#big oil memes

[victusinveritas]

[eyestrain-addict]

The only thing that makes me kinda sad about the time swap from book to show in IWTV is that half dead Lestat can't look up at a decaying but still beautiful oil painting of Louis sitting with a soft smile, Lestat standing behind and to the side of him, and a young and wide smiling Claudia sitting on Louis' lap. To which Lestat will then cry himself to sleep. Repeat for 70 years.

[doomxdriven]

What Color is Your Aura?

rose vines, blood, apples, velvet, sharp nails, galaxies, dripping jewelry. your essence is CRIMSON: you are the strong, defiant and avoidant. you crave some sort of deviation; to walk in another's footsteps feels mundane, a waste of your time. you are possessive and never look back at the things you've lost or forgotten. you are the rebel. you are the one who will change the world. you find kinship in like-minded individuals of red, blush, garnet, and bronze, who share your impassioned existence. you are also drawn to the confident souls royal and gold, who will help you grow and show that not everyone seeks to break you. however, you may struggle to get along with the slow-acting personalities of navy and umber who never seem assertive about anything.

Tagged By: @compassionatekiller Tagging: @serenexgraced (for whichever of your gals you want) and WHOEVER ELSE WANTS TO!!

[deepseacityunderground]

ive said this before but so much of what Retvrn Freaks glorify in early modern european art are just components inherent to the mediums being used at the time as opposed to like. an example of heightened skill that has been supposedly Lost in these degenerate times.... oil paint just looks like that. its very tonal and rich and even an artist with mediocre rendering skills will have their rendering skills improved by painting in oil. old oil paintings took years to complete not because the artists doing them were very skilled but because oil takes months to dry and they built up subtle washes over dried paint. tracing was also commonly utilized during that time period, and artists also often had small armies of apprentices who would do the hard work for them with no credit. these huge highly tonal oil paintings become significantly less impressive when you actually learn about their context.

[insipid-drivel]

Baby Boomers had a cinnamon challenge they won’t talk about that may be the reason why toothpick-chewers in classic movies are seen as cool

My mother is 65 and right bang in the middle of the Baby Boomer generation, but she’s very cool and does her best to be and stay woke, keep up with shifts in vernacular, and takes care to do things like make sure she’s strict with getting pronouns correct, etc. Her meme game is a little lagging, and she only just discovered the cinnamon challenge. I was surprised to see her... not surprised. If anything, she seemed a bit pleased and said, “Yep, kids are still kids.”

I stared at her for a while. “What do you mean?” I asked her. She’s seen other ancient memes like planking and never had that reaction before. Seeing the cinnamon challenge was downright satisfying to her.

She looked me dead in the face and said, “Sweetheart, I grew up in a time when you could get crystal meth over the counter at the pharmacy. They were called diet pills then.”

“Whaaaaaaat.” I knew that Nazi Germany passed meth around like candy, but that was in the 30′s and 40′s. I had just figured it had been prohibited already in America by the time my mom was growing up. “Did you have a cinnamon challenge or something in school?” I finally asked.

She half-nodded and half-shrugged and said, “Similar. You couldn’t have candy or gum in school when I was growing up. It was about 1969 in San Francisco and parents were starting to limit cigarette smoking to kids under 18, too, so a lot of my school friends were squirming all day long with nothing to at least chew on.”

“What did they do instead, mom?” I asked suspiciously, because she would not bring this subject up after I had explained to her that the cinnamon challenge was dangerous because of how horrible it is to accidentally inhale it into your airways.

“Well... Back when I was in school, you could get cinnamon extract from the pharmacy. It was just cinnamon suspended in canola oil, and you could use it for cooking or treating a skin fungus. Stuff like that,” she explained. “So the boys at my school would take toothpicks and dip them in the cinnamon extract. That’s why chewing on a toothpick was so common back then. If you were trying to quit smoking or couldn’t have chewing gum, you could carry a little bottle of flavor extract about the size of a bottle of nail polish in your pocket and dip a toothpick in it. Then you’d have something to chew on that the teachers hadn’t banned, and you could hide them in your cheek easily.”

“So what did the boys at your school get into, mother?” I asked again. We were still on the topic of ridiculous memes. This had to go somewhere.

