#it's not often i draw animals which is a common criticism i used to get from family when i was younger

[genericpuff]

Lore Olympus Art Analysis - Getting to the Bottom of It

For ages now it's been a common point of discussion - what's the process involved in Rachel's creation of Lore Olympus?

As a community, we've all discussed and speculated Rachel's process among herself and her assistants and how it seems to result in cheaper art each week. Same face syndrome, the overuse of the multiply tool, the dull backgrounds that often enter nightmare fuel territory, the lack of color vibrancy compared to Season 1, the repetitive poses and shots, the theories that different assistants are handling different aspects of individual panels, the clear lack of buffer, the list goes on and on.

But I think we've finally gotten to the bottom of what's going on. Or at least, deeper than we've gotten before and it feels like now we're closer to fully understanding Rachel's process than ever before.

Normally, I wouldn't care this much about dissecting the steps of creating a comic. Everyone's process is different, and when you're working with a team, that can introduce a whole new layer of understanding. I've worked with my own assistants in the past, trained to work in the animation industry which relies on coordination between people, and fully understand what's required to go into making a finalized piece of work put together by multiple people. All that's to say, having assistants doesn't necessarily mean you do less work.

When it comes to LO, though, I do feel this compulsion to tear into it more because Rachel seems to completely lack this understanding, and it shows in her work.

Before I continue, I want to throw in a quick disclaimer - when we criticize Rachel's art, it's not to throw any of her assistants under the bus. All of her assistants are incredibly skilled in their own right. When I criticize Rachel's art as a whole - regardless of who helped shape it into its final form - I'm criticizing not just the art itself, but her direction. Rachel is, essentially, a director of a team, and how she manages that team reflects how her work looks in the end after it's all been put together. I will be showing pieces of art from her assistants in this essay, none of this is to promote any shame or hate towards these people. This is purely an essay speculating on Rachel's directing capability and how she manages her team and is not meant to be taken as objective fact beyond what I am capable of proving as an outsider looking in. I consider her assistants people who are just being hired to do a job, I do not condone holding them responsible for the nosedive Lore Olympus has taken in quality over the past few years. These are simply points and speculations that myself and the ULO community came to after discussing it at length.

Alright, so, where to begin?

This essay started with me having a simple conversation with @loreolympusminoredits over on Instagram. They had pointed out a couple panels from a recent free episode where you could see the texturing wasn't being applied properly. You have to look really closely, but once you spot it, you can clearly see the outline of a square where the texturing block wasn't repeated.

It's VERY obvious in this last panel of Hades, look along the back of his shirt, you can clearly see the color warping from the texture block overlaid on top of him.

Now, I have a few theories for this on its own, it really depends on what drawing program these assistants are using. Some of them use Clip Studio. Others use Procreate. There is no consistent requirement in workstations or software among the team, which is Rachel's first mistake. There's a reason why the animation and film industry requires everyone to be using Adobe products whether they like it or not - because it keeps things consistent across the board. It doesn't matter how good you are at Clip Studio or how much you like Procreate, you need to be on the same software and hardware as everyone else to ensure that you can access the same tools, brushes, and workflow as the rest of the team. No one wants to have someone working primarily in Clip Studio who can't access the same brushes or files as the people working in Adobe. As much as I personally hate working in Photoshop, if I were to get an industry job, I would be expected to work in Photoshop, no questions asked. It's part of the job.

Moving on from that, this led me to wonder which assistant was doing these panels, because it's clear that this texturing problem is mostly at the end of Episode 242 during the Persephone / Hades conversation. There's also one stand-out feature that tells us it's the same person making these panels - the bobblehead necks.

Bobblehead necks have been a very noticeable feature in the comic's art decline over the past while. They typically happen when a character - especially a female one - is being drawn from the front. They're usually also defined with noticeable jugular and collarbone lines.

So, which assistant is it drawing the bobblehead necks?

Rachel's art team switches up a lot. Sometimes she has 3, sometimes she has as many as 8. Some assistants tag in, others are consistent.

So far the most noticeably consistent assistants in terms of participation since S2.2 (i.e. post-time skip S2) are Dnaeri, HardHeadedWoman, AmyKing89, and HeyItsJaki (as credited on their episodes). They're the usual team credited at the end of episodes, with the exception of maybe one artist not being present or an extra artist tagging in.

Upon checking their Instagrams, I am becoming way more certain of who does what and how Rachel does her process.

Let's start with HeyItsJaki:

Very thick lineart, distinguished collarbones, defined fingernails/fingers. Thick shading underneath the neck. Sometimes pouty lips if the expression calls for it.

Now let's look at HardHeadedWoman:

Very Disney/Warner Bros reminiscent art, with most notably, thick necks and distinguished jawline features on guys and hourglass figures/thin wrists/thin fingers on women.

And then we have Dnaeri:

It's harder to pin down her style because she seems to just draw whatever she's feeling like, but most notably are how she draws hands and collarbones, very similarly to Jaki, but with one noticeable difference - softer and rounder lines and shapes.

The irony is that Dnaeri and HeyItsJaki both have the same name - Jaki - so them having similar tells in their styles is just something I wanted to point out. Just a funny thought.

That said, Dnaeri DID post a drawing of Persephone once in her own style/interpretation, and there are definitely things to note here.

The collarbone distinction. The anatomy of the fingers and toes. The lighter lineart. The little 'dip' along the edge of the smile.

Moving on. Let's talk about the last assistant who I feel deserves a specific mention - AmyKim89.

You see, Amy is what I'm going to call the smoking gun. All thanks to this post:

Recognize that panel? That's the flat of Dream Persephone from Episode 204.

And this is what the final panel looked like.

Now, Webtoons cropping aside (don't mind the seam running through Persephone's chest) this confirms multiple things for us.

1. AmyKim89 was not the one to shade this panel.

2. The assistants are working purely off Rachel's sketches.

3. The assistants can be in charge of their own lining, which would explain the inconsistent lineart throughout each episode.

4. There are no backgrounds present meaning someone else is in charge of the backgrounds.

5. Flats can be changed and added to after the assistant has already done their job.

To talk about #5 first, notice the pantyhose that were added that make her legs disappear into her cloak. The baby's face changing. The added flower and necklace. Her eyes changing direction.

Regarding #1, look at how the shading makes the art so much more dull. The previous version of this panel with just the flats genuinely looks so much better than the finished piece.

This was, as I'm sure you can imagine, a pretty big find. While I'm sure Amy would probably not be happy to see me using her innocent post as proof for my hyperfocused ramblings tearing apart Rachel's process, I'm glad she posted it nonetheless because it finally shows us a smidge of what the process might be like during production.

Going back to the shading really quick - Amy was not the one who shaded that panel. But I did notice that out of every little inconsistent thing in LO, the shading is some of the most consistent, and it's consistently awful. Dull muddy tones, lack of consideration of space or lighting, clearly the multiply tool being used even when it really shouldn't be, placement of shading primarily under the eyes even when it makes the face look too dim to look good.

It's always being done with the same watercolor-like brush, with the same multiplied tones, and the same 'edges' along where the shading hits the light.

We also know that Rachel eyedrops her colors.

I don't think it's farfetched to believe that her assistants likely do too to a degree. Or they're working off color palettes from previous episodes they've done before which is resulting in this color dissonance where characters change colors, sometimes in between panels.

Considering the constant muddy shading, and the fact that the assistants may not be doing it, I believe it's Rachel doing the shading in the post-production. If you need more proof, here's a reel of her shading in Hades with the exact same techniques seen in finalized panels.

Otherwise, if it's not Rachel doing the shading, it could very likely be Dnaeri, as they're one of the longest-running assistants on the team (they came on during S1).

Moving on from that, let's circle back to AmyKim89's drawing of Persephone. She specifies she did the flats and lines for that panel, working off Rachel's sketches. But one noticeable thing is that there's no background.

This lead a bunch of us in ULO to speculate that Rachel is also the one throwing in the background and throwing PNG's of the characters on top.

Proof? How about the fact that there are panels out there with crunchy characters and pristine backgrounds?

I already suspected that the character was zoomed in and the background wasn't, but Amy's post confirms more than that - that the assistants are essentially drawing PNG's which don't get backgrounds until Rachel - or another one of her assistants - adds them.

Here's another panel that I strongly suspect was done by Amy judging by the colors (but the lineart feels like it could be Jaki):

Look at how she's floating in empty space. This wasn't drawn background first and Hestia second, this was drawn with Hestia first and they slapped a background behind her.

It would also explain why we get panels of characters missing their bottom halves or their limbs - because the backgrounds ended up being larger than they were anticipating in the final shot.

There are a whole bunch of things we can speculate on here knowing what we know from past essays and what I've laid out here.

Rachel may only be involved in the beginning and end of these episodes. She does the roughs, hands the sketches out to her assistants, which they flat and line, and she puts in the shading, dialogue/speech bubbles, texturing, and last details after they're all handed in. This would also explain why there are so many typos - lack of time to edit/proofread - and why sometimes there will be characters speaking but their mouths won't be open.

Rachel hands out the sketches to her assistants individually who flat and line it and hand them back. Sometimes they're handed individual panels, other times they're handed entire pages with a few panels on them. This would explain why we can go an entire scene with a character looking one way and then looking completely different by the next.

Think back to all those previous essays. Everything we've learned so far - that Rachel's buffer is miniscule, that she's shading with the multiply tool, that she's clearly only contributing the roughs and few panels that she makes from random drawings she did on a whim and waits until she can find a chance to shoehorn it into the comic.

Rachel started off drawing this comic just on her own. When she took on assistants, there were only two - AmbitiousIcarus and Madd_Joey.

But eventually, she took on more and more. Two became three, three became five, and nowadays, she maintains a consistent art team of 4-6 people per episode, not including herself or the rotating artists who come and go every now and then.

This has been happening steadily since the Episode 50's range of S1.

The summer when Lore Olympus' licensing rights for animation were sold to the Jim Henson Company.

I'm not gonna sit here and tell you that the assistants were the downfall of LO. I think they're all amazing artists, each in their own right - but their art is clearly failing to shine through in the wake of Rachel's poor management and organization. Rather than delegating single people to single roles - lines, flats, shading, texturing, etc. - she's handing things out panel by panel as she sketches them out... and considering how poor her time management is as we've all seen, it's not hard to come to the conclusion that these assistants are all being put in positions where they have to rush out lower quality work. Rachel is haphazardly dividing up the work between more people all the while contributing less and less on her own end in pre-production, post-production, and quality checking as time goes on. The final episodes weren't immediately noticeably bad as soon as she started taking on more assistants, but it's clear Rachel's involvement in the comic and its quality control has been declining rapidly since the Jim Henson purchase.

Again, this isn't to point fingers or assume the worst of anyone, but it really is food for thought. I hope that this was, at the very least, informative for those of us who've wondered over the years what Rachel's process is like. It definitely seems messy from what we can tell on the surface and frankly, if I could be in the same room as Rachel, I'd be using all this as an example of why she needs to manage her team and her time better. But that's not my place to do so. All I can do is speculate on it and spend way too much time writing an essay about it LMAO None of what I've written here is 'proof' of anything, as I'm not in the position to be able to do such a thing - that's reserved solely for Rachel and her assistants - but it's becoming plainly obvious what the workflow looks like and why the comic looks shittier and shittier every week.

All that said, I don't feel like her assistants get nearly enough credit for the work they do for Rachel. She can't even be bothered to remember the name of the guy who edited the books for her (it's Edwin, by the way) and you never see her bring up her assistants when she talks on interviews about how hard she works or how difficult it is to make a webcomic. At this point, Rachel may as well be the Queen of England - all the pomp and reward and credit, with nothing to show for leadership or actual work ethic.

It's not your work we're seeing each week - it's the work of people who are rushing to meet your deadlines, win your awards, and do your homework.

You are the sum of the parts you utilize in your workflow. You are not here purely of your own efforts. It can barely be called 'your work' at this point. Lore Olympus has become the Ship of Theseus - barely recognizable for what it once was after being haphazardly pieced together by the efforts of others.

And that's all I'm gonna say on that.

#lore olympus critical #lo critical #antiloreolympus #anti lore olympus

[monstersdownthepath]

Monster Spotlight: Pugwampi

CR 1/2

Neutral Evil Tiny Fey

Bestiary 2, pg. 144

Like many creatures I’ve been bringing up as of late, the Pugwampi here is one of many species’ of Gremlin, tiny Fey which live to cause misery, and which love living among other sapient races because they find endless joy in breaking things and causing general chaos. Pugwampi stand out a bit in this regard, because they’re universally hated by pretty much every creature that’s capable of hate... even other gremlins, who steer clear of Pugwampi settlements as if they were leper colonies. It should be noted that gremlins usually LOVE working with other gremlins, even those of different species’, which should give you an idea of how unpleasant these things are. Not even the Grimple and their infestations of Gremlin Lice are as despised!

It’s almost enough to draw one’s pity, but you should never pity any gremlin. Pugwampi are hated because they hate everything, cackling loudly at the misfortune and sadness of others and going out of their way to rig up traps and accidents to cause pain and misery. It says a lot that their most common “prank” is smearing sharp objects like nails, wood splinters, and their own weapons with excrement before hiding them in places someone may step on them, lay on them, or prick their fingers. They dig out pits, put up tripwires, break locks, contaminate food, use their 1/day Shatter to destroy small items, and all the other lovely actions we’ve come to appreciate gremlins for over the years, though it’s aided by their ability to Speak With Animals and wrangle beasts of various stripes into aiding them in their schemes. Their favorite? Stirges. The filthy mosquitos are practically pets to the Pugwampi, who are eager to keep their monstrous assistants fed on the blood of any unfortunate that enters their territory.

