2025-07-12 03:37:17
I met with a friend I hadn’t seen in over ten years. We are both artists. That night, I was sprawled on the floor, surrounded by loose sketching paper, experimenting with oil pastels. The pastels dragged unpredictably across the page, but I liked the way the colors smudged, how imprecise everything looked. She was at her desk, dipping her paintbrush into a glass of murky water, her canvas propped on a stand easel. We barely spoke. We didn’t really need to.
For so long, I struggled to finds reasons to live for. This was the whole reason I started Bear. To archive these miscellaneous memories with friends, thoughts, and feelings, a place to collect all these intangible moments and see if they might add up to something meaningful.
That night, I was sure I grasped a silver of this meaning that was missing from my life - in the quiet act of watching my friend paint, the soft hum of R&B music she liked, the warmth of shared silence, the gentleness of simply being with her and myself. This stillness, this presence is what meaning looks like to me: not answers, not certainty, but the tender, delicate moments that remind me I am alive.
2025-07-11 23:29:00
Here’s to another flashbackFriday, another day to unarchive the inner workings of my early teen mind. To be honest, I’m ready to fast forward to more recent years in the archive. These posts from my early teens are just so full of feelings and way too much angst. Not much has changed, but I guess I’m just more cautious now about what I put out into the world.
That said, it does make me think about how our online personas have evolved over the years. Back then, people were more raw and unfiltered. These days, it seems like we’re all trying to present the best versions of ourselves. That doesn’t necessarily mean we’re being less authentic, but it does make me wonder when that shift happened. Was it when people started leaning into influencer culture and getting paid to share their lives online instead of just sharing in hopes of finding connection?
This could be a separate post in itself… but it does make me reflect a little bit as I unearth little pieces of my past from a time when none of that mattered.
P.S. Those things still don’t matter to me. I have other reasons for being a little more cautious about what I share as an adult. Still, I try to be as authentic as I can be on here. Just a little bit more guarded.
🗓️ Original Post Date: May 24, 2004 @ 8:32pm
📝 Original Post Title: the limits to our love
💻 Original Post Platform: Livejournal
i'm sick of this game that we seem to be such experts playing. it's a back and forth thing and no one seems to be winning. too bad that i'm not really playing my best and all you're doing is ignoring the fact that something seems to be going wrong. we're not following the rules anymore. we're breaking every single one of them in hopes that someone will create new rules for us. yes, we're just that special. too bad everyone that wants to be like us are just failing miserably.
don't pretend to understand the words that i say. sometimes its better to not understand some things and preserve that innocence that you don't really deserve. lets be kids again. let's pretend we can fly and lets fly away from here.
If you'd like to comment, please send me an email, respond on any social media of mine you know, or sign my Guestbook.
faticake: your post has made me think why teens are so angsty and cryptic (my blog posts around the late aughties sound the same). At some point while reading old posts, i realized i didn't like having my dirty laundry out in public. Maybe as we grow older, we tend to reflect more before posting?
Lulu: I am also more cautious and concerned about my privacy nowadays. But like you said, you still can be authentic without going “full open book”.
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2025-07-11 21:30:00
This past week, I attended a networking event. I arrived, got my little name sticker, and walked over to the entrance of the main event area with a little get-to-know-each-other bingo card in hand.
At the door, someone had taped the following message to the glass:
"We will take pictures of the event to post on our website and social media. By entering this room, you agree to these conditions."
I froze in place. Am I agreeing to this? It would be really awkward for me to immediately turn around and leave. I wanted to be here to get out more and practice meeting new people, now I'm confronted with something I had forgotten to take into account before and wasn't informed about during signup for the event.
For context: I try to avoid posting my full face or full body online. I'll either dither it (like on my home page) or I'll censor it otherwise (via sticker or wearing a mask). I used to be comfortable with posting full face online, but we simply don't live in times like these anymore. It makes me uncomfortable how many "nudify" apps and websites there are, where AI will generate a nude image of a clothed person they posted online, or will be able to put your face on an existing sex worker's portfolio.
