#i do take criticism actually

[romanticallyghosting]

yes :) it is exactly what i wanted and the engineer one just makes me want my stuffed animals to be his stuffed animals’s best friend. a cuddle pit shall be formed! now im just picturing what kind of stuffed animals they’d all have though

oooh another fun hc, mind if I share my thoughts?

(this took me way to long please like comment and/or reblog)

-DARKIPLIER

not me headcannoning that wilford got them matching little sheep plushies

dark's one has black wool and just kinda looks pissed

jim tells all the other egos about it too so Dark just tells them he put fire to it

he did not.

he named it socks and he'll cuddle with it from time to time when he gets lonely

also his and wilford's stuffed sheep go for tea parties together every thursday at 3:45

-WILFORD

like I said, he has his sheep plushie who he named Sherbert

(his is pink and has a little mustache)

but the list doesn't end there

he has a mountain of different pink plushies stacked up on his bed

one of them is a bubblegum pink whale he named Sally

also I do imagine that in this universe he somehow acquired a plushie of him in a dress (like that fanart that I drew a little bit back)

no one has any clue where it's from

but its just there

-YANCY

won't admit to it at first, but he too has his own little collection of stuffed animals

most of them are birds

kind of ironic how birds are so free

and yet he's still trapped in the prison waiting for parole

his favorite one, however, is one you smuggled in for him

It's a bright sky blue bird, with little buttons for eyes

he named it cornflake <3

(no thats definitely not the name of a kenku npc in a dnd one shot i dmed and that one of my friends brutally murdered and that im writing in here to honor and that you guys can send an ask about if you want to learn more about them no wdym)

your the only one he trusts with his stuffed animals and if you have any he offers that they can go on playdates on visitation day

-ILLINOIS

doesn't have that many stuffed animals actually

he actually only has one

but the one he does have is very dear to him

literally

its a deer plushie

in all seriousness, his mom gave it to him for his 6th birthday

not many people know of it's existence

even less have actually seen it

he named it apples and its always on his person somewhere

its one of those little mini stuffed animals so he made it into a keychain for when he can't carry it anywhere else

he trusts like 2 people to actually look at it and if you make fun of him for it you two are no longer friends and he will be very upset with you

-MURDOCK

the only reason he has some in the first place is because he always likes to take something to remember his victims by

in a rush to get out, sometimes he'll just pick up a stuffed animal and bolt out the door

that's the story he swears by

and while it not exactly wrong, he's grown more attached to the stuffed creatures than he likes to admit

his favorite is a plain dark brown teddy with a red ribbon around it's neck that he named Teddy (wow murdock so original /j)

It's old and rather well loved

but it gives him a feeling of home even when he's on the run

-ENGINEER

ah yes, where it all began

has too many to count

his favorite however is from his captain

its a giant golden retriever that he named snuffleuflekins

the captain said they gave it to him because he's like a golden retriever

and while he's not to sure what that's supposed to mean

he takes it as a compliment

also he'll definitely arrange stuffed animal playdates

or eagerly explain how he got all of them, their names, backstories, and relationships

[proxycrit]

(I point. Gently, in the voice of somebody who’s mind touched by the outer gods, i whisper truth in your ears:

Your honor the horses are now lesbians

(Anyways here’s the designs)

[tea-cat-arts]

Shen Yuan getting transported into pidw isn't "the system punishing him for being a lazy internet hater," but instead representative of "step 1 of the creative process: getting so mad at something you decide to go write your own fucking book" in this essay I will

[courtrecord]

honestly i hate how that “maybe the curtains are just blue” post has become shorthand for anti-intellectualism and shit bc as someone who has an utter passion for media analysis now, I WAS THAT PERSON IN HIGH SCHOOL ENGLISH CLASS.

english class never taught me how to analyze stories, it taught me how to remember what things the teacher said were “symbolism” and how to take quizzes where we had to match a quote to the character who said it. i didn’t give a shit about any of it, bc literally why should i. it was bullshit.

there’s this idea online that people are forgetting or rejecting what they learned in english class when they’re bad at media analysis, and maybe that’s a little bit true, but i think the much bigger problem is they never learned it in the first place. cinemasins & “maybe the curtains are just blue” aren’t convincing people to abandon an intellectualism they already had, they’re filling a void.

when all you learn in high school is to write on the test “blue = depression”, why is it surprising that so many people don’t give a shit about the curtains.

[anti-terf-posts]

hot take but plus size/fat people shouldn't have to sexualize themselves for you to be accepting of them.

[yashley]

Say something true!

[dantent]

tav, trying to flirt with raphael but rolling a nat 1: if i had to pick a favorite tea... i would pick you, shaw-tea *winks*

raphael: ...

raphael: im surrounded by idiots

-later that night-

raphael in his bed, still thinking about tav: fuck...

