#a lot of this art is thematic rn

[beansinjeans]

Rainbow Killer

[herblay]

Tbf BNHA is and has always been confused messaging-wise. It opens with Deku saying: “humans are not made equal” and showing us all of the foul ways quirkless people are treated. Narratively, this is of course seen as bad, but there’s an underlying principle in the narrative there that’s never actively challenged (and there’s not enough time to make it satisfying if they do) that yes, humans really aren’t born equal. That yes, you see SOME characters overcome their limitations (but even then, like in the case of Deku, it’s because of a big narrative magical moment) but they’re largely confined to the roles expected of them. Power in BNHA is never really given to the powerless, a character like Toga or Shigaraki can’t be saved, and power is never truly denied to those who shouldn’t have it— Endeavor is given a dignity his victims weren’t afforded.

And though I don’t think this is wrong to do in a story in and of itself, I think it is at odds with the way it sets itself up in the opening. The first thing we see in BNHA is everyone telling Deku he can't be a hero with no quirk. The story should be set up to disprove that. To show that his heroic qualities are in and of themselves what makes him a hero. But every time in the narrative where it's his character that makes the difference, he kind of. Fails. He can't save Eri at first, can't save Shigaraki (even though he wants to) because Shigaraki is apparently beyond helping, etc etc. Like the largest successes for him as a hero are explicitly BECAUSE he has One for All now.

And that combined with the way the story ends, with the fact that Toga and Shigaraki are not possible to save, and the only thing about them that was worthy of saving was the innocent child they once were, just feels kind of at odds with what the opening of BNHA sets out to prove in the narrative. BNHA sets itself up to be about how anyone can be a true hero, that true heroism is from character and not power, but the only characters that are capable of being heroes are those with power, the only characters that are able to seek redemption are those whose powers allow that for them. A character like All for One is doomed from the outset, and the narrative makes no foil to him to show that there is a choice to be made there.

Idk it just seems kind of sad to me that a story that superficially claims to be about how anyone can be a hero narratively reinforces the very attitudes the first scenes portray as wrong. And it feels too late to change that. It feels too late for that when Mirio had to get his quirk back to be a hero again. It feels too late for that when Toga is dead. It feels too late for that when Deku was only able to defeat evils with a quirk. It feels too late for that when All for One selected everyone and maneuvered them into position and there was no inherent randomness. It feels too late for this story to course correct into "anyone can be a hero, heroism comes from internal ideals" when it's shown time and time again that the only people who get to be heroes are those with the quirks to do so.

[hongluboobs]

ok i was cooking up another hong lu analysis thing bc i noticed SEVERAL things in his base id art the other day and wanted to share with the class but they just dropped a new one in the canto V trailer and i have some stuff i wanna talk about that one:)

My Hong Lu knowledge and interpretation is very heavily influenced by reading Dream of the Red Chamber, which may not be the best because I don’t know how much Limbus will pull from the book because it’s Long as fuck but I think it’s given me a deeper knowledge of Hong Lu.

Keep in mind this ego is NOT out yet so i could be totally off base depending on what the full animation/corrosion/sin affinities are like and this is totally theorizing but I wanted to have a go at anyway!! And this got totally out of hand so reading is appreciated :)

One of the first things I noticed here is this Hong Lu seems VERY Bao-yu. We still don’t know for sure what Hong Lu is within the context of Red Chamber (i don’t think it’ll be straightforward considering how that book works) but it’s important to note!

He has this little hat on (this is the best pic i can get atm to show it’s not a fancy hair tie, unfortunately the footage we have rn is a little scuffed)

and Bao-yu is ALWAYS depicted with a hat like this.

This could just be because that’s the appropriate outfit for Chinese nobility (I unfortunately have little to no reference point here, feel free to correct me, but from some quick searches hats aren’t ubiquitous and ESPECIALLY not ones of this style.) I think it’s worth noting because it comes up in nearly all modern depictions of Bao-yu.

There’s also the pearl Hong Lu is wearing on his neck/chest area, which is where Bao-yu wears the magic jade he was born with. His jade is translated into Limbus as Hong Lu’s jade eye, but this plus his hat and the abno’s themes REALLY makes me think we are dealing with some Bao-Yu stuff here.

Speaking of the Abno’s themes, now i can actually go over them! All we have for Walking Pearl right now is the MD event (as well as general observation), but there’s a few things that are relevant.

Just based off design, the abnormality seems to be mostly about the precious (the pearl) and the filth (the muck) intermixing. which makes sense with the EGO being named “Effervescent Corrosion” and our holders being Hong Lu and Rodya.

There’s some symbolism around greed/wealth (the offspring filled muck desiring the pearl and fighting for which one will earn it? the muck tarnishing the pearl? ) and I think we should read into that because it’s Hong Lu and Rodya who have this one and they’re both very tied to their financial status. Those two sharing an ego makes me insane for a bunch of reasons but that’s probably for another analysis piece! But duality is REALLY important for those guys and that’s a theme they’re emphasizing here with both the pearl and muck within the clam.

There’s also some elements of shelter/protection/potentially entrapment with the clam’s shell which are HUGE for Hong Lu, especially with his egos so I think those may come up.

But mostly it’s about the mixing of the precious (likely “wealth” here) and the unsavory, which works very well with what we know of the Jia family. The design likely referencing Bao-yu and thematically dealing with the Jia family makes me think each of those individual readings are more likely because they’re deeply tied together!

And now onto the MD event! I did not write this in order so I may repeat stuff here but. I realized I had to cover the design first so here we are!

First thing that stuck out of me is this portion when you choose to sample some of the clam’s slime.

Sibling/family infighting is very Jia family. It reminds me a lot of this line base Hong Lu says.

You could take this a step further because the clam is something that would typically offer shelter from the rest of the world, and even though it protects, its offspring continue to kill and eat each other.

It seems fine, the offspring have this lovely shell for protection, and they have the precious pearl held within, but even as they are sheltered and wealthy. They are still getting killed and eaten by one another! Reminds me of someone I know:)

It reminds me of some bits in the later half of Red Chamber, where family members more obviously start acting behind each other’s backs or turning on each other, some even killing other family members.

Another part of the MD event that I got something out of was the beginning portion.

using specifically jade as the color for the seawater is a Hong Lu thing. I may be reaching with this bc it’s more than likely just flavor text BUT when taking this color with the fact that there’s nothing in the water it makes me think of an important scene in Red Chamber where Bao-Yu is described as an empty shell, so I wanted to mention it. We know Hong Lu has TONS of water motifs, especially when relating to his family (see his base ego)

The main reason I brought up this section of the MD event is because of the question brought up by the last portion.

If you take one thing from Dream Of The Red Chamber into your perception of Hong Lu as a character, it should be the themes of ambiguity, duality, and being between binaries. Because he sure as hell does that a lot!!! (and i’m not just talking about his gender) He is both genuinely curious and sheltered with an urge to learn as much as he can, but he also plays dumb frequently, backpedals and asks a lot of stupid questions on purpose to maintain others’ perceptions of him. He is CONSTANTLY walking the line between truth and illusion and it can be hard to tell which is which and precisely how much is fake or real, which is why I find him such an interesting character to think about.

Tangent about Hong Lu's characterization aside, it's really easy to read this line as about his family's perceptions of him.

Hong Lu (or rather, Bao-yu) can be read as being the source of the contamination in that he is the heir of the Jia family who is just an absolute fucking failure of everything you’d want in an heir for that time period.

