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genericpuff · 1 year

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This isn't meant to be a hateful ask, but you should probably stop saying you've 'fixed' Rachel's art whenever you redraw comic frames. At first, I could see why your posts were titled that, considering they were just edits made onto a frame, trying to keep in mind the style of the comic alongside it (and let me say, you absolutely nail colors when it comes to your gLOw series, I use your notes for my own art all the time). But it seems like for your more recent posts, you're redrawing panels in your own style and saying that you've 'fixed' the frames. I'm not saying that you can't do that, redraws are a core part of the LO community. But it feels as if you're putting Rachel's art style down in favor of your own. For example, your recent post. Smaller necks and 'googly eyes' (big eyes with small pupils) are usually apart of LOs more cartooney style, they aren't something as bad as LOs men's shoulder to head width, or awkward hand and feet positions, etc. The point I'm trying to make is that you should probably start titling frames you redraw in your own style as that, a redraw, not 'fixing' someone else's art style

EDIT: oh god I totally went off with this, BIG apologies for the essay dump in response to a very simple ask, it's just a topic I'm very passionate about and am willing to talk about at really extreme lengths. I appreciate your takes on this even if I do disagree with them, I just don't make shit easy and I apologize for that 😖 😂

Oookay, so I'm gonna try and answer this as best I can, with as little curtness as possible, because I know you're asking it genuinely, but please understand that this is a topic that comes up a LOT in artist/LO spaces and I'm sorta exhausted with having to talk about it. Often times because it's approaching the argument with a very misconstrued idea of what 'style' is.

Ironically enough, before I get into this, I actually do have a post queued up for tomorrow already that's called a 'redraw' because unlike the panels I'm assuming you're calling out, I actually painted the upcoming ones for tomorrow entirely from scratch. I'm still trying to replicate the LO style, of course, but it's not trying to remain quite as faithful as my edits tend to be because it's meant to be a redraw in the true sense of the word like you're referencing. My edits are often just a normal layer on top of the original that I paint over, which is what the last few posts have been. My redraws are drawn from the ground up, backgrounds, faces, poses, etc. often times with the goal of re-compositing the scene entirely. The ones from the last couple days were not drawn from the ground up, simply altered over the originals - but the unfortunate reality is that some of them simply can't be accurately edited entirely due to the original composition being such a visual mess. That includes this one which was a struggle to edit faithfully without my own anatomical stylizations bleeding into it due to how janky the original was (IMO). Like, the original panel didn't even "look like LO", it's godawful, and it's a stretch to say I'm dissing Rachel's "style" when I'm fairly certain Rachel didn't even draw any part of that original panel, it's INCREDIBLY obvious two different people from her team drew it and there's no way of knowing whether or not Rachel was one of them. I did not touch Hades because he's not the problem with the panel. Hades as you see him in that panel is exactly how he was in the original, I merely tried my best to edit Persephone to look more consistent with Hades and less creepy.

Disclaimers over, let's get on with this.

So here's the thing - if it were a simple matter of "style", I'd agree wholeheartedly with you. I'm not about pitting artists against one another, we're all different people with different takes and inspirations making our own thing.

However, there's a difference between style and execution.

With full disclosure, I do not accept the argument that because LO has a more "cartoony style", then it's "fine" for it to very blatantly lower its quality in technical execution or turn into a cheap copy of what it once was. LO was never 'cartoony', it was more akin to storybook art, like something you'd find in old Disney concept art pieces or in children's illustration books. 'Cartoony' as in 'not realistic', sure, but definitely not cartoony in the way most people envision it or market it (like what you'd see in legitimate cartoon shows). The use of color was vibrant and had thought put into it, compositions were dynamic, lineart was only used where needed to create depth, and overall, there was a vibe to it that many of you can still recognize, it's what a lot of my blog talks about.

When I do these panel "fixes", my goal isn't to go "hey, my style is superior to Rachel's! Fuck Rachel!" Far from it. My goal is to analyze what made the original LO art so special and unique, and help preserve those elements in newer panels through key elements such as color choice, glow layers, composition, texturing, etc. many of which are elements that are outright missing from S2 of LO onwards.

Because, full bluntness, LO has zero effort being put into it anymore.

LO never had perfect anatomy and it's always struggled with creating a cohesive visual narrative, but it hid its issues well with a good balance of color choice, mood/tone, and lineart-less rendering. It wasn't meant to be some hyper-realistic comic, what set it apart were the colorful panels and vignettes and use of 'cutout' style backgrounds and foreground elements.

Stuff like this:

I have spent literally hours dissecting LO's art style, researching and hunting down its brushes, crawling the best and most recognizable color palettes, drawing and redrawing old panels in attempts to replicate Rachel's style and techniques as best I can. I'm not doing all that just to try and be like "I can do it better", more so to preserve what once was and could have been. Because I genuinely miss how old LO looked and so do many others. It's my own way of participating in a fandom that's being torn apart each week by the new episodes that only seem to further degrade the comic's original presentation and why people liked it.

Trust me, if I wanted to just draw LO in 'my style' as some sort of self-gratifying flex (because everyone in the art world nowadays thinks the only point in creating art is to have a "style" that they can pit against other "styles" as if styles are collectables like fucking Pokemon lmao), you wouldn't even recognize it.

THIS is my "style", y'all. The only elements that I've purely taken from LO is the background and how I did the lighting effects along the side but everything else is my standard 'style' when I draw anything that's NOT LO, especially with my own comics and my day job.

"Style" is not a tangible thing, at least not in the way people nowadays tend to define it. Style is an accumulation of everything that's influenced an artist over years of practice, learning, refinement, and mastery. It is not something any one person can 'own' nor is it something that can or should be 'fixed' in and of itself. Just like how Rachel has adopted elements of her style from inspirations such as Glen Keane and Mary Blair, I've gotten my stylistic inspirations from anime, manga, video games, and other webcomics. Our styles and why we create art and who we create art for are completely different.

I have zero issue with Rachel's 'style'. At its core it's actually freaking gorgeous, when she puts in the effort. Not even just LO, take a look at her even OLDER art that's still available to sift through on her DA:

The issues I'm bringing up have to do with the execution of said style, how it's blatantly obvious Rachel doesn't put any effort into the art anymore and often has her assistants picking up the slack in a very disorganized manner that leads to disjointed, bland, weird ass art that often can't even maintain consistency between SINGLE PANELS, like this:

The magic is gone. These are not reflections of Rachel's capabilities in the slightest. She is far capable of so much more, this is beyond being a 'stylistic choice' and falls more under the implication of laziness or lack of care.

What's wild is that she's outright stated that she's "streamlined" the LO creation process to make it easier for new assistants to acclimate - which would be fine, if it weren't for the fact that 'streamlining' shouldn't mean 'downgrade'. There are plenty of ways to streamline the LO art style that can still retain the original charm of LO that drew people to it in the first place without cheapening it. It's not like LO is the only webtoon under strict deadlines, Rachel has more assistants than most working for WT and yet everyone else on the platform seems to only improve in their comic's production workflow and its presentation whereas LO has only declined.

(The Kiss Bet, 2019-Present)

(Tower of God, 2014-Present)

Not every comic needs to make improvements this drastically, and technically LO didn't even have to make improvements in its original execution - but it's so far gone in the other direction that it begs the question, "Why do other creators and comics with less prestige and as many or less assistants compared to LO seem to make such bigger strides in the technical execution of their work?" Regardless of whether the style is erring more towards anime or cartoon or realism, 'style' doesn't make up for poor technical execution and lack of consistency. That's the same energy we get all the time from newcomers to the craft who reject any form of criticism towards their technique and understanding of the fundamentals with "THAT'S JUST MY STYYYYLE". Even many animators who predominantly work on cartoon productions still understand their fundamentals and utilize them in the creation of stylized pieces of work. This isn't even me questioning how much of the fundamentals Rachel knows because, again, she clearly has understanding of it in her older work, she just seems to have stopped caring or isn't doing a proper job directing her team.

I criticize the stick necks and googly eyes the same way I do the inconsistent body types, refrigerator shoulders and same-face syndrome because they're all things that are detracting from and lowering the quality of LO's art as a whole. They didn't always shade whites in the old episodes of LO, but they did often tint them to make them less jarring against the more vibrant colors. They didn't always color in the irises back in 2018/2019, but at least when they were just solid black pupils, they were actually drawn EQUALLY, vs. the solid pupils nowadays which feel like they're each on their own schedule and are never the same size or facing the same direction. They didn't always draw perfect necks and faces, but nowadays it feels like the heads are being stuck on sticks and attached to separate bodies that aren't even consistent with the characters' body types. All of these things are issues, there's no 'hierarchy' of problems, they're each a part of a much bigger lackluster whole.

When it comes to my own panel fixes/redraws/whatever you wanna call them, if they don't look enough like Rachel's 'style', that's either because we're failing to recognize what makes Rachel's art unique due to it being so watered down over the years, or because I'm just not doing a good enough job replicating it. Undoubtedly a little bit of both. I'm still 'adjusting' to a workflow that accommodates the LO style and how it looks. It's not exactly easy to just jump from one style (my style) to another without my own usual biases bleeding in (trust me, I'm not happy that there are people who know my usual art style who can still 'see' it in my LO art, because that completely defeats the purpose of what I'm trying to do lmao)

All that aside, we can't pretend that S1 LO's signature style is still being executed to its fullest potential in S3.

If I can be really brash here, there are WAY more egregious panel 'editors' out there who straight up are drawing stuff legitimately just in their own style. And they're still all great in their own right and get to the point of what they're trying to say even if they don't fit what you would define as a "fix". Don't bug me about mine.

Rachel's style in and of itself is gorgeous and unique. It's the lack of effort in the execution as time goes on that is the topic here. I can never hope to fully achieve that 'vibe' that so many people miss about 'old' LO because that was all Rachel and I can never fully capture the spirit of her work because it's hers, it's the accumulation of everything that's inspired and influenced her in her artistic journey.

What I can do is point out and design alternatives to the many errors, inconsistencies, and technical issues that tries to get it closer to that original look and feel of S1 LO that better reflected Rachel's original efforts. It's what it could potentially look like if modern LO art wasn't so disjointed among its scattered assistants and rushed with as little visible effort possible. It's what could have been if it didn't feel like Rachel has essentially given up.

Does it really matter how I specifically word my posts between 'edit' and 'redraw' in this context when both things are attempting to accomplish the same goal?

