FAQ

Are you a furry?

No, I'm furry-adjacent at most. I do however have an interest in vintage furry artwork, which I've collected for display on Lutzbug's link page.

Can I use anything from your code?

Absolutely. Please, by all means, go ahead. This site is built off a template that's not even mine, and a lot of the code and libs I would have realistically gotten from, you know, W3Schools. The ASCII art is definitely where you might want to differ. I definitely highly recommend that you stick to the ASCII art with watermarks, or if you do link one without a watermark, try and link back to my site just so people can find the source. This was alluded to before you got here, but I'm of the persuasion that I'm not particularly obsessed with crediting, but I am very obsessed with people being able to backtrace what they see online. I think it is very, very important that they do such a thing. I think there's a lot of things that fall between the cracks, and even if it's something as simple as a piece of ASCII art, I definitely think it is worth the effort.

Can you help me do [blank]?

I am far too busy, and I need to personally know you before I will do that.

Do you take commissions?

No, but my best friend Lutz does. They can always do with a helping hand, whatever you pay them goes to dog food, human food and rent. Some of it used to go to weed, but now they grow their own plants and it's saved them a lot of money over the years.

How and/or why do you use LLMs?

This is something I briefly acknowledged, (but diverted from) on my about page because I didn't want to draw it out into a series of justifications. I see it as a tool that can be used for good or bad depending on the person. I use it to generate large swathes of boilerplate code rather than doing it by hand. I have quite a lot of things I want to be getting on with, and it's a good way to reduce repetitive hand movement and preserve my energy for more creative endeavours. I also use it to assist my writing process, though I cannot provide examples as none exist. All the writing you read here is mine, albeit simplified for cognitive accessibility. Without these modifications, I run the risk of confusing you and creating a worse reading experience. I have two primary explanations for why this is.

Firstly, my writing style is naturally verbose; I nest half a dozen clauses per sentence, and this does not make for comfortable reading, even for my intended audience of naturally verbose nerds. Secondly, I have PTSD, which can interfere with the process on top of these linguistic quirks. Of my nervous system's ideas of how to handle stimuli, dissociation is the one that intrudes the most. Keeping occupied is how I prevent dissociation, as with its sibling ailment, derealisation, a disconnection from the surrounding environment instead of the self. Thankfully, doing this is not overly difficult, being autistic means a tight routine is desirable for me. I start a passage by recording on my Iphone's Voice Memos program, copy the transcription and then I exchange with a robot until I whittle it down to a more concise result, adding and removing passages along the way. I find myself motivated to write more, especially as I remove chunks of the transcription. Eventually I review it for cadence and read it out loud, where I may repeatedly rewrite passages until I am satisfied.

I do not hold my drafts in high regard, for in the words of Hemingway, "The first draft of anything is shit." I also find using a robot is more efficient than stopping Lutz after a hard day's work and making them answer heaps of writing questions when they'd rather be getting stoned, drawing comix, and drowning people in Rollercoaster Tycoon while we caterwaul on a phone call together. They help me in many wonderful ways, but to me, writing is a process that is often best left to a single person, even if a robot acts as their teleprompter. As long as something gets to exist and I am in control, I am okay.

Where I do draw a hard line with AI, besides not lifting any text from it verbatim, is with my visual art. There is also no place for AI to fit into my process, and, in contrast to my issues writing, I am far more confident when I draw. For reference posing I use human sources, and when I get stuck on any compositions, I ask Lutz to help, as unlike writing, drawing is much easier to multitask with, and we both tend to be drawing at the same time when we have our calls. Without feeling a particular urgency to explain my personal philosophies on AI art, I do not feel threatened by it or worry about the concept of it replacing me. I am confident in the character of my work, and its ability to weather the deluge that roars past it. The way I see it is that AI art is a transient medium that cannot embed itself into our hearts the way our hands can. I am not afraid of pattern recognition, however advanced, when we still have true human insight.

Private e-mails are welcome, if you inquire politely and acknowledge my experiences with dissociation. Failing these, I will take your message as a sign of disrespect and refuse a response. I am disinclined to argue and I hope this explanation suffices.

How can I contact you?

Right now I'm active on the 32-Bit Cafe. Keep in mind, I am still quite shy.

How did you get into ASCII?

So, how I got into ASCII was because back in 2024 -- in particular, 2023/2024 -- I was having very, very bad thought spirals about somehow losing my ability to draw. It wasn't from a sense of me becoming worse. It was more like I was having thoughts about somehow being rendered physically unable to. And they were absolutely debilitating. I used to have all manner of psychosomatic pains in my upper arms. It was bad. It was very classic stress phenomena and very unpleasant. And I decided, in an attempt to sort of soothe myself when these thoughts were at their peak, I decided to try ASCII art as another means of expressing myself. I wasn't sure if I was going to be into it, but I think it's like a part of my philosophy that I like things that are tiny and primitive and seemingly unassuming, but can communicate a lot about oneself. So it's definitely one of those things that's very unexpected, but I think it's become quite emblematic of me. I also want to keep my website visually distinctive, and I dislike drawing assets for my site. It just never went with my aesthetic, and given that my site is so tech-heavy, I only find it appropriate and somewhat poetic that I am doing this text-heavy website with, well, text art. So to me, that's the whole thing there. My very first ASCII piece was more of a study than a proper piece, but then I did another one and things went from there.

How did you start webcomics?

