sarah zedig 🐐

@hmsnofun

video essayist, writer, creator of godfeels. keeping an eye on the material conditions. 30s. seattle. videos: podcast: @transquestioning.bsky.social fiction:

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sarah zedig 🐐@hmsnofun· 26d

how i'm feeling rn

sarah zedig 🐐@hmsnofun· Jul 9

oops, wrote an even longer essay on how TO get lost in the weeds writing high-concept science fiction!! www.tumblr.com/hms-no-fun/8...

a story isn't a house. you can ignore the blueprint. you can change it as you go without checking the math. you don't even have to have a blueprint in the first place! there is no cost for trying and failing. there is no penalty for breaking the rules. you SHOULD know the rules, you SHOULD have a solid grasp on what the average Finished Thing looks like, and you SHOULD probably spend some time in the I Fucking Suck At This mines before diving face first into your ambitious narrative epic. but you don't HAVE to. no one is going to send you to forever jail if you don't. you can break every never-ever-do-this rule in the book and still end up with a great story, as long as you write it good. and the only way to learn how to write it good is to write it bad first.

sarah zedig 🐐@hmsnofun· Jul 6

a frame from homestuck: beyond canon where dirk strider, wearing a very anime outfit, peers moodily over a table cluttered with pages. he is planning something. something to do with horses.

sarah zedig 🐐@hmsnofun· Jun 29

brb getting this tattooed on my face asap

picture of 80s-era stephen king grinning wetly, while red on-screen text reads "STEPHEN KINK"

sarah zedig 🐐@hmsnofun· Jun 28

[sweatily] we have, um. we have now taken the most, the most detailed photo ever, of- of the, um, haha [tugs collar] the galaxy's- 🥵wow is it hot in here or what???

a diagram of the Milky Way galaxy from the side pointing out the disc, the stellar halo, globular clusters, the location of our sun, and... the galactic bulge...

sarah zedig 🐐@hmsnofun· Jun 27

got a good question on tumblr and ended up writing a little essay on how to not get lost in the weeds while writing high-concept science fiction! www.tumblr.com/hms-no-fun/8...

great question! the shortest obvious answer, to get it out of the way: study and practice. there is, i think, a broad cultural literacy around pop sci-fi that isn't necessarily true of other genres just because it's so integral to 21st century tech and internet culture, and that's given a lot of casual sci-fi fans the conviction that they're experts. but how much of that expertise is from science fiction literature, vs movies and television? how much sci-fi have you actually read? how much of what you've read is from more than ten/twenty years ago? the question of how to avoid getting lost in the conceptual weeds is one that many other writers have answered in the past (some more successfully than others) and, contrary to the hilarious beginner's conviction of "i don't want other people's work to taint my vision", retracing their steps is preferable to forging a new path from scratch.

think of it like you're scaling a mountain. a newbie climber thinks it's all about rugged self-reliance, they want to take big swings and not follow the crowd and show the world how amazing they are. in the process, they make rookie mistakes that even casual climbers could have told them how to avoid, and they expend vastly more energy in the process by walking a straight line up hill instead of following the well-worn switchback trail to the point they almost certainly won't finish the climb, and might not even make it out of the beginner area. the experienced climber knows that following the established path isn't weakness, it's taking advantage of work that was already done and is not necessary to do again. they conserve their energy, pace themselves, and have enough experience to know what risks are worth taking. afterwards, the newbie will complain loudly about how unfair it is that everyone else is cheating by, essentially, climbing in easy mode, and doesn't understand why they're not impressed by him but are instead embarrassed.

[there's more but i hit the character limit]

sarah zedig 🐐@hmsnofun· Jun 24

how perfectly rich-neighborhood-in-seattle is it to build new affordable housing in a tiny island of land surrounded on all sides by 5+ lanes of well-used highway? it's beyond parody at this point. is the future of affordable living in this city a lifetime of noise pollution & carcinogen exposure?

satellite image and land-use map of a small triangular plot of land surrounded on all sides by 5-lane highways

image borrowed from the quoted piece

sarah zedig 🐐@hmsnofun· Jun 22

why aren't you watching Interview with the Vampire?

screenshot from season 3 episode 3 of Interview with the Vampire, which shows Lestat behind the wheel of a car in a close-up looking very cunty. on the bottom of the screen is subtitled narration that reads: "Serving cunt has its consequences."

sarah zedig 🐐@hmsnofun· Jun 18

this is by far the funniest thing a show could ever brag about

screenshot from promo video for House of the Dragon season 3, showing a bunch of dudes extremely on fire. on-screen text reads: "23 STUNT PERFORMERS IGNITED IN ONE TAKE"

another screenshot from the same promo, showing a closeup of two men who are extremely on fire. text reads: A NEW WORLD RECORD

sarah zedig 🐐@hmsnofun· Jun 16

berserk but griffith wants to resurrect the klan

sarah zedig 🐐@hmsnofun· Jun 14

i need to get in and take a bunch more closeup pictures of all the fiddly shit i had to do to make this rig work but damn does it work! never used these lights before, designed this setup in prepro sight unseen, had zero time to second guess the plan on the day. so happy that i pulled it off!!!

