#does it look good compared to professional artists? hell no

[zhongrin]

drawing selfship art is such a liberating and happy experience. 100/10 would recommend. i feel so soft rn

[pftones3482]

I want to be excited for the live action Little Mermaid so badly

The Little Mermaid is my favorite Disney movie. Anyone who knows me knows I'm obsessed with mermaids as a whole and will watch any media that has them. Hell, I own my own tails and monofins. But every time I see a gif or a video for the new Little Mermaid, I cringe

(btw, this is NOT because of the casting. If you're against this movie because Ariel is black, you're a racist piece of shit and this post isn't for you)

My issue lies with the CGI. It just looks so FAKE. We've seen through the course of movies and TV shows that use it that CGI does not age well, and that's because technology is constantly improving. What was impressive in 2005 is not impressive in 2023 (Just look at Aquamarine, another movie about mermaids). And the CGI on Ariel and her sisters already looks fake and the movie isn't even out yet!

Compare this image from the trailer

To this screenshot from H20: Just Add Water (a TV show that came out in 2006):

You can see the details of the scales in the second image

The first image is flat. Sure, it's colorful, but it's flat. It's fake. Halle herself is the most beautiful and alive part of the image, because everything else is fake

The difference?

H20 had costume designers, ones specifically trained in mermaid tail making, HAND CRAFT every tail on the show. All of the scales were hand laid, all the tails molded to fit the actors/actresses perfectly, painted by hand

Let's even look at someone with no affiliation to TV or movies:

This is Mermaid Linden, a very well known (in the mermaid community) professional mermaid. You can tell her tail is not as high quality as the ones made for H20 (though it's still a VERY expensive tail) - but it still looks like it's a part of her. You can still see the details. Because professional mermaid tails are also all handmade and molded to fit each person. Even if they don't lay every individual scale, good professional mermaid tail makers are very meticulous about what they do.

This is what happens when Disney refuses to pay practical effects artists. We could have had beautiful, handmade tails that would look real on screen for decades to come and could be reused for promotional purposes - instead, they're underpaying and overworking their non-unionized employees to make CGI tails that don't even look real now.

(to be clear, I'm not shitting on the artists. As I said, they're being underpaid and overworked. This is not their fault)

And before anyone comes and says "But swimming in those is difficult!" Absolutely it is. You should never swim in a professional level tail (or even just fabric tails) without practice and training. Which Disney could have given the cast if they were willing to PAY people (the cast of H20 [a TV SHOW] literally learned how to be mermaids on set. It's been done before)

Disney's "Live Action" needs to be rebranded as "CGI with some real people tossed in" because that's all any of these remakes have been, and it's exhausting when I look at what we could have had.

[sighed-the-snake]

Gun LOADED!

Many people are looking to the bullet catch scene to theorize that Aziraphale is going to fake Crowley's death in the next season, but I think there's another compelling scene from S1 that we should be looking at.

The one with the paintball guns, from S1.

Norm, from management, has a YELLOW cloth tied around his arm, as does the rest of his platoon. Yellow is known to be associated with Aziraphale, and by extension, angels. But I don't think this manager is representing Aziraphale. I think he is meant to represent Crowley.

"I wanted to be a graphics designer," he says. "Design LPs for the Rolling Stones."

Crowley was a graphics designer, of a sort. He made beautiful nebulas. I also think Crowley worked for management and held a high position.

"But the careers teacher said he hadn't heard of them. So I spent 36 years double-checking form BF-18."

The careers teacher is probably God. I get the feeling people in Heaven did not understand or appreciate Crowley's cleverness, didn't understand his work. Crowley was more of an artist than a bureaucracy guy. I wonder if becoming friends with 'Lucifer and the Guys' afforded him some professional freedom, a way to get away from form BF-18, as it were. Maybe Lucifer was his boss and allowed him to do whatever his little heart desired because having a clever subordinate who pulled off such complex work made him look good.

"They couldn't just say, 'Oh, Norman, we're giving you early retirement. Have a watch, bugger off and tend to your marigolds."

The mention of tending to marigolds is interesting here.

The British have something called gardening leave.

From wikipedia, "Garden leave (also known as gardening leave) is the practice whereby an employee leaving a job – having resigned or otherwise had their employment terminated – is instructed to stay away from work during the notice period, while still remaining on the payroll."

It's a sort of limbo period between leaving the company and no longer working for them. You don't go into the office, you're not allowed to contact your former business associates, but you're still getting paid, and you're expected to respond if they call you for assistance. Gardening leave could be a short period of weeks or months to let things calm down before you return because you screwed up, or it could be a prelude to getting fired, or forced into retirement.

Gardening leave sounds an awful lot like what Crowley has on Earth. He was literally sent to a garden to do a job, and he does not return to Hell after. He remains. He lives a posh life with a expense account and a lot of freedom compared to other demons. Furfur remarks on the unfairness of it. Crowley appears to be given assignments once in a while but otherwise I don't think much is expected of him - again, compared to other demons. We've seen the way they're crammed in down there.

(Why he's on gardening leave is a speculation for another day.)

"Well, if they want war," Norm says, knotting his RED necktie around his head, "we're going to give them war. Okay, guys, let's get the bastards."

Clearly, this is when Crowley in Heaven says to himself, "Fuck it, I hate these guys, let's brawl."

And then he turns around and is promptly shot in the heart by the RED team.

He staggers dramatically. He falls. We see the life leave his eyes.

Except it's a trick. One that Norm is not privy to. He thought he was dead as much as everyone else.

But Norm raises his head and looks, bewildered, at the bullet hole in his pocket. He's made a miraculous escape. It mirrors the age-old TV trope of having some hard metal thing in his pocket to deflect the bullet.

In a way, I think this is supposed to represent Crowley's fall from Heaven that he did not see coming, but with S2 and the bullet catch adding context, I think this entire scene holds more meaning.

The thing is, part of writing a good story is including echoes of your theme.

Every single romantic relationship in Good Omens mirrors Crowley and Aziraphale in some way (I'll write more on that later, probably).

Adam and his friends being reflections of the Four Horsemen.

The bookshop being an echo of Eden. The repetition of the "leaving the garden" theme at the end of both seasons, with S1 burning down the bookshop, and S2 with Crowley and Aziraphale leaving it behind.

Twice now, once in each season, there has been a theme of bullets, of getting shot, of miraculously not dying, and no one expecting it.

I'm pretty confident that in S3, Supreme Archangel Aziraphale is going to have his hand forced. He's going to have to execute Crowley for something he has done to meddle with Heaven's plans. And I think Aziraphale is going to have to pull a fast one with very little planning to fake his boyfriend's death.

I can picture it now, with Aziraphale saying something ridiculous to the crowd of witnesses like, "FLAMING SWORD LOADED!" to drop the hint, and the crowd sighs inwardly over what an idiot Aziraphale is, but Crowley looks at him like, "What the fu- oh, we're doing a bullet catch."

[tectco]

Hello, just wanna start this off by saying that I love your art. I've decided to ask my favourite artists for art tips as I wanna get into it, but no matter what I do it never looks right. So, any tips?

WARNING YOU JUST OPENED THE FLOOD GATES GET READY FOR A LONG ASS POST

WOOOOO BOY, first off huge fucking compliment i honestly didn't think i was anyone's favorite artist (despite what my friends say) and i find it super cool of you to try and draw

Anddd nowww the cowards will run out as soon as you read more

okay so first things first, disclaimer! I AM NO PROFESSIONAL BY ANY STANDARDS, IM JUST SUPER INTERESTED IN ART, DO NOT TAKE MY WORDS AS GOSPEL AND YOU DO NOT NEED TO TAKE MY WORDS OF ADVICE (you didnt say i was but just to cover my ass)

I am still learning as an artist so this will just be advice that helped me, lets just hope i can remember what got me here, and this will be just me jotting down my thoughts as they come so maybe im not the best person to come to about this (i may repeat what other people say in terms of art so bare with me)

SO WITHOUT ANYMORE DISCLAIMER! YOU WANT ART TIPS FROM ME? WELL GET READY FOR SOME BULLSHIT FROM A PERSON WHO'S BEEN SO ARTSY FARTSY IN THEIR ENTIRE LIFE AND HAS NO IDEA WHAT THEY'RE TALKING ABOUT, WELL COME INTO THE SHIT TRAIN!!

Now i dont know if you are an intermediate artist, beginner, need help in specific areas or whatever the hell else but! here's the three main points i always wanted to scream at artists who are just starting out!

Your art WILL look like shit in the beginning

References and inspiration are YOUR FRIEND

DONT be afraid to trace

(I know I know this feels like regurgitated and it probably is BUT HEY STICK WITH ME)

does your art looks fucking trash? THATS GOOD!! KEEP DRAWING!! My art looked fucking ugly when i started and some might say (me) it still does, but thats okay!! You learn more and more from just drawing without any tips, art is a pure skill that builds up, do not be discouraged!! The point of art isn't to be the greatest in the world, it's to be at peace with what you create so if your art looks good to you and you are in a happy place in your progress, you are basically successful in my eyes at least (this doesn't mean to quit learning obviously but it'll come in time, be patient, do not push yourself! that's how you stop loving art and we don't want that happening!)

Ever find yourself asking "man why the fuck does (include art shit here) not look accurate??" well here's a tip, USE REFERENCES! DO NOT BE LIKE ME WHERE YOU JUST WING IT OR ELSE YOU'LL BE CRYING OVER YOUR DRAWING TABLET LIKE I DID AT SOME POINT!! Pay attention to the shapes of the reference, break it down and draw over it if you need to, shapes are very important in art and you need to be able to draw whatever you want in the most basic forms (im no good example of this, i really need to practice more aughhh). As well as references, inspiration is KEY!!! Everything is inspired off each other, nothing is original, so steal from your favorite artists!! Look at their speedpaints, look at how they use colors, analyze how they draw anatomy in their style, see how they use shapes, etc etc, learn from who you consider are the "greats of their times"!! USE ALL THE INSPIRATION YOU HAVE AT YOUR FINGERTIPS!!LITERALLY COPY THEM IF YOU WANT EVEN IF YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND WHY THEY DID THAT, YOU'LL LEARN WITH TIME!! just whatever you do, don't compare yourself so heavily against other artists, i know its hard, i do it myself even! If there is an artist who has a style you so so want, don't crumble if you can't draw in their style perfectly, you'll never win against someone in their art style. I suggest taking inspiration from multiple artists and mashing them together until it looks good in your eyes!!

That actually leads me to my next point! TRACING IS OKAY!! Now obviously I do not mean directly tracing over like some lines, showing it off/posting it and calling it completely original. I mean tracing over the references i mentioned before, or like what i said before, i believe you should actually trace from your favs! (don't call it original like i said before), tracing can help build memory on how to draw certain things like how i took a photo of my hands before, traced them, and then put it to the side to redraw it, making me understand futher how hands work! OR like how i traced a piece of art that i liked to understand how the artist drew their bodies, tracing is used by total professionals in the industry so do not be afraid!! You have total permission from me to trace my art and learn how to draw my wack ass bodies

and for a little extra bit, little bit of a hot take (I'm actually not sure how much of a hot take this is), i don't think you HAVE to learn the fundamentals to get into art. NOW BEFORE YOU RUN OFF SCREAMING AND SHITTING, IM NOT SAYING YOU DON'T NEED THE FUNDAMENTALS UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES!! I'm just saying that if you want to get into art as a complete hobbyist and just want to draw to yknow draw and be happy, you should just go for it! Again don't make art something you hate! I completely encourage learning the fundamentals but don't ever feel like you're failing just because you don't, get into it when you have the time! be patient with yourself, this goes for any hobby/skill but just sink some time into it, i promise you will get further in you hobby than if you push and rush yourself into complete burn out

OH AND HERES MY ULTIMATE TIP! THERE IS NO WRONG WAY TO DO ART!!

Uhhh i think that's everything? Im not exactly sure how comprehensible this is or how the spelling is since i am not beta reading this! But apologies if this wasn't what you were looking for! (if anybody even read this far) and i hope that if you asked your other favorite artists they answered with anything better than whatever this is! I wish you alot of luck in your art journey and thank you for giving me an excuse to talk about art! OH AND REMEMBER TO TAKE BREAKS

[loopy777]

Yeah, the brutal demand for quality and excelence in the japanese weekly grind for Manga artists means that even the best of them experience burnout at some point or discover their plans didnt quite go as they wanted it too.

Because of this, even excelent manga tend to have at least one terrible or subpar arc, when things just did not come together.