She smirked. “Well, after a while, the boys started noticing that the cinnamon extract from the pharmacy was spicy. It burned. So it started to get to be a challenge to see how many cinnamon toothpicks you could hold in your mouth at once. It got so bad that kids would get blisters and burns on their mouths from it, and you could tell if someone had a few of them tucked in their cheek in class because their face would turn red from the neck up like a cartoon.”

“Why have I never heard about this?”

She wasn’t done. “Finally, the teachers figured out what everyone was doing and it became a pretty big deal. Cinnamon extract started getting banned or restricted to adults. Then they banned toothpicks for sale to anyone under 18, too. That’s why it was a sign of being cool, particularly among guys, to walk around with a toothpick in your mouth. It either meant you had a fake ID or that you were 18.”

I stared at her for a long time. “Mom, why didn’t they just use hot sauce? It was California. Didn’t you have peppers?”

Without missing a beat, my 65-year-old mother replied, “Honey, we were white as fuck.”

[staff]

Hello, Tumblr. This is a badges update.

Just popping in to tell you about all the nifty badges you can get to decorate your blog these days. You, too, could be the proud owner of The President’s Shoelaces (authentic, we promise), the Rainbow Crab, or the extra special Supporter Badge subscription that changes color as your support progresses. Here’s a full list of all the shiny knickknacks you can currently purchase from TumblrMart:

Supporter badge: This is the big one. This is how you support Tumblr in an ongoing fashion. This badge changes color the longer you subscribe to support Tumblr, starting off with Steel and working towards a very shiny Oil Slick, which demonstrates you’ve reached the highest level of support for this lovely little corner of the internet you call home. Read more about this one here.

Visionary, Literary, Shutterbug, Playlist, and Fashionista identity badges: We have a whole host of badges you can pin to your blog, leaving no one in the dark about your main passions. Are you an artist, a writer or reader, a photographer, a musician, or a style icon? Is your blog a curation of all your favorite art, writing, photography, music, or fashion? Then there’s a badge here for you! 

The Color of the Sky: That old meme that curses your dash now and again? Yeah, you can now wear it on your blog to show off your mischievous side all year round. 

The President’s Shoelaces: For when you want people to know you Know.

Crabs: Regular or Rainbow, you choose. Just know that crabs are something of a Tumblr mascot now, and wearing them on your blog shows that you either  (1) love crabs, (2) participated in crab day on Tumblr on July 29, 2023, or (3) know what to do when the news goes November 5, 2020 on you. 

Lunar badge: For all those who love the moon or simply need to know when they might not be sleeping well, this badge changes throughout the lunar cycle.

Important Babylonian Checkmark: Show your solidarity with disgruntled customers throughout time and space with the help of this extra special checkmark.

Hewie and Bones Halloween badges: Celebrate Tumblr’s national holiday in style. The Hewie and Bones badges bring that special Halloween feeling to your blog year-round. 

That’s all for now! Enjoy mixing and matching your badges to your heart’s content! What’s more, if you have an idea for a badge you’d like to see, get in touch with us, and we’ll see what we can do about that!

[fox-bright]

This meme is a MURDER ATTEMPT.

I am absolutely fucking serious. The original meme, without the big red denial, is someone's attempt to fucking kill people.

There is NO SAFE DOSAGE of pennyroyal oil. Even Mother Earth News says there's no reason to use pennyroyal essential oil for ANYTHING, even topically or as a fragrance, for fuckssake! That should give you some idea about how dangerous it is!

Pennyroyal tea, plant matter in hot water, is a traditional abortifacient. It is *incredibly* dangerous, induces abortion by bringing the body close to organ failure (and frequently pushing the system right over the edge, because dosage is impossible to meter), but I would drink a gallon of it before I took a half-teaspoon of pennyroyal essential oil.

Two teaspoons, taken across 48 hours, has successfully killed someone.

Three teaspoons taken as a single dosage killed the consumer within THREE HOURS.

There is NO SAFE DOSAGE! FOR PENNYROYAL OIL INTERNALLY! NONE!

The person who made this meme is PURPOSEFULLY, ACTIVELY, trying to get desperate people killed!

[green-with-envy-phandom-event]

The Final Scores are in!

(lines by @ovytia-art, @jamiethebeeart, @maebird-melody, @hannahmanderr, @dashing-through-ecto, @minnowmarsh, @dashing-through-ecto)

Congratulations Red Team for filling some very big shoes and taking home the gold!