#thanks for the discussion #i'll always take a good essay op #i'm genuinely not trying to be a dick #i'm just tired of 'style' being conflated with effort and visual appeal #this is another ask that turned into a fundamentals of art rant #lore olympus critical #antiloreolympus #lo critical #ask me anything

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animerunner · 1 year

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Someone: -comes on comment of one of my older fanarts and calls it awful and laughs at it- Don’t take it personal

Me: Yes because my own art. The thing I put hours into.

Yes totally I am not supposed to take that personally. Especially since this took me ages to even try doing art. And this was a redraw of my first one

How the fuck am I not supposed to take it personally.

Some of y’all should not interact with content creators.

I didn’t ask for critique. I don’t sure as hell need that in my mental headspace when I’m dealing with health issues.

Some of y’all are bullies I swear

Leave LMAO on an artists work. Like how the fuck am I not supposed to take it personally

It’s literally my own work.

Some of y’all need to shut up and learn etiquette because this ain’t it

#the owl house #the owl house fanart #brought to you by a comment on one of my Raine art #fan art #learn how to behave

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haeroniel-doliet · 8 months

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Bonus content: heres the super speed summary of how I struggled through the dinluke big bang piece I started over 80 days ago! More thoughts and details on my process below to cut

- Overall wanna post this with all the flaws galore for my future self, not at all because I've just left the record function on, forgot about it and now I have this!

- Good reminder that the worst thing is blank paper and just getting something down okay, rough simple lines convey ideas its all good!

- Drawing on an airplane produces questionable results (the first more refined lines, not NEARLY enough references in use)

- Speaking of, never regretted following a reference over trying to improvise. I feel like it always looks better (that smoke is one good example!)

- Redrawing and redrawing sometimes is so worth it, other times you should just let it be and move on (those first trees before the yellow dotting were kinda okay honestly!)

- Less all sorts of different brushes is better, for consistency :')

- Theres many parts I'd forgotten that in hindsight maybe look better than the end result (like overall composition being bigger and with better feeling of space) but choices were made and I gotta choose to be happy with and proud of the completed piece, afterall its better than all the dusty never finished wips.

- Definitely didn't quite follow the big bang deadlines, I'm sorry :') in general I'd consider that greyscale to be 20% sure (proof of idea and a layout figured out!) But hilariously after what I posted for even 80% I went and redid all that work. (Maybe its not actually totally redoing if you're making the same just improved! All the ground work took its own time and I wasn't starting from scratch at all.)

- At the very end it gets abruptly cut off, despite asking the program to leave on the last frame for a bit... Then I remembered the panic I had just yesterday, because the file for these screenshots took up too much disk space and caused Krita to crash, losing all the progress of like good bit of little adjustments and corrections. I guess I never turned the recording back on, so the very final few hours are missing, but thats okay! This is not professional! (Spot the absolutely tiny differences with the final image posted :p)

-Also realizing after many a rewatch, there's been some glitch with it not recording me recolouring the characters entirely!! How sad, but you can see the difference from when they pop up around the time I'm redoing the trees and at 02.53 and when they return all redone at 03.07

- Theres a lot I don't love, theres a lot that could be better if done differently, but I really have to start being okay with being done rather than perfect!

- Really proud of myself for dedicating to doing a more involved and detailed background/scene than i've ever done before digitally. I've pushed beyond my comfort zone of just characters with a hint of a background, it will get better from here!

- Did I need to post this with all sorts of bits missing? No, definitely not, but hopefully someone will find this interesting, and my future self feels that this was helpful!

#Haeroniel draws #art timelapse #art progress #krita timelapse #anyway this is mostly a personal post for future reference and for venting out the struggles I had along the way #but hey maybe someone finds it interesting and thats cool!#kritas suggested settings would've made this timelapse over 30 mins long.... so you're welcome!#I won't even have a guess how many hours this all took #still have to go finish the other pieces oop maybe those timelapses will be better?

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fearfully-fiction · 3 years

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St. Albans Pt.4- Dakota Laden x Reader

word count:3625

warnings: Fluff/comfort. PaRaNoRmAl aCtiViTy *insert spongebob meme*

Summary: Based on season 1 episode 4 of DF so all credit to the crew, the show, and the channel! Coming back together after separation reader and Dakota have a comforting conversation before deciding where to sleep alone.

part1! part2! part3!

(not my gif!)

The doors opened and you took a deep breath of fresh air. Dakota went to film with Alex and you went to talk to Tanner.

“Hey Tanner.” you greeted your friend. “Hey (y/n)? You ok?” he asked you. “Yeah, I’m ok. I just wanted to say sorry for overreacting earlier. It was really silly of me, and I hope you know I would never actually mean that.” You apologized. He looked down at you with a smile. “I know (y/n), it’s ok. I know you just want to protect him and I do too. C’mere.” He said and opened his arms to you. You wrapped your arms around him and held him tightly. “I want you safe too Tanner, I want all of you safe I hope you know that,” you said to your friend. “I know that, and I want you safe too we all do. We’ll keep each other safe.” he said and let go. You nodded your head in agreement. "Of course.”

Dakota walked over to you both and you could see his eyes looked a bit glassy. Your heart sunk he walked straight to you and wrapped his arms around you. Tanner walked away letting you both have a moment.

“What happened my love?” you asked softly as his head rested in the crook of your neck.

“I swear it doesn’t want us down there. I’m so nervous about this. I really don’t want anyone going back down there. I don’t want to go back down there.” he admitted to you.

You held him tighter and kissed his head. “I’m so sorry babe, I don’t want you down there either. I can’t stand the thought of you down there by yourself,” you said and he pulled away. You placed your hands on his cheeks. He looked at you with those beautiful eyes that you loved so much. You could see the fear glimmer in his eyes, and it caused a frown to form on your face.

“If you get the basement/bowling alley, I don’t want you to go alone. I’ll go with you ok,” you reassured him. “No, I don’t want to bend the rules because I’m scared. You’ll have your walkie close?” He asked you. “Of course I will, but are you sure you don’t want me with you?” you asked him just to make sure.

“I’m sure,” he answered you. You nodded and let your hands slip from his face and down to his shoulders. Rubbing his shoulders gently trying to calm him down a bit. He leaned down and pressed his lips to yours letting his hands grip your waist, your hands moved from his shoulders and to the back of his neck to play with his hair. He sighed into the kiss held you tighter. Your lips moved together slowly as if trying to memorize the feeling.

“Hey! If you guys would stop making out I’d like to get this night over with!” Alex called over to you. You broke away and took a breath before letting a smile fall on your lips and dropping your head onto his shoulder. He let out a chuckle, something you haven’t heard all night and it made your smile brighter. “I guess we should appease the crowd huh?” you asked with a raised brow.

“I think it would be best,” he said. You let go of him and were about to grab his hand and walk back to the group but he pulled you back to him and pressed one more short kiss on your lips just to annoy the group. You heard aggravate groaning and it made you giggle against his lips. You pulled away once more and dragged him toward your friends. “Alright, alright, we’re here. Sorry.” You jokingly apologized. Chelsea shook her head and bit back a smile.

“Alright. So, right now, we are going to sleep separately. This is gonna raise our fear levels, and hopefully, ramp up the activity in the sanatorium.” Your boyfriend informed the audience.

You rolled your eyes. “I totally hope that happens.” you retort sarcastically. “I know right.” Dakota shot back. You glared at him playfully.

“So, we should agree on the five scariest locations. We already kinda have,” he said and looked at you all. “Yeah. we know it is definitely the bowling alley.” Tanner said.

“Bowling alley for sure is the worst one,” Dakota said.

“The electroshock therapy room.” Chelsea put it out there as well.

“Absolutely the electroshock therapy room, so many people were tortured there,” you said.

“And then the suicide bathroom for sure.” Tanner threw that on the table as well.

“Suicide bathroom it’s on the third floor you’re so far away from everyone else. So yeah the three that we have are on this building.” Dakota said. “Someone should be in the east building in that creepy winding corridor.” Tanner also suggested. “Yeah, the basement.” you piped up.

“So, we did a walk-through of the east building earlier, and nothing happened, but when we were down in the basement that’s when it felt like we were not alone,” Dakota explained to everyone.

“We also have the boiler room, which really fucking creeped me out,” you said and a shiver ran up your spine at the thought of having to sleep alone down there.

“Right yeah,” Chelsea confirmed.

“So Tanner’s gonna now write these five locations out on paper and then we’re gonna draw out of a hat and decide where we sleep for the night.” Tanner placed all of the locations in the hat, and you clenched and unclenched your fists nervously.

“Okay, you got it?” Dakota asked him.

Tanner held out the hat toward Chelsea first and you could tell she was nervous.

She quickly grabbed one and showed the small crumpled ball of paper to the camera with a nervous smile.

“Alright Chelsea, where are you sleeping?” her brother asked her. She looked right at him.

“I don’t even want to tell you,” she said and you chuckled.

You looked at her paper over her shoulder and cringed.

“Ooh. Electroshock.” All of you cringed at the location. “That’s the second-worst one, you said.” She relays.

Dakota moved the camera forward to get a good look at her paper. “Chelsea got the electroshock therapy room. I think Alex should draw next.” He suggested with a grin.

“Alex.” he held the hat out for him, he reached his hand in and pulled out a paper to unravel his location.

“Suicide bathroom,” he said with disappointment dripping from his words as he showed the camera.

“Not to scare you anymore Alex but you are three whole floors above anyone else,” Dakota said, and you placed your hand on your best friend’s arm in a comforting manner. “You’ll be ok Al.” you smiled at him reassuringly.

“Ok babe, you’re up. It’s between the east basement, bowling alley, and the boiler room,” he said and gave you a grin.

“I better not get the boiler room or I’ll be pissed I swear.” you shook your head as you reached in to grab a paper. “Hey, at least you won’t be three floors away from anyone else,” Alex said. You gave him a sarcastic grin. “Yeah, that makes me feel great Al.” he chuckled at you.

“Alright, let’s see what you got,” Chelsea said while looking over your shoulder as you unraveled the paper.

The minute your eyes scanned the paper you immediately dropped your arms to your sides in exasperation. “No way. No way in hell!” you exclaimed.

“She got the boiler room,” Chelsea explained to everyone. “I got the damn boiler room.” you sighed before holding up the paper to the camera.

Alex threw an arm over your shoulder and pulled you into a side hug. You leaned into it and sighed.

You grabbed Dakota’s camera and began filming for him while he and Tanner chose.

“I hope it’s not the bowling alley because I feel like I’ve been picked on this whole night.” he ran his hands through his hair out of anxiety. “Ok, whatever. I’m just gonna do it. I’m just gonna do it” he tried to muster the courage and reached into the hat when Tanner did. When both of them had their paper.

“Open at the same time. Don’t look.” Alex said.

