#first post let's gooooooooooooooooooo

[justanotherhh]

something i haven't seen much of so far is analysis of charlie's journey from the perspective of someone who also needs to change how she engages with others (vaggie too, but that feels more obvious as she's an ex-angel/exorcist and a sinner)

when charlie tries to help angel by confronting valentino it's been built to in the other episodes, because it's made very clear that she doesn't respect sex work -- she's got that "we need to save them from themselves" type attitude you see a lot with people who haven't done critical analysis into their own biases from a position of mildly-to-severe privileged disgust and haven't engaged with the perspectives of sex workers as people who can frame and understand their own experiences (whatever work they engage in and why they do sex work to begin with). same for her opinions on addiction

the scene where angel has to do a reenactment with sir pentious frames addiction as

something to be judged

something pitiable

something predatory

which isn't exactly a great way to bring angel onboard with the programme/make him feel less like shit. meanwhile the anti-sex + weirdly heteronormative attitude is also present in that scene by having sir pentious dress up as a virginal young girl in an anime-type school uniform with a big lollipop (the irony of this being practically indistinguishable from a porn setup feels very intentional), who declares that "she" won't be having sex before marriage as the great crescendo (sidenote, monogamy in the afterlife sounds.... like a long time to be monogamous......... yzma voice: "why do we even have marriage??")

angel, up until his duet with husk, is having it made clear again and again that the people seemingly helping him find the essence of his being inherently gross. he likes sex -- yeah there's the performance/face he has to wear to get through the day, but i think the bdsm club was a sincere suggestion and vaggie literally calls it disgusting/shoots it down without thinking about how to do so respectfully (again, she's an ex-angel/exorcist, she has biases of her own to contend with, but also the implications that nobody in heaven is having fun sex or negotiated kink and bdsm... tragic. do they even have a sex club called consent up there?)

charlie is a fairly conservative person at the beginning of the story. yes, she wants to help, but her framing of what "help" looks like doesn't take into account her own biases; presumably she grew up with the idea that "sinners are bad people" as much as anyone else did, if not more considering lucifer gave up on the sinners and that's been her environment from birth -- cut off from the people she's supposedly in charge of, but "hearing stories." (in both the pilot and happy day in hell she clearly has a fondness for the sinners, but it's as an outsider, someone who does not relate to them, and generally there's that overtone of "royalty doesn't know shit about what anyone is going through" which, charlie being a ruler, i wonder if that will be a focal point or just something to accept, it's not a dealbreaker for me, just something i noticed, esp as helluva boss has poked on power dynamics in hell along those same lines). the yearly murdering of demons is, likewise, something that is simply status quo and so even getting to a place of "hey maybe we shouldn't do that" is big and was inevitably going to create more cracks in the logic of black-and-white heaven-or-hell, so it's cool that that's where we the audience get to first meet her -- right as those threads are about to start unravelling

but at the very beginning, in some ways she echoes elements of characters like adam and lute (who are of course far more in-your-face, being villains) in her original assessment of what makes someone "a bad person" -- it causes her to create a system that doesn't actually work, and then of course the hotel is destroyed, but next time they'll build it to be better! (metaphor *jazz hands*)

why is angel in hell, is the question later asked. is it because he was/is an addict? because he drinks? because he does sex work? because he likes sex? (it may be because he's killed people/was in the mafia, but we don't have all the context yet, for now those are the things people know in the story itself) at the beginning charlie isn't asking the right questions, questions that would need her to go into herself and challenge her own biases, but throughout season 1 she goes from merely proclaiming that "everyone" can be saved, to sincerely challenging the idea of "needing to be saved" from things that shouldn't be judged in the first place. "if angel's can do whatever and remain in the sky." yeah, how are we stipulating what's allowed and what isn't hmmmmmm? stay tuned for s2

(and youknow, apologises to angel for overstepping his boundaries, so it's not like angel doesn't know that she does care for him, s4 gives a lot of development for their relationship as well -- it's the tipping point for a lot of what comes next)

interested to see how that challenging will continue in s2. she's gone from "we have to make you into a good person by cutting out things that make me (and others) uncomfortable from a conservative/purity-based judgemental framework" to "why do we have these systems of judgement in the first place?"

tl;dr angel changed a looot in s1 but so did charlie. she understands better now that the work she's doing is going to look very different from what she'd first anticipated, and poking at her own biases in relation to angel helped that journey and brought her closer to actually understanding and relating to the people around her

(there's another element here about charlie and vaggie as queer women in this particular universe, but it's a slight tangent so... different post)

[4evasummer]

" last online: 15/11/2011 " (itto)

plot: you and itto were online friends back in the day where games like club penguin and wizard 101 were very popular, and always played and talked together online. however, one day you've never heard from him again.

notes: setting is modern au around 2009-2011 alongside present day. also i'm writing this at almost 3am help

content warning: angst, dialouge that screams early 2010s

~ 23/4/2010 (3:35am)

xxTheOneAndOnixx: hey there! wanna play some club penguin? :3 angelofdarkness1995: sure! but before that i need to show you my new hairstyle xD!!!! hint: it's what we talked about last week!!