We did it, Guys~! Green With Envy 2024 is now officially over! Thank you so much to everyone who participated!

@echo-does-art, @half-deadmagicperson, @goodfish-bowl, @ectoblastfromthepast, @furiarossa, @fuyuthefoxwriter, @brothebro, amazing work!

You managed to submit 219 colors in one month!

Pre-Bonus Points Scores

Red - 1832 Blue - 1409 Yellow - 1524 Brown - 703 Green - 109 Purple - 307 Pink - 304

Orange - 347 Black - 297 White - 191

Post-Bonus Points Scores

Red - 2507 Blue - 1920 Yellow - 2145 Brown - 830 Green - 154 Purple - 444 Pink - 434 Orange - 457 Black - 387 White - 256

--------

If anyone wants to color line art from the 2024 event, these lines are now open for anyone to color, just make sure to read the notes the line artists left you and credit them when you post a color! Last year's (2023's) stuff can also be found here.

MVP’s for Bonus Points Across All Teams Under the Cut!

The top 3 bonus point earners overall were:

@jamiethebeeart from yellow team with 230 points

@ecto-stone from blue team with 194 points

@half-deadmagicperson from red team with 164 points

Here's how well colorists scored with the Mods for slower, but more detailed colors! Each color of this type that we could spot earned that participant 5 additional points!

These people all did Palette Challenges, earning them 3 additional points per entry!

@lavendarlily x9, @craftybookworms x6, and @half-deadmagicperson x1

These people colored in bulk, with every 25 pieces netting them an additional 10 points!

@nanaarchy x2, @fuyuthefoxwriter x2, @half-deadmagicperson x2, @reading-wanderer x2, @jamiethebeeart x2, @balshumetsbaragouin x1, @echo-does-art x1, @furiarossa x1, @ecto-stone x1, @marzfartz x1, @moonfoxgazer x1, @audaciousanonj x1, and @sherry-a-h x1

These 11 people successfully poached points!

Yellow Team @reading-wanderer got x4, @moonfoxgazer got x2, and @marzfartz got x2 For a total of 8 Poaches and 160 points Red Team @half-deadmagicperson got x3, @goodfish-bowl got x1, @echo-does-art got x1, and @brothebro got x1 For a total of 6 Poaches and 120 points Blue Team @ecto-stone got x2, and @sherry-a-h got x1 For a total of 3 Poaches and 60 points Brown Team @audaciousanonj got x1 For 20 points Orange Team @craftybookworms got x1 For 20 points

These people had some extra creative colors, which each earned 5 additional points!

@lavendarlily for their animated lightning @craftybookworms for their creative use of the empty countertop @minnowmarsh for their 3D papercraft @raaorqtpbpdy for spending a very long time adding in sheen effects and using multiple types of coloring tools @raaorqtpbpdy for their elaborate mixed media background with the main art as a 3d floating element @echo-does-art drew and colored all the additional knives @brothebro for their creative punchline to the meme @ecto-stone for trying the hidden transparency trick for first time @ecto-stone for another transparency trick @ecto-stone for this lovely gif worm @moonfoxgazer for the outrageously cursed and elaborate OC Slackjaw born of Susi's lines @moonfoxgazer for their creative punchline to the meme @furiarossa for the above and beyond body and fur texture added to Susi's lines, paired with an amazing background @furiarossa for coloring the lines to look like a statue, and adding a ficlet inspired by the color @ventisettestars for this time intensive Hades coloring style @dreamwraith's VERY time-intensive traditional oil painting @marzfartz for their traditional watercolor with a really nice background @marzfartz for another lovely watercolor @ectoblastfromthepast for their super nice digital piece that took them 3 days of intense focus @summerssixecho for their scanned magazine digital collage @jamiethebeeart for this stunning digital piece that has such a lovely added background @jamiethebeeart for adding basically a whole story to the background of their color @jamiethebeeart for adding a background that just really fit the vibes of the line art perfectly @jamiethebeeart for their portal accident animation @pokerust for their papercraft @goodfish-bowl for their amazing paint pour background @sherry-a-h for their diamond painted furby

Thanks so much everyone for all your hard work to make this such a successful event and we hope to see you again next year~!

