#I like doing anims in this style because it's quick and easy!

[cuppajj]

mercy anim shenanigans

mercy by @emperor-kumquat

#I like doing anims in this style because it's quick and easy! #more to come when i get ideas #tf mercy #cjj arts #cjj anims #vos #tesarus #kaon #hellbat #djd

[noose-lion]

Maybe it was just my childhood special interest in martial arts and combat, but the bsd fandom drives me absolutely crazy on how they talk about the characters.

Specifically in combat abilities, fighting 'stats', body builds, ect. ect.

I mostly blame the anime, because it made everyone into twigs, but still. Some of my fellow fans out there are sometimes outright drawing lines over a character in a manga panel and going 'Look at this snatched waist' all the while ignoring basic perspective and forshortening rules. Chuuya is victim to this a fuckton.

For a starting example I'll talk about Kunikida. (Because if I start with Dazai or Chuuya I'll get the "He's petite it's not a crime to call him that" hecklers again).

Because remember folks, no need to get heated about fictional characters that were made up to tell a story.

Kunikida is a martial artist. He has a strong center of gravity, and a great deal of muscle mass. He's shown, (even in the anime mind you), to be competent against opponents who have both the height and mass advantage (that one time he swapped with Dazai mid fight, doing the cool grappling hook switch thing). He's a tall guy and he's drawn in the main manga as very broad shouldered and thick limbed. He's your average combat driven male. Built like a boxer.

He's not really the main talking point I see though. He's usually never called petite or delicate or any of the, quite frankly, ridiculous descriptors for a man of his size and build. It's usually Chuuya and in extension Dazai.

First off, ripping the bandaid off quick and easy. Chuuya isn't petite. (Sure technically petite only means short, but ancient also technically only means old. It's about the connotation.)

Chuuya is also a martial artist. Unlike Kunikida, who relies heavily on grappling technique and using his opponents own momentum and mass against them (a defensive fighter) Chuuya is almost purely offensive (most defense being left to his ability). His center of gravity is less stagnate, more fluid. He's acts quickly, crushing his opponent with efficient and well calculated brute force. Chuuya's body build reflects this. He's got a strong torso and thick limbs, strong shoulders that are lined with cords of muscle that absorb the impact of his attacks. He uses his legs a lot, kicks and jumps, and there is muscle concentration in his thighs and calves as a result. In the main manga, he's drawn with a lean torso, broader shoulders and thicker thighs. He's got a baseball player or a mixed martial artist build. (Broad shoulders and large thighs paired with his choice of suit cut is what creates his 'hourglass figure' so many of yall are obsessed with.)

Second bandaid I'm ripping off. Dazai isn't weak or delicate or whatever, but he is not buff or a tank either. And against men built for combat like Kunikida and Chuuya he's at a fairly large disadvantage.

Most of the athletic ability we've seen Dazai exhibit is evasion based. In the main manga he's drawn broad shouldered and thin, usually cloaked by his coat. Dazai has lean, muscle concentration in his shoulders, upper back and core. He doesn't have the thicker limbs of a boxer or martial artist. He better resembles a swimmer, gymnast, or even rock climber. He's not a stick, as flat as he may be. He's also probably a good deal softer then his martial artist counterparts, not living the stricter healthy life style most martial artist adhere to. Dazai doesn't do well against large heavily muscled opponents, he just doesn't have the needed mass for it. If he doesn't get the upperhand quickly he will loose. Evident in how he struggled so much against that one guy he did the cool grappling hook swap thing with Kunikida.

All this to say, almost every individual in bsd is built for their combat filled life, specialized to fit their fighting styles. It's not a big deal, but I find such thinking and analysis fun.

#inkedmyheart's recent post had me once more thinking on this #bsd #my stuff #screaming into the void #and the void screams back #bungou stray dogs #bungou gay dogs #bsd kunikida #kunikida doppo #bsd chuuya #chuuya nakahara #dazai osamu #bsd dazai #soukoku #jester thinks #bsd meta #bsd analysis #bsd headcanon #bsd headcanons

[starboltz]

Since a new TADC teaser came out, I really wanted to do an analysis of this post by gooseworx.

To start off with, in the quick flash of new characters we see in the trailer, 3 of them are seen in the teaser image - those being the cowgirl ghost, the candy princess, and the bubble man. The only character we don't see is the frog-looking character.

While not obvious by the reflection, the round part of the ghosts head is likely a hat, as seen in the teaser on the cowgirl ghost. I am fairly sure that both of these ghosts are the same character based on the dress silhouette of the reflection, and the design of the upper body of the ghost in the teaser. (If I am wrong about the ghost's gender and/or pronouns, I will edit this post.) I find it incredibly interesting that this is the most humanistic character yet on TADC.

The next character, the candy princess, has a silhouette that is very easy to match to the reflection. The only major difference is that her gloves and upper part of her skirt are a darker pink, but that could be due to lighting. She is very likely the princess of Candy Canyon Kingdom. If not, she's definitely royalty of some sort because of her crown. I did see a few people think that she was going to be similar to a betty spaghetti toy, but now that we see her in her natural setting, it seems like her arms are more like cake pops. The rest of her body seems to be a neat amalgamation of cake and other candies.

I don't have much to say about the bubble man, other than he appears to be a customer at Spudsy's - where Jax is being forced to work for minimum wage. If you look closely, you can see Jax's reflection in the bubble man's face. His (or it's? again if I'm wrong I'll change it later) reflection counterpart is a much darker blue, which again could be lighting, but it could also mean that other customers at Spudsy's are bubble people. (Also I love how Spudsy's is a ripoff/homage of McDonald's, hopefully it'll make for some good satire of the fast food industry).

While we don't see the frog character from Gooseworx' teaser image, a lot of people theorized that it is some sort of gummy frog or reptile, which makes sense when it comes to one of the other characters announced in the teaser trailer.

The gummy gator appears to be in the Candy Canyon Kingdom, and looks to be some sort of cowboy or guide. He has a white belly similar to the frog, which is why I think they exist in the same storyline/location. Something hard to see in the trailer is that he starts fading to green from yellow around his shoulders. It's hard to tell what he's holding, but it's very possible it is reigns.

Another character from Candy Canyon Kingdom is the chocolate ooze monster, who looks similar in style to the gloink queen. I love the details of candy corn teeth and jawbreaker eyes. It's difficult to tell if this will be the big boss of Candy Canyon Kingdom, or just an obstacle for the TADC crew.

A fourth character from the Candy Canyon Kingdom is revealed in the teaser, and that is the periwinkle drawing mannequin. It seems to be the only character from the CCK that is not made of candy, which leads to some questions. In the teaser it is screaming its head off, so it's likely it is running from the chocolate ooze monster.

Going back to the cowgirl ghost, another cute little ghost appears. It doesn't really have any defining features other than its puppy-like face, but its a ghost, so it works. This is the only other character in the western ghost town story revealed in the teaser. Though the gummy gator looks like a cowboy, I think the ghosts appear in a different location from the Candy Canyon Kingdom.

The last character I haven't talked about is the tape recorder. It doesn't really look like an animate character, but if TADC has taught me anything, inanimate objects can always become animate characters. It's hard to tell what storyline it's from, but based on the lighting, it's from the western ghost town storyline. One of the most unnerving things about it is that it is one of the most realistic looking characters in the entire show.

Overall, 4 characters were revealed for the Candy Canyon Kingdom storyline, 3(ish) characters for the western ghost town storyline, and 1 character for the Spudsy's storyline. I personally don't think all of these storylines and characters will appear in the same episodes, unless the TADC crew is split up like in ep 1. The Candy Canyon Kingdom and the Spudsy's storylines definitely don't, because Jax can be seen in the wagon, along with (at least) Pomni, Gangle, and Kinger, in the large image shot of CCK in the teaser. (I have no clue what kind of gummy animal is pulling the wagon.)

I also wanted to briefly talk about the unfinished location that Caine showed in the teaser. My first thought was that it was a baseball stadium, but after further inspection the field seems a bit off to be a baseball field. Regardless it definitely is set up to be a performance space, whether it be a theatre or arena of sorts. From the design, I don't think it connects to the other locations revealed in the trailer.

If you've made it this far, thanks for reading my theories on this teaser! If you have any thoughts, please comment or reblog to let me know!

#the amazing digital circus #tadc #the amazing digital circus spoilers #tadc spoilers #pomni #caine #jax #the amazing digital circus new characters #tadc new characters #gooseworx #glitch productions #spoilers #star says #not art

[xanderindisguis]

just started animating after procrastinating starting it for years and im already going insane, any tips?

Four things I feel is important to note

Analyze other animations, note things you like and why, slow it down and take in the frames

Go easy on yourself, permit mistakes, make it messy, if there's something you could've done better that you realize after you made the animation then use that knowledge for the future

Take care of yourself!!! Eating, staying hydrated, getting good sleep, all that is super important outside of animating and super important when animating

And. PLAN your animations, each scenario you want, write down how you want the characters to move, I don't normally do this (DON'T FOLLOW MY EXAMPLE 🙏) but it's super helpful when I do

For the animating part itself, I'm not sure how to word it, things I found help me when animating is

- Lower FPS (I usually go with 9-11)

- Playing with duplicated frames, a common thing I do is duplicate frames to avoid redrawing them so much

- Not caring if the outline is blurry, distorted, or messy because I used the lasso tool to correct something. As long as it looks smooth, you know what you're looking at, and it gets the job done

- What I call "fade ins/outs". For example, you have two keyframes (move hand from A to B), you redraw the first one but slightly different (Hand moves like 2 pixels or smth), you redraw it again (hand moves 7 pixels), middle frame (between A and B), and do the exact same process but backwards

BUT a things I want people to know because I see it a lot and it makes me itch in a bad way

- When lip syncing, unless the anatomy of the character is different, or you have a style that fits it, THE JAW ALWAYS GOES DOWN. Your focus should be on opening it downwards

- CONSISTENCY, while your sketches may be lazy, please keep them consistent to the original frame. Don't stray TOO far from the keyframe, like something's too big, or the size keeps changing, or even in cases of lip syncing where the way it moves is different each time (Up down up down up down left up, yk??). THIS ONLY EVER WORKS if the situation calls for it!!!

((I've done tgis before witg lip syncing....))

- PLEASE. Note how to use smear frames. In small movements, it's not necessary, someone raising their arm doesn't need a giant smear to do. Use them when there's exaggerated, quick motions, and make sure there's still form to it so it's not just a blob

(Completely off topic, but there was a trend on tiktok with a filter where they'd make a hand shift into another thing like 🤚 to ✌️, and it bothered me so much because EVRRYYY time there was a smear frame BUT IT WASN'T NECESSARY and sometimes even ruined it)

- Don't be afraid to skip middle frames, like when someone's shaking an item in their hand, as long as the two keyframes are there and a few extra frames after the action, it should be alright, or when someone's laughing

I think that's about all I can say

[caw4brandon]

The Power of Stop-Motion

Media in today's standard is quick and easy. Rarely is a show more than 2 hours long or 13-epiodes per-season. With that, animated movies are a lot slower than the typical films.

