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thebigbrightsun · 2 years

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MIYA POSTING

IT WOULDN’T LET ME TYPE ENOUGH TO REALLY SAY ANYTHING I WANTED TO IN THE FUCKIN. COMMENTS?? so i am just gonna make a post and tag mr. @yymiya who asked. So. INFO ON MY OCS!! specifically Miya because she is my baby and i’ve been drawing her for a year now

so these two are Miya (left) and river (right). Their pronouns are she/purr and they/he respectively. i made Miya last year in english because i was bored and remembered a conversation i had with a friend (who wears hijab)(i do not) which was basically just how would a catgirl wear a hijab? they would obviously just wrap their ears because it seems like kind of a hassle to cut out ear holes in every scarf you own and most hijabis cover their ears anyway, but if they had a tail would they wrap it? if catgirls were common enough would there be specially made clothes for them so they could cover their tail in a sleeve or something? we decided that its up to the person (like most things) but it’s probably not that common.. Anyway Miya doesn’t even have a tail in the main universe HAHA but it was an important question to answer i felt

i made River much later, in about april of this year? i thought Miya needed a skater boy friend (not boyfriend, as she is a lesbian🫶) so i made them also during class. to be honest i don’t have much of a story for either of them but they were really fun to draw messing around on my papers, i’m sure my teachers were sick of them lmao

if i were to make them into a comic of some sorts, i’d probably make their stories short and funny, while exploring themes of youth and growing up and finding your place in society as a minority/someone seen as ‘weird’. as an autistic queer poc, i didn’t really get much representation growing up, and i think seeing someone who acts and looks like me, who leads a life similarly to me, could have saved me from a lot of self-hatred when I was younger and didn’t know why I was different. a huge reason i still make art to this day is to help people who feel and look like me feel a bit better in their identities, because i know the representation i have seen, even if its few and far between, has touched me in ways i can’t even begin to explain. it means so much more than you’d think.

Anyway. the fantasy au kinda just came about one day when i was in a mood and felt like making fantasy character designs and stuff. i don’t have much of a storyline for this one either but i have a very vague idea on what it’s gonna be about, and i’m gonna develop the story as it is gonna be a big part of my Inquiry Question for Ap art this year👍👍👍

SO. these are their original fantasy au designs. i was actually pretty happy with miya’s first design, but for overall silhouette and posing issues i had to change her skirt, but i thought it looked stupid so i thought i should just rework her clothes altogether.

i’m gonna keep showing people this sheet because i am ridiculously proud of it. anyway. Even when i first started drawing Miya, way before i even thought of the fantasy Au, I had some specific design choices mind. I always wanted her to have catlike eyes, so i tried to imitate the shape of them while keeping them pretty human looking. the silhouette of her hijab is kinda exaggerated and not very realistic just so i could properly communicate the fact that she is supposed to be a cat.

in her original design, she’s supposed to be much closer to a human, with the only distinguishable traits to set her apart being her ears, her eyes, and maybe her hands. i wanted to put most of the “cat-coding” in things like the hoodie she wears, which has a tail, or the fact she paints paws onto her converse, or gives her self a dan-and-phil-style nose and whiskers (AHAHAKAHDHFKBS NOT A WORD). i also wanted her to be younger, about 15-16 in the modern universe, but that’s a difference I only made relatively recently, which you can see in the two pictures above.

with the fantasy AU, i wanted her to be honestly closer to an anthro than human. I didn’t want her to BE a furry, necessarily (no hate to furries, i am the number one furry enthusiast), but i wanted her to have much more animal-like traits. She’s very inspired by Tabaxies but i didn’t want the fantasy au to be in the 5e universe because i have several problems with racist stereotypes in DND.. anyway, miya is almost completely covered in a light layer of fur, has paw pads on her feet, almost has a muzzle, has a cat shaped nose, ears, a tail, and retractable claws. the only things keeping her from being a furry, at least in my mind, is that she has human hair and isn’t digigrade, and has much more human-like proportions, like the ratio of ear to head, head to body, torso to leg and so on.