They both unraveled their paper at the same time. “Bowling alley.” your boyfriend read off and your stomach lurched. “No!” he exclaimed loudly while Tanner jumped in excitement and relief that he didn’t have to sleep down there. While you were happy for him you were extremely worried for your boyfriend seeing as he most definitely was being messed with down there. Dakota had a smile on his face but you knew just how scared he was of that place and it broke your heart.

“Dude, I got touched down there. A handprint showed up on my back,” he said. You looked away because tears were collecting in your eyes. “I’m scared for all three of us,” Chelsea said and looked at her brother.

“Honestly, the bowling…” he cut himself off. “Can we redraw?” he asked.

You sighed and turned away from everyone else preparing to go get your things for the sleeping arrangements. Your boyfriend noticed that you had gone completely silent and looked over at you. Your back was turned to him, and he could practically see you trying to not breathe too hard.

He could tell that you were about to cry and made his way over to you.

The others were already grabbing their things.

“Hey,” he said trying to get your attention. You didn’t turn around and so he tried again this time walking around to face you. “Hey, babe look at me,” he said and you released a shaky breath before looking up at him. He could see the shine in your eyes from unshed tears and sighed.

He pulled you into a hug and you held him tightly.

“We can trade places. I know the boiler room still sucks and it’s super close, but it would be better than the bowling alley,” you suggested though it was a bit muffled by his chest seeing as you buried your head there.

Though your voice was muffled he heard you and pulled away from you. “There is no way, I would ever let you sleep in that bowling alley. Not after what happened tonight and to Chelsea last time. I’ll be ok, we’re close together ok. If you scream for me I’ll be right there, and I know you’d do the same for me. We’ll be ok babe, I promise you.” he said and kissed away the tears that fell down your cheeks. He nudged your nose with his gently and placed a kiss on it. It brought a small smile to your lips, and he smiled as well. “We’ll be ok,” he reassured you both one more time before grabbing your hand so you could both gather your things and head to your locations.

You all walked Alex up to the third floor and helped him set up. You made sure to give him a big supportive hug before leaving. “Love you Al!” you called while walking away. “Love you (y/n)!” he called back.

You made your way down to electroshock to drop off Chels and help her set up before giving her a hug as well. All of you said your I love you’s, getting the same response back. The next stop was Dakota, you and Tanner help him set up and Tanner wished him luck. You walked over and kissed him. “I love you, Kota. Just walkie me ok, or scream whatever you think will work better.” you joked a bit. He gave you a soft chuckle before kissing your cheek. You began to walk away with Tanner and sighed when you reached the boiler room.

You set your stuff down and Tanner helped you set the camera up before giving you a hug and wishing you luck. “Hey, wait,” you called after him. He turned back around with his flashlight in hand. “You ok?” he asked. “Yeah, I just wanted to know if you wanted me to walk with you so you aren’t alone,” you said to him. He gave you a warm smile and shook his head. “No, no I’ll be ok. Plus if I ever said yes to that here I’m pretty sure Dakota would kick my ass.” he joked which made you laugh. “I guess you’re not wrong. Well if you need anything just walkie me alright,” you said and he nodded. “Night, Tanner, love you!” you called and he responded the same.

You sat yourself on the ground and sighed heavily knowing you were not even going to be able to shut your eyes that night. “This is gonna be a night from hell…” you spoke to yourself.

“So, I am in the boiler room which is right next to the bowling alley actually so me and Dakota are very close to each other. Which is really strange because none of us have been this close in a location before but hey, I am not complaining about it,” you spoke to the camera. “At least I’ll be close to my boyfriend if I die here,” you said with a sigh.

As soon as the words left your mouth you hear what sounded like faint laughter. Your heart dropped as you shone your flashlight throughout the room. “That was a laugh, I just heard a laugh.” you began to panic. “Shit, I hope the camera caught that,” you mumbled to yourself.

The night had just started and you already felt more unsafe than before.

You picked up your walkie to get a hold of Dakota to ask if he had heard it too. Seeing as you were practically right next to him he had to have heard it.

“Kota,” you called.

“(y/n), what’s up?” he asked with a concerned tone.

“Did you just hear laughter? Or did you maybe laugh at all?” you asked him anxiously.

“What? No, I didn’t laugh. You heard laughter?” he asked in a panic.

At that moment you could just tell you were screwed.

“Yeah, it was very faint but I heard it. I’m not sure where it came from but I swear on my life I heard it,” you explain to him. “We’re not even 20 minutes in, and this is already frickin sick,” you said in a frustrated huff.

“We’ve got this, only a few hours left ok.” his voice crackled through the walkie.

“Alright Kota, you know what to do if you need me,” you told him.

“Got it see you soon.” he ended.

You went back to just sitting in the dark just waiting for something to come out at you. You knew for a fact that you were not alone in the room. It made your skin crawl at the feeling of someone or something watching you.

You sat there in the dark making sure to listen for Dakota if he yelled for you or if something happened. As you sat there you still couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched. Seeing as you were so focused on listening you suddenly heard something go by you. It wasn’t like walking more like the sound of shuffling as if someone were to crawl across the floor. It made you freeze in your place your breath got caught in your throat and you felt completely helpless. You wanted to walkie your boyfriend or even just yell for him because you were so scared but you didn’t want him to worry more than he already was. You knew that something wasn’t willing to let up and it scared you more than you had been at any other location.

You finally let out a shaky breath, “I just heard something literally crawl past me I swear on my life. I know I’ve been like a baby this entire night but damn…” your voice broke. You hated feeling weak but tonight you just couldn’t help it. You were extremely emotional and it most definitely wasn’t helping your situation. You needed to pull yourself together for your sake and everyone else’s. “Ok, I’m pulling myself together. I’m gonna be ok, Dakota is gonna be ok, we’re all gonna be ok. We’re stronger than this thing.” you spoke to yourself as calmly and confidently as you could. After saying this you once again heard faint laughter and it made you jump and turn your flashlight on to scan around the room. Still, you saw nothing but knew you would always feel something watching you. You took a breath and kept the light on for a few more seconds before turning it off and trying to push the events to the side. You just tried to focus on everyone else and it seemed to help slightly so that’s what you kept in your mind.

It was about an hour later when you began hearing noises again. You heard what sounded like tapping, “what the hell?” you whispered.

Then you heard your boyfriend from the other room.

“What the fuck? Ok. No. No.” your head snapped in his direction.

“Dakota! Hey, are you ok?!” you yelled. You heard him gasp. “Shit” he mumbled.

“Did you not hear that?!” he called to you. “The tapping?!” you asked. “No, the loud scratching noise!” he shot back. Your eyes widened, and all of a sudden things felt really heavy.

“No, I didn’t! Are you ok?!” you yelled hoping to get a good answer back.

“Fuck that was loud.” you heard him say. “Red if you’re down here, please leave me alone.” he pleaded. Your heart wrenched at the tone of his voice.

You got up from your spot as quickly as you could and grabbed your camera and flashlight. You made your way out of the room and into the bowling alley where your boyfriend sat with his head in his hands.

“Kota, hey. I’m here are you ok?” you asked softly trying not to startle him. He looked up at you and his eyes flooded with relief.

“(y/n), crap you should’ve heard it. It was frickin terrifying, and it was so loud,” he said as you sat down next to him letting one hand rest on his back while you set the light on the floor next to you.

His tense muscles relaxed at your touch and he sighed.

“I’m so sorry. Is there any way that Chelsea may have made the noise? I know she’s above us but maybe she did it.” you suggested. “I’ll check right now,” he said and picked up his walkie.

“Hey, Chelsea,” he said into the walkie.

“What?” she asked sounding exhausted.

“You’re not moving at all upstairs?” he questioned his big sister.

“Not moving at all,” she answered. You could tell that she was ready to be done with this place just as much as you were.

“You have to hear this. What I just heard.” Dakota said to her.

“Thanks for sharing your fear. Now I’m fricking wide awake,” she responds.

He sighs heavily. “Fuck.” you said in exhaustion.

“What was that?” he asked.

“I believe you. We know you’re down here.” he talked.

“I’ve heard you. You’ve talked to me, she heard you laughing earlier. I get it. We get it. Please leave us alone.” Dakota spoke into the dark. You both knew he was there, and it was even scarier that he didn’t respond, and knowing the things that had happened earlier in the night to you. You decided not to mention it in fear of making his fear worsen and his panic rise even more.

You turned to face him. “Do you need me to stay with you Dakota?” you asked him with sincerity floating around your words, quietly hoping he would ask you to stay, as you didn’t think you could handle that room alone.

He let out a heavy sigh before looking at you with disappointed and fear-filled eyes.

“Honestly, please. I really don’t want to be, I can’t be here alone anymore,” he responded and you set down your camera to wrap your arm around him and sit close to his side. “Then, I’ll stay. Just like I said. I’ll stay.” you told him and rested your head on his shoulder. Letting out an internal sigh of relief. He placed his head atop yours and let your presence be a grounding force for him.

“I’m sorry I made us do this.” you heard his voice, it was small and sounded so apologetic.

“Hey, it’s ok. Look at us, hell yeah we’re scared, and rightfully so but we’re together and we’re close to the finish line and then we can leave and never have to come back.” you tried to relieve his fears.

“I never should have brought us back here,” he said and put his head in his hands once again. You switched your positions so you were sitting in front of him. You took his wrists in your smaller hands and pulled his hands away so you could properly look at him. You could see guilt forming in him and you understood why, but you also understood why he had done it. He wanted to conquer this building because they didn’t before.

“Listen to me, Dakota. You came back here, to conquer the challenge that you quit last time. Now here you are hours and hours in. You’re here, we are all here and we won’t let it win. We can beat this. So let’s do it together huh.” you said and tried to smile though it was barely visible in the darkness.

“Together,” he said. “Together,” you reaffirmed.

Taglist: @jaziona92

@beautybyfire

@thefandomthings

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hibiscus-candy · 2 years

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@cryosphe Man.. good questions.. (i hope you don’t mind me answering in a seperate post)

- What got you into wordgirl/the fandom?

It was actually very gradual, someone I follow on twitter posted wordgirl fanart a few times. Then a few months followed where I didn’t think about it. Saw a few clips on youtube. Once again forgot about it. More clips, more fanart, and soon enough i was just bored with myself and decided to watch a few random episodes. (it was like being hit by a truck with nostaliga) Instantly in love. I knew right then I was being thrown into the thick of it. Speaking of the episodes, I watched them totally out of order lol.

