#pictogram

The original idea came to me when I made the Who's Lila?/TOV crossover fanart, which included the words "not supposed to be here". I was reminded of Annihilation and realised that the literal *first sentence* of that book also includes a similar phrase. From there, I then realised there are staircases in all three pieces of media as well (less prominent in Who's Lila than the other two, granted, but still important). Things...kinda escalated from there lol.

I really like how these words appear in all three pieces of media, and have both similar and wildly different meanings in each case. Wyatt telling the viewer/his 'audience' how he is not supposed to go down these stairs, Wheeliam telling players they are not supposed to be in the corrupted save file, and the biologist telling readers that the tower should not exist.

And yet all three statements work for all three pieces of media - Wyatt, Wheeliam and the Biologist should not be where they are. We as the audience should not be able to witness what they - and we - do. The things they (and we, through them) experience should be impossible.

And yet. Their choices lead them to be where they are, and we as the viewers/readers/players made the choice to view, read or play the piece of media.

(This one took a long time to make. Multiple days, including planning and learning the skills neccessary to get my ideas across. It is a bit of a culmination in multiple ways. It did not come out 100% how I originally wanted/planned it, but close enough that I am still very, very satisfied with it.)

(I had originally hoped to include House of Leaves into this piece as well btw, but this failed when I could not find the connecting phrase in there. In terms of staircases and themes, it connects very well with the other three pieces of media though.)

(Btw I just noticed that this is not just a fandom crossover, but a media crossover as well - a book, a video/online series and a videogame, combined in digital art.)

so for these pictograms I am making one for each wijk of amsterdam.

wijken are political divisions kind of like a small neighborhood, & amsterdam has 110. the name of the wijk is on the bottom, & on the side is the name of the stadsdeel (borough) it sits within.

for my pictograms, theres a few rules I set myself

1. each stadsdeel has its own color to work with

2. the drawing I make cannot reference a metro or train stop unless its iconic historically or architecturally— I dont want to tell people how to leave a neighborhood as the way to imagine a visual identity for it

3. the amsterdam city flag "xxx" has the central x on the location of the wijk within a transparent layer over the square