There is a discussion on if animation is suitable for film purposes and while it is often shunned by the Golden Globes or the Oscars or other awards. The very few outliers can prove these awards and the world very wrong.

But that is not what we will be talking about today. Because while animation is popular, there is a dark horse among its sphere. One with a rich history and strong filmography that should be shared. Let's talk about;

- Have I possibly gone daffy? -

Stop-motion is a film making style that compiles multiple still images of an object being physically manipulated in small movements into one whole scene.

Majority of Stop-motion films and videos use [Clay Animation] or [Paper Animation] with several more varieties of new innovations emerging under the umbrella of stop-motion. The most popular of them in the modern era towards kids is [Lego animation] which is the manipulation of Lego models in motion.

The earliest trace of Stop-motion in films is the 1898 short [The Humpty Dumpty Circus] by Albert E. Smith and James Stuart Blackton which is said to be a lost media. To compensate, please watch [A Tribute to Stop Motion]

In its early concept, Stop-motion was used as a method to create impossible things or do practical effects under budget constrains. Such as the iconic King Kong scene at the Empire State building. Since then, Stop-motion has evolved into a full production industry. From Indies; [Righteous Robot] to Juggernauts; [Laika Studios]

- Shimmer a Little at The Edges -

Unconventional media such as stop-motion is often not a style suited for every story. Its a rather expensive type of media that requires worthy innovations top break the niche barrier. Just looking at Laika Studios alone, we see that they've develop a lot of interesting ways to improve visual effects while staying to their stop-motion roots.

One perfect example is seen in < Kubo and the Two Strings > where the animators need to create water in a still image world that feels natural. [A Perfect Storm] one other part of the stop-motion puzzle is the iron-willed discipline it to conceptualize, animate and edit a production that can take about 3 to 5 years to complete. More so of a time frame than a normal film.

This difficult curve lead to budgeted methods such as using models that already exist to tell new stories. Such as; Legos or with crude multi-jointed figures of existing characters. [MOONSHINE]

While I may say its crude, the low budget production is the selling point. Assisted with sound bites taken from gaming sessions or from shows featuring a lot of inside jokes and memes. Also, its hilarious to see a Teletubby turned into a Eldritch monster.

These attempts to make stop-motion productions accessible has captured the attention of other like-minded channels to collaborate and elevate one another. [ERB: Harry Potter vs Luke Skywalker]

- For Better Tomorrows -

With all that is said, what is the power of stop-motion? As a media that is tediously overlapping across processes. What are the better tomorrows for our inanimate subjects?

I like to think, that as filmmaking grows. Stop-motion will continue to remain as a sacred tug against live action films and traditional animation. It can be used to tell complicated stories with concepts that may look strange if its adapted in a live action.

As I have mentioned in [The Beautiful World of Hilda] animation's greatest strength is simplification. Stop-motion takes the opposite side of that philosophy.

Its a higher level of world building of the materials with willingness to accept mistakes and ruggedness that gives them that little flavor of life. As an actual touchable thing, the various cartoonish styles can take on a whole new dimension to heighten the style and give it that detail that is less polished.

Stop-motion shows that filmmaking magic can still exist despite already knowing the tricks. Its a media where every frame shown has a significant purpose that invokes a specific flow. That's the power of stop-motion.

#stop motion #stop motion animation #coraline #coraline jones #lego animation #clay animation #paper animation #laika studios #paranorman #norman babcock #the lego movie #emirichu #daidus #moonshine animations #pinocchio #guillermo del toro #wendell and wild #Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio

[the-witch-of-one-piece]

霊圧 + 淫慾. // spiritual pressure + lust. [sashi-ya x twoop]

Kenpachi Zaraki, Kensei Mugurma, and Shinji Hirako: Getting Caught During Sex Part 2 Created by: The-witch-of-one-piece/WC:800+/Masterlist/Collab w/ @sashi-ya💜

TW: getting caught, fingering, groping, dirty talk, oral sex, penetration, voyeurism

Kenpachi

“I told you already,  I was going to take care of you tonight but you didn’t want to listen. And now we are here.” Kenpachi spoke in a rough tone.

Legs far apart from one another he practically ripped your bottoms and panties off of you. Your undone top is exposed to the code air. Your back pressed against his chest. His hand groped your breast while his fingers were pushing into your messy cunt. “Is it wrong to want to be touched by my wonderful captain?” you teasingly said. Your hand reaches behind your touching his face. “Wonderful? You mean wanting to be touched like a little slut by someone who can tear you apart. You have one sick mind to think I’m wonderful.” His fingers began to move faster inside you.

The door was open to his office and he didn’t care who saw, you wanted it so badly he didn’t give a flying rat's ass who saw. Ikakku didn’t seem phased by what he saw when he walked into the door because he saw way worse from you both. “Sorry to interrupt the weird thing you're doing to _____  but Catpain they are waiting for you to give the orders...” His eyes were looking at the corner of the wall not wanting to see you exposed. 

You tried to cover up but Kenpachi refused “Don’t be all shy now _____.. You are getting what you wanted right now ….. Ikakku tells them I’m attending to _______ it won’t take me long to finish her off. I will see them in a few.” Once he spoke Ikakku left  “hurry up and cum for me now little slut.” 

Kensei 

“Nghh~~mmmm~~oh god kensei~~” your moans were lingering a bit longer. The mat where you both did your stretches was being used in a different way.  Both of his hands pressed on the back of your thighs as he buried his face deep into your cunt. His lips began to suck on your clit. Your finger gripping the white hair Captain. Pushing his face more into your cunt.

“Those stretching poses of your work and to find out you didn’t wear any panties, you wanted this to happen.”  he was savoring the juices coming from your cunt. He enjoys the health-like style you both hand and he could taste the difference in your cunt juice.

“I wasn’t expecting you to do it now~~~” you arched your back closing your eyes. “Fuck~~~~ “ you began to heave a bit more. “Just like that,” you spoke in a quick tone that has a slightly high pitch to it. “I think that is a no you guys want to eat out…” you heard Mashiro giggling at the entrance. “Well, Captain you're already eating out… HEY GUYS THE CAPTAIN IS ALREADY EATING HIS MAIN COURSE IS ______!” Kensei picked his head up with a bit of a red tint on his face, “GOD DAMMIT MASHIRO!! I’M GONNA KILL YOU THIS TIME.” he shouted from the top of his lungs.

Shinji 

“Don’t drop me, Shinji.” You're held onto his shoulder, your back hitting the cold wall. Feeling your eyes rolling back of your head. Your juices were trickling down his cock as he continued to hold onto your thighs for support. 

“Ssss easy on the digging into my skin _____, I told you I got you,” Shinji spoke in a teasing tone. Her tongue traced your bottom lip before he pressed them against yours. 

Feeling his tempestuous cock slide inside and push through your dripping slit aching to be filled by no one else but him, Shinji let out a low groan as his member sheathed deeper into you.  He was usually more of a person who gradually increased his speed instead of ramming into you like an animal, but not this time. This thrusting motion he had made you a complete mess. The force behind each pound was sending your body over the edge and knocking the air out of your lungs. Shinji could see you were lost for words. Just crying out his name he was turned on by it. “Am I interrupting something?”  Rojuro looked at you both. He didn’t have a bashful look on his face; he was still rather calm.  Shinji looked a bit annoyed. He was still inside of you but stopped his thrusting. “Can I help you with something?”

“Well I was dropping by to see if you wanted to get a drink but I see you have your hands full.” he let out a small chuckle.  “Bit of advice might be to choose a different venue for the fun time and not an empty hallway. It will be empty  for a while till someone passes by.”

Tagging: @stygianoir @tealcat001 @dumbbitch223 @bookandyarndragon @jin-supremacy01

#zaraki kenpachi x reader #the witch of one piece #kensei muguruma x reader #zaraki kenpachi #kenpachi #kenpachi x reader #kensei x reader #kensei #kensei muguruma #shinji hirako x reader #hirako shinji #shinji #shinji hirako #bleach headcanons #bleach x reader fanfic #bleach fanfic #bleach x reader #bleach #spiritual pressure x lust #spiritual pressure + lust collab #smut writing

[epickiya722]

Happy holiday.... What do you think that made Yuuji is so likeable as a character? I've only been in the JJK fandom for a year, and I've seen a lot of other JJK characters' stan. But one thing in common, they all love Yuuji and mostly will include him in their top 5 fav JJK charas (including me :D)...

Okay, in general I don't know, but I will tell you why I find him likeable!

For one, it's his design. Yuji's design is actually one of my favorites in JJK. That pink hair + brown eyes combo? Love it. The touch of red on his uniform, I like that, too. Since when I got into JJK, I started with the anime and then the manga, I didn't know Yuji used to have blond hair.

Neither way, I like it! I find both colors fitting for him.

And it's not just his features, but also how he's animated/drawn. He has a range to him that I just love so much. It reminds me of how my other favorite, Izuku Midoriya from BNHA, has a range.

Yuji will literally look like this one minute!

And then look like this the next!

Of course, with everything he's been through, he's going to look different, but you get what I mean! 😆

Another reason is his overall personality. First episode/chapter alone with clock you on that he is a goofball with gets along with people, but he's not a pushover. He care about others and has a good heart. He's just so kind and energetic. His energy easily matches up with other hyper characters like Satoru and Kugisaki.

He's willing to sacrifice himself just to save someone and really, it's also a sad part of his character. He later on gives into the idea that he is just a cog in a system. He accepts death, deciding to help as many people as he can before his time is up. It leads to him going through so much as the story goes on to the point that he isn't exactly the same as he was before.

On a funnier note, he's just this strange kid to me. Like, Yuji finds a love story within a movie called Human Earthworm. Those dolls Yaga be making? Yeah, he calls one "creepy but cute" and even Satoru Gojo questions it "this thing is cute"? When Megumi tells him about Sukuna's finger and curses wanting it, wanna know what Yuji asks? "Why? Is it good?"

YUJI, IT IS A FINGER?!

He didn't even freak out when he saw Megumi's Demon Dogs.

Love his strangeness though. It's an endearing part of him to me.

Adding on, I adore about him is his overall skillset.

Yuji didn't even have cursed energy or any special techniques, but he was already capable of breaking records and outrunning cars. So much so that he gained a nickname like "Tiger of West Middle" and believed to be the reincarnation of Mirko Cro Cop, who is an actual person who is still alive.

His strength is so powerful that he was even given curses like Hanami and Choso a hard time fighting.

On top of that, it wasn't as if Yuji needed to go through a training session to learn basic fight skills. He was already beating ass before curses!!

Yuji is also a quick learner. Apparently, Black Flash is a move that is difficult to accomplish, yet Yuji was told about it for a couple of minutes and managed to delivered several Black Flashes within that same time frame. And if you count the amount of Black Flashes that has happened in the series so far, Yuji has executed the most at 8 - 10. Yuji is also able to adapt to the fighting style that whoever he is fighting alongside has. He has done it with Nobara, Aoi and Megumi. Three different styles, yet Yuji is able to work with each of them like nothing.