Like most gremlins, Pugwampi not especially dangerous on their own, even when armed with their preferred weapons--daggers and shortbows--so they often rely on the assistance of their trained beasts to distract or fight back against anything that threatens them. Unless they critically strike, an attack from either weapon does only 1 nonlethal damage, so Pugwampi tend to rely on tricks, traps, and allied animals to batter persistent attackers into submission. Also preventing them from being an outright lethal threat is the fact they’re consummate cowards and will almost never approach any creature it doesn’t have an obvious and measurable advantage over. They pop out of their hiding spots onto to laugh uproariously at a creature that falls for their diseased jokes before scattering into the shadows when their victim gets back to their feet, as the only thing standing between their 6 HP and whatever weapon a victim has is DR 2/cold iron.

... Well, and their Unluck Aura, which is a pretty hefty defense. The reason even other gremlins hate to be around Pugwampi is that each one projects a 20ft, irresistible aura of misfortune that causes any creature inside to roll twice for ANY d20 roll they make and use the lower result. Ironically, this doesn’t affect animals, other gremlins, and gnolls (which Pugwampi view as objects of worship, much to the gnolls’ annoyance), but other gremlins will blame Pugwampi for EVERY bit of bad luck and misfortune they experience even when the dog-faced Fey had nothing to do with it. Aside from the animal/gremlin/gnoll exclusion the aura is completely indiscriminate, afflicting ally and enemy alike and making the little bastards incredibly hard to work with for more skilled villains, even if they manage to bully the Pugwampi into obedience. It’s probably for the best that they evoke revulsion and disgust in other beings, because any villain that realized their potential could have the little buggers sneak around with their +17 to Stealth checks and watch the chaos unfold as the party of adventurers that gave them so much trouble before crumbles beneath their constant disadvantage.

I find it a little funny that even the gnolls they revere see them as pests to be exterminated, but the gnolls can still see the worth of having a few around, locked in cages as pets. It brings to mind the idea of a gnoll throwing a sack with a Pugwampi in it among an adventuring party, treating it like a dangerous explosive or chemical... but the real danger is the aura radiating off it, which a party may not realize is even impacting them until the fight against the gnoll attackers is becoming mysteriously one-sided. A gnoll pack with even one Pugwampi in their fold becomes obnoxiously difficult to harm until the gremlin is slain, and really, gremlins are all about making lives harder, so really they’re succeeding just by doing nothing in these cases.

Any gnoll pack trying to exploit the gremlins had better find a way to neutralize their prey’s luckstones first, though, because even a meager +1 luck bonus to any stat completely shields someone from the Unluck Aura and renders the gremlins utterly useless.

You can read more about them here.

#Monster Spotlight #CR 1 to 5 #Pathfinder #Dungeons and Dragons

[blimbo-buddy]

can you tell us more about madre antre's story/world?

-Cracking knuckles- here we go. Note, this is all still a work in progress, some stuff will change or be removed/added. I'm also open for suggestions and criticism on anything and everything Tw/Cw for: Mentions of abuse, attempted child murder, a lot of war and a lot of death

About the world:

This one is more lacking as I still need to work through some things, however some general base ideas are there

-The location isn't anything specific, not really said what country or state or city it takes place in either

-Though, I draw a lot of inspiration of locations/descriptions from Los Angeles or California as a whole

-A lot of the culture you see with the animals in general is all based off Mexican culture, dialect, language, traditions, etc. I'm planning on integrating more stuff based on other Latine cultures into the world

-Domestic animals almost worship Alebrijes, colorful and vibrant statues that the humans often create. They believe that once you die, you become one of these creatures

-Most animals (specifically domesticated ones) don't view humans as some scary death gods pre-explosion. Post-explosion, their opinions on humans begin to sour up a bit, humans are animals just like them, and animals are neither good or bad. Animals can do harm, yes, but not on the level of mass destruction that humans had caused

-Going along with the previous statement, some animals are dead set on hating humans because of this, blaming all of them for the explosion. Obviously, this is not true, and other animals know this, arguing against these bold claims of humanity being monsters

-Non-domesticated animals (such as foxes or deer) refer to Humans different, often citing them as "Snam/Snamuh", "Elpoep", or "Nosrep", while domesticated animals simply refer to them as Humans. Another common spelling/pronounciation of "Snam/Snamuh" is "Nam/Namuh". Same thing, just remove a letter

-Animal religion will usually depend on the community in question. Sometimes animals of different species will believe in the same thing while groups of one specific animal (such as a clowder of cats or a herd of deer) will believe in the same thing. It all just depends really

-Domestic animals view houses, buildings, cars, and machines as having a symbiotic relationship with animals, more specifically houses. I kind of talk about this in this post but it's not about the story in question

-The opinion of humans isn't set in stone based on whether you are domesticated or not, there are coyotes who love humans for the scraps of food that they leave behind for them and there are dogs who don't trust humans because of the abuse that they were put through. They understand that humans are not all the same just as the other animals are not all the same

-This world (or at least, this area) has been devastated by a recent ongoing war that ravaged the city. The once bustling and prospering place of opportunity for humans and animals alike had devolved into a place of constant fear

-Without getting into the nitty gritty of it all, there has been a lot of casualties that preceded the explosion. Lots of military corruption that led to some soldiers firing at their own citizens, gun fights being a common thing (Which is how Pipit's human died, shot in the head by a stray bullet)

-Post-explosion, a good amount of life is decimated, especially human life. The ones who aren't dead are in the process of dying slowly and painfully

-A large, nearby zoo had recently been destroyed, causing all of the animals who survived the destruction to be let loose into the wild. From what you can expect, this completely set everything upside down as new, invasive species were added into the ecosystem. Overgrazing, over hunting, territory takeovers all transpired.

-Although some zoo animals have formed alliances with some of the other non-zoo animals in agreement to keep the hunting/grazing to a minimum, not taking more than they needed

About Madre Antre:

-When she was a child, she resembled a lykoi (I don't condone the breeding of Lykois due to the problems that arise with their skin)

-Madre Antre can't remember her old name, it hurts her own brain to try, too many bad memories attached.

-Was like a child psychic sorta, she could predict the future that chronologically, extended even past her death in the far off future

-However as her visions grew more and more disturbing, the animals (more specifically the cats) of her small community began to fear this young child

-Rumors started that anything that she said would transpire would come true, good or bad. But only the bad was focused on

-The straw that broke the camel's back was her biggest vision yet: “A Fiery, destructive cloud of Hell, searing the skin of both earth and beast."

-The cats decided that she needed to be killed in order to prevent future tragedies, including the world-ending one

-Her sister helped her escape into the woods and the cats who were going to execute Antre claimed that they had killed Antre

-Her sister had to stay painfully silent, knowing that if she revealed that her sister was still alive, they'd continue to hunt her down. So, she stood by and watched her family scream tears of mourning and depression

-So anyways, back to Antre, she's not really having a good time out in the wild. She eventually finds a seemingly abandoned fallout shelter, however, she finds out the shelter had a large hole in the corner. She didn't think about going deeper in to figure out what it was but, eventually, she did.

-The dug out hole eventually led her into a behemoth of a cave system to take further shelter in. She eventually gets lost.

-She meets a large group of cave salamanders who keep her company. Weird, yes, but they're nice enough to her as long as she doesn't eat them

-Slowly, her fur begins to shrivel away and flutter onto the cave floor due to stress and a bunch of other things that are really hammering into her poor mental state

-Her previous vision (The world-ending one) plagues her thoughts and dreams, she can't rid her mind of it, all of those animals that she witnessed be turned into swirls of dark red dust as they were swept away by the inferno. So, she ventured out of the tunnels to search for supplies. Supplies that she used to paint.

-She felt that painting her visions that she had seen would take her mind off of things, which wasn't a lie! The cave walls were scattered and decorated in beautiful and vibrant paintings that depicted visions, new and old, good and bad.

-As a side note: Antre's brushes were made up of a few items such as grass or dry brush, but she also would scavenge some fallen clumps of her fur to use as a brush.

-But her biggest and most personal project was, you guessed it, the World-Ending Vision. This one took her a long time to complete as she found the biggest wall of the cave, scaling it's massive size to achieve the proportions that she desired. All with the help of her Salamander Cluster to help her out

-Eventually she runs into other animals who they themselves had gotten lost in the caves. She usually helps them find a way out of the caves

-However, some animals came to seek sanctuary from the caves just as she did. Some animals came from abusive households which is why they were there. Unwilling to turn away those who are in need, Antre agrees to let them stay

-One of these animals is a cat named Pipit, who's owner was tragically shot in the head when they were both escaping a bunch of gun fire that had erupted suddenly (Going back to the previous section about the world)

-The animals that she helped leave the caves go on to spread the word about her, referring to her as Madre Antre

-Things are going… decently for Madre Antre I suppose. She's not so lonely, but, she's still plagued by her visions and anxieties of the "Hell Cloud"

-Madre Antre is looked up to for her odd but charming character and her visions plus her wisdom during this period. So, things aren't going bad for her.

-One day, Madre Antre heard the scuffle and worried chatter of the animals within the caves. She followed the voices and told them all to stay within the caves while she checked outside

-Faint, distant sirens delicately filled the air due to the distance they were at, her rheumy eyes spotted an odd black blot fall from the sky like an angel falling from grace

-It plunged into the earth and Madre Antre felt her heart plunge with it. She gazed into it's eyes, into it's fiery, destructive soul. A Fiery, destructive cloud of Hell.

#blimbo rambles #ask #madre antre #untitled animal war story #going to keep this as a temporary tag until a title can be created #abuse mention #ask me to tag in case I missed anything #massive post #hey I can use that tag now #it fits real well now. shocker

[canmom]

assorted manga comments

Berserk is back! I imagine that will inspire some complicated feelings for Kouji Mori, but I’m glad he has the means to continue his friend’s life’s work. It is something I very much want to do for Fall - I can’t become a translator like her, although I am now making progress in Japanese, but I wish to try and keep alive her love of languages and attitude towards life. If any of my friends left an unfinished work, and I thought they’d trust me to finish it, I would want to do the same.

Anyway, these new chapters don’t really move things forward too much, but they do show that Mori et al. can hit the same incredible visual complexity that they were under Miura. Not surprising because I’m sure they were drawing a lot of the manga even before Miura died. I just hope that they’re getting to work at a reasonable pace, because one person dying of likely overwork is already far, far too many.

I started reading Fire Punch, the earlier manga by Chainsaw Man author Tatsuki Fujimoto. I also read his one-shot Goodbye, Eri. It’s very interesting seeing multiple works by the same author like this: you get a sense of what motifs they find especially interesting, which in Fujimoto’s case seems to be getting dommed by a girl who’s obsessed with movies, and characters with healing factors.

Fire Punch is a big step up in grimdark compared to Chainsaw Man - it’s rare to go a chapter without at least one of attempted (sometimes actual) rape, slavery or dismemberment. It is an amoral world where human life has become very cheap and those with power are unafraid to treat people entirely instrumentally - where people with superpowers are common but likely to be used as human batteries or sources of meat. In many ways it reminds me of the earlier chapters of Berserk, but there is a certain harsh dryness to it, in contrast to Berserk’s shōjo-influenced emphasis on emotion; characters state their desires and intentions plainly, and it focuses often on characters who treat violence dispassionately. It doesn’t yet have the dash of humour that came in with Chainsaw Man, and its action compositions haven’t quite reached the same unbelievable level, but you can see the ingredients of Chainsaw Man.

I think Fujimoto is a very interesting author; he has a deep fascination with the structures of domination and cruelty, but also a very interesting eye towards narrative structure and especially cinema. Much like the film nerd guy in Paprika, characters will talk about filmmaking in ways that will be reflected in the design of the comic itself. Both Fire Punch and Goodbye Eri feature the device of a movie-obsessed character wanting to make someone’s life into a movie by filming everything that happens; in Fire Punch she’s much more determined to direct and edit, while Eri is more of a critic bringing out the art in the main character, and it does some fun things blurring the lines of what’s ‘real’.

The visual style of all three of these manga - especially Goodbye Eri with its motion blur, and most of the panels diegetically being shot from the POV of a camera - also makes heavy reference to cinema. Fujimoto’s ‘camera’ is very cinematic: he’s very good at drawing faces in perspective from a variety of angles, which allows quite subtle body language to be conveyed. And he loves his huge special effects panels of a huge building getting smashed to pieces. But despite this, his drawings of characters - typically with minimal shading - tend to feel like they have an appealing simplicity with the very even, neat lines. He has a particular way of drawing eyes which is very characteristic, I think. I should do some studies of it. His fire effects in Fire Punch meanwhile are absolutely fantastic - incredible use of value and texture in a black and white medium.

Made in Abyss also updated - plus we have a continuation of the anime to look forward to soon so that’s exciting. It’s the start of a new arc, which seems to mean a really massive update of something like 90 pages, which bring a bunch of new characters, including a really big girl which is fun... the new guys seem surprisingly sympathetic at first glance, which means Tsukishi probably has something really horrifying waiting round the corner. That man can do some crazy things with tone and rounded shapes - the sense of depth in some of his backgrounds! The MCs are getting really close to the bottom of the Abyss, so I imagine some of those long running plot arcs might come to a head - if not in this arc then maybe in the next. Honestly I’m kind of looking forward of the anime treating the previous arc just because there were so many characters to keep track of, so a second run through would probably be good lmao.

