Adventures with the Geek Empress

The randomly random blog of artist Bwillett. This is the Tumblr I use to post all the cool stuff I see here but don't want to choke my sketch blog. Fandoms: Cardcaptors, YugiOh, Sailor Moon, Batman Beyond, Soul Eater, Madoka, Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy No porn, but expect my uncensored opinion about just about everything.

[mareliini]

my comic for the fairy anthology we made over in webcomics garden discord! Wretched work to make a comic that's only 8 pages..

[hexjulia]

sometimes your distress does indicate you should stop and respect your limitations. at other times it's more of a baby aquatic mammal being introduced to water for the first time thing. Too bad the difference is so hard to tell.

[bean-bog-blog]

"why are you so tired all of the time?" i literally have 1/4th as many good days as you do, barbara

[image ID in alt text]

[aleshakills]

Is there a word for occupying the space where normies think you're a freak and freaks think you're a normie?

[aleshakills]

I tell a woman with a 9 to 5 office job about the slightly niche speculative fiction novel I just finished and she goes "Oh, that's...interesting. I hadn't heard of that."

I tell a grungy chick I met at a dive bar about the same book and she kinda scoffs and goes "Okay" like I said my favorite show is Sesame Street

[i-shinori]

[a-shithead-who-posts]

Omg! This is beautiful

[byjove]

I think I made this exact post before but every few months on social media someone will be like “OMGGGGGG I FOUND BONES BURIED IN MY CELLAR. I JUST CALLED THE COPS.” and the bones are so visibly (weathered) butchered cow bones or small animal bones. Not a single time is it a ‘they could be human…’ incident. Totally not the poster’s fault because I doubt the majority of people know human skeletal anatomy. Were people 120 years ago burying the remains of their barbecue rib dinner in the dirt floor of the cellar to freak people out in the future or something? No, but like, it seems like packing your walls and floors with trash was so common until like 30 years ago.

[byjove]

FOR REFERENCE:

cow femur:

human femur, various growth stages (from bone clones, no actual human remains in the photo):

[byjove]

HOLY FUCK YOU ARE NOT KIDDING

[heflapper]

.....I was talking about the OTHER subreddit... the one with the fuckin counter for it:

cause apparently there's two

[byjove]

If I had a nickel for every time someone on a bone collecting subreddit found human remains, I’d have like $20…

bone found suspiciously buried in your basement: not human

interesting bone you found in a creek while hiking: inexplicably 100% human

[n0-1-important]

You guys forgot one subreddit

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

friend of mine recommended a video essay that's like 5 hours long about why it's currently a whole Thing for fascists to claim they only eat meat and demonize vegetables etc etc, and it's genuinely quite well researched in many places and contains some fascinating history and has made me feel very weird about my status as an adult who enjoys drinking milk. but I've not finished it and I genuinely don't know if I will because at one point the ol' "you can't say you care about animals and also eat animals" chestnut got dropped by the white vegan essayist and it put such a bad taste in my mouth that I had to leave instantly

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

like idk man it just feels genuinely parodic to dedicate hours to analyzing how foodways have frequently been used as white supremacist propaganda and then casually toss out an argument that pretty invariably demonizes indigenous hunting practices with 0 regard for traditional knowledge and land stewardship guiding those practices

[deramin2]

Every time I hear a white vegan say that I want to throw the rubble of the Klamath Dams at them.

The largest dam removal in U.S. history. So successful that the salmon that haven’t run freely in the river for literally over a century came back the next year. Not steady progress over a decade as expected, the very next salmon run they came home. No one alive saw salmon in that river outside the hatcheries kept by native’s tribes and the Department of Fish And Wildlife scientists desperately trying to save them. One of the activists who helped bring the suit spoke of their dying grandmother making them promise to bring the fish home, and they didn’t know how that was possible, but they spent decades doing it.

The legal basis for successfully suing the power company who owned the dams was Indigenous treaty rights to eat the fish. Eating the fish was the one thing in a century that succeeded in being a clear and legally binding right that superseded the desires of white capital and industry. I have been going to the public interest environmental law conference off and on for 20 years where a lot of organizing for Undam The Klamath happened. I’ve heard updates about every legal tact they tried as they happened, and they tried everything.