One more thing, is his relationships with other characters.

Again, Yuji is a sweet guy so it's easy for people to take to him and be his ally. It's not even just him being sweet, but there's also his other personality traits and skills. He was able to impress someone like Aoi Todo. There are not a lot of characters on the same wavelength as Satoru because of his personality, but Yuji is one that is. Even Megumi, one of the grumpiest characters, takes to him.

And while I do love the positive relationships he has, there's also the negative ones I like, too.

Out of all the characters, Yuji's clash with Sukuna is the most entertaining to me. That is not to say that the other relationships are boring.

It's just that with these two are so different. So very different, yet share a few things in common that makes my brain get to working and then I have thoughts I have to write down.

Really, that's all I have to say for now!

Yuji Itadori is a favorite of mine, the #1 on my list. I don't blame others for liking him, too, because to be for real... Yuji is a character I can't imagine anyone genuinely hating. Like... how can anyone, I don't know! Maybe not care for him? Not everyone has him as a favorite character, I'm sure.

I mean, I have seen people say they prefer Yuta or Satoru as the main character (makes no sense to me, I highly disagree, if either of them was the main character of the main storyline, then it would be a totally different story, HELLO, and I do like those two).

I have seen people call him "weak" and "useless" for losing to Choso as if Yuji didn't give Choso a hard time even after running around and fighting curses and curse users before then. "Yuji should stick to jumping". Yuji be doing 98% of the jumping, stop it now I'm exaggerating but you get it.

I'm just saying, Yuji could do almost all the crazy stuff a lot of other characters do without hesitation, but I doubt anyone else would be able to willingly, without thought, swallow a finger that looks like that like Yuji has. That kid is a menace, but an absolute sunshine and I adore him.

#kiya answers #kiya answers questions #jjk #jujutsu kaisen #jjk spoilers #itadori #itadori yuji #yuji itadori #yuuji itadori #itadori yuuji #that's my tiger cub! #💖🐯👊

[lovelybrooke]

I just want to rant for a sec so ignore if you’re not interested/know about the Kooleen drama since I haven't seen a lot of people talk about it.

As an artist, I can’t comprehend not understanding black/poc features, ESPECIALLY if you are someone giving out tutorials online to new and impressionable young artists.

If you aren't aware of the Kooleen drama, essentially, she made a side profile tutorial where she called a profile with protruding lips and chin (a feature common in poc) "gorilla looking." After that video, people found a clip of her "criticizing" a drawing of a black girl with the same features claiming it looked "goofy" before using the liquify tool to "yassify" it. In the same video she referred to edges as second eyebrows.

Now, this has a lot of implications, but at the end of the day, all of these can be chalked up to racism. I'm tired of people trying to defend her by saying "oh she's just ignorant." OKAY? AND? If you're an artist giving out tutorials, you have to be knowledgeable about different, non-Eurocentric features, and can't just go around erasing them because you view them as "goofy."

It doesn't help that Kooleen claims to only draw "pretty" people because she knows that it will get her attention on the internet, leading her to get more money. This by itself is fine, but then you notice she literally just doesn't draw black people. Like at all. You can go on her Instagram and look at all her art and I think the darkest character she drew is Miguel O'hara, not before de-aging him of course. Like I get wanting to draw people you find attractive, I believe all forms of art is wish fulfillment, but to only draw Eurocentric white and Asian people is insane.

And if you come at my trying to defend her by saying she was "doing an anime side profile tutorial." or "it's just her style." Then you're stupid. This isn't 2016, you can draw black people/poc in the anime art style without taking away ethnic features. And if your art style prevents you from drawing a wide range of people, including poc, fat people, disabled people, or anything else, then YOU'RE A BAD ARTIST.

This is all to say without even mentioning her art style which, while isn't bad, it's what I would call "safe." Her art is designed in a way that appeals to young artists, and her tutorials do the same. It's why her tutorials very rarely go over 10 minutes, because she isn't actually trying to teach you how to improve YOUR art, she's teaching you how to draw in her "juicy" style. It's very clear at least to me that she doesn't actually understand concepts like anatomy and face structure, just the basic ways of drawing them to make her characters look as visually appealing as possible.

Overall, I'm just disappointed with the amount of racism in art communities. If you are someone who likes Kooleen or are simply an artist looking for tutorials online, please look for tutorials that actually teach you how to understand what you are trying to learn. I'm tired of this trend of art tutorials that are 20 seconds long that don't teach you anything other than how to draw a basic looking eye as quickly as possible. If you really want to learn, look up references of real people, not quick and easy tutorials. Look at yourself in a mirror rather than watch a video on how to draw a pretty anime girl. Watch a video of someone explaining the basics to you rather than refusing to learn.

And please, I implore you to draw things out of your comfort zone. If you're just drawing for fun, okay, whatever. But if you're serious on improving, only drawing skinny white people is going to get you nowhere. You can't improve by staying in the same place forever.

Also, if you genuinely believe that Kooleen did nothing wrong please explain, I would love to have a discussion with you as long as you're not rude.

#art #art drama #kooleen #kooleen art #tw antiblackness #tw racsim #tw rant

[ordinaryschmuck]

Quick Thoughts on Nimona

Based on the graphic novel by the creator of that She-Ra reboot no one likes anymore, Nimona is a movie that is well-worth the wait.

For those who don’t know, this WAS originally a Blue Sky Studios produced movie intended to be in theaters. They got about...80-90% done before Disney shut down the studio and forced Nimona to be indefinitely shelved until someone wanted it.

And it turns out that Netflix wanted it. And boy...Blue Sky REALLY dodged a bullet with this one.

Oh, not because the movie is bad. Again, it is VERY well-worth the wait.

The animation is stellar, having a unique style that sets it apart from other animated movies, as well as having fluent movements and bombastic facial expressions. The most it shines are in the action sequences, which are fun to watch even if there’s not many of them (really wish there were, though).

And the characters are also pretty decent. Ballister has a very tragic beginning to his story, as well as a character arc that’s pretty endearing.

His boyfriend Ambrosius is also endearing, having a decent conflict that makes you understand his side and why he’s always willing to go back and forth on what to do.

And the main antagonist, who is a surprise that’s cleverly revealed halfway, is a great villain representing the flaws of authority and why the people who make the laws actually have zero value on human life. It IS easy to tell they’re the twist villain, and their motivations are a little lacking, but you can let that stuff go if its thematically appropriate, which it is.

But then there’s the real star of the film: Nimona. At first, I found it a little weird how she’s top billing with how much of the story’s conflict is based on Ballister, but the film really picks up with Nimona, who is the heart of the movie. She’s definitely that character who some are going to love while others are going to hate, but I find her wild and violent tendencies entertaining and her chemistry with Ballister to be on point. Plus, her backstory and attitude towards how people see her really helps to endear her.

Seriously, I wasn’t expecting too much drama from Nimona, but BOY does it deliver with a few heart-clenching scenes that almost got to me a few times.

Not to mention that the themes of...I guess anti-police is the best way to put it. It’s made pretty obvious that the knights and their director are to represent the police system, and the movie does well to illustrate the flaws of it. Not EVERYTHING is perfect, but it’s...good enough.

Any real complaints I have towards the movie is the pacing and the jokes. The movie knows when to slow down for when it’s important, but there are some scenes that fly by, particularly some bonding moments between Ballister and Nimona and the development of their relationship. And the jokes can be hit or miss. When it hits, it’s REALLY funny. When it doesn’t, it’s REALLY awkward.

But that’s about it...So, WHY do I say that Blue Sky dodged a bullet with this one?

Because this is a movie that’s very against police and VERY supportive of the LGBTQA+ community. Nimona makes it clear that the bad guys are the ones who kill what society deems as monsters, even though some of these monsters got that name because all they did was exist.

If Disney didn’t kill Blue Sky, the amount of homophobic and conservative parents demanding that Nimona got pulled from theaters WOULD.

People already aren’t alright with the gay and mind-changing stuff that’s on TV nowadays. Hell, I saw on Twitter that a guy destroyed his sons Funko pop collection AND TV just because the kid was watching THE OWL HOUSE. There are VERY bad parents out there who would do anything to “protect the children,” and Blue Sky would have undoubtedly went down for a VERY brave stand to take.

Which is a shame because Nimona really is that good. It’s a solid 7/10 film that left me entertained throughout and should be seen by everyone. Bit of a warning, there’s a bit of an attempt to self-harm/suicide near the end...but thankfully it was only an attempt.

Still, check out Nimona. It’s fun, it has heart, and it’s pleasant on the eyes. You won’t be disappointed by this one.

#nimona #ballister boldheart #ambrosius goldenloin #quick thoughts #what i thought about

[gendervapor14]

(update from previous ask — gotta send numbers for each hang on)

2, 12, 18, and 21 for crocodile!! and 2, 22, and 25 for doffy ✨

(here is the previous ask)

sweating and trembling. you want ME to answer things about crocodile and doflamingo??? okay let's do this

CROCODILE

2. Favorite canon thing about this character?

i love how he punches holes through his newspapers with his hook. so uncalled for. you could totally just balance the pages between the curve and point but no, he has zero chill, he's gonna fuck up this newspaper so no one else can read it afterwards.

12. What's a headcanon you have for this character?

i think he has a special interest/connection with animals. a lot of animals feature in baroque works, especially his lovely bananawanis. animals are easy to trust and difficult to hold grudges against, so maybe their presence gives him some peace of mind? he seems to have no issues disposing of his human agents if they fail him, but i like to think he's more forgiving with animals.

18. How about a relationship they have in canon with another character that you admire?

i'm a sucker for a devoted second-hand, (cough cough vergo) so i'm gonna go ahead and say daz bones and crocodile. i love how daz seems to be the exception to his cruel-streak. they're both there for each other and it's warms my heart. also gonna rec this fic real quick because the daz & croc relationship is so good...

21. If you're a fic writer and have written for this character, what's your favorite thing to do when you're writing for this character? What's something you don't like?

oh. this is tough. in general i enjoy crocodile's ability to deadpan his way through a comedic situation? especially since he's frequently in the company of rosinante when i write him XD so yeah i enjoy making him very serious or slightly annoyed when there's some sort of ridiculous situation. something i don't like is how i never quite feel like i have a grasp on his character 😵 croc i need a backstory for you so badly... it's killing me...

DOFLAMINGO

2. Favorite canon thing about this character?

so many things. i think for now, i'll say my favorite thing is how he seems to love sitting incorrectly. in warlord meetings, he's always got his ass perched on the back part of the chair, and his feet are in the seat. provided he isn't sitting on the table!! he likes to sit on those too. also people. loves to sit on people. think he used king riku as a footstool at one point.

