It's an amazing idea for a 404 page, I really like it

It's really cozy in a way!

Now I want to do something fun with my 404 page too, hmmmm why have I never considered that they can be fun too :omg:k:

Do you also have that thing where your thoughts are faster than your hands so you stop writing in the middle of a sentence, start a new sentence, and then move back to finish the first sentence later?

Sometimes I do! But more often than not it's more of a "Something distracted me mid-sentence and when I came back to writing I forgot I didn't finish it-- oh heck what's an unfinished half of a sentence doing in the middle of an e-mail I've almost just sent:dunno:"

I also sometimes just straight up accidentally skip words in a sentence (just did it with the word "more" in the second sentence above) because at times thinking it does not always equal writing it I guess? Like my hands are behind my thoughts and they just go "y'know what, we'll just skip over this word to catch up with the brain" or something.

That all leads to me re-reading my texts before sending for an almost equal amount of time as it took writing them, 'cause I know something's gonna be messed up

I think that's just because I'm an emotional and argumentative person. I'm also very talkative IRL. The kind of talkative that waves their hands around and speaks so fast half the audience can understand a thing. And then if I'm passionate about something I can also start yelling without noticing it. Some people perceive that as an attack, so I'm glad posts can't be heard.

In writing, that all translates into walls of text. I'm not exactly thinking what to say, it's like /home/user/ put it, a stream of consciousness. And that consciousness sometimes goes faster than I type and then adds thing on top of that, so I'm addind and adding and adding and suddenly whoops, that's a huge damn post.

To be fair these posts also sometimes take like an hour to write, but that's not 'cause I'm writing it slow, that's 'cause I'm writing a lot of stuff non-stop ahah.

Now, a mystery for me is people who write short messages precisely on point. Ask me to shorten some rant of mine to a hundred words and I'll spend hours sweating and suffering 'cause how can I throw something out when it all evidently helps to make my point clearer?

(I've also been writing stories and things like that, quality nonwithstanding, ever since I learned to write at all, so that probably also plays a role).

Generally a lot of people knew of my online life. Definitely my friends. And my coworkers, thanks to specifics of my job at the time. I'm a bit more reluctant to share it with my parents for certain reasons, let alone extended family, altho mom gets pouty about it. Also my grandma found my art space some time ago and is now leaving comments and it gives me a heart attack every time 'cause I don't generally filter my art and what I'm saying online through 'is it acceptable to be shown to grandma' lense. I swear a lot, dammit!

Now that I sort of moved to a new nickname and moved a lot of my activity from big social networks to my website and such... Only my closest friends and a dozen of people who followed me from that social media when I offered a link still know who I am.

Nobody in my family speaks English that well, if at all, so I think I'm hidden for now

Don't get me wrong, I have a good relationship with my family. Generally.

But with certain views of theirs I'm not much keen on possible discussions that may arise if they'd be exposed to my online presence as it is! ^^"

Finally managed to come there at the right time.

I adore experiences like this. The feeling in them is truly palpable. Lifts your mood in weird (or maybe not weird at all actually) ways.

Thank you for sharing!

Finally what happens after this; do Max and Chloe stay friends? I cant imagine they could or should.. its just too much pressure.

There's an official Life is Strange comic taking place after the "save Chloe" ending! It positions itself as a "what if" kinda story, not something set in stone but rather a one of the possible stories that could take place afterwards. Can't say I fully agree with some of its takes (and that's the whole point of being a 'what if' story tbh, doesn't necessarily step on anyone else's views), but it was nice to read anyway. And I really liked its take on growing and rebuilding. Just a reccomendation if you'd ever wanted to see how one creative team answered that question!

Honestly I think that your description of saying "No no no please I don't want this to happen again" and then very quickly regretting it as the realization dawns on you sounds like a very plausible version of that ending interptetation, too. Considering what Max went though right before making that choice I could easily see it being a spur of the moment decision - and then there's just no going back.

did this not invalidate everything Id done before then!