Looking for the 2024 Masterpost? Looking for links to last year's stuff? 2023 Free-To-Color Line Art 2023 Event Decal 2023 Masterpost

[actionmemeplay]

A meme for muses who can't open up.

Change pronouns and wording to your heart's content to best fit your muse.

"Maybe you'll feel better if you talk about it."

"It's okay. You don't have to say."

"You don't trust me by now?"

"You can say anything to me, I won't judge you."

"Have you...thought about talking to a therapist?"

"Who told you not to talk about it?"

"I never know when you're being quiet because that's just how you are, or if there's something wrong."

"You don't owe me or anyone else an explanation. But..."

"Things are going to stay the same forever if you won't talk about it."

"I can see you struggling. Take your time. I'm listening."

"I'll be here when you're ready."

"You never talk about yourself."

"Acting the strong silent type all the time is a good way to wind up lonely and hurting."

"The squeaky wheel gets the oil, you know. If you need something, speak up."

"I can talk to them for you if you want."

"I'll vouch for you, it's fine."

"Yeah, I don't like talking feelings either. Wanna go break something instead?"

"Is it that you can't find the words, or was what happened to you just that big?"

"Hey, I didn't know that about you."

"You don't have to say it, it's written all over your face."

"Good thing I can read you like a book."

"Is that you, [Name]? I almost forgot what your voice sounded like."

"You're full of secrets."

[pumpkinbxtch]

raccoon blurb ☄. *. ⋆

— leo valdez x mortal!reader

Summary: Sometimes you waste time on social networks, the good thing about being a mortal. But there are things that sometimes Leo doesn't understand, like raccoon memes.

warnings: arousal suggestions, yes finally it's not a big deal, tho. Other than that, they are two fools in love.

a/n: I love raccoons, I have nothing more to add. They are my spirit animal frfr. ALSO an apology for the previous blurb. @hopelesslyromanticshark sorry bby

English is not my first language, so sorry if it's bad

— Pay attention to meeee!

— In a moment, love, almost finished

— Leooo

— my love, give me a few minutes

—Look, Leo! — You tried to divert his attention by pretending to point something.

Leo continued with his head in the open hood of the truck. Fixing something about it.

— One second.

You let out a whimper.

— Kiss Me!

You heard Leo's laughter echo with the machinery, but he denied.

—I don't want anything else in the world, but just wait a little.

A growl left your throat, and you headed towards the part that looked like Leo's room. That small space that he ended up conditioning because he spent too much time in the bunker.

You took another look at your boyfriend, he was still turning nuts and doing things that only a son of Hephaestus can do. You let out another whimper and flopped dramatically onto the bed.

— Please, I'm just a raccoon who needs your love and affection. — You kicked and rolled as more moans and curses came out of your mouth.

Leo stopped and stayed silent. You pouted big and looked at him, still lying down.

— What? — Leo turned his head as he kept his body leaning over the camp van.

— What?

— What did you say? — he chuckled and leaned his forearms on the edges of the truck's battery casing.

— That I am a raccoon that needs your love and affection. — you repeated, still with a pout on your mouth.

— A raccoon?

— Yes — Leo laughed and turned around completely. The way that white tank top and greasy pants fit his body made you feel a slight warmth in your stomach. — Are you going to pay me attention now?

Your boyfriend brushed his curls out of his eyes with his wrist and smiled sideways. A certain satisfaction ran through him when he saw you so needy of his attention.

— I'm full of oil, pretty. Let me finish.

You protested, dropping your arms to the mattress.

— I don't care if you get me dirty!

The brunette raised an eyebrow and addressed you, throwing the bait gloves on his desk. You sat back up immediately and smiled at him.

He crouched at the foot of the bed and raised his brown gaze at you. You wanted to scream at him to get on top of you, but you tried to keep your cool.

You leaned in to kiss him and before your lips could touch his, he turned his face away. You let out an indignant groan.

— I don't think raccoons can do that.

—LEO!

[centrally-unplanned]

Always gonna be annoyed by "war for oil memes" which will haunt the US till the end of time I am sure. Has the US ever fought a war for oil? I don't think so, with maybe a few asterisks. Like oh sure the "Tanker War" of the 1980's against Iran was literally over oil, but the term "war" is ill-used here, it was a few naval skirmishes over a blockade zone (And backed by the international community, like almost all sealane security actions). What else, the First Gulf War? I will accept the asterisk but enforcing the no-conquest norm was definitely in the driver's seat (not like Iraq didn't want to sell oil to the US!). Maybe a motive at some point in some of the Indian-American wars?