22. If you're a fic reader, what's something you like in fics when it comes to ths character? Something you don't like?

i'm actually really picky about how doflamingo is written. i don't read much about him unless i'm familiar with the writer. i'm not a huge fan of the manic-pixie-girl coked-up-to-the-moon mingo (although i do think that's a funny style at times) also not a fan of the stories where he's just used as The Big Bad to make someone (law) suffer for the sake of whump. i love fics where he's got some crackhead energy, but not TOO much, yknow. he's quite intelligent and very diligent with his schemes, so a lot of the more comedic/brutal takes on his character make his intelligence less believable.

25. What was your first impression of this character? How about now?

OH i love this question. my first impression was the warlord meeting i think? i was fascinated. loved his character design (rip black V neck shirt. why couldn't he wear that for dressrosa. the white open shirt was Not doing him any favors) i thought he was just gonna be some Quirky crazy bastard, and he is! but when i saw dressrosa, specifically the backstory at spider miles, my brain opened up. his backstory, the brother trauma, how he spent his early life... it wasn't what i was expecting and i found him much more compelling with all that depth. that's probably why i tend to write him like more of a sleazy business man, spider miles mingo stuck in my brain XD

thank you for these questions!! ♥ so much good thinking for the sleepy brain muscles XD

#thanks for the ask! #character ask game #one piece #sir crocodile #donquixote doflamingo

[adarkrainbow]

An analysis of Otomo Katsuhiro's Hansel and Gretel (the story, not the anthology)

The anthology "Hensel to Gretel" is, as I said in my previous post, comprised of short sequences and brief parodies of a few pages... All except the opening story, the one that gave its name to the collection, that is a full blown story and a truly... let's say original take on the "Hansel and Gretel" story, one that takes back all the elements that would form the style of the anthology as a whole - and thus forms the perfect introduction.

Given the fascinating... oddness of this Hansel and Gretel I wanted to do a quick analysis here (or one of my "Let's overthink everything" analysis depending on how this will go). I will use scans of the pages to punctuate and illustrate my words.

THAT BEING SAID A WORD OF WARNING! This is an adult and mature parody of "Hansel and Gretel" with some dark humor, but also some... yes some gore in it and crude imagery. So this is not for everybody, be warned, this isn't any story for children. Are you ready? Good. Let's proceed.

(And just to be sure I'll put it all under a cut so that I don't get bothered by folks who claim I threw unwanted images at their face). All you will have, if you don't click below, is this safe and neat first page of the story:

Alright... Let's go under.

We open with a depiction of the poverty and misery of the family - and as the opening page says, they are VEEERRYYY poor. No joke. Not only is their house a ruin, but the two children themselves are in an obvious state of denutrition and neglect. They are copy-paste of children during famine - skeletal bodies with bloated abdominal organs, long unkept masses of hair, and Hansel doesn't even has clothes and goes naked for half of the story. (Ah yes, another warning for those who might be souls "too gentle" for this - yes you have a naked child going around in this story.)

Speaking of bodies - there is something that should be known about Otomo Katsuhiro's style. He deliberatly avoids the traditional "manga character design". He has always avoided as strongly as possible this smooth, alien-like, hyper-coded, specific "anime-design". He always wanted his characters to be realistic, to be ethnic, to be ugly, to be... well normal. And this shows here, just like in the rest of the stories of the anthology, by an exploration of various body shapes pushed to the extremes: bodies too tall, too small, too big, too frail (if you look at his Little Red Riding Hood tale, the Big Bad Wolf is a gaunt, bony, elderly looking creature while Little Red is a clearly overweight and round child). In this case, we have this extreme explored with Hansel and Gretel, who have much, much too skinny bodies - and their father, who is a very fat, if not obese man. And here is one of the first clues that something... weird and bizarre is going on in this family.

Hansel, Gretel, the mother, they are all gaunt and skinny and starving. But the father... the father is very fat, and clearly healthy. He is a lazy guy who peacefully sleeps for most of his scenes, or who does his actions with an easy, carefree, let's-not-think-about-it-for-too-long attitude. He is clearly a comedic character, the goof and the buffoon, to the mother's wicked, antagonistic character - here, the original personality of the two parents from the Grimm tale are exaggerated to the extreme, the bad mother being verbally and physically abusive, while the dominate father is a fat, sleepy, slug of a man. In fact, the crucial and anguished scene of the mother telling her husband the kids should be lost is completely wasted - because as it turns out the father was sleeping deeply while the mother had her evil monologue, and didn't listen to anything she said.

But there is still this question that is raised, by the mere contrast of the bodies: why is the father so fat and content and unworried if the family is indeed in a state of extreme poverty and severe hunger? Why is he so cut out of his own family? The reader wonders and can only theorize at this point, but there is clearly something unsaid or missing to this puzzle.

To continue, let's look at this set of pages:

On the first page I want to draw your attention to how, when the mother gives the children bread, they savagely and madly wolf it down, to the point the mother calls them "dogs". This is again part of this entire aesthetic of - let's paint malnutrition and famine in its real light, show what it truly looks like. It is skinny kids, dirty kids, that will eat with frenzy any good food they find. There is no glamorization or romanticism of poverty or famine. But more generally, this is part of the mangaka's effort of "parody". Indeed, what is the picture that comes to your mind when you think of "Hansel and Gretel"? Cute little doll-like kids. Blond cherubs in pretty clothes. And what are the Hansel and Gretel we are offered? Grime-covered, bone-showing, famished children with messy, dirty hair and either rags or no clothes. The entire Hansel and Gretel aesthetic is completely and violently broken down, and the two little German kids straight out of a Nazi propaganda now become subjects of a documentary about third-world famine.

On the second page I would like you to pay attention to the little critter that crawls in the forest. This is the first of the "birds" that haunt the forest that we see, except... It is not a bird. It crawls and moves like a toad, and yet it is a fish. A fish with a little human leg. With a second leg-like appendice, but held by pieces of wood, a hastily made crutch. And it keeps laughing bizarrely. This creature is straight out of a Bosch painting - and Bosch was in fact one of the stylistic inspirations behind this manga. The weird, bizarre, hellish, grotesque paintings of artists such as Bosch or Bruegel form the backdrop and aesthetic Otomo Katsuhiro wanted. Perfect for his quest of the ugly, his search for absurd magic and hellish wonders - his stories might be those of Grimm, but they are set in Bosch's Europe.

Just like i the original story, after one brilliantly working "let's spread little rocks" plan, Hansel tries a "let's spread bread crumbs" plan and it fails... But in the ironic twist here, not because the birds ate it (in fact, when Hansel complains about it, one of the titular birds actually ironically comments "I see..." upon this false accusation, much to Hansel's confusion). No... it is Gretel that ate it all, because Hansel did not inform her of his plan, and she just saw how he dropped all his crumbs of bread, and being a very hungry child, of course she just ate it all.

Once again, just like with the parents, the characters of the children are exaggerated - and just how in the original tale Gretel is a scared, younger, helpless child, here she is... well younger yes, but also as a result much dumber and much more self-centered, and surviving by focusing exclusively on her basic needs.

The "How the children reached the witch's house" is also completely switched and changed here - with the mangaka again placing the seeds of the ultimate conclusion of his tale. In the Grimm story, a pretty white bird lures the children to the candy house. But here? They do meet a bird, oh yes... But is a bizarre and clumsy talking bird that freaks off the kids more than anything, and that is part of the same group of grotesque Boschesque creatures that haunt these woods. And this encounter is... all feeding into the strange ambiguity of this very bizarre tale.

Indeed, what happens on a literal level? The bird tells the kids to NOT go on a certain path. Hansel does not trust the bird because it looks like a sketchy freak, and goes there nonetheless - as it turns out, it is the path leading to the child-eating witch. We have here a very literal lesson of "Don't judge a book by its cover, it is not because these weird creatures are monstrous-looking that they'd give bad advice" (even though the fact that Hansel believes they ate his breadcrumbs probably doesn't help). But... when you look carefully another reading opens itself. Indeed, the bird behavior seems to be intentionally sketchy and misleading - how he whistles when Hansel stares, how he side-eyes the children while gving his "free advice". The bird is shocked when the kids do not listen to him and tries to warn them... But immediately afterward smiles slyly, and joins the happy, singing, laughing dance of the strange wood creatures.

We are here confronted with what can be compared to a full "fae logic", or to the same kind of psychological messing-up the Cheshire Cat delivers on Alice in the Disney movie. It is not wonder that these bizarre beings of Bosch's hell can only offer a frightening ambiguity and confusing, misleading signs. They seem to embody and represent the forces of the supernatural and the "otherworld forest" in this specific universe - forces of the absurd and the nonsense, and that as a result are more amoral and mad than anything else, constantly double-playing and double-crossing others, and forever unclear on their real intentions.

The "gingerbread house" of the witch is nowhere to be seen and rather the mangaka offers us a "ridiculous house" - based on a Japanese, untranslatable pun, because the Japanese word for "ridiculous" sounds similar to the word for "candy". The titular house is ridiculous because it is a little wooden structured at the top of the dead branch of a large, dead, broken tree... That happens to look like two pair of butts one on top of the other. A literal ass-house. And just as ridiculous is the witch's design - if it is even a witch, as the story never calls this being anything nor genders it. Traditional witch elements are still kept - the use of a cauldron to cook, Gretel's "meal" being frogs, and the being carrying a broom as a main weapon. But the actual create is actually... some sort of scarecrow or ragdoll with a goofy, smiling face. This isn't just a parody of the original tale, but also another transliteration of the original concept of the tale - a seemingly harmless encounter (an old woman in a house of candy ; a rag-doll in a house made of butts) proves to be a mortal and horrible danger... And if imprisoning Hansel in a cage and fattening him up to eat him wasn't enough, the being literaly prevents Hansel escaping by... cutting off his feet.

Yes, I will not include those pages in this post, but not only does the witch cuts off the boy's feet, she (or he, or it, or they) even sucks the boy's blood from the wounds, commenting it needs to be more salty (and you have an equally disturbing joke when Gretel, who has been deprived of meat and becomes very insulting and violent because of this, briefly considers Hansel's fallen feet on the ground complaiing that she is hungry...). In the middle of the goof and the laugh comes the most brutal and senseless violence, clearly placing this entity as an inhuman monster. Not just that, but the mangaka plays on the anatomy to clearly show how otherwordly this entity is. The arms and legs of the being seem to be humans, with its head being a sort of scarecrow-mask ; and yet, when the being sucks Hansel's bloody legs, it does so with its "painted-cloth mouth", showing that the mask... is its real face.

Speaking of the witch here, it might not be obvious on a first read but it becomes so on a second - the mangaka clearly understood the parallel drawn in the original story between the mother and the witch, and retranscribed them in his story. The... thing of the ridiculous house IS a double of the mother. Notice the wooden spoon on the being's hat - the mother used a wooden spoon to beat up her family. In fact, the witch's clothes are larger and baggier versions of the mother's outfit. The mother constantly frowns and scolds, while the witch's face is stuck in an eternal smile. Finally, the witch cuts off Hansel's feet... when the mother said to her hungry children "If you are so hungry, cut off one of your leg and eat it."

