L'occhio de vaini

(he/him) My regrets are as countless as the sands of the desert

[barbwritesstuff]

I love it when people have weird takes and ideas.

So often people are just like 'oh, I loved [movie that 98% of people love]', or 'I think [opinion that has been signed, sealed, and approved by broader internet consensus]'. Worse, they just straight up start sending you memes.

Like, okay, sure, fine, I guess.

But come on. Come on.

Hit me with a freak thought. Please.

[if-memes]

spoon in his jammies :3

(reference image under cut)

[3leggedmagpie]

Fuck ice, yaknow?

[dynerlow]

https://archiveofourown.org/works/78849966

New year new fic! This one is based on the wonderful Interactive Fiction @infamous-if, and sees the main character stumble upon two very special rival bandmates as he visits the local record store. There's humor, there's angst, and there's also MC's band.

Big props to @capricule who acted as beta for the fic (if you're a fan of Infamous you are legally obligated to check out her art and fics), I'm so glad she agreed to do this since I have no idea who else I would've turned to for a fic on such a specific fandom😅

[shamebats]

Did they task the vampires with hanging up the flags 😭

[artofelanor]

Have you seen the new movie? It's on library. It's literally on the library. It's on library without ads. It's literally on your local public library. You can probably ask for it on your library. Dude it's on your library. It's in the original case too. It's on library. You can watch it at the library. You can go to your local library and watch it. Register onto your local library right now. Go to your library. Dive into your library. You can watch it. It's on there. Your library has it for you. Your library has it for you.

[mossworth]

Have you seen your post? You can see it at library. It's at library. It's on the library staff cabinet. It got printed out on paper and put up on Library.

[artofelanor]

oh my GOSH wow... I'm on Library...

[elbiotipo]

why bother caring about the environment when 1. It’s so obviously a lost cause and 2. There’s definitely going to be a nuclear war?

And what are you doing about it Anon? Learn about ecological restoration or get out of my way.

[elbiotipo]

If you read ecology books printed in the 70s and 80s, they were absolutely convinced that whales and tigers would not survive the century. There's a whole plot in Star Trek about how whales are extinct actually. Here in Argentina, we were sure that yaguaretés would have gone extinct. It was thought that rainforests would be forever lost, because there was no way that such complex ecosystems would be restored.

Now, you can go to Península Valdés and find that the whale population there is growing year after year, people can see them from their windows. In Iberá, where yaguaretés were extinct for over 70 years, there's now a population of 35 and growing, after being reintroduced just five years ago. As for rainforests?

We've becoming very, very good on restoring them. Natural environments, when given space and time to heal, can return to that they were. And after all, all natural enviroments are managed by human societies. It is up to us to implement a good management, un buen gobierno.

I firmly believe our children and grandchildren will see a restoration of Earth like never before.

Millions of people are working on this. You can learn about it, perhaps even become one of them. Or be a pointless doomer in my ask box. Your choice.

[crabussy]

if there are people who care, it's never a lost cause. at one point, kākāpō, a nocturnal flightless parrot species from aotearoa, were thought to be entirely extinct for decades. until 1977, where booming calls from males were heard on the small island of whenua hou. now, thanks to people who care so much they dedicated their lives to caring, kākāpō numbers are close to 300. despite the setbacks. despite the small gene pool causing infertility and health problems. people cared so fucking much that they survived. this is one of COUNTLESS, countless similar stories. I'm studying ecology so that I can go into conservation and all around me, every day, I see people who care enough to put years of their lives into learning about and solving environmental problems. I don't know man. hope isn't just some nebulous thing. it's tangible if you do something with it.

[vulgarweed]

The bald eagle almost went extinct in the US. That’s right, our national symbol. Pollution and insistence on using deadly chemical pesticides like DDT - which thankfully was banned in 1972. And after that, some other bird species we almost lost like the Peregrine Falcon started to come back too. Neither is on the endangered list at all any more.

People fought hard to make that happen, and they won.

[squeakitties]

wikipedia no longer being anywhere near the top of search results when looking up anything feels eviscerating

[ichorandpride]

#they really said “you can’t use wiki as an academic source-use our garbage AI that’s even less reliable”#and you can’t even opt out of it

no but you can FORCE it away. use ublock origin and copy paste the blacklist i made into the filters to be able to remove the bullshit AI overview that google forces. it also removes youtube's forced ads (at least until they fix it)

you can also use the ublacklist extension and use this blacklist of AI image generation websites to curate your google image results

there are ALWAYS ways around stuff. it's just a matter of looking into it and asking around

[nicenice7]

I'M FREE

[alistairsprayerwarrior]

FOR WIKIPEDIA!!!!