I mean honestly I think that this could be said of both choices. If you rewind the whole week back - then nothing you did matter 'cause now you've never done it (although knowing where to find Rachel, busting Jefferson and preventing Kate from even going to that rooftop are still on the table, so that's a result), and if you sacrifice the city and everyone you helped dies then it doesn't matter because, well, everyone is gone.

In that regard I personally believe that you helping someone one day is not devalued by something happening the next day. The world may end tomorrow, so to speak, but our actions will still matter today. Something like that.

That choice it truly a double-edged sword because both choices make you think "what was the point?" but also in both cases it wasn't exactly for naught, I think.

(Also, speaking of "what happens after this": I've always been slightly horrified for Max in "save the town" ending, 'cause can you imagine having all that trauma from being kidnapped, tortured and seeing your friend die a few times over, etc etc, and then being unable to talk to anyone about it 'cause it just...never happened for anyone else? At the very least if the town is destroyed she'd be able to blame her likely PTSD on that and get some actual therapy I think @~@ )

Been surprisingly decently discussing this in a dangerous place called "YouTube comments" and, considering that the residents of Melonland are much better at such discussions, I'm here to hit a hornets' nest with a bat out of sheer curiosity.

So, Life is Strange 1, the original that started the series, and its infamous last choice.

Spoilers. Obviously.

Feelings on whether that choice is disappointing gameplay-wise and choices-mattering-wise aside... What was your choice and what's your reasoning behind it?

I'll start: I'm a big time "sacrifice Arcadia Bay"/"Bae over Bay" truther. That's not only just because I'm uselessly gay. Well, it was back when I first played the game. Having very recently replayed the remaster though, I'm having some much more defined opinions. Namely:

1. I feel like both choices ultimately make this a story of acceptance and maturity. However, "sacrifice Chloe" is more of a "accept that sometimes you can't change things/save everyone" story, and "sacrifice Arcadia Bay" is more of a "sometimes you're gonna mess up big time even with the best of intentions and you have to learn to live with the consequences" story. I choose the latter moral. ":grin:omg: as you must and come what may".

2. I despise stories where a character kicked down the most by the narrative has to die in misery at the end. And Chloe might be a difficult character who got on a lot of people's nerves (not mine but still), but she is that very type of a miserable character.

3. As far as fiction goes I find more catharsis in selfish love and burning the world down to stand together atop the ruins. Self-explanatory, I think.

4. And finally I'm just annoyed by the idea of erasing all the events of the game by going back and making no one but Max remember them? I was given a power and I've spent five episodes thoroughly effing up space and time with it, let it damn show! (Also if 'rewind bad' then how's it the answer to...rewind one more time? Meh!)

There's an obvious argument of "Killing a whole town of innocents for one punk girl is BAD", yada-yada, trolley problem, but I think I made it rather clear that I personally don't measure fiction by real-life standards. You're welcome to, though!

So what do y'all think, dear gamers? I'm geniunely curious, it fascinates me that this game still can fascilitate discussion this many years later!

Is it not completely irrelevant where the art comes from? Is the end product not worth looking it by itself if it has not met a certain threshold of artist skill? I can imagine looking at algorithmically generated art and enjoying it. Is really anything else required to consider something art?

I will just quickly* address this before returning to the actual topic I swear - but I think it's not about the technical skill per say (as was already said, the littlest children can make art). But there's a piece of the artist themselves in each and every art I've ever liked. There's a reason why "art vs artists" compilations are surfacing every year - because indeed there's often something fasctinatingly similar between how the art looks and how the artist does. It's often immediately visible what artist loves (for example, I've stumbled upon a new artist yesterday and I immediately knew they were a lesbian and gender-ly queer at that, because the way they draw butches and what features they highlight is telling and speaks to me on a personal level), and people gravitate to that art if it speaks to them. Sure, artists get inspired by each other and give/take all the time, but they always make it their own because it passes through them like a filter. The same reason they teach to consider time period's and a writer's life circumstances in literary analysis. A photographer frames a shot and focuses on details based on what they see in their subject. A sculptor focuses on muscles or on soft folds of fat, artists make the lines hard or soft, colors bright or muted. Those pieces of love and inspiration are what makes an artist someone's favorite, that's why certain artists get commissioned from and subsequently that's why certain artstyles get requested from AIs. Because they touched someone, their soul or however you want to put it. Now, generating AI art and working with prompts can surely require skill, more and more as the time goes, but it's still going to be asking a machine to build your vision out of someone else's feelings, personality and love, and you won't be able to add much of your own unless you put your own art in the mix. I agree with one of the points above, it's more akin to commissioning.