We jump some times ahead and see the results of Hansel's fattening. No bone trick here, as Hansel has no real survival instinct anymore but more about that later. We see here that the witch didn't just make Hansel fat - she made him go from severely underweight to massively overweight, to the point she herself has a hard time handling him. We find back here Otomo's care and focus on extreme bodies, and more specifically unusual bodies for the manga of the time. You don't often see fat bodies in mangas, especially realistic ones, the same way you don't see much skinny or skeletal ones, and thus he gives them a strong focus in his work [Note: I am speaking for the manga world at the time of this anthology's rlease. Today manga greatly diversified itself in body types and drawing styles]

I say Hansel lost all survival instinct, hence the loss of the bone episode, because at first he is seen gleefully and mindlessly accepting his death - as, in his own words, he ate so much food and had so much meat in such a short time he can now "die happy". Then, in a second time he refuses to get out of the cage and has to be dragged to the cauldron... But only because "There's still food to eat". After living so deprived of food and so hungry he couldn't help but ravenously devour a whole loaf of bread upon seeing it, it makes sense that an over-abundance of food would be for him the equivalent of absolute bliss and paradise. That being said, this transformation also occurs two important symbols.

One: The couple of the parents is recreated among the siblings. Hansel becomes just as fat, lazy and mindless as his father, while Gretel, who has grown bitter and jealous because of her bad situation compared to her brother, is now fulfilling the role of her mother. So hungry and food obsessed she schemes to kill the witch - and ultimately does through trickery. Like parents, like children, and there is probably a message about the "cycle of influences and abuses" to be taken out of this.

Two: This is the inversion of the brother-sister roles from the original tale, but again taken to a dark and grim extreme. Remember: in the original story Hansel in a first time is the hero and savior of the day, hatching plans to save his helpless sister ; then in a second time, he becomes a helpless victim and it is Gretel's turn to save him. The mangaka also perceived this dynamic switch, and transcribed it here in the following way. At first, Hansel is the clever one, preparing plans to survive, while Gretel is the dumb and thoughtless kid who only thinks of eating and foils her brother's plan. With the humoristic twist that Hansel is over-thinking things or too clever for his own good - he prepares the breadcrumbs plan, but does not warn his sister of it ; he thinks he escapes a trap by ignoring the bird's advice, when in fact he has been double-played. But in a second time, the over-abundance of food and the fattening left Hansel blissfully stupid and reduced him to the same state as his sister originally was, thoughtless but only driven by food. In return, Gretel's anger and bitterness led her to become the "intelligent one" and prepare her own plan to escape - pushing the witch in her (their? its?) own cauldron.

We reach the final part of our tale. You can see above a good full panel of the "ridiculous house" and I forgot to mention something... Why choose an ass, a butt, to make the house ridiculous? It isn't just absurd or vulgar humor - it is also a crass reference to the main motifs of the story. The digestive process. The fairytale is all about starving, eatng and fattening up. It is a tale about devouring and absorbing - and the mangaka highlights it by the vampirism of the witch who sucks off Hansel's blood ; by the wild body changes of the characters who go from one extreme (underweight) to another (obesity)... But also by this house that reminds of what this whole process of digestion, absorption and devoration leads to. The ass. The shit. In fact, by choosing a house that reminds the reader of how digestion ends in crap, the mangaka literaly presents to us the angle of attack of his fairytale parodies and literary pastiche throughout the anthology - take a story, but presents it on the angle of the mundane, the vulgar, the cruel, the absurd. We are literaly being told "It's crap" by the mangaka himself. In this Hansel and Gretel gone are the sweet ducks, and the cute children, and the gingerbread, and the candy... We focus on unpleasant, physical, "real" materials and substances. The bones. The fat. The blood. The crap. Though the actual crap itself is owhere to be seen - it is just evoked in the reader's mind by this butt-house. But it might be also another subtle jab at how in fairytales "nobody goes to the toilet" as the saying goes.

Anyway, enough poopy digressions. Back to the story. Once the witch is dead, the next dark joke arrives, which is a very typical and traditional take on Hansel and Gretel: the two kids feast on the witch's cooked remains. This is a continuation of the joke of Gretel considering eating her brother's feet, and a traditional twist on the "Let's party for the witch is dead" scene. Nothing surprising here. What is interesting however is that the wood-creatures join the siblings in their happy party ad joyful feast, again throwing the tables when it comes to their unclear alignment. With their hellish reference, they could have been the witch's familiars - and yet they are gleeful of the monster's demise, though at the same time they keep constantly laughing, which does not help... They are senseless, constant, grotesque and absurd laughter, almost living laugh tracks - maybe they could even be read as te very embodiment of this book's humor?

What is even more interesting however is when you compare the creatures... and the kids. Design wise. Do you notice something? You should. Remember how Hansel ignored the bird's advice because he considered them weird and ugly freaks? Well... Now the kids look identical to the creatures. Notice Hansel's design. His new girth and round , enlarged belly is identical to the bloated, spherical abdomen of various of the creatures. His happy laughter is mixed with the animalistic joy of the beasts. But more importantly... the wooden crutches and items he gets to paliate his lack of feet are identical to the ones the mysterious fish-with-legs had! The children literaly became the same as the strange wood creatures, or "part of their band".

When the children finally return home, not with riches in this case (except in terms of body riches, as they are now fat, well-fed, healthy and happy), their mother is dead like in the Grimm's tale... But here is a final and very dark twist. The mother starved to death, reduced to a skinny corpse. We do know now the connection between the witch and the mother, and we can read it as the children killing their mother by killing the witch and devouring its body... But let's reconsider the beginning. Remember when I said there was a problem with how the father was such a large and big man untroubled by hunger? And this seemed strange compared to his underfed family... Let us consider how the mother was obsessed with food, with the coming starvation, beating up the kids if they asked for anything... And now she starves to death despite having two mouth less to feed? There are the disturbing and dark implications that this woman suffered from some deep food obsession, a dangerous, paranoid madness that made her starve her own children and impose some sort of artificial famine onto her family. After all, her husband is well-fed, and the creatures of the forest are all pot-bellied and portly built. Only her and the children were skinny - and the children not even for long, as their trp to the forest made them the same girth as their father. In this tale where everybody gets to eat only two people stay hungry - the mother who starved to death, possibly starved HERSELF to death ; and the witch who kept waiting for Hansel to be fat enough, offering all her food to him, and then died before she could get her meal.

And thus the story ends on this bizarre and strangely uncomplete note... The kids look at each other, but the reader is left in the blur as to what this look means. Are they sad? Are they secretly happy? Do they know there is a link between their mother's death and the witch's? The family, free of the tyrannical figure, gather together as a trio now very much alike in appearance. Their father decides it is time for them to live happily together - but what are his promises worth? We know from before he is a lazy, not very bright if not truly silly man, only good at being given orders and not even talented at doing anything he was asked. Is this truly a happy end?

And finally, the strange, absurd, genre-defying creatures of the wood dance silently under the moonlight, in a nonsensical, bizarre, frightening but bizarrely-joyful scene, halfway between the dancing circle of fairies and the hellish sabbat of witches.

#otomo katsuhiro #katsuhiro otomo #hansel and gretel #fairytale analysis #fairytale manga #manga analysis #dark fairytale #fairytale parody

[neonponders]

Here’s your crack fic for the day ~

• • • • •

Steve buys a cow. He supposes the correct terminology is “rescuing” because he has no intentions to slaughter it.

He names the cow Billy.

The horns have been “debudded,” which is like destroying a hair follicle so the hair stops growing. Maybe it’s the lack of horns that makes this cow head-butt everything, including Steve.

The cattle vendor at the fair certainly looked dubious when Steve made it clear he had the money to pay for him. Steve knew what he looked like - the last farmer in the Harrington clan had to be three generations back, at least.

“That bull’s a headstrong one. If you’re not used to lively horses or cattle, he ain’t the one for you.”

Nothing was for Steve, apparently. Not steady relationships, or a steady job, or steady mental health since Starcourt became a skeleton standing over rubble. Steve had bad decisions and the consequences sweating out of his pores; all he knew was that a blond and caramel cow with soft curly fur avoided everyone touching him until Steve held out the back of his hand. Horses wanted to smell a person before they were touched, why not cows?

Billy licked his hand and the rest was history.

Or at least, the rest was the Harrington’s summer cabin several miles outside Hawkins. The house was not technically a cabin, but a bonafide house. It looked like it belonged in the mountains with its many windows, thick beams, and flowery window boxes. The property around it was substantial, and he needed to get one of the fields ready with a quickness.

Hiring a team to install fencing around one of the meadows was easy. Getting a pre-built carport hauled out to the property was not, but it was the best he could do until a proper barn was ready. The carport looked like a barn-style covering to a bridge and acted as the entrance to the field as well as a safe spot at night or inclement weather.

The damn cow came with a learning curve, that’s for sure. And a hefty care bill which actually succeeded in bringing Steve’s parents home to see what the hell was going on with their son’s bank account. To say they were confused would be a severe understatement.

But the Harringtons were the type of wealthy people to enjoy equestrian pursuits, so Steve’s mother was not entirely put off by the prospect of keeping a large animal on the property. She called a vet to come out and do a full checkup of the creature, and Steve watched in annoyed wonder as Billy let his mother totally ruffle the curls and ears on his giant head.

“Playing favorites, I see,” he scoffed.

His mother smirked at him. “I think he knows he’s safe.”

Steve could only take her word for it, because Billy still head-butted him all the time. As soon as the screen went over Billy’s face to protect his eyes from flies, the cow followed Steve around the property, knocking his face against Steve’s backside while he tried to weed-wack the walking trails between the fields and the house.

“Could you not?”

Billy only snorted and shook his head, making his ears flop.

Steve’s father couldn’t help but marvel, “He doesn’t even need to be tethered. That cow follows you around like you polish the sun.”

Steve tried his best to do that, he really did. He got a cylindrical “cow brush” installed in the field. Billy rubbed against it like a massive cat. He cleaned Billy’s hooves every day that he was at the cabin, which became more and more often. When the barn was finally built, he made sure Billy always had a bucket of fruit and veggies to greet him after a long day in the pasture. The damn thing loved alfalfa hay, and it made Billy smell nice after rolling around in it.

The only thing that got Billy’s energy out was a giant bouncy ball. Steve introduced it by chucking the thing over the fence. He’d never seen Billy have a fun fit, but that was the day he learned that cows are just terrifyingly large dogs.

Thing is, one Billy Hargrove has to come out of the hospital some point or another. And while he’s being discharged, he gets to overhear a bizarre conversation between his sister and Henderson.

“He’s installing the salt lick this weekend. Cows love it, apparently.”

Dustin sighed, “I don’t see why he hasn’t invited us to his new place. I miss him.”

“Probably because the cow’s a rescue, and you’d scream loud enough to set it off,” Max teased.

Billy waited for Dustin to go to the bathroom before he ventured, “It almost sounds like you’re talking about a real cow and not a girlfriend.”

Max still doesn’t like the way he talks about women, but now she tells him so. The summer of ‘85 has changed a lot of things. Max sticks to Billy like glue and tells him like it is. Steve owns a cow, apparently, and barely visits Hawkins anymore. 