i’ve put a lot of work and love into her design! while i can’t say everything has a concrete reason, almost every detail on her is intentional, one way or another. like, how she doesn’t have paw pads on her hands but does on her feet because she’s bipedal, and cats have paw pads to muffle the sound of their footsteps when stalking, for prey or otherwise. she also doesn’t need shoes because of her paw pads, but if it gets a little cold she might wrap something around her feet. shoes are very uncomfortable for her. (can you tell i’ve been dying to tell someone about that in particular i think its so clever)

other little details are, i made her headpiece mostly to bring more gold up by her face. it helps balance out the colors i think. the green in her eyes is inspired by my cat! and i don’t think cats can have brown eyes, but it was mostly bc i didn’t want to just give her green eyes (bc brown ppl with light eyes kinda freak me out cough cougb my sister cougb cough). the circles with smaller dots around them on her sampin songket are suppose to vaugely look like paws. i was gonna actually make them paws but that felt a bit on the nose.

i think thats all i have to say for now… i will talk more abt river when i finish their character page. there’s nothing really wrong with their current design, other than the fact that it’s kinda really boring, so i’m working on adding more character and interest! here’s the sketches i did in my sketchbook, i’m currently working on tracing n coloring them digitally

here they are!! also i said earlier that in the modern au miya is supposed to be younger but i never said how old she’s supposed to be in the fantasy au and i cant find a smooth transition to talk about that so i will say that here. She’s supposed to be like 18-19 in the fantasy au, i just think it would make more sense for what they’re supposed to be doing throughout the story (exploration, fighting, potential mortal danger, i think its a bit much for high schoolers is all). river is slightly younger but still around the same age as miya, so same thing for him too. they look really young in the sketches above bc my art style was doing something funky that day lmao

that is all!! finally!! for now at least. (if u saw me post this way earlier than i meant to No You Didn’t.)

#ocs #original characters #character design

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love-love-you · 3 years

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space boy high

happy ending music video // your sympathy // bercy 2010 // underwater // good guys music video // tiny love // tiny love artwork

#it’s about the alienation #mika #mikasounds #mika penniman #man these posts are really just #“you’ve heard of gay gold now get ready for..gay space!’’#but it’s TRUE #it’s about the #knowing there’s something Off/ Different/ Weird from a very young age before you had the words to describe it #which always seems to be translated in child logic as ‘’well fuck guess I’m from mars’’#and then it turns into an escapism thing (gay ppl and sci fi anybody?)#anyway it’s a big theme in queer art and I always kinda have an eye out for it so here we are #press your space face close to mine‚ i wanna be a starshipper‚ refuse me diffuse me to the corners of the galaxy‚ i was just like an #astronaut cut from the ship‚ etc etc #and ofc for mika it wasn’t just being gay‚ it was also being dyslexic‚ being a victim of bullying‚ being ‘’from nowhere’’#not doing my album & song tags rn bc this is already far too long dhdjs #btw I’ve peaked with this and the gold post it’s all downhill from here #shoutout to can for screaming abt astro boy with me ur a treasure and ur patience is voluptuous💙💖

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your-ace-cousin-clover · 3 years

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ahhhh hi sorry for the LATE response, life's been kinda wild lately

anyway, i'm really glad you liked the poem & i don't mind you sharing it :)

(plus, a new prompt sounds nice)

(&btw, richard siken's new book is gonna be called "blue jupiters" (as far as i know copper canyon press will publish it))

also, happy you liked the recs! i found it cool how you said "the way god chooses to escape from his own reality through someone who does not believe enough in him to question him at first"! couldn't have put it better myself.

(sorry if this ask seems all over the place, i just have to get somewhere and i'm gonna be mad late - but i really want to finally send a response)

i enjoyed your recommendations a lot so let me elaborate real quick-

the problem with travel:

right off the bat, same.

traveling does always make me feel like i'm starting a new chapter and i should act accordingly.

love "kill the kid stuff, start to act my numbers" - the choice of words you use when writing is so important. (thats why i cant judge anyone who spends a long ass time on thesaurus! sometimes writing really does feel like looking through a lost & found or fishing the right word out of a goodwill bin! flipping through a magazine in search for the right word to cut out and stick on your collage!) imagine how substantially different the poem would sound if limon had written "start to act my age" instead of "start to act my numbers"

"[...] - we’re small

and flawed, but I want to be

who I am, going where

I’m going, all over again."

this^ part kills me in a good way

accident report in the tall, tall weeds:

"my ex got hit by a bus"

gets right to the point. kinda like a short story? an immediate jump into action

i might've said this before but i like it when poems tell stories (i mean i guess they all do, in a way, but i specifically mean the ones that have clear characters? if that makes sense)

"No tampering with the great universal brake wires."

ahhh yeah - when you feel like a thought can cause real life consequences

"When the plane went down in San Francisco,

I thought of my friend M. He’s obsessed with plane crashes.

