#nerdfighter art

[dragonharris]

Happy Pizzamas! Allow me to introduce Pizza John Man, otherwise known as Pizzaman! The superhero we neither deserve nor need, but just happened to get.

[almost-alys]

this is our house.

it's not very

pretty.

but

It's

home.

[pocket-sized-potato]

I've been enjoying John's livestreams playing games and signing his tip-in sheets for his upcoming TB book. And every much enjoying the return of the LECTROJOG

Lectrojog (To the tune of Shake it Off by Taylor Swift)

I'm signing my name Got nothing in my brain It's called a flow state, mm-mm It's called a flow state, mm-mm

I have a quarter mil pages  But I can't sign 'em all At least that's what people say, mm-mm That's what people say, mm-mm

But I keep signin' Can't stop, won't stop signin' It's like I got these pages for my book Sayin' end tuberculosis

Cause the joggers gonna jog, jog, jog, jog, jog And the readers gonna read, read, read, read, read Baby, I'm just gonna sign, sign, sign, sign, sign

I lectrojog! I lectrojog! (hoo-hoo-hoo) Nerdfighters gonna fight, fight, fight, fight, fight And the readers gonna read, read, read, read, read Baby, I'm just gonna sign, sign, sign, sign, sign I lectrojog, I lectrojog (hoo-hoo-hoo)

I never miss a page I'm lightnin' with my pen And add a spiral here, mm-mm D F T B A, mm-mm

If I mess up a bit I make it up with extra fun Add a spiral here, mm-mm D F T B A, mm-mm

But I keep signin' Can't stop, won't stop signin' It's like I got these pages for my book Sayin' end tuberculosis

Cause the joggers gonna jog, jog, jog, jog, jog And the readers gonna read, read, read, read, read Baby, I'm just gonna sign, sign, sign, sign, sign

I lectrojog! I lectrojog! (hoo-hoo-hoo) Nerdfighters gonna fight, fight, fight, fight, fight And the readers gonna read, read, read, read, read Baby, I'm just gonna sign, sign, sign, sign, sign I lectrojog, I lectrojog (hoo-hoo-hoo)

Lectrojog, I lectrojog I, I, I lectrojog, I lectrojog I, I, I lectrojog, I lectrojog I, I, I lectrojog, I lectrojog (hoo-hoo-hoo)

Hey, hey, hey Just think, while you've been gettin' down and out about the twitters And the dirty, danahers of the world You could've been gettin' down to J-scribble

Random House brought some more pages They're like, "Sign all these!" So I'm just gonna sign And to the jogger over there with the hella good vibes Won't you come on over, baby? We can jog, jog, jog (yeah)

Yeah, oh, oh

Cause the joggers gonna jog, jog, jog, jog, jog And the readers gonna read, read, read, read, read Baby, I'm just gonna sign, sign, sign, sign, sign I lectrojog! I lectrojog! (hoo-hoo-hoo) Nerdfighters gonna fight, fight, fight, fight, fight And the readers gonna read, read, read, read, read Baby, I'm just gonna sign, sign, sign, sign, sign I lectrojog, I lectrojog (hoo-hoo-hoo)

Lectrojog, I lectrojog I, I, I lectrojog, I lectrojog I, I, I lectrojog, I lectrojog I, I, I lectrojog, (yeah) I lectrojog (hoo-hoo-hoo)

Lectrojog, I lectrojog I, I, I lectrojog, I lectrojog (you got to) I, I, I lectrojog, I lectrojog I, I, I lectrojog, I lectrojog

[stardustandwinds-blog]

John Green

I’m getting really good at this. @sizzlingsandwichperfection-blog

[moreclaypigeons]

Weeza john.

[intermittentnightlights]

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by @mosscomics

For a while now, I've been making art and comics based on my multi-coloured cavoodle puppy, Moss. I would love if you could check it out and come along on Moss's adventures!

It can be found either on this hellsite (affectionate) or on instagram, both at @mosscomics, or on Webtoon under the title: The Adventures of Moss, which can be found here: https://www.webtoons.com/en/canvas/the-adventures-of-moss/list?title_no=944594.

Have a lovely day! 🐶🌳

[kittyninjaauthor]

This incredibly cursed Furby made me think of Hank Green

[road2nf]

You’re more than faces on a screen to me, more than news to follow.

I started on YouTube in the 7th grade. Four years ago. It began simply; a charlieissocoollike video here, some Filmcow there. It was novelty. I thought little of it.

But then Wheezywaiter entered the mix, and more kept adding on. I started making my own videos. I gained subscribers.

I made friends.

All the while, I heard whispers from every direction, and they all said the same thing. Vlogbrothers.