Also, concerning the "why do artist need to 'own' their art", even if we do remove money from the equasion: the same reason, honestly. A lot of art is incredibly personal, steaming from the artist's lived experiences and inner feelings. In a certain way it is my child of sorts. I want to show it to people, I'm happy when people like it, but to see or even just imagine it taken from me and mutilated for someone else's amusement like it means nothing, just some meaningless lines on paper... genuinely hurts. Like, it does. I've made it our of my own metaphorical flesh and blood, it's everyone's to look at, but I don't think it's everyone's to do with at they please. Forgive me for going all artistic and individualistic on you, I guess.

For those who have spoken out against it, are there any applications for AI art that you would consider acceptable or ethical, or is it a hard "no" in all situations?

OKAY BACK ON TRACK I PROMISE! As I said, I think that if regulated properly it could be a very nice tool to assist in creation (say, you draw the characters, it draws a background, something like that). Or even used for fun, as is the case with that one AI converting your photos into anime characters. I believe there is a game in development (or is it released already...) where you actually create an AI generated character to play with before the game actually starts. How cool is that? I also think AI art is there to stay commercially, and in theory that's not such a bad thing. Bring on artificially generated half-naked women on advertisement billboards ('cause that strategy is hardly going away), half of us are pining after 2D anyway!

_{* - they said like a liar}

You will not frigging believe who misclicked something and erased an entire post again. Also there's been three posts posted while I was rewriting this so sorry if I step on someone's point. ANYWAY.

I find AI learning fascinating as a concept. We're technically doing what sci-fi books write about, or the beginnings of it, anyway. In that regard, I was excited when the whole AI art appeared. I played with some free instances myself at first.

However, I'm also an artist and I can't ignore, pardon the language, the shitshow that's currently going on. I'd say it's an imperfect combination of "some people have infinite potential for ruining good concepts" and "we've never done that before, so there's no definite law on the subject, which is getting abused".

I believe that AI art as a concept has great potential. But ONLY if 1) the whole stolen art thing gets addressed, legally streamlined, and turned into training AI art on free-license and/or willingly donated material ONLY, and 2) if people doing said AI art will be open about it, dignified about it, and basically make it into a wholy separate section of art (like the aforementioned photography).

Because what we have now is blatant signatures of artists being visible on art without said artist's knowledge. What we also have is people making "art" in an artist's style not even a day after said artist's death, showing great disrespect. What we have is this very recent situation where a person made a screenshot of a work in progress on an artist's livestream, ran that screenshot through an AI, posted it immediately, and when said artist posted their work (which obviously took much more time to finish) - said person demanded credit, 'cause they posted first.

How is that art? That is a blender machine of greed and attention-seeking. If stealing art is illegal, if tracing someone's art is looked down upon, and if physical forgery of a painting in an existing artist's style for money is a whole heist material, then how is any of aforementioned problems okay?

There are clearly even now people who put actual effort in their pieces, tweak them or even finish them up "by hand", yes. And that's effort, and that's maybe even an art in it's own right. But their achievements are currently being heavily clouded by the fact that even their art is originally built on material questionably obtained (I'm no stranger to piracy, but those artists whose art gets currently chewed up are hardly a corporation who won't feel that), AND the actions of those individuals with questionable morals who so far run rampant.

Most artists don't earn that much as is. If their styles can be imitated in a matter of an hour and for much cheaper, without their consent or even awareness needed? That's a serious blow. And I'm not a fan of a cynical approach of "Well, go get an 'actual job' then!".

