Words of Whimsy 0 - Testing, Testing

-

This is a test

first and foremost

The exact words will be important later

once everything seems correct.

-

I wanted to start with a higher quality product

trust me

my inner perfectionist still demands it

but to make the first real one perfect,

a simple test like this is all but necessary.

-

That brings us to page two.

-

On this page

things are different.

This time, there’s an image of a cat

made of glyphs and symbols

laying flat below this paragraph.

-

I won’t describe it any more

aside from the alternate text in the full transcription,

which you may have just heard

This seemed like the best way to do it

the script stands on its own just fine

without any additional details

and I thought you should hear it alone, first.

-

There is nothing on the other pages except words

just so you know.

You could argue that goes for this one, too.

-

And so, this is the final page

before this begins for real.

What comes later? More posts like this

that are less meta.

When is later?

In weeks to months

knowing me.

-

What is this?

Where can I put it? Does it belong somewhere?

What does it count as?

Poetry? A comic? ASCII art?

All? None?

-

I don’t know,

but these are words

and there will be whimsy.

This post contains 3 pages of an ASCII art comic. For each page:

• The title, “Testing, Testing” is in the top left.
• The series name and comic number, “Words of Whimsy 0”, is in the bottom left.
• The release date, the 17th of January 2026, is written in shorthand in the bottom middle.
• The page number is the top right.
• The author’s username, “Miner_Fabs@lemmy.world”, is in the bottom right.
• There is only one panel per page.

Page 1 has 3 spaced out paragraphs:

"This is a test

first and foremost

The exact words will be important later

once everything seems correct.

-

I wanted to start with a higher quality product

trust me

my inner perfectionist still demands it

but to make the first real one perfect,

a simple test like this is all but necessary.

-

That brings us to page two."

Page 2 starts with one paragraph, split in two:

"On this page

things are different.

This time, there’s an image of a cat

made of glyphs and symbols

laying flat below this paragraph."

The cat is orange, and has a blank expression with squinting eyes. All four of its limbs are outstretched, and its tail is curled up. It is centered on the page.

Page 2 has two more paragraphs:

"I won’t describe it any more

aside from the alternate text in the full transcription,

which you may have just heard

This seemed like the best way to do it

the script stands on its own just fine

without any additional details

and I thought you should hear it alone, first.

-

There is nothing on the other pages except words

just so you know.

You could argue that goes for this one, too."

Page 3 has three spaced out paragraphs, and the first two are broken into multiple lines:

"And so, this is the final page

before this begins for real.

What comes later? More posts like this

that are less meta.

When is later?

In weeks to months

knowing me.

-

What is this?

Where can I put it? Does it belong somewhere?

What does it count as?

Poetry? A comic? ASCII art?

All? None?

-

I don’t know,

but these are words

and there will be whimsy."

The words “I don’t know” in the last paragraph are closer to the middle compared to the rest of the paragraph, which is right-aligned.

hi! it’s about time i make something of substance, and lemmy seems like the best place to do it.

i wrote some poems a while back, with the intention to turn them into this kinda thing and post them here later.

this test post exists for two reasons:

• to ask about accessibility. as the original form of these is poetry, i thought to present that on it’s own first, then the full transcript, then the rest of the post’s images, then this commentary. it’s important i get this right now, since there will be more visual stuff in later instalments.

  • should i be adding proper alt text for each image, or is this good enough?
  • does it matter for screenreaders that the transcriptions are at the top, or could i keep them lower down next to this commentary without issue?
  • spoiler tags on lemmy seem to ignore single new lines, so i used dashes to seperate the paragraphs instead. is there a better way to do this?

• to ask where i should post this series to. i intend to always share these here (!onehundredninetysix@lemmy.blahaj.zone) as penance for continually breaking the rule by lurking, though i’d like to crosspost it elsewhere (unless that breaks the transcripts…). !Funhole@lemmy.sdf.org seems like a good candidate, but what about communities like !comics@lemmy.blahaj.zone? or !Poetry@lemmy.world? as i said, i don’t know what this counts as. it’s not even ASCII art, technically; i sometimes use unicode symbols like ellipsis.

also going to use this post to shoutout my two major inspirations for this series:

• Luke Humphris, who makes animated short videos with slice-of-life writing that i will be shamelessly imitating for a lot of these. he has some one-offs and a few ongoing series, one of which he’s currently turning into a TTRPG. you can find his work here: https://linktr.ee/lukehumphris

• Stone Story RPG, a PC/mobile game that uses ASCII graphics. originally, these would’ve been in a more traditional webcomic style or pixelart, but it hit me at some point that i love how this game looks, and i wanted to try something new. the gameplay loop is simple, and there are very occasionally ads (at least on mobile), but it’s a good time killer, and it gives you a full-on programming language as a late-game unlock. see more about it here: https://stonestoryrpg.com/

feeling nervous now i’ve put all this effort in that this post is gonna get no traction, or the formatting’s broken, or… whatever! i enjoy the process, so i’m gonna keep making my art until it means something to someone.