As i said, i think there are plenty of better manga and animes that FMA, but there are very few of them that doesnt have such a dip in quality at some point.

And thats the series that are overall good, plentyu have a bad arc and never really recover. Naruto pre timeskip was better than FMA, and the peak of what shonen could be... Post timeskip it eventually fell off a cliff.

Bleach had a very interesting world, and peaked during an arc where it essentially was a giant murder/political mystery... With a spectacular plot twist at the end... But it never managed to reach that level of quality again, and meandered through to a finish line, where both anime and manga got cacencled at different points(despite what some like to argue) for shitty quality. Hell the manga was cut short during the final battle itself. Thats really bad.

The list goes on and on.

To be fair, one bad arc isn't exactly limited to manga, or shonen. You'll find it in many excellent series.

Hell, while not really an arc, even ATLA, amazing as it was had one episode which almost all fans utterly despises.

Also about the peanut gallery... Us talking about it, actuqlly reminded me that one of the best Fights Luffy ever had, actually had the Villain, Katakuri, basically go:

"Damn this peanut gallery is annoying... Lets get rid of them before we kick things into high gear."

And then he knocks them the fuck out so that him and luffy can have an epic battle in peace. It's not the funniest scene in the world, but when i actually look at it on a meta level, yeah, this fight is so much better speciffically cause Katakuri removed the damned commentary track.

Okay, that's almost worth going through all of One Piece to get to, considering my gripe. XD

I have to wonder about the weekly grind for manga compared to American comics. Sure, you can cover a lot more territory in 50 issues a year compared to 12, but in practice, does that hold up for most action manga? Is having a single writer-artist superior to having a writer who works with a rotating artist team?

I would argue that having a full writing team is inferior to a single writer, and American comics seem to agree with me as writers these days seem to stick around for an uninterrupted run for at least a year before leaving and never looking back, and that's when the book isn't writer-owned. But considering manga art is a group effort, anyway, it seems like it would be a simple shift to having a larger team who do every other issue or something like that.

And a shift to every other week as a standard probably wouldn't be hard to accommodate. It still gets installments out fairly frequently, and I'd argue that manga has largely decompressed in order to manage its update schedule, so I think we'd see a natural speed up in pace and the storytelling wouldn't be any slower. I suspect that even the writers who don't fumble things just learn how to stretch things or tread water with their stories in order to give themselves time to recharge or resolve creative issues, so giving them that week's buffer would just result in things tightening up.

But I'm just speculating as an ignorant Audience. I can't draw, I've never written anything professionally, I've never even worked on an amateur comic, and I know very little about the manga industry except that they come out bundled in weekly anthology magazines and about 15,000 mangaka die every year from overwork. As someone from an engineering background, my solution when a machine is burning itself out is to run it slower or stop covering up the vents. And I have no idea what that second option would look like in the comic industry.

[thesinglesjukebox]

VICTORIA MONÉT - "ON MY MAMA"

Your Fun Pop Factoid Of The Day: the uncredited vocals on will.i.am's "I Got It From My Mama" are by Kat Graham.

[7.65]

Nortey Dowuona: I TOUCHED A JAGUAR'S SWAG AND NOW I HAVE A TAIL: STORYTIME [9]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: The backstory for Victoria Monét's "On My Mama" may overpower the song one day: sat in the studio during COVID, battling postpartum depression, singing affirmations that she didn't yet believe. It's powerful, and now that it's a hit, it's the type of tale that pastors will add extra sizzle to, knowing it'll ring the congregation's bells. And yet, the song is slinkier and more pared-down than the built-in uplift would have you believe. Cheekier, too, zapped with tossed-off gags that are Monét's secret weapon: I always giggle at "[I] might be too fine to hit it from behi-yi-yi-yind". Ribald and heartwarming -- quite a combination. [8]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: The bassline's two-note filigrees are self-assured in their minimalist swerve -- effortless cool without lifting much more than a finger. "On My Mama" operates in this reserved mode for its entire runtime, capturing the righteous act of feeling yourself via Chalie Boy's "I Look Good." Ironically, the hook sounds constrained in this new context, trapped inside the hallowed gloss of triumphant brass. It's less thrilling when the instrumentation telegraphs that -- why let anything else explain that you're good enough? Still, this sleeked out take on Southern-rap braggadocio does find a moment of comparable excellence when Monét utters "sex game go stuUUupid." It isn't playful or horny, just domineering and cocksure; she doesn't sing that line for anyone but herself. [6]

Ian Mathers: Monét weaves so effortlessly and precisely among all the little bass pushes and gently peaking horns that it'd be easy to overlook how crucial her performance is here. But it is, and she nails the hell out of it. She rightfully mentions being deep in her bag, but this whole thing is also almost impossibly in several different kinds of pocket at once. [9]

Oliver Maier: Professional, fairly tedious, sounding so built for Tiny Desk that I'm shocked it hasn't happened yet. This would really benefit from some oomph, or at least some hi-hats. [4]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: The bass doesn't slap quite as hard as I want it to. But really, that's the only note I have here -- Ms. Monét is so self-assured here on this slab of funk, stringing together one-liners that lesser artists would be lucky to get one of like she's got an infinite supply. I always want extended versions of pop songs, but I especially want one here. [8]

Alfred Soto: Like a suite in a four-star hotel, everything's where it's supposed to be: the horn section, the bass line, and Victoria Monét's polished vocal. From Jamila Woods recording her own Avalon and Corinne Bailey Rae her own Sign 'o the Times on one disc to K Michelle reveling in tradition, 2023 was a wonderful year for female R&B artists: they sing their bodies eclectic. "I think we deserve it, right?" Monét asks rhetorically. [8]

Leah Isobel: "I just wanna live in a fantasy," Monét sings, her voice burnished gold. "I think we deserve it, right?" This song -- by design -- makes me remember 2000s R&B and pop, the era of Ciara and "Do It To It" and Usher's imperial phase, when the whole industry's center of gravity briefly shifted to Atlanta. The welding of hip-hop's stance and production with pop's melody created what felt, at the time, like the most impossibly cool music I had ever heard, both celebratory and strong. That trend passed, as all pop music trends do; as I left childhood, pop music became more nihilistically post-human. I like that stuff, too. But "On My Mama" triggers a specific memory button in which I remember a version of the world in which it seemed like people could keep pace, if you were tough enough. Monét brings a soft allure to that fantasy: it could be good. It could still be good. [8]

David Moore: There's been a scourge of millennial hip-hop worship that somehow takes some of the most joyous music ever produced and reduces it to the great gray blob of content, just execrable nostalgia-mining of the lowest order for almost every major rap and R&B hit between c. 2002 and 2007, so how refreshing is it to hear a pitch-perfect post-Aaliyah minimal R&B performance with the period-appropriate accoutrement to match: is that a real horn section? Chopped and screwed ad-libs? Oh my god, are those punchlines?? "I'm so deep in my bag like a grandma with a peppermint / they say ooh she smell good, that's because I'm heaven scent." Perfect. [9]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: "On My Mama" is sexy, swaggering, and most importantly, fun. Victoria Monét's glow-up from Ariana Grande sidekick to Grammy Award nominee is the exact type of thing everyone should have predicted on their 2023 bingo card. Extra point for making me smile with "I'm so deep in my bag/Like a grandma with a peppermint." [8]

Kayla Beardslee: "I'm so deep in my bag, like a grandma with a peppermint / They say, 'Oh she smell good,' that's just 'cause I'm heaven-scent" isn't actually the lyric of the year... or is it?? [9]

Katherine St Asaph: Cocaine-decor sumptuous to an almost surreal extent. Wish Monét hadn't crammed all her good lines into the second verse, though. [7]

Brad Shoup: Starts off luxe and slinky, a getting-ready ode that annexes the club before she walks through the door, similar to Kelly Rowland's "Like This". After the first chorus, she's thoroughly feeling herself, and the jokes and vocal elasticism put her in Post Malone territory. Not a bad thing! Peak Posty would've avoided the triumphant "SpottieOttieDopaliscious" horns (his loss), but probably wouldn't have bothered sampling Chalie Boy after a perfectly fine interpolation. Feels like padding. [7]

Alex Ostroff: Any song with even a passing resemblance to "SpottieOttieDopaliscious" is always going to hit almost every pleasure centre in my brain. [8]

Michelle Myers: Jaguar II is a phenomenal album, but I'm hard-pressed to pick a single track that demonstrates how sophisticated and immersive this record is when experienced in full. It's definitely not "On My Mama." [6]

Rachel Saywitz: "On My Mama" isn't Victoria Monét's best single, but it's unsurprising that it's the one that's garnered the most critical and commercial acclaim. There's a homely essence to its meandering horn lines and grounding low rumbles, like the human-shaped indent on your grandparents' old leather couch that looks like it's been there forever. Here, Monét eschews her honeyed voice to command in a deeper, wiser tone, as if relaying knowledge from her elders onto a new generation, and I'd absolutely love it if I didn't already know that Monét is capable of more wondrous and sexy R&B. And yet, listening to "On My Mama" still sounds like a bit of a triumph. The song, along with its success, seems like a testament to all the work Monét has put in to get to this moment: you can hear, for example, the trademarks of her writing that are more widely known in the voices of others, such in the Ariana-like playful tilt of its second verse. For those fans who've been with her for years, it's hard not to think of "On My Mama" as anything other than a long-anticipated greeting -- a toasty home on a chilly day, a sweet smile and open arms, the words, "welcome home." [7]

Aaron Bergstrom: Man, to tell the truuuuth, my opinion is irrelevant. [9]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox ]

[unsympathetic-teach]

[Image ID: Two screenshots from tumblr user “yiqiangmina.” The first says “PLEASE post the “fandom impacts canon” rant I’ve had similar feelings for quite awhile now. I hate how Thomas lets fans influence his characterization of Sides and how the writers room made it worse.” 

The second reads “Because “Logan’s the mom” “Logan loves wine” and all came from the FANS. Which is also why i believe Logan’s “stop ignoring me” thing is becoming an actual arc.” /End ID]

These are my thoughts exactly!!

I feel like Thomas has always been pretty interactive with his fans, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing! Like,,cool,,,people could send asks to his blog..and it’s kind of apparent that he (or someone on the SaSi team) goes through tags and finds art (or like? there is some other process for the fanart shout outs that we are unaware of). On their own. And those aren’t necessarily terrible things? But combine it with the “writers room” and Joan, who I believe was the main writer for the series (or at least put a lot of love and time into writing good characters), it feels like the show is becoming a caricature of itself. 

In the most recent episodes Roman has felt like his s1 self, Logan is becoming more and more like his fanon personality, hell, I even feel like Virgil is becoming very “uwu”-ified in the canon series. And it feels so abrupt! I was watching the most recent Aside and i was hit with whatever the fuck Roman was doing, because he felt so much louder and more annoying than I’d remembered him, and I couldn’t tell if it was a narrative choice, or maybe I was remembering him wrong? But now I realize it was probably just bad writing. 

And I *so* agree that the whole “stop ignoring me” arc is coming from the fans. There really hasn’t been any build up to it in the canon series, and most of the emotions that Logan has been expressing in the most recent episodes felt like a completely fanon version of the canon character. Why is Logan suddenly so ok with being more openly emotional? Why does he suddenly feel upset about the others “ignoring” him when there are very few canon instances of that happening? What the fuck????

And I do think this comes from how Thomas and the rest of the crew interact with fans. I think that the way asks are open (or at least used to be open) on Thomas and Joans blogs influenced how the characters were written because the fans ideas about the characters were present in those asks. I think the “fan artist shout outs” are good in theory, but in practice looking through tags or whatever will definitely influence how Thomas/the team sees the characters. I *hate* the patreon choice and the “writers room” choice because there is no way in fucking hell that fans are not influencing the real fucking arcs in the canon series through that. I dislike that they can’t hire actual animators and instead rip off fans to animate their episodes, because, again, if they are interacting with those artists at all beyond a very formal and professional relationship, then those artists will influence the team.

And maybe I’m wrong!! I have No idea what happens behind the scenes of Sanders Sides, but recently the show has felt off. It has felt way too much like the fandom. I used to be able to watch the episodes and be slapped in the face with how different the fans view of the sides is compared to the actual canon personalities. Now it feels like it’s all muddled together, like Roman has become a bigger, louder, more egotistical asshole than his character in SvS and the first two asides felt (aka his most recent character development), how Virgil is becoming cuter and more palatable recently, how Janus is somehow completely forgiven by Thomas and Patton??? How Logan’s arc feels out of place, and how it feels like he’s saying lines lifted directly from fanfiction. I hate it!! It’s ruining the show for me!! Because i reallly dislike this fandom and how toxic it has gotten over time, and I dont like the see the fanon concepts of much more complex and interesting characters becoming the canon versions. 

