Rebel with your Head High, Shining Brilliantly

film photography

Como Park Zoo & Conservatory
2019

redbubble | carrd | ko-fi
message me for custom prints ♥

Ember Spores

mushes drawing an unassuming gaze into the pitch black forest, what secrets do they keep?

theres a lot of these little blue flowers everywhere and i dont know what they are??? but theyre really pretty ♥️😭

foresty

i did this with a reference and made the colors all dreamy cause greenery is the dreamery

👉 ko-fi 👈

Moth

I drew some rosey maple moths today! :]

okay you know what? that's it. *unclenches your jaw*

Shahira Yusuf by Gustavo Papaleo for The Observer Magazine , Sep 2018

keep your friends close and your friends closer

Hold your friends. Never let go.

I think a lot about an article that I read that said our brains can't really tell the tell the difference between our relationships with real people and with fictional ones, so watching a favourite show can make you less lonely, etc. And we also mourn the deaths of favourite characters in pretty much the same way we would mourn real people.

Remembering that makes me feel less silly about going through a whole-ass grieving process for a character.

redbubble | carrd

My attitude towards art tutorials: Thank you teacher, I will attempt to emulate your wisdom.

My attitude towards writing advice: Bitch, I do what I want.

I've left fandoms for less than staying on this site asks you to put up with. Sometimes the only reason I don't deactivate is simply bc an object at rest will stay at rest. And that's where I'm at here. I don't post enough to feel like I can critique it too much. And usually, it's really quiet and I feel like it's easier to think and exist without millions of other voices drowning you out. Maybe I even like that it's not a super active site yet.

But one thing I do have experience with enough to make an opinion, is that in what was described for what happened on discord, and how this person was reprimanded, it should have been made explicitly clear through an announcement or something of the like that matters were being handled, and that that behavior wasn't acceptable. That's not asking you to "parade the criminal". That's making people feel safe and making it clear that no one is above the rules and the consequences of them. You don't even have to say what the punishment was. But if it's notable that a lot of people saw no visible action against the person..... That's not responsible as a server owner. And I've run discord servers for actual years at this point. I know what I'm talking about.

(That's not even mentioning that Discord should not be required to be heard on what happens to the site, or to be able to enjoy it. We joined a website, and if we wanted to join a discord server, we would have done that instead.)

on frustration with Waterfall development

1. Where does frustration with the site development come from?

Waterfall is a nice functional site with decent people on it, it has some neat features, doesn't lag terribly, and doesn't allow creeps on it. However, it's still underdeveloped, and you can't deny it. There's no fast reblog, the queue is set up for two days forward for no apparent reason, I can't write a text box, a message, or create a page without encountering some bugs. These issues are currently being worked on at a steady pace, and we have all agreed to wait until those are solved because we understand the struggles of one man behind this unexpectedly huge project. Most people I know aren't frustrated with how fast the site is developing. However, there is no set in stone date people can look forward to, and all the existing deadlines keep getting delayed, which create some frustration for some of us.

The frustration arises when people start talking about some new global features, or the overhaul of the old, already existing ones, and the way those discussions are being handled. As I see, people on the staff side experience concerns with the way some of the current systems work in the way that they're not very "beneficial for the site" in terms of newcomers, which is frustrating for staff, too. As someone who doesn't see the site from the inside, I often assume that the most trouble newcomers are having are the same troubles I am having, and a lot of them might disappear after the second update. However, the discussion of possible overhauls of big systems that people are currently allegedly misusing creates the illusion that those overhauls will happen and form a new direction for the site. Even if nothing is being implemented right now, people are starting to worry as if though the changes are already being implemented because they are being talked about.

They're mostly being talked about on discord, where it's easy to take stuff completely out of context since a lot of messages are happening at the same time, and the information is easily missed. This leads people to wrong conclusions from time to time and causes more frustration. Also, discord is not something everyone has, visits regularly, or even is aware of, because of multiple valid reasons, including mental health ones. So, some frustration from my side roots in me seeing staff blog say something like "I've talked to people on discord on it and they say it's fine so we will do it" while me not being aware the discussion even happened or that I could join it. I've only seen it happen once, however, so this is more of an exception, but I thought it still is worth mentioning.

In this part of the post, I've covered my perspective on where the frustration comes from. The second part of the post will be about how it is expressed and handled.

2. How is frustration expressed and handled? Why does it cause more frustration?

So the discussions on discord went nowhere and left everyone frustrated. The user side is upset for not being able to have a proper discussion, and the staff side is upset because they feel like they're getting bullied and threatened by the userbase on top of their already high workload. Why did this happen? Why did the discussion about what was supposed to be technical details turn personal? Well, unfortunately, the discussion was ultimately about the user experience, and the user experience is personal, so people have shared their personal opinions. Also, in a chat, people type fast and think fast, so some stuff was said without thinking and got too personal. Thus the frustrations arose that weren't about technical details, but more about the terminology surrounding them, which derailed the discussion to further frustration of everyone. But on top of that, I feel like there was a bunch of narratives that were pushed through the discussion (not by Thell personally mind you, I don't exactly remember who said that and I am not going to put words in Thell's mouth) which just left everyone upset. Here are said narratives.