He memorizes the wrecked metal details,

the clear cool skies cut by black scars of smoke.

Once, while driving, he told me about all the crashes:

The one in blue Kentucky, in yellow Iowa.

How people go on, and how people don’t.

It was almost a year before I learned

that his brother was a pilot.

I can’t help it,

I love the way men love."

^ don't you love it when a poem beats your heart to a pulp?

"What I saw in the men who came before,

sometimes I don’t want to say this out loud,

was someone I could hold up to my ear

and hear the ocean, something I could say my name into,

and have it returned in the inky waves."

self recognition through the other! yeah! sometimes people are people and sometimes people are mirrors and i know this wasn't her point but aren't we all just saying "hey! this is how i feel! do you feel like that too?" and sometimes "language is complicated but i think you know exactly what i mean and i know what you mean too!" and "when our experience overlaps the cosmic alone-ness becomes bearable!"

shit i'd love to drop another rec but i REALLY have to go now! hope to hear from you soon

-cat

Well, lmao Cat now, I'm the one who's late in replying, but yeah, I've been really busy. Now, I've got a bit of a time to reply to your ask.

First of all, "Don't You Wonder, Sometimes?" by Tracy Smith is a really interesting poem especially centred around Bowie. I love how the poet makes Bowie into a mythical being, like a sort of a spirit rather than a mortal man.

"Not God, exactly. More like-

Some thin-hipped glittering Bowie-being"

I love how the poem takes in the spirit of Bowie as something that will keep living on -

"Saying nothing is lost, that everything lives on waiting only

To be wanted back badly enough?

Bowie will never die. Nothing will come for him in his sleep

Or charging through his veins. And he’ll never grow old,"

It's just a beautiful way to think of the artist living on despite their death. They live through those they have touched with their art as well as their art themselves.

"In which I’m forever a child looking out my window at the night sky

Thinking one day I’ll touch the world with bare hands

Even if it burns."

And I just simply love these lines ^^^ . I love the poem touches up on reincarnation. It's interesting as it mentions how people are reincarnated a few times and then, they go to the beyond.

"And how many lives

Before take-off, before we find ourselves

Beyond ourselves, all glam-glow, all twinkle and gold?"

And finally, I love how the deification fo Bowie continues making him into a cryptid? That's the best way I can describe it honestly.

"When a man his size can meet

Your eyes for just a blip of time

And send a thought like SHINE

SHINE SHINE SHINE SHINE

Straight to your mind. Bowie,

I want to believe you."

(I followed your style of picking up lines and talking about them - it's a pretty fun thing to do)

{Purple happens to be my fav colour so, yeah I annotated with purple}

And yeah, language is funky like that. Honestly, I love the fact that people swap art with each and it's like every though we're different, you go through the same emotions. No matter whatever niche emotion is, someone has already written about it! If they haven't, you can always write it!

This reminded of a favourite poem of mine (tw : homophobia and sort of death ? though) which reminds me of the awkwardness of telling people I'm queer / coming out to them. It's called Three A.M. by Jill McDonough.

Also, I've been reading some more stuff to rec them and to hear your thoughts on them. It's all food - themed because I really got into food poetry last week. And as I was talking to a lovely mutual about the intimacy of cooking food and feeding someone.

I'd highly rec the movie "Big Eden". It's a wonderful gay rom-com movie with no homophobia at all and a lot of intimate cooking and wanting to make sure that your crush is loved and taken care off.