And again, I would like to stress that Thomas has always been very entrenched in the fandom. That his view of the characters is definitely somewhat influenced by that. And the recent choices with “writers room”, all the patreon bullshit, the dresses, and (in my opinion) the tiktoks have emphasized his involvement with fans and fandom, and that the recent narrative choices might reflect that. 

Also i feel like Joan being gone will have a real affect on the show. I don’t know why. I just don’t really trust Thomas or the rest of the team at this point because of the animation shit, the time between episodes, the patreon, etc. 

This is probably really hard to follow and I’m sorry i just,,, I dislikes the most recent episode so strongly and I have a lot of feelings lmao. (P.S lmk if the Image ID can be improved!!)

[epicqtefail]

One thing I learned about trying to get over my own insecurities when drawing, is that my own eyes are liars. They trick me into thinking that my mistakes are way more obvious than they are, and that they ruin a whole picture, and that if my drawings aren't perfect in every way then they aren't worth being shown. But then I see amazing works from other artists who think they aren't very good, and the imperfections I see (if any) don't come anywhere close to ruining the picture at all. I think of how sad I'd be if I didn't get to see that picture because the artist thought it wasn't good enough to show. Then I realize that I'm holding myself to an unfair standard compared to other artists. I would never tell another artist to withold or delete their work just because it isn't a 100% flawless masterpiece. Personally I think your work is amazing, whether it's a messy sketch for a joke or a fully coloured piece for a zine. It's funny, it looks great, and it's got so much personality. The fact that you were the one who made it is what makes it so good! I think you deserve to treat yourself and your art with a bit more kindness.

This is so, so achingly true and something that artists of all kinds need to be reminded of frequently, thank you. I love when it's put into perspective like this, because we really are just applying double standards unjustly towards ourselves relative to others and thinking it completely rational. hahah the shock of when a fellow artist thinks their art is terrible when all you see are masterpieces should be a wakeup call, but it never is :''^)

(oops sorry this got lomg so ill put it under here) 

and i'll do exactly this while wholeheartedly believing that art does not at all have to be """good""" by any standards (also that art doesnt have to be hard work to be worthwhile). the point is to create, after that it's about what you want to get from it. this reminds me of a few years ago when my housemate and i were talking about how their art is so clean and professional (of course they disagreed) and how they're always actively trying to improve, whereas i improve very slowly because i have little motivation to follow tutorials or learn how to colour, shade, highlight etc correctly. and then they just hit me with "it's because your priority isn't how good or professional your art looks, but more so the emotion or tone it conveys" and it was so on the mark that it stuck with me ever since. It's incredibly helpful to know what you want from your own art, and in turn, where your frustration/perfectionism is stemming from.

but in the face of those frustrations, like you said, kindness is key. give yourself a break from your brain, create art you think is bad, it's fine. why wouldn't it be fine? what do i think is going to happen? my inability to draw eyebrows that don't look like 2 slugs about to kiss will be weighed against my soul on judgement day and i will be cast to hell? (cut to judgement day and this is exactly what happens).

and because art is such a personal thing, everyone has their own unique flavour and other people are so much more likely to recognise that uniqueness than we do ourselves (no chance of sneaking off to draw embarrassingly indulgent fanart on the downlow, someone will always know its you '':^v *whispers* do it anyway, do it unabashedly). and like you said, the thought of missing out on seeing that because an artist deemed their work unworthy to share out of insecurity, is heart breaking.

thank you for these words of encouragement, you've really helped me and likely others refresh that stale, self-critical part of our minds, and i hope you’re able to internalise these kind reminders for yourself too <3 (i'm so sorry for this messy response, i originally typed out a whole essay and lost it all when the page reloaded... although the original was probably just as messy :'''V)

[writingforfun0714]

This is my first ever fanfic. It’s for Marvel, a NatxReader fic. I use ‘you’ instead of ‘i’ for x reader fics, so please let me know if that’s not right. A little angst/comfort, mostly a vent fic for me as I struggle with mental illness.

Warnings—depictions of mental illness, emotional distress, Google translator for the Russian nicknames, idk lemme know if I need to add more

**Everyone experiences mental illness differently and each diagnosis is different. This is just how I experience OCD, anxiety and depression, having been diagnosed at 16. I am not a doctor and mean no offense to anyone else suffering. If anything is offensive, please let me know and I will remove, thank you**

Comparison

It’s been a little over 5 months since you met Natasha. You’d never done a proper relationship before, having had your first kiss at 19. You know that no matter what, relationships thrive on honesty and truth. But you didn’t feel that applied to you. You’re mentally ill. That’s what the doctor had told you at a routine check up when you were 16. You had anxiety and depression the doc said. Then, at 18, you were diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder or OCD. Those all seemed like deal-breakers since you knew the stigma of mental illness is that people fear/avoid those with mental illness, so you decided to keep those little details to yourself and…well, the more time passed, the easier it was just to keep it from her.

For the past week or so, you felt yourself slipping. You didn’t know why it started. One day, it was so hard to get out of bed and do work. Even though your girlfriend is the Black Widow, you are not an Avenger. You work as a freelance artist, currently working on 2 children’s books. According to Natasha, that was one of the things she liked about you. She loved anything you showed her from finished pieces to sketches that never see the light of day. She liked hearing about all the normal things you do during your day or about stories from your past. Of course when you first met, you never went into too much detail, only giving her enough information to cover the basics and make it seem like everything is ok. You told her about your favorite animated shows and your childhood pets. It all seemed normal…you did a good job of making sure of that. But you never told her of the pain you endured. How could you?-When she and Yelena told you all about their experiences in the Red Room. You couldn’t possibly tell them you’re so broken just because your parents divorced. How can that compare to what they went through? You have no right to act the way you do, which makes you feel even worse.

You didn’t want to feel like a burden by unloading your petty problems on your girlfriend, so you did what you always do. Stay silent. But Natasha is a professionally trained spy. Not much gets by her. So when she saw you standing in the kitchen, she decided to stay quiet and watch to see what you’d do.

You sigh. It’s nearly 3am and you couldn’t sleep so you contemplated getting something to eat, since you had just kind of picked at your dinner. Not that Nat isn’t a good cook, but you just didn’t feel like eating. Instead, you decide to get a glass of water. You use the sink to fill the glass and chug the water all in one drink. Once you finished, you put the cup in the sink and wipe your mouth, not noticing Natasha watching you from the dark hallway that leads to the bedroom.

“Y/N?” You suddenly hear her voice, making you jump. You look up and see the redhead walk out of the shadows and into the dimly lit kitchen. You sigh with relief when you see her.

“Jesus Nat, you scared the hell out of me,” you sigh as relief washes over you and a small, crooked smile spreads across your lips. Seeing that she doesn’t return the gesture like she normally does causes concern to start filling you up.

“S-Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you up-“ You apologize, thinking that’s what’s wrong, but she shakes her head.

“No..No you didn’t wake me. I saw you weren’t in bed,” she explains. You nod.

“Thirsty,” You comment, glancing down at the empty cup in the sink. She nods and glances away, biting her lip as if she’s debating with herself. Now you’re confused.

“You ok?” You ask raising a thick, black eyebrow at her. She looks at you and nods.

“You know you can talk to me about anything…don’t you?” She suddenly asks, her voice…almost unsure, which really throws you. You’ve only seen Nat let her walls down completely twice. Once telling you about her past with the Red Room and the other talking to you about her hopes for us. You blink in surprise and confusion.

“Uh-y-yeah Nat. Of course I know that,” You tell her, though you don’t look at her. You’ve never been good at lying. Not that you were lying, but you didn’t feel that you could.

“Because we’ve been together for a while now-“ Nat begins.

“A while?” You ask, raising your eyebrow. She nods.

“Yeah. 5 months is a while,” she says and you nod, glancing at her.

“And…well..I think I know you well enough to know when something’s going on,” she tells you and you suddenly feel a chill run down your spine as fear grips you. Anxiety starts flooding your mind. You feel your stomach twist and clench nervously.

“I’m fine-“ You immediately respond, though you look more like a deer caught in headlights.

“Y/N-“ She says, moving towards you.

“Nat-please-“ You plead with her. She gives you a worried look. The concern and love in her emerald green eyes is almost too much.

“Don’t look at me like that,” You tell her, turning, shaking your head, shutting your eyes so you don’t see anything. You use your right hand to brace yourself, grabbing the granite countertop, trying to keep your breathing steady. You had a tendency to fold rather quickly, so you were determined to try and salvage…whatever this conversation was.

“I’m just…tired, that’s all,” You admit truthfully, letting a small sigh escape your lips at the word ‘tired’.

“Then you should be with me, in bed, sleeping,” she tells you.

“I know-“ You reply.

“So?” She asks, pushing you. You send her a look.

“Tasha-“

“Talk to me Y/N, you think you can just keep avoiding this-“ Nat tells you as she walks over to you and cups your cheeks in her hands, forcing you to gently tilt your head up to look at her.. You’re rather short at a mere 5’ 1” and lanky so even though Nat is also kind of short, she’s still about 2 inches taller than you, and she’s definitely stronger than you. You feel tears form in your *eye color* eyes that seemed to have dulled since starting to slip.

“Talk to me detka,” she whispers. You feel the warm tears start to slip and roll down your cheeks and onto her hands.

“I’m sorry—I’m sorry Nat—I’m so sorry—“ You start crying. Worry and concern wash over Nat and she quickly pulls you into a tight hug, wrapping her strong arms around you.

“Sshh, sshhh, it’s ok…you’re ok. I’m here for you. I’ll always be here for you,” she assures you, but the shattered, broken part of your mind doesn’t believe her. You wanted to believe her of course, but…after all the betrayals you’ve gone through, trust seems impossible. You shake your head as you tremble, clinging to the redhead, afraid to let go of her.

“Mm-mmm,” You shake your head, “everyone leaves…eventually. It’s my fault. It’s always been my fault. Didn’t want you to leave me…I’m sorry…I’m sorry—I’m clingy-I don’t mean to—I’m sorry—I’m sorry-“ You cry, though you press your face against her chest/shoulder so your words sound a bit muffled.

“I’ll never leave you moya lyubov’, never,” she assures you, rubbing soothing circles on your back. You remember something similar happening in school. You were probably in 6th or 7th grade.

“I’ll never leave you Y/N, don’t worry,” You heard her voice echo in your head. Honestly ever since she left you for those other kids…you’d never been the same. That was one of your last big mental breakdowns. The day you realized she was a liar. Sabryna. LIAR!!!

Once you two were best friends, having met in 3rd grade. You’d already had a best friend, Lia, but the addition had made the Dynamic Duo into the 3 Musketeers. But in 6th grade, Lia left the 2 of you to hang with the popular crowd. She decided we weren’t good enough for her. That you weren’t good enough for her. She was one of your first friends ever so that mentally broke you just as much as your parents’ divorce. That was when Sabryna lied to you, saying she’d always be there for you. Then high school happened and you supposed you shouldn’t have been surprised, but when she started ditching you for her choir friends, your already fractured, broken mind couldn’t take it. You spiraled for a long time. After managing to use drawing and art to pull yourself out of it, you met Natasha.

You realize you’re getting Natasha’s nightshirt all wet with your tears and you realize how hard you’re actually clinging to her. You immediately back off, Nat easily letting her arms drop, and you sniffle, wiping your eyes. You thought you could trust your best friends, who you thought were your sisters, but you couldn’t. What’s different that Natasha wouldn’t leave you too?

“Sorry-“ You apologize.

“You don’t have to apologize for anything-“ she assures you. She wants to embrace you again, but when she sees you back away, she stops herself. She doesn’t want to make you uncomfortable, but she doesn’t know what else to do. When Yelena would break down, especially from nightmares, physical reassurance was the best way to snap her out of it, so Nat doesn’t really know what else to do.

“I know you don’t wanna talk about it-but just know..I will always be here for you. No matter what. I promise,” she says. She reaches in her pocket and pulls out a small folded strip of paper.

“Here,” she tells you. You look at her and see she’s offering the strip to you. You take it tentatively and carefully unfold it to see it’s a photo strip of a young Natasha and Yelena. Nat is probably about 11 or 12 and Yelena is about 6. The two girls are smiling happily. Even as a young girl, Nat dyed her hair, which is a bright blue with her natural red roots starting to show. Your eyes widen.

