They are not here @mepthebufo6 - Tumblr Blog

Happy Halloween Ayreon edition!

First time drawing the entire Source cast and they're (ironically) in fish costumes lol

From left to right:

Preacher, Historian, Opposition Leader - sardines

Chemist - angler fish

Councelor - sea otter

Prophet - fish????

TH-1 - fish???? 2, electric boogaloo

Captain - starfish

Astronomer - crab

President - shark

Diplomat - manta ray

Biologist - coral reef + clownfish

#ayreon the source #ayreon #mepthebufo6art

cam1lla

“Authors should not be ALLOWED to write about–” you are an anti-intellectual and functionally a conservative

“This book should be taken off of shelves for featuring–” you are an anti-intellectual and functionally a conservative

“Schools shouldn’t teach this book in class because–” you are an anti-intellectual and functionally a conservative

“Nobody actually likes or wants to read classics because they’re–” you are an anti-intellectual and an idiot

“I only read YA fantasy books because every classic novel or work of literary fiction is problematic and features–” you are an anti-intellectual and you are robbing yourself of the full richness of the human experience.

moonshinemagpie

"you are functionally a conservative" is such a good and clarifying insult

Literally right after I saw this post, I saw another post in a discord chat for BOOK EDITORS in which an outspokenly liberal editor talked about how Nabokov should have never been published because he wrote about p*dophiles and described women's bodies in ways that made her uncomfortable. She described his writing as "objectively terrible" and said she wanted to burn his books. And other editors were bringing up classics they didn't like and talking about how they wanted to throw them in the trash. This wasn't like a light "unpopular opinion!" conversation. This was actual book editors talking about how books should be destroyed and censored.

There is something so scary and toxic in global culture right now. The revival of fascism is influencing everyone's mindset and approach to art, regardless of where they fall on the political spectrum.

I see far more books being censored today than when I was a kid. Librarians handed me The Catcher in the Rye, The Sexual Politics of Meat, and Animal Farm when I was literally 8-11. My mom would never have taken a book away from me. I read everything from the Tao Te Ching to the Qur'an to atheist texts under my desk at school. Teachers thought nothing of it or encouraged it. Books seemed universally acknowledged as sacrosanct to me.

Now I can't find any adults who don't hesitate or want to make exceptions when it comes to censorship. Even the most liberal social activist librarians I know go, "well except for book X..."

Functionally conservative. It's so important to have the language to express that.

cam1lla

Thank you for this addition!

ollieofthebeholder

I did a report on book banning once.

Actually, I did reports on book banning three separate times with three separate teachers, with three separate sets of parameters so I was able to write about the same topic in different ways, but this is specifically about the report I did in university. The actual specs for the report included that we were supposed to complete some kind of study or poll (this was not a science class). I put the questions out on a couple of forums I belonged to at the time and asked a few IRL friends as well. A lot of the questions were standard for this sort of thing, I think - were you ever assigned to read a banned book, did you ever read banned books on your own, did you read/were you assigned them BECAUSE they were banned or did you find out about them being banned later, what's your opinion on banning books, etc.

But there was one question I asked that ended up reshaping the entire thrust of my presentation: "Are there any books that you think SHOULD be banned, and if so, why?"

Here's the thing. Most of the forums I was posting on were fan spaces for a book series that, at the time, was one of the most banned/challenged books out there. It's a fandom that I have since entirely distanced myself from, that I one hundred percent do not recommend to anyone, that I will actively attempt to dissuade people from reading or talking about, and that I would like to not be popular anymore. I'm sure most of you reading this can guess which one I'm talking about (I won't name it or go into specifics because I don't want to trip any filters unnecessarily). But it was KNOWN that these books were banned in a lot of places. A lot of people wore the "I read banned books" badge with pride. I fully expected that the answer to that question would be a resounding "no" from the forums, and that I'd maybe get a few affirmative answers from one of the other spaces.

I was shocked. Not only did a lot of people come back with either "not exactly but I think we should keep [author] or [book] out of the hands of children" or "yes, [book]/anything by [author] should be banned because XYZPDQ", but not a single person who responded gave me the same answer. The only one I remember - keep in mind it's been almost twenty years - was that one person specifically said The Bone Collector, and for the "why do you think it should be banned" question, they only said, "No. I'm not explaining it. It's too horrible to even think about. Just believe me when I say nobody should ever be allowed to read this book."

I highlighted that last comment in my presentation, along with several other of my "favorite" official reasons for banning books - the Alabama school board that banned The Diary of Anne Frank in 1984 because it was "a real downer", the district that removed A Raisin in the Sun because it was "pornographic", the library that took Charlie and the Chocolate Factory out of circulation because it "might be hurtful to children without parents", and things of that nature - and pointed out that all of these were the same thing. This was somebody saying "I don't like this, therefore nobody should read it, and I shouldn't have to explain why." I also pointed out that if you can't give a good reason, the whole thing falls apart, and then I quoted "Smut" by Tom Lehrer:

All books can be indecent books, Though recent books are bolder, For filth, I'm glad to say, Is in the mind of the beholder. When correctly viewed, Everything is lewd. I can tell you things about Peter Pan And the Wizard of Oz - THERE'S a dirty old man...

