HERE LIES: HEATHERSANIMATIONS

Dungeon's dead end with a manticore

The Most, Most, Most, Most (Самый, самый, самый, самый)

Soyuzmultfilm, 1966

you've seen the jokes. india is "dirty", indians are "everywhere", why don't they fix their own country. ok. let me tell you why, and what's happening right now while nobody's watching.

first, the history you skipped: britain ruled india for two centuries and drained it. economist utsa patnaik's research estimates around $45 trillion in today's money was taken. the india that got independence in 1947 was one of the poorest countries on earth. every "why is india like this" question starts there. you don't get to profit off a robbery and then mock the crime scene.

now, what's happening RIGHT NOW:

in may the question paper for NEET leaked. that's the national medical entrance exam. over 2.2 million students took it. cancelled. years of studying, families' savings poured into coaching, gone overnight because someone sold the paper. students died by suicide after. these were kids who wanted to be doctors.

and out of that came a protest movement. a gen z group called the cockroach janta party, started by a 30 year old named abhijeet dipke, got 22 million instagram followers within DAYS. they've been doing a sit-in at jantar mantar in delhi demanding education minister dharmendra pradhan resign.

and then there's sonam wangchuk. if you've watched 3 idiots, he's the real engineer the character was based on. built solar schools in ladakh. invented ice stupas so himalayan villages have water. spent his whole life on education. he's 59 and he's been on hunger strike for 17+ days now. reporters went to see him this week and he was too weak to talk. and the troll armies are calling him "anti national" and "foreign funded". a man starving himself for other people's children. that's the thing here, anyone who asks a question is suddenly a traitor.

it's not one incident, it's everywhere you look:

• infrastructure worth thousands of crores failing within months of the ribbon cutting. tunnels collapsing in regions where heavy rain is a guarantee, not a surprise.

• youth unemployment near 10% for ages 15 to 29, 13.6% in cities. in a country of 1.42 billion where more than half the population is young.

• only about the top 3% of indians earn above 10 lakh a year. meanwhile billionaire wealth keeps ballooning and the headlines celebrate it.

• manipur burned for over two years. an ethnic conflict, tens of thousands displaced, and the prime minister barely said the word manipur while it happened.

• journalists raided. critics' houses bulldozed. activists sitting in jail for years without trial under laws like UAPA. our press freedom ranking has cratered.

• even the petrol is a fight now, ethanol blending pushed through while drivers complain about their engines and get no straight answers.

and through all of it, the PM, who came to power on religious polarisation (americans, sound familiar?), travels abroad for photo ops and has not held one single open press conference in over a decade. not one.

what i'm asking:

if you're not indian: share this. our media mostly won't cover any of it because the big outlets are owned by the same billionaires the government serves. the only reason wangchuk's fast is getting any coverage is people refusing to look away.

if you ARE indian: speak up even if you're comfortable. especially if you're comfortable. join the protests. add to this, correct me, translate it. staying quiet is a choice when nothing in this post touches your life.

india is not "dirty". india was robbed, and it's being robbed again, from the inside this time. but it's also the country where a 59 year old will starve for strangers' kids and 22 million young people will rally behind a party literally named after cockroaches, because cockroaches survive everything.

we can still save her. but only loudly.

bbuneiss hauve been knownd to enjoy a nivce Ball Touys playjtimr, and can evn do incredibkfe thinges with it !

soemtime abuniesf uses thr ball for bigbig hophs, or perhapsj even ballaying power.

picturged below ids an Unkneon bunirs Ball playingng techniuqe notyrt seen befofre

You know… I don't think I want to change. I like it in here. For the first time in a long time, I feel like I'm… like I'm right where I'm supposed to be.

Of course. One of my biggest influences is the cartoonist B.Kliban. While best known for his distinctive cat drawings, most of his cartooning output was single-panel work.

Much of it is easily understandable language or visual puns, but many of his funny works are just unusual situations, with no obvious meaning:

(I think that "Household Hint" could be considered a spiritual forerunner of Tiktok ragebait food videos.)

In his 1975 collection titled "Cat," among many funny cat comics, there are several pages which are just drawings of his beloved cats.

I feel a strong connection to Kliban's approach: Direct contour-line drawing, mostly anonymous characters in novel situations, and few traditional long-term narrative stories. And yet, there are recurring visual trends. (Have you noticed that he only draws one kind of cat?)

It is said that we train our audiences, in form or content. Over time, the reader knows what to expect from an author.

I think that a lesson can be derived from this graphic design manual.

(from Notes on Graphic Design And Visual Communication by Gregg Berryman, 1979.)

I believe we can draw a correlation between broadly-defined "art" (comics, painting, drawing, sculpture, video, etc.) and logo design:

With low "abstraction" (depending upon references that many people will get, explaining things in extremely explicit terms), material will be readily understood, but it is hard to separate this material from other stuff out there. It's harder to have your individual voice known.

With high "abstraction" (sharing weird comics, but consistently over a long period of time with many people,) an artist can have their message understood- or at least received enthusiastically- even if they're weird.

I drew this yesterday. It is probably understandable as both a humorous criticism of gamer-centric marketing and also as a visual-verbal pun to most English speakers under 40. I'm not sure if "Gamer Butter" would be accepted readily without people being familiar with other drawings I've made which lampoon consumerism and gadget culture.

IT COULD HAPPEN TO YOU