#furudate clowning us again

[yolart]

So, uh. Anyone read the last Haikyuu! chapter? 🙄🤡

[corpsentry]

january: an art retrospective

i did some stuff last month (but it’s a lot of stuff and there’s a photodump + some Serious Fucking Reflection, so it’s all below the cut)

so ok, let’s start with this. here are some heads. each head has a red arrow. that red arrow is what i call the red line of the devil. it’s the slope of the face from the side of the eye to the cheekbone and then down towards the chin. up until like 2 weeks ago, i couldn’t draw it. i couldn’t fucking draw it. i would edit over that part of the face over and over again until i was frustrated and tired and i had a raging homosexual headache and it still never looked right. notice that each head is different. notice that each head looks wrong.

at the start of 2021 i finally admitted to myself, as per the image above, that i was deeply, deeply unhappy with my art. what was the problem? i dunno. but i decided i was going to fix it and i was going to do so via another one scribble a day event wherein for every day of january i would find a photo of a human head, and i would draw it.

january 1st, 2021. i was embarrassed to tweet this even on my private account where like 5 friends and a rock would see it. in retrospect, you can also see all of my bad habits emerging like dicks from a hole in the ground. it’s disproportionate. the brows look flat. the eyes are slanting upwards. the entire drawing looks flat, like this isn’t a 3d person but a caricature of one.

january 2nd, 3rd, 4th:

on the 2nd i decided to start a separate thread for doodles and applied learning. here’s the first set of tests

the rest of the week is kind of uneventful so we’re going to skip those. fast forward to january 11th

this one is especially bad. i am acutely aware, suddenly, that i am not changing anything at all. i’m stressed and miserable about it because i’m still trying to see people as people and trying to draw people that look attractive and proportionate and hot. my friend, leny, reminds me that i need to think about faces in terms of planes. i have a moment. my other friend masha sends me some links to anatomy tutorials. i have another moment.

january 11th. applied sketch

january 13th is when i start the troubleshooting process. the link above drives me mad because i’m pretty happy with the face but then i realize that there’s something very fucking wrong with the shape of the head LOL and then i realize that i’ve never had any idea what the proportion of the face to the rest of the skull is so i grit my teeth and i open a new canvas and i

bald studies. it seemed like the right thing to do. can’t draw heads? ok draw some heads. look at some photographs. i traced each photo but tried to stick to straight lines so that i could replicate the shapes more easily. i broke each face down into shapes. i thought about airplanes

i got really excited. i started doing studies, then applied studies, then stylized studies.

sketches. i’m not sure what’s going on (as always) and it’s very rough, but they look different from the sketches i did on january 2nd. that’s a start

january 16th’s daily study. looks more like a person now. juuuuuust a bit

more applied studies

on the 18th i take a break and go stare at some lips because i don’t understand how the fuck they work. again, i focus on shapes, on volume, on the fact that these things exist in 3d. holy fuck lips exist in 3d. holy fuck we are real

january 19th. i’m working on it.

january 22nd. some sketches + a daily study. it has finally occurred to me that heads can tilt up and down and that things look different accordingly. yes i was not aware of this before. yes i have been drawing for over a decade.

january 23rd. by this point after doing my daily sketch i almost always go back and do an applied study which is basically to say i drew a lot of fucking links. this one looks kind of okay. i’m kind of proud

january 25th. links. trying to make sense of everything i’ve learned

26th, 27th, 28th. daily studies

january 1st. january 31st

The End Of The Photo Dump (dab)

ok NOW i get to talk about what i discovered while studying the shit out of human beings

FIRST OF ALL, there is something precious and magical about drawing shit without the explicit knowledge that you’re going to tweet that shit out to 45 people later. it takes the burden of perception off your shoulders and that does something to you, or at least that’s my theory. i told myself i wouldn’t post any of this stuff until the end of the month (if i wanted to post it at all) and kept everything off my public social media accounts and that meant i could draw ugly as hell without worrying about who would point and laugh, which i absolutely fucking did. a lot of these are fucking trainwrecks. most of these are fucking trainwrecks. why do they look like that?? why??? this doesn’t look like the work of someone who’s allegedly been drawing since they were in kindergarten, does it?????

here’s why: because that person took a huge motherfucking swing at everything they’d ever known about art and spent a month building something new in its place. the abstract explanation is that i grew up on shoujo and weird old anime and my understanding of anatomy was unironically kamichama karin and while i love kamichama karin, when kamichama karin is your rule even if you try to break it, you’re going to end up going nowhere. “you have to know the rules to break them”, yeah? well i didn’t know shit. the abstract explanation is i’ve been miserable about my art for a few years now because i saw other people doing things effortlessly which i couldn’t and instead of going back to the basics, i tried to do what they did (not plagiarism, mind you, i mean i literally tried to copy the red line of the devil i mentioned above because i couldn’t even make that happen) and then i fucking failed.