And... It’s not manga, but also read a few pages of Finder by Carla Speed McNeill. I really want to get a physical copy, but oof, £40 per collected volume is a lot of money. I think this is definitely a series I want to be able to fully concentrate on, so expect detailed commentary on that later haha...

#manga #berserk #fire punch #goodbye eri #made in abyss

[jbt7493]

(continuation of previous DF animalpeople post)

which you probably want to read first for context, but i made it a new post so i could put spoilers under a cut and because it is kinda a separate idea from that posts considerations. speaking of which, rather long post and also it contains dwarf fortress spoilers at the very end.

exclusively aquatic people - can't get them normally whether in fortress or adventure mode, but there's an interesting idea of having either an exclusively aquatic fortress or a separate section of your fortress with their own flooded workshops and beds and stuff (can they still use them though? would that even work?). the only reason they would be interesting despite this inconvenience and the possibility of them not even functioning, where amphibious people basically dont matter, is the species - sperm whale people are even fucking bigger than elephant people (5x more, jesus), and ?from what i can tell? cuttlefish, squid, and octupus people actually get the full set of limbs from the original animal plus 2 arms and 2 legs, so they have a ton of arms? but thats of dubious use since i think the main value draw of that is using more shields and its gonna be hard to field your aquatic-people as soldiers, lol.

anyway i mean idk how much of a benefit to productivity the extra strength of an elephant person is vs the value for combat, and even then, i would assume it plateaus long before you get to being 200 times the size of a dwarf. i guess maybe you could use dwarves for convenient surface work and then if a megabeast shows up you use forbidding to force them through an underwater path where a crack team of a dozen supersoldiers lay in wait. actually oh man that's interesting. if they're able to sleep and use training halls normally so long as you have a fully submerged area of your fort, and you dont care about them crafting (even better to ensure theyre as trained as possible), all you need to deal with is dropping meals and gear into the water for them, instead of worrying about getting items *they* craft out of the water.

a well equipped and trained dwarven squad can handle most megabeasts but some can still be a problem; assuming you can produce equipment for spermwhalepeople normally, i think even if your sperm whale people soldiers are only mediocre in skill, they will be larger and stronger than most megabeasts. a dwarf with good armor can take some serious hits from creatures far larger than it, but a spermwhaleperson with good armor? i think even when they take a hit it would barely do anything to them. maybe i dont understand the way damage accumulates on large creatures though, idk.

as for weapons, obviously a huge monster has just a lot of force behind their attacks, but their contact area for attacks are big and the material hardness isnt that high. the strength of a megabeast but using steel (or divine metal or adamantine) material characteristics, and the contact area of a weapon allowing it to do critical damage more often against any defenses. the only thing that would trump it in defensive capabilities would be procgen megabeasts with metal bodies, and even then, because of the contact area of a weapon vs natural attacks, they should fall. plus your soldiers have combat skills and also, masterwork gear is super effective so that narrows the gap a little bit. definitely still a risk, but i mean. metal procgen monsters decimate any normal fort unless you can permanently trap them or you use an atom smasher to kill them, and here we're talking about you might lose a couple soldiers in a frontal fight of one squad vs one megabeast. oh, also special attacks from procgen creatures. actually those matter a lot, your sperm whale supersoldiers are still vulnerable to syndromes.

SPOILERS AHEAD

but uh. I mean, okay, they're never fighting angels because they're exclusively stationed in their underwater tank and can't travel over land to a vault (also, that isn't a common occurrance anyway and history/mission combat works differently from combat in the normal game area such that (i'm told) a few well equipped and skilled squads can successfully take a vault even if they'd be annihilated by the same angels if the fight took place in the fort. but demons you fight in the fort have grand master combat skills and there are *tons* of them, whereas even with the terrifying prospect of the metal bodied forgotten beast or titan, there's only one of them vs your whole squad. plus against multiple demons its even more likely that the vulnerability of syndromes ends up fucking you over.

i would have sworn that demons and angels can also get a full set of divine metal masterwork gear but i think that might be only true for archangels and ?possibly also unique demons in spires?. in any case, that uh. rather closes the gap that was created by being able to use dwarven equipment, and even overcomes it, but those you only fight one on one so you have the advantage of numbers instead of like thirty HFS clowns.

also uh, despite all of this waxing on about the power of having soldiers that are literally *even bigger* than megabeasts (by fuckin 20%!!!), i think its worthy of consideration whether you could just, yknow, have elephantpeople instead. just seems a lot easier, theyre still goddamn huge, probably a hell of a lot easier to have a whole squadron of them compared to dealing with your second-fort-inside-your-fort and needing to like fenagle to get megabeasts to pathfind through the underwater chamber instead of just sending a squad to kill them with minimal effort. plus you could preemptively hunt down beasts in the caverns to make it safe for your dwarves to go down there instead of needing to react. and like, we know that number beats size from existing dwarf vs megabeast combat. so its pretty certain that 5 elephantpeople drastically outperform 1 spermwhaleperson.

[bedlessbug]

https://ir.canterbury.ac.nz/server/api/core/bitstreams/1e4f6476-2e5e-44b2-b041-ff33fc85c6ba/content

This combination of estrangement and cognition is important as a tool of distance or tension: placing action or concerns in a remote time or location is a common tactic that allows the familiar to be critically assessed.

Such tactics of defamiliarisation and refamiliarisation are especially crucial within utopian fiction as part of a central strategy of contrast and criticism with the immediate.

For Fredric Jameson, utopian desires are often framed in relations of antinomy: each text presents what is desired as opposed to that which is not, and one utopia may be the antithesis of another.

As part this focus, the utopian body is a site of multiple significance in speculative literature: at once, utopian tropes encourage regard for society, where the utopian body is a body corporate or social body, but community goals and form can also be revealed in the individual body. In utopian fiction, viewing the body is viewing a sign or relation to the whole, whether a representative microcosm or transgressive example

: from Descartes onwards Humanism has been constituted by anthropocentric definitions of the human against the other: sometimes other humans, but particularly against that which is not human: the mechanic or the animal, for example (through traits like rationality, opposable thumbs, tool-use and language).

In the last decades, different forms of posthumanist thought have arisen that challenge this centrality and latently static position of the human, either through emphasizing the ex-centric nature of the human alongside other subjects, or even promoting “becoming other”.

posthuman recognition of non human subjects as part of a wider community

I draw a sharp line between the schizoid personality and actual schizophrenia, which I have the utmost respect for, and for the people who do it--or have it, whatever. I see it this way: the schizoid personality overuses his thinking function at the expense of his feeling function (in Jungian terms) and so has inappropriate or flattened affect; he is android-like. But in schizophrenia, the denied feeling function breaks through from the unconscious in an effort to establish balance and parity between the functions. Therefore it can be said that in essence I regard what is called "schizophrenia" as an attempt by a one-sided mind to compensate and achieve wholeness: schizophrenia is a brave journey into the realm of the archetypes, and those who take it--who will no longer settle for the cold schizoid personality--are to be honored. Many never survive this journey, and so trade imbalance for total chaos, which is tragic. Others, however, return from the journey in a state of wholeness; they are the fortunate ones, the truly sane. Thus I see schizophrenia as closer to sanity (whatever that may mean) than the schizoid is. The terrible danger about the schizoid is that he can function; he can even get hold of a position of power over others, whereas the lurid schizophrenic wears a palpable tag saying, "I am nuts, pay no attention to me.”

The novel’s protagonist, Gurgeh, ironically displays boredom with the safety of the Culture’s taste and sensibilities and is tricked into engagement with the nostalgic appeals of the “organic” primitive: the embodied appeals of barbarism, violence and sensual agency of a fully-immersive and highly-complex game played in a distant, byzantine empire of Azad.

[alteredphoenix]

I've been doing (very admittedly off-model) character reference sketches of other OCs that will be featuring in Airi's story, and I had in mind an art piece of one who serves as her teacher - a reversal of the Old Master trope, where it’s a young girl that is actually Really 700 Years Old/Older Than They Look.

This is Iryna, pictured here with the ghostly shade of a large wolf familiar who fell in battle against the criminal elf cartels and had his domain exploited of resources. He responds to the name Lupara, yet no one is certain if that is his real name. Although he holds distrust towards earthwalkers, he aligns himself with Iryna for a goal they share: vengeance - and justice - toward the cartels for the crimes they have committed against them.

History books do not say what became of Lupara; for elementals, death is not the end, and death surely should not stop Lupara from becoming praja, or magic, made manifest. It can be assumed that after their journey he remained with Iryna as an equal and mentor, observing man and familiar and demon in their explorations.

As for what became of Iryna...well, that is a story for another day.

#armi's ocs #armi's art #traditional sketch #traditional art #drawing #this piece was a blast to work on #it's not often i draw animals which is a common criticism i used to get from family when i was younger #fun fact: the bone mask lupara is wearing was originally going to be an elf skull #but i wanted a punkish aesthetic to mesh with iryna's classic lolita design #if you look really closely you can see the itty-bitty wolf mask on iryna's choker lol #this symbolizes her bond with lupara #where she takes inspiration from since the punkcore design comes from him #i wanted to throw in her shotgun too but by the time i had done the inking it was too late to throw it in #so all you see are the shotgun ammo pouches #i had to look up the witcher wolf school design to get the mask right #it was supposed to mold with lupara's skull #but the end result looks like a cross between the wolf amulet & '90s mecha faces #eh it works either way #daemon familiar

[absolutebl]

Can you talk about BL that ‘feels like fanfiction’? Here and elsewhere I’ve seen BLs described as ‘feeling like fanfic,’ but what does ‘fanfiction-like’ connote/denote? Is it pejorative? Is ‘fanfickiness’ defined by tropes, or plot structure, or pacing? I might be asking what countries’ BLs feel more fanficky, but are webnovel-to-screen adaptations or manga/manhwa-to-screen more fanficky usually? How is fanfic-community taste/$$$ shaping BL texts (originals/adaptations) lately? TY ILY help plz

BL that has a Fanfic Style 

Ah it's a commentary on narrative style. And not pejorative. At least not from me.

I think fanfic-ness is defined by narrative style, or lack of one. Fanfic rarely has an intentional narrative arc or structure (so no 3 act or kishōtenketsu or anything like that). Most fanfic isn’t planned out or outlined from start to finish, as a story, (intentional or instinctual planning) the way traditionally published books are. It doesn't follow romance beats, or a narrative chassis like the hero or heroine's journey, save the cat, etc.... OF COURSE THERE ARE EXCEPTIONS. Don’t fucking @ me in a huff you drama queens. 

It's more episodic, in that the distribution of tension (and peril) is less predictable (kiss at 1/3, relationship crisis at 1/2, confession at 2/3, twist at 3/4, etc...) and more based on reader retention from one installment to the next. So the idea is more that each segment needs a hook and a draw to retain readers for the next one. 

Frankly in BL this is owed to webtoons and manga more than fanfic, but for writers and narrative analysis critics, fanfic makes a better reference point.

This style is particularly common in Thai BL because of Love Sick and then Make It Right which started the trend in Thai BL. And these two shows spawned what I like to call the Thai pulps, a whole tradition in Thai BL that acts a lot more like fanfic than anything else.

There's often multiple couples and an ensemble cast. Sometimes one couple is given more attention than others (see Gen Y; Top Secret Together; You're My Sky), sometimes two couples are weighted relatively equally with a few other couples (Why R U?), and sometimes it just a big joyous mess (see a few Pinoy dramas).

So the viewer appeal for something in this fanfic arena is more like a soap opera or medical drama etc... Viewers are following the series for character interactions first (plot second, if there is plot). Often we’re bought in not even for the main pair. We tune in because we like side couples. We accept that some of those side pairs might not even end up getting together and we might have to wait for a second season.

For older viewers (who have no soap opera background) fanfic style BL can be a turn off. And we can lash out in frustration over the lack of a narrative arc. I tend to prefer a “clean narrative arc and strong point of view” myself (I started out as a reader of romance, than then yaoi, not a watcher of romance or anime). I'll get annoyed when a show “waffles too much.” I'm learning, however, to chek myself and appreciate this style as a different art form. 

And then Gen Y 2 happens and I get mad all over again.

For most viewers who grew up with fanfic and reading it, there's no barrier to entry on BLs of this type, it's just a different kind of story structure. Or they're okay with the lack of it.

Neither is better or worse, they just both ARE.

(Incidentally there are now MAJOR authors who started in fanfic and still use this style and some of the more frowned up (but WILDLY popular trope) like Mary Sue, they just sell so well big publishing whistles softly to itself and turns a blind eye: Stephenie Meyer, E. L. James, Cassandra Claire. I don’t know how she started but Sarah Maas also uses this style. These tend to be authors who are wildly popular and pillorized by critics. Of course.) 

So yeah, what the hell do the critics know? Well they know what they once learned about in school mainly. Which means they tend to be behind the times. 

ALSO

There are legitimately some BLs that started out as fanfic. Nitiman was originally a GOT7 fic about Jinyoung and Jay B. Which, frankly, I prefer not to think about. 

(I’m one of those who draws the line at IRL fanfic... sorry. I know too many celebrities personally to find that anything but really quite gross. Personal hang up. Call it a trigger if it pleases you.) 

(source)

#asked and answered #thai bl #thai bl pulp #thai pulps #adapted from a manga #live action yaoi #story structure

[willowbirds]

Characters and Glasses in Western Animation

It’s been a while since I have talked about art and characters / OCs. I thought this would be a good time to discuss characters with glasses since Disney’s Encanto is coming out really soon. So let’s gets started.

