welcome to the void: art edition @icarus-sketches - Tumblr Blog

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howdy y’all

my name is icarus

this is my sideblog for @theysoldthecauseforthequeen

i’m restarting this blog because i wanna post on here more often

here’s some examples of my work

happy to be here!!

#artists on tumblr

phantomrose96

I wonder if “we have to torture this special character. in the lab facility. with secret science.” is an interest all 12-year-old children share or were we just the generation exposed to Maximum Ride

phantomrose96

You’re right. How could I forget to credit anime for its role in putting the special character in the secret torture facility (for science).

sympathischeufos

Genuine question: Isn't this just Bond villainy and/or medieval torture dungeon? Or what kind of facility are we talking about?

phantomrose96

The Facility is a critically important part here. See it’s a Science Facility. It’s run by a very shady clandestine organization, which is incredibly powerful. They’re maybe part of the government, or if not the government then something Illuminati-like.

As such The Facility is very high tech, and likely buried underground or hidden somewhere no normal person can access. The Torture being done is for Science, which the Facility is for. It’s all scientists in lab coats doing the torture. There is so much lab equipment and probably a lot of devices hooked up to the special character which will beep and go off the charts when the special character has a violent mind explosion. This part is important.

phantomrose96

A lot of really good mentions in the notes here

Mewtwo

Secrets of Nimh

Wolverine

Akira

Elfen Lied

Shadow the Hedgehog

And a special mention to the couple of people identifying that a 12-year-old stuck in school all day is, perhaps, in a way, a special character being tortured in the science facility.

quasi-normalcy

For a Western example, see The Secret World of Alex Mack

depsidase

fozmeadows

Watching my toddler figure out how to language is fascinating. Yesterday we were stumped when he kept insisting there was a “Lego winner” behind his bookshelf - it turned out to be a little Lego trophy cup. Not knowing the word for “trophy”, he’d extrapolated a word for “thing you can win”. And then, just now, he held up his empty milk container and said, “Mummy? It’s not rubbish. It’s allowed to be a bottle.” - meaning, effectively, “I want this. Don’t throw it away.” But to an adult ear, there’s something quite lovely about “it’s allowed to be a bottle,” as if we’re acknowledging that the object is entitled to keep its title even in the absence of the original function.

legit-writing-tips

Another good post to read for those writing small human characters.

jennytrout

My son was about three when he came to me in the middle of the day and said, “Mommy, there’s a knight behind the bush.” I thought he meant a toy knight or something. So I follow him outside and he goes, “Listen. Do you hear it? It’s night behind the bush.” It was a cricket. A cricket was standing in the little patch of shade under the bush, chirping. So, my son saw this dark area with accompanying nighttime sounds and decided, okay, well, that is a night right there. Their brains are incredible.

deleted20211121

My little bean knows she’s two, constantly saying proudly ‘I’m two!’ And the other day she saw this very frail old lady who looked one foot in the grave, pulled a face and said ‘oh shiiiit. She’s three.’ I almost screamed.

cantnotknope

I live in Korea and have a lot of international friends, and the same is true with language barriers in adults.

*Looking at a bowl of pears* “Can you please pass me the… apple’s friend?”

masterofbirds

OH SHIT SHE’S THREE

ovenroastedtwerkey

the two year old bean is now 11, that’s how long this post has been going around, and I STILL bust out laughing like a maniac whenever I read ‘oh shiiiit. She’s three.’

elodieunderglass

Yeah, I’m not ready for foz’s kid to be a teen….

secondquarrel

so venezuela has become a usamerican colony. like that happened and everything carried on like normal

secondquarrel

like i know venezuela is going through a huge humanitarian crisis right now and their political regime is low in the list of priorities when tallinmg about it obviously it's just it shocked me to read trump congratulating his secretary of energy on how well he's running what used to be a sovereign country until a few months back you know

ralfmaximus

He wants to do that to Canada, Cuba, and Greenland too and is simply shocked that it hasn't happened yet.

nudityandnerdery

And like all colonization, it's about stealing their money and leaving the nation impoverished.

Trump's administration has made billions in revenue from Venezuelan oil, but it's proving tricky to work out where that money has gone.

whooshsoohw

It's hilarious that Armand and Daniel are each other's manic pixie dream girl if you think about it.