picture of the rafters of a basement being used as a film set. an overhead fixture has four tube lights attached to it either by magnets or rope, and several rectangular light panels have been clipped to various overhead support beams.

sarah zedig 🐐@hmsnofun· Jun 13

i love old dude opinion pieces. yeah man let's cobble together a fake greek word out of multiple obscure prefixes and not bother sharing the etymology so we can sound smart when we say "i'm old and young people do things that annoy me"

What winds me up the most about our national life in general is the fashion for imprecise and redundant speech. I inherit this deep-seated misosaskopeslexis* from my father, who was disdainful of the transatlantic accent we all affected in the 1960s and 1970s, and the now forgotten vocabulary that went with it (hey, wow man, cool, far out, heavy, groovy etc).

* Hatred of pointless words. It’s Greek. Don’t look it up; I made it up myself. I think it might be useful.

sarah zedig 🐐@hmsnofun· Jun 13

the problem i'm having with this manifesto about video games is that all the best parts i've written so far have nothing to do with video games. and oh, what a problem to have

Merch is a virtue signal, even if only to yourself, and that’s by no means a bad thing in isolation. I enjoy a cheeky little trinket as much as the next red-blooded God-fearing American transsexual, and you know my eyes light up when I see someone else wearing a Deltarune pin. But the purveyors of these tchotchkies don’t want to stop at selling you what you already know you want- they want to sell you a dozen other things as well, a personality, a lifestyle, a [take a deep breath y’all, we’ll get through this one together] “community” of like-minded consumers whose every unique trait is subservient to their totalizing love of Thing. You love Thing too, don’t you? And not in the shallow, performantive way others love Thing. It’s deeper for you, profound, meaningful, it gives you hope and guides you out of the dark when everything and everyone else is telling you to stay right where you are. Okay, yes, sure, Thing is a corporate franchise and you don’t love all the choices they make with it (you’re not nearly as harsh as some of your peers and even you have to admit that Thing isn’t quite as good as it used to be), but so is everything these days and anyway that doesn’t change your relationship with Thing. It’s been with you for as long as you can remember, after all. You can’t possibly imagine your life without it.

But someday you’re gonna get old and all those acrylic waifus will be rotting in a landfill somewhere, never to decay while humans are still around to keep time. We have been conditioned not to reflect on our consumption habits, to not question that kneejerk support of Thing’s latest Thing-based product, and so we must build those muscles for ourselves. We have to collectively develop ways to express and exchange our love of Thing that are socially and ecologically conscious. Bill Watterson didn’t just make a great comic, he also single-handedly prevented untold decades of carbon emissions, chemical pollution, and tons of littering just by refusing to merchandize. Hey, guess what: turns out having a spine is good for the environment too!

Selling out is the success story. Maintaining your integrity is lame and lowkey prtentious. What’s so wrong about getting that bag? Obviously everyone wants to make Bill Watterson level art, but who’s to say you can’t be making Jim Davis level money at the same time?
I am. You can’t. It’s fucking impossible. Calvin and Hobbes has the staying power it does because it is singularly, precisely itself and nothing more. The Doom engine has the staying power it does because it isn’t a constantly-updating subscription service with content moderated servers and approved asset suppliers. And sure, we can argue that actually these were both very shrewd business decisions because they built a loyal longlasting fanbase and yadda yadda yadda but unfortunately I’ve been possessed by the spirit of Bill Hicks and he has a message for you: Kill yourself.

sarah zedig 🐐@hmsnofun· Jun 13

anyway i'm taking a stab at #manifestojam and probably won't finish in time but as you can see i picked some fairly uncontroversial low-hanging fruit for my topic

VIDEO GAMES AREN'T ART
(because art doesn't exist)

sarah zedig 🐐@hmsnofun· Jun 10

in a league of mediocre baseball, the above average team is king

a chart of the 2026 mlb season so far in the AL west, showing the mariners are currently the only team of five to have a winning record

sarah zedig 🐐@hmsnofun· Jun 10

watching last night's mariners highlights like

seattle mariner randy arozarena just doing his thing, walking off a baseball game

sarah zedig 🐐@hmsnofun· Jun 10

it's pride month you know what that means

sarah zedig 🐐@hmsnofun· Jun 4

some before/afters as i'm figuring out how to use it. so far, i think it's looking pretty good!

picture of a crow carrying something in its beak. the image is generally dark and flat.

same picture of a crow carrying something in its beak, but it is now more saturated and brighter to highlight the subject while darkening the negative space around/behind it.

picture of someone on a public balcony looking over their shoulder while someone next to them takes a selfie, both silhouetted against a cloudy sky. the image is generally dark.