Don't get me wrong, Photoshop has always made it possible, but it used to look really fake and bad. You could tell it wasn't real, and it took some effort and time. Now with generative AI doing an amazing job in seconds, it's possible to churn out tons of very real looking revenge porn, without that person even having taken or shared nudes in the first place. That stuff is humiliating, violating, and affects the relationship with your loved ones and your career. People have killed themselves over this. I know I can't control it and AI will be able to approximate and guess even missing parts of my face, but I can make it harder to get an exact match and reduce the risk of it harming me.
Now I'm going to this event where my full face will be put online.
I don't think organizers are really aware of what's happening online with AI, especially if they are most likely still using social media where everyone is posting face like usual. It's just normalized and tons of people either don't find out they've been nudified or they're presented as extreme outlier cases. It's portrayed as some sick and twisted individuals who had a clear target; but if you read more thorough reports of this kind of stuff (usually 404media is good for this) or visit the spaces where requests are posted, you can see it can happen to anyone. They just browse, see some stranger they want to see naked, and request that (or just generate it and then share it for anyone who might want it). You don't have to be close to anyone or anger anyone. This is just about power and lust and the targeting is random.
The motivation of the event organizers is promoting and documenting their event, which is fair; but if we weigh that against what is sadly now a very real risk, I think people wanting to protect themselves from the above should have the option to modify how they appear there. You should not have to choose between socializing/networking and shouldering this risk - this is just supporting further isolation.
Unfortunately, I think a part of why this risk is swept under the rug a little is also because it is happening mostly to women and protecting them from this stuff has never been a priority. A vocal part of the population loves to blame them for when this happens. Here, they'd point to the women entering and agreeing while they "should know the risks" and if you don't want this, you "should just stay home". I disagree, and I have an alternative approach.
It should be possible for people who want to participate but not show up online to be able to have their face (or parts of it) altered before posting. For this, I suggest event organizers offer an e-mail address to message for these requests and set a deadline. You'll most likely not post immediately anyway, so let's say the people have 24 hours to write to this e-mail address that they would want to be censored in the pictures. This should give people enough time to think about it and then to prevent being posted clearly.
That means the notice at the door could be something like
"We will take pictures of the event to post on our website and social media. By entering this room, you agree to these conditions. Should you prefer to be made unidentifiable, please message us within 24h at (email address)."
I want to note here: blurring is not enough, as this can be undone. It'll have to be something that covers the original pixels, not just warps or moves them. A black box works, but if another color would be less intrusive and visually unappealing in that picture, I'd choose that instead.
Images from the back without face visible should be okay, or very blurry, very tiny in the background where the details can't really be made out are also okay. Furthermore, the censorship only affects the pictures that are supposed to be uploaded to the internet - you can keep uncensored pictures for archival purposes as long as they aren't uploaded publicly.
This should serve both the interests of the person and the event organizer - they get to document and promote, and the person has had their rights to privacy respected with regard to the known risks online right now.
A note like this on the event location door makes it seem like you have no recourse afterwards. You should know that as long as you're in the EU, depending on what's shown in the image, you can probably still withdraw the given consent later. Relevant laws in my case here would be the GDPR and the KunstUrhG. The rights to decide over your own image is a part of the allgemeines Persönlichkeitsrecht which is derived from the German constitution.
This is highly dependent on the specifics of each case. Rough guidelines could be: If someone takes a picture of a beautiful church and you happen to walk by, that's usually not something you have any control over; you're not the point of the image (Beiwerk) and they didn't want to include you. Also, if you are at a big gathering (a concert, a theatre, a party) and you're somewhere in the crowd and the point is to just picture the crowd and not you specifically, that's also not something you can control or should really worry about.
But let's say, you're at an event standing at a table together with three other people and it's a close-up portrait image of all three of you posing and looking into the camera, there is obviously intent to picture you and you're clearly visible. That might be a situation you have more rights in.