- I notice that whenever it comes to drawing Steven/DTB you give him features that are typically attributed to those who are older. Any reasons as to why specifically? I mean I love it, but I’m just so intrigued…

To be totally honest with you... its a mix of just really having an appreciation for old people, and also a bit of an inspiration from how my father looked. My Dad started greying in High school (and so did I) and it always drew more attention to his fine lines, overall older appearance... also its just fun adding crows feet and all. But also! I Hc him in his early to mid 40s, he olde...

- When first drawing him (DTB) for the first time, did you experiment a little with the design? If so, what did you change/add? How is it different compared to the way you draw him now?

Idk dude I just started drawing, whatever comes out is what comes out. I still wasn’t posting back when i started drawing him so it was truly an unfiltered, unpolished time. I do mostly screenshot redraws when im figuring out a character. You’ve seen most of it before but heres the full first ever page:

Right before posting that grilled cheese comic, I was playing around with the idea of him recovering (obviously), and came to the conclusion that his experience with Squeaky should have aged him noticeably. So I added crows feet, and salt and pepper hair (even though you can’t really tell in the comic) And at the end of it, I was like, you know what, I really like the crows feet. So i decided to keep them. And at first I gave him crazy hair, then tried out a neater style, then i kinda forget about it untill I flipped back through randomly and thought to myself:

- I want more lore on his family 👹👹👹

OH MY GOD HIS FAMILY. I absolutely cannot create deep lore for the life of me 🙇 But heres what i’ve been thinking

-Amelia is the oldest and Stephanie the youngest.

-Amelia has a few kids of her own and is PERFECTLY balancing a job on top of it.

-Amelia is trying her best with Steven and is absolutely FILLED with guilt over how she unintentionally treats him.

-Stephanie is the closest with Steven

-Steven moved away from home to pursue higher education.

-Steven’s family love him very much, even now.

-Mami- the taller- rightmost mother, is indigenous. She was based off how my grandmother would always be described as ‘A tall, Indian woman’ by my cousins. However, thats about it. She doesn’t look like my grandma, and mine was far too mysterious to base a character off of anyways.

- Nah, but I’m curious about the family that you gave him. What’s the thought process behind that? Is there a reason for the two mothers or did you just do it cuz you wanted to?

Oh! So originally I thought a lot about him being from a picture perfect nuclear family (angst!) And it was cool and all. But one day I thought to base it off of some of the dynamics in MY extended family. And boy did it click! I come from a very women-dominated extended fam. With even a few all-women families in the mix. Its a very sweet and comfortable atmosphere, and when thinking of my brother and the men in this women-dominated family, I think it fits just right.

Once again there are a few all-women families in my circle. One of those is, yes, two old lesbians with some kids. I want it to be a little representation of the fact that there have always been queer families, even before legal recognition. And of the elder queers who thrived in their lives.

- WHAT HAPPENED TO STEVEN AND AMELIA’S RELATIONSHIP⁉️⁉️⁉️ 😭😭😭 Was it always this bad?

Oh man of course not! They got along as kids! Amelia is his older sister and wants whats best for him but she cannot wrap her head around what hes going through. She is very neurotypical, and Steven is very neurodivergent, and almost all of their friction comes from a lack of mutual understanding.

- Why can’t you draw Huggy❓❓❓ 👿👿👿

Animal drawing brain don’t work

- DTB is a dilf 👍🏽👍🏽👍🏽

👌👌👌

#thank you so much #I was fully expecting you to just send me an ask demanding i go on a ramble about one of my comics #wordgirl #wordgirl oc #wordgirl ocs #asks #<--- i think #rambles by yeya

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madelion · 3 years

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hey, i'm an artist (or so i'm pretending to be) and i absolutely ADORE your art style and the way you draw so beautifully. What are some tips or what is some advice you could give me on anatomy, use of color or digital drawing generally? I've posted my art like once but I was so nervous of what people might think of it I made something super different to my actual style, so if you scroll on my page don't find it because i hate it lmao

Anyway, I would really like to hear what's some advice you have to give!

Hi!!! First of all, thank you so much for your sweet comment it means so much to hear that 🥺

So my bIGGEST TIPS I can possibly give (this is gonna be long I apologize in advance):

1. always always always use references.

I cannot stress this tip enough.

Whether it‘s for a certain pose you want to draw: you can go on Pinterest/google to find poses, clothing ideas, hairstyles, lighting, scenery. use references for EVERYTHING. no matter what people say it is not cheating. Sometimes we luck out and we magically draw the poses straight from our brain, but honestly that’s rare.

And it doesnt all have to be from real life. You can take inspiration from other artist whose styles you look up to/admire. For me that’s viria94(Instagram), aleikats, alexiakhodanian(twitter), spidertams(instagram) and many others! Obviously you don’t want to copy your inspirations, but you can learn so much from just observing their artwork :) Your inspirations will most likely change dramatically overtime because your art style will grow as you continue to improve. These inspirations are going to be a mashup of things you like about each individual style. And eventually, you’ll learn how to incorporate some of those elements into your own art which in turn: helps you find your own voice/style with your artwork.

but also, don’t forget to not copy them exactly lol. It’s one thing to “copy” an art style as a way to personally practice in your own time (which is totally okay to do!) But there is definitely a fine line between practicing/outright copying and claiming it as your own work. I hope that made sense???

2. Redraws

this is something I only just started doing, but it has helped my artwork improve immensely. I redraw scenes from shows and movies that I love (which I will get to this tip in a second). And then because the scene is already set for you, it helps you not only practice anatomy (especially if you’re referencing real people), but also lighting, setting up compositions, and in general practicing this over time will help you refine your art style!

3. Draw from life

Not everyone has a realistic art style, nor do they need to have one. However, it is important to understand the ”rules” before you can break them. And what I mean by that is that by practicing realistic anatomy, you get to understand proportions/how the body works in relation to itself. Because even though everyone is shaped differently from each other, there is still an overall similarity we all have with one another. And honestly all you have to do will go into my next point:

4. watch tutorials

Cannot even tell you how many tutorials I have watched over the years. I will forever be on YouTube trying to learn how to do something. this honestly goes with the references section because it just helps so so so much. Having someone show you exactly what to do is so beneficial because they’ll move you through the exact motions you need to do to get to the end result. I remember when I first started really getting into art, I loved drawing realistic eyes and lips. so I watched tutorials of that all the time and now it’s pretty much second nature to me.

since you asked about the use of color, anatomy, and digital drawing… this is gonna be golden for helping you okay. I might have taken a color theory class a couple quarters ago at school… but trust me I’m still winging the whole color thing. howEVER, tutorials will be your best friend when it comes to these things I pROMISE.

5. TAKE BREAKS

please for the love of all things do not push yourself to be creative when your mind refuses to do so. some of our best work/ideas appear when we’re bored or doing something else entirely.

taking a break means go do something else you enjoy. For me that’s: playing my favorite video game, watching my favorite show/movie, reading a book, talking to my friends or family, baking, writing. just do something else!

the moment you try to force yourself to finish a drawing when you’re really not in the mindset to do so (unless this thing you’re drawing is for school… that’s an entirely different thing trust me lol), you’re just going to lead yourself into an art block. So many artists pressure themselves to draw everyday because yeah it can lead to improvement, but back in my anne with an e days when I felt pressured to put out fan art consistently for the show, it led me to what was probably my longest art block EVER. and it sucks because I ender up losing the inspiration to draw for a show that I loved a lot. So always remember to pace yourself and take care of yourself before anything else <3

6. Draw what you love

so often we feel pressured to draw what others want us to draw. But that shouldn’t matter. yes, it’s good to be aware of the people that may look at your art/follow your art account, but that should never dictate the work that you create.

for some people they love drawing original characters and creating stories, others might only love drawing animals, some people have certain themes in their artwork, and others, like me, purely like drawing fan art.

when you draw something you love, your artwork will always turn out better because that means you’re having fun making it.

and for me personally, I cannot whip out original characters for the life of me unless it’s for a grade LOL. So when it comes to drawing, that’s why I stick to fan art.

NOW I KNOW THIS WAS SUPER SUPER LONG but I really hoped this helped in some sense!!!

But thank you so much for asking, I’m always more than happy to give out some advice/tips :) I’m looking forward to seeing more art from you!

#art tips #digital art #anatomy #lighting #art style #i really rambled for six points but I seriously hope this helps AH

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stardustpinkart · 3 years

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Free Tickle Art Prompts

*Deep breath*Okay here goes. I never know what to say, I, get so nervous writing or reaching out, even if its digital XD

But yeah, I was thinking. Ive done some free art prompts before, and I see a lot of artists get commision work for ticklign art, and I wish I did too :) Im not as into it as I once was(more in my teens), but its always something I thought was cute, even as a little kid. I didnet understand it back then but I’d get a senstaion of fun, enjoyment, when seeing tickling scenes in cartoons and stuff :)

I guess part of it, not being asked, is not being that well known an artist? So, heres trying to rectify that.

I’m gonna open five slots, and take into considerations peoples ideas of what they might want to see. Ones already filled, as I liked the idea and right now Im getting back into HP, SO, tickles my fancy right now :) Pun intented.

Oh gee, where to start.

Uh, I prefer cutesy playful tickles or “Mock torture”, yknow like how in cartoons or tv they use it as the cruelest method, “tickle torture” is the worst possible thing they could face. But I am curious about more adult stuff too, and sometimes think Id like to give it a go, see if I could? My arts always been cute, been told that all my life and proud of it :) But, try new things?

What else what else... Well Im open to a lot of ideas, I like stories, I like animation, and Im always looking for new things so I think that Im familiar with a good deal of things? And even if Im not, well, you can ask, if I have a reference, easy as pie. It would also make it easier if your very precise and detialed in what you want, if you have a particular idea in mind :) Saves me redrawing for a start

If I think about fandoms Ive explored, gotten into, or enjoy, most recents would beeee...

Avatar: The Last Air Bender

Infinity Train(Hey if you havent seen this show, you should! Friggin most amazing cartoon I’ve ever seen)

Harry Potter at the moment(was into it as a kid like everyone, finding myself rexploring it at the moment).

She Ra, the Dreamworks remake.

Owl House, I especially like the characters Luz(I wouldve killed for a herione like this as a kid, oddball sweetheart, most of us were the oddball who didnet fit in) and Hunter

Disney, Pixar? I like most of there movies and Coco and Luca were very cute :)

But thats just a cheat sheet of whats on my mind right now, I like a lot of things. Ask me, i might be familair with the fandom you fancy. HOW THIS WORKS, is like a lottery. This is not first come first serve, more taking a chance?Im the same with commisions, if my hearts not in it, I wont draw it. BUT when your stuck for ideas it can be very helpful to get suggestions, and something you think would be really fun to draw, well, never would have thought of unless someone suggested :)

I like to put all my art up because, well, work so hard on it and cant share it? Dont like that, thats just a rule with me. HOWEVER im totally cool with you wanna to be anon, I understand the want of privacy.. Heck here on tumblr you can ASK anon.

