Category Archives: Essays

Soapboxing–the Somnolians when they have something more serious or feelsy to address.

On Confidence

Posted on July 9, 2020 by mariteaux

Last summer, I wrote an essay on creating characters with purpose and how adoptable culture seems to miss the point of having lads in the first place. At the time, I remember wanting to do an entire series on these kinds of creative pitfalls, and recently, I’ve been reminded of another stumbling block–this one affecting me probably more than anyone else, amazingly enough.

Let’s talk confidence. Continue reading →

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Incomplete Eclipses and Muffled Screams

Posted on May 22, 2020 by borb

I’m an artist who uses DeviantArt so I’m gonna tell you guys why you really shouldn’t force your site’s user-base to be beta testers. Continue reading →

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Tools, Toys, and You and I

Posted on May 9, 2020 by mariteaux

Been thinking a lot about simplicity, entropy, and how we’ve come to rely on computers in the past few decades. Here’s an essay about how technology should augment us in being people and nothing more. Continue reading →

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Five Reasons I’ve Stopped Reading Your Story

Posted on January 3, 2020 by mariteaux

Amateur and fan writing is something I’m no stranger to. In fact, it’s what I’m most familiar with. I don’t read a lot of books, but I do peruse toyhou.se and places for my own amusement and occasionally in the hopes of actually finding something good to read.

Of course, it being the internet, most of it isn’t great. Good writing habits are rarely taught in schools, at least here in the US. Past basic grammar (and even that’s not much), creative writing tends to be side-eyed and pushed aside, and otherwise bright people trip on the fundamentals, let alone anything involving tone, pacing, or dialogue.

Here’s just a few things I notice a lot in people’s writing, plus examples. (Don’t go looking for these people to bug them, thanks.) No judgement if you do any of these; I’ll tell you how to fix them as best I can. Continue reading →

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How the Feed Killed Creation

Posted on September 7, 2019 by mariteaux

Let’s start with a premise. We have a creator. She’s a writer, maybe, or maybe a visual artist. Maybe dabbles in animation. She’s got big ideas and the drive to see them to fruition. Might even be months into a grand project right now. Yet, she’ll post her stuff online or in a Discord server, and no one gives a shit.

The internet’s built on user-generated content, stuff ordinary people (people like you, perhaps!) create. And yet, with all these sites for it, where’s the support? Let’s talk about the feed and how it’s killed independent content. Continue reading →

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Gopher is Not the Web

Posted on June 27, 2019 by dotcomboom

Every now and then, I see new Gopher clients and sites popping up. And that’s great—we’re keeping this protocol alive for the next generation. However, I can’t help but think some of the methods of doing so is restrictive, only … Continue reading →

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On Purpose

Posted on June 3, 2019 by mariteaux

Less a rant and more musings about the pitfalls of storytelling without a goal for your characters, something I see a lot from amateur artists online. Continue reading →

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The Web is a Shitty App Platform

Posted on May 9, 2019 by mariteaux

I’m a big believer in implementing as little as possible to get the task at hand done. I’m as minimalist as it gets. Proprietary, open source—ultimately doesn’t matter to me so long as it gets the job done as simply as it can.

So why in fuck’s name did we give everything away to the web? Continue reading →

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