the simple explanation is this. i had to unlearn everything, and relearn it again (like some kind of new renaissance clown, what the fuck is this?)

take this for example. all my life i’ve drawn faces in the order: eyes, nose, mouth, face shape, head. this works for some people, im aware, but it was something central to how i had always drawn, so i decentralized it. i said fuck you to the old me and changed the order up. now i start with the nose, then the eyes, mouth, the chin line, and the sides of the face. now i force myself to think about the human head as a series of parts interacting with each other instead of a bunch of disparate features which i want to look pretty.

or let’s use this zelda from last year. something about this looked wrong last october, the way something about all of my drawings looked wrong, but i couldn’t pinpoint it for hell the way i couldn’t articulate Any of my feelings about the visual arts. now, looking back, here’s what i see. that nose is sticking out far too much given how she’s not really facing very far away from the camera. that ear at the back shouldn’t be there. her forehead is too big. she doesn’t have a forehead. what the fuck is up with the shape of her head?

so apparently reject modernity embrace tradition has its roots in alt-right terminology and i’m not very horny for the alt-right (you understand), but the spirit survives here. you know sometimes you have to admit that you have no idea what the fuck you’re doing and draw people for 31 days. i’ve spent my whole life drawing stylized people and while again there are artists who have no issue with this, i veered off the track of the Good and the Holy and couldn’t get back on. i had no point of reference because i’d never thought about what an actual human being looks like, so i had no way to fix what i knew in my gut looked wrong but wouldn’t come out better.

this was hard. this was like oikawa tooru swallowing his worthless pride and admitting that ushijima wakatoshi had gotten the best of him for the last time in his high school career, but in haikyuu!! by furudate haruichi oikawa tooru fucks off to argentina and then joins the argentinean national team, and you know what, i think i’ve made it to argentina (not the team just the country). as per the golden rule of dont fucking move until you’re at least two thirds of the way through the month, i only started trying to draw Shit shit on like the 22nd or something, but i was happy with that i created. i am happy with what i’ve done. i’ve posted like 2 things this month that involve people with what i now call ~applied Knowledge~~ and they’re, like, not perfect obviously (perfection is an unattainable ideal), but i’m fucking proud of them. i didn’t spend 5 hours hunched over my laptop adjusting the red line of the devil because it’s not a devil’s line anymore. because i finally sorta get how people work. because i sat down and i said ‘we are not going to fuck with this misery shit anymore’ and then i did that. it’s just a line now.

here are 2 collages tracking my painstakingly carved out progress from january 2nd to february 2nd because i’m a slut for collages

and here’s what i’ve done to my art! the same person drew these but also Not Really! you know! for the first time in a year i don’t immediately hate what i’ve drawn. you know what guys? art is fucking fun. zelda’s forehead doesn’t scare me anymore because i know how foreheads fucking work now, and i don’t know everything, and i’m going to keep troubleshooting stuff as i go (i want to draw a skeleton. like a. i want to draw a goddamn skeleton guys) but i’m honestly and genuinely proud of what i’ve done in the span of a month, and i’m also in disbelief. i started this month-long challenge out as a last ditch effort to make peace with my art because i’ve been tired for a long time and i was ready to kick the bucket on drawing people altogether. i didn’t think anything would happen. nothing’s happened for years. i’ve been miserable for years.

this was the caption for january 1st, 2021. i was super, super fucking embarrassed and it looks like super fucking shit, but you know what, i think i did in fact triumph over the bullshit. surprisingly enough, when you put in consistent effort into something, You Will See Results. didn’t see that coming, did you? i know i didn’t.

this isn’t a success story. it’s a happiness story. i never gave a shit damn about the institute of art or whatever, i was just mad at myself because what i saw in my head didn’t match up with what was on the canvas. and now it’s getting better. now i’m calibrating the compass. now drawing not just backgrounds but also people is exciting to me, and i can stick my links in your face and tell you ‘they hot’. i’m going to keep doing that. i’m going to keep going until i drop off the side of the earth and then spiral towards mars like some kind of fairy, and then i’m going to create something beautiful.

thanks for reading. here’s a pr department link for sticking around until the end

[000100000sstuff]

HAIKYUU CHAPTER 370

For the past day, as the spoilers were popping up, for the first time since picking up this series, I felt a great sense of disappointment towards this manga and ultimately towards Furudate. I felt like many of you feel now, that we were robbed of the rest of the first years' time in high school. I felt like Furudate had completely given up on his work and wanted to wrap this story up as soon as possible and rushed into a time-skip and I was one step away from putting on my clown makeup with the rest of you. But then the chapter came out and everything just fuckin clicked.

