Computer AI Comics

There's been an ever-increasing influx of AI doing increasingly complex formulas to recognize the imagery and language that many of us intuit naturally.  But there's still one area that computers are sorely lacking in, and that would be the realm of storytelling.  Sure, there's the humourous botnik website showing mock algorithms displaying a kind of warped dream logic storytelling that showcases programs almost but not quite getting it.  Showing classics such as a Star Trek Next Gen script, or a lost Harry Potter chapter where all kinds of weird stuff happens, or Keaton Patti's claim of forcing a bot to watch 1000 hours of media and create a script based on what they read, then showing us the first page.

This has led to the amusing creation of turning human-made computer-prompted scripts into actual comics.  A kind of recursive creativity.  But this practice is far more different than what actual computers do.  See, predictive scripts while useful in spurts, has limited practical uses.  It can't plan ahead for long-term storytelling, such as inserting a Checkov's gun to be applied later.

When we look at a comic, there's more than one way to do so.  Some people look at the text first, before moving onto the pictures.  Some look at the pictures first before looking at the words.  And some skip reams of redundant dialogue and narrative, and skip to the end entirely to see how it all turns out, then goes back to see how it got to that point.  Those plans work fine for humans, but for machines, their thought process is much different.  Instead of looking at an individual panel and wrestling meaning from it and making connections from one panel to the next, the computer has no idea what's going to happen next.

To parse the difference between words and pictures, computers would have to take in two disparate elements of fiction at the same time.  A way to bypass this overwhelming influx of information would be that rather than analyze every page on a panel-to-panel basis would be to absorb the entire page at once.  This would be equivalent to devouring the entirety of a novel in one go.  There’s no sense of pacing, of slowing down or speeding up individual panels for personal dramatic effect.  There’s no wandering eye, trailing from the text, to the images, (or images to text) and back.  It’s akin to speed-reading on a quantum level.

Storytelling is basically telling a puzzle, making due with limited information gradually revealed over time.  When the story is finished, we may mull over it, trying to figure out what made parts of it work, and others not.  What possible reason could a machine have for going over the tropes of a story?  Other than trying to parse obvious connections that crop up over time.  (See TvTropes)  For a machine to appreciate comics, they’d have to understand narrative.  And the best way to do that would be to create works that speaks to their tastes.

I’m sure you can see the logical fallacy here.

In order to create a comic that would appeal to machines, we’d have to devise an algorithm that would work along their preferences.  And what appeals to machines may very well be indecipherable to human taste.  Here's an example of a comic created by an AI program:

As creative entries go, it's certainly different. The poetic nonsensical prose reminds me of Josei narratives. Still, the lack of clear cohesive storytelling and abstract art makes telling what's going on near impossible. What's the comic even about?? That's the kind of maddening question that's going to plague linguistic comic schools.

The AI also has trouble with exaggeration of facial expressions, even though a human could easily tell when someone’s deforming their body under extreme stress or for comedic reasons.  Then there’s psychedelic backgrounds to heighten emotion or using unique pay layout to showcase optical illusions.  All various ways of using the medium to convey a message.

What we’re seeing is like a child’s first attempt at making their first comic without really understanding what they’re creating.  Of course it’s going to be a narrative mess!

Before machines can conduct stories of their own, they need to understand how stories work.  And the best way to encourage them is by giving them a basic setup, then have them try to figure out what happens next.  The whole appeal of cliffhangers is that the audience is filled with anticipation for what may or may not happen in the next installment, which can lead to runaway imaginations that can sometimes be better than the actual product.

You know how in movies, they show the T-800 using their infrared sight, getting data helpfully analyzed for the viewer?  Chances are a smarter computer would multitask, inputting thousands of pertinent and irrelevant information all at once.

It’s the difference between seeing a movie play out, and reading the wikipedia summary.  The webpage could be taken in as a whole, but wouldn’t have the same impact as the film, despite both sources containing the same information.

