top of search results when looking up anything feels eviscerating
#hey does anyone know what the deal was with the claims that Friday the 13th and Easter are actually pagan feminist fertility holidays #that were appropriated by the patriarchy/Catholic church? #because I feel like I'm going crazy seeing cnn quote that tumblr post from years ago #like which one came first (bc I can't find that post) and how true are those claims
@assclarinet Wh... what do you mean CNN is quoting tumblr posts. What.
Anyway. These claims go around constantly and they are just as sourceless as anything else in that post.
And as it is Easter Season, let's address them:
Was Easter actually a pagan feminist fertility holiday appropriated by the Catholic Church?
Short answer: No.
Long answer:
Easter is the theological core of Christianity. There is no Christianity without Easter. Easter is the holiest day of the Christian calendar, because it is the theological crux of the entire religion: that Jesus died, and then three days later he rose from the dead, his sacrifice having redeemed the world of sin and his resurrection ushering in a new age. Easter is a very Christian thing.
That's not typically what people who say this mean, though. They don't mean the Christian holy day of Jesus's resurrection Easter Sunday, they mean the hegemonic spring holiday in the culturally-Christian world that is pseudo-secularized Easter.
Was placing the central element of Christianity in the spring a way of co-opting pagan spring fertility festivals? No. It's fairly central to the Last Supper-crucifixion-resurrection narrative that it happened at Passover. The Gospels pretty well agree on this part, though there's conflict in the scholarship of whether the Last Supper was a Passover meal proper or happened a day before. (The seder as it is understood today wasnât performed the same way back then, so it wasnât properly a seder, either.) In early Christianity, the association of Easter with Passover was theologically significant--Jesus was (and is) called the Paschal lamb, equating Jesus's sacrifice with the sacrifice/slaughter of a lamb for the deliverance of the people from death. The timing of Easter is one of the few Christian holy days calculated based on the logic of the Jewish luni-solar calendar. It's not the same exact calendar, and they don't always directly coincide, but it's the same basis.
Early Christianity grew out of Judaism, and its relationship to Judaism, its self-view as the culmination of Judaism, remained significant to figures like Paul who have defined Christian thought and Church organization ever since. (Hereâs a standard view on this presented from a Jewish perspective.) (This is a super interesting perspective from a Congregationalist Christian theologian with a keen interest on the Jewish roots of early Christianity.) (Hereâs also a really interesting interview with provocative Jewish philosopher Daniel Boyarin about it.) Christianity and Judaism probably started really developing in different directions sometime after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, with the next few centuries seeing the rise of Rabbinic Judaism as well as the influx of pagan gentiles adopting Christianity and bringing their theological and philosophical backgrounds into it.
The upshot is: Easter is in the spring because Passover is in the spring.
Does the name "Easter" come from Ostara or Ishtar? No. These are the etymologies I see proposed to say, see! "Easter" steals the name of a pagan fertility goddess! And that's a super English-centric way of looking at the world. In most European languages (and let's be real, when people talk about Christianity stealing pagan holidays, they usually are thinking about, like, Celts), the name of Easter comes from the Latin "Pascha" which was adopted from the Greek "Pascha" which, wow, sounds an awful lot like Pesach, the Hebrew name of Passover. Because Easter was associated with Passover. Even in English, the formal, liturgical word for "pertaining to Easter" is "Paschal". So only in Germanic languages like German and English does the name of Easter come from non-Paschal origins.
Also there is no connection to Ishtar.
The etymology of "Easter" is super obscure, though.
Well, there was an Eostre, right? And the Easter bunny tradition was stolen from the pre-Christian Germanic pagan festivals for Eostre or Ostara? Ehhhhh. Dubious. This Library of Congress folklore blog post by a folklorist who has studied Middle English has a lot of well-cited information suggesting that most "received wisdom" about the pagan festivals or Eostre/Ostara that featured a hare derive from the Brothers Grimm in the 1800s. Jakob Grimm cites a single source for the evidence of a goddess Eostre, an 8th century Christian monk's writing.
Eosturmonath has a name which is now translated "Paschal month", and which was once called after a goddess of theirs named Eostre, in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month. Now they designate that Paschal season by her/its name, calling the joys of the new rite by the time-honoured name of the old observance.
Definitely possible, even likely, there was some syncretism in the celebration activities there, but it's hard to prove what, and to what extent.
