originalavenuefox - Tumblr blog

[originalavenuefox]

HTB: Ch01 - Part 1

♪ - Insert Theme Song Here

CHAPTER 1 COVER - Next >>

It's here! The beginning of the fancomic that I've been making for a few months now. I started planning this thing almost a year ago, and I am so excited to finally be sharing it. I'll make a proper dedicated side-blog for it later. Next couple pages drop in a week :)

Edit: Updated Navigation tools. Also, there is a side-blog now @heretherebeturtles-comic

[originalavenuefox]

4 am scrib

[originalavenuefox]

I am so fucking scared. I feel that... you know it's not about death. I'm not so scared of death. I'm so scared of being displaced. I want to go back to my home--and I'm so near, by the way... Gaza is so small. But I can't go there because the Gaza Strip is cut into pieces, and vehicles and tanks are in the borders between these pieces so I just can't go anywhere inside my homeland. My place. And... it's unacceptable. It's unimaginable. You know I have never imagined before that one day someone would just grab me from my... my homeland. My place. And just throw me away and prevent me to come back.

By the way, we don't know if we could go back. If we could go back again. Ever. And I'm so scared that they could displace us from Gaza Strip to the desert. [Bisan's voice breaks, she breaks into tears] We will die in the desert because of hunger. They displaced us to Egypt. To the north of Egypt, to Sanari desert. People just die. We will die.

[Sob] I don't know why do you guys are watching without doing anything to end this. Just in the... just stop it. Just stop it. Stop it in any price, stop it in any cost. Just stop it for anything. Just stop this. It's a nightmare. I can't continue just thinking about the displacement more and more. It's a nightmare. And I can't-- I can't keep it alive while thinking of being displaced more and more.

I just wanna go back to my home.

-- Bisan in a heartbreaking voice memo on Instagram, 2.14.2024

[originalavenuefox]

SPREADSHEET OF PALESTINIAN ESCAPE FUNDS‼️TIME SENSITIVE

Operation Olive Branch is a continuously updating spreadsheet of Palestinian escape funds where progress towards their goals is being tracked. As of right now, there are over 100 funds listed there.

Any amount of money can make a difference. With their recent decision to bomb Rafah, the only remaining “safe” territory in Gaza, Israel has forced Palestinians into a corner by giving them nowhere else to go. The international community has given Israel the ability to act with impunity - it is long past the point in time to rely on those in power to hold Israel to any standard of compassion.

Today, I want you to look at this document, choose a fund, contribute to it, and share it. The people in Rafah are living on borrowed time. Free Palestine.

[originalavenuefox]

Good morning. This might be my last message from the city of Rafah. The occupation [Israel] is carrying out crazy fire. Violent belts. As you’re hearing, there are helicopters. Planes and gunfire from the vehicles. There’s a complete invasion of the city.

We don’t know what is going on in Rafah. The place that the occupation [Israel] claimed to be safe. This is happening all of a sudden; the people didn’t go out. They didn’t do anything. More than thirty targets were hit in just minutes. People were asleep. We woke up to the bombing, to the shooting from the helicopters. It was horrifying. Unacceptable. This might be my last message. Please relay it to the world.

— Hazem, journalist residing in Rafah; 02.11.2024

Rafah was Palestinians’ very last safe zone. There is quite literally nowhere else left to go. And now it’s being bombed with airstrike after airstrike.

[originalavenuefox]

Zoomed this motherfucker in to see what Asami was doing to Korra in this scene. Well I can safely say she has her head on her shoulder with an arm wrapped around her. Can we all say “AAAAWWWWWWW”?

[originalavenuefox]

What "Wish" forgot about Disney

So, "Wish" definitely is a divisive movie. And I am not here to tell anyone how they should feel about this film, or what they should think about it. But honestly, I think the reason as to why it didn't connect emotionally to so many people is because it misses something many Disney classics had: tragic and sad backstories that push the story forward.