The clam containing the filth can be read as Hong Lu’s lies (whether conscious lies or otherwise) to himself and others about the true “filth” of his family. Really good example of this is with another bit of window dialogue, but these lies and half truths come up quite a bit if you know where to look. (what happened to cohort of kin looking to stab each other in the back at every turn???)

We already have Hong Lu’s assorted water motifs (his feet make ripples on the water in his base id, land of illusion has so much water theming and shows the Jia mansion is surrounded by water) so I think this is a reasonable analysis to make :)

There’s some other sections to the MD event, but there’s nothing of note that triggered the Hong Lu sleeper agent in my brain & also this has gone on long enough that I wanna talk about predicting some stuff for the ego!

I am manifesting Gluttony/Gloom/Wrath for this ego!!

Gluttony and gloom are in the MD event’s skill check already and I think tie in nicely with the themes. Gluttony works with the offspring in the muck killing and eating each other and themes of greed with the pearl (plus the ego is primarily green and that’s a pretty good clue) and then gloom comes up a LOT with Hong Lu’s family (Liu Hong Lu, the only one that remarks on his jade eye, is also the only Hong Lu with gloom. land of illusion requires 5 gloom resources and also relates a lot to red chamber/his family) Gloom’s also generally a stand-in for water which exists here.

Wrath in Hong Lu generally manifests in him going “yeah, maybe my family was a little fucked up actually” internally, instead of manifesting as taking direct action about the fucked up things like it works for most other sinners, and acknowledging that his family was at least partially filth and killing and eating eachother (metaphorically. maybe literally) works for that

i am not an expert on sin analysis but i wanted to take a prediction bc it’s fun :)

I have a couple of predictions for corrosion and i’ll be real they are the main reason i wrote this thing because i LOVE when bad things happen to Hong Lu!!

Since this ego seems to be referencing Bao-yu so much i can pull stuff from Red Chamber too which makes it more fun :)

First one I came up with is Hong Lu taking the place of the pearl within the clam and getting locked in there! A bunch of his egos have to do with being controlled/trapped so i think it works and it also can work as a parallel for Bao-yu’s treatment by his family. Bao-yu’s name means precious jade, and he’s often treated more like his namesake than a person, heavily controlled and never allowed to leave the Jia mansion (or, in this case, the clam.) I just think it’d be fun!

My other concept has to do with more Red Chamber stuff, notably what happens when Bao-yu loses his jade. I’m not quite there yet in the text, but from what i’ve heard he becomes incredibly unstable and essentially loses his mind. This sets the Jia family’s downfall into even faster motion and from that point things get REALLY fucked up. Since the pearl here parallels Bao-yu’s jade, I think having a reference to that part of the book would be really fucking crazy for all 5 people who have read 1800+ pages of red chanber to get to chapter 94 where he loses that thing. Also i just want to see Hong Lu lose his mind i KNOW it would be terrifying and chilling. but they may be saving that for his distortion (manifesting)

In my skimming Red Chamber table of contents to find when Bao-yu loses his jade i just found a chapter where Bao-yu’s father admires a pearl but we will just ignore that for now bc this has taken long enough to type already and that is several chapters off. but there may be more analysis when this thing actually comes out!

Thank you for reading this far!! I hope you enjoyed me looking far too deep into an unreleased ego we know next to nothing about for fun! this took WAY longer than expected to type out but i’m glad I did because I loveee telling people about Hong Lu!

There is a very real chance very little of my analysis and prediction is reflected in canon BUT please remember that truth becomes fiction when the fiction’s true and even if this doesn’t turn out to be correct now u know a little more about Hong Lu and the themes he plays with :)

[james-stark-the-writer]

terrible news, i tried to watch the Friendly Space Ninja Riverdale finale video again and i think i've pinpointed my problem with his videos, specifically the Riverdale ones but also just his general approach to media criticism, it's just the terrible wave of "objective criticism" we had on youtube with shitheads like Mauler but framed as just a more subjective opinion and it tries to pretend like that makes it any better, which it doesn't, like it really doesn't, because the underlying assumption that there is only one way to tell any type of story is just such a terrible thing for art but also he just fundamentally doesn't understand what type of art Riverdale is and there's just such a sheer lack of even attempting to treat it as a serious piece of art because the assumption is already that because popular consensus is that it sucks (the critical consensus has actually been consistently fucking great, you could just go look at the Rotten Tomatoes scores or even check out the legacy section on Riverdale's Wikipedia page), that means it automatically is trash, it never gets the opportunity to fight for itself because it's never given the chance to be thought of as a piece of art. it's an insistence that writing is the only way to analyze an audio-visual medium and like sure, writing doesn't "age" the same way other elements might, but audiences do age and change and evolve, media criticism does too, there's a reason people appreciate the Star Wars prequels more now than they ever did at release because we understand different ways of appreciating art now beyond the base insistence that conventionally "good" writing is the only thing to aim for (the prequels are actually well written but let's not get into THAT rn), that doesn't make the prequels "bad," it just means the prequels are different. i find the whole good/bad paradigm pretty suffocating in the first place but this is just so exhausting and i cannot believe that I've just managed to articulate it bc it seems shockingly obvious in retrospect.

also the video in question is just like factually wrong multiple times, he flat out admits he skips a lot of the season but then complains that the season doesn't make sense when he's jumping in at a random point, he complains that the previous seasons are meaningless but it's like has he forgotten that the audience doesn't forget stuff even if the characters have (and they even get their memories back in a thematically important and resonant moment the defines who the characters want to be so it's not really even entirely sound criticism) and that the show is intentionally trying to do interesting parallels and reversals of the stuff we've seen before, it's like commenting on itself because season 7 is a nostalgic look back at what the comics have been and what the show started from, and about the nostalgic feelings of that time and their appeal contrasted with the brutal truths of the reality of the situation, like this is just basic art criticism, i'm not even like trying to defend the season, like i don't even like season 7 that much, i think it's one of the more boring seasons and it ranks towards the middle for me, but like this is not like deep criticism where you're thinking and analyzing a lot, this is just seeing what the plot of the episodes is and what they're trying to communicate, it's just maddening how fucking exhausting the objective criticism shit is but it's actually even more grating when you don't pretend to be superior about it because it makes it seem like you're not even bold enough to stand by your opinions and actually embrace the implication present in the shit you are saying, like it's just cowardice, honestly. but anyway, glad i figured it out, because it was honestly irritating me that i couldn't articulate why i didn't like those videos beyond just them being wrong about Riverdale on like a factual level and him just not understanding what it's trying to say as a piece of art.

the point of this isn't to say that i think he's making these arguments in bad faith or anything, i do think these are genuinely opinions he holds, and they are valid opinions for him to hold, i'm not saying they're invalid, you can prefer one aspect of a piece of media over other aspects because it's more important to you, that's okay, i'm just saying they're misinformed takes and generally display a shocking lack of imagination and respect for art and no desire to broaden his horizons.

anyway, if you actually want to understand the appeal of Riverdale, the Super Eyepatchwolf video is pretty good, i still disagree with it a lot but at least the man tries to understand why people like the show and he even gets some part of the appeal, and we are going to get 4 5-hour videos from Lily Simpson over the next few months so i'm looking forward to those, bc Lily generally tends to at least understand the appeal of the stuff she talks about, and the title of the first video ("the captivating madness of Riverdale" [though i don't love the use of "madness"]) is already enough to make me feel like somebody kinda gets it and hopefully it'll be more coherent actual art analysis.