Computers have enough difficulty deciphering a simple image all on its own.  How’re they supposed to figure out how two seemingly meaningless panels individually connect?

You’d think the randomized Garfields would be a logical parameter for working with, but the Garfields that've been popularized online only work best when given limited parameters.  When given only three panels to choose from, the alignment is completely randomized, with no thought given to whether the resulting mishmash is funny or not.  No actual creativity is applied there.

The Garfield computer-generated remix results in panels where the trio of the cast, Jon, Odie and Garfield morph into each other, the background and the text winds up being backwards and nonsensical with no meaning attached to any of the made-up panels present.  (Check the link to see the animated sequence in action)  In that light, that’s an *actual* presentation of a truly randomized Garfield.

I posted an entry that the best way for a computer to learn would be through constant repetition of repetitive layouts with different captions, so they could figure out the pattern for setup and punchlines.  The iteration of Wizard of Id and BC strips would be a better factor in figuring out patterns than anything, since the use of setup, timing and punchline would give computers a way to figure out the formula much sooner.

I think comics is still something solely dominant in the human domain... for now. (Randomized Garfields notwitstanding) The computer-generated Manga page I posted earlier may seem impressive at first, but it was actually half of a page.  Even if you saw the other half, you'd hardly notice.  Do the two sides narratively connect?  Look at the repetitive panel layout! Apart from the speech bubbles bleeding over the borders, it's static, but boring.  This?  This is the computer equivalent of doodling.  Free-thought association without coherent goals, letting ideas flow from one subject to another.

For computers to understand a narrative, it would be helpful to see them adapting another work of fiction to their interpretation.  Then we could see how much they put of their own take, depending on what they add and/or subtract from the narrative.  Though I would suggest starting with smaller simpler stories before moving onto more complex works such as Frankenstein.  But even the simplest Fairy Tales have a kind of internalized dream logic that has an inherent morality that would escape their mindset.

At least there's SOMETHING we puny humans are better at than computers!  Until a machine can comprehend the elaborate innovative storytelling of Cerebus, we're a useful source of amusement.

"I HAVE FOUND MY CALLING."

"Don't give up your day job."

Brought Low by my Knees

Two months ago in early October, I had a bit of a health scare.  Nothing terribly serious, but it was still alarming.  I had a red rash on my leg that also hurt at certain odd spots when I moved.  Notably on the thigh and below the knee.  At the time, I thought I could simply tough it out, and wait for it to go away.  Turns out that your motivation for toughing the pain away goes down dramatically when the pain doesn’t go away.

This perplexed me, because I hadn’t been in any kind of extraneous activity lately.  The closest thing I could think of was when I accidentally twisted my leg while in an uncomfortable position around the debris in my room.  But that shouldn’t have caused what was keeping me from moving properly.  Another confounding analysis was that I’d bruised my leg before, but it was the other leg that hurt.  My body has a strange reaction to pain.

My sense of taste was heightened, yet I could hardly eat anything, and was throwing up multiple times in the middle of the night.  I couldn't eat a hardboiled egg, finding it loathsome even as I choked it down. To paraphrase a saying, when you're tired of eating, you're tired of life.  But I developed a taste for fruit. I liked the strawberry jam, but didn't like the strawberries. The grapes and pineapple and the cantaloupe tasted good. I even ate some off-brand clementines that had too much pulp, and finished off the leftover grape juice.

The last time I’d felt this bad was when I had my Kawasaki, which ironically enough, has some Covid-related symptoms.  If I experienced a milder version of what’s currently running around, then there was a chance I might be asymptomatic, and if so, take all precautions in preventing others from being affected.

What I was most upset about was that very same week, I had an appointment with my audiologist to get a replacement for getting my hearing aid replaced.  I’d been given a loaner after my old h-aid conked out, and was fortunate to have that done in March when the Pandemic just started.  (It's a wonder the loaner lasted as long as it did without breaking down.)  But before I could apply for a new model, I needed to do a hearing test to be eligible for a replacement, proving that I was deaf and hadn’t been faking it all these years.  And I couldn’t attend the simple 5-minute procedure since in terms of detecting dearness during a virus-laden society, it was low priority.

