Kot Blini's Facial Expression Is So Inscrutable. Its Like The Mona Lisa, Or The Famous Kuleshov Effect

Something I keep noticing about conversations I have with friends is that I never put any of my opinions in any elegant way that makes sense. And rather than just listing off reasons why I hate (music) streaming off the cuff, I'll explain where I would have put streaming service cash at the very least.

To some extent, this is a sister post to the audiophile one.

Bandcamp is an independent music platform that took a ~20% cut from any sale, leaving the rest for the musician. At the time, this was notable against iTunes *30%; with the rest having to be split between label and artist. Nowadays, it is very easy and affordable for musicians to get their music on any of the big platforms via Distrokid and like services. All of this to say that if an artist or album isn't on Bandcamp, or any other service that isn't iTunes, I'll still buy it off of iTunes since a single sale from one song makes an artist more money than paying $20 to Spotify.

As an aside; second hand CDs are a gray area purchase. I like owning my media; physical or otherwise. But I would be remiss to claim that buying a CD from a thrift store would be supporting an artist.

*I think they changed to match Bandcamp's split recently, but after they started doing music streaming.

Spotify and like music streaming services have been notorious for having bad payouts for their artists. Despite turning in positive revenue for the industry, the comical amount of artists who put their songs on Spotify means this split is literal pennies for multi-million streams on popular songs. Spotify is a platform that absolutely can be used to gain an audience or find new artists; but YouTube is (technically) free and Bandcamp lets people listen to whole songs before buying them.

Buying a single song at an artist's asking price on Bandcamp, fuck even iTunes, directly supports them. And it's nice to have high quality files to save onto my hard drive that I know won't be taken down due to *licensing or whatever.

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Awkwardly, I don't have a better segway into this next thought; more airing out my conflicting ideas about "owning media" and piracy.

I'm very aware that purchasing a game off of Steam and like services don't mean I "own" that game. I am licensing it from whoever is running that platform. GOG exists and lets customers download complete installers without any licensing or DRM. But most modern industry games are at most worth stealing on the bay since; the labor involved in its creation has already been paid for by the publisher, and only the publisher/producer gets the sales afterward. Paying for a game on steam or GOG really comes down to who is having a sale at any given moment.

Another aside; Itch.io is like a sister site to Bandcamp, except that they platform games and other digital media. Also, their split is theoretically 0% for independent game developers. Ethically speaking, it's better to spend the amount of cash that it would have taken to buy one new AAA game on a handful of short indie games. The cash stretches farther, and the money goes directly to the labor and talent responsible for it. That is to say:

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The concept of owning a purchase and owning a file is something I never think about explaining. A file, no matter how ephemeral, exists on storage somewhere. And I like to spend money to make sure that a copy of that file can exist on storage that I own and can access regardless of my connection to the internet. It doesn't matter how I get my hands on that file; ripped CDs, purchases off of any modern platform, or even piracy. I don't want to pay the cash for streaming, the cash never really touches the hands I'd want it too anyway. I never pirate games, since I never game enough to make it actually worth the risk involved in finding safe cracks.

To that, and I doubt it's the best example, I'm someone who "buys digital art commissions." Arguably, it's a digital file I spent $200+ on and will likely keep to myself after the fact. A vanity purchase of questionable value. But like vain nobility of eld, I spend the cash for the effort, labor, and skill of an artist because I don't like looking at my own art like supporting an artist I like the work of. Or personally know (@mintyfreshka). Owning the file at the end is somewhat secondary, but it's nice to have the project file to make my own edits, than an already baked JPEG.

I've yet to really meet an artist who doesn't like handing over their project file at request, or even with an additional cost. But I'd be cool if they want to keep it to themselves, since today's landscape is kinda dire for artists.

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Bagel time. Work your stuff.

favorite visual gags:

something drawn realistically to show an emotion

something drawn poorly to show an emotion

Hey everyone, I know it's going to be a busy day for a lot of people, but Google enrolled everyone over 18 into their AI program automatically.

If you have a google account, first go to gemini.google.com/extensions and turn everything off.

Then you need to go to myactivity.google.com/product/gemini and turn off all Gemini activity tracking. You do have to do them in that order to make sure it works.

Honestly, I'm not sure how long this will last, but this should keep Gemini off your projects for a bit.

I saw this over on bluesky and figured it would be good to spread on here. It only takes a few minutes to do.

Gaming Backlog Side Quest: Kingdom Hearts Re:Visited - A Fragmentary Retrospective (Part 1)

So it's only my second blog post in this backlog series, and I'm already veering off-course from what I originally thought it was going to be lol. Basically I want these KH Re:Visited posts to be a way for me to look back on how I got into this series while I share it with a friend of mine: @plzdonthitmewithyourcar. I think both fans of the series and people with <1% knowledge about this funky ass series should be able to enjoy the post though.

(Start of backstory) My introduction to Kingdom Hearts was very unconventional; I essentially stumbled across a volume of the manga while browsing my local library as a kid:

So to my naive self, I assumed that this was the first volume of the whole series, and the "II" of the logo was lost on me (cuz I was a 11 year old lmao). I knew nothing about it, and the cover stood out to me so I decided to take it home and give it a read.

My introduction to the series consisted of what I think is still my favorite false-start to a game I've played. I fully went into this book, and by extension the KH series thinking that it was all about this young teen named Roxas and his friends living in Twilight Town slowly discovering a series of odd events relating to strange creatures called "Nobodies"; Enough to say that by the end of the first volume the rug got pulled out from under me as I was introduced to the true protagonist of the series, Donald, and Goofy: the first truly Disney characters (which also took me aback because I didn't know that the Square Enix x Disney crossover was so literal)

So with that first volume consumed and my pre-teen mind absolutely blown, I voraciously looked for anything else I could consume about the series. (End of backstory)

So now that I'm introducing a dear friend of mine to the series, I've decided to essentially follow the same path that I went on when I was learning the series while introducing them. I've only played the opening of KH2 with them, before we have now switched over to KH1. I'm very pleased that the opening still has the same charm that captured me years ago. The pleasant coziness and simplicity of Twilight Town, contrasted to the feeling of ominous foreshadowing when the supernatural elements begin to become more present and Roxas is forced to confront the answers to the questions he's been asking himself.

Game cinematics are sick AF, gameplay holds up so well (looking at you KH1), and the writing is very recognizably that charming yet unnatural approach to character-driven story.

Some of the things that I hadn't appreciated as much on my first playthrough was the interactions with Seifer, and how Hayner was essentially behind-the-scenes rallying people in the town to help figure out what was going on with Roxas and all the strange events that were beginning to show up around their quiet town. I think noticing interactions like those made me appreciate even more the tragic story of Roxas.

So yeah, this series is really special to me, and I'm really glad to be able to share it with people and blog about it. :)

Found a sick tutorial on how to replicate 2D cel animation effects using blender, so I decided to revisit a past art piece!

Vid I followed is right here ⬇️

Doctor, it's chronic. Maybe even infectious ':/

characterpilled Unfollow

[photo of the character]

i love my this. the charactr

characterpilled Unfollow

charac te r. ... ... . .... #FUUUUCK. THE CHARACTER.

characterpilled Unfollow

DOES ANYBODY EVER THINK ABOUT .THE CHARACTER

characterpilled Unfollow

[1.5k word essay about the character] #but like idk maybe im wrong

characterpilled Unfollow

character i love youso badly.

^dash when someone is possessed by The Character core (this post is positive)

Kingdom Hearts 3

Reblog if you 100% okay with a transgender person correcting you if you accidentally misgender them or use their dead name.

please do