A Collection of Mostly Written Updates and an NFT Rant

I’ll try to be short and sweet and to the point with the update here, as the rant afterward may get a bit long. Most of these updates made here are important to me specifically because they helped to clear off my desk and organize my thoughts. And they helped make the Roadmaps I placed on this site more fleshed out.

• Updated all entries in the FAQ. Mostly adding more details to questions and providing links to make everything more fleshed out.
• Added some more meat to the StoryWriting Roadmap. Not just in terms of filling in content for some of the “Coming Soon” status bars, but the details/explanations for some of the bars as well. I’m not using stock images for any of the roadmap details. I’m using real captures of everything I’m working on. Horray for transparency!!
  • For example: This is a Gif of one of my actual Google Drive Accounts that has predominantly Rune.Academy-related documents saved on it.

• Also added a wonderful new software to my computer known as “miMind” by CryptoBees (linked). It’s a pretty awesome and extremely easy to learn mind mapping software. One of the thousands out there, I’m sure. But it was one of the first ones I came across and, so far, it’s doing the trick. So I’m not about to swap it for anything fancier. With it, I was able to take some of my written and typed up notes and organize them in a way that allowed me to de-clutter my desktop, cloud, and physical desk. So I feel like I made enough progress there to report on it. Any future random pieces of paper I write on, I’ll just add to my already existing maps. (I like maps.) I’m not sponsored by them in any way by the way. I just seem to currently find the app incredibly useful and linked it in case anybody else wants to try it.

I’ve tried to keep this update short just to ensure you all that I’m still working on everything as actively as I can be. It’s important to have all of these roadmaps and to-do lists fully plotted out from the start. It helps give direction on days I’m not sure where to begin and what to work on. And it prevents me from spending too much time on some very unnecessary things by putting into perspective just how much I still have to work on.

On NFT’s

One such unnecessary time-sink for me at the moment is the new trend of NFT’s hitting the market. Now, this is something that got into my creative circle of acquaintances as something you have to do or else you’re not a real artist or creator. A new technology that’s just hit the market and that must be jumped on while the going is still hot to make some easy and fast money. There was even conversation in non-creative circles about investing in them and in crypto in general and making out like a bandit. People started telling me that I could end up funding my entire project on Etherium with the art that I make and still have some left over. I went on websites of my old art-school classmates and saw that they were entering the NTF space as well and planning rather important-sounding opening parties for theirs as if they were hosting gallery openings. It seemed too good to be true, but then there were stories like this one popping up left and right in the news… (click the image for the link to the article)…

So, it still seemed too good to be true, but then my little brother made a bunch out of the blue and it seemed like something I should definitely look into. I started doing research and following all of the steps everyone said to do. If not for going into this space pretty deep, I would never have started the discord that I currently have. It’s empty and full of NTF information, but it’s not currently a priority enough for me to update/fix it. Still, it is one of the best ways to directly reach me. Aside from the discord, I also started making a debut page here on this site for them (modeled after some of the ones I lurked on), a roadmap alongside the others I posted, and I also started work on the NFTs themselves. Here’s an early video of the process that I shared:

@rune.academy Massive projects are a-brewin!! Come join my new discord, let’s chat ?? #nft #nfts #fantasyart #fantasyartwork #nftcollection #nftcollector #nftart ♬ Big Dreams – The Score & FITZ

In doing research, I made a list of pros and a list of cons. On the pros side, I could make them from things I was making anyway for the project – my concept art for the different assets I was going to introduce into the virtual space (or scrap if it didn’t fit… that’s what concept art is for…). I could include metadata into the NFTs that would later be used in-world in very interesting ways. A few other points made the list but they seem so trivial now that I can’t even remember them. I’m sure someone convinced me to put “you’ll be taken more seriously” on to that list at some point and I almost started believing that my project was somehow less real since it didn’t have these little tokens attached to it. But the cons quickly outweighed and outnumbered any pros on that list. I got a lot of push-back and highly negative takes on NTFs that I simply couldn’t ignore if I was to continue. A small bit even made it into the comments on my own videos that I posted on my TikTok while I was still getting my feet wet… such as this one:

@rune.academy #duet with @markliamsmith #nft #nftart #nftcollector #nftartist #whatisannft #whatarenfts #nftsexplained #imakenfts #til ♬ original sound – Mark Liam Smith

The fact that they’re terrible for the environment definitely rattled my nature-loving bones a bit. After all, I’m the crazy artsy lady slowly but actively working towards building her own Earthship dream house. (I give some details on that in the FAQ.) And the massive damage that minting and trading NFTs is causing the environment would far outweigh any negation-of-carbon-footprint that would be caused by me building any eco-friendly buildings. That was one of, if not the main con to working with and creating NFT’s. It didn’t matter if I wasn’t enough of an artist if I didn’t make some. I even started looking into how NFT’s came into being (and why would people want them if they were so terrible?), and it was basically because there was a massive crypto market and a lot of wealth in crypto as an idea and a currency, but a lack of things to actually do with it and use it for. You’re going to kill me for embedding so many videos, but here it is out of someone’s mouth that isn’t my own:

