#DFTBA

[derseprinceoftbd]

A friendly reminder that Hank Green has never apologized for putting out perhaps the single most incorrect video on trans Healthcare on the entire internet.

Fuck the Greens.

[99legcentipede]

woa... i didnt know he was so old...

[spicymancer]

Somethin I've noticed about your designs is that you've got a fair number of big boys (large, muscular, chunky etc.) but most of your female characters tend to stay pretty thin and lithe, with the biggest they get being kinda muscular.

Do you have any intention of adding some big girls to your cast?

I have a few! Though you're right, the percentage disparity is pretty telling.

To be honest, it's absolutely a weakness of my character design sensibilities, and I'm doing my best to improve. I really should draw more varied body types.

To look inward for a moment, I suspect that I'm experiencing a bit of a brain poison feedback loop. Drawing is, on one level, a leisure activity I do to have fun, and on another level a Job that do for Money. Both having fun and making money are important for surviving in the Capitalist Hellscape we all occupy.

When it comes to leisure, I obviously tend to draw inside of my comfort zone. I learned to draw by mimicking artists that I admired growing up and comic/manga art has historically not been great about body diversity. This then reinforces the feedback loop of mostly drawing one kind of face or body type. (in this case: cute anime girls) A common artistic bad-habit exemplified here in this Nozaki Kun comic.

(Monthly Girls Nozaki Kun is incredibly good and a little too real)

Combined with the fact that being less practiced at drawing outside of my comfort zone, makes these designs end up taking more work to match the quality bar I have set for my work, this in turn means that it's more of a struggle to build up those muscles and bring those characters to the point where I'm happy with their design, which then makes that sort of drawing feel discouragingly like Work. Even if it's work that's worth doing (which it absolutely is)!

On the "monetary" side, I've built my audience on the characters I find easy to draw and so many of them expect/want me to draw more of that sort of thing. And having built an audience that desires that thing, they are often less engaged by things outside of that. Not to mention the economic strain of posts that do poorly will affect how much money I make in a given month.

This isn't limited to "bigger women" but a lot of MxM stuff I draw tends to do poorly in my algorithm, discouraging me from drawing more of it even when I want to! This phenomena is probably worst for folks on Youtube who are DEEPLY punished by the algorithm for daring to make videos outside of their established niche. ("You're a videogame content creator, how DARE you have an opinion on BOOKS")

This is all to say that I am grateful for you reaching out and expressing interest in seeing more variety and it's a good reminder to expand my artistic horizons a little more. Nothing is for everybody and there's definitely sections of my lovely audience who are underserved by these absences.

For more thoughts on this sort of discussion: there's some excellent TBskyen posts on this subject.

In addition I'd like to shout out artists like @jam-etc and @lillhappycloud who draw incredibly fantastic and appealing bodies of all kinds!

I hope you'll bear with me as I work to improve while probably still drawing a lot of my Usual Stuff. I'll now leave you with a relevant Princess Bride Quote.

Best Wishes.

[weaponsofmassdisruption]

Happy Pride!

[mcb3k]

You have no chance to survive make your time

Oh wow, the nostalgia!

[nerdfighternichole]

Please sign this petition to tell @DanaherCorp that their test prices are too much. Why should someone have to spend ALL their money just to get a test? Medicine should not be a luxury. #TimeFor5 #PeopleOverProfits

[re-dracula]

New Merch!

Get yourself a Carmilla Hoodie or Mircalla T-Shirt at our dftba storefront!

[niftynoya]

I fucking love fandom culture.

I love how I can be absolutely obsessed with a show, a book, a YouTube channel and there will be hundreds of others just like me freaking out over the same dumb shit.

I love how happy fandoms can make me, scrolling through fanart and reading fanfics until my eyes blur at 3am.

I love how I can determine parts of my life by what I was obsessed with at the time. How those fandoms made me feel, what they taught me, what they got me through.

I love that I can look around my flat and see evidence of all my past and present obessions, from signed posters to collectable box sets, figures and books.

I love how I can come back to a fandom after years and pick up where I left off, finding joy in catching up on everything I've missed out on.

I fucking love fandom culture.

[firefly-fez]

I was physically compelled to draw Honk Green as a Jedi, here you go

[skylerwitherspoon]

in 2015.....@edwardspoonhands knew this day would come

[thelaurenshippen]

Atypical Artists is going to be mixing up our merch soon! if you've ever wanted a stay strange shirt, Breaker Whiskey shirt/sweatshirt, or a keep me green mug, snag them in the next month before they're gone!

[marsoid]

END OF THE YEAR SALE HAPPENING IN MY SHOP!!

LONG EXPOSURE VOLUME 1 (Chapters 1-5) AND RIDE OR DIE CHAPTER 1 BOOKS! they're gay, they're stupid, they're emotional, they're on sale

and all kinds of other cool stuff too!!

check it out here!!

