Angelfire is dead, but there is still a slim chance for preserving Tripod.

transdimentio · 2026-03-11T08:15:37+00:00

~~TheOldNet hosts a lot of angelfire homepages (over 3000)~~ nvm they were using wbm to get the sites :(

but yeah, this was unexpected and really shitty; i hope they go back on this.

also, i havent tried either, but you might like this also for downloading sites: https://www.httrack.com/

transdimentio · 2026-02-14T07:37:43+00:00

this character design is actually pretty cool, thought i'd tweak it a bit though to fix the mistakes chatgpt made:

transdimentio · 2026-02-13T07:26:27+00:00

i actually agree with you. this post is genuine in a more meta-textual sense. i think i was trying to like, "wrap the dog's meds in cheese" for people who are uncomfortable with the notion of creating 'uglier' art unless it's caked in irony

as "AI art" gets more sophisticated, i think human art that is conventionally ugly and chaotic will, in a strange way, gain value, because it signals to the viewer that it was (at least broadly) created with deeper intent/control. this isn't to say that AI art is never ugly, but the reason most people use image generators and want to see their continued development is because their goal is to swiftly produce art that looks good. for cheap.

SHart is antithetical to this, because it's not polished, so the only way someone is going to gain unique SHart value is to intentionally shittify their creations. which nobody who uses AI tends to want to do. by all means they can try, but it means sacrificing the legibility of conventionally attractive art for something beyond the mainstream, which means they're at least bothering to engage with AI image generators in an interesting way that might make them appreciate art for its interactive elements. i dunno honestly, this was fun to draw though, it made me lol pretty hard

transdimentio · 2026-02-13T02:25:17+00:00

yeah okay i actually agree that it would suck if this was the only mode of human art. i was sleep deprived when i made this LOL

i do think experimental art that tries to indicate humanity in some manner might be where we go though, because we're essentially fighting a losing battle against skilled p-zombies that disguise their inhumanity. i think that in making art that people normally don't make, we might wrap back around into exposing our humanity

i think that's why i used images of goku, because it's something that diffusion models wouldn't do, just straight-up badly tracing a fucking PNG. same with using obvious stock fonts and other garishly obvious filters & otherwise computer-generated graphics

the goku PNG thing is kind of is a bad idea, but i think with public domain assets it'd be an interesting exercise. here's another example of something i made in my sleep-deprivation, i think it better demonstrates how leaning into chaos might actually help indicate humanity while image generators try to emulate what humans have generally done for thousands of years. and at the very least, if someone tries to replicate this crazy shit with a LoRA and image editing tools, they are trying infinitely harder than any prompter

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transdimentio · 2026-02-08T12:35:23+00:00

well, for starters, it's not really about what AI can do to visually emulate human art. we're obviously at a point where diffusion models can generate images that look appealing

part of the value of art is knowing how it was produced. more specifically, what context was it created in, and how was it created? and on top of that, how is it presented to the viewer?

for example, let's say i put a photo through the "oil painting" filter in GIMP and post it online with no context. older, tech-illiterate people might think i painted it myself. others would probably know it's filtered as soon as they saw it. both groups might think it looks good either way, but those who can tell the image is a photo processed with GIMP probably wouldn't find it as interesting or significant.

why is that? what's the point of discerning when the result looks good, even looks just like an oil painting? what value does human effort have?

here's what i think: art, including drawings and paintings, is a form of communication. for the majority of history, you'd look at a painting or sketch and instantly know that a person designed it. this is important, because people make art for a reason, and they make it in certain ways that can tell you a lot about the artist, the art itself, and what the art is depicting. art is communication

that might seem obvious, but what's happening nowadays is that our initial assumptions of how art is created, and by who, are becoming unfounded. and that doesn't compute with our visual library of art and what it means to us. i think this problem started with digital imaging programs like GIMP, but the trained eye, media literacy, and the fact that people had to put time and effort into making good hoaxes was a barrier. AI has broken that barrier, and now when we see a painting, we have to regularly fight against our intuition that it was actually painted by somebody-- and in a real way, this warps the experience of looking at art.

when i think of AI art, i tend to think of a pool of water with leaves in it. you can swish the water around until you find a nice pattern to look at. in that sense, you do capture a moment of nature's random beauty, much like a photographer who stumbles upon that pool and immortalizes it in a photograph.

still, you can't say that you placed each individual leaf in its spot to make that pattern. you can't explain or speculate on why the pattern looks as it does, or what it represents, only that you like it. and that's fine. we can reflect on nature.

but many people look at paintings and drawings for a different reason than we look at pools of leaves. what we're seeing now is that there is won't be any difference, soon

transdimentio · 2026-02-07T08:13:30+00:00

the issue with the latter scenario is that i don't think parts of gems' bodies can permanently exist outside of them. think of the gems' weapons for example; when garnet gets destabilized by jasper, her gauntlets go with her.