But yeah in the main the US never had to fight a war for oil since it had/has oil (mainly from a war before anyone cared about oil, coincidentally). Meanwhile a loooot of other militaries have fought wars for oil - it was a bit of big deal in the first half of the 20th century and onwards. I can think of, um, some really huge wars actually, where oil was the key motivation! There are definitely nations & militaries that you could slap the war for oil meme on - the US is just ironically one of the least fitting targets for it.

[anopenbookunderlockandkey]

The 118 Sauce Chat

Eddie: I definitely make spaghetti sauce extremely wrong but I’m not going to stop

Chim: please elaborate on the wrong way to make spaghetti sauce; it sounds highly entertaining?

Eddie: 1 chop onion and put in a pot

Eddie: Add 1 or 2 cans of diced tomatoes. Whatever makes the ratio of onion look right.

Eddie: Add a ridiculous amount of frozen peas. Peas should make up a notable portion of this sauce.

Eddie: Add frozen corn also if you wanna be real fancy. If I have bacon I’ll ad that too. But I very rarely have bacon.

Eddie: Cook on HIGH

Eddie: While sauce is cooking, grab the nearest bottle of mixed spices that isn't obviously for desserts. Add some. How much? I dunno, enough that you feel like you've added seasoning so it's technically cooking. (For me this is most often a mix called Moroccan, but it could be anything. Buck reorganised my kitchen recently so tonight it was something called Pizza Topping.)

Eddie: If you happen to have green herbs lying around, add those too. Whatever you have on hand that's green

Eddie: Let the sauce boil on HIGH until all the water is gone. Stir occasionally so the saucepan will be easier to clean later. Serve on cooked spaghetti noodles with no cheese

Eddie: Today I added a new step called "while the sauce is cooking, duck out for 15 seconds to text the group chat about spaghetti sauce, then get distracted and forget you are cooking." This adds a novel Extremely Burnt edge to the flavour profile.

Chim: I am not Italian, or of Italian descent by *any* stretch of the imagination.

I am also not one of those "cooking purists", who believes that everything must be done in a specific/ traditional way (unless you are making a cooking video with the title "how to make x" in which case if you don't specify mid video that your way is not traditional god help you).

I am a firm believer in "If it tastes good, then it is correct for you".

Chim: Except in this case

Bobby: This hurts every cooking bone in my body. The latent ancestors in my soul. The judgmental elf in my brain just bit a cyanide capsule

Hen: Why? The spices.

Using a different spice mix every time, based on what is ready at hand just ... hurts

Eddie: *sends SPICE IS SPICE meme*

Ravi: absolutely deranged, Eddie. Food crimes.

Bobby: Hey Eddie, looks like you forgot to mention the part where you obviously sweated the onions, because nobody would make spaghetti sauce that had straight up raw onions boiled in tomato juices.

Bobby: RIGHT????

Bobby: Please Eddie

Eddie: I don’t know what sweating the onions means

Hen: It means. It means you cook em a little in a pan with a bit of oil first

Eddie: A pan? How many dishes do you want me to have to wash here?

Hen: I mean you can also do it in the same pot you're making the spaghetti sauce in! The important thing is the onions get a little cooked before the wet stuff goes in, so they're not so wet and limp and boiled....

Eddie: Honestly this depends entirely on whether I remember to chop an onion first or I find the can opener for the tomatoes first. The ingredients go in in whatever order they go in.

Ravi: Eddie, who hurt you???

Eddie: A pack of wild chefs herded my mother off a cliff

Chim: Theres probably a hit out on you for this

Eddie: What kind of stupid idiot would waste money assassinating someone who's so clearly going to accidentally poison themself for free at some point

Bobby: hi Eddie, big fan of your firefighting, this is the sauce equivalent of the running up a metal ladder in a lightning storm to try to pull up a 6’0” tall man instead of lowering him to the ground

-Athena

Eddie: Athena, that is the meanest review my cooking has ever received

Chim: congratulations you found the worst way to do it! this feels like a spaghetti recipe made by AI before it got really sophisticated

-Maddie

Eddie: this group chat’s hate mail game is insane

Ravi: at this point please just eat every ingredient raw… please

Eddie: Do I look like Tony Abbott to you

Buck: As a former Committer of Food Crimes, I have decided to make this sauce this weekend after I have a chance to go to the store. I will report back.

