Think About The Difference Between A Classical Greco-Roman Statue And A Roughly Carved Wooden Mask. The

worst popular statement about art is 'disturbs the comfortable and comforts the disturbed' because that basically means 'art is a weapon to dominate my enemies and help people I like" which is truly evil

the disturbing aspect of art should be something everybody experiences but which turns out to be a good thing as well as a bad thing. Let's all get struck by it like ragdolls!

I'm the Daijou-Daijin of cringe

make ugly art. NOWWWW

while I don't have a total solution for this kind of thing, I believe that bad working practices are usually tied to aspects of the final work that I don't care much about -- visual polish, technical achievement, etc. so I feel optimistic that there is no contradiction between what is truly good and what is good for the creators' work lives

I think when collaborating, a small number of people can go to extreme effort and push at the boundaries of what is possible, but this is not a workplace and shouldn't be done when money and power is corrupting everything

don't care to comment on the AI controversy du jour except to briefly remark on labour practices in Studio Ghibli, so far as I know about them - it's complicated lol. they are infamously demanding employers (c.f. Oshii's Kremlin quote) and it's quite likely the workload at the studio during Princess Mononoke and Takahata's abusive treatment killed Yoshifumi Kondō before he could direct a movie, but also so far as I understand they're moderately less bad on the 'ludicrously shit pay and no job security' norm of the rest of the anime industry, traditionally keeping mostly permanent employees rather than relying on freelancers.

they also do tend to attract some of the absolute best people in the industry on a technical level, and notably they've been a recurring home for brilliant idiosyncratic artists like Shinya Ohira whose work wouldn't easily fit into the standard pipeline. there's a reason a lot of animators see working at ghibli as a high aspiration and it's not just the fame of miyazaki's work. of course, Ghibli as experienced by famous animators like Yoshinori Kanada or Shinya Ohira might be a different experience than Ghibli as experienced at the lower rungs.

still, I think animation at large, as a heavily passion-driven creative industry, has a really warped relationship with overwork - there's a kind of 'that sucks but also you gotta respect the results tho' sentiment that goes way, way beyond ghibli or even the anime industry. it's sacrifice logic. to claim you sacrificed x hundred hours on a piece is to claim that piece was worth more than anything else you would have done for those x hundred hours, and to claim the role of the madly passionate artist who puts it all into their work. notably the myth of Miyazaki himself focuses on how intensely he works on his projects, from the thousands of pieces he did at university right through to his elaborate storyboards and micromanaging style as a director.

don't quite know the way through that, tbh. I'm no more immune to that romance than the next sakubuta.

It's really hard to understand what is and isn't bodily autonomy when it comes to social pressures. Do people want to alter their bodies or are they being pressured into it... but really, there is no such thing as an authentic individual self that can make these decisions free of pressure. We are social pressure, it's part of us just like our bodies

I thought it over and I now think this is very unlikely to be the reason the person said nao instead of nou

obviously a lot of ink has been spilled on how prefacing statements with "I'm not even gonna TRY to pronounce that!" is way worse than just. trying and getting it wrong

but what really bothers me is when people mispronounce something very badly even though it's written using a phonetic alphabet

I don't actually enjoy arguing, but seeing an opinion I really disagree with in text feels sort of overpowering and makes me want to carve out a space against it. Like in a response comment. Maybe it isnt such a good idea

A lot of people use art as a way to express emotions but I think it's important to not let emotional expression become just a new standard of authenticity. Express your feelings if you want to. You can also just make shapeless forms and that's okay too.

this is a photo of Guarino Guarini's church, Santissima Annunziata dei Teatini, before it was destroyed by the Messina earthquake in 1908.

Because the image has colour, it's interesting to pretend it's current day but just blurry. It looks like something you could encounter in your daily life