“I gave that to Yelena the night we got separated. She sent it back to me when we had to take down the Red Room,” she says. You find yourself smiling at the young widows. You begin to hand it back when the red-head shakes her head.

“You keep it. I know it’ll be safe with you,” she tells me giving me a relaxed but confident smile. She…trusts you with something so precious to her.

“I..I’m sorry-“ You tell her.

“I told you-you don’t have to-“ she begins to tell you, but you shake your head, cutting her off.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” you explain and she blinks but nods at you.

“Can..can I ask why you didn’t tell me?” Nat asks you carefully. You think her question over, debating on whether to tell her or not. She looks like she genuinely wants to know. You turn away from her.

“It’s not that I wanted to keep secrets or anything. I wanted to tell you…but I couldn’t,” you tell her.

“Why?” She asks.

“Because Nat-…there’s nothing I could tell you that would…justify my feelings. The Red Room alone is more than anyone should have to go through. I couldn’t tell you because…I’m weak. I should be able to handle normal, everyday things like a normal person. But I couldn’t. I’ve always been weak,” you tell her. You hear her almost silent footsteps approach you and you feel a comforting, strong hand on your shoulder.

“You’re not weak Y/N. I think I understand now,” she tells you, “but normal, everyday life situations are hard. Everyone, even the Avengers, struggle with it sometimes. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Just because I’ve had it worse than some, I know there will always be someone that’s had it worse than me. That doesn’t mean the trauma I went through wasn’t real. That doesn’t mean your trauma isn’t real,” she assures you.

“Being abandoned is one of the most intense, painful experiences we go through,” she says, “it doesn’t matter what caused those feelings, but those that have felt abandoned understand what it’s like.”

“But you are strong Y/N. Do you hear me? You’ve always been strong. You’ve dealt with this for so long…I wish I could’ve been there for you, and I’m sorry if I made you feel like you couldn’t come to me when you need me,” she apologizes. You shake your head and immediately jump into her, hugging her tightly. She chuckles and squeezes you back.

“You never did. It’s..just been…really hard…all by myself,” You tell her.

“Well you’re not alone. I’m here. I’ll always be here for you. Always,” she says.

“Really?” You ask timidly. She chuckles and runs her fingers through your thick, wild, shaggy hair.

“Really Y/N,” she replies and kisses the top of your head. You yawn simultaneously.

“C’mon, let’s go back to bed,” she says and you nod, glancing at the clock. You hadn’t realized how much time had passed and the emotional conversation has left you drained. Nat lets you lean on her and takes most of your weight as you two walk down the hall and back to bed.

[sanstropfremir]

I’d love your thoughts on BTS and their current image and music if you have them and aren’t afraid of the mindless internet hoards.

Personally, I liked a lot of their older stuff, but haven’t liked anything since I think the Fake Love promotions 3+ years ago. They’d started losing their personality and soul before that album cycle, but it feels like the sanitization of their image and artistry really kicked into hyperdrive after that. Now most of what they do seems like a sterile money grab driven by the Hybe hive mind which is a shame.

ok alrighty (cracks knuckles) let's get into it.

now that i've fully given myself a headache watching the majority of the bts videography, here are three points i'm going to cover:

performative character and the lack thereof

interesting aesthetics and the lack thereof, and

the inevitable cracking of perfection

ready, set, let's begin.

1.

idol music is very clearly definited by spectacle based aesthetics. and it's had that structure for its entire existence. so i gotta hand it to hybe for this one, because they managed to revolutionize being utterly fucking average. the triumph of bts is that they're just some guys and they look like just some guys. hybe found a niche in the system and then gamed that system to the tune of one of the largest musical acts in the world. they're not marketing bts as a romantic parasocial relationship, they're marketing them as your friends. and that is just as insidious to lonely kids as a run of the mill romantic fantasy. but that's not what i'm here to talk about today.

there's a pattern i find very interesting with bts mvs and that is that i don't remember anything about them. specifically, i don't remember the stuff that's happening IN the video; not the styling, not the setpieces, if i didn't know the members i doubt i would remember them either. what i DO remember, is how expensive the production is, and specific shots. i couldn't tell you what a single member was wearing, but i sure as hell remember that first upward angle shot of jungkook and the rusted park ride in spring day. or every single time they do that birdseye shot of jin in like every video. honestly as far as i'm aware jin has only ever worn a loose fitting beige longsleeve shirt.

it took bts a long time to establish any kind of consistent visual character. and the character they did establish.... i don't know if you can call a family-friendly-style clean aesthetic 'character'. they debuted as a hip hop group to little (comparative) success, and then made a switch to doing an early version of where they're currently at right now. if you've seen any of the mvs, you know that this is a pretty significant visual change. i don't think it is inherently a bad change, since the visual branding for hiphop based groups always tips over into iffy terrritory, but it is dramatic enough and early enough that it doesn't strike me as a natural evolution. concept switch ups are common, but they usually work because the members have established a bit of character for themselves, used their performance abilities and presence to fit into a niche in the group. the idol mould is perfect for showcasing the performers; that's its function. the groups that are the most fun to watch are the ones with stage presence, the ones who know how to perform, who can act all the parts they need to play. and bts? 4/7 actual performers on a good day. in my personal opinion it's 2/7.

i'm gonna expand on what i said about jimin here (this is technically the first part of this series), because it does apply to the rest of the group on the whole:

and i think here is where we see the main crux of the difference between taemin and jimin as performers: taemin has both an artistic and an idol persona. we know and understand him to do solo work that has a separate artistic meaning to just him being an idol. even though this performance was pre-move, i would still say this applies, because he's hot off press your number, where he's acting in a story based mv. jimin on the other hand just has his idol persona. he's not known for creating the same kind of storytelling that taemin is.

bts has been very insistent on the image of the group as a single unit. despite having the size of fanbase and the revenue that would make any official solo debut a massive success, none of them have done any substantial solo work. this isn't artistically a problem, and i think it's very admirable of them to be so dedicated to the image and the legacy of the group, when that can be an uncommon trait in the industry. i do however, think it starts to become an issue when we want to discuss what the artistic visions and images of groups are. shinee taemin and solo taemin have two distinct artistic representations, and taemin himself will attest to that. it's the same with all the shinee members that have solo careers, and the same with other groups. jackson, bambam, yugyeom, and jaebeom's solo work is all very different from got7. yixing's solo work is very different from exo's. even the subunits within exo all have their own character (cbx and sc). kpop groups all ostensibly are trained under the same system, so why the disparity with bts? mostly, it's their brand of "authenticity." it's impossible to perform authentically, by the nature of performance as a medium it is unnatural, and tragically, not everyone is naturally interesting, or suited to performing: that's why the performing arts even exist in the first place. it required painstaking training to be good at performing; it is a complex set of skills and those skills are not learnt by "being authentic." being an idol is not just the singing, dancing, rapping; that's only half the work. you need to be able to act to be a compelling performer. pulling your true self and emotions out on stage every night is a fast track to burnout and psychological issues, there's plenty of evidence. the only member of bts of whom i can say for some certainty has a persona and a stage presence is jhope/hoseok, a) because he's kept up a very specific brand in the solo work that he has done, and b) he has actual dance training, not just kpop dance training. the rest of them may have the kpop dance and the kpop vocal training, but what they do not have is the ability to market themselves as compelling performers on stage. taehyung is the only other member i would hesitantly give a semblance of persona and ability to, but i think he stumbled onto that mostly by accident. and if all the pieces don't each have a distinctive colour, how can the whole machine be visually interesting?

2.

bts may never have been able to establish an aesthetic brand, but what they did establish is an intellectual one. if you talk to a fan, the schtick they give is that "it's about the lyrics." as noble as having an intellectual or cerebral message is, what does that look like? how do you portray intellectual on stage, on film? what about intellectual is interesting to watch? cerebral, by it's literal nature as a descriptor, is very difficult to communicate in visual language because it is internal. to successfully communicate cerebrality and intellect in a short form medium like music videos requires a deft hand with metaphor that can elude even an experienced designer. and honestly? i don't know whether to applaud hybe's visual team for being the most successful subtle contemporary designers i've every seen, or to decry them as worst kpop designers i've ever seen. maybe both. regardless, i don't think they're able to cross the gap.

there are exactly four mvs where i actually remember the content of the mv and not the frame it sits in, and those are dna, idol, the singularity comeback trailer with taehyung, and war of hormone. and of an eight year career......that's not very many. these four mvs have at least an inkling of interesting spectacle and character, but even then, it's still a stretch. there is absolutely nothing to write home about in the styling for dna, other than it's well colour matched. I don't even know if I should include singularity because it involves none of the other members. idol is probably their most interesting mv because it actually has alternative styling and varies (at least a little bit) from the standard hybe boom crane shot-that-shows-off-how-we-can-afford-big-studio-spaces-and-locations. the company and the group would be loathe to admit it, but war of hormone is a well designed and interesting mv for the time it was made, with a well crafted gimmick and some actual showing of character from the members. it was the start of a potential that they squashed quite quickly because it wasn't picking up in the hiphop-group-saturated market of 2014. but the rest of their mvs? remarkably uninspired styling. like it's truly impressive how boring the styling is. and like i've said, that is the triumph in their aesthetics: they all look like normal dudes (if you had professional skin + makeup techs looking after them for the last 8 years).

all of this is a carefully crafted image that's tailored to hooking an audience, especially an international one. the mvs are boring in the relative scale of kpop, but they're just different enough from a western pop mv to catch attention. and once you do sink a hook, there's a direct clickfunnel of content that bills itself on these men being "authentic" and "self-producing," which is a huge draw to international fans, because people are racist and believe that the kpop industry is a factory that produces idols like clones, where none of them know how to do anything other than sing and dance and all the music is just handed to them by companies. and they have SO much content that there's no way a new fan can get to it all in a timely manner, so they'll never have to engage with any other kpop artists' work if they don't actively seek it out. but that's another essay for another time.

3.

that brings us to current day, in which at least the last five bts releases have been in the same aesthetic vein of positive, sanitized, and pristine. i said it in one of my txt responses and i will say it again here: money scrubs the humanity from the aesthetic of living. minimalism is for rich white people. hybe and bts may have pivoted their style and brand directly into the lane of mass appeal, but when you pair that with the amount of money funding them, there's a cognitive dissonance between the message and the aesthetics in which it's portrayed. some people do like the clean cut looks, and i won't say that they don't work, but as you've likely gleaned from this response, it isn't my style and if you've been around and reading my writing for longer you'll know that my tastes runs much closer to the messy and the weird, so very little about any of bts' visuals have appeal to me. i do find the contradiction of applying the appeal of radical relatability with the aesthetics of expansive (and expensive) minimalism interesting; it's an extremely fine line that hybe is walking and eventually they are going to tip over, the porcelain mask will not hold forever. maintaining the all ages aesthetic is going to be difficult now that all of them are grown ass men. with other groups of this member age and generation there's very obviously been a shift to a more adult tone, and not necessarily explicitly. got7, mx, nu'est, btob, shinee, 2pm, and groups that have older members like a.c.e and sf9 have all made slow shifts in tone that are undeniably aimed at a maturing audience: they know their core fanbases are aging with them and they (the fans) are not as interested in the 'boy' in boy group. and most of them have telltale visual styles, enough so that i can distinguish a specific group's mv. the last year and change of mx mvs have a very distinctive character; got7 too, since easily as far back as if you do. i can always tell an a.c.e mv by its impeccable fashion and formic styling, and although shinee has always had a more experimental aesthetic edge, their sound and voices are unmistakable.

honestly, i can't predict what bts is going to do in the future, but i personally don't believe they can keep up their clean aesthetic indefinitely without some fallout. part of the fun of following bands is watching them grow musically, and the last couple of years of bts haven't felt like growth. there are fans that have already started realizing it, and there's likely to be more soon.

---

the third part is here, which is a short followup about some of bts' industry influence.