I say, clear up the learning databases situation (somehow, considering an AI apparently does not forget. Start from scratch maybe?) and give the AI art it's separate art category, and then most of the issues will be done with. Say, if a contest is not a "All types of entries mixed together from art to photos to texts to plush toys" type of a contest, then give AI art a separate category. You don't pin artists against, again, since the example came up, photographers, 'cause their craft it different. Same here. AI vs AI, human vs human.

There's admittedly also a concern of corporate greed. Like, take book covers for example. Why pay an artist and wait days for their work when you can generate a cover with an AI? Which...yes, upsetting from an artist standpoint, but also most companies are already cutting corners wherever they can, trading art for photobashing and what not. This is just the logical next step in that decline, whether we like it or now. What IS currently the problem is, you guessed it, the glaring art theft mixed up in that process. I believe Tor Books has an ongoing incident just like that with one of their new books.

So, to summarize my opinion, AI art is most likely here to stay, and it does have it's uses (for example it'd be fun to use one to generate graffiti to put on backgrounds in my comics instead of drawing them myself when it's just for the aesthetic) but it needs to be properly defined in legal terms and recognised as a separate thing instead of competing with fully human art.

And that's just me talking as an artist who in a span of a couple of years went from "Wow, so cool!" to "Hecking hell, this is why we can't have nice things". I'm not even gonna touch on the whole alleged situations with personal medical records getting into that database blender and the facial recognition angle, I don't have enough info or expertise on neither of those.

---

As for art being "common property"... I think, as many things, that's sort of an utopia, because a lot of us, unfortunately, live under capitalism right now. I'm an artist who draws "for myself and those who like my art", mostly, but while not being able to earn my keep with said art, where am I left? Crunching on three jobs (well, three separate projects on my actual job) and sacrificing sleep to be able to put my art out, because the alternatives are either go broke or not draw at all. I've been in that place of not creating for years and I coudln't make rent as is. So "in this economy", if people want to have art in their lives at all, then artists need to be able to create and survive at the same time. Which, for many, means that their art has to bring them income.

Which, in turn, means they need to own their art. Because if they don't, if it can just be taken, changed, sold or imitated, then no amount of "That means people like it!" will put food on their table. I know that artists dying in poverty and only getting big after their death was a big thing in the past, but surely that's not the ideal here

And if artists of various kinds just stop creating and go do more paying jobs non-stop then it will affect them psychologically for sure and will also be felt sorely in the world. What was that saying going around in 2020? Something like ":grin:omg:n't forget than in your darkest times you've turned to art". TV and films are art too, aren't they?

Speaking of which. Keeping in mind how they dealt with a death of an actor in Fast and Furious a few years ago, I honestly wonder if in a few years we'll be debating the legitimacy of creating whole movies with technology instead of hiring actual actors. And how said actors will feel about that. Although in analogy with AI art's current state I'd say it would be more of a deepfake territory: why need actors at all if you could take anyone's image without their permission or knowledge and put them on big screens?

also it's 2 am for me, I should probbaly stop this train of thought, I've already written a wall of text TWICE

If it's a new page then I use Brackets to work the code (a lot of minor useful features like the automatic closing tags) and then I just open the local html pages in browser to observe the changes.

And then once I'm satisfied I move the whole folder to Neocities. If pages that are already on the site need tweaking or to be added to, then I just do it in Neocities' editor in browser

I'm a big basic chocolate flavor lover In everything, ice cream included! Gimme a chocolate-flavored cone and pour chocolate sauce on top while you're at it!

Although occasionally I do indulge in some pineapple or strawberry. But chocolate is my go-to.

Oh believe me, I know the feeling.

I've went through the process of figuring out lots of identity things when already being in my early twenties so that topic definitely didn't touch my most obnoxious years - kinda wonder what that would look like - however (while admittedly going off-topic of this thread) I totally agree with you about mainstream social sites bringing out the most reactionary and/or provocative sides of people. Just, like, a couple of years ago I was totally guilty of making a twitter account centered solely on being an eyesore for a certain demographic of people whose views I condsiderd - and still consider - bigoted. It was born out of righteous(? to me at the time anyway) anger and desire to push back, sure, but what it was at the core was me deliberately seeking out conflict and feeding my own ego on mocking the opponent and 'being right'. Which is gratifying. But also admittedly self-desctructing.