First, I want to talk about the use of glasses on characters. More specifically, current characters with glasses and what they represent in shows and movies. When you think of characters with glasses you might picture Pidge from Voltron, Velma from Scooby Doo, Sadness from Inside Out, or Tech from the Bad Batch (I know tech wears goggles but it still counts). These characters all have a few things in common: They are side characters and are anxious or nerdy. There haven’t been many characters, or any characters, that wear glasses that are courageous, the leader, and anything other then nerdy. Where are they? Well, I don’t know.

Glasses are worn by so many people all around the world. I mean, I’m the only one in my house hold that DOESN’T wear glasses. I have friends who wear glasses, I’ve seen people walking down the street wearing glasses, so why don’t we see more protagonists characters wearing glasses?

“But what about Harry Potter?” I hear you asking. Well 1: he’s not animated, but that’s not important. My next point is: It’s not that there isn’t tones of strong, not stereotypically nerdy protagonists. It’s that that there are barely any strong, not stereotypically nerdy protagonists that are women. The only strong, glasses wearing female protagonist I can think of is Mirabel from Encanto, and the movie hasn’t come out yet. For some reason in media, women who wear glasses are often the anxious bookworms, shy and reserved best friends, or are in nerdy roles that aren’t the leads. I don’t want to go into the topic of female leads at the moment since that is a whole other conversation, but it seems that when a male protagonist has glasses he is seen as handsome and a capable adult, but when a female protagonist has glasses she is considered cute, anxious, and nerdy. And that is kinda a problem. Hopefully with Encanto coming up, maybe we’ll start to see more women lead characters wearing big, round glasses, square glasses, and other shaped glasses in the future that aren’t anxious bookworms.

Now what about fanart and head canons? What if there is a character that you really like and you want to draw them with glasses or you head canon them with glasses? Maybe because you have glasses and you identify with the character, or you just think they would look good in glasses? Go for it! Nothing is stopping you!

Now because I’m hyperfixated on Critical Role, I wanted to address some discourse happening in fandom about this particular discussion. Now CritRole has discourse all the time, and apparently there is discourse about people drawing Imogen wearing glasses. I don’t have every single detail about it since I can’t find certain posts, but I think the discourse is getting a bit out of hand. Now I’ve heard people saying that drawing Imogen with glasses with the intention of making her look cuter is infantilizing her. Which I obviously understand the concern there and that something no one should be doing, but most people I see giving her glasses aren’t doing it because they are infantilizing her, but because they just want to give her glasses. Now do I think she’s cute with glasses? Yes. But I’m a disaster of a Lesbian and thought she was cute without glasses. If she has glasses or not I’m still gonna think she’s gorgeous. Besides, Imogen’s player Laura Bailey wears glasses herself! That’s one of the reasons why I gave Imogen glasses! That and because I doodled her in math class one day with glasses and it kinda stuck.

So to wrap up the Critical Role side of this post: If you want to draw Imogen with glasses because you wear glasses, you think she looks good in glasses, or it just kinda happened and you just want to keep doing it? Go for it! You are your own person and you can make your own choices. Just don’t infantilize ANYONE or I will smack you the way Dorian smacked Bertrand. Besides, wouldn’t a powerful, strong willed, capable young woman wearing glasses who isn’t stereotypically nerdy be a good thing? I was just talking about how we need more characters like that. Just saying. (I would talk about this a bit more in depth, but like I stated earlier I need to do a bit more research and I don’t want to get wrapped up in this discourse anymore then I probably already will).

To wrap this up: Let more female protagonists be strong willed and have glasses, give your OCs glasses, draw your favourite characters wearing glasses, and don’t let anyone tell you you can’t draw what you want to see in the world.

- Willow Bird

#Spoons talks about art #OCs #characters #original character #characters with glasses #disney encanto #encanto #mirabel madrigal #critical role #critical role campaign 3 #imogen #let people draw imogen with glasses if they want to

[queen-of-my-goofball-army]

Undiagnosed Autism-spectrum disorder in The Michells Vs The Machines

I'm sure that more well educated people have put two and two together in this film but I really, really want to put my own spin on it from my experience. For me, as an aspie, film is one of my biggest interests. I love studying and more than anything I love watching and rewatching films. My latest favorite movie was one that I just watched last night for my family movie night, The Michells Vs The Machines. I also went 17 years of my life asking myself the same question that both Rick and his daughter ask each other, what is wrong with him/her?

Well, I'll tell you, in my firmly undiagnosed autistic opinion for far too long, that this family is full of people with undiagnosed autism spectrum disorder. When I was watching it with my parents my mom made the comment that "the dad was a jerk" and maybe "he just didn't love his daughter enough to let her be her own person." I thought that was so not seeing the bigger picture even though it was only fifteen minutes into the film. I have felt like Katie so much with my own dad. My dad is a computer nerd and a physics major for those of you that don't talk to me very often. That means in laminas terms that he's extremely smart. Way smarter than I will ever be in my entire life. Both of my parents are insanely smart in their own rights. My mom is a CPA accountant. But that isn't what I wanted to talk about here. I want to discuss the effect of undiagnosed autism and what it can do to a whole family when they all have it and just don't know that they do. This will probably go on for quite some time so you may stop here or read below the cut because this also has the probablity of getting super, duper personal.

We'll start with Katie! To me, Katie is one of the most relatable characters that I have ever come across. She's a film nerd, which alone has made her supremely relatable as somebody who is thinking about going into a degree in film studies. I am more of a critic of film than somebody who wants to make her own film but nonetheless, there were SO many little moments that I related to. The first thing that I personally noticed and related to was the stimming technique that Katie has. She chews on her hoodie strings. As somebody who has chewed on the drawstrings of hoodies far too often long before I was officially put into the Aspergers box. Aspies are also known to stick with one "special interest" for the rest of their lives if it's one that is wide enough and varied enough to make it applicable. For Katie, that's film. For me that's animation. I appreciated that little detail of most of her dialogue being references to other films because as a lover of films and movies in general I could go for days on just fumes and movie references that nobody else understands. The little things from her hair being perpetually messy (same that's a whole ass mood like I just learned over quarantine how to tye my own hair back), only having one earring in her ear at all times, the way that she dresses and draws on her own hands, this was just me when I was first in high school. I was one of the few people that wore shorts underneath all my skirts/dresses. Everyone who knew about looked at me like I had grown a third eyeball.

Aaron, the younger brother, also just oozes spectrum lil buddy out of his every pore from his being. I do think that they should have picked somebody capable of doing a bit of a younger sounding voice (I know what they were going for, but like Ben Schwartz has become a huge deal in both voice acting and live action before switching mediums.) His special interest is actually quite a common one, he loves dinosaurs. I've met a bunch of people on the spectrum that are fascinated by dinos and what they meant for the world as well as the universe as a whole. To me, there was one scene specifically that was the scene where Katie was lightly teasing him when they were going to the half assed dinosaur extravaganza. For me, this was SO relatable because both of my parents will mess with me about my interests most of the time it's when we go to Disneyland, they'll tell me that we actually aren't going to land of magic but to Timbuckto (hopefully one day they'll say some place else just to switch things up.) I related so hard to Aaron's protesting and whining in this scene since that is always my reaction to doing something that I want to do but get told that I can't do that thing.

Linda is more of your traditional mom but I think that she's on the spectrum as well. Just a more... normalized version as opposed to her family. She's able to be a teacher, she's able to interact somewhat normally around her neighbors. If anything, she reminded me of my own mom. This independent, takes nobody's trash (especially not her husband's), strong minded, and amazing mother who is completely in control of everything. She knows the special interests of her children and is constantly thinking of what will make them happy. Whether it be taking a detour for something dinosaur related, reminding her daughter that her dad loves her no matter what, and even something as simple as watching something that her daughter made and put her heart and soul into. I can't tell you how many times my mom has watched something with me. She watched my first anime Soul Eater with me when I was 12 and ever since then has been trying to get me to watch other shows with her. She's a lot like Linda, your loving, but firm mother who just wants her family to work things out.

Whew boy. This one is going to be probably where I cry. Comparing my dad to Rick is... something that I did consistently when I was watching the film. He's the strong but silent type usually, unless your me and he's just this constant annoyance when I'm trying to do something. He could be seen as just a "Jerk" but I think that is the undiagnosed aspie talking. Rick and Katie just struggle so hard to see eye to eye because their special interests can't intersect to save their lives. This, this hurt me because so often I struggle to relate to my dad. Especially when he talks to me about computers or physics. Now I took physics but without having been in quarantine and having him as my live in tutor I would have failed, not gotten an A. This has resulted me in saying things that I don't mean in the heat of the moment when we do argue. It doesn't happen nearly as much as it used to back when I was in middle school but when it happened it was because of one thing. I lied. I used to lie a lot because I felt so unworthy of being his daughter because on my best days I am not technically smart. You want to know how many nations of the world there were in 1991 when the original Animaniacs was airing? You want to hear my Dot Warner impression? Did you ever wonder how to recognize a specific voice when your watching anime? Have you ever had to watch a panel of your favorite anime voice actor just to laugh at something? No, well I did. But ever since I have started taking a quarter off from community college I have realized something. I am not technically smart. I struggle at learning the rules for math. My dad can do this with his eyes closed but me, I struggle and look like a complete moron. It took years for my dad and I to see eye to eye. Sometimes I still wonder if I was the product of some laboratory experiment of what would happen if two intelligent people came together, fell in love, and expecting that the daughter was smart I was the reject. Watching this movie with my dad I saw so much of my relationship with him on the screen. Struggling to relate to one another, fighting and getting into arguments about petty things, and not being able to be in the same room as one another without heated words because I didn't get him.

The scene that I related to the most when it was in terms of how much Katie just doesn't understand her dad was after he was nabbed by the machines. When Aaron asked her why she said those things to their dad and her simple answer was "I don't know." This. This right here was when I saw me. So many times I've gotten into heated arguments with my dad when he has simply annoyed me at the wrong time and I've just blown up in his face. Then I regret my actions and not know how to apologize for losing my temper with him because "I don't know" just doesn't seem like a nearly acceptable answer. I felt this in my soul because it happened especially often before I was diagnosed.

When I was diagnosed, things started to get better with my dad and I. We haven't had a fight in nearly four years now. He watches cartoons with me now to try and relate to me, it's mostly Pinky and The Brain but it's more than I could have ever asked for. I love my dad so much, more than anything in the entire world. This movie is so, so good at telling a story about how a family of undiagnosed aspie's and people on the spectrum struggle to relate to one another because their special interests are different.

Special interests and family's are especially difficult and I applaud this movie so loud because of the way that it was able to treat the subject matter with integrity and honesty. I'm sorry if this analysis got a little bit long in the toof but thank you for sticking with me! I really hope that if you watched the film you loved my analysis.

#the mitchells vs the machines #aspergers #movie analysis #denki shut up #nobody cares about your emotional backstory #long post #this took me over an hour because I kept crying

[ruby-whistler]

the difference between static and dynamic characters on the dream smp

Hi, hello, it's Ruby, back with another PSA because this fandom (specifically the people on Twitter) keeps getting worse.

/dsmp /rp

Recently, people started claiming c!Techno was boring because he never had any character development.

Now, this may come as a surprise to some of you, but if you in any capacity decide to study the ins and outs of creative writing, you'd learn that characters don't need to have character development to be compelling, loved by the audience, and have a complex personality.

This is what is called a static character. Not to be confused with flat characters. What's the difference?

Most articles seem to agree on this;

"Static characters should not be confused or mixed up with flat, one-dimensional characters. Though neither changes as the story progresses, if a character remains unchanged, it does not mean that he is one-dimensional like a flat character. A static character can be perfectly interesting, like Sherlock Holmes, who is completely ingenious, eccentric, and sometimes jerky. He never changes, but the audience still loves him. Thus, a static character could be the protagonist too, and a flat character, on the other hand, only plays a side role in the story." - ( link to definition )

Static characters are ones that don't experience any personal growth during the span of the story. They're often used in writing, because they're realistic and can be interesting if well-written. This article provides examples such as the aforementioned Sherlock Holmes, Captain America from The Avengers, and TommyInnit from the Drea- [gunshots]

But in all seriousness, c!Tommy is very easily a static character; a lot of the criticism of his character is about the fact that he doesn't change. He does gain experience and new relationships, he does suffer and becomes more and more traumatized, he does make choices out of impulse or emotion, but none of that is character development - he never overcomes his character flaws, including selfishness, stubbornness, and a lack of compassion or empathy for others. And I do not blame him for it as a person, and I do not consider him a badly-written character, even if he's a little frustrating to watch sometimes.

c!Tommy has two main reasons why he remains a static character.

a) he doesn't live in a constructive environment

It is normal for boys Tommy's age to be low on empathy. It's completely normal for them to be chaotic, immature pricks, because that is part of their growth. All of this would be just fine if c!Tommy was growing up in a highschool; however, he in actuality grew up on a land ruled by politics, wars and conflict.

I do not like using the age excuse, because I do not believe it makes his bad choices any more justified, but it's easy to realize why him being in such a position could stunt his personal growth.

At that age, you need guidance, whether it be from teachers, parents, or whatever other figures you're able to find around you. Usually, it is not difficult to find good people to look up to in today's world, but for c!Tommy, that isn't true.

In the pre-L'Manberg, post-Tommy era, there was moderate peace. Yes, there were conflicts, but none of them were damaging in the long term for anyone involved, and they were chaotic scuffles more than fights of ideals.

Once c!Wilbur came along, c!Tommy latched onto him. We all know how that went.