[mirror-imaged]

idont think anybody understands sheffbrien the way I do (insane) I'm sorry they're literally so bad for each other (affectionate) I could go on and on forever. I will actually. sheffbrien post be upon ye. thanks to ashe for talking about this w me on discord. this is a kinda obrien centric post bc of that loll but I'm obvi getting into sheffields whole deal too

having reread tc22 again and done some literary analysis a few days ago on a plane at 2 in the morning (I'm out of the country rn helloo ^_^) I picked up on a lot of thematics for them I find very interesting. long post ahead!

1 - the dynamics in their relationship are so wildly interesting. I think their characterization in tc22 does wonders for them. firstly, there are a lot of false differences id say? they seem so different, but when you boil it down they have a lot in common. sheffield is affluent and intelligent but has a spiteful and hotheaded side, obrien is seen as angry or rude but is taken for granted with his intelligence quite often by others. he got into an ivy league school at 17. there's also how sheffield seems so charismatic while obrien is abrasive and lonely, but they both really have no other friends when you get down to it? and last example for now, sheffield sees himself as divine while obrien seems to have renounced religion, but he really hasn't done the work of removing his mindset from a catholic(?) framework. expanding on that,

2 - obrien has religious trauma and this is heavily established. he doesn't actually ever move past religion as a concept though, he just moves on from God. he replaces his concept of God with his concept of his sister. more on this later. sheffield also has a relationship with religion, but more in the sense that he inherently sees himself as something unlike humanity, something greater and to be revered. he refers to himself as an angel in a way that doesn't strike me as being ingenuine the way he does in other places. I need to draw art about this it makes me abnormal

3 - for obrien specifically, there are some insanely interesting threads left about his trauma creating a savior complex within him. obviously shown at the start of the story with professor harris, but there are also the times he mentions going into genetics due to his guilt and wanting to entirely eliminate the disease that disabled his sister and when he says he feels an involuntary sympathy for stella when he found out she didn't mean to kill harris. it also makes me wonder if that plays into his protectiveness of sera later on.

4 - obrien has some severe internalized ableism going on that I wish more people actually picked apart. I know tc22 is a small scale story and a lot of people haven't read it, but it's fascinating stuff. he obviously grew up with the mindset that his sister was somehow contagious and describes how he felt he would somehow fall ill because of this, and that sort of mindset does a lot to dehumanize somebody in a person's mind. after eventually passing on an illness to her that results in her death, he is driven entirely by guilt as a character. he becomes certain that if God were fair and true, he would have died instead of her. but, like I mentioned before, he never really renounces religion in any specific way aside from this. he even mentions how he now prays to his sister instead of God, which I think is so fascinating. he never saw his sister as a person, and by elevating her to this status of somebody he needs to grovel to or even just uses as a holy figure in his life, he continues to see her as inhuman. he recognizes his past ableism, but he never does anything to deconstruct and rebuild from it. much like with his relationship with religion!

5 - obrien is treated by dds2 as the morally virtuous character, but he's really not (if you get the context from tc22). my boyfriend put it as him being just on the right side of history, which I absolutely agree with. I know tc22 was probably written after dds2 and doesn't necessarily inform the writing decisions for the games, but it definitely adds juicy layers to me. obrien is seemingly not motivated by any true desire to help sera or the nameless sufferers of CATCH22, he is motivated by the guilt from his sisters death hanging over him like a shadow. not to say he doesn't care at all, but it seems more like a quest to make up for his sins in the eyes of his sister than a desire to do good, which seems awfully catholic to me. this is absolutely the most interesting part of his character presented by the narrative. God I wish they did this better in the games.

6 - moving on to sheffield, sheffield is actually one of the most interesting and real depictions of a character with NPD traits I've ever seen, hands down. I know I talk about this frequently, but it's especially strongly done in tc22 and one of my favorite parts of his character. to start, he's mostly presented with extremely minor and often-masked aspects of the disorder a lot of people don't really pick up on. vouching personally. he quickly becomes passive aggressive and seemingly personally offended when challenged, like by inspector Harvey for instance. he is a practiced and seemingly compulsive liar, able to make things up on the spot that nobody but obrien questions due to his confidence. he seems to get along swimmingly with people he doesn't know well, charismatic and understanding. he pays exceptionally close attention to other people's emotions, expressions, and demeanors to adjust and match theirs. he also is debatably depicted with real delusions of grandeur. he only seems to be able to let his guard down around obrien, actually. and my absolute favorite moment of his, really relatable for me, is that when he stops masking he does not become dangerous. he does not go into a rage, he just goes blank. entirely and visibly unable to express emotion "normally", and obrien is initially scared, but realizes he just doesn't understand sheffield as well as he thinks he does. this is incredibly accurate to real life for me. it's actually insanely well depicted. and what I really appreciate is that sheffield is never presented as truly malicious [IN THIS STORY]. with dds2 context, he can be seen that way for sure, but he isn't actually shown being morally reprehensible. he's dubious and seems to have trouble understanding where he crosses a line, but that's also very true to real life for me. he isn't necessarily trying to be evil, he's just nosy and invasive of boundaries on occasion. they also never actually label him as or call him a narcissist, which is so good?? props to tadashi for once?? I think he is one because I have the disorder and can more accurately assess this sort of thing, but labeling every character who's like Abusive as a narcissist is so tacky and distasteful to me. it diminishes the harm they inflict on other people as being something born of mental illness, which isn't necessarily true. he is definitely abusive to sera, but that is not related to his narcissism.

7 - sheffield is just such a good character in this. I raved already about his npd stuff but I want to get into other things a little too. firstly, he does seem to genuinely view himself as inhuman, which is something I also believe contrasts obrien a little. obrien has this deep internalized self hatred, while sheffield has this genuine belief he is on a different level from other people. despite this, he sees obrien as being his Equal in some way. as being worthy of his presence, his assistance, his friendship. the pizza scene really really drives this home for me. (that's another subtle npd ass trait but I've said enough). in addition, sheffield tries so desperately to present himself as worthy of something more, maybe backed by doubt, or maybe even just true belief. he tries to appear intimidating, has knowledge of how to get into people's heads, etc. maybe this is because he's young and people see him differently for being so ahead of his grade, but I also see it as a display of insecurity in an implicit way. his delusions of grandeur also play into this characterization, because delusions of grandeur are often born from extreme and severe self doubt (at least in those with mental health disorders, which I've already mentioned I believe he strongly aligns with). him coming from a wealthy background in Portland of all places would not help any of that kind of thing.

8 - i don't even know what else I could say about them. they make me so abnormal. not even a toxic romantic relationship between them (which I do like think about but obviously post tc22 I don't like their age gap) but simply their dynamic as two characters. sera is a figurehead for their conflict, really. all the things we learn about both of these characters really makes me question how much BOTH of them care for sera, not just sheffield's two-faced lies. she is representative of their ideological dispute. she is a small child who has the potential to save the world, but obrien is too scared of letting another child die as a result of his inaction and sheffield is too focused on his end goal of getting what he believes he deserves, divinity and becoming a revered savior of the world, no matter who falls along the way. they are built to contrast each other. you even see this through heat and serph to a degree, with how sera mixed them up. heat declares he is on the same level as God during the jp text of the vritra fight, while serph inevitably sacrifices his own life for the sake of sera.