Thats parlty why Im doing this on Tumblr, its more likley to be seen, people send in there ideas. I also ask you not harrass, if I take an idea on I will do my best to finish it :) So I ask in return people try and be patient.

Your more than free to check my gallery too, to see if my style is something youd like. Just check under the tags darlings

Well, lets see what happens. I hope this proves fruitful.I really really hope people will ask

Slot 1: Harry Potter Suggestion

Slot 2: Owl House Suggestion

Slot 3: Luca Suggestion

Slot 4: Owl House Suggestion

Slot 5: Little Witch Miyako Chan Suggestion

#tickling #art requests #art lottery #prompts #tickle prompts #tickling art #tickle #ticklish #free art #art

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angst-and-fajitas · 3 years

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Emma's Art Boundaries

(aka ways you are and aren't allowed to use my art!)

1) no reposts

This one should be pretty clear, since I've talked about this in the past, but do not repost my art to any other site, even with credit. I just want to maintain control over my art and how it's used. And if you claim it's yours, boy oh boy am I coming for you with a big stick. For those who get confused and mix up the two, reblogs are still totally ok, don't worry, I'm talking about when someone takes my art and puts it in a whole new post, either here or on another site

2) you can always use my art as a phone background or lockscreen!

Yup! And you don't even need to ask, just enjoy! Sometimes I'll even make art with specific dimensions so it can be used as a bg

3) profile pics and banners are totally ok, with credit!

I think it's super cool that anyone would like my art enough to want it in their layout, and I welcome it! Just make sure to credit me properly in your bio, and a reblog is a great way to show appreciation <3! My only other rules for this are A) Don't do this with my oc art, that would just be weird, and B) This is limited to the site on which I posted the art, so don't like make it your profile pic on instagram or whatever (If you REALLY want to, for whatever reason, just ask me personally. I'm chill and I'm happy to talk)

4) references are ok, but no tracing!

Art is hard and references are good help, so I'm cool with you using my art as a reference, but tracing stuff is a big ol No No. That's not referencing, that's just plagiarism, buddy. If you want to do a close reference or a redraw, I'd say ask me first! And if you just want to use one of my rare actually-original designs for a fandom-related character (like my blaze empress design for example), please credit me and also @ me cause I wanna see it and reblog it!!

5) use in edits needs permission first

I don't know the first thing about tiktok, but I know people make a lot of edits with various art in em. I ALSO know a lot of those don't have credits for all that art, so make sure you ask me first if you want to use my art in an edit, and if I agree, then make sure there's proper credit as well. If you don't, I'll treat it like a repost.

I reserve the rights to update my art boundaries at any point!

#emma talks #my art #important #about me #this is all I could think of for now

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byakuyasdarling · 3 years

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I share some rough drawing drafts and talk about my day under the cut:

———————

I have to do a time-based piece for my assignment, and yet again, they’re stuck in my portfolio with a different story (that AU I talked about a while back) to suit the themes and narrative of my folio. My Visual Arts teacher thinks the art, the themes, and the symbolism is really well done and I should keep going 0-0 As aforementioned, it is not the first time they’ve crept into folios.

But hey! She said I would probably be the one to top the grade in the subject again, so that makes me happy. Especially after that B+ in Maths, I literally died, sksksk. I was so focused on studying for bio and English (all within the same 2 days) I totally side-lined it and did not study. It truly is my fault, sksksks. I would not be so mad about it if I wasn’t Freya, and that a few people (who, no crap, got 1% better than me) were like “I did better than Freya!” so pridefully. I guess I should be happy that I am even presented as a standard for achievement, but at the same time it just makes me feel more horrible and I don’t feel as if I am an actual person to a lot of people; sometimes it feels like I am spoken as if I am more of a concept or a high work standard rather than someone with feelings. Like, I am always associated with what I have achieved there and how well I perform rather than who I am. However, I am lucky to have a lot of friends there who don’t make me feel that way.

Like, realistically, the mark REALLY isn’t good, I feel bad as it is. I know they don’t mean bad and I am happy for them, but they are hurting me to an extent.

So anyway, we got our Literature marks back too! At least that made me happy. I got a 42/45 on the exam (it was an analytical essay on a play we read, unseen question, you know the drill)! Since the exam has a 25% weighting the mark was converted to a 23/35 giving a semester overall of 47/50, which I am happy about. I hope my parents will be proud of me. I hope he would be proud of me (as funny as that is to say when ‘he’ is not real, and a grumpy man <33 perhaps I am just delirious enough to think that right now).

Anyway, the drawings above are for that time-based piece for an assignment I mentioned prior. I probably will post a slightly edited version of it here :) For the sake of time (since I have a dead-line) I FINALLY found a good reference to use for the spin transition I wanted and one of the final scenes of Beauty and the Beast was EXACTLY what I was looking for. So, I am referencing the poses off of that and redrawing it into my style. Obviously, one of the huge differences is the dress style (because I like to make things hard for myself apparently), but I digress. It is going to be rather tough because of time restraints and I am not fully dedicated to making this the be all or end all of projects. I still have to thnk fo a 3D piece. I will also need to edit the colours I have so far and redraw a minor part.

After today, I am unsure how I feel. I am so tired; I feel a bit sad for some reason. I hope you all have a wonderful day <333 Special thanks if you read my PSA HDBBDIUEB

#i.e. Freya is pretentious again #school mention #family mention #parent mention #Freya Talks | 💙

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ryuichirou · 3 years

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I really don’t understand the story of /tw/ in general. People are using them so much and for everything: it’s so fucking annoying and ridiculous! They even put it for food!??! If we should follow their silly reasonings, TV should put a content warning for every single fucking thing, even food programs. And what’s even the point??? Cause surely I can’t get it at all.

I feel like new generations are pretty much spoiled, so used to live in a crystal cage that expect the whole internet/world to be ready to adapt at their poor and fragile sensibility at any moment. This is a fucking joke, I swear: these (most of times underaged) persons don’t know shit about life, and it shows so much.

The only content that should be tagged is 18+ or NSWF (whatever they call it) content, and that’s totally enough: if they find a page where the creator says there’s the kind of content they don’t like they should just move the fuck on and ignore the page, instead of being angry or flustered because not every content is specifically made for them or doesn’t align with their sometimesboringwhenitcomestoantis taste. But even if they find a pic in their tl about something they don’t like, what’s so difficult in blocking the artist and just ignore the thing? If a pic is able to ruin their whole day, well I guess there’s a serious psychological problem behind the surface. If their sensibility is that much fragile that they need a tw for every single thing, they either need to stop using internet or contact a therapist to resolve their issues imo. If their life is so empty that they can’t stand some artists making a drawing of something they don’t like or that somehow triggers them (Awwwww poor things, as if I give a shit🙄) they should start going out more, experiencing some fresh grass or hanging out with some friends.

I’m so done of these persons making a fucking dictatorship on the internet, feeling allowed to say whatever the fuck they want cause “buhuhu, how dare u hurting my poor soul so bad!!!!” Who the fuck cares? Who the fuck are you??? You are literally noone to me, I don’t know you and I don’t even wanna know you: I make this content for myself in first place and eventually for every one who shares my tastes. Don’t like it? Well, I don’t give a damn and I don’t feel sorry at all: internet is a goddamn free place, where you can find everything. Didn’t mommy and daddy told u that? Welcome in the world, hon! But imma tell u a secret right away: you have the right and the POSSIBILITY to ignore the content you don’t like (WOW!), keep scrolling (OMG!!) and especially leave artists/content creators the fuck alone, you spoiled child, cause yeah the world doesn’t revolve around your tiny ass.

Am I being harsh? Yeah, I know. But I’ve reached my limit with this thing, and this is exeedingly ridiculous.

As a content creator myself, I totally understand you guys. I love you, I love the content you produce and I’ll keep supporting you forever.

Omg Anon look at us getting all mad over this thing haha, but yeah. It’s pretty much exactly how you described.

While I do understand that food isn't exactly what I draw and I understand that people have different limits to what they want and don’t want to see, it’s impossible to consider every single thing that might affect someone. I think it's people's responsibility to manage their own timelines - that's what I do constantly because there's a lot of stuff I never want to see in my life. Maybe it’s us growing up in a completely different internet space (and time…), maybe it’s a matter of taste, but unless it’s an example of severe cruelty or realistically rendered rotting piece of flesh, i.e. something that could legitimately scar a person, I’m sorry, but I can’t see myself tagging these types of drawings… It’s not even graphic, it’s just an anime boy head with some blood on it, you can’t even see the cut and you wouldn’t stop to think about it twice. I redrew a screencap with Eren's arm being bitten off where you can see meat and even the bone, and there, for some surprising reason, nobody said anything. Is it because it was in the manga? I don't know. Zeke's flying head was also in the manga. I plan on redrawing Eren cutting off his leg and eye poking properly this time, it's also fucking graphic. Most of the time I don't even know what tags to use (the mushroom drawing with poorly drawn holes and barely any shading that people enjoyed complaining about - what the fuck did I draw? Body horror? Because I don't consider this child scribble body horror, one of the prompts for the month is actually "body horror", so this wasn't it. It was just a creepy thing, somewhat gross), and if I were to use most of them, like I said, it breaks my posts.

My overall blog has a warning (a poor one thanks to the symbol limit which is mostly eaten by me screaming about the prohibition of reposting my art), and I think it's more than enough.

I can live without people constantly going "what", "wtf", "no", "nah", "the fuck/hell", and whatever unoriginal comment they can come up with under my drawings. If you have nothing to say, then shut the fuck up, how about that. I'm sorry that my art is somewhat popular, and people see it.

Anyways. Thanks a lot for your support and love, we appreciate it a lot <3

#replies

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mcrmadness · 3 years

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A Masterpost: ALL MY OLD die ärzte (aka Bela&Farin) COMICS (from 2010-2011)

I’ve lately been talking about my art, especially comics, here a lot but I have never posted my OLD old dä comics here! That’s about to change now. The old ones happened in 2010-2011 when I was 19-20 years old, so they are a bit cringy now :D The scans are my old ones so don’t mind about cat hair or something like that in some of the scans. And I know: my hand writing hasn’t really changed in the past 10-15 years at all :DD

And a slash warning (do I really need that with this fandom tho..?) because I used to draw just very fluffy Bela/Farin comics and they barely have any good plots even. There’s just 4 overall in this post and they all are quite short. But at least for me it’s fun to see how far I have come and how I’ve gotten better at drawing!