A lot of it was unlearning a lot of notions I had about art. That webcomics had a quote-unquote ceiling, you had to have a certain skill-level in order to even think of starting one and that even when you do, you're beholden to an endless list of rules on how to do it correctly. This easily could have kept me away from the idea, but I think the thing that got me into comics was that I just wanted to be able to say that I gave it a try at all. Very much like ASCII, I really, really wanted to try and just see what happens, and if it didn't work, then at least I tried. But the thing that captured me about webcomics was that I can and do illustrate, but I like the fact that I can show a lot of emotion and that I can tell you about so many of my characters and the setting that they're in in all these little pictures. I like the idea of the webcomic as a tapestry of one's creative output, rather than just labouring over huge pieces. I find illustration in longer bursts absolutely exhausting, even if I'm not fixating on mistakes I become understimulated and want to do more than just the composition I'm on. I prefer to go with sequential art because I think it really best demonstrates not just how I see my setting and how I wanted to communicate it, but I also feel like it's just a lot more engaging for me. I find it very satisfying when a page is put together. And also, I will admit, being inspired by underground comics and lo-fi art in general was massively helpful for getting me into webcomics. It really helped to communicate that you don't need to draw them in a certain way, you just need to be able to make the compromises you need to. There was also a YouTube video by an artist named Lars Martinson, in his video "4 Time-Saving Tips (from a guy who spent 13 YEARS drawing a comic)". He talks about his experiences with webcomics and how he struggles to get his graphic novel out, and he goes over quite a lot of these things himself as well. So I definitely recommend his video if you are new to comics or if you just want some pointers.

What version of Petz do you play?

I have Petz 4, though I have also played and grown up with Petz 5 as well. We grew up with both, actually, somehow, which is very strange. I'm not sure how that one happened logistically. We should have only grown up with the one. My favourite cat breed in the game is the Honey Bear, and my favourite dog breed is the Labrador. While I have no idea how to hex, I do love downloading modded clothes and toys for my babies.

What's your favourite dungeon synth album?

My favourite dungeon synth album is Moonrealms by Ekthelion.

Where did you get all of those vampire books from?

That's the exact kind of question to be asking. I got these books from a mixture of sources: the Library of Congress, Weird Fangs, Wikipedia, Wikimedia, Project Gutenberg and several scans of Weird Tales books on Archive.org.

Who is Max Stirner?

Johann Kaspar Schmidt, known by his pen name Max Stirner, was a German philosopher. He specialised in Hegelian philosophy, and would go on to form critical foundations for Individualist anarchism, most notably Egoist anarchism. As its name implies, Egoism is about the self. You do things because you want to, not because you are commanded by notions of morality, patriotism, or religiosity. It was actually very atheist in that way, in that you were not commanded by religion; that you could acknowledge it, but not find yourself doing things solely because of it. And you can love, but not because you feel pressed to, but on your own terms. An action that comes from inside is always more potent than one that is brought under duress. As for The Ego and Its Own, the book this sentiment originates, it's Stirner's main work and the first text you'll encounter while exploring this branch of anarchist theory. You can read it for free on the Anarchist Library, and like the other schools of anarchism, it comes with its own flag.

Who's your favourite black metal artist?

I like Bathory, Mayhem and Wallachia the most. I also enjoy the (sadly lonesome) Tomb of the Ancient King, by Wormphlegm.

Why do you serve everything as text files?

This is actually a recent development. Simply put, I was editing these files so often that sifting through the boilerplate became a game of diminishing returns. I can theoretically sit here and maintain all these HTML pages, but then plaintext is so durable compared to them that on top of the fatigue, I decided to just make the switch. It also keeps me focused on the writing process itself.

Why is the site so text-heavy?

Justin Jackson's "Words" explains this perfectly. Here it is on this very page.

There's not much here.
Just words.
And you're reading them.

We've become obsessed with fancy designs, responsive layouts, and scripts that do magical things.

But the most powerful tool on the web is still words.

I wrote these words, and you're reading them: that's magical.

I'm in a little city in British Columbia; you're probably somewhere else. I wrote this early in the morning, June 20th, 2013; you're reading it at a different time. I wrote this on my laptop; you could be reading this on your phone, a tablet or a desktop.

You and I have been able to connect because I wrote this and you're reading it. That's the web. Despite our different locations, devices, and time-zones we can connect here, on a simple HTML page.

I wrote this in a text editor. It's 6 kB. I didn't need a Content Management System, a graphic designer, or a software developer. There's not much code on this page at all: just simple markup for paragraphs, hierarchy, and emphasis.

I remember teaching my daughter to code HTML when she was 8. The first thing she wrote was a story about a squirrel. She wasn't "writing HTML"; she was sharing something with the world. She couldn't believe that she could write a story on our home computer, and then publish it for the world to see. She didn't care about HTML; she cared about sharing her stories.

You are still reading.

Think about all the things you could communicate with a simple page like this. If you're a businessperson, you could sell something. If you're a teacher, you could teach something. If you're an artist, you could show something you've made. And if your words are good, people will read them.

If you're a web designer, I challenge you to think about the words first. Instead of starting with a style guide or a Photoshop mockup, start with words on a page.

What do you have to say? If you don't know, there's not much use in adding all that other cruft. Just start with one page, with a single focus. Write it and publish it, and then iterate on that. Every time you're about to add something, ask yourself: does this help me communicate better? Will that additional styling, image, or hyperlink give my audience more understanding? If the answer is "no," don't add it.

At its heart, web design should be about words. Words don't come after the design is done. Words are the beginning, the core, the focus.

Start with words.

Cheers,
Justin Jackson