It was a long time before I gave in and looked into it.

I was in the eighth grade and no one in the school had yet heard of them.

The first video I watched involved tiny chicken disease and giant squids of anger an a dozen references to previous videos. I was hopelessly lost, but I kept at it.

Praise lord that I did.

Soon I was singing about quarks and putting stuff on my head and I was telling everyone who would listen about the wonders you were putting out on YouTube.

I did challenges and submitted video responses. I began to identify as a vlogger.

As I grew older, however, I became less able to convince myself that any video idea I had was a good one. My channel grew dusty, my YouTube friendships faded.

Still, though, I watched the Vlogbrothers. Freshman year, I bought a Pizza John shirt and participated in NaNoWriMo for the first time.

Then came the Fault in our Stars tour.

I bought a ticket as soon as I heard of it (by purchasing TFiOS, which was in my plans anyway). All my friends did as well. We carpooled from southern Rhode Island to Boston and took pictures by the tour van. We waited in a line, then received our books and entrances.

The evening was surreal, and too this day one of my strongest and fondest memories. Everyone was my friend. I got edging on 200 high fives. And then there was the show, which was hilarious and electric and overall and absolute joy.

You were both very tall and not in the least bit pixelated, which I remember commenting on when I met you up close for the signing.

I gave Hank a cardboard guitar with abstract art on it, and John a book with abstract art on it.

I put a lot of time into both, and expect that they both fell apart shortly even if you had the space to bring them to the van. I was aware of that, but I was happy just to be able to give you some physical thing as some sort of weird happy thanks for all the fun.

You both signed my book and poster. The poster’s in my room. The DFTBA that John wrote in my book was illegible, and he said that it was probably the worst he had ever done.

I’m a bit proud of that.

I certainly can’t say I’m a vlogger anymore, and I wouldn’t even call myself a YouTuber

I watch your videos and a few others.

I can say, however, that I’m a writer and an actor and a great big geek. I owe a lot of what I am to what you do.

I don’t believe much in the idolization of celebrity, and I feel like that’s something that I’m doing here. You aren’t my family or my friends, you don’t remember me.

But there is a connection between us, largely one-way, that has been very important to me for a long time. You’re more than faces on a screen to me, more than news to follow.

Hank, John: I value what you have brought to my life. And I thank you for that.

-Hunter Silvestri (hunterothegreat.tumblr)

[morgenlich]

i did laugh

[templeofshame]

No offense but it seems bizarre to me that Hank and John think the idea of an art subscription service is a good idea, like people would want to spend $25 a month on totally random art that every other subscriber also got? I feel like you'd have to have some kind of genre categories or something or else it seems extremely wasteful to just send people art as if that's not a subjective thing and it doesn't have constraints related to the space you live in. Maybe I'm missing things though. But like. Shouldn’t people buy art they love, that they have a suitable space for? I didn’t really understand Hank's initial idea but it seems like matching people with local artists they like is definitely more beneficial than sending them random art that is probably either generic like hotel art or going to be unappealing to a large portion of people.

[starfish-ix]

Great Blue Heron - Reviewed

Last semester, I took a class called Anthropos in the Anthropocene. It was really insightful, and i leaned a ton. heres an exerpt of the course description:

This course explores this writing and related work on the ways that humans interact with their environment. Its goals are to inform students about Anthropocene environmental conditions and debates surrounding the term; to trouble commonplace notions of what it means to be human; to show students how human-environment relations can vary historically and cross-culturally; and to encourage students to think critically about strategies for environmental conservation.

Our final project was to create a "blog post", and I chose to model mine after the format of my favorite book/podcast- The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green

SOOO here i am sharing it :) it is an ~10 min listen !! let me know if you listen/what u think <3

YouTube link to audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvgjDi41BnQ

Transcript:

Hello, and welcome to my own spin on the Anthropocene Reviewed, a podcast by John Green where he reviews facets of the human-centered planet on a five-star scale. My name’s Ixchel Quinn Cruz, and here in this episode I will be putting my own spin on the format, and reviewing the Great Blue Heron.

When I began this semester at Smith College, my professor, Colin Hoag, assigned us a semester-long project involving observing an organism in our environment. While at first my head was filled with ideas, as I went about my life the next few days, I could not get the idea of choosing this organism out of my head. I walked up the hill by Paradise Pond every afternoon as the sun was setting, and I always saw it : A tall, gray-ish blue heron standing tall in the evening light on the pond. Something about it drew me in. I could not help but stop and admire it, reveling in the beauty of this graceful bird in the pond, lit by the setting sun. I decided that I would wake up at 6am to go visit the heron whenever I could, over a few weeks. It was on these mornings that I developed such an intense affection for this heron.