But now, it looked like I might not even BE able to make it to my audiologist, my mental willpower notwithstanding.  The pain was starting to severely intervene with my motor functions, my temperature fluctuated between a high of 101 and a low of 98.6, and I had a headache along with a high fever, all typical symptoms of Covid, though my breathing remained the same.  Any potential sniffle and cough was cause for alarm when they happened, and was only relieved when they’re gone the next day.  It’d been two days now, and my leg still hurt, even with applying cold compresses to the affected areas.  I looked up my symptoms online, trying to find a stronger link between my leg rash and Covid, and didn’t see much of one.  Not seeing an obvious connection, I looked up pain in the leg.  The results showed bruising and blood clots, but nothing specific.

Eventually, the pain got to the point that I figured I might as well bring attention to my parents.   When I showed them the upper portions of my thighs, they reacted with alarm.  Not at the discolouring rashes or my nonexistent shallow breathing, but from seeing the state of my knees.

I’d always had severely callused knees, not because of any kind of rough-housing, but because I often spent a large amount of time in front of the computer on my knees.  This was a result from not only shifting positions from sitting down for long periods of time at end (I know, I know, sitting is the new smoking), and also needing to feel the direct pressure of the desk against my stomach, which the thin veneer of the edge isn’t enough to satisfy me.  My early days of using the computer were of the bulky suitcases-sized variety which required heavy desks that could withstand their weight, and had large boards to press against.  Today’s makeshift desks now have a flimsy slidable tray keeping a far distance away from the keyboard, which isn’t to my liking.  To this day, I still have a kind of nostalgia for those oldschool wooden desks and chairs, even though my size and mass no longer fits.  In fact, attempts to squeeze into that wedged space is something of a guilty pleasure.

But it turns out those days of kneeling on my knees more often than a church preacher had unintended side effects.  In addition to building up calluses that flaked over my knees as a symbol of inappropriate pride, the resultant buildup was a pathway for pathogens to come through, and had a high risk of infection.  And it was likely a malignant virus unrelated to Covid could’ve entered my bloodstream.

I’d been warned about my knees numerous times in the past, but this was the first time it really sunk in that it could be detrimental to my health.  After all, one of the highest risk of old people is their legs, and like horses, when they can no longer properly walk, their independence fades away into the harsh sunset of the glue factory.  For all my precautions at avoiding human contact, I’d foolhardily allowed a backdoor into my body at a knee-high level.

My parents had gone out of their way to make things easier for me during this state of emergency.  My Dad braved out on shopping excursions, even though he could’ve simply ordered what he needed.  My mother bought a bunch of transparent plastic masks to make it easier for me to lipread people, and here I was, making things more difficult for them at their most busiest.  I always seem to get sick at the worst possible times, when it’s most inconvenient, such as when I had my gout.

Since going out to a clinic at this late hour (it was around 7:00 or so), my parents had to make do with getting a secondhand diagnosis with a family doctor by sending photos of the infected area.  It’s much easier to get an accurate result when you can see the symptoms for yourself.  After some back and forth conversation I was completely unaware of, the general consensus was that I most likely had Cellulitis, a deep infection inside my leg that could severely affect my internal nervous system and blood pressure if left untreated.  For this, I needed to take some antibiotics and painkillers for 2 weeks until it went away.

I thought my old antibiotic cream would still work, and I’d only applied deliberately when certain body areas developed a scab from overuse.  Turns out I wasn’t aware that there was an expiration date, and needed to get replaced, since it’d been sitting on the counter for over 10 years.