As hard as this is to acknowledge to many of us, Haikyuu was never about Karasuno. It wasn't even about high school volleyball. The ultimate goal was never about Hinata becoming the ace or even about winning nationals. Haikyuu has always been a story that revolved around Hinata and him learning how he can play in a sport where height is necessary in order to succeed and win. Hinata's journey was about learning other ways you can beat stronger opponents, learning that on the court there are six people that connect the ball with each other in order to be able to see the other side of the court; and he learned that in his first year of Karasuno. He learned how to use his height, which others saw as a disadvantage, as a weapon and never stopped fighting mid-air battles with other taller, powerful, and skilled opponents.

Unfortunately, there was no need for Furudate to show us the first year's second or third year. Hinata's ultimate goal since chapter one has always been to be the one who gets to stay on the court longer than anybody else, which means beating Kageyma who is now standing on the grandest court of all. Back in chapter 37, when Hinata repeats his claim to Kageyama, that someday he is going to beat him and he will stand on the court the longest, even if it takes him 10-20 years. Furudate foreshadowed this time-skip since back then with Kageyama's reply: "Even if that's at the top of the national stage or the world stage? We all just assumed it meant winning nationals. The set up of this time skip has been there from the very beginning of this story.

So after reading this chapter, I no longer feel disappointment and instead feel a sense of excitement about what's to come and awe of Furudate's foreshadowing skills. The actual time-skip could have been done better in my opinion, and I do still feel sadness as a reader who fell in love with the characters that there was a time skip and we missed seeing the development of our favorite characters but in the end, this is a story that is created by one person. The first year alone took 369 chapters, there was no need for us to go through the rest of the years with the first years when the set up of the time skip was completed the moment Hinata was pulled from the match against Kamomedai. Not only did Hinata lose again to Kageyama but he also lost to Hoshiumi. Hoshiumi shouting, that he will be waiting for him and not to take forever seals the deal for me that he also went pro.

So Hinata moving to Brazil and playing beach volleyball is currently a stepping stone to help him further develop his skill and technique in volleyball in order to compete at the world level. Hinata should be making his comeback to Japan soon, per the two-year limit Washijo gave him. Btw Washijo line per translation: "There's no one else who's looking forward to Hinata Shoyou the most than me" is the best line setup for Hinata showing his true potential soon.

If you made it this far into my ted talk, I thank you. I feel like I just went through an epiphany about Haikyuu and I wanted to share my thoughts for those who feel like I felt a few days ago and hope you guys stay for the final arc.

[cannot-decide-on-a-fandom]

Part 2 of this way too long already crusade

This time, manga match ratings! Same rules as last time. Here's part 1-

Nekoma Vs Fukurodani Tokyo Qualifiers

Can I just appreciate how there's an entire arc in this series where our main characters only appear a couple times, about completely different teams playing matches they are not in any way involved with? It's so cool to see this, especially because Fukurodani isn't really Karasuno's rival as much as Nekoma's. Haikyuu really, really does give the spotlight to every single person at one point or another. And we see this happening in the nationals too, we don't only see Karasuno play.

Specifically for this match, I loved seeing the inner workings of all their plays, and it was such a great thing, as this was the first time we saw an official match with high level teams where it still remained relatively friendly, without removing from the competitiveness. I'm so glad we're getting the OVA of this.

Also, Akaashi having a numbered freaking list of Bokuto's weaknesses...I just can't deal with this

I love those dorks so much

And we met Akane and Alisa!

7.5/10

Nekoma Vs Nohebi

Alright, so I completely DESPISED Suguru at first. The first character I thought negatively of.

But...dammit Furudate, why are you such a great writer? How can you make me love him eventually?

Anyway, let me talk about the MVP of this match (in my eyes anyway!)

My boy!

I'm so sorry you got hurt! But you did so well!

Do you know what? When I was reading this and heard it was a sprain, I was like "oh, that sucks. But hey, it could be worse"

Then I sprained my own ankle in a competition and... damn, that hurts! I couldn't walk properly for like a week, and I couldn't exercise for 6. It's so much worse than I expected. My poor boy.