Eddie: Excellent, I look forward to vindication.

Hen: No one's going to vindicate your boiled onion in cinnamonny tomato juice on noodles, Eddie

Eddie: Not cinnamon. Cinnamon is a dessert spice. You use the nearest non-dessert spice.

Ravi: cinnamon is absolutely not a dessert spice

Eddie: Yes it is! It's for muffins and pancakes and fruit pies!

Chim: Cinnamon powder is absolutely a dessert “spice” and Eddie if your cooking is this bad I can’t imagine your baked abominations

Eddie: I put lemon juice in everything I bake that isn't bread

Written for the only two gremlins (endearment) who find this as entertaining as I do @professionalprocrastinator22 and @gravelyhalversobbing

Inspired by:

[rlyehtaxidermist]

so I’ve seen some posting about oil fire going around and as one of the people sitting in the eye of that particular hurricane i have a couple thoughts. keep in mind that I obviously can’t speak for every single Poster etc etc, obviously this is just my view on things. in particular don’t quote Twitter at me because the only time I was ever active on there was back when “have a visible professional social media account” was considered important for the job hunt. I know nothing of Touhou Twitter or Touhou Reddit and I am content in my ignorance

Anyway there’s three major points of criticism I’ve seen, and one of them as basically “it’s just a nothingburger that came out of nowhere” and even ignoring the history of that in Touhou in general, I’m going to set it aside because I don’t think it needs a more specific rebuttal than the length of this post. so on to the two more substantial complaints I’ve seen:

“it’s just a sex ship”: look, I won’t deny that there’s been a lot of sexposting. i’ve probably posted more about cock in the last 48 hours than in the last five years combined. almost certainly more than i will in the next five too. but there’s a subtext to it that often gets missed (not just by critics but also by a lot of sexposters).

these are two characters who have had... a bit of a history with being sexualised by the fandom. i shouldn’t need to recite all the “slut sanae” memes, those who know know and honestly they were never funny, but they existed. tsukasa meanwhile was stuck with “sex fox” pretty much from the beginning due to some kuda-gitsune legends specifically involving their rapid reproduction.

obviously this is going to go more into the personal view and i reiterate that i’m not speaking for Everyone’s posts, but I’m asexual. the whole emphasis people put on sex as a cultural thing, not just in terms of Posting about it but also in terms of Not Posting about it is funny to me. people dance around it like they’re waltzing with the demon core but also are baffled when i say i’m just not into it.

the oil fire sexposting isn’t about “lol they’re fucking”. there was already plenty of that. the joke is that it’s not a big deal that they’re fucking - it’s not dramatic or cathartic or even erotic. they’re bad at it, they get distracted, they’re not really thinking things through; fail sex with her cringe wife. it’s sexual in the way that a Tom and Jerry sketch is violent - stepping back from the artifice around it to say “you know, whatever else this is, it’s pretty goofy”. to me at least, that’s more of a repudiation of horny character exaggeration than simply ignoring it is.

(there’s also a false equivalence to me in the general notion of “it’s just hornyposting”, between hornyposting by straight men and that of queer women and/or the gender blender, when the characters involved are both women - especially in light of the reasonably consistent depiction of one or both as transgender in oil fire posting. there’s better people than me and my none gender with leftist beef to effortpost on that side of things.)

“tsukasa is manipulating sanae” I’d add a single phrase here - she’s trying to. The big thing with a lot of how I look at Sanae and this is no exception is that while she can be naive, she’s not stupid. There’s a difference between being trusting and being easily deceived. She’s not a master manipulator, but she lives with Kanako, she knows a bit of how the game is played.

I think this kind of echoes the last bit of the last segment, in that how the characters are portrayed in the context matters a lot. Oil Fire Sanae is, at least within the spheres I see here, heavily coded as if not explicitly autistic. A lot of the content is being written by autistic people, myself included.

Autistic adults are, in my anecdotal experience, pretty conscious of being manipulative or manipulated, because we have to learn deliberately where that line is drawn and how to act around it.