So my Dad went out to get the prescription for antibiotic pills and cream to apply over the infected area.  The cream insisted on washing the affected area first, and since it was to be applied twice a day, I opted for simplicity by taking a shower.  Easier than lifting my leg to fit under the faucet sink.  Then, after drying myself off, I’d apply two kinds of cream on my leg, the clear one first, and the milky white one after, taking care to wash my hands before and after.  While waiting for the cream to take effect, I noticed that the points where my leg hurt the most was the most used spots for when I’d rest my elbows in the bathroom.  So I couldn’t even enjoy reading in the ‘library’.

I thought this would be enough, but my parents didn’t want to take any unnecessary risks, and wanted to follow the doctor’s recommendation that I go to the hospital immediately.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t go to the hospital right at that moment because it was late at night, and raining, making for precarious driving conditions, even in the event of a potential emergency.  No point in getting into an accident and having to go to the hospital via ambulance.  Better to go early in the morning instead.

That night, I had trouble sleeping, not just from the pain in my leg, but my thoughts constantly racing over the certainty that I was going to die without having accomplished anything I’d set myself out for.  I still had loads of notes that still hadn’t been jotted down for my Web Novel which I’d kept putting off.  I had piles of old articles on Asperger’s I’d been organizing and left an awful mess out of.  One thing I can tell you, the fear of impending death is a great motivator for firing up the creative juices. Nothing like the impending threat of morality breathing down your back to motivate you to get your writing down.  That's why they call them DEADlines.  It’s also an appetite suppressor, though I wouldn’t recommend it as a diet plan.

Even though we were supposed to leave at 5:00 AM, I was so upset I couldn’t stand waiting, and sleeping on the wrong side (my hurt leg kept me from feeling comfortable) and having a thick Reader’s Digest Medical hardcover pressed against my stomach during times of stress wasn’t helping me much either.  I started off by preparing food for the upcoming trip, peeling the pulp off the off-brand clementines and packing grapes off their stems wrapped in napkins to absorb the moisture, not knowing just how long I would have to wait.  (No point using perfectly good paper towels when we’ve got plenty of napkins)

My Dad found me in the bathroom at 4:00 AM, throwing up for the third time and decided to leave earlier than expected, which was something of a relief, getting the suspense over with.  However, he was such a meticulous planner that, even with the two of us departing at an earlier schedule, we still wound up leaving at 5:00 anyways.

This early in the morning, there wasn’t much traffic, but still a few cars running at stop lights.  I was annoyed that even in the presence of a pandemic, there were still too many people around.  The air was cold, and the parking spot we found was far away from the main entrance, so we had to make our trek there, and I rushed peg-leg style, impatient to get this ordeal over and done with.

Upon arriving and seeing the white plastic sheet covering everything at the rear entrance of the Emergency room, all the strength went out of my legs, and I had to force myself to take further steps towards the daunting doorway, the enormity of the situation I was walking into began to weigh down on me.

I was guided to a waiting room with the resident nurse who’d determine the severeness of my illness, and where I’d get the chance to use the latest feature app on my Android cell phone, Live Transcribe, which I wrote an essay for a volunteer organization in a hearing magazine.  (Reproduced below)

Unseen Garfield Submissions

Back when I hesitantly gave my first comic submission to Square Root of Minus Garfield, there was only a small smattering of volunteers who were willing to give a try.  That pond has now grown larger than its current output of one comic a day can provide.

The backlog of SROMG has grown so large that the chances of my later strips being seen anytime in the future is now increasingly remote.  I Almost submitted the missing ones on my blog last year, but then, my entry, Suicide Hotline, (which I was particularly proud of) showed up, and I decided to wait another year.  If none of my other comics showed up until then, I wouldn't show them.

These comics haven't been seen by anybody, save for the moderator of SROMG who switched owners in 2015 to its current moderator, who has their own backlog of new comics coming in all the time.  They haven't been seen since I made them in... (checks creation date) 2013, so they're a little overdue.  And not seeing my works shown up in rapid succession has been a major damper in my creative process.  I haven't made any new Garfield comics since then, including what I thought would be my Last comic - a collection of all of Lyman's appearances into one comprehensive Lyman contribution strip.