None of the adults Tommy had looked up to were in any capacity helpful to him growing or becoming a better person. He helped lead a revolution to help Wilbur gain power, he was lead to help Wilbur lead and unfair election, and witnessed the breakdown of the man he trusted shortly after. He was subjected to emotional manipulation by Dream, and then came to the wrong person for help. None of these things are reasons for positive change.

b) it's his major character flaw

Even in the few chances he had at genuine change, at forgiveness, at letting go, all provided by the environment or people around him, he didn't take them. Tommy doesn't like change, he fights it, and that is why he always loses. He doesn't want to change for the better, and he despises himself when he changes for the worse.

He looks for peace in a lack of activity, growth, or development. He searches for happiness in not letting go of the past, but hanging onto it for dear life, terrified that the people around him might change because he doesn't want to. And that is why, as long as he keeps this mindset, he'll never find it.

While other characters, such as Tubbo, Dream, Wilbur or Quackity seek to change the world around them, for the better or the worse, to rewind or to progress, and are willing to change themselves accordingly, Tommy does the opposite, because his biggest fear is people drifting apart and leaving him behind.

Let's get back to the point, then; what makes Technoblade a static character, and a good one at that?

His motivation is simple; he is a lawful character who sticks to his morals through thick and thin, follows a strict inner code, and is loyal to people above all.

On top of that, he is given no reason to change his morals.

No one's arguments against c!Techno have ever made much sense, let's be honest, and ever since he'd entered the server, Techno's been proven right over and over and over again.

He saw Wilbur face the consequences of having power over other people and then losing it, seeing the influence of corruption on the man he worked with. He was forced by the government to kill another person, to kill an ally, to kill an innocent. He was betrayed and used by the Pogtopian revolution, which knowingly kept things from Techno and fought to seize power, rather than destroy it. He was unfairly executed without a trial by corrupt politicians just absolutely demolishing the Geneva convention, holy crap people call Techno a war criminal, just in that one stream New L'Manberg commited so many war crimes-

Point stands that people say one thing and then do the other. Talk of freedom and then force people to do things (and no, forcing people not to force other people to do things doesn't count nor does it make Techno a hypocrite, get a better argument). Techno was never manipulated or swayed to someone's side against his ideals because he's not a man of words; he believes in what he sees, not what people tell him, especially since he's been repeatedly lied to.

That is the first thing a good static character needs; a strong motivation. Through everything that's happened, I'd say without a doubt that Technoblade has the strongest motivation out of everyone, which is to emancipate people from the tyranny of their rulers - not just sing about it and then establish a dictatorship - but to in fact do it, no matter the cost.

He's a very Paragon-type character, which is a common type of static; his moral code is too strong to allow emotional change.

Another thing a static character needs is personality. And Techno - if you watch his streams, not just others' perspectives - has a lot of that. From his bond with Phil and Ranboo to fondness of animals to sense of humour, the character is entertaining to watch and follow. You know what to expect of him, you know he won't betray, and that despite the flaws he has he will not let personal issues hold him back. He wins because he trains, and he puts hours into pulling crazy stunts, and he's persistent - it's satisfying for the people watching his perspective to see his efforts pay off.

His interactions with others are characterized by an attempt at kindness, no matter how many times he might fail at separating his personal life from the ideals he's pursuing.

And that is compelling! To draw parallels to Tommy again, the kid has so much personality that other characters could borrow from him and he'd still be fun to watch!

Neither Tommy nor Techno are flat characters, and I think that is the mistake a lot of people make when misinterpreting both the characters; Tommy and Techno are amazing examples of great static characters in fiction, and I'd like to applaud cc!Tommy and cc!Techno for being brilliant writers.

#dream smp #c!techno #c!tommy #dsmp analysis #c!techno analysis #c!tommy analysis #tommyinnit #technoblade #writing #dsmp fandom critical #long post under cut

[panvani]

Mochizuki Jun The Case Study of Vanitas Anime da Vinci Interview - pt. 2 -

An interview conducted by Anime da Vinci with mangaka Mochizuki Jun regarding The Case Study of Vanitas. Part one of my translation is here. I said it was going to be two parts there, but I’ll be releasing it in 3, sorry.

In summary: A more in depth description of how Vanitas and Noé were developed, how Mochizuki wants to represent their relationship, Mochizuki’s feelings on “evil,” and how she wants to incorporate death.

Includes translation notes.

Initially, Vanitas was the vampire, and Noé was the human.

- The way Vanitas and Noé are depicted within the story is quite charming. How did those two come to be as they are? With that, how would Mochizuki Jun-sensei go about introducing “this person is Vanitas,” and “this person is Noé (a vampire)”?

Mochizuki Jun: Initially, Vanitas was the vampire, and Noé was the human. Drawing from Sherlock Holmes, Vanitas took the role of Holmes and Noé of Watson. But, no matter what I did with that concept, my boss would look at it and go “I mean, looking at this, the feeling I get is just... well, isn’t this kind of ordinary? In my opinion, it’s just... not interesting,” when providing consultation. Then, I got the advice of “hey, what if the vampire and the human roles were switched?!”  I was like “huh? A human Holmes and a vampire Watson? Wait, that’s- really extremely super cool!!” And it felt like I was suddenly looking at a completely different landscape. Vanitas’ prominent canine teeth are vestiges from those drafts.

MJ: A different friend of mine criticized my design for Vanitas, which is how he ended up developing those two-level side bangs. Noé’s design completely changed from the first drafts to serialization. Originally he had glasses and was more of the straight man of the comedy duo. I was forced to part with those and other ideas.

MJ: If I were to introduce them with a single phrase, it would be like:

Vanitas - A self loathing deviant.[1]

Noé - Body of a man, spirit of a maiden!

- Speaking of those two, even though they’re always butting heads, they still choose to be alongside one another, and end up fighting together to cover each other’s backs. That relationship is so endearing. In what manner does Mochizuki-sensei mean to depict the two of them?

MJ: They’re not friends, and their goals don’t exactly align[2]. Sort of contrarily, they always fight like dogs but still feel a mutual draw to one another. There’s not enough room to cover it all here, you know what I mean? Noé’s naivety frustrates Vanitas, but his foolish earnestness makes Vanitas harbor a desire to be close to him. Noé sees the light of Vanitas’ power which can do things far beyond Noé’s ability, and feels an attraction to the darkness that lurks in Vanitas’ shadow.

- The characters of Vanitas, especially in the case of when a depressed disposition shines through a carefree countenance, always have such impactful expressions. Please tell us if you have any points of fixation when it comes to drawing expressions.

MJ: I don’t have any specific points of fixation when it comes to expressions, but I usually end up redrawing the expression several times when I make a new panel. Whenever I draw a character’s face I end up making the same expression on my own face, so I leave a really bad impression when I draw in front of other people...

MJ: Aside from that, when I read manga by other people I’ll often go “oh, that’s a really good expression!” In those cases, I’ll try to analyze what about the drawing communicates the right emotion, follow that as closely as possible, and keep it in mind when I increase the stock of my own drawn expressions. I wanna get good at drawing...

Try to contain meaningless death within The Case Study of Vanitas.

- Though there are even humans who regard vampires as enemies, neither seems to be “good,” nor does either seem to be “evil.” Please tell us about the feelings you held when you decided to depict neither side as an axis of good or evil.

MJ: Simply rewarding good and punishing evil is bad storytelling. Those easy to swallow “I’m looking for world domination!” type characters always make me ask “Why’s this character want world domination?” “How do they intend to achieve it? For what purpose?” “What about their history led them to that conclusion?” “In the first place, when talking about evil, how was it that what we’re calling evil was decided to be evil?” It’s a really obnoxious way to get my head spinning with ideas as I try to look for an answer I can accept. Before I know it, that “easy to understand enemy” doesn’t really exist to me, no matter where I look.

MJ: Since I wholeheartedly reject “evil,” I think authors who create antagonists whose feelings you can see and relate to are extremely admirable.

- That monologue which began in the first chapter’s finale seemed to contain all sorts of foreshadowing. Has Mochizuki-sensei already envisioned the plot all the way up to the final chapter?

MJ: I haven’t firmly decided all the way to the end yet since I’m the type to not know what she wants to draw, but I’ve pretty much got the rough outline until the story’s conclusion. On my way to that final station called “the story’s end,” there are some stations at which I’m absolutely, inevitably going to have to stop. Still, I feel like it’s up to me as to which route I take on my way there.

MJ: For he who may have stuck with me since my previous works, I’m trying my hardest to work my way up and make the railway line of this current story feel more like a roller coaster.[3] Since in my previous work, Pandora Hearts, I wanted to make a bunch of distinctive events on their way to the last scene, which was supposed to be the highlight of that character’s arc. Because of that, most deaths in Pandora Hearts were made to be cathartic. In The Case Study of Vanitas, I think I want to try to include completely meaningless death.

---

[1] The word Mochizuki uses is 自分嫌い天の邪鬼. 自分嫌い is pretty directly just “self hating,” but 天の邪鬼 literally means “demon from heaven.” In speech, it’s used to mean “pervert” or “contrarian.” The manga translates 天邪鬼 (the same word spelled differently) as “bad tempered,” which I don’t like.

[2] Since I saw another translation for this part: Mochizuki specifically says 仲間とも違う, nakama to mo chigau, which means more literally “[their relationship] is also a different thing than a comrade.” 仲間 is sort of an infamous word among Japanese translation circles. It frequently implies “friend,” but is closer to “person with whom one finds commonality [in faction, ideas, goals, etc.]” Another translation might be “kindred spirit.”

[3] Yeah she starts using a train metaphor it wasn’t fun to translate

-

Part 3 here.

#the case study of vanitas #vanitas no carte #mochizuki jun #vanitas #noé archiviste #logxx #logam #vnc

[zoologica42]

Pigeons are neat, here’s the Tumblr version of the official “my favorite pigeons of all time” list.

(note, this list includes species only, no domestic forms of the rock pigeon)

The white-crowned pigeon:

I first encountered this bird on a family vacation to the Florida keys as a woebegone middle schooler. While trying to find rare birds to brag about when I got home, I caught a fleeting glimpse of a slate-gray at the top of a mangrove tree.

I don't know what got me about this cryptic and shy bird, maybe it was the funky way it ran about in the mangroves, more like a squirrel or a lizard than any other bird I had ever seen, perhaps it was the contrast between it, and the common, often forsaken rock pigeons eating under a nearby bridge. whatever it was, I needed to know more about this bird, and so the the white-crowned pigeon became a member of list of the species that have inspired me to get to where I am now in zoology.

Pale mountain pigeon:

I can't say If I love, or hate birds like the pale-mountain pigeon. For starters, this pigeon is only found found in the Solomon Islands, a place I might not ever find myself. the big thing about the pale mountain pigeon that intrigues me is what we know, or don't know, about this bird. for starters, the species's wikipedia page is two sentences long, and the Cornell lab of ornithology only has 55 reports of the species.

 Island birds like the pale mountain pigeon have been known to speciate quickly from other birds, and new species form readily. Maybe a few species are still out there, living on a single pacific island, never seen by human eyes (or maybe seen but not recognized). birds like the pale-mountain pigeon also worry me, as this bird might be critically endangered, but is so poorly studied, it might begin to die out before we have even notice.

But maybe it's fine out there, living its best pigeon life without much human interference, doin pigeon-y things in pigeon-y ways we might never know.

orange dove:

There's not much to say about this pidge, for starters, it lives on a few islands in Fiji, and spends most of it's time hunting for fruits, seeds and bugs. Unlike many other pigeons, it maintains territories when not in the breeding season, so that’s cool. but the reason I put this bird on this list is ITS RIDICULOUSLY ORANGE.

that’s it. orange birb.

Pin-tailed green pigeon:

Green-pigeons (genus Treron) are usually large, chunky square-tailed pigeons. This is not the case for the slender, almost parakeet-like pin-tailed green pigeon. Looking more like a child’s drawing of a parakeet with a dodo’s head screwed on than a real animal, the pin-tailed green pigeon never ceases to fascinate me... and also it’s name in Dutch is Spitsstaartpapegaaiduif which I absolutely love just for it’s absurd length.

Blue-eyed ground dove:

In 1941, the blue-eyed ground dove was believed extinct by most scientific athourites. It was a reasonable extinction as the blue eyed ground dove only lived in the Cerrado region of Brazil, an area often used for cattle ranching and charcoal production, this left little room for the doves and was believed to have driven them to extinction. However, in 2012, 12 birds where found by a team of ornithologists doing a survey of the region. Unfortunately, the plot of land where the doves were found was slated for iron mining, and the dove's future was in danger. Thankfully, areas around the property  where the doves where found is sounded by another private property, but this one is slated to be a wildlife preserve. In 2018, the region where the dove was found was purchased, along with the surrounding area. Today, the blue-eyed ground dove's preserve is open to the the public, although only 15-20 individuals are believed to remain in the wild, and blue eyed ground doves are strongly protected by the Brazilian government.

Plain-breasted ground dove:

The plain-breasted ground dove looks like your regular neotropical columbiforme, until you take a look at a photograph of this bird to scale with another object, like this one:

and it’s very smol. a very tiny pidge. bite size. but no eat.

#pigeon #pigeons #Ornithology #doves #pigeon appreciation

[xenoblademisadventures]

Also here's a dump of other sketches with my thoughts process. Long post, so everything’s under the cut.