Grimm is the one who postulates the existence of Ostara based on this, using the methods of historical linguistics to derive a cognate with the old German oster-month. Note that the Grimms were 1) linguists as well as folklorists, and the idea of Ostara appears to come from linguistic hypothesis moreso than actual gathered folklore, and 2) very invested in nation-building through their folklore project. No other sources for Eostre or Ostara exist, though modern linguists have hypothesized a connection to the Vedic Ushas and Greek Eos as Indo-European dawn-goddesses. (Also hence the word "east.") So Eostre and Ostara may certainly have existed as Germanic goddesses/personifications of the dawn, but probably not fertility. And the month around April, as the return of spring, was associated with the dawn goddess. If so, Eostre gave her name to Eosturmonath ("Eostre-month"), which is when Easter fell (see above re: the timing of Passover), and so Eoastremonath became Easter-month became Easter. "Easter" then likely derives from the name of the month, not the goddess directly.
The story of Ostara and a hare was, as best I can tell, invented in the 1800s during a time of renewed interest in European paganism as, again, nation-building projects.
Hares, eggs/chicks, and flowers are all perennial symbols of spring and new life in Europe, so it wouldn't be surprising if older celebrations in springtime used them, and those got transferred onto Easter celebrations because, hey, spring, dawn, sunrise out of the night, new birth, resurrection, new life, it all kinda goes together. But it wasn't a holiday that was "appropriated by the patriarchy/Catholic Church,"; at most it was traditional spring festivities transferred onto the new spring festivity. This happened a lot.
As for the second question...
Was Friday the 13th a pagan fertility holiday and that's why it's been made unlucky now?
Short answer: No.
Long answer:
No one really agrees on why Friday the 13th is unlucky, but it probably also comes from Christianity. Friday is the unlucky day because it's the day that Jesus was crucified. 13 is the unlucky number because that's the number of people at the Last Supper. I've also seen several people online reference that Loki was the 13th guest at the feast where he caused the death of Baldr, but I can't find an actual source for that, and it feels very Christianity-influenced. The most influential records of old Norse/Icelandic mythology were written down in the 1200s, well after Christianity was the primary religion of the region, and Christian influences on Norse mythology as we know it now cannot be wholly discounted. So I'm somewhat skeptical Loki is the origin, either.
But also, and this is where I get more into personal hypothesizing, 12 is a very strong and auspicious number in a lot of cultures. There are (typically, approximately) 12 full moons in a year, so lots and lots of calendars split the year into 12 months. 12 is a good number for timekeeping and subdividing: Ancient Egyptians were the ones to develop 12-hour days/nights, and Mesopotamians the ones to split time into units of 60. There were twelve tribes of Israel, twelve disciples, twelve Olympians, twelve labors of Hercules, twelve constellations in the Greek zodiac and twelve years in the Chinese zodiac cycle. English has unique number-names up to twelve before we start going three-ten, four-ten, etc. We like twelves! Particularly in cultures influenced by the Mediterranean sphere. So I can imagine prime thirteen is ungainly, awkward... unlucky.
(Also, the idea of splitting the week into a cycle of 7 days originates from Judaism in the Biblical book of Genesis, continuing into Christianity and Islam from the same origin. The whole concept of "Friday" is inextricable from Abrahamic religions.)
There's no evidence it was ever a sacred pagan day for sex or anything like that. It just wasn't.
How do you make an image into something that looks pixelated? Like for backgrounds and things
I draw it with pixels at a low resolution
I hate when I say things like "oh I want an ipod classic but with bluetooth so I can use wireless headphones" and some peanut comes in and replies with "so a smartphone with spotify?" No. I want a 160GB+ rectangular monstrosity where I can download every version of every song I want to it and it does nothing except play music and I don't need a data connection and don't have to pay a subscription to not have ads and don't have popups suggesting terrible AI playlists all over the menus.
Gimme the clicky wheel and song titles like "My Chemical Romance- The Black Parade- Blood (Bonus Track)- secret track- album rip- high quality"
Article/essay from 2020 by Maggie Appleton. Sharing here because I've seen enough posts cross my dash that are about related topics.
I recommend reading this to anybody, but especially to those considering starting a blog outside of Tumblr (like NeoCities, anything with a web ring), those who like to think deeply about the internet in the Web 2.0 era of chronological blogs, social media silos, and enshittification.
space jam dvd space jam dvd space jam dvd space jam dvd space jam dvd space jam dvd space jam dvd space jam dvd space jam dvd space jam dvd space jam dvd space jam dvd space jam dvd space jam dvd space jam dvd
Stuff I Learned at My Writing Workshop (That Iâm Kicking Myself in the Head for Not Realizing Sooner):
- The difference between a book that grabs you from the beginning vs. one that youâre on the fence about tossing out the window is winning your trust. Itâs why itâs âeasierâ to read books by authors you already know, or fanfic where youâre familiar with the characters. Winning the readerâs trust as quickly as possible should be your first goal as a writer when youâre going back and editing your first draft. This can be accomplished by things like: speaking authoritatively about the subject (even if itâs utter bullshit), graceful prose, or establishing quickly in the story what itâs about. For example,âCharacter A had a problem. Character B didnât love them back, so Character A was going to kidnap them so they would.â Maybe itâs not a story you want to read, but you are now firmly couched in what you signed up for in this story and the promise the author is going to deliver on before the end.Â
- Characters need goals. They need goals in every moment and in every scene. Every character needs a goal in every moment and in every scene. Maybe theyâre not directly pursuing that goal right this very moment but itâs probably always at the back of their mind. Romances and detective stories are the easiest to deliver on this need. Character A wants to win their love. Detective A wants to solve the case. Even when theyâre having tea with grandma, their thing is at the back of their mind. Keeping your character and your story focused on this thing they want helps pull your reader along and keeps them engaged on the âSo what?â and âWhy are we reading this scene?â questions of why they should keep reading.
