morrowzoranov

[morrowzoranov]

I am in LOVE with your buff Penelope design and have been meaning to ask about the inspiration behind her buffness? Is there a reason behind why she is so stacked - no complaints from my end I love and want to know everything about your Version of her.

So I had this idea of depicting Penelope in different ways depending on which character views her. Odysseus remembers her as she was when he left her, she was a bit more "feminine" and soft-looking, youthful even. So when Odysseus returns and we, the audience, finally get to see Penelope, she looks the same but different. And the difference, of course, is that she’s more rugged, more buff but still slim. It shows us that she’s not the same, just like Odysseus, she had to fight in her own way for survival, and both are miserable.

Another reason I draw Penelope a little more buff is because I like biceps.

[morrowzoranov]

the quest has been completed. @imcasperfox @anniflamma

[morrowzoranov]

Anni, I would just like you to know, seeing Penelope naked in your animatic made me scream and close my computer. That's all.

Why though? Nothing sexual happened? 😅

[morrowzoranov]

Persephone with cuteness agression.

[morrowzoranov]

I feel insane for never thinking of this before but AU where Sha’ul offers his eldest son’s hand in marriage to whoever kills Goliath rather than his eldest daughter’s

[morrowzoranov]

ANNI WE HAVE SGS TODAY, HOW ARE WE FEELING 🎤

[morrowzoranov]

Here’s my part of There Is No Name from Stories From Styx! It was such a joy working on this, and gosh, drawing Demeter’s angry expression made my own face constantly look angry for a while too. >.<

But watching the whole Part 1 was so freaking amazing! Everyone did a great job! Can’t wait for Part 2!

[morrowzoranov]

THE GASPS THAT I GUSPED. THE SQUEALS THAT I SQUEALED. ANNNIIIIIII AAAAAAHSHDHDJJDNDRN ANNIII🥹🥹😭😭😭

ANNI THAT WAS AMAZING IM SO PROUD OF YOU AND HAPPY FOR YOUUUUU THAT WAS BEAUTIFULLL I LOVE YOU ANNI😭😭😭😭💗💗💗

Ahhh, thank you so much! It was such a joy working with Casper! And seeing everyone else’s animations and art was simply fantastic! 😭

[morrowzoranov]

Olympians CANON DESIGNS by @anniflamma 💕

Feel free to use these in your animatics! Original designs also welcome 😍

[morrowzoranov]

The Underworld gang CANON DESIGNS by the insanely talented @anniflamma 💕

(Judges initial design by TheeArteest)

[morrowzoranov]

I just watched Casper’s stream from 5 days ago when he showed my animatic to the chat and trying to find my IG (I do not have one) And the conversation of him and Anni is so-

Casper: How come I never heard of Kinnie? Kinnie- is that how you pronounced it, Kinnie?

AnniFlamma in chat : SKILL ISSUE

Casper: Anni I’m gonna call you right now- >:0

( It is in fact, not pronounced Kinnie )

[morrowzoranov]

Okay… I’m going to rant about a book that I read a while ago.... And I can’t deny it anymore… it was a bad book.

The Passion of Sergius and Bacchus by David Reddish. It’s a romantic retelling of the Christian saints Sergius and Bacchus.

To tell the story briefly about these saints, Sergius and Bacchus were third-century Roman soldiers and Christian martyrs. The oldest record of their martyrdom describes them as erastai (Greek for “lovers”). Scholars believe they may have been united in the rite of adelphopoiesis, a kind of early Christian same-sex union. When their Christian faith became known, after they refused to attend sacrifices to Zeus, Sergius and Bacchus were arrested and paraded through the streets in women’s clothing in an unsuccessful effort to humiliate them. The reason it failed was that the duo didn’t feel humiliated being dressed as women. After that they were both executed. Bacchus was beaten to death and Sergius was forced to walk in inward-iron-spiked metal shoes to another town and there was executed.

So, of course, when I found out there was a book retelling about them, I bought it immediately and obviously ignored the negative reviews. I read it with rose-tinted glasses on and loved it! Sure, I could see some red flags, but I ignored them, and to be honest, there are some parts of the book that is very good.

