Am I the only one who continuously revisits this site, having an RSS feed and knowing full well that no one's written anything. I think it's the ship. It's got a strangely attractive effect, thinking of it as the venerable U.S.S. Quad Damage. In another way, it's kinda bad, considering we're not in the U.S.
Where is the line with you?
I frequent
elfwood. It is good. The stuff I really like is the variability in artists. They range from really shitty 14 year olds drawing stuff better left rotting on the fridge, to incredible fourteen year olds drawing amazing pieces of art. The thing is, it's got the most horrible design for a website, but it's really grown on me recently. The art of the site, as well the archaic design makes it seem like the "lost in the woods" atmosphere, without the familiar panes, etc.
The great thing is, it's recently (recently as in a few years ago) got tutorials and things for art. It's a real breeding ground for aspiring artists. Like I said, the variability of art is really encouraging. I've wanted to join for a while, but never have, owing to a pretty small collection of fantasy art. It'd be good to have a fair bit of stuff to put on there, and get tips and feedback off people. Plus, I dunno, it's elfwood. It's my claim to art geekdom. Fantasy art mostly being drawn by girls, I finally have some kind of great nerd pick-up line: "well really, because I have an elfwood account, maybe we could have sex some time."
The reason I mention this is flickr. Both me and nathan have registered flickr accounts, and it's a mostly photo related site. I'd want to do more of our photo hunts (and also upload the lot of photos I never uploaded). Maybe even load up my hand-drawn stuff to flickr. There are a fair few people who do that, and there are no rules against it. The additional advantage being that it doesn't have to be fantasy related makes it all the better. The only problem is, if I start doing this, I may not want to get an elfwood account at all. It feels kind of sad and nostalgic to know that I may never be a part of this fantastic subculture.
I could get both, but I like consistency, and I wouldn't want to upload stuff to 2 places. It might not sound like much, but it's something small that's really got my heart in a bind. Flickr is most definitely a part of the blogging sub-culture, a sub-culture which, as much as I'm a part of it, with my newsreaders and contributing to a tr1ck3d 0ut blog site, I really don't like. It's full of people who can't write, or pompous bigots with more of a mouth than a brain, or some combination of the two. Then there are some really great people who blog, which is excellent to hear their day-to-day opinions on things, so let's call it a love-hate relationship with blogging.
Photo-blogging is similarly thus. Some people use cameraphones to flood a steady stream of unfocused crap on the internet. Others can be truly artistic, using their brilliant talents to draw out emotion from the observer. There's a group of artistic people (you'll know them if you look at the feeds for long enough) taking the most amazing photos on Flickr. On top of that, there's people in different countries taking pictures of things. It's a really nice feeling sharing your day-to-day life visually with people around the world. So, more love-hate.
Elfwood is... classic. It reminds of the demoscene, the work that went into the mags. Totally unportable, highly optimised code, but totally awesome. There's a lot of effort, there's a lot of coaching. I doubt Flickr will ever offer any kind of tutorials, and I doubt blogger will offer any real tips on writing. I don't know of a creative literary subculture that can teach in these spheres, even though it can inspire. It looks like I'll be stuck with 2 accounts.