But we got Shibayama playing due to this, and that was great. And the moments with Lev. And HUGS!

I also liked the backstory for Yaku and Kuroo.

They're just...nerds. I love them so much.

I need to reread this match soon.

8.5/10

Okay, there weren't really any "matches" as such I could comment on during training camp, and Karasuno/Dateko practices we didn't see enough of, so! Jumping straight into nationals!

Karasuno Vs Tsubakihara

I have to apologize to Tsubakihara because for like a month, every time I tried to think of their name I couldn't remember it.

But still, this was a nice match. It brought us some new things like the ceiling serve, and the characters on the opposition were nice. It wasn't extraordinary, but you know what? I'm glad it exists.

Also! We started getting Kinoshita development! Yes, baby! He was always the least explored person on the team and I'm glad Furudate didn't ignore him (like they ever would, though, they're too great for that)

It was also the start of Hinata's improved receives, at least in official games. And I really liked how there was exploration of how the arena effects plays, because that is definitely the case. you perform in anything better when it's more similar to your own regular location. I love it.

7/10

Karasuno Vs Inarizaki

HELL YEAH!!!!!

This is my second favourite match of the entire series

It's so good! The Miya twins are stupidly chaotic, Kita is just wonderful, the entire team is great, and as for the actual match?

ARE YOU KIDDING ME WITH THIS?

How can I not love it? Hinata, I'm so proud baby! The twins version of the freak quick? Awesome. Tanaka's backstory? I LOVE IT!

Showing mistakes and screw ups by each player was fantastic, there was a lot of humour as well without detracting from the seriousness of this game, the freaking declaration of Atsumu tossing to Hinata one day, I just....I can't deal with this game

9.5/10 Would be 10 if the next match didn't exist

Karasuno Vs Nekoma Nationals

Okay. I'm not gonna say much, because I could honestly rant about this game for like 2 hours straight no problem. But....YEAH!

This is EASILY my favourite game of the entire series. It was the most emotional game of any of them, the freaking symbolism of the birdcage and all, seeing Kenma planning and Hinata being frustrated is so weirdly satisfying, Yamaguchi and Tsukki celebrating together, the HUGS!

KENMA!!!!!!!

I'm so proud of you! Are you kidding me?

Like, I know we say Tsukishima has had the best development, and I'm not necessarily disagreeing, but can we for a moment appreciate my precious boy?

He grew SO MUCH! IT'S SUCH AN AMAZING THING SEEING HIM SAY HE'S HAVING FUN! I JUST ABOUT DIED!

There's so much more, but I think I might burst if I talk about this more.

10/10. If I could give it 1000 I would but that would destroy the point of the scoring system.

Fukurodani Vs Mujinazaki

Oh, boy. How are we gonna follow up the best match of the series?

I'll tell you how, by more backstory, this time of Akaashi, hell yeah!

...I say that too much.

Anyway, this arc is what cemented Akaashi's place in my top 10 characters. I love seeing usually calm and collected characters struggling and feeling frustrated, but he handled it so well. He tried so hard, and he overcame it, and I love the little glimpses of his past with Bokuto.

I'm pretty sure the line "no matter what other people may say, we are the protagonists of the world" came from this match too (though I could be wrong), which is the rawest freaking line possible

I just...I really enjoyed seeing a Fukurodani match like this. As I said earlier, Nekoma and Fukurodani are rivals more than Karasuno and Fukurodani, but because Nekoma and Karasuno are strongly correlated, they were kind of tangentially related to the qualifiers, and they were mentioned a few times too.

But this was purely about Fukurodani. We got character arcs entirely about a team who we never actually saw Karasuno face

The entire game was great. It was good enough to not feel like a let down after the previous match, but also a nice cooling off period. I do adore this match

8.5/10

And, Finally

Karasuno Vs Kamomedai

...oh boy. Why not just hit me with a brick while you're at it?

Gonna be real, Hoshiumi is my least favourite rival (again though, that doesn't mean I dislike him, I love every character in this series) and when reading this match at first, I was like...I won't be able to get into this, will I?

...I need a clown mask or something.

This match made me cry so much! Hinata abandoning the name "Little Giant" and aiming for the title of "The Greatest Decoy", and how mature he was throughout this match, and everything alongside it...I can't deal with it without feeling things.

Actually, and I swear I'm not adding this just as a self promotion or something but purely because it's a lot faster to just link this than describe my thoughts here again, I made a video pretty much about this match, so check it out if you want my thoughts

9/10

And we've come to the end

This was...way too long

But oh well. Do you agree?