#Calvin and Hobbes was my childhood

[blorbologist]

Gwendolyn was absolutely listening in when Percy gave Fearne and Mister a gun lmao

--

I think we as a fandom need to consider the idea of ‘Calvin and Hobbes but it’s Gwen and her owlbear teddy’ more. Redrew parts of this og comic by Bill Waterson but with the de Rolos

Alt last panel:

[robynrileyart]

follow for more unpredictable fanart, this time featuring calvin and hobbes

[softichill]

the first known Calvin and Hobbes strip

[martinkate]

killer by phoebe bridgers while reading 17776 is something fucking else dude

[thoughts-of-endless-night]

i feel like calvin would have been really successful on tumblr

[antiherocomplex]

y’all ever just have a swirl of connected ideas in your head that you can’t write down lest they lose their beauty but you still consider your fleeting creation a poem

[certifiedlibraryposts]

How do u organise ur books?

Uh.....I don’t really, lol. I only have one pretty small bookshelf at the moment and most of it is taken up by childhood books that I haven't gotten the nerve to part with yet. Plus its in my closet cause I don't have space to put it anywhere else so it's not really on display 😔

But loosley, top shelf is my novels, they're bunched together by author/series where applicable but it's not in any kind of alphabetical order right now >>; Middle and bottom shelf is randomized childhood kids books. It's however always been extremely important to me that my collection of Calvin and Hobbes and Garfield books goes on the bottom, for some reason.

Someday I'd love to have a bigger collection and show them off in a room I spend a lot of time in. I dream of having a completed Discworld collection...

The nice thing about checking books out from the library is that I don't have to worry about where to keep them LMAO

[snakeautistic]

I feel like I’ve lost so much of the boundless imagination and creativity I had as a kid. I used to just sit down and draw anything, for hours at a time, to construct elaborate narratives in mind when I lay awake in bed at night.

I still consider myself a creative, but it doesn’t flow as naturally anymore. I can’t come up with interesting twists for my daydreams to take on the spot. Art doesn’t just spring out of me anymore. Maybe it was beaten out of my by the school system, or by anxieties and depression and all the pressures that were added to my life. Or maybe that’s just growing up.

I’m really scared of growing up. I’ve always said I feel like I wasn’t designed to survive within the world we live in. I don’t know how I can manage so many responsibilities, alone. And you’re expected to be independent and successful and fulfilled all at the same time and when almost no one can do that, me, being neurodivergent- I certainly cannot. Looking ahead at the futrue fills me with dread. I have college applications I should work on. But I get sick when I look at them. I don’t want to think about it. But then I remember how time is always passing, constantly, steadily, unstoppably. Not to mention all of the mounting threats against the world within politics, the very climate itself, in the economy, ect.

So obviously I fill a profound nostalgia for my childhood. For things being simpler. I remember poking at leaves blocking the swirling drains on my street in the rain. I remember going to the public library and looking at the fish there, or eagerly playing one of the ancient 90s edutainment games they provided on their computers. I remember staying up at night and reading Calvin and Hobbes under my covers with a flashlight. I remember granola bars on picnic blankets in the empty field behind the apartment. I remember crossing the creek in the woods and getting stuck in the mud of the riverbank.

I don’t know exaclty when those things stopped happening, but they did. And it bothers me that I can never go back.

[poindexters-labratory]

Thinking a lot about Bill Watterson again.

'Calvin and Hobbes' was one of my first special interests while I was growing up, right after dinosaurs, and it say that it navigated me through my life would be an understatement. I collected all of the compilations of the comics, I've read all of them, my personality in elementary school revolved around my odd obsession with these comics, that turned out not to be so odd looking back as a late-diagnosed autistic. That's where my art journey started was with eight-year-old fanart, and my love of reading. The idea of imagination, I didn't have much of an imagination as a child, but Calvin had an imagination, so I tried to have one too.