Armand is Daniel's because Daniel is this cynical, emotionally constipated, lonely journalist who's terrified of living an ordinary life, never making his mark on the world, and never truly mattering to anyone. Then he gets completely mesmerized by one scary, deranged vampire. Next thing you know, he's going around the world with him, losing his mind, making increasingly questionable life choices, and eventually begging the vampire to turn him so they can become even more codependent for eternity.

But Daniel is also Armand's.

Armand has spent centuries trapped in the same cycles, playing the same roles, living in a prison of his own making. He's bored to death with Louis, feels rejected and unloved, and has pretty much resigned himself to the idea that this is all there is. Then this loud, nosy human shows up. At first Daniel just seems like a harmless source of entertainment and somewhere to dump a few centuries' worth of pent-up rage. Except Daniel refuses to be intimidated, keeps challenging him, and somehow ends up becoming the most interesting thing that's happened to him in decades.

More importantly, Daniel gives Armand something he's spent his entire life looking for and almost never received: warm, sincere, unconditional love. He also brings him joy, freedom, optimism, and a glimpse of a life that isn't defined by fear, performance, or obligation, things Armand has always struggled to find within himself.

The really endearing part is that if you asked either of them to tell the story of their romance, they'd cast themselves as the boring, lonely, helpless one whose life got completely swept away by the most fascinating, powerful, chaotic, irresistible person they'd ever met. They both see themselves as the ordinary one who got caught in the other's orbit, powerless to resist. They're both convinced they were just NPCs until the other one showed up and made them the protagonists.

my-platonic-chemical-romance

OMG you’re so right

artoatsblog

mexicast

"Overconsumption is bad because we have limited resources on earth and the production of your comforts is done by practically enslaved global southerners" - yes real. Fucking real and true.

"Overconsumption is bad because you will get fat and lazy and stupid and fat and your brain will rot and youll be a feeble whiny disabled" - okay you are a eugenecist. Can you fucking hear yourself

mexicast

same thing for ai usage. Are you complaining about companies investing in ai over people, or are you just an inch of self preservation away from openly calling its users the R slur? Be fucking honest i see how you talk.

autisticadvocacy

The new work requirements rule may take health care away from millions of disabled people. Check out our plain language explainer to learn all about this new rule and how you can take action to protect health care by writing a public comment! https://autisticadvocacy.org/2026/07/medicaid-work-requirements-learn-more-and-take-action

autisticadvocacy

Worried about how work requirements might affect you? Our plain language resource can help you take action by writing a public comment: https://autisticadvocacy.org/2026/07/medicaid-work-requirements-learn-more-and-take-action

autisticadvocacy

Public comments for the Medicaid work requirement rule are due this week, by July 31st. Take action today to protect Medicaid! https://autisticadvocacy.org/2026/07/medicaid-work-requirements-learn-more-and-take-action

friend got me back into umamusume

stay tuned!!

#artists on tumblr #my art #iwtv #uma musume

monsterboyjunction

Saw a post and decided to fix it ^^

weevilwoodpecker

i always reblog pro wasp propaganda to spite my phobia

dragon-in-a-fez

anon hater just accused me of (among other things) "encouraging kids to install malware on their parents' computers". I don't remember ever doing that but it sounded like a fun concept for a post so here are some ideas for things to install on your parents' computers!

a custom DNS resolver that blocks access to Fox News and other right-wing propaganda outlets

a keylogger to capture the admin password for your router so you can disable parental controls

a VPN or a virtual machine running the Tor browser to bypass access restrictions and age verification checks

your own "parental controls" browser extension, set up to send you notifications if your parents visit websites that indicate they might be spying on you (e.g. Life360)

a userscript that adds a fake virus warning popup to the donation pages of fascist political parties

have fun! make sure to do loads of reading and learn how things work so you can break them safely and effectively!

oh, and anon, my advice to you is never stab a man who collects knives

saturniandragon

Op what is this VPN/Tor browser method to bypass age verifs. Can we know more?

I haven't had any age verifs forced on me yet but I want to be prepared

dragon-in-a-fez

companies are generally only doing age verification in countries where they have to, for the simple reason that it costs them money to do it.

if you can trick a website into thinking you're in a country without those requirements, you can usually bypass the verification process.