But anyway -

Having a Coke with You by Frank O'Hara

Perhaps the World Ends Here by Joy Harjo

The Orange by Wendy Cope

For Grace, After A Party by Frank O'Hara

Eating Together by Li-Young Lee

And these two posts are where I got these poems from, so perhaps you could read the other ones in the list.

Food Poems 1

Food Poems 2

And also, you're into Succession! Yay!! Are you into Tomgreg? If you're not, that's chill. But, like more Tomgreg people the better. I'd love to hear your thoughts about the show too! :) And like I said before, I really enjoyed your Kendall edit! Did you get a chance to watch my Tomgreg edit? It's called Don't Blame Me, I put it on my Tumblr. (No pressure if you can't)

And I have to ask, because I forgot, what are your pronouns, Cat? I use she/they. I just wanted to ask what you want me to use while referring to you. And let me know if you wanna do another poetry writing swap again.

Anyway, that's it for now! Let me know what you think! I hope to hear from you soon :)

#Cat Anon #Succession #Poetry #Clover speaks #Food

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carriagelamp · 4 years

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February 2020 Book Review

The Last Wish / Sword Of Destiny

Let’s start with the books that currently have me in a stranglehold. I apologize to everyone that actually follows me and watched me descend into fandom pits but whatcha gonna do. So, I was aware of the video game when it came out, but not being a prolific gamer I was intrigued but never bothered getting into it. Then the Netflix series came out, and I was again intrigued... but I suck at sitting down and watching shows. So what the heck I decided, it’s probably mediocre hypermasculine high fantasy but let’s try a book to see what the fuss is all about.

Good god. Guys. It’s real good. And so fucking different from the show. Geralt is actually a really emotional, well-meaning guy who’s starved for positive social interactions and is just trying to do his best. And the books’ consistent themes of colonialism, environmental destruction, forced extinction, and changing eras is... chilling and fascinating and honestly a little too relatable at times. These books have made me laugh and shout and frankly sob. Still a little sexist, cause 90s fantasy, but Geralt is so not the gruff, heartless, manly man character I thought he would be. I am so deeply into these and have just cracked the spine of the next book in the series. If you like high fantasy, I can’t recommend these enough.

The Silver Eyes

I just learnt that there were Five Nights At Freddy’s books, and honestly picked this up from the library as a joke for my brother. We’d played the games back when they first came out, and were into the lore, but lbr they’re more of a meme at this point. Anyway, we ended up reading this out loud to each other, a chapter a night, and I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would. Probably wouldn’t have liked it as much on my own, but the main character was complicated and messy, and the book’s way or portraying trauma was neat. It was nominally horror, and did have the occasional chilling moment, or times it was fun to speculate, it over all it was pretty run of the mill middle grade fiction.

FRNK

Probably the best graphic novel I’ve read this month.

I was howling with laughter while I read it. Good quality Belgium comics, always a treat. This story is about a modern day boy, Frank, who is accidentally thrown back into prehistoric times, where he’s stuck with a bunch of cavemen who haven’t invented the concept of vowels yet. Admittedly my French isn’t great, so it made trying to decipher words with half the letters missing a challenge to say the least, but plenty worth it. I really want to get my hands on book two. I believe there’s an English translation, and I’d recommend giving it a try.

Best Friends

A neat little graphic novel that addresses common growing up issues, about what it means to be friends, stay friends, how to cope with people changing and when it’s time to walk away. Anxiety, being yourself, fitting in, all that sort of stuff. It’s a quick read, very pleasant, and has nice art.

Karen’s Witch

Another cute graphic novel with charming art. I read this at the store while I was waiting for a prescription to be filled. It’s about this five year old (or thereabouts) who is absolutely determined that her neighbour is a witch and by god she is going to prove it or at least scare herself and her friend silly in the process. A fun little read!

Endling: The First

The second book in the Endling series, and all my praise for the first book apply here as well. A super unique high fantasy that gives extinct and threatened species a voice. The book explore themes of war, environmental destruction, sacrifice and loss. You really get to see how much Byx has grown and how much she needs to continue to grow. This book has me so excited for the third, I haven’t read such an emotionally rewarding quest novel in a long time.