The Mythra:

I really liked my first idea so I stuck with it. My thought process was I wanted to emphasize that she's mecha anime and therefore out of place (she already has a mech). Pants are a reference to Alvis's illegal shoes. She’s wearing a crop top because Mythra reads as the type of person who would enjoy wearing a crop top to me. She has giant gauntlet things on her arms because they look cool. I gave her two giant braids because anime (and I’ve noticed a trend of tsundere characters often having two strands of hair going outwards for some reason? And I figured “might as well copy+pasta lol). Her left eye is partially covered by hair, which is supposed to represent her feeling distant or partially isolated from the rest of the world. It’s also a character design trend sometimes used in villain characters, which I thought would fit Mythra since she’s worried about her power being used for evil in 2 and is being constantly compared to Malos in Torna. I kept the choker from the base design because it looks cool and also relates to how she’s constantly constraining herself.

I also wanted to make her buff because she’s a warrior who wields a giant fucking sword, she should be buff (like, the fight scenes involving her in Torna DLC looked a bit awkward because Mythra was swinging a giant sword around one-handed like it was nothing while also having very shrimpy arms). 

Overall, I wanted Mythra to feel very alien and distant to the rest of the world. If I were to continue iterating on this, I’d probably look at some of Elma’s armor (mim and alien) for reference because doing that would allow for Mythra to look disconnected from the Xenoblade 2 cast but still feel like a Xenoblade character.

Side note: I assumed that the Aegis shape Core Crystal was a requirement. If I had the option to remove it, I probably would. It doesn’t look bad, but if the goal was to connect the Aegises with the Monado, I don’t like that Alvis’s key had to be retconned for that to function.

The Pyras:

A consistent theme here between the designs was the pants. I wanted Alvis's illegal pants to be a running theme among the Aegises because they are stupid and illegal and I like them. They also look like the most vaguely scifi part of his actual outfit, so I figured giving them a shared article of clothing would be a nice way to visually connect the five character designs (Pyra, Mythra, Pneuma, Alvis, and Malos), and I wanted to keep the vaguely mecha theme going. You can see in Pyra 6 that I was tired and just drew Pyra in Alvis's attire. 

I wanted Pyra to look like a mecha design covered up by something that more closely fits the aesthetic used in Xenoblade 1. So not quite mecha, not quite 1. The idea was that Pyra was trying to look more like a common person in order to appear less threatening. If she despises and fears her power, I don’t think she’d want to wear an outfit that embraces it. Putting her in more casual clothing would also contrast with Mythra and better communicate that Mythra is significantly stronger than Pyra. But all that said, putting her in full casual clothing might undercut the emotion Rex and Pyra’s first meeting was meant to invoke (of being like “oh wow, a legendary ancient weapon). And designing her to still look mecha would still be saying that “even though Pyra doesn’t want to be the Aegis, she is still the Aegis and cannot escape her power.” Which is why quite a few designs lean into the mecha aesthetic. The exact balance between mecha and casual clothing was the main thing I struggled with on this design. The final design is the one that more or less struck the balance I was hoping for.

A few of the designs are vaguely sexualized. Specifically Pyras 1, 4, and 7 all have tiny boob windows. If I were to finalize 7, I’d remove the boob window because it looks a bit awkward and I think a belt (similar to Elma’s underboob belt) would look better, but my thought process there was “do I want Pyra to be comfortable?” I don’t want to go over the top with the revealing clothing, but making Pyra wear slightly revealing clothing that she probably wouldn’t want to be wearing could help drive the point that she’s a combination of all the traits Mythra was criticized for lacking. It’s not pleasant or comfortable letting others dictate your entire existence through repeated harassment and Pyra already very heavily acts like the sexist ideas of what a woman should be, so giving her a tiny boob window could help emphasize that point. The main reason I’m saying I’d change it if I iterated on 7 is because I don’t think it compliments the design particularly well.

Another thing that stuck between each version of Pyra’s design was that her left eye is completely covered by hair. I did this for a few reasons: it would follow up on the symbolism of Mythra’s design partially covering her left eye, it would give Pyra a slight air of mystery, and it would faintly reference Alvis’s design (I want the designs to hint at each other but I don’t want it to be super obvious). The earrings were also kept between designs because they were in Mythra’s design and I wanted that to get carried over because it’s a little bit extra cohesion between the two designs. 

I wanted was to use Pyra's hair to help represented Mythra binding herself. Mythra has two braids that are loosely flowing, so she's already semi bound. If I were to start drawing Pneuma, I think I'd want her hair to not be tied at all (maybe a similar style to KOS-MOS and Elly as a reference, maybe not?) or I'd just put her in really long dreadlocks or something because hair go brr. One idea I had was to just have one big braided ponytail, but another idea was to try and tie the hair up (which is what I was going for in Pyra 2). I couldn't find a way to do that in a way I particularly liked, so single big ponytail is the way I went.

You can probably see that there were a lot of ideas thrown at a wall here, so I’ll go over some noteworthy facets of each designs.

Pyra 1 had a key on her chest, it was meant to be reference to Alvis. It didn’t stay in other designs because the reference felt too obvious. The first two designs also had a giant X on her chest, it was meant to look like the outfit was binding her, but I don’t particularly care for it. Pyra 2′s pants had weird patterns on them because I was trying to visually make them look a bit distinguished from Mythra’s while still keeping the same idea, but I don’t really care for them. I also don’t like how Pyra 2 is just wearing a T Shirt. I’m not really sure what I was going for with Pyra 3. She kind of looks like Glimmer in the She-Ra reboot, which wasn’t intentional. Pyra 4 leans more into the mecha than any other Pyra. She kind of looks like a ballerina but not really. I was focusing mostly on making her look a lot like Mythra, but I feel that this design has a lot of similar issues to what I have with Pyra’s actual design where it’s sexy and looks cool, but doesn’t really fit the character. Pyra 5 looks like a heroforge character (or maybe like something that fit Mass Effect’s aesthetic if I’m being generous?). I feel that this one also doesn’t fit her character particularly well. Pyra 6 was a bit of an overcorrection and I ended up just drawing Pyra in Alvis’s outfit. And Pyra 7 is the one I actually went with.

Rexes:

Rex 1 was more of a warm-up than anything. I put him in a vest and some pants. The hookshot and x marking were things I completely forgot about until last minute, which is why they look tacked on. He has a belt with some items in it. I wanted to give him scraffly hair and freckles to better emphasize that he’s just some kid. I don’t really like this design. I feel like if I polished it up, it would still have a lot of the benefits to base Rex while not getting as many people complaining about his pants, but the design is overall a huge “meh.”

With Rex 2, I decided to actually look up what scuba gear looks like. This design ended up emphasizing primarily that Rex has a lot of expertise in salvaging and that he’s a kid with humble origins. His strap on was based on a scuba outfit, same with the shoes. He’s also wearing pull-ups with giant pockets. I felt those imply humble origins because pull-ups get associated with rural settings. The giant pockets imply that he works with machinery. That’s also why his hair’s tied back. If you long hair and you work with machinery, that’s supposed to be tied back so that it doesn’t get caught in anything. I also gave him glasses because we need more characters with glasses. 

The character’s meant to be 15 and I feel that this looks closer to 15 than 12. If I were to make future iterations of this design, I’d try to lean more into making him look 15 because he doesn’t look 15 enough to me. I’d do this by giving him acne.

He has gloves because he’ll be using a sword and it’s generally not good to scrape up your palm while using one of those. His hook-shot also now takes up his entire arm because that’s heavy equipment. I haven’t figured out how the wire is supposed to be stored without having it fuck up his arm. But the hook itself is now in a little hook cubby. I think I’d want to make the bottom of the shoes look heavier than they are since they don’t currently look great for walking around the bottom of the ocean. 

Still, I’m very happy with this Rex. I mostly draw anime girls, so I’m happy with the number of things I feel I’ve gotten right with Rex 2.

Nims and a Dahlia:

I’m a bit unsure of what I want from the Blade designs. I decided to design around their element, their rough personalities, them needing a core crystal, and their element. I also want them to look like they could also exist in the same universe and maybe not look very human? That was, at least, my thought process when drawing Nim, though that thought process was not consistently held, like, at all. A lot of my Blade redesigns don’t look very good because I didn’t have a very good idea towards what I should even be aiming for. The Blades have very generic personalities and overall feel so disconnected from the world that I’d probably just scrap every existing Blade in their entirety and replace them different characters who are better established. Like, maybe because this Blade was born from the Gormott Titan, they look like Gormotti or part giraff as a result and are more likely to have the earth element? And how many hands they’ve been through and the personalities of their previous drivers stack up to subtly influence their appearance? Like, a Blade from Gormott that ended up in Uraya for 10 lifetimes might be an earth-type cat-person with fins or something? Or maybe the more developed a Blade is, the less it resembles a human? But doing that would require writing a lot more lore per individual Blade than is actually provided. But just having something to better frame the Blades as something other than “random (mostly) anime girls that you pick up along the way” would be necessary to give them good designs.

Anyways, with Nim, I figured giving her a Saytr like appearance would be good. She has a strong association with animals and nature, which, for me, translates to “naked.” Alongside that, I looked up Nymphs and they’re also usually depicted as naked women. I also completely disregarded to the two foxes on her shoulders. They were put into Nim 1 as an afterthought. 

Nim 1 is the only Nim that isn’t plus-sized because I figured “why not have some different body types among the blades?” A lot of my redesigns for Pyra and Mythra try to keep their body type more or less in tact less because I think it’s the best body type for them and more to spite the idea that them having big boobs is the reason that they’re oversexualized. Like, they are comically big, but they’re only sexualized because of how much attention the camera and design draws to them. But, that’s a side tangent. I made Nim overweight because I like drawing overweight women. Nim 1 gets the vibes of “naked lady” while Nim 2 has the vibes of “big fluffy friend” while Nim 3 is somewhat of a compromise. If I were to make a final design for her out of these, I’d definitely try and fuse some aspects of Nims 2 and 3.

Nim 3 has vines on her arms because Nymphs get depicted with vines quite a bit. The main reason Nim 2 is wearing a sun dress is because I stepped back and thought “wait, maybe some people would have an issue with a naked anime lady running around.” Nim 2 also has a transition between furry legs and no fur legs. 

I didn’t really have any ideas for Dahlia. I saw someone draw a version of Dahlia based off Elsa from Frozen and I thought that might be fun to draw. I don’t really have any further thoughts on this.

Praxises:

This is sort of where I was at the point where I realized that if I wanted to redesign the blades, I’d need to figure out some unifying theme for them all. I was thinking “maybe blades could try and visually represent different aspects of being human?” This idea was only really used on Praxis and wasn’t very strongly represented. I was kind of tired when I drew Praxis 1 and Praxis 2 was a bit of a warm-up sketch. 

Neither of these designs are particularly good. I wanted Praxis to be wearing those 90s bubbly arm and leg warmers because she has a bubbly personality and is a water type. I don’t know why Praxis 2 is a cowgirl. 

Zenobias:

Zenobia 1 is based a bit a wrestler because she has wrestler vibes. I see her as the type of person who would do Dark Souls no armor run on the dance pad. My other thought process was “let me google the word ‘zenobia’ and see what crops up” and I saw something about a Syrian empress but I decided to do zero research, so I have no idea if what I drew was offensive towards muslims. She has a scarf tho because wind.

Zenobia 2 is based on a picture of that empress lady. I don’t think it follows her character in-game particularly well though. 

Two (Blade) Nias:

Neither Nia is particularly finished. The main requirements were that this Nia has to look like a Blade, a catgirl, and like something were she’d be able to hide the Blade parts, but not comfortably. I’m at a bit of a loss here. I think the formal wear used in her base-game design is not the way to go. The outfit just doesn’t feel like it matches her brash and snarky personality, like, at all. The first outfit was trying to throw random ideas but nothing was coming up and that’s what happened with the other. Though, Nia 2 gets bonus points for looking like a cats 2019 character. I was sketching out what parts of her body should be covered, but I don’t think I’d want to go with crop-top and skirt because Mythra already has a crop top. The tail is also debatable since I figured if I kept that, how Nia hides the tail could be a fun part of her driver outfit. I also didn’t really like how Driver Nia and Blade Nia have different hair and ear lengths. It bothered me more here than with the original Pyra/Mythra designs because Nia isn’t the Aegis, I don’t think she should be allowed to material and dematerialize her clothing, hair, and ears like that. I do kind of like the idea of giving her paws since those are things that can be easily hidden by shoes. Giving her spotted skin isn’t a bad idea but it’s not as high on the “keep” scale as the paws are (which aren’t super high in the first place).

Overall, it’s probably a bit anticlimactic to end on some lame designs, but that’s how it goes, I guess. If I were to redesign more of the Blades (or finish the Blade redesigns I started), I’d need to figure out what running themes I want from the Blade designs. I think maybe focusing on the human designs first and working from there could be a way to go. Unsure. 

#xenoblade chronicles 2 #character redesign #pyra #mythra #rex #praxis #zenobia #nia #nim #dahlia #xenoblade spoilers #xenoblade 2 spoilers

[bisou-doux]

The Starving Games ft. Freddie Weasel: AKA Pt. 1 of my Hunger Games x Harry Potter crossover series (OC x Fred Weasley)

Warnings (None of these are really graphic, but feel free not to read if any of these things make you uncomfortable!!): Blood, knives, knife wound, character death(s), severe injury mention (lost limbs), dead animal mention?? (a rat) 

This is the first fic I’ve ever written! I got the idea from a post I saw from @wand3ringr0s3 Comments and criticism are GREATLY appreciated and it’d be really cool to get some feedback on my writing style!! 

a/n: Also if I do write more, this is gonna be an enemies to allies to lovers situation bc I <3 angst 

Tagging my mutuals: @ourloveisforthelovely @darthwheezely @amrtxntia  @anchoeritic @kellsslut @whizboingies @beiahadid

Darkness. Pure black. I hear noises coming from somewhere. Muffled. Echoing through the endless void around me. The noises become louder. Someone is talking. The more I listen, the louder and clearer they get. Clear enough that I can almost make out the words. Suddenly, everything goes deafeningly quiet. My ears start ringing. But then, a single voice echoes through the silence, “Seph?”. I recognize it immediately. “Maeve?” I call out. “Seph? Is that you?” she responds, her voice shaky with fear. “Yes, yes, Maeve, it’s me. Where are you?”

