Went Nuts And Did Some Crazy Spider-punk Fanart So Here Ya Go!

"How are you even cooler under your mask?"

- "I was this cool the whole time."

✩HOBIE BROWN Y'ALL! 🤟✩

I haven't drew him in a while.. THIS is the second time I've ever drew him and I think I improved ALOT since the last sketch I did of him :)) kinda proud of this!

Somewhat on the vibe of "your glorious revolution doesn't exist," I want to talk to you all, especially the young folks, about effective anarchism.

Spoiler alert, it's not blowing stuff up or arson.

I am considered the most anarchical person of all among my friends. Granted, most of my experience has been wreaking anarchy against the systems present in my high school and college, but the principles are the same.

Practical anarchy is not the big, flashy, romanticizable thing people online make it out to be. It's more about the long haul - digging in your teeth and just being a menace that no one can really get rid of.

Everyone's "Why vote when you can firebomb a Walmart" posts (that they don't follow through on) are just not pratical because this is a surveillance society. With CCTV and DNA testing and cell phone cameras and GPS tracking, if you do something big like that, you are GOING to be caught; then that is the end of your anarchical career. And, keep in mind that you might get caught while you're setting up this big event - it's a crime to blow up a Walmart and also a crime to conspire to blow up a Walmart, so your career in anarchy might end before it begins, and then you are permanently out of the game. No matter what causes you were working for that inspired you to do something big and violent that you thought would get someone's attention, you now can't help at all ever again in your entire life. What you did will be a passing headline on the news, and then everything will go back to exactly what it was because big, acute actions can't compare in effectiveness to small, constant actions (just being a thorn in the side of the system, poking and poking, but unable to be dislodged).

This is just the practical side of it too: think about the risk of hurting innocents if you really advocate for doing things like that. You think blowing up a Walmart would really make a dent in that big of a corporation? But if you intentionally or unintentionally kill a bunch of Walmart shoppers, that's going to devastate families that had nothing to do with whatever your cause is.

So all that big talk about violence and destruction: not practical, not effective, not ethical.

The only way I've started to change oppressive systems around me is by justing chipping away from within the confines of the rules of these systems, and/or only stepping just outside them (never breaking rules in a big way that could have allowed said system to easily and "justifiably" get rid of me).

So if you're going to be an anarchist, you need to consider:

Having the longest career in anarchism possible (i.e. being careful enough and judicious with your actions so that you don't get expelled from the system you wish to fight).

And then for any given anarchical plan:

2. Potential consequences.

3. Insurance.

I'll give you an example. I had serious beef with the culture of my college's science department. Students were constantly overworked, and if they expressed their misery outloud or reached out to any of their professors about their struggles, they got apathetic responses if not direct insults to their abilities or dedication. I had too many similar disparaging interactions with professors in one week, and I realized a lot of the responses I was getting were just the result of professors not really knowing how they sounded when they said certain things to students (ex: If someone says they're struggling with a course, don't IMMEDIATELY respond with "change your major," - you can give that as an option, but if you make it your first suggestion, the implication to the student is that if they're having any trouble with the course, they're not good enough for the program).

So I wrote up a flier of examples of good and bad ways to respond to students having anxiety with explanations and distributed it to every professor in the department. Everyone who knew about this perceived it as a great personal risk - that I would get in some kind of unspecified trouble or piss off an important professor, so before embarking on this project, I considered...

Potential consequences: I couldn't really think of any specific college or department rules I could be violating. People postered and handed out fliers in the department all the time. What I was doing fell pretty clearly under freedom of speech. I just shoved the fliers under professors' doors, so I didn't trespass in anyone's office. Worst I could think is that individual professors would get mad at me and make my life difficult, or I'd simply be told to stop fliering in the department.

Insurance: Just in case there were any consequences that I didn't think of and to insure me against the ones I had thought of, I didn't put my name on the flier. It was typed in Word, something everyone had access to. I came in to do it after professors had all left for the day but before I needed to use my ID to get into the building (no electronic record of me being there). I took the elevator to the first floor offices because the stairs require ID swipe after 5pm, but the elevators do not. I found out the building had no cameras by asking about it on the grounds that something of mine had been stolen a few weeks prior. I shoved the flier under the doors of dark offices and left it outside offices with lights on (so that no one would come out and spot me). And here's one of the most important pieces of insurance: I put up a few of the fliers on public bulletin boards in the building. This was important so that if I slipped up and said something that conveyed that I had knowledge of the content of the flier, I would have an excuse for that, i.e., I read it on the bulletin board before class this morning.

And then I did the thing. And surprisingly, it was incredibly well-received by professors. A few who knew that the flier must have been mine (because of previous, similar anarchical actions rumored to be associated with me) told me that everyone was RELIEVED that they finally had an instruction manual from the student perspective on what the hell they're supposed to say when one of their students is panicking. It sparked a real change in the vibe of the department and student experience. Had it instead pissed people off, I would have simply said I could not claim authorship of the flier but had read it and thought it contained good ideas then gone on creating more anarchy while angry people grasped at the zero straws I had left them to pin the action on me.