[fleeting-sanity]

i keep having to fight my demon brain almost everyday to draw something. i envy the artists whose head are clear or manage their emotions better than i am. they can draw everyday do studies do experiments while my ass gets jealous and insecure when i saw pretty artworks with lots of likes while i do nothing but wallow in self hatred. yet i crave recognition & validation. instead of feeling inspired by them i feel discouraged. it’s toxic as hell. why am i not improving? bc i dont draw as often! bc what’s the fucking point when i’m talentless. no amount of hard work or years or experience can catch up to the ACTUALLY talented ones. i have endless ideas i never have artblock but maybe my own brand of artblock is this insecurity & self-hate. art is a form of therapy but instead it’s gotten toxic for me. 

yes this is bad for my professional look yes it’s bad if my clients see this shit. i actually need work i need $$ to fucking feed my cats. that toxic cycle repeats again when i see better artists getting work. toxic toxic toxic. i’m crying bc i hate myself so much i want me dead. nothing is going on currently. no disasters no nothing just me wanting to end myself. fuck. idk how much longer i can distract myself from actually doing it. it’s always self-destruct mode.

no therapy does not exist here. even if they do it’s only for the privileged not poors like me. i want to keep drawing i really do but fucking hell do i get jealous then sulk and stop drawing bc why can’t i be as good as other artists. why do i keep comparing. why am i like this. why cant i get out of this toxic pool???

[sugar-petals]

When I look at yuzuru he strikes me as a really soft cutesy charming etheral individual not really homme fatal kind of guy that's why I think he's pure romantic rather than TR what do u think? ( love you btw)

i’ve been thinking about it as well, but it’s not a crystal clear case. he’s a sportsman, skating morphs the body in the most uncommon ways which makes it harder to narrow down the type. 

basics first so we get the foundations right: pinpointing the kibbe category he is + isn’t and why, the subtype after.

1. which one of the big 5?

- safe to say, yes: he’s somewhere in the romantic category. nobody does these outfits quite like yuzu. light fabrics, intricate embellishments, he is famous for all that gorgeous princely tailoring. the sport is all about the sequins, he definitely shines in them. every professional figure skating photographer out there will tell you that he hits different and you can see why.

WOW.

i’ve witnessed people complaining that the glitz and glam no longer suits his age, he gets scorn for not dressing traditionally masculine, but i don’t know how it wouldn’t look appropriate. the only valid criticism is that it’s often a hit or miss, but we’d be damned if this isn’t what an ice prince looks like.

he’s the best in the world and his main goal is to put on a show. rolling up in a polo shirt would contradict the objective, being an allround artist first and only then a jump technician. he’s exactly how you’d expect a yuzuru hanyu to look like. if you appear ‘like yourself’, it’s the right kibbe category.

R clothing typically has a sexy edge as well, you can’t put a kid into that. cut out cleavage, transparent, figure-hugging, no way. if anything, most R styles seemed all over the place when yuzu was younger (this is from 2010). yin is meant to be tailored for adults to begin with, you can’t make it teenage gamine.

eleven years later at 26, yuzuru hanyu in 2021, adult man, wearing the hell out of a skating gala outfit. this would be tacky on someone any younger. R is not just light and sweet but also dignified and mature. long story short. he’s grown into a yin-dominant type. fits to a T, a feast for the eye.

- meanwhile: you can easily exclude dramatic. very thick, stable fabrics with large lines are gigantic on him. D clothing is a yuzu charm killer, figures because it’s the type opposite to romantic (pure yang). it washes out the face and is twice as wide as his frame is, bulks out around the shoulders.

- not a natural type either, it feels a bit too simple, underchallenging. ruffled hair appears dishevelled where it’d be just right on a natural. it doesn’t fully highlight him: natural looks aren’t the most memorable on yuzuru even if they tend to be rather neutral and don’t look too off per se, it has a bit of draping after all. 

he looks really good in the below outfit, but his frame doesn’t fill it out. he’s all elegant underneath and radiates ballet while N is a rough, easy-going, and leisurely concept for very bulky frames. the waist gets missing in translation, the mid-section of shirts like these is too wide.

- not a gamine either. he might appear like one and i deliberated back and forth whether he is Pure G or FG, but the material mix, line breaks, and fashion experiments are creating chaos rather than something put-together. it just isn’t as flattering as when he does drapes and florals. the hair being cropped (typical gamine cut) often obfuscates the face. G styles are confusing on yuzu.

his skating is from outer space but this is probably a bit too galactical 😅

- not a classic. something’s not right, suits like these contrast a lot with how round his face is and sit on his body very randomly. missing waist again (yin). the same people who want him to dress more conservatively/masculine have been roasting yuzu for looking like a salary man in that style 🤔 i sense hypocrisy. in any case, classic underwhelms, he’s made to dress up. more points to yin, he he’s too petite to wear C.

now, we got the main category down, time for subtyping. romantic has two options.

2. which romantic?

arguments in favor of Theatrical Romantic:

this type is what he often portrays in the rink (e.g. the phantom of the opera programme) and has become his secret weapon. whether that speaks of his true type is the question. what i mean is, he can pull it off, the seductive homme fatale. compare jimin, people lose their minds over theatrical romantic men. yuzu is in that lane as well.

as in, balance of main yin with a yang undercurrent — the very gentle, princely young man with the soft face who gathers everyone’s hearts, and he is a damn flirt on ice, but who can give a very visceral, dark performance. that shows a tremendous fervor and an edge, with an athletic and taut body.

he does have some yang elements to his physicality. streamlined silhouette, some narrowness, extreme flat muscle, long triangular upper body, some vertical line. also — his color palette (aka skin undertone, cool v warm, hue, chroma, deepness etc) might match TR. on the other hand, it might simply be the black hair giving him the contrast for it. 

the reason why we might get the TR impression is that he often wears all black which suggests dramatic, and the athleticism in his profession has trained away the chubbiness he might naturally have. the face as the only part that won’t be somehow affected by his routine is all yin. 

arguments in favor of pure Romantic:

... as you pointed out. in private life and backstage, he is quite effortlessly sweet- and small-looking. with the delicacy and doe-eyedness you’d expect from pure romantic, very unlike his performance persona. 

if you didn’t know he’s copyrighted BDE on the ice, yuzu seems like he can’t harm a fly, round rosy bean he is. he makes a very innocent and soft 1st impression in candids which no other type except soft gamine does.

facial features, all opposite of yang. not long, not sharp, not planar, not angular, not bony, not narrow. the button nose, full lips, and puffy cheeks is all you see. you’d not think of him as striking (=D, FN).

that’s also why he’s always pitted as nathan chen’s opposite in whatever he does. nate is on the other end of the kibbe spectrum, people probably don’t even realize that their physical lines are contrasting archetypes. it’s subconsciously part of why people can construct such a rivalry. 

study nathan’s face and it becomes apparent. very oblong shape, flat-laying flesh and an asymmetric jaw that couldn’t be any more prominent (=yang). the brows and eyes create a powerful horizontal unlike yuzu’s more wide-set puppy eyes. the nose is longer, the ears, too. nathan looks sharp, piercing, and intimidating rather than soft. you see the exact outline of the bone.

with him, you assume the reverse of what people think of yuzu at first glance. if you didn’t know that nathan couldn’t be any nerdier, you’d believe he’s 1000% jock-off-the-charts. how he has a lot of yang contributed to his on-ice image, too. one’s kibbe type can shape life choices since people see you in a certain way simply based on your lines.

how yuzu is such a visual difference to nathan further points to how he’s closer to pure yin: rather than a subtype that picks up elements from dramatic. otherwise, you’d see some of that angularity. but no: roundness over structure, you see the flesh, not frame. you couldn’t call him a jock by all means 😆 

you won’t see that chiseled geometry and crazy jawline/browline. as you say he’s more cutesy, and a charmer, the whole fandom will agree. pure romantics have everyone wrapped around their fingers (and their booty lmao!) because you want to pepper them with kisses, yin types all look so non-threatening and beautiful. ethereal is the right word. 

and they’re the sexiest ofc, since they’re curvy. R got hips.

sigh... this type is a showstopper. what to do with him. he can beam at ya or he can sway his hips at ya, another unsuspecting hanyu interessee falls for the guy. he does the prince concept and the sexy cutie alike.

he tries to convince us otherwise 😂

sexy aside, he looks great in the respective clothing recs, with waist emphasis and rounded edges. kimonos are often soft dramatic or natural-inspired, but it works out well this way. and again: romantic is not childish/playful clothing of some kind, it can be very official and deliberate.

rather than in edge tailoring which is very loose around his arms and does yuzu no justice. that’s actually the kind of clothing that makes him appear either younger or older depending on if it’s D or C.

TLDR - he might not seem completely yin in his appearance, but that’s because of his excessive sports regimen. since yuzu has been training since he was a kid, we never saw how he’d normally be. he rocks the pure romantic regardless and it’s likely it’s his kibbe type. him wearing R is always a spectacle.

bonus kibbe meme: yuzu, photoshopped to the moon and back, wearing soft dramatic for a toothpaste ad. amazing.

[watanabes-cum-dump]

Rating Genshin character designs pt.1

I am by no means a professional character designer, hell I’m not even a professional artist (I’m self taught) but I just really wanna do this become Genshin Impact is home to some of my favourite character designs and some that I fucking hate. So let’s get into them 

Jean

I fucking hate it

Don’t get me wrong, I love Jean, she carries my fucking team and I’ve maxed out my friendship with her. She’s a great character and has a great presence in the story, I can see why a lot of characters respect her, and I really hope to see more of her. 

But what the fuck is this design???

Basic blonde bitch face, I don’t even fucking know what’s going on with her outfit. I just really really really REALLY hate her tights. I don’t know why, but I have a vendetta against tights. Maybe it’s because I grew up in BC where girls consider tights to be fashionable, but I fucking hate tights. White tights especially since more often than not they’re transparent. 

I don’t know what it is, but I just don’t vibe with the colour scheme, ya feel me? There’s a rule with character design that I learned, which is have one main colour, and then have a secondary colour, and then have other colours that support those two colours. Jean is like... I can’t tell is her main colour is white or blue. The colour placement is sort of all over the place. 

Jean is just basic and it just doesn’t stand out when you compare her to the other characters. I just feel like she should look better than this, she’s the acting grandmaster of the knights for crying out loud, and yet she looks like a generic background character. 

She looks like Saber from the Fate series, I feel like she’s just so plain and there wasn’t really anything put into her design. Her in game model looks a bit better but it’s still kinda ‘meh.’

Like what does this outfit tell you about the character? Nothing! She doesn’t look like a powerful figure, you can’t tell she’s gentle and graceful, it doesn’t tell you that she’s a leader or tells you about how she carries herself. All her design says is “Hi I’m disposable blonde with a sword no. 235″ 

With all of the negatives, I do have to say that her design does a good job of directing you to look at her face. The colar and the way her hair frames her face is great but then again, her face isn’t much to look at. 

Kaeya

Ok, we have so much to unpack here because I LOVE Kaeya’s design

I mean look at him! Right away you can tell what he’s like! He screams shady, flirty, and eccentric! 

One qualm I do have is that he looks more like a pirate than a knight, with the fur, buckles, and details, but I guess that’s fine. At least he doesn’t look basic or forgettable. And the design is a bit confusing but even then it still tells you a lot about him. 

The colour placement is smart and he looks very cohesive and put together, nothing looks out of place. Kaeya’s tanned skin contrasts the cooler values perfectly and I’m honestly sad that we don’t get to see him too much. 

It’s really a shame Kaeya isn’t more important and that Mihoyo doesn’t promote him the way they do the other characters (Noelle, Diluc, Zhongli, Xiangling and Fischl) He’s even overlooked by the community which is kind of sad. 

Real talk though he kind of reminds me of Sinbad from Magi. Maybe not the same level of himbo energy, but the whole shady, manipulative, womanizer that pretends to be good thing is there. 

But yeah, Kaeya’s design is great and I love him so much plz give him more screen time-

Albedo 

They really did my boy dirty. Seriously, he looks so fucking fine in all of his art, but then you have his in game model and he looks all greasy and weird. Someone said that Albedo with the adult male model would have worked better and honestly I agree. 

But anyways! Let’s talk design!

Albedo’s colour scheme is simple but works well together, he very much looks like someone who works in a lab with his long white coat, but other than that he looks like a swordsman. It works really well for him since he is a captain in the knights of favonious as well as an alchemist. 

That’s all well and good, it tells you his occupation but it doesn’t really tell you about his personality. Like if I were to show you this guy without any context, you’d assume he’s kind and gentle soul. Which is kind of true (depends on who he’s interacting with) but we know Albedo to be analytical and sort of brisk and cold. Not cruel by any means, but he’s not very nice and gentle either. 

Overall very nice, I like it a lot, I really wanna have a coat like that, 7/10 solid design. 

Diluc

It’s... it’s kinda meh. Is he hot? Absolutely he’s smoldering, but I just... I don’t know. You can tell that he’s rich and all of that since he’s sort of wearing a suit, but that’s it. I also really hate that they didn’t give him coattails, I think coattails would have carried this rich untouchable vibe better. The weird fur is just kind of tacky. 