1. Judging someone's art quality. Thell has stated repeatedly both in discord and wf that he specifically doesn't want to define what is an art and what isn't, and if there's good art or bad art. But we still ended up having the debate about art quality at least three consecutive times on discord, all the time with the same people. And some people went as far as just saying something along the lines "sorry but yes I am implying your art is shitty" and we all just had to deal with the fact that the conversation is going in this tone. I am aware that the timeouts were handed out for the rude user, but it was done completely behind the scenes, with no acknowledgement of rude behaviour being unacceptable and with no way for me to even tell that there was a timeout going on, which didn't really make the environment feel more welcoming and polite.
2. The greater good of the site. The narrative about "people complaining because they don't understand what's actually good for them and the site" and the suggestions of completely ignoring said complaints "for the greater good" and "because there will always be someone who complains" were encountered multiple times by me. Now, I don't completely disagree with the fact that for every feature there will be people in the world who just aren't satisfied with it. But it also seems kinda weird to me to imply that there's only one certain way for the site to grow, even though the current direction of Waterfall isn't even specified as anything else but "definitely not Tumblr 2.0 also artists". Some sites rely entirely on poorly drawn shitty memes and some sites are for displaying high-quality professional photography. Sites can go in many directions and gain activity in multiple ways. And the weirdest thing to me was in this narrative was the implication that we can sacrifice the needs of existing site users by implementing something that might potentially attract new users. In Russia, we have a saying "a sparrow in the hand is better than a crane in the sky". A crane is a bigger bird, but you don't have it yet, and if you let go of your sparrow to catch a crane, you might lose both.
3. Userbase expressing concerns means they hate Thell. But at the same time, I saw a narrative about Thell being "bullied" into implementing featured, being called names, and "threatened" by people who say they are about to leave the site. Now, I haven't seen all the post, I believe there are people who are being purposefully rude to staff which is honestly uncalled for. However, I've mostly observed people expressing constructive criticism politely, and staff side taking the issue with certain words, which felt... Kinda weird? The words "elitist", etc. were thrown around because people were expressing how they've felt and why they are frustrated, and someone saying "you are using elitist language" doesn't equal someone calling you purposefully being elitist, just like people saying "this is ableist language" aren't calling you ableist, and even if they're calling you out on said behaviour in a civil manner, which I've seen most people do, this isn't an insult, this is an opportunity to learn to be more considerate. And people saying they're going to leave the site because a certain thing has left them frustrated... What else are they supposed to do or say? Leave quietly or stay at the site that bothers them because they don't want to offend staff by expressing their frustration in any way at all? Is that a community we want to build? Is there a way to express constructive criticism which is not considered offensive? I honestly have no idea at this point.
4. Discord is a great discussion platform. It's not. And still, I saw someone suggesting that the voices of people who don't come to discord because of various valid reasons should just be ignored because they "don't care enough". Don't think there was anyone else backing this point, but I've noticed it and I don't think this is a valid point at all.

In this part of the post, I've talked about the discussion that's happened and the sources of frustration that arose during this discussion.

I am not sure about the third part, going on a little break now.

Something else worth mentioning is that as much as I do love waterfall it IS kind of lacking in several ways. Like I joined the site over a year ago because one of my best friends was already on here and then I quickly got involved with the community and now I couldn't imagine leaving because of the people who are already here. However if I was looking for a new blogging platform now, and I found waterfall on my own I don't think I would stay. It's kind of a situation where I put up with some of the problems on the site because I really like a lot of the people that are on here a lot.

But the lack of any kind of a quick-reblog is something that's kind of been slightly annoying the whole time I've been here. And sure there are ways to get around it a bit by opening things in other tabs but when I first joined it was something that "was supposed to be fixed in one of the next updates". And whatever it's not a big deal to me.

But it does kind of feel crappy to have been here this whole time and to have to deal with minor inconveniences to keep using the site and then see language about wanting to cater the site to new users instead of trying to make thing better for the people who have been sticking to the site long-term.

The art thing isn't even the big issue for me because I get it's a system problem. It's just kind of like there's a lack of professionalism because it's just one guy running the whole thing and not a company. And while I DO understand how horrifically hard it probably is to run a company it just seems in bad taste to try to make it the fault of the users when things start going down-hill.

every time you stand your ground an angel gets its wings and every time you say no it wields a flaming sword

breathe, 8.10.20

☀️ photography | support ☕

i remember seeing this gifset of Kate McKinnon a long time ago where she was talking about how she used to dress and that she would cut her own hair and stuff and someone asked "but wouldn't you want women to think you looked good?" and she replied "different rules."

and if anyone please could tell me where that was from id be so freaking thankful

ITS BEEN TWO MONTHS AND I FUCKIBG FOUND IT!!

i cant add pics on mobile but if anyones wondering it was her episode of comedians in cars getting coffee

one year later here are the gifs bc i love them



Discord-running anxiety, gotta love it

White Fence Farm

instagram | ko-fi | redbubble | carrd

instagram | ko-fi | redbubble | carrd

Image Description: H, sitting cross legged, with a hand on their face. They're wearing a grey t-shirt, blue jeans, socks, and a red bracelet. It's captioned "Drawn by Alias, Painted by Honey".

my playlists

attempt 2.0 of posting this

ive added descriptions where i think theyre needed

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Amethyst

Photo by Dawid Zawila on Unsplash