Are images considered personally identifiable data according to the GDPR? This isn't always evident to everyone because most GDPR cases focus on text like name, birth date and more, not images. But as long as you're identifiable in them, they do count, and it affects the processing of this image.
Caution: Processing is defined in Art. 4 Nr. 2 GDPR and also includes any operation which is performed on personal data (automated or not) "such as [...] recording, [...] storage, adaptation or alteration, [...] dissemination or otherwise making available, [...]", which includes a lot of steps in taking an image and sharing it on websites and social media. Even cropping or increasing contrast or applying some pseudonymization measures.
That means other rights in the GDPR may apply in the specific case, which means people may be able to ask the event organizer to take the pictures down retroactively, depending on the image composition.
The option to anonymize people in the image to fall out of the application of GDPR still stands, though likely goes against the purpose of taking pictures, so…
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2025-07-11 08:24:00
Suddenly it's July...! It's been a whirlwind year for me so far as predicted in my 2024 year in review blog post, but overall I'm feeling pretty good about it all.
I realise that not everyone is on social media, so unless you're checking my Bluesky profile regularly, there's no real way of knowing what I'm up to. And I've got a few things to talk about now so it's a good time for making a blog post about it.
Also, I've recently gone past the arbitrary milestone of 5000 followers on itch.io. That seems like a lot of people to me. Whether you've been following me/my work since the Bitsy days or only just recently played something I made for the first time, thank you!
Will I ever stop making things for myself... Hopefully not. Anyway here's the latest on that front.
Over the past few months I've been working on DAWN CHORUS! I'll have more to share very, very soon, but it's been nice to finally have some time to get to it. I've been working in inkrunner with isyourguy on this and it's looking so good. I know I'm making a game here, but if you know me you'd understand that in some way or another I am also always making cinema.
I'll make a proper post about this project soon because I have been very quiet about it and I want to talk about it more.
Oh and if you're in Melbourne, I'll be showing a build at ACMI on July 23rd that you can play. Come along if you're curious.
I've released a new game with DOMINO CLUB earlier this year, portrait on imagined horizon. It's a very loose sequel (?) to ( C Y C L E ).
I made this in about three days, while I was playing through Control (2019), and in a strange way it is an exercise in exploring myth-making for DAWN CHORUS as well. It's the shortest game I've made in a while, and after a period of fairly ambitious projects, I think I really needed that.
It's a fun little mysterious thing, you should play/read it. Here's a secret: it looks really nice on mobile, too.
I've been doing a bunch of contract work in games over the past... year? or so. It's been good, I've been learning a whole lot, and I'm lucky to be working with people who are extremely driven and talented.
Working towards something you believe in is so cool.
I extremely vaguely hinted at this in my last blog post, but I joined Ghoulish as the narrative designer and writer for our upcoming weird horror adventure game Parasensor.
I'm ridiculously excited about this one. If you like paranoid fiction, body horror and mystery games... why don't you wishlist it on Steam now? It's shaping up to be a beautiful and kinda fucked up game. We're really cooking with this one, I swear. Yay!
Our beautiful Gay Dracula romantic horror visual novel, Drăculești... I've been the editor on this for a little bit now, and it's been wonderful.
Mads is such a good writer, meticulous in the historical fiction side of things--and I mean, how inspired to set a Dracula adaptation in the 1930s--and vivid/visceral in the horror side of things... and the specificity of how they write the romance side of the story is so cool. Imagine, if you will, a romance game where each character including the player character (my favourite tortured guy Roger M. Renfield) are fully realised. Love when that happens.
Anyway, we've just launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund development for the "full" version of the game, which includes more story routes and partial voice acting.
Definitely check it out if you're a visual novel enjoyer. Or a gothic horror enjoyer. Or a historical fiction enjoyer. Or a thoughtful and complex queer character enjoyer. Truly something for everyone. Back the damn Kickstarter will ya!!
DAWN CHORUS blog post soon. You might see me talk about it at Freeplay Angles if you're in Melbourne on the 2nd of August. Just sayin'.