“I don’t know.” she responds, panic rising in her voice. “Seph, I’m scared.”

“I know. I know, kiddo,” I swallow hard, “Hey. Hey, listen, I’m gonna find you, okay? Just stay calm.”

My heart is racing. I look around for some sort of clue, but nothing but complete darkness surrounds me. I tentatively reach my hand out in front of me. My fingertips graze something. Something cold. I take a step forward and reach out again. My hand finds what feels like a thin chain. I roll it around in my fingers before pulling down on it. The space is immediately flooded with blinding white light. I blink a few times to adjust my eyes to the sudden brightness. I’m at home; a tiny one room flat that I share with my mother, sister, and our cat. Except it’s empty- no furniture, not even a door. I see my sister standing a few feet in front of me, her hands bound together by a thick rope. “Maeve!” I rush towards her. “Seph!” she cries. As I reach out to hug her I’m pushed back by an invisible force. I look up and there she is- standing inside a giant glass dome. I take a few steps back, trying to register what I’m seeing.

“Shall we draw the names?” I whip my head around to see a woman in a magenta frock standing on the other side of the room. Her dress is covered in so many frills and flounces that she takes up half the flat. On her head is a ridiculous blonde wig that must add at least two feet to her height. Her face is covered entirely in white powder, with her cheeks overly rouged, and her top lip painted magenta to match the dress. She looks like a very posh clown.

“I-I’m sorry what?”

She laughs airily, “The names, darling. Surely you remembered?”

“Remember what?”

She tsked then pulled out two smaller versions of the glass dome from the frills at the front of her dress. They each had a small slip of paper in them. “Go on. Pick one.” Her voice was incredibly high-pitched, and she spoke with a capitol accent. I stepped towards her and hesitantly reached into the bowl in her right hand. I unfolded the slip of paper, ‘Maeve Whitlock’. I stared at the name in confusion.

“I don’t understand.”

“Will you take her fate as your own?”

“What do you mean? What fate?”

The woman let out another laugh, this one high and cold, it echoed around the entire room and caused the floor to shake. Suddenly, I heard Maeve call out to me, “SEPH!” I looked back to where she was in the dome. There was a dark, shadowy figure standing behind her, holding a knife to her neck. Her hands and feet were bound to a small wooden chair, and her mouth was now gagged with a dishcloth. I ran towards the dome, panic rising further in my chest. “MAEVE!” I shouted desperately. She looked at me fearfully, tears rolling slowly down her cheeks. I banged and kicked and rammed my body at the glass so hard, I should’ve shattered something. But it was no use. I looked back to where the woman had been standing, but she was gone. The shadowy figure stood still, holding the knife to my sister’s neck.

“LET GO OF HER YOU FREAK!” I cried, banging my fists against the dome. Maeve was panicking now, her chest rising and falling rapidly, tears running down her face, her muffled pleas penetrating through the glass. “MAEVE.” I cried out; my voice cracked as the salty tears streamed down my cheeks. But I was too late. The dark figure suddenly slashed the knife across her throat, her cries stopped and she slumped down into her seat, eyes still half open, blood now seeping into her blouse. “NO!” I screamed, sinking down to the ground. The glass squeaked as my hands dragged down over the exterior. I looked back up towards the shadowy figure, only to see it was no longer there. In its place I saw myself, a satisfied smile on my face. I heard the clownish woman’s disembodied laugh echo through the flat, “What a pity,” the voice said, “you could’ve saved her! But now, I’m afraid, you must face the consequences of your actions.” The clone slowly raised the hand still holding the knife, and pointed directly at me. Suddenly, I felt the cool touch of metal against my throat. The other me winked, and I felt the blade drag deep across my neck. I started to choke, the blood pooling into my airways. I instinctively brought my hand up to the wound. My vision started turning black around the edges. I looked down to see the front of my dress already soaked in red. The last thing I saw was my own hand, holding the knife, droplets of blood falling steadily from the tip of the blade. Then, everything went dark.

My eyes shot open. All I saw was fur, and something was blocking my breathing. I sat up quickly, and the ball of fluff leapt off my face. The cat looked up at me from his new place on my lap- those big amber eyes practically staring into my soul- and meowed loudly. I sighed in annoyance. “Stupid cat.” I grumbled as I lifted him up and let him jump to the floor. I rubbed my eyes and tried to slow my racing heartbeat. My body was covered in a sheen of cold sweat. I looked down at the bed to see my sister still sleeping soundly beside me. I took a deep, shaky breath and stroked the top of her head, moving away some of the stray hairs lying across her face. I glanced over at the digital clock next to me, SUNDAY: JULY 4. 8:26 AM. Today was Reaping Day; no wonder I had that horrible nightmare. This would be my 4th year participating in the drawing, it was Maeve’s first. How unlucky it was that her twelfth birthday had only been three days prior. If she’d just been born a few days later, she could’ve been spared for another year.

I sighed and swung my legs over the side of the bed. My mother was already awake, sewing some buttons back onto Maeve’s school shirt. “Hi, mom.”

“Hi, sweetie. Did you just wake up?”

“Yeah, just now.” I yawned.

“Is Maeve still asleep?”

“Yeah.”

“What time is it?”

“Almost 8:30. Should I wake her up?”

“No, it’s okay,” she sighed, “let her sleep some more. I’ll wake her up soon.” She held up the shirt to examine her work, “Still needs a few more stitches…” She held the needle between her teeth and reached down to her sewing basket to grab another spool of thread. I looked down as I felt the cat’s bushy tail brush past my ankles. I knelt down and scratched behind his ears.

“Did you feed Tulip yet?” I asked. The fluffy, tricolor, flat-faced cat was now sitting at my feet, purring contentedly.

“Didn’t have to; he caught his own breakfast. A huge rat, which he so lovingly dropped on my pillow this morning.” My mother replied.

I stifled a laugh.

“Since you’re already up, go ahead and shower. I’ve laid out your clothes for you on the kitchen table, so when you’re done, just change into them and come back here so I can do your hair. Okay?”

“Okay.”

She smiled at me then went back to her work. I grabbed some soap and a clean towel from the small shelf near the entrance and walked out. “Make sure you don’t use up all the hot water!” she called out as I closed the door behind me. “Don’t worry, I won’t!”.

We didn’t have our own bathroom- there was one toilet and one shower per floor, which could be shared by anywhere from 5 to 20 people. There were 5 apartments on each of the 4 floors- all one room- with one bed, a stove, a sink, a small table and chairs, and some shelves for storage. Each apartment had a heater and air conditioner, but they were never guaranteed to work when you needed them. Sometimes only one side of the building would have heating, or only certain floors had AC, or only specific apartments. Often, the whole building wouldn’t have either for days at a time. The same thing happened with the water and electricity. You could never fully rely on any of the appliances being in working order. As a result, we shared a lot with other apartments. If someone’s stove wasn’t working, they could just knock on a neighbor’s door and use theirs. If only one apartment on our floor had heating during the winter, there were no objections when everyone else would come over and make themselves at home. It made it feel like we were all one family, and it was customary to refer to many of your neighbors as your aunt or uncle. This was common throughout the District, as almost everyone aside from the mayor and peacekeepers lived in small, rundown tenements, expanding outwards from the city center, which was home to the Justice building. Here, in District 8, we produce textiles. There are 6 factories in total; one of which is entirely dedicated to making peacekeeper uniforms. We typically start in the factories at 14, splitting the day between school and work. We aren’t assigned specific jobs until we turn 18. Until then, those in charge of production make requests for certain numbers of workers, and we go wherever we’re needed. Once we finish school, we’re assigned permanent job positions based on both our aptitude tests and our performances in various factory tasks. The better you do on the aptitude test, the better (or at least safer) your job will be. Those with the highest scores tend to be assigned as desk jockeys- where the risk of dying on the job is fairly low. Those with the lowest scores are sent to work in the most dangerous parts of the factories; you can always tell who works there because chances are, they’ve lost some part of their limbs...or face...or they’re, you know, missing a hand...Then there’s those whose scores fall somewhere in the middle; if they have a specific skill, like baking, or perhaps healing, they’re assigned a job based on that. The rest are assigned mid-level factory jobs, which were still dangerous, but the chances of getting to keep all your fingers were significantly higher! (But not guaranteed).

When I turned on the shower, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the water was delightfully warm. It took everything in me not to keep standing there, enjoying the warmth, until the water would turn cold. I shivered as I stepped out of the shower and quickly wrapped my towel around me. I walked swiftly down the hall and flung open the door to the apartment. I grabbed my outfit from the kitchen table. A white trapeze-line dress ending an inch or so above my knees, long billowy sleeves pulled tight at the wrists, and a mock turtleneck with tiny ruffles adorning the edge. My shoes sat on the floor next to it; dark blue suede ankle-boots with small square heels.They were a birthday present from my mother; most definitely from the black market. I got dressed and pulled up a stool in front of my mother’s chair. She combed through my curls as gently as she could, but I still winced when she pulled too hard at a knot. She braided four small plaits at the front and sides of my hair, pulling them into two larger braids that she twisted together and pinned to the back of my head. She handed me the mirror. I looked into it and smiled, “It’s beautiful. Thank you.” I turned around and hugged her tightly. She smelled of soap and clean linen, and something else I couldn’t quite put my finger on- all I knew was that it was comforting and warm. I held on a little longer than usual. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, inhaling her scent. She brought her hand up and gently stroked the back of my head. We both knew what could happen today...I tried my best not to think about it. Maeve soon came back from the shower and changed into a mod-style purple dress and black mary janes. My mother braided her hair in a similar style to mine, adding a small flower clip at the side. She looked us once over, nodded, then stood at the mirror and added a few pins to secure her own hairstyle. She sighed, “Ready?”

“Yeah.” “Yeah.” my sister and I said in unison.

My mother chuckled lightly as we stepped through the threshold.

We walked the few blocks over to the underground and boarded the train headed to the Justice building. The train car was packed. Everyone was dressed in their best (and most colorful) outfit. These types of clothes were only worn on special occasions; those above working age wore grey coveralls to work and school, and something drab and ill-fitting otherwise. As we exited the train car, I kept a tight grip on Maeve’s hand. As we emerged from the underground, our eyes were bombarded with light, and I squinted as the brightness flooded my vision. When my eyes adjusted, I spotted the registration table. I gave my mother a brief hug and went to join the girls’ line with Maeve. Soon, we’d reached the front. I looked down at Maeve, “You want me to go first, kiddo?”

She glanced up at me with wide eyes, then stared forward and shook her head. 

“You sure?”

“Mhmm. I just wanna get it over with.”

“Okay.” I hunched over and whispered into her ear, “You’re gonna be fine, I promise. It’s not as bad as you think. I’ll see you in a few minutes, yeah?”

She nodded. I gave her hand a squeeze and watched her walk up to the table. I heard them speaking faintly and a few minutes later, she turned around to look at me, a nervous expression on her face. I gave her a reassuring nod then headed over there myself. 

The woman at the table sat there with a bored expression. She looked to be in her 30’s, but the heavy dark circles under her eyes seemed to age her quite a few years.

“Last name?” She said. She didn’t bother to look up at me. 

“Whitlock.”

“Whitlock…” she muttered, flipping through the pages, “Right, Whitlock. Persephone?” 

“Yeah.” 

She crossed my name off the list. “You’re sixteen?”

“Yes.” 

“Okay,” she sighed, “Hold out your hand, please.” She took a small device next to her and clipped it onto my index finger. I winced when I felt the needle prick my skin. She unclipped the device then stamped my wrist with the capitol’s sigil. 

“You can go join your age group, fourth line from the left.”

“Thanks,” I muttered.

She paused, then looked up at me sympathetically, “And um, good luck.”

I nodded and gave her a curt smile before heading over to join my peers. We were arranged by age and gender, boys and girls separate, all standing in rows in front of the stage. I stood waiting, and mindlessly watched the rows slowly multiply. I didn’t know how much time had passed, but soon enough, I looked up at the stage to see a woman in a bright magenta pantsuit. The hem of her skirt was decorated with a flounce of fabric, and she wore a light pink blouse underneath her suit jacket. The front of it contained so many ruffles, you could hardly see her neck. Her hair was pale blonde, and styled in a way that made it look like a cloud sitting on top of her head. Her face was powdered white, save for her blushed cheeks and glossy lipstick. Her lips were absurdly over lined, both painted a shocking fuchsia that closely matched her outfit. She approached the podium with tiny steps and cleared her throat daintily, “Welcome, everyone, to the reaping ceremony for the 59th annual Hunger Games!” People remained silent; the only reaction being a cough from someone in the crowd. She cleared her throat once more, “As always, we shall begin by watching a special film from the capitol, telling us the history and origins of this unique tradition, and to remind us why we are all standing here today.”

At her words, the two televisions turned on to display the Capitol’s sigil. It faded out, and a film about the glorious history of Panem started rolling. I tuned out and stared blankly at the rows of people ahead of me. When the film concluded, Ms. magenta up at the podium clapped enthusiastically. She was the only one. “Oh, wasn’t that wonderful?” She exclaimed, “What a rich history this nation has.” 