[blueskittlesart]

deeply refreshing to see someone critical of Swift who also like, genuinely likes her. Like i'm neutral to positive on her, but the online discourse has been absolutely rancid. flipping between "Taylor Swift has never done anything wrong ever and she's a fucking genius" and "Taylor Swift is the worst lyricist of all time and also a bad person" is exhausting, so thank you for like. nuance or something lmao

not to make it serious for a sec but i genuinely think that being able to like things that are bad is really important. like I think that it's an important skill to be able to look at something and see what you personally enjoy about it and then take a step back and acknowledge that objectively it's flawed. and to also be able to acknowledge that liking something isn't necessarily an identity or a moral stance. and i think that fandom space in general could really benefit from more people taking the time to learn how to do that. it's okay to like things that are bad

[choccy-milky]

bruh i need to vent about a rude comment i got on my recent chap and also about clora, cuz its something thats been on my mind for a while now. it has spoilers to my most recent chap tho so im putting it below

so in my most recent chap clora gets hit by the killing curse but thanks to seb sacrificing himself for her, it doesn’t work/she survives. and I got a rly rude comment about how that’s super cringe and that clora is a "shoe horning of every possible manifestation of Mary-Sueism I have ever seen." theyre dropping my fic after almost 500k words bc apparently THAT’S where they draw the line and that "just somehow pulling it out the bag and surviving a killing curse from the power of love. In simpler terms, it’s absolutely cringe worthy" and "forgive me if I rolled an eye at the yet again invincible nature of Clora Clemons-the-one-eighth-Veela-extraordinaire"

BUT LIKE LMAO TELL ME U DIDN’T READ/WATCH HARRY POTTER WITHOUT TELLING ME. that’s literally what happens to harry??but its only cringe when it happens to our "mary-sue" clora? like yeah sure love magic might be a bit cringe but IM LITERALLY JUST PULLING FROM THE SOURCE MATERIAL. of all the things to take issue with in my fic and interpretations, theyre taking issue with something that’s canon BAHAHA.

and since im on the topic of clora being mary sue can I just say I hate the misogyny/internalized misogyny that i've seen some people (NOT A LOT, THANKFULLY) treat her with. like i get it, im not pale and blonde and as conventionally pretty as clora is, but even if I was, is that a reason to hate me?? and does being beautiful and well-liked = mary sue? bc as far as I know, mary sue is a chara who is just naturally amazing at everything and doesnt need to try hard and theyre just inexplicably great for no reason (like mc in the base game BAHHAA) if anything the mary sue in MY fic is seb LMAO (but hes a boy so its ok). like clora has worked hard and studied magic all her life due to being a squib and wanting to make up for not being able to DO it. she isnt good at flying, seb is still better at her than duelling, shes really short sighted when it comes to doing/thinking whats best for others and can be a huge idiot.... and like. the only guys that have even shown interest in clora on a real scale have been seb and leander (and then lawley for blackmail purposes, and also bc he hates seb) so its not like literally everyone is falling over themselves for her?? like her interactions with the main cast of boys (ominis, garreth, amit) theyre all indifferent to her LMAO but still, the fact that shes pretty and guys here and there might look at her and go o shes cute! doesnt make her a mary sue SORRy thats just called being attractive idk its just annoying that ppl automatically see a nice kind beautiful female character without any VISIBLE flaws and go SHES TOO PERFECT!! MARY SUE!! WAH IM JEALOUS! and like I get it bc when I was younger I probs would have been annoyed by clora as well due to my own insecurities and internalized misogyny but hey, how about u just realize that’s ur own problem and your own jealousy, and not a real one HAHAH anyway ive since evolved bc I used to be a ‘not like other girls’ type girl back in highschool. trying to be super tomboy-y bc I thought being feminine was cringe and too basic but now ive embraced it and love girly things and dresses and charas like clora who are still strong and showcase their strengths and weaknesses in subtler ways, and I want to smooch her and make out with her. get behind me clora ill protect you🤺🤺🤺

[good-to-drive]

My favorite comments on How Do You Sleep

[lucyshypemaster]

you will NEVER see anyone writing paragraphs after paragraphs hating on keefe like they do with sophie.

[densitywell]

there's nothing orym would ask of the other hells that he wouldn't do himself, which is sort of the problem, really

[toastyghostcriticalblog]

look I’m not a professional artist but Vivzepop needs to STOP turning demons into twinks ok every hellhound design we seen is literally someone fursona and don’t get me started on the supposedly bug and animal characters like how tf I’m supposed to know Niffty is a bug I THOUGHT SHE WAS A CYCLOPS LIKE CHERRI FOR 3 YEARS like are we sure viv actually finished art school or did she payed her way to finish

[shorthaltsjester]

free my complex female character, she did the same thing as complex male characters but the fandom takes Any analysis of her actions/choices/motivations that doesn’t strip her of all of her agency in bad faith and claims that only misogynists would dare to critique the things that they’ve noticed in her character because she’s a woman, completely ignoring the over-presence of discourse about similarly traited male characters in their fandom.

[genericpuff]

Hey so I have a question-

Is Rachel even contributing to LO's art anymore? Like, at all?

CAUTION: MILD FASTPASS SPOILERS AHEAD !!!

I've talked at length about the 'tells' of each assistant and artist, and while it doesn't guarantee that I can tell exactly who drew each panel, there's one thing there's been a lot less of in the most recent episodes that have caught my attention - things that I know Rachel would typically contribute.