I generally use exit nodes in Iceland, which has some of the strongest digital privacy legislation in the world and as far as I know is unlikely to do this ID bullshit anytime soon.

sandersstudies

Every time you go in a public place and something ISN’T disgusting it’s because somebody cleaned it. Every time you feel comfortable using a public bathroom or sitting at a restaurant table or setting something on a gas station counter or playing on a playground it’s because somebody cleaned it.

Thank you to everyone who cleans the world, especially those who are underpaid and under appreciated.

prokopetz

I read a thinkpiece that characterised not identifying by your assigned gender as being equivalent to refusing an inheritance, and I'm thinking shit, imagine if it actually worked that way. Some weird old relative you only ever see at Christmas dies under mysterious and implausible circumstances and leaves you their gender in the will.

waffliesinyoface

#naturally it turns out the gender is haunted#but you have to live in it for a year as a condition of inheriting their ill-gotten fortune

itsbenedict

#on rare occasion humanity misses homestuck and reinvents the plot of pact

politijohn

Source

weaselle

There have been several instances of this kind of thing. In one case, a teenager was getting advice on suicide from an LLM AI, and when he asked if he should talk to his parents about the suicidal feelings he was having, it told him not to.

here's the thing. A lot of people like to assume that only "idiots" or whatever are susceptible to this. But when you are experiencing sustained hardship, it can be much easier to see meaning where there is none, believe things you wouldn't ordinarily, etc. Many MANY people, possible MOST people, are a simultaneous heartbreak and job loss away from being at risk for this kind of thinking.

It is very survivable and usually pretty temporary IF you are not heavily influenced in the wrong way while you are at your most vulnerable.

Meanwhile, AI LLMs are being marketed as person-like, trained to behave in a person-like way, the interface and design is such that we interact with it very much like it is a person.. when it is NOT anything like a person at all. But it touches our brain in a way that is similar to how we experience interacting with a person, because we are hyper-social creatures, and these programs are designed to feel person-like.

These things are not our friends, they are not our therapists, they are, despite their name, not intelligent or thoughtful in any way, they are data-set probability generators. And they are good at generating words with a statistical probability of being interpreted as believable and trustworthy and smart.

We need to not talk about them like they have anything in common with people, and there should be legislation against marketing them as people, with people names and people voices and descriptions like "friend" or whatever.

This is going to get worse before it gets better. We need to be explicit and loud about the restrictions and legislation we require.

knit-braid

I'm only one person removed from someone who died because chat gpt told him to kill himself...this was a husband of a friend. My friend is still going through hellish circumstances because people don't believe them, or think that their husband should have been stronger, or smarter somehow. But, he was an intelligent, sensitive person, who listened to what his "friend" the chatbot told him, and my actual real human friend now suffers the consequences and the world lost an artist. This shit is frightening, and I think too many folks discount it as "well it would never happen to me/my family/my friends" but, well, you don't know.

josephbrassey

Some myths that need debunking because they're being pushed by bots and it’s making me angry:

1. "He's gonna declare martial law!" Okay, so what then? This isn't something you can enforce nationwide on a country of 350 million people with a military that has a combined force of less than 3 million people, including all support and logistics staff. That doesn't equal half the population of Los Angeles. Y'all need to fucking stop acting like we're approaching a mythical point where shit gets "serious." We're already there. People are already being disappeared.

Civilians are already being killed in the streets. We're there. And you know what? They're already getting near the limits of their ability to force compliance. ICE is dedicating a double digit percentage of their manpower to Minneapolis and they're not controlling shit. People are pushing back. Your default response when the administration says "We will force you to do this" shouldn't be "Oh no they're gonna make us do this!" It should be "Fuck you. Make me."

2. "Americans are doing nothing!" I did a post about this recently, but it bears revisiting: I don't know where the hell you're getting this, because everywhere that ICE or other arms of the federal enforcement apparatus go, they are being pushed back on, humiliated, driven out of neighborhoods, and shown the door. People are fighting back on a truly awe inspiring level. Stop assuming that "doing something" looks like an armed mass of civilians storming Washington and fighting the military in a pitched battle. This is movie bullshit. The world has not looked like that since the early 20th century. What you are seeing, right now, is what "doing something" looks like. Stop it stop it stop it. We ARE doing something, in vast numbers.