Anyway, without further ado, this is where it all started:

Bela&Farin - “Du willst mich küssen”

Simply the idea came from the fact I noticed that on the “Du willst mich küssen” single there’s only one additional song: “Die Antwort bist du”, and that one out of all the potential other songs from the studio album. (Now I’m wondering if I should try to redraw this some day to see my progress? :DD)

The rest under the cut because they get very cringy but if you want to read B/F fluff comics and facepalm at my idiotic humour, go ahead and click the read more link.

Bela&Farin - Bela will ein Baby

(eng. Bela wants to have a baby)

This one was the first I did in German and I traumatized myself. I had just started learning German and totally failed everything and an (old) online friend, native German, wrote something that indicated laughing and I felt so insecure about my German after that that even today I have a fear of saying/writing even simple German words in front of native Germans. She anyway “beta read” the plot and corrected every faulty phrase (aka every phrase) and this is what she suggested that I’d write, and that’s what I did.

The plot shortly: Bela just wants to have a baby but he wants it with Farin obviously, so Farin says they’re both men and can’t reproduce together but Bela found a solution: he found them a surrogate mother. Problem solved.

***

Bela&Farin - “Beer Belly”

Prepare yourself for a cringe overload :)) I’m so sorry that you have to suffer through this.

With this the idea came from the live videos I was watching back then - lots of live videos from 2007-2009 and I noticed that Bela just kept growing and losing his belly all the time. (OMG HELP I’m crying because “SQUEAK SQUEAK” XDDDDDD)

Also the ending is... I don’t know what is it. I guess I just wanted Rod ot make an appearance and didn’t come up anything better than this ::D My peak of humour is right there btw: anything that happens at the background. That shit just never gets old for me. So I find that still funny in this comic but I have no clue how a bass can be pregnant.

Also hey, I have started drawing shadows :DD

And yes, Bela actually did have a cow t-shirt like that in some of the videos and I just had to draw it! And btw, the reason for the fluff is probably because the concerts where those videos were from? It was extremely slashy, Bela and Farin barely could keep their hands off of each other so you really can’t blame me for all this. The ship just sails itself.

***

Bela&Farin - “Zucker”

(eng. “Sugar” - this one was again in German because it wouldn’t work in English. This time I think I did all the language stuff myself but I can’t remember for sure so maybe I got help, maybe I didn’t... This is the last one of these old comics and my personal favorite. You can see that my style somehow went through some major changes but I don’t know what even happened there. I can’t remember.)

I can’t get over Farin’s hair in the last panel, I drew it so perfectly and I still don’t know how to recreate that lol. And now I’m losing it at that tiny “XD” in the grin panel because I found it so stupid looking - the first time I had even drawn a grin for him lmao. Also ignore Farin’s arm that has suddenly lost all its color. (Aka: someone forgot to color it.)

THE IDEA for this comic is simply in the name of brown sugar. At least in Finnish that is called as “fariinisokeri”, which always amuses me still after 12 years because I am a bit simple sometimes, and I figured that it can also be called “Farinzucker” in German so of course I needed to make a Bela/Farin comic about it.

The dialog for those who don’t speak German (too well) yet - Bela just goes to Farin to ask for “Farin sugar” and Farin first is like “nope” but then “jk” and they lived happily ever after. Or something.

***

BONUS:

Something I drew with a ballpoint pen once when I was visiting my aunt and cousin and was bored and doodled this. I like drawing repeated patterns like brick walls or apparently also flowers.

And I have no idea where did I draw this - maybe it was something to do with one course through the employment agency as I tend to doodle when in any kind of class. I feel like I had been watching “Die band, die sie Pferd nannten” prior to this, based on Bela’s looks.

And it was back in 2010, I didn’t have a smart phone yet so no internet to use for reference photos :D

***

So, back to the comics - I only made these 4 back then but before this I did draw other stuff and comics too. I drew several of them as horses when I still didn’t know how to draw humans, and I also have one of them as rats too. The rat one might work as a redrawn human comic, tho... Anyway, at some point I got annoyed because I didn’t like drawing them as horses or rats and wanted to invent a “human style” so then one night, this happened:

The texts are mainly just me chanting how I’m dying from laughter etc. That is actually what I do when I am very insecure of what I do and then I just start openly laughing at everything and myself, that way things don’t feel as bad failures than what they actually are :D (And yeah I know the article is wrong at some point, let’s just say I hadn’t memorized all the article stuff from German yet :D I don’t know if I had even started learning German yet at that point.)

But yeah, then I did find the style and these are the next sketches from my sketchbook:

The bottom left says “facial experessions” - and oh my god I was so damn cringe whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy---

but anyway, those were what I ended up with eventually and the rest is history. I think I’m still gonna make one post with stuff I drew in 2018 and that I haven’t posted here yet as there’s still a few of those, too.

#mcrmadness draws #my dä comics #my fub comics #my old drawings #dä fanart #die ärzte #belafarin

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toastedbuckwheat · 5 years

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Hello! May I ask how you draw? I'm currently learning how to myself and would be highly interested into a step to step process by you! Like from sketch to the done thing (no color necessary)

Hello there!

I dunno how I feel about showing how I work/giving advice to someone who’s learning (and I say it as a pro artist who went through years of traditional art education) because when I do the illustrations you see here on my tumblr I BREAK THE RULES you’d learn though life drawing routine, and give in to bad habits, and my methods are rather unplanned and chaotic which makes it difficult to pinpoint significant stages. But I used my portable potato to take some photos during working on my last piece, so I’ll throw it here with a bit of an explanation of what’s going on.

Before I begin - and because you’re about to look at a mess of a WIP - I’d like to give you some general advice that generally makes life easier when you draw (again, things that I learned in traditional arts education - another artist might advise you the complete opposite, dunno!)

Work holistically. Forget them satisfying-to-look-at clips on instagram showing someone produce a hyperrealistic portrait starting from an eye, with each and every element emerging being finished before they proceed to another part. It takes a lot of talent, yes, but these are ppl redrawing a photo in a kind of a mechanical manner. Most artists don’t work this way. Especially if you’re working without a reference, or if you’re doing a life drawing - your process will be layering and changing and finding what works best to give an impression of what you’re drawing rather than reproduce the exact image, and your artwork is likely to look messy most of the time.That said: don’t start with the details. Don’t spend too much time on a particular part while neglecting others. Your goal is to keep the whole piece at the same level of ‘finished’ (even though it’s unfinished - do I make sense?) before you’re confident that everything is where it should be and proceed to the details. So sketch out the composition first. See how things fit, what’s the dynamics. You’ll save yourself from limbs sticking out from the frame, odd proportions etc etc.

Because it’s a game of relationships between different parts of the picture/scene. I ask you not to worry about finishing a single element before laying out the rest because you’ll find that said element will look different once the other part appears! For instance - you might think that the colour you picked for a character’s hair is already very dark. But once you’re done with the night sky background, you’ll find that it’s in fact too light, and doesn’t work well with the cold palette. You’ll have to revisit different parts of the image as you go to balance these relationships and make the picture work as a whole.

Give an impression of something being there without actually drawing it ‘properly’- because details are hard, mate. You’ll see that my lineart usually has hardly any, and my colouring is large unrefined stains, but the finished thing looks convincing. Like, fuck, I can never focus on how Crowley’s eyes are really shaped. So I just turn them into large glowing yellow ellipses crossed by a line, and heard no protests so far.

Don’t panic if you messed up (you probably didn’t anyway). It might turn out to be a completely unnoticeable mistake - because, remember, things work together to balance each other, so another finished off prominent element will probably drown that badly placed line that looked so visible and out of place a second ago.

It might not look good before it’s finished. I’m mostly immune to it after years of drawing, and my recent illustrations all follow a specific method (ykno, my sunset glow effects and all that) so I can kinda predict the next stage. But I do my linearts on a specially picked crap paper, I don’t bother erasing the smudged graphite, and it looks messy af until I make the background white in Photoshop. Conclusion: you might have a moment of doubt as you work through a piece, but try to break through it - I often suddenly start to like what I cursed a minute before! - and try to finish it even if it’s meant to be bad. This way, looking through your past pieces, you’ll see the progress. And trust me, I can’t even look at my art from literally three months ago. It’s normal.

Now, pics! The sketches are paler in real life, but I increased the contrast a little so you can see something.

1. Laying out the composition!

I wanted to just show them kissing, but I got carried away due to some Art Nouveau inspiration. As you might have noticed, most of my illustrations are quite self-contained (ykno - they look like a sticker on a plain background). So I wanted a tight swirl bordered by Aziraphale’s wings creating a sort of rounded, yin-yang like bubble around them. Consequently I made the whole composition revolve around their heads.

2. Adding more details to the sketch. It’s messy af. It will be messy until I’m done. It’s fine.

3. These are the fineliners I use for the linearts! They are made by Uni-ball and come in light and dark grey. I also sometimes use the guy on the left - ‘Touch’ sign pen by Pentel, when I want more brush-like, wider strokes. I work in grey because when I scan it and do my usual boring trick with sunlight highlights - which is an Overlay mode layer in Photoshop - the highlights ‘burn out’ the lines too and make them vanish a little, and the lighting effect gets more striking. I also like to use the light grey ones to make something look pencil-y without actually using pencil, because pencil fucking smudges.

4. It smudges! So because I am right handed, I start inking from the right hand side, no matter how tempted I am to do their faces first.

5. You can see the composition directions here. I made it intuitively, but ofc some ppl actually use grids etc to lay out their drawings.

6. See how pale ans thin the lineart was at first? I kept adjusting it as new inked parts were appearing. It starts to look nice and consistent now!

7. Finished lineart? There are some mistakes which I later corrected in PS. Notice that Aziraphale’s face has hardly any details on it - I tried to make the drawing suggest his expression rather than risk overdoing it.

8. Photoshop time!! You can totally do what I did here even if you don’t have a graphic tablet. I used Curves tool to enhance the lineart, then Quick Selection Tool to select the background around around my sticker-like piece and filled it white (on a new layer ofc). I keep this white layer on top of the layer order so it works as a mask as I colour. I decided I did not like the hatching shading underneath Aziraphale’s halo, so I erased it with a Stamp tool (because I wanna keep the textured grey fill my crap paper naturally gives me!). It’s done roughly but won’t be visible once the thing is coloured.

