experience Archives - Home For Fiction

experience

Goodbye Bluehost, Good Fucking Riddance

August 27, 2025

computer, experience, experiencing, home for fiction, society

If you missed the “new beginning” post, I recently decided to shake things up regarding Home for Fiction. By the way, this was a few months after I had already taken control of my own site, reprogramming it from scratch (on top of WordPress, of course) and getting rid of all the useless stuff. And a few days ago, I was finally able to say, Goodbye Bluehost and if I ever see you again it will be a million years too soon.

You see, after programming my own theme and moving the site away from Bluehost’s shared servers to my own virtual private server, where I have full and total control, there was still one thing left: move the homeforfiction.com domain registration away from Bluehost.

The utterly appalling overall experience inspired me to write this post. You can consider it a review coming after I spent almost eight years with that bottomless pit of deception and predatory policies. Considering the fact that Bluehost – and its super-aggressive marketing – is what attracts most newcomers to it, if I manage to contribute to even one person’s informed decision, that’d be a huge win.

goodbye bluehost. image of laughing woman — Actual footage of myself laughing demonically after I cut off the last ties I had with Bluehost.

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Why I Want to be Forgotten when I Die

July 1, 2024

Experiencing

art, death, experience, life

For most people – certainly for most artists – to be forgotten when they die is not something they would wish. They would like to be remembered for a long time. Sometimes, when they fantasize about success, they might even dream of an undefined future, long after their demise, with their name still associated with artistic or other achievements.

Not me. I want to be forgotten when I die. I want my art, in particular, everything that I’ve made – from novels to songs to drawing – to disappear as if it had never existed.

This might sound counterintuitive, odd, and to some readers even hypocritical. I don’t blame you. As I said, to be forgotten when you die is not something you hear often from the mouth of people who create. Yet my motivations, as always, are entirely selfish. The deeper reasons might even be useful to you.

I want to be forgotten when I die. Image of graves — This is the graveyard of a small village on Lemnos, Greece, where my grandparents are buried – and, parenthetically, where some of the action in *The Storytelling Cat* takes place. I remember them, but after I and a couple other people die, there will be nobody left to remember them. It will be as if they never existed. I want the same, I want to be forgotten when I die, **especially** my art

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Pornography or Erotica? On Art’s Function, Purpose, and Essence

March 18, 2024

Criticism, Philosophy, Society

art, criticism, experience, experiencing, love, philosophy, sexuality, society

The topic might sound unusual and, ironically enough, this too is part of the theme. Namely, we should be able to explore a topic as ubiquitous as human sexuality. The differentiation between pornography and erotica (erotic art, that is) is problematic. United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart notoriously said he couldn’t define it but he knew it when he saw it.

That isn’t good enough.

I want to define it and I want to understand it. I’ve had some discussions on the topic with my friend Igor, and I decided to take my side of the emails we exchanged, edit it for length and focus, and turn it into a post.

But here’s an important caveat: My main interest isn’t in defining pornography (or erotica). Rather, I want to create a more general theoretical framework that talks about the differences between art’s function, purpose, and essence. So while there will be a fairly in-depth discussion on pornography, erotica, and their differences, my ultimate focus will divert to art in general.

pornography vs erotica. Image of young woman — Erotica doesn’t even need to display nudity to be erotic. Though, funnily enough, even nudity *itself* can be a matter of definition (i.e. historical/cultural contexts). Is the woman of the photo nude (a little? a lot?) or not? Ask a twenty-year old secular, liberal person in present-day Helsinki and a Victorian prude like Christina Rossetti, and you’ll get very different answers!

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