Bye for now,
Cecile
2025-07-11 04:50:00
I recently graduated with a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering. It's been a month, but I am struggling with navigating my creative life post-graduation.
Yes, I am suspended in the disorienting in-between: no longer a student, not yet employed. While the pressure to secure a job is indubitable, this post isn't about unemployment but a more quiet revelation: a part of me is silently resisting the very idea of finding a job, though money is a survival necessity.
For context: 1. I love my creative endeavors. I want to write forever, draw forever, build something I can call my own. 2. STEM was expected of me as an overachieving kid. So, I don't particularly enjoy engineering, neither do I have a "dream job" in the conventional sense. The idea of a standard 9-5 engineering role has been jarring, to put it euphemistically.
But considering our ridiculously capitalistic societies and questionable job market, I'm trying not to act stupid. If you are like me, dreaming big but trying to stay grounded in reality, here is how I'm navigating these feelings:
I think it's important not to rush the process of achieving financial stability outside the confines of a traditional 9-5. For so long, I romanticized the idea of pursuing a self-owned creative career full-time, beyond a 9-5 I knew I won't care about (This was largely fueled by the constant online rhetoric of "I quit my job to pursue art full-time!").
But we sometimes fail to acknowledge that most creatives didn’t start that way. Most held ordinary jobs for years, quietly building their crafts in the margin of their lives. Their success wasn't instant - it was the result of time, sacrifice, unseen struggle. Some were supported by financial safety nets provided by family, while others had privileges not openly discussed online. No two journeys are the same, so comparison only obscures this reality.
For most of creatives, financial stability comes first, before being able to live off the creative path. While not fond of the 9-5 grind, I’m recognizing the necessity of starting somewhere. I need a stable paycheck for now, and, most importantly, I need to fund my creative projects and protect this passion.
It’s okay to have a normal job that isn't your calling for now, to work during the day and create at night. It's okay not to chase an idealized version of "success" that doesn't leave room for survival. My journey might take longer than the accomplished creatives I envied for so long. It might not resemble anyone else's, but, as long as I keep believing, I know I will get there.
2025-07-11 04:12:25
I've never been known for my coordination, balance, or cardiovascular enthusiasm. In team sports, I was invariably the last one picked – probably only because "not picking" wasn't an option. Physical exertion was not among my natural strengths.
So naturally, last summer, I climbed into a boat that was both longer than my room (thanks KRH) and about as wide as myself, and tried to make it move in a straight line.
The first few sessions went about how you’d expect. I capsized enough that I began to question whether the boat was meant to be sat in at all, or if it was just a delivery mechanism for putting people into water efficiently. I spent more time in the water than I did on the boat.
But something about it stuck. Maybe it was the scenery. The glassy water at MacRitchie at 7am looks like a mirror. There is a strange satisfaction found in failing in increasingly specific ways.
Progress in kayaking doesn’t feel like progress. You just fall in slightly less. Your stroke gets marginally quieter. The boat wobbles less when you breathe. Eventually, you start noticing things like water texture, wind direction, and the turtles on the banks. It’s less a sport than a slow, immersive calibration of self to environment.
At some point, I moved from the training boats to the “almost” racing boats. I was still behind most of the team, but less behind than before. I was nowhere near the pace of the middle school children who went there after school. My team captain encouraged me in the way good leaders do: not by pretending I was better than I was, but by acting like improvement was inevitable if I kept showing up. That assumption helped.
Less than a year in, I was told I’d made varsity. A few months after that, I competed in my first inter-tertiary race. I did not win. I did not flip. Both outcomes were equally surprising.
Kayaking taught me to be okay with repeatedly looking dumb in public.
There are worse ways to start your day than sitting on still water in a boat that doesn’t want you there, trying to move forward anyway. Turns out that’s a decent metaphor for most things.
It’s easy to over-index on success stories. But I think there’s a quiet dignity in the almost-stories too.