I feel like giving his outfit more red would help him immensely, I’m not digging the white, it’s just there. For no reason. I guess it helps to break up all the black, but giving him a red vest would have easily done the same thing while staying true to him. He has red on his gloves, why not put a bit more on his body?

I guess my point is more red accents would do him good. Diluc is recognizable, but it’s mostly thanks to his hair. If I gave him a different outfit with the same colours it wouldn’t really change much. He lacks things like like Kaeya’s details or Albedo’s coat that make him really memorable. You could have a character who looks different, but I think to be truly memorable it’s gotta sell the character and suit them. 

Overall, his design is sort of overrated in my opinion.

Ningguang 

Ok ok queen alert I love her so much. Ningguang doesn’t just look hot her design sells her so well I love her. 

You can tell that she’s ruch, elegant, and powerful. The white, gold and black just go so well together and the way it’s placed is just aaaaahhhhh she’s so pretty what the hell. I strive to make a character that looks this good. 

I just have no idea what’s going on with her shorts. That’s like my only complaint. Just give her regular booty shorts? Like Beidou’s? You don’t need the diamonds, if you wanted them you could make it like a pattern. 

But other than that she really looks like she rules a country. She’s just so pretty omg. 

Design aside, Ningguang deserved to be a five star, she’s so strong like there’s a guy who’s Ningguang can so 29k per crystal with her ult. Ningguang has such a strong presence within the game compared to Kequing and Ganyu who are just sort of there. Ningguang is one of the few characters who get a 10/10 in performance, design, and character wise. I love her. 

Beidou

Another queen. I am so whipped for Beidou and Ningguang guys it’s not even funny-

Anyways I love Beidou so much, I love her dress her colour scheme, she’s just so cool. The black and red is consistent and well placed unlike SOME OTHER CHARACTER. 

You can tell that she’s a pirate, that she’s a strong warrior and idk why but she just screams laid back lesbian aunt. Those are the vibes I get from her. I love her. You can’t tell in this image, but she has anchors on the back of her gloves and it’s a really nice touch that adds to her as a pirate. 

The hairstyle, her outfit, the eye patch, Beidou is just iconic and so easy to recognize. I remember not knowing anything about Genshin impact but I saw some advertisements for it and Beidou’s design really stuck with me because I recognized her when I got her. 

Another one of the few who get a 10/10 in all aspects. Love her, and I can’t wait to set sail for Inazuma with her.

[qqueenofhades]

What weapons were used during the Crusades? I remember something vaguely about bows/crossbows being important but nothing else. Thank you :D

Nonnie, if you are (as I suspect) asking this for Very Important Fic Research Purposes, let me just say: you, my good gentleman/lady/nonbinary pal/mineral/vegetable, are Extremely Valid, and I salute you utterly. Let us just quietly assume that is in fact what you are doing. Buckle up, because yes. You have to consider individual and collective weaponry, differences in Christian vs. Muslim armies, tactics, and their development over the crusades. Never fear, I am here to make it entertaining (ish) for you. Let’s start with the individual warriors.

How To Arm Your Crusader: Nicky Edition

First! Nicky is from Genoa, which was most notably involved in the First and Third Crusades. I mention this because if you’re deciding to place him among a contingent of his fellow countrymen, it’s useful to know where you can most easily do that and where it would be most realistic to have them fighting. It will also make a difference for what he’s armed with. You are correct about crossbows being one of the major weapons of the crusades; indeed they were so effective in medieval warfare generally that the church tried to ban them, at the Third Lateran Council in 1179, from being used on fellow Christians. (Muslims were still fair game.) Longbow archers were used occasionally (though it wasn’t until the 13th century, mostly after the end of the crusades, that they became a major battlefield force), but Nicky would definitely be a crossbowman or at least know how to use one, because we have multiple mentions of Genoese crossbowmen in the sources. (Me in the shower this morning: YOU IDIOT OF COURSE HE’S A CROSSBOWMAN! YOU SEE HIM WITH A LONG RIFLE AND EVERYTHING!). Notably, Richard the Lionheart fought the Battle of Jaffa (1192) with 54 Genoese crossbowmen, about 100 knights, and 2 horses. It is up to you if you decide to use this fact or not, ahem.

Crossbows are easier to learn how to use than longbows, but require strength to wind the mechanism and launch the bolt. There is also a more powerful version called the arbalest, which had a frame made of metal instead of wood. These also had a longer range, so they were in fact a bit like the assault rifles of their day. Unlike a rifle, however, you have to have enough time to fire the weapon (which takes a while) and therefore it’s not as useful if the enemy is right on top of you. They’re most helpful in attacking an enemy in a more stationary position (such as, say atop a tower or a wall) and where you can have enough space to reload without being overrun.

We see that Nicky has a broadsword, which would also be a fairly standard weapon for a crusader. Most boys started their training at the age of 7, and the value in achieving the rank of knighthood would rise steadily over the course of the crusades, complementing the development of the ethos of chivalry. At the time of the Norman Conquest (1066), we could still have “free” or “unfree” knights, and it was a mark of military service rather than a distinct social rank. But with the popularity of chivalric literature in the 12th century, the ideas and prestige associated with knighthood skyrocketed. I know I’ve written some posts about this somewhere, which I’m too lazy to go find right now, but you can possibly find them in my medieval history tag. In essence, chivalry means martial prowess. It has a more romanticized aspect, of course, but it’s mostly about kicking ass, though it does prescribe certain codes of conduct for combatants (on both sides) and for noble-born women, as well as a strong religious aspect. If you do want more info on this and how to avoid the stereotypes of a chivalric knight, let me know and I’ll go dig up my old stuff.

There’s also a big difference between fighting on foot (infantry) and fighting on horseback (cavalry). All the footsoldiers were a lower or more common rank, and if you had a horse, you were almost certainly a knight or a professional soldier. Footsoldiers usually were pike (spear)men, since even if you only have long spears and a shield wall, you can throw together a pretty awesome defense. (At the Battle of Hastings, English fyrdmen with just pikes and shields almost defeated multiple Norman heavy cavalry charges.) Plus, a spear doesn’t take too much special training: just poke the sharp end into the other guy, as Jon Snow might say. Hence it was easier for non-professional soldiers or citizen conscripts to use it rather than the more specialized skills for knights.

The best warhorses were known as destriers. They were specially trained to kick, bite, and raise as much hell as their masters in battle; they were expensive and prized. A fast, strong horse often also used for war or for fast travel is a courser. A horse for non-battle or basic transport situations would be a palfrey or a rouncey (though lower-status men-at-arms could also ride one in battle). We can decide whether or not Nicky has one of these.

Armor! The Christian crusaders wore steel (chainmail) which was a major advantage in close-quarters combat. This is not the plate armor you may be thinking of, since full-body armor didn’t get used until around the 14th century at the earliest and came into full vogue in the 15th/16th century (by which cannons had often made it obsolete and dangerous). Chainmail is no joke: it weighs at least thirty pounds and boys had to wear it from childhood to know how to stand up in it, let alone move. (I.e. all those movies where anyone just slaps it on and is fine are liars.) You would wear several layers: first an undertunic, then a padded leather gambeson, the steel hauberk itself (often thigh-length), and then a cloth tabard on top, which displays your badge or flag or your cross, if you’re a crusader (though these were far from ubiquitous and sometimes color-coded by country). That way people can also tell which side you belong to. You wear a helmet on your head (obviously), vambraces and gloves on your arms, and greaves on your legs, over heavy leather boots. Now imagine all that coming at you with a spear on a charging warhorse.

.... what I’m saying is, medieval knights could kick your ASS.

You can also use daggers, hatchets, and other small arms (morningstars are cool, but alas, were never really used in the field). A knight sometimes carried a special blade known as a misericorde, which had the gruesome but necessary purpose of finishing off a wounded enemy (or friend) who hadn’t died immediately from their injury but wasn’t going to survive it either. Welp.

And with that:

How To Arm Your Muslim Warrior: Joe Edition

So we’ve got Nicky sorted: what about his More Than Boyfriend mortal enemy? Well, for the most part, it will look something like the above. Christian crusaders of the period would have called Muslims “Saracens,” which was the name for them, along with less flattering things (heathens, infidels, etc) but when in doubt, if writing from a crusader POV, you can just use Saracens. Actual Muslims obviously never use this word to refer to themselves. They did not have crossbows, but rather shorter and more mobile bows that were designed to be used from horseback. Arabian horses were smaller in stature than European destriers, but faster and more maneuverable, and had a legendary reputation for speed and temperament. Muslim forces would also sometimes ride to the battlefield and then dismount to fight.

We see that Joe has a sword with a shorter and wider/slightly curved blade in comparison to Nicky’s long, straight broadsword. In my fic, I call this a saif, which is just the Arabic word for sword and is how Muslims of the period would have referred to it (the word “scimitar” is from an Italian name for it and wasn’t used until at least the 16th century). It can mostly refer to any Islamic sword in this style, though there are different names for regional variations. If you want to give him a really cool and culturally significant weapon (especially since I headcanon him as a Fatimid Shia Muslim from Egypt), you could give him the zulfiqar, which was a double-pointed sword used by Ali ibn Abi Talib, a cousin of Prophet Muhammad and one of the main figures in Shia Islam. It is often represented on flags and in battlefield invocations. The actual zulfiqars that exist are more often dated from the 16th/17th century with the Ottomans or from 19th-century Persia, rather than from the crusades, but hey, you can always say that Joe had something to do with that. Sidenote, research the differences in the various Muslim dynasties of the crusader period, as they’re definitely not one size fits all (especially in re: the prominence of Sunni sultans in the later crusades, and how Joe might have thought about that).

As noted, the Muslims didn’t wear steel armor, which was a disadvantage to them in close-quarters combat with crusaders. Their armor was made of boiled leather and lamellar scales, designed to be light and good for long-distance riding rather than a heavy battle. They would also have helmets (in various shapes and styles), gloves, etc. An archer would have a quiver and have to think about using, reclaiming, or mending arrows after a battle (the Never Ending Quiver in every movie ever: ALSO WRONG).

I will confess that I don’t know as much about Islamic warrior ethoi comparable to chivalry as I should. However, the crusades were taking place against the backdrop of the Islamic Golden Age, in which the culture, sophistication, and scholarly study in the Islamic world was at its height, and there are plenty of artists, poets, mathematicans, and philosophers that Joe would be familiar with, that would guide his actions in the way that chivalry might for a knight. Such as, for example, Avicenna (Ibn Sina) from Samarkand, or the Banu Musa brothers of Baghdad. There would also obviously be the Qur’an and the ahaditha (sayings of Prophet Muhammad) and other religious texts and traditions. Obviously if you’re going to use any of these, be respectful, do your research, and present it in a positive way.

And then of course there is the:

Big-Ass Cool Weapons of Major Boom

So what else do we have on a large scale, aside from the individual warriors? For a start, we have (on the crusader side) siege engines, such as mangonels, trebuchets, towers, etc. These are not comparable to the Return of the King-esque “break off a chunk of the city with every hit,” but they were pretty damn effective; during the Third Crusade, one stone from a trebuchet was reputed to have killed twelve people in the market in Acre. Richard the Lionheart also hauled along a lot of high-quality stone from Sicily to make better missiles than the soft crumbly sandstone of the Holy Land. There’s a reference to a “cat,” which seems to have been a tower containing multiple compartments for crossbowmen, which could be pushed up against city walls. There are also battering rams and other blunt-force weapons, since sieges were a main part of every crusade. (In fact, commanders tried to avoid open battles as much as they could, though there were also usually at least one on each crusade.) Defensive strategy included digging deep ditches around walls, to prevent your opponent’s siege engines from getting too close, or just throwing stuff down at them as they tried to climb with scaling ladders. With this, we also have....

Greek fire! It’s semi-similar to wildfire from Game of Thrones, even if not quite as effective, but still a pretty cool weapon. The Muslims used it first; it didn’t enter Christian warfare until Geoffrey Plantagenet introduced it in 1151 (his grandson, Richard the Lionheart, also got to be rather fond of it). It was a long-burning liquid explosive that could burn even on water and couldn’t be put out by regular means; it was very feared and very effective. So if you were under siege and had some of that stuff to pour down on the defenders, it would be useful (along with boiling pitch, oil, or other more ordinary substances). Your enemy might plan for that or try to defend against it by using hides soaked in water or some other kind of shield.