[a-bittersweet-life]

Talking with Andrei Tarkovsky

(Andrei Tarkovsky with Oleg Yankovsky on the set of Nostalghia)

In three interviews that extend from the writing of the film to its showing at the Cannes Film Festival 1983, we dive into the past to meet the master Russian filmmaker, Andrei Tarkovsky, in discussions over his work Nostalghia. Share in the insight and wonder!

1980 Interview with Andrei Tarkovsky by Gian Luigi Rondi

Gian Luigi Rondi: Is the title now definitive?

Andrei Tarkovsky: I think so, yes. Initially we had considered Viaggio in Italia (Voyage to Italy), but since there was already the film by Rossellini, with Ingrid Bergman, which bore that title, we searched for something else. The title we have decided upon is Nostalghia, a word that is similar both in Russian and Italian, the only difference being that in Russian it is pronounced with a hard “g.”

And the nostalgia, as you told me the other night as you arrived at the Fiumicino Airport, is that of a Russian who is displeased that he cannot share with his family, which has remained in Moscow, the joy of the encounter with Italian art?

Well, expressed in that way it is just the kind of summary one makes in an airport as one is collecting one’s baggage and hurriedly placing his suitcases on a cart. No. The film, in fact, will deal with various problems and has many themes. The protagonist is a Russian intellectual. In Moscow, or in Leningrad, Tonino Guerra and I have still not yet specified this point, he teaches history of Italian Rennaissance architechture at a university. He is a great specialist, appreciated by everyone, even though he has never set foot in Italy because he constructed his science, his culture, solely through books. One day, for research purposes, he decides to come to Italy, assisted by an interpreter who must accompany him to all the inspections of palaces and monuments that he plans to make. He begins his visits, he looks, he studies, and very soon thereafter he enters into crisis. Everything that he knew, in fact, seems to no longer have any sense for him, it seems dead, empty. Contained in those monuments, in those palaces, is the heart and soul of those who made them, who conceived them, and around them are the people who don’t see them in an abstract way but in concrete terms, because they live there or experience them, because they are part of their daily panoramas, of the rythms of their existence. And thus all meanings change, all surroundings, as if revealing different themes and measures. What did the professor know of all this? Nothing. Thus he did not know the essential, the true juice of those monuments, of that art that he had read about in books, that he had seen only in photographs.

It is also a bit the problem of reproductions, of translations…

Precisely. The only art that reaches everyone directly is music. The others, if you are not in the midst of them, if you don’t experience them, they have only barriers surrounding them. Take a poem and translate it. The language, the sound, the spirit will immediately be different, it will be a different poem, not that one, because you will never be able to say, on the basis of a simple translation, that you have reached the heart of the poet, the secret of his soul, the true essence of the way that he expresses himself. And so it is for reproductions. A monument. Certainly, a photograph might contain all that appears, the lines, style, even the indication of the proportions. But the air that circulates around it, the light on that day, in that hour, the eyes of those who see it and walk near it, at times without even realizing where they are? And instead it is these that give that monument its truest meaning, its dimensions, its artistic secret. Photographic reproduction, translation. Art cannot manage to move inside it, it is there, imprisoned, and an imprisoned art, yes, certainly, is always a betrayed art.

And so?

And so, given this problem, it is necessary to attempt to arrive at a solution, and there can only be one solution, contact, communication. Art is culture, culture is the soul and memory of the people. There must be the possibility to transmit, to communicate culture: because only through this communication, this exchange, can man arrive at his entirety. However much you may be convinced that you have achieved a certain level of fullness, however much you may have experienced and studied, if you ignore that which there is elsewhere, if you lack that which cultulre has given to others far from you, you are lacking something, you are not complete, you cannot truly say that you have achieved the fullness which defines a true, whole, complete man. Culture is like blood, it must circulate, and it must circulate normally everywhere. Otherwise what happens is what occurs in a body when blood does not circulate in some point: gangrene immediately develops.

But what about nostalgia?