Go back to that paragraph I mentioned earlier, about those books that I no longer recommend to anyone. Notice how I phrased that. I don't recommend them. I will tell you all the reasons why I don't think you should buy them. I will tell you all the problems with the author, with the franchise, with the writing. I wish they were out of print, I wish they were deeply unpopular, I wish nobody would ever read them again.

But I still won't advocate for banning them.

It's so easy to twist a justification. Look at what I quoted up there! A Raisin in the Sun was banned for being "pornographic". One of the websites I used as a source responded to that accusation with "Did they read the same play I did?" At the time, I thought the comment was funny. Now, twenty years later, I realize: It was a buzzword. It was a convenient label. At the time of the challenge, just saying "it's pornographic" was enough. Obviously you're not some kind of sicko who wants to hear about all the pornographic details, are you? Freak! That's pornography! And they're teaching it in schools! We should get rid of it!

A Raisin in the Sun, for anyone who didn't study it at any point or read it (or watch the movie, which was very good), is a play/movie about a black family in Chicago in the 1960s. The family matriarch has been in domestic service for years, but she's just received a very large insurance payment from her husband's death and is retiring. Wanting to give her family, especially her young grandson, a better life, she goes out and buys a house...in an otherwise exclusively white neighborhood. The head of the homeowner's association (essentially) comes to visit them and offers to pay them a substantial amount of money to not move into the neighborhood, because segregation isn't officially a thing and they can't legally stop them from moving in, but they don't want them there. There's a lot more that goes on in the play, and I highly recommend you go and read it, but the point is that there is nothing sexual or titillating in the entire thing. The closest we get is a scene where the daughter (Beneatha, a college student) is gifted a traditional African dress from her boyfriend, who's Nigerian, and he shows her how to put it on over the clothes she's already wearing, and maybe the scene where the daughter-in-law (Ruth, a laundress) accidentally reveals that, having found out she's pregnant, she's planning to have an abortion rather than bring another child into the world/have another mouth to feed.

It's not pornographic. But someone didn't want it taught in schools, so they called it that to get it banned.

It's so easy to twist labels. If you, a liberal, agree that books with X trait are okay to ban, the people who don't want books to exist will find a way to say they have X trait, and then what are you going to do, admit that you like that sort of thing? Sicko! Freak! Pervert!

You don't have to like the book, or the author, or the topic. But if you're advocating for banning them entirely, you're functionally a conservative.

likepetalswealleventuallyfall

im laughing so hard because no matter what song you listen to

spiderman dances to the beat

no matter what song ive been testing it and lauing my ass off for an hour

creepymutelilbugger

hey guys do you want to circulate the heirloom dancing spiderman again i feel like we could stand to do that

yuumei-art

In 2012 I painted the top image: Rise

In 2026 I am saddened to have to repaint this update: Fall

candle-lamp-deactivated20250711

Modern AU of the Meadowlark kids, I might come back to these designs to flesh em out a bit

metamorphic-stranger

Types of concept albums:

some guy just absolutely goes crazy loses it

immortality is awful

death (that's it. the concept is death.)

the most complicated and convoluted plotline about life and love and death and war and science and religion and folk mythology and time and politics and existentialism and hope and mental illness and personal responsibility and a dictatorial regime and ai and art and philosophy and the human soul and the apocalypse and the lyrics are all metaphorical and vague and there's like so much expanded lore that can only be found in the notes of a limited edition release in Slovakia from 10 years ago and scattered across 5 different interviews from the digital branch of a french music magazine and try as you might you'll never understand it at all but there's some guy on a niche music review forum that pieced it all together in 2012

nkim-illustrates

How I Paint Grapes! 🍇

some doodles using storyboard pro

#art #cookie run kingdom #eternal sugar cookie #doodle #storyboard pro

Even in Arcadia

#artists on tumblr #mepthebufo6art #sleep token #fanart #vessel sleep token #watercolor #art

Even in Arcadia

#mepthebufo6art #sleep token #even in arcadia #sleep token emergence #caramel #art

beithiochan

I have thoughts while driving sometimes

alicefromwhichplanet

Reasonable

Ayreon plushie I made for class! Along with some not so organized notes because the teacher wanted me to show my progress

#ayreon #plushies #felt plushie #mepthebufo6art #ayreonthefinalexperiment #kinda proud of this ngl #the final experiment #ayreon the blind minstrel #plushblr

riderkaitlyn5

Does anybody have the gif of Blaster dancing from the tactical arena game? Me and my friend are having a transformers gif dance off and I'm trying my hardest to win but I can't seem to find the gif anywhere :( Hoping someone could help ❤️