'Calvin and Hobbes' was so important to me as an autistic kid growing up. It may have unlocked the abilities that I have now. My storytelling, my art, especially my comic style that I've been struggling to find. The way I draw to exaggerate facial expressions, situational comedy (sitcom) that I put a lot of characters in, and the simplicity of it all.

Bill Watterson, because of how fast and cheap he had to produce a comic strip would only use black and white. There were times that he used very beautiful colors and complex shapes, I have fond memories of his backgrounds and landscapes, sometimes the sublime nature of his pieces of work. He could draw in both realism and cartoon, poked and prodded at his modern world through satire, spoke through a six-year-old boy about the conundrums of philosophy and it would make sense!

There was a sort of absurdism to those comic strips that the world was a big place, the universe was drawn out on those strips with God's hand holding it, but there was still a punchline in that final panel that brought you back to sit in place within that universe. Bill Watterson speaking through Calvin to explain that the view on comics was indeed not fair. A piece of literature and a piece of quality art could be considered 'high art' separate, but a comic, a mix of the two weren't held that same standard.

During Bill Watterson's time, the late 80s, early 90s, there was rampant consumerism, a trend that may have gotten worse over the last three decades. He was very against the commercialization of his art, his characters. You can find all of the comic strips and Sunday pages for free online, by the way. He was extremely talented as an artist and writer, he didn't do it for money, he hates public notoriety, he's only been seen at a few public events for his work, the art and stories that I was so entranced by during the early stages of my life, my childhood was made simply for the love of doing it.

I love Calvin and Hobbes. I always have. There was nothing that pointed me into writing all this out, I just love it. I love and I care so deeply about the narrative that didn't make much sense, but really does anything?

[millenianthemums]

i was thinking about that tv show ranking list again. it made me realize, i always kind of assumed EVERYBODY had seen The Twilight Zone? or at least a couple episodes of it? it feels like a staple of culture to me. i watched it on TV so much as a kid, to the point that i kind of stopped seeing it as a show in a weird way. it’s such comfort food to me. The Twilight Zone is up there with Calvin and Hobbes and the Dragonology book as the three things that were so central to my childhood i assumed every child on earth grew up with them.

anyway if you haven’t seen the twilight zone you should watch an episode. i love it so much. my favorite three i can think of right now are “The Masks”, “The Hitchhiker”, and “Eye of the Beholder”

[chucktaylorupset]

9 People to Get to Know Better (Tag Game)

tagged by @immortaljailor thanks for tossing me a free one, badumtss

3 ships you like:

Kabru x Laius Touden (Dungeon Meshi) Autistic narrative foils who fuck. One is a blond bombshell of a knight and the other is a short king (well, not literally, but). I love ships where one is like, internally tearing apart their mental furniture about their dick getting them into this situation, and the other one is like hee hoo i love you!

Keeley Jones x Roy Kent x Jamie Tartt (Ted Lasso) Everyone here is hot and prone to hilarious stupidity. Roy is almost definitely internally screeching about willingly sticking his dick in Jamie.

Louis de Pointe du Lac x Daniel Molloy (Interview With the Vampire (TV)) Listen. Listen I know the entire point of this show is that Louis does not get better with every old man he hooks up with. I know that. But hear me out: third try's the charm

First ship ever:

This memory could not be retrieved. If you go in my blog archive, Cassian Andor x Bodhi Rook (Rogue One) is there pretty early tho

Last song you heard:

all eyes on me - bo burnham transposed to his original voice the way this hits different than the original haunts me

Favorite childhood book:

Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Waterson I don't know which volume, we owned a lot when I was growing up, but my dad would read them to me and my sister, and he would do voices. It made reading the hamster huey and the gooey kablooey comic very meta. The irony is I was very much a Susie growing up, and now I am nearly ideologically identical to Calvin. I did like the jokes, but also I just really liked Hobbes because he was a tiger.