Billy goes with Max when they finally get the invite to the “cabin.”

“This is not a cabin,” Billy remarks as he pulls up to the nice house in the repaired Camaro. The road there and the driveway to the house are as far as the car is allowed, otherwise his sports vehicle is super unequipped for this place. The house is nicer than the one back in Hawkins, but Billy feels as unequipped in his atrophied body as his car.

Thankfully, after an exhaustively awkward handshake with Steve, the latter sets them up in the house for the weekend. The fridge is stocked and there’s another in the garage. There’s a goddamn laundry room upstairs for guests and before long, Billy finds himself risking exhaustion by walking along the unfamiliar, grassy trails - 

A bike bell alerts him to someone coming down the trail. Steve.

Billy doesn’t wait for some clumsy hello. “You need a motorbike for this place.”

Steve laughs as he slows down and dismounts to walk beside him. The damn bike has a luggage carrier on the back with a green cube of hay stuffed with flowers like a pin cushion. “Is that for your cow I’ve heard so much about?”

Steve glanced back at it and confirmed, “Yeah. Cows love enrichment, or whatever, so I try to give him stuff. He rolls around in alfalfa, but the roses and herbs might be a nice change. Getting the honeysuckle and blackberries off the house was a nightmare. Those bushes have thorns. Big ones.”

Billy laughed softly. “I thought honeysuckle was poisonous?”

“Not the flowers. But cows have, like, four stomachs anyway.”

“What? No, they don’t.”

“Yeah, dude! They eat anything off the ground without even looking. It’s insane.”

Billy discovered that laughter came easily with Steve. And when they finally got to the carport, he watched the cow meet Steve and head-butt the block of treats out of his hands.

“Wait, wait! God, this is why we have to tie things up with twine.”

The cow won and shook the cube out of its binding. Steve snatched the twine anyway and untied the knot to wrap around the spool standing on a pegboard in the carport. Billy’s feet shuffled over the hay in the miniature barn while he relented, “He’s pretty. Still smells like shit, but...I haven’t seen a curly-haired cow before. What’s his name?”

He turned his head just in time to see Steve’s snap up and his jaw to go slack. “Uh.”

Billy snarked, “What, did you name it after your favorite porn star and your mom doesn’t know or something?”

Steve coughed and swallowed painfully. “Nope.”

Billy frowned at him. “Why are you being weird about this? It’s a name.”

“Yeah, but,” Steve began before his shoulders wilted into a slouch. He sighed, “His name’s Billy.”

Billy Hargrove has to take a long moment to process that. Then he dared, “I would ask if it’s because he’s blond, but there are plenty of those to take name inspo from.”

Steve rubbed the back of his neck, where the hair had recently been cut since he was tired of his longer hair holding sweat on his nape. “I found him after...everything happened...and he reminded me of you. That’s all.”

“That’s all,” Billy repeated flatly.

Steve shrugged and came to lean against the other side of the carport opening, mirroring him. “Yeah. Dark blond. Curly. Gets in my way and head-butts me around. Never lets me get the ball to play a proper game with him.”

Billy glanced at said ball in the grass with a soft smirk on his face. “I didn’t realize you thought of me enough to name something after me.”

Steve shyly held his gaze until Billy finished, “Even if it is a cow.”

And so what if Billy rides on the back of his bike to the house.

Or if he stays longer than a weekend because he likes the physical therapy of walking through the groves of trees and fields without an audience around him.

Or that he sleeps better with Steve’s homemade veggie pasta in his belly than he has in years.

Or that they kiss with lightning bugs around them after Billy admits that the lush greenery of late spring/early summer is kinda nice. Kissing is their business, no one else’s.

But with an extra pair of hands, Steve’s mother indulges and gets another pasture set up for a new rescue. Steve and Billy watch as a new barn gets built with waterlines and a saddle room. The truck drives up with the silver steel carrier hitched to it, and the boys watch a russet horse step out. Her fur is a beautiful clay red in the sunlight -

As she bites her handler.

Steve and Billy immediately looked at one another and said in unison, “Max.”

#harringrove #farmer!steve #post s3 #ficlet #neonponders #just a reminder that this is on ao3 #worth saving

[freebooter4ever]

Hi I wonder

If/when you finish Geno’s sculpture will you be able to program it to move? Like animation?

I’m not familiar with 3d modeling

this is a very good question, actually! cause the easy answer is yes, absolutely. the more complicated answer is that the topology i've modeled is optimized for sculpture rather than animation, so to turn it into an animated character and get clean movement i would have to make some modifications around the sections that deform the most (shoulders, elbows, knees, etc). brief lunchtime course in topology under the cut :)

the topology or 'wireframe' of a character represents the polygons. and each polygon is defined by vertices which are the actual coordinates stored in the computer that tells it to render these objects!

on the left is the sculpt that im working on, and on the right is the 'smoothed' version where the computer calculates a curved spline between points instead of a flat polygon (with certain specific case like where i've told it to 'crease' edges which will keep the sharp polygon line).

My goal in this sculpt (like the skate and the helmet and the gear) was to keep polycount as low as possible to give myself the cleanest lines in a way similar to how i process drawings. This means i have large shapes with as few polygons as i can get away with, so there's certain areas that have very very few polygons entirely. The biggest example of this is the back and the shoulder/arm connection:

if i were topologizing this for animation the 'wireframe' lines would be concentrated where deformation happens. So when I raise the arm the shoulder would have enough geo to stay defined and smooth instead of stretching. right now if i bent his elbow it would cause this problem. luckily, im only planning to bend his elbow for a few poses in a final sculpt - so when i finish with the pose i will go back in and add whatever extra geo is necessary.

anyway the purpose of my sculpting with as little polygons as i can is to keep the silhouette as well as keeping it as clean as possible so that it'll look good in toon shaders. (you can see the 'active points' is under 4k' in the corner there)

the best example i have of this is the face which is absolutely not done so dont judge me but its finally at a point where it doesnt look too terrifying:

on the right is the quick sculpt i did just to get a feel for his face in 3D - this was done with clay sculpting and you can see even though i used the hard surface brush its made up of millions of little vertices so doesn't have that 'clean' look. the goal is to make the gray spaces between as flat as possible to make that toon 2D look in 3D. :)

my face topology is based off which lines i want to 'show' as my 'drawing' lines and wouldn't necessarily result in good animation. geno's lips are driving me crazy - i have so many photos and still they aren't good enough. there's that bow shape on his bottom lip that i'm trying to recreate in geo and its slow going. i take a break from whatever apps or shit im working on, tinker with his lip shape for a half hour, and then go back to working lol.

here's an example of a hard surface object which doesn't deform (because if a helmet squishes thats....thats probably a very bad sign for the player) and so can be as high res as i want it to be to get the level of detail i want:

why am i doing all this? i dunno im crazy. sometime in october a character artist from a big name studio told me my portfolio needed to reflect their 'style' more if i wanted to be hired there and my reaction was well fuck this im figuring out what my OWN style looks like in 3D. probably not the smartest career move. (ive spent 10 years in this industry and i have been a chameleon the entire time blending into everyone else's style. if im spending my own money on this i want it to be mine)

but, going back to the original question, my vision back in october was a beauty sculpt of geno in some action shot - on the ice with the puck or celly. and the sculpt would be crisp and clean and lit with sharp angular lights like how i draw (getting his cheekbone right is a must and makes me cry). and on a turntable. so thats the goal, no animation necessary, and its looking like i might get there in the next month. :)

the, uh, torso sculpt is cause i want to do an extra pose of him looking sexy in his locker stall with his armor gear and shit (pants ON though, you can see i have not sculpted past the waist :P). thats just for me lmao.

#jrnlsht

[popculturebuffet]

Pride Month Triple Feature Finale: Rocko’s Modern Life: Static Cling (Commission for Weird Kev 27)

Well this last installment is a bit late, but any month can be pride month if you belivie in yourself, so we end this pride month trilogy with Rocko’s Modern Life Static Cling, something i’ve been wanting to cover for years, but usually something came up or I realized I forgot to include it by the time the schedule was already full up. But with violence, legeslation, and outright bigotry towards Trans Persons only escalating, it felt like the right time.

For those not as familiar with Rocko, quick refresher: Rocko’s Modern Life was one of the earliest Nicktoons, created by Joe Murray and being a hit not just with the networks target demo, but adults who related to the series, a 20 something hang out sitcom but with all the lunacy animation allows. Our Rocko, his doofy friend Heffer and nerdy best friend Philbert dealt with nipples of the future, death, time travel with the elderly, elves, and recyling. The show was very of it’s time but also timeless as MANY of the fairly adult subjects it tackled in it’s unique goofy way still resonate: the show tackled topics like your parents not approving of a mixed marriage, the struggles immigrants face, homosexuality (via clowns), a sexually unsatisfying marriage leading to a wondering eye (done ENTIRELY straight to the point the episode was banned), finding out your adopted, bosses treating their workers like a commodity instead of a person, megacorporations running our lives, credit card debt, and even sex work

It’s thanks to Rocko we have classics like Regular Show, it’s successor Close Enough and Tuca and Bertie. The kind of show that uses wacky humor while still showing some very real shit we have to deal with. 

So in hindsight. .it’s not really a stretch that with changing times, rocko would go from having to use clowns to cover queerness to doing a full coming out episode in it’s revivial special, a pogniant well done story that deeply reconteculaizes a beloved character

Pig you’ve been out since 1996. 

So let’s look at this touching tale and all the other neat stuff just in time for the show’s 30th anniversary shall we?

Static cling follows our boy, his bulbous buddy and his somethign else rhyming with b , picking up where we left off.. and the original finale to the series had our heroes shot up into space, returning as the elderly. The last part is stricken from the record Roseanne style, and instead our heroes have largely settled in: Filburt misses his wife tails, he misses her a lot, but otherwise our heroes are doing fine on fatheads reruns... till Filburt notices the remote has been jammed up Heffer’s butt for the past decade, they fight as usual and Rocko has to scream at them to “PUSH THE BUTTON”. TV’s Frank would not abide. 

SO with that our heroes return to earth. There’s also a nice small joke in that... most people really aren’t phased our heroes were gone 20 years: while we sadly dont’ get a scene with Heffer’s family , easily one of my faviorite parts of the series with Rocko’s dinner visit being one of my faviorite episodes, we do get to see his beaver hating grandpa, with all his innuendo glory, the only change being

And Filburt naturally easily reunited with Hutch because their perfect and we need that. It’s like our heroes were never gone for the most part.  The real exception is ROcko.. and i’ts easy to why: Filburt had a wife and four adoring children eager to finally get to know their dad. Heffer’s family is implictly there and his grandpa is still around only now he can posses lawn gnomes. Nothing’s really changed for either in a way that harms them. Filburt missed most of his kids’ lives, but they seem to have grown up fine.  In contrast when you think about it.. no one was really waiting for Rocko. He hit it off with Shiela well, but that was one episode towards the end. I mean he could look her up on face-o-rama, or something, so ti’s not lost, but when you think about the series with his family in australia.. all Rocko had were his friends, mrs. bighead (who warmly welcomes the guy back and gives him some needed support), and Spunky. Rocko really has nothign to come back to: his job is gone and while his friends adapt to the 2010′s really well... it’s all too much. it also makes sense: Heffer always went with the flow and while Filburt seems a bit too accepting on paper, he’ sa giant nerd in a world where he can livesteream being nauseous and blather about his opinons for an adoring public. I mean I woudnln’t of had the tools to do this when the show aired. I was two and the internet wasn’t easy to come by. Six maybe. 