9. And the reason why I keep the grey shade instead of easily getting rid of it by using Curves/Levels is because when I set this layer to Multiply mode and colour underneath, it gives me this nice desaturated look like from an old cheap paper comic page. It works as a natural filter! But of course I can’t do bright colours this way, so all my glowing highlights happen ABOVE the lineart layer - on a separate layer in Overlay mode!

Finished thing here!

_____

Commission infoBuy Me a Coffee - help me with my transitioning expenses!Prints and stickers and things on my Redbubble!

#ask the buckwheat #long post #tutorial #drawing advice #drawing tutorial #good omens #ineffable husbands #good omens fanart #good omens art #my illustrations #doodles #toastedbuckwheat

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thewolfmanslayer · 3 years

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Honestly the amount of people who say artists and writers should do stuff for free, or try to rip them off on comissions still royally piss me off.

I think the worst part of it is the entitlement, I dont want to make this too much about generations but a lot of commissioners are millenial/Gen z's who grew up on the "steal and pirate everything" mentality, take everything that you can because no one else is going to hand it to you. which I can get behind, when you are screwing over MULTI BILLION DOLLAR COMPANIES. NOT THE STRUGGLING ARTISTS AND WRITERS who are trying to keep food on the table as desperately as you probably are!

It's simple, you wouldn't walk into a restaurant, order food and tell the server "sorry I don't have any money, but I've got like a few thousand followers on social media, I can get your name out there, get the restaurant some exposure" NO! They don't need "exposure" they need you to pay the damn bill!

On top of that, most of these artists and writers ALREADY HAVE FOLLOWINGS. They already have thousands of people following them, waiting for the chance to get a commission, who are willing to pay for said commission, they don't need "exposure" when they're already out there! He'll even the artists and writers with a few hundred don't need it, they'll get more followers as time goes by, their skill alone will see to it.

And what is with people trying to get free art and writing? It's not going to work! You can't harass someone until they cave, trust me, you'll be long since blocked before you even have the opportunity. I don't do comissions, online anyways, but my own friends and family, people who actually know me STILL PAY ME whenever they ask for me to do art for them because they KNOW it takes TIME AND EFFORT.

How many times do we need to have this discussion???? Like when is it going to finally click that people who need to pay their bills just as much as you do AREN'T going to do this shit for free!?

Here's the thing about art and writing, that you've heard a billion times but still aren't getting; IT. TAKES. TIME. AND. EFFORT. TO. GET. DONE. the art isn't going to magically appear and the writing isn't going to suddenly write itself, if either were so convenient YOU WOULDNT BE ASKING AN ARTIST OR WRITER IN THE FIRST PLACE!

Look at that, you see that? The first picture I did back in 2012-13, the picture beside it? I did that TWO YEARS AGO. I didn't suddenly know exactly what to do, or had anything close to a god given talent for drawing (I'm not that talented). The first picture WAS THE ABSOLUTE BEST I COULD DO AT THE TIME THAT I MADE IT. In the time between these two drawings I admittedly took a break from art, but then I got back into it four years ago. EVEN STILL that was four YEARS of starting over from the basics, relearning everything, learning new things, wanting to actually improve my art.

Which, guess what, DID NOT HAPPEN OVER NIGHT. It was HOURS UPON HOURS of my limited free time as an adult drawing over and over and over and over again, every single goddamn day to get to the point that I was able to make that redraw look as good as it does in comparison. He'll, my art now puts them both to shame! Because I spent the time improving my quality!!

Now look at these artists doing comissions, they've probably put EVEN MORE of their time to get that good! They've put in LITERAL YEARS of sweat, blood, tears, frustrations and dedicated hardwork. Some did the same as me, self teaching and lots of practice, others probably had to go to school, which definitely wasn't cheap. But all of us put in that time and effort TO REACH THESE POINTS. Of being better artists, developing our styles, getting faster at drawing.

And maybe you think that this is super easy, right? That I or every other artist can just fire some art off and boom its good and done in like an hour?

FUCK. NO.

Even now it takes me several hours a day OVER MANY DAYS to make something exceptionally good! It doesn't matter how good an artist is, it still. Takes. Time.

Maybe the issue is that you don't understand how much actually goes into art, let me break it down for you, the steps that most people follow to finish ONE drawing.

-Rough draft: general character outline, get a feel for what I want to draw.

-Rough sketch: I start doing a bit of pencil to start filling in details like mouth, nose, eyes, hair, clothes. Ect.

-Penciling: I go over the rough sketch and clean everything up, maybe do some editing, this is when you can start making out all the details.

-Ink: I trace over the finished pencil with a pen tool and actually have the line art, everything looks clean, presentable, it actually looks like a character now. I'll spend time editing this and possibly redoing the inking many times over to get to a point where I like it.

-Flat color: I decide on which colors to use for skin tone, clothes accessories. Ect.

-Shading/highlights: I figure out where my light source is and how strong it is, I then apply the correct amount of lighting and shadows to the color to give it depth, I also have determine the texture of skin, clothes and accessories to make everything look real and natural.

-Blending: I smooth out the shading and highlights so that it looks more natural and isn't too hard (noticeable difference between color) so that it looks as natural as possible.

-Finish: I go over last minute details, finish any editing or corrections that need to be done. Once it's good I call it a day.

Each process is longer in length then the previous, with the exception of the final editing (as long as everything looks good) and even the rough draft can take some time. Over all this is SEVERAL HOURS of work for a SINGLE DRAWING.

So is it sinking in yet? How much is put into doing even a single character drawing? God forbid if its done with background. This isn't a "scratch a pen around and be done with it in ten minutes" kinda deal, no, this is SEVERAL HOURS OF SOMEONES LIFE BEING PUT INTO THIS

And if you still have the AUDACITY to try and wrangle free art from an artist then there's no helping you, you're just a selfish piece of shit, no question and I want nothing to do with you.

Someone might say "But I got free art/writing from.-" look I don't give a shit if someone did something for you THAT ONE TIME, these other artists and writers? Totally seperate and different people. You're one freebie experience does not, and should not apply to other artists and writers.

"But what if I really want this commission but don't have the money right now?" Well, that's tough shit. Save up and properly commission them when you can, it's not their problem.

"But what if I'm in a really bad financial situation and really want it?" That sucks, and I'm sorry, but again, not their problem. Chances are this is their only source of income and they need to make money so that they don't end up in a similar situation.

"They have a gift! They should share it!" What kind of cheap ass- LOOK, just because someone is talented or really good at something does not automatically obligate them to do anything for total strangers in anyway shape or form. These are living, breathing people, the same as you. They need to eat, they need to pay rent/mortgages, they need to pay vet bills, send their kids to college, do their taxes and everything else that YOU YOURSELF need to do. Asking anyone to spend their time doing something for free, when that something is how THEY ARE SURVIVING is beyond asinine. Not only that, this obviously isn't a hobby to them, it is very clearly THEIR JOB. Would you want to do a job where you didn't get paid at all? Doing a shit ton of work for absolutely nothing? No? Didn't think so.

"It shouldn't be about the money!" Well unfortunately, as with almost every other job, it is. We live in a world where we desperately need to make money in order to survive. That's the painful fact of the matter. If money never had to be an issue ever again then this would be a very different story. But it's not, plain and simple as can be.

Look, these people are just like you, artists and writers who are just trying to get by in a shitty ass world, using the one thing they have that let's them have an income. Leave them be, don't try and trick them, guilt them, or cuss them out when you don't get your way. Either properly comission or leave them the hell alone, plain and simple.

#artists #writers #art #writing #rant #comissions #people

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somethingusefulfromflorida · 3 years

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2022 midterms and 2024 general

2022 is an important year because the House of Representatives is reapportioning itself; following the 2020 census, the states have been tasked with redrawing district maps to “reflect” the new population. Partisan gerrymandering has been a problem for decades, but it has become a thoroughly entrenched problem following the 2019 Supreme Court decision that gerrymandering is outside the scope of federal courts; the 5-4 conservative majority decided that they can not and will not rule on the matter again, leaving it up to Congress and the states to figure it out. Congress can’t get anything done, so a gerrymandering ban is all but impossible, meaning the states have total control over their new maps. A majority of the states are controlled by Republicans, despite representing less than half the country; there are more smaller states than bigger states, so even though more people live in urban areas, the rural areas get the majority voice in the redistricting process.

This means that 2022 is going to be probably the worst gerrymandered year in American history; given that the Supreme Court has since changed to a 6-3 conservative majority, I don’t see them overturning their previous decision any time soon, meaning Republicans have an inordinate advantage going forward.

Let’s look at the 20th century as a guide to see if we can make any predictions.

1902: Republican Teddy Roosevelt is president, and the Republicans control both the House and Senate. Following the election, they maintain control.

1912: Republican William Howard Taft is president, Republicans control the Senate, Democrats control the House. At this time, both parties had liberal and conservative wings, and the Republicans were having a civil war between the liberal Roosevelt faction and the conservative Taft faction. Roosevelt ran against his own party’s incumbent as a Progressive, a third party spoiler, giving the White House to the Democrats for the first time since the 1880s (and to a southerner for the first time since the Civil War). Democrats kept the House and took back the White House and Senate, giving Woodrow Wilson the trifecta.

1922: Republican Warren G. Harding is president, Republicans control both the House and Senate. This year is special because it is the first time in American history that the House was unable to reapportion itself after a census; there was a major battle across the country between rural and urban state legislatures, so Congress eventually passed a law in 1929 to set the number of House seats permanently at 435, the level it had reached by that time. Before this, the House grew ever ten years, inflating with population; it has been stagnant ever since, making each Congress less representative than the one before it. Republicans maintained control of the House and Senate.

1932: Republican Herbert Hoover is president, Republicans control the Senate, Democrats control the House. Hoover was more or less single-handedly responsible for the Great Depression, refusing to give aid to the people, forever ranking him as one of the worst presidents in American history; he was soundly defeated by Franklin D. Roosevelt who dragged us out of the depression and jump started the economy during World War II, becoming one of the greatest presidents in American history. Democrats won super-majorities in both the House and Senate, giving Roosevelt all but unlimited power (the only thing keeping him from literally becoming a king was that Democrats were still split between the more liberal north and the conservative south).

1942: Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt is still president, on his third term, and Democrats still control the House and Senate. They maintain control after the election.

1952: Democrat Harry S. Truman is president, but the recently passed 22nd Amendment forbid him from running for a third term. This is the first reapportionment year of the century without an incumbent president running for re-election; Democrats still control the House and Senate. After 20 years of Democratic rule, the country elects Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower a war hero and basically America Incarnate. He was everything they wanted in a president; he was manly, intelligent, anti-communist, super Christian, and racially tolerant. Republicans took back the White House, the House and Senate, giving Eisenhower the trifecta.

