did 3" by 3" frescos in art history... made da wizrd. wouldge you like to see?

[ cw: technical child endangerment / ]

Y’know every time I see the turtle tots playing with their original weapons I’m always flabbergasted that Splinter let Leo have a literal sword as a small child.

And then left him unsupervised with it.

Like, at least the others had blunt weapons (though still dangerous in their own right, especially Raph’s blunt tipped sais) but Leo’s katana are so easily lethal that it’s a miracle he seemed to be a natural with them. Because, if he wasn’t a natural then…oof.

It’s at least a good thing he only got one sword at first and not his usual two. Splinter would’ve needed to count his lucky days because OOF.

dude psyched ur reading orv, insanely curious about ur takes

My friend @charterandbarter put it best.

ORV is pretty fascinating to me. It's really just a self-insert isekai OP webnovel, and it is nothing else. Its medium is trashy and lowbrow, and its genre is almost devoid of high art. OP isekais are 'id' stories, meant to be satisfying and fun and contain very little of substance. ORV is a very well executed OP isekai - it contains the elements of the genre that make it satisfying, it understands why people read the genre and enjoy it, it reproduces those elements very well, and it is very concerned with telling an enjoyable story. ORV really, really loves webnovels and isekais and shitty wishfuillment stories. There's a lot more to ORV than the 'fist pump' moments of kdj doing something cool or pulling a fast one on a shmuck, but those moments are the undoubtedly the point of ORV, as they are the point of all SIOC isekai OP webnovels. And that's the point of ORV.

Metanarrative stories are cheap. Neil Gaiman's written 30 and millenials love waxing philosophical about the power of narratives. These metanarratives tend to describe stories as a theoretical framework through which we understand the world and our lives. Therefore, stories are tremendously important and valuable because they contain the totality of religion, history, culture, relationships, and lives. ORV says this too. But this theory tends to land at mystifying and exalting stories on virtue of them being stories, which I think misses the point. Stories aren't special because they're stories. They're not more sacred for containing our lives. What ORV says is that stories are important, because our lives are important. I like that a lot more.

ORV says that stories are our way of ordering a disordered world. A history, culture, nation, and religion are stories. None of those stories are true or real, because histories/cultures/nations/religions are constructs - they're how we interface with reality. They're created with a purpose, told for a point, pulled together into a narrative, and are satisfying or dissatisfying based on certain factors. ORV's perspective on fiction is deeply seeped in its own nature as 'low art'. There's something very cynical and commercialized about narratives in ORV, and every narrative in ORV is being told for a quick buck or to try and spread an idea for an individual's gains. It's a very unromantic, unimpressed view of narratives and fiction. It's pretty much the only way a SIOC OP isekai webnovel like ORV can talk about it without being disingenuous. And it's remarkably raw and visceral as a result, because ORV loves SIOC OP isekai webnovels like kdj loves yjh. Fiercely, insanely, like breathing, exactly for what it is. No pretensions.

It's bizarre, because ORV is about love. It's not about love for anything that deserves it. Not for a story with a lot of literary merit, a main character who is a remotely kind or lovable person, or art itself outside of its commercial or philosophical value. kdj really, really, really fucked loved TWS - because it was there, and because it lasted 15 years, and because it was fake, and because it was what he had. He loves yjh because yjh was his only companion in a dark world. That's fiction. Fiction helped him survive, because love is a way of ordering a disordered world.

I'm still reading myself, but ORV seems to be about how we manage to live in a hard world, and how to find it within ourselves to love each other and find meaning in that hard world. I see why kdj's the protagonist: he can find merit in something for existing, and loving it for being there, and he holds onto something because he has it. He sees the value in that. He read it in a book.

TL;DR: ORV is well-executed trashy commercialized art that is so obsessed with trashy commercialized art that it's looped straight back around into being somehow the most raw and visceral depiction of love I've seen in a long time.

I don't think anyone who believes Arya is focused on revenge has ever actually read her chapters, it's just been one long game of telephone where people repeat a take they heard so they can pretend they know what they're talking about

mini dump

hi! about the "learn how it works before you start making assumptions" about the bluesky post and its networks; what assumptions should we be looking out for? that its not twitter and not everyone is going to be connected like on there? your description of federated networks is understandable, but the default domain it seems to have at signup is bluesky's. I feel like most people would be using this, and only people looking for a certain thing and knowingly leaving that "sphere" will know that theyre isolating to a different community.