- Characters shouldnât just have things they like, they should have obsessions. This is the one Iâm kicking myself for. The scientists in Pacific Rim are eccentrically obsessed with studying their thing. Thorin in the Hobbit is obsessed with regaining his home. Katniss Everdeen is obsessed with protecting her sister. Every crazy whackadoodle fandom darling character is obsessed with something. What do they have in common? Theyâre intensely obsessed with the thing that they care about. We love characters who are obsessed with things beyond reason, whether itâs reclaiming their home stolen by a dragon, or building artisanal bird houses, saving your sister, or studying monsters. Everyone âlikesâ things, but people and characters who are obsessed with something fascinate us. Examine the characters youâre most attracted to writing in fanfic, and examine your original characters if youâre trying to build those, and figure out what are they obsessed with and how does that inform their character. Thatâs the thing thatâs going to make readers care about them.Â
(Was this advice helpful? Consider donating to my Ko-fi!)
If you're a writer you're supposed to write a lot of bullshit. It's part of the gig. You have to write a lot of absolute garbage in order to get to the good bits. Every once in a while you'll be like "Oh, I wish I hadn't wasted all that time writing bullshit," but that's dumb. That's exactly the same as an Olympic runner being like "Oh, I wish I hadn't wasted all that time running all those practice laps"
Here is a free pdf of the players handbook
Here is a free pdf of xanathars guide to everything
Here is a free pdf to monsters manual
Here is a free pdf to tashas cauldron of everything
Here is a free pdf to dungeon masterâs guide
Here is a free pdf to voloâs guide to monsters
Here is a free pdf of mordenkainenâs tomb of foes
For all your dnd purposes
current project: cyber tech vest with built-in backpack
materials: $5 thrifted backpack disassembled for all the buckles & mesh, upcycled black fabric, and circuit printed fabric for the lining, clear neon yellow vinyl leftover from a project from like 8 years ago, and zippers i stole from an old job and resized for this.
this is phase 1 of this build, i plan to add more buckles on the front & make detachable sleeves with thumb holes that clip on and expose the shoulders.
design inspo: namilia, crisiswear, and lip service's vintage "circuit city" collection. custom made to fit my fiber optic whip in the back and my phone in the mesh pockets. there's secret features, like places to attach glow sticks đ
i think the near-extinction of people making fun, deep and/or unique interactive text-based browser games, projects and stories is catastrophic to the internet. i'm talking pre-itch.io era, nothing against it.
there are a lot of fun ones listed here and here but for the most part, they were made years ago and are now a dying breed. i get why. there's no money in it. factoring in the cost of web hosting and servers, it probably costs money. it's just sad that it's a dying art form.
anyway, here's some of my favorite browser-based interactive projects and games, if you're into that kind of thing. 90% of them are on the lists that i linked above.
A Better World - create an alternate history timeline
Alter Ego - abandonware birth-to-death life simulator game
Seedship - text-based game about colonizing a new planet
Sandboxels or ThisIsSand - free-falling sand physics games
Little Alchemy 2 - combine various elements to make new ones
Infinite Craft - kind of the same as Little Alchemy
ZenGM - simulate sports
Tamajoji - browser-based tamagotchi
IFDB - interactive fiction database (text adventure games)
Written Realms - more text adventure games with a user interface
The Cafe & Diner - mystery game
The New Campaign Trail - US presidential campaign game
Money Simulator - simulate financial decisions
Genesis - text-based adventure/fantasy game
Level 13 - text-based science fiction adventure game
Miniconomy - player driven economy game
Checkbox Olympics - games involving clicking checkboxes
BrantSteele.net - game show and Hunger Games simulators
Murder Games - fight to the death simulator by Orteil
Cookie Clicker - different but felt weird not including it. by Orteil.
if you're ever thinking about making a niche project that only a select number of individuals will be nerdy enough to enjoy, keep in mind i've been playing some of these games off and on for 20~ years (Alter Ego, for example). quite literally a lifetime of replayability.
ABBA - Gimme Gimme Gimme
8-bit version (square waves)