Herons exist all around the world. They come in many shapes and colors and sizes, and there is a species of heron that exists on every continent in the world except Antarctica. The Great Blue Heron is one of the biggest and most well known species of heron in the world. I consider them incredible and stunning birds, with their grayish blue plumage and an impressive wingspan that would make anyone stop and look in the afternoon light. Seeing a heron on a pond is always quite a moving sight, and I am not alone in these beliefs.

In her inaugural speech to the college, the new president, Sarah Willie LeBreton mentioned the very heron I observed. She said on her first morning here, she woke up to the sight of a Great Blue Heron on Paradise Pond, and that its beauty stunned her and reminded her to be mindful of many things, namely the land that we inhabit and its ancestral ties to the native cultures that see herons symbolizing many things: including individual strength, patience, meditation, and stillness. The respect and admiration for the heron could almost be felt in the room that day. It was clear that so many of the people in attendance knew exactly of the heron she spoke of. It was such a powerful statement based on something seemingly so simple. Just a bird on the pond. 

The canada goose is another water-dwelling bird of North America that frequents Paradise Pond, and its story mirrors the Great Blue Heron’s surprisingly well. They are both large birds hunted for game by European settlers that had astonishing comebacks after the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which protected Great Blue Herons along with any other migratory birds under the law, was passed. They inhabit the same spaces and can often be seen together in marshes and ponds. However, our perception of the two is often very different. I think a common sentiment around the Canada Goose is resentment. Geese honk and strut and bite and are loud when flying in large groups. They are very defensive of their nests and they protect ferociously against their biggest predator, Humans. We often see them as a pest, taking up all the space in our waterways when, in fact, the ways we have structured our human worlds in the anthropocene often create the perfect place for them to inhabit. On the other hand, the seemingly solitary, quiet, graceful heron is praised and admired. We build sculptures of it (note the small pond by lyman next time you walk by), paint it, and talk about it with an air of reverence for such a beautiful creature. 

An individual heron will nest communally in a large group, usually with dozens of nests (and sometimes hundreds of herons) placed high up in trees. These groups of nests, called rookeries, are loud, smelly, and herons are known to defend them when threatened. Herons tend to be quiet when we see them, but they can be loud, with a call that I have often heard compared to what people imagined a pterodactyl sounding like. I find it entertaining to think of the solitary heron on the pond that everyone seems to admire so much going home to its rookery, located most likely in the nearby Arcadia Wildlife Sanctuary, interacting with hundreds of others, calling to each other with their dinosaur-like noises. 

What is it about our cultural understandings of these species that create these contrasting views of the two species? How do we place these two species in our own view of the world, in relation to our own human centered view of the world? In discussions with my peers about the heron, I often noticed a tendency to assign it a personal, english gendered pronoun like “him” to the heron. 

 “Oh that heron!! He is so…..”

This was one of many things I noticed that they did to humanize the heron, granting him personhood in a way, and talking about him less in the expected way most people would think to talk about birds.. One remarked on the fact that “he” is at once so beautiful and graceful, while also being “a little silly”. But, I can’t help but agree with them. The way it sits with its neck scrunched up in an S shape does look really funny, sort of as if it was hunching its shoulders up by its head. 

This is one way we personify the heron, placing it within the context of our human-centered view of the world, in an attempt, I think, to connect to it. By giving it personhood, we in a way are granting it value and agency, as if their relation or proximity to personhood is what determines the importance of something’s existence. Above this, when we personify, we cannot avoid placing it within some sort of human context that inherently has meaning to us specifically? One friend described the heron as coming off as “kind of lanky and awkward” giving the impression that it might be shy, or too anxious to be social creatures. When we personify the heron like this, we inherently place it in a space where we can apply our pre-existing ideas on certain groups of a species. Since Aristotle’s first sketches of the evolutionary tree, humans have felt affection towards animals similar to us, but I noticed here that this works in the opposite direction as well – we as humans find ourselves relating to this heron as a result of our affection for it.

The heron isn’t alone on Paradise pond. Although the Great Blue Heron is one of the most recognizable and charismatic species on the pond,  they are just as ecologically important as non-charismatic species. Birds, like mallards, mergansers, and canada geese share the waters they use for food, and other species, like toads, turtles, and muskrats, similarly share the marshlands as a home. All these creatures rely on the wetland and each other to live, and this balance can easily be thrown off. 