But here’s the problem with it: Reddish’s way of portraying women is… very questionable. For example, there are only two named female characters in the book. Only two. The first one is Helen, whose personality traits are that she’s pregnant and stupid. Im not kidding. Not that she actually does anything dumb, the narrative just tells us she’s stupid. She don't do anything, like she takes parts in some conversations with the other male characters but other than that, nothing. But the book itself and the maincharacters acts like she is the most dumb person there is. Later in the book, she dies, motivating another male character to make irrational decisions out of grief. Her only purpose is to serve as a plot device when she dies.....

The second named female character is Miriam (I remember right...), and she’s a homophobe. She does have a small arc where she recognizes she’s wrong, the next chapter she’s back to being homophobic again, and the narrative nor other characters doesn’t acknowledge her regression.

Trigger warning for the topic of rape.

Then there’s another female character who appears in the book. She doesn’t have a name. She’s basically just a narrative device to show that Sergius is a good person. There’s a scene where Sergius finds a group of Roman men raping a 14-year-old girl. He kills them and saves her. He doesn’t speak to her, she have no speaking lines, and then… Sergius just leaves and continues with whatever he was doing before. The plot moves on, and it’s never mentioned again....This entire scene happens in less than one page. At first, I thought it would come back to bite Sergius, you know, because he just killed four Roman men.... but nope! It was just there to show that Sergius thinks rape is bad and that he’s a skilled fighter who can take down four men at once. That’s all. Wtf?

This is why I hate stories that use rape as a tool to make a male character look good...

And then there’s the moment when Sergius and Bacchus were forced to be dressed in women’s clothing… In this retelling book, it’s portrayed as deeply shameful. Sergius has a long inner monologue about how awful he feels seeing Bacchus in women’s clothing, blah blah blah.

Like… this book shits on every single female character it has, and when it reaches the part where, in the original story, the men proudly embrace being “Brides of Christ,” it does the exact opposite. Yet Sergius is described as empathetic toward women’s suffering, that guy have inner monologues about how much he thinks that women should be treated better but at the same time he’d rather be physically tortured than wear women’s clothing.... And Sergius nor the narrative never questions why Sergius feel that way.... Talk about the irony... a modern retelling of an ancient story about two men who proudly embrace becoming "Brides of Christ" which leads to their death, yet in this version, it’s portrayed as something shameful.

How do you, as an author, take an old story from the freaking third century and potray it like this? There is no women in the legend so all these female characters are made up by the author... I can't help it but it feels like this author just simply don't like women... I really wanted to like this book... but once you see it without the redtinded glasses... it's really hard for me to recommend it... Stay away guys.

[morrowzoranov]

have you read (or did you enjoy) madeline miller's song of achilles? your post about the shitty book made me think to ask, cause i've been wanting to get into retelling/modern writing, but don't know where to start lol

So I don’t think I’m the right person to ask whether you should read The Song of Achilles or not. XD

I have read the book… buuut… I kinda didn’t finish it. Thing is, the book is good, no, really! Even though I dropped it, that doesn’t mean it’s a bad book per se, it’s just that I realized it wasn’t really written for me, and I lost interest in continuing.

There are a lot of good things in the book that I makes me genuinely recommend it. Miller has a fantastic way of describing emotions in a poetic, almost abstract manner. She paints scenes and moments beautifully, and I think that’s true the highlight of The Song of Achilles. So my verdict is you should give it a try! If not, then I'll could recommend you The Prince’s Psalm by Eric Shaw Quinn. Simply due to it's one of my favorites.

If you looking for something shorter, then Medusa by Jessie Burton.