[find-felicity]

John Green has this amazing talent to say things that will echo in my head for days (sometimes weeks even), and make me feel just a tad bit more hopeful about my life and help me understand our strange and wonderful world just a tad bit more, all while sounding like the most natural thing a person would come up with after sitting quietly for a while. And I think we should all be grateful that he also shares these with us:)

His little pebbles of wisdom kept me holding on in the past few months, so here are 15 of my favourites:) Go ahead and pick some to help you get through whaterver that is happening in your life

"Sometimes things that don't kill you make you stronger. Like exercise!" — "Utter Chippy Butty Chaos", vlogbrothers video, 2022.

"You don't even know how loud the noise is, until the noise goes away." — "Mid-Morning Existential Crisis: The Format Returns", vlogbrothers video, 2023.

"I can even feel the pain in my jaw, but in a way that feels survivable as things only can once you've survived them." — "New Partner", "The Anthropocene reviewed" podcast, 2019.

"I don't even know what it's like to be other people now! The only person I can claim to know at all well is myself and I don't even know him that well." — "On Writing", vlogbrothers video, 2024.

"People will say everything happens for a reason or it'll all work out in the end which are very hopeful sentiments, it's just that they're also you know, bullshit" — "How to have hope that life can get better", johnschannel1007 video, 2022.

"The ideas don't come from having an extraordinary kind of life, they come from paying an extraordinary kind of attention to life." — "I am an artist.", vlogbrothers video, 2020.

"It's easy to forget how wonderous you are, how strange and lovely..." — "Consciously Experiencing Human Dignity", vlogbrothers video, 2020.

"Love is the fuel that burns both bright and clean, and love is not forged only in the good times, it is also forged in surviving and turning around the bad times together." — "Motivation in Hard Times", vlogbrothers video, 2022.

"Humans are nothing if not wildly, utterly dependent." — "the world is gonna roll me", vlogbrothers video, 2020.

"And one thing about a pick-me-up is that you never actually pick yourself up, you're picked up by people around you." — "Gastrointestinal Hypermotility in Tuatara", vlogbrothers video, 2025.

"In fact, I can't do almost everything tomorrow, right? And the constraints of our lived reality are not generally our fault, even if our social and economic stuctures would sometimes tell us that they are."— "how we spend our days", vlogbrothers video, 2021.

"And I thought I had failed. In fact, though, I just hadn't succeded yet."— "How I Made Friends", vlogbrothers video, 2018.

"We do not yet know the end of the story, and as such, we have cause for hope and also we have work to do."— "The ANXIETY IS PALPABLE", vlogbrothers video, 2025.

"Destiny is not something that happens all at once, it's something that happens only in retrospect."— "Who I Was in High School", vlogbrothers video, 2015.

"The point is to gather, the verb that gave us together." — "What to Love and How", vlogbrothers video, 2019.

Feel free to add you're own favourites, dear Nerdfighters! I'm so glad that you're here, that we're here (because we're here)

[sweet-bazzle-bean]

I don't think John has posted here yet, but this is a call to action to put pressure on Johnson & Johnson who are needlessly extending a patent for Bedaquiline, a drug that could save hundreds of thousands of lives per year.

What a good opportunity for tumblr to try to negate some very bad John Green karma while also fighting for a good cause, yeah?

(Action items from the doobly-doo)

Tell Johnson and Johnson that evergreening their patent on bedaquiline, which will deny millions of people access to live-saving treatment, is a violation of their corporate credo! (NOTE: this one is quite lengthy and confusing and that is by design! They are trying to limit the number of complaints by putting so many barriers between you and submitting the report. Just keep going! Answer the questions to the best of your ability and get the report in.)

Tell them on twitter!

Tell them on this other twitter!

Tell them on facebook!

Tell them on instagram!

[mcb3k]

Hey y'all, it's P4A time!

The Project for Awesome (or P4A) is an annual event where we raise awareness of charities that make the world a little bit of a better place and we raise money to redistribute to charities voted on by our community. Legally speaking, the Project for Awesome is a project of the Foundation to Decrease World Suck (or FTDWS), a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. The FTDWS exists to fundraise for the benefit of other nonprofits and only awards grants to organizations that are 501(c)(3) or foreign equivalent classified charities. The nine board members are John Green, Hank Green, Mike Green, Marie Ann Fernandez-Silva, Valerie Barr, Taylor Behnke, Benny Fine, Rosianna Halse Rojas, and Angela Lin. In 2024, we raised a grand total of $3,530,889.25, including several generous matching donations. 50% of donations went to Save the Children and Partners in Health, and 50% of donations were split between 30 charities chosen by the Project for Awesome community. You can see a list of all the charities that have received P4A grants here.

You can watch the live stream here:

You can also go to the perks page and donate using this link!

I have gotten the digital download bundle for the past several years, and it's a nice little treat that keeps delivering throughout the year. But they also have lots of other perks, so you should definitely check it out!