Anyway, I’m sure there is more I could say here, but this is already MORE than long enough. I hope it is helpful to start with. And inspirational. Ahem.

[goodguydotmp3]

two questions: why don’t you like harry and do you really think harry villanized the weed video or do you think that was the people attempting to court him (azoffs)

Whew, this is a long one folx!

Why don’t you like Harry [Styles]?

Let me preface this response by saying that I’m a pretty new “fan” if one can still call me that. I got into the One Direction fandom in the summer of last year, and much of my opinions of the boys where shaped by fan reactions. After gathering more and more information however, I realized that the fandom and I were wrong about some things, and over hyping others. 

Still, it wasn’t until this year that I actually broke out of the Harry-centric bubble to realize that the shady goings on where much worse than I originally thought. Add to this my realization that Harry’s music really doesn’t withstand the test of time, and that his persona is pretty Stagnant, and I’ve come to feel rather bamboozled.

Of course I know that the entire point of his PR team is to sway public opinion of him one way, and if I ate it up that was part of the plan. That doesn’t mean I have to like it. It also doesn’t mean I feel any less hurt about it. It also doesn’t mean that I like when other people fawn over him, as quite a lot of what I’m going to say has been public knowledge, and some of it before I was even a fan.

A. Music

 Actually getting to a big part of the problem here, his music isn’t good. Well, not long term like I said in the preface. He doesn’t really have much of a vocal range despite being a singer for more than ten years. He does not care and acts like he does, often leading to him sounding like he’s screaming instead of singing. He’s lyrics are boring and flat, and his melodies are fine, they just don’t make up for his unmemorable lyrics. I personally think that the cause is him more heavily relying on song writers to fill in more in more, but that’s mostly because I don’t want to believe that the same person who wrote Happily and Olivia also wrote At the Dining Table and Treat People With Kindness, because that would just mean he’s getting worse or putting forth less effort. 

Of course one could argue that I’m not a professional, I don’t have the necessary Jargon to correctly critique, and I’m no longer a singer so I can’t even do what he does. But to that I say fuck off. I know what sounds good! I know what I like! 

Even more than that though, If you bought a product (non food), and you could only use that product for the first two weeks you bought it, you’d say it was a shit product! You’d scream from the rooftops that no one should ever buy this product because it’s crap! Well guess what? I pre-ordered Fine Line just to listen for two weeks and never pick it up again except for golden, she’s a funky tune every couple months. 

Besides the test of time, there is still the subject of actual talent/listenability if you will. I feel there’s four main categories when I listen to music that makes it worth listening to

1.Amazing voice

2.Awesome lyrics

3.Funky/ cool ass melody/Beat

4.Catchy as hell

Now, a song doesn’t need to be all four, however the more they have the more likely I am to like the song. Also, I’ve said “main categories” because I’ve definitely had songs were I just through the beat drop was cool, or maybe the bridge was sick as hell, or maybe I just liked the pacing or the way the singer/singers stressed a note. Alternatively there is a sweet spot for me of super depressing lyrics but a melody/ that makes you want to dance. See: most of After Laughter by Paramore, Lola By Mika. But in general, those four usually make me love a song long term.

If it’s an album, it usually Just has to sound like it belongs on the same album/ tell a story. Like I really don’t like albums that sound like it’s just a playlist of songs personally. I should be able to listen to a song and go “oh yeah, that’s off --- album” or I didn’t like the album as a whole. An album is a bit like an outfit to me. It’s not going to be all tops, nor does it need to be monochromatic, but it does need to go together

For Example, I love Four as an album. I thought it was amazing. I still hate Spaces and Illusion. I hate both of their melodies, I don’t like the Illusion intro, I’m not to keen on those lyrics, and they’re definitely not catchy, I skip every time. 

So taking that logic to Harry’s music, I think HS1 works very well as an album, almost all of the songs sound like they’re supposed to be there. And I hate every song but Kiwi. The lyrics are boring/don’t make a ton of sense, the melodies definitely don’t make up for that, he doesn’t have the range, and none of them are catchy! And then you get to Kiwi and she’s got that vibe you know? She’s a pop punk bop and I cannot fucking believe that Harry has one pop punk bop among unmemorable pop rock album.

Going to Fine line, It’s not as great as an album. There are some songs that don’t really feel like they fit? Like just going through the album, cherry doesn’t have any business being there? Like the lyrics fit sure, but what is that weird intro and outro? It probably would have been fine If the song didn’t have those two, but having them there upset the pace a bit I felt. And then there was Treat People With Kindness, which was really Jarring and doesn’t feel like it belongs on the album at all? It  actually feels like it’s trying to be Kiwi - it’s loud and garish, and the lyrics are trying to be carefree, but! It just doesn’t work! TPWK sounds like Hippie music! Kiwi sounds like Brendon Urie could sing it and people would be like “good ol Panic!”. And then the album goes back down into Fine line the song, which again is Jarring because you’ve had this TPWK monstrosity right before it.

Then, looking at the overarching theme of his music, It’s whiny piss baby music He hates to take responsibility for his actions! It’s all in his lyrics! And don’t get me wrong, I love Honest lyrics, but not if the person is an asshole! LIke I fucking hate confessions by Usher specifically becasue he’s talking about how much he’s a piece of shit in the most whiny and piss baby way, making it all about him and no the people he hurt. I also really hate that one song that Zayn did with Usher and Chris Brown, because you have these awful men completely misunderstanding what it means to write a love song, and then you have Zayn at the very end all like “actually I really am in love tho…” Esp Chris browns verse! It boils down to “Hey I know I was a asshole seven billion times but I miss you tho :(“ GIRL BYE! 

Harry sounds the exact same though, Except he can’t even blame himself for his own mistakes, and just wades through self pity about how the object of his affection won’t love him even though he didn’t even do anything except it wasn’t his fault and why are you still mad it wasn’t even his fault and he was young and reckless and drunk and horny. Like??? WRITE A NEW SONG TAYLOR SWIFT 2.0! There’s only so much you can repackage the same narrative before it becomes stale no Cinderella does not count keep that shit coming. And It really jumps out in his writing, even through 1d, although I will say there were some catchy beats, and awesome lines to keep him afloat back then. Although wtf was Walking in the Wind??? Choke!

Then there are the melodies I’m talking post wondee here which often give this 70’s pop rock vibe. Which fine I guess, it’s his brand, but that doesn’t make it interesting. Or new. Or fresh. Or an interesting take. 

Now I completely understand relying on nostalgia to boost people’s opinion, but you could at leas have the decency to actually have good music. For Example, Miss you by Louis Tomlinson has a very distinctive pop rock feel, but it’s also an amazing song. Great lyrics, amazing voice, catchy liddle diddy that happens to be reminiscent of that 2005- 2010 punk pop/emo pop feel. Sour diesel has that like,,,basey 90s pop feel, and it fucking works with the lyrics, and of course his voice is beautiful. When Walls dropped and Lou put out that playlist of songs that were an inspiration, you can hear the influences when you listen to the album, but they’re also really good songs in their own right, with amazing lyrics, and Louis’ distinctive voice. Comparing that to Harry, it seems like he’s mostly relying on people’s nostalgia rather than actually good music.

Okay so this last point I’m making on music is a little petty but it’s been like a week and I’m still pissed about it so I’m saying it now. Someone said that Harry Styles is the best pop rock artist right now???? Just admit that you don’t listen to pop rock tf. Louis Tomlinson is right there. Brendon Urie is right there. Mika is right there. Haley Williams is right there. Janell Monae is right there. I don’t listen to a lot of pop rock lol but i feel my point has been made

B. Public Persona

He get’s so much clout! SO MUCH CLOUT! For doing the bare minimum (this is not specifically about the fandom, that’s for later)! People will write all these glowing reviews of him for him??? Being polite??? Like okay and? Just because a person is polite doesn’t mean they’re fucking Jesus??? There’s a million and one stories so i’m not fucking looking them up but there’s the pizza story and the fish story and the plane story and the snl story and the Stormzy story and the WS story on and on and on! Stop giving this man brownie points for basic human decency. “I didn’t expect him to be like that!” okay is that because of their perception of what a rock star is supposed to be like? Because in that case we need to start holding people accountable for being assholes. Or is it because he seems like an asshole. Cause valid.

I also don’t like him leaning so heavily on the queer image thing. Like! If that’s how he likes to express himself, Fine, But so much of it is just...so manufactured! And I Know I’ve heard people say oh well he wore the one rainbow on his lapel that one time or he wore the shirt or he wore the Keith Harring.

1. That Rainbow pin is sus as hell I don’t care what ya’ll say It absolutely screams set up, if he wanted to not be seen he would have not been seen 

2. That goes for literally every other time. I can’t believe it’s not a set up to push a queer image. (that he profits from!)

3. If he actually did his homework on Keith Harring he’d know that the man was a predator, and he wouldn’t have worn those shirts. It seems so performative! To add to that, does he know now? If so, why isn’t he using his platform to correct his mistake? Why didn’t he come out and let people know not to buy Harring’s stuff??? He knows the pull he has! He absolutely could have been like “I’ve made a mistake, if you are looking for queer artists to support, here’s some” But he fucking doesn’t

4. To add on to that last part, It is actually sus that he gets to profit off of this queer image, and yet the only queer voices that he’s propping up are white gays. And then not even directly? Not a “queer artists, esp queer artists of color are important and need their voices boosted because they are the back bone of society” but this wink nod type of deal, where again, he mainly boosts white gays.like??? One queer black woman that doesn’t work for the Azoffs, and then a bunch of white gays. Like?? That’s not racist to anyone else???????Just me? okay.

Now from a professional point of view, it’s even worse. I’m not saying that artists can’t be campy or blurr gender lines, or imply that they ‘re queer subtly. But I think it’s fucking disrespectful to play both ends. Like, he profits off of using the queer image, all while Dancing around the subject, but then on the back end he never says that Homophobes/Transphobes aren’t allowed in his fandom. He gives this empty ass tpwk and then washes his hands of it. 

Don’t get me wrong, I am always upset when people who have lots of queerphobes in their fandom bullying and harassing the actual queer people never say anything to let queerphobes know they’re unwelcome (clearly money is better than morals) but for me it’s an extra kick to the gut for it to literally profit Harry to seem queer. Look at that time that  gay company sold out shirts in less than an hour,because harry was wearing it and tell me people aren’t throwing money at him because they feel he’s queer. 

C. Fashion

This one is a really rough one for me because this is partially what drew me into Harry in the first place. But he’s really not all that in terms of fashion. He’s expensive certainly, but sometimes, the things that are more expensive are worse. Even When He’s not looking like a grandparent out on the town, his style is very dated, and yet he gets paraded around like he’s the freshest new thing?? Like who is his team paying of for him to get that many articles about how he’s fashion’s biggest star. And the thing is, his style is even dated for the mainstream. There’s already a post about how he copies prominent pop/pop rock stars of the 70s, which means that his style is 50 years old for the mainstream. Now don’t get me wrong, I think it’s totally fine if you’re addicted to seventies wear. I don’t think he should be heralded as this huge fashion star if his wardrobe is this dated

Even more than that. Gucci???? The Gucci with a history of Racism?? The Gucci with the child labor??? The Gucci with the 14 hour days Gucci??? Ugly ass Gucci????? Soulja Boy don’t even fuck with Gucci no more and he fuck with Gucci since like 2007. (although that was because of the racism, not cause it’s ugly)

I think that bothers me the most though. Like it’s not enough to exploit people, you also have to be tacky ugly and expensive???? For what??? @Gucci cease to exist please.

If Harry wants to be tacky ugly and expensive, that’s of course his rights to do so! But don’t act like he’s at the very pinnacle of fashion every time he does. 

I’m actually always very conflicted about that. I personally prefer a style that’s very loud and campy and avant garde but like,,,,that ain’t it. Maybe it’s something you got it or ya don’t??? Like for example Billy Porter could wear a trashbag and make it work. The expensive sweaters and the slacks? The suits? Not a good look on one Harry Styles. Maybe it’s because they’re expensive sweaters and slacks and expensive suits. What are you, Ted from accounting??? Grow up.

D. Treat People With Kindness

Ugh this is the thing that pisses me off like the second to most. This phrase is so fucking empty. You could not have made up a more corporate mandated phrase if you fucking tried. It stands for nothing! Just like him!