Bleach

I found out my library has a billion books of this series and decided to jump into it again for the first time in over a decade. Honestly it’s even better than I remembered? The art is absolutely stunning, Ichigo is such a power fantasy hero, and it’s one of those series with a lot of really loveable characters and a lot of heart. Ichigo is a good guy who you actually feel good liking, which can’t be said for all shonen protags by any means. This is just such a classic and it holds up man. And if you like manga and have never read it? Jump in and enjoy a normal human getting supernatural powers and kicking absolutely enormous monsters’ asses.

Dinotopia: Sabertooth Mountain

This was my favourite Dinotopia book as a kid, and it was still fun to reread. The world of Dinotopia is one separate from the rest of the world, where humanity lives in perfect harmony with many prehistoric creatures that have managed to survive and evolve on the island of Dinotopia. This story is about a crisis brewing, as the sabertooths are cut off from their food supply and are in danger of not only starving but of bringing death to the rest of the mountain as well. While surveying the situation with his older sister, the main character finds himself falling from the airship in the middle of a storm, directly into the valley of starving sabertooths.

I read a bunch of this author’s graphic novels, and they are such feel-good queer lit. This was probably my favourite of the lot, but I also read Tea Dragon Society, Aquicorn Cove, and Princess Princess Ever After. Taking place in a picturesque mountain community, it’s about a girl meeting a guardian dragon who accidentally fell asleep in the mountains a century ago rather than watch over the village like intended. It’s about coming to terms with and loving yourself (and also about super cute little tea dragons).

Just Jaime

Another story that focuses on the complications of middle school, and how friends can grow and change, and when sometimes friendships become toxic and cruel. These are novel/graphic novel hybrids that are very visually appealing, and really do manage to tell very heartfelt stories. This one takes a side character from the earlier two books, and turns her from a very one dimensional, somewhat annoying character, into a fully realized person with her own issues and her own need for growth.

The Life-Changing Magic Of Tidying Up / The Life-Changing Manga Of Tidying Up

Given that I’m not really a non-fiction person and DEFINITELY not a self-help book person, I really enjoyed these (though I didn’t read Spark Joy). I read the manga first, out of curiosity, but enough of it struck true that I decided to try the book as well. Have I cleaned anything up yet? No. But honestly, I can genuinely say that despite being repetitive at points I do truly feel like I got a lot of good out of it, and I feel much more excited and prepared when I do decide to do a big clean next. It really does reframe the relationship you have with your belongings and with yourself. I genuinely love the concept of “sparking joy”.

Bigfoot Boy: The Sound Of Thunder

Technically the last book of the series, whoops. Though honestly having read it I didn’t feel like I missed that much. It’s a Canadian graphic novel and I had... mixed feelings about it. Interesting and exciting in some ways, but the pacing was odd, and honestly I don’t think indigenous voices went into making it (I could be wrong but...) and it reads as kinda... eugh. Problematic. Having a none indigenous author write about a white boy being the guardian of a first nation totem and turning into a bigfoot isn’t a super cool optic.

Bloodchild

I was told “hey this is a really fucked up short story” so I read it, and guess what? It was a really fucked up short story. Would recommend if you want weird alien sex slavery bullshit-- it was a wild ride. And the overall themes obviously went a lot deeper than that, but honestly, it’s like a few dozen pages long if you wanna dig into all the philosophical shit, just give it a read! Uh, heavy content warning, tw tw tw, but a really bizarre, unsettling look at gender and power dynamics and oppression through a scifi lens.

Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIHM

I hadn’t read this book since elementary school so I reread it on a whim. It really is such a charming story. As far as animal stories go, this feels almost like the platonic ideal. Mother mouse is worried about her sick son and winds up compelled to seek out the mysterious rats who live in the rosebush for help, and is not only thrust into her own adventure but learns about the strange past her late husband shared with the rats of NIMH. It’s such a relaxing read, while still managing to be exciting and compelling.

Exploring According to Og the Frog

And one last animal story to round us off. I’d read one of the Humphrey books last month, and check out a couple more from the library for fun. I didn’t enjoy Mysteries According to Humphrey that much, but this one was charming, showing the world through Humphrey’s frog friend Og instead. The same charming type of adventure, but being a frog, Og has a very different attitude and view of the world, which was fun. Very cute elementary kid lit.

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