That's an example of a single action I took that was part of a much longer (~3 years) campaign of mine to change the culture of my department. Everytime I did something in that campaign, I made that consequences vs. insurance calculation to make sure they couldn't expell me from the program, the department, or the school before I succeeded.

The fetishization of Hobie Brown

Side note: This post is not intended to start up the age discourse that surrounds Hobie. I am not going to get into it as this argument/debate comes up every so often and really doesn’t prove anything on either side you are on. I’m not dissuading anyone from absorbing any content of Hobie and saying it’s problematic EXCEPT for the things I’m pointing out in this post. If you see Hobie as a minor, that’s fine. If you view him as an adult, that’s also fine. Until the directors come forward and confirm his canonical age I am not going to bring up the same facts that is brought up whenever his age comes to discussion. This is just me bringing up a reoccurring issue I’ve noticed that doesn’t get too addressed by the community (and when it does it’s often pushed to the side)

The fetishization and inherently the oversexualization of Hobie Brown is not only problematic but also harmful. Black men being fetishized has been going on for decades since slavery times. I’m not going to go too deep into the history but if you’re interested this creator has a very good video discussing it.

With Hobie Brown being a darkskin black man that is part of the punk scene and comes off with a “rough” exterior you’re going to have people put stereotypes on him. Despite how he’s portrayed in the movie I’ve seen people headcanon him as this cold person who wouldn’t care about his partner’s feelings or come off as a womanizer that sleeps with a lot of partners without a care in the world. He fucks rough and is aggressive while the reader is this innocent person pulled under his spell. That’s where some of the problem delves with him being portrayed as this aggressive and sex deviant who doesn’t care about his partner(s) feelings. It’s a stereotype a lot of (mainly non black) people see black men as.

Despite the fact that Hobie in the movie shows to deeply care for his friends, even going as far as helping Miles who he didn’t even know up until now. He’s shown to be gentle when handling Mayday. Yet people still want to paint him as the polar opposite.

Take Miles G for instant. I’ve seen him get the same treatment with him being painted as a “gangster” who is aggressive and your typical gang lord despite him only having five minute screen time. While yes from that little time he does seem to be the much colder version of Miles Morales painting him out to be a thug goes into that dangerous fantasy a lot of people see black men. People (again mainly non blacks) view black men as this dominant and powerful man who is always aggressive in and out the bedroom.

The same can be said for Miguel who even the screenwriters have written him as “animalistic” and “feral”. Writing him off more as some beast than a human being.

Circulating back to Hobie there’s nothing wrong with finding him attractive the problem delves if you’re headcanoning him or viewing him as your stereotypical “hood” boyfriend who is deprived of any other emotion except for anger, jealousy, or this sex god who will beat up people for even looking at his partner. When we make these harmful stereotypes about black characters it starts to trickle down to irl and how we view actual people.

And we end up seeing shit like this on the daily. I don’t even have to explain why this is problematic.

All in all Hobie Brown is much more than just a pretty face. He’s a young black man living in an oppressive fascist society that he’s actively fighting against. He deserves to be treated more than just a sexy conveniently attractive guy but a much more complex character who’s backstory in atsv is still a mystery. If you’re just gonna sexualize him 24/7 and not see him anything outside of that you’re weird, and you’re even weirder if you headcanon with “he’s ugly but he got that big dick 🤪.”

Hey so I usually avoid gatekeeping, but I’m so fucking sick of this shit.

I’ve seen “punks” with back the blue patches, “goths” for trump, ect ect. You are not a fucking punk if you support the police, or if you vote red, or if you bully gay/trans people

You can’t be punk and apathetic, just “oh I’m not voting they both suck 🥺” you are a whiny ass liberal

You can’t be punk and drive a fucking Tesla, or buy mass quantities of SHEIN and Temu.

You’re also not a punk if you shit talk and refuse to listen to the music, but that’s definitely less important than the political stuff

Some people are posers, and deserve to be told that

The weight of loyalty

Art might be coming out slower (it has been already) cuz my mental health is going to shit again sorry guys

My inspiration 👆

Art might go coming out slower (it has been already) cuz my mental health is going to shit again sorry guys

If you are trans I need you to stay alive.

Stay alive for every other trans person fighting, stay alive for every trans person who is no longer here, and most importantly stay alive for yourself.

They don’t get to erase us! They don’t get to take away our rights, and treat us as less than human. Don’t let them erase us, and don’t let them make you a statistic. Don’t let them win.

Stay alive

If you won’t do it for yourself, then do it for others. Do it out of spite.

I don’t understand at all how THIS happened when I was redrawing art that was 2.5 months old. LITERALLY HOW

(1st art is new, 2nd art is 2.5 months old)