I'm new to this too and theres very very minimal, well explained things about it online, and youre the only person I've come across who seems to know anything, so if you have more advice to share I'd appreciate it!

as much as I would like to answer this as an authority and really contribute to the nascent understanding of federated instances as an alternative to current social media platforms, the fact of the matter is that im not. i have a basic understanding of the way in which they work and how to use them, and I dont think im the best source of information. this being the case, since i did bring it up and i did get an ask, i'll try to explain the best i can.

the "fediverse" (dont mind the silly name, we know its silly) might best be explained with the similarities to email. Misskey, Mastodon, and others marketing themselves as federated instance platforms are basically like if you took your email account and stapled twitter to it: Misskey/Mastodon are not platforms themselves, so much as they are frameworks for web servers that connect to one another independently and are run by individuals. These frameworks are usually open source, have different alternative forks that offer different additional features/ui elements, and ultimately all connect to one another regardless. but they are not "platforms" like tumblr or twitter or facebook. anyone can make their own federated instance, and what that instance looks like depends on what framework they used to set it up.

Bluesky and Threads are different. Bluesky differs in that it is run on a private protocol-- it runs differently to the protocols used by the aforementioned open source alternatives and currently cannot connect with them. It's still in beta and its too early to call how it will operate. Threads, like Bluesky, is also a private protocol. At current, it merges your information with other Facebook/Meta products (facebook, instagram, etc). Supposedly, these will eventually be able to communicate with the Fediverse at large, but you should keep a great amount of suspicion with them, as both are run by billionaires. Bluesky is the project of the former head of twitter, and Threads obviously belongs to Zuckerburg and Facebook.

If you head about "x platform is homophobic/racist" in reference to the earlier federated instance frameworks, understand this very crucial thing about Mastodon/Misskey/etc:

They are not websites. They do not have established moderation policies and staff dedicated to managing who posts what.

as stated, Masto/Misskey are just server frameworks. Each federated instance using those frameworks is run by individuals on their own private web servers that they either operate themselves or rent out from a company. the largest Misskey instance, Misskey.io, is currently under fire for having homophobic moderation practices. This does not mean that every instance of Misskey is moderated with homophobia in mind, and homophobic moderation tools are not built into the code of Misskey.

As the old guard of web 2.0 crumbles, the internet is changing again. whether we fall back into the ad-friendly hellhole of yesteryear or we enter a new phase of the internet's wild west depends on platform migration patterns and whether or not people develop some pretty basic web and internet literacy that's been lost over the last 20 years as the internet corporatized and users had to learn less and less about how the websites they used work. my explanation here probably has incorrect information and holes in it, but that is because i, myself, do not fully understand the total extent to which the fediverse and federated protocols operate; i, too, am a layman.

that being said, i hope this was helpful to anyone trying to figure this stuff out. i've already carved my own space on a small, invite-only instance with friends, but i've got no plans to move shop until this place really does burn down to the ground. hope that helps. good luck!

Also thinking about BWU Megatron learning how to fly the old fashioned way: fucking throw his altmode off of a cliff and fail until he succeeds

He swears he still has dents from it.

beware my wine rants

learning how to color with my new screen tablet. turns out people still zoom in digitally and dont put their face up to ~.3 cm from the screen

ESTINIEN. with my favorite pair of complementary colours, purple and yellow. [please click for better quality]

it was a fun practice to get back in the habit, nice and quick and dirty. i like to think i now have a stronger grasp of the armor, but we will find out tomorrow when i try and continue drawing my wol in it without a one on one reference. please dont mind the misspelling im dyslexic as fuck and to tired to redo a letter of something i did in 5 min to use the empty space

I have to learn how to write for the people that appreciate me and my work/stop trying to fit in and impress other people. Anyone have any tips on how to not care? ❤️

Your posts resonate with me SO MUCH like you articulate everything on my mind that I can’t. Sounds dumb but it helps me find the words to communicate my feelings to the people who matter and I’m really bad at communicating lmao so THANK YOU (this rambling mess is a perfect example of what I mean 💀)

it’s not dumb at ALL !! I appreciate this so much, glad my messy thoughts are of some help to u my friend 💕💕

Learning Curve Hall-of-Famer right here. Tuvok making Chell clean the transporter room with the equivalent of a toothbrush as, I assume, a punishment of some sort & Harry coming out of left field with a 'You missed a spot <3' just to kick him while he's down. Harry, the man's gonna be there LITERALLY all day. Absolute bastards these Starfleet types <- said with love