xxTheOneAndOnixx: lemme see lemme see!!!!!!!!!!111!!!!!!111!!!!1!1 *angelofdarkness1995 sent an image* xxTheOneAndOnixx: WOW. that cut is so dope!!!!!!111!!!1! 0_o HOW DID YOU DO THAT????

angelofdarkness1995: had my big sis help me out :p. it was messy but worth it ;)

~ 1/6/2010 (12:04 am) angelofdarkness1995: HAPPY BDAY BROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

xxTheOneAndOnixx: thx!!!!!!!

angelofdarkness1995: i made you a lil shoutout video on youtube!! it has your favourite song in it!

xxTheOneAndOnIxx: now this is what i'm talking about!!! this video is fire!!!!!!!!!!!!!

angelofdarkness1995: omg tysm itto!!!! took me almost whole day to make it tho 0_o!

xxTheOneAndOnixx: hey, hey! there's no need!! let'z go play some moviestarplanet!!! i need to show off my new wardrobe to you ^^ angelofdarkness: YESH LET'S GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

~ 12/9/2010 (3:30 pm)

xxTheOneAndOnixx: srry i've been inactive for a while :<. i had to move to a new town and i ended up breaking my computer in the process ;; angelofdarkness1995: is okay! a ton of stuff has happened lately! have you heard that the shogun just created a myspace account? :0

xxTheOneAndOnixx: REALLY??????!!?!?!?!!?!? THAT'S NUTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

looking at older messages gives me comfort, despite the second hand embarassment. but the real thing is...why does time have to change? i looked at the last post itto sent in that forum we posted in everyday. it was a blingee of an anime girl dressed in emo clothing, captioned, "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO I GOT SCAMMED IN CLUB PENGUIN FOR THE 7TH TIME THIS YEAR :((((((((!!!11!!!! SOME1 HELP ME :((((((" many users responded to his post, asking him how it happened and offered solutions to rectify the issue. others made fun of him for his gullibility.

the cursor on the screen seemed to lead itself to the chatrooms, and clicked the chatroom between myself and itto. i read the latest messages we exchanged. ~15/11/2011 (9:00pm) xxTheOneAndOnixx: wow that mario kart sesh was hella dope 0_0! how do you have such insane drifting skillz???

angelofdarkness: it was blood, sweat and tears lol?\. xxTheOneAndOnixx: welp grandma is calling me down for dinner. see ya later alligator :3 angelofdarkness: see ya! :p last online: 15/11/2011 "i wonder where he is now" i ask myself as i open twitter and create a thread regarding itto's whereabouts.

welp that was my first tumblr fanfic ever. if you read this thanks so much and consider reblogging, liking and following! it's very appreciated :3!

[hot-gothics]

I am almost an entire month late in doing this, lol, but here it finally is! It's pretty fun to put this all together and see what my focus was for each month~ Thank you all for sticking with me throughout the year and thanks to all the newcomers who've joined me in my journey of art <3 Here's to another great year of art! \o/ I have a lot planned and I'm probably too ambitious, but here we gooooooooOOOOOOOOOOO!! I'm gonna give little blurbs about each month's piece or what I remember going through each month haha, so feel free to read over my ramblings and such >w>

January - 

I chose this piece because of the lighting and the expression. I really liked how the torn down wall turned out behind him and overall this is one of the best completed works of that month. It was a hard choice between this one and one with a sunset behind a female crocodile woman, but I ended up choosing this one for the color in the hair and that it was furry while the other one was a human with crocodile features. (both were not my commissions)

February -

This is probably one of the best pictures I've ever done to be honest haha. I still love the idea of it, the layout, the lighting, ALL of it. I even entered it into a scholarship contest and WON. But the best part of that contest was that it was for my university and this is KIRBY FANART xD that still kills me! haha

March -

Every time that I hang out with my friend :userVibrantEchoes: I end up drawing either Kirby or Pokemon stuff and this piece came from one of my sketches I did while hanging out with her. It was really just something I pulled out of files to work on after completing commissions in a stream but I experimented with lighting and I remember switching between two versions of my preferred art program (because a new update was released that changed nearly everything about the main tools I use) in order to get used to how the new version worked. This was a complete experimentation for all kinds of things but it turned out to be the best piece of the month (in my opinion anyway lol)

April -

Apparently April was when I started to get REALLY into Overwatch, haha. All the work I had available to choose from was Overwatch related and most of those were sketches or colored sketch style comics that I had done at the time. So I went with one of my FAVORITE colored sketch pieces where I had included a big ol' essay about Hanzo and how I adored that character and for what reasons, applying all I'd learned in my psychology classes as well as my own personal experience with depression and loss of family and difficulties with siblings to my claims. Then I tied in how McCree works really well as either a good friend or a lover for him based on their pasts. People seemed to LOVE it too! Though I honestly was expecting some sort of hate for that analysis of him but lots of people commented (this feedback is mostly on tumblr, btw) and messaged me about the analysis or left tags on their reblogs about how they were thinking similar things or that I did really well with it. I love getting feedback on anything, but the sheer amount of it for THIS post... it was amazing and totally worth it.