To get into explicitly personal experiences, I often think of myself as being “manipulative” because I have to deliberately strategise a lot of social cues and how I present myself and information I know, and still haven’t really shook that perspective internally despite the intellectual knowledge of several therapists and psychiatrists that no, that’s just an autism thing, most people do all that stuff without thinking about it.

Now obviously simply Being Autistic is not an unassailable fortress against manipulation, nor does it prevent you from being actually manipulative in your own right, but it does tilt the pinball table a bit, again especially in terms of awareness. And that awareness helps control a response - again, even if you’re not always quite sure how to respond.

Sanae’s way of cutting that Gordian knot is what a friend of mine calls the Bishop Myriel Method: how can someone steal what is freely given? She has her lines, but the stuff Tsukasa is leaning on her to get - protection, shelter, and an in-group - are all things Sanae doesn’t see an issue with giving to her. Tsukasa for her part doesn’t really understand this, being more used to dealing with power-broker types where everything has a quid-pro-quo, and from a position of pretty notable inferiority (just look at how any of the stronger youkai talk to her in UDoALG) at that - so she looks at all the leverage that Sanae now has over her (leverage which Sanae doesn’t really understand she has), and doubles down on trying to be manipulative because she doesn’t understand that she doesn’t have to.

in conclusion obviously I’m not thinking about all this wall of text every time I post something, for the same reason that I’m not thinking about how my house’s foundations are designed every time I go up or down the stairs - the general idea is there in the background and actually needing to go check it out usually means that I won’t be doing whatever I was going up the stairs for in the first place. but these are The Thoughts, upon which the lower effort thoughts stand as they heckle each other. there are many like them but these are mine

[redslug]

I think it’s kind of a question, kind of a statement but, there seem to be a lot of people upset about you utilizing ai art recently. Correct me if I’m wrong, but if you’re training an ai on your OWN art, doesn’t that cut out a lot of the unethical things about mainstream ai art generators? And if I may ask, how do you feel about mainstream ai art generators and the way it utilizes others’ art? I apologize if this comes off as rude, I’ve not seen someone train an ai specifically on their own art and I’m curious about your thoughts. Thank you for reading, I hope you have a lovely day. Your world building and art is phenomenal and inspiring.

My opinion is that the only unethical bits stem from how an operator uses a tool, not the tool itself. Stable Diffusion isn't a person, it's isn't good or evil, it is incapable of acting on it's own without a human's input.

I could do some extremely unethical things with oil and canvas if I bothered to dig them up from the closet. I have the skills to theoretically mimic the style of a known artist and then sell it as if it's genuine. I could use the same traditional tools to straight up copy an artwork and claim that I came up with the composition and plot myself.

I then could come up with an original plot and composition in my head and then achieve that with prompts and inpainting using Stable Diffusion. The prompt might have some artist's name in it to achieve a particular style, but the end result won't match anything that artist has drawn before. You can't steal a style after all.

If I did all that it doesn't make oil and canvas evil and an AI good. The only thing that mattered was my intent. If your intent is foul anything you create with any tool can be unethical.

My attitude towards mainstream AI art isn't all that different from that towards normal art. Majority of both is unoriginal, boring, poor quality or all three in that order.

On AI's side it'd be big titty babes just standing around or Midjourney stuff (I hate MJ's style with a passion), on normal art's side it'd be what I call "face in flowers" types of drawings. You'll see that exact type infesting all of Instagram.

Should these artworks not exist? No, they can stay, they have their fans so whatever. I just personally don't find them interesting.

And then a small percentage of both is truly interesting. It has surprising plot, style, other quirks or is just genuinely funny. Good art is memorable regardless of what it's made with. It's just my opinion though.

If you haven't seen anything memorable made with AI yet, I recommend you search for "Will Smith eating spaghetti checkpoint". It's burned into my mind and still causes an ugly laugh each time I remember it exists.

Or "Anime rock paper scissors" for something less meme-y.

Thanks for the compliments btw, nothing is more rewarding than inspiring others.

[zndr315-blog]

I finished reading Roxxon Presents: Thor and immediately wanted to throw up, which is a testament to Al Ewing’s excellent writing, but this page in particular stood out to me for a couple of reasons.

I think this page has a few more layers past being just a callout on big businesses putting out art, or “content”, about the evils of big business… I doubt Al Ewing would keep writing marvel comics if that were case.