the same picture of two people on a public balcony, only now it's more saturated and the subject's face has been lightened to be more prominent in the image

sarah zedig 🐐@hmsnofun· Jun 2

slippy: look fox, my palms sweat mucous! fox: that's cool slip but please wash your hands peppy: now fox don't be rude, he can't help his biology slippy: the mucous releases pheromones to attract potential mates! falco: [shotguns fifth space red bull in as many minutes]

sarah zedig 🐐@hmsnofun· Jun 2

nintendo i am sending you this message right now. i will buy a switch 2 and star fox IF AND ONLY IF you do another pack-in spinoff game only instead of being about slippy's weird capitalist uncle it's a dating sim about disaster lesbian katt munroe breaking hearts and surfing couches

screenshot of katt munroe's talksprite during combat in the new star fox game

sarah zedig 🐐@hmsnofun· Jun 2

me when i am about to get a tasty tasty treat!!!!!!!

screenshot of the switch 2's v-tuber esque face mapping technology, where a human expression read on a camera (left) is animated on fox mccloud's face (right)

sarah zedig 🐐@hmsnofun· Jun 2

falco... my boy... your posture is horrendous

screenshot of falco lombardi from the new star fox game, he kind of looks like the top half of an anthro bird furry stapled onto the bottom half of a more feral bird furry

sarah zedig 🐐@hmsnofun· Jun 2

👀

graph of the AL west rankings, showing the seattle mariners currently ahead of the pack by a couple of games

sarah zedig 🐐@hmsnofun· Jun 1

they don't print ticket stubs anymore so i gotta make do

sarah zedig 🐐@hmsnofun· May 31

got a question about how Backrooms is speculated to "change" hollywood, so i ended up writing a bit of an essay explaining why i think nothing substantial is gonna change despite all the hype. www.tumblr.com/hms-no-fun/8...

Anonymous asked:

I saw a post speculating about the possible impact from the back rooms movie. Do you think there will be any long term effects on the movie industry?

sarah responded:

i'm old enough now to have witnessed a fair few moments like this, where a hot young upstart breaks in and does the unexpected if not presumed-impossible and everyone's left thinking "nothing will ever be the same!" and then time passes and everything mostly stays the same. so i'm skeptical of the hype in that sense, that this is gonna be a huge turning point for hollywood. historically they always learn the wrong lessons and end up backing the worst horses because the industry (by and large) isn't run by artists, it's run by the same type of business boy who runs every other corporation.

i actually saw Backrooms last night and, much to my surprise, i kinda loved it? i'm grading it on a curve, naturally, there are a lot of nits one could pick with the script and story construction-- but the vibes, the atmosphere, the visuals, the themes, it all really came together for me and resulted in a film that's a lot of fun to talk about. it isn't just competent or, like, "good for a movie directed by a 19 year old," it's genuinely one of the better horror films i've seen in a long time. all those nits i mentioned didn't really bug me too much in the end because most of them are just The Parlance Of Contemporary Horror, your jump scares and spooky monsters and handholdy on-screen flashbacks to the movie you are currently watching etc. the presence of these things annoyed me, but compared to how those same quirks are deployed in most mainstream horror movies Backrooms comes across as downright restrained.

the reason it's good is that they got Kane Parsons to make this flick. he's not bandwagoning from the outside, he's very clearly iterating on and

[the line cuts off to bait you into reading the rest on tumblr]

sarah zedig 🐐@hmsnofun· May 31

six thousand human souls in my pocket. the boatman will be pleased

screenshot of my follower count, a perfectly round 6000

sarah zedig 🐐@hmsnofun· May 28

screenshot of a twitter post from @dkulchar on january 6 2021: "Trying to explain to my parents (very gently) that basically nobody under 40 right now expects good things to happen ever again"

sarah zedig 🐐@hmsnofun· May 26

haha oops i wrote a little essay about making yourself work on the art you want to be working on www.tumblr.com/hms-no-fun/8...

Anonymous asked:

do you have tips for getting yourself to actually sit down and work on creative projects? my adhd is medicated and yet i still struggle to actually work on the art and writing i deeply want to be doing

sarah zedig replied:

i wish i had an easy no-scope solution for you but i fully expect to be struggling with this same problem for the rest of my life. the artists who appear to be able to just churn shit out consistently for years on end are, in my experience, people who've developed a rigorous set of habits and built a lifestyle around their work, or are genetic freaks who've somehow hacked their own adhd into a superpower, or otherwise just don't really have much self-consciousness about the quality of their own work. they are few and far between, and even fewer are those who can maintain that pace indefinitely, but that doesn't stop the rest of the world from holding them up as the examples we should be aspiring towards. needless to say, i don't think that's particularly helpful.

there ARE lessons to be learned from them, to be clear. we tend to get up in our heads about making art because it's often an emotional process, but the reality is that the work part of the work is just that: work. nobody who clocks in at an office job is excited to be there every day, or even any day. sometimes making art is tedious and annoying and you just have to buckle in and do it anyway. a lot of it really is just habits, practice, and projecting a level of confidence that you probably lack. most people's bar of quality for your work is a lot lower than yours, and-

the text cuts off here to entice readers to click through to the full post on tumblr

sarah zedig 🐐@hmsnofun· May 22