9 - what happened between tc22 and the dds2 flashbacks? I actually need to know what caused their relationship to split so heavily. I'm fucking obsessed with them. post over please join my sheffbrien Island there's like 2 other people here

[meruz]

hey what’re your thoughts on bnha rn. you’re like one of the only dudes i trust with opinions on this manga/anime lmao

LOL idk why im one of the only guys u trust for manga/anime opinions BUT SURE do you mean like... what do I think of the current plot? or mha in general? (I will answer both. i love to talk) current plot: (SPOILERS) It's clearly the final arc and its clearly taking longer than Horikoshi intended lol. Overall it's decent shounen fare? Nothing mindblowing but it's well drawn and weekly developments r fun so im not complaining. I'm not the type to get rly invested in villains so AFO/shigaraki even Dabi are only interesting to me thematically and as characters I don't rly care but the visuals are cool enough. I love the pure white negative space hair and Horikoshi clearly loves AKIRA LOL. I will say I LOVE the ongoing Boku No Open Heart Surgery saga that's going on with Bakugo though. I love that they have to save him in some ridiculous weird power-based way lol, normal first aid would be booooring!! + I think its smart for the manga to keep him teetering on the edge of death and flashing his lifeless body every 5 pgs (lol) because it means even if the final fight drags a lil I'll keep tuning in.

in general: There's a lot of shounen manga out there but there's only one shounen manga that caters specifically to people who love the school aspect of x-men comics so I think I'm pre-disposed to love mha based on that alone. Beyond that, I love how idiosyncratic and energetic horikoshi's art style is.. I feel like the two things u can tell right off the bat abt his drawings is that he draws rly fast and that he rly loves his characters lol. Evident in the sketches he puts on twitter and the bonus content in all the tankobon volumes (it's also great for ""content""" he's a good content creator), he's always coming up with situations and outfits and concepts on the fly for those kids like they truly live in his brain. Also the more I read the more I realize I actually quite enjoy Horikoshi's writing too? I think he really clearly grew up with and adores paying homage to corny shounen superhero stuff but he's also very genre savvy and (I think) purposefully avoids a lot of common criticisms and pitfalls. Like the power scaling is pretty tame, the adults never truly give up responsibility of the kids & continue to own up to mistakes/endangerment (but never so much as to prevent the kids from doing cool action stuff!! duh), the cast is relatively well balanced despite being so big etc etc... It's not perfect, there's pretty significant failing on gender parity, and some of the pacing is way better in archival format > week-to-week but it's pretty good overall. Also its funny?? I feel like in the midst of 9486135613 action battle series + generic anime comedy we forget to address when something actually has good jokes and i think mha does. The aoyama cheese stuff made me laugh, the kids protesting biased commentary was funny as hell, and honestly i think mirio distracting afo with his ass?? funnier than naruto's final yaoi no jutsu imo. Sorry if you wanted me to dish out criticism I know its kind of popular to hate on mha rn because it's pretty generic low-brow shounen. And also adults who obsess over yaoi-ifying these kids are like the butt of the joke on the internet rn. But I don't rly run in fandom circles, it's just a solid manga to me with fun characters. Actually 90% of the reason I started reading mha again was because I listened to the mangasplaining ep abt it recently and they made me remember how much there was to like! Good to listen to if you want a more fandom-free objective take on the manga. Also Horikoshi credits all of his assistants in a bonus page in every volume! just a cool thing to note! kinda rare for a mangaka and kind of important for a series that requires as much assistant work as a wsj shounen. I feel like the amount of assistants that have gone on to lead mha spin off manga projects is kind of testament to how good his relationship w them is.

Ok thank you for reading my long thoughts. as a reward heres some drawings of deku and bakugo as splatoon characters that ive been sitting on for a while and have yet to finish LOL

[butchtwelfthdoctor]

something i've noticed about the difference between good omens and doctor who fandoms rn is that the good omens people are either making funny art or coming up with increasingly unfeasible theories about supposed 'hidden messages' in the show and generally being weird about it going out of their way to say they LOVE EVERYTHING about the show, and the doctor who people are like. damn this sucks.. unfortunately it's also really compelling. oh well <3

like idk the good omens people (generalising here of course) seem incredibly strung up on what Could Be Meaningful and making wayyyyy to much of a big deal out of minor details. and like the show is clever! there are secondary levels of meaning! but not everything is or should be. not everything is a metaphor. continuity errors exist. and the doctor who people (even new fans) are still yknow eating drywall over it but are also like HAHAHAHthat bit was awful. anyways its also incredibly thematically relevant to these other episodes so it's very important you watch it lol.

and i think the difference is that good omens is twelve episodes. just twelve. there's the book of course, which is a different angle than the show, there's the radio version etc. but there's only so much story. and a lot of the version are the plot of the book in different formats. whereas doctor who goes on forever and ever and ever and there will always be more content. so the good omens people are overanalysing the same few moments over and over again because thats all there is, they probably know their content better than the doctor who people, but b/c you only see them in so many Situations, its also easier to begin to warp your perception of them. you only see them deal with a crisis a couple times under very specific circumstances. there are only so many character moments, so things can be blown out of proportion b/c you cant compare it to another similar moment.

but doctor who is infamously long and infamously has a Very large eu so you have a lot more time with the characters to pull together your perception of the characters, even when regenerations and new companions come and go. you simply have more to work with to build your understanding.

like if you compare the 'i just lost my best friend' scene from good omens to any of the 'doctor thinks companion is dead' scenes--crowley reacts like that only once. he is distraught, obviously, doesnt quite know what to do about it at first, doesnt know what's happened to aziraphale--but its a specific moment. bookshop burned down. world is ending. aziraphale Gone. whereas doctor who there's a range of scenarios with a range of reactions--guilt and also hope when bill gets shot and then taken away. anger and denial over clara willingly dying knowing that she must (actually resolved her character arc quite well i thought, though so did hell bent). there are more but i forget. uhm end of s1 second to last episode rose gets vaporised but it's actually a teleport, the way nine responds to that. there's just more to work with!! which i think is why the good omens fandom is so deeply embroiled in arguing over minutiae of character and background detail b/c they dont have anything more to read about them except fanfics (which are obvious a feedback loop in any fandom) and because they only see aziraphale and crowley for such a short time. they cant compare their reactions during times of The Literal End of the World and The Disruption Of Their Quite Nice Life Together And Also Possibly the End of the World to them just chilling.

[wainwrightjakobshammerlock]

what are your influences/inspirations for your art!! like, stylistically or thematically!

visual art, stylistically:

the Borderlands artstyle obviously. cel shading and outlines my fucking beloved. I am so fucking sad that gbx themselves is kinda toning down on it and that they didn't implement the crosshatch shader they put in teasers for bl3. come the fuck on

the Psychonauts artstyle. even if I do no longer draw in the hyperdeformed style I took from that game I still often deform characters and exagerrate their main features in order to make them more distinct. it also kinda made me addicted to shape language lolmao

Team Fortress 2. I am fucking serious btw. blame that one youtube video on its artstyle. it's been a formative experience for me when I watched it and it stuck itself in my brain. it made me appreciate blockiness/solidity/stockiness in art, as well as teaching me how to limit color palettes and how to draw attention to the important parts of the character by using color contrast.

as for actual artists and not. Video Games. I have been eyeing cubists and futurists recently (even went to a gallery with some of Picasso's earlier works) but it's nothing too substantial as of rn

visual art, thematically:

most of what I draw is characters & fanart so. yeah .