And most of it comes down to her lineart.

The shading was always her, no doubt about that, you could tell with how consistently awful it is, how she would take actual decent flats from her assistants and proceed to butcher them with muddied shading.

AmyKim89's flats vs. after Rachel's gotten her hands on them:

(seriously Rachel why tf did you darken Persephone's legs here, it looked so much better before ??)

But there was also her lineart which, at first, I didn't realize who was drawing it. It didn't show up super often in LO but it was always very noticeable when it did so I knew it had to be someone on the team doing it:

The thickness of the lines and the extra little strokes added in along the knuckles and bends, that wasn't something that was really common in LO at this point... at least it hasn't been since S1:

And when comparing it to the lineart she used to do in The Doctor Pepper/Foxglove Show:

(look at the mouth in The Doctor Foxglove Show vs. Hera in the pilot version of LO, they're literally the same)

So yeah, it was certainly the revelation to discover that that one instance of "weirdly detailed lineart" wasn't one of her assistants having a little extra fun, it was Rachel herself. It was already so uncommon for her to contribute all the way back in S2 that her contributions seemed to be more of the exception rather than the norm.

And since seeing the art that's been in the newest FP episodes following the return of the series... is Rachel even drawing at all anymore? Because lately the lineart has felt very thin, in a way that I can't tell if it's her assistants just doing all the lineart now or if she's trying to emulate S1 LO more by using less lineart. But S1 didn't have thin lineart, it had very thick lineart, BUT only being used where necessary to emphasis shadows and depth.

Now the lineart feels very... dinky? Especially when you look at the eyelashes.

That said, there are moments from S1 that had similarly 'dinky' lineart, so take this with grains of salt. It still didn't feel as dinky though as it does today where the lines are practically non-existent in how thin they are.

There are also times when you can tell they're really trying to emulate that S1 look, the pieces are there but they aren't being put together very well:

So yeah at this point I wouldn't even be shocked if all Rachel's doing at this point is scripting and roughs. And considering there are definitely times where she'll just draw without knowing what to write, the 'scripting' is also practically non-existent. It's just her leaving her roughs off to the last second for her assistants to whip out with very little time to pay attention to what's being submitted.

Once again it's Rachel fundamentally missing the point of the criticism that's being made of her work. She's trying to forcefully emulate something that she didn't even have a process behind. I can attest as someone who's been trying to do studies of her past work to recreate it as faithfully as possible through Rekindled, it's very difficult to achieve the 'old LO' look because 'old LO' was literally just Rachel slapping down brush strokes until they looked good, there was no specific process or guidelines that she followed, she just made things look textured and colorful. Everything else was basically up to her figuring out what actually looked good, with panels often having their own vibes separate from others in isolation of one another.

Now she's trying to replicate that look while missing the point entirely that it's not something she can really replicate anymore. Though we do get the odd panel that's way closer to the point, those panels have one thing that she's clearly not putting into the comic as a whole anymore - love and effort.

(fr this panel is so gorgeous but I feel like at this point it was more sheer luck because of how rare it is to see panels like these nowadays, this feels like an accident LOL)

Case in point, this honorable mention towards Persephone's outfit which is literally just a color-swapped version of the sketch that Rachel posted to Blue Sky that got meme'd to death in the ULO sub:

Did you catch that though? The weird dark patch over her boob and the gap in the lineart of her cleavage?

That's because they copy pasted the first panel and then erased out the hands, but missed the part of the hand shading that was overlapping the breast and the gap in the lineart.

I shit you not, Rachel coming up with memes on Blue Sky that she's scraped out of shows she watched 20 years ago is basically the full extent of her writing at this point.

Haha take a thing and make it bigger! So funnyyyy!

(seriously Rachel's 'humor' feels like it's stuck in 2010)

Yep, you're really earning that #1 NYT Bestseller label that you haven't even gotten since Volume 3, Rachel. Put your hand down, there are no high fives for you here.

[spop-romanticizes-abuse]

hooty reminds me of kyle and entrapta in some ways. he never did anything wrong, in fact he only tried to be friendly with everyone, but everyone bullies him and acts like he's a nuisance just because he happens to be kinda weird. up to s2, at least.

like,, isn't it the message of the show to not bully people and accept them regardless of their eccentricities? wasn't luz bullied for this exact same reason?? why was it suddenly okay for luz to mess with hooty or act like he's annoying just because he's.. i guess, weirder than she is? her entire conflict with the human realm was that her weird interests were made fun of (although some of those interests turned out to be harmful to those around her, and they had a valid reason to be scared or weirded out but whatever).

i do like that they accept hooty later on but i feel like that's only because he helped them out with their problems. it's kind of like the situation with entrapta in s5, basically “people only respect you if you're useful to them”. there wasn't really a lesson to be learned, none of them really acknowledge that they were mean to hooty and they shouldn't have treated him like that. lilith of all people has this realization and apologizes to hooty for mistreating him but eda, king and luz doesn't? eda, especially, i mean hooty is the owl house, he ensures her safety and comfort but she still treated him like shit?