With that out of the way, here's the remainder of my Garfield Comics, with author commentary at the bottom:

REALLY Sophisticated Tastes

Considering that there are food connoisseurs out there who can deduct the quality and quantity of foods down to their most basic cooking instructions to how long each ingredient was prepared, 

it only seemed natural that the reciprocal for such a talent would eventually find its way through breaking down cat food to the basic elements.  There are sophisticated snobs concerned about how much meat Fido gets in their Bowl-o-chunks.  Probably the ONLY ingredient missing from the vast list of chemicals would be artificial food dye, but since their addition is more for the owners buying food and not their colourblind pets, this omission is somewhat understandable.

Randomized Garfield in 2053

It occurred to me that after seeing the static lazy use of repeat panels that it would only be a matter of time before all future Garfield panels were virtually indistinguishable from each other, down to the background colour.  Also, considering it's not impossible for a Garfield generator to use two different panels of the same strip, the probability of having similar-looking panels becomes considerably higher.

Following that train of logic, it would only be a matter of time before there were some repeat panels from the later years, and a higher chance of seeing duplicate panels next to each other.  Therefore, what would normally be the punchline would become the opening panel, with the remaining panels being exact copies.

Originally, this was going to have the first panel at the end, but I thought it would get its point across if it was shown from the start.  If you look closely, you can see the copyright text between panels is mixed and matched between the two as typical of various randomized Garfields.

The monologue comes from two variations of a Blender comic.

Just Look At That Gorgeous Garfield Minus Garfield

This one is going to take some explaining.

A frequent contributor, Manyhills, submitted a Garfield puzzle that left many readers baffled as to the content of the hidden word, which is (was) still being debated on in the forums.  Even with all the hints dropped in, hardly anybody got close to getting an answer.

The original comic in question.

The ACTUAL solution turned out to be a chain of random tactics so obtuse that you'd need to be a mind reader or web hacker to be able to figure it out.  The answer was a series of numbers referring to the date of a comic where Jon asked himself what the Capital of Nebraska was.  (Bismark)

What made this really infuriating is that the answer was so far from obvious, and it was labeled "Easy".  (Check the difficulty rating on mine.)  So I thought, why not make an already hard puzzle more difficult?  The result is something akin to a Mondrian painting, only with more colours between the lines.  It's my first time editoralizing someone else's work to reflect the audience's reaction, but I think it fits.  Bonus points if my comic managed to generate more answers than the former.

Real Cats...

This was largely inspired by crossing Real Men Don't Eat Quiche with the children's book, All Cats have Asperger's Syndrome.  I shared this with members of my Asperger group, but wondered why it never showed up on SROMG.  It wasn't until now that I realized that I never actually submitted it as an entry.  Kind of a waste - I insisted on privacy, wanting to wait until this comic would show up on a veritable site before sharing with a wider audience, and wound up self-sabotaging myself in the process.

Jon's Everyday Letter

These are all things Jon admitted to doing in front of Garfield on a regular basis.  One wonders just how he would be able to relay this level of weirdness to his parents.  It would be on a level of open honesty.  In an early strip, Jon pretty much admitted to his mother on the phone that his washing machine spat out his jockey shorts.  Since his mom and brother routinely sent letters along the lines of "The chicken died", and had their picture taken next to the world's largest corn cob, this kind of reply of everyday routine wouldn't be entirely out of character or place.  Without the visual aid of weirdness or the surprise setup, something's bound to get lost in the transition.

Chinese Garfield

Actually, a more accurate description for this would be “Canadian Garfield”, since this parody showed up in a long-running French children’s science/nature magazine, Les Debrouillards, drawn by the indefatigable Jacques Goldstyn.  The children are accompanied by their mascot, a talking frog named Beppo who provides the role of the chorus.  Interestingly enough, a spinoff of one of Jacques’ characters, Ivan the inventor is also published in China.