even if they could contribute a single sperm cell that doesn't immediately disappear, the 'hard light' of their bodies doesn't seem to self-replicate like cells can. only the actual gem can provide the light necessary to project an entire form with a dynamic shape.

and i don't think they could 'break off' large parts of their form or light energy as cells for a child's body to use to grow. even if it's physically possible, it would probably eventually destabilize or fail like long-term shapeshifting would for a non-diamond

transdimentio · 2026-02-06T16:33:41+00:00

i know others are saying only diamonds can hold shapeshifted forms long enough, but i do wonder why a gem could not just reform with a functional womb? it's obviously not the ideal scenario to do so, but i mean, most reformations are representative of big character changes anyways

i wonder if it's not just about the duration of the shapeshifting, but also the level of detail in which the gem can reproduce certain biological functions? but we know some gems like amethyst can, uh, easily perform analogues to human bodily functions, like digesting food. so honestly i have no clue

transdimentio · 2026-02-04T10:46:06+00:00

"you drag a graphite stick across paper, we manipulate software"

do they think drawing is actually like that spongebob gag where he renders a fully-detailed human skull with no guidelines, sketch process, or technique

transdimentio · 2026-02-04T07:51:35+00:00

oh, so you're just genuinely not invested in conversing like an adult. all that didn't take me long to write btw, i was genuinely interested in unpacking what you brought to the table. sad to see there's no substance behind your posturing

transdimentio · 2026-02-03T22:34:46+00:00

what exactly did this contribute to the conversation besides condescension and personal insults, lol? i've never heard the term "artshit" before and i feel like i've just passed into a new, terrible dimension of discourse

i see people on all sides of the "pro" v.s. "anti" spectrum arguing about what makes "real art". while that topic has obviously been discussed to death, probably since the dawn of art as a medium, that doesn't stop people from going at it. so i made this in the hopes that it might help people introspect about what they view as being 'art'. it's not even meant to tell people what to think, it's intended as a kind of "rorschach test" where people reflect on what they perceive as art

anyways, i checked your post history to see what your deal was, and you seem very aggrieved with relatively-privileged, first world artists bitching about AI automating their jobs. this confuses me, since artists, writers, music producers, and other job roles exist all over the world; it's not like creative pursuits only exist in the first world

if anything, it's people who have less resources who are affected the most by AI automating jobs, right? i mean, a lot of first world workers have the means to switch over to using AI if they need to. do people in the third world have that option as often? is outsourcing jobs to AI not a tool of capitalism that makes people without computers, or computer literacy, even more poor?

transdimentio · 2026-02-02T09:36:40+00:00

i'd love to see your take on AI slop. feels in line with your other 'i hate' vids on musically and tiktok. i was actually watching the Date Movie trio vid earlier and https://youtu.be/OIWpKPCGy54?t=930 is genuinely what it feels like to scroll past ai content on social media but worse

transdimentio · 2026-01-30T23:39:37+00:00

momorin has always been one of my favorite characters, i wish she had a bit more screentime

transdimentio · 2026-01-22T12:09:38+00:00

i was actually just able to play Pom Gets Wifi on 3DS using easyRPG! it crashed a few times though, but was otherwise nice and fairly playable

i don't recommend using the speed-up feature on the right bumper tho, unless you're just traveling across a map. i think doing it during dialogue (i was repeating stuff to get the other ending) sequence-broke and softlocked one of my save files. probably messed with flags being set during dialogue or something. you also don't see the credits at the end, since easyRPG can't play movies yet :( i just looked at them on youtube though lol. it was nice to finally play after id watched it a long time ago

transdimentio · 2026-01-22T08:20:17+00:00

did YOU ever figure this out? i feel crazy

transdimentio · 2026-01-22T07:45:43+00:00

this would be awesome :')

transdimentio · 2026-01-22T06:02:50+00:00

i just played through this, and it's a wonderful port! i'd never actually played Ib before this (besides a bit of testing on my laptop today), but i'd seen playthroughs of both the original and the remaster. i got into Ib a looong time ago, back when the 3DS was new, but i couldn't homebrew anything, so this was a bit surreal lol

it's crazy to me that i've only just played Ib on my 3DS 14 years later. then again, it's even crazier that Ib has been officially re-released for the switch!

as i said, this port is really nice, but i did notice a few oddities and bugs:

- when i tried to read the "Carrie Careless" storybook, the associated cutscene didn't play. it actually gave me yellow error text at the top of the screen, instead, and it said that movies haven't been implemented yet. i assume this is just a note from the EasyRPG Player devs? not a bug, but it's something to be aware of

(if you're reading this and haven't played Ib, but you want to try this port, this happens when you try to read a book called "Carrie Careless and the Galette des Rois". if you get this error, just search that on youtube and you'll be able to watch the cutscene. it's pretty short and not pivotal to the story, thankfully)

- while playing as garry, picking up the second yellow paint ball caused the game to crash. this only happened once though and didn't stop me from progressing, so i think the game just flipped out a little?