Let’s break it down. “Treat people with kindness” is, at face value, a call to action. It’s asking you to do something. But it doesn’t actually tell you what to do!! So it’s pretty inoffensive! You don’t actually have to change your behavior in anyway for two main reasons:

1. What the hell is Kindness??? This phrase never actually says what it is??? It’s just this short little punchy thing that assumes you know what kindness is! What if you didn’t actually know? What if you have differing ideals of what is considered kindness? I mean to my mother, Misgendering me is kindness, but I don’t think that’s kindness. To my father, not letting his children have autonomy is kindness, but I don’t find that kind. And yet they could both use that phrase and feel confident that they go around treating people with kindness. After all they cooked dinner didn’t they? They smiled at Janice from public relations didn’t they? That’s kindness right?

2. It also assumes you know what “people” are. Queer people are people. Queerphobes don’t consider queer people, people. Racists aren’t going to consider some people, people. So they can continue their harassment and dehumanization of them and still be treating people with kindness, because they never harmed actual people (to them)

E. Harry bots

Bitch?? Corporate spies?? Tf ??? That’s not weird to ya’ll ?? I think the thing that shocked me more than someone from Colombia records admitting that he manufactures the hype around people signed to Colombia, is the fact that the Fandom been knew!!!! Ya’ll been knew and ya’ll wasn’t gon tell me???????? I just found out last week wtf????????

Another thing I don’t like about them Harry bots, is it’s one thing to hype up Harry, but why tf do they need to shit on the other boys??? Is it because they’re more talented, good looking, and charming??? How about you get good!!!! I esp hate that it’s usually Louis. What is Corporate’s obsession with putting Louis down like? What a bunch of fucking weirdos?? It’s not enough to be a Harry fan and live up his ass, I gotta hate Louis too?? You lost yo damn mind. If you reading this and you a spy? Die.

F. Capitalism

Honestly that should be the end of it but here the fuck we go I guess. Now I get that there is going to be some capitalism involved when you get music, especially mainstream music, there are tones of articles out there with people who used to be in the industry telling you about how fucking awful it is, all in the pursuit of money. (Which isn’t fucking real by the way! We made it up! People out here getting traumatized! Belittled! Bullied! Married off! So some corporation can make all the money! The Imaginary Credits! That we made up! I hate it here!) 

But it’s another fucking thing to participate in a capitalist system? He invested into that one sleep app, even going to do one of the voice sessions (So you could have Harry Styles themed sleep paralysis) and you pay for that! He makes money off that! It’s not enough that you buy his mediocre music or his ugly ass merch, you also have to give him money through the sleep paralysis app. 

Then there was that Google Camp for Rich People Only! I don’t even want to fucking hear that it was on Climate Change oh wow all the rich people took helicopters and Yachts to a resort with manicured lawns??? To talk about how they treat the environment? That’s not at all Counter intuitive! Not at all for show! Fucking disgusting.

Oh and the Covid Shirt! Really bitch??? You need to Profit off a deadly pandemic? Are you profiting off of AIDS next you fucking bastard. And he can of course get a tax write of for his “ charitable donation” fuck off.

G. Racism

This! This is the thing that gets me the most! YA’LL CAN EXCUSE RACISM???

No, I’m not talking about the Native American Headdress thing, that was plenty despicable on it’s own, No I’m talking about the on going racism. The whole, using black people for clout and then dropping them and never returning the favor when they sing his praises thing. Specifically I’m thinking of Sis the activist, Stormzy, and Lizzo. 

The Lizzo thing pisses me off the most actually. I think it’s very fucking convenient that Harry started taking interest in Lizzo after there was uproar from black fans noting his hypocrisy of performing for Pepsi (Notoriously racist) and Having BLM sticker on his guitar. So he shows up at one of her concerts dressed like a senior citizen that got lost on the way to the retirement home bathroom. She looked fucking amazing and he couldn’t put forth the effort to at least not look senile. Then there was the covering of her songs, and then there was the cuddling up with her at the awards show. Funny how I haven’t seen any interaction after the fact! And Of course everyone forgot about the Pepsi concert! Fuck all the way off!!

Also! Are we just never going to talk about the fact that he didn’t comment on the blm protests earlier this year until his team could gauge whether or not it would be profitable to do so by DATA MINING HIS FAN BASE???? And then when he actually did he got the most praise for it, truly fucking hate it here. Also when he marched with those protesters he made sure we knew it was him. There were posts flouting around everywhere on how to best cover up to make yourself completely unrecognizable should you wind up on camera or fucking worse, get attacked by the police. Funny how Close Sprouse could follow the advice and not Harry? Also supper funny how he got the hell out of dodge before things got super bad and I have not heard anything on the matter since. Guess what Harry??? We’re still out here fighting for the rights to exist! Still wanna have a photo op while our own government tries to squash us with force????? This is like that Jenner Pepsi ad but with sunglasses and a pandemic.

H. Fandom

I think I would hate him less if I didn’t have to hear about him every hour of everyday. Stop Hyping this man so much. Even after unfollowing and blocking a bunch of Harries and Larries he’s all across my dash. And twitter. And insta. KURTIS CONNER FUCKING LIKES HIM I JUST WANTED CRACK CONTENT AND NOW LOOK. 

I. Conclusion.

After writing all this I think the running theme is that Harry Styles isn’t even a person, he’s a brand. I do not like or trust brands! And I definitely don’t like being advertised to! Just like It’s fake as fuck when Absolut is all about queer rights, it’s fake as fuck when Harry does it too. Just like I know Target doesn’t actually care about Black lives, I know Harry doesn’t either. People are always like “oh he’s so nice!” no! He’s polite! There’s a difference. Zayn Is a truly kind person. Liam is a truly kind person. Louis is a truly kind person. It shines though so brightly all the time, and yet people are really out here worshiping the Brand Harry Styles. 

Do I think It was Harry or The Azoffs throwing Zouis under the bus. 

Truly doesn’t matter! Whichever one did it, Harry was totally fine with it! Which tells me that he doesn’t give a shit about anyone but himself. He’ll go along with anything as long as it gets him to the top, and that’s fucked up on one million and one levels

[rotworld]

Voice and Style

an anon asked:

Do you have any tips for learning how to write in a different writing style?

and honestly i just went off the rails lmfao this is a long post, but hopefully it's useful. i wasn't 100% sure what you meant by style, but i assume you mean more along the lines of "voice" than the difference between like narrative, persuasive, etc. but let me know if you meant something else! what i'm going to do is 1) talk about voice in writing, 2) author voice vs character voice and examples, and 3) actually answer the question. i promise 1 and 2 are relevant to get to 3!

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to start we need to break down what "voice" is. this is a term that gets thrown around a lot when people talk about writing, and i've heard people get a little heated about it lol but i'll give my take at least. there are actually two kinds of voice: the writer's voice, and character voice. we'll start by focusing on the former.

describing an author's voice is tricky, because it's largely subjective. some parts of it are concrete and easy to analyze, while others are down to the author's personality, perspective, and life experience. while it is something that you continue to hone as you gain experience, it isn't something you can measure or "rank" comparatively. so...what the hell is it lol

if we boil it down to the simplest components, here's what i think goes into voice: tone, syntax, word choice, and perspective. this isn't all that voice is, but these are the fundamental building blocks, and the way you use them is a mix of personal preference/affinity, your level of experience as a writer, and who you are outside of writing.

->tone is often described as the "attitude" of your writing, the mood you evoke with a combination of the other components. in "twelve moments in the life of an artist," david sedaris recounts his struggles with an attempt at an art career and a meth addiction, simultaneously. the subject matter is difficult and emotionally distressing, but because it's sedaris writing it, it's fucking hilarious. it's funny because of the tone, the ridiculous statements he makes, the witty observations and the flippant way he describes things. someone else could write the same story and make it a dramatic tragedy, but sedaris' tone is one of humor.

->syntax is the way a writer constructs their sentences. i know this sounds boring lol but it can play a huge role in a writer's voice. when do you use long and complex sentences versus short and simple ones? do you use repetition, and for what purpose? when do you use active or passive voice? for example, "the monster bit him" vs "he was bitten by the monster." these sentences mean the same thing but have a subtle difference in where the focus is. these might seem like small, insignificant details, but they can drastically change how a work sounds. the rhythm of your writing also ties into syntax.

->word choice is just how it sounds: what words do you use when you write? are you more of a "purple prose" type who likes flowery, detailed descriptions, or are you more sparse and "beige?" do you use certain phrases of colloquialisms?

->perspective is straightforward, too. do you like or have a tendency for 1st, 2nd or 3rd person? there's some variation in 3rd person, too, like omniscient 3rd or close 3rd. i think a writer's strength and preference in this, as well as when they deviate, also contributes to their voice.

but what about character voice? this is kind of similar, but limited to specific characters and how you portray them. it includes their dialogue and word choice but also their perspective or worldview, their opinions, and their personality expressed by their interactions. it's the kind of thing that differentiates characters speaking even without a speech tag to label them. there might be really extreme differences between character voices and the author's voice, depending on the character.

i always feel kind of narcissistic using my own work as an example lmao but i think changeling is a good example, since each passage is super focused on a particular character and their perspective. in first person, or close 3rd like this, a character voice can come out in narration. huntress sounds like this:

The hunt ends. Her catch, meager. Still, she will not waste it. Wolf Mother travels far to see the meat put to good use.

She walks the crossroads, strange paths through the strange world. Sniffs out the road she needs and steps through thick fog. Darkness gives way to orange autumn haze. Eternal harvest season. Blackened corn rots on the stalk. Machinery rusts in the fields. Bloated animal bodies decay in old barns. It is sad and stifling, the stench of forgotten things. And there—the farmer’s son. Lopsided boy. He stands on his porch, wiping blood and grime from his hammer. Distrustful, he watches Wolf Mother. Above, a slow-turning weathervane creaks.

her sentences are often short and choppy. the unusual syntax (the hunt ends. her catch, meager) gives it a feeling like a feral stream of consciousness. rotten corn, machine rust and bodies decaying are visceral, smelly descriptions because her sense of smell is especially strong and she relies on it to interact with the world. in contrast, ghostface sounds like this:

He’s hanging around Haddonfield when She comes calling, because he doesn’t have a realm of his own. Oh, no, no, no, of course it’s not a problem. He doesn’t mind at all, honest! It’s just, you know, he’s real good at this whole ritualistic murder thing. Got a knack for it, you might say. He was something of a professional before he ever got brought on board with an impressive résumé spanning most of the continental United States—not that he’s bragging, of course. He’s just experienced, motivated, highly-organized, versatile, and frankly, overqualified.

this is almost conversational. he's "hanging around," he's "got a knack for it," like the way you talk to a friend. his narration has a very informal and emotive vocabulary. he talks about his skill at murdering people like he's at a job interview, and he's extremely arrogant. my hope, as the author, is that all of this comes across and you get a strong sense of these characters just from brief passages.

finally, we can go back to the original question lol how do you write in a different "style?" i think you have to analyze different styles and voices, and figure out what you're going for. do you want to write something dreamy and surreal, or more dry and sarcastic? what tone are you going for, and how can your usage of word choice, syntax and perspective help you attain it?

i'm giving you homework lmao track down your favorite book and try analyzing the author's voice. take some notes on the tone, and if it contrasts the subject matter or genre (is it cynical? is it nostalgic? is it a lighthearted, fairy tale-esque fantasy or a more somber, gothic one?). also pay attention to the word choice. how vivid or descriptive is the prose? does it evoke certain imagery or themes? (in kraken by china mieville, a story about a giant squid that goes missing from a museum and the chaos that follows, he uses a lot of water and squid metaphors.) use the elements of voice listed above as a checklist of things to look for. if there's a certain writer you want to emulate or take inspiration from, studying their work like this could help a lot.

one last thing: since we talked so much about voice, i want to ask why you want to change your style. you can ignore this part if you want lol this is just a pep talk and something i think is good to mention. if you want to focus on differentiating character voices, or trying out a new style for fun, that's awesome! you can and should experiment with style, but remember that your voice as a writer is something unique to you. it's not something that you have to fundamentally change. we can all learn from other writers and hone or refine our style, but i think who we are on a personal level affects our affinity for certain stylistic choices that form our voice.

for example, on a scale of purple to beige, i lean pretty lavender lmao but i'm not ashamed of that! i was influenced a lot by writers who have a (capital R) Romantic flair to their prose, so i like flowery language and descriptions of nature. if it gets too purple and "in the way" of the story, then sure, i might need to trim down certain passages. but my affinity and tendencies aren't something i'm going to get rid of altogether, rather something i'll practice so they're super polished. once you identify your voice, i think you should embrace it and roll with it.