May -

I shipped a few different pairings from Overwatch >w> Pharmercy is also one of them~ This piece was a pun on how Mercy's line in the game says "healing stream engaged" and I put a ring on her finger and titled it "Healing stream (and healer!) engaged!" ...unfortunately no one commented on that :'c

June -

This is around the time that I started switching from drawing BnF artwork to drawing furry art almost exclusively. I had been MAJORLY involved with the BnF roleplay community there for a while and did a lot of work for people on that site between doing my own roleplays. This was done for a dear friend of mine from that site of one of his new characters. Tagging on from the Pharmercy piece in May - I had become really drawn to doing a glow effect for some reason and wanted to do some sort of magic piece. So this one came about. The character himself was a mimic octopus, hence the designs on his skin and the almost tentacle texture to his hair. 

July

-

In July I spent a LOT of time sketching and doodling furry stuff so I didn't really have any "fully finished" things to choose from for this month. After attending Texas Furry Fiesta in March I wanted to get more involved with the furry community but I didn't know how. I downloaded Telegram and tried talking with the artists/friends I had met at the convention but nothing was really sticking with me because I barely knew anyone local. But July was when I found out about the local Texas chats and started attending furmeets and events, made friends, etc. I started making LOTS of stickers for myself of my brand new fursona design to use in the chats (after years of having two separate sonas I combined the species into one that feels like ME rather than characters). Overall it's been a fantastic experience and I've made SO MANY new friends in the local furry community, it's great. BUT! Splatoon 2 had also come out and I discovered Marina because of one of my new furry friends who was/is obsessed with Splatoon and fell in love with her design >w> so I did a little bit of fanart for her during this month~

August -

The last month before school starting up was also the last time that I drew the kemono design of Dimitri with his BnF boyfriend Onnen the elk. At this point I had fully decided that I was moving on from BnF to get more involved with the furry community and I had mostly stopped drawing Overwatch fanart all the time too. I believe my computer was broken at some point and the game had to be deleted, the drive wiped and such. I lost a lot of files that I had been working on... but I didn't re-install the game and ended up not playing anymore because school started up at the end of the month and it was my last semester so I had some pretty big classes that needed my attention more. 

September -

I'm really amazed that I had next to NOTHING for this month to choose from. All I had done in September was school work, some Telegram stickers, and maybe some sketches here and there. So what I chose for this month is an example of one of my favorite stickers that I had completed during the month (for Siber) and one of my projects during that month was to use Adobe Illustrator and design a sign or logo then use the laser cutters at the school to both do etching and cutting. And I redesigned my logo from about a year before and included elements that are super important to me (bunny and dragon, since I'm a dragunny, and the star since my last name is Starr). I also created my own font for the actual letters in my username too, which got me big points in my critique in class. It totally went to my head when everyone in there was just blown away with my design of it x3 I was struttin' the rest of the day~

October - 

This piece is super emotional for me. As some of you may be aware; I lost my dad a few years ago. For some reason the thought came to mind that when/if I get married I'm not going to have my dad around to dance with me during the traditional father-daughter dance and then I tried to remember if he and I had EVER done that together and I'm pretty sure we never did. Maybe when I was very very young, but I don't remember ever going to anything like a "father-daughter dance". So... this is a drawing of a moment that will never happen. Also - my dad's fursona is a lion with a "chipped" afro, by the way. He loved the character I designed for him too x3 It's just kind of hard to see that in this drawing since it's cropped and he's mostly behind my sona's head

November - 

I didn't have much to choose from for this month as I was still super busy with school, but this is when I started getting back into traditional art and began making badges for people~ One of my first commissioned traditional badges was for a local fur and I really like how it came out :3c so that's the one I chose to represent this month! \o/

December - 

Another piece with Siber here, haha. But this one had a bunch of elements in it that I really enjoyed doing. There's the "magic" effect with the music around him, the color scheme is super wintery, there's foreground and background elements that I think really make the picture work well, and I really just like this picture haha. I think it's a strong representation of my styles mixed together since all I'd drawn of him up until this point was stickers so I was pretty set into a certain way of drawing this character. But this turned out really well and I just really like it haha

Boy that was a lot of blurbing >-> lolol Thanks for reading if you did! I'd love to read your comments on what month is your favorite or if you had a piece from last year that is definitely one of YOUR favorites that I didn't include (I'm super interested in that actually, please let me know lol) Do you think I chose good work for this? :3c Do you think I over-explained my own reasons behind choosing these? lol Lemme know what you think in the tags or comments or through my inbox! \o/  I DO definitely read all of that ~ ❤❤❤ And thank you again for following me ❤❤❤