I mean, let's focus alone on the Disney Princess movies. Snow White and Cinderella were under the heel of cruel step-parents with no supportive/kind adults on sight. Aurora grew up isolated in a forest with only her three caretakers and woodland critters to keep her company, all because she was cursed to have a Fate Worse Than Death before even hitting proper adulthood. Tiana lost her beloved father and spent at least half her life constantly working to achieve their dream, partly to honor his memory. Elsa grew up constantly trying to repress her emotions out of fear of her emotion-linked and potentially deadly powers, while Anna grew up thinking she made her sister hate her and constantly wishing for a true source of company. And don't get me started on Dumbo (was separeted from his mother as a baby and was constantly mocked for his ears), or Simba (watched his father die in a brutal manner, had his own uncle say it was his fault, and ran away from home because of it all).

A very frequent trend on Disney movies is having their characters go through awful situations as part of their backstories. And even if some of them don't seem traumatized by it, we as the audience connect with them and root for them because we know they deserve better lives. They wish for better lives. In "Wish", we are told it's wrong that the people of Rosas have their greatest wishes stolen from them and then forgotten (which is true), but, as many reviews already pointed out, because we don't see any of these people actually suffering in some manner (with the exception of Simon and Asha's grandfather after the ceremony), we don't feel for their situation as much as we could have. They live secure lives with all their physical and emotional needs attended, except for their greatest wishes, but because we almost don't see anyone hurting for that, it might give the impression their wishes were just not that important to them. That's why so many people believe Magnifico's initial way of ruling Rosas was fair and rational.

On a similar note, we don't have a lot of reasons to truly connect to Asha, our main protagonist, because her goal of returning the wishes is explained solely as "she cares too much". She lost her father as an eleven-years old after an extended period of sickness. This could be her personal reason for wanting to help Rosas: it's not only that she associates wishing with the memory of her dad, she and her family shared the wish of him recovering, but it didn't come true, and she associates that trauma with Magnifico refusing to realizate the wishes of most of the realm. But her dad is only mentioned a few times, and we don't even have any extended monologues/scenes to establish the tragedy of his passing (again, like many Disney movies had).

So, to sum up, the main theme of "Wish" is something both subjective and personal, so it needed more emotional focus on its characters in order to better convey the message of the importance of dreams and of believing. But it ends up relying more on saying those things, and it not only weakens the film for many: it fails to make the audiences feel for the characters, like Disney is known for.

[originalavenuefox]

Witch Hat News #5 - In Sickness and in Health

by Tata Calthrop

This is an archived version of our microfiction newsletter! You can read along on our tumblr, or subscribe here.

Hey there! It's been a few months since you last heard from us, hasn't it? How have you been? I'll go first: I've been bad! Let's talk about creativity and mental health.

I don't speak much about my mental health publicly, but let me summarise it for you; I was a very happy teenager who plummeted into clinical depression at about age nineteen and never fully recovered, and it sucks. That said, the consequence of this is that I've been in therapy for years and read dozens of books about psychology for both patients and professionals, so even if I'm depressed, I'm also wise as all hell. (I suspect if I weren't depressed, I would probably be completely zen.)

I have an excellent relationship with my creative craft, and my evidence for this is that I am both alive and still actively creating things. A lot of people never learn to manage the balance. Many of the artists and writers I meet are weighed down heavily by the burden of not being good enough. "I'm an artist, but I get so anxious that I only draw once every few months, and then usually throw it away," my friends will tell me, ashamed. "I'm not good at it."

"I'm not really a writer," say the people I meet on discord. "I have this idea for a story that I've had for years, and I've written down some small things, but not anything I can show anyone – I'm not good enough yet."

On the other end of the scale are the creatives who push themselves through constant burnout, who neglect eating and sleeping in order to create as fast and voraciously as possible. A "successful career" may be built on five hours of sleep a day and constant, haunting guilt about keeping up engagement and output. I think it's very easy to hide in hard work. You can have terrible self-care and self-awareness and be falling apart in every area, but if you work hard, and succeed, you never need to feel guilty about the other stuff. 

You know who can create constantly, yet never get tired? Artists and writers who can spend hours every day effortlessly making things, while also being entirely present in their own lives? Children. Human beings are born with the constant urge to be creative. It's pretty well-studied that imaginative play and brain development are directly linked in small children. It's in their nature to engage in make-believe. Very few four-year-olds freeze in front of a blank piece of paper, because they know how terrible it feels to be bad at drawing and don't know where to begin with the idea they had without failing utterly. That's a particular madness we learn as we grow up.