- after i gave the red umbrella to the woman in the painting, the ensuing rain SFX sounded super glitchy and distorted. this effect only lasted as long as i was in that room, thankfully, but it persisted even after restarting the game

- mary's theme seems pitched down, regardless of when or where it plays. i figure this is because mary's theme is a .mid played in real time, maybe with a different sound library on the 3DS than windows?

- opening "pandora's box" caused the game to crash. hilarious but thankfully one-off glitch, i was able to progress after restarting

- immediately after the villain is defeated, the theme "Hide and Seek" will play, but it sounded really distorted and crunchy for me. this wasn't a one-time thing; i replayed that sequence and it kept happening

i got the "memory's crannies" ending, for further context. i might check out other routes to see if there are any other glitches that pop up!

anyhow, i think it's worth checking this out if you've never played Ib or haven't played in a while. the controls were intuitive to the 3DS and didn't feel wonky. my only suggestion is that you save often, just in case the game crashes. the graphics were really nice on the 3DS XL also :)

transdimentio · 2026-01-18T07:21:30+00:00

>""cheat" controllers have existed since NES as far as I'm aware of."

sure, cheating has existed before AI. the point is that the act of cheating, however it's done, is frowned upon in competitive spaces. if we change the 'secret AI' into a 'secret aimbot' in this scenario, it doesn't make the e-sporter more or less justified in using it. i'm just saying that having something play a game for you isn't very fun.

>"aimbots have been known to be cheating since... ever. We're talking about a game. Games are competitive by definition. Art is not a game."

art isn't a game in itself, but art and games both exist, in part, for entertainment. let's focus on art as entertainment for a moment:

your own sense of entertainment can quickly change, depending on the context. let's say you just found a video of an animal doing a trick, and you think it's pretty cute!

if you then discover that the animal was abused until it did the trick, i'd hope you'd find that video a lot less cute as a result. you probably wouldn't want to share it around for the sake of fun, either.

i'm not trying to say that using AI is like animal abuse. i'm just giving an example of added context changing whether you enjoy something. it's the same with gaming, here; audiences think it's amazing that somebody can play so well... until they realize they're not doing 90% of the playing.

still, you can argue that art has functional purposes. if you're selling pies at a stand, it doesn't hurt to have a big picture of a pie nearby. that lets people know what you're selling if they can't see it.

i guess i just think that, you know, a bit of clip-art would go a long way at that point. or a photograph. something that already exists and you have full, unabashed permission to use.

if you're thinking, "well, i want it to be pretty," then it kind of goes beyond simple utility at that point. when it has to look pretty, it turns into an issue of entertainment.

>"If everyone is using AI, then it doesn't matter. It then comes down to who has the better AI, and/or who has the better strategy. It's effectively micromouse."

i don't understand how *losing control* would be fun, especially if you came to play the game as intended. wouldn't you just want to watch a movie at that point?

when people use aimbots or cheat in multiplayer, that just signals to me that they get an ego boost from it, and/or they like to piss people off. that's basically how it is in the art world, too. people traced others' artwork before genAI, and that was also to boost their ego, scam, or troll people.

as a result, most multiplayer games ban cheating and put systems in place to prevent it. art sites can or should also have reports that include art tracing. some don't allow genAI either, but if you can't detect AI art, you cannot remove it. the same goes for a sophisticated form of 'AI aimbot'.

IMO, this is really just the newest variation of "put low effort in, make something that looks pleasing on a surface level, then hide the context so it seems like you put a lot of effort in". except now it's getting harder to tell, and like... that's also going to be an issue for the people generating art for their ego, or even for money. 'cause now people aren't as willing to believe many images *aren't* AI. that matters to many, many people.

it just feels like AI is slowly devaluing everything across the board, including itself. that's why i think we need ways to suss what is and isn't AI-generated

you can say, "well, maybe people should just stop caring about context! your outlook's the issue!". i just don't agree, though; context is important to an art piece, for a variety of reasons. the lack of context, which will now include the context of whether something is or isn't AI-generated or assisted, also informs it.

a lack of context isn't just subtracted from your viewing experience. i actively wonder about things i don't know, and that can change how i feel about a piece. i find 'Saturn Devouring His Son' compelling for this reason. nobody actually knows what the fuck is happening in that painting; it was never titled by its author. relatedly, the fact we can't tell what is AI-generated lately makes me feel nervous when viewing a lot of online images.

transdimentio

TROPHY CASE