#skills and values

[marzipanandminutiae]

accused 17th-century English or English colonial witches in a certain subset of modern pseudo-feminist fiction: I'm a girlboss who can read, unlike other women! I live apart from the community and use herbs to basically invent modern medicine! my views align perfectly with many modern progressive talking points! also I wear my hair down because I'm a ~free spirit~

actual accused 17th-century English or English colonial witches: I'm homeless and mentally ill and my community just kind of wants me gone. or I'm Jewish or Romani. or maybe I have property that someone else wants. I could have strong opinions but that's usually not enough to attract witchcraft charges on its own unless the community is REALLY in a mess. I might even be an unpopular MAN who someone has an interpersonal squabble with, although statistically I am more likely to be a woman (unlike in Scandinavia, where the reverse is true)

[teaboot]

People keep asking me how one could steal and get away with it, and while I can’t tell you any kind of useful information on the topic without ruining my professional credibility and therefore my value as a security professional, the one thing I CAN tell you is that the way anti-theft measures work, the safest way to steal and the safest THINGS to steal would be so low-value and low-volume and would waste so much of your time to take that you’d honestly be better off panhandling, which kind of defeats the purpose of theft to begin with

[eyes-of-nine]

my one seasonal illustration for this year feat. the boy ever

short hair version under the cut

[egg-noodle]

[femmefatalevibe]

Femme Fatale Guide: Game-Changing TED Talks Everyone Should Watch

"How Five Simple Words Can Get You What You Want" by Janine Driver

"Master your Mindset, Overcome Self-Deception, Change your Life" by  Shadé Zahrai

"How to talk to the worst parts of yourself" by Karen Faith

"Think before you speak, hacking the secret of communication" by Catherine Molloy

"The Hidden Code For Transforming Dreams Into Reality" by Mary Morrissey

"Don't Believe Everything You Think" by Lauren Weinstein

"The public speaking lesson you never had" by DK

"Programming your mind for success" by Carrie Green

"How to stop screwing yourself over" by Mel Robbins

"Own Your Behaviours, Master Your Communication, Determine Your Success" by Louise Evans

"The psychology of seduction" by Raj Persaud

"Why we're unhappy -- the expectation gap" by Nat Ware

"Think Fast. Talk Smart" by Matt Abrahams 

"Increase your self-awareness with one simple fix' by Tasha Eurich 

"5 steps to designing the life you want" by Bill Burnett

"Staying stuck or moving forward" by Dr. Lani Nelson Zlupko

"To reach beyond your limits by training your mind" by Marisa Peer

"Emotional laws are the answer for better relationships" by Diana Wais

"Feelings: Handle them before they handle you" by Mandy Saligari

"Cultivating Unconditional Self-Worth" by Adia Gooden 

[kiragecko]

Story Idea

Telekinetic supervillain who REALLY loves historical architecture. Living in a superhero universe where heroes keep crashing through stained glass windows and leveling entire streets. As well as the normal corruption causing building to be demolished or “restored” in extremely destructive ways.

Kinda has Poison Ivy vibes, without any of the femme fatale trappings - her entire focus is preserving historical valuable buildings, and she doesn’t really care if humans that get in the way die. But she also isn’t going out of her way to kill people.

And the leader of the local superhero team can see where she’s coming from. And decides that just throwing her in jail every time she acts up is a sign they’re failing in their duty to protect the city. Instead, he starts trying to gain her trust. He doesn’t care that much about buildings, but he works on lessening his team’s collateral damage. He promises the supervillain that he’ll try to pressure the city government if she brings problems to him rather than taking them into her own hands. Eventually, he convinces her that she can protect the city’s infrastructure better by being on his team than she can on her own.

She’s incredibly helpful! She will keep burning buildings from collapsing until everyone can get out and the fire is extinguished. She’ll hold skyscrapers up while supervillains reign destruction down around them. She’ll deconstruct traps and grumpily direct her teammates towards the hidden mastermind who set them up. And when the crisis is over, she’ll see what can be salvaged and rebuild it if possible.

But she’s a PR nightmare.

Former Supervillain refuses to help people. She DOES NOT care. Your kid is trapped in the burning building? That is not her problem. Go bother someone else. Dude is holding a bunch of people hostage? It’s fine, he’s not causing any damage to the building he’s in.

People DO NOT like this attitude. People do not accept that she’s part of a team, and other heroes are capable of filling the “empathy” and “human rescuing” gaps.