While I might've kept the same negative views on those people, I've come to realization that burying myself in negativity in response for that negativity and subsequently paying SO much attention to those people, constantly looking for reasons to get mad and go viral with my response is...hardly productive.

Perhaps spreading positivity towards the people those bigots attack and talking about stuff I personally love to bring more productive (or at least positive!) energy and counter-balance the hate is much better not only for those around but even for me personally.

That acc has been inactive for some time now and will probably be gone in the ongoing Twitter purge, but that one I will hardly miss, even if I stand by all the things said. Although I did get to make some positive and educational posts on there in my better days. Pity that those will be gone.

I have a Redmi Note, as far as smartphones go it's probably one of the most generic-looking ones. My whole family can only tell our phones apart by pictures we have on the back of them.

HOWEVER I do have this little guy for the soul. It's not the original one, it's a rebuild, but it's done so up to the real thing that it literally cannot connect to the modern Internet at all no matter how hard I try ahah.

It is a total joy to replay some old .java games though. Emulators are just not it. And as far as calls and SMS go it's perfectly usable. Playing music, too, but I don't have headphones with the right jack, whoops. (But I DO still have the old Walkman thingy that could be jacked into Sony Ericssons and played your music on a radio frequency! it's like a Bluetooth speaker but retro :cheesy:D)

here's my artistic mess feat. a very festive microphone

I think if I were to answer that question for myself, I would be more inclined to make a new account, although that would be hardly for the reason of problematic opinions (even if I certainly didn't lack those in certain years, as most of us probably didn't)

I just have this habit of "restarting" my online life when it gets "too much". First, when the whole social thing was new, I had accounts directly tied to my real name, as is the fashion with social media. Then, as I was growing teenager-ier and edgier, I deleted some of those accounts 'cause they were deemed "cringe" by my teen self (I honestly regret it nowadays, it would be so fun to look at my 10 y.o. self, however cringe). The new accounts were only partially linked to my real name. Then eventually all the fandoms and connections I've made on there became indeed "too much" and I quietly moved to a new set of accounts, only taking a few close friends with me.

And then THOSE accounts, despite a totally fake name this time, got technically "too irl" 'cause I used them to talk to work colleagues and such (I work in a pretty informal field). And then uuuuh certain legalities came into play (don't worry i didn't kill anyone). Sooo here I am. This nickname you know me by is only a couple months old. We'll see how many years it takes me to accidentally doxx myself! Knowing me - not a lot.

I do have a couple of experiences however coming back to old strictly-fandom accounts. Or trying to, rather. What's that they say? You can't step into the same river twice? That was pretty much my experience, yeah. The good times I have archived on those accounts were clashing way too much with the apparent half-dead timelines where most of my then-friends already left just as I had. At this point I think if I'm ever coming back to a fandom acc I haven't been on for a long time, might as well just start fresh and let the past lie. Without deleting it, however. I like the archiving approach.

As far as problematic posts of the past go, I have a mildly different experience. I have an old Tumblr acc which I had for almost ten years now (and I'm only jumping it because of a weird glitch that cut off half the functionality and made me basically shadowbanned, which makes interacting with people very hard, I would just switch the url otherwise). And that acc... Well, I've never cleaned it or anything, so if someone were to dig far enough they'd find all kinds of stuff, from 'problematic' fandoms to me being very frustrated about 'being totally straight' (honey no) to me blantantly using the n-word 'cause English is not my first language and back then I didn't know better. And these are just examples that I remember, I'm sure there's a lot of stuff in there that I simply forgot about.

Same about one of my old ditched accs on another platform btw. Some of the stuff there is... Oof someone was trying so hard to be edgy. Oh boy.

The point I'm making is, I'm pretty sure most of it is still up there and I haven't gotten rid of it. Never plan to, actually, regardless of if I will be much active on there again. I'm pretty convinced I have enough growth to show for it since then, and anyone who'd try to argue otherwise would definitely not be arguing in good faith, so. Why not grow visibly? (unless you're me and have this whole avoidant identity hopping thing)