however one thing I've been enjoying recently is redrawing paintings or old photos. usually replacing the ppl in them with my fave old man yaoi. maybe it's cringe but they are a very "love in every time" sort of couple to me so :shrug:

literary art, stylistically:

positivist writing, particularly Lalka by Bolesław Prus. perhaps it's because I consider myself academically inclined, perhaps it's because naturalistic descriptions pander to my Biology Autism, perhaps it's bc of smth else idk

impressionism except not really bc im autistic and thus sensory descriptions come to me naturally

Terry. Pratchett. comparisons in my fics are often snappy(tm) as all fuck because they're, well, Borderlands fics, and to me a Borderlands novel should be Discworld-like. also because Discworld itself slaps

the work of Alexis Kennedy: the guy who wrote a lot of Fallen London, Cultist Simulator and also the Horizon Signal dlc for Stellaris. which is all shit im into. and good lird . its hard to describe you have to read this stuff for yourself

literary art, thematically:

again see the visual art section but largely my fics if they aren't self indulgent fluff are just. taken from my brain tee em because I cover topics or angles that the rest of the fandom wouldn't even think of

Alexis Kennedy again bc he writes gothic/cosmic horror. especially the latter. hoo doggy

other things that in general inspire me:

Darkest Dungeon. both the artstyle and the story have been big influences on me even tho I only played the game once and know everything abt it by watching youtube and bingereading wikis

the legacy of H. P. "Racist" Lovecraft. I guess. what can I say I am a sucker (haha) for those tentacles. except I do everything he ever did sexier and cooler and also he can go roll in his grave

legends, folklore, mythology and occultism. Hellenic of course since that's a big part of Borderlands symbolism but I ain't a coward I throw all that shit in there. slavic (creator bias lollll), norse, japanese, a bit of voudoun, biblical tradition, alchemy, tarot, et cetera. of course I usually don't talk about all the symbols that go into my Everything bc there's a crapton and everyone is entitled to their own interpretations but. yknow! and thats not even accounting for my love of assigning complex motifs to things

[cruelsister-moved2]

Im the hater anon omg i didnt mean to lead u astray but i haven't finished it i'm just over half done. i probably will finish just so i can coherently say why i don't like it bc rn my thoughts are all over the place but  u hit all the major points im like nodding and taking notes rn.  Its very shallow lore wise like its all overly complex exposition that barely effects the plot. I could write about this for 100 years but basically it was boring and i just feel like it has nothing to say like theres no purpose or message and i think speculative stuff should have SOME weight behind it idk.  That paired w how the writing itself is like..not pretty or artful or anything………………….

And on top of that its not even actually funny. Instead of real jokes its just 100 million mcu quips awkwardly inserted so that no situation is ever treated genuinely or seriously or with depth. For example. My personal least favorite part beyond general quality so far is how often they bring up gideon being inappropriately horny… idk how else to word it.. Its one of her 3 personality traits. they mention her porn collection i swear every couple of pages. its played 4 jokes but like the rest of it its literally unfunny and feels so out of place. Like this is right when they just discovered an incinerated body → ”she looked troubled, which made Gideon sad, but she was also soaked right through to the skin, which made Gideon need a lie-down.” Its like if someone whose only point of reference was tiktok during that era where every vaguely masc woman got made fun of for being a quote hey mamas lesbian unquote tried to write a masc woman.  Reading it as a masc lesbian myself is just sort of embarrassing idk if other ppl feel differently but it just feels overplayed and goofy. 

Anyways… this is all very long and incoherent but thank u for complaining and vindicating me… i started reading it a couple days ago on a whim bc ive been seeing ppl talk abt it a lot lately and i was instantly SOOOOO disappointed. Part of it was definitely that i was expecting something very different because of how people talk about it but also its just like bad. Its insane. I also had no idea abt the roachpatrol thing so ummmmmm :(

hiiiiiiiiii omg so your suffering isn't even over yet my condolences.

the worldbuilding exposition industrial complex needs to end im so serious. I just had such a nice conversation with some writer friends about soft vs hard magic systems and world-building and how frustratingly common the assumption that more complex lore you dump the more sophisticated your story is at the moment. in reality many more sophisticated stories deliberately utilise abstraction and whimsy for thematic statements. v happy for brandon sanderson fans but again, a lot of those stories are basically like mystery novels except the magic is the mystery, whereas the speculative fiction authors who... actually speculate...are often using it as a tool to speculate about our own existence.

and the writing is so ugly like I've read a couple of chapters and I feel like i could get through a mid story if it's at least well written but it wasn't even inoffensive it was actively offputting like that prose was stinkyyyyyyyyy..... and the quips exactlyyy like who is laughing at none pizza with left beef anymore and the fact a lot of it isn't even the author being witty but just like. a reference to a meme? it's literally supposed to be like gritty but then everyone is memeing and quipping all the time how are you meant to take that seriously?

and okay the like sexualisation of Gideon had kind of been my suspicion but I hadn't read enough to make that claim for certain so. that's disappointing to have it confirmed. given that the author is a fem woman who calls herself a lesbian whilst being homestuck married to a guy, it really brings up some kind of discomfort in me to be using masc women that way and making a joke out of them and their sexuality and calling them himbos and shit like. it really doesn't seem like she actually knows any masc women??? and when that was a huge part of the marketing for the book it comes to feel exploitative.

one thing to be aware is that tor like. pushed it really hard marketing-wise for whatever reason. I guess they feel it symbolises a new era of sci-fi and like were using it as an outreach effort to engage the generation that mostly only reads fan fiction or whatever which I guess cheers if it achieves that. but the majority of negative reviews are specifically that it was nothing like what they expected it to be, because of the.... super gimmicky marketing.

the tagline being sword necromancer lesbians in space or something so lame 😭 and it really seems like the elements came first and the justification came second so it's never really explained why they use swords instead of more technologically advanced weapons (bc the answer is 'it sounds cool') or really why it needs to be in space at all (because the answer is 'it sounds cool'). even the necromancy is supposedly fairly tangential and ive seen people be underwhelmed how much actual lesbianism is involved too 💀

9mbut yeah the r0ach patr0l thing I wish people were more aware of because honestly above anything else, I've seen people who were fans and then found this out and felt super uncomfortable so I think people deserve to know what kind of background she has, and this is literally where she developed her writing and her name as a BNF so it's directly connected to her current career not just like a celebrity who tweeted something dumb when they were 14. like I think it's fair to take that into account + idk it's INTERESTING to me that she went from that to debuting with a masc lesbian whom she projects like comic hypersexuality onto it really is all much to think about truly

[sizhui]

hi angie!! im jjst chilling today but today i plan to go out n buy my bday books!!!

anyways as a fellow bl intellectual i would like to ask u what u think abt general bl stock characters / archetypes!! also as someone whos doing shakespeare this year im curious abt how u would blend currently existing bl story formats w like more traditional lit genres / conevtuons IF YOU COULD!! WOULD U!!

how do u think bl being a mostly Not white people thing has affected its conventions like idk emotional intensity, typical tropes idk!!

looks at u like this 🥺

HELLO DEAR LAB!!!! i saw your birthday books, very good choices, i hope you'll enjoy! Now let us discuss one BL intellectual to another ^_^ as usual, I'll stick to danmei, since I'm simply not well read in Japanese and Korean BL to speak confidently even though I have experience with them...!