I had planned to showcase a feature on Debrouillards, and requested the moderator of SROMG not to release this until then.  But since that would require scanlating French comics, my desire to do so kept falling away over time, and I never got around to it.

Fatty Arbuckle

I'm surprised no one's thought to make a correlation between the real-life Arbuckle and Garfield's owner, especially considering the implications of his film nickname, "Fatty".

Bye Bye Love

Although I'm deaf, I was still part of mandatory auditorium attendance in Grade school where we were to sing out lyrics to 50's songs such as Rag Mop and Anything You Can Do.  The presence of an overhead projector showing the words made following along much easier, and is only how I'm aware of these ditties in the first place.  It's probably funnier if you sing the lyrics to the tune of George Harrison's Bye Bye Love.  What's amusing is how little I had to change the words to most of these.  I was considering doing something similar for "Shoo Fly", but couldn't find enough references, since music isn't really my thing.  That's more Manyhill's field.

Nermal Manga - Director's Cut

Years ago, I made a Nermal Manga using Chi's Sweet Home as a base.  (An obvious reference.)  What is less known is that I submitted a potential sequel later.  This was something I'd planned to use in the first comic, but felt it was already running on for too long, and couldn't figure out where to place it anyways.  If you interpret the dialogue there, it could seem like "Nermal" is waking up in the last panel.

The Big Bang Melody

Inspired in part by the infamous Kitty song from The Big Bang Theory.  Only, I couldn't leave it well enough alone, since I wasn't entirely sure if there were instances of either Nermal or Odie being bounced around.  After some customary searching, I found results for both, and decided not to remove either, but keep both, and show how the lyrics for one would've inspired the other.

I also wanted to use a more lively atomic particle in a similar vein to BBT's animation segments, but couldn't find one.

(In case it's not obvious, Nermal hiding in Garfield's jacket in the 2nd panel is a "hot" item.)

Odie's Blog

I found a silent French comic titled Odi's Blog by Sergio Garcia and Lola Moral, and naturally thought of having it somehow tie in with the dumb dog who occasionally shows flashes of genius from time to time.  Even Jim Davis is somewhat elusive about the full extent of Odie's mental capacities.  It's also an apt metaphor for how uncommunicative people think in unconventional means.  Just because somebody is nonverbal doesn't mean that they're not smart in other ways. Dyslexics manage to be incredibly inventive despite their handicap of not being able to read.

Anime Opening

 






This is probably the most obscure referential material I've ever done.  The song lyrics are from ShakespeareHemmingway's legendary so bad it's good fanfic: Garfield, Prince of Tragedy in "Royal Rescue Part 2".

I started thinking about what the opening for Garfield & Friends would be like if it were done as an Anime, with their lingering quality and extended length of J-Pop lyrics.  Originally, I started out trying to find the Japanese version, but that was hampered by a lack of knowledge of foreign countries' translations and lazy internet searching.  (I gave up after two pages)  The result is something less than Every Anime Opening Ever Made and something more along the lines of an Anime music video.

My intention was to use double-entendres for the Japanese lyrics, but the lack of matching imagery and text meshing together forced me to revise this plan entirely, and I could only use my proposal for a select few scenes that had a happy coincidence.  Turns out there are a LOT of Anime openings with the word "Love" in them, which helped salvage my search somewhat.

For less enthusiastic Otakus out there confused about the frames, What follows below are the Animes I used, along with some notes for fansubbed lyrics that closely resembled the homaged song at the relevant screenshot in question:

3x3 Eyes

Love Hina (In the next shot, Shinobu is hanging up some laundry, which is another interpretation of the "making pants rise" line)

Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo

You're Under Arrest!

Excel Saga - "I love, but I’m not loved."