For starters, if we go with the theory that this comic is partially meant to parody the MCU and it’s take on Thor, then this could be seen as reflective of how the MCU started to stop taking itself seriously and have all of it’s characters treat the very world they inhabit like a joke, to act like all they’re battles have no real stakes, and constantly make jokes when they’re supposed to be protecting civilians. People often criticize the MCU for all too often serving as propaganda for the military industrial complex (I thought the MCU was moving away from that aspect for a while, only for phase 4 to double down on it) and I think a big reason that this aspect usually slips past people’s heads is because the MCU rarely ever takes itself or the sociopolitical themes it tries to tackle seriously, and instead opts to focus on quips and jokes.

Secondly… him referring to the comic as an in-universe work of self parody, an in-universe joke at the people at the bottom of society’s expense… really brings to mind how an entire generation was radicalized by jokes and memes. For the longest time, fascists and fascist-leaning trolls on the internet cloaked their beliefs under the guise of ‘humor’ and ‘irony”. Right up until they had grown their base large enough to actually impact the real world.

With that in mind… I can’t help but wonder how certain people in the marvel universe are reacting to this comic that is supposedly a work of self-parody. I imagine all the people who put thin blue line Punisher skulls on their cars all looked at the page where The Executioner calls down an army of Roxxon crowd control drones to electrocute some protesters (in the interest of good taste, I am not going to post that page) would all applaud that scene on social media, and then immediately walk that back by pointing out the scene where The Roxxin’ “Thor” advertises some Roxxon engine oil and hot sauce scented body gel and saying “what are you getting so upset about? It’s just a joke!” I also imagine Dario himself has his fair amount of simps who act exactly like the Elon Musk fandom in real life and still continue to do so even after the Xemnu debacle from The Immortal Hulk. I imagine they’d all look at the page at the end of the comic where Dario essentially bribes The Roxxin’ “Thor” into doing his bidding and say: “wow! If only the real Thor was more like this!” (Side note, maybe all the right-wingers’ and fascists’ craving for a more right-wing, authoritarian version of Thor, ignited by this very comic, is what Amora is actually using to fuel her spell?)

This whole comic feels like it was ripped straight out of The Boys and, in this case, I mean that as a positive.

[emo-gremlin]

General Friendly Neighbor hcs

Feel free to add on!

😊 They...they may be stupid. And by may, I mean they are. Like, common sense? Don't know her. Gordon has to thank his lucky stars that they're durable.

😊 They are all absolute sweethearts. Reaching out to anyone they see might be sad or needing help.

😊 They all know ASL, and a few common phrases in Spanish.

😊 Despite being afraid of the Unfriendly Neighbors, they still treat them with kindness, thinking maybe, just maybe, it will fix them. (It won't, but Gordon can't bring himself to tell them that.)

😊 They all know how to sew.

😊 If left unsupervised, will eat glue, play dough and paint.

😊 If exposed to 'mean' media, their colors start to fade. If they get to the point they're scratching out their eyes, it's too late and must be escorted to the Unfriendly Neighborhood by one of its ambassadors.

😊 However, Gordon doesn't bar them from watching TV entirely. Shows like MLP, Sesame Street, ones that showcase similar values to one's of their own show are allowed. (The Unfriendly Neighbors have full tv access, everything except porn.)

😊 Unfortunately, a few puppets now know how to swear, thanks to Gordon. Being a handyman kinda does that to ya.

😊 Gordon prides himself on teaching the puppets general handyman knowledge, like how to fix a flat tire, oil change, unclog toilets, use a hammer, etc.

😊 One of the UF ambassadors showed them memes and now quote them whenever possible. One Norman even dabbed while they were live and it went viral. The same Norman also did the Orange Justice during the end credits of an episode and that also went viral. It is the bane of Gordon's existence.

😊 NO ONE IS ALLOWED INTERNET PRIVILEGES. TV IS ONE THING, INTERNET IS WORSE.

😊 Very big huggers. During meet and greets, guests who don't like hugs are asked to wear a pin saying so, so that the puppets know before going in for one. Pins are provided for free.

😊 Accepting of everyone! Gordon was able to get them a float at the last Pride celebration, and they all had a lot of fun! It took awhile for the face paint stains to come out though.

😊 Can and will burst into song unpromted.