I'm an independent, queer artist of color and questionable gender making a lot of different kinds of art and selling my work as prints, button, stickers, magnets, shirts and more~!

(links in bio!)

When I was a teenager and still on Neopets I was part of a pretty big Star Trek guild and eventually became part of its council, with the solemn duty of creating weekly polls. Well one day I created the poll "Which would win in a fight? Borg Cube or Death Star?". Naturally, since this was a Star Trek guild, the answer was overwhelmingly "Borg Cube", but someone did have the rationality to point out we were biased.

So I look up a pretty prominent Star Wars guild and message one of their council and ask them to poll the same question and get back to me in a week. They do, and naturally the fuckin geeks said "Death Star".

So then I look up a Stargate guild and messaged the lead council member, saying the same thing, and they get back to me almost immediately saying that the Death Star would immediately one-shot a Borg Cube but they would never be able to do it again to another Cube. And I took that wisdom back to my guild and we were mollified, and for one moment the Nerd World was peaceful.

Truly thrilled to finally find this post on my dash.

some pages from my 2024 zine 'neurodivergent pop-ups'

Mother of Stars by Annie Stegg Gerard

Women will no longer be called the fairer sex. This has been updated to "the sex victorious"

Over a Teacup by Ekaterina Avramenko

@weirdchristmas

Reposting this so that everyone who liked it can find me. THIS IS ALL I POST! Come, friends, follow the weirdness…

I so wish cards with these kinds of designs still existed.

These are all out of copyright! Print ‘em out, fold ‘em into cards, and weirdass Christmas cards ride again!

Why so much anthropomorphic vegetable…

Värmland, Sweden (November 28, 2020).

I think it’s normal for people to be mad at each other sometimes even if they’re close friends or family or intimate with each other. Like I think that’s a normal and healthy part of relationships that can happen sometimes

“Why were you on Mad At Me island” because at the time I was mad at you and yet our friendship has weathered that without trouble

unexpectedly sexy part of the Sinners credits. we LOVE a thoroughly sourced film.

me and my wife “block button” saw you from across the dash and we absolutely fucking hated your vibe. we never want to see you ever again. goodbye

your aversion to anything earnest or sincere has affected us in the following ways 1. youre annoyinggggggg

They De-Tumblrized Ms. Frizzle

@transfagsculine​

#how do yall whitewash a white woman 

why would you leave this in the tags lmao

Allow me to explain:

Everyone dropping this pic

And talking about how the new frizz her is her niece, allow me to do a direct side by side instead

These are STILL not the same woman. Where is the icon fashion, the earrings (the chameleon, which might be in the new show idk I haven't watched it), the prominent hooked nose, the broader shoulders, the volume to her hair, the LIFE IN HER EYES

This frizzle looks like she's been called into the school board for inappropriate behavior and dress one too many times and has been broken.

Also others have said it before me but I couldn't find it in the scroll backs but they whitewashed all the kids too. They same face syndromed everyone to either be easier to draw or be more ambiguous so as not to offend or both or something, and it just makes me sad

Fuck it I did the digging cause I'm still mad

And that’s not even to mention what they did to the bus itself.

The old bus had a personality and life and fun and now it’s just… a bus.

HOW DO Y’ALL WHITEWASH A BUS?!

It's gives "anti abortion Jehova's Witness cartoon" now

Vector puppet animation and a shocking drop off in investment in kidvid is largely at fault, but international marketing is also to blame.

What's important to remember is that the whitewashy approach to character design in kidvid is a backslide.

Representation in cartoons had generally been on an upswing since the 1980s, even though efforts were often minimal, clumsy, or badly executed. Diversity helped sell action figures in the lucrative US/Canadian market and it was recognized as a prosocial value on the production side.

"Prosocial messages" are a major part of kidvid TV pitches and development, nearly every show has specific prosocial lessons the narrative themes are intended to work around, even if its an action-figure ad. These range from sincere expressions of the creator's intent (Gargoyles, OG Magic Schoolbus, OG He-Man (no, for real)) to the entertainment equivalent of carbon credits.

Slight aside. Actual ink-and-paint animation tended to lock characters down into more distinct tones because there were only so many standard paint colors. Which is why Kwame from Captain Planet, Roadblock from GI-Joe, and Tim from OG magic schoolbus all use essentially the same pantone.

Ralphie gets skinny because not only fatphobia, but I suspect because he would need slightly different rigging and would add just a teensy bit to the budget adjusting his animations when they could just copy-paste from one of the other identically built kids. If they need to put them all in spacesuits or diving suits or whatever, they just make the one body and slap the heads on, eazy-pezy.

Decals on the schoolbus mean they have to be tracked, they have to use different versions of the bus in flipped shots, same with Mrs. Frizzle's clothing patterns. Wouldn't want to spend time flipping Ralphie's "R' around.

And with the marketing for everything now being global, there's an impulse to average everything down to appeal to all markets to a general degree. Making stories oversimple makes them easy to translate. Humor varies culture to culture, keep it slapstick or quick quips that can be localized easily. Everything that makes the Chinese censor boards happy also makes US reactionaries less likely to kick up a protest, the incentive is to keep everything:

ALSO: These characters have the same face. They probably use the same eye and mouth parts for character animations.

It's all to do it as cheap and broadly appealing as possible, as determined by business weirdos who know nothing about art and care nothing about kids, and they're more than willing to leverage racism (or just ignore that its happening) for the promise of a tenth of a percent more profit.

And what's galling is that this kind of animation software doesn't have to make crap. It can be used to make amazing stuff and still be vastly cheaper than traditional hand-drawn, but the same quality at 60% of the cost is never going to beat 1/2 the quality at 5% of the cost for the money-men.

The path of least resistance rolls over a lot of people.

Reblogging for "the path of least resistance rolls over a lot of people"

Can I be invited next time ?