It becomes a universal problem. In Italy, the professor is alone. Obviously, he does not have his family with him, he does not have his students with him. The discoveries that he makes, starting above all with the discovery that he knows nothing and that thus his teaching is useless, are useful only to himself because they are not sensations, experiences, that can be transmitted in a classroom or, worse, printed in books, because it is absolutely necessary to experience them, and experience them together. So, as I already told you at the Fiumicino Airport, he has a sort of crisis of rejection, with regards to everything that surrounds him. That research trip–research and study only for himself–suddenly no longer seems to make any sense to him and he interrupts it. He still has some monuments, some buildings, to visit, but he refuses, he stops. Precisely because he has discovered the importance and the necessity of communication, of contact, he does not feel like being the only one to profit from it. Because it would in fact be like letting the blood circulate only partially in his body.

And how will you narrate all of this?

With Tonino Guerra, we have tried to develop these moral themes in the same manner that cinema generally develops the practical themes of hunger, hatred, violence, death. In order to arrive at evoking the same tensions, the same emotions.

Do you already have an idea of the images with which you will visualize these themes?

If possible, they will be even more simple and essential than those of Stalker, with the renunciation of technical gimmicks, of special effects. A man and the life around him, a man in reality. A recreated reality, naturally, not a copied one. I do not believe in a cinema that copies.

A realism of dream, like that of Mirror?

There isn’t “realism” on the one hand, and on the other hand (in contrast, in contradiction) “dreams.” We spend a third of our life asleep (and thus dreaming): what is there that is more real than dreams?

Then how would you explain the style which you have in mind for Nostalghia?

I refer once again to Stalker. There is a place there, the Zone, which is and is not, it is reality and, at the same time, it is a place of the soul, of memory. In the film, when you see it, it is a forest, a river. That’s all. But the air that circulates, the light, the rhythms, the perspectives, without distorting anything, make you feel it as an “other” place, with various dimensions, always real and, at the same time, different. The last time that I came to Italy to begin studying the project of Nostalghia, together with Tonino Guerra I visited many of your cities, also to have a precise idea of Rennaissance architecture, of your Art. Tonino would show me this or that monument, I looked, admired, took notes, but then what always struck me most was the sky, your blue sky, black sky, with clouds, with the sun, at dawn, at noon, in the evening. The sky, a sky is always just that, but all it takes is a different hour of the day, the wind, a change in climate, for it to speak to you in a different way, with love, with violence, with longing, with fear. Cinema can give these “ways” back to you, it must. With courage, and honesty, always starting from the real.

Have you already chosen the actors and the technicians?

For now only the protagonist, who, as in Andrei Rublov and Stalker, will once again be Anatoli Solonytsin. The others, obviously, will all be Italians, except for the ones who will act in the scenes to be filmed in the Soviet Union–the professor’s memories. We will discuss with RAI with regards to the technicians. In any case, I am considering Luciano Tovoli for director of photography [Giuseppe Lanci served as director of photography for Nostalghia, though Tovoli would take that role in Tarkovsky’s 1982 documentary Tempo di Viaggio, or Voyage in Time.

1983 Interview with Andrei Tarkovsky by Maurizio Porro

Maurizio Porro: Nostalgia for what, Mr. Tarkovsky?

Andrei Tarkovsky: Our “nostalghia” is not your “nostalgia.” It is not an individual emotion but something much more complex and profound that Russians experience when they are abroad. It is a disease, an illness, that drains away the strength of the soul, the capacity to work, the pleasure of living. I analyze this nostalghia confronting it with a concrete story, that of a Soviet intellectual who comes to Italy.

Afflicted with this nostalghia, how did you find working with us?

Extremely well, because cinema, in any case, is a big family everywhere. I made the film without the use of a translator, making myself understood with broken phrases. Film uses a universal language, it helps us to understand each other, to explain ourselves. However, I do find that in Italy there is far too much discussion and arguing over the financial aspects of this type of work, of filmmaking, which instead are not considered to be so essential by we in Russia.

Looking at the Russian protagonist, one is tempted to view it as being an autobiographical film.

It is, but only from the artistic point of view. In fact, in this sense, I have never made a film that has mirrored my moods with such violence, that has liberated my interior world so profoundly, as this one. I myself, when I saw the completed film, was stunned in the face of this expressive force. I felt almost ill: the same thing that one experiences when looking at oneself in the mirror, or when one has the impression of even having gone beyond one’s own intentions.

And what were your intentions?