When European settlers arrived in New England, they enjoyed hunting Great Blue Herons for game as well as for their beautiful plumage. This took a significant toll on their population numbers. European settlers also hunted the Beaver in extreme amounts in Massachusetts, which is important because their tendency to build dams on rivers and flood areas is a meaningful function to the ecosystems of wetlands. When the fur trade was at its height, Beavers were hunted and trapped until they nearly disappeared, making a significant and damaging impact to the whole landscape of New England. This obviously took a significant toll on herons as well, with many of the marshes and wetlands they rely on fading away, leaving them with no place to hunt, and no source of food. So they left. 

These factors combined meant that by the 1870s, herons were not believed to nest in Massachusetts anymore. They were occasionally seen as migrants, but no nesting sites were known, and they were a pretty rare bird to find. The aforementioned Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA), makes it illegal to “pursue, hunt, take, capture, kill, attempt to take, capture or kill, possess, or [use for commercial purposes]” any migratory bird in the U.S (Transect), making it illegal to capture, possess, or cause harm to a Great Blue Heron or its nest or eggs. This made it safe  for herons to return and repopulate. However, the return was slow. There was one rookery recorded in 1925 that survived until it was destroyed by the hurricane of 1938, but no other colonies were documented until 30 years later, in the 1960s.

It took the reintroduction of beavers for this change to become meaningful. As beavers repopulated,  they brought back many marshy areas with lots of dead plant matter, the perfect environment for herons to feed. The return of beavers to Massachusetts, as well as more stringent protection of both the herons themselves and the wetlands they depend on, resulted in an increasing return of the heron. Currently they are considered a low concern species on endangerment metrics, considered an unequivocally increasing species in Massachusetts. Their repopulation was joined closely with many other species of marsh-dwellers – including the canada goose. 

Deborah Bird Rose’s concept of multispecies knots imagines the encounters we have with each other in the world across species as one piece of a larger story in the history of our species’ coexistence. The idea of an individual in a species existing not only as itself, but as a link in the chain of the species history, with endless history stretching back into the past and into the future, as well as entwined with our own species history. That first visit to the pond back in September, when I sat at 6 am observing Paradise’s heron, feels different when I think about it contextualized as one encounter that has been shaped by the infinite history that we share. When I consider the trust that heron must have had in me to let me sit that near, when its ancestors were hunted by mine. When you think of the fact that I was drawn to be out there, admiring the beauty in its routine, almost inspired by its existence when it was just going about its daily life. It was a completely unique interaction that has never happened before exactly like that and will never happen again, just one thread that weaves the story of our collective existence. Just two creatures in the world, passing by each other. Noticing each other I sometimes find it hard to conceive every single interaction I have with anything ever can be seen as just one link in the chain of the world. One thread in the tapestry of our shared existence, that all together form a larger story that none of us will ever be able to see. Not even the heron.

Yet, the heron on paradise pond continues to go about its life. And I walk up, away from my pond, back to my homework, back to dinner with my friends. Just more threads forming the tapestry. I find it only fair to give the Great Blue Heron five stars.

★★★★★

Works Cited

ABC Birds. “Great Blue Heron.” 22 September 2021, https://abcbirds.org/bird/great-blue-heron/?psafe_param=1&gclid=Cj0KCQiAgK2qBhCHARIsAGACuzkBLa83htftDmVxYU8En8DwNvK97dtGckGC1_o2qUMylqN2F9XaojAaAk04EALw_wcB. Accessed 10 November 2023.

Dankosky, John, and Lily Tyson. “The History of Beavers in New England With Ben Goldfarb.” New England News Collaborative, 2 August 2018, https://nenc.news/ben-goldfarb-the-history-beavers-new-england/. Accessed 10 November 2023.

Green, John. Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet. Perfection Learning Corporation, 2023.

Haraway, Donna Jeanne. 2003. The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press. Pp. 1-47

Hejnol, Andreas. 2016. “Ladders, Trees, Complexity, and Other Metaphors in Evolutionary Thinking.” In: Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Stories from the Anthropocene. Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt, Nils Bubandt, Elaine Gan, and Heather Anne Swanson, eds. Pp. G87-102. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

IUCN. “Great Blue Heron.” 2 October 2022, https://www.iucnredlist.org/fr/species/181500967/181565357. Accessed 10 November 2023.

Massachusetts Audubon. “Find a Bird.” Find a Bird, https://www.massaudubon.org/our-work/birds-wildlife/bird-conservation-research/breeding-bird-atlases/find-a-bird?id=948. Accessed 10 November 2023.

Massachusetts Audubon. “Great Blue Herons.” Mass Audubon, https://www.massaudubon.org/nature-wildlife/birds/great-blue-herons. Accessed 10 November 2023.