There are healthy, thriving salmon, trout, and lamprey in a rewilding and recovering Klamath River right now as a direct result of Indigenous people eating them. Of their legally binding right to eat them. They sure as fuck care more about those fish than any white vegan ever could. They are salmon people that the Creator sent Salmon to feed, while charging the People with protecting and stewarding them. It’s not possible to learn about salmon and trout in the Pacific Northwest without learning this, and it’s unambiguously racist to dismiss this symbiotic relationship.

The white vegans are trying to get all hunting and fishing banned in Oregon, and that’s quite possibly the single most catastrophic thing that could be done to the animals here because we killed off all the major predators of creatures like deer and without anything hunting them their numbers will explode, eat all the vegetation, destroy the ecosystem, and then die along with everything else in that failing ecosystem. Controlled hunting of deer is vitally necessary for the deer to survive. This is something Native people know, but patronizing racist savior-complex white people refuse to listen to.

I have a whole collection of Oregon’s Public Broadcasting’s documentaries about Klamath River or the larger story of fish and people in the region. If you watch nothing else, watch Klamath Dams Are Coming Out, First Salmon Ceremony, After The Dams, and First Decent (Native made). It could not be clearer that the salmon are being protected and nourished by the people who eat them, and that stewardship is a massive part of their creation myths. But it contradicts political vegan dogma so they don’t listen.

The Klamath River Runs Free

The Klamath River Runs Free

[excusethequality]

While watching a DVD from the library my TV popped up a message saying to press a button if I wanted to watch this from additional providers.

It's never done that before so I looked it up and turns out Roku TVs have added all sorts of creepy things in the privacy section since I last checked.

One of which being they take screenshots from what you're watching and send them to third parties to identify it.

Fucking hell! Remember when every fucking device in your life wasn't a spy implanted in your home and working against your interests to try and sell your data? Remember how nice that was??

Remember when the TV was just a tool that would play the things you plugged into it?

Why must the future suck SO much?

[excusethequality]

How to Turn Off Smart TV Snooping Features - Consumer Reports

TVs collect a huge amount of data. Here's how to use privacy settings to limit the surveillance on TVs from LG, Samsung, TCL, and every othe

A good rundown on what each brand of TV is up to and which settings you should turn off.

[halondrus]

[manfrommars2049]

UBI needs to happen. via antiwork

[hasufin]

I think most importantly, it would give us the leverage to say “no”. To walk away from bad jobs and abusive managers. To refuse to work in unsafe environments. To demand better pay.

To demand better, because the options are no longer “suck it up” or “die”.

[tehamelie]

The counter-argument: Not having UBI is in the interests of those in power who want to do anything to the people they are in power over in order to remain in power.

If the greed of the few should come before the need of the many.

[viralfrog]

[rae-xoxo00]

omg the girlies

[astra-the-dragon]

omg the girls are saviiiiiiiing wiiiildliiiiife

[highlyillogicalandroid]

Not all heroes wear capes. Or trousers.

[poppy-tarts-stuff]

Not leaving this in the tags

[asukam]

I saw this on insta and someone commented asking her how she knew they were in there and she said that she saw the mama duck with only one duckling and thought it was suspicious so she stopped to check and hear them quacking down there... :') <3

[uncomfortablecliche]

the way the momma duck sped up once she saw her babies yayyyy

[reasonsforhope]

For when you need a reminder that there really is goodness in the world

And for whenever someone mistakenly tells you that humans can only hurt nature -

We are part of nature. And we are uniquely equipped, in many ways, to help heal the planet we are part of - so long as we keep choosing to help, and to heal, this planet of which we are a part

[mango-kitty-art]

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

[grasslandscolorado]

We live in a system that makes money off of your misery and ambivalence. It relies on people thinking that they are inherently bad for the planet and that the world is ending so why change? Why try? --This is untrue! We belong here, on this one beautiful green earth and we have to work together to protect it. You have the power to do more than you know. You have a role to play in your ecosystem!

[raccoonmilf]

The notion that humans are an invasive species is an ecofascist belief. We evolved just like every other animal, we are meant to be here just like they are. This is our home and we have a duty to care for it and change the environment for the better!