Here’s the "nag section" (in case anyone’s curious why I dropped The Song of Achilles):

So the downside? The way Miller writes the queer relationship between Achilles and Patroclus is… very… very… heteronormative. It’s extremely clear that Patroclus is the "woman" and Achilles is the "man" in their dynamic. When they’re intimate, Achilles is the one doing and spurting, while Patroclus experiences "floral feelings" in his nether regions. The book isn’t explicit, but the text often accidentally describes them having straight sex. XD

There were so many moments while reading where I’d pause and think, "Oh, I can tell this is written by a straight woman who really likes the idea of a housewife." That’s not necessarily a bad thing, it’s just the vibe I got. For comparison, when I read The Prince’s Psalm by Eric Shaw Quinn, I kept thinking, "This is written by a gay man who really loves tall, broad-shouldered, masculine men who make him feel small." It’s oddly similar to each other, Patroclus and David share the same character traits. Both are small insecure men, it’s just that the authors take different approaches to how they depict it.

The reason I dropped The Song of Achilles was that I just wasn’t interested in Patroclus being portrayed as this sweet, insecure, self-hating boy who sits in the tent all day and gets happy when Achilles comes back after a hard earnd work in the battlefield. I expected something more fluid in their dynamic. Don’t get me wrong, insecure protagonists are fine! For example, in The Prince’s Psalm, David is insecure too, but he also resents being seen as fragile by other men around him. The book explores that tension in David and Jonathan’s relationship. David kills Goliath not out of honor or duty, but because he wants to prove Jonathan wrong, even spite him, he did it out of anger. David is insecure, which also makes him envious. He gets angry easily but also quick to forgive. He is an romantic person, who loves the idea of Jonathan proposing to him and being swept up but he also wants to be seen as a "manly" man. He is faithful but when he have the conversation with Jonathan about their bounderies, they come to the conclution together who they can sleep with, no men and only women if you are married to them. David changes and the irony with it is that his change is also a cause why Jonathan died.

For Patroclus, I think he is very flat. He is incesure and he is a good boy. And sadly I really don't remember if there was anything else than that. Most of his reaction is based on Achilles actions. The reason why he is good with fighting is cuz gods are helping him. The reason why Achilles like Patroclus so much is... I don't know really, the text only describes how pretty Achilles is, it very superficial. Patroclus likes Achilles becasue Achilles isnt Patroclus.

Here’s the funny thing…

After all that, I still recommend The Song of Achilles! There's a reason why there are so many retelling books now. I genuinely believe The Prince's Psalm wouldn't have been published if The Song of Achilles hadn't existed. The book is a romanticization, and it was written around 2008 or so. That explains why Miller wrote them like that. I see the heteronormative dynamic between Achilles and Patroclus as simply a product of its time.

[morrowzoranov]

"Screw this competition…"

So I finally made a full illustration of Antonius. I started with some sketches for Hold Them Down and plan to ask Jay if I could borrow some imagery that I used for the commission. Since I had a lot of free range when working on my part of the Hold Them Down commission, many things were stuff I planned to do for my own fan version, but… well… just a lot more violent. 😅 It was so fun when Jay told me "No blood!" and I kinda stod there wanting to see Telemachus's expression when his throat gets slit, seeing actually when the throat gets slit and instead of his cut-up body looking like a doll, plus instead of Antonius holding a bag, it was a Telemachus's head. This doesn’t mean that I will just straight-up reuse shots, but I want to improve them so much more!

As for Antonius's design, he looks pretty much standard for what you’d expect of an Antonius design. The one thing I really like about him is the scar he has on his chest and that he still wears the same tunic he had when he got that scar. Don’t know if it’s due to pride or that he’s simply broke as hell, the only thing of value is his jewelry.

[morrowzoranov]

A VENICE MUSICAL ANIMATIC?!!!

[morrowzoranov]

AnniFlamma, we all love your fanart and animatics of Epic: The Musical, please don't let a few shitty people demotivate when 100x those people love and adore the stuff you make, along with all other animators!

Stay safe and take care, we will always be here and I can't seem to repeat this enough but we love your art

Thank you and everyone for reaching out to me. I will be honest with you all that what happened did upset me a lot, but I am very lucky to have people to go to for support. I will even blame some of them for making me cry, my friends, I mean, because if I am upset and if someone asks me if I am okay, I just break down. 😅 But I used our little server as a ground to vent, and right now I feel much better now.

But I will still be honest that I meant what I said that my interest in making Epic fan content has reduced a lot. I still love Epic, and I still really want to do the whole Ithaca saga, but I have also realized that posting content about it has caused me to feel anxious.