I'm biased, but I firmly believe that playfulness is what makes us human. What we describe as "intelligence" in other animals is often correlated with their adaptability – their ability to conceptualise and understand things they've never experienced before, and maybe didn't even know were possible. This, too, correlates with playfulness. Dolphins, crows, octopuses, and great apes – all very different animals – play games. Despite all having taken wildly different evolutionary paths to get there, they have all separately developed play.

To be human is to create. To imagine is to be human. So that's my way of not worrying about my creative output – whether I'm making enough, whether I'm good enough. I do not create art in order to sell it, or to gain praise for making it, although I would welcome it if either of those things started happening to me regularly. It does not need to be good, or valuable. It has the same value and function as the paintings I made at preschool when I was four; it is the byproduct of my humanity. Let go of the idea of being a "good artist". Nobody is a good artist. The only thing any of us is really good at is being human, which tends to get in the way of the other stuff.

"How do I create more, without letting anxiety or laziness get in the way?"

I'm here again, writing my newsletter. How long until another mental health break knocks me flat again, I don't know. But right now, I feel motivated to put words to paper (or words to mailing list, as it were), and I'm going to follow that feeling until it's gone. My advice to you is to do the same. Joy is a very precious gift; to enjoy creating something is divine. You are human, and that is enough. Put aside your doubts. Create ambitiously, stupidly, passionately, in any way you can, as long as you're having fun; and once you learn to have fun, the trick of learning how to create more and better is a very simple one. 

So, here: Three things that spoke to me about the subject of mental illness, death, and the arts. Let's drink to our good health, eh?

Recommendations

So Sad Today: Personal Essays by Melissa Broder. A series of devastating essays about illness, addiction, dysfunction, and brutal, intimate, visceral emotion. I have few words for this one. I found it indescribably powerful.

Sawbones have an excellent episode about personal mental health stories. This one's much easier to listen to, but it's still quite personal, as these things tend to be. It spoke to me as someone who, at the time, kept a lot of my issues completely secret.  

To The Moon by Freedbird Games: At the dying wish of a old man, two scientists must navigate and rewrite his memories of life. A short, funny video game, with very charming characters and hilarious jokes and – genuinely – one of the most sad and beautiful character dramas I've ever experienced in video game form. 

Your project here. Do you make art of any kind - visual, written, performed? Are you starting a project or recruiting co-creators? We want to hear from you! Email us at contact@witchhatproductions.com.

That's it from me. I'll see you on the flip side, however far away that is. I'm not giving up! And neither should you!

[originalavenuefox]

If Wish had Renaissance Disney's bite, would Sabino have died?

He's hitting 100 and, although it was kind of joked about that he wouldn't see 101, him being appropriately bedridden really would've illustrated that time to get his wish was running out. The movie's Darkest Hour is when Asha's mother's wish gets absorbed, but Magnifico crushing Sabino's wish is a harder gut punch. Worse, what if it was too much for the old man? What if the emptiness from losing his wish killed him just like that? Asha's quest suddenly amounts to nothing. That's how a villain breaks a protagonist's spirit!

As she's crying over her departed Saba, it slowly dawns on Asha that his wish to inspire came true and he didn't even know it. He inspired her, after all! This is the final piece of evidence that fully turns Asha off from Magnifico's way of thinking. The people don't need magic, not the king's, not Star's, not even her's, to make their wishes come true. Now on her second wind, Asha goes to defeat Magnifico. Sabino gets his face on a tapestry hanging in the castle or something in the epilogue.

Just seems to be another thing Wish played too safe.

[originalavenuefox]

I've just finished watching GOTG3 🥲 MY ROCKET BBY

[originalavenuefox]

I need help

My friend Abdul is in a refugee camp and has been using someone else’s phone to communicate with me, but that other person is moving to another camp soon and without a phone he’ll be stranded with no way to communicate or receive money from me.

I don’t have enough on my own to pay for a new phone ($380), i only have 4 bucks and I’m relying on someone else for financial support, but I might receive two hundred dollars when I get my first check for this Friday for the work i do on campus, in which case I’ll add it to the amount here. But sometimes money comes in late.