While the montage of various “new” things was.. dated even by when it came out and is kinda just there outside of Schlammo, the unhealty energy drink , it hammers home that while his friends have accepted the present.. Rocko is lost in it. He was never one to easily accept new trends in the show itself, usually being pulled into things like health clubs or credit cards by Heffer, so it’s entirley in character that being stuck in a world 20 years later with nothing to really hold him there shatters his normal optimisim. I’ts pretty heartining to see rocko shattered a bit when bev finds him. It makes her trying to support him and help him heartwarming.. but it can’t really fix the problem of feeling like the world’s passed you by. It was striking to realize how deep Rocko’s story comes off, a story about nostalgia and how it can help us when we feel lost.. but how we can cling to it as our only salvation. I’ll admit to having dived into my various coping mechanisms, comics, games, tv, youtube, to escape... and to have a minor panic attack if one’s missing, so I may just relate to rocko a bit.. but it still works.  It also kicks off the plot as the fatheads is gone, and Rocko badly needs it. HIs cries for it fall on deaf ears for mr bighead though, who just oopsied at work.. and now his world is collapsing for real, with his job gone and his house soon to be gone. “A tv show won’t solve your problems rocko”. It’s a simple statment.. but one that’s true. TV can offer an escape.. but it’s not going to fix what’s wrong with yoru life. It’s the thesis statment of this special.  Granted it can at least save ed’s job and house and conglomo as the special revenue would do it. It’s heavily spoofing how much companjies rely on these revivials and nostalgia pops, with the series lovingly mocking how much money fans think a rocko special would bring nick.. and then accidnetly being accurate as while Static Cling didn’t bring in millions upon millions of dollars, it was still a success all the same. 

The problem is the head of congolmo wants the chameleon twins to make it cheap with CG. I mean grante dth eproblem is the fatheads also you know.. ende din the run of the show, but honeslty i’m willing to ignore that for what a good story it is and it could easily be said Rachel just had to go back and make more to pay the bills or something. This was also built both off the actual rumors, that later came true of a CG Rugrats reboot, which honestly dosen’t LOOK bad.  So with that our heroes decide to search for the series creator, “Ralph” Bighead, who disappeared during the time skip, as all the money, all the success didn’t make them happy. We get some fun gags including a faviorite of mine “Culturally ambgious pillows”, as our heroes tour the world to find the creator.  And thus about halfway into the special they find them int he desert.. and find out why no one had seen them. See while they last saw them as “Ralph”.... our heroes instead find RACHEL Bighead. 

And honestly ti’s excellently done for the most part. Before we get to all the good let’s get the elephant out of the room: Joe Murray should not have continued playing rachel. Joe.. is a cis man. A cis man should nto play a trans woman. I can however accept this wasn’t done with any malcious intent, and was likelky done to hide that Rachel was trans now, as the special has it as a twist, wtih Rachel having a hat on and only revealing their trans by steping out of her fatheads foodtruck. Having a new VA might give that away. I still wish they’d swapped them but I get Joe meant well.  I mostly get that.. because everything ELSE is done well. When you look back on who rachel was.. they were miserable. They had all the money in the world, but could never find creative fufillment with the fatheads, to thepoint they tried sabotaging a followup with wacky delli. I mean we got the cheese, the best character in the show, but Rachel never found fufillment. It was only by realizing who they always were and making their body into what they truly always wanted that Rachel is happy. Said happiness.. allows her the reconciatlion with her creatoion she never got in the original show, selling fatheads freezie pops. She found a new art, the life she alwasy wanted she’s content. She even refuses to do the special, and rightfully so: while the creator SHOUDL revivie a work if possible, if they don’t want to.. they shoudlnt’ be forced to. Rachel only agrees because her parents are in danger.  I also love the acceptance rachel gets: the boys all think it’s neat and instantly accept it, as you should. The reveal itself is simply done: Rachel steps out, says “I’m rachel now”.. and the boys all think it’s neat and accept it, attaching their drone to the ice cream truck and flying off. Bev also fully accepts it, happy their daughter’s happy and even finding her some cute shoes. It makes sense for all involved: while all from the 90′s, Rocko’s group has always been an accepting bunch for the most part, while Bev was always the parent that accepted their kid more.  It’s harder for Ed.. but it’s a well done harder. He’s bigoted, and potrayed as stupidly as that sounds: he rejects the idea of the special simply because he rejects the idea he has no son but a daughter. I also like the stealth pun there: he once claimed he had no son when he disowned rachel.. and it turns out he never did. Everyone around him rightfully sees this as stupid, and it’s portrayed as such, but what i Like is that they play this realistically. Instead of Ed throwing out slurs or throwing a tantrum, which sadly could very well happen, he just disowns his child, again, and storms off. He can’t accept a trans daughter because to him it’s a change. To Rachel.. it’ sbeing who she was always meant to be. Rachel ends up still making the special, remembering her past, including biting ed’s eye as a baby.. and using that. And while Ed has to be dragged to the premiere, as many a person has to be dragged into acceptaince... it’s said work that helps Ed see what a fool he’s been. Rachel reworks the fatheads.. but now includes a baby based on themselves. It adds great new jokes to the bit.. but it’s the last one, a reinactment of her “damaging her fathers retina”.. that makes Ed realize what he shoudl have all along: this is his child and who they always were. Being a woman not only allowed them to be happy.. but it dosen’t change who they are.. because this is who they ALWAYS were. And what helps is that... Rachel didn’t NEED ed’s acceptance. Their disapointed, but when he wails no at it, she simply says yes. They do the short because, even if Ed dosen’t accept her, she wont’ leave her parents homeless and still loves them both. And it’s ED who has to come around and accept that he has a daughter, he always did.. and that’s wonderful.  We also get Rocko.. not accepting the change. A baby, how dare he.. but ed talks him down, getting to the point of the special in a truly lovely speech. 

“Rocko we can’t live in the past, we can be grateful for it, but life isn’t permenant, and if we don’t embrace what’s now, we miss out on a lot of the important stuff. “ I couldn’t of said it better myself and belivie me i’ve tried. And it’s a perfect message for this special.. and for Rachels’ story. embrace what you have, not what you thought you had. This special is phenominal, with tons of great gags, a truly amazing story at the core, and lots of great cameos in some lovely animation. Check it out wether your new to rocko or want to revisit an old friend. Thanks for reading and happy belated pride. 

#rocko's modern life #static cling #rachel bighead #rocko rama #heffer wolfe #philbert #ed bighead #trans #lbgtqia+ #pride month

[shitpostingkats]

Yu-Gi-Oh Review Roundup: DM!

Favorite main character: Joey Wheeler

Okay, let me just fully reveal all of biases here: Heart of Gold, Dumb of Ass. Characters who have never experienced a single thought in their entire lives because their brain is too busy running Friendship.EXE 24/7. Real golden retrievers of people. I wanna look at a character and know that the only thing running around in their cavernous, empty skull is *sparkly heart emoji*

Joey Wheeler is perhaps the pinnacle of this thriving subspecies. I don’t know what more to say than that. He just makes me happy.

As someone also suffering from Chronic Dumbass Disorder, I always adore shows and media where idiots are included in the friend group. It’s very easy to preach love from a pulpit of Smart, Successful, Capable, Well Rounded Characters. But the character that’s allowed to screw up? To constantly be just shy of achievement, but never feels any angst for it, because they know it’s not what their friends love about them. It’s the reciprocal act of loving like an idiot. And that being enough. 

Very good. 10/10. Inspiring to us fellow himbos.

Favorite antagonist: Marik Ishtar

And, at the complete opposite end of the Character Tropes I Go Bananas For scale: Maverick Blishtar. 

While I’m a tad shy of the proper age to truly have nostalgia for DM, there’s no denying the sheer style the first series burst out of the gate with. And Marik is truly the pinnacle of Battle City Iconic. Amazing gender. The perfect blend of (then) contemporary street fashion and ancient egyptian iconography. He’s just. So fantastically yugioh. 

And then, on top of that, he’s such a genuinely well grounded character, with a backstory and motives that feel very human, despite being about literally underground cults and ancient magic. Marik is, fundamentally, an angry, sheltered teenager, lashing out at the world with an anger too big for his age. You know: a teenager. As much as I adore villains like Pegasus and Kaiba, Marik manages to have the Campy Gay Villain Style while also being a very understandable, and surprisingly relatable, villain. 

(And, quick note, my other character weakness, aside from Pure Of Heart, Dumb Of Ass, is any fictional character whose arc can remotely correlate to the struggles of living with depression. I just. Cannot stress enough how impactful it is to every version of myself as a Consumer Of Media. I’m cutting myself short here, because this is meant to be a quick review and I might make an essay on the topic someday, but I wanted to touch on it very lightly, because it is not only a major reason why I adore Marik, but it’s gonna come up in my reviews of these shows again and again. Yugioh is a show that depicts depressed characters in a way that just. Makes me feel felt. And that’s important for me to say.)

Favorite side character: Mai Valentine

Anyway, heavy stuff out of the way! Mai “Girl” Valentine, everyone! 

She is very neat. :)

I mean, what more is there to say about a self sufficient, young woman who’s perfectly comfortable with her self, acts as a guiding older sister to the main friend group, and also rides a motorcycle??? Absolutely nothing. She is a lovely lass. 

I mean, you could talk about how she is the first victim on yugioh female characters having their most interesting character development when they’re momentarily evil, which, yes, is not exactly the most feminist win. But! There’s too many overly long think pieces one could write about shonen anime girls, and that’s not what I’m setting out to do today! And besides, the pattern is more worthy of criticism than its individual examples. So, here’s your complimentary grain of salt. Now, back to my favorite harpy lady.

In her first duel, she claims to have esp, when in fact both fake-psychics and real-psychics are a dime a dozen in this world. You know what’s actually impressive??? Being able to pick out individual strains of perfume from a forty card deck that’s been doused in as many fragrances. Beating up an entire biker gang while also on a bike and by throwing pieces of cardboard as weapons. Spending days trapped in the shadow realm, surrounded on all sides by magical projections of her own loneliness and fear of rejection, then coming back to life and deciding to use this once in a lifetime opportunity to play the fun prank of temporarily faking her death and making her friends think she’s gone forever. 

What a gal.

Favorite duel: Yami vs. Yugi

Probably my favorite thing about the entirety of DM. Yes, there are some fantastic duels in the series: Yugi vs Pegasus, Bakura vs. Yami Marik, Kaiba vs. Ishizu. But the final fight between Yami and Yugi is where I truly got yugioh. 