An example is when I finished The Challenge animatic, I felt an extreme wave of anxiety when I was going to press the upload button. And the worst thing? My anxiety confirmed the fears. I have gotten tiktok comments saying that I am a freak for drawing Penelope nude despite it being in a non-sexual way. Apparently, I have to be constantly reminded that female bodies are icky and the world hates women. Aaaaaaand then to get hit by that TikTok video of thousands of people shitting on me, Duvetbox, Gigi, Mircy, Neal, and so many more…

If you have noticed, I have posted less, all types of content for Epic. I don’t do my headcanons anymore, I never wrote that full review of Epic, I feel less keen on drawing fanart, let alone joking about shipping here online. I remember when I made a joke about shipping Aphrodite and Athea because they were the only female characters interacting with each other (ignoring Hera), and then I took it as a critique that Epic failed the Bechdel test. After that, I got plenty of anonymous messages about how I am an evil person for shipping those two goddesses… Just say that you don’t know what the Bechdel test is and block me... 😑

I also hate how my first negative experience with the Epic fandom was pure homophobia toward my Bible animatics. Like, they used negative language toward gay people to tell me to make Epic content instead. There is this weird obsession where people expect me and other artists to only do one thing, which is Epic, and if we dare to do something else, we get punished or infantilized, like we didn’t have any say when Casper commissioned us for Stories of Styx. Don’t get me started on how fucking awful people were to Casper and Teagan….

I hate how people easily tell others things, only for them to unquestionably believe everything said about me. Like the amount of "Anni made Ody/Circe porn, uwaaaa!!" And then, the moment someone questions them and forces them to realize I never made such a thing, they double down and say that I shouldn't have made Circe nude in the original animatic "cuz female bodies are icky" or the classic "Well, I haven’t seen the porn video, but someone told me it existed, so I’m going to believe it exsits." Like, you could tell these people that the sky is green, and they would believe you.

Then there’s that whole "Anni supports rape" or "Anni felt bad for the suitors and wanted Penelope to get raped" insanity. Those quotes stems from ppl was crashing out when I made a post criticizing Epic’s way of addressing the topic of rape. In that post, I was suggesting that I would like the story better if Odysseus were actually morally ambiguous when killing the suitors. How could anyone even think Ody was in the wrong for killing the suitors because he wanted to protect Penelope? How can he be a monster after that? I don’t know, I support a husband protecting his wife from gang rapists, but I guess that was the worst thing for me to ever say, huh? Like, how dare I criticize their almighty Jorge…

It’s insane that I have an easier time handling hateful Christians compared to TikTok Epic fans. 😅

Oh well... I’ve had so many bad experiences with the TikTok Epic fandom over the past two years. And eventually, you just want to log off.

I’m thinking of stopping posting Epic content at all on TikTok as a first step. If TikTok Epic fans hate my fanart that much, then I’ll do them the favor of never seeing it from my account. I will, however, continue posting my Bible animatics there. And if I continue working on my Hold Them Down animatic and if I ever finish it… I will only be active here on Tumblr and on YouTube.

And so, at this moment, I will take a pause from Epic. It probably won’t be that long because, despite everything, I love that musical. But I also have to remind myself that, despite there being so many negative remarks toward not only me but the other artists, there is a lot of love from you actual fans. I have about 138K subscribers on YouTube. That’s 138K individuals who love my work so much that they want to see more of it. THAT IS TOTALY INSANE! And I will never forget that! And I am so thankful for all of you and your support. Thank you and I love you guys! 💕

I’m also planning on making a better-formulated post about this another day. All of this is just me ranting and want to take a short break, focusing on something else.... Maybe... Venice the musical? 😅

[morrowzoranov]

David and Jonathan

okay! I finished The Prince’s Psalm about a week ago and I've dug my nose deep and now it's all I could think about.

This is my first post on here and my first time using Tumblr because it's the only media l could find people talking about the book and the tale of David + Jonathan

These are designs I came up with early into my read and they're bound to change later :)

I have plenty of sketches of them that l'd love to share soon 🫶