Kirby of the Stars

Hale nochi Guu - "LOVE LOVE LOVE"

Tsukiyomi ~ Moon Phase

Hajime no Ippo

Clannad - "A kind sweet bean dango" (This is kind of a cheat, since it comes from the ending theme song, not the opening)

Yakitate Japan

Lupin III

Escaflowne - "I love you. I love you."

Argento Soma - "Until we feel the melting of ourselves gently into each other"

Ruronin Kenshin - "I love you I love you I love you"

Corpse Princess (Those are hungry ghosts. I would've liked to use Attack on Titan, but there weren't any scenes of eating people in the opening, surprisingly enough)

Toriko

Wolf's Rain

Berserk

Revolutionary Girl Utena

Key the Metal Idol - "Why can't I show (Love you so)"

Azumanga Daioh - "The temptation of wheat" (a fair assessment of "One serving is never enough")

Pita-Ten - I wish “Hello, I say “I love U”

Club to Death Angel Dokuro-chan - "I’ll cut you, punch you, toy with you..." (This was the gentlest relevant torture scene I could find)

Kodomo no Omocha - "Today’s incident is burning love!"

Samurai Pizza Cats - "Go eat a pizza pie!"  (From the vastly superior American version)

Cardcaptor Sakura - "I’m - in - love - with - you!"

Groove Adventure Rave - "I'll give you paradise" (The main inspiration that led to all this)

For Garfield's finishing lines of "What good singer.  Could use lasagna cigarette", I referenced mangled Engrish and how yellow subtitles would look practically invisible without proper shading.

Tumblr Bumbler

In a move that played contrary to the purpose of the Internet, Tumblr just recently decided to ban all trace amounts of pornography from its site, since it’s Adult Label warning was proving to be as effective as those R ratings for movies and games.

Banned content includes photos, videos, and GIFs of human genitalia, female-presenting nipples, and any media involving sex acts, including illustrations. The exceptions include nude classical statues and political protests that feature nudity.

The real reason for this unpopular move was to ban child pornography, but this scorched Earth approach affects not only harmless sites, but also has an impact on LGBT users looking for a new home for creative expression, sex workers expressing their kinks, and women who, believe it or not, make up a significant part of the Tumblr audience.  Turns out Porn isn’t just for guys!  Who knew?

The really distressing part that’s been pointed out (and I’ve been rightfully ignorant of) is that while child pornography gets the whack-a-mole treatment, there’s a frightening amount of Nazi propaganda material out there that hasn’t been drastically cut down on.  How difficult can it possibly be to trim out sites devoted to hateful stuff?

So, for the last two weeks, I’ve been anxiously poring through multiple Tumblr sites saving as much material as humanly possible, taking well-needed breaks in between.  The reason for this was because the images that were being flagged included inconspicious pictures such as Unicorns, boot cleaners and raw chicken.

HAWT.

To double the irony, they've also restricted images of any critique on Tumblr's porn restrictions.

One of the longest-running Tumblr sites, EscherGirls, which is FULL of wonky female anatomy (and lessons on how to properly correct and display said anatomy) would be ripe for deletion. Ami Angelwings who’d been running the site for over seven years was horrified at the prospect of losing so much work.  Fortunately, there was the option of converting everything over to Wordpress, and she reserved the domain name of EscherGirls.com, just in case.  The Tumblr site is still available, but who know how long that’ll last.

I scoured the majority of Archie Out of Context, since there are many many instances of panels that could be potentially considered NSFW.  I also found several notable panels elsewhere not part of their lineup that could easily fit under their list of restrictions.

This social media platform had the benefit of cross-culture contribution - if there was something that was noticed on another normally obscure site, it would be shared, bringing wider recognition to other artists who would’ve been otherwise ignored.

One of the admirable features of Tumblr was that their Archive option, displaying all the frontal images all at once.  The only downside of this was that it only showed the first image, and didn’t note which post had more than one, or the accompanying text that came with them.  Also, depending on the number of updates, the thumbnailed images could overwhelm the site, leading to a slowdown of the site, making it impossible to see everything at once.