My wish was simply to observe a Russian who comes to Italy and discovers unexpected emotions which regard him. Of course, the same thing would have happened if I had gone to Africa, or who knows where else. This man does not understand the reason for the barriers between countries. He does not accept the artificial conventions that wish to render men different from each other. And all of this naturally provokes attrocious suffering in him. Even a child, if you ask him what we should do to understand each other better, will answer that we need to open the frontiers. Of course, it is a naive and idealistic answer, but a basically just one: the drama emerges precisely from this clash between this innocent vision of the world and the real conditions of life for a man who is away from his country.

Does your work help you?

Cinema is the most noble and important art, even though it is still expiating its original sin of having been born from commerce and the market as merchandise.

Don’t you think that all of this is very close to pessimism?

On the contrary, the true pessimists are those who continue to seek happiness. Wait for two or three years and then go and ask them what they have attained.

Can I ask you where your optimism lies?

It lies in being aware that the drama of our civilization consists in a non-harmonious development between the requirements of technology and the needs of the spirit, whose perfection is the true purpose of life.

1983 Interview with Andrei Tarkovsky by Natalia Aspesi

Natalia Aspesi: Are you indifferent to awards?

Andrei Tarkovsky: If I answered yes, I would be a liar. It would be like a writer saying that he doesn’t care at all wether he is read or not. Films are made in order to be seen, and if Nostalghia were to win here at Cannes I would be very happy. Nostalghia was conceived, filmed, and produced in Italy, but it is the most Russian of my films.

How do you find staying in Italy?

I like it very much. It is the only country where I could remain for a long period of time. I wouldn’t be able to stay for longer than a week anywhere else. Nevertheless, I’m going back to Moscow at the end of the month. I can’t live for long far away from my land, from my people. I have many projects. I will have to decide. I am thinking above all about a film based on Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot. My culture was formed, was nurtured, from the great Russian writers. Like them, I experience the dramatic condition of struggling to reconcile material life and spiritual life.

Is it true that you viewed Nostalghia only once before bringing it here to the Cannes Film Festival?

Yes. And I was extremely pleased with it. I feel that it is my most successfully realized film, the one that best expresses my interior world. The protagonist even became my alter ego of sorts. He contains all my emotions, my psychology, my nature. He is my portrait in the mirror.

Why don’t you want to talk about your film?

That’s not accurate. I don’t wish to recount the plot of the film, which, in and of itself, means nothing. What interest is there in knowing that it deals with a Russian writer who comes to Italy to carry out research about a countryman of his, an artist about whom all traces were lost two centuries ago, and that he encounters an Italian professor and a blond translator? But I can try to explain what the film tries to say. It is the expression of an emotion, the one that is most deeply rooted in me, that I have never felt so strongly as when I left the Soviet Union. It is for this reason that I say that I could have filmed Nostalghia only in Italy. And we Russians, for us nostalghia is not a gentle and benevolent emotion, as it is for you Italians. For us it is a sort of deadly disease, a mortal illness, a profound compassion that binds us not so much with our own privation, our longing, our separation, but rather with the suffering of others, a passionate empathy.

Where do you situate Nostalghia in the context of your body of work?

Nostalghia is an extremely important film for me. It is a film in which I have managed to express myself fully. I must say that it has confirmed for me that cinema is a truly great art form, capable of representing faithfully even the most imperceptable movements of the human soul.

What struck you most upon seeing, even if only once, your completed film?

Its almost unbearable sadness, which, however, reflects very well my need to immerse myself in spirituality. In any case, I can’t stand mirth. Cheerful people seem guilty to me, because they can’t comprehend the mournful value of existence. I accept happiness only in children and the elderly, with all others I am intolerant.

In a career that spans over 23 years, why have you made only six films?

Because I have only made the films that I wanted to make, and these required considerable financing. Now, being over fifty years of age, I begin to pose to myself the problem of this sort of prudence, of avarice, of mine. Perhaps I now must hurry, I must work more, say everything. 

[strangeindividual69]

sometimes when a movie starts there is a scary lion but don't be scared

[newtsnaturethings]

Commission for @dawn-the-rithmatist of her loooong cat Binx

Hope I did the lad justice 🦎

[dynerlow]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Quick post to announce my entry for the Midna Merry Mix-Up event, the gift is for @team5ds!

If you like Legend of Zelda, fluff & humor, or just good ol' pining, then this is for you.

[389]

Excalibur (1981) John Boorman

[dynerlow]

Rewatched it yesterday and it's crazy how, besides being one of the best adaptations of mythology to ever be put to screen, the dark fantasy elements shown here only make up like... a fourth of the aesthetic of the movie? It is so colourful and full of flowers and nature and filled with fancy medieval costumes... John Boorman's vision was just SO STRONG that the few gothic elements inspired the whole dark fantasy style that lasted throughout the decade.