Native Languages. “Native American Indian Heron Legends, Meaning and Symbolism from the Myths of Many Tribes.” Native-Languages.org, http://www.native-languages.org/legends-heron.htm. Accessed 10 November 2023.

Rose, Deborah Bird. 2012. “Multispecies Knots of Ethical Time.” Environmental Philosophy 9(1):127–140.

Transect. “The Bald Eagle & Migratory Bird Treaty Acts (2023).” Transect, https://www.transect.com/bald-eagle-migratory-birds-act. Accessed 10 November 2023.

US Fish and Wildlife Service. “Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 | U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.” U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 26 April 2020, https://www.fws.gov/law/migratory-bird-treaty-act-1918. Accessed 10 November 2023.

[moreclaypigeons]

My Pizza John bust, drawn late at night when I couldn't sleep, with kid's markers and a lack of proper sight.

[loremori]

Martin Freeman (235/366)

📺|Sherlock (2010–2017) Writer & Creator Mark Gatiss Steven Moffat

Modernized version of the Conan Doyle characters. Risa Rodil art: Ty Mattson + Olly Moss + Saul Bass inspired.

[dovand]

things to do with one hand/limited grip strength in your dominant hand

hi spoonies and suchlike. i am having some sort of a flare-up (probably carpal tunnel at this point, tbh) in my dominant hand, & i've been going CRAZY INSANE trying to keep myself occupied without exacerbating it. here's some stuff i have tried/am meaning to try that seems doable, even with the working hand being my non-dominant one :] feel free to add further suggestions!

crafts

finger painting (or drawing on the shower door/mirror when it's steamed up. you will have to BYO steam though)

air-dry clay with one hand? anything's possible! (keep it small, maybe?)

you could try learning to write/draw with your non-dominant hand (if that one isn't also fucky) (and not if you, like me, are prone to going "ah fuck it, i'm faster with my dominant hand, surely it can't hurt") (it CAN hurt) (ow)

pixel art! no gripping necessary; especially easy with a touchscreen. i've been using Pixel Studio on my ipad and it's pretty good! Aseprite on the computer will always win out for program quality, but clicking on my trackpad is more arduous than tapping a screen

music! i loveeee beepbox and it's all piano roll, so you don't have to play stuff realtime. otherwise you could try really resting your long-suffering fingies and doing a vocal mix on a DAW like garageband, cakewalk, logic, or reaper

origami if you can use your offhand for some support when folding

character playlists (suggested by a friend. love u, pal)

a friendship bracelet if you can secure it on something (and if you can do lots of tying knots)

write something? (dictation software might help if you can't type/handwrite with your off-hand. you could also just record yourself and transcribe it later)

games

some computer games can be played one-handed (either by default or with some remapping)—here's some reddit posts with suggestions in the comments (1) (2) (3) and a list article from thegamer and a steam collection. i don't think it's on any of those posts so i also rec Hades—you just need to remap the attack action (i put it on L-shift usually) but then you're good to go

on mobile: puzzle games like monument valley, a dark room, gubbins (hi nerdfighters), colour-matching games (i played I Love Hue for a while). is bejeweled still around?

on mobile again but fast-paced: platformer/tappy games like alto's adventure (or the sequel), crossy road, jetpack joyride, temple run

on mobile but longer-form: a dark room (again), godus, any town-building game (i think simcity is still kickin')

card games or chess online, Perhaps? i like a good bit of solitaire

outside

i don't have the energy to do these sorts of things, but perhaps you do

go to the park!

get a little treat and perhaps even sit in a nice location to consume it

window-shop (craft stores are excellent for this. don't bring a bag unless you want to Accidentally purchase pretty fibres that you will not use)

browse in the library. use your good hand to get stuff off the shelf

[prosy-days]

April 11, 2024 - Day 296

I am utterly delighted by my new Nerdfighter Art from the Project for Awesome.

[road2nf]

I like myself. I like being a nerdfighter and I like helping to decrease world suck.

When I discovered Nerdfighteria and all of its glory and beauty, I was a rather unhappy human being. I had always been a somewhat shy person, and while I had a very close knit group of friends, I felt very alone.

I had different interests than most of my friends, I was nerdier and I read more and kept to myself more. I thought I was different and weird in a bad way and I kind of bottled it up inside, and this ultimately led to me being a depressed person.

John and Hank taught me that there is nothing wrong with being nerdy, and that it is in fact a good thing, and it is good to be unironically obsessed with things.

Since discovering the Vlogbrothers, I have improved so much as a person. I got into art and I have almost finished a story that I hope to god will someday be published.

I like myself.

I like being a nerdfighter and I like helping to decrease world suck.

-Eleni (eleni-econopouly.tumblr)