Abdul’s friend is moving this Monday, so we’re pretty desperate. I’ll likely be able to cover most of it if I’m paid on time, but I don’t know where I’ll get the rest.

Please donate whatever you can.

I’m offering sketches for any donation over 5 dollars and more extensive drawing’s depending on the amount donated.

Kofi: nervesnebula

Cashapp: $nervesn

Venmo: @nervesnebbin

44/380

[originalavenuefox]

Hello there! I love your "TMMT" incarnation! It's so creative and well-drawn. On that matter, I'd like to know: what weapons do the four boys and Splinter use?

Teenage Meddling Mutant Turtles: Weapons

awwwgdhw, ty <3333 in general the boys all still use the same weapons as their predecessors, but id be more than happy to go more in depth :]

most simple are raph and leo, who both use their twin sais and katanas, respectively. while raph has a set of the classics, he prefers the mobility of the yin-yang sais, as shown above. they're great as a throwing and disarming weapon, allowing him to subdue enemies easily. leo on the other hand uses katanas, inspired by Splinter and previously Mikey. he's as skilled, if not more, in weapon fighting as Raph, but loses when it comes to experience and strength.

though mikey primarily uses nunchucks (they're fun), he's trained and skilled in all of his brothers' weapons- especially the sword. before raph, mikey spent many years (9-13+ yo) fighting solo, so it'd been necessary for him to develop his skills and adaptability fast. donnie on the other hand, having only joined the family less than 2 years ago, is still learning how to use the bo staff. its smth hes trying to adjust to, even if he prefers range weapons. regardless, theyre both good for attacking from a distance, which helps protect his plastron.

bàba shen is,, heavily inspired by the grandfather in bullet train lmao. though his old age wears him down like rise splinter, he still fights well, either with his fists or his hidden sword. he once trained in yearning for revenge of what he's lost- now he trains to protect what he's left.

+ extra sketches :3

~~~

TMMT Iteration Masterpost || Commission Info

[originalavenuefox]

Just to be clear, you have no right to hate on Mutant Mayhem because you liked Rise more and are salty it got paused.

I know it sucks, it’s still a special interest of mine, but one of the reasons it got paused was because 2012 tmnt fans liked it more and were salty it was being moved on from so soon, which generally just ended up with not enough people watching it to keep it going.

It’s not just Rise, nearly every TMNT version was endlessly compared to its predecessor and disliked because of it.

1987 was too unserious, 2003 was too serious, 2012 was 3D, Rise was different, but when the show ends everyone likes it and is mad at the next version.

And we can’t keep on doing that all the time! It’s going to end up with shows getting cancelled, merch being shitty or just nonexistent and a sagnificant downgrade in quality which will end up with even less fans.

Sure Rise got paused and maybe won’t come back, but hating on Mutant Mayhem is NOT the way to deal with it, the only thing you’re achieving by doing so is the whole tmnt franchise slowly dying.

[originalavenuefox]

and what if I cried over the leaked concept art?

[originalavenuefox]

NO WAY GUYS

Okay so no one apparently saw my add on to this post, but I’ve noticed a lot of people have been seeing this and immediately assuming that we will be getting a season 3. This is not a confirmation for season 3, as it only hints at the chance of this happening. I’m not saying to not get your hopes up, but some people are taking this the wrong way. The post was in no way official. However, we still have a chance, and it’s best to not forget that!

[originalavenuefox]

To those who are feeling like there’s no point left living in this life, to those feeling helpless and exhausted, just know please that there are people who cherish and love yall. That the future is ahead and still bright. That your life brings meaning and it’s important and it’s so, so special and unique. It can be hard, the year may not have been the best, but a new year means a new start does it not? There’s a chance it’ll get better. So, there is a point in staying and the point is yourself. You hold value, and you deserve to see a new year 💗💗

[originalavenuefox]

mutant mayhem was great but unfortunately it does contain flashing without a warning. if you’re planning on seeing it, the flashing starts in the scene where the turtles are in cynthia utrom’s lab and continues in the fight in superfly’s lair, i unfortunately don’t have timestamps though. feel free to share to spread the word for those who are planning on seeing the movie but may be harmed by flashing lights