And she’s high maintenance! The team frequently end up in situations where protecting lives is in conflict with protecting property. They take missions that mean very little to them, because they’re important to her. And the leader is constantly having to talk her out of rampages, pressuring the government to drop lucrative and unethical contracts, and making sure she’s sticking to the plan in the field. And she isn’t interested in interpersonal relationships or social niceties, so none of them are even doing this out of friendship!

-

Sometimes, you help someone not because they’ll be grateful, but because it will make your community better. Sometimes, you help the local drug addict not because he’s likely to turn his life around, but because he smashes less windows when he has a warm, quiet space to stay. And sometimes, keeping that community benefit takes a long term commitment.

I want to see a superhero team turn a villain as harm prevention and then willingly bear the cost of keeping that villain from causing harm. Not because it’s rewarding (though there are rewards) but because it’s more effective than any other method. And I want the villain to go along with it because the heroes actually found a more efficient way for her to reach her goals.

And it being messy for everyone, but I want them to make it work. And it to be worth it, in the end.

[tryingonametaphor]

you guys have to stop generating and sharing AI videos of byler kissing. the technology behind that is extremely exploitative and you are enabling it. but if that somehow isn’t enough of a reason to stop, it’s also making you look like you are coping. just wait for s5 or create (human-made non AI generated) art/fics in the meantime.

[cat-skull]

seeing art in all sorts of styles from artists with all sorts of different levels of experience is like the whole point of artfight to me. its stupid and heartless to make fun of beginners in any context but especially within artfight

[marzipanandminutiae]

"Traditional European ArchitectureTM is the best! modern architecture is degenerate!"

"alright, well, putting aside my strong disagreement on the philosophical/ethical undertones of your statement- I do love old buildings! you must be a big proponent of paid apprenticeships for preservation students"

"um what?"

"well, people have to know how to preserve these buildings. and as it stands now, only those willing to go into student debt or with family money to fall back on while they study can afford to learn the techniques involved (unless they're lucky enough to be born into a family with their own preservation contracting business). young people aren't going into these fields even if they want to, because they can't take the financial hit"

"yes but why should anyone have to pay them to learn? they should pull themselves up by their bootstraps!"

"...right. well, what about preservation grants? nationalizing historical site museums?"

"government handouts! no way!"

"preserving and revitalizing traditional forms of building craftsmanship, like decorative masonry or plasterwork, stained glass, tiling, clockmaking, etc?"

"those things cost too much and will hurt the building company's bottom line!"

"talking about the people whose labor made these incredible works of architectural art possible?"

"woke history!"

"adaptive reuse, like letting businesses rent historical buildings with appropriate restrictions on modification?"

"ew! not in my backyard!"

"traditional buildings in styles from other parts of the world?"

"no, no, no! everyone knows western art is the most ~highly evolved~!"

"so, let me get this straight: you just want grand old buildings to be there, and stay perfectly intact, unused for anything, with no effort whatsoever. and you want new buildings to happen in that style but somehow as cheaply as throwing up a glass-and-steel skyscraper that starts falling apart in six months? also only western-style buildings, and we should only talk about very specific people who occupied them?"

"yes!"

"my guy, you don't actually love old architecture"

[cabbagestrand]

oh, to be taken care of

[fjordfolk]

pictured: dogs sorted in order of most to least amount of pigment

[50stradwife]

girl mom 🧸🎀

[srubabu]

one of your fav artists opens commissions and their prices are criminally low. 72 dead 427 injured

[hotwaterandmilk]

Any localised translation worth reading is crafted using cultural understanding and carefully honed language skills that are inherently human in nature. AI cannot replicate this and any company hawking content that's been haphazardly tossed through AI doesn't deserve your support in any capacity.

I said the above on Bluesky and while I feel like I'm preaching to the choir (I don't think anyone I know online would knowingly waste their money on AI localised trash), I do think it still needs to be said loudly and clearly so the humans whose (already tenuous) jobs are under threat know that they have community support. I also strongly feel that this support needs to be extended to the editors, letterers, retouchers and others who make a significant difference in how works appear in publications outside their home country.

Generative AI being used solely to remove the human aspect of creative arts is abhorrent in all its forms and unfortunately one of the only ways to fight back meaningfully is to not give companies touting this soulless filth our hard earned money.

It sometimes feels like we're fighting a losing battle, resisting this fascist tech creep, but the humanity of the arts is intrinsic to its cultural value even when we're locked into the hellscape that is capitalism. It's worth resisting.

My friends in the arts, you will always have my support.