When googling people's favorite tropes, most people mentioned Enemies to Lovers. I do like a good conflict, but I like very specific shades of it... I like characters who are ideological opposites, but still hold some affection for each other since early on... Although i have been interested in thousand autumns in which the two leads start as straight up bitter enemies, so I'll see how I'm going to like that! Now, something slightly different that i really enjoy is characters being thematic opposites - demonic cultivator and orthodox cultivator, god and demon, soldier and librarian you name it! I have seen people call this the yin yang trope i don't know if that's a widely used term? I also enjoy slow burn - see Golden Terrace disappointed me in that regard cause they started sleeping together in like chapter 30 come on where is the drama the intrigue :(? I don't care for friends to lovers much unless it's written really well but i really much prefer strangers to lovers!!! A lot of people sigh at the trope of one Character being like "I don't like men it's..only for you ❤️" but i honestly think that's a convention you just have to accept when diving into the world of BL. I like badass shous that aren't annoyingly shy and talkative, charming gongs (sorry lan zhan is ok but strong and silent gongs usually piss me off) I'm probably one of the 5 western fans who actually like the gong/shou dynamic because like. Let's be honest there's nothing wrong with seme/uke in JPN bl either other than ukes being drawn as shotabait often, but since novel art for CN novels usually draws everyone looking like adults I really don't see anything problematic with gong/shou, heteronormativity my ass... i also kinda like when they call each other husband and wife SORRY. I also like the trope of the couple adopting a young boy. I'm not gonna call it found family I'm not gonna even try. I hate master/disciple and i hate school settings. I usually prefer the characters to be rougher men already hardened by life! I like reincarnation and revenge but i don't like Isekai ... Ummm what else is there? Nothing comes to mind rn , if you have some specific tropes you want me to rate, I'm here :)

NOW YOUR SECOND QUESTION HAS ME REALLY INTRIGUED...if i could, i would merge literally every literary genre with BL to be honest. Since you specifically mentioned Shakespeare, i think it would be fucking amazing to see BL adapted into stage plays - i don't mean those funny anime stage plays, i mean straight up tragedies on Hamlet level. Oh i would kill to see that!!! I would also love to see like, someone with an interest in narratology and metafiction write a super meta BL novel like enstars but like really properly yaoi. I don't think that danmei novels written by amateurs have "bad writing" - they simply exist on a different terrain and seek to communicate different ideas from traditional published novels, but i would love to see the two merged in some spectacular novel that takes inspiration from classics!!

Now your third question i would rather turn into a discussion with you, because while I've consumed a lot of East Asian media since a young age i don't claim to have such a good understanding of the cultures to be able to trace how the culture influenced BL literary conventions, but I would love to hear your thoughts on it and compare to what i know! I definitely find it interesting to compare East Asian BL with LGBT media made by white Americans and Europeans, cause they tend to rely on very different things, with American and European gay content being very focused on the issue of homophobia and stuff like family and cheating and coming of age, while Asian BL, despite tackling those sometimes, is more internal conflict-driven, less focused on orientation. I actually prefer it a lot for that - there are only so many coming of age homophobia stories i can watch -_- boring! I see some western fans annoyed that Asian BL rarely discusses orientation and stuff like LGBT solidarity and such, but i like, don't care cause i feel like they're too focused on realism and forget that bl is a genre not meant to perfectly mirror irl gay relationships, but rather provide romantic fantasies for women! Something just came to mind, i recently chatted with a classmate who is a white American, and she said that she finds Asian media confusing because emotional intensity seems amplified to her in anime and donghua, and that she just feels that emotions are expressed differently than in the American media she's used to. I think she's weak and stupid for giving up on watching just because it's different from what she's used to, but since you mentioned emotional intensity, i would like to hear your thoughts about it!

I hope my answer wasn't disappointing, and looking forward to hearing back from you!

[trenchcoatsbi]

ON A DIFFERENT NOTE I WAS JUST POKING AROUND AND SAW THAT MOD PHIL LISTENS TO BUG HUNTER? man us philza kins all share a musical braincell i guess because holy fuck i don’t think i’ve ever run into anyone else who listens to his stuff! i’m gonna have to politely ask you to hand over more recommendations for music because you’ve got TASTE. -🌾🪶

ARNJS i am staring at you soo hard I know like two other bug hunter fans and theyre fans because I commandeered the music bot and insisted on playing all of his songs during a music vc night... Anyway we are slaying so hard rn. us phils just have the best music taste 😎

OKAY anyway this took forever cause I tried to narrow down my list but ajfanfdk I listen to a lot of stuff. god there's so much music i enjoy that I could go on forever about random songs and stuff so uh yeah... I banished my bs to under a cut for the sake of not making a post that is annoying to scroll past. enjoy whatevr i did -za

Mickey Darling!! RAHGjsA a lot of his songs are like about breakups but they're all very upbeat and fun despite the lyrics. Honestly its so funny to me I literally found him because of a fanfic that used lyrics from say that you miss me (which like god yeah the author got me... it was extremely right for the character they used it for i know cause they're literally me). you were perfect & im so sorry is vry good and also I've had somewhere else stuck in my head since it came out...

Jukebox the Ghost. okay okay they just never miss! i adore like everything they've made but uhmmm I think the cheers album is my favorite still right now like dont get me wrong i love everything they've made but ajldnf how can I not like cheers. Brass Band and I Got A Girl are so good. I will say uh shout out to It's No Secret cause its inspired several pieces of self indulgent ship art I've made.

Streetlight Manifesto... The Hands that Thieve got me out of one of my weirdest music eras. I mean it's ska punk it's not too far from the uh protest songs I was listening too, but ska was more palatable than most of the shit that I was really into for a bit. Anyway listen to If Only For Memories too its good.

LyreLeTemps! god okay so i like electroswing a lot and ashutjak just fuck man Time Train is extremely mecore when it comes to a specific kin. A lot of the music i listen to gets shifted around depending to my shifts lol. Also listen to Nanana it's a close second for my favorite song by them other than Time Train

Groundbreaking, god i've listened to this guy for so long... I think all his music is great but the Anarchy I & II are my little guys I listen to them all the time still. They practically got me through quarantine... Uhm if I had to recommend a specific songs instead of just saying listen to the Anarchy Albums maybe VIP and Beautiful people. Those two were my favorites but jsut to get somthing from anarchy listed too uhm anarchy or media star

The Wrecks god another band I listened to a lot during quarantine... Fvck Somebody and Panic Vertigo are my #1s forever but I really like their new music too. Unrequited and Sonder came out at such a good time for me, unfortunately that means I have like four writings wips that have titles that are just the lyrics of those songs...

Air Traffic Controller is another band that made quarantine bearable for me god why have the last three just been quarantine time killers. Anyway I listen to Creature of the Night a lot because I love being thematic with my music when I pull all nighters. Uhhhh other than that Anybody got a light has quickly become one of my favorites from them too

Atarashii Gakko!! This is the only non english band I'm actively a fan of rn. My friends are like big into like Kpop and I'm more of a cpop or jpop guy but like even then I almost never find a band and get super invested. but raghg the choreography and vocals just everything really scratches my brain. I really like watching their dance practices idk its just so fascinating to me. uhm okay uh Fantastico and NAINAINAI yeah those i recommend them :]

AND because I cant help myself here's some things I wanted to talk about but uh 90% of it would just be me keyboard slamming cause I cannot articulate my enjoyment of them

Circa Waves: Your Ghost & Golden Days

Good Kid: Mimi's Delivery Service

Saint Motel: Sweet Talk & Slow Dance

Rare Americans: Walking N Talkin

Burn the Ballroom: Calm Down & Crazy

Bear Ghost: Haunt the Cartoon Heart & Sirens

Andie Schoen: the prophet (you love me) & loitering

The Happy Fits: In the Lobby & So Alright, Cool, Whatever

Hobo Johnson: Peach Scone & February 15th

[kurjakani]

what has influenced your art? (specifically thinking about things that aren't necessarily art related, but still has influenced you in some way🤔)(does that make any sense? I don't know haha)

Hi sorry for being so INCREEDINLY late w my answer im looking thru asks rn but!!!