I scoffed, that’s one way to put it, I thought. 

“Now, as always- ladies first.” She stuck her hand into the large glass bowl on the right side of the podium and shuffled her hand through the slips of paper before snatching one up. She gingerly unfolded the paper and held it delicately between her index finger and thumb. 

She cleared her throat and read out the name, “Maeve Whitlock.”

I felt my heart stop in my chest.

No. 

My eyes darted through the crowd and I saw people make way for her as she slowly walked to the stage, shaking with every step. Images from my dream flashed through my mind- most poignantly, the image of me watching helplessly, as a dark shadowy figure slashed a knife across my sister’s throat. Panic rose in my chest; my heart beat so loudly in my ears that I barely heard myself shout, “WAIT!” Everyone turned to look at me. My breathing sped up as I suddenly felt at a loss for air, “I volunteer.” I added, my voice cracking slightly, “I volunteer as tribute.” Maeve looked back at me with pleading eyes and shook her head furiously. I avoided her gaze and stared straight ahead as the crowd parted to allow me through to the stage. I paused to grab Maeve’s hand and squeeze it tightly. I cradled the back of her head and planted a kiss atop her forehead. I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment as I shakily released her from my grasp and allowed the other girls in the crowd to place a comforting hand on her shoulders as they quietly pulled her away from me. I walked up to the stage and slowly climbed the short flight of steps to then take my place just behind the glass bowl from which my sister’s name was drawn. I can’t believe I’m about to be shepherded to my untimely death because of a stupid glass bowl. I felt my hands getting clammy, and I held to the hem of my dress to keep them from shaking. Ms. Magenta smiled and stepped towards me, “And what is your name, dear?”

“Persephone Whitlock.” I stated.

“And you are…?”

“Her sister.”

“Her sister! Oh, well, of course you are!” she remarked, “Well, that was a very brave thing you just did, Persephone. I’m sure I speak for everyone when I say that this was a truly inspiring moment! Well done! And may the odds be ever in your favor.” she smiled brightly and turned towards the crowd. There were a few measly claps, but they quickly fell silent. “And now, let us draw our male tribute.” She stepped over to the glass bowl on her left and repeated the process. I stared blankly past the rows of people; only when she read the name was my trance broken, “Frederick Weasley.” A tall, redheaded boy emerged from the crowd. I stared as he made his way up to the podium. I recognized him from school. I didn’t know him well, but I knew he had a twin brother- George, I think- who’d lost an ear in a factory accident a few years prior, and was thus ineligible to compete in the Games, as his injury would be an unfair advantage to the other tributes. Apparently, he’d been checking the cogs underneath a broken machine when it somehow turned on and cut his left ear clean off. It was formally reported as an accident, but it’s been rumored that he did it on purpose. There were no witnesses, so no one can say for sure, but if it was intentional, I can’t say I blame him for doing it. There are very few ways you can get out of the games if you’re under 18- something as extreme as losing an ear would certainly fall under that category. I stared at the redhead as he took his place behind the other glass bowl. He was tall, at least 6 foot 4, and seemed to tower over my own 5 foot 10 frame. I’d always thought I was fairly tall for my age, and was used to surpassing most adults in height; but standing next to him, I felt like a child. His entire body was long and lean, but I could tell from the way his shirt clung to him that he was not just skin and bone. He had a well-structured face. Round brown eyes, thin lips, a prominent, romanesque nose; his jaw was clenched as he stared straight ahead and refused to look at me. Him and his brother were known for pulling pranks and cracking jokes at school- there was a strange, impish quality to his features that unintentionally revealed his penchant for mischief. Every inch of his cool, pale skin was covered in freckles. Despite his pallid complexion, his cheeks always seemed to have a slight blush to them that made everything about him appear bright and lively. However, at the present moment, his face had been drained of all colour, save for a rather sickly green tinge. No wonder he doesn’t want to look at me- poor kid looks like he’s about to puke. Ms. Magenta finally stepped forward, “Excellent! We now have our two lovely tributes! Both of whom will now be escorted into the Justice building to await further instructions; Happy Hunger Games, and may the odds be ever in your favor!” And with that, the Capitol’s sigil was once again displayed on the TVs, and its anthem blasted through the speakers. Suddenly, I felt four hands grab me by the arms and forcefully pull me backwards. I stumbled slightly, and looked up to see the two peacekeepers responsible. They continued to pull me across the stage before practically shoving me down the stairs and onto the cobblestone street. From the corner of my eye, I could see that my fellow tribute was receiving the same gentle treatment as they dragged- I’m sorry, escorted him- to the large, looming structure behind us. As they “escorted” me towards the building’s heavy brass doors, I looked back frantically, trying to spot my mother and sister. But the crowd had gotten rowdier, and they were all being jammed together as the peacekeepers continued to push them away from the stage. My breathing quickened, and I could feel the blood pumping through every vein in my body. When we reached the threshold, the brass doors opened to reveal a high-ceilinged marble hall, and a rush of cool air escaped them. So THIS is where all our air-conditioning goes, I thought to myself. Every sound echoed through the building’s marble interior. I craned my neck upwards and tried to take in every opulent detail as I was dragged down a hallway and shoved into a small room, where the peacekeepers finally released me from their vice grip. “Wait here,” one of them said. They both left and shut the door behind them. I massaged my sore upper arms. “You didn’t have to pull me so hard, you know!” I shouted at the door, “not like I was planning on going anywhere!”. I sighed and stepped back from the door. “Assholes,” I muttered to myself. I plopped down onto a green velvet armchair and examined my surroundings. The walls and ceilings were paneled in rich, mahogany wood. The square panels above me were covered in intricate carvings, complementing the elaborate crystal chandelier hanging in the center. While I assumed the floor was wood, it was hard to tell because of the heavy oriental rugs that adorned its surface. There were two large windows behind me, both framed by plush velvet curtains. They were the same emerald green as the chair, and were tied back with a thick, gold rope that had tassels on the end of it, so as to allow in natural light. There was not much furniture in the room aside from two armchairs- one of which I already occupied- a round, wooden coffee table between them, and two empty bookshelves inlaid in the wall on either side of the room. A thin blue vase containing a single white rose sat in the center of the coffee table. The smell of it was unnaturally overpowering. Something about it made me uneasy, so I carefully pushed it to the far side of the table and shifted away from it. I unconsciously started chewing on my lip. I couldn’t sit still. Sitting there shaking my leg, or playing with the hem of my dress, wasn’t helping. I let out a frustrated groan and jolted up from my seat. I continued to chew my lip as I restlessly paced back and forth across the room. The heavy rugs didn’t hide the creaking of the floorboards as I stomped across them. After what felt like hours, I heard the door creak open. I stopped in my tracks and ran to the door to greet my mother before she’d even entered the room. Her and my sister enveloped me in a bone-crushing hug which I eagerly returned. The peacekeeper standing behind them cleared his throat. We slowly let go of each other and turned to face him. “You have ten minutes to say goodbye- not a second more.” he said in a gruff voice. As my mother and sister stepped fully into the room, the peacekeeper roughly shut the door behind them and left. 

END OF PART ONE

a/n: If you’ve made it this far,  1. Hi, I love you 2. Will I write more for this series? To quote John Mulaney, “Who’s to say?”. 

#hunger games #the hunger games #hunger games au #hunger games fanfic #hunger games x harry potter #harry potter #harry potter au #crossover #fanfic #original character #oc #my oc #oc x character #fred weasley x oc #muggle fred weasley #harry potter oc #hunger games oc #fred weasley #harry potter fanfic #harry potter fanfiction #hunger games fanfiction #fred weasley fanfiction #fred weasley fic #fred weasley fanfic #enemies to allies #allies to lovers #tw blood #tw knives #tw injury #tw death

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The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator: Useful or pseudo-science?

I’m a huge fan of the MBTI system.  It’s opened the door to deep self-reflection, given me a community of interesting, like-minded people, is a useful heuristic for understanding the people around me, and sparked a passion for personality and cognitive science (which has gone much past MBTI).  

The MBTI system is based off of the cognitive function theories of renown psychologist Carl Jung, and was founded by a mother-daughter team, Katherine Myers and Isabell Briggs, in 1962.  The system works by creating four dimensions of personality with each dimension having two categories representing a different set of behavioral patterns.  This propagates as: Extrovert ( E ) vs Introvert ( I ), intuitive ( N ) vs Sensor ( S ), Feeler ( F ) vs Thinker ( T ), and Judger ( J ) vs Perceiver ( P ). These dimensions can be further broken down into specific cognitive functions, but just to keep things simple for this post here is a basic visualization:

The combination of these eight letters creates 16 personality types which have their own associated behavioral patterns that emerge out of the interplay between the combination of the dominant four letters.  A very basic form of this can be visualized in the below picture:  

Of course, everyone is unique, but on a population level each MBTI type is associated with specific strengths and weaknesses, career interests, temperaments, and compatibilities.  Your MBTI type is often determined by taking a test asking questions about your typical behaviors and preferences.  Each question is targeted to specific cognitive functions, so by the end of the test your answers should cluster around a specific personality type.  

Despite the claims of MBTI not being scientific, businesses have used the MBTI instrument for decades and there is a wealth of studies on the effectiveness of the MBTI instrument in scientific journals studying business and organizational psychology. This doesn’t mean the system is perfect (we’ll be getting into that in a minute) and controversies rise when organizations misuse or overemphasize an employee’s MBTI type when making promotion, hiring, and firing decisions.  It can also be severely misused when people use their MBTI type as a stand-in for their identity or as an excuse for bad behavior. Discovering your MBTI type should be used as a descriptive tool to guide self-reflection and personal growth.  

Because many of these tests are self-administered, their accuracy is highly dependent on having an accurate self-perception and honestly answering the questions.  A huge concern in any personality assessment being performed for work, school, or being viewed by others is that the test taker may answer the questions the way they think they SHOULD or WANT to answer them instead of how they really act and feel.  I’ve seen plenty of people get screwy results because they answered the questions based on what they wanted to be like, instead of how they actually are.  I’ve seen highly extroverted, party animals answer that they would “rather spend a Friday night reading a book instead of going out”, even though they spend every actual Friday night out with their friends.  Mistyped individuals, especially ones who over-identify with their mistyped personality type, can create a lot of confusion within the MBTI community and cause a lot of statistical problems when trying to analyze the validity of MBTI.  One solution is to have professionally proctored tests outside of the work setting, but these are often expensive and rare.

Issues like the ones discussed above are why I totally understand the reason MBTI has received so much criticism from the psychology community and has even been called pseudo-science.  Mainstream psychology prefers the OCEAN (aka Big 5) personality metric to the MBTI.  OCEAN stands for the traits it characterizes: Openness to experience, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism.  The OCEAN model still suffers from the issues of bias and dishonesty during test taking, however it does address some issues better than the traditional MBTI model.  Let’s list these out below:

1.  MBTI categorizes personality into 16 distinct types. The modern scientific study of personality has determined that personality lies on a continuum with most people falling in the middle.  This means that someone who’s slight introverted will have more in common with a slightly extroverted person than a very introverted person.  The OCEAN model plots people on a continuous scale to more accurately address this issue.  To be fair to MBTI, the modern versions of the test give you a percentage on your specific traits, in the same way that OCEAN does.  

2. OCEAN’s measured personality dimensions (Openness to experience, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism) were chosen through a data driven method analyzing clusters of commonly associated behavioral patterns, while MBTI’s personality dimensions were determined from psycho-analytic theory.  My issue with this criticism is that there’s not necessarily anything more scientific or special about using a machine to draw patterns vs a human brain to draw patterns.  Patterns are patterns, and I actually think a comparison of dimensions in MBTI and OCEAN actually shows the power of the human brain.  The human created MBTI dimensions fairly neatly overlap the dimensions of the data science derived OCEAN model:  E vs I = high vs low Extroversion, N vs S = high vs low Openness, F vs T = high vs low Agreeableness, J vs T = high vs low Conscientiousness, and the final factor Neuroticism has been recently incorporated into MBTI as “turbulence”.  Essentially, knowing a person’s OCEAN score tells you their MBTI type and the same goes for the other way around.

3.  The final and most valid criticism of MBTI is that personality can change over time.  Most models of the MBTI state that your type remains fixed after adolescence, although the more complex MBTI models allow for growth and development in the lower functions.  On the other hand, the OCEAN model often expects and predicts change throughout a person’s life.  However, it should be noted that there is strong evidence to suggest that people have a genetically determined base personality type which they default to and develop off of. What this means is that someone with naturally low Extroversion (let’s say scoring 5% on E) may develop into an Extrovert (scoring 60% on E) but chances are low that they would ever become highly extroverted (> 85% E).  

So, is MBTI a perfect tool for describing the rich and complex variables of human personality?  Obviously not.  But is MBTI pseudo-science garbage no more accurate than astrology?  I think that’s taking it too far.  MBTI may not pass the muster of science, but as long as it isn’t rigidly adhered to it is accurate enough for business and people looking for some extra guidance in their life and relationships.  Overall, MBTI is a fun tool to help you reflect on yourself and learn a little about other people. MBTI is not science so once it stops being useful to you, learn to put it aside. 

Below are some videos that I think give good arguments from both sides of the issue:

#mbti #myers-briggs #personality #personality test #mbti personalities #mbti personality types #science #psychology #pseudoscience #big 5 #ocean #intj #intp #entp #entj #infp #infj #enfj #enfp #esfp #esfj #isfj #istj #estj #estp #istp