I originally started watching yugioh as a time filler, something I could throw on in the background as a white noise while I sewed, or a wind-down right before I went to bed. While the characters were fun, and the monsters very cool and colorful, I found it very easy to zone out whenever duels took centerstage. I actually went digging through my old discord messages before writing this review, and found this quote, from myself, that really summarizes my thought on duels at the time:

But then I got to the finale. And everything clicked.

For once, I saw the card game as not just a brightly animated frame-filler, but an integral part of conveying the story. I wasn’t just waiting for Yugi to play enough turns until he could claim his inevitable victory; I was on the edge of my seat to see exactly how he would outmaneuver his opponent. And I genuinely cheered and gasped and got choked up watching it all unfold.

The finale fight was when I truly became invested in the card game aspect of yugioh, not just as a framework on which to hang the most insane anime worldbuilding, but as a truly unique way of delivering narrative that you can’t get anywhere else.

The time taken for deckbuilding does a lot to set up the duel. Yami and Yugi having to go through their shared card pool and picking out which card from the formerly homogeneous playstyle is truly theirs. Yami goes for the flashy monsters; the royalty, the big beasts, the cards he had a personal connection to in his past life. While Yugi has cutesy-er monsters that are more than meets the eye. The entire dramatic question of the finale is “Is that enough?”

Can those smol kidsy monsters match up to the King of Games partnership? Can they surpass it?

And then the actual duel, and the back and forth finishing of both arcs is wonderfully represented in the plays. The entire premise of this show started off with a vengeful ghost, violently punishing anyone who he can trick into a game, and now here he is, playing a fun game with a friend and actually enjoying himself. There’s gentle ribbing and friendly conversation during a duel for almost the first time. And yes, that’s mostly because all the opponents up till now have been villains trying to rob/murder people, but that goes even further to show how much Yami has grown! Because he used to be that villain dark magic baddie! Yami goes out with a smile and a thumbs up, happy to finally lose his crown.

On Yugi’s end of things, he proves that scrappy friendship he’s been touting around through the entire show can stand toe-to-toe with literal gods. And through Yami, he’s learned not only how to stand up for himself, but the technical skills of the game, leading to his victory. The Yami-Yugi dynamic is PERFECTLY summed up by the shiny, radiant god of the sun, equally matched (and eventually beaten!) by a pink marshmallow.

The Yami vs. Yugi fight is where I coined the phrase that has been guiding my principles in enjoying this franchise: The Rule Of Duel. That in any good yugioh fight, the game should strive to spend 50% of itself building and conveying character. And 50% of itself being PURE UNAPOLOGETICALLY AWESOME.

The closer a duel comes to that perfect Rule Of Duel ratio of 50/50, the closer it is to being the platonic ideal of yugioh story telling.

And by that metric, the Yami vs. Yugi fight is damn near perfect.

Favorite arc: Waking the Dragons

I know. I was surprised too.

At first, this choice was determined by process of elimination. Like I said, for most of its runtime, DM was very passive viewing for me, since I had yet to be bitten by the yugioh bug.

But as I started to think on it more, Waking The Dragons really is my favorite arc of the original show. Look, it has “dragons” in the title! That's like, a guarantee on 100% more dragons!

I think it’s in the fact that WtD feels like it has the least internal friction between the manga, the anime, and the 4kids dub. Probably because there isn’t a manga to conflict with. The americanized saturday morning cartoon feel isn’t fighting as harshly with the heavier tones, and rather, Dartz’s insane magic atlantis story feels just as natural as Seto Kaiba himself; ridiculous, over-the-top, and perfectly at home in the wild worldbuilding of the universe that runs on card games. Also, as a mythology nerd, this arc completely blindsided me by having a bunch of researched and under-utilized details about its Atlantis, like using Plato’s concentric ring city, non-greco-roman architecture, or the names of the dialogues for the arc’s dragon trinity.

Also, it’s some of my favorite character growth for Yami; forcing him to deal with consequences to his actions. Yugi and Yami are the central duo of the show, yet get very little story diving into their actual interactions and relationship. I really liked getting to see that dynamic explored, as well as Yami’s god-king complex brought down a peg. Good growth, good adventures, and just the thickest veneer of kids television charm.

Listen, sometimes, it’s not about the writing. It’s about how many dragons Seto Kaiba can summon before the building explodes.

Greatest strengths of the series:

Undeniably, its sheer style. Yugioh DM changed the entire definition of shonen drip. Its eclectic mix of occult, punk, and streetwear, with the sharp points of ink and eyeliner alike, really is something to behold. And applaud, seeing as how many works are still drawing influence from it, over two decades later. Duel Monsters really set the bar with such a strong visual identity and I think, without it, the series simply wouldn’t have grown into what it is today.

In terms of writing, the narrative bandies about a strong sense of duality, on what the “good” and “evil” parts of the self really contribute to as whole person. Marik is probably my favorite example, exploring whether that darkness in the soul should be eradicated, even at the cost of ones self.

 And the answer is: it shouldn’t.

Obviously, Yami Marik is defeated because, come on, this is an action driven card game anime, but the idea that og Marik was willing to sacrifice himself to do it. Killing the thing inside you at any costs. Including your own life.

Don’t do it. Instead, focus on making as much of yourself the you that you want to see survive. Overtake the Yami. Preservation of the self is the most radical form of self care, yet also the most difficult and tiring decision one can make. And it’s worth making.

Because there’s always. Always. A chance to heal.

Weakest points:

Those narrative high points, however, do come few and far between. If I could levy one criticism against DM, (as a story, not a show) it’s that it’s long. And it sometimes lacks direction. You really feel as DM violently jerks back and forth between being a pg-horror, an advertisement, a kitschy adventure anime, and a saturday morning cartoon, like a confused bumper car on a rusty track. None of the elements are bad, but they’re all somewhat fighting with each other. They haven’t properly coalesced yet into anything more than the sums of their parts.

The duels haven’t hit their stride yet either. The fights are long, and they rarely feel like they convey anything more than twenty minutes of screentime with a three minute ad break. And there’s so many of them. For every Yugi vs Kaiba, there’s at least a dozen Yugi vs. Random Joe We Don’t Really Care About. Again, early days of the formula, this is very much a trial by fire that will go on to be the foundations of some of my favorite Yugioh Serotonin.

(Also, I have no idea what is actually going on in the final season and at this point I’m scared to ask.)

Most yugioh moment:

When Kaiba loses Battle City, and grumpily announces to everyone that he will now blow up the entire island. Then flying away in a giant dragon shaped jet.

(Kaiba actually contributes to 98% of The Most Yugioh moments in the entire franchise, so I’ve disqualified him from any future runnings but. I can’t deny him his crown, not when I’m standing amidst the landscape of his kingdom.)

#yugioh #yugioh dm #yugioh duel monsters #yu-gi-oh! #yu-gi-oh #ygo #ygo dm #spk's ygo reviews #essays #review #yugi mutou #seto kaiba #marik ishtar #yami yugi #mai valentine #joey wheeler

[helium-stims]

Hi, I know you made a tutorial for making stim gifs before but I was wondering if you had any advice on how to find cool stim sources like you do in the first place? I'm super curious cos I feel like searching places like instagram and youtube could get super time consuming or overwhelming. So I thought I'd ask! Thanks~

Yes, looking for sources can be very time consuming and my process might not help much, but I'll share it anyway :)

Under a cut because I have a lot to say, lol

General tip

So the thing that has helped me the most is to make looking for sources it's own separate task. If I'm sitting down to do gif making, and in that time I also have to find sources, I get overwhelmed pretty quickly. So by the time I get to the gif making part, I usually already have some sources saved on instagram or bookmarked in my browser.

Sometimes I don't have enough sources for a board and I may do a quick supplemental search, but often this leads to my brain 'switching tasks' and I have a hard time going back to gif making. Or there will be times when I have a video saved and by the time I get around to giffing I forgot what I wanted to gif it for. So maybe it's not the best process but it's what works best for me.

Starting from a source

An easy way to begin looking for sources is to find a gif you like and follow it back to the source.

If it's a youtube source, you can let the algorithm recommend different videos, or you can go to the profile of the video poster, and look through their other videos.

If it's on instagram, you can search through the profile for other videos that weren't giffed, or you can look at what kind of tags they're using and type those into the search filter. Unfortunately instagram does not have a way to filter out videos vs. photos (that I know of), which is why I don't use it that much. Most of my instagram gifs are from people I follow or something that came up in a supplemental search because I wasn't finding what I wanted on youtube.

What to type in the search bar

If you're starting from scratch, staring at the search bar wondering what to put in, I've been there too. I owe a lot of my unique gifs on the unique requests I get. But when you don't have any requests to prompt you, think about something you might like. Favorite animals, favorite textures, or colors. If you can't pick something, try just typing 'asmr' or 'satisfying' and see what comes up.

A lot of asmr videos that pop up for me are of people speaking into a microphone and tapping their fingers on it, which isn't something I usually gif, but it can give me ideas of other things I might be interested in.

A quick glance at a thumbnail might show this asmr person uses bubble wrap, and while I know their video style isn't going to work for me, I could be inspired to type in bubble wrap in the search instead.

Or if someone is wearing gloves, I might be inspired to make a bunch of videos on gloves (anyone else remember all my gloves gifs)

Another thing to consider when looking through youtube, is that if you're looking for something with people, it will almost always show white creators on top. It can help to type ethnicities (Jamaican, Vietnamese, etc.) to try and get more diverse content. [this rarely works for food as it will usually show white people making ethnic food :( ]

Looking through videos

Once my search has begun, I usually start playing music or watching a show in the background. Then I mute my computer and just start playing videos. On youtube, I usually go for thumbnails that are nice (not too blurry) but not clickbait-y (This Shocking Video!).

I'll run my pointer to view the preview and see if there are any good looking moments. Paying attention to how things move, color changes, light movement, etc.

If I find a good moment, I bookmark it, then look at the recommended videos. If a video looks addictively good to me, I usually click on the uploader's profile instead and look through videos there.

Once I feel I've exhausted the algorithm, I go back to my initial search and see if any more videos look promising there. Or I may choose to search again with different keywords based on what caught my interest in other videos.

Doing Research

There have been a couple times where I know what I want to gif but can't get the keywords to work for me. The example I remember off the top of my head is when I was making the purple nature board. I knew I wanted to have a bird in it to mirror the other color nature board I did, but typing in 'purple bird' got me nowhere.

So I stopped looking for videos and started googling. Are there purple birds? The Costa's Hummingbird is what I was looking for and using that term I was able to find a better video.

Sometimes you can find reddit threads where people recommend satisfying videos or asmrtists with good visuals.

The End

So it really is just a bunch of clicking and going down an internet rabbit hole, but I hope that gives you a starting off point and gives some insight into my process.

If there are specific gifs where you wonder how I came across them, I probably remember how I tracked them down and am happy to share :)

#ask #notstim #tutorial #hope this helps!