Just to add another factor to the ongoing discussion: artistic talent isn’t uniform and never was. Just because only/mostly “immature” art survived from a certain century of human history, doesn’t mean that there literally was no realistic art present at the time. Since you mentioned the statues already…

These are from the same era (around 200 BC), but as you may have guessed, made by different artists =P The statue is called The Dying Gaul by the way.

As for painting examples, I guess the Rothschild Canticles^[1] book illustrations represent best what most people nowadays would call medieval art. Not exactly realistic, a little goofy … perspective? Never heard of it. Proportions? Who cares. And who needs shading anyway?! As long as you can still distinguish a human from a cupcake, it’s “eh good enough”.

I guess that was also what you meant by “immature” art, because it is the same art style as those goofy weird pictures of knights fighting giant snails and rabbits riding cattle into battle and the like.^[2]

That book is dated to be around 1500–1520 so it would be easy to assume that people at the start of the 15th century didn’t have a realistic art style yet. But you know what else was made in that same era?

The Mona Lisa (1503–1506).

One dorky meme-esque style, and one realistic, modest and easy-on-the-eyes style in the same century, probably even the same decade. But they were used by different artists.

Now you might be thinking that those art styles might have been intended for their respective purpose or something along the lines: that the goofy, simple art style was used for nothing but amusing little pictures, and the more realistic style was for “proper” art, because noone in their right mind would spend 100+ hours painting highly detailed nonsense just for sh*ts and giggles, right?

May I introduce you to Joseph Ducreux?^[3]

I guess most of you will have seen that meme by now, but this is a real painting made by a real artist - and it is far from the only one. Ducreux created an entire series of similar self-portraits in … unusual poses and situations.

… so yes, at least that one guy DID indeed spend dozens if not hundreds of hours (plus material costs) painting amusing nonsense for his own entertainement. He was, in a way, the victorian era equivalent of a shitposter (and I mean that in a good sense!)

Long story short: one can’t just claim that “they didn’t have X art style in Y century” because the truth is much more facetted than that. It is way more likely that each and every era of human history has had people with insane talent who were able to create art as realistic as possible with whatever tools their lifetime had to offer, and also a bunch of “eh good enough” art or stuff that was deliberately stylized for fun. How we percieve said art today depends mainly on what artworks have survived up until now, and/or how popular the surviving art is. (Everyone and their grandma knows about the Mona Lisa, but how many of y’all knew about the Rothschild Canticles?)

If we don’t know about any realistic art from a certain period of time, it doesn’t automatically mean that there was no realistic art. It may have been lost, forgotten or it exists but it’s just not popular enough to be well-known.

Wikipedia claims they’re quite popular.

Oh…yeah, that does look a lot closer to it. Thanks for pointing it out ^^ I’m going to edit the post.

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That’s an interesting zero-effort way to farm clicks… I guess coming up with some actual clickbait to boost engagement was too much work?

Eat them dry while maintaining eye contact to assert dominance.

Do they at least keep the monstie element / color change this time? TBH I was severely disappointed in MonHun Stories when I learned that they removed the only gameplay feature that kept gameplay interesting after the main story.

Hyrule, preferably the version from Breath of the Wild. I mean, yes there is the whole Ganon thing and one shouldn’t go too close to the castle, but the rest of the kingdom is pretty chill, and apparently you can make an easy living by just lazy foraging in the countryside, or by selling a handful of acorns and bugs at random stables, or by growing a grand total of eight pumpkins.

I’ll take a life as a homeless but well-fed drifter on horseback anytime over … this. gestures vaguely at the current state of the world

I just absolutely hate being a man in a “what role men have in society”-way.

I know exactly what you mean. A lot of random nonsense is seen as “unmanly” for no particular reason. I’ve seen grown ass men throw temper tantrums about doughnuts with pink glaze, because it is apparently uNmAnLy to even touch one, as if you would get a visit from the man police and they revoke your man card for even contemplating touching something in a “girly” color. It’s just complete and utter nonsense.

It is a lot healthier to not give a flying fuck about gender roles - but also harder, depending on the society you live in. I have the luxury of being a big, bearded dude so not many people dare to openly mock me when I do “unmanly” stuff - I let my niece paint my nails whenever she wants. I cry when movies get emotional. The last dog I owned was a mini pinscher, and I still miss her. I don’t like beer, cars, football/soccer/whatever. I bake and cook and I can get real passionate about it. I still own my first ever plushie.

…but I also have a bunch of friends who have been relentlessly bullied for similar stuff, gaslighted into believing that they deserved it for not being manly enough. And it breaks my heart every time I hear yet another story of someone killing their own passion, numbing themselves down to the point that they become unable to enjoy what they formerly loved, just to “fit in” a society that doesn’t accept deviation from the perceived norm.

Fuck gender roles in general. All they do is make people miserable for not fitting in.

EDIT: The above statement is not meant to bash trans folk by the way. What I dislike are the expectations tied to certain societal “roles” and the almost automatic ostracisation by “the society” if someone isn’t fulfilling enough of those expectations. Let people be who they want to be.

Now imagine if that was a Lego factory … you’d NEED safety shoes with steel soles for that.

Abso-friggen-lutely. But don’t forget that blahajs need a special diet so if you want to share a cup with them, you need something like this: (100% vegan and alcohol-free as well. AND zero calories!)

Cute dog/cat videos on the internet and a lemonade?

And one for flinching! bap bap bap

Plushies count too.

It’s okay to use any other beverage as a substitute … and any other pet for company. It’s the spirit of the holiday that counts ♪

Not related to the comic but I just wanted to say that I really REALLY appreciate you uploading these comics all the time ;) tumblr and instagram are a pain to use for me, and I don’t want to give reddit any traffic, so visiting this community every now and then to catch up without a hassle has been a godsend.

I have 20k followers and no option to turn off ads except the thing mentioned above, which only swaps ad types. But it might be different for people who have monetized their channels, which I don’t have and never will.

Even better would have been an option to turn them off entirely =P but that’s what UBlock Origin is for.

As someone with a youtube channel and regular uploads … fuck ads. Use uBlock Origin, Adblock Plus or whatever else works to wipe that garbage off the screen.

I’m extra sour about their suuuuuper useful new-ish option for content creators to turn off personalized ads in their channels - something I immediatly agreed to, because I thought it would, … y’now … get rid of the fucking ads.

Nope. All it does is swap “personalized” ads for “unpersonalized” ones, so my followers get the same type of garbage shoved into their faces, just more random. Thanks Youtube, this is exactly what I wanted to achieve. dripping sarcasm, in case it wasn’t obvious

big pair of chopsticks to flip deep-frying stuff,

100% this. I have a pair of metal chopsticks that I use exclusively for frying food, especially small, super sticky stuff like nan gua bing. Most wooden ones here (Germany) have some sort of artificial coating and I’m a bit worried about it melting or releasing chemicals when it gets too hot, so I don’t want to dunk these into hot oil.