Its umm.... hmm.... definetly just deeply a desire to tell stories? It's not as strong nowdays but i rly rly for a while wanted 2 make comics etc.

Nowdays tbh im very interested in like. Bringing other ppls projects to life? If that makes sense? Ofc my own stuff too but. Thats the part i love abt graphic design is... trying 2 figure out what someone else has in mind.

I think my style is affected by the themes im interested in... love but also kinda like. Bad things in life and how far we can go and how we can become better. Mistakes. Just life. My art has been described as cozy a lot and i think its there 2 contrast feelings of weight and bad. Ive defi lightened up thematically also in the recent years but still...

Hard to explain. Thats a rly good question thank u!!!

[healthyhorns]

Mural Unveiled at University Health Services Gynecology Clinic

Two students from the College of Fine Art collaborated with the staff at the UHS Gynecology Clinic to illustrate, design and paint a mural on a central wall in the clinic. The mural represents and celebrates the UT Austin community. 

Gabriella Carvelli, an art history major with minors in Italian, archaeology, and business and Josiah Brown, a studio art major, started the process of creating the mural during the Spring 2023 term after learning about the opportunity from one of their instructors. From there, the two met with representatives from the UHS administrative team and Gynecology Clinic, and pitched their ideas and inspiration. 

“We met through one of our professors, Megan Hildebrandt, who told us about this opportunity at the end of the Spring semester in 2023,” Brown explained. “During that following summer, we started a Google Document with all of our different ideas and narrowed them down from there.” 

The pair ended up creating sketches for five different mural ideas and collaborated with the UHS Gynecology Clinic to choose the final design. 

Amy Graf, CNM, APRN, Department Chief of the UHS Gynecology Clinic and Sheila Mahon, RN-OB, Assistant Director or Nursing in the UHS Gynecology Clinic both worked closely with the two student artists. Mahon said they had just taken down decorative quilts that were hanging on the walls and were looking for something to fill the blank slate. 

“I mentioned my idea for a mural to leadership,” Mahon said, “and they reached out to the College of Fine Arts.” 

Graf said working with the students was a pleasure from the very start, and she was impressed with their professionalism. 

“Sheila coordinated supplies and reimbursements, and the students worked around our clinic schedule,” Graf said. “It seemed like they got a lot done on weekends, and it made Mondays more fun to see how much they’d accomplished.” 

Carvelli said she and Brown wanted the mural to pay homage to all Longhorns and the city of Austin. 

“Thematically, we wanted the mural to be welcoming and familiar for the UT Austin community,” Carvelli said. “As a student of art history, I was deeply interested in exploring the role of women in artmaking practices throughout time, which inspired my fascination with recapturing toile, a 17th century French textile design, and subverting it in mural format.” 

During the winter break of 2023, Carvelli and Brown explored campus and Austin, taking photos of the landscapes, people and landmarks along the way, using the things they captured as inspiration for the details in the mural. 

“After we sketched these scenes, we interspersed some flora and fauna local to Austin and this area of Texas, such as crepe myrtle, Texas sage, and squirrels,” Brown said. “The style of our mural really gave us the opportunity for little vignettes of student life, which felt like it would honor our vision and the direction the Gynecology Clinic staff wanted to go in.” 

After several weeks of sketching and painting, the artists revealed the mural at a celebration event this spring. The pair said they are grateful for the learning experiences along the way and getting to create something that they hope will bring joy and warmth to others. 

“Opportunities like this really help open doors for the future,” Carvelli said. “To create a mural like this helped to connect me to my community on campus,” Carvelli said. “I have no doubt that this experience will open doors for the future." 

Brown said this experience was different from the things he learns in his classes. 

“I learned how to take something to a client and go back-and-forth on an idea,” Brown said. “In class we are typically given a prompt and go from there, but gaining the experience of collaboration with a client was very educational.” 

The pair said that neither of them have ever created anything on a scale this large, so they are thankful for this opportunity. 

“It was really cool to be able to do something like this that other people can enjoy,” Carvelli said. “I hope it brings joy and happiness to passersby for years to come.” 

Graf expressed the sincere gratitude of University Health Services for the hard work put in by the artists and the lasting impact their mural will have on Longhorns. 

“I hear students and staff praising the mural every day as they pass by,” Graf said. “What used to be a 10 second walk down the hallway has turned into a three-minute journey because there is always something new to discover. Not only is it relevant to our students’ lives, but also the craftsmanship is stunning. We want folks to feel comfortable and welcomed, and if they look hard enough, they will see an image of themselves portrayed in these vignettes because having student created art helps send that message.” 

-Erin Garcia, Healthyhorns Outreach and Social Media Coordinator

[kaidenshenandoahknapp]

this was an absurd amount of effort for what was ultimately an offhanded-joke but i needed to procrasinate lmao

if you watched @henrykathman's "Melody of Moominvalley" stream, (hi, hello, i made the thumbnail art, that was a cool surprise to see in my sub-box lol) Kathman made a comment about being glad no one has made him into a Moomintroll (or Snorktroll, i guess) because he thinks he would look like Snork

i had two thoughts in reply to this VOD:

that's probably because i would assume most video-essayist are on the spectrum of Hemulans (oversimplification: academics) to Teety-Woo/Woodies (oversimplification: big fans, arguably obsessive). you're probably more of a Hemulan? based on how you present yourself in videos? idk, i dont know you in your personal life lmao Hemulan just seems likely considering the hobby being so analytical (and also is easier for me to look at the different styles of since Woodies seem to have less general rules towards their appearance. and Teety-Woo is the only one of its kind that i know of, idk what is Teety-Woo's species and what is Teety-Woo's individuality there. but, like, that's not nearly as fun as my bullshit quiz lmao)

fucking bet

*: assets in not-gif form below Read More

(psa: please do forgive me for misspellings. i am dyslexic and will probably edit this repeatedly for quite some time, but im tired atm so Now It Is Posted)

anyway, i whipped all these up in about 2 or 3 days? idk, my chronic health issues have been a monster lately, its hard to keep track of days rn

but i made:

comics Moomintroll/Snorktroll

90s Moomintroll/Snorktroll and Hemulan

Tales From Moominvalley inspired illustration art of Hemulan where it has those lifeless "bug eyes with tiny pupils" style i love (but that i also understand why Jansson went back and gave them bigger pupils after a certain edition, and drew with more expressive eyes after a while)

why did i do three different styles + 3 different species? because i was torn on which to do and ended up pulling a classic Kaiden-Shenandoah and going "ill do more work and let them choose which one they like best". something something anxiety, i dont know what to tell you, im trying to learn self-acceptance lmao besides, it was fun to do a quicker shuft through style changes than the usual heavier studying i make Google Images help me do

speaking of, i dont often share my references because i worry about clutter, but i want to include it today and i also used less ref than usual, so you get clutter lol

(i learned last time that Tove Jansson doesn' often draw mugs; so i did my best guesses based on the references here + the result of my references the last time i drew in Jansson' style, which was more so her later novel-illustrations, if i remember right, as opposed to today. lots of best guesses today.)