Every single person has the power to make a meaningful impact on the planet. I had the most fireflies in my town this summer simply because I have a large area where the grass is never cut.

Please do not give up because you think the planet is too far gone and it’s hopeless. It isn’t. Please fight.

[no-resolution]

Who would win

Miss Piggy

Angel from Buffy

Voting ended onAug 13

[materassassino]

It seems like we're just feeding characters to Miss Piggy at this point

[genericpuff]

ooohhhhohohohoho hiveworks did a bad. hiveworks did a BIG bad.

To put it simply: they fucked over a lot of their creators by not paying them. they made WAY too many ambitious promises, and there are allegations of manipulation / abuse from that of the platform owners Xel and Isa.

It's unfortunate because Hiveworks was seemingly a great option for people who wanted to elevate their webcomics to traditional publishing, but eventually they couldn't afford to do print anymore, and now they're functionally the same as any other comics collective, akin to Foxglove Comics or SpiderForest (i.e. the benefits are just hosting your site through them and being a part of an organized collective of artists for the sake of community collaboration and cross-promotion).

Exclusive: Hiveworks Comics announces it will end print, publishing division - The Comics Journal

Hiveworks Comics press release regarding the future of the webcomics site.

Buuuuut a lot has come out since then from creators who have worked for Hiveworks and now it's become pretty obvious why the platform has been downscaling. They are severely in debt and don't have a plan, at least not one they're capable of committing to or fulfilling.

Hiveworks Artist Guild calls out Hiveworks execs mismanagement

Webcartoonists formerly hosted on Hiveworks have spoken out in a statement alleging financial misconduct by management

Now, one thing that came out of this whole mess was a new guild of artists called the Hiveworks Artist Guild, basically operating like a union where it would represent the actual artists and protect them from further mistreatment.

Buuuuut unfortunately apparently even that group isn't entirely honest either because according to a few creators who have tried to work with them, they've faced issues with certain folks being allowed into the guild who really shouldn't have been allowed in-

This author has chosen to make their posts visible only to people who are signed in.

Meg Syv (@megsyv.bsky.social)

Unfortunately I can confirm this kind of behavior as well, from the Cartoonist Co-Op. There is a current attitude of bailing out and protect

That said, I only know so much as what I've seen online. I'm not really in talks with any creators specifically who were involved in this situation so take all of this with mountains of salt, it's a lot of hearsay and allegations, much of which happened a decent while ago so the situation may have even changed since then (but heeeeyyy, if you're one of the creators who was affected by this and you wanna share further details I may have missed or misrepresented, my inbox is always open! wink wink)

Unfortunately because of the nature of webcomics as an accessible free form medium, it's extremely easy for artists to get taken advantage of by platforms that promise money, growth, traditional publishing opportunities, etc. It's what's allowed platforms like Webtoons to trap so many creators in hostile contracts. A lot of the folks in this community are passionate and hard-working, but we're also a bunch of big-eyed dreamers who often yearn for more outside of just our little webcomic circles, and so it's hard not to put our faith and trust in platforms like these - after all, these platforms are the ones making these promises in the first place, and they know it's easy to do.

But that's also all the more reason why it's important to address these issues when they arise and not stand for this kind of treatment, so we can hopefully get better at identifying red flags in contracts and publishing deals and standing up for ourselves if and when we find ourselves trapped in one.

[kosmogrl]

[manwhorewednesdays]

This is actually such a crucial part of healing from neglect and abuse and I have to add to this.

Because indeed, people who like you will not roll their eyes and sigh at the idea of accommodating your needs, they will value your voice and be upset with you about injustice done to you, not at you for "being difficult". They will be happy when you find a way to live a better life, and help you to get there. If you are struggling, someone who loves you wants to see you smile, not tell you to smile because "you have it so good".

[viejospellejos]

Típico de belgas malinois

[ceruinus]

Good video showcasing exactly why these dogs are not suited to 99 percent of households.

They've gotten very popular recently and I suspect theyre also being dumped in shelters at a high rate

[ultramarineblues]

I can confirm they are.

Which is one of the reasons I reblogged this, I vaguely hope it might make someone somewhere reconsider their choices