Pumping Blood
The subtle and imperfect heartbeat of Lineƒunction is real.
There's so much to say, more to do, and none of it is even close to ready. Yet, after hundreds if not thousands of hours, things are starting to click into place; half a greeting, half a more thorough explanation of where you are, this is the inaugural entry for the Archive — welcome to Lineƒunction!
Lineƒunction is being born entirely as a frustration at being a creator. It feels fairly safe to say that the current landscape is extremely hostile towards the creative streak: the dream is for creators to have enough time, mental energy, and emotional breathing room to work on their creations, and yet it doesn't seem to work that way. The creative outlets championed by the internet, from Pinterest to Etsy, exist in this constant comparative hellscape: "You're not good enough, not as stylish as other creators, you're behind, you need to practice more," the bombardment says. Then, on the educational end, it's a constant stream of "Here's this one trick! You only need 3 tips! This gets it done faster, that gets it done better. Do more." As if the joy and reason for trying to make something is always just a click away. As the final push, to make things as dark as possible, if you are someone who aspires to support yourself with your art, you're met with the darkest messages of all: "Sell more. It's about clicks. Your fans are numbers, and you need to get your number higher. Stop creating, stop dreaming, it's too slow. It's why you're unhappy. Let AI do it for you." And then, this thing you love, this thing that burns in your heart and eats at the back of your every thought is now a source of agony, instead of being the most incredible part of you.
Lineƒunction cannot change any of that. But it can be different. The goal is to create a place, a niche on the internet, where being creative is all about the process that has been in place for thousands upon thousands of years. All of us at Lineƒunction *believe* in taking the long and bumpy road, or even just making a new one. The lessons you will find here are not for doom scrolling. They are utterly exhaustive, and they go deep into subjects because we care about doing it right. Craft is done through knowledge and practice, and that's the only way we know how. To support you, we're making tools and games. Some of them are to help you work, some are to help quiet the noise that distracts you from what you love.