1962: Democrat John F. Kennedy is president, and Democrats control both the House and Senate. They maintain control after the election.

1972: Republican Richard Nixon is president, but Democrats maintain control of both the House and Senate. Nixon stole this election by hiring goons to break into the Democratic headquarters and steal dirt on his political opponent (Watergate Scandal). His campaign forged a letter from his strongest rival Edmund Muskie of Maine, in which they made it look like he was insulting the French-Canadian population, which would be like someone from Florida insulting Cubans, or someone from California insulting Mexicans. Muskie cried giving a speech denouncing the letter, imploding his campaign. The Democrats instead went with the unpopular George McGovern of South Dakota, a political nobody; Nixon hurt HIS campaign by revealing that his running mate Thomas Eagleton had depression and previously underwent electro-shock therapy, runing his career and forcing McGovern to replace him at the last minute with Sargent Shriver, whose main claim to fame was being married to John F. Kennedy’s sister. Nixon won in a landslide, winning 49 states including South Dakota. Nixon failed to cover up his crimes and resigned in 1974 before he could be impeached. Democrats kept both the House and Senate.

1982: Republican Ronald Reagan is president. Republicans control the Senate, but Democrats control the House. Both parties keep their respective chambers following the election.

1992: Republican George H.W. Bush is president, and Democrats control both the House and Senate. Bush is nowhere near as popular as Reagan was, riding his coattails into office and then stumbling through his first term. During his campaign he said “read my lips: no new taxes.” During his term he created new taxes. Whoops. He cared more about foreign policy than domestic, but still fumbled the Gulf War; we pushed Saddam out of Kuwait (yay), but then overthrew the Kuwaiti government (boo). The war had so much buildup; it was the only thing reported on TV for weeks and months, and it was over in days, so everyone was like “what was the point?” He may still have won re-election were it not for Ross Perot; a businessman from Bush’s own Texas, he ran the most successful third party campaign in modern history. He didn’t win any states, but he had national appeal where former third-partiers only had regional appeal; he split the ticket in all 50 states, meaning that Bush and Democratic rival Bill Clinton won multiple states with less than 50% of the vote. Clinton was a charismatic young southern Democrat in direct opposition to old pretender Bush (he was a new Englander pretending to be a Texan). Democrats won the White House, and kept both chambers of Congress, giving Clinton the trifecta.

2002: Republican George W. Bush is president (the H.W.’s son), and while the Republicans control the House, the Senate is split 50-50 for the first time in history. This should mean that Republican control the Senate because Dick Cheney was VP, but midway through 2001, Vermont Republican Jim Jeffords left the party to become an independent and caucus with the Democrats, giving them an effective 51-49 majority (fun fact: Jeffords was eventually succeeded by none other than Bernie Sanders). Bush Jr. was a warmonger who wanted to “redeem” the Bush family legacy by finishing what his daddy started; he used the tragedy of 9/11 as a pretense to go to war with Iraq so he could topple Saddam, even though Iraq had nothing to do with the attacks, had no ties to al-Qaeda, and possessed no WMDs. Republicans kept the House and narrowly won back the Senate after the election.

2012: Democrat Barack Obama is president. Democrats control the Senate, but Republicans control the House. Both parties keep their respective chambers, but Democrats win a handful of new House seats despite the re-districting.

2022: Democrat Joe Biden is president (in the event of an unforeseen tragedy, it might be Kamala Harris). Democrats control the House and Senate by razor-thin margins, meaning single-digit rebels could deadlock Congress entirely. It is very likely the Republicans will take back the House, and I give both parties a dead even chance of winning the Senate. Democrats are certainly going to lose Georgia and possibly Arizona, but could pick up Pennsylvania and maybe even Wisconsin; Pennsylvania is open because the Republican incumbent is retiring, but the Wisconsin incumbent is running for re-election, so that one will be an uphill battle. Those two are their best shots; maybe North Carolina (no incumbent), maybe Florida (yes incumbent), but I wouldn’t hold my breath. There’s a non-zero percent chance Congress could remain deadlocked 50-50. It depends on if Biden/Harris get anything substantive done this year.

It appears that the majority party in the House has the advantage going into the next re-districting cycle, but it has never been this close before and it fails to account for the Republican Revolution in the 80s and 90s. The Democrats maintained control of the House for 60 years, then Bill Clinton took office and the Republicans reorganized themselves in opposition to everything he stood for (even in the areas where he stood with them). Newt Gingrich took the Republican party from defense to offense, changing the playbook so they cared less about policy and more about culture; since then, instead of running for stuff, Republicans run against stuff. Their entire platform became “oppose Democrats,” with no real plan besides doing the opposite of what the other party wants to do; remind you, in 2016 Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court because he was a politically neutral choice who Republicans had no qualms against, they just refused to seat him because they hated Obama. Trump was a symptom of this backpedaling, he helped narrow the Republican platform even more, to the point that they didn’t change a thing between 2016 and 2020. That’s unheard of; a lot changed between then and now, and they didn’t feel the need to update ANYTHING, no new ideas, no new promises, just more of the same. It worked in 2016, and they thought it would work again in 2020, but then the pandemic hit and unemployment spiked to Great Depression levels and we entered a recession, turning Trump from Ronald Reagan to Herbert Hoover. It is historically difficult to defeat incumbent presidents, Trump was just a wildly unpopular idiot, and Biden was inoffensive and pretty close to politically neutral (he’s a moderate Democrat who is convinced he can work with Republicans even though their MO is still to oppose him on principle; they will NEVER work with him).

2024 seems so far away, but we’re already getting a taste at what it may look like. If Trump decides to run again, he will absolutely win the Republican nomination; if he runs again, no other candidate will even try to throw their hat in the ring, they worship at his feet, they’d never dare oppose him. In that case, it will be a rematch between Biden and Trump, which hasn’t gone to the challenger since Grover Cleveland won a nonconsecutive second term in 1892. Trump will lose the popular vote for the third time, but could eke by with a slim Electoral College victory if Republicans in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Georgia implement their anti-voting laws. If Biden doesn’t run for a second term, the Democratic nomination will absolutely go to Kamala Harris, meaning it’ll be Harris v Trump, a repeat of Clinton v Trump in 2016. A competent but politically moderate woman pretending to be a left-wing progressive will be torn apart by the media, third party candidates will be treated like real challengers, and the republicans will take the White House with a minority vote for the third time in a row (the last time a Republican won the presidency with a majority vote was George H.W. Bush in 1988. Bush Jr was re-elected with a majority vote in 2004, but he lost his initial race in 2000 and was given the victory by the Supreme Court. Democrats have won 7 of the last 8 elections, but have only seated 3 presidents).

Biden v Trump is up in the air

Harris v Trump will probably go to Trump

If Trump doesn’t run, then the Republican race may be as crowded as it was in 2016, only this time the dozen or so candidates will be vying for an endorsement from Trump. Whoever he picks will become the nominee, so over the next year or two we can expect a ton of right-wing nutjobs to try and position themselves as his heir apparent. Some people think it will be one of his adult children, Don Jr or Eric or maybe Ivanka, but they’re not quite as popular as their dear old dad, and he hates them anyway (he hates Don Jr because he has the same name as him, he hates Eric because he’s a bigger idiot than he is, and he wants to fuck Ivanka’s brains out). More likely, the nomination will go to a far-right sycophant like Ted Cruz who came in second behind Trump in 2016, or Ron DeSantis who is positioning himself as Trump’s #2 guy in Florida. Rick Scott is also vying for that position, so he could give DeSantis a run for his money, and senators generally perform better than governors, so I’d watch them closely. It won’t be a moderate Republican; that will never happen again. They ran moderates in 2008 and 2012 and they got their asses handed to them by Obama, their wing of the party has all but evaporated, there are no viable moderate Republicans anymore, so blue-state Republican governors like Hogan (MD), Scott (VT, no relation), and Baker (MA) don’t stand a chance. Trump IS the Republican party, so what he says goes. It’ll be a competition to see who can suck up to him the hardest and win over his base, but it’s not a race Trump will leave quietly. He could be a kingmaker, but that would mean giving up his spot as leader of the party, something he doesn’t want to do. If he doesn’t run, he’ll still basically be running vicariously through whichever candidate gets the nomination; it’ll be a Trump puppet, Diet Trump, store brand Trump “sorry we’re out of Coke, is Pepsi okay?” They’ll never be as popular as the real thing, and Biden will have the incumbency advantage after rescuing the country from the pandemic and the recession, so 2024 is the Democrats’ to lose.

I predict that Biden will be re-elected in 2024, but Republicans will take back both chambers of Congress. He will resign halfway through his second term due to declining health, making Harris the first female president, who will then lose handily in 2028 against a Republican woman (both will face misogyny, but the Republican will be white, so she’ll have it easier). Biden and Harris will seat no Supreme Court justices after 2022, so Breyer needs to retire RIGHT THE FUCK NOW or else he’ll become the next Ruth Bader Ginsburg. When the Republicans take back the White House, Clarence Thomas will probably retire and be replaced by a young black woman who is even more conservative than he is, just to stick it to the Democrats. Roberts and Alito (conservative), and Kagan and Sotomayor (liberal) are relatively young, so they won’t be leaving anytime soon, and Trump’s 3 appointees are stuck for decades, so Breyer will be the only liberal vacancy in the foreseeable future; if Democrats replace him, the court remains 6-3 conservative, but it will put them in a better position going forward. If Republicans replace him, they’ll get 7-2 conservative, which would be bad for women (especially trans women), the rest of the LGBT community, black people, immigrants, poor people, and everyone else who isn’t explicitly a Republican demographic.

If Democrats want to swing the country away from fascism, they need to act decisively and soon! Nuke the filibuster, pus through electoral reform, expand the Supreme Court, get rid of the Electoral College, ensure that no party can rule without majority support ever again. This would almost certainly lead to a civil war as conservative shit their pants with fear over having to campaign on popular ideas for once; the states would push back hard, the courts would push back hard (McConnell and the Republicans packed the courts by refusing to let Obama seat anyone after 2015, accruing hundreds of vacancies for Trump to fill), and Trump’s base would fight back hardest of all. They would make January 6th look like child’s play, it would be a total bloodbath, all out revolution! We need a constitutional convention to overhaul the system, but that would create more questions than answers, and the conservative minority would still weasel their way into power through compromises just as they’ve always done. The senate is disproportional to appease conservatives, black people counted as 3/5 of a person to appease conservatives, free and slave states were admitted in equal number to appease conservatives, reconstruction was ended to appease conservatives, appeasement is the only way conservatives prosper!

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