I was never part of Tumblr’s platform, but if I was, there was something I intended to contribute, but never did.  While I was doing volunteer work at a library, helping them with their move, weeding books and putting material back on the shelves, I noticed that there were quite a lot of books with naked breasts on them.  For something that put themselves on a pedestal of integrity, books weren’t afraid to pander to the lowest common denominator.  And with Tumblr’s latest restrictions, anything I put there would be immediately flagged.

In order to qualify, there would be several restrictions:

• No Romance Novels - any bodice rippers would be out.
• No Pornographic material - these would have to be works that didn’t focus solely on erotic content.
• Actual nipples - just showing lots of cleavage wouldn’t be enough.
• Foreign content was allowed - books in other countries were more lenient in unashamedly showing breasts whenever possible.  A French publication actually had a cover taken from a Hentai comic of a woman in bondage to a chair with copious fluids all over her.  (The inside was all text)
• No cartoon collections - Playboy-like comics would be too easy, and I was looking for lushly or playfully-drawn covers where the insides were just reams of words and no pictures.

However, I could only find a smattering of covers that met my standards, and didn’t know how to accept contributions from other people who could’ve added to my small collection.  I could've made a Facebook page, but it turns out that Facebook is likewise going to go towards a similar restriction of pornography.

My site would’ve been called Literary Boobs.

This is the most SFW cover I can put on my site without alerting any warnings.

The above image is just a collection of shapes that happens to resemble a human form.  However, there's no guarantee it'll pass the smell test since one of the images that triggered Tumblr's safety labels happened to be... Garfield.  Apparently, robots can't tell the difference between the fat cat's round eyes and a pair of breasts.  Must be why the fat cat's been so popular for so long.  (Also applies to the Simpsons)

Just LOOK at that seductive form!  Oh yeah, baby...

Since the announcement was made, there was a protest notice made by multiple outspoken Tumblr users that made its round in its dying days:

 

In response to the NSFW ban being enacted by Tumblr Staff, on December 17th 2018 I propose that we all log off of our Tumblr accounts for 24 hours. 

The lack of respect and communication between staff and users is stark. Users have been begging staff to delete the porn bot outbreak, which has plagued the website for well over a year. The porn bots oftentimes send people asks and messages, trying to get them to go to a website full of viruses. They also spam advertisements on others posts.  

Users have also begged that Tumblr ban neo-nazis, child porn, and pedophiles, all which run rampant on the site. The site/app got so bad that it was taken off the app store.

However, instead of answering the users, Tumblr has instead taken the liberty to ban all NSFW content, regardless of age. But users have already run into issues of their SFW content being marked as sensitive and being flagged as NSFW, not allowing them to share their work.

Not only does this discriminate again content creators, but it also discriminates against sex workers. Disgustingly, the ban will be enacted on December 17 which is also International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers.

This ban is disgusting, and while I (and plenty of others) welcome porn bots and child porn being banned, the Tumblr filtration system is broken. It tags artistic work’s nipples as NSFW (when it is art), it tags SFW art as NSFW (when it is not), and does not stop the porn bots, neo-nazis and dozens of other issues.

This ban is discriminatory. This ban is ineffective. This ban is unacceptable. 

To protest, log off of your Tumblr account for the entirety of November 17th. Log off at 12 am EST or 9PM PST and stay off for 24 hours. Don’t post. Don’t log on. Don’t even visit the website. Don’t give them that sweet ad revenue. 

Tumblr’s stock has already taken a hard hit. Let’s make it tank. Maybe then they will listen to the users. 

Reblog to signal boost! We must force change.

The effects may be being felt already.  There are signs that Tumblr might be going down the same path as LiveJournal, when it likewise purged a wide swath of its members without warning.  Until steps are taken to reclaim the wider implications and restore its natural state as a porn-friendly site like everywhere else, the fate of Tumblr is ultimately up in the air.  If this is the hill they're willing to die on, well, that's their prerogative.