@rune.academy #NFTs were created solely as something you can actually buy with #crypto . Because you can’t really buy too much with it yet. #nftartwork #fantasyart ♬ original sound – Rune.Academy

But why were game devs and massive studios pushing crypto and NFTs onto their players left and right suddenly? They were pushing the change for the future that they wanted to see happen. There were so many conversations happening online about how gamers and social network users were angry about large tech giants pushing this change onto them by getting celebrities to join in that my head began to spin. Facebook’s CEO alone spent more money than I’ve ever seen in my life just rebranding to META and forcing these ideas down people’s throats, with the main tactic being FOMO after losing most of his userbase to newer platforms. And so far, almost everyone I’ve asked personally not too far into the art or investment circle has either not cared about this move of his or downright hated it. Anyone who’s a self-proclaimed tech-saavy or “cyber”(etc) artist/investor looking to make a quick buck is, unfortunately, falling for the FOMO. And to an unsettling degree too. The way they speak starts to become very reminiscent of multi-level marketing “salespeople” trying to rope in someone new. But it could all also be because those few are just louder than their uncaring counterparts.

Now also, all these studios and companies are talking about making some massive metaverse and everyday, normal creators are hopping onto the trend by integrating them into their virtual worlds. And if they’re not saying it directly, they’re somehow making people believe it. Because I’ve come across this confusing notion more than just a few times in exploring the space. People are under the impression that all of their NFT tokens and assets will just transfer over from platform to platform without even asking the questions of how they’ll all link up in the end or why companies competing against one another would go out of their way to allow for cross-platform compatibility with their own competitors. These investors are legitimately thinking that they’ll be able to buy a hat from one space and transfer it to a completely different one. Sure, maybe someday. But it’s a definite gamble. And until there’s more concrete evidence that someone’s actually working on one platform that’ll be the end-all-be-all of virtual reality, I’m not convinced on the latter part. I’ll just look at them for what they are, as bids on art and nothing more. (Even that take isn’t exactly accurate as you don’t even own the art in the end.) Then, on top of everything else, videos like this came along and presented logical arguments that I simply couldn’t ignore.

So my main reasons for making NFTs, the fact that “I was making something similar already anyway, so I might as well mint some”, and “there’s a chance that I might be early to the party and make a bunch of money” were falling to the wayside fascinatingly fast. On the latter point, a sour taste definitely entered my mouth when taking into account the thought that NFT’s were mixed up in so many scams so early on, with so much harassment on Discord from spammers that I had to make a whole section on there about how to protect yourself from them.

Like why would I try to sell something to someone if I then had to explain to them how they could be scammed buying something similar and why mine definitely isn’t a scam??? Like, “Here’s some magical white pixie powder that looks like cocaine, but definitely is not cocaine. Here’s how to tell the difference between cocaine and my magical white powder… do you see how hard it is to tell the difference? Yeah? Now just trust me when I tell you that what I’m selling you isn’t cocaine, and, in fact, perfectly legal to buy and you definitely won’t go to jail or go bankrupt.” I’m not willing to have someone take a gamble on me if I’m then in turn not willing to turn around and take a gamble on someone else. And a lot of the people who take the money and run after making tons of empty promises are facing consequences for their actions now. Still, there are many who might never. I was recently blessed with a video like this on my YouTube page that gave me some hope.

Absolutely stupid. I could be spending my time actually developing and creating things that all accumulate and snowball into something larger and leave all of this NFT business for a bit later when 1) the entire market stops freaking out about people running with their money, 2) when people actually start scamming less and are charged more to deter them from doing it in the first place, 3) when I figure out how to implement the metadata I wanted to put into them into the actual project I’m working on without just making empty promises, 4) when it stops killing the planet in order to actually implement, 5) when there’s just overall less sketchiness associated with everything and fewer people willing to fight you for every move you want to make.

It would be interesting to see how the space evolves once the trend and hype die down. It might become more legitimate or it might die out. At this rate, later on down the line, I might as well forego the blockchain altogether and host some sort of art purchasing party that comes not only with metadata code that can be used virtually, but also an art print that someone can hang on their wall and a nice shout-out and a pat on the back or something. I can even bring cookies and tea.

I have much, much more to say about all of this still, but this is definitely enough to chew for now. I’ll be watching the space closely and might post something else about it later on. No promises though. Have a lovely day everyone.