Currently reading:

TCGF book 1 recommended by @sidecharactersdomatter, just want to be able to hang out in the same fandom/narrative spaces Babel by R.F. Kuang, given to me by a friend

Currently consuming:

Dungeon meshi anime, the magnus protocol kinda? I'm behind on both. I have a bunch of series I have ADHD wandered away from like the Bear s2, despite it being very good. I have entered the workforce and the things I do has decreased to focus on facillitating that. It is very sad.

Currently craving:

More Labru. More blonde bombshell knight bottoming. I know the labru fandom has mercifully universally agreed that the tall one gets to be the bottom this time, but I need more! (i have more, i just lack the mood and the willpower to write. i should probably post the concepts as bullet fics)

we're going to my extended family's soon for a belated lunar new year and i wanna eat my ba ngoais curry and the family egg rolls. let's GOOO

my mood's been in a gully lately but i wanna get back to the part where i'm ENERGIZED and DOING THINGS and it's not SO FUCKING COLD OUTSIDE

Tagging:

@sidecharactersdomatter, @fratgrl, @unbenchthekench @captainjonnitkessler @liesmyth @belovedblabber @professorsparklepants @twyrrinren @dabidagoose and anyone else who wants to join in!

[corellianhounds]

Top 5 characters (any media: books, TV shows, movies, anything)

SO I’m chronically unable to pick favorites of anything unless I narrow down the category but I did my best 😭

These are based on an array of characters from different mediums that I can talk about at length who—

I enjoy as a character

Are well written in a well-written story

Influenced me as a writer/artist

Occupy a lot of brain space 😆

In order from when I experienced them (below the cut because it got ridiculously long):

1. Calvin and Hobbes. Package deal. Calvin and Hobbes cartoons were how I got into reading as a kid and were a formative part of my childhood and influenced me as a storyteller in how I write, read, and draw.

2. Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride, both book and movie. What I love about Inigo as a person IS his drive for revenge and desire for justice for his father’s murder, and what I love about his character within both the book and the movie is that his story is a subplot— We don’t know if Inigo will survive the story, much less achieve his goal. The audience knows it’s a fairytale; we know Westley and Buttercup will survive and live happily ever after. Inigo Montoya does not have that guarantee.

Additionally, I love a satisfying revenge narrative. Inigo gets exactly what he wants and there’s never this wishy-washy “oh if I kill him than I’m no better than he is” nonsense that drives me INSANE when I see it in other media

3. Nightcrawler from X-Men. The X-Men movies got me into superheroes and then at about 12 I started getting into comics, but since I didn’t have access to a whole lot of them, what I would do was scour Wikipedia taking notes and reading about all of the characters and storylines I thought were interesting 😆 I was obsessed with X-Men and that was my first foray into the idea of fandom, collecting art and printing it out to put in a binder with fanfic on notebook paper and sketches on printer paper lolol. I liked Nightcrawler because depending on the story he was either a tragic character, a comedic character, or both. He’s got a fantastic design and I loved the swashbuckling rogue archetype already, as well as the circus background and acrobatic fighting style. Definitely influential. Did I have a crush on his character? Mind your own business

4. Loki from the phase 1 MCU. I did a lot of reading/writing because of his character based on the first Thor and Avengers movies. I thought he was incredibly compelling, and there’s one fanfic author whose work I really admired and are etched into my brain.

5. Din Djarin from The Mandalorian. By episode 1 you already have a good sense of who this guy is, despite the fact he is shrouded in mystery, and I LOVE characters like that. Characters whose past aren’t fully explained are great because that tension and mystery keeps audiences wondering and coming back to them, AND it gives writers the freedom to explore and add in what’s needed as the story goes along without being constrained by a past that’s already been clearly defined.