first of all, i guessed on Kathman's eye-color based on zooming in and it was too pixelated to tell for sure even with the eyedropped tool. secondly, very fun tying in the blue hair dye since 90s Snork has a pink edge to his hair and Mr Hemulan has a green edge to his. last of all: i made them with (and without) a light beard/stubble, since i saw Kathman has one now. but also that was enirely guesswork on my part: Tove Jansson drew heavy-duty moustaches/beards or completely facially-hairless characters, no in-between. so i used educated guesses on how to adapt that. and i feel a bit like i did the male version of that one Snorkmaiden lipstick comic for my efforts lmao but hey! i tried!

my only thing is idk which set to upload to instagram, bc doing all the assets of with/out facial hair feels oddly excessive and maybe goes past instagram's images-per-post limit, idk, ill upload these there someday i guess. really wish instagram would let me post a gif but idk how to do that. c'est la vie

you also may notice one of the Hemulan sets includes a magnifying glass. i just thought it was thematically appropriate for someone analytical, especially since one of my references above did have it available for me to also reference lol

as a fun detail, i did a more Police Inspector color palette for the 90s Hemulan design, and a more Moominpappa palette for the 90s Moomintroll/Snorktroll designs. hence why those colors aren't the same

and the last thing is that i made the comic assets yellow-y to reflect the aging of paper and the quality of the photo references i have. (Henry Kathman, if you want to edit them to be white for the aesthetic of something, feel totally free)

here's all the assets i made in total. the gif version felt the most succint but yeah. also, Henry Kathman, if you are reading this: same rules apply. feel free to use these in anything you want, credit would be nice. (also, very sweet that you saw my name change away from my childhood nickname, i appreciate that 🫶). credit in the future can be to either here or my instagram (which i changed to match this hyphen-less url, since tumblr terminated my last blog for unknown reasons) i hope you are not upset that i went against your wishes of gratitude that nobody had drawn you as a Moomintroll/Snorktroll, but i hope the fact that i think you don't look like Snork even as a Moomintroll/Snorktroll helps. i hope you also dont mind the Hemulan additions lmao. but yeah, i wont blame you if you prefer the more human (or arguably Mymble? idk species) style i did beforehand in the last batch and don't use these. that one has way more references with lots of drafts and this is more of me messing around and finalizing the first draft i made each time around lol but i think they came out fun! very silly distraction, thanks for the idea lmao

thanks to Henry Kathman for the fun VOD and the much-(un)needed procrastination excuse. it was a good distraction from a pretty bad flare-up in my disability and a full plte of things to do that i needed an escape from. hope youre having a great day!

[myaoiboy]

So i was thinking abt your post on light symbolism in Mgsv and i was wondering if you could talk more on the meaning of the blue lighting? In Peacewalker the red=bad and yellow=good is obvious but what are the examples of blue meaning uncertainty other than in the scene of Ocelot confessing? Is it exclusive to V? i can't find the post rn but i thought it was really interesting!!

Okay so there's a lot of ways i can go about this but I'm also going to be extremely upfront and say that mgs1-4+PW are slightly harder to get good quality screenshots of, and I see fewer recordings of them so I fully admit to having a less-than-perfect memory of them.

V is also easier to pick scenes from because it does the most "WTF, where is that weird-colored lens flare even coming from?" cinematic stuff. The other games have more direct integration into scenes and even the narrative.

The most explicit case of blue as dishonesty/unreliable narrator/dramatic irony/facade cracking/whatever you want to call it, is in the MGS4 novel. I don't really know that it's canon as much as a canon-enhancer, like an art book would be. I know that Kojima has said that Itoh got the spirit of what he was going for more than anyone else, so I'm willing to abide by his interpretation of the snake family (snamily?) geneticist surrounded by blue roses:

tl;dr: the blue of the blue roses is what makes them unnatural. Beautiful, but manmade. Snake is also genetically engineered, manmade, "unnatural," and at times considers himself less than human because of it.

This is sort of the explicit culmination of something that's been going on since MGS1, where the whole map is basically this weird, unnatural, unsettling blue color.

Which, for me, even playing the shadow moses smash level when I was younger felt ~weird~ due to the color and lighting. When I got around to playing MGS, the feeling was definitely still there.

I'll even offer grey fox as an example because he and Snake are basically the same color in their concept art, and Snake's definitely blue in-game. Making him this red-and-blue, murdery-but-something's-up figure...

Was it intentional? Honestly, I don't know. I lean towards assuming it was a palette limitation for hardware/performance that happened to play nice thematically. Add in the fact that straight-up black tends to look bad graphically for the same reason that it works well in actual stealth situations and...yeah, using a lot of blue makes sense. No reason that a medium's "limitations" shouldn't be considered just as meaningful and integral as its benefits though.

Maybe the weakest example I have is in 3, where Volgin's lightning turns the whole torture room blue (or at least, as blue as it can get with that piss filer)

Everyone in this room is fucking over everyone else in this room in impossible to comprehend ways. We've walked in on 5D chess that is only about to be made clear at the end of this cutscene, but the only person in this room loyal to Volgin is Volgin.

Consider:

She feels bad for Snake. Kinda obvious I suppose, but she's also planning to triple cross him. I mean, technically at this point she's probably still planning to kill him. Either way, She's definitely planning to fuck over Volgin and either you or the Chinese Philosophers.

The Boss is being The Boss and not telling ANYONE wtf is going on, (also planning to fuck over Volgin)

And THIS WHORE is over here clutching his fucking LOCKET OF YOUR HAIR (read: the bullet he fucked up with while fighting you that he wears around his neck)

...plus he was actually supposed to be fucking over Volgin in the first place as your contact before Eva got in the way. ...which she also does at the end when she cock blocks him ANYWAYS.

Then we get this lovely little quote that I've been thinking about since playing the game. Something about this feels like it's implying that the color of his eyes are unnatural or make him seem dishonest. Ironic, given the current company.

In Peace Walker specifically it's easy to tell when colors are being used for effect, since there's only really three used in the whole game, red, blue, and gold. Blue is used a lot for grief in this game, as it it's a game that deals heavily with the topic. Like, say, in Strangelove's first cutscene, where she's challenging BB to kill her.

And a moment after that we get one of the brightest pops of blue in the game! There aren't very many of them, most of the blues are dull, like on Strangelove's glasses here. But in this scene, not only are Snake's eyes blue, he also has blue highlights on his face. It really brings the two of them together in their grief over the same woman.

Strangelove also refers to the Boss AI as "[her] morpho," the kind of butterfly that BB references in PW.

Not so coincidentally, this is *also* the kind of butterfly that appears at the end of the Paz questline, which disappears in a flash of blue light, in this sort of combined grieving-and-unreality scene that I think makes blue throughout the series so beautiful.

It's not just one thing, it's many things that are intimately woven together. I guess you could more accurately say that it's mental/emotional hurt and old wounds where red is more physical/immediate hurt?

That's not to say that every single time someone is grieving or lying or is dishonest or is something they don't appear to be that they'll be ringed in blue or anything, but rather that it's something to watch for because there's often a sort of color confirmation. Same as how the snakes don't tend to wear red even when they do a lot of killing

I'm also very much still working out the symbolism of blue in the games honestly. These are mostly my working theories but if anyone has anything else to add I'm all ears!

Sorry that this is kind of short, I had covid this week and am still kind of playing catch-up a bit but I at least wanted to get some really obvious (to me) cases out there.

[icharchivist]

....... well that gives me something to relate to with saito soma apparently shit