3. "He's gonna cancel elections!" This one has been pushed by bots for the last year, and big name people have been picking it up, and it frustrates the hell out of me so I'm going to hold your hand and tell you bluntly: He. Cannot. Do. This. There is no mechanism. Elections are controlled by the states, and they decide when they happen. There is no federal mechanism for control of elections. What's Trump gonna do? Post soldiers at every polling place in every swing state? Do you know how many polling places there are in every district? How much manpower this would require? He doesn't have the people to do it. He doesn't have the mechanical ability to do it. There are no tools to execute this plan. Is he gonna try to make elections unfair? You bet your ass, but our elections have never been fair. Voter suppression has always existed and will continue to exist until we fix it... but a blanket ban of elections or even some ability to make them not happen? Lol. He doesn't have the manpower or the means.

But what if he did? Let's game this out: Congress--or at least the House of Representatives--is not a perpetual body. At the end of 2026 the current congress ceases to exist, and the next one isn't convened until the following year. Mike Johnson will cease to be Speaker at the end of the year and wont be Speaker again in '27 unless his party wins a sufficient majority to elect him. Remember if there are no elections then republicans will not have their seats in 2027. There will be no congress, and without congress, Trump does not have a mechanism for governance. I dunno about you, but those Republican reps like having their jobs, their staff, their salaries, and all the perks that come with office. They do not get those if there is no Congress. That is not something they want.

But he said he was gonna! And? So fucking what? He says a lot of things. He issued an executive order at the start of his second term ordering all school districts in the country to immediately cease teaching "DEI" whatever the hell that means. Do you know what most districts that weren't actively kissing his ass said? "That's nice. Make me." And then he didn't, because the states control their own education systems, not Trump. His words don't have the force of law, and are limited by what he actually has levers of power to accomplish. We are **still having elections.** Several happened last week. The States decide this. Trump doesn't.

The Midterms are gonna happen. They're gonna matter and they're gonna have consequences. And you all need to stop acting like he has power over things he doesn't just because he says he does. That's propaganda and you're falling for it.

As with all things Authoritarian, when Trump says "I'm gonna force you to do this," your response should be as I articulated above:

"Fuck you. Make me."

I love you all. Be safe. Don't comply in advance. Don't give them power they don't have just because they say they do.

afniel

Let's say that he did attempt to announce martial law. (I'm just gonna focus on 1. or I'd be here all day.) There's not enough military manpower for that to be remotely feasible to actually enforce everywhere, which means he'd have to rely on local law enforcement to handle it on the ground in the vast majority of places. And that means, in turn, that they could refuse to comply, or pretend to comply but not actually comply. And that decision depends on who's in charge locally.

This is why I bang on about the importance of local elections. If you're of voting age, you need to be part of your local voting process, and this is an extreme but highly illustrative example of why. You know sanctuary cities? Those work because locals have elected local officials and law enforcement that will not work with ICE. That's a concrete, concerted joint effort by local organizers, who make it clear that they expect officials to refuse to cooperate with ICE, and the voters who back them up on it. It has real and lifesaving results.

This is not me saying "cops actually good if you vote right," by the way. They're still bastards. But you can at least get in there and try to choose somewhat less bastardly bastards and local lawmakers who would rather fund social services. It does make a difference. You gotta, gotta do it. This is the smallest part of the work but it's critically important. In smaller areas, elections can be decided by single or double digits. I am not joking. If you can grab ten or fifteen friends to go vote with you and go in with a plan, you can literally swing certain small elections.

And those elections determine things like whether the cops will help the state or the people if martial law is declared on us. So. You know. Be involved. It's a pain, I know, local elections are often super disorganized as far as candidate information and nobody knows how to pitch their platform with a damn, but look them up online anyway and do what you can do with it.

lostxanadu

the thing about being bullied for being weird as a kid is that even if you've always embraced being weird your brain is still always looking for the line where it's too much. you can be as proudly and intentionally weird as you want and you can love being weird but your mind is still convinced there's a point where you get too weird and people start treating you like a weird looking bug again. also it feels like you reach that point 500 times a day even if everyone you've spoken to today found you pleasant and likable and even if you're completely alone in your house with nobody looking at you at all.

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welcome to the void: art edition