Additionally, episode 3 has one of the best narratives arcs of anything in Star Wars in my opinion, and is one of my personal favorites in storytelling in general. From the intro we know what the first act is going to be. Karga, not knowing what the target is, in a recording saying “I don’t know if [the Client] wants to eat it or hang it on his wall.” Mando’s next line being “It’s not a toy.” The whole return to the city, the audience knowing what kind of wretched hive of scum and villainy it is. Din’s uncertainty even as he gives a child to know enemies for payment. Him asking what they’re going to do with it and not receiving an answer, but a threat.

Taking payment and the title card immediately appearing to say “THE SIN.”

The rest of the episode proceeding and us FEELING the weight of guilt in Mando’s silence, the way he’s trying to justify his choice despite the fact he knows it was wrong. The war within himself between wanting to see a helpless child safe and knowing he’s the type of person who could and should see it done— who shouldn’t have been the reason for the child’s safety being compromised in the first place— and his desire to reclaim something culturally, religiously, and practically important to a persecuted people he has pledged a faithful life and allegiance to. How the two things he cares about most come into direct conflict because to prioritize one means sacrificing the other.

THE SHOT OF THE GEAR SHIFT WHEN HIS HAND HALTS MIDAIR. SO MUCH SAID IN SO LITTLE.

AND THEN HE GOES BACK!!! HE GOES BACK AND HE SAVES THE BABY!!! LITERALLY SINGLE-HANDEDLY TAKING OUT A STORMTROOPER SAFEHOUSE BECAUSE HE HAS A WEAPON IN ONE HAND AND A BABY IN THE OTHER!!!!!

He knew they had nefarious reasons for wanting a child captured. Why else would you throw out a cradle?

And to top it all off they REALLY tighten the noose around his neck all the way up to the climax because as far as we know, he really DOESN’T have a way out of this. The Mandalorians coming to his aid IS a surprise but it’s not contrived and it WORKS and it’s a satisfying end because we’ve truly seen this guy give it his all and despite the fact he was the best Mandalorian he could be, his best was not enough and the audience really doesn’t know how he’s going to get out of it in the end (<- establishing the main theme of the show). Tension, raising the stakes, meaningful themes that aren’t spoon-fed to the audience, and a successful marriage of the emotional climax to the physical one.

AND THAT WAS JUST ONE EPISODE!!!

The scripts and ideas in Season 1 were so solid and done so well. I don’t know how they accidentally created one of the greatest characters of all time with so few lines of dialogue but they DID and I’ve been thinking about him for four years straight.

[softpawsxd]

My Hyperfixations since 2023:

13: Elinor Wonders Why

This one is the most underrated PBS Kids shows in my opinion, And i really adore Ari Bat who's my comfort character now!

12: Littlest Pet Shop

This fandom was such a cutesy childhood show based on the toyline of the same name, And my new comfort character from the fandom is ButterCream Sundae!

11: BreadWinners

Although many people hates its extreme grossness and stuff, I found this show funny nowadays, And i love SwaySway so much that he's becoming one of my comfort characters!

10: Pucca

One of my childhood fandoms in South Korean history, And my main comfort ship is Pucca and Garu but in my AU they're such Toric cuties!

9: The Epic Tales Of Captain Underpants

This Netflix show that's based on the comic/novels by Dav Pilkey is very awesome and underrated in my opinion, And i love Mr. Krupp, Captain Underpants, George and Harold very much!

8: Modern Objects (AKA One of my fav object shows along with Inanimate Insanity, Object Havoc and Object Invasion)

This object show's my number 1 favorite fandom that ever existed in the whole OSC, And my comfort character from this fandom is Bucket!

7: Xavier Riddle And The Secret Museum

This is my number 1 favorite PBS Kids show of all time and it really reminds me of Calvin and Hobbes and Peanuts, Also Brad Meltzer is my bab... I mean favorite character from the fandom!

6: Friday Night Funkin'

Although this fandom is really toxic as hell, I really adore the art style, Musical gameplays and the character deisgns and that's why i love making Friday Night Funkin' OC's!