[ayilenthegingercat]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

This year too, I participated in Hateno's Midna's Merry Mix-up! Here's my gift for @dynerlow !

[mmelete]

i wish ao3 allowed people to give kudos per each chapter. These 100k word NOVELS need more love than 200 tiny digital hearts ☹️

[mmelete]

for all the people thinking “but that’s what comments are for”:

I think being able to leave comments and a kudo is great! Please comment on writer’s fics regardless (comments personally make my whole day as a writer ❤️)

But being able to give even more kudos all the beautiful authors on ao3 would be epic bc they deserve as much love as they can get! ❤️❤️❤️❤️

and plus, I wonder if kudo-by-chapter thing could help some longfic writers get more attention, if the system changed a bit.

[amelias-calamity-quintet]

Wanted to chime in as someone who has actively posted long fics on Wattpad (which does chapter votes) as well as now on AO3, would strongly agree with the creators in the tags here saying that's what comments are for.

I only have the one fic really still on Wattpad so I don't mean to use the numbers here as a humble brag, but it helps illustrate the topic I mean (also dates are showing most recent edits, in case there are confusions in my descriptions here).

Screenshots from my work Goddess of Secrecy on Wattpad as an example. Already on the first chapter to the second, there is a massive fall off of readership. Now, reader drop off is normal! And to be expected! But it's a lot easier to process that when you don't have hard proof of exactly where that happened. And so the continued drop off being visible is the data that's less fun to look at.

It also reflects that most readers will still only use the votes system like kudos anyway, which compounds the issue with these numbers to the writer: it'll always reads as a reader drop off from this end. I have no reason to tell why someone stopped reading, particularly just on votes alone. So I'm just going to assume it wasn't good enough to keep following at some particular chapter. It also leads to a lot of second guessing is the votes aren't consistent! If a regular reader only leaves a kudos every ~5 chapters, what was wrong with the other 4 chapters between? Why did the pattern suddenly get more erratic? Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria and Imposter Syndrome are already common enough in creators, adding more ways for someone to not interact with the work only adds more chances of making those symptoms worse. This gets highlighted more when we add in the very common occurrence in fic writing and that's hiatus.

These two screenshots are showing two major hiatus breaks I took on this fic, from 2015-2017, and then 2017-2024. While obviously with a hiatus you can't expect all readership to return, having hard numbers on exactly how many people came back is also really frustrating. And discouraging. Because now I'm left wondering why that many people didn't come back. And I can see exactly how much of a drop off it was.

You know what the difference was with finishing this fic in 2024 though? Actively commenting readers. Only three of them. But they were engaging with me actively in my comment sections and on my other social media. And that motivation got me through finishing the work and starting my next long fic. Because I knew someone was reading. They were telling me they were here reading. Kudos/votes don't reflect that, comments do.

This is also reflected in my current experience with posting on AO3 as well (I don't have visible metrics for this in the same way). But my biggest boosts of readership for my long fics are from reader recommendations. Every time someone leaves a public bookmark or recs the work somewhere, I see my biggest increases in kudos and new readers. A new active commenter is one of those boosts too. It shows other readers that someone is actively engaging through the length of the work enough that maybe they should give it a try too. And it means more. Storytelling is meant to be interactive, not passive. This isn't traditional publishing, you can engage directly with these creators. Take advantage of that opportunity!

I understand this sentiment. And there is always some serotonin in numbers go up. But. Anyone can hit a kudos button. It doesn't mean they're reading. In fact, adding more chapter kudos like this creates the opposite problem of encouraging people to post in short works right now and creates the issue in the other direction. One very long work with a writer with either a lot of time or a few good friends could make kudos bloat that's not reflective of actual readership. Comments can be done by bots, but not nearly as easily as votes/kudos can be.

So really, there is already a solution here. It's commenting. Even something simple. Fandom thrives on community engagement. There is no shortcut way around it like more ways to vote without compounding the problem. You want to support fandom creators, you have to be an active fandom participant.

[escuerzoresucitado]

[mrsterlingeverything]

[goopydad]

A wretched little horse is washed away.😈

[ode-on-a-grecian-butt]

Kos (or some say, 'Kosm')

[dirteater5000]

everyone shut up and look at this