Decided I’ll try cross-posting some thinky posts from DW to tumblr at times.
Since the dread news about LJ, I've been fretting more about where to host all my fanart. They're on LJ scrapbook now, which is an okay interface and pretty easy to use, but who knows what they'll do to it next?
Ordinary photo-sharing sites are no good as the file size is too low, they aim at making your art readily trawled by all (not always what I want) and I also worry that if I opt into a cute new site it'll go belly-up after I've gone through the hassle of moving everything.
What I want in an art storage site is ...
Free - even if I upgrade my experience for now, say to have the interface ad-free, if I can't afford a fee in future I still want all the links to work indefinitely (ha, hubris. Well, until the zombie apocalypse, anyway).
Easy to get a direct link for embedding in AO3 or DW etc. And it needs to provide a 'clean' direct link without a heap of site-GUI-crap and/or ads all around the edges, like tinypic and photobucket do. This is as I often post a smaller version of a pic and link to the full-size version, and I almost always do a link anyway even for smaller pics - this is for pads and mobiles, as otherwise the pic won't display fully.
I don't create many ginormous files, but for the few I do, the site needs to be OK with that.
Lots of free storage so I don't run out.
Easy to organise my art - easy to make folders, name and rename them. Photobucket also allows on-site artworks to be named, which is nice, but it's not crucial to me as I only use the site for storage so as to embed works elsewhere.
Ideally I need a site that doesn't care if I store some explicit images. I don't worry about that too much though, as mine are rarely super-explicit, and I figure I'll find another solution for the tiny few that are if LJ goes bust. Meanwhile I'll leave those ones on LJ.
I commented about this here and there recently and I thought for a while that Photobucket was going to be okay. But the links that I figured would give a clean direct link with no GUI-crap turned out not to do so, so that's a bust.
In the end, and partly because of this discussion from
Adam Savage's Tested, I'm going with Mediafire
It does all the above and focuses on storage so people aren't as likely to trawl through the site's images and accidentally hit my porny one of Remus and Sirius barebacking :) It's not hard to get a direct link to paste in for immediate display and also to link to - you do have to click on the thumbnail to call up the actual image, then R-click on it to get "copy image url", but that's no more work than with LJ.
Notes:
the top choice from the Adam Savage site above was actually Minus - but the article dates from 2012 and Minus doesn't seem to exist any more (cautionary tale there). Mediafire, on the other hand, has been around for ages.
another good thing about Mediafire is that the link doesn't alter if you reorganise and move the art to another folder later on (I tested this). So no need to edit the AO3 or DW post. This is a big plus over LJ, where it would break the link.
So that's where I'm at with this. I haven't actually moved many pics across so if anyone out there knows anything better, or sees flaws in this cunning plan, please set me straight!
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It takes a lot of strength to approach this dog-eat-dog world with a good attitude and high hopes. You have to be willing to open yourself up to disappointment. If you're looking for people to let you down, that's all you'll see. You have to accept the fact that everyone comes in to this world not knowing why or for what purpose, and we all struggle with a few key principles. Generally, people's instinct is to come together; people are capable of compassion. But it is difficult to not get wrapped up in your ego. It's difficult to not buy in, to not participate in the competition - whether its rooted in the media or in natural human flaws - for power and pleasure. It is difficult to walk the line between caring for yourself and caring for others without either pushing others down to work your way up or getting walked all over as other people take advantage of your kindness.
It comes down to truly believing in the values you live by, and measuring yourself and others based on those values. It also involves accepting that not everyone can possibly see the world way you do, and that it is not their fault if they don't. It's about keeping people around you that are generally good, but knowing that they are not perfect and that nobody is perfect. And it is about knowing that you just can't possibly know everything, and allowing yourself to accept the fact that people cannot be separated into good and bad. When you look to bring new people into your life, consider the way they treat you, the way they treat others, and their past behavior. Sometimes people change, sometimes they don't. Sometimes the best people can find themselves in a situation that leads them to do something that might seem out of character. It comes to a point where you have to judge the pros and cons of keeping someone in your life, and decide whether they add enough to it to be kept around. Forgiveness is a sticky thing; trust is even stickier. People don't have to earn my respect, but they certainly have to earn my trust.
Again, if you go through life expecting the worst out of people, that is all you will see. You need to be willing to let the good in in order to feel it. If you are always suspicious, you will never give people enough time to show you their good, and you'll rob yourself of the opportunity to have positive social experiences. It's important to understand the limitations of human kind in a way that is accepting and not disdainful. Be mindful of the power of the situation. Understand the wrenching need for acceptance and recognition that plagues every human being - understand that it is responsible for bringing people together and driving them apart. The temporal nature of our time on this earth leaves everyone scrambling for fulfillment to give themselves the best life they can, and sometimes that happens at the expense of others. Appreciate those with integrity, those who are less likely to let that anxiety get the better of them.
I keep recognizing a pattern in life that is both unfortunate and necessary at the same time. It seems like we always need to compare to someone who is worse off in order to feel good about our own lives. We only feel we have a lot if someone else has less. We only feel love if we know hate, and we only consider ourselves successful when we know failure. Things are not exciting unless some things are boring, and time doesn't fly unless it also drags on some days. Einstein's theory of relativity is brilliant in that it captures the dynamic of how nearly everything works under our physical 'laws".
For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Whether that holds true against quantum physics, or not, it certainly draws attention to many patterns I see in life. Most of the time, you get what you give in life. Hard work often trumps talent, and a life of leisure and little effort is not likely to provide the amount of fulfillment humans look for. We need to feel like we are always improving; we like seeing the "fruit of our labour", knowing that where we are now is better than we were before, and knowing that pushing a little harder will get us farther than the next guy.
It's hard to say whether this is good or bad. On one hand, the fact that you get what you work for, in most cases, allows for less unfairness. Even though some people come into the world with a lot more than others, the amount that they will get out of the world is dependent on how much they put in. It's like that for everyone. Or, at least, for passionate people.
Everything is constrained by the time we enter the world and the time we leave. We gravitate towards seeing the world in black and white categories - where things do not have meaning unless they can be compared and contrasted against something that has different meaning. "DifferAnce", as Jacques Derrida calls it. The contrast of life and death, of a period of time verses eternity, drives us towards productivity.
What will we do with the time we have? How can we make the best of each moment? What will provide that satisfaction - the sense that we have achieved, acquired, and enjoyed as much as we expect to? How do we strike a balance between giving and receiving, working and achieving? Is there really any true meaning to everything if each feeling, definition, and concept, is dependent on the next in order to mean anything at all?
I have thought about this a lot, and the idea used to scare me - probably because I'm prone to getting anxious under any kind of uncertainty. But, really, as much as I hate it, this is one of those times where I just have to conclude with "That's just the way it is". I have to accept life as a whole, and avoid the need to break everything down and assign it to categories. I have to, in some sense, lower my expectations in life, and accept that when things are "just okay" or "normal", they are actually pretty damn good.