5: Disney Plus' Diary Of A Wimpy Kid

This Disney animated movie fandom is really cool, And i even loved the animated adaptation of "Rodrick Rules" most of all!

4: The Paul Rudish era of Mickey Mouse (AKA The Wonderful World Of Mickey Mouse)

It's extremely underrated for me and its art style is so hilarious, And that's why Disney Plus is so nice!

3: Monica'S Gang

This one is one of my most favorite fandom in Brazilian history, And i love Jimmy Five a lot that he's becoming my comfort character!

2: The Emoji Movie (Sorry about The Emoji Movie haters...)

I know it's very unfunny and cringy but trust me, I do really enjoy it and JailBreak is now one of my fictional crushes.

1: TheOdd1sOut's OddBalls

This one is my number 1 fandom that ever existed on Netflix because it's based on the famous YouTuber known as James "TheOdd1sOut" Rallison, And i even made AU/LGBTQ+ headcanons (Even though TheOdd1sOut himself does NOT support the LGBTQ+ community yet, But still! X3) since i love this show so much!

[rainbowdelicsunshine]

What are sm e of your recent favorite media pieces and characters from them?

What makes them so interesting?

They weren't part of any particular ask I saw but I was just curious hehe

As of right now, I've just been rewatching Beavis and Butthead and Aqua Teen Hunger Force since theyre both huge childhood/teenhood favorites of mine

My favorite character for Beavis and Butthead is Beavis since he's always been my favorite of the two and he's always the funniest yet has moments of common sense!

My fav from ATHF is Master Shake since he has been a longtime childhood fictional crush of mine ever since I was 6-8 (in fact along with Hobbes from Calvin and Hobbes, he was my first one), he may be a violent asshole, but he's a funny and entertaining one!

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I hope that these answers will suffice enough for you my lovely friend, hope you find them fun to read through too!

I hope to see you here again soon and have a great evening!!

[pistisq]

some children keep thinking about death seems random like any temperament though I wondered if it causes obsessiveness or is an obvious target for that impulse the way a kid will repeat the same question over and over until getting an answer that gives it a space and name to store beside an existing object within their emerging filing system. death as a blank book with no decimal number carrying it around indefinitely instead of stuffing it wherever or beside “sleep” my memory is the word nothing my atheist parents clarify “like before you were born” nothing nothing but what is that fixation on trying to imagine it and horrible feeling of the world splitting apart at night not every night or even most. id get up go lay at the foot of my parents bed facing the door two steps down wall to wall carpeting was in vogue remember pressing on my eyes to make the red light of the alarm system double and circle itself when I got slightly older I would read calvin and hobbes comics locking myself in a bathroom stall when we started learning about “space” children maybe should be told i dont know more often and right away abort the expectation for understanding i was trying to trace a through line a narrative to release but i cant or dont want to theres many they all could be true and all are until i choose one besides i was lucky one of the lucky ones and my childhood was happy my mother was attentive and my father was making a lot of money read to us every night encapsulating stability of indulgent maternal devotion affluence we drank tons of milk i imagine its all the fucked growth hormones i wasn’t interested in being a woman yet i wouldnt have been in any version stop eating decades pass maybe resuming there im 11 ready to be a woman and FUCK watching girls gone wild at my aunts i can sleep downstairs and watch television all night intoxicating freedom I dont remember an emotion interested but not aroused I know I kept going back to watch once all the cartoons were over half for feeling I shouldnt the forbidden half seeking instruction an access point to my imminent future a hole to fill something another blank book id been left dumbly holding at the library sex and death now my hands are full seems theres nothing to resolve lay down on the floor clutching them to my breast like shields

[thefugitivesaint]

Bill Watterson, 'Calvin and Hobbes', March 20, 1987 Source I’m beginning to think that my sympathetic feeling towards primitivism (not a view I subscribe to mind you) began with early childhood exposure to suggestions of direct action in favor of non-human nature against human development.